I am in the area just south of Regent Park tube station. Fuck it is proper posh. I've just passed the consulates of China and Poland. Woo. I keep expecting to see Sarah Jessica Parker in a tutu.
Hold on to your phone, won't you.
It is in a carefully zipped-up pocket.
The area also has the consulates of Kenya and Colombia. I feel like stretching my arms out wide and declaiming: "People of earth: please attend carefully!" but I suspect nobody will listen
Three facts combined by the tech numpty who wrote the OSA, by the look of it, to reach a silly conclusion.
As an aside, the computing power needed for AI is worrying some green campaigners. Some (even on pb) have suggested that devolved governments in colder and wetter parts of the country should look at building data centres there to take advantage of natural cooling.
We can’t do that. It would mean moving jobs and investment from the south to the north, which is not on.
And imagine the political pressure and lobbying for charging electricity according to the distance from the generator. Wouldn't just be the SNP etc.
Has anyone ever provided a rational explanation of why electricity should be cheaper the further away from the source of generation?
I am in the area just south of Regent Park tube station. Fuck it is proper posh. I've just passed the consulates of China and Poland. Woo. I keep expecting to see Sarah Jessica Parker in a tutu.
Useless fact: Regent's Park is the only tube station without a surface level building.
Sounds like Vlad trying to instil the notion that were it not for incompetent minions his war with Ukraine would have been a rip-roaring success years ago.
Wasn’t there another mad dictator who fought a war in Ukraine and said those kind of things about his generals?
Three facts combined by the tech numpty who wrote the OSA, by the look of it, to reach a silly conclusion.
As an aside, the computing power needed for AI is worrying some green campaigners. Some (even on pb) have suggested that devolved governments in colder and wetter parts of the country should look at building data centres there to take advantage of natural cooling.
We can’t do that. It would mean moving jobs and investment from the south to the north, which is not on.
And imagine the political pressure and lobbying for charging electricity according to the distance from the generator. Wouldn't just be the SNP etc.
Has anyone ever provided a rational explanation of why electricity should be cheaper the further away from the source of generation?
Oh, yes. To encourage cheaper electricity in London and the SE without having to renew nasty power stations where the most important folk/voters live.
Edit: Else they'd have to pay for transmission more than the folk who live in the north/west or downwind from Hinkley Point etc. And we can't have that. Apparently.
This is so obvious it drives me crazy. Just slap nodal and 30-minute tariffs on everyone and the market will sort itself out. Instead, we have people in the Highlands desperately putting solar up because they are effectively subsiding London and the SE.
Other than 'Ed Miliband is rubbish' (which might be true, but seems overly simplistic) - what are the reasons why nodal (or zonal if nodal is too complicated) pricing wasn't put forward in the latest review? It seems such an obvious "win" to reduce constraint payments and encourage battery farms and privately funded links between nodes / zones etc that I feel that I must be missing something.
There's a complicated explanation here, but fundamentally if energy producers in Scotland generate more than the transmission network can cope with you either have to boost the transmission network or encourage generation away from Scotland and nearer to the point of most consumption. Zonal pricing encourages neither of those outcomes. The current imperfect arrangement feeds some of the pay not to produce payments back into network upgrades.
I am in the area just south of Regent Park tube station. Fuck it is proper posh. I've just passed the consulates of China and Poland. Woo. I keep expecting to see Sarah Jessica Parker in a tutu.
Hold on to your phone, won't you.
Sarah Jessica Parker is a notorious phone thief.
They were like that. Charlotte used to scratch her arse and fart the Benny Hill theme. Completely unmade up, that 😀
Three facts combined by the tech numpty who wrote the OSA, by the look of it, to reach a silly conclusion.
As an aside, the computing power needed for AI is worrying some green campaigners. Some (even on pb) have suggested that devolved governments in colder and wetter parts of the country should look at building data centres there to take advantage of natural cooling.
We can’t do that. It would mean moving jobs and investment from the south to the north, which is not on.
And imagine the political pressure and lobbying for charging electricity according to the distance from the generator. Wouldn't just be the SNP etc.
Has anyone ever provided a rational explanation of why electricity should be cheaper the further away from the source of generation?
Because that's where London tends to be ?
It used to have its own power stations, with water transport and all. Now converted to modern art galleries. So of course it needs subsidised energy.
It's complete nonsense. They did go down the highway and suffered heavy casualties. Where the nonsense came from is harder to determine.
Nonetheless there is an essential truth that Ukraine does not have many cards to play since being cut off from American arms, money, thoughts and prayers. Russia has largely bypassed sanctions. Sure, some brands have been replaced by knock-offs in Moscow supermarkets but that is like customers here switching from Tesco to Aldi. Russia's run out of tanks but has learned from Iran how to make drones. Europe can keep things going for a bit but nothing to scare the Kremlin.
Russia has run out of its stockpile of tanks but are building lots more (according to Institute of War). This raises the question about what they need these new tanks for since the Ukrainians can still knock them out with drones. But perhaps the Baltic States can't yet.
The other issue which the Russians bloggers like to state is that Trump is a *temporary* person and the next one can revoke any deals done - so why not wait until the mid-terms. Alaska is just a delaying tactic perhaps with collusion so that the US DIB can have a few customers for a bit longer.
Trump on the other hand just wants that Prize and will do lots of performative stuff to try to win it.
Sounds like Vlad trying to instil the notion that were it not for incompetent minions his war with Ukraine would have been a rip-roaring success years ago.
Wasn’t there another mad dictator who fought a war in Ukraine and said those kind of things about his generals?
I am in the area just south of Regent Park tube station. Fuck it is proper posh. I've just passed the consulates of China and Poland. Woo. I keep expecting to see Sarah Jessica Parker in a tutu.
Useless fact: Regent's Park is the only tube station without a surface level building.
CLANG! You haven't been to Gants Hill (Jewel of the North Ilford Ghetto) then?
I think periodic light touch refresher tests rather than once and you're done for the next fifty years. Renewals are shorter if you're older.
Maybe carried out by driving instructors with controls to ensure consistency.
What about the gap to the next refresher test is shorter the more points you've accrued.
We currently have a shortage of driving examiners that has created a grey market in test slots. Airily dumping more work on people who don't exist makes me wonder if pb is not run from the Cabinet Office.
Is that still happening? It’s a five-minute software fix to require the driver number when booking a test, and not allow it to be changed afterwards.
Who benefits from the grey market in test bookings?
This is like the grey market concert tickets. We know it can be done properly, because Glastonbury Festival has done it, but everyone else in the concert industry appears to benefit from the current system.
There’s a bunch of driving test business that claim, to the government, that their ability to buy blocks of tests and sell them to their students is vital to their business model.
Much as the garment trade types in Leicester used to proclaim that enforcing the minimum wage and the Factory Acts would put them out of business.
Or the Festival Fringe drama types who protested that the SG actually stopping people from being evicted at short notice was making it impossible for the thesps to get nice flats in inner Edinburgh exactly where and when they wanted.
I am in the area just south of Regent Park tube station. Fuck it is proper posh. I've just passed the consulates of China and Poland. Woo. I keep expecting to see Sarah Jessica Parker in a tutu.
Useless fact: Regent's Park is the only tube station without a surface level building.
I think periodic light touch refresher tests rather than once and you're done for the next fifty years. Renewals are shorter if you're older.
Maybe carried out by driving instructors with controls to ensure consistency.
What about the gap to the next refresher test is shorter the more points you've accrued.
We currently have a shortage of driving examiners that has created a grey market in test slots. Airily dumping more work on people who don't exist makes me wonder if pb is not run from the Cabinet Office.
Is that still happening? It’s a five-minute software fix to require the driver number when booking a test, and not allow it to be changed afterwards.
Who benefits from the grey market in test bookings?
This is like the grey market concert tickets. We know it can be done properly, because Glastonbury Festival has done it, but everyone else in the concert industry appears to benefit from the current system.
There’s a bunch of driving test business that claim, to the government, that their ability to buy blocks of tests and sell them to their students is vital to their business model.
Much as the garment trade types in Leicester used to proclaim that enforcing the minimum wage and the Factory Acts would put them out of business.
Weren't the garment trade people right? I think it's turned out that it's cheaper to get Bangladeshi's to make garments in Bangladesh than Leicester since the NWM arrived and then went through the roof (if it had tracked average wages since its introduction it would be more like £9/hr than £12.21/hr).
The real question is whether we want to keep the industry in question - there was a reasonable argument to be made on garment manufacture, I'm struggling to see the case in favour of the driving test touting system.
Requiring a drivers license number to book a test, limiting each drivers license number to two bookings, plus making them non-transferable but with the ability cancel (up to say a week before) for a full refund would fix the problem without penalising any normal people.
Three facts combined by the tech numpty who wrote the OSA, by the look of it, to reach a silly conclusion.
As an aside, the computing power needed for AI is worrying some green campaigners. Some (even on pb) have suggested that devolved governments in colder and wetter parts of the country should look at building data centres there to take advantage of natural cooling.
We can’t do that. It would mean moving jobs and investment from the south to the north, which is not on.
And imagine the political pressure and lobbying for charging electricity according to the distance from the generator. Wouldn't just be the SNP etc.
Has anyone ever provided a rational explanation of why electricity should be cheaper the further away from the source of generation?
Oh, yes. To encourage cheaper electricity in London and the SE without having to renew nasty power stations where the most important folk/voters live.
Edit: Else they'd have to pay for transmission more than the folk who live in the north/west or downwind from Hinkley Point etc. And we can't have that. Apparently.
This is so obvious it drives me crazy. Just slap nodal and 30-minute tariffs on everyone and the market will sort itself out. Instead, we have people in the Highlands desperately putting solar up because they are effectively subsiding London and the SE.
Other than 'Ed Miliband is rubbish' (which might be true, but seems overly simplistic) - what are the reasons why nodal (or zonal if nodal is too complicated) pricing wasn't put forward in the latest review? It seems such an obvious "win" to reduce constraint payments and encourage battery farms and privately funded links between nodes / zones etc that I feel that I must be missing something.
There's a complicated explanation here, but fundamentally if energy producers in Scotland generate more than the transmission network can cope with you either have to boost the transmission network or encourage generation away from Scotland and nearer to the point of most consumption. Zonal pricing encourages neither of those outcomes. The current imperfect arrangement feeds some of the pay not to produce payments back into network upgrades.
Of course it does. If the price of electricity is much higher in the SE, that incentivises power companies to invest in generation in those areas because they make more profit from doing so. Think about the shape of a supply curve.
Instead, we have the absurd situation where the price is universal, which means there is no cost to investing in Sutherland and then offloading the cost of transmission to customers via standing charges.
I am in the area just south of Regent Park tube station. Fuck it is proper posh. I've just passed the consulates of China and Poland. Woo. I keep expecting to see Sarah Jessica Parker in a tutu.
Useless fact: Regent's Park is the only tube station without a surface level building.
CLANG! You haven't been to Gants Hill (Jewel of the North Ilford Ghetto) then?
Is it really 'tube'? I ask out of ignorance. Lots of Underground seems to be Overground or Barelybelowpavementground.
I am in the area just south of Regent Park tube station. Fuck it is proper posh. I've just passed the consulates of China and Poland. Woo. I keep expecting to see Sarah Jessica Parker in a tutu.
Useless fact: Regent's Park is the only tube station without a surface level building.
CLANG! You haven't been to Gants Hill (Jewel of the North Ilford Ghetto) then?
I read that fact in Geoff Marshall's book and he's supposed to be one of the greatest experts on the tube.
Coming a bit late to the debate but a few observations.
1. Agree with tightening up the laws on drink driving. I know from my own experience that there is really no level of alcohol I can consume without it affecting my driving. This has always been the way with me even when I was able to drink heavily in my student days. So my rule for my whole driving career has been that I won't drive after drinking any alcohol at all. I think the 0.5 g/l level seems reasonable for legal purposes but think the 0.2 g/l level used in Norway and other Eureopan countries is probably a bit excessive as it does catch out a lot of people with the 'morning after' effect.
2. Whilst I agree with the eye tests, I don't see why they should start at 70. Deterioration in eye function can and does start much earlier for many people. AT 60 my eyesight is no where near as good as it was at 50. Perhaps we should consider an eye test as necessary for veryone renewing their licence every 10 years. As someone pointed out yesterday, setting the starting age at 70 but expecting people with driving jobs to continue until they are 67 (and sure to rise in the future) seems a bit daft to me.
3. What does seem to be missing from these proposals is the need to do far more than just test eyesight for the elderly. I would be interstd to know how many accdents are caused by poor eyesight and how many by other infirmaties. Currently it is pretty much impossible for a concerned relative to get someones driving licence revoked even when it is obvious to family members they are no longer fit to drive. It can be a cause of great animosity within families and as a result often it is just ignored. A test for mental and physical ability to drive safely should become a standard part of a more regular licence renewal for the elderly.
Fair enough but I disagree with pretty much all of this, as I do the suggestion of "no passenger" rules for young new drivers over on the BBC.
The last thing we need is more restrictions, process, and regulations regarding how we move around.
We are obsessed with trying to legislate to remove all risk in this country, regardless of the economic or social impact.
These are basic safety ideas to stop people getting killed. As you know two 18 year old lads from my sons class got killed in June as passengers in cars driven by new drivers. Both the young and the old need some controls placed on their driving where they are a danger to others.
It is not a question of legislating to emove 'All' risk, simply to deal with the bleeding obvious risks posed by those who are unfit to drive, either due to age or being under the influence.
I know from my own experience that there is really no level of alcohol I can consume without it affecting my driving. This has always been the way with me even when I was able to drink heavily in my student days.
I don't get how the second sentence follows the first here ? 'no level of alcohol' -> 'heavy drinking'. Surely an example to illustrate is 'even after a single pint of shandy' or some such...
The point being that even when I drank heavily and was still able to function in most tasks, I recognised that even a small amount of alcohol made me unfit to drive.
I am in the area just south of Regent Park tube station. Fuck it is proper posh. I've just passed the consulates of China and Poland. Woo. I keep expecting to see Sarah Jessica Parker in a tutu.
Useless fact: Regent's Park is the only tube station without a surface level building.
CLANG! You haven't been to Gants Hill (Jewel of the North Ilford Ghetto) then?
I read that fact in Geoff Marshall's book and he's supposed to be one of the greatest experts on the tube.
I am in the area just south of Regent Park tube station. Fuck it is proper posh. I've just passed the consulates of China and Poland. Woo. I keep expecting to see Sarah Jessica Parker in a tutu.
Useless fact: Regent's Park is the only tube station without a surface level building.
CLANG! You haven't been to Gants Hill (Jewel of the North Ilford Ghetto) then?
Is it really 'tube'? I ask out of ignorance. Lots of Underground seems to be Overground or Barelybelowpavementground.
Yes. OTOH, just to the west, Redbridge station's platforms are only 26 ft below street level, accessed by stairs (not escalators).
I think periodic light touch refresher tests rather than once and you're done for the next fifty years. Renewals are shorter if you're older.
Maybe carried out by driving instructors with controls to ensure consistency.
What about the gap to the next refresher test is shorter the more points you've accrued.
We currently have a shortage of driving examiners that has created a grey market in test slots. Airily dumping more work on people who don't exist makes me wonder if pb is not run from the Cabinet Office.
