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LAB lead in Redwall seats now up to 15% – politicalbetting.com

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  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,043
    Yokes said:

    Alistair said:

    That Crimean airbase probably had about a billion dollars worth of planes parked up on it.

    We dont know how many were hit. Its reported there were 30+ aircraft of various types, mainly fast jets, there today. If they did wipe it, Russia simply cant replace that kind of loss in the short term.
    But @Leon told us that Russia is winning.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    Yokes said:

    Alistair said:

    That Crimean airbase probably had about a billion dollars worth of planes parked up on it.

    We dont know how many were hit. Its reported there were 30+ aircraft of various types, mainly fast jets, there today. If they did wipe it, Russia simply cant replace that kind of loss in the short term.
    You said earlier that Ukraine still isn’t winning.
    Are you perhaps slightly more positive than you were?
  • bigjohnowlsbigjohnowls Posts: 21,723
    Has SKS gone on Boris and Carrie's honeymoon?
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,088

    MattW said:

    MattW said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Carnyx said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Sunak verging on Sheffield in that intro and his jokes are getting even lamer

    At least he has written some new material over the weekend. The parmo schtick will go down well in the North-East but will mystify the rest of the country.
    Do we think he would recognise a parmo in an identity parade?

    That "our women" grated like fuck last time. Really poor.
    They are in Darlington. Do they eat parmo in Darlo?
    Haggis I think..


    Not to mention clootie dumpling.
    As a Scot of working class roots I prefer my clootie dumpling fried. But since I have grown into an effete middle class intellectual (pseudo) I fry it in olive oil, not lard.
    Lard is a better frying medium than olive oil imo. As a saturated fat it is more heat stable.
    I think that the last thing fried dumpling requires is more saturated fat.
    There's no such thing as too much saturated fat.
    I love proper fats.

    Can anyone tell me of a decent chippie still using beef dripping?
    When I used to live in South Queensferry I saw beef tallow being delivered to the chippy.
    Excellent. Thank you.
    Olive Oil heated to a high temperature loses much of its health advantage, and the smoke (low smoke point temperarure) is rather toxic.

    Something like rapeseed oil is a better option for frying.
    No it isn't. Ghee, coconut oil, palm oil, are better options for frying. Rapeseed oil is best kept for making dressings.
    My dietician does not agree with you !

    Coconut oil has a smoke point at roughly normal frying temperature. All three of those are cholesterol boosters.

    Well they're wrong.

    As the video posted above rightly states, the smoke point has nothing to do with the temperature at which the oil becomes unstable and starts breaking down into toxic free radicals. The more saturated the fat, the more stable its molecular structure.

    Furthermore, the idea of cholesterol being the enemy is antideluvian. But that's probably for another night in the PB saloon bar.
    That depends on the type of cholesterol aiui, those oils being high in the ungood type.

    But agree - another day.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812

    One of the downsides of this “long” campaign is that by the time Liz Truss is crowned she’ll feel like old hat already.

    It is going to be fascinating i think because she is awful at set piece presentation. God knows what will happen at PMQs.

    My hunch is the public will find her manner a total turn off and she will appeal only to exactly the kind of voter who is, erm, actually already a member of the con party.

    Combine that with the apparently refusal to see that day one of her administration is not about cutting some mythical brexit red tape and then relabelling all the toilets but dealing with a MASSIVE ENERGY AND COST OF LIVING CRISIS that will bring people out on the streets by year's end.
    This is also my prediction.

    She’s already high on her own supply, and it’s been - what - two weeks?
  • bigjohnowlsbigjohnowls Posts: 21,723

    Andy_JS said:

    rcs1000 said:

    geoffw said:

    geoffw said:

    Carnyx said:

    Foxy said:

    nico679 said:

    The Tory party is in an awful mess potentially. Judging by the cheers and shouting the membership worship Johnson and can't understand why he has gone and yet the majority of his cabinet and lower ministers resigned en masse because he was unfit for office.

    The stab in the back myth aligned with the king 'o the water is going to poison things for years and Johnson will love stirring the cauldron.

    Talking of which:

    Liz Truss says she would vote to end the privileges committee investigation into whether the PM misled parliament (if such a vote existed)

    https://twitter.com/hoffman_noa/status/1557089965741412352

    Kill him why you can Liz. Or he will destroy you.
    Jeez she really is clueless . Even if she could do this it would look shocking to the public that she’s trying to get Johnson off. The more I see of her the more I loathe her .
    At least she will purge Woke Lefty language from our primary schools mathematics:

    https://twitter.com/trussliz/status/148813032645083136?t=-hz6iHTle5tqKhQMeLSLdA&s=19
    How absolutely extraordinary. She obviously doesn't know the meaning of those words. Or is pretending not to. I don't know which is worse.

    Edit: I had to go back and look again. But it does seem to be her account, not a parody one.
    Some twenty odd years ago I thought a tutorial student was taking the piss when using 'times' as a verb instead of 'multiply'. As in "you times a with b to get c". Regrettably, that seems to be the language used in schools nowadays.

    In their defence, they do get taught ‘times’ tables.
    So was I in the 1940s. And they went up to 12!

