I think we often make the mistake of comparing our humdrum day to day lives in the UK with the luxury, splash out experiences we get when visiting overseas.
For example we might dine on supermarket beef or visit pubs for Sunday Roast in our small suburb most of the year, then visit New York for a blow out long weekend and be amazed that the prime USDA striploin we're served in some eye wateringly pricey Manhatten palace is better than what we got from Sainsburys last week.
Same as we tend to visit the prettiest rural or coastal parts of our neighbouring European countries on holiday and wonder at how much nicer the lifestyle and landscape is than Bexleyheath or Harlow.
The top end meat in most rich countries these days is pretty good. The worst is pretty bad in the UK, downright toxic in the US and not that bad in Italy, Spain or Southern France.
Yes it's the New Zealand Fallacy in miniature.
People visit NZ, hire a sports car, tour the country in high summer, visited every majestic beauty spot going, sample both of the North Island's good restaurants, and decide to move there. Within a year they are desperate to move back because when you are living and working there, it's mundane and limited.
Tangentialy related, we viewed a house late last year that still had a coal boiler - as in someone turns up with bags of coal and you periodically have to shovel it in. 1960s house in reasonable size village, so not some ancient pile in the sticks. Bit of a shocker that - my gran had one until it was replaced with gas in the early 90s, but I'd no idea they still existed.
Italy has the same supermarket problem. Try looking for a decent big supermarket in the centre of Milan or Naples. Impossible. It's just tiny stores selling massively overpriced tins of tomatoes, and three kinds of Chianti with a 200% mark up
It's bizarre in a country with such brilliant cuisine, generally
If you want to shop well you have to go the bakers, the butchers, the market, the wine store, which is all very picturesque and Italian but is also a bloody pain, and they are often shut for most of the day
I lived in zone 1 back in 1999. The only supermarket in walking distance was Safeway (now a Waitrose I think) at the Brunswick Centre and it was tiny. So for almost anything you ended up heading out of town. So I moved to zone 4.
This is complete crap, sorry
I know the area you're talking about very well. I lived there for decades.
There's the huge Waitrose in the Brunswick Centre, a Sainsbury in the Brunswick Centre, two Sainsbury's on Tottenham Court Road (one big) a Tesco on Goodge Street, a Tesco Express on Russell Square, another big Sainsbury's in Holborn....
I am 99% sure that the Goodge Street and at least one of the two Sainsburys on TCR were not open when I was at law school on Store Street in 97-98. The Brunswick Centre Safeways/whatever certainly was but I distinctly remember the dearth of supermarket shopping options round Bloomsbury/Fitzrovia in the late 90s.
I literally lived on Store Street for ten years, I lived in Fitzrovia for ten years before that, and Bloomsbury (again) before that
Goodge Street was always open, as was one of the TCR Sainsburys, the other was back then a big Asda. Ditto the others, mostly they existed
The supermarket choice has somewhat expanded and elevated (eg the huge Waitrose in the Brunswick, once a Safeways) but your memory is largely faulty
If you say so. I don't call a Tesco Express or Sainsburys local a "supermarket" - they are convenience stores. You sure it isn't your memory that was fuzzy? Plenty of small independent c-stores stores to buy food in, but not a full size supermarket.
I think the main thing I hated about Z1 living was the tourists. Having to try and squeeze / dodge past people everywhere when doing normal stuff. Sod off down the Mall or something.
Calling bullshit on this, sorry.
Do you know where Bloomsbury is? My office is about ten minutes away. There aren't many tourists there unless you are circumnavigating the grounds of the British Museum. I get that you don't like London and want to tell everyone that, but making stuff up is a bizarre way of doing it, given how many of us actually live here.
Yeah lol at tourists in Bloomsbury. I guess some people mistake foreign students for tourists sometimes.
Well I lived in Russell Sq and there were quite a few tourists round there. Lots of students too of course with UCL etc.
As soon as you step behind TCR on the Fitzrovia side it's one of the few places in central London that is mostly tourist free.
Yep, there's a Museum/UCL Bloomsbury and a Holburny Bloomsbury, and at least one more if you count the slightly seamier bit around TCR. I personally don't think of that last zone as Bloomsbury because it doesn't feel to me like my idea of what Bloomsbury should feel like.
Also a heroiny Bloomsbury up by Gray's Inn Road towards Kings X
I've never stumbled into that zone. Wouldn't have found my way out if I had. Can't even kick the Silk Cut.
The U.K. appear to be in danger of getting sucked in to NZ/Aus potential problem. Got so used to seeing Covid deaths on the floor that it actually becomes a factor disincentivising the lifting of restrictions because of fear of ANY rises in numbers.
I'm trying not to talk about the unspeakable weather
If it's any consolation, even on sunny island we haven't had any today.
Not even in my part of Scotland, today.
And the wind gusts on the island have topped 80 mph, transport is disrupted, and apart from a brief walk with the dog in the Gale this morning, it’s not wide to go out.
The Bloombury square I'm most familiar with is Mecklenburgh Square.
Used to cage a room at in foreign student dorm in the summer, very cheap (included meal ticket for cafeteria or whatever they call it) and convenient. Did get woken up EAR-LY in the morning by the rooster in residence at the Coram Fields children's zoo! Not that I minded. There's also a very interesting old graveyard nearby.
That's a very peculiar square. Often feels odd. It has a tremendously haunted atmosphere on wet, dark autumn evenings, when the Bloomsbury mists rise up and shroud the buildings in ghostly vapour
Little known fact: much of Bloomsbury is built on marshy land, and the marshes underneath still make it one of the foggiest parts of central London, as they exhale their ancient vapours
Also, I also used to score heroin from a famous surgeon's daughter on Mecklenburgh Square, but you probably already predicted that
Currently in Blooms for a few days for work. Was meant to go back today, but as a 34 year old I was able to book a jab tomorrow at the Science museum. Seemed wonderfully apt. Wonder if I'll get done by JVT?!
The Truss's leadership prospects are surely in tatters. The Tories would never risk her - an absolutely vilified character within Britain's rural communities. Truss the Farmer's Cuss she'll be known as.
Dunno about that. The Tory members in the SE couldn’t give a damn about the farmers.
Everyone knows that the "countryside" is to stop plebs building houses, not for things like "farming". Don't be ridiculous.
I'm beginning to think some people don't know what "food security" means.
How does banning perfectly safe, perfectly scientific, well tested hormone supplements aid our food security?
Especially considering that the hormone supplement ban was protectionist unscientific bullshit that the EU imposed on us, as UK farmers were using hormone supplements until the EU instituted its ban that the UK opposed at the time in the Council of Ministers?
Maybe the UK farmer should just go back to doing what they were before the EU started meddling, and thus improve our food security?
Not hormones, but actually having farming and fishing industries at all in the Isles of Great Britain and Ireland.
Yes we have an industry, it represents all of 0.61% of UK GDP while taking up 70% of UK land.
Being made to compete with the rest of the world would force the industry to improve and become more efficient and more productive, just as happened with New Zealand when they eliminated their trade barriers and subsidies.
An improved and more efficient agriculture industry would improve our security, wouldn't it?
You won’t be happy until we’re eating dog food
Why would we eat dog food?
Have you ever eaten Australian meat? Its excellent top quality.
Your xenophobia at imports is weird, especially while seeing 27 other nations getting free access to export their meat to us zero tariffs, zero quotas.
They have lower standards then we do. 'OLB' post on PT has examples. Or if you want an even better authority - the best let's be honest - there's Mark Drakeford. But it won't bother you and that's perfectly understandable. This whole thing is bespoke tailored to push all your buttons.
Free trade. Free free free. No quotas or tariffs. Deregulated mangy beef. Don't like it? So don't eat it then. Problem solved. Choice. The market pure and simple. And omg Australia. Red on the map. Trad Commonwealth. Five eyes. FAMILY.
7th Heaven in other words.
I rarely succeed in changing your view on anything but I sometimes like to try. Not here though. It'd be too close to the bone.
"Mangy beef"?
I used to live there you forget, I grew up downunder.
American food is shit, when you talk about shit food and you're talking about American deals you have a point. Australian meat is top nosh. Great quality.
Has anyone on this site ever gone to Australia, eaten beef there and thought "urgh this is mangy dog food shit"? Don't be ridiculous.
As someone who has lived in the US and eats American cooking (as provided by the Wife) every day I beg to differ.
I have a friend who - and you can know someone for 20 years and still be finding things out about them - it turns out is a massive fan of really top quality beef. He insists on American beef - reckons it far superior to British in almost all circumstances.
British meat is relatively shit.
I don't know why. But it is. Maybe its the lack of sunshine, maybe its in your head, but go to Australia, or America and the meat there just tastes better. My wife is from South Africa and she says the same thing, when she moved to the UK she stopped eating meat for a while, not because of any 'vegetarian' reason but because it was so disappointing compared to what she was used to in South Africa.
If British and Aussie meat was available at the same price next to each other in a supermarket, I'd be very tempted to go for the latter.
I haven't done a scientific study of this but I tend to agree. I think the UK meat tends to a higher fat content, possibly because our lousy climate encourages that in the animals and our smaller fields means they don't move around as much. Leaner, firmer beef is better in the same way that free range chicken tastes much better than factory farmed.
Absolutely, hence why beef with low far content such as Wagyu is so cheap.
Oh wait.
Ok, ok, I give up. But I still think it is important how the animal has lived.
In any case, getting rid of sheep, fish, etc. from Scotland is like getting rid of Scots lawyers. Neither may take up a huge part of GDP, but we are on the whole a lot better for having them available locally ...
The problem, as I said yesterday, is that asking UK and in particular Scottish farms to compete on a no tariff level playing field with Australia and NZ is the problem of Morgan Motor Co taking on Ford and GM. The scale of production in the Antipodes means that competition is simply impossible and what we are looking at is surviving in niche segments of the market. That creates real problems with what we are going to do with all the marginal land that is going to go out of production.
It's not an insuperable problem but it would be a nasty jolt to our rural communities (our urban communities would of course gain by cheaper food) and it would change what a lot of our country actually looks like. There are reasons why agriculture is usually one of the hardest areas to agree in FTAs.
Absolutely, but its worth bearing in mind the words of Ricardo and JS Mill and so on - if the farms can't compete on a level playing field then its not a competitive advantage and maybe something else should be considered?
If people want to go for locally produce organic etc etc and stick a flag on it then some will pay a premium for that. But you've got to find something you're competitive in and if you can't, then as a nation we should move on and not save every Luddite job under threat.
I will still pay a premium for hill-farmed lamb. But it would be nice to be able to include lamb chops in my diet as a regular item.
I had a bit of a gall bladder problem a couple of years ago now. Pain like nothing else I have borne. Since then no lamb chops 😢. I have sneaked in the odd leg of lamb more recently, so far without adverse effects, but chops are a no no.
The Truss's leadership prospects are surely in tatters. The Tories would never risk her - an absolutely vilified character within Britain's rural communities. Truss the Farmer's Cuss she'll be known as.
Dunno about that. The Tory members in the SE couldn’t give a damn about the farmers.
Everyone knows that the "countryside" is to stop plebs building houses, not for things like "farming". Don't be ridiculous.
I'm beginning to think some people don't know what "food security" means.
How does banning perfectly safe, perfectly scientific, well tested hormone supplements aid our food security?
Especially considering that the hormone supplement ban was protectionist unscientific bullshit that the EU imposed on us, as UK farmers were using hormone supplements until the EU instituted its ban that the UK opposed at the time in the Council of Ministers?
Maybe the UK farmer should just go back to doing what they were before the EU started meddling, and thus improve our food security?
Not hormones, but actually having farming and fishing industries at all in the Isles of Great Britain and Ireland.
Yes we have an industry, it represents all of 0.61% of UK GDP while taking up 70% of UK land.
Being made to compete with the rest of the world would force the industry to improve and become more efficient and more productive, just as happened with New Zealand when they eliminated their trade barriers and subsidies.
An improved and more efficient agriculture industry would improve our security, wouldn't it?
You won’t be happy until we’re eating dog food
Why would we eat dog food?
Have you ever eaten Australian meat? Its excellent top quality.
Your xenophobia at imports is weird, especially while seeing 27 other nations getting free access to export their meat to us zero tariffs, zero quotas.
They have lower standards then we do. 'OLB' post on PT has examples. Or if you want an even better authority - the best let's be honest - there's Mark Drakeford. But it won't bother you and that's perfectly understandable. This whole thing is bespoke tailored to push all your buttons.
Free trade. Free free free. No quotas or tariffs. Deregulated mangy beef. Don't like it? So don't eat it then. Problem solved. Choice. The market pure and simple. And omg Australia. Red on the map. Trad Commonwealth. Five eyes. FAMILY.
7th Heaven in other words.
I rarely succeed in changing your view on anything but I sometimes like to try. Not here though. It'd be too close to the bone.
"Mangy beef"?
I used to live there you forget, I grew up downunder.
American food is shit, when you talk about shit food and you're talking about American deals you have a point. Australian meat is top nosh. Great quality.
Has anyone on this site ever gone to Australia, eaten beef there and thought "urgh this is mangy dog food shit"? Don't be ridiculous.
As someone who has lived in the US and eats American cooking (as provided by the Wife) every day I beg to differ.
I have a friend who - and you can know someone for 20 years and still be finding things out about them - it turns out is a massive fan of really top quality beef. He insists on American beef - reckons it far superior to British in almost all circumstances.
British meat is relatively shit.
I don't know why. But it is. Maybe its the lack of sunshine, maybe its in your head, but go to Australia, or America and the meat there just tastes better. My wife is from South Africa and she says the same thing, when she moved to the UK she stopped eating meat for a while, not because of any 'vegetarian' reason but because it was so disappointing compared to what she was used to in South Africa.
If British and Aussie meat was available at the same price next to each other in a supermarket, I'd be very tempted to go for the latter.
I haven't done a scientific study of this but I tend to agree. I think the UK meat tends to a higher fat content, possibly because our lousy climate encourages that in the animals and our smaller fields means they don't move around as much. Leaner, firmer beef is better in the same way that free range chicken tastes much better than factory farmed.
Absolutely, hence why beef with low far content such as Wagyu is so cheap.
Oh wait.
Ok, ok, I give up. But I still think it is important how the animal has lived.
In any case, getting rid of sheep, fish, etc. from Scotland is like getting rid of Scots lawyers. Neither may take up a huge part of GDP, but we are on the whole a lot better for having them available locally ...
The problem, as I said yesterday, is that asking UK and in particular Scottish farms to compete on a no tariff level playing field with Australia and NZ is the problem of Morgan Motor Co taking on Ford and GM. The scale of production in the Antipodes means that competition is simply impossible and what we are looking at is surviving in niche segments of the market. That creates real problems with what we are going to do with all the marginal land that is going to go out of production.
