The country are gagging for it and that's not including the 16-18 year olds who will vote rejoin unanimously. My guess is that Starmer has already got this in mind. He's got very close to France and Germany and Canada feels like it might want to be part of the club. Very few in the UK like Trump's America and people are only now wising up to the fact that the EU is as big a power block as the US and we were top dogs in it........
The advertising would be so easy......... None of the excruciating Red Bus nonsense of Referendum !. Just 28/29 of the most beautiful and inspiring capitals in the world and we get free access to all of them for work or for play. It could look like the most alluring travel agency of all time.....
Not happening Roger.
The right wing own the news media, including broadcast media, and OfCom have no teeth. It's their game now.
It feels like that at the moment but my sense is that the right wing media and their ignorant and aging followers have had their day. Corbyn is sparking more enthusiasm than Farage. People want change and no one's looking to the Telegraph the Mail or GB News for change. Media follow the zeitgeist. Even the BBC have noticably moved in the last few weeks as have Labour. Things are in flux and that can only lead one way and that's not in a Faragist/Trumpian/Netanyahu direction
"Over the weekend, three posters appeared next to Kentish Town West overground station, plastered onto the billboards which sit under the bridge to the left of the entrance. They read: “Wanted Keir Starmer”, calling out the Prime Minister for his perceived complicity in Israel’s war in Gaza. They, and other posters, popped up around London on Saturday ahead of a wider mobilisation of activists, led by Palestinian Youth Movement.
"Kentish Town is at the heart of Starmer’s constituency – Holborn and St Pancras – but it is also the place that the Prime Minister called home before last year’s general election. His favourite pub, The Pineapple, sits to the north of the area, and he still plays five-aside football on a Kentish Town pitch. It is a political home. But things are shifting. In 2019 Starmer returned to Holborn and St Pancras with a majority of 27,763. In 2024 it had dropped to 18,884. This cannot be explained entirely by the war in Gaza. But the pro-Gaza independent who ran against Starmer in 2024, Andrew Feinstein, squeezed some of his vote.
"The slow gestation of the new left-wing party (whose founding is being co-led by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana) has awakened talk of Feinstein’s candidacy. He has said he will support and likely join the new party, and Holborn and St Pancras is already being talked about as a key target (despite the next general election being four years away)."
Very unlikely.
Majority of 11,572 Turnout 38,602
So a majority that is 30% of turnout….
looks like the drop was stay-at-homes.
As a previous inhabitant of that constituency, I would say there is every chance if Labour are 24% in the polls, he loses IF Reform takes a chunk of his previously relied upon vote, and Your Party wins on differential turnout.
I cant imagine he has a personal vote of any note, hes distinctly unlikeable and the Fruits will be decapitating in a strong area. Greens stand aside and game on i reckon
A friend, living in a 5th storey council flat, has 2 folding e-cycles for mobility, an e-Brompton and a Gocycle; both are long established British brands. Her Council have just totally banned all e-scooter and e-bike batteries from the lifts.
Their stance is absolute, and to cite safety concerns and their legal duty to residents i.e. that they could go to prison if they don't take appropriate steps and there's a fire caused by an e-battery. Laptop batteries have not been banned.
It's a strange one with lots of angles. Standards exist. Fires would start when plugged in and charging in the main, surely? And AFAIK there are no stats collected distinguishing laptop batteries from e-bike batteries (does anyone know?) - there is not much difference, so how is the policy justified?
A totally separate angle is cycle storage as part of the residents parking for the block.
And calls for regulation of batteries have been being made consistently for a number of years. This is what happens when appropriate regulation is not done at the appropriate time.
The reason that they have banned e-bike batteries and not laptops, is volume of material. Same on airlines. A laptop battery letting go* is a small danger. An e-bike battery can threaten a whole building. Such fires have already happened and caused massive amounts of damage.
Fires are primarily during charging - but can happen after damage and are often time delayed from the damage - hours later.
After Grenfell, no one is going to take a chance. If they don't ban them and there is a fire, then they would be answering question in the dock. And the government el al will hang them out to dry - a useful scapegoat.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits.
Personally, I would go for staggering fines for importing, possession and use of dangerous batteries. Scaled by the capacity of the battery. Plus criminal liability.
We actually have such rules for dangerous ICEs - but it's a non-existent problem, since the cheapest and worst petrol car conforms to all the regulations about safety with petrol. Petrol contains more energy per kilo than TNT.....
*Increasing problem - people are buying ancient laptops, second hand and replacing the batteries with cheap shite from guess where. There is a whole market in replacement batteries for laptops going back a decade or more.
(Not having a go at you; I'm just exploring the details.)
For me that doesn't convince. It's not purely about capacity and fire risk. It's more broad brush than that.
The 20 mile range battery on my Axxon Rides E-folder is 180Wh. That is exactly the same size as batteries for power tools I have. For my E-Brompton I have batteries of size (checks) 90Wh and 180Wh, the former specced to go on an airline.
Apple currently supply laptop batteries of 100Wh.
Electric wheelchair lithium batteries go from ~250Wh to ~700Wh, including those available on Motability. The airline limit for those is 300Wh.
If the risk profile was so stark electric wheelchair batteries would be banned or required to be small; as far as I know they are not banned or size limited.
I'm not sure that we can say much around "there have already been fires" to justify bans, when data about which categories of battery caused how many fires has just not been collected. The alleged data is probably hearsay.
To me this feels like lazy and easy decisions that do not reflect actual risk.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits. I think this is important. Where are all these cheap batteries kept? We regulate other things; of course we can regulate these.
You need to think like the Process State. Bans and other rules need to be convenient for the State, not deal with problems. Or be sensible for the end user.
So banning all e-bike and scooters is easier than checking a standard. That doesn't exist. And would mean agro
The cheap e-bike batteries are being kept and charged in houses and flats.
The reason that wheelchairs aren't a focus of the problem is that there is no race to build super cheap wheelchairs with the cheapest batteries, yet the highest performance.
Studies of batteries showed that fires are a function of
1) How close to the cutting edge of battery tech they are 2) Quality control 3) "Smartness" in the charging process.
The super cheap eBike kits score 100% on all 3
Strangely, they burn much more often than mobiles or laptops.
The reverse is seen in electric cars - where fire safety has been taken seriously from day 1. Which is why electric car fires are rarer than ICE fires.
My friend is an EE engineer going out fixing/installing mobile masts, he says this is happening more and more.
Openreach engineers trial panic alarms as incidents of abuse and assault soar
Exclusive: UK company reports 450 incidents in a year, with workers spat at, shaken off ladders and pushed down stairs
From scissors being brandished as weapons to verbal abuse and being trapped during a home visit, the number of reported incidents of abuse and assault on telecoms engineers is on the rise.
Openreach, the BT subsidiary that maintains the vast majority of the broadband network serving UK homes and businesses, recorded 450 reports of abuse and assault in the year to the end of March.
The number of incidents involving Openreach employees was up 8% year-on-year, a 40% increase on 2022-23 and seven times the volume reported almost a decade ago.
Abuse and assault has for the first time become the largest cause of injury to Openreach office staff and its 22,000 field engineers. Managers believe the number of incidents is even higher, as many cases are not reported by staf
That seems a leap. My dad had a very unpleasant encounter with a very rude Open Reach employee. After my mum died Dad tried to arrange stopping BT sport and the internet but wanted to keep the landline. BT cut off the landline. When someone finally attended he accused by Dad of doing all kinds of things, which he hadn't, and didn't resolve the issue (which was BT cutting him off). So I'd image some people might have been rather more arsey than my dad was.
In my comment, I was thinking more of TSE's friend fixing/installing mobile masts rather than the home visits.
My friend is an EE engineer going out fixing/installing mobile masts, he says this is happening more and more.
Openreach engineers trial panic alarms as incidents of abuse and assault soar
Exclusive: UK company reports 450 incidents in a year, with workers spat at, shaken off ladders and pushed down stairs
From scissors being brandished as weapons to verbal abuse and being trapped during a home visit, the number of reported incidents of abuse and assault on telecoms engineers is on the rise.
Openreach, the BT subsidiary that maintains the vast majority of the broadband network serving UK homes and businesses, recorded 450 reports of abuse and assault in the year to the end of March.
The number of incidents involving Openreach employees was up 8% year-on-year, a 40% increase on 2022-23 and seven times the volume reported almost a decade ago.
Abuse and assault has for the first time become the largest cause of injury to Openreach office staff and its 22,000 field engineers. Managers believe the number of incidents is even higher, as many cases are not reported by staf
That seems a leap. My dad had a very unpleasant encounter with a very rude Open Reach employee. After my mum died Dad tried to arrange stopping BT sport and the internet but wanted to keep the landline. BT cut off the landline. When someone finally attended he accused by Dad of doing all kinds of things, which he hadn't, and didn't resolve the issue (which was BT cutting him off). So I'd image some people might have been rather more arsey than my dad was.
In my comment, I was thinking more of TSE's friend fixing/installing mobile masts rather than the home visits.
He said it is 70% plebs saying 5G causes cancer/Covid etc, and about 30% middle class/poshos complaining about huge ugly masts in nice areas, usually in the same breath as complaining about the mobile coverage.
"Over the weekend, three posters appeared next to Kentish Town West overground station, plastered onto the billboards which sit under the bridge to the left of the entrance. They read: “Wanted Keir Starmer”, calling out the Prime Minister for his perceived complicity in Israel’s war in Gaza. They, and other posters, popped up around London on Saturday ahead of a wider mobilisation of activists, led by Palestinian Youth Movement.
"Kentish Town is at the heart of Starmer’s constituency – Holborn and St Pancras – but it is also the place that the Prime Minister called home before last year’s general election. His favourite pub, The Pineapple, sits to the north of the area, and he still plays five-aside football on a Kentish Town pitch. It is a political home. But things are shifting. In 2019 Starmer returned to Holborn and St Pancras with a majority of 27,763. In 2024 it had dropped to 18,884. This cannot be explained entirely by the war in Gaza. But the pro-Gaza independent who ran against Starmer in 2024, Andrew Feinstein, squeezed some of his vote.
"The slow gestation of the new left-wing party (whose founding is being co-led by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana) has awakened talk of Feinstein’s candidacy. He has said he will support and likely join the new party, and Holborn and St Pancras is already being talked about as a key target (despite the next general election being four years away)."
If he doesn't do a volte face it's possible. Gaza is going to cause him and others long lasting problems. He in particular is going to have to do a lot of explaining. He kicked out a lot of good party members for telling what has turned out to be the truth. I thought he'd do well but now I'm not so sure. If a new charismatic leader from the centre left turns up a lot of people will be listening
On the bright side that should be Ollie Pope’s last test match.
He'll be on the plane to Oz. Would you bring in Hameed and drop Crawley to 3 ?
We just need to drop Crawley.
Who would you bring in for him ?
While I'm not a fan, you need a pretty strong replacement in place of someone who hasn't quite comprehensively failed.
Dom Sibley, forget his previous form, hes a much better bat now
Personally I'm unconvinced by Bethell - I'd bring in Sibley, drop Crawley down to 3, and drop Pope down to 5 where he's a better fit in my view. But that's probably too old-school for Stokes and McCullum.
On the bright side that should be Ollie Pope’s last test match.
He'll be on the plane to Oz. Would you bring in Hameed and drop Crawley to 3 ?
We just need to drop Crawley.
Who would you bring in for him ?
While I'm not a fan, you need a pretty strong replacement in place of someone who hasn't quite comprehensively failed.
Dom Sibley, forget his previous form, hes a much better bat now
Personally I'm unconvinced by Bethell - I'd bring in Sibley, drop Crawley down to 3, and drop Pope down to 5 where he's a better fit in my view. But that's probably too old-school for Stokes and McCullum.
The answer is obvious, rather than looking at the county failures, we need to start cloning Root and Brooks.
On the bright side that should be Ollie Pope’s last test match.
He'll be on the plane to Oz. Would you bring in Hameed and drop Crawley to 3 ?
We just need to drop Crawley.
Who would you bring in for him ?
While I'm not a fan, you need a pretty strong replacement in place of someone who hasn't quite comprehensively failed.
Dom Sibley, forget his previous form, hes a much better bat now
Personally I'm unconvinced by Bethell - I'd bring in Sibley, drop Crawley down to 3, and drop Pope down to 5 where he's a better fit in my view. But that's probably too old-school for Stokes and McCullum.
Alex Lees, Tom Haines, Ben Charlesworth...there are several players who could deal with the top-order challenge of batting in England and indeed abroad.
So why the actual quacking duck are we stuck with Crawley?
On the bright side that should be Ollie Pope’s last test match.
He'll be on the plane to Oz. Would you bring in Hameed and drop Crawley to 3 ?
We just need to drop Crawley.
Who would you bring in for him ?
While I'm not a fan, you need a pretty strong replacement in place of someone who hasn't quite comprehensively failed.
Dom Sibley, forget his previous form, hes a much better bat now
Personally I'm unconvinced by Bethell - I'd bring in Sibley, drop Crawley down to 3, and drop Pope down to 5 where he's a better fit in my view. But that's probably too old-school for Stokes and McCullum.
Bethell has the ability, but the way he's being handled reminds me and not in a good way of Mark Lathwell.
I've been down an interesting rabbit hole with FUKers and Dump Net Zero policy.
They're against wind and all cite the same data to prove that its more expensive than anything else. And they want it switched off tomorrow.
As Wind is a third of our generating capacity, we'd need to replace that with something else.
The best suggestion I've been told by one of their self-proclaimed energy experts? COAL. Specifically domestic coal.
Thing is, back when we had coal being dug from profitable pits, the imported stuff was cheaper, so we closed the pits. Now - so I am told - we can just reopen the pits and burn coal.
OK, lets imagine that we scrap planning laws so no cost from enquiries or any of that. Buy the land. Dig the holes. Erect the surface infrastructure, buy machinery and train men. Just to be able to access coal which used to be more expensive than imports when there was no access costs.
Coal. Is that really what they think can be done? And I used to mock Boris Johnson for "crayon policies". This lot are a whole new level of stupid.
Trouble is that they are half right. In £/Kwh for dispatachable generation* (ignoring taxes and subsidies) coal is cheaper than anything else by a country mile.
We were insane to knock down all our coal burning infrastructure (all that capex already spent), and we are still digging ourselves into an expensive energy hole rather than getting ourselves out of it - eg licensing offshore wind with strike prices greater than the current grid price.
That said, we are where we are now - local deep mined coal isn't coming back at scale - far too expensive to reopen, although there is still some opencast to be had.
Throwing up some big coal fired baseload plants and running on imported coal would probably be the straight up cheapest way forward, if we are determined to get electricity prices down. It's the only realistic way to decouple prices from the gas price any time soon. But I don't see Reform doing it.
What they might do is windfall tax all the CFD cash back - that would reduce prices (or at least, provide a big pile of cash that could be used to reduce prices). But the downside would be that no one would touch another government contract of this sort with someone else's barge pole for a very long time - and we still need people to build some sort of generating capacity.
*dispatchable - ie available when you need it, like after dark on a still winter night. Perfectly technically achievable with wind/solar + batteries, or more cheaply with wind/solar + gas backup, but all of this is more expensive than coal.
A friend, living in a 5th storey council flat, has 2 folding e-cycles for mobility, an e-Brompton and a Gocycle; both are long established British brands. Her Council have just totally banned all e-scooter and e-bike batteries from the lifts.
Their stance is absolute, and to cite safety concerns and their legal duty to residents i.e. that they could go to prison if they don't take appropriate steps and there's a fire caused by an e-battery. Laptop batteries have not been banned.
It's a strange one with lots of angles. Standards exist. Fires would start when plugged in and charging in the main, surely? And AFAIK there are no stats collected distinguishing laptop batteries from e-bike batteries (does anyone know?) - there is not much difference, so how is the policy justified?
A totally separate angle is cycle storage as part of the residents parking for the block.
And calls for regulation of batteries have been being made consistently for a number of years. This is what happens when appropriate regulation is not done at the appropriate time.
The reason that they have banned e-bike batteries and not laptops, is volume of material. Same on airlines. A laptop battery letting go* is a small danger. An e-bike battery can threaten a whole building. Such fires have already happened and caused massive amounts of damage.
Fires are primarily during charging - but can happen after damage and are often time delayed from the damage - hours later.
After Grenfell, no one is going to take a chance. If they don't ban them and there is a fire, then they would be answering question in the dock. And the government el al will hang them out to dry - a useful scapegoat.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits.
Personally, I would go for staggering fines for importing, possession and use of dangerous batteries. Scaled by the capacity of the battery. Plus criminal liability.
