Badoit and San Pellegrino have a nice volcanic taste.
All British mineral water tastes like nothing and is a waste of money.
Nonsense
Highland springs tastes different to buxton which tastes different to malvern
The best is that posh one, Hildon, tho I do confess that might be because it is served in expensive places and in expensive bottles. We are all susceptible to branding
I bet someone could switch the labels on them and you wouldn't tell the difference.
John Rentoul @JohnRentoul · 1h The Conservatives have had 12 years to come up with a plan for social care. But so have Labour: @MrTCHarris
Labour would imo be nuts to get bogged down in floating alternative proposals. The GE is years away and the government is (barring a u turn) stuck with trying to defend the indefensible with this NI plan. It can be ripped apart on so many levels that Labour's biggest challenge is knowing where to start.
You are probably correct, but they will face a lot of "so what would labour do?" questioning. At some point they will need to front up.
I'd argue that the best solution for the country would be a cross party agreement, but sadly low political cunning will almost certainly scupper that. As a country we need to decide who should pay for social care, and whether inheritance of your parents estate is a right, or something that is conditional on other factors. One thing that people in this country do stick to - a sense of fair play.
I was once very struck by the attitude of the grandparents of a friend. They had been frugal all their lives, scrimped, saved and paid their way. They were furious that others of their age had been spendthrift throughout and were now being supported by the state, because they couldn't support themselves. I think they would say if you have assets you should pay for you own care until you can no longer do so (with a cap set at a certain point).
None of this is easy. Most young people don't think they will ever get ill, or get old, or die. But they all will eventually. For the fortunate ones they will live long, healthy lives and then get taken swiftly at the end of a heart attack in their sleep. But we won't all be lucky. We have to do better as a society than 2 to 4 short visits a day where a carer has to chose between feeding someone or washing them, or other things.
I don't know the answer, but we have a duty to try harder.
Yes, I was talking about the politics of this right now for Labour, they should do their job of ripping the plan apart and no more, but I agree with these sentiments. A 'good' solution - ie not crassly unfair and sustainable for the longer term - needs to be cross party since it's too easy to paint anything serious as being some sort of outrage, winning votes off the back of the grievance stirred. Although this effort, using NI instead of either income tax or wealth tax, IS an outrage.
I don't quite follow your anecdote though. If those grandparents were furious that others without assets were getting state aid, surely they would NOT be saying that if you do have assets (eg themselves) you should be paying for care until you can't. They'd find this galling, wouldn't they, when the 'spendthrifts' were getting their bills covered? Exactly this sentiment is very prominent in the mix of emotions that people feel about social care.
I think they wished that they had had more fun through their lives and then turned to the state in old age. They were very bitter.
Right, but which way do you think they would have jumped as a way to drain the bitterness - that they should get the state aid too or that those who'd failed to save shouldn't?
Just heard on the bbc, half the adult social care budget goes on non-old age disability care.
Having seen the care cost breakdown for my 32 year old brother, I can understand.
It’s seriously expensive.
It’s fantastic that we, as a society, agree to pool the financial risk of parents/families having a severely disabled child, but we also should have a debate about preventing more of these births.
It’s a horrible debate to have, but the costs are just so enormous. I think we need to do far more discouraging consanguineous marriage, for example.
The shortages are relatively minor at present, but people are sensitised and starting to attribute any temporary lack of stock to the general narrative of HGV disruption (not so much Brexit, yet).
More or Less had a good episode on this (HGV drivers) yesterday. Their conclusion? Brexit is a contributory factor, as are other issues. This in response to a supposed shortage of HGV drivers of 100,000.
There was a shortage of 60,000 HGV drivers the year before the Brexit (2019) and 50,000 in 2015.
25,000 fewer people passed their HGV test vs the year before.
In 2019 before Brexit there were 44,000 lorry drivers from the EU and now there are around 25,000.
So 19,000 from Brexit 25,000 from fewer tests passed 60,000 residual shortage
= 100,000 shortage.
But that 100,000 is not a robust number according to MoL. No one knows how many there are to determine there is a 100,000 shortage.
Yes, I think that's fair.
My guess, based mainly on anecdote, is that the massive increase in home delivery over the pandemic has bled some of the potential employees out of the HGV market. People are finding they can earn very similar money whilst being at home every night doing local deliveries at much more sociable hours and are going for it. When this is added to the lack of new recruits coming in you get a problem.
That's a very astute observation.
Yes, that is a large factor. The one the government gets too much of a let on is that Covid shut down driver training, for HGV as well as for normal car driving. HMG should have spotted the likely consequence.
Why anyone is buying bottled water in the UK is a mystery.
There was an interesting documentary done on this many years ago by C4. They did blind tastings with chilled tap water v chilled bottled water and the result was no-one could consistently tell the difference, including those folk like TSE who said their tap water was "minging". They also carried out microbial and mineral analysis and concluded tap water is considerably safer. The best/safest water to drink anywhere in the UK is through a filter from you tap and refrigerate. If you want it sparkling get a sodastream.
You point "why anyone is buying bottled water in the UK is a mystery" is not entirely true. The answer is the same as to why some people believe Boris Johnson is a good PM. Gullibility.
I buy bottled water if I'm out and about and need water. I have water bottles I take, but I drink a lot, and often run out. They're a life saver on long car journeys, and far better than coke/fanta/soft drinks. Also when walking, I'll sometimes refill my Platypus from bottled water bought in shops.
Bottled water has a use; I just cannot understand people who live on it. They must be the same sort of idiotlovely fellow who buy Apple phones every year ...
Badoit and San Pellegrino have a nice volcanic taste.
All British mineral water tastes like nothing and is a waste of money.
Nonsense
Highland springs tastes different to buxton which tastes different to malvern
The best is that posh one, Hildon, tho I do confess that might be because it is served in expensive places and in expensive bottles. We are all susceptible to branding
I bet someone could switch the labels on them and you wouldn't tell the difference.
My girlfriend did it on me. Buxton versus highland. I got it right
Btw this doesn’t make me some genius. Most people could surely do it. Water varies intensely by taste according to salinity and minerality. Anyone who has tried distilled water at school will know this
Water snobbery probably makes more sense than wine snobbery, and is more understandable from an evolutionary perspective. Being able to detect ‘bad water’ has surely saved many many human lives, being able to detect the Pinot noir grape or a hint of corkage has not
The shortages are relatively minor at present, but people are sensitised and starting to attribute any temporary lack of stock to the general narrative of HGV disruption (not so much Brexit, yet).
More or Less had a good episode on this (HGV drivers) yesterday. Their conclusion? Brexit is a contributory factor, as are other issues. This in response to a supposed shortage of HGV drivers of 100,000.
There was a shortage of 60,000 HGV drivers the year before the Brexit (2019) and 50,000 in 2015.
25,000 fewer people passed their HGV test vs the year before.
In 2019 before Brexit there were 44,000 lorry drivers from the EU and now there are around 25,000.
So 19,000 from Brexit 25,000 from fewer tests passed 60,000 residual shortage
= 100,000 shortage.
But that 100,000 is not a robust number according to MoL. No one knows how many there are to determine there is a 100,000 shortage.
Yes, I think that's fair.
My guess, based mainly on anecdote, is that the massive increase in home delivery over the pandemic has bled some of the potential employees out of the HGV market. People are finding they can earn very similar money whilst being at home every night doing local deliveries at much more sociable hours and are going for it. When this is added to the lack of new recruits coming in you get a problem.
That's a very astute observation.
Yes, that is a large factor. The one the government gets too much of a let on is that Covid shut down driver training, for HGV as well as for normal car driving. HMG should have spotted the likely consequence.
Is there any explanation why Uber were available throughout but we couldn't do an HGV test yet?
Also we had 4868 drivers whose licenses expired in 2020 but couldnt get a re-test. Shouldn't we have rolled them over until the backlog was clear?
Badoit and San Pellegrino have a nice volcanic taste.
All British mineral water tastes like nothing and is a waste of money.
Nonsense
Highland springs tastes different to buxton which tastes different to malvern
The best is that posh one, Hildon, tho I do confess that might be because it is served in expensive places and in expensive bottles. We are all susceptible to branding
I bet someone could switch the labels on them and you wouldn't tell the difference.
My girlfriend did it on me. Buxton versus highland. I got it right
And anyone who can't tell the difference between Dasani and Fiji Water has presumably been smoking 40-a-day for quite a long time.
Have 56% of Britons noticed food shortages in their local shops/supermarkets or have they just noticed 56% of people talking about food shortages in their local shops/supermarkets?
I've noticed precisely nothing, and had no trouble getting anything at all.
I haven't because generally I don't do the shopping. If I were a politician and was asked the cliched question "how much is a pint of milk" I really wouldn't have a clue.
It can vary.
"Since leaving their City jobs 7 years ago Letitia Barrington Webb and her husband Roland have been producing organic milk on their farm in Devon. Using only the finest cows, and just one at a time, they produce the milk of dreams. The current cow is called Mathilda and she is treated like a queen. Every morning Letitia kneels and with great reverence and oh so gently kneads Mathilda's teats to bring forth the day's supply. Roland then bottles it and off it goes to Waitrose."
You pay a premium for this type of product. Quite a hefty one.
That has to be a piss take. Right???
🙂 - yes and no.
I am satirising those rather "precious" bespoke food products you sometimes see at the high end stores. It's not stretched that much either. There's some quite giggly stuff out there.
Norway made sure the resources benefitted its population and largely developed them using state-owned companies... the UK left it up to private companies, and didn't negotiate a good deal. This analysis reckons UK missed out on hundreds of billions of revenue.
BP was state owned at the time. So the British government gained on the privatisation of BP later in the decade.
Now, it may be that the terms offered to companies for exploiting the North Sea were more favourable for the Norwegian government, but it is also worth remembering that when initial licenses were being auctioned, no-one was really sure it was going to work. The UK Continental Shelf Act was in 1963/64 and then there were a succession of dry holes. I forget the actual number, but I think of the first 48 or 49 wells drilled in the North Sea, none found oil. (Although a few found gas, which at the time was massively less valuable.)
Only with Ecofisk (which was the last well Phillips petroleum was planning on drilling, so unhappy were they with the North Sea), that things were transformed.
The Norwegians were lucky. They sold licenses later. And therefore they got the benefit of people knowing that oil was there.
As the link notes - a few extra billion from privatizations doesn't change the overall arithmetic. It wasn't luck - > better judgment & not being ideologically driven to privatise, instead being open for the public sector to take on risk. Ultimately a very costly mistake not to keep equity in case of a large upside.
It would also have been an equally costly mistake to have tried to carry the costs and risks for themselves though. A quick trawl through the history of the North sea and how many companies went bust or were only saved from going bust by being bought out by other companies shows how much risk would have been involved. Only 1 in 7 wells drilled in the North Sea ever found hydrocarbons and only 1 in 11 ever led to development.
The history of BNOC/Britoil is instructive in this case but they were only one amongst very many.
Sharing the risks would have been smart (upside and downside). It doesn't matter that many companies went bust and most wells didn't lead to development... overall it was incredibly profitable and sadly the UK missed out on much of what it could have had.
When you say "the UK missed out", do you mean:
(a) that more oil would have been extracted at lower cost (b) that more tax revenue could have been collected or (c) that British firms could have owned more of the licenses
Ultimately, a certain amount of oil was collected and sold. It generated jobs, tax revenue and a thriving oil industry in the UK. It *may* have been the case that more tax revenue was collectable - but that might also have led to less investment.
It's easy to make perfect decisions with perfect knowledge. People making investment decisions in the 70s and 80s did not have that.
And it is one of the most inhospitable places in the world (or was a t the time) to drill for oil.
I would like to put up a photo of the last time I was offshore in 2013 which would illustrate this well but I lack the technical ability...
Thanks to Robert for showing me how to do this. This was taken from the Solan platform West of Shetlands and shows the rig I was sat on at the time during a small blow. This is the Semi-sub Ocean Valiant, one of the largest drilling units out there.
Norway made sure the resources benefitted its population and largely developed them using state-owned companies... the UK left it up to private companies, and didn't negotiate a good deal. This analysis reckons UK missed out on hundreds of billions of revenue.
BP was state owned at the time. So the British government gained on the privatisation of BP later in the decade.
Now, it may be that the terms offered to companies for exploiting the North Sea were more favourable for the Norwegian government, but it is also worth remembering that when initial licenses were being auctioned, no-one was really sure it was going to work. The UK Continental Shelf Act was in 1963/64 and then there were a succession of dry holes. I forget the actual number, but I think of the first 48 or 49 wells drilled in the North Sea, none found oil. (Although a few found gas, which at the time was massively less valuable.)
Only with Ecofisk (which was the last well Phillips petroleum was planning on drilling, so unhappy were they with the North Sea), that things were transformed.
The Norwegians were lucky. They sold licenses later. And therefore they got the benefit of people knowing that oil was there.
As the link notes - a few extra billion from privatizations doesn't change the overall arithmetic. It wasn't luck - > better judgment & not being ideologically driven to privatise, instead being open for the public sector to take on risk. Ultimately a very costly mistake not to keep equity in case of a large upside.
It would also have been an equally costly mistake to have tried to carry the costs and risks for themselves though. A quick trawl through the history of the North sea and how many companies went bust or were only saved from going bust by being bought out by other companies shows how much risk would have been involved. Only 1 in 7 wells drilled in the North Sea ever found hydrocarbons and only 1 in 11 ever led to development.
The history of BNOC/Britoil is instructive in this case but they were only one amongst very many.
Sharing the risks would have been smart (upside and downside). It doesn't matter that many companies went bust and most wells didn't lead to development... overall it was incredibly profitable and sadly the UK missed out on much of what it could have had.
When you say "the UK missed out", do you mean:
(a) that more oil would have been extracted at lower cost (b) that more tax revenue could have been collected or (c) that British firms could have owned more of the licenses
Ultimately, a certain amount of oil was collected and sold. It generated jobs, tax revenue and a thriving oil industry in the UK. It *may* have been the case that more tax revenue was collectable - but that might also have led to less investment.
It's easy to make perfect decisions with perfect knowledge. People making investment decisions in the 70s and 80s did not have that.
And it is one of the most inhospitable places in the world (or was a t the time) to drill for oil.
I would like to put up a photo of the last time I was offshore in 2013 which would illustrate this well but I lack the technical ability...
Thanks to Robert for showing me how to do this. This was taken from the Solan platform West of Shetlands and shows the rig I was sat on at the time during a small blow. This is the Semi-sub Ocean Valiant, one of the largest drilling units out there.
Is the camera or the rig tilting, or both? Both surely?
Norway made sure the resources benefitted its population and largely developed them using state-owned companies... the UK left it up to private companies, and didn't negotiate a good deal. This analysis reckons UK missed out on hundreds of billions of revenue.
BP was state owned at the time. So the British government gained on the privatisation of BP later in the decade.
Now, it may be that the terms offered to companies for exploiting the North Sea were more favourable for the Norwegian government, but it is also worth remembering that when initial licenses were being auctioned, no-one was really sure it was going to work. The UK Continental Shelf Act was in 1963/64 and then there were a succession of dry holes. I forget the actual number, but I think of the first 48 or 49 wells drilled in the North Sea, none found oil. (Although a few found gas, which at the time was massively less valuable.)
Only with Ecofisk (which was the last well Phillips petroleum was planning on drilling, so unhappy were they with the North Sea), that things were transformed.
The Norwegians were lucky. They sold licenses later. And therefore they got the benefit of people knowing that oil was there.
As the link notes - a few extra billion from privatizations doesn't change the overall arithmetic. It wasn't luck - > better judgment & not being ideologically driven to privatise, instead being open for the public sector to take on risk. Ultimately a very costly mistake not to keep equity in case of a large upside.
It would also have been an equally costly mistake to have tried to carry the costs and risks for themselves though. A quick trawl through the history of the North sea and how many companies went bust or were only saved from going bust by being bought out by other companies shows how much risk would have been involved. Only 1 in 7 wells drilled in the North Sea ever found hydrocarbons and only 1 in 11 ever led to development.
The history of BNOC/Britoil is instructive in this case but they were only one amongst very many.
Sharing the risks would have been smart (upside and downside). It doesn't matter that many companies went bust and most wells didn't lead to development... overall it was incredibly profitable and sadly the UK missed out on much of what it could have had.
When you say "the UK missed out", do you mean:
(a) that more oil would have been extracted at lower cost (b) that more tax revenue could have been collected or (c) that British firms could have owned more of the licenses
Ultimately, a certain amount of oil was collected and sold. It generated jobs, tax revenue and a thriving oil industry in the UK. It *may* have been the case that more tax revenue was collectable - but that might also have led to less investment.
It's easy to make perfect decisions with perfect knowledge. People making investment decisions in the 70s and 80s did not have that.
And it is one of the most inhospitable places in the world (or was a t the time) to drill for oil.
I would like to put up a photo of the last time I was offshore in 2013 which would illustrate this well but I lack the technical ability...
You have my respect. A number of my friends worked on the rigs in the late 80s. Not for the faint hearted.
My (rather sad story) is that I had my interview to start working offshore the day after Piper Alpha. The company at the time, Geoservices, were interviewing 80 people in London and only 12 of us turned up. We all got the jobs
Badoit and San Pellegrino have a nice volcanic taste.
All British mineral water tastes like nothing and is a waste of money.
Nonsense
Highland springs tastes different to buxton which tastes different to malvern
The best is that posh one, Hildon, tho I do confess that might be because it is served in expensive places and in expensive bottles. We are all susceptible to branding
I bet someone could switch the labels on them and you wouldn't tell the difference.
I've always thought that Perrier had bigger bubbles than other sparkling water.
Have 56% of Britons noticed food shortages in their local shops/supermarkets or have they just noticed 56% of people talking about food shortages in their local shops/supermarkets?
I've noticed precisely nothing, and had no trouble getting anything at all.
I haven't because generally I don't do the shopping. If I were a politician and was asked the cliched question "how much is a pint of milk" I really wouldn't have a clue.
It can vary.
"Since leaving their City jobs 7 years ago Letitia Barrington Webb and her husband Roland have been producing organic milk on their farm in Devon. Using only the finest cows, and just one at a time, they produce the milk of dreams. The current cow is called Mathilda and she is treated like a queen. Every morning Letitia kneels and with great reverence and oh so gently kneads Mathilda's teats to bring forth the day's supply. Roland then bottles it and off it goes to Waitrose."
You pay a premium for this type of product. Quite a hefty one.
That has to be a piss take. Right???
🙂 - yes and no.
I am satirising those rather "precious" bespoke food products you sometimes see at the high end stores. It's not stretched that much either. There's some quite giggly stuff out there.
Also, "treated like a Queen." I'm pretty certain trying this sort of manoeuvre on our own dear monarch would get the red card.
Norway made sure the resources benefitted its population and largely developed them using state-owned companies... the UK left it up to private companies, and didn't negotiate a good deal. This analysis reckons UK missed out on hundreds of billions of revenue.
BP was state owned at the time. So the British government gained on the privatisation of BP later in the decade.
Now, it may be that the terms offered to companies for exploiting the North Sea were more favourable for the Norwegian government, but it is also worth remembering that when initial licenses were being auctioned, no-one was really sure it was going to work. The UK Continental Shelf Act was in 1963/64 and then there were a succession of dry holes. I forget the actual number, but I think of the first 48 or 49 wells drilled in the North Sea, none found oil. (Although a few found gas, which at the time was massively less valuable.)
