Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 52s See also Tom Shugart and Mike Dahm's excellent paper. They write that the barges, plus other developments, "suggests the PLA may have significantly advanced its timetable to have sufficient capabilities to conduct a large-scale cross-strait operation" digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cmsi-notes/14/
It was not that long ago that key immigration computer systems were also housed in buildings at Heathrow
There's an immigration computer system? You could have fooled me. Is it Windows 95?
It's a hall full of clerks, each one with an IBM tabulation machine. Each clerk performs one function and passes it to the next. The traditional job title for the clerks is "Computers"
Reminds me of Jack Lemon in the Apartment. A great film.
One of the all time greats. I rewatch it nearly ever New Year.
Apparently (my dad is telling me this), Richard Tice has claimed that Heathrow has ditched diesel back up generators in the name of net zero. A quick Google finds this from 2022:
Stand-by generators currently operate using diesel as they need an independent power source to maintain resilient operations. They are used predominantly as back-up power for airfield ground lighting. We are investigating renewable-based alternatives that can still meet the stringent performance criteria for such a safety critical airport asset.
That suggests that any back up generators wouldn't be for the whole airport, so perhaps Heathrow is vulnerable to a single point of failure.
That said, Heathrow having a net zero plan is quite funny.
At the budget the OBR forecast £127.5 billion of borrowing the 12-month financial year ending in March. In 11 months that has already reached £132.2 billion.
Stick another £10bn on that for final month of the year will result in £15bn blackhole.
Don't worry reducing the expected increase in sick benefits by £5bn in five years will sort things out.
I never normally came around to this view, but it’s quite clear Labour need to get serious on welfare. The 1 in 10 young people not in work stat was evidence enough. One shocker this week was some guy on LBC earning 7000k a month with his partner, and still claimed PIP of 400 quid a month each. We’ve created an expectation culture that is wildly out of control.
And bloomin Rachel Reeves is in a never ending doom loop entirely of her own making. She needs to go
This just isn't true. On all metrics, the UK has historically low levels of economic activity, incapacity benefits are flat as a proportion of GDP, and unemployment levels are very low.
The PIP thing is not a shocker at all - it's literally an unconditional benefit payment, with no regard to savings or other income. It's designed to be like that. I know this is the current political zeitgeist but even a cursory look at the stats exposes this as a bit of a political panic.
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 52s See also Tom Shugart and Mike Dahm's excellent paper. They write that the barges, plus other developments, "suggests the PLA may have significantly advanced its timetable to have sufficient capabilities to conduct a large-scale cross-strait operation" digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cmsi-notes/14/
rottenborough said: Guess the Heathrow fire will block out the dire news for Reeves on public borrowing.
I said: Absolutely horrendous. Over £10bn deficit in February alone and this unsustainable pumping in of excess demand is doing no more than keeping the economy flat lining with no growth in sight.
We are in a terrible mess. Debt has risen by £1trn over the last 5 years and for what? What do we actually get a return on from that unimaginably large sum of money? Many people who could afford it got help with their heating bills. Millions who could have worked got paid not to. Nothing of substance, no infrastructure, nothing that is going to generate future wealth. Bugger.
This really is the big problem. I don't think people care about borrowing figures, but things seem pretty crappy even with them.
You cannot really directly equate national finances with individual but we all know that if soneone is spending money they dont have just to keep their head above water its a very bad sign, so the temptation to equate is atrong.
And there's no easy or quick answer. Vague 'reform' is the new magic money tree, and cutting has consequences as the amount of dead wood is smaller than many think. And we aint getting growth any time soon.
And people think/ are getting worked up by cutting welfare by 5 billion is going to make much of a difference..🧐
At the budget the OBR forecast £127.5 billion of borrowing the 12-month financial year ending in March. In 11 months that has already reached £132.2 billion.
Stick another £10bn on that for final month of the year will result in £15bn blackhole.
Don't worry reducing the expected increase in sick benefits by £5bn in five years will sort things out.
I never normally came around to this view, but it’s quite clear Labour need to get serious on welfare. The 1 in 10 young people not in work stat was evidence enough. One shocker this week was some guy on LBC earning 7000k a month with his partner, and still claimed PIP of 400 quid a month each. We’ve created an expectation culture that is wildly out of control.
And bloomin Rachel Reeves is in a never ending doom loop entirely of her own making. She needs to go
The problem is that benefits proliferate, and the benefit cap doesn't generally apply to disabled people. So you can have a couple on UC caring for disabled children, can get PIP themselves, add in Carers allowance carers addition and an LCWRA, plus child benefit and it can run to thousands and that's before you add in the rent and council tax that's paid for.
We have found a lot of ESA claimants being transferred to UC don't qualify for UC because they have not been spending their benefits and have savings over £16,000.
And yes PIP is not means tested. At all. A colleague tells of neighbours who are perfectly able to afford to run 2 cars but still get a new one off Motability every 3 years. You could get someone earning a 6 figure salary, able to work from home, but if he was a wheelchair user would get full mobility PIP and a new car off Motability
Apparently (my dad is telling me this), Richard Tice has claimed that Heathrow has ditched diesel back up generators in the name of net zero. A quick Google finds this from 2022:
Stand-by generators currently operate using diesel as they need an independent power source to maintain resilient operations. They are used predominantly as back-up power for airfield ground lighting. We are investigating renewable-based alternatives that can still meet the stringent performance criteria for such a safety critical airport asset.
That suggests that any back up generators wouldn't be for the whole airport, so perhaps Heathrow is vulnerable to a single point of failure.
That said, Heathrow having a net zero plan is quite funny.
Backup generators are unlikely to be for the entire airport, just for critical functions such as ATC and emergency services. I doubt it would provide power to (say) the baggage conveyors or check-in. Might be wrong, though.
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 52s See also Tom Shugart and Mike Dahm's excellent paper. They write that the barges, plus other developments, "suggests the PLA may have significantly advanced its timetable to have sufficient capabilities to conduct a large-scale cross-strait operation" digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cmsi-notes/14/
The cost of Heathrow disruption stacks up very quickly (from previous experience working alongside NATS, when someone dug up the wrong optical fibre).
A day lost will cost someone hundreds of millions - insurance company, power company, the airport or whoever.
International Airlines are down ~3.5% .
For me, a key question is why the entirety of Heathrow depends so strongly on one electricity substation. Why is there not an alternative supply?
This makes me think there's something else that's gone bang or got damaged, as substations do require to be taken offline (though rarely) for maintenance, and they obviously use an alternative supply when that happens.
(Background: 16,000 homes also lost power)
Comment from Miliband (dodgy lighting):
The Plan B instant (my surmise) backup was also taken out.
Attempting to switch over to Plan C - which I suggest may involve some reconfiguration.
Do Reform have a plan re. the deficit/national debt? Genuine question.
Their manifesto had a black hole in it big enough to roughly double the deficit. There's a concise examination of it on the IFS website, if you have a look.
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 52s See also Tom Shugart and Mike Dahm's excellent paper. They write that the barges, plus other developments, "suggests the PLA may have significantly advanced its timetable to have sufficient capabilities to conduct a large-scale cross-strait operation" digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cmsi-notes/14/
As I've said previously, the Chinese government have invested in a lot of shiny 'tools' (i.e. weapons) that many in their senior military will be lusting to use before they get outdated.
If Xi regains Taiwan, he will see his place in history as being assured. And when could be a better time than now?
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 52s See also Tom Shugart and Mike Dahm's excellent paper. They write that the barges, plus other developments, "suggests the PLA may have significantly advanced its timetable to have sufficient capabilities to conduct a large-scale cross-strait operation" digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cmsi-notes/14/
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 52s See also Tom Shugart and Mike Dahm's excellent paper. They write that the barges, plus other developments, "suggests the PLA may have significantly advanced its timetable to have sufficient capabilities to conduct a large-scale cross-strait operation" digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cmsi-notes/14/
As I've said previously, the Chinese government have invested in a lot of shiny 'tools' (i.e. weapons) that many in their senior military will be lusting to use before they get outdated.
If Xi regains Taiwan, he will see his place in history as being assured. And when could be a better time than now?
I said something similar fairly recently (after Trump's recent election victory).
I see PB’s love for Ed Miliband continues unabated. It’s curious - you could argue were it not for Ed Miliband there’d have been no EU referendum and no Brexit. The fervent Brexiteers should be prostrating themselves before effigies of the EdStone in rapturous delight.
The borrowing figures have also produced the monthly lamentations from the usual suspects with the habitual lengthy moaning about the state of the public finances and society in general.
Said lamentations are long on moaning and short on practical solutions. We all know why we are here and what could and should have been done by the last Government to recoup Sunak’s largesse but that water is under the bridge and halfway across the ocean now.
As New Zealand shows, making cuts to welfare spending may please the Daily Mail demographic but it doesn’t achieve anything. Even, it seems, Trump Republicans want some serious soaking of the rich but it seems we can’t and won’t do that because we don’t want the rich fleeing the country (not that they could easily today).
There are two priorities - stimulating growth and getting the public finances back under control. The latter is easy - I’ve yet to see anyone offer a meaningful approach to the former.
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 52s See also Tom Shugart and Mike Dahm's excellent paper. They write that the barges, plus other developments, "suggests the PLA may have significantly advanced its timetable to have sufficient capabilities to conduct a large-scale cross-strait operation" digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cmsi-notes/14/
The "soft left" tops the ratings then. I think I'd have predicted that. Am I soft left? I suppose I am. I'm certainly left and most days I am rather soft. Fwiw my favourite cabinet member is Yvette Cooper.
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 52s See also Tom Shugart and Mike Dahm's excellent paper. They write that the barges, plus other developments, "suggests the PLA may have significantly advanced its timetable to have sufficient capabilities to conduct a large-scale cross-strait operation" digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cmsi-notes/14/
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 52s See also Tom Shugart and Mike Dahm's excellent paper. They write that the barges, plus other developments, "suggests the PLA may have significantly advanced its timetable to have sufficient capabilities to conduct a large-scale cross-strait operation" digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cmsi-notes/14/
On topic anyone who thinks Ed Miliband is the answer is asking some bloody stupid questions.
When you're up against the Minister for Cutting Benefits, the Minister for Rising Taxes and the Minister for Long Waiting Lists, being popular as Minister for Green Energy isn't such a big achievement.
How long does +ve news take to feed through?
Waiting list numbers for Jan 2025 came out last week and were down by another notch over December - that is 30k, which is something but Not a Lot.
IMO it's still Strategy OK, Tactics Hmmm, Communications Missing.
True, but then a) the minister for NHS is almost never popular, per se, and b) many Labour members - who are the people polled here - don't like Streeting for his Blairite past (and present!)
Wes goes out of his way to wind up members who are even vaguely left of centre. I can't imagine him winning a leadership election.
Any assessment of Ed Milliband should surely take into account the government's own internal assessment of the impact of his plans on the economy and on the poorest in our society. That was rather less pie eyed than the views of Labour List members.
On topic anyone who thinks Ed Miliband is the answer is asking some bloody stupid questions.
When you're up against the Minister for Cutting Benefits, the Minister for Rising Taxes and the Minister for Long Waiting Lists, being popular as Minister for Green Energy isn't such a big achievement.
How long does +ve news take to feed through?
Waiting list numbers for Jan 2025 came out last week and were down by another notch over December - that is 30k, which is something but Not a Lot.
IMO it's still Strategy OK, Tactics Hmmm, Communications Missing.
