All those people facing higher electricity bills will thank you for your help in this matter.
But lower food bills
80 hectares in the NE of England* is not going to put a dent in global food prices. Nor is the solar farm in energy prices tbf, but there are other reasons why you might value that more than the other.
* rated only moderate for agricultural value, no SSSI etc etc
It was well-argued opposition to it.
I think they need to reconsider then come back with a modified proposal.
Alternatively: domestic clean energy generation close to large urban population centre and existing transmission, constructed on ecological desert agricultural monoculture adjacent to an industrial estate, rejected by NIMBYs.
This is why we need nodal pricing. NIMBYism is perfectly rational unless people enjoy energy cost discounts for living next to this stuff.
We 100% need some kind of regional electricity pricing.
Let businesses set up electricity intensive businesses where the real cost is low (like Scotland). And let NIMBYs in the south reel the brunt of the backlash against this sort of thing when costs go much higher.
For reference I live in London so certainly have nothing to gain from such a policy.
All those people facing higher electricity bills will thank you for your help in this matter.
But lower food bills
80 hectares in the NE of England* is not going to put a dent in global food prices. Nor is the solar farm in energy prices tbf, but there are other reasons why you might value that more than the other.
* rated only moderate for agricultural value, no SSSI etc etc
Trouble is that, if you live on or in the green belt, its main value is that you, personally, don't have any development around you. And whilst Bart's "if you don't own it, you don't get a say in what happens to it" has an elegant simplicity, it's not where we are and good luck winning an election on that platform.
And I suspect that even if you offered people free energy bills forever, they would still rather not have the development.
Here's the thing: the Green Belt is just a subsidy from people who don't own their homes, and towards people who do own homes on the edge of large towns and cities.
I find that quite morally hard to justify.
Mitigated somewhat in Scotland by right to roam. Even without that, I get immense pleasure from walking in the Lake District or cycling through the NE of England , so it’s not without value to those who live elsewhere.
Adam Boulton talking mean-spiritedly about Ann Widdecombe in front of what looks like a picture of himself. He describes her – a possible murder victim – as a 'spinster', a 'battleaxe', 'a bruiser', an 'old maid', and mentions her virginity, before speculating irresponsibly about her death. Horrible, horrible stuff"
A woman registered for a public JD Vance event using the official signup form, got a confirmation on White House letterhead, and stood in line for thirty minutes before five people, two of them armed Secret Service agents, pulled her out by name and told her, "we know where you stand."
Her offense was running a cat meme Instagram account with two million followers. The ACLU is now suing the Executive Office of the President and the Secret Service over it, and the strongest detail in the whole complaint is not the ejection itself. It is that Secret Service agents apparently monitor a satire account closely enough to recognize its founder on sight in a rope line in Bangor, Maine.
Vance called his own 2021 cat ladies comment one of the dumbest things he has ever said. He was right the first time. Weaponizing federal security personnel against the woman who turned that quote into a punchline is a worse unforced error than the original one. https://x.com/micyoung75/status/2075324362597482926
A woman registered for a public JD Vance event using the official signup form, got a confirmation on White House letterhead, and stood in line for thirty minutes before five people, two of them armed Secret Service agents, pulled her out by name and told her, "we know where you stand."
Her offense was running a cat meme Instagram account with two million followers. The ACLU is now suing the Executive Office of the President and the Secret Service over it, and the strongest detail in the whole complaint is not the ejection itself. It is that Secret Service agents apparently monitor a satire account closely enough to recognize its founder on sight in a rope line in Bangor, Maine.
Vance called his own 2021 cat ladies comment one of the dumbest things he has ever said. He was right the first time. Weaponizing federal security personnel against the woman who turned that quote into a punchline is a worse unforced error than the original one. https://x.com/micyoung75/status/2075324362597482926
Probably not his error in the second case, though. The secret service would do that without his direction.
Whatever you think about Ann Widdecombe's opinions - and I disagree with 95 per cent of them - a number of people have said that although she was often trunculent in debate, she was personally very affable. She did a roadshow some years ago with the gay Conservative blogger Iain Dale and there was such a rapport between them that one member of the audience asked if they were an item!
All those people facing higher electricity bills will thank you for your help in this matter.
But lower food bills
80 hectares in the NE of England* is not going to put a dent in global food prices. Nor is the solar farm in energy prices tbf, but there are other reasons why you might value that more than the other.
* rated only moderate for agricultural value, no SSSI etc etc
Trouble is that, if you live on or in the green belt, its main value is that you, personally, don't have any development around you. And whilst Bart's "if you don't own it, you don't get a say in what happens to it" has an elegant simplicity, it's not where we are and good luck winning an election on that platform.
And I suspect that even if you offered people free energy bills forever, they would still rather not have the development.
