Insulate Britain apologising for their actions but will carry on blocking roads
They really have lost the plot and their cause
Lock them up Patel
Terrorism: the unlawful use of violence or threats to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or government, with the goal of furthering political, social, or ideological objectives.
I think the "Domestic Extremist" tag fits.
And it's quite interesting to reflect on why there is suddenly such sociopathic, abusive behaviour from people who are by background reasonably well-off, well educated and numerate. Plus such trenchant, irreversible commitment to a series of fictions. To the extent that if other human beings are injured, or die, it is a lower priority for them.
I think there is an analogy with David Ike, who went over the edge and took his family group with him, leaving no easy way back. And 30 years later he is still out there gibbering about conspiracy theories.
I was back in Rochdale yesterday managing the removers as my parents are moving up here (after 41 years in the same house). Whilst I've seen how busy the town is getting over the years, it really hit home yesterday with absurd traffic levels.
Quite simply there are too many cars, too many houses, too many people. For 20 years the council have allowed houses to be built and built and built along the Rochdale > Littleborough road to the point where its now ludicrously busy.
New houses means you need new roads. New schools. New infrastructure. But there has been none of that. Just people piled on top of people so that you can barely move. Yes I know my perspective has shifted having moved to the country. But at which point do councils have a requirement to actually stop and plan rather than just let developments go up everywhere?
This is one of the problems. I've posted before about the likelihood of houses being built on the fields behind our house. I'm (really*) not against that in principle, but it does require upgrading facilities. It needs a new road in from the bypass. It needs at least a local shop or two. It needs a school or drastic expansion of the nearest school. The town would benefit from management of the floodplain (which only floods 1-2 times per year) to put in some nice parkland/playing fields (the town lacks this, just a few small play parks) and some good cycling/walking infrastructure to get from the new houses to the town centre in the most direct way. Those - even some of those - could make the development a net plus for us. The proposal is however houses only.
*I'll be a bit sad about it. There's a barn owl will lose its home/hunting ground, the deer will no longer wander through in the early morning, the hares won't be running across the field... But we do need houses and the flood plain means that the houses won't be that close and won't really impact on us in terms of privacy etc. It will be a less nice view, but I'd trade that if it led to new amenities for the town.
Is there a coordination of planning between councils and national government? In Scotland there is a duty on councils to produce a plan which is then reviewed by national gmt. I haven't looked into this in detail but for instance in my home area it is pretty clear what the plans are for new houses and where, and one can put one's views to the review. And, I assume, the total of plans bears some relation to government planninbg for new houses, new social/council housing, etc.
I'm wondering if this explains the otherwise bizarre map of Nimbyism in the UK we were discussing in PB a few weeks ago - total contrast across the Anglo-Scottish border.
There is a local plan, with consultation on that (we made our views known - essentially the above). I don't know whether the national government gets involved. The local plan has housing/mixed use which includes the proposed development, new roads etc - much, if not all, of what I ask for above. The proposed development is a smallish part of that site, accessed from the more desirable of the adjacent roads, but just houses. I hope the council will enforce their plan, so that at least some of the infrastructure is also built - wait and see, I guess. The council own the land in question, which is leased to the farmers, so they will have some conflicting interests, I guess - I'm sure there is a lot of good they could do with the money from selling the land, but I hope they don't lose sight of the benefits from doing the right development.
The Road Haulage Association (RHA) has said that Boris Johnson was mistaken when he explained how visas for foreign tanker drivers were issued in an interview this morning. (See 10.39am.) Johnson said the haulage industry had provided names of drivers wanting to come to the UK. But Rod McKenzie, the RHA’s managing director of policy and public affairs, said that was not the case.
He explained:
There isn’t a database of lorry drivers with names attached to them and want to work in Britain that British lorry firms can tap into and say, ‘we’ll have that one, that one, that one or that one’. It doesn’t work like that, it doesn’t exist.
The only way it works is the Government advertises that short-term visas are available, Europeans think about it, decide whether they want to or don’t want to, and act accordingly. And, clearly, only 127 to date have acted accordingly.
Adam Boulton of Sky has just got Insulate Britain to admit their plans would cost between half and one trillion pounds over 10 years
Without a concrete commitment to half a trillion plus spent on their pet project they'll continue to blockade roads.
People need to be imprisoned if they continue with this. Let them demonstrate from prison.
Their demand is every house in UK is fully insulated? Putting aside the cost and the practicalities of delivering, how much CO2 would this actually save? It's a generally laudable goal but is it a screaming must all be done in next year emergency priority?
A better target might be get on a build more nuclear so we can switch from gas faster?
A better target might have been to get on and build more wind turbines (and insulate more houses) when, less than a decade ago, people like Boris Johnson were claiming that they couldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding and people like Anne-Marie Trevelyan were denying the existence of climate change altogether. If we had a government made up of people who accepted reality, we wouldn't need XR!
Insulate Britain apologising for their actions but will carry on blocking roads
They really have lost the plot and their cause
Lock them up Patel
Terrorism: the unlawful use of violence or threats to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or government, with the goal of furthering political, social, or ideological objectives.
Not seen them using violence or threatening people.
Their direct action is no more than the Suffragettes did.
Terrorism my arse
They are using threats, of further blockades, to coerce. The definition doesn’t specify violence or threats against people.
The action has the risk of damaging the economy which they need to thrive to fund their crazy demands.
Adam Boulton of Sky has just got Insulate Britain to admit their plans would cost between half and one trillion pounds over 10 years
Without a concrete commitment to half a trillion plus spent on their pet project they'll continue to blockade roads.
People need to be imprisoned if they continue with this. Let them demonstrate from prison.
Their demand is every house in UK is fully insulated? Putting aside the cost and the practicalities of delivering, how much CO2 would this actually save? It's a generally laudable goal but is it a screaming must all be done in next year emergency priority?
A better target might be get on a build more nuclear so we can switch from gas faster?
UK housing stock is only worth about 8 tn. So they want over 10% of the value of each house spent on insulating it. How do you even manage that? It seems a barkingly specific and unambitious use of so much money.
Only 27 fuel tanker drivers from the EU have applied to work in Britain under the government’s emergency scheme to tackle the petrol crisis, ministers have been told.
It means only a fraction of the 300 visas available for HGV drivers in the fuel industry are set to be taken up in a setback to efforts to replenish supplies.
Who would have thought Brexit and the associated rhetoric would put off people coming to the UK.
The problem for the government is that they have both caved into pressure to make the points-based migration system offer visas to people we need, and have made it so appallingly unattractive that nobody is interested.
The clear aim of the new migration system is not to allow migration. Hence all the comments over the last few days about the need to transition the economy. But rhetoric doesn't put fuel in petrol tanks or turkeys on the Christmas table, so better use the new migration system.
The problem is that by making it 5,000 only and fuck off at Christmas, we are being shunned. Saying "we need a painful transition, suck it up for Britain" would be one thing. But instead they panicked, tried to open the door and nobody is coming. Which makes it their fault. Had they toed the line and said no, they could have tried to blame industry. Now they can't as they have accepted that people are needed.
No wonder he quoted the Muppet Show. They really are.
Who's that a problem for?
Its a problem for Remoaners who wanted freedom of movement restored. Its a problem for employers who wanted a return to people being shipped like a commodity in a 21st century triangular trade.
For those who want employers to improve both pay and conditions for their employees - and conditions are reportedly just as critical as pay - this is not a problem.
The 'door' to bringing people in as a solution has been opened and behind that door was a goat not a car. Time for those who were calling for movement as the solution to switch.
Deal with pay and conditions. Quit whining.
EU freedom of movement = the Atlantic slave trade. Well, it's a view, as they say.
Treating people as a commodity and shipping them around for minimum wage is a modern day comparable mindset, yes.
Giving people the right to live, work and study in 30 European countries is in no conceivable way comparable to slavery.
Shipping people in so that 12 working adults live in a 3 bedroom home, in order to pay them a pittance because they're desperate and evade having to offer good terms and conditions is the same mindset and is comparable though.
Shipping in implies those who came had no choice. They did. Slaves didn't. As a country, we chose to allow 12 adults to live in three bedroom houses and to make it as hard as possible for employees to organise collectively in order to secure good wages and working conditions. That had nothing to do with freedom of movement.
Yes. FOM provides a labour pool when you can't attract local labour. The pay and conditions are not a direct result of FOM - we can still pay sane wages and not force 6 in a room conditions.
"Ah but an endless labour pool allows people to be exploited". Yes and no - a restricted labour pool also offers the same opportunity of the legislative and societal framework allows it to be so. Have workers of whatever origin unionised and protected by working time regulations and HSE laws and the exploitation doesn't have to be there. It isn't elsewhere in western Europe with FOM.
Yes the practices that (ultra free marketeer) PT is attacking are simply the results of unfettered free market capitalism. My first job, back in the day when Tories decried the minimum wage as a tax on jobs and an attack on freedom, paid £1.50 an hour. Not a Pole or a Romanian in sight. Just good old fashioned British exploitative employers. Free market capitalism at work.
My first job paid £3.50 a week !!!!
Did you get paid in farthings or groats?
Actually in Scottish pound notes and it was paid monthly
At the time (1961) the average wage was £14 per week (£728) pa and remember my father coming home having been promoted to £1,000 pa
And the average cost of a house was just over £2,500.
Insulate Britain apologising for their actions but will carry on blocking roads
They really have lost the plot and their cause
Lock them up Patel
Terrorism: the unlawful use of violence or threats to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or government, with the goal of furthering political, social, or ideological objectives.
Not seen them using violence or threatening people.
Their direct action is no more than the Suffragettes did.
Terrorism my arse
They are using threats, of further blockades, to coerce. The definition doesn’t specify violence or threats against people.
The action has the risk of damaging the economy which they need to thrive to fund their crazy demands.
Demands for action to ensure that the world remains habitable by human beings. How utterly crazy.
Adam Boulton of Sky has just got Insulate Britain to admit their plans would cost between half and one trillion pounds over 10 years
Without a concrete commitment to half a trillion plus spent on their pet project they'll continue to blockade roads.
People need to be imprisoned if they continue with this. Let them demonstrate from prison.
Their demand is every house in UK is fully insulated? Putting aside the cost and the practicalities of delivering, how much CO2 would this actually save? It's a generally laudable goal but is it a screaming must all be done in next year emergency priority?
A better target might be get on a build more nuclear so we can switch from gas faster?
If we had a spare half a trillion lying around then half a trillion invested in nuclear or tidal would eliminate far more emissions than half a trillion in insulation would.
Classic fallacy of "something must be done, this is something, so this must be done."
On topic, Stephen Bush of Statesman's email this morning - an interesting comment:
"The central reason why Patel's stock is not as high as it once was among Conservative activists is the perception that her department is failing: that she is unable to prevent more people coming here on boats in search of a better life, that we have de facto decriminalised most crimes other than murder and speeding, that the Metropolitan Police is poorly run, and so on.
