At last PB can have a proper discussion with publication of a new MRP based on a mega poll. This new poll with Prof Curtice involved should bring Heathener back to reality winning elections just ain’t that easy as she makes out.
Under new boundaries it finds Labour on 35%. It finds Labour support in its lead over Tories is still “quite soft”
Under Labours worse case scenario Tory’s are boosted by taking Reform voters, or there’s no reform standing so the election result is Lab 316, leaving the Tories at 286.
And the focus group seems to like Rishi Sunak a lot.
1.They are really very expensive. 2. Their range is not good. 3. Charging infrastructure is patchy and unreliable
Until these 3 change I will not be buying one. For very local journeys we walk or bike. There are no buses. The trains have become unreliable since the strikes. Cars are essential. But EV's are as yet wholly impractical.
I think this is unreasonably reductive & “wholly impractical” a massive overstatement.
Plenty of people commute less than fifty miles to work. Which means that the round trip is easily within every EV currently on sale (and most second hand ones, except early Leafs I imagine). If you can charge overnight, then this model of usage can work out perfectly well.
EVs do not have to be a perfect replacement for ICE cars to replace them - they just have to be good enough that a buyer is happy to put up with the downsides in order to get the upside. That’s a calculation which differs between people.
A relative bought a second hand Leaf as a second car. It’s range is terrible! But it can happily drive to town / school / any kind of local trip and the running costs are extremely low. What’s not to like?
As I hope was obvious from my comment they are wholly impractical in the area where I live.
Elsewhere they may be suitable. But public policy should be designed to make such a change practical and cost effective for everyone not the lucky few. I see no signs of that happening.
Why not have both, like we do? A big comfy long distance diesel or petrol for those long country drives, and a small runabout EV for trips to the shops and other local excursions. Even the small ones like Leafs and Zoes have ranges these days around 200 miles which gets you a lot of local trips, and living in the countryside means I assume it's easy to charge at home. And they really aren't expensive.
I can't afford to own or run two cars, that's why. If the trains to London (or even the local ones) were reliable I could rely on something small. But they aren't.
In time I hope charging infrastructure and trains become better and the price comes down and then I will make the change. But for now - and I have looked into this - they don't work for me.
It’s fine to say they don’t work for you & therefore you won’t buy one. If you’re talking about yourself rather than in general then maybe make that a tad clearer in future? It really wasn’t obvious to me reading your original comment that you were speaking personally & not in generalities.
Was the phrase "until these 3 change, I will not be buying one" not a big clue. Nor the reference to the state of local trains / non-existence of local buses and what "we" do for local journeys?
I am curious as to why they are "wholly impractical in the area where I live". I assume you live in the sticks as I do. I have only ever used public chargers up here for shooting a YouTube video - the car's range means there's no need for local charging within a 140 mile radius of here.
That doesn't make any sense to me.
If you lack at-home charging capabilities and lack charging within a 140 mile radius then what if your daily commute is 20 miles each way with no charging capabilities at either side?
Do you deliberately go out of your way 140 miles to charge when you need a charge? That's not feasible.
If you can't charge at home then an EV is not for you. That isn't an "area" issue though, its your house whether its town, country, wherever.
But if you do have charging at home then you need to either be doing some serious local mileage or live in the artic to have EV use to be wholly impractical. My point about 140 miles was that with a comfortable range of about 300 miles I could go 140 miles each way and still not need charging.
Well precisely this is the problem that needs to be fixed. Many people won't have a charger at home.
Now in my town we have many charger ports available within a few miles of where I live, though the price and inconvenience of them means I wouldn't want to rely upon them, but in rural areas that's even more of a problem.
Even in rural areas, plenty of people live in terraced houses. Terraces are utter madness to me, especially nowadays how they're still getting built, its insane to drive through dozens of miles of no developments then have a row of houses all shoved together with nowhere to park and charge your car - but that's how many people live and many developments are still built like that today which is complete madness.
We only have 7 years until new ICE vehicles are supposed to be outlawed, in that 7 years there needs to be a viable solution implemented and rolled out to solve the charging problem for people who can't charge at home.
Simply saying "well I can charge at home, so suck to be you, you're left behind" is not a solution.
We don't "only have 7 years until new ICE vehicles are supposed to be outlawed". We have 7 years before sales of new ICE vehicles (with various exceptions) is to be outlawed. ICE vehicles will remain legal and in widespread use.
That said, yes, we need more infrastructure and I support government acting on that.
I said new.
Yes second-hand ICE vehicles will remain legal and in widespread use and available for sale, but that doesn't address the issue for anyone who lacks at-home charger capabilities and wants a new vehicle in 7 years time.
There are plenty of people who buy new cars every few years, and many of them will live in terraces or mews or other properties without at-home charger capabilities. In 7 years time a new vehicle that suits them is intended to be outlawed. So you're either now saying they're obliged to keep older, run-down vehicles they don't want which others might want but they don't, or they need to buy a technology that doesn't suit them.
We need a solution to houses that lack at home charger capabilities, and we need it within 7 years. Or we need to not outlaw new ICE sales then. Personally I'd rather the former, but simply saying "go second hand instead" isn't a solution.
Some people liked to argue that there were lots of Russian-speaking Ukrainians who wanted to live as part of Russia. Perhaps the evidence of the way in which Russia has abandoned civilians to the flooding from the dam collapse will convince some of these people that it is not a good idea to leave any of Ukraine under Russian control.
Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 @bayraktar_1love Local residents from the roofs of their houses are signaling for help to the Ukrainian drone. Oleshki, Kherson region. The left bank of the Dnipro, occupied by Russia.
Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 @bayraktar_1love /2. The Ukrainian side has no way to reach the local residents so far on the left bank of Dnipro. But it is possible to deliver part of the supplies with the help of Drones. On the video the 406 brigade delivers drinking water to the flood victims in Oleshki.
At last PB can have a proper discussion with publication of a new MRP based on a mega poll. This new poll with Prof Curtice involved should bring Heathener back to reality winning elections just ain’t that easy as she makes out.
Under new boundaries it finds Labour on 35%. It finds Labour support in its lead over Tories is still “quite soft”
Under Labours worse case scenario Tory’s are boosted by taking Reform voters, or there’s no reform standing so the election result is Lab 316, leaving the Tories at 286.
And the focus group seems to like Rishi Sunak a lot.
Mid thirties is the best Labour has got in real votes this parliament, maybe we should be thinking that’s about where they will poll in a general election?
Don’t really understand why he half hour wait is such a big deal. Most people would take a break of that order anyway on a long drive. And it’s not as if looking for a petrol station, waiting for a pump and filling up is instant.
Good morning
Taking a break on a long journey is one thing, but queuing and waiting half and hour or more on more than one occasion is not attractive
I drive the 450 miles to my family in Lossiemouth without filling up, and on that journey have maybe three or four stops.
Additionally I can drive a further 150 miles without replenishing the tank and get over 55 mpg
My BMW 520D is in a class of its own on such a long journey and indeed complies with ULEZ and at a £30 annual road tax
Why on earth would I consider a ev, and that is without considering paying up to £30,000 more to change
I will continue to look 'all smug' as I have no intention of buying a ev
EVs don't work for everyone. But on your trips to Lossie where you make 3 or 4 stops? An EV would charge whilst you did so. Depends on which generation of 5-series you have, but its hardly in a class of its own - Audi and Mercedes as starters for 10 offer similar vehicles with similar interiors.
Then we have the drivetrain point. Your car either has a manual box or a ZF 8-speed auto. Manual boxes are something out of the ark (though I know they can be pleasing to play with), the ZF box is pretty much industry leading. But neither are anything compared to electric transmission. Once you've had an electric motor instead of a gearbox, any cog shifting feels as backwards as it is.
So lets take a real world example - traffic. I have two recent example on my trip through England last week. Stuck in a big queue on the edge of cities. In a manual I would be endlessly having to blend out the clutch. In an automatic there is less work, but with either on your 4 pot diesel you're belching filth into the environment where people live and work.
Whereas I sat there. Literally. The car driving itself. Steering, acceleration, braking. No input from me. Whilst not spewing filth out into people's lungs. Its *easier* to drive an EV.
None of which really addreses Big G's point (and mine which I made the other day). It takes me 8 hours to drive to Aberdeen on a lot less than a single tank of diesel. How long would it take me to do that drive in an EV? HOw long would I currently have to be sat wasting time at a servoce station whilst thecr is chartged? Even if I can actually get to a charger.
For anyone regularly travelling long distances with time constraints EVs are impractical at present. I don't want them to be but they are. And of course my last ICE vehicle cost me £500 second hand. Not seeing any viable comparisons in the EV market any time soon.
I literally make money on YouTube doing videos about this exact thing. Your 8 hour trip - how many stops? Most people would have 2 stops, maybe 3. Toilet, a snack, in the shop - so perhaps 20 minutes per stop? Before you claim to do it non-stop, or make 1 5-minute stop half way and that's all, again I say "most people". There is a reason why motorway service areas are so busy - most people make stops.
So in your 20 minute stop, plug your car in, add another 150+ miles of range, and then carry on. If you only charge when you were stopping anyway, the time added to your journey for charging is zero. That is my experience of half a dozen now trips from north of Aberdeen down to Sheffield / Liverpool / Essex etc. The number of times I have queued to charge is zero.
I've even done a direct comparison of the same Aberdeenshire to Dartford trip in my current Tesla Model Y vs the previous Outlander PHEV. Tesla was 20 minutes faster, and £50 cheaper. A real world example.
The size of your tank or the range it offers is irrelevant in real world usage. Most people's range is how far their bladder lasts, or their stomach needs a snack, or they need a break because want to get out and stretch their legs. They aren't driving 600 miles of range without a stop.
Before I got stuck at home, I regularly (say 6+ times a year, most often in winter) did the trip north from the Flatlands. We'd have a driver swap somewhere in England, a short stop at Stirling and then a refuel either in Aviemore or Ullapool if heading for the far north. Basically, just point and go.
We usually had piles of outdoor junk, sometimes including bikes, which often went in the car to save on air resistance (about £20 in extra drag if you have them on the roof or a towbar).
My car was (and still is) a zero tax (ha!) diesel estate which gets about 60mpg and can usually do more than 500 miles on a tank.
All current EV cars would be functionally worse and would probably cost at least 4 times as much. A Tesla does not really have the boot space.
Now you could argue that because of climate change, we are all going to have to make sacrifices. But on the other hand I haven't flown anywhere since 2005, as this was what we did instead.
One solution would be to have two cars, one for long journeys and a small electric one for buzzing about. But we really don't do the short miles to make that worthwhile. I'm happy to cycle or walk locally most of the time and I'm not currently commuting (which is the ideal use case for an electric car).
For mass adoption, electric has to be functionally better, not just "morally". This time is maybe not far off, but they don't work for everyone, particularly those who can't afford shiny shiny. At least not yet.
For almost everyone, the best car option is the one they already own. You have an old diesel estate which is still going and by the sounds of it you're still happy with. Great! Keep it! Would be crazy to trade it for £little to spend £lots on any new car unless you really want to. That is the same consideration most of us face with cars - cheaper to keep it.
I did see a Tesla Model Y which had a bike rack on the roof. Asked the guy what that was doing to energy use, and as you said with your own example, it wasn't good.
My policy with choice of cars though isn't to have a universal vehicle that can cover every eventuality. Because I'd have to have a van. The Outlander I had before the Tesla was often used like a van, but even that wasn't big enough all the time. So I just did more trips. The gargantuan boot of my Tesla isn't as square as the Outlander, so more trips again. But its better at almost everything else than the Outlander.
My frustration - and it is frustration not opposition - is that I don't want to keep my old diesel. I want an electric car. Not for any pointless climate change reasons but for the ones I have outlined that really will make life better for people - cutting noise pollution (although I will caveat that with the fact that people don't seem to realise how much traffic noise on faster routes is actually tyre noise not engine) and dealing with what I believe is a far greater environmental catastrophe which is the effect of petrol additives on our insect population.
But it is frustrating that at this moment it is simply not practical. Saying we all have to make changes is great for those who have the ability and the money to do that. I don't. I can neither afford an EV nor would it be practical for the one main thing I use a vehicle for.
I want things to change but just waving away the objections, particularly when they come from people who genuinely want this promised future, is short sighted.
One reason they don't work for you because you have a robo bladder and don't get tired For almost anyone doing your example trip they would stop a couple of times because they aren't robo and whilst stopped the car charges up.
In our case with the family in the car we did Fraserburgh-ish to Basildon with a couple of stops. We would have to stop even if the car had a battery or fuel tank capable of going non-stop.
I take your points on cost and practicalities - costs are dropping and body types expanding, so the tipping point will come.
So, does the car park by the meadows in Stamford near the public WC have charging points installed now? Or the car park in the park at Grantham? Because that's where I break my journey heading 'up north'. If I stop anywhere else it will be an extra break in the journey. I'm sure plenty of people have their own stopoff points on long journeys that are not motorway service stations. Once the coverage is everywhere and easy to find and usually available then adoption will take off but this feels like it's a couple of years away at least.
Don’t really understand why he half hour wait is such a big deal. Most people would take a break of that order anyway on a long drive. And it’s not as if looking for a petrol station, waiting for a pump and filling up is instant.
Good morning
Taking a break on a long journey is one thing, but queuing and waiting half and hour or more on more than one occasion is not attractive
I drive the 450 miles to my family in Lossiemouth without filling up, and on that journey have maybe three or four stops.
Additionally I can drive a further 150 miles without replenishing the tank and get over 55 mpg
My BMW 520D is in a class of its own on such a long journey and indeed complies with ULEZ and at a £30 annual road tax
Why on earth would I consider a ev, and that is without considering paying up to £30,000 more to change
I will continue to look 'all smug' as I have no intention of buying a ev
EVs don't work for everyone. But on your trips to Lossie where you make 3 or 4 stops? An EV would charge whilst you did so. Depends on which generation of 5-series you have, but its hardly in a class of its own - Audi and Mercedes as starters for 10 offer similar vehicles with similar interiors.
Then we have the drivetrain point. Your car either has a manual box or a ZF 8-speed auto. Manual boxes are something out of the ark (though I know they can be pleasing to play with), the ZF box is pretty much industry leading. But neither are anything compared to electric transmission. Once you've had an electric motor instead of a gearbox, any cog shifting feels as backwards as it is.
So lets take a real world example - traffic. I have two recent example on my trip through England last week. Stuck in a big queue on the edge of cities. In a manual I would be endlessly having to blend out the clutch. In an automatic there is less work, but with either on your 4 pot diesel you're belching filth into the environment where people live and work.
Whereas I sat there. Literally. The car driving itself. Steering, acceleration, braking. No input from me. Whilst not spewing filth out into people's lungs. Its *easier* to drive an EV.
None of which really addreses Big G's point (and mine which I made the other day). It takes me 8 hours to drive to Aberdeen on a lot less than a single tank of diesel. How long would it take me to do that drive in an EV? HOw long would I currently have to be sat wasting time at a servoce station whilst thecr is chartged? Even if I can actually get to a charger.
For anyone regularly travelling long distances with time constraints EVs are impractical at present. I don't want them to be but they are. And of course my last ICE vehicle cost me £500 second hand. Not seeing any viable comparisons in the EV market any time soon.
I literally make money on YouTube doing videos about this exact thing. Your 8 hour trip - how many stops? Most people would have 2 stops, maybe 3. Toilet, a snack, in the shop - so perhaps 20 minutes per stop? Before you claim to do it non-stop, or make 1 5-minute stop half way and that's all, again I say "most people". There is a reason why motorway service areas are so busy - most people make stops.
So in your 20 minute stop, plug your car in, add another 150+ miles of range, and then carry on. If you only charge when you were stopping anyway, the time added to your journey for charging is zero. That is my experience of half a dozen now trips from north of Aberdeen down to Sheffield / Liverpool / Essex etc. The number of times I have queued to charge is zero.
I've even done a direct comparison of the same Aberdeenshire to Dartford trip in my current Tesla Model Y vs the previous Outlander PHEV. Tesla was 20 minutes faster, and £50 cheaper. A real world example.
The size of your tank or the range it offers is irrelevant in real world usage. Most people's range is how far their bladder lasts, or their stomach needs a snack, or they need a break because want to get out and stretch their legs. They aren't driving 600 miles of range without a stop.
Before I got stuck at home, I regularly (say 6+ times a year, most often in winter) did the trip north from the Flatlands. We'd have a driver swap somewhere in England, a short stop at Stirling and then a refuel either in Aviemore or Ullapool if heading for the far north. Basically, just point and go.
We usually had piles of outdoor junk, sometimes including bikes, which often went in the car to save on air resistance (about £20 in extra drag if you have them on the roof or a towbar).
My car was (and still is) a zero tax (ha!) diesel estate which gets about 60mpg and can usually do more than 500 miles on a tank.
All current EV cars would be functionally worse and would probably cost at least 4 times as much. A Tesla does not really have the boot space.
Now you could argue that because of climate change, we are all going to have to make sacrifices. But on the other hand I haven't flown anywhere since 2005, as this was what we did instead.