Only with Ecofisk (which was the last well Phillips petroleum was planning on drilling, so unhappy were they with the North Sea), that things were transformed.
The Norwegians were lucky. They sold licenses later. And therefore they got the benefit of people knowing that oil was there.
As the link notes - a few extra billion from privatizations doesn't change the overall arithmetic. It wasn't luck - > better judgment & not being ideologically driven to privatise, instead being open for the public sector to take on risk. Ultimately a very costly mistake not to keep equity in case of a large upside.
(I would point out that British Gas was also a big, state owned, beneficiary of the North Sea.)
I think it's very easy to be wise after the event. One only has to glance around the world to see that the number of promising petroleum basins, and the number of profitable, producing petroleum basins are very different. The British Government neither had the technical experience or the money to take on the gigantic risks of developing the North Sea on their own.
One also should look at Mexico and Venezuela: in both cases, laws were passed that stopped rapacious foreigners from exploiting vast hydrocarbon reserves. In both cases, this was a disaster for oil production.
Now, could we have done better. Yes, sure, of course we could. But this is based on knowledge that was only available after the event.
Venezuela is an interesting one. It is not entirely due just to kicking out the international oil companies that they had a collapse of their industry. It was far more to do with the fact that any Venezuelan who had previously worked for any of those companies was banned from working for the new state oil companies. Most of them left the country and very large numbers ended up in Aberdeen and Houston. One of them is a good friend of mine and was one of the world leading experts on steam induced heavy oil production. Venezuela lost almost all of their oil knowledge and experience overnight and it was almost entirely self inflicted.
That is without doubt the stupidest idea I've heard today.
That's even dafter than Brexit. At least we've only got rid of some of our truckers, carers, food packers, etc! I suppose they can always train up some more though.
What is also interesting is WHY Venezuela did this.
When Chavez took over, he declared, Soviet style that he wanted maximum income NOW from the oil industry.
In any oil producing country, there are wells that are easier to produce from than others. The standard operating scheme is to use the cheap fields sparingly, so as to have a buffer against falling oil prices and to generate revenue for investing in the the more expensive and difficult fields.
So quite a few people working in the Venezuelan oil industry pushed back. Chavez got angry and declared them wreckers and thieves. He even made a speech declaring there was too much investment going on - not enough profit for the government to spend.
So people who would do his bidding were brought in. The cheapest wells were maxed out - and water injection used to push the yield. Which damages the wells in the end.
So after a few years of this, the cheaper wells were exhausted. The more expensive fields weren't invested in and couldn't produce. There was no revenue to invest in production. And then the oil price fell......
Badoit and San Pellegrino have a nice volcanic taste.
All British mineral water tastes like nothing and is a waste of money.
Nonsense
Highland springs tastes different to buxton which tastes different to malvern
The best is that posh one, Hildon, tho I do confess that might be because it is served in expensive places and in expensive bottles. We are all susceptible to branding
I bet someone could switch the labels on them and you wouldn't tell the difference.
My girlfriend did it on me. Buxton versus highland. I got it right
Btw this doesn’t make me some genius. Most people could surely do it. Water varies intensely by taste according to salinity and minerality. Anyone who has tried distilled water at school will know this
Water snobbery probably makes more sense than wine snobbery, and is more understandable from an evolutionary perspective. Being able to detect ‘bad water’ has surely saved many many human lives, being able to detect the Pinot noir grape or a hint of corkage has not
Wouldn't know, don't touch the stuff unless flavoured with tea, fermented grapes or fermented barley. It's horrible.
Liz Kendell's turn on R4 this morning was just embarrassing. Completely devoid of ideas or proposals other than vacuous nonsense about needing to have a proper plan for social care.
Labour remain in serious trouble as an opposition.
Norway made sure the resources benefitted its population and largely developed them using state-owned companies... the UK left it up to private companies, and didn't negotiate a good deal. This analysis reckons UK missed out on hundreds of billions of revenue.
BP was state owned at the time. So the British government gained on the privatisation of BP later in the decade.
Now, it may be that the terms offered to companies for exploiting the North Sea were more favourable for the Norwegian government, but it is also worth remembering that when initial licenses were being auctioned, no-one was really sure it was going to work. The UK Continental Shelf Act was in 1963/64 and then there were a succession of dry holes. I forget the actual number, but I think of the first 48 or 49 wells drilled in the North Sea, none found oil. (Although a few found gas, which at the time was massively less valuable.)
Only with Ecofisk (which was the last well Phillips petroleum was planning on drilling, so unhappy were they with the North Sea), that things were transformed.
The Norwegians were lucky. They sold licenses later. And therefore they got the benefit of people knowing that oil was there.
As the link notes - a few extra billion from privatizations doesn't change the overall arithmetic. It wasn't luck - > better judgment & not being ideologically driven to privatise, instead being open for the public sector to take on risk. Ultimately a very costly mistake not to keep equity in case of a large upside.
It would also have been an equally costly mistake to have tried to carry the costs and risks for themselves though. A quick trawl through the history of the North sea and how many companies went bust or were only saved from going bust by being bought out by other companies shows how much risk would have been involved. Only 1 in 7 wells drilled in the North Sea ever found hydrocarbons and only 1 in 11 ever led to development.
The history of BNOC/Britoil is instructive in this case but they were only one amongst very many.
Sharing the risks would have been smart (upside and downside). It doesn't matter that many companies went bust and most wells didn't lead to development... overall it was incredibly profitable and sadly the UK missed out on much of what it could have had.
When you say "the UK missed out", do you mean:
(a) that more oil would have been extracted at lower cost (b) that more tax revenue could have been collected or (c) that British firms could have owned more of the licenses
Ultimately, a certain amount of oil was collected and sold. It generated jobs, tax revenue and a thriving oil industry in the UK. It *may* have been the case that more tax revenue was collectable - but that might also have led to less investment.
It's easy to make perfect decisions with perfect knowledge. People making investment decisions in the 70s and 80s did not have that.
And it is one of the most inhospitable places in the world (or was a t the time) to drill for oil.
I would like to put up a photo of the last time I was offshore in 2013 which would illustrate this well but I lack the technical ability...
Thanks to Robert for showing me how to do this. This was taken from the Solan platform West of Shetlands and shows the rig I was sat on at the time during a small blow. This is the Semi-sub Ocean Valiant, one of the largest drilling units out there.
Is the camera or the rig tilting, or both? Both surely?
The rig. The camera is on a platform fixed to the sea floor. The rig is a semi-submersible. Those legs go down to pontoons about 60ft below the surface and the rig is then floating free and held in place on anchor chains. In a bad storm - the worst you get are up on Haltenbank between the Norwegian and North Seas - the rig will move up and down by up to 50 or more feet. It is known as heaving. Well before that you unlatch from the well and ride it out in what is know as survival draught
I've noticed labour shortages more generally, even in my consultancy industry where all firms want to expand like crazy but can't find enough good staff.
Right now, this is good for me - as I've just had a fantastic job offer to become a Director with a substantial pay rise - but, it will shortly become my problem once I take the job and can't staff my teams.
The trouble is: immigration fixes it in weeks, whereas training & education take years, so firms are always going to prefer the former.
If there are two firms bidding for a contract, the one that has the lower price will win.
Firms should be investing in training and education, and the government needs to make sure the tax system encourages it.
One of the problems is this:
Imagine I take on John for £20,000 per year. In the first two years, I spend £10,000 each year training up John and he generates £15,000 of economic output. So, over the two years, I am out of pocket by £30,000.
In year three, John is fully trained and can generate economic output of £40,000 per year. Yay! If I pay him £30,000 per year, I'll get my money back in three years.
But NewCo down the road can afford to offer him £35,000/year and earn a profit on John from day one.
For almost any firm, the incentive is to take on qualified employees by outbidding rather than training them up themselves, because if you train them, they will leave for a higher paying job and you will be out of pocket.
Now, there are various ways around this. In America, the cost of training is handed over to the employees, and they send themselves to business or law or medical school and take on big debts. The Germans and the Swiss have done it differently, with vocational training seamlessly continuing from secondary education, and with the cost of that training shared between the state and the employer.
We in the UK have done it really badly.
Immigration is a consequence of the failure of the UK's tax, benefits and education systems.
There used to be the Construction Industry Training Board which was funded by a levy in order to get around the problem of freeloading employers. I don't know how successful it is or was, or whether the model could be applied to other industries.
Badoit and San Pellegrino have a nice volcanic taste.
All British mineral water tastes like nothing and is a waste of money.
Nonsense
Highland springs tastes different to buxton which tastes different to malvern
The best is that posh one, Hildon, tho I do confess that might be because it is served in expensive places and in expensive bottles. We are all susceptible to branding
I bet someone could switch the labels on them and you wouldn't tell the difference.
I've always thought that Perrier had bigger bubbles than other sparkling water.
This could be total nonsense of course.
It does, definitely. Then again, they used to pretend it comes out of the ground like that, then 20 odd years ago they had a contamination scare and had to admit that the bubbles were artificially enhanced.
Jesus Christ this view of Lake Maggiore is sublime
London Fields is unseasonably balmy. And we have better Deliveroo choice.
There’s a reasonable argument for saying the southern Alpine lakes - Como, Lugano, Garda, Maggiore, etc - are the most beautiful place on earth (with hotel prices to match). The combination of sun, water, steep green mountains, emerald meadows, waterfalls, lush palms and noble pine
But I can’t work out if that is objectively true or if it is subjective nonsense, or conditioning. Is my lake view really better than a view of the North Circular? If so, why?
Badoit and San Pellegrino have a nice volcanic taste.
All British mineral water tastes like nothing and is a waste of money.
Nonsense
Highland springs tastes different to buxton which tastes different to malvern
The best is that posh one, Hildon, tho I do confess that might be because it is served in expensive places and in expensive bottles. We are all susceptible to branding
I bet someone could switch the labels on them and you wouldn't tell the difference.
My girlfriend did it on me. Buxton versus highland. I got it right
Btw this doesn’t make me some genius. Most people could surely do it. Water varies intensely by taste according to salinity and minerality. Anyone who has tried distilled water at school will know this
Water snobbery probably makes more sense than wine snobbery, and is more understandable from an evolutionary perspective. Being able to detect ‘bad water’ has surely saved many many human lives, being able to detect the Pinot noir grape or a hint of corkage has not
Wouldn't know, don't touch the stuff unless flavoured with tea, fermented grapes or fermented barley. It's horrible.
Quite right. You should never drink water, fish piss in it.
Badoit and San Pellegrino have a nice volcanic taste.
All British mineral water tastes like nothing and is a waste of money.
Nonsense
Highland springs tastes different to buxton which tastes different to malvern
The best is that posh one, Hildon, tho I do confess that might be because it is served in expensive places and in expensive bottles. We are all susceptible to branding
I bet someone could switch the labels on them and you wouldn't tell the difference.
My girlfriend did it on me. Buxton versus highland. I got it right
Btw this doesn’t make me some genius. Most people could surely do it. Water varies intensely by taste according to salinity and minerality. Anyone who has tried distilled water at school will know this
Water snobbery probably makes more sense than wine snobbery, and is more understandable from an evolutionary perspective. Being able to detect ‘bad water’ has surely saved many many human lives, being able to detect the Pinot noir grape or a hint of corkage has not
Wouldn't know, don't touch the stuff unless flavoured with tea, fermented grapes or fermented barley. It's horrible.
Quite right. You should never drink water, fish piss in it.
Fish don't piss, they have just the one cloaca which doesn't distinguish piss from shit.
I've noticed labour shortages more generally, even in my consultancy industry where all firms want to expand like crazy but can't find enough good staff.
Right now, this is good for me - as I've just had a fantastic job offer to become a Director with a substantial pay rise - but, it will shortly become my problem once I take the job and can't staff my teams.
The trouble is: immigration fixes it in weeks, whereas training & education take years, so firms are always going to prefer the former.
If there are two firms bidding for a contract, the one that has the lower price will win.
Firms should be investing in training and education, and the government needs to make sure the tax system encourages it.
One of the problems is this:
Imagine I take on John for £20,000 per year. In the first two years, I spend £10,000 each year training up John and he generates £15,000 of economic output. So, over the two years, I am out of pocket by £30,000.
In year three, John is fully trained and can generate economic output of £40,000 per year. Yay! If I pay him £30,000 per year, I'll get my money back in three years.
But NewCo down the road can afford to offer him £35,000/year and earn a profit on John from day one.
For almost any firm, the incentive is to take on qualified employees by outbidding rather than training them up themselves, because if you train them, they will leave for a higher paying job and you will be out of pocket.
Now, there are various ways around this. In America, the cost of training is handed over to the employees, and they send themselves to business or law or medical school and take on big debts. The Germans and the Swiss have done it differently, with vocational training seamlessly continuing from secondary education, and with the cost of that training shared between the state and the employer.
We in the UK have done it really badly.
Immigration is a consequence of the failure of the UK's tax, benefits and education systems.
There used to be the Construction Industry Training Board which was funded by a levy in order to get around the problem of freeloading employers. I don't know how successful it is or was, or whether the model could be applied to other industries.
The fear for each individual employers is that a trained up employee can walk out of the business, taking tens of thousands of training capital with them.
Thus, there is a market failure in training because - left to their own devices - employers will train less than they need.
The solution is industry-by-industry training programmes, funded by an employer levy.
I've noticed labour shortages more generally, even in my consultancy industry where all firms want to expand like crazy but can't find enough good staff.
Right now, this is good for me - as I've just had a fantastic job offer to become a Director with a substantial pay rise - but, it will shortly become my problem once I take the job and can't staff my teams.
The trouble is: immigration fixes it in weeks, whereas training & education take years, so firms are always going to prefer the former.
If there are two firms bidding for a contract, the one that has the lower price will win.
Firms should be investing in training and education, and the government needs to make sure the tax system encourages it.
One of the problems is this:
Imagine I take on John for £20,000 per year. In the first two years, I spend £10,000 each year training up John and he generates £15,000 of economic output. So, over the two years, I am out of pocket by £30,000.
In year three, John is fully trained and can generate economic output of £40,000 per year. Yay! If I pay him £30,000 per year, I'll get my money back in three years.
But NewCo down the road can afford to offer him £35,000/year and earn a profit on John from day one.
For almost any firm, the incentive is to take on qualified employees by outbidding rather than training them up themselves, because if you train them, they will leave for a higher paying job and you will be out of pocket.
Now, there are various ways around this. In America, the cost of training is handed over to the employees, and they send themselves to business or law or medical school and take on big debts. The Germans and the Swiss have done it differently, with vocational training seamlessly continuing from secondary education, and with the cost of that training shared between the state and the employer.
We in the UK have done it really badly.
Immigration is a consequence of the failure of the UK's tax, benefits and education systems.
There used to be the Construction Industry Training Board which was funded by a levy in order to get around the problem of freeloading employers. I don't know how successful it is or was, or whether the model could be applied to other industries.
There is the more general apprenticeship levy which is 0.5% on all payrolls above £3m that can be used for training.
The issue is that its a faff to use and you still end up with scenarios like the first one where the work isn't economically profitable in the first year or so.
Boris and Brexit. At the time it was politically essential for Boris to deliver Brexit. otherwise he and the Tories were toast.
He had these options:
Leave, no deal, make the NI/RoI border the EU's problem.
Or
Leave, with deal, take on the insoluble border problem - because unless he took it on the EU wouldn't agree a deal.
I suspect No Deal would have been 20 times more catastrophic than Deal + owning the NI/RoI border problem.
So Boris did right; but knew, as did we all, that the border's insolubility would have to be revisited.
But we held all the cards, why didn't Boris Johnson use them?
We did. Which is why we got the deal we wanted for England and forced the EU into a position where we could compel them to revisit NI later on.
Check and mate.
It appears your knowledge of chess and card games is similar to your knowledge on "herd immunity" and international negotiation. No, hang on, just negotiation generally. Johnson fucked up the negotiation because to use a phrase that someone on here once used, he couldn't negotiate a discount at SCS. He is a journalist FFS! He has never had to negotiate a thing in his life, other than getting into the next debutants knickers. You don't want to see that because you have been suckered by him and his "get Brexit done" bollox. Quaint really.
It was a deliberately mixed metaphor. 🤦♂️
But if Boris couldn't negotiate a discount, how come he managed to get the atrociously awful backstop replaced with a NI-only Protocol that the EU can't even get the UK to implement against its will?
Seems like he's achieved a 98.5% discount to me. 97% by avoiding GB in the Protocol, and a further 50% because its only half-implemented in NI anyway.
that is because you are a true believer, and probably like him, have never had to negotiate anything complex in your life. It wasn't a negotiation, it was a capitulation, dressed up for the gullible as a great victory. It will unravel.
The UK never wanted the backstop/protocol, it was a "price" to be paid for a deal as the EU wanted it. A price that Boris got a massive "discount" on.
If it was a capitulation, then how come GB isn't in the Protocol/backstop as the EU managed to get May to agree to?
If it was a capitulation, then how the UK has a unilateral exit from it? Something the EU pointedly refused to agree too under May and Robbins? Remember "a backstop with an exit is not a backstop".
I get completely that you dislike Brexit, all it stands for, and you think Brexit will be bad ... But as far as the Protocol/backstop is concerned even you have to surely admit the UK has got a tremendous "discount" from what was on offer before - and if it's unravelling for anyone it's the EU who have discovered they can't compel the UK to implement it how they wanted us to.
Gosh, took you a while there Philip. I was just about to log off, but thought I would say that your blind loyalty to the cause does trouble me. I do think Brexit is pointless, but I am over that, and there are many people on here who support Brexit that I have respect for their views.
The aftermath of Brexit is really so far unknown except NI. As I am part Irish, and NI was an area in my early career that I regularly visited (often with a high degree of trepidation) I do feel a strange affinity for it, and also have some perspective on its complexity. Johnson's "solution" is a fuck up and it will have consequences, I just pray they are not too serious. Your opinion on it is, I am sorry to tell you, highly uninformed and simplistic. It is fortunate for you that you are able to opine on the subject from that position of ignorance.
My opinion is neither ignorant nor simplistic it simply comes from a different viewpoint and different principles than your own.
You have a special affinity for NI. I respect that. But respectfully I do not. I've travelled all over the globe, been to five continents and lived on two but I have never been to NI, I don't care for NI and it's not my priority. My priority is England.
There's nothing wrong with us having different affinities. It's just different choices. As far as I'm concerned with NI, I want a solution for them but as I said earlier I do not want the NI tail wagging the British dog.
From the perspective of an affinity for NI, what was agreed may suck for you and the DUP. Oh well. From my perspective of affinity for England, what was agreed was massively better. Which was the considered opinion of the House of Commons and even the Leader of the Opposition incidentally as far as their votes were concerned.
Jesus Christ this view of Lake Maggiore is sublime
London Fields is unseasonably balmy. And we have better Deliveroo choice.
There’s a reasonable argument for saying the southern Alpine lakes - Como, Lugano, Garda, Maggiore, etc - are the most beautiful place on earth (with hotel prices to match). The combination of sun, water, steep green mountains, emerald meadows, waterfalls, lush palms and noble pine
But I can’t work out if that is objectively true or if it is subjective nonsense, or conditioning. Is my lake view really better than a view of the North Circular? If so, why?
For some years I flew into Geneva then travelled on to the skifield, until I realised I could fly into Malpensa and drive up through the Lakes.
Liz Kendell's turn on R4 this morning was just embarrassing. Completely devoid of ideas or proposals other than vacuous nonsense about needing to have a proper plan for social care.