Agree - though I think from the evidence in things like vouchers for walking 10,000 steps, people have irrationally large positive responses to even small incentives.
And free year-round energy from living close to the local solar farm is a pretty big incentive.
A solar farm, like a battery energy storage site, is a pretty benign form of development as far as things go.
Compare to a sewage works, pig farm, factory, housing estate, quarry or landfill site. Most people would choose the solar farm every time in preference.
Scientology re-education centre, OnlyFans location house, FPV military training area…
PM Starmer now speaking says the most important thing is for the public to help the police arrest as quickly as possible the dangerous man who committed this act and come forward with any information. Starmer has already spoken to Farage and Burnham and the Chief Constable and sends his condolences to Ann Widdecombe's family and friends.
Starmer won't be drawn yet on whether this was a politically motivated assassination as with the murders of MPs Jo Cox and David Amess
Nor should he. Assuming he knows not much more than we do, making any statement that might imply it was politically motivated would be terrible behaviour.
We will know soon enough and really it makes bugger all difference to the fact that an elderly lady has been killed (assuming it turns out it was murder)
Even if Starmer does know much more than we do, even if he has been told that the police have a pretty shrewd idea of who, what and why, such a statement would still be pretty terrible. If this case goes to trial, we will find out soon enough.
Paddy O'Connell on R4 PM didn't have Starmer on, but instead had Prime Minister-in-waiting Kemi Badenoch on for her opinion.
Shouldn't X post immigration jockeys be complaining that the Police have released information that the perp is white?
All those people facing higher electricity bills will thank you for your help in this matter.
But lower food bills
80 hectares in the NE of England* is not going to put a dent in global food prices. Nor is the solar farm in energy prices tbf, but there are other reasons why you might value that more than the other.
* rated only moderate for agricultural value, no SSSI etc etc
Trouble is that, if you live on or in the green belt, its main value is that you, personally, don't have any development around you. And whilst Bart's "if you don't own it, you don't get a say in what happens to it" has an elegant simplicity, it's not where we are and good luck winning an election on that platform.
And I suspect that even if you offered people free energy bills forever, they would still rather not have the development.
Here's the thing: the Green Belt is just a subsidy from people who don't own their homes, and towards people who do own homes on the edge of large towns and cities.
I find that quite morally hard to justify.
The motivation for the creation of the green belt was more a sort of luddite opposition to the growth of towns and cities, but it's survived so long because most people prefer fields to buildings.
It's the combination of green belt with opposition to high housing densities - everyone naturally wanting a detached house with garden - that produces problems. You can have one, but having both is problematic, unless you shrink the population to roughly the level at the time the green belt was established.
I think it's a symptom of the prevailing culture in Britain where what British people hate most is other people. This recent article in the Southern Star would be unthinkable in Britain.
Whatever you think about Ann Widdecombe's opinions - and I disagree with 95 per cent of them - a number of people have said that although she was often trunculent in debate, she was personally very affable. She did a roadshow some years ago with the gay Conservative blogger Iain Dale and there was such a rapport between them that one member of the audience asked if they were an item!
Dale's own words on Tatchell's less than edifying tweet:
I will curb my language but that tweet is disgusting. You profess to be an advocate of human rights, and the right to be treated with dignity after death is a basic human right everyone should have, yet you rejoice in her death. Yes, her religion guided her views on equality issues, and I had many disagreements with her, but as a gay man I counted her as a friend, as did many others. She was actually a profoundly kind person. She endorsed my candidacy knowing of my sexuality. She softened her views on equal marriage and told me in 2019 she would not support reversing it. So be ashamed of yourself today, Peter. You do some great work, but in this instance it's you that's the bigot. Bigoted against the dead, and bringing upset to those of us who counted Ann as a friend. Think on that.
Adam Boulton talking mean-spiritedly about Ann Widdecombe in front of what looks like a picture of himself. He describes her – a possible murder victim – as a 'spinster', a 'battleaxe', 'a bruiser', an 'old maid', and mentions her virginity, before speculating irresponsibly about her death. Horrible, horrible stuff"
A woman registered for a public JD Vance event using the official signup form, got a confirmation on White House letterhead, and stood in line for thirty minutes before five people, two of them armed Secret Service agents, pulled her out by name and told her, "we know where you stand."
Her offense was running a cat meme Instagram account with two million followers. The ACLU is now suing the Executive Office of the President and the Secret Service over it, and the strongest detail in the whole complaint is not the ejection itself. It is that Secret Service agents apparently monitor a satire account closely enough to recognize its founder on sight in a rope line in Bangor, Maine.
