2025 Conservative Party conference and its problem policies – politicalbetting.com
2025 Conservative Party conference and its problem policies – politicalbetting.com
Kemi Badenoch vows to repeal Climate Change Act – Tory leader says she would replace it with ‘cheap energy’ strategy, ending decades-long consensus on climate.
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I think the US comparison question is a good one.
And I don't currently see a way out of their every-tightening spiral for the Conservatives, since Kemi has put in place measures (eg aiui candidates must pledge support for exiting the ECHR) that will ensure they become more and more stuck in their silo.
Clarkson wrote that Farage’s numbers don’t add up and when pressed he runs away and shouts about small boats, Starmer is stupid and has no idea about the economy but the Tories might have the answers if serious about making Britain a good place to start business.
This is a different thing from having things that we used to have called policies. Policies to protect the environment and the climate are good things and I generally have no problem with them. So, we should be encouraging more renewable energy, we should be encouraging electric vehicles to improve the atmosphere and reduce pollution, we should encourage less waste etc etc.
As for the immigration policy, words fail me.
And when you have a government locking in demand for natural gas as part of its decarbonisation strategy, through CCGT and blue hydrogen plants with CO2 capture, there is every incentive to 'drill, baby, drill' rather than import LNG from Qatar.
I may have mentioned this previously.
https://www.rochestercathedral.org/floatplane
They thereby helped out the plane restorers by giving them a display venue to make their work known. Which is nice.
More generally a key point about temporary exhibitions is that they will not be there for long. Another point is that they exist to do different things, sometimes experimental. So grumping about them is pointless, especially if it is to do with the Christian message anyway.
May got to feel self-righteous. The current Government gets to feel self-righteous. We outsource the pollution, and the profits.
It's entirely against the national interest, of course, but that's not the purpose of the legislation.
It's almost the legislative equivalent of when someone buys you a birthday present, only they've given a donation to charity instead and just add your name to it with a tag of: "Your gift is a donated school desk to a third world child". With the potentially dubious charity taking a nice fat cut.
For over an hour he didn't see a single white face.
Likewise, Chester Cathedral has, for the past few years, had a large model railway in it for a few weeks in the summer. Again, this seems more to do with pulling in the punters than it does religion (although the link between vicars and railways are much stronger than just Rev Awdry).
I'm not a fan of graffiti. But it'll be temporary, and won't have damaged the cathedral's fabric. Sometimes people should just shrug and say "That's not for me".
The former requires most folk to rip out their entire central heating system, and most likely freeze their bits off on the coldest winter days.
The latter has people shouting "Hindenberg!" and fleeing in terror. (The two proposed 'hydrogen village' projects were cancelled due to opposition from the residents.)
Unsurprisingly, the decision on what to do is not one that governments wish to take.
As a long term (honorary) member of the Conservative Climate Network, a pretty solid group imo, I’d be surprised if there’s the internal support Kemi will need to effectively end the commitment.
It feels performative.
I’ve a lot of small c conservative voters in my ward. They vote for me in preference to Labour. So this kind of cements my vote. So ta KB.
I take the environment very seriously, nevertheless this policy announcement doesn’t worry me much.
Of course Clarkson wearily announced on a May 1997 edition of the original Top Gear that "you have all voted communist", so is he as reliable a non partisan as we are led to believe?
If only a handful of people who come to see the railway exhibition are inspired to ask why people spent so much time and effort building the cathedral and progress from that to faith it will have been worthwhile
And as for the model railway it's not just Bishop Treacy and his fellow ordained enthusiasts. There is apparently a link at Chester through Brassey the engineer.
https://cheshireandwarrington.com/latest-news/model-railway-shunts-into-action-at-chester-cathedral/
Though it may just be that there's nowhere else to display a 72 foot long train set. And it's not so long in geological time sicne cathedrals were pretty much used as multipurpose community halls, much as parish church halls are today ... one wouldn't blink at St Werburgh's Parish Hall being used by the Much Binding in the Marsh Railway Club for their annual day show.
