Jason Kenny becomes the 30% favourite for this year BBC SPOTY election – politicalbetting.com

kamski said:

Lots of people determined to keep their heads firmly buried in the sand this morning.
Of course it's more comfortable to pretend this isn't happening and switch over to the sports instead, but the recklessness of what we have been doing for the last 30 years, mainly so that very rich people and companies can continue to make a fast buck is the by far the worst crime of my lifetime. Nothing else even comes close.

And those fanatic worshippers of the profit-motive cult continue to spout their bollocks despite all the evidence, it's hard to imagine any evidence that could possibly change their minds at this point. It's the worst religious cult of all - and some of its adherents even pretend to be against religion!

Philip_Thompson said:

And when are solar panels rather useless? In the winter, when heating is needed. Solar panels cease to work well just when our demand peaks. They're a great alternative to coal but if you want year-round zero carbon they're completely nonsensical.

IshmaelZ said:

contrarian said:

IshmaelZ said:

Andy_JS said:

contrarian said:

Morris_Dancer said:

How many decades have we been 10 years from disaster?

Certainly since the 1970s.

Why are the people who were so wrong then, so right now?

+1

This is puerile. Sources, please, for the 10 years claim being made in the 70s, and each of the years thereafter.

And as a bonus question for extra points: of the 10 hottest years since 1880 the earliest was 2005. Who thinks this fact arises purely from random variation?

https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-of-failed-eco-pocalyptic-predictions/

No you are correct its not since the 1970s.

Its actually since the 1960s.

See the prediction of meltdown by....er.....1975 from this eminent Stanford 'expert'

Famine, pollution and ice ages? What we are talking about is AGW, and you come up with a silly no effort blog of downstairs loo reading funnies.

Philip_Thompson said:

ydoethur said:

Pulpstar said:

Is Climate change real and driven by people ? Yes.
Do we need to ditch our gas central heating overnight ? No.

Simply building new homes with a heat pump "originally designed" into the system will replace the housing stock over the next couple of hundred years or so will be sufficient in my view (As will allowing electric to come on tap naturally). This is a marathon, not a sprint.

One thing about going for electric cars, do we have the generation capacity ?

What I frankly do not understand about these climate change targets is why we haven't been doing that, and also solar panels as standard, on all new builds for the last 15 years. That would have made a very considerable difference by now.

If I were feeling cynical I would say because the building trade lobbied hard to make sure it didn't happen and they had the right contacts to whom they were very close to get their way.

If I were feeling realistic, I would say everything in that sentence up to 'and.'

Solar panels are the wrong answer for the UK, they're almost but not quite virtue signalling nonsense in the UK.

In states like California or countries like Australia where electricity demand peaks in the summer sun when air conditioning comes on then solar panels are a complete no brainer.

But in the UK we're a cold, wet, grey island that sees energy demand peak in the winter when we put our heating on - and as we switch from gas to electric heaters that's only going to increase.

And when are solar panels rather useless? In the winter, when heating is needed. Solar panels cease to work well just when our demand peaks. They're a great alternative to coal but if you want year-round zero carbon they're completely nonsensical.

Big_G_NorthWales said:

kamski said:

Lots of people determined to keep their heads firmly buried in the sand this morning.
Of course it's more comfortable to pretend this isn't happening and switch over to the sports instead, but the recklessness of what we have been doing for the last 30 years, mainly so that very rich people and companies can continue to make a fast buck is the by far the worst crime of my lifetime. Nothing else even comes close.

And those fanatic worshippers of the profit-motive cult continue to spout their bollocks despite all the evidence, it's hard to imagine any evidence that could possibly change their minds at this point. It's the worst religious cult of all - and some of its adherents even pretend to be against religion!

If you read my post properly I accept climate change is happening but action to mitigate it has to be undertaken in a time scale that is realistic and acceptable to the public

Those who want immediate change need to explain exactly what they want, how they are going to achieve it, the cost, and how they are going to get the world to act in unison

Big_G_NorthWales said:

I started to listed to the IPCC report this morning and it was so boring and badly presented that I moved on to sports news quite quickly

I was prepared to listed and I accept climate change is with us but the idea that between 2021(yes this year) and 2040 we are all doomed is frankly idiotic.

As I understand it we have to give up all fossil fuel, stop flying, rid our homes of gas central heating, insulate every home in the UK, buy expensive electric cars that have poor ranges and nowhere near enough electricity capacity in the country and feel thoroughly guilty and selfish if we do not immediately agree to this, even though many countries will say of course they agree, then do absolutely nothing

It has to be a gradual process over many years and anything else is frankly totally unrealistic

And by the way watching Messi sobbing about leaving Barcelona was just pathetic.

Barcelona have made him a multi millionaire and if it was so important to him he could have played a couple of years at a nominal 1 euro per year, rather than £650,000 per week PSG are offering him

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

So the 'food shortages' turn out to be Waitrose not paying its drivers enough.

Not really Leningrad during the siege is it.

Still good for a bit of schadenfreude among those whose custom Waitrose doesn't want.

Now if you want a story which might damage Boris then try the new baby - he looks like one of those feckless fathers on poverty porn programs.

Not a good look when you're going to preach about environmental sustainability.

How have you reached that conclusion? There are tens of thousands fewer drivers than are required, with more retiring every month than are being replaced. So we now have some desperate companies like Tesco offering big dollah to entice drivers to defect, but that doesn't fix the problem either - the industry would be better served by Tesco spending the money on driver training.

What's wrong with pay rates rising for skilled workers ?

Nothing at all - there has been a race to the bottom over the last decade and more for truck drivers and a whole load of other industries.

My points are simple: they will drive costs and thus inflation, and it does not solve the driver crisis in the short to medium term. "Pay the drivers more" is not a solution for tens of thousands of vacancies you cannot fill. It is a strategy for 3 years hence which is fine, but needs to go hand in hand with a solution to the crisis - which has to be imported drivers.

And then the solution of get some cheap immigrants for the 'temporary crisis' becomes the permanent strategy.

There will never be any train more or pay more it will ALWAYS be get some cheap immigrants.

This is newly brexited Britain. We don't have to give migrant truck drivers a long term right to work here. The industry needs 18 months, so grant that long a work visa. Great opportunity for Romanian truck drivers to come over, make a bomb, then move on to the next gig.

The free market solution to a shortage of truck drivers is hire more truck drivers. It is only Brexit stubbornness preventing us from doing so.

The only time this will become salient is when and if it becomes obvious to the public

Right now I do not know anyone who is not receiving their orders either by food home delivery or through Amazon and other delivery companies

Because Amazon are willing to pay what it needs to pay in order to attract drivers they require. That is the free market solution.

Other companies whinging that there aren't enough drivers is a bit odd when so many people work on the roads in this country. There's no shortage of people willing to drive for a living, if they're not paying enough to attract drivers to work for them then there's a solution to that.

Does the free market stop at Dover, Phil?

Yes.

Past Dover there's no free movement of people, so if you want people to work for you then you need to either pay enough to get someone in the UK working for you - or pay enough that you can sponsor somebody for a visa.

You are a libertarian. You should surely want anyone to be an HGV driver here who decides they want to be an HGV driver here. Whether from Rotherham or Romania.

Yes absolutely if anyone wants to migrate here then I have no qualms with them doing so. The same rules should be consistently applied on that, I believe that currently if a company is offering a £30k salary plus they can sponsor a visa? I have no issues with that whatsoever, if a company wants to do that then they should do that.

If a company wants special privileges to hire people at low wages without meeting the salary requirements for a visa then I see no reason why we should do that.

Dura_Ace said:

Philip_Thompson said:

And when are solar panels rather useless? In the winter, when heating is needed. Solar panels cease to work well just when our demand peaks. They're a great alternative to coal but if you want year-round zero carbon they're completely nonsensical.

Obviously you are the world's fucking expert on solar systems but photovoltaic cells work on light not heat and are more efficient in colder temperatures. I usually get about 10kWh from both of my systems in the winter. It only stops being effective when it's covered in snow.

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

So the 'food shortages' turn out to be Waitrose not paying its drivers enough.

Not really Leningrad during the siege is it.

Still good for a bit of schadenfreude among those whose custom Waitrose doesn't want.

Now if you want a story which might damage Boris then try the new baby - he looks like one of those feckless fathers on poverty porn programs.

Not a good look when you're going to preach about environmental sustainability.

How have you reached that conclusion? There are tens of thousands fewer drivers than are required, with more retiring every month than are being replaced. So we now have some desperate companies like Tesco offering big dollah to entice drivers to defect, but that doesn't fix the problem either - the industry would be better served by Tesco spending the money on driver training.

What's wrong with pay rates rising for skilled workers ?

Nothing at all - there has been a race to the bottom over the last decade and more for truck drivers and a whole load of other industries.

My points are simple: they will drive costs and thus inflation, and it does not solve the driver crisis in the short to medium term. "Pay the drivers more" is not a solution for tens of thousands of vacancies you cannot fill. It is a strategy for 3 years hence which is fine, but needs to go hand in hand with a solution to the crisis - which has to be imported drivers.

And then the solution of get some cheap immigrants for the 'temporary crisis' becomes the permanent strategy.

There will never be any train more or pay more it will ALWAYS be get some cheap immigrants.

This is newly brexited Britain. We don't have to give migrant truck drivers a long term right to work here. The industry needs 18 months, so grant that long a work visa. Great opportunity for Romanian truck drivers to come over, make a bomb, then move on to the next gig.

The free market solution to a shortage of truck drivers is hire more truck drivers. It is only Brexit stubbornness preventing us from doing so.

The only time this will become salient is when and if it becomes obvious to the public

Right now I do not know anyone who is not receiving their orders either by food home delivery or through Amazon and other delivery companies

Because Amazon are willing to pay what it needs to pay in order to attract drivers they require. That is the free market solution.

Other companies whinging that there aren't enough drivers is a bit odd when so many people work on the roads in this country. There's no shortage of people willing to drive for a living, if they're not paying enough to attract drivers to work for them then there's a solution to that.

Does the free market stop at Dover, Phil?

Yes.

Past Dover there's no free movement of people, so if you want people to work for you then you need to either pay enough to get someone in the UK working for you - or pay enough that you can sponsor somebody for a visa.

You are a libertarian. You should surely want anyone to be an HGV driver here who decides they want to be an HGV driver here. Whether from Rotherham or Romania.

Yes absolutely if anyone wants to migrate here then I have no qualms with them doing so. The same rules should be consistently applied on that, I believe that currently if a company is offering a £30k salary plus they can sponsor a visa? I have no issues with that whatsoever, if a company wants to do that then they should do that.

If a company wants special privileges to hire people at low wages without meeting the salary requirements for a visa then I see no reason why we should do that.

Visas are an unwanted administrative tool to control the labour market aren't they?

IshmaelZ said:

Pulpstar said:

Dura_Ace said:

Philip_Thompson said:

And when are solar panels rather useless? In the winter, when heating is needed. Solar panels cease to work well just when our demand peaks. They're a great alternative to coal but if you want year-round zero carbon they're completely nonsensical.

Obviously you are the world's fucking expert on solar systems but photovoltaic cells work on light not heat and are more efficient in colder temperatures. I usually get about 10kWh from both of my systems in the winter. It only stops being effective when it's covered in snow.

There's far more heavy cloud in the UK winter than snow.

Are you sure you're in the UK and not the Alps ?

Epic epic point missing.

My panels worked through the winter in Devon at my last house. You can maximise bang for buck very effectively by running white goods machines while the sun is up. And hoovering.

MaxPB said:

Doing away with bitcoin and other crypto currencies would be of huge net benefit. It's all powered with dirty Chinese coal and takes up a massive proportion of global power output.

Concerted effort to make it all worthless would a good first step that is probably actionable.

MaxPB said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

So the 'food shortages' turn out to be Waitrose not paying its drivers enough.

Not really Leningrad during the siege is it.

