BJ pressing all the right buttons on his visit north. For clarity, the Evening Times is a bog standard local evening paper, pretty apolitical and certainly not nationalist.
Not usually much into the apocalypse, but this is a bit of a downer. Apparently the Gulf Stream is on the point of collapse, leading to worldwide starvation and the end of civilisation. Kind of nowish.
The UK is proper fucked if the gulf stream goes wonkey.
Look at our latitude and think about how much snow everywhere else at this latitude gets in winter.
It's not been a good year for weather. My wife is in Athens and says it was about 45 celsius on the weekend, and although it's cooler today the entire city smells of smoke. Meanwhile, friends in Italy are telling similar stories.
So about that (monopoly) money Piers Corbyn accepted to stop being an antivaxxer.
He's just a charlatan whose behaviour that is responsible for the death of the gullible.
Lock him up.
His supporters screaming about it are very entertaining.
Its quite simple really - if you are prepared to sell your principles for a bag of money offered by relative strangers, then you are the kind of person who is prepared to sell your principles for a bag of money offered by relative strangers.
It's not just the racial attitudes of the 19thC that the US right are embracing...
Florida woman who's an antimasker "wants to promote health the way her generation’s grandparents experienced it. 'When they got sick, they didn’t need the crutch of pharmaceuticals or antibiotics to get better. They just got sick and they got well.'” https://twitter.com/BGrueskin/status/1422760495631716353
(Though it should be noted that vaccination of sorts was a thing back then, too.)
What's particularly funny about that (apart from the obvious point that when they got sick, a lot of them died) is that the loony Florida woman's lawsuit is about the wearing of masks on planes. I mean, if she wants to be like her grandparents' generation, why the hell is she flying anywhere in the first place?
My grandparents flew to the south of France for their honeymoon…
Not usually much into the apocalypse, but this is a bit of a downer. Apparently the Gulf Stream is on the point of collapse, leading to worldwide starvation and the end of civilisation. Kind of nowish.
Not usually much into the apocalypse, but this is a bit of a downer. Apparently the Gulf Stream is on the point of collapse, leading to worldwide starvation and the end of civilisation. Kind of nowish.
And 'burner' has also appeared in every single Michael Connelly novel for the past decade.
Of course everyone knows what they are.
Who is Michael Connolly?
Not a book reader then
Currently reading R. D, Blackmore's Lorna Doone, so about 150 years to catch up. Mainly read history and science, with the cheeky bit of historical fiction thrown in.
The only book I know that features my old school…
Blundells? Did you meet a guy called Mark Tranchant, nickname, Troon whilst there?
Name doesn’t ring a bell. I was there a very long time ago…
Not usually much into the apocalypse, but this is a bit of a downer. Apparently the Gulf Stream is on the point of collapse, leading to worldwide starvation and the end of civilisation. Kind of nowish.
So maybe we are heading for freezing winters and scorching summers
What tends to happen is pressure systems become stagnant in place - we've had that this summer which has favoured high pressure more to the north and low pressure to the south so the south has had storms and rain while much of the north and west has enjoyed an excellent summer so far.
It's a kind of April-May pattern which hasn't really shifted on - we may hope for some energy into the atmosphere from hurricanes at lower latitudes in the next few weeks and I suspect we'll have an excellent early autumn.
Longer term I think the British and Northern European climate will eventually resemble that of the Indian Sub-Continent with scorching heat followed by monsoon like spells of rain but with drier winter weather especially at altitude.
On topic, Sunak's going to become as unpopular as an ex with the clap if he keeps the triple lock, cuts the UC uplift, and generally puts up payroll taxes.
When do we find out and can we bet on it/them?
Well the UC uplift ends next month, so that will be pretty soon either way.
As for the rest, pass, there's talk of moving to budget to next year now.
The triple lock does need to go - though aware it appeals to much of the Tories base. Though in the spirit of fairness if I end up paying more tax whilst the oldies are showered with goodies than the resentment will just build.
Indeed. At some point the younger voters will finally turn out and vote.
I mean, just get rid of the NI exemption for pensionable age workers for starters.
That really is an obvious (if painful) place to start. Also fully logical as there is no longer an age at which retirement from the workplace is taken. Gone are the days of 60 female / 65 male. People can opt to continue in employment and so should continue to make the same contributions.
Rationalising National Insurance does make sense. But I have never understood PB Tories' animosity to the triple lock. The full state pension is less than £10,000 a year which is less than the minimum wage. It is as mysterious as all those backbenchers who used to demand concessions for garden centres.
It'd make more sense to merge NI and income tax, and abolish the allowances for bank interest and share dividends, and tax income fairly. And leave the triple lock.
I agree with that exception for the allowance on bank interest and dividends.
Re bank interest I have no objection to the allowance being removed other than it removes the need for collecting peanuts and the associated cost of collecting peanuts so it might make sense to have an allowance just for that reason.
Re dividends. Where to start. Gordon Brown completely screwed this up just so he could nobble then pension funds. George Osborne promised to put this right, but he lied and pretended he had. As a consequence the link between dividends and Corporation Tax/ACT is completely broken now. The £5000 helped for small shareholders. Philip Hammond made it worse by reducing it to £2000. For all the buggering around you might as well eliminate it other than the admin factor, but in reality the sensible set up that had worked for decades should be reintroduced. Meddling chancellors!
I think there may also be a case for changes to Winter Fuel Allowance, which currently costs of the order of 2-3 billion a year and is rather indiscrimate.
It is better to be spending the money on measures to reduce demand for heating imo.
Agree. Also the Christmas bonus is now pointless. It was a shock when I got mine for the first time last year, £10!
Won't save much. I imagine the admin probably approaches the value.
WFP is very important in the north and west - cutting it would be very unwelcome. And because it is generally flat rate it is easy to deal with.
Edit: with energy costs going up, it might actually have to be increased.
Christmas bonus costs nothing to administer other than the bank payment - from what I recall of doing a relative's executry the tenner just pops up in your bank account beside the appropriate four-weekly state pension payment.
The Christmas bonus is an interesting example of the power of inflation. It was first introduced in 1972, and has never been increased since, while, if it had kept pace with inflation it would now be £134.94
So they should either uprate it to something significant - £100 or £150, say - or just get rid of it.
It's not just the racial attitudes of the 19thC that the US right are embracing...
Florida woman who's an antimasker "wants to promote health the way her generation’s grandparents experienced it. 'When they got sick, they didn’t need the crutch of pharmaceuticals or antibiotics to get better. They just got sick and they got well.'” https://twitter.com/BGrueskin/status/1422760495631716353
(Though it should be noted that vaccination of sorts was a thing back then, too.)
What's particularly funny about that (apart from the obvious point that when they got sick, a lot of them died) is that the loony Florida woman's lawsuit is about the wearing of masks on planes. I mean, if she wants to be like her grandparents' generation, why the hell is she flying anywhere in the first place?
My grandparents flew to the south of France for their honeymoon…
But for most people, the idea of flying was for the birds.
On topic, Sunak's going to become as unpopular as an ex with the clap if he keeps the triple lock, cuts the UC uplift, and generally puts up payroll taxes.
When do we find out and can we bet on it/them?
Well the UC uplift ends next month, so that will be pretty soon either way.
As for the rest, pass, there's talk of moving to budget to next year now.
The triple lock does need to go - though aware it appeals to much of the Tories base. Though in the spirit of fairness if I end up paying more tax whilst the oldies are showered with goodies than the resentment will just build.
Indeed. At some point the younger voters will finally turn out and vote.
I mean, just get rid of the NI exemption for pensionable age workers for starters.
That really is an obvious (if painful) place to start. Also fully logical as there is no longer an age at which retirement from the workplace is taken. Gone are the days of 60 female / 65 male. People can opt to continue in employment and so should continue to make the same contributions.
Rationalising National Insurance does make sense. But I have never understood PB Tories' animosity to the triple lock. The full state pension is less than £10,000 a year which is less than the minimum wage. It is as mysterious as all those backbenchers who used to demand concessions for garden centres.
It'd make more sense to merge NI and income tax, and abolish the allowances for bank interest and share dividends, and tax income fairly. And leave the triple lock.
I agree with that exception for the allowance on bank interest and dividends.
Re bank interest I have no objection to the allowance being removed other than it removes the need for collecting peanuts and the associated cost of collecting peanuts so it might make sense to have an allowance just for that reason.
Re dividends. Where to start. Gordon Brown completely screwed this up just so he could nobble then pension funds. George Osborne promised to put this right, but he lied and pretended he had. As a consequence the link between dividends and Corporation Tax/ACT is completely broken now. The £5000 helped for small shareholders. Philip Hammond made it worse by reducing it to £2000. For all the buggering around you might as well eliminate it other than the admin factor, but in reality the sensible set up that had worked for decades should be reintroduced. Meddling chancellors!
I think there may also be a case for changes to Winter Fuel Allowance, which currently costs of the order of 2-3 billion a year and is rather indiscrimate.
It is better to be spending the money on measures to reduce demand for heating imo.
Agree. Also the Christmas bonus is now pointless. It was a shock when I got mine for the first time last year, £10!
Won't save much. I imagine the admin probably approaches the value.
WFP is very important in the north and west - cutting it would be very unwelcome. And because it is generally flat rate it is easy to deal with.
Edit: with energy costs going up, it might actually have to be increased.
Christmas bonus costs nothing to administer other than the bank payment - from what I recall of doing a relative's executry the tenner just pops up in your bank account beside the appropriate four-weekly state pension payment.
The Christmas bonus is an interesting example of the power of inflation. It was first introduced in 1972, and has never been increased since, while, if it had kept pace with inflation it would now be £134.94
So they should either uprate it to something significant - £100 or £150, say - or just get rid of it.
Not forgetting incomes have increased by more than inflation.
Not usually much into the apocalypse, but this is a bit of a downer. Apparently the Gulf Stream is on the point of collapse, leading to worldwide starvation and the end of civilisation. Kind of nowish.
Perhaps Climate Change is about to blow all other issues away. I hope so and I hope not, if you see what I mean.
Oh and being very 'green' - that's also "Woke" according to the new Right lexicon.
The major car manufacturers of the world never struck me as particularly woke in any respect - and yet pretty well every one has now pinned their future on electric vehicles.
Victoria has gone into its sixth lockdown a week after leaving its fifth. What’s the definition of insanity? They are not going to be able to maintain this surely?
It's not just the racial attitudes of the 19thC that the US right are embracing...
Florida woman who's an antimasker "wants to promote health the way her generation’s grandparents experienced it. 'When they got sick, they didn’t need the crutch of pharmaceuticals or antibiotics to get better. They just got sick and they got well.'” https://twitter.com/BGrueskin/status/1422760495631716353
(Though it should be noted that vaccination of sorts was a thing back then, too.)
What's particularly funny about that (apart from the obvious point that when they got sick, a lot of them died) is that the loony Florida woman's lawsuit is about the wearing of masks on planes. I mean, if she wants to be like her grandparents' generation, why the hell is she flying anywhere in the first place?
My grandparents flew to the south of France for their honeymoon…
My grandparents lived in Derby. Just before the war, they bought a small cottage in Twyford, on the Trent, to holiday in. The cottage, which they used for holidays and weekends away, is about five miles from the city centre. AFAIAA, they did not have a car, and that five miles was as far as they could practically get with any regularity, given they had one kid and my dad on the way.
Oddly enough, many of my family still live within a few miles of there, and I was born just a mile away, right by the Trent and Mersey Canal.
Victoria has gone into its sixth lockdown a week after leaving its fifth. What’s the definition of insanity? They are not going to be able to maintain this surely?
No, but given their current predicament they daren't let it go.
BJ pressing all the right buttons on his visit north. For clarity, the Evening Times is a bog standard local evening paper, pretty apolitical and certainly not nationalist.
Well, that's done for a fair chunk of the supposed Labour tactical voting for Tories in Lothian, Lanarkshire, etc. etc. I mean, they still have MIners' Welfare and Social Clubs all over the place.
It's not just the racial attitudes of the 19thC that the US right are embracing...
Florida woman who's an antimasker "wants to promote health the way her generation’s grandparents experienced it. 'When they got sick, they didn’t need the crutch of pharmaceuticals or antibiotics to get better. They just got sick and they got well.'” https://twitter.com/BGrueskin/status/1422760495631716353
(Though it should be noted that vaccination of sorts was a thing back then, too.)
What's particularly funny about that (apart from the obvious point that when they got sick, a lot of them died) is that the loony Florida woman's lawsuit is about the wearing of masks on planes. I mean, if she wants to be like her grandparents' generation, why the hell is she flying anywhere in the first place?
