New panel of Conservative Party members:40% oppose the NetZero target; another 40% oppose writing it into law.33% think global warming is not driven by human activity; a further 12% think it isn't real.66% think there is not a climate emergency.https://t.co/xi02Vr3eK1
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Social media is a cancer on our democracy.
Conversely, Sunak seems to be pursuing a core vote strategy to fight the looking wall of Tory abstentions - "we might lose but let's motivate the remaining supporters to actually vote".
Is that a bit like Liz Truss' economic orthodoxy?
One of the most terrifying things I have done these last few years is visit this place in Arizona
https://titanmissilemuseum.org/
I mentioned it at the time on PB. It is - I think - the only place in the world you can see a big-ass city-busting ICBM in its actual silo. Ready to go. You can also visit the green room (green for soothing) where the missile controllers would flick the switch. The woman guide talks you through the process, and the exact moment when the command from the president would become legally then practically irreversible
Once the telephone calls were received from the president, and the codes verified, launch would then officially begin and could not legally be reversed. in practise another few minutes would pass and then the keys would be turned and communication stopped and from then on the missiles were gonna fire whatever. From codes to launch would be 5-10 excruciating yet inexorable minutes
It was accepted that these minutes would be psychological torture for the operators - the urge NOT to go through the process of destroying the world would be intense - so they were carefully selected for intelligence, mental health, loyalty, coolness
My whole visit was rendered near-intolerable by the fact it happened at the height of Putin's Ukraine nuke scare and everyone in the guided group was hyper aware of this. Yet the guide had her set Noughties spiel and she said "now we have nuclear peace treaties and this can never happen, thank God" and everyone laughed, bitterly and nervously
Margaret Thatcher first alerted the world to its dangers. Decades ago. Because she understood the science. All Conservatives revere her and should understand that. But she was practical too.
What we're seeing here is the consequences of allowing this issue to be entirely captured by the activist Left, which fuels polarisation.
Therefore we either take steps to mitigate it or we just ignore it
He has to ensure the Conservative Party survives to fight another day. That's his job, as well as being PM now.
I know a couple of New Labour SPADs who laughed out loud when I mentioned his name, and a few people in business who'd met him who said he was completely barking.
I think even the people who vote for him do so with clothes pegs on their nose.
Without those volcanoes, we'd still have a Snowball Earth.
I've just received a letter from the bank. It has withdrawn my overdraft!!!
Yet he's apparently coasting to victory again
I am sure I live in something of an ethnic bubble, more white than most of London, but that bubble is politically diverse from UKIP Brexiteers to plenty of lefties (of all classes)
I cannot find an enthusiastic Khan voter. He is eminently beatable and it is pathetic that the Tories have not found anyone to do it
But externalities. Not their problem. Because other people's problem. And they wanna win election now!!
What it really highlights is how difficult it is for us to get our heads round the massive thermal capacity of water compared with air, and the sheet vastness of the oceans. Some simple maths shows just how minuscule the basic thermal effect would be even if subsea volcanism were to increase 100-fold and the oceans were much shallower. But you can see the superficial appeal because people see kettles boiling and think “eureka”. Oddly enough much harder for people to imagine land volcanoes heating the air directly even though the thermal capacity of air is orders of magnitude lower.
1 Congested city centres mean traffic is funnelled down one or two streets
2 Most of the track can be off road
Edinburgh matches the first condition. There are only two drivable streets east/west through the city centre and three north/south.
*takes wild guess*
Anecdata, I know. I think there is a structural problem - the Mayoral office is mostly motivational rather than policy-focused, so you really need a bit of rah-rah-London-is-great stuff, which isn't Sadiq's style. But he'll still beat the Tory candidate by a country mile.
