I've mentioned before that facebook, strangley, are targetting me with ads urging me to vote for a conservative in Beckenham and Penge - one of the minority of UK seats that I have never even visited. It's still doing this - though I'm sure the candidate three weeks ago is male, and now is female. Anyway Tories - you're wasting your money. I can't vote Conservative in Beckenham and Penge even if I wanted to!
The Labour candidate in Beckenham and Penge is Sue Gray's son.
Nepo-candidacy can be a bad thing just ask the electors of Dover.
It’s like an exquisite form of Chinese water torture… drip drip drip
This really is the defining issue of the election. The UK's rapidly deteriorating health service directly and deeply affects large swathes of the electorate and is indicative of the general decline in services. It is a sign of a failed government.
Or a failed health service.
There is £251bn of government spending on health this year with a NHS workforce of over two million.
That's the thing. There's no shortage of resources for the NHS. The money must be spent appallingly inefficiently.
The NHS is a long way down the law of diminishing returns path.
I have sympathy for those public services which have received genuine funding cuts but have still maintained acceptable performance levels.
You never get an answer to the question: How much would be enough to fund the NHS?
I would fix it as a percentage of GDP, like defence. 15%? It's 11% at the moment in the UK, 12% in France, 13% in Germany, 17% in the US.
That would focus minds on what to do with fixed resources, and divert more health funding to interventions that boost the economy. Much more spending on public health, for example.
My view though is that as countries become richer, a larger proportion of GDP inevitably gets spent of healthcare. And I don't think that is a bad thing - my end-AI-stage for the UK is a 1 day week, lots of culture and sport and a large chunk of the workforce providing sports injury and old age care.
The key takehome from the D-Day debacle is that the vast majority of the electorate like to see britain along side neighbours and allies affirming its international commitment..... a britain at the heart of the western international community honouring that heritage.... basically the opposite of free wheeling go it alone brexiteerism. I saw Marr's piece in the New Statesman talking about rejoining the single market
"But the country has already changed its mind about his rotten Brexit deal, and there would be no opportunity like Labour’s first 18 months to improve relations with the giant market on our doorstep. As the EU grapples with the problem of enlargement to its east and populism at home, the notion of a more flexible, less monolithic EU of concentric or interlocking circles is growing in potency."
What I am looking for in Labour's manifesto is silence on the EU - that will (ironically) be a huge indicator to me where things are going. It will be a carte blance on EU trading relations and security agreements.
Sunak's actions on leaving the D-Day celebrations were very much a tacit expression of inward looking, isolationist ethos of the populist right, and its time has come.... I seriously think the country is turning a corner on brexit going into the next parliament.
Lol, this is an absolutely brilliant example of the genre: "What D-Day was really about is rejoining the single market".
You've got to admire the creativity, the imagination, the insightful juxtaposition of two apparently unrelated topics ;-)
We Remainers are never going to go away.
Not until you die off anyway.
There is nothing to "Remain" part of. You lost that war. We left the EU.
There is only Rejoin. And that is the dog that hasn't barked in this election. And if not this, then when?
You're right about it not becoming a major issue in this election, but I think it provides a general sense of unease to politics in the UK.
By a ratio of at least 3:1, people think the negatives of Brexit outweigh the benefits. For Leavers, immigration is at an all time high - so it was pointless for many. There must be some regret or misgiving there. For Remainers, there is no hint that any party will bring us back in or materially improve our relationship with Europe, so it sits as an open wound.
It's not being spoken about, but I think it contributes to the doom and gloom.
I think that is just a cipher for 'things were better before 2016' - which is understandable; the world was a surer place, no Ukraine, no pandemic, no culture wars (at least, not on the scale we see now), less immigration. Understandable people might wish things were otherwise. I'd happily swallow rejoin if it could mean we could wipe out all that other unpleasantness. But clearly, almost everything bad which has happened since 2016 is nothing to do with Brexit, and undoing Brexit wouldn't bring back those apples. That's just the way humans think. Change the thing we did and we can control and undo all those things we can't control.
If we were still in the EU, today’s news headline would be that electric cars are about to get more expensive, the EU voting for protectionism over Net Zero.
Great for the campaigners who think cars are evil and we should all get the bus, for for the average motorist who just to get from A to B as cheaply as possible, not so much.
Transportation was always a weakness in our climate change mitigation efforts - look at the massive fuss over the 2030 deadline for new ICE cars, even while other sectors of the economy made massive reductions in emissions. The Chinese have exploited the gap left by the lethargy and lobbying of European/American car makers.
It's darkly funny. When I was at Uni, there was all sorts of depressed talk about the industrialisation of China and India making climate change efforts basically pointless. Instead, the Chinese have flooded the market with cheap solar panels and cheap EVs to the extent that it's going to destroy fossil fuel industries in the West.
Annual CO2 emissions are still rising. It is delusional to think that by 2050 this will be much different. Even if output is halved from present levels (the evidence that this can be done is absent), levels will only be rising but a little more slowly.
The rhetoric is all reminiscent of UK General Election rhetoric. A realistic truthful conversation would make a nice change.
Climate change mitigation is not binary. It's not like there is a big climate change switch when we hit 2 degrees.
Most people working in this field know and accept that a huge amount of climate change damage is baked in. That's why we need to start discussing adaptation - flood defences, new pandemics, famine, mass migration.
But that doesn't mean the world should stop trying to prevent it being even worse - there is no sign of China abandoning solar or EVs, is there? The question for the UK is whether we want to embrace all this new technology or get left behind by the rest of the world.
Agree. This discussion is obscured by Trumpian denialists and 'Just Stop Oil' fundamentalists. The 'amelioration' aspect is often ignored.
Even if you don't agree with their methods, there's nothing particularly fundamentalist about JSO's demands. There is general scientific agreement that we need to rapidly reduce consumption of fossil fuels, and ceasing to issue new licences for oil exploration and production is broadly compatible with that aim. Amelioration to cope with the damage already in the pipeline is of course also required, but that's in addition to, not instead of, a sharp reduction in oil consumption.
I've mentioned before that facebook, strangley, are targetting me with ads urging me to vote for a conservative in Beckenham and Penge - one of the minority of UK seats that I have never even visited. It's still doing this - though I'm sure the candidate three weeks ago is male, and now is female. Anyway Tories - you're wasting your money. I can't vote Conservative in Beckenham and Penge even if I wanted to!
The Labour candidate in Beckenham and Penge is Sue Gray's son.
Nepo-candidacy can be a bad thing just ask the electors of Dover.
Remember it's only nepotism if... no, I've got nothing. Confusingly, Liam Conlon is Sue Gray's son but one of his rival candidates has Sue Gray's name: the Conservative, Hannah Gray.
It’s like an exquisite form of Chinese water torture… drip drip drip
This really is the defining issue of the election. The UK's rapidly deteriorating health service directly and deeply affects large swathes of the electorate and is indicative of the general decline in services. It is a sign of a failed government.
Or a failed health service.
There is £251bn of government spending on health this year with a NHS workforce of over two million.
That's the thing. There's no shortage of resources for the NHS. The money must be spent appallingly inefficiently.
The NHS is a long way down the law of diminishing returns path.
I have sympathy for those public services which have received genuine funding cuts but have still maintained acceptable performance levels.
You never get an answer to the question: How much would be enough to fund the NHS?
It's like asking how fast to run on a treadmill to move forward.
It doesn't matter how much you spend it will never be enough.
Spend more, people stay alive longer, get more chronic illnesses, require more expenditure as a result. It's a never ending circle until people do die.
It’s like an exquisite form of Chinese water torture… drip drip drip
This really is the defining issue of the election. The UK's rapidly deteriorating health service directly and deeply affects large swathes of the electorate and is indicative of the general decline in services. It is a sign of a failed government.
Or a failed health service.
There is £251bn of government spending on health this year with a NHS workforce of over two million.
That's the thing. There's no shortage of resources for the NHS. The money must be spent appallingly inefficiently.
The NHS is a long way down the law of diminishing returns path.
I have sympathy for those public services which have received genuine funding cuts but have still maintained acceptable performance levels.
My relative who nearly died just the other week was in an open bay right next to the nurses station. Seen by multiple people per day - nurses, doctors etc. No shortage of staff.
They all failed to do something about the dehydration or starvation - despite them being repeatedly told by his wife about him not eating or drinking. Which is a common result of the operation he had.
It seems that to change anything, they needed to consult God. Well, God's superior.
The key takehome from the D-Day debacle is that the vast majority of the electorate like to see britain along side neighbours and allies affirming its international commitment..... a britain at the heart of the western international community honouring that heritage.... basically the opposite of free wheeling go it alone brexiteerism. I saw Marr's piece in the New Statesman talking about rejoining the single market
"But the country has already changed its mind about his rotten Brexit deal, and there would be no opportunity like Labour’s first 18 months to improve relations with the giant market on our doorstep. As the EU grapples with the problem of enlargement to its east and populism at home, the notion of a more flexible, less monolithic EU of concentric or interlocking circles is growing in potency."
What I am looking for in Labour's manifesto is silence on the EU - that will (ironically) be a huge indicator to me where things are going. It will be a carte blance on EU trading relations and security agreements.
Sunak's actions on leaving the D-Day celebrations were very much a tacit expression of inward looking, isolationist ethos of the populist right, and its time has come.... I seriously think the country is turning a corner on brexit going into the next parliament.
Lol, this is an absolutely brilliant example of the genre: "What D-Day was really about is rejoining the single market".
You've got to admire the creativity, the imagination, the insightful juxtaposition of two apparently unrelated topics ;-)
We Remainers are never going to go away.
Not until you die off anyway.
There is nothing to "Remain" part of. You lost that war. We left the EU.
There is only Rejoin. And that is the dog that hasn't barked in this election. And if not this, then when?
You're right about it not becoming a major issue in this election, but I think it provides a general sense of unease to politics in the UK.
By a ratio of at least 3:1, people think the negatives of Brexit outweigh the benefits. For Leavers, immigration is at an all time high - so it was pointless for many. There must be some regret or misgiving there. For Remainers, there is no hint that any party will bring us back in or materially improve our relationship with Europe, so it sits as an open wound.
It's not being spoken about, but I think it contributes to the doom and gloom.
I think that is just a cipher for 'things were better before 2016' - which is understandable; the world was a surer place, no Ukraine, no pandemic, no culture wars (at least, not on the scale we see now), less immigration. Understandable people might wish things were otherwise. I'd happily swallow rejoin if it could mean we could wipe out all that other unpleasantness. But clearly, almost everything bad which has happened since 2016 is nothing to do with Brexit, and undoing Brexit wouldn't bring back those apples. That's just the way humans think. Change the thing we did and we can control and undo all those things we can't control.
If we were still in the EU, today’s news headline would be that electric cars are about to get more expensive, the EU voting for protectionism over Net Zero.
Great for the campaigners who think cars are evil and we should all get the bus, for for the average motorist who just to get from A to B as cheaply as possible, not so much.
Transportation was always a weakness in our climate change mitigation efforts - look at the massive fuss over the 2030 deadline for new ICE cars, even while other sectors of the economy made massive reductions in emissions. The Chinese have exploited the gap left by the lethargy and lobbying of European/American car makers.
It's darkly funny. When I was at Uni, there was all sorts of depressed talk about the industrialisation of China and India making climate change efforts basically pointless. Instead, the Chinese have flooded the market with cheap solar panels and cheap EVs to the extent that it's going to destroy fossil fuel industries in the West.
Annual CO2 emissions are still rising. It is delusional to think that by 2050 this will be much different. Even if output is halved from present levels (the evidence that this can be done is absent), levels will only be rising but a little more slowly.
The rhetoric is all reminiscent of UK General Election rhetoric. A realistic truthful conversation would make a nice change.
Climate change mitigation is not binary. It's not like there is a big climate change switch when we hit 2 degrees.
Most people working in this field know and accept that a huge amount of climate change damage is baked in. That's why we need to start discussing adaptation - flood defences, new pandemics, famine, mass migration.
But that doesn't mean the world should stop trying to prevent it being even worse - there is no sign of China abandoning solar or EVs, is there? The question for the UK is whether we want to embrace all this new technology or get left behind by the rest of the world.
Agree. This discussion is obscured by Trumpian denialists and 'Just Stop Oil' fundamentalists. The 'amelioration' aspect is often ignored.
Even if you don't agree with their methods, there's nothing particularly fundamentalist about JSO's demands. There is general scientific agreement that we need to rapidly reduce consumption of fossil fuels, and ceasing to issue new licences for oil exploration and production is broadly compatible with that aim. Amelioration to cope with the damage already in the pipeline is of course also required, but that's in addition to, not instead of, a sharp reduction in oil consumption.
Perhaps you'd like to accompany me if I have to close a factory in Aberdeen in the second half of this year. Decent people will be put out of a job because of flawed government policies, and I don't see too many "green jobs" they can take round where they live.
It’s like an exquisite form of Chinese water torture… drip drip drip
This really is the defining issue of the election. The UK's rapidly deteriorating health service directly and deeply affects large swathes of the electorate and is indicative of the general decline in services. It is a sign of a failed government.
Or a failed health service.
There is £251bn of government spending on health this year with a NHS workforce of over two million.
That's the thing. There's no shortage of resources for the NHS. The money must be spent appallingly inefficiently.
The NHS is a long way down the law of diminishing returns path.
I have sympathy for those public services which have received genuine funding cuts but have still maintained acceptable performance levels.
You never get an answer to the question: How much would be enough to fund the NHS?
I would fix it as a percentage of GDP, like defence. 15%? It's 11% at the moment in the UK, 12% in France, 13% in Germany, 17% in the US.
That would focus minds on what to do with fixed resources, and divert more health funding to interventions that boost the economy. Much more spending on public health, for example.
My view though is that as countries become richer, a larger proportion of GDP inevitably gets spent of healthcare. And I don't think that is a bad thing - my end-AI-stage for the UK is a 1 day week, lots of culture and sport and a large chunk of the workforce providing sports injury and old age care.
Post Scarcity Society v0.134
Why do you need lots of people creating sports injuries, though? Or is this a euphemism for other activities? (See Ian Banks).
It’s like an exquisite form of Chinese water torture… drip drip drip
This really is the defining issue of the election. The UK's rapidly deteriorating health service directly and deeply affects large swathes of the electorate and is indicative of the general decline in services. It is a sign of a failed government.
Or a failed health service.
There is £251bn of government spending on health this year with a NHS workforce of over two million.
That's the thing. There's no shortage of resources for the NHS. The money must be spent appallingly inefficiently.
The NHS is a long way down the law of diminishing returns path.
I have sympathy for those public services which have received genuine funding cuts but have still maintained acceptable performance levels.
You never get an answer to the question: How much would be enough to fund the NHS?
It's like asking how fast to run on a treadmill to move forward.
It doesn't matter how much you spend it will never be enough.
Spend more, people stay alive longer, get more chronic illnesses, require more expenditure as a result. It's a never ending circle until people do die.
Yes, but that makes it sound like health spending is futile. In principle for every additional £1 you spend on health you get an extra fraction of a QALY in return. So, to a certain extent, you spend as much money as you have available, once you've paid for more important things. And as the country becomes richer it has more spare money left over to spend on better health care.
That's a good thing, not a counsel of despair.
So I'd agree with @Eabhal - fix it as a percentage of GDP, perhaps with a planned gradual increase to accommodate the demographic transition, but with a ceiling once that transition has occurred.
Obviously you'd have to have some way of smoothing out the effects of recessions, so that they didn't lead to an instantaneous cut in health spending, but that sort of thing would also stop you from increasing spending unsustainably during a boom.
Lab smart to just go with CHANGE in the backdrop/lectern etc. It's what everyone wants (even if different changes!) and is memorable and easy to insert into speeches and soundbites.
The Tory one is long and unmemorable. I'm a politics obsessive and I can't remember it - something about a plan...
The key takehome from the D-Day debacle is that the vast majority of the electorate like to see britain along side neighbours and allies affirming its international commitment..... a britain at the heart of the western international community honouring that heritage.... basically the opposite of free wheeling go it alone brexiteerism. I saw Marr's piece in the New Statesman talking about rejoining the single market
"But the country has already changed its mind about his rotten Brexit deal, and there would be no opportunity like Labour’s first 18 months to improve relations with the giant market on our doorstep. As the EU grapples with the problem of enlargement to its east and populism at home, the notion of a more flexible, less monolithic EU of concentric or interlocking circles is growing in potency."
What I am looking for in Labour's manifesto is silence on the EU - that will (ironically) be a huge indicator to me where things are going. It will be a carte blance on EU trading relations and security agreements.
Sunak's actions on leaving the D-Day celebrations were very much a tacit expression of inward looking, isolationist ethos of the populist right, and its time has come.... I seriously think the country is turning a corner on brexit going into the next parliament.
Lol, this is an absolutely brilliant example of the genre: "What D-Day was really about is rejoining the single market".
You've got to admire the creativity, the imagination, the insightful juxtaposition of two apparently unrelated topics ;-)
We Remainers are never going to go away.
Not until you die off anyway.
There is nothing to "Remain" part of. You lost that war. We left the EU.
There is only Rejoin. And that is the dog that hasn't barked in this election. And if not this, then when?
You're right about it not becoming a major issue in this election, but I think it provides a general sense of unease to politics in the UK.
By a ratio of at least 3:1, people think the negatives of Brexit outweigh the benefits. For Leavers, immigration is at an all time high - so it was pointless for many. There must be some regret or misgiving there. For Remainers, there is no hint that any party will bring us back in or materially improve our relationship with Europe, so it sits as an open wound.
It's not being spoken about, but I think it contributes to the doom and gloom.
I think that is just a cipher for 'things were better before 2016' - which is understandable; the world was a surer place, no Ukraine, no pandemic, no culture wars (at least, not on the scale we see now), less immigration. Understandable people might wish things were otherwise. I'd happily swallow rejoin if it could mean we could wipe out all that other unpleasantness. But clearly, almost everything bad which has happened since 2016 is nothing to do with Brexit, and undoing Brexit wouldn't bring back those apples. That's just the way humans think. Change the thing we did and we can control and undo all those things we can't control.
If we were still in the EU, today’s news headline would be that electric cars are about to get more expensive, the EU voting for protectionism over Net Zero.
Great for the campaigners who think cars are evil and we should all get the bus, for for the average motorist who just to get from A to B as cheaply as possible, not so much.
Transportation was always a weakness in our climate change mitigation efforts - look at the massive fuss over the 2030 deadline for new ICE cars, even while other sectors of the economy made massive reductions in emissions. The Chinese have exploited the gap left by the lethargy and lobbying of European/American car makers.
It's darkly funny. When I was at Uni, there was all sorts of depressed talk about the industrialisation of China and India making climate change efforts basically pointless. Instead, the Chinese have flooded the market with cheap solar panels and cheap EVs to the extent that it's going to destroy fossil fuel industries in the West.
Annual CO2 emissions are still rising. It is delusional to think that by 2050 this will be much different. Even if output is halved from present levels (the evidence that this can be done is absent), levels will only be rising but a little more slowly.
The rhetoric is all reminiscent of UK General Election rhetoric. A realistic truthful conversation would make a nice change.
Climate change mitigation is not binary. It's not like there is a big climate change switch when we hit 2 degrees.
Most people working in this field know and accept that a huge amount of climate change damage is baked in. That's why we need to start discussing adaptation - flood defences, new pandemics, famine, mass migration.
But that doesn't mean the world should stop trying to prevent it being even worse - there is no sign of China abandoning solar or EVs, is there? The question for the UK is whether we want to embrace all this new technology or get left behind by the rest of the world.
Agree. This discussion is obscured by Trumpian denialists and 'Just Stop Oil' fundamentalists. The 'amelioration' aspect is often ignored.
Even if you don't agree with their methods, there's nothing particularly fundamentalist about JSO's demands. There is general scientific agreement that we need to rapidly reduce consumption of fossil fuels, and ceasing to issue new licences for oil exploration and production is broadly compatible with that aim. Amelioration to cope with the damage already in the pipeline is of course also required, but that's in addition to, not instead of, a sharp reduction in oil consumption.
Perhaps you'd like to accompany me if I have to close a factory in Aberdeen in the second half of this year. Decent people will be put out of a job because of flawed government policies, and I don't see too many "green jobs" they can take round where they live.
If I hear another idiot saying that they want "Green growth"... It apparently means growth without making anything, building anything. And it is free.
Changing technologies is massively disruptive for an industry - see Germany and American car makers. Who are stumbling.
The idea that this is free or painless is yet another populist, stupid delusion.
It is hard and expensive. And worth doing. Just decoupling our economy from the times that El Supremo has the hiccups and starts another war, and energy prices zoom up, it worth it. X recessions avoided.
Saving the planet is a nice side effect.
Further, in the longer term, as energy prices fall below fossil fuel energy prices, we have interesting opportunities.
Lab smart to just go with CHANGE in the backdrop/lectern etc. It's what everyone wants (even if different changes!) and is memorable and easy to insert into speeches and soundbites.
The Tory one is long and unmemorable. I'm a politics obsessive and I can't remember it - something about a plan...
Their campaign is garbo. I don't know if they've actually engaged an ad agency for this but considering the Tories have had some famously effective ads and campaigns in the past, this one is a sorry reflection.