One solution would be to have two cars, one for long journeys and a small electric one for buzzing about. But we really don't do the short miles to make that worthwhile. I'm happy to cycle or walk locally most of the time and I'm not currently commuting (which is the ideal use case for an electric car).
For mass adoption, electric has to be functionally better, not just "morally". This time is maybe not far off, but they don't work for everyone, particularly those who can't afford shiny shiny. At least not yet.
For almost everyone, the best car option is the one they already own. You have an old diesel estate which is still going and by the sounds of it you're still happy with. Great! Keep it! Would be crazy to trade it for £little to spend £lots on any new car unless you really want to. That is the same consideration most of us face with cars - cheaper to keep it.
I did see a Tesla Model Y which had a bike rack on the roof. Asked the guy what that was doing to energy use, and as you said with your own example, it wasn't good.
My policy with choice of cars though isn't to have a universal vehicle that can cover every eventuality. Because I'd have to have a van. The Outlander I had before the Tesla was often used like a van, but even that wasn't big enough all the time. So I just did more trips. The gargantuan boot of my Tesla isn't as square as the Outlander, so more trips again. But its better at almost everything else than the Outlander.
My frustration - and it is frustration not opposition - is that I don't want to keep my old diesel. I want an electric car. Not for any pointless climate change reasons but for the ones I have outlined that really will make life better for people - cutting noise pollution (although I will caveat that with the fact that people don't seem to realise how much traffic noise on faster routes is actually tyre noise not engine) and dealing with what I believe is a far greater environmental catastrophe which is the effect of petrol additives on our insect population.
But it is frustrating that at this moment it is simply not practical. Saying we all have to make changes is great for those who have the ability and the money to do that. I don't. I can neither afford an EV nor would it be practical for the one main thing I use a vehicle for.
I want things to change but just waving away the objections, particularly when they come from people who genuinely want this promised future, is short sighted.
Yes, tyre noise is significant and EVs don't solve that. But anybody who lives near a junction or a hill or where the speed limit goes up from 30 to 60 knows how piercing the roar of an engine can be when it's being made to push hard. On top of that there are those who deliberately drive noisily. All of those things are greatly improved by removing the combustion part of the car.
Yep that is my biggest issue. We live adjacent to traffic lights with the old Roman road then running straight up a hill away from it. The speed limit changes from 30 to 60 right outside our garden so we get the boy racers accelerating away from the lights up the hill. It is a pain in the arse.
But a decde or more ago I lived about a mile from the A1 at Newark. You could hear the noise from it all the time as a background hum and it was then I realised that most of that noise was tyrres not engines.
Don’t really understand why he half hour wait is such a big deal. Most people would take a break of that order anyway on a long drive. And it’s not as if looking for a petrol station, waiting for a pump and filling up is instant.
Good morning
Taking a break on a long journey is one thing, but queuing and waiting half and hour or more on more than one occasion is not attractive
I drive the 450 miles to my family in Lossiemouth without filling up, and on that journey have maybe three or four stops.
Additionally I can drive a further 150 miles without replenishing the tank and get over 55 mpg
My BMW 520D is in a class of its own on such a long journey and indeed complies with ULEZ and at a £30 annual road tax
Why on earth would I consider a ev, and that is without considering paying up to £30,000 more to change
I will continue to look 'all smug' as I have no intention of buying a ev
EVs don't work for everyone. But on your trips to Lossie where you make 3 or 4 stops? An EV would charge whilst you did so. Depends on which generation of 5-series you have, but its hardly in a class of its own - Audi and Mercedes as starters for 10 offer similar vehicles with similar interiors.
Then we have the drivetrain point. Your car either has a manual box or a ZF 8-speed auto. Manual boxes are something out of the ark (though I know they can be pleasing to play with), the ZF box is pretty much industry leading. But neither are anything compared to electric transmission. Once you've had an electric motor instead of a gearbox, any cog shifting feels as backwards as it is.
So lets take a real world example - traffic. I have two recent example on my trip through England last week. Stuck in a big queue on the edge of cities. In a manual I would be endlessly having to blend out the clutch. In an automatic there is less work, but with either on your 4 pot diesel you're belching filth into the environment where people live and work.
Whereas I sat there. Literally. The car driving itself. Steering, acceleration, braking. No input from me. Whilst not spewing filth out into people's lungs. Its *easier* to drive an EV.
None of which really addreses Big G's point (and mine which I made the other day). It takes me 8 hours to drive to Aberdeen on a lot less than a single tank of diesel. How long would it take me to do that drive in an EV? HOw long would I currently have to be sat wasting time at a servoce station whilst thecr is chartged? Even if I can actually get to a charger.
For anyone regularly travelling long distances with time constraints EVs are impractical at present. I don't want them to be but they are. And of course my last ICE vehicle cost me £500 second hand. Not seeing any viable comparisons in the EV market any time soon.
It is unreasonable to expect to be able to transition to a net zero economy while retaining every single aspect of our current unsustainable way of living. Some things may be lost, such as the ability to be anywhere in the country within a short amount of time. Businesses and individuals will adapt to cope with this.
So the great master plan is to reduce freedom and choice for millions of people.
Be interesting to see a government have the courage of their convictions and actually be honest about that.
Don't be silly. Of course nobody wants to reduce anyone's freedom and choice. But is frankly ridiculously entitled to assume that everything can carry on exactly as now, and I do indeed wish that governments would be honest about that. If we are to achieve our goal of a sustainable civilisation, then things need to change, some for the better and, yes, some for the worse. The technology is about mitigating the adverse effects as far as possible.
The vusions of the 'sustainable' civilisation we have been presented with so far are the rich do what they want and the rest of us do as we are told.
So how would you go about achieving net zero?
Start by taxing all chinese imports at 200%. No one would do it of course and it is only a half serious suggestion but it would do more good than anything we are doing in the UK at the moment.
Taxing imports of goods produced in environmentally damaging ways is certainly not a bad idea (though it would of course also hit the poorest people hardest). But that doesn't obviate our obligations to reduce domestic emissions.
This is what the CBAM will do, being phased in from next year. Going to cause all sorts of (good) disruption to supply chains.
At last PB can have a proper discussion with publication of a new MRP based on a mega poll. This new poll with Prof Curtice involved should bring Heathener back to reality winning elections just ain’t that easy as she makes out.
Under new boundaries it finds Labour on 35%. It finds Labour support in its lead over Tories is still “quite soft”
Under Labours worse case scenario Tory’s are boosted by taking Reform voters, or there’s no reform standing so the election result is Lab 316, leaving the Tories at 286.
And the focus group seems to like Rishi Sunak a lot.
Mid thirties is the best Labour has got in real votes this parliament, maybe we should be thinking that’s about where they will poll in a general election?
Also from this mega polling, the seats Labour on course to win in Scotland is only because SNP support is bleeding to Don’t know, not going SNP to Labour, so creating a huge pile of don’t knows.
We can’t have a principle both ways, Tory support to don’t knows had to be good news for Tory and not great for Labour, so SNP support to don’t know can’t be the slam dunk in Labour gains either?
I fear a backlash in Wales over the the new 20mph limit on roads.
Reading the comments on walesonline should sometimes come with a health warning. The mystery is why the government would do something likely to be so unpopular. I think public opinion just doesn't really matter in Wales. There is no serious alternative to Labour and if they and Plaid stick close together they're bound to keep more than 50% of the seats.
At last PB can have a proper discussion with publication of a new MRP based on a mega poll. This new poll with Prof Curtice involved should bring Heathener back to reality winning elections just ain’t that easy as she makes out.
Under new boundaries it finds Labour on 35%. It finds Labour support in its lead over Tories is still “quite soft”
Under Labours worse case scenario Tory’s are boosted by taking Reform voters, or there’s no reform standing so the election result is Lab 316, leaving the Tories at 286.
And the focus group seems to like Rishi Sunak a lot.
Mid thirties is the best Labour has got in real votes this parliament, maybe we should be thinking that’s about where they will poll in a general election?
Labour on 35% is on the basis that don't knows and not voting are on 20%. If you gross up for those, this suggests that Labour is on 44%.
The MRP looks wrong, as it predicts that the Lib Dems will only get 5 seats - St Albans, Bath and the three south west London seats.
Don’t really understand why he half hour wait is such a big deal. Most people would take a break of that order anyway on a long drive. And it’s not as if looking for a petrol station, waiting for a pump and filling up is instant.
Good morning
Taking a break on a long journey is one thing, but queuing and waiting half and hour or more on more than one occasion is not attractive
I drive the 450 miles to my family in Lossiemouth without filling up, and on that journey have maybe three or four stops.
Additionally I can drive a further 150 miles without replenishing the tank and get over 55 mpg
My BMW 520D is in a class of its own on such a long journey and indeed complies with ULEZ and at a £30 annual road tax
Why on earth would I consider a ev, and that is without considering paying up to £30,000 more to change
I will continue to look 'all smug' as I have no intention of buying a ev
EVs don't work for everyone. But on your trips to Lossie where you make 3 or 4 stops? An EV would charge whilst you did so. Depends on which generation of 5-series you have, but its hardly in a class of its own - Audi and Mercedes as starters for 10 offer similar vehicles with similar interiors.
Then we have the drivetrain point. Your car either has a manual box or a ZF 8-speed auto. Manual boxes are something out of the ark (though I know they can be pleasing to play with), the ZF box is pretty much industry leading. But neither are anything compared to electric transmission. Once you've had an electric motor instead of a gearbox, any cog shifting feels as backwards as it is.
So lets take a real world example - traffic. I have two recent example on my trip through England last week. Stuck in a big queue on the edge of cities. In a manual I would be endlessly having to blend out the clutch. In an automatic there is less work, but with either on your 4 pot diesel you're belching filth into the environment where people live and work.
Whereas I sat there. Literally. The car driving itself. Steering, acceleration, braking. No input from me. Whilst not spewing filth out into people's lungs. Its *easier* to drive an EV.
None of which really addreses Big G's point (and mine which I made the other day). It takes me 8 hours to drive to Aberdeen on a lot less than a single tank of diesel. How long would it take me to do that drive in an EV? HOw long would I currently have to be sat wasting time at a servoce station whilst thecr is chartged? Even if I can actually get to a charger.
For anyone regularly travelling long distances with time constraints EVs are impractical at present. I don't want them to be but they are. And of course my last ICE vehicle cost me £500 second hand. Not seeing any viable comparisons in the EV market any time soon.
It is unreasonable to expect to be able to transition to a net zero economy while retaining every single aspect of our current unsustainable way of living. Some things may be lost, such as the ability to be anywhere in the country within a short amount of time. Businesses and individuals will adapt to cope with this.
So the great master plan is to reduce freedom and choice for millions of people.
Be interesting to see a government have the courage of their convictions and actually be honest about that.
Don't be silly. Of course nobody wants to reduce anyone's freedom and choice. But is frankly ridiculously entitled to assume that everything can carry on exactly as now, and I do indeed wish that governments would be honest about that. If we are to achieve our goal of a sustainable civilisation, then things need to change, some for the better and, yes, some for the worse. The technology is about mitigating the adverse effects as far as possible.
The vusions of the 'sustainable' civilisation we have been presented with so far are the rich do what they want and the rest of us do as we are told.
So how would you go about achieving net zero?
Start by taxing all chinese imports at 200%. No one would do it of course and it is only a half serious suggestion but it would do more good than anything we are doing in the UK at the moment.
Taxing imports of goods produced in environmentally damaging ways is certainly not a bad idea (though it would of course also hit the poorest people hardest). But that doesn't obviate our obligations to reduce domestic emissions.
Though we've already done that, which is why people who want to pretend we're the problem now look at "historic" or "cumulative" figures which are utterly irrelevant rather than ongoing figures.
As we discussed yesterday, the fact that people decades ago burnt coal to keep themselves warm, or to power their lights, is neither here nor there when it comes to emissions that are happening today.
Or, more importantly to this discussion, to industrialise and raise the living standards of the rest of the world.
The price suggests Liverpool were the only serious bidders. Surprised noone else went in for him tbh.
Release clause.
But the reports say he wanted to work with Klopp.
35M is an absolute steal! How amazing was this young player in the World Cup?
Man Utd pay 80M for Anthony, Chelsea pay 90 for Mudryk and 75 for caciedo, Arsenal pay 95M to packet rice, and Liverpool get the most promising and influential than all those players, Macalister, for just 35M? It’s almost like I don’t immediately trust you, there must be another 50M in add ons.
Don’t really understand why he half hour wait is such a big deal. Most people would take a break of that order anyway on a long drive. And it’s not as if looking for a petrol station, waiting for a pump and filling up is instant.
Good morning
Taking a break on a long journey is one thing, but queuing and waiting half and hour or more on more than one occasion is not attractive
I drive the 450 miles to my family in Lossiemouth without filling up, and on that journey have maybe three or four stops.
Additionally I can drive a further 150 miles without replenishing the tank and get over 55 mpg
My BMW 520D is in a class of its own on such a long journey and indeed complies with ULEZ and at a £30 annual road tax
Why on earth would I consider a ev, and that is without considering paying up to £30,000 more to change
I will continue to look 'all smug' as I have no intention of buying a ev
EVs don't work for everyone. But on your trips to Lossie where you make 3 or 4 stops? An EV would charge whilst you did so. Depends on which generation of 5-series you have, but its hardly in a class of its own - Audi and Mercedes as starters for 10 offer similar vehicles with similar interiors.
Then we have the drivetrain point. Your car either has a manual box or a ZF 8-speed auto. Manual boxes are something out of the ark (though I know they can be pleasing to play with), the ZF box is pretty much industry leading. But neither are anything compared to electric transmission. Once you've had an electric motor instead of a gearbox, any cog shifting feels as backwards as it is.
So lets take a real world example - traffic. I have two recent example on my trip through England last week. Stuck in a big queue on the edge of cities. In a manual I would be endlessly having to blend out the clutch. In an automatic there is less work, but with either on your 4 pot diesel you're belching filth into the environment where people live and work.
Whereas I sat there. Literally. The car driving itself. Steering, acceleration, braking. No input from me. Whilst not spewing filth out into people's lungs. Its *easier* to drive an EV.
None of which really addreses Big G's point (and mine which I made the other day). It takes me 8 hours to drive to Aberdeen on a lot less than a single tank of diesel. How long would it take me to do that drive in an EV? HOw long would I currently have to be sat wasting time at a servoce station whilst thecr is chartged? Even if I can actually get to a charger.
For anyone regularly travelling long distances with time constraints EVs are impractical at present. I don't want them to be but they are. And of course my last ICE vehicle cost me £500 second hand. Not seeing any viable comparisons in the EV market any time soon.
It is unreasonable to expect to be able to transition to a net zero economy while retaining every single aspect of our current unsustainable way of living. Some things may be lost, such as the ability to be anywhere in the country within a short amount of time. Businesses and individuals will adapt to cope with this.
So the great master plan is to reduce freedom and choice for millions of people.
Be interesting to see a government have the courage of their convictions and actually be honest about that.
Don't be silly. Of course nobody wants to reduce anyone's freedom and choice. But is frankly ridiculously entitled to assume that everything can carry on exactly as now, and I do indeed wish that governments would be honest about that. If we are to achieve our goal of a sustainable civilisation, then things need to change, some for the better and, yes, some for the worse. The technology is about mitigating the adverse effects as far as possible.
The vusions of the 'sustainable' civilisation we have been presented with so far are the rich do what they want and the rest of us do as we are told.
So how would you go about achieving net zero?
Start by taxing all chinese imports at 200%. No one would do it of course and it is only a half serious suggestion but it would do more good than anything we are doing in the UK at the moment.
Taxing imports of goods produced in environmentally damaging ways is certainly not a bad idea (though it would of course also hit the poorest people hardest). But that doesn't obviate our obligations to reduce domestic emissions.
This is what the CBAM will do, being phased in from next year. Going to cause all sorts of (good) disruption to supply chains.
As UK per capita emissions are lower than the EU, has their been any analysis of how the EU's CBAM could have a positive impact on the balance of trade?
I did suggest here a week or so ago when it was reported that Wagner were retreating from Bakhmut saying the job was finished and handing Bakhmut over to the Russian military, that it was likely a sign of things to come, but even I didn't expect it to fall back this fast.
I fear a backlash in Wales over the the new 20mph limit on roads.
Reading the comments on walesonline should sometimes come with a health warning. The mystery is why the government would do something likely to be so unpopular. I think public opinion just doesn't really matter in Wales. There is no serious alternative to Labour and if they and Plaid stick close together they're bound to keep more than 50% of the seats.
Will it be unpopular though? I'm not able to easily find any polling on this issue, but many in Edinburgh regard the city-wide 20mph policy to be a success. Some evidence shows a reduction in accidents and fatalities. So that's a good thing.
I did suggest here a week or so ago when it was reported that Wagner were retreating from Bakhmut saying the job was finished and handing Bakhmut over to the Russian military, that it was likely a sign of things to come, but even I didn't expect it to fall back this fast.
"Prigozhin calls for Russia's Chief of General Staff Gerasimov & Defence Minister Shoigu to face execution by firing squad and he predicts it will happen."
At last PB can have a proper discussion with publication of a new MRP based on a mega poll. This new poll with Prof Curtice involved should bring Heathener back to reality winning elections just ain’t that easy as she makes out.
