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Davey reminds us of the threat his party poses in “blue wall” seats – politicalbetting.com
Davey reminds us of the threat his party poses in “blue wall” seats – politicalbetting.com
“Standing between the British people and our fair deal is a big blue wall”Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey tells his party conference “it’s up to us to tear it down” as he closes his conference speechhttps://t.co/R0tqSZh7pz pic.twitter.com/I98atlhfD0
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Hardly a surprising strategy and it encompasses some of the breakthrough seats from 1997 where the LD tradition and strength has been quickest to recover.
Much though we'd all like the LDs to win 450 seats at the next election, the truth is 25-30 seats would be at the top end of ambition and a solid mid-teens share of the vote. Whether that's enough to deprive the Conservatives of their majority will depend on events elsewhere and it's certainly no commitment to going into Government with Starmer.
We know so little of Starmer's plan and vision for mid-2020s Britain and beyond, anyone can project anything. I'm not as convinced as some there will be huge areas of common ground between the LDs and Labour so we'll see.
How post-Brexit bureaucracy is driving up the cost of UK gardening https://on.ft.com/3tUFzIr
From the sound of it Davey was talking earlier this week about tax rises but I'm not sure which?
However, the desire to remove Johnson from Downing Street would be compelling for Davey, and I can't see how he does that without at least some tacit arrangement with Labour assuming of course the numbers stack up. It would be an easy sell.
Whilst minor countries talk about submarines, the colossus of North Korea has a train-launched ballistic missile!
https://www.nknews.org/2021/09/north-korea-tested-new-train-launched-ballistic-missile-system-kcna/
(The US and Russia tried similar things yonks ago.)
Peat compost? Good, it should be banned. Peat extraction destroys habitats and emits large quantities of CO2.
Trees from Holland? Good. Biosecurity might improve. Ash dieback has been particularly bad this year. We should be growing our own native trees and avoiding the import of diseases as far as possible.
Garden flowers, also from Holland? Good. Again, there's no need to import this stuff.
Workers in nurseries not being prepared to work for peanuts? Good.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/sep/19/i-dont-think-well-survive-the-winter-small-energy-suppliers-call-for-help
https://twitter.com/katebevan/status/1439624266618753030?s=20
Declaration of interest: the Flatlands here include the two largest lowland bogs in the UK which were effectively destroyed by the peat industry. There's no need for us to export the destruction to Estonia as well.
A poll I've not seen on Europe elects but was on the front page of the Morgenbladio, which as we all know is Iceland's most popular daily paper and the website (see below) is apparently Iceland's most visited.
https://www.mbl.is/frettir/kosning/2021/09/18/vinstri_sveifla_thegar_vika_er_eftir/
For those whose Icelandic isn't quite up to it, try Google Translate or the figures (changes on 2017 Althing election);
Independence Party: 20.3% (-4.9)
Social Democrats: 13.0% (+0.9)
Progressive: 12.7% (+2.0)
Left-Green Movement: 12.1% (-4.8)
Pirate: 11.8% (+2.6)
Reform Party: 10.7% (+4.0)
Icelandic Socialist: 8.6% (+8.6)
People's Party: 5.6% (-1.3)
Centre Party: 4.6% (-6.3)
The government coalition of Independence, Progressive and Left-Green is down just under eight points from last time and would lose their majority in the Althing on these figures. I don't quite see the alternative Government coalition and I suspect this will be a messy inconclusive election.
Threshold is 5% and there are 63 seats in the Althing (as we all know).
The lead stories are a volcanic eruption in the Canary Islands and whether there is any need for capital letters in the Icelandic language.
A few months ago, Green were encouraging customers to top up their accounts, giving 10% extra credit. I read on one forum, there are customers who took advantage and now have five figure credit balances.
This could all get very messy…
Julia Hartley-Brewer
@JuliaHB1
·
4h
This is genuinely extraordinary. The Orwellian double-think needed to make such statements is terrifying.
A woman is an adult human female. That's a fact. Trans women are biological men who choose to live as women, as they should be free to do. But they're not women. #IAmAWoman
===
She's talking about Ed Davey's statement that a trans woman is a woman.