True, but then a) the minister for NHS is almost never popular, per se, and b) many Labour members - who are the people polled here - don't like Streeting for his Blairite past (and present!)
Wes goes out of his way to wind up members who are even vaguely left of centre. I can't imagine him winning a leadership election.
You're of the left. Are you not even slightly concerned at the way this government is targeting the disabled?
Apparently (my dad is telling me this), Richard Tice has claimed that Heathrow has ditched diesel back up generators in the name of net zero. A quick Google finds this from 2022:
Stand-by generators currently operate using diesel as they need an independent power source to maintain resilient operations. They are used predominantly as back-up power for airfield ground lighting. We are investigating renewable-based alternatives that can still meet the stringent performance criteria for such a safety critical airport asset.
That suggests that any back up generators wouldn't be for the whole airport, so perhaps Heathrow is vulnerable to a single point of failure.
That said, Heathrow having a net zero plan is quite funny.
I went to see Kyoto (the play) the other day. About the negotiating of the Kyoto Agreement. Some great performances and the play illustrates the delay and obfuscating tactics of those opposed to any limit on, or reduction of carbon emissions. There is a great passage about the hypocrisy of the carbon trading scam.
During the interval, there were two young people, a boy and a girl, sitting next to me and they were chattering about this and that. In particular, the boy was telling the girl about his impressive travel plans. He was going to go on a tour of the US and South America, fly here, then there, then come back via somewhere else, and this compared to his equally impressive travels this year (Iceland, then Amsterdam).
I turned to them and asked them, as representative of "youngsters" (we all laughed - they were young lawyers), what they thought about the play's subject matter and they both voiced enthusiastic approval.
I then said I couldn't help but overhear them talking about flying all over the world, to which the male responded "well obviously I'm a vegan on account of the planet, and..." and then blathered on, quite embarrassed.
I assured them that they didn't need to explain themselves to me and we settled down to watch the second half of the play.
But that is the reality of life and net zero and whatnot. People don't want to reduce their own activities while encouraging others to cut back theirs.
Apparently (my dad is telling me this), Richard Tice has claimed that Heathrow has ditched diesel back up generators in the name of net zero. A quick Google finds this from 2022:
Stand-by generators currently operate using diesel as they need an independent power source to maintain resilient operations. They are used predominantly as back-up power for airfield ground lighting. We are investigating renewable-based alternatives that can still meet the stringent performance criteria for such a safety critical airport asset.
That suggests that any back up generators wouldn't be for the whole airport, so perhaps Heathrow is vulnerable to a single point of failure.
That said, Heathrow having a net zero plan is quite funny.
I went to see Kyoto (the play) the other day. About the negotiating of the Kyoto Agreement. Some great performances and the play illustrates the delay and obfuscating tactics of those opposed to any limit on, or reduction of carbon emissions. There is a great passage about the hypocrisy of the carbon trading scam.
During the interval, there were two young people, a boy and a girl, sitting next to me and they were chattering about this and that. In particular, the boy was telling the girl about his impressive travel plans. He was going to go on a tour of the US and South America, fly here, then there, then come back via somewhere else, and this compared to his equally impressive travels this year (Iceland, then Amsterdam).
I turned to them and asked them, as representative of "youngsters" (we all laughed - they were young lawyers), what they thought about the play's subject matter and they both voiced enthusiastic approval.
I then said I couldn't help but overhear them talking about flying all over the world, to which the male responded "well obviously I'm a vegan on account of the planet, and..." and then blathered on, quite embarrassed.
I assured them that they didn't need to explain themselves to me and we settled down to watch the second half of the play.
But that is the reality of life and net zero and whatnot. People don't want to reduce their own activities while encouraging others to cut back theirs.
I'm quite tight when it comes to money. I think that helps the environment much more than if I was vegan or gave £10 weekly to Greenpeace, as I often don't buy the same sort of unnecessary tat other people do. Like a new iPhone each year...
It also means we have much more than £1k in savings.
The cost of Heathrow disruption stacks up very quickly (from previous experience working alongside NATS, when someone dug up the wrong optical fibre).
A day lost will cost someone hundreds of millions - insurance company, power company, the airport or whoever.
International Airlines are down ~3.5% .
For me, a key question is why the entirety of Heathrow depends so strongly on one electricity substation. Why is there not an alternative supply?
This makes me think there's something else that's gone bang or got damaged, as substations do require to be taken offline (though rarely) for maintenance, and they obviously use an alternative supply when that happens.
Supposedly back-up was diesel generators , scrapped due to NET Zero malarkey
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 52s See also Tom Shugart and Mike Dahm's excellent paper. They write that the barges, plus other developments, "suggests the PLA may have significantly advanced its timetable to have sufficient capabilities to conduct a large-scale cross-strait operation" digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cmsi-notes/14/
Those things look as though they'd be a pretty easy target for Taiwan's defence forces if they came anywhere near to Taiwan's coast.
They probably are not a first tranche force, in the way our Mulberry Harbours were. I'd expect them to get used weeks, rather than days, after an invasion. Perhaps even after localised victory, as they will expect Taiwan to destroy their ports if they lose.
Also, I wonder about the number of these things. The two Mulberry Harbous were massive, and a couple of ships really do not replicate their capabilities - even with the larger ship sizes nowadays. But they may have more than a couple.
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 52s See also Tom Shugart and Mike Dahm's excellent paper. They write that the barges, plus other developments, "suggests the PLA may have significantly advanced its timetable to have sufficient capabilities to conduct a large-scale cross-strait operation" digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cmsi-notes/14/
Apparently (my dad is telling me this), Richard Tice has claimed that Heathrow has ditched diesel back up generators in the name of net zero. A quick Google finds this from 2022:
Stand-by generators currently operate using diesel as they need an independent power source to maintain resilient operations. They are used predominantly as back-up power for airfield ground lighting. We are investigating renewable-based alternatives that can still meet the stringent performance criteria for such a safety critical airport asset.
That suggests that any back up generators wouldn't be for the whole airport, so perhaps Heathrow is vulnerable to a single point of failure.
That said, Heathrow having a net zero plan is quite funny.
I went to see Kyoto (the play) the other day. About the negotiating of the Kyoto Agreement. Some great performances and the play illustrates the delay and obfuscating tactics of those opposed to any limit on, or reduction of carbon emissions. There is a great passage about the hypocrisy of the carbon trading scam.
During the interval, there were two young people, a boy and a girl, sitting next to me and they were chattering about this and that. In particular, the boy was telling the girl about his impressive travel plans. He was going to go on a tour of the US and South America, fly here, then there, then come back via somewhere else, and this compared to his equally impressive travels this year (Iceland, then Amsterdam).
I turned to them and asked them, as representative of "youngsters" (we all laughed - they were young lawyers), what they thought about the play's subject matter and they both voiced enthusiastic approval.
I then said I couldn't help but overhear them talking about flying all over the world, to which the male responded "well obviously I'm a vegan on account of the planet, and..." and then blathered on, quite embarrassed.
I assured them that they didn't need to explain themselves to me and we settled down to watch the second half of the play.
But that is the reality of life and net zero and whatnot. People don't want to reduce their own activities while encouraging others to cut back theirs.
I'm quite tight when it comes to money. I think that helps the environment much more than if I was vegan or gave £10 weekly to Greenpeace, as I often don't buy the same sort of unnecessary tat other people do. Like a new iPhone each year...
It also means we have much more than £1k in savings.
I have an iPhone 7. Best thing about it is that when I'm at a football ground with rubbish wifi (cough, Arsenal, cough), I can switch over to 3G and it works fine. Alas, 3G is going to be switched off soon. Similarly, some apps won't work with the 7's operating system.
Apparently (my dad is telling me this), Richard Tice has claimed that Heathrow has ditched diesel back up generators in the name of net zero. A quick Google finds this from 2022:
Stand-by generators currently operate using diesel as they need an independent power source to maintain resilient operations. They are used predominantly as back-up power for airfield ground lighting. We are investigating renewable-based alternatives that can still meet the stringent performance criteria for such a safety critical airport asset.
That suggests that any back up generators wouldn't be for the whole airport, so perhaps Heathrow is vulnerable to a single point of failure.
That said, Heathrow having a net zero plan is quite funny.
I went to see Kyoto (the play) the other day. About the negotiating of the Kyoto Agreement. Some great performances and the play illustrates the delay and obfuscating tactics of those opposed to any limit on, or reduction of carbon emissions. There is a great passage about the hypocrisy of the carbon trading scam.
During the interval, there were two young people, a boy and a girl, sitting next to me and they were chattering about this and that. In particular, the boy was telling the girl about his impressive travel plans. He was going to go on a tour of the US and South America, fly here, then there, then come back via somewhere else, and this compared to his equally impressive travels this year (Iceland, then Amsterdam).
I turned to them and asked them, as representative of "youngsters" (we all laughed - they were young lawyers), what they thought about the play's subject matter and they both voiced enthusiastic approval.
I then said I couldn't help but overhear them talking about flying all over the world, to which the male responded "well obviously I'm a vegan on account of the planet, and..." and then blathered on, quite embarrassed.
I assured them that they didn't need to explain themselves to me and we settled down to watch the second half of the play.
But that is the reality of life and net zero and whatnot. People don't want to reduce their own activities while encouraging others to cut back theirs.
He said he was vegan for that reason, so he was willing to reduce some of his own activities.
At the budget the OBR forecast £127.5 billion of borrowing the 12-month financial year ending in March. In 11 months that has already reached £132.2 billion.
Stick another £10bn on that for final month of the year will result in £15bn blackhole.
Don't worry reducing the expected increase in sick benefits by £5bn in five years will sort things out.
I never normally came around to this view, but it’s quite clear Labour need to get serious on welfare. The 1 in 10 young people not in work stat was evidence enough. One shocker this week was some guy on LBC earning 7000k a month with his partner, and still claimed PIP of 400 quid a month each. We’ve created an expectation culture that is wildly out of control.
And bloomin Rachel Reeves is in a never ending doom loop entirely of her own making. She needs to go
The problem is that benefits proliferate, and the benefit cap doesn't generally apply to disabled people. So you can have a couple on UC caring for disabled children, can get PIP themselves, add in Carers allowance carers addition and an LCWRA, plus child benefit and it can run to thousands and that's before you add in the rent and council tax that's paid for.
We have found a lot of ESA claimants being transferred to UC don't qualify for UC because they have not been spending their benefits and have savings over £16,000.
And yes PIP is not means tested. At all. A colleague tells of neighbours who are perfectly able to afford to run 2 cars but still get a new one off Motability every 3 years. You could get someone earning a 6 figure salary, able to work from home, but if he was a wheelchair user would get full mobility PIP and a new car off Motability
I don't suppose Motability at least favours British-made cars?
Apparently (my dad is telling me this), Richard Tice has claimed that Heathrow has ditched diesel back up generators in the name of net zero. A quick Google finds this from 2022:
Stand-by generators currently operate using diesel as they need an independent power source to maintain resilient operations. They are used predominantly as back-up power for airfield ground lighting. We are investigating renewable-based alternatives that can still meet the stringent performance criteria for such a safety critical airport asset.
That suggests that any back up generators wouldn't be for the whole airport, so perhaps Heathrow is vulnerable to a single point of failure.
That said, Heathrow having a net zero plan is quite funny.
I went to see Kyoto (the play) the other day. About the negotiating of the Kyoto Agreement. Some great performances and the play illustrates the delay and obfuscating tactics of those opposed to any limit on, or reduction of carbon emissions. There is a great passage about the hypocrisy of the carbon trading scam.