Under new boundaries it finds Labour on 35%. It finds Labour support in its lead over Tories is still “quite soft”
Under Labours worse case scenario Tory’s are boosted by taking Reform voters, or there’s no reform standing so the election result is Lab 316, leaving the Tories at 286.
And the focus group seems to like Rishi Sunak a lot.
Labour's worst case scenario also sees most DKs and Reform voters in Tory marginal seats go Tory based on their demographic profile, yes produces a hung parliament but Labour still most seats.
The MRP poll also projects Labour to win most seats in Scotland again for the first time since 2010, with 31 Scottish Labour MPs to just 26 for the SNP. Which would be a humiliation for Yousaf.
That also raises the interesting scenario however that is not impossible Sunak's Tories now win most seats in England but Labour still win most seats in the UK thanks to Scottish and Welsh Labour MPs and Starmer therefore becomes UK PM with no English majority and no EVEL or English Parliament for English voters either https://www.bestforbritain.org/mrp_polling_new_boundaries_june_2023
At last PB can have a proper discussion with publication of a new MRP based on a mega poll. This new poll with Prof Curtice involved should bring Heathener back to reality winning elections just ain’t that easy as she makes out.
Under new boundaries it finds Labour on 35%. It finds Labour support in its lead over Tories is still “quite soft”
Under Labours worse case scenario Tory’s are boosted by taking Reform voters, or there’s no reform standing so the election result is Lab 316, leaving the Tories at 286.
And the focus group seems to like Rishi Sunak a lot.
Mid thirties is the best Labour has got in real votes this parliament, maybe we should be thinking that’s about where they will poll in a general election?
Labour on 35% is on the basis that don't knows and not voting are on 20%. If you gross up for those, this suggests that Labour is on 44%.
The MRP looks wrong, as it predicts that the Lib Dems will only get 5 seats - St Albans, Bath and the three south west London seats.
So you intend to eat your hat then if it turns out to be right!
It still gives an amazing historic more than 100 seat gain for Labour if it ends up Lab 316, leaving the Tories at 286. So it rings true as realistic in that sense?
A mistake you can make Nicky is constant comparisons with 97. Blair started off 75 seats better off, which is why the majority was so big and the result looked so spectacular. In reality gain sixty or seventy seats or more at general elections is historically a brilliant and rare result. Despite mid term polls and amazing local elections, things don’t tend to move around greatly in MPs from election to election, so this MRP work you are calling wrong still gives Labour way over 100 seat gains!
And you reckon it doesn’t sound like a realistic snapshot of where we are now 🤷♀️
All these discussions about private school fees seem to ignore the obvious extension of the argument to putting VAT on University fees. After all a selected section of the community benefit, universities are in effect a business and all the other other arguments put forward seem to apply.
University fees are overwhemingly paid for by loans. Those loans aren't likely to be paid back as it is. Adding 20% to the face value of the loans is effectively straight up borrowing.
Hardly seems logical. If school fees were paid for by loans should they be free of VAT as well? It's question of consistancy. If one form of education should be charged VAT why shouldn't another irrespective of how it is funded or current government policy on write off of loans. If you use the argument that we shouldn't charge VAT on university fees because some will be written off you can apply the same argument to university fees in total. If it's right for school fees it's right for university fees as well.
I guess you could even apply the same logic to other payments to organisations that benefit one section of society. Union subscriptions for example.
Access to University education is much broader than access to private schooling, something like 7% privately educated while 33% hold degrees (thank you Google). Many Universities are very keen on widening access further. I just don't think it's right to say, in the modern landscape of University education in the UK that a lack of VAT on tuition fees benefits one section of society.
That's before going on to the wider benefits to the country of having a highly educated population, though I'm sure others would argue the broader societal benefits of private schools are just as important.
I fear a backlash in Wales over the the new 20mph limit on roads.
Reading the comments on walesonline should sometimes come with a health warning. The mystery is why the government would do something likely to be so unpopular. I think public opinion just doesn't really matter in Wales. There is no serious alternative to Labour and if they and Plaid stick close together they're bound to keep more than 50% of the seats.
In some places especially around schools 20mph is sensible but blanket 20mph is nonsense
It will affect our son on a RNLI shout call and other emergency workers
I expect a lot of opposition, but then the Welsh Labour government has cancelled all road building projects, and the 3rd Menai crossing necessary due to the Freeport at Holyhead and the unreliability of the old Menai crossing
Ironically Labour have been in power for decades overseeing failing NHS and Education but still Wales remains a Labour stronghold and those of us who live here pay the price
The aliens are here, third world war gets closer, Ukraine is a bust, and you guys spend five hours talking about Electronic vehicles and Welsh speed limits
There’s quirky and determinedly parochial and then there’s…. PB
I fear a backlash in Wales over the the new 20mph limit on roads.
Reading the comments on walesonline should sometimes come with a health warning. The mystery is why the government would do something likely to be so unpopular. I think public opinion just doesn't really matter in Wales. There is no serious alternative to Labour and if they and Plaid stick close together they're bound to keep more than 50% of the seats.
Will it be unpopular though? I'm not able to easily find any polling on this issue, but many in Edinburgh regard the city-wide 20mph policy to be a success. Some evidence shows a reduction in accidents and fatalities. So that's a good thing.
It may be in a City but Wales have few cities and it is frankly a nonsense
I'd rather walk from Aberdeen to Dartford carrying an unwashed and naked Therese Coffey on my back than give Musk 1p. Dura_Ace
So you are quite happy to bid the price of oil that benefits theocratic dictatorships which jail women for 45 years who post on social media? Alternatively you could support someone who lost 10% of their net worth ending corporate censorship of social media.
Play the ball not the man.
Conversely kick the man with the forum posting skills of a vole in the balls is always an option.
The aliens are here, third world war gets closer, Ukraine is a bust, and you guys spend five hours talking about Electronic vehicles and Welsh speed limits
There’s quirky and determinedly parochial and then there’s…. PB
Oh good Captain Crisis is here to lecture us about flying saucers
I did suggest here a week or so ago when it was reported that Wagner were retreating from Bakhmut saying the job was finished and handing Bakhmut over to the Russian military, that it was likely a sign of things to come, but even I didn't expect it to fall back this fast.
"Prigozhin calls for Russia's Chief of General Staff Gerasimov & Defence Minister Shoigu to face execution by firing squad and he predicts it will happen."
I fear a backlash in Wales over the the new 20mph limit on roads.
Reading the comments on walesonline should sometimes come with a health warning. The mystery is why the government would do something likely to be so unpopular. I think public opinion just doesn't really matter in Wales. There is no serious alternative to Labour and if they and Plaid stick close together they're bound to keep more than 50% of the seats.
The Venn diagram of local newspaper website commenters, and people who fulminate about 20mph limits, is pretty much a perfect circle. It's basically Boomer Central.
YouGov polling in Oxford has shown that the LTNs are liked by more than they're disliked, but reading the Oxford Mail comments section you'd believe that everyone hates them.
The aliens are here, third world war gets closer, Ukraine is a bust, and you guys spend five hours talking about Electronic vehicles and Welsh speed limits
There’s quirky and determinedly parochial and then there’s…. PB
Its before the lagershed and aliens being here is the parochial concern of those who've imbibed too much Kentucky bourbon.
The aliens are here, third world war gets closer, Ukraine is a bust, and you guys spend five hours talking about Electronic vehicles and Welsh speed limits
There’s quirky and determinedly parochial and then there’s…. PB
Oh good Captain Crisis is here to lecture us about flying saucers
To be fair, a quark powered flying saucer would solve the EV problem.
At last PB can have a proper discussion with publication of a new MRP based on a mega poll. This new poll with Prof Curtice involved should bring Heathener back to reality winning elections just ain’t that easy as she makes out.
Under new boundaries it finds Labour on 35%. It finds Labour support in its lead over Tories is still “quite soft”
Under Labours worse case scenario Tory’s are boosted by taking Reform voters, or there’s no reform standing so the election result is Lab 316, leaving the Tories at 286.
And the focus group seems to like Rishi Sunak a lot.
Labour's worst case scenario also sees most DKs and Reform voters in Tory marginal seats go Tory based on their demographic profile, yes produces a hung parliament but Labour still most seats.
The MRP poll also projects Labour to win most seats in Scotland again for the first time since 2010, with 31 Scottish Labour MPs to just 26 for the SNP. Which would be a humiliation for Yousaf.
That also raises the interesting scenario however that is not impossible Sunak's Tories now win most seats in England but Labour still win most seats in the UK thanks to Scottish and Welsh Labour MPs and Starmer therefore becomes UK PM with no English majority and no EVEL or English Parliament for English voters either https://www.bestforbritain.org/mrp_polling_new_boundaries_june_2023
I don’t think Labour can count those Scottish seats yet, this polling suggests they only get them by default by SNP voters going to don’t know and not voting, not finding voters switching to Labour.
The SNP might even be under new leadership by the general election and all those don’t know SNP come flooding back.
Labour’s tax raid on private school fees could raise ‘very little’
At best the party’s calculations could be off by £600m, a report finds
Labour’s plan to add VAT to private school fees is badly flawed and could raise very little revenue, according to a think tank.
The party has said ending the tax breaks enjoyed by independent schools would raise £1.6 billion, which it would invest in the state sector.
However, a new analysis suggests that the figure is likely to be much lower and that in a “best case” scenario for Labour, the changes would bring in £1 billion. In a “worst case” scenario, there would be “very little” new revenue.
EDSK, an education think tank, said the wealthiest parents and the most expensive schools would be the least affected.
Most independent schools have charitable status, giving them at least 80 per cent relief on business rates. In September 2021, Labour said that in government it would end the charitable status of England’s private schools, raising an estimated £1.6 billion from VAT and £100 million from business rates.
The think tank’s report claims that the calculations behind the £1.6 billion figure do not take into account a drop-off in demand for private schools if VAT is added to fees or the extra taxpayer money needed to teach pupils who would be moved to state schools.
The most optimistic scenario is that 5 per cent of pupils would leave private schools and the addition of VAT to fees would only raise about £1 billion a year, it said.
The more pessimistic projection that 25 per cent of pupils would leave private schools means that adding VAT to fees would raise very little new revenue, especially when additional administration costs for HM Revenue & Customs are taken into account.
A local, private, all girls school announced this week it is closing in June for good. The decisive factor was the removal of the charity exemption for rates. So rather than raising more money the policy in this case has cost well over 100 jobs and will throw quite a number of kids onto the local authorities. It will not be the only one.
The inability of politicians, in this case the Scottish government, to recognise that actions have consequences and people and businesses react to being taxed, is truly remarkable.
They don't care, as it's not about money or helping people. It's about ideology.
Yes, but they also like to claim they can fund other things they want to do by the policy in exactly the same way as Labour are claiming with VAT on school fees.
They’ll be funding a lot more school places for a start. Although where they get the money from, is a different question!
Under any reasonable assumption on switching, the policy will pay for more state school places with money left over to raise per pupil funding. A policy that raises school funding while removing an unfair tax distortion that funnels money to the well off, what's not to like about that?
I really don't think it will 'under any reasonable assumption'. BOAFP: Labour need to ensure no more than one in four children move from private to state sector just to break even. It isn't obvious that this will be the case.
People who have studied this in detail have found that spending on private education is fairly price-inelastic, as is evident in the fact that fees have gone up significantly in recent years while the proportion of children in the private sector hasn't changed much.
But isn't that partly due to increased numbers of people from overseas? THis is very much the impression I get from a friend who has children in the Headmaster's Conference school which he attended himself. The children of local factory owners and accountants have ben priced out of the market and replaced by nouveaux riches from all over the world.
"analysis shows that, whilst parental demand for private schooling does respond to school fees, this response is relatively inelastic. Indeed, substantial increases in school fees in the United Kingdom during the last 10 years have not dented demand for private schooling."
Interesting - yet the clientele has changed a lot. Maybe, like tree holes, there are only so many boarding places or institutions with the prior investment in plant for credible participation in the market.
I fear a backlash in Wales over the the new 20mph limit on roads.
Reading the comments on walesonline should sometimes come with a health warning. The mystery is why the government would do something likely to be so unpopular. I think public opinion just doesn't really matter in Wales. There is no serious alternative to Labour and if they and Plaid stick close together they're bound to keep more than 50% of the seats.
Will it be unpopular though? I'm not able to easily find any polling on this issue, but many in Edinburgh regard the city-wide 20mph policy to be a success. Some evidence shows a reduction in accidents and fatalities. So that's a good thing.
It may be in a City but Wales have few cities and it is frankly a nonsense
But two thirds of people in Wales live in urban areas. Whether a settlement is a town or a city really isn't the issue here.
The aliens are here, third world war gets closer, Ukraine is a bust, and you guys spend five hours talking about Electronic vehicles and Welsh speed limits
There’s quirky and determinedly parochial and then there’s…. PB
Oh good Captain Crisis is here to lecture us about flying saucers
To be fair, a quark powered flying saucer would solve the EV problem.
I did suggest here a week or so ago when it was reported that Wagner were retreating from Bakhmut saying the job was finished and handing Bakhmut over to the Russian military, that it was likely a sign of things to come, but even I didn't expect it to fall back this fast.
"Prigozhin calls for Russia's Chief of General Staff Gerasimov & Defence Minister Shoigu to face execution by firing squad and he predicts it will happen."
If that's actually translated correctly, it cannot continue like this, can it? One of them will have to have an accident with a tall window.
It's a bit of a tabloid-style interpretation of what he said, but the interview is worth watching. He's very gloomy on Russia's prospects in general and he does predict that they're only a few months away from firing squads.
The aliens are here, third world war gets closer, Ukraine is a bust, and you guys spend five hours talking about Electronic vehicles and Welsh speed limits
There’s quirky and determinedly parochial and then there’s…. PB
Oh good Captain Crisis is here to lecture us about flying saucers
By way of distraction, nothing personal implied, there is something in the Graun today about a key element in primate evolution - I'd post the URL but NSFW.
The aliens are here, third world war gets closer, Ukraine is a bust, and you guys spend five hours talking about Electronic vehicles and Welsh speed limits
There’s quirky and determinedly parochial and then there’s…. PB
Oh good Captain Crisis is here to lecture us about flying saucers
I mean you *could* argue that @Dura_Ace achieving 58mph in his souped up geek-o-matic Incel electro-scooter where he got 27.829 miles per ampere is the most important story of the day or you could look at the fact the Telegraph and Times have joined the Guardian in soberly reporting THIS story:
'Non-human spacecrafts' found by US 'for decades' Whistleblower claims spacecrafts and the bodies of ‘pilots’ have been found by the US government for decades
1.They are really very expensive. 2. Their range is not good. 3. Charging infrastructure is patchy and unreliable
Until these 3 change I will not be buying one. For very local journeys we walk or bike. There are no buses. The trains have become unreliable since the strikes. Cars are essential. But EV's are as yet wholly impractical.
I think this is unreasonably reductive & “wholly impractical” a massive overstatement.
Plenty of people commute less than fifty miles to work. Which means that the round trip is easily within every EV currently on sale (and most second hand ones, except early Leafs I imagine). If you can charge overnight, then this model of usage can work out perfectly well.
EVs do not have to be a perfect replacement for ICE cars to replace them - they just have to be good enough that a buyer is happy to put up with the downsides in order to get the upside. That’s a calculation which differs between people.
A relative bought a second hand Leaf as a second car. It’s range is terrible! But it can happily drive to town / school / any kind of local trip and the running costs are extremely low. What’s not to like?
As I hope was obvious from my comment they are wholly impractical in the area where I live.
Elsewhere they may be suitable. But public policy should be designed to make such a change practical and cost effective for everyone not the lucky few. I see no signs of that happening.
Why not have both, like we do? A big comfy long distance diesel or petrol for those long country drives, and a small runabout EV for trips to the shops and other local excursions. Even the small ones like Leafs and Zoes have ranges these days around 200 miles which gets you a lot of local trips, and living in the countryside means I assume it's easy to charge at home. And they really aren't expensive.
I can't afford to own or run two cars, that's why. If the trains to London (or even the local ones) were reliable I could rely on something small. But they aren't.
In time I hope charging infrastructure and trains become better and the price comes down and then I will make the change. But for now - and I have looked into this - they don't work for me.
It’s fine to say they don’t work for you & therefore you won’t buy one. If you’re talking about yourself rather than in general then maybe make that a tad clearer in future? It really wasn’t obvious to me reading your original comment that you were speaking personally & not in generalities.
Was the phrase "until these 3 change, I will not be buying one" not a big clue. Nor the reference to the state of local trains / non-existence of local buses and what "we" do for local journeys?
I am curious as to why they are "wholly impractical in the area where I live". I assume you live in the sticks as I do. I have only ever used public chargers up here for shooting a YouTube video - the car's range means there's no need for local charging within a 140 mile radius of here.
That doesn't make any sense to me.
If you lack at-home charging capabilities and lack charging within a 140 mile radius then what if your daily commute is 20 miles each way with no charging capabilities at either side?
Do you deliberately go out of your way 140 miles to charge when you need a charge? That's not feasible.
If you can't charge at home then an EV is not for you. That isn't an "area" issue though, its your house whether its town, country, wherever.