And yes, it's going to cost upfront. Tough. Conservatives are meant to believe in the evil of borrowing resources, whether financial or ecological, from future generations. As our most scientifically literate PM said,
No generation has a freehold on this earth. All we have is a life tenancy—with a full repairing lease.
The current Conservative position on the tax/spend/borrow trilemma, and on the environment is "don't stop the party now, let out kids endure the hangover."
It's been that way for a while, but it simply isn't conservative.
@MoonRabbit's attempt to use the rise in sea temperatures to defend Net Zero (which will do absolutely nothing to cool the seas), is fundamentally dishonest - something sadly very common in the Net Zero lobby.
But otherwise, agreed.
I am going to be hammering this point hard in my run for Holyrood. The Reform clowns want to protect the NE by importing more gas into England and literally shutting down off-shore wind.
One of the easiest types to spot, the serious MAMIL. Often in senior positions in business. It’s the piercing eyes that give it away.
It's very similar to the EV - hydrogen fuel cell car debate from a decade or so back.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/b4vSxaO7hJQ
Seriously, modern plastic gas mains should be fine. All the old cast iron stuff is being eliminated.
Badenoch made a play of opposing Labour's farm tax - an idiotic tax that is easy to oppose. Farmers have been traditionally Tory voting and Eurosceptic, and Tories rightly believed their vote was in the bag.
From what Farmers are telling us, that isn't the case any longer. Farmers were promised that the oven-ready Brexit deal would replace EU subsidies with British subsidies. But a few transitory environmental ones aside, the money dried up.
Local Tories are still assuming Farmers will vote for them, and being given very short shrift by angry Farmers who feel lied to and betrayed.
For me one of the major problems the Tory party faces is a disconnect with reality. And its the same on policy after policy - thinking x because we think it so our base must think it, without realising the former base now thinks y. Labour have suffered the same delusions in the past, but its really bad now for the Tories.
But you are right, 5ft5 ( allegedly ) of solid muscle.
The banning of marine sulphates occurred in 2020. It’s clearly had a very impressive retrospective effect on temperatures since 1900.
1900-2020 being of course a period during which marine sulphate emissions increased exponentially. Yet still the oceans warmed. Weird, eh! I wonder what on earth might have caused that?
Yet too many Tories conclude that Reform policies are what the Conservatives need to beat Reform. However, as with Brexit itself, these policies are questionable at best and mostly a confused and unworkable mess.
Science doesn't give a toss about Tory rejection of net zero- carbon pollution will be a reality whether the Tories believe in it or not. Protecting the environment is not some gimmick, it is central to building a sustainable future for the planet. How you do this is open to debate, but the science is unarguable: anthropic climate change is happening now, what are humans going to do about it? The current Tory answer is stupid: scrap meaningful changes and ignore the problem.
Likewise with immigration, reality doesn't give a stuff about Tory policies. The 14 year car crash created a massive wave of immigration without any consent from the governed. Tories now want to wish it away by destroying civil liberties and using force. not only unworkable, but actively dangerous. Leaving the ECHR is a Trumpian idea that would fail to change anything. Anyway hard line anti-immigration policies look hypocritical and ridiculous in the mouth or a woman who grew up in Nigeria and the US. In the end the conference merely exposed the chaotic strategic thinking at the heart of the party.
Yet there is a tiny glimmer: the economy. The stamp duty idea hit home because it could actually work as part of addressing the can of worms that is the UK housing market. If the Tories began to talk economics instead of the Reform agenda of social conservatism and borderline authoritarianism, maybe there is a way back. Being a bit libertarian and having a far more free market bottom line might remind people why the Tories could have a purpose.
The Tories were always two parties: that Tebbit and Rifkind were in the same cabinet is always jarring to me. The Tebbit wing is flirting very hard with Farage, but the party in its current form is not a party of wealth and aspiration any more- losing the Waitrose voters to the Lib Dems is an astonishing defeat. Can the Tories at least start to ask the right questions? No one knows, and if this conference showed anything, it is that they are still megaparsecs from finding a coherent set of answers.
