Given that they could use aniseed rather than animal scent, it's clearly just a ruse to continue actual fox hunting, do a ban seems justified. The actual control measure for fox numbers would seem to be the motor car. We have plenty of foxes in my urban area and they don't cause an issue if you secure your bins properly. Given I've seen the cubs being taught to raid bins while surrounded by grazing rabbits, I doubt they can be bothered with chickens either.
Next the clowns will want to ban driving cars
There’s a few who do, de growth is very much on the agenda for some. Limit the supply of energy and water and other key essentials and simply live within that and forget growth as it hurts the planet.
The EU has spent millions funding groups looking at it.
Climate change committee has made some suggestions on energy use which it wants to see implemented.
If energy supply is limited, I'd expect a big backlash from the masses. If taxes were put up on flying, transport, meat etc it would obviously favour the wealthy. I dont see how you could go for reduction in energy use without annoying a big part of the population
I’d agree so I expect they will do it by stealth rather than be open and above board about it. We need cheap energy. We’re not going to get it.
The Climate Change Committe is one of those unelected NGO’s that @Sandpit was referring to. It has no accountability. Get money from the govt and lobbies the govt on matters that will affect each and every one of us.
It would be better to abolish many of these NGO’s as the govt just subcontracts policy making to them.
So leave it all to Ed Miliband then?
Effectively we are already doing that with the Climate Change Committee. It’s merely there to lobby for what he/his team wants. Leave it to him and his department let them own it.
Or should we have governance by unelected NGO ?
That would seem to be the conclusion of Blair’s Third Way and Cameron’s Big Society.
Very much so.
I cannot see it changing either as these groups are so well entrenched. Any attempt to remove, or even reduce, them will be met with a robust response and media campaign as they are so well enmeshed with the media.
Irrespective of the facts the public will be convinced life will be worse without them.
Had to laugh at this passage from the CCCs 2025 progress report:
"Last year, we made making electricity cheaper our first recommendation. When people and businesses switch to electric technologies, they are paying more than the actual cost of supplying the extra electricity they demand, because of policy decisions taken many years ago. Removing policy costs from electricity would ensure the underlying cost-savings of switching to efficient electric technologies are captured by households and businesses, encouraging take-up. The Government has made no clear progress on removing policy costs since the election. Making electricity cheaper remains our first recommendation"
So far the government have been close to the opposite. Like so many other issues, it is aware of the problem but not doing anywhere near enough to address it. We are an energy abundant country, whether it is in wind, oil, gas, nuclear, solar.
The effort to reduce energy costs has been pathetic
This is so obvious it drives me nuts. Electricity is already much cleaner than the alternatives (particularly somewhere like Scotland), and over the next 25 years it's the source of energy that the UK will depend on the most. If we want to encourage people to use it, it has to be falling in cost relative to the alternatives, not the opposite. To be fair on the Labour government, they have removed a bunch of the green levies from electricty, which is sensible.
But the fact this obvious advice has been ignored so long rather proves that the CCC does not have the kind of power that the conspiracists think they do. The same goes for the OBR - Truss and Kwarteng bypassed them with ease and actually passed a budget with no oversight at all.
The problem is not a conspiracy - but systemic culture. Much of government is wired to implement rationing/reduction in energy usage. tap water = energy usage, therefore.
This is because, until a decade or two ago, the idea that we really could get to net zero with abundant energy usage was seen as impossible.
Electric cars came out of no-where - from the point of view of governments. They were on a path to hydrogen vehicles - and rationing those.
I saw this, when talking with an ex-Cabinet Office chap. When I started to talk about cheap green energy slowing a massive expansion of consumption, he actually said “but the policy….”
So we need to change the culture from “squeeze energy usage” to “luxuriate in cheap, green energy”
A simple example is the extreme dislike of air conditioning - which is complicating building and raising costs. Not to mention is needed when temperatures regularly go above 27c or so.
The insane cheapness of solar panels probably shouldn't have been a surprise- it was just extrapolating the exisiting trend. The cheapness of batteries (which really do change the dynamics) rather more so. It means that the 'net 5%' solution is pretty obvious; solar wherever we can, wind where it's easy, lots of batteries and gas on standby. We just have to put in the capital spending to make it happen. On top of that, one of the arguments against CO2 extraction solutions (olivine weathering, for example) has tended to be the energy-intensiveness of the processes. Intuitively, it feels like there is a solution where they are used to mop up excess electricity at times of peak production.
On the aircon thing, didn't the government relax the rules this summer?
The more interesting question is when will those on the right notice that their support for fossil fuels really is utterly quixotic?
None of it should have come as a surprise
- electric cars came out of car moding in LA. You could get any car turned into an electric car for about $250k. Most of that was labour. Various companies, including Tesla, started out by building a production line to drop that cost to a fraction.
- the collapse in battery price was a line on a graph.
Etc.
The issue was systemic resistance to change they didn’t authorise.
As a senior US government official put it, concerning another of Musk’s enterprises “no one (in the government) asked for these capabilities or planned them”
The other thing that happened was the improvement in battery range. The first Leaf claimed 100 miles on a full charge. 80 at best for the pool cars we used to use. In tests the new model does around 300 miles.
Range is/was a function of battery cost.
The declining cost of batteries and continuous improvement in their performance (usually expressed in Watt/hours per Kg) made the 300 mile mass market car inevitable.
This is what the graphs showed in 2000.
Batteries lose efficiency over time. How long is the life of a car battery for a newer model before it needs a rather pricey replacement ? Who knows. I guess we will find out.
"Against this backdrop, thoughtful dissenters will consider whether an early election could be forced by via some kind of general strike blended with a dose of fuel and port blockades."
Little dig at the Telegraph there. Sure the article can’t be irrational and is well reasoned.
Clicks on article
Sees it’s Isobel Oakshott.
Clicks off promptly.
Reform know their only chance is to get an early election - within the next 12-18 months - while it is still Labour vs Not Labour and they can look an attractive and viable alternative to the current Government.
After that, it becomes more problematic as one of a number of things might happen (and I stress these are neither in order of likelihood nor desirability).
Labour gets its act together and economy starts improving The Conservative messaging on the economy in particular starts to resonate Reform's own internal contradictions start tearing it apart
1 won’t happen. Labours goose is cooked and any replacement for SKS and Reeves will be economically worse.
2 has started already. The Tories would be insane to get rid of her in my view.
3 given his track record I’d say there’s a strong chance of that but if it doesn’t happen then it’s game on.
We're a long way off an election and it's wishful thinking to imagine Labour can't or won't recover. In any case, IF economic perceptions change and people start to "feel" better (even if the truth is otherwise) that will lead a rebound in Labour polling numbers.
As for Badenoch, I've said on here a number of times she has had a good autumn but it's probable the May local elections will be painful and that will be the point of challenge. Don't underestimate the ability of people to do silly things and if 60 Conservative MPs see their seats going to Reform, that might be enough for a successful challenge.
As for Reform, the prospect of victory does wonders for party unity (look at how little trouble the "left" gave Blair after he became leader and started looking popular) so as long as they look the next Government internal dissent will be silenced but as soon as it starts becoming clear they won't win - let's say a winnable by-election isn't won - the knives will be out.
The window of opportunity for Reform isn't going to be open for ever but they are in no position to force an election and encouraging what amounts to civil insurrection to get one is ludicrous. The only way there would be an election is if Labour MPs wanted one and on most polling numbers most won't.
There is a more appropriate word than ludicrous for "encouraging a civil insurrection".
Given that they could use aniseed rather than animal scent, it's clearly just a ruse to continue actual fox hunting, do a ban seems justified. The actual control measure for fox numbers would seem to be the motor car. We have plenty of foxes in my urban area and they don't cause an issue if you secure your bins properly. Given I've seen the cubs being taught to raid bins while surrounded by grazing rabbits, I doubt they can be bothered with chickens either.
Next the clowns will want to ban driving cars
There’s a few who do, de growth is very much on the agenda for some. Limit the supply of energy and water and other key essentials and simply live within that and forget growth as it hurts the planet.
The EU has spent millions funding groups looking at it.
Climate change committee has made some suggestions on energy use which it wants to see implemented.
If energy supply is limited, I'd expect a big backlash from the masses. If taxes were put up on flying, transport, meat etc it would obviously favour the wealthy. I dont see how you could go for reduction in energy use without annoying a big part of the population
I’d agree so I expect they will do it by stealth rather than be open and above board about it. We need cheap energy. We’re not going to get it.
The Climate Change Committe is one of those unelected NGO’s that @Sandpit was referring to. It has no accountability. Get money from the govt and lobbies the govt on matters that will affect each and every one of us.
It would be better to abolish many of these NGO’s as the govt just subcontracts policy making to them.
So leave it all to Ed Miliband then?
Effectively we are already doing that with the Climate Change Committee. It’s merely there to lobby for what he/his team wants. Leave it to him and his department let them own it.
Or should we have governance by unelected NGO ?
That would seem to be the conclusion of Blair’s Third Way and Cameron’s Big Society.
Very much so.
I cannot see it changing either as these groups are so well entrenched. Any attempt to remove, or even reduce, them will be met with a robust response and media campaign as they are so well enmeshed with the media.
Irrespective of the facts the public will be convinced life will be worse without them.
Had to laugh at this passage from the CCCs 2025 progress report:
"Last year, we made making electricity cheaper our first recommendation. When people and businesses switch to electric technologies, they are paying more than the actual cost of supplying the extra electricity they demand, because of policy decisions taken many years ago. Removing policy costs from electricity would ensure the underlying cost-savings of switching to efficient electric technologies are captured by households and businesses, encouraging take-up. The Government has made no clear progress on removing policy costs since the election. Making electricity cheaper remains our first recommendation"
So far the government have been close to the opposite. Like so many other issues, it is aware of the problem but not doing anywhere near enough to address it. We are an energy abundant country, whether it is in wind, oil, gas, nuclear, solar.
The effort to reduce energy costs has been pathetic
This is so obvious it drives me nuts. Electricity is already much cleaner than the alternatives (particularly somewhere like Scotland), and over the next 25 years it's the source of energy that the UK will depend on the most. If we want to encourage people to use it, it has to be falling in cost relative to the alternatives, not the opposite. To be fair on the Labour government, they have removed a bunch of the green levies from electricty, which is sensible.
But the fact this obvious advice has been ignored so long rather proves that the CCC does not have the kind of power that the conspiracists think they do. The same goes for the OBR - Truss and Kwarteng bypassed them with ease and actually passed a budget with no oversight at all.
The problem is not a conspiracy - but systemic culture. Much of government is wired to implement rationing/reduction in energy usage. tap water = energy usage, therefore.
This is because, until a decade or two ago, the idea that we really could get to net zero with abundant energy usage was seen as impossible.
Electric cars came out of no-where - from the point of view of governments. They were on a path to hydrogen vehicles - and rationing those.
I saw this, when talking with an ex-Cabinet Office chap. When I started to talk about cheap green energy slowing a massive expansion of consumption, he actually said “but the policy….”
So we need to change the culture from “squeeze energy usage” to “luxuriate in cheap, green energy”
A simple example is the extreme dislike of air conditioning - which is complicating building and raising costs. Not to mention is needed when temperatures regularly go above 27c or so.
The insane cheapness of solar panels probably shouldn't have been a surprise- it was just extrapolating the exisiting trend. The cheapness of batteries (which really do change the dynamics) rather more so. It means that the 'net 5%' solution is pretty obvious; solar wherever we can, wind where it's easy, lots of batteries and gas on standby. We just have to put in the capital spending to make it happen. On top of that, one of the arguments against CO2 extraction solutions (olivine weathering, for example) has tended to be the energy-intensiveness of the processes. Intuitively, it feels like there is a solution where they are used to mop up excess electricity at times of peak production.
On the aircon thing, didn't the government relax the rules this summer?
The more interesting question is when will those on the right notice that their support for fossil fuels really is utterly quixotic?
None of it should have come as a surprise
- electric cars came out of car moding in LA. You could get any car turned into an electric car for about $250k. Most of that was labour. Various companies, including Tesla, started out by building a production line to drop that cost to a fraction.
- the collapse in battery price was a line on a graph.
Etc.
The issue was systemic resistance to change they didn’t authorise.
As a senior US government official put it, concerning another of Musk’s enterprises “no one (in the government) asked for these capabilities or planned them”
The other thing that happened was the improvement in battery range. The first Leaf claimed 100 miles on a full charge. 80 at best for the pool cars we used to use. In tests the new model does around 300 miles.
Range is/was a function of battery cost.
The declining cost of batteries and continuous improvement in their performance (usually expressed in Watt/hours per Kg) made the 300 mile mass market car inevitable.
This is what the graphs showed in 2000.
Batteries lose efficiency over time. How long is the life of a car battery for a newer model before it needs a rather pricey replacement ? Who knows. I guess we will find out.
We have decades of data.
Modern EV batteries degrade at an average rate of about 1.8% per year. EVs generally retain over 80% of their original capacity even after 200,000 miles.
Battery replacement is a £10-15,000 thing. Dropping all the time, as well.
"Against this backdrop, thoughtful dissenters will consider whether an early election could be forced by via some kind of general strike blended with a dose of fuel and port blockades."
Little dig at the Telegraph there. Sure the article can’t be irrational and is well reasoned.
Clicks on article
Sees it’s Isobel Oakshott.
Clicks off promptly.
Reform know their only chance is to get an early election - within the next 12-18 months - while it is still Labour vs Not Labour and they can look an attractive and viable alternative to the current Government.
After that, it becomes more problematic as one of a number of things might happen (and I stress these are neither in order of likelihood nor desirability).
Labour gets its act together and economy starts improving The Conservative messaging on the economy in particular starts to resonate Reform's own internal contradictions start tearing it apart
1 won’t happen. Labours goose is cooked and any replacement for SKS and Reeves will be economically worse.
2 has started already. The Tories would be insane to get rid of her in my view.
3 given his track record I’d say there’s a strong chance of that but if it doesn’t happen then it’s game on.
We're a long way off an election and it's wishful thinking to imagine Labour can't or won't recover. In any case, IF economic perceptions change and people start to "feel" better (even if the truth is otherwise) that will lead a rebound in Labour polling numbers.
As for Badenoch, I've said on here a number of times she has had a good autumn but it's probable the May local elections will be painful and that will be the point of challenge. Don't underestimate the ability of people to do silly things and if 60 Conservative MPs see their seats going to Reform, that might be enough for a successful challenge.
As for Reform, the prospect of victory does wonders for party unity (look at how little trouble the "left" gave Blair after he became leader and started looking popular) so as long as they look the next Government internal dissent will be silenced but as soon as it starts becoming clear they won't win - let's say a winnable by-election isn't won - the knives will be out.
The window of opportunity for Reform isn't going to be open for ever but they are in no position to force an election and encouraging what amounts to civil insurrection to get one is ludicrous. The only way there would be an election is if Labour MPs wanted one and on most polling numbers most won't.
biggest wobble so far for reform was after they won a by-election and everyone started to pay attention to what their new MP had to say.
They need to get a handle on candidate vetting and selection.
No party seems to do the levels of checks, for candidates (or anything else) that are standard for junior bank employees.
These would be a trawl for convictions, court judgements, Companies House and social media. Done through a number of security companies at a fixed price per head.
A basic and much cheaper first step would be to require an enhanced DBS.
"Against this backdrop, thoughtful dissenters will consider whether an early election could be forced by via some kind of general strike blended with a dose of fuel and port blockades."
Little dig at the Telegraph there. Sure the article can’t be irrational and is well reasoned.
Clicks on article
Sees it’s Isobel Oakshott.
Clicks off promptly.
Reform know their only chance is to get an early election - within the next 12-18 months - while it is still Labour vs Not Labour and they can look an attractive and viable alternative to the current Government.
After that, it becomes more problematic as one of a number of things might happen (and I stress these are neither in order of likelihood nor desirability).
Labour gets its act together and economy starts improving The Conservative messaging on the economy in particular starts to resonate Reform's own internal contradictions start tearing it apart
1 won’t happen. Labours goose is cooked and any replacement for SKS and Reeves will be economically worse.
2 has started already. The Tories would be insane to get rid of her in my view.
3 given his track record I’d say there’s a strong chance of that but if it doesn’t happen then it’s game on.
We're a long way off an election and it's wishful thinking to imagine Labour can't or won't recover. In any case, IF economic perceptions change and people start to "feel" better (even if the truth is otherwise) that will lead a rebound in Labour polling numbers.
As for Badenoch, I've said on here a number of times she has had a good autumn but it's probable the May local elections will be painful and that will be the point of challenge. Don't underestimate the ability of people to do silly things and if 60 Conservative MPs see their seats going to Reform, that might be enough for a successful challenge.
As for Reform, the prospect of victory does wonders for party unity (look at how little trouble the "left" gave Blair after he became leader and started looking popular) so as long as they look the next Government internal dissent will be silenced but as soon as it starts becoming clear they won't win - let's say a winnable by-election isn't won - the knives will be out.
The window of opportunity for Reform isn't going to be open for ever but they are in no position to force an election and encouraging what amounts to civil insurrection to get one is ludicrous. The only way there would be an election is if Labour MPs wanted one and on most polling numbers most won't.
biggest wobble so far for reform was after they won a by-election and everyone started to pay attention to what their new MP had to say.
They need to get a handle on candidate vetting and selection.
No party seems to do the levels of checks, for candidates (or anything else) that are standard for junior bank employees.
These would be a trawl for convictions, court judgements, Companies House and social media. Done through a number of security companies at a fixed price per head.
A basic and much cheaper first step would be to require an enhanced DBS.
True - and done by the same companies. The one I am taking about is not much more expensive, anyway.
So a plurality of Tory supporters oppose a trail hunting ban and less than half of Reform voters want to ban it either. The Boxing Day hunt also is a crucial part of village and rural life in areas like where I live. Hundreds turn out on the village green and the pub serves mulled wine as the hunt gathers and for its supporters in rural areas it is a big deal. Even if they have to hunt a trail or drag hunt now not a fox (whose numbers still need to be kept down).
Labour may try and ban trail hunting as most of its supporters want as it banned fox hunting but with Farage and Badenoch opposed to a trail hunting ban, if Labour lose power at the next general election it will be restored
There are perhaps only 170 hunt packs in England so this romanticised notion of every village welcoming its hunt with drinks and applause really needs to be challenged.
My only experience of this was in St Ives (Cornwall) several years ago when the Western Hunt paid the town a visit and it was all very congenial with a few supporters shouting and a small crowd applauding. For most, it was a curiousity and I suppose if there's a purpose to it, it shows urban people an aspect of rural life with which they would otherwise be unfamiliar.
I just think rural communities have a lot more serious issues than the future of the local Hunt.
Those foxhunts are spread across the country from Pembrokeshire to here in rural Essex, from Dumfriesshire to Wensleydale, the Cotswolds and Devon and will of course often stop at more than 1 village on a big hunt day than Boxing Day.
If Trail hunting supposedly doesn't kill foxes, what objection would hunts have to converting to Drag hunting? There doesn't seem to be one.
Also you keep bringing up the hunts keep the fox numbers down. If Trail hunts don't kill foxes how do they do that?
Also when fox hunts were allowed to kill they did not keep numbers down because that is not how Fox territories work. if you want I can go through the numbers for you but a simple example is to compare the City Fox to the Rural Fox. The City Fox has a much much much smaller territory than a Rural Fox (the territory is not controlled by extermination but food supply). Yet the City Office is effectively hunted and relentlessly so by the car. It is the major form of death for City Foxes and the average life span for a City Fox is 12 - 18 months but 3 years for a Rural Fox with some living up to 8 years.
So although the City Fox is culled and far more efficiently than a hunt its numbers are far greater. That is because food supply and not hunting is the determinant of the number of foxes.
Hunts used to kill 20 - 25,000 foxes a year. About 1.500,000 - 2,000,000 foxes are born each year. A killed foxes territory is simply taken over by another pair of foxes who will now breed.
If Trail hunting supposedly doesn't kill foxes why does it need to be banned?
Trail hunting also follows an animal based not artificial scent so is closer to the traditional sport of fox hunting Labour banned
Doh. Because they do kill foxes when they shouldn't. I think that has been shown quite clearly.
Which was of course the original purpose of the hunt until Labour in its class war banned it
Hang on, we are going around in circles here. I assume you are saying the original purpose of the hunt was killing foxes. Well obviously. But if you can get the enjoyment and spectacle without killing foxes then what is the problem.
And if you say to control fox numbers I am likely to punch a wall because:
a) Trail hunting supposedly doesn't kill foxes anyway (so what is your point in not moving to drag hunting where you can get the same enjoyment and definitely not kill a fox)) b) Fox hunting did not control numbers. See my post where I showed that.
Some sick fuckers enjoy seeing animals suffer.
That is what fox hunting is all about.
I am surprised that a follower of the teachings of Jesus, such as HY, is on the side of cruelty.
Yes foxes, lovely cuddly things, never rip rabbits and chickens to pieces and kill lambs, certainly not
Getting into the realms of morality here but foxes don't rip apart chickens and kill lambs out of deliberate cruelty.
So why do they? It isn’t for food if you have ever seen a chicken coop after a fox has visited
Because evolution never prepared them for a situation where there would be so much defenseless food.
Given that they could use aniseed rather than animal scent, it's clearly just a ruse to continue actual fox hunting, do a ban seems justified. The actual control measure for fox numbers would seem to be the motor car. We have plenty of foxes in my urban area and they don't cause an issue if you secure your bins properly. Given I've seen the cubs being taught to raid bins while surrounded by grazing rabbits, I doubt they can be bothered with chickens either.
Next the clowns will want to ban driving cars
There’s a few who do, de growth is very much on the agenda for some. Limit the supply of energy and water and other key essentials and simply live within that and forget growth as it hurts the planet.
The EU has spent millions funding groups looking at it.
Climate change committee has made some suggestions on energy use which it wants to see implemented.
If energy supply is limited, I'd expect a big backlash from the masses. If taxes were put up on flying, transport, meat etc it would obviously favour the wealthy. I dont see how you could go for reduction in energy use without annoying a big part of the population
I’d agree so I expect they will do it by stealth rather than be open and above board about it. We need cheap energy. We’re not going to get it.
The Climate Change Committe is one of those unelected NGO’s that @Sandpit was referring to. It has no accountability. Get money from the govt and lobbies the govt on matters that will affect each and every one of us.