At least Classic understood that if you're going to apply the Rule Of Three, single words tend to work best.
It’s like an exquisite form of Chinese water torture… drip drip drip
This really is the defining issue of the election. The UK's rapidly deteriorating health service directly and deeply affects large swathes of the electorate and is indicative of the general decline in services. It is a sign of a failed government.
Or a failed health service.
There is £251bn of government spending on health this year with a NHS workforce of over two million.
That's the thing. There's no shortage of resources for the NHS. The money must be spent appallingly inefficiently.
The NHS is a long way down the law of diminishing returns path.
I have sympathy for those public services which have received genuine funding cuts but have still maintained acceptable performance levels.
My relative who nearly died just the other week was in an open bay right next to the nurses station. Seen by multiple people per day - nurses, doctors etc. No shortage of staff.
They all failed to do something about the dehydration or starvation - despite them being repeatedly told by his wife about him not eating or drinking. Which is a common result of the operation he had.
It seems that to change anything, they needed to consult God. Well, God's superior.
Everyone has a story like this. I'm glad to hear your relative recovered but how exactly would more money solve the issue that in aggregate, the NHS doesn't care about its patients. It cares about aggregate stats and targets but on the wards it all too often doesn't really care if this patient or that patient is suffering or inconvenienced or dies. Because it is one big pot of suffering so that particular instance won't matter too much and unless you get a Letby (whose conviction I find troubling having read that Atlantic? NYTimes? piece) it will go on happening.
I look forward to those Budget statements when Rachel Reeves announces how much the economy is growing.
Those of you on here still clinging to some expectation that Labour are going to bomb need to brace yourselves for a loooooong time in the political wilderness.
And the further Right you go, the deeper into the desert you head.
Have a nice day xx
You are at the kidding Rachel, imagine doxxing yourself.
The key takehome from the D-Day debacle is that the vast majority of the electorate like to see britain along side neighbours and allies affirming its international commitment..... a britain at the heart of the western international community honouring that heritage.... basically the opposite of free wheeling go it alone brexiteerism. I saw Marr's piece in the New Statesman talking about rejoining the single market
"But the country has already changed its mind about his rotten Brexit deal, and there would be no opportunity like Labour’s first 18 months to improve relations with the giant market on our doorstep. As the EU grapples with the problem of enlargement to its east and populism at home, the notion of a more flexible, less monolithic EU of concentric or interlocking circles is growing in potency."
What I am looking for in Labour's manifesto is silence on the EU - that will (ironically) be a huge indicator to me where things are going. It will be a carte blance on EU trading relations and security agreements.
Sunak's actions on leaving the D-Day celebrations were very much a tacit expression of inward looking, isolationist ethos of the populist right, and its time has come.... I seriously think the country is turning a corner on brexit going into the next parliament.
Lol, this is an absolutely brilliant example of the genre: "What D-Day was really about is rejoining the single market".
You've got to admire the creativity, the imagination, the insightful juxtaposition of two apparently unrelated topics ;-)
We Remainers are never going to go away.
Not until you die off anyway.
There is nothing to "Remain" part of. You lost that war. We left the EU.
There is only Rejoin. And that is the dog that hasn't barked in this election. And if not this, then when?
You're right about it not becoming a major issue in this election, but I think it provides a general sense of unease to politics in the UK.
By a ratio of at least 3:1, people think the negatives of Brexit outweigh the benefits. For Leavers, immigration is at an all time high - so it was pointless for many. There must be some regret or misgiving there. For Remainers, there is no hint that any party will bring us back in or materially improve our relationship with Europe, so it sits as an open wound.
It's not being spoken about, but I think it contributes to the doom and gloom.
I think that is just a cipher for 'things were better before 2016' - which is understandable; the world was a surer place, no Ukraine, no pandemic, no culture wars (at least, not on the scale we see now), less immigration. Understandable people might wish things were otherwise. I'd happily swallow rejoin if it could mean we could wipe out all that other unpleasantness. But clearly, almost everything bad which has happened since 2016 is nothing to do with Brexit, and undoing Brexit wouldn't bring back those apples. That's just the way humans think. Change the thing we did and we can control and undo all those things we can't control.
If we were still in the EU, today’s news headline would be that electric cars are about to get more expensive, the EU voting for protectionism over Net Zero.
Great for the campaigners who think cars are evil and we should all get the bus, for for the average motorist who just to get from A to B as cheaply as possible, not so much.
Transportation was always a weakness in our climate change mitigation efforts - look at the massive fuss over the 2030 deadline for new ICE cars, even while other sectors of the economy made massive reductions in emissions. The Chinese have exploited the gap left by the lethargy and lobbying of European/American car makers.
It's darkly funny. When I was at Uni, there was all sorts of depressed talk about the industrialisation of China and India making climate change efforts basically pointless. Instead, the Chinese have flooded the market with cheap solar panels and cheap EVs to the extent that it's going to destroy fossil fuel industries in the West.
Annual CO2 emissions are still rising. It is delusional to think that by 2050 this will be much different. Even if output is halved from present levels (the evidence that this can be done is absent), levels will only be rising but a little more slowly.
The rhetoric is all reminiscent of UK General Election rhetoric. A realistic truthful conversation would make a nice change.
Climate change mitigation is not binary. It's not like there is a big climate change switch when we hit 2 degrees.
Most people working in this field know and accept that a huge amount of climate change damage is baked in. That's why we need to start discussing adaptation - flood defences, new pandemics, famine, mass migration.
But that doesn't mean the world should stop trying to prevent it being even worse - there is no sign of China abandoning solar or EVs, is there? The question for the UK is whether we want to embrace all this new technology or get left behind by the rest of the world.
Agree. This discussion is obscured by Trumpian denialists and 'Just Stop Oil' fundamentalists. The 'amelioration' aspect is often ignored.
Even if you don't agree with their methods, there's nothing particularly fundamentalist about JSO's demands. There is general scientific agreement that we need to rapidly reduce consumption of fossil fuels, and ceasing to issue new licences for oil exploration and production is broadly compatible with that aim. Amelioration to cope with the damage already in the pipeline is of course also required, but that's in addition to, not instead of, a sharp reduction in oil consumption.
Perhaps you'd like to accompany me if I have to close a factory in Aberdeen in the second half of this year. Decent people will be put out of a job because of flawed government policies, and I don't see too many "green jobs" they can take round where they live.
If I hear another idiot saying that they want "Green growth"... It apparently means growth without making anything, building anything. And it is free.
Changing technologies is massively disruptive for an industry - see Germany and American car makers. Who are stumbling.
The idea that this is free or painless is yet another populist, stupid delusion.
It is hard and expensive. And worth doing. Just decoupling our economy from the times that El Supremo has the hiccups and starts another war, and energy prices zoom up, it worth it. X recessions avoided.
Saving the planet is a nice side effect.
Further, in the longer term, as energy prices fall below fossil fuel energy prices, we have interesting opportunities.
Governments continually promise growth, as if they can just pass a law for it. All a government can do is provide the conditions that growth can occur. And we haven't had good continual growth for nearly 20 years, just falling productivity etc.
Jeremy Hunt becomes the latest senior Tory to admit the game is up, telling Politico that a vote for Reform will give Labour “an even bigger majority”.
Another sign of a stupid campaign masterminded by Australian consultants. It is all about the leader. Rishi is visibly knackered after being rushed to kiss babies from St Ives to Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross while Jeremy Hunt, who is the Chancellor of the sodding Exchequer, is left free to canvass his own seat.
Mr Sunak's spads not realising Shetland is the bit in the box in the middle of the North Sea?
The key takehome from the D-Day debacle is that the vast majority of the electorate like to see britain along side neighbours and allies affirming its international commitment..... a britain at the heart of the western international community honouring that heritage.... basically the opposite of free wheeling go it alone brexiteerism. I saw Marr's piece in the New Statesman talking about rejoining the single market
"But the country has already changed its mind about his rotten Brexit deal, and there would be no opportunity like Labour’s first 18 months to improve relations with the giant market on our doorstep. As the EU grapples with the problem of enlargement to its east and populism at home, the notion of a more flexible, less monolithic EU of concentric or interlocking circles is growing in potency."
What I am looking for in Labour's manifesto is silence on the EU - that will (ironically) be a huge indicator to me where things are going. It will be a carte blance on EU trading relations and security agreements.
Sunak's actions on leaving the D-Day celebrations were very much a tacit expression of inward looking, isolationist ethos of the populist right, and its time has come.... I seriously think the country is turning a corner on brexit going into the next parliament.
Lol, this is an absolutely brilliant example of the genre: "What D-Day was really about is rejoining the single market".
You've got to admire the creativity, the imagination, the insightful juxtaposition of two apparently unrelated topics ;-)
We Remainers are never going to go away.
Not until you die off anyway.
There is nothing to "Remain" part of. You lost that war. We left the EU.
There is only Rejoin. And that is the dog that hasn't barked in this election. And if not this, then when?
You're right about it not becoming a major issue in this election, but I think it provides a general sense of unease to politics in the UK.
By a ratio of at least 3:1, people think the negatives of Brexit outweigh the benefits. For Leavers, immigration is at an all time high - so it was pointless for many. There must be some regret or misgiving there. For Remainers, there is no hint that any party will bring us back in or materially improve our relationship with Europe, so it sits as an open wound.
It's not being spoken about, but I think it contributes to the doom and gloom.
I think that is just a cipher for 'things were better before 2016' - which is understandable; the world was a surer place, no Ukraine, no pandemic, no culture wars (at least, not on the scale we see now), less immigration. Understandable people might wish things were otherwise. I'd happily swallow rejoin if it could mean we could wipe out all that other unpleasantness. But clearly, almost everything bad which has happened since 2016 is nothing to do with Brexit, and undoing Brexit wouldn't bring back those apples. That's just the way humans think. Change the thing we did and we can control and undo all those things we can't control.
If we were still in the EU, today’s news headline would be that electric cars are about to get more expensive, the EU voting for protectionism over Net Zero.
Great for the campaigners who think cars are evil and we should all get the bus, for for the average motorist who just to get from A to B as cheaply as possible, not so much.
Transportation was always a weakness in our climate change mitigation efforts - look at the massive fuss over the 2030 deadline for new ICE cars, even while other sectors of the economy made massive reductions in emissions. The Chinese have exploited the gap left by the lethargy and lobbying of European/American car makers.
It's darkly funny. When I was at Uni, there was all sorts of depressed talk about the industrialisation of China and India making climate change efforts basically pointless. Instead, the Chinese have flooded the market with cheap solar panels and cheap EVs to the extent that it's going to destroy fossil fuel industries in the West.
Annual CO2 emissions are still rising. It is delusional to think that by 2050 this will be much different. Even if output is halved from present levels (the evidence that this can be done is absent), levels will only be rising but a little more slowly.
The rhetoric is all reminiscent of UK General Election rhetoric. A realistic truthful conversation would make a nice change.
Climate change mitigation is not binary. It's not like there is a big climate change switch when we hit 2 degrees.
Most people working in this field know and accept that a huge amount of climate change damage is baked in. That's why we need to start discussing adaptation - flood defences, new pandemics, famine, mass migration.
But that doesn't mean the world should stop trying to prevent it being even worse - there is no sign of China abandoning solar or EVs, is there? The question for the UK is whether we want to embrace all this new technology or get left behind by the rest of the world.
Agree. This discussion is obscured by Trumpian denialists and 'Just Stop Oil' fundamentalists. The 'amelioration' aspect is often ignored.
Even if you don't agree with their methods, there's nothing particularly fundamentalist about JSO's demands. There is general scientific agreement that we need to rapidly reduce consumption of fossil fuels, and ceasing to issue new licences for oil exploration and production is broadly compatible with that aim. Amelioration to cope with the damage already in the pipeline is of course also required, but that's in addition to, not instead of, a sharp reduction in oil consumption.
Perhaps you'd like to accompany me if I have to close a factory in Aberdeen in the second half of this year. Decent people will be put out of a job because of flawed government policies, and I don't see too many "green jobs" they can take round where they live.
If I hear another idiot saying that they want "Green growth"... It apparently means growth without making anything, building anything. And it is free.
Changing technologies is massively disruptive for an industry - see Germany and American car makers. Who are stumbling.
The idea that this is free or painless is yet another populist, stupid delusion.
It is hard and expensive. And worth doing. Just decoupling our economy from the times that El Supremo has the hiccups and starts another war, and energy prices zoom up, it worth it. X recessions avoided.
Saving the planet is a nice side effect.
Further, in the longer term, as energy prices fall below fossil fuel energy prices, we have interesting opportunities.
It annoys me too. The North Sea probably has another decade or so in it, forcing a shut down is just madness.
We saw this before when everything had to be shipped off to China then suddenly it wasnt such a good idea after all but the jobs were then long gone.
The key takehome from the D-Day debacle is that the vast majority of the electorate like to see britain along side neighbours and allies affirming its international commitment..... a britain at the heart of the western international community honouring that heritage.... basically the opposite of free wheeling go it alone brexiteerism. I saw Marr's piece in the New Statesman talking about rejoining the single market
"But the country has already changed its mind about his rotten Brexit deal, and there would be no opportunity like Labour’s first 18 months to improve relations with the giant market on our doorstep. As the EU grapples with the problem of enlargement to its east and populism at home, the notion of a more flexible, less monolithic EU of concentric or interlocking circles is growing in potency."
What I am looking for in Labour's manifesto is silence on the EU - that will (ironically) be a huge indicator to me where things are going. It will be a carte blance on EU trading relations and security agreements.
Sunak's actions on leaving the D-Day celebrations were very much a tacit expression of inward looking, isolationist ethos of the populist right, and its time has come.... I seriously think the country is turning a corner on brexit going into the next parliament.
Lol, this is an absolutely brilliant example of the genre: "What D-Day was really about is rejoining the single market".
You've got to admire the creativity, the imagination, the insightful juxtaposition of two apparently unrelated topics ;-)
We Remainers are never going to go away.
Not until you die off anyway.
There is nothing to "Remain" part of. You lost that war. We left the EU.
There is only Rejoin. And that is the dog that hasn't barked in this election. And if not this, then when?
You're right about it not becoming a major issue in this election, but I think it provides a general sense of unease to politics in the UK.
By a ratio of at least 3:1, people think the negatives of Brexit outweigh the benefits. For Leavers, immigration is at an all time high - so it was pointless for many. There must be some regret or misgiving there. For Remainers, there is no hint that any party will bring us back in or materially improve our relationship with Europe, so it sits as an open wound.
It's not being spoken about, but I think it contributes to the doom and gloom.
I think that is just a cipher for 'things were better before 2016' - which is understandable; the world was a surer place, no Ukraine, no pandemic, no culture wars (at least, not on the scale we see now), less immigration. Understandable people might wish things were otherwise. I'd happily swallow rejoin if it could mean we could wipe out all that other unpleasantness. But clearly, almost everything bad which has happened since 2016 is nothing to do with Brexit, and undoing Brexit wouldn't bring back those apples. That's just the way humans think. Change the thing we did and we can control and undo all those things we can't control.
If we were still in the EU, today’s news headline would be that electric cars are about to get more expensive, the EU voting for protectionism over Net Zero.
Great for the campaigners who think cars are evil and we should all get the bus, for for the average motorist who just to get from A to B as cheaply as possible, not so much.
Transportation was always a weakness in our climate change mitigation efforts - look at the massive fuss over the 2030 deadline for new ICE cars, even while other sectors of the economy made massive reductions in emissions. The Chinese have exploited the gap left by the lethargy and lobbying of European/American car makers.
It's darkly funny. When I was at Uni, there was all sorts of depressed talk about the industrialisation of China and India making climate change efforts basically pointless. Instead, the Chinese have flooded the market with cheap solar panels and cheap EVs to the extent that it's going to destroy fossil fuel industries in the West.
Annual CO2 emissions are still rising. It is delusional to think that by 2050 this will be much different. Even if output is halved from present levels (the evidence that this can be done is absent), levels will only be rising but a little more slowly.
The rhetoric is all reminiscent of UK General Election rhetoric. A realistic truthful conversation would make a nice change.
Climate change mitigation is not binary. It's not like there is a big climate change switch when we hit 2 degrees.
Most people working in this field know and accept that a huge amount of climate change damage is baked in. That's why we need to start discussing adaptation - flood defences, new pandemics, famine, mass migration.
But that doesn't mean the world should stop trying to prevent it being even worse - there is no sign of China abandoning solar or EVs, is there? The question for the UK is whether we want to embrace all this new technology or get left behind by the rest of the world.
Agree. This discussion is obscured by Trumpian denialists and 'Just Stop Oil' fundamentalists. The 'amelioration' aspect is often ignored.
Even if you don't agree with their methods, there's nothing particularly fundamentalist about JSO's demands. There is general scientific agreement that we need to rapidly reduce consumption of fossil fuels, and ceasing to issue new licences for oil exploration and production is broadly compatible with that aim. Amelioration to cope with the damage already in the pipeline is of course also required, but that's in addition to, not instead of, a sharp reduction in oil consumption.
Perhaps you'd like to accompany me if I have to close a factory in Aberdeen in the second half of this year. Decent people will be put out of a job because of flawed government policies, and I don't see too many "green jobs" they can take round where they live.
If I hear another idiot saying that they want "Green growth"... It apparently means growth without making anything, building anything. And it is free.
Changing technologies is massively disruptive for an industry - see Germany and American car makers. Who are stumbling.
The idea that this is free or painless is yet another populist, stupid delusion.
It is hard and expensive. And worth doing. Just decoupling our economy from the times that El Supremo has the hiccups and starts another war, and energy prices zoom up, it worth it. X recessions avoided.
Saving the planet is a nice side effect.
Further, in the longer term, as energy prices fall below fossil fuel energy prices, we have interesting opportunities.
It annoys me too. The North Sea probably has another decade or so in it, forcing a shut down is just madness.
We saw this before when everything had to be shipped off to China then suddenly it wasnt such a good idea after all but the jobs were then long gone.
Not exactly, Corbyn at least had squatted in the Labour Party as a semi-dormant parasite. What Farage is openly suggesting is that he will act as an invasive pathogen.
It’s like an exquisite form of Chinese water torture… drip drip drip
This really is the defining issue of the election. The UK's rapidly deteriorating health service directly and deeply affects large swathes of the electorate and is indicative of the general decline in services. It is a sign of a failed government.
Or a failed health service.
There is £251bn of government spending on health this year with a NHS workforce of over two million.
That's the thing. There's no shortage of resources for the NHS. The money must be spent appallingly inefficiently.
The NHS is a long way down the law of diminishing returns path.
I have sympathy for those public services which have received genuine funding cuts but have still maintained acceptable performance levels.
My relative who nearly died just the other week was in an open bay right next to the nurses station. Seen by multiple people per day - nurses, doctors etc. No shortage of staff.
They all failed to do something about the dehydration or starvation - despite them being repeatedly told by his wife about him not eating or drinking. Which is a common result of the operation he had.
It seems that to change anything, they needed to consult God. Well, God's superior.
Well, the Tories are i/c the Church. In England, anyway.
Not exactly, Corbyn at least had squatted in the Labour Party as a semi-dormant parasite. What Farage is openly suggesting is that he will act as an invasive pathogen.
I meant the followers not the individual. Maomentum lot only joined Labour because Corbyn became leader and went away to cry into their copy of Marx when he lost.
The key takehome from the D-Day debacle is that the vast majority of the electorate like to see britain along side neighbours and allies affirming its international commitment..... a britain at the heart of the western international community honouring that heritage.... basically the opposite of free wheeling go it alone brexiteerism. I saw Marr's piece in the New Statesman talking about rejoining the single market
"But the country has already changed its mind about his rotten Brexit deal, and there would be no opportunity like Labour’s first 18 months to improve relations with the giant market on our doorstep. As the EU grapples with the problem of enlargement to its east and populism at home, the notion of a more flexible, less monolithic EU of concentric or interlocking circles is growing in potency."
What I am looking for in Labour's manifesto is silence on the EU - that will (ironically) be a huge indicator to me where things are going. It will be a carte blance on EU trading relations and security agreements.
Sunak's actions on leaving the D-Day celebrations were very much a tacit expression of inward looking, isolationist ethos of the populist right, and its time has come.... I seriously think the country is turning a corner on brexit going into the next parliament.
Lol, this is an absolutely brilliant example of the genre: "What D-Day was really about is rejoining the single market".
You've got to admire the creativity, the imagination, the insightful juxtaposition of two apparently unrelated topics ;-)
We Remainers are never going to go away.
Not until you die off anyway.
There is nothing to "Remain" part of. You lost that war. We left the EU.
There is only Rejoin. And that is the dog that hasn't barked in this election. And if not this, then when?
You're right about it not becoming a major issue in this election, but I think it provides a general sense of unease to politics in the UK.
By a ratio of at least 3:1, people think the negatives of Brexit outweigh the benefits. For Leavers, immigration is at an all time high - so it was pointless for many. There must be some regret or misgiving there. For Remainers, there is no hint that any party will bring us back in or materially improve our relationship with Europe, so it sits as an open wound.
It's not being spoken about, but I think it contributes to the doom and gloom.
