Fascinating that Trump, per FT, is proposing to raise the taxes on the rich (income over $2.5M), and remove the preferential tax treatment of hedge funds.
The collapse in US elite support for Trump has been wonderful to see. This won’t help.
Trump of course was the first Republican presidential candidate to lose voters earning over 100 000 dollars a year last year
That is an utterly terrible result for Labour - I don't think they'd have even lost it last week.
And not only no Green squeeze but no LD squeeze either.
I know the housing types across most of this ward and looking at the EC map, and I'm struggling to think of the Reform demographic in this Halifax ward at all - a couple of terraces east of the A629, some less grand houses on the main road through Copley village, it doesn't even extend to the town centre terraces.
It is substantially the sort of mock Tudor around parkland that wouldn't be out of place in Surrey, but which has trended left over the last couple of decades. Can only think it is a remnant of old Tory votes.
I knew the housing in Longdendale ward in Tameside where Reform prevailed by 20% last month. This is a far worse result than that.
We are entering the era of peak Reform?
Depends which bit of the Reform demographic you're thinking of. From Andrew Teale:
The middle-class nature of Skircoat ward - which increasingly extends to its Asian community - can be seen in its election results, which we can trace over an unusually long length of time because Calderdale's ward boundaries haven't changed since 2004. Skircoat was strongly Conservative in the 2004 election, but it then developed into a close fight between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats: the Lib Dems won the ward twice, in 2007 and 2010. The Lib Dem vote then faded away over the next decade and Labour moved into second place in 2014; Labour then gained all three seats in Skircoat ward from the Conservatives in 2018-21 and they have pulled away further since then. At the last Calderdale elections in 2024, Skircoat ward remained part of the Labour majority on Calderdale council with vote shares of 52% for Labour, 25% for the Conservatives and 15% for the Green Party. The ward gave 17% to UKIP back in 2014, which might give Reform UK - who are standing here for the first time - something to build on.
Pissed off middle class people with a bit of memory of voting Conservative is textbook Reform; it's not far off as a description of Farage.
Let me try for one of our pissed-off demographics.
Around here (Ashfield), this street had the most Reform decals of any I saw. These are late 1960s / 1970s type housing, quite modest 3 bed ~900-1000sqft with a through lounge typically lived in by people who have dogs they walk on the rec at the back, and perhaps allotments on the big plot across the road. People stay a long time, and may have local family. These will mainly your middle aged -> retired skilled workers, lowish end professionals (nurses, teachers, LA employees), small business. Comfortable but not wealthy - those will be eg in detached bungalows. Note the campervans / caravans.
Current prices for these are approx £220k or so, so modestly above the local average price for a semi.
I think it was the New Statesman podcast that noted that Red Wall type places which still have a functioning housing market and new builds on the outskirts where new people come in (around here often East European migrants buying their 1st or 2nd house), have had their comfort zone made tighter by £££ more on the mortgage payments. They are generally politically grumpy, and politically homeless for some time - swinging perhaps from Ashfield Independent to Reform.
Wasn't it Geoff Hoon who was leafletting in Ashfield many years ago and said he could not believe the number of shiny new cars on every drive?
I still don't understand the car market. It used to be that when you drove through the, er, rougher areas of town, the quality of cars dropped - visibly older and rustier and less shiny. No longer the case - if you ignore the housing and just look at the cars, you can no longer tell whether you're in Altrincham or Wythenshawe. How have cars got so affordable?
1 in 5 new cars are Motability.
Wait till China starts dumping cars here. The prices will fall further.
Net Zero is starting to now run into economic reality with electric cars and deindustrialisation in a way it wasn't in the 2010s.
To go further, we will have to accept real economic damage being done now, with the hope that our global leadership on it galvanises a faster transition to Net Zero worldwide.
Will we?
To put the actual argument to one side, it was interesting to find that even Reform voters aren't that fussed about Net Zero - only 9% picked it as an issue. It's very much an internet meme.
Yet Farage considers this the "next Brexit". That feels like a fumble to me. They should stick to national identity and immigration.
I'd say that Lincs is the one to watch, again. The new Reform Mayor Andrea Jenkins, and also her boss (?) Zia Yusuf, have been leading with green-bashing, and Lincs is the only place where they have both Mayor and control of the County Council.
Yet Lincs is reported to now have 12k green jobs and a green economy worth £1.2bn, according to the Local Enterprise Partnership.
If they want to recreate the 1970s or 1950s, that might not be the place to start.
(One also notes the level of donations to Reform from fossil fuel industries, which is somewhere between "most" and "nearly all of it".)
I just think Labour should confront people with this. Do you want to go on a gas only electricity tariff? Do you want all that investment to go elsewhere?
It is not 'investment', it is companies seeking money from a rigged energy market at the consumers' expense. People are waking up to this fact and rightly so.
As I mentioned earlier, even when generating power these energy sources damage and disrupt the grid. Things have gone very quiet on Heathrow - we could well see renewable energy was responsible for that substation blowing in the first place, as well as the fact that the backup generation had been fucked up.
The whole thing is an utter shitshow on every level, and people blowing the whistle have been slandered, mocked and condemned, whilst those in the pay of 'green entrepreneurs' have been heaped with praise for their 'boldness'.
Support for solar and wind is currently at 88% and 83%, respectively, with 1% opposition. 3% oppose solar farms in their area. 74% think they boost the economy.
In older polling, support for new gas and coal is at 7% and 5%.
The (political) argument is over, Reform would be mad to take this approach.
Two caveats to that, though.
One is that the balance of capital to running costs is different for fuel power and renewable power. People- especially older people- don't like projects with ten year paybacks.
The other is that we are all instinctively NIMBY. Hence "solar energy please, but not near me". And the thing about NIMBYism is that it makes people scramble for any argument against the thing they don't like.
Bad government, but potentially good as an election winner. Maybe anti-net-zero is the new Brexit...
What's surprising about the polling is that people are YIMBY for solar farms and, to a lesser extent, wind. Maybe that is different in Lincolnshire? But 76% of Reform voters support them...
(Coal is deeply unpopular, as you'd expect).
I sort of know that Reform are opposed to Net Zero; does anyone know what they support on the matter of climate change? Are they deniers or something else?
They tiptoe around denialism. Their manifesto last year said:
"Net Zero is pushing up bills, damaging British industries like steel, and making us less secure. We can protect our environment with more tree planting, more recycling and less single use plastics. New technology will help, but we must not impoverish ourselves in pursuit of unaffordable, unachievable global CO2 targets."
It goes on:
"Cheap, Secure Energy for Britain "Start fast-track licences of North Sea gas and oil. Grant shale gas licences on test sites for 2 years. Enable major production when safety is proven, with local compensation schemes.
"Thereafter: "Cleaner Energy from New Technology "Fast-track clean nuclear energy with new Small Modular Reactors, built in Britain. Increase and incentivise ethical UK lithium mining for electric batteries, combined cycle gas turbines, clean synthetic fuel, tidal power and explore clean coal mining."
So, lots of talk of "clean" energy and some of their plan is low-carbon (nuclear, batteries), but overall what they're proposing would involve pumping out lots of CO2.
Reform still thinks there are suitable sites in the uk for Fracking?
Net Zero is starting to now run into economic reality with electric cars and deindustrialisation in a way it wasn't in the 2010s.
To go further, we will have to accept real economic damage being done now, with the hope that our global leadership on it galvanises a faster transition to Net Zero worldwide.
Will we?
To put the actual argument to one side, it was interesting to find that even Reform voters aren't that fussed about Net Zero - only 9% picked it as an issue. It's very much an internet meme.
Yet Farage considers this the "next Brexit". That feels like a fumble to me. They should stick to national identity and immigration.
I'd say that Lincs is the one to watch, again. The new Reform Mayor Andrea Jenkins, and also her boss (?) Zia Yusuf, have been leading with green-bashing, and Lincs is the only place where they have both Mayor and control of the County Council.
Yet Lincs is reported to now have 12k green jobs and a green economy worth £1.2bn, according to the Local Enterprise Partnership.
If they want to recreate the 1970s or 1950s, that might not be the place to start.
(One also notes the level of donations to Reform from fossil fuel industries, which is somewhere between "most" and "nearly all of it".)
I just think Labour should confront people with this. Do you want to go on a gas only electricity tariff? Do you want all that investment to go elsewhere?
It is not 'investment', it is companies seeking money from a rigged energy market at the consumers' expense. People are waking up to this fact and rightly so.
As I mentioned earlier, even when generating power these energy sources damage and disrupt the grid. Things have gone very quiet on Heathrow - we could well see renewable energy was responsible for that substation blowing in the first place, as well as the fact that the backup generation had been fucked up.
The whole thing is an utter shitshow on every level, and people blowing the whistle have been slandered, mocked and condemned, whilst those in the pay of 'green entrepreneurs' have been heaped with praise for their 'boldness'.
Support for solar and wind is currently at 88% and 83%, respectively, with 1% opposition. 3% oppose solar farms in their area. 74% think they boost the economy.
In older polling, support for new gas and coal is at 7% and 5%.
The (political) argument is over, Reform would be mad to take this approach.
Two caveats to that, though.
One is that the balance of capital to running costs is different for fuel power and renewable power. People- especially older people- don't like projects with ten year paybacks.
The other is that we are all instinctively NIMBY. Hence "solar energy please, but not near me". And the thing about NIMBYism is that it makes people scramble for any argument against the thing they don't like.
Bad government, but potentially good as an election winner. Maybe anti-net-zero is the new Brexit...
What's surprising about the polling is that people are YIMBY for solar farms and, to a lesser extent, wind. Maybe that is different in Lincolnshire? But 76% of Reform voters support them...
(Coal is deeply unpopular, as you'd expect).
I sort of know that Reform are opposed to Net Zero; does anyone know what they support on the matter of climate change? Are they deniers or something else?
The world is warming whether the UK acts or not - so expenditure on mitigation to my mind would be the sensible path.
Like rebuilding reservoirs that were sold off, and fixing leaks from water pipes?
Fascinating that Trump, per FT, is proposing to raise the taxes on the rich (income over $2.5M), and remove the preferential tax treatment of hedge funds.
The collapse in US elite support for Trump has been wonderful to see. This won’t help.
Trump of course was the first Republican presidential candidate to lose voters earning over 100 000 dollars a year last year
Collapsing the stock market meant trashing middle class savings and pension plans.
Net Zero is starting to now run into economic reality with electric cars and deindustrialisation in a way it wasn't in the 2010s.
To go further, we will have to accept real economic damage being done now, with the hope that our global leadership on it galvanises a faster transition to Net Zero worldwide.
Will we?
To put the actual argument to one side, it was interesting to find that even Reform voters aren't that fussed about Net Zero - only 9% picked it as an issue. It's very much an internet meme.
Yet Farage considers this the "next Brexit". That feels like a fumble to me. They should stick to national identity and immigration.
I'd say that Lincs is the one to watch, again. The new Reform Mayor Andrea Jenkins, and also her boss (?) Zia Yusuf, have been leading with green-bashing, and Lincs is the only place where they have both Mayor and control of the Council.
Yes Lincs is reported to now have 12k green jobs and a green economy worth £1.2bn, according to the Local Enterprise Partnership.
If they want to recreate the 1970s or 1950s, that might not be the place to start.
Apparently net zero costs a bomb, right, so we're going to scrap that woke lefty nonsense, right, and go back to the good old days with British power stations burning British coal, right, who wants wind turbines or pylons anyway, right.
I know that "Net Zero" is completely the wrong messaging, but the goal of energy independence is a good one. The environment needs to be tret as a bonus rather than the objective. Green energy is how we regain our place of power, no longer at the whim of Putin or money markets, we not only generate free energy but we can design build and export the technology.
It should be a no-brainer. But "investment" is seen to be "subsidy" and thus "who will pay for it"
Except that it isn't "free" energy and the panels are largely made in China, so probably not exactly reliable and secure, and quite arguable about how "green" the manufacture of said panels is.
The most obvious self-sufficiency that this government seems to enjoy saying "go fuck yourself" to, is food production. Hopefully unlikely that we would suffer a food blockade as we did in WW2, but if we did we would starve to death pretty quickly. Two Tier Kier seems to be keen to make us starve a lot quicker
So, back to back trade deals with the biggie (the EU) to come in the next couple of weeks. Is SKS starting to rock and roll? Let’s hope so. He’s a good man and he’s our PM. When he does well, so do we all.
Although something less sunny is on my mind this morning - the realisation that the world as framed by WW2 is fading out. Ok, I’ve read about this from the likes of Niall Ferguson and Max Hastings in the papers, but all of a sudden (and I’m not sure what’s brought this on) what strikes me is that this world that’s ending has been *my* world. The period in which I’ve lived the whole of my 64 years is over. It’s over. If this doesn’t merit the word “poignant” I don’t know what does. I’ll still be shopping at Tesco, going swimming sometimes, nibbling nuts in the afternoon, drinking red wine from a sherry glass, I’ll still be doing these same things, but I’ll be doing them in a world that has changed.
I'm having a look into whether now is a good time to switch again, maybe to electric. I love it, but I'm not sure that I still need my large (low mileage now) estate. It may be at the point where the value may be going to take a dive, so now could be a good time to0 swap.
What is a good smallish electric? Needs would be for local and county travel, with occasional extended distance.
I think someone mentioned a Fiat 500e recently, and the larger battery version of that looks like having potential. Any other suggestions would be welcome.
One question I need to understand - how long does a battery actually sensibly last? And what age is practical for buying a second hand electric?
Renault 5. I've got one so you know it's mint. Alpine A290 if you're flush and want a bit more pep.
A colleague bought a 3 year old i4 and it doesn't seem to have suffered any drop in battery performance. Much older than that and the cars just weren't as good. I've got an id7 estate, which is large. Depends on your usage profile, round trips up to 250-280 miles charging at home great. Longer than that and you'll need to charge in the wild, best described as part of the "experience". If I was regularly doing 300mile+ round trips I'd be regretting the switch.
Net Zero is starting to now run into economic reality with electric cars and deindustrialisation in a way it wasn't in the 2010s.
To go further, we will have to accept real economic damage being done now, with the hope that our global leadership on it galvanises a faster transition to Net Zero worldwide.
Will we?
To put the actual argument to one side, it was interesting to find that even Reform voters aren't that fussed about Net Zero - only 9% picked it as an issue. It's very much an internet meme.
Yet Farage considers this the "next Brexit". That feels like a fumble to me. They should stick to national identity and immigration.
I'd say that Lincs is the one to watch, again. The new Reform Mayor Andrea Jenkins, and also her boss (?) Zia Yusuf, have been leading with green-bashing, and Lincs is the only place where they have both Mayor and control of the County Council.
Yet Lincs is reported to now have 12k green jobs and a green economy worth £1.2bn, according to the Local Enterprise Partnership.
If they want to recreate the 1970s or 1950s, that might not be the place to start.
(One also notes the level of donations to Reform from fossil fuel industries, which is somewhere between "most" and "nearly all of it".)
I just think Labour should confront people with this. Do you want to go on a gas only electricity tariff? Do you want all that investment to go elsewhere?
It is not 'investment', it is companies seeking money from a rigged energy market at the consumers' expense. People are waking up to this fact and rightly so.
As I mentioned earlier, even when generating power these energy sources damage and disrupt the grid. Things have gone very quiet on Heathrow - we could well see renewable energy was responsible for that substation blowing in the first place, as well as the fact that the backup generation had been fucked up.
The whole thing is an utter shitshow on every level, and people blowing the whistle have been slandered, mocked and condemned, whilst those in the pay of 'green entrepreneurs' have been heaped with praise for their 'boldness'.
Support for solar and wind is currently at 88% and 83%, respectively, with 1% opposition. 3% oppose solar farms in their area. 74% think they boost the economy.
In older polling, support for new gas and coal is at 7% and 5%.
The (political) argument is over, Reform would be mad to take this approach.
Two caveats to that, though.
One is that the balance of capital to running costs is different for fuel power and renewable power. People- especially older people- don't like projects with ten year paybacks.
The other is that we are all instinctively NIMBY. Hence "solar energy please, but not near me". And the thing about NIMBYism is that it makes people scramble for any argument against the thing they don't like.
Bad government, but potentially good as an election winner. Maybe anti-net-zero is the new Brexit...
What's surprising about the polling is that people are YIMBY for solar farms and, to a lesser extent, wind. Maybe that is different in Lincolnshire? But 76% of Reform voters support them...
(Coal is deeply unpopular, as you'd expect).
I sort of know that Reform are opposed to Net Zero; does anyone know what they support on the matter of climate change? Are they deniers or something else?
They tiptoe around denialism. Their manifesto last year said:
"Net Zero is pushing up bills, damaging British industries like steel, and making us less secure. We can protect our environment with more tree planting, more recycling and less single use plastics. New technology will help, but we must not impoverish ourselves in pursuit of unaffordable, unachievable global CO2 targets."