The fat lady is clearing her throat for the Tories, but they may have one last chance, if they ignore the Alan B'stard wing of Jenrick and his ilk and focus on serious reform of the economy and especially of public administration.
However, I'm very much a low-hanging fruit kind of person so electric vehicles has to be the focus for now - particularly as it mitigates our problem with renewable energy intermittency.
But for those interested, the graph from the mid 1950s to present is here:
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/climate-data-records/global-ocean-heat-content
2020 is on the right of the time series.
My factoid of the day:
Nottinghamshire County Council has spent an additional £25m on adult social care this year just to meet the increase in the national living wage and increase employers’ NICs.
Combined with children’s social services, care makes up 75pc of Nottinghamshire County Council’s annual spending.
Telegraph
The other councils are all similar says article.
OK, but we don't have gas - we import half the gas we need to generate a quarter of our power. "The North Sea is full of it". Well no, not at viable prices, hence imports. "Well nuclear - SMRs". OK thats a deacde away and needs foreign investment, what do you do tomorrow?
At which point they showed me the website showing how much money was being spent - "we can stop spending this tomorrow". Sign.
People are sick of being in a circus, but seem to think that voting for a different set of clowns will change things.
But while I can understand that US energy policy is now determined by whatever whim takes hold of Trump, I can't really get my head around Farage deciding it's something to ape.
The safety and handling rules for hydrogen are written in blood. And a part of that is certifying joints and materials.
And before anyone starts, they are an example of rules and process that work - because they are quite simple and clear. And are about keeping the hydrogen contained, rather than bullshitting administrators.
And no, the methods they use for certifying joints on new gas mains don’t meet the requirements for hydrogen.
Hydrogen is perfectly safe (like natural gas and petrol). As long as you remember how fucking dangerous it is.
Also coming from the North East of Scotland, I remain really angry at the impact of the SNP, SGreens and now the Labour Government at Westminster's devasting impact on the North Sea Gas and Oil Industry here. So your flippant lads together comment really jarred with someone else who actually lives in the North East of Scotland right now! I am fed up watching the only Opposition party in Scotland knocking its head against a brick wall and getting dismissed in this way by a long time dismissive snobbish group on here! When I arrived on this site twenty years ago, I was out loud and a proud female Scottish Conservative and I remain so thanks to their bloody hard work protecting my rights as a biological woman here in Scotland!!
So Kemi, you go girl!
That's why I think a lot of this debate is a bit contrived, a bit culture war. Increasing gas production from the North Sea is not going to make a material difference to gas imports, and extracting it is not always economical. If we take Badenoch seriously when she says she wants to produce at 100% then we should ask how much that will cost in subsidies.
Marine sulphate emissions included large quantities of Thiotimoline.
The predictable effects are described in "The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline", ASF, 1948
The offset is instead one of "we are going to sack a million wasteful civil servants" and that sounds great on paper but that means things like fewer police means greater crime. There is always a trade off.
I was in the Bridgend Council depot which is now essentially a Portakabin. Ten years ago it was a huge 1930s built series of two commercial vehicle workshops with offices, both now razed to the ground. So vehicle maintenance is farmed out to the commercial sector and the cost per unit repair is probably a lot more expensive but the cost overhead has been lost, so a win on paper. So what of all those office staff running road gangs for hedge and verge management, pot hole repair and litter picking. Well the big stuff is farmed out to contractors whilst your hedges, verges, potholes an litter are just not trimmed, filled or picked anymore.
My biggest criticism of 21st century Tories (and Reformers) is they know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
Basically: there should be relatively humongous error bars on the early data.
Point is, the Tories can hardly claim to have been stalwart defenders of an industry they have run down. And not just energy, as I pointed out earlier the local farmers are fuming at both their treatment by the party and by the rank arrogance of Bowie et al assuming their vote remains secure...
If I was a farm family 20% IHT would be very annoying.
But could 50% work better?
Land is expensive because it carries tax advantages.
If my core skill is to extract the profit from managing land effectively for the long term, I’d probably prefer to get my land cheapish.
Because there are often obvious consequences that the last Tory Government was too thick to understand.
