I think it's a good analysis - pointing out that a move to fringe stunts adjacent to violence is a practice across various campaign groups. It's stuff the likes of the SWP and eg some Islamists and the Far Right have been doing forever, and now it has the added attraction of viewers on social media.
Until you are prepared to call them out, they'll keep on doing it. Simply calling them idiots - something which I doubt she'd call Tommy Robinson et al - isn't enough. I have no sympathy for her.
She sounds pretty sane to me. I wish everyone was as measured
From BBC France Télévisions gives the National Rally between 120 and 160 seats - if that's correct then this is a surprise defeat for the RN, which would have come third.
Two other polls, including France's biggest private channel TF1 and from RTL/M6 suggest RN has come second. One other projection gives RN the biggest number of seats, but that may be an outlier.
Looks like the withdrawals and appeals to combine against the far right worked. But governing will not be easier.
I think Le Pen will be very happy with the result.
Another couple of amazing stats from this bizarre election. Labour have never lost more than 91 seats at an election (2010). The Tories lost 252. The Tories have never gained more than 96 (2010 again). Labour gained 239.
All figures net since 1945.
One of my pals put it this way: to get 5 far right MPs elected cost 250 centre right MPs. Not a great piece of business.
Now be fair at least a fifth of the Tory MPs were probably Reform curious at heart.
Let's see if they feel that way now they are unemployed.
Ask Marcus Fysh.
A former Tory MP who lost his seat in the general election says he has quit the party because "it's dead".
Marcus Fysh was Yeovil's MP but lost heavily to Adam Dance from the Liberal Democrats.
On X, the former minister said the current parliamentary composition of the party was "non-Conservative".
He’s a right wing nutter. I’m glad he doesn’t agree with the composition of the Conservative Party
Room in the 'broad church' for everyone except those with right wing views eh? Surprise surprise. Like 'party loyalty', a concept that only applies one way.
I didn’t say that.
It was Fysh who was trying to define what the Conservative Party should be
Before the election, CCHQ tried to parachute a candidate into a seat who couldn't accept because they were already on the Lib Dem's candidates list. That's an extreme example of a selection process that stuff safe seats with ideological opponents to conservatism. It demonstrates a very profound issue that goes to the heart of the party's disunity and ineffectiveness in Government. The Tory Party used to be a lot more democratic, with local associations selecting MPs, a democratic right that they gave up in return for a say in the leadership, which CCHQ is also trying to take off them.
There does need to be a broad church, but everyone in that church should be motivated imho by a basic belief in the values of conservatism, however mild that form of conservatism might be. How else can they represent the interests of conservative voters?
The problem is that there *is* overlap between some of the parties in the centre, and you want that to be a hard-and-fast boundary. But without going to the NF or BNP, there is no boundary on the right. You want to truncate the broad church in the centre, but let any nutcase in on the far right.
But IMV the key word for Conservatives is the small-c word 'conservative'. Not no change, but careful and well-planned change, cautiously made. Progress by evolution rather than revolution.
The Conservative Party have forgotten that over the last decade.
But that notion is one of parties occupying a silly sort of space on left/right spectrum. A band that contracts, expands, and is pushed up and down like a pipe cleaner with the vagaries of politics.
What I'm arguing for is belief in a set of values and principles by which all political actions are measured. Is a law adding to the powers of the state against individual? Is a law or treaty in the national interest or against it? Is a law adding unduly to the tax burden? Will a law fundamentally undermine the security of the nation or its ability to defend itself? Is a law in the interests of families? Is a political action conducive to a strong, cohesive society? Is a law conducive to parliamentary sovereignty?
It isn't really about right and left, though those terms can be useful shorthand. A lot of the PCP, through design by CCHQ for reasons which I can't discern, doesn't pay more than lip service to those values, and sometimes not even that.
The issue is that the way those topics viewed can very much be in the eyes of he beholder, e.g. what is the national interest, especially if you take short- and long-term into account? They can also be contradictory. Is a slightly increased tax burden justified if that tax money is spent in the national interest? This treaty may slightly reduce national sovereignty, but also be in the national interest.
I think they're less ambiguous than you indicate. But they do come in and out of fashion.
There are fashionable weasel words that would justify the closing of Britain's virgin steel making capacity, dealing a knockout blow to our ability to manufacture armaments without importing the steel, based on amorphous envisaged future benefits of 'setting a good example' on CO2 emissions, but no true adherent to Tory principles could ever support such a scheme. Another Tory principle is that families and individuals spend their money better than the state. If adherence to these principles was widespread within the PCP, neither the party nor the country would be in the mess they are in.
I think Thatcher would have been thoroughly on board with reducing CO2 emissions. I think she was the first major world leader to take it seriously, along with CFCs and acid rain.
Her own words:
"For generations, we have assumed that the efforts of mankind would leave the fundamental equilibrium of the world's systems and atmosphere stable. But it is possible that with all these enormous changes (population, agricultural, use of fossil fuels) concentrated into such a short period of time, we have unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the system of this planet itself.
Recently three changes in atmospheric chemistry have become familiar subjects of concern. The first is the increase in the greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane, and chlorofluorocarbons—which has led some [end p4] to fear that we are creating a global heat trap which could lead to climatic instability. We are told that a warming effect of 1°C per decade would greatly exceed the capacity of our natural habitat to cope. Such warming could cause accelerated melting of glacial ice and a consequent increase in the sea level of several feet over the next century. This was brought home to me at the Commonwealth Conference in Vancouver last year when the President of the Maldive Islands reminded us that the highest part of the Maldives is only six feet above sea level. The population is 177,000. It is noteworthy that the five warmest years in a century of records have all been in the 1980s—though we may not have seen much evidence in Britain!
The second matter under discussion is the discovery by the British Antarctic Survey of a large hole in the ozone layer which protects life from ultra-violet radiation. We don't know the full implications of the ozone hole nor how it may interact with the greenhouse effect. Nevertheless it was common sense to support a worldwide agreement in Montreal last year to halve world consumption of chlorofluorocarbons by the end of the century. As the sole measure to limit ozone depletion, this may be insufficient but it is a start in reducing the pace of change while we continue the detailed study of the problem on which our (the British) Stratospheric Ozone Review Group is about to report.
The third matter is acid deposition which has affected soils, lakes and trees downwind from industrial centres. Extensive action is being taken to cut down emission of sulphur and nitrogen oxides from power stations at great but necessary expense."
According to you, Thatcher would not be a Conservative...
What a flimsy straw man. Thatcher was rightly extremely concerned about the evidence of global warming, but it is leaping a vast logical chasm to suggest that she would therefore have consented to give up virgin steel-making capacity in Britain, especially given the fact that it has not reduced the quantity of blast furnaces in the world - huge extra capacity has simply been built in India, where environmental standards are lower, so net CO2 may well go up. So the move surrenders a key component of national security, for zero environmental gain.
Do I take it from your attempt to co-opt a dead Margaret Thatcher into agreeing with the closure of Britain's last blast furnace, and therefore our ability to sustain independent armaments production during a war scenario, that you are in favour of this move?
Her actions on CFCs show that she might well have taken some very hard decisions on such matters. I don't think the steelworkers saw her as a friend, do you?
I'm unsure why you're so obsessed with steelmaking in Britain. What 'alternate' websites have informed you about it? The same ones that made you shill for Putin over MH17?
We could do with more MPs with scientific backgrounds. I wonder what scientific knowledge the new lot have got. NB CoPilot can't help me on this.
Danny Chambers, the new LibDem MP for Winchester, is a vet and writes for New Scientist. Ian Sollom, the LibDem MP for the new seat of St Neots, has a PhD in cosmology. Tom Gordon (Harrogate, LD) has a master’s in public health.
Robin Swann (UUP, S Antrim) didn’t do a university degree when young, but later in life did an OU science degree.
What would be considered a failure? They had hopes of getting a majority after the first round, but would you consider being the largest party and a more than doubling of their seats a failure?
Not being the largest party surely would be a failure after the first predictions.
They’ve come THIRD. That’s definitely a failure
If this is correct, they may not next time after a few years of Corbynite Trots running the place
It's still up for them, but after the first round it'd be way off what they'd have hoped for or expected. And as a sign for future presidentials not massively helpful (though they did go from 23 to 41 from 1st round to second there).
Gotta say it does look quite fash-adjacent. This place could - understandably - vote Nazi in despair any moment
This trying to empathise with the French business will do you no good you know!
(Is there an any way similar website to PB in France? A mere echo though it must be of course.)
I’m in Menerbes. One of the plus nice villages de France. It is absurdly beaut
No riots….. YET
I studied and lived on the Cote D'Azur for three months. Filthy little dogs shitting everywhere. Watch where you're puting your Gucci loafers.
I’ve no intention of going to the coast. It’s vulgar and full of gangsters. And I might meet @Roger
You should. It's at it's sparkling best and full of people you'll recognise. Two exhibitions you might like. Bettina Rheims in Nice and Pasolini in Monaco. Bettina Rheims shows that Me2 doesn't apply to women and Pasolini......is just Pasolini. Then if you can wait the Tour de France ends in Nice on the 17th and the Olympic torch is wending its way from VF to Paris as I type....
