Farage promises to build “Nightingale prisons” to house 12,400 inmates, send 10,000 of the most serious offenders to overseas jails, including in El Salvador and recruit 30,000 more police officers in five years.
6 weeks of law and order policy announcements to come says Farage.
I would like to see the workings out on these first day of announcements....
Leaving aside the whole "Florence Nightingale wasn't a prison warder" thing, don't you have to purpose-build prisons properly if you want to actually imprison people? Converting conference centres and sports halls ain't gonna work.
Hes not a serious politician though, this is pure populist arsery
As the print and broadcast media continue failing to call out ANYTHING he says why shouldn't we treat him as a serious politician?
Surely if he is talking bollocks, Laura Kuennsberg and Chris Mason would call him out.
Water is treated differently from the other utilities. You can be disconnected from the power and gas lines (subject to a Magistrate agreeing) but it is a criminal offence to cut off a water supply. And since it is so different, why was it privatised in the first place?
And as customers, we can choose who to buy our gas and leccy from. Poor service or rocketing prices? Shop around. Dodgy suppliers go out of business, and somebody else steps in.
With water, I have no choice but to buy from Yorkshire Water. Privatised monopolies are just crazy.
I've just spent the best part of an hour trying to access my BT account. It doesn't like my email (which doesn't refer to bt), my old and never used bt email account or any of the passwords I've got recorded for the account. And when I try t5o phone them, all their advisers "are busy with other customers. will I please wait 20 minutes." Grrr. No I won't.
I think they will lower it to 60. And increase it. That's the sort of kindness and respect Liz Kendall is famous for.
Don’t they have to review it periodically anyway ?
Every six years but it was done in 2023......
Looks like this one reports in 2027 from the news article.
So in time to be kicked out after the next election like every other tough decision.
I wasn't sure reading it - there's two reviews. One of increasing pension savings/the pension commission reboot which reports 2027 but I think the review of SRA is separate, not sure when it reports (unless I just read it wrong which is very possible)
The reporting is all rather generic, looks like churnalism, however I asked Grok and it said this. Which, if true, exactly does kick it into the next electoral cycle.
• Reporting Deadline: The third review, announced in July 2025, is expected to report by March 2029, though earlier reviews (e.g., 2023) had shorter timelines (published by May 2023).
It was amazing how you could rip off banks, back in the day
Open an account, run up an overdraft, close the account. Open a new one. You’d maybe get the occasional angry letter but you just put them into the calamity cupboard and then the disaster drawer and finally the “oh, whatever” waste paper basket. And so life went on
Good times
Because the vast majority of people were trustworthy and didn't behave like this. Also in many places, even big cities, people knew each other. The people working in the banks would know their customers.
Farage promises to build “Nightingale prisons” to house 12,400 inmates, send 10,000 of the most serious offenders to overseas jails, including in El Salvador and recruit 30,000 more police officers in five years.
6 weeks of law and order policy announcements to come says Farage.
I would like to see the workings out on these first day of announcements....
Leaving aside the whole "Florence Nightingale wasn't a prison warder" thing, don't you have to purpose-build prisons properly if you want to actually imprison people? Converting conference centres and sports halls ain't gonna work.
Hes not a serious politician though, this is pure populist arsery
As the print and broadcast media continue failing to call out ANYTHING he says why shouldn't we treat him as a serious politician?
Surely if he is talking bollocks, Laura Kuennsberg and Chris Mason would call him out.
Protect the triple lock, pull forward the change to 68 to about 2036.
Probably reporting just after the next election.
Really a simple change in the triple lock to inflation should be acceptable to most people.
Pensions used to be linked to inflation, and before (or maybe after) to wages. I'm convinced the triple lock fuss was started by Russian trolls. Ending it will save no money in the short term and affects only the OBR's dodgy economic modelling. And if the triple lock did call for a rise deemed too large, it would surely be overridden just as it was after Covid.
Do you really think this govt would get away with that given its massive majority and inability to use it and its ability to fold under the slightest bit of pressure from backbenchers who just want to be pleasers ?
Why do you think the fuss was by Russian trolls, BTW ?
Farage promises to build “Nightingale prisons” to house 12,400 inmates, send 10,000 of the most serious offenders to overseas jails, including in El Salvador and recruit 30,000 more police officers in five years.
6 weeks of law and order policy announcements to come says Farage.
I would like to see the workings out on these first day of announcements....
So, he wants to deport UK citizens to overseas jails... for what end?
So we can discover new fictitious countries and fantasy creatures like "marsupials".
There are 5 marsupial species in El Salvador: the yapok (or water opossum), the common opossum, the Virginia opossum (name notwithstanding), the Mexican mouse opossum (also name notwithstanding), and the gray four-eyed opossum.
The yapok has a watertight pouch and is also notable in that male yapoks also have a pouch.
The rejection seems to be of a 'new 2% tax on the savings, investments and property of the wealthy'. That's fair enough, as it is too much of a cliff-edge.
I predict a % of value Council Tax.
She has enough common sense to know that wealthy people have options and can quickly upsticks and move
Farage promises to build “Nightingale prisons” to house 12,400 inmates, send 10,000 of the most serious offenders to overseas jails, including in El Salvador and recruit 30,000 more police officers in five years.
6 weeks of law and order policy announcements to come says Farage.
I would like to see the workings out on these first day of announcements....
So, he wants to deport UK citizens to overseas jails... for what end?
So we can discover new fictitious countries and fantasy creatures like "marsupials".
There are 5 marsupial species in El Salvador: the yapok (or water opossum), the common opossum, the Virginia opossum (name notwithstanding), the Mexican mouse opossum (also name notwithstanding), and the gray four-eyed opossum.
The yapok has a watertight pouch and is also notable in that male yapoks also have a pouch.
Talk about learning something new every day........!!!
I think they will lower it to 60. And increase it. That's the sort of kindness and respect Liz Kendall is famous for.
Don’t they have to review it periodically anyway ?
Every six years but it was done in 2023......
Looks like this one reports in 2027 from the news article.
So in time to be kicked out after the next election like every other tough decision.
I wasn't sure reading it - there's two reviews. One of increasing pension savings/the pension commission reboot which reports 2027 but I think the review of SRA is separate, not sure when it reports (unless I just read it wrong which is very possible)
The reporting is all rather generic, looks like churnalism, however I asked Grok and it said this. Which, if true, exactly does kick it into the next electoral cycle.
• Reporting Deadline: The third review, announced in July 2025, is expected to report by March 2029, though earlier reviews (e.g., 2023) had shorter timelines (published by May 2023).
Im taking everything as early as possible just in case.
Has anyone read Henrich's 'The Secret of our Success'? It's a Harvard professor's argument that our collective social and cultural intelligence is at least as important a causal factor as natural selection in our ecological dominance.
I am halfway through it and finding it fascinating, but I don't have enough knowledge to critically assess his arguments, other than to have a vague feeling that he is picking and choosing research to favour his argument. Any evolutionary biologists around with a view on his claims?
Thanks.
No but at a hand-wavy level the prof is right. Natural selection is not responsible for war, agriculture or computers. They are different categories. As my old psychology professor put it – do you explain someone signing their name in terms of neurons and muscles or in terms of gas bills and banks?
Protect the triple lock, pull forward the change to 68 to about 2036.
Probably reporting just after the next election.
Really a simple change in the triple lock to inflation should be acceptable to most people.
Pensions used to be linked to inflation, and before (or maybe after) to wages. I'm convinced the triple lock fuss was started by Russian trolls. Ending it will save no money in the short term and affects only the OBR's dodgy economic modelling. And if the triple lock did call for a rise deemed too large, it would surely be overridden just as it was after Covid.
Linking consistently to either inflation or wages is reasonable.
Linking to the higher of both, plus a third factor, so they can only ever get ratchetted higher is not. Not at all.
It also means that it ratchets the cost at a higher rate than wages (since wages can only ever grow as high, and in other years less high). Is it reasonable that someone who is working is taking home proportionately less than someone who is not? No, it is not.
The Russian thing is a tired excuse to evade the debate because you know you're defending the indefensible so instead go "look Russia". Russia has f**k all to do with it. The problem is that it is an indefensible, immoral and reprehensibly selfish ratchet away from working people.
Farage promises to build “Nightingale prisons” to house 12,400 inmates, send 10,000 of the most serious offenders to overseas jails, including in El Salvador and recruit 30,000 more police officers in five years.
6 weeks of law and order policy announcements to come says Farage.
I would like to see the workings out on these first day of announcements....
So, he wants to deport UK citizens to overseas jails... for what end?
So we can discover new fictitious countries and fantasy creatures like "marsupials".
There are 5 marsupial species in El Salvador: the yapok (or water opossum), the common opossum, the Virginia opossum (name notwithstanding), the Mexican mouse opossum (also name notwithstanding), and the gray four-eyed opossum.
The yapok has a watertight pouch and is also notable in that male yapoks also have a pouch.
Talk about learning something new every day........!!!
The gray four-eyed opossum has two eyes, but it has prominent white spots above its eyes, thus the name. They don't really look like eyes. I'd've called it the gray bushy eyebrowed opossum.
Water is treated differently from the other utilities. You can be disconnected from the power and gas lines (subject to a Magistrate agreeing) but it is a criminal offence to cut off a water supply. And since it is so different, why was it privatised in the first place?
And as customers, we can choose who to buy our gas and leccy from. Poor service or rocketing prices? Shop around. Dodgy suppliers go out of business, and somebody else steps in.
With water, I have no choice but to buy from Yorkshire Water. Privatised monopolies are just crazy.
Privatisation wasn't about your choices.
Privatisation was about the choices of the firms, to either end pollution (and end fines) or to continue with pollution and continue to get fined.
Privatisation worked. Our water has been cleaned up immeasurably post-privatisation.
Farage promises to build “Nightingale prisons” to house 12,400 inmates, send 10,000 of the most serious offenders to overseas jails, including in El Salvador and recruit 30,000 more police officers in five years.
6 weeks of law and order policy announcements to come says Farage.
I would like to see the workings out on these first day of announcements....
So, he wants to deport UK citizens to overseas jails... for what end?
Water is treated differently from the other utilities. You can be disconnected from the power and gas lines (subject to a Magistrate agreeing) but it is a criminal offence to cut off a water supply. And since it is so different, why was it privatised in the first place?
And as customers, we can choose who to buy our gas and leccy from. Poor service or rocketing prices? Shop around. Dodgy suppliers go out of business, and somebody else steps in.
With water, I have no choice but to buy from Yorkshire Water. Privatised monopolies are just crazy.
Privatisation wasn't about your choices.
Privatisation was about the choices of the firms, to either end pollution (and end fines) or to continue with pollution and continue to get fined.
Privatisation worked. Our water has been cleaned up immeasurably post-privatisation.
Protect the triple lock, pull forward the change to 68 to about 2036.
