If reform are proposing fracking then isn’t this what the centrist duds of PB have been demanding? A party willing to commit to difficult and unpopular things that will benefit the nation long term?
Isn’t that to be applauded? Maybe not, if it’s from nigel
You can argue that fracking will never work in the UK but that’s a different argument. It is also a compromised argument because we know - we literally know - that Putin’s Russia has spent a decade trying to swing the argument against fracking in Europe (in the alleged science and in the voters’ minds) by pumping out disinformation so that we remain reliant on Russia for oil and gas
Fuck Russia. Try fracking
This is two good policies from reform in a row. Actual policies for migration and now an actual policy on energy. Both better than anything from Lab or Con
I'm against Fracking because it isn't viable. It has been looked at. Repeatedly. It's been tried. Commercially. My late father invested in loads of oil and gas companies and dipped into various frackers - and lost his money every time.
It isn't that many years ago that "brownouts" was the warning - not enough power generating capacity. That gap has been filled by wind and the Fuking morons say "turn them off"
We need to keep extracting as much oil and gas as is economic from the North Sea, but with the best will in the world that isn't a long term proposition now. Shale is a chimera. So what Farage proposes is that we import endless LNG from his orange gibbon friend.
I give much more attention to the balance of payments than most, certainly more than is rational. So I am generally in favour of home grown energy sources like wind, solar and the North Sea. To me it is a no brainer to use what we have to reduce imports even if we are, at the same time, looking to improve our energy efficiency and reduce consumption.
But fracking is not a serious proposition in areas of high density populations with lots of old, fragile buildings that are going to be damaged by it. If we found a way to frack off our coasts, for example, I would have no problem with it but not where we live. We've looked at this several times before and it just doesn't work.
Reform are touring the North East. Their message? Shut down the wind farms, burn more gas.
There's a problem. Even if you open up more gas wells we're short of the stuff having largely burnt it already. Gas is 26% of UK energy production but we have to import half. So if we burn more gas we import more gas.
I support bringing as much out of the North Sea as we can. But more gas power = more imports. None of the imports are to the NE - it will kill us.
Wind farms have been a huge success as has solar, but I have no idea how long the lifespan of both is and what happens when they have to be replaced
It’s hard to overstate what a disaster Boris Johnson turned out to be. It’s likely none of the present tensions would be happening in the UK if he hadn’t done this. The worst thing is, I couldn’t tell you if he did it on purpose or by accident. Either is quite possible.
At the time I remember plenty of Brexiteers saying things like "it's not about the numbers, it's about control" and claiming that immigration from the Commonwealth would be less unpopular with the sort of people who don't like immigration than immigration from the EU. I have to say that both arguments seemed implausible at the time.
With the odd exception, I don't think immigration from the commonwealth is a problem. Immigration from India is very visible in my part of the world, but it isn't really a problem: these are by and large skilled immigrants whom Britain has sought and who integrate easily. The problem is illegals and dubious asylum seekers from the Middle East and North Africa.
I am not sure your Labour -Boris-Labour-Reform voter will see it quite like that.
We left the EU because we thought FOM gave us too many foreigners, so Brexit kicked out the foreigners, but we needed more foreigners so Johnson brought in up to a million foreign workers a year from the Indian sub-continent. I am not sure how you sell that politically as a positive.
Your best strategy which is the one Badenoch, Philp and Jenrick are touting is if there is a problem with immigration it started on July 5th 2024. Perhaps you could try calling the "Boriswave" the "Starmerwave".
Well, because what people object to isn't Indian doctors and engineers in my nice middle class suburb boosting the numbers at the cricket club, their kids making grammar schoos more dificult to get into; it's Afghans and Syrians and Eritreans arriving on boats and living in tents in our city centres.
I am not sure you understand the racist mindset. I doubt they differentiate Indian Doctors from Afghan plasterers.
It’s hard to overstate what a disaster Boris Johnson turned out to be. It’s likely none of the present tensions would be happening in the UK if he hadn’t done this. The worst thing is, I couldn’t tell you if he did it on purpose or by accident. Either is quite possible.
At the time I remember plenty of Brexiteers saying things like "it's not about the numbers, it's about control" and claiming that immigration from the Commonwealth would be less unpopular with the sort of people who don't like immigration than immigration from the EU. I have to say that both arguments seemed implausible at the time.
With the odd exception, I don't think immigration from the commonwealth is a problem. Immigration from India is very visible in my part of the world, but it isn't really a problem: these are by and large skilled immigrants whom Britain has sought and who integrate easily. The problem is illegals and dubious asylum seekers from the Middle East and North Africa.
It's the Euroopeans who have disappeared that I miss the most. You could go round towns and cities all over the UK and it was full of young attractive people speaking a multitude of languages. It's like that in the Sounth of France everywhere and it used to be like that in England. It's difficult to realise how it's changed over the last nine or ten years
Ah, Europe, the continent where there are no ugly young people, just attractive ones, so many in fact that they could send tens of thousands over to work in the UK and display their beauty. And shame on the rest of the world for not supplying us with attractive guest workers to perv over.
This country.
It's the vibe that's changed. That you aren't able to feel it dioesn't surprise me at all.
74% voting for the handmaidens of Brexit which totally screwed farmers .
I think you will find it is Reeves IHT that is at the heart of this, and certainly I expect conservatives, reform and possibly even the Lib Dems to repeal this in their next manifestos
There is something more than faintly ridiculous about a homeowner being force to cough up £116000 13 years after felling a common lime tree on her own land, while nothing happens to a pub in Enfield that cut down an historic oak on land that didn't belong to them.
Our daughter came across this problem when selling her home recently
Apparently there are many trees with Tree Preservation Orders (TPO) not only in conservation areas, but more generally, and especially in estates built post the 1970's when developers created TPOs on trees on their developments, a practice that continues to this day I believe
Apparently Local Authorities have 'tree officers' who strictly police these regulations.
I doubt many home owners have any idea about this issue until it is specifically raised in a sale's pre contract enquiries, and can cause real problems for the sale if the rules haven't been followed.
Fortunately the trees in my daughter's property had not had TPO's but one nearby had
We had a tree in the garden with a TPO. We had it trimmed every so often, by someone who knew what they were doing, who eventually opined that it was becoming dangerous, due to old age and trunk deterioration. So he made the necessary approach to the local council and, approval having been given, cut it down. When it was, it was discovered that the trunk was absolutely rotten and indeed, then the last section was removed, it split into two. A gale might have caused considerable damage, either to us...... probably our garage ...... or to the neighbours, or to the local library.
To be fair you followed the legislation, but very many homeowners are blissfully unaware of the rules around TPO's
A guaranteed way to lose votes in return for nothing.
Its 'reopen the pits' level of pointlessness.
Also a guaranteed way for energy firms to lose vast amounts of money in a pointless exercise in reverse virtue signalling.
This is actually where the environmentalists missed a trick. If only they had just let the firms go ahead and try fracking it would have been bleeding obvious within a very short time that it was uneconomic and pointless. Because they opposed it, it has become a cause celebre for the Right to the point where economics is no longer a factor.
It’s hard to overstate what a disaster Boris Johnson turned out to be. It’s likely none of the present tensions would be happening in the UK if he hadn’t done this. The worst thing is, I couldn’t tell you if he did it on purpose or by accident. Either is quite possible.
At the time I remember plenty of Brexiteers saying things like "it's not about the numbers, it's about control" and claiming that immigration from the Commonwealth would be less unpopular with the sort of people who don't like immigration than immigration from the EU. I have to say that both arguments seemed implausible at the time.
With the odd exception, I don't think immigration from the commonwealth is a problem. Immigration from India is very visible in my part of the world, but it isn't really a problem: these are by and large skilled immigrants whom Britain has sought and who integrate easily. The problem is illegals and dubious asylum seekers from the Middle East and North Africa.
It's the Euroopeans who have disappeared that I miss the most. You could go round towns and cities all over the UK and it was full of young attractive people speaking a multitude of languages. It's like that in the Sounth of France everywhere and it used to be like that in England. It's difficult to realise how it's changed over the last nine or ten years
Ah, Europe, the continent where there are no ugly young people, just attractive ones, so many in fact that they could send tens of thousands over to work in the UK and display their beauty. And shame on the rest of the world for not supplying us with attractive guest workers to perv over.
This country.
It's the vibe that's changed. That you aren't able to feel it dioesn't surprise me at all.
Maybe because it hasn’t changed where I live and where I go. London was always full of disappeared people before freedom of movement so it’s not new or “thanks to the EU” that we have that vibe there.
I live somewhere with probably half the population being immigrants who were not born here. They come from all over the world to work in the finance industry, legal industry and service industry. More are now from Kenya and the Philippines in the service industry so an additional “vibe”.
It’s also perfectly ok for people to take comfort in being surrounded by people “like them”, it’s natural. Funnily enough if you venture outside of the South of France into the majority of the country that isn’t Paris, the Alps or the Dordogne it’s incredibly white, French, monocultural. Guess what, most of the world consists of countries where away from the cities the population is largely the same race, culture, religion.
It’s hard to overstate what a disaster Boris Johnson turned out to be. It’s likely none of the present tensions would be happening in the UK if he hadn’t done this. The worst thing is, I couldn’t tell you if he did it on purpose or by accident. Either is quite possible.
At the time I remember plenty of Brexiteers saying things like "it's not about the numbers, it's about control" and claiming that immigration from the Commonwealth would be less unpopular with the sort of people who don't like immigration than immigration from the EU. I have to say that both arguments seemed implausible at the time.
With the odd exception, I don't think immigration from the commonwealth is a problem. Immigration from India is very visible in my part of the world, but it isn't really a problem: these are by and large skilled immigrants whom Britain has sought and who integrate easily. The problem is illegals and dubious asylum seekers from the Middle East and North Africa.
It's the Euroopeans who have disappeared that I miss the most. You could go round towns and cities all over the UK and it was full of young attractive people speaking a multitude of languages. It's like that in the Sounth of France everywhere and it used to be like that in England. It's difficult to realise how it's changed over the last nine or ten years
Ah, Europe, the continent where there are no ugly young people, just attractive ones, so many in fact that they could send tens of thousands over to work in the UK and display their beauty. And shame on the rest of the world for not supplying us with attractive guest workers to perv over.
This country.
It's the vibe that's changed. That you aren't able to feel it dioesn't surprise me at all.
In your mindset certainly but more generally I very much doubt it
You can compare us to your southern France utopia but frankly it has as many problems as the rest of us
If reform are proposing fracking then isn’t this what the centrist duds of PB have been demanding? A party willing to commit to difficult and unpopular things that will benefit the nation long term?
Isn’t that to be applauded? Maybe not, if it’s from nigel
You can argue that fracking will never work in the UK but that’s a different argument. It is also a compromised argument because we know - we literally know - that Putin’s Russia has spent a decade trying to swing the argument against fracking in Europe (in the alleged science and in the voters’ minds) by pumping out disinformation so that we remain reliant on Russia for oil and gas
Fuck Russia. Try fracking
This is two good policies from reform in a row. Actual policies for migration and now an actual policy on energy. Both better than anything from Lab or Con
I'm against Fracking because it isn't viable. It has been looked at. Repeatedly. It's been tried. Commercially. My late father invested in loads of oil and gas companies and dipped into various frackers - and lost his money every time.
It isn't that many years ago that "brownouts" was the warning - not enough power generating capacity. That gap has been filled by wind and the Fuking morons say "turn them off"
We need to keep extracting as much oil and gas as is economic from the North Sea, but with the best will in the world that isn't a long term proposition now. Shale is a chimera. So what Farage proposes is that we import endless LNG from his orange gibbon friend.
I give much more attention to the balance of payments than most, certainly more than is rational. So I am generally in favour of home grown energy sources like wind, solar and the North Sea. To me it is a no brainer to use what we have to reduce imports even if we are, at the same time, looking to improve our energy efficiency and reduce consumption.
But fracking is not a serious proposition in areas of high density populations with lots of old, fragile buildings that are going to be damaged by it. If we found a way to frack off our coasts, for example, I would have no problem with it but not where we live. We've looked at this several times before and it just doesn't work.