Now, the wheel of politics has plenty of turns and it's possible that this time next year we're once again talking about how much activists and MPs love Priti Patel. But the concern among some MPs who believe - rightly in my view - that Patel was integral to their 2019 re-election is that the fall in the Home Secretary's stock among party activists is the first sign that the government's advantage as far as crime and security is concerned might once again be about to come under serious threat in the country as a whole."
Well, when the police seem more interested in policing Twitter, that catching speeding motorists appears to be more of a priority than stopping protesters blocking the roads, and when police themselves turn out to have a lot of bad eggs in their ranks, it’s hardly surprising that confidence in the Home Secretary is low.
Elements of the Tory target demographic were always rather reluctant to give up the right to speed, prefereably when pished. I can remember the arguments over the introduction of the breathalyser, etc.
If you want to find one point in recent history, where the general public started to lose faith in the police, the introduction of speed cameras is probably it.
I am in favour of people sticking to speed limits, and consequently of punishing people when they do not. However, policing in a democracy has to be by consent, and it's evident that the argument over speeding is not won. There is not consent for the enforcement of speed limits. Or at least the minority opposed is the largest for any policing issue.
Insulate Britain apologising for their actions but will carry on blocking roads
They really have lost the plot and their cause
Lock them up Patel
Terrorism: the unlawful use of violence or threats to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or government, with the goal of furthering political, social, or ideological objectives.
Not seen them using violence or threatening people.
Their direct action is no more than the Suffragettes did.
Terrorism my arse
They are using threats, of further blockades, to coerce. The definition doesn’t specify violence or threats against people.
The action has the risk of damaging the economy which they need to thrive to fund their crazy demands.
Insulate Britain apologising for their actions but will carry on blocking roads
They really have lost the plot and their cause
Lock them up Patel
Terrorism: the unlawful use of violence or threats to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or government, with the goal of furthering political, social, or ideological objectives.
Not seen them using violence or threatening people.
Their direct action is no more than the Suffragettes did.
Terrorism my arse
They are using threats, of further blockades, to coerce. The definition doesn’t specify violence or threats against people.
The action has the risk of damaging the economy which they need to thrive to fund their crazy demands.
Demands for action to ensure that the world remains habitable by human beings. How utterly crazy.
Spending half a trillion on insulation isn't what is required for a habitable world.
Adam Boulton of Sky has just got Insulate Britain to admit their plans would cost between half and one trillion pounds over 10 years
Without a concrete commitment to half a trillion plus spent on their pet project they'll continue to blockade roads.
People need to be imprisoned if they continue with this. Let them demonstrate from prison.
Their demand is every house in UK is fully insulated? Putting aside the cost and the practicalities of delivering, how much CO2 would this actually save? It's a generally laudable goal but is it a screaming must all be done in next year emergency priority?
A better target might be get on a build more nuclear so we can switch from gas faster?
A better target might have been to get on and build more wind turbines (and insulate more houses) when, less than a decade ago, people like Boris Johnson were claiming that they couldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding and people like Anne-Marie Trevelyan were denying the existence of climate change altogether. If we had a government made up of people who accepted reality, we wouldn't need XR!
We don’t need them. We have a govt who accepts this. Wind turbines have been going up offshore for quite a while now and New ones in the pipeline. Complaining about what people used to think when the science wasn’t as settled as it is now is futile.
There is no battle, all mainstream parties accept this. The Tories do. Trevelyan does.
Who, in the Current govt on the climate issue, does not Accept the need to take action ?
I got my house insulated, paid by the govt, a while ago. There are schemes and the govt is taking action.
Adam Boulton of Sky has just got Insulate Britain to admit their plans would cost between half and one trillion pounds over 10 years
Without a concrete commitment to half a trillion plus spent on their pet project they'll continue to blockade roads.
People need to be imprisoned if they continue with this. Let them demonstrate from prison.
Their demand is every house in UK is fully insulated? Putting aside the cost and the practicalities of delivering, how much CO2 would this actually save? It's a generally laudable goal but is it a screaming must all be done in next year emergency priority?
A better target might be get on a build more nuclear so we can switch from gas faster?
If we had a spare half a trillion lying around then half a trillion invested in nuclear or tidal would eliminate far more emissions than half a trillion in insulation would.
Classic fallacy of "something must be done, this is something, so this must be done."
And all because the organiser wasn't able to get his Green Deal claims done quickly enough.
Mogg on Insulate: "They are willing to risk people's lives, when they haven't even bothered to insulate their own homes."
Rather concise for him. However, spot on.
Given that he has been correctly pointedly personal at them, does anyone know what the EPCs are on Mogg's Houses?
(These things are overwhelmingly public,)
Are they? I thought they were needed on the event of a sale or lease - if he hasn't moved then no EPC
There's nothing stopping one being done whenever you want to. Everso cheap. For a normal property it is about £50.
IIRC they also tend to do one if you have any review of your house for a grant scheme. Used to apply to anywhere getting solar too, as the rates were higher for better properties.
I tend to do one after reasonably major modifications, because it gets them recorded for next time - whilst if they do one without evidence assessrs are required to make assumptions of poor quality fabric. Which will be a problem when we get to "Cs" being required. It really needs an evidence file per property.
I've asked elsewhere for recent experience, and will try to update.
How come the Magnificent Muscly Man is so low in these ratings? Is he not loved by his own?
He seems to have a following with the whippersnappers. Imagine going to the barber and asking for a Boris cut?
I foresee many decades ahead for these lads of whining about why cool, sexy, liberal elite Remoaners won’t shag them.
My wife is at the Tory conference today. Should I be worried? 😬
As long as she keeps away from the Great Inseminator himself. Women have been known to faint at just a whiff of his sour milk pheromones (with a bonus tang of fish and chips currently).
I was back in Rochdale yesterday managing the removers as my parents are moving up here (after 41 years in the same house). Whilst I've seen how busy the town is getting over the years, it really hit home yesterday with absurd traffic levels.
Quite simply there are too many cars, too many houses, too many people. For 20 years the council have allowed houses to be built and built and built along the Rochdale > Littleborough road to the point where its now ludicrously busy.
New houses means you need new roads. New schools. New infrastructure. But there has been none of that. Just people piled on top of people so that you can barely move. Yes I know my perspective has shifted having moved to the country. But at which point do councils have a requirement to actually stop and plan rather than just let developments go up everywhere?
This is one of the problems. I've posted before about the likelihood of houses being built on the fields behind our house. I'm (really*) not against that in principle, but it does require upgrading facilities. It needs a new road in from the bypass. It needs at least a local shop or two. It needs a school or drastic expansion of the nearest school. The town would benefit from management of the floodplain (which only floods 1-2 times per year) to put in some nice parkland/playing fields (the town lacks this, just a few small play parks) and some good cycling/walking infrastructure to get from the new houses to the town centre in the most direct way. Those - even some of those - could make the development a net plus for us. The proposal is however houses only.
*I'll be a bit sad about it. There's a barn owl will lose its home/hunting ground, the deer will no longer wander through in the early morning, the hares won't be running across the field... But we do need houses and the flood plain means that the houses won't be that close and won't really impact on us in terms of privacy etc. It will be a less nice view, but I'd trade that if it led to new amenities for the town.
The LA have the ability (working with the Trafffic Authority) to really push active travel.
There are all kinds of possibilities, and things that can be made requirements. You (or somebody) need to get stuck in with the Council. The Council has a very short institutional memory for good practice.
Places like Nottingham, and Chesterfield, are doing quite remarkable things.
You need a group of enough to lobby every councillor at the relevant Local Gov levels, and to keep on for a long time.
Insulate Britain apologising for their actions but will carry on blocking roads
They really have lost the plot and their cause
Lock them up Patel
Terrorism: the unlawful use of violence or threats to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or government, with the goal of furthering political, social, or ideological objectives.
Not seen them using violence or threatening people.
Their direct action is no more than the Suffragettes did.
Terrorism my arse
They are using threats, of further blockades, to coerce. The definition doesn’t specify violence or threats against people.
The action has the risk of damaging the economy which they need to thrive to fund their crazy demands.
So by your definition, even a Mayday carnival is terrorism. Go back to bed and sleep it off.
Ha ha, Clearly not but if you want to misunderstand it fill your boots, Scrappy.. Oh, and it wasn’t my definition it was someone else’s upthread. Their action just happens to fit the definition.
Only 27 fuel tanker drivers from the EU have applied to work in Britain under the government’s emergency scheme to tackle the petrol crisis, ministers have been told.
It means only a fraction of the 300 visas available for HGV drivers in the fuel industry are set to be taken up in a setback to efforts to replenish supplies.
Who would have thought Brexit and the associated rhetoric would put off people coming to the UK.
The problem for the government is that they have both caved into pressure to make the points-based migration system offer visas to people we need, and have made it so appallingly unattractive that nobody is interested.
The clear aim of the new migration system is not to allow migration. Hence all the comments over the last few days about the need to transition the economy. But rhetoric doesn't put fuel in petrol tanks or turkeys on the Christmas table, so better use the new migration system.
The problem is that by making it 5,000 only and fuck off at Christmas, we are being shunned. Saying "we need a painful transition, suck it up for Britain" would be one thing. But instead they panicked, tried to open the door and nobody is coming. Which makes it their fault. Had they toed the line and said no, they could have tried to blame industry. Now they can't as they have accepted that people are needed.
No wonder he quoted the Muppet Show. They really are.
Who's that a problem for?
Its a problem for Remoaners who wanted freedom of movement restored. Its a problem for employers who wanted a return to people being shipped like a commodity in a 21st century triangular trade.
For those who want employers to improve both pay and conditions for their employees - and conditions are reportedly just as critical as pay - this is not a problem.
The 'door' to bringing people in as a solution has been opened and behind that door was a goat not a car. Time for those who were calling for movement as the solution to switch.
Deal with pay and conditions. Quit whining.
EU freedom of movement = the Atlantic slave trade. Well, it's a view, as they say.
Treating people as a commodity and shipping them around for minimum wage is a modern day comparable mindset, yes.
Giving people the right to live, work and study in 30 European countries is in no conceivable way comparable to slavery.
Shipping people in so that 12 working adults live in a 3 bedroom home, in order to pay them a pittance because they're desperate and evade having to offer good terms and conditions is the same mindset and is comparable though.
Shipping in implies those who came had no choice. They did. Slaves didn't. As a country, we chose to allow 12 adults to live in three bedroom houses and to make it as hard as possible for employees to organise collectively in order to secure good wages and working conditions. That had nothing to do with freedom of movement.
Yes. FOM provides a labour pool when you can't attract local labour. The pay and conditions are not a direct result of FOM - we can still pay sane wages and not force 6 in a room conditions.
"Ah but an endless labour pool allows people to be exploited". Yes and no - a restricted labour pool also offers the same opportunity of the legislative and societal framework allows it to be so. Have workers of whatever origin unionised and protected by working time regulations and HSE laws and the exploitation doesn't have to be there. It isn't elsewhere in western Europe with FOM.
Yes the practices that (ultra free marketeer) PT is attacking are simply the results of unfettered free market capitalism. My first job, back in the day when Tories decried the minimum wage as a tax on jobs and an attack on freedom, paid £1.50 an hour. Not a Pole or a Romanian in sight. Just good old fashioned British exploitative employers. Free market capitalism at work.