South Korea 5.3
Germany 1.82
Draw 3.7
South Korea are leading 1-0 after 22 mins.
https://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/en/football/fifa-women-s-world-cup/south-korea-w-v-germany-w-betting-32516861
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2023/07/31/aac1f/1
Whoever replaces him as Tory leader will likely be just as pro car and net zero ambivalent. Labour voters however are much more pro action on climate change as are LDs, by 47% to 24% Labour voters think the government was wrong to issue new oil and gas licenses as do LD voters by 38% to 32%.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2023/07/31/aac1f/1
Labour Mayor of London Sadiq Khan also remains as pro ULEZ expansion as ever whatever Uxbridge voters thought
I am aware of Kemi Badenoch's skin colour, yes. She won't be elected party leader except perhaps as a stopgap in the extremely unlikely event that the Tories go into opposition, when it won't matter much who does the job. If a new leader is chosen before the election it will be a white person because everyone who can actually notice stuff is aware of the fact that most Tory voters and potential Tory voters are racist thickos.
As for the party's members, look how they chose the crazy nutter Liz Truss over Rishi Sunak when they had a chance to have a vote. It's rarely a good idea to let a nutter be your leader (they can break stuff - as Truss did, and fast too), but that can't have been what was uppermost in those elderly racist Ian Smith-admirers' "minds".
However he was to leave his wife and children.
I couldn’t have done it!
Sadiq, on the other hand, is boring. And whilst we need more boring overall, you can have too much of a good thing in one place.
But the impossible question is- who is this paragon who wants the job of London Mayor and is capable of winning it? I don't see anyone who wants it on the centre-left, or is capable of winning it from the centre-right. And the Conservatives have trapped themselves shouting to themselves in Zone 6.
So Sadiq, who is the word "meh" given human flesh, keeps on going.
https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/york-cold-war-bunker/
https://secretbunker.co.uk/
Haven't seen either yet, though. Also this dfiscussion is makng me wonder where I put my copy of 'Under the City Streets' (both editions, including the earlyu one that caused the row).
The issue wasn't captured by the activist Left: it was deserted by the Right. The Cameron-era consensus was dropped by the Tories.
Edit: including some sites which encourage visitors./
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Observer_Corps_monitoring_post
"Post-Brexit import checks on food delayed again"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66394235
The term climate emergency is meaningless. It is like "climate crisis" and "global boiling", just a hysterical term to, as Luckyguy says, get people on board with doing stuff that inconveniences them,
I am fully on board with the need to do something, I do believe climate change is not solely down to mans activity but is largely down to it, do I see it as an "Emergency", not really. Hardly makes me a denier.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/china-hits-back-at-allegations-of-obstruction-during-g20-climate-talks/ar-AA1eH3fG?ocid=entnewsntp&cvid=2561c52a0a6e472ea951737354ae840b&ei=46
Had a chap the other day, who was end timing it about satellites renewing the atmosphere. 15K tons of meteors enters the atmosphere....
Another one is "Why can't we use old watermills to power the country?" - not realising that most watermills had about the same power as a moped.
Net-Zee would roll off the tongue better
On a related note, The Lionesses is a really shit nickname for a team; it's FAR too long
I assume this must be due to the sulphur ban on ships unless this is 'catastrophe theory' in action.
TBF there is real value in hydro on a small scale out in the country with high-gradient rivers available.
Obviously you don't want to do that on a rooftop, you want to do it from an underground bunker.
1500 were built in the 1950s, and half of them were still operational until 1991
I know this because i just found out one of them was half a mile from my house
But offering Susan Hall as a candidate is pretty much taking the mickey.
Climate Change makes an appearance.
The problem with that is that Johnson didn't want to play that game. He didn't just want to be the fun figurehead - he wanted to exercise power. So he did get involved but wasn't very good at it - he got bored easily, changed his mind depending on who he was talking to, colleagues couldn't rely on what he told them and so on.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4353464/Underground-Cold-War-bunker-market-25k.html
The new owner doesn't _appear_ to have done anything with it, other than plant a few fruit trees in the surrounding paddock.
I thought it was most likely to end up as a cannabis farm.
There must be one somewhere, a successful and well-known London businessperson willing to stand against an unpopular mayor. My first thought would be someone like Charlie Mullins, if he’s not enjoying his money too much, then I realised that he’s now 70 so probably wouldn’t want to do it.