    Nevertheless, the act of multiplication was described as "times". You said "six times seven is forty two".
    But not "timesed by", which is what I've heard kids say. It's the ugly verbing of "times" that is the issue
    What's wrong with using times as a verb? It's not just the kids, I've always said it and I am in my forties, but perhaps I'm a bit common.
    Well the dictionary lists it primarily as a preposition, and only as an informal verb

    I don't think I've ever heard a mathematician say "timesed by"
    When teaching maths and physics I would use the term "times" for younger students and weaker students who were working towards grade 4 or C. Any older students with some ability in the subject, I would use multiply, or even product of.
    I would use multiply for everyone because everyone is capable of understanding the word and what it means.
    I tend to use multiply, but if I had been aware that referring to multiplication as "times" was "woke", I'd have used "times".
    Go forth and times doesn't have the same ring to it!
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,282
    "A conspiracy of silence about the impact of mass migration has cost Britain dear
    Failure to plan for the extra millions of people coming to Britain is behind many of our current woes
    PHILIP JOHNSTON" (£)

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/09/conspiracy-silence-impact-mass-migration-has-cost-britain-dear/
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,758
    edited August 2022

    Sam Freedman
    @Samfr
    Yeah I'm still not seeing why people think she's good at this.

    https://twitter.com/Samfr/status/1557077025210667008

    A sensation many of us, including those who think Truss is a twat, have had when looking at Sam Freedman's career of misfires and disasters.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,771

    rcs1000 said:

    She talks utter bollx, but I have to admit it she has an uncanny ability to tap into the stream of utter bollx that the saloon bar bores at the local Con club are saying right now.


    Adam Bienkov
    @AdamBienkov

    Liz Truss says she will stop people from “filling fields with paraphernalia like solar farms.”

    “What we want is crops, and we want livestock.”

    This saloon bar bore is saying it on PB right now, because it happens to be true.
    She's lost me - one minute she is the champion of free markets and liberty and the next minute she's telling farmers they have to put sheep in a field rather than make more money by building a solar farm.

    So which is it?

    The incentives that have lead landowners to build solar farms are anything but an example of free market liberalism. They were built because of subsidy.
    Technically they - like our new nuclear plants - were built because of the willingness of the government to enter into long-term electricity purchase contracts at above market rates.

    It is worth noting that, given current electricity prices, this is probably the cheapest electricity the grid is using today.
    The one scheme I'm aware of irl was build by the landowner concerned using weak solar panels because the scheme paid out better the less you fed in. The whole thing was utterly bonkers.
    I'm sorry, but that's not how the Feed In Tariff worked. And I've been involved in the financing of a lot of solar farms (and other power plants) in my time.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,043
    MattW said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    kyf_100 said:

    EPG said:

    Selebian said:

    "I'm somebody who wants to see farmers producing food." - Truss.

    Give me strength. The level of the debate in these hustings is enough to drive one to absinthe.

    It's when it's enough to drive you to Truss that you really need to worry
    The point is a good deal more profound than you think. Farmers are currently being encouraged to leave the industry, 'rewild', grow biomass, put solar panels up - do almost anything but provide the nourishing food that we need secure supplies of. To the extent that many believe a food crisis is being engineered deliberately.
    The same people who believe Ukraine is Russian?
    Not really.

    I follow a few very patriotic americans on the twitters who think the above is madness, food and fuel security should come above ESG. It's hardly partisan or pro russian to say so.
    The problem is that food and fuel security is very expensive.

    We could - undoubtedly - be fuel sufficient in the UK. We could build a bunch of new nuclear* (cost per MWh c. £100), aggressively exploit shale gas via guaranteed purchase contracts (probably around £150 to 200), and keep adding on-shore and off-shore wind (a much more reasonable £30-50/MWh).

    But the cost would need to be picked up by someone. Either we would have much higher electricity and gas prices than our peers when supply normalized, or we would have the government writing very large checks to suppliers every year to keep our prices in line.

    The right answer - which probably keeps costs at that £30 level in the medium term - is to

    (a) be willing to enter into long-term supply contracts with low cost LNG providers (Mozambique or Israel will sell you twenty years of LNG at pretty good prices),
    (b) have substantial gas storage facilities (say three to six months of usage), and
    (c) to invest in building out tidal, wind, solar and lower cost nuclear options.

    Natural gas, in this world, is your battery back up.

    * It is of course worth noting that the UK needs to import uranium - which is currently does from, ahem, Russia. So it's not an entirely secure source of energy.
    Have I read those numbers right (or has my maths gone down the pan)? £30 per MWh = 3p per kWh.

    I would have thought 10p per kWh wholesale would be pretty acceptable right now.
    It would be... But if you commit to nuclear you commit to paying £100 (index linked) for two decades. And when the gas starts flowing, you're suddenly paying 3 or 4x the market price of electricity for your nuclear power.
    How confident are you that the gas will start flowing again in the next 5 years?

    We had a village talk last night from a supplier of PV/battery solutions. Batteries look an attractive add-on to PV panels with electricity at >30p per kWh but not so much if the retail price drops back to 15p per kWh.
    Yes - that's a close call. If we get more tariffs that pay a wholesale electricity rate for exports, that could change for the long term. But we aren't there yet.

    There is also quite a wide range of prices in batteries. Tesla is one of the more expensive, and denies the owner control - which is not attractive.
    Interesting. How does Tesla deny the owner control?
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    Yokes said:

    Alistair said:

    That Crimean airbase probably had about a billion dollars worth of planes parked up on it.

