Mr. Ping, got to show just how green and virtuous the government is (not unique to this one, all of them to Blair at least have done it). Can't nasty coal and gas power. I mean, yes, they keep the lights on but, boo! Carbon!*
Meanwhile, in China...
*I've caricatured my position slightly. I do think most renewables have some promise. But wind is stupid because it's unpredictable, and we need sufficient capacity from coal/gas/nuclear to crank out what we need. And now we're paying through the nose because politicians want to parade their green credentials and can easily afford to do so. Cf boilers.
Why not take the HS2 budget and reallocate to offshore wind ?
We've got one of the richest potential assets in the world here, and can flog to the Germans, Dutch, Belgiums on windy days who all have far less territorial waters per head than we do.
It'd power our electric cars too.
I know it's not that windy right now but with enough capacity you can break simply outbuild quiet days since there is pretty much always wind at sea.
I'm not even particularly in favour of this for green arguments, though they are a nice bonus on top.
We have 24GW of wind capacity, (on and offshore) and it's currently generating 2GW and hasn't topped 5GW in the last 20 days.
On days of max power requirement (mid winter, high presssure, clear skies, freezing) there is no wind.
The more intermittent capacity we build, the more has to be spent on back-up capacity to sit there with its finger up its arse* waiting to be called on when it is overcast and windless. It just raises costs.
We need low-carbon dispatchable generation. Or CCS, as it is also known.
*Also known as receiving a capacity payment.
I am a massive CCS sceptic. From wiki (yes, I know...):
"Despite carbon capture increasingly appearing in policymakers' proposals to address climate change,[11] existing CCS technologies have significant shortcomings that limit their ability to reduce or negate carbon emissions; current CCS processes are usually less economical than renewable sources of energy[12][13] and most remain unproven at scale.[14] Opponents also point out that many CCS projects have failed to deliver on promised emissions reductions. [15]"
Sorry, but that is a distorted and incomplete account. Ask the renewables crowd what the cost is of delivering dispatchable power. And without CCS, how do we decarbonise industry and heating?
CCS with biomass fuel can even give net negative emissions. More readily than direct air capture, for sure.
Okay, I know you're a great fan of CCS. It's just that such schemes have been discussed for years - as I believe both of is have on here. And yet I'm not seeing many large-scale projects coming on stream, especially in non-EOR environments.
It is coming. Norway, Netherlands, Canada and, wait for it, right here in the UK. Expect to hear some news ahead of COP26.
Fair enough.
I'm a believer in a rich and varied power generation / storage ecosystem. CCS might well be part of that. But I wonder why everyone's not doing it at a large scale.
Loving the fact that the No.10 read-out of @BorisJohnson's phone call to @EmmaRaducanu resembles all other No.10 read-outs of calls to powerful overseas leaders, stressing harmony.
“Both the Prime Minister and Emma agreed on the importance of......"
Wow an almost 30% fall WoW in England and it also looks like deaths are now starting to trend downwards too following the hospitalisation trend.
I watched the scientist bit of the conference and he was banging on about how we're going into winter with more infections and more people in hospital etc... I don't understand why we're still making comparisons to last December, especially wrt hospitalisation and death where we know the vaccine programme has significantly reduced the individual and national risks to being almost negligible.
I also saw the first question from the public, what an eyeroll.
Agreed ... the doom-mongers seem to want to wring the last drop of despair out of this sh*t-show rather than pivoting to a more hopeful outlook (which an exhausted and demoralized populace desperately needs).
If there is anything positive to take out of the mishandling of all this it's the effectiveness of the vaccine program but we seem very reluctant to celebrate that success and take the earliest possible advantage of it.
I suspect the hand of the SPI-B still at work ... they really need to be run out of government or we'll never get out from under this thing.
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 1h Just for everyone still saying on TV interviews or in other parts of the media that "Cases are rising", here's a graph of what cases in England are *actually* doing. That bit where they're lower on the right than to the left: that means they're falling. I hope this clears that up
There was an epic episode from one or more posters on here the other day when they claimed cases were rising to record levels, when they were in fact falling at that time. That said, the very same poster(s) predicted 100,000 cases 'next week' in the middle of July, insisted that pubs wouldn't be allowed to open outside on 12 April because it wasn't viable, and continue to make hysterical and inaccurate hyperbolic comments, seemingly for their own warped entertainment.