We actually have such rules for dangerous ICEs - but it's a non-existent problem, since the cheapest and worst petrol car conforms to all the regulations about safety with petrol. Petrol contains more energy per kilo than TNT.....
*Increasing problem - people are buying ancient laptops, second hand and replacing the batteries with cheap shite from guess where. There is a whole market in replacement batteries for laptops going back a decade or more.
(Not having a go at you; I'm just exploring the details.)
For me that doesn't convince. It's not purely about capacity and fire risk. It's more broad brush than that.
The 20 mile range battery on my Axxon Rides E-folder is 180Wh. That is exactly the same size as batteries for power tools I have. For my E-Brompton I have batteries of size (checks) 90Wh and 180Wh, the former specced to go on an airline.
Apple currently supply laptop batteries of 100Wh.
Electric wheelchair lithium batteries go from ~250Wh to ~700Wh, including those available on Motability. The airline limit for those is 300Wh.
If the risk profile was so stark electric wheelchair batteries would be banned or required to be small; as far as I know they are not banned or size limited.
I'm not sure that we can say much around "there have already been fires" to justify bans, when data about which categories of battery caused how many fires has just not been collected. The alleged data is probably hearsay.
To me this feels like lazy and easy decisions that do not reflect actual risk.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits. I think this is important. Where are all these cheap batteries kept? We regulate other things; of course we can regulate these.
Campaign groups in this area need to point the finger at the actual problem, which is cheap and substandard Chinese imports.
HMRC and Trading Standards need to up their game, because it’s not Brompton e-bikes and Apple laptops causing house fires. There need to be businesses shut down and people prosecuted for the sale and import of these incendiary devices. Perhaps then there will be less of an aversion to large batteries in general.
Ive just looked up a random cricket stat to Cheer myself up, Jimmy Anderson is only 7 steps from the Bodyline series
He played in a test with Alec Stewart Who played in a test with Graham Gooch Who played with John Edrich Who played with Freddie Trueman Who played with Len Hutton Who played with Wally Hammond Who bowled in the Bodyline tour
If Gooch hadn't been dropped for the WIndies in 1976 when Close was called up again you could do it in 6 - Anderson, Stewart, Gooch, Brian Close, Hutton, Hammond I love stupid stats
Hundreds of Israeli ex-officials appeal to Trump to help end Gaza war
A group of some 600 retired Israeli security officials, including former heads of intelligence agencies, have written to US President Donald Trump to pressure Israel to immediately end the war in Gaza.
"It is our professional judgement that Hamas no longer poses a strategic threat to Israel," the officials said.
"Your credibility with the vast majority of Israelis augments your ability to steer Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu and his government in the right direction: End the war, return the hostages, stop the suffering," they wrote.
Their appeal comes amid reports that Netanyahu is pushing to expand military operations in Gaza as indirect ceasefire talks with Hamas have stalled.
On the bright side that should be Ollie Pope’s last test match.
He'll be on the plane to Oz. Would you bring in Hameed and drop Crawley to 3 ?
We just need to drop Crawley.
Who would you bring in for him ?
While I'm not a fan, you need a pretty strong replacement in place of someone who hasn't quite comprehensively failed.
Dom Sibley, forget his previous form, hes a much better bat now
Personally I'm unconvinced by Bethell - I'd bring in Sibley, drop Crawley down to 3, and drop Pope down to 5 where he's a better fit in my view. But that's probably too old-school for Stokes and McCullum.
Bethell is not in match form and temperament a big ?? After last night
The country are gagging for it and that's not including the 16-18 year olds who will vote rejoin unanimously. My guess is that Starmer has already got this in mind. He's got very close to France and Germany and Canada feels like it might want to be part of the club. Very few in the UK like Trump's America and people are only now wising up to the fact that the EU is as big a power block as the US and we were top dogs in it........
The advertising would be so easy......... None of the excruciating Red Bus nonsense of Referendum !. Just 28/29 of the most beautiful and inspiring capitals in the world and we get free access to all of them for work or for play. It could look like the most alluring travel agency of all time.....
Not happening Roger.
The right wing own the news media, including broadcast media, and OfCom have no teeth. It's their game now.
It feels like that at the moment but my sense is that the right wing media and their ignorant and aging followers have had their day. Corbyn is sparking more enthusiasm than Farage. People want change and no one's looking to the Telegraph the Mail or GB News for change. Media follow the zeitgeist. Even the BBC have noticably moved in the last few weeks as have Labour. Things are in flux and that can only lead one way and that's not in a Faragist/Trumpian/Netanyahu direction
The situation is more complex than that. This analysis overlooks three things: 1) Reform lead in the polls; 2) Reform is moving to the old Labour centre, ie social democrat and high spend + also with closed borders. 'Right' is not the correct term at all. 3) If there is a new left Jezzbollah movement that gets off the ground, being pro the EU will not be high on its agenda. To the proper left the EU is a military industrial complex old boy network corporate bankers conspiracy of the haves against the have nots. (A view which is not wholly without merit.)
A friend, living in a 5th storey council flat, has 2 folding e-cycles for mobility, an e-Brompton and a Gocycle; both are long established British brands. Her Council have just totally banned all e-scooter and e-bike batteries from the lifts.
Their stance is absolute, and to cite safety concerns and their legal duty to residents i.e. that they could go to prison if they don't take appropriate steps and there's a fire caused by an e-battery. Laptop batteries have not been banned.
It's a strange one with lots of angles. Standards exist. Fires would start when plugged in and charging in the main, surely? And AFAIK there are no stats collected distinguishing laptop batteries from e-bike batteries (does anyone know?) - there is not much difference, so how is the policy justified?
A totally separate angle is cycle storage as part of the residents parking for the block.
And calls for regulation of batteries have been being made consistently for a number of years. This is what happens when appropriate regulation is not done at the appropriate time.
The reason that they have banned e-bike batteries and not laptops, is volume of material. Same on airlines. A laptop battery letting go* is a small danger. An e-bike battery can threaten a whole building. Such fires have already happened and caused massive amounts of damage.
Fires are primarily during charging - but can happen after damage and are often time delayed from the damage - hours later.
After Grenfell, no one is going to take a chance. If they don't ban them and there is a fire, then they would be answering question in the dock. And the government el al will hang them out to dry - a useful scapegoat.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits.
Personally, I would go for staggering fines for importing, possession and use of dangerous batteries. Scaled by the capacity of the battery. Plus criminal liability.
We actually have such rules for dangerous ICEs - but it's a non-existent problem, since the cheapest and worst petrol car conforms to all the regulations about safety with petrol. Petrol contains more energy per kilo than TNT.....
*Increasing problem - people are buying ancient laptops, second hand and replacing the batteries with cheap shite from guess where. There is a whole market in replacement batteries for laptops going back a decade or more.
(Not having a go at you; I'm just exploring the details.)
For me that doesn't convince. It's not purely about capacity and fire risk. It's more broad brush than that.
The 20 mile range battery on my Axxon Rides E-folder is 180Wh. That is exactly the same size as batteries for power tools I have. For my E-Brompton I have batteries of size (checks) 90Wh and 180Wh, the former specced to go on an airline.
Apple currently supply laptop batteries of 100Wh.
Electric wheelchair lithium batteries go from ~250Wh to ~700Wh, including those available on Motability. The airline limit for those is 300Wh.
If the risk profile was so stark electric wheelchair batteries would be banned or required to be small; as far as I know they are not banned or size limited.
I'm not sure that we can say much around "there have already been fires" to justify bans, when data about which categories of battery caused how many fires has just not been collected. The alleged data is probably hearsay.
To me this feels like lazy and easy decisions that do not reflect actual risk.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits. I think this is important. Where are all these cheap batteries kept? We regulate other things; of course we can regulate these.
You need to think like the Process State. Bans and other rules need to be convenient for the State, not deal with problems. Or be sensible for the end user.
So banning all e-bike and scooters is easier than checking a standard. That doesn't exist. And would mean agro
The cheap e-bike batteries are being kept and charged in houses and flats.
The reason that wheelchairs aren't a focus of the problem is that there is no race to build super cheap wheelchairs with the cheapest batteries, yet the highest performance.
Studies of batteries showed that fires are a function of
1) How close to the cutting edge of battery tech they are 2) Quality control 3) "Smartness" in the charging process.
The super cheap eBike kits score 100% on all 3
Strangely, they burn much more often than mobiles or laptops.
The reverse is seen in electric cars - where fire safety has been taken seriously from day 1. Which is why electric car fires are rarer than ICE fires.
I'd agree that it is simplistic / lazy thinking, and that that is what happens. There is actually such a race, but it's not on the same scale of footprint.
The question is how effectively to change the process to something more realistic?
(It's exactly the same question around eg why do we have pedestrian cages on our pavements at junctions when we also have the research that shows removing them is safer. It's about changing process assumptions, which ultimately starts with changing underlying values then principles then process.)
Police and crime commissioner for Leicestershire and Rutland defects from the Conservatives to Reform UK. Not super-high profile, but a significant elected position.
I've been down an interesting rabbit hole with FUKers and Dump Net Zero policy.
They're against wind and all cite the same data to prove that its more expensive than anything else. And they want it switched off tomorrow.
As Wind is a third of our generating capacity, we'd need to replace that with something else.
The best suggestion I've been told by one of their self-proclaimed energy experts? COAL. Specifically domestic coal.
Thing is, back when we had coal being dug from profitable pits, the imported stuff was cheaper, so we closed the pits. Now - so I am told - we can just reopen the pits and burn coal.
OK, lets imagine that we scrap planning laws so no cost from enquiries or any of that. Buy the land. Dig the holes. Erect the surface infrastructure, buy machinery and train men. Just to be able to access coal which used to be more expensive than imports when there was no access costs.
Coal. Is that really what they think can be done? And I used to mock Boris Johnson for "crayon policies". This lot are a whole new level of stupid.
It's curious how our nationalist friends (Reform and SNP) descend into complete unreality when energy is introduced into the conversation.
According to some SNats, the perfidious English are nicking all their wind-power - "It's Scotland's Wind" - in much the same way as they snaffled the oil. Meanwhile, they are busy making sure Scotland is completely lacking in nuclear generation.
Head south and Big Nige is going to sweep to victory in Wales next year on the back of promising to reopen the coal mines.
I don’t have a problem with England using Scottish wind power. I have a problem with them getting it cheaper than we do.
On the bright side that should be Ollie Pope’s last test match.
He'll be on the plane to Oz. Would you bring in Hameed and drop Crawley to 3 ?
We just need to drop Crawley.
Who would you bring in for him ?
While I'm not a fan, you need a pretty strong replacement in place of someone who hasn't quite comprehensively failed.
Dom Sibley, forget his previous form, hes a much better bat now
Personally I'm unconvinced by Bethell - I'd bring in Sibley, drop Crawley down to 3, and drop Pope down to 5 where he's a better fit in my view. But that's probably too old-school for Stokes and McCullum.
Bethell has the ability, but the way he's being handled reminds me and not in a good way of Mark Lathwell.
His shot to get out was madness, now so was Brooks. But Bethell did not have a century at that point in his innings.
A friend, living in a 5th storey council flat, has 2 folding e-cycles for mobility, an e-Brompton and a Gocycle; both are long established British brands. Her Council have just totally banned all e-scooter and e-bike batteries from the lifts.
Their stance is absolute, and to cite safety concerns and their legal duty to residents i.e. that they could go to prison if they don't take appropriate steps and there's a fire caused by an e-battery. Laptop batteries have not been banned.
It's a strange one with lots of angles. Standards exist. Fires would start when plugged in and charging in the main, surely? And AFAIK there are no stats collected distinguishing laptop batteries from e-bike batteries (does anyone know?) - there is not much difference, so how is the policy justified?
A totally separate angle is cycle storage as part of the residents parking for the block.
And calls for regulation of batteries have been being made consistently for a number of years. This is what happens when appropriate regulation is not done at the appropriate time.
The reason that they have banned e-bike batteries and not laptops, is volume of material. Same on airlines. A laptop battery letting go* is a small danger. An e-bike battery can threaten a whole building. Such fires have already happened and caused massive amounts of damage.
Fires are primarily during charging - but can happen after damage and are often time delayed from the damage - hours later.
After Grenfell, no one is going to take a chance. If they don't ban them and there is a fire, then they would be answering question in the dock. And the government el al will hang them out to dry - a useful scapegoat.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits.
Personally, I would go for staggering fines for importing, possession and use of dangerous batteries. Scaled by the capacity of the battery. Plus criminal liability.
We actually have such rules for dangerous ICEs - but it's a non-existent problem, since the cheapest and worst petrol car conforms to all the regulations about safety with petrol. Petrol contains more energy per kilo than TNT.....
*Increasing problem - people are buying ancient laptops, second hand and replacing the batteries with cheap shite from guess where. There is a whole market in replacement batteries for laptops going back a decade or more.
(Not having a go at you; I'm just exploring the details.)
For me that doesn't convince. It's not purely about capacity and fire risk. It's more broad brush than that.
The 20 mile range battery on my Axxon Rides E-folder is 180Wh. That is exactly the same size as batteries for power tools I have. For my E-Brompton I have batteries of size (checks) 90Wh and 180Wh, the former specced to go on an airline.
Apple currently supply laptop batteries of 100Wh.
Electric wheelchair lithium batteries go from ~250Wh to ~700Wh, including those available on Motability. The airline limit for those is 300Wh.
If the risk profile was so stark electric wheelchair batteries would be banned or required to be small; as far as I know they are not banned or size limited.
I'm not sure that we can say much around "there have already been fires" to justify bans, when data about which categories of battery caused how many fires has just not been collected. The alleged data is probably hearsay.
To me this feels like lazy and easy decisions that do not reflect actual risk.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits. I think this is important. Where are all these cheap batteries kept? We regulate other things; of course we can regulate these.
You need to think like the Process State. Bans and other rules need to be convenient for the State, not deal with problems. Or be sensible for the end user.
So banning all e-bike and scooters is easier than checking a standard. That doesn't exist. And would mean agro
The cheap e-bike batteries are being kept and charged in houses and flats.
The reason that wheelchairs aren't a focus of the problem is that there is no race to build super cheap wheelchairs with the cheapest batteries, yet the highest performance.
Studies of batteries showed that fires are a function of
1) How close to the cutting edge of battery tech they are 2) Quality control 3) "Smartness" in the charging process.
The super cheap eBike kits score 100% on all 3
Strangely, they burn much more often than mobiles or laptops.
The reverse is seen in electric cars - where fire safety has been taken seriously from day 1. Which is why electric car fires are rarer than ICE fires.
I'd agree that it is simplistic / lazy thinking, and that that is what happens. There is actually such a race, but it's not on the same scale of footprint.
The question is how effectively to change the process to something more realistic?
(It's exactly the same question around eg why do we have pedestrian cages on our pavements at junctions when we also have the research that shows removing them is safer. It's about changing process assumptions, which ultimately starts with changing underlying values then principles then process.)
One complicating factor is that half the population and three quarters of our politicians have recently become convinced that e-bikes are used exclusively by illegal Deliveroo workers and phone thieves.
Hundreds of Israeli ex-officials appeal to Trump to help end Gaza war
A group of some 600 retired Israeli security officials, including former heads of intelligence agencies, have written to US President Donald Trump to pressure Israel to immediately end the war in Gaza.
"It is our professional judgement that Hamas no longer poses a strategic threat to Israel," the officials said.
"Your credibility with the vast majority of Israelis augments your ability to steer Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu and his government in the right direction: End the war, return the hostages, stop the suffering," they wrote.
Their appeal comes amid reports that Netanyahu is pushing to expand military operations in Gaza as indirect ceasefire talks with Hamas have stalled.
Ive just looked up a random cricket stat to Cheer myself up, Jimmy Anderson is only 7 steps from the Bodyline series
He played in a test with Alec Stewart Who played in a test with Graham Gooch Who played with John Edrich Who played with Freddie Trueman Who played with Len Hutton Who played with Wally Hammond Who bowled in the Bodyline tour
And permit me one further indulgence If we note that Wally Hammod played with Wilfred Rhodes Who's first test was WG Grace's last,
Sainsbury's sitrep: schools are out; some empty shelves; the driver doing the 97-point turn to get out of the car park clearly had no idea where the front of the car ended as there was no risk of collision. You can understand difficulties reversing but...
Anybody who thinks the EU wouldn't give a rejoining UK an opt-out on the Euro (although it wouldn't be called an 'opt-out') knows SFA about Berlaymont and its culture. In the pre-brexit Golden Age, I prepared 20+ students for the European Commission language assessments and I'm still in touch with some of them so I reckon I know a bit about it.