Is that still happening? It’s a five-minute software fix to require the driver number when booking a test, and not allow it to be changed afterwards.
Who benefits from the grey market in test bookings?
This is like the grey market concert tickets. We know it can be done properly, because Glastonbury Festival has done it, but everyone else in the concert industry appears to benefit from the current system.
There’s a bunch of driving test business that claim, to the government, that their ability to buy blocks of tests and sell them to their students is vital to their business model.
Much as the garment trade types in Leicester used to proclaim that enforcing the minimum wage and the Factory Acts would put them out of business.
Presumably "that's a bad business and you should be doing something useful with your life" doesn't cut any ice?
Maybe we do need Mitchell and Webb's panel of old ladies to audit the jobs people do.
I think periodic light touch refresher tests rather than once and you're done for the next fifty years. Renewals are shorter if you're older.
Maybe carried out by driving instructors with controls to ensure consistency.
What about the gap to the next refresher test is shorter the more points you've accrued.
We currently have a shortage of driving examiners that has created a grey market in test slots. Airily dumping more work on people who don't exist makes me wonder if pb is not run from the Cabinet Office.
Is that still happening? It’s a five-minute software fix to require the driver number when booking a test, and not allow it to be changed afterwards.
Who benefits from the grey market in test bookings?
This is like the grey market concert tickets. We know it can be done properly, because Glastonbury Festival has done it, but everyone else in the concert industry appears to benefit from the current system.
It does not really matter. The grey market is a symptom. The underlying cause is not enough slots owing to a shortage of examiners. Closing the grey market won't fix that any more than it would create more Oasis tickets.
I know from my own experience that there is really no level of alcohol I can consume without it affecting my driving. This has always been the way with me even when I was able to drink heavily in my student days.
I don't get how the second sentence follows the first here ? 'no level of alcohol' -> 'heavy drinking'. Surely an example to illustrate is 'even after a single pint of shandy' or some such...
The point being that even when I drank heavily and was still able to function in most tasks, I recognised that even a small amount of alcohol made me unfit to drive.
As Matt's data shows. Impairment comes much sooner than the buzz.
Coming a bit late to the debate but a few observations.
1. Agree with tightening up the laws on drink driving. I know from my own experience that there is really no level of alcohol I can consume without it affecting my driving. This has always been the way with me even when I was able to drink heavily in my student days. So my rule for my whole driving career has been that I won't drive after drinking any alcohol at all. I think the 0.5 g/l level seems reasonable for legal purposes but think the 0.2 g/l level used in Norway and other Eureopan countries is probably a bit excessive as it does catch out a lot of people with the 'morning after' effect.
2. Whilst I agree with the eye tests, I don't see why they should start at 70. Deterioration in eye function can and does start much earlier for many people. AT 60 my eyesight is no where near as good as it was at 50. Perhaps we should consider an eye test as necessary for veryone renewing their licence every 10 years. As someone pointed out yesterday, setting the starting age at 70 but expecting people with driving jobs to continue until they are 67 (and sure to rise in the future) seems a bit daft to me.
3. What does seem to be missing from these proposals is the need to do far more than just test eyesight for the elderly. I would be interstd to know how many accdents are caused by poor eyesight and how many by other infirmaties. Currently it is pretty much impossible for a concerned relative to get someones driving licence revoked even when it is obvious to family members they are no longer fit to drive. It can be a cause of great animosity within families and as a result often it is just ignored. A test for mental and physical ability to drive safely should become a standard part of a more regular licence renewal for the elderly.
With regard to point 3 see my earlier post below. I will cut and paste to save the search:
"More relevant for the elderly is observation and reaction. Plenty of elderly have glasses giving them vision that will pass any test, but should never be behind a wheel. The driver awareness test for observation and reaction fits the bill. I finally got the keys off my father at 92. He was incapable of driving for years before that. His eyesight (with glasses) was better than mine."
Worth noting it took years to get the keys off him for the reasons you state and we only did after an accident. Fortunately it was minor, but it might not have been. He was plain dangerous, but had perfect vision.
It's complete nonsense. They did go down the highway and suffered heavy casualties. Where the nonsense came from is harder to determine.
Nonetheless there is an essential truth that Ukraine does not have many cards to play since being cut off from American arms, money, thoughts and prayers. Russia has largely bypassed sanctions. Sure, some brands have been replaced by knock-offs in Moscow supermarkets but that is like customers here switching from Tesco to Aldi. Russia's run out of tanks but has learned from Iran how to make drones. Europe can keep things going for a bit but nothing to scare the Kremlin.
Russia has run out of its stockpile of tanks but are building lots more (according to Institute of War). This raises the question about what they need these new tanks for since the Ukrainians can still knock them out with drones. But perhaps the Baltic States can't yet.
The other issue which the Russians bloggers like to state is that Trump is a *temporary* person and the next one can revoke any deals done - so why not wait until the mid-terms. Alaska is just a delaying tactic perhaps with collusion so that the US DIB can have a few customers for a bit longer.
Trump on the other hand just wants that Prize and will do lots of performative stuff to try to win it.
The issue with the tank production statistics, is that they’re about as reliable as the tractor production statistics were in Stalin’s day. I’ve heard sources talk about 12-15 per month actual new tanks, with another few dozen being refurbs. The problem now being that there’s very little left to refurbish, most of what is still in storage is scrap metal. There’s rumours of Soviet-era tanks from NK and even China making their way East, but if that’s true they’re being refurbed rather than sent straight to the front lines, presumably to hide their origin.
I can’t see much coming from Trump and Putin meeting, if it even happens. Trump does indeed want his peace prize, and has had successes such as the agreement between Azerbaijan and Armenia last week, but in Putin he’s sitting across the table from someone who has no interest in stopping the war. The only way this war stops is for the West to keep on arming the Ukranian army, and for the Russians to withdraw defeated.
A rather concerning briefing courtesy of New Statesman. Da yoof...!
Last week, we learned that Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves currently have lower favourability ratings than Donald Trump. But how do Brits really feel about the US president anyway? The answer, according to Ipsos, may surprise you.
“Let’s be clear, Donald Trump isn't winning any popularity contests in the UK anytime soon, with 64 per cent of Britons overall unfavourable towards the US president,” says Keiran Pedley, director of UK politics at Ipsos. “But what’s fascinating in our polling is the generational divide that we uncovered.” Ipsos found that while just 9 per cent of those over 55 view Trump favourably, that figure jumps to 29 per cent for 18-34-year-olds (though 45 per cent in this age group are unfavourable)
I am in the area just south of Regent Park tube station. Fuck it is proper posh. I've just passed the consulates of China and Poland. Woo. I keep expecting to see Sarah Jessica Parker in a tutu.
Useless fact: Regent's Park is the only tube station without a surface level building.
CLANG! You haven't been to Gants Hill (Jewel of the North Ilford Ghetto) then?
I read that fact in Geoff Marshall's book and he's supposed to be one of the greatest experts on the tube.
Gants Hill's opening was delayed by the Central Line loop's use as a wartime factory. I wonder if people have just carried forward "facts" from pre-war sources. (Pointless anecdata: when I was at school, Queen Victoria was our longest-serving monarch.)
A rather concerning briefing courtesy of New Statesman. Da yoof...!
Last week, we learned that Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves currently have lower favourability ratings than Donald Trump. But how do Brits really feel about the US president anyway? The answer, according to Ipsos, may surprise you.
“Let’s be clear, Donald Trump isn't winning any popularity contests in the UK anytime soon, with 64 per cent of Britons overall unfavourable towards the US president,” says Keiran Pedley, director of UK politics at Ipsos. “But what’s fascinating in our polling is the generational divide that we uncovered.” Ipsos found that while just 9 per cent of those over 55 view Trump favourably, that figure jumps to 29 per cent for 18-34-year-olds (though 45 per cent in this age group are unfavourable)
My take from that is that social media must be pumping all sorts of far-right MAGA crap in innocent and vulnerable young minds. Worrying.
Three facts combined by the tech numpty who wrote the OSA, by the look of it, to reach a silly conclusion.
As an aside, the computing power needed for AI is worrying some green campaigners. Some (even on pb) have suggested that devolved governments in colder and wetter parts of the country should look at building data centres there to take advantage of natural cooling.
We can’t do that. It would mean moving jobs and investment from the south to the north, which is not on.
And imagine the political pressure and lobbying for charging electricity according to the distance from the generator. Wouldn't just be the SNP etc.
Has anyone ever provided a rational explanation of why electricity should be cheaper the further away from the source of generation?
Oh, yes. To encourage cheaper electricity in London and the SE without having to renew nasty power stations where the most important folk/voters live.
Edit: Else they'd have to pay for transmission more than the folk who live in the north/west or downwind from Hinkley Point etc. And we can't have that. Apparently.
This is so obvious it drives me crazy. Just slap nodal and 30-minute tariffs on everyone and the market will sort itself out. Instead, we have people in the Highlands desperately putting solar up because they are effectively subsiding London and the SE.
Other than 'Ed Miliband is rubbish' (which might be true, but seems overly simplistic) - what are the reasons why nodal (or zonal if nodal is too complicated) pricing wasn't put forward in the latest review? It seems such an obvious "win" to reduce constraint payments and encourage battery farms and privately funded links between nodes / zones etc that I feel that I must be missing something.
There's a complicated explanation here, but fundamentally if energy producers in Scotland generate more than the transmission network can cope with you either have to boost the transmission network or encourage generation away from Scotland and nearer to the point of most consumption. Zonal pricing encourages neither of those outcomes. The current imperfect arrangement feeds some of the pay not to produce payments back into network upgrades.
Of course it does. If the price of electricity is much higher in the SE, that incentivises power companies to invest in generation in those areas because they make more profit from doing so. Think about the shape of a supply curve.
Instead, we have the absurd situation where the price is universal, which means there is no cost to investing in Sutherland and then offloading the cost of transmission to customers via standing charges.
Two points I think here. Do consumers benefit from investments in additional transmission capacity that needs to be paid for? Zonal pricing discourages that, while generating companies in Scotland are paying for part of that investment under current arrangements.And, yes, zonal pricing ultimately reduces the business case for investments in energy production in Scotland. Long term average prices could be higher: consumers in the south pay for more expensively produced electricity while Scottish producers have a smaller market to sell to and to spread their costs over.
As I say it's complicated and I don't personally have a settled view. The best argument for zonal pricing, I suspect, it encourages earlier electrification, which should be everyone's goal.
Three facts combined by the tech numpty who wrote the OSA, by the look of it, to reach a silly conclusion.
As an aside, the computing power needed for AI is worrying some green campaigners. Some (even on pb) have suggested that devolved governments in colder and wetter parts of the country should look at building data centres there to take advantage of natural cooling.
We can’t do that. It would mean moving jobs and investment from the south to the north, which is not on.
And imagine the political pressure and lobbying for charging electricity according to the distance from the generator. Wouldn't just be the SNP etc.
Has anyone ever provided a rational explanation of why electricity should be cheaper the further away from the source of generation?
Oh, yes. To encourage cheaper electricity in London and the SE without having to renew nasty power stations where the most important folk/voters live.
Edit: Else they'd have to pay for transmission more than the folk who live in the north/west or downwind from Hinkley Point etc. And we can't have that. Apparently.
This is so obvious it drives me crazy. Just slap nodal and 30-minute tariffs on everyone and the market will sort itself out. Instead, we have people in the Highlands desperately putting solar up because they are effectively subsiding London and the SE.
Other than 'Ed Miliband is rubbish' (which might be true, but seems overly simplistic) - what are the reasons why nodal (or zonal if nodal is too complicated) pricing wasn't put forward in the latest review? It seems such an obvious "win" to reduce constraint payments and encourage battery farms and privately funded links between nodes / zones etc that I feel that I must be missing something.
There's a complicated explanation here, but fundamentally if energy producers in Scotland generate more than the transmission network can cope with you either have to boost the transmission network or encourage generation away from Scotland and nearer to the point of most consumption. Zonal pricing encourages neither of those outcomes. The current imperfect arrangement feeds some of the pay not to produce payments back into network upgrades.
Of course it does. If the price of electricity is much higher in the SE, that incentivises power companies to invest in generation in those areas because they make more profit from doing so. Think about the shape of a supply curve.
Instead, we have the absurd situation where the price is universal, which means there is no cost to investing in Sutherland and then offloading the cost of transmission to customers via standing charges.
And there's no benefit to being a consumer in a region where electricity is cheap. Or incentive for using power which otherwise just gets wasted.
The current arrangement is worse than imperfect. It's not a real market at all.
Incidentally, onshore wind, while not as cheap as solar, is quite competitive in the market.
The Top 12 wind power states have low rates!
All 12 have power prices below the US average of 13.18 cents/kWh (EIA's May 2025 YTD).
I am in the area just south of Regent Park tube station. Fuck it is proper posh. I've just passed the consulates of China and Poland. Woo. I keep expecting to see Sarah Jessica Parker in a tutu.
A young SJP played the intern(?) in Flight Of The Navigator.
Three facts combined by the tech numpty who wrote the OSA, by the look of it, to reach a silly conclusion.
As an aside, the computing power needed for AI is worrying some green campaigners. Some (even on pb) have suggested that devolved governments in colder and wetter parts of the country should look at building data centres there to take advantage of natural cooling.
We can’t do that. It would mean moving jobs and investment from the south to the north, which is not on.
And imagine the political pressure and lobbying for charging electricity according to the distance from the generator. Wouldn't just be the SNP etc.
Has anyone ever provided a rational explanation of why electricity should be cheaper the further away from the source of generation?
Oh, yes. To encourage cheaper electricity in London and the SE without having to renew nasty power stations where the most important folk/voters live.
Edit: Else they'd have to pay for transmission more than the folk who live in the north/west or downwind from Hinkley Point etc. And we can't have that. Apparently.
This is so obvious it drives me crazy. Just slap nodal and 30-minute tariffs on everyone and the market will sort itself out. Instead, we have people in the Highlands desperately putting solar up because they are effectively subsiding London and the SE.
Other than 'Ed Miliband is rubbish' (which might be true, but seems overly simplistic) - what are the reasons why nodal (or zonal if nodal is too complicated) pricing wasn't put forward in the latest review? It seems such an obvious "win" to reduce constraint payments and encourage battery farms and privately funded links between nodes / zones etc that I feel that I must be missing something.
There's a complicated explanation here, but fundamentally if energy producers in Scotland generate more than the transmission network can cope with you either have to boost the transmission network or encourage generation away from Scotland and nearer to the point of most consumption. Zonal pricing encourages neither of those outcomes. The current imperfect arrangement feeds some of the pay not to produce payments back into network upgrades.
Of course it does. If the price of electricity is much higher in the SE, that incentivises power companies to invest in generation in those areas because they make more profit from doing so. Think about the shape of a supply curve.
Instead, we have the absurd situation where the price is universal, which means there is no cost to investing in Sutherland and then offloading the cost of transmission to customers via standing charges.
Two points I think here. Do consumers benefit from investments in additional transmission capacity that needs to be paid for? Zonal pricing discourages that, while generating companies in Scotland are paying for part of that investment under current arrangements.And, yes, zonal pricing ultimately reduces the business case for investments in energy production in Scotland. Long term average prices could be higher: consumers in the south pay for more expensively produced electricity while Scottish producers have a smaller market to sell to and to spread their costs over.