Reform are touring the North East. Their message? Shut down the wind farms, burn more gas.
There's a problem. Even if you open up more gas wells we're short of the stuff having largely burnt it already. Gas is 26% of UK energy production but we have to import half. So if we burn more gas we import more gas.
I support bringing as much out of the North Sea as we can. But more gas power = more imports. None of the imports are to the NE - it will kill us.
Wind farms have been a huge success as has solar, but I have no idea how long the lifespan of both is and what happens when they have to be replaced
Any ideas on this genuine query ?
... put more up? That's already happening in Scotland - e.g. Novar 1 which is nearly 30 years old. 34 old turbines are being replaced by 10 more efficient ones. Much of the cost is already sunk in transmission and groundworks.
Solar is interesting because they deteriorate so slowly and the cost of getting on a roof (safely) to replace them is high. They'll have a very long cycle but the old ones will still have some life in them. I think they'll end up as fencing as us already the case in the Netherlands.
A guaranteed way to lose votes in return for nothing.
Its 'reopen the pits' level of pointlessness.
Also a guaranteed way for energy firms to lose vast amounts of money in a pointless exercise in reverse virtue signalling.
This is actually where the environmentalists missed a trick. If only they had just let the firms go ahead and try fracking it would have been bleeding obvious within a very short time that it was uneconomic and pointless. Because they opposed it, it has become a cause celebre for the Right to the point where economics is no longer a factor.
Also unflooding the former superpits will be an enormous feat of engineering excellence. If anyone can do it, I am sure Nigel is the man.
If reform are proposing fracking then isn’t this what the centrist duds of PB have been demanding? A party willing to commit to difficult and unpopular things that will benefit the nation long term?
Isn’t that to be applauded? Maybe not, if it’s from nigel
You can argue that fracking will never work in the UK but that’s a different argument. It is also a compromised argument because we know - we literally know - that Putin’s Russia has spent a decade trying to swing the argument against fracking in Europe (in the alleged science and in the voters’ minds) by pumping out disinformation so that we remain reliant on Russia for oil and gas
Fuck Russia. Try fracking
This is two good policies from reform in a row. Actual policies for migration and now an actual policy on energy. Both better than anything from Lab or Con
I'm against Fracking because it isn't viable. It has been looked at. Repeatedly. It's been tried. Commercially. My late father invested in loads of oil and gas companies and dipped into various frackers - and lost his money every time.
It isn't that many years ago that "brownouts" was the warning - not enough power generating capacity. That gap has been filled by wind and the Fuking morons say "turn them off"
We need to keep extracting as much oil and gas as is economic from the North Sea, but with the best will in the world that isn't a long term proposition now. Shale is a chimera. So what Farage proposes is that we import endless LNG from his orange gibbon friend.
I give much more attention to the balance of payments than most, certainly more than is rational. So I am generally in favour of home grown energy sources like wind, solar and the North Sea. To me it is a no brainer to use what we have to reduce imports even if we are, at the same time, looking to improve our energy efficiency and reduce consumption.
But fracking is not a serious proposition in areas of high density populations with lots of old, fragile buildings that are going to be damaged by it. If we found a way to frack off our coasts, for example, I would have no problem with it but not where we live. We've looked at this several times before and it just doesn't work.
Reform are touring the North East. Their message? Shut down the wind farms, burn more gas.
There's a problem. Even if you open up more gas wells we're short of the stuff having largely burnt it already. Gas is 26% of UK energy production but we have to import half. So if we burn more gas we import more gas.
I support bringing as much out of the North Sea as we can. But more gas power = more imports. None of the imports are to the NE - it will kill us.
Wind farms have been a huge success as has solar, but I have no idea how long the lifespan of both is and what happens when they have to be replaced
Any ideas on this genuine query ?
... put more up? That's already happening in Scotland - e.g. Novar 1 which is nearly 30 years old. 34 old turbines are being replaced by 10 more efficient ones. Much of the cost is already sunk in transmission and groundworks.
Solar is interesting because they deteriorate so slowly and the cost of getting on a roof (safely) to replace them is high. They'll have a very long cycle but the old ones will still have some life in them. I think they'll end up as fencing as us already the case in the Netherlands.
I would genuinely like to see the net costs of replacing excisting wind farms, including the removal of those which become obsolete
It’s hard to overstate what a disaster Boris Johnson turned out to be. It’s likely none of the present tensions would be happening in the UK if he hadn’t done this. The worst thing is, I couldn’t tell you if he did it on purpose or by accident. Either is quite possible.
At the time I remember plenty of Brexiteers saying things like "it's not about the numbers, it's about control" and claiming that immigration from the Commonwealth would be less unpopular with the sort of people who don't like immigration than immigration from the EU. I have to say that both arguments seemed implausible at the time.
With the odd exception, I don't think immigration from the commonwealth is a problem. Immigration from India is very visible in my part of the world, but it isn't really a problem: these are by and large skilled immigrants whom Britain has sought and who integrate easily. The problem is illegals and dubious asylum seekers from the Middle East and North Africa.
It's the Euroopeans who have disappeared that I miss the most. You could go round towns and cities all over the UK and it was full of young attractive people speaking a multitude of languages. It's like that in the Sounth of France everywhere and it used to be like that in England. It's difficult to realise how it's changed over the last nine or ten years
Ah, Europe, the continent where there are no ugly young people, just attractive ones, so many in fact that they could send tens of thousands over to work in the UK and display their beauty. And shame on the rest of the world for not supplying us with attractive guest workers to perv over.
This country.
It's the vibe that's changed. That you aren't able to feel it dioesn't surprise me at all.
In your mindset certainly but more generally I very much doubt it
You can compare us to your southern France utopia but frankly it has as many problems as the rest of us
Roger literally lives in a corner of France - Villefranche-sur-Mer - which is so far right it elected a Len Pen person on the first round at the French elex
All his lovely neighbours in that lovely place are neo-fash
He’s a ludicrous dummy who went to Millfield. The school for people to stupid to go to a comprehensive. Ignore
Do you know whether this is a properly conducted poll @hyufd, because I don't believe it. There is no way Labour are on 0%. As we have seen if you ask people if they have been decapitated the number is greater than 0%. It is really just about impossible to get a zero figure in a proper poll. The LD figure is also very dubious.
If reform are proposing fracking then isn’t this what the centrist duds of PB have been demanding? A party willing to commit to difficult and unpopular things that will benefit the nation long term?
Isn’t that to be applauded? Maybe not, if it’s from nigel
You can argue that fracking will never work in the UK but that’s a different argument. It is also a compromised argument because we know - we literally know - that Putin’s Russia has spent a decade trying to swing the argument against fracking in Europe (in the alleged science and in the voters’ minds) by pumping out disinformation so that we remain reliant on Russia for oil and gas
Fuck Russia. Try fracking
This is two good policies from reform in a row. Actual policies for migration and now an actual policy on energy. Both better than anything from Lab or Con
I'm against Fracking because it isn't viable. It has been looked at. Repeatedly. It's been tried. Commercially. My late father invested in loads of oil and gas companies and dipped into various frackers - and lost his money every time.
It isn't that many years ago that "brownouts" was the warning - not enough power generating capacity. That gap has been filled by wind and the Fuking morons say "turn them off"
We need to keep extracting as much oil and gas as is economic from the North Sea, but with the best will in the world that isn't a long term proposition now. Shale is a chimera. So what Farage proposes is that we import endless LNG from his orange gibbon friend.
I give much more attention to the balance of payments than most, certainly more than is rational. So I am generally in favour of home grown energy sources like wind, solar and the North Sea. To me it is a no brainer to use what we have to reduce imports even if we are, at the same time, looking to improve our energy efficiency and reduce consumption.
But fracking is not a serious proposition in areas of high density populations with lots of old, fragile buildings that are going to be damaged by it. If we found a way to frack off our coasts, for example, I would have no problem with it but not where we live. We've looked at this several times before and it just doesn't work.
Reform are touring the North East. Their message? Shut down the wind farms, burn more gas.
There's a problem. Even if you open up more gas wells we're short of the stuff having largely burnt it already. Gas is 26% of UK energy production but we have to import half. So if we burn more gas we import more gas.
I support bringing as much out of the North Sea as we can. But more gas power = more imports. None of the imports are to the NE - it will kill us.
Wind farms have been a huge success as has solar, but I have no idea how long the lifespan of both is and what happens when they have to be replaced
Any ideas on this genuine query ?
Solar is easy - just replace it with more solar, which will be cheaper and more efficient than what you're replacing,
Wind is slightly more complicated - and in any event requires ongoing regular maintenance.
But the EOL thing is a bit of a red herring. The cost of both includes depreciation of the asset.
It’s hard to overstate what a disaster Boris Johnson turned out to be. It’s likely none of the present tensions would be happening in the UK if he hadn’t done this. The worst thing is, I couldn’t tell you if he did it on purpose or by accident. Either is quite possible.
At the time I remember plenty of Brexiteers saying things like "it's not about the numbers, it's about control" and claiming that immigration from the Commonwealth would be less unpopular with the sort of people who don't like immigration than immigration from the EU. I have to say that both arguments seemed implausible at the time.
With the odd exception, I don't think immigration from the commonwealth is a problem. Immigration from India is very visible in my part of the world, but it isn't really a problem: these are by and large skilled immigrants whom Britain has sought and who integrate easily. The problem is illegals and dubious asylum seekers from the Middle East and North Africa.
It's the Euroopeans who have disappeared that I miss the most. You could go round towns and cities all over the UK and it was full of young attractive people speaking a multitude of languages. It's like that in the Sounth of France everywhere and it used to be like that in England. It's difficult to realise how it's changed over the last nine or ten years
There are more EU citizens living in Britain now than in 2016.
Net emigration post 2020, true, but not enough to overtake the net immigration 2016-2020.
The swastika is the symbol of veganism in Taiwan. (They don't distinguish between vegan and vegetarian). It is prominent on all non-meat establishments. See it a fair bit in India too.
It’s hard to overstate what a disaster Boris Johnson turned out to be. It’s likely none of the present tensions would be happening in the UK if he hadn’t done this. The worst thing is, I couldn’t tell you if he did it on purpose or by accident. Either is quite possible.
At the time I remember plenty of Brexiteers saying things like "it's not about the numbers, it's about control" and claiming that immigration from the Commonwealth would be less unpopular with the sort of people who don't like immigration than immigration from the EU. I have to say that both arguments seemed implausible at the time.
With the odd exception, I don't think immigration from the commonwealth is a problem. Immigration from India is very visible in my part of the world, but it isn't really a problem: these are by and large skilled immigrants whom Britain has sought and who integrate easily. The problem is illegals and dubious asylum seekers from the Middle East and North Africa.
It's the Euroopeans who have disappeared that I miss the most. You could go round towns and cities all over the UK and it was full of young attractive people speaking a multitude of languages. It's like that in the Sounth of France everywhere and it used to be like that in England. It's difficult to realise how it's changed over the last nine or ten years
Ah, Europe, the continent where there are no ugly young people, just attractive ones, so many in fact that they could send tens of thousands over to work in the UK and display their beauty. And shame on the rest of the world for not supplying us with attractive guest workers to perv over.
This country.
It's the vibe that's changed. That you aren't able to feel it dioesn't surprise me at all.
In your mindset certainly but more generally I very much doubt it
You can compare us to your southern France utopia but frankly it has as many problems as the rest of us
Roger literally lives in a corner of France - Villefranche-sur-Mer - which is so far right it elected a Len Pen person on the first round at the French elex
All his lovely neighbours in that lovely place are neo-fash
He’s a ludicrous dummy who went to Millfield. The school for people to stupid to go to a comprehensive. Ignore
Perhaps that’s why his corner of France is so nice to live in - it’s mainly populated by RN supporters and pieds noirs.
It’s hard to overstate what a disaster Boris Johnson turned out to be. It’s likely none of the present tensions would be happening in the UK if he hadn’t done this. The worst thing is, I couldn’t tell you if he did it on purpose or by accident. Either is quite possible.
At the time I remember plenty of Brexiteers saying things like "it's not about the numbers, it's about control" and claiming that immigration from the Commonwealth would be less unpopular with the sort of people who don't like immigration than immigration from the EU. I have to say that both arguments seemed implausible at the time.
