I'm with Horse on this. It was a great product when there was only one of it. Like membership of Blockbuster video, only with a much, much wider choice. But now there are half a dozen players - you simply can't have a subscription to all of them. It's daft, and prohibitively expensive. There can't be more than one Netflix, and the chances that Netflix are the best at being Netflix seem no better than about one in six.
No chance for Netflix with Disney+ having more than half of all content produced, without overheads of licensing to external companies
Alternatively many people will happily pay for both Netflix and Disney+ as we already do ourselves. Netflix + Disney+ combined costs much less than Sky and about the same as the BBC too and provides much more that we use than either Sky or BBC do.
In America that's even more true. The cost of "cable" TV in the USA has long been far more than even multiple subscriptions now cost.
Netflix is losing customers at a ridiculous pace.
They will not be around in 10 years, not enough content.
But you can’t just extrapolate a trend to infinity, yes they have shed customers, but the basic model isn’t broken.
Their model is broken.
They cannot support their lack of content because they're losing customers. They need original content to undo the content they're losing year on year to other services. They cannot keep up.
Not a chance they will be around in 10 years, probably get bought I would think.
But that's no longer true because for the last 5 years Netflix borrowed billions of dollars to build out a first party library to which they own the perpetual rights. All of the third party content that is going to leave has already gone and if anything we're going to see that reverse over the next few years because services like Paramount+ and Peacock are going to fail which means Paramount and NBC will have to start putting content on Netflix again and just taking the annual lump sum from Netflix if they agree and the price is right.
We've already seen the start of the consolidation, HBO Max has been canned. It's now being "merged" into Discovery+ but all of the original streaming only content is being killed and essentially it will just be HBO programming and boxsets under a HBO tab within Discovery+, that is not going to compete with Netflix or Disney+ (the two likely survivors of the streaming wars).
The other big deal for Netflix is that in 5 years they will have 10 years worth of original content in the library, while I don't think it has as much value as most people, it will be a bigger pull factor. The biggest missing piece of the puzzle, IMO, is not having a theatrical window. That's where Disney+ has a huge leg up on Netflix. Their movies still go out and recoup production costs in cinemas and then 84 days later they put it on their streaming service which is pure profit for bringing in new subscribers.
I agree with 99% of this. My only issue is that I think that HBO has a decent shot of making it. Don't forget that they have an existing "pay" channel, so why would they want to have streaming only content?
Just as interesting is what - if anything - Amazon and Apple do. They both have almost infinite money, but their streaming businesses have to be seriously money losing propositions - particularly Apple TV+.
Amazon and Apple are not pure streaming though - they allow old-fashioned buying of individual episodes and box sets as they always have. I bet Apple TV originals and Amazon originals are loss-making though.
There's a rather good UK sci-fi film from the early 60s called 'The Day The Earth Caught Fire' set in London which features the temperature going through the roof (I won't spoil the reasons). Very well done and an excellent turn from Leo McKern.
Yes, the Daily Express print room features in it back when the Express was a decent paper.
Some of the science is a bit dubious and I'm NOT suggesting anything like that.
I'm merely arguing that in the absence of widespread air conditioning, those who can may well move north to a more comfortable existence in northern England and indeed Scotland and if I wanted a long-term investment, I'd buy up land and property on the northern Scottish coast and in the islands.
It's not easy to get to Scrabster or that coastline now as @Sunil_Prasannan will confirm but that could well change if there was a real expansion of tourism.
Yeah - the science is 'a little' iffy - but I can forgive it for the dialogue. And yes, the scenes in The Express are excellent. Especially the resigned 'All stop!' passing down 10 lines of foremen to the printing press and the big sign just saying 'IMPACT!' in the newsroom.
But it does come to mind when I wonder what happens if this changes much, much faster than we thought. Not necessarily out of control - but to a new unpleasant steady state. I can certainly imagine a new line of thinking about MP's working in parliament while the refurbishment is going on. Might suddenly seem like a *terribly* good idea to show the flag up in Aberdeen or Orkney...
Not sure how much profit there is in it (little, I suspect) but supermarkets should do bags of ingredients for £4 or less with recipes that take 20 mins or less, and sell 'a week' of family dinners for £20. This sort of thing - which is filling and perfectly nourishing:
One reason people overspend on food: it's hard & time-consuming to cook. And then you have washing up.
So people go for chicken nuggets and chips (stick in the oven for 25 mins) from Iceland for £2.99, or ready meals that are microwaveable.
Is Home Economics still binned in schools? I remember it being basically useless when I had to do it - but feels like the kind of thing that *should* be really useful to give kids some baseline knowledge.
As it is, I remember being taught how to 'make a pizza' - which was to take the top half of a roll, spread tomato puree on it and a slice of cheddar then put it under the grill.
Some of is definitely laziness.
I have lots of eggs in the fridge but so often I look in there and go 'meh, nothing to eat'.
The only way I can successfully stick to my brutal diet (9 pounds down now!) is by having absolutely NOTHING to eat in my flat, apart from spices, oils, vinegars, powders, pickles, etc
At about 10pm when my willpower crumbles, you can find me nibbling raw Kampot peppercorns, or having a tragic spoonful of sauerkraut. It works
yep. But we do actually have the wherewithal to fix it. We are not a global tribe.
We have the technology but not the political will.
Technology or human ingenuity does offer a chance but we bump up against some hard questions - why should the developing world and in particular the likes of China, India and Brazil forego the same consumer-led resource-led growth the West enjoyed for much of the last century?
Who will tell these countries that can't go on buying cars, developing coal-fired power stations and believing the only thing that matters is growth. Some of the regimes must think if they don't deliver growth, they'll be swept away
The one thing is as individuals and societies experience even the first manifestations of climate change, it will hopefully make people stop and think a little. The experience of last month's heatwave was a real eye-opener for many of my friends who have never experienced that kind of heat. Imagine that for 10-14 days - that's the worry - our current infrastructure won't cope with a prolonged heatwave. That in itself should be something Sunak and Truss should be debating but they are as bad as each other.
As you say, intriguing thought. I may be being unkind to him, but I suspect my friend from Epping would have been in the honourable peace camp, that being the policy of a significant part of the Conservative party!
To be fair, I might well have been following the far left line, which would've meant I'd had to had to do a severe reverse ferret a few months later!
I'm less certain - @HYUFD would have lived in Churchill's constituency - he was MP for Epping from 1924 to 1945.
Boundary changes moved Churchill to the new Woodford seat in 1945 and Epping was won by Labour. The Conservatives re-captured it in 1950 but lost it again in 1964 when Stan Newens became MP. Newens lost in 1970 in a straight fight with a new Conservative candidate - one Norman Tebbit.
The Epping constituency was then abolished in 1974.
IIRC Winston Churchill came under serious pressure from local Tory establishment in Epping in aftermath of Hitler-Chamberlain Munich Agreement and WSC's denunciation thereof.
Which was relieved but hardly eliminated when Churchill joined Chamberlain govt as First Lord of Admiralty in September 1939.
Casino's quip about early summer 1940 does raise an intriguing question. Had pb existed then under the Asquthian benevolence of Sir Michael Fortesque Cavendish-Smithson Bt, how many of our number would have counselled for an 'honourable' peace with Germany, rather than persist with an unwinnable war under the erratic, unscrupulous adventurer Churchill, who only months previously had lost Norway?
I think it was Chamberlain who lost Norway ...? Or at least carried the can IRL. But who cares, it's alternative history anyway!
Churchill had been the sponsor and architect of the Norway Campaign which effectively brought down the government, even though it actually won the confidence vote. Churchill took over as Prime Minister of a coalition government; Chamberlain remained leader of the Conservative Party.
The other candidate for Prime Minister had been Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, who favoured a negotiated peace. This was no mere pipedream as Hitler had reached out via Mussolini to offer terms.
The new Prime Minister and coalition government were unpopular on Conservative benches. Obviously, this was to change with time and events.
Also, of course, Churchill wasn't party leader until September. The last Prime Minister to date not to be the leader of a political party. That caused quite a lot of tension in itself and is one of the reasons Churchill took the first opportunity to get rid of Halifax in case he succeeded Chamberlain as party leader instead.
Sinn Féin 36% (nc) Fine Gael 22% (nc) Fianna Fáil 17% (+2) Greens 4% (nc) People Before Profit/Solidarity 4% (+1) Social Democrats 4% (+1) Labour 3% (-1) Aontú 3% (nc) others/independents 9% (-1)
What's interesting about that is that FF + FG are down 4 points one the 2020 GE, and SF are up 11.5 points, so SF are consolidating support that's otherwise gone to minor parties and independents.
When FG received 36% of the vote in 2016 they won 76 seats, only 8 short of a majority.
With a potential SF government I worry more for the European Union than the UK. They're going to be a nightmare in the European Council while the UK gov can mostly ignore them.
There’s that “ignore” tactic again. A concept honoured more in the breach than in the observance.
Maybe PM Truss will just “ignore” the depression? Good luck with that.
There's a rather good UK sci-fi film from the early 60s called 'The Day The Earth Caught Fire' set in London which features the temperature going through the roof (I won't spoil the reasons). Very well done and an excellent turn from Leo McKern.
Yes, the Daily Express print room features in it back when the Express was a decent paper.
Some of the science is a bit dubious and I'm NOT suggesting anything like that.
I'm merely arguing that in the absence of widespread air conditioning, those who can may well move north to a more comfortable existence in northern England and indeed Scotland and if I wanted a long-term investment, I'd buy up land and property on the northern Scottish coast and in the islands.
It's not easy to get to Scrabster or that coastline now as @Sunil_Prasannan will confirm but that could well change if there was a real expansion of tourism.
Yeah - the science is 'a little' iffy - but I can forgive it for the dialogue. And yes, the scenes in The Express are excellent. Especially the resigned 'All stop!' passing down 10 lines of foremen to the printing press and the big sign just saying 'IMPACT!' in the newsroom.
But it does come to mind when I wonder what happens if this changes much, much faster than we thought. Not necessarily out of control - but to a new unpleasant steady state. I can certainly imagine a new line of thinking about MP's working in parliament while the refurbishment is going on. Might suddenly seem like a *terribly* good idea to show the flag up in Aberdeen or Orkney...
I'd also be very wary of buying seaside properties, partly because increased sea level will affect a rather larger number in a given seaside town than today, when combined with e.g. onshore storms. This won't be obvious on a nice sunny day, though.
Friend of mine bought his retirement home in Emsworth a few years back. He took a very careful look at the contour maps and flood records.
Churchill had been the sponsor and architect of the Norway Campaign which effectively brought down the government, even though it actually won the confidence vote. Churchill took over as Prime Minister of a coalition government; Chamberlain remained leader of the Conservative Party.
The other candidate for Prime Minister had been Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, who favoured a negotiated peace. This was no mere pipedream as Hitler had reached out via Mussolini to offer terms.
The new Prime Minister and coalition government were unpopular on Conservative benches. Obviously, this was to change with time and events.
Chamberlain was ill and would have resigned sooner or later. The revisionist character assassination of Halifax comes with little or no evidence. I suspect he'd have been as resistant to German peace feelers as was Churchill. There was no way any British Government was going to accept German hegemony over the Continent as a done deal.
The window of opportunity for the Germans to make a successful landing was probably mid-July - growing RAF strength, the rapid re-building of mobile reserves lost at Dunkirk, the re-grouping of naval forces and German unwillingness to risk an amphibious landing meant Britain was safe thereafter.
The famous Sandhurst exercise modelling a German invasion in mid September shows such an attempt would likely have ended in disastrous failure. That in itself might have foreshortened the war with Hitler being ousted by the Army but we've no way of knowing that.
As the old saying goes - the Americans provided the money, the Russians provided the blood and the British provided the time - all helped by Hitler's stupidity which ended with him going to war with the two growing industrial powers of the day, fighting a multi-front war and ending with Germany being physically conquered and divided.
IIRC, Chamberlain's illness came rather suddenly AFTER he'd been removed as Prime Minister but then agreed to serve in Churchill's cabinet.
However, would have caught up with Chamberlain - sooner, not later - IF he'd remained PM following the Norway Debate of May 1940.
There's a rather good UK sci-fi film from the early 60s called 'The Day The Earth Caught Fire' set in London which features the temperature going through the roof (I won't spoil the reasons). Very well done and an excellent turn from Leo McKern.
Yes, the Daily Express print room features in it back when the Express was a decent paper.
Some of the science is a bit dubious and I'm NOT suggesting anything like that.
I'm merely arguing that in the absence of widespread air conditioning, those who can may well move north to a more comfortable existence in northern England and indeed Scotland and if I wanted a long-term investment, I'd buy up land and property on the northern Scottish coast and in the islands.
It's not easy to get to Scrabster or that coastline now as @Sunil_Prasannan will confirm but that could well change if there was a real expansion of tourism.
Yeah - the science is 'a little' iffy - but I can forgive it for the dialogue. And yes, the scenes in The Express are excellent. Especially the resigned 'All stop!' passing down 10 lines of foremen to the printing press and the big sign just saying 'IMPACT!' in the newsroom.
But it does come to mind when I wonder what happens if this changes much, much faster than we thought. Not necessarily out of control - but to a new unpleasant steady state. I can certainly imagine a new line of thinking about MP's working in parliament while the refurbishment is going on. Might suddenly seem like a *terribly* good idea to show the flag up in Aberdeen or Orkney...
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
Although sadly not all. My wife and I are are attending a convention in two weeks time were the organisers are still insisting on facemasks. This despite being in a hotel where no one else will be doing so. It’s for the benefit of the vulnerable, apparently. I genuinely wonder when people who think like this will agree to stop asking people to wear masks. It has put a dampener on my expected enjoyment of the event (Discworld Convention).
While my predictions, as the Stodge Saturday Patent has demonstrated, aren't worth any attention, I'll offer a thought based on recent experience.
In 50-75 years time, London will empty at the beginning of June as those who can seek solace from the 45c temperatures and humidity associated with the late 21st century British summer between the spring and autumn monsoon seasons.
The newly-refurbished London Euston station will host the regular 30-minute Maglev summer service to the Lake District having passengers disembarking at Oxenholme in little more than a hour. From there, families will decamp to their summer chalets near the lakes (or as near as is affordable). The ability to work independently from location, first established during the 2020 pandemic, will allow tens of thousands of Londoners to continue working far from the overheating capital.
For those without the means to escape the heat, the annual ordeal that is summer in London is the very definition of purgatory. On the hottest days, with temperatures nearing 50c, many head to vast "cool centres" where they can enjoy air conditioned relief before heading home in the later evening.
While the Lakes are one popular "retreat from the heat", the Pennines and Cheviots have also seen summer housing and the major development of the north Scottish coast around Torrisdale and the islands of Harris and Lewis have seen an explosion of summer homes for those from southern and eastern Britain desperate to seek cooler summer weather.
I think you understate the case. The way we're going it will be a runaway climate change. Although some, especially reputable researchers, know what we need to do to counter this, most of us are too gormless to act accordingly. For instance, getting an electric car does not justify an otherwise wanton life style.
That's my fear. That we are now in an accelerating loop of increasing warmth and volatility, which will feed off itself like a chain reaction. And perhaps it is already too late to stop this
Our presence in this universe appears to be the result of a long series of lucky circumstances.
These include: The fortuitous value of the fine structure constant, which, if it were a little difference would not allow stellar fusion to produce carbon. The existence of a rocky planet at just the right distance from a stable and long-lived star. The presence of just enough water on said planet to make a complex environment of coasts and shallows that would drive evolution along. The presence of an unusually large moon orbiting said planet to slosh all that water about and further drive evolution. A complex geology that, combined with the effects of life, has managed to remove CO2 from the Earth's atmosphere at a rate that has just about compensated for the gradual increase in the luminosity of the sun, this keeping the temperature of the Earth in a range compatible with life over the aeons.
And wee Union Jacks on insulation. That’ll do the trick.
Does a Union Jack not give you a warm glow all of its own Stuart?
Only if decent accelerant is applied.
Jesting aside, I have a surprisingly high tolerance level for the Butcher’s Apron, for a despicable, seditious Jock. For example, it is liberally displayed on 2 of our cars. I gave up frowning about them after a few years. I even quite like them on occasion. When I drive like an arsehole fellow motorists just blame ‘engelsmannen’.
I've never liked the Union flag. It's not an ideological thing, I just think it's unattractive. I don't like the colour combination, it's too busy, and it's not even symmetric. It's just an ugly flag. Like our ugly, tuneless dirge of a national anthem. Why are our totems of nationhood so rubbish?