Rejoin of the UK and the utter humiliation of the leavers would be the final vindication of "The Project" on an emotional and philosophical level. For that prize, they'd give a lot and a Euro opt-out marketed as an assessment period of undefined duration wouldn't even make them blink twice.
lol
This is the exact psychological equivalent of “we hold all the cards in this negotiation” and “German car makers will demand to give us a great deal” ie all that hopeful sad bullshit from the Brexiteers - only from the other side, this time
Hilarious
Not really. It's just a useful corrective to all the 'we'd have to join the Euro' chestnutting.
The truth is we don't know what rejoining would look like.
As multiple people have pointed out, we would get the same conditions of entry as everyone else. Which would mean signing up, eventually, for the Euro.
The UK economy/government budget doesn't meet the conditions to join the Euro. Either
1) The government bravely decides that service cuts *and* tax rises are awesome. And does a decade of Euro Austerity. 2) Or they continue with misalignment that prevents entry to the Euro. So the "eventually" in joining the Euro is the other side of "never".
Hmmm.... that's a tough one.
Well those multiple people are 'asserting' not 'pointing out' - but, yes, 'eventually' can do great work when used properly, can't it.
It seems fairly certain - if you open up the joining criteria for the EU for negotiation, every country will stick their oar in. This is why the EU likes and tries to enforce unanimity - otherwise everything turns into a re-negotiation.
I think the response for rejoin from the EU would be "Sure. Join the process. Let's see where you are in the alignments and legal stuff...."
As good a place to start as any. I'd expect a degree of 'special case' for the UK - but to what degree, and how manifested, who knows.
TBH, I'm not particularly bullish on the prospects of Rejoin. Brexit was enormously stupid on every level but it feels irreversible to me.
The problem with "Special Case", from the EU point of view, is that it opens the door for every politician in Europe with a bone to pick and a special interest to appease. Spending 20 years sorting out some niggle due to an obscure Italian politician's demand regarding the labelling of flaked parmesan in Waitrose.....
Yes, and that is a powerful factor in the direction of nothing bespoke for us. But does it mean we'd be treated exactly like some country looking to join for the first time? There's the queue etc? I doubt that. I'd expect some flex. But as I say, how much and in what, nobody knows at this point.
Many in the EU would love to have us back in. It proves the EU is right!
They're obviously not going to treat us similarly to, say, Montenegro or other current applicants. We're clearly very different in size, in wealth, in history with the EU, in alignment with the EU etc. etc.
You’re so dumb. These are, equally, all reasons why a negotiation on re-entry would be extremely complicated and likely very painful
And, as others have noted, they would have to make sure we never leave again. That means Euro membership at least
The country are gagging for it and that's not including the 16-18 year olds who will vote rejoin unanimously. My guess is that Starmer has already got this in mind. He's got very close to France and Germany and Canada feels like it might want to be part of the club. Very few in the UK like Trump's America and people are only now wising up to the fact that the EU is as big a power block as the US and we were top dogs in it........
The advertising would be so easy......... None of the excruciating Red Bus nonsense of Referendum !. Just 28/29 of the most beautiful and inspiring capitals in the world and we get free access to all of them for work or for play. It could look like the most alluring travel agency of all time.....
Not happening Roger.
The right wing own the news media, including broadcast media, and OfCom have no teeth. It's their game now.
It feels like that at the moment but my sense is that the right wing media and their ignorant and aging followers have had their day. Corbyn is sparking more enthusiasm than Farage. People want change and no one's looking to the Telegraph the Mail or GB News for change. Media follow the zeitgeist. Even the BBC have noticably moved in the last few weeks as have Labour. Things are in flux and that can only lead one way and that's not in a Faragist/Trumpian/Netanyahu direction
The situation is more complex than that. This analysis overlooks three things: 1) Reform lead in the polls; 2) Reform is moving to the old Labour centre, ie social democrat and high spend + also with closed borders. 'Right' is not the correct term at all. 3) If there is a new left Jezzbollah movement that gets off the ground, being pro the EU will not be high on its agenda. To the proper left the EU is a military industrial complex old boy network corporate bankers conspiracy of the haves against the have nots. (A view which is not wholly without merit.)
(2) remains questionable. Reform UK don't have much in the way of a coherent platform, but what there is can't really be described as social democrat. They say they're not high spend.
I've been down an interesting rabbit hole with FUKers and Dump Net Zero policy.
They're against wind and all cite the same data to prove that its more expensive than anything else. And they want it switched off tomorrow.
As Wind is a third of our generating capacity, we'd need to replace that with something else.
The best suggestion I've been told by one of their self-proclaimed energy experts? COAL. Specifically domestic coal.
Thing is, back when we had coal being dug from profitable pits, the imported stuff was cheaper, so we closed the pits. Now - so I am told - we can just reopen the pits and burn coal.
OK, lets imagine that we scrap planning laws so no cost from enquiries or any of that. Buy the land. Dig the holes. Erect the surface infrastructure, buy machinery and train men. Just to be able to access coal which used to be more expensive than imports when there was no access costs.
Coal. Is that really what they think can be done? And I used to mock Boris Johnson for "crayon policies". This lot are a whole new level of stupid.
Trouble is that they are half right. In £/Kwh for dispatachable generation* (ignoring taxes and subsidies) coal is cheaper than anything else by a country mile.
We were insane to knock down all our coal burning infrastructure (all that capex already spent), and we are still digging ourselves into an expensive energy hole rather than getting ourselves out of it - eg licensing offshore wind with strike prices greater than the current grid price.
That said, we are where we are now - local deep mined coal isn't coming back at scale - far too expensive to reopen, although there is still some opencast to be had.
Throwing up some big coal fired baseload plants and running on imported coal would probably be the straight up cheapest way forward, if we are determined to get electricity prices down. It's the only realistic way to decouple prices from the gas price any time soon. But I don't see Reform doing it.
What they might do is windfall tax all the CFD cash back - that would reduce prices (or at least, provide a big pile of cash that could be used to reduce prices). But the downside would be that no one would touch another government contract of this sort with someone else's barge pole for a very long time - and we still need people to build some sort of generating capacity.
*dispatchable - ie available when you need it, like after dark on a still winter night. Perfectly technically achievable with wind/solar + batteries, or more cheaply with wind/solar + gas backup, but all of this is more expensive than coal.
The easy (political) response to that is CfD protected us from high energy prices during the Ukraine invasion, as hard as that is to believe. It could have been even worse.
And that Putin-Trump-Farage triangle is fatal for Reform.
I've been down an interesting rabbit hole with FUKers and Dump Net Zero policy.
They're against wind and all cite the same data to prove that its more expensive than anything else. And they want it switched off tomorrow.
As Wind is a third of our generating capacity, we'd need to replace that with something else.
The best suggestion I've been told by one of their self-proclaimed energy experts? COAL. Specifically domestic coal.
Thing is, back when we had coal being dug from profitable pits, the imported stuff was cheaper, so we closed the pits. Now - so I am told - we can just reopen the pits and burn coal.
OK, lets imagine that we scrap planning laws so no cost from enquiries or any of that. Buy the land. Dig the holes. Erect the surface infrastructure, buy machinery and train men. Just to be able to access coal which used to be more expensive than imports when there was no access costs.
Coal. Is that really what they think can be done? And I used to mock Boris Johnson for "crayon policies". This lot are a whole new level of stupid.
Trouble is that they are half right. In £/Kwh for dispatachable generation* (ignoring taxes and subsidies) coal is cheaper than anything else by a country mile.
We were insane to knock down all our coal burning infrastructure (all that capex already spent), and we are still digging ourselves into an expensive energy hole rather than getting ourselves out of it - eg licensing offshore wind with strike prices greater than the current grid price.
That said, we are where we are now - local deep mined coal isn't coming back at scale - far too expensive to reopen, although there is still some opencast to be had.
Throwing up some big coal fired baseload plants and running on imported coal would probably be the straight up cheapest way forward, if we are determined to get electricity prices down. It's the only realistic way to decouple prices from the gas price any time soon. But I don't see Reform doing it.
What they might do is windfall tax all the CFD cash back - that would reduce prices (or at least, provide a big pile of cash that could be used to reduce prices). But the downside would be that no one would touch another government contract of this sort with someone else's barge pole for a very long time - and we still need people to build some sort of generating capacity.
*dispatchable - ie available when you need it, like after dark on a still winter night. Perfectly technically achievable with wind/solar + batteries, or more cheaply with wind/solar + gas backup, but all of this is more expensive than coal.
I would be interested in where Pochdale Rioneers has heard that Reform want to 'switch off' all wind tomorrow.
Police and crime commissioner for Leicestershire and Rutland defects from the Conservatives to Reform UK. Not super-high profile, but a significant elected position.
That's an interesting one.
They were only elected in 2024, and have 3 years still in post iirc.
Ive just looked up a random cricket stat to Cheer myself up, Jimmy Anderson is only 7 steps from the Bodyline series
He played in a test with Alec Stewart Who played in a test with Graham Gooch Who played with John Edrich Who played with Freddie Trueman Who played with Len Hutton Who played with Wally Hammond Who bowled in the Bodyline tour
And permit me one further indulgence If we note that Wally Hammod played with Wilfred Rhodes Who's first test was WG Grace's last,
Sir James is 9 steps from WG Grace!
Striking to think that of those, three played for Yorkshire, two for Surrey, one for Essex and the other two for the greatest cricket team in the world.
I've been down an interesting rabbit hole with FUKers and Dump Net Zero policy.
They're against wind and all cite the same data to prove that its more expensive than anything else. And they want it switched off tomorrow.
As Wind is a third of our generating capacity, we'd need to replace that with something else.
The best suggestion I've been told by one of their self-proclaimed energy experts? COAL. Specifically domestic coal.
Thing is, back when we had coal being dug from profitable pits, the imported stuff was cheaper, so we closed the pits. Now - so I am told - we can just reopen the pits and burn coal.
OK, lets imagine that we scrap planning laws so no cost from enquiries or any of that. Buy the land. Dig the holes. Erect the surface infrastructure, buy machinery and train men. Just to be able to access coal which used to be more expensive than imports when there was no access costs.
Coal. Is that really what they think can be done? And I used to mock Boris Johnson for "crayon policies". This lot are a whole new level of stupid.
Trouble is that they are half right. In £/Kwh for dispatachable generation* (ignoring taxes and subsidies) coal is cheaper than anything else by a country mile.
We were insane to knock down all our coal burning infrastructure (all that capex already spent), and we are still digging ourselves into an expensive energy hole rather than getting ourselves out of it - eg licensing offshore wind with strike prices greater than the current grid price.
That said, we are where we are now - local deep mined coal isn't coming back at scale - far too expensive to reopen, although there is still some opencast to be had.
Throwing up some big coal fired baseload plants and running on imported coal would probably be the straight up cheapest way forward, if we are determined to get electricity prices down. It's the only realistic way to decouple prices from the gas price any time soon. But I don't see Reform doing it.
What they might do is windfall tax all the CFD cash back - that would reduce prices (or at least, provide a big pile of cash that could be used to reduce prices). But the downside would be that no one would touch another government contract of this sort with someone else's barge pole for a very long time - and we still need people to build some sort of generating capacity.
*dispatchable - ie available when you need it, like after dark on a still winter night. Perfectly technically achievable with wind/solar + batteries, or more cheaply with wind/solar + gas backup, but all of this is more expensive than coal.
I would be interested in where Pochdale Rioneers has heard that Reform want to 'switch off' all wind tomorrow.
Police and crime commissioner for Leicestershire and Rutland defects from the Conservatives to Reform UK. Not super-high profile, but a significant elected position.
That's an interesting one.
They were only elected in 2024, and have 3 years still in post iirc.
Rupert Matthews has held the position since 2021 and served as an MEP for the East Midlands for the Tories between 2017 and 2019.
Speaking at a press conference alongside Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, he said the "dark heart of wokeness" needed to be cut out of the criminal justice system.
"The self-serving, self-entitled liberal elite who have let our country down time after time are now on notice their day is almost done," he said.
"Be they Conservative or Labour governments, everyone knows our politicians have failed us all. They have let this country down. They have let the British people down. Enough. Now is the time for Reform."
He's not learned from the 2019 campaign. Corbyn needs to change his glasses so he can make eye contact down the camera. He also needs to remember the wise words of David Cameron's mum and wear a suit, or at least a formal shirt to hide his neck.
Ive just looked up a random cricket stat to Cheer myself up, Jimmy Anderson is only 7 steps from the Bodyline series
He played in a test with Alec Stewart Who played in a test with Graham Gooch Who played with John Edrich Who played with Freddie Trueman Who played with Len Hutton Who played with Wally Hammond Who bowled in the Bodyline tour
And permit me one further indulgence If we note that Wally Hammod played with Wilfred Rhodes Who's first test was WG Grace's last,
Sir James is 9 steps from WG Grace!
Striking to think that of those, three played for Yorkshire, two for Surrey, one for Essex and the other two for the greatest cricket team in the world.
With no disrespect to My Norfolk Man John Edrich, the rest of them are the very cream of the crop down the years
Ive just looked up a random cricket stat to Cheer myself up, Jimmy Anderson is only 7 steps from the Bodyline series
He played in a test with Alec Stewart Who played in a test with Graham Gooch Who played with John Edrich Who played with Freddie Trueman Who played with Len Hutton Who played with Wally Hammond Who bowled in the Bodyline tour
And permit me one further indulgence If we note that Wally Hammod played with Wilfred Rhodes Who's first test was WG Grace's last,
Sir James is 9 steps from WG Grace!
Striking to think that of those, three played for Yorkshire, two for Surrey, one for Essex and the other two for the greatest cricket team in the world.
With no disrespect to My Norfolk Man John Edrich, the rest of them are the very cream of the crop down the years
Well, that's hardly surprising given they had to have either very long careers at the top or remarkably long Gareth Batty-style gaps between appearances.
He's not learned from the 2019 campaign. Corbyn needs to change his glasses so he can make eye contact down the camera. He also needs to remember the wise words of David Cameron's mum and wear a suit, or at least a formal shirt to hide his neck.
This will be all for nothing if Zarah "look at me" Sultana is co leader.
A friend, living in a 5th storey council flat, has 2 folding e-cycles for mobility, an e-Brompton and a Gocycle; both are long established British brands. Her Council have just totally banned all e-scooter and e-bike batteries from the lifts.
Their stance is absolute, and to cite safety concerns and their legal duty to residents i.e. that they could go to prison if they don't take appropriate steps and there's a fire caused by an e-battery. Laptop batteries have not been banned.
It's a strange one with lots of angles. Standards exist. Fires would start when plugged in and charging in the main, surely? And AFAIK there are no stats collected distinguishing laptop batteries from e-bike batteries (does anyone know?) - there is not much difference, so how is the policy justified?
A totally separate angle is cycle storage as part of the residents parking for the block.
And calls for regulation of batteries have been being made consistently for a number of years. This is what happens when appropriate regulation is not done at the appropriate time.
The reason that they have banned e-bike batteries and not laptops, is volume of material. Same on airlines. A laptop battery letting go* is a small danger. An e-bike battery can threaten a whole building. Such fires have already happened and caused massive amounts of damage.
Fires are primarily during charging - but can happen after damage and are often time delayed from the damage - hours later.
After Grenfell, no one is going to take a chance. If they don't ban them and there is a fire, then they would be answering question in the dock. And the government el al will hang them out to dry - a useful scapegoat.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits.
Personally, I would go for staggering fines for importing, possession and use of dangerous batteries. Scaled by the capacity of the battery. Plus criminal liability.
We actually have such rules for dangerous ICEs - but it's a non-existent problem, since the cheapest and worst petrol car conforms to all the regulations about safety with petrol. Petrol contains more energy per kilo than TNT.....
*Increasing problem - people are buying ancient laptops, second hand and replacing the batteries with cheap shite from guess where. There is a whole market in replacement batteries for laptops going back a decade or more.
(Not having a go at you; I'm just exploring the details.)
For me that doesn't convince. It's not purely about capacity and fire risk. It's more broad brush than that.
The 20 mile range battery on my Axxon Rides E-folder is 180Wh. That is exactly the same size as batteries for power tools I have. For my E-Brompton I have batteries of size (checks) 90Wh and 180Wh, the former specced to go on an airline.
Apple currently supply laptop batteries of 100Wh.
Electric wheelchair lithium batteries go from ~250Wh to ~700Wh, including those available on Motability. The airline limit for those is 300Wh.
If the risk profile was so stark electric wheelchair batteries would be banned or required to be small; as far as I know they are not banned or size limited.
I'm not sure that we can say much around "there have already been fires" to justify bans, when data about which categories of battery caused how many fires has just not been collected. The alleged data is probably hearsay.