Then why didn’t Remainers use that as a campaign slogan?
“Stay in Europe so most immigrants are white and Christian”
I think we know why. Yet now they hypocritically whine
You voted for every bit of the mess.
Yet now hypocritically you whine.
I’m not whining. With gritted teeth, I’d vote Brexit tomorrow
Do you know whether this is a properly conducted poll @hyufd, because I don't believe it. There is no way Labour are on 0%. As we have seen if you ask people if they have been decapitated the number is greater than 0%. It is really just about impossible to get a zero figure in a proper poll. The LD figure is also very dubious.
You’re right. The poll is dubious
Says it’s a “poll by the Times of 400 Members of the country landowners association” which means it is tiny, unrepresentative and self selecting
It’s voodoo
(Which is a shame, it’s nice to see Labour on zero)
Am hearing of an enterprising young man going round taking down the England flags and flogging them on e-bay to those of righter than average persuasion for a fiver each. He's already recouped the cost of his holiday.
Do you know whether this is a properly conducted poll @hyufd, because I don't believe it. There is no way Labour are on 0%. As we have seen if you ask people if they have been decapitated the number is greater than 0%. It is really just about impossible to get a zero figure in a proper poll. The LD figure is also very dubious.
This is the source apparently:
According to research by the Country Land and Business Association (CLA), which represents 28,000 farmers and rural businesses across England and Wales, almost 80 per cent of farmers are worried their business will not survive the next ten years. None of those surveyed said they would vote for Labour in a general election.
The poll, conducted among 490 CLA members, found that 40 per cent “strongly agree” and 38 per cent “agree” with the statement: “I am worried that my business will not survive the next ten years.” More than 30 per cent have “seriously” considered selling their farm and leaving the industry in the next five years.
Nearly 70 per cent say they will be forced to sell land or take on debt to keep their business running, while almost half expect they will have to sell at least a quarter of their farm.
The anxiety stems largely from Labour’s inheritance tax reforms. From April 2026, inherited agricultural assets worth more than £1 million will face a 20 per cent tax charge. Previously, such assets were exempt. The government expects the policy to raise £520 million annually by 2029.
Since the announcement last October, around 90 per cent of farmers have delayed or paused investment, with more than a quarter holding back over £150,000.
Victoria Vyvyan, president of the CLA, said: “The Treasury says these reforms will barely touch rural Britain. Our polling shows they will force hard choices on farms that have sustained communities for generations — selling land, laying off staff and shelving plans for the future. Already families are weighing up which parts of their business they can afford to keep. Some are holding back investment, others are wondering if they can hand the farm on at all.”
The poll revealed striking political consequences. While 38 per cent of farmers said they would back the Conservatives, 36 per cent favoured Reform UK. The Liberal Democrats attracted just under 4 per cent, while 21 per cent were undecided. Labour secured zero support.
74% voting for the handmaidens of Brexit which totally screwed farmers .
I think you will find it is Reeves IHT that is at the heart of this, and certainly I expect conservatives, reform and possibly even the Lib Dems to repeal this in their next manifestos
Would you support this as an alternative ?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/aug/24/how-riverfords-guy-singh-watson-became-the-most-brutally-honest-farmer-in-britain “But the easiest way to get money out of the farming sector would be to capture the 100-fold increase in land value when planning permission is granted to build houses on it,” he says. “I don’t see why the farmer should be the beneficiary of that. Maybe they should get double the agricultural value, but the rest of it should go into the public purse.” His rough estimate of how much that would raise when the government’s target of 300,000 new homes are built is £10bn – 25 times more than the inheritance tax changes...
Id quite happily scrap the IHT thing for any farm worth less than (say) £50m, and replace it with this.
If reform are proposing fracking then isn’t this what the centrist duds of PB have been demanding? A party willing to commit to difficult and unpopular things that will benefit the nation long term?
Isn’t that to be applauded? Maybe not, if it’s from nigel
You can argue that fracking will never work in the UK but that’s a different argument. It is also a compromised argument because we know - we literally know - that Putin’s Russia has spent a decade trying to swing the argument against fracking in Europe (in the alleged science and in the voters’ minds) by pumping out disinformation so that we remain reliant on Russia for oil and gas
Fuck Russia. Try fracking
This is two good policies from reform in a row. Actual policies for migration and now an actual policy on energy. Both better than anything from Lab or Con
I'm against Fracking because it isn't viable. It has been looked at. Repeatedly. It's been tried. Commercially. My late father invested in loads of oil and gas companies and dipped into various frackers - and lost his money every time.
It isn't that many years ago that "brownouts" was the warning - not enough power generating capacity. That gap has been filled by wind and the Fuking morons say "turn them off"
We need to keep extracting as much oil and gas as is economic from the North Sea, but with the best will in the world that isn't a long term proposition now. Shale is a chimera. So what Farage proposes is that we import endless LNG from his orange gibbon friend.
I give much more attention to the balance of payments than most, certainly more than is rational. So I am generally in favour of home grown energy sources like wind, solar and the North Sea. To me it is a no brainer to use what we have to reduce imports even if we are, at the same time, looking to improve our energy efficiency and reduce consumption.
But fracking is not a serious proposition in areas of high density populations with lots of old, fragile buildings that are going to be damaged by it. If we found a way to frack off our coasts, for example, I would have no problem with it but not where we live. We've looked at this several times before and it just doesn't work.
Reform are touring the North East. Their message? Shut down the wind farms, burn more gas.
There's a problem. Even if you open up more gas wells we're short of the stuff having largely burnt it already. Gas is 26% of UK energy production but we have to import half. So if we burn more gas we import more gas.
I support bringing as much out of the North Sea as we can. But more gas power = more imports. None of the imports are to the NE - it will kill us.
Wind farms have been a huge success as has solar, but I have no idea how long the lifespan of both is and what happens when they have to be replaced
Any ideas on this genuine query ?
... put more up? That's already happening in Scotland - e.g. Novar 1 which is nearly 30 years old. 34 old turbines are being replaced by 10 more efficient ones. Much of the cost is already sunk in transmission and groundworks.
Solar is interesting because they deteriorate so slowly and the cost of getting on a roof (safely) to replace them is high. They'll have a very long cycle but the old ones will still have some life in them. I think they'll end up as fencing as us already the case in the Netherlands.
I would genuinely like to see the net costs of replacing excisting wind farms, including the removal of those which become obsolete
It's already included in the LCOE for each project. Just Google it.
As I said, it will be relatively small because all the infrastructure for the turbines remains, from access tracks to transmission. Indeed the LCOE is the cost of returning the site to original use, so will massively overstate the costs if you're actually just replacing the turbines instead.
(Note for awareness this argument is a favourite of climate deniers all over the internet, almost as common as the volcano one).
Am hearing of an enterprising young man going round taking down the England flags and flogging them on e-bay to those of righter than average persuasion for a fiver each. He's already recouped the cost of his holiday.
It was a Twitter and Facebook story that was debunked as “things that never happened”. Ironically being pushed by a chap who felt the need to display an Irish Tricolour on his Twitter handle. The price he was “selling” the flags at has gone up in a way since the story was made up that makes our inflation issues in 2023/24 seem like a mere trifle.
It’s hard to overstate what a disaster Boris Johnson turned out to be. It’s likely none of the present tensions would be happening in the UK if he hadn’t done this. The worst thing is, I couldn’t tell you if he did it on purpose or by accident. Either is quite possible.
At the time I remember plenty of Brexiteers saying things like "it's not about the numbers, it's about control" and claiming that immigration from the Commonwealth would be less unpopular with the sort of people who don't like immigration than immigration from the EU. I have to say that both arguments seemed implausible at the time.
Then why didn’t Remainers use that as a campaign slogan?
“Stay in Europe so most immigrants are white and Christian”
I think we know why. Yet now they hypocritically whine
You voted for every bit of the mess.
Yet now hypocritically you whine.
I’m not whining. With gritted teeth, I’d vote Brexit tomorrow
Do you know whether this is a properly conducted poll @hyufd, because I don't believe it. There is no way Labour are on 0%. As we have seen if you ask people if they have been decapitated the number is greater than 0%. It is really just about impossible to get a zero figure in a proper poll. The LD figure is also very dubious.
This is the source apparently:
According to research by the Country Land and Business Association (CLA), which represents 28,000 farmers and rural businesses across England and Wales, almost 80 per cent of farmers are worried their business will not survive the next ten years. None of those surveyed said they would vote for Labour in a general election.
The poll, conducted among 490 CLA members, found that 40 per cent “strongly agree” and 38 per cent “agree” with the statement: “I am worried that my business will not survive the next ten years.” More than 30 per cent have “seriously” considered selling their farm and leaving the industry in the next five years.
Nearly 70 per cent say they will be forced to sell land or take on debt to keep their business running, while almost half expect they will have to sell at least a quarter of their farm.
The anxiety stems largely from Labour’s inheritance tax reforms. From April 2026, inherited agricultural assets worth more than £1 million will face a 20 per cent tax charge. Previously, such assets were exempt. The government expects the policy to raise £520 million annually by 2029.
Since the announcement last October, around 90 per cent of farmers have delayed or paused investment, with more than a quarter holding back over £150,000.
Victoria Vyvyan, president of the CLA, said: “The Treasury says these reforms will barely touch rural Britain. Our polling shows they will force hard choices on farms that have sustained communities for generations — selling land, laying off staff and shelving plans for the future. Already families are weighing up which parts of their business they can afford to keep. Some are holding back investment, others are wondering if they can hand the farm on at all.”
The poll revealed striking political consequences. While 38 per cent of farmers said they would back the Conservatives, 36 per cent favoured Reform UK. The Liberal Democrats attracted just under 4 per cent, while 21 per cent were undecided. Labour secured zero support.
Indeed and 35% of farmers backed Labour to 32% for the Tories last year on one poll
It’s hard to overstate what a disaster Boris Johnson turned out to be. It’s likely none of the present tensions would be happening in the UK if he hadn’t done this. The worst thing is, I couldn’t tell you if he did it on purpose or by accident. Either is quite possible.
At the time I remember plenty of Brexiteers saying things like "it's not about the numbers, it's about control" and claiming that immigration from the Commonwealth would be less unpopular with the sort of people who don't like immigration than immigration from the EU. I have to say that both arguments seemed implausible at the time.
With the odd exception, I don't think immigration from the commonwealth is a problem. Immigration from India is very visible in my part of the world, but it isn't really a problem: these are by and large skilled immigrants whom Britain has sought and who integrate easily. The problem is illegals and dubious asylum seekers from the Middle East and North Africa.
It's the Euroopeans who have disappeared that I miss the most. You could go round towns and cities all over the UK and it was full of young attractive people speaking a multitude of languages. It's like that in the Sounth of France everywhere and it used to be like that in England. It's difficult to realise how it's changed over the last nine or ten years
Ah, Europe, the continent where there are no ugly young people, just attractive ones, so many in fact that they could send tens of thousands over to work in the UK and display their beauty. And shame on the rest of the world for not supplying us with attractive guest workers to perv over.
This country.
It's the vibe that's changed. That you aren't able to feel it dioesn't surprise me at all.
In your mindset certainly but more generally I very much doubt it
You can compare us to your southern France utopia but frankly it has as many problems as the rest of us
Roger literally lives in a corner of France - Villefranche-sur-Mer - which is so far right it elected a Len Pen person on the first round at the French elex
All his lovely neighbours in that lovely place are neo-fash
He’s a ludicrous dummy who went to Millfield. The school for people to stupid to go to a comprehensive. Ignore
Perhaps that’s why his corner of France is so nice to live in - it’s mainly populated by RN supporters and pieds noirs.
France is paradoxical as always
In Britain we associate the hard or far right with unlovely and downtrodden towns, cities, regions. This is probably true of most western countries
However in France it is quite often the nicest and richest corners that are far right. Like villefranche sur mer where roger chooses to live
Last year I went to the source of le penisme, south Brittany near Carnac where the le pens have their compound. It’s very pleasant. Much nicer than inland Brittany (which can be seriously bleak)
My theory is that the rich far right French and Roger are voting le pen to PRESERVE what they have
I also think this is beginning to happen in the UK. See my posh Notting Hill friends switching to Reform
If reform are proposing fracking then isn’t this what the centrist duds of PB have been demanding? A party willing to commit to difficult and unpopular things that will benefit the nation long term?