Labour remain in serious trouble as an opposition.
Why?
If Labour has a plan for social care, they would be mad to unveil it before Autumn 2023.
Jesus Christ this view of Lake Maggiore is sublime
London Fields is unseasonably balmy. And we have better Deliveroo choice.
There’s a reasonable argument for saying the southern Alpine lakes - Como, Lugano, Garda, Maggiore, etc - are the most beautiful place on earth (with hotel prices to match). The combination of sun, water, steep green mountains, emerald meadows, waterfalls, lush palms and noble pine
But I can’t work out if that is objectively true or if it is subjective nonsense, or conditioning. Is my lake view really better than a view of the North Circular? If so, why?
Norway made sure the resources benefitted its population and largely developed them using state-owned companies... the UK left it up to private companies, and didn't negotiate a good deal. This analysis reckons UK missed out on hundreds of billions of revenue.
BP was state owned at the time. So the British government gained on the privatisation of BP later in the decade.
Now, it may be that the terms offered to companies for exploiting the North Sea were more favourable for the Norwegian government, but it is also worth remembering that when initial licenses were being auctioned, no-one was really sure it was going to work. The UK Continental Shelf Act was in 1963/64 and then there were a succession of dry holes. I forget the actual number, but I think of the first 48 or 49 wells drilled in the North Sea, none found oil. (Although a few found gas, which at the time was massively less valuable.)
Only with Ecofisk (which was the last well Phillips petroleum was planning on drilling, so unhappy were they with the North Sea), that things were transformed.
The Norwegians were lucky. They sold licenses later. And therefore they got the benefit of people knowing that oil was there.
As the link notes - a few extra billion from privatizations doesn't change the overall arithmetic. It wasn't luck - > better judgment & not being ideologically driven to privatise, instead being open for the public sector to take on risk. Ultimately a very costly mistake not to keep equity in case of a large upside.
It would also have been an equally costly mistake to have tried to carry the costs and risks for themselves though. A quick trawl through the history of the North sea and how many companies went bust or were only saved from going bust by being bought out by other companies shows how much risk would have been involved. Only 1 in 7 wells drilled in the North Sea ever found hydrocarbons and only 1 in 11 ever led to development.
The history of BNOC/Britoil is instructive in this case but they were only one amongst very many.
Sharing the risks would have been smart (upside and downside). It doesn't matter that many companies went bust and most wells didn't lead to development... overall it was incredibly profitable and sadly the UK missed out on much of what it could have had.
When you say "the UK missed out", do you mean:
(a) that more oil would have been extracted at lower cost (b) that more tax revenue could have been collected or (c) that British firms could have owned more of the licenses
Ultimately, a certain amount of oil was collected and sold. It generated jobs, tax revenue and a thriving oil industry in the UK. It *may* have been the case that more tax revenue was collectable - but that might also have led to less investment.
It's easy to make perfect decisions with perfect knowledge. People making investment decisions in the 70s and 80s did not have that.
And it is one of the most inhospitable places in the world (or was a t the time) to drill for oil.
I would like to put up a photo of the last time I was offshore in 2013 which would illustrate this well but I lack the technical ability...
Thanks to Robert for showing me how to do this. This was taken from the Solan platform West of Shetlands and shows the rig I was sat on at the time during a small blow. This is the Semi-sub Ocean Valiant, one of the largest drilling units out there.
The stresses on those legs must be fantastic; especially from a fatigue viewpoint.
Boris and Brexit. At the time it was politically essential for Boris to deliver Brexit. otherwise he and the Tories were toast.
He had these options:
Leave, no deal, make the NI/RoI border the EU's problem.
Or
Leave, with deal, take on the insoluble border problem - because unless he took it on the EU wouldn't agree a deal.
I suspect No Deal would have been 20 times more catastrophic than Deal + owning the NI/RoI border problem.
So Boris did right; but knew, as did we all, that the border's insolubility would have to be revisited.
But we held all the cards, why didn't Boris Johnson use them?
We did. Which is why we got the deal we wanted for England and forced the EU into a position where we could compel them to revisit NI later on.
Check and mate.
"We" again is not the United Kingdom in your book, so no "we" didn't.
Your position on this, jettisoning NI because it is inconvenient to your English nationalist view of the world, renders your pronouncements as irrelevant as Wolfie Smith's Tooting Popular Front's wailings.
No we is not the United Kingdom.
But "we" is the collective will of the United Kingdom Parliament.
Its not just me that was prepared to jettison NI, to be sorted out later. It was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and over 500 MPs in the House of Commons who voted to ratify the deal too.
First off, we is most certainly the United Kingdom.
Second of all, yes you are right. Parliament ratified a deal which clearly sets a path towards a United Ireland. But they say they didn't and that's the critical point. Boris can you believe it maintains that he doesn't want a united Ireland and is acting for the United Kingdom.
I know. Absurd.
Not just Boris. Starmer too, can you believe it?
The DUP opposed Boris's deal. Oh well, NI has about 11 MPs in the Commons so sucks to be them.
I'm open and honest about considering NI to be a lesser priority. But you're absolutely kidding yourself if you think it isn't for the hundreds of MPs in the Commons either.
I suspect for the overwhelming majority of MPs in the Commons the situation in Northern Ireland is an incredibly low priority, below the concerns of their party, their constituents, their pet interests, their career prospects and much more.
Theresa May was perhaps a rather unique exception who truly was concerned with the union and NI first and foremost. Which is part of what made her such a terrible negotiator. The rest of the Commons isn't so naive, and nor should you be.
Liz Kendell's turn on R4 this morning was just embarrassing. Completely devoid of ideas or proposals other than vacuous nonsense about needing to have a proper plan for social care.
Labour remain in serious trouble as an opposition.
Frankly, no.
There's a political angle to this - let's say Labour has a match-winning idea. Why reveal it so the Conservatives can steal it? I'd expect the Party Conference to be the venue where this kind of policy announcement happens rather than on Monday morning on the Today programme if I'm being honest.
In any case, Labour can just sit back and allow the Conservatives to look divided and divisive.
Trying desperately to somehow spin this as an anti-Labour thing just doesn't work - it's a fair point the social care crisis didn't begin last Thursday but and let's be honest, Labour has not been in Government since 2010.
Its a weird question though "have you noticed shortages"?
Because if you asked that any time of of any year then I could answer yes. There's always something sold out, depending upon what time of day you visit and what you're looking at. Try looking for sandwiches at 5pm on any normal day and see how many are available. 🤷♂️
But now people are deliberately going out looking for and talking about shortages for political reasons so its more noticeable when it happens.
Anyway, the market will find a solution. Its what it does. Goods that people really want, supermarkets will ensure are in stock. Goods people can live without, like bottled water, may not be a priority.
I assume people are sensible about this. Our last 2 shops at Sainsbury's Cobham the answer is no shortages, although that is not to say stuff wasn't missing, but as you say there is always something missing, but just the normal level. However the previous 3 shops (I think, could verify if I could be bothered because I post here each time) there were large sections missing, which isn't normal. To be honest though it doesn't really impact the shop as it isn't like when we had panic buying so it is different stuff each time (and never loo rolls!)
Certainly gaps in shelves nowadays and not as much vegetables/fruit choices
I've noticed labour shortages more generally, even in my consultancy industry where all firms want to expand like crazy but can't find enough good staff.
Right now, this is good for me - as I've just had a fantastic job offer to become a Director with a substantial pay rise - but, it will shortly become my problem once I take the job and can't staff my teams.
The trouble is: immigration fixes it in weeks, whereas training & education take years, so firms are always going to prefer the former.
If there are two firms bidding for a contract, the one that has the lower price will win.
Firms should be investing in training and education, and the government needs to make sure the tax system encourages it.
One of the problems is this:
Imagine I take on John for £20,000 per year. In the first two years, I spend £10,000 each year training up John and he generates £15,000 of economic output. So, over the two years, I am out of pocket by £30,000.
In year three, John is fully trained and can generate economic output of £40,000 per year. Yay! If I pay him £30,000 per year, I'll get my money back in three years.
But NewCo down the road can afford to offer him £35,000/year and earn a profit on John from day one.
For almost any firm, the incentive is to take on qualified employees by outbidding rather than training them up themselves, because if you train them, they will leave for a higher paying job and you will be out of pocket.
Now, there are various ways around this. In America, the cost of training is handed over to the employees, and they send themselves to business or law or medical school and take on big debts. The Germans and the Swiss have done it differently, with vocational training seamlessly continuing from secondary education, and with the cost of that training shared between the state and the employer.
We in the UK have done it really badly.
Immigration is a consequence of the failure of the UK's tax, benefits and education systems.
There used to be the Construction Industry Training Board which was funded by a levy in order to get around the problem of freeloading employers. I don't know how successful it is or was, or whether the model could be applied to other industries.
There is the more general apprenticeship levy which is 0.5% on all payrolls above £3m that can be used for training.
The issue is that its a faff to use and you still end up with scenarios like the first one where the work isn't economically profitable in the first year or so.
When I worked in New Zealand, the Medical Director decided there was no point in having first year trainees in anaesthesia as they were effectively super nummary.
You could have knocked me down with a feather when they developed an anesthesia staffing crises a little way down the line...
Norway made sure the resources benefitted its population and largely developed them using state-owned companies... the UK left it up to private companies, and didn't negotiate a good deal. This analysis reckons UK missed out on hundreds of billions of revenue.
BP was state owned at the time. So the British government gained on the privatisation of BP later in the decade.
Now, it may be that the terms offered to companies for exploiting the North Sea were more favourable for the Norwegian government, but it is also worth remembering that when initial licenses were being auctioned, no-one was really sure it was going to work. The UK Continental Shelf Act was in 1963/64 and then there were a succession of dry holes. I forget the actual number, but I think of the first 48 or 49 wells drilled in the North Sea, none found oil. (Although a few found gas, which at the time was massively less valuable.)
Only with Ecofisk (which was the last well Phillips petroleum was planning on drilling, so unhappy were they with the North Sea), that things were transformed.
The Norwegians were lucky. They sold licenses later. And therefore they got the benefit of people knowing that oil was there.
As the link notes - a few extra billion from privatizations doesn't change the overall arithmetic. It wasn't luck - > better judgment & not being ideologically driven to privatise, instead being open for the public sector to take on risk. Ultimately a very costly mistake not to keep equity in case of a large upside.
It would also have been an equally costly mistake to have tried to carry the costs and risks for themselves though. A quick trawl through the history of the North sea and how many companies went bust or were only saved from going bust by being bought out by other companies shows how much risk would have been involved. Only 1 in 7 wells drilled in the North Sea ever found hydrocarbons and only 1 in 11 ever led to development.
The history of BNOC/Britoil is instructive in this case but they were only one amongst very many.
Sharing the risks would have been smart (upside and downside). It doesn't matter that many companies went bust and most wells didn't lead to development... overall it was incredibly profitable and sadly the UK missed out on much of what it could have had.
When you say "the UK missed out", do you mean:
(a) that more oil would have been extracted at lower cost (b) that more tax revenue could have been collected or (c) that British firms could have owned more of the licenses
Ultimately, a certain amount of oil was collected and sold. It generated jobs, tax revenue and a thriving oil industry in the UK. It *may* have been the case that more tax revenue was collectable - but that might also have led to less investment.
It's easy to make perfect decisions with perfect knowledge. People making investment decisions in the 70s and 80s did not have that.
And it is one of the most inhospitable places in the world (or was a t the time) to drill for oil.
I would like to put up a photo of the last time I was offshore in 2013 which would illustrate this well but I lack the technical ability...
Thanks to Robert for showing me how to do this. This was taken from the Solan platform West of Shetlands and shows the rig I was sat on at the time during a small blow. This is the Semi-sub Ocean Valiant, one of the largest drilling units out there.
Is the camera or the rig tilting, or both? Both surely?
The rig. The camera is on a platform fixed to the sea floor. The rig is a semi-submersible. Those legs go down to pontoons about 60ft below the surface and the rig is then floating free and held in place on anchor chains. In a bad storm - the worst you get are up on Haltenbank between the Norwegian and North Seas - the rig will move up and down by up to 50 or more feet. It is known as heaving. Well before that you unlatch from the well and ride it out in what is know as survival draught
An incredible photo
Btw how did you post it? I thought vanilla had disabled that feature?
John Rentoul @JohnRentoul · 1h The Conservatives have had 12 years to come up with a plan for social care. But so have Labour: @MrTCHarris
Labour would imo be nuts to get bogged down in floating alternative proposals. The GE is years away and the government is (barring a u turn) stuck with trying to defend the indefensible with this NI plan. It can be ripped apart on so many levels that Labour's biggest challenge is knowing where to start.
You are probably correct, but they will face a lot of "so what would labour do?" questioning. At some point they will need to front up.
I'd argue that the best solution for the country would be a cross party agreement, but sadly low political cunning will almost certainly scupper that. As a country we need to decide who should pay for social care, and whether inheritance of your parents estate is a right, or something that is conditional on other factors. One thing that people in this country do stick to - a sense of fair play.
I was once very struck by the attitude of the grandparents of a friend. They had been frugal all their lives, scrimped, saved and paid their way. They were furious that others of their age had been spendthrift throughout and were now being supported by the state, because they couldn't support themselves. I think they would say if you have assets you should pay for you own care until you can no longer do so (with a cap set at a certain point).
None of this is easy. Most young people don't think they will ever get ill, or get old, or die. But they all will eventually. For the fortunate ones they will live long, healthy lives and then get taken swiftly at the end of a heart attack in their sleep. But we won't all be lucky. We have to do better as a society than 2 to 4 short visits a day where a carer has to chose between feeding someone or washing them, or other things.
I don't know the answer, but we have a duty to try harder.
Yes, I was talking about the politics of this right now for Labour, they should do their job of ripping the plan apart and no more, but I agree with these sentiments. A 'good' solution - ie not crassly unfair and sustainable for the longer term - needs to be cross party since it's too easy to paint anything serious as being some sort of outrage, winning votes off the back of the grievance stirred. Although this effort, using NI instead of either income tax or wealth tax, IS an outrage.
I don't quite follow your anecdote though. If those grandparents were furious that others without assets were getting state aid, surely they would NOT be saying that if you do have assets (eg themselves) you should be paying for care until you can't. They'd find this galling, wouldn't they, when the 'spendthrifts' were getting their bills covered? Exactly this sentiment is very prominent in the mix of emotions that people feel about social care.
I think they wished that they had had more fun through their lives and then turned to the state in old age. They were very bitter.
Right, but which way do you think they would have jumped as a way to drain the bitterness - that they should get the state aid too or that those who'd failed to save shouldn't?
Sorry I’ve no idea. It was 25 years hence, but always stayed with me, just because of the strength of feeling.
Badoit and San Pellegrino have a nice volcanic taste.
All British mineral water tastes like nothing and is a waste of money.
Nonsense
Highland springs tastes different to buxton which tastes different to malvern
The best is that posh one, Hildon, tho I do confess that might be because it is served in expensive places and in expensive bottles. We are all susceptible to branding
I bet someone could switch the labels on them and you wouldn't tell the difference.
My girlfriend did it on me. Buxton versus highland. I got it right
And anyone who can't tell the difference between Dasani and Fiji Water has presumably been smoking 40-a-day for quite a long time.
That's easy. We can't buy Dasani in Britain. You must be one of those Russian trolls we've been warned against. Here is Tom Scott's entertaining explanation of why it all went wrong for Dasani (which I have bookmarked!). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wD79NZroV88
Liz Kendell's turn on R4 this morning was just embarrassing. Completely devoid of ideas or proposals other than vacuous nonsense about needing to have a proper plan for social care.
Labour remain in serious trouble as an opposition.
On BBC she said the Labour Party absolutely support that people's life savings should not be used for care
Then just got lost in a maze of non answers much to the frustration of the BBC presenter
Boris and Brexit. At the time it was politically essential for Boris to deliver Brexit. otherwise he and the Tories were toast.
He had these options:
Leave, no deal, make the NI/RoI border the EU's problem.
Or
Leave, with deal, take on the insoluble border problem - because unless he took it on the EU wouldn't agree a deal.
I suspect No Deal would have been 20 times more catastrophic than Deal + owning the NI/RoI border problem.
So Boris did right; but knew, as did we all, that the border's insolubility would have to be revisited.
But we held all the cards, why didn't Boris Johnson use them?
We did. Which is why we got the deal we wanted for England and forced the EU into a position where we could compel them to revisit NI later on.
Check and mate.
It appears your knowledge of chess and card games is similar to your knowledge on "herd immunity" and international negotiation. No, hang on, just negotiation generally. Johnson fucked up the negotiation because to use a phrase that someone on here once used, he couldn't negotiate a discount at SCS. He is a journalist FFS! He has never had to negotiate a thing in his life, other than getting into the next debutants knickers. You don't want to see that because you have been suckered by him and his "get Brexit done" bollox. Quaint really.
It was a deliberately mixed metaphor. 🤦♂️
But if Boris couldn't negotiate a discount, how come he managed to get the atrociously awful backstop replaced with a NI-only Protocol that the EU can't even get the UK to implement against its will?
Seems like he's achieved a 98.5% discount to me. 97% by avoiding GB in the Protocol, and a further 50% because its only half-implemented in NI anyway.
that is because you are a true believer, and probably like him, have never had to negotiate anything complex in your life. It wasn't a negotiation, it was a capitulation, dressed up for the gullible as a great victory. It will unravel.
The UK never wanted the backstop/protocol, it was a "price" to be paid for a deal as the EU wanted it. A price that Boris got a massive "discount" on.
If it was a capitulation, then how come GB isn't in the Protocol/backstop as the EU managed to get May to agree to?
If it was a capitulation, then how the UK has a unilateral exit from it? Something the EU pointedly refused to agree too under May and Robbins? Remember "a backstop with an exit is not a backstop".
I get completely that you dislike Brexit, all it stands for, and you think Brexit will be bad ... But as far as the Protocol/backstop is concerned even you have to surely admit the UK has got a tremendous "discount" from what was on offer before - and if it's unravelling for anyone it's the EU who have discovered they can't compel the UK to implement it how they wanted us to.
What do you mean by the UK having a unilateral exit from it?
Norway made sure the resources benefitted its population and largely developed them using state-owned companies... the UK left it up to private companies, and didn't negotiate a good deal. This analysis reckons UK missed out on hundreds of billions of revenue.
BP was state owned at the time. So the British government gained on the privatisation of BP later in the decade.
Now, it may be that the terms offered to companies for exploiting the North Sea were more favourable for the Norwegian government, but it is also worth remembering that when initial licenses were being auctioned, no-one was really sure it was going to work. The UK Continental Shelf Act was in 1963/64 and then there were a succession of dry holes. I forget the actual number, but I think of the first 48 or 49 wells drilled in the North Sea, none found oil. (Although a few found gas, which at the time was massively less valuable.)
Only with Ecofisk (which was the last well Phillips petroleum was planning on drilling, so unhappy were they with the North Sea), that things were transformed.
The Norwegians were lucky. They sold licenses later. And therefore they got the benefit of people knowing that oil was there.
As the link notes - a few extra billion from privatizations doesn't change the overall arithmetic. It wasn't luck - > better judgment & not being ideologically driven to privatise, instead being open for the public sector to take on risk. Ultimately a very costly mistake not to keep equity in case of a large upside.