However, in view of what is happening now that 2 year contact to the 31st August 2023 looks a very good deal
First time in ages I'd seen anyone doing it. They're a lot braver than I am...
My supplier, Good Energy has done a blog item on it:
https://www.goodenergy.co.uk/blog/2021/09/15/why-are-wholesale-energy-prices-so-high-and-what-does-it-mean/
Wild swimming is fantastic.
If you don’t like it, fine. But the books, and the articles, are useful.
But in the medium term, we're going to have to get used to higher energy prices. That's the cost of going green.
This what happens when you sell fixed, and buy variable. I.e., the price of wholesale electricity is not fixed, but the price at which you sell to consumers is. Suppliers could could have hedged (i.e. forward bought electricity), but they instead decided to take a chance to earn some extra profits.
Why has the price of wholesale electricity gone through the roof?
Well, that’s a classic knock on effect of Covid.
The price of electricity is (largely) set by the price of natural gas. Because that is the marginal producer.
Now, 18 months ago, as Covid hit, demand for electricity and natural gas collapsed. This resulted in a massive pull back by onshore oil and gas drillers. The number of rigs drilling in the US dropped by two-thirds.
In the old days, this wouldn’t have mattered so much. In the old days, oil and gas projects were long-term, and a drop in investment would only show up in production some time later. With onshore unconventionals, that’s not true any more. These new wells have pretty short lives. If you stop drilling, then the natural gas (and oil) stops flowing.
The market then did what it was supposed to do. The price of natural gas stabilised as drilling capacity got taken out the market.
This year, Covid is on the way out, and demand for natural gas is rising. The problem is that some people who worked on rigs got other jobs. And so, the rig count is taking more time to rise than one would expect for the current price of oil and gas. And this is feeding through to even higher natural gas prices.
Of course, this will overshoot the other way now. As natural gas prices get high and stay high, oil & gas companies will feel more confident in investing in production. And it’s not like we don’t know where the gas is. So this is a short term problem. But a very painful one for some energy companies.
My irritation here is that this is not a difficult market to hedge. Some things don’t have active futures markets, and so intermediaries are taking big risks. Energy isn’t like that. You want to sell an MMBTU in 2024 - you can do that. Suppliers got greedy. They thought - why bother hedging, when I can take extra profit. But they forgot that if they called it wrong they wouldn’t have a business.
I said no. They were fine with it. I’m guessing journalists don’t negotiate?
Typical Boris Kim Jong-un
Marr pointed out that the candidate in Chesham and Amersham had won by going against national Lib Dem positions on planning and HS2. On the former Davey mounted his own rather half-hearted attack on the planning reforms, without explaining what the Lib Dem alternative to fix housing supply is. On the latter, he argued that Sarah Green had the same stance as Cheryl Gillan, as if this was a relevant point. Clearly the Lib Dems can win by-elections by taking different and contradictory positions according to the circumstances of the place, but the tactic isn't as applicable to general elections.
On trans rights, and being asked why a member was disciplined for wearing a 'Woman: adult human female' t-shirt, his response was to blame Boris Johnson for 'toxifying the debate', which is odd as I can't recall Johnson mentioning the trans/sex-based rights issue once in his premiership. He also confirmed the Lib Dem position as one which would allow people to identify their way into spaces intended for the opposite sex, which goes down like a cup of cold sick with a lot of women.
Finally, Davey just doesn't look or sound like a party leader. There's no fire in his belly. He makes SKS look exciting.
He was non committal but how many know abut this green charge
This is from the 2019 manifesto:
A good government should responsibly manage the nation’s finances: taking advantage of opportunities to borrow to invest in key infrastructure while making sure that day-to-day spending does not exceed the amount of money raised in taxes.
P/S Reverend Sue, and others---good on yah.
https://christianclimateaction.org/2021/03/18/revd-sue-parfitt-79-commits-contempt-of-court-over-climate-emergency/
https://twitter.com/jowhiley/status/1437767225390374915?s=19
Cause I'm Ed Davey, yes, I'm the real Davey
All you other Ed Daveys, are just imitating
So won't the real Ed Davey, please stand up
Please stand up, please stand up
I'm not sure why.
There is a Danish newspaper called Morgenblad I think.