Vance called his own 2021 cat ladies comment one of the dumbest things he has ever said. He was right the first time. Weaponizing federal security personnel against the woman who turned that quote into a punchline is a worse unforced error than the original one. https://x.com/micyoung75/status/2075324362597482926
They like to mock our own free speech levels, and there's some fairness to it, but they aren't above a bit of intimidation to suppress commentary.
Whatever you think about Ann Widdecombe's opinions - and I disagree with 95 per cent of them - a number of people have said that although she was often trunculent in debate, she was personally very affable. She did a roadshow some years ago with the gay Conservative blogger Iain Dale and there was such a rapport between them that one member of the audience asked if they were an item!
Dale's own words on Tatchell's less than edifying tweet:
I will curb my language but that tweet is disgusting. You profess to be an advocate of human rights, and the right to be treated with dignity after death is a basic human right everyone should have, yet you rejoice in her death. Yes, her religion guided her views on equality issues, and I had many disagreements with her, but as a gay man I counted her as a friend, as did many others. She was actually a profoundly kind person. She endorsed my candidacy knowing of my sexuality. She softened her views on equal marriage and told me in 2019 she would not support reversing it. So be ashamed of yourself today, Peter. You do some great work, but in this instance it's you that's the bigot. Bigoted against the dead, and bringing upset to those of us who counted Ann as a friend. Think on that.
All those people facing higher electricity bills will thank you for your help in this matter.
But lower food bills
80 hectares in the NE of England* is not going to put a dent in global food prices. Nor is the solar farm in energy prices tbf, but there are other reasons why you might value that more than the other.
* rated only moderate for agricultural value, no SSSI etc etc
Trouble is that, if you live on or in the green belt, its main value is that you, personally, don't have any development around you. And whilst Bart's "if you don't own it, you don't get a say in what happens to it" has an elegant simplicity, it's not where we are and good luck winning an election on that platform.
And I suspect that even if you offered people free energy bills forever, they would still rather not have the development.
Here's the thing: the Green Belt is just a subsidy from people who don't own their homes, and towards people who do own homes on the edge of large towns and cities.
I find that quite morally hard to justify.
The motivation for the creation of the green belt was more a sort of luddite opposition to the growth of towns and cities, but it's survived so long because most people prefer fields to buildings.
It's the combination of green belt with opposition to high housing densities - everyone naturally wanting a detached house with garden - that produces problems. You can have one, but having both is problematic, unless you shrink the population to roughly the level at the time the green belt was established.
I think it's a symptom of the prevailing culture in Britain where what British people hate most is other people. This recent article in the Southern Star would be unthinkable in Britain.
Relaxed planning rules a lifeline for rural housing
NEW planning guidelines relaxing rules around rural one-off housing have been given a broad welcome in West Cork.
It flipped the expectation that town growth was an ok thing, and now our culture is outright hostile to any type of construction. Yes, even not on green belt.
It infuriates me but it won't change, parties occasionally make noises about changing things but there's too many votes to be lost to actually follow through.
A woman registered for a public JD Vance event using the official signup form, got a confirmation on White House letterhead, and stood in line for thirty minutes before five people, two of them armed Secret Service agents, pulled her out by name and told her, "we know where you stand."
Her offense was running a cat meme Instagram account with two million followers. The ACLU is now suing the Executive Office of the President and the Secret Service over it, and the strongest detail in the whole complaint is not the ejection itself. It is that Secret Service agents apparently monitor a satire account closely enough to recognize its founder on sight in a rope line in Bangor, Maine.
Vance called his own 2021 cat ladies comment one of the dumbest things he has ever said. He was right the first time. Weaponizing federal security personnel against the woman who turned that quote into a punchline is a worse unforced error than the original one. https://x.com/micyoung75/status/2075324362597482926
Probably not his error in the second case, though. The secret service would do that without his direction.
Presume this is automated, scraping every social site, correlating and pushing the insights to a shiny dashboard. Not easy being a subversive in the tech age,
Why is it always heavily odds on that the next vote fixing story will involve Republicans ?
Three Florida Republicans were just charged with creating a fake voter guide to steal an election.
They did not hack the machines. They did not stuff the ballot box. They printed a fake Republican voter guide, made it look nearly identical to the real one, and mailed it to tens of thousands of voters before a 2024 primary.
Whatever you think about Ann Widdecombe's opinions - and I disagree with 95 per cent of them - a number of people have said that although she was often trunculent in debate, she was personally very affable. She did a roadshow some years ago with the gay Conservative blogger Iain Dale and there was such a rapport between them that one member of the audience asked if they were an item!