My grandparents flew to the south of France for their honeymoon…
But for most people, the idea of flying was for the birds.
I think you would have liked my grandmother: she read history at Manchester back on the thirties, and spent part of the war teaching in London. She told great stories and got me interested in history when I was growing up.
Piers Corbyn is both the worst Piers and the worst Corbyn. Discuss.
That's its capable of serious consideration is a scary thought.
Not the worst Piers for me. My sister in law dated a Piers. Arrogant rich twat, had had a huge insurance payout after a being rear-ended which allegedly ended his RAF carreer, now flew his own plane and drove a sports car. Never like him, she is not with him now.
BJ pressing all the right buttons on his visit north. For clarity, the Evening Times is a bog standard local evening paper, pretty apolitical and certainly not nationalist.
It's not just the racial attitudes of the 19thC that the US right are embracing...
Florida woman who's an antimasker "wants to promote health the way her generation’s grandparents experienced it. 'When they got sick, they didn’t need the crutch of pharmaceuticals or antibiotics to get better. They just got sick and they got well.'” https://twitter.com/BGrueskin/status/1422760495631716353
(Though it should be noted that vaccination of sorts was a thing back then, too.)
What's particularly funny about that (apart from the obvious point that when they got sick, a lot of them died) is that the loony Florida woman's lawsuit is about the wearing of masks on planes. I mean, if she wants to be like her grandparents' generation, why the hell is she flying anywhere in the first place?
My grandparents flew to the south of France for their honeymoon…
My grandparents lived in Derby. Just before the war, they bought a small cottage in Twyford, on the Trent, to holiday in. The cottage, which they used for holidays and weekends away, is about five miles from the city centre. AFAIAA, they did not have a car, and that five miles was as far as they could practically get with any regularity, given they had one kid and my dad on the way.
Oddly enough, many of my family still live within a few miles of there, and I was born just a mile away, right by the Trent and Mersey Canal.
Growing up in Devon I knew people for whom a trip to Bristol was a once in a lifetime event, and the furthest they ever went from home.
And 'burner' has also appeared in every single Michael Connelly novel for the past decade.
Of course everyone knows what they are.
Who is Michael Connolly?
A best selling trashy novelist, and I mean proper best selling, creator of Harry Bosch. Ok for passing the time on a sun lounger though the series is a bit exhausted now. I prefer Robert Crais in that particular line.
Ah yes, Bosch. I used to devour them on holiday. Ages ago now but I think I recall he was standard 'tough guy with a heart' material but with the quirk that he knocked up a good pasta (and quite often did).
I am now astounded that I used to hang on Patricia Cornwell's every book. The past is indeed a foreign country.
Yep - read those too. Kay Scarpetta. Solid work. And I'm confident of low-browing you off the court with Robert Walker's "Jessica Coran" potboilers. There's no way you would have spent hours with them, but I did.
The Sue Grafton books are my favourite trash. She started writing them in the 80's, and kept on going for decades, still setting them in the 80s. Quite the nostalgia trip.
Ah, heard off but never read any. One of the 1st with a female (private) dick apparently per a quick wiki. And she didn't do a "Z is for ..." for some reason. Stopped at Y.
My son has started reading them, which feels strange.
Wish mine would read ANY books. It's a dying habit, I fear. And I'm just as bad. I get through maybe 5 a year now cf 20 in the past. And that's with being retired cf working, so it ought to have gone the other way. I should be tearing through the oeuvres and genres!
I used to read a book a week, easy, now way down. Of course the main explanation is the incubus of the internet sucking out everything, but I wonder if it's also time running out and not enough left to waste on even okayish (as opposed to outright trash) stuff.
Yes, the digital takeover is definitely a part of it. I read lots of 'stuff' online but it doesn't work for me for books, fiction or non.
Re time running out, yes, that's a factor too. You don't want to burn it.
And there's something with me about this which is (I know) rather stupid and negative. Not so much about not picking up new books but more about not trying to learn new skills. Eg piano. Always fancied that and now have the time. But let's say I took it up and it turns out I have some talent for it. Unlikely but possible. That would be great in one sense. But in another it would be very galling because I'd be kicking myself for not doing it when young and able to put in the fabled 10,000 hours and be properly good.
So you kind of just cruise in neutral to the grave. Can't find suitably precise emoticon for this 'sad but not really' sentiment.
My Grandad was lucky enough to retire at 60 on a good pension, and one thing that he used to say quite a bit once he reached his 90s was that he never expected to live that long, and if he'd known that he was going to do so he would have tried to do a bit more with that time (his time ultimately coming to an end when he was 97). Bearing in mind that he was the sort of person who did learn Spanish in his 80s, then I'm not sure what he had in mind.
So, you never know, you might have longer left then you think.
BJ pressing all the right buttons on his visit north. For clarity, the Evening Times is a bog standard local evening paper, pretty apolitical and certainly not nationalist.
Well, that's done for a fair chunk of the supposed Labour tactical voting for Tories in Lothian, Lanarkshire, etc. etc. I mean, they still have MIners' Welfare and Social Clubs all over the place.
The Tories don't have any MPs or constituency MSPs in Lothian or Lanarkshire. In those areas it is more SLab needing Tory tactical votes to beat the SNP than the reverse.
I am sure Boris' remarks will have delighted the anti coal Scottish Greens however, the SNP's new coalition partner, even if they do not go down as well in the Red Wall.
'The Prime Minister said: “Look at what we’ve done already.
“We’ve transitioned away from coal in my lifetime, thanks to Margaret Thatcher who closed so many coal mines.”
“Across the country we had a big early start and we’re now moving rapidly away from coal all together."
“I thought that would get you going.”
“We’re now down to less than 2%, I think it’s I% of our energy comes from coal.”'
Not usually much into the apocalypse, but this is a bit of a downer. Apparently the Gulf Stream is on the point of collapse, leading to worldwide starvation and the end of civilisation. Kind of nowish.
So maybe we are heading for freezing winters and scorching summers
What tends to happen is pressure systems become stagnant in place - we've had that this summer which has favoured high pressure more to the north and low pressure to the south so the south has had storms and rain while much of the north and west has enjoyed an excellent summer so far.
It's a kind of April-May pattern which hasn't really shifted on - we may hope for some energy into the atmosphere from hurricanes at lower latitudes in the next few weeks and I suspect we'll have an excellent early autumn.
Longer term I think the British and Northern European climate will eventually resemble that of the Indian Sub-Continent with scorching heat followed by monsoon like spells of rain but with drier winter weather especially at altitude.
Yes, the weather does seem to have got 'stuck' in particular patterns these past few years.
A friend of mine who specialises in palaeoecology reckons the last ice age ended 'on the first Tuesday in Lent' - ie it was an extremely fast flip from cold to hot.
There's no reason to suppose that any changes will be gradual.
Victoria has gone into its sixth lockdown a week after leaving its fifth. What’s the definition of insanity? They are not going to be able to maintain this surely?
I still find it incredible that Australia has got millions of vaccine doses it's decided to not give people. It's completely fucking idiotic.
For those who can't find the time/inclination/wrench of being away from PB to read as much as they did, I have two suggestions:
1) Subscribe to Granta - usually fantastic literature in bite-size chunks; and 2) Buy all the Booker shortlist nominees - usually 80% great books
If they are around then it's easy to pick one up.
Will be sorry to see so many of you spend time away from PB but hey it's all for the best.
Speaking of which - where is Philip T? Nose in a good book, I'd warrant.
Funnily, those are the lat two things I would recommend! I was given a year's subscription to Granta a while back, and I found it packed full of self-serving smugness. It was hard to tell one author from the next, it was as if they were pressed from a mould. And buying the Booker shortlist is - speaking as someone who ran a bookshop, and read lots of them - a sure route to madness. I'd put the ratio of good to bad on the Booker list as about 1:10. The ratio might have got better recently, but solely because of Hilary Mantel and her Wolf Hall wins.
If you want to find a decent book, go to your nearest bookshop (preferably independent, but Waterstones will do) and ask for a recommendation. If they're any good they'll have a chat about what you've liked before and they'll point you at something that should suit. And if you don't want to talk to anyone, read the little recommendation cards the booksellers put on the shelves.
Recommendations? Well that does get you to smug. I absolutely disagree with you about both (what makes PB PB).
I have all Grantas from No.1 and I think it's always a repository of very good writing, some great. And as I noted, in bite-size chunks.
And also disagree about the Booker. I've just this minute finished History of Wolves which was less good than others I have read but it is a safe repositary of "literature" which you can then take (Mantel, obvs, and the two I mentioned earlier) or leave (Brief History for example, and a few others).
The point being you are I believe in safe hands. Very difficult to find random good books just off the shelf even if you do ask for recommendations. And the Booker ones have been through some decent and well-read hands before they get to us.
And 'burner' has also appeared in every single Michael Connelly novel for the past decade.
Of course everyone knows what they are.
Who is Michael Connolly?
A best selling trashy novelist, and I mean proper best selling, creator of Harry Bosch. Ok for passing the time on a sun lounger though the series is a bit exhausted now. I prefer Robert Crais in that particular line.
Ah yes, Bosch. I used to devour them on holiday. Ages ago now but I think I recall he was standard 'tough guy with a heart' material but with the quirk that he knocked up a good pasta (and quite often did).
I am now astounded that I used to hang on Patricia Cornwell's every book. The past is indeed a foreign country.
Yep - read those too. Kay Scarpetta. Solid work. And I'm confident of low-browing you off the court with Robert Walker's "Jessica Coran" potboilers. There's no way you would have spent hours with them, but I did.
The Sue Grafton books are my favourite trash. She started writing them in the 80's, and kept on going for decades, still setting them in the 80s. Quite the nostalgia trip.
Ah, heard off but never read any. One of the 1st with a female (private) dick apparently per a quick wiki. And she didn't do a "Z is for ..." for some reason. Stopped at Y.
My son has started reading them, which feels strange.
Wish mine would read ANY books. It's a dying habit, I fear. And I'm just as bad. I get through maybe 5 a year now cf 20 in the past. And that's with being retired cf working, so it ought to have gone the other way. I should be tearing through the oeuvres and genres!
I get through 3-6 per night (depending on whether I'm doing bed time for the three year old with 'big boy' books or the 1 year old with 'baby' books).
And also 10-15 proper grown up books (without pictures) per year. We do the Netflix etc series, but every now and again we get into a reading phase, the telly doesn't go on and we snuggle up with books. Probably why we still haven't finished Game of Thrones or Line of Duty. Compromises have to be made.
Sounds a good balance. Yes unless you're a total powerhouse you cannot stay abreast of all the quality TV drama that there is these days AND read lots of books.
Quite. I stopped bothering with TV at all years ago though I do have some decent DVDs, some still to watch.
Good call for you, I'm sure. One plus for TV drama over books, though, is it can be a shared experience with others in the household, eg wife in my case. It's a thing we do together, watch and process a drama series soup to nuts, talk about it, speculate on plot, opine on characters etc. If we instead had our respective noses in our own respective books, that wouldn't be quite the same.
"Soup to nuts". Very investment banking.
Needs to be put on the same list as p*n**ppl* on p*zz* imo.
And 'burner' has also appeared in every single Michael Connelly novel for the past decade.
Of course everyone knows what they are.
Who is Michael Connolly?
A best selling trashy novelist, and I mean proper best selling, creator of Harry Bosch. Ok for passing the time on a sun lounger though the series is a bit exhausted now. I prefer Robert Crais in that particular line.
Ah yes, Bosch. I used to devour them on holiday. Ages ago now but I think I recall he was standard 'tough guy with a heart' material but with the quirk that he knocked up a good pasta (and quite often did).
I am now astounded that I used to hang on Patricia Cornwell's every book. The past is indeed a foreign country.
Yep - read those too. Kay Scarpetta. Solid work. And I'm confident of low-browing you off the court with Robert Walker's "Jessica Coran" potboilers. There's no way you would have spent hours with them, but I did.
The Sue Grafton books are my favourite trash. She started writing them in the 80's, and kept on going for decades, still setting them in the 80s. Quite the nostalgia trip.
Ah, heard off but never read any. One of the 1st with a female (private) dick apparently per a quick wiki. And she didn't do a "Z is for ..." for some reason. Stopped at Y.
My son has started reading them, which feels strange.
Wish mine would read ANY books. It's a dying habit, I fear. And I'm just as bad. I get through maybe 5 a year now cf 20 in the past. And that's with being retired cf working, so it ought to have gone the other way. I should be tearing through the oeuvres and genres!
I used to read a book a week, easy, now way down. Of course the main explanation is the incubus of the internet sucking out everything, but I wonder if it's also time running out and not enough left to waste on even okayish (as opposed to outright trash) stuff.
