1. There is no prospect that the UK will apply to join the EU in the next two decades. Even in the event that the UK dramatically underperformed the EU economically, it is still extremely unlikely.
2. It is possible, although still unlikely, that the UK enters into an agreement with the EU like the one Switzerland has - i.e. a bespoke agreement that is similar (but not exactly the same as) EEA membership.
Sadly both 1 and 2 are true. I really hope we can get back within 10 years but its a long shot. Brexit was and remains a gigantic clusterf*ck peddled by disingenuous politicians and bought by the largely ignorant public.
As with the grammar schools and private schools debate, I can't really take any view on Brexit seriously which cannot see shades of grey, positives and negatives, costs and benefits. Ditto Scottish independence, net zero, local government reorganisation or any one of a number of issues.
There are two facts that should be unarguable:
1) there was a positive case to make for EU membership; 2) the Remain campaign didn't make it.
Then there are some logical inferences to draw.
Ah I see, the usual Tory point. Distract from the lying and corrupt leave campaign involving Russian interference, 10+ years of poison laying by the chief poisoner of all, leading to slurs on the remain campaign. Now it's unravelling you are looking for a scapegoat.
Ah, you don't like the logical conclusion.
I think you are sh*tt*ng your pants over how the economy is going and losing all that trade with the EU is not going to bolster any GDP in the near future.
The new improved insulation programme is still missing.
Owner Occupiers have not been regulated to bring their houses into the 21C yet.
Round here the problem is not demand but supply. Both the firms I attempted to get to sort my house out with retrofitted insulation were completely full up with work and taking on no new projects until next year; I hear this is generally the case for the retrofit industry around here.
That’s what makes this tiny nano-chunk of life particularly GOOD
I’m in an an exceptionally good mood. Due to swimming in that sea, lying yawning in that sun, doing nothing much at all, reading PB and checking weather sites and chatting to Fam and listening to Bach as I lounge in the sun. And I am STILL sober and have an entire bottle of good local Montenegrin red to get through.
Does it get better than that? OK yes sex and drugs and rock n roll, but I am in my late 50s. It does not get better than this
Oh God, yet again we have a conversation on here about a tiny issue, whilst much bigger issues go untalked about. How many conversations have we had on here about trans issues? About toilets?
Get over yourselves. let people be what they want to be as long as they don't hurt other people.
And talk about something that actually matters. Like (say) infrastructure. Or illiteracy and innumeracy. Not about an issue that is an unpoliceable and utterly irrelevant religion.
It is precisely because of the concern that it will hurt other people that it is discussed. Have gender neutral spaces, groups etc in addition to male and female ones and the issue goes away. It is the insistence on barging into and eliminating women only spaces that is a concern - and to a lot of women, precisely because in such situations the risk cannot be managed. Womens rights are not and never should be a trivial issue that does not matter.
Cost of Living, Housing, Investment and productivity are my top 3 issues domestically.
Have any of the candidates said anything about these?
Of course not.
Because the answers to those boil down to "tough luck- overall we can't consume more than we sustainably produce, we can make housing cheaper by bursting the property bubble, and productivity will be improved by early retirees going back to work."
Everyone knows what is needed, nobody knows how to get elected afterwards.
Net zero is necessary to stop the planet literally burning.
It's not about left vs right, it is about facts vs lies.
And Labour isn't doing enough either.
Your first sentence is nonsense. We have increased temperatures world wide by around 1.1deg C from pre industrial. Even if it goes past the 1.5 deg C target, the planet is not literally going to burn. This kind of rhetoric is one of the things that drives people away.
Yes it is, we are heading for the extinction of human life if we continue.
Your rhetoric is what stops anything happening. "It'll all be okay" is what you are saying, no it won't.
Do you believe in science? This is literally the consensus, we are headed for obliteration at the current rate.
I respectfully disagree. I’m happy for Kemi to do well but I don’t want her put on the ballot alongside another candidate with limited government experience. Give members a choice of experience vs relatively new broom.
If Sunak doesn't win i think he will bugger off from the frontline, the rest i think will try and stay involved. Some won't get the chance *cough Priti cough*
If I were a new leader I’d probably offer Priti leader of the house or Lord President or something like that. Something that keeps her in the fold but doesn’t allow her to do too much damage.
I wouldn’t like Priti on the backbenches.
Give her the party chair maybe, keep her out the way of policy. Re Kemi, there is such chaos coming maybe entirely new and fresh is exactly what we need. Javid, Sunak, Zahawi, Truss etc are all stale now. Tine for radical change imo And, with tight times, a back story you can invest in. No trust funds, no banking background. Burger flipping, real human being. She is the future.
Maybe you’re right. I’d like to hear more from her though - the bits I’ve heard I’ve been impressed with, by and large. Not sure about this bare essential state stuff though.
I respectfully disagree. I’m happy for Kemi to do well but I don’t want her put on the ballot alongside another candidate with limited government experience. Give members a choice of experience vs relatively new broom.
If Sunak doesn't win i think he will bugger off from the frontline, the rest i think will try and stay involved. Some won't get the chance *cough Priti cough*
If I were a new leader I’d probably offer Priti leader of the house or Lord President or something like that. Something that keeps her in the fold but doesn’t allow her to do too much damage.
I wouldn’t like Priti on the backbenches.
I would
I would too, but realistically I wouldn’t want her hanging around building dissent. I have a feeling she’s good at motivating the resistance.
I see no reason for her to be moved from the Home Office. Realistically, the Home Secretary never does more than survive - the miraculous elimination of all crime being a distinctly unlikely scenario. You put a thick-skinned cold survivor into place, and you don't move them because no other bugger wants the job. It used to be Theresa May, now it's Priti Patel.
1. There is no prospect that the UK will apply to join the EU in the next two decades. Even in the event that the UK dramatically underperformed the EU economically, it is still extremely unlikely.
2. It is possible, although still unlikely, that the UK enters into an agreement with the EU like the one Switzerland has - i.e. a bespoke agreement that is similar (but not exactly the same as) EEA membership.