I think that is just a cipher for 'things were better before 2016' - which is understandable; the world was a surer place, no Ukraine, no pandemic, no culture wars (at least, not on the scale we see now), less immigration. Understandable people might wish things were otherwise. I'd happily swallow rejoin if it could mean we could wipe out all that other unpleasantness. But clearly, almost everything bad which has happened since 2016 is nothing to do with Brexit, and undoing Brexit wouldn't bring back those apples. That's just the way humans think. Change the thing we did and we can control and undo all those things we can't control.
If we were still in the EU, today’s news headline would be that electric cars are about to get more expensive, the EU voting for protectionism over Net Zero.
Great for the campaigners who think cars are evil and we should all get the bus, for for the average motorist who just to get from A to B as cheaply as possible, not so much.
Transportation was always a weakness in our climate change mitigation efforts - look at the massive fuss over the 2030 deadline for new ICE cars, even while other sectors of the economy made massive reductions in emissions. The Chinese have exploited the gap left by the lethargy and lobbying of European/American car makers.
It's darkly funny. When I was at Uni, there was all sorts of depressed talk about the industrialisation of China and India making climate change efforts basically pointless. Instead, the Chinese have flooded the market with cheap solar panels and cheap EVs to the extent that it's going to destroy fossil fuel industries in the West.
Annual CO2 emissions are still rising. It is delusional to think that by 2050 this will be much different. Even if output is halved from present levels (the evidence that this can be done is absent), levels will only be rising but a little more slowly.
The rhetoric is all reminiscent of UK General Election rhetoric. A realistic truthful conversation would make a nice change.
Climate change mitigation is not binary. It's not like there is a big climate change switch when we hit 2 degrees.
Most people working in this field know and accept that a huge amount of climate change damage is baked in. That's why we need to start discussing adaptation - flood defences, new pandemics, famine, mass migration.
But that doesn't mean the world should stop trying to prevent it being even worse - there is no sign of China abandoning solar or EVs, is there? The question for the UK is whether we want to embrace all this new technology or get left behind by the rest of the world.
Agree. This discussion is obscured by Trumpian denialists and 'Just Stop Oil' fundamentalists. The 'amelioration' aspect is often ignored.
Even if you don't agree with their methods, there's nothing particularly fundamentalist about JSO's demands. There is general scientific agreement that we need to rapidly reduce consumption of fossil fuels, and ceasing to issue new licences for oil exploration and production is broadly compatible with that aim. Amelioration to cope with the damage already in the pipeline is of course also required, but that's in addition to, not instead of, a sharp reduction in oil consumption.
Perhaps you'd like to accompany me if I have to close a factory in Aberdeen in the second half of this year. Decent people will be put out of a job because of flawed government policies, and I don't see too many "green jobs" they can take round where they live.
If I hear another idiot saying that they want "Green growth"... It apparently means growth without making anything, building anything. And it is free.
Changing technologies is massively disruptive for an industry - see Germany and American car makers. Who are stumbling.
The idea that this is free or painless is yet another populist, stupid delusion.
It is hard and expensive. And worth doing. Just decoupling our economy from the times that El Supremo has the hiccups and starts another war, and energy prices zoom up, it worth it. X recessions avoided.
Saving the planet is a nice side effect.
Further, in the longer term, as energy prices fall below fossil fuel energy prices, we have interesting opportunities.
Indeed. Switching to a sustainable economy is both necessary and also a huge challenge. Those who paint it as something that can be done without too much bother or inconvenience risk scuppering the whole effort. It's like fighting a war. It's necessary, but it inevitably involves some sacrifice. Smart leadership would prepare people for the challenges ahead as well as ensuring that the burdens are shared fairly.
The key takehome from the D-Day debacle is that the vast majority of the electorate like to see britain along side neighbours and allies affirming its international commitment..... a britain at the heart of the western international community honouring that heritage.... basically the opposite of free wheeling go it alone brexiteerism. I saw Marr's piece in the New Statesman talking about rejoining the single market
"But the country has already changed its mind about his rotten Brexit deal, and there would be no opportunity like Labour’s first 18 months to improve relations with the giant market on our doorstep. As the EU grapples with the problem of enlargement to its east and populism at home, the notion of a more flexible, less monolithic EU of concentric or interlocking circles is growing in potency."
What I am looking for in Labour's manifesto is silence on the EU - that will (ironically) be a huge indicator to me where things are going. It will be a carte blance on EU trading relations and security agreements.
Sunak's actions on leaving the D-Day celebrations were very much a tacit expression of inward looking, isolationist ethos of the populist right, and its time has come.... I seriously think the country is turning a corner on brexit going into the next parliament.
Lol, this is an absolutely brilliant example of the genre: "What D-Day was really about is rejoining the single market".
You've got to admire the creativity, the imagination, the insightful juxtaposition of two apparently unrelated topics ;-)
We Remainers are never going to go away.
Not until you die off anyway.
There is nothing to "Remain" part of. You lost that war. We left the EU.
There is only Rejoin. And that is the dog that hasn't barked in this election. And if not this, then when?
You're right about it not becoming a major issue in this election, but I think it provides a general sense of unease to politics in the UK.
By a ratio of at least 3:1, people think the negatives of Brexit outweigh the benefits. For Leavers, immigration is at an all time high - so it was pointless for many. There must be some regret or misgiving there. For Remainers, there is no hint that any party will bring us back in or materially improve our relationship with Europe, so it sits as an open wound.
It's not being spoken about, but I think it contributes to the doom and gloom.
I think that is just a cipher for 'things were better before 2016' - which is understandable; the world was a surer place, no Ukraine, no pandemic, no culture wars (at least, not on the scale we see now), less immigration. Understandable people might wish things were otherwise. I'd happily swallow rejoin if it could mean we could wipe out all that other unpleasantness. But clearly, almost everything bad which has happened since 2016 is nothing to do with Brexit, and undoing Brexit wouldn't bring back those apples. That's just the way humans think. Change the thing we did and we can control and undo all those things we can't control.
If we were still in the EU, today’s news headline would be that electric cars are about to get more expensive, the EU voting for protectionism over Net Zero.
Great for the campaigners who think cars are evil and we should all get the bus, for for the average motorist who just to get from A to B as cheaply as possible, not so much.
Transportation was always a weakness in our climate change mitigation efforts - look at the massive fuss over the 2030 deadline for new ICE cars, even while other sectors of the economy made massive reductions in emissions. The Chinese have exploited the gap left by the lethargy and lobbying of European/American car makers.
It's darkly funny. When I was at Uni, there was all sorts of depressed talk about the industrialisation of China and India making climate change efforts basically pointless. Instead, the Chinese have flooded the market with cheap solar panels and cheap EVs to the extent that it's going to destroy fossil fuel industries in the West.
Annual CO2 emissions are still rising. It is delusional to think that by 2050 this will be much different. Even if output is halved from present levels (the evidence that this can be done is absent), levels will only be rising but a little more slowly.
The rhetoric is all reminiscent of UK General Election rhetoric. A realistic truthful conversation would make a nice change.
Climate change mitigation is not binary. It's not like there is a big climate change switch when we hit 2 degrees.
Most people working in this field know and accept that a huge amount of climate change damage is baked in. That's why we need to start discussing adaptation - flood defences, new pandemics, famine, mass migration.
But that doesn't mean the world should stop trying to prevent it being even worse - there is no sign of China abandoning solar or EVs, is there? The question for the UK is whether we want to embrace all this new technology or get left behind by the rest of the world.
Agree. This discussion is obscured by Trumpian denialists and 'Just Stop Oil' fundamentalists. The 'amelioration' aspect is often ignored.
Even if you don't agree with their methods, there's nothing particularly fundamentalist about JSO's demands. There is general scientific agreement that we need to rapidly reduce consumption of fossil fuels, and ceasing to issue new licences for oil exploration and production is broadly compatible with that aim. Amelioration to cope with the damage already in the pipeline is of course also required, but that's in addition to, not instead of, a sharp reduction in oil consumption.
Perhaps you'd like to accompany me if I have to close a factory in Aberdeen in the second half of this year. Decent people will be put out of a job because of flawed government policies, and I don't see too many "green jobs" they can take round where they live.
If I hear another idiot saying that they want "Green growth"... It apparently means growth without making anything, building anything. And it is free.
Changing technologies is massively disruptive for an industry - see Germany and American car makers. Who are stumbling.
The idea that this is free or painless is yet another populist, stupid delusion.
It is hard and expensive. And worth doing. Just decoupling our economy from the times that El Supremo has the hiccups and starts another war, and energy prices zoom up, it worth it. X recessions avoided.
Saving the planet is a nice side effect.
Further, in the longer term, as energy prices fall below fossil fuel energy prices, we have interesting opportunities.
It annoys me too. The North Sea probably has another decade or so in it, forcing a shut down is just madness.
We saw this before when everything had to be shipped off to China then suddenly it wasnt such a good idea after all but the jobs were then long gone.
New Zealand to lift oil drilling ban amid blackout fears
It’s like an exquisite form of Chinese water torture… drip drip drip
This really is the defining issue of the election. The UK's rapidly deteriorating health service directly and deeply affects large swathes of the electorate and is indicative of the general decline in services. It is a sign of a failed government.
Or a failed health service.
There is £251bn of government spending on health this year with a NHS workforce of over two million.
That's the thing. There's no shortage of resources for the NHS. The money must be spent appallingly inefficiently.
The NHS is a long way down the law of diminishing returns path.
I have sympathy for those public services which have received genuine funding cuts but have still maintained acceptable performance levels.
My relative who nearly died just the other week was in an open bay right next to the nurses station. Seen by multiple people per day - nurses, doctors etc. No shortage of staff.
They all failed to do something about the dehydration or starvation - despite them being repeatedly told by his wife about him not eating or drinking. Which is a common result of the operation he had.
It seems that to change anything, they needed to consult God. Well, God's superior.
Everyone has a story like this. I'm glad to hear your relative recovered but how exactly would more money solve the issue that in aggregate, the NHS doesn't care about its patients. It cares about aggregate stats and targets but on the wards it all too often doesn't really care if this patient or that patient is suffering or inconvenienced or dies. Because it is one big pot of suffering so that particular instance won't matter too much and unless you get a Letby (whose conviction I find troubling having read that Atlantic? NYTimes? piece) it will go on happening.
It's about process. Ha!
Individual bits of good (the work that the people do is generally good) - but the system seems to be very poor on lines of reporting, passing information, escalating issues..
EDIT: I watched as they fiddled with different systems, wrote stuff on paper. I could do them such a nice system of patient management, complete with autogenerating graphs, stats monitoring and alerts, test ordering and status, treatment ordering and status, idiot checking on dosages.........
The key takehome from the D-Day debacle is that the vast majority of the electorate like to see britain along side neighbours and allies affirming its international commitment..... a britain at the heart of the western international community honouring that heritage.... basically the opposite of free wheeling go it alone brexiteerism. I saw Marr's piece in the New Statesman talking about rejoining the single market
"But the country has already changed its mind about his rotten Brexit deal, and there would be no opportunity like Labour’s first 18 months to improve relations with the giant market on our doorstep. As the EU grapples with the problem of enlargement to its east and populism at home, the notion of a more flexible, less monolithic EU of concentric or interlocking circles is growing in potency."
What I am looking for in Labour's manifesto is silence on the EU - that will (ironically) be a huge indicator to me where things are going. It will be a carte blance on EU trading relations and security agreements.
Sunak's actions on leaving the D-Day celebrations were very much a tacit expression of inward looking, isolationist ethos of the populist right, and its time has come.... I seriously think the country is turning a corner on brexit going into the next parliament.
Lol, this is an absolutely brilliant example of the genre: "What D-Day was really about is rejoining the single market".
You've got to admire the creativity, the imagination, the insightful juxtaposition of two apparently unrelated topics ;-)
We Remainers are never going to go away.
Not until you die off anyway.
There is nothing to "Remain" part of. You lost that war. We left the EU.
There is only Rejoin. And that is the dog that hasn't barked in this election. And if not this, then when?
You're right about it not becoming a major issue in this election, but I think it provides a general sense of unease to politics in the UK.
By a ratio of at least 3:1, people think the negatives of Brexit outweigh the benefits. For Leavers, immigration is at an all time high - so it was pointless for many. There must be some regret or misgiving there. For Remainers, there is no hint that any party will bring us back in or materially improve our relationship with Europe, so it sits as an open wound.
It's not being spoken about, but I think it contributes to the doom and gloom.
I think that is just a cipher for 'things were better before 2016' - which is understandable; the world was a surer place, no Ukraine, no pandemic, no culture wars (at least, not on the scale we see now), less immigration. Understandable people might wish things were otherwise. I'd happily swallow rejoin if it could mean we could wipe out all that other unpleasantness. But clearly, almost everything bad which has happened since 2016 is nothing to do with Brexit, and undoing Brexit wouldn't bring back those apples. That's just the way humans think. Change the thing we did and we can control and undo all those things we can't control.
If we were still in the EU, today’s news headline would be that electric cars are about to get more expensive, the EU voting for protectionism over Net Zero.
Great for the campaigners who think cars are evil and we should all get the bus, for for the average motorist who just to get from A to B as cheaply as possible, not so much.
Transportation was always a weakness in our climate change mitigation efforts - look at the massive fuss over the 2030 deadline for new ICE cars, even while other sectors of the economy made massive reductions in emissions. The Chinese have exploited the gap left by the lethargy and lobbying of European/American car makers.
It's darkly funny. When I was at Uni, there was all sorts of depressed talk about the industrialisation of China and India making climate change efforts basically pointless. Instead, the Chinese have flooded the market with cheap solar panels and cheap EVs to the extent that it's going to destroy fossil fuel industries in the West.
Annual CO2 emissions are still rising. It is delusional to think that by 2050 this will be much different. Even if output is halved from present levels (the evidence that this can be done is absent), levels will only be rising but a little more slowly.
The rhetoric is all reminiscent of UK General Election rhetoric. A realistic truthful conversation would make a nice change.
Climate change mitigation is not binary. It's not like there is a big climate change switch when we hit 2 degrees.
Most people working in this field know and accept that a huge amount of climate change damage is baked in. That's why we need to start discussing adaptation - flood defences, new pandemics, famine, mass migration.
But that doesn't mean the world should stop trying to prevent it being even worse - there is no sign of China abandoning solar or EVs, is there? The question for the UK is whether we want to embrace all this new technology or get left behind by the rest of the world.
Agree. This discussion is obscured by Trumpian denialists and 'Just Stop Oil' fundamentalists. The 'amelioration' aspect is often ignored.
Even if you don't agree with their methods, there's nothing particularly fundamentalist about JSO's demands. There is general scientific agreement that we need to rapidly reduce consumption of fossil fuels, and ceasing to issue new licences for oil exploration and production is broadly compatible with that aim. Amelioration to cope with the damage already in the pipeline is of course also required, but that's in addition to, not instead of, a sharp reduction in oil consumption.
Perhaps you'd like to accompany me if I have to close a factory in Aberdeen in the second half of this year. Decent people will be put out of a job because of flawed government policies, and I don't see too many "green jobs" they can take round where they live.
If I hear another idiot saying that they want "Green growth"... It apparently means growth without making anything, building anything. And it is free.
Changing technologies is massively disruptive for an industry - see Germany and American car makers. Who are stumbling.
The idea that this is free or painless is yet another populist, stupid delusion.
It is hard and expensive. And worth doing. Just decoupling our economy from the times that El Supremo has the hiccups and starts another war, and energy prices zoom up, it worth it. X recessions avoided.
Saving the planet is a nice side effect.
Further, in the longer term, as energy prices fall below fossil fuel energy prices, we have interesting opportunities.
Indeed. Switching to a sustainable economy is both necessary and also a huge challenge. Those who paint it as something that can be done without too much bother or inconvenience risk scuppering the whole effort. It's like fighting a war. It's necessary, but it inevitably involves some sacrifice. Smart leadership would prepare people for the challenges ahead as well as ensuring that the burdens are shared fairly.
The other thing is that the status quo is not an option. The energy transition away from fossil fuels is going to happen, and you don't want to be a laggard.
It’s like an exquisite form of Chinese water torture… drip drip drip
This really is the defining issue of the election. The UK's rapidly deteriorating health service directly and deeply affects large swathes of the electorate and is indicative of the general decline in services. It is a sign of a failed government.
Or a failed health service.
There is £251bn of government spending on health this year with a NHS workforce of over two million.
That's the thing. There's no shortage of resources for the NHS. The money must be spent appallingly inefficiently.
The NHS is a long way down the law of diminishing returns path.
I have sympathy for those public services which have received genuine funding cuts but have still maintained acceptable performance levels.
You never get an answer to the question: How much would be enough to fund the NHS?
It's like asking how fast to run on a treadmill to move forward.
It doesn't matter how much you spend it will never be enough.
Spend more, people stay alive longer, get more chronic illnesses, require more expenditure as a result. It's a never ending circle until people do die.
If the NHS could spend shedloads more money on prevention and general health advice (diet, cutting out UPF, eat more plants, exercise, mental wellbeing) in the long run the population would be far healthier, happier and cost the NHS a lot less. Big Food, wouldn't like it, though.
It’s like an exquisite form of Chinese water torture… drip drip drip
This really is the defining issue of the election. The UK's rapidly deteriorating health service directly and deeply affects large swathes of the electorate and is indicative of the general decline in services. It is a sign of a failed government.
Or a failed health service.
There is £251bn of government spending on health this year with a NHS workforce of over two million.
That's the thing. There's no shortage of resources for the NHS. The money must be spent appallingly inefficiently.
The NHS is a long way down the law of diminishing returns path.
I have sympathy for those public services which have received genuine funding cuts but have still maintained acceptable performance levels.
You never get an answer to the question: How much would be enough to fund the NHS?
It's like asking how fast to run on a treadmill to move forward.
It doesn't matter how much you spend it will never be enough.
Spend more, people stay alive longer, get more chronic illnesses, require more expenditure as a result. It's a never ending circle until people do die.
And new machines are expensive and new miracle drugs even more so, thousands of pounds for a single dose.
It’s like an exquisite form of Chinese water torture… drip drip drip
This really is the defining issue of the election. The UK's rapidly deteriorating health service directly and deeply affects large swathes of the electorate and is indicative of the general decline in services. It is a sign of a failed government.
Or a failed health service.
There is £251bn of government spending on health this year with a NHS workforce of over two million.
That's the thing. There's no shortage of resources for the NHS. The money must be spent appallingly inefficiently.
The NHS is a long way down the law of diminishing returns path.
I have sympathy for those public services which have received genuine funding cuts but have still maintained acceptable performance levels.
You never get an answer to the question: How much would be enough to fund the NHS?
It's like asking how fast to run on a treadmill to move forward.
It doesn't matter how much you spend it will never be enough.
Spend more, people stay alive longer, get more chronic illnesses, require more expenditure as a result. It's a never ending circle until people do die.
If the NHS could spend shedloads more money on prevention and general health advice (diet, cutting out UPF, eat more plants, exercise, mental wellbeing) in the long run the population would be far healthier, happier and cost the NHS a lot less. Big Food, wouldn't like it, though.
Lessons (not) learned from COVID pandemic.
Too much reliance on China for crucial chemicals, processes, etc..... Too many fatties, very bad for you if things like COVID come around.... The state has piss poor processes for data collection in a consistent useful format.... People have f##k all clue about basic stats.....
And instead we have been arguing over if women can have a penis. And the media still can't get basic facts right like stamp duty.
It’s like an exquisite form of Chinese water torture… drip drip drip
This really is the defining issue of the election. The UK's rapidly deteriorating health service directly and deeply affects large swathes of the electorate and is indicative of the general decline in services. It is a sign of a failed government.
Or a failed health service.
There is £251bn of government spending on health this year with a NHS workforce of over two million.
That's the thing. There's no shortage of resources for the NHS. The money must be spent appallingly inefficiently.
The NHS is a long way down the law of diminishing returns path.
I have sympathy for those public services which have received genuine funding cuts but have still maintained acceptable performance levels.
You never get an answer to the question: How much would be enough to fund the NHS?
It's like asking how fast to run on a treadmill to move forward.
It doesn't matter how much you spend it will never be enough.
Spend more, people stay alive longer, get more chronic illnesses, require more expenditure as a result. It's a never ending circle until people do die.
Yes, but that makes it sound like health spending is futile. In principle for every additional £1 you spend on health you get an extra fraction of a QALY in return. So, to a certain extent, you spend as much money as you have available, once you've paid for more important things. And as the country becomes richer it has more spare money left over to spend on better health care.
That's a good thing, not a counsel of despair.
So I'd agree with @Eabhal - fix it as a percentage of GDP, perhaps with a planned gradual increase to accommodate the demographic transition, but with a ceiling once that transition has occurred.
Obviously you'd have to have some way of smoothing out the effects of recessions, so that they didn't lead to an instantaneous cut in health spending, but that sort of thing would also stop you from increasing spending unsustainably during a boom.
Fixing it as a %age makes sense for the NHS. I think however that overall health spending will end up being a massive %age of GDP - way over 20% in my lifetime.
Jeremy Hunt becomes the latest senior Tory to admit the game is up, telling Politico that a vote for Reform will give Labour “an even bigger majority”.