I’ve done the Riviera many times. It’s nice if you like that sort of thing - and sometimes I do
But I’m here to do some actual flint knapping and a friend has kindly loaned me his little house in the lovely Luberon
Little known fact that Luberon is where KY Jelly was invented.
Not sure. My understanding from most of the commentators is that the deal that Macron has had to make with the Far Left is one that undoes much of his last 7 years and will put him on a collision course with Brussels over public finances. Basically he is risking bankrupting the country to savage this result after his stupid unecessary election.
All this seems to do is make Le Pen more likely as President in a few years - if the analysis is correct.
After all these years when the French must have been laughing their heads off about our weird Brexity election results and hung parliaments, we don’t look too bad now.
Another couple of amazing stats from this bizarre election. Labour have never lost more than 91 seats at an election (2010). The Tories lost 252. The Tories have never gained more than 96 (2010 again). Labour gained 239.
All figures net since 1945.
One of my pals put it this way: to get 5 far right MPs elected cost 250 centre right MPs. Not a great piece of business.
Now be fair at least a fifth of the Tory MPs were probably Reform curious at heart.
Let's see if they feel that way now they are unemployed.
Ask Marcus Fysh.
A former Tory MP who lost his seat in the general election says he has quit the party because "it's dead".
Marcus Fysh was Yeovil's MP but lost heavily to Adam Dance from the Liberal Democrats.
On X, the former minister said the current parliamentary composition of the party was "non-Conservative".
He’s a right wing nutter. I’m glad he doesn’t agree with the composition of the Conservative Party
Room in the 'broad church' for everyone except those with right wing views eh? Surprise surprise. Like 'party loyalty', a concept that only applies one way.
I didn’t say that.
It was Fysh who was trying to define what the Conservative Party should be
Before the election, CCHQ tried to parachute a candidate into a seat who couldn't accept because they were already on the Lib Dem's candidates list. That's an extreme example of a selection process that stuff safe seats with ideological opponents to conservatism. It demonstrates a very profound issue that goes to the heart of the party's disunity and ineffectiveness in Government. The Tory Party used to be a lot more democratic, with local associations selecting MPs, a democratic right that they gave up in return for a say in the leadership, which CCHQ is also trying to take off them.
There does need to be a broad church, but everyone in that church should be motivated imho by a basic belief in the values of conservatism, however mild that form of conservatism might be. How else can they represent the interests of conservative voters?
The problem is that there *is* overlap between some of the parties in the centre, and you want that to be a hard-and-fast boundary. But without going to the NF or BNP, there is no boundary on the right. You want to truncate the broad church in the centre, but let any nutcase in on the far right.
But IMV the key word for Conservatives is the small-c word 'conservative'. Not no change, but careful and well-planned change, cautiously made. Progress by evolution rather than revolution.
The Conservative Party have forgotten that over the last decade.
But that notion is one of parties occupying a silly sort of space on left/right spectrum. A band that contracts, expands, and is pushed up and down like a pipe cleaner with the vagaries of politics.
What I'm arguing for is belief in a set of values and principles by which all political actions are measured. Is a law adding to the powers of the state against individual? Is a law or treaty in the national interest or against it? Is a law adding unduly to the tax burden? Will a law fundamentally undermine the security of the nation or its ability to defend itself? Is a law in the interests of families? Is a political action conducive to a strong, cohesive society? Is a law conducive to parliamentary sovereignty?
It isn't really about right and left, though those terms can be useful shorthand. A lot of the PCP, through design by CCHQ for reasons which I can't discern, doesn't pay more than lip service to those values, and sometimes not even that.
The issue is that the way those topics viewed can very much be in the eyes of he beholder, e.g. what is the national interest, especially if you take short- and long-term into account? They can also be contradictory. Is a slightly increased tax burden justified if that tax money is spent in the national interest? This treaty may slightly reduce national sovereignty, but also be in the national interest.
I think they're less ambiguous than you indicate. But they do come in and out of fashion.
There are fashionable weasel words that would justify the closing of Britain's virgin steel making capacity, dealing a knockout blow to our ability to manufacture armaments without importing the steel, based on amorphous envisaged future benefits of 'setting a good example' on CO2 emissions, but no true adherent to Tory principles could ever support such a scheme. Another Tory principle is that families and individuals spend their money better than the state. If adherence to these principles was widespread within the PCP, neither the party nor the country would be in the mess they are in.
I think Thatcher would have been thoroughly on board with reducing CO2 emissions. I think she was the first major world leader to take it seriously, along with CFCs and acid rain.
Her own words:
"For generations, we have assumed that the efforts of mankind would leave the fundamental equilibrium of the world's systems and atmosphere stable. But it is possible that with all these enormous changes (population, agricultural, use of fossil fuels) concentrated into such a short period of time, we have unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the system of this planet itself.
Recently three changes in atmospheric chemistry have become familiar subjects of concern. The first is the increase in the greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane, and chlorofluorocarbons—which has led some [end p4] to fear that we are creating a global heat trap which could lead to climatic instability. We are told that a warming effect of 1°C per decade would greatly exceed the capacity of our natural habitat to cope. Such warming could cause accelerated melting of glacial ice and a consequent increase in the sea level of several feet over the next century. This was brought home to me at the Commonwealth Conference in Vancouver last year when the President of the Maldive Islands reminded us that the highest part of the Maldives is only six feet above sea level. The population is 177,000. It is noteworthy that the five warmest years in a century of records have all been in the 1980s—though we may not have seen much evidence in Britain!
The second matter under discussion is the discovery by the British Antarctic Survey of a large hole in the ozone layer which protects life from ultra-violet radiation. We don't know the full implications of the ozone hole nor how it may interact with the greenhouse effect. Nevertheless it was common sense to support a worldwide agreement in Montreal last year to halve world consumption of chlorofluorocarbons by the end of the century. As the sole measure to limit ozone depletion, this may be insufficient but it is a start in reducing the pace of change while we continue the detailed study of the problem on which our (the British) Stratospheric Ozone Review Group is about to report.
The third matter is acid deposition which has affected soils, lakes and trees downwind from industrial centres. Extensive action is being taken to cut down emission of sulphur and nitrogen oxides from power stations at great but necessary expense."
According to you, Thatcher would not be a Conservative...
There is no other way to make commercial steel without coking coal (a heck of a lot of CO2). Anyone who says otherwise also has a Fusion reactor to sell you.
I'm unsure what point you're trying to make? Few people say we need *no* coal; otherwise heritage railways would be in serious trouble. But getting rid of coal-fired power stations from the 1990s onwards made a massive dent in our carbon emissions.
Key takeaways and apparent concerns that aren't: - It'd probably make us less dependent on imports - You certainly can make the top grades of steel in electric arc furnaces these days and the very best grades of steel made in Britain these days are made in electric arc furnaces rather than blast furnaces
Actual concerns: - It's a very rapid and sudden shift and puts all our eggs into one basket (reversing our previous issue of being almost all-in on blast furnaces) - Power costs here are high - The most exciting new work on decarbonising steel production is occuring in Sweden with hydrogen DRI plants and the US with electrolysis
Thanks for that. PB is brilliant at guiding people who are arguing in the dark, or at least dusk. Generally, if PB doesn't have an expert on any one topic, there'll be someone with useful links...
That is the worst demi pie-chart that I've ever seen. Did France24 hire their data visualisation expert from the Lib Dems?
Looks like it was built for a different result and when that was wrong they had to just change the numbers and not the proportions. No one around to work excel?
Not sure. My understanding from most of the commentators is that the deal that Macron has had to make with the Far Left is one that undoes much of his last 7 years and will put him on a collision course with Brussels over public finances. Basically he is risking bankrupting the country to savage this result after his stupid unecessary election.
All this seems to do is make Le Pen more likely as President in a few years - if the analysis is correct.
The problem is that there will be unrest on a scale we've not seen before.
Gotta say it does look quite fash-adjacent. This place could - understandably - vote Nazi in despair any moment
This trying to empathise with the French business will do you no good you know!
(Is there an any way similar website to PB in France? A mere echo though it must be of course.)
I’m in Menerbes. One of the plus nice villages de France. It is absurdly beaut
No riots….. YET
I studied and lived on the Cote D'Azur for three months. Filthy little dogs shitting everywhere. Watch where you're puting your Gucci loafers.
I’ve no intention of going to the coast. It’s vulgar and full of gangsters. And I might meet @Roger
You should. It's at it's sparkling best and full of people you'll recognise. Two exhibitions you might like. Bettina Rheims in Nice and Pasolini in Monaco. Bettina Rheims shows that Me2 doesn't apply to women and Pasolini......is just Pasolini. Then if you can wait the Tour de France ends in Nice on the 17th and the Olympic torch is wending its way from VF to Paris as I type....
I’ve done the Riviera many times. It’s nice if you like that sort of thing - and sometimes I do
But I’m here to do some actual flint knapping and a friend has kindly loaned me his little house in the lovely Luberon
Little known fact that Luberon is where KY Jelly was invented.