As I say it's complicated and I don't personally have a settled view. The best argument for zonal pricing, I suspect, it encourages earlier electrification, which should be everyone's goal.
That would have the added benefit of strongly incentivising central government not to eff up contracting for major power contracts (Hinckley, etc). And think twice about lading on more green charges to pay for boondoggles like carbon capture, as though they have no downside.
The biggest benefit of zonal pricing is that it's a LOT closer to a genuine market than our existing arrangements, which aren't anything of the sort.
I think periodic light touch refresher tests rather than once and you're done for the next fifty years. Renewals are shorter if you're older.
Maybe carried out by driving instructors with controls to ensure consistency.
What about the gap to the next refresher test is shorter the more points you've accrued.
We currently have a shortage of driving examiners that has created a grey market in test slots. Airily dumping more work on people who don't exist makes me wonder if pb is not run from the Cabinet Office.
Is that still happening? It’s a five-minute software fix to require the driver number when booking a test, and not allow it to be changed afterwards.
Who benefits from the grey market in test bookings?
This is like the grey market concert tickets. We know it can be done properly, because Glastonbury Festival has done it, but everyone else in the concert industry appears to benefit from the current system.
There’s a bunch of driving test business that claim, to the government, that their ability to buy blocks of tests and sell them to their students is vital to their business model.
Much as the garment trade types in Leicester used to proclaim that enforcing the minimum wage and the Factory Acts would put them out of business.
Weren't the garment trade people right? I think it's turned out that it's cheaper to get Bangladeshi's to make garments in Bangladesh than Leicester since the NWM arrived and then went through the roof (if it had tracked average wages since its introduction it would be more like £9/hr than £12.21/hr).
The real question is whether we want to keep the industry in question - there was a reasonable argument to be made on garment manufacture, I'm struggling to see the case in favour of the driving test touting system.
Requiring a drivers license number to book a test, limiting each drivers license number to two bookings, plus making them non-transferable but with the ability cancel (up to say a week before) for a full refund would fix the problem without penalising any normal people.
Yes, they were right.
And probably a bunch of driving lesson companies will take a trouble hit if they can’t sell tests at a 500% markup
And in Leicester, the garment trade collapsed when companies didn’t want to buy from sketchy law breakers.
As PJ O’Rourke pointed out, banning 10 year old boys from being sent down coal mines created massive unemployment among 10 year old boys. It did however, leave them time to try other goals. Such as living till the age of 11….
US NATO Ambassador Matthew Whitaker on Ukraine's territorial concessions: "No big chunks or sections are going to be just given that haven't been fought for or earned on the battlefield." https://x.com/atrupar/status/1954531864921723174
By the US NATO ambassador's logic, if I
1. Break and enter your house. 2. Kill you 3. Rape and then kill your wife 4. sell your daughter off to some pal of Epstein's who advertises her on the web...
I also get to keep your house, car, and the rest of your possessions?
It was a bright sunny day when I did the route in 2017, also went as far as Ribblehead last September when I did the Clitheroe to Hellifield line.
I was at Garsdale Station (train station to the under 40s) a few weeks ago when a red squirrel walked right in front of me, and safely across the tracks.
Three facts combined by the tech numpty who wrote the OSA, by the look of it, to reach a silly conclusion.
As an aside, the computing power needed for AI is worrying some green campaigners. Some (even on pb) have suggested that devolved governments in colder and wetter parts of the country should look at building data centres there to take advantage of natural cooling.
We can’t do that. It would mean moving jobs and investment from the south to the north, which is not on.
And imagine the political pressure and lobbying for charging electricity according to the distance from the generator. Wouldn't just be the SNP etc.
Has anyone ever provided a rational explanation of why electricity should be cheaper the further away from the source of generation?
Oh, yes. To encourage cheaper electricity in London and the SE without having to renew nasty power stations where the most important folk/voters live.
Edit: Else they'd have to pay for transmission more than the folk who live in the north/west or downwind from Hinkley Point etc. And we can't have that. Apparently.
This is so obvious it drives me crazy. Just slap nodal and 30-minute tariffs on everyone and the market will sort itself out. Instead, we have people in the Highlands desperately putting solar up because they are effectively subsiding London and the SE.
Other than 'Ed Miliband is rubbish' (which might be true, but seems overly simplistic) - what are the reasons why nodal (or zonal if nodal is too complicated) pricing wasn't put forward in the latest review? It seems such an obvious "win" to reduce constraint payments and encourage battery farms and privately funded links between nodes / zones etc that I feel that I must be missing something.
There's a complicated explanation here, but fundamentally if energy producers in Scotland generate more than the transmission network can cope with you either have to boost the transmission network or encourage generation away from Scotland and nearer to the point of most consumption. Zonal pricing encourages neither of those outcomes. The current imperfect arrangement feeds some of the pay not to produce payments back into network upgrades.
Of course it does. If the price of electricity is much higher in the SE, that incentivises power companies to invest in generation in those areas because they make more profit from doing so. Think about the shape of a supply curve.
Instead, we have the absurd situation where the price is universal, which means there is no cost to investing in Sutherland and then offloading the cost of transmission to customers via standing charges.
My guess is one of the reasons Mr Miliband didn't want zonal pricing is the UK's electric is very expensive already and discounts for pockets of people in rural South of Scotland, Pennine Moors, Sunderland etc wouldn't go down well with the English electorate.
I think Starmer's lot are throwing their lot behind wind turbines. Not much room in Surrey or London suburbs for those. Battery storage is slowly creeping up and solar farms are rocketing, but turbines are the big beast.
So we are now left with a situation where there is a massive generation imbalance which means large parts of the grid need to be updated to get it down where its needed, to the midlands and south of England.
Scotgov seem quite happy with this situation, given Mr Swinney's reiterated commitment to more offshore and onshore wind, and pylons across from Skye eastwards and Aberdeenshire down the east coast.
The government(s) won't learn unless people revolt, and there's not enough of them living in the sticks for the Energy secretary(s) to change course
US NATO Ambassador Matthew Whitaker on Ukraine's territorial concessions: "No big chunks or sections are going to be just given that haven't been fought for or earned on the battlefield." https://x.com/atrupar/status/1954531864921723174
By the US NATO ambassador's logic, if I
1. Break and enter your house. 2. Kill you 3. Rape and then kill your wife 4. sell your daughter off to some pal of Epstein's who advertises her on the web...
I also get to keep your house, car, and the rest of your possessions?
I think periodic light touch refresher tests rather than once and you're done for the next fifty years. Renewals are shorter if you're older.
Maybe carried out by driving instructors with controls to ensure consistency.
What about the gap to the next refresher test is shorter the more points you've accrued.
We currently have a shortage of driving examiners that has created a grey market in test slots. Airily dumping more work on people who don't exist makes me wonder if pb is not run from the Cabinet Office.
Is that still happening? It’s a five-minute software fix to require the driver number when booking a test, and not allow it to be changed afterwards.
Who benefits from the grey market in test bookings?
This is like the grey market concert tickets. We know it can be done properly, because Glastonbury Festival has done it, but everyone else in the concert industry appears to benefit from the current system.
It does not really matter. The grey market is a symptom. The underlying cause is not enough slots owing to a shortage of examiners. Closing the grey market won't fix that any more than it would create more Oasis tickets.
Is the underlying cause not, as with the court system, that everything shut down for 18 months in 2020-21, and there isn’t the capacity to clear the resulting backlog?
At least getting rid of the grey market would allow people to see the extent of the queue, and to manage the issue by for example training more examiners or having recent retirees come back part time.
It’s not a new problem either, when I sat my test back in 1995 there was a four-month wait. I was told to apply for the test by the instructor on the day of my first lesson, which was my 17th birthday, after he was happy he could get me trained up before the test slot!
US NATO Ambassador Matthew Whitaker on Ukraine's territorial concessions: "No big chunks or sections are going to be just given that haven't been fought for or earned on the battlefield." https://x.com/atrupar/status/1954531864921723174
By the US NATO ambassador's logic, if I
1. Break and enter your house. 2. Kill you 3. Rape and then kill your wife 4. sell your daughter off to some pal of Epstein's who advertises her on the web...
I also get to keep your house, car, and the rest of your possessions?
Coming a bit late to the debate but a few observations.
1. Agree with tightening up the laws on drink driving. I know from my own experience that there is really no level of alcohol I can consume without it affecting my driving. This has always been the way with me even when I was able to drink heavily in my student days. So my rule for my whole driving career has been that I won't drive after drinking any alcohol at all. I think the 0.5 g/l level seems reasonable for legal purposes but think the 0.2 g/l level used in Norway and other Eureopan countries is probably a bit excessive as it does catch out a lot of people with the 'morning after' effect.
2. Whilst I agree with the eye tests, I don't see why they should start at 70. Deterioration in eye function can and does start much earlier for many people. AT 60 my eyesight is no where near as good as it was at 50. Perhaps we should consider an eye test as necessary for veryone renewing their licence every 10 years. As someone pointed out yesterday, setting the starting age at 70 but expecting people with driving jobs to continue until they are 67 (and sure to rise in the future) seems a bit daft to me.
3. What does seem to be missing from these proposals is the need to do far more than just test eyesight for the elderly. I would be interstd to know how many accdents are caused by poor eyesight and how many by other infirmaties. Currently it is pretty much impossible for a concerned relative to get someones driving licence revoked even when it is obvious to family members they are no longer fit to drive. It can be a cause of great animosity within families and as a result often it is just ignored. A test for mental and physical ability to drive safely should become a standard part of a more regular licence renewal for the elderly.
With regard to point 3 see my earlier post below. I will cut and paste to save the search:
"More relevant for the elderly is observation and reaction. Plenty of elderly have glasses giving them vision that will pass any test, but should never be behind a wheel. The driver awareness test for observation and reaction fits the bill. I finally got the keys off my father at 92. He was incapable of driving for years before that. His eyesight (with glasses) was better than mine."
Worth noting it took years to get the keys off him for the reasons you state and we only did after an accident. Fortunately it was minor, but it might not have been. He was plain dangerous, but had perfect vision.
Cognitive tests would help, some of the older generation can be very stubborn giving up their freedom to drive when not fit.
My suggestion would be a cognitive and sight test at 80, then one at 85, then annually until they no longer have a licence. Paid for by the licence holder or means tested in some cases
Three facts combined by the tech numpty who wrote the OSA, by the look of it, to reach a silly conclusion.
As an aside, the computing power needed for AI is worrying some green campaigners. Some (even on pb) have suggested that devolved governments in colder and wetter parts of the country should look at building data centres there to take advantage of natural cooling.
We can’t do that. It would mean moving jobs and investment from the south to the north, which is not on.
And imagine the political pressure and lobbying for charging electricity according to the distance from the generator. Wouldn't just be the SNP etc.
Has anyone ever provided a rational explanation of why electricity should be cheaper the further away from the source of generation?
Oh, yes. To encourage cheaper electricity in London and the SE without having to renew nasty power stations where the most important folk/voters live.
Edit: Else they'd have to pay for transmission more than the folk who live in the north/west or downwind from Hinkley Point etc. And we can't have that. Apparently.
This is so obvious it drives me crazy. Just slap nodal and 30-minute tariffs on everyone and the market will sort itself out. Instead, we have people in the Highlands desperately putting solar up because they are effectively subsiding London and the SE.
Other than 'Ed Miliband is rubbish' (which might be true, but seems overly simplistic) - what are the reasons why nodal (or zonal if nodal is too complicated) pricing wasn't put forward in the latest review? It seems such an obvious "win" to reduce constraint payments and encourage battery farms and privately funded links between nodes / zones etc that I feel that I must be missing something.
There's a complicated explanation here, but fundamentally if energy producers in Scotland generate more than the transmission network can cope with you either have to boost the transmission network or encourage generation away from Scotland and nearer to the point of most consumption. Zonal pricing encourages neither of those outcomes. The current imperfect arrangement feeds some of the pay not to produce payments back into network upgrades.
Of course it does. If the price of electricity is much higher in the SE, that incentivises power companies to invest in generation in those areas because they make more profit from doing so. Think about the shape of a supply curve.
Instead, we have the absurd situation where the price is universal, which means there is no cost to investing in Sutherland and then offloading the cost of transmission to customers via standing charges.
Two points I think here. Do consumers benefit from investments in additional transmission capacity that needs to be paid for? Zonal pricing discourages that, while generating companies in Scotland are paying for part of that investment under current arrangements.And, yes, zonal pricing ultimately reduces the business case for investments in energy production in Scotland. Long term average prices could be higher: consumers in the south pay for more expensively produced electricity while Scottish producers have a smaller market to sell to and to spread their costs over.
As I say it's complicated and I don't personally have a settled view. The best argument for zonal pricing, I suspect, it encourages earlier electrification, which should be everyone's goal.
Customers do not benefit from increased transmission capacity - they benefit from reliable and cheap electricity. That might mean building more pylons, but equally it might mean building more generation closer to demand.
And you're absolutely right about Scotland. We're an enormous exporter of renewable energy. There shouldn't really be a case for more generation here, unless the benefits of doing so outweigh the costs of building transmission to the SE of England. The price signal does not currently reflect those benefits and costs.
Would it be safer to close the House of Commons bars or its car park?
I'd love to know where this new puritanism has come from.
Its the process state again. Nannying is cheaper than making progress, so the process state gonna nanny.
No-one wants to take accountability on accepting any level of risk, so it's easier to advocate for a process that drives toward zero risk - the cost and impact of that being someone else's problem.
Like, stopping people living or getting things done.
Three facts combined by the tech numpty who wrote the OSA, by the look of it, to reach a silly conclusion.
As an aside, the computing power needed for AI is worrying some green campaigners. Some (even on pb) have suggested that devolved governments in colder and wetter parts of the country should look at building data centres there to take advantage of natural cooling.
We can’t do that. It would mean moving jobs and investment from the south to the north, which is not on.
And imagine the political pressure and lobbying for charging electricity according to the distance from the generator. Wouldn't just be the SNP etc.
Has anyone ever provided a rational explanation of why electricity should be cheaper the further away from the source of generation?
Oh, yes. To encourage cheaper electricity in London and the SE without having to renew nasty power stations where the most important folk/voters live.
Edit: Else they'd have to pay for transmission more than the folk who live in the north/west or downwind from Hinkley Point etc. And we can't have that. Apparently.
This is so obvious it drives me crazy. Just slap nodal and 30-minute tariffs on everyone and the market will sort itself out. Instead, we have people in the Highlands desperately putting solar up because they are effectively subsiding London and the SE.
Other than 'Ed Miliband is rubbish' (which might be true, but seems overly simplistic) - what are the reasons why nodal (or zonal if nodal is too complicated) pricing wasn't put forward in the latest review? It seems such an obvious "win" to reduce constraint payments and encourage battery farms and privately funded links between nodes / zones etc that I feel that I must be missing something.
There's a complicated explanation here, but fundamentally if energy producers in Scotland generate more than the transmission network can cope with you either have to boost the transmission network or encourage generation away from Scotland and nearer to the point of most consumption. Zonal pricing encourages neither of those outcomes. The current imperfect arrangement feeds some of the pay not to produce payments back into network upgrades.
Of course it does. If the price of electricity is much higher in the SE, that incentivises power companies to invest in generation in those areas because they make more profit from doing so. Think about the shape of a supply curve.