So it's not just the media – there's a lot of luxuriating in doom about.
It's a very popular pastime.
Dont forget Sir Keir's prophecies of doom regarding the 'Johnson Variant' and the summer of chaos in the NHS that would result from lifting restrictions
If he'd been right it would have paid off big time but being wrong didn't carry equal downside. Apart from you everybody's forgotten about it. So it was a win v flat bet. You of all people should appreciate that you do those given the chance.
Its like nobody remembers his call for firebreaks based on massively dodgy data.
We can go generic here. Throughout the pandemic nobody "out there" has given a flying fuck about what Starmer and Labour think about anything...
Might have helped if they'd actually bothered to oppose in any significant way.
Would have made no difference. In fact that would have irritated people.
1) It is 1970 since a party with this size of majority lost office at an election.
2) Boundary changes make winning many former Labour seats back just that little bit harder.
3) The aftershock of Brexit may be important but the key question is where Brexit party voters go. They appear to have been mostly disillusioned Labour voters who didn’t want to vote Tory. They have three options (1) to go the whole hog and vote Tory, as in Hartlepool, in which case another 50-odd Labour seats suddenly look vulnerable (2) to return to Labour, which is what they did in Wales at the assembly elections, in which case NOM is value or (3) to abstain.
I think probably around half will go for three on the basis neither party represents them. The rest I think it will vary by MP, which is where I think Brexiteer MPs in the red wall may get an incumbency bonus this time.
A general election campaign will be an opportunity for English voters, outside of the urban cores and university seats, to take a proper look at Labour and be reminded of everything they dislike about it.
The Conservative vote share has been climbing, to varying degrees, for the last six general elections on the bounce. With Farage out of the picture and his vehicles piled up in the junkyard, a seventh increase seems plausible. At this stage I'd be inclined to back a three-figure Government majority next time around.
I like that, a gutsy call.
However... Even if the Conservatives manage to maintain their vote share in 2024, I suspect they'll still lose seats (after boundary effects), simply because voters get better at tactical voting.
The scope for the anti-Tory vote become much more efficient on its own is limited. They start with 317 seats in which they won 47.5% or more of the vote. Only once (Newcastle-under-Lyme, 2017) have the Tories hit that percentage and lost since 1979.
Okay, so boundary changes make this difficult to assess (the cities seat is being split up, etc.), but the Tory vote needs to be eroded in most of these for them to come into play.
Interesting list. Only 20 Tory seats won with less than 45%, and therefore susceptible to tactical voting if the Con share stays the same.
I can't see Starmer directly winning over many socially conservative voters directly from the Tories in these seats although I can see some 2019 Tory voters staying at home. I would be surprised if he had any chance of winning some red wall seats like Bolsover or even Leigh but some seats towards the bottom of the list (which I do not class as Red Wall seats) like Bury N, Dewsbury and Peterborough I would say are actually pretty likely to go back to Labour at the next election (of course we don't know about boundary changes etc).
Some seats also not on this list like Keighley I would say Labour also has a good chance despite the Tory share being high in 48% as the demographics are similar to Batley and Spen.
West Yorkshire in particular is interesting as there is such a wide potential range of outcomes and Labour still has to guard against a few extra 'Hartlepools' happening like Yvette Cooper and Jon Trickett's seats.
But would Hartlepool have been lost had the by election been held today or in the coming weeks? There is a reasonable chance that Labour would now hold the seat.
1) It is 1970 since a party with this size of majority lost office at an election.
2) Boundary changes make winning many former Labour seats back just that little bit harder.
3) The aftershock of Brexit may be important but the key question is where Brexit party voters go. They appear to have been mostly disillusioned Labour voters who didn’t want to vote Tory. They have three options (1) to go the whole hog and vote Tory, as in Hartlepool, in which case another 50-odd Labour seats suddenly look vulnerable (2) to return to Labour, which is what they did in Wales at the assembly elections, in which case NOM is value or (3) to abstain.
I think probably around half will go for three on the basis neither party represents them. The rest I think it will vary by MP, which is where I think Brexiteer MPs in the red wall may get an incumbency bonus this time.
A general election campaign will be an opportunity for English voters, outside of the urban cores and university seats, to take a proper look at Labour and be reminded of everything they dislike about it.
