There should be an oddly satisfying German compound noun for “the oddly satisfying sensation of creating new German compound nouns for particular things that hitherto lacked these one word descriptors”
I have had my teeth cleaned. There should be a German compound noun for the strange small but definite rush of pleasure that comes ONCE this mildly unpleasant procedure is complete
I can't understand why energy prices keep going up with all this super green energy we have?
Because electricity prices are set on the margin and the margin is based on the price of gas when converted into electricity
Can someone explain why A: why this method of setting prices was chosen and B: why it isn't being ditched? It seems like total madness - I need to buy 10 pounds of potatoes. I buy nine pounds from Aldi @ 10p, but that's all they have. So I go to Waitrose and buy the final pound at £1. I don't then go back to Aldi and gift them an extra £8
Because if you need 10 pounds of potatoes, and Aldi only has 9, then, in a rational and transparent market, Aldi will raise the price of its potatoes to match that of Waitrose.
Edit: Basically it makes no economic sense for the cheaper suppliers to greatly undercut the expensive suppliers if demand is relatively rigid and the cheaper suppliers are unable to meet that demand. That, I think, is what is meant by price being set at the margin. (But I'm not an economist.)
But surely this means that the green suppliers are going to run bitcoin miners or similar to make sure we always use at least one joule of gas?
That's not necessarily a bad thing if it means the UK becomes a power generating and power consuming powerhouse. Our economy might rocket.
Scotland has 16GW of renewables, already exports energy, and has additional 57GW under construction or in planning. The big question is wtf are we going to do with it all.
No issue with any of that - seems great on a national scale. But on the retail scale I'm still paying the gas price for my lighting. Surely there is an electoral offer that could be made to be made to change this system that would be attractive? Why is no-one offering it?
I'd guess that the market price of energy will be much lower as a result anyway, even after taking into account the additional demand more generation will induce.
But write to your MP. I think nodal/regional pricing and smart tariffs that track the hourly spot price of electricity are the way in which households could benefit in the medium-term.
BIB: What mechanism yields a lower price if it always in the interest of generators to consume enough to need gas generation, triggering the price based on wholesale gas? Demand has an inelastic floor, not ceiling.
Like Uber, the Tesla bet is that they will have a nationwide network of driverless cars available soon.
Although Uber seem to have wisely decided this isn’t going to happen any time soon.
Elon on the other hand, has been promising full self driving since 2012, every year.
Never going to happen.
Around here even most humans aren't safe to drive a car and navigate the potholes, stray animals, fallen trees, overgrown hedges, flooded roads, random roadworks, tractors, cyclists, walkers, random objects literally fallen off the back of a lorry, etc., etc.
The other end of it is that Waymo is rolling out its service. They took the approach of limiting the problem to solve.
They seem to have self driving working, for what they are asking it to do.
I'm bemused by the whole concept of automated driving - do we need it. If we do, Waymo is a cul-de-sac. Tesla have been well behind the please invest spin from Gerald, but when you look at the recent progress made its clear that development is now on rapid trajectory.
That is the problem - I don't think legislators and regulators are ready. Waymo fits adapted cars with bubble protrusions to drive around selected cities. Tesla takes stock cars to drive around those cities and in-between them. But who is liable when a fully automated car kills someone - as it will?
Cars being “driven” hands off, have already killed people.
Law is accreting around this issue.
The idea that this issue will stop self driving, is already disproven.
People die, it's not the end of the world.
People need to get over zero deaths bullshit. It was bad during Covid, it's insane now.
Agree. There is never a call to ban domestic gas when some-one dies in a gas explosion.
We react strongly to some deaths and not others. Smoking still kills over 70,000 a year in the UK. Tens of thousands die from flu (the number varies a fair bit). Over a 1000 deaths per year from cocaine. But we worry about knife homicides (~250 p.a.) and terrorism attacks (~0 p.a.).
I can't understand why energy prices keep going up with all this super green energy we have?
What I cannot understand is why new houses ..... and there seem to be thousands in Essex .... are not built with solar panels as standard
I also wonder this and came to the conclusion that the government thinks it's hard enough to get houses built as it is, the extra cost would be another blocker.
Thing is, the cost when actually building a house would be really marginal. Main costs of solar - fitting (scaffolding/roof works), wiring in and the inverter/battery. The first two are absolutely minimal if you're building a house, compared to not having solar. The batter is the biggest cost and optional, but probably sensible to better shift demand and offset storage needs elsewhere. There's probably a business case for subsidising builders for those costs - if necessary - to massively increase national solar and storage. If necessary slightly tweak stamp duty to recoup the extra cost directly.
There's a very good case for introducing a subsidy alongside the building regs necessary.
But any battery requirement needs to mandate the safest battery chemistry (currently LFP, which is also conveniently he cheapest).
Ah but is this another instance of 2-tier Keir's heavy-handed policing of ‘hurty words’ or is there a realistic threat to assassinate the Prime Minister? And if there is, why did police wait three weeks?
Like Uber, the Tesla bet is that they will have a nationwide network of driverless cars available soon.
Although Uber seem to have wisely decided this isn’t going to happen any time soon.
Elon on the other hand, has been promising full self driving since 2012, every year.
Never going to happen.
Around here even most humans aren't safe to drive a car and navigate the potholes, stray animals, fallen trees, overgrown hedges, flooded roads, random roadworks, tractors, cyclists, walkers, random objects literally fallen off the back of a lorry, etc., etc.
The other end of it is that Waymo is rolling out its service. They took the approach of limiting the problem to solve.
They seem to have self driving working, for what they are asking it to do.
I'm bemused by the whole concept of automated driving - do we need it. If we do, Waymo is a cul-de-sac. Tesla have been well behind the please invest spin from Gerald, but when you look at the recent progress made its clear that development is now on rapid trajectory.
That is the problem - I don't think legislators and regulators are ready. Waymo fits adapted cars with bubble protrusions to drive around selected cities. Tesla takes stock cars to drive around those cities and in-between them. But who is liable when a fully automated car kills someone - as it will?
Cars being “driven” hands off, have already killed people.
Law is accreting around this issue.
The idea that this issue will stop self driving, is already disproven.
People die, it's not the end of the world.
People need to get over zero deaths bullshit. It was bad during Covid, it's insane now.
Agree. There is never a call to ban domestic gas when some-one dies in a gas explosion.
We react strongly to some deaths and not others. Smoking still kills over 70,000 a year in the UK. Tens of thousands die from flu (the number varies a fair bit). Over a 1000 deaths per year from cocaine. But we worry about knife homicides (~250 p.a.) and terrorism attacks (~0 p.a.).
The last two are entirely avoidable if people wouldn’t go around killing each other. The other three are voluntary (I.e. self-inflicted), unavoidable without massive social restrictions, and voluntary.
In fact, there should be an oddly satisfying German compound noun for the “oddly satisfying sensation of creating a German compound noun for the oddly satisfying sensation of creating new German compound nouns for particular things that hitherto lacked these one word descriptors”
And it is
Deutschkompositumschöpfungsglücksschöpfungsglück
Which just goes to show how cleverly economical German is; there should be a German compound noun for the sensation of discovering this
I can't understand why energy prices keep going up with all this super green energy we have?
Because electricity prices are set on the margin and the margin is based on the price of gas when converted into electricity
Can someone explain why A: why this method of setting prices was chosen and B: why it isn't being ditched? It seems like total madness - I need to buy 10 pounds of potatoes. I buy nine pounds from Aldi @ 10p, but that's all they have. So I go to Waitrose and buy the final pound at £1. I don't then go back to Aldi and gift them an extra £8
Because if you need 10 pounds of potatoes, and Aldi only has 9, then, in a rational and transparent market, Aldi will raise the price of its potatoes to match that of Waitrose.
Edit: Basically it makes no economic sense for the cheaper suppliers to greatly undercut the expensive suppliers if demand is relatively rigid and the cheaper suppliers are unable to meet that demand. That, I think, is what is meant by price being set at the margin. (But I'm not an economist.)
But surely this means that the green suppliers are going to run bitcoin miners or similar to make sure we always use at least one joule of gas?
That's not necessarily a bad thing if it means the UK becomes a power generating and power consuming powerhouse. Our economy might rocket.
Scotland has 16GW of renewables, already exports energy, and has additional 57GW under construction or in planning. The big question is wtf are we going to do with it all.
No issue with any of that - seems great on a national scale. But on the retail scale I'm still paying the gas price for my lighting. Surely there is an electoral offer that could be made to be made to change this system that would be attractive? Why is no-one offering it?
Because it's been too complicated for most politicians to get their heads around, and, as I noted earlier, almost all the power companies lobby strongly against any change.
Thanks - so the current system was designed to encourage investment in green energy while we build up our capability, and REMA is looking at how we move on from it? That at least explains some of what looks like insanity from the current system.
Ah but is this another instance of 2-tier Keir's heavy-handed policing of ‘hurty words’ or is there a realistic threat to assassinate the Prime Minister? And if there is, why did police wait three weeks?
People who loudly proclaim their intention to assassinate the prime minister are less dangerous than those who keep it to themselves.
Like Uber, the Tesla bet is that they will have a nationwide network of driverless cars available soon.
Although Uber seem to have wisely decided this isn’t going to happen any time soon.
Elon on the other hand, has been promising full self driving since 2012, every year.
Never going to happen.
Around here even most humans aren't safe to drive a car and navigate the potholes, stray animals, fallen trees, overgrown hedges, flooded roads, random roadworks, tractors, cyclists, walkers, random objects literally fallen off the back of a lorry, etc., etc.
The other end of it is that Waymo is rolling out its service. They took the approach of limiting the problem to solve.
They seem to have self driving working, for what they are asking it to do.
I'm bemused by the whole concept of automated driving - do we need it. If we do, Waymo is a cul-de-sac. Tesla have been well behind the please invest spin from Gerald, but when you look at the recent progress made its clear that development is now on rapid trajectory.
That is the problem - I don't think legislators and regulators are ready. Waymo fits adapted cars with bubble protrusions to drive around selected cities. Tesla takes stock cars to drive around those cities and in-between them. But who is liable when a fully automated car kills someone - as it will?
Cars being “driven” hands off, have already killed people.
Law is accreting around this issue.
The idea that this issue will stop self driving, is already disproven.
People kill and maim other people every day whilst allegedly in control of cars. Banning humans from driving is the only way.
On that grounds motorcyclists and cyclists have also killed people so you would have to ban them too
Yup, ban 'em all.
There is a sober, sensible debate to be had over this:
- QALY. Victims of road collisions tend to be younger, in employment, fitter than the general population. Your cycle commuter, for example, tends to be a high-earner in their 20s/30s, so the comparison to COVID lockdowns is a little lazy. - There is a significant economic cost associated with collisions, whether from the emergency services (£2 million per fatality), insurance costs (70% of your premium, or about £8 billion a year), lost earnings from those injured and so on.
OTOH, you have the economic cost of people and goods not being able to get around quite as fast. In total, that's a significant cost. Getting the optimal balance is tricky.
In urban areas, you can look at the "market speed limit" for private roads, such as in holiday parks, shipyards, military bases etc etc. On average they tend to be a lot slower, which suggests that current limits are higher than the optimal urban speed.
The point being overlooked about self-driving cars is not that they will to won't kill people, as all vehicles will. It's rather, I suspect, that people object to the possibility of being killed by a company conducting what amounts to an experiment.
More to do with the psychology (and possibly Musk's evidently blase attitude towards other folk's safety) than the actual odds.
The psychology on risk perception is well established. People are more scared of things they don't have control over. (We are more scare of flying than driving, although driving is more dangerous, because we are doing the driving and someone else is doing the flying.) People are more scared of novel things. A novel thing that we don't control, self-driving cars, will be more scary.
I can't understand why energy prices keep going up with all this super green energy we have?
Because electricity prices are set on the margin and the margin is based on the price of gas when converted into electricity
Can someone explain why A: why this method of setting prices was chosen and B: why it isn't being ditched? It seems like total madness - I need to buy 10 pounds of potatoes. I buy nine pounds from Aldi @ 10p, but that's all they have. So I go to Waitrose and buy the final pound at £1. I don't then go back to Aldi and gift them an extra £8
Because if you need 10 pounds of potatoes, and Aldi only has 9, then, in a rational and transparent market, Aldi will raise the price of its potatoes to match that of Waitrose.
Edit: Basically it makes no economic sense for the cheaper suppliers to greatly undercut the expensive suppliers if demand is relatively rigid and the cheaper suppliers are unable to meet that demand. That, I think, is what is meant by price being set at the margin. (But I'm not an economist.)
But surely this means that the green suppliers are going to run bitcoin miners or similar to make sure we always use at least one joule of gas?
That's not necessarily a bad thing if it means the UK becomes a power generating and power consuming powerhouse. Our economy might rocket.
Scotland has 16GW of renewables, already exports energy, and has additional 57GW under construction or in planning. The big question is wtf are we going to do with it all.
No issue with any of that - seems great on a national scale. But on the retail scale I'm still paying the gas price for my lighting. Surely there is an electoral offer that could be made to be made to change this system that would be attractive? Why is no-one offering it?
I'd guess that the market price of energy will be much lower as a result anyway, even after taking into account the additional demand more generation will induce.
But write to your MP. I think nodal/regional pricing and smart tariffs that track the hourly spot price of electricity are the way in which households could benefit in the medium-term.
BIB: What mechanism yields a lower price if it always in the interest of generators to consume enough to need gas generation, triggering the price based on wholesale gas? Demand has an inelastic floor, not ceiling.
The market price of gas generation also falls when there is plentiful renewable energy. For example, yesterday the price was £22 per MWh when we generating 7GW of solar and 17GW of wind, and using 3GW of gas. It's currently £82 because wind has fallen off and we're using 11GW of gas.
Talking of German words I hereby propose that a unit of energy which is 100 times more expensive than it should be due to political ineptitude is hereafter known as a “Merkel”
“You’ll need 380 Merkels of gas an hour to run that factory so I’m afraid you’re bankrupt”
In even more extreme situations - where the unit of energy costs 1000 times as much for similar reasons - that unit will be known as a “Miliband”
On the German election, as I read it the 2 party coalition will lack the supermajority of MPs necessary to do significant changes such as lifting the debt ceiling, and other measures - leaving them subject to a far left / far right blocking minority.
I can't understand why energy prices keep going up with all this super green energy we have?