Another sign of a stupid campaign masterminded by Australian consultants. It is all about the leader. Rishi is visibly knackered after being rushed to kiss babies from St Ives to Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross while Jeremy Hunt, who is the Chancellor of the sodding Exchequer, is left free to canvass his own seat.
Mr Sunak's spads not realising Shetland is the bit in the box in the middle of the North Sea?
Er no, that was me translating Land's End to John O'Groats into parliamentary seats. See also my hysterical AI anecdote on that theme posted earlier in this thread.
The word on the street podcasts is Rishi is increasingly trying to rescue normally safe seats.
The key takehome from the D-Day debacle is that the vast majority of the electorate like to see britain along side neighbours and allies affirming its international commitment..... a britain at the heart of the western international community honouring that heritage.... basically the opposite of free wheeling go it alone brexiteerism. I saw Marr's piece in the New Statesman talking about rejoining the single market
"But the country has already changed its mind about his rotten Brexit deal, and there would be no opportunity like Labour’s first 18 months to improve relations with the giant market on our doorstep. As the EU grapples with the problem of enlargement to its east and populism at home, the notion of a more flexible, less monolithic EU of concentric or interlocking circles is growing in potency."
What I am looking for in Labour's manifesto is silence on the EU - that will (ironically) be a huge indicator to me where things are going. It will be a carte blance on EU trading relations and security agreements.
Sunak's actions on leaving the D-Day celebrations were very much a tacit expression of inward looking, isolationist ethos of the populist right, and its time has come.... I seriously think the country is turning a corner on brexit going into the next parliament.
Lol, this is an absolutely brilliant example of the genre: "What D-Day was really about is rejoining the single market".
You've got to admire the creativity, the imagination, the insightful juxtaposition of two apparently unrelated topics ;-)
We Remainers are never going to go away.
Not until you die off anyway.
There is nothing to "Remain" part of. You lost that war. We left the EU.
There is only Rejoin. And that is the dog that hasn't barked in this election. And if not this, then when?
You're right about it not becoming a major issue in this election, but I think it provides a general sense of unease to politics in the UK.
By a ratio of at least 3:1, people think the negatives of Brexit outweigh the benefits. For Leavers, immigration is at an all time high - so it was pointless for many. There must be some regret or misgiving there. For Remainers, there is no hint that any party will bring us back in or materially improve our relationship with Europe, so it sits as an open wound.
It's not being spoken about, but I think it contributes to the doom and gloom.
I think that is just a cipher for 'things were better before 2016' - which is understandable; the world was a surer place, no Ukraine, no pandemic, no culture wars (at least, not on the scale we see now), less immigration. Understandable people might wish things were otherwise. I'd happily swallow rejoin if it could mean we could wipe out all that other unpleasantness. But clearly, almost everything bad which has happened since 2016 is nothing to do with Brexit, and undoing Brexit wouldn't bring back those apples. That's just the way humans think. Change the thing we did and we can control and undo all those things we can't control.
If we were still in the EU, today’s news headline would be that electric cars are about to get more expensive, the EU voting for protectionism over Net Zero.
Great for the campaigners who think cars are evil and we should all get the bus, for for the average motorist who just to get from A to B as cheaply as possible, not so much.
Transportation was always a weakness in our climate change mitigation efforts - look at the massive fuss over the 2030 deadline for new ICE cars, even while other sectors of the economy made massive reductions in emissions. The Chinese have exploited the gap left by the lethargy and lobbying of European/American car makers.
It's darkly funny. When I was at Uni, there was all sorts of depressed talk about the industrialisation of China and India making climate change efforts basically pointless. Instead, the Chinese have flooded the market with cheap solar panels and cheap EVs to the extent that it's going to destroy fossil fuel industries in the West.
Annual CO2 emissions are still rising. It is delusional to think that by 2050 this will be much different. Even if output is halved from present levels (the evidence that this can be done is absent), levels will only be rising but a little more slowly.
The rhetoric is all reminiscent of UK General Election rhetoric. A realistic truthful conversation would make a nice change.
Climate change mitigation is not binary. It's not like there is a big climate change switch when we hit 2 degrees.
Most people working in this field know and accept that a huge amount of climate change damage is baked in. That's why we need to start discussing adaptation - flood defences, new pandemics, famine, mass migration.
But that doesn't mean the world should stop trying to prevent it being even worse - there is no sign of China abandoning solar or EVs, is there? The question for the UK is whether we want to embrace all this new technology or get left behind by the rest of the world.
Agree. This discussion is obscured by Trumpian denialists and 'Just Stop Oil' fundamentalists. The 'amelioration' aspect is often ignored.
Even if you don't agree with their methods, there's nothing particularly fundamentalist about JSO's demands. There is general scientific agreement that we need to rapidly reduce consumption of fossil fuels, and ceasing to issue new licences for oil exploration and production is broadly compatible with that aim. Amelioration to cope with the damage already in the pipeline is of course also required, but that's in addition to, not instead of, a sharp reduction in oil consumption.
Perhaps you'd like to accompany me if I have to close a factory in Aberdeen in the second half of this year. Decent people will be put out of a job because of flawed government policies, and I don't see too many "green jobs" they can take round where they live.
If I hear another idiot saying that they want "Green growth"... It apparently means growth without making anything, building anything. And it is free.
Changing technologies is massively disruptive for an industry - see Germany and American car makers. Who are stumbling.
The idea that this is free or painless is yet another populist, stupid delusion.
It is hard and expensive. And worth doing. Just decoupling our economy from the times that El Supremo has the hiccups and starts another war, and energy prices zoom up, it worth it. X recessions avoided.
Saving the planet is a nice side effect.
Further, in the longer term, as energy prices fall below fossil fuel energy prices, we have interesting opportunities.
Indeed. Switching to a sustainable economy is both necessary and also a huge challenge. Those who paint it as something that can be done without too much bother or inconvenience risk scuppering the whole effort. It's like fighting a war. It's necessary, but it inevitably involves some sacrifice. Smart leadership would prepare people for the challenges ahead as well as ensuring that the burdens are shared fairly.
The other thing is that the status quo is not an option. The energy transition away from fossil fuels is going to happen, and you don't want to be a laggard.
Estimates suggest 20% of all the electricity generated in Ireland will go to keeping Data Centres functioning.
It’s like an exquisite form of Chinese water torture… drip drip drip
This really is the defining issue of the election. The UK's rapidly deteriorating health service directly and deeply affects large swathes of the electorate and is indicative of the general decline in services. It is a sign of a failed government.
Or a failed health service.
There is £251bn of government spending on health this year with a NHS workforce of over two million.
That's the thing. There's no shortage of resources for the NHS. The money must be spent appallingly inefficiently.
The NHS is a long way down the law of diminishing returns path.
I have sympathy for those public services which have received genuine funding cuts but have still maintained acceptable performance levels.
You never get an answer to the question: How much would be enough to fund the NHS?
It's like asking how fast to run on a treadmill to move forward.
It doesn't matter how much you spend it will never be enough.
Spend more, people stay alive longer, get more chronic illnesses, require more expenditure as a result. It's a never ending circle until people do die.
Yes, but that makes it sound like health spending is futile. In principle for every additional £1 you spend on health you get an extra fraction of a QALY in return. So, to a certain extent, you spend as much money as you have available, once you've paid for more important things. And as the country becomes richer it has more spare money left over to spend on better health care.
That's a good thing, not a counsel of despair.
So I'd agree with @Eabhal - fix it as a percentage of GDP, perhaps with a planned gradual increase to accommodate the demographic transition, but with a ceiling once that transition has occurred.
Obviously you'd have to have some way of smoothing out the effects of recessions, so that they didn't lead to an instantaneous cut in health spending, but that sort of thing would also stop you from increasing spending unsustainably during a boom.
I disagree actually. The myth with QALY is that all years are created equal. Keeping people alive longer in chronic pain, with dementia and so on may not always be the kindest thing to do, or provide the best return on expenditure.
If we're going to boost expenditure on something then instead of the NHS we should be looking towards what someone might suggest as three priorities: education, education, education.
We treat keeping people alive like money is no object but penny-pinch with setting young people up with an education that they will affect their lives for the next 6 or 7 decades after they leave school.
The key takehome from the D-Day debacle is that the vast majority of the electorate like to see britain along side neighbours and allies affirming its international commitment..... a britain at the heart of the western international community honouring that heritage.... basically the opposite of free wheeling go it alone brexiteerism. I saw Marr's piece in the New Statesman talking about rejoining the single market
"But the country has already changed its mind about his rotten Brexit deal, and there would be no opportunity like Labour’s first 18 months to improve relations with the giant market on our doorstep. As the EU grapples with the problem of enlargement to its east and populism at home, the notion of a more flexible, less monolithic EU of concentric or interlocking circles is growing in potency."
What I am looking for in Labour's manifesto is silence on the EU - that will (ironically) be a huge indicator to me where things are going. It will be a carte blance on EU trading relations and security agreements.
Sunak's actions on leaving the D-Day celebrations were very much a tacit expression of inward looking, isolationist ethos of the populist right, and its time has come.... I seriously think the country is turning a corner on brexit going into the next parliament.
Lol, this is an absolutely brilliant example of the genre: "What D-Day was really about is rejoining the single market".
You've got to admire the creativity, the imagination, the insightful juxtaposition of two apparently unrelated topics ;-)
We Remainers are never going to go away.
Not until you die off anyway.
There is nothing to "Remain" part of. You lost that war. We left the EU.
There is only Rejoin. And that is the dog that hasn't barked in this election. And if not this, then when?
You're right about it not becoming a major issue in this election, but I think it provides a general sense of unease to politics in the UK.
By a ratio of at least 3:1, people think the negatives of Brexit outweigh the benefits. For Leavers, immigration is at an all time high - so it was pointless for many. There must be some regret or misgiving there. For Remainers, there is no hint that any party will bring us back in or materially improve our relationship with Europe, so it sits as an open wound.
It's not being spoken about, but I think it contributes to the doom and gloom.
I think that is just a cipher for 'things were better before 2016' - which is understandable; the world was a surer place, no Ukraine, no pandemic, no culture wars (at least, not on the scale we see now), less immigration. Understandable people might wish things were otherwise. I'd happily swallow rejoin if it could mean we could wipe out all that other unpleasantness. But clearly, almost everything bad which has happened since 2016 is nothing to do with Brexit, and undoing Brexit wouldn't bring back those apples. That's just the way humans think. Change the thing we did and we can control and undo all those things we can't control.
If we were still in the EU, today’s news headline would be that electric cars are about to get more expensive, the EU voting for protectionism over Net Zero.
Great for the campaigners who think cars are evil and we should all get the bus, for for the average motorist who just to get from A to B as cheaply as possible, not so much.
Who are these 'we' you refer to? Don't you live somewhere on the shores of the Persian Gulf?
Difference between the Tory campaign and the Labour campaign in a single manifesto image
Bollocks.
You are Rishi Sunak's tour manager AICMFP. Rishi left Normandy early. Labour pulled every string it could find to get Keir Starmer out there chatting to President Zelensky.
It’s like an exquisite form of Chinese water torture… drip drip drip
This really is the defining issue of the election. The UK's rapidly deteriorating health service directly and deeply affects large swathes of the electorate and is indicative of the general decline in services. It is a sign of a failed government.
Or a failed health service.
There is £251bn of government spending on health this year with a NHS workforce of over two million.
That's the thing. There's no shortage of resources for the NHS. The money must be spent appallingly inefficiently.
The NHS is a long way down the law of diminishing returns path.
I have sympathy for those public services which have received genuine funding cuts but have still maintained acceptable performance levels.
You never get an answer to the question: How much would be enough to fund the NHS?
It's like asking how fast to run on a treadmill to move forward.
It doesn't matter how much you spend it will never be enough.
Spend more, people stay alive longer, get more chronic illnesses, require more expenditure as a result. It's a never ending circle until people do die.
Yes, but that makes it sound like health spending is futile. In principle for every additional £1 you spend on health you get an extra fraction of a QALY in return. So, to a certain extent, you spend as much money as you have available, once you've paid for more important things. And as the country becomes richer it has more spare money left over to spend on better health care.
That's a good thing, not a counsel of despair.
So I'd agree with @Eabhal - fix it as a percentage of GDP, perhaps with a planned gradual increase to accommodate the demographic transition, but with a ceiling once that transition has occurred.
Obviously you'd have to have some way of smoothing out the effects of recessions, so that they didn't lead to an instantaneous cut in health spending, but that sort of thing would also stop you from increasing spending unsustainably during a boom.
I disagree actually. The myth with QALY is that all years are created equal. Keeping people alive longer in chronic pain, with dementia and so on may not always be the kindest thing to do, or provide the best return on expenditure.
If we're going to boost expenditure on something then instead of the NHS we should be looking towards what someone might suggest as three priorities: education, education, education.
We treat keeping people alive like money is no object but penny-pinch with setting young people up with an education that they will affect their lives for the next 6 or 7 decades after they leave school.
The key takehome from the D-Day debacle is that the vast majority of the electorate like to see britain along side neighbours and allies affirming its international commitment..... a britain at the heart of the western international community honouring that heritage.... basically the opposite of free wheeling go it alone brexiteerism. I saw Marr's piece in the New Statesman talking about rejoining the single market
"But the country has already changed its mind about his rotten Brexit deal, and there would be no opportunity like Labour’s first 18 months to improve relations with the giant market on our doorstep. As the EU grapples with the problem of enlargement to its east and populism at home, the notion of a more flexible, less monolithic EU of concentric or interlocking circles is growing in potency."
What I am looking for in Labour's manifesto is silence on the EU - that will (ironically) be a huge indicator to me where things are going. It will be a carte blance on EU trading relations and security agreements.
Sunak's actions on leaving the D-Day celebrations were very much a tacit expression of inward looking, isolationist ethos of the populist right, and its time has come.... I seriously think the country is turning a corner on brexit going into the next parliament.
Lol, this is an absolutely brilliant example of the genre: "What D-Day was really about is rejoining the single market".
You've got to admire the creativity, the imagination, the insightful juxtaposition of two apparently unrelated topics ;-)
We Remainers are never going to go away.
Not until you die off anyway.
There is nothing to "Remain" part of. You lost that war. We left the EU.
There is only Rejoin. And that is the dog that hasn't barked in this election. And if not this, then when?
You're right about it not becoming a major issue in this election, but I think it provides a general sense of unease to politics in the UK.
By a ratio of at least 3:1, people think the negatives of Brexit outweigh the benefits. For Leavers, immigration is at an all time high - so it was pointless for many. There must be some regret or misgiving there. For Remainers, there is no hint that any party will bring us back in or materially improve our relationship with Europe, so it sits as an open wound.
It's not being spoken about, but I think it contributes to the doom and gloom.
I think that is just a cipher for 'things were better before 2016' - which is understandable; the world was a surer place, no Ukraine, no pandemic, no culture wars (at least, not on the scale we see now), less immigration. Understandable people might wish things were otherwise. I'd happily swallow rejoin if it could mean we could wipe out all that other unpleasantness. But clearly, almost everything bad which has happened since 2016 is nothing to do with Brexit, and undoing Brexit wouldn't bring back those apples. That's just the way humans think. Change the thing we did and we can control and undo all those things we can't control.
If we were still in the EU, today’s news headline would be that electric cars are about to get more expensive, the EU voting for protectionism over Net Zero.
Great for the campaigners who think cars are evil and we should all get the bus, for for the average motorist who just to get from A to B as cheaply as possible, not so much.
Transportation was always a weakness in our climate change mitigation efforts - look at the massive fuss over the 2030 deadline for new ICE cars, even while other sectors of the economy made massive reductions in emissions. The Chinese have exploited the gap left by the lethargy and lobbying of European/American car makers.
It's darkly funny. When I was at Uni, there was all sorts of depressed talk about the industrialisation of China and India making climate change efforts basically pointless. Instead, the Chinese have flooded the market with cheap solar panels and cheap EVs to the extent that it's going to destroy fossil fuel industries in the West.
Annual CO2 emissions are still rising. It is delusional to think that by 2050 this will be much different. Even if output is halved from present levels (the evidence that this can be done is absent), levels will only be rising but a little more slowly.
The rhetoric is all reminiscent of UK General Election rhetoric. A realistic truthful conversation would make a nice change.
Climate change mitigation is not binary. It's not like there is a big climate change switch when we hit 2 degrees.
Most people working in this field know and accept that a huge amount of climate change damage is baked in. That's why we need to start discussing adaptation - flood defences, new pandemics, famine, mass migration.
But that doesn't mean the world should stop trying to prevent it being even worse - there is no sign of China abandoning solar or EVs, is there? The question for the UK is whether we want to embrace all this new technology or get left behind by the rest of the world.
Agree. This discussion is obscured by Trumpian denialists and 'Just Stop Oil' fundamentalists. The 'amelioration' aspect is often ignored.
Even if you don't agree with their methods, there's nothing particularly fundamentalist about JSO's demands. There is general scientific agreement that we need to rapidly reduce consumption of fossil fuels, and ceasing to issue new licences for oil exploration and production is broadly compatible with that aim. Amelioration to cope with the damage already in the pipeline is of course also required, but that's in addition to, not instead of, a sharp reduction in oil consumption.
Perhaps you'd like to accompany me if I have to close a factory in Aberdeen in the second half of this year. Decent people will be put out of a job because of flawed government policies, and I don't see too many "green jobs" they can take round where they live.
If I hear another idiot saying that they want "Green growth"... It apparently means growth without making anything, building anything. And it is free.
Changing technologies is massively disruptive for an industry - see Germany and American car makers. Who are stumbling.
The idea that this is free or painless is yet another populist, stupid delusion.
It is hard and expensive. And worth doing. Just decoupling our economy from the times that El Supremo has the hiccups and starts another war, and energy prices zoom up, it worth it. X recessions avoided.
Saving the planet is a nice side effect.
Further, in the longer term, as energy prices fall below fossil fuel energy prices, we have interesting opportunities.
Indeed. Switching to a sustainable economy is both necessary and also a huge challenge. Those who paint it as something that can be done without too much bother or inconvenience risk scuppering the whole effort. It's like fighting a war. It's necessary, but it inevitably involves some sacrifice. Smart leadership would prepare people for the challenges ahead as well as ensuring that the burdens are shared fairly.
The other thing is that the status quo is not an option. The energy transition away from fossil fuels is going to happen, and you don't want to be a laggard.
Estimates suggest 20% of all the electricity generated in Ireland will go to keeping Data Centres functioning.
Why not close them ?
Because they are useful and you can generate the electricity for them cleanly.
Difference between the Tory campaign and the Labour campaign in a single manifesto image
He looks like some Wandsworth lawyer trying to “talk builder” with the guy who’s come to quote for a big glass kitchen extension. “Yeah my mate, it’s for the Doris as she loves cooking. Not me, I’m into the football, can’t wait for the European tournament, going to have a mad time with some brewskis.”
“Yeah ok Mr Starmer, anyway its gonna cost a lot more than you hoped with Labour”
It’s like an exquisite form of Chinese water torture… drip drip drip
This really is the defining issue of the election. The UK's rapidly deteriorating health service directly and deeply affects large swathes of the electorate and is indicative of the general decline in services. It is a sign of a failed government.
Or a failed health service.
There is £251bn of government spending on health this year with a NHS workforce of over two million.
That's the thing. There's no shortage of resources for the NHS. The money must be spent appallingly inefficiently.
The NHS is a long way down the law of diminishing returns path.
I have sympathy for those public services which have received genuine funding cuts but have still maintained acceptable performance levels.
You never get an answer to the question: How much would be enough to fund the NHS?
It's like asking how fast to run on a treadmill to move forward.
It doesn't matter how much you spend it will never be enough.
Spend more, people stay alive longer, get more chronic illnesses, require more expenditure as a result. It's a never ending circle until people do die.
Yes, but that makes it sound like health spending is futile. In principle for every additional £1 you spend on health you get an extra fraction of a QALY in return. So, to a certain extent, you spend as much money as you have available, once you've paid for more important things. And as the country becomes richer it has more spare money left over to spend on better health care.
That's a good thing, not a counsel of despair.
So I'd agree with @Eabhal - fix it as a percentage of GDP, perhaps with a planned gradual increase to accommodate the demographic transition, but with a ceiling once that transition has occurred.
Obviously you'd have to have some way of smoothing out the effects of recessions, so that they didn't lead to an instantaneous cut in health spending, but that sort of thing would also stop you from increasing spending unsustainably during a boom.
I disagree actually. The myth with QALY is that all years are created equal. Keeping people alive longer in chronic pain, with dementia and so on may not always be the kindest thing to do, or provide the best return on expenditure.
If we're going to boost expenditure on something then instead of the NHS we should be looking towards what someone might suggest as three priorities: education, education, education.
We treat keeping people alive like money is no object but penny-pinch with setting young people up with an education that they will affect their lives for the next 6 or 7 decades after they leave school.
The key takehome from the D-Day debacle is that the vast majority of the electorate like to see britain along side neighbours and allies affirming its international commitment..... a britain at the heart of the western international community honouring that heritage.... basically the opposite of free wheeling go it alone brexiteerism. I saw Marr's piece in the New Statesman talking about rejoining the single market
"But the country has already changed its mind about his rotten Brexit deal, and there would be no opportunity like Labour’s first 18 months to improve relations with the giant market on our doorstep. As the EU grapples with the problem of enlargement to its east and populism at home, the notion of a more flexible, less monolithic EU of concentric or interlocking circles is growing in potency."
