I spoke to the tidal lagoon power lot about making an equity investment several years ago. One of the obvious problems to me was that even if the government signed off on the principle that a tidal lagoon power initiative was a great idea and even greenlit them to run the Swansea scheme, there was no guarantee that the company putting in the legwork for the proof of concept pilot would win the mandate for the larger economic schemes elsewhere.
It needs to be partially nationalised if it’s going to work. Taxpayer taking risk, in exchange for taxpayer getting reward. Not just electricity consumers (not quite the same thing). Old fashioned Tories in Parliament and Treasury mandarins don’t like hearing that sort of thing.
I don't follow on the risk vs reward - what is the price for power generated by the scheme vs the market price?
It's over a decade ago now but when I was PPS to the Energy Minister (Malcolm Wicks) we looked at the unit costs of every variety of energy and tidal lagoons were by far the worst (measured in energy returned over 30 years per £, as I recall. The clear winner then was onshore windpower, though offshore did quite well toodespite the higher maintenance costs - both were even then competitive with gas and oil. Nuclear was significantly more expensive but of course available 24/7 - we tried to avoid plunging for that anyway, feeling that renewables were the safest long-term direction. A later review tweaked the decision more towards including nuclear in the long-term directionh.
I doubt if the maths have changed that dramatically, so doing the lagoon approach would need to be subsidised because of its other benefits.
You saying that Marquee Mark talks bollocks? What a surprise.
Yet tidal is great to have in the mix for baseload. Wind power is intermittent.
Maybe. But he is constantly banging on about his amazing biz case and how stupid officials are for not appreciating it.
Then Nick Palmer comes on and says tidal had the highest unit costs of any energy choice.
Swansea is used as the benchmark. It is W-A-Y higher than all the other tidal lagoons - because it is the test-bed.
Back then, offshore wind was £150. So offshore wind costs come down by 2/3rds, but tidal apparently stays the same, based on the price of the testbed being the roll-out price across the whole series of lagoons. There, in a nutshell, is the civil service case that has been made to Govt.
However, if you have a "vaccine-style" task force, they would see just how ridiculous that positon is.
Unbelievable. How can we even think about having more than just a simple trading agreement with the EU.
I don't really understand why the Germans and Russians should not build this pipeline. The argument seems to be that it makes continental Europe 'dependent' on Russian gas. How does having a pipeline to get something cheaper remove the competing alternative suppliers? If Putin does 'switch the pipeline off' to blackmail the West, how does that actually work as blackmail when all the other suppliers are still there?
It allows Russia to bypass Eastern Europe and continue supplying gas to Western Europe. As it stands the only way to cut off Eastern Europe from gas also results in cutting off extremely profitable Western European markets simultaneously.
Essentially Germany is handing Russia a huge stick to bear Eastern Europe with should they decide they don't like Russian interference in their nations.
But it benefits German companies and allows Siemens to build cheaper dishwashers, so it's worth it from the German perspective.
Then the right way forward would appear to be to build alternative supply lines to those countries, rather than preventing Russia and Germany from pursuing what is on the face of it a legitimate commercial initiative. I know exactly what I would think as a British consumer if another country wanted to stop me getting cheaper power from another country - so I don't see why the Germans should feel any different.
How do you feel as a British consumer having to pay for baseload nuclear electricity at twice the price of domestic tidal? And it is the Whitehall civil servants stopping you getting that cheaper power....
I feel f-ing livid about it - I'm all in on tidal and if someone tells me who to write to that I can influence (seems unlikely as an Englishman living in Scotland), or points me to a petition I can sign, I'll do it.
I still have a feeling that this situation will turn around as Boris seeks a popular policy in Wales - very excited about it WHEN (not if) it happens.
I spoke to the tidal lagoon power lot about making an equity investment several years ago. One of the obvious problems to me was that even if the government signed off on the principle that a tidal lagoon power initiative was a great idea and even greenlit them to run the Swansea scheme, there was no guarantee that the company putting in the legwork for the proof of concept pilot would win the mandate for the larger economic schemes elsewhere.
It needs to be partially nationalised if it’s going to work. Taxpayer taking risk, in exchange for taxpayer getting reward. Not just electricity consumers (not quite the same thing). Old fashioned Tories in Parliament and Treasury mandarins don’t like hearing that sort of thing.
I don't follow on the risk vs reward - what is the price for power generated by the scheme vs the market price?
There is no long term market price for electricity.
There is if it's guaranteed by the UK government....
I spoke to the tidal lagoon power lot about making an equity investment several years ago. One of the obvious problems to me was that even if the government signed off on the principle that a tidal lagoon power initiative was a great idea and even greenlit them to run the Swansea scheme, there was no guarantee that the company putting in the legwork for the proof of concept pilot would win the mandate for the larger economic schemes elsewhere.
It needs to be partially nationalised if it’s going to work. Taxpayer taking risk, in exchange for taxpayer getting reward. Not just electricity consumers (not quite the same thing). Old fashioned Tories in Parliament and Treasury mandarins don’t like hearing that sort of thing.
I don't follow on the risk vs reward - what is the price for power generated by the scheme vs the market price?
It's over a decade ago now but when I was PPS to the Energy Minister (Malcolm Wicks) we looked at the unit costs of every variety of energy and tidal lagoons were by far the worst (measured in energy returned over 30 years per £, as I recall. The clear winner then was onshore windpower, though offshore did quite well toodespite the higher maintenance costs - both were even then competitive with gas and oil. Nuclear was significantly more expensive but of course available 24/7 - we tried to avoid plunging for that anyway, feeling that renewables were the safest long-term direction. A later review tweaked the decision more towards including nuclear in the long-term directionh.
I doubt if the maths have changed that dramatically, so doing the lagoon approach would need to be subsidised because of its other benefits.
You saying that Marquee Mark talks bollocks? What a surprise.
Yet tidal is great to have in the mix for baseload. Wind power is intermittent.
Maybe. But he is constantly banging on about his amazing biz case and how stupid officials are for not appreciating it.
Then Nick Palmer comes on and says tidal had the highest unit costs of any energy choice.
To be fair, the costs for building large structures in tidal zones are all over the place.
When I worked in the oil industry, many, many moons ago, there was discussion of such schemes. We got involved because people though ocean engineering = ask an oil company. The prices were all over the place, because no one had built them yet....
Some people suggested pricing on the basis of the berms built in shallow water around oil rigs in Arctic areas - which suggested that some of the highest prices weren't accurate.
Is the proposed scheme one of the berm-for-most-of-it systems?
I spoke to the tidal lagoon power lot about making an equity investment several years ago. One of the obvious problems to me was that even if the government signed off on the principle that a tidal lagoon power initiative was a great idea and even greenlit them to run the Swansea scheme, there was no guarantee that the company putting in the legwork for the proof of concept pilot would win the mandate for the larger economic schemes elsewhere.
It needs to be partially nationalised if it’s going to work. Taxpayer taking risk, in exchange for taxpayer getting reward. Not just electricity consumers (not quite the same thing). Old fashioned Tories in Parliament and Treasury mandarins don’t like hearing that sort of thing.
I don't follow on the risk vs reward - what is the price for power generated by the scheme vs the market price?
It's over a decade ago now but when I was PPS to the Energy Minister (Malcolm Wicks) we looked at the unit costs of every variety of energy and tidal lagoons were by far the worst (measured in energy returned over 30 years per £, as I recall. The clear winner then was onshore windpower, though offshore did quite well toodespite the higher maintenance costs - both were even then competitive with gas and oil. Nuclear was significantly more expensive but of course available 24/7 - we tried to avoid plunging for that anyway, feeling that renewables were the safest long-term direction. A later review tweaked the decision more towards including nuclear in the long-term directionh.
I doubt if the maths have changed that dramatically, so doing the lagoon approach would need to be subsidised because of its other benefits.
You saying that Marquee Mark talks bollocks? What a surprise.
Normally that is you.
I’d have you generally mid-table.
Not top, except when you lose your shit because someone questions your fondest but utterly demented belief set.
Surprised to hear you think EFTA membership, a good relationship with the EU, higher animal welfare and environmental standards and a globalist outlook are a 'demented belief set'.
Says a great deal about your particular value set.
I was thinking more about your global warming denialism, belief in an entirely open doors immigration policy, and advocacy for Scottish independence...from Lincolnshire.
Shrug - there's always going to be some groups who vary from the average when you look at the subsamples - it's like the "women problem" of the Tories in some polls which can also be presented as a "men advantage". It's quite plausible that SKS does best with middle-class voters and BJ with working-class voters, but in the end winning overall is what counts.
I spoke to the tidal lagoon power lot about making an equity investment several years ago. One of the obvious problems to me was that even if the government signed off on the principle that a tidal lagoon power initiative was a great idea and even greenlit them to run the Swansea scheme, there was no guarantee that the company putting in the legwork for the proof of concept pilot would win the mandate for the larger economic schemes elsewhere.
It needs to be partially nationalised if it’s going to work. Taxpayer taking risk, in exchange for taxpayer getting reward. Not just electricity consumers (not quite the same thing). Old fashioned Tories in Parliament and Treasury mandarins don’t like hearing that sort of thing.
I don't follow on the risk vs reward - what is the price for power generated by the scheme vs the market price?
It's over a decade ago now but when I was PPS to the Energy Minister (Malcolm Wicks) we looked at the unit costs of every variety of energy and tidal lagoons were by far the worst (measured in energy returned over 30 years per £, as I recall. The clear winner then was onshore windpower, though offshore did quite well toodespite the higher maintenance costs - both were even then competitive with gas and oil. Nuclear was significantly more expensive but of course available 24/7 - we tried to avoid plunging for that anyway, feeling that renewables were the safest long-term direction. A later review tweaked the decision more towards including nuclear in the long-term directionh.
I doubt if the maths have changed that dramatically, so doing the lagoon approach would need to be subsidised because of its other benefits.
You saying that Marquee Mark talks bollocks? What a surprise.
Yet tidal is great to have in the mix for baseload. Wind power is intermittent.
Yep, both wind & solar are pretty useless on the days of the year with highest power requirement (high pressure in winter - freezing cold, no wind, sun too low to do much despite lack of clouds) - basically where we are today running all the gas stations full chat to fill the gap, and then next week the wind comes back and we'll pay them to not run whilst pretending wind is subsidy free.
Solar is superb in hot countries like the (southern) US and India, where much of the energy demand is for aircon in the summer. So the sun shines exactly when you need it.
It's of less use in the UK where few homes have aircon, and it's only really hot for 2-3 weeks a year and even then largely only in the SE.
Have to confess, the overnight loss of all EU share trading to Amsterdam, is the first bit of Project Fear which has:
1 Come true
AND
2 Given me the fear
One kinda knew it was coming, but the speed and scale still shocks. It might even make me regret my vote, if only the EU had not behaved with such flailing, malignant incompetence, in recent weeks.
But, if the City does collapse (quick or slow), we are in deep shit. Massively in debt just as our tax base disappears. Not good. Not good at all.
Although in the super long term - which is how Brexit must be judged to have any chance of being deemed a success - a less bloated City could be a good thing. Yes, it pays lots of tax, but it also sucks so much talent and energy and resource and focus out of other (arguably more value added) sectors and it adds enormously to regional inequalities. How many smart young Northerners, for example, who could have stayed up there and worked in high tech manufacturing or renewable energy or medical research - or a hundred other things that could flourish outside London and the South East given the steer - end up instead sitting in a trading floor in EC4 or Canary, or a room in Mayfair, dreaming up "products" to help the crooked rich launder their money and dodge tax etc etc? It's a huge number. Think of the potential wasted. It's the British disease, along with private schools.
You emotional remainers (as distinct the reluctant, pragmatic remainers like me) really struggle to accept that Brexit is already, and always will be, judged as a success by those who voted for it. They are delighted - delighted - that we have left the EU. That`s it.
Actually, I do know that, although I wish it were not so. It's done, we're out, thank fuck for that, what a palaver. NEXT. The only way this changes is if it's an absolute and obvious disaster that can be pinned on Brexit. I'm hoping for this and any trueblood Remainer who says they aren't is fibbing.
Sorry not to sugar-coat this, but sickness of the mind isn't too strong a description for this sort of sentiment. Why don't you move to the EU with everyone's blessing? You deserve to live in a country that you actually desire to succeed, and your chosen country of residence deserves that from you.
It revolves around what "succeed" means. For me leaving the EU was in and of itself a national failure. That my country did not have the quiet and mature self-confidence to remain a part of this collective European endeavour, showed instead a brittle and chippy sense of misplaced exceptionalism, chose bread and circuses over bread and butter, this disappointed me greatly. Still does.
I spoke to the tidal lagoon power lot about making an equity investment several years ago. One of the obvious problems to me was that even if the government signed off on the principle that a tidal lagoon power initiative was a great idea and even greenlit them to run the Swansea scheme, there was no guarantee that the company putting in the legwork for the proof of concept pilot would win the mandate for the larger economic schemes elsewhere.
It needs to be partially nationalised if it’s going to work. Taxpayer taking risk, in exchange for taxpayer getting reward. Not just electricity consumers (not quite the same thing). Old fashioned Tories in Parliament and Treasury mandarins don’t like hearing that sort of thing.
I don't follow on the risk vs reward - what is the price for power generated by the scheme vs the market price?
It's over a decade ago now but when I was PPS to the Energy Minister (Malcolm Wicks) we looked at the unit costs of every variety of energy and tidal lagoons were by far the worst (measured in energy returned over 30 years per £, as I recall. The clear winner then was onshore windpower, though offshore did quite well toodespite the higher maintenance costs - both were even then competitive with gas and oil. Nuclear was significantly more expensive but of course available 24/7 - we tried to avoid plunging for that anyway, feeling that renewables were the safest long-term direction. A later review tweaked the decision more towards including nuclear in the long-term directionh.
I doubt if the maths have changed that dramatically, so doing the lagoon approach would need to be subsidised because of its other benefits.
You saying that Marquee Mark talks bollocks? What a surprise.
Yet tidal is great to have in the mix for baseload. Wind power is intermittent.
Maybe. But he is constantly banging on about his amazing biz case and how stupid officials are for not appreciating it.
Then Nick Palmer comes on and says tidal had the highest unit costs of any energy choice.
Swansea is used as the benchmark. It is W-A-Y higher than all the other tidal lagoons - because it is the test-bed.
Back then, offshore wind was £150. So offshore wind costs come down by 2/3rds, but tidal apparently stays the same, based on the price of the testbed being the roll-out price across the whole series of lagoons. There, in a nutshell, is the civil service case that has been made to Govt.
However, if you have a "vaccine-style" task force, they would see just how ridiculous that positon is.
Are you pitching to the Welsh government? If so, there’s your problem.
However as they seem to have missed out on that battery gigafactory perhaps they will give you another hearing.
I spoke to the tidal lagoon power lot about making an equity investment several years ago. One of the obvious problems to me was that even if the government signed off on the principle that a tidal lagoon power initiative was a great idea and even greenlit them to run the Swansea scheme, there was no guarantee that the company putting in the legwork for the proof of concept pilot would win the mandate for the larger economic schemes elsewhere.
It needs to be partially nationalised if it’s going to work. Taxpayer taking risk, in exchange for taxpayer getting reward. Not just electricity consumers (not quite the same thing). Old fashioned Tories in Parliament and Treasury mandarins don’t like hearing that sort of thing.
I don't follow on the risk vs reward - what is the price for power generated by the scheme vs the market price?
It's over a decade ago now but when I was PPS to the Energy Minister (Malcolm Wicks) we looked at the unit costs of every variety of energy and tidal lagoons were by far the worst (measured in energy returned over 30 years per £, as I recall. The clear winner then was onshore windpower, though offshore did quite well toodespite the higher maintenance costs - both were even then competitive with gas and oil. Nuclear was significantly more expensive but of course available 24/7 - we tried to avoid plunging for that anyway, feeling that renewables were the safest long-term direction. A later review tweaked the decision more towards including nuclear in the long-term directionh.
I doubt if the maths have changed that dramatically, so doing the lagoon approach would need to be subsidised because of its other benefits.
Tidal fences are probably a better bet, and that could change the maths dramatically. (And the real world maths for both solar and wind has improved massively since you were a PPS.)
Nuclear similarly - the current tech is rubbish, but some of the ideas (like the First Light Fusion ideas I posted upthread) have the potential to be a good deal cheaper.
Have to confess, the overnight loss of all EU share trading to Amsterdam, is the first bit of Project Fear which has:
1 Come true
AND
2 Given me the fear
One kinda knew it was coming, but the speed and scale still shocks. It might even make me regret my vote, if only the EU had not behaved with such flailing, malignant incompetence, in recent weeks.
But, if the City does collapse (quick or slow), we are in deep shit. Massively in debt just as our tax base disappears. Not good. Not good at all.
Although in the super long term - which is how Brexit must be judged to have any chance of being deemed a success - a less bloated City could be a good thing. Yes, it pays lots of tax, but it also sucks so much talent and energy and resource and focus out of other (arguably more value added) sectors and it adds enormously to regional inequalities. How many smart young Northerners, for example, who could have stayed up there and worked in high tech manufacturing or renewable energy or medical research - or a hundred other things that could flourish outside London and the South East given the steer - end up instead sitting in a trading floor in EC4 or Canary, or a room in Mayfair, dreaming up "products" to help the crooked rich launder their money and dodge tax etc etc? It's a huge number. Think of the potential wasted. It's the British disease, along with private schools.
You emotional remainers (as distinct the reluctant, pragmatic remainers like me) really struggle to accept that Brexit is already, and always will be, judged as a success by those who voted for it. They are delighted - delighted - that we have left the EU. That`s it.
Does that mean you think it's a success or you can understand why people think it's a success?
Because from my perspective, Brexit looks massively unsuccessful, and I am not as an emotional a Remainer as all that. It's simply that things have turned out pretty much as I expected them to, given that the project was based on assumptions that, while being reasonable in themselves, were never likely to pan out. Same as the Iraq War. I knew from the off that was unlikely to turn out well. It wasn't that I objected to removing a horrible dictator.
The latter : I can understand why people think it's a success.
This is interesting. Would it be fair to say you are an emotional Leaver, who would like Brexit to be a success but hasn't been invested enough in the project at any point to ignore the practical problems with it? But really you would have like to have voted Leave, if only you could have made it add up?
It seems to me this is different from another group of people who voted Remain but are now fully on board and have the same view of Brexit reality as those that voted Leave. I would call those people Leavers.
@FF43 For me the referendum offered us a dire choice. Like being given a stick to grasp with shit at both ends. I dallied with voting leave, but dismissed this because my chief reason would have been out of spite towards Cameron who I blamed (and still do) for having the bloody referendum in the first place.
Vote to leave = pragmatically stupid; you can`t just leave decades of international diplomacy and peace-keeping. Vote to stay = poorer position within the EU and any scope we had to moderate its aims would be diminished.
The other influence on me was the environmental work that the EU has done - particularly on rewilding. Monbiot was similarly conflicted but voted remain in the end for this reason.
So it was a clear remain vote from me in the end, but I have no love for the EU and like most pragmatic remainers on balance wish it didn`t exist at all because it puts the UK in a quandary - but while it does we should have remained in it and piss inside the tent.
Best we can hope for now is other nations leave too and the project crumbles.
Thanks. I accept wanting the EU to collapse is a rational desire for a UK that is outside the project. It's not a view I take myself, partly emotional I guess, because I think the EU is good for Europe, whether the UK is in it or not, and partly practical because now we have left we have to deal with the EU as it is. We have no say on that and it's not good either for us or our partners to get drawn into deciding what they should do.
It is clearly in our interests to have a wealthy and stable Europe, and in that sense having the EU next to us works well.
On the other hand, a Europe that self-consciously sees itself as competing *against* the U.K., whether economically or diplomatically, is more problematic.
It is already clear that U.K. was able to block or temper certain foreign policy instincts in the EU, and it is not a good thing that we have surrendered that leverage.
As Donald Tusk, I think, put it, it isn't in the interests of the EU to protect the UK from the consequences of its decision to leave the European Union. There are several motivations behind the EU move to make things more difficult for the UK, some strategic, some opportunistic, some principled and some emotional. Those reasons are powerful and the UK won't get anywhere by saying the EU is unreasonable.
Nevertheless it's also in the EU and its members' interest to have a good relationship with a powerful near country, given that it has decided to leave the Union. There is a tension there. To satisfy both interests the EU needs to come up with an arrangement that is distinctly inferior to membership, yet is still valuable to the third party. I don't think they have worked that one out yet.
Actually your last paragraph puts the lie to your first.
It is very much in the interests of the UK to say the EU is being unreasonable. If they are going to persist in that attitude then we have nothing to gain from having a good relationship with them. If they expect us to behave reasonably towards them then they have to reciprocate. It is a two way relationship and both sides have to be reasonable. If either is not then the whole thing fails.
The EU so far does not seem to have grasped this basic concept. They recognise that the UK could potentially be a threat to them if it follows a certain course (and I am not advocating that) but seem to be unwilling to do anything to prevent that happening.
It's in the UK's interest to have its cake and eat it, which is how Johnson put it. For powerful and specific reasons that is not at all in the EU's interest - mainly because as with all membership organisations they need to maximise the value of membership. Brexit was sold on no loss. The EU needs to make sure no other country tries that again by allowing that loss to happen. Having a good relationship with the UK is a nice to have, but is secondary. What's maybe interesting is that member states are completely aligned with the EU on that. They aren't the Commission and you might expect them to have different views.
I spoke to the tidal lagoon power lot about making an equity investment several years ago. One of the obvious problems to me was that even if the government signed off on the principle that a tidal lagoon power initiative was a great idea and even greenlit them to run the Swansea scheme, there was no guarantee that the company putting in the legwork for the proof of concept pilot would win the mandate for the larger economic schemes elsewhere.
It needs to be partially nationalised if it’s going to work. Taxpayer taking risk, in exchange for taxpayer getting reward. Not just electricity consumers (not quite the same thing). Old fashioned Tories in Parliament and Treasury mandarins don’t like hearing that sort of thing.
I don't follow on the risk vs reward - what is the price for power generated by the scheme vs the market price?