Still good for a bit of schadenfreude among those whose custom Waitrose doesn't want.

Now if you want a story which might damage Boris then try the new baby - he looks like one of those feckless fathers on poverty porn programs.

Not a good look when you're going to preach about environmental sustainability.

How have you reached that conclusion? There are tens of thousands fewer drivers than are required, with more retiring every month than are being replaced. So we now have some desperate companies like Tesco offering big dollah to entice drivers to defect, but that doesn't fix the problem either - the industry would be better served by Tesco spending the money on driver training.

What's wrong with pay rates rising for skilled workers ?

Nothing at all - there has been a race to the bottom over the last decade and more for truck drivers and a whole load of other industries.

My points are simple: they will drive costs and thus inflation, and it does not solve the driver crisis in the short to medium term. "Pay the drivers more" is not a solution for tens of thousands of vacancies you cannot fill. It is a strategy for 3 years hence which is fine, but needs to go hand in hand with a solution to the crisis - which has to be imported drivers.

And then the solution of get some cheap immigrants for the 'temporary crisis' becomes the permanent strategy.

There will never be any train more or pay more it will ALWAYS be get some cheap immigrants.

This is newly brexited Britain. We don't have to give migrant truck drivers a long term right to work here. The industry needs 18 months, so grant that long a work visa. Great opportunity for Romanian truck drivers to come over, make a bomb, then move on to the next gig.

The free market solution to a shortage of truck drivers is hire more truck drivers. It is only Brexit stubbornness preventing us from doing so.

The only time this will become salient is when and if it becomes obvious to the public

Right now I do not know anyone who is not receiving their orders either by food home delivery or through Amazon and other delivery companies

Because Amazon are willing to pay what it needs to pay in order to attract drivers they require. That is the free market solution.

Other companies whinging that there aren't enough drivers is a bit odd when so many people work on the roads in this country. There's no shortage of people willing to drive for a living, if they're not paying enough to attract drivers to work for them then there's a solution to that.

Does the free market stop at Dover, Phil?

Yes.

Past Dover there's no free movement of people, so if you want people to work for you then you need to either pay enough to get someone in the UK working for you - or pay enough that you can sponsor somebody for a visa.

You are a libertarian. You should surely want anyone to be an HGV driver here who decides they want to be an HGV driver here. Whether from Rotherham or Romania.

Yes absolutely if anyone wants to migrate here then I have no qualms with them doing so. The same rules should be consistently applied on that, I believe that currently if a company is offering a £30k salary plus they can sponsor a visa? I have no issues with that whatsoever, if a company wants to do that then they should do that.

If a company wants special privileges to hire people at low wages without meeting the salary requirements for a visa then I see no reason why we should do that.

Visas are an unwanted administrative tool to control the labour market aren't they?

I guess it depends on whether or not it's your job that's getting its wages depressed.

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

MaxPB said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

So the 'food shortages' turn out to be Waitrose not paying its drivers enough.

Not really Leningrad during the siege is it.

Still good for a bit of schadenfreude among those whose custom Waitrose doesn't want.

Now if you want a story which might damage Boris then try the new baby - he looks like one of those feckless fathers on poverty porn programs.

Not a good look when you're going to preach about environmental sustainability.

How have you reached that conclusion? There are tens of thousands fewer drivers than are required, with more retiring every month than are being replaced. So we now have some desperate companies like Tesco offering big dollah to entice drivers to defect, but that doesn't fix the problem either - the industry would be better served by Tesco spending the money on driver training.

What's wrong with pay rates rising for skilled workers ?

Nothing at all - there has been a race to the bottom over the last decade and more for truck drivers and a whole load of other industries.

My points are simple: they will drive costs and thus inflation, and it does not solve the driver crisis in the short to medium term. "Pay the drivers more" is not a solution for tens of thousands of vacancies you cannot fill. It is a strategy for 3 years hence which is fine, but needs to go hand in hand with a solution to the crisis - which has to be imported drivers.

And then the solution of get some cheap immigrants for the 'temporary crisis' becomes the permanent strategy.

There will never be any train more or pay more it will ALWAYS be get some cheap immigrants.

This is newly brexited Britain. We don't have to give migrant truck drivers a long term right to work here. The industry needs 18 months, so grant that long a work visa. Great opportunity for Romanian truck drivers to come over, make a bomb, then move on to the next gig.

The free market solution to a shortage of truck drivers is hire more truck drivers. It is only Brexit stubbornness preventing us from doing so.

The only time this will become salient is when and if it becomes obvious to the public

Right now I do not know anyone who is not receiving their orders either by food home delivery or through Amazon and other delivery companies

Because Amazon are willing to pay what it needs to pay in order to attract drivers they require. That is the free market solution.

Other companies whinging that there aren't enough drivers is a bit odd when so many people work on the roads in this country. There's no shortage of people willing to drive for a living, if they're not paying enough to attract drivers to work for them then there's a solution to that.

Does the free market stop at Dover, Phil?

Yes.

Past Dover there's no free movement of people, so if you want people to work for you then you need to either pay enough to get someone in the UK working for you - or pay enough that you can sponsor somebody for a visa.

You are a libertarian. You should surely want anyone to be an HGV driver here who decides they want to be an HGV driver here. Whether from Rotherham or Romania.

Yes absolutely if anyone wants to migrate here then I have no qualms with them doing so. The same rules should be consistently applied on that, I believe that currently if a company is offering a £30k salary plus they can sponsor a visa? I have no issues with that whatsoever, if a company wants to do that then they should do that.

If a company wants special privileges to hire people at low wages without meeting the salary requirements for a visa then I see no reason why we should do that.

Visas are an unwanted administrative tool to control the labour market aren't they?

I guess it depends on whether or not it's your job that's getting its wages depressed.

Oh absolutely but Philip is a man of principle and it is his political philosophy that is being discussed here.

My principle is I'm in favour of consistent reasonably free movement globally. I'd like the same rules applied globally and consistently.

I would be happy to see immigration go up not down, but I'd like to see restrictions on land usage eased tied to that so that we can have adequate house building etc to go with the increased population demands.

Dura_Ace said:

Philip_Thompson said:

And when are solar panels rather useless? In the winter, when heating is needed. Solar panels cease to work well just when our demand peaks. They're a great alternative to coal but if you want year-round zero carbon they're completely nonsensical.

Obviously you are the world's fucking expert on solar systems but photovoltaic cells work on light not heat and are more efficient in colder temperatures. I usually get about 10kWh from both of my systems in the winter. It only stops being effective when it's covered in snow.

IshmaelZ said:

Pulpstar said:

Dura_Ace said:

Philip_Thompson said:

And when are solar panels rather useless? In the winter, when heating is needed. Solar panels cease to work well just when our demand peaks. They're a great alternative to coal but if you want year-round zero carbon they're completely nonsensical.

Obviously you are the world's fucking expert on solar systems but photovoltaic cells work on light not heat and are more efficient in colder temperatures. I usually get about 10kWh from both of my systems in the winter. It only stops being effective when it's covered in snow.

There's far more heavy cloud in the UK winter than snow.

Are you sure you're in the UK and not the Alps ?

Epic epic point missing.

My panels worked through the winter in Devon at my last house. You can maximise bang for buck very effectively by running white goods machines while the sun is up. And hoovering.

turbotubbs said:

kle4 said:

turbotubbs said:

kle4 said:

turbotubbs said:

CarlottaVance said:

IPCC Report:

https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/

Cynical hat says it will say - "Its even worse than before, we really mean it now, we are all doomed!".

I am fully signed up to net zero, protecting the environment, properly using resources - the whole green thing. But I find the increasingly shrill desperation and scare tactics from the climate scientist lobby, without a balance of proper skeptical science at times counter productive. The recent pandemic has revealed the limits of modelling in complex scenarios.

We need to reach a point where we no longer use fossil fuels and have a fully sustainable existence. We need to stop destroying habitats and making species go extinct. But to say we have to do this because the global temperature (whatever that even is) will rise by a degree or two, against a setting where the planet ranges from -50 to +50 deg C, and even in temperate UK from -19 to +38 deg C is nonsense. I am also surprised that the scientists now seem confident to link extreme weather events to climate change. One of the issues is we now have world wide reporting, so any extreme event gets reported, whereas even 20 years ago that was not the case. This adds to the feeling of doom everywhere, when in reality, for much of the world, extremes have always happened.
Homes being flooded is far more because of where they have built their houses, not necessarily due to more rain.

I dont agree on the point about global temperature, but it is the case that as bad as things may be previous estimates feel like they were that things would be even worse.

Based on predictions of 80s videos we had to watch at school in the 90s I'm surprised theres any amazon rainforest left.

I'm not sure how one appropriately lists concern. If you don't set a date theres no urgency but if you then reach that date without widespread catastrophe it undermines future warnings, yet its also probably the case that by the time its obvious it's too late.

It does seem true that more people are more passionately concerned about these issues than just 5 years ago, but given its certain that lots things in any report stated as needing to happen will not happen, by that logic we're already doomed.

I'm happy to disagree - but what do you understand the global temperature to be? I think it is a stupid concept, but that might just be me.

I'm not a scientist and have not explored the issue so couldn't answer with any authority, I just don't see the idea of average global temperatures as inherently nonsense. If there are criticisms of such a thing I'd listen.

My criticism is what is the average temperature of the the earth today? And where? There is a huge spread across the globe. If you take 100 people and measured the average height to be say 5 foot 10, no-one would be that far from that average. Instead if you took insects and elephants and averaged the height it would be meaningless for all of them.

I believe the temp change given is actually the average rise of all the observations around the world. I have issues with that too - most observation sites have changed markedly over the last 150 years, and are subject to urban heat island effects. Climate scientist try to mitigate this (I have seen some talk about this) but I remain unconvinced.

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

MaxPB said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

So the 'food shortages' turn out to be Waitrose not paying its drivers enough.

Not really Leningrad during the siege is it.

Still good for a bit of schadenfreude among those whose custom Waitrose doesn't want.

Now if you want a story which might damage Boris then try the new baby - he looks like one of those feckless fathers on poverty porn programs.

Not a good look when you're going to preach about environmental sustainability.

How have you reached that conclusion? There are tens of thousands fewer drivers than are required, with more retiring every month than are being replaced. So we now have some desperate companies like Tesco offering big dollah to entice drivers to defect, but that doesn't fix the problem either - the industry would be better served by Tesco spending the money on driver training.

What's wrong with pay rates rising for skilled workers ?

Nothing at all - there has been a race to the bottom over the last decade and more for truck drivers and a whole load of other industries.

My points are simple: they will drive costs and thus inflation, and it does not solve the driver crisis in the short to medium term. "Pay the drivers more" is not a solution for tens of thousands of vacancies you cannot fill. It is a strategy for 3 years hence which is fine, but needs to go hand in hand with a solution to the crisis - which has to be imported drivers.

And then the solution of get some cheap immigrants for the 'temporary crisis' becomes the permanent strategy.

There will never be any train more or pay more it will ALWAYS be get some cheap immigrants.

This is newly brexited Britain. We don't have to give migrant truck drivers a long term right to work here. The industry needs 18 months, so grant that long a work visa. Great opportunity for Romanian truck drivers to come over, make a bomb, then move on to the next gig.

The free market solution to a shortage of truck drivers is hire more truck drivers. It is only Brexit stubbornness preventing us from doing so.

The only time this will become salient is when and if it becomes obvious to the public

Right now I do not know anyone who is not receiving their orders either by food home delivery or through Amazon and other delivery companies

Because Amazon are willing to pay what it needs to pay in order to attract drivers they require. That is the free market solution.

Other companies whinging that there aren't enough drivers is a bit odd when so many people work on the roads in this country. There's no shortage of people willing to drive for a living, if they're not paying enough to attract drivers to work for them then there's a solution to that.

Does the free market stop at Dover, Phil?

Yes.

Past Dover there's no free movement of people, so if you want people to work for you then you need to either pay enough to get someone in the UK working for you - or pay enough that you can sponsor somebody for a visa.