Probably reporting just after the next election.
Really a simple change in the triple lock to inflation should be acceptable to most people.
Pensions used to be linked to inflation, and before (or maybe after) to wages. I'm convinced the triple lock fuss was started by Russian trolls. Ending it will save no money in the short term and affects only the OBR's dodgy economic modelling. And if the triple lock did call for a rise deemed too large, it would surely be overridden just as it was after Covid.
Do you really think this govt would get away with that given its massive majority and inability to use it and its ability to fold under the slightest bit of pressure from backbenchers who just want to be pleasers ?
Why do you think the fuss was by Russian trolls, BTW ?
Because it sows dissent (a key Russian aim) between generations, because economically it makes little sense, and because it often is tied to criticism of boomers but our baby boom came later than the American one.
It was amazing how you could rip off banks, back in the day
Open an account, run up an overdraft, close the account. Open a new one. You’d maybe get the occasional angry letter but you just put them into the calamity cupboard and then the disaster drawer and finally the “oh, whatever” waste paper basket. And so life went on
Good times
Because the vast majority of people were trustworthy and didn't behave like this. Also in many places, even big cities, people knew each other. The people working in the banks would know their customers.
Back in the day the vast majority of people didn’t have bank accounts. Like not or lot, technology tends to make life more convenient. I for one would not enjoy having to go down to the bank every week to sort out all my bills etc.
Water is treated differently from the other utilities. You can be disconnected from the power and gas lines (subject to a Magistrate agreeing) but it is a criminal offence to cut off a water supply. And since it is so different, why was it privatised in the first place?
And as customers, we can choose who to buy our gas and leccy from. Poor service or rocketing prices? Shop around. Dodgy suppliers go out of business, and somebody else steps in.
With water, I have no choice but to buy from Yorkshire Water. Privatised monopolies are just crazy.
Privatisation wasn't about your choices.
Privatisation was about the choices of the firms, to either end pollution (and end fines) or to continue with pollution and continue to get fined.
Privatisation worked. Our water has been cleaned up immeasurably post-privatisation.
WTAF?
See my post earlier.
In part because water pollution pre-privatisation was utterly horrendous and the state-owned and state-managed firms did absolutely nothing to end it because any 'fines' they notionally got were utterly meaningless since it was all state-ran anyway.
Privatising water was a huge success, initially at least, as the firms had a profit motive not to get fined, so it was worth investing and fixing problems.
That only works with a strong regulator that is willing to issue fines though, that puts a real cost on the externality.
Water pollution today is a tiny fraction of what it was pre-privatisation. Our waterways are miles, miles better than they were when water was state-ran. Privatisation has been a huge success.
However it only works with a regulator with teeth, as I said.
OFWAT to be scrapped and replaced by a new regulator, probably with most of the same faces and the water industry to remain privatised Environment Sec announces. So little real change
There has been a very large project in Warminster for over a year - building infrastructure to manage storm water (so avoiding sewage overflows). All good, thats what we want. BUT. A look at the data suggests that Warminster doesn't really have a big problem with this so I am surprised that this is the project they have been pouring money and concrete into. Surely you fix the worst cases first?
Look up bikeshedding.
This is a variant. You find a small version of the problem, put in an overkill solution. Then everyone in the circle pats the back of the person to their right.
Fixing the actual, big problems is too difficult, so the solution there is to bury your head in the sand.
For example, the report on the water industry says that
1) We need water metering to reduce water usage because there will be a shortage. 2) Too much water is going through the sewers for the sewage system to cope. 3) We need to hold up house building to prevent people taking a shit.
on 1 & 2
The real issue is that, historically, rain water runoff goes into the sewers. This means that when we have heavy storms, the flow can increase by an order of magnitude. Or more. No one is going to build sewers to cope with that.
The sane solution would be to start building a diversion of runoff, into a separate network of drains. This is already done in some areas. These can be simpler. While the runoff still needs treatment, it requires far less. It could ease the coming water shortage.
Another part of the fix, would be to introduce water butts as part of house builds and refurbs. Which in turn leads to the idea of gray water plumbing - where the water that has runoff the roof is used to flush toilets.
The problem is that this is a slow solution - decades of actual work.
3
The simple fact is that the amount of water used is a function of toilet flushing - baths are a rarity these days, and showers use quite little. Squeezing everyone into an HMO isn't going to reduce toilet flushing or showers.
It will reduce, *the apparent* load on the system. Since the water companies don't figure on hilarious numbers of adults in a house. So the sewage problem will get worse, water shortages get worse, but (importantly) the water companies can shrug their shoulders.
Protect the triple lock, pull forward the change to 68 to about 2036.
Probably reporting just after the next election.
Really a simple change in the triple lock to inflation should be acceptable to most people.
Pensions used to be linked to inflation, and before (or maybe after) to wages. I'm convinced the triple lock fuss was started by Russian trolls. Ending it will save no money in the short term and affects only the OBR's dodgy economic modelling. And if the triple lock did call for a rise deemed too large, it would surely be overridden just as it was after Covid.
Do you really think this govt would get away with that given its massive majority and inability to use it and its ability to fold under the slightest bit of pressure from backbenchers who just want to be pleasers ?
Why do you think the fuss was by Russian trolls, BTW ?
Because it sows dissent (a key Russian aim) between generations, because economically it makes little sense, and because it often is tied to criticism of boomers but our baby boom came later than the American one.
Yes, the triple lock does make little sense, it does sow dissent because it is absolutely unreasonable that those on benefits are getting more than those on wages.
Link it to either wages or inflation, pick your poison and stick with it. Not both.
The triple lock is indefensible.
If you want less dissent, then abolish it and ensure we are "all in it together". Those who are working for a living should see their wages rise by at least as much as those who are not.
Farage promises to build “Nightingale prisons” to house 12,400 inmates, send 10,000 of the most serious offenders to overseas jails, including in El Salvador and recruit 30,000 more police officers in five years.
6 weeks of law and order policy announcements to come says Farage.
I would like to see the workings out on these first day of announcements....
So, he wants to deport UK citizens to overseas jails... for what end?
So we can discover new fictitious countries and fantasy creatures like "marsupials".
There are 5 marsupial species in El Salvador: the yapok (or water opossum), the common opossum, the Virginia opossum (name notwithstanding), the Mexican mouse opossum (also name notwithstanding), and the gray four-eyed opossum.
The yapok has a watertight pouch and is also notable in that male yapoks also have a pouch.
Talk about learning something new every day........!!!
The gray four-eyed opossum has two eyes, but it has prominent white spots above its eyes, thus the name. They don't really look like eyes. I'd've called it the gray bushy eyebrowed opossum.
It was amazing how you could rip off banks, back in the day
Open an account, run up an overdraft, close the account. Open a new one. You’d maybe get the occasional angry letter but you just put them into the calamity cupboard and then the disaster drawer and finally the “oh, whatever” waste paper basket. And so life went on
Good times
Because the vast majority of people were trustworthy and didn't behave like this. Also in many places, even big cities, people knew each other. The people working in the banks would know their customers.
Back in the day the vast majority of people didn’t have bank accounts. Like not or lot, technology tends to make life more convenient. I for one would not enjoy having to go down to the bank every week to sort out all my bills etc.
In the 1980s I remember reassuring and advising a man whose firm was about to replace cash payment of wages with bank transfers. The man was in his mid-50s and had never used a bank. (Presumably employers and unions were doing this up and down the land.)
And this at least temporarily made life harder. Now you had to go to the bank to get money out, as well as go to the gas board to pay the gas bill and the electricity board to pay the electricity bill. We did not go straight from cash to online payments and running your whole life off your phone.
Water is treated differently from the other utilities. You can be disconnected from the power and gas lines (subject to a Magistrate agreeing) but it is a criminal offence to cut off a water supply. And since it is so different, why was it privatised in the first place?
In part because water pollution pre-privatisation was utterly horrendous and the state-owned and state-managed firms did absolutely nothing to end it because any 'fines' they notionally got were utterly meaningless since it was all state-ran anyway.
Privatising water was a huge success, initially at least, as the firms had a profit motive not to get fined, so it was worth investing and fixing problems.
That only works with a strong regulator that is willing to issue fines though, that puts a real cost on the externality.
More importantly, under state ownership, the state wrote exemptions to rules. Spend money on separating water runoff from sewage? Treasury says - "Doing something costs money. Doing nothing is awesome."
One of the reason for privatisation was that incoming new regulations (quite a few EU related) on tap water quality, were not able to be ignored on the ground that Treasury Says No.
Yes, passwords, they're associated with the modern digital world but you come across them well before that. Eg in the dated reactionary 'Secret Seven' novels of Enid Blyton, in order to enter whatever place they were meeting up in, typically a garden shed, each member would have to whisper the agreed password. Anybody failing to do so would not get through the door, not even Peter.
Do you dispute that nearly everyone used to do their banking without needing passwords? Or even any ID a lot of the time. You just walked into the bank with your bank book.
Yep. I remember those days. Nicer in some ways but lots of downside too. Eg when I first went to uni my cashcard was good for a cumulative £50. After that it was swallowed and another one posted back to me a week later. And if I wanted an overdraft I had to go in and see the manager, persaude him I wouldn't spend it on fripperies. I still recall his name. Mr Wilkinson.
When I first went to Uni I had an arrangement at the local bank (my branch being at my home) at which I could take out the grand sum of £15 in cash per week. I have no memory of cash machines even though I know Reg Vardy used the first one I think 6 years prior. I believe the Access card came out in my 2nd or 3rd year and wasn't something a student could get. So I was limited to cheques and £15 per week in cash from just one source (unless I travelled 200 miles home)
I read some Enid Blyton as a kid but wasn't that bothered by it and don't remember it now.
I preferred to read the Hardy Boys at that age.
Enid Blyton was so popular because she wrote so many books.
She literally started on Monday at 9am and by lunchtime on Friday it was finished and on to the next one - to say she wrote a lot would be an understatement
Are we sure she didn't have a team of little helpers?
Various claims were made of that.
IIRC she actually sued someone of that.
Again, IIRC, those who knew her, said that she typed non-stop, pretty much every day.
The reason for the upsurge of interest in her is funny. On Amazon etc, they stated publishing very cheap sets of hers and other old children's authors. Middle class parents started using them as party gifts at kids parties - split the set up, one in each party bag - books not sweets etc. Cost less than a pound a book, sometimes
They never bothered to actually read them. I have fond memories of my daughters swapping such books after a party - attend enough birthdays and you'd get the set.
Protect the triple lock, pull forward the change to 68 to about 2036.
Probably reporting just after the next election.
Really a simple change in the triple lock to inflation should be acceptable to most people.
Pensions used to be linked to inflation, and before (or maybe after) to wages. I'm convinced the triple lock fuss was started by Russian trolls. Ending it will save no money in the short term and affects only the OBR's dodgy economic modelling. And if the triple lock did call for a rise deemed too large, it would surely be overridden just as it was after Covid.