It's over a decade ago now but when I was PPS to the Energy Minister (Malcolm Wicks) we looked at the unit costs of every variety of energy and tidal lagoons were by far the worst (measured in energy returned over 30 years per £, as I recall. The clear winner then was onshore windpower, though offshore did quite well toodespite the higher maintenance costs - both were even then competitive with gas and oil. Nuclear was significantly more expensive but of course available 24/7 - we tried to avoid plunging for that anyway, feeling that renewables were the safest long-term direction. A later review tweaked the decision more towards including nuclear in the long-term directionh.
I doubt if the maths have changed that dramatically, so doing the lagoon approach would need to be subsidised because of its other benefits.
You saying that Marquee Mark talks bollocks? What a surprise.
Yet tidal is great to have in the mix for baseload. Wind power is intermittent.
Baseload to me seems like the opposite of what we need. We need surge capacity for when the wind isn't blowing and sun isn't shining - how does baseload help with that?
I spoke to the tidal lagoon power lot about making an equity investment several years ago. One of the obvious problems to me was that even if the government signed off on the principle that a tidal lagoon power initiative was a great idea and even greenlit them to run the Swansea scheme, there was no guarantee that the company putting in the legwork for the proof of concept pilot would win the mandate for the larger economic schemes elsewhere.
It needs to be partially nationalised if it’s going to work. Taxpayer taking risk, in exchange for taxpayer getting reward. Not just electricity consumers (not quite the same thing). Old fashioned Tories in Parliament and Treasury mandarins don’t like hearing that sort of thing.
I don't follow on the risk vs reward - what is the price for power generated by the scheme vs the market price?
It's over a decade ago now but when I was PPS to the Energy Minister (Malcolm Wicks) we looked at the unit costs of every variety of energy and tidal lagoons were by far the worst (measured in energy returned over 30 years per £, as I recall. The clear winner then was onshore windpower, though offshore did quite well toodespite the higher maintenance costs - both were even then competitive with gas and oil. Nuclear was significantly more expensive but of course available 24/7 - we tried to avoid plunging for that anyway, feeling that renewables were the safest long-term direction. A later review tweaked the decision more towards including nuclear in the long-term directionh.
I doubt if the maths have changed that dramatically, so doing the lagoon approach would need to be subsidised because of its other benefits.
You saying that Marquee Mark talks bollocks? What a surprise.
Yet tidal is great to have in the mix for baseload. Wind power is intermittent.
Yep, both wind & solar are pretty useless on the days of the year with highest power requirement (high pressure in winter - freezing cold, no wind, sun too low to do much despite lack of clouds) - basically where we are today running all the gas stations full chat to fill the gap, and then next week the wind comes back and we'll pay them to not run whilst pretending wind is subsidy free.
Solar is superb in hot countries like the (southern) US and India, where much of the energy demand is for aircon in the summer. So the sun shines exactly when you need it.
It's of less use in the UK where few homes have aircon, and it's only really hot for 2-3 weeks a year and even then largely only in the SE.
Remember solar doesn't depend on heat...
But yes, solar *PV* is not worthwhile in the UK on the domestic scale due to the FIT tariff levels the payback is now around 30 years, which is the lifetime of the panels themselves.
Solar *thermal* however can provide 100% of domestic hot water needs for 9 months of the year from only 2-3 panels, even in the North East of England. This is something that is often overlooked.
Question about polls like these; The classic sociological definition of Working Class is C2DE, which includes state pensioners. There are 12 million of them.
How much of the "WC people love Boris" is really "retired people love Boris"- important, but slightly different?
I spoke to the tidal lagoon power lot about making an equity investment several years ago. One of the obvious problems to me was that even if the government signed off on the principle that a tidal lagoon power initiative was a great idea and even greenlit them to run the Swansea scheme, there was no guarantee that the company putting in the legwork for the proof of concept pilot would win the mandate for the larger economic schemes elsewhere.
It needs to be partially nationalised if it’s going to work. Taxpayer taking risk, in exchange for taxpayer getting reward. Not just electricity consumers (not quite the same thing). Old fashioned Tories in Parliament and Treasury mandarins don’t like hearing that sort of thing.
I don't follow on the risk vs reward - what is the price for power generated by the scheme vs the market price?
It's over a decade ago now but when I was PPS to the Energy Minister (Malcolm Wicks) we looked at the unit costs of every variety of energy and tidal lagoons were by far the worst (measured in energy returned over 30 years per £, as I recall. The clear winner then was onshore windpower, though offshore did quite well toodespite the higher maintenance costs - both were even then competitive with gas and oil. Nuclear was significantly more expensive but of course available 24/7 - we tried to avoid plunging for that anyway, feeling that renewables were the safest long-term direction. A later review tweaked the decision more towards including nuclear in the long-term directionh.
I doubt if the maths have changed that dramatically, so doing the lagoon approach would need to be subsidised because of its other benefits.
You saying that Marquee Mark talks bollocks? What a surprise.
Normally that is you.
I’d have you generally mid-table.
Not top, except when you lose your shit because someone questions your fondest but utterly demented belief set.
Surprised to hear you think EFTA membership, a good relationship with the EU, higher animal welfare and environmental standards and a globalist outlook are a 'demented belief set'.
Says a great deal about your particular value set.
I was thinking more about your global warming denialism, belief in an entirely open doors immigration policy, and advocacy for Scottish independence...from Lincolnshire.
Hang on, are you Piers Corbyn?
Anyone using the word 'denier' in this context has already lost the argument.
And advocating Scottish Independence from anywhere in England seems a very enlightened position to me. Of course with you being a statist verging on the fascist - or the communist if you prefer - I am not surprised you are opposed to people having the right of self determination. I am sure you were right there cheering on the Spanish as they were beating up old ladies for daring to want to have a vote.
Have to confess, the overnight loss of all EU share trading to Amsterdam, is the first bit of Project Fear which has:
1 Come true
AND
2 Given me the fear
One kinda knew it was coming, but the speed and scale still shocks. It might even make me regret my vote, if only the EU had not behaved with such flailing, malignant incompetence, in recent weeks.
But, if the City does collapse (quick or slow), we are in deep shit. Massively in debt just as our tax base disappears. Not good. Not good at all.
Although in the super long term - which is how Brexit must be judged to have any chance of being deemed a success - a less bloated City could be a good thing. Yes, it pays lots of tax, but it also sucks so much talent and energy and resource and focus out of other (arguably more value added) sectors and it adds enormously to regional inequalities. How many smart young Northerners, for example, who could have stayed up there and worked in high tech manufacturing or renewable energy or medical research - or a hundred other things that could flourish outside London and the South East given the steer - end up instead sitting in a trading floor in EC4 or Canary, or a room in Mayfair, dreaming up "products" to help the crooked rich launder their money and dodge tax etc etc? It's a huge number. Think of the potential wasted. It's the British disease, along with private schools.
You emotional remainers (as distinct the reluctant, pragmatic remainers like me) really struggle to accept that Brexit is already, and always will be, judged as a success by those who voted for it. They are delighted - delighted - that we have left the EU. That`s it.
Actually, I do know that, although I wish it were not so. It's done, we're out, thank fuck for that, what a palaver. NEXT. The only way this changes is if it's an absolute and obvious disaster that can be pinned on Brexit. I'm hoping for this and any trueblood Remainer who says they aren't is fibbing.
One can see how the absolute and obvious success of the UK vaccine programme - which is being pinned on Brexit by none other than the self-described EU 'tanker' itself! - might be distressing to you then.
That's a nice try.
No, I am pleased about our vaccine rollout. Unlike many Leavers, however, I am not getting a buzz from the EU's troubles in same. It has little, in truth, to do with Brexit, and much to do with 'necessity is the mother of invention', our necessity being particularly acute, viz our death toll and our healthcare system creaking under its Covid caseload. But, yes, a slight Brexit angle too. That's fair.
And to clarify on Brexit economic fallout. It will be negative, there is no way it won't be, it's almost laws of physics territory, so my hope is simply that it is clearly so - the better for Brexit pinning and hence future rectification. So, for example, we don't want the slow steady slide into relative penury over 50 years. That's no good to anybody. What we want are some quick "wins", the big factory closing, say, with an accompanying announcement the supply chain just doesn't hack it anymore.
The truth is, and I know this will get a chorus of boos but I can take it, I view the Leave vote as bad behaviour. And bad behaviour should not be rewarded. It should be punished.
You say that the Brexit economic fallout will be negative - and I agree - but what if the fallout is positive to the UK? I mean conclusively positive.
It seems to me that you are hankering for outcomes which are not confined to the UK`s best interests. Is that fair? And if so would it be useful to know what you admire so much about the EU even when it goes against the interests of your own country. I`m not getting at you, I`m interested to know the mind of a type of remainer that I don`t understand. Is it a dislike (a la Corbyn) of the whole concept of the nation state?
Have to confess, the overnight loss of all EU share trading to Amsterdam, is the first bit of Project Fear which has:
1 Come true
AND
2 Given me the fear
One kinda knew it was coming, but the speed and scale still shocks. It might even make me regret my vote, if only the EU had not behaved with such flailing, malignant incompetence, in recent weeks.
But, if the City does collapse (quick or slow), we are in deep shit. Massively in debt just as our tax base disappears. Not good. Not good at all.
Although in the super long term - which is how Brexit must be judged to have any chance of being deemed a success - a less bloated City could be a good thing. Yes, it pays lots of tax, but it also sucks so much talent and energy and resource and focus out of other (arguably more value added) sectors and it adds enormously to regional inequalities. How many smart young Northerners, for example, who could have stayed up there and worked in high tech manufacturing or renewable energy or medical research - or a hundred other things that could flourish outside London and the South East given the steer - end up instead sitting in a trading floor in EC4 or Canary, or a room in Mayfair, dreaming up "products" to help the crooked rich launder their money and dodge tax etc etc? It's a huge number. Think of the potential wasted. It's the British disease, along with private schools.
You emotional remainers (as distinct the reluctant, pragmatic remainers like me) really struggle to accept that Brexit is already, and always will be, judged as a success by those who voted for it. They are delighted - delighted - that we have left the EU. That`s it.
Actually, I do know that, although I wish it were not so. It's done, we're out, thank fuck for that, what a palaver. NEXT. The only way this changes is if it's an absolute and obvious disaster that can be pinned on Brexit. I'm hoping for this and any trueblood Remainer who says they aren't is fibbing.
Sorry not to sugar-coat this, but sickness of the mind isn't too strong a description for this sort of sentiment. Why don't you move to the EU with everyone's blessing? You deserve to live in a country that you actually desire to succeed, and your chosen country of residence deserves that from you.
It revolves around what "succeed" means. For me leaving the EU was in and of itself a national failure. That my country did not have the quiet and mature self-confidence to remain a part of this collective European endeavour, showed instead a brittle and chippy sense of misplaced exceptionalism, chose bread and circuses over bread and butter, this disappointed me greatly. Still does.
And that was sugarcoated. Next time I won't.
Please don’t sugarcoat. Nobody else here does.
You and I both know that Brexit was driven by that certain jealous, curtain-twitching chippiness that encourages people to read the Daily Mail and vote to cut their own noses off.
Basically, Brexit is a project for elderly incels who were angry that the French looked liked they had too much sex.
I spoke to the tidal lagoon power lot about making an equity investment several years ago. One of the obvious problems to me was that even if the government signed off on the principle that a tidal lagoon power initiative was a great idea and even greenlit them to run the Swansea scheme, there was no guarantee that the company putting in the legwork for the proof of concept pilot would win the mandate for the larger economic schemes elsewhere.
It needs to be partially nationalised if it’s going to work. Taxpayer taking risk, in exchange for taxpayer getting reward. Not just electricity consumers (not quite the same thing). Old fashioned Tories in Parliament and Treasury mandarins don’t like hearing that sort of thing.
I don't follow on the risk vs reward - what is the price for power generated by the scheme vs the market price?
It's over a decade ago now but when I was PPS to the Energy Minister (Malcolm Wicks) we looked at the unit costs of every variety of energy and tidal lagoons were by far the worst (measured in energy returned over 30 years per £, as I recall. The clear winner then was onshore windpower, though offshore did quite well toodespite the higher maintenance costs - both were even then competitive with gas and oil. Nuclear was significantly more expensive but of course available 24/7 - we tried to avoid plunging for that anyway, feeling that renewables were the safest long-term direction. A later review tweaked the decision more towards including nuclear in the long-term directionh.
I doubt if the maths have changed that dramatically, so doing the lagoon approach would need to be subsidised because of its other benefits.
You saying that Marquee Mark talks bollocks? What a surprise.
Stay classy.
I could say that I know far, far more about the current state of play than an out of date former PPS, not in power back when costed tidal lagoon proposals were put before Government some 8 years ago.
The great disaster of Brexit on this was that the two big cheerleaders for tidal lagoon power, Cameron and Osborne, were swept away by the Referendum....
The continuing disaster is that Boris hasn't enacted it either - despite what he said on his sweep around Wales on his leadership campaign.
I spoke to the tidal lagoon power lot about making an equity investment several years ago. One of the obvious problems to me was that even if the government signed off on the principle that a tidal lagoon power initiative was a great idea and even greenlit them to run the Swansea scheme, there was no guarantee that the company putting in the legwork for the proof of concept pilot would win the mandate for the larger economic schemes elsewhere.
It needs to be partially nationalised if it’s going to work. Taxpayer taking risk, in exchange for taxpayer getting reward. Not just electricity consumers (not quite the same thing). Old fashioned Tories in Parliament and Treasury mandarins don’t like hearing that sort of thing.
I don't follow on the risk vs reward - what is the price for power generated by the scheme vs the market price?
It's over a decade ago now but when I was PPS to the Energy Minister (Malcolm Wicks) we looked at the unit costs of every variety of energy and tidal lagoons were by far the worst (measured in energy returned over 30 years per £, as I recall. The clear winner then was onshore windpower, though offshore did quite well toodespite the higher maintenance costs - both were even then competitive with gas and oil. Nuclear was significantly more expensive but of course available 24/7 - we tried to avoid plunging for that anyway, feeling that renewables were the safest long-term direction. A later review tweaked the decision more towards including nuclear in the long-term directionh.
I doubt if the maths have changed that dramatically, so doing the lagoon approach would need to be subsidised because of its other benefits.
You saying that Marquee Mark talks bollocks? What a surprise.
Normally that is you.
I’d have you generally mid-table.
Not top, except when you lose your shit because someone questions your fondest but utterly demented belief set.
Surprised to hear you think EFTA membership, a good relationship with the EU, higher animal welfare and environmental standards and a globalist outlook are a 'demented belief set'.
Says a great deal about your particular value set.
I was thinking more about your global warming denialism, belief in an entirely open doors immigration policy, and advocacy for Scottish independence...from Lincolnshire.
Hang on, are you Piers Corbyn?
Anyone using the word 'denier' in this context has already lost the argument.
And advocating Scottish Independence from anywhere in England seems a very enlightened position to me. Of course with you being a statist verging on the fascist - or the communist if you prefer - I am not surprised you are opposed to people having the right of self determination. I am sure you were right there cheering on the Spanish as they were beating up old ladies for daring to want to have a vote.
Question about polls like these; The classic sociological definition of Working Class is C2DE, which includes state pensioners. There are 12 million of them.
How much of the "WC people love Boris" is really "retired people love Boris"- important, but slightly different?
Indeed, the NRS social grades need updating.
It doesn't seem to realise there can be upper/middle class pensioners.
I did see a report from Wuhan on the BBC news this week (Stephen McDonnell was possibly the reporter) at the WHO press conference and couldn't help think at the time it wouldn't be long before he was moved along somewhere else given the openness of his reporting.
Have to confess, the overnight loss of all EU share trading to Amsterdam, is the first bit of Project Fear which has:
1 Come true
AND
2 Given me the fear
One kinda knew it was coming, but the speed and scale still shocks. It might even make me regret my vote, if only the EU had not behaved with such flailing, malignant incompetence, in recent weeks.
But, if the City does collapse (quick or slow), we are in deep shit. Massively in debt just as our tax base disappears. Not good. Not good at all.
Although in the super long term - which is how Brexit must be judged to have any chance of being deemed a success - a less bloated City could be a good thing. Yes, it pays lots of tax, but it also sucks so much talent and energy and resource and focus out of other (arguably more value added) sectors and it adds enormously to regional inequalities. How many smart young Northerners, for example, who could have stayed up there and worked in high tech manufacturing or renewable energy or medical research - or a hundred other things that could flourish outside London and the South East given the steer - end up instead sitting in a trading floor in EC4 or Canary, or a room in Mayfair, dreaming up "products" to help the crooked rich launder their money and dodge tax etc etc? It's a huge number. Think of the potential wasted. It's the British disease, along with private schools.
You emotional remainers (as distinct the reluctant, pragmatic remainers like me) really struggle to accept that Brexit is already, and always will be, judged as a success by those who voted for it. They are delighted - delighted - that we have left the EU. That`s it.
Does that mean you think it's a success or you can understand why people think it's a success?
Because from my perspective, Brexit looks massively unsuccessful, and I am not as an emotional a Remainer as all that. It's simply that things have turned out pretty much as I expected them to, given that the project was based on assumptions that, while being reasonable in themselves, were never likely to pan out. Same as the Iraq War. I knew from the off that was unlikely to turn out well. It wasn't that I objected to removing a horrible dictator.
The latter : I can understand why people think it's a success.
This is interesting. Would it be fair to say you are an emotional Leaver, who would like Brexit to be a success but hasn't been invested enough in the project at any point to ignore the practical problems with it? But really you would have like to have voted Leave, if only you could have made it add up?
It seems to me this is different from another group of people who voted Remain but are now fully on board and have the same view of Brexit reality as those that voted Leave. I would call those people Leavers.
@FF43 For me the referendum offered us a dire choice. Like being given a stick to grasp with shit at both ends. I dallied with voting leave, but dismissed this because my chief reason would have been out of spite towards Cameron who I blamed (and still do) for having the bloody referendum in the first place.
Vote to leave = pragmatically stupid; you can`t just leave decades of international diplomacy and peace-keeping. Vote to stay = poorer position within the EU and any scope we had to moderate its aims would be diminished.
The other influence on me was the environmental work that the EU has done - particularly on rewilding. Monbiot was similarly conflicted but voted remain in the end for this reason.
So it was a clear remain vote from me in the end, but I have no love for the EU and like most pragmatic remainers on balance wish it didn`t exist at all because it puts the UK in a quandary - but while it does we should have remained in it and piss inside the tent.
Best we can hope for now is other nations leave too and the project crumbles.
Thanks. I accept wanting the EU to collapse is a rational desire for a UK that is outside the project. It's not a view I take myself, partly emotional I guess, because I think the EU is good for Europe, whether the UK is in it or not, and partly practical because now we have left we have to deal with the EU as it is. We have no say on that and it's not good either for us or our partners to get drawn into deciding what they should do.
It is clearly in our interests to have a wealthy and stable Europe, and in that sense having the EU next to us works well.
On the other hand, a Europe that self-consciously sees itself as competing *against* the U.K., whether economically or diplomatically, is more problematic.
It is already clear that U.K. was able to block or temper certain foreign policy instincts in the EU, and it is not a good thing that we have surrendered that leverage.
As Donald Tusk, I think, put it, it isn't in the interests of the EU to protect the UK from the consequences of its decision to leave the European Union. There are several motivations behind the EU move to make things more difficult for the UK, some strategic, some opportunistic, some principled and some emotional. Those reasons are powerful and the UK won't get anywhere by saying the EU is unreasonable.
Nevertheless it's also in the EU and its members' interest to have a good relationship with a powerful near country, given that it has decided to leave the Union. There is a tension there. To satisfy both interests the EU needs to come up with an arrangement that is distinctly inferior to membership, yet is still valuable to the third party. I don't think they have worked that one out yet.
Actually your last paragraph puts the lie to your first.
It is very much in the interests of the UK to say the EU is being unreasonable. If they are going to persist in that attitude then we have nothing to gain from having a good relationship with them. If they expect us to behave reasonably towards them then they have to reciprocate. It is a two way relationship and both sides have to be reasonable. If either is not then the whole thing fails.
The EU so far does not seem to have grasped this basic concept. They recognise that the UK could potentially be a threat to them if it follows a certain course (and I am not advocating that) but seem to be unwilling to do anything to prevent that happening.
Lol.
Right now Rickhardt Tindellwanger is staying the precise opposite on PB.de
As I have already observed you clearly don't believe in people being reasonable. I think your extremist views are rather unfortunate when so many people on both sides are advocating common sense approaches. Thankfully you are in a small minority that can easily be ignored.
(And how many more PBers are going to enthusiastically retweet this clown?)
Middle/Upper class breakdown is
Starmer 38%
Johnson 33%
Strange that the odious Goodwin failed to cite these numbers.
His descent from mildly provocative analyst of populism, through Trump arse-licker general, to ludicrous populist apologist for the Tory government really is a tale of misery and embarrassment.
I spoke to the tidal lagoon power lot about making an equity investment several years ago. One of the obvious problems to me was that even if the government signed off on the principle that a tidal lagoon power initiative was a great idea and even greenlit them to run the Swansea scheme, there was no guarantee that the company putting in the legwork for the proof of concept pilot would win the mandate for the larger economic schemes elsewhere.
It needs to be partially nationalised if it’s going to work. Taxpayer taking risk, in exchange for taxpayer getting reward. Not just electricity consumers (not quite the same thing). Old fashioned Tories in Parliament and Treasury mandarins don’t like hearing that sort of thing.
I don't follow on the risk vs reward - what is the price for power generated by the scheme vs the market price?
It's over a decade ago now but when I was PPS to the Energy Minister (Malcolm Wicks) we looked at the unit costs of every variety of energy and tidal lagoons were by far the worst (measured in energy returned over 30 years per £, as I recall. The clear winner then was onshore windpower, though offshore did quite well toodespite the higher maintenance costs - both were even then competitive with gas and oil. Nuclear was significantly more expensive but of course available 24/7 - we tried to avoid plunging for that anyway, feeling that renewables were the safest long-term direction. A later review tweaked the decision more towards including nuclear in the long-term directionh.
I doubt if the maths have changed that dramatically, so doing the lagoon approach would need to be subsidised because of its other benefits.
You saying that Marquee Mark talks bollocks? What a surprise.
Yet tidal is great to have in the mix for baseload. Wind power is intermittent.