Sadly both 1 and 2 are true. I really hope we can get back within 10 years but its a long shot. Brexit was and remains a gigantic clusterf*ck peddled by disingenuous politicians and bought by the largely ignorant public.
As with the grammar schools and private schools debate, I can't really take any view on Brexit seriously which cannot see shades of grey, positives and negatives, costs and benefits. Ditto Scottish independence, net zero, local government reorganisation or any one of a number of issues.
There are two facts that should be unarguable:
1) there was a positive case to make for EU membership; 2) the Remain campaign didn't make it.
Then there are some logical inferences to draw.
Ah I see, the usual Tory point. Distract from the lying and corrupt leave campaign involving Russian interference, 10+ years of poison laying by the chief poisoner of all, leading to slurs on the remain campaign. Now it's unravelling you are looking for a scapegoat.
Ah, you don't like the logical conclusion.
I think you are sh*tt*ng your pants over how the economy is going and losing all that trade with the EU is not going to bolster any GDP in the near future.
Oh God, yet again we have a conversation on here about a tiny issue, whilst much bigger issues go untalked about. How many conversations have we had on here about trans issues? About toilets?
Get over yourselves. let people be what they want to be as long as they don't hurt other people.
And talk about something that actually matters. Like (say) infrastructure. Or illiteracy and innumeracy. Not about an issue that is an unpoliceable and utterly irrelevant religion.
This is what I say every time this comes up.
I want to talk about CoL, the environment, FTTP, communications. Real levelling up.
Yes I do too. But also womens rights. These are not an unimportant optional extra. They are fundamental to women, necessary, hard fought for and not something to be traded or dismissed because they do not matter at all or very much to men.
Bonkers Braverman tells ITV that there are loads of people sitting around of good health not working on benefits.
How? How can they be when they are harassed from dawn to dusk to prove they are looking for work and sanctions all over the place. It's just a fantasy in her head.
Her government will build work houses. Contracts handed out without tender to new companies just set up by Tory donors again. To force the workshy scroungers, wokeists and trans freaks to generate electricity for normal people by walking on giant treadmills.
Whilst they walk on the wheel for their benefits, many will also be sanctioned for not applying for enough jobs, or for missing an appointment with a job adviser. Being chained in place to walk on the wheel is no excuse for these feckless scumbags.
Bonkers Braverman tells ITV that there are loads of people sitting around of good health not working on benefits.
How? How can they be when they are harassed from dawn to dusk to prove they are looking for work and sanctions all over the place. It's just a fantasy in her head.
LATEST Gleeful reports in rival camps about Rishi Sunak's audition in front of the ERG today. One source says the former Chancellor "got huffy" when the Brexiteer hardliners started asking him about other things. He said: "I thought this was about Brexit" and left quite quickly. https://twitter.com/christopherhope/status/1546562341839544321
Whatever Labour is offering, it's enough to be 15 points ahead. I remember when the Tories were 20 points ahead, talking to you about a decade of Johnson...
LATEST Gleeful reports in rival camps about Rishi Sunak's audition in front of the ERG today. One source says the former Chancellor "got huffy" when the Brexiteer hardliners started asking him about other things. He said: "I thought this was about Brexit" and left quite quickly. https://twitter.com/christopherhope/status/1546562341839544321
Rishi should have asked the ERG what, following their research on Europe, they proposed should be done about Brexit.
Oh God, yet again we have a conversation on here about a tiny issue, whilst much bigger issues go untalked about. How many conversations have we had on here about trans issues? About toilets?
Get over yourselves. let people be what they want to be as long as they don't hurt other people.
And talk about something that actually matters. Like (say) infrastructure. Or illiteracy and innumeracy. Not about an issue that is an unpoliceable and utterly irrelevant religion.
It is precisely because of the concern that it will hurt other people that it is discussed. Have gender neutral spaces, groups etc in addition to male and female ones and the issue goes away. It is the insistence on barging into and eliminating women only spaces that is a concern - and to a lot of women, precisely because in such situations the risk cannot be managed. Womens rights are not and never should be a trivial issue that does not matter.
"It *will* hurt other people"
will it? And what degree of 'hurt' is worth stopping the vast majority of people from going about their business?
As an example: gay men have raped (*) straight men in toilets. It has happened many times (**), but it is *rare* compared to the number of times men visits public toilets. Do these exceptionally rare cases mean that gay men should be banned from male toilets?
It is not just about 'womens rights'. It is the about the rights of people to be who and what they want to be, as long as they do not hurt other people. I'd argue that fundamental principle is on top of everything. You wanted to be a lawyer and not a stay-at-home-housewife - and you did so. I wanted to be a stay-at-home-dad rather than the main breadwinner. What's the problem with that? neither of us hurt anyone with our choices, but people would have looked at those choices askance.
If (say) Quentin Crisp or Eddie Izzard came into the women's toilet: a) would you realise, and b) would you mind?
And if you think they should not, how do you police it?
(*) Don't go down that route... (**) And many go unreported.
Net zero is necessary to stop the planet literally burning.
It's not about left vs right, it is about facts vs lies.
And Labour isn't doing enough either.
Your first sentence is nonsense. We have increased temperatures world wide by around 1.1deg C from pre industrial. Even if it goes past the 1.5 deg C target, the planet is not literally going to burn. This kind of rhetoric is one of the things that drives people away.
Yes it is, we are heading for the extinction of human life if we continue.
Your rhetoric is what stops anything happening. "It'll all be okay" is what you are saying, no it won't.
Do you believe in science? This is literally the consensus, we are headed for obliteration at the current rate.
Very unlikely. Techological civilisation could utterly collapse of course but extinction of homo sapiens is highly improbable. After the Toba eruption 75,000 years ago the population of Homo Sapiens on the whole planet fell to a few thousand. We made it through that, we will make it through climate change. Juat maybe not with Ipads and Teslas.
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 18m Interesting, albeit unsurprising, how instantly popular Badenoch is. I think she's probably the only one that could beat Truss with the members.
That’s what makes this tiny nano-chunk of life particularly GOOD
I’m in an an exceptionally good mood. Due to swimming in that sea, lying yawning in that sun, doing nothing much at all, reading PB and checking weather sites and chatting to Fam and listening to Bach as I lounge in the sun. And I am STILL sober and have an entire bottle of good local Montenegrin red to get through.