Isn’t that to be applauded? Maybe not, if it’s from nigel
You can argue that fracking will never work in the UK but that’s a different argument. It is also a compromised argument because we know - we literally know - that Putin’s Russia has spent a decade trying to swing the argument against fracking in Europe (in the alleged science and in the voters’ minds) by pumping out disinformation so that we remain reliant on Russia for oil and gas
Fuck Russia. Try fracking
This is two good policies from reform in a row. Actual policies for migration and now an actual policy on energy. Both better than anything from Lab or Con
I'm against Fracking because it isn't viable. It has been looked at. Repeatedly. It's been tried. Commercially. My late father invested in loads of oil and gas companies and dipped into various frackers - and lost his money every time.
It isn't that many years ago that "brownouts" was the warning - not enough power generating capacity. That gap has been filled by wind and the Fuking morons say "turn them off"
We need to keep extracting as much oil and gas as is economic from the North Sea, but with the best will in the world that isn't a long term proposition now. Shale is a chimera. So what Farage proposes is that we import endless LNG from his orange gibbon friend.
I give much more attention to the balance of payments than most, certainly more than is rational. So I am generally in favour of home grown energy sources like wind, solar and the North Sea. To me it is a no brainer to use what we have to reduce imports even if we are, at the same time, looking to improve our energy efficiency and reduce consumption.
But fracking is not a serious proposition in areas of high density populations with lots of old, fragile buildings that are going to be damaged by it. If we found a way to frack off our coasts, for example, I would have no problem with it but not where we live. We've looked at this several times before and it just doesn't work.
Reform are touring the North East. Their message? Shut down the wind farms, burn more gas.
There's a problem. Even if you open up more gas wells we're short of the stuff having largely burnt it already. Gas is 26% of UK energy production but we have to import half. So if we burn more gas we import more gas.
I support bringing as much out of the North Sea as we can. But more gas power = more imports. None of the imports are to the NE - it will kill us.
Wind farms have been a huge success as has solar, but I have no idea how long the lifespan of both is and what happens when they have to be replaced
Any ideas on this genuine query ?
... put more up? That's already happening in Scotland - e.g. Novar 1 which is nearly 30 years old. 34 old turbines are being replaced by 10 more efficient ones. Much of the cost is already sunk in transmission and groundworks.
Solar is interesting because they deteriorate so slowly and the cost of getting on a roof (safely) to replace them is high. They'll have a very long cycle but the old ones will still have some life in them. I think they'll end up as fencing as us already the case in the Netherlands.
I would genuinely like to see the net costs of replacing excisting wind farms, including the removal of those which become obsolete
It's already included in the LCOE for each project. Just Google it.
As I said, it will be relatively small because all the infrastructure for the turbines remains, from access tracks to transmission. Indeed the LCOE is the cost of returning the site to original use, so will massively overstate the costs if you're actually just replacing the turbines instead.
(Note for awareness this argument is a favourite of climate deniers all over the internet, almost as common as the volcano one).
I am not making an argument, just seeking information that I do not know
74% voting for the handmaidens of Brexit which totally screwed farmers .
I think you will find it is Reeves IHT that is at the heart of this, and certainly I expect conservatives, reform and possibly even the Lib Dems to repeal this in their next manifestos
Would you support this as an alternative ?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/aug/24/how-riverfords-guy-singh-watson-became-the-most-brutally-honest-farmer-in-britain “But the easiest way to get money out of the farming sector would be to capture the 100-fold increase in land value when planning permission is granted to build houses on it,” he says. “I don’t see why the farmer should be the beneficiary of that. Maybe they should get double the agricultural value, but the rest of it should go into the public purse.” His rough estimate of how much that would raise when the government’s target of 300,000 new homes are built is £10bn – 25 times more than the inheritance tax changes...
Id quite happily scrap the IHT thing for any farm worth less than (say) £50m, and replace it with this.
It’s hard to overstate what a disaster Boris Johnson turned out to be. It’s likely none of the present tensions would be happening in the UK if he hadn’t done this. The worst thing is, I couldn’t tell you if he did it on purpose or by accident. Either is quite possible.
At the time I remember plenty of Brexiteers saying things like "it's not about the numbers, it's about control" and claiming that immigration from the Commonwealth would be less unpopular with the sort of people who don't like immigration than immigration from the EU. I have to say that both arguments seemed implausible at the time.
Then why didn’t Remainers use that as a campaign slogan?
“Stay in Europe so most immigrants are white and Christian”
I think we know why. Yet now they hypocritically whine
You voted for every bit of the mess.
Yet now hypocritically you whine.
I’m not whining. With gritted teeth, I’d vote Brexit tomorrow
Politics? https://www.youtube.com/@EmergencyPodcastUK - we're doing decent business with all of the AI-clipped reels off the main episodes we record. I'm also posting these on TikTok along with a few ragebait type videos... EVs? https://www.youtube.com/@JustGetATesla- moving to 3 videos a week has helped embed my new £30 a day average revenue. Plus increasing amounts of paid sponsors and referral sales
It’s hard to overstate what a disaster Boris Johnson turned out to be. It’s likely none of the present tensions would be happening in the UK if he hadn’t done this. The worst thing is, I couldn’t tell you if he did it on purpose or by accident. Either is quite possible.
At the time I remember plenty of Brexiteers saying things like "it's not about the numbers, it's about control" and claiming that immigration from the Commonwealth would be less unpopular with the sort of people who don't like immigration than immigration from the EU. I have to say that both arguments seemed implausible at the time.
With the odd exception, I don't think immigration from the commonwealth is a problem. Immigration from India is very visible in my part of the world, but it isn't really a problem: these are by and large skilled immigrants whom Britain has sought and who integrate easily. The problem is illegals and dubious asylum seekers from the Middle East and North Africa.
It's the Euroopeans who have disappeared that I miss the most. You could go round towns and cities all over the UK and it was full of young attractive people speaking a multitude of languages. It's like that in the Sounth of France everywhere and it used to be like that in England. It's difficult to realise how it's changed over the last nine or ten years
There are more EU citizens living in Britain now than in 2016.
Net emigration post 2020, true, but not enough to overtake the net immigration 2016-2020.
4 million EU nationals, 200,000 Ukrainians. I doubt, truly, that it’s hard to find Europeans in our towns.
It’s hard to overstate what a disaster Boris Johnson turned out to be. It’s likely none of the present tensions would be happening in the UK if he hadn’t done this. The worst thing is, I couldn’t tell you if he did it on purpose or by accident. Either is quite possible.
At the time I remember plenty of Brexiteers saying things like "it's not about the numbers, it's about control" and claiming that immigration from the Commonwealth would be less unpopular with the sort of people who don't like immigration than immigration from the EU. I have to say that both arguments seemed implausible at the time.
With the odd exception, I don't think immigration from the commonwealth is a problem. Immigration from India is very visible in my part of the world, but it isn't really a problem: these are by and large skilled immigrants whom Britain has sought and who integrate easily. The problem is illegals and dubious asylum seekers from the Middle East and North Africa.
It's the Euroopeans who have disappeared that I miss the most. You could go round towns and cities all over the UK and it was full of young attractive people speaking a multitude of languages. It's like that in the Sounth of France everywhere and it used to be like that in England. It's difficult to realise how it's changed over the last nine or ten years
Ah, Europe, the continent where there are no ugly young people, just attractive ones, so many in fact that they could send tens of thousands over to work in the UK and display their beauty. And shame on the rest of the world for not supplying us with attractive guest workers to perv over.
This country.
It's the vibe that's changed. That you aren't able to feel it dioesn't surprise me at all.
In your mindset certainly but more generally I very much doubt it
You can compare us to your southern France utopia but frankly it has as many problems as the rest of us
Roger literally lives in a corner of France - Villefranche-sur-Mer - which is so far right it elected a Len Pen person on the first round at the French elex
All his lovely neighbours in that lovely place are neo-fash
He’s a ludicrous dummy who went to Millfield. The school for people to stupid to go to a comprehensive. Ignore
So he's a dummy who has done very well in life.
But I have to admit there are better advocates for Britain in Europe.
It’s hard to overstate what a disaster Boris Johnson turned out to be. It’s likely none of the present tensions would be happening in the UK if he hadn’t done this. The worst thing is, I couldn’t tell you if he did it on purpose or by accident. Either is quite possible.
At the time I remember plenty of Brexiteers saying things like "it's not about the numbers, it's about control" and claiming that immigration from the Commonwealth would be less unpopular with the sort of people who don't like immigration than immigration from the EU. I have to say that both arguments seemed implausible at the time.
Then why didn’t Remainers use that as a campaign slogan?
“Stay in Europe so most immigrants are white and Christian”
I think we know why. Yet now they hypocritically whine
You voted for every bit of the mess.
Yet now hypocritically you whine.
I’m not whining. With gritted teeth, I’d vote Brexit tomorrow
It’s hard to overstate what a disaster Boris Johnson turned out to be. It’s likely none of the present tensions would be happening in the UK if he hadn’t done this. The worst thing is, I couldn’t tell you if he did it on purpose or by accident. Either is quite possible.
At the time I remember plenty of Brexiteers saying things like "it's not about the numbers, it's about control" and claiming that immigration from the Commonwealth would be less unpopular with the sort of people who don't like immigration than immigration from the EU. I have to say that both arguments seemed implausible at the time.
With the odd exception, I don't think immigration from the commonwealth is a problem. Immigration from India is very visible in my part of the world, but it isn't really a problem: these are by and large skilled immigrants whom Britain has sought and who integrate easily. The problem is illegals and dubious asylum seekers from the Middle East and North Africa.
It's the Euroopeans who have disappeared that I miss the most. You could go round towns and cities all over the UK and it was full of young attractive people speaking a multitude of languages. It's like that in the Sounth of France everywhere and it used to be like that in England. It's difficult to realise how it's changed over the last nine or ten years
Ah, Europe, the continent where there are no ugly young people, just attractive ones, so many in fact that they could send tens of thousands over to work in the UK and display their beauty. And shame on the rest of the world for not supplying us with attractive guest workers to perv over.
This country.
It's the vibe that's changed. That you aren't able to feel it dioesn't surprise me at all.
In your mindset certainly but more generally I very much doubt it
You can compare us to your southern France utopia but frankly it has as many problems as the rest of us
Roger literally lives in a corner of France - Villefranche-sur-Mer - which is so far right it elected a Len Pen person on the first round at the French elex
All his lovely neighbours in that lovely place are neo-fash
He’s a ludicrous dummy who went to Millfield. The school for people to stupid to go to a comprehensive. Ignore
Perhaps that’s why his corner of France is so nice to live in - it’s mainly populated by RN supporters and pieds noirs.
France is paradoxical as always
In Britain we associate the hard or far right with unlovely and downtrodden towns, cities, regions. This is probably true of most western countries
However in France it is quite often the nicest and richest corners that are far right. Like villefranche sur mer where roger chooses to live
Last year I went to the source of le penisme, south Brittany near Carnac where the le pens have their compound. It’s very pleasant. Much nicer than inland Brittany (which can be seriously bleak)
My theory is that the rich far right French and Roger are voting le pen to PRESERVE what they have
I also think this is beginning to happen in the UK. See my posh Notting Hill friends switching to Reform
I'm not sure " le penis - me" is the name you want to use for it
There is something more than faintly ridiculous about a homeowner being force to cough up £116000 13 years after felling a common lime tree on her own land, while nothing happens to a pub in Enfield that cut down an historic oak on land that didn't belong to them.
Our daughter came across this problem when selling her home recently
Apparently there are many trees with Tree Preservation Orders (TPO) not only in conservation areas, but more generally, and especially in estates built post the 1970's when developers created TPOs on trees on their developments, a practice that continues to this day I believe
Apparently Local Authorities have 'tree officers' who strictly police these regulations.