To me this feels like lazy and easy decisions that do not reflect actual risk.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits. I think this is important. Where are all these cheap batteries kept? We regulate other things; of course we can regulate these.
Campaign groups in this area need to point the finger at the actual problem, which is cheap and substandard Chinese imports.
HMRC and Trading Standards need to up their game, because it’s not Brompton e-bikes and Apple laptops causing house fires. There need to be businesses shut down and people prosecuted for the sale and import of these incendiary devices. Perhaps then there will be less of an aversion to large batteries in general.
But that will run head on into the Furriners Office*, which will say that will upset the Chinese.
Plus enforcement will mean actually spending money.
Are you sure a nice 3,500 page form to fill in by the importers won’t work?
A friend, living in a 5th storey council flat, has 2 folding e-cycles for mobility, an e-Brompton and a Gocycle; both are long established British brands. Her Council have just totally banned all e-scooter and e-bike batteries from the lifts.
Their stance is absolute, and to cite safety concerns and their legal duty to residents i.e. that they could go to prison if they don't take appropriate steps and there's a fire caused by an e-battery. Laptop batteries have not been banned.
It's a strange one with lots of angles. Standards exist. Fires would start when plugged in and charging in the main, surely? And AFAIK there are no stats collected distinguishing laptop batteries from e-bike batteries (does anyone know?) - there is not much difference, so how is the policy justified?
A totally separate angle is cycle storage as part of the residents parking for the block.
And calls for regulation of batteries have been being made consistently for a number of years. This is what happens when appropriate regulation is not done at the appropriate time.
The reason that they have banned e-bike batteries and not laptops, is volume of material. Same on airlines. A laptop battery letting go* is a small danger. An e-bike battery can threaten a whole building. Such fires have already happened and caused massive amounts of damage.
Fires are primarily during charging - but can happen after damage and are often time delayed from the damage - hours later.
After Grenfell, no one is going to take a chance. If they don't ban them and there is a fire, then they would be answering question in the dock. And the government el al will hang them out to dry - a useful scapegoat.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits.
Personally, I would go for staggering fines for importing, possession and use of dangerous batteries. Scaled by the capacity of the battery. Plus criminal liability.
We actually have such rules for dangerous ICEs - but it's a non-existent problem, since the cheapest and worst petrol car conforms to all the regulations about safety with petrol. Petrol contains more energy per kilo than TNT.....
*Increasing problem - people are buying ancient laptops, second hand and replacing the batteries with cheap shite from guess where. There is a whole market in replacement batteries for laptops going back a decade or more.
(Not having a go at you; I'm just exploring the details.)
For me that doesn't convince. It's not purely about capacity and fire risk. It's more broad brush than that.
The 20 mile range battery on my Axxon Rides E-folder is 180Wh. That is exactly the same size as batteries for power tools I have. For my E-Brompton I have batteries of size (checks) 90Wh and 180Wh, the former specced to go on an airline.
Apple currently supply laptop batteries of 100Wh.
Electric wheelchair lithium batteries go from ~250Wh to ~700Wh, including those available on Motability. The airline limit for those is 300Wh.
If the risk profile was so stark electric wheelchair batteries would be banned or required to be small; as far as I know they are not banned or size limited.
I'm not sure that we can say much around "there have already been fires" to justify bans, when data about which categories of battery caused how many fires has just not been collected. The alleged data is probably hearsay.
To me this feels like lazy and easy decisions that do not reflect actual risk.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits. I think this is important. Where are all these cheap batteries kept? We regulate other things; of course we can regulate these.
You need to think like the Process State. Bans and other rules need to be convenient for the State, not deal with problems. Or be sensible for the end user.
So banning all e-bike and scooters is easier than checking a standard. That doesn't exist. And would mean agro
The cheap e-bike batteries are being kept and charged in houses and flats.
The reason that wheelchairs aren't a focus of the problem is that there is no race to build super cheap wheelchairs with the cheapest batteries, yet the highest performance.
Studies of batteries showed that fires are a function of
1) How close to the cutting edge of battery tech they are 2) Quality control 3) "Smartness" in the charging process.
The super cheap eBike kits score 100% on all 3
Strangely, they burn much more often than mobiles or laptops.
The reverse is seen in electric cars - where fire safety has been taken seriously from day 1. Which is why electric car fires are rarer than ICE fires.
I'd agree that it is simplistic / lazy thinking, and that that is what happens. There is actually such a race, but it's not on the same scale of footprint.
The question is how effectively to change the process to something more realistic?
(It's exactly the same question around eg why do we have pedestrian cages on our pavements at junctions when we also have the research that shows removing them is safer. It's about changing process assumptions, which ultimately starts with changing underlying values then principles then process.)
One complicating factor is that half the population and three quarters of our politicians have recently become convinced that e-bikes are used exclusively by illegal Deliveroo workers and phone thieves.
Substantially correct imo, and one strategy for a start is to create a separate "disabled" category.
The general principle being argued is that "cycles - standard and non-standard - used by disabled people should be a mobility aid treated like wheelchairs and mobility scooters when the speeds are the same ie <4mph or <8mph" depending on where it is being used. That's approximately the exception in place in a couple of PSPOs etc.
That's what happened to the guy who had his wheelchair kept in the vehicle pound for 3 weeks - the police did not understand what it was, so they called it (in legislation terms) a "carriage" and decided it needed the full panoply of driving license etc.
The country are gagging for it and that's not including the 16-18 year olds who will vote rejoin unanimously. My guess is that Starmer has already got this in mind. He's got very close to France and Germany and Canada feels like it might want to be part of the club. Very few in the UK like Trump's America and people are only now wising up to the fact that the EU is as big a power block as the US and we were top dogs in it........
The advertising would be so easy......... None of the excruciating Red Bus nonsense of Referendum !. Just 28/29 of the most beautiful and inspiring capitals in the world and we get free access to all of them for work or for play. It could look like the most alluring travel agency of all time.....
Not happening Roger.
The right wing own the news media, including broadcast media, and OfCom have no teeth. It's their game now.
It feels like that at the moment but my sense is that the right wing media and their ignorant and aging followers have had their day. Corbyn is sparking more enthusiasm than Farage. People want change and no one's looking to the Telegraph the Mail or GB News for change. Media follow the zeitgeist. Even the BBC have noticably moved in the last few weeks as have Labour. Things are in flux and that can only lead one way and that's not in a Faragist/Trumpian/Netanyahu direction
The situation is more complex than that. This analysis overlooks three things: 1) Reform lead in the polls; 2) Reform is moving to the old Labour centre, ie social democrat and high spend + also with closed borders. 'Right' is not the correct term at all. 3) If there is a new left Jezzbollah movement that gets off the ground, being pro the EU will not be high on its agenda. To the proper left the EU is a military industrial complex old boy network corporate bankers conspiracy of the haves against the have nots. (A view which is not wholly without merit.)
(2) remains questionable. Reform UK don't have much in the way of a coherent platform, but what there is can't really be described as social democrat. They say they're not high spend.
My view about (2) requires inference, common sense and prediction - this is a betting site. Agree about coherent platform, but Reform, unlike 2024 intend to win and govern. There isn't a cheap, inexpensive way to run a western democracy. This is because it has social democratic structures, and has had since 1945. That is: NHS, free education to 18, welfare safety net, social housing, pensions, NATO, regulated capitalism and a bank of last resort. This is high spend, and despite denials also = high tax.
Ask the voters of Clacton which of these they plan that they and their families do without. The rest follows.
It can of course be run better (much better) but the idea it can be run much cheaper is delusional.
Therefore Reform are in fact high spend (and therefore high tax) centrist social democrats + closed borders nationalists + fairly social conservative. Of this I am confident. I do not support them. They would be a disaster. In policy terms the nearest thing to them is 1950s/early 60s Labour.
Police and crime commissioner for Leicestershire and Rutland defects from the Conservatives to Reform UK. Not super-high profile, but a significant elected position.
I think that’s probably the first time that anyone, anywhere, has described a police & crime commissioner as being a “significant elected position”!
Police and crime commissioner for Leicestershire and Rutland defects from the Conservatives to Reform UK. Not super-high profile, but a significant elected position.
That's an interesting one.
They were only elected in 2024, and have 3 years still in post iirc.
Rupert Matthews has held the position since 2021 and served as an MEP for the East Midlands for the Tories between 2017 and 2019.
Speaking at a press conference alongside Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, he said the "dark heart of wokeness" needed to be cut out of the criminal justice system.
"The self-serving, self-entitled liberal elite who have let our country down time after time are now on notice their day is almost done," he said.
"Be they Conservative or Labour governments, everyone knows our politicians have failed us all. They have let this country down. They have let the British people down. Enough. Now is the time for Reform."
Police and crime commissioner for Leicestershire and Rutland defects from the Conservatives to Reform UK. Not super-high profile, but a significant elected position.
That's an interesting one.
They were only elected in 2024, and have 3 years still in post iirc.
Rupert Matthews has held the position since 2021 and served as an MEP for the East Midlands for the Tories between 2017 and 2019.
Speaking at a press conference alongside Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, he said the "dark heart of wokeness" needed to be cut out of the criminal justice system.
"The self-serving, self-entitled liberal elite who have let our country down time after time are now on notice their day is almost done," he said.
"Be they Conservative or Labour governments, everyone knows our politicians have failed us all. They have let this country down. They have let the British people down. Enough. Now is the time for Reform."
I think Rupert was given that spiel by a well-known Spectator columnist. I'm sure I've read pretty much those exact words on here. The 'Enough' is a give-away.
That's what happened to the guy who had his wheelchair kept in the vehicle pound for 3 weeks - the police did not understand what it was, so they called it (in legislation terms) a "carriage" and decided it needed the full panoply of driving license etc.
The police looked a bit daft there, but I have a deal of sympathy for them. The laws surrounding licencing and operation of light vehicles of all kinds are stupidly complex and illogical. They urgently need updating, the ones we have were unfit for purpose when introduced and all the new technology that's come along recently has just made the issue even more pressing.
The country are gagging for it and that's not including the 16-18 year olds who will vote rejoin unanimously. My guess is that Starmer has already got this in mind. He's got very close to France and Germany and Canada feels like it might want to be part of the club. Very few in the UK like Trump's America and people are only now wising up to the fact that the EU is as big a power block as the US and we were top dogs in it........
The advertising would be so easy......... None of the excruciating Red Bus nonsense of Referendum !. Just 28/29 of the most beautiful and inspiring capitals in the world and we get free access to all of them for work or for play. It could look like the most alluring travel agency of all time.....
Not happening Roger.
The right wing own the news media, including broadcast media, and OfCom have no teeth. It's their game now.
It feels like that at the moment but my sense is that the right wing media and their ignorant and aging followers have had their day. Corbyn is sparking more enthusiasm than Farage. People want change and no one's looking to the Telegraph the Mail or GB News for change. Media follow the zeitgeist. Even the BBC have noticably moved in the last few weeks as have Labour. Things are in flux and that can only lead one way and that's not in a Faragist/Trumpian/Netanyahu direction
The situation is more complex than that. This analysis overlooks three things: 1) Reform lead in the polls; 2) Reform is moving to the old Labour centre, ie social democrat and high spend + also with closed borders. 'Right' is not the correct term at all. 3) If there is a new left Jezzbollah movement that gets off the ground, being pro the EU will not be high on its agenda. To the proper left the EU is a military industrial complex old boy network corporate bankers conspiracy of the haves against the have nots. (A view which is not wholly without merit.)
(2) remains questionable. Reform UK don't have much in the way of a coherent platform, but what there is can't really be described as social democrat. They say they're not high spend.
My view about (2) requires inference, common sense and prediction - this is a betting site. Agree about coherent platform, but Reform, unlike 2024 intend to win and govern. There isn't a cheap, inexpensive way to run a western democracy. This is because it has social democratic structures, and has had since 1945. That is: NHS, free education to 18, welfare safety net, social housing, pensions, NATO, regulated capitalism and a bank of last resort. This is high spend, and despite denials also = high tax.
Ask the voters of Clacton which of these they plan that they and their families do without. The rest follows.
It can of course be run better (much better) but the idea it can be run much cheaper is delusional.
Therefore Reform are in fact high spend (and therefore high tax) centrist social democrats + closed borders nationalists + fairly social conservative. Of this I am confident. I do not support them. They would be a disaster. In policy terms the nearest thing to them is 1950s/early 60s Labour.
The Reform UK manifesto will say they are low tax and probably low spend, while being full of promises to do many things (as with the Republicans in the US). This will be impossible, but that doesn't mean we can describe it as social democratic.
The country are gagging for it and that's not including the 16-18 year olds who will vote rejoin unanimously. My guess is that Starmer has already got this in mind. He's got very close to France and Germany and Canada feels like it might want to be part of the club. Very few in the UK like Trump's America and people are only now wising up to the fact that the EU is as big a power block as the US and we were top dogs in it........
The advertising would be so easy......... None of the excruciating Red Bus nonsense of Referendum !. Just 28/29 of the most beautiful and inspiring capitals in the world and we get free access to all of them for work or for play. It could look like the most alluring travel agency of all time.....
Not happening Roger.
The right wing own the news media, including broadcast media, and OfCom have no teeth. It's their game now.
It feels like that at the moment but my sense is that the right wing media and their ignorant and aging followers have had their day. Corbyn is sparking more enthusiasm than Farage. People want change and no one's looking to the Telegraph the Mail or GB News for change. Media follow the zeitgeist. Even the BBC have noticably moved in the last few weeks as have Labour. Things are in flux and that can only lead one way and that's not in a Faragist/Trumpian/Netanyahu direction
The situation is more complex than that. This analysis overlooks three things: 1) Reform lead in the polls; 2) Reform is moving to the old Labour centre, ie social democrat and high spend + also with closed borders. 'Right' is not the correct term at all. 3) If there is a new left Jezzbollah movement that gets off the ground, being pro the EU will not be high on its agenda. To the proper left the EU is a military industrial complex old boy network corporate bankers conspiracy of the haves against the have nots. (A view which is not wholly without merit.)
(2) remains questionable. Reform UK don't have much in the way of a coherent platform, but what there is can't really be described as social democrat. They say they're not high spend.
The signs are they will be peddling the 'government spending is mainly on asylum seekers and paper-pushers' nonsense.
"The police and crime commissioner for Leicestershire and Rutland has defected from the Conservatives to Reform UK, giving the party its first PCC.
Rupert Matthews has held the position since 2021 and served as an MEP for the East Midlands for the Tories between 2017 and 2019.
Speaking at a press conference alongside Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, he said the "dark heart of wokeness" needed to be cut out of the criminal justice system."
Police and crime commissioner for Leicestershire and Rutland defects from the Conservatives to Reform UK. Not super-high profile, but a significant elected position.
I think that’s probably the first time that anyone, anywhere, has described a police & crime commissioner as being a “significant elected position”!
He got 62,280 votes. That's a bigger personal mandate than most (any?) MP.
He's not learned from the 2019 campaign. Corbyn needs to change his glasses so he can make eye contact down the camera. He also needs to remember the wise words of David Cameron's mum and wear a suit, or at least a formal shirt to hide his neck.
This will be all for nothing if Zarah "look at me" Sultana is co leader.
I've not seen Zarah on the campaign trail. Hopefully she will have learned something from Jo Swinson who looked underdressed for a car boot sale. Voters like to be shown they are taken seriously, and that means at least ‘smart casual’ even if not the full Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Police and crime commissioner for Leicestershire and Rutland defects from the Conservatives to Reform UK. Not super-high profile, but a significant elected position.
I think that’s probably the first time that anyone, anywhere, has described a police & crime commissioner as being a “significant elected position”!
The post is one of the mist irrelevant of all elected positions. It is the only vote I refuse to take part in.
Police and crime commissioner for Leicestershire and Rutland defects from the Conservatives to Reform UK. Not super-high profile, but a significant elected position.
That's an interesting one.
They were only elected in 2024, and have 3 years still in post iirc.
Rupert Matthews has held the position since 2021 and served as an MEP for the East Midlands for the Tories between 2017 and 2019.
Speaking at a press conference alongside Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, he said the "dark heart of wokeness" needed to be cut out of the criminal justice system.
"The self-serving, self-entitled liberal elite who have let our country down time after time are now on notice their day is almost done," he said.
"Be they Conservative or Labour governments, everyone knows our politicians have failed us all. They have let this country down. They have let the British people down. Enough. Now is the time for Reform."
I think Rupert was given that spiel by a well-known Spectator columnist. I'm sure I've read pretty much those exact words on here. The 'Enough' is a give-away.
Yep. "Enough" flags very effectively as hyperbolic populist claptrap.
I've been down an interesting rabbit hole with FUKers and Dump Net Zero policy.