That is the worst demi pie-chart that I've ever seen. Did France24 hire their data visualisation expert from the Lib Dems?
Makes it look like the exit poll results were doctored at the last minute to pretend Front Nationale are not heading for a majority so that the good and great can offload their assets before tbe markets twig on and implode..but they forgot to change the semi piechart.
That is the worst demi pie-chart that I've ever seen. Did France24 hire their data visualisation expert from the Lib Dems?
Makes it look like the exit poll results were doctored at the last minute to pretend Front Nationale are not heading for a majority so that the good and great can offload their assets before tbe markets twig on and implode..
Or they just have someone incompetent working in the graphics department.
Another couple of amazing stats from this bizarre election. Labour have never lost more than 91 seats at an election (2010). The Tories lost 252. The Tories have never gained more than 96 (2010 again). Labour gained 239.
All figures net since 1945.
One of my pals put it this way: to get 5 far right MPs elected cost 250 centre right MPs. Not a great piece of business.
Now be fair at least a fifth of the Tory MPs were probably Reform curious at heart.
Let's see if they feel that way now they are unemployed.
Ask Marcus Fysh.
A former Tory MP who lost his seat in the general election says he has quit the party because "it's dead".
Marcus Fysh was Yeovil's MP but lost heavily to Adam Dance from the Liberal Democrats.
On X, the former minister said the current parliamentary composition of the party was "non-Conservative".
He’s a right wing nutter. I’m glad he doesn’t agree with the composition of the Conservative Party
Room in the 'broad church' for everyone except those with right wing views eh? Surprise surprise. Like 'party loyalty', a concept that only applies one way.
I didn’t say that.
It was Fysh who was trying to define what the Conservative Party should be
Before the election, CCHQ tried to parachute a candidate into a seat who couldn't accept because they were already on the Lib Dem's candidates list. That's an extreme example of a selection process that stuff safe seats with ideological opponents to conservatism. It demonstrates a very profound issue that goes to the heart of the party's disunity and ineffectiveness in Government. The Tory Party used to be a lot more democratic, with local associations selecting MPs, a democratic right that they gave up in return for a say in the leadership, which CCHQ is also trying to take off them.
There does need to be a broad church, but everyone in that church should be motivated imho by a basic belief in the values of conservatism, however mild that form of conservatism might be. How else can they represent the interests of conservative voters?
The problem is that there *is* overlap between some of the parties in the centre, and you want that to be a hard-and-fast boundary. But without going to the NF or BNP, there is no boundary on the right. You want to truncate the broad church in the centre, but let any nutcase in on the far right.
But IMV the key word for Conservatives is the small-c word 'conservative'. Not no change, but careful and well-planned change, cautiously made. Progress by evolution rather than revolution.
The Conservative Party have forgotten that over the last decade.
But that notion is one of parties occupying a silly sort of space on left/right spectrum. A band that contracts, expands, and is pushed up and down like a pipe cleaner with the vagaries of politics.
What I'm arguing for is belief in a set of values and principles by which all political actions are measured. Is a law adding to the powers of the state against individual? Is a law or treaty in the national interest or against it? Is a law adding unduly to the tax burden? Will a law fundamentally undermine the security of the nation or its ability to defend itself? Is a law in the interests of families? Is a political action conducive to a strong, cohesive society? Is a law conducive to parliamentary sovereignty?
It isn't really about right and left, though those terms can be useful shorthand. A lot of the PCP, through design by CCHQ for reasons which I can't discern, doesn't pay more than lip service to those values, and sometimes not even that.
The issue is that the way those topics viewed can very much be in the eyes of he beholder, e.g. what is the national interest, especially if you take short- and long-term into account? They can also be contradictory. Is a slightly increased tax burden justified if that tax money is spent in the national interest? This treaty may slightly reduce national sovereignty, but also be in the national interest.
I think they're less ambiguous than you indicate. But they do come in and out of fashion.
There are fashionable weasel words that would justify the closing of Britain's virgin steel making capacity, dealing a knockout blow to our ability to manufacture armaments without importing the steel, based on amorphous envisaged future benefits of 'setting a good example' on CO2 emissions, but no true adherent to Tory principles could ever support such a scheme. Another Tory principle is that families and individuals spend their money better than the state. If adherence to these principles was widespread within the PCP, neither the party nor the country would be in the mess they are in.
I think Thatcher would have been thoroughly on board with reducing CO2 emissions. I think she was the first major world leader to take it seriously, along with CFCs and acid rain.
Her own words:
"For generations, we have assumed that the efforts of mankind would leave the fundamental equilibrium of the world's systems and atmosphere stable. But it is possible that with all these enormous changes (population, agricultural, use of fossil fuels) concentrated into such a short period of time, we have unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the system of this planet itself.
Recently three changes in atmospheric chemistry have become familiar subjects of concern. The first is the increase in the greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane, and chlorofluorocarbons—which has led some [end p4] to fear that we are creating a global heat trap which could lead to climatic instability. We are told that a warming effect of 1°C per decade would greatly exceed the capacity of our natural habitat to cope. Such warming could cause accelerated melting of glacial ice and a consequent increase in the sea level of several feet over the next century. This was brought home to me at the Commonwealth Conference in Vancouver last year when the President of the Maldive Islands reminded us that the highest part of the Maldives is only six feet above sea level. The population is 177,000. It is noteworthy that the five warmest years in a century of records have all been in the 1980s—though we may not have seen much evidence in Britain!
The second matter under discussion is the discovery by the British Antarctic Survey of a large hole in the ozone layer which protects life from ultra-violet radiation. We don't know the full implications of the ozone hole nor how it may interact with the greenhouse effect. Nevertheless it was common sense to support a worldwide agreement in Montreal last year to halve world consumption of chlorofluorocarbons by the end of the century. As the sole measure to limit ozone depletion, this may be insufficient but it is a start in reducing the pace of change while we continue the detailed study of the problem on which our (the British) Stratospheric Ozone Review Group is about to report.
The third matter is acid deposition which has affected soils, lakes and trees downwind from industrial centres. Extensive action is being taken to cut down emission of sulphur and nitrogen oxides from power stations at great but necessary expense."
According to you, Thatcher would not be a Conservative...
There is no other way to make commercial steel without coking coal (a heck of a lot of CO2). Anyone who says otherwise also has a Fusion reactor to sell you.
I'm unsure what point you're trying to make? Few people say we need *no* coal; otherwise heritage railways would be in serious trouble. But getting rid of coal-fired power stations from the 1990s onwards made a massive dent in our carbon emissions.
We are talking about commercial steel and the closing down of a plant that makes virgin steel to replace it with one the recycles scrap steel. The virgin steel market is not decreasing in any way, but it just wont be getting made here.
We also do not mine iron ore any more (there are lots of traces of that industry, only recently gone, in the Northamptonshire area). So that needs importing as well for the true independence you desire. Fortunately we have oodles of limestone.
I'm ambivalent about the steel plant's closure. Ideally we'd keep it, bit I have little idea of the economics of it. If we did, we may be better off nationalising it as a national resource - not that British Steel did a stellar job...
Point of order. We stopped mining iron ore because in a globalised market we could get it cheaper from vast open cast mines in other parts of the word. There are still huge reserves of iron ore just as there are coal. Same goes for copper and tungsten (Devon has the 4th largest tungesten reserves in the world). These are economic and political decisions not resource availability decisions.
Yep, I'm aware of that, but point taken. But I might lightly quibble with your past point: it's not just about resource availability, but also the *quality* of that resource? As an example, the quality/purity of the ore?
As a lifelong Liberal and Liberal Democrat supporter and one time Party member, it's incredible to think we now have 72 MPs. I remember the thrill of 46 MPs in 1997 and thinking of that as a breakthrough but to imagine after the dark days of 2015, we now have 2 LD MPs for every 3 Conservatives - almost unbelievable.
I've often said on here the party I joined and worked for died in the fires of the coalition but, phoenix-like, that party has risen from the ashes of 2015 and has targeted ruthlessly to achieve such a result. Ed Davey is a product of ALDC and the campaigning techniques of that organisation (as was Farron) and it's perhaps no surprise the party has gone back to the future. Yes, a lot of it was the classic "high tide floating all boats" but that doesn't mean each and every gain wasn't the result of hard work.
I strongly suspect there is a significant correlation between local Government success, especially from 2022 onwards, and victory last Thursday and it's to other areas of local strength which were outside the scope of targeting this time the party needs to look for further progress. 2025 has to be about gains at County level and using those to develop organisation in new areas.
Given how some Conservatives enjoyed dancing on the LD graves in 2015, you'll forgive a wry smile as I look at the Conservatives "assessing their losses". The humiliation of 2015 has been avenged. Such is politics, a rough trade as someone once said.
But 71 Lib Dem seats in 2024 matter a lot less than a dozen did in 2015, because Labour's majority is so huge and they will obviously be mostly gone when the public want Labour out, whenever that is. Most of the public would be hard pressed to name a single LibDem policy I think. That's the way with protest votes, whether they are Reform, LibDem or Monster Raving Loony.