My first job paid £3.50 a week !!!!
Did you get paid in farthings or groats?
Actually in Scottish pound notes and it was paid monthly
At the time (1961) the average wage was £14 per week (£728) pa and remember my father coming home having been promoted to £1,000 pa
And the average cost of a house was just over £2,500.
A few years back a chap came into the pub, laughing. Apparently he'd discovered that his granddad had the tiny remnant of a mortgage on a farm cottage bought at some such price. So he paid it off then and there, with his credit card.
O/T: some hope for Conservatives in that Johnson only scores just above Priti Patel, but the real shocker is the two most swivelly of swivelly-eyed nutjobs, Frost and Rees-Mogg right up at the top. The modern Conservative Party clearly still has more extremists in it than Labour under Corbyn if so many want to endorse these two!
Adam Boulton of Sky has just got Insulate Britain to admit their plans would cost between half and one trillion pounds over 10 years
Without a concrete commitment to half a trillion plus spent on their pet project they'll continue to blockade roads.
People need to be imprisoned if they continue with this. Let them demonstrate from prison.
Their demand is every house in UK is fully insulated? Putting aside the cost and the practicalities of delivering, how much CO2 would this actually save? It's a generally laudable goal but is it a screaming must all be done in next year emergency priority?
A better target might be get on a build more nuclear so we can switch from gas faster?
A better target might have been to get on and build more wind turbines (and insulate more houses) when, less than a decade ago, people like Boris Johnson were claiming that they couldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding and people like Anne-Marie Trevelyan were denying the existence of climate change altogether. If we had a government made up of people who accepted reality, we wouldn't need XR!
We don’t need them. We have a govt who accepts this. Wind turbines have been going up offshore for quite a while now and New ones in the pipeline. Complaining about what people used to think when the science wasn’t as settled as it is now is futile.
There is no battle, all mainstream parties accept this. The Tories do. Trevelyan does.
Who, in the Current govt on the climate issue, does not Accept the need to take action ?
I got my house insulated, paid by the govt, a while ago. There are schemes and the govt is taking action.
The science was well settled a decade ago. Indeed, it's been known since the 1980s that CO2 emissions were an urgent problem. The reason we're in a mess now is not because of XR, Greenpeace and Co; it's bacause of the refusal of governments, particularly right-wing governments, to act on the advice of the scientists.
I was back in Rochdale yesterday managing the removers as my parents are moving up here (after 41 years in the same house). Whilst I've seen how busy the town is getting over the years, it really hit home yesterday with absurd traffic levels.
Quite simply there are too many cars, too many houses, too many people. For 20 years the council have allowed houses to be built and built and built along the Rochdale > Littleborough road to the point where its now ludicrously busy.
New houses means you need new roads. New schools. New infrastructure. But there has been none of that. Just people piled on top of people so that you can barely move. Yes I know my perspective has shifted having moved to the country. But at which point do councils have a requirement to actually stop and plan rather than just let developments go up everywhere?
This is one of the problems. I've posted before about the likelihood of houses being built on the fields behind our house. I'm (really*) not against that in principle, but it does require upgrading facilities. It needs a new road in from the bypass. It needs at least a local shop or two. It needs a school or drastic expansion of the nearest school. The town would benefit from management of the floodplain (which only floods 1-2 times per year) to put in some nice parkland/playing fields (the town lacks this, just a few small play parks) and some good cycling/walking infrastructure to get from the new houses to the town centre in the most direct way. Those - even some of those - could make the development a net plus for us. The proposal is however houses only.
*I'll be a bit sad about it. There's a barn owl will lose its home/hunting ground, the deer will no longer wander through in the early morning, the hares won't be running across the field... But we do need houses and the flood plain means that the houses won't be that close and won't really impact on us in terms of privacy etc. It will be a less nice view, but I'd trade that if it led to new amenities for the town.
Is there a coordination of planning between councils and national government? In Scotland there is a duty on councils to produce a plan which is then reviewed by national gmt. I haven't looked into this in detail but for instance in my home area it is pretty clear what the plans are for new houses and where, and one can put one's views to the review. And, I assume, the total of plans bears some relation to government planninbg for new houses, new social/council housing, etc.
I'm wondering if this explains the otherwise bizarre map of Nimbyism in the UK we were discussing in PB a few weeks ago - total contrast across the Anglo-Scottish border.
There is a local plan, with consultation on that (we made our views known - essentially the above). I don't know whether the national government gets involved. The local plan has housing/mixed use which includes the proposed development, new roads etc - much, if not all, of what I ask for above. The proposed development is a smallish part of that site, accessed from the more desirable of the adjacent roads, but just houses. I hope the council will enforce their plan, so that at least some of the infrastructure is also built - wait and see, I guess. The council own the land in question, which is leased to the farmers, so they will have some conflicting interests, I guess - I'm sure there is a lot of good they could do with the money from selling the land, but I hope they don't lose sight of the benefits from doing the right development.
WRT to this, the plan needs to be examined by a government appointed planning Inspector before it can be adopted. I cannot tell if this has happened in your case. What generally happens in situations like this is the developer will go through a process of getting as much profit out of the site as possible (ie putting on twice as many houses, and only providing the perks that directly boost the value of the houses they are building). There is also a loophole whereby if the plan gets to be more than 5 years old, or the Council isn't delivering enough housing, then the plan becomes 'out of date'; which is often effectively a green light to go ahead anyway. In such a scenario, as an objector, you have to find harm in some way: IE is the existing infrastructure really that inadequate, would there be such disruption on the roads that it 'significantly and demonstrably' outweighs the benefit of more housing. Not sure if any of this applies here, but people who have been scarred by these battles will be able to tell you that you can't really rely on what is in the plan, unfortunately.
On topic, Stephen Bush of Statesman's email this morning - an interesting comment:
"The central reason why Patel's stock is not as high as it once was among Conservative activists is the perception that her department is failing: that she is unable to prevent more people coming here on boats in search of a better life, that we have de facto decriminalised most crimes other than murder and speeding, that the Metropolitan Police is poorly run, and so on.
Now, the wheel of politics has plenty of turns and it's possible that this time next year we're once again talking about how much activists and MPs love Priti Patel. But the concern among some MPs who believe - rightly in my view - that Patel was integral to their 2019 re-election is that the fall in the Home Secretary's stock among party activists is the first sign that the government's advantage as far as crime and security is concerned might once again be about to come under serious threat in the country as a whole."
Well, when the police seem more interested in policing Twitter, that catching speeding motorists appears to be more of a priority than stopping protesters blocking the roads, and when police themselves turn out to have a lot of bad eggs in their ranks, it’s hardly surprising that confidence in the Home Secretary is low.
Elements of the Tory target demographic were always rather reluctant to give up the right to speed, prefereably when pished. I can remember the arguments over the introduction of the breathalyser, etc.
If you want to find one point in recent history, where the general public started to lose faith in the police, the introduction of speed cameras is probably it.
I am in favour of people sticking to speed limits, and consequently of punishing people when they do not. However, policing in a democracy has to be by consent, and it's evident that the argument over speeding is not won. There is not consent for the enforcement of speed limits. Or at least the minority opposed is the largest for any policing issue.
Living in a village where twats drive through sometimes at double the speed limit, I would like to see speed averaging cameras introduced to catch the irresponsible bastards
On topic, Stephen Bush of Statesman's email this morning - an interesting comment:
"The central reason why Patel's stock is not as high as it once was among Conservative activists is the perception that her department is failing: that she is unable to prevent more people coming here on boats in search of a better life, that we have de facto decriminalised most crimes other than murder and speeding, that the Metropolitan Police is poorly run, and so on.
Now, the wheel of politics has plenty of turns and it's possible that this time next year we're once again talking about how much activists and MPs love Priti Patel. But the concern among some MPs who believe - rightly in my view - that Patel was integral to their 2019 re-election is that the fall in the Home Secretary's stock among party activists is the first sign that the government's advantage as far as crime and security is concerned might once again be about to come under serious threat in the country as a whole."
Well, when the police seem more interested in policing Twitter, that catching speeding motorists appears to be more of a priority than stopping protesters blocking the roads, and when police themselves turn out to have a lot of bad eggs in their ranks, it’s hardly surprising that confidence in the Home Secretary is low.
Elements of the Tory target demographic were always rather reluctant to give up the right to speed, prefereably when pished. I can remember the arguments over the introduction of the breathalyser, etc.
If you want to find one point in recent history, where the general public started to lose faith in the police, the introduction of speed cameras is probably it.
I am in favour of people sticking to speed limits, and consequently of punishing people when they do not. However, policing in a democracy has to be by consent, and it's evident that the argument over speeding is not won. There is not consent for the enforcement of speed limits. Or at least the minority opposed is the largest for any policing issue.
There’s consent for letting the police stop people driving like idiots, or drunk, or speeding through villages.
The problem comes with things like, as was the case near me a couple of decades ago, a brand new bypass opening, dual carriageway but with a 50 limit and four cameras in three miles. The setting of limits and the enforcement of them, simply isn’t seen as ‘fair’ by the majority of motorists. See also unmarked traffic cars stopping people doing 75 on motorways, rather than the middle-lane hogs, and camera vans and radars that can operate at long range hidden from view. I once got done for speeding at 420m range from a handheld radar, that’s just not playing the game.
Insulate Britain apologising for their actions but will carry on blocking roads
They really have lost the plot and their cause
Lock them up Patel
Terrorism: the unlawful use of violence or threats to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or government, with the goal of furthering political, social, or ideological objectives.
Not seen them using violence or threatening people.
Their direct action is no more than the Suffragettes did.
Terrorism my arse
They are using threats, of further blockades, to coerce. The definition doesn’t specify violence or threats against people.
The action has the risk of damaging the economy which they need to thrive to fund their crazy demands.
So by your definition, even a Mayday carnival is terrorism. Go back to bed and sleep it off.
Ha ha, Clearly not but if you want to misunderstand it fill your boots Scrappy.. Oh, and it wasn’t my definition it was someone else’s upthread. Their action just happens to fit the definition.
It doesn't. Not by a long way. It's really quite silly to think it does.
Instead of responding like an obnoxious asshole, which seems to be your M.O., given this is a discusson group why not just offer a counterpoint ?
Adam Boulton of Sky has just got Insulate Britain to admit their plans would cost between half and one trillion pounds over 10 years
Without a concrete commitment to half a trillion plus spent on their pet project they'll continue to blockade roads.
People need to be imprisoned if they continue with this. Let them demonstrate from prison.
Their demand is every house in UK is fully insulated? Putting aside the cost and the practicalities of delivering, how much CO2 would this actually save? It's a generally laudable goal but is it a screaming must all be done in next year emergency priority?
A better target might be get on a build more nuclear so we can switch from gas faster?
A better target might have been to get on and build more wind turbines (and insulate more houses) when, less than a decade ago, people like Boris Johnson were claiming that they couldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding and people like Anne-Marie Trevelyan were denying the existence of climate change altogether. If we had a government made up of people who accepted reality, we wouldn't need XR!