Do you really think this govt would get away with that given its massive majority and inability to use it and its ability to fold under the slightest bit of pressure from backbenchers who just want to be pleasers ?
Why do you think the fuss was by Russian trolls, BTW ?
Russian trolls are a good excuse.
"This policy is popular. I don't want it to be popular. Therefore this policy was made popular by Russian Trolls."
It' a variation on False Consciousness - since the people are trying to act against The Proper Policy, they are the problem.
I read some Enid Blyton as a kid but wasn't that bothered by it and don't remember it now.
I preferred to read the Hardy Boys at that age.
Enid Blyton was so popular because she wrote so many books.
She literally started on Monday at 9am and by lunchtime on Friday it was finished and on to the next one - to say she wrote a lot would be an understatement
Are we sure she didn't have a team of little helpers?
See also "Daisy Meadows" of the Rainbow Magic "X they Y Fairy" books. Blahddy Thasands Of Them.
If you know, you know. If you are lucky, you have put it in the same headspace as the Truss Premiership.
I'm 52. If they change my retirement age I plan to have my fingers in my ears, ignore the TV, radio, internet, papers etc and then make a claim about it all being SO unfair.
Yes, passwords, they're associated with the modern digital world but you come across them well before that. Eg in the dated reactionary 'Secret Seven' novels of Enid Blyton, in order to enter whatever place they were meeting up in, typically a garden shed, each member would have to whisper the agreed password. Anybody failing to do so would not get through the door, not even Peter.
Do you dispute that nearly everyone used to do their banking without needing passwords? Or even any ID a lot of the time. You just walked into the bank with your bank book.
Yep. I remember those days. Nicer in some ways but lots of downside too. Eg when I first went to uni my cashcard was good for a cumulative £50. After that it was swallowed and another one posted back to me a week later. And if I wanted an overdraft I had to go in and see the manager, persaude him I wouldn't spend it on fripperies. I still recall his name. Mr Wilkinson.
When I first went to Uni I had an arrangement at the local bank (my branch being at my home) at which I could take out the grand sum of £15 in cash per week. I have no memory of cash machines even though I know Reg Vardy used the first one I think 6 years prior. I believe the Access card came out in my 2nd or 3rd year and wasn't something a student could get. So I was limited to cheques and £15 per week in cash from just one source (unless I travelled 200 miles home)
It was Reg Varney, the popular star of seventies sitcom, ‘On the Buses’ and ‘Down the Gate’ among others.
Sofia Brizo spends four hours a day on what she calls "disability admin".
The 27-year-old PhD student, who has cerebral palsy, said she needed to spend that time on making accommodations and planning alternatives, because "the world is not accessible".
I'm 52. If they change my retirement age I plan to have my fingers in my ears, ignore the TV, radio, internet, papers etc and then make a claim about it all being SO unfair.
And the Lib Dem’s will says the govt was being mean and they’d promise to fire up the printer and give you loads of cash.
Protocol is that if you are 10 years from state pension age they won’t change it.
Ah, God. I would pay my own money to have Blair back as PM. Can’t believe I’m saying that, but he’s just so much better than the thicko fools in charge now - on any side
Farage promises to build “Nightingale prisons” to house 12,400 inmates, send 10,000 of the most serious offenders to overseas jails, including in El Salvador and recruit 30,000 more police officers in five years.
He should have a whole bunch of primary legislation prepared in his top drawer to be run through parliament if he wants to make these sorts of changes & a plan to get it all through the Lords (Whether that's through abolition, packing or tieing everything to money bills)
Must admit though given experience of gov't in recent years I'd be pleasently surprised if he's done the prep. Of course if he doesn't get a majority and is in a minority administration that's another matter.
Ah, God. I would pay my own money to have Blair back as PM. Can’t believe I’m saying that, but he’s just so much better than the thicko fools in charge now - on any side
Water is treated differently from the other utilities. You can be disconnected from the power and gas lines (subject to a Magistrate agreeing) but it is a criminal offence to cut off a water supply. And since it is so different, why was it privatised in the first place?
And as customers, we can choose who to buy our gas and leccy from. Poor service or rocketing prices? Shop around. Dodgy suppliers go out of business, and somebody else steps in.
With water, I have no choice but to buy from Yorkshire Water. Privatised monopolies are just crazy.
Privatisation wasn't about your choices.
Privatisation was about the choices of the firms, to either end pollution (and end fines) or to continue with pollution and continue to get fined.
Privatisation worked. Our water has been cleaned up immeasurably post-privatisation.
WTAF?
Well I'm not sure, but what Bart says passesthe sniff test. British rivers were absolutely foul when I was growing up. Dead. And now you get fish in the Mersey and people swim in Salford Quays.
Has anyone read Henrich's 'The Secret of our Success'? It's a Harvard professor's argument that our collective social and cultural intelligence is at least as important a causal factor as natural selection in our ecological dominance.
I am halfway through it and finding it fascinating, but I don't have enough knowledge to critically assess his arguments, other than to have a vague feeling that he is picking and choosing research to favour his argument. Any evolutionary biologists around with a view on his claims?
Thanks.
No but at a hand-wavy level the prof is right. Natural selection is not responsible for war, agriculture or computers. They are different categories. As my old psychology professor put it – do you explain someone signing their name in terms of neurons and muscles or in terms of gas bills and banks?
Agreed, but he pushes the argument further - with some frankly fascinating anecdotes as well as references to lots of studies - to claim that culture and genes co-influence one another (rather than just culture affecting our behaviour).
One anecdote that sticks in the mind: human ability to digest lactose is so unevenly distributed globally because of the uneven development of cheese production. Whilst milk has high lactose content, (most) cheese doesn't, so cultures that discovered how to make cheese at the same time as they tried to digest milk never favoured the mutations that allow us Europeans (and some west Africans) to digest milk as adults. (We worked out how to make cheese much later on).
The most surprising thing (to me) is that the ability to digest lactose can vary hugely within small geographical areas, depending on when the cultures in question discovered and implemented cheese production.
Has anyone read Henrich's 'The Secret of our Success'? It's a Harvard professor's argument that our collective social and cultural intelligence is at least as important a causal factor as natural selection in our ecological dominance.
I am halfway through it and finding it fascinating, but I don't have enough knowledge to critically assess his arguments, other than to have a vague feeling that he is picking and choosing research to favour his argument. Any evolutionary biologists around with a view on his claims?
Thanks.
No but at a hand-wavy level the prof is right. Natural selection is not responsible for war, agriculture or computers. They are different categories. As my old psychology professor put it – do you explain someone signing their name in terms of neurons and muscles or in terms of gas bills and banks?
Homo Sapiens was in most respects an inferior model to the Neanderthal, who was stronger and more intelligent. But Homo Sapiens had two advantages: the social ability to operate in large groups, and a long life, meaning a supply of old people, whoin those days weretge only reliable way of storing knowledge for over 40 years.
That said, ourability to outcompete through being able to formulate a collective social and cultural intelligence IS natural selection.
Sofia Brizo spends four hours a day on what she calls "disability admin".
The 27-year-old PhD student, who has cerebral palsy, said she needed to spend that time on making accommodations and planning alternatives, because "the world is not accessible".
Enid Blyton - read one as a kid and decided she was rubbish. Never seen any need to revisit that conclusion.
You’ve never read **trembles slightly** - The Magic Faraway Tree??
My wife read it to the kids. They were not overly impressed, either.
This is one of the most outrageous things you’ve ever said on PB
Sorry. I was more of a Rosemary Sutcliffe, Alan Garner kind of child.
The books I loved when very young were by pre-war authors like Katharine Tozer (who died tragically early, and lacks even a Wikipedia page), and Kathleen Hale, who lived to 101.
Water is treated differently from the other utilities. You can be disconnected from the power and gas lines (subject to a Magistrate agreeing) but it is a criminal offence to cut off a water supply. And since it is so different, why was it privatised in the first place?
In part because water pollution pre-privatisation was utterly horrendous and the state-owned and state-managed firms did absolutely nothing to end it because any 'fines' they notionally got were utterly meaningless since it was all state-ran anyway.
Privatising water was a huge success, initially at least, as the firms had a profit motive not to get fined, so it was worth investing and fixing problems.
That only works with a strong regulator that is willing to issue fines though, that puts a real cost on the externality.
More importantly, under state ownership, the state wrote exemptions to rules. Spend money on separating water runoff from sewage? Treasury says - "Doing something costs money. Doing nothing is awesome."
One of the reason for privatisation was that incoming new regulations (quite a few EU related) on tap water quality, were not able to be ignored on the ground that Treasury Says No.
Appoint the EU as the regulator then?
The 10 water companies were essentially given away i.e. worthless. We are now back at the situation where the largest is again almost worthless after all this privatisation (of a monopoly).
Farage promises to build “Nightingale prisons” to house 12,400 inmates, send 10,000 of the most serious offenders to overseas jails, including in El Salvador and recruit 30,000 more police officers in five years.
He should have a whole bunch of primary legislation prepared in his top drawer to be run through parliament if he wants to make these sorts of changes & a plan to get it all through the Lords (Whether that's through abolition, packing or tieing everything to money bills)
Must admit though given experience of gov't in recent years I'd be pleasently surprised if he's done the prep. Of course if he doesn't get a majority and is in a minority administration that's another matter.
He won't have done a single thing.
Here's a thought experiment.
You are Nigel Farage and it's April 2029. You're riding high enough in the polls.
You like the adulation, of course. And who wouldn't like the title PM and the victory over all those little lanyard people? But you also know that being PM would be hellish, hard work and cause people not to like you. And, bluntly, Reform aren't going to be ready.
(Because I think that NF has that degree of self-awareness that BoJo and DJT don't have. Anyway, it's a thought experiment.)
What do you do? Go on proper national TV and drop such a clanger that you throw the election?
Water is treated differently from the other utilities. You can be disconnected from the power and gas lines (subject to a Magistrate agreeing) but it is a criminal offence to cut off a water supply. And since it is so different, why was it privatised in the first place?
In part because water pollution pre-privatisation was utterly horrendous and the state-owned and state-managed firms did absolutely nothing to end it because any 'fines' they notionally got were utterly meaningless since it was all state-ran anyway.
Privatising water was a huge success, initially at least, as the firms had a profit motive not to get fined, so it was worth investing and fixing problems.
That only works with a strong regulator that is willing to issue fines though, that puts a real cost on the externality.
More importantly, under state ownership, the state wrote exemptions to rules. Spend money on separating water runoff from sewage? Treasury says - "Doing something costs money. Doing nothing is awesome."
One of the reason for privatisation was that incoming new regulations (quite a few EU related) on tap water quality, were not able to be ignored on the ground that Treasury Says No.
Appoint the EU as the regulator then?