It would be better to abolish many of these NGO’s as the govt just subcontracts policy making to them.
So leave it all to Ed Miliband then?
Effectively we are already doing that with the Climate Change Committee. It’s merely there to lobby for what he/his team wants. Leave it to him and his department let them own it.
Or should we have governance by unelected NGO ?
That would seem to be the conclusion of Blair’s Third Way and Cameron’s Big Society.
Very much so.
I cannot see it changing either as these groups are so well entrenched. Any attempt to remove, or even reduce, them will be met with a robust response and media campaign as they are so well enmeshed with the media.
Irrespective of the facts the public will be convinced life will be worse without them.
Had to laugh at this passage from the CCCs 2025 progress report:
"Last year, we made making electricity cheaper our first recommendation. When people and businesses switch to electric technologies, they are paying more than the actual cost of supplying the extra electricity they demand, because of policy decisions taken many years ago. Removing policy costs from electricity would ensure the underlying cost-savings of switching to efficient electric technologies are captured by households and businesses, encouraging take-up. The Government has made no clear progress on removing policy costs since the election. Making electricity cheaper remains our first recommendation"
So far the government have been close to the opposite. Like so many other issues, it is aware of the problem but not doing anywhere near enough to address it. We are an energy abundant country, whether it is in wind, oil, gas, nuclear, solar.
The effort to reduce energy costs has been pathetic
This is so obvious it drives me nuts. Electricity is already much cleaner than the alternatives (particularly somewhere like Scotland), and over the next 25 years it's the source of energy that the UK will depend on the most. If we want to encourage people to use it, it has to be falling in cost relative to the alternatives, not the opposite. To be fair on the Labour government, they have removed a bunch of the green levies from electricty, which is sensible.
But the fact this obvious advice has been ignored so long rather proves that the CCC does not have the kind of power that the conspiracists think they do. The same goes for the OBR - Truss and Kwarteng bypassed them with ease and actually passed a budget with no oversight at all.
The problem is not a conspiracy - but systemic culture. Much of government is wired to implement rationing/reduction in energy usage. tap water = energy usage, therefore.
This is because, until a decade or two ago, the idea that we really could get to net zero with abundant energy usage was seen as impossible.
Electric cars came out of no-where - from the point of view of governments. They were on a path to hydrogen vehicles - and rationing those.
I saw this, when talking with an ex-Cabinet Office chap. When I started to talk about cheap green energy slowing a massive expansion of consumption, he actually said “but the policy….”
So we need to change the culture from “squeeze energy usage” to “luxuriate in cheap, green energy”
A simple example is the extreme dislike of air conditioning - which is complicating building and raising costs. Not to mention is needed when temperatures regularly go above 27c or so.
The insane cheapness of solar panels probably shouldn't have been a surprise- it was just extrapolating the exisiting trend. The cheapness of batteries (which really do change the dynamics) rather more so. It means that the 'net 5%' solution is pretty obvious; solar wherever we can, wind where it's easy, lots of batteries and gas on standby. We just have to put in the capital spending to make it happen. On top of that, one of the arguments against CO2 extraction solutions (olivine weathering, for example) has tended to be the energy-intensiveness of the processes. Intuitively, it feels like there is a solution where they are used to mop up excess electricity at times of peak production.
On the aircon thing, didn't the government relax the rules this summer?
The more interesting question is when will those on the right notice that their support for fossil fuels really is utterly quixotic?
None of it should have come as a surprise
- electric cars came out of car moding in LA. You could get any car turned into an electric car for about $250k. Most of that was labour. Various companies, including Tesla, started out by building a production line to drop that cost to a fraction.
- the collapse in battery price was a line on a graph.
Etc.
The issue was systemic resistance to change they didn’t authorise.
As a senior US government official put it, concerning another of Musk’s enterprises “no one (in the government) asked for these capabilities or planned them”
The other thing that happened was the improvement in battery range. The first Leaf claimed 100 miles on a full charge. 80 at best for the pool cars we used to use. In tests the new model does around 300 miles.
Range is/was a function of battery cost.
The declining cost of batteries and continuous improvement in their performance (usually expressed in Watt/hours per Kg) made the 300 mile mass market car inevitable.
This is what the graphs showed in 2000.
Batteries lose efficiency over time. How long is the life of a car battery for a newer model before it needs a rather pricey replacement ? Who knows. I guess we will find out.
We have decades of data.
Modern EV batteries degrade at an average rate of about 1.8% per year. EVs generally retain over 80% of their original capacity even after 200,000 miles.
Battery replacement is a £10-15,000 thing. Dropping all the time, as well.
It is also worth remembering that the efficiency of an ICE drops over time too, as any Top Gear viewer knows
"Against this backdrop, thoughtful dissenters will consider whether an early election could be forced by via some kind of general strike blended with a dose of fuel and port blockades."
Little dig at the Telegraph there. Sure the article can’t be irrational and is well reasoned.
Clicks on article
Sees it’s Isobel Oakshott.
Clicks off promptly.
Reform know their only chance is to get an early election - within the next 12-18 months - while it is still Labour vs Not Labour and they can look an attractive and viable alternative to the current Government.
After that, it becomes more problematic as one of a number of things might happen (and I stress these are neither in order of likelihood nor desirability).
Labour gets its act together and economy starts improving The Conservative messaging on the economy in particular starts to resonate Reform's own internal contradictions start tearing it apart
1 won’t happen. Labours goose is cooked and any replacement for SKS and Reeves will be economically worse.
2 has started already. The Tories would be insane to get rid of her in my view.
3 given his track record I’d say there’s a strong chance of that but if it doesn’t happen then it’s game on.
The Russian fake news story about Ukraine’s alleged attack on Putin’s residence near Lake Valdai appears to have been a spontaneous response to reports of a positive outcome from the Trump–Zelensky meeting at Mar-a-Lago last Sunday.. https://x.com/A_SHEKH0VTS0V/status/2005951437411385656
Trump doesn't seem to be only one gullible enough to fall for a clearly fake story.
Modi also publicly expressed his "deep concern" for the murderous dictator.
To be fair to Modi, he doesn’t want the idea it’s okay to attack autocrats at their holiday homes to gain traction
Given that they could use aniseed rather than animal scent, it's clearly just a ruse to continue actual fox hunting, do a ban seems justified. The actual control measure for fox numbers would seem to be the motor car. We have plenty of foxes in my urban area and they don't cause an issue if you secure your bins properly. Given I've seen the cubs being taught to raid bins while surrounded by grazing rabbits, I doubt they can be bothered with chickens either.
Next the clowns will want to ban driving cars
There’s a few who do, de growth is very much on the agenda for some. Limit the supply of energy and water and other key essentials and simply live within that and forget growth as it hurts the planet.
The EU has spent millions funding groups looking at it.
Climate change committee has made some suggestions on energy use which it wants to see implemented.
If energy supply is limited, I'd expect a big backlash from the masses. If taxes were put up on flying, transport, meat etc it would obviously favour the wealthy. I dont see how you could go for reduction in energy use without annoying a big part of the population
I’d agree so I expect they will do it by stealth rather than be open and above board about it. We need cheap energy. We’re not going to get it.
The Climate Change Committe is one of those unelected NGO’s that @Sandpit was referring to. It has no accountability. Get money from the govt and lobbies the govt on matters that will affect each and every one of us.
It would be better to abolish many of these NGO’s as the govt just subcontracts policy making to them.
So leave it all to Ed Miliband then?
Effectively we are already doing that with the Climate Change Committee. It’s merely there to lobby for what he/his team wants. Leave it to him and his department let them own it.
Or should we have governance by unelected NGO ?
That would seem to be the conclusion of Blair’s Third Way and Cameron’s Big Society.
Very much so.
I cannot see it changing either as these groups are so well entrenched. Any attempt to remove, or even reduce, them will be met with a robust response and media campaign as they are so well enmeshed with the media.
Irrespective of the facts the public will be convinced life will be worse without them.
Had to laugh at this passage from the CCCs 2025 progress report:
"Last year, we made making electricity cheaper our first recommendation. When people and businesses switch to electric technologies, they are paying more than the actual cost of supplying the extra electricity they demand, because of policy decisions taken many years ago. Removing policy costs from electricity would ensure the underlying cost-savings of switching to efficient electric technologies are captured by households and businesses, encouraging take-up. The Government has made no clear progress on removing policy costs since the election. Making electricity cheaper remains our first recommendation"
So far the government have been close to the opposite. Like so many other issues, it is aware of the problem but not doing anywhere near enough to address it. We are an energy abundant country, whether it is in wind, oil, gas, nuclear, solar.
The effort to reduce energy costs has been pathetic
This is so obvious it drives me nuts. Electricity is already much cleaner than the alternatives (particularly somewhere like Scotland), and over the next 25 years it's the source of energy that the UK will depend on the most. If we want to encourage people to use it, it has to be falling in cost relative to the alternatives, not the opposite. To be fair on the Labour government, they have removed a bunch of the green levies from electricty, which is sensible.
But the fact this obvious advice has been ignored so long rather proves that the CCC does not have the kind of power that the conspiracists think they do. The same goes for the OBR - Truss and Kwarteng bypassed them with ease and actually passed a budget with no oversight at all.
The problem is not a conspiracy - but systemic culture. Much of government is wired to implement rationing/reduction in energy usage. tap water = energy usage, therefore.
This is because, until a decade or two ago, the idea that we really could get to net zero with abundant energy usage was seen as impossible.
Electric cars came out of no-where - from the point of view of governments. They were on a path to hydrogen vehicles - and rationing those.
I saw this, when talking with an ex-Cabinet Office chap. When I started to talk about cheap green energy slowing a massive expansion of consumption, he actually said “but the policy….”
So we need to change the culture from “squeeze energy usage” to “luxuriate in cheap, green energy”
A simple example is the extreme dislike of air conditioning - which is complicating building and raising costs. Not to mention is needed when temperatures regularly go above 27c or so.
The insane cheapness of solar panels probably shouldn't have been a surprise- it was just extrapolating the exisiting trend. The cheapness of batteries (which really do change the dynamics) rather more so. It means that the 'net 5%' solution is pretty obvious; solar wherever we can, wind where it's easy, lots of batteries and gas on standby. We just have to put in the capital spending to make it happen. On top of that, one of the arguments against CO2 extraction solutions (olivine weathering, for example) has tended to be the energy-intensiveness of the processes. Intuitively, it feels like there is a solution where they are used to mop up excess electricity at times of peak production.
On the aircon thing, didn't the government relax the rules this summer?
The more interesting question is when will those on the right notice that their support for fossil fuels really is utterly quixotic?
None of it should have come as a surprise
- electric cars came out of car moding in LA. You could get any car turned into an electric car for about $250k. Most of that was labour. Various companies, including Tesla, started out by building a production line to drop that cost to a fraction.
- the collapse in battery price was a line on a graph.
Etc.
The issue was systemic resistance to change they didn’t authorise.
As a senior US government official put it, concerning another of Musk’s enterprises “no one (in the government) asked for these capabilities or planned them”
The other thing that happened was the improvement in battery range. The first Leaf claimed 100 miles on a full charge. 80 at best for the pool cars we used to use. In tests the new model does around 300 miles.
Range is/was a function of battery cost.
The declining cost of batteries and continuous improvement in their performance (usually expressed in Watt/hours per Kg) made the 300 mile mass market car inevitable.
This is what the graphs showed in 2000.
Batteries lose efficiency over time. How long is the life of a car battery for a newer model before it needs a rather pricey replacement ? Who knows. I guess we will find out.
Speaking of blood sports. As a teenager I witnessed a scorpion fight a few doors down from my local Wetherspoons in an abandoned building, which was rather random.
Never heard of a fox hunt with dogs in these parts, despite being pretty rural. Pheasant shoots are ten a penny.
Any scorpion that fights a few doors (presumably winning some) is obviously a hard bastard of a scorpion.
Bet he gets lots of space at the bar at the ‘spoons.
I’m more intrigued by the Wetherspoons being in an abandoned building
To be fair to Spoons, plenty of their pubs have given a new lease of life to abandoned buildings, especially former banks.
Although not a Spoons this place used to be a bank.
When I catch the bus to,the toon go past it and I’ve never been tempted to get off and go in, the sight of half a dozen surly looking blokes chain smoking outside puts me off a little.
You can go for a beer in the Old Bank of England on Fleet St. It is impressive in there. It used to hold gold and apparently the crown jewels at some time. Now a pub.
I suspect it’s a bit more up market than the one in Gateshead.
I may be in the smoke with a mate in the new year doing some Sweeney locations so may look it up 👍
When you say Sweeney locations do you mean from the TV series? There can't be many left can there? A lot must be redeveloped. I remember a few that weren't far from where I lived at the time if they ventured out into the sticks. Chertsey on the river rings a bell for one.
Yes. From the TV series. There’s still a few around. Me and my mate are big fans of the show going back to when we first became friends in the mid eighties.
I was a fan at the time. Although my memory is playing tricks on me because I thought I watched it when I was in the 6th form, but it appears it was released just before I left University. I remember Brian Blessed was in the first episode whom I met many years later at his house when convincing his wife to stand as a local candidate for the LDs. He was as loud and scary in real life.
Given that they could use aniseed rather than animal scent, it's clearly just a ruse to continue actual fox hunting, do a ban seems justified. The actual control measure for fox numbers would seem to be the motor car. We have plenty of foxes in my urban area and they don't cause an issue if you secure your bins properly. Given I've seen the cubs being taught to raid bins while surrounded by grazing rabbits, I doubt they can be bothered with chickens either.
Next the clowns will want to ban driving cars
There’s a few who do, de growth is very much on the agenda for some. Limit the supply of energy and water and other key essentials and simply live within that and forget growth as it hurts the planet.
The EU has spent millions funding groups looking at it.
Climate change committee has made some suggestions on energy use which it wants to see implemented.
If energy supply is limited, I'd expect a big backlash from the masses. If taxes were put up on flying, transport, meat etc it would obviously favour the wealthy. I dont see how you could go for reduction in energy use without annoying a big part of the population
I’d agree so I expect they will do it by stealth rather than be open and above board about it. We need cheap energy. We’re not going to get it.
The Climate Change Committe is one of those unelected NGO’s that @Sandpit was referring to. It has no accountability. Get money from the govt and lobbies the govt on matters that will affect each and every one of us.
It would be better to abolish many of these NGO’s as the govt just subcontracts policy making to them.
So leave it all to Ed Miliband then?
Effectively we are already doing that with the Climate Change Committee. It’s merely there to lobby for what he/his team wants. Leave it to him and his department let them own it.
Or should we have governance by unelected NGO ?
That would seem to be the conclusion of Blair’s Third Way and Cameron’s Big Society.
Very much so.
I cannot see it changing either as these groups are so well entrenched. Any attempt to remove, or even reduce, them will be met with a robust response and media campaign as they are so well enmeshed with the media.
Irrespective of the facts the public will be convinced life will be worse without them.
Had to laugh at this passage from the CCCs 2025 progress report:
"Last year, we made making electricity cheaper our first recommendation. When people and businesses switch to electric technologies, they are paying more than the actual cost of supplying the extra electricity they demand, because of policy decisions taken many years ago. Removing policy costs from electricity would ensure the underlying cost-savings of switching to efficient electric technologies are captured by households and businesses, encouraging take-up. The Government has made no clear progress on removing policy costs since the election. Making electricity cheaper remains our first recommendation"
So far the government have been close to the opposite. Like so many other issues, it is aware of the problem but not doing anywhere near enough to address it. We are an energy abundant country, whether it is in wind, oil, gas, nuclear, solar.
The effort to reduce energy costs has been pathetic
This is so obvious it drives me nuts. Electricity is already much cleaner than the alternatives (particularly somewhere like Scotland), and over the next 25 years it's the source of energy that the UK will depend on the most. If we want to encourage people to use it, it has to be falling in cost relative to the alternatives, not the opposite. To be fair on the Labour government, they have removed a bunch of the green levies from electricty, which is sensible.
But the fact this obvious advice has been ignored so long rather proves that the CCC does not have the kind of power that the conspiracists think they do. The same goes for the OBR - Truss and Kwarteng bypassed them with ease and actually passed a budget with no oversight at all.
The problem is not a conspiracy - but systemic culture. Much of government is wired to implement rationing/reduction in energy usage. tap water = energy usage, therefore.
This is because, until a decade or two ago, the idea that we really could get to net zero with abundant energy usage was seen as impossible.
Electric cars came out of no-where - from the point of view of governments. They were on a path to hydrogen vehicles - and rationing those.
I saw this, when talking with an ex-Cabinet Office chap. When I started to talk about cheap green energy slowing a massive expansion of consumption, he actually said “but the policy….”
So we need to change the culture from “squeeze energy usage” to “luxuriate in cheap, green energy”
A simple example is the extreme dislike of air conditioning - which is complicating building and raising costs. Not to mention is needed when temperatures regularly go above 27c or so.
The insane cheapness of solar panels probably shouldn't have been a surprise- it was just extrapolating the exisiting trend. The cheapness of batteries (which really do change the dynamics) rather more so. It means that the 'net 5%' solution is pretty obvious; solar wherever we can, wind where it's easy, lots of batteries and gas on standby. We just have to put in the capital spending to make it happen. On top of that, one of the arguments against CO2 extraction solutions (olivine weathering, for example) has tended to be the energy-intensiveness of the processes. Intuitively, it feels like there is a solution where they are used to mop up excess electricity at times of peak production.
On the aircon thing, didn't the government relax the rules this summer?
The more interesting question is when will those on the right notice that their support for fossil fuels really is utterly quixotic?
None of it should have come as a surprise
- electric cars came out of car moding in LA. You could get any car turned into an electric car for about $250k. Most of that was labour. Various companies, including Tesla, started out by building a production line to drop that cost to a fraction.
- the collapse in battery price was a line on a graph.
Etc.
The issue was systemic resistance to change they didn’t authorise.
As a senior US government official put it, concerning another of Musk’s enterprises “no one (in the government) asked for these capabilities or planned them”
The other thing that happened was the improvement in battery range. The first Leaf claimed 100 miles on a full charge. 80 at best for the pool cars we used to use. In tests the new model does around 300 miles.
Range is/was a function of battery cost.
The declining cost of batteries and continuous improvement in their performance (usually expressed in Watt/hours per Kg) made the 300 mile mass market car inevitable.
This is what the graphs showed in 2000.
Batteries lose efficiency over time. How long is the life of a car battery for a newer model before it needs a rather pricey replacement ? Who knows. I guess we will find out.
We have decades of data.
Modern EV batteries degrade at an average rate of about 1.8% per year. EVs generally retain over 80% of their original capacity even after 200,000 miles.
Battery replacement is a £10-15,000 thing. Dropping all the time, as well.
One challenge is that these benchmarks are being used by bots/numpties to spread disinformation about EVs - e.g. over Christmas one of my relatives claimed that the battery is completely gone after 100,000 miles - I had to point out that the battery warranty standard is that it should retain 70% of charge after 100,000 miles, not that it works at all.
As you say, most batteries will persist a lot longer than that. My ICE is now well over 100,000 tbh the rate of repairs is now pushing us towards a replacement - not sure why EVs are held to a higher standard.
So a plurality of Tory supporters oppose a trail hunting ban and less than half of Reform voters want to ban it either. The Boxing Day hunt also is a crucial part of village and rural life in areas like where I live. Hundreds turn out on the village green and the pub serves mulled wine as the hunt gathers and for its supporters in rural areas it is a big deal. Even if they have to hunt a trail or drag hunt now not a fox (whose numbers still need to be kept down).
Labour may try and ban trail hunting as most of its supporters want as it banned fox hunting but with Farage and Badenoch opposed to a trail hunting ban, if Labour lose power at the next general election it will be restored
There are perhaps only 170 hunt packs in England so this romanticised notion of every village welcoming its hunt with drinks and applause really needs to be challenged.
My only experience of this was in St Ives (Cornwall) several years ago when the Western Hunt paid the town a visit and it was all very congenial with a few supporters shouting and a small crowd applauding. For most, it was a curiousity and I suppose if there's a purpose to it, it shows urban people an aspect of rural life with which they would otherwise be unfamiliar.
I just think rural communities have a lot more serious issues than the future of the local Hunt.
Those foxhunts are spread across the country from Pembrokeshire to here in rural Essex, from Dumfriesshire to Wensleydale, the Cotswolds and Devon and will of course often stop at more than 1 village on a big hunt day than Boxing Day.
If Trail hunting supposedly doesn't kill foxes, what objection would hunts have to converting to Drag hunting? There doesn't seem to be one.
Also you keep bringing up the hunts keep the fox numbers down. If Trail hunts don't kill foxes how do they do that?
Also when fox hunts were allowed to kill they did not keep numbers down because that is not how Fox territories work. if you want I can go through the numbers for you but a simple example is to compare the City Fox to the Rural Fox. The City Fox has a much much much smaller territory than a Rural Fox (the territory is not controlled by extermination but food supply). Yet the City Office is effectively hunted and relentlessly so by the car. It is the major form of death for City Foxes and the average life span for a City Fox is 12 - 18 months but 3 years for a Rural Fox with some living up to 8 years.
So although the City Fox is culled and far more efficiently than a hunt its numbers are far greater. That is because food supply and not hunting is the determinant of the number of foxes.
Hunts used to kill 20 - 25,000 foxes a year. About 1.500,000 - 2,000,000 foxes are born each year. A killed foxes territory is simply taken over by another pair of foxes who will now breed.
If Trail hunting supposedly doesn't kill foxes why does it need to be banned?
Trail hunting also follows an animal based not artificial scent so is closer to the traditional sport of fox hunting Labour banned
Doh. Because they do kill foxes when they shouldn't. I think that has been shown quite clearly.
Which was of course the original purpose of the hunt until Labour in its class war banned it
I suspect it's becoming arguable that we should re-introduce deer hunting round here; both native species and muntjac are beginning to become pests. Guns, though, I think. Not packs of dogs.
Plenty of deer shot and venison eaten in the Highlands of Scotland
Plenty of deer shot everywhere. Just ask foresters and zoologists in England. It's not just the Red Deer but pest species such as muntjac .
Three of the species of deer here are invasive too.
I quite like the Chinese Water Deer.
A local pub/restuarant has venison on the menu every so often. Very tasty.
But is it vegan?