We don’t need them. We have a govt who accepts this. Wind turbines have been going up offshore for quite a while now and New ones in the pipeline. Complaining about what people used to think when the science wasn’t as settled as it is now is futile.
There is no battle, all mainstream parties accept this. The Tories do. Trevelyan does.
Who, in the Current govt on the climate issue, does not Accept the need to take action ?
I got my house insulated, paid by the govt, a while ago. There are schemes and the govt is taking action.
It is just the same rent-a-mob twats who turn up at any protest. They get a kick out of causing disruption to others that they think they are morally superior to.
Adam Boulton of Sky has just got Insulate Britain to admit their plans would cost between half and one trillion pounds over 10 years
Without a concrete commitment to half a trillion plus spent on their pet project they'll continue to blockade roads.
People need to be imprisoned if they continue with this. Let them demonstrate from prison.
Their demand is every house in UK is fully insulated? Putting aside the cost and the practicalities of delivering, how much CO2 would this actually save? It's a generally laudable goal but is it a screaming must all be done in next year emergency priority?
A better target might be get on a build more nuclear so we can switch from gas faster?
A better target might have been to get on and build more wind turbines (and insulate more houses) when, less than a decade ago, people like Boris Johnson were claiming that they couldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding and people like Anne-Marie Trevelyan were denying the existence of climate change altogether. If we had a government made up of people who accepted reality, we wouldn't need XR!
We don’t need them. We have a govt who accepts this. Wind turbines have been going up offshore for quite a while now and New ones in the pipeline. Complaining about what people used to think when the science wasn’t as settled as it is now is futile.
There is no battle, all mainstream parties accept this. The Tories do. Trevelyan does.
Who, in the Current govt on the climate issue, does not Accept the need to take action ?
I got my house insulated, paid by the govt, a while ago. There are schemes and the govt is taking action.
The science was well settled a decade ago. Indeed, it's been known since the 1980s that CO2 emissions were an urgent problem. The reason we're in a mess now is not because of XR, Greenpeace and Co; it's bacause of the refusal of governments, particularly right-wing governments, to act on the advice of the scientists.
Well they are accepting It now. Who in the current govt doesn’t accept the need to take action, which they are doing ? And ten years ago the science was very much disputed.
O/T: some hope for Conservatives in that Johnson only scores just above Priti Patel, but the real shocker is the two most swivelly of swivelly-eyed nutjobs, Frost and Rees-Mogg right up at the top. The modern Conservative Party clearly still has more extremists in it than Labour under Corbyn if so many want to endorse these two!
You're calling "Swivel-eyed" the professional diplomat Frost?
The professional diplomat Frost who managed to get not one but two deals agreed by both all 27 nations of the EU and the Westminster Parliament too? Something his predecessor Robbins abjectly failed to do?
O/T: some hope for Conservatives in that Johnson only scores just above Priti Patel, but the real shocker is the two most swivelly of swivelly-eyed nutjobs, Frost and Rees-Mogg right up at the top. The modern Conservative Party clearly still has more extremists in it than Labour under Corbyn if so many want to endorse these two!
You're calling "Swivel-eyed" the professional diplomat Frost?
The professional diplomat Frost who managed to get not one but two deals agreed by both all 27 nations of the EU and the Westminster Parliament too? Something his predecessor Robbins abjectly failed to do?
Doesn't he want to tear up that deal as unworkable?
Don't agree with Patel talking about tougher sentences for drugs whatsoever.
Time to legalise them instead.
Deflection and taking tough. Deflecting from her failures elsewhere.
Agree it is time to legalise them and use the taxes for treatment of addiction.
Drugs policy is totally broken, by trying to find a middle way.
You either need to legalise drugs completely, tax them and treat addicts as a health issue, or you need to have a totally zero tolerance, and use compulsory prison sentences for personal amounts.
Having a situation where small amounts are dealt with by a caution, but with the gangs running the distribution and killing each other over it, is the worst possible situation.
Insulate Britain apologising for their actions but will carry on blocking roads
They really have lost the plot and their cause
Lock them up Patel
Terrorism: the unlawful use of violence or threats to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or government, with the goal of furthering political, social, or ideological objectives.
The response of the Police and the government has been inept and merely emboldened them. As I said yesterday. They are fanatics. They cannot be reasoned with. Access to their demands and there will be something else and every other fringe group will do the same.
Exactly. If the police don’t get a grip on these demonstrators soon, it probably ends with someone getting killed.
Imagine being on the jury, at the trial of the motorist charged with running over someone who was deliberately blocking the road.
Adam Boulton of Sky has just got Insulate Britain to admit their plans would cost between half and one trillion pounds over 10 years
Without a concrete commitment to half a trillion plus spent on their pet project they'll continue to blockade roads.
People need to be imprisoned if they continue with this. Let them demonstrate from prison.
Their demand is every house in UK is fully insulated? Putting aside the cost and the practicalities of delivering, how much CO2 would this actually save? It's a generally laudable goal but is it a screaming must all be done in next year emergency priority?
A better target might be get on a build more nuclear so we can switch from gas faster?
If we had a spare half a trillion lying around then half a trillion invested in nuclear or tidal would eliminate far more emissions than half a trillion in insulation would.
Classic fallacy of "something must be done, this is something, so this must be done."
And all because the organiser wasn't able to get his Green Deal claims done quickly enough.
Really? Interesting. Peoples' small frustrations can have big consequences. I wonder whether history would have been different had Farage's delicate ego not been slighted by the Conservative Party when he unsuccessfully applied to be a parliamentary candidate
The 27 is for fuel tanker drivers , the 127 is for normal HGV drivers .
The policy was delusional as unless you give visas for a much longer period of time why would a driver take a job for just a few months and then be told to bugger off.
On topic, Stephen Bush of Statesman's email this morning - an interesting comment:
"The central reason why Patel's stock is not as high as it once was among Conservative activists is the perception that her department is failing: that she is unable to prevent more people coming here on boats in search of a better life, that we have de facto decriminalised most crimes other than murder and speeding, that the Metropolitan Police is poorly run, and so on.
Now, the wheel of politics has plenty of turns and it's possible that this time next year we're once again talking about how much activists and MPs love Priti Patel. But the concern among some MPs who believe - rightly in my view - that Patel was integral to their 2019 re-election is that the fall in the Home Secretary's stock among party activists is the first sign that the government's advantage as far as crime and security is concerned might once again be about to come under serious threat in the country as a whole."
Well, when the police seem more interested in policing Twitter, that catching speeding motorists appears to be more of a priority than stopping protesters blocking the roads, and when police themselves turn out to have a lot of bad eggs in their ranks, it’s hardly surprising that confidence in the Home Secretary is low.
Elements of the Tory target demographic were always rather reluctant to give up the right to speed, prefereably when pished. I can remember the arguments over the introduction of the breathalyser, etc.
If you want to find one point in recent history, where the general public started to lose faith in the police, the introduction of speed cameras is probably it.
I am in favour of people sticking to speed limits, and consequently of punishing people when they do not. However, policing in a democracy has to be by consent, and it's evident that the argument over speeding is not won. There is not consent for the enforcement of speed limits. Or at least the minority opposed is the largest for any policing issue.
Living in a village where twats drive through sometimes at double the speed limit, I would like to see speed averaging cameras introduced to catch the irresponsible bastards
I blame the 'please drive carefully through our village' signs. As the old joke goes, I have to be reallly careful when I'm plowing through at 90mph compared to 30mph.
Adam Boulton of Sky has just got Insulate Britain to admit their plans would cost between half and one trillion pounds over 10 years
Without a concrete commitment to half a trillion plus spent on their pet project they'll continue to blockade roads.
People need to be imprisoned if they continue with this. Let them demonstrate from prison.
Their demand is every house in UK is fully insulated? Putting aside the cost and the practicalities of delivering, how much CO2 would this actually save? It's a generally laudable goal but is it a screaming must all be done in next year emergency priority?
A better target might be get on a build more nuclear so we can switch from gas faster?
A better target might have been to get on and build more wind turbines (and insulate more houses) when, less than a decade ago, people like Boris Johnson were claiming that they couldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding and people like Anne-Marie Trevelyan were denying the existence of climate change altogether. If we had a government made up of people who accepted reality, we wouldn't need XR!
We don’t need them. We have a govt who accepts this. Wind turbines have been going up offshore for quite a while now and New ones in the pipeline. Complaining about what people used to think when the science wasn’t as settled as it is now is futile.
There is no battle, all mainstream parties accept this. The Tories do. Trevelyan does.
Who, in the Current govt on the climate issue, does not Accept the need to take action ?
I got my house insulated, paid by the govt, a while ago. There are schemes and the govt is taking action.
The government is, slowly, taking action. But it's always too little and too late, and then only because of the shift in public opinion brought about by campaigns by pressure groups like Greenpeace and XR.
O/T: some hope for Conservatives in that Johnson only scores just above Priti Patel, but the real shocker is the two most swivelly of swivelly-eyed nutjobs, Frost and Rees-Mogg right up at the top. The modern Conservative Party clearly still has more extremists in it than Labour under Corbyn if so many want to endorse these two!
You're calling "Swivel-eyed" the professional diplomat Frost?
The professional diplomat Frost who managed to get not one but two deals agreed by both all 27 nations of the EU and the Westminster Parliament too? Something his predecessor Robbins abjectly failed to do?
Doesn't he want to tear up that deal as unworkable?
He wants to exercise an article of the deal he negotiated, in the way it was intended and written.
Robbins and May's deal had no exit mechanism from the backstop. Frost's and Boris's deal had Article 16.
There's no reason the Article 16 they negotiated to be included can not be exercised.
Insulate Britain apologising for their actions but will carry on blocking roads
They really have lost the plot and their cause
Lock them up Patel
Terrorism: the unlawful use of violence or threats to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or government, with the goal of furthering political, social, or ideological objectives.
Not seen them using violence or threatening people.
Their direct action is no more than the Suffragettes did.
Terrorism my arse
They are using threats, of further blockades, to coerce. The definition doesn’t specify violence or threats against people.
The action has the risk of damaging the economy which they need to thrive to fund their crazy demands.
Adam Boulton of Sky has just got Insulate Britain to admit their plans would cost between half and one trillion pounds over 10 years
Without a concrete commitment to half a trillion plus spent on their pet project they'll continue to blockade roads.
People need to be imprisoned if they continue with this. Let them demonstrate from prison.
Their demand is every house in UK is fully insulated? Putting aside the cost and the practicalities of delivering, how much CO2 would this actually save? It's a generally laudable goal but is it a screaming must all be done in next year emergency priority?
A better target might be get on a build more nuclear so we can switch from gas faster?
A better target might have been to get on and build more wind turbines (and insulate more houses) when, less than a decade ago, people like Boris Johnson were claiming that they couldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding and people like Anne-Marie Trevelyan were denying the existence of climate change altogether. If we had a government made up of people who accepted reality, we wouldn't need XR!
We don’t need them. We have a govt who accepts this. Wind turbines have been going up offshore for quite a while now and New ones in the pipeline. Complaining about what people used to think when the science wasn’t as settled as it is now is futile.