A valid question. Our anthem is tedious. The England flag was nicked from someone else, the union flag looks as contrived as it is.
Worse is that the England team lay the wrong anthem. God Save The Queen is the UK national anthem. Home nations rightly have separate anthems - except England. So we get to here the dirge when it isn't even appropriate.
Jerusalem is a much better song and the English would be wise to adopt it more broadly. Another thing that bothers me about the Union flag is that it fails even on its own terms. There is no representation of Wales in the flag, and the St Patrick's saltire isn't used by the only bit of Ireland that remains in the Union (and in fact was never really used by the Irish at all).
Jerusalem is a breathtakingly good composition. A true classic. The English should embrace it and love it. Many already do.
- “The England flag was nicked from someone else… “
Please clarify. Do you mean that it is a reverse Dannebrogen, the second oldest national flag after the Saltire?
We're all gonna have to move to fucking Scotland. Ugh
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too
There's a rather good UK sci-fi film from the early 60s called 'The Day The Earth Caught Fire' set in London which features the temperature going through the roof (I won't spoil the reasons). Very well done and an excellent turn from Leo McKern.
Yes, the Daily Express print room features in it back when the Express was a decent paper.
Some of the science is a bit dubious and I'm NOT suggesting anything like that.
I'm merely arguing that in the absence of widespread air conditioning, those who can may well move north to a more comfortable existence in northern England and indeed Scotland and if I wanted a long-term investment, I'd buy up land and property on the northern Scottish coast and in the islands.
It's not easy to get to Scrabster or that coastline now as @Sunil_Prasannan will confirm but that could well change if there was a real expansion of tourism.
Yeah - the science is 'a little' iffy - but I can forgive it for the dialogue. And yes, the scenes in The Express are excellent. Especially the resigned 'All stop!' passing down 10 lines of foremen to the printing press and the big sign just saying 'IMPACT!' in the newsroom.
But it does come to mind when I wonder what happens if this changes much, much faster than we thought. Not necessarily out of control - but to a new unpleasant steady state. I can certainly imagine a new line of thinking about MP's working in parliament while the refurbishment is going on. Might suddenly seem like a *terribly* good idea to show the flag up in Aberdeen or Orkney...
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
Oh, he could just do a few more photo-op's 'showing the red card' to various people and he'd be happy enough. That's what politics is about really. When you think about it. A certain way.
Churchill had been the sponsor and architect of the Norway Campaign which effectively brought down the government, even though it actually won the confidence vote. Churchill took over as Prime Minister of a coalition government; Chamberlain remained leader of the Conservative Party.
The other candidate for Prime Minister had been Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, who favoured a negotiated peace. This was no mere pipedream as Hitler had reached out via Mussolini to offer terms.
The new Prime Minister and coalition government were unpopular on Conservative benches. Obviously, this was to change with time and events.
Chamberlain was ill and would have resigned sooner or later. The revisionist character assassination of Halifax comes with little or no evidence. I suspect he'd have been as resistant to German peace feelers as was Churchill. There was no way any British Government was going to accept German hegemony over the Continent as a done deal.
The window of opportunity for the Germans to make a successful landing was probably mid-July - growing RAF strength, the rapid re-building of mobile reserves lost at Dunkirk, the re-grouping of naval forces and German unwillingness to risk an amphibious landing meant Britain was safe thereafter.
The famous Sandhurst exercise modelling a German invasion in mid September shows such an attempt would likely have ended in disastrous failure. That in itself might have foreshortened the war with Hitler being ousted by the Army but we've no way of knowing that.
As the old saying goes - the Americans provided the money, the Russians provided the blood and the British provided the time - all helped by Hitler's stupidity which ended with him going to war with the two growing industrial powers of the day, fighting a multi-front war and ending with Germany being physically conquered and divided.
My favourite Sealion story:
An Austrian mountain brigade was tasked with climbing the Kent cliffs.
They went to the French coast to practice their swimming and boating.
The first day went okay but on the second they went at a different time and the tide was out.
They were utterly baffled that the sea could move and even more so when a naval officer told them that the 'man in the moon' had moved the sea.
My knowledge of art is pathetic - I could maybe recognise a Gauguin but after that I struggle. But what's good about this display - 9 artists, with a room for each - is that it's multi-dimensional - a video, a pyramid, sculptures, paintings - each room is strikingly different. They didn't all work for us - in one room, we were completely nonplussed untiol we read up what the artist thought he was doing - but overall it's well worth a visit.
As you say, intriguing thought. I may be being unkind to him, but I suspect my friend from Epping would have been in the honourable peace camp, that being the policy of a significant part of the Conservative party!
To be fair, I might well have been following the far left line, which would've meant I'd had to had to do a severe reverse ferret a few months later!
I'm less certain - @HYUFD would have lived in Churchill's constituency - he was MP for Epping from 1924 to 1945.
Boundary changes moved Churchill to the new Woodford seat in 1945 and Epping was won by Labour. The Conservatives re-captured it in 1950 but lost it again in 1964 when Stan Newens became MP. Newens lost in 1970 in a straight fight with a new Conservative candidate - one Norman Tebbit.
The Epping constituency was then abolished in 1974.
Epping constituency included Harlow until 1974 which has always been marginal and was also won by New Labour from 1997 to 2010.
However on the current Epping Forest constituency boundaries the Conservatives would have won Epping even in 1966 on a notional basis with a 1,330 majority
While my predictions, as the Stodge Saturday Patent has demonstrated, aren't worth any attention, I'll offer a thought based on recent experience.
In 50-75 years time, London will empty at the beginning of June as those who can seek solace from the 45c temperatures and humidity associated with the late 21st century British summer between the spring and autumn monsoon seasons.
The newly-refurbished London Euston station will host the regular 30-minute Maglev summer service to the Lake District having passengers disembarking at Oxenholme in little more than a hour. From there, families will decamp to their summer chalets near the lakes (or as near as is affordable). The ability to work independently from location, first established during the 2020 pandemic, will allow tens of thousands of Londoners to continue working far from the overheating capital.
For those without the means to escape the heat, the annual ordeal that is summer in London is the very definition of purgatory. On the hottest days, with temperatures nearing 50c, many head to vast "cool centres" where they can enjoy air conditioned relief before heading home in the later evening.
While the Lakes are one popular "retreat from the heat", the Pennines and Cheviots have also seen summer housing and the major development of the north Scottish coast around Torrisdale and the islands of Harris and Lewis have seen an explosion of summer homes for those from southern and eastern Britain desperate to seek cooler summer weather.
I think you understate the case. The way we're going it will be a runaway climate change. Although some, especially reputable researchers, know what we need to do to counter this, most of us are too gormless to act accordingly. For instance, getting an electric car does not justify an otherwise wanton life style.
That's my fear. That we are now in an accelerating loop of increasing warmth and volatility, which will feed off itself like a chain reaction. And perhaps it is already too late to stop this
The science, as we know it at present, seems to suggest that we can still limit the rise to 1.5 degrees and avoid runaway climate change, but it's getting more difficult all the time. Biden's bill looks as though it's passing, which is good news for the climate although could have been better. Let's hope that the Congress elections in November and the Presidential in 2024 are good for the Democrats. Here the Tory contenders for PM seem worse than Boris, who at least paid lip service to the subject.
!.5 degrees is also now almost impossible. Even 2 degrees is extremely difficult and would require immediate and large scale action of the kind that appears to be politically unfeasible.
Disappointing - since quibbles on the detail aside the world’s response to Covid showed how we can act in our collective best interest in response to an emergency.
Necessity is the mother of invention has far more going for it than most chestnuts, so it must be with Climate Change that too many people still don't truly feel the necessity. They need their own house to catch fire and until it does will carry on with their soft or hard denial.
Hard denial being either it isn't happening or it's not caused by us. Soft denial being stuff like "technology will fix it" or "the models are iffy" or "ok it's likely happening but totally exaggerated" bla bla.
There's a rather good UK sci-fi film from the early 60s called 'The Day The Earth Caught Fire' set in London which features the temperature going through the roof (I won't spoil the reasons). Very well done and an excellent turn from Leo McKern.
Yes, the Daily Express print room features in it back when the Express was a decent paper.
Some of the science is a bit dubious and I'm NOT suggesting anything like that.
I'm merely arguing that in the absence of widespread air conditioning, those who can may well move north to a more comfortable existence in northern England and indeed Scotland and if I wanted a long-term investment, I'd buy up land and property on the northern Scottish coast and in the islands.
It's not easy to get to Scrabster or that coastline now as @Sunil_Prasannan will confirm but that could well change if there was a real expansion of tourism.
Yeah - the science is 'a little' iffy - but I can forgive it for the dialogue. And yes, the scenes in The Express are excellent. Especially the resigned 'All stop!' passing down 10 lines of foremen to the printing press and the big sign just saying 'IMPACT!' in the newsroom.
But it does come to mind when I wonder what happens if this changes much, much faster than we thought. Not necessarily out of control - but to a new unpleasant steady state. I can certainly imagine a new line of thinking about MP's working in parliament while the refurbishment is going on. Might suddenly seem like a *terribly* good idea to show the flag up in Aberdeen or Orkney...
I'd also be very wary of buying seaside properties, partly because increased sea level will affect a rather larger number in a given seaside town than today, when combined with e.g. onshore storms. This won't be obvious on a nice sunny day, though.
Friend of mine bought his retirement home in Emsworth a few years back. He took a very careful look at the contour maps and flood records.
A hill overlooking the sea does seem ever more attractive than 'beachside' does. Those attractive Miami beachfront condo's that allured in the 80s aren't looking quite so attractive now.
"American communists celebrate as they open a new chapter of their “think-tank” @CPIUSA in Chicago.
They fly the flags of China and the “Donetsk People’s Republic while also brandishing the Z sign that is used to voice support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
While my predictions, as the Stodge Saturday Patent has demonstrated, aren't worth any attention, I'll offer a thought based on recent experience.
In 50-75 years time, London will empty at the beginning of June as those who can seek solace from the 45c temperatures and humidity associated with the late 21st century British summer between the spring and autumn monsoon seasons.
The newly-refurbished London Euston station will host the regular 30-minute Maglev summer service to the Lake District having passengers disembarking at Oxenholme in little more than a hour. From there, families will decamp to their summer chalets near the lakes (or as near as is affordable). The ability to work independently from location, first established during the 2020 pandemic, will allow tens of thousands of Londoners to continue working far from the overheating capital.
For those without the means to escape the heat, the annual ordeal that is summer in London is the very definition of purgatory. On the hottest days, with temperatures nearing 50c, many head to vast "cool centres" where they can enjoy air conditioned relief before heading home in the later evening.
While the Lakes are one popular "retreat from the heat", the Pennines and Cheviots have also seen summer housing and the major development of the north Scottish coast around Torrisdale and the islands of Harris and Lewis have seen an explosion of summer homes for those from southern and eastern Britain desperate to seek cooler summer weather.
I think you understate the case. The way we're going it will be a runaway climate change. Although some, especially reputable researchers, know what we need to do to counter this, most of us are too gormless to act accordingly. For instance, getting an electric car does not justify an otherwise wanton life style.
That's my fear. That we are now in an accelerating loop of increasing warmth and volatility, which will feed off itself like a chain reaction. And perhaps it is already too late to stop this
Our presence in this universe appears to be the result of a long series of lucky circumstances.
These include: The fortuitous value of the fine structure constant, which, if it were a little difference would not allow stellar fusion to produce carbon. The existence of a rocky planet at just the right distance from a stable and long-lived star. The presence of just enough water on said planet to make a complex environment of coasts and shallows that would drive evolution along. The presence of an unusually large moon orbiting said planet to slosh all that water about and further drive evolution. A complex geology that, combined with the effects of life, has managed to remove CO2 from the Earth's atmosphere at a rate that has just about compensated for the gradual increase in the luminosity of the sun, this keeping the temperature of the Earth in a range compatible with life over the aeons.
And we are just about to screw it all up.
The Tories will blame the Scots. It was us, after all, who invented the industrial revolution*.
"American communists celebrate as they open a new chapter of their “think-tank” @CPIUSA in Chicago.
They fly the flags of China and the “Donetsk People’s Republic while also brandishing the Z sign that is used to voice support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
While my predictions, as the Stodge Saturday Patent has demonstrated, aren't worth any attention, I'll offer a thought based on recent experience.
In 50-75 years time, London will empty at the beginning of June as those who can seek solace from the 45c temperatures and humidity associated with the late 21st century British summer between the spring and autumn monsoon seasons.
The newly-refurbished London Euston station will host the regular 30-minute Maglev summer service to the Lake District having passengers disembarking at Oxenholme in little more than a hour. From there, families will decamp to their summer chalets near the lakes (or as near as is affordable). The ability to work independently from location, first established during the 2020 pandemic, will allow tens of thousands of Londoners to continue working far from the overheating capital.
For those without the means to escape the heat, the annual ordeal that is summer in London is the very definition of purgatory. On the hottest days, with temperatures nearing 50c, many head to vast "cool centres" where they can enjoy air conditioned relief before heading home in the later evening.
While the Lakes are one popular "retreat from the heat", the Pennines and Cheviots have also seen summer housing and the major development of the north Scottish coast around Torrisdale and the islands of Harris and Lewis have seen an explosion of summer homes for those from southern and eastern Britain desperate to seek cooler summer weather.
I think you understate the case. The way we're going it will be a runaway climate change. Although some, especially reputable researchers, know what we need to do to counter this, most of us are too gormless to act accordingly. For instance, getting an electric car does not justify an otherwise wanton life style.
That's my fear. That we are now in an accelerating loop of increasing warmth and volatility, which will feed off itself like a chain reaction. And perhaps it is already too late to stop this
Our presence in this universe appears to be the result of a long series of lucky circumstances.
These include: The fortuitous value of the fine structure constant, which, if it were a little difference would not allow stellar fusion to produce carbon. The existence of a rocky planet at just the right distance from a stable and long-lived star. The presence of just enough water on said planet to make a complex environment of coasts and shallows that would drive evolution along. The presence of an unusually large moon orbiting said planet to slosh all that water about and further drive evolution. A complex geology that, combined with the effects of life, has managed to remove CO2 from the Earth's atmosphere at a rate that has just about compensated for the gradual increase in the luminosity of the sun, this keeping the temperature of the Earth in a range compatible with life over the aeons.
And we are just about to screw it all up.
The Tories will blame the Scots. It was us, after all, who invented the industrial revolution*.
We're all gonna have to move to fucking Scotland. Ugh
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too
Adding violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing to your list of hobbies. Why am I not surprised?
We're all gonna have to move to fucking Scotland. Ugh
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too
Adding violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing to your list of hobbies. Why am I not surprised?
If done voluntarily no and no it would not be ethnic cleansing
"American communists celebrate as they open a new chapter of their “think-tank” @CPIUSA in Chicago.
They fly the flags of China and the “Donetsk People’s Republic while also brandishing the Z sign that is used to voice support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
We're all gonna have to move to fucking Scotland. Ugh
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too
Adding violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing to your list of hobbies. Why am I not surprised?
There's a rather good UK sci-fi film from the early 60s called 'The Day The Earth Caught Fire' set in London which features the temperature going through the roof (I won't spoil the reasons). Very well done and an excellent turn from Leo McKern.
Yes, the Daily Express print room features in it back when the Express was a decent paper.
Some of the science is a bit dubious and I'm NOT suggesting anything like that.
I'm merely arguing that in the absence of widespread air conditioning, those who can may well move north to a more comfortable existence in northern England and indeed Scotland and if I wanted a long-term investment, I'd buy up land and property on the northern Scottish coast and in the islands.
It's not easy to get to Scrabster or that coastline now as @Sunil_Prasannan will confirm but that could well change if there was a real expansion of tourism.
Yeah - the science is 'a little' iffy - but I can forgive it for the dialogue. And yes, the scenes in The Express are excellent. Especially the resigned 'All stop!' passing down 10 lines of foremen to the printing press and the big sign just saying 'IMPACT!' in the newsroom.
But it does come to mind when I wonder what happens if this changes much, much faster than we thought. Not necessarily out of control - but to a new unpleasant steady state. I can certainly imagine a new line of thinking about MP's working in parliament while the refurbishment is going on. Might suddenly seem like a *terribly* good idea to show the flag up in Aberdeen or Orkney...
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
Oh, he could just do a few more photo-op's 'showing the red card' to various people and he'd be happy enough. That's what politics is about really. When you think about it. A certain way.