You are a libertarian. You should surely want anyone to be an HGV driver here who decides they want to be an HGV driver here. Whether from Rotherham or Romania.

Yes absolutely if anyone wants to migrate here then I have no qualms with them doing so. The same rules should be consistently applied on that, I believe that currently if a company is offering a £30k salary plus they can sponsor a visa? I have no issues with that whatsoever, if a company wants to do that then they should do that.

If a company wants special privileges to hire people at low wages without meeting the salary requirements for a visa then I see no reason why we should do that.

Visas are an unwanted administrative tool to control the labour market aren't they?

I guess it depends on whether or not it's your job that's getting its wages depressed.

Oh absolutely but Philip is a man of principle and it is his political philosophy that is being discussed here.

My principle is I'm in favour of consistent reasonably free movement globally. I'd like the same rules applied globally and consistently.

I would be happy to see immigration go up not down, but I'd like to see restrictions on land usage eased tied to that so that we can have adequate house building etc to go with the increased population demands.

We've been through the land thing. You can't have people build anywhere because the taxes to address the negative externalities would be prohibitive.

But glad to see you are against restrictions on free movement. Can't say the same for all your Brexit fellow travellers.

An "Australian style points immigration system" quite literally applied could see immigration double. Australia has about twice as much immigration as the UK does.

What I see no reason to do is to put onerous demands for visas should apply for Australians, Canadians, Indians, Americans, Japanese, Mexicans etc - but that they shouldn't for French, Germans, Portugese, Polish or Romanians.

I grew up in Australia, if any of my classmates wanted to come to the UK they'd need a visa.

If visas are an issue then that issue should be fixed consistently. Do you disagree?

Depends. Preferred immigration treatment for our neighbours was part of a package of measures which we decided overall were beneficial for the country.

Dura_Ace said:

Philip_Thompson said:

And when are solar panels rather useless? In the winter, when heating is needed. Solar panels cease to work well just when our demand peaks. They're a great alternative to coal but if you want year-round zero carbon they're completely nonsensical.

Obviously you are the world's fucking expert on solar systems but photovoltaic cells work on light not heat and are more efficient in colder temperatures. I usually get about 10kWh from both of my systems in the winter. It only stops being effective when it's covered in snow.

Nigelb said:

turbotubbs said:

kle4 said:

turbotubbs said:

kle4 said:

turbotubbs said:

CarlottaVance said:

IPCC Report:

https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/

Cynical hat says it will say - "Its even worse than before, we really mean it now, we are all doomed!".

I am fully signed up to net zero, protecting the environment, properly using resources - the whole green thing. But I find the increasingly shrill desperation and scare tactics from the climate scientist lobby, without a balance of proper skeptical science at times counter productive. The recent pandemic has revealed the limits of modelling in complex scenarios.

We need to reach a point where we no longer use fossil fuels and have a fully sustainable existence. We need to stop destroying habitats and making species go extinct. But to say we have to do this because the global temperature (whatever that even is) will rise by a degree or two, against a setting where the planet ranges from -50 to +50 deg C, and even in temperate UK from -19 to +38 deg C is nonsense. I am also surprised that the scientists now seem confident to link extreme weather events to climate change. One of the issues is we now have world wide reporting, so any extreme event gets reported, whereas even 20 years ago that was not the case. This adds to the feeling of doom everywhere, when in reality, for much of the world, extremes have always happened.
Homes being flooded is far more because of where they have built their houses, not necessarily due to more rain.

I dont agree on the point about global temperature, but it is the case that as bad as things may be previous estimates feel like they were that things would be even worse.

Based on predictions of 80s videos we had to watch at school in the 90s I'm surprised theres any amazon rainforest left.

I'm not sure how one appropriately lists concern. If you don't set a date theres no urgency but if you then reach that date without widespread catastrophe it undermines future warnings, yet its also probably the case that by the time its obvious it's too late.

It does seem true that more people are more passionately concerned about these issues than just 5 years ago, but given its certain that lots things in any report stated as needing to happen will not happen, by that logic we're already doomed.

I'm happy to disagree - but what do you understand the global temperature to be? I think it is a stupid concept, but that might just be me.

I'm not a scientist and have not explored the issue so couldn't answer with any authority, I just don't see the idea of average global temperatures as inherently nonsense. If there are criticisms of such a thing I'd listen.

My criticism is what is the average temperature of the the earth today? And where? There is a huge spread across the globe. If you take 100 people and measured the average height to be say 5 foot 10, no-one would be that far from that average. Instead if you took insects and elephants and averaged the height it would be meaningless for all of them.

I believe the temp change given is actually the average rise of all the observations around the world. I have issues with that too - most observation sites have changed markedly over the last 150 years, and are subject to urban heat island effects. Climate scientist try to mitigate this (I have seen some talk about this) but I remain unconvinced.

And your alternative for measuring global temperature is what ?

Of course there are uncertainties - but one of the reasons for the increase in alarm is that successive sets of data from an increasing number of sources keeps reducing the room to say 'our calculations were wrong and there's no reason to be worried after all'.

If we wait until the best guess proves a certainty, it will be too late to do anything about it.

Here's some detail on how it's done at the moment:
https://granthaminstitute.com/2015/10/16/taking-the-planets-temperature-how-are-global-temperatures-calculated/

MaxPB said:

edmundintokyo said:

MaxPB said:

Doing away with bitcoin and other crypto currencies would be of huge net benefit. It's all powered with dirty Chinese coal and takes up a massive proportion of global power output.

Concerted effort to make it all worthless would a good first step that is probably actionable.

Yup. Ideally mining would be taxed at source but that's probably not practical, as it only takes a single country to pick a lower tax rate and it all moves there and everyone else gets undercut.

What would be practical would be to tax holding cryptocurrencies, at a rate proportional to the amount of environmental damage it does. There would be quite a bit of evasion, but it would still be enough to collect a decent amount of tax revenue and clobber the prices of the most damaging ones, while encouraging people to migrate to better designs.

The issue is that you or I may understand that, does this issue even make the discussion table for Boris, Biden or Xi? The scientists are too focussed on inputs rather than outputs. We know there are a few highly energy intensive industries. We can focus innovation on these in the very near term to improve efficiency of processes. We should have been doing it 30 years ago but the same scientists were still trying to get people to agree to live in cold, damp caves with ever more hysterical sounding catchphrases.

30 years ago there was a lot of first mover's advantage to be had for any nation which successfully addressed energy inefficiencies in industrial processes. Just as Tesla are getting a huge first mover's advantage for electric cars. Sadly it looks like we're only starting that process today which means we need to wait for 30 years and hope that the current trend can be reversed.

IshmaelZ said:

contrarian said:

IshmaelZ said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

I started to listed to the IPCC report this morning and it was so boring and badly presented that I moved on to sports news quite quickly

I was prepared to listed and I accept climate change is with us but the idea that between 2021(yes this year) and 2040 we are all doomed is frankly idiotic.

As I understand it we have to give up all fossil fuel, stop flying, rid our homes of gas central heating, insulate every home in the UK, buy expensive electric cars that have poor ranges and nowhere near enough electricity capacity in the country and feel thoroughly guilty and selfish if we do not immediately agree to this, even though many countries will say of course they agree, then do absolutely nothing

It has to be a gradual process over many years and anything else is frankly totally unrealistic

And by the way watching Messi sobbing about leaving Barcelona was just pathetic.

Barcelona have made him a multi millionaire and if it was so important to him he could have played a couple of years at a nominal 1 euro per year, rather than £650,000 per week PSG are offering him

Agree about Messi.

On climate change, sadly the sacrosanct nature of the comfortable Western lifestyle is not a physical constant. If the situation is that your ship needs to jettison all its cargo or sink, that's the situation. You cannot bargain with the weather to jettison some of the lower value stuff over a period of days, nor point out to it that other ships are not doing as much as you are.

That lazy analogy does not stand up.

We could jettison all our cargo and still sink because the theory of climate change is that the sea conditions are actually determined by the boats collectively. One boat dumping its cargo makes no difference. And the fact is that many boats are taking on cargo. Hundreds of new coal fired power stations are planned in places like Indonesia, Vietnam and of course China.

What we are doing is more like the suicide squad at the end of Life of Brian collectively committing suicide as a gesture of solidarity instead of actually taking saving Brian from being crucified.

We laughed at them. And soon, the rest of the world will be laughing at us.

No, the analogy holds perfecrctly as far as the ineluctability of physical forces is concerned.

On the collective effort point, someone has to move first (and actually it is not as if it's just plucky little GB vs ROW again: other countries are actually coming to COP26, even if just for the look of the thing) and to speak with moral authority backed up by personal example. It's more likely we will be belatedly copied, than laughed at. And anyway, I thought contrarianism was rather your thing?

MaxPB said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

MaxPB said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

So the 'food shortages' turn out to be Waitrose not paying its drivers enough.

Not really Leningrad during the siege is it.

Still good for a bit of schadenfreude among those whose custom Waitrose doesn't want.

Now if you want a story which might damage Boris then try the new baby - he looks like one of those feckless fathers on poverty porn programs.

Not a good look when you're going to preach about environmental sustainability.

How have you reached that conclusion? There are tens of thousands fewer drivers than are required, with more retiring every month than are being replaced. So we now have some desperate companies like Tesco offering big dollah to entice drivers to defect, but that doesn't fix the problem either - the industry would be better served by Tesco spending the money on driver training.

What's wrong with pay rates rising for skilled workers ?

Nothing at all - there has been a race to the bottom over the last decade and more for truck drivers and a whole load of other industries.

My points are simple: they will drive costs and thus inflation, and it does not solve the driver crisis in the short to medium term. "Pay the drivers more" is not a solution for tens of thousands of vacancies you cannot fill. It is a strategy for 3 years hence which is fine, but needs to go hand in hand with a solution to the crisis - which has to be imported drivers.

And then the solution of get some cheap immigrants for the 'temporary crisis' becomes the permanent strategy.

There will never be any train more or pay more it will ALWAYS be get some cheap immigrants.

This is newly brexited Britain. We don't have to give migrant truck drivers a long term right to work here. The industry needs 18 months, so grant that long a work visa. Great opportunity for Romanian truck drivers to come over, make a bomb, then move on to the next gig.

The free market solution to a shortage of truck drivers is hire more truck drivers. It is only Brexit stubbornness preventing us from doing so.

The only time this will become salient is when and if it becomes obvious to the public

Right now I do not know anyone who is not receiving their orders either by food home delivery or through Amazon and other delivery companies

Because Amazon are willing to pay what it needs to pay in order to attract drivers they require. That is the free market solution.

Other companies whinging that there aren't enough drivers is a bit odd when so many people work on the roads in this country. There's no shortage of people willing to drive for a living, if they're not paying enough to attract drivers to work for them then there's a solution to that.

Does the free market stop at Dover, Phil?

Yes.

Past Dover there's no free movement of people, so if you want people to work for you then you need to either pay enough to get someone in the UK working for you - or pay enough that you can sponsor somebody for a visa.

You are a libertarian. You should surely want anyone to be an HGV driver here who decides they want to be an HGV driver here. Whether from Rotherham or Romania.

Yes absolutely if anyone wants to migrate here then I have no qualms with them doing so. The same rules should be consistently applied on that, I believe that currently if a company is offering a £30k salary plus they can sponsor a visa? I have no issues with that whatsoever, if a company wants to do that then they should do that.

If a company wants special privileges to hire people at low wages without meeting the salary requirements for a visa then I see no reason why we should do that.

Visas are an unwanted administrative tool to control the labour market aren't they?

I guess it depends on whether or not it's your job that's getting its wages depressed.

Oh absolutely but Philip is a man of principle and it is his political philosophy that is being discussed here.

My principle is I'm in favour of consistent reasonably free movement globally. I'd like the same rules applied globally and consistently.