There is no battle, all mainstream parties accept this. The Tories do. Trevelyan does.
Who, in the Current govt on the climate issue, does not Accept the need to take action ?
I got my house insulated, paid by the govt, a while ago. There are schemes and the govt is taking action.
The government is, slowly, taking action. But it's always too little and too late, and then only because of the shift in public opinion brought about by campaigns by pressure groups like Greenpeace and XR.
Complete nonsense. This country is a global leader on climate change and has virtually eradicated the usage of coal for instance within a decade of 2010 once the Government started working on that - and that was before XR were founded.
XR jumped on the bandwagon that already existed, they're not first movers.
Good Day! I see Facebook works, Taiwan remains unmolested for now, and Patel won't rest till the streets are free of crime. And if she has to lock up every last citizen, then all the better.
O/T: some hope for Conservatives in that Johnson only scores just above Priti Patel, but the real shocker is the two most swivelly of swivelly-eyed nutjobs, Frost and Rees-Mogg right up at the top. The modern Conservative Party clearly still has more extremists in it than Labour under Corbyn if so many want to endorse these two!
You're calling "Swivel-eyed" the professional diplomat Frost?
The professional diplomat Frost who managed to get not one but two deals agreed by both all 27 nations of the EU and the Westminster Parliament too? Something his predecessor Robbins abjectly failed to do?
And then he demanded that the EU had to renegotiate it after he realized he'd mucked NI up.
O/T: some hope for Conservatives in that Johnson only scores just above Priti Patel, but the real shocker is the two most swivelly of swivelly-eyed nutjobs, Frost and Rees-Mogg right up at the top. The modern Conservative Party clearly still has more extremists in it than Labour under Corbyn if so many want to endorse these two!
You're calling "Swivel-eyed" the professional diplomat Frost?
The professional diplomat Frost who managed to get not one but two deals agreed by both all 27 nations of the EU and the Westminster Parliament too? Something his predecessor Robbins abjectly failed to do?
Yep. Fucking nutjob, doesn't matter what his background is. I bet you love Rees-Mogg too. I think he might not find you to his taste though.
Would be nice to see what the definition of a people smuggler is?
As at the moment your son could be one....
With respect I reject that suggestion
Doesn't matter what you and I think or feel. What matters is what the law says, or in this case will say. And that draft we discussed hasn't been changed as far as I am aware to take the heat off the RNLI (to whom I have just renewed my sub, as it happens).
O/T: some hope for Conservatives in that Johnson only scores just above Priti Patel, but the real shocker is the two most swivelly of swivelly-eyed nutjobs, Frost and Rees-Mogg right up at the top. The modern Conservative Party clearly still has more extremists in it than Labour under Corbyn if so many want to endorse these two!
You're calling "Swivel-eyed" the professional diplomat Frost?
The professional diplomat Frost who managed to get not one but two deals agreed by both all 27 nations of the EU and the Westminster Parliament too? Something his predecessor Robbins abjectly failed to do?
Doesn't he want to tear up that deal as unworkable?
He wants to exercise an article of the deal he negotiated, in the way it was intended and written.
Robbins and May's deal had no exit mechanism from the backstop. Frost's and Boris's deal had Article 16.
There's no reason the Article 16 they negotiated to be included can not be exercised.
People can argue about the reasonableness of the use of Article 16 - the EU's abortive intent to use it as an example - but it's on shakier ground suggesting that it is unreasonable to even contemplate exercising a provision presumably included for a reason.
If we invoke it unreasonably that will be pretty apparent I should think, so there's no need to blanket condemn the principle of invocation, it's the detail of invocation which can be condemned, if appropriate.
On Topic - I assume the top of the list is made up of the sane Tories voting for Truss, Wallace, Sunak, Zahawi, Javid, etc and the loons going for Rees Mogg, Frost, Dorries, Trevelyan, etc
What surprises me is Shapps down at the bottom. He has played a blinder with the media for months and months. What has he done wrong in Tory eyes?
O/T: some hope for Conservatives in that Johnson only scores just above Priti Patel, but the real shocker is the two most swivelly of swivelly-eyed nutjobs, Frost and Rees-Mogg right up at the top. The modern Conservative Party clearly still has more extremists in it than Labour under Corbyn if so many want to endorse these two!
You're calling "Swivel-eyed" the professional diplomat Frost?
The professional diplomat Frost who managed to get not one but two deals agreed by both all 27 nations of the EU and the Westminster Parliament too? Something his predecessor Robbins abjectly failed to do?
And then he demanded that the EU had to renegotiate it after he realized he'd mucked NI up.
Absolutely he did which is entirely smart politics and shows what a skilled negotiator Frost was.
Robbins completely screwed up by agreeing to allow Northern Ireland to be sorted first before the future relationship was negotiated, it should have always been the other way around. And he was incapable of negotiating any unilateral way out of the backstop.
Frost managed to negotiate a fudge for NI which included Article 16 within its provisions. Then he was able to sort out the future relationship. Now its time to deal with NI.
Sorting out Northern Ireland should have always taken place after sorting out the future relationship, not before it. The Protocol has served its purpose now, its time to replace it. Very smart politics.
O/T: some hope for Conservatives in that Johnson only scores just above Priti Patel, but the real shocker is the two most swivelly of swivelly-eyed nutjobs, Frost and Rees-Mogg right up at the top. The modern Conservative Party clearly still has more extremists in it than Labour under Corbyn if so many want to endorse these two!
Neither Frost or JRM are as bad as Jezza.
But.
The people at the top of the list are the ones who make the Conservatives feel good about themselves, who tell the activists what they want to hear. In that sense, they are the mirror image of Corbyn.
In some ways, fair enough. But at some point, all parties need someone to remind them that not everyone thinks like them, or they can't have what they want. To give him his due, BoJo does that with greenery.
But who in the professional wing of the Conservative Party is left who is prepared to stand up to the activists?
Would be nice to see what the definition of a people smuggler is?
As at the moment your son could be one....
With respect I reject that suggestion
Doesn't matter what you and I think or feel. What matters is what the law says, or in this case will say. And that draft we discussed hasn't been changed as far as I am aware to take the heat off the RNLI (to whom I have just renewed my sub, as it happens).
I have no doubt whatsoever that the RNLI will continue to save the lives of those in peril on the sea irrespectively
Insulate Britain apologising for their actions but will carry on blocking roads
They really have lost the plot and their cause
Lock them up Patel
Terrorism: the unlawful use of violence or threats to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or government, with the goal of furthering political, social, or ideological objectives.
Not seen them using violence or threatening people.
Their direct action is no more than the Suffragettes did.
Terrorism my arse
They are using threats, of further blockades, to coerce. The definition doesn’t specify violence or threats against people.
The action has the risk of damaging the economy which they need to thrive to fund their crazy demands.
On Topic - I assume the top of the list is made up of the sane Tories voting for Truss, Wallace, Sunak, Zahawi, Javid, etc and the loons going for Rees Mogg, Frost, Dorries, Trevelyan, etc
What surprises me is Shapps down at the bottom. He has played a blinder with the media for months and months. What has he done wrong in Tory eyes?
Johnson is in the relegation zone though, even on Con Home.
Would be nice to see what the definition of a people smuggler is?
As at the moment your son could be one....
With respect I reject that suggestion
OK any RNLI person sent out to rescue a dingy / boat which has immigrants on it.
The issue isn't the size of the sentence, its can the crime be defined in a way that innocent bystanders aren't guilty of it.
And those bystanders currently include the RNLI and anyone providing an immigrant with the number of a suitable UK immigration lawyer, to include 2 examples we've discussed in the past.
I'm not quite sure how Priti Patel managed to hang on to her job in the recent reshuffle.
Right at the top of her 'to do' list after the last GE was to stop asylum seekers/refugees/economic migrants/criminals (select according to taste) crossing the Channel. Not only has she singularly failed to do this, but I understand numbers have doubled this year. Regardless of the reasons, she's accountable for the failure. If I'd have missed my targets at work so spectacularly, I'd have been out on my ear.
And it's not as if Patel has any other notable achievements to compensate for her failure on Channel crossings. Far from it.
The 27 is for fuel tanker drivers , the 127 is for normal HGV drivers .
The policy was delusional as unless you give visas for a much longer period of time why would a driver take a job for just a few months and then be told to bugger off.
Don't agree with Patel talking about tougher sentences for drugs whatsoever.
Time to legalise them instead.
Deflection and taking tough. Deflecting from her failures elsewhere.
Agree it is time to legalise them and use the taxes for treatment of addiction.
Drugs policy is totally broken, by trying to find a middle way.
You either need to legalise drugs completely, tax them and treat addicts as a health issue, or you need to have a totally zero tolerance, and use compulsory prison sentences for personal amounts.
Having a situation where small amounts are dealt with by a caution, but with the gangs running the distribution and killing each other over it, is the worst possible situation.
The other issue is education. It has been utterly atrocious in this country over decades. You have folk who think being within 15 feet of a bong will cause instant addiction, a life of crime and an early grave. Who, therefore see no distinction between weed or crack. And others, too clever by half, who always know better than the experts. Because they've never heard an expert who is permitted to speak openly and truthfully on the subject in the mainstream. Not only have we not had a grown-up debate. We haven’t had a debate.
O/T: some hope for Conservatives in that Johnson only scores just above Priti Patel, but the real shocker is the two most swivelly of swivelly-eyed nutjobs, Frost and Rees-Mogg right up at the top. The modern Conservative Party clearly still has more extremists in it than Labour under Corbyn if so many want to endorse these two!
You're calling "Swivel-eyed" the professional diplomat Frost?
The professional diplomat Frost who managed to get not one but two deals agreed by both all 27 nations of the EU and the Westminster Parliament too? Something his predecessor Robbins abjectly failed to do?
Yep. Fucking nutjob, doesn't matter what his background is. I bet you love Rees-Mogg too. I think he might not find you to his taste though.
I can't stand Mogg. He has next to no redeeming features.
O/T: some hope for Conservatives in that Johnson only scores just above Priti Patel, but the real shocker is the two most swivelly of swivelly-eyed nutjobs, Frost and Rees-Mogg right up at the top. The modern Conservative Party clearly still has more extremists in it than Labour under Corbyn if so many want to endorse these two!
Neither Frost or JRM are as bad as Jezza.
But.
The people at the top of the list are the ones who make the Conservatives feel good about themselves, who tell the activists what they want to hear. In that sense, they are the mirror image of Corbyn.
In some ways, fair enough. But at some point, all parties need someone to remind them that not everyone thinks like them, or they can't have what they want. To give him his due, BoJo does that with greenery.
But who in the professional wing of the Conservative Party is left who is prepared to stand up to the activists?
Would be nice to see what the definition of a people smuggler is?
As at the moment your son could be one....
With respect I reject that suggestion
Doesn't matter what you and I think or feel. What matters is what the law says, or in this case will say. And that draft we discussed hasn't been changed as far as I am aware to take the heat off the RNLI (to whom I have just renewed my sub, as it happens).