One of the biggest strategic weaknesses for Scottish Tories is idleness. They have no purpose, no function, no policies and no prospect of power. The absolute apex of their ambitions would be propping up a Labour or Liberal Democrat first minister. Hardly stuff to motivate, focus and discipline the troops. The longer it goes since they last won an election, in the 1950s, the worse the problem becomes.
Without the compliant media they’d have been finished long ago. As we witness the break up of old media patterns there is a big worry for Ross & Co.
While my predictions, as the Stodge Saturday Patent has demonstrated, aren't worth any attention, I'll offer a thought based on recent experience.
In 50-75 years time, London will empty at the beginning of June as those who can seek solace from the 45c temperatures and humidity associated with the late 21st century British summer between the spring and autumn monsoon seasons.
The newly-refurbished London Euston station will host the regular 30-minute Maglev summer service to the Lake District having passengers disembarking at Oxenholme in little more than a hour. From there, families will decamp to their summer chalets near the lakes (or as near as is affordable). The ability to work independently from location, first established during the 2020 pandemic, will allow tens of thousands of Londoners to continue working far from the overheating capital.
For those without the means to escape the heat, the annual ordeal that is summer in London is the very definition of purgatory. On the hottest days, with temperatures nearing 50c, many head to vast "cool centres" where they can enjoy air conditioned relief before heading home in the later evening.
While the Lakes are one popular "retreat from the heat", the Pennines and Cheviots have also seen summer housing and the major development of the north Scottish coast around Torrisdale and the islands of Harris and Lewis have seen an explosion of summer homes for those from southern and eastern Britain desperate to seek cooler summer weather.
I think you understate the case. The way we're going it will be a runaway climate change. Although some, especially reputable researchers, know what we need to do to counter this, most of us are too gormless to act accordingly. For instance, getting an electric car does not justify an otherwise wanton life style.
That's my fear. That we are now in an accelerating loop of increasing warmth and volatility, which will feed off itself like a chain reaction. And perhaps it is already too late to stop this
The science, as we know it at present, seems to suggest that we can still limit the rise to 1.5 degrees and avoid runaway climate change, but it's getting more difficult all the time. Biden's bill looks as though it's passing, which is good news for the climate although could have been better. Let's hope that the Congress elections in November and the Presidential in 2024 are good for the Democrats. Here the Tory contenders for PM seem worse than Boris, who at least paid lip service to the subject.
!.5 degrees is also now almost impossible. Even 2 degrees is extremely difficult and would require immediate and large scale action of the kind that appears to be politically unfeasible.
I can't help being too much of an optimist. You're right politicians should take this seriously, I suppose they will only do so when we voters force them to,
While my predictions, as the Stodge Saturday Patent has demonstrated, aren't worth any attention, I'll offer a thought based on recent experience.
In 50-75 years time, London will empty at the beginning of June as those who can seek solace from the 45c temperatures and humidity associated with the late 21st century British summer between the spring and autumn monsoon seasons.
The newly-refurbished London Euston station will host the regular 30-minute Maglev summer service to the Lake District having passengers disembarking at Oxenholme in little more than a hour. From there, families will decamp to their summer chalets near the lakes (or as near as is affordable). The ability to work independently from location, first established during the 2020 pandemic, will allow tens of thousands of Londoners to continue working far from the overheating capital.
For those without the means to escape the heat, the annual ordeal that is summer in London is the very definition of purgatory. On the hottest days, with temperatures nearing 50c, many head to vast "cool centres" where they can enjoy air conditioned relief before heading home in the later evening.
While the Lakes are one popular "retreat from the heat", the Pennines and Cheviots have also seen summer housing and the major development of the north Scottish coast around Torrisdale and the islands of Harris and Lewis have seen an explosion of summer homes for those from southern and eastern Britain desperate to seek cooler summer weather.
I think you understate the case. The way we're going it will be a runaway climate change. Although some, especially reputable researchers, know what we need to do to counter this, most of us are too gormless to act accordingly. For instance, getting an electric car does not justify an otherwise wanton life style.
That's my fear. That we are now in an accelerating loop of increasing warmth and volatility, which will feed off itself like a chain reaction. And perhaps it is already too late to stop this
The science, as we know it at present, seems to suggest that we can still limit the rise to 1.5 degrees and avoid runaway climate change, but it's getting more difficult all the time. Biden's bill looks as though it's passing, which is good news for the climate although could have been better. Let's hope that the Congress elections in November and the Presidential in 2024 are good for the Democrats. Here the Tory contenders for PM seem worse than Boris, who at least paid lip service to the subject.
!.5 degrees is also now almost impossible. Even 2 degrees is extremely difficult and would require immediate and large scale action of the kind that appears to be politically unfeasible.
Disappointing - since quibbles on the detail aside the world’s response to Covid showed how we can act in our collective best interest in response to an emergency.
Necessity is the mother of invention has far more going for it than most chestnuts, so it must be with Climate Change that too many people still don't truly feel the necessity. They need their own house to catch fire and until it does will carry on with their soft or hard denial.
Hard denial being either it isn't happening or it's not caused by us. Soft denial being stuff like "technology will fix it" or "the models are iffy" or "ok it's likely happening but totally exaggerated" bla bla.
‘Technology will fix it’ is not ‘soft denial’. It is probably our best and maybe only hope
There is talk of Ukraine flying sorties over Kherson. If true that is very encouraging. One wonders how things would be if more aircraft had been provided sooner. The nuclear power plant at Enerhodar remains a big concern.
We're all gonna have to move to fucking Scotland. Ugh
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too
Adding violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing to your list of hobbies. Why am I not surprised?
Says the New Swede.
I do not advocate the mass infiltration of a Swedish political party and subsequent take over of the country by foreign fifth columnists. But then I’m not a Franco adherent or tank commander like FUDHY.
We're all gonna have to move to fucking Scotland. Ugh
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too
Adding violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing to your list of hobbies. Why am I not surprised?
Says the New Swede.
I do not advocate the mass infiltration of a Swedish political party and subsequent take over of the country by foreign fifth columnists. But then I’m not a Franco adherent or tank commander like FUDHY.
We're all gonna have to move to fucking Scotland. Ugh
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too
Adding violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing to your list of hobbies. Why am I not surprised?
Says the New Swede.
I do not advocate the mass infiltration of a Swedish political party and subsequent take over of the country by foreign fifth columnists. But then I’m not a Franco adherent or tank commander like FUDHY.
Scotland isn't a foreign country and the English aren't foreigners to Scots. As 55% of Scots confirmed in 2014 we are all one sovereign United Kingdom
Con 34% (no change) Lab 37% (no change) Lib Dem 12% (+1) Green 6% (no change)
In a series of "Best Prime Minister" head-to-heads, Starmer beats Johnson by 3, and Sunak by 4.
However he trails Truss by 1 point.
So even if Truss does fractionally better than Johnson v Starmer with Sunak doing a bit worse, a 1% Truss lead would be even less than the 2% lead May got in 2017.
So even if the Tories were largest party not only would they have lost their majority but not even have a majority with the DUP
This is not because the Rwandans are ahead of us in renewables, or all drive teslas. It is because they are dirt poor and the only acceptable climate plan is for them either to do the decent thing and die off, or remain dirt poor. Which is not terribly acceptable.
We're all gonna have to move to fucking Scotland. Ugh
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too
Adding violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing to your list of hobbies. Why am I not surprised?
Says the New Swede.
I do not advocate the mass infiltration of a Swedish political party and subsequent take over of the country by foreign fifth columnists. But then I’m not a Franco adherent or tank commander like FUDHY.
So you want to pull up the drawbridge?
Your New Brexit Revolutionary Party already did that.
Except you thought you were pulling up the drawbridge to stop folk moving to England. In reality, you stopped the English from moving to the rest of Europe. Hence your new-found interest in colonising Scotland.
There is talk of Ukraine flying sorties over Kherson. If true that is very encouraging. One wonders how things would be if more aircraft had been provided sooner. The nuclear power plant at Enerhodar remains a big concern.
There were reports from yesterday of the Ukraine air force did multiple sorties the other day, including one with multiple aircraft (I forget the number, I think it was six or eight). This is rather embarrassing for Russia, which should have got air superiority in a few days.
I doubt it's fully to do with aircraft supply; I think it's much more to do with Russian SAM systems - and the missiles - having been taken out. There are also rumours that Russian SAM sites have been taken out with American Anti-radiation missiles, despite the fact Ukrainian aircraft should not be able to fire them.
We're all gonna have to move to fucking Scotland. Ugh
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too
Adding violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing to your list of hobbies. Why am I not surprised?
Says the New Swede.
I do not advocate the mass infiltration of a Swedish political party and subsequent take over of the country by foreign fifth columnists. But then I’m not a Franco adherent or tank commander like FUDHY.
Scotland isn't a foreign country and the English aren't foreigners to Scots. As 55% of Scots confirmed in 2014 we are all one sovereign United Kingdom
That wasn’t on the ballot paper, and none of the Unionist campaigners argued that during the referendum. Quite the opposite: they argued that we would have a Union of Equals.
Scots did not vote for the abolition of their country and the mass plantation of English settlers until we were a minority in our own land.
If that is how you interpret the 2014 result you are an even bigger fool than you appear.
And wee Union Jacks on insulation. That’ll do the trick.
Does a Union Jack not give you a warm glow all of its own Stuart?
Only if decent accelerant is applied.
Jesting aside, I have a surprisingly high tolerance level for the Butcher’s Apron, for a despicable, seditious Jock. For example, it is liberally displayed on 2 of our cars. I gave up frowning about them after a few years. I even quite like them on occasion. When I drive like an arsehole fellow motorists just blame ‘engelsmannen’.
I've never liked the Union flag. It's not an ideological thing, I just think it's unattractive. I don't like the colour combination, it's too busy, and it's not even symmetric. It's just an ugly flag. Like our ugly, tuneless dirge of a national anthem. Why are our totems of nationhood so rubbish?
I agree our flag is so ugly. Like so much else poisonous in this country it is because of political correctness. When we absorbed Scotland and Ireland we had to pretend it was a partnership so we included their flags in our flag. So the beautiful simple English flag was corrupted. However it is well known so we seem to be stuck with it.
Nothing is forever. You English are sovereign and can choose independence whenever you like. We Scots are Untermenschen and do not share your privileges.
We're all gonna have to move to fucking Scotland. Ugh
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too
Adding violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing to your list of hobbies. Why am I not surprised?
Says the New Swede.
I do not advocate the mass infiltration of a Swedish political party and subsequent take over of the country by foreign fifth columnists. But then I’m not a Franco adherent or tank commander like FUDHY.
Scotland isn't a foreign country and the English aren't foreigners to Scots. As 55% of Scots confirmed in 2014 we are all one sovereign United Kingdom
That wasn’t on the ballot paper, and none of the Unionist campaigners argued that during the referendum. Quite the opposite: they argued that we would have a Union of Equals.
Scots did not vote for the abolition of their country and the mass plantation of English settlers until we were a minority in our own land.
If that is how you interpret the 2014 result you are an even bigger fool than you appear.
Scots voted to stay in the same sovereign country with England with freedom of movement to England and from England to Scotland.
If large numbers of English people decide to move to Scotland because of a cooler climate and lower cost of living they are free to do so entirely in accordance with the 2014 result
We're all gonna have to move to fucking Scotland. Ugh
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too
Adding violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing to your list of hobbies. Why am I not surprised?
Says the New Swede.
I do not advocate the mass infiltration of a Swedish political party and subsequent take over of the country by foreign fifth columnists. But then I’m not a Franco adherent or tank commander like FUDHY.
Scotland isn't a foreign country and the English aren't foreigners to Scots. As 55% of Scots confirmed in 2014 we are all one sovereign United Kingdom
That wasn’t on the ballot paper, and none of the Unionist campaigners argued that during the referendum. Quite the opposite: they argued that we would have a Union of Equals.
Scots did not vote for the abolition of their country and the mass plantation of English settlers until we were a minority in our own land.
If that is how you interpret the 2014 result you are an even bigger fool than you appear.
Your beloved Scotland (remind me where you live again?) voted to remain in the union when last asked. Good enough for me. Why do you care so much if you can’t even bring yourself to live in the country you love? You are like th3 classic pub ex pat droning on about how beautiful it is, yet never quite managing to actually want to move back.
As you say, intriguing thought. I may be being unkind to him, but I suspect my friend from Epping would have been in the honourable peace camp, that being the policy of a significant part of the Conservative party!
To be fair, I might well have been following the far left line, which would've meant I'd had to had to do a severe reverse ferret a few months later!
I'm less certain - @HYUFD would have lived in Churchill's constituency - he was MP for Epping from 1924 to 1945.
Boundary changes moved Churchill to the new Woodford seat in 1945 and Epping was won by Labour. The Conservatives re-captured it in 1950 but lost it again in 1964 when Stan Newens became MP. Newens lost in 1970 in a straight fight with a new Conservative candidate - one Norman Tebbit.
The Epping constituency was then abolished in 1974.
Epping constituency included Harlow until 1974 which has always been marginal and was also won by New Labour from 1997 to 2010.
However on the current Epping Forest constituency boundaries the Conservatives would have won Epping even in 1966 on a notional basis with a 1,330 majority
It's fascinating to see how constituencies have changed and developed. I live in East Ham which was created in 1997 - before that it was Newham North East whose most famous MP was Reg Prentice so the seat had a Conservative MP from 1977 to 1979.
Before that it was East Ham South which was created in 1918. At that election, a Coupon candidate beat a Unionist and Labour candidates but Labour won in 1922 by just under 4000 and the Liberals cut that to 988 in 1924. In 1931, the National Government took the seat which was the last time anyone other than Labour held the seat before Prentice's defection. The Conservative candidate won by 2,569 but was defeated by the previous sitting Labour MP in 1935 on a 13% swing.
Said MP was Alfred Barnes who was Minister of Transport in both Attlee Governments and retired before the 1955 election.
And wee Union Jacks on insulation. That’ll do the trick.
Does a Union Jack not give you a warm glow all of its own Stuart?
Only if decent accelerant is applied.
Jesting aside, I have a surprisingly high tolerance level for the Butcher’s Apron, for a despicable, seditious Jock. For example, it is liberally displayed on 2 of our cars. I gave up frowning about them after a few years. I even quite like them on occasion. When I drive like an arsehole fellow motorists just blame ‘engelsmannen’.
I've never liked the Union flag. It's not an ideological thing, I just think it's unattractive. I don't like the colour combination, it's too busy, and it's not even symmetric. It's just an ugly flag. Like our ugly, tuneless dirge of a national anthem. Why are our totems of nationhood so rubbish?
I agree our flag is so ugly. Like so much else poisonous in this country it is because of political correctness. When we absorbed Scotland and Ireland we had to pretend it was a partnership so we included their flags in our flag. So the beautiful simple English flag was corrupted. However it is well known so we seem to be stuck with it.
Nothing is forever. You English are sovereign and can choose independence whenever you like. We Scots are Untermenschen and do not share your privileges.
You (I.e. the people of Scotland) had the choice in 2014. They chose 'no.'
That you can't accept the result is sad, but also your problem, not the Natsy fantasy you have just peddled.
We're all gonna have to move to fucking Scotland. Ugh
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too
Adding violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing to your list of hobbies. Why am I not surprised?
Says the New Swede.
I do not advocate the mass infiltration of a Swedish political party and subsequent take over of the country by foreign fifth columnists. But then I’m not a Franco adherent or tank commander like FUDHY.
Scotland isn't a foreign country and the English aren't foreigners to Scots. As 55% of Scots confirmed in 2014 we are all one sovereign United Kingdom
That wasn’t on the ballot paper, and none of the Unionist campaigners argued that during the referendum. Quite the opposite: they argued that we would have a Union of Equals.
Scots did not vote for the abolition of their country and the mass plantation of English settlers until we were a minority in our own land.
If that is how you interpret the 2014 result you are an even bigger fool than you appear.
Scots voted to stay in the same sovereign country with England with freedom of movement to England and from England to Scotland.
If large numbers of English people decide to move to Scotland because of a cooler climate and lower cost of living they are free to do so entirely in accordance with the 2014 result
The UK is not a country, it is a union of three countries and part of a fourth one.
You wrote: “If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too.”
You are not a benevolent bystander. You are an agitator actively working against the interests of the Scottish nation. To such an extent that you want to see us eradicated.
Churchill had been the sponsor and architect of the Norway Campaign which effectively brought down the government, even though it actually won the confidence vote. Churchill took over as Prime Minister of a coalition government; Chamberlain remained leader of the Conservative Party.
The other candidate for Prime Minister had been Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, who favoured a negotiated peace. This was no mere pipedream as Hitler had reached out via Mussolini to offer terms.