What I am looking for in Labour's manifesto is silence on the EU - that will (ironically) be a huge indicator to me where things are going. It will be a carte blance on EU trading relations and security agreements.
Sunak's actions on leaving the D-Day celebrations were very much a tacit expression of inward looking, isolationist ethos of the populist right, and its time has come.... I seriously think the country is turning a corner on brexit going into the next parliament.
Lol, this is an absolutely brilliant example of the genre: "What D-Day was really about is rejoining the single market".
You've got to admire the creativity, the imagination, the insightful juxtaposition of two apparently unrelated topics ;-)
We Remainers are never going to go away.
Not until you die off anyway.
There is nothing to "Remain" part of. You lost that war. We left the EU.
There is only Rejoin. And that is the dog that hasn't barked in this election. And if not this, then when?
You're right about it not becoming a major issue in this election, but I think it provides a general sense of unease to politics in the UK.
By a ratio of at least 3:1, people think the negatives of Brexit outweigh the benefits. For Leavers, immigration is at an all time high - so it was pointless for many. There must be some regret or misgiving there. For Remainers, there is no hint that any party will bring us back in or materially improve our relationship with Europe, so it sits as an open wound.
It's not being spoken about, but I think it contributes to the doom and gloom.
I think that is just a cipher for 'things were better before 2016' - which is understandable; the world was a surer place, no Ukraine, no pandemic, no culture wars (at least, not on the scale we see now), less immigration. Understandable people might wish things were otherwise. I'd happily swallow rejoin if it could mean we could wipe out all that other unpleasantness. But clearly, almost everything bad which has happened since 2016 is nothing to do with Brexit, and undoing Brexit wouldn't bring back those apples. That's just the way humans think. Change the thing we did and we can control and undo all those things we can't control.
If we were still in the EU, today’s news headline would be that electric cars are about to get more expensive, the EU voting for protectionism over Net Zero.
Great for the campaigners who think cars are evil and we should all get the bus, for for the average motorist who just to get from A to B as cheaply as possible, not so much.
Transportation was always a weakness in our climate change mitigation efforts - look at the massive fuss over the 2030 deadline for new ICE cars, even while other sectors of the economy made massive reductions in emissions. The Chinese have exploited the gap left by the lethargy and lobbying of European/American car makers.
It's darkly funny. When I was at Uni, there was all sorts of depressed talk about the industrialisation of China and India making climate change efforts basically pointless. Instead, the Chinese have flooded the market with cheap solar panels and cheap EVs to the extent that it's going to destroy fossil fuel industries in the West.
Annual CO2 emissions are still rising. It is delusional to think that by 2050 this will be much different. Even if output is halved from present levels (the evidence that this can be done is absent), levels will only be rising but a little more slowly.
The rhetoric is all reminiscent of UK General Election rhetoric. A realistic truthful conversation would make a nice change.
Climate change mitigation is not binary. It's not like there is a big climate change switch when we hit 2 degrees.
Most people working in this field know and accept that a huge amount of climate change damage is baked in. That's why we need to start discussing adaptation - flood defences, new pandemics, famine, mass migration.
But that doesn't mean the world should stop trying to prevent it being even worse - there is no sign of China abandoning solar or EVs, is there? The question for the UK is whether we want to embrace all this new technology or get left behind by the rest of the world.
Agree. This discussion is obscured by Trumpian denialists and 'Just Stop Oil' fundamentalists. The 'amelioration' aspect is often ignored.
Even if you don't agree with their methods, there's nothing particularly fundamentalist about JSO's demands. There is general scientific agreement that we need to rapidly reduce consumption of fossil fuels, and ceasing to issue new licences for oil exploration and production is broadly compatible with that aim. Amelioration to cope with the damage already in the pipeline is of course also required, but that's in addition to, not instead of, a sharp reduction in oil consumption.
Perhaps you'd like to accompany me if I have to close a factory in Aberdeen in the second half of this year. Decent people will be put out of a job because of flawed government policies, and I don't see too many "green jobs" they can take round where they live.
If I hear another idiot saying that they want "Green growth"... It apparently means growth without making anything, building anything. And it is free.
Changing technologies is massively disruptive for an industry - see Germany and American car makers. Who are stumbling.
The idea that this is free or painless is yet another populist, stupid delusion.
It is hard and expensive. And worth doing. Just decoupling our economy from the times that El Supremo has the hiccups and starts another war, and energy prices zoom up, it worth it. X recessions avoided.
Saving the planet is a nice side effect.
Further, in the longer term, as energy prices fall below fossil fuel energy prices, we have interesting opportunities.
It annoys me too. The North Sea probably has another decade or so in it, forcing a shut down is just madness.
We saw this before when everything had to be shipped off to China then suddenly it wasnt such a good idea after all but the jobs were then long gone.
New Zealand to lift oil drilling ban amid blackout fears
That makes little sense given that virtually none of New Zealand's electricity is generated from oil. Most of their electricity comes from renewable sources such as hydroelectricity. Oh, of course, it's The Telegraph. Why would it make sense?
It’s like an exquisite form of Chinese water torture… drip drip drip
This really is the defining issue of the election. The UK's rapidly deteriorating health service directly and deeply affects large swathes of the electorate and is indicative of the general decline in services. It is a sign of a failed government.
Or a failed health service.
There is £251bn of government spending on health this year with a NHS workforce of over two million.
That's the thing. There's no shortage of resources for the NHS. The money must be spent appallingly inefficiently.
The NHS is a long way down the law of diminishing returns path.
I have sympathy for those public services which have received genuine funding cuts but have still maintained acceptable performance levels.
You never get an answer to the question: How much would be enough to fund the NHS?
It's like asking how fast to run on a treadmill to move forward.
It doesn't matter how much you spend it will never be enough.
Spend more, people stay alive longer, get more chronic illnesses, require more expenditure as a result. It's a never ending circle until people do die.
If the NHS could spend shedloads more money on prevention and general health advice (diet, cutting out UPF, eat more plants, exercise, mental wellbeing) in the long run the population would be far healthier, happier and cost the NHS a lot less. Big Food, wouldn't like it, though.
Alternatively getting more up to diet science and stop pushing the myth of five plus fruit and veg a day and other failed medical advice that has led to ever expanding chronic disease and a surge in diabetes.
My dad spent decades as a vegetarian and ended up with diabetes as a result. Subsequently now no longer a vegetarian and works hard to cut down carbs but still afflicted with diabetes.
I'm not taking any chances of ending up with diabetes myself. I've spent seven months now on zero a day for plant-based products. Down 45 pounds as a result, blood tests are great and resting heart rate down by over 10 beats per minute.
It’s like an exquisite form of Chinese water torture… drip drip drip
This really is the defining issue of the election. The UK's rapidly deteriorating health service directly and deeply affects large swathes of the electorate and is indicative of the general decline in services. It is a sign of a failed government.
Or a failed health service.
There is £251bn of government spending on health this year with a NHS workforce of over two million.
That's the thing. There's no shortage of resources for the NHS. The money must be spent appallingly inefficiently.
The NHS is a long way down the law of diminishing returns path.
I have sympathy for those public services which have received genuine funding cuts but have still maintained acceptable performance levels.
My relative who nearly died just the other week was in an open bay right next to the nurses station. Seen by multiple people per day - nurses, doctors etc. No shortage of staff.
They all failed to do something about the dehydration or starvation - despite them being repeatedly told by his wife about him not eating or drinking. Which is a common result of the operation he had.
It seems that to change anything, they needed to consult God. Well, God's superior.
Everyone has a story like this. I'm glad to hear your relative recovered but how exactly would more money solve the issue that in aggregate, the NHS doesn't care about its patients. It cares about aggregate stats and targets but on the wards it all too often doesn't really care if this patient or that patient is suffering or inconvenienced or dies. Because it is one big pot of suffering so that particular instance won't matter too much and unless you get a Letby (whose conviction I find troubling having read that Atlantic? NYTimes? piece) it will go on happening.
It's about process. Ha!
Individual bits of good (the work that the people do is generally good) - but the system seems to be very poor on lines of reporting, passing information, escalating issues..
EDIT: I watched as they fiddled with different systems, wrote stuff on paper. I could do them such a nice system of patient management, complete with autogenerating graphs, stats monitoring and alerts, test ordering and status, treatment ordering and status, idiot checking on dosages.........
Yes but you can't build a new NHS system because of the need to provide support to thousands of users across the country every day. It is that insistence on national scale that leads back to the usual failed suspects like Atos and Capita.
The key takehome from the D-Day debacle is that the vast majority of the electorate like to see britain along side neighbours and allies affirming its international commitment..... a britain at the heart of the western international community honouring that heritage.... basically the opposite of free wheeling go it alone brexiteerism. I saw Marr's piece in the New Statesman talking about rejoining the single market
"But the country has already changed its mind about his rotten Brexit deal, and there would be no opportunity like Labour’s first 18 months to improve relations with the giant market on our doorstep. As the EU grapples with the problem of enlargement to its east and populism at home, the notion of a more flexible, less monolithic EU of concentric or interlocking circles is growing in potency."
What I am looking for in Labour's manifesto is silence on the EU - that will (ironically) be a huge indicator to me where things are going. It will be a carte blance on EU trading relations and security agreements.
Sunak's actions on leaving the D-Day celebrations were very much a tacit expression of inward looking, isolationist ethos of the populist right, and its time has come.... I seriously think the country is turning a corner on brexit going into the next parliament.
Lol, this is an absolutely brilliant example of the genre: "What D-Day was really about is rejoining the single market".
You've got to admire the creativity, the imagination, the insightful juxtaposition of two apparently unrelated topics ;-)
We Remainers are never going to go away.
Not until you die off anyway.
There is nothing to "Remain" part of. You lost that war. We left the EU.
There is only Rejoin. And that is the dog that hasn't barked in this election. And if not this, then when?
You're right about it not becoming a major issue in this election, but I think it provides a general sense of unease to politics in the UK.
By a ratio of at least 3:1, people think the negatives of Brexit outweigh the benefits. For Leavers, immigration is at an all time high - so it was pointless for many. There must be some regret or misgiving there. For Remainers, there is no hint that any party will bring us back in or materially improve our relationship with Europe, so it sits as an open wound.
It's not being spoken about, but I think it contributes to the doom and gloom.
I think that is just a cipher for 'things were better before 2016' - which is understandable; the world was a surer place, no Ukraine, no pandemic, no culture wars (at least, not on the scale we see now), less immigration. Understandable people might wish things were otherwise. I'd happily swallow rejoin if it could mean we could wipe out all that other unpleasantness. But clearly, almost everything bad which has happened since 2016 is nothing to do with Brexit, and undoing Brexit wouldn't bring back those apples. That's just the way humans think. Change the thing we did and we can control and undo all those things we can't control.
If we were still in the EU, today’s news headline would be that electric cars are about to get more expensive, the EU voting for protectionism over Net Zero.
Great for the campaigners who think cars are evil and we should all get the bus, for for the average motorist who just to get from A to B as cheaply as possible, not so much.
Transportation was always a weakness in our climate change mitigation efforts - look at the massive fuss over the 2030 deadline for new ICE cars, even while other sectors of the economy made massive reductions in emissions. The Chinese have exploited the gap left by the lethargy and lobbying of European/American car makers.
It's darkly funny. When I was at Uni, there was all sorts of depressed talk about the industrialisation of China and India making climate change efforts basically pointless. Instead, the Chinese have flooded the market with cheap solar panels and cheap EVs to the extent that it's going to destroy fossil fuel industries in the West.
Annual CO2 emissions are still rising. It is delusional to think that by 2050 this will be much different. Even if output is halved from present levels (the evidence that this can be done is absent), levels will only be rising but a little more slowly.
The rhetoric is all reminiscent of UK General Election rhetoric. A realistic truthful conversation would make a nice change.
Climate change mitigation is not binary. It's not like there is a big climate change switch when we hit 2 degrees.
Most people working in this field know and accept that a huge amount of climate change damage is baked in. That's why we need to start discussing adaptation - flood defences, new pandemics, famine, mass migration.
But that doesn't mean the world should stop trying to prevent it being even worse - there is no sign of China abandoning solar or EVs, is there? The question for the UK is whether we want to embrace all this new technology or get left behind by the rest of the world.
Agree. This discussion is obscured by Trumpian denialists and 'Just Stop Oil' fundamentalists. The 'amelioration' aspect is often ignored.
Even if you don't agree with their methods, there's nothing particularly fundamentalist about JSO's demands. There is general scientific agreement that we need to rapidly reduce consumption of fossil fuels, and ceasing to issue new licences for oil exploration and production is broadly compatible with that aim. Amelioration to cope with the damage already in the pipeline is of course also required, but that's in addition to, not instead of, a sharp reduction in oil consumption.
Perhaps you'd like to accompany me if I have to close a factory in Aberdeen in the second half of this year. Decent people will be put out of a job because of flawed government policies, and I don't see too many "green jobs" they can take round where they live.
If I hear another idiot saying that they want "Green growth"... It apparently means growth without making anything, building anything. And it is free.
Changing technologies is massively disruptive for an industry - see Germany and American car makers. Who are stumbling.
The idea that this is free or painless is yet another populist, stupid delusion.
It is hard and expensive. And worth doing. Just decoupling our economy from the times that El Supremo has the hiccups and starts another war, and energy prices zoom up, it worth it. X recessions avoided.
Saving the planet is a nice side effect.
Further, in the longer term, as energy prices fall below fossil fuel energy prices, we have interesting opportunities.
Indeed. Switching to a sustainable economy is both necessary and also a huge challenge. Those who paint it as something that can be done without too much bother or inconvenience risk scuppering the whole effort. It's like fighting a war. It's necessary, but it inevitably involves some sacrifice. Smart leadership would prepare people for the challenges ahead as well as ensuring that the burdens are shared fairly.
The other thing is that the status quo is not an option. The energy transition away from fossil fuels is going to happen, and you don't want to be a laggard.
Estimates suggest 20% of all the electricity generated in Ireland will go to keeping Data Centres functioning.
Why not close them ?
Because they are useful and you can generate the electricity for them cleanly.
Only way in the future, Ireland currently generates 52% of its energy from oil or coal. With a growing population and a noted lack of infrastructure investment, that will be the case for some time. Data centres will consume energy and there is no green backstop to feed them.
It’s like an exquisite form of Chinese water torture… drip drip drip
This really is the defining issue of the election. The UK's rapidly deteriorating health service directly and deeply affects large swathes of the electorate and is indicative of the general decline in services. It is a sign of a failed government.
Or a failed health service.
There is £251bn of government spending on health this year with a NHS workforce of over two million.
That's the thing. There's no shortage of resources for the NHS. The money must be spent appallingly inefficiently.
The NHS is a long way down the law of diminishing returns path.
I have sympathy for those public services which have received genuine funding cuts but have still maintained acceptable performance levels.
You never get an answer to the question: How much would be enough to fund the NHS?
It's like asking how fast to run on a treadmill to move forward.
It doesn't matter how much you spend it will never be enough.
Spend more, people stay alive longer, get more chronic illnesses, require more expenditure as a result. It's a never ending circle until people do die.
If the NHS could spend shedloads more money on prevention and general health advice (diet, cutting out UPF, eat more plants, exercise, mental wellbeing) in the long run the population would be far healthier, happier and cost the NHS a lot less. Big Food, wouldn't like it, though.
Alternatively getting more up to diet science and stop pushing the myth of five plus fruit and veg a day and other failed medical advice that has led to ever expanding chronic disease and a surge in diabetes.
My dad spent decades as a vegetarian and ended up with diabetes as a result. Subsequently now no longer a vegetarian and works hard to cut down carbs but still afflicted with diabetes.
I'm not taking any chances of ending up with diabetes myself. I've spent seven months now on zero a day for plant-based products. Down 45 pounds as a result, blood tests are great and resting heart rate down by over 10 beats per minute.
That's great for you. You should do whatever you feel is right, but it's scientific fact that there is no downside to including vegetables in your diet. It really isn't failed medical science.
It’s like an exquisite form of Chinese water torture… drip drip drip
This really is the defining issue of the election. The UK's rapidly deteriorating health service directly and deeply affects large swathes of the electorate and is indicative of the general decline in services. It is a sign of a failed government.
Or a failed health service.
There is £251bn of government spending on health this year with a NHS workforce of over two million.
That's the thing. There's no shortage of resources for the NHS. The money must be spent appallingly inefficiently.
The NHS is a long way down the law of diminishing returns path.
I have sympathy for those public services which have received genuine funding cuts but have still maintained acceptable performance levels.
You never get an answer to the question: How much would be enough to fund the NHS?
It's like asking how fast to run on a treadmill to move forward.
It doesn't matter how much you spend it will never be enough.
Spend more, people stay alive longer, get more chronic illnesses, require more expenditure as a result. It's a never ending circle until people do die.
Yes, but that makes it sound like health spending is futile. In principle for every additional £1 you spend on health you get an extra fraction of a QALY in return. So, to a certain extent, you spend as much money as you have available, once you've paid for more important things. And as the country becomes richer it has more spare money left over to spend on better health care.
That's a good thing, not a counsel of despair.
So I'd agree with @Eabhal - fix it as a percentage of GDP, perhaps with a planned gradual increase to accommodate the demographic transition, but with a ceiling once that transition has occurred.
Obviously you'd have to have some way of smoothing out the effects of recessions, so that they didn't lead to an instantaneous cut in health spending, but that sort of thing would also stop you from increasing spending unsustainably during a boom.
I disagree actually. The myth with QALY is that all years are created equal. Keeping people alive longer in chronic pain, with dementia and so on may not always be the kindest thing to do, or provide the best return on expenditure.
If we're going to boost expenditure on something then instead of the NHS we should be looking towards what someone might suggest as three priorities: education, education, education.
We treat keeping people alive like money is no object but penny-pinch with setting young people up with an education that they will affect their lives for the next 6 or 7 decades after they leave school.
What do you think QA is in QALY?
Badly handled. I think NICE and the NHS are so scared of being considered ageist (not unreasonably so either) that they don't handle it well at all.
Throwing unlimited money at keeping people in care homes alive for longer, while not properly funding people's education that will affect them for the next 70 years, is an unmitigated failure.
It’s like an exquisite form of Chinese water torture… drip drip drip
This really is the defining issue of the election. The UK's rapidly deteriorating health service directly and deeply affects large swathes of the electorate and is indicative of the general decline in services. It is a sign of a failed government.
Or a failed health service.
There is £251bn of government spending on health this year with a NHS workforce of over two million.
That's the thing. There's no shortage of resources for the NHS. The money must be spent appallingly inefficiently.
The NHS is a long way down the law of diminishing returns path.
I have sympathy for those public services which have received genuine funding cuts but have still maintained acceptable performance levels.
You never get an answer to the question: How much would be enough to fund the NHS?
It's like asking how fast to run on a treadmill to move forward.
It doesn't matter how much you spend it will never be enough.
Spend more, people stay alive longer, get more chronic illnesses, require more expenditure as a result. It's a never ending circle until people do die.
If the NHS could spend shedloads more money on prevention and general health advice (diet, cutting out UPF, eat more plants, exercise, mental wellbeing) in the long run the population would be far healthier, happier and cost the NHS a lot less. Big Food, wouldn't like it, though.
Alternatively getting more up to diet science and stop pushing the myth of five plus fruit and veg a day and other failed medical advice that has led to ever expanding chronic disease and a surge in diabetes.
My dad spent decades as a vegetarian and ended up with diabetes as a result. Subsequently now no longer a vegetarian and works hard to cut down carbs but still afflicted with diabetes.
I'm not taking any chances of ending up with diabetes myself. I've spent seven months now on zero a day for plant-based products. Down 45 pounds as a result, blood tests are great and resting heart rate down by over 10 beats per minute.
That's great for you. You should do whatever you feel is right, but it's scientific fact that there is no downside to including vegetables in your diet. It really isn't failed medical science.
No, its not. There is a growing body of evidence that there is a downside to including carbs and vegetables in your diet. Especially exclusively/primarily doing so and not incorporating enough meats and proteins and fats.
I thought Labour were supposed to be carrying a ming vase across the room? In their hubris and triumphalism they have completely dropped it with this dishonest and ideologically dangerous manifesto.
The key takehome from the D-Day debacle is that the vast majority of the electorate like to see britain along side neighbours and allies affirming its international commitment..... a britain at the heart of the western international community honouring that heritage.... basically the opposite of free wheeling go it alone brexiteerism. I saw Marr's piece in the New Statesman talking about rejoining the single market
"But the country has already changed its mind about his rotten Brexit deal, and there would be no opportunity like Labour’s first 18 months to improve relations with the giant market on our doorstep. As the EU grapples with the problem of enlargement to its east and populism at home, the notion of a more flexible, less monolithic EU of concentric or interlocking circles is growing in potency."
What I am looking for in Labour's manifesto is silence on the EU - that will (ironically) be a huge indicator to me where things are going. It will be a carte blance on EU trading relations and security agreements.
Sunak's actions on leaving the D-Day celebrations were very much a tacit expression of inward looking, isolationist ethos of the populist right, and its time has come.... I seriously think the country is turning a corner on brexit going into the next parliament.