Does it get better than that? OK yes sex and drugs and rock n roll, but I am in my late 50s. It does not get better than this
Have you finished "Njegos"? AND equally-thrilling sequel: "Njegos II - Battle for Black Mountain"
II features our hero, fresh from thrashing Johnny Turk, turning his righteous (and flinty) wrath upon hordes of far-more vicious spaced-out aliens seemingly intent on overrunning Little Montenegro.
Net zero is necessary to stop the planet literally burning.
It's not about left vs right, it is about facts vs lies.
And Labour isn't doing enough either.
Your first sentence is nonsense. We have increased temperatures world wide by around 1.1deg C from pre industrial. Even if it goes past the 1.5 deg C target, the planet is not literally going to burn. This kind of rhetoric is one of the things that drives people away.
Yes it is, we are heading for the extinction of human life if we continue.
Your rhetoric is what stops anything happening. "It'll all be okay" is what you are saying, no it won't.
Do you believe in science? This is literally the consensus, we are headed for obliteration at the current rate.
You know what I do for a living? I am literally a scientist. The planet is not going to burn. What does that even mean? We have massive challenges, and we are gradually adapting our way of life. The alternative frankly is too awful to contemplate. What is your mechanism for the extinction of human life? Do you not think that with say 3 deg or warming there will still be a majority of the globe that is habitable? Whether we can sustain the population we have is a differen5 question, as is should we try? Overall a lot fewer humans would be a good thing for the rest.
My rhetoric is absolutely not ‘just do nothing’. I am fully supporting of doing all we can. I am however knowledgeable enough to see through the hyperbole to the real world.
Oh God, yet again we have a conversation on here about a tiny issue, whilst much bigger issues go untalked about. How many conversations have we had on here about trans issues? About toilets?
Get over yourselves. let people be what they want to be as long as they don't hurt other people.
And talk about something that actually matters. Like (say) infrastructure. Or illiteracy and innumeracy. Not about an issue that is an unpoliceable and utterly irrelevant religion.
It is precisely because of the concern that it will hurt other people that it is discussed. Have gender neutral spaces, groups etc in addition to male and female ones and the issue goes away. It is the insistence on barging into and eliminating women only spaces that is a concern - and to a lot of women, precisely because in such situations the risk cannot be managed. Womens rights are not and never should be a trivial issue that does not matter.
That is a perfectly valid concern; another perfectly valid concern about the excesses of the trans lobby is the sheer number of children - in particular autistic children - being led to believe that the reason they are unhappy is that they are the wrong gender, and being encouraged to undergo serious and sometimes irreversible medical treatments to address this.
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 18m Interesting, albeit unsurprising, how instantly popular Badenoch is. I think she's probably the only one that could beat Truss with the members.
It is surely more interesting that even Conservative Party activists do not seem to rate the people who were actually running the Conservative government.
Bonkers Braverman tells ITV that there are loads of people sitting around of good health not working on benefits.
How? How can they be when they are harassed from dawn to dusk to prove they are looking for work and sanctions all over the place. It's just a fantasy in her head.
Her government will build work houses. Contracts handed out without tender to new companies just set up by Tory donors again. To force the workshy scroungers, wokeists and trans freaks to generate electricity for normal people by walking on giant treadmills.
Whilst they walk on the wheel for their benefits, many will also be sanctioned for not applying for enough jobs, or for missing an appointment with a job adviser. Being chained in place to walk on the wheel is no excuse for these feckless scumbags.
I knew Monty Norman’s Bond theme was originally composed for the sitar, but I’d no idea of this detail.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-62122982 … For the main theme, the composer dusted off one of his previous compositions - Bad Sign Good Sign, from an abandoned production of VS Naipaul's A House For Mr Biswas…
She is obsessed with the culture wars. Would be dreadful.
She just doesn't accept the premises of the other side.
No it's not that, she enflames it for no good reason.
Penny Morduant is the most sensible on this by a country mile.
No she isn't. She has lied about her position.
I don't mind Ms Mordaunt having different views on self-ID to mine but I do mind very much that she lies about them. She is now claiming, wrongly, that she was the one who fought to remove the gender neutral language in the Maternity Bill so that the word "woman" was used. This is a lie. She was the one who introduced the gender neutral language. It was the Lords who threw the gender neutral language out and she was forced to accept it.
Not the first time she has lied - see the nonsense she spoke during the Brexit campaign. Good at PR and getting herself on TV but in a campaign allegedly based on integrity she has more than a touch of Boris about her.
Badenoch recently gave an instruction that all new buildings should have male and female loos. Good as far as it goes but not good enough. It would have been more sensible to make it a requirement for all new buildings that they have gender neutral loos as well thus giving trans people their own option while also maintaining single sex spaces. That would have been a sensible practical solution.
But you see this is why she has enflamed it.
What you said is a solution - but Badenoch just proposed a cheap headline grabber that isn't practically sensible.
In my work we have loos that anyone can use, they're all private/safe spaces, seems to work fine for us, I am not sure why this can't be done in more places?
Male and female loos are not practically sensible?? Don't be daft. Saying that provision should be for made for single sex loos for women is sensible. It does not inflame anything. What is inflaming the situation is those who say that women should not longer have this option.
But my post was not really about Kemi but about Mordaunt's integrity. We've had another liar as PM. We don't need another one.
What is wrong with having loos anyone can use In our office it meant we used the space most effectively.
When we went to gender neural loos at work it meant men were happy to crack on with all of them, for all purposes, and women were unhappy when said men used the loo after a big night and a curry.
It’s like when we went to Cabaret early on in its run in the West End. They made all loos gender neutral to make a point - in practice this meant men could use them all but women wouldn’t use the ones with urinals, so women queued even longer.
That’s what makes this tiny nano-chunk of life particularly GOOD
I’m in an an exceptionally good mood. Due to swimming in that sea, lying yawning in that sun, doing nothing much at all, reading PB and checking weather sites and chatting to Fam and listening to Bach as I lounge in the sun. And I am STILL sober and have an entire bottle of good local Montenegrin red to get through.