It goes on:
"Cheap, Secure Energy for Britain "Start fast-track licences of North Sea gas and oil. Grant shale gas licences on test sites for 2 years. Enable major production when safety is proven, with local compensation schemes.
"Thereafter: "Cleaner Energy from New Technology "Fast-track clean nuclear energy with new Small Modular Reactors, built in Britain. Increase and incentivise ethical UK lithium mining for electric batteries, combined cycle gas turbines, clean synthetic fuel, tidal power and explore clean coal mining."
So, lots of talk of "clean" energy and some of their plan is low-carbon (nuclear, batteries), but overall what they're proposing would involve pumping out lots of CO2.
That's a sharp contrast to their 2021 pitch in the Senedd Manifesto, which @MarqueeMark would approve of, which is pro-renewables, pro-working-from-home, and pro-tidal. They are all about retail politics, and this is perhaps an indication of the switch from Tice to Farage.
Innovation and technology will be the key to deliver a net-zero carbon future. We believe that scientists, engineers, and politicians need to work smartly together.
Everyone in Wales needs to do their bit. Government needs to support communities to change how we travel, shop and heat our homes. We can embrace the opportunities offered by the shift towards more remote working through the pandemic to reduce unnecessary commuting. Not everyone wants to, or has the space to work from home, and we support creating local hubs, where people can still socially interact without the need to travel.
The shift towards electric cars is a key feature of reducing the impact on the environment. The demand for electricity will rise significantly to power these vehicles and we need to focus on how we generate this electricity by increasing how much electricity comes from renewable sources. Wind turbines and solar panels will play a part, but the sun doesn’t always shine, and the wind doesn’t always blow, but the tide will always ebb and flow.
Our energy revolution must be tidal if we are to create a constant energy source. As a country surrounded by some of the biggest tides in the world, Wales can be a world leader in the tidal energy revolution. We can harness the energy created by the high tide movements along our 870 mile coastline.
We believe in an integrated approach to how we live our daily lives along with improving the environment. The shift to electric cars will only work if we increase the number of charging points on the network and create legislation to ensure all new homes have electric vehicle charging points. Local authorities own many of the car parks in our towns and cities. Putting in the infrastructure at these locations can transform car parks into the fuel stations of the future.
Sentencing in July or later, pending reports. My plan to fix the justice system includes immediate sentencing, with mitigation to be factored in later.
Net Zero is starting to now run into economic reality with electric cars and deindustrialisation in a way it wasn't in the 2010s.
To go further, we will have to accept real economic damage being done now, with the hope that our global leadership on it galvanises a faster transition to Net Zero worldwide.
Will we?
To put the actual argument to one side, it was interesting to find that even Reform voters aren't that fussed about Net Zero - only 9% picked it as an issue. It's very much an internet meme.
Yet Farage considers this the "next Brexit". That feels like a fumble to me. They should stick to national identity and immigration.
I'd say that Lincs is the one to watch, again. The new Reform Mayor Andrea Jenkins, and also her boss (?) Zia Yusuf, have been leading with green-bashing, and Lincs is the only place where they have both Mayor and control of the Council.
Yes Lincs is reported to now have 12k green jobs and a green economy worth £1.2bn, according to the Local Enterprise Partnership.
If they want to recreate the 1970s or 1950s, that might not be the place to start.
Apparently net zero costs a bomb, right, so we're going to scrap that woke lefty nonsense, right, and go back to the good old days with British power stations burning British coal, right, who wants wind turbines or pylons anyway, right.
I know that "Net Zero" is completely the wrong messaging, but the goal of energy independence is a good one. The environment needs to be tret as a bonus rather than the objective. Green energy is how we regain our place of power, no longer at the whim of Putin or money markets, we not only generate free energy but we can design build and export the technology.
It should be a no-brainer. But "investment" is seen to be "subsidy" and thus "who will pay for it"
Except that it isn't "free" energy and the panels are largely made in China, so probably not exactly reliable and secure, and quite arguable about how "green" the manufacture of said panels is.
The most obvious self-sufficiency that this government seems to enjoy saying "go fuck yourself" to, is food production. Hopefully unlikely that we would suffer a food blockade as we did in WW2, but if we did we would starve to death pretty quickly. Two Tier Kier seems to be keen to make us starve a lot quicker
Autarky positions like this quickly become absurd. You're arguing for a significant reduction in energy consumption and compulsory veganism.
Solar lasts 25 years+ at 80% efficiency - if China cuts off supply, it will have no material impact on our energy generation for decades, by which time we'll be importing them from someone else. With food, most of our critical imports are from European countries (mainly veg). On gas, most of it comes from Norway.
Sentencing in July or later, pending reports. My plan to fix the justice system includes immediate sentencing, with mitigation to be factored in later.
Two fewer Reform voters in Carlisle for the foreseeable future.
"This document serves to define the general terms for the EPD" "The United States and United Kingdom are immediately beginning negotiations of the EPD" "Both the United States and the United Kingdom recognize that this document does not constitute a legally binding agreement."
The dealer has just offered me an approx trade in value sight unseen, but they have maintained it throughout, of 60% of what I paid them for it in 2018. Albeit it's averaged only 3k miles per annum. It was the same sales chap who sold me the last one.
He also mentioned a thing called an Enyaq, the small battery version of, for just under 30k. An Enyaq is a medium sized SUV if I understand it correctly with a 250 mile 'range' - a bit of a contrast to an R5 or Fiat 500.
"This document serves to define the general terms for the EPD" "The United States and United Kingdom are immediately beginning negotiations of the EPD" "Both the United States and the United Kingdom recognize that this document does not constitute a legally binding agreement."
Nonetheless, it is promising a significant improvement compared to the status quo. The pharma bit hadn't previously got much coverage: ..Contingent on the findings of the U.S. Section 232 investigation* on pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical ingredients, and consistent with the United Kingdom’s compliance with the supply chains security requirements described in subparagraph (ii), the United States and the United Kingdom intend to promptly negotiate significantly preferential treatment outcomes on pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical ingredients. The United Kingdom confirms that it will endeavor to improve the overall environment for pharmaceutical companies operating in the United Kingdom...
*Section 232 was the largely bullshit legal cover for tariffs imposed by executive fiat, bypassing Congress. "..Under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act, the President has broad power to adjust imports — including through the use of tariffs — if excessive foreign imports are found to be a threat to US national security..."
Net Zero is starting to now run into economic reality with electric cars and deindustrialisation in a way it wasn't in the 2010s.
To go further, we will have to accept real economic damage being done now, with the hope that our global leadership on it galvanises a faster transition to Net Zero worldwide.
Will we?
To put the actual argument to one side, it was interesting to find that even Reform voters aren't that fussed about Net Zero - only 9% picked it as an issue. It's very much an internet meme.
Yet Farage considers this the "next Brexit". That feels like a fumble to me. They should stick to national identity and immigration.
I'd say that Lincs is the one to watch, again. The new Reform Mayor Andrea Jenkins, and also her boss (?) Zia Yusuf, have been leading with green-bashing, and Lincs is the only place where they have both Mayor and control of the County Council.
Yet Lincs is reported to now have 12k green jobs and a green economy worth £1.2bn, according to the Local Enterprise Partnership.
If they want to recreate the 1970s or 1950s, that might not be the place to start.
(One also notes the level of donations to Reform from fossil fuel industries, which is somewhere between "most" and "nearly all of it".)
I just think Labour should confront people with this. Do you want to go on a gas only electricity tariff? Do you want all that investment to go elsewhere?
It is not 'investment', it is companies seeking money from a rigged energy market at the consumers' expense. People are waking up to this fact and rightly so.
As I mentioned earlier, even when generating power these energy sources damage and disrupt the grid. Things have gone very quiet on Heathrow - we could well see renewable energy was responsible for that substation blowing in the first place, as well as the fact that the backup generation had been fucked up.
The whole thing is an utter shitshow on every level, and people blowing the whistle have been slandered, mocked and condemned, whilst those in the pay of 'green entrepreneurs' have been heaped with praise for their 'boldness'.
Support for solar and wind is currently at 88% and 83%, respectively, with 1% opposition. 3% oppose solar farms in their area. 74% think they boost the economy.
In older polling, support for new gas and coal is at 7% and 5%.
The (political) argument is over, Reform would be mad to take this approach.
Two caveats to that, though.
One is that the balance of capital to running costs is different for fuel power and renewable power. People- especially older people- don't like projects with ten year paybacks.
The other is that we are all instinctively NIMBY. Hence "solar energy please, but not near me". And the thing about NIMBYism is that it makes people scramble for any argument against the thing they don't like.
Bad government, but potentially good as an election winner. Maybe anti-net-zero is the new Brexit...
What's surprising about the polling is that people are YIMBY for solar farms and, to a lesser extent, wind. Maybe that is different in Lincolnshire? But 76% of Reform voters support them...
(Coal is deeply unpopular, as you'd expect).
I sort of know that Reform are opposed to Net Zero; does anyone know what they support on the matter of climate change? Are they deniers or something else?
They tiptoe around denialism. Their manifesto last year said:
"Net Zero is pushing up bills, damaging British industries like steel, and making us less secure. We can protect our environment with more tree planting, more recycling and less single use plastics. New technology will help, but we must not impoverish ourselves in pursuit of unaffordable, unachievable global CO2 targets."
It goes on:
"Cheap, Secure Energy for Britain "Start fast-track licences of North Sea gas and oil. Grant shale gas licences on test sites for 2 years. Enable major production when safety is proven, with local compensation schemes.
"Thereafter: "Cleaner Energy from New Technology "Fast-track clean nuclear energy with new Small Modular Reactors, built in Britain. Increase and incentivise ethical UK lithium mining for electric batteries, combined cycle gas turbines, clean synthetic fuel, tidal power and explore clean coal mining."
So, lots of talk of "clean" energy and some of their plan is low-carbon (nuclear, batteries), but overall what they're proposing would involve pumping out lots of CO2.
Reform still thinks there are suitable sites in the uk for Fracking?
There are definitely some born every minute
As with other populist right movements, what they believe is very much based on vibes. They want stuff to be true, so they say it's true. Reality is just a left-wing conspiracy against them.
The result of electing such people is the hyperinflation in Turkey and the ongoing shitshow in the US.
The dealer has just offered me an approx trade in value sight unseen, but they have maintained it throughout, of 60% of what I paid them for it in 2018. Albeit it's averaged only 3k miles per annum. It was the same sales chap who sold me the last one.
He also mentioned a thing called an Enyaq, the small battery version of, for just under 30k. An Enyaq is a medium sized SUV if I understand it correctly with a 250 mile 'range' - a bit of a contrast to an R5 or Fiat 500.
Hmmm.
Last time I almost PEX'd I got a better offer from WeBuyAnyCar than the dealership. It might be worth 20 minutes of a lunch hour.
"This document serves to define the general terms for the EPD" "The United States and United Kingdom are immediately beginning negotiations of the EPD" "Both the United States and the United Kingdom recognize that this document does not constitute a legally binding agreement."
Classic negotiating mistake. At a former company, my boss's boss told a story of how he was negotiating with a customer who he had offered a certain price, but the customer was trying to beat him down. Costs were going up, and our guy says to the customer that he's no longer sure he can offer that price. He sees the customer's eye's widen, and realises two things: 1) customer had promised that price to his boss, even though it wasn't committed and 2) we now had this guy over a barrel, because he wasn't going to want to go back to his boss and say he didn't get what he promised. I'm not sure exactly what concessions were wrung, but they were wrung.
Starmer may have needed a good media day, but he's left himself exposed if Trump goes back on this. I guess the only saving grace is that Trump is such an arsehole that Starmer may find it easy to put the blame on him if he does.
Net Zero is starting to now run into economic reality with electric cars and deindustrialisation in a way it wasn't in the 2010s.
To go further, we will have to accept real economic damage being done now, with the hope that our global leadership on it galvanises a faster transition to Net Zero worldwide.
Will we?
To put the actual argument to one side, it was interesting to find that even Reform voters aren't that fussed about Net Zero - only 9% picked it as an issue. It's very much an internet meme.
Yet Farage considers this the "next Brexit". That feels like a fumble to me. They should stick to national identity and immigration.
I'd say that Lincs is the one to watch, again. The new Reform Mayor Andrea Jenkins, and also her boss (?) Zia Yusuf, have been leading with green-bashing, and Lincs is the only place where they have both Mayor and control of the Council.
Yes Lincs is reported to now have 12k green jobs and a green economy worth £1.2bn, according to the Local Enterprise Partnership.
If they want to recreate the 1970s or 1950s, that might not be the place to start.
Apparently net zero costs a bomb, right, so we're going to scrap that woke lefty nonsense, right, and go back to the good old days with British power stations burning British coal, right, who wants wind turbines or pylons anyway, right.
I know that "Net Zero" is completely the wrong messaging, but the goal of energy independence is a good one. The environment needs to be tret as a bonus rather than the objective. Green energy is how we regain our place of power, no longer at the whim of Putin or money markets, we not only generate free energy but we can design build and export the technology.
It should be a no-brainer. But "investment" is seen to be "subsidy" and thus "who will pay for it"
Except that it isn't "free" energy and the panels are largely made in China, so probably not exactly reliable and secure, and quite arguable about how "green" the manufacture of said panels is.
The most obvious self-sufficiency that this government seems to enjoy saying "go fuck yourself" to, is food production. Hopefully unlikely that we would suffer a food blockade as we did in WW2, but if we did we would starve to death pretty quickly. Two Tier Kier seems to be keen to make us starve a lot quicker
Autarky positions like this quickly become absurd. You're arguing for a significant reduction in energy consumption and compulsory veganism.
Solar lasts 25 years+ at 80% efficiency - if China cuts off supply, it will have no material impact on our energy generation for decades, by which time we'll be importing them from someone else. With food, most of our critical imports are from European countries (mainly veg). On gas, most of it comes from Norway.
It isn't an "autarcky position" you pillock, it is common sense critique based on historical fact that being unable to produce a substantial part of our own food is not in any way desirable, quite apart from the environmental cost of importing food that can be grown here, and it's juxtaposition with the attitude of the current government with their much less rational claims on "energy security". As for China cutting off supply of panels, this is highly unlikely, but the point remains that the environmental credentials of these products are highly dubious. Goofy pillocks like Miliband arguing that "energy self-sufficiency" is a main reason for his obsession with randomly covering rural areas in solar panels to line the pockets the greedy is disingenuous in the extreme.
"This document serves to define the general terms for the EPD" "The United States and United Kingdom are immediately beginning negotiations of the EPD" "Both the United States and the United Kingdom recognize that this document does not constitute a legally binding agreement."
Trump isn't interested in and doesn't understand real deals. He just wants something so he looks like he's winning on Fox News.
"This document serves to define the general terms for the EPD" "The United States and United Kingdom are immediately beginning negotiations of the EPD" "Both the United States and the United Kingdom recognize that this document does not constitute a legally binding agreement."
Trump isn't interested in and doesn't understand real deals. He just wants something so he looks like he's winning on Fox News.
Sentencing in July or later, pending reports. My plan to fix the justice system includes immediate sentencing, with mitigation to be factored in later.
Two fewer Reform voters in Carlisle for the foreseeable future.
I think at least one of them might be "of no fixed abode" so probably unlikely to be a supporter of Reform, as I would guess the average Reform voter may have a less favourable view than some of those that choose to live in caravans.
Net Zero is starting to now run into economic reality with electric cars and deindustrialisation in a way it wasn't in the 2010s.
To go further, we will have to accept real economic damage being done now, with the hope that our global leadership on it galvanises a faster transition to Net Zero worldwide.
Will we?
To put the actual argument to one side, it was interesting to find that even Reform voters aren't that fussed about Net Zero - only 9% picked it as an issue. It's very much an internet meme.
Yet Farage considers this the "next Brexit". That feels like a fumble to me. They should stick to national identity and immigration.
I'd say that Lincs is the one to watch, again. The new Reform Mayor Andrea Jenkins, and also her boss (?) Zia Yusuf, have been leading with green-bashing, and Lincs is the only place where they have both Mayor and control of the Council.
Yes Lincs is reported to now have 12k green jobs and a green economy worth £1.2bn, according to the Local Enterprise Partnership.
If they want to recreate the 1970s or 1950s, that might not be the place to start.
Apparently net zero costs a bomb, right, so we're going to scrap that woke lefty nonsense, right, and go back to the good old days with British power stations burning British coal, right, who wants wind turbines or pylons anyway, right.
I know that "Net Zero" is completely the wrong messaging, but the goal of energy independence is a good one. The environment needs to be tret as a bonus rather than the objective. Green energy is how we regain our place of power, no longer at the whim of Putin or money markets, we not only generate free energy but we can design build and export the technology.