But if you do have charging at home then you need to either be doing some serious local mileage or live in the artic to have EV use to be wholly impractical. My point about 140 miles was that with a comfortable range of about 300 miles I could go 140 miles each way and still not need charging.
Well precisely this is the problem that needs to be fixed. Many people won't have a charger at home.
Now in my town we have many charger ports available within a few miles of where I live, though the price and inconvenience of them means I wouldn't want to rely upon them, but in rural areas that's even more of a problem.
Even in rural areas, plenty of people live in terraced houses. Terraces are utter madness to me, especially nowadays how they're still getting built, its insane to drive through dozens of miles of no developments then have a row of houses all shoved together with nowhere to park and charge your car - but that's how many people live and many developments are still built like that today which is complete madness.
We only have 7 years until new ICE vehicles are supposed to be outlawed, in that 7 years there needs to be a viable solution implemented and rolled out to solve the charging problem for people who can't charge at home.
Simply saying "well I can charge at home, so suck to be you, you're left behind" is not a solution.
If you have off-street parking you can charge at home. Even just using a slow 3-pin charger is enough for most people's usage.
The issue of terraced housing, houses without direct parking and blocks of flats is a much wider one than just being about EVs. And the barrier we will need to overcome to get anywhere near the 2030 deadline is not about the "left behind" - an awful lot of people who could charge at home easily would also be "left behind" because of other issues.
What would help is if the right-whinge press stopped doing false stories about EVs. And yes, I do mean false - some go beyond distortion to outright lies.
I fear a backlash in Wales over the the new 20mph limit on roads.
Reading the comments on walesonline should sometimes come with a health warning. The mystery is why the government would do something likely to be so unpopular. I think public opinion just doesn't really matter in Wales. There is no serious alternative to Labour and if they and Plaid stick close together they're bound to keep more than 50% of the seats.
The Venn diagram of local newspaper website commenters, and people who fulminate about 20mph limits, is pretty much a perfect circle. It's basically Boomer Central.
YouGov polling in Oxford has shown that the LTNs are liked by more than they're disliked, but reading the Oxford Mail comments section you'd believe that everyone hates them.
Hasn't Scotland had 20 mph limits for ages and Leeds already has them in residential areas.
I don't see the problem except in Jedburgh where for reasons unknown the A68 is 20mph through an empty industrial estate when the road is rather wide.
I fear a backlash in Wales over the the new 20mph limit on roads.
Reading the comments on walesonline should sometimes come with a health warning. The mystery is why the government would do something likely to be so unpopular. I think public opinion just doesn't really matter in Wales. There is no serious alternative to Labour and if they and Plaid stick close together they're bound to keep more than 50% of the seats.
Will it be unpopular though? I'm not able to easily find any polling on this issue, but many in Edinburgh regard the city-wide 20mph policy to be a success. Some evidence shows a reduction in accidents and fatalities. So that's a good thing.
It may be in a City but Wales have few cities and it is frankly a nonsense
But two thirds of people in Wales live in urban areas. Whether a settlement is a town or a city really isn't the issue here.
Its absolutely an issue.
20 is ridiculously slow for a town's main road. By schools or on residential side streets its fair enough, but a main road then 20 is just slow.
For a city it might make sense, if cities have gridlock anyway, but for towns it doesn't make any sense at all.
The aliens are here, third world war gets closer, Ukraine is a bust, and you guys spend five hours talking about Electronic vehicles and Welsh speed limits
There’s quirky and determinedly parochial and then there’s…. PB
Oh good Captain Crisis is here to lecture us about flying saucers
I mean you *could* argue that @Dura_Ace achieving 58mph in his souped up geek-o-matic Incel electro-scooter where he got 27.829 miles per ampere is the most important story of the day or you could look at the fact the Telegraph and Times have joined the Guardian in soberly reporting THIS story:
'Non-human spacecrafts' found by US 'for decades' Whistleblower claims spacecrafts and the bodies of ‘pilots’ have been found by the US government for decades
I fear a backlash in Wales over the the new 20mph limit on roads.
Reading the comments on walesonline should sometimes come with a health warning. The mystery is why the government would do something likely to be so unpopular. I think public opinion just doesn't really matter in Wales. There is no serious alternative to Labour and if they and Plaid stick close together they're bound to keep more than 50% of the seats.
The Venn diagram of local newspaper website commenters, and people who fulminate about 20mph limits, is pretty much a perfect circle. It's basically Boomer Central.
YouGov polling in Oxford has shown that the LTNs are liked by more than they're disliked, but reading the Oxford Mail comments section you'd believe that everyone hates them.
You are comparing Oxford to Wales????
Area;
Oxford = 45.59km2 Wales = 20,779km2
Density:
Oxford = 3270/km2 Wales = 150/km2
I'm not a driver and I don't know the full implication of which roads would be affected.
The aliens are here, third world war gets closer, Ukraine is a bust, and you guys spend five hours talking about Electronic vehicles and Welsh speed limits
There’s quirky and determinedly parochial and then there’s…. PB
Oh good Captain Crisis is here to lecture us about flying saucers
I mean you *could* argue that @Dura_Ace achieving 58mph in his souped up geek-o-matic Incel electro-scooter where he got 27.829 miles per ampere is the most important story of the day or you could look at the fact the Telegraph and Times have joined the Guardian in soberly reporting THIS story:
'Non-human spacecrafts' found by US 'for decades' Whistleblower claims spacecrafts and the bodies of ‘pilots’ have been found by the US government for decades
I did suggest here a week or so ago when it was reported that Wagner were retreating from Bakhmut saying the job was finished and handing Bakhmut over to the Russian military, that it was likely a sign of things to come, but even I didn't expect it to fall back this fast.
"Prigozhin calls for Russia's Chief of General Staff Gerasimov & Defence Minister Shoigu to face execution by firing squad and he predicts it will happen."
I fear a backlash in Wales over the the new 20mph limit on roads.
Reading the comments on walesonline should sometimes come with a health warning. The mystery is why the government would do something likely to be so unpopular. I think public opinion just doesn't really matter in Wales. There is no serious alternative to Labour and if they and Plaid stick close together they're bound to keep more than 50% of the seats.
The Venn diagram of local newspaper website commenters, and people who fulminate about 20mph limits, is pretty much a perfect circle. It's basically Boomer Central.
YouGov polling in Oxford has shown that the LTNs are liked by more than they're disliked, but reading the Oxford Mail comments section you'd believe that everyone hates them.
Hasn't Scotland had 20 mph limits for ages and Leeds already has them in residential areas.
I don't see the problem except in Jedburgh where for reasons unknown the A68 is 20mph through an empty industrial estate when the road is rather wide.
I am not anti 20mph restrictions where it is eminently sensible and around schools, but a blanket 20mph replacing all 30mph zones in Wales is a step too far
On our last trip to our family in Scotland I would say the 20mph zones seemed to be sensible and you were soon in 30mph ones. That is not what Wales labour is proposing
I fear a backlash in Wales over the the new 20mph limit on roads.
Reading the comments on walesonline should sometimes come with a health warning. The mystery is why the government would do something likely to be so unpopular. I think public opinion just doesn't really matter in Wales. There is no serious alternative to Labour and if they and Plaid stick close together they're bound to keep more than 50% of the seats.
Will it be unpopular though? I'm not able to easily find any polling on this issue, but many in Edinburgh regard the city-wide 20mph policy to be a success. Some evidence shows a reduction in accidents and fatalities. So that's a good thing.
It may be in a City but Wales have few cities and it is frankly a nonsense
But two thirds of people in Wales live in urban areas. Whether a settlement is a town or a city really isn't the issue here.
Its absolutely an issue.
20 is ridiculously slow for a town's main road. By schools or on residential side streets its fair enough, but a main road then 20 is just slow.
For a city it might make sense, if cities have gridlock anyway, but for towns it doesn't make any sense at all.
What I mean is the designation of a settlement being a town or a city is neither here nor there. A settlement of under 2000 people that's dubbed a "city" is quite different from a "town" of a quarter of a million people.
The debate centres around who uses the roads, when, and for what. The convenience of the driver should be balanced against the convenience of the non-driver.
1.They are really very expensive. 2. Their range is not good. 3. Charging infrastructure is patchy and unreliable
Until these 3 change I will not be buying one. For very local journeys we walk or bike. There are no buses. The trains have become unreliable since the strikes. Cars are essential. But EV's are as yet wholly impractical.
I think this is unreasonably reductive & “wholly impractical” a massive overstatement.
Plenty of people commute less than fifty miles to work. Which means that the round trip is easily within every EV currently on sale (and most second hand ones, except early Leafs I imagine). If you can charge overnight, then this model of usage can work out perfectly well.
EVs do not have to be a perfect replacement for ICE cars to replace them - they just have to be good enough that a buyer is happy to put up with the downsides in order to get the upside. That’s a calculation which differs between people.
A relative bought a second hand Leaf as a second car. It’s range is terrible! But it can happily drive to town / school / any kind of local trip and the running costs are extremely low. What’s not to like?
As I hope was obvious from my comment they are wholly impractical in the area where I live.
Elsewhere they may be suitable. But public policy should be designed to make such a change practical and cost effective for everyone not the lucky few. I see no signs of that happening.
Why not have both, like we do? A big comfy long distance diesel or petrol for those long country drives, and a small runabout EV for trips to the shops and other local excursions. Even the small ones like Leafs and Zoes have ranges these days around 200 miles which gets you a lot of local trips, and living in the countryside means I assume it's easy to charge at home. And they really aren't expensive.
I can't afford to own or run two cars, that's why. If the trains to London (or even the local ones) were reliable I could rely on something small. But they aren't.
In time I hope charging infrastructure and trains become better and the price comes down and then I will make the change. But for now - and I have looked into this - they don't work for me.
It’s fine to say they don’t work for you & therefore you won’t buy one. If you’re talking about yourself rather than in general then maybe make that a tad clearer in future? It really wasn’t obvious to me reading your original comment that you were speaking personally & not in generalities.
Was the phrase "until these 3 change, I will not be buying one" not a big clue. Nor the reference to the state of local trains / non-existence of local buses and what "we" do for local journeys?
I am curious as to why they are "wholly impractical in the area where I live". I assume you live in the sticks as I do. I have only ever used public chargers up here for shooting a YouTube video - the car's range means there's no need for local charging within a 140 mile radius of here.
That doesn't make any sense to me.
If you lack at-home charging capabilities and lack charging within a 140 mile radius then what if your daily commute is 20 miles each way with no charging capabilities at either side?
Do you deliberately go out of your way 140 miles to charge when you need a charge? That's not feasible.
If you can't charge at home then an EV is not for you. That isn't an "area" issue though, its your house whether its town, country, wherever.
But if you do have charging at home then you need to either be doing some serious local mileage or live in the artic to have EV use to be wholly impractical. My point about 140 miles was that with a comfortable range of about 300 miles I could go 140 miles each way and still not need charging.
Well precisely this is the problem that needs to be fixed. Many people won't have a charger at home.
Now in my town we have many charger ports available within a few miles of where I live, though the price and inconvenience of them means I wouldn't want to rely upon them, but in rural areas that's even more of a problem.
Even in rural areas, plenty of people live in terraced houses. Terraces are utter madness to me, especially nowadays how they're still getting built, its insane to drive through dozens of miles of no developments then have a row of houses all shoved together with nowhere to park and charge your car - but that's how many people live and many developments are still built like that today which is complete madness.
We only have 7 years until new ICE vehicles are supposed to be outlawed, in that 7 years there needs to be a viable solution implemented and rolled out to solve the charging problem for people who can't charge at home.
Simply saying "well I can charge at home, so suck to be you, you're left behind" is not a solution.
If you have off-street parking you can charge at home. Even just using a slow 3-pin charger is enough for most people's usage.
The issue of terraced housing, houses without direct parking and blocks of flats is a much wider one than just being about EVs. And the barrier we will need to overcome to get anywhere near the 2030 deadline is not about the "left behind" - an awful lot of people who could charge at home easily would also be "left behind" because of other issues.
What would help is if the right-whinge press stopped doing false stories about EVs. And yes, I do mean false - some go beyond distortion to outright lies.
If you have off-street parking, is again a ludicrously big if. Many don't.
When I moved last December I deliberately found somewhere with off-road parking looking towards the future it was a big point for me, but before then I did not. A car has always been my primary mode of transportation, and not having off-road parking has been fairly standard for me in almost every home I've lived in - which isn't an issue with ICE but it is with EV.
Simply saying we have a solution for those with off-road parking is not good enough. We need viable solutions for those who do not. And that is not a lie or a false story.
There needs to be a serious shift in the next seven years towards tackling the problem of charging when charging is not available at home. If you are a decision maker or planner, then you need to be designing rules around people who can't charge at home - because that is the reality for most.
Being able to charge at home should be treated in the planning towards 2030 as a nice luxury to have, not an essential, because its simply not going to be an option for far too many.
If you take the attitude of "anyone can drive 280 miles without a charger, because they can just charge at home" then you are screwing over millions of people.
The aliens are here, third world war gets closer, Ukraine is a bust, and you guys spend five hours talking about Electronic vehicles and Welsh speed limits
There’s quirky and determinedly parochial and then there’s…. PB
Oh good Captain Crisis is here to lecture us about flying saucers
I mean you *could* argue that @Dura_Ace achieving 58mph in his souped up geek-o-matic Incel electro-scooter where he got 27.829 miles per ampere is the most important story of the day or you could look at the fact the Telegraph and Times have joined the Guardian in soberly reporting THIS story:
'Non-human spacecrafts' found by US 'for decades' Whistleblower claims spacecrafts and the bodies of ‘pilots’ have been found by the US government for decades
"Mr Grusch has not seen the alleged material himself."
“Senior officials have spoken out to vouch for Mr Grusch and his claims.
Karl Nell, a retired Army colonel who was also on the UFO task force, described him as “beyond reproach
Jonathan Grey, a generational officer of the United States Intelligence Community who currently works for the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC), said: “The non-human intelligence phenomenon is real. We are not alone,” Mr Grey added: “Retrievals of this kind are not limited to the United States. This is a global phenomenon, and yet a global solution continues to elude us.””
Whatever the explanation - madness, psyops, someone putting acid in the water across America, visiting aliens - something really really REALLY weird is happening
YouGov polling in Oxford has shown that the LTNs are liked by more than they're disliked, but reading the Oxford Mail comments section you'd believe that everyone hates them.
I've been in Oxford in rush hour. The taxi drivers absolutely hate the LTNs. Given the extraordinarily large taxi fare, I'm not a big fan myself
I fear a backlash in Wales over the the new 20mph limit on roads.
Reading the comments on walesonline should sometimes come with a health warning. The mystery is why the government would do something likely to be so unpopular. I think public opinion just doesn't really matter in Wales. There is no serious alternative to Labour and if they and Plaid stick close together they're bound to keep more than 50% of the seats.
Will it be unpopular though? I'm not able to easily find any polling on this issue, but many in Edinburgh regard the city-wide 20mph policy to be a success. Some evidence shows a reduction in accidents and fatalities. So that's a good thing.
It may be in a City but Wales have few cities and it is frankly a nonsense
But two thirds of people in Wales live in urban areas. Whether a settlement is a town or a city really isn't the issue here.
Its absolutely an issue.
20 is ridiculously slow for a town's main road. By schools or on residential side streets its fair enough, but a main road then 20 is just slow.
For a city it might make sense, if cities have gridlock anyway, but for towns it doesn't make any sense at all.
What I mean is the designation of a settlement being a town or a city is neither here nor there. A settlement of under 2000 people that's dubbed a "city" is quite different from a "town" of a quarter of a million people.
The debate centres around who uses the roads, when, and for what. The convenience of the driver should be balanced against the convenience of the non-driver.
It absolutely should be, yes, and that is done already without needing nonsense like uniform 20mph speed limits.
Where I drive daily I have a 30mph speed limit on the main road off my estate, with speed bumps on that road (to discourage it being used as a rat run) and that's a perfectly reasonable speed limit. There are trees lining the road, and behind the trees is a wide footpath with a line painted to separate a footpath for pedestrians, and a path for cyclists too.
Pedestrians, cyclists and drivers have all been considered. Why should that be ripped up with a Whitehall knows best, or Cardiff knows best one-size-fits-all change to 20mph that doesn't help anyone?
Elsewhere on the main road for town with my kids school off it there is a 20mph zone near the school, with speed cameras, which is entirely sensible, but elsewhere a 30mph speed limit with a fence lining the pavement to separate pedestrians from drivers. Again, put some thought into using 20mph where it works best, and 30mph where it works best, not 20mph for everyone at all times.
I did suggest here a week or so ago when it was reported that Wagner were retreating from Bakhmut saying the job was finished and handing Bakhmut over to the Russian military, that it was likely a sign of things to come, but even I didn't expect it to fall back this fast.
I think Mark is getting ahead of himself, but the direction of travel is in Ukraine's favour, and they are making gains around Bakhmut at a greater pace then the Russians did.
Russia has to decide where to deploy its reserves, if it has any, in the knowledge that Ukraine will probably concentrate on the front Russia doesn't reinforce.