It would also have been an equally costly mistake to have tried to carry the costs and risks for themselves though. A quick trawl through the history of the North sea and how many companies went bust or were only saved from going bust by being bought out by other companies shows how much risk would have been involved. Only 1 in 7 wells drilled in the North Sea ever found hydrocarbons and only 1 in 11 ever led to development.
The history of BNOC/Britoil is instructive in this case but they were only one amongst very many.
Sharing the risks would have been smart (upside and downside). It doesn't matter that many companies went bust and most wells didn't lead to development... overall it was incredibly profitable and sadly the UK missed out on much of what it could have had.
When you say "the UK missed out", do you mean:
(a) that more oil would have been extracted at lower cost (b) that more tax revenue could have been collected or (c) that British firms could have owned more of the licenses
Ultimately, a certain amount of oil was collected and sold. It generated jobs, tax revenue and a thriving oil industry in the UK. It *may* have been the case that more tax revenue was collectable - but that might also have led to less investment.
It's easy to make perfect decisions with perfect knowledge. People making investment decisions in the 70s and 80s did not have that.
And it is one of the most inhospitable places in the world (or was a t the time) to drill for oil.
I would like to put up a photo of the last time I was offshore in 2013 which would illustrate this well but I lack the technical ability...
Thanks to Robert for showing me how to do this. This was taken from the Solan platform West of Shetlands and shows the rig I was sat on at the time during a small blow. This is the Semi-sub Ocean Valiant, one of the largest drilling units out there.
Is the camera or the rig tilting, or both? Both surely?
The rig. The camera is on a platform fixed to the sea floor. The rig is a semi-submersible. Those legs go down to pontoons about 60ft below the surface and the rig is then floating free and held in place on anchor chains. In a bad storm - the worst you get are up on Haltenbank between the Norwegian and North Seas - the rig will move up and down by up to 50 or more feet. It is known as heaving. Well before that you unlatch from the well and ride it out in what is know as survival draught
An incredible photo
Btw how did you post it? I thought vanilla had disabled that feature?
I asked on here earlier how to post photos and Robert pointed out how to do it. I did it at the vanilla page rather than the main PB page
Liz Kendell's turn on R4 this morning was just embarrassing. Completely devoid of ideas or proposals other than vacuous nonsense about needing to have a proper plan for social care.
Labour remain in serious trouble as an opposition.
Frankly, no.
There's a political angle to this - let's say Labour has a match-winning idea. Why reveal it so the Conservatives can steal it? I'd expect the Party Conference to be the venue where this kind of policy announcement happens rather than on Monday morning on the Today programme if I'm being honest.
In any case, Labour can just sit back and allow the Conservatives to look divided and divisive.
Trying desperately to somehow spin this as an anti-Labour thing just doesn't work - it's a fair point the social care crisis didn't begin last Thursday but and let's be honest, Labour has not been in Government since 2010.
Yet, on the other hand you can argue that Labour should be beginning to at least look vaguely like a government in waiting as Johnson unravels instead of looking like they haven't a clue what they will do if they ever get near office in this decade.
Liz Kendell's turn on R4 this morning was just embarrassing. Completely devoid of ideas or proposals other than vacuous nonsense about needing to have a proper plan for social care.
Labour remain in serious trouble as an opposition.
Frankly, no.
There's a political angle to this - let's say Labour has a match-winning idea. Why reveal it so the Conservatives can steal it? I'd expect the Party Conference to be the venue where this kind of policy announcement happens rather than on Monday morning on the Today programme if I'm being honest.
In any case, Labour can just sit back and allow the Conservatives to look divided and divisive.
Trying desperately to somehow spin this as an anti-Labour thing just doesn't work - it's a fair point the social care crisis didn't begin last Thursday but and let's be honest, Labour has not been in Government since 2010.
That's a fair point.
Interestingly wasn't there supposed to be some sort of official announcement today? At least according to The Times last night. Unless I missed it, I have not seen any today.
Hopefully a u turn is on because if this atrocious idea of a tax rise goes ahead then the Tories will lose my vote and my support.
Entirely predictable move to kick the intra-Irish border fuckup into the grass again. We keep waiting for the EU to compromise the external EEA border. It doesn't.
Is it not compromised at the moment?
No more than usual. We are *aligned* to the EEA so allowing ever-decreasing volumes of stuff across with minimal checks is no threat.
As we are pledged to not lower things like food standards we could have agreed an actual free trade deal. But no, we want to be a 3rd country and then complain about what that means in practice.
We have agreed an actual free trade deal.
I have no qualms with us being a third country. If they wish to impose checks at our countries border that's their choice, but they don't want to. That's their problem, they should solve it.
It'd the kind of "free trade" that the right have campaigned against for decades - slow, costly, red-tape heavy. As for checks I don't think the EEA side are that bothered. If sales to the GB drop they have the rest of the market to sell to. It is our problem, not theirs.
Anyway you should be pleased! The Lord Brexiteer is once again threatening to trigger A16 and blow up the deal. Which you have assured me is the point where it starts to work. So a solution is at hand is it not...
Article 16 is part of the deal, so why do you think using it for the purpose for which it is intended would blow it up?
Unlike UVDL unilaterally invoking Article 16 at night with zero notice, not even discussing it with Dublin first . . . Frost has been laying the groundwork for potentially invoking Article 16 for many months now.
He said to Parliament, to the EU and in public repeatedly that the threshold for invocation is met but he wishes to try other solutions first. If the other solutions fail, there can be no objection to invocation happening. Its not like they haven't been warned that the threshold for invoking it had been met already.
And when that happens - as it almost certainly will - the EU will respond by imposing trade sanctions of its choice on us. There are no wins here, Phil. Just further isolation for the UK.
Since Article 16 is a legitimate part of the Treaty to be exercised, the EU are actually quite limited in what responses they can have within the confines of the Treaty.
Unless they wish to break the Treaty, which A16 doesn't do.
Responses to what is considered an unreasonable invocation are also a legitimate part of the Treaty.
But its not unreasonable.
Nobody is even arguing with Frost that the conditions to invoke it have been met. Are you denying that they have?
The conditions to invoke it are quite explicit and they've quite clearly been met.
The unreasonableness, or not, will ultimately be decided by the dispute resolution process if the parties do not agree. Invoking Article 16 also covers a multitude of actions - from the relatively minor to the nuclear. Let's see what happens. As I say, the idea that there are pain-free ways for Johnson and Frost to undo the mess they have created is for the fairies.
Frost and Johnson didn't create the mess.
May and Barnier created the mess by going arse about tit and choosing to "sort out" the Northern Ireland issue before the future of UK/EU trading relationship was sorted. Which was an impossibility that got us bogged down in a horrendous mess.
Johnson and Frost sorted out 97% of the mess by sorting out the UK and EU's trading relationship first which is what should have happened all along.
Now they're going back to sort out the final 3% as the last part of the negotiations. As they should have always been, instead of the first.
No, Phil, Frost and Johnson signed up to a deal they did not understand or never meant to honour. They put a customs border in the Irish Sea. They told us it was a triumph. You are the only person in the world who still believes it was.
It was a triumph.
They got Brexit done dealing with GB which is 97% of the United Kingdom and 100% of the seats their MPs represent. They got done what May couldn't.
As for not honouring the deal, they are honouring it in full. The deal literally had a get-out clause within it saying it didn't need to be applied in full if it created problems, and the problems were foreseeable, so it was entirely foreseeable the get-out clause could be invoked. Invoking a get-out clause you and the other party agreed in the negotiations is not failing to honour the deal.
The Northern Irish tail should never have been allowed to wag the British dog. It isn't anymore, Johnson put paid to that nonsense and now proper negotiations can begin afresh as should have always happened in a logical order of events.
If you truly believe this everybody (including "Boris") is laughing their socks off at you. But if you don't believe it, ie you're taking the piss, you (and of course "Boris") are laughing at us. I wonder which it is?
I 100% hand on heart believe every word of it.
Unless you come from a perspective that NI should be treated as equally as England in the negotiations (which I don't), how is any of what I said laughable?
Ok, so if that's true it means the world is laughing at you. OTOH if it isn't true it means you're laughing at the world. I'm still wondering which it is. As all know I pride myself on being able to detect whether a PB poster is being sincere or is yanking the communal chain. Here, however, with you and this ridiculously rosy view of Johnson's Brexit shenanigans, I confess to some doubt. On balance I think you're telling the truth and do genuinely believe what you're saying, but it's a marginal assessment, wouldn't shock me one iota if I'm wrong. Intriguing situation we find ourselves in. Also slightly uncomfortable.
No laughter. Indeed others have (perfectly reasonably) pointed out that its only my willingness to put England first before Northern Ireland that means I can take my view. But having done that, my view is entirely reasonable and no laughing matter.
I don't see any shenanigans like you do. I see Britain having moved on from the quagmire of a mess that we'd found ourselves in under May's failed stewardship.
Sure matters are worse for Northern Ireland right now. Sucks to be them. But its better for England and England > Northern Ireland.
There is laughter but we don't know which way it's flowing, is where we are. You remember the PB Panel of Moderates which in order to ensure independence and objectivity neither you nor I are on? Well that is unanimous (10/0) that Johnson either (i) didn't understand the deal or (ii) did and always intended to renege on it. They are the only 2 possibilities within the boundaries of rational discussion, slapdash or bad faith, and the POM delivered a 5/5 split verdict. It would have been 5/6 in favour of bad faith, btw, if I'd have had a vote. I think old "Boris" legged the EU over.
Actually you're wrong. Boris invoking Article 16, a perfectly valid Article of the Protocol, is not "bad faith" it is the Protocol being implemented as written.
I also saw today that EU countries also have shortages of drivers - It seems this is not just a Brexit issue, not that the press will bother to explain that.
Jesus Christ this view of Lake Maggiore is sublime
London Fields is unseasonably balmy. And we have better Deliveroo choice.
There’s a reasonable argument for saying the southern Alpine lakes - Como, Lugano, Garda, Maggiore, etc - are the most beautiful place on earth (with hotel prices to match). The combination of sun, water, steep green mountains, emerald meadows, waterfalls, lush palms and noble pine
But I can’t work out if that is objectively true or if it is subjective nonsense, or conditioning. Is my lake view really better than a view of the North Circular? If so, why?
For some years I flew into Geneva then travelled on to the skifield, until I realised I could fly into Malpensa and drive up through the Lakes.
The Romans adored the Lakes. Catullus the poet found his solace here. So it’s not like this is some new thing dependent on 18th century theories of the Sublime, or Picturesque.
Boris and Brexit. At the time it was politically essential for Boris to deliver Brexit. otherwise he and the Tories were toast.
He had these options:
Leave, no deal, make the NI/RoI border the EU's problem.
Or
Leave, with deal, take on the insoluble border problem - because unless he took it on the EU wouldn't agree a deal.
I suspect No Deal would have been 20 times more catastrophic than Deal + owning the NI/RoI border problem.
So Boris did right; but knew, as did we all, that the border's insolubility would have to be revisited.
But we held all the cards, why didn't Boris Johnson use them?
We did. Which is why we got the deal we wanted for England and forced the EU into a position where we could compel them to revisit NI later on.
Check and mate.
It appears your knowledge of chess and card games is similar to your knowledge on "herd immunity" and international negotiation. No, hang on, just negotiation generally. Johnson fucked up the negotiation because to use a phrase that someone on here once used, he couldn't negotiate a discount at SCS. He is a journalist FFS! He has never had to negotiate a thing in his life, other than getting into the next debutants knickers. You don't want to see that because you have been suckered by him and his "get Brexit done" bollox. Quaint really.
It was a deliberately mixed metaphor. 🤦♂️
But if Boris couldn't negotiate a discount, how come he managed to get the atrociously awful backstop replaced with a NI-only Protocol that the EU can't even get the UK to implement against its will?
Seems like he's achieved a 98.5% discount to me. 97% by avoiding GB in the Protocol, and a further 50% because its only half-implemented in NI anyway.
that is because you are a true believer, and probably like him, have never had to negotiate anything complex in your life. It wasn't a negotiation, it was a capitulation, dressed up for the gullible as a great victory. It will unravel.
The UK never wanted the backstop/protocol, it was a "price" to be paid for a deal as the EU wanted it. A price that Boris got a massive "discount" on.
If it was a capitulation, then how come GB isn't in the Protocol/backstop as the EU managed to get May to agree to?
If it was a capitulation, then how the UK has a unilateral exit from it? Something the EU pointedly refused to agree too under May and Robbins? Remember "a backstop with an exit is not a backstop".
I get completely that you dislike Brexit, all it stands for, and you think Brexit will be bad ... But as far as the Protocol/backstop is concerned even you have to surely admit the UK has got a tremendous "discount" from what was on offer before - and if it's unravelling for anyone it's the EU who have discovered they can't compel the UK to implement it how they wanted us to.
What do you mean by the UK having a unilateral exit from it?
Not a complete exit but the UK can unilaterally invoke Article 16 and suspend and or all parts of the Protocol we say are causing issues. Which is in practical purposes an exit.
The EU might choose to take us to dispute resolution and could potentially have retaliation as a response. But our choice to enact A16 is entirely unilateral and not subject to the EU's consent being required - which was the case for an exit to the backstop.
Have 56% of Britons noticed food shortages in their local shops/supermarkets or have they just noticed 56% of people talking about food shortages in their local shops/supermarkets?
I've noticed precisely nothing, and had no trouble getting anything at all.
I haven't because generally I don't do the shopping. If I were a politician and was asked the cliched question "how much is a pint of milk" I really wouldn't have a clue.
It can vary.
"Since leaving their City jobs 7 years ago Letitia Barrington Webb and her husband Roland have been producing organic milk on their farm in Devon. Using only the finest cows, and just one at a time, they produce the milk of dreams. The current cow is called Mathilda and she is treated like a queen. Every morning Letitia kneels and with great reverence and oh so gently kneads Mathilda's teats to bring forth the day's supply. Roland then bottles it and off it goes to Waitrose."
You pay a premium for this type of product. Quite a hefty one.
That has to be a piss take. Right???
🙂 - yes and no.
I am satirising those rather "precious" bespoke food products you sometimes see at the high end stores. It's not stretched that much either. There's some quite giggly stuff out there.
Also, "treated like a Queen." I'm pretty certain trying this sort of manoeuvre on our own dear monarch would get the red card.
Hanging offence if you're lucky. If not, well I don't like to dwell on it.
Norway made sure the resources benefitted its population and largely developed them using state-owned companies... the UK left it up to private companies, and didn't negotiate a good deal. This analysis reckons UK missed out on hundreds of billions of revenue.
BP was state owned at the time. So the British government gained on the privatisation of BP later in the decade.
Now, it may be that the terms offered to companies for exploiting the North Sea were more favourable for the Norwegian government, but it is also worth remembering that when initial licenses were being auctioned, no-one was really sure it was going to work. The UK Continental Shelf Act was in 1963/64 and then there were a succession of dry holes. I forget the actual number, but I think of the first 48 or 49 wells drilled in the North Sea, none found oil. (Although a few found gas, which at the time was massively less valuable.)
Only with Ecofisk (which was the last well Phillips petroleum was planning on drilling, so unhappy were they with the North Sea), that things were transformed.
The Norwegians were lucky. They sold licenses later. And therefore they got the benefit of people knowing that oil was there.
As the link notes - a few extra billion from privatizations doesn't change the overall arithmetic. It wasn't luck - > better judgment & not being ideologically driven to privatise, instead being open for the public sector to take on risk. Ultimately a very costly mistake not to keep equity in case of a large upside.
It would also have been an equally costly mistake to have tried to carry the costs and risks for themselves though. A quick trawl through the history of the North sea and how many companies went bust or were only saved from going bust by being bought out by other companies shows how much risk would have been involved. Only 1 in 7 wells drilled in the North Sea ever found hydrocarbons and only 1 in 11 ever led to development.
The history of BNOC/Britoil is instructive in this case but they were only one amongst very many.
Sharing the risks would have been smart (upside and downside). It doesn't matter that many companies went bust and most wells didn't lead to development... overall it was incredibly profitable and sadly the UK missed out on much of what it could have had.
When you say "the UK missed out", do you mean:
(a) that more oil would have been extracted at lower cost (b) that more tax revenue could have been collected or (c) that British firms could have owned more of the licenses
Ultimately, a certain amount of oil was collected and sold. It generated jobs, tax revenue and a thriving oil industry in the UK. It *may* have been the case that more tax revenue was collectable - but that might also have led to less investment.
It's easy to make perfect decisions with perfect knowledge. People making investment decisions in the 70s and 80s did not have that.
And it is one of the most inhospitable places in the world (or was a t the time) to drill for oil.
I would like to put up a photo of the last time I was offshore in 2013 which would illustrate this well but I lack the technical ability...
Thanks to Robert for showing me how to do this. This was taken from the Solan platform West of Shetlands and shows the rig I was sat on at the time during a small blow. This is the Semi-sub Ocean Valiant, one of the largest drilling units out there.
The stresses on those legs must be fantastic; especially from a fatigue viewpoint.
Generally they hold up well. The one exception sadly was the Alexander Keilland which capsized in Norway in 1980. Ironically she had a leg failure around a hole that had been drilled in the leg to insert an instrument to measure... stress on the legs. She capsized in about 20 minutes and 123 men died. I have seen the remains of her failed leg in the Oil Museum in Stavanger.
A bigger problem is that in really bad weather the rig can just be overwhelmed by waves. That happened to the Ocean Ranger on the Newfoundland Banks in 1982. She got water into her ballast control system which started sending ballast water randomly between the pontoons and caused her to become unstable. Again she capsized and there were no survivors from the crew of 84.
You get to chat about these things a lot on stormy nights when drilling is suspended. Our favourite pastime as service hands in really bad storms was to gather in the TV room and watch Perfect Storm. You get extra effects of course
Jesus Christ this view of Lake Maggiore is sublime
London Fields is unseasonably balmy. And we have better Deliveroo choice.
There’s a reasonable argument for saying the southern Alpine lakes - Como, Lugano, Garda, Maggiore, etc - are the most beautiful place on earth (with hotel prices to match). The combination of sun, water, steep green mountains, emerald meadows, waterfalls, lush palms and noble pine
But I can’t work out if that is objectively true or if it is subjective nonsense, or conditioning. Is my lake view really better than a view of the North Circular? If so, why?
For some years I flew into Geneva then travelled on to the skifield, until I realised I could fly into Malpensa and drive up through the Lakes.
The Romans adored the Lakes. Catullus the poet found his solace here. So it’s not like this is some new thing dependent on 18th century theories of the Sublime, or Picturesque.
Thanks for the heads up on the 9 / 11 series - very moving and very well presented
Entirely predictable move to kick the intra-Irish border fuckup into the grass again. We keep waiting for the EU to compromise the external EEA border. It doesn't.
Is it not compromised at the moment?
No more than usual. We are *aligned* to the EEA so allowing ever-decreasing volumes of stuff across with minimal checks is no threat.
As we are pledged to not lower things like food standards we could have agreed an actual free trade deal. But no, we want to be a 3rd country and then complain about what that means in practice.
We have agreed an actual free trade deal.
I have no qualms with us being a third country. If they wish to impose checks at our countries border that's their choice, but they don't want to. That's their problem, they should solve it.
It'd the kind of "free trade" that the right have campaigned against for decades - slow, costly, red-tape heavy. As for checks I don't think the EEA side are that bothered. If sales to the GB drop they have the rest of the market to sell to. It is our problem, not theirs.
Anyway you should be pleased! The Lord Brexiteer is once again threatening to trigger A16 and blow up the deal. Which you have assured me is the point where it starts to work. So a solution is at hand is it not...