It should be a no-brainer. But "investment" is seen to be "subsidy" and thus "who will pay for it"
Except that it isn't "free" energy and the panels are largely made in China, so probably not exactly reliable and secure, and quite arguable about how "green" the manufacture of said panels is.
The most obvious self-sufficiency that this government seems to enjoy saying "go fuck yourself" to, is food production. Hopefully unlikely that we would suffer a food blockade as we did in WW2, but if we did we would starve to death pretty quickly. Two Tier Kier seems to be keen to make us starve a lot quicker
Autarky positions like this quickly become absurd. You're arguing for a significant reduction in energy consumption and compulsory veganism.
Solar lasts 25 years+ at 80% efficiency - if China cuts off supply, it will have no material impact on our energy generation for decades, by which time we'll be importing them from someone else. With food, most of our critical imports are from European countries (mainly veg). On gas, most of it comes from Norway.
It isn't an "autarcky position" you pillock, it is common sense critique based on historical fact that being unable to produce a substantial part of our own food is not in any way desirable, quite apart from the environmental cost of importing food that can be grown here, and it's juxtaposition with the attitude of the current government with their much less rational claims on "energy security". As for China cutting off supply of panels, this is highly unlikely, but the point remains that the environmental credentials of these products are highly dubious. Goofy pillocks like Miliband arguing that "energy self-sufficiency" is a main reason for his obsession with randomly covering rural areas in solar panels to line the pockets the greedy is disingenuous in the extreme.
We haven't been self-sufficient on food since about 1805.
If you're moving to an enviornmental position, a massive tax on meat consumption (or at least a reduction in subsidies) would meet both objectives. About 40% of our crops are used to feed animals, and it opens up pastoral land for solar farms and reduces methane emissions.
Sentencing in July or later, pending reports. My plan to fix the justice system includes immediate sentencing, with mitigation to be factored in later.
Two fewer Reform voters in Carlisle for the foreseeable future.
I think at least one of them might be "of no fixed abode" so probably unlikely to be a supporter of Reform, as I would guess the average Reform voter may have a less favourable view than some of those that choose to live in caravans.
Shall we just say that SharePoint and co-pilot don’t look like a good combination
Sadly Sandpit is no longer here. Hounded from this group for not being pure enough when it comes to Ukraine. Especially given he has a personal stake in the conflict that others don’t
The dealer has just offered me an approx trade in value sight unseen, but they have maintained it throughout, of 60% of what I paid them for it in 2018. Albeit it's averaged only 3k miles per annum. It was the same sales chap who sold me the last one.
He also mentioned a thing called an Enyaq, the small battery version of, for just under 30k. An Enyaq is a medium sized SUV if I understand it correctly with a 250 mile 'range' - a bit of a contrast to an R5 or Fiat 500.
Hmmm.
Last time I almost PEX'd I got a better offer from WeBuyAnyCar than the dealership. It might be worth 20 minutes of a lunch hour.
Sentencing in July or later, pending reports. My plan to fix the justice system includes immediate sentencing, with mitigation to be factored in later.
Two fewer Reform voters in Carlisle for the foreseeable future.
I think at least one of them might be "of no fixed abode" so probably unlikely to be a supporter of Reform, as I would guess the average Reform voter may have a less favourable view than some of those that choose to live in caravans.
Did we get a motive of any sort?
Do utter twats need a motive? It's just in their nature to be utter twats.
Sentencing in July or later, pending reports. My plan to fix the justice system includes immediate sentencing, with mitigation to be factored in later.
Two fewer Reform voters in Carlisle for the foreseeable future.
I think at least one of them might be "of no fixed abode" so probably unlikely to be a supporter of Reform, as I would guess the average Reform voter may have a less favourable view than some of those that choose to live in caravans.
From the BBC "Graham's barrister Christopher Knox said his client had been in prison for his "own protection" after "an episode" in December, and would not be making an application for bail." Suggests 6 months already served by sentencing. The other chap the judge is thinking about renewing bail.
Put a dab of paint on your oil filter and see how often it actually gets changed. The VW dealer my father insisted on going to did this all the time and used to claim it was an "oversight". This contrite claim may have carried more heft if the old oil filter hadn't been given a quick wipe with WD40 to clean it up and make it look new.
I fucking love the car game, me.
I've got dash cam footage of my large VW group service centre mechanics laughing and swearing about our T6 not being moved from where we parked it all day. While that was being filmed, we were in reception having a ding dong with the manager as we knew they hadn't touched it and she was claiming the warranty work was "ongoing" and they needed the van back next day (my Mrs is a distrustful sort, she'd parked it with the wheels at a funny angle and a stone on the wheel). She stormed out to find the van gone. That's when the dash cam caught the mechanics pissing about. I confronted the manager next day with the footage. Worth its weight in comedy gold. I don't touch main dealers anymore, apart from warrenty work.
I'm having a look into whether now is a good time to switch again, maybe to electric. I love it, but I'm not sure that I still need my large (low mileage now) estate. It may be at the point where the value may be going to take a dive, so now could be a good time to0 swap.
What is a good smallish electric? Needs would be for local and county travel, with occasional extended distance.
I think someone mentioned a Fiat 500e recently, and the larger battery version of that looks like having potential. Any other suggestions would be welcome.
One question I need to understand - how long does a battery actually sensibly last? And what age is practical for buying a second hand electric?
Renault 5. I've got one so you know it's mint. Alpine A290 if you're flush and want a bit more pep.
It looks like the back-end of the bus during a crash test.
J.D. Vance says Russia won’t get more territory in Ukraine peace talks: “Russia can’t expect to gain land it hasn’t even taken.” He adds, “The U.S. will walk away from talks if Russia doesn’t negotiate in good faith.”
Net Zero is starting to now run into economic reality with electric cars and deindustrialisation in a way it wasn't in the 2010s.
To go further, we will have to accept real economic damage being done now, with the hope that our global leadership on it galvanises a faster transition to Net Zero worldwide.
Will we?
To put the actual argument to one side, it was interesting to find that even Reform voters aren't that fussed about Net Zero - only 9% picked it as an issue. It's very much an internet meme.
Yet Farage considers this the "next Brexit". That feels like a fumble to me. They should stick to national identity and immigration.
I'd say that Lincs is the one to watch, again. The new Reform Mayor Andrea Jenkins, and also her boss (?) Zia Yusuf, have been leading with green-bashing, and Lincs is the only place where they have both Mayor and control of the Council.
Yes Lincs is reported to now have 12k green jobs and a green economy worth £1.2bn, according to the Local Enterprise Partnership.
If they want to recreate the 1970s or 1950s, that might not be the place to start.
Apparently net zero costs a bomb, right, so we're going to scrap that woke lefty nonsense, right, and go back to the good old days with British power stations burning British coal, right, who wants wind turbines or pylons anyway, right.
I know that "Net Zero" is completely the wrong messaging, but the goal of energy independence is a good one. The environment needs to be tret as a bonus rather than the objective. Green energy is how we regain our place of power, no longer at the whim of Putin or money markets, we not only generate free energy but we can design build and export the technology.
It should be a no-brainer. But "investment" is seen to be "subsidy" and thus "who will pay for it"
Except that it isn't "free" energy and the panels are largely made in China, so probably not exactly reliable and secure, and quite arguable about how "green" the manufacture of said panels is.
The most obvious self-sufficiency that this government seems to enjoy saying "go fuck yourself" to, is food production. Hopefully unlikely that we would suffer a food blockade as we did in WW2, but if we did we would starve to death pretty quickly. Two Tier Kier seems to be keen to make us starve a lot quicker
Autarky positions like this quickly become absurd. You're arguing for a significant reduction in energy consumption and compulsory veganism.
Solar lasts 25 years+ at 80% efficiency - if China cuts off supply, it will have no material impact on our energy generation for decades, by which time we'll be importing them from someone else. With food, most of our critical imports are from European countries (mainly veg). On gas, most of it comes from Norway.
It isn't an "autarcky position" you pillock, it is common sense critique based on historical fact that being unable to produce a substantial part of our own food is not in any way desirable, quite apart from the environmental cost of importing food that can be grown here, and it's juxtaposition with the attitude of the current government with their much less rational claims on "energy security". As for China cutting off supply of panels, this is highly unlikely, but the point remains that the environmental credentials of these products are highly dubious. Goofy pillocks like Miliband arguing that "energy self-sufficiency" is a main reason for his obsession with randomly covering rural areas in solar panels to line the pockets the greedy is disingenuous in the extreme.
We haven't been self-sufficient on food since about 1805.
If you're moving to an enviornmental position, a massive tax on meat consumption (or at least a reduction in subsidies) would meet both objectives. About 40% of our crops are used to feed animals, and it opens up pastoral land for solar farms and reduces methane emissions.
Lol. Are you a vegan by any chance? This is hyperbolic "enviornmental" (sic) bollox. Sorry to burst your myopic greeny propaganda bubble, but in the real practical rural world (where most lefties and Greens have never ventured) there are large parts of the local ecology and enviornment that require grazing to maintain ecosystems that have evolved over millennia. There is no doubt that a reduction in meat consumption in the west would have some benefits both environmental and health, but the idea that we should move to the fantasy world that many vegans and Greens live in would cause dramatic food shortage and localised environmental damage.
Put a dab of paint on your oil filter and see how often it actually gets changed. The VW dealer my father insisted on going to did this all the time and used to claim it was an "oversight". This contrite claim may have carried more heft if the old oil filter hadn't been given a quick wipe with WD40 to clean it up and make it look new.
I fucking love the car game, me.
I've got dash cam footage of my large VW group service centre mechanics laughing and swearing about our T6 not being moved from where we parked it all day. While that was being filmed, we were in reception having a ding dong with the manager as we knew they hadn't touched it and she was claiming the warranty work was "ongoing" and they needed the van back next day (my Mrs is a distrustful sort, she'd parked it with the wheels at a funny angle and a stone on the wheel). She stormed out to find the van gone. That's when the dash cam caught the mechanics pissing about. I confronted the manager next day with the footage. Worth its weight in comedy gold. I don't touch main dealers anymore, apart from warrenty work.
Reminds me I need to go and pay my invoice next Monday morning for the recent service and headlight bulb replacements. £155 all in, car left on road outside because I get to it after the shop closes from work. They mentioned the top mount could potentially do with changing (~£250 job) but it could wait till the November MOT. Proper salt of the earth independent garage.
Net Zero is starting to now run into economic reality with electric cars and deindustrialisation in a way it wasn't in the 2010s.
To go further, we will have to accept real economic damage being done now, with the hope that our global leadership on it galvanises a faster transition to Net Zero worldwide.
Will we?
To put the actual argument to one side, it was interesting to find that even Reform voters aren't that fussed about Net Zero - only 9% picked it as an issue. It's very much an internet meme.
Yet Farage considers this the "next Brexit". That feels like a fumble to me. They should stick to national identity and immigration.
I'd say that Lincs is the one to watch, again. The new Reform Mayor Andrea Jenkins, and also her boss (?) Zia Yusuf, have been leading with green-bashing, and Lincs is the only place where they have both Mayor and control of the Council.
Yes Lincs is reported to now have 12k green jobs and a green economy worth £1.2bn, according to the Local Enterprise Partnership.
If they want to recreate the 1970s or 1950s, that might not be the place to start.
Apparently net zero costs a bomb, right, so we're going to scrap that woke lefty nonsense, right, and go back to the good old days with British power stations burning British coal, right, who wants wind turbines or pylons anyway, right.
I know that "Net Zero" is completely the wrong messaging, but the goal of energy independence is a good one. The environment needs to be tret as a bonus rather than the objective. Green energy is how we regain our place of power, no longer at the whim of Putin or money markets, we not only generate free energy but we can design build and export the technology.
It should be a no-brainer. But "investment" is seen to be "subsidy" and thus "who will pay for it"
Except that it isn't "free" energy and the panels are largely made in China, so probably not exactly reliable and secure, and quite arguable about how "green" the manufacture of said panels is.
The most obvious self-sufficiency that this government seems to enjoy saying "go fuck yourself" to, is food production. Hopefully unlikely that we would suffer a food blockade as we did in WW2, but if we did we would starve to death pretty quickly. Two Tier Kier seems to be keen to make us starve a lot quicker
Autarky positions like this quickly become absurd. You're arguing for a significant reduction in energy consumption and compulsory veganism.
Solar lasts 25 years+ at 80% efficiency - if China cuts off supply, it will have no material impact on our energy generation for decades, by which time we'll be importing them from someone else. With food, most of our critical imports are from European countries (mainly veg). On gas, most of it comes from Norway.
It isn't an "autarcky position" you pillock, it is common sense critique based on historical fact that being unable to produce a substantial part of our own food is not in any way desirable, quite apart from the environmental cost of importing food that can be grown here, and it's juxtaposition with the attitude of the current government with their much less rational claims on "energy security". As for China cutting off supply of panels, this is highly unlikely, but the point remains that the environmental credentials of these products are highly dubious. Goofy pillocks like Miliband arguing that "energy self-sufficiency" is a main reason for his obsession with randomly covering rural areas in solar panels to line the pockets the greedy is disingenuous in the extreme.
We haven't been self-sufficient on food since about 1805.
If you're moving to an enviornmental position, a massive tax on meat consumption (or at least a reduction in subsidies) would meet both objectives. About 40% of our crops are used to feed animals, and it opens up pastoral land for solar farms and reduces methane emissions.
If memory serves we got close during ww2, but not completely and including the republic of Ireland. It involved a lot of people growing their own food. this was forced by the fact that food imports from Europe shrank to zero and from other countries were endangered by U-boat.
I’ll still be shopping at Tesco, going swimming sometimes, nibbling nuts in the afternoon, drinking red wine from a sherry glass, I’ll still be doing these same things, but I’ll be doing them in a world that has changed.
This is faintly tragic, and also ever so slightly provincial, and non-U. But, then again, you are a retired accountant.
I agree the post WWII world is now over. VE Day 80 didn't have the spark it should, and it's just moving into history now.
Sentencing in July or later, pending reports. My plan to fix the justice system includes immediate sentencing, with mitigation to be factored in later.
Two fewer Reform voters in Carlisle for the foreseeable future.
I think at least one of them might be "of no fixed abode" so probably unlikely to be a supporter of Reform, as I would guess the average Reform voter may have a less favourable view than some of those that choose to live in caravans.
Did we get a motive of any sort?
Do utter twats need a motive? It's just in their nature to be utter twats.
It has been suggested somewhere that it was "revenge" for one of them being in dispute about where he keeps his caravan
If memory serves we got close during ww2, but not completely and including the republic of Ireland. It involved a lot of people growing their own food. this was forced by the fact that food imports from Europe shrank to zero and from other countries were endangered by U-boat.
Net Zero is starting to now run into economic reality with electric cars and deindustrialisation in a way it wasn't in the 2010s.
To go further, we will have to accept real economic damage being done now, with the hope that our global leadership on it galvanises a faster transition to Net Zero worldwide.
Will we?
To put the actual argument to one side, it was interesting to find that even Reform voters aren't that fussed about Net Zero - only 9% picked it as an issue. It's very much an internet meme.
Yet Farage considers this the "next Brexit". That feels like a fumble to me. They should stick to national identity and immigration.
I'd say that Lincs is the one to watch, again. The new Reform Mayor Andrea Jenkins, and also her boss (?) Zia Yusuf, have been leading with green-bashing, and Lincs is the only place where they have both Mayor and control of the Council.
Yes Lincs is reported to now have 12k green jobs and a green economy worth £1.2bn, according to the Local Enterprise Partnership.
If they want to recreate the 1970s or 1950s, that might not be the place to start.
Apparently net zero costs a bomb, right, so we're going to scrap that woke lefty nonsense, right, and go back to the good old days with British power stations burning British coal, right, who wants wind turbines or pylons anyway, right.
I know that "Net Zero" is completely the wrong messaging, but the goal of energy independence is a good one. The environment needs to be tret as a bonus rather than the objective. Green energy is how we regain our place of power, no longer at the whim of Putin or money markets, we not only generate free energy but we can design build and export the technology.
It should be a no-brainer. But "investment" is seen to be "subsidy" and thus "who will pay for it"
Except that it isn't "free" energy and the panels are largely made in China, so probably not exactly reliable and secure, and quite arguable about how "green" the manufacture of said panels is.
The most obvious self-sufficiency that this government seems to enjoy saying "go fuck yourself" to, is food production. Hopefully unlikely that we would suffer a food blockade as we did in WW2, but if we did we would starve to death pretty quickly. Two Tier Kier seems to be keen to make us starve a lot quicker
Autarky positions like this quickly become absurd. You're arguing for a significant reduction in energy consumption and compulsory veganism.