During the interval, there were two young people, a boy and a girl, sitting next to me and they were chattering about this and that. In particular, the boy was telling the girl about his impressive travel plans. He was going to go on a tour of the US and South America, fly here, then there, then come back via somewhere else, and this compared to his equally impressive travels this year (Iceland, then Amsterdam).
I turned to them and asked them, as representative of "youngsters" (we all laughed - they were young lawyers), what they thought about the play's subject matter and they both voiced enthusiastic approval.
I then said I couldn't help but overhear them talking about flying all over the world, to which the male responded "well obviously I'm a vegan on account of the planet, and..." and then blathered on, quite embarrassed.
I assured them that they didn't need to explain themselves to me and we settled down to watch the second half of the play.
But that is the reality of life and net zero and whatnot. People don't want to reduce their own activities while encouraging others to cut back theirs.
I'm quite tight when it comes to money. I think that helps the environment much more than if I was vegan or gave £10 weekly to Greenpeace, as I often don't buy the same sort of unnecessary tat other people do. Like a new iPhone each year...
It also means we have much more than £1k in savings.
an absolute decimation of energy prices is an available option. and I think Miliband has it in his sights.
yes that will be why they keep escalating and most of bills now are for Ed's crazy plan
I live in a conservation area. I gather we're not allowed to have solar panels. At least it give me something to tell the solar energy marketeers who ring daily.
The cost of Heathrow disruption stacks up very quickly (from previous experience working alongside NATS, when someone dug up the wrong optical fibre).
A day lost will cost someone hundreds of millions - insurance company, power company, the airport or whoever.
International Airlines are down ~3.5% .
For me, a key question is why the entirety of Heathrow depends so strongly on one electricity substation. Why is there not an alternative supply?
This makes me think there's something else that's gone bang or got damaged, as substations do require to be taken offline (though rarely) for maintenance, and they obviously use an alternative supply when that happens.
Supposedly back-up was diesel generators , scrapped due to NET Zero malarkey
That claim is from a dodgy source and I've not seen it substantiated.
Apparently (my dad is telling me this), Richard Tice has claimed that Heathrow has ditched diesel back up generators in the name of net zero. A quick Google finds this from 2022:
Stand-by generators currently operate using diesel as they need an independent power source to maintain resilient operations. They are used predominantly as back-up power for airfield ground lighting. We are investigating renewable-based alternatives that can still meet the stringent performance criteria for such a safety critical airport asset.
That suggests that any back up generators wouldn't be for the whole airport, so perhaps Heathrow is vulnerable to a single point of failure.
That said, Heathrow having a net zero plan is quite funny.
I went to see Kyoto (the play) the other day. About the negotiating of the Kyoto Agreement. Some great performances and the play illustrates the delay and obfuscating tactics of those opposed to any limit on, or reduction of carbon emissions. There is a great passage about the hypocrisy of the carbon trading scam.
During the interval, there were two young people, a boy and a girl, sitting next to me and they were chattering about this and that. In particular, the boy was telling the girl about his impressive travel plans. He was going to go on a tour of the US and South America, fly here, then there, then come back via somewhere else, and this compared to his equally impressive travels this year (Iceland, then Amsterdam).
I turned to them and asked them, as representative of "youngsters" (we all laughed - they were young lawyers), what they thought about the play's subject matter and they both voiced enthusiastic approval.
I then said I couldn't help but overhear them talking about flying all over the world, to which the male responded "well obviously I'm a vegan on account of the planet, and..." and then blathered on, quite embarrassed.
I assured them that they didn't need to explain themselves to me and we settled down to watch the second half of the play.
But that is the reality of life and net zero and whatnot. People don't want to reduce their own activities while encouraging others to cut back theirs.
typical of these woke fcukwitted planet savers who are normally the biggest arseholes destroying it.
an absolute decimation of energy prices is an available option. and I think Miliband has it in his sights.
yes that will be why they keep escalating and most of bills now are for Ed's crazy plan
The transition to renewables is adding about 3% to your energy bill. CfD renewables saved us all cash during the Ukraine invasion. Miliband's plan for Net Zero is almost indistinguishable from that under the Conservatives, and in line with the trend since 2005.
(Scotland is now has significant electricity exports due to renewables - which is a good thing, right?)
At the budget the OBR forecast £127.5 billion of borrowing the 12-month financial year ending in March. In 11 months that has already reached £132.2 billion.
Stick another £10bn on that for final month of the year will result in £15bn blackhole.
Don't worry reducing the expected increase in sick benefits by £5bn in five years will sort things out.
I never normally came around to this view, but it’s quite clear Labour need to get serious on welfare. The 1 in 10 young people not in work stat was evidence enough. One shocker this week was some guy on LBC earning 7000k a month with his partner, and still claimed PIP of 400 quid a month each. We’ve created an expectation culture that is wildly out of control.
And bloomin Rachel Reeves is in a never ending doom loop entirely of her own making. She needs to go
The problem is that benefits proliferate, and the benefit cap doesn't generally apply to disabled people. So you can have a couple on UC caring for disabled children, can get PIP themselves, add in Carers allowance carers addition and an LCWRA, plus child benefit and it can run to thousands and that's before you add in the rent and council tax that's paid for.
We have found a lot of ESA claimants being transferred to UC don't qualify for UC because they have not been spending their benefits and have savings over £16,000.
And yes PIP is not means tested. At all. A colleague tells of neighbours who are perfectly able to afford to run 2 cars but still get a new one off Motability every 3 years. You could get someone earning a 6 figure salary, able to work from home, but if he was a wheelchair user would get full mobility PIP and a new car off Motability
I don't suppose Motability at least favours British-made cars?
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 52s See also Tom Shugart and Mike Dahm's excellent paper. They write that the barges, plus other developments, "suggests the PLA may have significantly advanced its timetable to have sufficient capabilities to conduct a large-scale cross-strait operation" digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cmsi-notes/14/
Those things look as though they'd be a pretty easy target for Taiwan's defence forces if they came anywhere near to Taiwan's coast.
They probably are not a first tranche force, in the way our Mulberry Harbours were. I'd expect them to get used weeks, rather than days, after an invasion. Perhaps even after localised victory, as they will expect Taiwan to destroy their ports if they lose.
Also, I wonder about the number of these things. The two Mulberry Harbous were massive, and a couple of ships really do not replicate their capabilities - even with the larger ship sizes nowadays. But they may have more than a couple.
An analysis segment from HI Sutton on how they could be used in a Taiwan context:
The cost of Heathrow disruption stacks up very quickly (from previous experience working alongside NATS, when someone dug up the wrong optical fibre).
A day lost will cost someone hundreds of millions - insurance company, power company, the airport or whoever.
International Airlines are down ~3.5% .
For me, a key question is why the entirety of Heathrow depends so strongly on one electricity substation. Why is there not an alternative supply?
This makes me think there's something else that's gone bang or got damaged, as substations do require to be taken offline (though rarely) for maintenance, and they obviously use an alternative supply when that happens.
Supposedly back-up was diesel generators , scrapped due to NET Zero malarkey
Highly effective if so - not only saved on the diesel generator emissions, but stopped all the flight emissions, too
(I suspect the claim is bollox though - we'll see.)
The cost of Heathrow disruption stacks up very quickly (from previous experience working alongside NATS, when someone dug up the wrong optical fibre).
A day lost will cost someone hundreds of millions - insurance company, power company, the airport or whoever.
International Airlines are down ~3.5% .
For me, a key question is why the entirety of Heathrow depends so strongly on one electricity substation. Why is there not an alternative supply?
This makes me think there's something else that's gone bang or got damaged, as substations do require to be taken offline (though rarely) for maintenance, and they obviously use an alternative supply when that happens.
Supposedly back-up was diesel generators , scrapped due to NET Zero malarkey
That claim is from a dodgy source and I've not seen it substantiated.
you can bet it will be due to incompetence and stupidity with Ed's big bawheid in there.
Do Reform have a plan re. the deficit/national debt? Genuine question.
Their manifesto had a black hole in it big enough to roughly double the deficit. There's a concise examination of it on the IFS website, if you have a look.
No party has a proper plan for deficit and debt. This and the last government's debt 'plan' was and is that total debt should not exceed X % of GDP in 5 (I think) years' time, with that 5 year period rolling forwards by 12 months every year - ie never being reached.
This involved paying back precisely zero of what we have borrowed. We are now being told that this bogus formula is too tight, and we should allow ourselves to borrow loads more.
Instead the government should 'flood the zone' with these items simultaneously: Tax the rich properly and get rid of exemptions Tax pensioners (like me) properly Abolish the triple lock Update the 30 year old property valuations for council tax and tax expensive property properly, and allow councils to increase council taxes Start paying back the debt.
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 52s See also Tom Shugart and Mike Dahm's excellent paper. They write that the barges, plus other developments, "suggests the PLA may have significantly advanced its timetable to have sufficient capabilities to conduct a large-scale cross-strait operation" digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cmsi-notes/14/
Those things look as though they'd be a pretty easy target for Taiwan's defence forces if they came anywhere near to Taiwan's coast.
They probably are not a first tranche force, in the way our Mulberry Harbours were. I'd expect them to get used weeks, rather than days, after an invasion. Perhaps even after localised victory, as they will expect Taiwan to destroy their ports if they lose.
Also, I wonder about the number of these things. The two Mulberry Harbous were massive, and a couple of ships really do not replicate their capabilities - even with the larger ship sizes nowadays. But they may have more than a couple.
Apparently Musk is going to be given access to the super Top Secret US plan for what happens if war with China.
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 52s See also Tom Shugart and Mike Dahm's excellent paper. They write that the barges, plus other developments, "suggests the PLA may have significantly advanced its timetable to have sufficient capabilities to conduct a large-scale cross-strait operation" digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cmsi-notes/14/
Those things look as though they'd be a pretty easy target for Taiwan's defence forces if they came anywhere near to Taiwan's coast.
They probably are not a first tranche force, in the way our Mulberry Harbours were. I'd expect them to get used weeks, rather than days, after an invasion. Perhaps even after localised victory, as they will expect Taiwan to destroy their ports if they lose.
Also, I wonder about the number of these things. The two Mulberry Harbous were massive, and a couple of ships really do not replicate their capabilities - even with the larger ship sizes nowadays. But they may have more than a couple.
Apparently Musk is going to be given access to the super Top Secret US plan for what happens if war with China.
How do you give a major defense contractor, who does business in China, access to Top Secret contingency planning for war with CHINA? It's such an obvious, audacious and egregious conflict of interest, it takes your breath away.
Apparently (my dad is telling me this), Richard Tice has claimed that Heathrow has ditched diesel back up generators in the name of net zero. A quick Google finds this from 2022:
Stand-by generators currently operate using diesel as they need an independent power source to maintain resilient operations. They are used predominantly as back-up power for airfield ground lighting. We are investigating renewable-based alternatives that can still meet the stringent performance criteria for such a safety critical airport asset.
That suggests that any back up generators wouldn't be for the whole airport, so perhaps Heathrow is vulnerable to a single point of failure.
That said, Heathrow having a net zero plan is quite funny.
I went to see Kyoto (the play) the other day. About the negotiating of the Kyoto Agreement. Some great performances and the play illustrates the delay and obfuscating tactics of those opposed to any limit on, or reduction of carbon emissions. There is a great passage about the hypocrisy of the carbon trading scam.