This is why they've played down the incursions into Belgorod. They've no spare units to send to sort it out, so they kinda have to pretend it isn't happening.
All these discussions about private school fees seem to ignore the obvious extension of the argument to putting VAT on University fees. After all a selected section of the community benefit, universities are in effect a business and all the other other arguments put forward seem to apply.
University fees are overwhemingly paid for by loans. Those loans aren't likely to be paid back as it is. Adding 20% to the face value of the loans is effectively straight up borrowing.
Hardly seems logical. If school fees were paid for by loans should they be free of VAT as well? It's question of consistancy. If one form of education should be charged VAT why shouldn't another irrespective of how it is funded or current government policy on write off of loans. If you use the argument that we shouldn't charge VAT on university fees because some will be written off you can apply the same argument to university fees in total. If it's right for school fees it's right for university fees as well.
I guess you could even apply the same logic to other payments to organisations that benefit one section of society. Union subscriptions for example.
Access to University education is much broader than access to private schooling, something like 7% privately educated while 33% hold degrees (thank you Google). Many Universities are very keen on widening access further. I just don't think it's right to say, in the modern landscape of University education in the UK that a lack of VAT on tuition fees benefits one section of society.
That's before going on to the wider benefits to the country of having a highly educated population, though I'm sure others would argue the broader societal benefits of private schools are just as important.
67% might disagree.
Universities bring a range of different benefits to the country. The gains from research to the economy, to our health and to culture benefit those 67%, as does the help to the balance of payments from educating overseas students.
At present, Government and charities underpay the costs of research. Fees income subsidises research. Government policy has allowed this situation to develop. So, any impact on fees income has knock-on effects for research budgets.
YouGov polling in Oxford has shown that the LTNs are liked by more than they're disliked, but reading the Oxford Mail comments section you'd believe that everyone hates them.
I've been in Oxford in rush hour. The taxi drivers absolutely hate the LTNs. Given the extraordinarily large taxi fare, I'm not a big fan myself
Yeah. So Oxford's problem is that there are basically two crossings of the Cherwell (Magdalen, Marston Ferry), three crossings of the Thames (Osney, Folly, Donnington), and everything is funnelled over those. It's unsupportable with current traffic levels and everything, including buses and taxis, gets snarled up in the resulting congestion.
The County Council's proposal is a bunch of traffic filters that will restrict private car traffic (but not taxis, buses etc.) from passing through the pinch points. It will make your taxi driver's life much easier but I can almost guarantee he hates the idea. On Planet Taxi the only solution is to build more roads, ban cyclists and publicly hang, draw and quarter the county councillors.
The aliens are here, third world war gets closer, Ukraine is a bust, and you guys spend five hours talking about Electronic vehicles and Welsh speed limits
There’s quirky and determinedly parochial and then there’s…. PB
Oh good Captain Crisis is here to lecture us about flying saucers
I mean you *could* argue that @Dura_Ace achieving 58mph in his souped up geek-o-matic Incel electro-scooter where he got 27.829 miles per ampere is the most important story of the day or you could look at the fact the Telegraph and Times have joined the Guardian in soberly reporting THIS story:
'Non-human spacecrafts' found by US 'for decades' Whistleblower claims spacecrafts and the bodies of ‘pilots’ have been found by the US government for decades
‘Spacecrafts’? What a pile of crap the Tele is nowadays.
I try not to dismiss things out of hand based on the media they appear in, but the Telegraph pushes that principle to its limit. A sad state for a once-great organ.
The aliens are here, third world war gets closer, Ukraine is a bust, and you guys spend five hours talking about Electronic vehicles and Welsh speed limits
There’s quirky and determinedly parochial and then there’s…. PB
Oh good Captain Crisis is here to lecture us about flying saucers
I mean you *could* argue that @Dura_Ace achieving 58mph in his souped up geek-o-matic Incel electro-scooter where he got 27.829 miles per ampere is the most important story of the day or you could look at the fact the Telegraph and Times have joined the Guardian in soberly reporting THIS story:
'Non-human spacecrafts' found by US 'for decades' Whistleblower claims spacecrafts and the bodies of ‘pilots’ have been found by the US government for decades
"Mr Grusch has not seen the alleged material himself."
“Senior officials have spoken out to vouch for Mr Grusch and his claims.
Karl Nell, a retired Army colonel who was also on the UFO task force, described him as “beyond reproach
Jonathan Grey, a generational officer of the United States Intelligence Community who currently works for the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC), said: “The non-human intelligence phenomenon is real. We are not alone,” Mr Grey added: “Retrievals of this kind are not limited to the United States. This is a global phenomenon, and yet a global solution continues to elude us.””
Whatever the explanation - madness, psyops, someone putting acid in the water across America, visiting aliens - something really really REALLY weird is happening
Sounds pretty normal to me. Humans have always been claiming to have seen all kinds of stuff, large pinch of salt and a bit of common sense should be applied.
All these discussions about private school fees seem to ignore the obvious extension of the argument to putting VAT on University fees. After all a selected section of the community benefit, universities are in effect a business and all the other other arguments put forward seem to apply.
University fees are overwhemingly paid for by loans. Those loans aren't likely to be paid back as it is. Adding 20% to the face value of the loans is effectively straight up borrowing.
Hardly seems logical. If school fees were paid for by loans should they be free of VAT as well? It's question of consistancy. If one form of education should be charged VAT why shouldn't another irrespective of how it is funded or current government policy on write off of loans. If you use the argument that we shouldn't charge VAT on university fees because some will be written off you can apply the same argument to university fees in total. If it's right for school fees it's right for university fees as well.
I guess you could even apply the same logic to other payments to organisations that benefit one section of society. Union subscriptions for example.
Access to University education is much broader than access to private schooling, something like 7% privately educated while 33% hold degrees (thank you Google). Many Universities are very keen on widening access further. I just don't think it's right to say, in the modern landscape of University education in the UK that a lack of VAT on tuition fees benefits one section of society.
That's before going on to the wider benefits to the country of having a highly educated population, though I'm sure others would argue the broader societal benefits of private schools are just as important.
67% might disagree.
Universities bring a range of different benefits to the country. The gains from research to the economy, to our health and to culture benefit those 67%, as does the help to the balance of payments from educating overseas students.
At present, Government and charities underpay the costs of research. Fees income subsidises research. Government policy has allowed this situation to develop. So, any impact on fees income has knock-on effects for research budgets.
True but why should working class voters and many lower middle class voters who never went to university subsidise universities VAT exemption any more than state school educated voters should subsidise private schools VAT exemption?
Bakhmut and Oxford are approximately the same size. It took three months and tens of thousands of casualties for the pro-Russian forces to get from one side of the city of the other and, if the rumors are correct, may not be able to hold it.
Where of course ev's really fail is a scenario I think most have done once
Driving along you realise you have overestimated your fuel/charge due to conditions. You start muttering prayers as you head to the nearest filling station but run out short.
Now in an ice car its a total inconvenience and you swear as you trudge/hitchhike to the nearest bp then do the reverse journey with a flagon of petrol.
In an ev you do? Difficult to go fetch a bucket of electricity
You get someone to tow you.
It's a pain.
But I'm 48 years old and have never run out of fuel. It's not that common a scenario.
Towing costs a fair amount of money as I know from when I had to get towed off a motorway when my last car broke down.
Running out of fuel is more common than you think especially in cold weather where you are stuck in a jam and need the engine running for heat. Something I suspect just as common in ev's as ice. Most I know have run out of fuel at least once in their life due to this
I’ve never come close to running out of fuel and I’m in my mid 40s. You have to be pretty absent minded to allow that to happen.
The light comes on with about 70 miles left in the tank these days.
I’ve been driving for nearly 28 years.
I think the light has come on about 3 times in those 28 years.
I always fill up when I have just less than a quarter in.
The transition to electric vehicles can't come soon enough for one key reason: noise. Not all traffic noise is engine noise but it's the most significant part. The gradual end of revving, roaring, popping noise pollution will make every part of this country better in ways that I don't think many people really give credit for.
It'll take a long time for it to filter down through the second hand market, and I expect there will be "classics" knocking around for decades, but anyone who lives within a couple of kilometres of a main road, which is basically everyone, will gradually start to live better, more relaxing lives.
Until you can't get anywhere because your EV car has run out of power and there is no charging point nearby. Not that relaxing.
Look at what Mike said. 30 minutes or more at a charging station. We have been told for ages that the technology is getting "better" but the simple fact is that petrol cars are still most effective.
I spend far less time at charging stations than you do, because I charge my car at home once a week. Those five or ten minutes add up over the year, and I'm saving time and money.
Now, is that true of everyone? No.
But for a substantial minority of people, EVs are the better option today. And every day the size of that minority increases.
Perhaps in the US. I would question that in the UK.
At the end of the day, there is an implicit class / socio-economic issue here. If you are fairly well-off you will be fine (you will have a drive, a decent car, can afford the electricity etc). If you are poor and rely on your car for essentials, you are screwed.
Oh, I agree, for now they're not for everyone.
But the number of people who will benefit from going EV is growing all the time. You can't buck the market.
Again, I would question that.
The car manufacturers are not showing much inclination to develop mass market EV models. Instead, what they have done - and some such as BMW and Mercedes have been explicit about this - is to raise prices structurally. Wealthier people can afford this, poorer people can't.
I go back to the point that there is an implicit class / socio-economic point thing here. The unstated aim of many who are pushing the EV agenda is to force people - mainly the poorer types - onto public transport by pricing them out of the market when it comes to buying and maintaining a car. There is a reason why so many wealthy middle-class individuals are perfectly happy with pushing an EV agenda because they can afford the price as well as knowing others cannot. You see the same dynamic with such types calling for a reduction in air flights - they are not thinking about their trips to Tuscany or Provence, they are thinking those awful plebs who go on package holidays to cheap destinations.
You use this word plebs a lot. It really says a great deal more about you than it does about the groups you are cack-handedly trying to attack.
Mmmm, one of our most self-righteous posters gets on their high horse again.
You are the one who uses epithets like “plebs” regularly, not me.
Mmmm, touched a sore point? I'm guessing you are not the type who would be keen on "White Van Man" moving in next door.
Again, you are that insists on using these terms, not me. A period of introspection on your part might be welcome.
You could always deny of course that you disdain such people but you haven't. That lack of denial suggests you may have such feelings.
O/T - Why would people need to charge their cars at home? You don't need a petrol pump in your garage. Surely the future is converting petrol stations into fast electric charging stations, where you pull up and charge for 15/20 mins then drive off.
YouGov polling in Oxford has shown that the LTNs are liked by more than they're disliked, but reading the Oxford Mail comments section you'd believe that everyone hates them.
I've been in Oxford in rush hour. The taxi drivers absolutely hate the LTNs. Given the extraordinarily large taxi fare, I'm not a big fan myself
About 4.6bn years ago I used to commute from my flat in Edmonton to Kings Cross. As I had a company car and could park in Kings Cross for free, I used to drive some of the time. That meant learning every traffic dodge there was, which of course means driving down people's streets in places like Harringay. Including where some of their new LTNs have been created.
I get that barriers and blocked streets is inconvenient to residents. But so is the whole area being gridlocked by people like me using them as rat runs...
Bakhmut and Oxford are approximately the same size. It took three months and tens of thousands of casualties for the pro-Russian forces to get from one side of the city of the other and, if the rumors are correct, may not be able to hold it.
The Russians are really fucked.
The traffic plan of Oxford council makes sense if you put it like that.
Old Cold War joke - when the Russians invade, they will be stuck, forever, in a contra flow outside Basingstoke.
I fear a backlash in Wales over the the new 20mph limit on roads.
Reading the comments on walesonline should sometimes come with a health warning. The mystery is why the government would do something likely to be so unpopular. I think public opinion just doesn't really matter in Wales. There is no serious alternative to Labour and if they and Plaid stick close together they're bound to keep more than 50% of the seats.
Will it be unpopular though? I'm not able to easily find any polling on this issue, but many in Edinburgh regard the city-wide 20mph policy to be a success. Some evidence shows a reduction in accidents and fatalities. So that's a good thing.
It may be in a City but Wales have few cities and it is frankly a nonsense
But two thirds of people in Wales live in urban areas. Whether a settlement is a town or a city really isn't the issue here.
Its absolutely an issue.
20 is ridiculously slow for a town's main road. By schools or on residential side streets its fair enough, but a main road then 20 is just slow.
For a city it might make sense, if cities have gridlock anyway, but for towns it doesn't make any sense at all.
If the purpose of the 20mph limits are to protect or at least prioritise pedestrians, the most important street to have within that limit is the main street because that's where the biggest number of pedestrians are.
YouGov polling in Oxford has shown that the LTNs are liked by more than they're disliked, but reading the Oxford Mail comments section you'd believe that everyone hates them.
I've been in Oxford in rush hour. The taxi drivers absolutely hate the LTNs. Given the extraordinarily large taxi fare, I'm not a big fan myself
Yeah. So Oxford's problem is that there are basically two crossings of the Cherwell (Magdalen, Marston Ferry), three crossings of the Thames (Osney, Folly, Donnington), and everything is funnelled over those. It's unsupportable with current traffic levels and everything, including buses and taxis, gets snarled up in the resulting congestion.
The County Council's proposal is a bunch of traffic filters that will restrict private car traffic (but not taxis, buses etc.) from passing through the pinch points. It will make your taxi driver's life much easier but I can almost guarantee he hates the idea. On Planet Taxi the only solution is to build more roads, ban cyclists and publicly hang, draw and quarter the county councillors.
That's excessive. I'd settle for beheading the County councillors.
O/T - Why would people need to charge their cars at home? You don't need a petrol pump in your garage. Surely the future is converting petrol stations into fast electric charging stations, where you pull up and charge for 15/20 mins then drive off.
That'd be progress from where we are now with charger capabilities but still a massive step backwards versus petrol currently. Currently it takes about 2 minutes to fill a tank of petrol, not 15/20 minutes.
For motorway service stations 15 minutes is OK as you'd take a break then anyway, but for routine petrol stations? Currently I fill my car for 2 minutes, drive off, and then the next car can pull in for 2 minutes before driving off and the next car is able to.
Changing that to 15 minutes is a problem for me, and a problem for anyone who wants to charge behind me too.
The price suggests Liverpool were the only serious bidders. Surprised noone else went in for him tbh.
Release clause.
But the reports say he wanted to work with Klopp.
35M is an absolute steal! How amazing was this young player in the World Cup?
Man Utd pay 80M for Anthony, Chelsea pay 90 for Mudryk and 75 for caciedo, Arsenal pay 95M to packet rice, and Liverpool get the most promising and influential than all those players, Macalister, for just 35M? It’s almost like I don’t immediately trust you, there must be another 50M in add ons.
Honestly, the deals are so complex and the sums so huge these days that I struggle to comprehend them. It's not like the good old Champ Man 2 days.
Or to paraphrase Stalin, £13.8m for Francis Jeffers is a tragedy, £95m plus addons for Declan Rice is a statistic.
YouGov polling in Oxford has shown that the LTNs are liked by more than they're disliked, but reading the Oxford Mail comments section you'd believe that everyone hates them.
I've been in Oxford in rush hour. The taxi drivers absolutely hate the LTNs. Given the extraordinarily large taxi fare, I'm not a big fan myself
I was driving in Oxford a few days ago. As an outsider to the city, you certainly need your wits about you; there's so much going on that it's not really possible to safely drive faster than about 20 mph in the city centre.
O/T - Why would people need to charge their cars at home? You don't need a petrol pump in your garage. Surely the future is converting petrol stations into fast electric charging stations, where you pull up and charge for 15/20 mins then drive off.
Yes, it is. The problem is that so far only one provider has implemented a really user friendly network of chargers.
The others appear to have been designed as follows
“Get me everything, everyone hates about paying for parking. Right. Implement all of that.”
YouGov polling in Oxford has shown that the LTNs are liked by more than they're disliked, but reading the Oxford Mail comments section you'd believe that everyone hates them.
I've been in Oxford in rush hour. The taxi drivers absolutely hate the LTNs. Given the extraordinarily large taxi fare, I'm not a big fan myself
Yeah. So Oxford's problem is that there are basically two crossings of the Cherwell (Magdalen, Marston Ferry), three crossings of the Thames (Osney, Folly, Donnington), and everything is funnelled over those. It's unsupportable with current traffic levels and everything, including buses and taxis, gets snarled up in the resulting congestion.
The County Council's proposal is a bunch of traffic filters that will restrict private car traffic (but not taxis, buses etc.) from passing through the pinch points. It will make your taxi driver's life much easier but I can almost guarantee he hates the idea. On Planet Taxi the only solution is to build more roads, ban cyclists and publicly hang, draw and quarter the county councillors.
It's odd how much taxi drivers hate pedestrians, given pedestrians are their customers.
At last PB can have a proper discussion with publication of a new MRP based on a mega poll. This new poll with Prof Curtice involved should bring Heathener back to reality winning elections just ain’t that easy as she makes out.
Under new boundaries it finds Labour on 35%. It finds Labour support in its lead over Tories is still “quite soft”
Under Labours worse case scenario Tory’s are boosted by taking Reform voters, or there’s no reform standing so the election result is Lab 316, leaving the Tories at 286.