The new Prime Minister and coalition government were unpopular on Conservative benches. Obviously, this was to change with time and events.
Chamberlain was ill and would have resigned sooner or later. The revisionist character assassination of Halifax comes with little or no evidence. I suspect he'd have been as resistant to German peace feelers as was Churchill. There was no way any British Government was going to accept German hegemony over the Continent as a done deal.
The window of opportunity for the Germans to make a successful landing was probably mid-July - growing RAF strength, the rapid re-building of mobile reserves lost at Dunkirk, the re-grouping of naval forces and German unwillingness to risk an amphibious landing meant Britain was safe thereafter.
The famous Sandhurst exercise modelling a German invasion in mid September shows such an attempt would likely have ended in disastrous failure. That in itself might have foreshortened the war with Hitler being ousted by the Army but we've no way of knowing that.
As the old saying goes - the Americans provided the money, the Russians provided the blood and the British provided the time - all helped by Hitler's stupidity which ended with him going to war with the two growing industrial powers of the day, fighting a multi-front war and ending with Germany being physically conquered and divided.
My favourite Sealion story:
An Austrian mountain brigade was tasked with climbing the Kent cliffs.
They went to the French coast to practice their swimming and boating.
The first day went okay but on the second they went at a different time and the tide was out.
They were utterly baffled that the sea could move and even more so when a naval officer told them that the 'man in the moon' had moved the sea.
Don't know how true it was.
There was a story from Dieppe. About the only thing that went 'well' with that adventure was the attempt to take out one of the German big-gun batteries. The Germans had rolled barbed wire down the cliffs below one of the batteries, but some of the commandos used the wire as impromptu climbing ropes, helping them up the cliffs. Elsewhere, where the barbed wire had been properly laid, it was a massive problem for the attackers.
As Tom Wolfe once said: something along the lines of, a novelist need not employ their imagination to come up with strange stuff they just needed to go out into America.
“Andrew Bailey has missed a vocation in journalism. The Governor of the Bank of England has all the right catastrophist instincts, and knows how to generate terrifying headlines....”
While my predictions, as the Stodge Saturday Patent has demonstrated, aren't worth any attention, I'll offer a thought based on recent experience.
In 50-75 years time, London will empty at the beginning of June as those who can seek solace from the 45c temperatures and humidity associated with the late 21st century British summer between the spring and autumn monsoon seasons.
The newly-refurbished London Euston station will host the regular 30-minute Maglev summer service to the Lake District having passengers disembarking at Oxenholme in little more than a hour. From there, families will decamp to their summer chalets near the lakes (or as near as is affordable). The ability to work independently from location, first established during the 2020 pandemic, will allow tens of thousands of Londoners to continue working far from the overheating capital.
For those without the means to escape the heat, the annual ordeal that is summer in London is the very definition of purgatory. On the hottest days, with temperatures nearing 50c, many head to vast "cool centres" where they can enjoy air conditioned relief before heading home in the later evening.
While the Lakes are one popular "retreat from the heat", the Pennines and Cheviots have also seen summer housing and the major development of the north Scottish coast around Torrisdale and the islands of Harris and Lewis have seen an explosion of summer homes for those from southern and eastern Britain desperate to seek cooler summer weather.
I think you understate the case. The way we're going it will be a runaway climate change. Although some, especially reputable researchers, know what we need to do to counter this, most of us are too gormless to act accordingly. For instance, getting an electric car does not justify an otherwise wanton life style.
That's my fear. That we are now in an accelerating loop of increasing warmth and volatility, which will feed off itself like a chain reaction. And perhaps it is already too late to stop this
Our presence in this universe appears to be the result of a long series of lucky circumstances.
These include: The fortuitous value of the fine structure constant, which, if it were a little difference would not allow stellar fusion to produce carbon. The existence of a rocky planet at just the right distance from a stable and long-lived star. The presence of just enough water on said planet to make a complex environment of coasts and shallows that would drive evolution along. The presence of an unusually large moon orbiting said planet to slosh all that water about and further drive evolution. A complex geology that, combined with the effects of life, has managed to remove CO2 from the Earth's atmosphere at a rate that has just about compensated for the gradual increase in the luminosity of the sun, this keeping the temperature of the Earth in a range compatible with life over the aeons.
And we are just about to screw it all up.
Not at all. Whilst you are right about the serendipity element of our existence, you vastly overestimate the significance of our current civilisation and the nature of the changes we are facing. Presenting these current very minor adjustments in our environment with the vast changes that have occurred over the last few million years (one of which probably reduced the human population to less than 10,000 individuals) really shows a fundamental disconnect with the reality of our existence on planet earth.
The changes of a few degrees - whilst undoubtedly bad for our current comfortable civilisation - are bugger all in both scale and rate of change compared to the natural changes that have occurred even in fairly recent times.
This is not to say we shouldn't try to mitigate such changes, nor that they won't be very bad for our current lifestyles but your hyperbolic comment shows a stunning lack of historical and prehistorical perspective.
And wee Union Jacks on insulation. That’ll do the trick.
Does a Union Jack not give you a warm glow all of its own Stuart?
Only if decent accelerant is applied.
Jesting aside, I have a surprisingly high tolerance level for the Butcher’s Apron, for a despicable, seditious Jock. For example, it is liberally displayed on 2 of our cars. I gave up frowning about them after a few years. I even quite like them on occasion. When I drive like an arsehole fellow motorists just blame ‘engelsmannen’.
I've never liked the Union flag. It's not an ideological thing, I just think it's unattractive. I don't like the colour combination, it's too busy, and it's not even symmetric. It's just an ugly flag. Like our ugly, tuneless dirge of a national anthem. Why are our totems of nationhood so rubbish?
I agree our flag is so ugly. Like so much else poisonous in this country it is because of political correctness. When we absorbed Scotland and Ireland we had to pretend it was a partnership so we included their flags in our flag. So the beautiful simple English flag was corrupted. However it is well known so we seem to be stuck with it.
Nothing is forever. You English are sovereign and can choose independence whenever you like. We Scots are Untermenschen and do not share your privileges.
You (I.e. the people of Scotland) had the choice in 2014. They chose 'no.'
That you can't accept the result is sad, but also your problem, not the Natsy fantasy you have just peddled.
I did accept the result, and congratulated my Unionist friends and family on their victory. (Funnily enough I never hear a peep from them about their finest hour these days: they’re all deeply ashamed.)
Then The Vow lies started to unravel, culminating in Brexit. The SNP and Greens presented the electorate with our proposals to counter London’s breach of faith, and the electorate agreed with us.
I respect the will of the electorate: they voted for a fresh referendum and a fresh referendum they will get.
We're all gonna have to move to fucking Scotland. Ugh
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too
Adding violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing to your list of hobbies. Why am I not surprised?
Says the New Swede.
I do not advocate the mass infiltration of a Swedish political party and subsequent take over of the country by foreign fifth columnists. But then I’m not a Franco adherent or tank commander like FUDHY.
Scotland isn't a foreign country and the English aren't foreigners to Scots. As 55% of Scots confirmed in 2014 we are all one sovereign United Kingdom
That wasn’t on the ballot paper, and none of the Unionist campaigners argued that during the referendum. Quite the opposite: they argued that we would have a Union of Equals.
Scots did not vote for the abolition of their country and the mass plantation of English settlers until we were a minority in our own land.
If that is how you interpret the 2014 result you are an even bigger fool than you appear.
Scots voted to stay in the same sovereign country with England with freedom of movement to England and from England to Scotland.
If large numbers of English people decide to move to Scotland because of a cooler climate and lower cost of living they are free to do so entirely in accordance with the 2014 result
The UK is not a country, it is a union of three countries and part of a fourth one.
You wrote: “If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too.”
You are not a benevolent bystander. You are an agitator actively working against the interests of the Scottish nation. To such an extent that you want to see us eradicated.
How do you define a country? Pretty much every definition would work for the U.K.
I see that Sunak has said it's wrong for Truss to cut his National Insurance tax hike, so people who work many of whom are seeing wages go up less than inflation can keep more of their own money, as he thinks we should do more to support Triple Locked pensioners instead.
Sunak represents everything that is wrong with the modern Conservative Party. If he wins, the Party deserves to lose.
Add that to his green belt nimbyism when what we really need is houses, houses, houses.
We do not need houses, houses, houses in the already overheated South-East, nor do we need more high-rise flats in London as Rishi proposes. We need to spread prosperity throughout the country, to make levelling up more than a slogan, and to build new homes and even new towns with new employers in the less affluent parts of the country.
You do need houses, houses, houses all over the country including the South East. The South East like the entire country has seen its population dramatically rise in a generation thanks to longer life expectancies and net immigration. That should not be be a bad thing but housing hasn't kept up so many people can't get a home of their own.
Unless you want to start major net emigration we need more housing for the people already living here to get a home of their own. North, South, East and West.
If you want to have any immigration at all, which is a very good thing in my eyes to have I don't know about you, then we need even more housing just to stand still let alone sort out the backlog of missing homes.
Net migration is a red herring, whether up or down. Internal migration should be encouraged: that's the point. It is also what happened during the industrial revolution, and after the war with new towns being built. There's nothing new here. Move people, and jobs, and economic activity and prosperity around the country.
Internal migration is a herring. Homes, homes, homes are needed because the population of the country has risen by about 10 million people in a generation and is still rising fast and the housing supply hasn't kept up. You can't solve that with a few soothing words about spreading prosperity, we need a massive and sustained increase in housing supply to address the shortage and to then stand still with rising population levels.
We also need tighter immigration controls to reduce demand. The biggest shortage of affordable housing is in London by far that is where most new property needs to be built, through high rise in particular. In the North East or most of the West Midlands there is plenty of affordable housing already
Tighter immigration controls won't reduce demand, just slow the increase in demand. Demand will still be there, and rising, unless we have net emigration surpassing the rate of native population growth to reduce demand.
Houses are needed either way. There is not plenty of affordable housing anywhere, there are housing shortages across the entire country which is why new homes are being built in the North and Midlands as they're needed just as they are in the South too.
Native population growth is already below replacement level, the UK birth rate is only 1.65 per woman. It is rising immigration that is pushing up demand.
There is not the same need for affordable housing in the North and Midlands, Wales, NI and Scotland, average house prices there are less than half the price of those in the South. There is also in turn not the same need for new affordable housing in the South as in London, house prices in London are a 1/3 higher than those in the South on average
Categorically wrong, native population is growing.
10.79 births/1000 population and 9.07 births/1000 population = growing population even without immigration.
House prices to earnings ratios are too high in the entire country.
Once you take account of native population deaths our population is declining without immigration.
Once you exclude the distortion of London from house price to earnings ratios North of Watford there is not really a problem
Not true.
10.79 births > 9.07 deaths.
If births > deaths then population grows.
For population to fall then deaths must be greater than births.
House price ratios in the North now are higher than they were anywhere in the entire country, including London, a generation ago.
Deaths outnumbered births last year actually in the UK.
Property prices in London were cheap a generation ago before it became a global city so that means little
Those figures are out of date and from two years ago, at the height of the pandemic. Births exceed deaths now and normally.
Property prices were normal a generation ago, that is what we should be getting back to now, by building enough houses. Your utter obsession with London doesn't answer the fact that prices are too high in the entire country and a crash relative to earnings is needed.
Do you have the raw numbers for of births and deaths in the UK in 2021? I've searched and I can't find them.
(And UK TFR from 2019 was 1.65, so absent immigration, the medium term outlook is for falling population.)
So births exceed deaths by almost 40,000 in 2021 even with the pandemic going on and the pandemic deaths recorded especially in January 2021.
Longer term we may have falling population without immigration due to TFR but people have been saying that for many decades and only in 2 years in about half a century have we had births be less than deaths - and one of those was only narrowly and thanks to the pandemic.
Thanks for that:
It's fascinating, because one would expect that net immigration would cause people to be added to the population, without a corresponding birth, and therefore that it should in the medium term add to deaths relatives to births.
At the same time, if I look at my cohort from school, 20-25% of people haven't had kids, and there are very few families I know with more than two children. (A very good frum friend has four... but he's the exception.)
As I'm 47, the women in that cohort have had all the kids they're going to have, so a TFR of 1.65 feels about right.
I'd also caution that the UK population pyramid...
... hints at trouble ahead. There are a lot more 25 to 34 year olds than there are 15 to 24 year olds. That suggests that there are fewer mothers to have babies in the next couple of years than in the recent past.
And wee Union Jacks on insulation. That’ll do the trick.
Does a Union Jack not give you a warm glow all of its own Stuart?
Only if decent accelerant is applied.
Jesting aside, I have a surprisingly high tolerance level for the Butcher’s Apron, for a despicable, seditious Jock. For example, it is liberally displayed on 2 of our cars. I gave up frowning about them after a few years. I even quite like them on occasion. When I drive like an arsehole fellow motorists just blame ‘engelsmannen’.
I've never liked the Union flag. It's not an ideological thing, I just think it's unattractive. I don't like the colour combination, it's too busy, and it's not even symmetric. It's just an ugly flag. Like our ugly, tuneless dirge of a national anthem. Why are our totems of nationhood so rubbish?
I agree our flag is so ugly. Like so much else poisonous in this country it is because of political correctness. When we absorbed Scotland and Ireland we had to pretend it was a partnership so we included their flags in our flag. So the beautiful simple English flag was corrupted. However it is well known so we seem to be stuck with it.
Nothing is forever. You English are sovereign and can choose independence whenever you like. We Scots are Untermenschen and do not share your privileges.
You (I.e. the people of Scotland) had the choice in 2014. They chose 'no.'
That you can't accept the result is sad, but also your problem, not the Natsy fantasy you have just peddled.
I did accept the result, and congratulated my Unionist friends and family on their victory. (Funnily enough I never hear a peep from them about their finest hour these days: they’re all deeply ashamed.)
Then The Vow lies started to unravel, culminating in Brexit. The SNP and Greens presented the electorate with our proposals to counter London’s breach of faith, and the electorate agreed with us.
I respect the will of the electorate: they voted for a fresh referendum and a fresh referendum they will get.
While my predictions, as the Stodge Saturday Patent has demonstrated, aren't worth any attention, I'll offer a thought based on recent experience.
In 50-75 years time, London will empty at the beginning of June as those who can seek solace from the 45c temperatures and humidity associated with the late 21st century British summer between the spring and autumn monsoon seasons.
The newly-refurbished London Euston station will host the regular 30-minute Maglev summer service to the Lake District having passengers disembarking at Oxenholme in little more than a hour. From there, families will decamp to their summer chalets near the lakes (or as near as is affordable). The ability to work independently from location, first established during the 2020 pandemic, will allow tens of thousands of Londoners to continue working far from the overheating capital.
For those without the means to escape the heat, the annual ordeal that is summer in London is the very definition of purgatory. On the hottest days, with temperatures nearing 50c, many head to vast "cool centres" where they can enjoy air conditioned relief before heading home in the later evening.
While the Lakes are one popular "retreat from the heat", the Pennines and Cheviots have also seen summer housing and the major development of the north Scottish coast around Torrisdale and the islands of Harris and Lewis have seen an explosion of summer homes for those from southern and eastern Britain desperate to seek cooler summer weather.
I think you understate the case. The way we're going it will be a runaway climate change. Although some, especially reputable researchers, know what we need to do to counter this, most of us are too gormless to act accordingly. For instance, getting an electric car does not justify an otherwise wanton life style.
That's my fear. That we are now in an accelerating loop of increasing warmth and volatility, which will feed off itself like a chain reaction. And perhaps it is already too late to stop this
Our presence in this universe appears to be the result of a long series of lucky circumstances.
These include: The fortuitous value of the fine structure constant, which, if it were a little difference would not allow stellar fusion to produce carbon. The existence of a rocky planet at just the right distance from a stable and long-lived star. The presence of just enough water on said planet to make a complex environment of coasts and shallows that would drive evolution along. The presence of an unusually large moon orbiting said planet to slosh all that water about and further drive evolution. A complex geology that, combined with the effects of life, has managed to remove CO2 from the Earth's atmosphere at a rate that has just about compensated for the gradual increase in the luminosity of the sun, this keeping the temperature of the Earth in a range compatible with life over the aeons.
And we are just about to screw it all up.
Not at all. Whilst you are right about the serendipity element of our existence, you vastly overestimate the significance of our current civilisation and the nature of the changes we are facing. Presenting these current very minor adjustments in our environment with the vast changes that have occurred over the last few million years (one of which probably reduced the human population to less than 10,000 individuals) really shows a fundamental disconnect with the reality of our existence on planet earth.