During the interval, there were two young people, a boy and a girl, sitting next to me and they were chattering about this and that. In particular, the boy was telling the girl about his impressive travel plans. He was going to go on a tour of the US and South America, fly here, then there, then come back via somewhere else, and this compared to his equally impressive travels this year (Iceland, then Amsterdam).
I turned to them and asked them, as representative of "youngsters" (we all laughed - they were young lawyers), what they thought about the play's subject matter and they both voiced enthusiastic approval.
I then said I couldn't help but overhear them talking about flying all over the world, to which the male responded "well obviously I'm a vegan on account of the planet, and..." and then blathered on, quite embarrassed.
I assured them that they didn't need to explain themselves to me and we settled down to watch the second half of the play.
But that is the reality of life and net zero and whatnot. People don't want to reduce their own activities while encouraging others to cut back theirs.
He said he was vegan for that reason, so he was willing to reduce some of his own activities.
What Miliband is up to is 1) interesting and 2) optimistic.* That's in contrast with the rest of the government, which doesn't seem to have much of an idea of why they wanted to be in power and so far has had a incoherent set of policies and messaging.
It's no surprise then than what he is doing is popular among Labour supporters, and deeply unpopular among right-wing supporters. Worth a reminder that Labour's favourability rating are dire not because they are unpopular amongst right-wing people (which is a given), but because lefties and centrist-dads are disappointed by their lethargy. Miliband is the exception.
*That doesn't mean he is getting it right.
Interesting is a polite way of saying a load of buggery bollocks. As in all areas of the Labour Government, they had 14 years of opposition to formulate plans, and *this* is what they came up with. They had no ambition or plan beyond getting their snouts in the trough, and being 'nicer' than the evul Torees.
Just heard the news about Heathrow. Is anyone else astonished that a fire at one electricity substation can knock out the second busiest airport in the world? It shouldn't be so reliant on one source of supply to say the obvious. At least now it's happened they can do something about it in the future.
I'm reminded of Stannis Baratheon saying the good does not wash away the bad, nor the bad wash away the good.
Or you could compare becoming vegan and taking a dozen flights to buying yourself an indulgence (and one that brings the possibility of lecturing others while highlighting how virtuous you are).
I'm reminded of Stannis Baratheon saying the good does not wash away the bad, nor the bad wash away the good.
Or you could compare becoming vegan and taking a dozen flights to buying yourself an indulgence (and one that brings the possibility of lecturing others while highlighting how virtuous you are).
Morris didn't you dip your toe into the "quote" function the other day. I hope it didn't put you off.
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 52s See also Tom Shugart and Mike Dahm's excellent paper. They write that the barges, plus other developments, "suggests the PLA may have significantly advanced its timetable to have sufficient capabilities to conduct a large-scale cross-strait operation" digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cmsi-notes/14/
As I've said previously, the Chinese government have invested in a lot of shiny 'tools' (i.e. weapons) that many in their senior military will be lusting to use before they get outdated.
If Xi regains Taiwan, he will see his place in history as being assured. And when could be a better time than now?
I said something similar fairly recently (after Trump's recent election victory).
There's a change happening which is infectious and affects us all. The broadly global freeish trade and sovereign but co-operating states has now been explicitly abandoned by its chief upholder, the USA.
The system which this replaced was based on three other principles, imperialism (conquest), expropriation (theft) and mercantilism (finite cake, my gain = your loss). All of these of course never went away, but were less dominant than the Adam Smith/Ricardo system.
No-one is safe if the old order comes back. And it is.
Hard times coming, including for those who wish to remain outside that bleak house of cards.
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 52s See also Tom Shugart and Mike Dahm's excellent paper. They write that the barges, plus other developments, "suggests the PLA may have significantly advanced its timetable to have sufficient capabilities to conduct a large-scale cross-strait operation" digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cmsi-notes/14/
To be fair to the Telegraph's writer, if not its headline writer, the text makes it clear that the £1,000 cap was lifted five years ago when (iirc) Boris was minding the shop.
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 52s See also Tom Shugart and Mike Dahm's excellent paper. They write that the barges, plus other developments, "suggests the PLA may have significantly advanced its timetable to have sufficient capabilities to conduct a large-scale cross-strait operation" digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cmsi-notes/14/
Not great planning from Heathrow to be reliant on a single substation. Wonder what caused the fire. Also how the hell are they going to get back up and running by tomorrow?! That literally makes no sense at all unless they can magic up a new industrial power connection in 12 hours to a different substation. This could get very messy.
Not great planning from Heathrow to be reliant on a single substation. Wonder what caused the fire. Also how the hell are they going to get back up and running by tomorrow?! That literally makes no sense at all unless they can magic up a new industrial power connection in 12 hours to a different substation. This could get very messy.
Somewhere like Heathrow Airport ought to have multiple electricity connections in all directions. It's lucky this hasn't happened before, or did they use to have a better system in the past?
Apparently (my dad is telling me this), Richard Tice has claimed that Heathrow has ditched diesel back up generators in the name of net zero. A quick Google finds this from 2022:
Stand-by generators currently operate using diesel as they need an independent power source to maintain resilient operations. They are used predominantly as back-up power for airfield ground lighting. We are investigating renewable-based alternatives that can still meet the stringent performance criteria for such a safety critical airport asset.
That suggests that any back up generators wouldn't be for the whole airport, so perhaps Heathrow is vulnerable to a single point of failure.
That said, Heathrow having a net zero plan is quite funny.
I went to see Kyoto (the play) the other day. About the negotiating of the Kyoto Agreement. Some great performances and the play illustrates the delay and obfuscating tactics of those opposed to any limit on, or reduction of carbon emissions. There is a great passage about the hypocrisy of the carbon trading scam.
During the interval, there were two young people, a boy and a girl, sitting next to me and they were chattering about this and that. In particular, the boy was telling the girl about his impressive travel plans. He was going to go on a tour of the US and South America, fly here, then there, then come back via somewhere else, and this compared to his equally impressive travels this year (Iceland, then Amsterdam).
I turned to them and asked them, as representative of "youngsters" (we all laughed - they were young lawyers), what they thought about the play's subject matter and they both voiced enthusiastic approval.
I then said I couldn't help but overhear them talking about flying all over the world, to which the male responded "well obviously I'm a vegan on account of the planet, and..." and then blathered on, quite embarrassed.
I assured them that they didn't need to explain themselves to me and we settled down to watch the second half of the play.
But that is the reality of life and net zero and whatnot. People don't want to reduce their own activities while encouraging others to cut back theirs.
I'm quite tight when it comes to money. I think that helps the environment much more than if I was vegan or gave £10 weekly to Greenpeace, as I often don't buy the same sort of unnecessary tat other people do. Like a new iPhone each year...
It also means we have much more than £1k in savings.
no pockets in a shroud
You can have fun while not pissing money up against the wall. Which allows you to retire and become a net spender rather than a net saver earlier. And, for example, my £200 Nokia XR20 serves me as well as an iPhone would *and* it's waterproof and bounces off concrete
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 52s See also Tom Shugart and Mike Dahm's excellent paper. They write that the barges, plus other developments, "suggests the PLA may have significantly advanced its timetable to have sufficient capabilities to conduct a large-scale cross-strait operation" digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cmsi-notes/14/
As I've said previously, the Chinese government have invested in a lot of shiny 'tools' (i.e. weapons) that many in their senior military will be lusting to use before they get outdated.
If Xi regains Taiwan, he will see his place in history as being assured. And when could be a better time than now?
I said something similar fairly recently (after Trump's recent election victory).
There's a change happening which is infectious and affects us all. The broadly global freeish trade and sovereign but co-operating states has now been explicitly abandoned by its chief upholder, the USA.
The system which this replaced was based on three other principles, imperialism (conquest), expropriation (theft) and mercantilism (finite cake, my gain = your loss). All of these of course never went away, but were less dominant than the Adam Smith/Ricardo system.
No-one is safe if the old order comes back. And it is.
Hard times coming, including for those who wish to remain outside that bleak house of cards.
Sometimes I'm glad I'm coming towards the end of my life and then I think of my grandchildren, and their enthusiasm for the future.
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 52s See also Tom Shugart and Mike Dahm's excellent paper. They write that the barges, plus other developments, "suggests the PLA may have significantly advanced its timetable to have sufficient capabilities to conduct a large-scale cross-strait operation" digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cmsi-notes/14/
As I've said previously, the Chinese government have invested in a lot of shiny 'tools' (i.e. weapons) that many in their senior military will be lusting to use before they get outdated.
If Xi regains Taiwan, he will see his place in history as being assured. And when could be a better time than now?
I said something similar fairly recently (after Trump's recent election victory).
There's a change happening which is infectious and affects us all. The broadly global freeish trade and sovereign but co-operating states has now been explicitly abandoned by its chief upholder, the USA.
The system which this replaced was based on three other principles, imperialism (conquest), expropriation (theft) and mercantilism (finite cake, my gain = your loss). All of these of course never went away, but were less dominant than the Adam Smith/Ricardo system.
No-one is safe if the old order comes back. And it is.
Hard times coming, including for those who wish to remain outside that bleak house of cards.
Sometimes I'm glad I'm coming towards the end of my life and then I think of my grandchildren, and their enthusiasm for the future.
Not great planning from Heathrow to be reliant on a single substation. Wonder what caused the fire. Also how the hell are they going to get back up and running by tomorrow?! That literally makes no sense at all unless they can magic up a new industrial power connection in 12 hours to a different substation. This could get very messy.
Somewhere like Heathrow Airport ought to have multiple electricity connections in all directions. It's lucky this hasn't happened before, or did they use to have a better system in the past?
Could they have had a worse one , the fecking idiots could not run a bath between them.
It'll be interesting to see whether planners at Heathrow Airport had even considered whether having the airport powered by one substation was a good idea or not. And if they had discussed it, why they thought it was appropriate. At the very least, you'd have expected each terminal to have had its own power source.
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 52s See also Tom Shugart and Mike Dahm's excellent paper. They write that the barges, plus other developments, "suggests the PLA may have significantly advanced its timetable to have sufficient capabilities to conduct a large-scale cross-strait operation" digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cmsi-notes/14/
As I've said previously, the Chinese government have invested in a lot of shiny 'tools' (i.e. weapons) that many in their senior military will be lusting to use before they get outdated.
If Xi regains Taiwan, he will see his place in history as being assured. And when could be a better time than now?
I said something similar fairly recently (after Trump's recent election victory).
There's a change happening which is infectious and affects us all. The broadly global freeish trade and sovereign but co-operating states has now been explicitly abandoned by its chief upholder, the USA.
The system which this replaced was based on three other principles, imperialism (conquest), expropriation (theft) and mercantilism (finite cake, my gain = your loss). All of these of course never went away, but were less dominant than the Adam Smith/Ricardo system.
No-one is safe if the old order comes back. And it is.
Hard times coming, including for those who wish to remain outside that bleak house of cards.
And, on top of that, the new dog-eat-dog order pretty much scuppers international cooperation in limiting climate change and other environmental degredation, so our children will be dealing with rising temperatures and seas as well as spending large amounts of cash (and possibly blood) on defence against agressive regimes.
On topic anyone who thinks Ed Miliband is the answer is asking some bloody stupid questions.
When you're up against the Minister for Cutting Benefits, the Minister for Rising Taxes and the Minister for Long Waiting Lists, being popular as Minister for Green Energy isn't such a big achievement.
How long does +ve news take to feed through?