The 10 water companies were essentially given away i.e. worthless. We are now back at the situation where the largest is again almost worthless after all this privatisation (of a monopoly).
So what if its now worthless?
Let it go bust, file for bankruptcy, appoint administrators to keep it running as a going concern, and flog off the assets to a Newco who will keep it running but without the debts the old firm ran up.
Investors who lent the old firm money or bought stocks and bonds will lose out. Screw them. Privatise the gains, privatise the losses.
Has anyone read Henrich's 'The Secret of our Success'? It's a Harvard professor's argument that our collective social and cultural intelligence is at least as important a causal factor as natural selection in our ecological dominance.
I am halfway through it and finding it fascinating, but I don't have enough knowledge to critically assess his arguments, other than to have a vague feeling that he is picking and choosing research to favour his argument. Any evolutionary biologists around with a view on his claims?
Thanks.
No but at a hand-wavy level the prof is right. Natural selection is not responsible for war, agriculture or computers. They are different categories. As my old psychology professor put it – do you explain someone signing their name in terms of neurons and muscles or in terms of gas bills and banks?
Agreed, but he pushes the argument further - with some frankly fascinating anecdotes as well as references to lots of studies - to claim that culture and genes co-influence one another (rather than just culture affecting our behaviour).
One anecdote that sticks in the mind: human ability to digest lactose is so unevenly distributed globally because of the uneven development of cheese production. Whilst milk has high lactose content, (most) cheese doesn't, so cultures that discovered how to make cheese at the same time as they tried to digest milk never favoured the mutations that allow us Europeans (and some west Africans) to digest milk as adults. (We worked out how to make cheese much later on).
The most surprising thing (to me) is that the ability to digest lactose can vary hugely within small geographical areas, depending on when the cultures in question discovered and implemented cheese production.
Well I was fascinated, anyway.
And that too is natural selection. A gene mutation which enabled the ancestors of people in those areas to out compete those who did not have that gene.
Water is treated differently from the other utilities. You can be disconnected from the power and gas lines (subject to a Magistrate agreeing) but it is a criminal offence to cut off a water supply. And since it is so different, why was it privatised in the first place?
And as customers, we can choose who to buy our gas and leccy from. Poor service or rocketing prices? Shop around. Dodgy suppliers go out of business, and somebody else steps in.
With water, I have no choice but to buy from Yorkshire Water. Privatised monopolies are just crazy.
Privatisation wasn't about your choices.
Privatisation was about the choices of the firms, to either end pollution (and end fines) or to continue with pollution and continue to get fined.
Privatisation worked. Our water has been cleaned up immeasurably post-privatisation.
WTAF?
Well I'm not sure, but what Bart says passesthe sniff test. British rivers were absolutely foul when I was growing up. Dead. And now you get fish in the Mersey and people swim in Salford Quays.
The Water Act set out standards. But that could have been set out whilst still in public ownership.
But after the assets (land and real estate) were stripped by the owners and the Companies could no longer afford to both operate their water treatment facilities and pay the shareholders their bonuses, they started pumping sewerage into the rivers contrary to acceptable levels, and water systems for both the collection of waste water and the distribution of clean water (the losses via leakage is phenomenal) were seldom properly maintained and updated.
The fact that you couldn't swim in a river, then you could, and now you can't, does not suggest lasting progress.
If your argument is party political, blame the failure on Steve Reed. Feargal Sharkey has today asked for his resignation.
Water is treated differently from the other utilities. You can be disconnected from the power and gas lines (subject to a Magistrate agreeing) but it is a criminal offence to cut off a water supply. And since it is so different, why was it privatised in the first place?
In part because water pollution pre-privatisation was utterly horrendous and the state-owned and state-managed firms did absolutely nothing to end it because any 'fines' they notionally got were utterly meaningless since it was all state-ran anyway.
Privatising water was a huge success, initially at least, as the firms had a profit motive not to get fined, so it was worth investing and fixing problems.
That only works with a strong regulator that is willing to issue fines though, that puts a real cost on the externality.
More importantly, under state ownership, the state wrote exemptions to rules. Spend money on separating water runoff from sewage? Treasury says - "Doing something costs money. Doing nothing is awesome."
One of the reason for privatisation was that incoming new regulations (quite a few EU related) on tap water quality, were not able to be ignored on the ground that Treasury Says No.
The main reason for water privatisation was that privatisation of everything not nailed down was a magic money tree.
Water is treated differently from the other utilities. You can be disconnected from the power and gas lines (subject to a Magistrate agreeing) but it is a criminal offence to cut off a water supply. And since it is so different, why was it privatised in the first place?
And as customers, we can choose who to buy our gas and leccy from. Poor service or rocketing prices? Shop around. Dodgy suppliers go out of business, and somebody else steps in.
With water, I have no choice but to buy from Yorkshire Water. Privatised monopolies are just crazy.
Privatisation wasn't about your choices.
Privatisation was about the choices of the firms, to either end pollution (and end fines) or to continue with pollution and continue to get fined.
Privatisation worked. Our water has been cleaned up immeasurably post-privatisation.
WTAF?
Well I'm not sure, but what Bart says passesthe sniff test. British rivers were absolutely foul when I was growing up. Dead. And now you get fish in the Mersey and people swim in Salford Quays.
The Water Act set out standards. But that could have been set out whilst still in public ownership.
But after the assets (land and real estate) were stripped by the owners and the Companies could no longer afford to both operate their water treatment facilities and pay the shareholders their bonuses, they started pumping sewerage into the rivers contrary to acceptable levels, and water systems for both the collection of waste water and the distribution of clean water (the losses via leakage is phenomenal) were seldom properly maintained and updated.
The fact that you couldn't swim in a river, then you could, and now you can't, does not suggest lasting progress.
If your argument is party political, blame the failure on Steve Reed. Feargal Sharkey has today asked for his resignation.
I'm not conflat at all. All I'm saying is that rivers seem cleaner than in the early 80s.
Enid Blyton - read one as a kid and decided she was rubbish. Never seen any need to revisit that conclusion.
You’ve never read **trembles slightly** - The Magic Faraway Tree??
I don't know what this says about me or you, but I loved The Magic Faraway Tree as a child. I'm always vaguely disappointed that trees don't have a slippery-slip nor a Saucepan Man. God knows what I'd think if I read it now, and a quick Google tells me it's been bowdlerised - grits teeth, restrains expletive - but when you're a kid all this flies over your head.
Water is treated differently from the other utilities. You can be disconnected from the power and gas lines (subject to a Magistrate agreeing) but it is a criminal offence to cut off a water supply. And since it is so different, why was it privatised in the first place?
And as customers, we can choose who to buy our gas and leccy from. Poor service or rocketing prices? Shop around. Dodgy suppliers go out of business, and somebody else steps in.
With water, I have no choice but to buy from Yorkshire Water. Privatised monopolies are just crazy.
Privatisation wasn't about your choices.
Privatisation was about the choices of the firms, to either end pollution (and end fines) or to continue with pollution and continue to get fined.
Privatisation worked. Our water has been cleaned up immeasurably post-privatisation.
WTAF?
Well I'm not sure, but what Bart says passesthe sniff test. British rivers were absolutely foul when I was growing up. Dead. And now you get fish in the Mersey and people swim in Salford Quays.
The Water Act set out standards. But that could have been set out whilst still in public ownership.
But after the assets (land and real estate) were stripped by the owners and the Companies could no longer afford to both operate their water treatment facilities and pay the shareholders their bonuses, they started pumping sewerage into the rivers contrary to acceptable levels, and water systems for both the collection of waste water and the distribution of clean water (the losses via leakage is phenomenal) were seldom properly maintained and updated.
The fact that you couldn't swim in a river, then you could, and now you can't, does not suggest lasting progress.
If you argument is party political, blame the failure on Steve Reed. Feargal Sharkey has today asked for his resignation.
Barty and you are conflat
We had regulations pre-privatisation. We had standards pre-privatisation.
The regulations were routinely flouted and the standards weren't enforced.
The state-owned firms were theoretically fined pre-privatisation for flouting the rules, but it was meaningless since it was all ran from the Treasury anyway and the Treasury didn't want to invest in infrastructure (plus ca change!).
By privatising the firms the regulations were given teeth. Get fined, that fine comes from your bottom line.
Would you like to go back to pre-privatisation levels of pollution?
Water is treated differently from the other utilities. You can be disconnected from the power and gas lines (subject to a Magistrate agreeing) but it is a criminal offence to cut off a water supply. And since it is so different, why was it privatised in the first place?
In part because water pollution pre-privatisation was utterly horrendous and the state-owned and state-managed firms did absolutely nothing to end it because any 'fines' they notionally got were utterly meaningless since it was all state-ran anyway.
Privatising water was a huge success, initially at least, as the firms had a profit motive not to get fined, so it was worth investing and fixing problems.
That only works with a strong regulator that is willing to issue fines though, that puts a real cost on the externality.
More importantly, under state ownership, the state wrote exemptions to rules. Spend money on separating water runoff from sewage? Treasury says - "Doing something costs money. Doing nothing is awesome."
One of the reason for privatisation was that incoming new regulations (quite a few EU related) on tap water quality, were not able to be ignored on the ground that Treasury Says No.
The main reason for water privatisation was that privatisation of everything not nailed down was a magic money tree.
And once everything was sold off, we just printed money. The boomers have a lot to answer for. Cancel the Triples all Round Triple Lock
Water is treated differently from the other utilities. You can be disconnected from the power and gas lines (subject to a Magistrate agreeing) but it is a criminal offence to cut off a water supply. And since it is so different, why was it privatised in the first place?
In part because water pollution pre-privatisation was utterly horrendous and the state-owned and state-managed firms did absolutely nothing to end it because any 'fines' they notionally got were utterly meaningless since it was all state-ran anyway.
Privatising water was a huge success, initially at least, as the firms had a profit motive not to get fined, so it was worth investing and fixing problems.
That only works with a strong regulator that is willing to issue fines though, that puts a real cost on the externality.
More importantly, under state ownership, the state wrote exemptions to rules. Spend money on separating water runoff from sewage? Treasury says - "Doing something costs money. Doing nothing is awesome."
One of the reason for privatisation was that incoming new regulations (quite a few EU related) on tap water quality, were not able to be ignored on the ground that Treasury Says No.
The main reason for water privatisation was that privatisation of everything not nailed down was a magic money tree.
Not just that- when capitalists bought the water companies, they didn't do so out of the goodnesses of their hearts. They had a duty to extract as much value as they could from their new posessions.
My instincts are broadly "yay, capitalism". But only a nitwit would deny that some of its faces are unacceptable.
Water is treated differently from the other utilities. You can be disconnected from the power and gas lines (subject to a Magistrate agreeing) but it is a criminal offence to cut off a water supply. And since it is so different, why was it privatised in the first place?