Instead, we have the absurd situation where the price is universal, which means there is no cost to investing in Sutherland and then offloading the cost of transmission to customers via standing charges.
My guess is one of the reasons Mr Miliband didn't want zonal pricing is the UK's electric is very expensive already and discounts for pockets of people in rural South of Scotland, Pennine Moors, Sunderland etc wouldn't go down well with the English electorate.
I think Starmer's lot are throwing their lot behind wind turbines. Not much room in Surrey or London suburbs for those. Battery storage is slowly creeping up and solar farms are rocketing, but turbines are the big beast.
So we are now left with a situation where there is a massive generation imbalance which means large parts of the grid need to be updated to get it down where its needed, to the midlands and south of England.
Scotgov seem quite happy with this situation, given Mr Swinney's reiterated commitment to more offshore and onshore wind, and pylons across from Skye eastwards and Aberdeenshire down the east coast.
The government(s) won't learn unless people revolt, and there's not enough of them living in the sticks for the Energy secretary(s) to change course
There’s also not very much steady wind in Surrey.
The last time someone tried “the evil southies want to build wind turbines only elsewhere”, here, we ended up with a map showing that onshore wind farms are being built where the wind is. Funny that.
Which is why offshore wind is booming - you can use ever large and more efficient turbines, fairly easily, and the wind is more frequent and steadier. If you go to then south and east coasts, you see the result, in the distance.
Coming a bit late to the debate but a few observations.
1. Agree with tightening up the laws on drink driving. I know from my own experience that there is really no level of alcohol I can consume without it affecting my driving. This has always been the way with me even when I was able to drink heavily in my student days. So my rule for my whole driving career has been that I won't drive after drinking any alcohol at all. I think the 0.5 g/l level seems reasonable for legal purposes but think the 0.2 g/l level used in Norway and other Eureopan countries is probably a bit excessive as it does catch out a lot of people with the 'morning after' effect.
2. Whilst I agree with the eye tests, I don't see why they should start at 70. Deterioration in eye function can and does start much earlier for many people. AT 60 my eyesight is no where near as good as it was at 50. Perhaps we should consider an eye test as necessary for veryone renewing their licence every 10 years. As someone pointed out yesterday, setting the starting age at 70 but expecting people with driving jobs to continue until they are 67 (and sure to rise in the future) seems a bit daft to me.
3. What does seem to be missing from these proposals is the need to do far more than just test eyesight for the elderly. I would be interstd to know how many accdents are caused by poor eyesight and how many by other infirmaties. Currently it is pretty much impossible for a concerned relative to get someones driving licence revoked even when it is obvious to family members they are no longer fit to drive. It can be a cause of great animosity within families and as a result often it is just ignored. A test for mental and physical ability to drive safely should become a standard part of a more regular licence renewal for the elderly.
Fair enough but I disagree with pretty much all of this, as I do the suggestion of "no passenger" rules for young new drivers over on the BBC.
The last thing we need is more restrictions, process, and regulations regarding how we move around.
We are obsessed with trying to legislate to remove all risk in this country, regardless of the economic or social impact.
These are basic safety ideas to stop people getting killed. As you know two 18 year old lads from my sons class got killed in June as passengers in cars driven by new drivers. Both the young and the old need some controls placed on their driving where they are a danger to others.
It is not a question of legislating to emove 'All' risk, simply to deal with the bleeding obvious risks posed by those who are unfit to drive, either due to age or being under the influence.
I didn't know that and I'm sorry to hear that.
The trouble is if you legislate for a tragedy that hits and restricts the options for all 18 year old drivers, and there are over 150k of them.
In general, one should always be cautious in responding to a tragedy with knee-jerk legislation. And I don't agree with it.
Instead I'd put the risk and judgement onto the 18 year olds themselves. Most of whom will get it absolutely right.
Trump says Powell has been a disaster and has done incalculable damage to the economy but it doesn't matter as the Trump economy is so brilliant it got through his mistake and I am planning to sue him anyway for cost overruns.
US NATO Ambassador Matthew Whitaker on Ukraine's territorial concessions: "No big chunks or sections are going to be just given that haven't been fought for or earned on the battlefield." https://x.com/atrupar/status/1954531864921723174
By the US NATO ambassador's logic, if I
1. Break and enter your house. 2. Kill you 3. Rape and then kill your wife 4. sell your daughter off to some pal of Epstein's who advertises her on the web...
I also get to keep your house, car, and the rest of your possessions?
It’s like they filled the administration with all the dumb jocks and stupid mean girls from 80s and 90s films.
Anyway, does anyone have an Economist subscription who would happily precis this article as I can’t be bothered subscribing for this.
Was trying to guess what the article says and I have the horror it involves Starmer handing over the Falklands to Argentina, the US putting a military base there and us paying the Argentinians billions for the privilege.
Three facts combined by the tech numpty who wrote the OSA, by the look of it, to reach a silly conclusion.
As an aside, the computing power needed for AI is worrying some green campaigners. Some (even on pb) have suggested that devolved governments in colder and wetter parts of the country should look at building data centres there to take advantage of natural cooling.
We can’t do that. It would mean moving jobs and investment from the south to the north, which is not on.
And imagine the political pressure and lobbying for charging electricity according to the distance from the generator. Wouldn't just be the SNP etc.
Has anyone ever provided a rational explanation of why electricity should be cheaper the further away from the source of generation?
Oh, yes. To encourage cheaper electricity in London and the SE without having to renew nasty power stations where the most important folk/voters live.
Edit: Else they'd have to pay for transmission more than the folk who live in the north/west or downwind from Hinkley Point etc. And we can't have that. Apparently.
This is so obvious it drives me crazy. Just slap nodal and 30-minute tariffs on everyone and the market will sort itself out. Instead, we have people in the Highlands desperately putting solar up because they are effectively subsiding London and the SE.
Other than 'Ed Miliband is rubbish' (which might be true, but seems overly simplistic) - what are the reasons why nodal (or zonal if nodal is too complicated) pricing wasn't put forward in the latest review? It seems such an obvious "win" to reduce constraint payments and encourage battery farms and privately funded links between nodes / zones etc that I feel that I must be missing something.
There's a complicated explanation here, but fundamentally if energy producers in Scotland generate more than the transmission network can cope with you either have to boost the transmission network or encourage generation away from Scotland and nearer to the point of most consumption. Zonal pricing encourages neither of those outcomes. The current imperfect arrangement feeds some of the pay not to produce payments back into network upgrades.
Of course it does. If the price of electricity is much higher in the SE, that incentivises power companies to invest in generation in those areas because they make more profit from doing so. Think about the shape of a supply curve.
Instead, we have the absurd situation where the price is universal, which means there is no cost to investing in Sutherland and then offloading the cost of transmission to customers via standing charges.
Two points I think here. Do consumers benefit from investments in additional transmission capacity that needs to be paid for? Zonal pricing discourages that, while generating companies in Scotland are paying for part of that investment under current arrangements.And, yes, zonal pricing ultimately reduces the business case for investments in energy production in Scotland. Long term average prices could be higher: consumers in the south pay for more expensively produced electricity while Scottish producers have a smaller market to sell to and to spread their costs over.
As I say it's complicated and I don't personally have a settled view. The best argument for zonal pricing, I suspect, it encourages earlier electrification, which should be everyone's goal.
That would have the added benefit of strongly incentivising central government not to eff up contracting for major power contracts (Hinckley, etc). And think twice about lading on more green charges to pay for boondoggles like carbon capture, as though they have no downside.
The biggest benefit of zonal pricing is that it's a LOT closer to a genuine market than our existing arrangements, which aren't anything of the sort.
It's closer to a market but markets don't on their own make major infrastructure developments happen. Hence the current hybrid/mess (choose your noun).
An explanation for the current setup, not necessarily a justification.
I am in the area just south of Regent Park tube station. Fuck it is proper posh. I've just passed the consulates of China and Poland. Woo. I keep expecting to see Sarah Jessica Parker in a tutu.
Useless fact: Regent's Park is the only tube station without a surface level building.
That ranks the UK as the fifth most successful country in the programme, which is open to 43 nations: the 27 EU member states and 16 non-EU associate members also including New Zealand, Canada and Norway.
Germany, the top participant in Horizon in 2024, won €1.4bn (£1.21bn) in grants and Spain, which came third, got €900m (£777m).
Scientists have said previously they were “over the moon” to be back working with EU colleagues. They said they knew it would take time to return to the top three because of the time it took to build multinational consortiums to apply for funds.
But in terms of grants for proposals by individual scientists, which are easier to assemble, the UK now ranks as the second-most successful participating country after Germany, with €242m (£209m) in funds.
The UK is the single most successful applicant country when it comes to Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, one of the most prestigious grant programmes for doctoral and post-doctoral research in the world...
Data decarbonisation is very much a thing and was starting to become a big part of my trade when I retired. The environmental costs of storing terabytes of information on servers which need to not only be permanently powered but often kept at specific levels of heat and humidity is huge. It's also worth pointing out a lot of this accumulated infornation will a) probably never be accessed and b) isn't governed by proper rules of retention allowing for deletion.
In the old days, a bank or law firm would store two million boxes of paperwork and printouts down a salt mine in Cheshire where the environmental conditions are perfect for long term shortage but unfortunately even these tended to suffer from that I used to call the KGB syndrome where every file was stamped "to be preserved forever".
Permanent preservation of historical records is or should be the responsibility of the network of record offices across the country but even they are short of space and there will be another influx of such records following local government reorganisation (will nobody think of the record managers?).
As a famous exchange from the 1960s had it - "We want information - you won't get it - by hook or by crook, we will". If we of course deleted all tweets from 12 months back, we'd lose half the fun of sites like this.
Three facts combined by the tech numpty who wrote the OSA, by the look of it, to reach a silly conclusion.
As an aside, the computing power needed for AI is worrying some green campaigners. Some (even on pb) have suggested that devolved governments in colder and wetter parts of the country should look at building data centres there to take advantage of natural cooling.
We can’t do that. It would mean moving jobs and investment from the south to the north, which is not on.
And imagine the political pressure and lobbying for charging electricity according to the distance from the generator. Wouldn't just be the SNP etc.
Has anyone ever provided a rational explanation of why electricity should be cheaper the further away from the source of generation?
Oh, yes. To encourage cheaper electricity in London and the SE without having to renew nasty power stations where the most important folk/voters live.
Edit: Else they'd have to pay for transmission more than the folk who live in the north/west or downwind from Hinkley Point etc. And we can't have that. Apparently.
This is so obvious it drives me crazy. Just slap nodal and 30-minute tariffs on everyone and the market will sort itself out. Instead, we have people in the Highlands desperately putting solar up because they are effectively subsiding London and the SE.
Other than 'Ed Miliband is rubbish' (which might be true, but seems overly simplistic) - what are the reasons why nodal (or zonal if nodal is too complicated) pricing wasn't put forward in the latest review? It seems such an obvious "win" to reduce constraint payments and encourage battery farms and privately funded links between nodes / zones etc that I feel that I must be missing something.
There's a complicated explanation here, but fundamentally if energy producers in Scotland generate more than the transmission network can cope with you either have to boost the transmission network or encourage generation away from Scotland and nearer to the point of most consumption. Zonal pricing encourages neither of those outcomes. The current imperfect arrangement feeds some of the pay not to produce payments back into network upgrades.
Of course it does. If the price of electricity is much higher in the SE, that incentivises power companies to invest in generation in those areas because they make more profit from doing so. Think about the shape of a supply curve.
Instead, we have the absurd situation where the price is universal, which means there is no cost to investing in Sutherland and then offloading the cost of transmission to customers via standing charges.
Two points I think here. Do consumers benefit from investments in additional transmission capacity that needs to be paid for? Zonal pricing discourages that, while generating companies in Scotland are paying for part of that investment under current arrangements.And, yes, zonal pricing ultimately reduces the business case for investments in energy production in Scotland. Long term average prices could be higher: consumers in the south pay for more expensively produced electricity while Scottish producers have a smaller market to sell to and to spread their costs over.
As I say it's complicated and I don't personally have a settled view. The best argument for zonal pricing, I suspect, it encourages earlier electrification, which should be everyone's goal.
Customers do not benefit from increased transmission capacity - they benefit from reliable and cheap electricity. That might mean building more pylons, but equally it might mean building more generation closer to demand.
And you're absolutely right about Scotland. We're an enormous exporter of renewable energy. There shouldn't really be a case for more generation here, unless the benefits of doing so outweigh the costs of building transmission to the SE of England. The price signal does not currently reflect those benefits and costs.
Customers benefit when there is investment in improving the local distribution grid. A good example was Garsdale and upper Dentdale which were both put in as spurs in 1960. About 20 years ago UU or whatever it was called then redesigned the whole as a ring main. Before the change our electic went off somewhere at least once a month. Since then maybe goes off for 5 seconds then jumps back on. Fantastic change benefiting perhaps 800 householders. The thing is Friends of the Earth did their usual this will be terrible bullshit, should all be undergrounded (No!). In fact the lines are much less visible than they were. I wouldn't be able to see where it goes under the Rawthey, if I didn't know. but because they are only undergrounded where there is absolute need it is much safer and faults are easier to detect. Undergound everything is a fool's promise. Suppose the conductor breaks, we know it is between two points 2 miles apart - typical situation. Drive around and you can find an overground break within 10 minutes. Underground, will take a day to locate the break within 100 metres then it is all to dig out.
I helped push approval through South Lakeland but can't forget the grand-standing of Farron et al for whom winning a vote is worth more than an efficient electricity supply. That attitude hasn't changed just see the Lib Dems with the Gas and Lithium Battery site near Kendal.
Three facts combined by the tech numpty who wrote the OSA, by the look of it, to reach a silly conclusion.
As an aside, the computing power needed for AI is worrying some green campaigners. Some (even on pb) have suggested that devolved governments in colder and wetter parts of the country should look at building data centres there to take advantage of natural cooling.
We can’t do that. It would mean moving jobs and investment from the south to the north, which is not on.
And imagine the political pressure and lobbying for charging electricity according to the distance from the generator. Wouldn't just be the SNP etc.
Has anyone ever provided a rational explanation of why electricity should be cheaper the further away from the source of generation?
Oh, yes. To encourage cheaper electricity in London and the SE without having to renew nasty power stations where the most important folk/voters live.
Edit: Else they'd have to pay for transmission more than the folk who live in the north/west or downwind from Hinkley Point etc. And we can't have that. Apparently.
This is so obvious it drives me crazy. Just slap nodal and 30-minute tariffs on everyone and the market will sort itself out. Instead, we have people in the Highlands desperately putting solar up because they are effectively subsiding London and the SE.
Other than 'Ed Miliband is rubbish' (which might be true, but seems overly simplistic) - what are the reasons why nodal (or zonal if nodal is too complicated) pricing wasn't put forward in the latest review? It seems such an obvious "win" to reduce constraint payments and encourage battery farms and privately funded links between nodes / zones etc that I feel that I must be missing something.
There's a complicated explanation here, but fundamentally if energy producers in Scotland generate more than the transmission network can cope with you either have to boost the transmission network or encourage generation away from Scotland and nearer to the point of most consumption. Zonal pricing encourages neither of those outcomes. The current imperfect arrangement feeds some of the pay not to produce payments back into network upgrades.