Yes, the digital takeover is definitely a part of it. I read lots of 'stuff' online but it doesn't work for me for books, fiction or non.
Re time running out, yes, that's a factor too. You don't want to burn it.
And there's something with me about this which is (I know) rather stupid and negative. Not so much about not picking up new books but more about not trying to learn new skills. Eg piano. Always fancied that and now have the time. But let's say I took it up and it turns out I have some talent for it. Unlikely but possible. That would be great in one sense. But in another it would be very galling because I'd be kicking myself for not doing it when young and able to put in the fabled 10,000 hours and be properly good.
So you kind of just cruise in neutral to the grave. Can't find suitably precise emoticon for this 'sad but not really' sentiment.
Weltschmerz covers it for me, though it doesn't yet have an emoticon afaics. Which on the new skills thing remind me I need to do my daily German Duolingo. I'm determined to be able to speak conversational German before I shuffle off, but fair to say I have not turned out to have some talent for it.
My money's on you. Das ist ein Hund! - and away we go.
I lived in Vienna and had 'total immersion' tuition in German twice a week for a while. I was getting somewhere (I think) but came back to London before the dam broke and I could truly converse in it. If my Vienna job had not been English speaking (the money markets) I reckon I might have got closer.
I did it for two years at school. The top kids in each French class in my year got to drop a PE lesson and do German instead. Happy days cos I hate rugby. And I live in rugby league land.
I really wanted to be good at it, my WW2 obsession was just taking off, it would’ve been nice to learn the lingo to read stuff, memoirs and the like, that never gets translated.
I was shite at it. Der, die and das? Couldn’t get my head round it. Bastards.
Piers Corbyn is both the worst Piers and the worst Corbyn. Discuss.
Two longest piers in the UK are Southend and Southport.
Neither are particularly pleasant, though. Southwold Pier is superb (as is the whole town), and Bangor Pier is also worth visiting, if only for the views. Clevedon Pier is simply beautiful.
Most piers are dismal, dreary places if you don't like amusement arcades. Southwold has bucked that trend, whilst Bangor Pier is much more of a traditional 'promenading' pier.
I really, really want to see Birnbeck Pier at Weston-Super-Mare restored.
Clarence Pier in Portsmouth is an utterly depressing place - barely worth calling a pier IMO.
BJ pressing all the right buttons on his visit north. For clarity, the Evening Times is a bog standard local evening paper, pretty apolitical and certainly not nationalist.
Well, that's done for a fair chunk of the supposed Labour tactical voting for Tories in Lothian, Lanarkshire, etc. etc. I mean, they still have MIners' Welfare and Social Clubs all over the place.
The Tories don't have any MPs or constituency MSPs in Lothian or Lanarkshire.
I am sure Boris' remarks will have delighted the Scottish Greens however, the SNP's new coalition partner, even if they do not go down as well in the Red Wall
The West Central Belt used to be prime Tory = Unionist battleground. The Tories most certainly have regional MSPs in regions which were, or include, major coal mining areas, and it will also count in the general sentiment about the sensitivity and care with which the Tory Party treats Scotland.
On topic, Sunak's going to become as unpopular as an ex with the clap if he keeps the triple lock, cuts the UC uplift, and generally puts up payroll taxes.
When do we find out and can we bet on it/them?
Well the UC uplift ends next month, so that will be pretty soon either way.
As for the rest, pass, there's talk of moving to budget to next year now.
The triple lock does need to go - though aware it appeals to much of the Tories base. Though in the spirit of fairness if I end up paying more tax whilst the oldies are showered with goodies than the resentment will just build.
Indeed. At some point the younger voters will finally turn out and vote.
I mean, just get rid of the NI exemption for pensionable age workers for starters.
That really is an obvious (if painful) place to start. Also fully logical as there is no longer an age at which retirement from the workplace is taken. Gone are the days of 60 female / 65 male. People can opt to continue in employment and so should continue to make the same contributions.
Rationalising National Insurance does make sense. But I have never understood PB Tories' animosity to the triple lock. The full state pension is less than £10,000 a year which is less than the minimum wage. It is as mysterious as all those backbenchers who used to demand concessions for garden centres.
It'd make more sense to merge NI and income tax, and abolish the allowances for bank interest and share dividends, and tax income fairly. And leave the triple lock.
I agree with that exception for the allowance on bank interest and dividends.
Re bank interest I have no objection to the allowance being removed other than it removes the need for collecting peanuts and the associated cost of collecting peanuts so it might make sense to have an allowance just for that reason.
Re dividends. Where to start. Gordon Brown completely screwed this up just so he could nobble then pension funds. George Osborne promised to put this right, but he lied and pretended he had. As a consequence the link between dividends and Corporation Tax/ACT is completely broken now. The £5000 helped for small shareholders. Philip Hammond made it worse by reducing it to £2000. For all the buggering around you might as well eliminate it other than the admin factor, but in reality the sensible set up that had worked for decades should be reintroduced. Meddling chancellors!
I think there may also be a case for changes to Winter Fuel Allowance, which currently costs of the order of 2-3 billion a year and is rather indiscrimate.
It is better to be spending the money on measures to reduce demand for heating imo.
Agree. Also the Christmas bonus is now pointless. It was a shock when I got mine for the first time last year, £10!
Won't save much. I imagine the admin probably approaches the value.
WFP is very important in the north and west - cutting it would be very unwelcome. And because it is generally flat rate it is easy to deal with.
Edit: with energy costs going up, it might actually have to be increased.
Christmas bonus costs nothing to administer other than the bank payment - from what I recall of doing a relative's executry the tenner just pops up in your bank account beside the appropriate four-weekly state pension payment.
I got a letter notifying me of my Christmas bonus. It doesn't cost much, but as a percentage of £10?
Re WFA I take your point and I have argued in the past for non means tested benefits sometimes because of the admin so I might not be consistent here, but there must be some better way as suggested by the earlier poster.
Oh, they send a letter, do they? I suppose they have to, to explain what it is, but for £10? Much better to roll it into the basic pension allowance and pay it evenly over the year.
It's not just for pensions, but for recipients of many different social security benefits. I've received it before, possible the retirement age will recede off into the never never for my generation.
BJ pressing all the right buttons on his visit north. For clarity, the Evening Times is a bog standard local evening paper, pretty apolitical and certainly not nationalist.
Well, that's done for a fair chunk of the supposed Labour tactical voting for Tories in Lothian, Lanarkshire, etc. etc. I mean, they still have MIners' Welfare and Social Clubs all over the place.
The Tories don't have any MPs or constituency MSPs in Lothian or Lanarkshire.
I am sure Boris' remarks will have delighted the Scottish Greens however, the SNP's new coalition partner, even if they do not go down as well in the Red Wall
The West Central Belt used to be prime Tory = Unionist battleground. The Tories most certainly have regional MSPs in regions which were, or include, major coal mining areas, and it will also count in the general sentiment about the sensitivity and care with which the Tory Party treats Scotland.
There is not a single Scottish former mining constituency in even the top 20 Tory target seats for the next general election. There is not a single Tory MP or constituency MSP who represents an ex mining seat in Scotland either.
There are plenty of English and Welsh Red Wall Tory held seats and Tory target seats which used to have a mine however, by far the biggest winner from Boris' gaffe therefore will be Starmer, not Sturgeon
Yes, the digital takeover is definitely a part of it. I read lots of 'stuff' online but it doesn't work for me for books, fiction or non.
Re time running out, yes, that's a factor too. You don't want to burn it.
And there's something with me about this which is (I know) rather stupid and negative. Not so much about not picking up new books but more about not trying to learn new skills. Eg piano. Always fancied that and now have the time. But let's say I took it up and it turns out I have some talent for it. Unlikely but possible. That would be great in one sense. But in another it would be very galling because I'd be kicking myself for not doing it when young and able to put in the fabled 10,000 hours and be properly good.
So you kind of just cruise in neutral to the grave. Can't find suitably precise emoticon for this 'sad but not really' sentiment.
Interesting philosophical point, that. In my view, the purpose of life is having a number of peaks that you always remember plus a generally OK everyday, like Switzerland. Learning to play the piano pretty well counts as a decent peak, and not doing it 40 years ago and being a professional, meh, that's just a possible earlier peak and you've had others instead. But cruising in neureal is just pointless - there are years of my life that I can't recall doing anything at all, and that's a total waste.
What life definitely isn't is a steady climb ending in Mount Everest as the crowning achievement. You need to factor in a gradual fade, and have things that really stand out in your memory.
I did think about this the other day when there was that discussion on Scottish population numbers and thinking there could be a win-win-win situation here for the migrants, Nicola S and the UK Government.
Basically, you say to the migrants, "look, we will let you stay - and you can also work - on condition you live in Scotland (or Northern Ireland, as well, actually) for a minimum of 15 years and give up your rights to live in rUK."
Helps the migrants obviously. Helps Nicola because she wants to increase the diversity of Scotland anyway plus its population. And helps the UK Government because shoves the problem out of its heartlands and into the SNP'ss hands.
Should be fairly easy to enforce as well. You have no right to housing, schools, hospitals etc outside Scotland (or NI) so a fairly easy barrier.
Not a bad idea.
I especially like your explicit admission that Scotland is not part of the “heartlands” of the UK. Ho ho. Ya don’t say?
It's not just the racial attitudes of the 19thC that the US right are embracing...
Florida woman who's an antimasker "wants to promote health the way her generation’s grandparents experienced it. 'When they got sick, they didn’t need the crutch of pharmaceuticals or antibiotics to get better. They just got sick and they got well.'” https://twitter.com/BGrueskin/status/1422760495631716353
(Though it should be noted that vaccination of sorts was a thing back then, too.)
What's particularly funny about that (apart from the obvious point that when they got sick, a lot of them died) is that the loony Florida woman's lawsuit is about the wearing of masks on planes. I mean, if she wants to be like her grandparents' generation, why the hell is she flying anywhere in the first place?
My grandparents flew to the south of France for their honeymoon…
My grandparents lived in Derby. Just before the war, they bought a small cottage in Twyford, on the Trent, to holiday in. The cottage, which they used for holidays and weekends away, is about five miles from the city centre. AFAIAA, they did not have a car, and that five miles was as far as they could practically get with any regularity, given they had one kid and my dad on the way.
Oddly enough, many of my family still live within a few miles of there, and I was born just a mile away, right by the Trent and Mersey Canal.
Growing up in Devon I knew people for whom a trip to Bristol was a once in a lifetime event, and the furthest they ever went from home.
I'd love to see it again, but back in the early 1990's there was a segment on TV news in London about a woman in her eighties who had never left the Isle of Dogs. All through the roaring twenties, the depression, the war, the swinging sixties; she had remained on the isle. Despite it's wonderful transport links (even in the seventies and eighties), she had never been tempted out.
ISTR she was taken into the city to see shows and meet someone important.
On topic, Sunak's going to become as unpopular as an ex with the clap if he keeps the triple lock, cuts the UC uplift, and generally puts up payroll taxes.
When do we find out and can we bet on it/them?
Well the UC uplift ends next month, so that will be pretty soon either way.
As for the rest, pass, there's talk of moving to budget to next year now.
The triple lock does need to go - though aware it appeals to much of the Tories base. Though in the spirit of fairness if I end up paying more tax whilst the oldies are showered with goodies than the resentment will just build.
Indeed. At some point the younger voters will finally turn out and vote.
I mean, just get rid of the NI exemption for pensionable age workers for starters.
That really is an obvious (if painful) place to start. Also fully logical as there is no longer an age at which retirement from the workplace is taken. Gone are the days of 60 female / 65 male. People can opt to continue in employment and so should continue to make the same contributions.
Rationalising National Insurance does make sense. But I have never understood PB Tories' animosity to the triple lock. The full state pension is less than £10,000 a year which is less than the minimum wage. It is as mysterious as all those backbenchers who used to demand concessions for garden centres.
It'd make more sense to merge NI and income tax, and abolish the allowances for bank interest and share dividends, and tax income fairly. And leave the triple lock.
I agree with that exception for the allowance on bank interest and dividends.
Re bank interest I have no objection to the allowance being removed other than it removes the need for collecting peanuts and the associated cost of collecting peanuts so it might make sense to have an allowance just for that reason.
Re dividends. Where to start. Gordon Brown completely screwed this up just so he could nobble then pension funds. George Osborne promised to put this right, but he lied and pretended he had. As a consequence the link between dividends and Corporation Tax/ACT is completely broken now. The £5000 helped for small shareholders. Philip Hammond made it worse by reducing it to £2000. For all the buggering around you might as well eliminate it other than the admin factor, but in reality the sensible set up that had worked for decades should be reintroduced. Meddling chancellors!