Solar lasts 25 years+ at 80% efficiency - if China cuts off supply, it will have no material impact on our energy generation for decades, by which time we'll be importing them from someone else. With food, most of our critical imports are from European countries (mainly veg). On gas, most of it comes from Norway.
It isn't an "autarcky position" you pillock, it is common sense critique based on historical fact that being unable to produce a substantial part of our own food is not in any way desirable, quite apart from the environmental cost of importing food that can be grown here, and it's juxtaposition with the attitude of the current government with their much less rational claims on "energy security". As for China cutting off supply of panels, this is highly unlikely, but the point remains that the environmental credentials of these products are highly dubious. Goofy pillocks like Miliband arguing that "energy self-sufficiency" is a main reason for his obsession with randomly covering rural areas in solar panels to line the pockets the greedy is disingenuous in the extreme.
We haven't been self-sufficient on food since about 1805.
If you're moving to an enviornmental position, a massive tax on meat consumption (or at least a reduction in subsidies) would meet both objectives. About 40% of our crops are used to feed animals, and it opens up pastoral land for solar farms and reduces methane emissions.
The removal of the 19% tariff on US bioethanol may free up some farmland for growing food in the UK. I have no idea how much farmland.
Net Zero is starting to now run into economic reality with electric cars and deindustrialisation in a way it wasn't in the 2010s.
To go further, we will have to accept real economic damage being done now, with the hope that our global leadership on it galvanises a faster transition to Net Zero worldwide.
Will we?
To put the actual argument to one side, it was interesting to find that even Reform voters aren't that fussed about Net Zero - only 9% picked it as an issue. It's very much an internet meme.
Yet Farage considers this the "next Brexit". That feels like a fumble to me. They should stick to national identity and immigration.
I'd say that Lincs is the one to watch, again. The new Reform Mayor Andrea Jenkins, and also her boss (?) Zia Yusuf, have been leading with green-bashing, and Lincs is the only place where they have both Mayor and control of the Council.
Yes Lincs is reported to now have 12k green jobs and a green economy worth £1.2bn, according to the Local Enterprise Partnership.
If they want to recreate the 1970s or 1950s, that might not be the place to start.
Apparently net zero costs a bomb, right, so we're going to scrap that woke lefty nonsense, right, and go back to the good old days with British power stations burning British coal, right, who wants wind turbines or pylons anyway, right.
I know that "Net Zero" is completely the wrong messaging, but the goal of energy independence is a good one. The environment needs to be tret as a bonus rather than the objective. Green energy is how we regain our place of power, no longer at the whim of Putin or money markets, we not only generate free energy but we can design build and export the technology.
It should be a no-brainer. But "investment" is seen to be "subsidy" and thus "who will pay for it"
Except that it isn't "free" energy and the panels are largely made in China, so probably not exactly reliable and secure, and quite arguable about how "green" the manufacture of said panels is.
The most obvious self-sufficiency that this government seems to enjoy saying "go fuck yourself" to, is food production. Hopefully unlikely that we would suffer a food blockade as we did in WW2, but if we did we would starve to death pretty quickly. Two Tier Kier seems to be keen to make us starve a lot quicker
Autarky positions like this quickly become absurd. You're arguing for a significant reduction in energy consumption and compulsory veganism.
Solar lasts 25 years+ at 80% efficiency - if China cuts off supply, it will have no material impact on our energy generation for decades, by which time we'll be importing them from someone else. With food, most of our critical imports are from European countries (mainly veg). On gas, most of it comes from Norway.
It isn't an "autarcky position" you pillock, it is common sense critique based on historical fact that being unable to produce a substantial part of our own food is not in any way desirable, quite apart from the environmental cost of importing food that can be grown here, and it's juxtaposition with the attitude of the current government with their much less rational claims on "energy security". As for China cutting off supply of panels, this is highly unlikely, but the point remains that the environmental credentials of these products are highly dubious. Goofy pillocks like Miliband arguing that "energy self-sufficiency" is a main reason for his obsession with randomly covering rural areas in solar panels to line the pockets the greedy is disingenuous in the extreme.
We haven't been self-sufficient on food since about 1805.
If you're moving to an enviornmental position, a massive tax on meat consumption (or at least a reduction in subsidies) would meet both objectives. About 40% of our crops are used to feed animals, and it opens up pastoral land for solar farms and reduces methane emissions.
If memory serves we got close during ww2, but not completely and including the republic of Ireland. It involved a lot of people growing their own food. this was forced by the fact that food imports from Europe shrank to zero and from other countries were endangered by U-boat.
Happy to be corrected if wrong
It was WWI where we are supposed to have got within 6 weeks of problems, before convoys were introduced.
In WWII, the germans never got close to closing the Atlantic.
Net Zero is starting to now run into economic reality with electric cars and deindustrialisation in a way it wasn't in the 2010s.
To go further, we will have to accept real economic damage being done now, with the hope that our global leadership on it galvanises a faster transition to Net Zero worldwide.
Will we?
To put the actual argument to one side, it was interesting to find that even Reform voters aren't that fussed about Net Zero - only 9% picked it as an issue. It's very much an internet meme.
Yet Farage considers this the "next Brexit". That feels like a fumble to me. They should stick to national identity and immigration.
I'd say that Lincs is the one to watch, again. The new Reform Mayor Andrea Jenkins, and also her boss (?) Zia Yusuf, have been leading with green-bashing, and Lincs is the only place where they have both Mayor and control of the Council.
Yes Lincs is reported to now have 12k green jobs and a green economy worth £1.2bn, according to the Local Enterprise Partnership.
If they want to recreate the 1970s or 1950s, that might not be the place to start.
Apparently net zero costs a bomb, right, so we're going to scrap that woke lefty nonsense, right, and go back to the good old days with British power stations burning British coal, right, who wants wind turbines or pylons anyway, right.
I know that "Net Zero" is completely the wrong messaging, but the goal of energy independence is a good one. The environment needs to be tret as a bonus rather than the objective. Green energy is how we regain our place of power, no longer at the whim of Putin or money markets, we not only generate free energy but we can design build and export the technology.
It should be a no-brainer. But "investment" is seen to be "subsidy" and thus "who will pay for it"
Except that it isn't "free" energy and the panels are largely made in China, so probably not exactly reliable and secure, and quite arguable about how "green" the manufacture of said panels is.
The most obvious self-sufficiency that this government seems to enjoy saying "go fuck yourself" to, is food production. Hopefully unlikely that we would suffer a food blockade as we did in WW2, but if we did we would starve to death pretty quickly. Two Tier Kier seems to be keen to make us starve a lot quicker
Autarky positions like this quickly become absurd. You're arguing for a significant reduction in energy consumption and compulsory veganism.
Solar lasts 25 years+ at 80% efficiency - if China cuts off supply, it will have no material impact on our energy generation for decades, by which time we'll be importing them from someone else. With food, most of our critical imports are from European countries (mainly veg). On gas, most of it comes from Norway.
It isn't an "autarcky position" you pillock, it is common sense critique based on historical fact that being unable to produce a substantial part of our own food is not in any way desirable, quite apart from the environmental cost of importing food that can be grown here, and it's juxtaposition with the attitude of the current government with their much less rational claims on "energy security". As for China cutting off supply of panels, this is highly unlikely, but the point remains that the environmental credentials of these products are highly dubious. Goofy pillocks like Miliband arguing that "energy self-sufficiency" is a main reason for his obsession with randomly covering rural areas in solar panels to line the pockets the greedy is disingenuous in the extreme.
We haven't been self-sufficient on food since about 1805.
If you're moving to an enviornmental position, a massive tax on meat consumption (or at least a reduction in subsidies) would meet both objectives. About 40% of our crops are used to feed animals, and it opens up pastoral land for solar farms and reduces methane emissions.
If memory serves we got close during ww2, but not completely and including the republic of Ireland. It involved a lot of people growing their own food. this was forced by the fact that food imports from Europe shrank to zero and from other countries were endangered by U-boat.
Put a dab of paint on your oil filter and see how often it actually gets changed. The VW dealer my father insisted on going to did this all the time and used to claim it was an "oversight". This contrite claim may have carried more heft if the old oil filter hadn't been given a quick wipe with WD40 to clean it up and make it look new.
I fucking love the car game, me.
I've got dash cam footage of my large VW group service centre mechanics laughing and swearing about our T6 not being moved from where we parked it all day. While that was being filmed, we were in reception having a ding dong with the manager as we knew they hadn't touched it and she was claiming the warranty work was "ongoing" and they needed the van back next day (my Mrs is a distrustful sort, she'd parked it with the wheels at a funny angle and a stone on the wheel). She stormed out to find the van gone. That's when the dash cam caught the mechanics pissing about. I confronted the manager next day with the footage. Worth its weight in comedy gold. I don't touch main dealers anymore, apart from warrenty work.
Mrs DA always leases her cars through her business so they have to go to the dealer for service. I stand over them the entire time they are doing it.
Net Zero is starting to now run into economic reality with electric cars and deindustrialisation in a way it wasn't in the 2010s.
To go further, we will have to accept real economic damage being done now, with the hope that our global leadership on it galvanises a faster transition to Net Zero worldwide.
Will we?
To put the actual argument to one side, it was interesting to find that even Reform voters aren't that fussed about Net Zero - only 9% picked it as an issue. It's very much an internet meme.
Yet Farage considers this the "next Brexit". That feels like a fumble to me. They should stick to national identity and immigration.
I'd say that Lincs is the one to watch, again. The new Reform Mayor Andrea Jenkins, and also her boss (?) Zia Yusuf, have been leading with green-bashing, and Lincs is the only place where they have both Mayor and control of the Council.
Yes Lincs is reported to now have 12k green jobs and a green economy worth £1.2bn, according to the Local Enterprise Partnership.
If they want to recreate the 1970s or 1950s, that might not be the place to start.
Apparently net zero costs a bomb, right, so we're going to scrap that woke lefty nonsense, right, and go back to the good old days with British power stations burning British coal, right, who wants wind turbines or pylons anyway, right.
I know that "Net Zero" is completely the wrong messaging, but the goal of energy independence is a good one. The environment needs to be tret as a bonus rather than the objective. Green energy is how we regain our place of power, no longer at the whim of Putin or money markets, we not only generate free energy but we can design build and export the technology.
It should be a no-brainer. But "investment" is seen to be "subsidy" and thus "who will pay for it"
Except that it isn't "free" energy and the panels are largely made in China, so probably not exactly reliable and secure, and quite arguable about how "green" the manufacture of said panels is.
The most obvious self-sufficiency that this government seems to enjoy saying "go fuck yourself" to, is food production. Hopefully unlikely that we would suffer a food blockade as we did in WW2, but if we did we would starve to death pretty quickly. Two Tier Kier seems to be keen to make us starve a lot quicker
Autarky positions like this quickly become absurd. You're arguing for a significant reduction in energy consumption and compulsory veganism.
Solar lasts 25 years+ at 80% efficiency - if China cuts off supply, it will have no material impact on our energy generation for decades, by which time we'll be importing them from someone else. With food, most of our critical imports are from European countries (mainly veg). On gas, most of it comes from Norway.
It isn't an "autarcky position" you pillock, it is common sense critique based on historical fact that being unable to produce a substantial part of our own food is not in any way desirable, quite apart from the environmental cost of importing food that can be grown here, and it's juxtaposition with the attitude of the current government with their much less rational claims on "energy security". As for China cutting off supply of panels, this is highly unlikely, but the point remains that the environmental credentials of these products are highly dubious. Goofy pillocks like Miliband arguing that "energy self-sufficiency" is a main reason for his obsession with randomly covering rural areas in solar panels to line the pockets the greedy is disingenuous in the extreme.
We haven't been self-sufficient on food since about 1805.
If you're moving to an enviornmental position, a massive tax on meat consumption (or at least a reduction in subsidies) would meet both objectives. About 40% of our crops are used to feed animals, and it opens up pastoral land for solar farms and reduces methane emissions.
Lol. Are you a vegan by any chance? This is hyperbolic "enviornmental" (sic) bollox. Sorry to burst your myopic greeny propaganda bubble, but in the real practical rural world (where most lefties and Greens have never ventured) there are large parts of the local ecology and enviornment that require grazing to maintain ecosystems that have evolved over millennia. There is no doubt that a reduction in meat consumption in the west would have some benefits both environmental and health, but the idea that we should move to the fantasy world that many vegans and Greens live in would cause dramatic food shortage and localised environmental damage.
Keep taking the lentils!
No, I'm not. Not even a vegetarian. I'm just pointing out the absurdity of your position, and you don't like it.
That is an utterly terrible result for Labour - I don't think they'd have even lost it last week.
And not only no Green squeeze but no LD squeeze either.
I know the housing types across most of this ward and looking at the EC map, and I'm struggling to think of the Reform demographic in this Halifax ward at all - a couple of terraces east of the A629, some less grand houses on the main road through Copley village, it doesn't even extend to the town centre terraces.
It is substantially the sort of mock Tudor around parkland that wouldn't be out of place in Surrey, but which has trended left over the last couple of decades. Can only think it is a remnant of old Tory votes.
I knew the housing in Longdendale ward in Tameside where Reform prevailed by 20% last month. This is a far worse result than that.
We are entering the era of peak Reform?
Depends which bit of the Reform demographic you're thinking of. From Andrew Teale:
The middle-class nature of Skircoat ward - which increasingly extends to its Asian community - can be seen in its election results, which we can trace over an unusually long length of time because Calderdale's ward boundaries haven't changed since 2004. Skircoat was strongly Conservative in the 2004 election, but it then developed into a close fight between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats: the Lib Dems won the ward twice, in 2007 and 2010. The Lib Dem vote then faded away over the next decade and Labour moved into second place in 2014; Labour then gained all three seats in Skircoat ward from the Conservatives in 2018-21 and they have pulled away further since then. At the last Calderdale elections in 2024, Skircoat ward remained part of the Labour majority on Calderdale council with vote shares of 52% for Labour, 25% for the Conservatives and 15% for the Green Party. The ward gave 17% to UKIP back in 2014, which might give Reform UK - who are standing here for the first time - something to build on.
Pissed off middle class people with a bit of memory of voting Conservative is textbook Reform; it's not far off as a description of Farage.
Pissed off urban middle class people who fell leftwards in the mid 10s isn't quite so classic Reform though. If it is, places that once voted LD but don't now is another string to their bow.
Locally, disapproval of Rachel Reeves from Halifax employees could be another factor.
And old boundaries is an interesting point for next year. It is possibly the biggest round of all up metro elections due to boundary changes in years - most of West Midlands, Tyneside and West Yorkshire are all up, along with Barnsley and Sefton - there are 16 all up metros next year that are usually by thirds. If Reform have kept cleanish where they are in charge now, they could get a very significant metro foothold in a single year.
Halifax is the kind of place I'd expect Reform to do well. And, plenty of middle class people will vote for them, especially with the Conservatives' vote in free fall.
They'll perform very well in much of urban Britain next year, other than Liverpool, some university constituencies, and most of London.
My favourite car repair story was the time the manager of the body shop, where I'd taken my car after an accident, rang me to say he was very sorry but my car had been stolen from his premises!
Got it back fairly quickly ...... the thieves jumped a red light in front of a police patrol car ..... and after a further week the car was returned to me with immaculate bodywork.
Net Zero is starting to now run into economic reality with electric cars and deindustrialisation in a way it wasn't in the 2010s.
To go further, we will have to accept real economic damage being done now, with the hope that our global leadership on it galvanises a faster transition to Net Zero worldwide.
Will we?
To put the actual argument to one side, it was interesting to find that even Reform voters aren't that fussed about Net Zero - only 9% picked it as an issue. It's very much an internet meme.
Yet Farage considers this the "next Brexit". That feels like a fumble to me. They should stick to national identity and immigration.
I'd say that Lincs is the one to watch, again. The new Reform Mayor Andrea Jenkins, and also her boss (?) Zia Yusuf, have been leading with green-bashing, and Lincs is the only place where they have both Mayor and control of the Council.
Yes Lincs is reported to now have 12k green jobs and a green economy worth £1.2bn, according to the Local Enterprise Partnership.
If they want to recreate the 1970s or 1950s, that might not be the place to start.
Apparently net zero costs a bomb, right, so we're going to scrap that woke lefty nonsense, right, and go back to the good old days with British power stations burning British coal, right, who wants wind turbines or pylons anyway, right.
I know that "Net Zero" is completely the wrong messaging, but the goal of energy independence is a good one. The environment needs to be tret as a bonus rather than the objective. Green energy is how we regain our place of power, no longer at the whim of Putin or money markets, we not only generate free energy but we can design build and export the technology.
It should be a no-brainer. But "investment" is seen to be "subsidy" and thus "who will pay for it"
Except that it isn't "free" energy and the panels are largely made in China, so probably not exactly reliable and secure, and quite arguable about how "green" the manufacture of said panels is.