Lol, this is an absolutely brilliant example of the genre: "What D-Day was really about is rejoining the single market".
You've got to admire the creativity, the imagination, the insightful juxtaposition of two apparently unrelated topics ;-)
We Remainers are never going to go away.
Not until you die off anyway.
There is nothing to "Remain" part of. You lost that war. We left the EU.
There is only Rejoin. And that is the dog that hasn't barked in this election. And if not this, then when?
You're right about it not becoming a major issue in this election, but I think it provides a general sense of unease to politics in the UK.
By a ratio of at least 3:1, people think the negatives of Brexit outweigh the benefits. For Leavers, immigration is at an all time high - so it was pointless for many. There must be some regret or misgiving there. For Remainers, there is no hint that any party will bring us back in or materially improve our relationship with Europe, so it sits as an open wound.
It's not being spoken about, but I think it contributes to the doom and gloom.
I think that is just a cipher for 'things were better before 2016' - which is understandable; the world was a surer place, no Ukraine, no pandemic, no culture wars (at least, not on the scale we see now), less immigration. Understandable people might wish things were otherwise. I'd happily swallow rejoin if it could mean we could wipe out all that other unpleasantness. But clearly, almost everything bad which has happened since 2016 is nothing to do with Brexit, and undoing Brexit wouldn't bring back those apples. That's just the way humans think. Change the thing we did and we can control and undo all those things we can't control.
If we were still in the EU, today’s news headline would be that electric cars are about to get more expensive, the EU voting for protectionism over Net Zero.
Great for the campaigners who think cars are evil and we should all get the bus, for for the average motorist who just to get from A to B as cheaply as possible, not so much.
Transportation was always a weakness in our climate change mitigation efforts - look at the massive fuss over the 2030 deadline for new ICE cars, even while other sectors of the economy made massive reductions in emissions. The Chinese have exploited the gap left by the lethargy and lobbying of European/American car makers.
It's darkly funny. When I was at Uni, there was all sorts of depressed talk about the industrialisation of China and India making climate change efforts basically pointless. Instead, the Chinese have flooded the market with cheap solar panels and cheap EVs to the extent that it's going to destroy fossil fuel industries in the West.
Annual CO2 emissions are still rising. It is delusional to think that by 2050 this will be much different. Even if output is halved from present levels (the evidence that this can be done is absent), levels will only be rising but a little more slowly.
The rhetoric is all reminiscent of UK General Election rhetoric. A realistic truthful conversation would make a nice change.
Climate change mitigation is not binary. It's not like there is a big climate change switch when we hit 2 degrees.
Most people working in this field know and accept that a huge amount of climate change damage is baked in. That's why we need to start discussing adaptation - flood defences, new pandemics, famine, mass migration.
But that doesn't mean the world should stop trying to prevent it being even worse - there is no sign of China abandoning solar or EVs, is there? The question for the UK is whether we want to embrace all this new technology or get left behind by the rest of the world.
Agree. This discussion is obscured by Trumpian denialists and 'Just Stop Oil' fundamentalists. The 'amelioration' aspect is often ignored.
Even if you don't agree with their methods, there's nothing particularly fundamentalist about JSO's demands. There is general scientific agreement that we need to rapidly reduce consumption of fossil fuels, and ceasing to issue new licences for oil exploration and production is broadly compatible with that aim. Amelioration to cope with the damage already in the pipeline is of course also required, but that's in addition to, not instead of, a sharp reduction in oil consumption.
Perhaps you'd like to accompany me if I have to close a factory in Aberdeen in the second half of this year. Decent people will be put out of a job because of flawed government policies, and I don't see too many "green jobs" they can take round where they live.
If I hear another idiot saying that they want "Green growth"... It apparently means growth without making anything, building anything. And it is free.
Changing technologies is massively disruptive for an industry - see Germany and American car makers. Who are stumbling.
The idea that this is free or painless is yet another populist, stupid delusion.
It is hard and expensive. And worth doing. Just decoupling our economy from the times that El Supremo has the hiccups and starts another war, and energy prices zoom up, it worth it. X recessions avoided.
Saving the planet is a nice side effect.
Further, in the longer term, as energy prices fall below fossil fuel energy prices, we have interesting opportunities.
Indeed. Switching to a sustainable economy is both necessary and also a huge challenge. Those who paint it as something that can be done without too much bother or inconvenience risk scuppering the whole effort. It's like fighting a war. It's necessary, but it inevitably involves some sacrifice. Smart leadership would prepare people for the challenges ahead as well as ensuring that the burdens are shared fairly.
The other thing is that the status quo is not an option. The energy transition away from fossil fuels is going to happen, and you don't want to be a laggard.
Estimates suggest 20% of all the electricity generated in Ireland will go to keeping Data Centres functioning.
Why not close them ?
Because they are useful and you can generate the electricity for them cleanly.
Only way in the future, Ireland currently generates 52% of its energy from oil or coal. With a growing population and a noted lack of infrastructure investment, that will be the case for some time. Data centres will consume energy and there is no green backstop to feed them.
Those problems will continue to exist whether there are data centres or not. I'd suggest fixing the problem.
I think the Green Party in government spent too much time/money on admirable improvements to public transport, and not enough on offshore wind and other energy infrastructure.
Considering his (fake) nationalist credentials, Farage really loves foreign money... Holly Vukadinović, a half Serbian Australian, then their´s Tump, Putin...
Treason doth never prosper. What´s the reason? For if it doth prosper, none dare call it treason.
The key takehome from the D-Day debacle is that the vast majority of the electorate like to see britain along side neighbours and allies affirming its international commitment..... a britain at the heart of the western international community honouring that heritage.... basically the opposite of free wheeling go it alone brexiteerism. I saw Marr's piece in the New Statesman talking about rejoining the single market
"But the country has already changed its mind about his rotten Brexit deal, and there would be no opportunity like Labour’s first 18 months to improve relations with the giant market on our doorstep. As the EU grapples with the problem of enlargement to its east and populism at home, the notion of a more flexible, less monolithic EU of concentric or interlocking circles is growing in potency."
What I am looking for in Labour's manifesto is silence on the EU - that will (ironically) be a huge indicator to me where things are going. It will be a carte blance on EU trading relations and security agreements.
Sunak's actions on leaving the D-Day celebrations were very much a tacit expression of inward looking, isolationist ethos of the populist right, and its time has come.... I seriously think the country is turning a corner on brexit going into the next parliament.
Lol, this is an absolutely brilliant example of the genre: "What D-Day was really about is rejoining the single market".
You've got to admire the creativity, the imagination, the insightful juxtaposition of two apparently unrelated topics ;-)
We Remainers are never going to go away.
Not until you die off anyway.
There is nothing to "Remain" part of. You lost that war. We left the EU.
There is only Rejoin. And that is the dog that hasn't barked in this election. And if not this, then when?
You're right about it not becoming a major issue in this election, but I think it provides a general sense of unease to politics in the UK.
By a ratio of at least 3:1, people think the negatives of Brexit outweigh the benefits. For Leavers, immigration is at an all time high - so it was pointless for many. There must be some regret or misgiving there. For Remainers, there is no hint that any party will bring us back in or materially improve our relationship with Europe, so it sits as an open wound.
It's not being spoken about, but I think it contributes to the doom and gloom.
I think that is just a cipher for 'things were better before 2016' - which is understandable; the world was a surer place, no Ukraine, no pandemic, no culture wars (at least, not on the scale we see now), less immigration. Understandable people might wish things were otherwise. I'd happily swallow rejoin if it could mean we could wipe out all that other unpleasantness. But clearly, almost everything bad which has happened since 2016 is nothing to do with Brexit, and undoing Brexit wouldn't bring back those apples. That's just the way humans think. Change the thing we did and we can control and undo all those things we can't control.
If we were still in the EU, today’s news headline would be that electric cars are about to get more expensive, the EU voting for protectionism over Net Zero.
Great for the campaigners who think cars are evil and we should all get the bus, for for the average motorist who just to get from A to B as cheaply as possible, not so much.
Transportation was always a weakness in our climate change mitigation efforts - look at the massive fuss over the 2030 deadline for new ICE cars, even while other sectors of the economy made massive reductions in emissions. The Chinese have exploited the gap left by the lethargy and lobbying of European/American car makers.
It's darkly funny. When I was at Uni, there was all sorts of depressed talk about the industrialisation of China and India making climate change efforts basically pointless. Instead, the Chinese have flooded the market with cheap solar panels and cheap EVs to the extent that it's going to destroy fossil fuel industries in the West.
Annual CO2 emissions are still rising. It is delusional to think that by 2050 this will be much different. Even if output is halved from present levels (the evidence that this can be done is absent), levels will only be rising but a little more slowly.
The rhetoric is all reminiscent of UK General Election rhetoric. A realistic truthful conversation would make a nice change.
Climate change mitigation is not binary. It's not like there is a big climate change switch when we hit 2 degrees.
Most people working in this field know and accept that a huge amount of climate change damage is baked in. That's why we need to start discussing adaptation - flood defences, new pandemics, famine, mass migration.
But that doesn't mean the world should stop trying to prevent it being even worse - there is no sign of China abandoning solar or EVs, is there? The question for the UK is whether we want to embrace all this new technology or get left behind by the rest of the world.
Agree. This discussion is obscured by Trumpian denialists and 'Just Stop Oil' fundamentalists. The 'amelioration' aspect is often ignored.
Even if you don't agree with their methods, there's nothing particularly fundamentalist about JSO's demands. There is general scientific agreement that we need to rapidly reduce consumption of fossil fuels, and ceasing to issue new licences for oil exploration and production is broadly compatible with that aim. Amelioration to cope with the damage already in the pipeline is of course also required, but that's in addition to, not instead of, a sharp reduction in oil consumption.
Perhaps you'd like to accompany me if I have to close a factory in Aberdeen in the second half of this year. Decent people will be put out of a job because of flawed government policies, and I don't see too many "green jobs" they can take round where they live.
If I hear another idiot saying that they want "Green growth"... It apparently means growth without making anything, building anything. And it is free.
Changing technologies is massively disruptive for an industry - see Germany and American car makers. Who are stumbling.
The idea that this is free or painless is yet another populist, stupid delusion.
It is hard and expensive. And worth doing. Just decoupling our economy from the times that El Supremo has the hiccups and starts another war, and energy prices zoom up, it worth it. X recessions avoided.
Saving the planet is a nice side effect.
Further, in the longer term, as energy prices fall below fossil fuel energy prices, we have interesting opportunities.
Indeed. Switching to a sustainable economy is both necessary and also a huge challenge. Those who paint it as something that can be done without too much bother or inconvenience risk scuppering the whole effort. It's like fighting a war. It's necessary, but it inevitably involves some sacrifice. Smart leadership would prepare people for the challenges ahead as well as ensuring that the burdens are shared fairly.
The other thing is that the status quo is not an option. The energy transition away from fossil fuels is going to happen, and you don't want to be a laggard.
If we are talking energy transition, then coal fired plants merely need to self-identity as low carbon, and we're sorted.
It’s like an exquisite form of Chinese water torture… drip drip drip
This really is the defining issue of the election. The UK's rapidly deteriorating health service directly and deeply affects large swathes of the electorate and is indicative of the general decline in services. It is a sign of a failed government.
Or a failed health service.
There is £251bn of government spending on health this year with a NHS workforce of over two million.
That's the thing. There's no shortage of resources for the NHS. The money must be spent appallingly inefficiently.
The NHS is a long way down the law of diminishing returns path.
I have sympathy for those public services which have received genuine funding cuts but have still maintained acceptable performance levels.
You never get an answer to the question: How much would be enough to fund the NHS?
It's like asking how fast to run on a treadmill to move forward.
It doesn't matter how much you spend it will never be enough.
Spend more, people stay alive longer, get more chronic illnesses, require more expenditure as a result. It's a never ending circle until people do die.
If the NHS could spend shedloads more money on prevention and general health advice (diet, cutting out UPF, eat more plants, exercise, mental wellbeing) in the long run the population would be far healthier, happier and cost the NHS a lot less. Big Food, wouldn't like it, though.
Alternatively getting more up to diet science and stop pushing the myth of five plus fruit and veg a day and other failed medical advice that has led to ever expanding chronic disease and a surge in diabetes.
My dad spent decades as a vegetarian and ended up with diabetes as a result. Subsequently now no longer a vegetarian and works hard to cut down carbs but still afflicted with diabetes.
I'm not taking any chances of ending up with diabetes myself. I've spent seven months now on zero a day for plant-based products. Down 45 pounds as a result, blood tests are great and resting heart rate down by over 10 beats per minute.
That's great for you. You should do whatever you feel is right, but it's scientific fact that there is no downside to including vegetables in your diet. It really isn't failed medical science.
No, its not. There is a growing body of evidence that there is a downside to including carbs and vegetables in your diet. Especially exclusively/primarily doing so and not incorporating enough meats and proteins and fats.
I think this is complicated because not all carbohydrates are the same, and the standard of research in this area is low.
It’s like an exquisite form of Chinese water torture… drip drip drip
This really is the defining issue of the election. The UK's rapidly deteriorating health service directly and deeply affects large swathes of the electorate and is indicative of the general decline in services. It is a sign of a failed government.
Or a failed health service.
There is £251bn of government spending on health this year with a NHS workforce of over two million.
That's the thing. There's no shortage of resources for the NHS. The money must be spent appallingly inefficiently.
The NHS is a long way down the law of diminishing returns path.
I have sympathy for those public services which have received genuine funding cuts but have still maintained acceptable performance levels.
You never get an answer to the question: How much would be enough to fund the NHS?
It's like asking how fast to run on a treadmill to move forward.
It doesn't matter how much you spend it will never be enough.
Spend more, people stay alive longer, get more chronic illnesses, require more expenditure as a result. It's a never ending circle until people do die.
Yes, but that makes it sound like health spending is futile. In principle for every additional £1 you spend on health you get an extra fraction of a QALY in return. So, to a certain extent, you spend as much money as you have available, once you've paid for more important things. And as the country becomes richer it has more spare money left over to spend on better health care.
That's a good thing, not a counsel of despair.
So I'd agree with @Eabhal - fix it as a percentage of GDP, perhaps with a planned gradual increase to accommodate the demographic transition, but with a ceiling once that transition has occurred.
Obviously you'd have to have some way of smoothing out the effects of recessions, so that they didn't lead to an instantaneous cut in health spending, but that sort of thing would also stop you from increasing spending unsustainably during a boom.
I disagree actually. The myth with QALY is that all years are created equal. Keeping people alive longer in chronic pain, with dementia and so on may not always be the kindest thing to do, or provide the best return on expenditure.
If we're going to boost expenditure on something then instead of the NHS we should be looking towards what someone might suggest as three priorities: education, education, education.
We treat keeping people alive like money is no object but penny-pinch with setting young people up with an education that they will affect their lives for the next 6 or 7 decades after they leave school.
QALY = Quality-Adjusted Life Year.
I agree about the importance of education.
My father was involved in whole QALY thing from the medical ethics side. The whole point is the Quality of Life.
The key takehome from the D-Day debacle is that the vast majority of the electorate like to see britain along side neighbours and allies affirming its international commitment..... a britain at the heart of the western international community honouring that heritage.... basically the opposite of free wheeling go it alone brexiteerism. I saw Marr's piece in the New Statesman talking about rejoining the single market
"But the country has already changed its mind about his rotten Brexit deal, and there would be no opportunity like Labour’s first 18 months to improve relations with the giant market on our doorstep. As the EU grapples with the problem of enlargement to its east and populism at home, the notion of a more flexible, less monolithic EU of concentric or interlocking circles is growing in potency."
What I am looking for in Labour's manifesto is silence on the EU - that will (ironically) be a huge indicator to me where things are going. It will be a carte blance on EU trading relations and security agreements.
Sunak's actions on leaving the D-Day celebrations were very much a tacit expression of inward looking, isolationist ethos of the populist right, and its time has come.... I seriously think the country is turning a corner on brexit going into the next parliament.
Lol, this is an absolutely brilliant example of the genre: "What D-Day was really about is rejoining the single market".
You've got to admire the creativity, the imagination, the insightful juxtaposition of two apparently unrelated topics ;-)
We Remainers are never going to go away.
Not until you die off anyway.
There is nothing to "Remain" part of. You lost that war. We left the EU.
There is only Rejoin. And that is the dog that hasn't barked in this election. And if not this, then when?
You're right about it not becoming a major issue in this election, but I think it provides a general sense of unease to politics in the UK.
By a ratio of at least 3:1, people think the negatives of Brexit outweigh the benefits. For Leavers, immigration is at an all time high - so it was pointless for many. There must be some regret or misgiving there. For Remainers, there is no hint that any party will bring us back in or materially improve our relationship with Europe, so it sits as an open wound.
It's not being spoken about, but I think it contributes to the doom and gloom.
I think that is just a cipher for 'things were better before 2016' - which is understandable; the world was a surer place, no Ukraine, no pandemic, no culture wars (at least, not on the scale we see now), less immigration. Understandable people might wish things were otherwise. I'd happily swallow rejoin if it could mean we could wipe out all that other unpleasantness. But clearly, almost everything bad which has happened since 2016 is nothing to do with Brexit, and undoing Brexit wouldn't bring back those apples. That's just the way humans think. Change the thing we did and we can control and undo all those things we can't control.
If we were still in the EU, today’s news headline would be that electric cars are about to get more expensive, the EU voting for protectionism over Net Zero.
Great for the campaigners who think cars are evil and we should all get the bus, for for the average motorist who just to get from A to B as cheaply as possible, not so much.
Transportation was always a weakness in our climate change mitigation efforts - look at the massive fuss over the 2030 deadline for new ICE cars, even while other sectors of the economy made massive reductions in emissions. The Chinese have exploited the gap left by the lethargy and lobbying of European/American car makers.
It's darkly funny. When I was at Uni, there was all sorts of depressed talk about the industrialisation of China and India making climate change efforts basically pointless. Instead, the Chinese have flooded the market with cheap solar panels and cheap EVs to the extent that it's going to destroy fossil fuel industries in the West.
Annual CO2 emissions are still rising. It is delusional to think that by 2050 this will be much different. Even if output is halved from present levels (the evidence that this can be done is absent), levels will only be rising but a little more slowly.
The rhetoric is all reminiscent of UK General Election rhetoric. A realistic truthful conversation would make a nice change.
Climate change mitigation is not binary. It's not like there is a big climate change switch when we hit 2 degrees.
Most people working in this field know and accept that a huge amount of climate change damage is baked in. That's why we need to start discussing adaptation - flood defences, new pandemics, famine, mass migration.
But that doesn't mean the world should stop trying to prevent it being even worse - there is no sign of China abandoning solar or EVs, is there? The question for the UK is whether we want to embrace all this new technology or get left behind by the rest of the world.
Agree. This discussion is obscured by Trumpian denialists and 'Just Stop Oil' fundamentalists. The 'amelioration' aspect is often ignored.
Even if you don't agree with their methods, there's nothing particularly fundamentalist about JSO's demands. There is general scientific agreement that we need to rapidly reduce consumption of fossil fuels, and ceasing to issue new licences for oil exploration and production is broadly compatible with that aim. Amelioration to cope with the damage already in the pipeline is of course also required, but that's in addition to, not instead of, a sharp reduction in oil consumption.
Perhaps you'd like to accompany me if I have to close a factory in Aberdeen in the second half of this year. Decent people will be put out of a job because of flawed government policies, and I don't see too many "green jobs" they can take round where they live.
If I hear another idiot saying that they want "Green growth"... It apparently means growth without making anything, building anything. And it is free.
Changing technologies is massively disruptive for an industry - see Germany and American car makers. Who are stumbling.
The idea that this is free or painless is yet another populist, stupid delusion.
It is hard and expensive. And worth doing. Just decoupling our economy from the times that El Supremo has the hiccups and starts another war, and energy prices zoom up, it worth it. X recessions avoided.
Saving the planet is a nice side effect.
Further, in the longer term, as energy prices fall below fossil fuel energy prices, we have interesting opportunities.
Indeed. Switching to a sustainable economy is both necessary and also a huge challenge. Those who paint it as something that can be done without too much bother or inconvenience risk scuppering the whole effort. It's like fighting a war. It's necessary, but it inevitably involves some sacrifice. Smart leadership would prepare people for the challenges ahead as well as ensuring that the burdens are shared fairly.
The other thing is that the status quo is not an option. The energy transition away from fossil fuels is going to happen, and you don't want to be a laggard.
Estimates suggest 20% of all the electricity generated in Ireland will go to keeping Data Centres functioning.
Why not close them ?
Because they are useful and you can generate the electricity for them cleanly.
Only way in the future, Ireland currently generates 52% of its energy from oil or coal. With a growing population and a noted lack of infrastructure investment, that will be the case for some time. Data centres will consume energy and there is no green backstop to feed them.
Those problems will continue to exist whether there are data centres or not. I'd suggest fixing the problem.
I think the Green Party in government spent too much time/money on admirable improvements to public transport, and not enough on offshore wind and other energy infrastructure.
You could move all the data centres out of Ireland and to somewhere cool and Scandi with massive access to renewables. Why not close the lot and help the planet ?