It's not an insuperable problem but it would be a nasty jolt to our rural communities (our urban communities would of course gain by cheaper food) and it would change what a lot of our country actually looks like. There are reasons why agriculture is usually one of the hardest areas to agree in FTAs.
Absolutely, but its worth bearing in mind the words of Ricardo and JS Mill and so on - if the farms can't compete on a level playing field then its not a competitive advantage and maybe something else should be considered?
If people want to go for locally produce organic etc etc and stick a flag on it then some will pay a premium for that. But you've got to find something you're competitive in and if you can't, then as a nation we should move on and not save every Luddite job under threat.
I will still pay a premium for hill-farmed lamb. But it would be nice to be able to include lamb chops in my diet as a regular item.
I had a bit of a gall bladder problem a couple of years ago now. Pain like nothing else I have borne. Since then no lamb chops 😢. I have sneaked in the odd leg of lamb more recently, so far without adverse effects, but chops are a no no.
Going to be an interesting one this. As I live in countryside we burn oil for heating. I'd like to look at alternatives, but solar isn't really an option as my house is listed, and there must be many other reasons why it will be challenging to go carbon neutral for many folk. I will be genuinely interested to see how the government approach it, particularly in rural areas.
Yep I am in the same boat as you. I am currently going through the long process of getting listed building consent to build an extension for a wood fired boiler. We have an old bullet proof oil fired boiler in the cellar but I can see the way thigs are going and want to get an alternative of my choice in place before they ban them. Again being a listed property I have had all applications for solar panels and windpower turned down both on the building and within the curtilage.
Interesting proposal now that it may be gong to happen. A good one to wake people up imo. Good to not subsidize something that should not be done before the fabric.
Not good for the balance of payments unless we have UK HP makers or plants. I am not aware of any currently.
Solar has never been a good idea for heating (except maybe solar water heating plus night rate boost, as winter insolation is only about 10% of peak.
I know people who are planting a couple of acres of coppice for their heating, but that requires dedication.
So, my university friend who joined XR rebellion has now got back to me after 6 weeks with (for her) a totally uncharacteristic passive-aggressive, and even nakedly angry, message. It has lots of CAPITALS and statements of "belief", asserting the imminence of "extinction" ends with her saying she's part of the 3.5% and it's ok because will save the world without me.
She's also defriended me from Facebook.
I'm quite upset by it to be honest. We've been friends for over 20 years, but she's gone off the deep end.
That is quite sad. In an irony the XR types will probably never get, they have an almost exact mirror image in the American far-right Three Percenters, that 3% being their estimate of the proportion of the citizenry necessary to bring down their own government by force of arms...
Absolutely right.
On a professional (as opposed to personal) level what really yanked my chain - and it really did, although I didn't rise to it - was her claim that I'm doing "nothing" where it's literally my job to do deliver new strategic infrastructure. I'm looking at developing new business in blue hydrogen and nuclear fusion at the moment.
In 30 years time the self-indulgent narcissists in XR will try and take the credit for it whilst those who slaved away trying to fix it will be branded bystanders.
Piss. Boiled.
Tough about your friend. Losing a friend is not nice.
However these things sometimes heal. I lost a good friend for a few years, due to us both being dicks, but somehow we patched it up and now it's fine
So, my university friend who joined XR rebellion has now got back to me after 6 weeks with (for her) a totally uncharacteristic passive-aggressive, and even nakedly angry, message. It has lots of CAPITALS and statements of "belief", asserting the imminence of "extinction" ends with her saying she's part of the 3.5% and it's ok because will save the world without me.
She's also defriended me from Facebook.
I'm quite upset by it to be honest. We've been friends for over 20 years, but she's gone off the deep end.
That is quite sad. In an irony the XR types will probably never get, they have an almost exact mirror image in the American far-right Three Percenters, that 3% being their estimate of the proportion of the citizenry necessary to bring down their own government by force of arms...
Absolutely right.
On a professional (as opposed to personal) level what really yanked my chain - and it really did, although I didn't rise to it - was her claim that I'm doing "nothing" where it's literally my job to do deliver new strategic infrastructure. I'm looking at developing new business in blue hydrogen and nuclear fusion at the moment.
In 30 years time the self-indulgent narcissists in XR will try and take the credit for it whilst those who slaved away trying to fix it will be branded bystanders.
Piss. Boiled.
Tough about your friend. Losing a friend is not nice.
However these things sometimes heal. I lost a good friend for a few years, due to us both being dicks, but somehow we patched it up and now it's fine
Are you both still dicks?
Yeah, but we admit it now, and laugh about it. It's the best way
Lol, that's incredible. France facing competition for UK import/export business. French/EU border pedantry won't last forever and once it's over we'll still be out of the EU.
It's actually one of the benefits of dealing with the EU from the outside: each country is competing to win the EU's share of [import/export trade, financial services, etc.].
I often wondered at the time, and wonder still, why we didn't look at building a tunnel to Belgium instead of France. Slightly further away, but if you're going to have a border into mainland Europe and you can choose who to have that border with, Belgium look a more reliable option.
Didn’t want to make it too easy for them the next time the Germans want to invade.
I know this is a flippant comment, but I have wondered in the past about the strategic vulnerability of the tunnel. Presumably, it would be pretty horrible to invade througha tunnel. As a defender, you can wait until there's 26 miles of troops in there, then block up one end and start shelling the other. However, once you have invaded, it does make supply line issues rather easier. Hopefully this will never be tested!
Wait until they’re half way through and then pump fuel down it and recreate the Mont Blanc tunnel fire. After that pump saltwater down until your hit the rim.
So, my university friend who joined XR rebellion has now got back to me after 6 weeks with (for her) a totally uncharacteristic passive-aggressive, and even nakedly angry, message. It has lots of CAPITALS and statements of "belief", asserting the imminence of "extinction" ends with her saying she's part of the 3.5% and it's ok because will save the world without me.
She's also defriended me from Facebook.
I'm quite upset by it to be honest. We've been friends for over 20 years, but she's gone off the deep end.
It's the same thing as QAnon IMO, just a different cause. Some people become completely captured by it and are unable to distinguish between reality and their newfound beliefs so will trash friendships and even blood when people disagree with them or point out inconsistencies in their new belief system.
It's sad, but there's not really a lot you can do about it but wait it out and hope they can escape the cult.
Sounds like parts of XR are in danger of turning into a millenarian cult.
I've just started Niall Ferguson's new book 'Doom: the politics of catastrophe'. No doubt these kinds of cults will feature.
I have often wondered whether some people have predisposition to blind loyalty to cults/philosophies. It has always existed throughout history; mainly manifesting itself in religion in earlier times, and then in the 20th century non-religious philosophies such as Nazism, fascism and communism. If you compare one type of a fanatic with another, they often have similar psychologies, and often exhibit gullibility in the extreme and a desire to be part of a movement that they can identify with and see a reflection of their own inflexible viewpoint .
That's true. It's mainly bad. But there's a positive in there too - the desire to be part of something much bigger than yourself.
Seattle Times ($) business columnist Jon Talton - Downtown’s coming back, maybe. Pick your scenario
. . . . Downtown was especially important pre-pandemic because it generated more than half of Seattle’s business taxes, was the regional employment hub with 81% of the city’s office space and 55% of its jobs, and held important tourism (78% of hotel rooms), convention and arts assets. . . .
NYU marketing professor Scott Galloway said many companies will be more comfortable with employees working remotely part of the time. That could bring a big shift for cities.
“If you look at a 20-30% destruction in gross demand for office space, you’re talking about the GDP of Japan flowing out of the office-industrial complex into residential,” he recently told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “The transition of time and capital from offices to residential is a tsunami.” . . . .
Real urban expertise comes from an article in City Journal, published by the conservative Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. It carried the unlikely double bylines of Richard Florida and Joel Kotkin — unlikely because in general Florida is a backer of cities while Kotkin is an apologist for suburban sprawl. . . .
“The pandemic has worsened the new urban crisis of rampant gentrification, high living costs, and class and racial division — all sharply dramatized amid the wave of protests and riots in the summer of 2020.”
Most provocatively, they see the shifts “likely to disrupt the central business districts of superstar cities. With their massive skyscraper blocks, these office districts may become the last remaining urban holdover from the industrial revolution.”
Perhaps more aspirationally than realistically, they write that the moribund office towers could be turned “into housing, flexible workspaces, and artisanal businesses, transforming once-deadened districts into much livelier, 24-hour communities.” . . . .
The reopening might also rebalance the winner-take-all concentration of the innovation economy from which Seattle has so benefited, along with a few other coastal metros. Other cities might get in the game, taking “some pressure off the housing and real-estate markets of superstar cities and tech hubs . . . .
Call this the big shake-up scenario, less apocalyptic than Galloway but requiring tectonic shifts.
. . . [A] survey by the Harris Poll and Chicago Council on Global Affairs found that city residents remain committed to staying, despite the anecdotal stories of flight to suburbia.
Meanwhile, Big Tech is still building, including Amazon’s HQ2 and Google’s ambitious remake of downtown San Jose, California, with 7.3 million square feet of office space. That says urban spaces aren’t dead and offers at least distant comfort for Seattle.
So, my university friend who joined XR rebellion has now got back to me after 6 weeks with (for her) a totally uncharacteristic passive-aggressive, and even nakedly angry, message. It has lots of CAPITALS and statements of "belief", asserting the imminence of "extinction" ends with her saying she's part of the 3.5% and it's ok because will save the world without me.
She's also defriended me from Facebook.
I'm quite upset by it to be honest. We've been friends for over 20 years, but she's gone off the deep end.
That is quite sad. In an irony the XR types will probably never get, they have an almost exact mirror image in the American far-right Three Percenters, that 3% being their estimate of the proportion of the citizenry necessary to bring down their own government by force of arms...
Absolutely right.
On a professional (as opposed to personal) level what really yanked my chain - and it really did, although I didn't rise to it - was her claim that I'm doing "nothing" where it's literally my job to do deliver new strategic infrastructure. I'm looking at developing new business in blue hydrogen and nuclear fusion at the moment.
In 30 years time the self-indulgent narcissists in XR will try and take the credit for it whilst those who slaved away trying to fix it will be branded bystanders.
Piss. Boiled.
Tough about your friend. Losing a friend is not nice.
However these things sometimes heal. I lost a good friend for a few years, due to us both being dicks, but somehow we patched it up and now it's fine
Are you both still dicks?
Yeah, but we admit it now, and laugh about it. It's the best way
So, my university friend who joined XR rebellion has now got back to me after 6 weeks with (for her) a totally uncharacteristic passive-aggressive, and even nakedly angry, message. It has lots of CAPITALS and statements of "belief", asserting the imminence of "extinction" ends with her saying she's part of the 3.5% and it's ok because will save the world without me.
She's also defriended me from Facebook.
I'm quite upset by it to be honest. We've been friends for over 20 years, but she's gone off the deep end.
It's the same thing as QAnon IMO, just a different cause. Some people become completely captured by it and are unable to distinguish between reality and their newfound beliefs so will trash friendships and even blood when people disagree with them or point out inconsistencies in their new belief system.
It's sad, but there's not really a lot you can do about it but wait it out and hope they can escape the cult.
Sounds like parts of XR are in danger of turning into a millenarian cult.
I've just started Niall Ferguson's new book 'Doom: the politics of catastrophe'. No doubt these kinds of cults will feature.
I have often wondered whether some people have predisposition to blind loyalty to cults/philosophies. It has always existed throughout history; mainly manifesting itself in religion in earlier times, and then in the 20th century non-religious philosophies such as Nazism, fascism and communism. If you compare one type of a fanatic with another, they often have similar psychologies, and often exhibit gullibility in the extreme and a desire to be part of a movement that they can identify with and see a reflection of their own inflexible viewpoint .
That's true. It's mainly bad. But there's a positive in there too - the desire to be part of something much bigger than yourself.
Yes that is OK, but I was more thinking about people on the extremist fringe. I think one motivation, in addition to the sense of belonging, is that there seems to be a misplaced sense of moral superiority enjoyed by adherents, which I think might be the case with members of XR at one end of the spectrum and QAnon at the other. "We get it and they (the silly feckers) don't!" seems to be the attitude. Very similar to the fanatically religious
The Truss's leadership prospects are surely in tatters. The Tories would never risk her - an absolutely vilified character within Britain's rural communities. Truss the Farmer's Cuss she'll be known as.
Dunno about that. The Tory members in the SE couldn’t give a damn about the farmers.
Everyone knows that the "countryside" is to stop plebs building houses, not for things like "farming". Don't be ridiculous.
I'm beginning to think some people don't know what "food security" means.
How does banning perfectly safe, perfectly scientific, well tested hormone supplements aid our food security?
Especially considering that the hormone supplement ban was protectionist unscientific bullshit that the EU imposed on us, as UK farmers were using hormone supplements until the EU instituted its ban that the UK opposed at the time in the Council of Ministers?
Maybe the UK farmer should just go back to doing what they were before the EU started meddling, and thus improve our food security?
Not hormones, but actually having farming and fishing industries at all in the Isles of Great Britain and Ireland.
Yes we have an industry, it represents all of 0.61% of UK GDP while taking up 70% of UK land.
Being made to compete with the rest of the world would force the industry to improve and become more efficient and more productive, just as happened with New Zealand when they eliminated their trade barriers and subsidies.
An improved and more efficient agriculture industry would improve our security, wouldn't it?
You won’t be happy until we’re eating dog food
Why would we eat dog food?
Have you ever eaten Australian meat? Its excellent top quality.
Your xenophobia at imports is weird, especially while seeing 27 other nations getting free access to export their meat to us zero tariffs, zero quotas.
They have lower standards then we do. 'OLB' post on PT has examples. Or if you want an even better authority - the best let's be honest - there's Mark Drakeford. But it won't bother you and that's perfectly understandable. This whole thing is bespoke tailored to push all your buttons.
Free trade. Free free free. No quotas or tariffs. Deregulated mangy beef. Don't like it? So don't eat it then. Problem solved. Choice. The market pure and simple. And omg Australia. Red on the map. Trad Commonwealth. Five eyes. FAMILY.
7th Heaven in other words.
I rarely succeed in changing your view on anything but I sometimes like to try. Not here though. It'd be too close to the bone.
"Mangy beef"?
I used to live there you forget, I grew up downunder.
American food is shit, when you talk about shit food and you're talking about American deals you have a point. Australian meat is top nosh. Great quality.
Has anyone on this site ever gone to Australia, eaten beef there and thought "urgh this is mangy dog food shit"? Don't be ridiculous.
As someone who has lived in the US and eats American cooking (as provided by the Wife) every day I beg to differ.
I have a friend who - and you can know someone for 20 years and still be finding things out about them - it turns out is a massive fan of really top quality beef. He insists on American beef - reckons it far superior to British in almost all circumstances.
British meat is relatively shit.