Yep, both wind & solar are pretty useless on the days of the year with highest power requirement (high pressure in winter - freezing cold, no wind, sun too low to do much despite lack of clouds) - basically where we are today running all the gas stations full chat to fill the gap, and then next week the wind comes back and we'll pay them to not run whilst pretending wind is subsidy free.
Solar is superb in hot countries like the (southern) US and India, where much of the energy demand is for aircon in the summer. So the sun shines exactly when you need it.
It's of less use in the UK where few homes have aircon, and it's only really hot for 2-3 weeks a year and even then largely only in the SE.
I once spoke to a rather 'enthusiastic' MP who told me intermittency wasn't a problem because batteries.
Seemed to be a shock to them that the world's largest battery station project would be enough to power the UK for about 6 minutes, so not quite yet a viable solution for transferring large surpluses and deficits between weeks.
I spoke to the tidal lagoon power lot about making an equity investment several years ago. One of the obvious problems to me was that even if the government signed off on the principle that a tidal lagoon power initiative was a great idea and even greenlit them to run the Swansea scheme, there was no guarantee that the company putting in the legwork for the proof of concept pilot would win the mandate for the larger economic schemes elsewhere.
It needs to be partially nationalised if it’s going to work. Taxpayer taking risk, in exchange for taxpayer getting reward. Not just electricity consumers (not quite the same thing). Old fashioned Tories in Parliament and Treasury mandarins don’t like hearing that sort of thing.
I don't follow on the risk vs reward - what is the price for power generated by the scheme vs the market price?
It's over a decade ago now but when I was PPS to the Energy Minister (Malcolm Wicks) we looked at the unit costs of every variety of energy and tidal lagoons were by far the worst (measured in energy returned over 30 years per £, as I recall. The clear winner then was onshore windpower, though offshore did quite well toodespite the higher maintenance costs - both were even then competitive with gas and oil. Nuclear was significantly more expensive but of course available 24/7 - we tried to avoid plunging for that anyway, feeling that renewables were the safest long-term direction. A later review tweaked the decision more towards including nuclear in the long-term directionh.
I doubt if the maths have changed that dramatically, so doing the lagoon approach would need to be subsidised because of its other benefits.
You saying that Marquee Mark talks bollocks? What a surprise.
Stay classy.
I could say that I know far, far more about the current state of play than an out of date former PPS, not in power back when costed tidal lagoon proposals were put before Government some 8 years ago.
The great disaster of Brexit on this was that the two big cheerleaders for tidal lagoon power, Cameron and Osborne, were swept away by the Referendum....
The continuing disaster is that Boris hasn't enacted it either - despite what he said on his sweep around Wales on his leadership campaign.
You mean the continuing disaster that *is* Boris...?
I spoke to the tidal lagoon power lot about making an equity investment several years ago. One of the obvious problems to me was that even if the government signed off on the principle that a tidal lagoon power initiative was a great idea and even greenlit them to run the Swansea scheme, there was no guarantee that the company putting in the legwork for the proof of concept pilot would win the mandate for the larger economic schemes elsewhere.
It needs to be partially nationalised if it’s going to work. Taxpayer taking risk, in exchange for taxpayer getting reward. Not just electricity consumers (not quite the same thing). Old fashioned Tories in Parliament and Treasury mandarins don’t like hearing that sort of thing.
I don't follow on the risk vs reward - what is the price for power generated by the scheme vs the market price?
It's over a decade ago now but when I was PPS to the Energy Minister (Malcolm Wicks) we looked at the unit costs of every variety of energy and tidal lagoons were by far the worst (measured in energy returned over 30 years per £, as I recall. The clear winner then was onshore windpower, though offshore did quite well toodespite the higher maintenance costs - both were even then competitive with gas and oil. Nuclear was significantly more expensive but of course available 24/7 - we tried to avoid plunging for that anyway, feeling that renewables were the safest long-term direction. A later review tweaked the decision more towards including nuclear in the long-term directionh.
I doubt if the maths have changed that dramatically, so doing the lagoon approach would need to be subsidised because of its other benefits.
You saying that Marquee Mark talks bollocks? What a surprise.
Stay classy.
I could say that I know far, far more about the current state of play than an out of date former PPS, not in power back when costed tidal lagoon proposals were put before Government some 8 years ago.
The great disaster of Brexit on this was that the two big cheerleaders for tidal lagoon power, Cameron and Osborne, were swept away by the Referendum....
The continuing disaster is that Boris hasn't enacted it either - despite what he said on his sweep around Wales on his leadership campaign.
Why, do you think? Is he not a believer or is it more a case of having so much on his plate?
Have to confess, the overnight loss of all EU share trading to Amsterdam, is the first bit of Project Fear which has:
1 Come true
AND
2 Given me the fear
One kinda knew it was coming, but the speed and scale still shocks. It might even make me regret my vote, if only the EU had not behaved with such flailing, malignant incompetence, in recent weeks.
But, if the City does collapse (quick or slow), we are in deep shit. Massively in debt just as our tax base disappears. Not good. Not good at all.
Although in the super long term - which is how Brexit must be judged to have any chance of being deemed a success - a less bloated City could be a good thing. Yes, it pays lots of tax, but it also sucks so much talent and energy and resource and focus out of other (arguably more value added) sectors and it adds enormously to regional inequalities. How many smart young Northerners, for example, who could have stayed up there and worked in high tech manufacturing or renewable energy or medical research - or a hundred other things that could flourish outside London and the South East given the steer - end up instead sitting in a trading floor in EC4 or Canary, or a room in Mayfair, dreaming up "products" to help the crooked rich launder their money and dodge tax etc etc? It's a huge number. Think of the potential wasted. It's the British disease, along with private schools.
You emotional remainers (as distinct the reluctant, pragmatic remainers like me) really struggle to accept that Brexit is already, and always will be, judged as a success by those who voted for it. They are delighted - delighted - that we have left the EU. That`s it.
Does that mean you think it's a success or you can understand why people think it's a success?
Because from my perspective, Brexit looks massively unsuccessful, and I am not as an emotional a Remainer as all that. It's simply that things have turned out pretty much as I expected them to, given that the project was based on assumptions that, while being reasonable in themselves, were never likely to pan out. Same as the Iraq War. I knew from the off that was unlikely to turn out well. It wasn't that I objected to removing a horrible dictator.
The latter : I can understand why people think it's a success.
This is interesting. Would it be fair to say you are an emotional Leaver, who would like Brexit to be a success but hasn't been invested enough in the project at any point to ignore the practical problems with it? But really you would have like to have voted Leave, if only you could have made it add up?
It seems to me this is different from another group of people who voted Remain but are now fully on board and have the same view of Brexit reality as those that voted Leave. I would call those people Leavers.
@FF43 For me the referendum offered us a dire choice. Like being given a stick to grasp with shit at both ends. I dallied with voting leave, but dismissed this because my chief reason would have been out of spite towards Cameron who I blamed (and still do) for having the bloody referendum in the first place.
Vote to leave = pragmatically stupid; you can`t just leave decades of international diplomacy and peace-keeping. Vote to stay = poorer position within the EU and any scope we had to moderate its aims would be diminished.
The other influence on me was the environmental work that the EU has done - particularly on rewilding. Monbiot was similarly conflicted but voted remain in the end for this reason.
So it was a clear remain vote from me in the end, but I have no love for the EU and like most pragmatic remainers on balance wish it didn`t exist at all because it puts the UK in a quandary - but while it does we should have remained in it and piss inside the tent.
Best we can hope for now is other nations leave too and the project crumbles.
Thanks. I accept wanting the EU to collapse is a rational desire for a UK that is outside the project. It's not a view I take myself, partly emotional I guess, because I think the EU is good for Europe, whether the UK is in it or not, and partly practical because now we have left we have to deal with the EU as it is. We have no say on that and it's not good either for us or our partners to get drawn into deciding what they should do.
It is clearly in our interests to have a wealthy and stable Europe, and in that sense having the EU next to us works well.
On the other hand, a Europe that self-consciously sees itself as competing *against* the U.K., whether economically or diplomatically, is more problematic.
It is already clear that U.K. was able to block or temper certain foreign policy instincts in the EU, and it is not a good thing that we have surrendered that leverage.
As Donald Tusk, I think, put it, it isn't in the interests of the EU to protect the UK from the consequences of its decision to leave the European Union. There are several motivations behind the EU move to make things more difficult for the UK, some strategic, some opportunistic, some principled and some emotional. Those reasons are powerful and the UK won't get anywhere by saying the EU is unreasonable.
Nevertheless it's also in the EU and its members' interest to have a good relationship with a powerful near country, given that it has decided to leave the Union. There is a tension there. To satisfy both interests the EU needs to come up with an arrangement that is distinctly inferior to membership, yet is still valuable to the third party. I don't think they have worked that one out yet.
Actually your last paragraph puts the lie to your first.
It is very much in the interests of the UK to say the EU is being unreasonable. If they are going to persist in that attitude then we have nothing to gain from having a good relationship with them. If they expect us to behave reasonably towards them then they have to reciprocate. It is a two way relationship and both sides have to be reasonable. If either is not then the whole thing fails.
The EU so far does not seem to have grasped this basic concept. They recognise that the UK could potentially be a threat to them if it follows a certain course (and I am not advocating that) but seem to be unwilling to do anything to prevent that happening.
Lol.
Right now Rickhardt Tindellwanger is staying the precise opposite on PB.de
As I have already observed you clearly don't believe in people being reasonable. I think your extremist views are rather unfortunate when so many people on both sides are advocating common sense approaches. Thankfully you are in a small minority that can easily be ignored.
Nowhere have I said the people should not be reasonable.
That is your, barmy, interpretation, straight after a post where you called me both a fascist and a communist.
I knew Fergus McReynolds a bit at university (not well, friend of a friend; I probably only ever saw him when he was drinking - I've checked and the pic seems to fit though) and, given what I knew of him I'm astonished that he has a job, let alone a director at Make UK. Maybe my impression of him was unfair, maybe he's changed a lot or maybe it suggests that Make UK should not be taken too seriously. I suspect it's one of the first two (or a bit of both) but it's truly bizarre to see him in an apparently serious position.
Mind, I expect Boris Johnson's contemporaries have similar feelings!
I'm constantly surprised that I seem to have accidentally become one of the leading global experts in my specific niche. It certainly wasn't what I expected to be doing!
I'm currently working for clients in Japan, Australia, Taiwan, Denmark, Sweden, France, Germany the UK, Canada and the US.
I spoke to the tidal lagoon power lot about making an equity investment several years ago. One of the obvious problems to me was that even if the government signed off on the principle that a tidal lagoon power initiative was a great idea and even greenlit them to run the Swansea scheme, there was no guarantee that the company putting in the legwork for the proof of concept pilot would win the mandate for the larger economic schemes elsewhere.
It needs to be partially nationalised if it’s going to work. Taxpayer taking risk, in exchange for taxpayer getting reward. Not just electricity consumers (not quite the same thing). Old fashioned Tories in Parliament and Treasury mandarins don’t like hearing that sort of thing.
I don't follow on the risk vs reward - what is the price for power generated by the scheme vs the market price?
It's over a decade ago now but when I was PPS to the Energy Minister (Malcolm Wicks) we looked at the unit costs of every variety of energy and tidal lagoons were by far the worst (measured in energy returned over 30 years per £, as I recall. The clear winner then was onshore windpower, though offshore did quite well toodespite the higher maintenance costs - both were even then competitive with gas and oil. Nuclear was significantly more expensive but of course available 24/7 - we tried to avoid plunging for that anyway, feeling that renewables were the safest long-term direction. A later review tweaked the decision more towards including nuclear in the long-term directionh.
I doubt if the maths have changed that dramatically, so doing the lagoon approach would need to be subsidised because of its other benefits.
You saying that Marquee Mark talks bollocks? What a surprise.
Normally that is you.
I’d have you generally mid-table.
Not top, except when you lose your shit because someone questions your fondest but utterly demented belief set.
Surprised to hear you think EFTA membership, a good relationship with the EU, higher animal welfare and environmental standards and a globalist outlook are a 'demented belief set'.
Says a great deal about your particular value set.
I was thinking more about your global warming denialism, belief in an entirely open doors immigration policy, and advocacy for Scottish independence...from Lincolnshire.
Hang on, are you Piers Corbyn?
Anyone using the word 'denier' in this context has already lost the argument.
And advocating Scottish Independence from anywhere in England seems a very enlightened position to me. Of course with you being a statist verging on the fascist - or the communist if you prefer - I am not surprised you are opposed to people having the right of self determination. I am sure you were right there cheering on the Spanish as they were beating up old ladies for daring to want to have a vote.
A lot of projection here. Almost a classic case.
Nope, merely judging you based on your stated views. If you don't like people seeing you that way then that is all in your hands.
I spoke to the tidal lagoon power lot about making an equity investment several years ago. One of the obvious problems to me was that even if the government signed off on the principle that a tidal lagoon power initiative was a great idea and even greenlit them to run the Swansea scheme, there was no guarantee that the company putting in the legwork for the proof of concept pilot would win the mandate for the larger economic schemes elsewhere.
It needs to be partially nationalised if it’s going to work. Taxpayer taking risk, in exchange for taxpayer getting reward. Not just electricity consumers (not quite the same thing). Old fashioned Tories in Parliament and Treasury mandarins don’t like hearing that sort of thing.
I don't follow on the risk vs reward - what is the price for power generated by the scheme vs the market price?
It's over a decade ago now but when I was PPS to the Energy Minister (Malcolm Wicks) we looked at the unit costs of every variety of energy and tidal lagoons were by far the worst (measured in energy returned over 30 years per £, as I recall. The clear winner then was onshore windpower, though offshore did quite well toodespite the higher maintenance costs - both were even then competitive with gas and oil. Nuclear was significantly more expensive but of course available 24/7 - we tried to avoid plunging for that anyway, feeling that renewables were the safest long-term direction. A later review tweaked the decision more towards including nuclear in the long-term directionh.
I doubt if the maths have changed that dramatically, so doing the lagoon approach would need to be subsidised because of its other benefits.
You saying that Marquee Mark talks bollocks? What a surprise.
Normally that is you.
I’d have you generally mid-table.
Not top, except when you lose your shit because someone questions your fondest but utterly demented belief set.
Surprised to hear you think EFTA membership, a good relationship with the EU, higher animal welfare and environmental standards and a globalist outlook are a 'demented belief set'.
Says a great deal about your particular value set.
I was thinking more about your global warming denialism, belief in an entirely open doors immigration policy, and advocacy for Scottish independence...from Lincolnshire.
Hang on, are you Piers Corbyn?
Anyone using the word 'denier' in this context has already lost the argument.
And advocating Scottish Independence from anywhere in England seems a very enlightened position to me. Of course with you being a statist verging on the fascist - or the communist if you prefer - I am not surprised you are opposed to people having the right of self determination. I am sure you were right there cheering on the Spanish as they were beating up old ladies for daring to want to have a vote.
There's a depressing tendancy in life, as with this site, to manichaeism. I spent my first few months on this site screaming my head off at Richard until it emerged that, from diemetrically opposite starting points, that we both felt that EFTA membership was a reasonable idea. I've even found my self agreeing with HYUFD on...well... actually it was only one occasion.
I spoke to the tidal lagoon power lot about making an equity investment several years ago. One of the obvious problems to me was that even if the government signed off on the principle that a tidal lagoon power initiative was a great idea and even greenlit them to run the Swansea scheme, there was no guarantee that the company putting in the legwork for the proof of concept pilot would win the mandate for the larger economic schemes elsewhere.
It needs to be partially nationalised if it’s going to work. Taxpayer taking risk, in exchange for taxpayer getting reward. Not just electricity consumers (not quite the same thing). Old fashioned Tories in Parliament and Treasury mandarins don’t like hearing that sort of thing.
I don't follow on the risk vs reward - what is the price for power generated by the scheme vs the market price?
It's over a decade ago now but when I was PPS to the Energy Minister (Malcolm Wicks) we looked at the unit costs of every variety of energy and tidal lagoons were by far the worst (measured in energy returned over 30 years per £, as I recall. The clear winner then was onshore windpower, though offshore did quite well toodespite the higher maintenance costs - both were even then competitive with gas and oil. Nuclear was significantly more expensive but of course available 24/7 - we tried to avoid plunging for that anyway, feeling that renewables were the safest long-term direction. A later review tweaked the decision more towards including nuclear in the long-term directionh.
I doubt if the maths have changed that dramatically, so doing the lagoon approach would need to be subsidised because of its other benefits.
You saying that Marquee Mark talks bollocks? What a surprise.
Yet tidal is great to have in the mix for baseload. Wind power is intermittent.
Baseload to me seems like the opposite of what we need. We need surge capacity for when the wind isn't blowing and sun isn't shining - how does baseload help with that?
Predictable, rather than baseload. And system which relies very heavily on renewables will rely on some form of storage. If you have unpredictable renewables with potential downtime measure in days, then you'll need a lot more storage.
Storage tech is also developing fast. Some of the flow battery technologies have the potential to be significantly cheaper than pumped hydro.
The costs of each bit of the system depend on the makeup of the rest of the system. If you need weeks of storage rather than days (or even hours), that's obviously going to be costly. Very short term storage (batteries versus gas peaker plants) is already market competitive.
Unbelievable. How can we even think about having more than just a simple trading agreement with the EU.
I don't really understand why the Germans and Russians should not build this pipeline. The argument seems to be that it makes continental Europe 'dependent' on Russian gas. How does having a pipeline to get something cheaper remove the competing alternative suppliers? If Putin does 'switch the pipeline off' to blackmail the West, how does that actually work as blackmail when all the other suppliers are still there?
It allows Russia to bypass Eastern Europe and continue supplying gas to Western Europe. As it stands the only way to cut off Eastern Europe from gas also results in cutting off extremely profitable Western European markets simultaneously.
Essentially Germany is handing Russia a huge stick to bear Eastern Europe with should they decide they don't like Russian interference in their nations.
But it benefits German companies and allows Siemens to build cheaper dishwashers, so it's worth it from the German perspective.
Then the right way forward would appear to be to build alternative supply lines to those countries, rather than preventing Russia and Germany from pursuing what is on the face of it a legitimate commercial initiative. I know exactly what I would think as a British consumer if another country wanted to stop me getting cheaper power from another country - so I don't see why the Germans should feel any different.
How do you feel as a British consumer having to pay for baseload nuclear electricity at twice the price of domestic tidal? And it is the Whitehall civil servants stopping you getting that cheaper power....
I feel f-ing livid about it - I'm all in on tidal and if someone tells me who to write to that I can influence (seems unlikely as an Englishman living in Scotland), or points me to a petition I can sign, I'll do it.
I still have a feeling that this situation will turn around as Boris seeks a popular policy in Wales - very excited about it WHEN (not if) it happens.
I spoke to the tidal lagoon power lot about making an equity investment several years ago. One of the obvious problems to me was that even if the government signed off on the principle that a tidal lagoon power initiative was a great idea and even greenlit them to run the Swansea scheme, there was no guarantee that the company putting in the legwork for the proof of concept pilot would win the mandate for the larger economic schemes elsewhere.
It needs to be partially nationalised if it’s going to work. Taxpayer taking risk, in exchange for taxpayer getting reward. Not just electricity consumers (not quite the same thing). Old fashioned Tories in Parliament and Treasury mandarins don’t like hearing that sort of thing.
I don't follow on the risk vs reward - what is the price for power generated by the scheme vs the market price?
It's over a decade ago now but when I was PPS to the Energy Minister (Malcolm Wicks) we looked at the unit costs of every variety of energy and tidal lagoons were by far the worst (measured in energy returned over 30 years per £, as I recall. The clear winner then was onshore windpower, though offshore did quite well toodespite the higher maintenance costs - both were even then competitive with gas and oil. Nuclear was significantly more expensive but of course available 24/7 - we tried to avoid plunging for that anyway, feeling that renewables were the safest long-term direction. A later review tweaked the decision more towards including nuclear in the long-term directionh.
I doubt if the maths have changed that dramatically, so doing the lagoon approach would need to be subsidised because of its other benefits.
You saying that Marquee Mark talks bollocks? What a surprise.
Stay classy.
I could say that I know far, far more about the current state of play than an out of date former PPS, not in power back when costed tidal lagoon proposals were put before Government some 8 years ago.
The great disaster of Brexit on this was that the two big cheerleaders for tidal lagoon power, Cameron and Osborne, were swept away by the Referendum....
The continuing disaster is that Boris hasn't enacted it either - despite what he said on his sweep around Wales on his leadership campaign.
Why, do you think? Is he not a believer or is it more a case of having so much on his plate?
Who knows. I suspect in these times of Brexit and Covid, he has farmed it out to BEIS - whose officials are defiantly intent on spending many tens of billions of taxpayer money supporting nuclear.
Have to confess, the overnight loss of all EU share trading to Amsterdam, is the first bit of Project Fear which has:
1 Come true
AND
2 Given me the fear
One kinda knew it was coming, but the speed and scale still shocks. It might even make me regret my vote, if only the EU had not behaved with such flailing, malignant incompetence, in recent weeks.
But, if the City does collapse (quick or slow), we are in deep shit. Massively in debt just as our tax base disappears. Not good. Not good at all.
Although in the super long term - which is how Brexit must be judged to have any chance of being deemed a success - a less bloated City could be a good thing. Yes, it pays lots of tax, but it also sucks so much talent and energy and resource and focus out of other (arguably more value added) sectors and it adds enormously to regional inequalities. How many smart young Northerners, for example, who could have stayed up there and worked in high tech manufacturing or renewable energy or medical research - or a hundred other things that could flourish outside London and the South East given the steer - end up instead sitting in a trading floor in EC4 or Canary, or a room in Mayfair, dreaming up "products" to help the crooked rich launder their money and dodge tax etc etc? It's a huge number. Think of the potential wasted. It's the British disease, along with private schools.
You emotional remainers (as distinct the reluctant, pragmatic remainers like me) really struggle to accept that Brexit is already, and always will be, judged as a success by those who voted for it. They are delighted - delighted - that we have left the EU. That`s it.
Does that mean you think it's a success or you can understand why people think it's a success?