72. It's 72.
73 teamed up with the APNI
The Lib Dems should appoint Sorcha Eastwood as their Northern Ireland spokesperson. It would help the inclusion of Northern Ireland politics into wider British politics. It would also show NI voters the advantages of voting for a non sectarian party.
I think that's a great idea, and being non-sectarian that might be easier to swallow than alliances between any of the other parties and GB equivalents.
The SDLP, despite being Nationalists, used to take the Labour Whip. Not sure if they still do.
Only informally - there was never a formal coalition, and Labour had no power to compel them to vote a certain way. Notably, Gerry Fitt abstained on the 1979 confidence motion that caused Callaghan's govt to fall.
Labour now organise in NI, but don't (yet) stand for election. The SDLP controversially entered a formal partnership with Fianna Fail in 2019, but that ended 3 years later, and the party now "stands on it's own 2 feet" and isn't in partnership with anyone.
IF it proves somewhat difficult to form a new French legislative majority, or even a working minority, does current ministry retain office in the interim?
They aren't the Far Left though. They are the Left/Green Alliance. Some of them are. Francois Hollande is a candidate, too.
Yeah, I'm sure you'd be as understanding if Sarkozy or someone was in an alliance with Le Pen.
No. I'm merely pointing out that to describe them as Far Left or Communist is simply inaccurate. There are those. But they encompass the full range to very moderate Centrists. A lot of environmentalists of divergent views beyond ecology, too.
IF it proves somewhat difficult to form a new French legislative majority, or even a working minority, does current ministry retain office in the interim?
Macron is allowed to call another election in a year. He might have to
They aren't the Far Left though. They are the Left/Green Alliance. Some of them are. Francois Hollande is a candidate, too.
The FT last week described the French Communists as one the most moderate of the parties in the NPF. Doesn't exactly bode well does it. (Mind you I agree it would have been as bad if the RN had won.) Like Sunak, MAcron called an unecessary election and has ended up in a worse place than he started.
IF it proves somewhat difficult to form a new French legislative majority, or even a working minority, does current ministry retain office in the interim?
Macron is allowed to call another election in a year. He might have to
Not sure. My understanding from most of the commentators is that the deal that Macron has had to make with the Far Left is one that undoes much of his last 7 years and will put him on a collision course with Brussels over public finances. Basically he is risking bankrupting the country to savage this result after his stupid unecessary election.
All this seems to do is make Le Pen more likely as President in a few years - if the analysis is correct.
The problem is that there will be unrest on a scale we've not seen before.
I hope not. Mind you in France that is quite a high bar to overcome.
Another couple of amazing stats from this bizarre election. Labour have never lost more than 91 seats at an election (2010). The Tories lost 252. The Tories have never gained more than 96 (2010 again). Labour gained 239.
All figures net since 1945.
One of my pals put it this way: to get 5 far right MPs elected cost 250 centre right MPs. Not a great piece of business.
Now be fair at least a fifth of the Tory MPs were probably Reform curious at heart.
Let's see if they feel that way now they are unemployed.
Ask Marcus Fysh.
A former Tory MP who lost his seat in the general election says he has quit the party because "it's dead".
Marcus Fysh was Yeovil's MP but lost heavily to Adam Dance from the Liberal Democrats.
On X, the former minister said the current parliamentary composition of the party was "non-Conservative".
He’s a right wing nutter. I’m glad he doesn’t agree with the composition of the Conservative Party
Room in the 'broad church' for everyone except those with right wing views eh? Surprise surprise. Like 'party loyalty', a concept that only applies one way.
I didn’t say that.
It was Fysh who was trying to define what the Conservative Party should be
Before the election, CCHQ tried to parachute a candidate into a seat who couldn't accept because they were already on the Lib Dem's candidates list. That's an extreme example of a selection process that stuff safe seats with ideological opponents to conservatism. It demonstrates a very profound issue that goes to the heart of the party's disunity and ineffectiveness in Government. The Tory Party used to be a lot more democratic, with local associations selecting MPs, a democratic right that they gave up in return for a say in the leadership, which CCHQ is also trying to take off them.
There does need to be a broad church, but everyone in that church should be motivated imho by a basic belief in the values of conservatism, however mild that form of conservatism might be. How else can they represent the interests of conservative voters?
The problem is that there *is* overlap between some of the parties in the centre, and you want that to be a hard-and-fast boundary. But without going to the NF or BNP, there is no boundary on the right. You want to truncate the broad church in the centre, but let any nutcase in on the far right.
But IMV the key word for Conservatives is the small-c word 'conservative'. Not no change, but careful and well-planned change, cautiously made. Progress by evolution rather than revolution.
The Conservative Party have forgotten that over the last decade.
But that notion is one of parties occupying a silly sort of space on left/right spectrum. A band that contracts, expands, and is pushed up and down like a pipe cleaner with the vagaries of politics.
What I'm arguing for is belief in a set of values and principles by which all political actions are measured. Is a law adding to the powers of the state against individual? Is a law or treaty in the national interest or against it? Is a law adding unduly to the tax burden? Will a law fundamentally undermine the security of the nation or its ability to defend itself? Is a law in the interests of families? Is a political action conducive to a strong, cohesive society? Is a law conducive to parliamentary sovereignty?
It isn't really about right and left, though those terms can be useful shorthand. A lot of the PCP, through design by CCHQ for reasons which I can't discern, doesn't pay more than lip service to those values, and sometimes not even that.
The issue is that the way those topics viewed can very much be in the eyes of he beholder, e.g. what is the national interest, especially if you take short- and long-term into account? They can also be contradictory. Is a slightly increased tax burden justified if that tax money is spent in the national interest? This treaty may slightly reduce national sovereignty, but also be in the national interest.
I think they're less ambiguous than you indicate. But they do come in and out of fashion.
There are fashionable weasel words that would justify the closing of Britain's virgin steel making capacity, dealing a knockout blow to our ability to manufacture armaments without importing the steel, based on amorphous envisaged future benefits of 'setting a good example' on CO2 emissions, but no true adherent to Tory principles could ever support such a scheme. Another Tory principle is that families and individuals spend their money better than the state. If adherence to these principles was widespread within the PCP, neither the party nor the country would be in the mess they are in.
I think Thatcher would have been thoroughly on board with reducing CO2 emissions. I think she was the first major world leader to take it seriously, along with CFCs and acid rain.
Her own words:
"For generations, we have assumed that the efforts of mankind would leave the fundamental equilibrium of the world's systems and atmosphere stable. But it is possible that with all these enormous changes (population, agricultural, use of fossil fuels) concentrated into such a short period of time, we have unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the system of this planet itself.
Recently three changes in atmospheric chemistry have become familiar subjects of concern. The first is the increase in the greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane, and chlorofluorocarbons—which has led some [end p4] to fear that we are creating a global heat trap which could lead to climatic instability. We are told that a warming effect of 1°C per decade would greatly exceed the capacity of our natural habitat to cope. Such warming could cause accelerated melting of glacial ice and a consequent increase in the sea level of several feet over the next century. This was brought home to me at the Commonwealth Conference in Vancouver last year when the President of the Maldive Islands reminded us that the highest part of the Maldives is only six feet above sea level. The population is 177,000. It is noteworthy that the five warmest years in a century of records have all been in the 1980s—though we may not have seen much evidence in Britain!
The second matter under discussion is the discovery by the British Antarctic Survey of a large hole in the ozone layer which protects life from ultra-violet radiation. We don't know the full implications of the ozone hole nor how it may interact with the greenhouse effect. Nevertheless it was common sense to support a worldwide agreement in Montreal last year to halve world consumption of chlorofluorocarbons by the end of the century. As the sole measure to limit ozone depletion, this may be insufficient but it is a start in reducing the pace of change while we continue the detailed study of the problem on which our (the British) Stratospheric Ozone Review Group is about to report.
The third matter is acid deposition which has affected soils, lakes and trees downwind from industrial centres. Extensive action is being taken to cut down emission of sulphur and nitrogen oxides from power stations at great but necessary expense."
According to you, Thatcher would not be a Conservative...
There is no other way to make commercial steel without coking coal (a heck of a lot of CO2). Anyone who says otherwise also has a Fusion reactor to sell you.
I'm unsure what point you're trying to make? Few people say we need *no* coal; otherwise heritage railways would be in serious trouble. But getting rid of coal-fired power stations from the 1990s onwards made a massive dent in our carbon emissions.
Key takeaways and apparent concerns that aren't: - It'd probably make us less dependent on imports - You certainly can make the top grades of steel in electric arc furnaces these days and the very best grades of steel made in Britain these days are made in electric arc furnaces rather than blast furnaces
Actual concerns: - It's a very rapid and sudden shift and puts all our eggs into one basket (reversing our previous issue of being almost all-in on blast furnaces) - Power costs here are high - The most exciting new work on decarbonising steel production is occuring in Sweden with hydrogen DRI plants and the US with electrolysis
Also, in terms of our bring able to sustain fighting any conventional war we're likely to be engaged in, the Welsh steel production is pretty well irrelevant.
If the concern is for our manufacturing base, that's quite a different argument. But then we're into the discussion of our having had no real industrial strategy for last four decades.