I don't know why. But it is. Maybe its the lack of sunshine, maybe its in your head, but go to Australia, or America and the meat there just tastes better. My wife is from South Africa and she says the same thing, when she moved to the UK she stopped eating meat for a while, not because of any 'vegetarian' reason but because it was so disappointing compared to what she was used to in South Africa.
If British and Aussie meat was available at the same price next to each other in a supermarket, I'd be very tempted to go for the latter.
I haven't done a scientific study of this but I tend to agree. I think the UK meat tends to a higher fat content, possibly because our lousy climate encourages that in the animals and our smaller fields means they don't move around as much. Leaner, firmer beef is better in the same way that free range chicken tastes much better than factory farmed.
Absolutely, hence why beef with low far content such as Wagyu is so cheap.
Oh wait.
Ok, ok, I give up. But I still think it is important how the animal has lived.
In any case, getting rid of sheep, fish, etc. from Scotland is like getting rid of Scots lawyers. Neither may take up a huge part of GDP, but we are on the whole a lot better for having them available locally ...
The problem, as I said yesterday, is that asking UK and in particular Scottish farms to compete on a no tariff level playing field with Australia and NZ is the problem of Morgan Motor Co taking on Ford and GM. The scale of production in the Antipodes means that competition is simply impossible and what we are looking at is surviving in niche segments of the market. That creates real problems with what we are going to do with all the marginal land that is going to go out of production.
It's not an insuperable problem but it would be a nasty jolt to our rural communities (our urban communities would of course gain by cheaper food) and it would change what a lot of our country actually looks like. There are reasons why agriculture is usually one of the hardest areas to agree in FTAs.
Absolutely, but its worth bearing in mind the words of Ricardo and JS Mill and so on - if the farms can't compete on a level playing field then its not a competitive advantage and maybe something else should be considered?
If people want to go for locally produce organic etc etc and stick a flag on it then some will pay a premium for that. But you've got to find something you're competitive in and if you can't, then as a nation we should move on and not save every Luddite job under threat.
The problem being that policy only works if you are dealing with a level playing field around the world and all countries are producing food to a standard acceptable to the British. Otherwise you simply end up with companies importing huge amounts of food produced in conditions that are banned in the UK.
And as I said, you ignore the fact that this is not about the small percentage of GDP. The bottom line is not what matters. It is about feeding our country in a way we find acceptable and which is reliable. I have absolutely no problem with importing food if it is produced to the same standards as UK food (or hopefully even better). What is not acceptable is to destroy our farming on the basis we can import food from countries whose welfare, safety and environmental standards do not meet our own.
You are a classic case of someone who knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
That's a mispresentation.
If there's a serious issue as to why something is not safe etc or doesn't meet our standards then it should be barred from being imported. I have no issue with that, apply the laws the same.
What I don't support is non-tariff barriers that have no scientific basis whatsoever. In which case, I think we should have a level playing field.
Australians don't abuse animals. The one objection raised earlier was that they use hormonal growth, which is used in almost the entire world excluding the EU and which the WTO found was unsupported by the science - and was used in this country prior to the EU banning them. If that's the objection then my solution is to have a level playing field and go back to our own laws before the EU changed them and allow the use of hormones in the UK just like we used to do and many other nations do.
If there's not a level playing field, then we should sort it out so that there is. Or if there's something insurmountable then sure have a ban, but it should be for good reasons and not just a non-tariff barrier.
It is in no way a misinterpretation. It is you who are ignoring facts.
One of the biggest issues facing us in food safety is the overuse of anti-biotics. There are moves now to reduce or prevent the use of anti-biotics in an prophylactic way because of the concerns about anti-biotic resistance. What is the point of us doing that in this country if we are hen importing he meet from other countries. Few countries have animal welfare standards as strict as ours - something both Nick Palmer and I have campaigned about in the past. Why should we accept food from countries with lower food standards? Same goes for the use of pesticides and herbicides. We are trying to move away from the Chemical Brothers form of farming which is pointless if we then import cheaper food from countries that still allow it. The same for soil degradation and nitrate pollution.
All these things matter far more than that 0.7% of GDP you are so hung up on.
So my accusation stands. When we already have a far higher home to population ratio than we had 50 years ago your arguments for ever increasing house building at the cost of our environment are simply not valid.
As I said to you, I have no qualms with our standards applying to imports as well as domestic standards. Though I don't buy the drive to organic etc and view it comparable to XR, but I know others opinions vary.
If we decide on domestic standards, whether blocking antibiotic usage, hormones or anything else then there's no reason in my eyes that should only apply to domestic production, it should apply to imports too. I am agreeing with you on that point, I never disagreed with you on that point. If others standards don't meet ours I am OK with it not being allowed to import at any price, let alone having tariffs.
Tariffs are a different matter, that should apply to those goods that are allowed to be imported and do meet our standards.
As for housing, your argument about ratios is not that important since as others said to you straight away, household profiles in that time have changed too. We have a lot of retired couples etc whose kids have moved out still owning the family homes their kids lived in, meaning that later generations are incapable of getting a good home as there's a shortage of good homes. This isn't helped then by those NIMBYs who want to only approve the building of shit "affordable" homes and not more good homes like their own.
Also housing ratios have changed, so you have more eg divorced or otherwise single people living in houses (again some of these now in large homes blocking them from those with families) etc etc - we don't live the same lives as we did fifty years ago and there is clearly a major shortage and if there wasn't then newly constructed homes wouldn't be getting bought straight from plan so rapidly.
So as I said, this is a debate about lifestyle choices. Your vision vs mine.
It depends, if you mean about people being divorced etc then that's not a lifestyle choice. Nor is people living in big houses after their kids have flown the coop, while only building small houses for the younger generations starting families that's not really a "lifestyle choice".
If you mean about organic etc then I'm very liberal about lifestyle choices. I don't think its the government's job to impose lifestyle choices on people, it should be a free choice: you want to be vegan, or kosher, or organic or whatever else floats your boat then that's your choice. I don't want the law to stop your choices, and I just don't want you or the law to stop me from making my own choices.
You should make your choices, I should make my own, and its not the states job to pick your lifestyle over mine or vice-versa.
So if say Aussie imports operate on a level playing field and meet the same welfare etc requirements of UK laws as they aren't hormone treated, then why should they be subject to tariffs?
For the Catholic church divorce is a lifestyle choice, divorce only became legal in Ireland in 1996
The Truss's leadership prospects are surely in tatters. The Tories would never risk her - an absolutely vilified character within Britain's rural communities. Truss the Farmer's Cuss she'll be known as.
Dunno about that. The Tory members in the SE couldn’t give a damn about the farmers.
Everyone knows that the "countryside" is to stop plebs building houses, not for things like "farming". Don't be ridiculous.
I'm beginning to think some people don't know what "food security" means.
How does banning perfectly safe, perfectly scientific, well tested hormone supplements aid our food security?
Especially considering that the hormone supplement ban was protectionist unscientific bullshit that the EU imposed on us, as UK farmers were using hormone supplements until the EU instituted its ban that the UK opposed at the time in the Council of Ministers?
Maybe the UK farmer should just go back to doing what they were before the EU started meddling, and thus improve our food security?
Not hormones, but actually having farming and fishing industries at all in the Isles of Great Britain and Ireland.
Yes we have an industry, it represents all of 0.61% of UK GDP while taking up 70% of UK land.
Being made to compete with the rest of the world would force the industry to improve and become more efficient and more productive, just as happened with New Zealand when they eliminated their trade barriers and subsidies.
An improved and more efficient agriculture industry would improve our security, wouldn't it?
You won’t be happy until we’re eating dog food
Why would we eat dog food?
Have you ever eaten Australian meat? Its excellent top quality.
Your xenophobia at imports is weird, especially while seeing 27 other nations getting free access to export their meat to us zero tariffs, zero quotas.
They have lower standards then we do. 'OLB' post on PT has examples. Or if you want an even better authority - the best let's be honest - there's Mark Drakeford. But it won't bother you and that's perfectly understandable. This whole thing is bespoke tailored to push all your buttons.
Free trade. Free free free. No quotas or tariffs. Deregulated mangy beef. Don't like it? So don't eat it then. Problem solved. Choice. The market pure and simple. And omg Australia. Red on the map. Trad Commonwealth. Five eyes. FAMILY.
7th Heaven in other words.
I rarely succeed in changing your view on anything but I sometimes like to try. Not here though. It'd be too close to the bone.
"Mangy beef"?
I used to live there you forget, I grew up downunder.
American food is shit, when you talk about shit food and you're talking about American deals you have a point. Australian meat is top nosh. Great quality.
Has anyone on this site ever gone to Australia, eaten beef there and thought "urgh this is mangy dog food shit"? Don't be ridiculous.
As someone who has lived in the US and eats American cooking (as provided by the Wife) every day I beg to differ.
I have a friend who - and you can know someone for 20 years and still be finding things out about them - it turns out is a massive fan of really top quality beef. He insists on American beef - reckons it far superior to British in almost all circumstances.
British meat is relatively shit.
I don't know why. But it is. Maybe its the lack of sunshine, maybe its in your head, but go to Australia, or America and the meat there just tastes better. My wife is from South Africa and she says the same thing, when she moved to the UK she stopped eating meat for a while, not because of any 'vegetarian' reason but because it was so disappointing compared to what she was used to in South Africa.
If British and Aussie meat was available at the same price next to each other in a supermarket, I'd be very tempted to go for the latter.
I haven't done a scientific study of this but I tend to agree. I think the UK meat tends to a higher fat content, possibly because our lousy climate encourages that in the animals and our smaller fields means they don't move around as much. Leaner, firmer beef is better in the same way that free range chicken tastes much better than factory farmed.
Absolutely, hence why beef with low far content such as Wagyu is so cheap.
Oh wait.
Ok, ok, I give up. But I still think it is important how the animal has lived.
In any case, getting rid of sheep, fish, etc. from Scotland is like getting rid of Scots lawyers. Neither may take up a huge part of GDP, but we are on the whole a lot better for having them available locally ...
The problem, as I said yesterday, is that asking UK and in particular Scottish farms to compete on a no tariff level playing field with Australia and NZ is the problem of Morgan Motor Co taking on Ford and GM. The scale of production in the Antipodes means that competition is simply impossible and what we are looking at is surviving in niche segments of the market. That creates real problems with what we are going to do with all the marginal land that is going to go out of production.
It's not an insuperable problem but it would be a nasty jolt to our rural communities (our urban communities would of course gain by cheaper food) and it would change what a lot of our country actually looks like. There are reasons why agriculture is usually one of the hardest areas to agree in FTAs.
Absolutely, but its worth bearing in mind the words of Ricardo and JS Mill and so on - if the farms can't compete on a level playing field then its not a competitive advantage and maybe something else should be considered?
If people want to go for locally produce organic etc etc and stick a flag on it then some will pay a premium for that. But you've got to find something you're competitive in and if you can't, then as a nation we should move on and not save every Luddite job under threat.
The problem being that policy only works if you are dealing with a level playing field around the world and all countries are producing food to a standard acceptable to the British. Otherwise you simply end up with companies importing huge amounts of food produced in conditions that are banned in the UK.
And as I said, you ignore the fact that this is not about the small percentage of GDP. The bottom line is not what matters. It is about feeding our country in a way we find acceptable and which is reliable. I have absolutely no problem with importing food if it is produced to the same standards as UK food (or hopefully even better). What is not acceptable is to destroy our farming on the basis we can import food from countries whose welfare, safety and environmental standards do not meet our own.
You are a classic case of someone who knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
That's a mispresentation.
If there's a serious issue as to why something is not safe etc or doesn't meet our standards then it should be barred from being imported. I have no issue with that, apply the laws the same.
What I don't support is non-tariff barriers that have no scientific basis whatsoever. In which case, I think we should have a level playing field.
Australians don't abuse animals. The one objection raised earlier was that they use hormonal growth, which is used in almost the entire world excluding the EU and which the WTO found was unsupported by the science - and was used in this country prior to the EU banning them. If that's the objection then my solution is to have a level playing field and go back to our own laws before the EU changed them and allow the use of hormones in the UK just like we used to do and many other nations do.
If there's not a level playing field, then we should sort it out so that there is. Or if there's something insurmountable then sure have a ban, but it should be for good reasons and not just a non-tariff barrier.
It is in no way a misinterpretation. It is you who are ignoring facts.
One of the biggest issues facing us in food safety is the overuse of anti-biotics. There are moves now to reduce or prevent the use of anti-biotics in an prophylactic way because of the concerns about anti-biotic resistance. What is the point of us doing that in this country if we are hen importing he meet from other countries. Few countries have animal welfare standards as strict as ours - something both Nick Palmer and I have campaigned about in the past. Why should we accept food from countries with lower food standards? Same goes for the use of pesticides and herbicides. We are trying to move away from the Chemical Brothers form of farming which is pointless if we then import cheaper food from countries that still allow it. The same for soil degradation and nitrate pollution.
All these things matter far more than that 0.7% of GDP you are so hung up on.
So my accusation stands. When we already have a far higher home to population ratio than we had 50 years ago your arguments for ever increasing house building at the cost of our environment are simply not valid.
As I said to you, I have no qualms with our standards applying to imports as well as domestic standards. Though I don't buy the drive to organic etc and view it comparable to XR, but I know others opinions vary.
If we decide on domestic standards, whether blocking antibiotic usage, hormones or anything else then there's no reason in my eyes that should only apply to domestic production, it should apply to imports too. I am agreeing with you on that point, I never disagreed with you on that point. If others standards don't meet ours I am OK with it not being allowed to import at any price, let alone having tariffs.
Tariffs are a different matter, that should apply to those goods that are allowed to be imported and do meet our standards.
As for housing, your argument about ratios is not that important since as others said to you straight away, household profiles in that time have changed too. We have a lot of retired couples etc whose kids have moved out still owning the family homes their kids lived in, meaning that later generations are incapable of getting a good home as there's a shortage of good homes. This isn't helped then by those NIMBYs who want to only approve the building of shit "affordable" homes and not more good homes like their own.
Also housing ratios have changed, so you have more eg divorced or otherwise single people living in houses (again some of these now in large homes blocking them from those with families) etc etc - we don't live the same lives as we did fifty years ago and there is clearly a major shortage and if there wasn't then newly constructed homes wouldn't be getting bought straight from plan so rapidly.
So as I said, this is a debate about lifestyle choices. Your vision vs mine.
It depends, if you mean about people being divorced etc then that's not a lifestyle choice. Nor is people living in big houses after their kids have flown the coop, while only building small houses for the younger generations starting families that's not really a "lifestyle choice".
If you mean about organic etc then I'm very liberal about lifestyle choices. I don't think its the government's job to impose lifestyle choices on people, it should be a free choice: you want to be vegan, or kosher, or organic or whatever else floats your boat then that's your choice. I don't want the law to stop your choices, and I just don't want you or the law to stop me from making my own choices.