The changes of a few degrees - whilst undoubtedly bad for our current comfortable civilisation - are bugger all in both scale and rate of change compared to the natural changes that have occurred even in fairly recent times.
This is not to say we shouldn't try to mitigate such changes, nor that they won't be very bad for our current lifestyles but your hyperbolic comment shows a stunning lack of historical and prehistorical perspective.
Not really, as your parenthesis "(one of which probably reduced the human population to less than 10,000 individuals)" accidentally reveals. What is the point of saying This is nothing, we've had snowball earth and ice free earth and oxygen levels of 31%, this is a mere pin prick, when any one of those three sets of conditions would leave mankind wholly or mainly, stone dead? What has the long view got to do with us, when we have only been in the picture for a couple of minutes relatively speaking?
It's like warning a population of tadpoles in an April puddle that if it doesn't rain in the next week their puddle will dry out and they will all die: not much consolation for them to know that rainfall usually averages out in the course of a year and their puddle was virtually a pond back in January.
While my predictions, as the Stodge Saturday Patent has demonstrated, aren't worth any attention, I'll offer a thought based on recent experience.
In 50-75 years time, London will empty at the beginning of June as those who can seek solace from the 45c temperatures and humidity associated with the late 21st century British summer between the spring and autumn monsoon seasons.
The newly-refurbished London Euston station will host the regular 30-minute Maglev summer service to the Lake District having passengers disembarking at Oxenholme in little more than a hour. From there, families will decamp to their summer chalets near the lakes (or as near as is affordable). The ability to work independently from location, first established during the 2020 pandemic, will allow tens of thousands of Londoners to continue working far from the overheating capital.
For those without the means to escape the heat, the annual ordeal that is summer in London is the very definition of purgatory. On the hottest days, with temperatures nearing 50c, many head to vast "cool centres" where they can enjoy air conditioned relief before heading home in the later evening.
While the Lakes are one popular "retreat from the heat", the Pennines and Cheviots have also seen summer housing and the major development of the north Scottish coast around Torrisdale and the islands of Harris and Lewis have seen an explosion of summer homes for those from southern and eastern Britain desperate to seek cooler summer weather.
I think you understate the case. The way we're going it will be a runaway climate change. Although some, especially reputable researchers, know what we need to do to counter this, most of us are too gormless to act accordingly. For instance, getting an electric car does not justify an otherwise wanton life style.
Telling people what sort of lifestyles they ought to be living isn't acceptable.
Like banning smoking indoors? Or disallowing (ocassionally) Rochdale taxi drivers from indulging in the statutory rape of minors?
While my predictions, as the Stodge Saturday Patent has demonstrated, aren't worth any attention, I'll offer a thought based on recent experience.
In 50-75 years time, London will empty at the beginning of June as those who can seek solace from the 45c temperatures and humidity associated with the late 21st century British summer between the spring and autumn monsoon seasons.
The newly-refurbished London Euston station will host the regular 30-minute Maglev summer service to the Lake District having passengers disembarking at Oxenholme in little more than a hour. From there, families will decamp to their summer chalets near the lakes (or as near as is affordable). The ability to work independently from location, first established during the 2020 pandemic, will allow tens of thousands of Londoners to continue working far from the overheating capital.
For those without the means to escape the heat, the annual ordeal that is summer in London is the very definition of purgatory. On the hottest days, with temperatures nearing 50c, many head to vast "cool centres" where they can enjoy air conditioned relief before heading home in the later evening.
While the Lakes are one popular "retreat from the heat", the Pennines and Cheviots have also seen summer housing and the major development of the north Scottish coast around Torrisdale and the islands of Harris and Lewis have seen an explosion of summer homes for those from southern and eastern Britain desperate to seek cooler summer weather.
I think you understate the case. The way we're going it will be a runaway climate change. Although some, especially reputable researchers, know what we need to do to counter this, most of us are too gormless to act accordingly. For instance, getting an electric car does not justify an otherwise wanton life style.
Telling people what sort of lifestyles they ought to be living isn't acceptable.
That's not quite true, surely?
If your lifestyle involves murdering and eating people, then society probably has a right to interfere.
The question, surely, is about negative externalities. Does your lifestyle generate negative externalities that require the state to step in?
And while the bar needs to be set sufficiently high, there does need to be one.
So, if I like to smoke kippers in my backyard, that's OK, right? But what if I do it 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, such that my neighbours cannot hang clothes out to dry or use their gardens without coughing?
Con 34% (no change) Lab 37% (no change) Lib Dem 12% (+1) Green 6% (no change)
In a series of "Best Prime Minister" head-to-heads, Starmer beats Johnson by 3, and Sunak by 4.
However he trails Truss by 1 point.
That is truly appalling.
Starmer is a dud.
Yes overturning a 25 point lead is surely crap
Against an Oaf. Big deal.
When Labour face a decent opponent, ie Nicola Sturgeon, you flounder. The SNP have a 24 point lead over Labour.
Getting beaten by Truss is just gobsmackingly shite. Truly, utterly appalling. The Labour leader ought to be knocking any named Con leader out of the park by this stage in proceedings.
We're all gonna have to move to fucking Scotland. Ugh
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too
Adding violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing to your list of hobbies. Why am I not surprised?
Says the New Swede.
I do not advocate the mass infiltration of a Swedish political party and subsequent take over of the country by foreign fifth columnists. But then I’m not a Franco adherent or tank commander like FUDHY.
Scotland isn't a foreign country and the English aren't foreigners to Scots. As 55% of Scots confirmed in 2014 we are all one sovereign United Kingdom
That wasn’t on the ballot paper, and none of the Unionist campaigners argued that during the referendum. Quite the opposite: they argued that we would have a Union of Equals.
Scots did not vote for the abolition of their country and the mass plantation of English settlers until we were a minority in our own land.
If that is how you interpret the 2014 result you are an even bigger fool than you appear.
Scots voted to stay in the same sovereign country with England with freedom of movement to England and from England to Scotland.
If large numbers of English people decide to move to Scotland because of a cooler climate and lower cost of living they are free to do so entirely in accordance with the 2014 result
The UK is not a country, it is a union of three countries and part of a fourth one.
You wrote: “If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too.”
You are not a benevolent bystander. You are an agitator actively working against the interests of the Scottish nation. To such an extent that you want to see us eradicated.
How do you define a country? Pretty much every definition would work for the U.K.
I see that Sunak has said it's wrong for Truss to cut his National Insurance tax hike, so people who work many of whom are seeing wages go up less than inflation can keep more of their own money, as he thinks we should do more to support Triple Locked pensioners instead.
Sunak represents everything that is wrong with the modern Conservative Party. If he wins, the Party deserves to lose.
Add that to his green belt nimbyism when what we really need is houses, houses, houses.
We do not need houses, houses, houses in the already overheated South-East, nor do we need more high-rise flats in London as Rishi proposes. We need to spread prosperity throughout the country, to make levelling up more than a slogan, and to build new homes and even new towns with new employers in the less affluent parts of the country.
You do need houses, houses, houses all over the country including the South East. The South East like the entire country has seen its population dramatically rise in a generation thanks to longer life expectancies and net immigration. That should not be be a bad thing but housing hasn't kept up so many people can't get a home of their own.
Unless you want to start major net emigration we need more housing for the people already living here to get a home of their own. North, South, East and West.
If you want to have any immigration at all, which is a very good thing in my eyes to have I don't know about you, then we need even more housing just to stand still let alone sort out the backlog of missing homes.
Net migration is a red herring, whether up or down. Internal migration should be encouraged: that's the point. It is also what happened during the industrial revolution, and after the war with new towns being built. There's nothing new here. Move people, and jobs, and economic activity and prosperity around the country.
Internal migration is a herring. Homes, homes, homes are needed because the population of the country has risen by about 10 million people in a generation and is still rising fast and the housing supply hasn't kept up. You can't solve that with a few soothing words about spreading prosperity, we need a massive and sustained increase in housing supply to address the shortage and to then stand still with rising population levels.
We also need tighter immigration controls to reduce demand. The biggest shortage of affordable housing is in London by far that is where most new property needs to be built, through high rise in particular. In the North East or most of the West Midlands there is plenty of affordable housing already
Tighter immigration controls won't reduce demand, just slow the increase in demand. Demand will still be there, and rising, unless we have net emigration surpassing the rate of native population growth to reduce demand.
Houses are needed either way. There is not plenty of affordable housing anywhere, there are housing shortages across the entire country which is why new homes are being built in the North and Midlands as they're needed just as they are in the South too.
Native population growth is already below replacement level, the UK birth rate is only 1.65 per woman. It is rising immigration that is pushing up demand.
There is not the same need for affordable housing in the North and Midlands, Wales, NI and Scotland, average house prices there are less than half the price of those in the South. There is also in turn not the same need for new affordable housing in the South as in London, house prices in London are a 1/3 higher than those in the South on average
Categorically wrong, native population is growing.
10.79 births/1000 population and 9.07 births/1000 population = growing population even without immigration.
House prices to earnings ratios are too high in the entire country.
Once you take account of native population deaths our population is declining without immigration.
Once you exclude the distortion of London from house price to earnings ratios North of Watford there is not really a problem
Not true.
10.79 births > 9.07 deaths.
If births > deaths then population grows.
For population to fall then deaths must be greater than births.
House price ratios in the North now are higher than they were anywhere in the entire country, including London, a generation ago.
Deaths outnumbered births last year actually in the UK.
Property prices in London were cheap a generation ago before it became a global city so that means little
Those figures are out of date and from two years ago, at the height of the pandemic. Births exceed deaths now and normally.
Property prices were normal a generation ago, that is what we should be getting back to now, by building enough houses. Your utter obsession with London doesn't answer the fact that prices are too high in the entire country and a crash relative to earnings is needed.
Do you have the raw numbers for of births and deaths in the UK in 2021? I've searched and I can't find them.
(And UK TFR from 2019 was 1.65, so absent immigration, the medium term outlook is for falling population.)
So births exceed deaths by almost 40,000 in 2021 even with the pandemic going on and the pandemic deaths recorded especially in January 2021.
Longer term we may have falling population without immigration due to TFR but people have been saying that for many decades and only in 2 years in about half a century have we had births be less than deaths - and one of those was only narrowly and thanks to the pandemic.
Thanks for that:
It's fascinating, because one would expect that net immigration would cause people to be added to the population, without a corresponding birth, and therefore that it should in the medium term add to deaths relatives to births.
At the same time, if I look at my cohort from school, 20-25% of people haven't had kids, and there are very few families I know with more than two children. (A very good frum friend has four... but he's the exception.)
As I'm 47, the women in that cohort have had all the kids they're going to have, so a TFR of 1.65 feels about right.
I'd also caution that the UK population pyramid...
... hints at trouble ahead. There are a lot more 25 to 34 year olds than there are 15 to 24 year olds. That suggests that there are fewer mothers to have babies in the next couple of years than in the recent past.
Over 50% of the increase in UK population and therefore housing demand is accounted for by immigration. The fact that deaths outnumbered births in 2020 even accounting for the pandemic could well be as you suggest the sign of things to come.
In which case we do not need to concrete all over the countryside with new housing. Especially if we control immigration more tightly
And wee Union Jacks on insulation. That’ll do the trick.
Does a Union Jack not give you a warm glow all of its own Stuart?
Only if decent accelerant is applied.
Jesting aside, I have a surprisingly high tolerance level for the Butcher’s Apron, for a despicable, seditious Jock. For example, it is liberally displayed on 2 of our cars. I gave up frowning about them after a few years. I even quite like them on occasion. When I drive like an arsehole fellow motorists just blame ‘engelsmannen’.
I've never liked the Union flag. It's not an ideological thing, I just think it's unattractive. I don't like the colour combination, it's too busy, and it's not even symmetric. It's just an ugly flag. Like our ugly, tuneless dirge of a national anthem. Why are our totems of nationhood so rubbish?
I agree our flag is so ugly. Like so much else poisonous in this country it is because of political correctness. When we absorbed Scotland and Ireland we had to pretend it was a partnership so we included their flags in our flag. So the beautiful simple English flag was corrupted. However it is well known so we seem to be stuck with it.
Nothing is forever. You English are sovereign and can choose independence whenever you like. We Scots are Untermenschen and do not share your privileges.
You (I.e. the people of Scotland) had the choice in 2014. They chose 'no.'
That you can't accept the result is sad, but also your problem, not the Natsy fantasy you have just peddled.
I did accept the result, and congratulated my Unionist friends and family on their victory. (Funnily enough I never hear a peep from them about their finest hour these days: they’re all deeply ashamed.)
Then The Vow lies started to unravel, culminating in Brexit. The SNP and Greens presented the electorate with our proposals to counter London’s breach of faith, and the electorate agreed with us.
I respect the will of the electorate: they voted for a fresh referendum and a fresh referendum they will get.
"Funnily enough I never hear a peep from them about their finest hour these days: they’re all deeply ashamed."
I see that Sunak has said it's wrong for Truss to cut his National Insurance tax hike, so people who work many of whom are seeing wages go up less than inflation can keep more of their own money, as he thinks we should do more to support Triple Locked pensioners instead.
Sunak represents everything that is wrong with the modern Conservative Party. If he wins, the Party deserves to lose.
Add that to his green belt nimbyism when what we really need is houses, houses, houses.
We do not need houses, houses, houses in the already overheated South-East, nor do we need more high-rise flats in London as Rishi proposes. We need to spread prosperity throughout the country, to make levelling up more than a slogan, and to build new homes and even new towns with new employers in the less affluent parts of the country.
You do need houses, houses, houses all over the country including the South East. The South East like the entire country has seen its population dramatically rise in a generation thanks to longer life expectancies and net immigration. That should not be be a bad thing but housing hasn't kept up so many people can't get a home of their own.
Unless you want to start major net emigration we need more housing for the people already living here to get a home of their own. North, South, East and West.
If you want to have any immigration at all, which is a very good thing in my eyes to have I don't know about you, then we need even more housing just to stand still let alone sort out the backlog of missing homes.
Net migration is a red herring, whether up or down. Internal migration should be encouraged: that's the point. It is also what happened during the industrial revolution, and after the war with new towns being built. There's nothing new here. Move people, and jobs, and economic activity and prosperity around the country.
Internal migration is a herring. Homes, homes, homes are needed because the population of the country has risen by about 10 million people in a generation and is still rising fast and the housing supply hasn't kept up. You can't solve that with a few soothing words about spreading prosperity, we need a massive and sustained increase in housing supply to address the shortage and to then stand still with rising population levels.
We also need tighter immigration controls to reduce demand. The biggest shortage of affordable housing is in London by far that is where most new property needs to be built, through high rise in particular. In the North East or most of the West Midlands there is plenty of affordable housing already
Tighter immigration controls won't reduce demand, just slow the increase in demand. Demand will still be there, and rising, unless we have net emigration surpassing the rate of native population growth to reduce demand.
Houses are needed either way. There is not plenty of affordable housing anywhere, there are housing shortages across the entire country which is why new homes are being built in the North and Midlands as they're needed just as they are in the South too.
Native population growth is already below replacement level, the UK birth rate is only 1.65 per woman. It is rising immigration that is pushing up demand.
There is not the same need for affordable housing in the North and Midlands, Wales, NI and Scotland, average house prices there are less than half the price of those in the South. There is also in turn not the same need for new affordable housing in the South as in London, house prices in London are a 1/3 higher than those in the South on average
Categorically wrong, native population is growing.
10.79 births/1000 population and 9.07 births/1000 population = growing population even without immigration.
House prices to earnings ratios are too high in the entire country.
Once you take account of native population deaths our population is declining without immigration.
Once you exclude the distortion of London from house price to earnings ratios North of Watford there is not really a problem
Not true.
10.79 births > 9.07 deaths.
If births > deaths then population grows.
For population to fall then deaths must be greater than births.
House price ratios in the North now are higher than they were anywhere in the entire country, including London, a generation ago.
Deaths outnumbered births last year actually in the UK.
Property prices in London were cheap a generation ago before it became a global city so that means little
Those figures are out of date and from two years ago, at the height of the pandemic. Births exceed deaths now and normally.
Property prices were normal a generation ago, that is what we should be getting back to now, by building enough houses. Your utter obsession with London doesn't answer the fact that prices are too high in the entire country and a crash relative to earnings is needed.
Do you have the raw numbers for of births and deaths in the UK in 2021? I've searched and I can't find them.
(And UK TFR from 2019 was 1.65, so absent immigration, the medium term outlook is for falling population.)
So births exceed deaths by almost 40,000 in 2021 even with the pandemic going on and the pandemic deaths recorded especially in January 2021.