What I cannot understand is why new houses ..... and there seem to be thousands in Essex .... are not built with solar panels as standard
I also wonder this and came to the conclusion that the government thinks it's hard enough to get houses built as it is, the extra cost would be another blocker.
Thing is, the cost when actually building a house would be really marginal. Main costs of solar - fitting (scaffolding/roof works), wiring in and the inverter/battery. The first two are absolutely minimal if you're building a house, compared to not having solar. The batter is the biggest cost and optional, but probably sensible to better shift demand and offset storage needs elsewhere. There's probably a business case for subsidising builders for those costs - if necessary - to massively increase national solar and storage. If necessary slightly tweak stamp duty to recoup the extra cost directly.
There's a very good case for introducing a subsidy alongside the building regs necessary.
But any battery requirement needs to mandate the safest battery chemistry (currently LFP, which is also conveniently he cheapest).
Indeed.
Another puzzler is heat pumps. There's a valid debate about retro-fitting,* although the new high temp models, even at lower efficiency compared to the low temp ones, can make sense if gas prices stay high.* But for new builds, with up-to-regs insulation, it would be trivial to simply fit heat pumps and the required radiators (oversize if needed) or underfloor heating (that does cost more, but you don't waste floor space).
Apart from anything else, you could save a lot of money in not running gas into new estates. I don't know whether builders pay for that or the gas networks do it and recoup from charging gas suppliers for the extra new customers.
*we have a gas boiler in our 1920s semi, but all our works over the past few years - two extensions, some insulation and renewing radiators when redecorating - have been with the future in mind. We're already running the CH temp at 50C which has the benefit of being less hot to touch with small children around. The underfloor heating areas are mixed down to 40Cor 45C, I think.
Like Uber, the Tesla bet is that they will have a nationwide network of driverless cars available soon.
Although Uber seem to have wisely decided this isn’t going to happen any time soon.
Elon on the other hand, has been promising full self driving since 2012, every year.
Never going to happen.
Around here even most humans aren't safe to drive a car and navigate the potholes, stray animals, fallen trees, overgrown hedges, flooded roads, random roadworks, tractors, cyclists, walkers, random objects literally fallen off the back of a lorry, etc., etc.
The other end of it is that Waymo is rolling out its service. They took the approach of limiting the problem to solve.
They seem to have self driving working, for what they are asking it to do.
I'm bemused by the whole concept of automated driving - do we need it. If we do, Waymo is a cul-de-sac. Tesla have been well behind the please invest spin from Gerald, but when you look at the recent progress made its clear that development is now on rapid trajectory.
That is the problem - I don't think legislators and regulators are ready. Waymo fits adapted cars with bubble protrusions to drive around selected cities. Tesla takes stock cars to drive around those cities and in-between them. But who is liable when a fully automated car kills someone - as it will?
Cars being “driven” hands off, have already killed people.
Law is accreting around this issue.
The idea that this issue will stop self driving, is already disproven.
People die, it's not the end of the world.
People need to get over zero deaths bullshit. It was bad during Covid, it's insane now.
Agree. There is never a call to ban domestic gas when some-one dies in a gas explosion.
We react strongly to some deaths and not others. Smoking still kills over 70,000 a year in the UK. Tens of thousands die from flu (the number varies a fair bit). Over a 1000 deaths per year from cocaine. But we worry about knife homicides (~250 p.a.) and terrorism attacks (~0 p.a.).
The last two are entirely avoidable if people wouldn’t go around killing each other. The other three are voluntary (I.e. self-inflicted), unavoidable without massive social restrictions, and voluntary.
You can have an impact on flu deaths without massive social restrictions. Vaccination campaigns work.
Ah but is this another instance of 2-tier Keir's heavy-handed policing of ‘hurty words’ or is there a realistic threat to assassinate the Prime Minister? And if there is, why did police wait three weeks?
People who loudly proclaim their intention to assassinate the prime minister are less dangerous than those who keep it to themselves.
"I am arresting you for doing nothing. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not state that you intend to assassinate the prime minister."
Talking of German words I hereby propose that a unit of energy which is 100 times more expensive than it should be due to political ineptitude is hereafter known as a “Merkel”
“You’ll need 380 Merkels of gas an hour to run that factory so I’m afraid you’re bankrupt”
In even more extreme situations - where the unit of energy costs 1000 times as much for similar reasons - that unit will be known as a “Miliband”
The Miliband is problematic. What's 10^3 milibands? A band or a kilomiliband? What's 10^-3 milibands? A microband or a milimiliband?
On Donald’s “deal of the century” for the minerals, wouldn’t it be better if Zemelensky offered publicly that the US get rights until they have covered an audited cost of aid/weapons sent and they can offset the cost of providing security to Ukraine plus a profit once the initial bill is paid off.
Surely nobody decent (haha) could object to this - the US gets their money back and future protection of the Ukraine is an income generator.
Yes, I know that Trump wouldn’t go for it because he’s a greedy shyster but it would add to highlighting that globally.
Are we close to a deal? Or is it just the US side claiming we are to apply pressure? The statements from Ukraine were pretty non-committal...
Good morning
Trump seemed confident of the deal though I do not trust a thing he says, but late last night a report on Sky from their Moscow correspondent on a speech Putin was making at the same time as the Trump - Macron meeting where Putin announced that he was in talks with Trump over a deal for the sale of Russian minerals to him and that a deal for the US - Russia and China to cut spending on defence by 50% [yes 50%] was in discussion
How fast everything has changed and uncertainty abounds
Relatively speaking that would benefit Russia
Their military is average but cheap and large. So they reduce headcount not capabilities. That can be restored quickly
The US budget is spent on technology which has a much longer lead time
Talking of German words I hereby propose that a unit of energy which is 100 times more expensive than it should be due to political ineptitude is hereafter known as a “Merkel”
“You’ll need 380 Merkels of gas an hour to run that factory so I’m afraid you’re bankrupt”
In even more extreme situations - where the unit of energy costs 1000 times as much for similar reasons - that unit will be known as a “Miliband”
Miliband doesn't deserve that until we know what the government's response to REMA is.
Talking of German words I hereby propose that a unit of energy which is 100 times more expensive than it should be due to political ineptitude is hereafter known as a “Merkel”
“You’ll need 380 Merkels of gas an hour to run that factory so I’m afraid you’re bankrupt”
In even more extreme situations - where the unit of energy costs 1000 times as much for similar reasons - that unit will be known as a “Miliband”
I don't think there is an SI or derived unit for bullshit. Perhaps we can use the Leon. 16 Leon's to the musk and 14 musk's to the Trump?
Like Uber, the Tesla bet is that they will have a nationwide network of driverless cars available soon.
Although Uber seem to have wisely decided this isn’t going to happen any time soon.
Elon on the other hand, has been promising full self driving since 2012, every year.
Never going to happen.
Around here even most humans aren't safe to drive a car and navigate the potholes, stray animals, fallen trees, overgrown hedges, flooded roads, random roadworks, tractors, cyclists, walkers, random objects literally fallen off the back of a lorry, etc., etc.
The other end of it is that Waymo is rolling out its service. They took the approach of limiting the problem to solve.
They seem to have self driving working, for what they are asking it to do.
I'm bemused by the whole concept of automated driving - do we need it. If we do, Waymo is a cul-de-sac. Tesla have been well behind the please invest spin from Gerald, but when you look at the recent progress made its clear that development is now on rapid trajectory.
That is the problem - I don't think legislators and regulators are ready. Waymo fits adapted cars with bubble protrusions to drive around selected cities. Tesla takes stock cars to drive around those cities and in-between them. But who is liable when a fully automated car kills someone - as it will?
Cars being “driven” hands off, have already killed people.
Law is accreting around this issue.
The idea that this issue will stop self driving, is already disproven.
People kill and maim other people every day whilst allegedly in control of cars. Banning humans from driving is the only way.
On that grounds motorcyclists and cyclists have also killed people so you would have to ban them too
Yup, ban 'em all.
There is a sober, sensible debate to be had over this:
- QALY. Victims of road collisions tend to be younger, in employment, fitter than the general population. Your cycle commuter, for example, tends to be a high-earner in their 20s/30s, so the comparison to COVID lockdowns is a little lazy. - There is a significant economic cost associated with collisions, whether from the emergency services (£2 million per fatality), insurance costs (70% of your premium, or about £8 billion a year), lost earnings from those injured and so on.
OTOH, you have the economic cost of people and goods not being able to get around quite as fast. In total, that's a significant cost. Getting the optimal balance is tricky.
In urban areas, you can look at the "market speed limit" for private roads, such as in holiday parks, shipyards, military bases etc etc. On average they tend to be a lot slower, which suggests that current limits are higher than the optimal urban speed.
In urban areas you see endless drivers rushing to get to the back of the queue to get through the next junction. Clearly it would be optimal for everyone if they pootled along at whatever speed the actual average was, reducing both the likelihood & severity of potential incidents along the way.
But when you tell people to do 20 instead of 30 in a city with a mean speed of 19mph they go beserk, because people hate being told what to do if it’s different from what they’re used to. Such is the business of politics.
But that's essentially a process of cultural adjustment.
We did it for drunk driving - though there has been backsliding in some measure since 2010, and a lack of will for further progression since (estd) 2000.
And we can do it for distracted driving and speeding, too.
My YouTube videos show me often cruising at 65mph on the motorway. "Why are you going so slowly" some people ask. I then explain the science behind traffic flow and the impact of bunching. I may as well be speaking martian. "But 70mph is faster"
We used to do public information films. Despite having brilliant social media able to reach millions quickly we've decided not to bother. TikTok advocating Vabbing (NSFW, don't look it up) rather than drive slower to get there quicker.
Adaptive cruise control set at 70mph and just let the car follow the lead of the car in front.
Only time it’s an issue is when you finally get annoyed with following a lorry so overtake
Talking of German words I hereby propose that a unit of energy which is 100 times more expensive than it should be due to political ineptitude is hereafter known as a “Merkel”
“You’ll need 380 Merkels of gas an hour to run that factory so I’m afraid you’re bankrupt”
In even more extreme situations - where the unit of energy costs 1000 times as much for similar reasons - that unit will be known as a “Miliband”
Miliband doesn't deserve that until we know what the government's response to REMA is.
Labour is apparently the worst government in history and yet is still tied in the majority of polls. I do think their strategy of getting the unpopular stuff out of the way early was right.
However, they should have also used that burned political capital to get rid of the triple lock for good.
They are on core vote. As is the Conservative Party.
If they can’t change the mood music by getting some actual results, they are heading for an epic pounding.
The nation’s voters don’t see the genius in being told that their taxes are going up and bin collections are moving from bi-weekly to once a month. Yes, this may or may not be the fault of the national government, but that’s who gets the blame.
They ARE getting results though. Waiting lists are dropping.
The nation’s voters will look at the options available and it’s either Reform or Labour. Labour will almost certainly be re-elected.
Almost certainly true, but with a majority of 17 rather than 174. If they're lucky.
Labour's problem is that they think they can make incremental changes to a broken system and have it pay off. They can't, and it won't. You're mentioning waiting lists - they won't get the credit for wait times being slightly shorter when you can't see a GP and hospitals remain in crisis with a drastic shortage of beds and medical staff.
I'm curious as to who these people who are unable to see a GP are.
I've never had a problem in getting a GP appointment (or dentist for that matter) and nor has anyone I know.
While according to the official bodies there are over 350m GP appointments per year with this number having increased in recent years.
So an average of five GP appointments per person per year.
Considering that many people never or rarely need to go to their doctor it would suggest others have season tickets to theirs.
Remember the context - we're talking about "facts", not facts.
Two contradictory positions are true: There are more GP appointments being made available There are is a shortage of GPs, especially in localised pockets
Because the NHSes are shit sandwiches, there is both more appointments available in each nation and a catastrophic inability to see *my* GP at *my* practice. And because most people see a GP infrequently, they don't have the lived experience to disprove the narrative that you can't see a GP.
Its the 'it takes months to renew your passport' bollox on a bigger scale.
Well Labour were happy to peddle 'Broken Britain' bollox in opposition so they will now have to deal with it in government.
But *it isn't bollocks*. You want to tell the people who genuinely struggle to see a GP that its bollocks? Where their local practice opens the phone lines at 08:30, it's endlessly engaged and as and when you get through they offer an appointment weeks away?
This is why the system is fundamentally broken and needs significant reform. The patient interface is set at a local level and for so many people its desperately poor, regardless of the national statistics that politicians sneeringly recite.
Telling people its impossible to get a GP appointment when they would have no problem in doing so is bollox.
Telling people it takes months to renew a passport when it takes a week is bollox.
All it results in is people thinking the country is in a lot worse shape than it is which in turn feeds through to support for the political extremes.
Yes, some people have some problems - so governments should concentrate on resolving them instead of bewailing and doomcasting.
For a large number of people getting GP appointments is very difficult.
Our local practise merged with another. Now it’s appointment only by filling in a multi page online form. During business hours. Yes, they disable it before 8:30am and after 5pm.
Not sure what people who find multi-page web forms difficult, are supposed to do…
About 50% of the time they fail to follow up.
They got very snotty at a community meeting, when all the questions were hostile. Wrong kind of patients, apparently.
There is a reason why the form is 8:30 to 5pm only - someone triages the forms as they arrive to check people aren’t reporting stroke / heart attack symptoms and it’s remarkable how often people do that.
I likewise believe that the entirety of this thread from beginning to end constitutes the single most boring passage of commentary that has ever existed on PB, with every single commenter managing to say something even more inert, unfunny, lacklustre, middlebrow and soul-sappingly listless than the prior commenter
It reminds me of when my late father took me to see Redruth v Camborne at rugby, when I was about 9, and he promised me that I was about to witness a famous club rivalry with fiery passions on all sides
The game was conducted entirely in light Cornish mizzle and barely anything was visible, and after 80 bone-aching minutes of muddy tedium it ended 3-3. One penalty each. And I was left marvelling that people actually paid to watch something so utterly tedious and drear that it was mentally distressing
Talking of German words I hereby propose that a unit of energy which is 100 times more expensive than it should be due to political ineptitude is hereafter known as a “Merkel”
“You’ll need 380 Merkels of gas an hour to run that factory so I’m afraid you’re bankrupt”
In even more extreme situations - where the unit of energy costs 1000 times as much for similar reasons - that unit will be known as a “Miliband”
The Miliband is problematic. What's 10^3 milibands? A band or a kilomiliband? What's 10^-3 milibands? A microband or a milimiliband?