That is the worst demi pie-chart that I've ever seen. Did France24 hire their data visualisation expert from the Lib Dems?
Makes it look like the exit poll results were doctored at the last minute to pretend Front Nationale are not heading for a majority so that the good and great can offload their assets before tbe markets twig on and implode..but they forgot to change the semi piechart.
Yes, that would be the conspiracy theory take. I'd go for the oops we guessed wrong theory.
BREAKING: The government is to divert tens of millions of pounds from the Rwanda scheme to set up a new Border Security Command, as it announces its plans to tackle illegal migration.
They aren't the Far Left though. They are the Left/Green Alliance. Some of them are. Francois Hollande is a candidate, too.
The FT last week described the French Communists as one the most moderate of the parties in the NPF. Doesn't exactly bode well does it. (Mind you I agree it would have been as bad if the RN had won.) Like Sunak, MAcron called an unecessary election and has ended up in a worse place than he started.
Maybe they all being advised by Theresa May.
Rather like Bruning’s cunning plan to call a snap German election in 1930.
BREAKING: The government is to divert tens of millions of pounds from the Rwanda scheme to set up a new Border Security Command, as it announces its plans to tackle illegal migration.
Another couple of amazing stats from this bizarre election. Labour have never lost more than 91 seats at an election (2010). The Tories lost 252. The Tories have never gained more than 96 (2010 again). Labour gained 239.
All figures net since 1945.
One of my pals put it this way: to get 5 far right MPs elected cost 250 centre right MPs. Not a great piece of business.
Now be fair at least a fifth of the Tory MPs were probably Reform curious at heart.
Let's see if they feel that way now they are unemployed.
Ask Marcus Fysh.
A former Tory MP who lost his seat in the general election says he has quit the party because "it's dead".
Marcus Fysh was Yeovil's MP but lost heavily to Adam Dance from the Liberal Democrats.
On X, the former minister said the current parliamentary composition of the party was "non-Conservative".
He’s a right wing nutter. I’m glad he doesn’t agree with the composition of the Conservative Party
Room in the 'broad church' for everyone except those with right wing views eh? Surprise surprise. Like 'party loyalty', a concept that only applies one way.
I didn’t say that.
It was Fysh who was trying to define what the Conservative Party should be
Before the election, CCHQ tried to parachute a candidate into a seat who couldn't accept because they were already on the Lib Dem's candidates list. That's an extreme example of a selection process that stuff safe seats with ideological opponents to conservatism. It demonstrates a very profound issue that goes to the heart of the party's disunity and ineffectiveness in Government. The Tory Party used to be a lot more democratic, with local associations selecting MPs, a democratic right that they gave up in return for a say in the leadership, which CCHQ is also trying to take off them.
There does need to be a broad church, but everyone in that church should be motivated imho by a basic belief in the values of conservatism, however mild that form of conservatism might be. How else can they represent the interests of conservative voters?
The problem is that there *is* overlap between some of the parties in the centre, and you want that to be a hard-and-fast boundary. But without going to the NF or BNP, there is no boundary on the right. You want to truncate the broad church in the centre, but let any nutcase in on the far right.
But IMV the key word for Conservatives is the small-c word 'conservative'. Not no change, but careful and well-planned change, cautiously made. Progress by evolution rather than revolution.
The Conservative Party have forgotten that over the last decade.
But that notion is one of parties occupying a silly sort of space on left/right spectrum. A band that contracts, expands, and is pushed up and down like a pipe cleaner with the vagaries of politics.
What I'm arguing for is belief in a set of values and principles by which all political actions are measured. Is a law adding to the powers of the state against individual? Is a law or treaty in the national interest or against it? Is a law adding unduly to the tax burden? Will a law fundamentally undermine the security of the nation or its ability to defend itself? Is a law in the interests of families? Is a political action conducive to a strong, cohesive society? Is a law conducive to parliamentary sovereignty?
It isn't really about right and left, though those terms can be useful shorthand. A lot of the PCP, through design by CCHQ for reasons which I can't discern, doesn't pay more than lip service to those values, and sometimes not even that.
The issue is that the way those topics viewed can very much be in the eyes of he beholder, e.g. what is the national interest, especially if you take short- and long-term into account? They can also be contradictory. Is a slightly increased tax burden justified if that tax money is spent in the national interest? This treaty may slightly reduce national sovereignty, but also be in the national interest.
I think they're less ambiguous than you indicate. But they do come in and out of fashion.
There are fashionable weasel words that would justify the closing of Britain's virgin steel making capacity, dealing a knockout blow to our ability to manufacture armaments without importing the steel, based on amorphous envisaged future benefits of 'setting a good example' on CO2 emissions, but no true adherent to Tory principles could ever support such a scheme. Another Tory principle is that families and individuals spend their money better than the state. If adherence to these principles was widespread within the PCP, neither the party nor the country would be in the mess they are in.
I think Thatcher would have been thoroughly on board with reducing CO2 emissions. I think she was the first major world leader to take it seriously, along with CFCs and acid rain.
Her own words:
"For generations, we have assumed that the efforts of mankind would leave the fundamental equilibrium of the world's systems and atmosphere stable. But it is possible that with all these enormous changes (population, agricultural, use of fossil fuels) concentrated into such a short period of time, we have unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the system of this planet itself.
Recently three changes in atmospheric chemistry have become familiar subjects of concern. The first is the increase in the greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane, and chlorofluorocarbons—which has led some [end p4] to fear that we are creating a global heat trap which could lead to climatic instability. We are told that a warming effect of 1°C per decade would greatly exceed the capacity of our natural habitat to cope. Such warming could cause accelerated melting of glacial ice and a consequent increase in the sea level of several feet over the next century. This was brought home to me at the Commonwealth Conference in Vancouver last year when the President of the Maldive Islands reminded us that the highest part of the Maldives is only six feet above sea level. The population is 177,000. It is noteworthy that the five warmest years in a century of records have all been in the 1980s—though we may not have seen much evidence in Britain!
The second matter under discussion is the discovery by the British Antarctic Survey of a large hole in the ozone layer which protects life from ultra-violet radiation. We don't know the full implications of the ozone hole nor how it may interact with the greenhouse effect. Nevertheless it was common sense to support a worldwide agreement in Montreal last year to halve world consumption of chlorofluorocarbons by the end of the century. As the sole measure to limit ozone depletion, this may be insufficient but it is a start in reducing the pace of change while we continue the detailed study of the problem on which our (the British) Stratospheric Ozone Review Group is about to report.
The third matter is acid deposition which has affected soils, lakes and trees downwind from industrial centres. Extensive action is being taken to cut down emission of sulphur and nitrogen oxides from power stations at great but necessary expense."
According to you, Thatcher would not be a Conservative...
What a flimsy straw man. Thatcher was rightly extremely concerned about the evidence of global warming, but it is leaping a vast logical chasm to suggest that she would therefore have consented to give up virgin steel-making capacity in Britain, especially given the fact that it has not reduced the quantity of blast furnaces in the world - huge extra capacity has simply been built in India, where environmental standards are lower, so net CO2 may well go up. So the move surrenders a key component of national security, for zero environmental gain.
Do I take it from your attempt to co-opt a dead Margaret Thatcher into agreeing with the closure of Britain's last blast furnace, and therefore our ability to sustain independent armaments production during a war scenario, that you are in favour of this move?
Her actions on CFCs show that she might well have taken some very hard decisions on such matters. I don't think the steelworkers saw her as a friend, do you?
I'm unsure why you're so obsessed with steelmaking in Britain. What 'alternate' websites have informed you about it? The same ones that made you shill for Putin over MH17?
Hahah - brilliant. Not enjoying this discussion very much ducks? Your rather drippy equivocation on a very simple national security concept, preserving a capability that every other Government from Atlee to Cameron to May has preserved, is very telling.
You're psychotically insistent on holding the PB-line against Mad Vlad, and very flamboyantly question where the loyalties of other people lie, but on something which is a real threat to our national security, you really couldn't give a toss.
I'm not *psychotically* anything. I do think you are stupid or a troll - after all, only someone who is stupid or a troll could have come out with some of the 'alternative' stuff you do.
As it happens I do give a toss - you've obviously never heard me complain about the closure of specialist steelmakers such as Butterley (and in a way this is just as vital as the raw product). The steel industry is an interesting one, and the decision is certainly not as clear-cut as you make out. I've little idea what the correct answer is, because I have not researched it enough,.
And I doubt you have either.
Here's a question for you, which you will obviously instantly be able to answer as you've such thorough knowledge on this: if steelmaking is essential for our national security, hoe much steel do we need to be making each year for national security?
Another couple of amazing stats from this bizarre election. Labour have never lost more than 91 seats at an election (2010). The Tories lost 252. The Tories have never gained more than 96 (2010 again). Labour gained 239.
All figures net since 1945.
One of my pals put it this way: to get 5 far right MPs elected cost 250 centre right MPs. Not a great piece of business.
Now be fair at least a fifth of the Tory MPs were probably Reform curious at heart.
Let's see if they feel that way now they are unemployed.