Because from my perspective, Brexit looks massively unsuccessful, and I am not as an emotional a Remainer as all that. It's simply that things have turned out pretty much as I expected them to, given that the project was based on assumptions that, while being reasonable in themselves, were never likely to pan out. Same as the Iraq War. I knew from the off that was unlikely to turn out well. It wasn't that I objected to removing a horrible dictator.
The latter : I can understand why people think it's a success.
This is interesting. Would it be fair to say you are an emotional Leaver, who would like Brexit to be a success but hasn't been invested enough in the project at any point to ignore the practical problems with it? But really you would have like to have voted Leave, if only you could have made it add up?
It seems to me this is different from another group of people who voted Remain but are now fully on board and have the same view of Brexit reality as those that voted Leave. I would call those people Leavers.
@FF43 For me the referendum offered us a dire choice. Like being given a stick to grasp with shit at both ends. I dallied with voting leave, but dismissed this because my chief reason would have been out of spite towards Cameron who I blamed (and still do) for having the bloody referendum in the first place.
Vote to leave = pragmatically stupid; you can`t just leave decades of international diplomacy and peace-keeping. Vote to stay = poorer position within the EU and any scope we had to moderate its aims would be diminished.
The other influence on me was the environmental work that the EU has done - particularly on rewilding. Monbiot was similarly conflicted but voted remain in the end for this reason.
So it was a clear remain vote from me in the end, but I have no love for the EU and like most pragmatic remainers on balance wish it didn`t exist at all because it puts the UK in a quandary - but while it does we should have remained in it and piss inside the tent.
Best we can hope for now is other nations leave too and the project crumbles.
Thanks. I accept wanting the EU to collapse is a rational desire for a UK that is outside the project. It's not a view I take myself, partly emotional I guess, because I think the EU is good for Europe, whether the UK is in it or not, and partly practical because now we have left we have to deal with the EU as it is. We have no say on that and it's not good either for us or our partners to get drawn into deciding what they should do.
It is clearly in our interests to have a wealthy and stable Europe, and in that sense having the EU next to us works well.
On the other hand, a Europe that self-consciously sees itself as competing *against* the U.K., whether economically or diplomatically, is more problematic.
It is already clear that U.K. was able to block or temper certain foreign policy instincts in the EU, and it is not a good thing that we have surrendered that leverage.
As Donald Tusk, I think, put it, it isn't in the interests of the EU to protect the UK from the consequences of its decision to leave the European Union. There are several motivations behind the EU move to make things more difficult for the UK, some strategic, some opportunistic, some principled and some emotional. Those reasons are powerful and the UK won't get anywhere by saying the EU is unreasonable.
Nevertheless it's also in the EU and its members' interest to have a good relationship with a powerful near country, given that it has decided to leave the Union. There is a tension there. To satisfy both interests the EU needs to come up with an arrangement that is distinctly inferior to membership, yet is still valuable to the third party. I don't think they have worked that one out yet.
Actually your last paragraph puts the lie to your first.
It is very much in the interests of the UK to say the EU is being unreasonable. If they are going to persist in that attitude then we have nothing to gain from having a good relationship with them. If they expect us to behave reasonably towards them then they have to reciprocate. It is a two way relationship and both sides have to be reasonable. If either is not then the whole thing fails.
The EU so far does not seem to have grasped this basic concept. They recognise that the UK could potentially be a threat to them if it follows a certain course (and I am not advocating that) but seem to be unwilling to do anything to prevent that happening.
It's in the UK's interest to have its cake and eat it, which is how Johnson put it. For powerful and specific reasons that is not at all in the EU's interest - mainly because as with all membership organisations they need to maximise the value of membership. Brexit was sold on no loss. The EU needs to make sure no other country tries that again by allowing that loss to happen. Having a good relationship with the UK is a nice to have, but is secondary. What's maybe interesting is that member states are completely aligned with the EU on that. They aren't the Commission and you might expect them to have different views.
I should have added, reasonableness isn't much of a concept in international relations. I don't think the EU either expects the UK to be reasonable or to be reasonable themselves. The questions are where are the points of agreement and what can you get the other side to commit to?
(And how many more PBers are going to enthusiastically retweet this clown?)
Middle/Upper class breakdown is
Starmer 38%
Johnson 33%
Strange that the odious Goodwin failed to cite these numbers.
His descent from mildly provocative analyst of populism, through Trump arse-licker general, to ludicrous populist apologist for the Tory government really is a tale of misery and embarrassment.
And of course his tweet was posted THREE TIMES by posters happy to minge about “Scott and Paste”.
Have to confess, the overnight loss of all EU share trading to Amsterdam, is the first bit of Project Fear which has:
1 Come true
AND
2 Given me the fear
One kinda knew it was coming, but the speed and scale still shocks. It might even make me regret my vote, if only the EU had not behaved with such flailing, malignant incompetence, in recent weeks.
But, if the City does collapse (quick or slow), we are in deep shit. Massively in debt just as our tax base disappears. Not good. Not good at all.
Although in the super long term - which is how Brexit must be judged to have any chance of being deemed a success - a less bloated City could be a good thing. Yes, it pays lots of tax, but it also sucks so much talent and energy and resource and focus out of other (arguably more value added) sectors and it adds enormously to regional inequalities. How many smart young Northerners, for example, who could have stayed up there and worked in high tech manufacturing or renewable energy or medical research - or a hundred other things that could flourish outside London and the South East given the steer - end up instead sitting in a trading floor in EC4 or Canary, or a room in Mayfair, dreaming up "products" to help the crooked rich launder their money and dodge tax etc etc? It's a huge number. Think of the potential wasted. It's the British disease, along with private schools.
You emotional remainers (as distinct the reluctant, pragmatic remainers like me) really struggle to accept that Brexit is already, and always will be, judged as a success by those who voted for it. They are delighted - delighted - that we have left the EU. That`s it.
Does that mean you think it's a success or you can understand why people think it's a success?
Because from my perspective, Brexit looks massively unsuccessful, and I am not as an emotional a Remainer as all that. It's simply that things have turned out pretty much as I expected them to, given that the project was based on assumptions that, while being reasonable in themselves, were never likely to pan out. Same as the Iraq War. I knew from the off that was unlikely to turn out well. It wasn't that I objected to removing a horrible dictator.
The latter : I can understand why people think it's a success.
This is interesting. Would it be fair to say you are an emotional Leaver, who would like Brexit to be a success but hasn't been invested enough in the project at any point to ignore the practical problems with it? But really you would have like to have voted Leave, if only you could have made it add up?
It seems to me this is different from another group of people who voted Remain but are now fully on board and have the same view of Brexit reality as those that voted Leave. I would call those people Leavers.
@FF43 For me the referendum offered us a dire choice. Like being given a stick to grasp with shit at both ends. I dallied with voting leave, but dismissed this because my chief reason would have been out of spite towards Cameron who I blamed (and still do) for having the bloody referendum in the first place.
Vote to leave = pragmatically stupid; you can`t just leave decades of international diplomacy and peace-keeping. Vote to stay = poorer position within the EU and any scope we had to moderate its aims would be diminished.
The other influence on me was the environmental work that the EU has done - particularly on rewilding. Monbiot was similarly conflicted but voted remain in the end for this reason.
So it was a clear remain vote from me in the end, but I have no love for the EU and like most pragmatic remainers on balance wish it didn`t exist at all because it puts the UK in a quandary - but while it does we should have remained in it and piss inside the tent.
Best we can hope for now is other nations leave too and the project crumbles.
Thanks. I accept wanting the EU to collapse is a rational desire for a UK that is outside the project. It's not a view I take myself, partly emotional I guess, because I think the EU is good for Europe, whether the UK is in it or not, and partly practical because now we have left we have to deal with the EU as it is. We have no say on that and it's not good either for us or our partners to get drawn into deciding what they should do.
It is clearly in our interests to have a wealthy and stable Europe, and in that sense having the EU next to us works well.
On the other hand, a Europe that self-consciously sees itself as competing *against* the U.K., whether economically or diplomatically, is more problematic.
It is already clear that U.K. was able to block or temper certain foreign policy instincts in the EU, and it is not a good thing that we have surrendered that leverage.
As Donald Tusk, I think, put it, it isn't in the interests of the EU to protect the UK from the consequences of its decision to leave the European Union. There are several motivations behind the EU move to make things more difficult for the UK, some strategic, some opportunistic, some principled and some emotional. Those reasons are powerful and the UK won't get anywhere by saying the EU is unreasonable.
Nevertheless it's also in the EU and its members' interest to have a good relationship with a powerful near country, given that it has decided to leave the Union. There is a tension there. To satisfy both interests the EU needs to come up with an arrangement that is distinctly inferior to membership, yet is still valuable to the third party. I don't think they have worked that one out yet.
Actually your last paragraph puts the lie to your first.
It is very much in the interests of the UK to say the EU is being unreasonable. If they are going to persist in that attitude then we have nothing to gain from having a good relationship with them. If they expect us to behave reasonably towards them then they have to reciprocate. It is a two way relationship and both sides have to be reasonable. If either is not then the whole thing fails.
The EU so far does not seem to have grasped this basic concept. They recognise that the UK could potentially be a threat to them if it follows a certain course (and I am not advocating that) but seem to be unwilling to do anything to prevent that happening.
Lol.
Right now Rickhardt Tindellwanger is staying the precise opposite on PB.de
As I have already observed you clearly don't believe in people being reasonable. I think your extremist views are rather unfortunate when so many people on both sides are advocating common sense approaches. Thankfully you are in a small minority that can easily be ignored.
Nowhere have I said the people should not be reasonable.
That is your, barmy, interpretation, straight after a post where you called me both a fascist and a communist.
Dickie's winning rhetorical style is to say something like "you would have run up behind that disabled person in the queue at Aldi and hit her over the head with a bag of chips so I think we can ignore your views about EU Reg EU/43G/2021/RX"
This is the problematic quote afaics: Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors … even by children,” the report said quoting the post.
“Because history is edited, most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views.”
IMV hating someone is hating someone. It doesn't really matter why.
But on the left it is totemic that motive matters more than action. (cf the higher sentences for racist/sexuality motivated crimes in the UK vs generic crimes)
Mens Rea has been part of criminal law for a very long time I think. The motive makes the crime in many cases, not just those involving hate.
Yes, but I was thinking not of Mens Rea, but the fact that you have a higher sentence for beating up a black or gay person (as a hate crime) vs beating up someone because they just happen to be in the area.
For me it's the beating up that is the crime that needs punishing, not the "why".
So, take the Stephen Lawrence murder. For you the racist motivation adds not a jot to the weight of the crime?
No. A black man's life is worth the same as a white man's life (or a man, or woman, of any other colour).
A murder should be punished as such.
Of course, the parole board, in due course, will need to consider the probability of reoffending and might come to a different view at that time.
Have to confess, the overnight loss of all EU share trading to Amsterdam, is the first bit of Project Fear which has:
1 Come true
AND
2 Given me the fear
One kinda knew it was coming, but the speed and scale still shocks. It might even make me regret my vote, if only the EU had not behaved with such flailing, malignant incompetence, in recent weeks.
But, if the City does collapse (quick or slow), we are in deep shit. Massively in debt just as our tax base disappears. Not good. Not good at all.
Although in the super long term - which is how Brexit must be judged to have any chance of being deemed a success - a less bloated City could be a good thing. Yes, it pays lots of tax, but it also sucks so much talent and energy and resource and focus out of other (arguably more value added) sectors and it adds enormously to regional inequalities. How many smart young Northerners, for example, who could have stayed up there and worked in high tech manufacturing or renewable energy or medical research - or a hundred other things that could flourish outside London and the South East given the steer - end up instead sitting in a trading floor in EC4 or Canary, or a room in Mayfair, dreaming up "products" to help the crooked rich launder their money and dodge tax etc etc? It's a huge number. Think of the potential wasted. It's the British disease, along with private schools.
You emotional remainers (as distinct the reluctant, pragmatic remainers like me) really struggle to accept that Brexit is already, and always will be, judged as a success by those who voted for it. They are delighted - delighted - that we have left the EU. That`s it.
Actually, I do know that, although I wish it were not so. It's done, we're out, thank fuck for that, what a palaver. NEXT. The only way this changes is if it's an absolute and obvious disaster that can be pinned on Brexit. I'm hoping for this and any trueblood Remainer who says they aren't is fibbing.
What a strange way to live a life.
No different to Europhobes wanting the EU to struggle and ideally collapse. I find agnostics more strange.
It is not the same, because reprehensible and stupid as those people are, they are not willing their own country, where they pay taxes, and bring up their families, to fail. They are merely selfish, not active self-harmers.
First, there is no moral superiority in wishing harm on foreigners rather than Brits. Second, none of the harm done by Brexit will be caused by people who opposed it. It's outrageous to suggest this. That's victim blaming. That's gaslighting. It's just a complete and utter bunch of bananas.
This is the problematic quote afaics: Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors … even by children,” the report said quoting the post.
“Because history is edited, most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views.”
IMV hating someone is hating someone. It doesn't really matter why.
But on the left it is totemic that motive matters more than action. (cf the higher sentences for racist/sexuality motivated crimes in the UK vs generic crimes)
Mens Rea has been part of criminal law for a very long time I think. The motive makes the crime in many cases, not just those involving hate.
Yes, but I was thinking not of Mens Rea, but the fact that you have a higher sentence for beating up a black or gay person (as a hate crime) vs beating up someone because they just happen to be in the area.
For me it's the beating up that is the crime that needs punishing, not the "why".
So, take the Stephen Lawrence murder. For you the racist motivation adds not a jot to the weight of the crime?
No. A black man's life is worth the same as a white man's life (or a man, or woman, of any other colour).
A murder should be punished as such.
Of course, the parole board, in due course, will need to consider the probability of reoffending and might come to a different view at that time.
So wife can't take it any more decides to electrocute her husband by dropping the toaster in his bath = person singling out man because he is Asian and beating him to death in front of a cheering racist mob.
Have to confess, the overnight loss of all EU share trading to Amsterdam, is the first bit of Project Fear which has:
1 Come true
AND
2 Given me the fear
One kinda knew it was coming, but the speed and scale still shocks. It might even make me regret my vote, if only the EU had not behaved with such flailing, malignant incompetence, in recent weeks.
But, if the City does collapse (quick or slow), we are in deep shit. Massively in debt just as our tax base disappears. Not good. Not good at all.
Although in the super long term - which is how Brexit must be judged to have any chance of being deemed a success - a less bloated City could be a good thing. Yes, it pays lots of tax, but it also sucks so much talent and energy and resource and focus out of other (arguably more value added) sectors and it adds enormously to regional inequalities. How many smart young Northerners, for example, who could have stayed up there and worked in high tech manufacturing or renewable energy or medical research - or a hundred other things that could flourish outside London and the South East given the steer - end up instead sitting in a trading floor in EC4 or Canary, or a room in Mayfair, dreaming up "products" to help the crooked rich launder their money and dodge tax etc etc? It's a huge number. Think of the potential wasted. It's the British disease, along with private schools.
You emotional remainers (as distinct the reluctant, pragmatic remainers like me) really struggle to accept that Brexit is already, and always will be, judged as a success by those who voted for it. They are delighted - delighted - that we have left the EU. That`s it.
Does that mean you think it's a success or you can understand why people think it's a success?
Because from my perspective, Brexit looks massively unsuccessful, and I am not as an emotional a Remainer as all that. It's simply that things have turned out pretty much as I expected them to, given that the project was based on assumptions that, while being reasonable in themselves, were never likely to pan out. Same as the Iraq War. I knew from the off that was unlikely to turn out well. It wasn't that I objected to removing a horrible dictator.
The latter : I can understand why people think it's a success.
This is interesting. Would it be fair to say you are an emotional Leaver, who would like Brexit to be a success but hasn't been invested enough in the project at any point to ignore the practical problems with it? But really you would have like to have voted Leave, if only you could have made it add up?
It seems to me this is different from another group of people who voted Remain but are now fully on board and have the same view of Brexit reality as those that voted Leave. I would call those people Leavers.
@FF43 For me the referendum offered us a dire choice. Like being given a stick to grasp with shit at both ends. I dallied with voting leave, but dismissed this because my chief reason would have been out of spite towards Cameron who I blamed (and still do) for having the bloody referendum in the first place.
Vote to leave = pragmatically stupid; you can`t just leave decades of international diplomacy and peace-keeping. Vote to stay = poorer position within the EU and any scope we had to moderate its aims would be diminished.
The other influence on me was the environmental work that the EU has done - particularly on rewilding. Monbiot was similarly conflicted but voted remain in the end for this reason.
So it was a clear remain vote from me in the end, but I have no love for the EU and like most pragmatic remainers on balance wish it didn`t exist at all because it puts the UK in a quandary - but while it does we should have remained in it and piss inside the tent.
Best we can hope for now is other nations leave too and the project crumbles.
Thanks. I accept wanting the EU to collapse is a rational desire for a UK that is outside the project. It's not a view I take myself, partly emotional I guess, because I think the EU is good for Europe, whether the UK is in it or not, and partly practical because now we have left we have to deal with the EU as it is. We have no say on that and it's not good either for us or our partners to get drawn into deciding what they should do.
It is clearly in our interests to have a wealthy and stable Europe, and in that sense having the EU next to us works well.
On the other hand, a Europe that self-consciously sees itself as competing *against* the U.K., whether economically or diplomatically, is more problematic.
It is already clear that U.K. was able to block or temper certain foreign policy instincts in the EU, and it is not a good thing that we have surrendered that leverage.
As Donald Tusk, I think, put it, it isn't in the interests of the EU to protect the UK from the consequences of its decision to leave the European Union. There are several motivations behind the EU move to make things more difficult for the UK, some strategic, some opportunistic, some principled and some emotional. Those reasons are powerful and the UK won't get anywhere by saying the EU is unreasonable.
Nevertheless it's also in the EU and its members' interest to have a good relationship with a powerful near country, given that it has decided to leave the Union. There is a tension there. To satisfy both interests the EU needs to come up with an arrangement that is distinctly inferior to membership, yet is still valuable to the third party. I don't think they have worked that one out yet.
Actually your last paragraph puts the lie to your first.
It is very much in the interests of the UK to say the EU is being unreasonable. If they are going to persist in that attitude then we have nothing to gain from having a good relationship with them. If they expect us to behave reasonably towards them then they have to reciprocate. It is a two way relationship and both sides have to be reasonable. If either is not then the whole thing fails.
The EU so far does not seem to have grasped this basic concept. They recognise that the UK could potentially be a threat to them if it follows a certain course (and I am not advocating that) but seem to be unwilling to do anything to prevent that happening.
Lol.
Right now Rickhardt Tindellwanger is staying the precise opposite on PB.de
As I have already observed you clearly don't believe in people being reasonable. I think your extremist views are rather unfortunate when so many people on both sides are advocating common sense approaches. Thankfully you are in a small minority that can easily be ignored.
Nowhere have I said the people should not be reasonable.
That is your, barmy, interpretation, straight after a post where you called me both a fascist and a communist.
The posting that I responded to here was you attacking my comment that we should all be reasonable. If you can't even be bothered to keep up with your own arguments/comments then you really are wasting everyone's time.
Edit: Oh and I didn't call you a fascist and a communist. It was either/or. Your choice.
Please try and brush up on your basic comprehension if you want to have these little discussions.
On (1), it is worth noting that the Argentinian Embassy in London is technically titled the Embassy of Argentina and Mercosur. I don't know if there is an official Mercosur Ambassador, but the UK could have relegated the office to being simply the Mercosur Mission or Representative Office.
Is that true, I googled it in quotes and there were zero hits.
My knowledge is, I admit, a little out of date. But when I was exporting solar batteries to Brazil and Argentina (2015?) we needed to get a special permit from the Mercosur embassy in London.
Are you sure they aren't just co-located in the way that the Icelandic Embassy borrows some space from the Danes?
Have to confess, the overnight loss of all EU share trading to Amsterdam, is the first bit of Project Fear which has:
1 Come true
AND
2 Given me the fear
One kinda knew it was coming, but the speed and scale still shocks. It might even make me regret my vote, if only the EU had not behaved with such flailing, malignant incompetence, in recent weeks.
But, if the City does collapse (quick or slow), we are in deep shit. Massively in debt just as our tax base disappears. Not good. Not good at all.
Although in the super long term - which is how Brexit must be judged to have any chance of being deemed a success - a less bloated City could be a good thing. Yes, it pays lots of tax, but it also sucks so much talent and energy and resource and focus out of other (arguably more value added) sectors and it adds enormously to regional inequalities. How many smart young Northerners, for example, who could have stayed up there and worked in high tech manufacturing or renewable energy or medical research - or a hundred other things that could flourish outside London and the South East given the steer - end up instead sitting in a trading floor in EC4 or Canary, or a room in Mayfair, dreaming up "products" to help the crooked rich launder their money and dodge tax etc etc? It's a huge number. Think of the potential wasted. It's the British disease, along with private schools.
You emotional remainers (as distinct the reluctant, pragmatic remainers like me) really struggle to accept that Brexit is already, and always will be, judged as a success by those who voted for it. They are delighted - delighted - that we have left the EU. That`s it.
Does that mean you think it's a success or you can understand why people think it's a success?
Because from my perspective, Brexit looks massively unsuccessful, and I am not as an emotional a Remainer as all that. It's simply that things have turned out pretty much as I expected them to, given that the project was based on assumptions that, while being reasonable in themselves, were never likely to pan out. Same as the Iraq War. I knew from the off that was unlikely to turn out well. It wasn't that I objected to removing a horrible dictator.
The latter : I can understand why people think it's a success.
This is interesting. Would it be fair to say you are an emotional Leaver, who would like Brexit to be a success but hasn't been invested enough in the project at any point to ignore the practical problems with it? But really you would have like to have voted Leave, if only you could have made it add up?
It seems to me this is different from another group of people who voted Remain but are now fully on board and have the same view of Brexit reality as those that voted Leave. I would call those people Leavers.
@FF43 For me the referendum offered us a dire choice. Like being given a stick to grasp with shit at both ends. I dallied with voting leave, but dismissed this because my chief reason would have been out of spite towards Cameron who I blamed (and still do) for having the bloody referendum in the first place.
Vote to leave = pragmatically stupid; you can`t just leave decades of international diplomacy and peace-keeping. Vote to stay = poorer position within the EU and any scope we had to moderate its aims would be diminished.