Article 16 is part of the deal, so why do you think using it for the purpose for which it is intended would blow it up?
Unlike UVDL unilaterally invoking Article 16 at night with zero notice, not even discussing it with Dublin first . . . Frost has been laying the groundwork for potentially invoking Article 16 for many months now.
He said to Parliament, to the EU and in public repeatedly that the threshold for invocation is met but he wishes to try other solutions first. If the other solutions fail, there can be no objection to invocation happening. Its not like they haven't been warned that the threshold for invoking it had been met already.
And when that happens - as it almost certainly will - the EU will respond by imposing trade sanctions of its choice on us. There are no wins here, Phil. Just further isolation for the UK.
Since Article 16 is a legitimate part of the Treaty to be exercised, the EU are actually quite limited in what responses they can have within the confines of the Treaty.
Unless they wish to break the Treaty, which A16 doesn't do.
Responses to what is considered an unreasonable invocation are also a legitimate part of the Treaty.
But its not unreasonable.
Nobody is even arguing with Frost that the conditions to invoke it have been met. Are you denying that they have?
The conditions to invoke it are quite explicit and they've quite clearly been met.
The unreasonableness, or not, will ultimately be decided by the dispute resolution process if the parties do not agree. Invoking Article 16 also covers a multitude of actions - from the relatively minor to the nuclear. Let's see what happens. As I say, the idea that there are pain-free ways for Johnson and Frost to undo the mess they have created is for the fairies.
Frost and Johnson didn't create the mess.
May and Barnier created the mess by going arse about tit and choosing to "sort out" the Northern Ireland issue before the future of UK/EU trading relationship was sorted. Which was an impossibility that got us bogged down in a horrendous mess.
Johnson and Frost sorted out 97% of the mess by sorting out the UK and EU's trading relationship first which is what should have happened all along.
Now they're going back to sort out the final 3% as the last part of the negotiations. As they should have always been, instead of the first.
No, Phil, Frost and Johnson signed up to a deal they did not understand or never meant to honour. They put a customs border in the Irish Sea. They told us it was a triumph. You are the only person in the world who still believes it was.
It was a triumph.
They got Brexit done dealing with GB which is 97% of the United Kingdom and 100% of the seats their MPs represent. They got done what May couldn't.
As for not honouring the deal, they are honouring it in full. The deal literally had a get-out clause within it saying it didn't need to be applied in full if it created problems, and the problems were foreseeable, so it was entirely foreseeable the get-out clause could be invoked. Invoking a get-out clause you and the other party agreed in the negotiations is not failing to honour the deal.
The Northern Irish tail should never have been allowed to wag the British dog. It isn't anymore, Johnson put paid to that nonsense and now proper negotiations can begin afresh as should have always happened in a logical order of events.
If you truly believe this everybody (including "Boris") is laughing their socks off at you. But if you don't believe it, ie you're taking the piss, you (and of course "Boris") are laughing at us. I wonder which it is?
I 100% hand on heart believe every word of it.
Unless you come from a perspective that NI should be treated as equally as England in the negotiations (which I don't), how is any of what I said laughable?
Ok, so if that's true it means the world is laughing at you. OTOH if it isn't true it means you're laughing at the world. I'm still wondering which it is. As all know I pride myself on being able to detect whether a PB poster is being sincere or is yanking the communal chain. Here, however, with you and this ridiculously rosy view of Johnson's Brexit shenanigans, I confess to some doubt. On balance I think you're telling the truth and do genuinely believe what you're saying, but it's a marginal assessment, wouldn't shock me one iota if I'm wrong. Intriguing situation we find ourselves in. Also slightly uncomfortable.
No laughter. Indeed others have (perfectly reasonably) pointed out that its only my willingness to put England first before Northern Ireland that means I can take my view. But having done that, my view is entirely reasonable and no laughing matter.
I don't see any shenanigans like you do. I see Britain having moved on from the quagmire of a mess that we'd found ourselves in under May's failed stewardship.
Sure matters are worse for Northern Ireland right now. Sucks to be them. But its better for England and England > Northern Ireland.
There is laughter but we don't know which way it's flowing, is where we are. You remember the PB Panel of Moderates which in order to ensure independence and objectivity neither you nor I are on? Well that is unanimous (10/0) that Johnson either (i) didn't understand the deal or (ii) did and always intended to renege on it. They are the only 2 possibilities within the boundaries of rational discussion, slapdash or bad faith, and the POM delivered a 5/5 split verdict. It would have been 5/6 in favour of bad faith, btw, if I'd have had a vote. I think old "Boris" legged the EU over.
Actually you're wrong. Boris invoking Article 16, a perfectly valid Article of the Protocol, is not "bad faith" it is the Protocol being implemented as written.
Norway made sure the resources benefitted its population and largely developed them using state-owned companies... the UK left it up to private companies, and didn't negotiate a good deal. This analysis reckons UK missed out on hundreds of billions of revenue.
BP was state owned at the time. So the British government gained on the privatisation of BP later in the decade.
Now, it may be that the terms offered to companies for exploiting the North Sea were more favourable for the Norwegian government, but it is also worth remembering that when initial licenses were being auctioned, no-one was really sure it was going to work. The UK Continental Shelf Act was in 1963/64 and then there were a succession of dry holes. I forget the actual number, but I think of the first 48 or 49 wells drilled in the North Sea, none found oil. (Although a few found gas, which at the time was massively less valuable.)
Only with Ecofisk (which was the last well Phillips petroleum was planning on drilling, so unhappy were they with the North Sea), that things were transformed.
The Norwegians were lucky. They sold licenses later. And therefore they got the benefit of people knowing that oil was there.
As the link notes - a few extra billion from privatizations doesn't change the overall arithmetic. It wasn't luck - > better judgment & not being ideologically driven to privatise, instead being open for the public sector to take on risk. Ultimately a very costly mistake not to keep equity in case of a large upside.
It would also have been an equally costly mistake to have tried to carry the costs and risks for themselves though. A quick trawl through the history of the North sea and how many companies went bust or were only saved from going bust by being bought out by other companies shows how much risk would have been involved. Only 1 in 7 wells drilled in the North Sea ever found hydrocarbons and only 1 in 11 ever led to development.
The history of BNOC/Britoil is instructive in this case but they were only one amongst very many.
Sharing the risks would have been smart (upside and downside). It doesn't matter that many companies went bust and most wells didn't lead to development... overall it was incredibly profitable and sadly the UK missed out on much of what it could have had.
When you say "the UK missed out", do you mean:
(a) that more oil would have been extracted at lower cost (b) that more tax revenue could have been collected or (c) that British firms could have owned more of the licenses
Ultimately, a certain amount of oil was collected and sold. It generated jobs, tax revenue and a thriving oil industry in the UK. It *may* have been the case that more tax revenue was collectable - but that might also have led to less investment.
It's easy to make perfect decisions with perfect knowledge. People making investment decisions in the 70s and 80s did not have that.
And it is one of the most inhospitable places in the world (or was a t the time) to drill for oil.
I would like to put up a photo of the last time I was offshore in 2013 which would illustrate this well but I lack the technical ability...
Thanks to Robert for showing me how to do this. This was taken from the Solan platform West of Shetlands and shows the rig I was sat on at the time during a small blow. This is the Semi-sub Ocean Valiant, one of the largest drilling units out there.
Is the camera or the rig tilting, or both? Both surely?
The rig. The camera is on a platform fixed to the sea floor. The rig is a semi-submersible. Those legs go down to pontoons about 60ft below the surface and the rig is then floating free and held in place on anchor chains. In a bad storm - the worst you get are up on Haltenbank between the Norwegian and North Seas - the rig will move up and down by up to 50 or more feet. It is known as heaving. Well before that you unlatch from the well and ride it out in what is know as survival draught
An incredible photo
Btw how did you post it? I thought vanilla had disabled that feature?
It works now, what happens there's a load limit.
So when lots of people post lots of pictures it overloads vanilla and it reduces the size of the images.
"The UK’s vaccine advisory group behaved like a medical regulator in rejecting calls for all children aged 12-15 to be offered Covid jabs despite that not being its role, Prof Neil Ferguson has said."
Norway made sure the resources benefitted its population and largely developed them using state-owned companies... the UK left it up to private companies, and didn't negotiate a good deal. This analysis reckons UK missed out on hundreds of billions of revenue.
BP was state owned at the time. So the British government gained on the privatisation of BP later in the decade.
Now, it may be that the terms offered to companies for exploiting the North Sea were more favourable for the Norwegian government, but it is also worth remembering that when initial licenses were being auctioned, no-one was really sure it was going to work. The UK Continental Shelf Act was in 1963/64 and then there were a succession of dry holes. I forget the actual number, but I think of the first 48 or 49 wells drilled in the North Sea, none found oil. (Although a few found gas, which at the time was massively less valuable.)
Only with Ecofisk (which was the last well Phillips petroleum was planning on drilling, so unhappy were they with the North Sea), that things were transformed.
The Norwegians were lucky. They sold licenses later. And therefore they got the benefit of people knowing that oil was there.
As the link notes - a few extra billion from privatizations doesn't change the overall arithmetic. It wasn't luck - > better judgment & not being ideologically driven to privatise, instead being open for the public sector to take on risk. Ultimately a very costly mistake not to keep equity in case of a large upside.
It would also have been an equally costly mistake to have tried to carry the costs and risks for themselves though. A quick trawl through the history of the North sea and how many companies went bust or were only saved from going bust by being bought out by other companies shows how much risk would have been involved. Only 1 in 7 wells drilled in the North Sea ever found hydrocarbons and only 1 in 11 ever led to development.
The history of BNOC/Britoil is instructive in this case but they were only one amongst very many.
Sharing the risks would have been smart (upside and downside). It doesn't matter that many companies went bust and most wells didn't lead to development... overall it was incredibly profitable and sadly the UK missed out on much of what it could have had.
When you say "the UK missed out", do you mean:
(a) that more oil would have been extracted at lower cost (b) that more tax revenue could have been collected or (c) that British firms could have owned more of the licenses
Ultimately, a certain amount of oil was collected and sold. It generated jobs, tax revenue and a thriving oil industry in the UK. It *may* have been the case that more tax revenue was collectable - but that might also have led to less investment.
It's easy to make perfect decisions with perfect knowledge. People making investment decisions in the 70s and 80s did not have that.
And it is one of the most inhospitable places in the world (or was a t the time) to drill for oil.
I would like to put up a photo of the last time I was offshore in 2013 which would illustrate this well but I lack the technical ability...
Thanks to Robert for showing me how to do this. This was taken from the Solan platform West of Shetlands and shows the rig I was sat on at the time during a small blow. This is the Semi-sub Ocean Valiant, one of the largest drilling units out there.
The stresses on those legs must be fantastic; especially from a fatigue viewpoint.
Wasn't the Alexander Keilland disaster due to a fatigue crack?
Entirely predictable move to kick the intra-Irish border fuckup into the grass again. We keep waiting for the EU to compromise the external EEA border. It doesn't.
Is it not compromised at the moment?
No more than usual. We are *aligned* to the EEA so allowing ever-decreasing volumes of stuff across with minimal checks is no threat.
As we are pledged to not lower things like food standards we could have agreed an actual free trade deal. But no, we want to be a 3rd country and then complain about what that means in practice.
We have agreed an actual free trade deal.
I have no qualms with us being a third country. If they wish to impose checks at our countries border that's their choice, but they don't want to. That's their problem, they should solve it.
It'd the kind of "free trade" that the right have campaigned against for decades - slow, costly, red-tape heavy. As for checks I don't think the EEA side are that bothered. If sales to the GB drop they have the rest of the market to sell to. It is our problem, not theirs.
Anyway you should be pleased! The Lord Brexiteer is once again threatening to trigger A16 and blow up the deal. Which you have assured me is the point where it starts to work. So a solution is at hand is it not...
Article 16 is part of the deal, so why do you think using it for the purpose for which it is intended would blow it up?
Unlike UVDL unilaterally invoking Article 16 at night with zero notice, not even discussing it with Dublin first . . . Frost has been laying the groundwork for potentially invoking Article 16 for many months now.
He said to Parliament, to the EU and in public repeatedly that the threshold for invocation is met but he wishes to try other solutions first. If the other solutions fail, there can be no objection to invocation happening. Its not like they haven't been warned that the threshold for invoking it had been met already.
And when that happens - as it almost certainly will - the EU will respond by imposing trade sanctions of its choice on us. There are no wins here, Phil. Just further isolation for the UK.
Since Article 16 is a legitimate part of the Treaty to be exercised, the EU are actually quite limited in what responses they can have within the confines of the Treaty.
Unless they wish to break the Treaty, which A16 doesn't do.
Responses to what is considered an unreasonable invocation are also a legitimate part of the Treaty.
But its not unreasonable.
Nobody is even arguing with Frost that the conditions to invoke it have been met. Are you denying that they have?
The conditions to invoke it are quite explicit and they've quite clearly been met.
The unreasonableness, or not, will ultimately be decided by the dispute resolution process if the parties do not agree. Invoking Article 16 also covers a multitude of actions - from the relatively minor to the nuclear. Let's see what happens. As I say, the idea that there are pain-free ways for Johnson and Frost to undo the mess they have created is for the fairies.
Frost and Johnson didn't create the mess.
May and Barnier created the mess by going arse about tit and choosing to "sort out" the Northern Ireland issue before the future of UK/EU trading relationship was sorted. Which was an impossibility that got us bogged down in a horrendous mess.
Johnson and Frost sorted out 97% of the mess by sorting out the UK and EU's trading relationship first which is what should have happened all along.
Now they're going back to sort out the final 3% as the last part of the negotiations. As they should have always been, instead of the first.
No, Phil, Frost and Johnson signed up to a deal they did not understand or never meant to honour. They put a customs border in the Irish Sea. They told us it was a triumph. You are the only person in the world who still believes it was.
It was a triumph.
They got Brexit done dealing with GB which is 97% of the United Kingdom and 100% of the seats their MPs represent. They got done what May couldn't.
As for not honouring the deal, they are honouring it in full. The deal literally had a get-out clause within it saying it didn't need to be applied in full if it created problems, and the problems were foreseeable, so it was entirely foreseeable the get-out clause could be invoked. Invoking a get-out clause you and the other party agreed in the negotiations is not failing to honour the deal.
The Northern Irish tail should never have been allowed to wag the British dog. It isn't anymore, Johnson put paid to that nonsense and now proper negotiations can begin afresh as should have always happened in a logical order of events.
If you truly believe this everybody (including "Boris") is laughing their socks off at you. But if you don't believe it, ie you're taking the piss, you (and of course "Boris") are laughing at us. I wonder which it is?
I 100% hand on heart believe every word of it.
Unless you come from a perspective that NI should be treated as equally as England in the negotiations (which I don't), how is any of what I said laughable?
Ok, so if that's true it means the world is laughing at you. OTOH if it isn't true it means you're laughing at the world. I'm still wondering which it is. As all know I pride myself on being able to detect whether a PB poster is being sincere or is yanking the communal chain. Here, however, with you and this ridiculously rosy view of Johnson's Brexit shenanigans, I confess to some doubt. On balance I think you're telling the truth and do genuinely believe what you're saying, but it's a marginal assessment, wouldn't shock me one iota if I'm wrong. Intriguing situation we find ourselves in. Also slightly uncomfortable.
No laughter. Indeed others have (perfectly reasonably) pointed out that its only my willingness to put England first before Northern Ireland that means I can take my view. But having done that, my view is entirely reasonable and no laughing matter.
I don't see any shenanigans like you do. I see Britain having moved on from the quagmire of a mess that we'd found ourselves in under May's failed stewardship.
Sure matters are worse for Northern Ireland right now. Sucks to be them. But its better for England and England > Northern Ireland.
There is laughter but we don't know which way it's flowing, is where we are. You remember the PB Panel of Moderates which in order to ensure independence and objectivity neither you nor I are on? Well that is unanimous (10/0) that Johnson either (i) didn't understand the deal or (ii) did and always intended to renege on it. They are the only 2 possibilities within the boundaries of rational discussion, slapdash or bad faith, and the POM delivered a 5/5 split verdict. It would have been 5/6 in favour of bad faith, btw, if I'd have had a vote. I think old "Boris" legged the EU over.
Actually you're wrong. Boris invoking Article 16, a perfectly valid Article of the Protocol, is not "bad faith" it is the Protocol being implemented as written.
Norway made sure the resources benefitted its population and largely developed them using state-owned companies... the UK left it up to private companies, and didn't negotiate a good deal. This analysis reckons UK missed out on hundreds of billions of revenue.
BP was state owned at the time. So the British government gained on the privatisation of BP later in the decade.
Now, it may be that the terms offered to companies for exploiting the North Sea were more favourable for the Norwegian government, but it is also worth remembering that when initial licenses were being auctioned, no-one was really sure it was going to work. The UK Continental Shelf Act was in 1963/64 and then there were a succession of dry holes. I forget the actual number, but I think of the first 48 or 49 wells drilled in the North Sea, none found oil. (Although a few found gas, which at the time was massively less valuable.)
Only with Ecofisk (which was the last well Phillips petroleum was planning on drilling, so unhappy were they with the North Sea), that things were transformed.
The Norwegians were lucky. They sold licenses later. And therefore they got the benefit of people knowing that oil was there.
As the link notes - a few extra billion from privatizations doesn't change the overall arithmetic. It wasn't luck - > better judgment & not being ideologically driven to privatise, instead being open for the public sector to take on risk. Ultimately a very costly mistake not to keep equity in case of a large upside.
It would also have been an equally costly mistake to have tried to carry the costs and risks for themselves though. A quick trawl through the history of the North sea and how many companies went bust or were only saved from going bust by being bought out by other companies shows how much risk would have been involved. Only 1 in 7 wells drilled in the North Sea ever found hydrocarbons and only 1 in 11 ever led to development.
The history of BNOC/Britoil is instructive in this case but they were only one amongst very many.
Sharing the risks would have been smart (upside and downside). It doesn't matter that many companies went bust and most wells didn't lead to development... overall it was incredibly profitable and sadly the UK missed out on much of what it could have had.
When you say "the UK missed out", do you mean:
(a) that more oil would have been extracted at lower cost (b) that more tax revenue could have been collected or (c) that British firms could have owned more of the licenses
Ultimately, a certain amount of oil was collected and sold. It generated jobs, tax revenue and a thriving oil industry in the UK. It *may* have been the case that more tax revenue was collectable - but that might also have led to less investment.
It's easy to make perfect decisions with perfect knowledge. People making investment decisions in the 70s and 80s did not have that.
And it is one of the most inhospitable places in the world (or was a t the time) to drill for oil.
I would like to put up a photo of the last time I was offshore in 2013 which would illustrate this well but I lack the technical ability...
Thanks to Robert for showing me how to do this. This was taken from the Solan platform West of Shetlands and shows the rig I was sat on at the time during a small blow. This is the Semi-sub Ocean Valiant, one of the largest drilling units out there.
The stresses on those legs must be fantastic; especially from a fatigue viewpoint.
Generally they hold up well. The one exception sadly was the Alexander Keilland which capsized in Norway in 1980. Ironically she had a leg failure around a hole that had been drilled in the leg to insert an instrument to measure... stress on the legs. She capsized in about 20 minutes and 123 men died. I have seen the remains of her failed leg in the Oil Museum in Stavanger.