Waiting list numbers for Jan 2025 came out last week and were down by another notch over December - that is 30k, which is something but Not a Lot.
IMO it's still Strategy OK, Tactics Hmmm, Communications Missing.
True, but then a) the minister for NHS is almost never popular, per se, and b) many Labour members - who are the people polled here - don't like Streeting for his Blairite past (and present!)
Wes goes out of his way to wind up members who are even vaguely left of centre. I can't imagine him winning a leadership election.
You're of the left. Are you not even slightly concerned at the way this government is targeting the disabled?
Yes, I dislike the targeting of the disabled, and more generally I'm not a fan of quite a bit of the Government's agenda (e.g. the huge increase in defence spending strikes me as unbalanced), though I don't see a realistic alternative. The practical effect (mirrored by numerous other members) is that I'm less active in canvassing etc. than I would otherwise be. FPTP and a sense that neither the LibDems nor the Greens are serious deter me from alternatives.
Apparently (my dad is telling me this), Richard Tice has claimed that Heathrow has ditched diesel back up generators in the name of net zero. A quick Google finds this from 2022:
Stand-by generators currently operate using diesel as they need an independent power source to maintain resilient operations. They are used predominantly as back-up power for airfield ground lighting. We are investigating renewable-based alternatives that can still meet the stringent performance criteria for such a safety critical airport asset.
That suggests that any back up generators wouldn't be for the whole airport, so perhaps Heathrow is vulnerable to a single point of failure.
That said, Heathrow having a net zero plan is quite funny.
I went to see Kyoto (the play) the other day. About the negotiating of the Kyoto Agreement. Some great performances and the play illustrates the delay and obfuscating tactics of those opposed to any limit on, or reduction of carbon emissions. There is a great passage about the hypocrisy of the carbon trading scam.
During the interval, there were two young people, a boy and a girl, sitting next to me and they were chattering about this and that. In particular, the boy was telling the girl about his impressive travel plans. He was going to go on a tour of the US and South America, fly here, then there, then come back via somewhere else, and this compared to his equally impressive travels this year (Iceland, then Amsterdam).
I turned to them and asked them, as representative of "youngsters" (we all laughed - they were young lawyers), what they thought about the play's subject matter and they both voiced enthusiastic approval.
I then said I couldn't help but overhear them talking about flying all over the world, to which the male responded "well obviously I'm a vegan on account of the planet, and..." and then blathered on, quite embarrassed.
I assured them that they didn't need to explain themselves to me and we settled down to watch the second half of the play.
But that is the reality of life and net zero and whatnot. People don't want to reduce their own activities while encouraging others to cut back theirs.
I'm quite tight when it comes to money. I think that helps the environment much more than if I was vegan or gave £10 weekly to Greenpeace, as I often don't buy the same sort of unnecessary tat other people do. Like a new iPhone each year...
It also means we have much more than £1k in savings.
no pockets in a shroud
That's a great quote.
But that's not what I see 'tight' as being about. I spend money, and I have a good life. I have hobbies and fun.
As an example: I know a couple of triathletes who got top-end triathlon bikes for a song. Including one guy who bought a triathlon bike worth over £8k for £3k from a neighbour. The neighbour bought it to do a triathlon race, got bored in the training before using it, and sold it new at a massive discount in a garage sale.
That's the sort of waste I cannot stand. It's stupid. Try the hobby as cheaply as possible to see if you enjoy it, and *then* spend the money.
When I set out to do a sprint triathlon last year, I bought a cheap £450 road bike. I have enough money in the bank to buy something an order of magnitude more expensive, but that would have been stupid, as my bike racing skills were non-existent. So I raced the cheap bike and learnt skills on it, knowing that if I trashed it, or it got stolen, it would not matter much. This year, as I have enjoyed my triathlon races, I bought a Zwift Ride indoor bike setup for a grand - as it is safer and more convenient than riding on the roads, especially in winter. And I'm spending a couple of hundred on a bike fit, so I know what sort of second-hand triathlon or high-end road bikes to look for. Technically a waste of money, but far better than buying the wrong-sized bike.
I could easily have spent ten grand on kit for my triathlon hobby - and in fact know people only slightly above my level who have. £500 wetsuits instead of £150 ones. £3,000 bikes instead of £450 ones. Stuff that does not actually make them much faster, especially as they don't train much.
So 'being tight' in my view is not about not spending money: it is about being cautious about spending money. And that caution can save you a lot of money.
Apparently (my dad is telling me this), Richard Tice has claimed that Heathrow has ditched diesel back up generators in the name of net zero. A quick Google finds this from 2022:
Stand-by generators currently operate using diesel as they need an independent power source to maintain resilient operations. They are used predominantly as back-up power for airfield ground lighting. We are investigating renewable-based alternatives that can still meet the stringent performance criteria for such a safety critical airport asset.
That suggests that any back up generators wouldn't be for the whole airport, so perhaps Heathrow is vulnerable to a single point of failure.
That said, Heathrow having a net zero plan is quite funny.
I went to see Kyoto (the play) the other day. About the negotiating of the Kyoto Agreement. Some great performances and the play illustrates the delay and obfuscating tactics of those opposed to any limit on, or reduction of carbon emissions. There is a great passage about the hypocrisy of the carbon trading scam.
During the interval, there were two young people, a boy and a girl, sitting next to me and they were chattering about this and that. In particular, the boy was telling the girl about his impressive travel plans. He was going to go on a tour of the US and South America, fly here, then there, then come back via somewhere else, and this compared to his equally impressive travels this year (Iceland, then Amsterdam).
I turned to them and asked them, as representative of "youngsters" (we all laughed - they were young lawyers), what they thought about the play's subject matter and they both voiced enthusiastic approval.
I then said I couldn't help but overhear them talking about flying all over the world, to which the male responded "well obviously I'm a vegan on account of the planet, and..." and then blathered on, quite embarrassed.
I assured them that they didn't need to explain themselves to me and we settled down to watch the second half of the play.
But that is the reality of life and net zero and whatnot. People don't want to reduce their own activities while encouraging others to cut back theirs.
He said he was vegan for that reason, so he was willing to reduce some of his own activities.
Why not look at people in the round? I admit I like to travel, although to date it has mostly been short haul. And I eat a lot of meat. However I drive very little (my 15 year old Megane has done about 72000 miles), often travel by train and rarely use the tumble dryer, in fact Octopus has recently given me some money back and allowed me to reduce my monthly payments to £64.
I am not sure what proportion of carbon outputs are due to aviation but I bet it is very little compared with other sources, which will be easier to reduce. Access to cheap aviation gives many people a lot of benefits. So I am not sure it should be a priority
Apparently (my dad is telling me this), Richard Tice has claimed that Heathrow has ditched diesel back up generators in the name of net zero. A quick Google finds this from 2022:
Stand-by generators currently operate using diesel as they need an independent power source to maintain resilient operations. They are used predominantly as back-up power for airfield ground lighting. We are investigating renewable-based alternatives that can still meet the stringent performance criteria for such a safety critical airport asset.
That suggests that any back up generators wouldn't be for the whole airport, so perhaps Heathrow is vulnerable to a single point of failure.
That said, Heathrow having a net zero plan is quite funny.
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 52s See also Tom Shugart and Mike Dahm's excellent paper. They write that the barges, plus other developments, "suggests the PLA may have significantly advanced its timetable to have sufficient capabilities to conduct a large-scale cross-strait operation" digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cmsi-notes/14/
As I've said previously, the Chinese government have invested in a lot of shiny 'tools' (i.e. weapons) that many in their senior military will be lusting to use before they get outdated.
If Xi regains Taiwan, he will see his place in history as being assured. And when could be a better time than now?
I said something similar fairly recently (after Trump's recent election victory).
There's a change happening which is infectious and affects us all. The broadly global freeish trade and sovereign but co-operating states has now been explicitly abandoned by its chief upholder, the USA.
The system which this replaced was based on three other principles, imperialism (conquest), expropriation (theft) and mercantilism (finite cake, my gain = your loss). All of these of course never went away, but were less dominant than the Adam Smith/Ricardo system.
No-one is safe if the old order comes back. And it is.
Hard times coming, including for those who wish to remain outside that bleak house of cards.
Sometimes I'm glad I'm coming towards the end of my life and then I think of my grandchildren, and their enthusiasm for the future.
It'll be interesting to see whether planners at Heathrow Airport had even considered whether having the airport powered by one substation was a good idea or not. And if they had discussed it, why they thought it was appropriate. At the very least, you'd have expected each terminal to have had its own power source.
It's interesting how much armchair experts are jumping to conclusions about Heathrow's electricity supply based on nothing.
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 52s See also Tom Shugart and Mike Dahm's excellent paper. They write that the barges, plus other developments, "suggests the PLA may have significantly advanced its timetable to have sufficient capabilities to conduct a large-scale cross-strait operation" digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cmsi-notes/14/
Those things look as though they'd be a pretty easy target for Taiwan's defence forces if they came anywhere near to Taiwan's coast.
They probably are not a first tranche force, in the way our Mulberry Harbours were. I'd expect them to get used weeks, rather than days, after an invasion. Perhaps even after localised victory, as they will expect Taiwan to destroy their ports if they lose.
Also, I wonder about the number of these things. The two Mulberry Harbous were massive, and a couple of ships really do not replicate their capabilities - even with the larger ship sizes nowadays. But they may have more than a couple.
Apparently Musk is going to be given access to the super Top Secret US plan for what happens if war with China.
How do you give a major defense contractor, who does business in China, access to Top Secret contingency planning for war with CHINA? It's such an obvious, audacious and egregious conflict of interest, it takes your breath away.
It'll be interesting to see whether planners at Heathrow Airport had even considered whether having the airport powered by one substation was a good idea or not. And if they had discussed it, why they thought it was appropriate. At the very least, you'd have expected each terminal to have had its own power source.
It's interesting how much armchair experts are jumping to conclusions about Heathrow's electricity supply based on nothing.
To be fair to the Telegraph's writer, if not its headline writer, the text makes it clear that the £1,000 cap was lifted five years ago when (iirc) Boris was minding the shop.
There's something in this. The £1,000 limit was way too tight to get a decent commuter (eg the most basic Brompton will set you back £950), but you do have people buying fancy carbon racers who WFH all the time. The issue is e-bikes, which really do transform people's ability to commute (and move children around) cost a few grand too.
I've always disliked C2W because it's so regressive. I'd be open to a new policy.
Apparently (my dad is telling me this), Richard Tice has claimed that Heathrow has ditched diesel back up generators in the name of net zero. A quick Google finds this from 2022:
Stand-by generators currently operate using diesel as they need an independent power source to maintain resilient operations. They are used predominantly as back-up power for airfield ground lighting. We are investigating renewable-based alternatives that can still meet the stringent performance criteria for such a safety critical airport asset.
That suggests that any back up generators wouldn't be for the whole airport, so perhaps Heathrow is vulnerable to a single point of failure.
That said, Heathrow having a net zero plan is quite funny.
I went to see Kyoto (the play) the other day. About the negotiating of the Kyoto Agreement. Some great performances and the play illustrates the delay and obfuscating tactics of those opposed to any limit on, or reduction of carbon emissions. There is a great passage about the hypocrisy of the carbon trading scam.
During the interval, there were two young people, a boy and a girl, sitting next to me and they were chattering about this and that. In particular, the boy was telling the girl about his impressive travel plans. He was going to go on a tour of the US and South America, fly here, then there, then come back via somewhere else, and this compared to his equally impressive travels this year (Iceland, then Amsterdam).