You’ve mistaken the miliband for a metric measurement when it’s part of the British Imperial system. A miliband is twelve cleggs.
Labour is apparently the worst government in history and yet is still tied in the majority of polls. I do think their strategy of getting the unpopular stuff out of the way early was right.
However, they should have also used that burned political capital to get rid of the triple lock for good.
They are on core vote. As is the Conservative Party.
If they can’t change the mood music by getting some actual results, they are heading for an epic pounding.
The nation’s voters don’t see the genius in being told that their taxes are going up and bin collections are moving from bi-weekly to once a month. Yes, this may or may not be the fault of the national government, but that’s who gets the blame.
They ARE getting results though. Waiting lists are dropping.
The nation’s voters will look at the options available and it’s either Reform or Labour. Labour will almost certainly be re-elected.
Almost certainly true, but with a majority of 17 rather than 174. If they're lucky.
Labour's problem is that they think they can make incremental changes to a broken system and have it pay off. They can't, and it won't. You're mentioning waiting lists - they won't get the credit for wait times being slightly shorter when you can't see a GP and hospitals remain in crisis with a drastic shortage of beds and medical staff.
I'm curious as to who these people who are unable to see a GP are.
I've never had a problem in getting a GP appointment (or dentist for that matter) and nor has anyone I know.
While according to the official bodies there are over 350m GP appointments per year with this number having increased in recent years.
So an average of five GP appointments per person per year.
Considering that many people never or rarely need to go to their doctor it would suggest others have season tickets to theirs.
Remember the context - we're talking about "facts", not facts.
Two contradictory positions are true: There are more GP appointments being made available There are is a shortage of GPs, especially in localised pockets
Because the NHSes are shit sandwiches, there is both more appointments available in each nation and a catastrophic inability to see *my* GP at *my* practice. And because most people see a GP infrequently, they don't have the lived experience to disprove the narrative that you can't see a GP.
Its the 'it takes months to renew your passport' bollox on a bigger scale.
Well Labour were happy to peddle 'Broken Britain' bollox in opposition so they will now have to deal with it in government.
But *it isn't bollocks*. You want to tell the people who genuinely struggle to see a GP that its bollocks? Where their local practice opens the phone lines at 08:30, it's endlessly engaged and as and when you get through they offer an appointment weeks away?
This is why the system is fundamentally broken and needs significant reform. The patient interface is set at a local level and for so many people its desperately poor, regardless of the national statistics that politicians sneeringly recite.
Telling people its impossible to get a GP appointment when they would have no problem in doing so is bollox.
Telling people it takes months to renew a passport when it takes a week is bollox.
All it results in is people thinking the country is in a lot worse shape than it is which in turn feeds through to support for the political extremes.
Yes, some people have some problems - so governments should concentrate on resolving them instead of bewailing and doomcasting.
For a large number of people getting GP appointments is very difficult.
Our local practise merged with another. Now it’s appointment only by filling in a multi page online form. During business hours. Yes, they disable it before 8:30am and after 5pm.
Not sure what people who find multi-page web forms difficult, are supposed to do…
About 50% of the time they fail to follow up.
They got very snotty at a community meeting, when all the questions were hostile. Wrong kind of patients, apparently.
There is a reason why the form is 8:30 to 5pm only - someone triages the forms as they arrive to check people aren’t reporting stroke / heart attack symptoms and it’s remarkable how often people do that.
One of my cricket friends is married to a nurse. Both failed to spot his heart attach for around 12 hours...
On the German election, as I read it the 2 party coalition will lack the supermajority of MPs necessary to do significant changes such as lifting the debt ceiling, and other measures - leaving them subject to a far left / far right blocking minority.
Can anyone elucidate?
There is a nascent plan to lift the ceiling before the new Parliament meets. I do not know the details of how that would work.
Like Uber, the Tesla bet is that they will have a nationwide network of driverless cars available soon.
Although Uber seem to have wisely decided this isn’t going to happen any time soon.
Elon on the other hand, has been promising full self driving since 2012, every year.
Never going to happen.
Around here even most humans aren't safe to drive a car and navigate the potholes, stray animals, fallen trees, overgrown hedges, flooded roads, random roadworks, tractors, cyclists, walkers, random objects literally fallen off the back of a lorry, etc., etc.
The other end of it is that Waymo is rolling out its service. They took the approach of limiting the problem to solve.
They seem to have self driving working, for what they are asking it to do.
I'm bemused by the whole concept of automated driving - do we need it. If we do, Waymo is a cul-de-sac. Tesla have been well behind the please invest spin from Gerald, but when you look at the recent progress made its clear that development is now on rapid trajectory.
That is the problem - I don't think legislators and regulators are ready. Waymo fits adapted cars with bubble protrusions to drive around selected cities. Tesla takes stock cars to drive around those cities and in-between them. But who is liable when a fully automated car kills someone - as it will?
Cars being “driven” hands off, have already killed people.
Law is accreting around this issue.
The idea that this issue will stop self driving, is already disproven.
People kill and maim other people every day whilst allegedly in control of cars. Banning humans from driving is the only way.
On that grounds motorcyclists and cyclists have also killed people so you would have to ban them too
Yup, ban 'em all.
There is a sober, sensible debate to be had over this:
- QALY. Victims of road collisions tend to be younger, in employment, fitter than the general population. Your cycle commuter, for example, tends to be a high-earner in their 20s/30s, so the comparison to COVID lockdowns is a little lazy. - There is a significant economic cost associated with collisions, whether from the emergency services (£2 million per fatality), insurance costs (70% of your premium, or about £8 billion a year), lost earnings from those injured and so on.
OTOH, you have the economic cost of people and goods not being able to get around quite as fast. In total, that's a significant cost. Getting the optimal balance is tricky.
In urban areas, you can look at the "market speed limit" for private roads, such as in holiday parks, shipyards, military bases etc etc. On average they tend to be a lot slower, which suggests that current limits are higher than the optimal urban speed.
The point being overlooked about self-driving cars is not that they will to won't kill people, as all vehicles will. It's rather, I suspect, that people object to the possibility of being killed by a company conducting what amounts to an experiment.
More to do with the psychology (and possibly Musk's evidently blase attitude towards other folk's safety) than the actual odds.
The psychology on risk perception is well established. People are more scared of things they don't have control over. (We are more scare of flying than driving, although driving is more dangerous, because we are doing the driving and someone else is doing the flying.) People are more scared of novel things. A novel thing that we don't control, self-driving cars, will be more scary.
The future has always been unevenly distributed. Self driving doesn't need to be normalised everywhere, all at once, for everyone. Just small groups - the hip young things that Apple targets - in limited areas you can build out from. Some of those people will sell it to their friends (like smart phones!), some will move and be your seed customers in new location.
And, of course, fear sells. They'll be a point where any news article on taxi driver rapists viewed in a robocab-covered location will have a discreet Waymo ad next to it.
I likewise believe that the entirety of this thread from beginning to end constitutes the single most boring passage of commentary that has ever existed on PB, with every single commenter managing to say something even more inert, unfunny, lacklustre, middlebrow and soul-sappingly listless than the prior commenter
It reminds me of when my late father took me to see Redruth v Camborne at rugby, when I was about 9, and he promised me that I was about to witness a famous club rivalry with fiery passions on all sides
The game was conducted entirely in light Cornish mizzle and barely anything was visible, and after 80 bone-aching minutes of muddy tedium it ended 3-3. One penalty each. And I was left marvelling that people actually paid to watch something so utterly tedious and drear that it was mentally distressing
Labour is apparently the worst government in history and yet is still tied in the majority of polls. I do think their strategy of getting the unpopular stuff out of the way early was right.
However, they should have also used that burned political capital to get rid of the triple lock for good.
They are on core vote. As is the Conservative Party.
If they can’t change the mood music by getting some actual results, they are heading for an epic pounding.
The nation’s voters don’t see the genius in being told that their taxes are going up and bin collections are moving from bi-weekly to once a month. Yes, this may or may not be the fault of the national government, but that’s who gets the blame.
They ARE getting results though. Waiting lists are dropping.
The nation’s voters will look at the options available and it’s either Reform or Labour. Labour will almost certainly be re-elected.
Almost certainly true, but with a majority of 17 rather than 174. If they're lucky.
Labour's problem is that they think they can make incremental changes to a broken system and have it pay off. They can't, and it won't. You're mentioning waiting lists - they won't get the credit for wait times being slightly shorter when you can't see a GP and hospitals remain in crisis with a drastic shortage of beds and medical staff.
I'm curious as to who these people who are unable to see a GP are.
I've never had a problem in getting a GP appointment (or dentist for that matter) and nor has anyone I know.
While according to the official bodies there are over 350m GP appointments per year with this number having increased in recent years.
So an average of five GP appointments per person per year.
Considering that many people never or rarely need to go to their doctor it would suggest others have season tickets to theirs.
Remember the context - we're talking about "facts", not facts.
Two contradictory positions are true: There are more GP appointments being made available There are is a shortage of GPs, especially in localised pockets
Because the NHSes are shit sandwiches, there is both more appointments available in each nation and a catastrophic inability to see *my* GP at *my* practice. And because most people see a GP infrequently, they don't have the lived experience to disprove the narrative that you can't see a GP.
Its the 'it takes months to renew your passport' bollox on a bigger scale.
Well Labour were happy to peddle 'Broken Britain' bollox in opposition so they will now have to deal with it in government.
But *it isn't bollocks*. You want to tell the people who genuinely struggle to see a GP that its bollocks? Where their local practice opens the phone lines at 08:30, it's endlessly engaged and as and when you get through they offer an appointment weeks away?
This is why the system is fundamentally broken and needs significant reform. The patient interface is set at a local level and for so many people its desperately poor, regardless of the national statistics that politicians sneeringly recite.
Telling people its impossible to get a GP appointment when they would have no problem in doing so is bollox.
Telling people it takes months to renew a passport when it takes a week is bollox.
All it results in is people thinking the country is in a lot worse shape than it is which in turn feeds through to support for the political extremes.
Yes, some people have some problems - so governments should concentrate on resolving them instead of bewailing and doomcasting.
For a large number of people getting GP appointments is very difficult.
Our local practise merged with another. Now it’s appointment only by filling in a multi page online form. During business hours. Yes, they disable it before 8:30am and after 5pm.
Not sure what people who find multi-page web forms difficult, are supposed to do…
About 50% of the time they fail to follow up.
They got very snotty at a community meeting, when all the questions were hostile. Wrong kind of patients, apparently.
There is a reason why the form is 8:30 to 5pm only - someone triages the forms as they arrive to check people aren’t reporting stroke / heart attack symptoms and it’s remarkable how often people do that.
So why isn't that explained? As for example at the meeting to which Mr M referred.
Talking of German words I hereby propose that a unit of energy which is 100 times more expensive than it should be due to political ineptitude is hereafter known as a “Merkel”
“You’ll need 380 Merkels of gas an hour to run that factory so I’m afraid you’re bankrupt”
In even more extreme situations - where the unit of energy costs 1000 times as much for similar reasons - that unit will be known as a “Miliband”
The Miliband is problematic. What's 10^3 milibands? A band or a kilomiliband? What's 10^-3 milibands? A microband or a milimiliband?
You’ve mistaken the miliband for a metric measurement when it’s part of the British Imperial system. A miliband is twelve cleggs.
Not at all. Anyone in the British nonconformist traditions is automatically going to be a SI unit. Joule, Kelvin, Watt, Farad[ay] ... and definitly not approved of by Brexiters such as you.
Labour is apparently the worst government in history and yet is still tied in the majority of polls. I do think their strategy of getting the unpopular stuff out of the way early was right.
However, they should have also used that burned political capital to get rid of the triple lock for good.
They are on core vote. As is the Conservative Party.
If they can’t change the mood music by getting some actual results, they are heading for an epic pounding.
The nation’s voters don’t see the genius in being told that their taxes are going up and bin collections are moving from bi-weekly to once a month. Yes, this may or may not be the fault of the national government, but that’s who gets the blame.
They ARE getting results though. Waiting lists are dropping.
The nation’s voters will look at the options available and it’s either Reform or Labour. Labour will almost certainly be re-elected.
Almost certainly true, but with a majority of 17 rather than 174. If they're lucky.
Labour's problem is that they think they can make incremental changes to a broken system and have it pay off. They can't, and it won't. You're mentioning waiting lists - they won't get the credit for wait times being slightly shorter when you can't see a GP and hospitals remain in crisis with a drastic shortage of beds and medical staff.
I'm curious as to who these people who are unable to see a GP are.
I've never had a problem in getting a GP appointment (or dentist for that matter) and nor has anyone I know.
While according to the official bodies there are over 350m GP appointments per year with this number having increased in recent years.
So an average of five GP appointments per person per year.
Considering that many people never or rarely need to go to their doctor it would suggest others have season tickets to theirs.
Remember the context - we're talking about "facts", not facts.
Two contradictory positions are true: There are more GP appointments being made available There are is a shortage of GPs, especially in localised pockets
Because the NHSes are shit sandwiches, there is both more appointments available in each nation and a catastrophic inability to see *my* GP at *my* practice. And because most people see a GP infrequently, they don't have the lived experience to disprove the narrative that you can't see a GP.
Labour is apparently the worst government in history and yet is still tied in the majority of polls. I do think their strategy of getting the unpopular stuff out of the way early was right.
However, they should have also used that burned political capital to get rid of the triple lock for good.
They are on core vote. As is the Conservative Party.
If they can’t change the mood music by getting some actual results, they are heading for an epic pounding.
The nation’s voters don’t see the genius in being told that their taxes are going up and bin collections are moving from bi-weekly to once a month. Yes, this may or may not be the fault of the national government, but that’s who gets the blame.
They ARE getting results though. Waiting lists are dropping.
The nation’s voters will look at the options available and it’s either Reform or Labour. Labour will almost certainly be re-elected.
Almost certainly true, but with a majority of 17 rather than 174. If they're lucky.
Labour's problem is that they think they can make incremental changes to a broken system and have it pay off. They can't, and it won't. You're mentioning waiting lists - they won't get the credit for wait times being slightly shorter when you can't see a GP and hospitals remain in crisis with a drastic shortage of beds and medical staff.
I'm curious as to who these people who are unable to see a GP are.