The most obvious self-sufficiency that this government seems to enjoy saying "go fuck yourself" to, is food production. Hopefully unlikely that we would suffer a food blockade as we did in WW2, but if we did we would starve to death pretty quickly. Two Tier Kier seems to be keen to make us starve a lot quicker
Autarky positions like this quickly become absurd. You're arguing for a significant reduction in energy consumption and compulsory veganism.
Solar lasts 25 years+ at 80% efficiency - if China cuts off supply, it will have no material impact on our energy generation for decades, by which time we'll be importing them from someone else. With food, most of our critical imports are from European countries (mainly veg). On gas, most of it comes from Norway.
It isn't an "autarcky position" you pillock, it is common sense critique based on historical fact that being unable to produce a substantial part of our own food is not in any way desirable, quite apart from the environmental cost of importing food that can be grown here, and it's juxtaposition with the attitude of the current government with their much less rational claims on "energy security". As for China cutting off supply of panels, this is highly unlikely, but the point remains that the environmental credentials of these products are highly dubious. Goofy pillocks like Miliband arguing that "energy self-sufficiency" is a main reason for his obsession with randomly covering rural areas in solar panels to line the pockets the greedy is disingenuous in the extreme.
We haven't been self-sufficient on food since about 1805.
If you're moving to an enviornmental position, a massive tax on meat consumption (or at least a reduction in subsidies) would meet both objectives. About 40% of our crops are used to feed animals, and it opens up pastoral land for solar farms and reduces methane emissions.
Lol. Are you a vegan by any chance? This is hyperbolic "enviornmental" (sic) bollox. Sorry to burst your myopic greeny propaganda bubble, but in the real practical rural world (where most lefties and Greens have never ventured) there are large parts of the local ecology and enviornment that require grazing to maintain ecosystems that have evolved over millennia. There is no doubt that a reduction in meat consumption in the west would have some benefits both environmental and health, but the idea that we should move to the fantasy world that many vegans and Greens live in would cause dramatic food shortage and localised environmental damage.
Keep taking the lentils!
I think around 75% (depending on who you believe) of agricultural land is used to raise meat and dairy, either in grazing, pens/ housing or crops to feed the livestock. People want Red Tractor bollocks and "Organic Free Range Grass Fed Barn Raised Humanely Killed" to salve their conscience , but that's not sustainable even over the short term. Given that about 50% of habitable land is used for agriculture, what little animal "welfare" we have will have to go out the window. Eat what you want, but we'll have to find a better way to feed the humans we keep producing.
Net Zero is starting to now run into economic reality with electric cars and deindustrialisation in a way it wasn't in the 2010s.
To go further, we will have to accept real economic damage being done now, with the hope that our global leadership on it galvanises a faster transition to Net Zero worldwide.
Will we?
To put the actual argument to one side, it was interesting to find that even Reform voters aren't that fussed about Net Zero - only 9% picked it as an issue. It's very much an internet meme.
Yet Farage considers this the "next Brexit". That feels like a fumble to me. They should stick to national identity and immigration.
I'd say that Lincs is the one to watch, again. The new Reform Mayor Andrea Jenkins, and also her boss (?) Zia Yusuf, have been leading with green-bashing, and Lincs is the only place where they have both Mayor and control of the Council.
Yes Lincs is reported to now have 12k green jobs and a green economy worth £1.2bn, according to the Local Enterprise Partnership.
If they want to recreate the 1970s or 1950s, that might not be the place to start.
Apparently net zero costs a bomb, right, so we're going to scrap that woke lefty nonsense, right, and go back to the good old days with British power stations burning British coal, right, who wants wind turbines or pylons anyway, right.
I know that "Net Zero" is completely the wrong messaging, but the goal of energy independence is a good one. The environment needs to be tret as a bonus rather than the objective. Green energy is how we regain our place of power, no longer at the whim of Putin or money markets, we not only generate free energy but we can design build and export the technology.
It should be a no-brainer. But "investment" is seen to be "subsidy" and thus "who will pay for it"
Except that it isn't "free" energy and the panels are largely made in China, so probably not exactly reliable and secure, and quite arguable about how "green" the manufacture of said panels is.
The most obvious self-sufficiency that this government seems to enjoy saying "go fuck yourself" to, is food production. Hopefully unlikely that we would suffer a food blockade as we did in WW2, but if we did we would starve to death pretty quickly. Two Tier Kier seems to be keen to make us starve a lot quicker
Autarky positions like this quickly become absurd. You're arguing for a significant reduction in energy consumption and compulsory veganism.
Solar lasts 25 years+ at 80% efficiency - if China cuts off supply, it will have no material impact on our energy generation for decades, by which time we'll be importing them from someone else. With food, most of our critical imports are from European countries (mainly veg). On gas, most of it comes from Norway.
It isn't an "autarcky position" you pillock, it is common sense critique based on historical fact that being unable to produce a substantial part of our own food is not in any way desirable, quite apart from the environmental cost of importing food that can be grown here, and it's juxtaposition with the attitude of the current government with their much less rational claims on "energy security". As for China cutting off supply of panels, this is highly unlikely, but the point remains that the environmental credentials of these products are highly dubious. Goofy pillocks like Miliband arguing that "energy self-sufficiency" is a main reason for his obsession with randomly covering rural areas in solar panels to line the pockets the greedy is disingenuous in the extreme.
We haven't been self-sufficient on food since about 1805.
If you're moving to an enviornmental position, a massive tax on meat consumption (or at least a reduction in subsidies) would meet both objectives. About 40% of our crops are used to feed animals, and it opens up pastoral land for solar farms and reduces methane emissions.
If memory serves we got close during ww2, but not completely and including the republic of Ireland. It involved a lot of people growing their own food. this was forced by the fact that food imports from Europe shrank to zero and from other countries were endangered by U-boat.
Happy to be corrected if wrong
Nowhere near.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feeding_Britain_in_the_Second_World_War ..In 1939, 12 million acres (4.8 million ha) of land in Britain was cultivated and 17 million acres (7.0 million ha) of land was in grassland. By 1944, 18 million acres were being cultivated (7.6 million ha) and eleven million (4.4 million ha) were in grassland. The acreage planted in potatoes had more than doubled and that in wheat increased by two-thirds.[16] The government programs to effect this change involved the "plough-up" program, guaranteed high prices to farmers for their products, and technological advances in farming practices. As much of the new land was marginal in quality, the results did not make Britain self sufficient in food. At the beginning of the war Britain produced 33 percent of the calories its people consumed; by the end of the war Britain produced 44 percent of the calories consumed..
The dealer has just offered me an approx trade in value sight unseen, but they have maintained it throughout, of 60% of what I paid them for it in 2018. Albeit it's averaged only 3k miles per annum. It was the same sales chap who sold me the last one.
He also mentioned a thing called an Enyaq, the small battery version of, for just under 30k. An Enyaq is a medium sized SUV if I understand it correctly with a 250 mile 'range' - a bit of a contrast to an R5 or Fiat 500.
Hmmm.
Last time I almost PEX'd I got a better offer from WeBuyAnyCar than the dealership. It might be worth 20 minutes of a lunch hour.
Had a RTC last month where the car was written off. Insurance offered 70% of the purchase price after 4 years which seemed high. Did 2nd hand prices jump post-Covid
Does the centre-left have any explanations for why Ref is doing so well atm, (other than they're a bunch of thickos, bigots, etc)?
Country wants change, people know we've been on the wrong track for 15 years. That gave Labour a landslide, but now Labour are in power so Reform is the change option. Tories still associated with the mess they left country in.
Does the centre-left have any explanations for why Ref is doing so well atm, (other than they're a bunch of thickos, bigots, etc)?
Its not a great mystery is it?
Conservatives are not just rubbish but discredited and out of ideas. Labour are a fraction better but also out of both ideas and courage. Workers are unhappy their share of the economy goes to the retired. The retired are unhappy with immigration and the pace of social change.
Not sure what it has to do with the centre left, anymore than the far left, centre right, centre or far right.
Net Zero is starting to now run into economic reality with electric cars and deindustrialisation in a way it wasn't in the 2010s.
To go further, we will have to accept real economic damage being done now, with the hope that our global leadership on it galvanises a faster transition to Net Zero worldwide.
Will we?
To put the actual argument to one side, it was interesting to find that even Reform voters aren't that fussed about Net Zero - only 9% picked it as an issue. It's very much an internet meme.
Yet Farage considers this the "next Brexit". That feels like a fumble to me. They should stick to national identity and immigration.
I'd say that Lincs is the one to watch, again. The new Reform Mayor Andrea Jenkins, and also her boss (?) Zia Yusuf, have been leading with green-bashing, and Lincs is the only place where they have both Mayor and control of the Council.
Yes Lincs is reported to now have 12k green jobs and a green economy worth £1.2bn, according to the Local Enterprise Partnership.
If they want to recreate the 1970s or 1950s, that might not be the place to start.
Apparently net zero costs a bomb, right, so we're going to scrap that woke lefty nonsense, right, and go back to the good old days with British power stations burning British coal, right, who wants wind turbines or pylons anyway, right.
I know that "Net Zero" is completely the wrong messaging, but the goal of energy independence is a good one. The environment needs to be tret as a bonus rather than the objective. Green energy is how we regain our place of power, no longer at the whim of Putin or money markets, we not only generate free energy but we can design build and export the technology.
It should be a no-brainer. But "investment" is seen to be "subsidy" and thus "who will pay for it"
Except that it isn't "free" energy and the panels are largely made in China, so probably not exactly reliable and secure, and quite arguable about how "green" the manufacture of said panels is.
The most obvious self-sufficiency that this government seems to enjoy saying "go fuck yourself" to, is food production. Hopefully unlikely that we would suffer a food blockade as we did in WW2, but if we did we would starve to death pretty quickly. Two Tier Kier seems to be keen to make us starve a lot quicker
Autarky positions like this quickly become absurd. You're arguing for a significant reduction in energy consumption and compulsory veganism.
Solar lasts 25 years+ at 80% efficiency - if China cuts off supply, it will have no material impact on our energy generation for decades, by which time we'll be importing them from someone else. With food, most of our critical imports are from European countries (mainly veg). On gas, most of it comes from Norway.
It isn't an "autarcky position" you pillock, it is common sense critique based on historical fact that being unable to produce a substantial part of our own food is not in any way desirable, quite apart from the environmental cost of importing food that can be grown here, and it's juxtaposition with the attitude of the current government with their much less rational claims on "energy security". As for China cutting off supply of panels, this is highly unlikely, but the point remains that the environmental credentials of these products are highly dubious. Goofy pillocks like Miliband arguing that "energy self-sufficiency" is a main reason for his obsession with randomly covering rural areas in solar panels to line the pockets the greedy is disingenuous in the extreme.
We haven't been self-sufficient on food since about 1805.
If you're moving to an enviornmental position, a massive tax on meat consumption (or at least a reduction in subsidies) would meet both objectives. About 40% of our crops are used to feed animals, and it opens up pastoral land for solar farms and reduces methane emissions.
Lol. Are you a vegan by any chance? This is hyperbolic "enviornmental" (sic) bollox. Sorry to burst your myopic greeny propaganda bubble, but in the real practical rural world (where most lefties and Greens have never ventured) there are large parts of the local ecology and enviornment that require grazing to maintain ecosystems that have evolved over millennia. There is no doubt that a reduction in meat consumption in the west would have some benefits both environmental and health, but the idea that we should move to the fantasy world that many vegans and Greens live in would cause dramatic food shortage and localised environmental damage.
Keep taking the lentils!
I think around 75% (depending on who you believe) of agricultural land is used to raise meat and dairy, either in grazing, pens/ housing or crops to feed the livestock. People want Red Tractor bollocks and "Organic Free Range Grass Fed Barn Raised Humanely Killed" to salve their conscience , but that's not sustainable even over the short term. Given that about 50% of habitable land is used for agriculture, what little animal "welfare" we have will have to go out the window. Eat what you want, but we'll have to find a better way to feed the humans we keep producing.
Net Zero is starting to now run into economic reality with electric cars and deindustrialisation in a way it wasn't in the 2010s.
To go further, we will have to accept real economic damage being done now, with the hope that our global leadership on it galvanises a faster transition to Net Zero worldwide.
Will we?
To put the actual argument to one side, it was interesting to find that even Reform voters aren't that fussed about Net Zero - only 9% picked it as an issue. It's very much an internet meme.
Yet Farage considers this the "next Brexit". That feels like a fumble to me. They should stick to national identity and immigration.
I'd say that Lincs is the one to watch, again. The new Reform Mayor Andrea Jenkins, and also her boss (?) Zia Yusuf, have been leading with green-bashing, and Lincs is the only place where they have both Mayor and control of the Council.
Yes Lincs is reported to now have 12k green jobs and a green economy worth £1.2bn, according to the Local Enterprise Partnership.
If they want to recreate the 1970s or 1950s, that might not be the place to start.
Apparently net zero costs a bomb, right, so we're going to scrap that woke lefty nonsense, right, and go back to the good old days with British power stations burning British coal, right, who wants wind turbines or pylons anyway, right.
I know that "Net Zero" is completely the wrong messaging, but the goal of energy independence is a good one. The environment needs to be tret as a bonus rather than the objective. Green energy is how we regain our place of power, no longer at the whim of Putin or money markets, we not only generate free energy but we can design build and export the technology.
It should be a no-brainer. But "investment" is seen to be "subsidy" and thus "who will pay for it"
Except that it isn't "free" energy and the panels are largely made in China, so probably not exactly reliable and secure, and quite arguable about how "green" the manufacture of said panels is.
The most obvious self-sufficiency that this government seems to enjoy saying "go fuck yourself" to, is food production. Hopefully unlikely that we would suffer a food blockade as we did in WW2, but if we did we would starve to death pretty quickly. Two Tier Kier seems to be keen to make us starve a lot quicker
Autarky positions like this quickly become absurd. You're arguing for a significant reduction in energy consumption and compulsory veganism.
Solar lasts 25 years+ at 80% efficiency - if China cuts off supply, it will have no material impact on our energy generation for decades, by which time we'll be importing them from someone else. With food, most of our critical imports are from European countries (mainly veg). On gas, most of it comes from Norway.
It isn't an "autarcky position" you pillock, it is common sense critique based on historical fact that being unable to produce a substantial part of our own food is not in any way desirable, quite apart from the environmental cost of importing food that can be grown here, and it's juxtaposition with the attitude of the current government with their much less rational claims on "energy security". As for China cutting off supply of panels, this is highly unlikely, but the point remains that the environmental credentials of these products are highly dubious. Goofy pillocks like Miliband arguing that "energy self-sufficiency" is a main reason for his obsession with randomly covering rural areas in solar panels to line the pockets the greedy is disingenuous in the extreme.
We haven't been self-sufficient on food since about 1805.
If you're moving to an enviornmental position, a massive tax on meat consumption (or at least a reduction in subsidies) would meet both objectives. About 40% of our crops are used to feed animals, and it opens up pastoral land for solar farms and reduces methane emissions.
If memory serves we got close during ww2, but not completely and including the republic of Ireland. It involved a lot of people growing their own food. this was forced by the fact that food imports from Europe shrank to zero and from other countries were endangered by U-boat.
Happy to be corrected if wrong
Nowhere near.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feeding_Britain_in_the_Second_World_War ..In 1939, 12 million acres (4.8 million ha) of land in Britain was cultivated and 17 million acres (7.0 million ha) of land was in grassland. By 1944, 18 million acres were being cultivated (7.6 million ha) and eleven million (4.4 million ha) were in grassland. The acreage planted in potatoes had more than doubled and that in wheat increased by two-thirds.[16] The government programs to effect this change involved the "plough-up" program, guaranteed high prices to farmers for their products, and technological advances in farming practices. As much of the new land was marginal in quality, the results did not make Britain self sufficient in food. At the beginning of the war Britain produced 33 percent of the calories its people consumed; by the end of the war Britain produced 44 percent of the calories consumed..
Net Zero is starting to now run into economic reality with electric cars and deindustrialisation in a way it wasn't in the 2010s.
To go further, we will have to accept real economic damage being done now, with the hope that our global leadership on it galvanises a faster transition to Net Zero worldwide.
Will we?
To put the actual argument to one side, it was interesting to find that even Reform voters aren't that fussed about Net Zero - only 9% picked it as an issue. It's very much an internet meme.
Yet Farage considers this the "next Brexit". That feels like a fumble to me. They should stick to national identity and immigration.
I'd say that Lincs is the one to watch, again. The new Reform Mayor Andrea Jenkins, and also her boss (?) Zia Yusuf, have been leading with green-bashing, and Lincs is the only place where they have both Mayor and control of the Council.