Longer term we may have falling population without immigration due to TFR but people have been saying that for many decades and only in 2 years in about half a century have we had births be less than deaths - and one of those was only narrowly and thanks to the pandemic.
Thanks for that:
It's fascinating, because one would expect that net immigration would cause people to be added to the population, without a corresponding birth, and therefore that it should in the medium term add to deaths relatives to births.
At the same time, if I look at my cohort from school, 20-25% of people haven't had kids, and there are very few families I know with more than two children. (A very good frum friend has four... but he's the exception.)
As I'm 47, the women in that cohort have had all the kids they're going to have, so a TFR of 1.65 feels about right.
I'd also caution that the UK population pyramid...
... hints at trouble ahead. There are a lot more 25 to 34 year olds than there are 15 to 24 year olds. That suggests that there are fewer mothers to have babies in the next couple of years than in the recent past.
Over 50% of the increase in UK population and therefore housing demand is accounted for by immigration. The fact that deaths outnumbered births in 2020 even accounting for the pandemic could well be as you suggest the sign of things to come.
In which case we do not need to concrete all over the countryside with new housing. Especially if we control immigration more tightly
"Over 50% of the increase in UK population and therefore housing demand is accounted for by immigration."
We're all gonna have to move to fucking Scotland. Ugh
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too
Adding violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing to your list of hobbies. Why am I not surprised?
Says the New Swede.
I do not advocate the mass infiltration of a Swedish political party and subsequent take over of the country by foreign fifth columnists. But then I’m not a Franco adherent or tank commander like FUDHY.
Scotland isn't a foreign country and the English aren't foreigners to Scots. As 55% of Scots confirmed in 2014 we are all one sovereign United Kingdom
That wasn’t on the ballot paper, and none of the Unionist campaigners argued that during the referendum. Quite the opposite: they argued that we would have a Union of Equals.
Scots did not vote for the abolition of their country and the mass plantation of English settlers until we were a minority in our own land.
If that is how you interpret the 2014 result you are an even bigger fool than you appear.
Scots voted to stay in the same sovereign country with England with freedom of movement to England and from England to Scotland.
If large numbers of English people decide to move to Scotland because of a cooler climate and lower cost of living they are free to do so entirely in accordance with the 2014 result
The UK is not a country, it is a union of three countries and part of a fourth one.
You wrote: “If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too.”
You are not a benevolent bystander. You are an agitator actively working against the interests of the Scottish nation. To such an extent that you want to see us eradicated.
How do you define a country? Pretty much every definition would work for the U.K.
Shared law, language, tax. Scotland a bit of an outlier on all tests.
Churchill had been the sponsor and architect of the Norway Campaign which effectively brought down the government, even though it actually won the confidence vote. Churchill took over as Prime Minister of a coalition government; Chamberlain remained leader of the Conservative Party.
The other candidate for Prime Minister had been Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, who favoured a negotiated peace. This was no mere pipedream as Hitler had reached out via Mussolini to offer terms.
The new Prime Minister and coalition government were unpopular on Conservative benches. Obviously, this was to change with time and events.
Chamberlain was ill and would have resigned sooner or later. The revisionist character assassination of Halifax comes with little or no evidence. I suspect he'd have been as resistant to German peace feelers as was Churchill. There was no way any British Government was going to accept German hegemony over the Continent as a done deal.
The window of opportunity for the Germans to make a successful landing was probably mid-July - growing RAF strength, the rapid re-building of mobile reserves lost at Dunkirk, the re-grouping of naval forces and German unwillingness to risk an amphibious landing meant Britain was safe thereafter.
The famous Sandhurst exercise modelling a German invasion in mid September shows such an attempt would likely have ended in disastrous failure. That in itself might have foreshortened the war with Hitler being ousted by the Army but we've no way of knowing that.
As the old saying goes - the Americans provided the money, the Russians provided the blood and the British provided the time - all helped by Hitler's stupidity which ended with him going to war with the two growing industrial powers of the day, fighting a multi-front war and ending with Germany being physically conquered and divided.
My favourite Sealion story:
An Austrian mountain brigade was tasked with climbing the Kent cliffs.
They went to the French coast to practice their swimming and boating.
The first day went okay but on the second they went at a different time and the tide was out.
They were utterly baffled that the sea could move and even more so when a naval officer told them that the 'man in the moon' had moved the sea.
Don't know how true it was.
There was a story from Dieppe. About the only thing that went 'well' with that adventure was the attempt to take out one of the German big-gun batteries. The Germans had rolled barbed wire down the cliffs below one of the batteries, but some of the commandos used the wire as impromptu climbing ropes, helping them up the cliffs. Elsewhere, where the barbed wire had been properly laid, it was a massive problem for the attackers.
I find it very odd that there's no really good popular history of Operation Jubilee.
We're all gonna have to move to fucking Scotland. Ugh
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too
Adding violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing to your list of hobbies. Why am I not surprised?
Says the New Swede.
I do not advocate the mass infiltration of a Swedish political party and subsequent take over of the country by foreign fifth columnists. But then I’m not a Franco adherent or tank commander like FUDHY.
Scotland isn't a foreign country and the English aren't foreigners to Scots. As 55% of Scots confirmed in 2014 we are all one sovereign United Kingdom
That wasn’t on the ballot paper, and none of the Unionist campaigners argued that during the referendum. Quite the opposite: they argued that we would have a Union of Equals.
Scots did not vote for the abolition of their country and the mass plantation of English settlers until we were a minority in our own land.
If that is how you interpret the 2014 result you are an even bigger fool than you appear.
Scots voted to stay in the same sovereign country with England with freedom of movement to England and from England to Scotland.
If large numbers of English people decide to move to Scotland because of a cooler climate and lower cost of living they are free to do so entirely in accordance with the 2014 result
The UK is not a country, it is a union of three countries and part of a fourth one.
You wrote: “If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too.”
You are not a benevolent bystander. You are an agitator actively working against the interests of the Scottish nation. To such an extent that you want to see us eradicated.
The UK is a sovereign country. Scotland in reality is no more a country than Texas, Ontario, Catalonia, Quebec, New South Wales or Bavaria.
And wee Union Jacks on insulation. That’ll do the trick.
Does a Union Jack not give you a warm glow all of its own Stuart?
Only if decent accelerant is applied.
Jesting aside, I have a surprisingly high tolerance level for the Butcher’s Apron, for a despicable, seditious Jock. For example, it is liberally displayed on 2 of our cars. I gave up frowning about them after a few years. I even quite like them on occasion. When I drive like an arsehole fellow motorists just blame ‘engelsmannen’.
I've never liked the Union flag. It's not an ideological thing, I just think it's unattractive. I don't like the colour combination, it's too busy, and it's not even symmetric. It's just an ugly flag. Like our ugly, tuneless dirge of a national anthem. Why are our totems of nationhood so rubbish?
I agree our flag is so ugly. Like so much else poisonous in this country it is because of political correctness. When we absorbed Scotland and Ireland we had to pretend it was a partnership so we included their flags in our flag. So the beautiful simple English flag was corrupted. However it is well known so we seem to be stuck with it.
Nothing is forever. You English are sovereign and can choose independence whenever you like. We Scots are Untermenschen and do not share your privileges.
You (I.e. the people of Scotland) had the choice in 2014. They chose 'no.'
That you can't accept the result is sad, but also your problem, not the Natsy fantasy you have just peddled.
I did accept the result, and congratulated my Unionist friends and family on their victory. (Funnily enough I never hear a peep from them about their finest hour these days: they’re all deeply ashamed.)
Then The Vow lies started to unravel, culminating in Brexit. The SNP and Greens presented the electorate with our proposals to counter London’s breach of faith, and the electorate agreed with us.
I respect the will of the electorate: they voted for a fresh referendum and a fresh referendum they will get.
No they didn't. A majority voted for Unionist candidates, as in every Scotland-wide election there has ever been, whether for Westminster or Holyrood.
But I agree with you that the Vow was a bunch of lies. There has been no serious effort by the government of the Union to strengthen the Union and make it a popular, happy, forward-looking thing. Sending Michael Gove to Glasgow doesn't count.
As for the Scottish Greens, they are a bunch of creeps who shouldn't be allowed to take Short money as an "opposition" party while they support the SNP government to the hilt, indeed even on paper in the form of what they pretentiously call the "Bute House Agreement".
I see that Sunak has said it's wrong for Truss to cut his National Insurance tax hike, so people who work many of whom are seeing wages go up less than inflation can keep more of their own money, as he thinks we should do more to support Triple Locked pensioners instead.
Sunak represents everything that is wrong with the modern Conservative Party. If he wins, the Party deserves to lose.
Add that to his green belt nimbyism when what we really need is houses, houses, houses.
We do not need houses, houses, houses in the already overheated South-East, nor do we need more high-rise flats in London as Rishi proposes. We need to spread prosperity throughout the country, to make levelling up more than a slogan, and to build new homes and even new towns with new employers in the less affluent parts of the country.
You do need houses, houses, houses all over the country including the South East. The South East like the entire country has seen its population dramatically rise in a generation thanks to longer life expectancies and net immigration. That should not be be a bad thing but housing hasn't kept up so many people can't get a home of their own.
Unless you want to start major net emigration we need more housing for the people already living here to get a home of their own. North, South, East and West.
If you want to have any immigration at all, which is a very good thing in my eyes to have I don't know about you, then we need even more housing just to stand still let alone sort out the backlog of missing homes.
Net migration is a red herring, whether up or down. Internal migration should be encouraged: that's the point. It is also what happened during the industrial revolution, and after the war with new towns being built. There's nothing new here. Move people, and jobs, and economic activity and prosperity around the country.
Internal migration is a herring. Homes, homes, homes are needed because the population of the country has risen by about 10 million people in a generation and is still rising fast and the housing supply hasn't kept up. You can't solve that with a few soothing words about spreading prosperity, we need a massive and sustained increase in housing supply to address the shortage and to then stand still with rising population levels.
We also need tighter immigration controls to reduce demand. The biggest shortage of affordable housing is in London by far that is where most new property needs to be built, through high rise in particular. In the North East or most of the West Midlands there is plenty of affordable housing already
Tighter immigration controls won't reduce demand, just slow the increase in demand. Demand will still be there, and rising, unless we have net emigration surpassing the rate of native population growth to reduce demand.
Houses are needed either way. There is not plenty of affordable housing anywhere, there are housing shortages across the entire country which is why new homes are being built in the North and Midlands as they're needed just as they are in the South too.
Native population growth is already below replacement level, the UK birth rate is only 1.65 per woman. It is rising immigration that is pushing up demand.
There is not the same need for affordable housing in the North and Midlands, Wales, NI and Scotland, average house prices there are less than half the price of those in the South. There is also in turn not the same need for new affordable housing in the South as in London, house prices in London are a 1/3 higher than those in the South on average
Categorically wrong, native population is growing.
10.79 births/1000 population and 9.07 births/1000 population = growing population even without immigration.
House prices to earnings ratios are too high in the entire country.
Once you take account of native population deaths our population is declining without immigration.
Once you exclude the distortion of London from house price to earnings ratios North of Watford there is not really a problem
Not true.
10.79 births > 9.07 deaths.
If births > deaths then population grows.
For population to fall then deaths must be greater than births.
House price ratios in the North now are higher than they were anywhere in the entire country, including London, a generation ago.
Deaths outnumbered births last year actually in the UK.
Property prices in London were cheap a generation ago before it became a global city so that means little
Those figures are out of date and from two years ago, at the height of the pandemic. Births exceed deaths now and normally.
Property prices were normal a generation ago, that is what we should be getting back to now, by building enough houses. Your utter obsession with London doesn't answer the fact that prices are too high in the entire country and a crash relative to earnings is needed.
Do you have the raw numbers for of births and deaths in the UK in 2021? I've searched and I can't find them.
(And UK TFR from 2019 was 1.65, so absent immigration, the medium term outlook is for falling population.)
So births exceed deaths by almost 40,000 in 2021 even with the pandemic going on and the pandemic deaths recorded especially in January 2021.
Longer term we may have falling population without immigration due to TFR but people have been saying that for many decades and only in 2 years in about half a century have we had births be less than deaths - and one of those was only narrowly and thanks to the pandemic.
Thanks for that:
It's fascinating, because one would expect that net immigration would cause people to be added to the population, without a corresponding birth, and therefore that it should in the medium term add to deaths relatives to births.
At the same time, if I look at my cohort from school, 20-25% of people haven't had kids, and there are very few families I know with more than two children. (A very good frum friend has four... but he's the exception.)
As I'm 47, the women in that cohort have had all the kids they're going to have, so a TFR of 1.65 feels about right.
I'd also caution that the UK population pyramid...
... hints at trouble ahead. There are a lot more 25 to 34 year olds than there are 15 to 24 year olds. That suggests that there are fewer mothers to have babies in the next couple of years than in the recent past.
Over 50% of the increase in UK population and therefore housing demand is accounted for by immigration. The fact that deaths outnumbered births in 2020 even accounting for the pandemic could well be as you suggest the sign of things to come.
In which case we do not need to concrete all over the countryside with new housing. Especially if we control immigration more tightly
"Over 50% of the increase in UK population and therefore housing demand is accounted for by immigration."
Over what period?
2011 to 2021. There was a 2 million increase via immigration but only 1.5 million by births over deaths.
We will see if Brexit and the end of free movement makes a difference in reducing longer term the immigration rate
I see that Sunak has said it's wrong for Truss to cut his National Insurance tax hike, so people who work many of whom are seeing wages go up less than inflation can keep more of their own money, as he thinks we should do more to support Triple Locked pensioners instead.
Sunak represents everything that is wrong with the modern Conservative Party. If he wins, the Party deserves to lose.
Add that to his green belt nimbyism when what we really need is houses, houses, houses.
We do not need houses, houses, houses in the already overheated South-East, nor do we need more high-rise flats in London as Rishi proposes. We need to spread prosperity throughout the country, to make levelling up more than a slogan, and to build new homes and even new towns with new employers in the less affluent parts of the country.
You do need houses, houses, houses all over the country including the South East. The South East like the entire country has seen its population dramatically rise in a generation thanks to longer life expectancies and net immigration. That should not be be a bad thing but housing hasn't kept up so many people can't get a home of their own.
Unless you want to start major net emigration we need more housing for the people already living here to get a home of their own. North, South, East and West.
If you want to have any immigration at all, which is a very good thing in my eyes to have I don't know about you, then we need even more housing just to stand still let alone sort out the backlog of missing homes.
Net migration is a red herring, whether up or down. Internal migration should be encouraged: that's the point. It is also what happened during the industrial revolution, and after the war with new towns being built. There's nothing new here. Move people, and jobs, and economic activity and prosperity around the country.
Internal migration is a herring. Homes, homes, homes are needed because the population of the country has risen by about 10 million people in a generation and is still rising fast and the housing supply hasn't kept up. You can't solve that with a few soothing words about spreading prosperity, we need a massive and sustained increase in housing supply to address the shortage and to then stand still with rising population levels.
We also need tighter immigration controls to reduce demand. The biggest shortage of affordable housing is in London by far that is where most new property needs to be built, through high rise in particular. In the North East or most of the West Midlands there is plenty of affordable housing already
Tighter immigration controls won't reduce demand, just slow the increase in demand. Demand will still be there, and rising, unless we have net emigration surpassing the rate of native population growth to reduce demand.
Houses are needed either way. There is not plenty of affordable housing anywhere, there are housing shortages across the entire country which is why new homes are being built in the North and Midlands as they're needed just as they are in the South too.
Native population growth is already below replacement level, the UK birth rate is only 1.65 per woman. It is rising immigration that is pushing up demand.
There is not the same need for affordable housing in the North and Midlands, Wales, NI and Scotland, average house prices there are less than half the price of those in the South. There is also in turn not the same need for new affordable housing in the South as in London, house prices in London are a 1/3 higher than those in the South on average
Categorically wrong, native population is growing.
10.79 births/1000 population and 9.07 births/1000 population = growing population even without immigration.
House prices to earnings ratios are too high in the entire country.
Once you take account of native population deaths our population is declining without immigration.
Once you exclude the distortion of London from house price to earnings ratios North of Watford there is not really a problem
Not true.
10.79 births > 9.07 deaths.
If births > deaths then population grows.
For population to fall then deaths must be greater than births.
House price ratios in the North now are higher than they were anywhere in the entire country, including London, a generation ago.
Deaths outnumbered births last year actually in the UK.
Property prices in London were cheap a generation ago before it became a global city so that means little
Those figures are out of date and from two years ago, at the height of the pandemic. Births exceed deaths now and normally.