I've never had a problem in getting a GP appointment (or dentist for that matter) and nor has anyone I know.
While according to the official bodies there are over 350m GP appointments per year with this number having increased in recent years.
So an average of five GP appointments per person per year.
Considering that many people never or rarely need to go to their doctor it would suggest others have season tickets to theirs.
Remember the context - we're talking about "facts", not facts.
Two contradictory positions are true: There are more GP appointments being made available There are is a shortage of GPs, especially in localised pockets
Because the NHSes are shit sandwiches, there is both more appointments available in each nation and a catastrophic inability to see *my* GP at *my* practice. And because most people see a GP infrequently, they don't have the lived experience to disprove the narrative that you can't see a GP.
Its the 'it takes months to renew your passport' bollox on a bigger scale.
Well Labour were happy to peddle 'Broken Britain' bollox in opposition so they will now have to deal with it in government.
But *it isn't bollocks*. You want to tell the people who genuinely struggle to see a GP that its bollocks? Where their local practice opens the phone lines at 08:30, it's endlessly engaged and as and when you get through they offer an appointment weeks away?
This is why the system is fundamentally broken and needs significant reform. The patient interface is set at a local level and for so many people its desperately poor, regardless of the national statistics that politicians sneeringly recite.
An actual example from yesterday. I joined the 8.30am rush to phone for an appointment. I got into the queue after only 12 attempts, which was better than normal. I eventually got to speak to the receptionist. By not specifying a particular doctor, I was able to get the first available appointment. It will be next Tuesday evening.
I can't understand why energy prices keep going up with all this super green energy we have?
Because electricity prices are set on the margin and the margin is based on the price of gas when converted into electricity
So the system simply isn't working.
The system needs to be changed so that electricity prices are set at the average production price plus profit, rather than marginal gas price. This would mean that some producers would be producing some energy at a marginal loss, They could be mandated to do that or get a public subsidy.
The current system is crazy and explains why our electricity prices are so high, and energy producers profits so high.
Labour is apparently the worst government in history and yet is still tied in the majority of polls. I do think their strategy of getting the unpopular stuff out of the way early was right.
However, they should have also used that burned political capital to get rid of the triple lock for good.
They are on core vote. As is the Conservative Party.
If they can’t change the mood music by getting some actual results, they are heading for an epic pounding.
The nation’s voters don’t see the genius in being told that their taxes are going up and bin collections are moving from bi-weekly to once a month. Yes, this may or may not be the fault of the national government, but that’s who gets the blame.
They ARE getting results though. Waiting lists are dropping.
The nation’s voters will look at the options available and it’s either Reform or Labour. Labour will almost certainly be re-elected.
Almost certainly true, but with a majority of 17 rather than 174. If they're lucky.
Labour's problem is that they think they can make incremental changes to a broken system and have it pay off. They can't, and it won't. You're mentioning waiting lists - they won't get the credit for wait times being slightly shorter when you can't see a GP and hospitals remain in crisis with a drastic shortage of beds and medical staff.
I'm curious as to who these people who are unable to see a GP are.
I've never had a problem in getting a GP appointment (or dentist for that matter) and nor has anyone I know.
While according to the official bodies there are over 350m GP appointments per year with this number having increased in recent years.
So an average of five GP appointments per person per year.
Considering that many people never or rarely need to go to their doctor it would suggest others have season tickets to theirs.
Remember the context - we're talking about "facts", not facts.
Two contradictory positions are true: There are more GP appointments being made available There are is a shortage of GPs, especially in localised pockets
Because the NHSes are shit sandwiches, there is both more appointments available in each nation and a catastrophic inability to see *my* GP at *my* practice. And because most people see a GP infrequently, they don't have the lived experience to disprove the narrative that you can't see a GP.
Its the 'it takes months to renew your passport' bollox on a bigger scale.
Well Labour were happy to peddle 'Broken Britain' bollox in opposition so they will now have to deal with it in government.
But *it isn't bollocks*. You want to tell the people who genuinely struggle to see a GP that its bollocks? Where their local practice opens the phone lines at 08:30, it's endlessly engaged and as and when you get through they offer an appointment weeks away?
This is why the system is fundamentally broken and needs significant reform. The patient interface is set at a local level and for so many people its desperately poor, regardless of the national statistics that politicians sneeringly recite.
Telling people its impossible to get a GP appointment when they would have no problem in doing so is bollox.
Telling people it takes months to renew a passport when it takes a week is bollox.
All it results in is people thinking the country is in a lot worse shape than it is which in turn feeds through to support for the political extremes.
Yes, some people have some problems - so governments should concentrate on resolving them instead of bewailing and doomcasting.
For a large number of people getting GP appointments is very difficult.
Our local practise merged with another. Now it’s appointment only by filling in a multi page online form. During business hours. Yes, they disable it before 8:30am and after 5pm.
Not sure what people who find multi-page web forms difficult, are supposed to do…
About 50% of the time they fail to follow up.
They got very snotty at a community meeting, when all the questions were hostile. Wrong kind of patients, apparently.
There is a reason why the form is 8:30 to 5pm only - someone triages the forms as they arrive to check people aren’t reporting stroke / heart attack symptoms and it’s remarkable how often people do that.
So why isn't that explained? As for example at the meeting to which Mr M referred.
It’s clearly explained on the form my doctor uses - why it’s not clear on your Dr’s website is a question for your practice to answer
I can't understand why energy prices keep going up with all this super green energy we have?
Because electricity prices are set on the margin and the margin is based on the price of gas when converted into electricity
So the system simply isn't working.
It's working, but perversely, as it was designed for an energy mix - and commodity prices - completely different to what now exists. That's why there's a project to reform the market, and a lot of argument (not much of which is aired publicly) about how best to do it.
How many PBers, who are about 100x as politically informed as the average bod, are aware that the Review of Electricity Market Arrangements has been bumbling along since 2022 ?
I can't understand why energy prices keep going up with all this super green energy we have?
Because electricity prices are set on the margin and the margin is based on the price of gas when converted into electricity
So the system simply isn't working.
The system needs to be changed so that electricity prices are set at the average production price plus profit, rather than marginal gas price. This would mean that some producers would be producing some energy at a marginal loss, They could be mandated to do that or get a public subsidy.
The current system is crazy and explains why our electricity prices are so high, and energy producers profits so high.
The problem with that is you would bankrupt many energy suppliers, so you'd have far less electricity than you had previously. That'd do wonders for the economy.
I likewise believe that the entirety of this thread from beginning to end constitutes the single most boring passage of commentary that has ever existed on PB, with every single commenter managing to say something even more inert, unfunny, lacklustre, middlebrow and soul-sappingly listless than the prior commenter
It reminds me of when my late father took me to see Redruth v Camborne at rugby, when I was about 9, and he promised me that I was about to witness a famous club rivalry with fiery passions on all sides
The game was conducted entirely in light Cornish mizzle and barely anything was visible, and after 80 bone-aching minutes of muddy tedium it ended 3-3. One penalty each. And I was left marvelling that people actually paid to watch something so utterly tedious and drear that it was mentally distressing
That is the PB of the midwit centrist dads
And you wander in like a latter-day Mr Pooter, to provide some variety.
Labour is apparently the worst government in history and yet is still tied in the majority of polls. I do think their strategy of getting the unpopular stuff out of the way early was right.
However, they should have also used that burned political capital to get rid of the triple lock for good.
They are on core vote. As is the Conservative Party.
If they can’t change the mood music by getting some actual results, they are heading for an epic pounding.
The nation’s voters don’t see the genius in being told that their taxes are going up and bin collections are moving from bi-weekly to once a month. Yes, this may or may not be the fault of the national government, but that’s who gets the blame.
They ARE getting results though. Waiting lists are dropping.
The nation’s voters will look at the options available and it’s either Reform or Labour. Labour will almost certainly be re-elected.
Almost certainly true, but with a majority of 17 rather than 174. If they're lucky.
Labour's problem is that they think they can make incremental changes to a broken system and have it pay off. They can't, and it won't. You're mentioning waiting lists - they won't get the credit for wait times being slightly shorter when you can't see a GP and hospitals remain in crisis with a drastic shortage of beds and medical staff.
I'm curious as to who these people who are unable to see a GP are.
I've never had a problem in getting a GP appointment (or dentist for that matter) and nor has anyone I know.
While according to the official bodies there are over 350m GP appointments per year with this number having increased in recent years.
So an average of five GP appointments per person per year.
Considering that many people never or rarely need to go to their doctor it would suggest others have season tickets to theirs.
Remember the context - we're talking about "facts", not facts.
Two contradictory positions are true: There are more GP appointments being made available There are is a shortage of GPs, especially in localised pockets
Because the NHSes are shit sandwiches, there is both more appointments available in each nation and a catastrophic inability to see *my* GP at *my* practice. And because most people see a GP infrequently, they don't have the lived experience to disprove the narrative that you can't see a GP.
Its the 'it takes months to renew your passport' bollox on a bigger scale.
Well Labour were happy to peddle 'Broken Britain' bollox in opposition so they will now have to deal with it in government.
But *it isn't bollocks*. You want to tell the people who genuinely struggle to see a GP that its bollocks? Where their local practice opens the phone lines at 08:30, it's endlessly engaged and as and when you get through they offer an appointment weeks away?
This is why the system is fundamentally broken and needs significant reform. The patient interface is set at a local level and for so many people its desperately poor, regardless of the national statistics that politicians sneeringly recite.
Telling people its impossible to get a GP appointment when they would have no problem in doing so is bollox.
Telling people it takes months to renew a passport when it takes a week is bollox.
All it results in is people thinking the country is in a lot worse shape than it is which in turn feeds through to support for the political extremes.
Yes, some people have some problems - so governments should concentrate on resolving them instead of bewailing and doomcasting.
For a large number of people getting GP appointments is very difficult.
Our local practise merged with another. Now it’s appointment only by filling in a multi page online form. During business hours. Yes, they disable it before 8:30am and after 5pm.
Not sure what people who find multi-page web forms difficult, are supposed to do…
About 50% of the time they fail to follow up.
They got very snotty at a community meeting, when all the questions were hostile. Wrong kind of patients, apparently.
There is a reason why the form is 8:30 to 5pm only - someone triages the forms as they arrive to check people aren’t reporting stroke / heart attack symptoms and it’s remarkable how often people do that.
So if someone wants to fills in the form at 9pm, they need to stop dying until 8:30am?
Talking of German words I hereby propose that a unit of energy which is 100 times more expensive than it should be due to political ineptitude is hereafter known as a “Merkel”
“You’ll need 380 Merkels of gas an hour to run that factory so I’m afraid you’re bankrupt”
In even more extreme situations - where the unit of energy costs 1000 times as much for similar reasons - that unit will be known as a “Miliband”
I don't think there is an SI or derived unit for bullshit. Perhaps we can use the Leon. 16 Leon's to the musk and 14 musk's to the Trump?
Talking of German words I hereby propose that a unit of energy which is 100 times more expensive than it should be due to political ineptitude is hereafter known as a “Merkel”
“You’ll need 380 Merkels of gas an hour to run that factory so I’m afraid you’re bankrupt”
In even more extreme situations - where the unit of energy costs 1000 times as much for similar reasons - that unit will be known as a “Miliband”
The Miliband is problematic. What's 10^3 milibands? A band or a kilomiliband? What's 10^-3 milibands? A microband or a milimiliband?
You’ve mistaken the miliband for a metric measurement when it’s part of the British Imperial system. A miliband is twelve cleggs.
Not at all. Anyone in the British nonconformist traditions is automatically going to be a SI unit. Joule, Kelvin, Watt, Farad[ay] ... and definitly not approved of by Brexiters such as you.
Joule and Watt and Farad are derived units not SI.
Talking of German words I hereby propose that a unit of energy which is 100 times more expensive than it should be due to political ineptitude is hereafter known as a “Merkel”
“You’ll need 380 Merkels of gas an hour to run that factory so I’m afraid you’re bankrupt”
In even more extreme situations - where the unit of energy costs 1000 times as much for similar reasons - that unit will be known as a “Miliband”
A milliband sounds like a very small unit, so suitable for less availability due to political ineptitude. E.g. housing availability has been reduced by 1000 millibands.
I can't understand why energy prices keep going up with all this super green energy we have?
Because electricity prices are set on the margin and the margin is based on the price of gas when converted into electricity
So the system simply isn't working.
The system needs to be changed so that electricity prices are set at the average production price plus profit, rather than marginal gas price. This would mean that some producers would be producing some energy at a marginal loss, They could be mandated to do that or get a public subsidy.
The current system is crazy and explains why our electricity prices are so high, and energy producers profits so high.
The problem with that is you would bankrupt many energy suppliers, so you'd have far less electricity than you had previously. That'd do wonders for the economy.
They would get a public subsidy to keep producing. Far better than excess profit taxes on producers which is the current system.
In fact, there should be an oddly satisfying German compound noun for the “oddly satisfying sensation of creating a German compound noun for the oddly satisfying sensation of creating new German compound nouns for particular things that hitherto lacked these one word descriptors”
And it is
Deutschkompositumschöpfungsglücksschöpfungsglück
Which just goes to show how cleverly economical German is; there should be a German compound noun for the sensation of discovering this
I feel the opposite about French - an irrational irritation at the French language's refusal to compound nouns, thereby ending up with long strings of nouns separated by 'de' and 'de la' and 'du'. There is probably a word for that too. Or a string of words. And it itself is irritating.
"Irritation face à l’incapacité de la langue française à utiliser des noms composés."
Labour is apparently the worst government in history and yet is still tied in the majority of polls. I do think their strategy of getting the unpopular stuff out of the way early was right.
However, they should have also used that burned political capital to get rid of the triple lock for good.
They are on core vote. As is the Conservative Party.
If they can’t change the mood music by getting some actual results, they are heading for an epic pounding.
The nation’s voters don’t see the genius in being told that their taxes are going up and bin collections are moving from bi-weekly to once a month. Yes, this may or may not be the fault of the national government, but that’s who gets the blame.
They ARE getting results though. Waiting lists are dropping.
The nation’s voters will look at the options available and it’s either Reform or Labour. Labour will almost certainly be re-elected.
Almost certainly true, but with a majority of 17 rather than 174. If they're lucky.
Labour's problem is that they think they can make incremental changes to a broken system and have it pay off. They can't, and it won't. You're mentioning waiting lists - they won't get the credit for wait times being slightly shorter when you can't see a GP and hospitals remain in crisis with a drastic shortage of beds and medical staff.