Dale's own words on Tatchell's less than edifying tweet:
I will curb my language but that tweet is disgusting. You profess to be an advocate of human rights, and the right to be treated with dignity after death is a basic human right everyone should have, yet you rejoice in her death. Yes, her religion guided her views on equality issues, and I had many disagreements with her, but as a gay man I counted her as a friend, as did many others. She was actually a profoundly kind person. She endorsed my candidacy knowing of my sexuality. She softened her views on equal marriage and told me in 2019 she would not support reversing it. So be ashamed of yourself today, Peter. You do some great work, but in this instance it's you that's the bigot. Bigoted against the dead, and bringing upset to those of us who counted Ann as a friend. Think on that.
Well that is good, even if his claim he was not celebrating is a bit weak. It's online culture at work perhaps, people are so used to speaking without filter and finding an audience for whatever they might say, that they cannot easily recognise when the cross a line, or they revel in crossing it.
We don't want people self-censoring all their thoughts and opinions for fear of giving offence, but the needle could perhaps swing back a little the other way, so that there's a bit more shame to go around.
Alternatively: domestic clean energy generation close to large urban population centre and existing transmission, constructed on ecological desert agricultural monoculture adjacent to an industrial estate, rejected by NIMBYs.
This is why we need nodal pricing. NIMBYism is perfectly rational unless people enjoy energy cost discounts for living next to this stuff.
We 100% need some kind of regional electricity pricing.
Let businesses set up electricity intensive businesses where the real cost is low (like Scotland). And let NIMBYs in the south reel the brunt of the backlash against this sort of thing when costs go much higher.
For reference I live in London so certainly have nothing to gain from such a policy.
We were talking yesterday about generation constraints and associated balancing costs that are due to a not-fit-for-purpose National Grid. Fix the Grid upgrade and your constraint problems mostly disappear.
Interesting analysis on what's causing constraints now and will cause constraints over the next ten years. While a lot of the constraints as the moment are triggered by North of Scotland wind generators, this is a largely temporary problem. The big constraints will be in East Anglia.
Should add there is regional pricing. Living in London you pay about a penny more per unit wholesale than people living in Scotland and the North of England because your transmission costs from energy sources are higher.
Why is it always heavily odds on that the next vote fixing story will involve Republicans ?
Three Florida Republicans were just charged with creating a fake voter guide to steal an election.
They did not hack the machines. They did not stuff the ballot box. They printed a fake Republican voter guide, made it look nearly identical to the real one, and mailed it to tens of thousands of voters before a 2024 primary.
Whatever you think about Ann Widdecombe's opinions - and I disagree with 95 per cent of them - a number of people have said that although she was often trunculent in debate, she was personally very affable. She did a roadshow some years ago with the gay Conservative blogger Iain Dale and there was such a rapport between them that one member of the audience asked if they were an item!
Dale's own words on Tatchell's less than edifying tweet:
I will curb my language but that tweet is disgusting. You profess to be an advocate of human rights, and the right to be treated with dignity after death is a basic human right everyone should have, yet you rejoice in her death. Yes, her religion guided her views on equality issues, and I had many disagreements with her, but as a gay man I counted her as a friend, as did many others. She was actually a profoundly kind person. She endorsed my candidacy knowing of my sexuality. She softened her views on equal marriage and told me in 2019 she would not support reversing it. So be ashamed of yourself today, Peter. You do some great work, but in this instance it's you that's the bigot. Bigoted against the dead, and bringing upset to those of us who counted Ann as a friend. Think on that.
Well that is good, even if his claim he was not celebrating is a bit weak. It's online culture at work perhaps, people are so used to speaking without filter and finding an audience for whatever they might say, that they cannot easily recognise when the cross a line, or they revel in crossing it.
We don't want people self-censoring all their thoughts and opinions for fear of giving offence, but the needle could perhaps swing back a little the other way, so that there's a bit more shame to go around.
Once said, never unsaid.
People of Tatchell's brand of Labour socialism are fundamentally evil. Starmer pitched it right for once.
A woman registered for a public JD Vance event using the official signup form, got a confirmation on White House letterhead, and stood in line for thirty minutes before five people, two of them armed Secret Service agents, pulled her out by name and told her, "we know where you stand."
Her offense was running a cat meme Instagram account with two million followers. The ACLU is now suing the Executive Office of the President and the Secret Service over it, and the strongest detail in the whole complaint is not the ejection itself. It is that Secret Service agents apparently monitor a satire account closely enough to recognize its founder on sight in a rope line in Bangor, Maine.
Vance called his own 2021 cat ladies comment one of the dumbest things he has ever said. He was right the first time. Weaponizing federal security personnel against the woman who turned that quote into a punchline is a worse unforced error than the original one. https://x.com/micyoung75/status/2075324362597482926
Probably not his error in the second case, though. The secret service would do that without his direction.
Presume this is automated, scraping every social site, correlating and pushing the insights to a shiny dashboard. Not easy being a subversive in the tech age,
It's a good time to start up an autocratic regime on the cheap. Not good news for democracy.