They're against wind and all cite the same data to prove that its more expensive than anything else. And they want it switched off tomorrow.
As Wind is a third of our generating capacity, we'd need to replace that with something else.
The best suggestion I've been told by one of their self-proclaimed energy experts? COAL. Specifically domestic coal.
Thing is, back when we had coal being dug from profitable pits, the imported stuff was cheaper, so we closed the pits. Now - so I am told - we can just reopen the pits and burn coal.
OK, lets imagine that we scrap planning laws so no cost from enquiries or any of that. Buy the land. Dig the holes. Erect the surface infrastructure, buy machinery and train men. Just to be able to access coal which used to be more expensive than imports when there was no access costs.
Coal. Is that really what they think can be done? And I used to mock Boris Johnson for "crayon policies". This lot are a whole new level of stupid.
Trouble is that they are half right. In £/Kwh for dispatachable generation* (ignoring taxes and subsidies) coal is cheaper than anything else by a country mile.
We were insane to knock down all our coal burning infrastructure (all that capex already spent), and we are still digging ourselves into an expensive energy hole rather than getting ourselves out of it - eg licensing offshore wind with strike prices greater than the current grid price.
That said, we are where we are now - local deep mined coal isn't coming back at scale - far too expensive to reopen, although there is still some opencast to be had.
Throwing up some big coal fired baseload plants and running on imported coal would probably be the straight up cheapest way forward, if we are determined to get electricity prices down. It's the only realistic way to decouple prices from the gas price any time soon. But I don't see Reform doing it.
What they might do is windfall tax all the CFD cash back - that would reduce prices (or at least, provide a big pile of cash that could be used to reduce prices). But the downside would be that no one would touch another government contract of this sort with someone else's barge pole for a very long time - and we still need people to build some sort of generating capacity.
*dispatchable - ie available when you need it, like after dark on a still winter night. Perfectly technically achievable with wind/solar + batteries, or more cheaply with wind/solar + gas backup, but all of this is more expensive than coal.
The easy (political) response to that is CfD protected us from high energy prices during the Ukraine invasion, as hard as that is to believe. It could have been even worse.
And that Putin-Trump-Farage triangle is fatal for Reform.
The trouble with Reform's coal policy is not the details but the fact they've lazily pinched it from Trump. They need to be alert to what does not travel.
He's not learned from the 2019 campaign. Corbyn needs to change his glasses so he can make eye contact down the camera. He also needs to remember the wise words of David Cameron's mum and wear a suit, or at least a formal shirt to hide his neck.
This will be all for nothing if Zarah "look at me" Sultana is co leader.
I've not seen Zarah on the campaign trail. Hopefully she will have learned something from Jo Swinson who looked underdressed for a car boot sale. Voters like to be shown they are taken seriously, and that means at least ‘smart casual’ even if not the full Jacob Rees-Mogg.
I've been down an interesting rabbit hole with FUKers and Dump Net Zero policy.
They're against wind and all cite the same data to prove that its more expensive than anything else. And they want it switched off tomorrow.
As Wind is a third of our generating capacity, we'd need to replace that with something else.
The best suggestion I've been told by one of their self-proclaimed energy experts? COAL. Specifically domestic coal.
Thing is, back when we had coal being dug from profitable pits, the imported stuff was cheaper, so we closed the pits. Now - so I am told - we can just reopen the pits and burn coal.
OK, lets imagine that we scrap planning laws so no cost from enquiries or any of that. Buy the land. Dig the holes. Erect the surface infrastructure, buy machinery and train men. Just to be able to access coal which used to be more expensive than imports when there was no access costs.
Coal. Is that really what they think can be done? And I used to mock Boris Johnson for "crayon policies". This lot are a whole new level of stupid.
Trouble is that they are half right. In £/Kwh for dispatachable generation* (ignoring taxes and subsidies) coal is cheaper than anything else by a country mile.
We were insane to knock down all our coal burning infrastructure (all that capex already spent), and we are still digging ourselves into an expensive energy hole rather than getting ourselves out of it - eg licensing offshore wind with strike prices greater than the current grid price.
That said, we are where we are now - local deep mined coal isn't coming back at scale - far too expensive to reopen, although there is still some opencast to be had.
Throwing up some big coal fired baseload plants and running on imported coal would probably be the straight up cheapest way forward, if we are determined to get electricity prices down. It's the only realistic way to decouple prices from the gas price any time soon. But I don't see Reform doing it.
What they might do is windfall tax all the CFD cash back - that would reduce prices (or at least, provide a big pile of cash that could be used to reduce prices). But the downside would be that no one would touch another government contract of this sort with someone else's barge pole for a very long time - and we still need people to build some sort of generating capacity.
*dispatchable - ie available when you need it, like after dark on a still winter night. Perfectly technically achievable with wind/solar + batteries, or more cheaply with wind/solar + gas backup, but all of this is more expensive than coal.
The easy (political) response to that is CfD protected us from high energy prices during the Ukraine invasion, as hard as that is to believe. It could have been even worse.
And that Putin-Trump-Farage triangle is fatal for Reform.
The trouble with Reform's coal policy is not the details but the fact they've lazily pinched it from Trump. They need to be alert to what does not travel.
It’s always rather amusing to observe political talking points crossing the Pond, in both directions, often a few months apart and almost always with no nuance that they are two very different countries with a (mostly) common language.
I've been down an interesting rabbit hole with FUKers and Dump Net Zero policy.
They're against wind and all cite the same data to prove that its more expensive than anything else. And they want it switched off tomorrow.
As Wind is a third of our generating capacity, we'd need to replace that with something else.
The best suggestion I've been told by one of their self-proclaimed energy experts? COAL. Specifically domestic coal.
Thing is, back when we had coal being dug from profitable pits, the imported stuff was cheaper, so we closed the pits. Now - so I am told - we can just reopen the pits and burn coal.
OK, lets imagine that we scrap planning laws so no cost from enquiries or any of that. Buy the land. Dig the holes. Erect the surface infrastructure, buy machinery and train men. Just to be able to access coal which used to be more expensive than imports when there was no access costs.
Coal. Is that really what they think can be done? And I used to mock Boris Johnson for "crayon policies". This lot are a whole new level of stupid.
It's curious how our nationalist friends (Reform and SNP) descend into complete unreality when energy is introduced into the conversation.
According to some SNats, the perfidious English are nicking all their wind-power - "It's Scotland's Wind" - in much the same way as they snaffled the oil. Meanwhile, they are busy making sure Scotland is completely lacking in nuclear generation.
Head south and Big Nige is going to sweep to victory in Wales next year on the back of promising to reopen the coal mines.
He's not learned from the 2019 campaign. Corbyn needs to change his glasses so he can make eye contact down the camera. He also needs to remember the wise words of David Cameron's mum and wear a suit, or at least a formal shirt to hide his neck.
This will be all for nothing if Zarah "look at me" Sultana is co leader.
I've not seen Zarah on the campaign trail. Hopefully she will have learned something from Jo Swinson who looked underdressed for a car boot sale. Voters like to be shown they are taken seriously, and that means at least ‘smart casual’ even if not the full Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Sultana dressing up as Rees Mogg would be an odd way to campaign.
A friend, living in a 5th storey council flat, has 2 folding e-cycles for mobility, an e-Brompton and a Gocycle; both are long established British brands. Her Council have just totally banned all e-scooter and e-bike batteries from the lifts.
Their stance is absolute, and to cite safety concerns and their legal duty to residents i.e. that they could go to prison if they don't take appropriate steps and there's a fire caused by an e-battery. Laptop batteries have not been banned.
It's a strange one with lots of angles. Standards exist. Fires would start when plugged in and charging in the main, surely? And AFAIK there are no stats collected distinguishing laptop batteries from e-bike batteries (does anyone know?) - there is not much difference, so how is the policy justified?
A totally separate angle is cycle storage as part of the residents parking for the block.
And calls for regulation of batteries have been being made consistently for a number of years. This is what happens when appropriate regulation is not done at the appropriate time.
The reason that they have banned e-bike batteries and not laptops, is volume of material. Same on airlines. A laptop battery letting go* is a small danger. An e-bike battery can threaten a whole building. Such fires have already happened and caused massive amounts of damage.
Fires are primarily during charging - but can happen after damage and are often time delayed from the damage - hours later.
After Grenfell, no one is going to take a chance. If they don't ban them and there is a fire, then they would be answering question in the dock. And the government el al will hang them out to dry - a useful scapegoat.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits.
Personally, I would go for staggering fines for importing, possession and use of dangerous batteries. Scaled by the capacity of the battery. Plus criminal liability.
We actually have such rules for dangerous ICEs - but it's a non-existent problem, since the cheapest and worst petrol car conforms to all the regulations about safety with petrol. Petrol contains more energy per kilo than TNT.....
*Increasing problem - people are buying ancient laptops, second hand and replacing the batteries with cheap shite from guess where. There is a whole market in replacement batteries for laptops going back a decade or more.
(Not having a go at you; I'm just exploring the details.)
For me that doesn't convince. It's not purely about capacity and fire risk. It's more broad brush than that.
The 20 mile range battery on my Axxon Rides E-folder is 180Wh. That is exactly the same size as batteries for power tools I have. For my E-Brompton I have batteries of size (checks) 90Wh and 180Wh, the former specced to go on an airline.
Apple currently supply laptop batteries of 100Wh.
Electric wheelchair lithium batteries go from ~250Wh to ~700Wh, including those available on Motability. The airline limit for those is 300Wh.
If the risk profile was so stark electric wheelchair batteries would be banned or required to be small; as far as I know they are not banned or size limited.
I'm not sure that we can say much around "there have already been fires" to justify bans, when data about which categories of battery caused how many fires has just not been collected. The alleged data is probably hearsay.
To me this feels like lazy and easy decisions that do not reflect actual risk.
Regulating the batteries would require strict import control. Which would upset China and all the poorer people using cheap e-bike kits. I think this is important. Where are all these cheap batteries kept? We regulate other things; of course we can regulate these.
You need to think like the Process State. Bans and other rules need to be convenient for the State, not deal with problems. Or be sensible for the end user.
So banning all e-bike and scooters is easier than checking a standard. That doesn't exist. And would mean agro
The cheap e-bike batteries are being kept and charged in houses and flats.
The reason that wheelchairs aren't a focus of the problem is that there is no race to build super cheap wheelchairs with the cheapest batteries, yet the highest performance.
Studies of batteries showed that fires are a function of
1) How close to the cutting edge of battery tech they are 2) Quality control 3) "Smartness" in the charging process.
The super cheap eBike kits score 100% on all 3
Strangely, they burn much more often than mobiles or laptops.
The reverse is seen in electric cars - where fire safety has been taken seriously from day 1. Which is why electric car fires are rarer than ICE fires.
I'd agree that it is simplistic / lazy thinking, and that that is what happens. There is actually such a race, but it's not on the same scale of footprint.
The question is how effectively to change the process to something more realistic?
(It's exactly the same question around eg why do we have pedestrian cages on our pavements at junctions when we also have the research that shows removing them is safer. It's about changing process assumptions, which ultimately starts with changing underlying values then principles then process.)
One complicating factor is that half the population and three quarters of our politicians have recently become convinced that e-bikes are used exclusively by illegal Deliveroo workers and phone thieves.
Substantially correct imo, and one strategy for a start is to create a separate "disabled" category.
The general principle being argued is that "cycles - standard and non-standard - used by disabled people should be a mobility aid treated like wheelchairs and mobility scooters when the speeds are the same ie <4mph or <8mph" depending on where it is being used. That's approximately the exception in place in a couple of PSPOs etc.
That's what happened to the guy who had his wheelchair kept in the vehicle pound for 3 weeks - the police did not understand what it was, so they called it (in legislation terms) a "carriage" and decided it needed the full panoply of driving license etc.
I don't know how true it is now (or then) but I once heard that if you squint hard at the law, it is illegal to push babies' prams on the pavement.
As for mobility scooters and bikes bursting into flames, either the batteries are dangerous or they are not. It is bad law to have special carve-outs.
PS: be careful with ‘less than’ signs as Vanilla is easily confused and takes < to be part of an html tag.
He's not learned from the 2019 campaign. Corbyn needs to change his glasses so he can make eye contact down the camera. He also needs to remember the wise words of David Cameron's mum and wear a suit, or at least a formal shirt to hide his neck.
This will be all for nothing if Zarah "look at me" Sultana is co leader.
I've not seen Zarah on the campaign trail. Hopefully she will have learned something from Jo Swinson who looked underdressed for a car boot sale. Voters like to be shown they are taken seriously, and that means at least ‘smart casual’ even if not the full Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Sultana dressing up as Rees Mogg would be an odd way to campaign.
He's not learned from the 2019 campaign. Corbyn needs to change his glasses so he can make eye contact down the camera. He also needs to remember the wise words of David Cameron's mum and wear a suit, or at least a formal shirt to hide his neck.
This will be all for nothing if Zarah "look at me" Sultana is co leader.
I've not seen Zarah on the campaign trail. Hopefully she will have learned something from Jo Swinson who looked underdressed for a car boot sale. Voters like to be shown they are taken seriously, and that means at least ‘smart casual’ even if not the full Jacob Rees-Mogg.
There must be some second-hand Primark trouser suits going now that Mhairi Black has retired.
Police and crime commissioner for Leicestershire and Rutland defects from the Conservatives to Reform UK. Not super-high profile, but a significant elected position.
I think that’s probably the first time that anyone, anywhere, has described a police & crime commissioner as being a “significant elected position”!
He got 62,280 votes. That's a bigger personal mandate than most (any?) MP.
Yes, but those votes came from the whole of Leicestershire and Rutland, at least 10 constituencys.
I've been down an interesting rabbit hole with FUKers and Dump Net Zero policy.
They're against wind and all cite the same data to prove that its more expensive than anything else. And they want it switched off tomorrow.
As Wind is a third of our generating capacity, we'd need to replace that with something else.
The best suggestion I've been told by one of their self-proclaimed energy experts? COAL. Specifically domestic coal.
Thing is, back when we had coal being dug from profitable pits, the imported stuff was cheaper, so we closed the pits. Now - so I am told - we can just reopen the pits and burn coal.
OK, lets imagine that we scrap planning laws so no cost from enquiries or any of that. Buy the land. Dig the holes. Erect the surface infrastructure, buy machinery and train men. Just to be able to access coal which used to be more expensive than imports when there was no access costs.
Coal. Is that really what they think can be done? And I used to mock Boris Johnson for "crayon policies". This lot are a whole new level of stupid.
It's curious how our nationalist friends (Reform and SNP) descend into complete unreality when energy is introduced into the conversation.
According to some SNats, the perfidious English are nicking all their wind-power - "It's Scotland's Wind" - in much the same way as they snaffled the oil. Meanwhile, they are busy making sure Scotland is completely lacking in nuclear generation.
Head south and Big Nige is going to sweep to victory in Wales next year on the back of promising to reopen the coal mines.
I don’t have a problem with England using Scottish wind power. I have a problem with them getting it cheaper than we do.
Red , they do same with everything else , why would they be fair with our power. Grifters gotta grift.
I've been down an interesting rabbit hole with FUKers and Dump Net Zero policy.
They're against wind and all cite the same data to prove that its more expensive than anything else. And they want it switched off tomorrow.
As Wind is a third of our generating capacity, we'd need to replace that with something else.
The best suggestion I've been told by one of their self-proclaimed energy experts? COAL. Specifically domestic coal.
Thing is, back when we had coal being dug from profitable pits, the imported stuff was cheaper, so we closed the pits. Now - so I am told - we can just reopen the pits and burn coal.
OK, lets imagine that we scrap planning laws so no cost from enquiries or any of that. Buy the land. Dig the holes. Erect the surface infrastructure, buy machinery and train men. Just to be able to access coal which used to be more expensive than imports when there was no access costs.
Coal. Is that really what they think can be done? And I used to mock Boris Johnson for "crayon policies". This lot are a whole new level of stupid.
It's curious how our nationalist friends (Reform and SNP) descend into complete unreality when energy is introduced into the conversation.
According to some SNats, the perfidious English are nicking all their wind-power - "It's Scotland's Wind" - in much the same way as they snaffled the oil. Meanwhile, they are busy making sure Scotland is completely lacking in nuclear generation.
Head south and Big Nige is going to sweep to victory in Wales next year on the back of promising to reopen the coal mines.
You parasites will be after our water soon
Are you suggesting the English will be taking the piss?
I've been down an interesting rabbit hole with FUKers and Dump Net Zero policy.
They're against wind and all cite the same data to prove that its more expensive than anything else. And they want it switched off tomorrow.
As Wind is a third of our generating capacity, we'd need to replace that with something else.