I doubt many home owners have any idea about this issue until it is specifically raised in a sale's pre contract enquiries, and can cause real problems for the sale if the rules haven't been followed.
Fortunately the trees in my daughter's property had not had TPO's but one nearby had
We had a tree in the garden with a TPO. We had it trimmed every so often, by someone who knew what they were doing, who eventually opined that it was becoming dangerous, due to old age and trunk deterioration. So he made the necessary approach to the local council and, approval having been given, cut it down. When it was, it was discovered that the trunk was absolutely rotten and indeed, then the last section was removed, it split into two. A gale might have caused considerable damage, either to us...... probably our garage ...... or to the neighbours, or to the local library.
To be fair you followed the legislation, but very many homeowners are blissfully unaware of the rules around TPO's
We live in a conservation area, a lovely old town, although our bungalow has little architectural merit apart from being being suitable for two increasingly doddery old people. So TPO's and care for community generally are regular issues here.
One of the big lime trees at the end of the road has shed most of its leaves in the past few days. Hmmm.
I've noticed a lot of the leaves on the trees in the woods near our house are turning brown in the last week. It seems very early. I suspect the drought has quite a lot to do with it. Our groundwater has never recovered from the exceptionally dry spring. Even when it rains at this time of year too much of the water runs off hard soil so the burns get a sudden boost and then its gone.
The fields around are house are also largely harvested now and most of the hay has been baled and stored away. In the morning we have had several misty mornings with a real Autumnal feel about them.
David, you can feel it in the mornings now, also see it getting dark earlier as well.
If reform are proposing fracking then isn’t this what the centrist duds of PB have been demanding? A party willing to commit to difficult and unpopular things that will benefit the nation long term?
Isn’t that to be applauded? Maybe not, if it’s from nigel
You can argue that fracking will never work in the UK but that’s a different argument. It is also a compromised argument because we know - we literally know - that Putin’s Russia has spent a decade trying to swing the argument against fracking in Europe (in the alleged science and in the voters’ minds) by pumping out disinformation so that we remain reliant on Russia for oil and gas
Fuck Russia. Try fracking
This is two good policies from reform in a row. Actual policies for migration and now an actual policy on energy. Both better than anything from Lab or Con
I'm against Fracking because it isn't viable. It has been looked at. Repeatedly. It's been tried. Commercially. My late father invested in loads of oil and gas companies and dipped into various frackers - and lost his money every time.
It isn't that many years ago that "brownouts" was the warning - not enough power generating capacity. That gap has been filled by wind and the Fuking morons say "turn them off"
We need to keep extracting as much oil and gas as is economic from the North Sea, but with the best will in the world that isn't a long term proposition now. Shale is a chimera. So what Farage proposes is that we import endless LNG from his orange gibbon friend.
I give much more attention to the balance of payments than most, certainly more than is rational. So I am generally in favour of home grown energy sources like wind, solar and the North Sea. To me it is a no brainer to use what we have to reduce imports even if we are, at the same time, looking to improve our energy efficiency and reduce consumption.
But fracking is not a serious proposition in areas of high density populations with lots of old, fragile buildings that are going to be damaged by it. If we found a way to frack off our coasts, for example, I would have no problem with it but not where we live. We've looked at this several times before and it just doesn't work.
Reform are touring the North East. Their message? Shut down the wind farms, burn more gas.
There's a problem. Even if you open up more gas wells we're short of the stuff having largely burnt it already. Gas is 26% of UK energy production but we have to import half. So if we burn more gas we import more gas.
I support bringing as much out of the North Sea as we can. But more gas power = more imports. None of the imports are to the NE - it will kill us.
Wind farms have been a huge success as has solar, but I have no idea how long the lifespan of both is and what happens when they have to be replaced
Any ideas on this genuine query ?
... put more up? That's already happening in Scotland - e.g. Novar 1 which is nearly 30 years old. 34 old turbines are being replaced by 10 more efficient ones. Much of the cost is already sunk in transmission and groundworks.
Solar is interesting because they deteriorate so slowly and the cost of getting on a roof (safely) to replace them is high. They'll have a very long cycle but the old ones will still have some life in them. I think they'll end up as fencing as us already the case in the Netherlands.
I would genuinely like to see the net costs of replacing excisting wind farms, including the removal of those which become obsolete
It's already included in the LCOE for each project. Just Google it.
As I said, it will be relatively small because all the infrastructure for the turbines remains, from access tracks to transmission. Indeed the LCOE is the cost of returning the site to original use, so will massively overstate the costs if you're actually just replacing the turbines instead.
(Note for awareness this argument is a favourite of climate deniers all over the internet, almost as common as the volcano one).
I am not making an argument, just seeking information that I do not know
It doesn't really have a simple answer. Depends on the turbines, the location, the financial arrangements, how much they are able to recycle etc etc.
It’s hard to overstate what a disaster Boris Johnson turned out to be. It’s likely none of the present tensions would be happening in the UK if he hadn’t done this. The worst thing is, I couldn’t tell you if he did it on purpose or by accident. Either is quite possible.
At the time I remember plenty of Brexiteers saying things like "it's not about the numbers, it's about control" and claiming that immigration from the Commonwealth would be less unpopular with the sort of people who don't like immigration than immigration from the EU. I have to say that both arguments seemed implausible at the time.
With the odd exception, I don't think immigration from the commonwealth is a problem. Immigration from India is very visible in my part of the world, but it isn't really a problem: these are by and large skilled immigrants whom Britain has sought and who integrate easily. The problem is illegals and dubious asylum seekers from the Middle East and North Africa.
It's the Euroopeans who have disappeared that I miss the most. You could go round towns and cities all over the UK and it was full of young attractive people speaking a multitude of languages. It's like that in the Sounth of France everywhere and it used to be like that in England. It's difficult to realise how it's changed over the last nine or ten years
Ah, Europe, the continent where there are no ugly young people, just attractive ones, so many in fact that they could send tens of thousands over to work in the UK and display their beauty. And shame on the rest of the world for not supplying us with attractive guest workers to perv over.
This country.
It's the vibe that's changed. That you aren't able to feel it dioesn't surprise me at all.
In your mindset certainly but more generally I very much doubt it
You can compare us to your southern France utopia but frankly it has as many problems as the rest of us
Roger literally lives in a corner of France - Villefranche-sur-Mer - which is so far right it elected a Len Pen person on the first round at the French elex
All his lovely neighbours in that lovely place are neo-fash
He’s a ludicrous dummy who went to Millfield. The school for people to stupid to go to a comprehensive. Ignore
Perhaps that’s why his corner of France is so nice to live in - it’s mainly populated by RN supporters and pieds noirs.
France is paradoxical as always
In Britain we associate the hard or far right with unlovely and downtrodden towns, cities, regions. This is probably true of most western countries
However in France it is quite often the nicest and richest corners that are far right. Like villefranche sur mer where roger chooses to live
Last year I went to the source of le penisme, south Brittany near Carnac where the le pens have their compound. It’s very pleasant. Much nicer than inland Brittany (which can be seriously bleak)
My theory is that the rich far right French and Roger are voting le pen to PRESERVE what they have
I also think this is beginning to happen in the UK. See my posh Notting Hill friends switching to Reform
Supporting the far right is more respectable in France than in other countries. Checking the result in 2024, I see indeed that the RN MP won 56% on the first round in this constituency . Overall, RN hold 5 out of 9 seats in Alpes-Maritimes.
In recent years, FN/RN have expanded into bleak towns in the North East that used to vote Communist.
It’s hard to overstate what a disaster Boris Johnson turned out to be. It’s likely none of the present tensions would be happening in the UK if he hadn’t done this. The worst thing is, I couldn’t tell you if he did it on purpose or by accident. Either is quite possible.
At the time I remember plenty of Brexiteers saying things like "it's not about the numbers, it's about control" and claiming that immigration from the Commonwealth would be less unpopular with the sort of people who don't like immigration than immigration from the EU. I have to say that both arguments seemed implausible at the time.
With the odd exception, I don't think immigration from the commonwealth is a problem. Immigration from India is very visible in my part of the world, but it isn't really a problem: these are by and large skilled immigrants whom Britain has sought and who integrate easily. The problem is illegals and dubious asylum seekers from the Middle East and North Africa.
It's the Euroopeans who have disappeared that I miss the most. You could go round towns and cities all over the UK and it was full of young attractive people speaking a multitude of languages. It's like that in the Sounth of France everywhere and it used to be like that in England. It's difficult to realise how it's changed over the last nine or ten years
You're comparing your current fantasy world with your earlier fantasy world.
Without considering which of them people who live in this country might actually prefer.
Though perhaps one reason you might think there are fewer Europeans in Britain is that many of them have integrated and now speak English.
"1. Overhaul of the civil service: replacement of all key leadership positions alligned to political priorities of incoming government. 2. Judicial reform: reasserting parliamentary sovereignty over political judicial activism. 3. Abolition of key QUANGOs, Commisions, "Independent" Bodies that have eroded democratic accountability and led to bureaucratic power-grab over the last 30 years. Without these basics, the next government will, like so many before, be tied in knots by the 'system' and fail to deliver on the priorities of the British people."
So that is: 1. Remove anyone from the machinery of government who doesn't parrot whatever madness is government policy 2. Ensure that all trials deliver the result demanded on X 3. Abolish any arms length agency so that all decisions on all things are made by ministers
The Conservative Party is over. They've gone utterly mad.
Am hearing of an enterprising young man going round taking down the England flags and flogging them on e-bay to those of righter than average persuasion for a fiver each. He's already recouped the cost of his holiday.
I cannot regard Howe as a villain. It is not his fault that the Tories obsessed about Europe for the subsequent 30 years to the detriment of themselves and the country. It is not is fault that Thatcher went on too long undoing some of the good that she had done with his considerable assistance.
What I am concerned about is where are the Howes of today? He was a serious intellectual heavyweight who thought deeply about public policy and the public good. Like every human he wasn't always right but he was deeply focused on that public good, ahead even of party political considerations. I cannot think of his equivalent in the House of Commons today. Instead, our most prominent politicians are interested in sound bites, social media, clickbait and, above all, themselves. They are obsessed with what sounds good rather than what is good. Gestures instead of substance. It's sad.
Edit, see this fracking nonsense this morning.
It's sad, but it's what we vote for. Politicians who try to do good more than sounding good (Stewart? May? maybe Starmer?) end up in the dumpster pretty quickly.
Of course, it would be brilliant to have someone who talks a good game whilst also doing a good game, but I don't think we can wait for one of them.
I think all three of those (May, Stewart, Starmer) are as guilty as any other politician of trying to 'sound good' with less regard for actions. Both May and Starmer carefully cultivated a public image as dutiful and competent. The dutiful part I can buy into, certainly with May at least. But competent? That seems very much to have been vibes with both. Starmer, in ensuring Labour opposition to May's Brexit deal, played a still-underestimated role in both her failure and Johnson's subsequent 2019 triumph. I presume Starmer to have been a forensic, competent and dutiful public servant when DPP for, to quote Gilbert and Sullivan on their fictional politician Sir Joseph Porter, 'he told me so himself'. I have yet to see proof that he quite understands exactly what a Prime Minister is actually meant to do - he seemed initially to think the role that of benevolent figurehead, and did not seem to realise that the politicians do actually need to tell civil servants what to do. Now No.10 briefings suggest that the civil servants are being blamed, Cummings-style. Sunak had a similar lack of ideological direction but was probably slightly more competent. Just as the public in its wisdom witheld a majority from May, so it has granted Starmer an extraordinarily large one. If he fails, he will have fewer excuses than her.
As for Stewart: Like any good Etonian whose parents got their money's worth, Stewart is supremely confident in his own ability to do better job than whoever is currently in the position he wants. I did like him in government, but he now seems to have settled on a position as eternal commentator from the sidelines. This removes any consequence from those of his assessments which turn out to be wrong, and it is better for both his ego and bank account. Whatever his aims might once might have been, his purpose now is only to sound good.
Am hearing of an enterprising young man going round taking down the England flags and flogging them on e-bay to those of righter than average persuasion for a fiver each. He's already recouped the cost of his holiday.