I would be happy to see immigration go up not down, but I'd like to see restrictions on land usage eased tied to that so that we can have adequate house building etc to go with the increased population demands.

We've been through the land thing. You can't have people build anywhere because the taxes to address the negative externalities would be prohibitive.

But glad to see you are against restrictions on free movement. Can't say the same for all your Brexit fellow travellers.

An "Australian style points immigration system" quite literally applied could see immigration double. Australia has about twice as much immigration as the UK does.

What I see no reason to do is to put onerous demands for visas should apply for Australians, Canadians, Indians, Americans, Japanese, Mexicans etc - but that they shouldn't for French, Germans, Portugese, Polish or Romanians.

I grew up in Australia, if any of my classmates wanted to come to the UK they'd need a visa.

If visas are an issue then that issue should be fixed consistently. Do you disagree?

Depends. Preferred immigration treatment for our neighbours was part of a package of measures which we decided overall were beneficial for the country.

Correction - which we decided was not beneficial to the country. There was a referendum, not sure if you remember it.

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

MaxPB said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

So the 'food shortages' turn out to be Waitrose not paying its drivers enough.

Not really Leningrad during the siege is it.

Still good for a bit of schadenfreude among those whose custom Waitrose doesn't want.

Now if you want a story which might damage Boris then try the new baby - he looks like one of those feckless fathers on poverty porn programs.

Not a good look when you're going to preach about environmental sustainability.

How have you reached that conclusion? There are tens of thousands fewer drivers than are required, with more retiring every month than are being replaced. So we now have some desperate companies like Tesco offering big dollah to entice drivers to defect, but that doesn't fix the problem either - the industry would be better served by Tesco spending the money on driver training.

What's wrong with pay rates rising for skilled workers ?

Nothing at all - there has been a race to the bottom over the last decade and more for truck drivers and a whole load of other industries.

My points are simple: they will drive costs and thus inflation, and it does not solve the driver crisis in the short to medium term. "Pay the drivers more" is not a solution for tens of thousands of vacancies you cannot fill. It is a strategy for 3 years hence which is fine, but needs to go hand in hand with a solution to the crisis - which has to be imported drivers.

And then the solution of get some cheap immigrants for the 'temporary crisis' becomes the permanent strategy.

There will never be any train more or pay more it will ALWAYS be get some cheap immigrants.

This is newly brexited Britain. We don't have to give migrant truck drivers a long term right to work here. The industry needs 18 months, so grant that long a work visa. Great opportunity for Romanian truck drivers to come over, make a bomb, then move on to the next gig.

The free market solution to a shortage of truck drivers is hire more truck drivers. It is only Brexit stubbornness preventing us from doing so.

The only time this will become salient is when and if it becomes obvious to the public

Right now I do not know anyone who is not receiving their orders either by food home delivery or through Amazon and other delivery companies

Because Amazon are willing to pay what it needs to pay in order to attract drivers they require. That is the free market solution.

Other companies whinging that there aren't enough drivers is a bit odd when so many people work on the roads in this country. There's no shortage of people willing to drive for a living, if they're not paying enough to attract drivers to work for them then there's a solution to that.

Does the free market stop at Dover, Phil?

Yes.

Past Dover there's no free movement of people, so if you want people to work for you then you need to either pay enough to get someone in the UK working for you - or pay enough that you can sponsor somebody for a visa.

You are a libertarian. You should surely want anyone to be an HGV driver here who decides they want to be an HGV driver here. Whether from Rotherham or Romania.

Yes absolutely if anyone wants to migrate here then I have no qualms with them doing so. The same rules should be consistently applied on that, I believe that currently if a company is offering a £30k salary plus they can sponsor a visa? I have no issues with that whatsoever, if a company wants to do that then they should do that.

If a company wants special privileges to hire people at low wages without meeting the salary requirements for a visa then I see no reason why we should do that.

Visas are an unwanted administrative tool to control the labour market aren't they?

I guess it depends on whether or not it's your job that's getting its wages depressed.

Oh absolutely but Philip is a man of principle and it is his political philosophy that is being discussed here.

My principle is I'm in favour of consistent reasonably free movement globally. I'd like the same rules applied globally and consistently.

I would be happy to see immigration go up not down, but I'd like to see restrictions on land usage eased tied to that so that we can have adequate house building etc to go with the increased population demands.

We've been through the land thing. You can't have people build anywhere because the taxes to address the negative externalities would be prohibitive.

But glad to see you are against restrictions on free movement. Can't say the same for all your Brexit fellow travellers.

An "Australian style points immigration system" quite literally applied could see immigration double. Australia has about twice as much immigration as the UK does.

What I see no reason to do is to put onerous demands for visas should apply for Australians, Canadians, Indians, Americans, Japanese, Mexicans etc - but that they shouldn't for French, Germans, Portugese, Polish or Romanians.

I grew up in Australia, if any of my classmates wanted to come to the UK they'd need a visa.

If visas are an issue then that issue should be fixed consistently. Do you disagree?

Depends. Preferred immigration treatment for our neighbours was part of a package of measures which we decided overall were beneficial for the country.

Correction: preferred immigration treatment for our neighbours was part of a package of measures which we decided overall were not beneficial for the country.

Considering the UK has more people moving to countries like Australia than European country by a long margin, we should reasonably consider solving visa issues on a global and not regional basis.

Philip_Thompson said:

ydoethur said:

Philip_Thompson said:

ydoethur said:

Pulpstar said:

Is Climate change real and driven by people ? Yes.
Do we need to ditch our gas central heating overnight ? No.

Simply building new homes with a heat pump "originally designed" into the system will replace the housing stock over the next couple of hundred years or so will be sufficient in my view (As will allowing electric to come on tap naturally). This is a marathon, not a sprint.

One thing about going for electric cars, do we have the generation capacity ?

What I frankly do not understand about these climate change targets is why we haven't been doing that, and also solar panels as standard, on all new builds for the last 15 years. That would have made a very considerable difference by now.

If I were feeling cynical I would say because the building trade lobbied hard to make sure it didn't happen and they had the right contacts to whom they were very close to get their way.

If I were feeling realistic, I would say everything in that sentence up to 'and.'

Solar panels are the wrong answer for the UK, they're almost but not quite virtue signalling nonsense in the UK.

In states like California or countries like Australia where electricity demand peaks in the summer sun when air conditioning comes on then solar panels are a complete no brainer.

But in the UK we're a cold, wet, grey island that sees energy demand peak in the winter when we put our heating on - and as we switch from gas to electric heaters that's only going to increase.

And when are solar panels rather useless? In the winter, when heating is needed. Solar panels cease to work well just when our demand peaks. They're a great alternative to coal but if you want year-round zero carbon they're completely nonsensical.

Even in winter, my solar panels give enough power to run electric radiators. Just not for the whole house.

Now I will grant you that might work for me, where I'm quite happy just to heat one room and not for the whole day at that, and not for you with a young family across several rooms. But that doesn't make them the wrong solution. Especially not if people are going to do more working from home and be in more often in the hours of daylight.

I'm talking on a national basis.

The issue is best summed up by looking at two charts from Gridwatch.

Annual demand - clearly peaks in December to February - and this is before we switch our heating over from gas to electric heating which will send winter demand surging much, much higher.


Annual supply - look at the red line. How useful is that in winter?

JosiasJessop said:

Pulpstar said:

Is Climate change real and driven by people ? Yes.
Do we need to ditch our gas central heating overnight ? No.

Simply building new homes with a heat pump "originally designed" into the system will replace the housing stock over the next couple of hundred years or so will be sufficient in my view (As will allowing electric to come on tap naturally). This is a marathon, not a sprint.

One thing about going for electric cars, do we have the generation capacity ?

Okay, IANAE, but I don't see generation capacity as much of a problem wrt electric cars. In fact, if they manage to use them as remote batteries for the grid, then it may help even out renewables.

What is a problem is charging them for the average person, especially people who have to park on the roadside. I'm a bit sceptical about Qualcomm's electric roads (Halo) project - as were they, because they sold it off. But such a technology might be rather useful for charging parked cars without cluttering up pavements with charging pods and/or trailing cables.

Nigelb said:

.

Taz said:

Dura_Ace said:

Philip_Thompson said:

And when are solar panels rather useless? In the winter, when heating is needed. Solar panels cease to work well just when our demand peaks. They're a great alternative to coal but if you want year-round zero carbon they're completely nonsensical.

Obviously you are the world's fucking expert on solar systems but photovoltaic cells work on light not heat and are more efficient in colder temperatures. I usually get about 10kWh from both of my systems in the winter. It only stops being effective when it's covered in snow.

Or when it’s dark, and it’s quite a bit darker in the winter than the summer.

Phillip does have a point about winter. We need more power during the winter and even working efficiently solar panels don’t deliver and they are great where you got longer days in the south of England but in the north east or Scotland were days are quite a bit shorter they are less so.

Which is why we're planning a shit tonne of wind farms. There's also the plan for a massive solar farm in Morocco, with an HVDC cable to somewhere in the south of England.

Nigelb said:

MaxPB said:

edmundintokyo said:

MaxPB said:

Doing away with bitcoin and other crypto currencies would be of huge net benefit. It's all powered with dirty Chinese coal and takes up a massive proportion of global power output.

Concerted effort to make it all worthless would a good first step that is probably actionable.

Yup. Ideally mining would be taxed at source but that's probably not practical, as it only takes a single country to pick a lower tax rate and it all moves there and everyone else gets undercut.

What would be practical would be to tax holding cryptocurrencies, at a rate proportional to the amount of environmental damage it does. There would be quite a bit of evasion, but it would still be enough to collect a decent amount of tax revenue and clobber the prices of the most damaging ones, while encouraging people to migrate to better designs.

The issue is that you or I may understand that, does this issue even make the discussion table for Boris, Biden or Xi? The scientists are too focussed on inputs rather than outputs. We know there are a few highly energy intensive industries. We can focus innovation on these in the very near term to improve efficiency of processes. We should have been doing it 30 years ago but the same scientists were still trying to get people to agree to live in cold, damp caves with ever more hysterical sounding catchphrases.

30 years ago there was a lot of first mover's advantage to be had for any nation which successfully addressed energy inefficiencies in industrial processes. Just as Tesla are getting a huge first mover's advantage for electric cars. Sadly it looks like we're only starting that process today which means we need to wait for 30 years and hope that the current trend can be reversed.

Or they'll just migrate the the Middle East, where solar will be a cent per kW...

TOPPING said:

MaxPB said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

MaxPB said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

So the 'food shortages' turn out to be Waitrose not paying its drivers enough.

Not really Leningrad during the siege is it.

Still good for a bit of schadenfreude among those whose custom Waitrose doesn't want.

Now if you want a story which might damage Boris then try the new baby - he looks like one of those feckless fathers on poverty porn programs.

Not a good look when you're going to preach about environmental sustainability.

How have you reached that conclusion? There are tens of thousands fewer drivers than are required, with more retiring every month than are being replaced. So we now have some desperate companies like Tesco offering big dollah to entice drivers to defect, but that doesn't fix the problem either - the industry would be better served by Tesco spending the money on driver training.

What's wrong with pay rates rising for skilled workers ?

Nothing at all - there has been a race to the bottom over the last decade and more for truck drivers and a whole load of other industries.

My points are simple: they will drive costs and thus inflation, and it does not solve the driver crisis in the short to medium term. "Pay the drivers more" is not a solution for tens of thousands of vacancies you cannot fill. It is a strategy for 3 years hence which is fine, but needs to go hand in hand with a solution to the crisis - which has to be imported drivers.

And then the solution of get some cheap immigrants for the 'temporary crisis' becomes the permanent strategy.

There will never be any train more or pay more it will ALWAYS be get some cheap immigrants.

This is newly brexited Britain. We don't have to give migrant truck drivers a long term right to work here. The industry needs 18 months, so grant that long a work visa. Great opportunity for Romanian truck drivers to come over, make a bomb, then move on to the next gig.