Naughty
A naughty vegan? Don’t say you are coming over all @seant now?
Given that they could use aniseed rather than animal scent, it's clearly just a ruse to continue actual fox hunting, do a ban seems justified. The actual control measure for fox numbers would seem to be the motor car. We have plenty of foxes in my urban area and they don't cause an issue if you secure your bins properly. Given I've seen the cubs being taught to raid bins while surrounded by grazing rabbits, I doubt they can be bothered with chickens either.
Next the clowns will want to ban driving cars
There’s a few who do, de growth is very much on the agenda for some. Limit the supply of energy and water and other key essentials and simply live within that and forget growth as it hurts the planet.
The EU has spent millions funding groups looking at it.
Climate change committee has made some suggestions on energy use which it wants to see implemented.
If energy supply is limited, I'd expect a big backlash from the masses. If taxes were put up on flying, transport, meat etc it would obviously favour the wealthy. I dont see how you could go for reduction in energy use without annoying a big part of the population
I’d agree so I expect they will do it by stealth rather than be open and above board about it. We need cheap energy. We’re not going to get it.
The Climate Change Committe is one of those unelected NGO’s that @Sandpit was referring to. It has no accountability. Get money from the govt and lobbies the govt on matters that will affect each and every one of us.
It would be better to abolish many of these NGO’s as the govt just subcontracts policy making to them.
So leave it all to Ed Miliband then?
Effectively we are already doing that with the Climate Change Committee. It’s merely there to lobby for what he/his team wants. Leave it to him and his department let them own it.
Or should we have governance by unelected NGO ?
That would seem to be the conclusion of Blair’s Third Way and Cameron’s Big Society.
Very much so.
I cannot see it changing either as these groups are so well entrenched. Any attempt to remove, or even reduce, them will be met with a robust response and media campaign as they are so well enmeshed with the media.
Irrespective of the facts the public will be convinced life will be worse without them.
Had to laugh at this passage from the CCCs 2025 progress report:
"Last year, we made making electricity cheaper our first recommendation. When people and businesses switch to electric technologies, they are paying more than the actual cost of supplying the extra electricity they demand, because of policy decisions taken many years ago. Removing policy costs from electricity would ensure the underlying cost-savings of switching to efficient electric technologies are captured by households and businesses, encouraging take-up. The Government has made no clear progress on removing policy costs since the election. Making electricity cheaper remains our first recommendation"
So far the government have been close to the opposite. Like so many other issues, it is aware of the problem but not doing anywhere near enough to address it. We are an energy abundant country, whether it is in wind, oil, gas, nuclear, solar.
The effort to reduce energy costs has been pathetic
This is so obvious it drives me nuts. Electricity is already much cleaner than the alternatives (particularly somewhere like Scotland), and over the next 25 years it's the source of energy that the UK will depend on the most. If we want to encourage people to use it, it has to be falling in cost relative to the alternatives, not the opposite. To be fair on the Labour government, they have removed a bunch of the green levies from electricty, which is sensible.
But the fact this obvious advice has been ignored so long rather proves that the CCC does not have the kind of power that the conspiracists think they do. The same goes for the OBR - Truss and Kwarteng bypassed them with ease and actually passed a budget with no oversight at all.
The problem is not a conspiracy - but systemic culture. Much of government is wired to implement rationing/reduction in energy usage. tap water = energy usage, therefore.
This is because, until a decade or two ago, the idea that we really could get to net zero with abundant energy usage was seen as impossible.
Electric cars came out of no-where - from the point of view of governments. They were on a path to hydrogen vehicles - and rationing those.
I saw this, when talking with an ex-Cabinet Office chap. When I started to talk about cheap green energy slowing a massive expansion of consumption, he actually said “but the policy….”
So we need to change the culture from “squeeze energy usage” to “luxuriate in cheap, green energy”
A simple example is the extreme dislike of air conditioning - which is complicating building and raising costs. Not to mention is needed when temperatures regularly go above 27c or so.
The insane cheapness of solar panels probably shouldn't have been a surprise- it was just extrapolating the exisiting trend. The cheapness of batteries (which really do change the dynamics) rather more so. It means that the 'net 5%' solution is pretty obvious; solar wherever we can, wind where it's easy, lots of batteries and gas on standby. We just have to put in the capital spending to make it happen. On top of that, one of the arguments against CO2 extraction solutions (olivine weathering, for example) has tended to be the energy-intensiveness of the processes. Intuitively, it feels like there is a solution where they are used to mop up excess electricity at times of peak production.
On the aircon thing, didn't the government relax the rules this summer?
The more interesting question is when will those on the right notice that their support for fossil fuels really is utterly quixotic?
None of it should have come as a surprise
- electric cars came out of car moding in LA. You could get any car turned into an electric car for about $250k. Most of that was labour. Various companies, including Tesla, started out by building a production line to drop that cost to a fraction.
- the collapse in battery price was a line on a graph.
Etc.
The issue was systemic resistance to change they didn’t authorise.
As a senior US government official put it, concerning another of Musk’s enterprises “no one (in the government) asked for these capabilities or planned them”
The other thing that happened was the improvement in battery range. The first Leaf claimed 100 miles on a full charge. 80 at best for the pool cars we used to use. In tests the new model does around 300 miles.
Range is/was a function of battery cost.
The declining cost of batteries and continuous improvement in their performance (usually expressed in Watt/hours per Kg) made the 300 mile mass market car inevitable.
This is what the graphs showed in 2000.
Batteries lose efficiency over time. How long is the life of a car battery for a newer model before it needs a rather pricey replacement ? Who knows. I guess we will find out.
We have decades of data.
Modern EV batteries degrade at an average rate of about 1.8% per year. EVs generally retain over 80% of their original capacity even after 200,000 miles.
Battery replacement is a £10-15,000 thing. Dropping all the time, as well.
It is also worth remembering that the efficiency of an ICE drops over time too, as any Top Gear viewer knows
But the petrol tank doesn't get smaller.
PS I'm an idiot. I was thinking of performance, but if the mpg goes down it is the same issue. I'm a Twit.
Only the past few weeks I have eaten goose, pig trotters, pig intestines, chicken gizzards...and they are just the things which were identified.
I had chicken gizzards when visiting a toolmaker in Portugal. Very nice it was too in a lovely tomato sauce.
Stuff like Trotters as well as haslet, pork belly and other foods were cheap foods back 30 or so years. Not these days.
Never had intestines. Sounds unpleasant.
A mates ex wife is Jamaica . She once cooked a dish for us with pigs tails in. Cannot say I enjoyed them but the rest of the dish was banging.
Had chicken feet once when exploring a Chinese dim sum menu ...
Very popular in Taiwan. My students would frequently gnaw on one during break time.
They were selling in big bags in the crisps / snack aisle in Chinese supermarkets. Can't say I was tempted even with the flashy packaging of one particularly Waitrose+++ type establishment.
Given that they could use aniseed rather than animal scent, it's clearly just a ruse to continue actual fox hunting, do a ban seems justified. The actual control measure for fox numbers would seem to be the motor car. We have plenty of foxes in my urban area and they don't cause an issue if you secure your bins properly. Given I've seen the cubs being taught to raid bins while surrounded by grazing rabbits, I doubt they can be bothered with chickens either.
Next the clowns will want to ban driving cars
There’s a few who do, de growth is very much on the agenda for some. Limit the supply of energy and water and other key essentials and simply live within that and forget growth as it hurts the planet.
The EU has spent millions funding groups looking at it.
Climate change committee has made some suggestions on energy use which it wants to see implemented.
If energy supply is limited, I'd expect a big backlash from the masses. If taxes were put up on flying, transport, meat etc it would obviously favour the wealthy. I dont see how you could go for reduction in energy use without annoying a big part of the population
I’d agree so I expect they will do it by stealth rather than be open and above board about it. We need cheap energy. We’re not going to get it.
The Climate Change Committe is one of those unelected NGO’s that @Sandpit was referring to. It has no accountability. Get money from the govt and lobbies the govt on matters that will affect each and every one of us.
It would be better to abolish many of these NGO’s as the govt just subcontracts policy making to them.
So leave it all to Ed Miliband then?
Effectively we are already doing that with the Climate Change Committee. It’s merely there to lobby for what he/his team wants. Leave it to him and his department let them own it.
Or should we have governance by unelected NGO ?
That would seem to be the conclusion of Blair’s Third Way and Cameron’s Big Society.
Very much so.
I cannot see it changing either as these groups are so well entrenched. Any attempt to remove, or even reduce, them will be met with a robust response and media campaign as they are so well enmeshed with the media.
Irrespective of the facts the public will be convinced life will be worse without them.
Had to laugh at this passage from the CCCs 2025 progress report:
"Last year, we made making electricity cheaper our first recommendation. When people and businesses switch to electric technologies, they are paying more than the actual cost of supplying the extra electricity they demand, because of policy decisions taken many years ago. Removing policy costs from electricity would ensure the underlying cost-savings of switching to efficient electric technologies are captured by households and businesses, encouraging take-up. The Government has made no clear progress on removing policy costs since the election. Making electricity cheaper remains our first recommendation"
So far the government have been close to the opposite. Like so many other issues, it is aware of the problem but not doing anywhere near enough to address it. We are an energy abundant country, whether it is in wind, oil, gas, nuclear, solar.
The effort to reduce energy costs has been pathetic
This is so obvious it drives me nuts. Electricity is already much cleaner than the alternatives (particularly somewhere like Scotland), and over the next 25 years it's the source of energy that the UK will depend on the most. If we want to encourage people to use it, it has to be falling in cost relative to the alternatives, not the opposite. To be fair on the Labour government, they have removed a bunch of the green levies from electricty, which is sensible.
But the fact this obvious advice has been ignored so long rather proves that the CCC does not have the kind of power that the conspiracists think they do. The same goes for the OBR - Truss and Kwarteng bypassed them with ease and actually passed a budget with no oversight at all.
The problem is not a conspiracy - but systemic culture. Much of government is wired to implement rationing/reduction in energy usage. tap water = energy usage, therefore.
This is because, until a decade or two ago, the idea that we really could get to net zero with abundant energy usage was seen as impossible.
Electric cars came out of no-where - from the point of view of governments. They were on a path to hydrogen vehicles - and rationing those.
I saw this, when talking with an ex-Cabinet Office chap. When I started to talk about cheap green energy slowing a massive expansion of consumption, he actually said “but the policy….”
So we need to change the culture from “squeeze energy usage” to “luxuriate in cheap, green energy”
A simple example is the extreme dislike of air conditioning - which is complicating building and raising costs. Not to mention is needed when temperatures regularly go above 27c or so.
The insane cheapness of solar panels probably shouldn't have been a surprise- it was just extrapolating the exisiting trend. The cheapness of batteries (which really do change the dynamics) rather more so. It means that the 'net 5%' solution is pretty obvious; solar wherever we can, wind where it's easy, lots of batteries and gas on standby. We just have to put in the capital spending to make it happen. On top of that, one of the arguments against CO2 extraction solutions (olivine weathering, for example) has tended to be the energy-intensiveness of the processes. Intuitively, it feels like there is a solution where they are used to mop up excess electricity at times of peak production.
On the aircon thing, didn't the government relax the rules this summer?
The more interesting question is when will those on the right notice that their support for fossil fuels really is utterly quixotic?
None of it should have come as a surprise
- electric cars came out of car moding in LA. You could get any car turned into an electric car for about $250k. Most of that was labour. Various companies, including Tesla, started out by building a production line to drop that cost to a fraction.
- the collapse in battery price was a line on a graph.
Etc.
The issue was systemic resistance to change they didn’t authorise.
As a senior US government official put it, concerning another of Musk’s enterprises “no one (in the government) asked for these capabilities or planned them”
The other thing that happened was the improvement in battery range. The first Leaf claimed 100 miles on a full charge. 80 at best for the pool cars we used to use. In tests the new model does around 300 miles.
Range is/was a function of battery cost.
The declining cost of batteries and continuous improvement in their performance (usually expressed in Watt/hours per Kg) made the 300 mile mass market car inevitable.
This is what the graphs showed in 2000.
Batteries lose efficiency over time. How long is the life of a car battery for a newer model before it needs a rather pricey replacement ? Who knows. I guess we will find out.
We have decades of data.
Modern EV batteries degrade at an average rate of about 1.8% per year. EVs generally retain over 80% of their original capacity even after 200,000 miles.
Battery replacement is a £10-15,000 thing. Dropping all the time, as well.
It is also worth remembering that the efficiency of an ICE drops over time too, as any Top Gear viewer knows
But the petrol tank doesn't get smaller.
Better to think of the engine as the comparable "most expensive element that could fail".
"Against this backdrop, thoughtful dissenters will consider whether an early election could be forced by via some kind of general strike blended with a dose of fuel and port blockades."
Little dig at the Telegraph there. Sure the article can’t be irrational and is well reasoned.
Clicks on article
Sees it’s Isobel Oakshott.
Clicks off promptly.
Reform know their only chance is to get an early election - within the next 12-18 months - while it is still Labour vs Not Labour and they can look an attractive and viable alternative to the current Government.
After that, it becomes more problematic as one of a number of things might happen (and I stress these are neither in order of likelihood nor desirability).
Labour gets its act together and economy starts improving The Conservative messaging on the economy in particular starts to resonate Reform's own internal contradictions start tearing it apart
1 won’t happen. Labours goose is cooked and any replacement for SKS and Reeves will be economically worse.
2 has started already. The Tories would be insane to get rid of her in my view.
3 given his track record I’d say there’s a strong chance of that but if it doesn’t happen then it’s game on.
We're a long way off an election and it's wishful thinking to imagine Labour can't or won't recover. In any case, IF economic perceptions change and people start to "feel" better (even if the truth is otherwise) that will lead a rebound in Labour polling numbers.
As for Badenoch, I've said on here a number of times she has had a good autumn but it's probable the May local elections will be painful and that will be the point of challenge. Don't underestimate the ability of people to do silly things and if 60 Conservative MPs see their seats going to Reform, that might be enough for a successful challenge.
As for Reform, the prospect of victory does wonders for party unity (look at how little trouble the "left" gave Blair after he became leader and started looking popular) so as long as they look the next Government internal dissent will be silenced but as soon as it starts becoming clear they won't win - let's say a winnable by-election isn't won - the knives will be out.
The window of opportunity for Reform isn't going to be open for ever but they are in no position to force an election and encouraging what amounts to civil insurrection to get one is ludicrous. The only way there would be an election is if Labour MPs wanted one and on most polling numbers most won't.
I voted for Labour. I’d love them to recover. If they recover and the economy picks up we all gain. I just cannot see it and I cannot see any replacements being an improvement.
We are a high tax, high welfare, high regulation, low growth economy and although they talk the talk on deregulation they have yet to walk the walk.
To be heretical, it was interesting hearing Martin Lewis (some people's idea of the perfect Prime Minister) opining there had been very little honesty on the economy from successive Governments over a 20-30 year period.
Well, yes, and he said this was due to electoral necessity. Well, yes again, and bears use wooded areas for toiletary functions. It's a little more than that, however. The Truss proposals (which had some economic rationale behind them) failed for a number of reasons but primarily because they didn't pass the "fairness" test with the public. Making already rich people richer just doesn't work for most of the electorate - indeed, many favour a harsher redistribution despite the oft-quoted statistic of 1% of the tax paying population paying 29% of all the tax paid.
I've often said a rich man will always find (or pay) someone to argue their case, a poor man hasn't the same luxury but the notion of "fairness" has been challenged by the pandemic among other things so you could well argue the high tax, high welfare economy you cite isn't as unpopular as some think but in an ageing society with higher levels of economic inactivity there's a challenge or two at work (or not work if you prefer) trying to square the circle if we think in 20th century terms of work, income, growth and taxation.
I’m not sure it’s the pandemic so much as the cultural desire to flaunt it (eg Rich Kids of Instagram). The wealthy Brits survived for so long because their culture was to have old landrovers and their grandpa’s barber jacket. So no one really noticed it. By contrast, pre-revolutionary France was very much an in your face society with predictable outcomes
One thing that I was surprised by, during travelling 1200km in China on one trip, I saw virtually no renewables. Maybe 20 windmills and a couple of very small solar farms on a 7hr bullet train trip.
Also only saw I think two petrol stations the whole month.
Given that they could use aniseed rather than animal scent, it's clearly just a ruse to continue actual fox hunting, do a ban seems justified. The actual control measure for fox numbers would seem to be the motor car. We have plenty of foxes in my urban area and they don't cause an issue if you secure your bins properly. Given I've seen the cubs being taught to raid bins while surrounded by grazing rabbits, I doubt they can be bothered with chickens either.
Next the clowns will want to ban driving cars
There’s a few who do, de growth is very much on the agenda for some. Limit the supply of energy and water and other key essentials and simply live within that and forget growth as it hurts the planet.
The EU has spent millions funding groups looking at it.
Climate change committee has made some suggestions on energy use which it wants to see implemented.
If energy supply is limited, I'd expect a big backlash from the masses. If taxes were put up on flying, transport, meat etc it would obviously favour the wealthy. I dont see how you could go for reduction in energy use without annoying a big part of the population
I’d agree so I expect they will do it by stealth rather than be open and above board about it. We need cheap energy. We’re not going to get it.
The Climate Change Committe is one of those unelected NGO’s that @Sandpit was referring to. It has no accountability. Get money from the govt and lobbies the govt on matters that will affect each and every one of us.
It would be better to abolish many of these NGO’s as the govt just subcontracts policy making to them.
So leave it all to Ed Miliband then?
Effectively we are already doing that with the Climate Change Committee. It’s merely there to lobby for what he/his team wants. Leave it to him and his department let them own it.
Or should we have governance by unelected NGO ?
That would seem to be the conclusion of Blair’s Third Way and Cameron’s Big Society.
Very much so.
I cannot see it changing either as these groups are so well entrenched. Any attempt to remove, or even reduce, them will be met with a robust response and media campaign as they are so well enmeshed with the media.
Irrespective of the facts the public will be convinced life will be worse without them.
Had to laugh at this passage from the CCCs 2025 progress report:
"Last year, we made making electricity cheaper our first recommendation. When people and businesses switch to electric technologies, they are paying more than the actual cost of supplying the extra electricity they demand, because of policy decisions taken many years ago. Removing policy costs from electricity would ensure the underlying cost-savings of switching to efficient electric technologies are captured by households and businesses, encouraging take-up. The Government has made no clear progress on removing policy costs since the election. Making electricity cheaper remains our first recommendation"
So far the government have been close to the opposite. Like so many other issues, it is aware of the problem but not doing anywhere near enough to address it. We are an energy abundant country, whether it is in wind, oil, gas, nuclear, solar.
The effort to reduce energy costs has been pathetic
This is so obvious it drives me nuts. Electricity is already much cleaner than the alternatives (particularly somewhere like Scotland), and over the next 25 years it's the source of energy that the UK will depend on the most. If we want to encourage people to use it, it has to be falling in cost relative to the alternatives, not the opposite. To be fair on the Labour government, they have removed a bunch of the green levies from electricty, which is sensible.
But the fact this obvious advice has been ignored so long rather proves that the CCC does not have the kind of power that the conspiracists think they do. The same goes for the OBR - Truss and Kwarteng bypassed them with ease and actually passed a budget with no oversight at all.
The problem is not a conspiracy - but systemic culture. Much of government is wired to implement rationing/reduction in energy usage. tap water = energy usage, therefore.
This is because, until a decade or two ago, the idea that we really could get to net zero with abundant energy usage was seen as impossible.
Electric cars came out of no-where - from the point of view of governments. They were on a path to hydrogen vehicles - and rationing those.
I saw this, when talking with an ex-Cabinet Office chap. When I started to talk about cheap green energy slowing a massive expansion of consumption, he actually said “but the policy….”
So we need to change the culture from “squeeze energy usage” to “luxuriate in cheap, green energy”
A simple example is the extreme dislike of air conditioning - which is complicating building and raising costs. Not to mention is needed when temperatures regularly go above 27c or so.
The insane cheapness of solar panels probably shouldn't have been a surprise- it was just extrapolating the exisiting trend. The cheapness of batteries (which really do change the dynamics) rather more so. It means that the 'net 5%' solution is pretty obvious; solar wherever we can, wind where it's easy, lots of batteries and gas on standby. We just have to put in the capital spending to make it happen. On top of that, one of the arguments against CO2 extraction solutions (olivine weathering, for example) has tended to be the energy-intensiveness of the processes. Intuitively, it feels like there is a solution where they are used to mop up excess electricity at times of peak production.
On the aircon thing, didn't the government relax the rules this summer?
The more interesting question is when will those on the right notice that their support for fossil fuels really is utterly quixotic?
None of it should have come as a surprise
- electric cars came out of car moding in LA. You could get any car turned into an electric car for about $250k. Most of that was labour. Various companies, including Tesla, started out by building a production line to drop that cost to a fraction.
- the collapse in battery price was a line on a graph.
Etc.
The issue was systemic resistance to change they didn’t authorise.
As a senior US government official put it, concerning another of Musk’s enterprises “no one (in the government) asked for these capabilities or planned them”
The other thing that happened was the improvement in battery range. The first Leaf claimed 100 miles on a full charge. 80 at best for the pool cars we used to use. In tests the new model does around 300 miles.
Range is/was a function of battery cost.
The declining cost of batteries and continuous improvement in their performance (usually expressed in Watt/hours per Kg) made the 300 mile mass market car inevitable.
This is what the graphs showed in 2000.
Batteries lose efficiency over time. How long is the life of a car battery for a newer model before it needs a rather pricey replacement ? Who knows. I guess we will find out.
We have decades of data.
Modern EV batteries degrade at an average rate of about 1.8% per year. EVs generally retain over 80% of their original capacity even after 200,000 miles.
Battery replacement is a £10-15,000 thing. Dropping all the time, as well.
It is also worth remembering that the efficiency of an ICE drops over time too, as any Top Gear viewer knows
But the petrol tank doesn't get smaller.
PS I'm an idiot. I was thinking of performance, but if the mpg goes down it is the same issue. I'm a Twit.
Just the horses escape.
Didn’t Jeremy buy a second hand Ferrari that had about 90bhp, when tested?