Does it get better than that? OK yes sex and drugs and rock n roll, but I am in my late 50s. It does not get better than this
Have you finished "Njegos"? AND equally-thrilling sequel: "Njegos II - Battle for Black Mountain"
II features our hero, fresh from thrashing Johnny Turk, turning his righteous (and flinty) wrath upon hordes of far-more vicious spaced-out aliens seemingly intent on overrunning Little Montenegro.
Life is good here too. This is a golden summer. 12 months ago we were still waiting for Matt Hancock to allow us to do anything fun. 24 months ago we were in the middle of a nightmare. 36 months ago was, I think, pretty rainy and grim. But this summer, every day, every week brings new pleasures. And the light! I do not remember midsummer being this light. Perhaps it was but I was under a cloud. My current pleasure is watching my daughters have a protracted water fight in the back garden rather than doing homework.
On another matter: I hope we're all looking forward to the first 'proper' image from the James Webb Space Telescope being released later by Biden (*)?
I am!
(*) This does seem a bit of glory-grabbing by Biden. As far as I can tell, the first images were due for release tomorrow, but suddenly *one* is being released today by the president, a day early. Can't really blame him for it though; it's an easy positive.
Oh God, yet again we have a conversation on here about a tiny issue, whilst much bigger issues go untalked about. How many conversations have we had on here about trans issues? About toilets?
Get over yourselves. let people be what they want to be as long as they don't hurt other people.
And talk about something that actually matters. Like (say) infrastructure. Or illiteracy and innumeracy. Not about an issue that is an unpoliceable and utterly irrelevant religion.
It is precisely because of the concern that it will hurt other people that it is discussed. Have gender neutral spaces, groups etc in addition to male and female ones and the issue goes away. It is the insistence on barging into and eliminating women only spaces that is a concern - and to a lot of women, precisely because in such situations the risk cannot be managed. Womens rights are not and never should be a trivial issue that does not matter.
"It *will* hurt other people"
will it? And what degree of 'hurt' is worth stopping the vast majority of people from going about their business?
As an example: gay men have raped (*) straight men in toilets. It has happened many times (**), but it is *rare* compared to the number of times men visits public toilets. Do these exceptionally rare cases mean that gay men should be banned from male toilets?
It is not just about 'womens rights'. It is the about the rights of people to be who and what they want to be, as long as they do not hurt other people. I'd argue that fundamental principle is on top of everything. You wanted to be a lawyer and not a stay-at-home-housewife - and you did so. I wanted to be a stay-at-home-dad rather than the main breadwinner. What's the problem with that? neither of us hurt anyone with our choices, but people would have looked at those choices askance.
If (say) Quentin Crisp or Eddie Izzard came into the women's toilet: a) would you realise, and b) would you mind?
And if you think they should not, how do you police it?
(*) Don't go down that route... (**) And many go unreported.
Yes I would realise. Women can always tell when a man pretends to be a woman. And I'd tell them to use the men's.
You ignore the fact that the biggest risk to women are men. 98% of all violence and sexual violence to women is committed by men.
Now, tell me how do you tell the difference between a man who is an abuser and one who isn't? Go on - do they have a mark or label? They don't. You can't tell in advance. So there are two ways of managing that risk: you can do an individual risk assessment (due diligence, DBS, references, etc) as you do when you are hiring an individual etc. Or you keep the whole category out.
The first works for hires etc. The latter for changing rooms.
There has not been enough research in this area but what there has been shows that men who claim to be trans continue to have male patterns of offending. Some research suggests that there is a higher incidence of normal of sexual offences amongst those males identifying as females, higher than in the normal male population. More research is needed.
I could not care less what trans people do, how they live their lives, dress etc. What I do not want is for them to seek to eliminate (as the extremists among them seem to want to do) single sex spaces and single sex exemptions for women because there is a very good reason why we need and want them.
As for male on male rape, I agree that this is an issue but it is not a trans issue and is not a reason to take away existing rights for women.
On another matter: I hope we're all looking forward to the first 'proper' image from the James Webb Space Telescope being released later by Biden (*)?
I am!
(*) This does seem a bit of glory-grabbing by Biden. As far as I can tell, the first images were due for release tomorrow, but suddenly *one* is being released today by the president, a day early. Can't really blame him for it though; it's an easy positive.
Net zero is necessary to stop the planet literally burning.
It's not about left vs right, it is about facts vs lies.
And Labour isn't doing enough either.
Your first sentence is nonsense. We have increased temperatures world wide by around 1.1deg C from pre industrial. Even if it goes past the 1.5 deg C target, the planet is not literally going to burn. This kind of rhetoric is one of the things that drives people away.
Yes it is, we are heading for the extinction of human life if we continue.
Your rhetoric is what stops anything happening. "It'll all be okay" is what you are saying, no it won't.
Do you believe in science? This is literally the consensus, we are headed for obliteration at the current rate.
2 degrees is ok. 2.5 is ok for us but shit in some places. 3 degrees gets unpleasant for many. No projection is for the end of human life.
Hence why I’d target 1.5-2 which is where we are going to end up.
Many Conservatives are stupid, then. We can't just keep increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. We need to stop at some point.
It’s the situation we’ve got ourselves into as a country. We end up arguing as if you have to be an eco-zealot or an anti-science idiot.
The middle position I’d argue for (target 2-2.5% rather than 1.5% and with the right tech we can get there without too awful a set of sacrifices) gets lost.
My engineering professor car-share (right up till Covid) asserted that electric cars would never work. Even in two years they are booming. Charging stations are tolling out. We have made huge strides in renewables. But there are a lot of challenges. I’d argue that net zero is a red herring. Ultimately we will transition completely from fossil fuels. Net zero is about exerting pressure to do it as fast as possible. Actually, external factors such as the price of fuel now will add their own stimulus.
Added bonuses would be less soil erosion, better and nore nourishing crops, and reduced need for nitrogen fertilisers.