The free market solution to a shortage of truck drivers is hire more truck drivers. It is only Brexit stubbornness preventing us from doing so.

The only time this will become salient is when and if it becomes obvious to the public

Right now I do not know anyone who is not receiving their orders either by food home delivery or through Amazon and other delivery companies

Because Amazon are willing to pay what it needs to pay in order to attract drivers they require. That is the free market solution.

Other companies whinging that there aren't enough drivers is a bit odd when so many people work on the roads in this country. There's no shortage of people willing to drive for a living, if they're not paying enough to attract drivers to work for them then there's a solution to that.

Does the free market stop at Dover, Phil?

Yes.

Past Dover there's no free movement of people, so if you want people to work for you then you need to either pay enough to get someone in the UK working for you - or pay enough that you can sponsor somebody for a visa.

You are a libertarian. You should surely want anyone to be an HGV driver here who decides they want to be an HGV driver here. Whether from Rotherham or Romania.

Yes absolutely if anyone wants to migrate here then I have no qualms with them doing so. The same rules should be consistently applied on that, I believe that currently if a company is offering a £30k salary plus they can sponsor a visa? I have no issues with that whatsoever, if a company wants to do that then they should do that.

If a company wants special privileges to hire people at low wages without meeting the salary requirements for a visa then I see no reason why we should do that.

Visas are an unwanted administrative tool to control the labour market aren't they?

I guess it depends on whether or not it's your job that's getting its wages depressed.

Oh absolutely but Philip is a man of principle and it is his political philosophy that is being discussed here.

My principle is I'm in favour of consistent reasonably free movement globally. I'd like the same rules applied globally and consistently.

I would be happy to see immigration go up not down, but I'd like to see restrictions on land usage eased tied to that so that we can have adequate house building etc to go with the increased population demands.

We've been through the land thing. You can't have people build anywhere because the taxes to address the negative externalities would be prohibitive.

But glad to see you are against restrictions on free movement. Can't say the same for all your Brexit fellow travellers.

An "Australian style points immigration system" quite literally applied could see immigration double. Australia has about twice as much immigration as the UK does.

What I see no reason to do is to put onerous demands for visas should apply for Australians, Canadians, Indians, Americans, Japanese, Mexicans etc - but that they shouldn't for French, Germans, Portugese, Polish or Romanians.

I grew up in Australia, if any of my classmates wanted to come to the UK they'd need a visa.

If visas are an issue then that issue should be fixed consistently. Do you disagree?

Depends. Preferred immigration treatment for our neighbours was part of a package of measures which we decided overall were beneficial for the country.

Correction - which we decided was not beneficial to the country. There was a referendum, not sure if you remember it.

Oh absolutely. We decided it was good for the country and then decided it was not good for the country.

Phil seemed to think there was an inconsistency in it all. He wants a come all ye immigration policy. Which is his right.

Not sure how many fellow Brexiters he will take along with him but that is his view.

isam said:

…

TOPPING said:

MaxPB said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

MaxPB said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

So the 'food shortages' turn out to be Waitrose not paying its drivers enough.

Not really Leningrad during the siege is it.

Still good for a bit of schadenfreude among those whose custom Waitrose doesn't want.

Now if you want a story which might damage Boris then try the new baby - he looks like one of those feckless fathers on poverty porn programs.

Not a good look when you're going to preach about environmental sustainability.

How have you reached that conclusion? There are tens of thousands fewer drivers than are required, with more retiring every month than are being replaced. So we now have some desperate companies like Tesco offering big dollah to entice drivers to defect, but that doesn't fix the problem either - the industry would be better served by Tesco spending the money on driver training.

What's wrong with pay rates rising for skilled workers ?

Nothing at all - there has been a race to the bottom over the last decade and more for truck drivers and a whole load of other industries.

My points are simple: they will drive costs and thus inflation, and it does not solve the driver crisis in the short to medium term. "Pay the drivers more" is not a solution for tens of thousands of vacancies you cannot fill. It is a strategy for 3 years hence which is fine, but needs to go hand in hand with a solution to the crisis - which has to be imported drivers.

And then the solution of get some cheap immigrants for the 'temporary crisis' becomes the permanent strategy.

There will never be any train more or pay more it will ALWAYS be get some cheap immigrants.

This is newly brexited Britain. We don't have to give migrant truck drivers a long term right to work here. The industry needs 18 months, so grant that long a work visa. Great opportunity for Romanian truck drivers to come over, make a bomb, then move on to the next gig.

The free market solution to a shortage of truck drivers is hire more truck drivers. It is only Brexit stubbornness preventing us from doing so.

The only time this will become salient is when and if it becomes obvious to the public

Right now I do not know anyone who is not receiving their orders either by food home delivery or through Amazon and other delivery companies

Because Amazon are willing to pay what it needs to pay in order to attract drivers they require. That is the free market solution.

Other companies whinging that there aren't enough drivers is a bit odd when so many people work on the roads in this country. There's no shortage of people willing to drive for a living, if they're not paying enough to attract drivers to work for them then there's a solution to that.

Does the free market stop at Dover, Phil?

Yes.

Past Dover there's no free movement of people, so if you want people to work for you then you need to either pay enough to get someone in the UK working for you - or pay enough that you can sponsor somebody for a visa.

You are a libertarian. You should surely want anyone to be an HGV driver here who decides they want to be an HGV driver here. Whether from Rotherham or Romania.

Yes absolutely if anyone wants to migrate here then I have no qualms with them doing so. The same rules should be consistently applied on that, I believe that currently if a company is offering a £30k salary plus they can sponsor a visa? I have no issues with that whatsoever, if a company wants to do that then they should do that.

If a company wants special privileges to hire people at low wages without meeting the salary requirements for a visa then I see no reason why we should do that.

Visas are an unwanted administrative tool to control the labour market aren't they?

I guess it depends on whether or not it's your job that's getting its wages depressed.

Oh absolutely but Philip is a man of principle and it is his political philosophy that is being discussed here.

My principle is I'm in favour of consistent reasonably free movement globally. I'd like the same rules applied globally and consistently.

I would be happy to see immigration go up not down, but I'd like to see restrictions on land usage eased tied to that so that we can have adequate house building etc to go with the increased population demands.

We've been through the land thing. You can't have people build anywhere because the taxes to address the negative externalities would be prohibitive.

But glad to see you are against restrictions on free movement. Can't say the same for all your Brexit fellow travellers.

An "Australian style points immigration system" quite literally applied could see immigration double. Australia has about twice as much immigration as the UK does.

What I see no reason to do is to put onerous demands for visas should apply for Australians, Canadians, Indians, Americans, Japanese, Mexicans etc - but that they shouldn't for French, Germans, Portugese, Polish or Romanians.

I grew up in Australia, if any of my classmates wanted to come to the UK they'd need a visa.

If visas are an issue then that issue should be fixed consistently. Do you disagree?

Depends. Preferred immigration treatment for our neighbours was part of a package of measures which we decided overall were beneficial for the country.

Correction - which we decided was not beneficial to the country. There was a referendum, not sure if you remember it.

Oh absolutely. We decided it was good for the country and then decided it was not good for the country.

Phil seemed to think there was an inconsistency in it all. He wants a come all ye immigration policy. Which is his right.

Not sure how many fellow Brexiters he will take along with him but that is his view.

The first “we” is Tony Blair & Gordon Brown & the second the majority of voters at the referendum?

MaxPB said:

TOPPING said:

MaxPB said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

MaxPB said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

So the 'food shortages' turn out to be Waitrose not paying its drivers enough.

Not really Leningrad during the siege is it.

Still good for a bit of schadenfreude among those whose custom Waitrose doesn't want.

Now if you want a story which might damage Boris then try the new baby - he looks like one of those feckless fathers on poverty porn programs.

Not a good look when you're going to preach about environmental sustainability.

How have you reached that conclusion? There are tens of thousands fewer drivers than are required, with more retiring every month than are being replaced. So we now have some desperate companies like Tesco offering big dollah to entice drivers to defect, but that doesn't fix the problem either - the industry would be better served by Tesco spending the money on driver training.

What's wrong with pay rates rising for skilled workers ?

Nothing at all - there has been a race to the bottom over the last decade and more for truck drivers and a whole load of other industries.

My points are simple: they will drive costs and thus inflation, and it does not solve the driver crisis in the short to medium term. "Pay the drivers more" is not a solution for tens of thousands of vacancies you cannot fill. It is a strategy for 3 years hence which is fine, but needs to go hand in hand with a solution to the crisis - which has to be imported drivers.

And then the solution of get some cheap immigrants for the 'temporary crisis' becomes the permanent strategy.

There will never be any train more or pay more it will ALWAYS be get some cheap immigrants.

This is newly brexited Britain. We don't have to give migrant truck drivers a long term right to work here. The industry needs 18 months, so grant that long a work visa. Great opportunity for Romanian truck drivers to come over, make a bomb, then move on to the next gig.

The free market solution to a shortage of truck drivers is hire more truck drivers. It is only Brexit stubbornness preventing us from doing so.

The only time this will become salient is when and if it becomes obvious to the public

Right now I do not know anyone who is not receiving their orders either by food home delivery or through Amazon and other delivery companies

Because Amazon are willing to pay what it needs to pay in order to attract drivers they require. That is the free market solution.

Other companies whinging that there aren't enough drivers is a bit odd when so many people work on the roads in this country. There's no shortage of people willing to drive for a living, if they're not paying enough to attract drivers to work for them then there's a solution to that.

Does the free market stop at Dover, Phil?

Yes.

Past Dover there's no free movement of people, so if you want people to work for you then you need to either pay enough to get someone in the UK working for you - or pay enough that you can sponsor somebody for a visa.

You are a libertarian. You should surely want anyone to be an HGV driver here who decides they want to be an HGV driver here. Whether from Rotherham or Romania.

Yes absolutely if anyone wants to migrate here then I have no qualms with them doing so. The same rules should be consistently applied on that, I believe that currently if a company is offering a £30k salary plus they can sponsor a visa? I have no issues with that whatsoever, if a company wants to do that then they should do that.

If a company wants special privileges to hire people at low wages without meeting the salary requirements for a visa then I see no reason why we should do that.

Visas are an unwanted administrative tool to control the labour market aren't they?

I guess it depends on whether or not it's your job that's getting its wages depressed.

Oh absolutely but Philip is a man of principle and it is his political philosophy that is being discussed here.

My principle is I'm in favour of consistent reasonably free movement globally. I'd like the same rules applied globally and consistently.

I would be happy to see immigration go up not down, but I'd like to see restrictions on land usage eased tied to that so that we can have adequate house building etc to go with the increased population demands.

We've been through the land thing. You can't have people build anywhere because the taxes to address the negative externalities would be prohibitive.

But glad to see you are against restrictions on free movement. Can't say the same for all your Brexit fellow travellers.

An "Australian style points immigration system" quite literally applied could see immigration double. Australia has about twice as much immigration as the UK does.

What I see no reason to do is to put onerous demands for visas should apply for Australians, Canadians, Indians, Americans, Japanese, Mexicans etc - but that they shouldn't for French, Germans, Portugese, Polish or Romanians.

I grew up in Australia, if any of my classmates wanted to come to the UK they'd need a visa.

If visas are an issue then that issue should be fixed consistently. Do you disagree?

Depends. Preferred immigration treatment for our neighbours was part of a package of measures which we decided overall were beneficial for the country.

Correction - which we decided was not beneficial to the country. There was a referendum, not sure if you remember it.

Oh absolutely. We decided it was good for the country and then decided it was not good for the country.

Phil seemed to think there was an inconsistency in it all. He wants a come all ye immigration policy. Which is his right.

Not sure how many fellow Brexiters he will take along with him but that is his view.

No one cares if we have an effective open door for doctors or nurses (or bankers). I think the major concern has always been lower skilled and unskilled labour which is predominantly white working class. Closing up shop at the bottom and keeping the door fairly open everywhere else seems like the direction we're heading in. I think if we could have made that work within the EU we wouldn't have voted to leave. Without retreading the same ground for the 209th time there was a level of inflexibility from the EU that they must now regret.