Yes Lincs is reported to now have 12k green jobs and a green economy worth £1.2bn, according to the Local Enterprise Partnership.
If they want to recreate the 1970s or 1950s, that might not be the place to start.
Apparently net zero costs a bomb, right, so we're going to scrap that woke lefty nonsense, right, and go back to the good old days with British power stations burning British coal, right, who wants wind turbines or pylons anyway, right.
I know that "Net Zero" is completely the wrong messaging, but the goal of energy independence is a good one. The environment needs to be tret as a bonus rather than the objective. Green energy is how we regain our place of power, no longer at the whim of Putin or money markets, we not only generate free energy but we can design build and export the technology.
It should be a no-brainer. But "investment" is seen to be "subsidy" and thus "who will pay for it"
Except that it isn't "free" energy and the panels are largely made in China, so probably not exactly reliable and secure, and quite arguable about how "green" the manufacture of said panels is.
The most obvious self-sufficiency that this government seems to enjoy saying "go fuck yourself" to, is food production. Hopefully unlikely that we would suffer a food blockade as we did in WW2, but if we did we would starve to death pretty quickly. Two Tier Kier seems to be keen to make us starve a lot quicker
Autarky positions like this quickly become absurd. You're arguing for a significant reduction in energy consumption and compulsory veganism.
Solar lasts 25 years+ at 80% efficiency - if China cuts off supply, it will have no material impact on our energy generation for decades, by which time we'll be importing them from someone else. With food, most of our critical imports are from European countries (mainly veg). On gas, most of it comes from Norway.
It isn't an "autarcky position" you pillock, it is common sense critique based on historical fact that being unable to produce a substantial part of our own food is not in any way desirable, quite apart from the environmental cost of importing food that can be grown here, and it's juxtaposition with the attitude of the current government with their much less rational claims on "energy security". As for China cutting off supply of panels, this is highly unlikely, but the point remains that the environmental credentials of these products are highly dubious. Goofy pillocks like Miliband arguing that "energy self-sufficiency" is a main reason for his obsession with randomly covering rural areas in solar panels to line the pockets the greedy is disingenuous in the extreme.
We haven't been self-sufficient on food since about 1805.
If you're moving to an enviornmental position, a massive tax on meat consumption (or at least a reduction in subsidies) would meet both objectives. About 40% of our crops are used to feed animals, and it opens up pastoral land for solar farms and reduces methane emissions.
If memory serves we got close during ww2, but not completely and including the republic of Ireland. It involved a lot of people growing their own food. this was forced by the fact that food imports from Europe shrank to zero and from other countries were endangered by U-boat.
Happy to be corrected if wrong
Pretty sure though UK internal food supply got much more efficient, despite rationing & shortages we were still nowhere close to being self sufficient. According to Wiki in 1939 imports made up 50% of Britain’s food supply with 22m tons pa, by war’s end it was 12m tons pa. No doubt there’s an alternative history somewhere where AH flung all Germany’s naval resources at U boats rather than battleships and Sealions.
Does the centre-left have any explanations for why Ref is doing so well atm, (other than they're a bunch of thickos, bigots, etc)?
Reform is NOTA. Reform voters think or know Britain has gone to the dogs.
And – remarkably – the strategy recommended by Jenrick supporters and other right wing dimwits is to cosy up to Reform in the hope of appealing to voters whose core belief is that Conservative governments spent the last 14 years wrecking the place.
Net Zero is starting to now run into economic reality with electric cars and deindustrialisation in a way it wasn't in the 2010s.
To go further, we will have to accept real economic damage being done now, with the hope that our global leadership on it galvanises a faster transition to Net Zero worldwide.
Will we?
To put the actual argument to one side, it was interesting to find that even Reform voters aren't that fussed about Net Zero - only 9% picked it as an issue. It's very much an internet meme.
Yet Farage considers this the "next Brexit". That feels like a fumble to me. They should stick to national identity and immigration.
I'd say that Lincs is the one to watch, again. The new Reform Mayor Andrea Jenkins, and also her boss (?) Zia Yusuf, have been leading with green-bashing, and Lincs is the only place where they have both Mayor and control of the Council.
Yes Lincs is reported to now have 12k green jobs and a green economy worth £1.2bn, according to the Local Enterprise Partnership.
If they want to recreate the 1970s or 1950s, that might not be the place to start.
Apparently net zero costs a bomb, right, so we're going to scrap that woke lefty nonsense, right, and go back to the good old days with British power stations burning British coal, right, who wants wind turbines or pylons anyway, right.
I know that "Net Zero" is completely the wrong messaging, but the goal of energy independence is a good one. The environment needs to be tret as a bonus rather than the objective. Green energy is how we regain our place of power, no longer at the whim of Putin or money markets, we not only generate free energy but we can design build and export the technology.
It should be a no-brainer. But "investment" is seen to be "subsidy" and thus "who will pay for it"
Except that it isn't "free" energy and the panels are largely made in China, so probably not exactly reliable and secure, and quite arguable about how "green" the manufacture of said panels is.
The most obvious self-sufficiency that this government seems to enjoy saying "go fuck yourself" to, is food production. Hopefully unlikely that we would suffer a food blockade as we did in WW2, but if we did we would starve to death pretty quickly. Two Tier Kier seems to be keen to make us starve a lot quicker
Autarky positions like this quickly become absurd. You're arguing for a significant reduction in energy consumption and compulsory veganism.
Solar lasts 25 years+ at 80% efficiency - if China cuts off supply, it will have no material impact on our energy generation for decades, by which time we'll be importing them from someone else. With food, most of our critical imports are from European countries (mainly veg). On gas, most of it comes from Norway.
It isn't an "autarcky position" you pillock, it is common sense critique based on historical fact that being unable to produce a substantial part of our own food is not in any way desirable, quite apart from the environmental cost of importing food that can be grown here, and it's juxtaposition with the attitude of the current government with their much less rational claims on "energy security". As for China cutting off supply of panels, this is highly unlikely, but the point remains that the environmental credentials of these products are highly dubious. Goofy pillocks like Miliband arguing that "energy self-sufficiency" is a main reason for his obsession with randomly covering rural areas in solar panels to line the pockets the greedy is disingenuous in the extreme.
We haven't been self-sufficient on food since about 1805.
If you're moving to an enviornmental position, a massive tax on meat consumption (or at least a reduction in subsidies) would meet both objectives. About 40% of our crops are used to feed animals, and it opens up pastoral land for solar farms and reduces methane emissions.
Lol. Are you a vegan by any chance? This is hyperbolic "enviornmental" (sic) bollox. Sorry to burst your myopic greeny propaganda bubble, but in the real practical rural world (where most lefties and Greens have never ventured) there are large parts of the local ecology and enviornment that require grazing to maintain ecosystems that have evolved over millennia. There is no doubt that a reduction in meat consumption in the west would have some benefits both environmental and health, but the idea that we should move to the fantasy world that many vegans and Greens live in would cause dramatic food shortage and localised environmental damage.
Keep taking the lentils!
No, I'm not. Not even a vegetarian. I'm just pointing out the absurdity of your position, and you don't like it.
Lol. No absurdity in my position you pompous prick! It is called political opinion, based on historical perspective and I am calling out the government view that energy security is more important than food, which I do not believe it is. I personally believe that in a volatile world both should be considered. Nothing absurd in that unless you are an idiot, or a blind devoted apologist of this hopeless government, or probably both.
Net Zero is starting to now run into economic reality with electric cars and deindustrialisation in a way it wasn't in the 2010s.
To go further, we will have to accept real economic damage being done now, with the hope that our global leadership on it galvanises a faster transition to Net Zero worldwide.
Will we?
To put the actual argument to one side, it was interesting to find that even Reform voters aren't that fussed about Net Zero - only 9% picked it as an issue. It's very much an internet meme.
Yet Farage considers this the "next Brexit". That feels like a fumble to me. They should stick to national identity and immigration.
I'd say that Lincs is the one to watch, again. The new Reform Mayor Andrea Jenkins, and also her boss (?) Zia Yusuf, have been leading with green-bashing, and Lincs is the only place where they have both Mayor and control of the Council.
Yes Lincs is reported to now have 12k green jobs and a green economy worth £1.2bn, according to the Local Enterprise Partnership.
If they want to recreate the 1970s or 1950s, that might not be the place to start.
Apparently net zero costs a bomb, right, so we're going to scrap that woke lefty nonsense, right, and go back to the good old days with British power stations burning British coal, right, who wants wind turbines or pylons anyway, right.
I know that "Net Zero" is completely the wrong messaging, but the goal of energy independence is a good one. The environment needs to be tret as a bonus rather than the objective. Green energy is how we regain our place of power, no longer at the whim of Putin or money markets, we not only generate free energy but we can design build and export the technology.
It should be a no-brainer. But "investment" is seen to be "subsidy" and thus "who will pay for it"
Except that it isn't "free" energy and the panels are largely made in China, so probably not exactly reliable and secure, and quite arguable about how "green" the manufacture of said panels is.
The most obvious self-sufficiency that this government seems to enjoy saying "go fuck yourself" to, is food production. Hopefully unlikely that we would suffer a food blockade as we did in WW2, but if we did we would starve to death pretty quickly. Two Tier Kier seems to be keen to make us starve a lot quicker
Autarky positions like this quickly become absurd. You're arguing for a significant reduction in energy consumption and compulsory veganism.
Solar lasts 25 years+ at 80% efficiency - if China cuts off supply, it will have no material impact on our energy generation for decades, by which time we'll be importing them from someone else. With food, most of our critical imports are from European countries (mainly veg). On gas, most of it comes from Norway.
It isn't an "autarcky position" you pillock, it is common sense critique based on historical fact that being unable to produce a substantial part of our own food is not in any way desirable, quite apart from the environmental cost of importing food that can be grown here, and it's juxtaposition with the attitude of the current government with their much less rational claims on "energy security". As for China cutting off supply of panels, this is highly unlikely, but the point remains that the environmental credentials of these products are highly dubious. Goofy pillocks like Miliband arguing that "energy self-sufficiency" is a main reason for his obsession with randomly covering rural areas in solar panels to line the pockets the greedy is disingenuous in the extreme.
We haven't been self-sufficient on food since about 1805.
If you're moving to an enviornmental position, a massive tax on meat consumption (or at least a reduction in subsidies) would meet both objectives. About 40% of our crops are used to feed animals, and it opens up pastoral land for solar farms and reduces methane emissions.
If memory serves we got close during ww2, but not completely and including the republic of Ireland. It involved a lot of people growing their own food. this was forced by the fact that food imports from Europe shrank to zero and from other countries were endangered by U-boat.
Happy to be corrected if wrong
Pretty sure though UK internal food supply got much more efficient, despite rationing & shortages we were still nowhere close to being self sufficient. According to Wiki imports made up 50% of Britain’s food supply with 22m tons pa, by war’s end it was 12m tons pa. No doubt there’s an alternative history somewhere where AH flung all Germany’s naval resources at U boats rather than battleships and Sealions.
I don't think there's any scenario in which Nazi Germany could have won the War. Taking on simultaneously, the British Empire and Commonwealth, the Soviet Union, and the USA, could only end one way.
Logistics are not everything, but they're probably about 75% of winning.
Does the centre-left have any explanations for why Ref is doing so well atm, (other than they're a bunch of thickos, bigots, etc)?
Plenty. The Tories have collapsed after over a decade of poor government, so voters on the right are switching to Reform. There is a more general none-of-the-above vote, unhappy with the party in power and the party previously in power, looking to vote elsewhere. Immigration is a potent motivator for some of the electorate, particularly after Brexit and the Tories failed to deliver on what their supporters expected and we saw very high immigration under Johnson and Sunak. Farage is a smooth operator.
We all know this, don't we? It's not rocket science.
Net Zero is starting to now run into economic reality with electric cars and deindustrialisation in a way it wasn't in the 2010s.
To go further, we will have to accept real economic damage being done now, with the hope that our global leadership on it galvanises a faster transition to Net Zero worldwide.
Will we?
To put the actual argument to one side, it was interesting to find that even Reform voters aren't that fussed about Net Zero - only 9% picked it as an issue. It's very much an internet meme.
Yet Farage considers this the "next Brexit". That feels like a fumble to me. They should stick to national identity and immigration.
I'd say that Lincs is the one to watch, again. The new Reform Mayor Andrea Jenkins, and also her boss (?) Zia Yusuf, have been leading with green-bashing, and Lincs is the only place where they have both Mayor and control of the Council.
Yes Lincs is reported to now have 12k green jobs and a green economy worth £1.2bn, according to the Local Enterprise Partnership.
If they want to recreate the 1970s or 1950s, that might not be the place to start.
Apparently net zero costs a bomb, right, so we're going to scrap that woke lefty nonsense, right, and go back to the good old days with British power stations burning British coal, right, who wants wind turbines or pylons anyway, right.
I know that "Net Zero" is completely the wrong messaging, but the goal of energy independence is a good one. The environment needs to be tret as a bonus rather than the objective. Green energy is how we regain our place of power, no longer at the whim of Putin or money markets, we not only generate free energy but we can design build and export the technology.
It should be a no-brainer. But "investment" is seen to be "subsidy" and thus "who will pay for it"
Except that it isn't "free" energy and the panels are largely made in China, so probably not exactly reliable and secure, and quite arguable about how "green" the manufacture of said panels is.
The most obvious self-sufficiency that this government seems to enjoy saying "go fuck yourself" to, is food production. Hopefully unlikely that we would suffer a food blockade as we did in WW2, but if we did we would starve to death pretty quickly. Two Tier Kier seems to be keen to make us starve a lot quicker
Autarky positions like this quickly become absurd. You're arguing for a significant reduction in energy consumption and compulsory veganism.
Solar lasts 25 years+ at 80% efficiency - if China cuts off supply, it will have no material impact on our energy generation for decades, by which time we'll be importing them from someone else. With food, most of our critical imports are from European countries (mainly veg). On gas, most of it comes from Norway.
It isn't an "autarcky position" you pillock, it is common sense critique based on historical fact that being unable to produce a substantial part of our own food is not in any way desirable, quite apart from the environmental cost of importing food that can be grown here, and it's juxtaposition with the attitude of the current government with their much less rational claims on "energy security". As for China cutting off supply of panels, this is highly unlikely, but the point remains that the environmental credentials of these products are highly dubious. Goofy pillocks like Miliband arguing that "energy self-sufficiency" is a main reason for his obsession with randomly covering rural areas in solar panels to line the pockets the greedy is disingenuous in the extreme.
We haven't been self-sufficient on food since about 1805.
If you're moving to an enviornmental position, a massive tax on meat consumption (or at least a reduction in subsidies) would meet both objectives. About 40% of our crops are used to feed animals, and it opens up pastoral land for solar farms and reduces methane emissions.
If memory serves we got close during ww2, but not completely and including the republic of Ireland. It involved a lot of people growing their own food. this was forced by the fact that food imports from Europe shrank to zero and from other countries were endangered by U-boat.
Happy to be corrected if wrong
Pretty sure though UK internal food supply got much more efficient, despite rationing & shortages we were still nowhere close to being self sufficient. According to Wiki imports made up 50% of Britain’s food supply with 22m tons pa, by war’s end it was 12m tons pa. No doubt there’s an alternative history somewhere where AH flung all Germany’s naval resources at U boats rather than battleships and Sealions.
Certainly quite a bit of Common Land round here was converted from casual recreational use to agriculture.
Not sure about the political logic, but props to the old guy.
98-year-old 🇬🇧British World War II veteran Ken Turner got into a Sherman tank that his army used to fight on to crush a Tesla car. He believes that Elon Musk supports the far-right in Europe, and the money for this comes from car sales. https://x.com/front_ukrainian/status/1920496303361892378
Net Zero is starting to now run into economic reality with electric cars and deindustrialisation in a way it wasn't in the 2010s.
To go further, we will have to accept real economic damage being done now, with the hope that our global leadership on it galvanises a faster transition to Net Zero worldwide.
Will we?
To put the actual argument to one side, it was interesting to find that even Reform voters aren't that fussed about Net Zero - only 9% picked it as an issue. It's very much an internet meme.
Yet Farage considers this the "next Brexit". That feels like a fumble to me. They should stick to national identity and immigration.
I'd say that Lincs is the one to watch, again. The new Reform Mayor Andrea Jenkins, and also her boss (?) Zia Yusuf, have been leading with green-bashing, and Lincs is the only place where they have both Mayor and control of the Council.
Yes Lincs is reported to now have 12k green jobs and a green economy worth £1.2bn, according to the Local Enterprise Partnership.
If they want to recreate the 1970s or 1950s, that might not be the place to start.
Apparently net zero costs a bomb, right, so we're going to scrap that woke lefty nonsense, right, and go back to the good old days with British power stations burning British coal, right, who wants wind turbines or pylons anyway, right.
