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Why stoking the culture wars ensures a Tory shellacking – politicalbetting.com
Why stoking the culture wars ensures a Tory shellacking – politicalbetting.com
Key takeaways from this (mainly Conservative inclined group) -terror/fury about economy, about winter to come.-short shrift for ‘culture war’ issues in that context: “what’s that got to do with me?” Sole focus cost of living-desperate to hear about policies to deal with it. https://t.co/2dsjhV8ARb
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2.62 Rishi Sunak 38%
2.7 Penny Mordaunt 37%
6.4 Liz Truss 16%
10.5 Kemi Badenoch 10%
95 Tom Tugendhat
110 Dominic Raab
To make the final two
1.08 Rishi Sunak 93%
1.55 Penny Mordaunt 65%
3.2 Liz Truss 31%
7.2 Kemi Badenoch 14%
100 Tom Tugendhat
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11021079/Boris-Johnson-called-Tories-quit-MP-stop-probe-lied-Partygate.html
We had a BBQ last night with Fox Jr and his partner. Both find the Tory obsession with this bizarre and repulsive.
1) Some left-wing *activists* are really into these issues, and are always trying to be edgy and get attention
2) Left-wing politicians can be made to answer questions or at least have to publicly dodge them, and they can be phrased in whatever way the person spinning the attacker chooses to create maximum discomfort based on what the average voter knows ("Kier Starmer can't even give you a straight answer on whether a cashew nut is a nut")
3) The papers can print what they like, and they can talk about the answers to (2) out of proportion to how much time the left-wing politicians spend talking about them
As the threat to life from the impending heatwave continues to crystallise, the prime minister chose to skip the meeting on Saturday. He instead stayed at his Chequers country retreat, where he is due to hold a thank you party for supporters on Sunday.
How come Badenoch's suddenly come down to 10?
Interesting that Sunak's currently shorter than Mordaunt.
Tempted to lay Badenoch...
(1) She's not Rishi Sunak, and would beat him in a head-to-head
(2) She's likely to beat out Kemi for third place, and therefore will be the main repository for her votes
Why Sweden has always been known for the high quality of its pornographic output.
Edit - although why he needs Chequers for his supporters I don’t know. Surely both of them would have been happy with a surf and turf at Spoons?
I am surprised to see such a significant shift, though, given there was (I think) no debate yesterday.
Back in 2021, you could (rightly) claim that renewables were increasing the price of our electricity.
Today, the government paying a guaranteed £43/MWh for wind looks like like utter genius.
Tugendhat staying in does provide extra opportunity for a shift like that to happen.
Mr. Doethur, not just that, the specific design for the Chinese money drain apparently doesn't work at all. Be better to just set fire to several billion pounds and use that for warmth...
But I still find it astonishing that at a time when hydrocarbon prices are through the roof, a few people come out of the woodwork and say "Well, if only we'd not increased our reliance on renewables, we'd be fine."
I'm not a man to through around the "retard" word lightly. But W.T.F.
And that's now coming home to roost with a vengeance.
If there were effective storage solutions available for wind generation things would be different. But there are none available yet.
https://mubi.com/films/pleasure-2020
Needless to say it is unrelentingly graphic, and at times rather disturbing.
Having said that, I'm in favour if having as varied a power generation system in the UK as possible; we should throw everything into the mix. It's just that I doubt tidal lagoons will prove to be as cheap or effective as their proponents claim.
UK gas storage capacity - whether at the utility level (Rough) or at the local level (the Oval) - cost almost nothing to maintain, and yet was still shut down.
Next time a voter pauses over the ballt paper. "They're barmy, and winter is a'coming."
They don't have to be a silver bullet. Only more reliable than wind, cheaper than gas and longer lasting than nuclear.
Which they undoubtedly would be. There is no realistic way you can juggle the numbers to come out with a different answer.
If we'd built five lagoons five years ago we'd be in a much better situation now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_More,_with_Feeling_(book)
To borrow the Chilean saying, trans extremism is god's way of keeping the left out of power forever.
It's remarkable how bad multiple parties have been on energy. They're shit hot on closing down coal-powered power stations, but when it comes to building enough new nuclear sites, less good.
Johnson's 'rush for nuclear' sums up the short-sightedness.
We are talking about new tech done on a scale that had not been attempted before. Worse, we are talking about a new tech that almost wholly involves groundworks and water: perhaps the most complex and troublesome types of civil engineering. And to make a difference, they need to be large in scale (even if individual ones are small).
If we'd started building five lagoons five years ago, we'd probably still be building them. In fact, we'd probably still be in the planning stage.
This is not a reason not to build them: but I can't see them being anywhere near as advantageous or easy as you make out.
I'm not saying it should not be done; just that it is much more complex than the proponents on here try to make out.
Now, if you want to get me onto a technology we should not progress, than just ask me about carbon capture.
We are not really talking new technology here.
We've managed to close down almost all of our 'dirtiest' plants: the coal ones, replacing them with less-polluting gas plants. We've massively increased the amount of renewable energy over the last ten or fifteen years, even under (shock, horror) a Conservative government.
We are facing a problem with gas supply this winter due to Russia's actions. But we faced issues with electricity generation (and had electricity rationing for months) in 1974 due to the miners' strike.
Yes, we could have done more; but what we have done is actually quite impressive. Ten years or so ago, I had some conversations with RCS on here about the dangers of power cuts in 2016. He said there would not be any. He was right; I was wrong.
And whilst it needs to be approached with some urgency, going too fast can cause significant issues like power cuts or even further massive price hikes.
As with most things in politics, it is about a balance.
And there's the elephant in the room: we still have not got energy storage sorted out...