The other influence on me was the environmental work that the EU has done - particularly on rewilding. Monbiot was similarly conflicted but voted remain in the end for this reason.
So it was a clear remain vote from me in the end, but I have no love for the EU and like most pragmatic remainers on balance wish it didn`t exist at all because it puts the UK in a quandary - but while it does we should have remained in it and piss inside the tent.
Best we can hope for now is other nations leave too and the project crumbles.
Thanks. I accept wanting the EU to collapse is a rational desire for a UK that is outside the project. It's not a view I take myself, partly emotional I guess, because I think the EU is good for Europe, whether the UK is in it or not, and partly practical because now we have left we have to deal with the EU as it is. We have no say on that and it's not good either for us or our partners to get drawn into deciding what they should do.
It is clearly in our interests to have a wealthy and stable Europe, and in that sense having the EU next to us works well.
On the other hand, a Europe that self-consciously sees itself as competing *against* the U.K., whether economically or diplomatically, is more problematic.
It is already clear that U.K. was able to block or temper certain foreign policy instincts in the EU, and it is not a good thing that we have surrendered that leverage.
As Donald Tusk, I think, put it, it isn't in the interests of the EU to protect the UK from the consequences of its decision to leave the European Union. There are several motivations behind the EU move to make things more difficult for the UK, some strategic, some opportunistic, some principled and some emotional. Those reasons are powerful and the UK won't get anywhere by saying the EU is unreasonable.
Nevertheless it's also in the EU and its members' interest to have a good relationship with a powerful near country, given that it has decided to leave the Union. There is a tension there. To satisfy both interests the EU needs to come up with an arrangement that is distinctly inferior to membership, yet is still valuable to the third party. I don't think they have worked that one out yet.
Actually your last paragraph puts the lie to your first.
It is very much in the interests of the UK to say the EU is being unreasonable. If they are going to persist in that attitude then we have nothing to gain from having a good relationship with them. If they expect us to behave reasonably towards them then they have to reciprocate. It is a two way relationship and both sides have to be reasonable. If either is not then the whole thing fails.
The EU so far does not seem to have grasped this basic concept. They recognise that the UK could potentially be a threat to them if it follows a certain course (and I am not advocating that) but seem to be unwilling to do anything to prevent that happening.
Lol.
Right now Rickhardt Tindellwanger is staying the precise opposite on PB.de
As I have already observed you clearly don't believe in people being reasonable. I think your extremist views are rather unfortunate when so many people on both sides are advocating common sense approaches. Thankfully you are in a small minority that can easily be ignored.
Nowhere have I said the people should not be reasonable.
That is your, barmy, interpretation, straight after a post where you called me both a fascist and a communist.
Dickie's winning rhetorical style is to say something like "you would have run up behind that disabled person in the queue at Aldi and hit her over the head with a bag of chips so I think we can ignore your views about EU Reg EU/43G/2021/RX"
Lol.
He is one of the many EU obsessed “self-righteous brothers” that infest this site.
Have to confess, the overnight loss of all EU share trading to Amsterdam, is the first bit of Project Fear which has:
1 Come true
AND
2 Given me the fear
One kinda knew it was coming, but the speed and scale still shocks. It might even make me regret my vote, if only the EU had not behaved with such flailing, malignant incompetence, in recent weeks.
But, if the City does collapse (quick or slow), we are in deep shit. Massively in debt just as our tax base disappears. Not good. Not good at all.
Although in the super long term - which is how Brexit must be judged to have any chance of being deemed a success - a less bloated City could be a good thing. Yes, it pays lots of tax, but it also sucks so much talent and energy and resource and focus out of other (arguably more value added) sectors and it adds enormously to regional inequalities. How many smart young Northerners, for example, who could have stayed up there and worked in high tech manufacturing or renewable energy or medical research - or a hundred other things that could flourish outside London and the South East given the steer - end up instead sitting in a trading floor in EC4 or Canary, or a room in Mayfair, dreaming up "products" to help the crooked rich launder their money and dodge tax etc etc? It's a huge number. Think of the potential wasted. It's the British disease, along with private schools.
You emotional remainers (as distinct the reluctant, pragmatic remainers like me) really struggle to accept that Brexit is already, and always will be, judged as a success by those who voted for it. They are delighted - delighted - that we have left the EU. That`s it.
Does that mean you think it's a success or you can understand why people think it's a success?
Because from my perspective, Brexit looks massively unsuccessful, and I am not as an emotional a Remainer as all that. It's simply that things have turned out pretty much as I expected them to, given that the project was based on assumptions that, while being reasonable in themselves, were never likely to pan out. Same as the Iraq War. I knew from the off that was unlikely to turn out well. It wasn't that I objected to removing a horrible dictator.
The latter : I can understand why people think it's a success.
This is interesting. Would it be fair to say you are an emotional Leaver, who would like Brexit to be a success but hasn't been invested enough in the project at any point to ignore the practical problems with it? But really you would have like to have voted Leave, if only you could have made it add up?
It seems to me this is different from another group of people who voted Remain but are now fully on board and have the same view of Brexit reality as those that voted Leave. I would call those people Leavers.
@FF43 For me the referendum offered us a dire choice. Like being given a stick to grasp with shit at both ends. I dallied with voting leave, but dismissed this because my chief reason would have been out of spite towards Cameron who I blamed (and still do) for having the bloody referendum in the first place.
Vote to leave = pragmatically stupid; you can`t just leave decades of international diplomacy and peace-keeping. Vote to stay = poorer position within the EU and any scope we had to moderate its aims would be diminished.
The other influence on me was the environmental work that the EU has done - particularly on rewilding. Monbiot was similarly conflicted but voted remain in the end for this reason.
So it was a clear remain vote from me in the end, but I have no love for the EU and like most pragmatic remainers on balance wish it didn`t exist at all because it puts the UK in a quandary - but while it does we should have remained in it and piss inside the tent.
Best we can hope for now is other nations leave too and the project crumbles.
Thanks. I accept wanting the EU to collapse is a rational desire for a UK that is outside the project. It's not a view I take myself, partly emotional I guess, because I think the EU is good for Europe, whether the UK is in it or not, and partly practical because now we have left we have to deal with the EU as it is. We have no say on that and it's not good either for us or our partners to get drawn into deciding what they should do.
It is clearly in our interests to have a wealthy and stable Europe, and in that sense having the EU next to us works well.
On the other hand, a Europe that self-consciously sees itself as competing *against* the U.K., whether economically or diplomatically, is more problematic.
It is already clear that U.K. was able to block or temper certain foreign policy instincts in the EU, and it is not a good thing that we have surrendered that leverage.
As Donald Tusk, I think, put it, it isn't in the interests of the EU to protect the UK from the consequences of its decision to leave the European Union. There are several motivations behind the EU move to make things more difficult for the UK, some strategic, some opportunistic, some principled and some emotional. Those reasons are powerful and the UK won't get anywhere by saying the EU is unreasonable.
Nevertheless it's also in the EU and its members' interest to have a good relationship with a powerful near country, given that it has decided to leave the Union. There is a tension there. To satisfy both interests the EU needs to come up with an arrangement that is distinctly inferior to membership, yet is still valuable to the third party. I don't think they have worked that one out yet.
Actually your last paragraph puts the lie to your first.
It is very much in the interests of the UK to say the EU is being unreasonable. If they are going to persist in that attitude then we have nothing to gain from having a good relationship with them. If they expect us to behave reasonably towards them then they have to reciprocate. It is a two way relationship and both sides have to be reasonable. If either is not then the whole thing fails.
The EU so far does not seem to have grasped this basic concept. They recognise that the UK could potentially be a threat to them if it follows a certain course (and I am not advocating that) but seem to be unwilling to do anything to prevent that happening.
Lol.
Right now Rickhardt Tindellwanger is staying the precise opposite on PB.de
As I have already observed you clearly don't believe in people being reasonable. I think your extremist views are rather unfortunate when so many people on both sides are advocating common sense approaches. Thankfully you are in a small minority that can easily be ignored.
Nowhere have I said the people should not be reasonable.
That is your, barmy, interpretation, straight after a post where you called me both a fascist and a communist.
Dickie's winning rhetorical style is to say something like "you would have run up behind that disabled person in the queue at Aldi and hit her over the head with a bag of chips so I think we can ignore your views about EU Reg EU/43G/2021/RX"
Have to confess, the overnight loss of all EU share trading to Amsterdam, is the first bit of Project Fear which has:
1 Come true
AND
2 Given me the fear
One kinda knew it was coming, but the speed and scale still shocks. It might even make me regret my vote, if only the EU had not behaved with such flailing, malignant incompetence, in recent weeks.
But, if the City does collapse (quick or slow), we are in deep shit. Massively in debt just as our tax base disappears. Not good. Not good at all.
Although in the super long term - which is how Brexit must be judged to have any chance of being deemed a success - a less bloated City could be a good thing. Yes, it pays lots of tax, but it also sucks so much talent and energy and resource and focus out of other (arguably more value added) sectors and it adds enormously to regional inequalities. How many smart young Northerners, for example, who could have stayed up there and worked in high tech manufacturing or renewable energy or medical research - or a hundred other things that could flourish outside London and the South East given the steer - end up instead sitting in a trading floor in EC4 or Canary, or a room in Mayfair, dreaming up "products" to help the crooked rich launder their money and dodge tax etc etc? It's a huge number. Think of the potential wasted. It's the British disease, along with private schools.
You emotional remainers (as distinct the reluctant, pragmatic remainers like me) really struggle to accept that Brexit is already, and always will be, judged as a success by those who voted for it. They are delighted - delighted - that we have left the EU. That`s it.
Actually, I do know that, although I wish it were not so. It's done, we're out, thank fuck for that, what a palaver. NEXT. The only way this changes is if it's an absolute and obvious disaster that can be pinned on Brexit. I'm hoping for this and any trueblood Remainer who says they aren't is fibbing.
What a strange way to live a life.
No different to Europhobes wanting the EU to struggle and ideally collapse. I find agnostics more strange.
It is not the same, because reprehensible and stupid as those people are, they are not willing their own country, where they pay taxes, and bring up their families, to fail. They are merely selfish, not active self-harmers.
First, there is no moral superiority in wishing harm on foreigners rather than Brits. Second, none of the harm done by Brexit will be caused by people who opposed it. It's outrageous to suggest this. That's victim blaming. That's gaslighting. It's just a complete and utter bunch of bananas.
Wishing harm - no - but don`t you hold the widely accepted notion of "an expanding circle of moral concern, beginning with our own family or tribe, and expanding over time to include larger groups, nations, families of nations, all humans and perhaps even nonhuman animals"?
I spoke to the tidal lagoon power lot about making an equity investment several years ago. One of the obvious problems to me was that even if the government signed off on the principle that a tidal lagoon power initiative was a great idea and even greenlit them to run the Swansea scheme, there was no guarantee that the company putting in the legwork for the proof of concept pilot would win the mandate for the larger economic schemes elsewhere.
It needs to be partially nationalised if it’s going to work. Taxpayer taking risk, in exchange for taxpayer getting reward. Not just electricity consumers (not quite the same thing). Old fashioned Tories in Parliament and Treasury mandarins don’t like hearing that sort of thing.
I don't follow on the risk vs reward - what is the price for power generated by the scheme vs the market price?
It's over a decade ago now but when I was PPS to the Energy Minister (Malcolm Wicks) we looked at the unit costs of every variety of energy and tidal lagoons were by far the worst (measured in energy returned over 30 years per £, as I recall. The clear winner then was onshore windpower, though offshore did quite well toodespite the higher maintenance costs - both were even then competitive with gas and oil. Nuclear was significantly more expensive but of course available 24/7 - we tried to avoid plunging for that anyway, feeling that renewables were the safest long-term direction. A later review tweaked the decision more towards including nuclear in the long-term directionh.
I doubt if the maths have changed that dramatically, so doing the lagoon approach would need to be subsidised because of its other benefits.
You saying that Marquee Mark talks bollocks? What a surprise.
Yet tidal is great to have in the mix for baseload. Wind power is intermittent.
Maybe. But he is constantly banging on about his amazing biz case and how stupid officials are for not appreciating it.
Then Nick Palmer comes on and says tidal had the highest unit costs of any energy choice.
Swansea is used as the benchmark. It is W-A-Y higher than all the other tidal lagoons - because it is the test-bed.
Back then, offshore wind was £150. So offshore wind costs come down by 2/3rds, but tidal apparently stays the same, based on the price of the testbed being the roll-out price across the whole series of lagoons. There, in a nutshell, is the civil service case that has been made to Govt.
However, if you have a "vaccine-style" task force, they would see just how ridiculous that positon is.
Are you pitching to the Welsh government? If so, there’s your problem.
However as they seem to have missed out on that battery gigafactory perhaps they will give you another hearing.
Wales could now be building a state of the art turbine manufacturing facility in south Wales. Inward investment from one of the world's leading turbine companies based in mainland Europe.
They were effectively written a letter by BEIS saying "Fuck off - and take your green jobs with you...."
Does not surprise me one iota. The plebs like a bit of "Boris". As I keep saying, it was the BBC election. Three contributors to the landslide. Corbyn, yes; Brexit, oh yes; but also BORIS. This is a formidable brand. I want him gone before the next election. I fancy Labour's chances more against anyone else.
Why do pollsters still try to polarise the country into remain and leave by analysing their findings in this way? It`s becoming irritating.
Because alongside age and educational attainment level, how people voted in the referendum are pretty good predictors for how people will vote on a whole range of opinions.
This is the problematic quote afaics: Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors … even by children,” the report said quoting the post.
“Because history is edited, most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views.”
IMV hating someone is hating someone. It doesn't really matter why.
But on the left it is totemic that motive matters more than action. (cf the higher sentences for racist/sexuality motivated crimes in the UK vs generic crimes)
Mens Rea has been part of criminal law for a very long time I think. The motive makes the crime in many cases, not just those involving hate.
Yes, but I was thinking not of Mens Rea, but the fact that you have a higher sentence for beating up a black or gay person (as a hate crime) vs beating up someone because they just happen to be in the area.
For me it's the beating up that is the crime that needs punishing, not the "why".
So, take the Stephen Lawrence murder. For you the racist motivation adds not a jot to the weight of the crime?
No. A black man's life is worth the same as a white man's life (or a man, or woman, of any other colour).
A murder should be punished as such.
Of course, the parole board, in due course, will need to consider the probability of reoffending and might come to a different view at that time.
But to Stephen Lawrence's killers, his life was not worth the same as a white man's. Had he been white, he would not have been killed.
You also said earlier that it was a 'leftist' thing that racism etc. was factored in to punishment. I believe that the idea of racially aggravated crimes being punished more severely has been supported by the Tories as well. If not, they certainly haven't changed the law.
I make that about 450k added to the first dose count, so it looks very much as if the NHS is going to get to fifteen million by February 15th with room to spare. The only question is, therefore, how many of those in the top four priority cohorts will, by then, have either been missed or refused. Indeed, at the present rate of progress, and given anecdata on the subject seen here and elsewhere, a significant minority of the 65-69's should've cleared through vaccination by that date.
Why do pollsters still try to polarise the country into remain and leave by analysing their findings in this way? It`s becoming irritating.
Because alongside age and educational attainment level, how people voted in the referendum are pretty good predictors for how people will vote on a whole range of opinions.
Feels like they are deliberately rubbing salt into a wound to me.
As Donald Tusk, I think, put it, it isn't in the interests of the EU to protect the UK from the consequences of its decision to leave the European Union. There are several motivations behind the EU move to make things more difficult for the UK, some strategic, some opportunistic, some principled and some emotional. Those reasons are powerful and the UK won't get anywhere by saying the EU is unreasonable.
Nevertheless it's also in the EU and its members' interest to have a good relationship with a powerful near country, given that it has decided to leave the Union. There is a tension there. To satisfy both interests the EU needs to come up with an arrangement that is distinctly inferior to membership, yet is still valuable to the third party. I don't think they have worked that one out yet.
Actually your last paragraph puts the lie to your first.
It is very much in the interests of the UK to say the EU is being unreasonable. If they are going to persist in that attitude then we have nothing to gain from having a good relationship with them. If they expect us to behave reasonably towards them then they have to reciprocate. It is a two way relationship and both sides have to be reasonable. If either is not then the whole thing fails.
The EU so far does not seem to have grasped this basic concept. They recognise that the UK could potentially be a threat to them if it follows a certain course (and I am not advocating that) but seem to be unwilling to do anything to prevent that happening.
It's in the UK's interest to have its cake and eat it, which is how Johnson put it. For powerful and specific reasons that is not at all in the EU's interest - mainly because as with all membership organisations they need to maximise the value of membership. Brexit was sold on no loss. The EU needs to make sure no other country tries that again by allowing that loss to happen. Having a good relationship with the UK is a nice to have, but is secondary. What's maybe interesting is that member states are completely aligned with the EU on that. They aren't the Commission and you might expect them to have different views.
Furthermore, and this is a curious thing, it is in the EU's interest to maximise Brexit loss and the UK's interest to minimise it. Yet the UK Leaver government does nothing to minimise the loss. Instead it aggravates it. The UK government is doing the EU a favour here.
Have to confess, the overnight loss of all EU share trading to Amsterdam, is the first bit of Project Fear which has:
1 Come true
AND
2 Given me the fear
One kinda knew it was coming, but the speed and scale still shocks. It might even make me regret my vote, if only the EU had not behaved with such flailing, malignant incompetence, in recent weeks.
But, if the City does collapse (quick or slow), we are in deep shit. Massively in debt just as our tax base disappears. Not good. Not good at all.
Although in the super long term - which is how Brexit must be judged to have any chance of being deemed a success - a less bloated City could be a good thing. Yes, it pays lots of tax, but it also sucks so much talent and energy and resource and focus out of other (arguably more value added) sectors and it adds enormously to regional inequalities. How many smart young Northerners, for example, who could have stayed up there and worked in high tech manufacturing or renewable energy or medical research - or a hundred other things that could flourish outside London and the South East given the steer - end up instead sitting in a trading floor in EC4 or Canary, or a room in Mayfair, dreaming up "products" to help the crooked rich launder their money and dodge tax etc etc? It's a huge number. Think of the potential wasted. It's the British disease, along with private schools.
You emotional remainers (as distinct the reluctant, pragmatic remainers like me) really struggle to accept that Brexit is already, and always will be, judged as a success by those who voted for it. They are delighted - delighted - that we have left the EU. That`s it.
Does that mean you think it's a success or you can understand why people think it's a success?
Because from my perspective, Brexit looks massively unsuccessful, and I am not as an emotional a Remainer as all that. It's simply that things have turned out pretty much as I expected them to, given that the project was based on assumptions that, while being reasonable in themselves, were never likely to pan out. Same as the Iraq War. I knew from the off that was unlikely to turn out well. It wasn't that I objected to removing a horrible dictator.
The latter : I can understand why people think it's a success.
This is interesting. Would it be fair to say you are an emotional Leaver, who would like Brexit to be a success but hasn't been invested enough in the project at any point to ignore the practical problems with it? But really you would have like to have voted Leave, if only you could have made it add up?
It seems to me this is different from another group of people who voted Remain but are now fully on board and have the same view of Brexit reality as those that voted Leave. I would call those people Leavers.
@FF43 For me the referendum offered us a dire choice. Like being given a stick to grasp with shit at both ends. I dallied with voting leave, but dismissed this because my chief reason would have been out of spite towards Cameron who I blamed (and still do) for having the bloody referendum in the first place.
Vote to leave = pragmatically stupid; you can`t just leave decades of international diplomacy and peace-keeping. Vote to stay = poorer position within the EU and any scope we had to moderate its aims would be diminished.
The other influence on me was the environmental work that the EU has done - particularly on rewilding. Monbiot was similarly conflicted but voted remain in the end for this reason.
So it was a clear remain vote from me in the end, but I have no love for the EU and like most pragmatic remainers on balance wish it didn`t exist at all because it puts the UK in a quandary - but while it does we should have remained in it and piss inside the tent.
Best we can hope for now is other nations leave too and the project crumbles.
Thanks. I accept wanting the EU to collapse is a rational desire for a UK that is outside the project. It's not a view I take myself, partly emotional I guess, because I think the EU is good for Europe, whether the UK is in it or not, and partly practical because now we have left we have to deal with the EU as it is. We have no say on that and it's not good either for us or our partners to get drawn into deciding what they should do.
It is clearly in our interests to have a wealthy and stable Europe, and in that sense having the EU next to us works well.
On the other hand, a Europe that self-consciously sees itself as competing *against* the U.K., whether economically or diplomatically, is more problematic.
It is already clear that U.K. was able to block or temper certain foreign policy instincts in the EU, and it is not a good thing that we have surrendered that leverage.
As Donald Tusk, I think, put it, it isn't in the interests of the EU to protect the UK from the consequences of its decision to leave the European Union. There are several motivations behind the EU move to make things more difficult for the UK, some strategic, some opportunistic, some principled and some emotional. Those reasons are powerful and the UK won't get anywhere by saying the EU is unreasonable.
Nevertheless it's also in the EU and its members' interest to have a good relationship with a powerful near country, given that it has decided to leave the Union. There is a tension there. To satisfy both interests the EU needs to come up with an arrangement that is distinctly inferior to membership, yet is still valuable to the third party. I don't think they have worked that one out yet.
Actually your last paragraph puts the lie to your first.
It is very much in the interests of the UK to say the EU is being unreasonable. If they are going to persist in that attitude then we have nothing to gain from having a good relationship with them. If they expect us to behave reasonably towards them then they have to reciprocate. It is a two way relationship and both sides have to be reasonable. If either is not then the whole thing fails.
The EU so far does not seem to have grasped this basic concept. They recognise that the UK could potentially be a threat to them if it follows a certain course (and I am not advocating that) but seem to be unwilling to do anything to prevent that happening.
It's in the UK's interest to have its cake and eat it, which is how Johnson put it. For powerful and specific reasons that is not at all in the EU's interest - mainly because as with all membership organisations they need to maximise the value of membership. Brexit was sold on no loss. The EU needs to make sure no other country tries that again by allowing that loss to happen. Having a good relationship with the UK is a nice to have, but is secondary. What's maybe interesting is that member states are completely aligned with the EU on that. They aren't the Commission and you might expect them to have different views.