LostPassword said:

TOPPING said:

Nigelb said:

turbotubbs said:

kle4 said:

turbotubbs said:

kle4 said:

turbotubbs said:

CarlottaVance said:

IPCC Report:

https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/

Cynical hat says it will say - "Its even worse than before, we really mean it now, we are all doomed!".

I am fully signed up to net zero, protecting the environment, properly using resources - the whole green thing. But I find the increasingly shrill desperation and scare tactics from the climate scientist lobby, without a balance of proper skeptical science at times counter productive. The recent pandemic has revealed the limits of modelling in complex scenarios.

We need to reach a point where we no longer use fossil fuels and have a fully sustainable existence. We need to stop destroying habitats and making species go extinct. But to say we have to do this because the global temperature (whatever that even is) will rise by a degree or two, against a setting where the planet ranges from -50 to +50 deg C, and even in temperate UK from -19 to +38 deg C is nonsense. I am also surprised that the scientists now seem confident to link extreme weather events to climate change. One of the issues is we now have world wide reporting, so any extreme event gets reported, whereas even 20 years ago that was not the case. This adds to the feeling of doom everywhere, when in reality, for much of the world, extremes have always happened.
Homes being flooded is far more because of where they have built their houses, not necessarily due to more rain.

I dont agree on the point about global temperature, but it is the case that as bad as things may be previous estimates feel like they were that things would be even worse.

Based on predictions of 80s videos we had to watch at school in the 90s I'm surprised theres any amazon rainforest left.

I'm not sure how one appropriately lists concern. If you don't set a date theres no urgency but if you then reach that date without widespread catastrophe it undermines future warnings, yet its also probably the case that by the time its obvious it's too late.

It does seem true that more people are more passionately concerned about these issues than just 5 years ago, but given its certain that lots things in any report stated as needing to happen will not happen, by that logic we're already doomed.

I'm happy to disagree - but what do you understand the global temperature to be? I think it is a stupid concept, but that might just be me.

I'm not a scientist and have not explored the issue so couldn't answer with any authority, I just don't see the idea of average global temperatures as inherently nonsense. If there are criticisms of such a thing I'd listen.

My criticism is what is the average temperature of the the earth today? And where? There is a huge spread across the globe. If you take 100 people and measured the average height to be say 5 foot 10, no-one would be that far from that average. Instead if you took insects and elephants and averaged the height it would be meaningless for all of them.

I believe the temp change given is actually the average rise of all the observations around the world. I have issues with that too - most observation sites have changed markedly over the last 150 years, and are subject to urban heat island effects. Climate scientist try to mitigate this (I have seen some talk about this) but I remain unconvinced.

And your alternative for measuring global temperature is what ?

Of course there are uncertainties - but one of the reasons for the increase in alarm is that successive sets of data from an increasing number of sources keeps reducing the room to say 'our calculations were wrong and there's no reason to be worried after all'.

If we wait until the best guess proves a certainty, it will be too late to do anything about it.

Here's some detail on how it's done at the moment:
https://granthaminstitute.com/2015/10/16/taking-the-planets-temperature-how-are-global-temperatures-calculated/

I have an email from the Met Office saying that the GISS global temperature measurement methodology is dishonest.

Who is right?

I don't that's a fair characterisation of the Met Office email, and the differences between the two are relatively slight in the context of the issue as a whole.

So while they're important for scientists iterating towards a best estimate, it's not a difference that's important for deciding policy.

TOPPING said:

isam said:

…

TOPPING said:

MaxPB said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

MaxPB said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

So the 'food shortages' turn out to be Waitrose not paying its drivers enough.

Not really Leningrad during the siege is it.

Still good for a bit of schadenfreude among those whose custom Waitrose doesn't want.

Now if you want a story which might damage Boris then try the new baby - he looks like one of those feckless fathers on poverty porn programs.

Not a good look when you're going to preach about environmental sustainability.

How have you reached that conclusion? There are tens of thousands fewer drivers than are required, with more retiring every month than are being replaced. So we now have some desperate companies like Tesco offering big dollah to entice drivers to defect, but that doesn't fix the problem either - the industry would be better served by Tesco spending the money on driver training.

What's wrong with pay rates rising for skilled workers ?

Nothing at all - there has been a race to the bottom over the last decade and more for truck drivers and a whole load of other industries.

My points are simple: they will drive costs and thus inflation, and it does not solve the driver crisis in the short to medium term. "Pay the drivers more" is not a solution for tens of thousands of vacancies you cannot fill. It is a strategy for 3 years hence which is fine, but needs to go hand in hand with a solution to the crisis - which has to be imported drivers.

And then the solution of get some cheap immigrants for the 'temporary crisis' becomes the permanent strategy.

There will never be any train more or pay more it will ALWAYS be get some cheap immigrants.

This is newly brexited Britain. We don't have to give migrant truck drivers a long term right to work here. The industry needs 18 months, so grant that long a work visa. Great opportunity for Romanian truck drivers to come over, make a bomb, then move on to the next gig.

The free market solution to a shortage of truck drivers is hire more truck drivers. It is only Brexit stubbornness preventing us from doing so.

The only time this will become salient is when and if it becomes obvious to the public

Right now I do not know anyone who is not receiving their orders either by food home delivery or through Amazon and other delivery companies

Because Amazon are willing to pay what it needs to pay in order to attract drivers they require. That is the free market solution.

Other companies whinging that there aren't enough drivers is a bit odd when so many people work on the roads in this country. There's no shortage of people willing to drive for a living, if they're not paying enough to attract drivers to work for them then there's a solution to that.

Does the free market stop at Dover, Phil?

Yes.

Past Dover there's no free movement of people, so if you want people to work for you then you need to either pay enough to get someone in the UK working for you - or pay enough that you can sponsor somebody for a visa.

You are a libertarian. You should surely want anyone to be an HGV driver here who decides they want to be an HGV driver here. Whether from Rotherham or Romania.

Yes absolutely if anyone wants to migrate here then I have no qualms with them doing so. The same rules should be consistently applied on that, I believe that currently if a company is offering a £30k salary plus they can sponsor a visa? I have no issues with that whatsoever, if a company wants to do that then they should do that.

If a company wants special privileges to hire people at low wages without meeting the salary requirements for a visa then I see no reason why we should do that.

Visas are an unwanted administrative tool to control the labour market aren't they?

I guess it depends on whether or not it's your job that's getting its wages depressed.

Oh absolutely but Philip is a man of principle and it is his political philosophy that is being discussed here.

My principle is I'm in favour of consistent reasonably free movement globally. I'd like the same rules applied globally and consistently.

I would be happy to see immigration go up not down, but I'd like to see restrictions on land usage eased tied to that so that we can have adequate house building etc to go with the increased population demands.

We've been through the land thing. You can't have people build anywhere because the taxes to address the negative externalities would be prohibitive.

But glad to see you are against restrictions on free movement. Can't say the same for all your Brexit fellow travellers.

An "Australian style points immigration system" quite literally applied could see immigration double. Australia has about twice as much immigration as the UK does.

What I see no reason to do is to put onerous demands for visas should apply for Australians, Canadians, Indians, Americans, Japanese, Mexicans etc - but that they shouldn't for French, Germans, Portugese, Polish or Romanians.

I grew up in Australia, if any of my classmates wanted to come to the UK they'd need a visa.

If visas are an issue then that issue should be fixed consistently. Do you disagree?

Depends. Preferred immigration treatment for our neighbours was part of a package of measures which we decided overall were beneficial for the country.

Correction - which we decided was not beneficial to the country. There was a referendum, not sure if you remember it.

Oh absolutely. We decided it was good for the country and then decided it was not good for the country.

Phil seemed to think there was an inconsistency in it all. He wants a come all ye immigration policy. Which is his right.

Not sure how many fellow Brexiters he will take along with him but that is his view.

The first “we” is Tony Blair & Gordon Brown & the second the majority of voters at the referendum?

Weren't they both elected by the British people?

TOPPING said:

isam said:

…

TOPPING said:

MaxPB said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

MaxPB said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

So the 'food shortages' turn out to be Waitrose not paying its drivers enough.

Not really Leningrad during the siege is it.

Still good for a bit of schadenfreude among those whose custom Waitrose doesn't want.

Now if you want a story which might damage Boris then try the new baby - he looks like one of those feckless fathers on poverty porn programs.

Not a good look when you're going to preach about environmental sustainability.

How have you reached that conclusion? There are tens of thousands fewer drivers than are required, with more retiring every month than are being replaced. So we now have some desperate companies like Tesco offering big dollah to entice drivers to defect, but that doesn't fix the problem either - the industry would be better served by Tesco spending the money on driver training.

What's wrong with pay rates rising for skilled workers ?

Nothing at all - there has been a race to the bottom over the last decade and more for truck drivers and a whole load of other industries.

My points are simple: they will drive costs and thus inflation, and it does not solve the driver crisis in the short to medium term. "Pay the drivers more" is not a solution for tens of thousands of vacancies you cannot fill. It is a strategy for 3 years hence which is fine, but needs to go hand in hand with a solution to the crisis - which has to be imported drivers.

And then the solution of get some cheap immigrants for the 'temporary crisis' becomes the permanent strategy.

There will never be any train more or pay more it will ALWAYS be get some cheap immigrants.

This is newly brexited Britain. We don't have to give migrant truck drivers a long term right to work here. The industry needs 18 months, so grant that long a work visa. Great opportunity for Romanian truck drivers to come over, make a bomb, then move on to the next gig.

The free market solution to a shortage of truck drivers is hire more truck drivers. It is only Brexit stubbornness preventing us from doing so.

The only time this will become salient is when and if it becomes obvious to the public

Right now I do not know anyone who is not receiving their orders either by food home delivery or through Amazon and other delivery companies

Because Amazon are willing to pay what it needs to pay in order to attract drivers they require. That is the free market solution.

Other companies whinging that there aren't enough drivers is a bit odd when so many people work on the roads in this country. There's no shortage of people willing to drive for a living, if they're not paying enough to attract drivers to work for them then there's a solution to that.

Does the free market stop at Dover, Phil?

Yes.

Past Dover there's no free movement of people, so if you want people to work for you then you need to either pay enough to get someone in the UK working for you - or pay enough that you can sponsor somebody for a visa.

You are a libertarian. You should surely want anyone to be an HGV driver here who decides they want to be an HGV driver here. Whether from Rotherham or Romania.

Yes absolutely if anyone wants to migrate here then I have no qualms with them doing so. The same rules should be consistently applied on that, I believe that currently if a company is offering a £30k salary plus they can sponsor a visa? I have no issues with that whatsoever, if a company wants to do that then they should do that.

If a company wants special privileges to hire people at low wages without meeting the salary requirements for a visa then I see no reason why we should do that.

Visas are an unwanted administrative tool to control the labour market aren't they?

I guess it depends on whether or not it's your job that's getting its wages depressed.

Oh absolutely but Philip is a man of principle and it is his political philosophy that is being discussed here.

My principle is I'm in favour of consistent reasonably free movement globally. I'd like the same rules applied globally and consistently.

I would be happy to see immigration go up not down, but I'd like to see restrictions on land usage eased tied to that so that we can have adequate house building etc to go with the increased population demands.

We've been through the land thing. You can't have people build anywhere because the taxes to address the negative externalities would be prohibitive.

But glad to see you are against restrictions on free movement. Can't say the same for all your Brexit fellow travellers.

An "Australian style points immigration system" quite literally applied could see immigration double. Australia has about twice as much immigration as the UK does.

What I see no reason to do is to put onerous demands for visas should apply for Australians, Canadians, Indians, Americans, Japanese, Mexicans etc - but that they shouldn't for French, Germans, Portugese, Polish or Romanians.

I grew up in Australia, if any of my classmates wanted to come to the UK they'd need a visa.