You should make your choices, I should make my own, and its not the states job to pick your lifestyle over mine or vice-versa.
So if say Aussie imports operate on a level playing field and meet the same welfare etc requirements of UK laws as they aren't hormone treated, then why should they be subject to tariffs?
For the Catholic church divorce is a lifestyle choice, divorce only became legal in Ireland in 1996
That's the Catholic Church's problem.
And makes the point that comparisons with house-to-population levels 50 years ago aren't comparing like-for-like.
Going to be an interesting one this. As I live in countryside we burn oil for heating. I'd like to look at alternatives, but solar isn't really an option as my house is listed, and there must be many other reasons why it will be challenging to go carbon neutral for many folk. I will be genuinely interested to see how the government approach it, particularly in rural areas.
Yep I am in the same boat as you. I am currently going through the long process of getting listed building consent to build an extension for a wood fired boiler. We have an old bullet proof oil fired boiler in the cellar but I can see the way thigs are going and want to get an alternative of my choice in place before they ban them. Again being a listed property I have had all applications for solar panels and windpower turned down both on the building and within the curtilage.
Interesting proposal now that it may be gong to happen. A good one to wake people up imo. Good to not subsidize something that should not be done before the fabric.
Not good for the balance of payments unless we have UK HP makers or plants. I am not aware of any currently.
Solar has never been a good idea for heating (except maybe solar water heating plus night rate boost, as winter insolation is only about 10% of peak.
I know people who are planting a couple of acres of coppice for their heating, but that requires dedication.
And a couple of acres of coppice
A couple of acres of *land*.
You plant the coppice .
I''m sure someone said they were in the country !
Over on BH, we had someone appear yesterday with a 15 acre rural site in Dacorum, and the Council are complaining about a post and rail fence. And it isn't Sarah Beany. Not my world, unfortunately. https://bit.ly/347VjLY
The U.K. appear to be in danger of getting sucked in to NZ/Aus potential problem. Got so used to seeing Covid deaths on the floor that it actually becomes a factor disincentivising the lifting of restrictions because of fear of ANY rises in numbers.
Australia has only vaccinated 6% of the population though and New Zealand has only vaccinated 4% of its population.
Hence they still impose and will have to impose outright bans on international travel to and from them for some time to come, unlike the UK where 70% have been vaccinated overall already (rising to 81% in Wales) with at least their first dose and 40% have had their second dose too
21 minutes on PM over an interview some 26 years ago. The BBC does love to talk about itself.
JFC. They are now rounding off the show by spending the final 10 minutes banging on about it. Making fully half the show! Barely a comment here, nor I suspect anywhere else outside media land. Out of touch elite. That's what they are.
"As Birmingham Live reports, Bank Holiday Monday on May 31st is forecast to see blistering highs of 20C with temperatures expected to return to warmer climates from next week." (what does that last phrase even mean!)
The proper long range is drier, slightly above average temperature by days, slightly cooler than average by night, but balancing out as average. I'm no heat fiend, I'll take that.
The U.K. appear to be in danger of getting sucked in to NZ/Aus potential problem. Got so used to seeing Covid deaths on the floor that it actually becomes a factor disincentivising the lifting of restrictions because of fear of ANY rises in numbers.
Australia has only vaccinated 6% of the population though and New Zealand has only vaccinated 4% of its population.
Hence they still impose and will have to impose outright bans on international travel to and from them for some time to come, unlike the UK where 70% have been vaccinated overall already (rising to 81% in Wales) with at least their first dose and 40% have had their second dose too
Taiwan has the same issue. Why trouble yourself with a vaccine when the threat is largely theoretical?
The Truss's leadership prospects are surely in tatters. The Tories would never risk her - an absolutely vilified character within Britain's rural communities. Truss the Farmer's Cuss she'll be known as.
Dunno about that. The Tory members in the SE couldn’t give a damn about the farmers.
Everyone knows that the "countryside" is to stop plebs building houses, not for things like "farming". Don't be ridiculous.
I'm beginning to think some people don't know what "food security" means.
How does banning perfectly safe, perfectly scientific, well tested hormone supplements aid our food security?
Especially considering that the hormone supplement ban was protectionist unscientific bullshit that the EU imposed on us, as UK farmers were using hormone supplements until the EU instituted its ban that the UK opposed at the time in the Council of Ministers?
Maybe the UK farmer should just go back to doing what they were before the EU started meddling, and thus improve our food security?
Not hormones, but actually having farming and fishing industries at all in the Isles of Great Britain and Ireland.
Yes we have an industry, it represents all of 0.61% of UK GDP while taking up 70% of UK land.
Being made to compete with the rest of the world would force the industry to improve and become more efficient and more productive, just as happened with New Zealand when they eliminated their trade barriers and subsidies.
An improved and more efficient agriculture industry would improve our security, wouldn't it?
You won’t be happy until we’re eating dog food
Why would we eat dog food?
Have you ever eaten Australian meat? Its excellent top quality.
Your xenophobia at imports is weird, especially while seeing 27 other nations getting free access to export their meat to us zero tariffs, zero quotas.
They have lower standards then we do. 'OLB' post on PT has examples. Or if you want an even better authority - the best let's be honest - there's Mark Drakeford. But it won't bother you and that's perfectly understandable. This whole thing is bespoke tailored to push all your buttons.
Free trade. Free free free. No quotas or tariffs. Deregulated mangy beef. Don't like it? So don't eat it then. Problem solved. Choice. The market pure and simple. And omg Australia. Red on the map. Trad Commonwealth. Five eyes. FAMILY.
7th Heaven in other words.
I rarely succeed in changing your view on anything but I sometimes like to try. Not here though. It'd be too close to the bone.
"Mangy beef"?
I used to live there you forget, I grew up downunder.
American food is shit, when you talk about shit food and you're talking about American deals you have a point. Australian meat is top nosh. Great quality.
Has anyone on this site ever gone to Australia, eaten beef there and thought "urgh this is mangy dog food shit"? Don't be ridiculous.
As someone who has lived in the US and eats American cooking (as provided by the Wife) every day I beg to differ.
I have a friend who - and you can know someone for 20 years and still be finding things out about them - it turns out is a massive fan of really top quality beef. He insists on American beef - reckons it far superior to British in almost all circumstances.
British meat is relatively shit.
I don't know why. But it is. Maybe its the lack of sunshine, maybe its in your head, but go to Australia, or America and the meat there just tastes better. My wife is from South Africa and she says the same thing, when she moved to the UK she stopped eating meat for a while, not because of any 'vegetarian' reason but because it was so disappointing compared to what she was used to in South Africa.
If British and Aussie meat was available at the same price next to each other in a supermarket, I'd be very tempted to go for the latter.
I haven't done a scientific study of this but I tend to agree. I think the UK meat tends to a higher fat content, possibly because our lousy climate encourages that in the animals and our smaller fields means they don't move around as much. Leaner, firmer beef is better in the same way that free range chicken tastes much better than factory farmed.
Absolutely, hence why beef with low far content such as Wagyu is so cheap.
Oh wait.
Ok, ok, I give up. But I still think it is important how the animal has lived.
In any case, getting rid of sheep, fish, etc. from Scotland is like getting rid of Scots lawyers. Neither may take up a huge part of GDP, but we are on the whole a lot better for having them available locally ...
The problem, as I said yesterday, is that asking UK and in particular Scottish farms to compete on a no tariff level playing field with Australia and NZ is the problem of Morgan Motor Co taking on Ford and GM. The scale of production in the Antipodes means that competition is simply impossible and what we are looking at is surviving in niche segments of the market. That creates real problems with what we are going to do with all the marginal land that is going to go out of production.
It's not an insuperable problem but it would be a nasty jolt to our rural communities (our urban communities would of course gain by cheaper food) and it would change what a lot of our country actually looks like. There are reasons why agriculture is usually one of the hardest areas to agree in FTAs.
Absolutely, but its worth bearing in mind the words of Ricardo and JS Mill and so on - if the farms can't compete on a level playing field then its not a competitive advantage and maybe something else should be considered?
If people want to go for locally produce organic etc etc and stick a flag on it then some will pay a premium for that. But you've got to find something you're competitive in and if you can't, then as a nation we should move on and not save every Luddite job under threat.
The problem being that policy only works if you are dealing with a level playing field around the world and all countries are producing food to a standard acceptable to the British. Otherwise you simply end up with companies importing huge amounts of food produced in conditions that are banned in the UK.
And as I said, you ignore the fact that this is not about the small percentage of GDP. The bottom line is not what matters. It is about feeding our country in a way we find acceptable and which is reliable. I have absolutely no problem with importing food if it is produced to the same standards as UK food (or hopefully even better). What is not acceptable is to destroy our farming on the basis we can import food from countries whose welfare, safety and environmental standards do not meet our own.
You are a classic case of someone who knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
That's a mispresentation.
If there's a serious issue as to why something is not safe etc or doesn't meet our standards then it should be barred from being imported. I have no issue with that, apply the laws the same.
What I don't support is non-tariff barriers that have no scientific basis whatsoever. In which case, I think we should have a level playing field.
Australians don't abuse animals. The one objection raised earlier was that they use hormonal growth, which is used in almost the entire world excluding the EU and which the WTO found was unsupported by the science - and was used in this country prior to the EU banning them. If that's the objection then my solution is to have a level playing field and go back to our own laws before the EU changed them and allow the use of hormones in the UK just like we used to do and many other nations do.
If there's not a level playing field, then we should sort it out so that there is. Or if there's something insurmountable then sure have a ban, but it should be for good reasons and not just a non-tariff barrier.
It is in no way a misinterpretation. It is you who are ignoring facts.
One of the biggest issues facing us in food safety is the overuse of anti-biotics. There are moves now to reduce or prevent the use of anti-biotics in an prophylactic way because of the concerns about anti-biotic resistance. What is the point of us doing that in this country if we are hen importing he meet from other countries. Few countries have animal welfare standards as strict as ours - something both Nick Palmer and I have campaigned about in the past. Why should we accept food from countries with lower food standards? Same goes for the use of pesticides and herbicides. We are trying to move away from the Chemical Brothers form of farming which is pointless if we then import cheaper food from countries that still allow it. The same for soil degradation and nitrate pollution.
All these things matter far more than that 0.7% of GDP you are so hung up on.
So my accusation stands. When we already have a far higher home to population ratio than we had 50 years ago your arguments for ever increasing house building at the cost of our environment are simply not valid.
As I said to you, I have no qualms with our standards applying to imports as well as domestic standards. Though I don't buy the drive to organic etc and view it comparable to XR, but I know others opinions vary.
If we decide on domestic standards, whether blocking antibiotic usage, hormones or anything else then there's no reason in my eyes that should only apply to domestic production, it should apply to imports too. I am agreeing with you on that point, I never disagreed with you on that point. If others standards don't meet ours I am OK with it not being allowed to import at any price, let alone having tariffs.
Tariffs are a different matter, that should apply to those goods that are allowed to be imported and do meet our standards.
As for housing, your argument about ratios is not that important since as others said to you straight away, household profiles in that time have changed too. We have a lot of retired couples etc whose kids have moved out still owning the family homes their kids lived in, meaning that later generations are incapable of getting a good home as there's a shortage of good homes. This isn't helped then by those NIMBYs who want to only approve the building of shit "affordable" homes and not more good homes like their own.
Also housing ratios have changed, so you have more eg divorced or otherwise single people living in houses (again some of these now in large homes blocking them from those with families) etc etc - we don't live the same lives as we did fifty years ago and there is clearly a major shortage and if there wasn't then newly constructed homes wouldn't be getting bought straight from plan so rapidly.
So as I said, this is a debate about lifestyle choices. Your vision vs mine.
It depends, if you mean about people being divorced etc then that's not a lifestyle choice. Nor is people living in big houses after their kids have flown the coop, while only building small houses for the younger generations starting families that's not really a "lifestyle choice".
If you mean about organic etc then I'm very liberal about lifestyle choices. I don't think its the government's job to impose lifestyle choices on people, it should be a free choice: you want to be vegan, or kosher, or organic or whatever else floats your boat then that's your choice. I don't want the law to stop your choices, and I just don't want you or the law to stop me from making my own choices.
You should make your choices, I should make my own, and its not the states job to pick your lifestyle over mine or vice-versa.
So if say Aussie imports operate on a level playing field and meet the same welfare etc requirements of UK laws as they aren't hormone treated, then why should they be subject to tariffs?
For the Catholic church divorce is a lifestyle choice, divorce only became legal in Ireland in 1996
That's the Catholic Church's problem.
And makes the point that comparisons with house-to-population levels 50 years ago aren't comparing like-for-like.
If however nobody got divorced and net immigration fell to near zero, as our birth rate is only 1.6 ie below replacement, longer term we would likely have more houses than we need already.
Of course in reality people should now be able to get divorced if a relationship has broken down and we need some immigration to fill shortage areas of the economy but the more families break down and the more immigration we have then the more demand for housing and house prices will rise and the more houses we will need to build
So, my university friend who joined XR rebellion has now got back to me after 6 weeks with (for her) a totally uncharacteristic passive-aggressive, and even nakedly angry, message. It has lots of CAPITALS and statements of "belief", asserting the imminence of "extinction" ends with her saying she's part of the 3.5% and it's ok because will save the world without me.
She's also defriended me from Facebook.
I'm quite upset by it to be honest. We've been friends for over 20 years, but she's gone off the deep end.
It's the same thing as QAnon IMO, just a different cause. Some people become completely captured by it and are unable to distinguish between reality and their newfound beliefs so will trash friendships and even blood when people disagree with them or point out inconsistencies in their new belief system.
It's sad, but there's not really a lot you can do about it but wait it out and hope they can escape the cult.
Sounds like parts of XR are in danger of turning into a millenarian cult.
I've just started Niall Ferguson's new book 'Doom: the politics of catastrophe'. No doubt these kinds of cults will feature.
I have often wondered whether some people have predisposition to blind loyalty to cults/philosophies. It has always existed throughout history; mainly manifesting itself in religion in earlier times, and then in the 20th century non-religious philosophies such as Nazism, fascism and communism. If you compare one type of a fanatic with another, they often have similar psychologies, and often exhibit gullibility in the extreme and a desire to be part of a movement that they can identify with and see a reflection of their own inflexible viewpoint .
That's true. It's mainly bad. But there's a positive in there too - the desire to be part of something much bigger than yourself.
I see that as the same effect that pre-disposes victims to go back to giving more money to a con-artist, whether a dating-scam or a boiler room sales operative who has developed a rapore and a narrative.
The U.K. appear to be in danger of getting sucked in to NZ/Aus potential problem. Got so used to seeing Covid deaths on the floor that it actually becomes a factor disincentivising the lifting of restrictions because of fear of ANY rises in numbers.
Australia has only vaccinated 6% of the population though and New Zealand has only vaccinated 4% of its population.