It was a Twitter and Facebook story that was debunked as “things that never happened”. Ironically being pushed by a chap who felt the need to display an Irish Tricolour on his Twitter handle. The price he was “selling” the flags at has gone up in a way since the story was made up that makes our inflation issues in 2023/24 seem like a mere trifle.
If it wasn't true then it will be soon. A very good idea for an income stream.
"1. Overhaul of the civil service: replacement of all key leadership positions alligned to political priorities of incoming government. 2. Judicial reform: reasserting parliamentary sovereignty over political judicial activism. 3. Abolition of key QUANGOs, Commisions, "Independent" Bodies that have eroded democratic accountability and led to bureaucratic power-grab over the last 30 years. Without these basics, the next government will, like so many before, be tied in knots by the 'system' and fail to deliver on the priorities of the British people."
So that is: 1. Remove anyone from the machinery of government who doesn't parrot whatever madness is government policy 2. Ensure that all trials deliver the result demanded on X 3. Abolish any arms length agency so that all decisions on all things are made by ministers
The Conservative Party is over. They've gone utterly mad.
He's regurgitating Republican/MAGA talking points that barely make sense in the different UK context.
Am hearing of an enterprising young man going round taking down the England flags and flogging them on e-bay to those of righter than average persuasion for a fiver each. He's already recouped the cost of his holiday.
It was a Twitter and Facebook story that was debunked as “things that never happened”. Ironically being pushed by a chap who felt the need to display an Irish Tricolour on his Twitter handle. The price he was “selling” the flags at has gone up in a way since the story was made up that makes our inflation issues in 2023/24 seem like a mere trifle.
If it wasn't true then it will be soon. A very good idea for an income stream.
It’s not really as you can buy the flags online for 99p so why pay more and wait for some random to post it to you.
"1. Overhaul of the civil service: replacement of all key leadership positions alligned to political priorities of incoming government. 2. Judicial reform: reasserting parliamentary sovereignty over political judicial activism. 3. Abolition of key QUANGOs, Commisions, "Independent" Bodies that have eroded democratic accountability and led to bureaucratic power-grab over the last 30 years. Without these basics, the next government will, like so many before, be tied in knots by the 'system' and fail to deliver on the priorities of the British people."
So that is: 1. Remove anyone from the machinery of government who doesn't parrot whatever madness is government policy 2. Ensure that all trials deliver the result demanded on X 3. Abolish any arms length agency so that all decisions on all things are made by ministers
The Conservative Party is over. They've gone utterly mad.
The third one I can buy into completely. All Governmental power should be exercised within the electoral system (from Parish to Parliament). Not handed off to semi-independent organisations with their own agendas.
The first two are just batshit crazy by people who don't understand either the British system nor the (very different) American system they are trying to emulate.
"1. Overhaul of the civil service: replacement of all key leadership positions alligned to political priorities of incoming government. 2. Judicial reform: reasserting parliamentary sovereignty over political judicial activism. 3. Abolition of key QUANGOs, Commisions, "Independent" Bodies that have eroded democratic accountability and led to bureaucratic power-grab over the last 30 years. Without these basics, the next government will, like so many before, be tied in knots by the 'system' and fail to deliver on the priorities of the British people."
So that is: 1. Remove anyone from the machinery of government who doesn't parrot whatever madness is government policy 2. Ensure that all trials deliver the result demanded on X 3. Abolish any arms length agency so that all decisions on all things are made by ministers
The Conservative Party is over. They've gone utterly mad.
Ministers and the govt simply offshore decision making to Quangos so they simply have less accountability.
I don’t think addressing this is necessarily a bad thing.
"1. Overhaul of the civil service: replacement of all key leadership positions alligned to political priorities of incoming government. 2. Judicial reform: reasserting parliamentary sovereignty over political judicial activism. 3. Abolition of key QUANGOs, Commisions, "Independent" Bodies that have eroded democratic accountability and led to bureaucratic power-grab over the last 30 years. Without these basics, the next government will, like so many before, be tied in knots by the 'system' and fail to deliver on the priorities of the British people."
So that is: 1. Remove anyone from the machinery of government who doesn't parrot whatever madness is government policy 2. Ensure that all trials deliver the result demanded on X 3. Abolish any arms length agency so that all decisions on all things are made by ministers
The Conservative Party is over. They've gone utterly mad.
The third one I can buy into completely. All Governmental power should be exercised within the electoral system (from Parish to Parliament). Not handed off to semi-independent organisations with their own agendas.
The first two are just batshit crazy by people who don't understand either the British system nor the (very different) American system they are trying to emulate.
You don't think that it's good that some decisions are depoliticised and handed over to an arms length body? When, for example, NICE reviews the evidence of whether a drug is effective, or the MHRA reviews whether a new hip implant is safe, I think it's better that those decisions are NOT taken by politicians.
Am hearing of an enterprising young man going round taking down the England flags and flogging them on e-bay to those of righter than average persuasion for a fiver each. He's already recouped the cost of his holiday.
It was a Twitter and Facebook story that was debunked as “things that never happened”. Ironically being pushed by a chap who felt the need to display an Irish Tricolour on his Twitter handle. The price he was “selling” the flags at has gone up in a way since the story was made up that makes our inflation issues in 2023/24 seem like a mere trifle.
If it wasn't true then it will be soon. A very good idea for an income stream.
It’s not really as you can buy the flags online for 99p so why pay more and wait for some random to post it to you.
I thought most of these people putting up the flags were supposed to be stupid.
"1. Overhaul of the civil service: replacement of all key leadership positions alligned to political priorities of incoming government. 2. Judicial reform: reasserting parliamentary sovereignty over political judicial activism. 3. Abolition of key QUANGOs, Commisions, "Independent" Bodies that have eroded democratic accountability and led to bureaucratic power-grab over the last 30 years. Without these basics, the next government will, like so many before, be tied in knots by the 'system' and fail to deliver on the priorities of the British people."
So that is: 1. Remove anyone from the machinery of government who doesn't parrot whatever madness is government policy 2. Ensure that all trials deliver the result demanded on X 3. Abolish any arms length agency so that all decisions on all things are made by ministers
The Conservative Party is over. They've gone utterly mad.
The third one I can buy into completely. All Governmental power should be exercised within the electoral system (from Parish to Parliament). Not handed off to semi-independent organisations with their own agendas.
The first two are just batshit crazy by people who don't understand either the British system nor the (very different) American system they are trying to emulate.
You don't think that it's good that some decisions are depoliticised and handed over to an arms length body? When, for example, NICE reviews the evidence of whether a drug is effective, or the MHRA reviews whether a new hip implant is safe, I think it's better that those decisions are NOT taken by politicians.
Or the Met Office with it's woke weather warnings. "It's always been 42c in July lololol"
One of the big lime trees at the end of the road has shed most of its leaves in the past few days. Hmmm.
I've noticed a lot of the leaves on the trees in the woods near our house are turning brown in the last week. It seems very early. I suspect the drought has quite a lot to do with it. Our groundwater has never recovered from the exceptionally dry spring. Even when it rains at this time of year too much of the water runs off hard soil so the burns get a sudden boost and then its gone.
The fields around are house are also largely harvested now and most of the hay has been baled and stored away. In the morning we have had several misty mornings with a real Autumnal feel about them.
David, you can feel it in the mornings now, also see it getting dark earlier as well.
I cannot regard Howe as a villain. It is not his fault that the Tories obsessed about Europe for the subsequent 30 years to the detriment of themselves and the country. It is not is fault that Thatcher went on too long undoing some of the good that she had done with his considerable assistance.
What I am concerned about is where are the Howes of today? He was a serious intellectual heavyweight who thought deeply about public policy and the public good. Like every human he wasn't always right but he was deeply focused on that public good, ahead even of party political considerations. I cannot think of his equivalent in the House of Commons today. Instead, our most prominent politicians are interested in sound bites, social media, clickbait and, above all, themselves. They are obsessed with what sounds good rather than what is good. Gestures instead of substance. It's sad.
Edit, see this fracking nonsense this morning.
It's sad, but it's what we vote for. Politicians who try to do good more than sounding good (Stewart? May? maybe Starmer?) end up in the dumpster pretty quickly.
Of course, it would be brilliant to have someone who talks a good game whilst also doing a good game, but I don't think we can wait for one of them.
I think all three of those (May, Stewart, Starmer) are as guilty as any other politician of trying to 'sound good' with less regard for actions. Both May and Starmer carefully cultivated a public image as dutiful and competent. The dutiful part I can buy into, certainly with May at least. But competent? That seems very much to have been vibes with both. Starmer, in ensuring Labour opposition to May's Brexit deal, played a still-underestimated role in both her failure and Johnson's subsequent 2019 triumph. I presume Starmer to have been a forensic, competent and dutiful public servant when DPP for, to quote Gilbert and Sullivan on their fictional politician Sir Joseph Porter, 'he told me so himself'. I have yet to see proof that he quite understands exactly what a Prime Minister is actually meant to do - he seemed initially to think the role that of benevolent figurehead, and did not seem to realise that the politicians do actually need to tell civil servants what to do. Now No.10 briefings suggest that the civil servants are being blamed, Cummings-style. Sunak had a similar lack of ideological direction but was probably slightly more competent. Just as the public in its wisdom witheld a majority from May, so it has granted Starmer an extraordinarily large one. If he fails, he will have fewer excuses than her.
As for Stewart: Like any good Etonian whose parents got their money's worth, Stewart is supremely confident in his own ability to do better job than whoever is currently in the position he wants. I did like him in government, but he now seems to have settled on a position as eternal commentator from the sidelines. This removes any consequence from those of his assessments which turn out to be wrong, and it is better for both his ego and bank account. Whatever his aims might once might have been, his purpose now is only to sound good.
Stewart is a self confident mediocrity. Like Cameron. So a classic Etonian
And, as with Cameron, admiring him is also a marker of mediocrity
It’s hard to overstate what a disaster Boris Johnson turned out to be. It’s likely none of the present tensions would be happening in the UK if he hadn’t done this. The worst thing is, I couldn’t tell you if he did it on purpose or by accident. Either is quite possible.
At the time I remember plenty of Brexiteers saying things like "it's not about the numbers, it's about control" and claiming that immigration from the Commonwealth would be less unpopular with the sort of people who don't like immigration than immigration from the EU. I have to say that both arguments seemed implausible at the time.
With the odd exception, I don't think immigration from the commonwealth is a problem. Immigration from India is very visible in my part of the world, but it isn't really a problem: these are by and large skilled immigrants whom Britain has sought and who integrate easily. The problem is illegals and dubious asylum seekers from the Middle East and North Africa.
It's the Euroopeans who have disappeared that I miss the most. You could go round towns and cities all over the UK and it was full of young attractive people speaking a multitude of languages. It's like that in the Sounth of France everywhere and it used to be like that in England. It's difficult to realise how it's changed over the last nine or ten years
You're comparing your current fantasy world with your earlier fantasy world.
Without considering which of them people who live in this country might actually prefer.
Though perhaps one reason you might think there are fewer Europeans in Britain is that many of them have integrated and now speak English.
Not at all. It was a more transitory population. My ex lives the life of a hippy in Crete and lives with a revolving population. She loves it. She's never been happier. Different people turn up at different times and they live a great life. If success is your thing she's had that. If your thing is six pints of beer on a Saturday night then little in the UK will have changed.
The Spanish have a saying about 'The smell of the paint' which is just another way of describing 'the vibe' and to a lot of people it doesn't matter at all. Leon despite his tales of derring do is one of them. I don't think there's a more MOR person on here. He swoons over Taylor swift and thinks Sydney Sweeney is the most alluring person he's seen. That's fine. That's his taste. Take a look at his room featured on here often. Enough said! Not everyone is sensitive to what goes on around them or the styling of the place they live in and that's why some like you and Leon like Brexit and others like me don't
I've a 1922 copy of The Jungle Book, with an elephant and a small swastika on the front. The broken cross was used by many cultures, including Hindus.
You may be right about reclaiming it. But the cross of Saint George is not remotely the same thing.
Yet.
We'll know the boundary has been crossed when people start fleeing the UK rather than endangering themselves to get in, but by then it will probably be too late.