A bigger problem is that in really bad weather the rig can just be overwhelmed by waves. That happened to the Ocean Ranger on the Newfoundland Banks in 1982. She got water into her ballast control system which started sending ballast water randomly between the pontoons and caused her to become unstable. Again she capsized and there were no survivors from the crew of 84.
You get to chat about these things a lot on stormy nights when drilling is suspended. Our favourite pastime as service hands in really bad storms was to gather in the TV room and watch Perfect Storm. You get extra effects of course
I'm halfway through an account of the Ocean Ranger!! But it wouldn;t be in a book of engineering extremes if something bad had not happened, I suppose ...
Entirely predictable move to kick the intra-Irish border fuckup into the grass again. We keep waiting for the EU to compromise the external EEA border. It doesn't.
Is it not compromised at the moment?
No more than usual. We are *aligned* to the EEA so allowing ever-decreasing volumes of stuff across with minimal checks is no threat.
As we are pledged to not lower things like food standards we could have agreed an actual free trade deal. But no, we want to be a 3rd country and then complain about what that means in practice.
We have agreed an actual free trade deal.
I have no qualms with us being a third country. If they wish to impose checks at our countries border that's their choice, but they don't want to. That's their problem, they should solve it.
It'd the kind of "free trade" that the right have campaigned against for decades - slow, costly, red-tape heavy. As for checks I don't think the EEA side are that bothered. If sales to the GB drop they have the rest of the market to sell to. It is our problem, not theirs.
Anyway you should be pleased! The Lord Brexiteer is once again threatening to trigger A16 and blow up the deal. Which you have assured me is the point where it starts to work. So a solution is at hand is it not...
Article 16 is part of the deal, so why do you think using it for the purpose for which it is intended would blow it up?
Unlike UVDL unilaterally invoking Article 16 at night with zero notice, not even discussing it with Dublin first . . . Frost has been laying the groundwork for potentially invoking Article 16 for many months now.
He said to Parliament, to the EU and in public repeatedly that the threshold for invocation is met but he wishes to try other solutions first. If the other solutions fail, there can be no objection to invocation happening. Its not like they haven't been warned that the threshold for invoking it had been met already.
And when that happens - as it almost certainly will - the EU will respond by imposing trade sanctions of its choice on us. There are no wins here, Phil. Just further isolation for the UK.
Since Article 16 is a legitimate part of the Treaty to be exercised, the EU are actually quite limited in what responses they can have within the confines of the Treaty.
Unless they wish to break the Treaty, which A16 doesn't do.
Responses to what is considered an unreasonable invocation are also a legitimate part of the Treaty.
But its not unreasonable.
Nobody is even arguing with Frost that the conditions to invoke it have been met. Are you denying that they have?
The conditions to invoke it are quite explicit and they've quite clearly been met.
The unreasonableness, or not, will ultimately be decided by the dispute resolution process if the parties do not agree. Invoking Article 16 also covers a multitude of actions - from the relatively minor to the nuclear. Let's see what happens. As I say, the idea that there are pain-free ways for Johnson and Frost to undo the mess they have created is for the fairies.
Frost and Johnson didn't create the mess.
May and Barnier created the mess by going arse about tit and choosing to "sort out" the Northern Ireland issue before the future of UK/EU trading relationship was sorted. Which was an impossibility that got us bogged down in a horrendous mess.
Johnson and Frost sorted out 97% of the mess by sorting out the UK and EU's trading relationship first which is what should have happened all along.
Now they're going back to sort out the final 3% as the last part of the negotiations. As they should have always been, instead of the first.
No, Phil, Frost and Johnson signed up to a deal they did not understand or never meant to honour. They put a customs border in the Irish Sea. They told us it was a triumph. You are the only person in the world who still believes it was.
It was a triumph.
They got Brexit done dealing with GB which is 97% of the United Kingdom and 100% of the seats their MPs represent. They got done what May couldn't.
As for not honouring the deal, they are honouring it in full. The deal literally had a get-out clause within it saying it didn't need to be applied in full if it created problems, and the problems were foreseeable, so it was entirely foreseeable the get-out clause could be invoked. Invoking a get-out clause you and the other party agreed in the negotiations is not failing to honour the deal.
The Northern Irish tail should never have been allowed to wag the British dog. It isn't anymore, Johnson put paid to that nonsense and now proper negotiations can begin afresh as should have always happened in a logical order of events.
If you truly believe this everybody (including "Boris") is laughing their socks off at you. But if you don't believe it, ie you're taking the piss, you (and of course "Boris") are laughing at us. I wonder which it is?
I 100% hand on heart believe every word of it.
Unless you come from a perspective that NI should be treated as equally as England in the negotiations (which I don't), how is any of what I said laughable?
Ok, so if that's true it means the world is laughing at you. OTOH if it isn't true it means you're laughing at the world. I'm still wondering which it is. As all know I pride myself on being able to detect whether a PB poster is being sincere or is yanking the communal chain. Here, however, with you and this ridiculously rosy view of Johnson's Brexit shenanigans, I confess to some doubt. On balance I think you're telling the truth and do genuinely believe what you're saying, but it's a marginal assessment, wouldn't shock me one iota if I'm wrong. Intriguing situation we find ourselves in. Also slightly uncomfortable.
No laughter. Indeed others have (perfectly reasonably) pointed out that its only my willingness to put England first before Northern Ireland that means I can take my view. But having done that, my view is entirely reasonable and no laughing matter.
I don't see any shenanigans like you do. I see Britain having moved on from the quagmire of a mess that we'd found ourselves in under May's failed stewardship.
Sure matters are worse for Northern Ireland right now. Sucks to be them. But its better for England and England > Northern Ireland.
There is laughter but we don't know which way it's flowing, is where we are. You remember the PB Panel of Moderates which in order to ensure independence and objectivity neither you nor I are on? Well that is unanimous (10/0) that Johnson either (i) didn't understand the deal or (ii) did and always intended to renege on it. They are the only 2 possibilities within the boundaries of rational discussion, slapdash or bad faith, and the POM delivered a 5/5 split verdict. It would have been 5/6 in favour of bad faith, btw, if I'd have had a vote. I think old "Boris" legged the EU over.
Actually you're wrong. Boris invoking Article 16, a perfectly valid Article of the Protocol, is not "bad faith" it is the Protocol being implemented as written.
He didn’t understand the deal AND he intended to renage on it
A fourth possibility is that Boris makes no distinction between truth and falsehood. To quote Jim Hacker quoting someone famous, "He lies not because it is in his interest but because it is in his nature." Speaking for myself, I'm not sure lying is the right word; rather, Boris seems to live in a post-truth world; there is no intention to deceive but a complete disregard for the truth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9NifqJyDMI
There's a political angle to this - let's say Labour has a match-winning idea. Why reveal it so the Conservatives can steal it? I'd expect the Party Conference to be the venue where this kind of policy announcement happens rather than on Monday morning on the Today programme if I'm being honest.
In any case, Labour can just sit back and allow the Conservatives to look divided and divisive.
Trying desperately to somehow spin this as an anti-Labour thing just doesn't work - it's a fair point the social care crisis didn't begin last Thursday but and let's be honest, Labour has not been in Government since 2010.
Yet, on the other hand you can argue that Labour should be beginning to at least look vaguely like a government in waiting as Johnson unravels instead of looking like they haven't a clue what they will do if they ever get near office in this decade.
That's not how politics works.
It was a charge often levelled at Labour in the mid-1990s and the Conservatives in the mid-2000s.
Two and a half years from an election, you don't interrupt your opponent while he is busy shooting himself in both feet. Labour doesn't need to have answers now, the Government does.
Johnson made the commitment to sorting out social care one of the key points in the 2019 manifesto yet nearly two years on if there's anyone floundering and looking like he hasn't a clue it's the Prime Minister.
His problem is he's caught between a financial rock and an electoral hard place. The core of his support are the elderly -antagonise them and it's game over but if solving this requires tax rises that pulls out one of the core planks of what it is to be Conservative - low taxes and it wrecks a manifesto pledge not to raise income taxes or National Insurance.
Now, some will support the Conservatives whatever they do - others may take a more nuanced view and may then be receptive to what Labour has to say.
Liz Kendell's turn on R4 this morning was just embarrassing. Completely devoid of ideas or proposals other than vacuous nonsense about needing to have a proper plan for social care.
Labour remain in serious trouble as an opposition.
Frankly, no.
There's a political angle to this - let's say Labour has a match-winning idea. Why reveal it so the Conservatives can steal it? I'd expect the Party Conference to be the venue where this kind of policy announcement happens rather than on Monday morning on the Today programme if I'm being honest.
In any case, Labour can just sit back and allow the Conservatives to look divided and divisive.
Trying desperately to somehow spin this as an anti-Labour thing just doesn't work - it's a fair point the social care crisis didn't begin last Thursday but and let's be honest, Labour has not been in Government since 2010.
Yet, on the other hand you can argue that Labour should be beginning to at least look vaguely like a government in waiting as Johnson unravels instead of looking like they haven't a clue what they will do if they ever get near office in this decade.
Tories divided? Labour’s last leader has been expelled, rumoured to be running as an Indy, the centrists spend half their life moaning about the lefties & vice versa.
I think they hate each other more than they do the Tories
Entirely predictable move to kick the intra-Irish border fuckup into the grass again. We keep waiting for the EU to compromise the external EEA border. It doesn't.
Is it not compromised at the moment?
No more than usual. We are *aligned* to the EEA so allowing ever-decreasing volumes of stuff across with minimal checks is no threat.
As we are pledged to not lower things like food standards we could have agreed an actual free trade deal. But no, we want to be a 3rd country and then complain about what that means in practice.
We have agreed an actual free trade deal.
I have no qualms with us being a third country. If they wish to impose checks at our countries border that's their choice, but they don't want to. That's their problem, they should solve it.
It'd the kind of "free trade" that the right have campaigned against for decades - slow, costly, red-tape heavy. As for checks I don't think the EEA side are that bothered. If sales to the GB drop they have the rest of the market to sell to. It is our problem, not theirs.
Anyway you should be pleased! The Lord Brexiteer is once again threatening to trigger A16 and blow up the deal. Which you have assured me is the point where it starts to work. So a solution is at hand is it not...
Article 16 is part of the deal, so why do you think using it for the purpose for which it is intended would blow it up?
Unlike UVDL unilaterally invoking Article 16 at night with zero notice, not even discussing it with Dublin first . . . Frost has been laying the groundwork for potentially invoking Article 16 for many months now.
He said to Parliament, to the EU and in public repeatedly that the threshold for invocation is met but he wishes to try other solutions first. If the other solutions fail, there can be no objection to invocation happening. Its not like they haven't been warned that the threshold for invoking it had been met already.
And when that happens - as it almost certainly will - the EU will respond by imposing trade sanctions of its choice on us. There are no wins here, Phil. Just further isolation for the UK.
Since Article 16 is a legitimate part of the Treaty to be exercised, the EU are actually quite limited in what responses they can have within the confines of the Treaty.
Unless they wish to break the Treaty, which A16 doesn't do.
Responses to what is considered an unreasonable invocation are also a legitimate part of the Treaty.
But its not unreasonable.
Nobody is even arguing with Frost that the conditions to invoke it have been met. Are you denying that they have?
The conditions to invoke it are quite explicit and they've quite clearly been met.
The unreasonableness, or not, will ultimately be decided by the dispute resolution process if the parties do not agree. Invoking Article 16 also covers a multitude of actions - from the relatively minor to the nuclear. Let's see what happens. As I say, the idea that there are pain-free ways for Johnson and Frost to undo the mess they have created is for the fairies.
Frost and Johnson didn't create the mess.
May and Barnier created the mess by going arse about tit and choosing to "sort out" the Northern Ireland issue before the future of UK/EU trading relationship was sorted. Which was an impossibility that got us bogged down in a horrendous mess.
Johnson and Frost sorted out 97% of the mess by sorting out the UK and EU's trading relationship first which is what should have happened all along.
Now they're going back to sort out the final 3% as the last part of the negotiations. As they should have always been, instead of the first.
No, Phil, Frost and Johnson signed up to a deal they did not understand or never meant to honour. They put a customs border in the Irish Sea. They told us it was a triumph. You are the only person in the world who still believes it was.
It was a triumph.
They got Brexit done dealing with GB which is 97% of the United Kingdom and 100% of the seats their MPs represent. They got done what May couldn't.
As for not honouring the deal, they are honouring it in full. The deal literally had a get-out clause within it saying it didn't need to be applied in full if it created problems, and the problems were foreseeable, so it was entirely foreseeable the get-out clause could be invoked. Invoking a get-out clause you and the other party agreed in the negotiations is not failing to honour the deal.
The Northern Irish tail should never have been allowed to wag the British dog. It isn't anymore, Johnson put paid to that nonsense and now proper negotiations can begin afresh as should have always happened in a logical order of events.
If you truly believe this everybody (including "Boris") is laughing their socks off at you. But if you don't believe it, ie you're taking the piss, you (and of course "Boris") are laughing at us. I wonder which it is?
I 100% hand on heart believe every word of it.
Unless you come from a perspective that NI should be treated as equally as England in the negotiations (which I don't), how is any of what I said laughable?
Ok, so if that's true it means the world is laughing at you. OTOH if it isn't true it means you're laughing at the world. I'm still wondering which it is. As all know I pride myself on being able to detect whether a PB poster is being sincere or is yanking the communal chain. Here, however, with you and this ridiculously rosy view of Johnson's Brexit shenanigans, I confess to some doubt. On balance I think you're telling the truth and do genuinely believe what you're saying, but it's a marginal assessment, wouldn't shock me one iota if I'm wrong. Intriguing situation we find ourselves in. Also slightly uncomfortable.
No laughter. Indeed others have (perfectly reasonably) pointed out that its only my willingness to put England first before Northern Ireland that means I can take my view. But having done that, my view is entirely reasonable and no laughing matter.
I don't see any shenanigans like you do. I see Britain having moved on from the quagmire of a mess that we'd found ourselves in under May's failed stewardship.
Sure matters are worse for Northern Ireland right now. Sucks to be them. But its better for England and England > Northern Ireland.
There is laughter but we don't know which way it's flowing, is where we are. You remember the PB Panel of Moderates which in order to ensure independence and objectivity neither you nor I are on? Well that is unanimous (10/0) that Johnson either (i) didn't understand the deal or (ii) did and always intended to renege on it. They are the only 2 possibilities within the boundaries of rational discussion, slapdash or bad faith, and the POM delivered a 5/5 split verdict. It would have been 5/6 in favour of bad faith, btw, if I'd have had a vote. I think old "Boris" legged the EU over.
Actually you're wrong. Boris invoking Article 16, a perfectly valid Article of the Protocol, is not "bad faith" it is the Protocol being implemented as written.
He didn’t understand the deal AND he intended to renage on it
A fourth possibility is that Boris makes no distinction between truth and falsehood. To quote Jim Hacker quoting someone famous, "He lies because it is in his nature, not because it is in his interest." Speaking for myself, I'm not sure lying is the right word; rather, Boris seems to live in a post-truth world; there is no intention to deceive but a complete disregard for the truth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9NifqJyDMI
I once read an account of fakes and forgeries: I think, one of those book-length exhibition catalogues from the British Museum. What struck me was that the problem with, say, carving your own 1st Century AD Roman emperor was that the mens rea, the intent, was the crucial difference between a fake and a replica or pastiche ...
Chris Curtis @chriscurtis94 · 31m If you tasked me to come up with a social care plan for Labour that I thought would be most palatable with the public, I would have come up with the Tories social care plan.
Entirely predictable move to kick the intra-Irish border fuckup into the grass again. We keep waiting for the EU to compromise the external EEA border. It doesn't.
Is it not compromised at the moment?
No more than usual. We are *aligned* to the EEA so allowing ever-decreasing volumes of stuff across with minimal checks is no threat.
As we are pledged to not lower things like food standards we could have agreed an actual free trade deal. But no, we want to be a 3rd country and then complain about what that means in practice.
We have agreed an actual free trade deal.
I have no qualms with us being a third country. If they wish to impose checks at our countries border that's their choice, but they don't want to. That's their problem, they should solve it.
It'd the kind of "free trade" that the right have campaigned against for decades - slow, costly, red-tape heavy. As for checks I don't think the EEA side are that bothered. If sales to the GB drop they have the rest of the market to sell to. It is our problem, not theirs.
Anyway you should be pleased! The Lord Brexiteer is once again threatening to trigger A16 and blow up the deal. Which you have assured me is the point where it starts to work. So a solution is at hand is it not...
Article 16 is part of the deal, so why do you think using it for the purpose for which it is intended would blow it up?
Unlike UVDL unilaterally invoking Article 16 at night with zero notice, not even discussing it with Dublin first . . . Frost has been laying the groundwork for potentially invoking Article 16 for many months now.
He said to Parliament, to the EU and in public repeatedly that the threshold for invocation is met but he wishes to try other solutions first. If the other solutions fail, there can be no objection to invocation happening. Its not like they haven't been warned that the threshold for invoking it had been met already.
And when that happens - as it almost certainly will - the EU will respond by imposing trade sanctions of its choice on us. There are no wins here, Phil. Just further isolation for the UK.
Since Article 16 is a legitimate part of the Treaty to be exercised, the EU are actually quite limited in what responses they can have within the confines of the Treaty.
Unless they wish to break the Treaty, which A16 doesn't do.
Responses to what is considered an unreasonable invocation are also a legitimate part of the Treaty.
But its not unreasonable.
Nobody is even arguing with Frost that the conditions to invoke it have been met. Are you denying that they have?
The conditions to invoke it are quite explicit and they've quite clearly been met.
The unreasonableness, or not, will ultimately be decided by the dispute resolution process if the parties do not agree. Invoking Article 16 also covers a multitude of actions - from the relatively minor to the nuclear. Let's see what happens. As I say, the idea that there are pain-free ways for Johnson and Frost to undo the mess they have created is for the fairies.
Frost and Johnson didn't create the mess.
May and Barnier created the mess by going arse about tit and choosing to "sort out" the Northern Ireland issue before the future of UK/EU trading relationship was sorted. Which was an impossibility that got us bogged down in a horrendous mess.
Johnson and Frost sorted out 97% of the mess by sorting out the UK and EU's trading relationship first which is what should have happened all along.
Now they're going back to sort out the final 3% as the last part of the negotiations. As they should have always been, instead of the first.
No, Phil, Frost and Johnson signed up to a deal they did not understand or never meant to honour. They put a customs border in the Irish Sea. They told us it was a triumph. You are the only person in the world who still believes it was.
It was a triumph.
They got Brexit done dealing with GB which is 97% of the United Kingdom and 100% of the seats their MPs represent. They got done what May couldn't.
As for not honouring the deal, they are honouring it in full. The deal literally had a get-out clause within it saying it didn't need to be applied in full if it created problems, and the problems were foreseeable, so it was entirely foreseeable the get-out clause could be invoked. Invoking a get-out clause you and the other party agreed in the negotiations is not failing to honour the deal.
The Northern Irish tail should never have been allowed to wag the British dog. It isn't anymore, Johnson put paid to that nonsense and now proper negotiations can begin afresh as should have always happened in a logical order of events.
If you truly believe this everybody (including "Boris") is laughing their socks off at you. But if you don't believe it, ie you're taking the piss, you (and of course "Boris") are laughing at us. I wonder which it is?
I 100% hand on heart believe every word of it.
Unless you come from a perspective that NI should be treated as equally as England in the negotiations (which I don't), how is any of what I said laughable?