Hence they still impose and will have to impose outright bans on international travel to and from them for some time to come, unlike the UK where 70% have been vaccinated overall already (rising to 81% in Wales) with at least their first dose and 40% have had their second dose too
Taiwan has the same issue. Why trouble yourself with a vaccine when the threat is largely theoretical?
Indeed but it does mean they will effectively have to cut themselves off from the world to sustain that if most of the population are not going to get vaccinated
So, my university friend who joined XR rebellion has now got back to me after 6 weeks with (for her) a totally uncharacteristic passive-aggressive, and even nakedly angry, message. It has lots of CAPITALS and statements of "belief", asserting the imminence of "extinction" ends with her saying she's part of the 3.5% and it's ok because will save the world without me.
She's also defriended me from Facebook.
I'm quite upset by it to be honest. We've been friends for over 20 years, but she's gone off the deep end.
It's the same thing as QAnon IMO, just a different cause. Some people become completely captured by it and are unable to distinguish between reality and their newfound beliefs so will trash friendships and even blood when people disagree with them or point out inconsistencies in their new belief system.
It's sad, but there's not really a lot you can do about it but wait it out and hope they can escape the cult.
Sounds like parts of XR are in danger of turning into a millenarian cult.
I've just started Niall Ferguson's new book 'Doom: the politics of catastrophe'. No doubt these kinds of cults will feature.
I have often wondered whether some people have predisposition to blind loyalty to cults/philosophies. It has always existed throughout history; mainly manifesting itself in religion in earlier times, and then in the 20th century non-religious philosophies such as Nazism, fascism and communism. If you compare one type of a fanatic with another, they often have similar psychologies, and often exhibit gullibility in the extreme and a desire to be part of a movement that they can identify with and see a reflection of their own inflexible viewpoint .
That's true. It's mainly bad. But there's a positive in there too - the desire to be part of something much bigger than yourself.
I see that as the same effect that pre-disposes victims to go back to giving more money to a con-artist, whether a dating-scam or a boiler room sales operative who has developed a rapore and a narrative.
What's it called? - "cognitive bias?"
"But there's a positive in there too - the desire to be part of something much bigger than yourself."
Going to be an interesting one this. As I live in countryside we burn oil for heating. I'd like to look at alternatives, but solar isn't really an option as my house is listed, and there must be many other reasons why it will be challenging to go carbon neutral for many folk. I will be genuinely interested to see how the government approach it, particularly in rural areas.
Yep I am in the same boat as you. I am currently going through the long process of getting listed building consent to build an extension for a wood fired boiler. We have an old bullet proof oil fired boiler in the cellar but I can see the way thigs are going and want to get an alternative of my choice in place before they ban them. Again being a listed property I have had all applications for solar panels and windpower turned down both on the building and within the curtilage.
Interesting proposal now that it may be gong to happen. A good one to wake people up imo. Good to not subsidize something that should not be done before the fabric.
Not good for the balance of payments unless we have UK HP makers or plants. I am not aware of any currently.
Solar has never been a good idea for heating (except maybe solar water heating plus night rate boost, as winter insolation is only about 10% of peak.
I know people who are planting a couple of acres of coppice for their heating, but that requires dedication.
And a couple of acres of coppice
A couple of acres of *land*.
You plant the coppice .
I''m sure someone said they were in the country !
Over on BH, we had someone appear yesterday with a 15 acre rural site in Dacorum, and the Council are complaining about a post and rail fence. And it isn't Sarah Beany. Not my world, unfortunately. https://bit.ly/347VjLY
Nor mine sadly. I like living in the city I was born in but sadly my allotment is too small for my grand plans and I had to retire too soon to pay for what I would need. I am reduced to planting a few spuds, raising fowl watching old episodes of “the good life” and trying my very best to not interfere with the allotment committee.
The U.K. appear to be in danger of getting sucked in to NZ/Aus potential problem. Got so used to seeing Covid deaths on the floor that it actually becomes a factor disincentivising the lifting of restrictions because of fear of ANY rises in numbers.
Australia has only vaccinated 6% of the population though and New Zealand has only vaccinated 4% of its population.
Hence they still impose and will have to impose outright bans on international travel to and from them for some time to come, unlike the UK where 70% have been vaccinated overall already (rising to 81% in Wales) with at least their first dose and 40% have had their second dose too
That's not my point. They are obviously not in a good position to open up (and relatively poor vaccine take up making it worse) and we are. My point is simply that when you have virtually no deaths the fear factor of "what could go wrong" becomes greater, on a relative level. The likes of NZ/Aus will probably end up needing to vaccinate a higher proportion of vulnerable people simply because psychologically tolerance of even a small number of deaths seems higher.
It's not the same in the UK, but when you're working with very low numbers, it makes it very easy for those with a vested interest to come up with ridiculous projections to scare people. Psychologically it's much easier to open up with 50-100 deaths a day and falling, than 2-3 deaths when even a small rise trigger some people to enter panic mode.
It depends, if you mean about people being divorced etc then that's not a lifestyle choice. Nor is people living in big houses after their kids have flown the coop, while only building small houses for the younger generations starting families that's not really a "lifestyle choice".
If you mean about organic etc then I'm very liberal about lifestyle choices. I don't think its the government's job to impose lifestyle choices on people, it should be a free choice: you want to be vegan, or kosher, or organic or whatever else floats your boat then that's your choice. I don't want the law to stop your choices, and I just don't want you or the law to stop me from making my own choices.
You should make your choices, I should make my own, and its not the states job to pick your lifestyle over mine or vice-versa.
So if say Aussie imports operate on a level playing field and meet the same welfare etc requirements of UK laws as they aren't hormone treated, then why should they be subject to tariffs?
Too much of the day job for me to want to go on about it, but briefly: Australia does NOT meet UK welfare requirements. Cattle in feedlots are common in Australia, illegal in Britain. Hens in barren cages are common in Australia, illegal in Britain. The level of antibiotics used to compensate for overcrowding is five times the British level, and overuse of antibiotics risks human health (by making the evolution of antibiotic-resistant bugs more likely).
The case for allowing them tariff-free exports to us anyway is not that they meet our standards - they don't. It's that the food will be slightly cheaper and allowing it may give us profitable exports in other goods. But it's undeniably going to be tough on farmers meeting higher standards because British legislation requires it.
Note that you can already import Australian beef. But there's a tariff that makes it uneconomic. The question is whether to lower it.
And whatever we decide will inevitably form a precedent for the US deal - with much larger impact as well as much larger benefits in non-agrilcutural exports.
“ There is mounting concern in political and farming circles that the UK is on the cusp of sealing a trade deal with Australia that could have a major impact on Irish beef exports to Britain.”
It depends, if you mean about people being divorced etc then that's not a lifestyle choice. Nor is people living in big houses after their kids have flown the coop, while only building small houses for the younger generations starting families that's not really a "lifestyle choice".
If you mean about organic etc then I'm very liberal about lifestyle choices. I don't think its the government's job to impose lifestyle choices on people, it should be a free choice: you want to be vegan, or kosher, or organic or whatever else floats your boat then that's your choice. I don't want the law to stop your choices, and I just don't want you or the law to stop me from making my own choices.
You should make your choices, I should make my own, and its not the states job to pick your lifestyle over mine or vice-versa.
So if say Aussie imports operate on a level playing field and meet the same welfare etc requirements of UK laws as they aren't hormone treated, then why should they be subject to tariffs?
Too much of the day job for me to want to go on about it, but briefly: Australia does NOT meet UK welfare requirements. Cattle in feedlots are common in Australia, illegal in Britain. Hens in barren cages are common in Australia, illegal in Britain. The level of antibiotics used to compensate for overcrowding is five times the British level, and overuse of antibiotics risks human health (by making the evolution of antibiotic-resistant bugs more likely).
The case for allowing them tariff-free exports to us anyway is not that they meet our standards - they don't. It's that the food will be slightly cheaper and allowing it may give us profitable exports in other goods. But it's undeniably going to be tough on farmers meeting higher standards because British legislation requires it.
Note that you can already import Australian beef. But there's a tariff that makes it uneconomic. The question is whether to lower it.
And whatever we decide will inevitably form a precedent for the US deal - with much larger impact as well as much larger benefits in non-agrilcutural exports.
What is your view on the two halves of the EU technique:
1 - Permit trade limited to that segment of Oz beef production that meets the no-hormone criteria , which I understand to be 60% of their beef prodiction. 2 - And apply a tonnage quota for that segment.
It depends, if you mean about people being divorced etc then that's not a lifestyle choice. Nor is people living in big houses after their kids have flown the coop, while only building small houses for the younger generations starting families that's not really a "lifestyle choice".
If you mean about organic etc then I'm very liberal about lifestyle choices. I don't think its the government's job to impose lifestyle choices on people, it should be a free choice: you want to be vegan, or kosher, or organic or whatever else floats your boat then that's your choice. I don't want the law to stop your choices, and I just don't want you or the law to stop me from making my own choices.
You should make your choices, I should make my own, and its not the states job to pick your lifestyle over mine or vice-versa.
So if say Aussie imports operate on a level playing field and meet the same welfare etc requirements of UK laws as they aren't hormone treated, then why should they be subject to tariffs?
Too much of the day job for me to want to go on about it, but briefly: Australia does NOT meet UK welfare requirements. Cattle in feedlots are common in Australia, illegal in Britain. Hens in barren cages are common in Australia, illegal in Britain. The level of antibiotics used to compensate for overcrowding is five times the British level, and overuse of antibiotics risks human health (by making the evolution of antibiotic-resistant bugs more likely).
The case for allowing them tariff-free exports to us anyway is not that they meet our standards - they don't. It's that the food will be slightly cheaper and allowing it may give us profitable exports in other goods. But it's undeniably going to be tough on farmers meeting higher standards because British legislation requires it.
Note that you can already import Australian beef. But there's a tariff that makes it uneconomic. The question is whether to lower it.
And whatever we decide will inevitably form a precedent for the US deal - with much larger impact as well as much larger benefits in non-agrilcutural exports.
This astounds me. The Australians have got almost infinite land. Why do they feel the need to farm so intensively?
It depends, if you mean about people being divorced etc then that's not a lifestyle choice. Nor is people living in big houses after their kids have flown the coop, while only building small houses for the younger generations starting families that's not really a "lifestyle choice".
If you mean about organic etc then I'm very liberal about lifestyle choices. I don't think its the government's job to impose lifestyle choices on people, it should be a free choice: you want to be vegan, or kosher, or organic or whatever else floats your boat then that's your choice. I don't want the law to stop your choices, and I just don't want you or the law to stop me from making my own choices.
You should make your choices, I should make my own, and its not the states job to pick your lifestyle over mine or vice-versa.
So if say Aussie imports operate on a level playing field and meet the same welfare etc requirements of UK laws as they aren't hormone treated, then why should they be subject to tariffs?
Too much of the day job for me to want to go on about it, but briefly: Australia does NOT meet UK welfare requirements. Cattle in feedlots are common in Australia, illegal in Britain. Hens in barren cages are common in Australia, illegal in Britain. The level of antibiotics used to compensate for overcrowding is five times the British level, and overuse of antibiotics risks human health (by making the evolution of antibiotic-resistant bugs more likely).
The case for allowing them tariff-free exports to us anyway is not that they meet our standards - they don't. It's that the food will be slightly cheaper and allowing it may give us profitable exports in other goods. But it's undeniably going to be tough on farmers meeting higher standards because British legislation requires it.
Note that you can already import Australian beef. But there's a tariff that makes it uneconomic. The question is whether to lower it.
And whatever we decide will inevitably form a precedent for the US deal - with much larger impact as well as much larger benefits in non-agrilcutural exports.
This astounds me. The Australians have got almost infinite land. Why do they feel the need to farm so intensively?
Isn't almost all of it completely uninhabitable and basically useless for any economic purpose?
It depends, if you mean about people being divorced etc then that's not a lifestyle choice. Nor is people living in big houses after their kids have flown the coop, while only building small houses for the younger generations starting families that's not really a "lifestyle choice".
If you mean about organic etc then I'm very liberal about lifestyle choices. I don't think its the government's job to impose lifestyle choices on people, it should be a free choice: you want to be vegan, or kosher, or organic or whatever else floats your boat then that's your choice. I don't want the law to stop your choices, and I just don't want you or the law to stop me from making my own choices.
You should make your choices, I should make my own, and its not the states job to pick your lifestyle over mine or vice-versa.
So if say Aussie imports operate on a level playing field and meet the same welfare etc requirements of UK laws as they aren't hormone treated, then why should they be subject to tariffs?
Too much of the day job for me to want to go on about it, but briefly: Australia does NOT meet UK welfare requirements. Cattle in feedlots are common in Australia, illegal in Britain. Hens in barren cages are common in Australia, illegal in Britain. The level of antibiotics used to compensate for overcrowding is five times the British level, and overuse of antibiotics risks human health (by making the evolution of antibiotic-resistant bugs more likely).
The case for allowing them tariff-free exports to us anyway is not that they meet our standards - they don't. It's that the food will be slightly cheaper and allowing it may give us profitable exports in other goods. But it's undeniably going to be tough on farmers meeting higher standards because British legislation requires it.
Note that you can already import Australian beef. But there's a tariff that makes it uneconomic. The question is whether to lower it.
And whatever we decide will inevitably form a precedent for the US deal - with much larger impact as well as much larger benefits in non-agrilcutural exports.
This astounds me. The Australians have got almost infinite land. Why do they feel the need to farm so intensively?
A lot of the land is desert and unsuitable for farming?
The UK is only of very few countries with really decent treatment of animals in the food chain. They join Switzerland, Sweden, Austria, Denmark and New Zealand.
“ There is mounting concern in political and farming circles that the UK is on the cusp of sealing a trade deal with Australia that could have a major impact on Irish beef exports to Britain.”
Yes, Ireland and France are the biggest losers here. They're going to lose an absolute shit ton of market share to Australian imports into the UK.
Going to be an interesting one this. As I live in countryside we burn oil for heating. I'd like to look at alternatives, but solar isn't really an option as my house is listed, and there must be many other reasons why it will be challenging to go carbon neutral for many folk. I will be genuinely interested to see how the government approach it, particularly in rural areas.
Yep I am in the same boat as you. I am currently going through the long process of getting listed building consent to build an extension for a wood fired boiler. We have an old bullet proof oil fired boiler in the cellar but I can see the way thigs are going and want to get an alternative of my choice in place before they ban them. Again being a listed property I have had all applications for solar panels and windpower turned down both on the building and within the curtilage.
The "curtilage" rule is ridiculous. I have often thought if I could afford it, it would almost be worthwhile buying a neighbour's house and putting solars on it. We have a couple of outbuilding that were built in the 80s but we cant even put panels on them! Good luck with extension. We went through that some years ago. It is pretty painful. My experience was that the conservation officers are often perverse and seem to make it up as they go along. We had to have sheep's wool for insulation (that no-one will see) FFS! A lot depends on whose jurisdiction you are under. Some counties are much more reasonable than others.