It’s hard to overstate what a disaster Boris Johnson turned out to be. It’s likely none of the present tensions would be happening in the UK if he hadn’t done this. The worst thing is, I couldn’t tell you if he did it on purpose or by accident. Either is quite possible.
At the time I remember plenty of Brexiteers saying things like "it's not about the numbers, it's about control" and claiming that immigration from the Commonwealth would be less unpopular with the sort of people who don't like immigration than immigration from the EU. I have to say that both arguments seemed implausible at the time.
With the odd exception, I don't think immigration from the commonwealth is a problem. Immigration from India is very visible in my part of the world, but it isn't really a problem: these are by and large skilled immigrants whom Britain has sought and who integrate easily. The problem is illegals and dubious asylum seekers from the Middle East and North Africa.
It's the Euroopeans who have disappeared that I miss the most. You could go round towns and cities all over the UK and it was full of young attractive people speaking a multitude of languages. It's like that in the Sounth of France everywhere and it used to be like that in England. It's difficult to realise how it's changed over the last nine or ten years
You're comparing your current fantasy world with your earlier fantasy world.
Without considering which of them people who live in this country might actually prefer.
Though perhaps one reason you might think there are fewer Europeans in Britain is that many of them have integrated and now speak English.
Not at all. It was a more transitory population. My ex lives the life of a hippy in Crete and lives with a revolving population. She loves it. She's never been happier. Different people turn up at different times and they live a great life. If success is your thing she's had that. If your thing is six pints of beer on a Saturday night then little in the UK will have changed.
The Spanish have a saying about 'The smell of the paint' which is just another way of describing 'the vibe' and to a lot of people it doesn't matter at all. Leon despite his tales of derring do is one of them. I don't think there's a more MOR person on here. He swoons over Taylor swift and thinks Sydney Sweeney is the most alluring person he's seen. That's fine. That's his taste. Take a look at his room featured on here often. Enough said! Not everyone is sensitive to what goes on around them or the styling of the place they live in and that's why some like you and Leon like Brexit and others like me don't
I remember the thousands of German hippies still living this life on the Greek islands in the '80s and '90s. It looked pretty blissful, and some charming characters I met.
I cannot regard Howe as a villain. It is not his fault that the Tories obsessed about Europe for the subsequent 30 years to the detriment of themselves and the country. It is not is fault that Thatcher went on too long undoing some of the good that she had done with his considerable assistance.
What I am concerned about is where are the Howes of today? He was a serious intellectual heavyweight who thought deeply about public policy and the public good. Like every human he wasn't always right but he was deeply focused on that public good, ahead even of party political considerations. I cannot think of his equivalent in the House of Commons today. Instead, our most prominent politicians are interested in sound bites, social media, clickbait and, above all, themselves. They are obsessed with what sounds good rather than what is good. Gestures instead of substance. It's sad.
Edit, see this fracking nonsense this morning.
This is what concerns me when I look at the UK today: the fundamentally unserious nature of political commentary and by extension politics itself. The number of commentators with a deep and layered understanding of political realities has given way to celebrity presenters who obsess about political theatre and process but fail to understand anything about political ideologies or even the basic mechanisms of administration. The contrast between say Charles Wheeler of thirty years ago and Naga Munchetty of today is pretty astonishing. Thus when people like Gove or Johnson, or Farage for that matter, come up with superficial and even absurd ideas then their media pals do not analyse them as ideas but simply in terms of shallow political positioning, because human interest is all they (and apparently we) really understand. The result is that really bad ideas get adopted with little scrutiny and both policy making and even public administration itself are degraded. The fact that so many politicians in the current crop of Tories were media workers themselves compounded the problem. Gove may have had "enough of experts", and I think that tells you that he had lost the plot in terms of enacting reasonable or even workable legislation. It has been said that Brexit was a fundamentally unserious policy and has been executed in such a ridiculous way as to guarantee its failure: that is where this fundamental lack of seriousness in British politics brought us.
Both policies (bright ideas) and the execution of policy (actually enacting workable laws) have much lower priority than presentation and media management, and this is why Britain is failing to address the multiple crises that it faces. All is not well in Estonia, but it is not considered being a nerdy swot to have read books and to be able to engage with the various experts in policy and execution in an organised and serious way.
Basically the UK needs to get real, but apparently a few hundred flag shaggers are more important than reform of our tax code and a total overhaul of our public administration and infrastructure. That, of course is what the Mail, Murdoch etc are misdirecting you towards, and ultimately it results in the Trump world of cretins.
It’s hard to overstate what a disaster Boris Johnson turned out to be. It’s likely none of the present tensions would be happening in the UK if he hadn’t done this. The worst thing is, I couldn’t tell you if he did it on purpose or by accident. Either is quite possible.
At the time I remember plenty of Brexiteers saying things like "it's not about the numbers, it's about control" and claiming that immigration from the Commonwealth would be less unpopular with the sort of people who don't like immigration than immigration from the EU. I have to say that both arguments seemed implausible at the time.
With the odd exception, I don't think immigration from the commonwealth is a problem. Immigration from India is very visible in my part of the world, but it isn't really a problem: these are by and large skilled immigrants whom Britain has sought and who integrate easily. The problem is illegals and dubious asylum seekers from the Middle East and North Africa.
It's the Euroopeans who have disappeared that I miss the most. You could go round towns and cities all over the UK and it was full of young attractive people speaking a multitude of languages. It's like that in the Sounth of France everywhere and it used to be like that in England. It's difficult to realise how it's changed over the last nine or ten years
You're comparing your current fantasy world with your earlier fantasy world.
Without considering which of them people who live in this country might actually prefer.
Though perhaps one reason you might think there are fewer Europeans in Britain is that many of them have integrated and now speak English.
Not at all. It was a more transitory population. My ex lives the life of a hippy in Crete and lives with a revolving population. She loves it. She's never been happier. Different people turn up at different times and they live a great life. If success is your thing she's had that. If your thing is six pints of beer on a Saturday night then little in the UK will have changed.
The Spanish have a saying about 'The smell of the paint' which is just another way of describing 'the vibe' and to a lot of people it doesn't matter at all. Leon despite his tales of derring do is one of them. I don't think there's a more MOR person on here. He swoons over Taylor swift and thinks Sydney Sweeney is the most alluring person he's seen. That's fine. That's his taste. Take a look at his room featured on here often. Enough said! Not everyone is sensitive to what goes on around them or the styling of the place they live in and that's why some like you and Leon like Brexit and others like me don't
lol
You are a low watt minor-public-school retired tampon advertising executive who lives in a neo fascist enclave surrounded by Russian noovs
You are, without question, the most vulgar person on here
Reform have the ability to stir up people about insane and costly ideas. The BGS survey indicates resources are there but unlikely to be recoverable. However the lack of substance to their claims (see their county councillors) doesn't seem to be a barrier to their progress.
Fracking is neither insane nor costly. It is a commercial opportunity - if companies try it and it doesn't work, they will lose their investment. It doesn't affect the taxpayer. The Government had no business banning it - a Tory one to boot.
Am hearing of an enterprising young man going round taking down the England flags and flogging them on e-bay to those of righter than average persuasion for a fiver each. He's already recouped the cost of his holiday.
It was a Twitter and Facebook story that was debunked as “things that never happened”. Ironically being pushed by a chap who felt the need to display an Irish Tricolour on his Twitter handle. The price he was “selling” the flags at has gone up in a way since the story was made up that makes our inflation issues in 2023/24 seem like a mere trifle.
If it wasn't true then it will be soon. A very good idea for an income stream.
It’s not really as you can buy the flags online for 99p so why pay more and wait for some random to post it to you.
It’s obvious farcical nonsense, designed to please the gullible. It’s like the people that believed the absurd R S Archer stories about stupid brexiteers
It’s hard to overstate what a disaster Boris Johnson turned out to be. It’s likely none of the present tensions would be happening in the UK if he hadn’t done this. The worst thing is, I couldn’t tell you if he did it on purpose or by accident. Either is quite possible.
At the time I remember plenty of Brexiteers saying things like "it's not about the numbers, it's about control" and claiming that immigration from the Commonwealth would be less unpopular with the sort of people who don't like immigration than immigration from the EU. I have to say that both arguments seemed implausible at the time.
With the odd exception, I don't think immigration from the commonwealth is a problem. Immigration from India is very visible in my part of the world, but it isn't really a problem: these are by and large skilled immigrants whom Britain has sought and who integrate easily. The problem is illegals and dubious asylum seekers from the Middle East and North Africa.
It's the Euroopeans who have disappeared that I miss the most. You could go round towns and cities all over the UK and it was full of young attractive people speaking a multitude of languages. It's like that in the Sounth of France everywhere and it used to be like that in England. It's difficult to realise how it's changed over the last nine or ten years
You're comparing your current fantasy world with your earlier fantasy world.
Without considering which of them people who live in this country might actually prefer.
Though perhaps one reason you might think there are fewer Europeans in Britain is that many of them have integrated and now speak English.
Not at all. It was a more transitory population. My ex lives the life of a hippy in Crete and lives with a revolving population. She loves it. She's never been happier. Different people turn up at different times and they live a great life. If success is your thing she's had that. If your thing is six pints of beer on a Saturday night then little in the UK will have changed.
The Spanish have a saying about 'The smell of the paint' which is just another way of describing 'the vibe' and to a lot of people it doesn't matter at all. Leon despite his tales of derring do is one of them. I don't think there's a more MOR person on here. He swoons over Taylor swift and thinks Sydney Sweeney is the most alluring person he's seen. That's fine. That's his taste. Take a look at his room featured on here often. Enough said! Not everyone is sensitive to what goes on around them or the styling of the place they live in and that's why some like you and Leon like Brexit and others like me don't
Ah, the Spanish. I wonder which paint scent they ascribe to this vibe? I’m guessing the same smell as the flaggers in England?
It’s hard to overstate what a disaster Boris Johnson turned out to be. It’s likely none of the present tensions would be happening in the UK if he hadn’t done this. The worst thing is, I couldn’t tell you if he did it on purpose or by accident. Either is quite possible.
At the time I remember plenty of Brexiteers saying things like "it's not about the numbers, it's about control" and claiming that immigration from the Commonwealth would be less unpopular with the sort of people who don't like immigration than immigration from the EU. I have to say that both arguments seemed implausible at the time.
With the odd exception, I don't think immigration from the commonwealth is a problem. Immigration from India is very visible in my part of the world, but it isn't really a problem: these are by and large skilled immigrants whom Britain has sought and who integrate easily. The problem is illegals and dubious asylum seekers from the Middle East and North Africa.
It's the Euroopeans who have disappeared that I miss the most. You could go round towns and cities all over the UK and it was full of young attractive people speaking a multitude of languages. It's like that in the Sounth of France everywhere and it used to be like that in England. It's difficult to realise how it's changed over the last nine or ten years
You're comparing your current fantasy world with your earlier fantasy world.
Without considering which of them people who live in this country might actually prefer.
Though perhaps one reason you might think there are fewer Europeans in Britain is that many of them have integrated and now speak English.
Not at all. It was a more transitory population. My ex lives the life of a hippy in Crete and lives with a revolving population. She loves it. She's never been happier. Different people turn up at different times and they live a great life. If success is your thing she's had that. If your thing is six pints of beer on a Saturday night then little in the UK will have changed.
The Spanish have a saying about 'The smell of the paint' which is just another way of describing 'the vibe' and to a lot of people it doesn't matter at all. Leon despite his tales of derring do is one of them. I don't think there's a more MOR person on here. He swoons over Taylor swift and thinks Sydney Sweeney is the most alluring person he's seen. That's fine. That's his taste. Take a look at his room featured on here often. Enough said! Not everyone is sensitive to what goes on around them or the styling of the place they live in and that's why some like you and Leon like Brexit and others like me don't
So what you're saying is that the Europeans who live in Britain are the 'wrong' sort of Europeans.
That we now have Europeans who have integrated and speak English and have average lives with average families while doing average jobs and living in average houses in average towns.
And not 'citizens of anywhere' who would flutter around spending a season here and a year there while always talking in their own language.