The key takehome from the D-Day debacle is that the vast majority of the electorate like to see britain along side neighbours and allies affirming its international commitment..... a britain at the heart of the western international community honouring that heritage.... basically the opposite of free wheeling go it alone brexiteerism. I saw Marr's piece in the New Statesman talking about rejoining the single market
"But the country has already changed its mind about his rotten Brexit deal, and there would be no opportunity like Labour’s first 18 months to improve relations with the giant market on our doorstep. As the EU grapples with the problem of enlargement to its east and populism at home, the notion of a more flexible, less monolithic EU of concentric or interlocking circles is growing in potency."
What I am looking for in Labour's manifesto is silence on the EU - that will (ironically) be a huge indicator to me where things are going. It will be a carte blance on EU trading relations and security agreements.
Sunak's actions on leaving the D-Day celebrations were very much a tacit expression of inward looking, isolationist ethos of the populist right, and its time has come.... I seriously think the country is turning a corner on brexit going into the next parliament.
Lol, this is an absolutely brilliant example of the genre: "What D-Day was really about is rejoining the single market".
You've got to admire the creativity, the imagination, the insightful juxtaposition of two apparently unrelated topics ;-)
We Remainers are never going to go away.
Not until you die off anyway.
There is nothing to "Remain" part of. You lost that war. We left the EU.
There is only Rejoin. And that is the dog that hasn't barked in this election. And if not this, then when?
You're right about it not becoming a major issue in this election, but I think it provides a general sense of unease to politics in the UK.
By a ratio of at least 3:1, people think the negatives of Brexit outweigh the benefits. For Leavers, immigration is at an all time high - so it was pointless for many. There must be some regret or misgiving there. For Remainers, there is no hint that any party will bring us back in or materially improve our relationship with Europe, so it sits as an open wound.
It's not being spoken about, but I think it contributes to the doom and gloom.
I think that is just a cipher for 'things were better before 2016' - which is understandable; the world was a surer place, no Ukraine, no pandemic, no culture wars (at least, not on the scale we see now), less immigration. Understandable people might wish things were otherwise. I'd happily swallow rejoin if it could mean we could wipe out all that other unpleasantness. But clearly, almost everything bad which has happened since 2016 is nothing to do with Brexit, and undoing Brexit wouldn't bring back those apples. That's just the way humans think. Change the thing we did and we can control and undo all those things we can't control.
If we were still in the EU, today’s news headline would be that electric cars are about to get more expensive, the EU voting for protectionism over Net Zero.
Great for the campaigners who think cars are evil and we should all get the bus, for for the average motorist who just to get from A to B as cheaply as possible, not so much.
Transportation was always a weakness in our climate change mitigation efforts - look at the massive fuss over the 2030 deadline for new ICE cars, even while other sectors of the economy made massive reductions in emissions. The Chinese have exploited the gap left by the lethargy and lobbying of European/American car makers.
It's darkly funny. When I was at Uni, there was all sorts of depressed talk about the industrialisation of China and India making climate change efforts basically pointless. Instead, the Chinese have flooded the market with cheap solar panels and cheap EVs to the extent that it's going to destroy fossil fuel industries in the West.
Annual CO2 emissions are still rising. It is delusional to think that by 2050 this will be much different. Even if output is halved from present levels (the evidence that this can be done is absent), levels will only be rising but a little more slowly.
The rhetoric is all reminiscent of UK General Election rhetoric. A realistic truthful conversation would make a nice change.
Climate change mitigation is not binary. It's not like there is a big climate change switch when we hit 2 degrees.
Most people working in this field know and accept that a huge amount of climate change damage is baked in. That's why we need to start discussing adaptation - flood defences, new pandemics, famine, mass migration.
But that doesn't mean the world should stop trying to prevent it being even worse - there is no sign of China abandoning solar or EVs, is there? The question for the UK is whether we want to embrace all this new technology or get left behind by the rest of the world.
Agree. This discussion is obscured by Trumpian denialists and 'Just Stop Oil' fundamentalists. The 'amelioration' aspect is often ignored.
Even if you don't agree with their methods, there's nothing particularly fundamentalist about JSO's demands. There is general scientific agreement that we need to rapidly reduce consumption of fossil fuels, and ceasing to issue new licences for oil exploration and production is broadly compatible with that aim. Amelioration to cope with the damage already in the pipeline is of course also required, but that's in addition to, not instead of, a sharp reduction in oil consumption.
Perhaps you'd like to accompany me if I have to close a factory in Aberdeen in the second half of this year. Decent people will be put out of a job because of flawed government policies, and I don't see too many "green jobs" they can take round where they live.
If I hear another idiot saying that they want "Green growth"... It apparently means growth without making anything, building anything. And it is free.
Changing technologies is massively disruptive for an industry - see Germany and American car makers. Who are stumbling.
The idea that this is free or painless is yet another populist, stupid delusion.
It is hard and expensive. And worth doing. Just decoupling our economy from the times that El Supremo has the hiccups and starts another war, and energy prices zoom up, it worth it. X recessions avoided.
Saving the planet is a nice side effect.
Further, in the longer term, as energy prices fall below fossil fuel energy prices, we have interesting opportunities.
Indeed. Switching to a sustainable economy is both necessary and also a huge challenge. Those who paint it as something that can be done without too much bother or inconvenience risk scuppering the whole effort. It's like fighting a war. It's necessary, but it inevitably involves some sacrifice. Smart leadership would prepare people for the challenges ahead as well as ensuring that the burdens are shared fairly.
The other thing is that the status quo is not an option. The energy transition away from fossil fuels is going to happen, and you don't want to be a laggard.
Estimates suggest 20% of all the electricity generated in Ireland will go to keeping Data Centres functioning.
Why not close them ?
Because they are useful and you can generate the electricity for them cleanly.
Only way in the future, Ireland currently generates 52% of its energy from oil or coal. With a growing population and a noted lack of infrastructure investment, that will be the case for some time. Data centres will consume energy and there is no green backstop to feed them.
The key takehome from the D-Day debacle is that the vast majority of the electorate like to see britain along side neighbours and allies affirming its international commitment..... a britain at the heart of the western international community honouring that heritage.... basically the opposite of free wheeling go it alone brexiteerism. I saw Marr's piece in the New Statesman talking about rejoining the single market
"But the country has already changed its mind about his rotten Brexit deal, and there would be no opportunity like Labour’s first 18 months to improve relations with the giant market on our doorstep. As the EU grapples with the problem of enlargement to its east and populism at home, the notion of a more flexible, less monolithic EU of concentric or interlocking circles is growing in potency."
What I am looking for in Labour's manifesto is silence on the EU - that will (ironically) be a huge indicator to me where things are going. It will be a carte blance on EU trading relations and security agreements.
Sunak's actions on leaving the D-Day celebrations were very much a tacit expression of inward looking, isolationist ethos of the populist right, and its time has come.... I seriously think the country is turning a corner on brexit going into the next parliament.
Lol, this is an absolutely brilliant example of the genre: "What D-Day was really about is rejoining the single market".
You've got to admire the creativity, the imagination, the insightful juxtaposition of two apparently unrelated topics ;-)
We Remainers are never going to go away.
Not until you die off anyway.
There is nothing to "Remain" part of. You lost that war. We left the EU.
There is only Rejoin. And that is the dog that hasn't barked in this election. And if not this, then when?
You're right about it not becoming a major issue in this election, but I think it provides a general sense of unease to politics in the UK.
By a ratio of at least 3:1, people think the negatives of Brexit outweigh the benefits. For Leavers, immigration is at an all time high - so it was pointless for many. There must be some regret or misgiving there. For Remainers, there is no hint that any party will bring us back in or materially improve our relationship with Europe, so it sits as an open wound.
It's not being spoken about, but I think it contributes to the doom and gloom.
I think that is just a cipher for 'things were better before 2016' - which is understandable; the world was a surer place, no Ukraine, no pandemic, no culture wars (at least, not on the scale we see now), less immigration. Understandable people might wish things were otherwise. I'd happily swallow rejoin if it could mean we could wipe out all that other unpleasantness. But clearly, almost everything bad which has happened since 2016 is nothing to do with Brexit, and undoing Brexit wouldn't bring back those apples. That's just the way humans think. Change the thing we did and we can control and undo all those things we can't control.
If we were still in the EU, today’s news headline would be that electric cars are about to get more expensive, the EU voting for protectionism over Net Zero.
Great for the campaigners who think cars are evil and we should all get the bus, for for the average motorist who just to get from A to B as cheaply as possible, not so much.
Transportation was always a weakness in our climate change mitigation efforts - look at the massive fuss over the 2030 deadline for new ICE cars, even while other sectors of the economy made massive reductions in emissions. The Chinese have exploited the gap left by the lethargy and lobbying of European/American car makers.
It's darkly funny. When I was at Uni, there was all sorts of depressed talk about the industrialisation of China and India making climate change efforts basically pointless. Instead, the Chinese have flooded the market with cheap solar panels and cheap EVs to the extent that it's going to destroy fossil fuel industries in the West.
Annual CO2 emissions are still rising. It is delusional to think that by 2050 this will be much different. Even if output is halved from present levels (the evidence that this can be done is absent), levels will only be rising but a little more slowly.
The rhetoric is all reminiscent of UK General Election rhetoric. A realistic truthful conversation would make a nice change.
Climate change mitigation is not binary. It's not like there is a big climate change switch when we hit 2 degrees.
Most people working in this field know and accept that a huge amount of climate change damage is baked in. That's why we need to start discussing adaptation - flood defences, new pandemics, famine, mass migration.
But that doesn't mean the world should stop trying to prevent it being even worse - there is no sign of China abandoning solar or EVs, is there? The question for the UK is whether we want to embrace all this new technology or get left behind by the rest of the world.
Agree. This discussion is obscured by Trumpian denialists and 'Just Stop Oil' fundamentalists. The 'amelioration' aspect is often ignored.
Even if you don't agree with their methods, there's nothing particularly fundamentalist about JSO's demands. There is general scientific agreement that we need to rapidly reduce consumption of fossil fuels, and ceasing to issue new licences for oil exploration and production is broadly compatible with that aim. Amelioration to cope with the damage already in the pipeline is of course also required, but that's in addition to, not instead of, a sharp reduction in oil consumption.
Perhaps you'd like to accompany me if I have to close a factory in Aberdeen in the second half of this year. Decent people will be put out of a job because of flawed government policies, and I don't see too many "green jobs" they can take round where they live.
If I hear another idiot saying that they want "Green growth"... It apparently means growth without making anything, building anything. And it is free.
Changing technologies is massively disruptive for an industry - see Germany and American car makers. Who are stumbling.
The idea that this is free or painless is yet another populist, stupid delusion.
It is hard and expensive. And worth doing. Just decoupling our economy from the times that El Supremo has the hiccups and starts another war, and energy prices zoom up, it worth it. X recessions avoided.
Saving the planet is a nice side effect.
Further, in the longer term, as energy prices fall below fossil fuel energy prices, we have interesting opportunities.
Indeed. Switching to a sustainable economy is both necessary and also a huge challenge. Those who paint it as something that can be done without too much bother or inconvenience risk scuppering the whole effort. It's like fighting a war. It's necessary, but it inevitably involves some sacrifice. Smart leadership would prepare people for the challenges ahead as well as ensuring that the burdens are shared fairly.
The other thing is that the status quo is not an option. The energy transition away from fossil fuels is going to happen, and you don't want to be a laggard.
Estimates suggest 20% of all the electricity generated in Ireland will go to keeping Data Centres functioning.
Why not close them ?
Because they are useful and you can generate the electricity for them cleanly.
Only way in the future, Ireland currently generates 52% of its energy from oil or coal. With a growing population and a noted lack of infrastructure investment, that will be the case for some time. Data centres will consume energy and there is no green backstop to feed them.
Those problems will continue to exist whether there are data centres or not. I'd suggest fixing the problem.
I think the Green Party in government spent too much time/money on admirable improvements to public transport, and not enough on offshore wind and other energy infrastructure.
And yet public transport in Ireland (outwith the cities) is abysmal.
Considering his (fake) nationalist credentials, Farage really loves foreign money... Holly Vukadinović, a half Serbian Australian, then their´s Tump, Putin...
Treason doth never prosper. What´s the reason? For if it doth prosper, none dare call it treason.
tsk, you call anyone on the right little englanders and yet they seem to have more in tune with folk overseas than lefties.
'Change' is not 'nothing at all'. Except when it is. Visionless offer from Labour. No wonder everyone is bored
Higher Utility charges to pay for the Socialist Starmer’s Nationalisation Programme. State Ownership means being an employer, and with that comes costs, wages, training, a pension scheme etc etc etc And who’s paying for all this? You the taxpayer. Not only that, Labour’s anti aspirational VAT on private schooling, not touching the wealthy famous schools, but destroying all the fine local ones, working families have been using for their families for generations. And the dreaded garden tax is coming - they have it in Labour Wales, where tax man flies drones over your property to hit you with Labours brand new stealth tax.
You won’t get any of this with a Tory government. Fact. 💁♀️
The key takehome from the D-Day debacle is that the vast majority of the electorate like to see britain along side neighbours and allies affirming its international commitment..... a britain at the heart of the western international community honouring that heritage.... basically the opposite of free wheeling go it alone brexiteerism. I saw Marr's piece in the New Statesman talking about rejoining the single market
"But the country has already changed its mind about his rotten Brexit deal, and there would be no opportunity like Labour’s first 18 months to improve relations with the giant market on our doorstep. As the EU grapples with the problem of enlargement to its east and populism at home, the notion of a more flexible, less monolithic EU of concentric or interlocking circles is growing in potency."
What I am looking for in Labour's manifesto is silence on the EU - that will (ironically) be a huge indicator to me where things are going. It will be a carte blance on EU trading relations and security agreements.
Sunak's actions on leaving the D-Day celebrations were very much a tacit expression of inward looking, isolationist ethos of the populist right, and its time has come.... I seriously think the country is turning a corner on brexit going into the next parliament.
Lol, this is an absolutely brilliant example of the genre: "What D-Day was really about is rejoining the single market".
You've got to admire the creativity, the imagination, the insightful juxtaposition of two apparently unrelated topics ;-)
We Remainers are never going to go away.
Not until you die off anyway.
There is nothing to "Remain" part of. You lost that war. We left the EU.
There is only Rejoin. And that is the dog that hasn't barked in this election. And if not this, then when?
You're right about it not becoming a major issue in this election, but I think it provides a general sense of unease to politics in the UK.
By a ratio of at least 3:1, people think the negatives of Brexit outweigh the benefits. For Leavers, immigration is at an all time high - so it was pointless for many. There must be some regret or misgiving there. For Remainers, there is no hint that any party will bring us back in or materially improve our relationship with Europe, so it sits as an open wound.
It's not being spoken about, but I think it contributes to the doom and gloom.
I think that is just a cipher for 'things were better before 2016' - which is understandable; the world was a surer place, no Ukraine, no pandemic, no culture wars (at least, not on the scale we see now), less immigration. Understandable people might wish things were otherwise. I'd happily swallow rejoin if it could mean we could wipe out all that other unpleasantness. But clearly, almost everything bad which has happened since 2016 is nothing to do with Brexit, and undoing Brexit wouldn't bring back those apples. That's just the way humans think. Change the thing we did and we can control and undo all those things we can't control.
If we were still in the EU, today’s news headline would be that electric cars are about to get more expensive, the EU voting for protectionism over Net Zero.
Great for the campaigners who think cars are evil and we should all get the bus, for for the average motorist who just to get from A to B as cheaply as possible, not so much.
Transportation was always a weakness in our climate change mitigation efforts - look at the massive fuss over the 2030 deadline for new ICE cars, even while other sectors of the economy made massive reductions in emissions. The Chinese have exploited the gap left by the lethargy and lobbying of European/American car makers.
It's darkly funny. When I was at Uni, there was all sorts of depressed talk about the industrialisation of China and India making climate change efforts basically pointless. Instead, the Chinese have flooded the market with cheap solar panels and cheap EVs to the extent that it's going to destroy fossil fuel industries in the West.
Annual CO2 emissions are still rising. It is delusional to think that by 2050 this will be much different. Even if output is halved from present levels (the evidence that this can be done is absent), levels will only be rising but a little more slowly.
The rhetoric is all reminiscent of UK General Election rhetoric. A realistic truthful conversation would make a nice change.
Climate change mitigation is not binary. It's not like there is a big climate change switch when we hit 2 degrees.
Most people working in this field know and accept that a huge amount of climate change damage is baked in. That's why we need to start discussing adaptation - flood defences, new pandemics, famine, mass migration.
But that doesn't mean the world should stop trying to prevent it being even worse - there is no sign of China abandoning solar or EVs, is there? The question for the UK is whether we want to embrace all this new technology or get left behind by the rest of the world.
Agree. This discussion is obscured by Trumpian denialists and 'Just Stop Oil' fundamentalists. The 'amelioration' aspect is often ignored.
Even if you don't agree with their methods, there's nothing particularly fundamentalist about JSO's demands. There is general scientific agreement that we need to rapidly reduce consumption of fossil fuels, and ceasing to issue new licences for oil exploration and production is broadly compatible with that aim. Amelioration to cope with the damage already in the pipeline is of course also required, but that's in addition to, not instead of, a sharp reduction in oil consumption.
Perhaps you'd like to accompany me if I have to close a factory in Aberdeen in the second half of this year. Decent people will be put out of a job because of flawed government policies, and I don't see too many "green jobs" they can take round where they live.
If I hear another idiot saying that they want "Green growth"... It apparently means growth without making anything, building anything. And it is free.
Changing technologies is massively disruptive for an industry - see Germany and American car makers. Who are stumbling.
The idea that this is free or painless is yet another populist, stupid delusion.
It is hard and expensive. And worth doing. Just decoupling our economy from the times that El Supremo has the hiccups and starts another war, and energy prices zoom up, it worth it. X recessions avoided.
Saving the planet is a nice side effect.
Further, in the longer term, as energy prices fall below fossil fuel energy prices, we have interesting opportunities.
Indeed. Switching to a sustainable economy is both necessary and also a huge challenge. Those who paint it as something that can be done without too much bother or inconvenience risk scuppering the whole effort. It's like fighting a war. It's necessary, but it inevitably involves some sacrifice. Smart leadership would prepare people for the challenges ahead as well as ensuring that the burdens are shared fairly.
The other thing is that the status quo is not an option. The energy transition away from fossil fuels is going to happen, and you don't want to be a laggard.
Estimates suggest 20% of all the electricity generated in Ireland will go to keeping Data Centres functioning.
Why not close them ?
Because they are useful and you can generate the electricity for them cleanly.
Only way in the future, Ireland currently generates 52% of its energy from oil or coal. With a growing population and a noted lack of infrastructure investment, that will be the case for some time. Data centres will consume energy and there is no green backstop to feed them.
Those problems will continue to exist whether there are data centres or not. I'd suggest fixing the problem.
I think the Green Party in government spent too much time/money on admirable improvements to public transport, and not enough on offshore wind and other energy infrastructure.
You could move all the data centres out of Ireland and to somewhere cool and Scandi with massive access to renewables. Why not close the lot and help the planet ?
Because it's a distraction from the more important things they will do more to help the planet and, ideally, things like the carbon price should ensure that if there is an excess of renewable energy in Scandinavia, and data centres can be run there more efficiently, then there would be a price signal that would encourage that - and government wouldn't have to get involved in directing where specific industries were located.
Why do you have a bee in your bonnet over data centres?
It’s like an exquisite form of Chinese water torture… drip drip drip
This really is the defining issue of the election. The UK's rapidly deteriorating health service directly and deeply affects large swathes of the electorate and is indicative of the general decline in services. It is a sign of a failed government.
Or a failed health service.
There is £251bn of government spending on health this year with a NHS workforce of over two million.
That's the thing. There's no shortage of resources for the NHS. The money must be spent appallingly inefficiently.
The NHS is a long way down the law of diminishing returns path.
I have sympathy for those public services which have received genuine funding cuts but have still maintained acceptable performance levels.
You never get an answer to the question: How much would be enough to fund the NHS?
It's like asking how fast to run on a treadmill to move forward.
It doesn't matter how much you spend it will never be enough.
Spend more, people stay alive longer, get more chronic illnesses, require more expenditure as a result. It's a never ending circle until people do die.
Yes, but that makes it sound like health spending is futile. In principle for every additional £1 you spend on health you get an extra fraction of a QALY in return. So, to a certain extent, you spend as much money as you have available, once you've paid for more important things. And as the country becomes richer it has more spare money left over to spend on better health care.
That's a good thing, not a counsel of despair.
So I'd agree with @Eabhal - fix it as a percentage of GDP, perhaps with a planned gradual increase to accommodate the demographic transition, but with a ceiling once that transition has occurred.
Obviously you'd have to have some way of smoothing out the effects of recessions, so that they didn't lead to an instantaneous cut in health spending, but that sort of thing would also stop you from increasing spending unsustainably during a boom.
I disagree actually. The myth with QALY is that all years are created equal. Keeping people alive longer in chronic pain, with dementia and so on may not always be the kindest thing to do, or provide the best return on expenditure.
If we're going to boost expenditure on something then instead of the NHS we should be looking towards what someone might suggest as three priorities: education, education, education.