I know that "Net Zero" is completely the wrong messaging, but the goal of energy independence is a good one. The environment needs to be tret as a bonus rather than the objective. Green energy is how we regain our place of power, no longer at the whim of Putin or money markets, we not only generate free energy but we can design build and export the technology.
It should be a no-brainer. But "investment" is seen to be "subsidy" and thus "who will pay for it"
Except that it isn't "free" energy and the panels are largely made in China, so probably not exactly reliable and secure, and quite arguable about how "green" the manufacture of said panels is.
The most obvious self-sufficiency that this government seems to enjoy saying "go fuck yourself" to, is food production. Hopefully unlikely that we would suffer a food blockade as we did in WW2, but if we did we would starve to death pretty quickly. Two Tier Kier seems to be keen to make us starve a lot quicker
Autarky positions like this quickly become absurd. You're arguing for a significant reduction in energy consumption and compulsory veganism.
Solar lasts 25 years+ at 80% efficiency - if China cuts off supply, it will have no material impact on our energy generation for decades, by which time we'll be importing them from someone else. With food, most of our critical imports are from European countries (mainly veg). On gas, most of it comes from Norway.
It isn't an "autarcky position" you pillock, it is common sense critique based on historical fact that being unable to produce a substantial part of our own food is not in any way desirable, quite apart from the environmental cost of importing food that can be grown here, and it's juxtaposition with the attitude of the current government with their much less rational claims on "energy security". As for China cutting off supply of panels, this is highly unlikely, but the point remains that the environmental credentials of these products are highly dubious. Goofy pillocks like Miliband arguing that "energy self-sufficiency" is a main reason for his obsession with randomly covering rural areas in solar panels to line the pockets the greedy is disingenuous in the extreme.
We haven't been self-sufficient on food since about 1805.
If you're moving to an enviornmental position, a massive tax on meat consumption (or at least a reduction in subsidies) would meet both objectives. About 40% of our crops are used to feed animals, and it opens up pastoral land for solar farms and reduces methane emissions.
If memory serves we got close during ww2, but not completely and including the republic of Ireland. It involved a lot of people growing their own food. this was forced by the fact that food imports from Europe shrank to zero and from other countries were endangered by U-boat.
Happy to be corrected if wrong
Nowhere near.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feeding_Britain_in_the_Second_World_War ..In 1939, 12 million acres (4.8 million ha) of land in Britain was cultivated and 17 million acres (7.0 million ha) of land was in grassland. By 1944, 18 million acres were being cultivated (7.6 million ha) and eleven million (4.4 million ha) were in grassland. The acreage planted in potatoes had more than doubled and that in wheat increased by two-thirds.[16] The government programs to effect this change involved the "plough-up" program, guaranteed high prices to farmers for their products, and technological advances in farming practices. As much of the new land was marginal in quality, the results did not make Britain self sufficient in food. At the beginning of the war Britain produced 33 percent of the calories its people consumed; by the end of the war Britain produced 44 percent of the calories consumed..
Net Zero is starting to now run into economic reality with electric cars and deindustrialisation in a way it wasn't in the 2010s.
To go further, we will have to accept real economic damage being done now, with the hope that our global leadership on it galvanises a faster transition to Net Zero worldwide.
Will we?
To put the actual argument to one side, it was interesting to find that even Reform voters aren't that fussed about Net Zero - only 9% picked it as an issue. It's very much an internet meme.
Yet Farage considers this the "next Brexit". That feels like a fumble to me. They should stick to national identity and immigration.
I'd say that Lincs is the one to watch, again. The new Reform Mayor Andrea Jenkins, and also her boss (?) Zia Yusuf, have been leading with green-bashing, and Lincs is the only place where they have both Mayor and control of the Council.
Yes Lincs is reported to now have 12k green jobs and a green economy worth £1.2bn, according to the Local Enterprise Partnership.
If they want to recreate the 1970s or 1950s, that might not be the place to start.
Apparently net zero costs a bomb, right, so we're going to scrap that woke lefty nonsense, right, and go back to the good old days with British power stations burning British coal, right, who wants wind turbines or pylons anyway, right.
I know that "Net Zero" is completely the wrong messaging, but the goal of energy independence is a good one. The environment needs to be tret as a bonus rather than the objective. Green energy is how we regain our place of power, no longer at the whim of Putin or money markets, we not only generate free energy but we can design build and export the technology.
It should be a no-brainer. But "investment" is seen to be "subsidy" and thus "who will pay for it"
Except that it isn't "free" energy and the panels are largely made in China, so probably not exactly reliable and secure, and quite arguable about how "green" the manufacture of said panels is.
The most obvious self-sufficiency that this government seems to enjoy saying "go fuck yourself" to, is food production. Hopefully unlikely that we would suffer a food blockade as we did in WW2, but if we did we would starve to death pretty quickly. Two Tier Kier seems to be keen to make us starve a lot quicker
Autarky positions like this quickly become absurd. You're arguing for a significant reduction in energy consumption and compulsory veganism.
Solar lasts 25 years+ at 80% efficiency - if China cuts off supply, it will have no material impact on our energy generation for decades, by which time we'll be importing them from someone else. With food, most of our critical imports are from European countries (mainly veg). On gas, most of it comes from Norway.
It isn't an "autarcky position" you pillock, it is common sense critique based on historical fact that being unable to produce a substantial part of our own food is not in any way desirable, quite apart from the environmental cost of importing food that can be grown here, and it's juxtaposition with the attitude of the current government with their much less rational claims on "energy security". As for China cutting off supply of panels, this is highly unlikely, but the point remains that the environmental credentials of these products are highly dubious. Goofy pillocks like Miliband arguing that "energy self-sufficiency" is a main reason for his obsession with randomly covering rural areas in solar panels to line the pockets the greedy is disingenuous in the extreme.
We haven't been self-sufficient on food since about 1805.
If you're moving to an enviornmental position, a massive tax on meat consumption (or at least a reduction in subsidies) would meet both objectives. About 40% of our crops are used to feed animals, and it opens up pastoral land for solar farms and reduces methane emissions.
If memory serves we got close during ww2, but not completely and including the republic of Ireland. It involved a lot of people growing their own food. this was forced by the fact that food imports from Europe shrank to zero and from other countries were endangered by U-boat.
Happy to be corrected if wrong
Nowhere near.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feeding_Britain_in_the_Second_World_War ..In 1939, 12 million acres (4.8 million ha) of land in Britain was cultivated and 17 million acres (7.0 million ha) of land was in grassland. By 1944, 18 million acres were being cultivated (7.6 million ha) and eleven million (4.4 million ha) were in grassland. The acreage planted in potatoes had more than doubled and that in wheat increased by two-thirds.[16] The government programs to effect this change involved the "plough-up" program, guaranteed high prices to farmers for their products, and technological advances in farming practices. As much of the new land was marginal in quality, the results did not make Britain self sufficient in food. At the beginning of the war Britain produced 33 percent of the calories its people consumed; by the end of the war Britain produced 44 percent of the calories consumed..
Does the centre-left have any explanations for why Ref is doing so well atm, (other than they're a bunch of thickos, bigots, etc)?
It is easily accountable, though it involves a lot of people stopping being in denial.
The Reform supporter's expectation - and I think they are right - is that if Reform get into government they will try to govern completely in line with the post WWII social democratic deal. Sometimes called centre-left. NATO, western alliance, cradle to grave welfare, pensions, free education to 18, NHS, regulated capitalism with dirigiste state.
In addition to these universal features of our politics must be added four things:
A charismatic leader when there are no others Huge competence and truth fails from the governing parties Migration and asylum Culture.
All this is obvious to me, and I don't even support them. I shall, as a One Nation Tory, vote Labour again as things stand.
Net Zero is starting to now run into economic reality with electric cars and deindustrialisation in a way it wasn't in the 2010s.
To go further, we will have to accept real economic damage being done now, with the hope that our global leadership on it galvanises a faster transition to Net Zero worldwide.
Will we?
To put the actual argument to one side, it was interesting to find that even Reform voters aren't that fussed about Net Zero - only 9% picked it as an issue. It's very much an internet meme.
Yet Farage considers this the "next Brexit". That feels like a fumble to me. They should stick to national identity and immigration.
I'd say that Lincs is the one to watch, again. The new Reform Mayor Andrea Jenkins, and also her boss (?) Zia Yusuf, have been leading with green-bashing, and Lincs is the only place where they have both Mayor and control of the Council.
Yes Lincs is reported to now have 12k green jobs and a green economy worth £1.2bn, according to the Local Enterprise Partnership.
If they want to recreate the 1970s or 1950s, that might not be the place to start.
Apparently net zero costs a bomb, right, so we're going to scrap that woke lefty nonsense, right, and go back to the good old days with British power stations burning British coal, right, who wants wind turbines or pylons anyway, right.
I know that "Net Zero" is completely the wrong messaging, but the goal of energy independence is a good one. The environment needs to be tret as a bonus rather than the objective. Green energy is how we regain our place of power, no longer at the whim of Putin or money markets, we not only generate free energy but we can design build and export the technology.
It should be a no-brainer. But "investment" is seen to be "subsidy" and thus "who will pay for it"
Except that it isn't "free" energy and the panels are largely made in China, so probably not exactly reliable and secure, and quite arguable about how "green" the manufacture of said panels is.
The most obvious self-sufficiency that this government seems to enjoy saying "go fuck yourself" to, is food production. Hopefully unlikely that we would suffer a food blockade as we did in WW2, but if we did we would starve to death pretty quickly. Two Tier Kier seems to be keen to make us starve a lot quicker
Autarky positions like this quickly become absurd. You're arguing for a significant reduction in energy consumption and compulsory veganism.
Solar lasts 25 years+ at 80% efficiency - if China cuts off supply, it will have no material impact on our energy generation for decades, by which time we'll be importing them from someone else. With food, most of our critical imports are from European countries (mainly veg). On gas, most of it comes from Norway.
It isn't an "autarcky position" you pillock, it is common sense critique based on historical fact that being unable to produce a substantial part of our own food is not in any way desirable, quite apart from the environmental cost of importing food that can be grown here, and it's juxtaposition with the attitude of the current government with their much less rational claims on "energy security". As for China cutting off supply of panels, this is highly unlikely, but the point remains that the environmental credentials of these products are highly dubious. Goofy pillocks like Miliband arguing that "energy self-sufficiency" is a main reason for his obsession with randomly covering rural areas in solar panels to line the pockets the greedy is disingenuous in the extreme.
We haven't been self-sufficient on food since about 1805.
If you're moving to an enviornmental position, a massive tax on meat consumption (or at least a reduction in subsidies) would meet both objectives. About 40% of our crops are used to feed animals, and it opens up pastoral land for solar farms and reduces methane emissions.
If memory serves we got close during ww2, but not completely and including the republic of Ireland. It involved a lot of people growing their own food. this was forced by the fact that food imports from Europe shrank to zero and from other countries were endangered by U-boat.
Happy to be corrected if wrong
Nowhere near.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feeding_Britain_in_the_Second_World_War ..In 1939, 12 million acres (4.8 million ha) of land in Britain was cultivated and 17 million acres (7.0 million ha) of land was in grassland. By 1944, 18 million acres were being cultivated (7.6 million ha) and eleven million (4.4 million ha) were in grassland. The acreage planted in potatoes had more than doubled and that in wheat increased by two-thirds.[16] The government programs to effect this change involved the "plough-up" program, guaranteed high prices to farmers for their products, and technological advances in farming practices. As much of the new land was marginal in quality, the results did not make Britain self sufficient in food. At the beginning of the war Britain produced 33 percent of the calories its people consumed; by the end of the war Britain produced 44 percent of the calories consumed..
Net Zero is starting to now run into economic reality with electric cars and deindustrialisation in a way it wasn't in the 2010s.
To go further, we will have to accept real economic damage being done now, with the hope that our global leadership on it galvanises a faster transition to Net Zero worldwide.
Will we?
To put the actual argument to one side, it was interesting to find that even Reform voters aren't that fussed about Net Zero - only 9% picked it as an issue. It's very much an internet meme.
Yet Farage considers this the "next Brexit". That feels like a fumble to me. They should stick to national identity and immigration.
I'd say that Lincs is the one to watch, again. The new Reform Mayor Andrea Jenkins, and also her boss (?) Zia Yusuf, have been leading with green-bashing, and Lincs is the only place where they have both Mayor and control of the Council.
Yes Lincs is reported to now have 12k green jobs and a green economy worth £1.2bn, according to the Local Enterprise Partnership.
If they want to recreate the 1970s or 1950s, that might not be the place to start.
Apparently net zero costs a bomb, right, so we're going to scrap that woke lefty nonsense, right, and go back to the good old days with British power stations burning British coal, right, who wants wind turbines or pylons anyway, right.
I know that "Net Zero" is completely the wrong messaging, but the goal of energy independence is a good one. The environment needs to be tret as a bonus rather than the objective. Green energy is how we regain our place of power, no longer at the whim of Putin or money markets, we not only generate free energy but we can design build and export the technology.
It should be a no-brainer. But "investment" is seen to be "subsidy" and thus "who will pay for it"
Except that it isn't "free" energy and the panels are largely made in China, so probably not exactly reliable and secure, and quite arguable about how "green" the manufacture of said panels is.
The most obvious self-sufficiency that this government seems to enjoy saying "go fuck yourself" to, is food production. Hopefully unlikely that we would suffer a food blockade as we did in WW2, but if we did we would starve to death pretty quickly. Two Tier Kier seems to be keen to make us starve a lot quicker
Autarky positions like this quickly become absurd. You're arguing for a significant reduction in energy consumption and compulsory veganism.
Solar lasts 25 years+ at 80% efficiency - if China cuts off supply, it will have no material impact on our energy generation for decades, by which time we'll be importing them from someone else. With food, most of our critical imports are from European countries (mainly veg). On gas, most of it comes from Norway.
It isn't an "autarcky position" you pillock, it is common sense critique based on historical fact that being unable to produce a substantial part of our own food is not in any way desirable, quite apart from the environmental cost of importing food that can be grown here, and it's juxtaposition with the attitude of the current government with their much less rational claims on "energy security". As for China cutting off supply of panels, this is highly unlikely, but the point remains that the environmental credentials of these products are highly dubious. Goofy pillocks like Miliband arguing that "energy self-sufficiency" is a main reason for his obsession with randomly covering rural areas in solar panels to line the pockets the greedy is disingenuous in the extreme.
We haven't been self-sufficient on food since about 1805.
If you're moving to an enviornmental position, a massive tax on meat consumption (or at least a reduction in subsidies) would meet both objectives. About 40% of our crops are used to feed animals, and it opens up pastoral land for solar farms and reduces methane emissions.
If memory serves we got close during ww2, but not completely and including the republic of Ireland. It involved a lot of people growing their own food. this was forced by the fact that food imports from Europe shrank to zero and from other countries were endangered by U-boat.
Happy to be corrected if wrong
Nowhere near.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feeding_Britain_in_the_Second_World_War ..In 1939, 12 million acres (4.8 million ha) of land in Britain was cultivated and 17 million acres (7.0 million ha) of land was in grassland. By 1944, 18 million acres were being cultivated (7.6 million ha) and eleven million (4.4 million ha) were in grassland. The acreage planted in potatoes had more than doubled and that in wheat increased by two-thirds.[16] The government programs to effect this change involved the "plough-up" program, guaranteed high prices to farmers for their products, and technological advances in farming practices. As much of the new land was marginal in quality, the results did not make Britain self sufficient in food. At the beginning of the war Britain produced 33 percent of the calories its people consumed; by the end of the war Britain produced 44 percent of the calories consumed..
Net Zero is starting to now run into economic reality with electric cars and deindustrialisation in a way it wasn't in the 2010s.
To go further, we will have to accept real economic damage being done now, with the hope that our global leadership on it galvanises a faster transition to Net Zero worldwide.
Will we?
To put the actual argument to one side, it was interesting to find that even Reform voters aren't that fussed about Net Zero - only 9% picked it as an issue. It's very much an internet meme.
Yet Farage considers this the "next Brexit". That feels like a fumble to me. They should stick to national identity and immigration.
I'd say that Lincs is the one to watch, again. The new Reform Mayor Andrea Jenkins, and also her boss (?) Zia Yusuf, have been leading with green-bashing, and Lincs is the only place where they have both Mayor and control of the Council.
Yes Lincs is reported to now have 12k green jobs and a green economy worth £1.2bn, according to the Local Enterprise Partnership.
If they want to recreate the 1970s or 1950s, that might not be the place to start.
Apparently net zero costs a bomb, right, so we're going to scrap that woke lefty nonsense, right, and go back to the good old days with British power stations burning British coal, right, who wants wind turbines or pylons anyway, right.