The cynic in me says though, if we did this and it worked, senior politicians here and globally would try somehow exclude that result from our target - because punishing people sort of seems to be the point.
Professor Lysenko has entered the chat
"up to 45%" means something different from "45% (yep, 45)"
This is not about quarry dust (a by-product and therefore little to no marginal cost) it is specifically about mining tonnes of basalt specifically for putting on crops
Why does soil erode less because you put rock dust on it?
I can't see the actual article, but what the summary scrupulously refrains from doing is saying what effect this would have on crop yields. The answer is it would fucking halve them. NPK is a wonder drug, you chuck it on and you see the result within a week after the next decent rain. These long- decay mineral things work, a bit, in the long term. I know this because I enthusiastically deploy them because I don't want my horse pasture full of over-rich nitrogen fed grass, but the pay off is a reduction in horses per acre. It is exactly and precisely people like you which are why Sri Lanka is starving, and kooky theories about how the hugely reduced crops are better and more nourishing for the chakras of those who get their hands on them, ain't much consolation for them that's getting nothing at all.
I was counting down to when someone would utterly irrelevantly accuse me of starving Sri Lanka to death; congratulations. Clearly your last embarrassing foray into this debate wasn't abject humiliation enough.
I don't have any kooky theories about reducing the size of crops, a large yield is, all other things being equal, a sign of a healthy crop. The exception to this is crops treated extensively with nitrogen fertiliser, which focuses on bulk, and results in larger crops with less nutritional value - I can't quite see what is 'kooky' or even a 'theory' about that; it's a simple case of no minerals going in, no minerals coming out. Neglecting all the minerals your body needs in favour of just nitrogen wouldn't create a healthy Ishmael, so why would it create a healthy turnip or bell pepper? Rock dust increases yield, as the studies you request last time out proved.
No. Let's recap that. Your hilarious apple tree studies started from the premise that the trees under consideration were 15 years old and suffering from "disease and old age." An apple tree's lifespan is way longer than a human being's [if growing them commercially on seriously dwarfing rootstocks like M9 or M27 you might grub them up after 35 years but that's a yield maximisation thing, you are killing them in early middle age].
It follows 1. that the authors of the study know fuck all about what they are talking about and 2. that the trees were not suffering from old age any more than a 15 year old human is. They were diseased. If applying rock dust to them makes them better, the disease was a micronutrient deficiency. It's like scurvy: if someone has it, administering vitamin C to them is like resurrecting Lazarus. If they don't, vitamin C is neither here nor there, except to a perplexingly large group of cranks and nutters. Micro nutrient deficient soils benefit from micro nutrients, non deficient ones don't. And I know this not from reading wannabe scientific papers from a parcel of grant-hunting dweebs, but from actually growing lots of healthy apples, and horses.
God give me strength - if the soils were rich in nutrients, of course we wouldn't need to treat them to be richer in nutrients (though the other environmental benefits would potentially still be present). The point is that having been farmed extensively in most cases, they aren't.
Oh God, yet again we have a conversation on here about a tiny issue, whilst much bigger issues go untalked about. How many conversations have we had on here about trans issues? About toilets?
Get over yourselves. let people be what they want to be as long as they don't hurt other people.
And talk about something that actually matters. Like (say) infrastructure. Or illiteracy and innumeracy. Not about an issue that is an unpoliceable and utterly irrelevant religion.
It is precisely because of the concern that it will hurt other people that it is discussed. Have gender neutral spaces, groups etc in addition to male and female ones and the issue goes away. It is the insistence on barging into and eliminating women only spaces that is a concern - and to a lot of women, precisely because in such situations the risk cannot be managed. Womens rights are not and never should be a trivial issue that does not matter.
That is a perfectly valid concern; another perfectly valid concern about the excesses of the trans lobby is the sheer number of children - in particular autistic children - being led to believe that the reason they are unhappy is that they are the wrong gender, and being encouraged to undergo serious and sometimes irreversible medical treatments to address this.
My eldest son is on the autistic spectrum and I have been involved with autistic groups over the last almost twenty years. Never in that time have I come across any autistic children who believed their social issues were down to being the wrong gender.
I suspect I know f*** all about autistic children and you and Leon have all the answers, and I daresay you can give me loads of evidence to confirm autistic children are being stalked by chicks with dicks who are demanding autistic children change their gender to make them happy. I am just saying, to date, such a narrative has passed me by.
Oh God, yet again we have a conversation on here about a tiny issue, whilst much bigger issues go untalked about. How many conversations have we had on here about trans issues? About toilets?
Get over yourselves. let people be what they want to be as long as they don't hurt other people.
And talk about something that actually matters. Like (say) infrastructure. Or illiteracy and innumeracy. Not about an issue that is an unpoliceable and utterly irrelevant religion.
It is precisely because of the concern that it will hurt other people that it is discussed. Have gender neutral spaces, groups etc in addition to male and female ones and the issue goes away. It is the insistence on barging into and eliminating women only spaces that is a concern - and to a lot of women, precisely because in such situations the risk cannot be managed. Womens rights are not and never should be a trivial issue that does not matter.
"It *will* hurt other people"
will it? And what degree of 'hurt' is worth stopping the vast majority of people from going about their business?
As an example: gay men have raped (*) straight men in toilets. It has happened many times (**), but it is *rare* compared to the number of times men visits public toilets. Do these exceptionally rare cases mean that gay men should be banned from male toilets?
It is not just about 'womens rights'. It is the about the rights of people to be who and what they want to be, as long as they do not hurt other people. I'd argue that fundamental principle is on top of everything. You wanted to be a lawyer and not a stay-at-home-housewife - and you did so. I wanted to be a stay-at-home-dad rather than the main breadwinner. What's the problem with that? neither of us hurt anyone with our choices, but people would have looked at those choices askance.
If (say) Quentin Crisp or Eddie Izzard came into the women's toilet: a) would you realise, and b) would you mind?
And if you think they should not, how do you police it?
(*) Don't go down that route... (**) And many go unreported.
Yes I would realise. Women can always tell when a man pretends to be a woman. And I'd tell them to use the men's.
You ignore the fact that the biggest risk to women are men. 98% of all violence and sexual violence to women is committed by men.