    We dont know how many were hit. Its reported there were 30+ aircraft of various types, mainly fast jets, there today. If they did wipe it, Russia simply cant replace that kind of loss in the short term.
    Based on analysing videos and measuring time delay to geo located points between visuals of the explosions and sound wave relative to the height of the explosions I can say the explosions were Fucking Massive with a calculated destructive force of Loads.

    Need more than a new coat of paint to get any of those planes on the ground airworthy
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,043
    David Gauke
    @DavidGauke
    ·
    1h
    It is deeply depressing how Trumpian the Conservative Party has become.

    ====

    Well, the old saw is that we always import our politics and culture from america just with a delay.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    Andy_JS said:

    "A conspiracy of silence about the impact of mass migration has cost Britain dear
    Failure to plan for the extra millions of people coming to Britain is behind many of our current woes
    PHILIP JOHNSTON" (£)

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/09/conspiracy-silence-impact-mass-migration-has-cost-britain-dear/

    What conspiracy of silence?
    File in the bin, along with the Telegraph’s entire output.
  • DynamoDynamo Posts: 651
    edited August 2022

    Yokes said:

    Alistair said:

    That Crimean airbase probably had about a billion dollars worth of planes parked up on it.

    We dont know how many were hit. Its reported there were 30+ aircraft of various types, mainly fast jets, there today. If they did wipe it, Russia simply cant replace that kind of loss in the short term.
    You said earlier that Ukraine still isn’t winning.
    Are you perhaps slightly more positive than you were?
    From the Guardian write-up of the airbase explosions:

    "(O)ne adviser to the president, Mikhail Podolyak, appeared to suggest the strike could herald a new phase of the conflict. Podolyak said that Kyiv’s long-term goal was 'demilitarisation of the Russian Federation'. He added: 'The future of the Crimea is to be a pearl of the Black Sea, a national park with unique nature and a world resort. Not a military base for terrorists. It is just the beginning.'"

    Podolyak is a former journalist who runs the info policy for Zelensky's office - a kind of Alastair Campbell figure.

    I said it in 2014 and I will say it again: the US navy is not going to sail into Sevastopol. It ain't going to happen, not even so that US sailors can go happycamping in a peninsula-wide nature resort. The war would go strategic-nuclear long before that ever seemed likely. As for the demilitarisation of Russia...
  • FlatlanderFlatlander Posts: 3,853
    Alistair said:

    That Crimean airbase probably had about a billion dollars worth of planes parked up on it.

    Shame if anything were to have happened to them...

    I see the Ukrainians have claimed that what hit the airbase was purely Ukrainian, which in theory rules out the US ATACMS.

    One video has a classic supersonic double boom so that rules out a subsonic cruise missile.

    They were working on a ballistic missile themselves (Hrim) but it was allegedly still in development. Live testing perhaps...?
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,771
    Dynamo said:

    Yokes said:

    Alistair said:

    That Crimean airbase probably had about a billion dollars worth of planes parked up on it.

    We dont know how many were hit. Its reported there were 30+ aircraft of various types, mainly fast jets, there today. If they did wipe it, Russia simply cant replace that kind of loss in the short term.
    You said earlier that Ukraine still isn’t winning.
    Are you perhaps slightly more positive than you were?
    From the Guardian write-up of the airbase explosions:

    "(O)ne adviser to the president, Mikhail Podolyak, appeared to suggest the strike could herald a new phase of the conflict. Podolyak said that Kyiv’s long-term goal was 'demilitarisation of the Russian Federation'. He added: 'The future of the Crimea is to be a pearl of the Black Sea, a national park with unique nature and a world resort. Not a military base for terrorists. It is just the beginning.'"

    Podolyak is a former journalist who runs the info policy for Zelensky's office - a kind of Alastair Campbell figure.

    I said it in 2014 and I will say it again: the US navy is not going to sail into Sevastopol. It ain't going to happen, not even so the sailors can go happy-camping in a nature resort. The war would go strategic-nuclear long before that ever seemed likely. As for the demilitarisation of Russia...
    So, you're saying that Ukraine's current goal wrt to Russia is what Russia's goal was wrt Ukraine about six month ago: i.e. demilitarization?
  • She talks utter bollx, but I have to admit it she has an uncanny ability to tap into the stream of utter bollx that the saloon bar bores at the local Con club are saying right now.


    Adam Bienkov
    @AdamBienkov

    Liz Truss says she will stop people from “filling fields with paraphernalia like solar farms.”

    “What we want is crops, and we want livestock.”

    This saloon bar bore is saying it on PB right now, because it happens to be true.
    She's lost me - one minute she is the champion of free markets and liberty and the next minute she's telling farmers they have to put sheep in a field rather than make more money by building a solar farm.

    So which is it?

    Markets are free to do what Truss wants.
    Tbf, Rishi and Liz are saying the same thing. I can only imagine they have been lobbied by farmers that they are being forced to plant solar rather than cows in their fields (maybe by Defra edict; more likely by loss of subsidy).
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,047
    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    She talks utter bollx, but I have to admit it she has an uncanny ability to tap into the stream of utter bollx that the saloon bar bores at the local Con club are saying right now.


    Adam Bienkov
    @AdamBienkov

    Liz Truss says she will stop people from “filling fields with paraphernalia like solar farms.”

    “What we want is crops, and we want livestock.”

    This saloon bar bore is saying it on PB right now, because it happens to be true.
    She's lost me - one minute she is the champion of free markets and liberty and the next minute she's telling farmers they have to put sheep in a field rather than make more money by building a solar farm.

    So which is it?