The best suggestion I've been told by one of their self-proclaimed energy experts? COAL. Specifically domestic coal.
Thing is, back when we had coal being dug from profitable pits, the imported stuff was cheaper, so we closed the pits. Now - so I am told - we can just reopen the pits and burn coal.
OK, lets imagine that we scrap planning laws so no cost from enquiries or any of that. Buy the land. Dig the holes. Erect the surface infrastructure, buy machinery and train men. Just to be able to access coal which used to be more expensive than imports when there was no access costs.
Coal. Is that really what they think can be done? And I used to mock Boris Johnson for "crayon policies". This lot are a whole new level of stupid.
Trouble is that they are half right. In £/Kwh for dispatachable generation* (ignoring taxes and subsidies) coal is cheaper than anything else by a country mile.
We were insane to knock down all our coal burning infrastructure (all that capex already spent), and we are still digging ourselves into an expensive energy hole rather than getting ourselves out of it - eg licensing offshore wind with strike prices greater than the current grid price.
That said, we are where we are now - local deep mined coal isn't coming back at scale - far too expensive to reopen, although there is still some opencast to be had.
Throwing up some big coal fired baseload plants and running on imported coal would probably be the straight up cheapest way forward, if we are determined to get electricity prices down. It's the only realistic way to decouple prices from the gas price any time soon. But I don't see Reform doing it.
What they might do is windfall tax all the CFD cash back - that would reduce prices (or at least, provide a big pile of cash that could be used to reduce prices). But the downside would be that no one would touch another government contract of this sort with someone else's barge pole for a very long time - and we still need people to build some sort of generating capacity.
*dispatchable - ie available when you need it, like after dark on a still winter night. Perfectly technically achievable with wind/solar + batteries, or more cheaply with wind/solar + gas backup, but all of this is more expensive than coal.
I would be interested in where Pochdale Rioneers has heard that Reform want to 'switch off' all wind tomorrow.
Tice has been making noises about CfD contract agreements, legally Reform may not be able to renege on signed agreements but as the Prole says, there could be some form or clawback on them as a windfall tax or whatever.
I suspect the long term gain is for Reform to spook the market enough so the big investors are put off going for new wind farm developments the closer we are to a potential Reform government.
Long term, the more I see of wind power the more we need battery storage if renewables as our only energy source are going to work. That may be easier achieved with solar though. Last night at one stage, admittedly later on, 32% of our energy was coming via interconnectors on the continent. Different story today, but its not a problem that's going to be fixed quickly no matter how many CfDs or constraints payments Mr Miliband wants to chuck at wind farms
I've been down an interesting rabbit hole with FUKers and Dump Net Zero policy.
They're against wind and all cite the same data to prove that its more expensive than anything else. And they want it switched off tomorrow.
As Wind is a third of our generating capacity, we'd need to replace that with something else.
The best suggestion I've been told by one of their self-proclaimed energy experts? COAL. Specifically domestic coal.
Thing is, back when we had coal being dug from profitable pits, the imported stuff was cheaper, so we closed the pits. Now - so I am told - we can just reopen the pits and burn coal.
OK, lets imagine that we scrap planning laws so no cost from enquiries or any of that. Buy the land. Dig the holes. Erect the surface infrastructure, buy machinery and train men. Just to be able to access coal which used to be more expensive than imports when there was no access costs.
Coal. Is that really what they think can be done? And I used to mock Boris Johnson for "crayon policies". This lot are a whole new level of stupid.
Trouble is that they are half right. In £/Kwh for dispatachable generation* (ignoring taxes and subsidies) coal is cheaper than anything else by a country mile.
We were insane to knock down all our coal burning infrastructure (all that capex already spent), and we are still digging ourselves into an expensive energy hole rather than getting ourselves out of it - eg licensing offshore wind with strike prices greater than the current grid price.
That said, we are where we are now - local deep mined coal isn't coming back at scale - far too expensive to reopen, although there is still some opencast to be had.
Throwing up some big coal fired baseload plants and running on imported coal would probably be the straight up cheapest way forward, if we are determined to get electricity prices down. It's the only realistic way to decouple prices from the gas price any time soon. But I don't see Reform doing it.
What they might do is windfall tax all the CFD cash back - that would reduce prices (or at least, provide a big pile of cash that could be used to reduce prices). But the downside would be that no one would touch another government contract of this sort with someone else's barge pole for a very long time - and we still need people to build some sort of generating capacity.
*dispatchable - ie available when you need it, like after dark on a still winter night. Perfectly technically achievable with wind/solar + batteries, or more cheaply with wind/solar + gas backup, but all of this is more expensive than coal.
The easy (political) response to that is CfD protected us from high energy prices during the Ukraine invasion, as hard as that is to believe. It could have been even worse.
And that Putin-Trump-Farage triangle is fatal for Reform.
The trouble with Reform's coal policy is not the details but the fact they've lazily pinched it from Trump. They need to be alert to what does not travel.
I've been down an interesting rabbit hole with FUKers and Dump Net Zero policy.
They're against wind and all cite the same data to prove that its more expensive than anything else. And they want it switched off tomorrow.
As Wind is a third of our generating capacity, we'd need to replace that with something else.
The best suggestion I've been told by one of their self-proclaimed energy experts? COAL. Specifically domestic coal.
Thing is, back when we had coal being dug from profitable pits, the imported stuff was cheaper, so we closed the pits. Now - so I am told - we can just reopen the pits and burn coal.
OK, lets imagine that we scrap planning laws so no cost from enquiries or any of that. Buy the land. Dig the holes. Erect the surface infrastructure, buy machinery and train men. Just to be able to access coal which used to be more expensive than imports when there was no access costs.
Coal. Is that really what they think can be done? And I used to mock Boris Johnson for "crayon policies". This lot are a whole new level of stupid.
It's curious how our nationalist friends (Reform and SNP) descend into complete unreality when energy is introduced into the conversation.
According to some SNats, the perfidious English are nicking all their wind-power - "It's Scotland's Wind" - in much the same way as they snaffled the oil. Meanwhile, they are busy making sure Scotland is completely lacking in nuclear generation.
Head south and Big Nige is going to sweep to victory in Wales next year on the back of promising to reopen the coal mines.
I don’t have a problem with England using Scottish wind power. I have a problem with them getting it cheaper than we do.
Red , they do same with everything else , why would they be fair with our power. Grifters gotta grift.
Do you have a problem with the Barnett formula consistently sending English money to fund Scottish government spending?
I've been down an interesting rabbit hole with FUKers and Dump Net Zero policy.
They're against wind and all cite the same data to prove that its more expensive than anything else. And they want it switched off tomorrow.
As Wind is a third of our generating capacity, we'd need to replace that with something else.
The best suggestion I've been told by one of their self-proclaimed energy experts? COAL. Specifically domestic coal.
Thing is, back when we had coal being dug from profitable pits, the imported stuff was cheaper, so we closed the pits. Now - so I am told - we can just reopen the pits and burn coal.
OK, lets imagine that we scrap planning laws so no cost from enquiries or any of that. Buy the land. Dig the holes. Erect the surface infrastructure, buy machinery and train men. Just to be able to access coal which used to be more expensive than imports when there was no access costs.
Coal. Is that really what they think can be done? And I used to mock Boris Johnson for "crayon policies". This lot are a whole new level of stupid.
It's curious how our nationalist friends (Reform and SNP) descend into complete unreality when energy is introduced into the conversation.
According to some SNats, the perfidious English are nicking all their wind-power - "It's Scotland's Wind" - in much the same way as they snaffled the oil. Meanwhile, they are busy making sure Scotland is completely lacking in nuclear generation.
Head south and Big Nige is going to sweep to victory in Wales next year on the back of promising to reopen the coal mines.
I don’t have a problem with England using Scottish wind power. I have a problem with them getting it cheaper than we do.
Red , they do same with everything else , why would they be fair with our power. Grifters gotta grift.
Do you have a problem with the Barnett formula consistently sending English money to fund Scottish government spending?
Grifters gotta grift
*London's money. Scotland makes a stronger tax contribution than any part of the UK other than the SE of England.
I've been down an interesting rabbit hole with FUKers and Dump Net Zero policy.
They're against wind and all cite the same data to prove that its more expensive than anything else. And they want it switched off tomorrow.
As Wind is a third of our generating capacity, we'd need to replace that with something else.
The best suggestion I've been told by one of their self-proclaimed energy experts? COAL. Specifically domestic coal.
Thing is, back when we had coal being dug from profitable pits, the imported stuff was cheaper, so we closed the pits. Now - so I am told - we can just reopen the pits and burn coal.
OK, lets imagine that we scrap planning laws so no cost from enquiries or any of that. Buy the land. Dig the holes. Erect the surface infrastructure, buy machinery and train men. Just to be able to access coal which used to be more expensive than imports when there was no access costs.
Coal. Is that really what they think can be done? And I used to mock Boris Johnson for "crayon policies". This lot are a whole new level of stupid.
It's curious how our nationalist friends (Reform and SNP) descend into complete unreality when energy is introduced into the conversation.
According to some SNats, the perfidious English are nicking all their wind-power - "It's Scotland's Wind" - in much the same way as they snaffled the oil. Meanwhile, they are busy making sure Scotland is completely lacking in nuclear generation.
Head south and Big Nige is going to sweep to victory in Wales next year on the back of promising to reopen the coal mines.
You parasites will be after our water soon
Are you suggesting the English will be taking the piss?
Police and crime commissioner for Leicestershire and Rutland defects from the Conservatives to Reform UK. Not super-high profile, but a significant elected position.
That's an interesting one.
They were only elected in 2024, and have 3 years still in post iirc.
Rupert Matthews has held the position since 2021 and served as an MEP for the East Midlands for the Tories between 2017 and 2019.
Speaking at a press conference alongside Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, he said the "dark heart of wokeness" needed to be cut out of the criminal justice system.
"The self-serving, self-entitled liberal elite who have let our country down time after time are now on notice their day is almost done," he said.
"Be they Conservative or Labour governments, everyone knows our politicians have failed us all. They have let this country down. They have let the British people down. Enough. Now is the time for Reform."
I've been down an interesting rabbit hole with FUKers and Dump Net Zero policy.
They're against wind and all cite the same data to prove that its more expensive than anything else. And they want it switched off tomorrow.
As Wind is a third of our generating capacity, we'd need to replace that with something else.
The best suggestion I've been told by one of their self-proclaimed energy experts? COAL. Specifically domestic coal.
Thing is, back when we had coal being dug from profitable pits, the imported stuff was cheaper, so we closed the pits. Now - so I am told - we can just reopen the pits and burn coal.
OK, lets imagine that we scrap planning laws so no cost from enquiries or any of that. Buy the land. Dig the holes. Erect the surface infrastructure, buy machinery and train men. Just to be able to access coal which used to be more expensive than imports when there was no access costs.
Coal. Is that really what they think can be done? And I used to mock Boris Johnson for "crayon policies". This lot are a whole new level of stupid.
It's curious how our nationalist friends (Reform and SNP) descend into complete unreality when energy is introduced into the conversation.
According to some SNats, the perfidious English are nicking all their wind-power - "It's Scotland's Wind" - in much the same way as they snaffled the oil. Meanwhile, they are busy making sure Scotland is completely lacking in nuclear generation.
Head south and Big Nige is going to sweep to victory in Wales next year on the back of promising to reopen the coal mines.
I don’t have a problem with England using Scottish wind power. I have a problem with them getting it cheaper than we do.
Red , they do same with everything else , why would they be fair with our power. Grifters gotta grift.
Do you have a problem with the Barnett formula consistently sending English money to fund Scottish government spending?
Grifters gotta grift
*London's money. Scotland makes a stronger tax contribution than any part of the UK other than the SE of England.
That’s the nature of a unitary state (although given that London uses resources nationwide to deliver that surplus there are some accounting issues to work through)
I've been down an interesting rabbit hole with FUKers and Dump Net Zero policy.
They're against wind and all cite the same data to prove that its more expensive than anything else. And they want it switched off tomorrow.
As Wind is a third of our generating capacity, we'd need to replace that with something else.
The best suggestion I've been told by one of their self-proclaimed energy experts? COAL. Specifically domestic coal.
Thing is, back when we had coal being dug from profitable pits, the imported stuff was cheaper, so we closed the pits. Now - so I am told - we can just reopen the pits and burn coal.
OK, lets imagine that we scrap planning laws so no cost from enquiries or any of that. Buy the land. Dig the holes. Erect the surface infrastructure, buy machinery and train men. Just to be able to access coal which used to be more expensive than imports when there was no access costs.
Coal. Is that really what they think can be done? And I used to mock Boris Johnson for "crayon policies". This lot are a whole new level of stupid.
It's curious how our nationalist friends (Reform and SNP) descend into complete unreality when energy is introduced into the conversation.
According to some SNats, the perfidious English are nicking all their wind-power - "It's Scotland's Wind" - in much the same way as they snaffled the oil. Meanwhile, they are busy making sure Scotland is completely lacking in nuclear generation.
Head south and Big Nige is going to sweep to victory in Wales next year on the back of promising to reopen the coal mines.
I don’t have a problem with England using Scottish wind power. I have a problem with them getting it cheaper than we do.
Red , they do same with everything else , why would they be fair with our power. Grifters gotta grift.
Do you have a problem with the Barnett formula consistently sending English money to fund Scottish government spending?
Grifters gotta grift
Dumbo joins the fray. You halfwitted nutter, we get back a small % of the money transferred to England. They use the rest to fund their deficits and pretend the debt is down to Scotland.
I've been down an interesting rabbit hole with FUKers and Dump Net Zero policy.
They're against wind and all cite the same data to prove that its more expensive than anything else. And they want it switched off tomorrow.
As Wind is a third of our generating capacity, we'd need to replace that with something else.
The best suggestion I've been told by one of their self-proclaimed energy experts? COAL. Specifically domestic coal.
Thing is, back when we had coal being dug from profitable pits, the imported stuff was cheaper, so we closed the pits. Now - so I am told - we can just reopen the pits and burn coal.
OK, lets imagine that we scrap planning laws so no cost from enquiries or any of that. Buy the land. Dig the holes. Erect the surface infrastructure, buy machinery and train men. Just to be able to access coal which used to be more expensive than imports when there was no access costs.
Coal. Is that really what they think can be done? And I used to mock Boris Johnson for "crayon policies". This lot are a whole new level of stupid.
It's curious how our nationalist friends (Reform and SNP) descend into complete unreality when energy is introduced into the conversation.
According to some SNats, the perfidious English are nicking all their wind-power - "It's Scotland's Wind" - in much the same way as they snaffled the oil. Meanwhile, they are busy making sure Scotland is completely lacking in nuclear generation.
Head south and Big Nige is going to sweep to victory in Wales next year on the back of promising to reopen the coal mines.
I don’t have a problem with England using Scottish wind power. I have a problem with them getting it cheaper than we do.
Red , they do same with everything else , why would they be fair with our power. Grifters gotta grift.
Do you have a problem with the Barnett formula consistently sending English money to fund Scottish government spending?
Grifters gotta grift
Dumbo joins the fray. You halfwitted nutter, we get back a small % of the money transferred to England. They use the rest to fund their deficits and pretend the debt is down to Scotland.
According to google, UK government spending is 44% of GDP while Scottish government spending is 51% of GDP.
You seem to be doing pretty well out of the arrangement
I've been down an interesting rabbit hole with FUKers and Dump Net Zero policy.
They're against wind and all cite the same data to prove that its more expensive than anything else. And they want it switched off tomorrow.
As Wind is a third of our generating capacity, we'd need to replace that with something else.
The best suggestion I've been told by one of their self-proclaimed energy experts? COAL. Specifically domestic coal.
Thing is, back when we had coal being dug from profitable pits, the imported stuff was cheaper, so we closed the pits. Now - so I am told - we can just reopen the pits and burn coal.
OK, lets imagine that we scrap planning laws so no cost from enquiries or any of that. Buy the land. Dig the holes. Erect the surface infrastructure, buy machinery and train men. Just to be able to access coal which used to be more expensive than imports when there was no access costs.
Coal. Is that really what they think can be done? And I used to mock Boris Johnson for "crayon policies". This lot are a whole new level of stupid.
Trouble is that they are half right. In £/Kwh for dispatachable generation* (ignoring taxes and subsidies) coal is cheaper than anything else by a country mile.
We were insane to knock down all our coal burning infrastructure (all that capex already spent), and we are still digging ourselves into an expensive energy hole rather than getting ourselves out of it - eg licensing offshore wind with strike prices greater than the current grid price.
That said, we are where we are now - local deep mined coal isn't coming back at scale - far too expensive to reopen, although there is still some opencast to be had.