In part because water pollution pre-privatisation was utterly horrendous and the state-owned and state-managed firms did absolutely nothing to end it because any 'fines' they notionally got were utterly meaningless since it was all state-ran anyway.
Privatising water was a huge success, initially at least, as the firms had a profit motive not to get fined, so it was worth investing and fixing problems.
That only works with a strong regulator that is willing to issue fines though, that puts a real cost on the externality.
More importantly, under state ownership, the state wrote exemptions to rules. Spend money on separating water runoff from sewage? Treasury says - "Doing something costs money. Doing nothing is awesome."
One of the reason for privatisation was that incoming new regulations (quite a few EU related) on tap water quality, were not able to be ignored on the ground that Treasury Says No.
The main reason for water privatisation was that privatisation of everything not nailed down was a magic money tree.
Not just that- when capitalists bought the water companies, they didn't do so out of the goodnesses of their hearts. They had a duty to extract as much value as they could from their new posessions.
My instincts are broadly "yay, capitalism". But only a nitwit would deny that some of its faces are unacceptable.
Which is why you need sensible regulations that ensure that value is maximised by doing a good job.
Polluting? We'll fine you. Polluting a lot? We'll fine you so much you go bankrupt and lose all your assets.
Instead we're operating as if a private firm going bust for doing a bad job is a failure. In a free market, firms that do a bad job are supposed to fail, that's the market working as intended. Let them fail, let a Newco (or a rival who can do a better job) pick up the pieces and run it better.
Water is treated differently from the other utilities. You can be disconnected from the power and gas lines (subject to a Magistrate agreeing) but it is a criminal offence to cut off a water supply. And since it is so different, why was it privatised in the first place?
And as customers, we can choose who to buy our gas and leccy from. Poor service or rocketing prices? Shop around. Dodgy suppliers go out of business, and somebody else steps in.
With water, I have no choice but to buy from Yorkshire Water. Privatised monopolies are just crazy.
Privatisation wasn't about your choices.
Privatisation was about the choices of the firms, to either end pollution (and end fines) or to continue with pollution and continue to get fined.
Privatisation worked. Our water has been cleaned up immeasurably post-privatisation.
WTAF?
Well I'm not sure, but what Bart says passesthe sniff test. British rivers were absolutely foul when I was growing up. Dead. And now you get fish in the Mersey and people swim in Salford Quays.
The Water Act set out standards. But that could have been set out whilst still in public ownership.
But after the assets (land and real estate) were stripped by the owners and the Companies could no longer afford to both operate their water treatment facilities and pay the shareholders their bonuses, they started pumping sewerage into the rivers contrary to acceptable levels, and water systems for both the collection of waste water and the distribution of clean water (the losses via leakage is phenomenal) were seldom properly maintained and updated.
The fact that you couldn't swim in a river, then you could, and now you can't, does not suggest lasting progress.
If your argument is party political, blame the failure on Steve Reed. Feargal Sharkey has today asked for his resignation.
I'm not conflat at all. All I'm saying is that rivers seem cleaner than in the early 80s.
They were. All sorts of industrial effluent was pumped into rivers, streams and canals in the 1970s and 80s, that was stopped. Now the rovers are once again filthy because the water companies are pumping all kinds of e-coli laden untreated effluent into your local river and often above regulatory limits.
Enid Blyton - read one as a kid and decided she was rubbish. Never seen any need to revisit that conclusion.
You’ve never read **trembles slightly** - The Magic Faraway Tree??
I don't know what this says about me or you, but I loved The Magic Faraway Tree as a child. I'm always vaguely disappointed that trees don't have a slippery-slip nor a Saucepan Man. God knows what I'd think if I read it now, and a quick Google tells me it's been bowdlerised - grits teeth, restrains expletive - but when you're a kid all this flies over your head.
I don't think it's been THAT bowdlerised. Just that two of the main characters - 'Dick' and 'Fanny' - have, understandably, been renamed. I'm usually one to stick my heels in about rewriting books for modern sensibilities, but I'm happy to let this one go. (One has become Rick and I can't remember about the other.)
Water is treated differently from the other utilities. You can be disconnected from the power and gas lines (subject to a Magistrate agreeing) but it is a criminal offence to cut off a water supply. And since it is so different, why was it privatised in the first place?
And as customers, we can choose who to buy our gas and leccy from. Poor service or rocketing prices? Shop around. Dodgy suppliers go out of business, and somebody else steps in.
With water, I have no choice but to buy from Yorkshire Water. Privatised monopolies are just crazy.
Privatisation wasn't about your choices.
Privatisation was about the choices of the firms, to either end pollution (and end fines) or to continue with pollution and continue to get fined.
Privatisation worked. Our water has been cleaned up immeasurably post-privatisation.
WTAF?
Well I'm not sure, but what Bart says passesthe sniff test. British rivers were absolutely foul when I was growing up. Dead. And now you get fish in the Mersey and people swim in Salford Quays.
The Water Act set out standards. But that could have been set out whilst still in public ownership.
But after the assets (land and real estate) were stripped by the owners and the Companies could no longer afford to both operate their water treatment facilities and pay the shareholders their bonuses, they started pumping sewerage into the rivers contrary to acceptable levels, and water systems for both the collection of waste water and the distribution of clean water (the losses via leakage is phenomenal) were seldom properly maintained and updated.
The fact that you couldn't swim in a river, then you could, and now you can't, does not suggest lasting progress.
If your argument is party political, blame the failure on Steve Reed. Feargal Sharkey has today asked for his resignation.
I'm not conflat at all. All I'm saying is that rivers seem cleaner than in the early 80s.
They were. All sorts of industrial effluent was pumped into rivers, streams and canals in the 1970s and 80s, that was stopped. Now the rovers are once again filthy because the water companies are pumping all kinds of e-coli laden untreated effluent into your local river and often above regulatory limits.
So fine them.
If they were in public ownership that would be meaningless, since they could pollute to their hearts content since fines are just a Treasury accounting trick that mean nothing.
But they're not, they're in the private sector, so it works. They have teeth. Fine them. If they don't clean up their act, feel free to fine them enough they go bankrupt. That's the market working.
Ah, God. I would pay my own money to have Blair back as PM. Can’t believe I’m saying that, but he’s just so much better than the thicko fools in charge now - on any side
[Sunil utters a cough that sounds suspiciously like "Iraq"]
Water is treated differently from the other utilities. You can be disconnected from the power and gas lines (subject to a Magistrate agreeing) but it is a criminal offence to cut off a water supply. And since it is so different, why was it privatised in the first place?
And as customers, we can choose who to buy our gas and leccy from. Poor service or rocketing prices? Shop around. Dodgy suppliers go out of business, and somebody else steps in.
With water, I have no choice but to buy from Yorkshire Water. Privatised monopolies are just crazy.
Privatisation wasn't about your choices.
Privatisation was about the choices of the firms, to either end pollution (and end fines) or to continue with pollution and continue to get fined.
Privatisation worked. Our water has been cleaned up immeasurably post-privatisation.
WTAF?
Well I'm not sure, but what Bart says passesthe sniff test. British rivers were absolutely foul when I was growing up. Dead. And now you get fish in the Mersey and people swim in Salford Quays.
The Water Act set out standards. But that could have been set out whilst still in public ownership.
But after the assets (land and real estate) were stripped by the owners and the Companies could no longer afford to both operate their water treatment facilities and pay the shareholders their bonuses, they started pumping sewerage into the rivers contrary to acceptable levels, and water systems for both the collection of waste water and the distribution of clean water (the losses via leakage is phenomenal) were seldom properly maintained and updated.
The fact that you couldn't swim in a river, then you could, and now you can't, does not suggest lasting progress.
If your argument is party political, blame the failure on Steve Reed. Feargal Sharkey has today asked for his resignation.
I think we have multiple issues. We now have much better data on the condition of the rivers through monitoring and reporting. I believe that many of our rivers in the middle of the last century were functionally dead - industrial run off, sewage etc. I can recall stories of 'first salmon seen in the river X' as things are massively better now. And yet public perception is that things are worse, and I think its the measurement and the reporting of such that is misleading. Plus some very bad examples of pollution (often linked to heavy rain causing overflows).
As a society we have been quick to urbanise areas and concrete over drives etc. This then adds to the run off issues in heavy rain. Add in some climate disruption with more frequent and heavier storms, add in more people and we are where we are.
I believe that our rivers are vastly better than they were, but we need to be better still. But Bart's comment does indeed pass the sniff test on this regard.
Water is treated differently from the other utilities. You can be disconnected from the power and gas lines (subject to a Magistrate agreeing) but it is a criminal offence to cut off a water supply. And since it is so different, why was it privatised in the first place?
In part because water pollution pre-privatisation was utterly horrendous and the state-owned and state-managed firms did absolutely nothing to end it because any 'fines' they notionally got were utterly meaningless since it was all state-ran anyway.
Privatising water was a huge success, initially at least, as the firms had a profit motive not to get fined, so it was worth investing and fixing problems.
That only works with a strong regulator that is willing to issue fines though, that puts a real cost on the externality.
More importantly, under state ownership, the state wrote exemptions to rules. Spend money on separating water runoff from sewage? Treasury says - "Doing something costs money. Doing nothing is awesome."
One of the reason for privatisation was that incoming new regulations (quite a few EU related) on tap water quality, were not able to be ignored on the ground that Treasury Says No.
The main reason for water privatisation was that privatisation of everything not nailed down was a magic money tree.
Not just that- when capitalists bought the water companies, they didn't do so out of the goodnesses of their hearts. They had a duty to extract as much value as they could from their new posessions.
My instincts are broadly "yay, capitalism". But only a nitwit would deny that some of its faces are unacceptable.
Which is why you need sensible regulations that ensure that value is maximised by doing a good job.
Polluting? We'll fine you. Polluting a lot? We'll fine you so much you go bankrupt and lose all your assets.
Instead we're operating as if a private firm going bust for doing a bad job is a failure. In a free market, firms that do a bad job are supposed to fail, that's the market working as intended. Let them fail, let a Newco (or a rival who can do a better job) pick up the pieces and run it better.
Ideally, yes. In practice, it seems harder to do than to say.
There's a parallel with evolution here- however hard governments work to devise good regulations, at least some capitalists will work harder to find ways round them. Because the rewards if you succeed are worth it.
(That's not unique to evil business, natch. Sport is liberally sprinkled with winners who got there by cheating and getting away with it. And in my sector, there are plenty of schools that can put on a brilliant show for inspectors and distort their behaviour to look good in national statistics that I wouldn't send my least favourite child to.)
Enid Blyton - read one as a kid and decided she was rubbish. Never seen any need to revisit that conclusion.
You’ve never read **trembles slightly** - The Magic Faraway Tree??
I don't know what this says about me or you, but I loved The Magic Faraway Tree as a child. I'm always vaguely disappointed that trees don't have a slippery-slip nor a Saucepan Man. God knows what I'd think if I read it now, and a quick Google tells me it's been bowdlerised - grits teeth, restrains expletive - but when you're a kid all this flies over your head.