I'm curious as to who these people who are unable to see a GP are.
I've never had a problem in getting a GP appointment (or dentist for that matter) and nor has anyone I know.
While according to the official bodies there are over 350m GP appointments per year with this number having increased in recent years.
So an average of five GP appointments per person per year.
Considering that many people never or rarely need to go to their doctor it would suggest others have season tickets to theirs.
Remember the context - we're talking about "facts", not facts.
Two contradictory positions are true: There are more GP appointments being made available There are is a shortage of GPs, especially in localised pockets
Because the NHSes are shit sandwiches, there is both more appointments available in each nation and a catastrophic inability to see *my* GP at *my* practice. And because most people see a GP infrequently, they don't have the lived experience to disprove the narrative that you can't see a GP.
Its the 'it takes months to renew your passport' bollox on a bigger scale.
Well Labour were happy to peddle 'Broken Britain' bollox in opposition so they will now have to deal with it in government.
But *it isn't bollocks*. You want to tell the people who genuinely struggle to see a GP that its bollocks? Where their local practice opens the phone lines at 08:30, it's endlessly engaged and as and when you get through they offer an appointment weeks away?
This is why the system is fundamentally broken and needs significant reform. The patient interface is set at a local level and for so many people its desperately poor, regardless of the national statistics that politicians sneeringly recite.
Telling people its impossible to get a GP appointment when they would have no problem in doing so is bollox.
Telling people it takes months to renew a passport when it takes a week is bollox.
All it results in is people thinking the country is in a lot worse shape than it is which in turn feeds through to support for the political extremes.
Yes, some people have some problems - so governments should concentrate on resolving them instead of bewailing and doomcasting.
For a large number of people getting GP appointments is very difficult.
Our local practise merged with another. Now it’s appointment only by filling in a multi page online form. During business hours. Yes, they disable it before 8:30am and after 5pm.
Not sure what people who find multi-page web forms difficult, are supposed to do…
About 50% of the time they fail to follow up.
They got very snotty at a community meeting, when all the questions were hostile. Wrong kind of patients, apparently.
There is a reason why the form is 8:30 to 5pm only - someone triages the forms as they arrive to check people aren’t reporting stroke / heart attack symptoms and it’s remarkable how often people do that.
That sounds like it's "get with the programme" time. These are my GP normal hours:
Mo,We,Th 8:00 am – 6:30 pm; Tu,Fr 7:00 am – 6:30 pm
They also have:
To request a routine appointment in the next 7 days:
the bulk of our appointments are bookable on the day phone us on xxxxxx, Monday to Friday from 8.30am to 6.00pm a small number of routine pre-bookable appointments are available using the methods as detailed above but can also be accessed on line using our on line system SystmOnline or via the NHS App.
and
In response to comments from working patients, we now offer a limited number of early morning pre-bookable appointments from 8.20am Tuesday to Fridays. The 8.20 and 8.30 are bookable a week in advance. These appointments can be booked either online or by phone.
In addition, as part of collaborative working with our other PCN practices, under an additional service called GP Extended Access we all provide appointments on two early mornings, one late evening and occasional Saturdays on rotation. Our early mornings are generally Tuesdays and Fridays from 7am and these appointments are available to pre-book one week in advance. Late evenings are 6.30 to 8pm and the occasional Saturdays are 9am to 5pm and are sometimes used for specific clinics such as Family Planning, Joint Injections or Flu vaccinations. The GP partners cover all the GP Extended Access sessions in turn.
Practice Nurse, First Contact Physio and Pharmacy appointments are also be available during this time, but with a longer booking period.
And there's quite a lot more as well, including:
Please tell us:
if there’s a specific doctor, nurse or other health professional you would prefer to respond if you would prefer to consult with the doctor or nurse by phone, face-to-face, by video call or by text or email if you need an interpreter if you have any other access or communication needs
Talking of German words I hereby propose that a unit of energy which is 100 times more expensive than it should be due to political ineptitude is hereafter known as a “Merkel”
“You’ll need 380 Merkels of gas an hour to run that factory so I’m afraid you’re bankrupt”
In even more extreme situations - where the unit of energy costs 1000 times as much for similar reasons - that unit will be known as a “Miliband”
The Miliband is problematic. What's 10^3 milibands? A band or a kilomiliband? What's 10^-3 milibands? A microband or a milimiliband?
You’ve mistaken the miliband for a metric measurement when it’s part of the British Imperial system. A miliband is twelve cleggs.
Not at all. Anyone in the British nonconformist traditions is automatically going to be a SI unit. Joule, Kelvin, Watt, Farad[ay] ... and definitly not approved of by Brexiters such as you.
Joule and Watt and Farad are derived units not SI.
I can't understand why energy prices keep going up with all this super green energy we have?
Because electricity prices are set on the margin and the margin is based on the price of gas when converted into electricity
So the system simply isn't working.
The system needs to be changed so that electricity prices are set at the average production price plus profit, rather than marginal gas price. This would mean that some producers would be producing some energy at a marginal loss, They could be mandated to do that or get a public subsidy.
The current system is crazy and explains why our electricity prices are so high, and energy producers profits so high.
The problem with that is you would bankrupt many energy suppliers, so you'd have far less electricity than you had previously. That'd do wonders for the economy.
They would get a public subsidy to keep producing. Far better than excess profit taxes on producers which is the current system.
It's not immediately obvious to me why that would be better.
Labour is apparently the worst government in history and yet is still tied in the majority of polls. I do think their strategy of getting the unpopular stuff out of the way early was right.
However, they should have also used that burned political capital to get rid of the triple lock for good.
They are on core vote. As is the Conservative Party.
If they can’t change the mood music by getting some actual results, they are heading for an epic pounding.
The nation’s voters don’t see the genius in being told that their taxes are going up and bin collections are moving from bi-weekly to once a month. Yes, this may or may not be the fault of the national government, but that’s who gets the blame.
They ARE getting results though. Waiting lists are dropping.
The nation’s voters will look at the options available and it’s either Reform or Labour. Labour will almost certainly be re-elected.
Almost certainly true, but with a majority of 17 rather than 174. If they're lucky.
Labour's problem is that they think they can make incremental changes to a broken system and have it pay off. They can't, and it won't. You're mentioning waiting lists - they won't get the credit for wait times being slightly shorter when you can't see a GP and hospitals remain in crisis with a drastic shortage of beds and medical staff.
I'm curious as to who these people who are unable to see a GP are.
I've never had a problem in getting a GP appointment (or dentist for that matter) and nor has anyone I know.
While according to the official bodies there are over 350m GP appointments per year with this number having increased in recent years.
So an average of five GP appointments per person per year.
Considering that many people never or rarely need to go to their doctor it would suggest others have season tickets to theirs.
Remember the context - we're talking about "facts", not facts.
Two contradictory positions are true: There are more GP appointments being made available There are is a shortage of GPs, especially in localised pockets
Because the NHSes are shit sandwiches, there is both more appointments available in each nation and a catastrophic inability to see *my* GP at *my* practice. And because most people see a GP infrequently, they don't have the lived experience to disprove the narrative that you can't see a GP.
Its the 'it takes months to renew your passport' bollox on a bigger scale.
Well Labour were happy to peddle 'Broken Britain' bollox in opposition so they will now have to deal with it in government.
But *it isn't bollocks*. You want to tell the people who genuinely struggle to see a GP that its bollocks? Where their local practice opens the phone lines at 08:30, it's endlessly engaged and as and when you get through they offer an appointment weeks away?
This is why the system is fundamentally broken and needs significant reform. The patient interface is set at a local level and for so many people its desperately poor, regardless of the national statistics that politicians sneeringly recite.
Telling people its impossible to get a GP appointment when they would have no problem in doing so is bollox.
Telling people it takes months to renew a passport when it takes a week is bollox.
All it results in is people thinking the country is in a lot worse shape than it is which in turn feeds through to support for the political extremes.
Yes, some people have some problems - so governments should concentrate on resolving them instead of bewailing and doomcasting.
For a large number of people getting GP appointments is very difficult.
Our local practise merged with another. Now it’s appointment only by filling in a multi page online form. During business hours. Yes, they disable it before 8:30am and after 5pm.
Not sure what people who find multi-page web forms difficult, are supposed to do…
About 50% of the time they fail to follow up.
They got very snotty at a community meeting, when all the questions were hostile. Wrong kind of patients, apparently.
There is a reason why the form is 8:30 to 5pm only - someone triages the forms as they arrive to check people aren’t reporting stroke / heart attack symptoms and it’s remarkable how often people do that.
So if someone wants to fills in the form at 9pm, they need to stop dying until 8:30am?
I can't understand why energy prices keep going up with all this super green energy we have?
Because electricity prices are set on the margin and the margin is based on the price of gas when converted into electricity
So the system simply isn't working.
The system needs to be changed so that electricity prices are set at the average production price plus profit, rather than marginal gas price. This would mean that some producers would be producing some energy at a marginal loss, They could be mandated to do that or get a public subsidy.
The current system is crazy and explains why our electricity prices are so high, and energy producers profits so high.
The problem with that is you would bankrupt many energy suppliers, so you'd have far less electricity than you had previously. That'd do wonders for the economy.
They would get a public subsidy to keep producing. Far better than excess profit taxes on producers which is the current system.
It's not clear to me how that would make any difference. The amount saved by not paying suppliers of cheap electricity the marginal rate would surely be swallowed up by the cost of the subsidy.
I can't understand why energy prices keep going up with all this super green energy we have?
Because electricity prices are set on the margin and the margin is based on the price of gas when converted into electricity
So the system simply isn't working.
The system needs to be changed so that electricity prices are set at the average production price plus profit, rather than marginal gas price. This would mean that some producers would be producing some energy at a marginal loss, They could be mandated to do that or get a public subsidy.
The current system is crazy and explains why our electricity prices are so high, and energy producers profits so high.
The problem with that is you would bankrupt many energy suppliers, so you'd have far less electricity than you had previously. That'd do wonders for the economy.
Yep, "I wouldn't start from here" figures a lot in the discussion of how to redesign the UK market.
Talking of German words I hereby propose that a unit of energy which is 100 times more expensive than it should be due to political ineptitude is hereafter known as a “Merkel”
“You’ll need 380 Merkels of gas an hour to run that factory so I’m afraid you’re bankrupt”
In even more extreme situations - where the unit of energy costs 1000 times as much for similar reasons - that unit will be known as a “Miliband”
A milliband sounds like a very small unit, so suitable for less availability due to political ineptitude. E.g. housing availability has been reduced by 1000 millibands.
The problem with that is it assumes constant energy usage.
Different houses can have different energy usage by 2x or 3x just based on their insulation and form of heating.
Ukraine could be any place. Lets all be brutally honest here - the important part is *who* invaded them. Russia invades, we're very concerned. A war between two other small countries a long way off? Less bothered - as we demonstrate time and time agains in Africa.
Ukraine is very important because the aggressor is *Russia*.
Exactly. But we have no interest. We never have had, and we never will do.
Why are we there?
At the moment we're progressing toward a situation where Trump's America: 1. Gets rich on Ukrainian minerals 2. Gets Europe to do all the military heavy lifting to guard America's minerals 3. Makes peace with Russia 4. Europe still sanctions Russia and is still shivering due to energy sanctions
I mean do we have 'easy mark' written across our forehead?
There's no UK interest in preventing Russia swallowing up Ukraine?
Literally none. It could not matter less.
Of course, there is a moral argument - the invasion of a sovereign nation is unacceptable and morally reprehensible.
But viewed dispassionately, Russia does not represent a severe security threat to the UK. It could never invade, and even in terms of infiltration and radicalistion, India, Bangladesh, China, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey (I could be forgetting others) are all more pressing threats than Russia is. Actually with the Trump USAID cuts a lot of less than great information about American influence is coming out - USAID funding the BBC?? But that's another story.
It represents somewhat of a commercial threat (energy blackmail), but that threat has already been realised, and we're not doing anything about it. We seem determined to have a suicidal energy policy anyway.
Talking of German words I hereby propose that a unit of energy which is 100 times more expensive than it should be due to political ineptitude is hereafter known as a “Merkel”
“You’ll need 380 Merkels of gas an hour to run that factory so I’m afraid you’re bankrupt”
In even more extreme situations - where the unit of energy costs 1000 times as much for similar reasons - that unit will be known as a “Miliband”
I don't think there is an SI or derived unit for bullshit. Perhaps we can use the Leon. 16 Leon's to the musk and 14 musk's to the Trump?
This got a like from me despite the greengrocer’s apostrophes.
In fact, there should be an oddly satisfying German compound noun for the “oddly satisfying sensation of creating a German compound noun for the oddly satisfying sensation of creating new German compound nouns for particular things that hitherto lacked these one word descriptors”
And it is
Deutschkompositumschöpfungsglücksschöpfungsglück
Which just goes to show how cleverly economical German is; there should be a German compound noun for the sensation of discovering this
I feel the opposite about French - an irrational irritation at the French language's refusal to compound nouns, thereby ending up with long strings of nouns separated by 'de' and 'de la' and 'du'. There is probably a word for that too. Or a string of words. And it itself is irritating.
"Irritation face à l’incapacité de la langue française à utiliser des noms composés."
There are lots of French compound nouns. It's just that you don't know about them due to leaver proclivities. Their baroque pluralisation rules are the final boss in the A-Level production écrite.
I can't understand why energy prices keep going up with all this super green energy we have?
Because electricity prices are set on the margin and the margin is based on the price of gas when converted into electricity
So the system simply isn't working.
The system needs to be changed so that electricity prices are set at the average production price plus profit, rather than marginal gas price. This would mean that some producers would be producing some energy at a marginal loss, They could be mandated to do that or get a public subsidy.
The current system is crazy and explains why our electricity prices are so high, and energy producers profits so high.
You can’t expect producers to produce at a marginal loss: they’ll just shut down instead.
Labour is apparently the worst government in history and yet is still tied in the majority of polls. I do think their strategy of getting the unpopular stuff out of the way early was right.
However, they should have also used that burned political capital to get rid of the triple lock for good.
They are on core vote. As is the Conservative Party.
If they can’t change the mood music by getting some actual results, they are heading for an epic pounding.