I think there may also be a case for changes to Winter Fuel Allowance, which currently costs of the order of 2-3 billion a year and is rather indiscrimate.
It is better to be spending the money on measures to reduce demand for heating imo.
Agree. Also the Christmas bonus is now pointless. It was a shock when I got mine for the first time last year, £10!
Won't save much. I imagine the admin probably approaches the value.
WFP is very important in the north and west - cutting it would be very unwelcome. And because it is generally flat rate it is easy to deal with.
Edit: with energy costs going up, it might actually have to be increased.
Christmas bonus costs nothing to administer other than the bank payment - from what I recall of doing a relative's executry the tenner just pops up in your bank account beside the appropriate four-weekly state pension payment.
I got a letter notifying me of my Christmas bonus. It doesn't cost much, but as a percentage of £10?
Re WFA I take your point and I have argued in the past for non means tested benefits sometimes because of the admin so I might not be consistent here, but there must be some better way as suggested by the earlier poster.
Have a higher basic state pension in the winter months (Dec, Jan, Feb) ? If the annual increase is, say 4%, then increase it by 10% for the winter quarter and 2% in the other three.
I did think about this the other day when there was that discussion on Scottish population numbers and thinking there could be a win-win-win situation here for the migrants, Nicola S and the UK Government.
Basically, you say to the migrants, "look, we will let you stay - and you can also work - on condition you live in Scotland (or Northern Ireland, as well, actually) for a minimum of 15 years and give up your rights to live in rUK."
Helps the migrants obviously. Helps Nicola because she wants to increase the diversity of Scotland anyway plus its population. And helps the UK Government because shoves the problem out of its heartlands and into the SNP'ss hands.
Should be fairly easy to enforce as well. You have no right to housing, schools, hospitals etc outside Scotland (or NI) so a fairly easy barrier.
Ironically, current government policy is the opposite to this. They send Asylum Seekers pretty much anywhere - but the starting point is Croydon, where all initial claims have to be made - and if they decide to move to Glasgow because they know someone there, or there's an established immigrant population, then they lose their right to Home Office support.
That’s the Home Office for you. Couldn’t organise a cèilidh in a distillery.
BJ pressing all the right buttons on his visit north. For clarity, the Evening Times is a bog standard local evening paper, pretty apolitical and certainly not nationalist.
Well, that's done for a fair chunk of the supposed Labour tactical voting for Tories in Lothian, Lanarkshire, etc. etc. I mean, they still have MIners' Welfare and Social Clubs all over the place.
The Tories don't have any MPs or constituency MSPs in Lothian or Lanarkshire. In those areas it is more SLab needing Tory tactical votes to beat the SNP than the reverse.
I am sure Boris' remarks will have delighted the anti coal Scottish Greens however, the SNP's new coalition partner, even if they do not go down as well in the Red Wall.
'The Prime Minister said: “Look at what we’ve done already.
“We’ve transitioned away from coal in my lifetime, thanks to Margaret Thatcher who closed so many coal mines.”
“Across the country we had a big early start and we’re now moving rapidly away from coal all together."
“I thought that would get you going.”
“We’re now down to less than 2%, I think it’s I% of our energy comes from coal.”'
I’ve always found it to be a remarkable irony that so many people who profess to have environmental credentials still get very agitated about the closure of the coal mines.
And 'burner' has also appeared in every single Michael Connelly novel for the past decade.
Of course everyone knows what they are.
Who is Michael Connolly?
A best selling trashy novelist, and I mean proper best selling, creator of Harry Bosch. Ok for passing the time on a sun lounger though the series is a bit exhausted now. I prefer Robert Crais in that particular line.
Ah yes, Bosch. I used to devour them on holiday. Ages ago now but I think I recall he was standard 'tough guy with a heart' material but with the quirk that he knocked up a good pasta (and quite often did).
I am now astounded that I used to hang on Patricia Cornwell's every book. The past is indeed a foreign country.
Yep - read those too. Kay Scarpetta. Solid work. And I'm confident of low-browing you off the court with Robert Walker's "Jessica Coran" potboilers. There's no way you would have spent hours with them, but I did.
The Sue Grafton books are my favourite trash. She started writing them in the 80's, and kept on going for decades, still setting them in the 80s. Quite the nostalgia trip.
Ah, heard off but never read any. One of the 1st with a female (private) dick apparently per a quick wiki. And she didn't do a "Z is for ..." for some reason. Stopped at Y.
My son has started reading them, which feels strange.
Wish mine would read ANY books. It's a dying habit, I fear. And I'm just as bad. I get through maybe 5 a year now cf 20 in the past. And that's with being retired cf working, so it ought to have gone the other way. I should be tearing through the oeuvres and genres!
I used to read a book a week, easy, now way down. Of course the main explanation is the incubus of the internet sucking out everything, but I wonder if it's also time running out and not enough left to waste on even okayish (as opposed to outright trash) stuff.
Yes, the digital takeover is definitely a part of it. I read lots of 'stuff' online but it doesn't work for me for books, fiction or non.
Re time running out, yes, that's a factor too. You don't want to burn it.
And there's something with me about this which is (I know) rather stupid and negative. Not so much about not picking up new books but more about not trying to learn new skills. Eg piano. Always fancied that and now have the time. But let's say I took it up and it turns out I have some talent for it. Unlikely but possible. That would be great in one sense. But in another it would be very galling because I'd be kicking myself for not doing it when young and able to put in the fabled 10,000 hours and be properly good.
So you kind of just cruise in neutral to the grave. Can't find suitably precise emoticon for this 'sad but not really' sentiment.
Weltschmerz covers it for me, though it doesn't yet have an emoticon afaics. Which on the new skills thing remind me I need to do my daily German Duolingo. I'm determined to be able to speak conversational German before I shuffle off, but fair to say I have not turned out to have some talent for it.
My money's on you. Das ist ein Hund! - and away we go.
I lived in Vienna and had 'total immersion' tuition in German twice a week for a while. I was getting somewhere (I think) but came back to London before the dam broke and I could truly converse in it. If my Vienna job had not been English speaking (the money markets) I reckon I might have got closer.
I did it for two years at school. The top kids in each French class in my year got to drop a PE lesson and do German instead. Happy days cos I hate rugby. And I live in rugby league land.
I really wanted to be good at it, my WW2 obsession was just taking off, it would’ve been nice to learn the lingo to read stuff, memoirs and the like, that never gets translated.
I was shite at it. Der, die and das? Couldn’t get my head round it. Bastards.
🙂 - it is a tough subject imo.
Annoyingly, whilst I was in Vienna one of my brothers was in Leipzig (for about the same length of time), and he nailed it.
Piers Corbyn is both the worst Piers and the worst Corbyn. Discuss.
Two longest piers in the UK are Southend and Southport.
Neither are particularly pleasant, though. Southwold Pier is superb (as is the whole town), and Bangor Pier is also worth visiting, if only for the views. Clevedon Pier is simply beautiful.
Most piers are dismal, dreary places if you don't like amusement arcades. Southwold has bucked that trend, whilst Bangor Pier is much more of a traditional 'promenading' pier.
I really, really want to see Birnbeck Pier at Weston-Super-Mare restored.
Clarence Pier in Portsmouth is an utterly depressing place - barely worth calling a pier IMO.
Ryde is number four and also the oldest. Probably the only one you can drive along? And destined for a revamp.
Johnson sings the praises of Margaret Thatcher (!?) because… wait for it… she closed all the Scottish coal mines.
And somebody yesterday suggested that the PM was going to be “delicate” (sic) on his foreign trip.
Is the average 20 year old supposed to think that closing the coal mines was a bad thing?
But if Mr Johnson is claiming that closing the coal industry was a good thing for global warming then he also has rto explain why Mrs T ramped up the oil and gas from Scottish waters (and some English, esp. gas) to replace the coal. Despite its impact on global warming.
I'd like to see him try to claim at COP in Glasgow that closing down the Scottish coal industry is a credit point for the UK.
It wasn't particularly efficient in many places - I'm not denying that - but closing the modern superpits and not helping the people thrown on the scrapheap was unforgiveable to very many. That is what is remembered hereabouts.
Piers Corbyn is both the worst Piers and the worst Corbyn. Discuss.
Two longest piers in the UK are Southend and Southport.
Neither are particularly pleasant, though. Southwold Pier is superb (as is the whole town), and Bangor Pier is also worth visiting, if only for the views. Clevedon Pier is simply beautiful.
Most piers are dismal, dreary places if you don't like amusement arcades. Southwold has bucked that trend, whilst Bangor Pier is much more of a traditional 'promenading' pier.
I really, really want to see Birnbeck Pier at Weston-Super-Mare restored.
Clarence Pier in Portsmouth is an utterly depressing place - barely worth calling a pier IMO.
Ryde is number four and also the oldest. Probably the only one you can drive along? And destined for a revamp.
And 'burner' has also appeared in every single Michael Connelly novel for the past decade.
Of course everyone knows what they are.
Who is Michael Connolly?
A best selling trashy novelist, and I mean proper best selling, creator of Harry Bosch. Ok for passing the time on a sun lounger though the series is a bit exhausted now. I prefer Robert Crais in that particular line.
Ah yes, Bosch. I used to devour them on holiday. Ages ago now but I think I recall he was standard 'tough guy with a heart' material but with the quirk that he knocked up a good pasta (and quite often did).
I am now astounded that I used to hang on Patricia Cornwell's every book. The past is indeed a foreign country.
Yep - read those too. Kay Scarpetta. Solid work. And I'm confident of low-browing you off the court with Robert Walker's "Jessica Coran" potboilers. There's no way you would have spent hours with them, but I did.
The Sue Grafton books are my favourite trash. She started writing them in the 80's, and kept on going for decades, still setting them in the 80s. Quite the nostalgia trip.
Ah, heard off but never read any. One of the 1st with a female (private) dick apparently per a quick wiki. And she didn't do a "Z is for ..." for some reason. Stopped at Y.
My son has started reading them, which feels strange.
Wish mine would read ANY books. It's a dying habit, I fear. And I'm just as bad. I get through maybe 5 a year now cf 20 in the past. And that's with being retired cf working, so it ought to have gone the other way. I should be tearing through the oeuvres and genres!
I get through 3-6 per night (depending on whether I'm doing bed time for the three year old with 'big boy' books or the 1 year old with 'baby' books).
And also 10-15 proper grown up books (without pictures) per year. We do the Netflix etc series, but every now and again we get into a reading phase, the telly doesn't go on and we snuggle up with books. Probably why we still haven't finished Game of Thrones or Line of Duty. Compromises have to be made.
Sounds a good balance. Yes unless you're a total powerhouse you cannot stay abreast of all the quality TV drama that there is these days AND read lots of books.
Quite. I stopped bothering with TV at all years ago though I do have some decent DVDs, some still to watch.
Good call for you, I'm sure. One plus for TV drama over books, though, is it can be a shared experience with others in the household, eg wife in my case. It's a thing we do together, watch and process a drama series soup to nuts, talk about it, speculate on plot, opine on characters etc. If we instead had our respective noses in our own respective books, that wouldn't be quite the same.
"Soup to nuts". Very investment banking.
Needs to be put on the same list as p*n**ppl* on p*zz* imo.
Yes sorry it's not a great expression. You won't see it again on here from me.
Piers Corbyn is both the worst Piers and the worst Corbyn. Discuss.
Two longest piers in the UK are Southend and Southport.
Neither are particularly pleasant, though. Southwold Pier is superb (as is the whole town), and Bangor Pier is also worth visiting, if only for the views. Clevedon Pier is simply beautiful.
Most piers are dismal, dreary places if you don't like amusement arcades. Southwold has bucked that trend, whilst Bangor Pier is much more of a traditional 'promenading' pier.
I really, really want to see Birnbeck Pier at Weston-Super-Mare restored.
Clarence Pier in Portsmouth is an utterly depressing place - barely worth calling a pier IMO.
Ryde is number four and also the oldest. Probably the only one you can drive along? And destined for a revamp.
One imagines the Gulf Strem collapse would leave the UK with a similar continental climate comparable with Petropavlosk with the North Sea doubling as the Sea of Okhotsk:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/01/modeling-what-would-happen-to-the-uk-if-the-gulf-stream-shuts-down/ ...Things are quite a bit different if the AMOC shuts down. Rather than rising, temperatures would actually drop by an average of 3.4°C. That drop would occur on a gradient, with northern Scotland cooling the most and southern England seeing the least impact and therefore seeing conditions similar to what it currently experiences. But, more dramatically, rainfall during the growing season is expected to drop by 123mm. That drop is enough to reduce the UK's percentage of arable land from 32 percent to just seven percent. Obviously, this would cause a big hit to the UK's agricultural productivity. Irrigation could again offset this, but the scale of the changes needed would be far larger; the authors estimate adding this irrigation at ten times the value of the crops that would be produced. But they note that it's not clear if the UK would have enough water to spare to fully reverse the loss of rain....