Interesting. We have a listed house in a conservation area. Solar turned down. Attempting to build a greenhouse is harder than building a massive extension in a non-listed house. Windows must be energy inefficient. We have ice inside windows in winter.
All of which I fully understood but to then be told that wood burners are evil because of people living in SW London polluting their urban environment and that heat pumps, which seem to be loved by men who like tepid water* (you rarely see women enthusing about them) are the way of the future is a case of left/right hand.
*see Matthew Parris who doesn’t wash his hair, ever,
The Truss's leadership prospects are surely in tatters. The Tories would never risk her - an absolutely vilified character within Britain's rural communities. Truss the Farmer's Cuss she'll be known as.
Dunno about that. The Tory members in the SE couldn’t give a damn about the farmers.
Everyone knows that the "countryside" is to stop plebs building houses, not for things like "farming". Don't be ridiculous.
I'm beginning to think some people don't know what "food security" means.
How does banning perfectly safe, perfectly scientific, well tested hormone supplements aid our food security?
Especially considering that the hormone supplement ban was protectionist unscientific bullshit that the EU imposed on us, as UK farmers were using hormone supplements until the EU instituted its ban that the UK opposed at the time in the Council of Ministers?
Maybe the UK farmer should just go back to doing what they were before the EU started meddling, and thus improve our food security?
Not hormones, but actually having farming and fishing industries at all in the Isles of Great Britain and Ireland.
Yes we have an industry, it represents all of 0.61% of UK GDP while taking up 70% of UK land.
Being made to compete with the rest of the world would force the industry to improve and become more efficient and more productive, just as happened with New Zealand when they eliminated their trade barriers and subsidies.
An improved and more efficient agriculture industry would improve our security, wouldn't it?
You won’t be happy until we’re eating dog food
Why would we eat dog food?
Have you ever eaten Australian meat? Its excellent top quality.
Your xenophobia at imports is weird, especially while seeing 27 other nations getting free access to export their meat to us zero tariffs, zero quotas.
They have lower standards then we do. 'OLB' post on PT has examples. Or if you want an even better authority - the best let's be honest - there's Mark Drakeford. But it won't bother you and that's perfectly understandable. This whole thing is bespoke tailored to push all your buttons.
Free trade. Free free free. No quotas or tariffs. Deregulated mangy beef. Don't like it? So don't eat it then. Problem solved. Choice. The market pure and simple. And omg Australia. Red on the map. Trad Commonwealth. Five eyes. FAMILY.
7th Heaven in other words.
I rarely succeed in changing your view on anything but I sometimes like to try. Not here though. It'd be too close to the bone.
"Mangy beef"?
I used to live there you forget, I grew up downunder.
American food is shit, when you talk about shit food and you're talking about American deals you have a point. Australian meat is top nosh. Great quality.
Has anyone on this site ever gone to Australia, eaten beef there and thought "urgh this is mangy dog food shit"? Don't be ridiculous.
As someone who has lived in the US and eats American cooking (as provided by the Wife) every day I beg to differ.
I have a friend who - and you can know someone for 20 years and still be finding things out about them - it turns out is a massive fan of really top quality beef. He insists on American beef - reckons it far superior to British in almost all circumstances.
British meat is relatively shit.
I don't know why. But it is. Maybe its the lack of sunshine, maybe its in your head, but go to Australia, or America and the meat there just tastes better. My wife is from South Africa and she says the same thing, when she moved to the UK she stopped eating meat for a while, not because of any 'vegetarian' reason but because it was so disappointing compared to what she was used to in South Africa.
If British and Aussie meat was available at the same price next to each other in a supermarket, I'd be very tempted to go for the latter.
I haven't done a scientific study of this but I tend to agree. I think the UK meat tends to a higher fat content, possibly because our lousy climate encourages that in the animals and our smaller fields means they don't move around as much. Leaner, firmer beef is better in the same way that free range chicken tastes much better than factory farmed.
Absolutely, hence why beef with low far content such as Wagyu is so cheap.
Oh wait.
Ok, ok, I give up. But I still think it is important how the animal has lived.
In any case, getting rid of sheep, fish, etc. from Scotland is like getting rid of Scots lawyers. Neither may take up a huge part of GDP, but we are on the whole a lot better for having them available locally ...
The problem, as I said yesterday, is that asking UK and in particular Scottish farms to compete on a no tariff level playing field with Australia and NZ is the problem of Morgan Motor Co taking on Ford and GM. The scale of production in the Antipodes means that competition is simply impossible and what we are looking at is surviving in niche segments of the market. That creates real problems with what we are going to do with all the marginal land that is going to go out of production.
It's not an insuperable problem but it would be a nasty jolt to our rural communities (our urban communities would of course gain by cheaper food) and it would change what a lot of our country actually looks like. There are reasons why agriculture is usually one of the hardest areas to agree in FTAs.
Absolutely, but its worth bearing in mind the words of Ricardo and JS Mill and so on - if the farms can't compete on a level playing field then its not a competitive advantage and maybe something else should be considered?
If people want to go for locally produce organic etc etc and stick a flag on it then some will pay a premium for that. But you've got to find something you're competitive in and if you can't, then as a nation we should move on and not save every Luddite job under threat.
The problem being that policy only works if you are dealing with a level playing field around the world and all countries are producing food to a standard acceptable to the British. Otherwise you simply end up with companies importing huge amounts of food produced in conditions that are banned in the UK.
And as I said, you ignore the fact that this is not about the small percentage of GDP. The bottom line is not what matters. It is about feeding our country in a way we find acceptable and which is reliable. I have absolutely no problem with importing food if it is produced to the same standards as UK food (or hopefully even better). What is not acceptable is to destroy our farming on the basis we can import food from countries whose welfare, safety and environmental standards do not meet our own.
You are a classic case of someone who knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
That's a mispresentation.
If there's a serious issue as to why something is not safe etc or doesn't meet our standards then it should be barred from being imported. I have no issue with that, apply the laws the same.
What I don't support is non-tariff barriers that have no scientific basis whatsoever. In which case, I think we should have a level playing field.
Australians don't abuse animals. The one objection raised earlier was that they use hormonal growth, which is used in almost the entire world excluding the EU and which the WTO found was unsupported by the science - and was used in this country prior to the EU banning them. If that's the objection then my solution is to have a level playing field and go back to our own laws before the EU changed them and allow the use of hormones in the UK just like we used to do and many other nations do.
If there's not a level playing field, then we should sort it out so that there is. Or if there's something insurmountable then sure have a ban, but it should be for good reasons and not just a non-tariff barrier.
It is in no way a misinterpretation. It is you who are ignoring facts.
One of the biggest issues facing us in food safety is the overuse of anti-biotics. There are moves now to reduce or prevent the use of anti-biotics in an prophylactic way because of the concerns about anti-biotic resistance. What is the point of us doing that in this country if we are hen importing he meet from other countries. Few countries have animal welfare standards as strict as ours - something both Nick Palmer and I have campaigned about in the past. Why should we accept food from countries with lower food standards? Same goes for the use of pesticides and herbicides. We are trying to move away from the Chemical Brothers form of farming which is pointless if we then import cheaper food from countries that still allow it. The same for soil degradation and nitrate pollution.
All these things matter far more than that 0.7% of GDP you are so hung up on.
So my accusation stands. When we already have a far higher home to population ratio than we had 50 years ago your arguments for ever increasing house building at the cost of our environment are simply not valid.
As I said to you, I have no qualms with our standards applying to imports as well as domestic standards. Though I don't buy the drive to organic etc and view it comparable to XR, but I know others opinions vary.
If we decide on domestic standards, whether blocking antibiotic usage, hormones or anything else then there's no reason in my eyes that should only apply to domestic production, it should apply to imports too. I am agreeing with you on that point, I never disagreed with you on that point. If others standards don't meet ours I am OK with it not being allowed to import at any price, let alone having tariffs.
Tariffs are a different matter, that should apply to those goods that are allowed to be imported and do meet our standards.
As for housing, your argument about ratios is not that important since as others said to you straight away, household profiles in that time have changed too. We have a lot of retired couples etc whose kids have moved out still owning the family homes their kids lived in, meaning that later generations are incapable of getting a good home as there's a shortage of good homes. This isn't helped then by those NIMBYs who want to only approve the building of shit "affordable" homes and not more good homes like their own.
Also housing ratios have changed, so you have more eg divorced or otherwise single people living in houses (again some of these now in large homes blocking them from those with families) etc etc - we don't live the same lives as we did fifty years ago and there is clearly a major shortage and if there wasn't then newly constructed homes wouldn't be getting bought straight from plan so rapidly.
So as I said, this is a debate about lifestyle choices. Your vision vs mine.
It depends, if you mean about people being divorced etc then that's not a lifestyle choice. Nor is people living in big houses after their kids have flown the coop, while only building small houses for the younger generations starting families that's not really a "lifestyle choice".
If you mean about organic etc then I'm very liberal about lifestyle choices. I don't think its the government's job to impose lifestyle choices on people, it should be a free choice: you want to be vegan, or kosher, or organic or whatever else floats your boat then that's your choice. I don't want the law to stop your choices, and I just don't want you or the law to stop me from making my own choices.
You should make your choices, I should make my own, and its not the states job to pick your lifestyle over mine or vice-versa.
So if say Aussie imports operate on a level playing field and meet the same welfare etc requirements of UK laws as they aren't hormone treated, then why should they be subject to tariffs?
For the Catholic church divorce is a lifestyle choice, divorce only became legal in Ireland in 1996
That's the Catholic Church's problem.
And makes the point that comparisons with house-to-population levels 50 years ago aren't comparing like-for-like.
If however nobody got divorced and net immigration fell to near zero, as our birth rate is only 1.6 ie below replacement, longer term we would likely have more houses than we need already.
Of course in reality people should now be able to get divorced if a relationship has broken down and we need some immigration to fill shortage areas of the economy but the more families break down and the more immigration we have then the more demand for housing and house prices will rise and the more houses we will need to build
In the long-term if population growth stops and household population shrinkage stops then absolutely there will in the long-term not be more houses needed.
But in the short-term the migrants of recent decades have already arrived, the divorces etc have already happened, and the retired people having big houses with more rooms than they need so younger generations struggle to get what they need - none of that is going away. The housing crisis happening today needs resolving now, once its resolved then in the long-term that may be it, unless population growth restarts.
“ There is mounting concern in political and farming circles that the UK is on the cusp of sealing a trade deal with Australia that could have a major impact on Irish beef exports to Britain.”
A few years ago I had a drinking partner who was one of the bigwigs in Irish farming and he was unable to conceive of the situation where the EU (which had made him a rich man) would put the Irish beef industry in this position. He was much more concerned about the mercosur talks. I suspect that Irish farming has much more to fear from this than UK farmers.
“ There is mounting concern in political and farming circles that the UK is on the cusp of sealing a trade deal with Australia that could have a major impact on Irish beef exports to Britain.”
Yes, Ireland and France are the biggest losers here. They're going to lose an absolute shit ton of market share to Australian imports into the UK.
Where can i buy French beef in the UK? Genuine question, I really like their burgers!
The U.K. appear to be in danger of getting sucked in to NZ/Aus potential problem. Got so used to seeing Covid deaths on the floor that it actually becomes a factor disincentivising the lifting of restrictions because of fear of ANY rises in numbers.
Australia has only vaccinated 6% of the population though and New Zealand has only vaccinated 4% of its population.
Hence they still impose and will have to impose outright bans on international travel to and from them for some time to come, unlike the UK where 70% have been vaccinated overall already (rising to 81% in Wales) with at least their first dose and 40% have had their second dose too
Taiwan has the same issue. Why trouble yourself with a vaccine when the threat is largely theoretical?
Indeed but it does mean they will effectively have to cut themselves off from the world to sustain that if most of the population are not going to get vaccinated
Taiwan was planning on chucking away doses next week. Now they have an outbreak they won't be. Does show the psychology. That the rollout coincided with huge case numbers here has really helped.
“ There is mounting concern in political and farming circles that the UK is on the cusp of sealing a trade deal with Australia that could have a major impact on Irish beef exports to Britain.”
A few years ago I had a drinking partner who was one of the bigwigs in Irish farming and he was unable to conceive of the situation where the EU (which had made him a rich man) would put the Irish beef industry in this position. He was much more concerned about the mercosur talks. I suspect that Irish farming has much more to fear from this than UK farmers.
Well the EU haven't put them in this situation? Surely you mean (if it was a few years ago) that the EU would never allow tariff free Australian meat into the UK? Whereas now they have no choice. I suppose they could jump in and try and offset it with something else offered to the UK for free, but it would be a bit of an unconventional approach.
It depends, if you mean about people being divorced etc then that's not a lifestyle choice. Nor is people living in big houses after their kids have flown the coop, while only building small houses for the younger generations starting families that's not really a "lifestyle choice".
If you mean about organic etc then I'm very liberal about lifestyle choices. I don't think its the government's job to impose lifestyle choices on people, it should be a free choice: you want to be vegan, or kosher, or organic or whatever else floats your boat then that's your choice. I don't want the law to stop your choices, and I just don't want you or the law to stop me from making my own choices.
You should make your choices, I should make my own, and its not the states job to pick your lifestyle over mine or vice-versa.
So if say Aussie imports operate on a level playing field and meet the same welfare etc requirements of UK laws as they aren't hormone treated, then why should they be subject to tariffs?
Too much of the day job for me to want to go on about it, but briefly: Australia does NOT meet UK welfare requirements. Cattle in feedlots are common in Australia, illegal in Britain. Hens in barren cages are common in Australia, illegal in Britain. The level of antibiotics used to compensate for overcrowding is five times the British level, and overuse of antibiotics risks human health (by making the evolution of antibiotic-resistant bugs more likely).
The case for allowing them tariff-free exports to us anyway is not that they meet our standards - they don't. It's that the food will be slightly cheaper and allowing it may give us profitable exports in other goods. But it's undeniably going to be tough on farmers meeting higher standards because British legislation requires it.
Note that you can already import Australian beef. But there's a tariff that makes it uneconomic. The question is whether to lower it.
And whatever we decide will inevitably form a precedent for the US deal - with much larger impact as well as much larger benefits in non-agrilcutural exports.
This astounds me. The Australians have got almost infinite land. Why do they feel the need to farm so intensively?
A lot of the land is desert and unsuitable for farming?
The UK is only of very few countries with really decent treatment of animals in the food chain. They join Switzerland, Sweden, Austria, Denmark and New Zealand.
Ys, but even ruling the desert out - there's an awful lot of land. I don't disbelieve that it is the case that Australia does farm very intensively - plenty of credible witnesses seem to state that this is so - I'm just surprised that this is the strategy they've adopted. It seems unnecessary (though if your primary market is the Chinese, I suppose animal welfare isn't high up your list of concerns).