Of course it does. If the price of electricity is much higher in the SE, that incentivises power companies to invest in generation in those areas because they make more profit from doing so. Think about the shape of a supply curve.
Instead, we have the absurd situation where the price is universal, which means there is no cost to investing in Sutherland and then offloading the cost of transmission to customers via standing charges.
Two points I think here. Do consumers benefit from investments in additional transmission capacity that needs to be paid for? Zonal pricing discourages that, while generating companies in Scotland are paying for part of that investment under current arrangements.And, yes, zonal pricing ultimately reduces the business case for investments in energy production in Scotland. Long term average prices could be higher: consumers in the south pay for more expensively produced electricity while Scottish producers have a smaller market to sell to and to spread their costs over.
As I say it's complicated and I don't personally have a settled view. The best argument for zonal pricing, I suspect, it encourages earlier electrification, which should be everyone's goal.
Customers do not benefit from increased transmission capacity - they benefit from reliable and cheap electricity. That might mean building more pylons, but equally it might mean building more generation closer to demand.
And you're absolutely right about Scotland. We're an enormous exporter of renewable energy. There shouldn't really be a case for more generation here, unless the benefits of doing so outweigh the costs of building transmission to the SE of England. The price signal does not currently reflect those benefits and costs.
I don't disagree with most of your comment but I question your last sentence. People developing power generation aren't going to sink money now into a national transmission network with common good benefits later unless they are required to. Price signals don't come into it.
Private generation companies were forced to supply a National Grid in the 1920s and 1930s on equal terms. The National Grid turned out a massive success and was one of factors behind Britain surviving the Second World War - power stations in Wales could replace destroyed power stations in the South East.
US NATO Ambassador Matthew Whitaker on Ukraine's territorial concessions: "No big chunks or sections are going to be just given that haven't been fought for or earned on the battlefield." https://x.com/atrupar/status/1954531864921723174
By the US NATO ambassador's logic, if I
1. Break and enter your house. 2. Kill you 3. Rape and then kill your wife 4. sell your daughter off to some pal of Epstein's who advertises her on the web...
I also get to keep your house, car, and the rest of your possessions?
It’s like they filled the administration with all the dumb jocks and stupid mean girls from 80s and 90s films.
Anyway, does anyone have an Economist subscription who would happily precis this article as I can’t be bothered subscribing for this.
Was trying to guess what the article says and I have the horror it involves Starmer handing over the Falklands to Argentina, the US putting a military base there and us paying the Argentinians billions for the privilege.
America is increasingly concerned about the South Atlantic, a region of growing strategic significance. It's a gateway to Antarctica, where China and Russia operate 15 bases, and is key to Pacific access via the Strait of Magellan—now busier due to drought in the Panama Canal. China’s illegal fishing and regional infrastructure efforts have raised alarms. Meanwhile, U.S. generals are regularly visiting Argentina’s south.
Though Argentina's military is weak, President Javier Milei is a strong pro-Western ally and seeks to modernize its armed forces with NATO-compatible equipment, raising defence spending from 0.5% to 2% of GDP. However, Britain’s longstanding arms embargo—rooted in the 1982 Falklands War—has hindered this, pushing Argentina toward Chinese weapons. Now, Milei’s pragmatic approach to the Falklands has led to renewed British-Argentine defence dialogue.
Britain remains cautious, wary of domestic backlash and a potential political shift in Argentina. But the U.S. is pushing for a deal that would curb Chinese influence and help Argentina rearm with Western support. Though obstacles remain—including the sensitivity of Falklands sovereignty—momentum is building. With Milei aligned with Washington and London reconsidering its position, a new security arrangement in the South Atlantic could be on the horizon.
But this extract is probably more informative:
Argentina wants Britain to loosen its restrictions on arms purchases. Britain wants discreet acceptance of its role in the rest of the South Atlantic, even while Argentina maintains its constitutional claim over the Falklands. Britain also wants Argentina to work with it on practical matters to improve life for the Falklanders.
The warming began in February 2024, a few months after Mr Milei took office. British defence attachés visited the ministry of defence in Argentina for the first time in three years. In September that year the British and Argentine foreign ministers met and arranged a visit by Argentines to family members' graves on the Falklands. They also agreed to share fisheries data and to restart monthly direct flights to the islands from Argentina. Defence dialogue then accelerated. An Argentine delegation visited London in January. A British one is expected to visit Buenos Aires.
Three facts combined by the tech numpty who wrote the OSA, by the look of it, to reach a silly conclusion.
As an aside, the computing power needed for AI is worrying some green campaigners. Some (even on pb) have suggested that devolved governments in colder and wetter parts of the country should look at building data centres there to take advantage of natural cooling.
We can’t do that. It would mean moving jobs and investment from the south to the north, which is not on.
And imagine the political pressure and lobbying for charging electricity according to the distance from the generator. Wouldn't just be the SNP etc.
Has anyone ever provided a rational explanation of why electricity should be cheaper the further away from the source of generation?
Oh, yes. To encourage cheaper electricity in London and the SE without having to renew nasty power stations where the most important folk/voters live.
Edit: Else they'd have to pay for transmission more than the folk who live in the north/west or downwind from Hinkley Point etc. And we can't have that. Apparently.
This is so obvious it drives me crazy. Just slap nodal and 30-minute tariffs on everyone and the market will sort itself out. Instead, we have people in the Highlands desperately putting solar up because they are effectively subsiding London and the SE.
Other than 'Ed Miliband is rubbish' (which might be true, but seems overly simplistic) - what are the reasons why nodal (or zonal if nodal is too complicated) pricing wasn't put forward in the latest review? It seems such an obvious "win" to reduce constraint payments and encourage battery farms and privately funded links between nodes / zones etc that I feel that I must be missing something.
There's a complicated explanation here, but fundamentally if energy producers in Scotland generate more than the transmission network can cope with you either have to boost the transmission network or encourage generation away from Scotland and nearer to the point of most consumption. Zonal pricing encourages neither of those outcomes. The current imperfect arrangement feeds some of the pay not to produce payments back into network upgrades.
Of course it does. If the price of electricity is much higher in the SE, that incentivises power companies to invest in generation in those areas because they make more profit from doing so. Think about the shape of a supply curve.
Instead, we have the absurd situation where the price is universal, which means there is no cost to investing in Sutherland and then offloading the cost of transmission to customers via standing charges.
Two points I think here. Do consumers benefit from investments in additional transmission capacity that needs to be paid for? Zonal pricing discourages that, while generating companies in Scotland are paying for part of that investment under current arrangements.And, yes, zonal pricing ultimately reduces the business case for investments in energy production in Scotland. Long term average prices could be higher: consumers in the south pay for more expensively produced electricity while Scottish producers have a smaller market to sell to and to spread their costs over.
As I say it's complicated and I don't personally have a settled view. The best argument for zonal pricing, I suspect, it encourages earlier electrification, which should be everyone's goal.
Customers do not benefit from increased transmission capacity - they benefit from reliable and cheap electricity. That might mean building more pylons, but equally it might mean building more generation closer to demand.
And you're absolutely right about Scotland. We're an enormous exporter of renewable energy. There shouldn't really be a case for more generation here, unless the benefits of doing so outweigh the costs of building transmission to the SE of England. The price signal does not currently reflect those benefits and costs.
Customers benefit when there is investment in improving the local distribution grid. A good example was Garsdale and upper Dentdale which were both put in as spurs in 1960. About 20 years ago UU or whatever it was called then redesigned the whole as a ring main. Before the change our electic went off somewhere at least once a month. Since then maybe goes off for 5 seconds then jumps back on. Fantastic change benefiting perhaps 800 householders. The thing is Friends of the Earth did their usual this will be terrible bullshit, should all be undergrounded (No!). In fact the lines are much less visible than they were. I wouldn't be able to see where it goes under the Rawthey, if I didn't know. but because they are only undergrounded where there is absolute need it is much safer and faults are easier to detect. Undergound everything is a fool's promise. Suppose the conductor breaks, we know it is between two points 2 miles apart - typical situation. Drive around and you can find an overground break within 10 minutes. Underground, will take a day to locate the break within 100 metres then it is all to dig out.
I helped push approval through South Lakeland but can't forget the grand-standing of Farron et al for whom winning a vote is worth more than an efficient electricity supply. That attitude hasn't changed just see the Lib Dems with the Gas and Lithium Battery site near Kendal.
If I recall correctly, there’s roughly an order of magnitude difference in price between underground and overground routes for high voltage power cables.
The overground ones are not quite as reliable in service, but are much easier to repair when they do break. These days you can use drones for inspections, which makes it cheaper to plan routine maintenance such as clearing trees.
Lib Dems being naked opportunists is definitely not a new story.
US NATO Ambassador Matthew Whitaker on Ukraine's territorial concessions: "No big chunks or sections are going to be just given that haven't been fought for or earned on the battlefield." https://x.com/atrupar/status/1954531864921723174
By the US NATO ambassador's logic, if I
1. Break and enter your house. 2. Kill you 3. Rape and then kill your wife 4. sell your daughter off to some pal of Epstein's who advertises her on the web...
I also get to keep your house, car, and the rest of your possessions?
It’s like they filled the administration with all the dumb jocks and stupid mean girls from 80s and 90s films.
Anyway, does anyone have an Economist subscription who would happily precis this article as I can’t be bothered subscribing for this.
Was trying to guess what the article says and I have the horror it involves Starmer handing over the Falklands to Argentina, the US putting a military base there and us paying the Argentinians billions for the privilege.
America is increasingly concerned about the South Atlantic, a region of growing strategic significance. It's a gateway to Antarctica, where China and Russia operate 15 bases, and is key to Pacific access via the Strait of Magellan—now busier due to drought in the Panama Canal. China’s illegal fishing and regional infrastructure efforts have raised alarms. Meanwhile, U.S. generals are regularly visiting Argentina’s south.
Though Argentina's military is weak, President Javier Milei is a strong pro-Western ally and seeks to modernize its armed forces with NATO-compatible equipment, raising defence spending from 0.5% to 2% of GDP. However, Britain’s longstanding arms embargo—rooted in the 1982 Falklands War—has hindered this, pushing Argentina toward Chinese weapons. Now, Milei’s pragmatic approach to the Falklands has led to renewed British-Argentine defence dialogue.
Britain remains cautious, wary of domestic backlash and a potential political shift in Argentina. But the U.S. is pushing for a deal that would curb Chinese influence and help Argentina rearm with Western support. Though obstacles remain—including the sensitivity of Falklands sovereignty—momentum is building. With Milei aligned with Washington and London reconsidering its position, a new security arrangement in the South Atlantic could be on the horizon.
But this extract is probably more informative:
Argentina wants Britain to loosen its restrictions on arms purchases. Britain wants discreet acceptance of its role in the rest of the South Atlantic, even while Argentina maintains its constitutional claim over the Falklands. Britain also wants Argentina to work with it on practical matters to improve life for the Falklanders.
The warming began in February 2024, a few months after Mr Milei took office. British defence attachés visited the ministry of defence in Argentina for the first time in three years. In September that year the British and Argentine foreign ministers met and arranged a visit by Argentines to family members' graves on the Falklands. They also agreed to share fisheries data and to restart monthly direct flights to the islands from Argentina. Defence dialogue then accelerated. An Argentine delegation visited London in January. A British one is expected to visit Buenos Aires.
The key part is the growth of online betting against the stagnation of retail betting though it's fair to say the two start from very different places and a big part of Entain's growth has come from its investment in BetMGM.
It's disappointing but again predictable to see Entain claiming their only recourse to mitigate against the tax changes would be to effectively pass the change back to its customers - they are a hugely profitable company who could look at their own outgoings and indeed might question whether profit levels are really suastainable at a time of general uncertainty.
They say only Mad Dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun - that's also true of Kiwis so Mrs Stodge and I ventured up to the High Street and to the pathetic excuse of what was once a Post Office.
Privatisation has, as might have been expected, caused a savage contraction of Services as the "new" owners seek to cut costs. Our local had a sole member of staff on duty, the self service machines were all switched off and even the Travel Money section (which should do well in East Ham but doesn't because its rates are laughable compared to other outlets) also closed.
It's now a pathetic joke which is very sad because not so long ago we had a Post Office of which we could be proud and that's emphatically NOT to say those still working aren't doing their level best.
US NATO Ambassador Matthew Whitaker on Ukraine's territorial concessions: "No big chunks or sections are going to be just given that haven't been fought for or earned on the battlefield." https://x.com/atrupar/status/1954531864921723174
By the US NATO ambassador's logic, if I
1. Break and enter your house. 2. Kill you 3. Rape and then kill your wife 4. sell your daughter off to some pal of Epstein's who advertises her on the web...
I also get to keep your house, car, and the rest of your possessions?
Data decarbonisation is very much a thing and was starting to become a big part of my trade when I retired. The environmental costs of storing terabytes of information on servers which need to not only be permanently powered but often kept at specific levels of heat and humidity is huge. It's also worth pointing out a lot of this accumulated infornation will a) probably never be accessed and b) isn't governed by proper rules of retention allowing for deletion.
In the old days, a bank or law firm would store two million boxes of paperwork and printouts down a salt mine in Cheshire where the environmental conditions are perfect for long term shortage but unfortunately even these tended to suffer from that I used to call the KGB syndrome where every file was stamped "to be preserved forever".
Permanent preservation of historical records is or should be the responsibility of the network of record offices across the country but even they are short of space and there will be another influx of such records following local government reorganisation (will nobody think of the record managers?).
As a famous exchange from the 1960s had it - "We want information - you won't get it - by hook or by crook, we will". If we of course deleted all tweets from 12 months back, we'd lose half the fun of sites like this.
If every man, woman and child in the land deleted a gig of photos it would save 50 million GB or about £500,000 worth of spinning rust and no water.
ETA pointless anecdata – my first school holiday job was moving a solicitor's archived files around in a lock-up garage.
Data decarbonisation is very much a thing and was starting to become a big part of my trade when I retired. The environmental costs of storing terabytes of information on servers which need to not only be permanently powered but often kept at specific levels of heat and humidity is huge. It's also worth pointing out a lot of this accumulated infornation will a) probably never be accessed and b) isn't governed by proper rules of retention allowing for deletion.
In the old days, a bank or law firm would store two million boxes of paperwork and printouts down a salt mine in Cheshire where the environmental conditions are perfect for long term shortage but unfortunately even these tended to suffer from that I used to call the KGB syndrome where every file was stamped "to be preserved forever".
Permanent preservation of historical records is or should be the responsibility of the network of record offices across the country but even they are short of space and there will be another influx of such records following local government reorganisation (will nobody think of the record managers?).
As a famous exchange from the 1960s had it - "We want information - you won't get it - by hook or by crook, we will". If we of course deleted all tweets from 12 months back, we'd lose half the fun of sites like this.
I find really hard to believe that storing emails uses that much power. A one terabyte SSD might use around 10W while being actively accessed and only a few 10s of milliwatts otherwise. This seems utterly trivial compared to, for example, the power used to run LLMs.
The key part is the growth of online betting against the stagnation of retail betting though it's fair to say the two start from very different places and a big part of Entain's growth has come from its investment in BetMGM.
It's disappointing but again predictable to see Entain claiming their only recourse to mitigate against the tax changes would be to effectively pass the change back to its customers - they are a hugely profitable company who could look at their own outgoings and indeed might question whether profit levels are really suastainable at a time of general uncertainty.