Throwing up some big coal fired baseload plants and running on imported coal would probably be the straight up cheapest way forward, if we are determined to get electricity prices down. It's the only realistic way to decouple prices from the gas price any time soon. But I don't see Reform doing it.
What they might do is windfall tax all the CFD cash back - that would reduce prices (or at least, provide a big pile of cash that could be used to reduce prices). But the downside would be that no one would touch another government contract of this sort with someone else's barge pole for a very long time - and we still need people to build some sort of generating capacity.
*dispatchable - ie available when you need it, like after dark on a still winter night. Perfectly technically achievable with wind/solar + batteries, or more cheaply with wind/solar + gas backup, but all of this is more expensive than coal.
I would be interested in where Pochdale Rioneers has heard that Reform want to 'switch off' all wind tomorrow.
Tice has been making noises about CfD contract agreements, legally Reform may not be able to renege on signed agreements but as the Prole says, there could be some form or clawback on them as a windfall tax or whatever.
I suspect the long term gain is for Reform to spook the market enough so the big investors are put off going for new wind farm developments the closer we are to a potential Reform government.
Long term, the more I see of wind power the more we need battery storage if renewables as our only energy source are going to work. That may be easier achieved with solar though. Last night at one stage, admittedly later on, 32% of our energy was coming via interconnectors on the continent. Different story today, but its not a problem that's going to be fixed quickly no matter how many CfDs or constraints payments Mr Miliband wants to chuck at wind farms
I don't think importing energy from Europe is a bad thing, nor exporting it. Our neighbours can act as the "battery" - we've exported 4.5GW on average over the last 24 hours, and it could have been even more if we hadn't maxed out the interconnectors.
We might want to be able to sustain self-reliance - but that's not a position we were going to be in with fossil fuels either, with gas and potential coal imports.
I've been down an interesting rabbit hole with FUKers and Dump Net Zero policy.
They're against wind and all cite the same data to prove that its more expensive than anything else. And they want it switched off tomorrow.
As Wind is a third of our generating capacity, we'd need to replace that with something else.
The best suggestion I've been told by one of their self-proclaimed energy experts? COAL. Specifically domestic coal.
Thing is, back when we had coal being dug from profitable pits, the imported stuff was cheaper, so we closed the pits. Now - so I am told - we can just reopen the pits and burn coal.
OK, lets imagine that we scrap planning laws so no cost from enquiries or any of that. Buy the land. Dig the holes. Erect the surface infrastructure, buy machinery and train men. Just to be able to access coal which used to be more expensive than imports when there was no access costs.
Coal. Is that really what they think can be done? And I used to mock Boris Johnson for "crayon policies". This lot are a whole new level of stupid.
It's curious how our nationalist friends (Reform and SNP) descend into complete unreality when energy is introduced into the conversation.
According to some SNats, the perfidious English are nicking all their wind-power - "It's Scotland's Wind" - in much the same way as they snaffled the oil. Meanwhile, they are busy making sure Scotland is completely lacking in nuclear generation.
Head south and Big Nige is going to sweep to victory in Wales next year on the back of promising to reopen the coal mines.
I don’t have a problem with England using Scottish wind power. I have a problem with them getting it cheaper than we do.
Red , they do same with everything else , why would they be fair with our power. Grifters gotta grift.
Do you have a problem with the Barnett formula consistently sending English money to fund Scottish government spending?
Grifters gotta grift
Dumbo joins the fray. You halfwitted nutter, we get back a small % of the money transferred to England. They use the rest to fund their deficits and pretend the debt is down to Scotland.
Scottish government deficit (including oil) is 10.4% of GDP (23/24) while the UK as a whole is 4.5%.
On the bright side that should be Ollie Pope’s last test match.
He'll be on the plane to Oz. Would you bring in Hameed and drop Crawley to 3 ?
We just need to drop Crawley.
Who would you bring in for him ?
While I'm not a fan, you need a pretty strong replacement in place of someone who hasn't quite comprehensively failed.
*Looks at his record*
I'm not sure he hasn't quite comprehensively failed.
Presumably you look at the county performances and pick one of the top performing batsmen? Except they're playing with a kookaburra and the better English bowlers are on contract so not bowling at them. One conclusion is that picking a 21 year old who has been kept away from red ball is not a great idea.
I've been down an interesting rabbit hole with FUKers and Dump Net Zero policy.
They're against wind and all cite the same data to prove that its more expensive than anything else. And they want it switched off tomorrow.
As Wind is a third of our generating capacity, we'd need to replace that with something else.
The best suggestion I've been told by one of their self-proclaimed energy experts? COAL. Specifically domestic coal.
Thing is, back when we had coal being dug from profitable pits, the imported stuff was cheaper, so we closed the pits. Now - so I am told - we can just reopen the pits and burn coal.
OK, lets imagine that we scrap planning laws so no cost from enquiries or any of that. Buy the land. Dig the holes. Erect the surface infrastructure, buy machinery and train men. Just to be able to access coal which used to be more expensive than imports when there was no access costs.
Coal. Is that really what they think can be done? And I used to mock Boris Johnson for "crayon policies". This lot are a whole new level of stupid.
Trouble is that they are half right. In £/Kwh for dispatachable generation* (ignoring taxes and subsidies) coal is cheaper than anything else by a country mile.
We were insane to knock down all our coal burning infrastructure (all that capex already spent), and we are still digging ourselves into an expensive energy hole rather than getting ourselves out of it - eg licensing offshore wind with strike prices greater than the current grid price.
That said, we are where we are now - local deep mined coal isn't coming back at scale - far too expensive to reopen, although there is still some opencast to be had.
Throwing up some big coal fired baseload plants and running on imported coal would probably be the straight up cheapest way forward, if we are determined to get electricity prices down. It's the only realistic way to decouple prices from the gas price any time soon. But I don't see Reform doing it.
What they might do is windfall tax all the CFD cash back - that would reduce prices (or at least, provide a big pile of cash that could be used to reduce prices). But the downside would be that no one would touch another government contract of this sort with someone else's barge pole for a very long time - and we still need people to build some sort of generating capacity.
*dispatchable - ie available when you need it, like after dark on a still winter night. Perfectly technically achievable with wind/solar + batteries, or more cheaply with wind/solar + gas backup, but all of this is more expensive than coal.
The easy (political) response to that is CfD protected us from high energy prices during the Ukraine invasion, as hard as that is to believe. It could have been even worse.
And that Putin-Trump-Farage triangle is fatal for Reform.
That's a rubbish argument. Yes, the CfDs did knock the top off the Russia/Ukraine price spike a bit, but the saving there is nothing compared to the losses before and since.
In political terms, the argument you're making is that someone mugged you for £100, but was then overcome with remorse and gave you £20 for a taxi home - so now you should be grateful to the mugger.
"The police and crime commissioner for Leicestershire and Rutland has defected from the Conservatives to Reform UK, giving the party its first PCC.
Rupert Matthews has held the position since 2021 and served as an MEP for the East Midlands for the Tories between 2017 and 2019.
Speaking at a press conference alongside Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, he said the "dark heart of wokeness" needed to be cut out of the criminal justice system."
Police and crime commissioner for Leicestershire and Rutland defects from the Conservatives to Reform UK. Not super-high profile, but a significant elected position.
That's an interesting one.
They were only elected in 2024, and have 3 years still in post iirc.
Rupert Matthews has held the position since 2021 and served as an MEP for the East Midlands for the Tories between 2017 and 2019.
Speaking at a press conference alongside Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, he said the "dark heart of wokeness" needed to be cut out of the criminal justice system.
"The self-serving, self-entitled liberal elite who have let our country down time after time are now on notice their day is almost done," he said.
"Be they Conservative or Labour governments, everyone knows our politicians have failed us all. They have let this country down. They have let the British people down. Enough. Now is the time for Reform."
Re-elected 2024 !
Is that not basically a flash-card?
Did anyone ask him what he meant by Wokeness ?
Something to do with darkness, apparently.
Actually, looking at his paranormal CV, it may actually mean he thinks the criminal justice system has been possessed by a Wokeness Demon!
On the bright side that should be Ollie Pope’s last test match.
He'll be on the plane to Oz. Would you bring in Hameed and drop Crawley to 3 ?
We just need to drop Crawley.
Who would you bring in for him ?
While I'm not a fan, you need a pretty strong replacement in place of someone who hasn't quite comprehensively failed.
*Looks at his record*
I'm not sure he hasn't quite comprehensively failed.
Presumably you look at the county performances and pick one of the top performing batsmen? Except they're playing with a kookaburra and the better English bowlers are on contract so not bowling at them. One conclusion is that picking a 21 year old who has been kept away from red ball is not a great idea.
I have no issue with them choosing Bethel but the idea of not having him play championship games when available (i.e. not in the test team) was rubbish. I don't know if he's even played at the level below championship on a saturday for a club side.
The country are gagging for it and that's not including the 16-18 year olds who will vote rejoin unanimously. My guess is that Starmer has already got this in mind. He's got very close to France and Germany and Canada feels like it might want to be part of the club. Very few in the UK like Trump's America and people are only now wising up to the fact that the EU is as big a power block as the US and we were top dogs in it........
The advertising would be so easy......... None of the excruciating Red Bus nonsense of Referendum !. Just 28/29 of the most beautiful and inspiring capitals in the world and we get free access to all of them for work or for play. It could look like the most alluring travel agency of all time.....
Not happening Roger.
The right wing own the news media, including broadcast media, and OfCom have no teeth. It's their game now.
It feels like that at the moment but my sense is that the right wing media and their ignorant and aging followers have had their day. Corbyn is sparking more enthusiasm than Farage. People want change and no one's looking to the Telegraph the Mail or GB News for change. Media follow the zeitgeist. Even the BBC have noticably moved in the last few weeks as have Labour. Things are in flux and that can only lead one way and that's not in a Faragist/Trumpian/Netanyahu direction
A comment with typically brilliant @roger timing just as GBNews becomes the most watched news channel in the UK
I've been down an interesting rabbit hole with FUKers and Dump Net Zero policy.
They're against wind and all cite the same data to prove that its more expensive than anything else. And they want it switched off tomorrow.
As Wind is a third of our generating capacity, we'd need to replace that with something else.
The best suggestion I've been told by one of their self-proclaimed energy experts? COAL. Specifically domestic coal.
Thing is, back when we had coal being dug from profitable pits, the imported stuff was cheaper, so we closed the pits. Now - so I am told - we can just reopen the pits and burn coal.
OK, lets imagine that we scrap planning laws so no cost from enquiries or any of that. Buy the land. Dig the holes. Erect the surface infrastructure, buy machinery and train men. Just to be able to access coal which used to be more expensive than imports when there was no access costs.
Coal. Is that really what they think can be done? And I used to mock Boris Johnson for "crayon policies". This lot are a whole new level of stupid.
Trouble is that they are half right. In £/Kwh for dispatachable generation* (ignoring taxes and subsidies) coal is cheaper than anything else by a country mile.
We were insane to knock down all our coal burning infrastructure (all that capex already spent), and we are still digging ourselves into an expensive energy hole rather than getting ourselves out of it - eg licensing offshore wind with strike prices greater than the current grid price.
That said, we are where we are now - local deep mined coal isn't coming back at scale - far too expensive to reopen, although there is still some opencast to be had.
Throwing up some big coal fired baseload plants and running on imported coal would probably be the straight up cheapest way forward, if we are determined to get electricity prices down. It's the only realistic way to decouple prices from the gas price any time soon. But I don't see Reform doing it.
What they might do is windfall tax all the CFD cash back - that would reduce prices (or at least, provide a big pile of cash that could be used to reduce prices). But the downside would be that no one would touch another government contract of this sort with someone else's barge pole for a very long time - and we still need people to build some sort of generating capacity.
*dispatchable - ie available when you need it, like after dark on a still winter night. Perfectly technically achievable with wind/solar + batteries, or more cheaply with wind/solar + gas backup, but all of this is more expensive than coal.
The easy (political) response to that is CfD protected us from high energy prices during the Ukraine invasion, as hard as that is to believe. It could have been even worse.
And that Putin-Trump-Farage triangle is fatal for Reform.
That's a rubbish argument. Yes, the CfDs did knock the top off the Russia/Ukraine price spike a bit, but the saving there is nothing compared to the losses before and since.
In political terms, the argument you're making is that someone mugged you for £100, but was then overcome with remorse and gave you £20 for a taxi home - so now you should be grateful to the mugger.
There is also a significant value in stability of energy prices - most people will pay more to fix a price than to take on the risk of a variance. We see this in consumer behaviour all the time.
CfD is reckoned to add about 3% versus taking the market price over the last 5 years. That stability is going to be worth it for the vast majority of consumers and industries, and that's before you get to the value such guarantees provide to generators as they make investment decisions in nascent technologies.
(There is also some evidence that a serious negative shock like Ukraine is much more damaging to industry than the equivalent in the other direction - it's not just the monetary value but rather a function that takes into account the direction and just how violent those swings in energy prices are).
I've been down an interesting rabbit hole with FUKers and Dump Net Zero policy.
They're against wind and all cite the same data to prove that its more expensive than anything else. And they want it switched off tomorrow.
As Wind is a third of our generating capacity, we'd need to replace that with something else.
The best suggestion I've been told by one of their self-proclaimed energy experts? COAL. Specifically domestic coal.
Thing is, back when we had coal being dug from profitable pits, the imported stuff was cheaper, so we closed the pits. Now - so I am told - we can just reopen the pits and burn coal.
OK, lets imagine that we scrap planning laws so no cost from enquiries or any of that. Buy the land. Dig the holes. Erect the surface infrastructure, buy machinery and train men. Just to be able to access coal which used to be more expensive than imports when there was no access costs.
Coal. Is that really what they think can be done? And I used to mock Boris Johnson for "crayon policies". This lot are a whole new level of stupid.
Trouble is that they are half right. In £/Kwh for dispatachable generation* (ignoring taxes and subsidies) coal is cheaper than anything else by a country mile.
We were insane to knock down all our coal burning infrastructure (all that capex already spent), and we are still digging ourselves into an expensive energy hole rather than getting ourselves out of it - eg licensing offshore wind with strike prices greater than the current grid price.
That said, we are where we are now - local deep mined coal isn't coming back at scale - far too expensive to reopen, although there is still some opencast to be had.
Throwing up some big coal fired baseload plants and running on imported coal would probably be the straight up cheapest way forward, if we are determined to get electricity prices down. It's the only realistic way to decouple prices from the gas price any time soon. But I don't see Reform doing it.
What they might do is windfall tax all the CFD cash back - that would reduce prices (or at least, provide a big pile of cash that could be used to reduce prices). But the downside would be that no one would touch another government contract of this sort with someone else's barge pole for a very long time - and we still need people to build some sort of generating capacity.
*dispatchable - ie available when you need it, like after dark on a still winter night. Perfectly technically achievable with wind/solar + batteries, or more cheaply with wind/solar + gas backup, but all of this is more expensive than coal.
"We were insane to knock down all our coal burning infrastructure (all that capex already spent)"
Infrastructure does not last forever. A thermal power station generally has a 25-30 design life; that can be extended, but at increasing cost and reduced reliability. Most coal-fired power stations were at, or past, their lives when they were switched off and replaced (mostly) by CCGT. Mothballing is expensive as well, as is recommissioning afterwards. Any coal power station switched off more than a decade ago, and which has not been properly mothballed, would just be scrap now.
Coal is also *terrible* environmentally. The worst of the worst. The idea of going back to coal is insane. I have nothing against CCGT, though.
I've been down an interesting rabbit hole with FUKers and Dump Net Zero policy.
They're against wind and all cite the same data to prove that its more expensive than anything else. And they want it switched off tomorrow.
As Wind is a third of our generating capacity, we'd need to replace that with something else.
The best suggestion I've been told by one of their self-proclaimed energy experts? COAL. Specifically domestic coal.
Thing is, back when we had coal being dug from profitable pits, the imported stuff was cheaper, so we closed the pits. Now - so I am told - we can just reopen the pits and burn coal.
OK, lets imagine that we scrap planning laws so no cost from enquiries or any of that. Buy the land. Dig the holes. Erect the surface infrastructure, buy machinery and train men. Just to be able to access coal which used to be more expensive than imports when there was no access costs.
Coal. Is that really what they think can be done? And I used to mock Boris Johnson for "crayon policies". This lot are a whole new level of stupid.
It's curious how our nationalist friends (Reform and SNP) descend into complete unreality when energy is introduced into the conversation.
According to some SNats, the perfidious English are nicking all their wind-power - "It's Scotland's Wind" - in much the same way as they snaffled the oil. Meanwhile, they are busy making sure Scotland is completely lacking in nuclear generation.