So a plurality of Tory supporters oppose a trail hunting ban and less than half of Reform voters want to ban it either. The Boxing Day hunt also is a crucial part of village and rural life in areas like where I live. Hundreds turn out on the village green and the pub serves mulled wine as the hunt gathers and for its supporters in rural areas it is a big deal. Even if they have to hunt a trail or drag hunt now not a fox (whose numbers still need to be kept down).
Labour may try and ban trail hunting as most of its supporters want as it banned fox hunting but with Farage and Badenoch opposed to a trail hunting ban, if Labour lose power at the next general election it will be restored
There are perhaps only 170 hunt packs in England so this romanticised notion of every village welcoming its hunt with drinks and applause really needs to be challenged.
My only experience of this was in St Ives (Cornwall) several years ago when the Western Hunt paid the town a visit and it was all very congenial with a few supporters shouting and a small crowd applauding. For most, it was a curiousity and I suppose if there's a purpose to it, it shows urban people an aspect of rural life with which they would otherwise be unfamiliar.
I just think rural communities have a lot more serious issues than the future of the local Hunt.
Those foxhunts are spread across the country from Pembrokeshire to here in rural Essex, from Dumfriesshire to Wensleydale, the Cotswolds and Devon and will of course often stop at more than 1 village on a big hunt day than Boxing Day.
If Trail hunting supposedly doesn't kill foxes, what objection would hunts have to converting to Drag hunting? There doesn't seem to be one.
Also you keep bringing up the hunts keep the fox numbers down. If Trail hunts don't kill foxes how do they do that?
Also when fox hunts were allowed to kill they did not keep numbers down because that is not how Fox territories work. if you want I can go through the numbers for you but a simple example is to compare the City Fox to the Rural Fox. The City Fox has a much much much smaller territory than a Rural Fox (the territory is not controlled by extermination but food supply). Yet the City Office is effectively hunted and relentlessly so by the car. It is the major form of death for City Foxes and the average life span for a City Fox is 12 - 18 months but 3 years for a Rural Fox with some living up to 8 years.
So although the City Fox is culled and far more efficiently than a hunt its numbers are far greater. That is because food supply and not hunting is the determinant of the number of foxes.
Hunts used to kill 20 - 25,000 foxes a year. About 1.500,000 - 2,000,000 foxes are born each year. A killed foxes territory is simply taken over by another pair of foxes who will now breed.
If Trail hunting supposedly doesn't kill foxes why does it need to be banned?
Trail hunting also follows an animal based not artificial scent so is closer to the traditional sport of fox hunting Labour banned
Doh. Because they do kill foxes when they shouldn't. I think that has been shown quite clearly.
Which was of course the original purpose of the hunt until Labour in its class war banned it
I suspect it's becoming arguable that we should re-introduce deer hunting round here; both native species and muntjac are beginning to become pests. Guns, though, I think. Not packs of dogs.
Plenty of deer shot and venison eaten in the Highlands of Scotland
Plenty of deer shot everywhere. Just ask foresters and zoologists in England. It's not just the Red Deer but pest species such as muntjac .
Three of the species of deer here are invasive too.
I quite like the Chinese Water Deer.
A local pub/restuarant has venison on the menu every so often. Very tasty.
But is it vegan?
Naughty
A naughty vegan? Don’t say you are coming over all @seant now?
I’d love to know just how far into the organs of state this high profile campaign and deification of this unpleasant Egyptian chap and his equally unpleasant family went exactly as well as wilful ignorance of their output.
“ This is @AndrewMarr9 in 2022 "Alaa is clearly a very very important probably the most important activist and pro democracy campaigner in his region and he's also a very very fine writer."
Its not the first time (nor will it be the last) that loads of celebs / politicians have jumped on a cause to find the thing they were backing was a proper wrong'un.
Given that they could use aniseed rather than animal scent, it's clearly just a ruse to continue actual fox hunting, do a ban seems justified. The actual control measure for fox numbers would seem to be the motor car. We have plenty of foxes in my urban area and they don't cause an issue if you secure your bins properly. Given I've seen the cubs being taught to raid bins while surrounded by grazing rabbits, I doubt they can be bothered with chickens either.
Next the clowns will want to ban driving cars
There’s a few who do, de growth is very much on the agenda for some. Limit the supply of energy and water and other key essentials and simply live within that and forget growth as it hurts the planet.
The EU has spent millions funding groups looking at it.
Climate change committee has made some suggestions on energy use which it wants to see implemented.
If energy supply is limited, I'd expect a big backlash from the masses. If taxes were put up on flying, transport, meat etc it would obviously favour the wealthy. I dont see how you could go for reduction in energy use without annoying a big part of the population
I’d agree so I expect they will do it by stealth rather than be open and above board about it. We need cheap energy. We’re not going to get it.
The Climate Change Committe is one of those unelected NGO’s that @Sandpit was referring to. It has no accountability. Get money from the govt and lobbies the govt on matters that will affect each and every one of us.
It would be better to abolish many of these NGO’s as the govt just subcontracts policy making to them.
So leave it all to Ed Miliband then?
Effectively we are already doing that with the Climate Change Committee. It’s merely there to lobby for what he/his team wants. Leave it to him and his department let them own it.
Or should we have governance by unelected NGO ?
That would seem to be the conclusion of Blair’s Third Way and Cameron’s Big Society.
Very much so.
I cannot see it changing either as these groups are so well entrenched. Any attempt to remove, or even reduce, them will be met with a robust response and media campaign as they are so well enmeshed with the media.
Irrespective of the facts the public will be convinced life will be worse without them.
Had to laugh at this passage from the CCCs 2025 progress report:
"Last year, we made making electricity cheaper our first recommendation. When people and businesses switch to electric technologies, they are paying more than the actual cost of supplying the extra electricity they demand, because of policy decisions taken many years ago. Removing policy costs from electricity would ensure the underlying cost-savings of switching to efficient electric technologies are captured by households and businesses, encouraging take-up. The Government has made no clear progress on removing policy costs since the election. Making electricity cheaper remains our first recommendation"
So far the government have been close to the opposite. Like so many other issues, it is aware of the problem but not doing anywhere near enough to address it. We are an energy abundant country, whether it is in wind, oil, gas, nuclear, solar.
The effort to reduce energy costs has been pathetic
This is so obvious it drives me nuts. Electricity is already much cleaner than the alternatives (particularly somewhere like Scotland), and over the next 25 years it's the source of energy that the UK will depend on the most. If we want to encourage people to use it, it has to be falling in cost relative to the alternatives, not the opposite. To be fair on the Labour government, they have removed a bunch of the green levies from electricty, which is sensible.
But the fact this obvious advice has been ignored so long rather proves that the CCC does not have the kind of power that the conspiracists think they do. The same goes for the OBR - Truss and Kwarteng bypassed them with ease and actually passed a budget with no oversight at all.
The problem is not a conspiracy - but systemic culture. Much of government is wired to implement rationing/reduction in energy usage. tap water = energy usage, therefore.
This is because, until a decade or two ago, the idea that we really could get to net zero with abundant energy usage was seen as impossible.
Electric cars came out of no-where - from the point of view of governments. They were on a path to hydrogen vehicles - and rationing those.
I saw this, when talking with an ex-Cabinet Office chap. When I started to talk about cheap green energy slowing a massive expansion of consumption, he actually said “but the policy….”
So we need to change the culture from “squeeze energy usage” to “luxuriate in cheap, green energy”
A simple example is the extreme dislike of air conditioning - which is complicating building and raising costs. Not to mention is needed when temperatures regularly go above 27c or so.
The insane cheapness of solar panels probably shouldn't have been a surprise- it was just extrapolating the exisiting trend. The cheapness of batteries (which really do change the dynamics) rather more so. It means that the 'net 5%' solution is pretty obvious; solar wherever we can, wind where it's easy, lots of batteries and gas on standby. We just have to put in the capital spending to make it happen. On top of that, one of the arguments against CO2 extraction solutions (olivine weathering, for example) has tended to be the energy-intensiveness of the processes. Intuitively, it feels like there is a solution where they are used to mop up excess electricity at times of peak production.
On the aircon thing, didn't the government relax the rules this summer?
The more interesting question is when will those on the right notice that their support for fossil fuels really is utterly quixotic?
None of it should have come as a surprise
- electric cars came out of car moding in LA. You could get any car turned into an electric car for about $250k. Most of that was labour. Various companies, including Tesla, started out by building a production line to drop that cost to a fraction.
- the collapse in battery price was a line on a graph.
Etc.
The issue was systemic resistance to change they didn’t authorise.
As a senior US government official put it, concerning another of Musk’s enterprises “no one (in the government) asked for these capabilities or planned them”
The other thing that happened was the improvement in battery range. The first Leaf claimed 100 miles on a full charge. 80 at best for the pool cars we used to use. In tests the new model does around 300 miles.
Range is/was a function of battery cost.
The declining cost of batteries and continuous improvement in their performance (usually expressed in Watt/hours per Kg) made the 300 mile mass market car inevitable.
This is what the graphs showed in 2000.
Batteries lose efficiency over time. How long is the life of a car battery for a newer model before it needs a rather pricey replacement ? Who knows. I guess we will find out.
We have decades of data.
Modern EV batteries degrade at an average rate of about 1.8% per year. EVs generally retain over 80% of their original capacity even after 200,000 miles.
Battery replacement is a £10-15,000 thing. Dropping all the time, as well.
It is also worth remembering that the efficiency of an ICE drops over time too, as any Top Gear viewer knows
But the petrol tank doesn't get smaller.
PS I'm an idiot. I was thinking of performance, but if the mpg goes down it is the same issue. I'm a Twit.
Just the horses escape.
Didn’t Jeremy buy a second hand Ferrari that had about 90bhp, when tested?
OK for posing still though.
So my original quip was ok then and I didn't need to humiliate myself?
Given that they could use aniseed rather than animal scent, it's clearly just a ruse to continue actual fox hunting, do a ban seems justified. The actual control measure for fox numbers would seem to be the motor car. We have plenty of foxes in my urban area and they don't cause an issue if you secure your bins properly. Given I've seen the cubs being taught to raid bins while surrounded by grazing rabbits, I doubt they can be bothered with chickens either.
Next the clowns will want to ban driving cars
There’s a few who do, de growth is very much on the agenda for some. Limit the supply of energy and water and other key essentials and simply live within that and forget growth as it hurts the planet.
The EU has spent millions funding groups looking at it.
Climate change committee has made some suggestions on energy use which it wants to see implemented.
If energy supply is limited, I'd expect a big backlash from the masses. If taxes were put up on flying, transport, meat etc it would obviously favour the wealthy. I dont see how you could go for reduction in energy use without annoying a big part of the population
I’d agree so I expect they will do it by stealth rather than be open and above board about it. We need cheap energy. We’re not going to get it.
The Climate Change Committe is one of those unelected NGO’s that @Sandpit was referring to. It has no accountability. Get money from the govt and lobbies the govt on matters that will affect each and every one of us.
It would be better to abolish many of these NGO’s as the govt just subcontracts policy making to them.
So leave it all to Ed Miliband then?
Effectively we are already doing that with the Climate Change Committee. It’s merely there to lobby for what he/his team wants. Leave it to him and his department let them own it.
Or should we have governance by unelected NGO ?
That would seem to be the conclusion of Blair’s Third Way and Cameron’s Big Society.
Very much so.
I cannot see it changing either as these groups are so well entrenched. Any attempt to remove, or even reduce, them will be met with a robust response and media campaign as they are so well enmeshed with the media.
Irrespective of the facts the public will be convinced life will be worse without them.
Had to laugh at this passage from the CCCs 2025 progress report:
"Last year, we made making electricity cheaper our first recommendation. When people and businesses switch to electric technologies, they are paying more than the actual cost of supplying the extra electricity they demand, because of policy decisions taken many years ago. Removing policy costs from electricity would ensure the underlying cost-savings of switching to efficient electric technologies are captured by households and businesses, encouraging take-up. The Government has made no clear progress on removing policy costs since the election. Making electricity cheaper remains our first recommendation"
So far the government have been close to the opposite. Like so many other issues, it is aware of the problem but not doing anywhere near enough to address it. We are an energy abundant country, whether it is in wind, oil, gas, nuclear, solar.
The effort to reduce energy costs has been pathetic
This is so obvious it drives me nuts. Electricity is already much cleaner than the alternatives (particularly somewhere like Scotland), and over the next 25 years it's the source of energy that the UK will depend on the most. If we want to encourage people to use it, it has to be falling in cost relative to the alternatives, not the opposite. To be fair on the Labour government, they have removed a bunch of the green levies from electricty, which is sensible.
But the fact this obvious advice has been ignored so long rather proves that the CCC does not have the kind of power that the conspiracists think they do. The same goes for the OBR - Truss and Kwarteng bypassed them with ease and actually passed a budget with no oversight at all.
The problem is not a conspiracy - but systemic culture. Much of government is wired to implement rationing/reduction in energy usage. tap water = energy usage, therefore.
This is because, until a decade or two ago, the idea that we really could get to net zero with abundant energy usage was seen as impossible.
Electric cars came out of no-where - from the point of view of governments. They were on a path to hydrogen vehicles - and rationing those.
I saw this, when talking with an ex-Cabinet Office chap. When I started to talk about cheap green energy slowing a massive expansion of consumption, he actually said “but the policy….”
So we need to change the culture from “squeeze energy usage” to “luxuriate in cheap, green energy”
A simple example is the extreme dislike of air conditioning - which is complicating building and raising costs. Not to mention is needed when temperatures regularly go above 27c or so.
The insane cheapness of solar panels probably shouldn't have been a surprise- it was just extrapolating the exisiting trend. The cheapness of batteries (which really do change the dynamics) rather more so. It means that the 'net 5%' solution is pretty obvious; solar wherever we can, wind where it's easy, lots of batteries and gas on standby. We just have to put in the capital spending to make it happen. On top of that, one of the arguments against CO2 extraction solutions (olivine weathering, for example) has tended to be the energy-intensiveness of the processes. Intuitively, it feels like there is a solution where they are used to mop up excess electricity at times of peak production.
On the aircon thing, didn't the government relax the rules this summer?
The more interesting question is when will those on the right notice that their support for fossil fuels really is utterly quixotic?
None of it should have come as a surprise
- electric cars came out of car moding in LA. You could get any car turned into an electric car for about $250k. Most of that was labour. Various companies, including Tesla, started out by building a production line to drop that cost to a fraction.
- the collapse in battery price was a line on a graph.
Etc.
The issue was systemic resistance to change they didn’t authorise.
As a senior US government official put it, concerning another of Musk’s enterprises “no one (in the government) asked for these capabilities or planned them”
The other thing that happened was the improvement in battery range. The first Leaf claimed 100 miles on a full charge. 80 at best for the pool cars we used to use. In tests the new model does around 300 miles.
Range is/was a function of battery cost.
The declining cost of batteries and continuous improvement in their performance (usually expressed in Watt/hours per Kg) made the 300 mile mass market car inevitable.
This is what the graphs showed in 2000.
Batteries lose efficiency over time. How long is the life of a car battery for a newer model before it needs a rather pricey replacement ? Who knows. I guess we will find out.
We have decades of data.
Modern EV batteries degrade at an average rate of about 1.8% per year. EVs generally retain over 80% of their original capacity even after 200,000 miles.
Battery replacement is a £10-15,000 thing. Dropping all the time, as well.
I remember one of the original plans floated by a carmaker was to have replaceable batteries each time you needed a charge. You rocked up and they swapped the battery for a fully charged one, took the old one and recharged it for another punter.
Idea didn’t last of course.
Prices fall over time in general especially as the initial investment costs are paid back. I noticed AESC in Sunderland actually started producing batteries.
Only the past few weeks I have eaten goose, pig trotters, pig intestines, chicken gizzards...and they are just the things which were identified.
I had chicken gizzards when visiting a toolmaker in Portugal. Very nice it was too in a lovely tomato sauce.
Stuff like Trotters as well as haslet, pork belly and other foods were cheap foods back 30 or so years. Not these days.
Never had intestines. Sounds unpleasant.
A mates ex wife is Jamaica . She once cooked a dish for us with pigs tails in. Cannot say I enjoyed them but the rest of the dish was banging.
Had chicken feet once when exploring a Chinese dim sum menu ...
Very popular in Taiwan. My students would frequently gnaw on one during break time.
They were selling in big bags in the crisps / snack aisle in Chinese supermarkets. Can't say I was tempted even with the flashy packaging of one particularly Waitrose+++ type establishment.
Whole dried squid on a stick was another popular one.
Speaking of blood sports. As a teenager I witnessed a scorpion fight a few doors down from my local Wetherspoons in an abandoned building, which was rather random.
Never heard of a fox hunt with dogs in these parts, despite being pretty rural. Pheasant shoots are ten a penny.
Any scorpion that fights a few doors (presumably winning some) is obviously a hard bastard of a scorpion.
Bet he gets lots of space at the bar at the ‘spoons.
I’m more intrigued by the Wetherspoons being in an abandoned building
To be fair to Spoons, plenty of their pubs have given a new lease of life to abandoned buildings, especially former banks.
Although not a Spoons this place used to be a bank.
When I catch the bus to,the toon go past it and I’ve never been tempted to get off and go in, the sight of half a dozen surly looking blokes chain smoking outside puts me off a little.
You can go for a beer in the Old Bank of England on Fleet St. It is impressive in there. It used to hold gold and apparently the crown jewels at some time. Now a pub.
I suspect it’s a bit more up market than the one in Gateshead.
I may be in the smoke with a mate in the new year doing some Sweeney locations so may look it up 👍
When you say Sweeney locations do you mean from the TV series? There can't be many left can there? A lot must be redeveloped. I remember a few that weren't far from where I lived at the time if they ventured out into the sticks. Chertsey on the river rings a bell for one.
Yes. From the TV series. There’s still a few around. Me and my mate are big fans of the show going back to when we first became friends in the mid eighties.
I was a fan at the time. Although my memory is playing tricks on me because I thought I watched it when I was in the 6th form, but it appears it was released just before I left University. I remember Brian Blessed was in the first episode whom I met many years later at his house when convincing his wife to stand as a local candidate for the LDs. He was as loud and scary in real life.
Hildegaard Neil ?
She was a decent actress too.
He was Frank Kembel in the first one of the TV series. Met a grisly end.
Given that they could use aniseed rather than animal scent, it's clearly just a ruse to continue actual fox hunting, do a ban seems justified. The actual control measure for fox numbers would seem to be the motor car. We have plenty of foxes in my urban area and they don't cause an issue if you secure your bins properly. Given I've seen the cubs being taught to raid bins while surrounded by grazing rabbits, I doubt they can be bothered with chickens either.
Next the clowns will want to ban driving cars
There’s a few who do, de growth is very much on the agenda for some. Limit the supply of energy and water and other key essentials and simply live within that and forget growth as it hurts the planet.
The EU has spent millions funding groups looking at it.
Climate change committee has made some suggestions on energy use which it wants to see implemented.
If energy supply is limited, I'd expect a big backlash from the masses. If taxes were put up on flying, transport, meat etc it would obviously favour the wealthy. I dont see how you could go for reduction in energy use without annoying a big part of the population
I’d agree so I expect they will do it by stealth rather than be open and above board about it. We need cheap energy. We’re not going to get it.
The Climate Change Committe is one of those unelected NGO’s that @Sandpit was referring to. It has no accountability. Get money from the govt and lobbies the govt on matters that will affect each and every one of us.
It would be better to abolish many of these NGO’s as the govt just subcontracts policy making to them.
So leave it all to Ed Miliband then?
Effectively we are already doing that with the Climate Change Committee. It’s merely there to lobby for what he/his team wants. Leave it to him and his department let them own it.
Or should we have governance by unelected NGO ?
That would seem to be the conclusion of Blair’s Third Way and Cameron’s Big Society.
Very much so.
I cannot see it changing either as these groups are so well entrenched. Any attempt to remove, or even reduce, them will be met with a robust response and media campaign as they are so well enmeshed with the media.
Irrespective of the facts the public will be convinced life will be worse without them.
Had to laugh at this passage from the CCCs 2025 progress report:
"Last year, we made making electricity cheaper our first recommendation. When people and businesses switch to electric technologies, they are paying more than the actual cost of supplying the extra electricity they demand, because of policy decisions taken many years ago. Removing policy costs from electricity would ensure the underlying cost-savings of switching to efficient electric technologies are captured by households and businesses, encouraging take-up. The Government has made no clear progress on removing policy costs since the election. Making electricity cheaper remains our first recommendation"
So far the government have been close to the opposite. Like so many other issues, it is aware of the problem but not doing anywhere near enough to address it. We are an energy abundant country, whether it is in wind, oil, gas, nuclear, solar.
The effort to reduce energy costs has been pathetic
This is so obvious it drives me nuts. Electricity is already much cleaner than the alternatives (particularly somewhere like Scotland), and over the next 25 years it's the source of energy that the UK will depend on the most. If we want to encourage people to use it, it has to be falling in cost relative to the alternatives, not the opposite. To be fair on the Labour government, they have removed a bunch of the green levies from electricty, which is sensible.
But the fact this obvious advice has been ignored so long rather proves that the CCC does not have the kind of power that the conspiracists think they do. The same goes for the OBR - Truss and Kwarteng bypassed them with ease and actually passed a budget with no oversight at all.
The problem is not a conspiracy - but systemic culture. Much of government is wired to implement rationing/reduction in energy usage. tap water = energy usage, therefore.
This is because, until a decade or two ago, the idea that we really could get to net zero with abundant energy usage was seen as impossible.
Electric cars came out of no-where - from the point of view of governments. They were on a path to hydrogen vehicles - and rationing those.
I saw this, when talking with an ex-Cabinet Office chap. When I started to talk about cheap green energy slowing a massive expansion of consumption, he actually said “but the policy….”
So we need to change the culture from “squeeze energy usage” to “luxuriate in cheap, green energy”
A simple example is the extreme dislike of air conditioning - which is complicating building and raising costs. Not to mention is needed when temperatures regularly go above 27c or so.
The insane cheapness of solar panels probably shouldn't have been a surprise- it was just extrapolating the exisiting trend. The cheapness of batteries (which really do change the dynamics) rather more so. It means that the 'net 5%' solution is pretty obvious; solar wherever we can, wind where it's easy, lots of batteries and gas on standby. We just have to put in the capital spending to make it happen. On top of that, one of the arguments against CO2 extraction solutions (olivine weathering, for example) has tended to be the energy-intensiveness of the processes. Intuitively, it feels like there is a solution where they are used to mop up excess electricity at times of peak production.