Though given the huge uncertainties in modelling climate/weather, who knows ? Malcom's turnip season would be significantly truncated, I expect.
Thanks Nigelb, fascinating link!
England would become even more dependent on Welsh and Scottish water.
BJ pressing all the right buttons on his visit north. For clarity, the Evening Times is a bog standard local evening paper, pretty apolitical and certainly not nationalist.
Well, that's done for a fair chunk of the supposed Labour tactical voting for Tories in Lothian, Lanarkshire, etc. etc. I mean, they still have MIners' Welfare and Social Clubs all over the place.
The Tories don't have any MPs or constituency MSPs in Lothian or Lanarkshire. In those areas it is more SLab needing Tory tactical votes to beat the SNP than the reverse.
I am sure Boris' remarks will have delighted the anti coal Scottish Greens however, the SNP's new coalition partner, even if they do not go down as well in the Red Wall.
'The Prime Minister said: “Look at what we’ve done already.
“We’ve transitioned away from coal in my lifetime, thanks to Margaret Thatcher who closed so many coal mines.”
“Across the country we had a big early start and we’re now moving rapidly away from coal all together."
“I thought that would get you going.”
“We’re now down to less than 2%, I think it’s I% of our energy comes from coal.”'
Sounds like pretty abysmal "gotcha" journalism if that's the context.
BJ pressing all the right buttons on his visit north. For clarity, the Evening Times is a bog standard local evening paper, pretty apolitical and certainly not nationalist.
One imagines the Gulf Strem collapse would leave the UK with a similar continental climate comparable with Petropavlosk with the North Sea doubling as the Sea of Okhotsk:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/01/modeling-what-would-happen-to-the-uk-if-the-gulf-stream-shuts-down/ ...Things are quite a bit different if the AMOC shuts down. Rather than rising, temperatures would actually drop by an average of 3.4°C. That drop would occur on a gradient, with northern Scotland cooling the most and southern England seeing the least impact and therefore seeing conditions similar to what it currently experiences. But, more dramatically, rainfall during the growing season is expected to drop by 123mm. That drop is enough to reduce the UK's percentage of arable land from 32 percent to just seven percent. Obviously, this would cause a big hit to the UK's agricultural productivity. Irrigation could again offset this, but the scale of the changes needed would be far larger; the authors estimate adding this irrigation at ten times the value of the crops that would be produced. But they note that it's not clear if the UK would have enough water to spare to fully reverse the loss of rain....
Though given the huge uncertainties in modelling climate/weather, who knows ? Malcom's turnip season would be significantly truncated, I expect.
Thanks Nigelb, fascinating link!
England would become even more dependent on Welsh and Scottish water.
It also says southern English arable land would be least impacted, with northern Scotland worst hit
Johnson sings the praises of Margaret Thatcher (!?) because… wait for it… she closed all the Scottish coal mines.
And somebody yesterday suggested that the PM was going to be “delicate” (sic) on his foreign trip.
Is the average 20 year old supposed to think that closing the coal mines was a bad thing?
But if Mr Johnson is claiming that closing the coal industry was a good thing for global warming then he also has rto explain why Mrs T ramped up the oil and gas from Scottish waters (and some English, esp. gas) to replace the coal. Despite its impact on global warming.
(snip)
If my understanding is correct, then that's easy. Since the various Clean Air Acts made burning coal in residential fireplaces difficult, the main user of coal was power generation. Aside from a couple of places (e.g. Fawley), oil was not used for power generation. Gas was. And gas is much, much cleaner than coal, with about half the CO2 being emitted, and none of the other nasties that coal emits.
Johnson sings the praises of Margaret Thatcher (!?) because… wait for it… she closed all the Scottish coal mines.
And somebody yesterday suggested that the PM was going to be “delicate” (sic) on his foreign trip.
Is the average 20 year old supposed to think that closing the coal mines was a bad thing?
But if Mr Johnson is claiming that closing the coal industry was a good thing for global warming then he also has rto explain why Mrs T ramped up the oil and gas from Scottish waters (and some English, esp. gas) to replace the coal. Despite its impact on global warming.
I'd like to see him try to claim at COP in Glasgow that closing down the Scottish coal industry is a credit point for the UK.
It wasn't particularly efficient in many places - I'm not denying that - but closing the modern superpits and not helping the people thrown on the scrapheap was unforgiveable to very many. That is what is remembered hereabouts.
Since burning oil and natural gas are considerably cleaner than burning goal - especially coal to make gas - I’m not sure I see your point.
And 'burner' has also appeared in every single Michael Connelly novel for the past decade.
Of course everyone knows what they are.
Who is Michael Connolly?
A best selling trashy novelist, and I mean proper best selling, creator of Harry Bosch. Ok for passing the time on a sun lounger though the series is a bit exhausted now. I prefer Robert Crais in that particular line.
Ah yes, Bosch. I used to devour them on holiday. Ages ago now but I think I recall he was standard 'tough guy with a heart' material but with the quirk that he knocked up a good pasta (and quite often did).
I am now astounded that I used to hang on Patricia Cornwell's every book. The past is indeed a foreign country.
Yep - read those too. Kay Scarpetta. Solid work. And I'm confident of low-browing you off the court with Robert Walker's "Jessica Coran" potboilers. There's no way you would have spent hours with them, but I did.
The Sue Grafton books are my favourite trash. She started writing them in the 80's, and kept on going for decades, still setting them in the 80s. Quite the nostalgia trip.
Ah, heard off but never read any. One of the 1st with a female (private) dick apparently per a quick wiki. And she didn't do a "Z is for ..." for some reason. Stopped at Y.
My son has started reading them, which feels strange.
Wish mine would read ANY books. It's a dying habit, I fear. And I'm just as bad. I get through maybe 5 a year now cf 20 in the past. And that's with being retired cf working, so it ought to have gone the other way. I should be tearing through the oeuvres and genres!
I used to read a book a week, easy, now way down. Of course the main explanation is the incubus of the internet sucking out everything, but I wonder if it's also time running out and not enough left to waste on even okayish (as opposed to outright trash) stuff.
Yes, the digital takeover is definitely a part of it. I read lots of 'stuff' online but it doesn't work for me for books, fiction or non.
Re time running out, yes, that's a factor too. You don't want to burn it.
And there's something with me about this which is (I know) rather stupid and negative. Not so much about not picking up new books but more about not trying to learn new skills. Eg piano. Always fancied that and now have the time. But let's say I took it up and it turns out I have some talent for it. Unlikely but possible. That would be great in one sense. But in another it would be very galling because I'd be kicking myself for not doing it when young and able to put in the fabled 10,000 hours and be properly good.
So you kind of just cruise in neutral to the grave. Can't find suitably precise emoticon for this 'sad but not really' sentiment.
My Grandad was lucky enough to retire at 60 on a good pension, and one thing that he used to say quite a bit once he reached his 90s was that he never expected to live that long, and if he'd known that he was going to do so he would have tried to do a bit more with that time (his time ultimately coming to an end when he was 97). Bearing in mind that he was the sort of person who did learn Spanish in his 80s, then I'm not sure what he had in mind.
So, you never know, you might have longer left then you think.
Yes that's the way to think. My dad is cut from that cloth. Closing fast on 90 but still embracing new things. Annoying old coot in many ways, he is, but at the same time admirable.
It's not just the racial attitudes of the 19thC that the US right are embracing...
Florida woman who's an antimasker "wants to promote health the way her generation’s grandparents experienced it. 'When they got sick, they didn’t need the crutch of pharmaceuticals or antibiotics to get better. They just got sick and they got well.'” https://twitter.com/BGrueskin/status/1422760495631716353
(Though it should be noted that vaccination of sorts was a thing back then, too.)
What's particularly funny about that (apart from the obvious point that when they got sick, a lot of them died) is that the loony Florida woman's lawsuit is about the wearing of masks on planes. I mean, if she wants to be like her grandparents' generation, why the hell is she flying anywhere in the first place?
My grandparents flew to the south of France for their honeymoon…
My grandparents lived in Derby. Just before the war, they bought a small cottage in Twyford, on the Trent, to holiday in. The cottage, which they used for holidays and weekends away, is about five miles from the city centre. AFAIAA, they did not have a car, and that five miles was as far as they could practically get with any regularity, given they had one kid and my dad on the way.
Oddly enough, many of my family still live within a few miles of there, and I was born just a mile away, right by the Trent and Mersey Canal.
Growing up in Devon I knew people for whom a trip to Bristol was a once in a lifetime event, and the furthest they ever went from home.
I'd love to see it again, but back in the early 1990's there was a segment on TV news in London about a woman in her eighties who had never left the Isle of Dogs. All through the roaring twenties, the depression, the war, the swinging sixties; she had remained on the isle. Despite it's wonderful transport links (even in the seventies and eighties), she had never been tempted out.
ISTR she was taken into the city to see shows and meet someone important.
This column in the ever-entertaining 'Guardian Experiences' column is purportedly about a man who eats the same dinner every day but is really about his love of the Welsh valley he lives in: And has left precisely once in his life, 30 years ago, for a trip to a different farm.
Not usually much into the apocalypse, but this is a bit of a downer. Apparently the Gulf Stream is on the point of collapse, leading to worldwide starvation and the end of civilisation. Kind of nowish.
BJ pressing all the right buttons on his visit north. For clarity, the Evening Times is a bog standard local evening paper, pretty apolitical and certainly not nationalist.
Nothing to do with Yes, the vast majority of working class ex miners and their families in Scotland already vote SNP and many already voted Yes in 2014.
It is middle class professional voters who are the backbone of the No vote in Scotland and they could not care less about coal, they are very pro clean energy. Plus the SNP are in now in bed with the coal hating Scottish Greens anyway.
However it could have a more detrimental impact in England with working class ex miners and their families in the RedWall who voted Tory in 2019 for the first time
Johnson sings the praises of Margaret Thatcher (!?) because… wait for it… she closed all the Scottish coal mines.
And somebody yesterday suggested that the PM was going to be “delicate” (sic) on his foreign trip.
Is the average 20 year old supposed to think that closing the coal mines was a bad thing?
But if Mr Johnson is claiming that closing the coal industry was a good thing for global warming then he also has rto explain why Mrs T ramped up the oil and gas from Scottish waters (and some English, esp. gas) to replace the coal. Despite its impact on global warming.
(snip)
If my understanding is correct, then that's easy. Since the various Clean Air Acts made burning coal in residential fireplaces difficult, the main user of coal was power generation. Aside from a couple of places (e.g. Fawley), oil was not used for power generation. Gas was. And gas is much, much cleaner than coal, with about half the CO2 being emitted, and none of the other nasties that coal emits.
That's correct, I think; coal was already well on the way out in Lothian in favour of north sea gas before Mrs T was elected. I suspect its retention in some houses was partly because of the miners' free allowance. The older pits were closing wholesale and the work focussing on the superpits efficient merrygoround trains to power stations such as Longannet.
One imagines the Gulf Strem collapse would leave the UK with a similar continental climate comparable with Petropavlosk with the North Sea doubling as the Sea of Okhotsk:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/01/modeling-what-would-happen-to-the-uk-if-the-gulf-stream-shuts-down/ ...Things are quite a bit different if the AMOC shuts down. Rather than rising, temperatures would actually drop by an average of 3.4°C. That drop would occur on a gradient, with northern Scotland cooling the most and southern England seeing the least impact and therefore seeing conditions similar to what it currently experiences. But, more dramatically, rainfall during the growing season is expected to drop by 123mm. That drop is enough to reduce the UK's percentage of arable land from 32 percent to just seven percent. Obviously, this would cause a big hit to the UK's agricultural productivity. Irrigation could again offset this, but the scale of the changes needed would be far larger; the authors estimate adding this irrigation at ten times the value of the crops that would be produced. But they note that it's not clear if the UK would have enough water to spare to fully reverse the loss of rain....
Though given the huge uncertainties in modelling climate/weather, who knows ? Malcom's turnip season would be significantly truncated, I expect.
Thanks Nigelb, fascinating link!
England would become even more dependent on Welsh and Scottish water.
Hmmmm...
FOI reference: FOI/202000104273 Date received: 2 Oct 2020 Date responded: 29 Oct 2020
Information requested
I would like to know to what extent Scotland supplies England with water, how many water pipeline run from Scotland to England, can I see a map to this national linkup.