Property prices were normal a generation ago, that is what we should be getting back to now, by building enough houses. Your utter obsession with London doesn't answer the fact that prices are too high in the entire country and a crash relative to earnings is needed.
Do you have the raw numbers for of births and deaths in the UK in 2021? I've searched and I can't find them.
(And UK TFR from 2019 was 1.65, so absent immigration, the medium term outlook is for falling population.)
So births exceed deaths by almost 40,000 in 2021 even with the pandemic going on and the pandemic deaths recorded especially in January 2021.
Longer term we may have falling population without immigration due to TFR but people have been saying that for many decades and only in 2 years in about half a century have we had births be less than deaths - and one of those was only narrowly and thanks to the pandemic.
Thanks for that:
It's fascinating, because one would expect that net immigration would cause people to be added to the population, without a corresponding birth, and therefore that it should in the medium term add to deaths relatives to births.
At the same time, if I look at my cohort from school, 20-25% of people haven't had kids, and there are very few families I know with more than two children. (A very good frum friend has four... but he's the exception.)
As I'm 47, the women in that cohort have had all the kids they're going to have, so a TFR of 1.65 feels about right.
I'd also caution that the UK population pyramid...
... hints at trouble ahead. There are a lot more 25 to 34 year olds than there are 15 to 24 year olds. That suggests that there are fewer mothers to have babies in the next couple of years than in the recent past.
Yes, I'd echo that. My group of friends from school - 10 male, 1 female - have between us had 15 children: 6 have had 2 children and 1 (me) has had three. (There are also another three step children, but for the purposes of this discussion I'm excluding them). I'm 47 too, so it would be a major surprise if there were any changes to the numbers now. Fairly sure at least three of those who haven't had children themselves would have liked to if things had been different - but I don't think there are any common themes about why it didn't happen.
We're all gonna have to move to fucking Scotland. Ugh
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too
Adding violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing to your list of hobbies. Why am I not surprised?
Says the New Swede.
I do not advocate the mass infiltration of a Swedish political party and subsequent take over of the country by foreign fifth columnists. But then I’m not a Franco adherent or tank commander like FUDHY.
Scotland isn't a foreign country and the English aren't foreigners to Scots. As 55% of Scots confirmed in 2014 we are all one sovereign United Kingdom
That wasn’t on the ballot paper, and none of the Unionist campaigners argued that during the referendum. Quite the opposite: they argued that we would have a Union of Equals.
Scots did not vote for the abolition of their country and the mass plantation of English settlers until we were a minority in our own land.
If that is how you interpret the 2014 result you are an even bigger fool than you appear.
Scots voted to stay in the same sovereign country with England with freedom of movement to England and from England to Scotland.
If large numbers of English people decide to move to Scotland because of a cooler climate and lower cost of living they are free to do so entirely in accordance with the 2014 result
The UK is not a country, it is a union of three countries and part of a fourth one.
Your article claiming credit for the industrial revolution cites John Roebuck who was born in Sheffield and went to school in Northampton.
We're all gonna have to move to fucking Scotland. Ugh
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too
Adding violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing to your list of hobbies. Why am I not surprised?
Says the New Swede.
I do not advocate the mass infiltration of a Swedish political party and subsequent take over of the country by foreign fifth columnists. But then I’m not a Franco adherent or tank commander like FUDHY.
Scotland isn't a foreign country and the English aren't foreigners to Scots. As 55% of Scots confirmed in 2014 we are all one sovereign United Kingdom
That wasn’t on the ballot paper, and none of the Unionist campaigners argued that during the referendum. Quite the opposite: they argued that we would have a Union of Equals.
Scots did not vote for the abolition of their country and the mass plantation of English settlers until we were a minority in our own land.
If that is how you interpret the 2014 result you are an even bigger fool than you appear.
Scots voted to stay in the same sovereign country with England with freedom of movement to England and from England to Scotland.
If large numbers of English people decide to move to Scotland because of a cooler climate and lower cost of living they are free to do so entirely in accordance with the 2014 result
The UK is not a country, it is a union of three countries and part of a fourth one.
You wrote: “If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too.”
You are not a benevolent bystander. You are an agitator actively working against the interests of the Scottish nation. To such an extent that you want to see us eradicated.
How do you define a country? Pretty much every definition would work for the U.K.
Well,
An empire is ruled by an emperor.
A kingdom is ruled by a king.
A sheikdom is ruled by a sheik.
An emirate is ruled by an emir.
Who rules a country?
Those are all examples of states, not countries.
State = legal entity Country = geographical entity Nation = cultural entity
We're all gonna have to move to fucking Scotland. Ugh
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too
Adding violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing to your list of hobbies. Why am I not surprised?
Says the New Swede.
I do not advocate the mass infiltration of a Swedish political party and subsequent take over of the country by foreign fifth columnists. But then I’m not a Franco adherent or tank commander like FUDHY.
Scotland isn't a foreign country and the English aren't foreigners to Scots. As 55% of Scots confirmed in 2014 we are all one sovereign United Kingdom
That wasn’t on the ballot paper, and none of the Unionist campaigners argued that during the referendum. Quite the opposite: they argued that we would have a Union of Equals.
Scots did not vote for the abolition of their country and the mass plantation of English settlers until we were a minority in our own land.
If that is how you interpret the 2014 result you are an even bigger fool than you appear.
Scots voted to stay in the same sovereign country with England with freedom of movement to England and from England to Scotland.
If large numbers of English people decide to move to Scotland because of a cooler climate and lower cost of living they are free to do so entirely in accordance with the 2014 result
The UK is not a country, it is a union of three countries and part of a fourth one.
You wrote: “If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too.”
You are not a benevolent bystander. You are an agitator actively working against the interests of the Scottish nation. To such an extent that you want to see us eradicated.
How do you define a country? Pretty much every definition would work for the U.K.
Shared law, language, tax. Scotland a bit of an outlier on all tests.
Parliament? Prime minister? Sovereign? National TV broadcaster?
We're all gonna have to move to fucking Scotland. Ugh
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too
Adding violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing to your list of hobbies. Why am I not surprised?
Says the New Swede.
I do not advocate the mass infiltration of a Swedish political party and subsequent take over of the country by foreign fifth columnists. But then I’m not a Franco adherent or tank commander like FUDHY.
Scotland isn't a foreign country and the English aren't foreigners to Scots. As 55% of Scots confirmed in 2014 we are all one sovereign United Kingdom
That wasn’t on the ballot paper, and none of the Unionist campaigners argued that during the referendum. Quite the opposite: they argued that we would have a Union of Equals.
Scots did not vote for the abolition of their country and the mass plantation of English settlers until we were a minority in our own land.
If that is how you interpret the 2014 result you are an even bigger fool than you appear.
Scots voted to stay in the same sovereign country with England with freedom of movement to England and from England to Scotland.
If large numbers of English people decide to move to Scotland because of a cooler climate and lower cost of living they are free to do so entirely in accordance with the 2014 result
The UK is not a country, it is a union of three countries and part of a fourth one.
You wrote: “If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too.”
You are not a benevolent bystander. You are an agitator actively working against the interests of the Scottish nation. To such an extent that you want to see us eradicated.
How do you define a country? Pretty much every definition would work for the U.K.
As you say, intriguing thought. I may be being unkind to him, but I suspect my friend from Epping would have been in the honourable peace camp, that being the policy of a significant part of the Conservative party!
To be fair, I might well have been following the far left line, which would've meant I'd had to had to do a severe reverse ferret a few months later!
I'm less certain - @HYUFD would have lived in Churchill's constituency - he was MP for Epping from 1924 to 1945.
Boundary changes moved Churchill to the new Woodford seat in 1945 and Epping was won by Labour. The Conservatives re-captured it in 1950 but lost it again in 1964 when Stan Newens became MP. Newens lost in 1970 in a straight fight with a new Conservative candidate - one Norman Tebbit.
The Epping constituency was then abolished in 1974.
IIRC Winston Churchill came under serious pressure from local Tory establishment in Epping in aftermath of Hitler-Chamberlain Munich Agreement and WSC's denunciation thereof.
Which was relieved but hardly eliminated when Churchill joined Chamberlain govt as First Lord of Admiralty in September 1939.
Indeed, he faced several no confidence votes by the local association, and the Tory party chairman of the time had to twist arms and do whatever other dark arts were necessary to deliver the vote. The community hall in Woodford green is still named after the guy.
We're all gonna have to move to fucking Scotland. Ugh
Well at least that screws the SNP
Yeah. Fuck em. Let's all go to Scotland to get some cool rain AND all vote NO, then we can move back to warm, beautiful sunny Merry England
*drinks more excellent English white wine*
Make Edinburgh the summer capital and we can all relocate once a year like the Queen does, holidays in the Cornish Riviera notwithstanding.
All we then have to do is schedule all independence votes for August, and give a vote to all residents even if they are normally resident elsewhere. We can make the announcement of the “No” vote part of the military tattoo.
Quite a lot of English luvvies already decamp to Edinburgh (Covid unpleasantness aside) in August. Difficult to say how they’d break now after 8 years of shitshow.
Oh come on. Each year I reckon only 50-60% of the shows I see at the Fringe are shit.
Yes, but one day you’ll be able to say you saw whoever is the 2030s Jimmy Carr, in front of 20 people who didn’t give a sh!t about him and his crap jokes.
We're all gonna have to move to fucking Scotland. Ugh
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too
Adding violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing to your list of hobbies. Why am I not surprised?
Says the New Swede.
I do not advocate the mass infiltration of a Swedish political party and subsequent take over of the country by foreign fifth columnists. But then I’m not a Franco adherent or tank commander like FUDHY.
Scotland isn't a foreign country and the English aren't foreigners to Scots. As 55% of Scots confirmed in 2014 we are all one sovereign United Kingdom
That wasn’t on the ballot paper, and none of the Unionist campaigners argued that during the referendum. Quite the opposite: they argued that we would have a Union of Equals.
Scots did not vote for the abolition of their country and the mass plantation of English settlers until we were a minority in our own land.
If that is how you interpret the 2014 result you are an even bigger fool than you appear.
Can I refer you to our own government's policy on migration. Far from "mass plantation of settlers" - English or otherwise - its says this:
"Scotland is a welcoming and inclusive nation and we value everyone, no matter where they were born, who has chosen to make Scotland their home; to live, work, study, raise their families and build their lives here."
This government - with this policy - won a 4th term in office. So Scots voted for people like me to cross the border and become Scottish - to live and work and integrate in Scotland, to "build our lives here".
So blow your anti-migration rhetoric up your Malmo.
While my predictions, as the Stodge Saturday Patent has demonstrated, aren't worth any attention, I'll offer a thought based on recent experience.
In 50-75 years time, London will empty at the beginning of June as those who can seek solace from the 45c temperatures and humidity associated with the late 21st century British summer between the spring and autumn monsoon seasons.
The newly-refurbished London Euston station will host the regular 30-minute Maglev summer service to the Lake District having passengers disembarking at Oxenholme in little more than a hour. From there, families will decamp to their summer chalets near the lakes (or as near as is affordable). The ability to work independently from location, first established during the 2020 pandemic, will allow tens of thousands of Londoners to continue working far from the overheating capital.
For those without the means to escape the heat, the annual ordeal that is summer in London is the very definition of purgatory. On the hottest days, with temperatures nearing 50c, many head to vast "cool centres" where they can enjoy air conditioned relief before heading home in the later evening.
While the Lakes are one popular "retreat from the heat", the Pennines and Cheviots have also seen summer housing and the major development of the north Scottish coast around Torrisdale and the islands of Harris and Lewis have seen an explosion of summer homes for those from southern and eastern Britain desperate to seek cooler summer weather.
I think you understate the case. The way we're going it will be a runaway climate change. Although some, especially reputable researchers, know what we need to do to counter this, most of us are too gormless to act accordingly. For instance, getting an electric car does not justify an otherwise wanton life style.
That's my fear. That we are now in an accelerating loop of increasing warmth and volatility, which will feed off itself like a chain reaction. And perhaps it is already too late to stop this
The science, as we know it at present, seems to suggest that we can still limit the rise to 1.5 degrees and avoid runaway climate change, but it's getting more difficult all the time. Biden's bill looks as though it's passing, which is good news for the climate although could have been better. Let's hope that the Congress elections in November and the Presidential in 2024 are good for the Democrats. Here the Tory contenders for PM seem worse than Boris, who at least paid lip service to the subject.
!.5 degrees is also now almost impossible. Even 2 degrees is extremely difficult and would require immediate and large scale action of the kind that appears to be politically unfeasible.
Disappointing - since quibbles on the detail aside the world’s response to Covid showed how we can act in our collective best interest in response to an emergency.
Necessity is the mother of invention has far more going for it than most chestnuts, so it must be with Climate Change that too many people still don't truly feel the necessity. They need their own house to catch fire and until it does will carry on with their soft or hard denial.
Hard denial being either it isn't happening or it's not caused by us. Soft denial being stuff like "technology will fix it" or "the models are iffy" or "ok it's likely happening but totally exaggerated" bla bla.
‘Technology will fix it’ is not ‘soft denial’. It is probably our best and maybe only hope
I mean, "chill, no big changes to make here or price to pay here, technology will fix it" - this is soft denial.
We're all gonna have to move to fucking Scotland. Ugh
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too
Adding violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing to your list of hobbies. Why am I not surprised?
Says the New Swede.
I do not advocate the mass infiltration of a Swedish political party and subsequent take over of the country by foreign fifth columnists. But then I’m not a Franco adherent or tank commander like FUDHY.
Scotland isn't a foreign country and the English aren't foreigners to Scots. As 55% of Scots confirmed in 2014 we are all one sovereign United Kingdom
That wasn’t on the ballot paper, and none of the Unionist campaigners argued that during the referendum. Quite the opposite: they argued that we would have a Union of Equals.
Scots did not vote for the abolition of their country and the mass plantation of English settlers until we were a minority in our own land.
If that is how you interpret the 2014 result you are an even bigger fool than you appear.
Scots voted to stay in the same sovereign country with England with freedom of movement to England and from England to Scotland.
If large numbers of English people decide to move to Scotland because of a cooler climate and lower cost of living they are free to do so entirely in accordance with the 2014 result
The UK is not a country, it is a union of three countries and part of a fourth one.
You wrote: “If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too.”
You are not a benevolent bystander. You are an agitator actively working against the interests of the Scottish nation. To such an extent that you want to see us eradicated.
How do you define a country? Pretty much every definition would work for the U.K.
Shared law, language, tax. Scotland a bit of an outlier on all tests.
Parliament? Prime minister? Sovereign? National TV broadcaster?
There's a Scotch one, there's a FM, there's plenty of foreign countries sharing our Sovereign, what about radio Luxembourg?
While my predictions, as the Stodge Saturday Patent has demonstrated, aren't worth any attention, I'll offer a thought based on recent experience.
In 50-75 years time, London will empty at the beginning of June as those who can seek solace from the 45c temperatures and humidity associated with the late 21st century British summer between the spring and autumn monsoon seasons.
The newly-refurbished London Euston station will host the regular 30-minute Maglev summer service to the Lake District having passengers disembarking at Oxenholme in little more than a hour. From there, families will decamp to their summer chalets near the lakes (or as near as is affordable). The ability to work independently from location, first established during the 2020 pandemic, will allow tens of thousands of Londoners to continue working far from the overheating capital.
For those without the means to escape the heat, the annual ordeal that is summer in London is the very definition of purgatory. On the hottest days, with temperatures nearing 50c, many head to vast "cool centres" where they can enjoy air conditioned relief before heading home in the later evening.
While the Lakes are one popular "retreat from the heat", the Pennines and Cheviots have also seen summer housing and the major development of the north Scottish coast around Torrisdale and the islands of Harris and Lewis have seen an explosion of summer homes for those from southern and eastern Britain desperate to seek cooler summer weather.
I think you understate the case. The way we're going it will be a runaway climate change. Although some, especially reputable researchers, know what we need to do to counter this, most of us are too gormless to act accordingly. For instance, getting an electric car does not justify an otherwise wanton life style.
That's my fear. That we are now in an accelerating loop of increasing warmth and volatility, which will feed off itself like a chain reaction. And perhaps it is already too late to stop this
Our presence in this universe appears to be the result of a long series of lucky circumstances.