I have no doubt whatsoever that the RNLI will continue to save the lives of those in peril on the sea irrespectively
Got to laugh at Patel announcing more 'increased sentences'. This seems to be a recurring trick to fool the public: they change the law to increase the theoretical maximum sentence, normally to life imprisonment. But little actually changes in the courts, as the sentencing guidelines remain largely unchanged. Its similar to what labour did, longer jail sentences were introduced at the same time as automatic release half way through, so no effective change.
Don't agree with Patel talking about tougher sentences for drugs whatsoever.
Time to legalise them instead.
Cannabis at most, certainly not hard drugs like heroin
Definitely legalise heroin. It’s not difficult to be a functional heroin addict, with a good quality product and treatment options - yet it’s the most likely drug to be cut with all sorts of crap by the black market, and turns lives upside-down because of the dependency on the dealers.
Would be nice to see what the definition of a people smuggler is?
As at the moment your son could be one....
With respect I reject that suggestion
OK any RNLI person sent out to rescue a dingy / boat which has immigrants on it.
Are you really suggesting HMG will charge RNLI crew for rescuing lives at sea, immigrants or not
Unlikely but that's what the law says unless they find a means of correcting that rather large flaw in it.
And it doesn't need to be a criminal prosecution, it could be a private one...
There is alkso the small matter of insurance cover for the RNLI.
Edit: and getting anyone at all to be a committee member, given the duties of charity trustees and their personal liability for the decisions thet make.
On topic, Stephen Bush of Statesman's email this morning - an interesting comment:
"The central reason why Patel's stock is not as high as it once was among Conservative activists is the perception that her department is failing: that she is unable to prevent more people coming here on boats in search of a better life, that we have de facto decriminalised most crimes other than murder and speeding, that the Metropolitan Police is poorly run, and so on.
Now, the wheel of politics has plenty of turns and it's possible that this time next year we're once again talking about how much activists and MPs love Priti Patel. But the concern among some MPs who believe - rightly in my view - that Patel was integral to their 2019 re-election is that the fall in the Home Secretary's stock among party activists is the first sign that the government's advantage as far as crime and security is concerned might once again be about to come under serious threat in the country as a whole."
Well, when the police seem more interested in policing Twitter, that catching speeding motorists appears to be more of a priority than stopping protesters blocking the roads, and when police themselves turn out to have a lot of bad eggs in their ranks, it’s hardly surprising that confidence in the Home Secretary is low.
Elements of the Tory target demographic were always rather reluctant to give up the right to speed, prefereably when pished. I can remember the arguments over the introduction of the breathalyser, etc.
If you want to find one point in recent history, where the general public started to lose faith in the police, the introduction of speed cameras is probably it.
I am in favour of people sticking to speed limits, and consequently of punishing people when they do not. However, policing in a democracy has to be by consent, and it's evident that the argument over speeding is not won. There is not consent for the enforcement of speed limits. Or at least the minority opposed is the largest for any policing issue.
There’s consent for letting the police stop people driving like idiots, or drunk, or speeding through villages.
The problem comes with things like, as was the case near me a couple of decades ago, a brand new bypass opening, dual carriageway but with a 50 limit and four cameras in three miles. The setting of limits and the enforcement of them, simply isn’t seen as ‘fair’ by the majority of motorists. See also unmarked traffic cars stopping people doing 75 on motorways, rather than the middle-lane hogs, and camera vans and radars that can operate at long range hidden from view. I once got done for speeding at 420m range from a handheld radar, that’s just not playing the game.
There is quite an easy way to avoid being ever fined for speeding though, isn't there?
It's a bit like folk complaining that councils are fleecing people and raising millions with fines for illegal parking, driving in bus lanes etc. If people didn't do it, councils wouldn't raise a penny (maybe apart from the odd 'accidental' bit of illegality).
Got to laugh at Patel announcing more 'increased sentences'. This seems to be a recurring trick to fool the public: they change the law to increase the theoretical maximum sentence, normally to life imprisonment. But little actually changes in the courts, as the sentencing guidelines remain largely unchanged. Its similar to what labour did, longer jail sentences were introduced at the same time as automatic release half way through, so no effective change.
My first thought when they announced money to allow more electronic tags this morning was that money would be way better spent getting people through court rather than afterwards.
Don't agree with Patel talking about tougher sentences for drugs whatsoever.
Time to legalise them instead.
Cannabis at most, certainly not hard drugs like heroin
Definitely legalise heroin. It’s not difficult to be a functional heroin addict, with a good quality product and treatment options - yet it’s the most likely drug to be cut with all sorts of crap by the black market, and turns lives upside-down because of the dependency on the dealers.
Definitely legalise cocaine too.
It is a piece of piss for anyone who wants to get any of these drugs, to do so.
A law that can't be enforced is not a good law. All you're doing is pushing people into the grateful arms of criminals.
Tax them and try to eradicate their use via education and treatment instead.
Don't agree with Patel talking about tougher sentences for drugs whatsoever.
Time to legalise them instead.
Deflection and taking tough. Deflecting from her failures elsewhere.
Agree it is time to legalise them and use the taxes for treatment of addiction.
Politicians rarely go wrong with the public when promising to be tough tough tough. It's simple and sounds right, even when it isn't.
See also creating new offences as a gimmick. I as surprised to see Boris apparently not going that route re misogyny.
You’re right of course, it’s depressing really. Something innovative may work. It’s to the credit of the SNP/green govt they are taking a different approach as they have clearly failed with the current one.
Adam Boulton of Sky has just got Insulate Britain to admit their plans would cost between half and one trillion pounds over 10 years
Without a concrete commitment to half a trillion plus spent on their pet project they'll continue to blockade roads.
People need to be imprisoned if they continue with this. Let them demonstrate from prison.
Their demand is every house in UK is fully insulated? Putting aside the cost and the practicalities of delivering, how much CO2 would this actually save? It's a generally laudable goal but is it a screaming must all be done in next year emergency priority?
A better target might be get on a build more nuclear so we can switch from gas faster?
If we had a spare half a trillion lying around then half a trillion invested in nuclear or tidal would eliminate far more emissions than half a trillion in insulation would.
Classic fallacy of "something must be done, this is something, so this must be done."
It doesn't need half a trillion, and much of it has already been done. And it is not just about insulation.
IB are clueless, sociopathic, goons.
And Govt is the wrong source for most of it; most of the investment should be by the house owner - perhaps with some regulation and modest co-funding from Government.
A more realistic total number would be a few billion per annum with appropriate regulation, used as co-funding, and very much clawed back from energy usage. Plus some incentives making it more expensive to have an inefficient house.
Potential emissions' savings are actually very significant, as more other sectors have been seriously addressed.
O/T: some hope for Conservatives in that Johnson only scores just above Priti Patel, but the real shocker is the two most swivelly of swivelly-eyed nutjobs, Frost and Rees-Mogg right up at the top. The modern Conservative Party clearly still has more extremists in it than Labour under Corbyn if so many want to endorse these two!
You're calling "Swivel-eyed" the professional diplomat Frost?
The professional diplomat Frost who managed to get not one but two deals agreed by both all 27 nations of the EU and the Westminster Parliament too? Something his predecessor Robbins abjectly failed to do?
And then he demanded that the EU had to renegotiate it after he realized he'd mucked NI up.
Absolutely he did which is entirely smart politics and shows what a skilled negotiator Frost was.
Robbins completely screwed up by agreeing to allow Northern Ireland to be sorted first before the future relationship was negotiated, it should have always been the other way around. And he was incapable of negotiating any unilateral way out of the backstop.
Frost managed to negotiate a fudge for NI which included Article 16 within its provisions. Then he was able to sort out the future relationship. Now its time to deal with NI.
Sorting out Northern Ireland should have always taken place after sorting out the future relationship, not before it. The Protocol has served its purpose now, its time to replace it. Very smart politics.
Seems incredibly stupid politics to me - leaving Northern Ireland's position as an unsolved, festering sore after the negotiations were signed off by all parties and everyone's gone home.
Don't agree with Patel talking about tougher sentences for drugs whatsoever.
Time to legalise them instead.
Cannabis at most, certainly not hard drugs like heroin
I'd legalise them all, heroin, cocaine, cannabis ...
Then tax them and invest the money into education and treatment to eradicate its use.
There's more than one way to skin a cat.
Of course.
50 years of drug prohibition has failed. And failed badly enough that I'd wager anyone on this board if given £100 and 24 hours could find a little heroin (of questionable purity).
Got to laugh at Patel announcing more 'increased sentences'. This seems to be a recurring trick to fool the public: they change the law to increase the theoretical maximum sentence, normally to life imprisonment. But little actually changes in the courts, as the sentencing guidelines remain largely unchanged. Its similar to what labour did, longer jail sentences were introduced at the same time as automatic release half way through, so no effective change.
My first thought when they announced money to allow more electronic tags this morning was that money would be way better spent getting people through court rather than afterwards.
Despite moaning about the courts yesterday, I don't agree with that one.
The issue at the minute is the revolving door so people get [eventually] through the courts and end up back on the streets and back ultimately before the courts again.
If people could go through the courts once and be genuinely rehabilitated and not end up back before the courts again . . . that'd be worth more than almost any other investment.
O/T: some hope for Conservatives in that Johnson only scores just above Priti Patel, but the real shocker is the two most swivelly of swivelly-eyed nutjobs, Frost and Rees-Mogg right up at the top. The modern Conservative Party clearly still has more extremists in it than Labour under Corbyn if so many want to endorse these two!
You're calling "Swivel-eyed" the professional diplomat Frost?
The professional diplomat Frost who managed to get not one but two deals agreed by both all 27 nations of the EU and the Westminster Parliament too? Something his predecessor Robbins abjectly failed to do?
And then he demanded that the EU had to renegotiate it after he realized he'd mucked NI up.
Absolutely he did which is entirely smart politics and shows what a skilled negotiator Frost was.
Robbins completely screwed up by agreeing to allow Northern Ireland to be sorted first before the future relationship was negotiated, it should have always been the other way around. And he was incapable of negotiating any unilateral way out of the backstop.
Frost managed to negotiate a fudge for NI which included Article 16 within its provisions. Then he was able to sort out the future relationship. Now its time to deal with NI.
Sorting out Northern Ireland should have always taken place after sorting out the future relationship, not before it. The Protocol has served its purpose now, its time to replace it. Very smart politics.
Seems incredibly stupid politics to me - leaving Northern Ireland's position as an unsolved, festering sore after the negotiations were signed off by all parties and everyone's gone home.
Well it is very on brand for historical approaches to Northern Ireland.
Insulate Britain apologising for their actions but will carry on blocking roads
They really have lost the plot and their cause
Lock them up Patel
Terrorism: the unlawful use of violence or threats to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or government, with the goal of furthering political, social, or ideological objectives.
Not seen them using violence or threatening people.
Their direct action is no more than the Suffragettes did.
Terrorism my arse
They are using threats, of further blockades, to coerce. The definition doesn’t specify violence or threats against people.
The action has the risk of damaging the economy which they need to thrive to fund their crazy demands.