And the focus group seems to like Rishi Sunak a lot.
Mid thirties is the best Labour has got in real votes this parliament, maybe we should be thinking that’s about where they will poll in a general election?
Labour on 35% is on the basis that don't knows and not voting are on 20%. If you gross up for those, this suggests that Labour is on 44%.
The MRP looks wrong, as it predicts that the Lib Dems will only get 5 seats - St Albans, Bath and the three south west London seats.
So you intend to eat your hat then if it turns out to be right!
It still gives an amazing historic more than 100 seat gain for Labour if it ends up Lab 316, leaving the Tories at 286. So it rings true as realistic in that sense?
A mistake you can make Nicky is constant comparisons with 97. Blair started off 75 seats better off, which is why the majority was so big and the result looked so spectacular. In reality gain sixty or seventy seats or more at general elections is historically a brilliant and rare result. Despite mid term polls and amazing local elections, things don’t tend to move around greatly in MPs from election to election, so this MRP work you are calling wrong still gives Labour way over 100 seat gains!
And you reckon it doesn’t sound like a realistic snapshot of where we are now 🤷♀️
I have a concern with MRPs in general.
For a standard opinion poll, you have to extrapolate from a small sample to the voting population as a whole. This requires an understanding and appropriate adjustments to ensure that the sample is representative of the voting population. As we can see with six polling companies polling on a weekly basis, with more on a fortnightly or monthly rota, the current Conservative range is 25-31%, Labour 42-47%, LDs 9-13%, Greens 3-7%, Reform 4-7%. This is more than a just a pure statisical variation arising from sampling, but reflects "house effects" resulting from the adjustments each polling company makes to try to obtain a representative sample of the voting population.
With a MRP this is replicated on a larger scale. To start you have a number of sub population groups which you have to map to each constituency. This brings in an additional level of variance and complexity. There are assumptions that each sub population have a similar voting pattern accross the country . The sub populations need to be well designed, and may well vary from election to election. Then the polling sample will need to obtain a representative sample of those sub population groups, with adjustments as necessary for each group. Each additional adjustment increases the potential variance. These then need to be extropolated to each consistuency - Peter Kellner had a recent article on proportional vs linear adjustments.
Effectively the black box of the MRP is more complex and thus more liable to systematic errors than a standard opinion poll.
MRPs can be useful, but the engineering approach needs to be taken - standing back and looking at it in general does this look approximately right.
The potential complications with the results of the MRP are Scotland - only SNP and Labour seats - low LD and conservative seats in the basic prediction.
It's unclear to me who benefits most or loses least in the strict physical military sense, i.e. try to screen out psywar considerations, from the Kakhovka dam event. Russia says both sides have been hit but implies Ukraine has been hit hardest; Ukraine says essentially that Russians are barbarians innit, and barbarians gonna be barbaric. If the dam broke because of shelling, which is the Russian allegation, you'd expect Russia to have evidence surely and to release some of it not necessarily right away but within a few days. A major feature of where the parallelogram of forces is headed may be the effect on the cooling of the Zaporozhye/Zaporizhzhia nuke plant.
All these discussions about private school fees seem to ignore the obvious extension of the argument to putting VAT on University fees. After all a selected section of the community benefit, universities are in effect a business and all the other other arguments put forward seem to apply.
University fees are overwhemingly paid for by loans. Those loans aren't likely to be paid back as it is. Adding 20% to the face value of the loans is effectively straight up borrowing.
Hardly seems logical. If school fees were paid for by loans should they be free of VAT as well? It's question of consistancy. If one form of education should be charged VAT why shouldn't another irrespective of how it is funded or current government policy on write off of loans. If you use the argument that we shouldn't charge VAT on university fees because some will be written off you can apply the same argument to university fees in total. If it's right for school fees it's right for university fees as well.
I guess you could even apply the same logic to other payments to organisations that benefit one section of society. Union subscriptions for example.
Access to University education is much broader than access to private schooling, something like 7% privately educated while 33% hold degrees (thank you Google). Many Universities are very keen on widening access further. I just don't think it's right to say, in the modern landscape of University education in the UK that a lack of VAT on tuition fees benefits one section of society.
That's before going on to the wider benefits to the country of having a highly educated population, though I'm sure others would argue the broader societal benefits of private schools are just as important.
67% might disagree.
Universities bring a range of different benefits to the country. The gains from research to the economy, to our health and to culture benefit those 67%, as does the help to the balance of payments from educating overseas students.
At present, Government and charities underpay the costs of research. Fees income subsidises research. Government policy has allowed this situation to develop. So, any impact on fees income has knock-on effects for research budgets.
True but why should working class voters and many lower middle class voters who never went to university subsidise universities VAT exemption any more than state school educated voters should subsidise private schools VAT exemption?
Because society as a whole benefits from people being university educated; it does not benefit from the privately educated (perhaps even the opposite, see Rees Mogg et al ad nauseam).
I fear a backlash in Wales over the the new 20mph limit on roads.
Reading the comments on walesonline should sometimes come with a health warning. The mystery is why the government would do something likely to be so unpopular. I think public opinion just doesn't really matter in Wales. There is no serious alternative to Labour and if they and Plaid stick close together they're bound to keep more than 50% of the seats.
Will it be unpopular though? I'm not able to easily find any polling on this issue, but many in Edinburgh regard the city-wide 20mph policy to be a success. Some evidence shows a reduction in accidents and fatalities. So that's a good thing.
It may be in a City but Wales have few cities and it is frankly a nonsense
But two thirds of people in Wales live in urban areas. Whether a settlement is a town or a city really isn't the issue here.
Its absolutely an issue.
20 is ridiculously slow for a town's main road. By schools or on residential side streets its fair enough, but a main road then 20 is just slow.
For a city it might make sense, if cities have gridlock anyway, but for towns it doesn't make any sense at all.
If the purpose of the 20mph limits are to protect or at least prioritise pedestrians, the most important street to have within that limit is the main street because that's where the biggest number of pedestrians are.
Not at all.
20 on residential roads make sense because children can be playing on those. On my residential road my kids play in front of our house, they ride their bike and scooter - other kids play football etc. Drive slowly on those roads, as you never know if a kid might run out chasing their ball.
On a main road that people are driving down, I've never seen kids playing football on those roads. People may walk to the shops, but they're not playing kickabout on the road, and if there's a fence separating the children from the cars then the volume of people isn't the issue - its the type of people you're likely to risk coming across.
O/T - Why would people need to charge their cars at home? You don't need a petrol pump in your garage. Surely the future is converting petrol stations into fast electric charging stations, where you pull up and charge for 15/20 mins then drive off.
Charging cars at home when not driving them is surely one of the benefits of electric vehicles?
Assuming always you have the off-road space to do so.
The transition to electric vehicles can't come soon enough for one key reason: noise. Not all traffic noise is engine noise but it's the most significant part. The gradual end of revving, roaring, popping noise pollution will make every part of this country better in ways that I don't think many people really give credit for.
It'll take a long time for it to filter down through the second hand market, and I expect there will be "classics" knocking around for decades, but anyone who lives within a couple of kilometres of a main road, which is basically everyone, will gradually start to live better, more relaxing lives.
Until you can't get anywhere because your EV car has run out of power and there is no charging point nearby. Not that relaxing.
Look at what Mike said. 30 minutes or more at a charging station. We have been told for ages that the technology is getting "better" but the simple fact is that petrol cars are still most effective.
I spend far less time at charging stations than you do, because I charge my car at home once a week. Those five or ten minutes add up over the year, and I'm saving time and money.
Now, is that true of everyone? No.
But for a substantial minority of people, EVs are the better option today. And every day the size of that minority increases.
Perhaps in the US. I would question that in the UK.
At the end of the day, there is an implicit class / socio-economic issue here. If you are fairly well-off you will be fine (you will have a drive, a decent car, can afford the electricity etc). If you are poor and rely on your car for essentials, you are screwed.
Oh, I agree, for now they're not for everyone.
But the number of people who will benefit from going EV is growing all the time. You can't buck the market.
Again, I would question that.
The car manufacturers are not showing much inclination to develop mass market EV models. Instead, what they have done - and some such as BMW and Mercedes have been explicit about this - is to raise prices structurally. Wealthier people can afford this, poorer people can't.
I go back to the point that there is an implicit class / socio-economic point thing here. The unstated aim of many who are pushing the EV agenda is to force people - mainly the poorer types - onto public transport by pricing them out of the market when it comes to buying and maintaining a car. There is a reason why so many wealthy middle-class individuals are perfectly happy with pushing an EV agenda because they can afford the price as well as knowing others cannot. You see the same dynamic with such types calling for a reduction in air flights - they are not thinking about their trips to Tuscany or Provence, they are thinking those awful plebs who go on package holidays to cheap destinations.
...Why attack EVs? Seen as trendy and modern, driven by do-gooders, promoting the environment. So of course you want to attack people driving EVs - we're not one of you.
There's a fairly clear motive in the US, where car dealers make big money from the existing system, and are generous funders of Republican politicians. They absolutely loathe Tesla, since it has bypassed them completely.
Tesla also doesn't money on advertising, which doesn't endear them to the media.
I suspect they'll go on a similar journey to Amazon with advertising; Captain Jeff Penisrocket didn't 'believe' in it for a long time, but realised after a while that both brand and activation advertising are important for growth in the long term, especially in a market that becomes increasingly competitive.
As the unquestioned brand leader in their vertical Tesla didn't really need to do brand ads - they were selling everything they made and there was a lot of excitement and fanboyishness about them. As a brand it has undeniably made electric cars desirable and cool (remember that the market leader before was the two-steps-from-a-milk-float Nissan Leaf).
However, their brand is struggling as it becomes less cool - Musky is divisive (to be generous) and remains closely associated with Tesla's image. Rumours around reliability, NDAs and whatnot have not helped. The pricing strategy has been sclerotic and reduced the brand's prestige, as (maybe more arguably) have the bland aesthetics of the Model 3.
That is all happening to Tesla's brand regardless of the market - BUT, the market (especially German and Korean manufacturers) has itself now caught up with Tesla, giving consumers more choice and also offering more market niches than Tesla's limited range. Now, against a backdrop of extraordinary sector growth that won't hurt Tesla much in the short term, but in the long run they are in severe danger of being eclipsed, become both less cool and less competitive.
Brand advertising will be crucial to whether they survive or not. They are no longer a market disrupter. If they want sustained growth and sales, they need to remain appealing in a market that will quickly outgun them in terms of brand loyalty and market infrastructure.
They now don’t have a waiting list in most markets, have built a lot of extra production capacity in recent years, and have an increasing amount of competition from other manufacturers.
Selling to the 10% of evangelical early-adopters was the easy bit, selling to the other 90% of us is a lot more difficult.
Especially now the rest of us have more of a choice, and that choice includes not giving money to a weirdo man-child.
I did suggest here a week or so ago when it was reported that Wagner were retreating from Bakhmut saying the job was finished and handing Bakhmut over to the Russian military, that it was likely a sign of things to come, but even I didn't expect it to fall back this fast.
I think Mark is getting ahead of himself, but the direction of travel is in Ukraine's favour, and they are making gains around Bakhmut at a greater pace then the Russians did.
Russia has to decide where to deploy its reserves, if it has any, in the knowledge that Ukraine will probably concentrate on the front Russia doesn't reinforce.
This is why they've played down the incursions into Belgorod. They've no spare units to send to sort it out, so they kinda have to pretend it isn't happening.
All these discussions about private school fees seem to ignore the obvious extension of the argument to putting VAT on University fees. After all a selected section of the community benefit, universities are in effect a business and all the other other arguments put forward seem to apply.
University fees are overwhemingly paid for by loans. Those loans aren't likely to be paid back as it is. Adding 20% to the face value of the loans is effectively straight up borrowing.
Hardly seems logical. If school fees were paid for by loans should they be free of VAT as well? It's question of consistancy. If one form of education should be charged VAT why shouldn't another irrespective of how it is funded or current government policy on write off of loans. If you use the argument that we shouldn't charge VAT on university fees because some will be written off you can apply the same argument to university fees in total. If it's right for school fees it's right for university fees as well.
I guess you could even apply the same logic to other payments to organisations that benefit one section of society. Union subscriptions for example.
Access to University education is much broader than access to private schooling, something like 7% privately educated while 33% hold degrees (thank you Google). Many Universities are very keen on widening access further. I just don't think it's right to say, in the modern landscape of University education in the UK that a lack of VAT on tuition fees benefits one section of society.
That's before going on to the wider benefits to the country of having a highly educated population, though I'm sure others would argue the broader societal benefits of private schools are just as important.
67% might disagree.
Universities bring a range of different benefits to the country. The gains from research to the economy, to our health and to culture benefit those 67%, as does the help to the balance of payments from educating overseas students.
At present, Government and charities underpay the costs of research. Fees income subsidises research. Government policy has allowed this situation to develop. So, any impact on fees income has knock-on effects for research budgets.
True but why should working class voters and many lower middle class voters who will never go to university subsidise universities VAT exemption any more than state school educated voters should subsidise private schools VAT exemption?
I wasn’t arguing for or against, just noting the less obvious externalities.
I think (as someone who works in a university) that universities should be well-funded by the public purse. Research benefits the whole population in various ways. Universities are drivers of innovation and thus the economy. The UK’s universities are a key part of our global brand, an area where we punch above our weight. Overseas students contribute greatly to the economy. A well-educated populace increases productivity.
But how best to fund universities is a vexed question. Many funding mechanisms are inefficient. Others have hidden subsidies (e.g., medical charity funding is significantly subsidised by government, which may well be a sound policy, but I think few realise how much it is going on). One can make a case that more or less of the cost of a degree should fall on the student.
I did suggest here a week or so ago when it was reported that Wagner were retreating from Bakhmut saying the job was finished and handing Bakhmut over to the Russian military, that it was likely a sign of things to come, but even I didn't expect it to fall back this fast.
"Prigozhin calls for Russia's Chief of General Staff Gerasimov & Defence Minister Shoigu to face execution by firing squad and he predicts it will happen."
All these discussions about private school fees seem to ignore the obvious extension of the argument to putting VAT on University fees. After all a selected section of the community benefit, universities are in effect a business and all the other other arguments put forward seem to apply.
University fees are overwhemingly paid for by loans. Those loans aren't likely to be paid back as it is. Adding 20% to the face value of the loans is effectively straight up borrowing.
Hardly seems logical. If school fees were paid for by loans should they be free of VAT as well? It's question of consistancy. If one form of education should be charged VAT why shouldn't another irrespective of how it is funded or current government policy on write off of loans. If you use the argument that we shouldn't charge VAT on university fees because some will be written off you can apply the same argument to university fees in total. If it's right for school fees it's right for university fees as well.
I guess you could even apply the same logic to other payments to organisations that benefit one section of society. Union subscriptions for example.
Access to University education is much broader than access to private schooling, something like 7% privately educated while 33% hold degrees (thank you Google). Many Universities are very keen on widening access further. I just don't think it's right to say, in the modern landscape of University education in the UK that a lack of VAT on tuition fees benefits one section of society.
That's before going on to the wider benefits to the country of having a highly educated population, though I'm sure others would argue the broader societal benefits of private schools are just as important.
67% might disagree.
Universities bring a range of different benefits to the country. The gains from research to the economy, to our health and to culture benefit those 67%, as does the help to the balance of payments from educating overseas students.
At present, Government and charities underpay the costs of research. Fees income subsidises research. Government policy has allowed this situation to develop. So, any impact on fees income has knock-on effects for research budgets.
True but why should working class voters and many lower middle class voters who never went to university subsidise universities VAT exemption any more than state school educated voters should subsidise private schools VAT exemption?
Because society as a whole benefits from people being university educated; it does not benefit from the privately educated (perhaps even the opposite, see Rees Mogg et al ad nauseam).
Society as a whole also benefits from people being privately educated, they get higher GCSE and A Level exam grades than average and earn more on average and are less likely to be unemployed, so will be more likely to pay more tax and be less reliant on the welfare state. Doctors for instance are also more likely to be privately educated than average as are judges and army officers, all of whom society needs. Not to forget more British Oscar winners are privately educated than average as are top rugby and cricket stars for instance as are the current PM and Labour leader
O/T - Why would people need to charge their cars at home? You don't need a petrol pump in your garage. Surely the future is converting petrol stations into fast electric charging stations, where you pull up and charge for 15/20 mins then drive off.
1) There's no waiting involved at all, given the the car is usually charging while you sleeping. It's not much harder than charging your phone. 2) It's usually a lot cheaper, especially if you have a low night-time tariff. 3) Fast-charging is harder on the battery and likely to diminish its lifetime.
All these discussions about private school fees seem to ignore the obvious extension of the argument to putting VAT on University fees. After all a selected section of the community benefit, universities are in effect a business and all the other other arguments put forward seem to apply.
University fees are overwhemingly paid for by loans. Those loans aren't likely to be paid back as it is. Adding 20% to the face value of the loans is effectively straight up borrowing.
Hardly seems logical. If school fees were paid for by loans should they be free of VAT as well? It's question of consistancy. If one form of education should be charged VAT why shouldn't another irrespective of how it is funded or current government policy on write off of loans. If you use the argument that we shouldn't charge VAT on university fees because some will be written off you can apply the same argument to university fees in total. If it's right for school fees it's right for university fees as well.