Head south and Big Nige is going to sweep to victory in Wales next year on the back of promising to reopen the coal mines.
The country are gagging for it and that's not including the 16-18 year olds who will vote rejoin unanimously. My guess is that Starmer has already got this in mind. He's got very close to France and Germany and Canada feels like it might want to be part of the club. Very few in the UK like Trump's America and people are only now wising up to the fact that the EU is as big a power block as the US and we were top dogs in it........
The advertising would be so easy......... None of the excruciating Red Bus nonsense of Referendum !. Just 28/29 of the most beautiful and inspiring capitals in the world and we get free access to all of them for work or for play. It could look like the most alluring travel agency of all time.....
Not happening Roger.
The right wing own the news media, including broadcast media, and OfCom have no teeth. It's their game now.
It feels like that at the moment but my sense is that the right wing media and their ignorant and aging followers have had their day. Corbyn is sparking more enthusiasm than Farage. People want change and no one's looking to the Telegraph the Mail or GB News for change. Media follow the zeitgeist. Even the BBC have noticably moved in the last few weeks as have Labour. Things are in flux and that can only lead one way and that's not in a Faragist/Trumpian/Netanyahu direction
A comment with typically brilliant @roger timing just as GBNews becomes the most watched news channel in the UK
The country are gagging for it and that's not including the 16-18 year olds who will vote rejoin unanimously. My guess is that Starmer has already got this in mind. He's got very close to France and Germany and Canada feels like it might want to be part of the club. Very few in the UK like Trump's America and people are only now wising up to the fact that the EU is as big a power block as the US and we were top dogs in it........
The advertising would be so easy......... None of the excruciating Red Bus nonsense of Referendum !. Just 28/29 of the most beautiful and inspiring capitals in the world and we get free access to all of them for work or for play. It could look like the most alluring travel agency of all time.....
Not happening Roger.
The right wing own the news media, including broadcast media, and OfCom have no teeth. It's their game now.
It feels like that at the moment but my sense is that the right wing media and their ignorant and aging followers have had their day. Corbyn is sparking more enthusiasm than Farage. People want change and no one's looking to the Telegraph the Mail or GB News for change. Media follow the zeitgeist. Even the BBC have noticably moved in the last few weeks as have Labour. Things are in flux and that can only lead one way and that's not in a Faragist/Trumpian/Netanyahu direction
A comment with typically brilliant @roger timing just as GBNews becomes the most watched news channel in the UK
I've been down an interesting rabbit hole with FUKers and Dump Net Zero policy.
They're against wind and all cite the same data to prove that its more expensive than anything else. And they want it switched off tomorrow.
As Wind is a third of our generating capacity, we'd need to replace that with something else.
The best suggestion I've been told by one of their self-proclaimed energy experts? COAL. Specifically domestic coal.
Thing is, back when we had coal being dug from profitable pits, the imported stuff was cheaper, so we closed the pits. Now - so I am told - we can just reopen the pits and burn coal.
OK, lets imagine that we scrap planning laws so no cost from enquiries or any of that. Buy the land. Dig the holes. Erect the surface infrastructure, buy machinery and train men. Just to be able to access coal which used to be more expensive than imports when there was no access costs.
Coal. Is that really what they think can be done? And I used to mock Boris Johnson for "crayon policies". This lot are a whole new level of stupid.
It's curious how our nationalist friends (Reform and SNP) descend into complete unreality when energy is introduced into the conversation.
According to some SNats, the perfidious English are nicking all their wind-power - "It's Scotland's Wind" - in much the same way as they snaffled the oil. Meanwhile, they are busy making sure Scotland is completely lacking in nuclear generation.
Head south and Big Nige is going to sweep to victory in Wales next year on the back of promising to reopen the coal mines.
I don’t have a problem with England using Scottish wind power. I have a problem with them getting it cheaper than we do.
Red , they do same with everything else , why would they be fair with our power. Grifters gotta grift.
Do you have a problem with the Barnett formula consistently sending English money to fund Scottish government spending?
Grifters gotta grift
Dumbo joins the fray. You halfwitted nutter, we get back a small % of the money transferred to England. They use the rest to fund their deficits and pretend the debt is down to Scotland.
According to google, UK government spending is 44% of GDP while Scottish government spending is 51% of GDP.
You seem to be doing pretty well out of the arrangement
Let's Twist Again, like we did last autumn 2013 ...
He's not learned from the 2019 campaign. Corbyn needs to change his glasses so he can make eye contact down the camera. He also needs to remember the wise words of David Cameron's mum and wear a suit, or at least a formal shirt to hide his neck.
This will be all for nothing if Zarah "look at me" Sultana is co leader.
I've not seen Zarah on the campaign trail. Hopefully she will have learned something from Jo Swinson who looked underdressed for a car boot sale. Voters like to be shown they are taken seriously, and that means at least ‘smart casual’ even if not the full Jacob Rees-Mogg.
The country are gagging for it and that's not including the 16-18 year olds who will vote rejoin unanimously. My guess is that Starmer has already got this in mind. He's got very close to France and Germany and Canada feels like it might want to be part of the club. Very few in the UK like Trump's America and people are only now wising up to the fact that the EU is as big a power block as the US and we were top dogs in it........
The advertising would be so easy......... None of the excruciating Red Bus nonsense of Referendum !. Just 28/29 of the most beautiful and inspiring capitals in the world and we get free access to all of them for work or for play. It could look like the most alluring travel agency of all time.....
Not happening Roger.
The right wing own the news media, including broadcast media, and OfCom have no teeth. It's their game now.
It feels like that at the moment but my sense is that the right wing media and their ignorant and aging followers have had their day. Corbyn is sparking more enthusiasm than Farage. People want change and no one's looking to the Telegraph the Mail or GB News for change. Media follow the zeitgeist. Even the BBC have noticably moved in the last few weeks as have Labour. Things are in flux and that can only lead one way and that's not in a Faragist/Trumpian/Netanyahu direction
A comment with typically brilliant @roger timing just as GBNews becomes the most watched news channel in the UK
The country are gagging for it and that's not including the 16-18 year olds who will vote rejoin unanimously. My guess is that Starmer has already got this in mind. He's got very close to France and Germany and Canada feels like it might want to be part of the club. Very few in the UK like Trump's America and people are only now wising up to the fact that the EU is as big a power block as the US and we were top dogs in it........
The advertising would be so easy......... None of the excruciating Red Bus nonsense of Referendum !. Just 28/29 of the most beautiful and inspiring capitals in the world and we get free access to all of them for work or for play. It could look like the most alluring travel agency of all time.....
Not happening Roger.
The right wing own the news media, including broadcast media, and OfCom have no teeth. It's their game now.
It feels like that at the moment but my sense is that the right wing media and their ignorant and aging followers have had their day. Corbyn is sparking more enthusiasm than Farage. People want change and no one's looking to the Telegraph the Mail or GB News for change. Media follow the zeitgeist. Even the BBC have noticably moved in the last few weeks as have Labour. Things are in flux and that can only lead one way and that's not in a Faragist/Trumpian/Netanyahu direction
A comment with typically brilliant @roger timing just as GBNews becomes the most watched news channel in the UK
He's not learned from the 2019 campaign. Corbyn needs to change his glasses so he can make eye contact down the camera. He also needs to remember the wise words of David Cameron's mum and wear a suit, or at least a formal shirt to hide his neck.
This will be all for nothing if Zarah "look at me" Sultana is co leader.
I've not seen Zarah on the campaign trail. Hopefully she will have learned something from Jo Swinson who looked underdressed for a car boot sale. Voters like to be shown they are taken seriously, and that means at least ‘smart casual’ even if not the full Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Can’t see her being anything other than an electoral liability.
She seems to cry racism or homophobia at any adverse coverage. Even a rather interesting piece on Sky News the other day.
It some ways, she comes across to me well, as being personable and honest in her beliefs, but, absolutely, she repeats the same pat responses to everything.
The country are gagging for it and that's not including the 16-18 year olds who will vote rejoin unanimously. My guess is that Starmer has already got this in mind. He's got very close to France and Germany and Canada feels like it might want to be part of the club. Very few in the UK like Trump's America and people are only now wising up to the fact that the EU is as big a power block as the US and we were top dogs in it........
The advertising would be so easy......... None of the excruciating Red Bus nonsense of Referendum !. Just 28/29 of the most beautiful and inspiring capitals in the world and we get free access to all of them for work or for play. It could look like the most alluring travel agency of all time.....
Not happening Roger.
The right wing own the news media, including broadcast media, and OfCom have no teeth. It's their game now.
It feels like that at the moment but my sense is that the right wing media and their ignorant and aging followers have had their day. Corbyn is sparking more enthusiasm than Farage. People want change and no one's looking to the Telegraph the Mail or GB News for change. Media follow the zeitgeist. Even the BBC have noticably moved in the last few weeks as have Labour. Things are in flux and that can only lead one way and that's not in a Faragist/Trumpian/Netanyahu direction
A comment with typically brilliant @roger timing just as GBNews becomes the most watched news channel in the UK
Comments
You need to think like the Process State. Bans and other rules need to be convenient for the State, not deal with problems. Or be sensible for the end user.
So banning all e-bike and scooters is easier than checking a standard. That doesn't exist. And would mean agro
The cheap e-bike batteries are being kept and charged in houses and flats.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm25e414dq8o
The reason that wheelchairs aren't a focus of the problem is that there is no race to build super cheap wheelchairs with the cheapest batteries, yet the highest performance.
Studies of batteries showed that fires are a function of
1) How close to the cutting edge of battery tech they are
2) Quality control
3) "Smartness" in the charging process.
The super cheap eBike kits score 100% on all 3
Strangely, they burn much more often than mobiles or laptops.
The reverse is seen in electric cars - where fire safety has been taken seriously from day 1. Which is why electric car fires are rarer than ICE fires.
So why the actual quacking duck are we stuck with Crawley?
We were insane to knock down all our coal burning infrastructure (all that capex already spent), and we are still digging ourselves into an expensive energy hole rather than getting ourselves out of it - eg licensing offshore wind with strike prices greater than the current grid price.
That said, we are where we are now - local deep mined coal isn't coming back at scale - far too expensive to reopen, although there is still some opencast to be had.
Throwing up some big coal fired baseload plants and running on imported coal would probably be the straight up cheapest way forward, if we are determined to get electricity prices down. It's the only realistic way to decouple prices from the gas price any time soon. But I don't see Reform doing it.
What they might do is windfall tax all the CFD cash back - that would reduce prices (or at least, provide a big pile of cash that could be used to reduce prices). But the downside would be that no one would touch another government contract of this sort with someone else's barge pole for a very long time - and we still need people to build some sort of generating capacity.
*dispatchable - ie available when you need it, like after dark on a still winter night. Perfectly technically achievable with wind/solar + batteries, or more cheaply with wind/solar + gas backup, but all of this is more expensive than coal.
HMRC and Trading Standards need to up their game, because it’s not Brompton e-bikes and Apple laptops causing house fires. There need to be businesses shut down and people prosecuted for the sale and import of these incendiary devices. Perhaps then there will be less of an aversion to large batteries in general.
I love stupid stats
Hundreds of Israeli ex-officials appeal to Trump to help end Gaza war
A group of some 600 retired Israeli security officials, including former heads of intelligence agencies, have written to US President Donald Trump to pressure Israel to immediately end the war in Gaza.
"It is our professional judgement that Hamas no longer poses a strategic threat to Israel," the officials said.
"Your credibility with the vast majority of Israelis augments your ability to steer Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu and his government in the right direction: End the war, return the hostages, stop the suffering," they wrote.
Their appeal comes amid reports that Netanyahu is pushing to expand military operations in Gaza as indirect ceasefire talks with Hamas have stalled.
The question is how effectively to change the process to something more realistic?
(It's exactly the same question around eg why do we have pedestrian cages on our pavements at junctions when we also have the research that shows removing them is safer. It's about changing process assumptions, which ultimately starts with changing underlying values then principles then process.)
Real change is coming.
https://x.com/jeremycorbyn/status/1952284846631378964
If we note that Wally Hammod played with Wilfred Rhodes
Who's first test was WG Grace's last,
Sir James is 9 steps from WG Grace!
And that Putin-Trump-Farage triangle is fatal for Reform.
They were only elected in 2024, and have 3 years still in post iirc.
Speaking at a press conference alongside Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, he said the "dark heart of wokeness" needed to be cut out of the criminal justice system.
"The self-serving, self-entitled liberal elite who have let our country down time after time are now on notice their day is almost done," he said.
"Be they Conservative or Labour governments, everyone knows our politicians have failed us all. They have let this country down. They have let the British people down. Enough. Now is the time for Reform."
Plus enforcement will mean actually spending money.
Are you sure a nice 3,500 page form to fill in by the importers won’t work?
*which represents the interests of Foreigners.
The general principle being argued is that "cycles - standard and non-standard - used by disabled people should be a mobility aid treated like wheelchairs and mobility scooters when the speeds are the same ie <4mph or <8mph" depending on where it is being used. That's approximately the exception in place in a couple of PSPOs etc.
That's what happened to the guy who had his wheelchair kept in the vehicle pound for 3 weeks - the police did not understand what it was, so they called it (in legislation terms) a "carriage" and decided it needed the full panoply of driving license etc.
Ask the voters of Clacton which of these they plan that they and their families do without. The rest follows.
It can of course be run better (much better) but the idea it can be run much cheaper is delusional.
Therefore Reform are in fact high spend (and therefore high tax) centrist social democrats + closed borders nationalists + fairly social conservative. Of this I am confident. I do not support them. They would be a disaster. In policy terms the nearest thing to them is 1950s/early 60s Labour.
Don't know why they couldn't try and do it in singles though.
Is that not basically a flash-card?
Did anyone ask him what he meant by Wokeness ?
I'm sure I've read pretty much those exact words on here. The 'Enough' is a give-away.
Rupert Matthews has held the position since 2021 and served as an MEP for the East Midlands for the Tories between 2017 and 2019.
Speaking at a press conference alongside Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, he said the "dark heart of wokeness" needed to be cut out of the criminal justice system."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c23p4ev0x4po
As for mobility scooters and bikes bursting into flames, either the batteries are dangerous or they are not. It is bad law to have special carve-outs.
PS: be careful with ‘less than’ signs as Vanilla is easily confused and takes < to be part of an html tag.
I suspect the long term gain is for Reform to spook the market enough so the big investors are put off going for new wind farm developments the closer we are to a potential Reform government.
Long term, the more I see of wind power the more we need battery storage if renewables as our only energy source are going to work. That may be easier achieved with solar though. Last night at one stage, admittedly later on, 32% of our energy was coming via interconnectors on the continent. Different story today, but its not a problem that's going to be fixed quickly no matter how many CfDs or constraints payments Mr Miliband wants to chuck at wind farms
Wow.
What will Agent Anderson think?
Grifters gotta grift
You seem to be doing pretty well out of the arrangement
"Why the world is obsessed with white women
Sean Thomas" (£)
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-the-world-is-obsessed-with-white-women/
We might want to be able to sustain self-reliance - but that's not a position we were going to be in with fossil fuels either, with gas and potential coal imports.
https://www.gov.scot/publications/government-expenditure-revenue-scotland-gers-2023-24/
Except they're playing with a kookaburra and the better English bowlers are on contract so not bowling at them.
One conclusion is that picking a 21 year old who has been kept away from red ball is not a great idea.
In political terms, the argument you're making is that someone mugged you for £100, but was then overcome with remorse and gave you £20 for a taxi home - so now you should be grateful to the mugger.
OMG, I've just agreed with Truss on something.
CfD is reckoned to add about 3% versus taking the market price over the last 5 years. That stability is going to be worth it for the vast majority of consumers and industries, and that's before you get to the value such guarantees provide to generators as they make investment decisions in nascent technologies.
(There is also some evidence that a serious negative shock like Ukraine is much more damaging to industry than the equivalent in the other direction - it's not just the monetary value but rather a function that takes into account the direction and just how violent those swings in energy prices are).
Infrastructure does not last forever. A thermal power station generally has a 25-30 design life; that can be extended, but at increasing cost and reduced reliability. Most coal-fired power stations were at, or past, their lives when they were switched off and replaced (mostly) by CCGT. Mothballing is expensive as well, as is recommissioning afterwards. Any coal power station switched off more than a decade ago, and which has not been properly mothballed, would just be scrap now.
Coal is also *terrible* environmentally. The worst of the worst. The idea of going back to coal is insane. I have nothing against CCGT, though.
BBC News at Six averages 4 million viewers.
You go with your bad self.
She seems to cry racism or homophobia at any adverse coverage. Even a rather interesting piece on Sky News the other day.