I should have added, reasonableness isn't much of a concept in international relations. I don't think the EU either expects the UK to be reasonable or to be reasonable themselves. The questions are where are the points of agreement and what can you get the other side to commit to?
The relationship between the EU and the UK is, now, unique in the world of democracy. It is in the best interests of the EU that the UK do BADLY and SUFFER, so that all other states are discouraged from leaving. And this is exactly how they are acting, not just neutral, but hostile and pernicious. They are TRYING to make life as hard as possible for us.
This attitude is not repeated anywhere else across the free world. as far as I know.
It makes them a bunch of wankers, but logical wankers. They are behaving rationally, albeit with narrow self interest, and a great deal of insecurity (a confident EU would have shrugged off Brexit and would be happy to do better deals).
This is not going to change for the foreseeable. We are confronted with a hostile trading bloc on our doorstep. Our only choice is to grovel for a change of heart, or be hostile right back, while trying to undermine them. Or unite with America and then invade.
This is the problematic quote afaics: Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors … even by children,” the report said quoting the post.
“Because history is edited, most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views.”
IMV hating someone is hating someone. It doesn't really matter why.
But on the left it is totemic that motive matters more than action. (cf the higher sentences for racist/sexuality motivated crimes in the UK vs generic crimes)
Mens Rea has been part of criminal law for a very long time I think. The motive makes the crime in many cases, not just those involving hate.
Yes, but I was thinking not of Mens Rea, but the fact that you have a higher sentence for beating up a black or gay person (as a hate crime) vs beating up someone because they just happen to be in the area.
For me it's the beating up that is the crime that needs punishing, not the "why".
So, take the Stephen Lawrence murder. For you the racist motivation adds not a jot to the weight of the crime?
No. A black man's life is worth the same as a white man's life (or a man, or woman, of any other colour).
A murder should be punished as such.
Of course, the parole board, in due course, will need to consider the probability of reoffending and might come to a different view at that time.
So wife can't take it any more decides to electrocute her husband by dropping the toaster in his bath = person singling out man because he is Asian and beating him to death in front of a cheering racist mob.
Where did that come from? Mitigating circumstances are still a thing that can be considered in sentencing.
A better equivalency might be: person singling out man because he is Asian and beating him to death in front of a cheering racist mob = white person beating to death a random white person for no apparent reason
Why do pollsters still try to polarise the country into remain and leave by analysing their findings in this way? It`s becoming irritating.
Because alongside age and educational attainment level, how people voted in the referendum are pretty good predictors for how people will vote on a whole range of opinions.
Other correlations are available...
It looks like they didn't even offer Ireland as a choice.
Why do pollsters still try to polarise the country into remain and leave by analysing their findings in this way? It`s becoming irritating.
Because alongside age and educational attainment level, how people voted in the referendum are pretty good predictors for how people will vote on a whole range of opinions.
Feels like they are deliberately rubbing salt into a wound to me.
Do you get this excited when pollsters break down their polls by previous general election vote?
Have to confess, the overnight loss of all EU share trading to Amsterdam, is the first bit of Project Fear which has:
1 Come true
AND
2 Given me the fear
One kinda knew it was coming, but the speed and scale still shocks. It might even make me regret my vote, if only the EU had not behaved with such flailing, malignant incompetence, in recent weeks.
But, if the City does collapse (quick or slow), we are in deep shit. Massively in debt just as our tax base disappears. Not good. Not good at all.
Although in the super long term - which is how Brexit must be judged to have any chance of being deemed a success - a less bloated City could be a good thing. Yes, it pays lots of tax, but it also sucks so much talent and energy and resource and focus out of other (arguably more value added) sectors and it adds enormously to regional inequalities. How many smart young Northerners, for example, who could have stayed up there and worked in high tech manufacturing or renewable energy or medical research - or a hundred other things that could flourish outside London and the South East given the steer - end up instead sitting in a trading floor in EC4 or Canary, or a room in Mayfair, dreaming up "products" to help the crooked rich launder their money and dodge tax etc etc? It's a huge number. Think of the potential wasted. It's the British disease, along with private schools.
You emotional remainers (as distinct the reluctant, pragmatic remainers like me) really struggle to accept that Brexit is already, and always will be, judged as a success by those who voted for it. They are delighted - delighted - that we have left the EU. That`s it.
Does that mean you think it's a success or you can understand why people think it's a success?
Because from my perspective, Brexit looks massively unsuccessful, and I am not as an emotional a Remainer as all that. It's simply that things have turned out pretty much as I expected them to, given that the project was based on assumptions that, while being reasonable in themselves, were never likely to pan out. Same as the Iraq War. I knew from the off that was unlikely to turn out well. It wasn't that I objected to removing a horrible dictator.
The latter : I can understand why people think it's a success.
This is interesting. Would it be fair to say you are an emotional Leaver, who would like Brexit to be a success but hasn't been invested enough in the project at any point to ignore the practical problems with it? But really you would have like to have voted Leave, if only you could have made it add up?
It seems to me this is different from another group of people who voted Remain but are now fully on board and have the same view of Brexit reality as those that voted Leave. I would call those people Leavers.
@FF43 For me the referendum offered us a dire choice. Like being given a stick to grasp with shit at both ends. I dallied with voting leave, but dismissed this because my chief reason would have been out of spite towards Cameron who I blamed (and still do) for having the bloody referendum in the first place.
Vote to leave = pragmatically stupid; you can`t just leave decades of international diplomacy and peace-keeping. Vote to stay = poorer position within the EU and any scope we had to moderate its aims would be diminished.
The other influence on me was the environmental work that the EU has done - particularly on rewilding. Monbiot was similarly conflicted but voted remain in the end for this reason.
So it was a clear remain vote from me in the end, but I have no love for the EU and like most pragmatic remainers on balance wish it didn`t exist at all because it puts the UK in a quandary - but while it does we should have remained in it and piss inside the tent.
Best we can hope for now is other nations leave too and the project crumbles.
Thanks. I accept wanting the EU to collapse is a rational desire for a UK that is outside the project. It's not a view I take myself, partly emotional I guess, because I think the EU is good for Europe, whether the UK is in it or not, and partly practical because now we have left we have to deal with the EU as it is. We have no say on that and it's not good either for us or our partners to get drawn into deciding what they should do.
It is clearly in our interests to have a wealthy and stable Europe, and in that sense having the EU next to us works well.
On the other hand, a Europe that self-consciously sees itself as competing *against* the U.K., whether economically or diplomatically, is more problematic.
It is already clear that U.K. was able to block or temper certain foreign policy instincts in the EU, and it is not a good thing that we have surrendered that leverage.
As Donald Tusk, I think, put it, it isn't in the interests of the EU to protect the UK from the consequences of its decision to leave the European Union. There are several motivations behind the EU move to make things more difficult for the UK, some strategic, some opportunistic, some principled and some emotional. Those reasons are powerful and the UK won't get anywhere by saying the EU is unreasonable.
Nevertheless it's also in the EU and its members' interest to have a good relationship with a powerful near country, given that it has decided to leave the Union. There is a tension there. To satisfy both interests the EU needs to come up with an arrangement that is distinctly inferior to membership, yet is still valuable to the third party. I don't think they have worked that one out yet.
Actually your last paragraph puts the lie to your first.
It is very much in the interests of the UK to say the EU is being unreasonable. If they are going to persist in that attitude then we have nothing to gain from having a good relationship with them. If they expect us to behave reasonably towards them then they have to reciprocate. It is a two way relationship and both sides have to be reasonable. If either is not then the whole thing fails.
The EU so far does not seem to have grasped this basic concept. They recognise that the UK could potentially be a threat to them if it follows a certain course (and I am not advocating that) but seem to be unwilling to do anything to prevent that happening.
Lol.
Right now Rickhardt Tindellwanger is staying the precise opposite on PB.de
As I have already observed you clearly don't believe in people being reasonable. I think your extremist views are rather unfortunate when so many people on both sides are advocating common sense approaches. Thankfully you are in a small minority that can easily be ignored.
Nowhere have I said the people should not be reasonable.
That is your, barmy, interpretation, straight after a post where you called me both a fascist and a communist.
Dickie's winning rhetorical style is to say something like "you would have run up behind that disabled person in the queue at Aldi and hit her over the head with a bag of chips so I think we can ignore your views about EU Reg EU/43G/2021/RX"
Lol.
He is one of the many EU obsessed “self-righteous brothers” that infest this site.
I make that about 450k added to the first dose count, so it looks very much as if the NHS is going to get to fifteen million by February 15th with room to spare. The only question is, therefore, how many of those in the top four priority cohorts will, by then, have either been missed or refused. Indeed, at the present rate of progress, and given anecdata on the subject seen here and elsewhere, a significant minority of the 65-69's should've cleared through vaccination by that date.
The actual target is 14.6m, so they should be there near as damnit by tomorrow night given the reported figures are a day late already. Then the weekend will all be jam on top.
Have to confess, the overnight loss of all EU share trading to Amsterdam, is the first bit of Project Fear which has:
1 Come true
AND
2 Given me the fear
One kinda knew it was coming, but the speed and scale still shocks. It might even make me regret my vote, if only the EU had not behaved with such flailing, malignant incompetence, in recent weeks.
But, if the City does collapse (quick or slow), we are in deep shit. Massively in debt just as our tax base disappears. Not good. Not good at all.
Although in the super long term - which is how Brexit must be judged to have any chance of being deemed a success - a less bloated City could be a good thing. Yes, it pays lots of tax, but it also sucks so much talent and energy and resource and focus out of other (arguably more value added) sectors and it adds enormously to regional inequalities. How many smart young Northerners, for example, who could have stayed up there and worked in high tech manufacturing or renewable energy or medical research - or a hundred other things that could flourish outside London and the South East given the steer - end up instead sitting in a trading floor in EC4 or Canary, or a room in Mayfair, dreaming up "products" to help the crooked rich launder their money and dodge tax etc etc? It's a huge number. Think of the potential wasted. It's the British disease, along with private schools.
You emotional remainers (as distinct the reluctant, pragmatic remainers like me) really struggle to accept that Brexit is already, and always will be, judged as a success by those who voted for it. They are delighted - delighted - that we have left the EU. That`s it.
Does that mean you think it's a success or you can understand why people think it's a success?
Because from my perspective, Brexit looks massively unsuccessful, and I am not as an emotional a Remainer as all that. It's simply that things have turned out pretty much as I expected them to, given that the project was based on assumptions that, while being reasonable in themselves, were never likely to pan out. Same as the Iraq War. I knew from the off that was unlikely to turn out well. It wasn't that I objected to removing a horrible dictator.
The latter : I can understand why people think it's a success.
This is interesting. Would it be fair to say you are an emotional Leaver, who would like Brexit to be a success but hasn't been invested enough in the project at any point to ignore the practical problems with it? But really you would have like to have voted Leave, if only you could have made it add up?
It seems to me this is different from another group of people who voted Remain but are now fully on board and have the same view of Brexit reality as those that voted Leave. I would call those people Leavers.
@FF43 For me the referendum offered us a dire choice. Like being given a stick to grasp with shit at both ends. I dallied with voting leave, but dismissed this because my chief reason would have been out of spite towards Cameron who I blamed (and still do) for having the bloody referendum in the first place.
Vote to leave = pragmatically stupid; you can`t just leave decades of international diplomacy and peace-keeping. Vote to stay = poorer position within the EU and any scope we had to moderate its aims would be diminished.
The other influence on me was the environmental work that the EU has done - particularly on rewilding. Monbiot was similarly conflicted but voted remain in the end for this reason.
So it was a clear remain vote from me in the end, but I have no love for the EU and like most pragmatic remainers on balance wish it didn`t exist at all because it puts the UK in a quandary - but while it does we should have remained in it and piss inside the tent.
Best we can hope for now is other nations leave too and the project crumbles.
Thanks. I accept wanting the EU to collapse is a rational desire for a UK that is outside the project. It's not a view I take myself, partly emotional I guess, because I think the EU is good for Europe, whether the UK is in it or not, and partly practical because now we have left we have to deal with the EU as it is. We have no say on that and it's not good either for us or our partners to get drawn into deciding what they should do.
It is clearly in our interests to have a wealthy and stable Europe, and in that sense having the EU next to us works well.
On the other hand, a Europe that self-consciously sees itself as competing *against* the U.K., whether economically or diplomatically, is more problematic.
It is already clear that U.K. was able to block or temper certain foreign policy instincts in the EU, and it is not a good thing that we have surrendered that leverage.
As Donald Tusk, I think, put it, it isn't in the interests of the EU to protect the UK from the consequences of its decision to leave the European Union. There are several motivations behind the EU move to make things more difficult for the UK, some strategic, some opportunistic, some principled and some emotional. Those reasons are powerful and the UK won't get anywhere by saying the EU is unreasonable.
Nevertheless it's also in the EU and its members' interest to have a good relationship with a powerful near country, given that it has decided to leave the Union. There is a tension there. To satisfy both interests the EU needs to come up with an arrangement that is distinctly inferior to membership, yet is still valuable to the third party. I don't think they have worked that one out yet.
Actually your last paragraph puts the lie to your first.
It is very much in the interests of the UK to say the EU is being unreasonable. If they are going to persist in that attitude then we have nothing to gain from having a good relationship with them. If they expect us to behave reasonably towards them then they have to reciprocate. It is a two way relationship and both sides have to be reasonable. If either is not then the whole thing fails.
The EU so far does not seem to have grasped this basic concept. They recognise that the UK could potentially be a threat to them if it follows a certain course (and I am not advocating that) but seem to be unwilling to do anything to prevent that happening.
Lol.
Right now Rickhardt Tindellwanger is staying the precise opposite on PB.de
As I have already observed you clearly don't believe in people being reasonable. I think your extremist views are rather unfortunate when so many people on both sides are advocating common sense approaches. Thankfully you are in a small minority that can easily be ignored.
Nowhere have I said the people should not be reasonable.
That is your, barmy, interpretation, straight after a post where you called me both a fascist and a communist.
Dickie's winning rhetorical style is to say something like "you would have run up behind that disabled person in the queue at Aldi and hit her over the head with a bag of chips so I think we can ignore your views about EU Reg EU/43G/2021/RX"
Oh dear. Topping is off his medication again.
QED.
With added extra spice of a mental health reference.
Have to confess, the overnight loss of all EU share trading to Amsterdam, is the first bit of Project Fear which has:
1 Come true
AND
2 Given me the fear
One kinda knew it was coming, but the speed and scale still shocks. It might even make me regret my vote, if only the EU had not behaved with such flailing, malignant incompetence, in recent weeks.
But, if the City does collapse (quick or slow), we are in deep shit. Massively in debt just as our tax base disappears. Not good. Not good at all.
Although in the super long term - which is how Brexit must be judged to have any chance of being deemed a success - a less bloated City could be a good thing. Yes, it pays lots of tax, but it also sucks so much talent and energy and resource and focus out of other (arguably more value added) sectors and it adds enormously to regional inequalities. How many smart young Northerners, for example, who could have stayed up there and worked in high tech manufacturing or renewable energy or medical research - or a hundred other things that could flourish outside London and the South East given the steer - end up instead sitting in a trading floor in EC4 or Canary, or a room in Mayfair, dreaming up "products" to help the crooked rich launder their money and dodge tax etc etc? It's a huge number. Think of the potential wasted. It's the British disease, along with private schools.
You emotional remainers (as distinct the reluctant, pragmatic remainers like me) really struggle to accept that Brexit is already, and always will be, judged as a success by those who voted for it. They are delighted - delighted - that we have left the EU. That`s it.
Does that mean you think it's a success or you can understand why people think it's a success?
Because from my perspective, Brexit looks massively unsuccessful, and I am not as an emotional a Remainer as all that. It's simply that things have turned out pretty much as I expected them to, given that the project was based on assumptions that, while being reasonable in themselves, were never likely to pan out. Same as the Iraq War. I knew from the off that was unlikely to turn out well. It wasn't that I objected to removing a horrible dictator.
The latter : I can understand why people think it's a success.
This is interesting. Would it be fair to say you are an emotional Leaver, who would like Brexit to be a success but hasn't been invested enough in the project at any point to ignore the practical problems with it? But really you would have like to have voted Leave, if only you could have made it add up?
It seems to me this is different from another group of people who voted Remain but are now fully on board and have the same view of Brexit reality as those that voted Leave. I would call those people Leavers.
@FF43 For me the referendum offered us a dire choice. Like being given a stick to grasp with shit at both ends. I dallied with voting leave, but dismissed this because my chief reason would have been out of spite towards Cameron who I blamed (and still do) for having the bloody referendum in the first place.
Vote to leave = pragmatically stupid; you can`t just leave decades of international diplomacy and peace-keeping. Vote to stay = poorer position within the EU and any scope we had to moderate its aims would be diminished.
The other influence on me was the environmental work that the EU has done - particularly on rewilding. Monbiot was similarly conflicted but voted remain in the end for this reason.
So it was a clear remain vote from me in the end, but I have no love for the EU and like most pragmatic remainers on balance wish it didn`t exist at all because it puts the UK in a quandary - but while it does we should have remained in it and piss inside the tent.
Best we can hope for now is other nations leave too and the project crumbles.
Thanks. I accept wanting the EU to collapse is a rational desire for a UK that is outside the project. It's not a view I take myself, partly emotional I guess, because I think the EU is good for Europe, whether the UK is in it or not, and partly practical because now we have left we have to deal with the EU as it is. We have no say on that and it's not good either for us or our partners to get drawn into deciding what they should do.
It is clearly in our interests to have a wealthy and stable Europe, and in that sense having the EU next to us works well.
On the other hand, a Europe that self-consciously sees itself as competing *against* the U.K., whether economically or diplomatically, is more problematic.
It is already clear that U.K. was able to block or temper certain foreign policy instincts in the EU, and it is not a good thing that we have surrendered that leverage.
As Donald Tusk, I think, put it, it isn't in the interests of the EU to protect the UK from the consequences of its decision to leave the European Union. There are several motivations behind the EU move to make things more difficult for the UK, some strategic, some opportunistic, some principled and some emotional. Those reasons are powerful and the UK won't get anywhere by saying the EU is unreasonable.
Nevertheless it's also in the EU and its members' interest to have a good relationship with a powerful near country, given that it has decided to leave the Union. There is a tension there. To satisfy both interests the EU needs to come up with an arrangement that is distinctly inferior to membership, yet is still valuable to the third party. I don't think they have worked that one out yet.
Actually your last paragraph puts the lie to your first.
It is very much in the interests of the UK to say the EU is being unreasonable. If they are going to persist in that attitude then we have nothing to gain from having a good relationship with them. If they expect us to behave reasonably towards them then they have to reciprocate. It is a two way relationship and both sides have to be reasonable. If either is not then the whole thing fails.
The EU so far does not seem to have grasped this basic concept. They recognise that the UK could potentially be a threat to them if it follows a certain course (and I am not advocating that) but seem to be unwilling to do anything to prevent that happening.
Lol.
Right now Rickhardt Tindellwanger is staying the precise opposite on PB.de
As I have already observed you clearly don't believe in people being reasonable. I think your extremist views are rather unfortunate when so many people on both sides are advocating common sense approaches. Thankfully you are in a small minority that can easily be ignored.
Nowhere have I said the people should not be reasonable.
That is your, barmy, interpretation, straight after a post where you called me both a fascist and a communist.
Dickie's winning rhetorical style is to say something like "you would have run up behind that disabled person in the queue at Aldi and hit her over the head with a bag of chips so I think we can ignore your views about EU Reg EU/43G/2021/RX"
Lol.
He is one of the many EU obsessed “self-righteous brothers” that infest this site.
This is the problematic quote afaics: Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors … even by children,” the report said quoting the post.
“Because history is edited, most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views.”
IMV hating someone is hating someone. It doesn't really matter why.
But on the left it is totemic that motive matters more than action. (cf the higher sentences for racist/sexuality motivated crimes in the UK vs generic crimes)
Mens Rea has been part of criminal law for a very long time I think. The motive makes the crime in many cases, not just those involving hate.
Yes, but I was thinking not of Mens Rea, but the fact that you have a higher sentence for beating up a black or gay person (as a hate crime) vs beating up someone because they just happen to be in the area.
For me it's the beating up that is the crime that needs punishing, not the "why".
So, take the Stephen Lawrence murder. For you the racist motivation adds not a jot to the weight of the crime?
No. A black man's life is worth the same as a white man's life (or a man, or woman, of any other colour).
A murder should be punished as such.
Of course, the parole board, in due course, will need to consider the probability of reoffending and might come to a different view at that time.
But to Stephen Lawrence's killers, his life was not worth the same as a white man's. Had he been white, he would not have been killed.
You also said earlier that it was a 'leftist' thing that racism etc. was factored in to punishment. I believe that the idea of racially aggravated crimes being punished more severely has been supported by the Tories as well. If not, they certainly haven't changed the law.
Challenge is that this logic means the (predominantly black on black) drug related stabbings would be seen as less heinous than the racist killing of Mr Lawrence.
Since things are a little heated around here... Time to start a real fight
Chorizo in Paella - yes or no?
I am going to make pizza (including the dough) on Saturday night and the amount of processed meat in my fridge waiting to be used would see out weaker-arteried types.
Have to confess, the overnight loss of all EU share trading to Amsterdam, is the first bit of Project Fear which has:
1 Come true
AND
2 Given me the fear
One kinda knew it was coming, but the speed and scale still shocks. It might even make me regret my vote, if only the EU had not behaved with such flailing, malignant incompetence, in recent weeks.
But, if the City does collapse (quick or slow), we are in deep shit. Massively in debt just as our tax base disappears. Not good. Not good at all.
Although in the super long term - which is how Brexit must be judged to have any chance of being deemed a success - a less bloated City could be a good thing. Yes, it pays lots of tax, but it also sucks so much talent and energy and resource and focus out of other (arguably more value added) sectors and it adds enormously to regional inequalities. How many smart young Northerners, for example, who could have stayed up there and worked in high tech manufacturing or renewable energy or medical research - or a hundred other things that could flourish outside London and the South East given the steer - end up instead sitting in a trading floor in EC4 or Canary, or a room in Mayfair, dreaming up "products" to help the crooked rich launder their money and dodge tax etc etc? It's a huge number. Think of the potential wasted. It's the British disease, along with private schools.