    The incentives that have lead landowners to build solar farms are anything but an example of free market liberalism. They were built because of subsidy.
    Technically they - like our new nuclear plants - were built because of the willingness of the government to enter into long-term electricity purchase contracts at above market rates.

    It is worth noting that, given current electricity prices, this is probably the cheapest electricity the grid is using today.
    The one scheme I'm aware of irl was build by the landowner concerned using weak solar panels because the scheme paid out better the less you fed in. The whole thing was utterly bonkers.
    I'm sorry, but that's not how the Feed In Tariff worked. And I've been involved in the financing of a lot of solar farms (and other power plants) in my time.
    I don't know how it worked in your cases, but I can tell you categorically that in this instance, weaker panels were chosen because it paid better. I believe it was because the scheme aimed to incentivise 'smaller' projects.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,047

    David Gauke
    @DavidGauke
    ·
    1h
    It is deeply depressing how Trumpian the Conservative Party has become.

    ====

    Well, the old saw is that we always import our politics and culture from america just with a delay.

    On a more positive note, it has become a lot less Gaukian.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    Dynamo said:

    Yokes said:

    Alistair said:

    That Crimean airbase probably had about a billion dollars worth of planes parked up on it.

    We dont know how many were hit. Its reported there were 30+ aircraft of various types, mainly fast jets, there today. If they did wipe it, Russia simply cant replace that kind of loss in the short term.
    You said earlier that Ukraine still isn’t winning.
    Are you perhaps slightly more positive than you were?
    From the Guardian write-up of the airbase explosions:

    "(O)ne adviser to the president, Mikhail Podolyak, appeared to suggest the strike could herald a new phase of the conflict. Podolyak said that Kyiv’s long-term goal was 'demilitarisation of the Russian Federation'. He added: 'The future of the Crimea is to be a pearl of the Black Sea, a national park with unique nature and a world resort. Not a military base for terrorists. It is just the beginning.'"

    Podolyak is a former journalist who runs the info policy for Zelensky's office - a kind of Alastair Campbell figure.

    I said it in 2014 and I will say it again: the US navy is not going to sail into Sevastopol. It ain't going to happen, not even so that US sailors can go happycamping in a peninsula-wide nature resort. The war would go strategic-nuclear long before that ever seemed likely. As for the demilitarisation of Russia...
    Who was suggesting the demilitarisation of Russia? Literally nobody.

    I’d be happy to see it effectively dissolved though. Like Prussia, it’s had its chances and managed to stuff it up each and every time.

    Fascists gonna fash, and it’s beyond boring now.
  • YokesYokes Posts: 1,178
    edited August 2022

    Yokes said:

    Alistair said:

    That Crimean airbase probably had about a billion dollars worth of planes parked up on it.

    We dont know how many were hit. Its reported there were 30+ aircraft of various types, mainly fast jets, there today. If they did wipe it, Russia simply cant replace that kind of loss in the short term.
    You said earlier that Ukraine still isn’t winning.
    Are you perhaps slightly more positive than you were?
    Arent winning. Yet. The loss of fast jet aircraft isnt the same as war winning. You just dont replace 20 odd jets that quickly, though, unless you are the US or maybe China. If, that is, the attack caused that level of damage.

    In short, Ukraine is not winning if we read into war aims & territory. There is, however, no forceful momentum either way. Russia is focussing on local battlefield efforts, Ukraine is focussing on depth, essentially trying to strategically weaken the Russian frontline by destroying the chain behind it. If you were looking at it from a Russian point of view, war winning in military terms is not looking near, they havent significantly disrupted the strategic chain supporting the frontline Ukrainain military, the Ukrainian airforce is still flying and the Russians have failed to interdict logistics in transit since the start of the war, ie if its moving at night they cant seem to find it.

    Long term, the differing methodologies favour Ukraine over timde but territory is territory and Russia holds land that Ukraine wants back. The idea too that the much promised Kherson offensive will go without Russia attempting their own offensive elsewhere seems fanciful. If the Russians were unable to do that, you'd have to doubt their long term capacity to win.
  • DynamoDynamo Posts: 651
    edited August 2022

    Dynamo said:

    Yokes said:

    Alistair said:

    That Crimean airbase probably had about a billion dollars worth of planes parked up on it.

    We dont know how many were hit. Its reported there were 30+ aircraft of various types, mainly fast jets, there today. If they did wipe it, Russia simply cant replace that kind of loss in the short term.
    You said earlier that Ukraine still isn’t winning.
    Are you perhaps slightly more positive than you were?
    From the Guardian write-up of the airbase explosions:

    "(O)ne adviser to the president, Mikhail Podolyak, appeared to suggest the strike could herald a new phase of the conflict. Podolyak said that Kyiv’s long-term goal was 'demilitarisation of the Russian Federation'. He added: 'The future of the Crimea is to be a pearl of the Black Sea, a national park with unique nature and a world resort. Not a military base for terrorists. It is just the beginning.'"

    Podolyak is a former journalist who runs the info policy for Zelensky's office - a kind of Alastair Campbell figure.

    I said it in 2014 and I will say it again: the US navy is not going to sail into Sevastopol. It ain't going to happen, not even so that US sailors can go happycamping in a peninsula-wide nature resort. The war would go strategic-nuclear long before that ever seemed likely. As for the demilitarisation of Russia...
    Who was suggesting the demilitarisation of Russia? Literally nobody.