Now, tell me how do you tell the difference between a man who is an abuser and one who isn't? Go on - do they have a mark or label? They don't. You can't tell in advance. So there are two ways of managing that risk: you can do an individual risk assessment (due diligence, DBS, references, etc) as you do when you are hiring an individual etc. Or you keep the whole category out.
The first works for hires etc. The latter for changing rooms.
There has not been enough research in this area but what there has been shows that men who claim to be trans continue to have male patterns of offending. Some research suggests that there is a higher incidence of normal of sexual offences amongst those males identifying as females, higher than in the normal male population. More research is needed.
I could not care less what trans people do, how they live their lives, dress etc. What I do not want is for them to seek to eliminate (as the extremists among them seem to want to do) single sex spaces and single sex exemptions for women because there is a very good reason why we need and want them.
As for male on male rape, I agree that this is an issue but it is not a trans issue and is not a reason to take away existing rights for women.
"Women can always tell when a man pretends to be a woman. "
Really? Are you sure?
"And I'd tell them to use the men's."
And when you get it wrong (as you will), what do you think of the hurt you will cause the women?
"Now, tell me how do you tell the difference between a man who is an abuser and one who isn't"
If you addressed my point: how can you tell the difference between a gay man who is an abuser and one who isn't? You cannot, but civilisation in this country has progressed beyond this idea that just because a few of a group are like something, they all have to be.
I am looking forward to seeing the Cyclefree Women Police policing female toilets and harassing everyone who enters 'because they look male'.
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 18m Interesting, albeit unsurprising, how instantly popular Badenoch is. I think she's probably the only one that could beat Truss with the members.
It is surely more interesting that even Conservative Party activists do not seem to rate the people who were actually running the Conservative government.
I literally just said this to my OH.
The Tory membership want a coup. They are largely favouring those drawn from outside government rather than those at its upper echelons. They have decided the Boris gang need to be excised.
This is a radical and novel idea because it requires parachuting someone with limited government experience into the leadership, something no party has ever really tried before whilst in government. It could do them the world of good, but it could also be seen as irresponsible.
She is obsessed with the culture wars. Would be dreadful.
She just doesn't accept the premises of the other side.
No it's not that, she enflames it for no good reason.
Penny Morduant is the most sensible on this by a country mile.
No she isn't. She has lied about her position.
I don't mind Ms Mordaunt having different views on self-ID to mine but I do mind very much that she lies about them. She is now claiming, wrongly, that she was the one who fought to remove the gender neutral language in the Maternity Bill so that the word "woman" was used. This is a lie. She was the one who introduced the gender neutral language. It was the Lords who threw the gender neutral language out and she was forced to accept it.
Not the first time she has lied - see the nonsense she spoke during the Brexit campaign. Good at PR and getting herself on TV but in a campaign allegedly based on integrity she has more than a touch of Boris about her.
Badenoch recently gave an instruction that all new buildings should have male and female loos. Good as far as it goes but not good enough. It would have been more sensible to make it a requirement for all new buildings that they have gender neutral loos as well thus giving trans people their own option while also maintaining single sex spaces. That would have been a sensible practical solution.
But you see this is why she has enflamed it.
What you said is a solution - but Badenoch just proposed a cheap headline grabber that isn't practically sensible.
In my work we have loos that anyone can use, they're all private/safe spaces, seems to work fine for us, I am not sure why this can't be done in more places?
Male and female loos are not practically sensible?? Don't be daft. Saying that provision should be for made for single sex loos for women is sensible. It does not inflame anything. What is inflaming the situation is those who say that women should not longer have this option.
But my post was not really about Kemi but about Mordaunt's integrity. We've had another liar as PM. We don't need another one.
What is wrong with having loos anyone can use? In our office it meant we used the space most effectively.
I'm with CHB on this one I think. There is clearly a balance to strike between protecting women's spaces and trying to accommodate those who are questioning their gender or transitioning. I have quite a bit of sympathy for the argument that there is a really thorny issue with shared single-sex spaces (such as changing rooms). But I can't see the issue with gender neutral toilets that are single occupancy. Badenoch is just playing to the gallery I think.
I agree with Cyclefree though that Mordaunt's apparently changing position on this is also problematic.
Net zero is necessary to stop the planet literally burning.
It's not about left vs right, it is about facts vs lies.
And Labour isn't doing enough either.
Your first sentence is nonsense. We have increased temperatures world wide by around 1.1deg C from pre industrial. Even if it goes past the 1.5 deg C target, the planet is not literally going to burn. This kind of rhetoric is one of the things that drives people away.
Yes it is, we are heading for the extinction of human life if we continue.
Your rhetoric is what stops anything happening. "It'll all be okay" is what you are saying, no it won't.
Do you believe in science? This is literally the consensus, we are headed for obliteration at the current rate.
2 degrees is ok. 2.5 is ok for us but shit in some places. 3 degrees gets unpleasant for many. No projection is for the end of human life.
Hence why I’d target 1.5-2 which is where we are going to end up.
You may know more than me on this (my knowledge is a bit out of date) but I thought the main concern was feedback loops (permafrost etc) that means it is very difficult to model the risk above 2 degrees. Your sliding scale suggests that's not the case (putting aside any ethical questions about it).
Net zero is necessary to stop the planet literally burning.
It's not about left vs right, it is about facts vs lies.
And Labour isn't doing enough either.
Your first sentence is nonsense. We have increased temperatures world wide by around 1.1deg C from pre industrial. Even if it goes past the 1.5 deg C target, the planet is not literally going to burn. This kind of rhetoric is one of the things that drives people away.
Yes it is, we are heading for the extinction of human life if we continue.
Your rhetoric is what stops anything happening. "It'll all be okay" is what you are saying, no it won't.
Do you believe in science? This is literally the consensus, we are headed for obliteration at the current rate.
2 degrees is ok. 2.5 is ok for us but shit in some places. 3 degrees gets unpleasant for many. No projection is for the end of human life.
Hence why I’d target 1.5-2 which is where we are going to end up.