Ask Marcus Fysh.
A former Tory MP who lost his seat in the general election says he has quit the party because "it's dead".
Marcus Fysh was Yeovil's MP but lost heavily to Adam Dance from the Liberal Democrats.
On X, the former minister said the current parliamentary composition of the party was "non-Conservative".
He’s a right wing nutter. I’m glad he doesn’t agree with the composition of the Conservative Party
Room in the 'broad church' for everyone except those with right wing views eh? Surprise surprise. Like 'party loyalty', a concept that only applies one way.
I didn’t say that.
It was Fysh who was trying to define what the Conservative Party should be
Before the election, CCHQ tried to parachute a candidate into a seat who couldn't accept because they were already on the Lib Dem's candidates list. That's an extreme example of a selection process that stuff safe seats with ideological opponents to conservatism. It demonstrates a very profound issue that goes to the heart of the party's disunity and ineffectiveness in Government. The Tory Party used to be a lot more democratic, with local associations selecting MPs, a democratic right that they gave up in return for a say in the leadership, which CCHQ is also trying to take off them.
There does need to be a broad church, but everyone in that church should be motivated imho by a basic belief in the values of conservatism, however mild that form of conservatism might be. How else can they represent the interests of conservative voters?
The problem is that there *is* overlap between some of the parties in the centre, and you want that to be a hard-and-fast boundary. But without going to the NF or BNP, there is no boundary on the right. You want to truncate the broad church in the centre, but let any nutcase in on the far right.
But IMV the key word for Conservatives is the small-c word 'conservative'. Not no change, but careful and well-planned change, cautiously made. Progress by evolution rather than revolution.
The Conservative Party have forgotten that over the last decade.
But that notion is one of parties occupying a silly sort of space on left/right spectrum. A band that contracts, expands, and is pushed up and down like a pipe cleaner with the vagaries of politics.
What I'm arguing for is belief in a set of values and principles by which all political actions are measured. Is a law adding to the powers of the state against individual? Is a law or treaty in the national interest or against it? Is a law adding unduly to the tax burden? Will a law fundamentally undermine the security of the nation or its ability to defend itself? Is a law in the interests of families? Is a political action conducive to a strong, cohesive society? Is a law conducive to parliamentary sovereignty?
It isn't really about right and left, though those terms can be useful shorthand. A lot of the PCP, through design by CCHQ for reasons which I can't discern, doesn't pay more than lip service to those values, and sometimes not even that.
The issue is that the way those topics viewed can very much be in the eyes of he beholder, e.g. what is the national interest, especially if you take short- and long-term into account? They can also be contradictory. Is a slightly increased tax burden justified if that tax money is spent in the national interest? This treaty may slightly reduce national sovereignty, but also be in the national interest.
I think they're less ambiguous than you indicate. But they do come in and out of fashion.
There are fashionable weasel words that would justify the closing of Britain's virgin steel making capacity, dealing a knockout blow to our ability to manufacture armaments without importing the steel, based on amorphous envisaged future benefits of 'setting a good example' on CO2 emissions, but no true adherent to Tory principles could ever support such a scheme. Another Tory principle is that families and individuals spend their money better than the state. If adherence to these principles was widespread within the PCP, neither the party nor the country would be in the mess they are in.
I think Thatcher would have been thoroughly on board with reducing CO2 emissions. I think she was the first major world leader to take it seriously, along with CFCs and acid rain.
Her own words:
"For generations, we have assumed that the efforts of mankind would leave the fundamental equilibrium of the world's systems and atmosphere stable. But it is possible that with all these enormous changes (population, agricultural, use of fossil fuels) concentrated into such a short period of time, we have unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the system of this planet itself.
Recently three changes in atmospheric chemistry have become familiar subjects of concern. The first is the increase in the greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane, and chlorofluorocarbons—which has led some [end p4] to fear that we are creating a global heat trap which could lead to climatic instability. We are told that a warming effect of 1°C per decade would greatly exceed the capacity of our natural habitat to cope. Such warming could cause accelerated melting of glacial ice and a consequent increase in the sea level of several feet over the next century. This was brought home to me at the Commonwealth Conference in Vancouver last year when the President of the Maldive Islands reminded us that the highest part of the Maldives is only six feet above sea level. The population is 177,000. It is noteworthy that the five warmest years in a century of records have all been in the 1980s—though we may not have seen much evidence in Britain!
The second matter under discussion is the discovery by the British Antarctic Survey of a large hole in the ozone layer which protects life from ultra-violet radiation. We don't know the full implications of the ozone hole nor how it may interact with the greenhouse effect. Nevertheless it was common sense to support a worldwide agreement in Montreal last year to halve world consumption of chlorofluorocarbons by the end of the century. As the sole measure to limit ozone depletion, this may be insufficient but it is a start in reducing the pace of change while we continue the detailed study of the problem on which our (the British) Stratospheric Ozone Review Group is about to report.
The third matter is acid deposition which has affected soils, lakes and trees downwind from industrial centres. Extensive action is being taken to cut down emission of sulphur and nitrogen oxides from power stations at great but necessary expense."
According to you, Thatcher would not be a Conservative...
There is no other way to make commercial steel without coking coal (a heck of a lot of CO2). Anyone who says otherwise also has a Fusion reactor to sell you.
I'm unsure what point you're trying to make? Few people say we need *no* coal; otherwise heritage railways would be in serious trouble. But getting rid of coal-fired power stations from the 1990s onwards made a massive dent in our carbon emissions.
Key takeaways and apparent concerns that aren't: - It'd probably make us less dependent on imports - You certainly can make the top grades of steel in electric arc furnaces these days and the very best grades of steel made in Britain these days are made in electric arc furnaces rather than blast furnaces
Actual concerns: - It's a very rapid and sudden shift and puts all our eggs into one basket (reversing our previous issue of being almost all-in on blast furnaces) - Power costs here are high - The most exciting new work on decarbonising steel production is occuring in Sweden with hydrogen DRI plants and the US with electrolysis
Also, in terms of our bring able to sustain fighting any conventional war we're likely to be engaged in, the Welsh steel production is pretty well irrelevant.
If the concern is for our manufacturing base, that's quite a different argument. But then we're into the discussion of our having had no real industrial strategy for last four decades.
Of course we have, Shut it all down and send it overseas,
Even in Dundee — the fabled “Yes City” — Chris Law clung on to the new Dundee Central constituency by only 675 votes. The SNP’s catastrophic result was “much worse than I thought in my darkest days,” one veteran said. “There is just shock among the entire party,” another insider said. The nationalists no longer hold any seats south of Stirling.
How many of us need to look at a map to find Stirling? Just me then.
Much of England
Can you find Hemel Hempstead?
Can anyone? It is more elusive than Milton Keynes.
There is a street called Paradise in Hemel.
As a boy I was taken once around Old Hemel, which was very pretty. Does it still exist?
Sorry but I don't know.
We were visiting a place in Paradise which is in the new bit. I can confirm that the name of the street could be the dictionary definition of Oxymoron.
The euro elections and last Sunday showed that quite a lot of French voters are up for le Pen. Today showed that a considerable number more are up for opposing her. And in FPTP, the second matters more. As we've seen here.
What's the range of leftyness in the lefty alliance?
To repeat/clarify my question re: France, does the current ministry retain office UNTIL a new one is formed based on new National Assembly?
Note that in Belgium, it typically takes months to form a new government . . . during which time the old ministers retain office and (as W would say) governate.
The euro elections and last Sunday showed that quite a lot of French voters are up for le Pen. Today showed that a considerable number more are up for opposing her. And in FPTP, the second matters more. As we've seen here.
What's the range of leftyness in the lefty alliance?
Perhaps he'll end up appointing Francois Hollande as PM as some people predicted.
Even in Dundee — the fabled “Yes City” — Chris Law clung on to the new Dundee Central constituency by only 675 votes. The SNP’s catastrophic result was “much worse than I thought in my darkest days,” one veteran said. “There is just shock among the entire party,” another insider said. The nationalists no longer hold any seats south of Stirling.
How many of us need to look at a map to find Stirling? Just me then.
Much of England
Can you find Hemel Hempstead?
Can anyone? It is more elusive than Milton Keynes.
There is a street called Paradise in Hemel.
As a boy I was taken once around Old Hemel, which was very pretty. Does it still exist?
Sorry but I don't know.
We were visiting a place in Paradise which is in the new bit. I can confirm that the name of the street could be the dictionary definition of Oxymoron.
Perhaps that's where the woman in that song had been
Not sure. My understanding from most of the commentators is that the deal that Macron has had to make with the Far Left is one that undoes much of his last 7 years and will put him on a collision course with Brussels over public finances. Basically he is risking bankrupting the country to savage this result after his stupid unecessary election.
All this seems to do is make Le Pen more likely as President in a few years - if the analysis is correct.
The most interesting thing about this 2nd round is the increase in turnout and the change in the order from that expected. Macron was expected to come last and it looks like he's 2nd. National Rally were expected to win and looks like they're 3rd. So, well done French people for making the best of an unfortunate situation.