Ok, so if that's true it means the world is laughing at you. OTOH if it isn't true it means you're laughing at the world. I'm still wondering which it is. As all know I pride myself on being able to detect whether a PB poster is being sincere or is yanking the communal chain. Here, however, with you and this ridiculously rosy view of Johnson's Brexit shenanigans, I confess to some doubt. On balance I think you're telling the truth and do genuinely believe what you're saying, but it's a marginal assessment, wouldn't shock me one iota if I'm wrong. Intriguing situation we find ourselves in. Also slightly uncomfortable.
No laughter. Indeed others have (perfectly reasonably) pointed out that its only my willingness to put England first before Northern Ireland that means I can take my view. But having done that, my view is entirely reasonable and no laughing matter.
I don't see any shenanigans like you do. I see Britain having moved on from the quagmire of a mess that we'd found ourselves in under May's failed stewardship.
Sure matters are worse for Northern Ireland right now. Sucks to be them. But its better for England and England > Northern Ireland.
There is laughter but we don't know which way it's flowing, is where we are. You remember the PB Panel of Moderates which in order to ensure independence and objectivity neither you nor I are on? Well that is unanimous (10/0) that Johnson either (i) didn't understand the deal or (ii) did and always intended to renege on it. They are the only 2 possibilities within the boundaries of rational discussion, slapdash or bad faith, and the POM delivered a 5/5 split verdict. It would have been 5/6 in favour of bad faith, btw, if I'd have had a vote. I think old "Boris" legged the EU over.
Actually you're wrong. Boris invoking Article 16, a perfectly valid Article of the Protocol, is not "bad faith" it is the Protocol being implemented as written.
He didn’t understand the deal AND he intended to renage on it
Yes that's a live one. If you know you'll be tearing it up why sweat the detail?
Can I ask you a question?
If Frost had said to Johnson "I've negotiated an agreement with Barnier that if the Protocol causes issues, we can unilaterally suspend the Protocol" and Boris or Frost thought "this Protocol may cause problems but if so we can threaten to suspend it as agreed and renegotiate it for something better" then is that 'bad faith' or good negotiating?
Entirely predictable move to kick the intra-Irish border fuckup into the grass again. We keep waiting for the EU to compromise the external EEA border. It doesn't.
Is it not compromised at the moment?
No more than usual. We are *aligned* to the EEA so allowing ever-decreasing volumes of stuff across with minimal checks is no threat.
As we are pledged to not lower things like food standards we could have agreed an actual free trade deal. But no, we want to be a 3rd country and then complain about what that means in practice.
We have agreed an actual free trade deal.
I have no qualms with us being a third country. If they wish to impose checks at our countries border that's their choice, but they don't want to. That's their problem, they should solve it.
It'd the kind of "free trade" that the right have campaigned against for decades - slow, costly, red-tape heavy. As for checks I don't think the EEA side are that bothered. If sales to the GB drop they have the rest of the market to sell to. It is our problem, not theirs.
Anyway you should be pleased! The Lord Brexiteer is once again threatening to trigger A16 and blow up the deal. Which you have assured me is the point where it starts to work. So a solution is at hand is it not...
Article 16 is part of the deal, so why do you think using it for the purpose for which it is intended would blow it up?
Unlike UVDL unilaterally invoking Article 16 at night with zero notice, not even discussing it with Dublin first . . . Frost has been laying the groundwork for potentially invoking Article 16 for many months now.
He said to Parliament, to the EU and in public repeatedly that the threshold for invocation is met but he wishes to try other solutions first. If the other solutions fail, there can be no objection to invocation happening. Its not like they haven't been warned that the threshold for invoking it had been met already.
And when that happens - as it almost certainly will - the EU will respond by imposing trade sanctions of its choice on us. There are no wins here, Phil. Just further isolation for the UK.
Since Article 16 is a legitimate part of the Treaty to be exercised, the EU are actually quite limited in what responses they can have within the confines of the Treaty.
Unless they wish to break the Treaty, which A16 doesn't do.
Responses to what is considered an unreasonable invocation are also a legitimate part of the Treaty.
But its not unreasonable.
Nobody is even arguing with Frost that the conditions to invoke it have been met. Are you denying that they have?
The conditions to invoke it are quite explicit and they've quite clearly been met.
The unreasonableness, or not, will ultimately be decided by the dispute resolution process if the parties do not agree. Invoking Article 16 also covers a multitude of actions - from the relatively minor to the nuclear. Let's see what happens. As I say, the idea that there are pain-free ways for Johnson and Frost to undo the mess they have created is for the fairies.
Frost and Johnson didn't create the mess.
May and Barnier created the mess by going arse about tit and choosing to "sort out" the Northern Ireland issue before the future of UK/EU trading relationship was sorted. Which was an impossibility that got us bogged down in a horrendous mess.
Johnson and Frost sorted out 97% of the mess by sorting out the UK and EU's trading relationship first which is what should have happened all along.
Now they're going back to sort out the final 3% as the last part of the negotiations. As they should have always been, instead of the first.
No, Phil, Frost and Johnson signed up to a deal they did not understand or never meant to honour. They put a customs border in the Irish Sea. They told us it was a triumph. You are the only person in the world who still believes it was.
It was a triumph.
They got Brexit done dealing with GB which is 97% of the United Kingdom and 100% of the seats their MPs represent. They got done what May couldn't.
As for not honouring the deal, they are honouring it in full. The deal literally had a get-out clause within it saying it didn't need to be applied in full if it created problems, and the problems were foreseeable, so it was entirely foreseeable the get-out clause could be invoked. Invoking a get-out clause you and the other party agreed in the negotiations is not failing to honour the deal.
The Northern Irish tail should never have been allowed to wag the British dog. It isn't anymore, Johnson put paid to that nonsense and now proper negotiations can begin afresh as should have always happened in a logical order of events.
If you truly believe this everybody (including "Boris") is laughing their socks off at you. But if you don't believe it, ie you're taking the piss, you (and of course "Boris") are laughing at us. I wonder which it is?
I 100% hand on heart believe every word of it.
Unless you come from a perspective that NI should be treated as equally as England in the negotiations (which I don't), how is any of what I said laughable?
Ok, so if that's true it means the world is laughing at you. OTOH if it isn't true it means you're laughing at the world. I'm still wondering which it is. As all know I pride myself on being able to detect whether a PB poster is being sincere or is yanking the communal chain. Here, however, with you and this ridiculously rosy view of Johnson's Brexit shenanigans, I confess to some doubt. On balance I think you're telling the truth and do genuinely believe what you're saying, but it's a marginal assessment, wouldn't shock me one iota if I'm wrong. Intriguing situation we find ourselves in. Also slightly uncomfortable.
No laughter. Indeed others have (perfectly reasonably) pointed out that its only my willingness to put England first before Northern Ireland that means I can take my view. But having done that, my view is entirely reasonable and no laughing matter.
I don't see any shenanigans like you do. I see Britain having moved on from the quagmire of a mess that we'd found ourselves in under May's failed stewardship.
Sure matters are worse for Northern Ireland right now. Sucks to be them. But its better for England and England > Northern Ireland.
There is laughter but we don't know which way it's flowing, is where we are. You remember the PB Panel of Moderates which in order to ensure independence and objectivity neither you nor I are on? Well that is unanimous (10/0) that Johnson either (i) didn't understand the deal or (ii) did and always intended to renege on it. They are the only 2 possibilities within the boundaries of rational discussion, slapdash or bad faith, and the POM delivered a 5/5 split verdict. It would have been 5/6 in favour of bad faith, btw, if I'd have had a vote. I think old "Boris" legged the EU over.
Actually you're wrong. Boris invoking Article 16, a perfectly valid Article of the Protocol, is not "bad faith" it is the Protocol being implemented as written.
He didn’t understand the deal AND he intended to renage on it
A fourth possibility is that Boris makes no distinction between truth and falsehood. To quote Jim Hacker quoting someone famous, "He lies not because it is in his interest but because it is in his nature." Speaking for myself, I'm not sure lying is the right word; rather, Boris seems to live in a post-truth world; there is no intention to deceive but a complete disregard for the truth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9NifqJyDMI
Might be true but I don’t like it. Smacks of a devious insanity defence whereby the bad guy becomes the mad guy and avoids porridge.
Just heard on the bbc, half the adult social care budget goes on non-old age disability care.
Having seen the care cost breakdown for my 32 year old brother, I can understand.
It’s seriously expensive.
It’s fantastic that we, as a society, agree to pool the financial risk of parents/families having a severely disabled child, but we also should have a debate about preventing more of these births.
It’s a horrible debate to have, but the costs are just so enormous. I think we need to do far more discouraging consanguineous marriage, for example.
That's all true, but I suspect it's all bound up in the eugenics vibe of the 1930s and therefore taboo.
However, gene editing may not be taboo so there's a possible avenue for exploration there.
There's a political angle to this - let's say Labour has a match-winning idea. Why reveal it so the Conservatives can steal it? I'd expect the Party Conference to be the venue where this kind of policy announcement happens rather than on Monday morning on the Today programme if I'm being honest.
In any case, Labour can just sit back and allow the Conservatives to look divided and divisive.
Trying desperately to somehow spin this as an anti-Labour thing just doesn't work - it's a fair point the social care crisis didn't begin last Thursday but and let's be honest, Labour has not been in Government since 2010.
Yet, on the other hand you can argue that Labour should be beginning to at least look vaguely like a government in waiting as Johnson unravels instead of looking like they haven't a clue what they will do if they ever get near office in this decade.
That's not how politics works.
It was a charge often levelled at Labour in the mid-1990s and the Conservatives in the mid-2000s.
Two and a half years from an election, you don't interrupt your opponent while he is busy shooting himself in both feet. Labour doesn't need to have answers now, the Government does.
Johnson made the commitment to sorting out social care one of the key points in the 2019 manifesto yet nearly two years on if there's anyone floundering and looking like he hasn't a clue it's the Prime Minister.
His problem is he's caught between a financial rock and an electoral hard place. The core of his support are the elderly -antagonise them and it's game over but if solving this requires tax rises that pulls out one of the core planks of what it is to be Conservative - low taxes and it wrecks a manifesto pledge not to raise income taxes or National Insurance.
Now, some will support the Conservatives whatever they do - others may take a more nuanced view and may then be receptive to what Labour has to say.
A voter listening this morning might have thought, "Hmm, I don't agree with an increase in NI as that hits young working people while the rich elderly keep their homes, I wonder what Labour would do". Answer came there none.
I suspect we will have to agree to disagree on this one.
Chris Curtis @chriscurtis94 · 31m If you tasked me to come up with a social care plan for Labour that I thought would be most palatable with the public, I would have come up with the Tories social care plan.
Exactly. But they have to pretend to disagree to try and score points.
As I said, if Labour had come up with this, or if Boris haters thought Labour had, they’d be right up for it.
As it is, Lab & LD are more positive about it than Conservative voters, and all agree it’s a good idea
Chris Curtis @chriscurtis94 · 31m If you tasked me to come up with a social care plan for Labour that I thought would be most palatable with the public, I would have come up with the Tories social care plan.
Because if you're driven purely by polls all policies will converge. Banal point.
Liz Kendell's turn on R4 this morning was just embarrassing. Completely devoid of ideas or proposals other than vacuous nonsense about needing to have a proper plan for social care.
Labour remain in serious trouble as an opposition.
Frankly, no.
There's a political angle to this - let's say Labour has a match-winning idea. Why reveal it so the Conservatives can steal it? I'd expect the Party Conference to be the venue where this kind of policy announcement happens rather than on Monday morning on the Today programme if I'm being honest.
In any case, Labour can just sit back and allow the Conservatives to look divided and divisive.
Trying desperately to somehow spin this as an anti-Labour thing just doesn't work - it's a fair point the social care crisis didn't begin last Thursday but and let's be honest, Labour has not been in Government since 2010.
Yet, on the other hand you can argue that Labour should be beginning to at least look vaguely like a government in waiting as Johnson unravels instead of looking like they haven't a clue what they will do if they ever get near office in this decade.
Tories divided? Labour’s last leader has been expelled, rumoured to be running as an Indy, the centrists spend half their life moaning about the lefties & vice versa.
I think they hate each other more than they do the Tories
Norway made sure the resources benefitted its population and largely developed them using state-owned companies... the UK left it up to private companies, and didn't negotiate a good deal. This analysis reckons UK missed out on hundreds of billions of revenue.
BP was state owned at the time. So the British government gained on the privatisation of BP later in the decade.
Now, it may be that the terms offered to companies for exploiting the North Sea were more favourable for the Norwegian government, but it is also worth remembering that when initial licenses were being auctioned, no-one was really sure it was going to work. The UK Continental Shelf Act was in 1963/64 and then there were a succession of dry holes. I forget the actual number, but I think of the first 48 or 49 wells drilled in the North Sea, none found oil. (Although a few found gas, which at the time was massively less valuable.)
Only with Ecofisk (which was the last well Phillips petroleum was planning on drilling, so unhappy were they with the North Sea), that things were transformed.
The Norwegians were lucky. They sold licenses later. And therefore they got the benefit of people knowing that oil was there.
As the link notes - a few extra billion from privatizations doesn't change the overall arithmetic. It wasn't luck - > better judgment & not being ideologically driven to privatise, instead being open for the public sector to take on risk. Ultimately a very costly mistake not to keep equity in case of a large upside.
It would also have been an equally costly mistake to have tried to carry the costs and risks for themselves though. A quick trawl through the history of the North sea and how many companies went bust or were only saved from going bust by being bought out by other companies shows how much risk would have been involved. Only 1 in 7 wells drilled in the North Sea ever found hydrocarbons and only 1 in 11 ever led to development.
The history of BNOC/Britoil is instructive in this case but they were only one amongst very many.
Sharing the risks would have been smart (upside and downside). It doesn't matter that many companies went bust and most wells didn't lead to development... overall it was incredibly profitable and sadly the UK missed out on much of what it could have had.
When you say "the UK missed out", do you mean:
(a) that more oil would have been extracted at lower cost (b) that more tax revenue could have been collected or (c) that British firms could have owned more of the licenses
Ultimately, a certain amount of oil was collected and sold. It generated jobs, tax revenue and a thriving oil industry in the UK. It *may* have been the case that more tax revenue was collectable - but that might also have led to less investment.
It's easy to make perfect decisions with perfect knowledge. People making investment decisions in the 70s and 80s did not have that.
And it is one of the most inhospitable places in the world (or was a t the time) to drill for oil.
I would like to put up a photo of the last time I was offshore in 2013 which would illustrate this well but I lack the technical ability...
Thanks to Robert for showing me how to do this. This was taken from the Solan platform West of Shetlands and shows the rig I was sat on at the time during a small blow. This is the Semi-sub Ocean Valiant, one of the largest drilling units out there.
Is the camera or the rig tilting, or both? Both surely?
The rig. The camera is on a platform fixed to the sea floor. The rig is a semi-submersible. Those legs go down to pontoons about 60ft below the surface and the rig is then floating free and held in place on anchor chains. In a bad storm - the worst you get are up on Haltenbank between the Norwegian and North Seas - the rig will move up and down by up to 50 or more feet. It is known as heaving. Well before that you unlatch from the well and ride it out in what is know as survival draught
There's a political angle to this - let's say Labour has a match-winning idea. Why reveal it so the Conservatives can steal it? I'd expect the Party Conference to be the venue where this kind of policy announcement happens rather than on Monday morning on the Today programme if I'm being honest.
In any case, Labour can just sit back and allow the Conservatives to look divided and divisive.
Trying desperately to somehow spin this as an anti-Labour thing just doesn't work - it's a fair point the social care crisis didn't begin last Thursday but and let's be honest, Labour has not been in Government since 2010.
Yet, on the other hand you can argue that Labour should be beginning to at least look vaguely like a government in waiting as Johnson unravels instead of looking like they haven't a clue what they will do if they ever get near office in this decade.
That's not how politics works.
It was a charge often levelled at Labour in the mid-1990s and the Conservatives in the mid-2000s.
Two and a half years from an election, you don't interrupt your opponent while he is busy shooting himself in both feet. Labour doesn't need to have answers now, the Government does.
Johnson made the commitment to sorting out social care one of the key points in the 2019 manifesto yet nearly two years on if there's anyone floundering and looking like he hasn't a clue it's the Prime Minister.
His problem is he's caught between a financial rock and an electoral hard place. The core of his support are the elderly -antagonise them and it's game over but if solving this requires tax rises that pulls out one of the core planks of what it is to be Conservative - low taxes and it wrecks a manifesto pledge not to raise income taxes or National Insurance.
Now, some will support the Conservatives whatever they do - others may take a more nuanced view and may then be receptive to what Labour has to say.
A voter listening this morning might have thought, "Hmm, I don't agree with an increase in NI as that hits young working people while the rich elderly keep their homes, I wonder what Labour would do". Answer came there none.
I suspect we will have to agree to disagree on this one.
The genius of good Opposition is to give just enough detail as to be taken seriously, but not too much that you are credibly examined or taken apart.
Which since the focus is on the Government can be achieved by a good Opposition leader. A clever catchphrase, something that can be projected onto, and repeat ad infinitum.
Norway made sure the resources benefitted its population and largely developed them using state-owned companies... the UK left it up to private companies, and didn't negotiate a good deal. This analysis reckons UK missed out on hundreds of billions of revenue.
BP was state owned at the time. So the British government gained on the privatisation of BP later in the decade.
Now, it may be that the terms offered to companies for exploiting the North Sea were more favourable for the Norwegian government, but it is also worth remembering that when initial licenses were being auctioned, no-one was really sure it was going to work. The UK Continental Shelf Act was in 1963/64 and then there were a succession of dry holes. I forget the actual number, but I think of the first 48 or 49 wells drilled in the North Sea, none found oil. (Although a few found gas, which at the time was massively less valuable.)
Only with Ecofisk (which was the last well Phillips petroleum was planning on drilling, so unhappy were they with the North Sea), that things were transformed.
The Norwegians were lucky. They sold licenses later. And therefore they got the benefit of people knowing that oil was there.
As the link notes - a few extra billion from privatizations doesn't change the overall arithmetic. It wasn't luck - > better judgment & not being ideologically driven to privatise, instead being open for the public sector to take on risk. Ultimately a very costly mistake not to keep equity in case of a large upside.
It would also have been an equally costly mistake to have tried to carry the costs and risks for themselves though. A quick trawl through the history of the North sea and how many companies went bust or were only saved from going bust by being bought out by other companies shows how much risk would have been involved. Only 1 in 7 wells drilled in the North Sea ever found hydrocarbons and only 1 in 11 ever led to development.
The history of BNOC/Britoil is instructive in this case but they were only one amongst very many.
Sharing the risks would have been smart (upside and downside). It doesn't matter that many companies went bust and most wells didn't lead to development... overall it was incredibly profitable and sadly the UK missed out on much of what it could have had.
When you say "the UK missed out", do you mean:
(a) that more oil would have been extracted at lower cost (b) that more tax revenue could have been collected or (c) that British firms could have owned more of the licenses
Ultimately, a certain amount of oil was collected and sold. It generated jobs, tax revenue and a thriving oil industry in the UK. It *may* have been the case that more tax revenue was collectable - but that might also have led to less investment.
It's easy to make perfect decisions with perfect knowledge. People making investment decisions in the 70s and 80s did not have that.
And it is one of the most inhospitable places in the world (or was a t the time) to drill for oil.