All those people facing higher electricity bills will thank you for your help in this matter.
But lower food bills
80 hectares in the NE of England* is not going to put a dent in global food prices. Nor is the solar farm in energy prices tbf, but there are other reasons why you might value that more than the other.
* rated only moderate for agricultural value, no SSSI etc etc
Trouble is that, if you live on or in the green belt, its main value is that you, personally, don't have any development around you. And whilst Bart's "if you don't own it, you don't get a say in what happens to it" has an elegant simplicity, it's not where we are and good luck winning an election on that platform.
And I suspect that even if you offered people free energy bills forever, they would still rather not have the development.
Agree - though I think from the evidence in things like vouchers for walking 10,000 steps, people have irrationally large positive responses to even small incentives.
And free year-round energy from living close to the local solar farm is a pretty big incentive.
A solar farm, like a battery energy storage site, is a pretty benign form of development as far as things go.
Compare to a sewage works, pig farm, factory, housing estate, quarry or landfill site. Most people would choose the solar farm every time in preference.
No. They'd choose no development on a green field, greenbelt site.
I want him to win. His sanctimonious, holier-than-thou pronouncements mean he'd *have* to give up his enjoyable 'comedy' life and be an MP - an awful job. He deserves it for mocking the voters. I thought the same about @almurray https://x.com/AdamShame3/status/2075264645787418974
It's a fair point, though. The grifter Farage didn't give up any of his comedy gigs; if you're running against him with the intention of winning, then promising to do so if you win might be the principled thing to do.
OTOH, if you're just running against him to take the piss (an equally valid motive) ....
All those people facing higher electricity bills will thank you for your help in this matter.
But lower food bills
80 hectares in the NE of England* is not going to put a dent in global food prices. Nor is the solar farm in energy prices tbf, but there are other reasons why you might value that more than the other.
* rated only moderate for agricultural value, no SSSI etc etc
Trouble is that, if you live on or in the green belt, its main value is that you, personally, don't have any development around you. And whilst Bart's "if you don't own it, you don't get a say in what happens to it" has an elegant simplicity, it's not where we are and good luck winning an election on that platform.
And I suspect that even if you offered people free energy bills forever, they would still rather not have the development.
Agree - though I think from the evidence in things like vouchers for walking 10,000 steps, people have irrationally large positive responses to even small incentives.
And free year-round energy from living close to the local solar farm is a pretty big incentive.
A solar farm, like a battery energy storage site, is a pretty benign form of development as far as things go.
Compare to a sewage works, pig farm, factory, housing estate, quarry or landfill site. Most people would choose the solar farm every time in preference.
People object strenuously and in high numbers to solar farms and battery storage. And since they are usually in places that won't (easily) be targets for a lot of houses, people do not compare them to getting that instead.
Social media is full of malicious communications regarding the death of Ann Widdecombe. Will anything be done about it, or does that law (which I don't agree with in the first place) only get applied to certain people?
I believe a legal distinction is drawn between celebrating the death of a dead person (distasteful, but not illegal unless the death was perpetrated by a terrorist, in which case you would be guilty of glorifying terrorism) and calling for the death of living people.
Please tell me this is not what the HS means by "speculation". Because for instance labelling her death (As someone has done on bluesky) as entertainment is not speculation.
There are two different things going on, I assume.
One is people celebrating the death of a political opponent, which I think demeans the person who is doing the celebrating, but in truth I am a flawed person, and I expect to celebrate the death of the Presidents of at least two nuclear powers. With God's grace I will not have to wait long to so demean myself.
The second is speculation about the motives for Widdecombe's murder. At present we have no information on which to base this, except for the race of the suspect, and so literally almost anything is possible. Some of this speculation might prove to be very upsetting to friends of the deceased, and some would have the potential to provoke civil disorder, were it to be taken seriously.
It's become de rigeur for politicians and police to ask the public not to speculate in situations like this, because although it is pointless - we have no information to go on - it can have serious consequences. But, of course, it is very natural to try to come up with explanations for why such a thing would have happened. So I'm not surprised people speculate.
Macron's still pretty young, so you're likely to be waiting a while.
All those people facing higher electricity bills will thank you for your help in this matter.
But lower food bills
80 hectares in the NE of England* is not going to put a dent in global food prices. Nor is the solar farm in energy prices tbf, but there are other reasons why you might value that more than the other.
* rated only moderate for agricultural value, no SSSI etc etc
Trouble is that, if you live on or in the green belt, its main value is that you, personally, don't have any development around you. And whilst Bart's "if you don't own it, you don't get a say in what happens to it" has an elegant simplicity, it's not where we are and good luck winning an election on that platform.
And I suspect that even if you offered people free energy bills forever, they would still rather not have the development.