These include: The fortuitous value of the fine structure constant, which, if it were a little difference would not allow stellar fusion to produce carbon. The existence of a rocky planet at just the right distance from a stable and long-lived star. The presence of just enough water on said planet to make a complex environment of coasts and shallows that would drive evolution along. The presence of an unusually large moon orbiting said planet to slosh all that water about and further drive evolution. A complex geology that, combined with the effects of life, has managed to remove CO2 from the Earth's atmosphere at a rate that has just about compensated for the gradual increase in the luminosity of the sun, this keeping the temperature of the Earth in a range compatible with life over the aeons.
And we are just about to screw it all up.
Not at all. Whilst you are right about the serendipity element of our existence, you vastly overestimate the significance of our current civilisation and the nature of the changes we are facing. Presenting these current very minor adjustments in our environment with the vast changes that have occurred over the last few million years (one of which probably reduced the human population to less than 10,000 individuals) really shows a fundamental disconnect with the reality of our existence on planet earth.
The changes of a few degrees - whilst undoubtedly bad for our current comfortable civilisation - are bugger all in both scale and rate of change compared to the natural changes that have occurred even in fairly recent times.
This is not to say we shouldn't try to mitigate such changes, nor that they won't be very bad for our current lifestyles but your hyperbolic comment shows a stunning lack of historical and prehistorical perspective.
You are wrong, Richard. My view as set out here is supported by the evidence, and is shared by the vast majority of people who have expertise in this area. That's why they are so worried about the future.
Climatologists are well aware of both the rate and magnitude of past changes in climate and have a pretty good idea of their causes. In particular, the cycles of glaciation over the past few million years are thought to have been triggered by the Milankovitch cycles, the effects of which were than amplified by various feedback effects - the CO2 greenhouse effect being one of the prime ones. Ice core records show the very strong correlation of atmospheric CO2 with global temperature, and this is supported by models based on radiative physics.
The difference between the depths of the last glacial period and the current balmy interglacial is, in terms of global mean temperature, around 5 C, and that happened over a period of around 10,000 years. In about 150 years, humans have already lifted by global temperature by nearly 1.5 C and it continues to rise. This is not "bugger all". This is a profound shock to the climate system.
I'm off now, but if you are going to respond to this, please don't confuse local rates of temperature change for global ones, as you did last time we discussed this issue.
Churchill had been the sponsor and architect of the Norway Campaign which effectively brought down the government, even though it actually won the confidence vote. Churchill took over as Prime Minister of a coalition government; Chamberlain remained leader of the Conservative Party.
The other candidate for Prime Minister had been Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, who favoured a negotiated peace. This was no mere pipedream as Hitler had reached out via Mussolini to offer terms.
The new Prime Minister and coalition government were unpopular on Conservative benches. Obviously, this was to change with time and events.
Chamberlain was ill and would have resigned sooner or later. The revisionist character assassination of Halifax comes with little or no evidence. I suspect he'd have been as resistant to German peace feelers as was Churchill. There was no way any British Government was going to accept German hegemony over the Continent as a done deal.
The window of opportunity for the Germans to make a successful landing was probably mid-July - growing RAF strength, the rapid re-building of mobile reserves lost at Dunkirk, the re-grouping of naval forces and German unwillingness to risk an amphibious landing meant Britain was safe thereafter.
The famous Sandhurst exercise modelling a German invasion in mid September shows such an attempt would likely have ended in disastrous failure. That in itself might have foreshortened the war with Hitler being ousted by the Army but we've no way of knowing that.
As the old saying goes - the Americans provided the money, the Russians provided the blood and the British provided the time - all helped by Hitler's stupidity which ended with him going to war with the two growing industrial powers of the day, fighting a multi-front war and ending with Germany being physically conquered and divided.
My favourite Sealion story:
An Austrian mountain brigade was tasked with climbing the Kent cliffs.
They went to the French coast to practice their swimming and boating.
The first day went okay but on the second they went at a different time and the tide was out.
They were utterly baffled that the sea could move and even more so when a naval officer told them that the 'man in the moon' had moved the sea.
Don't know how true it was.
That doesn’t sound remotely true.
If they were Austrian, they would go at the same time every day.
Yes, in its various releases up to 4. Requires quite a bit of time, and the economic rules are primitive, but the politics are fun, as is the military micromangement. Are you asking because you're contemplating getting it, or...?
Comments
But it does come to mind when I wonder what happens if this changes much, much faster than we thought. Not necessarily out of control - but to a new unpleasant steady state. I can certainly imagine a new line of thinking about MP's working in parliament while the refurbishment is going on. Might suddenly seem like a *terribly* good idea to show the flag up in Aberdeen or Orkney...
I imagine you'll be having Jam every day if so.
Who will tell these countries that can't go on buying cars, developing coal-fired power stations and believing the only thing that matters is growth. Some of the regimes must think if they don't deliver growth, they'll be swept away
The one thing is as individuals and societies experience even the first manifestations of climate change, it will hopefully make people stop and think a little. The experience of last month's heatwave was a real eye-opener for many of my friends who have never experienced that kind of heat. Imagine that for 10-14 days - that's the worry - our current infrastructure won't cope with a prolonged heatwave. That in itself should be something Sunak and Truss should be debating but they are as bad as each other.
Which was relieved but hardly eliminated when Churchill joined Chamberlain govt as First Lord of Admiralty in September 1939.
Maybe PM Truss will just “ignore” the depression? Good luck with that.
Friend of mine bought his retirement home in Emsworth a few years back. He took a very careful look at the contour maps and flood records.
https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/aus-vs-ind-cwg-2022-tahlia-mcgrath-plays-final-despite-testing-positive-for-covid-19-1328212
However, would have caught up with Chamberlain - sooner, not later - IF he'd remained PM following the Norway Debate of May 1940.
She also took part in this performance art:
Marjorie Taylor Greene prayed over a convicted Capitol rioter who spent a day crying in a mock prison cell at CPAC
https://uk.sports.yahoo.com/news/marjorie-taylor-greene-prayed-over-002028128.html
It has put a dampener on my expected enjoyment of the event (Discworld Convention).
These include:
The fortuitous value of the fine structure constant, which, if it were a little difference would not allow stellar fusion to produce carbon.
The existence of a rocky planet at just the right distance from a stable and long-lived star.
The presence of just enough water on said planet to make a complex environment of coasts and shallows that would drive evolution along.
The presence of an unusually large moon orbiting said planet to slosh all that water about and further drive evolution.
A complex geology that, combined with the effects of life, has managed to remove CO2 from the Earth's atmosphere at a rate that has just about compensated for the gradual increase in the luminosity of the sun, this keeping the temperature of the Earth in a range compatible with life over the aeons.
And we are just about to screw it all up.
- “The England flag was nicked from someone else… “
Please clarify. Do you mean that it is a reverse Dannebrogen, the second oldest national flag after the Saltire?
…
An Austrian mountain brigade was tasked with climbing the Kent cliffs.
They went to the French coast to practice their swimming and boating.
The first day went okay but on the second they went at a different time and the tide was out.
They were utterly baffled that the sea could move and even more so when a naval officer told them that the 'man in the moon' had moved the sea.
Don't know how true it was.
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/jul/03/in-the-black-fantastic-review-hayward-gallery-london-spectacular-from-first-to-last
My knowledge of art is pathetic - I could maybe recognise a Gauguin but after that I struggle. But what's good about this display - 9 artists, with a room for each - is that it's multi-dimensional - a video, a pyramid, sculptures, paintings - each room is strikingly different. They didn't all work for us - in one room, we were completely nonplussed untiol we read up what the artist thought he was doing - but overall it's well worth a visit.
However on the current Epping Forest constituency boundaries the Conservatives would have won Epping even in 1966 on a notional basis with a 1,330 majority
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epping_Forest_(UK_Parliament_constituency)
Necessity is the mother of invention has far more going for it than most chestnuts, so it must be with Climate Change that too many people still don't truly feel the necessity. They need their own house to catch fire and until it does will carry on with their soft or hard denial.
Hard denial being either it isn't happening or it's not caused by us. Soft denial being stuff like "technology will fix it" or "the models are iffy" or "ok it's likely happening but totally exaggerated" bla bla.
"American communists celebrate as they open a new chapter of their “think-tank”
@CPIUSA
in Chicago.
They fly the flags of China and the “Donetsk People’s Republic while also brandishing the Z sign that is used to voice support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Pure insanity."
https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1556333085905518593?s=20&t=NbP-mEluB51C3zflS6g8og
https://www.nature.com/articles/139918c0
*and football, so less of that “coming home” shite
(Glad to see you admire that fine novelist Banks.)
Always have been - see what Orwell had to say about them.
Without the compliant media they’d have been finished long ago. As we witness the break up of old media patterns there is a big worry for Ross & Co.
Con 34% (no change)
Lab 37% (no change)
Lib Dem 12% (+1)
Green 6% (no change)
In a series of "Best Prime Minister" head-to-heads, Starmer beats Johnson by 3, and Sunak by 4.
However he trails Truss by 1 point.
So even if the Tories were largest party not only would they have lost their majority but not even have a majority with the DUP
We had our chance, and we blew it. Now humankind is going to witness the correction. We’re not going to enjoy the experience.
Starmer is a dud.
Wonderful attendance and follows on from London 2012 which were also fantastic .
CO2 output tonnes per year per capita
UK 5.2
Rwanda 0.1
Each of us is 52 Rwandans.
This is not because the Rwandans are ahead of us in renewables, or all drive teslas. It is because they are dirt poor and the only acceptable climate plan is for them either to do the decent thing and die off, or remain dirt poor. Which is not terribly acceptable.
Except you thought you were pulling up the drawbridge to stop folk moving to England. In reality, you stopped the English from moving to the rest of Europe. Hence your new-found interest in colonising Scotland.
I doubt it's fully to do with aircraft supply; I think it's much more to do with Russian SAM systems - and the missiles - having been taken out. There are also rumours that Russian SAM sites have been taken out with American Anti-radiation missiles, despite the fact Ukrainian aircraft should not be able to fire them.
Scots did not vote for the abolition of their country and the mass plantation of English settlers until we were a minority in our own land.
If that is how you interpret the 2014 result you are an even bigger fool than you appear.
If large numbers of English people decide to move to Scotland because of a cooler climate and lower cost of living they are free to do so entirely in accordance with the 2014 result
Before that it was East Ham South which was created in 1918. At that election, a Coupon candidate beat a Unionist and Labour candidates but Labour won in 1922 by just under 4000 and the Liberals cut that to 988 in 1924. In 1931, the National Government took the seat which was the last time anyone other than Labour held the seat before Prentice's defection. The Conservative candidate won by 2,569 but was defeated by the previous sitting Labour MP in 1935 on a 13% swing.
Said MP was Alfred Barnes who was Minister of Transport in both Attlee Governments and retired before the 1955 election.
They did this NPR Tiny Desk gig about six years ago, all their own tunes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdRAcoD5Gt0
And they cover some great songs really well
This is them doing The Kinks' Lola
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7_Lg5dd_9g
And doing the Jackson 5's I want You Back on a street corner
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EPwRdVg5Ug
That you can't accept the result is sad, but also your problem, not the Natsy fantasy you have just peddled.
You wrote: “If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too.”
You are not a benevolent bystander. You are an agitator actively working against the interests of the Scottish nation. To such an extent that you want to see us eradicated.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/08/07/governor-andrew-baileys-catastrophism-control/
“Andrew Bailey has missed a vocation in journalism. The Governor of the Bank of England has all the right catastrophist instincts, and knows how to generate terrifying headlines....”
The changes of a few degrees - whilst undoubtedly bad for our current comfortable civilisation - are bugger all in both scale and rate of change compared to the natural changes that have occurred even in fairly recent times.
This is not to say we shouldn't try to mitigate such changes, nor that they won't be very bad for our current lifestyles but your hyperbolic comment shows a stunning lack of historical and prehistorical perspective.
Then The Vow lies started to unravel, culminating in Brexit. The SNP and Greens presented the electorate with our proposals to counter London’s breach of faith, and the electorate agreed with us.
I respect the will of the electorate: they voted for a fresh referendum and a fresh referendum they will get.
It's fascinating, because one would expect that net immigration would cause people to be added to the population, without a corresponding birth, and therefore that it should in the medium term add to deaths relatives to births.
At the same time, if I look at my cohort from school, 20-25% of people haven't had kids, and there are very few families I know with more than two children. (A very good frum friend has four... but he's the exception.)
As I'm 47, the women in that cohort have had all the kids they're going to have, so a TFR of 1.65 feels about right.
I'd also caution that the UK population pyramid...
... hints at trouble ahead. There are a lot more 25 to 34 year olds than there are 15 to 24 year olds. That suggests that there are fewer mothers to have babies in the next couple of years than in the recent past.
The Vow was fulfilled via the Scotland Act 2016
It's like warning a population of tadpoles in an April puddle that if it doesn't rain in the next week their puddle will dry out and they will all die: not much consolation for them to know that rainfall usually averages out in the course of a year and their puddle was virtually a pond back in January.
If your lifestyle involves murdering and eating people, then society probably has a right to interfere.
The question, surely, is about negative externalities. Does your lifestyle generate negative externalities that require the state to step in?
And while the bar needs to be set sufficiently high, there does need to be one.
So, if I like to smoke kippers in my backyard, that's OK, right? But what if I do it 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, such that my neighbours cannot hang clothes out to dry or use their gardens without coughing?
When Labour face a decent opponent, ie Nicola Sturgeon, you flounder. The SNP have a 24 point lead over Labour.
Getting beaten by Truss is just gobsmackingly shite. Truly, utterly appalling. The Labour leader ought to be knocking any named Con leader out of the park by this stage in proceedings.
The local election results were utterly dire too.
Lab Maj wouldn’t be value at twice the odds.
An empire is ruled by an emperor.
A kingdom is ruled by a king.
A sheikdom is ruled by a sheik.
An emirate is ruled by an emir.
Who rules a country?
In which case we do not need to concrete all over the countryside with new housing. Especially if we control immigration more tightly
That is certainly one of the options.
Over what period?
But I agree with you that the Vow was a bunch of lies. There has been no serious effort by the government of the Union to strengthen the Union and make it a popular, happy, forward-looking thing. Sending Michael Gove to Glasgow doesn't count.
As for the Scottish Greens, they are a bunch of creeps who shouldn't be allowed to take Short money as an "opposition" party while they support the SNP government to the hilt, indeed even on paper in the form of what they pretentiously call the "Bute House Agreement".
We will see if Brexit and the end of free movement makes a difference in reducing longer term the immigration rate
Fairly sure at least three of those who haven't had children themselves would have liked to if things had been different - but I don't think there are any common themes about why it didn't happen.
This is holiday music wherever you are
They're called Monsieur Periné and they're Columbian
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGL-eQAAxGs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Roebuck
State = legal entity
Country = geographical entity
Nation = cultural entity
Speaking at an Edinburgh Fringe show, the former prime minister said ignoring Scotland was not the best way to help the union ‘survive’.
… Mr Brown, Labour prime minister from 2007 to 2010, said Ms Truss’s approach was “ridiculous” if she wanted the British union to “survive”.
He said Ms Truss was attempting to take a “domineering attitude” where telling “Scotland to get lost” was the best approach.
“The only way that the union or Britain will survive is if people find better ways to work together”
“You cannot just say I’m not going to talk to you at all. It’s a ridiculous position.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/gordon-brown-liz-truss-boris-johnson-scotland-conservative-b2140228.html
"Scotland is a welcoming and inclusive nation and we value everyone, no matter where they were born, who has chosen to make Scotland their home; to live, work, study, raise their families and build their lives here."
This government - with this policy - won a 4th term in office. So Scots voted for people like me to cross the border and become Scottish - to live and work and integrate in Scotland, to "build our lives here".
So blow your anti-migration rhetoric up your Malmo.
But of course technology is key.
Climatologists are well aware of both the rate and magnitude of past changes in climate and have a pretty good idea of their causes. In particular, the cycles of glaciation over the past few million years are thought to have been triggered by the Milankovitch cycles, the effects of which were than amplified by various feedback effects - the CO2 greenhouse effect being one of the prime ones. Ice core records show the very strong correlation of atmospheric CO2 with global temperature, and this is supported by models based on radiative physics.
The difference between the depths of the last glacial period and the current balmy interglacial is, in terms of global mean temperature, around 5 C, and that happened over a period of around 10,000 years. In about 150 years, humans have already lifted by global temperature by nearly 1.5 C and it continues to rise. This is not "bugger all". This is a profound shock to the climate system.
I'm off now, but if you are going to respond to this, please don't confuse local rates of temperature change for global ones, as you did last time we discussed this issue.
If they were Austrian, they would go at the same time every day.
Starmer isn't very good, maybe he'll improve.