For other uses of the word blade = leaf, in Old English, maegdblaed = vulva. (Apologies for the spelling, but I don't seem to have ash on my keyboard despite having eð and þorn)
ESB is sending me lots and lots of emails offering me £50 to break my contract and sign up to a new 2 year contract today.
When someone is pushing something that hard… I didn’t even both to check the terms because I guessed it wasn’t going to be in my interest…
I once spent a year walking around the coast. in all that time by the sea, including the scorchingly hot summer of 2003, I only took one dip in the sea, and also a loch on the same day.
And had sex in the loch.
Thinking about it, that's perhaps why I don't like wild swimming: who knows what other people have been up to in the water!
#ButIt’sProbablyAllBecauseOfBrexit @Farooq
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1016819/UKHSA_12073_COVID-19_easy_read_jab_consent_form_CYP.pdf
My daughter's school (large state school) has had calls from parents concerned that the jabs will be provided at school and to make it clear that they do not give permission for this. The school has responded by sending a letter to all parents saying that this is in fact nothing to do with the school, it will all be run by the NHS when they visit the school site. (The above PDF was not enclosed with the letter, I'm assuming it will be shown to each child on the day.)
AFAIK the NHS team will not be contacting parents in advance of their visit. This will just be a tick-box exercise production line.
I find this all very concerning indeed.
Yep, the market is working just fine, and a bunch of spivs are about to be "corrected" out of existence.
"I never came ‘out’ as transgender or gay because I was never ‘in’ and I’ve never known anything except the life I have. I either lived in the dream world in which I was a woman or else I lived awkwardly in the outside world where I was inadequate."
"The only thing in my life I have wanted and didn’t get was to be a woman. It will be my life’s biggest regret. If the operation had been available and cheap when I was young, say when I was twenty-five or twenty-six, I would have jumped at the chance. My life would have been much simpler as a result. I would have told nobody. Instead, I would have gone to live in a distant town and run a knitting wool shop and no one would ever have known my secret. I would have joined the real world and it would have been wonderful."
https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2017/11/21/quentin-crisp-reflects-on-trans-identity-in-exclusive-final-autobiography/
1 - The small ones going bust don't pay it.
2 - It's the only working green programme currently running.
3 - All the people complaining about over high prices because they haven't invested in their homes can get help from it to improve their insulation and so on.
Lord save us from this clowning...
I’m locked in until November and wondering when to refix (I like certainty for budgeting purposes) or whether I should ride the tiger down for a bit.
And do you know how much homeowners have availed themselves of the scheme
Glorious.
AFAICR Sandwood Bay is where the last sighting of a Mermaid was made in the UK. And, by personal attestation, where the whisky fairies live. Perhaps there's a connection between the two...
They are arguing for people to trespass and swim in reservoirs in violation of the standing rules, and piggybacking on the very questionable case for a right of navigation on all English waterways. I see injunctions incoming if this takes off, because if it moves beyond the hardcore who really know their stuff people will die.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/sep/19/in-at-the-deep-end-the-activists-plunging-into-the-wild-swimming-campaign
Whoops now 3 nil
If you don't want to rough it in a tent, stay in a fecking hotel.
- "You are a man who identifies as a woman."
- "No, I'm a woman who was born a boy."
I don't see that this get us very far.
The issue, at heart and in practice, is about what you are legally, a man or a woman, the process/controls around changing from one to the other, and to what extent (if any) female only spaces and activities should be able to exclude transwomen.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/sep/12/broken-heartlands-by-sebastian-payne-review-a-tour-of-the-red-walls-ruins
EDIT: judging by the references to canvas, no. So that wasn't glamping.
Edit: and WC etc.
Not sure if that counts as glamping ...
When I was a child we used to stay at the Scottish seaside in an old railway carriage (NBR guards' 6 wheeler I think at this remove, still with much of the interior) which had kitchen, WC, second bedroom, and a sort ofd sitting room/sunroom added as leantos over time. No idea if we were glamping devant la lettre.
“Women only spaces should not be open to trans women with penises”
Mind you we both miss the point she does not have a vote
She's the Queen !!!!!
Less tax for @RochdalePioneers!
More tax for people he thinks are bad!