I'm not quite sure how Priti Patel managed to hang on to her job in the recent reshuffle.
Right at the top of her 'to do' list after the last GE was to stop asylum seekers/refugees/economic migrants/criminals (select according to taste) crossing the Channel. Not only has she singularly failed to do this, but I understand numbers have doubled this year. Regardless of the reasons, she's accountable for the failure. If I'd have missed my targets at work so spectacularly, I'd have been out on my ear.
And it's not as if Patel has any other notable achievements to compensate for her failure on Channel crossings. Far from it.
I get the feeling she will stay there until the migrant situation gets so bad she can be made a scapegoat for it and sacked. At the moment people are focussed on other things, plus the weather is getting bad so less people will attempt the crossings.
She thought she knew it all, but has failed to implement the bright ideas that she had (IE: wave machines to divert the boats and send the asylum seekers back).
O/T: some hope for Conservatives in that Johnson only scores just above Priti Patel, but the real shocker is the two most swivelly of swivelly-eyed nutjobs, Frost and Rees-Mogg right up at the top. The modern Conservative Party clearly still has more extremists in it than Labour under Corbyn if so many want to endorse these two!
You're calling "Swivel-eyed" the professional diplomat Frost?
The professional diplomat Frost who managed to get not one but two deals agreed by both all 27 nations of the EU and the Westminster Parliament too? Something his predecessor Robbins abjectly failed to do?
And then he demanded that the EU had to renegotiate it after he realized he'd mucked NI up.
Absolutely he did which is entirely smart politics and shows what a skilled negotiator Frost was.
Robbins completely screwed up by agreeing to allow Northern Ireland to be sorted first before the future relationship was negotiated, it should have always been the other way around. And he was incapable of negotiating any unilateral way out of the backstop.
Frost managed to negotiate a fudge for NI which included Article 16 within its provisions. Then he was able to sort out the future relationship. Now its time to deal with NI.
Sorting out Northern Ireland should have always taken place after sorting out the future relationship, not before it. The Protocol has served its purpose now, its time to replace it. Very smart politics.
Seems incredibly stupid politics to me - leaving Northern Ireland's position as an unsolved, festering sore after the negotiations were signed off by all parties and everyone's gone home.
That's because you're wilfully blind.
Its not possible to resolve a part of the UK's position until you've resolved the UK's position itself. How could you?
It was a farcically stupid EU demand that Robbins agreed to. If you want to arrange a relationship between A and B you need to know what state A and B are.
Once the UK/EU position is agreed (which it is now), then its possible to tweak a portion of the UK's relationship with the EU. Not before then.
O/T: some hope for Conservatives in that Johnson only scores just above Priti Patel, but the real shocker is the two most swivelly of swivelly-eyed nutjobs, Frost and Rees-Mogg right up at the top. The modern Conservative Party clearly still has more extremists in it than Labour under Corbyn if so many want to endorse these two!
Neither Frost or JRM are as bad as Jezza.
But.
The people at the top of the list are the ones who make the Conservatives feel good about themselves, who tell the activists what they want to hear. In that sense, they are the mirror image of Corbyn.
In some ways, fair enough. But at some point, all parties need someone to remind them that not everyone thinks like them, or they can't have what they want. To give him his due, BoJo does that with greenery.
But who in the professional wing of the Conservative Party is left who is prepared to stand up to the activists?
Look, the Tories have been in power for 11 years now.
After 10 years in power all parties get a bit bored and less fresh and full of ideas. The activists too start to want a leader who is ideologically purer rather than to just stay in power for the sake of it.
Labour however has been out of power for over a decade, so it is they whose leadership needs to stand up to activists more than the Tories
I was back in Rochdale yesterday managing the removers as my parents are moving up here (after 41 years in the same house). Whilst I've seen how busy the town is getting over the years, it really hit home yesterday with absurd traffic levels.
Quite simply there are too many cars, too many houses, too many people. For 20 years the council have allowed houses to be built and built and built along the Rochdale > Littleborough road to the point where its now ludicrously busy.
New houses means you need new roads. New schools. New infrastructure. But there has been none of that. Just people piled on top of people so that you can barely move. Yes I know my perspective has shifted having moved to the country. But at which point do councils have a requirement to actually stop and plan rather than just let developments go up everywhere?
This is one of the problems. I've posted before about the likelihood of houses being built on the fields behind our house. I'm (really*) not against that in principle, but it does require upgrading facilities. It needs a new road in from the bypass. It needs at least a local shop or two. It needs a school or drastic expansion of the nearest school. The town would benefit from management of the floodplain (which only floods 1-2 times per year) to put in some nice parkland/playing fields (the town lacks this, just a few small play parks) and some good cycling/walking infrastructure to get from the new houses to the town centre in the most direct way. Those - even some of those - could make the development a net plus for us. The proposal is however houses only.
*I'll be a bit sad about it. There's a barn owl will lose its home/hunting ground, the deer will no longer wander through in the early morning, the hares won't be running across the field... But we do need houses and the flood plain means that the houses won't be that close and won't really impact on us in terms of privacy etc. It will be a less nice view, but I'd trade that if it led to new amenities for the town.
Is there a coordination of planning between councils and national government? In Scotland there is a duty on councils to produce a plan which is then reviewed by national gmt. I haven't looked into this in detail but for instance in my home area it is pretty clear what the plans are for new houses and where, and one can put one's views to the review. And, I assume, the total of plans bears some relation to government planninbg for new houses, new social/council housing, etc.
I'm wondering if this explains the otherwise bizarre map of Nimbyism in the UK we were discussing in PB a few weeks ago - total contrast across the Anglo-Scottish border.
There is a local plan, with consultation on that (we made our views known - essentially the above). I don't know whether the national government gets involved. The local plan has housing/mixed use which includes the proposed development, new roads etc - much, if not all, of what I ask for above. The proposed development is a smallish part of that site, accessed from the more desirable of the adjacent roads, but just houses. I hope the council will enforce their plan, so that at least some of the infrastructure is also built - wait and see, I guess. The council own the land in question, which is leased to the farmers, so they will have some conflicting interests, I guess - I'm sure there is a lot of good they could do with the money from selling the land, but I hope they don't lose sight of the benefits from doing the right development.
WRT to this, the plan needs to be examined by a government appointed planning Inspector before it can be adopted. I cannot tell if this has happened in your case. What generally happens in situations like this is the developer will go through a process of getting as much profit out of the site as possible (ie putting on twice as many houses, and only providing the perks that directly boost the value of the houses they are building). There is also a loophole whereby if the plan gets to be more than 5 years old, or the Council isn't delivering enough housing, then the plan becomes 'out of date'; which is often effectively a green light to go ahead anyway. In such a scenario, as an objector, you have to find harm in some way: IE is the existing infrastructure really that inadequate, would there be such disruption on the roads that it 'significantly and demonstrably' outweighs the benefit of more housing. Not sure if any of this applies here, but people who have been scarred by these battles will be able to tell you that you can't really rely on what is in the plan, unfortunately.
Thanks, that's interesting.
Last plan is over 5 years old. The new plan is not yet adopted (is that the right word? - still out for consultation, I think).
The developer's plan is not yet in for planning permission; it has only been sent round to residents, by them, for consultation. I suspect, as you say, it may be an unrealistic opening gambit - they might add some amenities in response to the consultation, which were - perhaps - always planned anyway. As for impacts, that's the other interesting thing. The proposed development is, in the first stage, only 300 houses. Impacts not so great or hard to show. The local plan has ten times that number in a contiguous area. Overall, it would have a big impact. But added a few hundred at a time? No single group of a few hundred makes a huge difference...
For this particular development, the council does in principle have absolute veto as they own the land, I guess. But council budgets what they are, there will be a strong incentive to sell and put the money to use.
I assume - and accept - that all the earmarked land will be built on over the few years. The thing that I hope can still be influenced is exactly what is built.
O/T: some hope for Conservatives in that Johnson only scores just above Priti Patel, but the real shocker is the two most swivelly of swivelly-eyed nutjobs, Frost and Rees-Mogg right up at the top. The modern Conservative Party clearly still has more extremists in it than Labour under Corbyn if so many want to endorse these two!
You're calling "Swivel-eyed" the professional diplomat Frost?
The professional diplomat Frost who managed to get not one but two deals agreed by both all 27 nations of the EU and the Westminster Parliament too? Something his predecessor Robbins abjectly failed to do?
And then he demanded that the EU had to renegotiate it after he realized he'd mucked NI up.
Absolutely he did which is entirely smart politics and shows what a skilled negotiator Frost was.
Robbins completely screwed up by agreeing to allow Northern Ireland to be sorted first before the future relationship was negotiated, it should have always been the other way around. And he was incapable of negotiating any unilateral way out of the backstop.
Frost managed to negotiate a fudge for NI which included Article 16 within its provisions. Then he was able to sort out the future relationship. Now its time to deal with NI.
Sorting out Northern Ireland should have always taken place after sorting out the future relationship, not before it. The Protocol has served its purpose now, its time to replace it. Very smart politics.
Seems incredibly stupid politics to me - leaving Northern Ireland's position as an unsolved, festering sore after the negotiations were signed off by all parties and everyone's gone home.
Well it is very on brand for historical approaches to Northern Ireland.
Adam Boulton of Sky has just got Insulate Britain to admit their plans would cost between half and one trillion pounds over 10 years
Without a concrete commitment to half a trillion plus spent on their pet project they'll continue to blockade roads.
People need to be imprisoned if they continue with this. Let them demonstrate from prison.
Their demand is every house in UK is fully insulated? Putting aside the cost and the practicalities of delivering, how much CO2 would this actually save? It's a generally laudable goal but is it a screaming must all be done in next year emergency priority?
A better target might be get on a build more nuclear so we can switch from gas faster?
A better target might have been to get on and build more wind turbines (and insulate more houses) when, less than a decade ago, people like Boris Johnson were claiming that they couldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding and people like Anne-Marie Trevelyan were denying the existence of climate change altogether. If we had a government made up of people who accepted reality, we wouldn't need XR!
We don’t need them. We have a govt who accepts this. Wind turbines have been going up offshore for quite a while now and New ones in the pipeline. Complaining about what people used to think when the science wasn’t as settled as it is now is futile.
There is no battle, all mainstream parties accept this. The Tories do. Trevelyan does.
Who, in the Current govt on the climate issue, does not Accept the need to take action ?
I got my house insulated, paid by the govt, a while ago. There are schemes and the govt is taking action.
The science was well settled a decade ago. Indeed, it's been known since the 1980s that CO2 emissions were an urgent problem. The reason we're in a mess now is not because of XR, Greenpeace and Co; it's because of the refusal of governments, particularly right-wing governments, to act on the advice of the scientists.
I am very doubtful whether this is a left/right wing government issue. It is a politics issue. The most totalitarian governments, traditionally seen as left (like China - though who knows what left or right would mean) seem to struggle immensely with the realities of the issue. The most social democrat of regimes produce directly and indirectly oceans of CO2 (Canada, Norway etc).