The Tories have been in power for the last decade - how and why is "the activist left" setting their agenda ?
Square the result
Square the result again
The number you have arrived at is invisible next to the clusterfuck that the no new ICE cars by 2030 plan is going to be. Buy a diesel truck, a 20,000 litre diesel storage tank, and a shotgun for the defence of both.
For nearly 50 years we've been insisting that tax is bad, but reluctant to cut spending to match the tax take, and have been making up the difference by debt. We have run out of road on this approach and need to change
To accomplish that we need to move from taxing mobile things (people, income) to taxing static things (wealth, buildings). You can lie about your income, you can emigrate to another country, but you can't take your house with you. You can tax, and prevent from leaving the country, large manifestations of wealth like houses, land and cars(?). I can't prove if person X is rich or poor, but I can find Emirates Stadium and tax it.
So my plan is
- Gradually reduce income tax
- Gradually increase wealth tax
- Keep it neutral to ensure popular support
- Once established, match spending to income and pay off debt.
There y'go. Question answered. It has been a productive day!PS: This guy Gary Stevenson has got it right
https://www.youtube.com/@garyseconomics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViY-zI3b5JQ
The chap who owned it was tearing his hair out about bills. especially heating. My relative who's in the building business was there.
He pointed out that
1) Run a few kms of weighted plastic pipe round and round the ornamental lake as the external source for heat pump setup.
2) There was the remains of an old Pelton wheel turbine on the inlet stream to the lake. From the size of it, it could power the heat pump (and probably a bit more).
Completely free heating - just capital cost and maintenance.
I think this is pretty much what Skoda have done with their new Octavia, so presumably you will be allowed one until 2035.
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/scientists-exactly-zero-evidence-covid-19-came-lab
You have to delegate. That is part of the art of leadership.
Read the Mythical Man Month.
Street came in and managed a big business very effectively, achieving good growth and profits. It's also impressive but not that similar - it's very different from being an entrepreneur like Mullins.
In terms of a major elected mayoralty, I have to say the skill set of Street is a better fit, and I suspect Mullins would find it hugely frustrating. You're needing to manage a large bureaucracy and a lot of characters with different objectives, and I think running John Lewis is much more relevant to that.
But good point about heat capacity - heat transfer between ocean and atmosphere (and the energy transfers involved in the phase change between water and glacial ice) greatly complicate climate modelling.
However the left via Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion have overreached and Sunak has seen an opportunity post Uxbridge and is now pushing a more pro motorist and pro oil and gas agenda
Pimlico Plumbers donated £22,735 to the Conservative Party in 2015, and Mullins donated more than £48,000, in the two years to July 2017. He was a business adviser to David Cameron and George Osborne, and has been a vocal critic of Brexit.
In January 2018, Mullins announced that he would no longer be a Conservative Party donor, and declared his candidacy as an independent at the 2021 London mayoral election (which had been scheduled for 2020, before being postponed) but Mullins did not appear on the ballot paper. In March 2018, Mullins said he would financially support the Liberal Democrats to support their campaign to prevent Brexit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Mullins
If a party chooses to chase retired homeowners, that's a valid choice and overall an electorally sound one. But it has consequences.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jun/11/minister-for-london-paul-scully-fails-to-make-tory-shortlist-to-run-for-city-mayor
I doubt Sunak will be remembered as actually having done anything of any importance, but insofar as he doesn't seem to be vacuous or a bullshitter you gotta admit he seems superior in his level of skill in prime ministerial office to his three Tory predecessors.
Interest rates up again.
We’ve been persecuted for too long whilst mortgage holders have had it easy for the last 15 years.
So why is it different with social media now?
The Tory Party has a settled pro-Britain view, and a settled views on the desirability of low taxes and a small state. The wets need to stop hijacking the Tory party, and go and start a new party to get a mandate for the policies they espouse, and see how many people flock to their cause. I understand the name 'Change UK' may be available.
What chance do you think the banks will pass this on to savers ?