I guess you could even apply the same logic to other payments to organisations that benefit one section of society. Union subscriptions for example.
Access to University education is much broader than access to private schooling, something like 7% privately educated while 33% hold degrees (thank you Google). Many Universities are very keen on widening access further. I just don't think it's right to say, in the modern landscape of University education in the UK that a lack of VAT on tuition fees benefits one section of society.
That's before going on to the wider benefits to the country of having a highly educated population, though I'm sure others would argue the broader societal benefits of private schools are just as important.
67% might disagree.
Universities bring a range of different benefits to the country. The gains from research to the economy, to our health and to culture benefit those 67%, as does the help to the balance of payments from educating overseas students.
At present, Government and charities underpay the costs of research. Fees income subsidises research. Government policy has allowed this situation to develop. So, any impact on fees income has knock-on effects for research budgets.
True but why should working class voters and many lower middle class voters who never went to university subsidise universities VAT exemption any more than state school educated voters should subsidise private schools VAT exemption?
Because society as a whole benefits from people being university educated; it does not benefit from the privately educated (perhaps even the opposite, see Rees Mogg et al ad nauseam).
Society as a whole also benefits from people being privately educated, they go on to get higher exam grades than average and earn more on average and be less likely to be unemployed, so will be more likely to pay more tax and be less reliant on the welfare state. Doctors for instance are also more likely to be privately educated than average as are judges and army officers, all of whom society needs
I disagree; it is not their private education that determines those things but a combination of their parents' wealth and drive. They would likely do equally well if there was no private school sector.
YouGov polling in Oxford has shown that the LTNs are liked by more than they're disliked, but reading the Oxford Mail comments section you'd believe that everyone hates them.
I've been in Oxford in rush hour. The taxi drivers absolutely hate the LTNs. Given the extraordinarily large taxi fare, I'm not a big fan myself
Yeah. So Oxford's problem is that there are basically two crossings of the Cherwell (Magdalen, Marston Ferry), three crossings of the Thames (Osney, Folly, Donnington), and everything is funnelled over those. It's unsupportable with current traffic levels and everything, including buses and taxis, gets snarled up in the resulting congestion.
The County Council's proposal is a bunch of traffic filters that will restrict private car traffic (but not taxis, buses etc.) from passing through the pinch points. It will make your taxi driver's life much easier but I can almost guarantee he hates the idea. On Planet Taxi the only solution is to build more roads, ban cyclists and publicly hang, draw and quarter the county councillors.
If existing roads don't have enough capacity, then building more roads - including more bridges if they're the pinch points - is the solution.
Not dick around trying to restrict traffic from going through the pinch points, when the traffic still needs to do so.
All these discussions about private school fees seem to ignore the obvious extension of the argument to putting VAT on University fees. After all a selected section of the community benefit, universities are in effect a business and all the other other arguments put forward seem to apply.
University fees are overwhemingly paid for by loans. Those loans aren't likely to be paid back as it is. Adding 20% to the face value of the loans is effectively straight up borrowing.
Hardly seems logical. If school fees were paid for by loans should they be free of VAT as well? It's question of consistancy. If one form of education should be charged VAT why shouldn't another irrespective of how it is funded or current government policy on write off of loans. If you use the argument that we shouldn't charge VAT on university fees because some will be written off you can apply the same argument to university fees in total. If it's right for school fees it's right for university fees as well.
I guess you could even apply the same logic to other payments to organisations that benefit one section of society. Union subscriptions for example.
Access to University education is much broader than access to private schooling, something like 7% privately educated while 33% hold degrees (thank you Google). Many Universities are very keen on widening access further. I just don't think it's right to say, in the modern landscape of University education in the UK that a lack of VAT on tuition fees benefits one section of society.
That's before going on to the wider benefits to the country of having a highly educated population, though I'm sure others would argue the broader societal benefits of private schools are just as important.
67% might disagree.
Universities bring a range of different benefits to the country. The gains from research to the economy, to our health and to culture benefit those 67%, as does the help to the balance of payments from educating overseas students.
At present, Government and charities underpay the costs of research. Fees income subsidises research. Government policy has allowed this situation to develop. So, any impact on fees income has knock-on effects for research budgets.
True but why should working class voters and many lower middle class voters who never went to university subsidise universities VAT exemption any more than state school educated voters should subsidise private schools VAT exemption?
Because society as a whole benefits from people being university educated; it does not benefit from the privately educated (perhaps even the opposite, see Rees Mogg et al ad nauseam).
Society as a whole also benefits from people being privately educated, they go on to get higher exam grades than average and earn more on average and be less likely to be unemployed, so will be more likely to pay more tax and be less reliant on the welfare state. Doctors for instance are also more likely to be privately educated than average as are judges and army officers, all of whom society needs
I disagree; it is not their private education that determines those things but a combination of their parents' wealth and drive. They would likely do equally well if there was no private school sector.
Not necessarily, especially if they went to a poorly performing state school
I did suggest here a week or so ago when it was reported that Wagner were retreating from Bakhmut saying the job was finished and handing Bakhmut over to the Russian military, that it was likely a sign of things to come, but even I didn't expect it to fall back this fast.
"Prigozhin calls for Russia's Chief of General Staff Gerasimov & Defence Minister Shoigu to face execution by firing squad and he predicts it will happen."
All these discussions about private school fees seem to ignore the obvious extension of the argument to putting VAT on University fees. After all a selected section of the community benefit, universities are in effect a business and all the other other arguments put forward seem to apply.
University fees are overwhemingly paid for by loans. Those loans aren't likely to be paid back as it is. Adding 20% to the face value of the loans is effectively straight up borrowing.
Hardly seems logical. If school fees were paid for by loans should they be free of VAT as well? It's question of consistancy. If one form of education should be charged VAT why shouldn't another irrespective of how it is funded or current government policy on write off of loans. If you use the argument that we shouldn't charge VAT on university fees because some will be written off you can apply the same argument to university fees in total. If it's right for school fees it's right for university fees as well.
I guess you could even apply the same logic to other payments to organisations that benefit one section of society. Union subscriptions for example.
Access to University education is much broader than access to private schooling, something like 7% privately educated while 33% hold degrees (thank you Google). Many Universities are very keen on widening access further. I just don't think it's right to say, in the modern landscape of University education in the UK that a lack of VAT on tuition fees benefits one section of society.
That's before going on to the wider benefits to the country of having a highly educated population, though I'm sure others would argue the broader societal benefits of private schools are just as important.
67% might disagree.
Universities bring a range of different benefits to the country. The gains from research to the economy, to our health and to culture benefit those 67%, as does the help to the balance of payments from educating overseas students.
At present, Government and charities underpay the costs of research. Fees income subsidises research. Government policy has allowed this situation to develop. So, any impact on fees income has knock-on effects for research budgets.
True but why should working class voters and many lower middle class voters who will never go to university subsidise universities VAT exemption any more than state school educated voters should subsidise private schools VAT exemption?
I wasn’t arguing for or against, just noting the less obvious externalities.
I think (as someone who works in a university) that universities should be well-funded by the public purse. Research benefits the whole population in various ways. Universities are drivers of innovation and thus the economy. The UK’s universities are a key part of our global brand, an area where we punch above our weight. Overseas students contribute greatly to the economy. A well-educated populace increases productivity.
But how best to fund universities is a vexed question. Many funding mechanisms are inefficient. Others have hidden subsidies (e.g., medical charity funding is significantly subsidised by government, which may well be a sound policy, but I think few realise how much it is going on). One can make a case that more or less of the cost of a degree should fall on the student.
I don't disagree, I support VAT exemptions for universities and private schools as I value both. Not because I am a Snob but because they both contribute greatly to society overall
YouGov polling in Oxford has shown that the LTNs are liked by more than they're disliked, but reading the Oxford Mail comments section you'd believe that everyone hates them.
I've been in Oxford in rush hour. The taxi drivers absolutely hate the LTNs. Given the extraordinarily large taxi fare, I'm not a big fan myself
Yeah. So Oxford's problem is that there are basically two crossings of the Cherwell (Magdalen, Marston Ferry), three crossings of the Thames (Osney, Folly, Donnington), and everything is funnelled over those. It's unsupportable with current traffic levels and everything, including buses and taxis, gets snarled up in the resulting congestion.
The County Council's proposal is a bunch of traffic filters that will restrict private car traffic (but not taxis, buses etc.) from passing through the pinch points. It will make your taxi driver's life much easier but I can almost guarantee he hates the idea. On Planet Taxi the only solution is to build more roads, ban cyclists and publicly hang, draw and quarter the county councillors.
It's odd how much taxi drivers hate pedestrians, given pedestrians are their customers.
A taxi driver probably sees a pedestrian as someone who could be in a taxi but is too stingy to pay for one.
YouGov polling in Oxford has shown that the LTNs are liked by more than they're disliked, but reading the Oxford Mail comments section you'd believe that everyone hates them.
I've been in Oxford in rush hour. The taxi drivers absolutely hate the LTNs. Given the extraordinarily large taxi fare, I'm not a big fan myself
Yeah. So Oxford's problem is that there are basically two crossings of the Cherwell (Magdalen, Marston Ferry), three crossings of the Thames (Osney, Folly, Donnington), and everything is funnelled over those. It's unsupportable with current traffic levels and everything, including buses and taxis, gets snarled up in the resulting congestion.
The County Council's proposal is a bunch of traffic filters that will restrict private car traffic (but not taxis, buses etc.) from passing through the pinch points. It will make your taxi driver's life much easier but I can almost guarantee he hates the idea. On Planet Taxi the only solution is to build more roads, ban cyclists and publicly hang, draw and quarter the county councillors.
If existing roads don't have enough capacity, then building more roads - including more bridges if they're the pinch points - is the solution.
Not dick around trying to restrict traffic from going through the pinch points, when the traffic still needs to do so.
It's Oxford.
If you build more roads then you have to explain which college you're going to knock down.
All these discussions about private school fees seem to ignore the obvious extension of the argument to putting VAT on University fees. After all a selected section of the community benefit, universities are in effect a business and all the other other arguments put forward seem to apply.
University fees are overwhemingly paid for by loans. Those loans aren't likely to be paid back as it is. Adding 20% to the face value of the loans is effectively straight up borrowing.
Hardly seems logical. If school fees were paid for by loans should they be free of VAT as well? It's question of consistancy. If one form of education should be charged VAT why shouldn't another irrespective of how it is funded or current government policy on write off of loans. If you use the argument that we shouldn't charge VAT on university fees because some will be written off you can apply the same argument to university fees in total. If it's right for school fees it's right for university fees as well.
I guess you could even apply the same logic to other payments to organisations that benefit one section of society. Union subscriptions for example.
Access to University education is much broader than access to private schooling, something like 7% privately educated while 33% hold degrees (thank you Google). Many Universities are very keen on widening access further. I just don't think it's right to say, in the modern landscape of University education in the UK that a lack of VAT on tuition fees benefits one section of society.
That's before going on to the wider benefits to the country of having a highly educated population, though I'm sure others would argue the broader societal benefits of private schools are just as important.
67% might disagree.
Universities bring a range of different benefits to the country. The gains from research to the economy, to our health and to culture benefit those 67%, as does the help to the balance of payments from educating overseas students.
At present, Government and charities underpay the costs of research. Fees income subsidises research. Government policy has allowed this situation to develop. So, any impact on fees income has knock-on effects for research budgets.
True but why should working class voters and many lower middle class voters who never went to university subsidise universities VAT exemption any more than state school educated voters should subsidise private schools VAT exemption?
Because society as a whole benefits from people being university educated; it does not benefit from the privately educated (perhaps even the opposite, see Rees Mogg et al ad nauseam).
Society as a whole also benefits from people being privately educated, they get higher GCSE and A Level exam grades than average and earn more on average and are less likely to be unemployed, so will be more likely to pay more tax and be less reliant on the welfare state. Doctors for instance are also more likely to be privately educated than average as are judges and army officers, all of whom society needs. Not to forget more British Oscar winners are privately educated than average as are top rugby and cricket stars for instance as are the current PM and Labour leader
Privately educated medical students do on average slightly less well than non-privately educated medical students, controlling for other factors, at medical school exams. The effect seems to be that private school students do better at A’levels because of their school for their level of ability. Thus, when you look at medical school performance and control for A’levels performance, the privately educated do less well than you’d expect. Paper at https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1339899/
It's unclear to me who benefits most or loses least in the strict physical military sense..
Seems perfectly clear to me. Ukraine is commencing a large scale counteroffensive. This barbarous act completely neutralises a large section of the front as a possible area of operations for some time. Reducing their options benefits only the Russians.
As for other considerations, only one side has consistently demonstrated they don't give a Dean about civilians, Ukraine's infrastructure, or their own troops.
I suppose it's just about possible Ukraine was responsible, but it's highly implausible.
YouGov polling in Oxford has shown that the LTNs are liked by more than they're disliked, but reading the Oxford Mail comments section you'd believe that everyone hates them.
I've been in Oxford in rush hour. The taxi drivers absolutely hate the LTNs. Given the extraordinarily large taxi fare, I'm not a big fan myself
Yeah. So Oxford's problem is that there are basically two crossings of the Cherwell (Magdalen, Marston Ferry), three crossings of the Thames (Osney, Folly, Donnington), and everything is funnelled over those. It's unsupportable with current traffic levels and everything, including buses and taxis, gets snarled up in the resulting congestion.
The County Council's proposal is a bunch of traffic filters that will restrict private car traffic (but not taxis, buses etc.) from passing through the pinch points. It will make your taxi driver's life much easier but I can almost guarantee he hates the idea. On Planet Taxi the only solution is to build more roads, ban cyclists and publicly hang, draw and quarter the county councillors.
If existing roads don't have enough capacity, then building more roads - including more bridges if they're the pinch points - is the solution.
Not dick around trying to restrict traffic from going through the pinch points, when the traffic still needs to do so.
It's Oxford.
If you build more roads then you have to explain which college you're going to knock down.
YouGov polling in Oxford has shown that the LTNs are liked by more than they're disliked, but reading the Oxford Mail comments section you'd believe that everyone hates them.
I've been in Oxford in rush hour. The taxi drivers absolutely hate the LTNs. Given the extraordinarily large taxi fare, I'm not a big fan myself
Yeah. So Oxford's problem is that there are basically two crossings of the Cherwell (Magdalen, Marston Ferry), three crossings of the Thames (Osney, Folly, Donnington), and everything is funnelled over those. It's unsupportable with current traffic levels and everything, including buses and taxis, gets snarled up in the resulting congestion.
The County Council's proposal is a bunch of traffic filters that will restrict private car traffic (but not taxis, buses etc.) from passing through the pinch points. It will make your taxi driver's life much easier but I can almost guarantee he hates the idea. On Planet Taxi the only solution is to build more roads, ban cyclists and publicly hang, draw and quarter the county councillors.
If existing roads don't have enough capacity, then building more roads - including more bridges if they're the pinch points - is the solution.
Not dick around trying to restrict traffic from going through the pinch points, when the traffic still needs to do so.
It's Oxford.
If you build more roads then you have to explain which college you're going to knock down.
But you claimed the issue was the pinch points, especially over the river.
Surely there's places where there's roads on either side of the river, but no bridge to connect them?
If so, build the bridge and problem solved. Unless the colleges are built on the rivers themselves, or all the banks are taken up by colleges.
O/T - Why would people need to charge their cars at home? You don't need a petrol pump in your garage. Surely the future is converting petrol stations into fast electric charging stations, where you pull up and charge for 15/20 mins then drive off.
The throughput of a busy supermarket petrol station with 15-18 pumps is very high.
If it took 20 minutes to charge for each person you would basically need the entire supermarket car park with each bay having a charger to maintain the same throughput.
I think that's what is going to have to happen anyway as the existing stations won't just be replaced overnight.
Even if 50% can charge at home, there's still going to be a large demand.
The aliens are here, third world war gets closer, Ukraine is a bust, and you guys spend five hours talking about Electronic vehicles and Welsh speed limits
There’s quirky and determinedly parochial and then there’s…. PB
Oh good Captain Crisis is here to lecture us about flying saucers
I mean you *could* argue that @Dura_Ace achieving 58mph in his souped up geek-o-matic Incel electro-scooter where he got 27.829 miles per ampere is the most important story of the day or you could look at the fact the Telegraph and Times have joined the Guardian in soberly reporting THIS story:
'Non-human spacecrafts' found by US 'for decades' Whistleblower claims spacecrafts and the bodies of ‘pilots’ have been found by the US government for decades
"Mr Grusch has not seen the alleged material himself."
“Senior officials have spoken out to vouch for Mr Grusch and his claims.
Karl Nell, a retired Army colonel who was also on the UFO task force, described him as “beyond reproach
Jonathan Grey, a generational officer of the United States Intelligence Community who currently works for the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC), said: “The non-human intelligence phenomenon is real. We are not alone,” Mr Grey added: “Retrievals of this kind are not limited to the United States. This is a global phenomenon, and yet a global solution continues to elude us.””