On the aircon thing, didn't the government relax the rules this summer?
The more interesting question is when will those on the right notice that their support for fossil fuels really is utterly quixotic?
None of it should have come as a surprise
- electric cars came out of car moding in LA. You could get any car turned into an electric car for about $250k. Most of that was labour. Various companies, including Tesla, started out by building a production line to drop that cost to a fraction.
- the collapse in battery price was a line on a graph.
Etc.
The issue was systemic resistance to change they didn’t authorise.
As a senior US government official put it, concerning another of Musk’s enterprises “no one (in the government) asked for these capabilities or planned them”
The other thing that happened was the improvement in battery range. The first Leaf claimed 100 miles on a full charge. 80 at best for the pool cars we used to use. In tests the new model does around 300 miles.
Range is/was a function of battery cost.
The declining cost of batteries and continuous improvement in their performance (usually expressed in Watt/hours per Kg) made the 300 mile mass market car inevitable.
This is what the graphs showed in 2000.
Batteries lose efficiency over time. How long is the life of a car battery for a newer model before it needs a rather pricey replacement ? Who knows. I guess we will find out.
2015 called, it wants its fears back.
Given my Hybrid had to have the battery replaced after a year, just glad it was in warranty otherwise it would be 8 grand.
Audi customer service was shit too.
So, yes, that experience (we warmly embraced having a Hybrid) has made me a little wary.
Speaking of blood sports. As a teenager I witnessed a scorpion fight a few doors down from my local Wetherspoons in an abandoned building, which was rather random.
Never heard of a fox hunt with dogs in these parts, despite being pretty rural. Pheasant shoots are ten a penny.
Any scorpion that fights a few doors (presumably winning some) is obviously a hard bastard of a scorpion.
Bet he gets lots of space at the bar at the ‘spoons.
I’m more intrigued by the Wetherspoons being in an abandoned building
To be fair to Spoons, plenty of their pubs have given a new lease of life to abandoned buildings, especially former banks.
Although not a Spoons this place used to be a bank.
When I catch the bus to,the toon go past it and I’ve never been tempted to get off and go in, the sight of half a dozen surly looking blokes chain smoking outside puts me off a little.
You can go for a beer in the Old Bank of England on Fleet St. It is impressive in there. It used to hold gold and apparently the crown jewels at some time. Now a pub.
I suspect it’s a bit more up market than the one in Gateshead.
I may be in the smoke with a mate in the new year doing some Sweeney locations so may look it up 👍
When you say Sweeney locations do you mean from the TV series? There can't be many left can there? A lot must be redeveloped. I remember a few that weren't far from where I lived at the time if they ventured out into the sticks. Chertsey on the river rings a bell for one.
Yes. From the TV series. There’s still a few around. Me and my mate are big fans of the show going back to when we first became friends in the mid eighties.
I was a fan at the time. Although my memory is playing tricks on me because I thought I watched it when I was in the 6th form, but it appears it was released just before I left University. I remember Brian Blessed was in the first episode whom I met many years later at his house when convincing his wife to stand as a local candidate for the LDs. He was as loud and scary in real life.
Hildegaard Neil ?
She was a decent actress too.
He was Frank Kembel in the first one of the TV series. Met a grisly end.
If memory serves me right it also starred Ian Hendry and a shotgun was involved (I promise I am trying to do this from memory and not Google) and Blessed owned a garage.
Yep that is her. They had a weird house (as you might imagine would be the case)
I’d love to know just how far into the organs of state this high profile campaign and deification of this unpleasant Egyptian chap and his equally unpleasant family went exactly as well as wilful ignorance of their output.
“ This is @AndrewMarr9 in 2022 "Alaa is clearly a very very important probably the most important activist and pro democracy campaigner in his region and he's also a very very fine writer."
Its not the first time (nor will it be the last) that loads of celebs / politicians have jumped on a cause to find the thing they were backing was a proper wrong'un.
As I mentioned at the weekend and I’m sure others like Malmesbury have too, it’s like the Brass Eye ‘cake is a made up drug’, ‘Shatners bassoon’ which brilliantly lampooned politicians and slebs who will jump on any cause for publicity.
Speaking of blood sports. As a teenager I witnessed a scorpion fight a few doors down from my local Wetherspoons in an abandoned building, which was rather random.
Never heard of a fox hunt with dogs in these parts, despite being pretty rural. Pheasant shoots are ten a penny.
Any scorpion that fights a few doors (presumably winning some) is obviously a hard bastard of a scorpion.
Bet he gets lots of space at the bar at the ‘spoons.
I’m more intrigued by the Wetherspoons being in an abandoned building
To be fair to Spoons, plenty of their pubs have given a new lease of life to abandoned buildings, especially former banks.
Although not a Spoons this place used to be a bank.
When I catch the bus to,the toon go past it and I’ve never been tempted to get off and go in, the sight of half a dozen surly looking blokes chain smoking outside puts me off a little.
You can go for a beer in the Old Bank of England on Fleet St. It is impressive in there. It used to hold gold and apparently the crown jewels at some time. Now a pub.
I suspect it’s a bit more up market than the one in Gateshead.
I may be in the smoke with a mate in the new year doing some Sweeney locations so may look it up 👍
When you say Sweeney locations do you mean from the TV series? There can't be many left can there? A lot must be redeveloped. I remember a few that weren't far from where I lived at the time if they ventured out into the sticks. Chertsey on the river rings a bell for one.
Yes. From the TV series. There’s still a few around. Me and my mate are big fans of the show going back to when we first became friends in the mid eighties.
I was a fan at the time. Although my memory is playing tricks on me because I thought I watched it when I was in the 6th form, but it appears it was released just before I left University. I remember Brian Blessed was in the first episode whom I met many years later at his house when convincing his wife to stand as a local candidate for the LDs. He was as loud and scary in real life.
Hildegaard Neil ?
She was a decent actress too.
He was Frank Kembel in the first one of the TV series. Met a grisly end.
If memory serves me right it also starred Ian Hendry and a shotgun was involved (I promise I am trying to do this from memory and not Google) and Blessed owned a garage.
Yep that is her. They had a weird house (as you might imagine would be the case)
Ian Hendry played Dave Brooker and Alan Lake was in it too.
In the early episodes it was a far bigger team than just Carter and Regan. Although the other members vanished relatively quickly some came back for the movies. Guys like John Flanagan, Martyn Adams and Nick Brimble appeared in the early ones.
I’m going from memory too.
They dealt in knicked cars I’m sure. Regans girlfriend was menaced by Lake with an iron to find out who her partner was who was tracking them.
Given that they could use aniseed rather than animal scent, it's clearly just a ruse to continue actual fox hunting, do a ban seems justified. The actual control measure for fox numbers would seem to be the motor car. We have plenty of foxes in my urban area and they don't cause an issue if you secure your bins properly. Given I've seen the cubs being taught to raid bins while surrounded by grazing rabbits, I doubt they can be bothered with chickens either.
Next the clowns will want to ban driving cars
There’s a few who do, de growth is very much on the agenda for some. Limit the supply of energy and water and other key essentials and simply live within that and forget growth as it hurts the planet.
The EU has spent millions funding groups looking at it.
Climate change committee has made some suggestions on energy use which it wants to see implemented.
If energy supply is limited, I'd expect a big backlash from the masses. If taxes were put up on flying, transport, meat etc it would obviously favour the wealthy. I dont see how you could go for reduction in energy use without annoying a big part of the population
I’d agree so I expect they will do it by stealth rather than be open and above board about it. We need cheap energy. We’re not going to get it.
The Climate Change Committe is one of those unelected NGO’s that @Sandpit was referring to. It has no accountability. Get money from the govt and lobbies the govt on matters that will affect each and every one of us.
It would be better to abolish many of these NGO’s as the govt just subcontracts policy making to them.
So leave it all to Ed Miliband then?
Effectively we are already doing that with the Climate Change Committee. It’s merely there to lobby for what he/his team wants. Leave it to him and his department let them own it.
Or should we have governance by unelected NGO ?
That would seem to be the conclusion of Blair’s Third Way and Cameron’s Big Society.
Very much so.
I cannot see it changing either as these groups are so well entrenched. Any attempt to remove, or even reduce, them will be met with a robust response and media campaign as they are so well enmeshed with the media.
Irrespective of the facts the public will be convinced life will be worse without them.
Had to laugh at this passage from the CCCs 2025 progress report:
"Last year, we made making electricity cheaper our first recommendation. When people and businesses switch to electric technologies, they are paying more than the actual cost of supplying the extra electricity they demand, because of policy decisions taken many years ago. Removing policy costs from electricity would ensure the underlying cost-savings of switching to efficient electric technologies are captured by households and businesses, encouraging take-up. The Government has made no clear progress on removing policy costs since the election. Making electricity cheaper remains our first recommendation"
So far the government have been close to the opposite. Like so many other issues, it is aware of the problem but not doing anywhere near enough to address it. We are an energy abundant country, whether it is in wind, oil, gas, nuclear, solar.
The effort to reduce energy costs has been pathetic
This is so obvious it drives me nuts. Electricity is already much cleaner than the alternatives (particularly somewhere like Scotland), and over the next 25 years it's the source of energy that the UK will depend on the most. If we want to encourage people to use it, it has to be falling in cost relative to the alternatives, not the opposite. To be fair on the Labour government, they have removed a bunch of the green levies from electricty, which is sensible.
But the fact this obvious advice has been ignored so long rather proves that the CCC does not have the kind of power that the conspiracists think they do. The same goes for the OBR - Truss and Kwarteng bypassed them with ease and actually passed a budget with no oversight at all.
The problem is not a conspiracy - but systemic culture. Much of government is wired to implement rationing/reduction in energy usage. tap water = energy usage, therefore.
This is because, until a decade or two ago, the idea that we really could get to net zero with abundant energy usage was seen as impossible.
Electric cars came out of no-where - from the point of view of governments. They were on a path to hydrogen vehicles - and rationing those.
I saw this, when talking with an ex-Cabinet Office chap. When I started to talk about cheap green energy slowing a massive expansion of consumption, he actually said “but the policy….”
So we need to change the culture from “squeeze energy usage” to “luxuriate in cheap, green energy”
A simple example is the extreme dislike of air conditioning - which is complicating building and raising costs. Not to mention is needed when temperatures regularly go above 27c or so.
The insane cheapness of solar panels probably shouldn't have been a surprise- it was just extrapolating the exisiting trend. The cheapness of batteries (which really do change the dynamics) rather more so. It means that the 'net 5%' solution is pretty obvious; solar wherever we can, wind where it's easy, lots of batteries and gas on standby. We just have to put in the capital spending to make it happen. On top of that, one of the arguments against CO2 extraction solutions (olivine weathering, for example) has tended to be the energy-intensiveness of the processes. Intuitively, it feels like there is a solution where they are used to mop up excess electricity at times of peak production.
On the aircon thing, didn't the government relax the rules this summer?
The more interesting question is when will those on the right notice that their support for fossil fuels really is utterly quixotic?
None of it should have come as a surprise
- electric cars came out of car moding in LA. You could get any car turned into an electric car for about $250k. Most of that was labour. Various companies, including Tesla, started out by building a production line to drop that cost to a fraction.
- the collapse in battery price was a line on a graph.
Etc.
The issue was systemic resistance to change they didn’t authorise.
As a senior US government official put it, concerning another of Musk’s enterprises “no one (in the government) asked for these capabilities or planned them”
The other thing that happened was the improvement in battery range. The first Leaf claimed 100 miles on a full charge. 80 at best for the pool cars we used to use. In tests the new model does around 300 miles.
Range is/was a function of battery cost.
The declining cost of batteries and continuous improvement in their performance (usually expressed in Watt/hours per Kg) made the 300 mile mass market car inevitable.
This is what the graphs showed in 2000.
Batteries lose efficiency over time. How long is the life of a car battery for a newer model before it needs a rather pricey replacement ? Who knows. I guess we will find out.
We have decades of data.
Modern EV batteries degrade at an average rate of about 1.8% per year. EVs generally retain over 80% of their original capacity even after 200,000 miles.
Battery replacement is a £10-15,000 thing. Dropping all the time, as well.
I remember one of the original plans floated by a carmaker was to have replaceable batteries each time you needed a charge. You rocked up and they swapped the battery for a fully charged one, took the old one and recharged it for another punter.
Idea didn’t last of course.
Prices fall over time in general especially as the initial investment costs are paid back. I noticed AESC in Sunderland actually started producing batteries.
That was because “experts” claimed that fast charging was impossible.
Apart from the fact it was theoretically possible and demonstrated, repeatedly, in testing. But multiple organisations.
So when Tesla started rolling out superchargers this was another Complete Surprise. That wasn’t.
The Tory Shadow Attorney General is also now Abramovich’s legal counsel - apparently working to protect his assets from efforts to recover them for Ukraine.
Given that they could use aniseed rather than animal scent, it's clearly just a ruse to continue actual fox hunting, do a ban seems justified. The actual control measure for fox numbers would seem to be the motor car. We have plenty of foxes in my urban area and they don't cause an issue if you secure your bins properly. Given I've seen the cubs being taught to raid bins while surrounded by grazing rabbits, I doubt they can be bothered with chickens either.
Next the clowns will want to ban driving cars
There’s a few who do, de growth is very much on the agenda for some. Limit the supply of energy and water and other key essentials and simply live within that and forget growth as it hurts the planet.
The EU has spent millions funding groups looking at it.
Climate change committee has made some suggestions on energy use which it wants to see implemented.
If energy supply is limited, I'd expect a big backlash from the masses. If taxes were put up on flying, transport, meat etc it would obviously favour the wealthy. I dont see how you could go for reduction in energy use without annoying a big part of the population
I’d agree so I expect they will do it by stealth rather than be open and above board about it. We need cheap energy. We’re not going to get it.
The Climate Change Committe is one of those unelected NGO’s that @Sandpit was referring to. It has no accountability. Get money from the govt and lobbies the govt on matters that will affect each and every one of us.
It would be better to abolish many of these NGO’s as the govt just subcontracts policy making to them.
So leave it all to Ed Miliband then?
Effectively we are already doing that with the Climate Change Committee. It’s merely there to lobby for what he/his team wants. Leave it to him and his department let them own it.
Or should we have governance by unelected NGO ?
That would seem to be the conclusion of Blair’s Third Way and Cameron’s Big Society.
Very much so.
I cannot see it changing either as these groups are so well entrenched. Any attempt to remove, or even reduce, them will be met with a robust response and media campaign as they are so well enmeshed with the media.
Irrespective of the facts the public will be convinced life will be worse without them.
Had to laugh at this passage from the CCCs 2025 progress report:
"Last year, we made making electricity cheaper our first recommendation. When people and businesses switch to electric technologies, they are paying more than the actual cost of supplying the extra electricity they demand, because of policy decisions taken many years ago. Removing policy costs from electricity would ensure the underlying cost-savings of switching to efficient electric technologies are captured by households and businesses, encouraging take-up. The Government has made no clear progress on removing policy costs since the election. Making electricity cheaper remains our first recommendation"
So far the government have been close to the opposite. Like so many other issues, it is aware of the problem but not doing anywhere near enough to address it. We are an energy abundant country, whether it is in wind, oil, gas, nuclear, solar.
The effort to reduce energy costs has been pathetic
This is so obvious it drives me nuts. Electricity is already much cleaner than the alternatives (particularly somewhere like Scotland), and over the next 25 years it's the source of energy that the UK will depend on the most. If we want to encourage people to use it, it has to be falling in cost relative to the alternatives, not the opposite. To be fair on the Labour government, they have removed a bunch of the green levies from electricty, which is sensible.
But the fact this obvious advice has been ignored so long rather proves that the CCC does not have the kind of power that the conspiracists think they do. The same goes for the OBR - Truss and Kwarteng bypassed them with ease and actually passed a budget with no oversight at all.
The problem is not a conspiracy - but systemic culture. Much of government is wired to implement rationing/reduction in energy usage. tap water = energy usage, therefore.
This is because, until a decade or two ago, the idea that we really could get to net zero with abundant energy usage was seen as impossible.
Electric cars came out of no-where - from the point of view of governments. They were on a path to hydrogen vehicles - and rationing those.
I saw this, when talking with an ex-Cabinet Office chap. When I started to talk about cheap green energy slowing a massive expansion of consumption, he actually said “but the policy….”
So we need to change the culture from “squeeze energy usage” to “luxuriate in cheap, green energy”
A simple example is the extreme dislike of air conditioning - which is complicating building and raising costs. Not to mention is needed when temperatures regularly go above 27c or so.
The insane cheapness of solar panels probably shouldn't have been a surprise- it was just extrapolating the exisiting trend. The cheapness of batteries (which really do change the dynamics) rather more so. It means that the 'net 5%' solution is pretty obvious; solar wherever we can, wind where it's easy, lots of batteries and gas on standby. We just have to put in the capital spending to make it happen. On top of that, one of the arguments against CO2 extraction solutions (olivine weathering, for example) has tended to be the energy-intensiveness of the processes. Intuitively, it feels like there is a solution where they are used to mop up excess electricity at times of peak production.
On the aircon thing, didn't the government relax the rules this summer?
The more interesting question is when will those on the right notice that their support for fossil fuels really is utterly quixotic?
None of it should have come as a surprise
- electric cars came out of car moding in LA. You could get any car turned into an electric car for about $250k. Most of that was labour. Various companies, including Tesla, started out by building a production line to drop that cost to a fraction.
- the collapse in battery price was a line on a graph.
Etc.
The issue was systemic resistance to change they didn’t authorise.
As a senior US government official put it, concerning another of Musk’s enterprises “no one (in the government) asked for these capabilities or planned them”
The other thing that happened was the improvement in battery range. The first Leaf claimed 100 miles on a full charge. 80 at best for the pool cars we used to use. In tests the new model does around 300 miles.
Range is/was a function of battery cost.
The declining cost of batteries and continuous improvement in their performance (usually expressed in Watt/hours per Kg) made the 300 mile mass market car inevitable.
This is what the graphs showed in 2000.
Batteries lose efficiency over time. How long is the life of a car battery for a newer model before it needs a rather pricey replacement ? Who knows. I guess we will find out.
We have decades of data.
Modern EV batteries degrade at an average rate of about 1.8% per year. EVs generally retain over 80% of their original capacity even after 200,000 miles.
Battery replacement is a £10-15,000 thing. Dropping all the time, as well.
I remember one of the original plans floated by a carmaker was to have replaceable batteries each time you needed a charge. You rocked up and they swapped the battery for a fully charged one, took the old one and recharged it for another punter.
Idea didn’t last of course.
Prices fall over time in general especially as the initial investment costs are paid back. I noticed AESC in Sunderland actually started producing batteries.
That was because “experts” claimed that fast charging was impossible.
Apart from the fact it was theoretically possible and demonstrated, repeatedly, in testing. But multiple organisations.
So when Tesla started rolling out superchargers this was another Complete Surprise. That wasn’t.
Reminds me of the experts in vehicle lighting who said the thin rectangular reversing lamp on the Maestro rear lamp cluster was not possible and a redesign was needed. Suffice to say we didn’t get the business. Britax Vega did and delivered it.
Speaking of blood sports. As a teenager I witnessed a scorpion fight a few doors down from my local Wetherspoons in an abandoned building, which was rather random.
Never heard of a fox hunt with dogs in these parts, despite being pretty rural. Pheasant shoots are ten a penny.
Any scorpion that fights a few doors (presumably winning some) is obviously a hard bastard of a scorpion.
Bet he gets lots of space at the bar at the ‘spoons.
I’m more intrigued by the Wetherspoons being in an abandoned building
To be fair to Spoons, plenty of their pubs have given a new lease of life to abandoned buildings, especially former banks.
Although not a Spoons this place used to be a bank.
When I catch the bus to,the toon go past it and I’ve never been tempted to get off and go in, the sight of half a dozen surly looking blokes chain smoking outside puts me off a little.
You can go for a beer in the Old Bank of England on Fleet St. It is impressive in there. It used to hold gold and apparently the crown jewels at some time. Now a pub.
I suspect it’s a bit more up market than the one in Gateshead.
I may be in the smoke with a mate in the new year doing some Sweeney locations so may look it up 👍
When you say Sweeney locations do you mean from the TV series? There can't be many left can there? A lot must be redeveloped. I remember a few that weren't far from where I lived at the time if they ventured out into the sticks. Chertsey on the river rings a bell for one.
Yes. From the TV series. There’s still a few around. Me and my mate are big fans of the show going back to when we first became friends in the mid eighties.
I was a fan at the time. Although my memory is playing tricks on me because I thought I watched it when I was in the 6th form, but it appears it was released just before I left University. I remember Brian Blessed was in the first episode whom I met many years later at his house when convincing his wife to stand as a local candidate for the LDs. He was as loud and scary in real life.
Hildegaard Neil ?
She was a decent actress too.
He was Frank Kembel in the first one of the TV series. Met a grisly end.
If memory serves me right it also starred Ian Hendry and a shotgun was involved (I promise I am trying to do this from memory and not Google) and Blessed owned a garage.
Yep that is her. They had a weird house (as you might imagine would be the case)
Ian Hendry played Dave Brooker and Alan Lake was in it too.
In the early episodes it was a far bigger team than just Carter and Regan. Although the other members vanished relatively quickly some came back for the movies. Guys like John Flanagan, Martyn Adams and Nick Brimble appeared in the early ones.
You obviously know them off by heart. I have watched them all several times.
Speaking of blood sports. As a teenager I witnessed a scorpion fight a few doors down from my local Wetherspoons in an abandoned building, which was rather random.
Never heard of a fox hunt with dogs in these parts, despite being pretty rural. Pheasant shoots are ten a penny.
Any scorpion that fights a few doors (presumably winning some) is obviously a hard bastard of a scorpion.
Bet he gets lots of space at the bar at the ‘spoons.
I’m more intrigued by the Wetherspoons being in an abandoned building
To be fair to Spoons, plenty of their pubs have given a new lease of life to abandoned buildings, especially former banks.
Although not a Spoons this place used to be a bank.
When I catch the bus to,the toon go past it and I’ve never been tempted to get off and go in, the sight of half a dozen surly looking blokes chain smoking outside puts me off a little.
You can go for a beer in the Old Bank of England on Fleet St. It is impressive in there. It used to hold gold and apparently the crown jewels at some time. Now a pub.