The nation’s voters don’t see the genius in being told that their taxes are going up and bin collections are moving from bi-weekly to once a month. Yes, this may or may not be the fault of the national government, but that’s who gets the blame.
They ARE getting results though. Waiting lists are dropping.
The nation’s voters will look at the options available and it’s either Reform or Labour. Labour will almost certainly be re-elected.
Almost certainly true, but with a majority of 17 rather than 174. If they're lucky.
Labour's problem is that they think they can make incremental changes to a broken system and have it pay off. They can't, and it won't. You're mentioning waiting lists - they won't get the credit for wait times being slightly shorter when you can't see a GP and hospitals remain in crisis with a drastic shortage of beds and medical staff.
I'm curious as to who these people who are unable to see a GP are.
I've never had a problem in getting a GP appointment (or dentist for that matter) and nor has anyone I know.
While according to the official bodies there are over 350m GP appointments per year with this number having increased in recent years.
So an average of five GP appointments per person per year.
Considering that many people never or rarely need to go to their doctor it would suggest others have season tickets to theirs.
Remember the context - we're talking about "facts", not facts.
Two contradictory positions are true: There are more GP appointments being made available There are is a shortage of GPs, especially in localised pockets
Because the NHSes are shit sandwiches, there is both more appointments available in each nation and a catastrophic inability to see *my* GP at *my* practice. And because most people see a GP infrequently, they don't have the lived experience to disprove the narrative that you can't see a GP.
Its the 'it takes months to renew your passport' bollox on a bigger scale.
Well Labour were happy to peddle 'Broken Britain' bollox in opposition so they will now have to deal with it in government.
But *it isn't bollocks*. You want to tell the people who genuinely struggle to see a GP that its bollocks? Where their local practice opens the phone lines at 08:30, it's endlessly engaged and as and when you get through they offer an appointment weeks away?
This is why the system is fundamentally broken and needs significant reform. The patient interface is set at a local level and for so many people its desperately poor, regardless of the national statistics that politicians sneeringly recite.
Telling people its impossible to get a GP appointment when they would have no problem in doing so is bollox.
Telling people it takes months to renew a passport when it takes a week is bollox.
All it results in is people thinking the country is in a lot worse shape than it is which in turn feeds through to support for the political extremes.
Yes, some people have some problems - so governments should concentrate on resolving them instead of bewailing and doomcasting.
For a large number of people getting GP appointments is very difficult.
Our local practise merged with another. Now it’s appointment only by filling in a multi page online form. During business hours. Yes, they disable it before 8:30am and after 5pm.
Not sure what people who find multi-page web forms difficult, are supposed to do…
About 50% of the time they fail to follow up.
They got very snotty at a community meeting, when all the questions were hostile. Wrong kind of patients, apparently.
There is a reason why the form is 8:30 to 5pm only - someone triages the forms as they arrive to check people aren’t reporting stroke / heart attack symptoms and it’s remarkable how often people do that.
That sounds like it's "get with the programme" time. These are my GP normal hours:
Mo,We,Th 8:00 am – 6:30 pm; Tu,Fr 7:00 am – 6:30 pm
They also have:
To request a routine appointment in the next 7 days:
the bulk of our appointments are bookable on the day phone us on xxxxxx, Monday to Friday from 8.30am to 6.00pm a small number of routine pre-bookable appointments are available using the methods as detailed above but can also be accessed on line using our on line system SystmOnline or via the NHS App.
and
In response to comments from working patients, we now offer a limited number of early morning pre-bookable appointments from 8.20am Tuesday to Fridays. The 8.20 and 8.30 are bookable a week in advance. These appointments can be booked either online or by phone.
In addition, as part of collaborative working with our other PCN practices, under an additional service called GP Extended Access we all provide appointments on two early mornings, one late evening and occasional Saturdays on rotation. Our early mornings are generally Tuesdays and Fridays from 7am and these appointments are available to pre-book one week in advance. Late evenings are 6.30 to 8pm and the occasional Saturdays are 9am to 5pm and are sometimes used for specific clinics such as Family Planning, Joint Injections or Flu vaccinations. The GP partners cover all the GP Extended Access sessions in turn.
Practice Nurse, First Contact Physio and Pharmacy appointments are also be available during this time, but with a longer booking period.
And there's quite a lot more as well, including:
Please tell us:
if there’s a specific doctor, nurse or other health professional you would prefer to respond if you would prefer to consult with the doctor or nurse by phone, face-to-face, by video call or by text or email if you need an interpreter if you have any other access or communication needs
I do agree it's possible to get a doctor's appointment. The process of doing so is irritating, but I don't think it's necessarily bad.
At my doctor's you can only fill in the online form for an appointment between 8 and 10am, which seems to miss the point of doing things online, but I can see from the above why they do it.
I'd like there to be an appointment between 'urgent' and 'not urgent' though. It's normally eminently possible to get a sameday appointment if you describe it as 'urgent', but if you're in 'not urgent' territory it might be several weeks. But most things I need to see a doctor about fall into the category of 'liveable-with for a couple of days, but not weeks'.
On which subject, after six months of waiting on the list for a hernia clinic, I've decided to go private, and have been offered an appointment today. Again, the extremes of one-end-of-the-scale-of-the-other is frustrating. Either pay absolutely nothing and have it sorted in a couple of years, or pay and absolute shitload and get it addressed immediately. It would be nice if there was a middle ground.
Talking of German words I hereby propose that a unit of energy which is 100 times more expensive than it should be due to political ineptitude is hereafter known as a “Merkel”
“You’ll need 380 Merkels of gas an hour to run that factory so I’m afraid you’re bankrupt”
In even more extreme situations - where the unit of energy costs 1000 times as much for similar reasons - that unit will be known as a “Miliband”
A milliband sounds like a very small unit, so suitable for less availability due to political ineptitude. E.g. housing availability has been reduced by 1000 millibands.
The problem with that is it assumes constant energy usage.
Different houses can have different energy usage by 2x or 3x just based on their insulation and form of heating.
My gas usage last year was almost precisely the UK average of 11,500 kwh. (11498.45), 180 m^2 house.
One thing I really don't like with the ofgem calculations is when they change the "standard user". If everyone gets better insulated homes, well the fixed costs aren't going anywhere so the unit cost of power will head north but it can be presented as a fall because they're now assuming people only need 10,500 kwh of gas annually or whatever.
Once you've got LED lights and a A rated fridge freezer or whatever YOUR house won't change much but there's the insidious effect of the ever falling "average user" making the increases look less than they actually are.
Talking of German words I hereby propose that a unit of energy which is 100 times more expensive than it should be due to political ineptitude is hereafter known as a “Merkel”
“You’ll need 380 Merkels of gas an hour to run that factory so I’m afraid you’re bankrupt”
In even more extreme situations - where the unit of energy costs 1000 times as much for similar reasons - that unit will be known as a “Miliband”
The Miliband is problematic. What's 10^3 milibands? A band or a kilomiliband? What's 10^-3 milibands? A microband or a milimiliband?
You’ve mistaken the miliband for a metric measurement when it’s part of the British Imperial system. A miliband is twelve cleggs.
Not at all. Anyone in the British nonconformist traditions is automatically going to be a SI unit. Joule, Kelvin, Watt, Farad[ay] ... and definitly not approved of by Brexiters such as you.
Joule and Watt and Farad are derived units not SI.
Just looked in the corner of my office where I keep log tables, style guides, Gowers, etc. and fished out the Royal Society 'Quantities, Units and Symbols' which says very clearly on p. 23 that they are SI units, more specifically SI derived units (based on the Newton, metre, Kelvin, and so on).
Indeed you could add Newton to the list given his dodgy alchemical mysticism ...
Talking of German words I hereby propose that a unit of energy which is 100 times more expensive than it should be due to political ineptitude is hereafter known as a “Merkel”
“You’ll need 380 Merkels of gas an hour to run that factory so I’m afraid you’re bankrupt”
In even more extreme situations - where the unit of energy costs 1000 times as much for similar reasons - that unit will be known as a “Miliband”
The Miliband is problematic. What's 10^3 milibands? A band or a kilomiliband? What's 10^-3 milibands? A microband or a milimiliband?
You’ve mistaken the miliband for a metric measurement when it’s part of the British Imperial system. A miliband is twelve cleggs.
Not at all. Anyone in the British nonconformist traditions is automatically going to be a SI unit. Joule, Kelvin, Watt, Farad[ay] ... and definitly not approved of by Brexiters such as you.
Joule and Watt and Farad are derived units not SI.
Just looked in the corner of my office where I keep log tables, style guides, Gowers, etc. and fished out the Royal Society 'Quantities, Units and Symbols' which says very clearly on p. 23 that they are SI units, more specifically SI derived units (based on the Newton, metre, Kelvin, and so on).
Indeed you could add Newton to the list given his dodgy alchemical mysticism ...
Is the Henry the only unit named after an American?
Talking of German words I hereby propose that a unit of energy which is 100 times more expensive than it should be due to political ineptitude is hereafter known as a “Merkel”
“You’ll need 380 Merkels of gas an hour to run that factory so I’m afraid you’re bankrupt”
In even more extreme situations - where the unit of energy costs 1000 times as much for similar reasons - that unit will be known as a “Miliband”
The Miliband is problematic. What's 10^3 milibands? A band or a kilomiliband? What's 10^-3 milibands? A microband or a milimiliband?
You’ve mistaken the miliband for a metric measurement when it’s part of the British Imperial system. A miliband is twelve cleggs.
Not at all. Anyone in the British nonconformist traditions is automatically going to be a SI unit. Joule, Kelvin, Watt, Farad[ay] ... and definitly not approved of by Brexiters such as you.
Joule and Watt and Farad are derived units not SI.
Just looked in the corner of my office where I keep log tables, style guides, Gowers, etc. and fished out the Royal Society 'Quantities, Units and Symbols' which says very clearly on p. 23 that they are SI units, more specifically SI derived units (based on the Newton, metre, Kelvin, and so on).
Indeed you could add Newton to the list given his dodgy alchemical mysticism ...
The European Union offered its own agreement on "critical materials" to Ukraine on Monday, just as U.S. President Donald Trump claimed Washington was close to inking a deal with Kyiv for the rights to its vast natural resources.
Europe's Commissioner for Industrial Strategy Stéphane Séjourné said he'd pitched the rival proposal to Ukrainian officials he met in Kyiv during a visit by the European Commission to mark the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion.
"Twenty-one of the 30 critical materials Europe needs can be provided by Ukraine in a win-win partnership," Séjourné said, according to AFP.
I likewise believe that the entirety of this thread from beginning to end constitutes the single most boring passage of commentary that has ever existed on PB, with every single commenter managing to say something even more inert, unfunny, lacklustre, middlebrow and soul-sappingly listless than the prior commenter
It reminds me of when my late father took me to see Redruth v Camborne at rugby, when I was about 9, and he promised me that I was about to witness a famous club rivalry with fiery passions on all sides
The game was conducted entirely in light Cornish mizzle and barely anything was visible, and after 80 bone-aching minutes of muddy tedium it ended 3-3. One penalty each. And I was left marvelling that people actually paid to watch something so utterly tedious and drear that it was mentally distressing
That is the PB of the midwit centrist dads
I like a boring interlude on PB. I find it reassuring. You do too, on occasion. Perhaps you're just tetchy because you're trying to put off writing your article about China.
I suspect ordinarily and without an article hanging over you you'd rejoice in 80 minutes of muddy tedium in the Cornish mizzle too.
TSE - If you are looking for a header, let me suggest you run a competition for the best political jokes, in various categories.
A friend of mine works as a shop assistant in Moscow. With the Ukrainian drone raids at night and the associated sirens, people have been getting less and less sleep recently. She tells me there's a foolproof way to tell how much sleep her customers have had by how they respond to her when she serves them in the morning.
If she says, "What do you think of Putin?" and they answer politely she knows they've had plenty of sleep.
If she says, "What do you think of Putin?" and they answer rudely she knows they've had very little sleep.
If she says, "What do you think of Putin?" and they answer, "The man's a genius", she knows they've always been asleep.
Talking of German words I hereby propose that a unit of energy which is 100 times more expensive than it should be due to political ineptitude is hereafter known as a “Merkel”
“You’ll need 380 Merkels of gas an hour to run that factory so I’m afraid you’re bankrupt”
In even more extreme situations - where the unit of energy costs 1000 times as much for similar reasons - that unit will be known as a “Miliband”
The Miliband is problematic. What's 10^3 milibands? A band or a kilomiliband? What's 10^-3 milibands? A microband or a milimiliband?
You’ve mistaken the miliband for a metric measurement when it’s part of the British Imperial system. A miliband is twelve cleggs.
Not at all. Anyone in the British nonconformist traditions is automatically going to be a SI unit. Joule, Kelvin, Watt, Farad[ay] ... and definitly not approved of by Brexiters such as you.
Joule and Watt and Farad are derived units not SI.
Just looked in the corner of my office where I keep log tables, style guides, Gowers, etc. and fished out the Royal Society 'Quantities, Units and Symbols' which says very clearly on p. 23 that they are SI units, more specifically SI derived units (based on the Newton, metre, Kelvin, and so on).
Indeed you could add Newton to the list given his dodgy alchemical mysticism ...
Is the Henry the only unit named after an American?
Tesla was an American citizen (though not American born) so depends on definition, I guess.
ETA: I didn't know the Henry, shame on me and my undergrad physics teachers! I thought maybe a unit of suction
Ukraine could be any place. Lets all be brutally honest here - the important part is *who* invaded them. Russia invades, we're very concerned. A war between two other small countries a long way off? Less bothered - as we demonstrate time and time agains in Africa.
Ukraine is very important because the aggressor is *Russia*.
Exactly. But we have no interest. We never have had, and we never will do.
Why are we there?
At the moment we're progressing toward a situation where Trump's America: 1. Gets rich on Ukrainian minerals 2. Gets Europe to do all the military heavy lifting to guard America's minerals 3. Makes peace with Russia 4. Europe still sanctions Russia and is still shivering due to energy sanctions
I mean do we have 'easy mark' written across our forehead?
There's no UK interest in preventing Russia swallowing up Ukraine?
Literally none. It could not matter less.
Of course, there is a moral argument - the invasion of a sovereign nation is unacceptable and morally reprehensible.
But viewed dispassionately, Russia does not represent a severe security threat to the UK. It could never invade, and even in terms of infiltration and radicalistion, India, Bangladesh, China, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey (I could be forgetting others) are all more pressing threats than Russia is. Actually with the Trump USAID cuts a lot of less than great information about American influence is coming out - USAID funding the BBC?? But that's another story.