They are all (wild generalisation here) looking to expand into the United States. British racing punters are a sideshow.
Labour to Conservative swing of 2%, Conservative to Liberal Democrat swing of 5.5%, Labour to Reform swing of 12.5%, Conservative to Reform swing of 10.5%. The old duopoly down from 60% to 40%.
2016 LEAVE voters break 50% Reform, 25% Conservative while Reform leads among men by 12 points and among women by just two.
Just to norte the headline numbers are projected by YouGov MRP model
Trump says Powell has been a disaster and has done incalculable damage to the economy but it doesn't matter as the Trump economy is so brilliant it got through his mistake and I am planning to sue him anyway for cost overruns.
Well he may have a point as Powell and the Fed have not been great.
Too slow to raise interest rates when inflation got going and too slow to start cutting when it was brought under control.
US NATO Ambassador Matthew Whitaker on Ukraine's territorial concessions: "No big chunks or sections are going to be just given that haven't been fought for or earned on the battlefield." https://x.com/atrupar/status/1954531864921723174
By the US NATO ambassador's logic, if I
1. Break and enter your house. 2. Kill you 3. Rape and then kill your wife 4. sell your daughter off to some pal of Epstein's who advertises her on the web...
I also get to keep your house, car, and the rest of your possessions?
Outrageous. Tymal Mills has been banned by the Hundred from doing a public service during this heat wave, he isn't allowed to advertise Only Fans on his bat.
Data decarbonisation is very much a thing and was starting to become a big part of my trade when I retired. The environmental costs of storing terabytes of information on servers which need to not only be permanently powered but often kept at specific levels of heat and humidity is huge. It's also worth pointing out a lot of this accumulated infornation will a) probably never be accessed and b) isn't governed by proper rules of retention allowing for deletion.
In the old days, a bank or law firm would store two million boxes of paperwork and printouts down a salt mine in Cheshire where the environmental conditions are perfect for long term shortage but unfortunately even these tended to suffer from that I used to call the KGB syndrome where every file was stamped "to be preserved forever".
Permanent preservation of historical records is or should be the responsibility of the network of record offices across the country but even they are short of space and there will be another influx of such records following local government reorganisation (will nobody think of the record managers?).
As a famous exchange from the 1960s had it - "We want information - you won't get it - by hook or by crook, we will". If we of course deleted all tweets from 12 months back, we'd lose half the fun of sites like this.
I find really hard to believe that storing emails uses that much power. A one terabyte SSD might use around 10W while being actively accessed and only a few 10s of milliwatts otherwise. This seems utterly trivial compared to, for example, the power used to run LLMs.
It's the emails, the email chains, the attachments to the emails etc, etc. It's the emails cc'ed round to 50 people or 500 people. It's personal inboxes, folders, shared folders (SharePoint etc).
When I retired, I deliberately disengaged from all current work for the final fortnight to sort out my digital legacy - the documents, emails, spreadsheets and other things I thought (in consultation with my manager) needed to be retained for the organisation going forward. Everything else went. Are all organisations doing this? They should be.
The key part is the growth of online betting against the stagnation of retail betting though it's fair to say the two start from very different places and a big part of Entain's growth has come from its investment in BetMGM.
It's disappointing but again predictable to see Entain claiming their only recourse to mitigate against the tax changes would be to effectively pass the change back to its customers - they are a hugely profitable company who could look at their own outgoings and indeed might question whether profit levels are really suastainable at a time of general uncertainty.
They are all (wild generalisation here) looking to expand into the United States. British racing punters are a sideshow.
I’ve seen a few videos in the last couple of months, bemoaning that Las Vegas is becoming a relative ghost town.
There’s lots of reasons given, such as the resorts nickel-and-diming the customers with high prices and extra fees, but the overwhelming sense is that gambling has very quickly moved online as States have relaxed laws, and left Sin City behind.
The key part is the growth of online betting against the stagnation of retail betting though it's fair to say the two start from very different places and a big part of Entain's growth has come from its investment in BetMGM.
It's disappointing but again predictable to see Entain claiming their only recourse to mitigate against the tax changes would be to effectively pass the change back to its customers - they are a hugely profitable company who could look at their own outgoings and indeed might question whether profit levels are really suastainable at a time of general uncertainty.
They are all (wild generalisation here) looking to expand into the United States. British racing punters are a sideshow.
I’ve seen a few videos in the last couple of months, bemoaning that Las Vegas is becoming a relative ghost town.
There’s lots of reasons given, such as the resorts nickel-and-diming the customers with high prices and extra fees, but the overwhelming sense is that gambling has very quickly moved online as States have relaxed laws, and left Sin City behind.
Not just fees, tax on the fees that are placed on top of the taxes + fees for breathing. They have also changed edges on lots of popular table game, removed "cheap" buffets on top of rooms costing $150-200 before all the fees and taxes ontop of the fees and taxes e.g. resort fee, parking, etc
Three facts combined by the tech numpty who wrote the OSA, by the look of it, to reach a silly conclusion.
As an aside, the computing power needed for AI is worrying some green campaigners. Some (even on pb) have suggested that devolved governments in colder and wetter parts of the country should look at building data centres there to take advantage of natural cooling.
We can’t do that. It would mean moving jobs and investment from the south to the north, which is not on.
And imagine the political pressure and lobbying for charging electricity according to the distance from the generator. Wouldn't just be the SNP etc.
Has anyone ever provided a rational explanation of why electricity should be cheaper the further away from the source of generation?
Oh, yes. To encourage cheaper electricity in London and the SE without having to renew nasty power stations where the most important folk/voters live.
Edit: Else they'd have to pay for transmission more than the folk who live in the north/west or downwind from Hinkley Point etc. And we can't have that. Apparently.
This is so obvious it drives me crazy. Just slap nodal and 30-minute tariffs on everyone and the market will sort itself out. Instead, we have people in the Highlands desperately putting solar up because they are effectively subsiding London and the SE.
Other than 'Ed Miliband is rubbish' (which might be true, but seems overly simplistic) - what are the reasons why nodal (or zonal if nodal is too complicated) pricing wasn't put forward in the latest review? It seems such an obvious "win" to reduce constraint payments and encourage battery farms and privately funded links between nodes / zones etc that I feel that I must be missing something.
The key part is the growth of online betting against the stagnation of retail betting though it's fair to say the two start from very different places and a big part of Entain's growth has come from its investment in BetMGM.
It's disappointing but again predictable to see Entain claiming their only recourse to mitigate against the tax changes would be to effectively pass the change back to its customers - they are a hugely profitable company who could look at their own outgoings and indeed might question whether profit levels are really suastainable at a time of general uncertainty.
They are all (wild generalisation here) looking to expand into the United States. British racing punters are a sideshow.
I’ve seen a few videos in the last couple of months, bemoaning that Las Vegas is becoming a relative ghost town.
There’s lots of reasons given, such as the resorts nickel-and-diming the customers with high prices and extra fees, but the overwhelming sense is that gambling has very quickly moved online as States have relaxed laws, and left Sin City behind.
Not just fees, tax on the fees on top of the taxes + fees for breathing.
Don’t forget the tips on the fees and the taxes. Choose from 30%, 40%, and 50%, on the card machine.
The key part is the growth of online betting against the stagnation of retail betting though it's fair to say the two start from very different places and a big part of Entain's growth has come from its investment in BetMGM.
It's disappointing but again predictable to see Entain claiming their only recourse to mitigate against the tax changes would be to effectively pass the change back to its customers - they are a hugely profitable company who could look at their own outgoings and indeed might question whether profit levels are really suastainable at a time of general uncertainty.
They are all (wild generalisation here) looking to expand into the United States. British racing punters are a sideshow.
I’ve seen a few videos in the last couple of months, bemoaning that Las Vegas is becoming a relative ghost town.
There’s lots of reasons given, such as the resorts nickel-and-diming the customers with high prices and extra fees, but the overwhelming sense is that gambling has very quickly moved online as States have relaxed laws, and left Sin City behind.
Not just fees, tax on the fees on top of the taxes + fees for breathing.
Don’t forget the tips on the fees and the taxes. Choose from 30%, 40%, and 50%, on the card machine.
I heard one of the super naughty things some places are doing is there is your bill, then a "COVID recovery fee" (totally made up fee), then a general service charge from the restaurant (in small print when you enter that you are agreeing to pay this), then a predetermined charge for service i.e. the tip, then all the taxes, and then they walk up and the ipad will also then say would you like to add a tip.....
You need to be a contract lawyer and willing to a) read the contract and b) go full legal eagle on them to start removing all the fees.
The key part is the growth of online betting against the stagnation of retail betting though it's fair to say the two start from very different places and a big part of Entain's growth has come from its investment in BetMGM.
It's disappointing but again predictable to see Entain claiming their only recourse to mitigate against the tax changes would be to effectively pass the change back to its customers - they are a hugely profitable company who could look at their own outgoings and indeed might question whether profit levels are really suastainable at a time of general uncertainty.
They are all (wild generalisation here) looking to expand into the United States. British racing punters are a sideshow.
I’ve seen a few videos in the last couple of months, bemoaning that Las Vegas is becoming a relative ghost town.
There’s lots of reasons given, such as the resorts nickel-and-diming the customers with high prices and extra fees, but the overwhelming sense is that gambling has very quickly moved online as States have relaxed laws, and left Sin City behind.
Not just fees, tax on the fees on top of the taxes + fees for breathing.
Don’t forget the tips on the fees and the taxes. Choose from 30%, 40%, and 50%, on the card machine.
I heard one of the super naughty things some places are doing is there is your bill, then a "COVID recovery fee" (totally made up fee), then a general service charge from the restaurant (in small print when you enter that you are agreeing to pay this), then a predetermined charge for service i.e. the tip, then all the taxes, and then they walk up and the ipad will also then say would you like to add a tip.....
You need to be a contract lawyer and willing to a) read the contract and b) go full legal eagle on them to start removing all the fees.
Also now ‘Carbon Free dining’ charges in some places.
The key part is the growth of online betting against the stagnation of retail betting though it's fair to say the two start from very different places and a big part of Entain's growth has come from its investment in BetMGM.
It's disappointing but again predictable to see Entain claiming their only recourse to mitigate against the tax changes would be to effectively pass the change back to its customers - they are a hugely profitable company who could look at their own outgoings and indeed might question whether profit levels are really suastainable at a time of general uncertainty.
They are all (wild generalisation here) looking to expand into the United States. British racing punters are a sideshow.
I’ve seen a few videos in the last couple of months, bemoaning that Las Vegas is becoming a relative ghost town.
There’s lots of reasons given, such as the resorts nickel-and-diming the customers with high prices and extra fees, but the overwhelming sense is that gambling has very quickly moved online as States have relaxed laws, and left Sin City behind.
Not just fees, tax on the fees on top of the taxes + fees for breathing.
Don’t forget the tips on the fees and the taxes. Choose from 30%, 40%, and 50%, on the card machine.
I heard one of the super naughty things some places are doing is there is your bill, then a "COVID recovery fee" (totally made up fee), then a general service charge from the restaurant (in small print when you enter that you are agreeing to pay this), then a predetermined charge for service i.e. the tip, then all the taxes, and then they walk up and the ipad will also then say would you like to add a tip.....
Yeah, they’re going out of their way to annoy the customers, turning what used to be a fun weekend of comped drinks and cheap buffets, into a constant looking for how the establishment is trying to scam you.
Gold medal has to go to the table games though, 6:5 Blackjack and triple-zero Roulette should be outright illegal, and so many casual gamblers simply don’t notice it.
The key part is the growth of online betting against the stagnation of retail betting though it's fair to say the two start from very different places and a big part of Entain's growth has come from its investment in BetMGM.
It's disappointing but again predictable to see Entain claiming their only recourse to mitigate against the tax changes would be to effectively pass the change back to its customers - they are a hugely profitable company who could look at their own outgoings and indeed might question whether profit levels are really suastainable at a time of general uncertainty.
They are all (wild generalisation here) looking to expand into the United States. British racing punters are a sideshow.
I’ve seen a few videos in the last couple of months, bemoaning that Las Vegas is becoming a relative ghost town.
There’s lots of reasons given, such as the resorts nickel-and-diming the customers with high prices and extra fees, but the overwhelming sense is that gambling has very quickly moved online as States have relaxed laws, and left Sin City behind.
Not just fees, tax on the fees on top of the taxes + fees for breathing.
Don’t forget the tips on the fees and the taxes. Choose from 30%, 40%, and 50%, on the card machine.
I heard one of the super naughty things some places are doing is there is your bill, then a "COVID recovery fee" (totally made up fee), then a general service charge from the restaurant (in small print when you enter that you are agreeing to pay this), then a predetermined charge for service i.e. the tip, then all the taxes, and then they walk up and the ipad will also then say would you like to add a tip.....
You need to be a contract lawyer and willing to a) read the contract and b) go full legal eagle on them to start removing all the fees.
Also now ‘Carbon Free dining’ charges in some places.
Data decarbonisation is very much a thing and was starting to become a big part of my trade when I retired. The environmental costs of storing terabytes of information on servers which need to not only be permanently powered but often kept at specific levels of heat and humidity is huge. It's also worth pointing out a lot of this accumulated infornation will a) probably never be accessed and b) isn't governed by proper rules of retention allowing for deletion.
In the old days, a bank or law firm would store two million boxes of paperwork and printouts down a salt mine in Cheshire where the environmental conditions are perfect for long term shortage but unfortunately even these tended to suffer from that I used to call the KGB syndrome where every file was stamped "to be preserved forever".
Permanent preservation of historical records is or should be the responsibility of the network of record offices across the country but even they are short of space and there will be another influx of such records following local government reorganisation (will nobody think of the record managers?).
As a famous exchange from the 1960s had it - "We want information - you won't get it - by hook or by crook, we will". If we of course deleted all tweets from 12 months back, we'd lose half the fun of sites like this.
I find really hard to believe that storing emails uses that much power. A one terabyte SSD might use around 10W while being actively accessed and only a few 10s of milliwatts otherwise. This seems utterly trivial compared to, for example, the power used to run LLMs.
Storage uses relatively trivial amounts of power. Even the servers that run Gmail and Google Drive are probably a rounding error in Google's energy bill.
You can pack a 2U rack server full of SSDs and spinning rust and even at full load it will be pulling a few hundred watts, plus the associated cooling power. The CPUs used in these servers prioritise efficiency over performance, a bunch of medium performance low-power cores are fine for this kind of use.
I have a server in my loft that stores 14TB of data on a RAID array, handles my email and provides file sharing. It pulls about 250w at max load, and it's an old system based on a relatively inefficient 2nd gen Intel platform. I could run a dozen of those from a single 240v domestic socket.
An AI server will pull kilowatts easily. Some of NVidia's AI accelerators are specced for 1000W+ and a single server will contain multiple cards. It's not only the GPU chips being hungry, the large amounts of GDDR6/7 they have gulps down a lot of electrons. GDDR6 consumes roughly 100W per 24GB, so on an AI card with 96GB you're looking at 400W per card just for the memory. A server with five NVidia AI cards could easily require 10KW to run and keep it cool.
Stack a few thousand of those in a datacentre and you're well into megawatt territory.
Three facts combined by the tech numpty who wrote the OSA, by the look of it, to reach a silly conclusion.