I suspect it’s a bit more up market than the one in Gateshead.
I may be in the smoke with a mate in the new year doing some Sweeney locations so may look it up 👍
When you say Sweeney locations do you mean from the TV series? There can't be many left can there? A lot must be redeveloped. I remember a few that weren't far from where I lived at the time if they ventured out into the sticks. Chertsey on the river rings a bell for one.
Yes. From the TV series. There’s still a few around. Me and my mate are big fans of the show going back to when we first became friends in the mid eighties.
I was a fan at the time. Although my memory is playing tricks on me because I thought I watched it when I was in the 6th form, but it appears it was released just before I left University. I remember Brian Blessed was in the first episode whom I met many years later at his house when convincing his wife to stand as a local candidate for the LDs. He was as loud and scary in real life.
Hildegaard Neil ?
She was a decent actress too.
He was Frank Kembel in the first one of the TV series. Met a grisly end.
If memory serves me right it also starred Ian Hendry and a shotgun was involved (I promise I am trying to do this from memory and not Google) and Blessed owned a garage.
Yep that is her. They had a weird house (as you might imagine would be the case)
Ian Hendry played Dave Brooker and Alan Lake was in it too.
In the early episodes it was a far bigger team than just Carter and Regan. Although the other members vanished relatively quickly some came back for the movies. Guys like John Flanagan, Martyn Adams and Nick Brimble appeared in the early ones.
You obviously know them off by heart. I have watched them all several times.
Drag hunting uses artificial scents (like aniseed) on a pre-planned route, focusing on equestrian sport and jumping, while trail hunting uses animal-based scents (like fox urine) and mimics traditional hunting.
Drag hunting is a more controlled, legitimate equestrian activity distinct from the controversial trail hunting often used as a cover for illegal hunting.
So to answer your question: The benefit of drag hunting is a harmless equestrian sport providing exercise and the other benefits of taking part in a sport. The "benefit" of trail hunting is providing a cover for illegal hunting.
Thanks for that. I live in a very rural area and I didn't know the distinction between the two. Is the proposal to ban both drag and trail or just trail?
Personally I support the ban on fox hunting. I would also support a ban on trail.hunting as you have explained it. I would not support a ban on drag hunting under those definitions.
I also have to say red coat hunting plays no part at all in the life of my rural community. I have never seen any sign of a hunt in the 17 years I have lived here.
Shooting in its various forms is however a big part of rural life round here
Shooting tends to be of pheasants, grouse etc and organised with often wealthy city types paying farmers and landowners to shoot on their land.
Trail hunts though tend to involve all sections of the rural community
Nope. That is one form.of shooting but certainly not the only one nor even the norm. In many rural areas shooting is in the form.of 'walking up' and is very different from the driven shoots you are referring to. Very few non locals and all the birds are taken for food.
Pheasants and grouse are also often eaten after big shoots
Far too often they are left to rot or more usually buried. The majority of grouse shot in the UK are not eaten.
A man has been arrested after five people were assaulted with a weapon at a hospital.
Merseyside Police say the incident began when a man attended Newton Community Hospital, in Newton-Le-Willows, on Tuesday afternoon and requested an appointment.
"At this stage, it is believed that his request was declined, and when he was asked to leave, he became increasingly agitated and damaged a counter before assaulting several people inside the hospital, with a weapon - possibly a crowbar," a police spokesperson said.
A 20-year-old man, who police say is originally from Afghanistan, has been arrested on suspicion of five counts of wounding with intent, affray and criminal damage.
"Asylum seekers should be required to wear electronic tags so their movements can be tracked, a policing chief has proposed.
Katy Bourne, Sussex’s police and crime commissioner (PCC), said the move would act as a deterrent to any potential criminal activity. It could also give migrants “greater freedom” to travel further from holding centres and help them get temporary jobs."
So a plurality of Tory supporters oppose a trail hunting ban and less than half of Reform voters want to ban it either. The Boxing Day hunt also is a crucial part of village and rural life in areas like where I live. Hundreds turn out on the village green and the pub serves mulled wine as the hunt gathers and for its supporters in rural areas it is a big deal. Even if they have to hunt a trail or drag hunt now not a fox (whose numbers still need to be kept down).
Labour may try and ban trail hunting as most of its supporters want as it banned fox hunting but with Farage and Badenoch opposed to a trail hunting ban, if Labour lose power at the next general election it will be restored
There are perhaps only 170 hunt packs in England so this romanticised notion of every village welcoming its hunt with drinks and applause really needs to be challenged.
My only experience of this was in St Ives (Cornwall) several years ago when the Western Hunt paid the town a visit and it was all very congenial with a few supporters shouting and a small crowd applauding. For most, it was a curiousity and I suppose if there's a purpose to it, it shows urban people an aspect of rural life with which they would otherwise be unfamiliar.
I just think rural communities have a lot more serious issues than the future of the local Hunt.
Those foxhunts are spread across the country from Pembrokeshire to here in rural Essex, from Dumfriesshire to Wensleydale, the Cotswolds and Devon and will of course often stop at more than 1 village on a big hunt day than Boxing Day.
If Trail hunting supposedly doesn't kill foxes, what objection would hunts have to converting to Drag hunting? There doesn't seem to be one.
Also you keep bringing up the hunts keep the fox numbers down. If Trail hunts don't kill foxes how do they do that?
Also when fox hunts were allowed to kill they did not keep numbers down because that is not how Fox territories work. if you want I can go through the numbers for you but a simple example is to compare the City Fox to the Rural Fox. The City Fox has a much much much smaller territory than a Rural Fox (the territory is not controlled by extermination but food supply). Yet the City Office is effectively hunted and relentlessly so by the car. It is the major form of death for City Foxes and the average life span for a City Fox is 12 - 18 months but 3 years for a Rural Fox with some living up to 8 years.
So although the City Fox is culled and far more efficiently than a hunt its numbers are far greater. That is because food supply and not hunting is the determinant of the number of foxes.
Hunts used to kill 20 - 25,000 foxes a year. About 1.500,000 - 2,000,000 foxes are born each year. A killed foxes territory is simply taken over by another pair of foxes who will now breed.
If Trail hunting supposedly doesn't kill foxes why does it need to be banned?
Trail hunting also follows an animal based not artificial scent so is closer to the traditional sport of fox hunting Labour banned
Doh. Because they do kill foxes when they shouldn't. I think that has been shown quite clearly.
Which was of course the original purpose of the hunt until Labour in its class war banned it
Hang on, we are going around in circles here. I assume you are saying the original purpose of the hunt was killing foxes. Well obviously. But if you can get the enjoyment and spectacle without killing foxes then what is the problem.
And if you say to control fox numbers I am likely to punch a wall because:
a) Trail hunting supposedly doesn't kill foxes anyway (so what is your point in not moving to drag hunting where you can get the same enjoyment and definitely not kill a fox)) b) Fox hunting did not control numbers. See my post where I showed that.
Some sick fuckers enjoy seeing animals suffer.
That is what fox hunting is all about.
I am surprised that a follower of the teachings of Jesus, such as HY, is on the side of cruelty.
Yes foxes, lovely cuddly things, never rip rabbits and chickens to pieces and kill lambs, certainly not
Getting into the realms of morality here but foxes don't rip apart chickens and kill lambs out of deliberate cruelty.
So why do they? It isn’t for food if you have ever seen a chicken coop after a fox has visited
Because evolution never prepared them for a situation where there would be so much defenseless food.
It's perfectly normal and advantageous predator behaviour to kill more than it can eat. Those carcasses might still be there in a few days time when it's hungry again.
"Asylum seekers should be required to wear electronic tags so their movements can be tracked, a policing chief has proposed.
Katy Bourne, Sussex’s police and crime commissioner (PCC), said the move would act as a deterrent to any potential criminal activity. It could also give migrants “greater freedom” to travel further from holding centres and help them get temporary jobs."
A man has been arrested after five people were assaulted with a weapon at a hospital.
Merseyside Police say the incident began when a man attended Newton Community Hospital, in Newton-Le-Willows, on Tuesday afternoon and requested an appointment.
"At this stage, it is believed that his request was declined, and when he was asked to leave, he became increasingly agitated and damaged a counter before assaulting several people inside the hospital, with a weapon - possibly a crowbar," a police spokesperson said.
A 20-year-old man, who police say is originally from Afghanistan, has been arrested on suspicion of five counts of wounding with intent, affray and criminal damage.
Apparently he went crazy a he was not happy waiting for an appointment. Not defending him but I must admit to feeling slightly vexed when I’m stuck in a slow queue.
So a plurality of Tory supporters oppose a trail hunting ban and less than half of Reform voters want to ban it either. The Boxing Day hunt also is a crucial part of village and rural life in areas like where I live. Hundreds turn out on the village green and the pub serves mulled wine as the hunt gathers and for its supporters in rural areas it is a big deal. Even if they have to hunt a trail or drag hunt now not a fox (whose numbers still need to be kept down).
Labour may try and ban trail hunting as most of its supporters want as it banned fox hunting but with Farage and Badenoch opposed to a trail hunting ban, if Labour lose power at the next general election it will be restored
There are perhaps only 170 hunt packs in England so this romanticised notion of every village welcoming its hunt with drinks and applause really needs to be challenged.
My only experience of this was in St Ives (Cornwall) several years ago when the Western Hunt paid the town a visit and it was all very congenial with a few supporters shouting and a small crowd applauding. For most, it was a curiousity and I suppose if there's a purpose to it, it shows urban people an aspect of rural life with which they would otherwise be unfamiliar.
I just think rural communities have a lot more serious issues than the future of the local Hunt.
Those foxhunts are spread across the country from Pembrokeshire to here in rural Essex, from Dumfriesshire to Wensleydale, the Cotswolds and Devon and will of course often stop at more than 1 village on a big hunt day than Boxing Day.
If Trail hunting supposedly doesn't kill foxes, what objection would hunts have to converting to Drag hunting? There doesn't seem to be one.
Also you keep bringing up the hunts keep the fox numbers down. If Trail hunts don't kill foxes how do they do that?
Also when fox hunts were allowed to kill they did not keep numbers down because that is not how Fox territories work. if you want I can go through the numbers for you but a simple example is to compare the City Fox to the Rural Fox. The City Fox has a much much much smaller territory than a Rural Fox (the territory is not controlled by extermination but food supply). Yet the City Office is effectively hunted and relentlessly so by the car. It is the major form of death for City Foxes and the average life span for a City Fox is 12 - 18 months but 3 years for a Rural Fox with some living up to 8 years.
So although the City Fox is culled and far more efficiently than a hunt its numbers are far greater. That is because food supply and not hunting is the determinant of the number of foxes.
Hunts used to kill 20 - 25,000 foxes a year. About 1.500,000 - 2,000,000 foxes are born each year. A killed foxes territory is simply taken over by another pair of foxes who will now breed.
If Trail hunting supposedly doesn't kill foxes why does it need to be banned?
Trail hunting also follows an animal based not artificial scent so is closer to the traditional sport of fox hunting Labour banned
Doh. Because they do kill foxes when they shouldn't. I think that has been shown quite clearly.
Which was of course the original purpose of the hunt until Labour in its class war banned it
Hang on, we are going around in circles here. I assume you are saying the original purpose of the hunt was killing foxes. Well obviously. But if you can get the enjoyment and spectacle without killing foxes then what is the problem.
And if you say to control fox numbers I am likely to punch a wall because:
a) Trail hunting supposedly doesn't kill foxes anyway (so what is your point in not moving to drag hunting where you can get the same enjoyment and definitely not kill a fox)) b) Fox hunting did not control numbers. See my post where I showed that.
Some sick fuckers enjoy seeing animals suffer.
That is what fox hunting is all about.
I am surprised that a follower of the teachings of Jesus, such as HY, is on the side of cruelty.
Yes foxes, lovely cuddly things, never rip rabbits and chickens to pieces and kill lambs, certainly not
Getting into the realms of morality here but foxes don't rip apart chickens and kill lambs out of deliberate cruelty.
So why do they? It isn’t for food if you have ever seen a chicken coop after a fox has visited
Because evolution never prepared them for a situation where there would be so much defenseless food.
It's perfectly normal and advantageous predator behaviour to kill more than it can eat. Those carcasses might still be there in a few days time when it's hungry again.
AIUI, although I don’t shoot, the vast majority of pheasants shot locally get eaten by someone. Not always the shooter, though.
The Tory Shadow Attorney General is also now Abramovich’s legal counsel - apparently working to protect his assets from efforts to recover them for Ukraine.
Reminds me of the experts in vehicle lighting who said the thin rectangular reversing lamp on the Maestro rear lamp cluster was not possible and a redesign was needed. Suffice to say we didn’t get the business. Britax Vega did and delivered it.
I saw an MG Maestro Turbo in the Waitrose car park just before Christmas. I hung around for a bit, because I wanted to talk to the owner and ask him how the fuck it was still moving. He (and it 100% was a 'he') didn't show up in the ten minutes I was prepared to throw into the enterprise. Probably topped himself in the toilets.
So a plurality of Tory supporters oppose a trail hunting ban and less than half of Reform voters want to ban it either. The Boxing Day hunt also is a crucial part of village and rural life in areas like where I live. Hundreds turn out on the village green and the pub serves mulled wine as the hunt gathers and for its supporters in rural areas it is a big deal. Even if they have to hunt a trail or drag hunt now not a fox (whose numbers still need to be kept down).
Labour may try and ban trail hunting as most of its supporters want as it banned fox hunting but with Farage and Badenoch opposed to a trail hunting ban, if Labour lose power at the next general election it will be restored
There are perhaps only 170 hunt packs in England so this romanticised notion of every village welcoming its hunt with drinks and applause really needs to be challenged.
My only experience of this was in St Ives (Cornwall) several years ago when the Western Hunt paid the town a visit and it was all very congenial with a few supporters shouting and a small crowd applauding. For most, it was a curiousity and I suppose if there's a purpose to it, it shows urban people an aspect of rural life with which they would otherwise be unfamiliar.
I just think rural communities have a lot more serious issues than the future of the local Hunt.
Those foxhunts are spread across the country from Pembrokeshire to here in rural Essex, from Dumfriesshire to Wensleydale, the Cotswolds and Devon and will of course often stop at more than 1 village on a big hunt day than Boxing Day.
If Trail hunting supposedly doesn't kill foxes, what objection would hunts have to converting to Drag hunting? There doesn't seem to be one.
Also you keep bringing up the hunts keep the fox numbers down. If Trail hunts don't kill foxes how do they do that?
Also when fox hunts were allowed to kill they did not keep numbers down because that is not how Fox territories work. if you want I can go through the numbers for you but a simple example is to compare the City Fox to the Rural Fox. The City Fox has a much much much smaller territory than a Rural Fox (the territory is not controlled by extermination but food supply). Yet the City Office is effectively hunted and relentlessly so by the car. It is the major form of death for City Foxes and the average life span for a City Fox is 12 - 18 months but 3 years for a Rural Fox with some living up to 8 years.
So although the City Fox is culled and far more efficiently than a hunt its numbers are far greater. That is because food supply and not hunting is the determinant of the number of foxes.
Hunts used to kill 20 - 25,000 foxes a year. About 1.500,000 - 2,000,000 foxes are born each year. A killed foxes territory is simply taken over by another pair of foxes who will now breed.
If Trail hunting supposedly doesn't kill foxes why does it need to be banned?
Trail hunting also follows an animal based not artificial scent so is closer to the traditional sport of fox hunting Labour banned
Doh. Because they do kill foxes when they shouldn't. I think that has been shown quite clearly.
Which was of course the original purpose of the hunt until Labour in its class war banned it
I suspect it's becoming arguable that we should re-introduce deer hunting round here; both native species and muntjac are beginning to become pests. Guns, though, I think. Not packs of dogs.
Plenty of deer shot and venison eaten in the Highlands of Scotland
Plenty of deer shot everywhere. Just ask foresters and zoologists in England. It's not just the Red Deer but pest species such as muntjac .
Three of the species of deer here are invasive too.
I quite like the Chinese Water Deer.
A local pub/restuarant has venison on the menu every so often. Very tasty.
We used to buy Venison from Raby castle as they had a few herd and farmed them.
I agree, it is very very tasty.
Had it earlier in the year at a couple of local restaurants. It seems to be getting more and more popular rather than just high end places.
I’m really a fan of it.
Cheaper than beef or lamb at my local butcher - for diced.
You can use it in any receipe that calls for lamb and most for beef.
Venison lasagne is rather nice.
As a veggie option Lentils in a lasagne is rather nice too !
New year I’ll give venison lasagne a bash. The mince seems ideal, or maybe I’ll do a venison chilli con carne.
My wife makes a version of shepherd's pie that we call poachers pie: uses minced vensison and duck. (You could add some rabbit too.)
Very fine it is .
Love that name.
Does she mince her duck ?
I’ve bought breast and leg but never seen minced duck.
Yes, we get the duck minced too. The local butchers have no problem doing it.
A man has been arrested after five people were assaulted with a weapon at a hospital.
Merseyside Police say the incident began when a man attended Newton Community Hospital, in Newton-Le-Willows, on Tuesday afternoon and requested an appointment.
"At this stage, it is believed that his request was declined, and when he was asked to leave, he became increasingly agitated and damaged a counter before assaulting several people inside the hospital, with a weapon - possibly a crowbar," a police spokesperson said.
A 20-year-old man, who police say is originally from Afghanistan, has been arrested on suspicion of five counts of wounding with intent, affray and criminal damage.
Apparently he went crazy a he was not happy waiting for an appointment. Not defending him but I must admit to feeling slightly vexed when I’m stuck in a slow queue.
Slightly vexed vs attacking multiple people with a crowbar.
Was he trying out for a position with Tommy Lots-Of-Names?
A man has been arrested after five people were assaulted with a weapon at a hospital.
Merseyside Police say the incident began when a man attended Newton Community Hospital, in Newton-Le-Willows, on Tuesday afternoon and requested an appointment.
"At this stage, it is believed that his request was declined, and when he was asked to leave, he became increasingly agitated and damaged a counter before assaulting several people inside the hospital, with a weapon - possibly a crowbar," a police spokesperson said.
A 20-year-old man, who police say is originally from Afghanistan, has been arrested on suspicion of five counts of wounding with intent, affray and criminal damage.
Apparently he went crazy a he was not happy waiting for an appointment. Not defending him but I must admit to feeling slightly vexed when I’m stuck in a slow queue.
I had lunch yesterday with the executive director of a programme that helps special forces operatives reintegrate with society.
She said her job was to teach them that the “old lady with ten coupons in front of them in the queue” doesn’t behave like other SFOs…
Speaking of blood sports. As a teenager I witnessed a scorpion fight a few doors down from my local Wetherspoons in an abandoned building, which was rather random.
Never heard of a fox hunt with dogs in these parts, despite being pretty rural. Pheasant shoots are ten a penny.
Any scorpion that fights a few doors (presumably winning some) is obviously a hard bastard of a scorpion.
Bet he gets lots of space at the bar at the ‘spoons.
I’m more intrigued by the Wetherspoons being in an abandoned building
To be fair to Spoons, plenty of their pubs have given a new lease of life to abandoned buildings, especially former banks.
Although not a Spoons this place used to be a bank.
When I catch the bus to,the toon go past it and I’ve never been tempted to get off and go in, the sight of half a dozen surly looking blokes chain smoking outside puts me off a little.
You can go for a beer in the Old Bank of England on Fleet St. It is impressive in there. It used to hold gold and apparently the crown jewels at some time. Now a pub.
I suspect it’s a bit more up market than the one in Gateshead.
I may be in the smoke with a mate in the new year doing some Sweeney locations so may look it up 👍
When you say Sweeney locations do you mean from the TV series? There can't be many left can there? A lot must be redeveloped. I remember a few that weren't far from where I lived at the time if they ventured out into the sticks. Chertsey on the river rings a bell for one.
Yes. From the TV series. There’s still a few around. Me and my mate are big fans of the show going back to when we first became friends in the mid eighties.
A man has been arrested after five people were assaulted with a weapon at a hospital.
Merseyside Police say the incident began when a man attended Newton Community Hospital, in Newton-Le-Willows, on Tuesday afternoon and requested an appointment.
"At this stage, it is believed that his request was declined, and when he was asked to leave, he became increasingly agitated and damaged a counter before assaulting several people inside the hospital, with a weapon - possibly a crowbar," a police spokesperson said.
A 20-year-old man, who police say is originally from Afghanistan, has been arrested on suspicion of five counts of wounding with intent, affray and criminal damage.
Speaking of blood sports. As a teenager I witnessed a scorpion fight a few doors down from my local Wetherspoons in an abandoned building, which was rather random.
Never heard of a fox hunt with dogs in these parts, despite being pretty rural. Pheasant shoots are ten a penny.
Any scorpion that fights a few doors (presumably winning some) is obviously a hard bastard of a scorpion.
Bet he gets lots of space at the bar at the ‘spoons.
I’m more intrigued by the Wetherspoons being in an abandoned building
To be fair to Spoons, plenty of their pubs have given a new lease of life to abandoned buildings, especially former banks.
Although not a Spoons this place used to be a bank.
When I catch the bus to,the toon go past it and I’ve never been tempted to get off and go in, the sight of half a dozen surly looking blokes chain smoking outside puts me off a little.
You can go for a beer in the Old Bank of England on Fleet St. It is impressive in there. It used to hold gold and apparently the crown jewels at some time. Now a pub.
I suspect it’s a bit more up market than the one in Gateshead.
I may be in the smoke with a mate in the new year doing some Sweeney locations so may look it up 👍
When you say Sweeney locations do you mean from the TV series? There can't be many left can there? A lot must be redeveloped. I remember a few that weren't far from where I lived at the time if they ventured out into the sticks. Chertsey on the river rings a bell for one.
Yes. From the TV series. There’s still a few around. Me and my mate are big fans of the show going back to when we first became friends in the mid eighties.
So a plurality of Tory supporters oppose a trail hunting ban and less than half of Reform voters want to ban it either. The Boxing Day hunt also is a crucial part of village and rural life in areas like where I live. Hundreds turn out on the village green and the pub serves mulled wine as the hunt gathers and for its supporters in rural areas it is a big deal. Even if they have to hunt a trail or drag hunt now not a fox (whose numbers still need to be kept down).