The euro elections and last Sunday showed that quite a lot of French voters are up for le Pen. Today showed that a considerable number more are up for opposing her. And in FPTP, the second matters more. As we've seen here.
What's the range of leftyness in the lefty alliance?
The LFI are like Galloway’s mob, and may have half the bloc’s seats. The Communists and Socialists are comparatively moderate.
That is the worst demi pie-chart that I've ever seen. Did France24 hire their data visualisation expert from the Lib Dems?
Makes it look like the exit poll results were doctored at the last minute to pretend Front Nationale are not heading for a majority so that the good and great can offload their assets before tbe markets twig on and implode..
Or they just have someone incompetent working in the graphics department.
MisterBedfordshire is never one to overlook the chance for a conspiracy theory.
Macron’s decision to call a snap election has proved idiotic.
Not necessarily. It has shown that anything with the mame Le Pen anywhere near the title can never win. There's every chance that this was their high water mark and this is the beginning of the end
Gotta say it does look quite fash-adjacent. This place could - understandably - vote Nazi in despair any moment
This trying to empathise with the French business will do you no good you know!
(Is there an any way similar website to PB in France? A mere echo though it must be of course.)
I’m in Menerbes. One of the plus nice villages de France. It is absurdly beaut
No riots….. YET
I studied and lived on the Cote D'Azur for three months. Filthy little dogs shitting everywhere. Watch where you're puting your Gucci loafers.
I’ve no intention of going to the coast. It’s vulgar and full of gangsters. And I might meet @Roger
You should. It's at it's sparkling best and full of people you'll recognise. Two exhibitions you might like. Bettina Rheims in Nice and Pasolini in Monaco. Bettina Rheims shows that Me2 doesn't apply to women and Pasolini......is just Pasolini. Then if you can wait the Tour de France ends in Nice on the 17th and the Olympic torch is wending its way from VF to Paris as I type....
I’ve done the Riviera many times. It’s nice if you like that sort of thing - and sometimes I do
But I’m here to do some actual flint knapping and a friend has kindly loaned me his little house in the lovely Luberon
Little known fact that Luberon is where KY Jelly was invented.
Wait till you hear what they dreamt up at Condom.
France once had an international rugby payer by the name of Condom. Caused Nigel Starmer-Smith all sorts of difficulties.
Another couple of amazing stats from this bizarre election. Labour have never lost more than 91 seats at an election (2010). The Tories lost 252. The Tories have never gained more than 96 (2010 again). Labour gained 239.
All figures net since 1945.
One of my pals put it this way: to get 5 far right MPs elected cost 250 centre right MPs. Not a great piece of business.
Now be fair at least a fifth of the Tory MPs were probably Reform curious at heart.
Let's see if they feel that way now they are unemployed.
Ask Marcus Fysh.
A former Tory MP who lost his seat in the general election says he has quit the party because "it's dead".
Marcus Fysh was Yeovil's MP but lost heavily to Adam Dance from the Liberal Democrats.
On X, the former minister said the current parliamentary composition of the party was "non-Conservative".
He’s a right wing nutter. I’m glad he doesn’t agree with the composition of the Conservative Party
Room in the 'broad church' for everyone except those with right wing views eh? Surprise surprise. Like 'party loyalty', a concept that only applies one way.
I didn’t say that.
It was Fysh who was trying to define what the Conservative Party should be
Before the election, CCHQ tried to parachute a candidate into a seat who couldn't accept because they were already on the Lib Dem's candidates list. That's an extreme example of a selection process that stuff safe seats with ideological opponents to conservatism. It demonstrates a very profound issue that goes to the heart of the party's disunity and ineffectiveness in Government. The Tory Party used to be a lot more democratic, with local associations selecting MPs, a democratic right that they gave up in return for a say in the leadership, which CCHQ is also trying to take off them.
There does need to be a broad church, but everyone in that church should be motivated imho by a basic belief in the values of conservatism, however mild that form of conservatism might be. How else can they represent the interests of conservative voters?
The problem is that there *is* overlap between some of the parties in the centre, and you want that to be a hard-and-fast boundary. But without going to the NF or BNP, there is no boundary on the right. You want to truncate the broad church in the centre, but let any nutcase in on the far right.
But IMV the key word for Conservatives is the small-c word 'conservative'. Not no change, but careful and well-planned change, cautiously made. Progress by evolution rather than revolution.
The Conservative Party have forgotten that over the last decade.
But that notion is one of parties occupying a silly sort of space on left/right spectrum. A band that contracts, expands, and is pushed up and down like a pipe cleaner with the vagaries of politics.
What I'm arguing for is belief in a set of values and principles by which all political actions are measured. Is a law adding to the powers of the state against individual? Is a law or treaty in the national interest or against it? Is a law adding unduly to the tax burden? Will a law fundamentally undermine the security of the nation or its ability to defend itself? Is a law in the interests of families? Is a political action conducive to a strong, cohesive society? Is a law conducive to parliamentary sovereignty?
It isn't really about right and left, though those terms can be useful shorthand. A lot of the PCP, through design by CCHQ for reasons which I can't discern, doesn't pay more than lip service to those values, and sometimes not even that.
The issue is that the way those topics viewed can very much be in the eyes of he beholder, e.g. what is the national interest, especially if you take short- and long-term into account? They can also be contradictory. Is a slightly increased tax burden justified if that tax money is spent in the national interest? This treaty may slightly reduce national sovereignty, but also be in the national interest.
I think they're less ambiguous than you indicate. But they do come in and out of fashion.
There are fashionable weasel words that would justify the closing of Britain's virgin steel making capacity, dealing a knockout blow to our ability to manufacture armaments without importing the steel, based on amorphous envisaged future benefits of 'setting a good example' on CO2 emissions, but no true adherent to Tory principles could ever support such a scheme. Another Tory principle is that families and individuals spend their money better than the state. If adherence to these principles was widespread within the PCP, neither the party nor the country would be in the mess they are in.
I think Thatcher would have been thoroughly on board with reducing CO2 emissions. I think she was the first major world leader to take it seriously, along with CFCs and acid rain.
Her own words:
"For generations, we have assumed that the efforts of mankind would leave the fundamental equilibrium of the world's systems and atmosphere stable. But it is possible that with all these enormous changes (population, agricultural, use of fossil fuels) concentrated into such a short period of time, we have unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the system of this planet itself.
Recently three changes in atmospheric chemistry have become familiar subjects of concern. The first is the increase in the greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane, and chlorofluorocarbons—which has led some [end p4] to fear that we are creating a global heat trap which could lead to climatic instability. We are told that a warming effect of 1°C per decade would greatly exceed the capacity of our natural habitat to cope. Such warming could cause accelerated melting of glacial ice and a consequent increase in the sea level of several feet over the next century. This was brought home to me at the Commonwealth Conference in Vancouver last year when the President of the Maldive Islands reminded us that the highest part of the Maldives is only six feet above sea level. The population is 177,000. It is noteworthy that the five warmest years in a century of records have all been in the 1980s—though we may not have seen much evidence in Britain!
The second matter under discussion is the discovery by the British Antarctic Survey of a large hole in the ozone layer which protects life from ultra-violet radiation. We don't know the full implications of the ozone hole nor how it may interact with the greenhouse effect. Nevertheless it was common sense to support a worldwide agreement in Montreal last year to halve world consumption of chlorofluorocarbons by the end of the century. As the sole measure to limit ozone depletion, this may be insufficient but it is a start in reducing the pace of change while we continue the detailed study of the problem on which our (the British) Stratospheric Ozone Review Group is about to report.
The third matter is acid deposition which has affected soils, lakes and trees downwind from industrial centres. Extensive action is being taken to cut down emission of sulphur and nitrogen oxides from power stations at great but necessary expense."
According to you, Thatcher would not be a Conservative...
There is no other way to make commercial steel without coking coal (a heck of a lot of CO2). Anyone who says otherwise also has a Fusion reactor to sell you.
I'm unsure what point you're trying to make? Few people say we need *no* coal; otherwise heritage railways would be in serious trouble. But getting rid of coal-fired power stations from the 1990s onwards made a massive dent in our carbon emissions.
We are talking about commercial steel and the closing down of a plant that makes virgin steel to replace it with one the recycles scrap steel. The virgin steel market is not decreasing in any way, but it just wont be getting made here.
We also do not mine iron ore any more (there are lots of traces of that industry, only recently gone, in the Northamptonshire area). So that needs importing as well for the true independence you desire. Fortunately we have oodles of limestone.
I'm ambivalent about the steel plant's closure. Ideally we'd keep it, bit I have little idea of the economics of it. If we did, we may be better off nationalising it as a national resource - not that British Steel did a stellar job...
Point of order. We stopped mining iron ore because in a globalised market we could get it cheaper from vast open cast mines in other parts of the word. There are still huge reserves of iron ore just as there are coal. Same goes for copper and tungsten (Devon has the 4th largest tungesten reserves in the world). These are economic and political decisions not resource availability decisions.
Do you know anything about the US efforts to innovate new mining technologies, Richard ? (eg ARPA-e programs.)