If visas are an issue then that issue should be fixed consistently. Do you disagree?

Depends. Preferred immigration treatment for our neighbours was part of a package of measures which we decided overall were beneficial for the country.

Correction - which we decided was not beneficial to the country. There was a referendum, not sure if you remember it.

Oh absolutely. We decided it was good for the country and then decided it was not good for the country.

Phil seemed to think there was an inconsistency in it all. He wants a come all ye immigration policy. Which is his right.

Not sure how many fellow Brexiters he will take along with him but that is his view.

The first “we” is Tony Blair & Gordon Brown & the second the majority of voters at the referendum?

Weren't they both elected by the British people?

MaxPB said:

Nigelb said:

MaxPB said:

edmundintokyo said:

MaxPB said:

Doing away with bitcoin and other crypto currencies would be of huge net benefit. It's all powered with dirty Chinese coal and takes up a massive proportion of global power output.

Concerted effort to make it all worthless would a good first step that is probably actionable.

Yup. Ideally mining would be taxed at source but that's probably not practical, as it only takes a single country to pick a lower tax rate and it all moves there and everyone else gets undercut.

What would be practical would be to tax holding cryptocurrencies, at a rate proportional to the amount of environmental damage it does. There would be quite a bit of evasion, but it would still be enough to collect a decent amount of tax revenue and clobber the prices of the most damaging ones, while encouraging people to migrate to better designs.

The issue is that you or I may understand that, does this issue even make the discussion table for Boris, Biden or Xi? The scientists are too focussed on inputs rather than outputs. We know there are a few highly energy intensive industries. We can focus innovation on these in the very near term to improve efficiency of processes. We should have been doing it 30 years ago but the same scientists were still trying to get people to agree to live in cold, damp caves with ever more hysterical sounding catchphrases.

30 years ago there was a lot of first mover's advantage to be had for any nation which successfully addressed energy inefficiencies in industrial processes. Just as Tesla are getting a huge first mover's advantage for electric cars. Sadly it looks like we're only starting that process today which means we need to wait for 30 years and hope that the current trend can be reversed.

Or they'll just migrate the the Middle East, where solar will be a cent per kW...

It will be uninhabitable by then anyway so may as well cover it in solar panels.

isam said:

TOPPING said:

isam said:

…

TOPPING said:

MaxPB said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

MaxPB said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

So the 'food shortages' turn out to be Waitrose not paying its drivers enough.

Not really Leningrad during the siege is it.

Still good for a bit of schadenfreude among those whose custom Waitrose doesn't want.

Now if you want a story which might damage Boris then try the new baby - he looks like one of those feckless fathers on poverty porn programs.

Not a good look when you're going to preach about environmental sustainability.

How have you reached that conclusion? There are tens of thousands fewer drivers than are required, with more retiring every month than are being replaced. So we now have some desperate companies like Tesco offering big dollah to entice drivers to defect, but that doesn't fix the problem either - the industry would be better served by Tesco spending the money on driver training.

What's wrong with pay rates rising for skilled workers ?

Nothing at all - there has been a race to the bottom over the last decade and more for truck drivers and a whole load of other industries.

My points are simple: they will drive costs and thus inflation, and it does not solve the driver crisis in the short to medium term. "Pay the drivers more" is not a solution for tens of thousands of vacancies you cannot fill. It is a strategy for 3 years hence which is fine, but needs to go hand in hand with a solution to the crisis - which has to be imported drivers.

And then the solution of get some cheap immigrants for the 'temporary crisis' becomes the permanent strategy.

There will never be any train more or pay more it will ALWAYS be get some cheap immigrants.

This is newly brexited Britain. We don't have to give migrant truck drivers a long term right to work here. The industry needs 18 months, so grant that long a work visa. Great opportunity for Romanian truck drivers to come over, make a bomb, then move on to the next gig.

The free market solution to a shortage of truck drivers is hire more truck drivers. It is only Brexit stubbornness preventing us from doing so.

The only time this will become salient is when and if it becomes obvious to the public

Right now I do not know anyone who is not receiving their orders either by food home delivery or through Amazon and other delivery companies

Because Amazon are willing to pay what it needs to pay in order to attract drivers they require. That is the free market solution.

Other companies whinging that there aren't enough drivers is a bit odd when so many people work on the roads in this country. There's no shortage of people willing to drive for a living, if they're not paying enough to attract drivers to work for them then there's a solution to that.

Does the free market stop at Dover, Phil?

Yes.

Past Dover there's no free movement of people, so if you want people to work for you then you need to either pay enough to get someone in the UK working for you - or pay enough that you can sponsor somebody for a visa.

You are a libertarian. You should surely want anyone to be an HGV driver here who decides they want to be an HGV driver here. Whether from Rotherham or Romania.

Yes absolutely if anyone wants to migrate here then I have no qualms with them doing so. The same rules should be consistently applied on that, I believe that currently if a company is offering a £30k salary plus they can sponsor a visa? I have no issues with that whatsoever, if a company wants to do that then they should do that.

If a company wants special privileges to hire people at low wages without meeting the salary requirements for a visa then I see no reason why we should do that.

Visas are an unwanted administrative tool to control the labour market aren't they?

I guess it depends on whether or not it's your job that's getting its wages depressed.

Oh absolutely but Philip is a man of principle and it is his political philosophy that is being discussed here.

My principle is I'm in favour of consistent reasonably free movement globally. I'd like the same rules applied globally and consistently.

I would be happy to see immigration go up not down, but I'd like to see restrictions on land usage eased tied to that so that we can have adequate house building etc to go with the increased population demands.

We've been through the land thing. You can't have people build anywhere because the taxes to address the negative externalities would be prohibitive.

But glad to see you are against restrictions on free movement. Can't say the same for all your Brexit fellow travellers.

An "Australian style points immigration system" quite literally applied could see immigration double. Australia has about twice as much immigration as the UK does.

What I see no reason to do is to put onerous demands for visas should apply for Australians, Canadians, Indians, Americans, Japanese, Mexicans etc - but that they shouldn't for French, Germans, Portugese, Polish or Romanians.

I grew up in Australia, if any of my classmates wanted to come to the UK they'd need a visa.

If visas are an issue then that issue should be fixed consistently. Do you disagree?

Depends. Preferred immigration treatment for our neighbours was part of a package of measures which we decided overall were beneficial for the country.

Correction - which we decided was not beneficial to the country. There was a referendum, not sure if you remember it.

Oh absolutely. We decided it was good for the country and then decided it was not good for the country.

Phil seemed to think there was an inconsistency in it all. He wants a come all ye immigration policy. Which is his right.

Not sure how many fellow Brexiters he will take along with him but that is his view.

The first “we” is Tony Blair & Gordon Brown & the second the majority of voters at the referendum?

Weren't they both elected by the British people?

I don’t know if FOM from the A8 was in a manifesto, it might have been. I voted Labour in 2001, so if it was I voted for it! At the time I probably would have done if it had been in their manifesto, I used to think WWC moaning about mass immigration were stupid racists when I was in my 20s.

But when there was an explicit vote on the matter, “we” said no thanks

TOPPING said:

MaxPB said:

TOPPING said:

MaxPB said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

MaxPB said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

So the 'food shortages' turn out to be Waitrose not paying its drivers enough.

Not really Leningrad during the siege is it.

Still good for a bit of schadenfreude among those whose custom Waitrose doesn't want.

Now if you want a story which might damage Boris then try the new baby - he looks like one of those feckless fathers on poverty porn programs.

Not a good look when you're going to preach about environmental sustainability.

How have you reached that conclusion? There are tens of thousands fewer drivers than are required, with more retiring every month than are being replaced. So we now have some desperate companies like Tesco offering big dollah to entice drivers to defect, but that doesn't fix the problem either - the industry would be better served by Tesco spending the money on driver training.

What's wrong with pay rates rising for skilled workers ?

Nothing at all - there has been a race to the bottom over the last decade and more for truck drivers and a whole load of other industries.

My points are simple: they will drive costs and thus inflation, and it does not solve the driver crisis in the short to medium term. "Pay the drivers more" is not a solution for tens of thousands of vacancies you cannot fill. It is a strategy for 3 years hence which is fine, but needs to go hand in hand with a solution to the crisis - which has to be imported drivers.

And then the solution of get some cheap immigrants for the 'temporary crisis' becomes the permanent strategy.

There will never be any train more or pay more it will ALWAYS be get some cheap immigrants.

This is newly brexited Britain. We don't have to give migrant truck drivers a long term right to work here. The industry needs 18 months, so grant that long a work visa. Great opportunity for Romanian truck drivers to come over, make a bomb, then move on to the next gig.

The free market solution to a shortage of truck drivers is hire more truck drivers. It is only Brexit stubbornness preventing us from doing so.

The only time this will become salient is when and if it becomes obvious to the public

Right now I do not know anyone who is not receiving their orders either by food home delivery or through Amazon and other delivery companies

Because Amazon are willing to pay what it needs to pay in order to attract drivers they require. That is the free market solution.

Other companies whinging that there aren't enough drivers is a bit odd when so many people work on the roads in this country. There's no shortage of people willing to drive for a living, if they're not paying enough to attract drivers to work for them then there's a solution to that.

Does the free market stop at Dover, Phil?

Yes.

Past Dover there's no free movement of people, so if you want people to work for you then you need to either pay enough to get someone in the UK working for you - or pay enough that you can sponsor somebody for a visa.

You are a libertarian. You should surely want anyone to be an HGV driver here who decides they want to be an HGV driver here. Whether from Rotherham or Romania.

Yes absolutely if anyone wants to migrate here then I have no qualms with them doing so. The same rules should be consistently applied on that, I believe that currently if a company is offering a £30k salary plus they can sponsor a visa? I have no issues with that whatsoever, if a company wants to do that then they should do that.

If a company wants special privileges to hire people at low wages without meeting the salary requirements for a visa then I see no reason why we should do that.

Visas are an unwanted administrative tool to control the labour market aren't they?

I guess it depends on whether or not it's your job that's getting its wages depressed.

Oh absolutely but Philip is a man of principle and it is his political philosophy that is being discussed here.

My principle is I'm in favour of consistent reasonably free movement globally. I'd like the same rules applied globally and consistently.

I would be happy to see immigration go up not down, but I'd like to see restrictions on land usage eased tied to that so that we can have adequate house building etc to go with the increased population demands.

We've been through the land thing. You can't have people build anywhere because the taxes to address the negative externalities would be prohibitive.

But glad to see you are against restrictions on free movement. Can't say the same for all your Brexit fellow travellers.

An "Australian style points immigration system" quite literally applied could see immigration double. Australia has about twice as much immigration as the UK does.

What I see no reason to do is to put onerous demands for visas should apply for Australians, Canadians, Indians, Americans, Japanese, Mexicans etc - but that they shouldn't for French, Germans, Portugese, Polish or Romanians.

I grew up in Australia, if any of my classmates wanted to come to the UK they'd need a visa.

If visas are an issue then that issue should be fixed consistently. Do you disagree?

Depends. Preferred immigration treatment for our neighbours was part of a package of measures which we decided overall were beneficial for the country.

Correction - which we decided was not beneficial to the country. There was a referendum, not sure if you remember it.

Oh absolutely. We decided it was good for the country and then decided it was not good for the country.

Phil seemed to think there was an inconsistency in it all. He wants a come all ye immigration policy. Which is his right.

Not sure how many fellow Brexiters he will take along with him but that is his view.

No one cares if we have an effective open door for doctors or nurses (or bankers). I think the major concern has always been lower skilled and unskilled labour which is predominantly white working class. Closing up shop at the bottom and keeping the door fairly open everywhere else seems like the direction we're heading in. I think if we could have made that work within the EU we wouldn't have voted to leave. Without retreading the same ground for the 209th time there was a level of inflexibility from the EU that they must now regret.

I don't think that's unfair. The studies that you decry about it all do show that the bottom decile (more or less I can't remember) suffered wage deflation which on paper people didn't register, but they did if they were affected.