As an aside, the computing power needed for AI is worrying some green campaigners. Some (even on pb) have suggested that devolved governments in colder and wetter parts of the country should look at building data centres there to take advantage of natural cooling.
We can’t do that. It would mean moving jobs and investment from the south to the north, which is not on.
And imagine the political pressure and lobbying for charging electricity according to the distance from the generator. Wouldn't just be the SNP etc.
Has anyone ever provided a rational explanation of why electricity should be cheaper the further away from the source of generation?
Oh, yes. To encourage cheaper electricity in London and the SE without having to renew nasty power stations where the most important folk/voters live.
Edit: Else they'd have to pay for transmission more than the folk who live in the north/west or downwind from Hinkley Point etc. And we can't have that. Apparently.
This is so obvious it drives me crazy. Just slap nodal and 30-minute tariffs on everyone and the market will sort itself out. Instead, we have people in the Highlands desperately putting solar up because they are effectively subsiding London and the SE.
Other than 'Ed Miliband is rubbish' (which might be true, but seems overly simplistic) - what are the reasons why nodal (or zonal if nodal is too complicated) pricing wasn't put forward in the latest review? It seems such an obvious "win" to reduce constraint payments and encourage battery farms and privately funded links between nodes / zones etc that I feel that I must be missing something.
There's a complicated explanation here, but fundamentally if energy producers in Scotland generate more than the transmission network can cope with you either have to boost the transmission network or encourage generation away from Scotland and nearer to the point of most consumption. Zonal pricing encourages neither of those outcomes. The current imperfect arrangement feeds some of the pay not to produce payments back into network upgrades.
Three facts combined by the tech numpty who wrote the OSA, by the look of it, to reach a silly conclusion.
As an aside, the computing power needed for AI is worrying some green campaigners. Some (even on pb) have suggested that devolved governments in colder and wetter parts of the country should look at building data centres there to take advantage of natural cooling.
We can’t do that. It would mean moving jobs and investment from the south to the north, which is not on.
And imagine the political pressure and lobbying for charging electricity according to the distance from the generator. Wouldn't just be the SNP etc.
Has anyone ever provided a rational explanation of why electricity should be cheaper the further away from the source of generation?
Oh, yes. To encourage cheaper electricity in London and the SE without having to renew nasty power stations where the most important folk/voters live.
Edit: Else they'd have to pay for transmission more than the folk who live in the north/west or downwind from Hinkley Point etc. And we can't have that. Apparently.
This is so obvious it drives me crazy. Just slap nodal and 30-minute tariffs on everyone and the market will sort itself out. Instead, we have people in the Highlands desperately putting solar up because they are effectively subsiding London and the SE.
Other than 'Ed Miliband is rubbish' (which might be true, but seems overly simplistic) - what are the reasons why nodal (or zonal if nodal is too complicated) pricing wasn't put forward in the latest review? It seems such an obvious "win" to reduce constraint payments and encourage battery farms and privately funded links between nodes / zones etc that I feel that I must be missing something.
The government was afraid that they couldn’t sell zonal pricing to voters in the SE who would be fed DM headlines along the lines of “Scotland gets cheap electricity & we don’t: Labour sells out the SE to benefit the Scots” & other such rubbish.
This kind of lack of leadership is what we’ve come to expect from all our politicians sadly. To an extent we get the politics we (the voters) deserve: if the electorate cared enough to understand these issues then our politics would be very different!
Data decarbonisation is very much a thing and was starting to become a big part of my trade when I retired. The environmental costs of storing terabytes of information on servers which need to not only be permanently powered but often kept at specific levels of heat and humidity is huge. It's also worth pointing out a lot of this accumulated infornation will a) probably never be accessed and b) isn't governed by proper rules of retention allowing for deletion.
In the old days, a bank or law firm would store two million boxes of paperwork and printouts down a salt mine in Cheshire where the environmental conditions are perfect for long term shortage but unfortunately even these tended to suffer from that I used to call the KGB syndrome where every file was stamped "to be preserved forever".
Permanent preservation of historical records is or should be the responsibility of the network of record offices across the country but even they are short of space and there will be another influx of such records following local government reorganisation (will nobody think of the record managers?).
As a famous exchange from the 1960s had it - "We want information - you won't get it - by hook or by crook, we will". If we of course deleted all tweets from 12 months back, we'd lose half the fun of sites like this.
I find really hard to believe that storing emails uses that much power. A one terabyte SSD might use around 10W while being actively accessed and only a few 10s of milliwatts otherwise. This seems utterly trivial compared to, for example, the power used to run LLMs.
It's the emails, the email chains, the attachments to the emails etc, etc. It's the emails cc'ed round to 50 people or 500 people. It's personal inboxes, folders, shared folders (SharePoint etc).
When I retired, I deliberately disengaged from all current work for the final fortnight to sort out my digital legacy - the documents, emails, spreadsheets and other things I thought (in consultation with my manager) needed to be retained for the organisation going forward. Everything else went. Are all organisations doing this? They should be.
The sum total of all my emails is around 10GB, the storage of which is utterly trivial in terms of power costs, and hence water use. Flushing the toilet one less time during my morning routine will conserve far more water than deleting any number of emails.
Three facts combined by the tech numpty who wrote the OSA, by the look of it, to reach a silly conclusion.
As an aside, the computing power needed for AI is worrying some green campaigners. Some (even on pb) have suggested that devolved governments in colder and wetter parts of the country should look at building data centres there to take advantage of natural cooling.
We can’t do that. It would mean moving jobs and investment from the south to the north, which is not on.
And imagine the political pressure and lobbying for charging electricity according to the distance from the generator. Wouldn't just be the SNP etc.
Has anyone ever provided a rational explanation of why electricity should be cheaper the further away from the source of generation?
Oh, yes. To encourage cheaper electricity in London and the SE without having to renew nasty power stations where the most important folk/voters live.
Edit: Else they'd have to pay for transmission more than the folk who live in the north/west or downwind from Hinkley Point etc. And we can't have that. Apparently.
This is so obvious it drives me crazy. Just slap nodal and 30-minute tariffs on everyone and the market will sort itself out. Instead, we have people in the Highlands desperately putting solar up because they are effectively subsiding London and the SE.
Other than 'Ed Miliband is rubbish' (which might be true, but seems overly simplistic) - what are the reasons why nodal (or zonal if nodal is too complicated) pricing wasn't put forward in the latest review? It seems such an obvious "win" to reduce constraint payments and encourage battery farms and privately funded links between nodes / zones etc that I feel that I must be missing something.
There's a complicated explanation here, but fundamentally if energy producers in Scotland generate more than the transmission network can cope with you either have to boost the transmission network or encourage generation away from Scotland and nearer to the point of most consumption. Zonal pricing encourages neither of those outcomes. The current imperfect arrangement feeds some of the pay not to produce payments back into network upgrades.
Coming a bit late to the debate but a few observations.
1. Agree with tightening up the laws on drink driving. I know from my own experience that there is really no level of alcohol I can consume without it affecting my driving. This has always been the way with me even when I was able to drink heavily in my student days. So my rule for my whole driving career has been that I won't drive after drinking any alcohol at all. I think the 0.5 g/l level seems reasonable for legal purposes but think the 0.2 g/l level used in Norway and other Eureopan countries is probably a bit excessive as it does catch out a lot of people with the 'morning after' effect.
2. Whilst I agree with the eye tests, I don't see why they should start at 70. Deterioration in eye function can and does start much earlier for many people. AT 60 my eyesight is no where near as good as it was at 50. Perhaps we should consider an eye test as necessary for veryone renewing their licence every 10 years. As someone pointed out yesterday, setting the starting age at 70 but expecting people with driving jobs to continue until they are 67 (and sure to rise in the future) seems a bit daft to me.
3. What does seem to be missing from these proposals is the need to do far more than just test eyesight for the elderly. I would be interstd to know how many accdents are caused by poor eyesight and how many by other infirmaties. Currently it is pretty much impossible for a concerned relative to get someones driving licence revoked even when it is obvious to family members they are no longer fit to drive. It can be a cause of great animosity within families and as a result often it is just ignored. A test for mental and physical ability to drive safely should become a standard part of a more regular licence renewal for the elderly.
Fair enough but I disagree with pretty much all of this, as I do the suggestion of "no passenger" rules for young new drivers over on the BBC.
The last thing we need is more restrictions, process, and regulations regarding how we move around.
We are obsessed with trying to legislate to remove all risk in this country, regardless of the economic or social impact.
These are basic safety ideas to stop people getting killed. As you know two 18 year old lads from my sons class got killed in June as passengers in cars driven by new drivers. Both the young and the old need some controls placed on their driving where they are a danger to others.
It is not a question of legislating to emove 'All' risk, simply to deal with the bleeding obvious risks posed by those who are unfit to drive, either due to age or being under the influence.
I didn't know that and I'm sorry to hear that.
The trouble is if you legislate for a tragedy that hits and restricts the options for all 18 year old drivers, and there are over 150k of them.
In general, one should always be cautious in responding to a tragedy with knee-jerk legislation. And I don't agree with it.
Instead I'd put the risk and judgement onto the 18 year olds themselves. Most of whom will get it absolutely right.
Honestly not in this case.
The biggest predictor of speeding for young drivers is having their friends in the car.
Data decarbonisation is very much a thing and was starting to become a big part of my trade when I retired. The environmental costs of storing terabytes of information on servers which need to not only be permanently powered but often kept at specific levels of heat and humidity is huge. It's also worth pointing out a lot of this accumulated infornation will a) probably never be accessed and b) isn't governed by proper rules of retention allowing for deletion.
In the old days, a bank or law firm would store two million boxes of paperwork and printouts down a salt mine in Cheshire where the environmental conditions are perfect for long term shortage but unfortunately even these tended to suffer from that I used to call the KGB syndrome where every file was stamped "to be preserved forever".
Permanent preservation of historical records is or should be the responsibility of the network of record offices across the country but even they are short of space and there will be another influx of such records following local government reorganisation (will nobody think of the record managers?).
As a famous exchange from the 1960s had it - "We want information - you won't get it - by hook or by crook, we will". If we of course deleted all tweets from 12 months back, we'd lose half the fun of sites like this.
If every man, woman and child in the land deleted a gig of photos it would save 50 million GB or about £500,000 worth of spinning rust and no water.
ETA pointless anecdata – my first school holiday job was moving a solicitor's archived files around in a lock-up garage.
@DavidL recommended to me, some years ago, what turned out to be a memorable SF novel set in a Glaswegian solicitors' (the old kind) where part of the plot revolved around just the sort of filing system such solicitors had (and part on the quirks of Scots Law on real estate).
Three facts combined by the tech numpty who wrote the OSA, by the look of it, to reach a silly conclusion.
As an aside, the computing power needed for AI is worrying some green campaigners. Some (even on pb) have suggested that devolved governments in colder and wetter parts of the country should look at building data centres there to take advantage of natural cooling.
We can’t do that. It would mean moving jobs and investment from the south to the north, which is not on.
And imagine the political pressure and lobbying for charging electricity according to the distance from the generator. Wouldn't just be the SNP etc.
Has anyone ever provided a rational explanation of why electricity should be cheaper the further away from the source of generation?
Oh, yes. To encourage cheaper electricity in London and the SE without having to renew nasty power stations where the most important folk/voters live.
Edit: Else they'd have to pay for transmission more than the folk who live in the north/west or downwind from Hinkley Point etc. And we can't have that. Apparently.
This is so obvious it drives me crazy. Just slap nodal and 30-minute tariffs on everyone and the market will sort itself out. Instead, we have people in the Highlands desperately putting solar up because they are effectively subsiding London and the SE.
Other than 'Ed Miliband is rubbish' (which might be true, but seems overly simplistic) - what are the reasons why nodal (or zonal if nodal is too complicated) pricing wasn't put forward in the latest review? It seems such an obvious "win" to reduce constraint payments and encourage battery farms and privately funded links between nodes / zones etc that I feel that I must be missing something.
The government was afraid that they couldn’t sell zonal pricing to voters in the SE who would be fed DM headlines along the lines of “Scotland gets cheap electricity & we don’t: Labour sells out the SE to benefit the Scots” & other such rubbish.
This kind of lack of leadership is what we’ve come to expect from all our politicians sadly. To an extent we get the politics we (the voters) deserve: if the electorate cared enough to understand these issues then our politics would be very different!
Quite. It's surprisingly not very salient in Scotland voter wise yet but if energy prices were to (continue to) be then things will get interesting. Ditto Wales, Northumberland etc.
Data decarbonisation is very much a thing and was starting to become a big part of my trade when I retired. The environmental costs of storing terabytes of information on servers which need to not only be permanently powered but often kept at specific levels of heat and humidity is huge. It's also worth pointing out a lot of this accumulated infornation will a) probably never be accessed and b) isn't governed by proper rules of retention allowing for deletion.
In the old days, a bank or law firm would store two million boxes of paperwork and printouts down a salt mine in Cheshire where the environmental conditions are perfect for long term shortage but unfortunately even these tended to suffer from that I used to call the KGB syndrome where every file was stamped "to be preserved forever".
Permanent preservation of historical records is or should be the responsibility of the network of record offices across the country but even they are short of space and there will be another influx of such records following local government reorganisation (will nobody think of the record managers?).
As a famous exchange from the 1960s had it - "We want information - you won't get it - by hook or by crook, we will". If we of course deleted all tweets from 12 months back, we'd lose half the fun of sites like this.
If every man, woman and child in the land deleted a gig of photos it would save 50 million GB or about £500,000 worth of spinning rust and no water.
ETA pointless anecdata – my first school holiday job was moving a solicitor's archived files around in a lock-up garage.
@DavidL recommended to me, some years ago, what turned out to be a memorable SF novel set in a Glaswegian solicitors' (the old kind) where part of the plot revolved around just the sort of filing system such solicitors had (and part on the quirks of Scots Law on real estate).
The only two authors that spring to mind are Iain (M) Banks or Ken MacLeod. Perplexity.ai can't help. Any ideas?
Comments
The area also has the consulates of Kenya and Colombia. I feel like stretching my arms out wide and declaiming: "People of earth: please attend carefully!" but I suspect nobody will listen
https://www.these-islands.co.uk/publications/i403/zonal_pricing_what_happened.aspx
The other issue which the Russians bloggers like to state is that Trump is a *temporary* person and the next one can revoke any deals done - so why not wait until the mid-terms. Alaska is just a delaying tactic perhaps with collusion so that the US DIB can have a few customers for a bit longer.
Trump on the other hand just wants that Prize and will do lots of performative stuff to try to win it.
The real question is whether we want to keep the industry in question - there was a reasonable argument to be made on garment manufacture, I'm struggling to see the case in favour of the driving test touting system.
Requiring a drivers license number to book a test, limiting each drivers license number to two bookings, plus making them non-transferable but with the ability cancel (up to say a week before) for a full refund would fix the problem without penalising any normal people.
Instead, we have the absurd situation where the price is universal, which means there is no cost to investing in Sutherland and then offloading the cost of transmission to customers via standing charges.
It is not a question of legislating to emove 'All' risk, simply to deal with the bleeding obvious risks posed by those who are unfit to drive, either due to age or being under the influence.
Remember, I live a 5 minute walk from Gants Hill!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gants_Hill_tube_station
OTOH, just to the west, Redbridge station's platforms are only 26 ft below street level, accessed by stairs (not escalators).