I would like to put up a photo of the last time I was offshore in 2013 which would illustrate this well but I lack the technical ability...
Thanks to Robert for showing me how to do this. This was taken from the Solan platform West of Shetlands and shows the rig I was sat on at the time during a small blow. This is the Semi-sub Ocean Valiant, one of the largest drilling units out there.
Is the camera or the rig tilting, or both? Both surely?
The rig. The camera is on a platform fixed to the sea floor. The rig is a semi-submersible. Those legs go down to pontoons about 60ft below the surface and the rig is then floating free and held in place on anchor chains. In a bad storm - the worst you get are up on Haltenbank between the Norwegian and North Seas - the rig will move up and down by up to 50 or more feet. It is known as heaving. Well before that you unlatch from the well and ride it out in what is know as survival draught
I also saw today that EU countries also have shortages of drivers - It seems this is not just a Brexit issue, not that the press will bother to explain that.
I have seen a fair few gaps, but nothing where there wasn't a perfectly reasonable alternative*, so of no real consequence.
If it reaches the point where there are no reasonable alternatives we might see some feathers fly.
Norway made sure the resources benefitted its population and largely developed them using state-owned companies... the UK left it up to private companies, and didn't negotiate a good deal. This analysis reckons UK missed out on hundreds of billions of revenue.
BP was state owned at the time. So the British government gained on the privatisation of BP later in the decade.
Now, it may be that the terms offered to companies for exploiting the North Sea were more favourable for the Norwegian government, but it is also worth remembering that when initial licenses were being auctioned, no-one was really sure it was going to work. The UK Continental Shelf Act was in 1963/64 and then there were a succession of dry holes. I forget the actual number, but I think of the first 48 or 49 wells drilled in the North Sea, none found oil. (Although a few found gas, which at the time was massively less valuable.)
Only with Ecofisk (which was the last well Phillips petroleum was planning on drilling, so unhappy were they with the North Sea), that things were transformed.
The Norwegians were lucky. They sold licenses later. And therefore they got the benefit of people knowing that oil was there.
As the link notes - a few extra billion from privatizations doesn't change the overall arithmetic. It wasn't luck - > better judgment & not being ideologically driven to privatise, instead being open for the public sector to take on risk. Ultimately a very costly mistake not to keep equity in case of a large upside.
It would also have been an equally costly mistake to have tried to carry the costs and risks for themselves though. A quick trawl through the history of the North sea and how many companies went bust or were only saved from going bust by being bought out by other companies shows how much risk would have been involved. Only 1 in 7 wells drilled in the North Sea ever found hydrocarbons and only 1 in 11 ever led to development.
The history of BNOC/Britoil is instructive in this case but they were only one amongst very many.
Sharing the risks would have been smart (upside and downside). It doesn't matter that many companies went bust and most wells didn't lead to development... overall it was incredibly profitable and sadly the UK missed out on much of what it could have had.
When you say "the UK missed out", do you mean:
(a) that more oil would have been extracted at lower cost (b) that more tax revenue could have been collected or (c) that British firms could have owned more of the licenses
Ultimately, a certain amount of oil was collected and sold. It generated jobs, tax revenue and a thriving oil industry in the UK. It *may* have been the case that more tax revenue was collectable - but that might also have led to less investment.
It's easy to make perfect decisions with perfect knowledge. People making investment decisions in the 70s and 80s did not have that.
And it is one of the most inhospitable places in the world (or was a t the time) to drill for oil.
I would like to put up a photo of the last time I was offshore in 2013 which would illustrate this well but I lack the technical ability...
Thanks to Robert for showing me how to do this. This was taken from the Solan platform West of Shetlands and shows the rig I was sat on at the time during a small blow. This is the Semi-sub Ocean Valiant, one of the largest drilling units out there.
Is the camera or the rig tilting, or both? Both surely?
The rig. The camera is on a platform fixed to the sea floor. The rig is a semi-submersible. Those legs go down to pontoons about 60ft below the surface and the rig is then floating free and held in place on anchor chains. In a bad storm - the worst you get are up on Haltenbank between the Norwegian and North Seas - the rig will move up and down by up to 50 or more feet. It is known as heaving. Well before that you unlatch from the well and ride it out in what is know as survival draught
That sounds bloody awful.
I have spent much of my working life seasick
I honestly don’t know how you manage such conditions.
Just heard on the bbc, half the adult social care budget goes on non-old age disability care.
Having seen the care cost breakdown for my 32 year old brother, I can understand.
It’s seriously expensive.
It’s fantastic that we, as a society, agree to pool the financial risk of parents/families having a severely disabled child, but we also should have a debate about preventing more of these births.
It’s a horrible debate to have, but the costs are just so enormous. I think we need to do far more discouraging consanguineous marriage, for example.
That's all true, but I suspect it's all bound up in the eugenics vibe of the 1930s and therefore taboo.
However, gene editing may not be taboo so there's a possible avenue for exploration there.
As I've said, Surrey County Council budgeted for £372 million spend on Adult Social Care in 2019-20 out of a total budget of about £1 billion.
That isn't just about "care" in terms of homes and care packages. As @ping states, care can involve lifelong care or long-term care for adults with disabilities or other issues.
The unpalatable truth is not so long ago many children with severe disabilities would not have survived but now they do and whatever you think about the quality of life (and that's a debate for serious people), the fact remains we have a duty to those individuals to do what we can to help and support them but that comes at a cost whether it be human, technological or pharmaceutical.
Norway made sure the resources benefitted its population and largely developed them using state-owned companies... the UK left it up to private companies, and didn't negotiate a good deal. This analysis reckons UK missed out on hundreds of billions of revenue.
BP was state owned at the time. So the British government gained on the privatisation of BP later in the decade.
Now, it may be that the terms offered to companies for exploiting the North Sea were more favourable for the Norwegian government, but it is also worth remembering that when initial licenses were being auctioned, no-one was really sure it was going to work. The UK Continental Shelf Act was in 1963/64 and then there were a succession of dry holes. I forget the actual number, but I think of the first 48 or 49 wells drilled in the North Sea, none found oil. (Although a few found gas, which at the time was massively less valuable.)
Only with Ecofisk (which was the last well Phillips petroleum was planning on drilling, so unhappy were they with the North Sea), that things were transformed.
The Norwegians were lucky. They sold licenses later. And therefore they got the benefit of people knowing that oil was there.
As the link notes - a few extra billion from privatizations doesn't change the overall arithmetic. It wasn't luck - > better judgment & not being ideologically driven to privatise, instead being open for the public sector to take on risk. Ultimately a very costly mistake not to keep equity in case of a large upside.
It would also have been an equally costly mistake to have tried to carry the costs and risks for themselves though. A quick trawl through the history of the North sea and how many companies went bust or were only saved from going bust by being bought out by other companies shows how much risk would have been involved. Only 1 in 7 wells drilled in the North Sea ever found hydrocarbons and only 1 in 11 ever led to development.
The history of BNOC/Britoil is instructive in this case but they were only one amongst very many.
Sharing the risks would have been smart (upside and downside). It doesn't matter that many companies went bust and most wells didn't lead to development... overall it was incredibly profitable and sadly the UK missed out on much of what it could have had.
When you say "the UK missed out", do you mean:
(a) that more oil would have been extracted at lower cost (b) that more tax revenue could have been collected or (c) that British firms could have owned more of the licenses
Ultimately, a certain amount of oil was collected and sold. It generated jobs, tax revenue and a thriving oil industry in the UK. It *may* have been the case that more tax revenue was collectable - but that might also have led to less investment.
It's easy to make perfect decisions with perfect knowledge. People making investment decisions in the 70s and 80s did not have that.
And it is one of the most inhospitable places in the world (or was a t the time) to drill for oil.
I would like to put up a photo of the last time I was offshore in 2013 which would illustrate this well but I lack the technical ability...
Thanks to Robert for showing me how to do this. This was taken from the Solan platform West of Shetlands and shows the rig I was sat on at the time during a small blow. This is the Semi-sub Ocean Valiant, one of the largest drilling units out there.
The stresses on those legs must be fantastic; especially from a fatigue viewpoint.
Generally they hold up well. The one exception sadly was the Alexander Keilland which capsized in Norway in 1980. Ironically she had a leg failure around a hole that had been drilled in the leg to insert an instrument to measure... stress on the legs. She capsized in about 20 minutes and 123 men died. I have seen the remains of her failed leg in the Oil Museum in Stavanger.
A bigger problem is that in really bad weather the rig can just be overwhelmed by waves. That happened to the Ocean Ranger on the Newfoundland Banks in 1982. She got water into her ballast control system which started sending ballast water randomly between the pontoons and caused her to become unstable. Again she capsized and there were no survivors from the crew of 84.
You get to chat about these things a lot on stormy nights when drilling is suspended. Our favourite pastime as service hands in really bad storms was to gather in the TV room and watch Perfect Storm. You get extra effects of course
I hope you were extremely well paid for fairly horrendous working conditions?
Politics For All @PoliticsForAlI · 1h | BREAKING: The Government is ‘planning an October lockdown’ should hospitalisations continue at their current level and threaten to overload the NHS,
Politics For All @PoliticsForAlI · 1h | BREAKING: The Government is ‘planning an October lockdown’ should hospitalisations continue at their current level and threaten to overload the NHS,
Politics For All @PoliticsForAlI · 1h | BREAKING: The Government is ‘planning an October lockdown’ should hospitalisations continue at their current level and threaten to overload the NHS,
Can we post photos now? Here’s my view this minute at Lake Maggiore
Are you in Locarno?
Beautiful town - Stresa and Isola Bella gorgeous.
We stayed at the Palma au Lac - probably a notch down from your usual standards. The Maitre D' at dinner spoke seven languages fluently - my attempts at German and Italian (at which I thought I was reasonable) were politely but firmly rebuffed in favour of an English which suggested a proper education.
Switzerland was of course very expensive but not for everything - we found a beautiful tablecloth much cheaper than in England.
Comments
I do not support the abolition
Having seen the care cost breakdown for my 32 year old brother, I can understand.
It’s seriously expensive.
It’s fantastic that we, as a society, agree to pool the financial risk of parents/families having a severely disabled child, but we also should have a debate about preventing more of these births.
It’s a horrible debate to have, but the costs are just so enormous. I think we need to do far more discouraging consanguineous marriage, for example.
Bottled water has a use; I just cannot understand people who live on it. They must be the same sort of idiotlovely fellow who buy Apple phones every year ...
Btw this doesn’t make me some genius. Most people could surely do it. Water varies intensely by taste according to salinity and minerality. Anyone who has tried distilled water at school will know this
Water snobbery probably makes more sense than wine snobbery, and is more understandable from an evolutionary perspective. Being able to detect ‘bad water’ has surely saved many many human lives, being able to detect the Pinot noir grape or a hint of corkage has not
.............and has made such a beast with two backs mess of this sceptered Isle he should be hung up and beaten like a dog.............
Also we had 4868 drivers whose licenses expired in 2020 but couldnt get a re-test. Shouldn't we have rolled them over until the backlog was clear?
This is basic stuff.
I am satirising those rather "precious" bespoke food products you sometimes see at the high end stores. It's not stretched that much either. There's some quite giggly stuff out there.
And we have better Deliveroo choice.
https://twitter.com/JackBannister94/status/1434916088823828486/photo/1
This could be total nonsense of course.
When Chavez took over, he declared, Soviet style that he wanted maximum income NOW from the oil industry.
In any oil producing country, there are wells that are easier to produce from than others. The standard operating scheme is to use the cheap fields sparingly, so as to have a buffer against falling oil prices and to generate revenue for investing in the the more expensive and difficult fields.
So quite a few people working in the Venezuelan oil industry pushed back. Chavez got angry and declared them wreckers and thieves. He even made a speech declaring there was too much investment going on - not enough profit for the government to spend.
So people who would do his bidding were brought in. The cheapest wells were maxed out - and water injection used to push the yield. Which damages the wells in the end.
So after a few years of this, the cheaper wells were exhausted. The more expensive fields weren't invested in and couldn't produce. There was no revenue to invest in production. And then the oil price fell......
Labour remain in serious trouble as an opposition.
But I can’t work out if that is objectively true or if it is subjective nonsense, or conditioning. Is my lake view really better than a view of the North Circular? If so, why?
https://www.golfmagic.com/golf-news/emily-pedersen-play-against-usa-caddie-and-boyfriend-solheim-cup-singles
Whoever wins, he loses.
They also fuck in it.
Thus, there is a market failure in training because - left to their own devices - employers will train less than they need.
The solution is industry-by-industry training programmes, funded by an employer levy.
The issue is that its a faff to use and you still end up with scenarios like the first one where the work isn't economically profitable in the first year or so.
You have a special affinity for NI. I respect that. But respectfully I do not. I've travelled all over the globe, been to five continents and lived on two but I have never been to NI, I don't care for NI and it's not my priority. My priority is England.
There's nothing wrong with us having different affinities. It's just different choices. As far as I'm concerned with NI, I want a solution for them but as I said earlier I do not want the NI tail wagging the British dog.
From the perspective of an affinity for NI, what was agreed may suck for you and the DUP. Oh well. From my perspective of affinity for England, what was agreed was massively better. Which was the considered opinion of the House of Commons and even the Leader of the Opposition incidentally as far as their votes were concerned.
If Labour has a plan for social care, they would be mad to unveil it before Autumn 2023.
The DUP opposed Boris's deal. Oh well, NI has about 11 MPs in the Commons so sucks to be them.
I'm open and honest about considering NI to be a lesser priority. But you're absolutely kidding yourself if you think it isn't for the hundreds of MPs in the Commons either.
I suspect for the overwhelming majority of MPs in the Commons the situation in Northern Ireland is an incredibly low priority, below the concerns of their party, their constituents, their pet interests, their career prospects and much more.
Theresa May was perhaps a rather unique exception who truly was concerned with the union and NI first and foremost. Which is part of what made her such a terrible negotiator. The rest of the Commons isn't so naive, and nor should you be.
There's a political angle to this - let's say Labour has a match-winning idea. Why reveal it so the Conservatives can steal it? I'd expect the Party Conference to be the venue where this kind of policy announcement happens rather than on Monday morning on the Today programme if I'm being honest.
In any case, Labour can just sit back and allow the Conservatives to look divided and divisive.
Trying desperately to somehow spin this as an anti-Labour thing just doesn't work - it's a fair point the social care crisis didn't begin last Thursday but and let's be honest, Labour has not been in Government since 2010.
You could have knocked me down with a feather when they developed an anesthesia staffing crises a little way down the line...
Btw how did you post it? I thought vanilla had disabled that feature?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wD79NZroV88
Then just got lost in a maze of non answers much to the frustration of the BBC presenter
Interestingly wasn't there supposed to be some sort of official announcement today? At least according to The Times last night. Unless I missed it, I have not seen any today.
Hopefully a u turn is on because if this atrocious idea of a tax rise goes ahead then the Tories will lose my vote and my support.
Who will gain it, I have no idea about.
@kinabalu
Not joining the debate as too late
But your analysis ignores a third possibility;
He didn’t understand the deal AND he intended to renage on it
I did in March 2020 due to Covid fears.
I also saw today that EU countries also have shortages of drivers - It seems this is not just a Brexit issue, not that the press will bother to explain that.
The EU might choose to take us to dispute resolution and could potentially have retaliation as a response. But our choice to enact A16 is entirely unilateral and not subject to the EU's consent being required - which was the case for an exit to the backstop.
A bigger problem is that in really bad weather the rig can just be overwhelmed by waves. That happened to the Ocean Ranger on the Newfoundland Banks in 1982. She got water into her ballast control system which started sending ballast water randomly between the pontoons and caused her to become unstable. Again she capsized and there were no survivors from the crew of 84.
You get to chat about these things a lot on stormy nights when drilling is suspended. Our favourite pastime as service hands in really bad storms was to gather in the TV room and watch Perfect Storm. You get extra effects of course
So when lots of people post lots of pictures it overloads vanilla and it reduces the size of the images.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/06/uk-vaccine-advisers-acted-like-medical-regulators-covid-jabs-children-neil-ferguson
"The UK’s vaccine advisory group behaved like a medical regulator in rejecting calls for all children aged 12-15 to be offered Covid jabs despite that not being its role, Prof Neil Ferguson has said."
Edit: ignore, RT has preempted, very well ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9NifqJyDMI
It was a charge often levelled at Labour in the mid-1990s and the Conservatives in the mid-2000s.
Two and a half years from an election, you don't interrupt your opponent while he is busy shooting himself in both feet. Labour doesn't need to have answers now, the Government does.
Johnson made the commitment to sorting out social care one of the key points in the 2019 manifesto yet nearly two years on if there's anyone floundering and looking like he hasn't a clue it's the Prime Minister.
His problem is he's caught between a financial rock and an electoral hard place. The core of his support are the elderly -antagonise them and it's game over but if solving this requires tax rises that pulls out one of the core planks of what it is to be Conservative - low taxes and it wrecks a manifesto pledge not to raise income taxes or National Insurance.
Now, some will support the Conservatives whatever they do - others may take a more nuanced view and may then be receptive to what Labour has to say.
I think they hate each other more than they do the Tories
@chriscurtis94
·
31m
If you tasked me to come up with a social care plan for Labour that I thought would be most palatable with the public, I would have come up with the Tories social care plan.
If Frost had said to Johnson "I've negotiated an agreement with Barnier that if the Protocol causes issues, we can unilaterally suspend the Protocol" and Boris or Frost thought "this Protocol may cause problems but if so we can threaten to suspend it as agreed and renegotiate it for something better" then is that 'bad faith' or good negotiating?
Or both?
However, gene editing may not be taboo so there's a possible avenue for exploration there.
I suspect we will have to agree to disagree on this one.
As I said, if Labour had come up with this, or if Boris haters thought Labour had, they’d be right up for it.
As it is, Lab & LD are more positive about it than Conservative voters, and all agree it’s a good idea
https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/3kjece5ofl/TheTimes_Results_VI_210903_W.pdf
Which since the focus is on the Government can be achieved by a good Opposition leader. A clever catchphrase, something that can be projected onto, and repeat ad infinitum.
Not simply a void.
I would reply with a view of my suburban garden just off Cannock Chase but I wouldn’t want to overshadow your post
If it reaches the point where there are no reasonable alternatives we might see some feathers fly.
*such as tap water!
It’s a really nice feature to have so don’t want to break it
That isn't just about "care" in terms of homes and care packages. As @ping states, care can involve lifelong care or long-term care for adults with disabilities or other issues.
The unpalatable truth is not so long ago many children with severe disabilities would not have survived but now they do and whatever you think about the quality of life (and that's a debate for serious people), the fact remains we have a duty to those individuals to do what we can to help and support them but that comes at a cost whether it be human, technological or pharmaceutical.
Has Trump been CGI'ed? Looks different but he was already a cartoon.
That’s like a hardship posting
@PoliticsForAlI
· 1h
| BREAKING: The Government is ‘planning an October lockdown’ should hospitalisations continue at their current level and threaten to overload the NHS,
Via @theipaper
Beautiful town - Stresa and Isola Bella gorgeous.
We stayed at the Palma au Lac - probably a notch down from your usual standards. The Maitre D' at dinner spoke seven languages fluently - my attempts at German and Italian (at which I thought I was reasonable) were politely but firmly rebuffed in favour of an English which suggested a proper education.
Switzerland was of course very expensive but not for everything - we found a beautiful tablecloth much cheaper than in England.
Satisfactory
Alright
So so
Adequate
Middling