I turned to them and asked them, as representative of "youngsters" (we all laughed - they were young lawyers), what they thought about the play's subject matter and they both voiced enthusiastic approval.
I then said I couldn't help but overhear them talking about flying all over the world, to which the male responded "well obviously I'm a vegan on account of the planet, and..." and then blathered on, quite embarrassed.
I assured them that they didn't need to explain themselves to me and we settled down to watch the second half of the play.
But that is the reality of life and net zero and whatnot. People don't want to reduce their own activities while encouraging others to cut back theirs.
I'm quite tight when it comes to money. I think that helps the environment much more than if I was vegan or gave £10 weekly to Greenpeace, as I often don't buy the same sort of unnecessary tat other people do. Like a new iPhone each year...
It also means we have much more than £1k in savings.
no pockets in a shroud
That's a great quote.
But that's not what I see 'tight' as being about. I spend money, and I have a good life. I have hobbies and fun.
As an example: I know a couple of triathletes who got top-end triathlon bikes for a song. Including one guy who bought a triathlon bike worth over £8k for £3k from a neighbour. The neighbour bought it to do a triathlon race, got bored in the training before using it, and sold it new at a massive discount in a garage sale.
That's the sort of waste I cannot stand. It's stupid. Try the hobby as cheaply as possible to see if you enjoy it, and *then* spend the money.
When I set out to do a sprint triathlon last year, I bought a cheap £450 road bike. I have enough money in the bank to buy something an order of magnitude more expensive, but that would have been stupid, as my bike racing skills were non-existent. So I raced the cheap bike and learnt skills on it, knowing that if I trashed it, or it got stolen, it would not matter much. This year, as I have enjoyed my triathlon races, I bought a Zwift Ride indoor bike setup for a grand - as it is safer and more convenient than riding on the roads, especially in winter. And I'm spending a couple of hundred on a bike fit, so I know what sort of second-hand triathlon or high-end road bikes to look for. Technically a waste of money, but far better than buying the wrong-sized bike.
I could easily have spent ten grand on kit for my triathlon hobby - and in fact know people only slightly above my level who have. £500 wetsuits instead of £150 ones. £3,000 bikes instead of £450 ones. Stuff that does not actually make them much faster, especially as they don't train much.
So 'being tight' in my view is not about not spending money: it is about being cautious about spending money. And that caution can save you a lot of money.
Ha, yes
A chap I know bought a huge CNC mill (second hand, but was high 4 figures) - he was rightly terrified of the thing. He didn't buy a bench top hand mill first and learn properly.
So it sat there gathering dust.
What he actually wanted, for most of the things he wanted to do, was a good drill press. Not even a mill.
EDIT: On bikes, it is not uncommon to see people spend sagans on a bike. Because it is lighter. When the cost of *them* dropping 10 kilos....
Just heard the news about Heathrow. Is anyone else astonished that a fire at one electricity substation can knock out the second busiest airport in the world? It shouldn't be so reliant on one source of supply to say the obvious. At least now it's happened they can do something about it in the future.
Went onto betfair to check the next PM market and can't see Ed M listed on it. I can however back David Miliband at 60, Jeremy Clarkson at 21, Andrew Tate at 85, and several Tories who are not even MPs
Ladbrokes don't have Ed M listed either, but handily do have Boris at 14/1 (!). I think TSEs bet is a shrewd one, these markets are crazy
Apparently (my dad is telling me this), Richard Tice has claimed that Heathrow has ditched diesel back up generators in the name of net zero. A quick Google finds this from 2022:
Stand-by generators currently operate using diesel as they need an independent power source to maintain resilient operations. They are used predominantly as back-up power for airfield ground lighting. We are investigating renewable-based alternatives that can still meet the stringent performance criteria for such a safety critical airport asset.
That suggests that any back up generators wouldn't be for the whole airport, so perhaps Heathrow is vulnerable to a single point of failure.
That said, Heathrow having a net zero plan is quite funny.
I went to see Kyoto (the play) the other day. About the negotiating of the Kyoto Agreement. Some great performances and the play illustrates the delay and obfuscating tactics of those opposed to any limit on, or reduction of carbon emissions. There is a great passage about the hypocrisy of the carbon trading scam.
During the interval, there were two young people, a boy and a girl, sitting next to me and they were chattering about this and that. In particular, the boy was telling the girl about his impressive travel plans. He was going to go on a tour of the US and South America, fly here, then there, then come back via somewhere else, and this compared to his equally impressive travels this year (Iceland, then Amsterdam).
I turned to them and asked them, as representative of "youngsters" (we all laughed - they were young lawyers), what they thought about the play's subject matter and they both voiced enthusiastic approval.
I then said I couldn't help but overhear them talking about flying all over the world, to which the male responded "well obviously I'm a vegan on account of the planet, and..." and then blathered on, quite embarrassed.
I assured them that they didn't need to explain themselves to me and we settled down to watch the second half of the play.
But that is the reality of life and net zero and whatnot. People don't want to reduce their own activities while encouraging others to cut back theirs.
He said he was vegan for that reason, so he was willing to reduce some of his own activities.
Why not look at people in the round? I admit I like to travel, although to date it has mostly been short haul. And I eat a lot of meat. However I drive very little (my 15 year old Megane has done about 72000 miles), often travel by train and rarely use the tumble dryer, in fact Octopus has recently given me some money back and allowed me to reduce my monthly payments to £64.
I am not sure what proportion of carbon outputs are due to aviation but I bet it is very little compared with other sources, which will be easier to reduce. Access to cheap aviation gives many people a lot of benefits. So I am not sure it should be a priority
I suspect aviation use is a skewed distribution, with a small set of people who fly a lot, but many more who take onoy a couple of flights a year (and of course globally many many who don't fly at all because they can't afford to). So knocking some of that frequent flyer business travel on the head would be where I would start. (Also apparently flight is twice as energy efficient per passenger kilometre as it was in 1990, so it's not been impossible to reduce its carbon emissions. Better engines, bigger planes, fewer empty seats.)
Not great planning from Heathrow to be reliant on a single substation. Wonder what caused the fire. Also how the hell are they going to get back up and running by tomorrow?! That literally makes no sense at all unless they can magic up a new industrial power connection in 12 hours to a different substation. This could get very messy.
I would have thought as the tumbleweed rolls along the 747 length runway at Cardiff a decent number of flights in and out of Heathrow could have been diverted.
Apparently (my dad is telling me this), Richard Tice has claimed that Heathrow has ditched diesel back up generators in the name of net zero. A quick Google finds this from 2022:
Stand-by generators currently operate using diesel as they need an independent power source to maintain resilient operations. They are used predominantly as back-up power for airfield ground lighting. We are investigating renewable-based alternatives that can still meet the stringent performance criteria for such a safety critical airport asset.
That suggests that any back up generators wouldn't be for the whole airport, so perhaps Heathrow is vulnerable to a single point of failure.
That said, Heathrow having a net zero plan is quite funny.
More woke madness. If they hadn't replaced reliable cisformers with transformers as part of the radical woke agenda none of this would have happened. They couldn't even scenario plan for blackouts because that's racist now. It's just another example of DEI (Dodgy Electrical Infrastructure) in action. All of this is true because Reform said it on Twitter and they repeated it on GB News.
To be fair to the Telegraph's writer, if not its headline writer, the text makes it clear that the £1,000 cap was lifted five years ago when (iirc) Boris was minding the shop.
There's something in this. The £1,000 limit was way too tight to get a decent commuter (eg the most basic Brompton will set you back £950), but you do have people buying fancy carbon racers who WFH all the time. The issue is e-bikes, which really do transform people's ability to commute (and move children around) cost a few grand too.
I've always disliked C2W because it's so regressive. I'd be open to a new policy.
My proposal is that we zero rate bicycles and bike accessories for VAT. Simple to admin, easy to understand, doesn't require the purchaser to be working for a big company that will admin the scheme or to be confident about entering into a weird hire purchase style agreement.
Apparently (my dad is telling me this), Richard Tice has claimed that Heathrow has ditched diesel back up generators in the name of net zero. A quick Google finds this from 2022:
Stand-by generators currently operate using diesel as they need an independent power source to maintain resilient operations. They are used predominantly as back-up power for airfield ground lighting. We are investigating renewable-based alternatives that can still meet the stringent performance criteria for such a safety critical airport asset.
That suggests that any back up generators wouldn't be for the whole airport, so perhaps Heathrow is vulnerable to a single point of failure.
That said, Heathrow having a net zero plan is quite funny.
I went to see Kyoto (the play) the other day. About the negotiating of the Kyoto Agreement. Some great performances and the play illustrates the delay and obfuscating tactics of those opposed to any limit on, or reduction of carbon emissions. There is a great passage about the hypocrisy of the carbon trading scam.
During the interval, there were two young people, a boy and a girl, sitting next to me and they were chattering about this and that. In particular, the boy was telling the girl about his impressive travel plans. He was going to go on a tour of the US and South America, fly here, then there, then come back via somewhere else, and this compared to his equally impressive travels this year (Iceland, then Amsterdam).
I turned to them and asked them, as representative of "youngsters" (we all laughed - they were young lawyers), what they thought about the play's subject matter and they both voiced enthusiastic approval.
I then said I couldn't help but overhear them talking about flying all over the world, to which the male responded "well obviously I'm a vegan on account of the planet, and..." and then blathered on, quite embarrassed.
I assured them that they didn't need to explain themselves to me and we settled down to watch the second half of the play.
But that is the reality of life and net zero and whatnot. People don't want to reduce their own activities while encouraging others to cut back theirs.
I'm quite tight when it comes to money. I think that helps the environment much more than if I was vegan or gave £10 weekly to Greenpeace, as I often don't buy the same sort of unnecessary tat other people do. Like a new iPhone each year...
It also means we have much more than £1k in savings.
no pockets in a shroud
That's a great quote.
But that's not what I see 'tight' as being about. I spend money, and I have a good life. I have hobbies and fun.
As an example: I know a couple of triathletes who got top-end triathlon bikes for a song. Including one guy who bought a triathlon bike worth over £8k for £3k from a neighbour. The neighbour bought it to do a triathlon race, got bored in the training before using it, and sold it new at a massive discount in a garage sale.
That's the sort of waste I cannot stand. It's stupid. Try the hobby as cheaply as possible to see if you enjoy it, and *then* spend the money.
When I set out to do a sprint triathlon last year, I bought a cheap £450 road bike. I have enough money in the bank to buy something an order of magnitude more expensive, but that would have been stupid, as my bike racing skills were non-existent. So I raced the cheap bike and learnt skills on it, knowing that if I trashed it, or it got stolen, it would not matter much. This year, as I have enjoyed my triathlon races, I bought a Zwift Ride indoor bike setup for a grand - as it is safer and more convenient than riding on the roads, especially in winter. And I'm spending a couple of hundred on a bike fit, so I know what sort of second-hand triathlon or high-end road bikes to look for. Technically a waste of money, but far better than buying the wrong-sized bike.
I could easily have spent ten grand on kit for my triathlon hobby - and in fact know people only slightly above my level who have. £500 wetsuits instead of £150 ones. £3,000 bikes instead of £450 ones. Stuff that does not actually make them much faster, especially as they don't train much.
So 'being tight' in my view is not about not spending money: it is about being cautious about spending money. And that caution can save you a lot of money.
Ha, yes
A chap I know bought a huge CNC mill (second hand, but was high 4 figures) - he was rightly terrified of the thing. He didn't buy a bench top hand mill first and learn properly.