The Conservative vote share has been climbing, to varying degrees, for the last six general elections on the bounce. With Farage out of the picture and his vehicles piled up in the junkyard, a seventh increase seems plausible. At this stage I'd be inclined to back a three-figure Government majority next time around.
I like that, a gutsy call.
However... Even if the Conservatives manage to maintain their vote share in 2024, I suspect they'll still lose seats (after boundary effects), simply because voters get better at tactical voting.
The scope for the anti-Tory vote become much more efficient on its own is limited. They start with 317 seats in which they won 47.5% or more of the vote. Only once (Newcastle-under-Lyme, 2017) have the Tories hit that percentage and lost since 1979.
Okay, so boundary changes make this difficult to assess (the cities seat is being split up, etc.), but the Tory vote needs to be eroded in most of these for them to come into play.
Interesting list. Only 20 Tory seats won with less than 45%, and therefore susceptible to tactical voting if the Con share stays the same.
I can't see Starmer directly winning over many socially conservative voters directly from the Tories in these seats although I can see some 2019 Tory voters staying at home. I would be surprised if he had any chance of winning some red wall seats like Bolsover or even Leigh but some seats towards the bottom of the list (which I do not class as Red Wall seats) like Bury N, Dewsbury and Peterborough I would say are actually pretty likely to go back to Labour at the next election (of course we don't know about boundary changes etc).
Some seats also not on this list like Keighley I would say Labour also has a good chance despite the Tory share being high in 48% as the demographics are similar to Batley and Spen.
West Yorkshire in particular is interesting as there is such a wide potential range of outcomes and Labour still has to guard against a few extra 'Hartlepools' happening like Yvette Cooper and Jon Trickett's seats.
But would Hartlepool have been lost had the by election been held today or in the coming weeks? There is a reasonable chance that Labour would now hold the seat.
I don't know TBH. It was a perfect storm in timing and poor candidate section for sure. Funny result in 2019 with the split with BXP as well.
It almost seems like the SPD went ahead as a result of defections from Greens supporters, and now previous FDP voters have responded by going back to the CDU/CSU. A sort of domino effect.
I'm not sure about this, only GMS and civey are showing the CDU/CSU only 2% behind, most of the polls show the CDU/CSU trailing by about 4-6% behind the SPD. Today's kantar poll still has the CDU/CSU 6% behind. Also I'm not sure younger FDP voters will switch to the CDU/CSU even if their not keen on a SPD-Green-FDP coalition.
Interestingly all the polls have the SPD on 25/26% and the AfD on 11/12% but there is more relative disagreement for the other parties.
It's possible that the CDU/CSU could rally enough older voters to end up only 1/2% behind the SPD but there is so much uncertainty.
I have no idea what will happen to the CDU/CSU really but Laschet is still catastrophically unpopular. They have also undershot their polls in 2005, 2009 and 2017.
Baerbock is also unpopular but I don't think that's as much of a problem among younger Green voters where they get their strength from.
I can see the Green vote holding up quite well in the south and a massive turnout among younger voters could still benefit the Greens. It's still not unthinkable that the CDU/CSU could come third even though I don't think that'll happen.
Comments
I'm a believer in a rich and varied power generation / storage ecosystem. CCS might well be part of that. But I wonder why everyone's not doing it at a large scale.
“Both the Prime Minister and Emma agreed on the importance of......"
https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1437806145343741959?s=20
If there is anything positive to take out of the mishandling of all this it's the effectiveness of the vaccine program but we seem very reluctant to celebrate that success and take the earliest possible advantage of it.
I suspect the hand of the SPI-B still at work ... they really need to be run out of government or we'll never get out from under this thing.
Interestingly all the polls have the SPD on 25/26% and the AfD on 11/12% but there is more relative disagreement for the other parties.
It's possible that the CDU/CSU could rally enough older voters to end up only 1/2% behind the SPD but there is so much uncertainty.
I have no idea what will happen to the CDU/CSU really but Laschet is still catastrophically unpopular. They have also undershot their polls in 2005, 2009 and 2017.
Baerbock is also unpopular but I don't think that's as much of a problem among younger Green voters where they get their strength from.
I can see the Green vote holding up quite well in the south and a massive turnout among younger voters could still benefit the Greens. It's still not unthinkable that the CDU/CSU could come third even though I don't think that'll happen.