But I'll take dirty electricity and the lights being on over the talk there is now of lights going out over winter because ideology was put above practicality when it comes to energy. An enthusiasm for cutting power plants for 'green' reasons has not been matched by a commitment to make up the shortfall.
More nuclear plants should have been built to help bridge the gap. But the only nuclear moves that have been made are May's terrible Chinese deal and some verbal diarrhoea from the outgoing jester.
Hopefully everything will be fine but the fact it's even a question is alarming.
I have solar panels, and encouraging built-in panels would be a step forward, but it will have to be a gradual process. I suspect we'll muddle our way there, but if the greens ever came to power, black-outs would be routine. They'd blame the recalcitrance of the voters for not moving faster. "See, we were right."
Now, dams have been built. Barriers have been built. Barrages have been built. The Sihwa scheme is impressive. But the scale of these schemes is still impressive from a civ eng point of view.
http://www.tidallagoonpower.com/projects/swansea-bay/
It's utterly ridiculous that we closed all our (comparatively green) hard coal fired plant, whilst the Germans closed their nuclear plants to burn ever more (exceptionally dirty) lignite.
Decarbonising the grid is actually relatively easy without busting the economy. As this graph shows:
It's heating homes and businesses, alternative fuels for transport, waste management, industrial processes, manufacturing and construction, and agriculture where the trillions are going to come in.
In this case, however, a more pertinent question is why they accepted without question the figures of the nuclear power industry - which turned out, unsurprisingly, to be as accurate as the average Dominic Cummings statement - and rejected the tidal option without even allowing a test of it on the basis they didn't believe the figures.
I should probably be laying the crap out of her now. But I'm just not quite sure enough, whilst I have little faith in Truss to perform massively better tonight.
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As I have been saying for about 7 years, the Coalition will be remembered as a golden era of good government by comparison with what comes after.
But putting all of the good that happened on Ed Davey is a trifle unfair on Cameron and the others in government.
All the stories out of 'No 10' ..... Johnson trying to destroy Rishi's campaign because he was disloyal ......Gove's duplicity ...... various candidates not being up to the job and now Johnson leaving before they can establish he lied to parliament have the unmistakable Guto Harri handwriting all over them. All the delicacy of a bull in a china shop.
Johnson's legacy will be bad enough without soiling it still further with the manner of his leaving. Time to get rid of the 'No 10 ' sycophants and in the words of Sir Keir time to show some self respect
Cummings was right. Throw the Treasury onto the bonfire and rebuild an entirely new department with a focused mission statement and new blood.
They are quite literally almost zero carbon in operation (bit of water vapour, that's it), we can get uranium ore from Canada and Australia, countries that are unlikely to do the dirty on us anytime soon, and it helps us pump out a major amount of power at all hours, night-and-day, and efficiently manage the fluctuation of wind.
Yes, we need a secure geological disposal facility for a modest amount of waste; we've had nuclear reactors for decades and decades and our kids don't yet seem to have two heads. Yes, they're a tad expensive but so is any insurance policy that protects you against climate change and rogue states that might otherwise choose to hold a gun to our heads.
We know they work - and getting 2-3 more of these built by 2040 achieves grid decarbonisation. This makes us stronger and more resilient. So let's drop the histrionics and pseudo-CND stuff and just get on with it.
Had mixed feelings on Kingmaker. I liked a lot of it, but load times were on the slow side and I think the strategic side (managing the kingdom) did not work well. It just annoyed me (which was surprising as this was after strategy games came to console so I was familiar with, and liked, Civ VI and Stellaris).
Anybody happen to know if the buggy mess that Pillars of Eternity 2, for PS4, apparently was got resolved by patches?
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/uk-and-global-emissions-and-temperature-trends/
A school boy blinded by the glitz of Shanghai when backpacking and who then thought it was sensible to try and offshore our nuclear industry to people who quite explicitly identify themselves as our adversaries if you bother to listen to them. All so he could placate the bean counters in the Treasury, because it meant he could keep the construction costs off the books. And here we are. Still no new nuclear capacity.
(There is a chance that the claim on the front page was written before the SK scheme came online, and they just have not updated it.)
The state of the conservative party, as being shown to the public, with petty squabbling and disunity, while with the most diverse of candidates standing for PM, are most likely to elect the least favourable as they continue their Johnson tribute act
My wife and I discussed this this morning and agreed that unless the party comes to it's senses its deserves to go into opposition and we agreed we would vote for the independent candidate at the next GE if this came about
They are tired and have been in office too long and a period in opposition may well be needed, but I really hope the Lib Dems perform well in those circumstances and are able to protect the country from labour's worst excesses
Anyway, on Tuesday we travel to Pitlochry, then on Wednesday to Lossiemouth to see our family which we have not been able to do due to covid, then a week tomorrow we have hired a 6 berth cabin cruiser on the Caledonian Canal to be accompanied by our daughter, her husband, their son and dog, and we shall enjoy being far away from the maddening crowds
This will be our third time navigating the Caledonian canal, and my wife's late father sailed his fishing boat through the canal numerous times as he and his brothers fished in Ireland, and indeed helped to develop the Irish fishing industry at the time
We will go as fast as we can that makes logical political and economic sense to do so in the short-medium term.
The solution, of course, is tech, engineering and megaproject delivery skills.
The point was also that he had miscalculated if that had been his thinking precisely because he and the situation are different.
Famously perfection is the enemy of the good, just do something, if ever there was a place to remove partisan narrow bickering this is it. Build it.
When really long term borrowing was historically at an absolute low.
Bit more complicated now, I suspect.
It was clearly much more of a risk that the Boris government would go down that path but that and he are irrelevant now.