It represents somewhat of a commercial threat (energy blackmail), but that threat has already been realised, and we're not doing anything about it. We seem determined to have a suicidal energy policy anyway.
Yes, the millions of Ukrainians fleeing Putin's control of the country in Europe's biggest refugee crisis since WW2 would definitely not have any impact on the UK whatsoever. We know that because the comparatively much smaller refugee flows from east to west over recent years have had absolutely no affect on us.
Talking of German words I hereby propose that a unit of energy which is 100 times more expensive than it should be due to political ineptitude is hereafter known as a “Merkel”
“You’ll need 380 Merkels of gas an hour to run that factory so I’m afraid you’re bankrupt”
In even more extreme situations - where the unit of energy costs 1000 times as much for similar reasons - that unit will be known as a “Miliband”
The Miliband is problematic. What's 10^3 milibands? A band or a kilomiliband? What's 10^-3 milibands? A microband or a milimiliband?
You’ve mistaken the miliband for a metric measurement when it’s part of the British Imperial system. A miliband is twelve cleggs.
Not at all. Anyone in the British nonconformist traditions is automatically going to be a SI unit. Joule, Kelvin, Watt, Farad[ay] ... and definitly not approved of by Brexiters such as you.
Joule and Watt and Farad are derived units not SI.
Just looked in the corner of my office where I keep log tables, style guides, Gowers, etc. and fished out the Royal Society 'Quantities, Units and Symbols' which says very clearly on p. 23 that they are SI units, more specifically SI derived units (based on the Newton, metre, Kelvin, and so on).
Indeed you could add Newton to the list given his dodgy alchemical mysticism ...
Is the Henry the only unit named after an American?
Tesla was an American citizen (though not American born) so depends on definition, I guess.
ETA: I didn't know the Henry, shame on me and my undergrad physics teachers! I thought maybe a unit of suction
That counts. I do not discriminate against immigrants! Unlike Tesla's owner.
Talking of German words I hereby propose that a unit of energy which is 100 times more expensive than it should be due to political ineptitude is hereafter known as a “Merkel”
“You’ll need 380 Merkels of gas an hour to run that factory so I’m afraid you’re bankrupt”
In even more extreme situations - where the unit of energy costs 1000 times as much for similar reasons - that unit will be known as a “Miliband”
The Miliband is problematic. What's 10^3 milibands? A band or a kilomiliband? What's 10^-3 milibands? A microband or a milimiliband?
It would be a millimiliband, I think (double-L, then single-)?
There's already precedent within the SI system for this though, with the gram. As that is (or would be) a stupidly small base unit, other units designed around the kilogram. So while excessive cost could be measured by (mostly subdivisions of) the Band, that's far too large for most purposes (standard cost is one μB, based on the above definition), so the standard unit would be the milliBand.
Like Uber, the Tesla bet is that they will have a nationwide network of driverless cars available soon.
Although Uber seem to have wisely decided this isn’t going to happen any time soon.
Elon on the other hand, has been promising full self driving since 2012, every year.
Never going to happen.
Around here even most humans aren't safe to drive a car and navigate the potholes, stray animals, fallen trees, overgrown hedges, flooded roads, random roadworks, tractors, cyclists, walkers, random objects literally fallen off the back of a lorry, etc., etc.
The other end of it is that Waymo is rolling out its service. They took the approach of limiting the problem to solve.
They seem to have self driving working, for what they are asking it to do.
I'm bemused by the whole concept of automated driving - do we need it. If we do, Waymo is a cul-de-sac. Tesla have been well behind the please invest spin from Gerald, but when you look at the recent progress made its clear that development is now on rapid trajectory.
That is the problem - I don't think legislators and regulators are ready. Waymo fits adapted cars with bubble protrusions to drive around selected cities. Tesla takes stock cars to drive around those cities and in-between them. But who is liable when a fully automated car kills someone - as it will?
Cars being “driven” hands off, have already killed people.
Law is accreting around this issue.
The idea that this issue will stop self driving, is already disproven.
People kill and maim other people every day whilst allegedly in control of cars. Banning humans from driving is the only way.
On that grounds motorcyclists and cyclists have also killed people so you would have to ban them too
Yup, ban 'em all.
There is a sober, sensible debate to be had over this:
- QALY. Victims of road collisions tend to be younger, in employment, fitter than the general population. Your cycle commuter, for example, tends to be a high-earner in their 20s/30s, so the comparison to COVID lockdowns is a little lazy. - There is a significant economic cost associated with collisions, whether from the emergency services (£2 million per fatality), insurance costs (70% of your premium, or about £8 billion a year), lost earnings from those injured and so on.
OTOH, you have the economic cost of people and goods not being able to get around quite as fast. In total, that's a significant cost. Getting the optimal balance is tricky.
In urban areas, you can look at the "market speed limit" for private roads, such as in holiday parks, shipyards, military bases etc etc. On average they tend to be a lot slower, which suggests that current limits are higher than the optimal urban speed.
The point being overlooked about self-driving cars is not that they will to won't kill people, as all vehicles will. It's rather, I suspect, that people object to the possibility of being killed by a company conducting what amounts to an experiment.
More to do with the psychology (and possibly Musk's evidently blase attitude towards other folk's safety) than the actual odds.
The psychology on risk perception is well established. People are more scared of things they don't have control over. (We are more scare of flying than driving, although driving is more dangerous, because we are doing the driving and someone else is doing the flying.) People are more scared of novel things. A novel thing that we don't control, self-driving cars, will be more scary.
Is that true? About driving and flying and control? It might explain why car drivers are scared of flying but what about car passengers?
Car passengers are equally not in control (cf bus and train passengers) but most people's fear of taxis is the fare or having to listen to the driver, not crashing into the ocean.
Are they used to a passive role so are unafraid of flying? Ex-Arsenal footballer Dennis Bergkamp was famously afraid to fly but was content to be driven in car or coach to distant away games.
Are car drivers more afraid of flying than rail commuters, or is it about the same?
There's a final year project for a psychology undergraduate.
I can't understand why energy prices keep going up with all this super green energy we have?
Because electricity prices are set on the margin and the margin is based on the price of gas when converted into electricity
Can someone explain why A: why this method of setting prices was chosen and B: why it isn't being ditched? It seems like total madness - I need to buy 10 pounds of potatoes. I buy nine pounds from Aldi @ 10p, but that's all they have. So I go to Waitrose and buy the final pound at £1. I don't then go back to Aldi and gift them an extra £8
Because if you need 10 pounds of potatoes, and Aldi only has 9, then, in a rational and transparent market, Aldi will raise the price of its potatoes to match that of Waitrose.
Edit: Basically it makes no economic sense for the cheaper suppliers to greatly undercut the expensive suppliers if demand is relatively rigid and the cheaper suppliers are unable to meet that demand. That, I think, is what is meant by price being set at the margin. (But I'm not an economist.)
But surely this means that the green suppliers are going to run bitcoin miners or similar to make sure we always use at least one joule of gas?
That's not necessarily a bad thing if it means the UK becomes a power generating and power consuming powerhouse. Our economy might rocket.
Scotland has 16GW of renewables, already exports energy, and has additional 57GW under construction or in planning. The big question is wtf are we going to do with it all.
No issue with any of that - seems great on a national scale. But on the retail scale I'm still paying the gas price for my lighting. Surely there is an electoral offer that could be made to be made to change this system that would be attractive? Why is no-one offering it?
I'd guess that the market price of energy will be much lower as a result anyway, even after taking into account the additional demand more generation will induce.
But write to your MP. I think nodal/regional pricing and smart tariffs that track the hourly spot price of electricity are the way in which households could benefit in the medium-term.
BIB: What mechanism yields a lower price if it always in the interest of generators to consume enough to need gas generation, triggering the price based on wholesale gas? Demand has an inelastic floor, not ceiling.
The point that energy demand has an elastic ceiling is an important one. It's why, despite RCS1000's assertions, renewables will struggle to bring the price of electricty down sufficiently to make fossil fuels uncompetitive. If we don't impose taxes on fossil fuels commensurate with their negative externalities, then we will keep using them and ultimately fry the planet.
Talking of German words I hereby propose that a unit of energy which is 100 times more expensive than it should be due to political ineptitude is hereafter known as a “Merkel”
“You’ll need 380 Merkels of gas an hour to run that factory so I’m afraid you’re bankrupt”
In even more extreme situations - where the unit of energy costs 1000 times as much for similar reasons - that unit will be known as a “Miliband”
The Miliband is problematic. What's 10^3 milibands? A band or a kilomiliband? What's 10^-3 milibands? A microband or a milimiliband?
It would be a millimiliband, I think (double-L, then single-)?
There's already precedent within the SI system for this though, with the gram. As that is (or would be) a stupidly small base unit, other units designed around the kilogram. So while excessive cost could be measured by (mostly subdivisions of) the Band, that's far too large for most purposes (standard cost is one μB, based on the above definition), so the standard unit would be the milliBand.
In fact, there should be an oddly satisfying German compound noun for the “oddly satisfying sensation of creating a German compound noun for the oddly satisfying sensation of creating new German compound nouns for particular things that hitherto lacked these one word descriptors”
And it is
Deutschkompositumschöpfungsglücksschöpfungsglück
Which just goes to show how cleverly economical German is; there should be a German compound noun for the sensation of discovering this
I suggest Dilettantismusdummheit
You realise that English also has compound nouns? You just don't usually write them as one word.
For example: attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Starmer statement... "We are freezing defence spending, but the CoE has assured me that her plans will nonetheless mean that defence spending reaches 5% of GDP within 12 months."?
Keir Starmer is planning drastic cuts to Britain’s international aid budget to help pay for a boost to defence spending, the Guardian has been told, as European nations attempt to fill the gap left by Donald Trump on Ukraine.
The prime minister is expected to confirm the UK government’s timeline to increase defence spending to at least 2.5% of GDP by 2030 as he prepares for what will inevitably be a diplomatically fraught visit to Washington DC.
However, he will come under continued pressure to rapidly lift defence spending even further, after he pledged that the UK would “play its full part” in deploying troops to Ukraine for a peacekeeping force in the event of a durable deal after Russia’s invasion.
Defence sources have said that an increase to 2.5%, from 2.3% now, would still be far short of what is required to rebuild and transform the armed forces, stressing that an ultimate hike to at least 3% of national income would be necessary.
Sources told the Guardian that Starmer had chosen to reduce the aid budget, perhaps by as much as half, in order to help boost military capability after the new US administration said it was withdrawing its own support from Ukraine.
They've changed the headline now, but it originally said that thousands of children in England were "falsely accused" of witchcraft, as if the real culprits are getting away with it.
Keir Starmer is planning drastic cuts to Britain’s international aid budget to help pay for a boost to defence spending, the Guardian has been told, as European nations attempt to fill the gap left by Donald Trump on Ukraine.
The prime minister is expected to confirm the UK government’s timeline to increase defence spending to at least 2.5% of GDP by 2030 as he prepares for what will inevitably be a diplomatically fraught visit to Washington DC.
However, he will come under continued pressure to rapidly lift defence spending even further, after he pledged that the UK would “play its full part” in deploying troops to Ukraine for a peacekeeping force in the event of a durable deal after Russia’s invasion.
Defence sources have said that an increase to 2.5%, from 2.3% now, would still be far short of what is required to rebuild and transform the armed forces, stressing that an ultimate hike to at least 3% of national income would be necessary.
Sources told the Guardian that Starmer had chosen to reduce the aid budget, perhaps by as much as half, in order to help boost military capability after the new US administration said it was withdrawing its own support from Ukraine.
I likewise believe that the entirety of this thread from beginning to end constitutes the single most boring passage of commentary that has ever existed on PB, with every single commenter managing to say something even more inert, unfunny, lacklustre, middlebrow and soul-sappingly listless than the prior commenter
It reminds me of when my late father took me to see Redruth v Camborne at rugby, when I was about 9, and he promised me that I was about to witness a famous club rivalry with fiery passions on all sides
The game was conducted entirely in light Cornish mizzle and barely anything was visible, and after 80 bone-aching minutes of muddy tedium it ended 3-3. One penalty each. And I was left marvelling that people actually paid to watch something so utterly tedious and drear that it was mentally distressing
That is the PB of the midwit centrist dads
I like a boring interlude on PB. I find it reassuring. You do too, on occasion. Perhaps you're just tetchy because you're trying to put off writing your article about China.
I suspect ordinarily and without an article hanging over you you'd rejoice in 80 minutes of muddy tedium in the Cornish mizzle too.
Finished the article and filed yesterday. Indeed I’m in a good mood - see my compound German noun on the pleasure of having finished a dental appointment for teeth cleaning
But this is a quite exceptionally dull, lifeless, centrist dad PB thread, even by PB’s dire recent standards
Like Uber, the Tesla bet is that they will have a nationwide network of driverless cars available soon.
Although Uber seem to have wisely decided this isn’t going to happen any time soon.
Elon on the other hand, has been promising full self driving since 2012, every year.
Never going to happen.
Around here even most humans aren't safe to drive a car and navigate the potholes, stray animals, fallen trees, overgrown hedges, flooded roads, random roadworks, tractors, cyclists, walkers, random objects literally fallen off the back of a lorry, etc., etc.
The other end of it is that Waymo is rolling out its service. They took the approach of limiting the problem to solve.
They seem to have self driving working, for what they are asking it to do.
I'm bemused by the whole concept of automated driving - do we need it. If we do, Waymo is a cul-de-sac. Tesla have been well behind the please invest spin from Gerald, but when you look at the recent progress made its clear that development is now on rapid trajectory.
That is the problem - I don't think legislators and regulators are ready. Waymo fits adapted cars with bubble protrusions to drive around selected cities. Tesla takes stock cars to drive around those cities and in-between them. But who is liable when a fully automated car kills someone - as it will?
Cars being “driven” hands off, have already killed people.
Law is accreting around this issue.
The idea that this issue will stop self driving, is already disproven.
People kill and maim other people every day whilst allegedly in control of cars. Banning humans from driving is the only way.
On that grounds motorcyclists and cyclists have also killed people so you would have to ban them too
Yup, ban 'em all.