Response
The answer to your question is that whilst Scotland has a relative abundance of fresh water compared to an increasing number of parts of the world that are becoming water stressed due to population growth and climate factors, there are no current plans to export water to England or internationally.
One imagines the Gulf Strem collapse would leave the UK with a similar continental climate comparable with Petropavlosk with the North Sea doubling as the Sea of Okhotsk:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/01/modeling-what-would-happen-to-the-uk-if-the-gulf-stream-shuts-down/ ...Things are quite a bit different if the AMOC shuts down. Rather than rising, temperatures would actually drop by an average of 3.4°C. That drop would occur on a gradient, with northern Scotland cooling the most and southern England seeing the least impact and therefore seeing conditions similar to what it currently experiences. But, more dramatically, rainfall during the growing season is expected to drop by 123mm. That drop is enough to reduce the UK's percentage of arable land from 32 percent to just seven percent. Obviously, this would cause a big hit to the UK's agricultural productivity. Irrigation could again offset this, but the scale of the changes needed would be far larger; the authors estimate adding this irrigation at ten times the value of the crops that would be produced. But they note that it's not clear if the UK would have enough water to spare to fully reverse the loss of rain....
Though given the huge uncertainties in modelling climate/weather, who knows ? Malcom's turnip season would be significantly truncated, I expect.
Thanks Nigelb, fascinating link!
England would become even more dependent on Welsh and Scottish water.
Hmmmm...
FOI reference: FOI/202000104273 Date received: 2 Oct 2020 Date responded: 29 Oct 2020
Information requested
I would like to know to what extent Scotland supplies England with water, how many water pipeline run from Scotland to England, can I see a map to this national linkup.
Response
The answer to your question is that whilst Scotland has a relative abundance of fresh water compared to an increasing number of parts of the world that are becoming water stressed due to population growth and climate factors, there are no current plans to export water to England or internationally.
Not usually much into the apocalypse, but this is a bit of a downer. Apparently the Gulf Stream is on the point of collapse, leading to worldwide starvation and the end of civilisation. Kind of nowish.
So maybe we are heading for freezing winters and scorching summers
What tends to happen is pressure systems become stagnant in place - we've had that this summer which has favoured high pressure more to the north and low pressure to the south so the south has had storms and rain while much of the north and west has enjoyed an excellent summer so far.
It's a kind of April-May pattern which hasn't really shifted on - we may hope for some energy into the atmosphere from hurricanes at lower latitudes in the next few weeks and I suspect we'll have an excellent early autumn.
Longer term I think the British and Northern European climate will eventually resemble that of the Indian Sub-Continent with scorching heat followed by monsoon like spells of rain but with drier winter weather especially at altitude.
An Aussie scientist friend of mine swears blind that the big winner from climate change is going to be…
Oh yes, a lot of the older mines were closed then as you say. The industry was heavily modernised and concentrated into the superpits that went in the 1980s. It's instructive to look at Ordnance Survey maps of the different periods.
But Mr Johnson was indeed focussing on the 1980s closures, so I was thinking in the context.
On topic, Sunak's going to become as unpopular as an ex with the clap if he keeps the triple lock, cuts the UC uplift, and generally puts up payroll taxes.
When do we find out and can we bet on it/them?
Well the UC uplift ends next month, so that will be pretty soon either way.
As for the rest, pass, there's talk of moving to budget to next year now.
The triple lock does need to go - though aware it appeals to much of the Tories base. Though in the spirit of fairness if I end up paying more tax whilst the oldies are showered with goodies than the resentment will just build.
Indeed. At some point the younger voters will finally turn out and vote.
I mean, just get rid of the NI exemption for pensionable age workers for starters.
That really is an obvious (if painful) place to start. Also fully logical as there is no longer an age at which retirement from the workplace is taken. Gone are the days of 60 female / 65 male. People can opt to continue in employment and so should continue to make the same contributions.
Rationalising National Insurance does make sense. But I have never understood PB Tories' animosity to the triple lock. The full state pension is less than £10,000 a year which is less than the minimum wage. It is as mysterious as all those backbenchers who used to demand concessions for garden centres.
It'd make more sense to merge NI and income tax, and abolish the allowances for bank interest and share dividends, and tax income fairly. And leave the triple lock.
I agree with that exception for the allowance on bank interest and dividends.
Re bank interest I have no objection to the allowance being removed other than it removes the need for collecting peanuts and the associated cost of collecting peanuts so it might make sense to have an allowance just for that reason.
Re dividends. Where to start. Gordon Brown completely screwed this up just so he could nobble then pension funds. George Osborne promised to put this right, but he lied and pretended he had. As a consequence the link between dividends and Corporation Tax/ACT is completely broken now. The £5000 helped for small shareholders. Philip Hammond made it worse by reducing it to £2000. For all the buggering around you might as well eliminate it other than the admin factor, but in reality the sensible set up that had worked for decades should be reintroduced. Meddling chancellors!
I think there may also be a case for changes to Winter Fuel Allowance, which currently costs of the order of 2-3 billion a year and is rather indiscrimate.
It is better to be spending the money on measures to reduce demand for heating imo.
Agree. Also the Christmas bonus is now pointless. It was a shock when I got mine for the first time last year, £10!
Won't save much. I imagine the admin probably approaches the value.
WFP is very important in the north and west - cutting it would be very unwelcome. And because it is generally flat rate it is easy to deal with.
Edit: with energy costs going up, it might actually have to be increased.
Christmas bonus costs nothing to administer other than the bank payment - from what I recall of doing a relative's executry the tenner just pops up in your bank account beside the appropriate four-weekly state pension payment.
The Christmas bonus is an interesting example of the power of inflation. It was first introduced in 1972, and has never been increased since, while, if it had kept pace with inflation it would now be £134.94
So they should either uprate it to something significant - £100 or £150, say - or just get rid of it.
Not forgetting incomes have increased by more than inflation.
I can find a timeseries of GDP per head in CVM market prices - which I assume is stripping out the inflationary effect, and that shows an increase from £3485 in 1972Q1 to £8141 at our pre-pandemic peak, so that would suggest increasing the Christmas bonus to £315.22 if you wanted it to reflect the increase in our nation's prosperity since 1972.
One imagines the Gulf Strem collapse would leave the UK with a similar continental climate comparable with Petropavlosk with the North Sea doubling as the Sea of Okhotsk:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/01/modeling-what-would-happen-to-the-uk-if-the-gulf-stream-shuts-down/ ...Things are quite a bit different if the AMOC shuts down. Rather than rising, temperatures would actually drop by an average of 3.4°C. That drop would occur on a gradient, with northern Scotland cooling the most and southern England seeing the least impact and therefore seeing conditions similar to what it currently experiences. But, more dramatically, rainfall during the growing season is expected to drop by 123mm. That drop is enough to reduce the UK's percentage of arable land from 32 percent to just seven percent. Obviously, this would cause a big hit to the UK's agricultural productivity. Irrigation could again offset this, but the scale of the changes needed would be far larger; the authors estimate adding this irrigation at ten times the value of the crops that would be produced. But they note that it's not clear if the UK would have enough water to spare to fully reverse the loss of rain....
Though given the huge uncertainties in modelling climate/weather, who knows ? Malcom's turnip season would be significantly truncated, I expect.
Thanks Nigelb, fascinating link!
England would become even more dependent on Welsh and Scottish water.
Bless. The enduring Scottish fantasy of the English dying of thirst after Scottish independence. However there is a flaw in your cunning plan. We don’t rely on Scottish water, nor (for most of the country) Welsh. Eg -
While it’s nice for you lovely eliminationist Anglophobes to believe, England does not import water from Scotland, so your gentle civic nationalism will have to fantasise a new way of offing us all.
Victoria has gone into its sixth lockdown a week after leaving its fifth. What’s the definition of insanity? They are not going to be able to maintain this surely?
- “What’s the definition of insanity?”
Gordon Brown banging on about federalism for the 52,167th time.
Not usually much into the apocalypse, but this is a bit of a downer. Apparently the Gulf Stream is on the point of collapse, leading to worldwide starvation and the end of civilisation. Kind of nowish.
So maybe we are heading for freezing winters and scorching summers
What tends to happen is pressure systems become stagnant in place - we've had that this summer which has favoured high pressure more to the north and low pressure to the south so the south has had storms and rain while much of the north and west has enjoyed an excellent summer so far.
It's a kind of April-May pattern which hasn't really shifted on - we may hope for some energy into the atmosphere from hurricanes at lower latitudes in the next few weeks and I suspect we'll have an excellent early autumn.
Longer term I think the British and Northern European climate will eventually resemble that of the Indian Sub-Continent with scorching heat followed by monsoon like spells of rain but with drier winter weather especially at altitude.
An Aussie scientist friend of mine swears blind that the big winner from climate change is going to be…
… wait for it…
… Russia!
I’m looking into the dacha market.
'In 2020, regions across Russia have experienced the hottest temperatures on record, contributing to forest fires that burned through acreage the size of Greece and emitted one-third more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than in 2019 (Russian forests account for one-fifth of the world’s total). Flash floods in Siberia destroyed entire villages and displaced thousands of residents. Snow coverage was at a record low in 2020, and Arctic sea ice coverage shrank to its second-lowest extent in over 40 years. '
It's not just the racial attitudes of the 19thC that the US right are embracing...
Florida woman who's an antimasker "wants to promote health the way her generation’s grandparents experienced it. 'When they got sick, they didn’t need the crutch of pharmaceuticals or antibiotics to get better. They just got sick and they got well.'” https://twitter.com/BGrueskin/status/1422760495631716353
(Though it should be noted that vaccination of sorts was a thing back then, too.)
What's particularly funny about that (apart from the obvious point that when they got sick, a lot of them died) is that the loony Florida woman's lawsuit is about the wearing of masks on planes. I mean, if she wants to be like her grandparents' generation, why the hell is she flying anywhere in the first place?
My grandparents flew to the south of France for their honeymoon…
My grandparents lived in Derby. Just before the war, they bought a small cottage in Twyford, on the Trent, to holiday in. The cottage, which they used for holidays and weekends away, is about five miles from the city centre. AFAIAA, they did not have a car, and that five miles was as far as they could practically get with any regularity, given they had one kid and my dad on the way.
Oddly enough, many of my family still live within a few miles of there, and I was born just a mile away, right by the Trent and Mersey Canal.
Growing up in Devon I knew people for whom a trip to Bristol was a once in a lifetime event, and the furthest they ever went from home.
I'd love to see it again, but back in the early 1990's there was a segment on TV news in London about a woman in her eighties who had never left the Isle of Dogs. All through the roaring twenties, the depression, the war, the swinging sixties; she had remained on the isle. Despite it's wonderful transport links (even in the seventies and eighties), she had never been tempted out.
ISTR she was taken into the city to see shows and meet someone important.
This column in the ever-entertaining 'Guardian Experiences' column is purportedly about a man who eats the same dinner every day but is really about his love of the Welsh valley he lives in: And has left precisely once in his life, 30 years ago, for a trip to a different farm.
I think there's something about farmers. A distant relative of mine was born, raised, and lives on, a farm. For nearly thirty years he has worked in the nearest city, about ten miles away. A few years back another relative got a phone call from him. He was in tears as he had two routes into work, and both were blocked off for roadworks.
There were plenty of diversionary routes (it is in the Midlands), but the thought of using a different route had driven him to tears.
Perhaps it is because farmers are used to a regular rhythm, both through the day and the year.
One imagines the Gulf Strem collapse would leave the UK with a similar continental climate comparable with Petropavlosk with the North Sea doubling as the Sea of Okhotsk:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/01/modeling-what-would-happen-to-the-uk-if-the-gulf-stream-shuts-down/ ...Things are quite a bit different if the AMOC shuts down. Rather than rising, temperatures would actually drop by an average of 3.4°C. That drop would occur on a gradient, with northern Scotland cooling the most and southern England seeing the least impact and therefore seeing conditions similar to what it currently experiences. But, more dramatically, rainfall during the growing season is expected to drop by 123mm. That drop is enough to reduce the UK's percentage of arable land from 32 percent to just seven percent. Obviously, this would cause a big hit to the UK's agricultural productivity. Irrigation could again offset this, but the scale of the changes needed would be far larger; the authors estimate adding this irrigation at ten times the value of the crops that would be produced. But they note that it's not clear if the UK would have enough water to spare to fully reverse the loss of rain....
Though given the huge uncertainties in modelling climate/weather, who knows ? Malcom's turnip season would be significantly truncated, I expect.
Thanks Nigelb, fascinating link!
England would become even more dependent on Welsh and Scottish water.