So it sat there gathering dust.
What he actually wanted, for most of the things he wanted to do, was a good drill press. Not even a mill.
With me and bikes, it's a case of what bang I get for my bucks - in that case, how much extra speed.
I'd expect a £1k bike to be much faster than my £450 bike, for the same power/skill level. The components are so much better. A £2k bike will be faster than a £1k bike, but not by as much. And a £4k bike will be faster again, but again by a reduced amount. It increasingly becomes about expensive marginal gains.
The problem is the 'marginal gains' also look cool.
As I'm new to this cycle racing malarkey, the most improvement will not be got from an ultra-expensive bike, but by improving my skills. Hence the Zwift setup. I've decided that when I get to 2.5 watts per kg, I'll buy a new bike...
(And yes, i know 2.5 is low. But I'm a newbie and in my fifties...)
It'll be interesting to see whether planners at Heathrow Airport had even considered whether having the airport powered by one substation was a good idea or not. And if they had discussed it, why they thought it was appropriate. At the very least, you'd have expected each terminal to have had its own power source.
It's interesting how much armchair experts are jumping to conclusions about Heathrow's electricity supply based on nothing.
Well not based on nothing, the airport is closed. I'm sure you can give us 17 academic studies telling us otherwise but the airport is actually closed because there's no electricity.
If Andy Burnham returned to parliament though he would be a strong contender to be next Labour leader, Ed Miliband unlikely to want to do the role again.
The LabourList survey of Labour members had Burnham favoured to take over from Starmer with 56%, then Rayner on 21%, then Cooper and Streeting tied on just 5% and Nandy last on 3%
Apparently (my dad is telling me this), Richard Tice has claimed that Heathrow has ditched diesel back up generators in the name of net zero. A quick Google finds this from 2022:
Stand-by generators currently operate using diesel as they need an independent power source to maintain resilient operations. They are used predominantly as back-up power for airfield ground lighting. We are investigating renewable-based alternatives that can still meet the stringent performance criteria for such a safety critical airport asset.
That suggests that any back up generators wouldn't be for the whole airport, so perhaps Heathrow is vulnerable to a single point of failure.
That said, Heathrow having a net zero plan is quite funny.
We need to know whether this claim is true or not.
Apparently (my dad is telling me this), Richard Tice has claimed that Heathrow has ditched diesel back up generators in the name of net zero. A quick Google finds this from 2022:
Stand-by generators currently operate using diesel as they need an independent power source to maintain resilient operations. They are used predominantly as back-up power for airfield ground lighting. We are investigating renewable-based alternatives that can still meet the stringent performance criteria for such a safety critical airport asset.
That suggests that any back up generators wouldn't be for the whole airport, so perhaps Heathrow is vulnerable to a single point of failure.
That said, Heathrow having a net zero plan is quite funny.
I went to see Kyoto (the play) the other day. About the negotiating of the Kyoto Agreement. Some great performances and the play illustrates the delay and obfuscating tactics of those opposed to any limit on, or reduction of carbon emissions. There is a great passage about the hypocrisy of the carbon trading scam.
During the interval, there were two young people, a boy and a girl, sitting next to me and they were chattering about this and that. In particular, the boy was telling the girl about his impressive travel plans. He was going to go on a tour of the US and South America, fly here, then there, then come back via somewhere else, and this compared to his equally impressive travels this year (Iceland, then Amsterdam).
I turned to them and asked them, as representative of "youngsters" (we all laughed - they were young lawyers), what they thought about the play's subject matter and they both voiced enthusiastic approval.
I then said I couldn't help but overhear them talking about flying all over the world, to which the male responded "well obviously I'm a vegan on account of the planet, and..." and then blathered on, quite embarrassed.
I assured them that they didn't need to explain themselves to me and we settled down to watch the second half of the play.
But that is the reality of life and net zero and whatnot. People don't want to reduce their own activities while encouraging others to cut back theirs.
He said he was vegan for that reason, so he was willing to reduce some of his own activities.
Why not look at people in the round? I admit I like to travel, although to date it has mostly been short haul. And I eat a lot of meat. However I drive very little (my 15 year old Megane has done about 72000 miles), often travel by train and rarely use the tumble dryer, in fact Octopus has recently given me some money back and allowed me to reduce my monthly payments to £64.
I am not sure what proportion of carbon outputs are due to aviation but I bet it is very little compared with other sources, which will be easier to reduce. Access to cheap aviation gives many people a lot of benefits. So I am not sure it should be a priority
I suspect aviation use is a skewed distribution, with a small set of people who fly a lot, but many more who take onoy a couple of flights a year (and of course globally many many who don't fly at all because they can't afford to). So knocking some of that frequent flyer business travel on the head would be where I would start. (Also apparently flight is twice as energy efficient per passenger kilometre as it was in 1990, so it's not been impossible to reduce its carbon emissions. Better engines, bigger planes, fewer empty seats.)
I have always thought that flight tax should be a proportion of the price of the flight, so those of us going to Thailand in steerage will pay a lot less than the people in Business
Apparently (my dad is telling me this), Richard Tice has claimed that Heathrow has ditched diesel back up generators in the name of net zero. A quick Google finds this from 2022:
Stand-by generators currently operate using diesel as they need an independent power source to maintain resilient operations. They are used predominantly as back-up power for airfield ground lighting. We are investigating renewable-based alternatives that can still meet the stringent performance criteria for such a safety critical airport asset.
That suggests that any back up generators wouldn't be for the whole airport, so perhaps Heathrow is vulnerable to a single point of failure.
That said, Heathrow having a net zero plan is quite funny.
There really is no end to it.
This is what Tice says:
Reform MP Richard Tice said: 'It appears that Heathrow had changed its backup systems in order to be, wait for it...Net Zero compliant’.
‘They had got rid of their diesel generators and had moved towards a biomass generator that was designed not to completely replace the grid but work alongside it. Their net zero compliant backup system has completely failed in its core function at the first time of asking’.
So when power goes down they have to stoke up the woodburner FFS! Biomass is SHIT. And this is Governments' fault - and largely Tory Governments, just going into conferences and promising things and then putting it on industry sort it out. This is what Kemi means @stodge about there being no workable plan to get to Net Zero. A massive key infrastructure switching over to a worse and less capable form of back up power just because it uses bits of dead tree, not bits of long dead tree.
It'll be interesting to see whether planners at Heathrow Airport had even considered whether having the airport powered by one substation was a good idea or not. And if they had discussed it, why they thought it was appropriate. At the very least, you'd have expected each terminal to have had its own power source.
It's interesting how much armchair experts are jumping to conclusions about Heathrow's electricity supply based on nothing.
Based on nothing? We know that one fire at one substation has shut the airport completely.
Apparently (my dad is telling me this), Richard Tice has claimed that Heathrow has ditched diesel back up generators in the name of net zero. A quick Google finds this from 2022:
Stand-by generators currently operate using diesel as they need an independent power source to maintain resilient operations. They are used predominantly as back-up power for airfield ground lighting. We are investigating renewable-based alternatives that can still meet the stringent performance criteria for such a safety critical airport asset.
That suggests that any back up generators wouldn't be for the whole airport, so perhaps Heathrow is vulnerable to a single point of failure.
That said, Heathrow having a net zero plan is quite funny.
Reform MP Richard Tice said: 'It appears that Heathrow had changed its backup systems in order to be, wait for it...Net Zero compliant’.
‘They had got rid of their diesel generators and had moved towards a biomass generator that was designed not to completely replace the grid but work alongside it. Their net zero compliant backup system has completely failed in its core function at the first time of asking’.
So when power goes down they have to stoke up the woodburner FFS! Biomass is SHIT. And this is Governments' fault - and largely Tory Governments, just going into conferences and promising things and then putting it on industry sort it out. This is what Kemi means @stodge about there being no workable plan to get to Net Zero. A massive key infrastructure switching over to a worse and less capable form of back up power just because it uses bits of dead tree, not bits of long dead tree.
Apparently (my dad is telling me this), Richard Tice has claimed that Heathrow has ditched diesel back up generators in the name of net zero. A quick Google finds this from 2022:
Stand-by generators currently operate using diesel as they need an independent power source to maintain resilient operations. They are used predominantly as back-up power for airfield ground lighting. We are investigating renewable-based alternatives that can still meet the stringent performance criteria for such a safety critical airport asset.
That suggests that any back up generators wouldn't be for the whole airport, so perhaps Heathrow is vulnerable to a single point of failure.
That said, Heathrow having a net zero plan is quite funny.
I went to see Kyoto (the play) the other day. About the negotiating of the Kyoto Agreement. Some great performances and the play illustrates the delay and obfuscating tactics of those opposed to any limit on, or reduction of carbon emissions. There is a great passage about the hypocrisy of the carbon trading scam.
During the interval, there were two young people, a boy and a girl, sitting next to me and they were chattering about this and that. In particular, the boy was telling the girl about his impressive travel plans. He was going to go on a tour of the US and South America, fly here, then there, then come back via somewhere else, and this compared to his equally impressive travels this year (Iceland, then Amsterdam).
I turned to them and asked them, as representative of "youngsters" (we all laughed - they were young lawyers), what they thought about the play's subject matter and they both voiced enthusiastic approval.
I then said I couldn't help but overhear them talking about flying all over the world, to which the male responded "well obviously I'm a vegan on account of the planet, and..." and then blathered on, quite embarrassed.
I assured them that they didn't need to explain themselves to me and we settled down to watch the second half of the play.
But that is the reality of life and net zero and whatnot. People don't want to reduce their own activities while encouraging others to cut back theirs.
I'm quite tight when it comes to money. I think that helps the environment much more than if I was vegan or gave £10 weekly to Greenpeace, as I often don't buy the same sort of unnecessary tat other people do. Like a new iPhone each year...
It also means we have much more than £1k in savings.
no pockets in a shroud
That's a great quote.
But that's not what I see 'tight' as being about. I spend money, and I have a good life. I have hobbies and fun.
As an example: I know a couple of triathletes who got top-end triathlon bikes for a song. Including one guy who bought a triathlon bike worth over £8k for £3k from a neighbour. The neighbour bought it to do a triathlon race, got bored in the training before using it, and sold it new at a massive discount in a garage sale.
That's the sort of waste I cannot stand. It's stupid. Try the hobby as cheaply as possible to see if you enjoy it, and *then* spend the money.
When I set out to do a sprint triathlon last year, I bought a cheap £450 road bike. I have enough money in the bank to buy something an order of magnitude more expensive, but that would have been stupid, as my bike racing skills were non-existent. So I raced the cheap bike and learnt skills on it, knowing that if I trashed it, or it got stolen, it would not matter much. This year, as I have enjoyed my triathlon races, I bought a Zwift Ride indoor bike setup for a grand - as it is safer and more convenient than riding on the roads, especially in winter. And I'm spending a couple of hundred on a bike fit, so I know what sort of second-hand triathlon or high-end road bikes to look for. Technically a waste of money, but far better than buying the wrong-sized bike.
I could easily have spent ten grand on kit for my triathlon hobby - and in fact know people only slightly above my level who have. £500 wetsuits instead of £150 ones. £3,000 bikes instead of £450 ones. Stuff that does not actually make them much faster, especially as they don't train much.
So 'being tight' in my view is not about not spending money: it is about being cautious about spending money. And that caution can save you a lot of money.
Ha, yes
A chap I know bought a huge CNC mill (second hand, but was high 4 figures) - he was rightly terrified of the thing. He didn't buy a bench top hand mill first and learn properly.