Here's the thing: the Green Belt is just a subsidy from people who don't own their homes, and towards people who do own homes on the edge of large towns and cities.
I find that quite morally hard to justify.
The motivation for the creation of the green belt was more a sort of luddite opposition to the growth of towns and cities, but it's survived so long because most people prefer fields to buildings.
It's the combination of green belt with opposition to high housing densities - everyone naturally wanting a detached house with garden - that produces problems. You can have one, but having both is problematic, unless you shrink the population to roughly the level at the time the green belt was established.
I think it's a symptom of the prevailing culture in Britain where what British people hate most is other people. This recent article in the Southern Star would be unthinkable in Britain.
Relaxed planning rules a lifeline for rural housing
NEW planning guidelines relaxing rules around rural one-off housing have been given a broad welcome in West Cork.
I think that is some way off where Green Belt came from. I think it was far simpler - people o outer estates wanting to keep their distance to the countryside down.
It was a measure to limit urban sprawl, which I think has largely worked. If I had to speculate, I'd say it was a reaction to all those 30s suburbs, quite possibly motivated by those who lived in them who did not want another ring of estates outside their areas. The London Green Belt Act was passed in 1935.
It is another of those things - like NATO, the UN, the welfare state, and the NHS (OK - that one is part of the welfare state) that crystallised around WW2.
It is very much of its time, in that many areas have little or no Greenbelt. But I'd say it has worked better at keeping open countryside close to town better than in some other European countries.
But those who campaign around "save the Green Belt" do rather typecast themselves as residents of Walmington-on-Sea, maybe even as Widdecombe Warriors.
(One off developments have always been possible in Green Belt or Open Countryside. I know lots of people who have built them.)
A woman registered for a public JD Vance event using the official signup form, got a confirmation on White House letterhead, and stood in line for thirty minutes before five people, two of them armed Secret Service agents, pulled her out by name and told her, "we know where you stand."
Her offense was running a cat meme Instagram account with two million followers. The ACLU is now suing the Executive Office of the President and the Secret Service over it, and the strongest detail in the whole complaint is not the ejection itself. It is that Secret Service agents apparently monitor a satire account closely enough to recognize its founder on sight in a rope line in Bangor, Maine.
Vance called his own 2021 cat ladies comment one of the dumbest things he has ever said. He was right the first time. Weaponizing federal security personnel against the woman who turned that quote into a punchline is a worse unforced error than the original one. https://x.com/micyoung75/status/2075324362597482926
Land of the Free part 2:
The EU just used a clever little voting tactic to reinstate automated monitoring of private chat on social media.
The proposal had been rejected 4 times already by the European Parliament so they used a little trick to introduce it on a temporary basis by choosing the day before the recess and then introducing it in a form that needed rejection by an absolute majority of the parliament for it to fall.
The thing is right now it is only for monitoring for child sex abuse. But it began life as a proposed law to allow monitoring for any behaviour that might be deemed criminal. It is mass monitoring of all non encrypted private chat. You would have to be really naive to think it won't be extended again and again to encompass more areas.
Why is it always heavily odds on that the next vote fixing story will involve Republicans ?
Three Florida Republicans were just charged with creating a fake voter guide to steal an election.
They did not hack the machines. They did not stuff the ballot box. They printed a fake Republican voter guide, made it look nearly identical to the real one, and mailed it to tens of thousands of voters before a 2024 primary.
Why is it always heavily odds on that the next vote fixing story will involve Republicans ?
Three Florida Republicans were just charged with creating a fake voter guide to steal an election.
They did not hack the machines. They did not stuff the ballot box. They printed a fake Republican voter guide, made it look nearly identical to the real one, and mailed it to tens of thousands of voters before a 2024 primary.
Why is it always heavily odds on that the next vote fixing story will involve Republicans ?
Three Florida Republicans were just charged with creating a fake voter guide to steal an election.
They did not hack the machines. They did not stuff the ballot box. They printed a fake Republican voter guide, made it look nearly identical to the real one, and mailed it to tens of thousands of voters before a 2024 primary.
Why is it always heavily odds on that the next vote fixing story will involve Republicans ?
Three Florida Republicans were just charged with creating a fake voter guide to steal an election.
They did not hack the machines. They did not stuff the ballot box. They printed a fake Republican voter guide, made it look nearly identical to the real one, and mailed it to tens of thousands of voters before a 2024 primary.
All those people facing higher electricity bills will thank you for your help in this matter.
But lower food bills
80 hectares in the NE of England* is not going to put a dent in global food prices. Nor is the solar farm in energy prices tbf, but there are other reasons why you might value that more than the other.
* rated only moderate for agricultural value, no SSSI etc etc
Trouble is that, if you live on or in the green belt, its main value is that you, personally, don't have any development around you. And whilst Bart's "if you don't own it, you don't get a say in what happens to it" has an elegant simplicity, it's not where we are and good luck winning an election on that platform.