Bless. The enduring Scottish fantasy of the English dying of thirst after Scottish independence. However there is a flaw in your cunning plan. We don’t rely on Scottish water, nor (for most of the country) Welsh. Eg -
While it’s nice for you lovely eliminationist Anglophobes to believe, England does not import water from Scotland, so your gentle civic nationalism will have to fantasise a new way of offing us all.
Actually, it was Mr Johnson who proposed that about 2015. As the Scots' duty within the Union. And there were serious investigations about what might be practical. Though the plan fell through.
On topic, Sunak's going to become as unpopular as an ex with the clap if he keeps the triple lock, cuts the UC uplift, and generally puts up payroll taxes.
When do we find out and can we bet on it/them?
Well the UC uplift ends next month, so that will be pretty soon either way.
As for the rest, pass, there's talk of moving to budget to next year now.
The triple lock does need to go - though aware it appeals to much of the Tories base. Though in the spirit of fairness if I end up paying more tax whilst the oldies are showered with goodies than the resentment will just build.
Indeed. At some point the younger voters will finally turn out and vote.
I mean, just get rid of the NI exemption for pensionable age workers for starters.
That really is an obvious (if painful) place to start. Also fully logical as there is no longer an age at which retirement from the workplace is taken. Gone are the days of 60 female / 65 male. People can opt to continue in employment and so should continue to make the same contributions.
Rationalising National Insurance does make sense. But I have never understood PB Tories' animosity to the triple lock. The full state pension is less than £10,000 a year which is less than the minimum wage. It is as mysterious as all those backbenchers who used to demand concessions for garden centres.
It'd make more sense to merge NI and income tax, and abolish the allowances for bank interest and share dividends, and tax income fairly. And leave the triple lock.
I agree with that exception for the allowance on bank interest and dividends.
Re bank interest I have no objection to the allowance being removed other than it removes the need for collecting peanuts and the associated cost of collecting peanuts so it might make sense to have an allowance just for that reason.
Re dividends. Where to start. Gordon Brown completely screwed this up just so he could nobble then pension funds. George Osborne promised to put this right, but he lied and pretended he had. As a consequence the link between dividends and Corporation Tax/ACT is completely broken now. The £5000 helped for small shareholders. Philip Hammond made it worse by reducing it to £2000. For all the buggering around you might as well eliminate it other than the admin factor, but in reality the sensible set up that had worked for decades should be reintroduced. Meddling chancellors!
I think there may also be a case for changes to Winter Fuel Allowance, which currently costs of the order of 2-3 billion a year and is rather indiscrimate.
It is better to be spending the money on measures to reduce demand for heating imo.
Agree. Also the Christmas bonus is now pointless. It was a shock when I got mine for the first time last year, £10!
Won't save much. I imagine the admin probably approaches the value.
WFP is very important in the north and west - cutting it would be very unwelcome. And because it is generally flat rate it is easy to deal with.
Edit: with energy costs going up, it might actually have to be increased.
Christmas bonus costs nothing to administer other than the bank payment - from what I recall of doing a relative's executry the tenner just pops up in your bank account beside the appropriate four-weekly state pension payment.
The Christmas bonus is an interesting example of the power of inflation. It was first introduced in 1972, and has never been increased since, while, if it had kept pace with inflation it would now be £134.94
So they should either uprate it to something significant - £100 or £150, say - or just get rid of it.
Lovely did not realise I got a Christmas bonus as well
The rush to decarbonise energy production has all the hallmarks of a multi-dimensional disaster on an epic scale. Every line of activity is based on optimistic forecasts of technical progress and hiding likely costs from the western electorates.
Johnson sings the praises of Margaret Thatcher (!?) because… wait for it… she closed all the Scottish coal mines.
And somebody yesterday suggested that the PM was going to be “delicate” (sic) on his foreign trip.
Is the average 20 year old supposed to think that closing the coal mines was a bad thing?
But if Mr Johnson is claiming that closing the coal industry was a good thing for global warming then he also has rto explain why Mrs T ramped up the oil and gas from Scottish waters (and some English, esp. gas) to replace the coal. Despite its impact on global warming.
(snip)
If my understanding is correct, then that's easy. Since the various Clean Air Acts made burning coal in residential fireplaces difficult, the main user of coal was power generation. Aside from a couple of places (e.g. Fawley), oil was not used for power generation. Gas was. And gas is much, much cleaner than coal, with about half the CO2 being emitted, and none of the other nasties that coal emits.
That's correct, I think; coal was already well on the way out in Lothian in favour of north sea gas before Mrs T was elected. I suspect its retention in some houses was partly because of the miners' free allowance. The older pits were closing wholesale and the work focussing on the superpits efficient merrygoround trains to power stations such as Longannet.
For residential purposes, the various clean air acts were the killer. And you know what? They were perhaps amongst the best pieces of post-war legislation. No more silent, killer smogs.
Electrification or hydrogenisation of road transport will be another massive win for our local environments.
One imagines the Gulf Strem collapse would leave the UK with a similar continental climate comparable with Petropavlosk with the North Sea doubling as the Sea of Okhotsk:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/01/modeling-what-would-happen-to-the-uk-if-the-gulf-stream-shuts-down/ ...Things are quite a bit different if the AMOC shuts down. Rather than rising, temperatures would actually drop by an average of 3.4°C. That drop would occur on a gradient, with northern Scotland cooling the most and southern England seeing the least impact and therefore seeing conditions similar to what it currently experiences. But, more dramatically, rainfall during the growing season is expected to drop by 123mm. That drop is enough to reduce the UK's percentage of arable land from 32 percent to just seven percent. Obviously, this would cause a big hit to the UK's agricultural productivity. Irrigation could again offset this, but the scale of the changes needed would be far larger; the authors estimate adding this irrigation at ten times the value of the crops that would be produced. But they note that it's not clear if the UK would have enough water to spare to fully reverse the loss of rain....
Though given the huge uncertainties in modelling climate/weather, who knows ? Malcom's turnip season would be significantly truncated, I expect.
Thanks Nigelb, fascinating link!
England would become even more dependent on Welsh and Scottish water.
Hmmmm...
FOI reference: FOI/202000104273 Date received: 2 Oct 2020 Date responded: 29 Oct 2020
Information requested
I would like to know to what extent Scotland supplies England with water, how many water pipeline run from Scotland to England, can I see a map to this national linkup.
Response
The answer to your question is that whilst Scotland has a relative abundance of fresh water compared to an increasing number of parts of the world that are becoming water stressed due to population growth and climate factors, there are no current plans to export water to England or internationally.
On topic, Sunak's going to become as unpopular as an ex with the clap if he keeps the triple lock, cuts the UC uplift, and generally puts up payroll taxes.
When do we find out and can we bet on it/them?
Well the UC uplift ends next month, so that will be pretty soon either way.
As for the rest, pass, there's talk of moving to budget to next year now.
The triple lock does need to go - though aware it appeals to much of the Tories base. Though in the spirit of fairness if I end up paying more tax whilst the oldies are showered with goodies than the resentment will just build.
Indeed. At some point the younger voters will finally turn out and vote.
I mean, just get rid of the NI exemption for pensionable age workers for starters.
That really is an obvious (if painful) place to start. Also fully logical as there is no longer an age at which retirement from the workplace is taken. Gone are the days of 60 female / 65 male. People can opt to continue in employment and so should continue to make the same contributions.
Rationalising National Insurance does make sense. But I have never understood PB Tories' animosity to the triple lock. The full state pension is less than £10,000 a year which is less than the minimum wage. It is as mysterious as all those backbenchers who used to demand concessions for garden centres.
It'd make more sense to merge NI and income tax, and abolish the allowances for bank interest and share dividends, and tax income fairly. And leave the triple lock.
I agree with that exception for the allowance on bank interest and dividends.
Re bank interest I have no objection to the allowance being removed other than it removes the need for collecting peanuts and the associated cost of collecting peanuts so it might make sense to have an allowance just for that reason.
Re dividends. Where to start. Gordon Brown completely screwed this up just so he could nobble then pension funds. George Osborne promised to put this right, but he lied and pretended he had. As a consequence the link between dividends and Corporation Tax/ACT is completely broken now. The £5000 helped for small shareholders. Philip Hammond made it worse by reducing it to £2000. For all the buggering around you might as well eliminate it other than the admin factor, but in reality the sensible set up that had worked for decades should be reintroduced. Meddling chancellors!
I think there may also be a case for changes to Winter Fuel Allowance, which currently costs of the order of 2-3 billion a year and is rather indiscrimate.
It is better to be spending the money on measures to reduce demand for heating imo.
Agree. Also the Christmas bonus is now pointless. It was a shock when I got mine for the first time last year, £10!
Won't save much. I imagine the admin probably approaches the value.
WFP is very important in the north and west - cutting it would be very unwelcome. And because it is generally flat rate it is easy to deal with.
Edit: with energy costs going up, it might actually have to be increased.
Christmas bonus costs nothing to administer other than the bank payment - from what I recall of doing a relative's executry the tenner just pops up in your bank account beside the appropriate four-weekly state pension payment.
The Christmas bonus is an interesting example of the power of inflation. It was first introduced in 1972, and has never been increased since, while, if it had kept pace with inflation it would now be £134.94
So they should either uprate it to something significant - £100 or £150, say - or just get rid of it.
Lovely did not realise I got a Christmas bonus as well
BJ pressing all the right buttons on his visit north. For clarity, the Evening Times is a bog standard local evening paper, pretty apolitical and certainly not nationalist.
Johnson sings the praises of Margaret Thatcher (!?) because… wait for it… she closed all the Scottish coal mines.
And somebody yesterday suggested that the PM was going to be “delicate” (sic) on his foreign trip.
Is the average 20 year old supposed to think that closing the coal mines was a bad thing?
But if Mr Johnson is claiming that closing the coal industry was a good thing for global warming then he also has rto explain why Mrs T ramped up the oil and gas from Scottish waters (and some English, esp. gas) to replace the coal. Despite its impact on global warming.
(snip)
If my understanding is correct, then that's easy. Since the various Clean Air Acts made burning coal in residential fireplaces difficult, the main user of coal was power generation. Aside from a couple of places (e.g. Fawley), oil was not used for power generation. Gas was. And gas is much, much cleaner than coal, with about half the CO2 being emitted, and none of the other nasties that coal emits.
That's correct, I think; coal was already well on the way out in Lothian in favour of north sea gas before Mrs T was elected. I suspect its retention in some houses was partly because of the miners' free allowance. The older pits were closing wholesale and the work focussing on the superpits efficient merrygoround trains to power stations such as Longannet.
For residential purposes, the various clean air acts were the killer. And you know what? They were perhaps amongst the best pieces of post-war legislation. No more silent, killer smogs.
Electrification or hydrogenisation of road transport will be another massive win for our local environments.
And while I have every sympathy for miners abandoned to the dole due to changing energy usage, I will have precisely fuck all sympathy for the hardship caused to the House of Saud thereby.
BJ pressing all the right buttons on his visit north. For clarity, the Evening Times is a bog standard local evening paper, pretty apolitical and certainly not nationalist.
Piers Corbyn is both the worst Piers and the worst Corbyn. Discuss.
Two longest piers in the UK are Southend and Southport.
Neither are particularly pleasant, though. Southwold Pier is superb (as is the whole town), and Bangor Pier is also worth visiting, if only for the views. Clevedon Pier is simply beautiful.
Most piers are dismal, dreary places if you don't like amusement arcades. Southwold has bucked that trend, whilst Bangor Pier is much more of a traditional 'promenading' pier.
I really, really want to see Birnbeck Pier at Weston-Super-Mare restored.
Clarence Pier in Portsmouth is an utterly depressing place - barely worth calling a pier IMO.
Ryde is number four and also the oldest. Probably the only one you can drive along? And destined for a revamp.
Also ride a train on?
Indeed, but doesn’t Southend also have a train?
Yes it does, 3ft gauge, so a little on the narrow side!
Southport Pier had a tram (battery powered) until 2015.
Not usually much into the apocalypse, but this is a bit of a downer. Apparently the Gulf Stream is on the point of collapse, leading to worldwide starvation and the end of civilisation. Kind of nowish.
On topic, Sunak's going to become as unpopular as an ex with the clap if he keeps the triple lock, cuts the UC uplift, and generally puts up payroll taxes.
When do we find out and can we bet on it/them?
Well the UC uplift ends next month, so that will be pretty soon either way.
As for the rest, pass, there's talk of moving to budget to next year now.
The triple lock does need to go - though aware it appeals to much of the Tories base. Though in the spirit of fairness if I end up paying more tax whilst the oldies are showered with goodies than the resentment will just build.
Indeed. At some point the younger voters will finally turn out and vote.