I'm also slightly surprised Denmark is listed as a country with good animal husbandry habits - my understanding was that Danish pig farming practices were rather intensive.
It depends, if you mean about people being divorced etc then that's not a lifestyle choice. Nor is people living in big houses after their kids have flown the coop, while only building small houses for the younger generations starting families that's not really a "lifestyle choice".
If you mean about organic etc then I'm very liberal about lifestyle choices. I don't think its the government's job to impose lifestyle choices on people, it should be a free choice: you want to be vegan, or kosher, or organic or whatever else floats your boat then that's your choice. I don't want the law to stop your choices, and I just don't want you or the law to stop me from making my own choices.
You should make your choices, I should make my own, and its not the states job to pick your lifestyle over mine or vice-versa.
So if say Aussie imports operate on a level playing field and meet the same welfare etc requirements of UK laws as they aren't hormone treated, then why should they be subject to tariffs?
Too much of the day job for me to want to go on about it, but briefly: Australia does NOT meet UK welfare requirements. Cattle in feedlots are common in Australia, illegal in Britain. Hens in barren cages are common in Australia, illegal in Britain. The level of antibiotics used to compensate for overcrowding is five times the British level, and overuse of antibiotics risks human health (by making the evolution of antibiotic-resistant bugs more likely).
The case for allowing them tariff-free exports to us anyway is not that they meet our standards - they don't. It's that the food will be slightly cheaper and allowing it may give us profitable exports in other goods. But it's undeniably going to be tough on farmers meeting higher standards because British legislation requires it.
Note that you can already import Australian beef. But there's a tariff that makes it uneconomic. The question is whether to lower it.
And whatever we decide will inevitably form a precedent for the US deal - with much larger impact as well as much larger benefits in non-agrilcutural exports.
This astounds me. The Australians have got almost infinite land. Why do they feel the need to farm so intensively?
Isn't almost all of it completely uninhabitable and basically useless for any economic purpose?
Australia is so big, so unimaginably vast, that even though they have 60% desert or rainforest or whatever, and lots of crappy old soil, that still means they have zillions of hectares of decent land
Take Victoria. It is almost exactly the same size as the UK, but it only has a population of 6m. That means there's a lot of space for farming.
It depends, if you mean about people being divorced etc then that's not a lifestyle choice. Nor is people living in big houses after their kids have flown the coop, while only building small houses for the younger generations starting families that's not really a "lifestyle choice".
If you mean about organic etc then I'm very liberal about lifestyle choices. I don't think its the government's job to impose lifestyle choices on people, it should be a free choice: you want to be vegan, or kosher, or organic or whatever else floats your boat then that's your choice. I don't want the law to stop your choices, and I just don't want you or the law to stop me from making my own choices.
You should make your choices, I should make my own, and its not the states job to pick your lifestyle over mine or vice-versa.
So if say Aussie imports operate on a level playing field and meet the same welfare etc requirements of UK laws as they aren't hormone treated, then why should they be subject to tariffs?
Too much of the day job for me to want to go on about it, but briefly: Australia does NOT meet UK welfare requirements. Cattle in feedlots are common in Australia, illegal in Britain. Hens in barren cages are common in Australia, illegal in Britain. The level of antibiotics used to compensate for overcrowding is five times the British level, and overuse of antibiotics risks human health (by making the evolution of antibiotic-resistant bugs more likely).
The case for allowing them tariff-free exports to us anyway is not that they meet our standards - they don't. It's that the food will be slightly cheaper and allowing it may give us profitable exports in other goods. But it's undeniably going to be tough on farmers meeting higher standards because British legislation requires it.
Note that you can already import Australian beef. But there's a tariff that makes it uneconomic. The question is whether to lower it.
And whatever we decide will inevitably form a precedent for the US deal - with much larger impact as well as much larger benefits in non-agrilcutural exports.
This astounds me. The Australians have got almost infinite land. Why do they feel the need to farm so intensively?
Isn't almost all of it completely uninhabitable and basically useless for any economic purpose?
It depends, if you mean about people being divorced etc then that's not a lifestyle choice. Nor is people living in big houses after their kids have flown the coop, while only building small houses for the younger generations starting families that's not really a "lifestyle choice".
If you mean about organic etc then I'm very liberal about lifestyle choices. I don't think its the government's job to impose lifestyle choices on people, it should be a free choice: you want to be vegan, or kosher, or organic or whatever else floats your boat then that's your choice. I don't want the law to stop your choices, and I just don't want you or the law to stop me from making my own choices.
You should make your choices, I should make my own, and its not the states job to pick your lifestyle over mine or vice-versa.
So if say Aussie imports operate on a level playing field and meet the same welfare etc requirements of UK laws as they aren't hormone treated, then why should they be subject to tariffs?
Too much of the day job for me to want to go on about it, but briefly: Australia does NOT meet UK welfare requirements. Cattle in feedlots are common in Australia, illegal in Britain. Hens in barren cages are common in Australia, illegal in Britain. The level of antibiotics used to compensate for overcrowding is five times the British level, and overuse of antibiotics risks human health (by making the evolution of antibiotic-resistant bugs more likely).
The case for allowing them tariff-free exports to us anyway is not that they meet our standards - they don't. It's that the food will be slightly cheaper and allowing it may give us profitable exports in other goods. But it's undeniably going to be tough on farmers meeting higher standards because British legislation requires it.
Note that you can already import Australian beef. But there's a tariff that makes it uneconomic. The question is whether to lower it.
And whatever we decide will inevitably form a precedent for the US deal - with much larger impact as well as much larger benefits in non-agrilcutural exports.
This astounds me. The Australians have got almost infinite land. Why do they feel the need to farm so intensively?
A lot of the land is desert and unsuitable for farming?
The UK is only of very few countries with really decent treatment of animals in the food chain. They join Switzerland, Sweden, Austria, Denmark and New Zealand.
Ys, but even ruling the desert out - there's an awful lot of land. I don't disbelieve that it is the case that Australia does farm very intensively - plenty of credible witnesses seem to state that this is so - I'm just surprised that this is the strategy they've adopted. It seems unnecessary (though if your primary market is the Chinese, I suppose animal welfare isn't high up your list of concerns).
I'm also slightly surprised Denmark is listed as a country with good animal husbandry habits - my understanding was that Danish pig farming practices were rather intensive.
I wonder if it is distance - Oz being so huge - and the population so small
Yes there's loads of land, but if you are 1000 miles from the cities and the coasts that's a major hassle for a beef farmer, maybe? So they do intensive farming nearer Sydney, Melbourne. Just a guess. I have no real idea
It depends, if you mean about people being divorced etc then that's not a lifestyle choice. Nor is people living in big houses after their kids have flown the coop, while only building small houses for the younger generations starting families that's not really a "lifestyle choice".
If you mean about organic etc then I'm very liberal about lifestyle choices. I don't think its the government's job to impose lifestyle choices on people, it should be a free choice: you want to be vegan, or kosher, or organic or whatever else floats your boat then that's your choice. I don't want the law to stop your choices, and I just don't want you or the law to stop me from making my own choices.
You should make your choices, I should make my own, and its not the states job to pick your lifestyle over mine or vice-versa.
So if say Aussie imports operate on a level playing field and meet the same welfare etc requirements of UK laws as they aren't hormone treated, then why should they be subject to tariffs?
Too much of the day job for me to want to go on about it, but briefly: Australia does NOT meet UK welfare requirements. Cattle in feedlots are common in Australia, illegal in Britain. Hens in barren cages are common in Australia, illegal in Britain. The level of antibiotics used to compensate for overcrowding is five times the British level, and overuse of antibiotics risks human health (by making the evolution of antibiotic-resistant bugs more likely).
The case for allowing them tariff-free exports to us anyway is not that they meet our standards - they don't. It's that the food will be slightly cheaper and allowing it may give us profitable exports in other goods. But it's undeniably going to be tough on farmers meeting higher standards because British legislation requires it.
Note that you can already import Australian beef. But there's a tariff that makes it uneconomic. The question is whether to lower it.
And whatever we decide will inevitably form a precedent for the US deal - with much larger impact as well as much larger benefits in non-agrilcutural exports.
This astounds me. The Australians have got almost infinite land. Why do they feel the need to farm so intensively?
A lot of the land is desert and unsuitable for farming?
The UK is only of very few countries with really decent treatment of animals in the food chain. They join Switzerland, Sweden, Austria, Denmark and New Zealand.
Ys, but even ruling the desert out - there's an awful lot of land. I don't disbelieve that it is the case that Australia does farm very intensively - plenty of credible witnesses seem to state that this is so - I'm just surprised that this is the strategy they've adopted. It seems unnecessary (though if your primary market is the Chinese, I suppose animal welfare isn't high up your list of concerns).
I'm also slightly surprised Denmark is listed as a country with good animal husbandry habits - my understanding was that Danish pig farming practices were rather intensive.
I wonder if it is distance - Oz being so huge - and the population so small
Yes there's loads of land, but if you are 1000 miles from the cities and the coasts that's a major hassle for a beef farmer, maybe? So they do intensive farming nearer Sydney, Melbourne. Just a guess. I have no real idea
Some years ago there was a TV programme called Jimmy’s Global Harvest, one of whose four episodes was about Australia. Absolutely fascinating series although weirdly difficult to get hold of.
The TLDR version of it however is that it depends on which part of Oz you are in. There are some huge wheat, cattle and sheep stations spread over literally thousands of square miles, but also many small, intensive facilities in places near the cities.
Remember, it’s not just a country, it’s a continent. There’s lots of room for diversity.
Going to be an interesting one this. As I live in countryside we burn oil for heating. I'd like to look at alternatives, but solar isn't really an option as my house is listed, and there must be many other reasons why it will be challenging to go carbon neutral for many folk. I will be genuinely interested to see how the government approach it, particularly in rural areas.
Yep I am in the same boat as you. I am currently going through the long process of getting listed building consent to build an extension for a wood fired boiler. We have an old bullet proof oil fired boiler in the cellar but I can see the way thigs are going and want to get an alternative of my choice in place before they ban them. Again being a listed property I have had all applications for solar panels and windpower turned down both on the building and within the curtilage.
Interesting proposal now that it may be gong to happen. A good one to wake people up imo. Good to not subsidize something that should not be done before the fabric.
Not good for the balance of payments unless we have UK HP makers or plants. I am not aware of any currently.
Solar has never been a good idea for heating (except maybe solar water heating plus night rate boost, as winter insolation is only about 10% of peak.
I know people who are planting a couple of acres of coppice for their heating, but that requires dedication.
And a couple of acres of coppice
A couple of acres of *land*.
You plant the coppice .
I''m sure someone said they were in the country !
Over on BH, we had someone appear yesterday with a 15 acre rural site in Dacorum, and the Council are complaining about a post and rail fence. And it isn't Sarah Beany. Not my world, unfortunately. https://bit.ly/347VjLY
Listed building and AONB rules are completely counter to the net zero goal. The windows in my listed house are brand new. So of no historic value. But double glazed was still not allowed, even if sensitively designed. This rules out using a heat pump for the house. No gas so stuck on heating oil. Means the hydrogen revolution will also not work. So it’s more or less fingers crossed there a suitable biofuel to put in the oil tank. A friend locally was forbidden from putting a wood burner in the inglenook to make it more efficient (and environmentally cleaner), despite it only have grade 2 and not grade 2* classification, and the installation of a wood burner being completely reversible.
I am not allowed to put pv on the roof either, which is fair enough. But there’s an adjoining paddock not visible from the road. Or anywhere really. But I’m still not allowed to put in a small ground based solar pv array, even if designed to still allow grazing underneath. Unless I put in an application to build a whole solar farm! Which would also no doubt be rejected.
These are the sorts of gaps that need to be filled in the planning law. Theresa May was a total bellen* because she passed the net zero goal without then doing a single thing to actually make it possible, before buggering off to whinge from the backbenches.
We had a similar delivery from Michelin starred chef doing Indian food, Aktar Islam. Fantastic quality and lasted three nights for less than the cost of a night out, we will be doing much more eating in.
Just decided to try that based on your recommendation. Thanks.
"
@Taz is seems that this establishment has just run off with my money. Delivery supposedly yesterday and delayed by them to today - now uncontactable. I said I'd update you, but I was hoping it'd be about their food.
Jeremy Paxman has Parkinson's disease: University Challenge host, 71, reveals he has 'mild symptoms' following 'recent diagnosis'
The World has not finished with Mr Paxman. Illness and the gods ought to fuck off.
He doesn't look in great health these days.
I know.
An uncle of mine had a really shitty eleven year decline with Parkinson's. Paxman actually has a look of him twelve years ago. Horrible disease - hope it can be managed.
It depends, if you mean about people being divorced etc then that's not a lifestyle choice. Nor is people living in big houses after their kids have flown the coop, while only building small houses for the younger generations starting families that's not really a "lifestyle choice".
If you mean about organic etc then I'm very liberal about lifestyle choices. I don't think its the government's job to impose lifestyle choices on people, it should be a free choice: you want to be vegan, or kosher, or organic or whatever else floats your boat then that's your choice. I don't want the law to stop your choices, and I just don't want you or the law to stop me from making my own choices.
You should make your choices, I should make my own, and its not the states job to pick your lifestyle over mine or vice-versa.
So if say Aussie imports operate on a level playing field and meet the same welfare etc requirements of UK laws as they aren't hormone treated, then why should they be subject to tariffs?
Too much of the day job for me to want to go on about it, but briefly: Australia does NOT meet UK welfare requirements. Cattle in feedlots are common in Australia, illegal in Britain. Hens in barren cages are common in Australia, illegal in Britain. The level of antibiotics used to compensate for overcrowding is five times the British level, and overuse of antibiotics risks human health (by making the evolution of antibiotic-resistant bugs more likely).
The case for allowing them tariff-free exports to us anyway is not that they meet our standards - they don't. It's that the food will be slightly cheaper and allowing it may give us profitable exports in other goods. But it's undeniably going to be tough on farmers meeting higher standards because British legislation requires it.
Note that you can already import Australian beef. But there's a tariff that makes it uneconomic. The question is whether to lower it.
And whatever we decide will inevitably form a precedent for the US deal - with much larger impact as well as much larger benefits in non-agrilcutural exports.
This astounds me. The Australians have got almost infinite land. Why do they feel the need to farm so intensively?
Isn't almost all of it completely uninhabitable and basically useless for any economic purpose?
Australia is so big, so unimaginably vast, that even though they have 60% desert or rainforest or whatever, and lots of crappy old soil, that still means they have zillions of hectares of decent land
Take Victoria. It is almost exactly the same size as the UK, but it only has a population of 6m. That means there's a lot of space for farming.