I know that "Net Zero" is completely the wrong messaging, but the goal of energy independence is a good one. The environment needs to be tret as a bonus rather than the objective. Green energy is how we regain our place of power, no longer at the whim of Putin or money markets, we not only generate free energy but we can design build and export the technology.
It should be a no-brainer. But "investment" is seen to be "subsidy" and thus "who will pay for it"
Except that it isn't "free" energy and the panels are largely made in China, so probably not exactly reliable and secure, and quite arguable about how "green" the manufacture of said panels is.
The most obvious self-sufficiency that this government seems to enjoy saying "go fuck yourself" to, is food production. Hopefully unlikely that we would suffer a food blockade as we did in WW2, but if we did we would starve to death pretty quickly. Two Tier Kier seems to be keen to make us starve a lot quicker
Autarky positions like this quickly become absurd. You're arguing for a significant reduction in energy consumption and compulsory veganism.
Solar lasts 25 years+ at 80% efficiency - if China cuts off supply, it will have no material impact on our energy generation for decades, by which time we'll be importing them from someone else. With food, most of our critical imports are from European countries (mainly veg). On gas, most of it comes from Norway.
It isn't an "autarcky position" you pillock, it is common sense critique based on historical fact that being unable to produce a substantial part of our own food is not in any way desirable, quite apart from the environmental cost of importing food that can be grown here, and it's juxtaposition with the attitude of the current government with their much less rational claims on "energy security". As for China cutting off supply of panels, this is highly unlikely, but the point remains that the environmental credentials of these products are highly dubious. Goofy pillocks like Miliband arguing that "energy self-sufficiency" is a main reason for his obsession with randomly covering rural areas in solar panels to line the pockets the greedy is disingenuous in the extreme.
We haven't been self-sufficient on food since about 1805.
If you're moving to an enviornmental position, a massive tax on meat consumption (or at least a reduction in subsidies) would meet both objectives. About 40% of our crops are used to feed animals, and it opens up pastoral land for solar farms and reduces methane emissions.
If memory serves we got close during ww2, but not completely and including the republic of Ireland. It involved a lot of people growing their own food. this was forced by the fact that food imports from Europe shrank to zero and from other countries were endangered by U-boat.
Happy to be corrected if wrong
Nowhere near.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feeding_Britain_in_the_Second_World_War ..In 1939, 12 million acres (4.8 million ha) of land in Britain was cultivated and 17 million acres (7.0 million ha) of land was in grassland. By 1944, 18 million acres were being cultivated (7.6 million ha) and eleven million (4.4 million ha) were in grassland. The acreage planted in potatoes had more than doubled and that in wheat increased by two-thirds.[16] The government programs to effect this change involved the "plough-up" program, guaranteed high prices to farmers for their products, and technological advances in farming practices. As much of the new land was marginal in quality, the results did not make Britain self sufficient in food. At the beginning of the war Britain produced 33 percent of the calories its people consumed; by the end of the war Britain produced 44 percent of the calories consumed..
Net Zero is starting to now run into economic reality with electric cars and deindustrialisation in a way it wasn't in the 2010s.
To go further, we will have to accept real economic damage being done now, with the hope that our global leadership on it galvanises a faster transition to Net Zero worldwide.
Will we?
To put the actual argument to one side, it was interesting to find that even Reform voters aren't that fussed about Net Zero - only 9% picked it as an issue. It's very much an internet meme.
Yet Farage considers this the "next Brexit". That feels like a fumble to me. They should stick to national identity and immigration.
I'd say that Lincs is the one to watch, again. The new Reform Mayor Andrea Jenkins, and also her boss (?) Zia Yusuf, have been leading with green-bashing, and Lincs is the only place where they have both Mayor and control of the Council.
Yes Lincs is reported to now have 12k green jobs and a green economy worth £1.2bn, according to the Local Enterprise Partnership.
If they want to recreate the 1970s or 1950s, that might not be the place to start.
Apparently net zero costs a bomb, right, so we're going to scrap that woke lefty nonsense, right, and go back to the good old days with British power stations burning British coal, right, who wants wind turbines or pylons anyway, right.
I know that "Net Zero" is completely the wrong messaging, but the goal of energy independence is a good one. The environment needs to be tret as a bonus rather than the objective. Green energy is how we regain our place of power, no longer at the whim of Putin or money markets, we not only generate free energy but we can design build and export the technology.
It should be a no-brainer. But "investment" is seen to be "subsidy" and thus "who will pay for it"
Except that it isn't "free" energy and the panels are largely made in China, so probably not exactly reliable and secure, and quite arguable about how "green" the manufacture of said panels is.
The most obvious self-sufficiency that this government seems to enjoy saying "go fuck yourself" to, is food production. Hopefully unlikely that we would suffer a food blockade as we did in WW2, but if we did we would starve to death pretty quickly. Two Tier Kier seems to be keen to make us starve a lot quicker
Autarky positions like this quickly become absurd. You're arguing for a significant reduction in energy consumption and compulsory veganism.
Solar lasts 25 years+ at 80% efficiency - if China cuts off supply, it will have no material impact on our energy generation for decades, by which time we'll be importing them from someone else. With food, most of our critical imports are from European countries (mainly veg). On gas, most of it comes from Norway.
It isn't an "autarcky position" you pillock, it is common sense critique based on historical fact that being unable to produce a substantial part of our own food is not in any way desirable, quite apart from the environmental cost of importing food that can be grown here, and it's juxtaposition with the attitude of the current government with their much less rational claims on "energy security". As for China cutting off supply of panels, this is highly unlikely, but the point remains that the environmental credentials of these products are highly dubious. Goofy pillocks like Miliband arguing that "energy self-sufficiency" is a main reason for his obsession with randomly covering rural areas in solar panels to line the pockets the greedy is disingenuous in the extreme.
We haven't been self-sufficient on food since about 1805.
If you're moving to an enviornmental position, a massive tax on meat consumption (or at least a reduction in subsidies) would meet both objectives. About 40% of our crops are used to feed animals, and it opens up pastoral land for solar farms and reduces methane emissions.
If memory serves we got close during ww2, but not completely and including the republic of Ireland. It involved a lot of people growing their own food. this was forced by the fact that food imports from Europe shrank to zero and from other countries were endangered by U-boat.
Happy to be corrected if wrong
Nowhere near.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feeding_Britain_in_the_Second_World_War ..In 1939, 12 million acres (4.8 million ha) of land in Britain was cultivated and 17 million acres (7.0 million ha) of land was in grassland. By 1944, 18 million acres were being cultivated (7.6 million ha) and eleven million (4.4 million ha) were in grassland. The acreage planted in potatoes had more than doubled and that in wheat increased by two-thirds.[16] The government programs to effect this change involved the "plough-up" program, guaranteed high prices to farmers for their products, and technological advances in farming practices. As much of the new land was marginal in quality, the results did not make Britain self sufficient in food. At the beginning of the war Britain produced 33 percent of the calories its people consumed; by the end of the war Britain produced 44 percent of the calories consumed..
I recall eating snoek..... horrible..... and whale. Tried snoek years later on a visit to South Africa and it was still horrible. All bones. Used to have to take ration books to Scout camp until about 1954, IIRC.
Comments
Wait till China starts dumping cars here. The prices will fall further.
There are definitely some born every minute
https://capx.co/coventrys-tram-building-revolution
The most obvious self-sufficiency that this government seems to enjoy saying "go fuck yourself" to, is food production. Hopefully unlikely that we would suffer a food blockade as we did in WW2, but if we did we would starve to death pretty quickly. Two Tier Kier seems to be keen to make us starve a lot quicker
Although something less sunny is on my mind this morning - the realisation that the world as framed by WW2 is fading out. Ok, I’ve read about this from the likes of Niall Ferguson and Max Hastings in the papers, but all of a sudden (and I’m not sure what’s brought this on) what strikes me is that this world that’s ending has been *my* world. The period in which I’ve lived the whole of my 64 years is over. It’s over. If this doesn’t merit the word “poignant” I don’t know what does. I’ll still be shopping at Tesco, going swimming sometimes, nibbling nuts in the afternoon, drinking red wine from a sherry glass, I’ll still be doing these same things, but I’ll be doing them in a world that has changed.
I've got an id7 estate, which is large. Depends on your usage profile, round trips up to 250-280 miles charging at home great. Longer than that and you'll need to charge in the wild, best described as part of the "experience". If I was regularly doing 300mile+ round trips I'd be regretting the switch.
https://www.pentestpartners.com/security-blog/exploiting-copilot-ai-for-sharepoint/
Shall we just say that SharePoint and co-pilot don’t look like a good combination
Innovation and technology will be the key to deliver a net-zero carbon future. We believe that scientists, engineers, and politicians need to work smartly together.
Everyone in Wales needs to do their bit. Government needs to support communities to change how we travel, shop and heat our homes. We can embrace the opportunities offered by the shift towards more remote working through the pandemic to reduce unnecessary commuting. Not everyone wants to, or has the space to work from home, and we support creating local hubs, where people can still socially interact without the need to travel.
The shift towards electric cars is a key feature of reducing the impact on the
environment. The demand for electricity will rise significantly to power these vehicles and we need to focus on how we generate this electricity by increasing how much electricity comes from renewable sources. Wind turbines and solar panels will play a part, but the sun doesn’t always shine, and the wind doesn’t always blow, but the tide will always ebb and flow.
Our energy revolution must be tidal if we are to create a constant energy source. As a country surrounded by some of the biggest tides in the world, Wales can be a world leader in the tidal energy revolution. We can harness the energy created by the high tide movements along our 870 mile coastline.
We believe in an integrated approach to how we live our daily lives along with improving the environment. The shift to electric cars will only work if we increase the number of charging points on the network and create legislation to ensure all new homes have electric vehicle charging points. Local authorities own many of the car parks in our towns and cities. Putting in the infrastructure at these locations can transform car parks into the fuel stations of the future.
Solar lasts 25 years+ at 80% efficiency - if China cuts off supply, it will have no material impact on our energy generation for decades, by which time we'll be importing them from someone else. With food, most of our critical imports are from European countries (mainly veg). On gas, most of it comes from Norway.
Read the actual document: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/681d327d43d6699b3c1d2a9d/US_UK_EPD_050825_FINAL_rev_v2.pdf
"This document serves to define the general terms for the EPD"
"The United States and United Kingdom are immediately beginning negotiations of the EPD"
"Both the United States and the United Kingdom recognize that this document does not constitute
a legally binding agreement."
‘It was Woke and Nancy Pelosi’s ice cream freezer that forced Vance into that position’
I need to keep reflecting for a bit.
The dealer has just offered me an approx trade in value sight unseen, but they have maintained it throughout, of 60% of what I paid them for it in 2018. Albeit it's averaged only 3k miles per annum. It was the same sales chap who sold me the last one.
He also mentioned a thing called an Enyaq, the small battery version of, for just under 30k. An Enyaq is a medium sized SUV if I understand it correctly with a 250 mile 'range' - a bit of a contrast to an R5 or Fiat 500.
Hmmm.
The pharma bit hadn't previously got much coverage:
..Contingent on the findings of the U.S. Section 232 investigation* on
pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical ingredients, and consistent with the United
Kingdom’s compliance with the supply chains security requirements described in
subparagraph (ii), the United States and the United Kingdom intend to promptly
negotiate significantly preferential treatment outcomes on pharmaceuticals and
pharmaceutical ingredients. The United Kingdom confirms that it will endeavor to
improve the overall environment for pharmaceutical companies operating in the
United Kingdom...
*Section 232 was the largely bullshit legal cover for tariffs imposed by executive fiat, bypassing Congress.
"..Under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act, the President has broad power to adjust imports — including through the use of tariffs — if excessive foreign imports are found to be a threat to US national security..."
The result of electing such people is the hyperinflation in Turkey and the ongoing shitshow in the US.
Starmer may have needed a good media day, but he's left himself exposed if Trump goes back on this. I guess the only saving grace is that Trump is such an arsehole that Starmer may find it easy to put the blame on him if he does.
Navarro doesn't understand the deal they signed.
https://bsky.app/profile/iandunt.bsky.social/post/3lopwtigco22x
If we could get £15 Bn for a thousand kilometres of tram/train the Treasury would snap your hand off.
If you're moving to an enviornmental position, a massive tax on meat consumption (or at least a reduction in subsidies) would meet both objectives. About 40% of our crops are used to feed animals, and it opens up pastoral land for solar farms and reduces methane emissions.
This country’s going to the dogs.
He wants to sell his Enyaq !
"Graham's barrister Christopher Knox said his client had been in prison for his "own protection" after "an episode" in December, and would not be making an application for bail."
Suggests 6 months already served by sentencing.
The other chap the judge is thinking about renewing bail.
I confronted the manager next day with the footage. Worth its weight in comedy gold. I don't touch main dealers anymore, apart from warrenty work.
I wouldn't be seen dead in one.
British Airways owner agrees $13bn deal to buy 32 Boeing planes
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/may/09/british-airways-owner-international-airlines-group-to-buy-32-boeing-planes
With a chain saw.
J.D. Vance says Russia won’t get more territory in Ukraine peace talks: “Russia can’t expect to gain land it hasn’t even taken.” He adds, “The U.S. will walk away from talks if Russia doesn’t negotiate in good faith.”
Who cares what they do or don't understand ?
Keep taking the lentils!
On the View, Biden says he “wasn’t surprised” that Harris lost.
When asked if he thinks he would’ve won, he says: “Yes.”
https://x.com/matt____rice/status/1920496591531639025
Proper salt of the earth independent garage.
Happy to be corrected if wrong
I agree the post WWII world is now over. VE Day 80 didn't have the spark it should, and it's just moving into history now.
(Are there sufficient Americans who simply don't want a lady President? Enough to tip the election? Maybe.)
Note that they also bought some Airbus aircraft, which they added to that fleet. Which fly other routes.
In WWII, the germans never got close to closing the Atlantic.
They'll perform very well in much of urban Britain next year, other than Liverpool, some university constituencies, and most of London.
Got it back fairly quickly ...... the thieves jumped a red light in front of a police patrol car ..... and after a further week the car was returned to me with immaculate bodywork.
Eat what you want, but we'll have to find a better way to feed the humans we keep producing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feeding_Britain_in_the_Second_World_War
..In 1939, 12 million acres (4.8 million ha) of land in Britain was cultivated and 17 million acres (7.0 million ha) of land was in grassland. By 1944, 18 million acres were being cultivated (7.6 million ha) and eleven million (4.4 million ha) were in grassland. The acreage planted in potatoes had more than doubled and that in wheat increased by two-thirds.[16] The government programs to effect this change involved the "plough-up" program, guaranteed high prices to farmers for their products, and technological advances in farming practices. As much of the new land was marginal in quality, the results did not make Britain self sufficient in food. At the beginning of the war Britain produced 33 percent of the calories its people consumed; by the end of the war Britain produced 44 percent of the calories consumed..
And meant eating stuff like this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woolton_pie
Conservatives are not just rubbish but discredited and out of ideas.
Labour are a fraction better but also out of both ideas and courage.
Workers are unhappy their share of the economy goes to the retired.
The retired are unhappy with immigration and the pace of social change.
Not sure what it has to do with the centre left, anymore than the far left, centre right, centre or far right.
It's mostly churn on the right.
Ref + Con = somewhat less than 50%, which has been the case for years. United, that wins, split that loses.
And right now, Conservatives offer the worst of both worlds. Too much red meat for political herbivores like me, not enough for the hard core.
No doubt there’s an alternative history somewhere where AH flung all Germany’s naval resources at U boats rather than battleships and Sealions.
And – remarkably – the strategy recommended by Jenrick supporters and other right wing dimwits is to cosy up to Reform in the hope of appealing to voters whose core belief is that Conservative governments spent the last 14 years wrecking the place.
Logistics are not everything, but they're probably about 75% of winning.
We all know this, don't we? It's not rocket science.
98-year-old 🇬🇧British World War II veteran Ken Turner got into a Sherman tank that his army used to fight on to crush a Tesla car. He believes that Elon Musk supports the far-right in Europe, and the money for this comes from car sales.
https://x.com/front_ukrainian/status/1920496303361892378
The Reform supporter's expectation - and I think they are right - is that if Reform get into government they will try to govern completely in line with the post WWII social democratic deal. Sometimes called centre-left. NATO, western alliance, cradle to grave welfare, pensions, free education to 18, NHS, regulated capitalism with dirigiste state.
In addition to these universal features of our politics must be added four things:
A charismatic leader when there are no others
Huge competence and truth fails from the governing parties
Migration and asylum
Culture.
All this is obvious to me, and I don't even support them. I shall, as a One Nation Tory, vote Labour again as things stand.
Used to have to take ration books to Scout camp until about 1954, IIRC.