I mean, just get rid of the NI exemption for pensionable age workers for starters.
That really is an obvious (if painful) place to start. Also fully logical as there is no longer an age at which retirement from the workplace is taken. Gone are the days of 60 female / 65 male. People can opt to continue in employment and so should continue to make the same contributions.
Rationalising National Insurance does make sense. But I have never understood PB Tories' animosity to the triple lock. The full state pension is less than £10,000 a year which is less than the minimum wage. It is as mysterious as all those backbenchers who used to demand concessions for garden centres.
It'd make more sense to merge NI and income tax, and abolish the allowances for bank interest and share dividends, and tax income fairly. And leave the triple lock.
I agree with that exception for the allowance on bank interest and dividends.
Re bank interest I have no objection to the allowance being removed other than it removes the need for collecting peanuts and the associated cost of collecting peanuts so it might make sense to have an allowance just for that reason.
Re dividends. Where to start. Gordon Brown completely screwed this up just so he could nobble then pension funds. George Osborne promised to put this right, but he lied and pretended he had. As a consequence the link between dividends and Corporation Tax/ACT is completely broken now. The £5000 helped for small shareholders. Philip Hammond made it worse by reducing it to £2000. For all the buggering around you might as well eliminate it other than the admin factor, but in reality the sensible set up that had worked for decades should be reintroduced. Meddling chancellors!
I think there may also be a case for changes to Winter Fuel Allowance, which currently costs of the order of 2-3 billion a year and is rather indiscrimate.
It is better to be spending the money on measures to reduce demand for heating imo.
Agree. Also the Christmas bonus is now pointless. It was a shock when I got mine for the first time last year, £10!
Won't save much. I imagine the admin probably approaches the value.
WFP is very important in the north and west - cutting it would be very unwelcome. And because it is generally flat rate it is easy to deal with.
Edit: with energy costs going up, it might actually have to be increased.
Christmas bonus costs nothing to administer other than the bank payment - from what I recall of doing a relative's executry the tenner just pops up in your bank account beside the appropriate four-weekly state pension payment.
The Christmas bonus is an interesting example of the power of inflation. It was first introduced in 1972, and has never been increased since, while, if it had kept pace with inflation it would now be £134.94
So they should either uprate it to something significant - £100 or £150, say - or just get rid of it.
Not forgetting incomes have increased by more than inflation.
I can find a timeseries of GDP per head in CVM market prices - which I assume is stripping out the inflationary effect, and that shows an increase from £3485 in 1972Q1 to £8141 at our pre-pandemic peak, so that would suggest increasing the Christmas bonus to £315.22 if you wanted it to reflect the increase in our nation's prosperity since 1972.
Which would be a very considerable sum, and worth sending a letter for.
Of course, following that logic you’d also have to up the state pension to around £200 a week as well.
BJ pressing all the right buttons on his visit north. For clarity, the Evening Times is a bog standard local evening paper, pretty apolitical and certainly not nationalist.
Well, that's done for a fair chunk of the supposed Labour tactical voting for Tories in Lothian, Lanarkshire, etc. etc. I mean, they still have MIners' Welfare and Social Clubs all over the place.
Supreme Leader Boris is a dunderheid? Don’t tell FUDHY.
It's not just the racial attitudes of the 19thC that the US right are embracing...
Florida woman who's an antimasker "wants to promote health the way her generation’s grandparents experienced it. 'When they got sick, they didn’t need the crutch of pharmaceuticals or antibiotics to get better. They just got sick and they got well.'” https://twitter.com/BGrueskin/status/1422760495631716353
(Though it should be noted that vaccination of sorts was a thing back then, too.)
What's particularly funny about that (apart from the obvious point that when they got sick, a lot of them died) is that the loony Florida woman's lawsuit is about the wearing of masks on planes. I mean, if she wants to be like her grandparents' generation, why the hell is she flying anywhere in the first place?
My grandparents flew to the south of France for their honeymoon…
My grandparents lived in Derby. Just before the war, they bought a small cottage in Twyford, on the Trent, to holiday in. The cottage, which they used for holidays and weekends away, is about five miles from the city centre. AFAIAA, they did not have a car, and that five miles was as far as they could practically get with any regularity, given they had one kid and my dad on the way.
Oddly enough, many of my family still live within a few miles of there, and I was born just a mile away, right by the Trent and Mersey Canal.
Growing up in Devon I knew people for whom a trip to Bristol was a once in a lifetime event, and the furthest they ever went from home.
I'd love to see it again, but back in the early 1990's there was a segment on TV news in London about a woman in her eighties who had never left the Isle of Dogs. All through the roaring twenties, the depression, the war, the swinging sixties; she had remained on the isle. Despite it's wonderful transport links (even in the seventies and eighties), she had never been tempted out.
ISTR she was taken into the city to see shows and meet someone important.
This column in the ever-entertaining 'Guardian Experiences' column is purportedly about a man who eats the same dinner every day but is really about his love of the Welsh valley he lives in: And has left precisely once in his life, 30 years ago, for a trip to a different farm.
I think there's something about farmers. A distant relative of mine was born, raised, and lives on, a farm. For nearly thirty years he has worked in the nearest city, about ten miles away. A few years back another relative got a phone call from him. He was in tears as he had two routes into work, and both were blocked off for roadworks.
There were plenty of diversionary routes (it is in the Midlands), but the thought of using a different route had driven him to tears.
Perhaps it is because farmers are used to a regular rhythm, both through the day and the year.
A friend of mine in Portsmouth took her grandmother to London for a significant birthday (80th, 90th, something like that) ten years ago. As the train went under the A27, grandma said it was the first time she'd ever left Portsea Island. Said the island had everything she needed. London was apparently alright - but she wasn't bothered about going again.
Lolz, hardened, world weary realpolitickers of the Speccie actually big, fat suckers, who'd have thunk?
Gerry Hassan @GerryHassan 26m This is a brilliant article on the @Spectator's plans to trash @MarcusRashford. Looks like @FraserNelson & his pals have been well & truly had. This is the problem when you view the world thru hatred, bile & bigotry. Thank you @deccamitford
Comments
https://tinyurl.com/chzw87h3
Its quite simple really - if you are prepared to sell your principles for a bag of money offered by relative strangers, then you are the kind of person who is prepared to sell your principles for a bag of money offered by relative strangers.
Oh and being very 'green' - that's also "Woke" according to the new Right lexicon.
It's a kind of April-May pattern which hasn't really shifted on - we may hope for some energy into the atmosphere from hurricanes at lower latitudes in the next few weeks and I suspect we'll have an excellent early autumn.
Longer term I think the British and Northern European climate will eventually resemble that of the Indian Sub-Continent with scorching heat followed by monsoon like spells of rain but with drier winter weather especially at altitude.
So they should either uprate it to something significant - £100 or £150, say - or just get rid of it.
Oddly enough, many of my family still live within a few miles of there, and I was born just a mile away, right by the Trent and Mersey Canal.
Two stand out for me off the top of my head - Elmet (Fiona Mozley) and Narcopolis (Jeet Thayil).
Edited for awful autocorrect…
So, you never know, you might have longer left then you think.
I am sure Boris' remarks will have delighted the anti coal Scottish Greens however, the SNP's new coalition partner, even if they do not go down as well in the Red Wall.
'The Prime Minister said: “Look at what we’ve done already.
“We’ve transitioned away from coal in my lifetime, thanks to Margaret Thatcher who closed so many coal mines.”
“Across the country we had a big early start and we’re now moving rapidly away from coal all together."
“I thought that would get you going.”
“We’re now down to less than 2%, I think it’s I% of our energy comes from coal.”'
A friend of mine who specialises in palaeoecology reckons the last ice age ended 'on the first Tuesday in Lent' - ie it was an extremely fast flip from cold to hot.
There's no reason to suppose that any changes will be gradual.
I have all Grantas from No.1 and I think it's always a repository of very good writing, some great. And as I noted, in bite-size chunks.
And also disagree about the Booker. I've just this minute finished History of Wolves which was less good than others I have read but it is a safe repositary of "literature" which you can then take (Mantel, obvs, and the two I mentioned earlier) or leave (Brief History for example, and a few others).
The point being you are I believe in safe hands. Very difficult to find random good books just off the shelf even if you do ask for recommendations. And the Booker ones have been through some decent and well-read hands before they get to us.
But of course each to their own.
Needs to be put on the same list as p*n**ppl* on p*zz* imo.
Johnson sings the praises of Margaret Thatcher (!?) because… wait for it… she closed all the Scottish coal mines.
And somebody yesterday suggested that the PM was going to be “delicate” (sic) on his foreign trip.
I really wanted to be good at it, my WW2 obsession was just taking off, it would’ve been nice to learn the lingo to read stuff, memoirs and the like, that never gets translated.
I was shite at it. Der, die and das? Couldn’t get my head round it. Bastards.
Most piers are dismal, dreary places if you don't like amusement arcades. Southwold has bucked that trend, whilst Bangor Pier is much more of a traditional 'promenading' pier.
I really, really want to see Birnbeck Pier at Weston-Super-Mare restored.
Clarence Pier in Portsmouth is an utterly depressing place - barely worth calling a pier IMO.
The status quo is not sustainable.
He’s not wrong.
There are plenty of English and Welsh Red Wall Tory held seats and Tory target seats which used to have a mine however, by far the biggest winner from Boris' gaffe therefore will be Starmer, not Sturgeon
What life definitely isn't is a steady climb ending in Mount Everest as the crowning achievement. You need to factor in a gradual fade, and have things that really stand out in your memory.
I especially like your explicit admission that Scotland is not part of the “heartlands” of the UK. Ho ho. Ya don’t say?
Anyway I think it's clear that overseas Scots need to pay more tax.
Whatever the issues I think we have a good while before any of them are settled. Next real politics is in 2022.
ISTR she was taken into the city to see shows and meet someone important.
If the annual increase is, say 4%, then increase it by 10% for the winter quarter and 2% in the other three.
Annoyingly, whilst I was in Vienna one of my brothers was in Leipzig (for about the same length of time), and he nailed it.
I'd like to see him try to claim at COP in Glasgow that closing down the Scottish coal industry is a credit point for the UK.
It wasn't particularly efficient in many places - I'm not denying that - but closing the modern superpits and not helping the people thrown on the scrapheap was unforgiveable to very many. That is what is remembered hereabouts.
England would become even more dependent on Welsh and Scottish water.
… for Yes.
The two biggest drops are between the Wars, and then in the 1960s.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_mining_in_the_United_Kingdom#/media/File:UK_Coal_Mining_Jobs.png
The 80 is notable as "the end".
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/apr/16/experience-ive-had-the-same-supper-for-10-years
It is middle class professional voters who are the backbone of the No vote in Scotland and they could not care less about coal, they are very pro clean energy. Plus the SNP are in now in bed with the coal hating Scottish Greens anyway.
However it could have a more detrimental impact in England with working class ex miners and their families in the RedWall who voted Tory in 2019 for the first time
… wait for it…
… Russia!
I’m looking into the dacha market.
But Mr Johnson was indeed focussing on the 1980s closures, so I was thinking in the context.
https://www.anglianwater.co.uk/help-and-advice/drinking-water-advice/where-your-water-comes-from/
While it’s nice for you lovely eliminationist Anglophobes to believe, England does not import water from Scotland, so your gentle civic nationalism will have to fantasise a new way of offing us all.
Gordon Brown banging on about federalism for the 52,167th time.
https://www.csis.org/analysis/climate-change-will-reshape-russia
There are no winners really from climate change, except maybe northern European seaside resorts in summer
There were plenty of diversionary routes (it is in the Midlands), but the thought of using a different route had driven him to tears.
Perhaps it is because farmers are used to a regular rhythm, both through the day and the year.
Electrification or hydrogenisation of road transport will be another massive win for our local environments.
Both utter rubbish.
He is the Johnson of all Johnsons.
Southport Pier had a tram (battery powered) until 2015.
Of course, following that logic you’d also have to up the state pension to around £200 a week as well.
Did tell you all that Barca's financial problems made it unlikely he could resign and play for them again.
La Liga ain't shifting from their version of financial fair play.
London was apparently alright - but she wasn't bothered about going again.
Gerry Hassan
@GerryHassan
26m
This is a brilliant article on the @Spectator's plans to trash @MarcusRashford. Looks like @FraserNelson
& his pals have been well & truly had. This is the problem when you view the world thru hatred, bile & bigotry. Thank you @deccamitford
https://tinyurl.com/3ms9smw7
https://www.fcbarcelona.com/en/football/first-team/news/2207655/leo-messi-not-staying-at-fc-barcelona
Good news for Spurs?
Citeh go for Messi instead of Kane?