    I’d be happy to see it effectively dissolved though. Like Prussia, it’s had its chances and managed to stuff it up each and every time.

    Fascists gonna fash, and it’s beyond boring now.
    Did you not see the inner quotation marks in what I quoted from the Guardian article? Mikhail Podolyak, an adviser to President Zelensky (see my blurb for further info about him), said that Kyiv's goal (that means the goal of the Ukrainian government) is "demilitarisation of the Russian Federation". (The quote marks mean those words came out of his mouth.)

    What are you bored with exactly? Facts being reported in the newspapers that you don't like, which someone then puts in front of your retina on the internet?
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    She talks utter bollx, but I have to admit it she has an uncanny ability to tap into the stream of utter bollx that the saloon bar bores at the local Con club are saying right now.


    Adam Bienkov
    @AdamBienkov

    Liz Truss says she will stop people from “filling fields with paraphernalia like solar farms.”

    “What we want is crops, and we want livestock.”

    This saloon bar bore is saying it on PB right now, because it happens to be true.
    She's lost me - one minute she is the champion of free markets and liberty and the next minute she's telling farmers they have to put sheep in a field rather than make more money by building a solar farm.

    So which is it?

    Markets are free to do what Truss wants.
    Tbf, Rishi and Liz are saying the same thing. I can only imagine they have been lobbied by farmers that they are being forced to plant solar rather than cows in their fields (maybe by Defra edict; more likely by loss of subsidy).
    Defra can't directly force farmers to do stuff, and the subsidy situation is really fluid atm with ELMS on the horizon but not really understood, by me anyway. Farmers aren't that big of a lobby. My theory is this is nimbies preferring a view of fluffy baa lambs vs 1984 style energy factories.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,771

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    She talks utter bollx, but I have to admit it she has an uncanny ability to tap into the stream of utter bollx that the saloon bar bores at the local Con club are saying right now.


    Adam Bienkov
    @AdamBienkov

    Liz Truss says she will stop people from “filling fields with paraphernalia like solar farms.”

    “What we want is crops, and we want livestock.”

    This saloon bar bore is saying it on PB right now, because it happens to be true.
    She's lost me - one minute she is the champion of free markets and liberty and the next minute she's telling farmers they have to put sheep in a field rather than make more money by building a solar farm.

    So which is it?

    The incentives that have lead landowners to build solar farms are anything but an example of free market liberalism. They were built because of subsidy.
    Technically they - like our new nuclear plants - were built because of the willingness of the government to enter into long-term electricity purchase contracts at above market rates.

    It is worth noting that, given current electricity prices, this is probably the cheapest electricity the grid is using today.
    The one scheme I'm aware of irl was build by the landowner concerned using weak solar panels because the scheme paid out better the less you fed in. The whole thing was utterly bonkers.
    I'm sorry, but that's not how the Feed In Tariff worked. And I've been involved in the financing of a lot of solar farms (and other power plants) in my time.
    I don't know how it worked in your cases, but I can tell you categorically that in this instance, weaker panels were chosen because it paid better. I believe it was because the scheme aimed to incentivise 'smaller' projects.
    OK, I misunderstood you.

    Smaller projects (i.e. sub 50MW) got higher rates. But you could make your project produce less electricity by just - you know - buying fewer panels.

    If land is cheap, the optimum strategy was almost certainly to buy lower efficiency solar panels.

    If a 12% efficiency panel is $100 and a 15% one is $200 then your total project cost - if installation is inexpensive - is certainly to buyer lower efficiency panels, because your cost per watt (fully installed) is lower.

    But my points: the only subsidy is exactly the same one as exists with nuclear - i.e. the government was willing to enter into a long-term electricity purchase agreement at an above market rate. One which, ironically, is now well below market rates.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    sarissa said:

    OT- probably going to Zurich and then St Gallen for a football match next week, weather looks terrible. Anyone have some recommendations for indoors attractions and reasonably inexpensive dining and drinking?

    Switzerland is not the place for inexpensive eating or drinking. Zurich especially not. It's also a very dull city unless you want to go to a poser night club with Switzerland, Austria and Germany's influencers. Unless of course you want to shop for luxury goods, then it's great.
  • sarissa said:

    OT- probably going to Zurich and then St Gallen for a football match next week, weather looks terrible. Anyone have some recommendations for indoors attractions and reasonably inexpensive dining and drinking?

    Switzerland doesn’t do anything inexpensive. Shame it wasn’t a month later, Ice Hockey.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 49,959

    Sam Freedman
    @Samfr
    Yeah I'm still not seeing why people think she's good at this.

    https://twitter.com/Samfr/status/1557077025210667008

    She sounds a bit half-cut to be honest. It's in the bag so why not?
    The gurning, unexpected tonal changes, and split-second misalignments between voice and facial expression are strangely mesmerising.

    Like when Gordon Brown was told to smile. It was all so wrong....
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 49,959

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 - Try this search: "uranium mines + Australia".
    Or this one: "uranium mines + Canada"

    Sure, but the UK buys its Uranium from Russia right now.

    It's a similar situation to natural gas. If Russia stops exporting, we (and other people who import from Russia) will need to buy from someone else. We'll all be competing over a smaller amount of exported uranium, and the price will go through the roof.
    I always assumed the cost of uranium is only a very small fraction of the total cost of nuclear energy.
    Of a plant costing £25 billion, maybe. But without the uranium, that is £25 billion on a big lump of concrete.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,088

    MattW said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    kyf_100 said:

    EPG said:

    Selebian said:

    "I'm somebody who wants to see farmers producing food." - Truss.