You emotional remainers (as distinct the reluctant, pragmatic remainers like me) really struggle to accept that Brexit is already, and always will be, judged as a success by those who voted for it. They are delighted - delighted - that we have left the EU. That`s it.
Actually, I do know that, although I wish it were not so. It's done, we're out, thank fuck for that, what a palaver. NEXT. The only way this changes is if it's an absolute and obvious disaster that can be pinned on Brexit. I'm hoping for this and any trueblood Remainer who says they aren't is fibbing.
What a strange way to live a life.
No different to Europhobes wanting the EU to struggle and ideally collapse. I find agnostics more strange.
It is not the same, because reprehensible and stupid as those people are, they are not willing their own country, where they pay taxes, and bring up their families, to fail. They are merely selfish, not active self-harmers.
First, there is no moral superiority in wishing harm on foreigners rather than Brits. Second, none of the harm done by Brexit will be caused by people who opposed it. It's outrageous to suggest this. That's victim blaming. That's gaslighting. It's just a complete and utter bunch of bananas.
Wishing harm - no - but don`t you hold the widely accepted notion of "an expanding circle of moral concern, beginning with our own family or tribe, and expanding over time to include larger groups, nations, families of nations, all humans and perhaps even nonhuman animals"?
When it comes to the impact on me of something, this holds. So ceteris paribus I will be more moved by a murder in my street than in my City than in the UK than in France than in etc etc. But the moral concern? Hmm, not sure. Have to give that a deep think. Which I will now. I won't be able to stop myself. Thanks a bunch.
Why do pollsters still try to polarise the country into remain and leave by analysing their findings in this way? It`s becoming irritating.
Because alongside age and educational attainment level, how people voted in the referendum are pretty good predictors for how people will vote on a whole range of opinions.
Other correlations are available...
It looks like they didn't even offer Ireland as a choice.
I make that about 450k added to the first dose count, so it looks very much as if the NHS is going to get to fifteen million by February 15th with room to spare. The only question is, therefore, how many of those in the top four priority cohorts will, by then, have either been missed or refused. Indeed, at the present rate of progress, and given anecdata on the subject seen here and elsewhere, a significant minority of the 65-69's should've cleared through vaccination by that date.
The actual target is 14.6m, so they should be there near as damnit by tomorrow night given the reported figures are a day late already. Then the weekend will all be jam on top.
The target groups are 14.6 million.
Because of the policy of "spare jabs go to *someone*", a fair number outside those groups have been vaccinated.
Have to confess, the overnight loss of all EU share trading to Amsterdam, is the first bit of Project Fear which has:
1 Come true
AND
2 Given me the fear
One kinda knew it was coming, but the speed and scale still shocks. It might even make me regret my vote, if only the EU had not behaved with such flailing, malignant incompetence, in recent weeks.
But, if the City does collapse (quick or slow), we are in deep shit. Massively in debt just as our tax base disappears. Not good. Not good at all.
Although in the super long term - which is how Brexit must be judged to have any chance of being deemed a success - a less bloated City could be a good thing. Yes, it pays lots of tax, but it also sucks so much talent and energy and resource and focus out of other (arguably more value added) sectors and it adds enormously to regional inequalities. How many smart young Northerners, for example, who could have stayed up there and worked in high tech manufacturing or renewable energy or medical research - or a hundred other things that could flourish outside London and the South East given the steer - end up instead sitting in a trading floor in EC4 or Canary, or a room in Mayfair, dreaming up "products" to help the crooked rich launder their money and dodge tax etc etc? It's a huge number. Think of the potential wasted. It's the British disease, along with private schools.
You emotional remainers (as distinct the reluctant, pragmatic remainers like me) really struggle to accept that Brexit is already, and always will be, judged as a success by those who voted for it. They are delighted - delighted - that we have left the EU. That`s it.
Does that mean you think it's a success or you can understand why people think it's a success?
Because from my perspective, Brexit looks massively unsuccessful, and I am not as an emotional a Remainer as all that. It's simply that things have turned out pretty much as I expected them to, given that the project was based on assumptions that, while being reasonable in themselves, were never likely to pan out. Same as the Iraq War. I knew from the off that was unlikely to turn out well. It wasn't that I objected to removing a horrible dictator.
The latter : I can understand why people think it's a success.
This is interesting. Would it be fair to say you are an emotional Leaver, who would like Brexit to be a success but hasn't been invested enough in the project at any point to ignore the practical problems with it? But really you would have like to have voted Leave, if only you could have made it add up?
It seems to me this is different from another group of people who voted Remain but are now fully on board and have the same view of Brexit reality as those that voted Leave. I would call those people Leavers.
@FF43 For me the referendum offered us a dire choice. Like being given a stick to grasp with shit at both ends. I dallied with voting leave, but dismissed this because my chief reason would have been out of spite towards Cameron who I blamed (and still do) for having the bloody referendum in the first place.
Vote to leave = pragmatically stupid; you can`t just leave decades of international diplomacy and peace-keeping. Vote to stay = poorer position within the EU and any scope we had to moderate its aims would be diminished.
The other influence on me was the environmental work that the EU has done - particularly on rewilding. Monbiot was similarly conflicted but voted remain in the end for this reason.
So it was a clear remain vote from me in the end, but I have no love for the EU and like most pragmatic remainers on balance wish it didn`t exist at all because it puts the UK in a quandary - but while it does we should have remained in it and piss inside the tent.
Best we can hope for now is other nations leave too and the project crumbles.
Thanks. I accept wanting the EU to collapse is a rational desire for a UK that is outside the project. It's not a view I take myself, partly emotional I guess, because I think the EU is good for Europe, whether the UK is in it or not, and partly practical because now we have left we have to deal with the EU as it is. We have no say on that and it's not good either for us or our partners to get drawn into deciding what they should do.
It is clearly in our interests to have a wealthy and stable Europe, and in that sense having the EU next to us works well.
On the other hand, a Europe that self-consciously sees itself as competing *against* the U.K., whether economically or diplomatically, is more problematic.
It is already clear that U.K. was able to block or temper certain foreign policy instincts in the EU, and it is not a good thing that we have surrendered that leverage.
As Donald Tusk, I think, put it, it isn't in the interests of the EU to protect the UK from the consequences of its decision to leave the European Union. There are several motivations behind the EU move to make things more difficult for the UK, some strategic, some opportunistic, some principled and some emotional. Those reasons are powerful and the UK won't get anywhere by saying the EU is unreasonable.
Nevertheless it's also in the EU and its members' interest to have a good relationship with a powerful near country, given that it has decided to leave the Union. There is a tension there. To satisfy both interests the EU needs to come up with an arrangement that is distinctly inferior to membership, yet is still valuable to the third party. I don't think they have worked that one out yet.
Actually your last paragraph puts the lie to your first.
It is very much in the interests of the UK to say the EU is being unreasonable. If they are going to persist in that attitude then we have nothing to gain from having a good relationship with them. If they expect us to behave reasonably towards them then they have to reciprocate. It is a two way relationship and both sides have to be reasonable. If either is not then the whole thing fails.
The EU so far does not seem to have grasped this basic concept. They recognise that the UK could potentially be a threat to them if it follows a certain course (and I am not advocating that) but seem to be unwilling to do anything to prevent that happening.
Lol.
Right now Rickhardt Tindellwanger is staying the precise opposite on PB.de
As I have already observed you clearly don't believe in people being reasonable. I think your extremist views are rather unfortunate when so many people on both sides are advocating common sense approaches. Thankfully you are in a small minority that can easily be ignored.
Nowhere have I said the people should not be reasonable.
That is your, barmy, interpretation, straight after a post where you called me both a fascist and a communist.
Dickie's winning rhetorical style is to say something like "you would have run up behind that disabled person in the queue at Aldi and hit her over the head with a bag of chips so I think we can ignore your views about EU Reg EU/43G/2021/RX"
Lol.
He is one of the many EU obsessed “self-righteous brothers” that infest this site.
I spoke to the tidal lagoon power lot about making an equity investment several years ago. One of the obvious problems to me was that even if the government signed off on the principle that a tidal lagoon power initiative was a great idea and even greenlit them to run the Swansea scheme, there was no guarantee that the company putting in the legwork for the proof of concept pilot would win the mandate for the larger economic schemes elsewhere.
It needs to be partially nationalised if it’s going to work. Taxpayer taking risk, in exchange for taxpayer getting reward. Not just electricity consumers (not quite the same thing). Old fashioned Tories in Parliament and Treasury mandarins don’t like hearing that sort of thing.
I don't follow on the risk vs reward - what is the price for power generated by the scheme vs the market price?
It's over a decade ago now but when I was PPS to the Energy Minister (Malcolm Wicks) we looked at the unit costs of every variety of energy and tidal lagoons were by far the worst (measured in energy returned over 30 years per £, as I recall. The clear winner then was onshore windpower, though offshore did quite well toodespite the higher maintenance costs - both were even then competitive with gas and oil. Nuclear was significantly more expensive but of course available 24/7 - we tried to avoid plunging for that anyway, feeling that renewables were the safest long-term direction. A later review tweaked the decision more towards including nuclear in the long-term directionh.
I doubt if the maths have changed that dramatically, so doing the lagoon approach would need to be subsidised because of its other benefits.
You saying that Marquee Mark talks bollocks? What a surprise.
Yet tidal is great to have in the mix for baseload. Wind power is intermittent.
Baseload to me seems like the opposite of what we need. We need surge capacity for when the wind isn't blowing and sun isn't shining - how does baseload help with that?
Predictable, rather than baseload. And system which relies very heavily on renewables will rely on some form of storage. If you have unpredictable renewables with potential downtime measure in days, then you'll need a lot more storage.
Storage tech is also developing fast. Some of the flow battery technologies have the potential to be significantly cheaper than pumped hydro.
The costs of each bit of the system depend on the makeup of the rest of the system. If you need weeks of storage rather than days (or even hours), that's obviously going to be costly. Very short term storage (batteries versus gas peaker plants) is already market competitive.
Well precisely I completely agree.
The thing is what problem are you seeking to address? The problem is that the wind etc we've invested heavily in is unreliable and our demand surges, so we need some form of on-demand capacity to work when there's no wind and Eastenders ends and everyone puts the kettle on. Storage can do that, tidal can't.
Wind (unreliable) + Gas (on demand) works as a combination. Tidal (predicable) + Gas (on demand) works as a combination.
Tidal (unreliable) + Wind (predictable) I can't see working as a combination. Wind doesn't work on demand with Tidal's predictable downtimes, Tidal doesn't work on demand with Wind's unreliable downtimes.
Whatever solution is gone for needs to be on demand. That seems to me to be either Gas or Storage.
Furthermore, and this is a curious thing, it is in the EU's interest to maximise Brexit loss and the UK's interest to minimise it. Yet the UK Leaver government does nothing to minimise the loss. Instead it aggravates it. The UK government is doing the EU a favour here.
I make that about 450k added to the first dose count, so it looks very much as if the NHS is going to get to fifteen million by February 15th with room to spare. The only question is, therefore, how many of those in the top four priority cohorts will, by then, have either been missed or refused. Indeed, at the present rate of progress, and given anecdata on the subject seen here and elsewhere, a significant minority of the 65-69's should've cleared through vaccination by that date.
The actual target is 14.6m, so they should be there near as damnit by tomorrow night given the reported figures are a day late already. Then the weekend will all be jam on top.
The target groups are 14.6 million.
Because of the policy of "spare jabs go to *someone*", a fair number outside those groups have been vaccinated.
Yep, but the actual target is 14.6m all offered a vaccine and able to get it before the deadline - and in those terms the target is clearly already met given anyone in the group not already vaccinated or not booked has chosen that themselves bar a few outlyers.
Have to confess, the overnight loss of all EU share trading to Amsterdam, is the first bit of Project Fear which has:
1 Come true
AND
2 Given me the fear
One kinda knew it was coming, but the speed and scale still shocks. It might even make me regret my vote, if only the EU had not behaved with such flailing, malignant incompetence, in recent weeks.
But, if the City does collapse (quick or slow), we are in deep shit. Massively in debt just as our tax base disappears. Not good. Not good at all.
Although in the super long term - which is how Brexit must be judged to have any chance of being deemed a success - a less bloated City could be a good thing. Yes, it pays lots of tax, but it also sucks so much talent and energy and resource and focus out of other (arguably more value added) sectors and it adds enormously to regional inequalities. How many smart young Northerners, for example, who could have stayed up there and worked in high tech manufacturing or renewable energy or medical research - or a hundred other things that could flourish outside London and the South East given the steer - end up instead sitting in a trading floor in EC4 or Canary, or a room in Mayfair, dreaming up "products" to help the crooked rich launder their money and dodge tax etc etc? It's a huge number. Think of the potential wasted. It's the British disease, along with private schools.
You emotional remainers (as distinct the reluctant, pragmatic remainers like me) really struggle to accept that Brexit is already, and always will be, judged as a success by those who voted for it. They are delighted - delighted - that we have left the EU. That`s it.
Does that mean you think it's a success or you can understand why people think it's a success?
Because from my perspective, Brexit looks massively unsuccessful, and I am not as an emotional a Remainer as all that. It's simply that things have turned out pretty much as I expected them to, given that the project was based on assumptions that, while being reasonable in themselves, were never likely to pan out. Same as the Iraq War. I knew from the off that was unlikely to turn out well. It wasn't that I objected to removing a horrible dictator.
The latter : I can understand why people think it's a success.
This is interesting. Would it be fair to say you are an emotional Leaver, who would like Brexit to be a success but hasn't been invested enough in the project at any point to ignore the practical problems with it? But really you would have like to have voted Leave, if only you could have made it add up?
It seems to me this is different from another group of people who voted Remain but are now fully on board and have the same view of Brexit reality as those that voted Leave. I would call those people Leavers.
@FF43 For me the referendum offered us a dire choice. Like being given a stick to grasp with shit at both ends. I dallied with voting leave, but dismissed this because my chief reason would have been out of spite towards Cameron who I blamed (and still do) for having the bloody referendum in the first place.
Vote to leave = pragmatically stupid; you can`t just leave decades of international diplomacy and peace-keeping. Vote to stay = poorer position within the EU and any scope we had to moderate its aims would be diminished.
The other influence on me was the environmental work that the EU has done - particularly on rewilding. Monbiot was similarly conflicted but voted remain in the end for this reason.
So it was a clear remain vote from me in the end, but I have no love for the EU and like most pragmatic remainers on balance wish it didn`t exist at all because it puts the UK in a quandary - but while it does we should have remained in it and piss inside the tent.
Best we can hope for now is other nations leave too and the project crumbles.
Thanks. I accept wanting the EU to collapse is a rational desire for a UK that is outside the project. It's not a view I take myself, partly emotional I guess, because I think the EU is good for Europe, whether the UK is in it or not, and partly practical because now we have left we have to deal with the EU as it is. We have no say on that and it's not good either for us or our partners to get drawn into deciding what they should do.
It is clearly in our interests to have a wealthy and stable Europe, and in that sense having the EU next to us works well.
On the other hand, a Europe that self-consciously sees itself as competing *against* the U.K., whether economically or diplomatically, is more problematic.
It is already clear that U.K. was able to block or temper certain foreign policy instincts in the EU, and it is not a good thing that we have surrendered that leverage.
As Donald Tusk, I think, put it, it isn't in the interests of the EU to protect the UK from the consequences of its decision to leave the European Union. There are several motivations behind the EU move to make things more difficult for the UK, some strategic, some opportunistic, some principled and some emotional. Those reasons are powerful and the UK won't get anywhere by saying the EU is unreasonable.
Nevertheless it's also in the EU and its members' interest to have a good relationship with a powerful near country, given that it has decided to leave the Union. There is a tension there. To satisfy both interests the EU needs to come up with an arrangement that is distinctly inferior to membership, yet is still valuable to the third party. I don't think they have worked that one out yet.
Actually your last paragraph puts the lie to your first.
It is very much in the interests of the UK to say the EU is being unreasonable. If they are going to persist in that attitude then we have nothing to gain from having a good relationship with them. If they expect us to behave reasonably towards them then they have to reciprocate. It is a two way relationship and both sides have to be reasonable. If either is not then the whole thing fails.
The EU so far does not seem to have grasped this basic concept. They recognise that the UK could potentially be a threat to them if it follows a certain course (and I am not advocating that) but seem to be unwilling to do anything to prevent that happening.
It's in the UK's interest to have its cake and eat it, which is how Johnson put it. For powerful and specific reasons that is not at all in the EU's interest - mainly because as with all membership organisations they need to maximise the value of membership. Brexit was sold on no loss. The EU needs to make sure no other country tries that again by allowing that loss to happen. Having a good relationship with the UK is a nice to have, but is secondary. What's maybe interesting is that member states are completely aligned with the EU on that. They aren't the Commission and you might expect them to have different views.
I should have added, reasonableness isn't much of a concept in international relations. I don't think the EU either expects the UK to be reasonable or to be reasonable themselves. The questions are where are the points of agreement and what can you get the other side to commit to?
The relationship between the EU and the UK is, now, unique in the world of democracy. It is in the best interests of the EU that the UK do BADLY and SUFFER, so that all other states are discouraged from leaving. And this is exactly how they are acting, not just neutral, but hostile and pernicious. They are TRYING to make life as hard as possible for us.
This attitude is not repeated anywhere else across the free world. as far as I know.
It makes them a bunch of wankers, but logical wankers. They are behaving rationally, albeit with narrow self interest, and a great deal of insecurity (a confident EU would have shrugged off Brexit and would be happy to do better deals).
This is not going to change for the foreseeable. We are confronted with a hostile trading bloc on our doorstep. Our only choice is to grovel for a change of heart, or be hostile right back, while trying to undermine them. Or unite with America and then invade.
But the EU are still implementing economic MAD.
They have pressed the big red button that says "Fuck it. Make them hurt."
They have lost all pretence of being a body to enhance the economic benefits to their members, instead implementing the political imperatives of the European State.
Have to confess, the overnight loss of all EU share trading to Amsterdam, is the first bit of Project Fear which has:
1 Come true
AND
2 Given me the fear
One kinda knew it was coming, but the speed and scale still shocks. It might even make me regret my vote, if only the EU had not behaved with such flailing, malignant incompetence, in recent weeks.
But, if the City does collapse (quick or slow), we are in deep shit. Massively in debt just as our tax base disappears. Not good. Not good at all.
Although in the super long term - which is how Brexit must be judged to have any chance of being deemed a success - a less bloated City could be a good thing. Yes, it pays lots of tax, but it also sucks so much talent and energy and resource and focus out of other (arguably more value added) sectors and it adds enormously to regional inequalities. How many smart young Northerners, for example, who could have stayed up there and worked in high tech manufacturing or renewable energy or medical research - or a hundred other things that could flourish outside London and the South East given the steer - end up instead sitting in a trading floor in EC4 or Canary, or a room in Mayfair, dreaming up "products" to help the crooked rich launder their money and dodge tax etc etc? It's a huge number. Think of the potential wasted. It's the British disease, along with private schools.
You emotional remainers (as distinct the reluctant, pragmatic remainers like me) really struggle to accept that Brexit is already, and always will be, judged as a success by those who voted for it. They are delighted - delighted - that we have left the EU. That`s it.
Does that mean you think it's a success or you can understand why people think it's a success?
Because from my perspective, Brexit looks massively unsuccessful, and I am not as an emotional a Remainer as all that. It's simply that things have turned out pretty much as I expected them to, given that the project was based on assumptions that, while being reasonable in themselves, were never likely to pan out. Same as the Iraq War. I knew from the off that was unlikely to turn out well. It wasn't that I objected to removing a horrible dictator.
The latter : I can understand why people think it's a success.
This is interesting. Would it be fair to say you are an emotional Leaver, who would like Brexit to be a success but hasn't been invested enough in the project at any point to ignore the practical problems with it? But really you would have like to have voted Leave, if only you could have made it add up?
It seems to me this is different from another group of people who voted Remain but are now fully on board and have the same view of Brexit reality as those that voted Leave. I would call those people Leavers.
@FF43 For me the referendum offered us a dire choice. Like being given a stick to grasp with shit at both ends. I dallied with voting leave, but dismissed this because my chief reason would have been out of spite towards Cameron who I blamed (and still do) for having the bloody referendum in the first place.
Vote to leave = pragmatically stupid; you can`t just leave decades of international diplomacy and peace-keeping. Vote to stay = poorer position within the EU and any scope we had to moderate its aims would be diminished.
The other influence on me was the environmental work that the EU has done - particularly on rewilding. Monbiot was similarly conflicted but voted remain in the end for this reason.
So it was a clear remain vote from me in the end, but I have no love for the EU and like most pragmatic remainers on balance wish it didn`t exist at all because it puts the UK in a quandary - but while it does we should have remained in it and piss inside the tent.
Best we can hope for now is other nations leave too and the project crumbles.
Thanks. I accept wanting the EU to collapse is a rational desire for a UK that is outside the project. It's not a view I take myself, partly emotional I guess, because I think the EU is good for Europe, whether the UK is in it or not, and partly practical because now we have left we have to deal with the EU as it is. We have no say on that and it's not good either for us or our partners to get drawn into deciding what they should do.
It is clearly in our interests to have a wealthy and stable Europe, and in that sense having the EU next to us works well.
On the other hand, a Europe that self-consciously sees itself as competing *against* the U.K., whether economically or diplomatically, is more problematic.
It is already clear that U.K. was able to block or temper certain foreign policy instincts in the EU, and it is not a good thing that we have surrendered that leverage.
As Donald Tusk, I think, put it, it isn't in the interests of the EU to protect the UK from the consequences of its decision to leave the European Union. There are several motivations behind the EU move to make things more difficult for the UK, some strategic, some opportunistic, some principled and some emotional. Those reasons are powerful and the UK won't get anywhere by saying the EU is unreasonable.
Nevertheless it's also in the EU and its members' interest to have a good relationship with a powerful near country, given that it has decided to leave the Union. There is a tension there. To satisfy both interests the EU needs to come up with an arrangement that is distinctly inferior to membership, yet is still valuable to the third party. I don't think they have worked that one out yet.
Actually your last paragraph puts the lie to your first.
It is very much in the interests of the UK to say the EU is being unreasonable. If they are going to persist in that attitude then we have nothing to gain from having a good relationship with them. If they expect us to behave reasonably towards them then they have to reciprocate. It is a two way relationship and both sides have to be reasonable. If either is not then the whole thing fails.