And I suspect that even if you offered people free energy bills forever, they would still rather not have the development.
Agree - though I think from the evidence in things like vouchers for walking 10,000 steps, people have irrationally large positive responses to even small incentives.
And free year-round energy from living close to the local solar farm is a pretty big incentive.
A solar farm, like a battery energy storage site, is a pretty benign form of development as far as things go.
Compare to a sewage works, pig farm, factory, housing estate, quarry or landfill site. Most people would choose the solar farm every time in preference.
People object strenuously and in high numbers to solar farms and battery storage. And since they are usually in places that won't (easily) be targets for a lot of houses, people do not compare them to getting that instead.
I think the location in County Durham may be significant. That is the "Darren Grimes as Council Leader" patch, and he is given to making mountains out of culture war molehills, and this is a decision that may have gone through a tactical loophole because (allegedly) "the letter notifying us of the Appeal due to us not processing it on time (aka Non-determination) had not arrived". Such letters can easily be delayed for a day in the post.
OTOH it was quite an overwhelming development, but solar developments can be put behind high hedges quite easily.
I think it will be back, at 1/3 to 2/3 of the size, and less intensive.
Whatever you think about Ann Widdecombe's opinions - and I disagree with 95 per cent of them - a number of people have said that although she was often trunculent in debate, she was personally very affable. She did a roadshow some years ago with the gay Conservative blogger Iain Dale and there was such a rapport between them that one member of the audience asked if they were an item!
Dale's own words on Tatchell's less than edifying tweet:
I will curb my language but that tweet is disgusting. You profess to be an advocate of human rights, and the right to be treated with dignity after death is a basic human right everyone should have, yet you rejoice in her death. Yes, her religion guided her views on equality issues, and I had many disagreements with her, but as a gay man I counted her as a friend, as did many others. She was actually a profoundly kind person. She endorsed my candidacy knowing of my sexuality. She softened her views on equal marriage and told me in 2019 she would not support reversing it. So be ashamed of yourself today, Peter. You do some great work, but in this instance it's you that's the bigot. Bigoted against the dead, and bringing upset to those of us who counted Ann as a friend. Think on that.
De mortuis nil nisi bonum is always a good principle to follow, and maybe Ann Widdecombe's presumed murder demonstrates why, but Tatchell had absolutely no reason to suspect she was murdered.
I want him to win. His sanctimonious, holier-than-thou pronouncements mean he'd *have* to give up his enjoyable 'comedy' life and be an MP - an awful job. He deserves it for mocking the voters. I thought the same about @almurray https://x.com/AdamShame3/status/2075264645787418974
It's a fair point, though. The grifter Farage didn't give up any of his comedy gigs; if you're running against him with the intention of winning, then promising to do so if you win might be the principled thing to do.
OTOH, if you're just running against him to take the piss (an equally valid motive) ....
Comments
Let businesses set up electricity intensive businesses where the real cost is low (like Scotland). And let NIMBYs in the south reel the brunt of the backlash against this sort of thing when costs go much higher.
For reference I live in London so certainly have nothing to gain from such a policy.
This field in Seaham does not qualify however.
A woman registered for a public JD Vance event using the official signup form, got a confirmation on White House letterhead, and stood in line for thirty minutes before five people, two of them armed Secret Service agents, pulled her out by name and told her, "we know where you stand."
Her offense was running a cat meme Instagram account with two million followers. The ACLU is now suing the Executive Office of the President and the Secret Service over it, and the strongest detail in the whole complaint is not the ejection itself. It is that Secret Service agents apparently monitor a satire account closely enough to recognize its founder on sight in a rope line in Bangor, Maine.
Vance called his own 2021 cat ladies comment one of the dumbest things he has ever said. He was right the first time. Weaponizing federal security personnel against the woman who turned that quote into a punchline is a worse unforced error than the original one.
https://x.com/micyoung75/status/2075324362597482926
Shouldn't X post immigration jockeys be complaining that the Police have released information that the perp is white?
https://x.com/ArchRose90/status/2075617079617531967/video/1
Hope the Police catch the perpetrator.
It's the combination of green belt with opposition to high housing densities - everyone naturally wanting a detached house with garden - that produces problems. You can have one, but having both is problematic, unless you shrink the population to roughly the level at the time the green belt was established.
I think it's a symptom of the prevailing culture in Britain where what British people hate most is other people. This recent article in the Southern Star would be unthinkable in Britain.
https://www.southernstar.ie/subscriber-exclusives/relaxed-planning-rules-a-lifeline-for-rural-housing-4357522
Relaxed planning rules a lifeline for rural housing
NEW planning guidelines relaxing rules around rural one-off housing have been given a broad welcome in West Cork.