    Give me strength. The level of the debate in these hustings is enough to drive one to absinthe.

    It's when it's enough to drive you to Truss that you really need to worry
    The point is a good deal more profound than you think. Farmers are currently being encouraged to leave the industry, 'rewild', grow biomass, put solar panels up - do almost anything but provide the nourishing food that we need secure supplies of. To the extent that many believe a food crisis is being engineered deliberately.
    The same people who believe Ukraine is Russian?
    Not really.

    I follow a few very patriotic americans on the twitters who think the above is madness, food and fuel security should come above ESG. It's hardly partisan or pro russian to say so.
    The problem is that food and fuel security is very expensive.

    We could - undoubtedly - be fuel sufficient in the UK. We could build a bunch of new nuclear* (cost per MWh c. £100), aggressively exploit shale gas via guaranteed purchase contracts (probably around £150 to 200), and keep adding on-shore and off-shore wind (a much more reasonable £30-50/MWh).

    But the cost would need to be picked up by someone. Either we would have much higher electricity and gas prices than our peers when supply normalized, or we would have the government writing very large checks to suppliers every year to keep our prices in line.

    The right answer - which probably keeps costs at that £30 level in the medium term - is to

    (a) be willing to enter into long-term supply contracts with low cost LNG providers (Mozambique or Israel will sell you twenty years of LNG at pretty good prices),
    (b) have substantial gas storage facilities (say three to six months of usage), and
    (c) to invest in building out tidal, wind, solar and lower cost nuclear options.

    Natural gas, in this world, is your battery back up.

    * It is of course worth noting that the UK needs to import uranium - which is currently does from, ahem, Russia. So it's not an entirely secure source of energy.
    Have I read those numbers right (or has my maths gone down the pan)? £30 per MWh = 3p per kWh.

    I would have thought 10p per kWh wholesale would be pretty acceptable right now.
    It would be... But if you commit to nuclear you commit to paying £100 (index linked) for two decades. And when the gas starts flowing, you're suddenly paying 3 or 4x the market price of electricity for your nuclear power.
    How confident are you that the gas will start flowing again in the next 5 years?

    We had a village talk last night from a supplier of PV/battery solutions. Batteries look an attractive add-on to PV panels with electricity at >30p per kWh but not so much if the retail price drops back to 15p per kWh.
    Yes - that's a close call. If we get more tariffs that pay a wholesale electricity rate for exports, that could change for the long term. But we aren't there yet.

    There is also quite a wide range of prices in batteries. Tesla is one of the more expensive, and denies the owner control - which is not attractive.
    Interesting. How does Tesla deny the owner control?
    Anecdotal reports about problems doing non-basic things with it, especially if used with other brands of kit. eg:

    I see PW as the dominant device here. You have very little control over it. I give it the off peak charge window and it decides whether to charge and how much. It takes into account apparently your consumption, how much PV you generated (just the day before?, or week?, or month? no idea ) also *allegedly* it takes into estimated account PV production tomorrow.

    SE * is dumb. This makes life simpler. It will charge/discharge at set times/days/months - which I can define.


    * refers to a Solar Edge battery system.

    I think if you go Tesla and let it do its thing, you would be fine - and you get the other parts of the ecosystem such as the Tesla tariff or teh Tesla Energy plan from the same, related solar panels (Tesla are not particularly keen on batteries being sold without panels), and so on.

    But the PW seems to do its own thing, a bit like the cars.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,880

    Dura_Ace said:

    HYUFD said:

    Iain Duncan Smith rode a motorcycle in black leather to a Liz Truss even yesterday

    https://twitter.com/WJames_Reuters/status/1556932421148352512?s=20&t=vr3IgxdePEgmAEXvNcWAmw

    Trident 660. Not great, not terrible.
    Just saw someone go by on a Ducati in shorts and T-shirt, earlier. Took off from the lights hard enough to lift the front wheel for a fair stretch of road. In an urban environment.

    If people want to kill themselves, could they please do it on a track, where flying bits won’t hit other people?
    That's absolutely sickening. I hope he wasn't close to a school or youngsters at play.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,088

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    She talks utter bollx, but I have to admit it she has an uncanny ability to tap into the stream of utter bollx that the saloon bar bores at the local Con club are saying right now.


    Adam Bienkov
    @AdamBienkov

    Liz Truss says she will stop people from “filling fields with paraphernalia like solar farms.”

    “What we want is crops, and we want livestock.”

    This saloon bar bore is saying it on PB right now, because it happens to be true.
    She's lost me - one minute she is the champion of free markets and liberty and the next minute she's telling farmers they have to put sheep in a field rather than make more money by building a solar farm.

    So which is it?

    The incentives that have lead landowners to build solar farms are anything but an example of free market liberalism. They were built because of subsidy.
    Technically they - like our new nuclear plants - were built because of the willingness of the government to enter into long-term electricity purchase contracts at above market rates.

    It is worth noting that, given current electricity prices, this is probably the cheapest electricity the grid is using today.
    The one scheme I'm aware of irl was build by the landowner concerned using weak solar panels because the scheme paid out better the less you fed in. The whole thing was utterly bonkers.
    I'm sorry, but that's not how the Feed In Tariff worked. And I've been involved in the financing of a lot of solar farms (and other power plants) in my time.
    I don't know how it worked in your cases, but I can tell you categorically that in this instance, weaker panels were chosen because it paid better. I believe it was because the scheme aimed to incentivise 'smaller' projects.
    Perhaps he had a special deal on obsolete panels from the factory in China, or similar?