If Australian politicians had an ounce of sense they would export their vast surplus solar electricity potential in the form of aluminium, refined using green electrolysis locally mined bauxite. But they don’t have any sense, so instead pitch a full blown war with their own people over long term uneconomic projects like the Carmichael coal mine.
“ There is mounting concern in political and farming circles that the UK is on the cusp of sealing a trade deal with Australia that could have a major impact on Irish beef exports to Britain.”
A few years ago I had a drinking partner who was one of the bigwigs in Irish farming and he was unable to conceive of the situation where the EU (which had made him a rich man) would put the Irish beef industry in this position. He was much more concerned about the mercosur talks. I suspect that Irish farming has much more to fear from this than UK farmers.
Well the EU haven't put them in this situation? Surely you mean (if it was a few years ago) that the EU would never allow tariff free Australian meat into the UK? Whereas now they have no choice. I suppose they could jump in and try and offset it with something else offered to the UK for free, but it would be a bit of an unconventional approach.
He was convinced the EU would come up with a plan that would set aside the right of Irish farmers to sell to the UK in a separate deal. He was sure the Commission was the alpha and omega. A lovely lovely man but conditioned.
It depends, if you mean about people being divorced etc then that's not a lifestyle choice. Nor is people living in big houses after their kids have flown the coop, while only building small houses for the younger generations starting families that's not really a "lifestyle choice".
If you mean about organic etc then I'm very liberal about lifestyle choices. I don't think its the government's job to impose lifestyle choices on people, it should be a free choice: you want to be vegan, or kosher, or organic or whatever else floats your boat then that's your choice. I don't want the law to stop your choices, and I just don't want you or the law to stop me from making my own choices.
You should make your choices, I should make my own, and its not the states job to pick your lifestyle over mine or vice-versa.
So if say Aussie imports operate on a level playing field and meet the same welfare etc requirements of UK laws as they aren't hormone treated, then why should they be subject to tariffs?
Too much of the day job for me to want to go on about it, but briefly: Australia does NOT meet UK welfare requirements. Cattle in feedlots are common in Australia, illegal in Britain. Hens in barren cages are common in Australia, illegal in Britain. The level of antibiotics used to compensate for overcrowding is five times the British level, and overuse of antibiotics risks human health (by making the evolution of antibiotic-resistant bugs more likely).
The case for allowing them tariff-free exports to us anyway is not that they meet our standards - they don't. It's that the food will be slightly cheaper and allowing it may give us profitable exports in other goods. But it's undeniably going to be tough on farmers meeting higher standards because British legislation requires it.
Note that you can already import Australian beef. But there's a tariff that makes it uneconomic. The question is whether to lower it.
And whatever we decide will inevitably form a precedent for the US deal - with much larger impact as well as much larger benefits in non-agrilcutural exports.
This astounds me. The Australians have got almost infinite land. Why do they feel the need to farm so intensively?
Isn't almost all of it completely uninhabitable and basically useless for any economic purpose?
Australia is so big, so unimaginably vast, that even though they have 60% desert or rainforest or whatever, and lots of crappy old soil, that still means they have zillions of hectares of decent land
Take Victoria. It is almost exactly the same size as the UK, but it only has a population of 6m. That means there's a lot of space for farming.
In fairness to the egregious Mr Morrison and his ilk, it should be pointed out that it is not just Australian politicians who suffer from this fatal flaw.
Its cos its a scientific fact da yuff engage in risky behaviour.
The thing is with this incident there isn't even the cover that the plod arrested a black person or something... apparently it was just a kid who tragically just dropped down dead watching a local football match.
It depends, if you mean about people being divorced etc then that's not a lifestyle choice. Nor is people living in big houses after their kids have flown the coop, while only building small houses for the younger generations starting families that's not really a "lifestyle choice".
If you mean about organic etc then I'm very liberal about lifestyle choices. I don't think its the government's job to impose lifestyle choices on people, it should be a free choice: you want to be vegan, or kosher, or organic or whatever else floats your boat then that's your choice. I don't want the law to stop your choices, and I just don't want you or the law to stop me from making my own choices.
You should make your choices, I should make my own, and its not the states job to pick your lifestyle over mine or vice-versa.
So if say Aussie imports operate on a level playing field and meet the same welfare etc requirements of UK laws as they aren't hormone treated, then why should they be subject to tariffs?
Too much of the day job for me to want to go on about it, but briefly: Australia does NOT meet UK welfare requirements. Cattle in feedlots are common in Australia, illegal in Britain. Hens in barren cages are common in Australia, illegal in Britain. The level of antibiotics used to compensate for overcrowding is five times the British level, and overuse of antibiotics risks human health (by making the evolution of antibiotic-resistant bugs more likely).
The case for allowing them tariff-free exports to us anyway is not that they meet our standards - they don't. It's that the food will be slightly cheaper and allowing it may give us profitable exports in other goods. But it's undeniably going to be tough on farmers meeting higher standards because British legislation requires it.
Note that you can already import Australian beef. But there's a tariff that makes it uneconomic. The question is whether to lower it.
And whatever we decide will inevitably form a precedent for the US deal - with much larger impact as well as much larger benefits in non-agrilcutural exports.
This astounds me. The Australians have got almost infinite land. Why do they feel the need to farm so intensively?
A lot of the land is desert and unsuitable for farming?
The UK is only of very few countries with really decent treatment of animals in the food chain. They join Switzerland, Sweden, Austria, Denmark and New Zealand.
Ys, but even ruling the desert out - there's an awful lot of land. I don't disbelieve that it is the case that Australia does farm very intensively - plenty of credible witnesses seem to state that this is so - I'm just surprised that this is the strategy they've adopted. It seems unnecessary (though if your primary market is the Chinese, I suppose animal welfare isn't high up your list of concerns).
I'm also slightly surprised Denmark is listed as a country with good animal husbandry habits - my understanding was that Danish pig farming practices were rather intensive.
A little surprisingly, Australian beef production is only about 2.5 times as high as ours. I have no idea how much land area is actually used for beef there.
Indian variant.... don't they mean variant of unsayable origin of the unspecified virus of unknown origin? Otherwise they might get done as a hate crime in Scotland.
Comments
Gales in the Solent; England cut off
https://www.accuweather.com/en/is/reykjavik/190390/weather-forecast/190390
They've got clear skies, sun, 9C, a light breeze, probably rather pleasant if you wrap up well
London has 12C, leaden skies, lashing rain and howling gales; much worse
Everything down except cases.
The rise in cases is in the 0-44 age group. The other groups are still falling.
Monaco Grand Prix
Hamilton 2.82
Verstappen 2.68
Le Clerc 9
Bottas 17
Perez 18.5
My advice would be not to bet against the Mercs or Red Bulls
. . . . Downtown was especially important pre-pandemic because it generated more than half of Seattle’s business taxes, was the regional employment hub with 81% of the city’s office space and 55% of its jobs, and held important tourism (78% of hotel rooms), convention and arts assets. . . .
NYU marketing professor Scott Galloway said many companies will be more comfortable with employees working remotely part of the time. That could bring a big shift for cities.
“If you look at a 20-30% destruction in gross demand for office space, you’re talking about the GDP of Japan flowing out of the office-industrial complex into residential,” he recently told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “The transition of time and capital from offices to residential is a tsunami.” . . . .
Real urban expertise comes from an article in City Journal, published by the conservative Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. It carried the unlikely double bylines of Richard Florida and Joel Kotkin — unlikely because in general Florida is a backer of cities while Kotkin is an apologist for suburban sprawl. . . .
“The pandemic has worsened the new urban crisis of rampant gentrification, high living costs, and class and racial division — all sharply dramatized amid the wave of protests and riots in the summer of 2020.”
Most provocatively, they see the shifts “likely to disrupt the central business districts of superstar cities. With their massive skyscraper blocks, these office districts may become the last remaining urban holdover from the industrial revolution.”
Perhaps more aspirationally than realistically, they write that the moribund office towers could be turned “into housing, flexible workspaces, and artisanal businesses, transforming once-deadened districts into much livelier, 24-hour communities.” . . . .
The reopening might also rebalance the winner-take-all concentration of the innovation economy from which Seattle has so benefited, along with a few other coastal metros. Other cities might get in the game, taking “some pressure off the housing and real-estate markets of superstar cities and tech hubs . . . .
Call this the big shake-up scenario, less apocalyptic than Galloway but requiring tectonic shifts.
. . . [A] survey by the Harris Poll and Chicago Council on Global Affairs found that city residents remain committed to staying, despite the anecdotal stories of flight to suburbia.
Meanwhile, Big Tech is still building, including Amazon’s HQ2 and Google’s ambitious remake of downtown San Jose, California, with 7.3 million square feet of office space. That says urban spaces aren’t dead and offers at least distant comfort for Seattle.
Wise words.
https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1395772766184427523?s=20
https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1395780413394767874?s=20
And makes the point that comparisons with house-to-population levels 50 years ago aren't comparing like-for-like.
Pouria Hadjibagheri
@Pouriaaa
Doing some last minute work for tomorrow's talk at
@apha_analysts
annual conference on the UK Coronavirus Dashboard.
Here are a few factlets about the dashboard + an overview of our daily processes.
https://twitter.com/Pouriaaa/status/1395142135142289411
You plant the coppice
I''m sure someone said they were in the country !
Over on BH, we had someone appear yesterday with a 15 acre rural site in Dacorum, and the Council are complaining about a post and rail fence. And it isn't Sarah Beany. Not my world, unfortunately.
https://bit.ly/347VjLY
Hence they still impose and will have to impose outright bans on international travel to and from them for some time to come, unlike the UK where 70% have been vaccinated overall already (rising to 81% in Wales) with at least their first dose and 40% have had their second dose too
Barely a comment here, nor I suspect anywhere else outside media land.
Out of touch elite. That's what they are.
https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/news/local-news/exact-date-16-day-uk-20645798#ICID=Android_HuddersfieldExaminerNewsApp_AppShare
"As Birmingham Live reports, Bank Holiday Monday on May 31st is forecast to see blistering highs of 20C with temperatures expected to return to warmer climates from next week." (what does that last phrase even mean!)
The proper long range is drier, slightly above average temperature by days, slightly cooler than average by night, but balancing out as average. I'm no heat fiend, I'll take that.
Of course in reality people should now be able to get divorced if a relationship has broken down and we need some immigration to fill shortage areas of the economy but the more families break down and the more immigration we have then the more demand for housing and house prices will rise and the more houses we will need to build
What's it called? - "cognitive bias?"
That just brings to mind....
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6uajey
I am reduced to planting a few spuds, raising fowl watching old episodes of “the good life” and trying my very best to not interfere with the allotment committee.
It's not the same in the UK, but when you're working with very low numbers, it makes it very easy for those with a vested interest to come up with ridiculous projections to scare people. Psychologically it's much easier to open up with 50-100 deaths a day and falling, than 2-3 deaths when even a small rise trigger some people to enter panic mode.
The case for allowing them tariff-free exports to us anyway is not that they meet our standards - they don't. It's that the food will be slightly cheaper and allowing it may give us profitable exports in other goods. But it's undeniably going to be tough on farmers meeting higher standards because British legislation requires it.
Note that you can already import Australian beef. But there's a tariff that makes it uneconomic. The question is whether to lower it.
And whatever we decide will inevitably form a precedent for the US deal - with much larger impact as well as much larger benefits in non-agrilcutural exports.
“ There is mounting concern in political and farming circles that the UK is on the cusp of sealing a trade deal with Australia that could have a major impact on Irish beef exports to Britain.”
What is your view on the two halves of the EU technique:
1 - Permit trade limited to that segment of Oz beef production that meets the no-hormone criteria , which I understand to be 60% of their beef prodiction.
2 - And apply a tonnage quota for that segment.
The UK is only of very few countries with really decent treatment of animals in the food chain. They join Switzerland, Sweden, Austria, Denmark and New Zealand.
All of which I fully understood but to then be told that wood burners are evil because of people living in SW London polluting their urban environment and that heat pumps, which seem to be loved by men who like tepid water* (you rarely see women enthusing about them) are the way of the future is a case of left/right hand.
*see Matthew Parris who doesn’t wash his hair, ever,
But in the short-term the migrants of recent decades have already arrived, the divorces etc have already happened, and the retired people having big houses with more rooms than they need so younger generations struggle to get what they need - none of that is going away. The housing crisis happening today needs resolving now, once its resolved then in the long-term that may be it, unless population growth restarts.
Does show the psychology. That the rollout coincided with huge case numbers here has really helped.
I don't disbelieve that it is the case that Australia does farm very intensively - plenty of credible witnesses seem to state that this is so - I'm just surprised that this is the strategy they've adopted. It seems unnecessary (though if your primary market is the Chinese, I suppose animal welfare isn't high up your list of concerns).
I'm also slightly surprised Denmark is listed as a country with good animal husbandry habits - my understanding was that Danish pig farming practices were rather intensive.
Take Victoria. It is almost exactly the same size as the UK, but it only has a population of 6m. That means there's a lot of space for farming.
See here. They have 46m hectares of arable land
Argentina has 39m
France 18m
UK 6m
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/AUS/australia/arable-land#:~:text=Land abandoned as a result,a 1.6% increase from 2013.
Yes there's loads of land, but if you are 1000 miles from the cities and the coasts that's a major hassle for a beef farmer, maybe? So they do intensive farming nearer Sydney, Melbourne. Just a guess. I have no real idea
The TLDR version of it however is that it depends on which part of Oz you are in. There are some huge wheat, cattle and sheep stations spread over literally thousands of square miles, but also many small, intensive facilities in places near the cities.
Remember, it’s not just a country, it’s a continent. There’s lots of room for diversity.
I am not allowed to put pv on the roof either, which is fair enough. But there’s an adjoining paddock not visible from the road. Or anywhere really. But I’m still not allowed to put in a small ground based solar pv array, even if designed to still allow grazing underneath. Unless I put in an application to build a whole solar farm! Which would also no doubt be rejected.
These are the sorts of gaps that need to be filled in the planning law. Theresa May was a total bellen* because she passed the net zero goal without then doing a single thing to actually make it possible, before buggering off to whinge from the backbenches.
" "
@Taz is seems that this establishment has just run off with my money.
Delivery supposedly yesterday and delayed by them to today - now uncontactable.
I said I'd update you, but I was hoping it'd be about their food.
----
How long has it taken them to think this might be a sensible idea?
BBC News - Mayhill: Swansea rioters injure seven police officers
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-57197466
Its cos its a scientific fact da yuff engage in risky behaviour.
The thing is with this incident there isn't even the cover that the plod arrested a black person or something... apparently it was just a kid who tragically just dropped down dead watching a local football match.
So it is probably going to turn to be no worse than the current variant in terms.of transmission and vaccine efficacy.
NEW THREAD
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/21/ufo-uap-aliens-report-sightings-us-government-encounters-barack/