I don't think it's been THAT bowdlerised. Just that two of the main characters - 'Dick' and 'Fanny' - have, understandably, been renamed. I'm usually one to stick my heels in about rewriting books for modern sensibilities, but I'm happy to let this one go. (One has become Rick and I can't remember about the other.)
Swallows and Amazons changed Able Seaman Titty to Tatty, for the film. I don’t know if they kept Roger The Ship’s Boy and Salty Seaman.
Has anyone read Henrich's 'The Secret of our Success'? It's a Harvard professor's argument that our collective social and cultural intelligence is at least as important a causal factor as natural selection in our ecological dominance.
I am halfway through it and finding it fascinating, but I don't have enough knowledge to critically assess his arguments, other than to have a vague feeling that he is picking and choosing research to favour his argument. Any evolutionary biologists around with a view on his claims?
Thanks.
No but at a hand-wavy level the prof is right. Natural selection is not responsible for war, agriculture or computers. They are different categories. As my old psychology professor put it – do you explain someone signing their name in terms of neurons and muscles or in terms of gas bills and banks?
Agreed, but he pushes the argument further - with some frankly fascinating anecdotes as well as references to lots of studies - to claim that culture and genes co-influence one another (rather than just culture affecting our behaviour).
One anecdote that sticks in the mind: human ability to digest lactose is so unevenly distributed globally because of the uneven development of cheese production. Whilst milk has high lactose content, (most) cheese doesn't, so cultures that discovered how to make cheese at the same time as they tried to digest milk never favoured the mutations that allow us Europeans (and some west Africans) to digest milk as adults. (We worked out how to make cheese much later on).
The most surprising thing (to me) is that the ability to digest lactose can vary hugely within small geographical areas, depending on when the cultures in question discovered and implemented cheese production.
Well I was fascinated, anyway.
And that too is natural selection. A gene mutation which enabled the ancestors of people in those areas to out compete those who did not have that gene.
Agreed on both your posts. I phrased my first poorly - it should have read "our collective social and cultural intelligence is at least as important a causal factor as genetic mutations in our ecological dominance." He argued that culture and genes co-evolve.
His point about lactose tolerance is that the gene mutation was selected or not depending on the prevailing culture at the time, and so natural selection can be culture-specific, rather than species-wide. I'm insufficiently well versed in the science to understand whether his point is (a) not true (b) obvious or (c) interestingly controversial. He claims that other evolutionary biologists tend to see intra-species culture as too ephemeral to impact on natural selection in the long-term.
I've been away for several days. Where are we with Afghani immigrant scandal? Is it civil war yet?
Oddly, like dressgate and the Chagos Islands, it's turned out not to have the same traction with the public as some on PB thought.
Yes, that's why Labour's polling is at unprecedentedly appalling levels, and Starmer's polling, in particular, is so far down the toilet it's re-emerged at the Barking Outfall
It's all because "none of these issues have any traction with the public"
Water is treated differently from the other utilities. You can be disconnected from the power and gas lines (subject to a Magistrate agreeing) but it is a criminal offence to cut off a water supply. And since it is so different, why was it privatised in the first place?
In part because water pollution pre-privatisation was utterly horrendous and the state-owned and state-managed firms did absolutely nothing to end it because any 'fines' they notionally got were utterly meaningless since it was all state-ran anyway.
Privatising water was a huge success, initially at least, as the firms had a profit motive not to get fined, so it was worth investing and fixing problems.
That only works with a strong regulator that is willing to issue fines though, that puts a real cost on the externality.
More importantly, under state ownership, the state wrote exemptions to rules. Spend money on separating water runoff from sewage? Treasury says - "Doing something costs money. Doing nothing is awesome."
One of the reason for privatisation was that incoming new regulations (quite a few EU related) on tap water quality, were not able to be ignored on the ground that Treasury Says No.
The main reason for water privatisation was that privatisation of everything not nailed down was a magic money tree.
Not just that- when capitalists bought the water companies, they didn't do so out of the goodnesses of their hearts. They had a duty to extract as much value as they could from their new posessions.
My instincts are broadly "yay, capitalism". But only a nitwit would deny that some of its faces are unacceptable.
Which is why you need sensible regulations that ensure that value is maximised by doing a good job.
Polluting? We'll fine you. Polluting a lot? We'll fine you so much you go bankrupt and lose all your assets.
Instead we're operating as if a private firm going bust for doing a bad job is a failure. In a free market, firms that do a bad job are supposed to fail, that's the market working as intended. Let them fail, let a Newco (or a rival who can do a better job) pick up the pieces and run it better.
Ideally, yes. In practice, it seems harder to do than to say.
There's a parallel with evolution here- however hard governments work to devise good regulations, at least some capitalists will work harder to find ways round them. Because the rewards if you succeed are worth it.
(That's not unique to evil business, natch. Sport is liberally sprinkled with winners who got there by cheating and getting away with it. And in my sector, there are plenty of schools that can put on a brilliant show for inspectors and distort their behaviour to look good in national statistics that I wouldn't send my least favourite child to.)
Absolutely agreed, which is why you need teeth and fines - and to be willing to see failed businesses fail and die and be reborn with new ownership of the assets with the old owners wiped out.
But there's potential enforcement on a privatised utility. There's none on a state owned one. If the state owned business is polluting, and the Treasury won't pay to stop it, then what do you do next?
For a private firm you can fine it and force it to change that way, for a public one a fine is meaningless and if the state won't follow its own rules (as happened with waterways pre-privatisation) there's little that can be done about it.
Has anyone read Henrich's 'The Secret of our Success'? It's a Harvard professor's argument that our collective social and cultural intelligence is at least as important a causal factor as natural selection in our ecological dominance.
I am halfway through it and finding it fascinating, but I don't have enough knowledge to critically assess his arguments, other than to have a vague feeling that he is picking and choosing research to favour his argument. Any evolutionary biologists around with a view on his claims?
Thanks.
No but at a hand-wavy level the prof is right. Natural selection is not responsible for war, agriculture or computers. They are different categories. As my old psychology professor put it – do you explain someone signing their name in terms of neurons and muscles or in terms of gas bills and banks?
Homo Sapiens was in most respects an inferior model to the Neanderthal, who was stronger and more intelligent. But Homo Sapiens had two advantages: the social ability to operate in large groups, and a long life, meaning a supply of old people, whoin those days weretge only reliable way of storing knowledge for over 40 years.
That said, ourability to outcompete through being able to formulate a collective social and cultural intelligence IS natural selection.
Interesting side - note. Henrich makes much of your point about the supply of old people and how important prestige is within a culture. To paraphrase: you do what old or prestigious people do even if you don't understand why, because the culture is much more intelligent than you are and old or prestigious people are stores of cultural know-how.
To me, that's quite a powerful argument for political conservatism (though not Conservatism as it is currently formulated). Of course this relies on our prestige cues not being skewed by rapacious capitalists, so perhaps I'm back where I started.
I've been away for several days. Where are we with Afghani immigrant scandal? Is it civil war yet?
Oddly, like dressgate and the Chagos Islands, it's turned out not to have the same traction with the public as some on PB thought.
Yes, that's why Labour's polling is at unprecedentedly appalling levels, and Starmer's polling, in particular, is so far down the toilet it's re-emerged at the Barking Outfall
It's all because "none of these issues have any traction with the public"
I assume lots of comments like this reflect the fact that other posters' media preference of choice aren't talking about these issues.
Come to a pub in the countryside and the levels of disquiet at this government are far, far higher than under Sunak.
Sending British offenders overseas to serve their sentence.
Sounds barmy to me.
Prison is punishment and rehabilitation. But part of that would be family visits. This would unduly penalise prisoners family members and how does it help rehabilitation.
Sending British offenders overseas to serve their sentence.
Sounds barmy to me.
Prison is punishment and rehabilitation. But part of that would be family visits. This would unduly penalise prisoners family members and how does it help rehabilitation.
Sounds a bit ‘back of a fag packet’ to me.
Once all the asylum seekers have been sent home, there will be plenty of empty hotels. HMP Epping will hold a few prisoners.
Sending British offenders overseas to serve their sentence.
Sounds barmy to me.
Prison is punishment and rehabilitation. But part of that would be family visits. This would unduly penalise prisoners family members and how does it help rehabilitation.
Sounds a bit ‘back of a fag packet’ to me.
Yes agreed. On the other hand we should be trying harder to have foreign nationals serving their sentences in their country of origin. And if that turns out to be less salubrious accommodation , well, I guess I can cope with that.
Sending British offenders overseas to serve their sentence.
Sounds barmy to me.
Prison is punishment and rehabilitation. But part of that would be family visits. This would unduly penalise prisoners family members and how does it help rehabilitation.
Sounds a bit ‘back of a fag packet’ to me.
Its a dangerous policy. We tried it before and then couldn't beat the offspring at cricket for almost a generation between 1987 and 2005!
Sending British offenders overseas to serve their sentence.
Sounds barmy to me.
Prison is punishment and rehabilitation. But part of that would be family visits. This would unduly penalise prisoners family members and how does it help rehabilitation.
Sounds a bit ‘back of a fag packet’ to me.
Though given the lack of prison spaces, this does seem like a potential action that could boost capacity.
Especially for any prisoners serving a life sentence, where rehabilitation is a moot point.
Sending British offenders overseas to serve their sentence.
Sounds barmy to me.
Prison is punishment and rehabilitation. But part of that would be family visits. This would unduly penalise prisoners family members and how does it help rehabilitation.
Sounds a bit ‘back of a fag packet’ to me.
Though given the lack of prison spaces, this does seem like a potential action that could boost capacity.
Especially for any prisoners serving a life sentence, where rehabilitation is a moot point.
I assume you mean a whole life tariffs because most people on a life sentence serve x years before release. For people without a whole life tariff the life part is that they can be recalled at any time
Sending British offenders overseas to serve their sentence.
Sounds barmy to me.
Prison is punishment and rehabilitation. But part of that would be family visits. This would unduly penalise prisoners family members and how does it help rehabilitation.
Sounds a bit ‘back of a fag packet’ to me.
Though given the lack of prison spaces, this does seem like a potential action that could boost capacity.
Especially for any prisoners serving a life sentence, where rehabilitation is a moot point.
It really isn’t. Very, very few get a life sentence meaning life. You’re talking about the fingers of 1 hand. Nearly all life prisoners will be released. What happens then is going to be influenced on how institutionalised they have become and what contacts on the outside they have retained.
I've been away for several days. Where are we with Afghani immigrant scandal? Is it civil war yet?
Oddly, like dressgate and the Chagos Islands, it's turned out not to have the same traction with the public as some on PB thought.