Labour may try and ban trail hunting as most of its supporters want as it banned fox hunting but with Farage and Badenoch opposed to a trail hunting ban, if Labour lose power at the next general election it will be restored
There are perhaps only 170 hunt packs in England so this romanticised notion of every village welcoming its hunt with drinks and applause really needs to be challenged.
My only experience of this was in St Ives (Cornwall) several years ago when the Western Hunt paid the town a visit and it was all very congenial with a few supporters shouting and a small crowd applauding. For most, it was a curiousity and I suppose if there's a purpose to it, it shows urban people an aspect of rural life with which they would otherwise be unfamiliar.
I just think rural communities have a lot more serious issues than the future of the local Hunt.
Those foxhunts are spread across the country from Pembrokeshire to here in rural Essex, from Dumfriesshire to Wensleydale, the Cotswolds and Devon and will of course often stop at more than 1 village on a big hunt day than Boxing Day.
If Trail hunting supposedly doesn't kill foxes, what objection would hunts have to converting to Drag hunting? There doesn't seem to be one.
Also you keep bringing up the hunts keep the fox numbers down. If Trail hunts don't kill foxes how do they do that?
Also when fox hunts were allowed to kill they did not keep numbers down because that is not how Fox territories work. if you want I can go through the numbers for you but a simple example is to compare the City Fox to the Rural Fox. The City Fox has a much much much smaller territory than a Rural Fox (the territory is not controlled by extermination but food supply). Yet the City Office is effectively hunted and relentlessly so by the car. It is the major form of death for City Foxes and the average life span for a City Fox is 12 - 18 months but 3 years for a Rural Fox with some living up to 8 years.
So although the City Fox is culled and far more efficiently than a hunt its numbers are far greater. That is because food supply and not hunting is the determinant of the number of foxes.
Hunts used to kill 20 - 25,000 foxes a year. About 1.500,000 - 2,000,000 foxes are born each year. A killed foxes territory is simply taken over by another pair of foxes who will now breed.
If Trail hunting supposedly doesn't kill foxes why does it need to be banned?
Trail hunting also follows an animal based not artificial scent so is closer to the traditional sport of fox hunting Labour banned
Doh. Because they do kill foxes when they shouldn't. I think that has been shown quite clearly.
Which was of course the original purpose of the hunt until Labour in its class war banned it
I suspect it's becoming arguable that we should re-introduce deer hunting round here; both native species and muntjac are beginning to become pests. Guns, though, I think. Not packs of dogs.
Why Britain has a deer problem - leaving damage that costs millions
A lot of venison isn't wild these days, it's farmed. There's also a lot imported. I agree that having a lot more wild venison hunted and going into the food chain would be good.
We lead the world in country sports and coming over here to hunt should be far better promoted.
Wild deer are becoming quite a problem in parts of Highlands and Scotland. I would expect a fair bit more venison to end up on dinner plates soon
I was reading about this the other day. There are no predators to keep their numbers down so they are exploding.
There’s quite a few close to me. Get them in the local woods and along the coast to coast cycle path. As the years have gone on you see them more and more too.
Which is why we need to reintroduce lynx to the British Isles!
The Tory Shadow Attorney General is also now Abramovich’s legal counsel - apparently working to protect his assets from efforts to recover them for Ukraine.
A man has been arrested after five people were assaulted with a weapon at a hospital.
Merseyside Police say the incident began when a man attended Newton Community Hospital, in Newton-Le-Willows, on Tuesday afternoon and requested an appointment.
"At this stage, it is believed that his request was declined, and when he was asked to leave, he became increasingly agitated and damaged a counter before assaulting several people inside the hospital, with a weapon - possibly a crowbar," a police spokesperson said.
A 20-year-old man, who police say is originally from Afghanistan, has been arrested on suspicion of five counts of wounding with intent, affray and criminal damage.
Apparently he went crazy a he was not happy waiting for an appointment. Not defending him but I must admit to feeling slightly vexed when I’m stuck in a slow queue.
I had lunch yesterday with the executive director of a programme that helps special forces operatives reintegrate with society.
She said her job was to teach them that the “old lady with ten coupons in front of them in the queue” doesn’t behave like other SFOs…
Reminds me of the experts in vehicle lighting who said the thin rectangular reversing lamp on the Maestro rear lamp cluster was not possible and a redesign was needed. Suffice to say we didn’t get the business. Britax Vega did and delivered it.
I saw an MG Maestro Turbo in the Waitrose car park just before Christmas. I hung around for a bit, because I wanted to talk to the owner and ask him how the fuck it was still moving. He (and it 100% was a 'he') didn't show up in the ten minutes I was prepared to throw into the enterprise. Probably topped himself in the toilets.
Last year we went to the steam/classic car rally at Lambton Park. There was a Maestro there, not the one with the talking dashboard, but sadly no MG Maestro.
Do you remember the MG Montego turbo too. My old boss had one as a company car. Got to drive it from Cannock to Telford and back a few times.
The MG badging reminds me of the saying ‘you can put a ribbon on a turd, it’s still a turd’
Speaking of blood sports. As a teenager I witnessed a scorpion fight a few doors down from my local Wetherspoons in an abandoned building, which was rather random.
Never heard of a fox hunt with dogs in these parts, despite being pretty rural. Pheasant shoots are ten a penny.
Any scorpion that fights a few doors (presumably winning some) is obviously a hard bastard of a scorpion.
Bet he gets lots of space at the bar at the ‘spoons.
I’m more intrigued by the Wetherspoons being in an abandoned building
To be fair to Spoons, plenty of their pubs have given a new lease of life to abandoned buildings, especially former banks.
Although not a Spoons this place used to be a bank.
When I catch the bus to,the toon go past it and I’ve never been tempted to get off and go in, the sight of half a dozen surly looking blokes chain smoking outside puts me off a little.
You can go for a beer in the Old Bank of England on Fleet St. It is impressive in there. It used to hold gold and apparently the crown jewels at some time. Now a pub.
I suspect it’s a bit more up market than the one in Gateshead.
I may be in the smoke with a mate in the new year doing some Sweeney locations so may look it up 👍
When you say Sweeney locations do you mean from the TV series? There can't be many left can there? A lot must be redeveloped. I remember a few that weren't far from where I lived at the time if they ventured out into the sticks. Chertsey on the river rings a bell for one.
Yes. From the TV series. There’s still a few around. Me and my mate are big fans of the show going back to when we first became friends in the mid eighties.
Early dvd in four cardboard boxes, and two later box sets, each in one plastic box. I've resisted later upgrades. Also, the two films and pilot which are possibly also on the later box sets, I'm not sure. It comes from the days when you could walk round HMV and buy stuff, without necessarily remembering what you already had.
Reminds me of the experts in vehicle lighting who said the thin rectangular reversing lamp on the Maestro rear lamp cluster was not possible and a redesign was needed. Suffice to say we didn’t get the business. Britax Vega did and delivered it.
I saw an MG Maestro Turbo in the Waitrose car park just before Christmas. I hung around for a bit, because I wanted to talk to the owner and ask him how the fuck it was still moving. He (and it 100% was a 'he') didn't show up in the ten minutes I was prepared to throw into the enterprise. Probably topped himself in the toilets.
Last year we went to the steam/classic car rally at Lambton Park. There was a Maestro there, not the one with the talking dashboard, but sadly no MG Maestro.
Do you remember the MG Montego turbo too. My old boss had one as a company car. Got to drive it from Cannock to Telford and back a few times.
The MG badging reminds me of the saying ‘you can put a ribbon on a turd, it’s still a turd’
A friend has restored an Alfasud. I’m amazed he ever found one that hadn’t already disintegrated.
Reminds me of the experts in vehicle lighting who said the thin rectangular reversing lamp on the Maestro rear lamp cluster was not possible and a redesign was needed. Suffice to say we didn’t get the business. Britax Vega did and delivered it.
I saw an MG Maestro Turbo in the Waitrose car park just before Christmas. I hung around for a bit, because I wanted to talk to the owner and ask him how the fuck it was still moving. He (and it 100% was a 'he') didn't show up in the ten minutes I was prepared to throw into the enterprise. Probably topped himself in the toilets.
Last year we went to the steam/classic car rally at Lambton Park. There was a Maestro there, not the one with the talking dashboard, but sadly no MG Maestro.
Do you remember the MG Montego turbo too. My old boss had one as a company car. Got to drive it from Cannock to Telford and back a few times.
The MG badging reminds me of the saying ‘you can put a ribbon on a turd, it’s still a turd’
A friend has restored an Alfasud. I’m amazed he ever found one that hadn’t already disintegrated.
Reminds me of the experts in vehicle lighting who said the thin rectangular reversing lamp on the Maestro rear lamp cluster was not possible and a redesign was needed. Suffice to say we didn’t get the business. Britax Vega did and delivered it.
I saw an MG Maestro Turbo in the Waitrose car park just before Christmas. I hung around for a bit, because I wanted to talk to the owner and ask him how the fuck it was still moving. He (and it 100% was a 'he') didn't show up in the ten minutes I was prepared to throw into the enterprise. Probably topped himself in the toilets.
Last year we went to the steam/classic car rally at Lambton Park. There was a Maestro there, not the one with the talking dashboard, but sadly no MG Maestro.
Do you remember the MG Montego turbo too. My old boss had one as a company car. Got to drive it from Cannock to Telford and back a few times.
The MG badging reminds me of the saying ‘you can put a ribbon on a turd, it’s still a turd’
A friend has restored an Alfasud. I’m amazed he ever found one that hadn’t already disintegrated.
I’m reminded of the chap who “restored” a Japanese Zero that had been shot down, exploded, then left to rot in the Philippine jungle for 50 years.
Basically a new build that retained a serial number.
Reminds me of the experts in vehicle lighting who said the thin rectangular reversing lamp on the Maestro rear lamp cluster was not possible and a redesign was needed. Suffice to say we didn’t get the business. Britax Vega did and delivered it.
I saw an MG Maestro Turbo in the Waitrose car park just before Christmas. I hung around for a bit, because I wanted to talk to the owner and ask him how the fuck it was still moving. He (and it 100% was a 'he') didn't show up in the ten minutes I was prepared to throw into the enterprise. Probably topped himself in the toilets.
I followed a (mint condition) Allegro this afternoon, driven at a steady 20mph in a 30 zone by a gent who appeared to be aged c.95.
Speaking of blood sports. As a teenager I witnessed a scorpion fight a few doors down from my local Wetherspoons in an abandoned building, which was rather random.
Never heard of a fox hunt with dogs in these parts, despite being pretty rural. Pheasant shoots are ten a penny.
Any scorpion that fights a few doors (presumably winning some) is obviously a hard bastard of a scorpion.
Bet he gets lots of space at the bar at the ‘spoons.
I’m more intrigued by the Wetherspoons being in an abandoned building
To be fair to Spoons, plenty of their pubs have given a new lease of life to abandoned buildings, especially former banks.
Although not a Spoons this place used to be a bank.
When I catch the bus to,the toon go past it and I’ve never been tempted to get off and go in, the sight of half a dozen surly looking blokes chain smoking outside puts me off a little.
You can go for a beer in the Old Bank of England on Fleet St. It is impressive in there. It used to hold gold and apparently the crown jewels at some time. Now a pub.
I suspect it’s a bit more up market than the one in Gateshead.
I may be in the smoke with a mate in the new year doing some Sweeney locations so may look it up 👍
When you say Sweeney locations do you mean from the TV series? There can't be many left can there? A lot must be redeveloped. I remember a few that weren't far from where I lived at the time if they ventured out into the sticks. Chertsey on the river rings a bell for one.
Yes. From the TV series. There’s still a few around. Me and my mate are big fans of the show going back to when we first became friends in the mid eighties.
Early dvd in four cardboard boxes, and two later box sets, each in one plastic box. I've resisted later upgrades. Also, the two films and pilot which are possibly also on the later box sets, I'm not sure. It comes from the days when you could walk round HMV and buy stuff, without necessarily remembering what you already had.
The Pilot was part of the Armchair Cinema strand.
The films are now out on Blu Ray and look stunning.
I’m tempted to get season 2 on Blu Ray as well as seasons 1 and 2 of Blake’s 7 and The New Avengers.
Reminds me of the experts in vehicle lighting who said the thin rectangular reversing lamp on the Maestro rear lamp cluster was not possible and a redesign was needed. Suffice to say we didn’t get the business. Britax Vega did and delivered it.
I saw an MG Maestro Turbo in the Waitrose car park just before Christmas. I hung around for a bit, because I wanted to talk to the owner and ask him how the fuck it was still moving. He (and it 100% was a 'he') didn't show up in the ten minutes I was prepared to throw into the enterprise. Probably topped himself in the toilets.
I'm surprised Waitrose didn't have it towed off their property in ten minutes.
Reminds me of the experts in vehicle lighting who said the thin rectangular reversing lamp on the Maestro rear lamp cluster was not possible and a redesign was needed. Suffice to say we didn’t get the business. Britax Vega did and delivered it.
I saw an MG Maestro Turbo in the Waitrose car park just before Christmas. I hung around for a bit, because I wanted to talk to the owner and ask him how the fuck it was still moving. He (and it 100% was a 'he') didn't show up in the ten minutes I was prepared to throw into the enterprise. Probably topped himself in the toilets.
I followed a (mint condition) Allegro this afternoon, driven at a steady 20mph in a 30 zone by a gent who appeared to be aged c.95.
Speaking of blood sports. As a teenager I witnessed a scorpion fight a few doors down from my local Wetherspoons in an abandoned building, which was rather random.
Never heard of a fox hunt with dogs in these parts, despite being pretty rural. Pheasant shoots are ten a penny.
Any scorpion that fights a few doors (presumably winning some) is obviously a hard bastard of a scorpion.
Bet he gets lots of space at the bar at the ‘spoons.
I’m more intrigued by the Wetherspoons being in an abandoned building
To be fair to Spoons, plenty of their pubs have given a new lease of life to abandoned buildings, especially former banks.
Although not a Spoons this place used to be a bank.
When I catch the bus to,the toon go past it and I’ve never been tempted to get off and go in, the sight of half a dozen surly looking blokes chain smoking outside puts me off a little.
You can go for a beer in the Old Bank of England on Fleet St. It is impressive in there. It used to hold gold and apparently the crown jewels at some time. Now a pub.
I suspect it’s a bit more up market than the one in Gateshead.
I may be in the smoke with a mate in the new year doing some Sweeney locations so may look it up 👍
When you say Sweeney locations do you mean from the TV series? There can't be many left can there? A lot must be redeveloped. I remember a few that weren't far from where I lived at the time if they ventured out into the sticks. Chertsey on the river rings a bell for one.
Yes. From the TV series. There’s still a few around. Me and my mate are big fans of the show going back to when we first became friends in the mid eighties.
A man has been arrested after five people were assaulted with a weapon at a hospital.
Merseyside Police say the incident began when a man attended Newton Community Hospital, in Newton-Le-Willows, on Tuesday afternoon and requested an appointment.
"At this stage, it is believed that his request was declined, and when he was asked to leave, he became increasingly agitated and damaged a counter before assaulting several people inside the hospital, with a weapon - possibly a crowbar," a police spokesperson said.
A 20-year-old man, who police say is originally from Afghanistan, has been arrested on suspicion of five counts of wounding with intent, affray and criminal damage.
Racism!
It must be amusing to come from a country where you can see a doctor the same day for a small fee [1], to the British GP system.
Reminds me of the experts in vehicle lighting who said the thin rectangular reversing lamp on the Maestro rear lamp cluster was not possible and a redesign was needed. Suffice to say we didn’t get the business. Britax Vega did and delivered it.
I saw an MG Maestro Turbo in the Waitrose car park just before Christmas. I hung around for a bit, because I wanted to talk to the owner and ask him how the fuck it was still moving. He (and it 100% was a 'he') didn't show up in the ten minutes I was prepared to throw into the enterprise. Probably topped himself in the toilets.
I followed a (mint condition) Allegro this afternoon, driven at a steady 20mph in a 30 zone by a gent who appeared to be aged c.95.
8 genuine miles. He's still driving it back from the dealership...
Reminds me of the experts in vehicle lighting who said the thin rectangular reversing lamp on the Maestro rear lamp cluster was not possible and a redesign was needed. Suffice to say we didn’t get the business. Britax Vega did and delivered it.
I saw an MG Maestro Turbo in the Waitrose car park just before Christmas. I hung around for a bit, because I wanted to talk to the owner and ask him how the fuck it was still moving. He (and it 100% was a 'he') didn't show up in the ten minutes I was prepared to throw into the enterprise. Probably topped himself in the toilets.
Last year we went to the steam/classic car rally at Lambton Park. There was a Maestro there, not the one with the talking dashboard, but sadly no MG Maestro.
Do you remember the MG Montego turbo too. My old boss had one as a company car. Got to drive it from Cannock to Telford and back a few times.
The MG badging reminds me of the saying ‘you can put a ribbon on a turd, it’s still a turd’
A friend has restored an Alfasud. I’m amazed he ever found one that hadn’t already disintegrated.
South Korea’s proposed amendment to its Network Act, ostensibly focused on redressing defamatory deepfakes, reaches much further — and endangers tech cooperation.
Speaking of blood sports. As a teenager I witnessed a scorpion fight a few doors down from my local Wetherspoons in an abandoned building, which was rather random.
Never heard of a fox hunt with dogs in these parts, despite being pretty rural. Pheasant shoots are ten a penny.
Any scorpion that fights a few doors (presumably winning some) is obviously a hard bastard of a scorpion.
Bet he gets lots of space at the bar at the ‘spoons.
I’m more intrigued by the Wetherspoons being in an abandoned building
To be fair to Spoons, plenty of their pubs have given a new lease of life to abandoned buildings, especially former banks.
Although not a Spoons this place used to be a bank.
When I catch the bus to,the toon go past it and I’ve never been tempted to get off and go in, the sight of half a dozen surly looking blokes chain smoking outside puts me off a little.
You can go for a beer in the Old Bank of England on Fleet St. It is impressive in there. It used to hold gold and apparently the crown jewels at some time. Now a pub.
I suspect it’s a bit more up market than the one in Gateshead.
I may be in the smoke with a mate in the new year doing some Sweeney locations so may look it up 👍
When you say Sweeney locations do you mean from the TV series? There can't be many left can there? A lot must be redeveloped. I remember a few that weren't far from where I lived at the time if they ventured out into the sticks. Chertsey on the river rings a bell for one.
Yes. From the TV series. There’s still a few around. Me and my mate are big fans of the show going back to when we first became friends in the mid eighties.
Reminds me of the experts in vehicle lighting who said the thin rectangular reversing lamp on the Maestro rear lamp cluster was not possible and a redesign was needed. Suffice to say we didn’t get the business. Britax Vega did and delivered it.
I saw an MG Maestro Turbo in the Waitrose car park just before Christmas. I hung around for a bit, because I wanted to talk to the owner and ask him how the fuck it was still moving. He (and it 100% was a 'he') didn't show up in the ten minutes I was prepared to throw into the enterprise. Probably topped himself in the toilets.
I followed a (mint condition) Allegro this afternoon, driven at a steady 20mph in a 30 zone by a gent who appeared to be aged c.95.
8 genuine miles. He's still driving it back from the dealership...
Reminds me of the experts in vehicle lighting who said the thin rectangular reversing lamp on the Maestro rear lamp cluster was not possible and a redesign was needed. Suffice to say we didn’t get the business. Britax Vega did and delivered it.
I saw an MG Maestro Turbo in the Waitrose car park just before Christmas. I hung around for a bit, because I wanted to talk to the owner and ask him how the fuck it was still moving. He (and it 100% was a 'he') didn't show up in the ten minutes I was prepared to throw into the enterprise. Probably topped himself in the toilets.
I followed a (mint condition) Allegro this afternoon, driven at a steady 20mph in a 30 zone by a gent who appeared to be aged c.95.
String backed driving gloves a pre-requisite ?
No, I could clearly make out the white knuckles' death grip on the steering wheel.
So a plurality of Tory supporters oppose a trail hunting ban and less than half of Reform voters want to ban it either. The Boxing Day hunt also is a crucial part of village and rural life in areas like where I live. Hundreds turn out on the village green and the pub serves mulled wine as the hunt gathers and for its supporters in rural areas it is a big deal. Even if they have to hunt a trail or drag hunt now not a fox (whose numbers still need to be kept down).
Labour may try and ban trail hunting as most of its supporters want as it banned fox hunting but with Farage and Badenoch opposed to a trail hunting ban, if Labour lose power at the next general election it will be restored
There are perhaps only 170 hunt packs in England so this romanticised notion of every village welcoming its hunt with drinks and applause really needs to be challenged.
My only experience of this was in St Ives (Cornwall) several years ago when the Western Hunt paid the town a visit and it was all very congenial with a few supporters shouting and a small crowd applauding. For most, it was a curiousity and I suppose if there's a purpose to it, it shows urban people an aspect of rural life with which they would otherwise be unfamiliar.
I just think rural communities have a lot more serious issues than the future of the local Hunt.
Those foxhunts are spread across the country from Pembrokeshire to here in rural Essex, from Dumfriesshire to Wensleydale, the Cotswolds and Devon and will of course often stop at more than 1 village on a big hunt day than Boxing Day.
If Trail hunting supposedly doesn't kill foxes, what objection would hunts have to converting to Drag hunting? There doesn't seem to be one.
Also you keep bringing up the hunts keep the fox numbers down. If Trail hunts don't kill foxes how do they do that?
Also when fox hunts were allowed to kill they did not keep numbers down because that is not how Fox territories work. if you want I can go through the numbers for you but a simple example is to compare the City Fox to the Rural Fox. The City Fox has a much much much smaller territory than a Rural Fox (the territory is not controlled by extermination but food supply). Yet the City Office is effectively hunted and relentlessly so by the car. It is the major form of death for City Foxes and the average life span for a City Fox is 12 - 18 months but 3 years for a Rural Fox with some living up to 8 years.
So although the City Fox is culled and far more efficiently than a hunt its numbers are far greater. That is because food supply and not hunting is the determinant of the number of foxes.
Hunts used to kill 20 - 25,000 foxes a year. About 1.500,000 - 2,000,000 foxes are born each year. A killed foxes territory is simply taken over by another pair of foxes who will now breed.
If Trail hunting supposedly doesn't kill foxes why does it need to be banned?