The more interesting question is this: When will climate realists and climate idealists agree that for all sorts of reasons the CO2 amount in the air is going to reach levels science regards as unacceptable, and this is already baked in. CO2 is not only continuing going into the air, the amount going in is increasing yearly. We are nowhere near the required trajectory. Nor shall we be.
Don't agree with Patel talking about tougher sentences for drugs whatsoever.
Time to legalise them instead.
Cannabis at most, certainly not hard drugs like heroin
Definitely legalise heroin. It’s not difficult to be a functional heroin addict, with a good quality product and treatment options - yet it’s the most likely drug to be cut with all sorts of crap by the black market, and turns lives upside-down because of the dependency on the dealers.
If you legalise anything more people will do it and try it. That means more people will try harder drugs like heroin and cocaine just because they can without fear of arrest, a criminal record or even jail.
You can still keep the treatment options for those who are heroin addicts now
Comments
And it's quite interesting to reflect on why there is suddenly such sociopathic, abusive behaviour from people who are by background reasonably well-off, well educated and numerate. Plus such trenchant, irreversible commitment to a series of fictions. To the extent that if other human beings are injured, or die, it is a lower priority for them.
I think there is an analogy with David Ike, who went over the edge and took his family group with him, leaving no easy way back. And 30 years later he is still out there gibbering about conspiracy theories.
Sometimes history needs a push, as Father Lenin said.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2021/oct/05/boris-johnson-tory-conference-conservative-party-uk-politics-news-live
The Road Haulage Association (RHA) has said that Boris Johnson was mistaken when he explained how visas for foreign tanker drivers were issued in an interview this morning. (See 10.39am.) Johnson said the haulage industry had provided names of drivers wanting to come to the UK. But Rod McKenzie, the RHA’s managing director of policy and public affairs, said that was not the case.
He explained:
There isn’t a database of lorry drivers with names attached to them and want to work in Britain that British lorry firms can tap into and say, ‘we’ll have that one, that one, that one or that one’. It doesn’t work like that, it doesn’t exist.
The only way it works is the Government advertises that short-term visas are available, Europeans think about it, decide whether they want to or don’t want to, and act accordingly. And, clearly, only 127 to date have acted accordingly.
The action has the risk of damaging the economy which they need to thrive to fund their crazy demands.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yU4V9foPaUE&list=PL3CCBF5A57052F05B&index=4
Classic fallacy of "something must be done, this is something, so this must be done."
Like claiming there is no poverty because billionaires have plenty of money.
Poverty in the UK is also a distribution problem.
There is no battle, all mainstream parties accept this. The Tories do. Trevelyan does.
Who, in the Current govt on the climate issue, does not Accept the need to take action ?
I got my house insulated, paid by the govt, a while ago. There are schemes and the govt is taking action.
IIRC they also tend to do one if you have any review of your house for a grant scheme. Used to apply to anywhere getting solar too, as the rates were higher for better properties.
I tend to do one after reasonably major modifications, because it gets them recorded for next time - whilst if they do one without evidence assessrs are required to make assumptions of poor quality fabric. Which will be a problem when we get to "Cs" being required. It really needs an evidence file per property.
I've asked elsewhere for recent experience, and will try to update.
There are all kinds of possibilities, and things that can be made requirements. You (or somebody) need to get stuck in with the Council. The Council has a very short institutional memory for good practice.
Places like Nottingham, and Chesterfield, are doing quite remarkable things.
You need a group of enough to lobby every councillor at the relevant Local Gov levels, and to keep on for a long time.
Have a look at the infrastructure section of the Chesterfield Cycle Campaign site.
https://chesterfieldcc.org.uk/#
This is the sort of thing a non-sectarian Green Party should be for.
Time to legalise them instead.
Agree it is time to legalise them and use the taxes for treatment of addiction.
The problem comes with things like, as was the case near me a couple of decades ago, a brand new bypass opening, dual carriageway but with a 50 limit and four cameras in three miles. The setting of limits and the enforcement of them, simply isn’t seen as ‘fair’ by the majority of motorists. See also unmarked traffic cars stopping people doing 75 on motorways, rather than the middle-lane hogs, and camera vans and radars that can operate at long range hidden from view. I once got done for speeding at 420m range from a handheld radar, that’s just not playing the game.
I refer to your prior comment.
Well they are accepting It now. Who in the current govt doesn’t accept the need to take action, which they are doing ? And ten years ago the science was very much disputed.
The professional diplomat Frost who managed to get not one but two deals agreed by both all 27 nations of the EU and the Westminster Parliament too? Something his predecessor Robbins abjectly failed to do?
You either need to legalise drugs completely, tax them and treat addicts as a health issue, or you need to have a totally zero tolerance, and use compulsory prison sentences for personal amounts.
Having a situation where small amounts are dealt with by a caution, but with the gangs running the distribution and killing each other over it, is the worst possible situation.
As at the moment your son could be one....
Robbins and May's deal had no exit mechanism from the backstop. Frost's and Boris's deal had Article 16.
There's no reason the Article 16 they negotiated to be included can not be exercised.
XR jumped on the bandwagon that already existed, they're not first movers.
I see Facebook works, Taiwan remains unmolested for now, and Patel won't rest till the streets are free of crime.
And if she has to lock up every last citizen, then all the better.
https://news.sky.com/story/brexit-uk-and-eu-cannot-go-on-as-we-are-with-northern-ireland-protocol-says-lord-frost-12360568
If we invoke it unreasonably that will be pretty apparent I should think, so there's no need to blanket condemn the principle of invocation, it's the detail of invocation which can be condemned, if appropriate.
What surprises me is Shapps down at the bottom. He has played a blinder with the media for months and months. What has he done wrong in Tory eyes?
Robbins completely screwed up by agreeing to allow Northern Ireland to be sorted first before the future relationship was negotiated, it should have always been the other way around. And he was incapable of negotiating any unilateral way out of the backstop.
Frost managed to negotiate a fudge for NI which included Article 16 within its provisions. Then he was able to sort out the future relationship. Now its time to deal with NI.
Sorting out Northern Ireland should have always taken place after sorting out the future relationship, not before it. The Protocol has served its purpose now, its time to replace it. Very smart politics.
But.
The people at the top of the list are the ones who make the Conservatives feel good about themselves, who tell the activists what they want to hear. In that sense, they are the mirror image of Corbyn.
In some ways, fair enough. But at some point, all parties need someone to remind them that not everyone thinks like them, or they can't have what they want. To give him his due, BoJo does that with greenery.
But who in the professional wing of the Conservative Party is left who is prepared to stand up to the activists?
See also creating new offences as a gimmick. I as surprised to see Boris apparently not going that route re misogyny.
The issue isn't the size of the sentence, its can the crime be defined in a way that innocent bystanders aren't guilty of it.
And those bystanders currently include the RNLI and anyone providing an immigrant with the number of a suitable UK immigration lawyer, to include 2 examples we've discussed in the past.
Right at the top of her 'to do' list after the last GE was to stop asylum seekers/refugees/economic migrants/criminals (select according to taste) crossing the Channel. Not only has she singularly failed to do this, but I understand numbers have doubled this year. Regardless of the reasons, she's accountable for the failure. If I'd have missed my targets at work so spectacularly, I'd have been out on my ear.
And it's not as if Patel has any other notable achievements to compensate for her failure on Channel crossings. Far from it.
Then tax them and invest the money into education and treatment to eradicate its use.
There's more than one way to skin a cat.
You have folk who think being within 15 feet of a bong will cause instant addiction, a life of crime and an early grave.
Who, therefore see no distinction between weed or crack.
And others, too clever by half, who always know better than the experts. Because they've never heard an expert who is permitted to speak openly and truthfully on the subject in the mainstream.
Not only have we not had a grown-up debate. We haven’t had a debate.
And it doesn't need to be a criminal prosecution, it could be a private one...
Edit: and getting anyone at all to be a committee member, given the duties of charity trustees and their personal liability for the decisions thet make.
It's a bit like folk complaining that councils are fleecing people and raising millions with fines for illegal parking, driving in bus lanes etc. If people didn't do it, councils wouldn't raise a penny (maybe apart from the odd 'accidental' bit of illegality).
It is a piece of piss for anyone who wants to get any of these drugs, to do so.
A law that can't be enforced is not a good law. All you're doing is pushing people into the grateful arms of criminals.
Tax them and try to eradicate their use via education and treatment instead.
IB are clueless, sociopathic, goons.
And Govt is the wrong source for most of it; most of the investment should be by the house owner - perhaps with some regulation and modest co-funding from Government.
A more realistic total number would be a few billion per annum with appropriate regulation, used as co-funding, and very much clawed back from energy usage. Plus some incentives making it more expensive to have an inefficient house.
Potential emissions' savings are actually very significant, as more other sectors have been seriously addressed.
50 years of drug prohibition has failed. And failed badly enough that I'd wager anyone on this board if given £100 and 24 hours could find a little heroin (of questionable purity).
Could be a PB challenge, 'unsober October'?
The issue at the minute is the revolving door so people get [eventually] through the courts and end up back on the streets and back ultimately before the courts again.
If people could go through the courts once and be genuinely rehabilitated and not end up back before the courts again . . . that'd be worth more than almost any other investment.
They are required to take into consideration all aspects that may affect their rescue before launching a lifeboat
She thought she knew it all, but has failed to implement the bright ideas that she had (IE: wave machines to divert the boats and send the asylum seekers back).
Its not possible to resolve a part of the UK's position until you've resolved the UK's position itself. How could you?
It was a farcically stupid EU demand that Robbins agreed to. If you want to arrange a relationship between A and B you need to know what state A and B are.
Once the UK/EU position is agreed (which it is now), then its possible to tweak a portion of the UK's relationship with the EU. Not before then.
After 10 years in power all parties get a bit bored and less fresh and full of ideas. The activists too start to want a leader who is ideologically purer rather than to just stay in power for the sake of it.
Labour however has been out of power for over a decade, so it is they whose leadership needs to stand up to activists more than the Tories
Last plan is over 5 years old. The new plan is not yet adopted (is that the right word? - still out for consultation, I think).
The developer's plan is not yet in for planning permission; it has only been sent round to residents, by them, for consultation. I suspect, as you say, it may be an unrealistic opening gambit - they might add some amenities in response to the consultation, which were - perhaps - always planned anyway. As for impacts, that's the other interesting thing. The proposed development is, in the first stage, only 300 houses. Impacts not so great or hard to show. The local plan has ten times that number in a contiguous area. Overall, it would have a big impact. But added a few hundred at a time? No single group of a few hundred makes a huge difference...
For this particular development, the council does in principle have absolute veto as they own the land, I guess. But council budgets what they are, there will be a strong incentive to sell and put the money to use.
I assume - and accept - that all the earmarked land will be built on over the few years. The thing that I hope can still be influenced is exactly what is built.
The more interesting question is this: When will climate realists and climate idealists agree that for all sorts of reasons the CO2 amount in the air is going to reach levels science regards as unacceptable, and this is already baked in. CO2 is not only continuing going into the air, the amount going in is increasing yearly. We are nowhere near the required trajectory. Nor shall we be.
You can still keep the treatment options for those who are heroin addicts now