The US similarly has some of the largest known reserves of various minerals, which remain unexploited. And the growing friction with China - and strategic vulnerability in regard to imports - is getting them more interested in doing something about it.
BREAKING: The government is to divert tens of millions of pounds from the Rwanda scheme to set up a new Border Security Command, as it announces its plans to tackle illegal migration.
Even in Dundee — the fabled “Yes City” — Chris Law clung on to the new Dundee Central constituency by only 675 votes. The SNP’s catastrophic result was “much worse than I thought in my darkest days,” one veteran said. “There is just shock among the entire party,” another insider said. The nationalists no longer hold any seats south of Stirling.
How many of us need to look at a map to find Stirling? Just me then.
Much of England
Can you find Hemel Hempstead?
Can anyone? It is more elusive than Milton Keynes.
There is a street called Paradise in Hemel.
As a boy I was taken once around Old Hemel, which was very pretty. Does it still exist?
Sorry but I don't know.
We were visiting a place in Paradise which is in the new bit. I can confirm that the name of the street could be the dictionary definition of Oxymoron.
That's not uncommon.
I recall Shepherdess Walk in Islington was an absolute toilet.
That is the worst demi pie-chart that I've ever seen. Did France24 hire their data visualisation expert from the Lib Dems?
Makes it look like the exit poll results were doctored at the last minute to pretend Front Nationale are not heading for a majority so that the good and great can offload their assets before tbe markets twig on and implode..but they forgot to change the semi piechart.
Yes, that would be the conspiracy theory take. I'd go for the oops we guessed wrong theory.
People think it is clever to go with these second order arguments, and I never understand why. Given claims of A and not-A the thing to do is to assess the evidence that A, not to ask which side is the conspiracy theory or the incompetence vs malevolence theory. It's without logical foundation and hugely dangerous. It's I think undisputed that initial reports of the shoah were discounted in the UK because we always get these atrocity stories, it was the Belgians last time round. And the It's usually incompetence not malevolence theory enables the Old Etonian contingent to rob the country blind under cover of being lovable bumbling Bertie Wooster idiots.
I think it's a good analysis - pointing out that a move to fringe stunts adjacent to violence is a practice across various campaign groups. It's stuff the likes of the SWP and eg some Islamists and the Far Right have been doing forever, and now it has the added attraction of viewers on social media.
Not all muslims are the same. Rowan Williams the late Archbishop of Canterbury and Ian Paisley (senior) were both Christians but almost totally different religions
We are very blessed that many Muslims in this country are Ahmadis who are wholly peaceful and non voilent. Wonderful people but regarded as heritics by militants.
And dare I say it that where there is trouble it is less to do with religion and more to do with a lot of little educated people from certain remote rural areas being brought in by the owners of declining mills, due to manual skills that enabled them to be (very) cheap labour and brought with them many customs that would not have been wholy unfamiliar to Thomas Hardy.
Some did extraordinarily well, but many ended up in virtual ghettoes with little attempt to bring them in to the mainstream and basically abandonment of them when the mills went bust a decade or two later. In such a siutation communities become insular.
I'd basically agree with a couple of caveats.
I think that she is correct to apply "idiot" to the method not the ideology. The behaviour she describes has certain similarities with eg drive-by-abusers on twitter or blog commenters; it's about assertion and abuse and not being capable or interested of engaging in a conversation.
I think that were Yaxley-Lennon doing that, she would call him an idiot.
On Muslims, there's a vast diversity of movements, eg quietists who want to be left alone with their society, like in Christian terms the Amish or in Jewish terms certain Orthodox groups.
Throughout my adulthood I have met and discussed with some Muslims who obey the law of the land, yet also look to see an Islamic State / Caliphate be created, or a Islamic Republic modelled on Iran - a Muslim Majority changes the belief about how it should be run. It's peaceful, but uncompromising.
There are movements around linked to the Muslim Brotherhood (an Egyptian Movement from the 1st half of 20C which has an intellectual base but also merges into violence).
If you look for roots of Islamist thought in this country, one source is that Mosques were heavily funded, and Imams sent in or trained, by Middle Eastern countries, in the 1970s. And by Iran in competition with Saudi Arabia etc from the 1980s. That's wrapped up in Sunni-Shia religious competition, and in Arab-Persian nationalist competition. We have problems when these type of institutions gain prominence and thought-leadership.
The Ahmadis have their world headquarters here (Watford) because General Zia Ul-Haq expelled them from Pakistan in ~1984 by declaring in law & constitution that they cannot call themseles Muslims subject to a prison sentence; in Pakistan that is open season. The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation takes a similar stance.
In Islam there is also a very great sense of internationalism around the concept of Ummah, the worldwide community, which is far more tangible than say similar concepts in Christianity, and also around the Hajj.
Comments
Robin Swann (UUP, S Antrim) didn’t do a university degree when young, but later in life did an OU science degree.
Some of them are. Francois Hollande is a candidate, too.
The left are as bonkers as RN.
I have no idea how you get a government out of this.
Thanks to France's collaboration, no wait, co-habitation, he's still in charge.
theyve chosen red fascists
All this seems to do is make Le Pen more likely as President in a few years - if the analysis is correct.
Labour now organise in NI, but don't (yet) stand for election. The SDLP controversially entered a formal partnership with Fianna Fail in 2019, but that ended 3 years later, and the party now "stands on it's own 2 feet" and isn't in partnership with anyone.
Looks like France will have have P Melenchon next time round
I'm merely pointing out that to describe them as Far Left or Communist is simply inaccurate. There are those. But they encompass the full range to very moderate Centrists. A lot of environmentalists of divergent views beyond ecology, too.
In the meantime sell French shares and bonds
Maybe they all being advised by Theresa May.
Not at all.
If the concern is for our manufacturing base, that's quite a different argument. But then we're into the discussion of our having had no real industrial strategy for last four decades.
I'd go for the oops we guessed wrong theory.
BREAKING: The government is to divert tens of millions of pounds from the Rwanda scheme to set up a new Border Security Command, as it announces its plans to tackle illegal migration.
https://x.com/SkyNews/status/1809999666781495568
So let's give it some time.
There isn't a majority for anything.
As it happens I do give a toss - you've obviously never heard me complain about the closure of specialist steelmakers such as Butterley (and in a way this is just as vital as the raw product). The steel industry is an interesting one, and the decision is certainly not as clear-cut as you make out. I've little idea what the correct answer is, because I have not researched it enough,.
And I doubt you have either.
Here's a question for you, which you will obviously instantly be able to answer as you've such thorough knowledge on this: if steelmaking is essential for our national security, hoe much steel do we need to be making each year for national security?
We were visiting a place in Paradise which is in the new bit. I can confirm that the name of the street could be the dictionary definition of Oxymoron.
The euro elections and last Sunday showed that quite a lot of French voters are up for le Pen. Today showed that a considerable number more are up for opposing her. And in FPTP, the second matters more. As we've seen here.
What's the range of leftyness in the lefty alliance?
Note that in Belgium, it typically takes months to form a new government . . . during which time the old ministers retain office and (as W would say) governate.
NEW THREAD
So, well done French people for making the best of an unfortunate situation.
Ruffin seems to have lost to RN.
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:lzzsbij4k5kivn7vexvzibkp/post/3kwot657gvr2l
NEW THREAD
(eg ARPA-e programs.)
The US similarly has some of the largest known reserves of various minerals, which remain unexploited.
And the growing friction with China - and strategic vulnerability in regard to imports - is getting them more interested in doing something about it.
I recall Shepherdess Walk in Islington was an absolute toilet.
I think that she is correct to apply "idiot" to the method not the ideology. The behaviour she describes has certain similarities with eg drive-by-abusers on twitter or blog commenters; it's about assertion and abuse and not being capable or interested of engaging in a conversation.
I think that were Yaxley-Lennon doing that, she would call him an idiot.
On Muslims, there's a vast diversity of movements, eg quietists who want to be left alone with their society, like in Christian terms the Amish or in Jewish terms certain Orthodox groups.
Throughout my adulthood I have met and discussed with some Muslims who obey the law of the land, yet also look to see an Islamic State / Caliphate be created, or a Islamic Republic modelled on Iran - a Muslim Majority changes the belief about how it should be run. It's peaceful, but uncompromising.
There are movements around linked to the Muslim Brotherhood (an Egyptian Movement from the 1st half of 20C which has an intellectual base but also merges into violence).
If you look for roots of Islamist thought in this country, one source is that Mosques were heavily funded, and Imams sent in or trained, by Middle Eastern countries, in the 1970s. And by Iran in competition with Saudi Arabia etc from the 1980s. That's wrapped up in Sunni-Shia religious competition, and in Arab-Persian nationalist competition. We have problems when these type of institutions gain prominence and thought-leadership.
The Ahmadis have their world headquarters here (Watford) because General Zia Ul-Haq expelled them from Pakistan in ~1984 by declaring in law & constitution that they cannot call themseles Muslims subject to a prison sentence; in Pakistan that is open season. The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation takes a similar stance.
In Islam there is also a very great sense of internationalism around the concept of Ummah, the worldwide community, which is far more tangible than say similar concepts in Christianity, and also around the Hajj.