Yes, that's why Labour's polling is at unprecedentedly appalling levels, and Starmer's polling, in particular, is so far down the toilet it's re-emerged at the Barking Outfall
It's all because "none of these issues have any traction with the public"
I assume lots of comments like this reflect the fact that other posters' media preference of choice aren't talking about these issues.
Come to a pub in the countryside and the levels of disquiet at this government are far, far higher than under Sunak.
Levels of disquiet in the public are clearly high. But what particular issues have driven that? Remember the famous More in Common word cloud? The one with "Winter Fuel Allowance" in very big letters? Well, that's clearly a key issue. If you zoom in to see other things, next biggest is "Immigration". Also larger is "Cost of Living", "Benefits", "Cuts", "Economy", "Welfare". So, there are plenty of issues driving disquiet, the usual bread and butter stuff, but polling does not support the importance of certain bugbears that excite certain PB regulars.
Sending British offenders overseas to serve their sentence.
Sounds barmy to me.
Prison is punishment and rehabilitation. But part of that would be family visits. This would unduly penalise prisoners family members and how does it help rehabilitation.
Sounds a bit ‘back of a fag packet’ to me.
Yes, if I were writing on Nige's fag packet, it would be for foreign prisoners only. Take a convict who is, say, Albanian. Pay the Albanian prison service to lock up said Albanian wrong'un in an Albanian prison eating Albanian food and visited by his Albanian family. Cheaper than Rwanda and meets a lot of Reform tick-boxes. Then do the same for the next country on the list of foreign-born prisoners and work down the list.
Sending British offenders overseas to serve their sentence.
Sounds barmy to me.
Prison is punishment and rehabilitation. But part of that would be family visits. This would unduly penalise prisoners family members and how does it help rehabilitation.
Sounds a bit ‘back of a fag packet’ to me.
It’s really back of a few fag packets because I can see Reform have put some work into this
1) we want people in prison longer But - the prisons are already full and we can’t build more
So 2) lets send them elsewhere - problem solved provided no one looks at how plausible that isn’t
Sending British offenders overseas to serve their sentence.
Sounds barmy to me.
Prison is punishment and rehabilitation. But part of that would be family visits. This would unduly penalise prisoners family members and how does it help rehabilitation.
Sounds a bit ‘back of a fag packet’ to me.
Yes agreed. On the other hand we should be trying harder to have foreign nationals serving their sentences in their country of origin. And if that turns out to be less salubrious accommodation , well, I guess I can cope with that.
But that's not what this policy is about. This policy is about sending UK nationals serving their sentences overseas because... it sounds cruel???
Enid Blyton - read one as a kid and decided she was rubbish. Never seen any need to revisit that conclusion.
You’ve never read **trembles slightly** - The Magic Faraway Tree??
My wife read it to the kids. They were not overly impressed, either.
This is one of the most outrageous things you’ve ever said on PB
Sorry. I was more of a Rosemary Sutcliffe, Alan Garner kind of child.
The books I loved when very young were by pre-war authors like Katharine Tozer (who died tragically early, and lacks even a Wikipedia page), and Kathleen Hale, who lived to 101.
Sending British offenders overseas to serve their sentence.
Sounds barmy to me.
Prison is punishment and rehabilitation. But part of that would be family visits. This would unduly penalise prisoners family members and how does it help rehabilitation.
Sounds a bit ‘back of a fag packet’ to me.
Though given the lack of prison spaces, this does seem like a potential action that could boost capacity.
Especially for any prisoners serving a life sentence, where rehabilitation is a moot point.
Sending British offenders overseas to serve their sentence.
Sounds barmy to me.
Prison is punishment and rehabilitation. But part of that would be family visits. This would unduly penalise prisoners family members and how does it help rehabilitation.
Sounds a bit ‘back of a fag packet’ to me.
Once all the asylum seekers have been sent home, there will be plenty of empty hotels. HMP Epping will hold a few prisoners.
The last thing Epping needs is a prison. The first thing Epping needs is to clear up the fly-tipped rubbish all round the forest.
Enid Blyton - read one as a kid and decided she was rubbish. Never seen any need to revisit that conclusion.
You’ve never read **trembles slightly** - The Magic Faraway Tree??
My wife read it to the kids. They were not overly impressed, either.
This is one of the most outrageous things you’ve ever said on PB
Sorry. I was more of a Rosemary Sutcliffe, Alan Garner kind of child.
The books I loved when very young were by pre-war authors like Katharine Tozer (who died tragically early, and lacks even a Wikipedia page), and Kathleen Hale, who lived to 101.
Sending British offenders overseas to serve their sentence.
Sounds barmy to me.
Prison is punishment and rehabilitation. But part of that would be family visits. This would unduly penalise prisoners family members and how does it help rehabilitation.
Sounds a bit ‘back of a fag packet’ to me.
Yes, if I were writing on Nige's fag packet, it would be for foreign prisoners only. Take a convict who is, say, Albanian. Pay the Albanian prison service to lock up said Albanian wrong'un in an Albanian prison eating Albanian food and visited by his Albanian family. Cheaper than Rwanda and meets a lot of Reform tick-boxes. Then do the same for the next country on the list of foreign-born prisoners and work down the list.
Sending British offenders overseas to serve their sentence.
Sounds barmy to me.
Prison is punishment and rehabilitation. But part of that would be family visits. This would unduly penalise prisoners family members and how does it help rehabilitation.
Sounds a bit ‘back of a fag packet’ to me.
Yes agreed. On the other hand we should be trying harder to have foreign nationals serving their sentences in their country of origin. And if that turns out to be less salubrious accommodation , well, I guess I can cope with that.
But that's not what this policy is about. This policy is about sending UK nationals serving their sentences overseas because... it sounds cruel???
Water is treated differently from the other utilities. You can be disconnected from the power and gas lines (subject to a Magistrate agreeing) but it is a criminal offence to cut off a water supply. And since it is so different, why was it privatised in the first place?
And as customers, we can choose who to buy our gas and leccy from. Poor service or rocketing prices? Shop around. Dodgy suppliers go out of business, and somebody else steps in.
With water, I have no choice but to buy from Yorkshire Water. Privatised monopolies are just crazy.
Privatisation wasn't about your choices.
Privatisation was about the choices of the firms, to either end pollution (and end fines) or to continue with pollution and continue to get fined.
Privatisation worked. Our water has been cleaned up immeasurably post-privatisation.
WTAF?
Well I'm not sure, but what Bart says passesthe sniff test. British rivers were absolutely foul when I was growing up. Dead. And now you get fish in the Mersey and people swim in Salford Quays.
The Water Act set out standards. But that could have been set out whilst still in public ownership.
But after the assets (land and real estate) were stripped by the owners and the Companies could no longer afford to both operate their water treatment facilities and pay the shareholders their bonuses, they started pumping sewerage into the rivers contrary to acceptable levels, and water systems for both the collection of waste water and the distribution of clean water (the losses via leakage is phenomenal) were seldom properly maintained and updated.
The fact that you couldn't swim in a river, then you could, and now you can't, does not suggest lasting progress.
If your argument is party political, blame the failure on Steve Reed. Feargal Sharkey has today asked for his resignation.
I think we have multiple issues. We now have much better data on the condition of the rivers through monitoring and reporting. I believe that many of our rivers in the middle of the last century were functionally dead - industrial run off, sewage etc. I can recall stories of 'first salmon seen in the river X' as things are massively better now. And yet public perception is that things are worse, and I think its the measurement and the reporting of such that is misleading. Plus some very bad examples of pollution (often linked to heavy rain causing overflows).
As a society we have been quick to urbanise areas and concrete over drives etc. This then adds to the run off issues in heavy rain. Add in some climate disruption with more frequent and heavier storms, add in more people and we are where we are.
I believe that our rivers are vastly better than they were, but we need to be better still. But Bart's comment does indeed pass the sniff test on this regard.
As someone who rows in the tidal Thames (Tideway)
You've got two problems passing each other. Industrial chemical pollution has essentially vanished.
The Thames is now full of wildlife. You've got seals at Hammersmith, herons, salmon the works.
The other issue is that expanding London (population) has reached the limits on the major structure of the sewer system. The Tideway Tunnel (AKA Super Sewer) is helping with that, but will not completely stop sewage discharges.
The Sewage discharges have always been there - they are what happens when the system overloads. They have been there since the system was built - pre Bazalgette.
So you have one issue that has vanished as another has risen to prominence. The actual problem is No Infrastructure (Livingstone blocked reservoirs and a desalinisation plant, for example) multiplied by the issue of runoff rain water being directed into the sewers.
Interestingly, the Thames is generally less polluted than many other European capital city rivers. The Seine, for example.
Sending British offenders overseas to serve their sentence.
Sounds barmy to me.
Prison is punishment and rehabilitation. But part of that would be family visits. This would unduly penalise prisoners family members and how does it help rehabilitation.
Sounds a bit ‘back of a fag packet’ to me.
Yes, if I were writing on Nige's fag packet, it would be for foreign prisoners only. Take a convict who is, say, Albanian. Pay the Albanian prison service to lock up said Albanian wrong'un in an Albanian prison eating Albanian food and visited by his Albanian family. Cheaper than Rwanda and meets a lot of Reform tick-boxes. Then do the same for the next country on the list of foreign-born prisoners and work down the list.
Comments
Surely if he is talking bollocks, Laura Kuennsberg and Chris Mason would call him out.
With water, I have no choice but to buy from Yorkshire Water. Privatised monopolies are just crazy.
And when I try t5o phone them, all their advisers "are busy with other customers. will I please wait 20 minutes."
Grrr.
No I won't.
• Reporting Deadline: The third review, announced in July 2025, is expected to report by March 2029, though earlier reviews (e.g., 2023) had shorter timelines (published by May 2023).
Why do you think the fuss was by Russian trolls, BTW ?
The yapok has a watertight pouch and is also notable in that male yapoks also have a pouch.
Linking to the higher of both, plus a third factor, so they can only ever get ratchetted higher is not. Not at all.
It also means that it ratchets the cost at a higher rate than wages (since wages can only ever grow as high, and in other years less high). Is it reasonable that someone who is working is taking home proportionately less than someone who is not? No, it is not.
The Russian thing is a tired excuse to evade the debate because you know you're defending the indefensible so instead go "look Russia". Russia has f**k all to do with it. The problem is that it is an indefensible, immoral and reprehensibly selfish ratchet away from working people.
Privatisation was about the choices of the firms, to either end pollution (and end fines) or to continue with pollution and continue to get fined.
Privatisation worked. Our water has been cleaned up immeasurably post-privatisation.
The cover art and the pseudonym are interesting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andre_Norton#/media/File:Fantasy_book_1947_v1_n1.jpg
In part because water pollution pre-privatisation was utterly horrendous and the state-owned and state-managed firms did absolutely nothing to end it because any 'fines' they notionally got were utterly meaningless since it was all state-ran anyway.