I will curb my language but that tweet is disgusting. You profess to be an advocate of human rights, and the right to be treated with dignity after death is a basic human right everyone should have, yet you rejoice in her death. Yes, her religion guided her views on equality issues, and I had many disagreements with her, but as a gay man I counted her as a friend, as did many others. She was actually a profoundly kind person. She endorsed my candidacy knowing of my sexuality. She softened her views on equal marriage and told me in 2019 she would not support reversing it.
So be ashamed of yourself today, Peter. You do some great work, but in this instance it's you that's the bigot. Bigoted against the dead, and bringing upset to those of us who counted Ann as a friend. Think on that.
https://x.com/IainDale/status/2075585263984672941
https://x.com/PeterTatchell/status/2075610449765126544?s=20
It infuriates me but it won't change, parties occasionally make noises about changing things but there's too many votes to be lost to actually follow through.
Now the Mondial has gone I wanted to talk about my experiences and expenses involved in running a classic Ferrari. A 🧵1/9
https://x.com/adrianfclarke/status/2075559598308704655
Three Florida Republicans were just charged with creating a fake voter guide to steal an election.
They did not hack the machines. They did not stuff the ballot box. They printed a fake Republican voter guide, made it look nearly identical to the real one, and mailed it to tens of thousands of voters before a 2024 primary.
It worked. An incumbent won by fewer than 1,000 votes. Now three elected officials in St. Johns County, Florida are facing criminal charges for it.
https://x.com/Gianl1974/status/2075500150286426267
We don't want people self-censoring all their thoughts and opinions for fear of giving offence, but the needle could perhaps swing back a little the other way, so that there's a bit more shame to go around.
Now we find out she’s been murdered and WTF indeed!
Interesting analysis on what's causing constraints now and will cause constraints over the next ten years. While a lot of the constraints as the moment are triggered by North of Scotland wind generators, this is a largely temporary problem. The big constraints will be in East Anglia.
https://insights.lcp.com/rs/032-PAO-331/images/LCP-Delta-Reformed-National-Pricing-Measures-on-GB-Grid-Constraint-Costs-March-2026.pdf
Should add there is regional pricing. Living in London you pay about a penny more per unit wholesale than people living in Scotland and the North of England because your transmission costs from energy sources are higher.
People of Tatchell's brand of Labour socialism are fundamentally evil. Starmer pitched it right for once.
Rewilding, yes. Ugly carbuncle, no.
I want him to win. His sanctimonious, holier-than-thou pronouncements mean he'd *have* to give up his enjoyable 'comedy' life and be an MP - an awful job. He deserves it for mocking the voters. I thought the same about @almurray
https://x.com/AdamShame3/status/2075264645787418974
It's a fair point, though.
The grifter Farage didn't give up any of his comedy gigs; if you're running against him with the intention of winning, then promising to do so if you win might be the principled thing to do.
OTOH, if you're just running against him to take the piss (an equally valid motive) ....
It was a measure to limit urban sprawl, which I think has largely worked. If I had to speculate, I'd say it was a reaction to all those 30s suburbs, quite possibly motivated by those who lived in them who did not want another ring of estates outside their areas. The London Green Belt Act was passed in 1935.
It is another of those things - like NATO, the UN, the welfare state, and the NHS (OK - that one is part of the welfare state) that crystallised around WW2.
It is very much of its time, in that many areas have little or no Greenbelt. But I'd say it has worked better at keeping open countryside close to town better than in some other European countries.
But those who campaign around "save the Green Belt" do rather typecast themselves as residents of Walmington-on-Sea, maybe even as Widdecombe Warriors.
(One off developments have always been possible in Green Belt or Open Countryside. I know lots of people who have built them.)
The EU just used a clever little voting tactic to reinstate automated monitoring of private chat on social media.
The proposal had been rejected 4 times already by the European Parliament so they used a little trick to introduce it on a temporary basis by choosing the day before the recess and then introducing it in a form that needed rejection by an absolute majority of the parliament for it to fall.
The thing is right now it is only for monitoring for child sex abuse. But it began life as a proposed law to allow monitoring for any behaviour that might be deemed criminal. It is mass monitoring of all non encrypted private chat. You would have to be really naive to think it won't be extended again and again to encompass more areas.
Edit. Forgot the link
https://www.euronews.com/next/2026/07/10/chat-control-10-passed-the-european-parliament-through-the-back-door
OTOH it was quite an overwhelming development, but solar developments can be put behind high hedges quite easily.
I think it will be back, at 1/3 to 2/3 of the size, and less intensive.
Request default link click behaviour to be "open in new tab" - or, better (if possible) this to be a user settable behaviour.