There are plenty of mitigating responses (the people who suffered most were other immigrants, upskilling usually/should result, etc) but if you are in that bottom group you care and it is real.

Sandpit said:

Nigelb said:

MaxPB said:

edmundintokyo said:

MaxPB said:

Doing away with bitcoin and other crypto currencies would be of huge net benefit. It's all powered with dirty Chinese coal and takes up a massive proportion of global power output.

Concerted effort to make it all worthless would a good first step that is probably actionable.

Yup. Ideally mining would be taxed at source but that's probably not practical, as it only takes a single country to pick a lower tax rate and it all moves there and everyone else gets undercut.

What would be practical would be to tax holding cryptocurrencies, at a rate proportional to the amount of environmental damage it does. There would be quite a bit of evasion, but it would still be enough to collect a decent amount of tax revenue and clobber the prices of the most damaging ones, while encouraging people to migrate to better designs.

The issue is that you or I may understand that, does this issue even make the discussion table for Boris, Biden or Xi? The scientists are too focussed on inputs rather than outputs. We know there are a few highly energy intensive industries. We can focus innovation on these in the very near term to improve efficiency of processes. We should have been doing it 30 years ago but the same scientists were still trying to get people to agree to live in cold, damp caves with ever more hysterical sounding catchphrases.

30 years ago there was a lot of first mover's advantage to be had for any nation which successfully addressed energy inefficiencies in industrial processes. Just as Tesla are getting a huge first mover's advantage for electric cars. Sadly it looks like we're only starting that process today which means we need to wait for 30 years and hope that the current trend can be reversed.

Or they'll just migrate the the Middle East, where solar will be a cent per kW...

Waves from the Middle East, where the latest phase of a massive solar park is already below 1.7 cents a kWh.

https://www.mbrsic.ae/en/About/MBRSolarPark

MaxPB said:

TOPPING said:

MaxPB said:

TOPPING said:

MaxPB said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

MaxPB said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TOPPING said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

RochdalePioneers said:

another_richard said:

So the 'food shortages' turn out to be Waitrose not paying its drivers enough.

Not really Leningrad during the siege is it.

Still good for a bit of schadenfreude among those whose custom Waitrose doesn't want.

Now if you want a story which might damage Boris then try the new baby - he looks like one of those feckless fathers on poverty porn programs.

Not a good look when you're going to preach about environmental sustainability.

How have you reached that conclusion? There are tens of thousands fewer drivers than are required, with more retiring every month than are being replaced. So we now have some desperate companies like Tesco offering big dollah to entice drivers to defect, but that doesn't fix the problem either - the industry would be better served by Tesco spending the money on driver training.

What's wrong with pay rates rising for skilled workers ?

Nothing at all - there has been a race to the bottom over the last decade and more for truck drivers and a whole load of other industries.

My points are simple: they will drive costs and thus inflation, and it does not solve the driver crisis in the short to medium term. "Pay the drivers more" is not a solution for tens of thousands of vacancies you cannot fill. It is a strategy for 3 years hence which is fine, but needs to go hand in hand with a solution to the crisis - which has to be imported drivers.

And then the solution of get some cheap immigrants for the 'temporary crisis' becomes the permanent strategy.

There will never be any train more or pay more it will ALWAYS be get some cheap immigrants.

This is newly brexited Britain. We don't have to give migrant truck drivers a long term right to work here. The industry needs 18 months, so grant that long a work visa. Great opportunity for Romanian truck drivers to come over, make a bomb, then move on to the next gig.

The free market solution to a shortage of truck drivers is hire more truck drivers. It is only Brexit stubbornness preventing us from doing so.

The only time this will become salient is when and if it becomes obvious to the public

Right now I do not know anyone who is not receiving their orders either by food home delivery or through Amazon and other delivery companies

Because Amazon are willing to pay what it needs to pay in order to attract drivers they require. That is the free market solution.

Other companies whinging that there aren't enough drivers is a bit odd when so many people work on the roads in this country. There's no shortage of people willing to drive for a living, if they're not paying enough to attract drivers to work for them then there's a solution to that.

Does the free market stop at Dover, Phil?

Yes.

Past Dover there's no free movement of people, so if you want people to work for you then you need to either pay enough to get someone in the UK working for you - or pay enough that you can sponsor somebody for a visa.

You are a libertarian. You should surely want anyone to be an HGV driver here who decides they want to be an HGV driver here. Whether from Rotherham or Romania.

Yes absolutely if anyone wants to migrate here then I have no qualms with them doing so. The same rules should be consistently applied on that, I believe that currently if a company is offering a £30k salary plus they can sponsor a visa? I have no issues with that whatsoever, if a company wants to do that then they should do that.

If a company wants special privileges to hire people at low wages without meeting the salary requirements for a visa then I see no reason why we should do that.

Visas are an unwanted administrative tool to control the labour market aren't they?

I guess it depends on whether or not it's your job that's getting its wages depressed.

Oh absolutely but Philip is a man of principle and it is his political philosophy that is being discussed here.

My principle is I'm in favour of consistent reasonably free movement globally. I'd like the same rules applied globally and consistently.

I would be happy to see immigration go up not down, but I'd like to see restrictions on land usage eased tied to that so that we can have adequate house building etc to go with the increased population demands.

We've been through the land thing. You can't have people build anywhere because the taxes to address the negative externalities would be prohibitive.

But glad to see you are against restrictions on free movement. Can't say the same for all your Brexit fellow travellers.

An "Australian style points immigration system" quite literally applied could see immigration double. Australia has about twice as much immigration as the UK does.

What I see no reason to do is to put onerous demands for visas should apply for Australians, Canadians, Indians, Americans, Japanese, Mexicans etc - but that they shouldn't for French, Germans, Portugese, Polish or Romanians.

I grew up in Australia, if any of my classmates wanted to come to the UK they'd need a visa.

If visas are an issue then that issue should be fixed consistently. Do you disagree?

Depends. Preferred immigration treatment for our neighbours was part of a package of measures which we decided overall were beneficial for the country.

Correction - which we decided was not beneficial to the country. There was a referendum, not sure if you remember it.

Oh absolutely. We decided it was good for the country and then decided it was not good for the country.

Phil seemed to think there was an inconsistency in it all. He wants a come all ye immigration policy. Which is his right.

Not sure how many fellow Brexiters he will take along with him but that is his view.

No one cares if we have an effective open door for doctors or nurses (or bankers). I think the major concern has always been lower skilled and unskilled labour which is predominantly white working class. Closing up shop at the bottom and keeping the door fairly open everywhere else seems like the direction we're heading in. I think if we could have made that work within the EU we wouldn't have voted to leave. Without retreading the same ground for the 209th time there was a level of inflexibility from the EU that they must now regret.

I don't think that's unfair. The studies that you decry about it all do show that the bottom decile (more or less I can't remember) suffered wage deflation which on paper people didn't register, but they did if they were affected.

There are plenty of mitigating responses (the people who suffered most were other immigrants, upskilling usually/should result, etc) but if you are in that bottom group you care and it is real.

I think it was the bottom 25% that saw wage stagnation, the bottom 10% actually saw wages drop but the top 20% saw huge wage growth which completely skews all of the numbers and makes it seem like there's no real issue because overall national pay has increased.

JosiasJessop said:

MattW said:

JosiasJessop said:

Pulpstar said:

Is Climate change real and driven by people ? Yes.
Do we need to ditch our gas central heating overnight ? No.

Simply building new homes with a heat pump "originally designed" into the system will replace the housing stock over the next couple of hundred years or so will be sufficient in my view (As will allowing electric to come on tap naturally). This is a marathon, not a sprint.

One thing about going for electric cars, do we have the generation capacity ?

Okay, IANAE, but I don't see generation capacity as much of a problem wrt electric cars. In fact, if they manage to use them as remote batteries for the grid, then it may help even out renewables.

What is a problem is charging them for the average person, especially people who have to park on the roadside. I'm a bit sceptical about Qualcomm's electric roads (Halo) project - as were they, because they sold it off. But such a technology might be rather useful for charging parked cars without cluttering up pavements with charging pods and/or trailing cables.

I don't see either of those as really being a problem.

Electric cars will be at the same range as petrol ones soon enough, and nearly the same refuelling speed, and all the people without drives seem to be quite happy without their own personal petrol pump. Range anxiety will drift away in a few years.

I think much of the grid adaptation has already been done.
https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/electric-cars/uk-national-grid-can-handle-ev-surge-experts-say

They're a long way away from being 'nearly the same refuelling speed'.

It takes me a few minutes to fill up my car for a 600 mile range. It'll take considerably longer to recharge even the best cars atm, for less range.
https://evcharging.enelx.com/uk/about/news/blog/577-how-long-does-it-take-to-charge-a-tesla

Therefore the best place to charge them is at home.

I'm hopeful we'll get much better battery technology (both in terms of capacity and recharge time), but headlines aside, it'll take years for them to approach fossil fuels.

JosiasJessop said:

Dura_Ace said:

Philip_Thompson said:

And when are solar panels rather useless? In the winter, when heating is needed. Solar panels cease to work well just when our demand peaks. They're a great alternative to coal but if you want year-round zero carbon they're completely nonsensical.

Obviously you are the world's fucking expert on solar systems but photovoltaic cells work on light not heat and are more efficient in colder temperatures. I usually get about 10kWh from both of my systems in the winter. It only stops being effective when it's covered in snow.

Just adding to the posts from other people to say that your post is absolutely effing clueless.

1) There are fewer hours of daylight in winter.
2) Winters tend to be more overcast. Whilst panels do not require direct sunlight, the energy delivered is still lower.
3) The sun is lower in the sky in winter, meaning the angle of incidence is lower.

Whilst you are correct that they work better in lower (reasonable) temperatures, this is more than offset by the factors above. At a guess, you'd be lucky to get 20% of average July power in December.

(I daresay someone else will point out I've got this wrong and I'm effing clueless as well...)

Sandpit said:

Nigelb said:

Sandpit said:

Nigelb said:

MaxPB said:

edmundintokyo said:

MaxPB said:

Doing away with bitcoin and other crypto currencies would be of huge net benefit. It's all powered with dirty Chinese coal and takes up a massive proportion of global power output.

Concerted effort to make it all worthless would a good first step that is probably actionable.

Yup. Ideally mining would be taxed at source but that's probably not practical, as it only takes a single country to pick a lower tax rate and it all moves there and everyone else gets undercut.

What would be practical would be to tax holding cryptocurrencies, at a rate proportional to the amount of environmental damage it does. There would be quite a bit of evasion, but it would still be enough to collect a decent amount of tax revenue and clobber the prices of the most damaging ones, while encouraging people to migrate to better designs.

The issue is that you or I may understand that, does this issue even make the discussion table for Boris, Biden or Xi? The scientists are too focussed on inputs rather than outputs. We know there are a few highly energy intensive industries. We can focus innovation on these in the very near term to improve efficiency of processes. We should have been doing it 30 years ago but the same scientists were still trying to get people to agree to live in cold, damp caves with ever more hysterical sounding catchphrases.

30 years ago there was a lot of first mover's advantage to be had for any nation which successfully addressed energy inefficiencies in industrial processes. Just as Tesla are getting a huge first mover's advantage for electric cars. Sadly it looks like we're only starting that process today which means we need to wait for 30 years and hope that the current trend can be reversed.

Or they'll just migrate the the Middle East, where solar will be a cent per kW...

Waves from the Middle East, where the latest phase of a massive solar park is already below 1.7 cents a kWh.

https://www.mbrsic.ae/en/About/MBRSolarPark

1.04...
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/04/08/saudi-arabias-second-pv-tender-draws-world-record-low-bid-of-0104-kwh/

Wow, I missed that one. So we are pretty much there already, in areas of plentiful sunshine.

Apparently the most difficult issue out here, is finding ways to keep the panels clean from sand without using tonnes of water.