You may know more than me on this (my knowledge is a bit out of date) but I thought the main concern was feedback loops (permafrost etc) that means it is very difficult to model the risk above 2 degrees. Your sliding scale suggests that's not the case (putting aside any ethical questions about it).
The trouble with 2.5C (or possibly even 2.0C for that matter) is that it probably means the eventual and irreversible loss of most of the Greenland ice sheet and chunks of the West Antarctic ice sheet. We won’t be around to see it of course, we’re talking a century or so, but that’s tens of m of sea level rise.
Prudence suggests doing what is already well within our technological and practical means and slashing carbon emissions as quickly as possible, with the added bonus of bankrupting Putin’s Russia. While, I agree, not panicking and not turning this into some kind of moral culture war, which it’s not. It’s just physics
Many Conservatives are stupid, then. We can't just keep increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. We need to stop at some point.
Plants act to reduce CO2 levels, so stopping completely is not necessary and could be counterproductive. And involve the extinction of all human and animal life.
You do realise I'm not advocating the removal of all CO2 from the atmosphere? Jesus, are you that stupid? We need equilibrium. At the moment, we are changing the composition of the air.
The new improved insulation programme is still missing.
Owner Occupiers have not been regulated to bring their houses into the 21C yet.
Round here the problem is not demand but supply. Both the firms I attempted to get to sort my house out with retrofitted insulation were completely full up with work and taking on no new projects until next year; I hear this is generally the case for the retrofit industry around here.
It's all three.
Appropriate encouragement to improve environmental performance has not been done in any meaningful way in the Owner Occupied sector, which is the least energy efficient of all of them - Social Rent, Private Rent, and Owner Occupied. Since the average house is up in value by £40-50k in a little over 2 years they can all pretty much afford it without blinking, and the Govt could take a charge over say 3-5% of the house if they really need help.
Supply side - agree, but it is a very small impact on house prices as if you even increased house building by 50%, you are only adding 0.3% extra to the stock every year. Tories have done reasonably on this, but it is never going to be enough.
Demand side. Huge amounts of money - £40bn or so - poured into inflating House Prices every year. If you want to make housing more affordable, that is the one to hit.
Plus a lot of minor reforms on 20 different less important areas. Such as sorting out Council Tax to be less regressive, and dealing with over-costly rental regulation eg by introducing a national landlord licensing scheme rather than a crazy quilt of crazily expensive local ones.
(1/4) We believe that BBC Panorama’s episode about SAS operations in Afghanistan, scheduled for broadcast Tuesday 12 July 2022, jumps to unjustified conclusions from allegations that have already been fully investigated.
(2/4) We have provided a detailed and comprehensive statement to Panorama, highlighting unequivocally how two Service Police operations carried out extensive and independent investigation into allegations about the conduct of UK forces in Afghanistan.
(3/4) Neither investigation found sufficient evidence to prosecute. Insinuating otherwise is irresponsible, incorrect and puts our brave Armed Forces personnel at risk both in the field and reputationally.
Comments
I’m in an an exceptionally good mood. Due to swimming in that sea, lying yawning in that sun, doing nothing much at all, reading PB and checking weather sites and chatting to Fam and listening to Bach as I lounge in the sun. And I am STILL sober and have an entire bottle of good local Montenegrin red to get through.
Does it get better than that? OK yes sex and drugs and rock n roll, but I am in my late 50s. It does not get better than this
Because the answers to those boil down to "tough luck- overall we can't consume more than we sustainably produce, we can make housing cheaper by bursting the property bubble, and productivity will be improved by early retirees going back to work."
Everyone knows what is needed, nobody knows how to get elected afterwards.
Your rhetoric is what stops anything happening. "It'll all be okay" is what you are saying, no it won't.
Do you believe in science? This is literally the consensus, we are headed for obliteration at the current rate.
It’s mustard in a tiny plastic pot
But here’s a weird thing. Montenegrin supermarkets only sell mustard from the chill cabinet. Why the F is that?
Anyway I bought some for my “biftek” and it is REALLY good
So this leads me to wonder, should all mustard be fresh and in a chill cabinet? What even is “mustard” as we know it?
50 years behind the Tories. And counting.....
Whilst they walk on the wheel for their benefits, many will also be sanctioned for not applying for enough jobs, or for missing an appointment with a job adviser. Being chained in place to walk on the wheel is no excuse for these feckless scumbags.
How long before Mordaunt gets hit by incoming fire? If @Cyclefree is right, her possible untruthfulness on the trans issue won't help.
The Tories are currently offering the 1970s.
One source says the former Chancellor "got huffy" when the Brexiteer hardliners started asking him about other things.
He said: "I thought this was about Brexit" and left quite quickly.
https://twitter.com/christopherhope/status/1546562341839544321
I think that's how arguments are meant to go these days.
More seriously, investment is needed to improve productivity not just be a disguised way of describing spending.
will it? And what degree of 'hurt' is worth stopping the vast majority of people from going about their business?
As an example: gay men have raped (*) straight men in toilets. It has happened many times (**), but it is *rare* compared to the number of times men visits public toilets. Do these exceptionally rare cases mean that gay men should be banned from male toilets?
It is not just about 'womens rights'. It is the about the rights of people to be who and what they want to be, as long as they do not hurt other people. I'd argue that fundamental principle is on top of everything. You wanted to be a lawyer and not a stay-at-home-housewife - and you did so. I wanted to be a stay-at-home-dad rather than the main breadwinner. What's the problem with that? neither of us hurt anyone with our choices, but people would have looked at those choices askance.
If (say) Quentin Crisp or Eddie Izzard came into the women's toilet: a) would you realise, and b) would you mind?
And if you think they should not, how do you police it?
(*) Don't go down that route...
(**) And many go unreported.
After the Toba eruption 75,000 years ago the population of Homo Sapiens on the whole planet fell to a few thousand. We made it through that, we will make it through climate change. Juat maybe not with Ipads and Teslas.
Andrew Lilico
@andrew_lilico
·
18m
Interesting, albeit unsurprising, how instantly popular Badenoch is. I think she's probably the only one that could beat Truss with the members.