Trail hunting also follows an animal based not artificial scent so is closer to the traditional sport of fox hunting Labour banned
Doh. Because they do kill foxes when they shouldn't. I think that has been shown quite clearly.
Which was of course the original purpose of the hunt until Labour in its class war banned it
I suspect it's becoming arguable that we should re-introduce deer hunting round here; both native species and muntjac are beginning to become pests. Guns, though, I think. Not packs of dogs.
Why Britain has a deer problem - leaving damage that costs millions
A lot of venison isn't wild these days, it's farmed. There's also a lot imported. I agree that having a lot more wild venison hunted and going into the food chain would be good.
We lead the world in country sports and coming over here to hunt should be far better promoted.
Wild deer are becoming quite a problem in parts of Highlands and Scotland. I would expect a fair bit more venison to end up on dinner plates soon
I was reading about this the other day. There are no predators to keep their numbers down so they are exploding.
There’s quite a few close to me. Get them in the local woods and along the coast to coast cycle path. As the years have gone on you see them more and more too.
Which is why we need to reintroduce lynx to the British Isles!
I thought the military still fly Lynxes!
British military? Not for many years now. They've been totally replaced by Wildcats.
I remember it very well because a girl I was an undergrad with at Durham with had a new one courtesy of her dad - basically child abuse.
I often used to see her at a bus stop and eventually took an interest in the monstrosity. The earth strap was only finger tight which explained a great deal of its aberrant recalcitrance. I fixed that and a few other things on it but it was still fundamentally an unreliable piece of shit.
South Korea’s proposed amendment to its Network Act, ostensibly focused on redressing defamatory deepfakes, reaches much further — and endangers tech cooperation.
So long as the US doesn't regulate other countries multinationals, then that would -at least- be consistent.
However, I haven't seen any proposals to exempt Sony or Siemens from US laws. Presumably that's coming, right?
Reminds me of the experts in vehicle lighting who said the thin rectangular reversing lamp on the Maestro rear lamp cluster was not possible and a redesign was needed. Suffice to say we didn’t get the business. Britax Vega did and delivered it.
I saw an MG Maestro Turbo in the Waitrose car park just before Christmas. I hung around for a bit, because I wanted to talk to the owner and ask him how the fuck it was still moving. He (and it 100% was a 'he') didn't show up in the ten minutes I was prepared to throw into the enterprise. Probably topped himself in the toilets.
Last year we went to the steam/classic car rally at Lambton Park. There was a Maestro there, not the one with the talking dashboard, but sadly no MG Maestro.
Do you remember the MG Montego turbo too. My old boss had one as a company car. Got to drive it from Cannock to Telford and back a few times.
The MG badging reminds me of the saying ‘you can put a ribbon on a turd, it’s still a turd’
A friend has restored an Alfasud. I’m amazed he ever found one that hadn’t already disintegrated.
I remember it very well because a girl I was an undergrad with at Durham with had a new one courtesy of her dad - basically child abuse.
I often used to see her at a bus stop and eventually took an interest in the monstrosity. The earth strap was only finger tight which explained a great deal of its aberrant recalcitrance. I fixed that and a few other things on it but it was still fundamentally an unreliable piece of shit.
That’s a new one on me, never heard a woman’s fanny called that before.
I wonder if Dura Ace fancies an MG Maestro Turbo project.
He does not. I'm doing a fuel injection conversion and R6 fork swap on a Mk.II Ariel Square Four so I already have a badly built British curiosity to occupy me this winter.
South Korea’s proposed amendment to its Network Act, ostensibly focused on redressing defamatory deepfakes, reaches much further — and endangers tech cooperation.
So long as the US doesn't regulate other countries multinationals, then that would -at least- be consistent.
However, I haven't seen any proposals to exempt Sony or Siemens from US laws. Presumably that's coming, right?
Why should they be consistent? Power doesn't work that way.
"Against this backdrop, thoughtful dissenters will consider whether an early election could be forced by via some kind of general strike blended with a dose of fuel and port blockades."
Little dig at the Telegraph there. Sure the article can’t be irrational and is well reasoned.
Clicks on article
Sees it’s Isobel Oakshott.
Clicks off promptly.
Reform know their only chance is to get an early election - within the next 12-18 months - while it is still Labour vs Not Labour and they can look an attractive and viable alternative to the current Government.
After that, it becomes more problematic as one of a number of things might happen (and I stress these are neither in order of likelihood nor desirability).
Labour gets its act together and economy starts improving The Conservative messaging on the economy in particular starts to resonate Reform's own internal contradictions start tearing it apart
1 won’t happen. Labours goose is cooked and any replacement for SKS and Reeves will be economically worse.
2 has started already. The Tories would be insane to get rid of her in my view.
3 given his track record I’d say there’s a strong chance of that but if it doesn’t happen then it’s game on.
We're a long way off an election and it's wishful thinking to imagine Labour can't or won't recover. In any case, IF economic perceptions change and people start to "feel" better (even if the truth is otherwise) that will lead a rebound in Labour polling numbers.
As for Badenoch, I've said on here a number of times she has had a good autumn but it's probable the May local elections will be painful and that will be the point of challenge. Don't underestimate the ability of people to do silly things and if 60 Conservative MPs see their seats going to Reform, that might be enough for a successful challenge.
As for Reform, the prospect of victory does wonders for party unity (look at how little trouble the "left" gave Blair after he became leader and started looking popular) so as long as they look the next Government internal dissent will be silenced but as soon as it starts becoming clear they won't win - let's say a winnable by-election isn't won - the knives will be out.
The window of opportunity for Reform isn't going to be open for ever but they are in no position to force an election and encouraging what amounts to civil insurrection to get one is ludicrous. The only way there would be an election is if Labour MPs wanted one and on most polling numbers most won't.
biggest wobble so far for reform was after they won a by-election and everyone started to pay attention to what their new MP had to say.
They need to get a handle on candidate vetting and selection.
No party seems to do the levels of checks, for candidates (or anything else) that are standard for junior bank employees.
These would be a trawl for convictions, court judgements, Companies House and social media. Done through a number of security companies at a fixed price per head.
A basic and much cheaper first step would be to require an enhanced DBS.
True - and done by the same companies. The one I am taking about is not much more expensive, anyway.
South Korea’s proposed amendment to its Network Act, ostensibly focused on redressing defamatory deepfakes, reaches much further — and endangers tech cooperation.
So long as the US doesn't regulate other countries multinationals, then that would -at least- be consistent.
However, I haven't seen any proposals to exempt Sony or Siemens from US laws. Presumably that's coming, right?
Why should they be consistent? Power doesn't work that way.
It does in a conventional international trade arrangement. The fact that convention has been thrown to the dogs, and by exerting power Trump has pissed off e.g. Canada who have as a collective taken their bat and ball home, screwing, for example Floridian tourism from East Coast Canada.
I remember it very well because a girl I was an undergrad with at Durham with had a new one courtesy of her dad - basically child abuse.
I often used to see her at a bus stop and eventually took an interest in the monstrosity. The earth strap was only finger tight which explained a great deal of its aberrant recalcitrance. I fixed that and a few other things on it but it was still fundamentally an unreliable piece of shit.
So a plurality of Tory supporters oppose a trail hunting ban and less than half of Reform voters want to ban it either. The Boxing Day hunt also is a crucial part of village and rural life in areas like where I live. Hundreds turn out on the village green and the pub serves mulled wine as the hunt gathers and for its supporters in rural areas it is a big deal. Even if they have to hunt a trail or drag hunt now not a fox (whose numbers still need to be kept down).
Labour may try and ban trail hunting as most of its supporters want as it banned fox hunting but with Farage and Badenoch opposed to a trail hunting ban, if Labour lose power at the next general election it will be restored
There are perhaps only 170 hunt packs in England so this romanticised notion of every village welcoming its hunt with drinks and applause really needs to be challenged.
My only experience of this was in St Ives (Cornwall) several years ago when the Western Hunt paid the town a visit and it was all very congenial with a few supporters shouting and a small crowd applauding. For most, it was a curiousity and I suppose if there's a purpose to it, it shows urban people an aspect of rural life with which they would otherwise be unfamiliar.
I just think rural communities have a lot more serious issues than the future of the local Hunt.
Those foxhunts are spread across the country from Pembrokeshire to here in rural Essex, from Dumfriesshire to Wensleydale, the Cotswolds and Devon and will of course often stop at more than 1 village on a big hunt day than Boxing Day.
If Trail hunting supposedly doesn't kill foxes, what objection would hunts have to converting to Drag hunting? There doesn't seem to be one.
Also you keep bringing up the hunts keep the fox numbers down. If Trail hunts don't kill foxes how do they do that?
Also when fox hunts were allowed to kill they did not keep numbers down because that is not how Fox territories work. if you want I can go through the numbers for you but a simple example is to compare the City Fox to the Rural Fox. The City Fox has a much much much smaller territory than a Rural Fox (the territory is not controlled by extermination but food supply). Yet the City Office is effectively hunted and relentlessly so by the car. It is the major form of death for City Foxes and the average life span for a City Fox is 12 - 18 months but 3 years for a Rural Fox with some living up to 8 years.
So although the City Fox is culled and far more efficiently than a hunt its numbers are far greater. That is because food supply and not hunting is the determinant of the number of foxes.
Hunts used to kill 20 - 25,000 foxes a year. About 1.500,000 - 2,000,000 foxes are born each year. A killed foxes territory is simply taken over by another pair of foxes who will now breed.
If Trail hunting supposedly doesn't kill foxes why does it need to be banned?
Trail hunting also follows an animal based not artificial scent so is closer to the traditional sport of fox hunting Labour banned
Doh. Because they do kill foxes when they shouldn't. I think that has been shown quite clearly.
Which was of course the original purpose of the hunt until Labour in its class war banned it
I suspect it's becoming arguable that we should re-introduce deer hunting round here; both native species and muntjac are beginning to become pests. Guns, though, I think. Not packs of dogs.
Why Britain has a deer problem - leaving damage that costs millions
A lot of venison isn't wild these days, it's farmed. There's also a lot imported. I agree that having a lot more wild venison hunted and going into the food chain would be good.
We lead the world in country sports and coming over here to hunt should be far better promoted.
Wild deer are becoming quite a problem in parts of Highlands and Scotland. I would expect a fair bit more venison to end up on dinner plates soon
I was reading about this the other day. There are no predators to keep their numbers down so they are exploding.
There’s quite a few close to me. Get them in the local woods and along the coast to coast cycle path. As the years have gone on you see them more and more too.
Which is why we need to reintroduce lynx to the British Isles!
I thought the military still fly Lynxes!
British military? Not for many years now. They've been totally replaced by Wildcats.
"You're gonna do exactly as you're told! Jack, we both know he was the brains of your particular operation. You can't beat me, you're gonna pay me every dollar. Otherwise, you, the Wildcat, and every innocent person on that bus, are gonna end up just like your friend. You paying attention? Jack, you listening to me? Jack? Jack!"
I remember it very well because a girl I was an undergrad with at Durham with had a new one courtesy of her dad - basically child abuse.
I often used to see her at a bus stop and eventually took an interest in the monstrosity. The earth strap was only finger tight which explained a great deal of its aberrant recalcitrance. I fixed that and a few other things on it but it was still fundamentally an unreliable piece of shit.
Reminds me of the experts in vehicle lighting who said the thin rectangular reversing lamp on the Maestro rear lamp cluster was not possible and a redesign was needed. Suffice to say we didn’t get the business. Britax Vega did and delivered it.
I saw an MG Maestro Turbo in the Waitrose car park just before Christmas. I hung around for a bit, because I wanted to talk to the owner and ask him how the fuck it was still moving. He (and it 100% was a 'he') didn't show up in the ten minutes I was prepared to throw into the enterprise. Probably topped himself in the toilets.
I followed a (mint condition) Allegro this afternoon, driven at a steady 20mph in a 30 zone by a gent who appeared to be aged c.95.
8 genuine miles. He's still driving it back from the dealership...
Speaking of blood sports. As a teenager I witnessed a scorpion fight a few doors down from my local Wetherspoons in an abandoned building, which was rather random.
Never heard of a fox hunt with dogs in these parts, despite being pretty rural. Pheasant shoots are ten a penny.
Any scorpion that fights a few doors (presumably winning some) is obviously a hard bastard of a scorpion.
Bet he gets lots of space at the bar at the ‘spoons.
I’m more intrigued by the Wetherspoons being in an abandoned building
To be fair to Spoons, plenty of their pubs have given a new lease of life to abandoned buildings, especially former banks.
Although not a Spoons this place used to be a bank.
When I catch the bus to,the toon go past it and I’ve never been tempted to get off and go in, the sight of half a dozen surly looking blokes chain smoking outside puts me off a little.
You can go for a beer in the Old Bank of England on Fleet St. It is impressive in there. It used to hold gold and apparently the crown jewels at some time. Now a pub.
I suspect it’s a bit more up market than the one in Gateshead.
I may be in the smoke with a mate in the new year doing some Sweeney locations so may look it up 👍
When you say Sweeney locations do you mean from the TV series? There can't be many left can there? A lot must be redeveloped. I remember a few that weren't far from where I lived at the time if they ventured out into the sticks. Chertsey on the river rings a bell for one.
Yes. From the TV series. There’s still a few around. Me and my mate are big fans of the show going back to when we first became friends in the mid eighties.
I remember it very well because a girl I was an undergrad with at Durham with had a new one courtesy of her dad - basically child abuse.
I often used to see her at a bus stop and eventually took an interest in the monstrosity. The earth strap was only finger tight which explained a great deal of its aberrant recalcitrance. I fixed that and a few other things on it but it was still fundamentally an unreliable piece of shit.
That’s a new one on me, never heard a woman’s fanny called that before.
So a plurality of Tory supporters oppose a trail hunting ban and less than half of Reform voters want to ban it either. The Boxing Day hunt also is a crucial part of village and rural life in areas like where I live. Hundreds turn out on the village green and the pub serves mulled wine as the hunt gathers and for its supporters in rural areas it is a big deal. Even if they have to hunt a trail or drag hunt now not a fox (whose numbers still need to be kept down).
Labour may try and ban trail hunting as most of its supporters want as it banned fox hunting but with Farage and Badenoch opposed to a trail hunting ban, if Labour lose power at the next general election it will be restored
There are perhaps only 170 hunt packs in England so this romanticised notion of every village welcoming its hunt with drinks and applause really needs to be challenged.
My only experience of this was in St Ives (Cornwall) several years ago when the Western Hunt paid the town a visit and it was all very congenial with a few supporters shouting and a small crowd applauding. For most, it was a curiousity and I suppose if there's a purpose to it, it shows urban people an aspect of rural life with which they would otherwise be unfamiliar.
I just think rural communities have a lot more serious issues than the future of the local Hunt.
Those foxhunts are spread across the country from Pembrokeshire to here in rural Essex, from Dumfriesshire to Wensleydale, the Cotswolds and Devon and will of course often stop at more than 1 village on a big hunt day than Boxing Day.
If Trail hunting supposedly doesn't kill foxes, what objection would hunts have to converting to Drag hunting? There doesn't seem to be one.
Also you keep bringing up the hunts keep the fox numbers down. If Trail hunts don't kill foxes how do they do that?
Also when fox hunts were allowed to kill they did not keep numbers down because that is not how Fox territories work. if you want I can go through the numbers for you but a simple example is to compare the City Fox to the Rural Fox. The City Fox has a much much much smaller territory than a Rural Fox (the territory is not controlled by extermination but food supply). Yet the City Office is effectively hunted and relentlessly so by the car. It is the major form of death for City Foxes and the average life span for a City Fox is 12 - 18 months but 3 years for a Rural Fox with some living up to 8 years.
So although the City Fox is culled and far more efficiently than a hunt its numbers are far greater. That is because food supply and not hunting is the determinant of the number of foxes.
Hunts used to kill 20 - 25,000 foxes a year. About 1.500,000 - 2,000,000 foxes are born each year. A killed foxes territory is simply taken over by another pair of foxes who will now breed.
If Trail hunting supposedly doesn't kill foxes why does it need to be banned?
Trail hunting also follows an animal based not artificial scent so is closer to the traditional sport of fox hunting Labour banned
Doh. Because they do kill foxes when they shouldn't. I think that has been shown quite clearly.
Which was of course the original purpose of the hunt until Labour in its class war banned it
I suspect it's becoming arguable that we should re-introduce deer hunting round here; both native species and muntjac are beginning to become pests. Guns, though, I think. Not packs of dogs.
Why Britain has a deer problem - leaving damage that costs millions
A lot of venison isn't wild these days, it's farmed. There's also a lot imported. I agree that having a lot more wild venison hunted and going into the food chain would be good.
We lead the world in country sports and coming over here to hunt should be far better promoted.
Wild deer are becoming quite a problem in parts of Highlands and Scotland. I would expect a fair bit more venison to end up on dinner plates soon
I was reading about this the other day. There are no predators to keep their numbers down so they are exploding.
There’s quite a few close to me. Get them in the local woods and along the coast to coast cycle path. As the years have gone on you see them more and more too.
Which is why we need to reintroduce lynx to the British Isles!
I thought the military still fly Lynxes!
British military? Not for many years now. They've been totally replaced by Wildcats.
"You're gonna do exactly as you're told! Jack, we both know he was the brains of your particular operation. You can't beat me, you're gonna pay me every dollar. Otherwise, you, the Wildcat, and every innocent person on that bus, are gonna end up just like your friend. You paying attention? Jack, you listening to me? Jack? Jack!"
Comments
Modern EV batteries degrade at an average rate of about 1.8% per year. EVs generally retain over 80% of their original capacity even after 200,000 miles.
Battery replacement is a £10-15,000 thing. Dropping all the time, as well.
My students would frequently gnaw on one during break time.
We are wrong to anthropomorphize their behavior.
As you say, most batteries will persist a lot longer than that. My ICE is now well over 100,000 tbh the rate of repairs is now pushing us towards a replacement - not sure why EVs are held to a higher standard.
PS I'm an idiot. I was thinking of performance, but if the mpg goes down it is the same issue. I'm a Twit.
Also only saw I think two petrol stations the whole month.
Didn’t Jeremy buy a second hand Ferrari that had about 90bhp, when tested?
Which brings sudden memories of a certain Cabinet Minister, but on further reflection ISTR that was made up anyway.
So my original quip was ok then and I didn't need to humiliate myself?
Idea didn’t last of course.
Prices fall over time in general especially as the initial investment costs are paid back. I noticed AESC in Sunderland actually started producing batteries.
Approve: 12%
Disapprove: 68%
Net: -56
https://x.com/PolitlcsUK/status/2006034815104024833?s=20
She was a decent actress too.
He was Frank Kembel in the first one of the TV series. Met a grisly end.
Audi customer service was shit too.
So, yes, that experience (we warmly embraced having a Hybrid) has made me a little wary.
Yep that is her. They had a weird house (as you might imagine would be the case)
https://youtu.be/w9quauTf7fY?si=5C6Webb0shnkcy6M
I wonder how many Labour politicians will tweet approvingly about that compared with how many who tweeted about an Egyptian Islamist.
In the early episodes it was a far bigger team than just Carter and Regan. Although the other members vanished relatively quickly some came back for the movies. Guys like John Flanagan, Martyn Adams and Nick Brimble appeared in the early ones.
I’m going from memory too.
They dealt in knicked cars I’m sure. Regans girlfriend was menaced by Lake with an iron to find out who her partner was who was tracking them.
Apart from the fact it was theoretically possible and demonstrated, repeatedly, in testing. But multiple organisations.
So when Tesla started rolling out superchargers this was another Complete Surprise. That wasn’t.
Barristers should not be judged by the character of their clients. But his political position is clearly untenable.
https://x.com/JakeBenRichards/status/2005616406214381611
What does PB think ?
Yes, I know most of them pretty well 😀
A man has been arrested after five people were assaulted with a weapon at a hospital.
Merseyside Police say the incident began when a man attended Newton Community Hospital, in Newton-Le-Willows, on Tuesday afternoon and requested an appointment.
"At this stage, it is believed that his request was declined, and when he was asked to leave, he became increasingly agitated and damaged a counter before assaulting several people inside the hospital, with a weapon - possibly a crowbar," a police spokesperson said.
A 20-year-old man, who police say is originally from Afghanistan, has been arrested on suspicion of five counts of wounding with intent, affray and criminal damage.
So you could reduce immigrant headcounts meet government targets…
Was he trying out for a position with Tommy Lots-Of-Names?
She said her job was to teach them that the “old lady with ten coupons in front of them in the queue” doesn’t behave like other SFOs…
Sid and Doris doesn't begin to describe them............
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv3gAaPyGbI
Do you remember the MG Montego turbo too. My old boss had one as a company car. Got to drive it from Cannock to Telford and back a few times.
The MG badging reminds me of the saying ‘you can put a ribbon on a turd, it’s still a turd’
Basically a new build that retained a serial number.
The films are now out on Blu Ray and look stunning.
I’m tempted to get season 2 on Blu Ray as well as seasons 1 and 2 of Blake’s 7 and The New Avengers.
Not the image they want to be selling...
Just listened to the last "Uncanny" of the series podcast. Very disturbing. Worth listening to. It's on BBC sounds.
[1] I made this up. Bet it's true, though.
https://www.howmanyleft.co.uk/?q=alfasud
(Still 31 MG Maestro Turbo licensed in 2025 - with another 185 SORN "projects"....if anyone was curious)
https://x.com/UnderSecPD/status/2006000521979769130
South Korea’s proposed amendment to its Network Act, ostensibly focused on redressing defamatory deepfakes, reaches much further — and endangers tech cooperation.
It's possible.
Drunk dancing into drink (3,3,5)
I often used to see her at a bus stop and eventually took an interest in the monstrosity. The earth strap was only finger tight which explained a great deal of its aberrant recalcitrance. I fixed that and a few other things on it but it was still fundamentally an unreliable piece of shit.
However, I haven't seen any proposals to exempt Sony or Siemens from US laws. Presumably that's coming, right?
https://x.com/metpoliceuk/status/2006002340474609794
Primrose Hill will be closed on New Year’s Eve this year ⛔There will be fencing, security and a police presence to prevent access.
If you had planned to head there to get a view of the central London fireworks, please make alternative arrangements.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crrkreqvzy2o
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/4uOF59GvaTw
80 seconds of #ClassicDom.