We treat keeping people alive like money is no object but penny-pinch with setting young people up with an education that they will affect their lives for the next 6 or 7 decades after they leave school.
What do you think QA is in QALY?
Badly handled. I think NICE and the NHS are so scared of being considered ageist (not unreasonably so either) that they don't handle it well at all.
Throwing unlimited money at keeping people in care homes alive for longer, while not properly funding people's education that will affect them for the next 70 years, is an unmitigated failure.
QALYs are assessed through standardised quality of life measures (EQ-5D or derivatives, mostly) so they're hard to game. If you have an issue with the measures, that's fair enough, but the key questions are on things like mobility, self-care, usual activities (ability to do), pain and common mental health. The first three, at least, are things that many elderly people would score lower on.
There is an argument for measuring long term impacts of non-health interventions for young so that those kinds of interventions can be better weighed against healthcare spending for example.
It’s like an exquisite form of Chinese water torture… drip drip drip
This really is the defining issue of the election. The UK's rapidly deteriorating health service directly and deeply affects large swathes of the electorate and is indicative of the general decline in services. It is a sign of a failed government.
Or a failed health service.
There is £251bn of government spending on health this year with a NHS workforce of over two million.
That's the thing. There's no shortage of resources for the NHS. The money must be spent appallingly inefficiently.
The NHS is a long way down the law of diminishing returns path.
I have sympathy for those public services which have received genuine funding cuts but have still maintained acceptable performance levels.
You never get an answer to the question: How much would be enough to fund the NHS?
It's like asking how fast to run on a treadmill to move forward.
It doesn't matter how much you spend it will never be enough.
Spend more, people stay alive longer, get more chronic illnesses, require more expenditure as a result. It's a never ending circle until people do die.
If the NHS could spend shedloads more money on prevention and general health advice (diet, cutting out UPF, eat more plants, exercise, mental wellbeing) in the long run the population would be far healthier, happier and cost the NHS a lot less. Big Food, wouldn't like it, though.
Alternatively getting more up to diet science and stop pushing the myth of five plus fruit and veg a day and other failed medical advice that has led to ever expanding chronic disease and a surge in diabetes.
My dad spent decades as a vegetarian and ended up with diabetes as a result. Subsequently now no longer a vegetarian and works hard to cut down carbs but still afflicted with diabetes.
I'm not taking any chances of ending up with diabetes myself. I've spent seven months now on zero a day for plant-based products. Down 45 pounds as a result, blood tests are great and resting heart rate down by over 10 beats per minute.
If you want to compare stats.... I'm 57, plant based, wholefood diet (as much as I can be in a modern food environment) Resting heart rate 49 bpm, low cholesterol, on no medication, no health issues, Run most days, lift 3 times a week, fall off my mountain bike at every opportunity. Walk as much as possible. Entered a 10k race for October. Fitter and healthier than I've ever been. Diabetes is rife because people eat crap food, not because they eat fruit.
The key takehome from the D-Day debacle is that the vast majority of the electorate like to see britain along side neighbours and allies affirming its international commitment..... a britain at the heart of the western international community honouring that heritage.... basically the opposite of free wheeling go it alone brexiteerism. I saw Marr's piece in the New Statesman talking about rejoining the single market
"But the country has already changed its mind about his rotten Brexit deal, and there would be no opportunity like Labour’s first 18 months to improve relations with the giant market on our doorstep. As the EU grapples with the problem of enlargement to its east and populism at home, the notion of a more flexible, less monolithic EU of concentric or interlocking circles is growing in potency."
What I am looking for in Labour's manifesto is silence on the EU - that will (ironically) be a huge indicator to me where things are going. It will be a carte blance on EU trading relations and security agreements.
Sunak's actions on leaving the D-Day celebrations were very much a tacit expression of inward looking, isolationist ethos of the populist right, and its time has come.... I seriously think the country is turning a corner on brexit going into the next parliament.
Lol, this is an absolutely brilliant example of the genre: "What D-Day was really about is rejoining the single market".
You've got to admire the creativity, the imagination, the insightful juxtaposition of two apparently unrelated topics ;-)
We Remainers are never going to go away.
Not until you die off anyway.
There is nothing to "Remain" part of. You lost that war. We left the EU.
There is only Rejoin. And that is the dog that hasn't barked in this election. And if not this, then when?
You're right about it not becoming a major issue in this election, but I think it provides a general sense of unease to politics in the UK.
By a ratio of at least 3:1, people think the negatives of Brexit outweigh the benefits. For Leavers, immigration is at an all time high - so it was pointless for many. There must be some regret or misgiving there. For Remainers, there is no hint that any party will bring us back in or materially improve our relationship with Europe, so it sits as an open wound.
It's not being spoken about, but I think it contributes to the doom and gloom.
I think that is just a cipher for 'things were better before 2016' - which is understandable; the world was a surer place, no Ukraine, no pandemic, no culture wars (at least, not on the scale we see now), less immigration. Understandable people might wish things were otherwise. I'd happily swallow rejoin if it could mean we could wipe out all that other unpleasantness. But clearly, almost everything bad which has happened since 2016 is nothing to do with Brexit, and undoing Brexit wouldn't bring back those apples. That's just the way humans think. Change the thing we did and we can control and undo all those things we can't control.
If we were still in the EU, today’s news headline would be that electric cars are about to get more expensive, the EU voting for protectionism over Net Zero.
Great for the campaigners who think cars are evil and we should all get the bus, for for the average motorist who just to get from A to B as cheaply as possible, not so much.
Transportation was always a weakness in our climate change mitigation efforts - look at the massive fuss over the 2030 deadline for new ICE cars, even while other sectors of the economy made massive reductions in emissions. The Chinese have exploited the gap left by the lethargy and lobbying of European/American car makers.
It's darkly funny. When I was at Uni, there was all sorts of depressed talk about the industrialisation of China and India making climate change efforts basically pointless. Instead, the Chinese have flooded the market with cheap solar panels and cheap EVs to the extent that it's going to destroy fossil fuel industries in the West.
Annual CO2 emissions are still rising. It is delusional to think that by 2050 this will be much different. Even if output is halved from present levels (the evidence that this can be done is absent), levels will only be rising but a little more slowly.
The rhetoric is all reminiscent of UK General Election rhetoric. A realistic truthful conversation would make a nice change.
Climate change mitigation is not binary. It's not like there is a big climate change switch when we hit 2 degrees.
Most people working in this field know and accept that a huge amount of climate change damage is baked in. That's why we need to start discussing adaptation - flood defences, new pandemics, famine, mass migration.
But that doesn't mean the world should stop trying to prevent it being even worse - there is no sign of China abandoning solar or EVs, is there? The question for the UK is whether we want to embrace all this new technology or get left behind by the rest of the world.
Agree. This discussion is obscured by Trumpian denialists and 'Just Stop Oil' fundamentalists. The 'amelioration' aspect is often ignored.
Even if you don't agree with their methods, there's nothing particularly fundamentalist about JSO's demands. There is general scientific agreement that we need to rapidly reduce consumption of fossil fuels, and ceasing to issue new licences for oil exploration and production is broadly compatible with that aim. Amelioration to cope with the damage already in the pipeline is of course also required, but that's in addition to, not instead of, a sharp reduction in oil consumption.
Perhaps you'd like to accompany me if I have to close a factory in Aberdeen in the second half of this year. Decent people will be put out of a job because of flawed government policies, and I don't see too many "green jobs" they can take round where they live.
If I hear another idiot saying that they want "Green growth"... It apparently means growth without making anything, building anything. And it is free.
Changing technologies is massively disruptive for an industry - see Germany and American car makers. Who are stumbling.
The idea that this is free or painless is yet another populist, stupid delusion.
It is hard and expensive. And worth doing. Just decoupling our economy from the times that El Supremo has the hiccups and starts another war, and energy prices zoom up, it worth it. X recessions avoided.
Saving the planet is a nice side effect.
Further, in the longer term, as energy prices fall below fossil fuel energy prices, we have interesting opportunities.
Indeed. Switching to a sustainable economy is both necessary and also a huge challenge. Those who paint it as something that can be done without too much bother or inconvenience risk scuppering the whole effort. It's like fighting a war. It's necessary, but it inevitably involves some sacrifice. Smart leadership would prepare people for the challenges ahead as well as ensuring that the burdens are shared fairly.
The other thing is that the status quo is not an option. The energy transition away from fossil fuels is going to happen, and you don't want to be a laggard.
Estimates suggest 20% of all the electricity generated in Ireland will go to keeping Data Centres functioning.
Why not close them ?
Because they are useful and you can generate the electricity for them cleanly.
Only way in the future, Ireland currently generates 52% of its energy from oil or coal. With a growing population and a noted lack of infrastructure investment, that will be the case for some time. Data centres will consume energy and there is no green backstop to feed them.
Labours biggest con trick of all - Labours “no new tax on working people” is just straightforward hypocrisy, easily called out as the lie it is when Labour confirmed today: that 6.5 million workers will be in Labour governments highest income tax bands, with new working families getting sucked into this stealth tax pain every year of Labour government.
Labour presented their manifesto knowing full well the number of people paying at the higher rate of 40 per cent and 'additional' rate of 45 per cent, is up from 5 million in recent years and more working people will be joining them in coming years under Labour government, including workers paying 20 per cent tax on incomes above just £12,570. All this will rake in a staggering £241billion from working households to go part the way to paying cost of Labours promises and policy’s, like the Nationalisation Programme of State Control.
Think about it, those earning just £12,570 a year under Labour will pay 20 per cent tax.
So why are they still called Labour and claiming Change, when they don’t represent Change from the highest tax burden since wartime, nor will protect hard working households like the Thatcher governments used to?
Labour and the Unions only represent the work shy, a bloating and costly state, and ruinous union demands for a 4 day working week.
And then, the icing on the huge tax cake, on top of all this theft of your money you worked hard for, Labours Net Zero taxes - a flag of Millibands gurning face, planted ON TOP the mountain of all this stealthy, over taxed pain, to remind you Labour has a ruinous idealogical side to their socialism. (Bridget Phillipson is straight out of Wallace and Gromit too, before politics she was a clay model at Hardman animations).
By all means fact check, but you will find every tax figure I said here is 110% true. This is what change to Labour actually means in the coming years.
Labours biggest con trick of all - Labours “no new tax on working people” is just straightforward hypocrisy, easily called out as the lie it is when Labour confirmed today: that 6.5 million workers will be in Labour governments highest income tax bands, with new working families getting sucked into this stealth tax pain every year of Labour government.
Labour presented their manifesto knowing full well the number of people paying at the higher rate of 40 per cent and 'additional' rate of 45 per cent, is up from 5 million in recent years and more working people will be joining them in coming years under Labour government, including workers paying 20 per cent tax on incomes above just £12,570. All this will rake in a staggering £241billion from working households to go part the way to paying cost of Labours promises and policy’s, like the Nationalisation Programme of State Control.
Think about it, those earning just £12,570 a year under Labour will pay 20 per cent tax.
So why are they still called Labour and claiming Change, when they don’t represent Change from the highest tax burden since wartime, nor will protect hard working households like the Thatcher governments used to?
Labour and the Unions only represent the work shy, a bloating and costly state, and ruinous union demands for a 4 day working week.
And then, the icing on the huge tax cake, on top of all this theft of your money you worked hard for, Labours Net Zero taxes - a flag of Millibands gurning face, planted ON TOP the mountain of all this stealthy, over taxed pain, to remind you Labour has a ruinous idealogical side to their socialism. (Bridget Phillipson is straight out of Wallace and Gromit too, before politics she was a clay model at Hardman animations).
By all means fact check, but you will find every tax figure I said here is 110% true. This is what change to Labour actually means in the coming years.
It’s like an exquisite form of Chinese water torture… drip drip drip
This really is the defining issue of the election. The UK's rapidly deteriorating health service directly and deeply affects large swathes of the electorate and is indicative of the general decline in services. It is a sign of a failed government.
Or a failed health service.
There is £251bn of government spending on health this year with a NHS workforce of over two million.
That's the thing. There's no shortage of resources for the NHS. The money must be spent appallingly inefficiently.
The NHS is a long way down the law of diminishing returns path.
I have sympathy for those public services which have received genuine funding cuts but have still maintained acceptable performance levels.
You never get an answer to the question: How much would be enough to fund the NHS?
It's like asking how fast to run on a treadmill to move forward.
It doesn't matter how much you spend it will never be enough.
Spend more, people stay alive longer, get more chronic illnesses, require more expenditure as a result. It's a never ending circle until people do die.
If the NHS could spend shedloads more money on prevention and general health advice (diet, cutting out UPF, eat more plants, exercise, mental wellbeing) in the long run the population would be far healthier, happier and cost the NHS a lot less. Big Food, wouldn't like it, though.
Alternatively getting more up to diet science and stop pushing the myth of five plus fruit and veg a day and other failed medical advice that has led to ever expanding chronic disease and a surge in diabetes.
My dad spent decades as a vegetarian and ended up with diabetes as a result. Subsequently now no longer a vegetarian and works hard to cut down carbs but still afflicted with diabetes.
I'm not taking any chances of ending up with diabetes myself. I've spent seven months now on zero a day for plant-based products. Down 45 pounds as a result, blood tests are great and resting heart rate down by over 10 beats per minute.
That's great for you. You should do whatever you feel is right, but it's scientific fact that there is no downside to including vegetables in your diet. It really isn't failed medical science.
No, its not. There is a growing body of evidence that there is a downside to including carbs and vegetables in your diet. Especially exclusively/primarily doing so and not incorporating enough meats and proteins and fats.
Considering his (fake) nationalist credentials, Farage really loves foreign money... Holly Vukadinović, a half Serbian Australian, then their´s Tump, Putin...
Treason doth never prosper. What´s the reason? For if it doth prosper, none dare call it treason.
tsk, you call anyone on the right little englanders and yet they seem to have more in tune with folk overseas than lefties.
I think it is actually pretty sinister the way Farage behaves, I do not think I am alone.
Comments
Party funds boosted in the days since Nigel Farage’s return as leader"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/06/13/holly-valance-among-reform-donors-fund-boost-farage/
That would focus minds on what to do with fixed resources, and divert more health funding to interventions that boost the economy. Much more spending on public health, for example.
My view though is that as countries become richer, a larger proportion of GDP inevitably gets spent of healthcare. And I don't think that is a bad thing - my end-AI-stage for the UK is a 1 day week, lots of culture and sport and a large chunk of the workforce providing sports injury and old age care.
38.00-39.99% -> 5.7
40.00-41.99% -> 5.9
42.00-43.99% -> 5.8
44.00-45.99% -> 5.8
https://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/politics/market/1.223276482
It doesn't matter how much you spend it will never be enough.
Spend more, people stay alive longer, get more chronic illnesses, require more expenditure as a result. It's a never ending circle until people do die.
They all failed to do something about the dehydration or starvation - despite them being repeatedly told by his wife about him not eating or drinking. Which is a common result of the operation he had.
It seems that to change anything, they needed to consult God. Well, God's superior.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/06/13/rishi-sunak-giorgia-meloni-g7-summit/
Why do you need lots of people creating sports injuries, though? Or is this a euphemism for other activities? (See Ian Banks).
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/06/13/farage-willing-to-lead-conservative-reform-merged-party/
Its Corbyn entryism for the right.
That's a good thing, not a counsel of despair.
So I'd agree with @Eabhal - fix it as a percentage of GDP, perhaps with a planned gradual increase to accommodate the demographic transition, but with a ceiling once that transition has occurred.
Obviously you'd have to have some way of smoothing out the effects of recessions, so that they didn't lead to an instantaneous cut in health spending, but that sort of thing would also stop you from increasing spending unsustainably during a boom.
Tell me I'm crazy.
The Tory one is long and unmemorable. I'm a politics obsessive and I can't remember it - something about a plan...
I know we hate word clouds but isn't this a damning indictment? We are meant to be on the cusp of change and everyone is bored rigid
Labour going for the poncy men's fragrance look to the front of their manifesto. Change, eau de parfum pour homme.
But the range 38%-43.99% is only 6pp and roughly MOE territory for the central point of 41% (which matches current poll averages, IIRC).
Changing technologies is massively disruptive for an industry - see Germany and American car makers. Who are stumbling.
The idea that this is free or painless is yet another populist, stupid delusion.
It is hard and expensive. And worth doing. Just decoupling our economy from the times that El Supremo has the hiccups and starts another war, and energy prices zoom up, it worth it. X recessions avoided.
Saving the planet is a nice side effect.
Further, in the longer term, as energy prices fall below fossil fuel energy prices, we have interesting opportunities.
10 photos of @Keir_Starmer by pg29 of the manifesto. Two of @RachelReevesMP - first pic of anyone else? @AngelaRayner pg39 Clear who the main @UKLabour offer is from…
At least Classic understood that if you're going to apply the Rule Of Three, single words tend to work best.
We saw this before when everything had to be shipped off to China then suddenly it wasnt such a good idea after all but the jobs were then long gone.
We saw this before when everything had to be shipped off to China then suddenly it wasnt such a good idea after all but the jobs were then long gone.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/06/09/new-zealand-brings-back-oil-drilling-amid-fears-of-blackout/
Individual bits of good (the work that the people do is generally good) - but the system seems to be very poor on lines of reporting, passing information, escalating issues..
EDIT: I watched as they fiddled with different systems, wrote stuff on paper. I could do them such a nice system of patient management, complete with autogenerating graphs, stats monitoring and alerts, test ordering and status, treatment ordering and status, idiot checking on dosages.........
Big Food, wouldn't like it, though.
Too much reliance on China for crucial chemicals, processes, etc.....
Too many fatties, very bad for you if things like COVID come around....
The state has piss poor processes for data collection in a consistent useful format....
People have f##k all clue about basic stats.....
And instead we have been arguing over if women can have a penis. And the media still can't get basic facts right like stamp duty.
The word on the
streetpodcasts is Rishi is increasingly trying to rescue normally safe seats.Why not close them ?
If we're going to boost expenditure on something then instead of the NHS we should be looking towards what someone might suggest as three priorities: education, education, education.
We treat keeping people alive like money is no object but penny-pinch with setting young people up with an education that they will affect their lives for the next 6 or 7 decades after they leave school.
@PickardJE
A young woman starts to heckle the Starmer speech in Manchester:
“We gave up being the party of protest five years ago,” replies Starmer as she is removed by security….
“Yeah ok Mr Starmer, anyway its gonna cost a lot more than you hoped with Labour”
I agree about the importance of education.
My dad spent decades as a vegetarian and ended up with diabetes as a result. Subsequently now no longer a vegetarian and works hard to cut down carbs but still afflicted with diabetes.
I'm not taking any chances of ending up with diabetes myself. I've spent seven months now on zero a day for plant-based products. Down 45 pounds as a result, blood tests are great and resting heart rate down by over 10 beats per minute.
https://kpmg.com/ie/en/home/insights/2024/01/energy-outlook-2024-cge-eut.html
Throwing unlimited money at keeping people in care homes alive for longer, while not properly funding people's education that will affect them for the next 70 years, is an unmitigated failure.
I think the Green Party in government spent too much time/money on admirable improvements to public transport, and not enough on offshore wind and other energy infrastructure.
Treason doth never prosper. What´s the reason? For if it doth prosper, none dare call it treason.
Visionless offer from Labour. No wonder everyone is bored
https://www.iea.org/countries/ireland/electricity
You won’t get any of this with a Tory government. Fact. 💁♀️
Why do you have a bee in your bonnet over data centres?
There is an argument for measuring long term impacts of non-health interventions for young so that those kinds of interventions can be better weighed against healthcare spending for example.
I'm 57, plant based, wholefood diet (as much as I can be in a modern food environment)
Resting heart rate 49 bpm, low cholesterol, on no medication, no health issues,
Run most days, lift 3 times a week, fall off my mountain bike at every opportunity. Walk as much as possible.
Entered a 10k race for October. Fitter and healthier than I've ever been.
Diabetes is rife because people eat crap food, not because they eat fruit.
Anyhow as I sit here in the land of lignite energy, I must regrettably leave PB and go see some Germans.
Labour presented their manifesto knowing full well the number of people paying at the higher rate of 40 per cent and 'additional' rate of 45 per cent, is up from 5 million in recent years and more working people will be joining them in coming years under Labour government, including workers paying 20 per cent tax on incomes above just £12,570. All this will rake in a staggering £241billion from working households to go part the way to paying cost of Labours promises and policy’s, like the Nationalisation Programme of State Control.
Think about it, those earning just £12,570 a year under Labour will pay 20 per cent tax.
So why are they still called Labour and claiming Change, when they don’t represent Change from the highest tax burden since wartime, nor will protect hard working households like the Thatcher governments used to?
Labour and the Unions only represent the work shy, a bloating and costly state, and ruinous union demands for a 4 day working week.
And then, the icing on the huge tax cake, on top of all this theft of your money you worked hard for, Labours Net Zero taxes - a flag of Millibands gurning face, planted ON TOP the mountain of all this stealthy, over taxed pain, to remind you Labour has a ruinous idealogical side to their socialism.
(Bridget Phillipson is straight out of Wallace and Gromit too, before politics she was a clay model at Hardman animations).
By all means fact check, but you will find every tax figure I said here is 110% true. This is what change to Labour actually means in the coming years.