Reduce the number of people processing asylum claims
those awaiting their claim to be processed take longer to be processed
which means they need to be housed for longer
which means you need to house more people than you have space for so suddenly that little staff saving results in £10bn being spent to hire run down hotels.
Its also for those born with less privilege for whom endless immigration and ever higher energy costs severely restrict their life opportunities.
We will follow a path of decarbonisation over the coming decades anyway, but it needs to be a technologically realistic and economically sustainable one or else we'll pointlessly cripple ourselves - and then won't be able to afford investmentsnin new technology.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-61437156.amp
Whatever we're haggling over is pretty marginal. Politics is not going to conjure up huge amounts of oil and gas.
Now that we have set the "you're not from round here" point aside (and I accept I am not) can we go back to the points I am making?
A big run down of the industry under the Tories. A lot of job losses. The whole net zero thing was Tory, with all that entails. Not funding CCS here was Tory. The slashing of farming subsidy in a direct betrayal of promises made was Tory. Its not us saying these things to farmers and energy workers. They are saying it to us. And Bowie got short shrift at several of the local agricultural fairs, and more so when the Tractors for Truth came into the area.
The discontent is real, hence the decline in the vote.
I wish more of your former voters would stick with you rather than switch to Reform.
It's a great example of how strong political leadership can do that and break the consensus.
Before Kemi no-one was seriously questioning at a national level the wisdom of this law, even though no doubt many people will now "forget" this and pretend that they were.
The trouble for palaeoclimatologists is that their painstaking work has become politicised by those with an interest in denying climate change, so that small differences between studies become the equivalent of “yebbut how does evolution explain the [insert since-debunked evolutionary headscratcher here]”
I’m not remotely wedded to Stamp Duty. We don’t have it in Scotland. But having suddenly decided Stamp Duty is bad, you actually need power again to do this thing you didn’t do when you were in power. Which means persuading people to vote for you. Which they won’t.
A journeyman (or woman) Chief Executive is brought in to cut costs. He/she pores over spreadsheets and determines that labour is their biggest cost, so in order to cut costs they cut staff. Easy!
Let's take kerbside refuse collectors. In a.medium sized authority it would be reasonable to assume a 100 collectors and drivers. So the CE decides after much calculation that they can make do with 70 ( it's always a cut of circa 30%). So we have just saved just under a third of our labour cost. We can also get rid of 30% of our vehicles and their associated costs. Happy days!
However householder start complaining that their bins/ recycling service is failing (and don't forget ratepayers pay their council tax for one thing, to get their bins emptied). So to offset the failing service they hire in first ten, then twenty, then thirty agency staff. These workers will require a corresponding number of vehicles and these will be hired in at an astronomical rate. It probably takes two years to get back up to 70 permanent staff and 30 expensive agency staff, by which time the CE who saved 30% on service provision costs has moved on to a bigger local authority to do the same.
The next CE comes in and is tasked with reducing agency and vehicle hire costs so he/she tupees over the 30 agency staff onto the books and buys the corresponding vehicles required.
So often, cost savings costs more than they save.
I suspect Kemi's civil service sackings maintain a similar result.
Huge variety of play and scores, some very rugbyesque play.
If they can work out how to cut out a lot of the dead time around games the NFL might just take off and make some money.
Sadly we're still run by people who think history (and the need for any economic progress) ended in the 1990s - meanwhile the rest of the world continues to develop. The best immigration policy now would be letting people know they're backing the wrong horse and Poland will be better off than us in short order.
I'd suggest that it could become enough of a deal in Scotland for SCon to get double figures. If I buy with my partner it will cost me around £20k.
I'm assuming it's related to the other big thing that happened in the middle of the 2010s, but that might just be horrible centrist prejudice.
https://youtu.be/BXUdGPjJHkc?si=TtGIIH6bwCGRrGig
I said it quietly so I don't think anyone noticed.
1) Why are we investing so little in on-street EV charging?
2) Why haven't we abolished Stamp Duty when every economist says we should?
3) Why aren't we trying to reform the Refugee Convention? We all know it needs to happen.
4) Why haven't we dualled the A1?
etc etc