Whatever the explanation - madness, psyops, someone putting acid in the water across America, visiting aliens - something really really REALLY weird is happening
Bear in mind that the most important, far-reaching effects of the whole pandemic business have been psychological, behavioural, and on structures for preparedness. Corporate-state structures, to use perhaps an old-fashioned term. But what else to call the cooperation between governments and Big Pharma and between governments and infotech-advertising-surveillance companies such as Facebook and Apple and above all, the biggest boy in the garden, the company that makes the IBM of the 20th century seem like a bit part player, Google? So what's next? What will be the "new normal" after this "something really really REALLY weird" plays out a bit? Those focusing on ChatGPT and "AI" may well be looking in the wrong direction if their attention is taken away from Neuralink etc.
All these discussions about private school fees seem to ignore the obvious extension of the argument to putting VAT on University fees. After all a selected section of the community benefit, universities are in effect a business and all the other other arguments put forward seem to apply.
University fees are overwhemingly paid for by loans. Those loans aren't likely to be paid back as it is. Adding 20% to the face value of the loans is effectively straight up borrowing.
Hardly seems logical. If school fees were paid for by loans should they be free of VAT as well? It's question of consistancy. If one form of education should be charged VAT why shouldn't another irrespective of how it is funded or current government policy on write off of loans. If you use the argument that we shouldn't charge VAT on university fees because some will be written off you can apply the same argument to university fees in total. If it's right for school fees it's right for university fees as well.
I guess you could even apply the same logic to other payments to organisations that benefit one section of society. Union subscriptions for example.
Access to University education is much broader than access to private schooling, something like 7% privately educated while 33% hold degrees (thank you Google). Many Universities are very keen on widening access further. I just don't think it's right to say, in the modern landscape of University education in the UK that a lack of VAT on tuition fees benefits one section of society.
That's before going on to the wider benefits to the country of having a highly educated population, though I'm sure others would argue the broader societal benefits of private schools are just as important.
67% might disagree.
Universities bring a range of different benefits to the country. The gains from research to the economy, to our health and to culture benefit those 67%, as does the help to the balance of payments from educating overseas students.
At present, Government and charities underpay the costs of research. Fees income subsidises research. Government policy has allowed this situation to develop. So, any impact on fees income has knock-on effects for research budgets.
True but why should working class voters and many lower middle class voters who never went to university subsidise universities VAT exemption any more than state school educated voters should subsidise private schools VAT exemption?
Because society as a whole benefits from people being university educated; it does not benefit from the privately educated (perhaps even the opposite, see Rees Mogg et al ad nauseam).
Society as a whole also benefits from people being privately educated, they get higher GCSE and A Level exam grades than average and earn more on average and are less likely to be unemployed, so will be more likely to pay more tax and be less reliant on the welfare state. Doctors for instance are also more likely to be privately educated than average as are judges and army officers, all of whom society needs. Not to forget more British Oscar winners are privately educated than average as are top rugby and cricket stars for instance as are the current PM and Labour leader
Private schools are a natural contributor to inequality. The more unequal a society is, the more likely it is to have on average worse health outcomes, higher crime rates, higher infant mortality, and reduced life expectancy. Compare the 'segregation academies' in the southern USA vs Finland.
It's unclear to me who benefits most or loses least in the strict physical military sense..
Seems perfectly clear to me. Ukraine is commencing a large scale counteroffensive. This barbarous act completely neutralises a large section of the front as a possible area of operations for some time. Reducing their options benefits only the Russians.
As for other considerations, only one side has consistently demonstrated they don't give a Dean about civilians, Ukraine's infrastructure, or their own troops.
I suppose it's just about possible Ukraine was responsible, but it's highly implausible.
The BBC being so even-handed yesterday on who might be responsible veered a long way off credible reportage.
Comments
https://www.vulture.com/2023/06/streaming-industry-netflix-max-disney-hulu-apple-tv-prime-video-peacock-paramount.html
Under new boundaries it finds Labour on 35%. It finds Labour support in its lead over Tories is still “quite soft”
Under Labours worse case scenario Tory’s are boosted by taking Reform voters, or there’s no reform standing so the election result is Lab 316, leaving the Tories at 286.
And the focus group seems to like Rishi Sunak a lot.
Yes second-hand ICE vehicles will remain legal and in widespread use and available for sale, but that doesn't address the issue for anyone who lacks at-home charger capabilities and wants a new vehicle in 7 years time.
There are plenty of people who buy new cars every few years, and many of them will live in terraces or mews or other properties without at-home charger capabilities. In 7 years time a new vehicle that suits them is intended to be outlawed. So you're either now saying they're obliged to keep older, run-down vehicles they don't want which others might want but they don't, or they need to buy a technology that doesn't suit them.
We need a solution to houses that lack at home charger capabilities, and we need it within 7 years. Or we need to not outlaw new ICE sales then. Personally I'd rather the former, but simply saying "go second hand instead" isn't a solution.
https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPR/status/1666385562746470403
Orientation is as if you're going downstream I think ?
But a decde or more ago I lived about a mile from the A1 at Newark. You could hear the noise from it all the time as a background hum and it was then I realised that most of that noise was tyrres not engines.
We can’t have a principle both ways, Tory support to don’t knows had to be good news for Tory and not great for Labour, so SNP support to don’t know can’t be the slam dunk in Labour gains either?
Reading the comments on walesonline should sometimes come with a health warning. The mystery is why the government would do something likely to be so unpopular. I think public opinion just doesn't really matter in Wales. There is no serious alternative to Labour and if they and Plaid stick close together they're bound to keep more than 50% of the seats.
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/welsh-governments-report-says-20mph-25913398
The MRP looks wrong, as it predicts that the Lib Dems will only get 5 seats - St Albans, Bath and the three south west London seats.
Man Utd pay 80M for Anthony, Chelsea pay 90 for Mudryk and 75 for caciedo, Arsenal pay 95M to packet rice, and Liverpool get the most promising and influential than all those players, Macalister, for just 35M? It’s almost like I don’t immediately trust you, there must be another 50M in add ons.
I did suggest here a week or so ago when it was reported that Wagner were retreating from Bakhmut saying the job was finished and handing Bakhmut over to the Russian military, that it was likely a sign of things to come, but even I didn't expect it to fall back this fast.
https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1666281190482132992
The MRP poll also projects Labour to win most seats in Scotland again for the first time since 2010, with 31 Scottish Labour MPs to just 26 for the SNP. Which would be a humiliation for Yousaf.
That also raises the interesting scenario however that is not impossible Sunak's Tories now win most seats in England but Labour still win most seats in the UK thanks to Scottish and Welsh Labour MPs and Starmer therefore becomes UK PM with no English majority and no EVEL or English Parliament for English voters either
https://www.bestforbritain.org/mrp_polling_new_boundaries_june_2023
It still gives an amazing historic more than 100 seat gain for Labour if it ends up Lab 316, leaving the Tories at 286. So it rings true as realistic in that sense?
A mistake you can make Nicky is constant comparisons with 97. Blair started off 75 seats better off, which is why the majority was so big and the result looked so spectacular. In reality gain sixty or seventy seats or more at general elections is historically a brilliant and rare result. Despite mid term polls and amazing local elections, things don’t tend to move around greatly in MPs from election to election, so this MRP work you are calling wrong still gives Labour way over 100 seat gains!
And you reckon it doesn’t sound like a realistic snapshot of where we are now 🤷♀️
It will affect our son on a RNLI shout call and other emergency workers
I expect a lot of opposition, but then the Welsh Labour government has cancelled all road building projects, and the 3rd Menai crossing necessary due to the Freeport at Holyhead and the unreliability of the old Menai crossing
Ironically Labour have been in power for decades overseeing failing NHS and Education but still Wales remains a Labour stronghold and those of us who live here pay the price
The aliens are here, third world war gets closer, Ukraine is a bust, and you guys spend five hours talking about Electronic vehicles and Welsh speed limits
There’s quirky and determinedly parochial and then there’s…. PB
YouGov polling in Oxford has shown that the LTNs are liked by more than they're disliked, but reading the Oxford Mail comments section you'd believe that everyone hates them.
The SNP might even be under new leadership by the general election and all those don’t know SNP come flooding back.
'Non-human spacecrafts' found by US 'for decades'
Whistleblower claims spacecrafts and the bodies of ‘pilots’ have been found by the US government for decades
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/06/07/ufos-made-with-non-human-materials-found-by-us/
The issue of terraced housing, houses without direct parking and blocks of flats is a much wider one than just being about EVs. And the barrier we will need to overcome to get anywhere near the 2030 deadline is not about the "left behind" - an awful lot of people who could charge at home easily would also be "left behind" because of other issues.
What would help is if the right-whinge press stopped doing false stories about EVs. And yes, I do mean false - some go beyond distortion to outright lies.
I don't see the problem except in Jedburgh where for reasons unknown the A68 is 20mph through an empty industrial estate when the road is rather wide.
"No no, its not Calder Hall, no need to be worried. This is Sellafield"
20 is ridiculously slow for a town's main road. By schools or on residential side streets its fair enough, but a main road then 20 is just slow.
For a city it might make sense, if cities have gridlock anyway, but for towns it doesn't make any sense at all.
Area;
Oxford = 45.59km2
Wales = 20,779km2
Density:
Oxford = 3270/km2
Wales = 150/km2
I'm not a driver and I don't know the full implication of which roads would be affected.
On our last trip to our family in Scotland I would say the 20mph zones seemed to be sensible and you were soon in 30mph ones. That is not what Wales labour is proposing
The debate centres around who uses the roads, when, and for what. The convenience of the driver should be balanced against the convenience of the non-driver.
55 Things You Need to Know About Mike Pence
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/06/07/mike-pence-55-things-about-00100408
When I moved last December I deliberately found somewhere with off-road parking looking towards the future it was a big point for me, but before then I did not. A car has always been my primary mode of transportation, and not having off-road parking has been fairly standard for me in almost every home I've lived in - which isn't an issue with ICE but it is with EV.
Simply saying we have a solution for those with off-road parking is not good enough. We need viable solutions for those who do not. And that is not a lie or a false story.
There needs to be a serious shift in the next seven years towards tackling the problem of charging when charging is not available at home. If you are a decision maker or planner, then you need to be designing rules around people who can't charge at home - because that is the reality for most.
Being able to charge at home should be treated in the planning towards 2030 as a nice luxury to have, not an essential, because its simply not going to be an option for far too many.
If you take the attitude of "anyone can drive 280 miles without a charger, because they can just charge at home" then you are screwing over millions of people.
Karl Nell, a retired Army colonel who was also on the UFO task force, described him as “beyond reproach
Jonathan Grey, a generational officer of the United States Intelligence Community who currently works for the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC), said: “The non-human intelligence phenomenon is real. We are not alone,” Mr Grey added: “Retrievals of this kind are not limited to the United States. This is a global phenomenon, and yet a global solution continues to elude us.””
Whatever the explanation - madness, psyops, someone putting acid in the water across America, visiting aliens - something really really REALLY weird is happening
Where I drive daily I have a 30mph speed limit on the main road off my estate, with speed bumps on that road (to discourage it being used as a rat run) and that's a perfectly reasonable speed limit. There are trees lining the road, and behind the trees is a wide footpath with a line painted to separate a footpath for pedestrians, and a path for cyclists too.
Pedestrians, cyclists and drivers have all been considered. Why should that be ripped up with a Whitehall knows best, or Cardiff knows best one-size-fits-all change to 20mph that doesn't help anyone?
Elsewhere on the main road for town with my kids school off it there is a 20mph zone near the school, with speed cameras, which is entirely sensible, but elsewhere a 30mph speed limit with a fence lining the pavement to separate pedestrians from drivers. Again, put some thought into using 20mph where it works best, and 30mph where it works best, not 20mph for everyone at all times.
Russia has to decide where to deploy its reserves, if it has any, in the knowledge that Ukraine will probably concentrate on the front Russia doesn't reinforce.
This is why they've played down the incursions into Belgorod. They've no spare units to send to sort it out, so they kinda have to pretend it isn't happening.
At present, Government and charities underpay the costs of research. Fees income subsidises research. Government policy has allowed this situation to develop. So, any impact on fees income has knock-on effects for research budgets.
The County Council's proposal is a bunch of traffic filters that will restrict private car traffic (but not taxis, buses etc.) from passing through the pinch points. It will make your taxi driver's life much easier but I can almost guarantee he hates the idea. On Planet Taxi the only solution is to build more roads, ban cyclists and publicly hang, draw and quarter the county councillors.
Bakhmut and Oxford are approximately the same size. It took three months and tens of thousands of casualties for the pro-Russian forces to get from one side of the city of the other and, if the rumors are correct, may not be able to hold it.
The Russians are really fucked.
Surely the future is converting petrol stations into fast electric charging stations, where you pull up and charge for 15/20 mins then drive off.
I get that barriers and blocked streets is inconvenient to residents. But so is the whole area being gridlocked by people like me using them as rat runs...
Old Cold War joke - when the Russians invade, they will be stuck, forever, in a contra flow outside Basingstoke.
For motorway service stations 15 minutes is OK as you'd take a break then anyway, but for routine petrol stations? Currently I fill my car for 2 minutes, drive off, and then the next car can pull in for 2 minutes before driving off and the next car is able to.
Changing that to 15 minutes is a problem for me, and a problem for anyone who wants to charge behind me too.
Or to paraphrase Stalin, £13.8m for Francis Jeffers is a tragedy, £95m plus addons for Declan Rice is a statistic.
The others appear to have been designed as follows
“Get me everything, everyone hates about paying for parking. Right. Implement all of that.”
For a standard opinion poll, you have to extrapolate from a small sample to the voting population as a whole. This requires an understanding and appropriate adjustments to ensure that the sample is representative of the voting population. As we can see with six polling companies polling on a weekly basis, with more on a fortnightly or monthly rota, the current Conservative range is 25-31%, Labour 42-47%, LDs 9-13%, Greens 3-7%, Reform 4-7%. This is more than a just a pure statisical variation arising from sampling, but reflects "house effects" resulting from the adjustments each polling company makes to try to obtain a representative sample of the voting population.
With a MRP this is replicated on a larger scale. To start you have a number of sub population groups which you have to map to each constituency. This brings in an additional level of variance and complexity. There are assumptions that each sub population have a similar voting pattern accross the country . The sub populations need to be well designed, and may well vary from election to election. Then the polling sample will need to obtain a representative sample of those sub population groups, with adjustments as necessary for each group. Each additional adjustment increases the potential variance. These then need to be extropolated to each consistuency - Peter Kellner had a recent article on proportional vs linear adjustments.
Effectively the black box of the MRP is more complex and thus more liable to systematic errors than a standard opinion poll.
MRPs can be useful, but the engineering approach needs to be taken - standing back and looking at it in general does this look approximately right.
The potential complications with the results of the MRP are Scotland - only SNP and Labour seats - low LD and conservative seats in the basic prediction.
20 on residential roads make sense because children can be playing on those. On my residential road my kids play in front of our house, they ride their bike and scooter - other kids play football etc. Drive slowly on those roads, as you never know if a kid might run out chasing their ball.
On a main road that people are driving down, I've never seen kids playing football on those roads. People may walk to the shops, but they're not playing kickabout on the road, and if there's a fence separating the children from the cars then the volume of people isn't the issue - its the type of people you're likely to risk coming across.
Assuming always you have the off-road space to do so.
I think (as someone who works in a university) that universities should be well-funded by the public purse. Research benefits the whole population in various ways. Universities are drivers of innovation and thus the economy. The UK’s universities are a key part of our global brand, an area where we punch above our weight. Overseas students contribute greatly to the economy. A well-educated populace increases productivity.
But how best to fund universities is a vexed question. Many funding mechanisms are inefficient. Others have hidden subsidies (e.g., medical charity funding is significantly subsidised by government, which may well be a sound policy, but I think few realise how much it is going on). One can make a case that more or less of the cost of a degree should fall on the student.
2) It's usually a lot cheaper, especially if you have a low night-time tariff.
3) Fast-charging is harder on the battery and likely to diminish its lifetime.
Not dick around trying to restrict traffic from going through the pinch points, when the traffic still needs to do so.
If you build more roads then you have to explain which college you're going to knock down.
Ukraine is commencing a large scale counteroffensive. This barbarous act completely neutralises a large section of the front as a possible area of operations for some time.
Reducing their options benefits only the Russians.
As for other considerations, only one side has consistently demonstrated they don't give a Dean about civilians, Ukraine's infrastructure, or their own troops.
I suppose it's just about possible Ukraine was responsible, but it's highly implausible.
https://twitter.com/PaulRieckhoff/status/1666406422534340609
{idly thumbs plans marked Casaba-Howitzer}
Surely there's places where there's roads on either side of the river, but no bridge to connect them?
If so, build the bridge and problem solved. Unless the colleges are built on the rivers themselves, or all the banks are taken up by colleges.
If it took 20 minutes to charge for each person you would basically need the entire supermarket car park with each bay having a charger to maintain the same throughput.
I think that's what is going to have to happen anyway as the existing stations won't just be replaced overnight.
Even if 50% can charge at home, there's still going to be a large demand.
https://twitter.com/timkmak/status/1666407597660930048