II features our hero, fresh from thrashing Johnny Turk, turning his righteous (and flinty) wrath upon hordes of far-more vicious spaced-out aliens seemingly intent on overrunning Little Montenegro.
We have massive challenges, and we are gradually adapting our way of life. The alternative frankly is too awful to contemplate.
What is your mechanism for the extinction of human life? Do you not think that with say 3 deg or warming there will still be a majority of the globe that is habitable? Whether we can sustain the population we have is a differen5 question, as is should we try? Overall a lot fewer humans would be a good thing for the rest.
My rhetoric is absolutely not ‘just do nothing’. I am fully supporting of doing all we can. I am however knowledgeable enough to see through the hyperbole to the real world.
There will absolutely be a tender process.
it occurs to me that the betting markets are about 2 days behind politicalbetting, and consistently so
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-62122982
… For the main theme, the composer dusted off one of his previous compositions - Bad Sign Good Sign, from an abandoned production of VS Naipaul's A House For Mr Biswas…
Hard to think of anything less Bond.
"If I don't stand but endorse you and bring my people - what's my prize?"
"Come over first."
It’s like when we went to Cabaret early on in its run in the West End. They made all loos gender neutral to make a point - in practice this meant men could use them all but women wouldn’t use the ones with urinals, so women queued even longer.
But this summer, every day, every week brings new pleasures. And the light! I do not remember midsummer being this light. Perhaps it was but I was under a cloud.
My current pleasure is watching my daughters have a protracted water fight in the back garden rather than doing homework.
Too obvious?
I am!
(*) This does seem a bit of glory-grabbing by Biden. As far as I can tell, the first images were due for release tomorrow, but suddenly *one* is being released today by the president, a day early. Can't really blame him for it though; it's an easy positive.
You ignore the fact that the biggest risk to women are men. 98% of all violence and sexual violence to women is committed by men.
Now, tell me how do you tell the difference between a man who is an abuser and one who isn't? Go on - do they have a mark or label? They don't. You can't tell in advance. So there are two ways of managing that risk: you can do an individual risk assessment (due diligence, DBS, references, etc) as you do when you are hiring an individual etc. Or you keep the whole category out.
The first works for hires etc. The latter for changing rooms.
There has not been enough research in this area but what there has been shows that men who claim to be trans continue to have male patterns of offending. Some research suggests that there is a higher incidence of normal of sexual offences amongst those males identifying as females, higher than in the normal male population. More research is needed.
I could not care less what trans people do, how they live their lives, dress etc. What I do not want is for them to seek to eliminate (as the extremists among them seem to want to do) single sex spaces and single sex exemptions for women because there is a very good reason why we need and want them.
As for male on male rape, I agree that this is an issue but it is not a trans issue and is not a reason to take away existing rights for women.
Hence why I’d target 1.5-2 which is where we are going to end up.
I suspect I know f*** all about autistic children and you and Leon have all the answers, and I daresay you can give me loads of evidence to confirm autistic children are being stalked by chicks with dicks who are demanding autistic children change their gender to make them happy. I am just saying, to date, such a narrative has passed me by.
Really? Are you sure?
"And I'd tell them to use the men's."
And when you get it wrong (as you will), what do you think of the hurt you will cause the women?
"Now, tell me how do you tell the difference between a man who is an abuser and one who isn't"
If you addressed my point: how can you tell the difference between a gay man who is an abuser and one who isn't? You cannot, but civilisation in this country has progressed beyond this idea that just because a few of a group are like something, they all have to be.
I am looking forward to seeing the Cyclefree Women Police policing female toilets and harassing everyone who enters 'because they look male'.
It's evil.
The Tory membership want a coup. They are largely favouring those drawn from outside government rather than those at its upper echelons. They have decided the Boris gang need to be excised.
This is a radical and novel idea because it requires parachuting someone with limited government experience into the leadership, something no party has ever really tried before whilst in government. It could do them the world of good, but it could also be seen as irresponsible.
I agree with Cyclefree though that Mordaunt's apparently changing position on this is also problematic.
Prudence suggests doing what is already well within our technological and practical means and slashing carbon emissions as quickly as possible, with the added bonus of bankrupting Putin’s Russia. While, I agree, not panicking and not turning this into some kind of moral culture war, which it’s not. It’s just physics
We need equilibrium. At the moment, we are changing the composition of the air.
The extra spending splurge is .. er .. £83bn per annum, and is specifically identified as "All new spending is in addition to that announced in all previous fiscal events, up to and including Spending Round 2019".
https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Funding-Real-Change-1.pdf
Appropriate encouragement to improve environmental performance has not been done in any meaningful way in the Owner Occupied sector, which is the least energy efficient of all of them - Social Rent, Private Rent, and Owner Occupied. Since the average house is up in value by £40-50k in a little over 2 years they can all pretty much afford it without blinking, and the Govt could take a charge over say 3-5% of the house if they really need help.
Supply side - agree, but it is a very small impact on house prices as if you even increased house building by 50%, you are only adding 0.3% extra to the stock every year. Tories have done reasonably on this, but it is never going to be enough.
Demand side. Huge amounts of money - £40bn or so - poured into inflating House Prices every year. If you want to make housing more affordable, that is the one to hit.
Plus a lot of minor reforms on 20 different less important areas. Such as sorting out Council Tax to be less regressive, and dealing with over-costly rental regulation eg by introducing a national landlord licensing scheme rather than a crazy quilt of crazily expensive local ones.
(1/4) We believe that BBC Panorama’s episode about SAS operations in Afghanistan, scheduled for broadcast Tuesday 12 July 2022, jumps to unjustified conclusions from allegations that have already been fully investigated.
(2/4) We have provided a detailed and comprehensive statement to Panorama, highlighting unequivocally how two Service Police operations carried out extensive and independent investigation into allegations about the conduct of UK forces in Afghanistan.
(3/4) Neither investigation found sufficient evidence to prosecute. Insinuating otherwise is irresponsible, incorrect and puts our brave Armed Forces personnel at risk both in the field and reputationally.
https://twitter.com/DefenceHQPress/status/1546521612018765827
(not sure where 4 went)