There is a sober, sensible debate to be had over this:
- QALY. Victims of road collisions tend to be younger, in employment, fitter than the general population. Your cycle commuter, for example, tends to be a high-earner in their 20s/30s, so the comparison to COVID lockdowns is a little lazy. - There is a significant economic cost associated with collisions, whether from the emergency services (£2 million per fatality), insurance costs (70% of your premium, or about £8 billion a year), lost earnings from those injured and so on.
OTOH, you have the economic cost of people and goods not being able to get around quite as fast. In total, that's a significant cost. Getting the optimal balance is tricky.
In urban areas, you can look at the "market speed limit" for private roads, such as in holiday parks, shipyards, military bases etc etc. On average they tend to be a lot slower, which suggests that current limits are higher than the optimal urban speed.
The point being overlooked about self-driving cars is not that they will to won't kill people, as all vehicles will. It's rather, I suspect, that people object to the possibility of being killed by a company conducting what amounts to an experiment.
More to do with the psychology (and possibly Musk's evidently blase attitude towards other folk's safety) than the actual odds.
The psychology on risk perception is well established. People are more scared of things they don't have control over. (We are more scare of flying than driving, although driving is more dangerous, because we are doing the driving and someone else is doing the flying.) People are more scared of novel things. A novel thing that we don't control, self-driving cars, will be more scary.
Is that true? About driving and flying and control? It might explain why car drivers are scared of flying but what about car passengers?
Car passengers are equally not in control (cf bus and train passengers) but most people's fear of taxis is the fare or having to listen to the driver, not crashing into the ocean.
Are they used to a passive role so are unafraid of flying? Ex-Arsenal footballer Dennis Bergkamp was famously afraid to fly but was content to be driven in car or coach to distant away games.
Are car drivers more afraid of flying than rail commuters, or is it about the same?
There's a final year project for a psychology undergraduate.
The lethal nature of most air crashes - the finality - is surely what makes flying more frightening. We are more scared of things that, if they happen, will almost certainly kill us, than of events where the outcomes are on a spectrum from cuts and bruises to death.
Think of the other phenomena that really scare many ordinary people:
- Cancer: despite advances in treatment it has the reputation of being fatal, and it is eventually almost 100% fatal if untreated. - Falling off a high building or cliff. If it happens, you’re dead - A ship sinking out of sight of land. We’ve all seen Titanic - Being attacked by a tiger or a polar bear. Likely to end up with death - Nuclear war
Then the many phenomena that can be fatal but often aren’t:
- car and bike accidents - Train or bus crashes - Heart disease - falling on to the railway track - Falling into a river - Smoking - Conventional war
None of which are as scary to the man on the well-driven Clapham omnibus as the absolute risks of the first list.
We’ve had price control for energy for a while. How about rent control until the market cools down ?
The housing market is a function of supply and demand. Supply has been artificially restricted for years (decades), while demand has soared. It will not 'cool down' until that disequilibrium is addressed.
Blimey. His whole premiership just became about this and only this.
When Labour were elected I said that a potential second Trump Presidency was the biggest problem on the horizon, but even I didn't think Trump would be as dangerous and chaotic as he has been.
Sadly I think the government has been a bit dozy, and even now is underestimating the threat. That said I'm glad that they are setting concrete targets and heading in the right direction.
They've changed the headline now, but it originally said that thousands of children in England were "falsely accused" of witchcraft, as if the real culprits are getting away with it.
Also seems rather to be skirting over the issue of who - its clearly linked to African immigration. Its not kids watching Grotbags or Sabrina the Teenage Witch on YouTube and getting inspired...
Blimey. His whole premiership just became about this and only this.
When Labour were elected I said that a potential second Trump Presidency was the biggest problem on the horizon, but even I didn't think Trump would be as dangerous and chaotic as he has been.
Sadly I think the government has been a bit dozy, and even now is underestimating the threat. That said I'm glad that they are setting concrete targets and heading in the right direction.
I think that’s right. Good statement, and moving in the right direction. But there will need to be more.
Comments
And it is
“Deutschkompositumschöpfungsglück“
But any battery requirement needs to mandate the safest battery chemistry (currently LFP, which is also conveniently he cheapest).
And it is
Deutschkompositumschöpfungsglücksschöpfungsglück
Which just goes to show how cleverly economical German is; there should be a German compound noun for the sensation of discovering this
“You’ll need 380 Merkels of gas an hour to run that factory so I’m afraid you’re bankrupt”
In even more extreme situations - where the unit of energy costs 1000 times as much for similar reasons - that unit will be known as a “Miliband”
Can anyone elucidate?
Another puzzler is heat pumps. There's a valid debate about retro-fitting,* although the new high temp models, even at lower efficiency compared to the low temp ones, can make sense if gas prices stay high.* But for new builds, with up-to-regs insulation, it would be trivial to simply fit heat pumps and the required radiators (oversize if needed) or underfloor heating (that does cost more, but you don't waste floor space).
Apart from anything else, you could save a lot of money in not running gas into new estates. I don't know whether builders pay for that or the gas networks do it and recoup from charging gas suppliers for the extra new customers.
*we have a gas boiler in our 1920s semi, but all our works over the past few years - two extensions, some insulation and renewing radiators when redecorating - have been with the future in mind. We're already running the CH temp at 50C which has the benefit of being less hot to touch with small children around. The underfloor heating areas are mixed down to 40Cor 45C, I think.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/23/principles-first-enrique-tarrio-bomb-threat
Announcement of threat:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_p_kVEFEfVw
Their military is average but cheap and large. So they reduce headcount not capabilities. That can be restored quickly
The US budget is spent on technology which has a much longer lead time
Only time it’s an issue is when you finally get annoyed with following a lorry so overtake
It reminds me of when my late father took me to see Redruth v Camborne at rugby, when I was about 9, and he promised me that I was about to witness a famous club rivalry with fiery passions on all sides
The game was conducted entirely in light Cornish mizzle and barely anything was visible, and after 80 bone-aching minutes of muddy tedium it ended 3-3. One penalty each. And I was left marvelling that people actually paid to watch something so utterly tedious and drear that it was mentally distressing
That is the PB of the midwit centrist dads
I do not know the details of how that would work.
And, of course, fear sells. They'll be a point where any news article on taxi driver rapists viewed in a robocab-covered location will have a discreet Waymo ad next to it.
The current system is crazy and explains why our electricity prices are so high, and energy producers profits so high.
That's why there's a project to reform the market, and a lot of argument (not much of which is aired publicly) about how best to do it.
How many PBers, who are about 100x as politically informed as the average bod, are aware that the Review of Electricity Market Arrangements has been bumbling along since 2022 ?
(I wasn't, really.)
"Irritation face à l’incapacité de la langue française à utiliser des noms composés."
Mo,We,Th 8:00 am – 6:30 pm; Tu,Fr 7:00 am – 6:30 pm
They also have:
To request a routine appointment in the next 7 days:
the bulk of our appointments are bookable on the day
phone us on xxxxxx, Monday to Friday from 8.30am to 6.00pm
a small number of routine pre-bookable appointments are available using the methods as detailed above but can also be accessed on line using our on line system SystmOnline or via the NHS App.
and
In response to comments from working patients, we now offer a limited number of early morning pre-bookable appointments from 8.20am Tuesday to Fridays. The 8.20 and 8.30 are bookable a week in advance. These appointments can be booked either online or by phone.
In addition, as part of collaborative working with our other PCN practices, under an additional service called GP Extended Access we all provide appointments on two early mornings, one late evening and occasional Saturdays on rotation. Our early mornings are generally Tuesdays and Fridays from 7am and these appointments are available to pre-book one week in advance. Late evenings are 6.30 to 8pm and the occasional Saturdays are 9am to 5pm and are sometimes used for specific clinics such as Family Planning, Joint Injections or Flu vaccinations. The GP partners cover all the GP Extended Access sessions in turn.
Practice Nurse, First Contact Physio and Pharmacy appointments are also be available during this time, but with a longer booking period.
And there's quite a lot more as well, including:
Please tell us:
if there’s a specific doctor, nurse or other health professional you would prefer to respond
if you would prefer to consult with the doctor or nurse by phone, face-to-face, by video call or by text or email
if you need an interpreter
if you have any other access or communication needs
Exclusive: Departure follows meetings with Wes Streeting and unusual criticism from two Commons committees
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/feb/25/amanda-pritchard-quits-nhs-england-chief-executive
Different houses can have different energy usage by 2x or 3x just based on their insulation and form of heating.
Starmer to make surprise announcement on ‘defence and security’ in Commons, ahead of meeting with Trump
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2025/feb/25/yvette-cooper-labour-mike-amesbury-keir-starmer-conservatives-kemi-badenoch-uk-politics-live-news-updates
Of course, there is a moral argument - the invasion of a sovereign nation is unacceptable and morally reprehensible.
But viewed dispassionately, Russia does not represent a severe security threat to the UK. It could never invade, and even in terms of infiltration and radicalistion, India, Bangladesh, China, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey (I could be forgetting others) are all more pressing threats than Russia is. Actually with the Trump USAID cuts a lot of less than great information about American influence is coming out - USAID funding the BBC?? But that's another story.
It represents somewhat of a commercial threat (energy blackmail), but that threat has already been realised, and we're not doing anything about it. We seem determined to have a suicidal energy policy anyway.
At my doctor's you can only fill in the online form for an appointment between 8 and 10am, which seems to miss the point of doing things online, but I can see from the above why they do it.
I'd like there to be an appointment between 'urgent' and 'not urgent' though. It's normally eminently possible to get a sameday appointment if you describe it as 'urgent', but if you're in 'not urgent' territory it might be several weeks. But most things I need to see a doctor about fall into the category of 'liveable-with for a couple of days, but not weeks'.
On which subject, after six months of waiting on the list for a hernia clinic, I've decided to go private, and have been offered an appointment today. Again, the extremes of one-end-of-the-scale-of-the-other is frustrating. Either pay absolutely nothing and have it sorted in a couple of years, or pay and absolute shitload and get it addressed immediately. It would be nice if there was a middle ground.
One thing I really don't like with the ofgem calculations is when they change the "standard user". If everyone gets better insulated homes, well the fixed costs aren't going anywhere so the unit cost of power will head north but it can be presented as a fall because they're now assuming people only need 10,500 kwh of gas annually or whatever.
Once you've got LED lights and a A rated fridge freezer or whatever YOUR house won't change much but there's the insidious effect of the ever falling "average user" making the increases look less than they actually are.
Indeed you could add Newton to the list given his dodgy alchemical mysticism ...
The European Union offered its own agreement on "critical materials" to Ukraine on Monday, just as U.S. President Donald Trump claimed Washington was close to inking a deal with Kyiv for the rights to its vast natural resources.
Europe's Commissioner for Industrial Strategy Stéphane Séjourné said he'd pitched the rival proposal to Ukrainian officials he met in Kyiv during a visit by the European Commission to mark the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion.
"Twenty-one of the 30 critical materials Europe needs can be provided by Ukraine in a win-win partnership," Séjourné said, according to AFP.
I suspect ordinarily and without an article hanging over you you'd rejoice in 80 minutes of muddy tedium in the Cornish mizzle too.
If she says, "What do you think of Putin?" and they answer politely she knows they've had plenty of sleep.
If she says, "What do you think of Putin?" and they answer rudely she knows they've had very little sleep.
If she says, "What do you think of Putin?" and they answer, "The man's a genius", she knows they've always been asleep.
ETA: I didn't know the Henry, shame on me and my undergrad physics teachers! I thought maybe a unit of suction
There's already precedent within the SI system for this though, with the gram. As that is (or would be) a stupidly small base unit, other units designed around the kilogram. So while excessive cost could be measured by (mostly subdivisions of) the Band, that's far too large for most purposes (standard cost is one μB, based on the above definition), so the standard unit would be the milliBand.
Car passengers are equally not in control (cf bus and train passengers) but most people's fear of taxis is the fare or having to listen to the driver, not crashing into the ocean.
Are they used to a passive role so are unafraid of flying? Ex-Arsenal footballer Dennis Bergkamp was famously afraid to fly but was content to be driven in car or coach to distant away games.
Are car drivers more afraid of flying than rail commuters, or is it about the same?
There's a final year project for a psychology undergraduate.
You realise that English also has compound nouns? You just don't usually write them as one word.
For example: attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Keir Starmer is planning drastic cuts to Britain’s international aid budget to help pay for a boost to defence spending, the Guardian has been told, as European nations attempt to fill the gap left by Donald Trump on Ukraine.
The prime minister is expected to confirm the UK government’s timeline to increase defence spending to at least 2.5% of GDP by 2030 as he prepares for what will inevitably be a diplomatically fraught visit to Washington DC.
However, he will come under continued pressure to rapidly lift defence spending even further, after he pledged that the UK would “play its full part” in deploying troops to Ukraine for a peacekeeping force in the event of a durable deal after Russia’s invasion.
Defence sources have said that an increase to 2.5%, from 2.3% now, would still be far short of what is required to rebuild and transform the armed forces, stressing that an ultimate hike to at least 3% of national income would be necessary.
Sources told the Guardian that Starmer had chosen to reduce the aid budget, perhaps by as much as half, in order to help boost military capability after the new US administration said it was withdrawing its own support from Ukraine.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/feb/25/starmer-planning-big-cuts-to-aid-budget-to-boost-defence-spending-say-sources
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/feb/24/thousands-of-children-england-falsely-accused-witchcraft-kindoki-witch-boy
But this is a quite exceptionally dull, lifeless, centrist dad PB thread, even by PB’s dire recent standards
Think of the other phenomena that really scare many ordinary people:
- Cancer: despite advances in treatment it has the reputation of being fatal, and it is eventually almost 100% fatal if untreated.
- Falling off a high building or cliff. If it happens, you’re dead
- A ship sinking out of sight of land. We’ve all seen Titanic
- Being attacked by a tiger or a polar bear. Likely to end up with death
- Nuclear war
Then the many phenomena that can be fatal but often aren’t:
- car and bike accidents
- Train or bus crashes
- Heart disease
- falling on to the railway track
- Falling into a river
- Smoking
- Conventional war
None of which are as scary to the man on the well-driven Clapham omnibus as the absolute risks of the first list.
We're all lucky to have him as our leader.
Just build more effing homes.
Sadly I think the government has been a bit dozy, and even now is underestimating the threat. That said I'm glad that they are setting concrete targets and heading in the right direction.
And demonstrates just how dire are the public finances.