So it sat there gathering dust.
What he actually wanted, for most of the things he wanted to do, was a good drill press. Not even a mill.
With me and bikes, it's a case of what bang I get for my bucks - in that case, how much extra speed.
I'd expect a £1k bike to be much faster than my £450 bike, for the same power/skill level. The components are so much better. A £2k bike will be faster than a £1k bike, but not by as much. And a £4k bike will be faster again, but again by a reduced amount. It increasingly becomes about expensive marginal gains.
The problem is the 'marginal gains' also look cool.
As I'm new to this cycle racing malarkey, the most improvement will not be got from an ultra-expensive bike, but by improving my skills. Hence the Zwift setup. I've decided that when I get to 2.5 watts per kg, I'll buy a new bike...
(And yes, i know 2.5 is low. But I'm a newbie and in my fifties...)
The commuting version of this is decent brakes (eg TRP Spyre), SKS mudguards and Marathon Plus deliver huge marginal gains. After that, it's probably not worth spending much more.
It'll be interesting to see whether planners at Heathrow Airport had even considered whether having the airport powered by one substation was a good idea or not. And if they had discussed it, why they thought it was appropriate. At the very least, you'd have expected each terminal to have had its own power source.
It's interesting how much armchair experts are jumping to conclusions about Heathrow's electricity supply based on nothing.
Based on nothing? We know that one fire at one substation has shut the airport completely.
Don't worry, he's got a litany of "experts" who will say otherwise and write dozens of academic papers about how the fire wasn't cause, it was actually a bat having sex with a pangolin. I find it quite funny how he rushes out to defend the status quo every single time even when there's very clear evidence that this is a huge fuck up.
Comments
https://www.heathrow.com/content/dam/heathrow/web/common/documents/company/heathrow-2-0-sustainability/futher-reading/Heathrow_Net Zero Carbon Strategy_v13.pdf
Stand-by generators currently operate using diesel as they need an independent power source to maintain resilient operations. They are used predominantly as back-up power for airfield ground lighting. We are investigating renewable-based alternatives that can still meet the stringent performance criteria for such a safety critical airport asset.
That suggests that any back up generators wouldn't be for the whole airport, so perhaps Heathrow is vulnerable to a single point of failure.
That said, Heathrow having a net zero plan is quite funny.
The PIP thing is not a shocker at all - it's literally an unconditional benefit payment, with no regard to savings or other income. It's designed to be like that. I know this is the current political zeitgeist but even a cursory look at the stats exposes this as a bit of a political panic.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/uklabourmarket/march2025 (section 4)
https://obr.uk/docs/dlm_uploads/Welfare-trends-report-October-2024.pdf (chart 1.3)
We have found a lot of ESA claimants being transferred to UC don't qualify for UC because they have not been spending their benefits and have savings over £16,000.
And yes PIP is not means tested. At all. A colleague tells of neighbours who are perfectly able to afford to run 2 cars but still get a new one off Motability every 3 years. You could get someone earning a 6 figure salary, able to work from home, but if he was a wheelchair user would get full mobility PIP and a new car off Motability
Where, IIRC, the USA sides with Russia....
Comment from Miliband (dodgy lighting):
The Plan B instant (my surmise) backup was also taken out.
Attempting to switch over to Plan C - which I suggest may involve some reconfiguration.
https://news.sky.com/video/heathrow-airport-closed-backup-system-also-affected-by-fire-13333031
If Xi regains Taiwan, he will see his place in history as being assured. And when could be a better time than now?
Never, ever go Full Dale Brown.
I see PB’s love for Ed Miliband continues unabated. It’s curious - you could argue were it not for Ed Miliband there’d have been no EU referendum and no Brexit. The fervent Brexiteers should be prostrating themselves before effigies of the EdStone in rapturous delight.
The borrowing figures have also produced the monthly lamentations from the usual suspects with the habitual lengthy moaning about the state of the public finances and society in general.
Said lamentations are long on moaning and short on practical solutions. We all know why we are here and what could and should have been done by the last Government to recoup Sunak’s largesse but that water is under the bridge and halfway across the ocean now.
As New Zealand shows, making cuts to welfare spending may please the Daily Mail demographic but it doesn’t achieve anything. Even, it seems, Trump Republicans want some serious soaking of the rich but it seems we can’t and won’t do that because we don’t want the rich fleeing the country (not that they could easily today).
There are two priorities - stimulating growth and getting the public finances back under control. The latter is easy - I’ve yet to see anyone offer a meaningful approach to the former.
During the interval, there were two young people, a boy and a girl, sitting next to me and they were chattering about this and that. In particular, the boy was telling the girl about his impressive travel plans. He was going to go on a tour of the US and South America, fly here, then there, then come back via somewhere else, and this compared to his equally impressive travels this year (Iceland, then Amsterdam).
I turned to them and asked them, as representative of "youngsters" (we all laughed - they were young lawyers), what they thought about the play's subject matter and they both voiced enthusiastic approval.
I then said I couldn't help but overhear them talking about flying all over the world, to which the male responded "well obviously I'm a vegan on account of the planet, and..." and then blathered on, quite embarrassed.
I assured them that they didn't need to explain themselves to me and we settled down to watch the second half of the play.
But that is the reality of life and net zero and whatnot. People don't want to reduce their own activities while encouraging others to cut back theirs.
(Gawd, I hope I haven't ballsed that up!)
It also means we have much more than £1k in savings.
he is getting on with a vital task.
one that could regenerate our country-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0iMW1sgfpw
about ten minutes in the presentation the impact of high market penetration is examined-
an absolute decimation of energy prices is an available option.
and I think Miliband has it in his sights.
Also, I wonder about the number of these things. The two Mulberry Harbous were massive, and a couple of ships really do not replicate their capabilities - even with the larger ship sizes nowadays. But they may have more than a couple.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkQuiPiPOsg
is Jonathan Van-Tam on "Communicating in a Crisis: Lessons Learned Five Years After Covid"
Not quite as good, weather-wise this morning, but still pleasant. Have a good one, everyone!
Check it out Malc..
(Scotland is now has significant electricity exports due to renewables - which is a good thing, right?)
https://youtu.be/Klkpk_hO4FQ?t=754
https://x.com/mr_andrew_fox/status/1903006498596303082
(I suspect the claim is bollox though - we'll see.)
This involved paying back precisely zero of what we have borrowed. We are now being told that this bogus formula is too tight, and we should allow ourselves to borrow loads more.
Instead the government should 'flood the zone' with these items simultaneously:
Tax the rich properly and get rid of exemptions
Tax pensioners (like me) properly
Abolish the triple lock
Update the 30 year old property valuations for council tax and tax expensive property properly, and allow councils to increase council taxes
Start paying back the debt.
Just incredible. Madness.
Poorly used 'AI' snippet/pic generation or simply human incompetence?
@davidaxelrod
How do you give a major defense contractor, who does business in China, access to Top Secret contingency planning for war with CHINA?
It's such an obvious, audacious and egregious conflict of interest, it takes your breath away.
https://x.com/davidaxelrod/status/1902914705678594432
Or you could compare becoming vegan and taking a dozen flights to buying yourself an indulgence (and one that brings the possibility of lecturing others while highlighting how virtuous you are).
The system which this replaced was based on three other principles, imperialism (conquest), expropriation (theft) and mercantilism (finite cake, my gain = your loss). All of these of course never went away, but were less dominant than the Adam Smith/Ricardo system.
No-one is safe if the old order comes back. And it is.
Hard times coming, including for those who wish to remain outside that bleak house of cards.
The Japanese finished up with three shiploads of oil, from the Dutch East Indies, in WWII.
Middle-class men on six-figure salaries are shamelessly exploiting Gordon Brown’s tax freebie
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/tax/rich-cyclists-brand-new-bikes-taxpayer/ (£££)
To be fair to the Telegraph's writer, if not its headline writer, the text makes it clear that the £1,000 cap was lifted five years ago when (iirc) Boris was minding the shop.
But that's not what I see 'tight' as being about. I spend money, and I have a good life. I have hobbies and fun.
As an example: I know a couple of triathletes who got top-end triathlon bikes for a song. Including one guy who bought a triathlon bike worth over £8k for £3k from a neighbour. The neighbour bought it to do a triathlon race, got bored in the training before using it, and sold it new at a massive discount in a garage sale.
That's the sort of waste I cannot stand. It's stupid. Try the hobby as cheaply as possible to see if you enjoy it, and *then* spend the money.
When I set out to do a sprint triathlon last year, I bought a cheap £450 road bike. I have enough money in the bank to buy something an order of magnitude more expensive, but that would have been stupid, as my bike racing skills were non-existent. So I raced the cheap bike and learnt skills on it, knowing that if I trashed it, or it got stolen, it would not matter much. This year, as I have enjoyed my triathlon races, I bought a Zwift Ride indoor bike setup for a grand - as it is safer and more convenient than riding on the roads, especially in winter. And I'm spending a couple of hundred on a bike fit, so I know what sort of second-hand triathlon or high-end road bikes to look for. Technically a waste of money, but far better than buying the wrong-sized bike.
I could easily have spent ten grand on kit for my triathlon hobby - and in fact know people only slightly above my level who have. £500 wetsuits instead of £150 ones. £3,000 bikes instead of £450 ones. Stuff that does not actually make them much faster, especially as they don't train much.
So 'being tight' in my view is not about not spending money: it is about being cautious about spending money. And that caution can save you a lot of money.
I am not sure what proportion of carbon outputs are due to aviation but I bet it is very little compared with other sources, which will be easier to reduce. Access to cheap aviation gives many people a lot of benefits. So I am not sure it should be a priority
I've always disliked C2W because it's so regressive. I'd be open to a new policy.
A chap I know bought a huge CNC mill (second hand, but was high 4 figures) - he was rightly terrified of the thing. He didn't buy a bench top hand mill first and learn properly.
So it sat there gathering dust.
What he actually wanted, for most of the things he wanted to do, was a good drill press. Not even a mill.
EDIT: On bikes, it is not uncommon to see people spend sagans on a bike. Because it is lighter. When the cost of *them* dropping 10 kilos....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_airports_by_passenger_traffic
Ladbrokes don't have Ed M listed either, but handily do have Boris at 14/1 (!). I think TSEs bet is a shrewd one, these markets are crazy
All of this is true because Reform said it on Twitter and they repeated it on GB News.
I'd expect a £1k bike to be much faster than my £450 bike, for the same power/skill level. The components are so much better. A £2k bike will be faster than a £1k bike, but not by as much. And a £4k bike will be faster again, but again by a reduced amount. It increasingly becomes about expensive marginal gains.
The problem is the 'marginal gains' also look cool.
As I'm new to this cycle racing malarkey, the most improvement will not be got from an ultra-expensive bike, but by improving my skills. Hence the Zwift setup. I've decided that when I get to 2.5 watts per kg, I'll buy a new bike...
(And yes, i know 2.5 is low. But I'm a newbie and in my fifties...)
The LabourList survey of Labour members had Burnham favoured to take over from Starmer with 56%, then Rayner on 21%, then Cooper and Streeting tied on just 5% and Nandy last on 3%
https://labourlist.org/2025/03/cabinet-league-table-labourlist-survation-poll/
‘They had got rid of their diesel generators and had moved towards a biomass generator that was designed not to completely replace the grid but work alongside it. Their net zero compliant backup system has completely failed in its core function at the first time of asking’.