    But where we are now, does a subsidy regime still exist?
  • YokesYokes Posts: 1,178
    And it appears the FBI, or at least he says its the FBI, has executed a search warrant on Republican Congressman Scott Perry. Took his phone supposedly.

    Coincidence with events in Florida?

  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    Dura_Ace said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    HYUFD said:

    Iain Duncan Smith rode a motorcycle in black leather to a Liz Truss even yesterday

    https://twitter.com/WJames_Reuters/status/1556932421148352512?s=20&t=vr3IgxdePEgmAEXvNcWAmw

    Trident 660. Not great, not terrible.
    Just saw someone go by on a Ducati in shorts and T-shirt, earlier. Took off from the lights hard enough to lift the front wheel for a fair stretch of road. In an urban environment.

    If people want to kill themselves, could they please do it on a track, where flying bits won’t hit other people?
    That's absolutely sickening. I hope he wasn't close to a school or youngsters at play.
    :lol: :
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,771
    edited August 2022
    MattW said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    She talks utter bollx, but I have to admit it she has an uncanny ability to tap into the stream of utter bollx that the saloon bar bores at the local Con club are saying right now.


    Adam Bienkov
    @AdamBienkov

    Liz Truss says she will stop people from “filling fields with paraphernalia like solar farms.”

    “What we want is crops, and we want livestock.”

    This saloon bar bore is saying it on PB right now, because it happens to be true.
    She's lost me - one minute she is the champion of free markets and liberty and the next minute she's telling farmers they have to put sheep in a field rather than make more money by building a solar farm.

    So which is it?

    The incentives that have lead landowners to build solar farms are anything but an example of free market liberalism. They were built because of subsidy.
    Technically they - like our new nuclear plants - were built because of the willingness of the government to enter into long-term electricity purchase contracts at above market rates.

    It is worth noting that, given current electricity prices, this is probably the cheapest electricity the grid is using today.
    The one scheme I'm aware of irl was build by the landowner concerned using weak solar panels because the scheme paid out better the less you fed in. The whole thing was utterly bonkers.
    I'm sorry, but that's not how the Feed In Tariff worked. And I've been involved in the financing of a lot of solar farms (and other power plants) in my time.
    I don't know how it worked in your cases, but I can tell you categorically that in this instance, weaker panels were chosen because it paid better. I believe it was because the scheme aimed to incentivise 'smaller' projects.
    Perhaps he had a special deal on obsolete panels from the factory in China, or similar?

    But where we are now, does a subsidy regime still exist?
    I don't believe the government has any non-residential feed in tariffs for solar any more*: you want to build in your field, you are going to be at the mercy of wholesale electricity prices. (Which means you will be making out like a bandito right now.)

    That said, it's a bit different for residential, where there is a guaranteed rate that the grid will pay for any energy you don't use and re-export. It is - however - fairly modest these days. I forget the exact number, but it's in the 5 cents a KWh level, which is waaaaaaayyyy below current wholesale electricity prices.

    * Obviously, if you sold the output of your field for twenty years, you probably still have 12 years or so left on your contract.
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074

    Sam Freedman
    @Samfr
    Yeah I'm still not seeing why people think she's good at this.

    https://twitter.com/Samfr/status/1557077025210667008

    She sounds a bit half-cut to be honest. It's in the bag so why not?
    The gurning, unexpected tonal changes, and split-second misalignments between voice and facial expression are strangely mesmerising.

    She is an appalling public speaker.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,771
    Ms Omar, of "the squad" could be in trouble in her Minnesota primary: she's three points clear of her challenger, but Minneapolis has largely finished counting, and the suburbs are much less friendly to her.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,282
    rcs1000 said:

    Ms Omar, of "the squad" could be in trouble in her Minnesota primary: she's three points clear of her challenger, but Minneapolis has largely finished counting, and the suburbs are much less friendly to her.

    It would be a major boost for the Democrats if she loses, TSTO.
  • geoffw said:

    Carnyx said:

    Foxy said:

    nico679 said:

    The Tory party is in an awful mess potentially. Judging by the cheers and shouting the membership worship Johnson and can't understand why he has gone and yet the majority of his cabinet and lower ministers resigned en masse because he was unfit for office.

    The stab in the back myth aligned with the king 'o the water is going to poison things for years and Johnson will love stirring the cauldron.

    Talking of which:

    Liz Truss says she would vote to end the privileges committee investigation into whether the PM misled parliament (if such a vote existed)

    https://twitter.com/hoffman_noa/status/1557089965741412352

    Kill him why you can Liz. Or he will destroy you.
    Jeez she really is clueless . Even if she could do this it would look shocking to the public that she’s trying to get Johnson off. The more I see of her the more I loathe her .
    At least she will purge Woke Lefty language from our primary schools mathematics:

    https://twitter.com/trussliz/status/148813032645083136?t=-hz6iHTle5tqKhQMeLSLdA&s=19
    How absolutely extraordinary. She obviously doesn't know the meaning of those words. Or is pretending not to. I don't know which is worse.