The EU so far does not seem to have grasped this basic concept. They recognise that the UK could potentially be a threat to them if it follows a certain course (and I am not advocating that) but seem to be unwilling to do anything to prevent that happening.
It's in the UK's interest to have its cake and eat it, which is how Johnson put it. For powerful and specific reasons that is not at all in the EU's interest - mainly because as with all membership organisations they need to maximise the value of membership. Brexit was sold on no loss. The EU needs to make sure no other country tries that again by allowing that loss to happen. Having a good relationship with the UK is a nice to have, but is secondary. What's maybe interesting is that member states are completely aligned with the EU on that. They aren't the Commission and you might expect them to have different views.
I should have added, reasonableness isn't much of a concept in international relations. I don't think the EU either expects the UK to be reasonable or to be reasonable themselves. The questions are where are the points of agreement and what can you get the other side to commit to?
The relationship between the EU and the UK is, now, unique in the world of democracy. It is in the best interests of the EU that the UK do BADLY and SUFFER, so that all other states are discouraged from leaving. And this is exactly how they are acting, not just neutral, but hostile and pernicious. They are TRYING to make life as hard as possible for us.
This attitude is not repeated anywhere else across the free world. as far as I know.
It makes them a bunch of wankers, but logical wankers. They are behaving rationally, albeit with narrow self interest, and a great deal of insecurity (a confident EU would have shrugged off Brexit and would be happy to do better deals).
This is not going to change for the foreseeable. We are confronted with a hostile trading bloc on our doorstep. Our only choice is to grovel for a change of heart, or be hostile right back, while trying to undermine them. Or unite with America and then invade.
That's one way of putting it. When I cancelled my Virgin Media subscription the letter put it a little differently. Mentioned that I wouldn't be able to watch things any more. Comes to the same thing. They weren't going to allow me carry on watching for free although it doesn't cost them a penny if I do.
Have to confess, the overnight loss of all EU share trading to Amsterdam, is the first bit of Project Fear which has:
1 Come true
AND
2 Given me the fear
One kinda knew it was coming, but the speed and scale still shocks. It might even make me regret my vote, if only the EU had not behaved with such flailing, malignant incompetence, in recent weeks.
But, if the City does collapse (quick or slow), we are in deep shit. Massively in debt just as our tax base disappears. Not good. Not good at all.
Although in the super long term - which is how Brexit must be judged to have any chance of being deemed a success - a less bloated City could be a good thing. Yes, it pays lots of tax, but it also sucks so much talent and energy and resource and focus out of other (arguably more value added) sectors and it adds enormously to regional inequalities. How many smart young Northerners, for example, who could have stayed up there and worked in high tech manufacturing or renewable energy or medical research - or a hundred other things that could flourish outside London and the South East given the steer - end up instead sitting in a trading floor in EC4 or Canary, or a room in Mayfair, dreaming up "products" to help the crooked rich launder their money and dodge tax etc etc? It's a huge number. Think of the potential wasted. It's the British disease, along with private schools.
You emotional remainers (as distinct the reluctant, pragmatic remainers like me) really struggle to accept that Brexit is already, and always will be, judged as a success by those who voted for it. They are delighted - delighted - that we have left the EU. That`s it.
Does that mean you think it's a success or you can understand why people think it's a success?
Because from my perspective, Brexit looks massively unsuccessful, and I am not as an emotional a Remainer as all that. It's simply that things have turned out pretty much as I expected them to, given that the project was based on assumptions that, while being reasonable in themselves, were never likely to pan out. Same as the Iraq War. I knew from the off that was unlikely to turn out well. It wasn't that I objected to removing a horrible dictator.
The latter : I can understand why people think it's a success.
This is interesting. Would it be fair to say you are an emotional Leaver, who would like Brexit to be a success but hasn't been invested enough in the project at any point to ignore the practical problems with it? But really you would have like to have voted Leave, if only you could have made it add up?
It seems to me this is different from another group of people who voted Remain but are now fully on board and have the same view of Brexit reality as those that voted Leave. I would call those people Leavers.
@FF43 For me the referendum offered us a dire choice. Like being given a stick to grasp with shit at both ends. I dallied with voting leave, but dismissed this because my chief reason would have been out of spite towards Cameron who I blamed (and still do) for having the bloody referendum in the first place.
Vote to leave = pragmatically stupid; you can`t just leave decades of international diplomacy and peace-keeping. Vote to stay = poorer position within the EU and any scope we had to moderate its aims would be diminished.
The other influence on me was the environmental work that the EU has done - particularly on rewilding. Monbiot was similarly conflicted but voted remain in the end for this reason.
So it was a clear remain vote from me in the end, but I have no love for the EU and like most pragmatic remainers on balance wish it didn`t exist at all because it puts the UK in a quandary - but while it does we should have remained in it and piss inside the tent.
Best we can hope for now is other nations leave too and the project crumbles.
Thanks. I accept wanting the EU to collapse is a rational desire for a UK that is outside the project. It's not a view I take myself, partly emotional I guess, because I think the EU is good for Europe, whether the UK is in it or not, and partly practical because now we have left we have to deal with the EU as it is. We have no say on that and it's not good either for us or our partners to get drawn into deciding what they should do.
It is clearly in our interests to have a wealthy and stable Europe, and in that sense having the EU next to us works well.
On the other hand, a Europe that self-consciously sees itself as competing *against* the U.K., whether economically or diplomatically, is more problematic.
It is already clear that U.K. was able to block or temper certain foreign policy instincts in the EU, and it is not a good thing that we have surrendered that leverage.
As Donald Tusk, I think, put it, it isn't in the interests of the EU to protect the UK from the consequences of its decision to leave the European Union. There are several motivations behind the EU move to make things more difficult for the UK, some strategic, some opportunistic, some principled and some emotional. Those reasons are powerful and the UK won't get anywhere by saying the EU is unreasonable.
Nevertheless it's also in the EU and its members' interest to have a good relationship with a powerful near country, given that it has decided to leave the Union. There is a tension there. To satisfy both interests the EU needs to come up with an arrangement that is distinctly inferior to membership, yet is still valuable to the third party. I don't think they have worked that one out yet.
Actually your last paragraph puts the lie to your first.
It is very much in the interests of the UK to say the EU is being unreasonable. If they are going to persist in that attitude then we have nothing to gain from having a good relationship with them. If they expect us to behave reasonably towards them then they have to reciprocate. It is a two way relationship and both sides have to be reasonable. If either is not then the whole thing fails.
The EU so far does not seem to have grasped this basic concept. They recognise that the UK could potentially be a threat to them if it follows a certain course (and I am not advocating that) but seem to be unwilling to do anything to prevent that happening.
Lol.
Right now Rickhardt Tindellwanger is staying the precise opposite on PB.de
As I have already observed you clearly don't believe in people being reasonable. I think your extremist views are rather unfortunate when so many people on both sides are advocating common sense approaches. Thankfully you are in a small minority that can easily be ignored.
Nowhere have I said the people should not be reasonable.
That is your, barmy, interpretation, straight after a post where you called me both a fascist and a communist.
Dickie's winning rhetorical style is to say something like "you would have run up behind that disabled person in the queue at Aldi and hit her over the head with a bag of chips so I think we can ignore your views about EU Reg EU/43G/2021/RX"
Lol.
He is one of the many EU obsessed “self-righteous brothers” that infest this site.
Furthermore, and this is a curious thing, it is in the EU's interest to maximise Brexit loss and the UK's interest to minimise it. Yet the UK Leaver government does nothing to minimise the loss. Instead it aggravates it. The UK government is doing the EU a favour here.
Astute point. It really is weird.
To minimise the loss, one would have to admit there is loss.
That is something the Brexiters are psychologically, and perhaps politically, unable to do.
Have to confess, the overnight loss of all EU share trading to Amsterdam, is the first bit of Project Fear which has:
1 Come true
AND
2 Given me the fear
One kinda knew it was coming, but the speed and scale still shocks. It might even make me regret my vote, if only the EU had not behaved with such flailing, malignant incompetence, in recent weeks.
But, if the City does collapse (quick or slow), we are in deep shit. Massively in debt just as our tax base disappears. Not good. Not good at all.
Although in the super long term - which is how Brexit must be judged to have any chance of being deemed a success - a less bloated City could be a good thing. Yes, it pays lots of tax, but it also sucks so much talent and energy and resource and focus out of other (arguably more value added) sectors and it adds enormously to regional inequalities. How many smart young Northerners, for example, who could have stayed up there and worked in high tech manufacturing or renewable energy or medical research - or a hundred other things that could flourish outside London and the South East given the steer - end up instead sitting in a trading floor in EC4 or Canary, or a room in Mayfair, dreaming up "products" to help the crooked rich launder their money and dodge tax etc etc? It's a huge number. Think of the potential wasted. It's the British disease, along with private schools.
You emotional remainers (as distinct the reluctant, pragmatic remainers like me) really struggle to accept that Brexit is already, and always will be, judged as a success by those who voted for it. They are delighted - delighted - that we have left the EU. That`s it.
Does that mean you think it's a success or you can understand why people think it's a success?
Because from my perspective, Brexit looks massively unsuccessful, and I am not as an emotional a Remainer as all that. It's simply that things have turned out pretty much as I expected them to, given that the project was based on assumptions that, while being reasonable in themselves, were never likely to pan out. Same as the Iraq War. I knew from the off that was unlikely to turn out well. It wasn't that I objected to removing a horrible dictator.
The latter : I can understand why people think it's a success.
This is interesting. Would it be fair to say you are an emotional Leaver, who would like Brexit to be a success but hasn't been invested enough in the project at any point to ignore the practical problems with it? But really you would have like to have voted Leave, if only you could have made it add up?
It seems to me this is different from another group of people who voted Remain but are now fully on board and have the same view of Brexit reality as those that voted Leave. I would call those people Leavers.
@FF43 For me the referendum offered us a dire choice. Like being given a stick to grasp with shit at both ends. I dallied with voting leave, but dismissed this because my chief reason would have been out of spite towards Cameron who I blamed (and still do) for having the bloody referendum in the first place.
Vote to leave = pragmatically stupid; you can`t just leave decades of international diplomacy and peace-keeping. Vote to stay = poorer position within the EU and any scope we had to moderate its aims would be diminished.
The other influence on me was the environmental work that the EU has done - particularly on rewilding. Monbiot was similarly conflicted but voted remain in the end for this reason.
So it was a clear remain vote from me in the end, but I have no love for the EU and like most pragmatic remainers on balance wish it didn`t exist at all because it puts the UK in a quandary - but while it does we should have remained in it and piss inside the tent.
Best we can hope for now is other nations leave too and the project crumbles.
Thanks. I accept wanting the EU to collapse is a rational desire for a UK that is outside the project. It's not a view I take myself, partly emotional I guess, because I think the EU is good for Europe, whether the UK is in it or not, and partly practical because now we have left we have to deal with the EU as it is. We have no say on that and it's not good either for us or our partners to get drawn into deciding what they should do.
It is clearly in our interests to have a wealthy and stable Europe, and in that sense having the EU next to us works well.
On the other hand, a Europe that self-consciously sees itself as competing *against* the U.K., whether economically or diplomatically, is more problematic.
It is already clear that U.K. was able to block or temper certain foreign policy instincts in the EU, and it is not a good thing that we have surrendered that leverage.
As Donald Tusk, I think, put it, it isn't in the interests of the EU to protect the UK from the consequences of its decision to leave the European Union. There are several motivations behind the EU move to make things more difficult for the UK, some strategic, some opportunistic, some principled and some emotional. Those reasons are powerful and the UK won't get anywhere by saying the EU is unreasonable.
Nevertheless it's also in the EU and its members' interest to have a good relationship with a powerful near country, given that it has decided to leave the Union. There is a tension there. To satisfy both interests the EU needs to come up with an arrangement that is distinctly inferior to membership, yet is still valuable to the third party. I don't think they have worked that one out yet.
Actually your last paragraph puts the lie to your first.
It is very much in the interests of the UK to say the EU is being unreasonable. If they are going to persist in that attitude then we have nothing to gain from having a good relationship with them. If they expect us to behave reasonably towards them then they have to reciprocate. It is a two way relationship and both sides have to be reasonable. If either is not then the whole thing fails.
The EU so far does not seem to have grasped this basic concept. They recognise that the UK could potentially be a threat to them if it follows a certain course (and I am not advocating that) but seem to be unwilling to do anything to prevent that happening.
It's in the UK's interest to have its cake and eat it, which is how Johnson put it. For powerful and specific reasons that is not at all in the EU's interest - mainly because as with all membership organisations they need to maximise the value of membership. Brexit was sold on no loss. The EU needs to make sure no other country tries that again by allowing that loss to happen. Having a good relationship with the UK is a nice to have, but is secondary. What's maybe interesting is that member states are completely aligned with the EU on that. They aren't the Commission and you might expect them to have different views.
I should have added, reasonableness isn't much of a concept in international relations. I don't think the EU either expects the UK to be reasonable or to be reasonable themselves. The questions are where are the points of agreement and what can you get the other side to commit to?
The relationship between the EU and the UK is, now, unique in the world of democracy. It is in the best interests of the EU that the UK do BADLY and SUFFER, so that all other states are discouraged from leaving. And this is exactly how they are acting, not just neutral, but hostile and pernicious. They are TRYING to make life as hard as possible for us.
This attitude is not repeated anywhere else across the free world. as far as I know.
It makes them a bunch of wankers, but logical wankers. They are behaving rationally, albeit with narrow self interest, and a great deal of insecurity (a confident EU would have shrugged off Brexit and would be happy to do better deals).
This is not going to change for the foreseeable. We are confronted with a hostile trading bloc on our doorstep. Our only choice is to grovel for a change of heart, or be hostile right back, while trying to undermine them. Or unite with America and then invade.
That's one way of putting it. When I cancelled my Virgin Media subscription the letter put it a little differently. Mentioned that I wouldn't be able to watch things any more. Comes to the same thing. They weren't going to allow me carry on watching for free although it doesn't cost them a penny if I do.
Still persisting with the nonsense that the UK wants member benefits?
How is granting equivalence to Australia, New Zealand and countless other non-members but not the UK anything other than a hostile act?
Comments
Back then, offshore wind was £150. So offshore wind costs come down by 2/3rds, but tidal apparently stays the same, based on the price of the testbed being the roll-out price across the whole series of lagoons. There, in a nutshell, is the civil service case that has been made to Govt.
However, if you have a "vaccine-style" task force, they would see just how ridiculous that positon is.
When I worked in the oil industry, many, many moons ago, there was discussion of such schemes. We got involved because people though ocean engineering = ask an oil company. The prices were all over the place, because no one had built them yet....
Some people suggested pricing on the basis of the berms built in shallow water around oil rigs in Arctic areas - which suggested that some of the highest prices weren't accurate.
Is the proposed scheme one of the berm-for-most-of-it systems?
I bet he'll have to eat a book live on TV again.
Hang on, are you Piers Corbyn?
For me with three horses on the ferry this would raise the charge, on top of the £200 ferry fare, by £1,070.76 (at today’s exchange rate) to £1,270.76. A 535% rise. On the train on top of the fare of £500 the rise would be £1,983.45 making a total of £2,483.45 which is a 396% rise. There is also the annual fee of E500 to European Horse Services to act as your agent in the EU and an annual Carnet charge of £800.
It's of less use in the UK where few homes have aircon, and it's only really hot for 2-3 weeks a year and even then largely only in the SE.
And that was sugarcoated. Next time I won't.
If so, there’s your problem.
However as they seem to have missed out on that battery gigafactory perhaps they will give you another hearing.
What's the middle class breakdown?
Why does it matter?
(And how many more PBers are going to enthusiastically retweet this clown?)
(And the real world maths for both solar and wind has improved massively since you were a PPS.)
Nuclear similarly - the current tech is rubbish, but some of the ideas (like the First Light Fusion ideas I posted upthread) have the potential to be a good deal cheaper.
https://twitter.com/heraldscotland/status/1359913841975414784?s=20
https://twitter.com/davidbevanwood/status/1359890603711078402
But yes, solar *PV* is not worthwhile in the UK on the domestic scale due to the FIT tariff levels the payback is now around 30 years, which is the lifetime of the panels themselves.
Solar *thermal* however can provide 100% of domestic hot water needs for 9 months of the year from only 2-3 panels, even in the North East of England. This is something that is often overlooked.
The classic sociological definition of Working Class is C2DE, which includes state pensioners. There are 12 million of them.
How much of the "WC people love Boris" is really "retired people love Boris"- important, but slightly different?
And advocating Scottish Independence from anywhere in England seems a very enlightened position to me. Of course with you being a statist verging on the fascist - or the communist if you prefer - I am not surprised you are opposed to people having the right of self determination. I am sure you were right there cheering on the Spanish as they were beating up old ladies for daring to want to have a vote.
Starmer 38%
Johnson 33%
It seems to me that you are hankering for outcomes which are not confined to the UK`s best interests. Is that fair? And if so would it be useful to know what you admire so much about the EU even when it goes against the interests of your own country. I`m not getting at you, I`m interested to know the mind of a type of remainer that I don`t understand. Is it a dislike (a la Corbyn) of the whole concept of the nation state?
Nobody else here does.
You and I both know that Brexit was driven by that certain jealous, curtain-twitching chippiness that encourages people to read the Daily Mail and vote to cut their own noses off.
Basically, Brexit is a project for elderly incels who were angry that the French looked liked they had too much sex.
I could say that I know far, far more about the current state of play than an out of date former PPS, not in power back when costed tidal lagoon proposals were put before Government some 8 years ago.
The great disaster of Brexit on this was that the two big cheerleaders for tidal lagoon power, Cameron and Osborne, were swept away by the Referendum....
The continuing disaster is that Boris hasn't enacted it either - despite what he said on his sweep around Wales on his leadership campaign.
It doesn't seem to realise there can be upper/middle class pensioners.
His descent from mildly provocative analyst of populism, through Trump arse-licker general, to ludicrous populist apologist for the Tory government really is a tale of misery and embarrassment.
Seemed to be a shock to them that the world's largest battery station project would be enough to power the UK for about 6 minutes, so not quite yet a viable solution for transferring large surpluses and deficits between weeks.
Please don’t tell me you believed a word he said.
https://twitter.com/KellyIpsosMORI/status/1359905043051290626?s=20
https://twitter.com/KellyIpsosMORI/status/1359905050844397569?s=20
So that's Ireland and the EU out of it.....
That is your, barmy, interpretation, straight after a post where you called me both a fascist and a communist.
I'm currently working for clients in Japan, Australia, Taiwan, Denmark, Sweden, France, Germany the UK, Canada and the US.
And system which relies very heavily on renewables will rely on some form of storage. If you have unpredictable renewables with potential downtime measure in days, then you'll need a lot more storage.
Storage tech is also developing fast. Some of the flow battery technologies have the potential to be significantly cheaper than pumped hydro.
The costs of each bit of the system depend on the makeup of the rest of the system. If you need weeks of storage rather than days (or even hours), that's obviously going to be costly.
Very short term storage (batteries versus gas peaker plants) is already market competitive.
A murder should be punished as such.
Of course, the parole board, in due course, will need to consider the probability of reoffending and might come to a different view at that time.
https://twitter.com/fact_covid/status/1359918310784172038?s=20
Edit: Oh and I didn't call you a fascist and a communist. It was either/or. Your choice.
Please try and brush up on your basic comprehension if you want to have these little discussions.
He is one of the many EU obsessed “self-righteous brothers” that infest this site.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EqPAuotjkM4
Oi! Barnier! NO!
https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/11/15/501972594/expanding-the-circle-of-moral-concern
They were effectively written a letter by BEIS saying "Fuck off - and take your green jobs with you...."
You also said earlier that it was a 'leftist' thing that racism etc. was factored in to punishment. I believe that the idea of racially aggravated crimes being punished more severely has been supported by the Tories as well. If not, they certainly haven't changed the law.
When will the new border rules be lifted?
Matt Hancock refused to answer - and twice hinted it could be as late as the Autumn.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/hotel-quarantine-rules-full-10000-23485268
Chorizo in Paella - yes or no?
This attitude is not repeated anywhere else across the free world. as far as I know.
It makes them a bunch of wankers, but logical wankers. They are behaving rationally, albeit with narrow self interest, and a great deal of insecurity (a confident EU would have shrugged off Brexit and would be happy to do better deals).
This is not going to change for the foreseeable. We are confronted with a hostile trading bloc on our doorstep. Our only choice is to grovel for a change of heart, or be hostile right back, while trying to undermine them. Or unite with America and then invade.
A better equivalency might be: person singling out man because he is Asian and beating him to death in front of a cheering racist mob = white person beating to death a random white person for no apparent reason
It looks like they didn't even offer Ireland as a choice.
'' Oh yes Frank, there's no doubt I admire Barnier's negotiating skills and grasp of detail relative to our side, but if......
No Brexiteer would ever say that
With added extra spice of a mental health reference.
Simply no need
We can all disagree with each other but being rank unpleasant is unnecessary
Because of the policy of "spare jabs go to *someone*", a fair number outside those groups have been vaccinated.
The thing is what problem are you seeking to address? The problem is that the wind etc we've invested heavily in is unreliable and our demand surges, so we need some form of on-demand capacity to work when there's no wind and Eastenders ends and everyone puts the kettle on. Storage can do that, tidal can't.
Wind (unreliable) + Gas (on demand) works as a combination.
Tidal (predicable) + Gas (on demand) works as a combination.
Tidal (unreliable) + Wind (predictable) I can't see working as a combination. Wind doesn't work on demand with Tidal's predictable downtimes, Tidal doesn't work on demand with Wind's unreliable downtimes.
Whatever solution is gone for needs to be on demand. That seems to me to be either Gas or Storage.
They have pressed the big red button that says "Fuck it. Make them hurt."
They have lost all pretence of being a body to enhance the economic benefits to their members, instead implementing the political imperatives of the European State.
My son has just woken up in Canada from his second electroconvulsive therapy session and throw away insults on mental health are unnecessary
That is something the Brexiters are psychologically, and perhaps politically, unable to do.
How is granting equivalence to Australia, New Zealand and countless other non-members but not the UK anything other than a hostile act?