Privatising water was a huge success, initially at least, as the firms had a profit motive not to get fined, so it was worth investing and fixing problems.
That only works with a strong regulator that is willing to issue fines though, that puts a real cost on the externality.
Water pollution today is a tiny fraction of what it was pre-privatisation. Our waterways are miles, miles better than they were when water was state-ran. Privatisation has been a huge success.
However it only works with a regulator with teeth, as I said.
This is a variant. You find a small version of the problem, put in an overkill solution. Then everyone in the circle pats the back of the person to their right.
Fixing the actual, big problems is too difficult, so the solution there is to bury your head in the sand.
For example, the report on the water industry says that
1) We need water metering to reduce water usage because there will be a shortage.
2) Too much water is going through the sewers for the sewage system to cope.
3) We need to hold up house building to prevent people taking a shit.
on 1 & 2
The real issue is that, historically, rain water runoff goes into the sewers. This means that when we have heavy storms, the flow can increase by an order of magnitude. Or more. No one is going to build sewers to cope with that.
The sane solution would be to start building a diversion of runoff, into a separate network of drains. This is already done in some areas. These can be simpler. While the runoff still needs treatment, it requires far less. It could ease the coming water shortage.
Another part of the fix, would be to introduce water butts as part of house builds and refurbs. Which in turn leads to the idea of gray water plumbing - where the water that has runoff the roof is used to flush toilets.
The problem is that this is a slow solution - decades of actual work.
3
The simple fact is that the amount of water used is a function of toilet flushing - baths are a rarity these days, and showers use quite little. Squeezing everyone into an HMO isn't going to reduce toilet flushing or showers.
It will reduce, *the apparent* load on the system. Since the water companies don't figure on hilarious numbers of adults in a house. So the sewage problem will get worse, water shortages get worse, but (importantly) the water companies can shrug their shoulders.
Link it to either wages or inflation, pick your poison and stick with it. Not both.
The triple lock is indefensible.
If you want less dissent, then abolish it and ensure we are "all in it together". Those who are working for a living should see their wages rise by at least as much as those who are not.
And this at least temporarily made life harder. Now you had to go to the bank to get money out, as well as go to the gas board to pay the gas bill and the electricity board to pay the electricity bill. We did not go straight from cash to online payments and running your whole life off your phone.
Shaun Edwards overlooked again.
A six nations of England, Ireland, France, Scotland, Italy and Argentina beckons.
One of the reason for privatisation was that incoming new regulations (quite a few EU related) on tap water quality, were not able to be ignored on the ground that Treasury Says No.
IIRC she actually sued someone of that.
Again, IIRC, those who knew her, said that she typed non-stop, pretty much every day.
The reason for the upsurge of interest in her is funny. On Amazon etc, they stated publishing very cheap sets of hers and other old children's authors. Middle class parents started using them as party gifts at kids parties - split the set up, one in each party bag - books not sweets etc. Cost less than a pound a book, sometimes
They never bothered to actually read them. I have fond memories of my daughters swapping such books after a party - attend enough birthdays and you'd get the set.
"This policy is popular. I don't want it to be popular. Therefore this policy was made popular by Russian Trolls."
It' a variation on False Consciousness - since the people are trying to act against The Proper Policy, they are the problem.
If you know, you know. If you are lucky, you have put it in the same headspace as the Truss Premiership.
Dig deep taxpayers. The news cycle has moved onto something else.
https://x.com/rcolvile/status/1946469690739417134?s=61
Reg Vardy is a car dealer.
Sofia Brizo spends four hours a day on what she calls "disability admin".
The 27-year-old PhD student, who has cerebral palsy, said she needed to spend that time on making accommodations and planning alternatives, because "the world is not accessible".
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c36eknj1nz4o
I think it is AI epoxyclips until 2pm, then lunch, then an afternoon of Small Boats, followed by Tea.
Protocol is that if you are 10 years from state pension age they won’t change it.
There to get a family visa it is a dependent child. That's it.
Adult children, such as my wife are ineligible let alone any more distant relations.
Seems reasonable.
He'd now be decidedly centrist.
Oh I see. He always was Tory Blair.
One anecdote that sticks in the mind: human ability to digest lactose is so unevenly distributed globally because of the uneven development of cheese production. Whilst milk has high lactose content, (most) cheese doesn't, so cultures that discovered how to make cheese at the same time as they tried to digest milk never favoured the mutations that allow us Europeans (and some west Africans) to digest milk as adults. (We worked out how to make cheese much later on).
The most surprising thing (to me) is that the ability to digest lactose can vary hugely within small geographical areas, depending on when the cultures in question discovered and implemented cheese production.
Well I was fascinated, anyway.
That said, ourability to outcompete through being able to formulate a collective social and cultural intelligence IS natural selection.
Wonder if I can tap them up for some cash 🤔
The 10 water companies were essentially given away i.e. worthless. We are now back at the situation where the largest is again almost worthless after all this privatisation (of a monopoly).
You are Nigel Farage and it's April 2029. You're riding high enough in the polls.
You like the adulation, of course. And who wouldn't like the title PM and the victory over all those little lanyard people? But you also know that being PM would be hellish, hard work and cause people not to like you. And, bluntly, Reform aren't going to be ready.
(Because I think that NF has that degree of self-awareness that BoJo and DJT don't have. Anyway, it's a thought experiment.)
What do you do? Go on proper national TV and drop such a clanger that you throw the election?
Let it go bust, file for bankruptcy, appoint administrators to keep it running as a going concern, and flog off the assets to a Newco who will keep it running but without the debts the old firm ran up.
Investors who lent the old firm money or bought stocks and bonds will lose out. Screw them. Privatise the gains, privatise the losses.
But after the assets (land and real estate) were stripped by the owners and the Companies could no longer afford to both operate their water treatment facilities and pay the shareholders their bonuses, they started pumping sewerage into the rivers contrary to acceptable levels, and water systems for both the collection of waste water and the distribution of clean water (the losses via leakage is phenomenal) were seldom properly maintained and updated.
The fact that you couldn't swim in a river, then you could, and now you can't, does not suggest lasting progress.
If your argument is party political, blame the failure on Steve Reed. Feargal Sharkey has today asked for his resignation.
All I'm saying is that rivers seem cleaner than in the early 80s.
The regulations were routinely flouted and the standards weren't enforced.
The state-owned firms were theoretically fined pre-privatisation for flouting the rules, but it was meaningless since it was all ran from the Treasury anyway and the Treasury didn't want to invest in infrastructure (plus ca change!).
By privatising the firms the regulations were given teeth. Get fined, that fine comes from your bottom line.
Would you like to go back to pre-privatisation levels of pollution?
Triples all RoundTriple LockMy instincts are broadly "yay, capitalism". But only a nitwit would deny that some of its faces are unacceptable.
Polluting? We'll fine you.
Polluting a lot? We'll fine you so much you go bankrupt and lose all your assets.
Instead we're operating as if a private firm going bust for doing a bad job is a failure. In a free market, firms that do a bad job are supposed to fail, that's the market working as intended. Let them fail, let a Newco (or a rival who can do a better job) pick up the pieces and run it better.
If they were in public ownership that would be meaningless, since they could pollute to their hearts content since fines are just a Treasury accounting trick that mean nothing.
But they're not, they're in the private sector, so it works. They have teeth. Fine them. If they don't clean up their act, feel free to fine them enough they go bankrupt. That's the market working.
As a society we have been quick to urbanise areas and concrete over drives etc. This then adds to the run off issues in heavy rain. Add in some climate disruption with more frequent and heavier storms, add in more people and we are where we are.
I believe that our rivers are vastly better than they were, but we need to be better still. But Bart's comment does indeed pass the sniff test on this regard.
There's a parallel with evolution here- however hard governments work to devise good regulations, at least some capitalists will work harder to find ways round them. Because the rewards if you succeed are worth it.
(That's not unique to evil business, natch. Sport is liberally sprinkled with winners who got there by cheating and getting away with it. And in my sector, there are plenty of schools that can put on a brilliant show for inspectors and distort their behaviour to look good in national statistics that I wouldn't send my least favourite child to.)
His point about lactose tolerance is that the gene mutation was selected or not depending on the prevailing culture at the time, and so natural selection can be culture-specific, rather than species-wide. I'm insufficiently well versed in the science to understand whether his point is (a) not true (b) obvious or (c) interestingly controversial. He claims that other evolutionary biologists tend to see intra-species culture as too ephemeral to impact on natural selection in the long-term.
It's all because "none of these issues have any traction with the public"
But there's potential enforcement on a privatised utility. There's none on a state owned one. If the state owned business is polluting, and the Treasury won't pay to stop it, then what do you do next?
For a private firm you can fine it and force it to change that way, for a public one a fine is meaningless and if the state won't follow its own rules (as happened with waterways pre-privatisation) there's little that can be done about it.
To me, that's quite a powerful argument for political conservatism (though not Conservatism as it is currently formulated). Of course this relies on our prestige cues not being skewed by rapacious capitalists, so perhaps I'm back where I started.
Come to a pub in the countryside and the levels of disquiet at this government are far, far higher than under Sunak.
Sounds barmy to me.
Prison is punishment and rehabilitation. But part of that would be family visits. This would unduly penalise prisoners family members and how does it help rehabilitation.
Sounds a bit ‘back of a fag packet’ to me.
Especially for any prisoners serving a life sentence, where rehabilitation is a moot point.
Nearly all life prisoners will be released. What happens then is going to be influenced on how institutionalised they have become and what contacts on the outside they have retained.
1) we want people in prison longer
But - the prisons are already full and we can’t build more
So 2) lets send them elsewhere - problem solved provided no one looks at how plausible that isn’t
My partner has them all.
(Albania must do well from bilateral intergovernmental agreements if countries start at the beginning of the alphabet, while Zambia gets nothing.)
"Every single company in Europe or the US ... doing any kind of this new defence tech ... should absolutely be testing in Ukraine.
"If things have not been tested in a live battlefield environment, I can almost guarantee it is probably not going to work."
https://x.com/JPLindsley/status/1946905644943942007
A lot of them (including quite a few in the UK I think) aren't, as it's seen as unnecessary hassle.
You've got two problems passing each other. Industrial chemical pollution has essentially vanished.
The Thames is now full of wildlife. You've got seals at Hammersmith, herons, salmon the works.
The other issue is that expanding London (population) has reached the limits on the major structure of the sewer system. The Tideway Tunnel (AKA Super Sewer) is helping with that, but will not completely stop sewage discharges.
The Sewage discharges have always been there - they are what happens when the system overloads. They have been there since the system was built - pre Bazalgette.
So you have one issue that has vanished as another has risen to prominence. The actual problem is No Infrastructure (Livingstone blocked reservoirs and a desalinisation plant, for example) multiplied by the issue of runoff rain water being directed into the sewers.
Interestingly, the Thames is generally less polluted than many other European capital city rivers. The Seine, for example.