    Edit: I had to go back and look again. But it does seem to be her account, not a parody one.
    Some twenty odd years ago I thought a tutorial student was taking the piss when using 'times' as a verb instead of 'multiply'. As in "you times a with b to get c". Regrettably, that seems to be the language used in schools nowadays.

    I was taught using the word times as a verb in the eighties, learning my times tables. It's nothing new.

    On that Tweet, it's out of context and from eleven years ago. I find it refreshing she's not been purging her Tweet history, but delving into it with comments like that is just silly.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,772
    edited August 2022
    IshmaelZ said:

    She talks utter bollx, but I have to admit it she has an uncanny ability to tap into the stream of utter bollx that the saloon bar bores at the local Con club are saying right now.


    Adam Bienkov
    @AdamBienkov

    Liz Truss says she will stop people from “filling fields with paraphernalia like solar farms.”

    “What we want is crops, and we want livestock.”

    This saloon bar bore is saying it on PB right now, because it happens to be true.
    She's lost me - one minute she is the champion of free markets and liberty and the next minute she's telling farmers they have to put sheep in a field rather than make more money by building a solar farm.

    So which is it?

    Markets are free to do what Truss wants.
    Tbf, Rishi and Liz are saying the same thing. I can only imagine they have been lobbied by farmers that they are being forced to plant solar rather than cows in their fields (maybe by Defra edict; more likely by loss of subsidy).
    Defra can't directly force farmers to do stuff, and the subsidy situation is really fluid atm with ELMS on the horizon but not really understood, by me anyway. Farmers aren't that big of a lobby. My theory is this is nimbies preferring a view of fluffy baa lambs vs 1984 style energy factories.
    There are old fogeys against solar panels only because young greens are in favour of them. "We didn't have solar panels in my day. We had soot from coal fire on our laundry and we were glad."
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 55,019
    rcs1000 said:

    kyf_100 said:

    EPG said:

    Selebian said:

    "I'm somebody who wants to see farmers producing food." - Truss.

    Give me strength. The level of the debate in these hustings is enough to drive one to absinthe.

    It's when it's enough to drive you to Truss that you really need to worry
    The point is a good deal more profound than you think. Farmers are currently being encouraged to leave the industry, 'rewild', grow biomass, put solar panels up - do almost anything but provide the nourishing food that we need secure supplies of. To the extent that many believe a food crisis is being engineered deliberately.
    The same people who believe Ukraine is Russian?
    Not really.

    I follow a few very patriotic americans on the twitters who think the above is madness, food and fuel security should come above ESG. It's hardly partisan or pro russian to say so.
    The problem is that food and fuel security is very expensive.

    We could - undoubtedly - be fuel sufficient in the UK. We could build a bunch of new nuclear* (cost per MWh c. £100), aggressively exploit shale gas via guaranteed purchase contracts (probably around £150 to 200), and keep adding on-shore and off-shore wind (a much more reasonable £30-50/MWh).

    But the cost would need to be picked up by someone. Either we would have much higher electricity and gas prices than our peers when supply normalized, or we would have the government writing very large checks to suppliers every year to keep our prices in line.

    The right answer - which probably keeps costs at that £30 level in the medium term - is to

    (a) be willing to enter into long-term supply contracts with low cost LNG providers (Mozambique or Israel will sell you twenty years of LNG at pretty good prices),
    (b) have substantial gas storage facilities (say three to six months of usage), and
    (c) to invest in building out tidal, wind, solar and lower cost nuclear options.

    Natural gas, in this world, is your battery back up.

    * It is of course worth noting that the UK needs to import uranium - which is currently does from, ahem, Russia. So it's not an entirely secure source of energy.
    This is simply not true. The UK gets most of its uranium from Australia.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 55,019
    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 - Try this search: "uranium mines + Australia".
    Or this one: "uranium mines + Canada"

    Sure, but the UK buys its Uranium from Russia right now.

    It's a similar situation to natural gas. If Russia stops exporting, we (and other people who import from Russia) will need to buy from someone else. We'll all be competing over a smaller amount of exported uranium, and the price will go through the roof.
    No it doesn't.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,047

    IshmaelZ said:

    She talks utter bollx, but I have to admit it she has an uncanny ability to tap into the stream of utter bollx that the saloon bar bores at the local Con club are saying right now.


    Adam Bienkov
    @AdamBienkov

    Liz Truss says she will stop people from “filling fields with paraphernalia like solar farms.”

    “What we want is crops, and we want livestock.”

    This saloon bar bore is saying it on PB right now, because it happens to be true.
    She's lost me - one minute she is the champion of free markets and liberty and the next minute she's telling farmers they have to put sheep in a field rather than make more money by building a solar farm.

    So which is it?

    Markets are free to do what Truss wants.
    Tbf, Rishi and Liz are saying the same thing. I can only imagine they have been lobbied by farmers that they are being forced to plant solar rather than cows in their fields (maybe by Defra edict; more likely by loss of subsidy).
    Defra can't directly force farmers to do stuff, and the subsidy situation is really fluid atm with ELMS on the horizon but not really understood, by me anyway. Farmers aren't that big of a lobby. My theory is this is nimbies preferring a view of fluffy baa lambs vs 1984 style energy factories.
    There are old fogeys against solar panels only because young greens are in favour of them. "We didn't have solar panels in my day. We had soot from coal fire on our laundry and we were glad."
    Or, they could just want this country to produce a secure supply of good, ethically reared/farmed food.
  • Striking - not good
    Not paying energy bills - good
This discussion has been closed.