Maybe we do need Mitchell and Webb's panel of old ladies to audit the jobs people do.
https://youtu.be/vD0gVRI_kEQ
"Election Maps UK
@ElectionMapsUK
Westminster Voting Intention:
RFM: 28% (+1)
LAB: 21% (=)
CON: 17% (=)
LDM: 16% (+1)
GRN: 10% (-1)
SNP: 3% (=)
Via
@YouGov
, 10-11 Aug.
Changes w/ 3-4 Aug."
https://x.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1955253877508333720
"More relevant for the elderly is observation and reaction. Plenty of elderly have glasses giving them vision that will pass any test, but should never be behind a wheel. The driver awareness test for observation and reaction fits the bill. I finally got the keys off my father at 92. He was incapable of driving for years before that. His eyesight (with glasses) was better than mine."
Worth noting it took years to get the keys off him for the reasons you state and we only did after an accident. Fortunately it was minor, but it might not have been. He was plain dangerous, but had perfect vision.
I can’t see much coming from Trump and Putin meeting, if it even happens. Trump does indeed want his peace prize, and has had successes such as the agreement between Azerbaijan and Armenia last week, but in Putin he’s sitting across the table from someone who has no interest in stopping the war. The only way this war stops is for the West to keep on arming the Ukranian army, and for the Russians to withdraw defeated.
Last week, we learned that Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves currently have lower favourability ratings than Donald Trump. But how do Brits really feel about the US president anyway? The answer, according to Ipsos, may surprise you.
“Let’s be clear, Donald Trump isn't winning any popularity contests in the UK anytime soon, with 64 per cent of Britons overall unfavourable towards the US president,” says Keiran Pedley, director of UK politics at Ipsos. “But what’s fascinating in our polling is the generational divide that we uncovered.” Ipsos found that while just 9 per cent of those over 55 view Trump favourably, that figure jumps to 29 per cent for 18-34-year-olds (though 45 per cent in this age group are unfavourable)
As I say it's complicated and I don't personally have a settled view. The best argument for zonal pricing, I suspect, it encourages earlier electrification, which should be everyone's goal.
Or incentive for using power which otherwise just gets wasted.
The current arrangement is worse than imperfect. It's not a real market at all.
Incidentally, onshore wind, while not as cheap as solar, is quite competitive in the market.
The Top 12 wind power states have low rates!
All 12 have power prices below the US average of 13.18 cents/kWh (EIA's May 2025 YTD).
Wind % 2024 Cents/kWh
IA 63% 8.9
SD 59% 11
KS 52% 11
https://x.com/johnrhanger/status/1954866640941654100
Beautiful clear views of the mountains today.
Compliance!
The biggest benefit of zonal pricing is that it's a LOT closer to a genuine market than our existing arrangements, which aren't anything of the sort.
And probably a bunch of driving lesson companies will take a trouble hit if they can’t sell tests at a 500% markup
And in Leicester, the garment trade collapsed when companies didn’t want to buy from sketchy law breakers.
As PJ O’Rourke pointed out, banning 10 year old boys from being sent down coal mines created massive unemployment among 10 year old boys. It did however, leave them time to try other goals. Such as living till the age of 11….
https://x.com/atrupar/status/1954531864921723174
By the US NATO ambassador's logic, if I
1. Break and enter your house.
2. Kill you
3. Rape and then kill your wife
4. sell your daughter off to some pal of Epstein's who advertises her on the web...
I also get to keep your house, car, and the rest of your possessions?
Because I've EARNED it.
https://x.com/IlvesToomas/status/1954808783709905202
I think Starmer's lot are throwing their lot behind wind turbines. Not much room in Surrey or London suburbs for those. Battery storage is slowly creeping up and solar farms are rocketing, but turbines are the big beast.
So we are now left with a situation where there is a massive generation imbalance which means large parts of the grid need to be updated to get it down where its needed, to the midlands and south of England.
Scotgov seem quite happy with this situation, given Mr Swinney's reiterated commitment to more offshore and onshore wind, and pylons across from Skye eastwards and Aberdeenshire down the east coast.
The government(s) won't learn unless people revolt, and there's not enough of them living in the sticks for the Energy secretary(s) to change course
At least getting rid of the grey market would allow people to see the extent of the queue, and to manage the issue by for example training more examiners or having recent retirees come back part time.
It’s not a new problem either, when I sat my test back in 1995 there was a four-month wait. I was told to apply for the test by the instructor on the day of my first lesson, which was my 17th birthday, after he was happy he could get me trained up before the test slot!
My suggestion would be a cognitive and sight test at 80, then one at 85, then annually until they no longer have a licence. Paid for by the licence holder or means tested in some cases
And you're absolutely right about Scotland. We're an enormous exporter of renewable energy. There shouldn't really be a case for more generation here, unless the benefits of doing so outweigh the costs of building transmission to the SE of England. The price signal does not currently reflect those benefits and costs.
Like, stopping people living or getting things done.
The last time someone tried “the evil southies want to build wind turbines only elsewhere”, here, we ended up with a map showing that onshore wind farms are being built where the wind is. Funny that.
Which is why offshore wind is booming - you can use ever large and more efficient turbines, fairly easily, and the wind is more frequent and steadier. If you go to then south and east coasts, you see the result, in the distance.
The trouble is if you legislate for a tragedy that hits and restricts the options for all 18 year old drivers, and there are over 150k of them.
In general, one should always be cautious in responding to a tragedy with knee-jerk legislation. And I don't agree with it.
Instead I'd put the risk and judgement onto the 18 year olds themselves. Most of whom will get it absolutely right.
Anyway, does anyone have an Economist subscription who would happily precis this article as I can’t be bothered subscribing for this.
Was trying to guess what the article says and I have the horror it involves Starmer handing over the Falklands to Argentina, the US putting a military base there and us paying the Argentinians billions for the privilege.
https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2025/07/06/inside-the-secret-military-dialogue-between-britain-and-argentina?utm_campaign=a.io-btl_fy2526_all_conversion-TESTING-sub_prospecting_global-global_auction_facebook-instagram&utm_medium=social-media.content.pd&utm_source=facebook-instagram&utm_content=discovery.content.non-subscriber.content_staticlinkad_np-automatedInsidethesecretmilitarydialoguebetweenBritainandArgentina-n-aug_na-na_article_na_na_na_na&utm_term=sa.int-all-geopolitics&utm_id=120232769604530437&fbclid=IwQ0xDSwMIJQBleHRuA2FlbQEwAGFkaWQBqycTkKvNxQEejQydnqzXla_L21Eh0mwq19ui0TsafFq_i2n96MdEDNKHP3PrG2_OVdz1SaA_aem_AbCDyY1OmQmXVhu4PRMGDg
An explanation for the current setup, not necessarily a justification.
Have you done Platform 0 at Bradford F.S. yet?
UK recovers position in EU’s Horizon Europe science research programme
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/aug/12/uk-recovers-position-horizon-europe-science-research-eu-brexit
..While the UK has to play catch-up, entering three years into the seven-year 2020-27 funding programme, data shows British scientists are punching above their weight with €735m (£635m) in grants in 2024.
That ranks the UK as the fifth most successful country in the programme, which is open to 43 nations: the 27 EU member states and 16 non-EU associate members also including New Zealand, Canada and Norway.
Germany, the top participant in Horizon in 2024, won €1.4bn (£1.21bn) in grants and Spain, which came third, got €900m (£777m).
Scientists have said previously they were “over the moon” to be back working with EU colleagues. They said they knew it would take time to return to the top three because of the time it took to build multinational consortiums to apply for funds.
But in terms of grants for proposals by individual scientists, which are easier to assemble, the UK now ranks as the second-most successful participating country after Germany, with €242m (£209m) in funds.
The UK is the single most successful applicant country when it comes to Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, one of the most prestigious grant programmes for doctoral and post-doctoral research in the world...
One or two silly responses up thread in response to stories like this:
https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/delete-your-old-emails-to-help-save-water-environment-chiefs-urge-5Hjd8f6_2/
Data decarbonisation is very much a thing and was starting to become a big part of my trade when I retired. The environmental costs of storing terabytes of information on servers which need to not only be permanently powered but often kept at specific levels of heat and humidity is huge. It's also worth pointing out a lot of this accumulated infornation will a) probably never be accessed and b) isn't governed by proper rules of retention allowing for deletion.
In the old days, a bank or law firm would store two million boxes of paperwork and printouts down a salt mine in Cheshire where the environmental conditions are perfect for long term shortage but unfortunately even these tended to suffer from that I used to call the KGB syndrome where every file was stamped "to be preserved forever".
Permanent preservation of historical records is or should be the responsibility of the network of record offices across the country but even they are short of space and there will be another influx of such records following local government reorganisation (will nobody think of the record managers?).
As a famous exchange from the 1960s had it - "We want information - you won't get it - by hook or by crook, we will". If we of course deleted all tweets from 12 months back, we'd lose half the fun of sites like this.
I helped push approval through South Lakeland but can't forget the grand-standing of Farron et al for whom winning a vote is worth more than an efficient electricity supply. That attitude hasn't changed just see the Lib Dems with the Gas and Lithium Battery site near Kendal.
Private generation companies were forced to supply a National Grid in the 1920s and 1930s on equal terms. The National Grid turned out a massive success and was one of factors behind Britain surviving the Second World War - power stations in Wales could replace destroyed power stations in the South East.
America is increasingly concerned about the South Atlantic, a region of growing strategic significance. It's a gateway to Antarctica, where China and Russia operate 15 bases, and is key to Pacific access via the Strait of Magellan—now busier due to drought in the Panama Canal. China’s illegal fishing and regional infrastructure efforts have raised alarms. Meanwhile, U.S. generals are regularly visiting Argentina’s south.
Though Argentina's military is weak, President Javier Milei is a strong pro-Western ally and seeks to modernize its armed forces with NATO-compatible equipment, raising defence spending from 0.5% to 2% of GDP. However, Britain’s longstanding arms embargo—rooted in the 1982 Falklands War—has hindered this, pushing Argentina toward Chinese weapons. Now, Milei’s pragmatic approach to the Falklands has led to renewed British-Argentine defence dialogue.
Britain remains cautious, wary of domestic backlash and a potential political shift in Argentina. But the U.S. is pushing for a deal that would curb Chinese influence and help Argentina rearm with Western support. Though obstacles remain—including the sensitivity of Falklands sovereignty—momentum is building. With Milei aligned with Washington and London reconsidering its position, a new security arrangement in the South Atlantic could be on the horizon.
But this extract is probably more informative:
Argentina wants Britain to loosen its restrictions on arms purchases. Britain wants discreet acceptance of its role in the rest of the South Atlantic, even while Argentina maintains its constitutional claim over the Falklands. Britain also wants Argentina to work with it on practical matters to improve life for the Falklanders.
The warming began in February 2024, a few months after Mr Milei took office. British defence attachés visited the ministry of defence in Argentina for the first time in three years. In September that year the British and Argentine foreign ministers met and arranged a visit by Argentines to family members' graves on the Falklands. They also agreed to share fisheries data and to restart monthly direct flights to the islands from Argentina. Defence dialogue then accelerated. An Argentine delegation visited London in January. A British one is expected to visit Buenos Aires.
The overground ones are not quite as reliable in service, but are much easier to repair when they do break. These days you can use drones for inspections, which makes it cheaper to plan routine maintenance such as clearing trees.
Lib Dems being naked opportunists is definitely not a new story.
https://www.racingpost.com/news/britain/entain-outperforms-expectations-for-the-start-of-2025-helped-by-the-success-of-betmgm-aWUUM7a0Xqz1/
The key part is the growth of online betting against the stagnation of retail betting though it's fair to say the two start from very different places and a big part of Entain's growth has come from its investment in BetMGM.
It's disappointing but again predictable to see Entain claiming their only recourse to mitigate against the tax changes would be to effectively pass the change back to its customers - they are a hugely profitable company who could look at their own outgoings and indeed might question whether profit levels are really suastainable at a time of general uncertainty.
Privatisation has, as might have been expected, caused a savage contraction of Services as the "new" owners seek to cut costs. Our local had a sole member of staff on duty, the self service machines were all switched off and even the Travel Money section (which should do well in East Ham but doesn't because its rates are laughable compared to other outlets) also closed.
It's now a pathetic joke which is very sad because not so long ago we had a Post Office of which we could be proud and that's emphatically NOT to say those still working aren't doing their level best.
ETA pointless anecdata – my first school holiday job was moving a solicitor's archived files around in a lock-up garage.
The England sub sample (no sniggering, please) with changes from the Last GE:
Reform: 28% (+13)
Labour: 22% (-12)
Conservative: 18% (-8)
Lib Democrat: 16% (+3)
Green: 11% (+4)
Labour to Conservative swing of 2%, Conservative to Liberal Democrat swing of 5.5%, Labour to Reform swing of 12.5%, Conservative to Reform swing of 10.5%. The old duopoly down from 60% to 40%.
2016 LEAVE voters break 50% Reform, 25% Conservative while Reform leads among men by 12 points and among women by just two.
Just to norte the headline numbers are projected by YouGov MRP model
Too slow to raise interest rates when inflation got going and too slow to start cutting when it was brought under control.
And then "earned" all of Russia east of the Urals.
When I retired, I deliberately disengaged from all current work for the final fortnight to sort out my digital legacy - the documents, emails, spreadsheets and other things I thought (in consultation with my manager) needed to be retained for the organisation going forward. Everything else went. Are all organisations doing this? They should be.
There’s lots of reasons given, such as the resorts nickel-and-diming the customers with high prices and extra fees, but the overwhelming sense is that gambling has very quickly moved online as States have relaxed laws, and left Sin City behind.
You need to be a contract lawyer and willing to a) read the contract and b) go full legal eagle on them to start removing all the fees.
Gold medal has to go to the table games though, 6:5 Blackjack and triple-zero Roulette should be outright illegal, and so many casual gamblers simply don’t notice it.
NEW THREAD
You can pack a 2U rack server full of SSDs and spinning rust and even at full load it will be pulling a few hundred watts, plus the associated cooling power. The CPUs used in these servers prioritise efficiency over performance, a bunch of medium performance low-power cores are fine for this kind of use.
I have a server in my loft that stores 14TB of data on a RAID array, handles my email and provides file sharing. It pulls about 250w at max load, and it's an old system based on a relatively inefficient 2nd gen Intel platform. I could run a dozen of those from a single 240v domestic socket.
An AI server will pull kilowatts easily. Some of NVidia's AI accelerators are specced for 1000W+ and a single server will contain multiple cards. It's not only the GPU chips being hungry, the large amounts of GDDR6/7 they have gulps down a lot of electrons. GDDR6 consumes roughly 100W per 24GB, so on an AI card with 96GB you're looking at 400W per card just for the memory. A server with five NVidia AI cards could easily require 10KW to run and keep it cool.
Stack a few thousand of those in a datacentre and you're well into megawatt territory.
This kind of lack of leadership is what we’ve come to expect from all our politicians sadly. To an extent we get the politics we (the voters) deserve: if the electorate cared enough to understand these issues then our politics would be very different!
Hence the huge offshore wind farms along the south and east coasts and Dogger Bank (with its multiple phases)
The biggest predictor of speeding for young drivers is having their friends in the car.