"1. Overhaul of the civil service: replacement of all key leadership positions alligned to political priorities of incoming government. 2. Judicial reform: reasserting parliamentary sovereignty over political judicial activism. 3. Abolition of key QUANGOs, Commisions, "Independent" Bodies that have eroded democratic accountability and led to bureaucratic power-grab over the last 30 years. Without these basics, the next government will, like so many before, be tied in knots by the 'system' and fail to deliver on the priorities of the British people."
So that is: 1. Remove anyone from the machinery of government who doesn't parrot whatever madness is government policy 2. Ensure that all trials deliver the result demanded on X 3. Abolish any arms length agency so that all decisions on all things are made by ministers
The Conservative Party is over. They've gone utterly mad.
The third one I can buy into completely. All Governmental power should be exercised within the electoral system (from Parish to Parliament). Not handed off to semi-independent organisations with their own agendas.
The first two are just batshit crazy by people who don't understand either the British system nor the (very different) American system they are trying to emulate.
I would strongly agree with that if it weren't for the extreme likelihood that none of the powers would be handed down to localities.
"1. Overhaul of the civil service: replacement of all key leadership positions alligned to political priorities of incoming government. 2. Judicial reform: reasserting parliamentary sovereignty over political judicial activism. 3. Abolition of key QUANGOs, Commisions, "Independent" Bodies that have eroded democratic accountability and led to bureaucratic power-grab over the last 30 years. Without these basics, the next government will, like so many before, be tied in knots by the 'system' and fail to deliver on the priorities of the British people."
So that is: 1. Remove anyone from the machinery of government who doesn't parrot whatever madness is government policy 2. Ensure that all trials deliver the result demanded on X 3. Abolish any arms length agency so that all decisions on all things are made by ministers
The Conservative Party is over. They've gone utterly mad.
The third one I can buy into completely. All Governmental power should be exercised within the electoral system (from Parish to Parliament). Not handed off to semi-independent organisations with their own agendas.
The first two are just batshit crazy by people who don't understand either the British system nor the (very different) American system they are trying to emulate.
I would strongly agree with that if it weren't for the extreme likelihood that none of the powers would be handed down to localities.
It would all be Whitehall.
True. Once a govt assumes a power they very rarely relinquish it’
It’s hard to overstate what a disaster Boris Johnson turned out to be. It’s likely none of the present tensions would be happening in the UK if he hadn’t done this. The worst thing is, I couldn’t tell you if he did it on purpose or by accident. Either is quite possible.
At the time I remember plenty of Brexiteers saying things like "it's not about the numbers, it's about control" and claiming that immigration from the Commonwealth would be less unpopular with the sort of people who don't like immigration than immigration from the EU. I have to say that both arguments seemed implausible at the time.
Then why didn’t Remainers use that as a campaign slogan?
“Stay in Europe so most immigrants are white and Christian”
I think we know why. Yet now they hypocritically whine
You voted for every bit of the mess.
Yet now hypocritically you whine.
I’m not whining. With gritted teeth, I’d vote Brexit tomorrow
I am often accused by the over enthusiastic right on here that I "play the man" in my reposts. It would seem that it is acceptable for Conservatives to play the man, so long as that man is of the left.
Am hearing of an enterprising young man going round taking down the England flags and flogging them on e-bay to those of righter than average persuasion for a fiver each. He's already recouped the cost of his holiday.
It was a Twitter and Facebook story that was debunked as “things that never happened”. Ironically being pushed by a chap who felt the need to display an Irish Tricolour on his Twitter handle. The price he was “selling” the flags at has gone up in a way since the story was made up that makes our inflation issues in 2023/24 seem like a mere trifle.
If it wasn't true then it will be soon. A very good idea for an income stream.
It’s not really as you can buy the flags online for 99p so why pay more and wait for some random to post it to you.
It’s obvious farcical nonsense, designed to please the gullible. It’s like the people that believed the absurd R S Archer stories about stupid brexiteers
I did love the fact that the chap who started pushing it has an Irish flag (and a watermelon for whatever reason) on his twitter id as he felt the need to display his national identity and indicate where he was coming from through the use of said flag whilst at the same time being very anti other people wanting to display their choice of flag to make statements about identity.
I've a 1922 copy of The Jungle Book, with an elephant and a small swastika on the front. The broken cross was used by many cultures, including Hindus.
You may be right about reclaiming it. But the cross of Saint George is not remotely the same thing.
Yet.
We'll know the boundary has been crossed when people start fleeing the UK rather than endangering themselves to get in, but by then it will probably be too late.
Anecdotage warning: saw one of my best friends at the weekend, currently working very successfully in the US with citizenship, American wife & 2 kids. They are seriously thinking about moving to UK (back to UK in friend's case), so it does happen. I stifled any frying pan and fire comments.
It’s hard to overstate what a disaster Boris Johnson turned out to be. It’s likely none of the present tensions would be happening in the UK if he hadn’t done this. The worst thing is, I couldn’t tell you if he did it on purpose or by accident. Either is quite possible.
At the time I remember plenty of Brexiteers saying things like "it's not about the numbers, it's about control" and claiming that immigration from the Commonwealth would be less unpopular with the sort of people who don't like immigration than immigration from the EU. I have to say that both arguments seemed implausible at the time.
With the odd exception, I don't think immigration from the commonwealth is a problem. Immigration from India is very visible in my part of the world, but it isn't really a problem: these are by and large skilled immigrants whom Britain has sought and who integrate easily. The problem is illegals and dubious asylum seekers from the Middle East and North Africa.
It's the Euroopeans who have disappeared that I miss the most. You could go round towns and cities all over the UK and it was full of young attractive people speaking a multitude of languages. It's like that in the Sounth of France everywhere and it used to be like that in England. It's difficult to realise how it's changed over the last nine or ten years
You're comparing your current fantasy world with your earlier fantasy world.
Without considering which of them people who live in this country might actually prefer.
Though perhaps one reason you might think there are fewer Europeans in Britain is that many of them have integrated and now speak English.
Not at all. It was a more transitory population. My ex lives the life of a hippy in Crete and lives with a revolving population. She loves it. She's never been happier. Different people turn up at different times and they live a great life. If success is your thing she's had that. If your thing is six pints of beer on a Saturday night then little in the UK will have changed.
The Spanish have a saying about 'The smell of the paint' which is just another way of describing 'the vibe' and to a lot of people it doesn't matter at all. Leon despite his tales of derring do is one of them. I don't think there's a more MOR person on here. He swoons over Taylor swift and thinks Sydney Sweeney is the most alluring person he's seen. That's fine. That's his taste. Take a look at his room featured on here often. Enough said! Not everyone is sensitive to what goes on around them or the styling of the place they live in and that's why some like you and Leon like Brexit and others like me don't
lol
You are a low watt minor-public-school retired tampon advertising executive who lives in a neo fascist enclave surrounded by Russian noovs
You are, without question, the most vulgar person on here
I don't think Roger has ever sunk to vulgarly displaying pics of his garish soft furnishings, but chacun à son goût.
Reform have the ability to stir up people about insane and costly ideas. The BGS survey indicates resources are there but unlikely to be recoverable. However the lack of substance to their claims (see their county councillors) doesn't seem to be a barrier to their progress.
Fracking is neither insane nor costly. It is a commercial opportunity - if companies try it and it doesn't work, they will lose their investment. It doesn't affect the taxpayer. The Government had no business banning it - a Tory one to boot.
See also Underground Coal Gasification. All those seams out under the North Sea are ripe for it. With CCS once you get the syngas to the surface, of course, resulting in Blue Hydrogen.
It’s hard to overstate what a disaster Boris Johnson turned out to be. It’s likely none of the present tensions would be happening in the UK if he hadn’t done this. The worst thing is, I couldn’t tell you if he did it on purpose or by accident. Either is quite possible.
At the time I remember plenty of Brexiteers saying things like "it's not about the numbers, it's about control" and claiming that immigration from the Commonwealth would be less unpopular with the sort of people who don't like immigration than immigration from the EU. I have to say that both arguments seemed implausible at the time.
With the odd exception, I don't think immigration from the commonwealth is a problem. Immigration from India is very visible in my part of the world, but it isn't really a problem: these are by and large skilled immigrants whom Britain has sought and who integrate easily. The problem is illegals and dubious asylum seekers from the Middle East and North Africa.
It's the Euroopeans who have disappeared that I miss the most. You could go round towns and cities all over the UK and it was full of young attractive people speaking a multitude of languages. It's like that in the Sounth of France everywhere and it used to be like that in England. It's difficult to realise how it's changed over the last nine or ten years
You're comparing your current fantasy world with your earlier fantasy world.
Without considering which of them people who live in this country might actually prefer.
Though perhaps one reason you might think there are fewer Europeans in Britain is that many of them have integrated and now speak English.
Not at all. It was a more transitory population. My ex lives the life of a hippy in Crete and lives with a revolving population. She loves it. She's never been happier. Different people turn up at different times and they live a great life. If success is your thing she's had that. If your thing is six pints of beer on a Saturday night then little in the UK will have changed.
The Spanish have a saying about 'The smell of the paint' which is just another way of describing 'the vibe' and to a lot of people it doesn't matter at all. Leon despite his tales of derring do is one of them. I don't think there's a more MOR person on here. He swoons over Taylor swift and thinks Sydney Sweeney is the most alluring person he's seen. That's fine. That's his taste. Take a look at his room featured on here often. Enough said! Not everyone is sensitive to what goes on around them or the styling of the place they live in and that's why some like you and Leon like Brexit and others like me don't
lol
You are a low watt minor-public-school retired tampon advertising executive who lives in a neo fascist enclave surrounded by Russian noovs
You are, without question, the most vulgar person on here
I don't think Roger has ever sunk to vulgarly displaying pics of his garish soft furnishings, but chacun à son goût.
Or tried to flex about earning "several hundred pounds" (lol) as if he were a cash-in-hand gardener.
It’s hard to overstate what a disaster Boris Johnson turned out to be. It’s likely none of the present tensions would be happening in the UK if he hadn’t done this. The worst thing is, I couldn’t tell you if he did it on purpose or by accident. Either is quite possible.
At the time I remember plenty of Brexiteers saying things like "it's not about the numbers, it's about control" and claiming that immigration from the Commonwealth would be less unpopular with the sort of people who don't like immigration than immigration from the EU. I have to say that both arguments seemed implausible at the time.
With the odd exception, I don't think immigration from the commonwealth is a problem. Immigration from India is very visible in my part of the world, but it isn't really a problem: these are by and large skilled immigrants whom Britain has sought and who integrate easily. The problem is illegals and dubious asylum seekers from the Middle East and North Africa.
It's the Euroopeans who have disappeared that I miss the most. You could go round towns and cities all over the UK and it was full of young attractive people speaking a multitude of languages. It's like that in the Sounth of France everywhere and it used to be like that in England. It's difficult to realise how it's changed over the last nine or ten years
You're comparing your current fantasy world with your earlier fantasy world.
Without considering which of them people who live in this country might actually prefer.
Though perhaps one reason you might think there are fewer Europeans in Britain is that many of them have integrated and now speak English.
Not at all. It was a more transitory population. My ex lives the life of a hippy in Crete and lives with a revolving population. She loves it. She's never been happier. Different people turn up at different times and they live a great life. If success is your thing she's had that. If your thing is six pints of beer on a Saturday night then little in the UK will have changed.
The Spanish have a saying about 'The smell of the paint' which is just another way of describing 'the vibe' and to a lot of people it doesn't matter at all. Leon despite his tales of derring do is one of them. I don't think there's a more MOR person on here. He swoons over Taylor swift and thinks Sydney Sweeney is the most alluring person he's seen. That's fine. That's his taste. Take a look at his room featured on here often. Enough said! Not everyone is sensitive to what goes on around them or the styling of the place they live in and that's why some like you and Leon like Brexit and others like me don't
I remember the thousands of German hippies still living this life on the Greek islands in the '80s and '90s. It looked pretty blissful, and some charming characters I met.
I have to say I'm quite jealous of it. It's little changed from all accounts though i haven't actually visited myself. It's nice to know when you see people marching with flags and screaming at immigrant hotels that those people and places are still around. Infact I'm just going to put on a Leonard Cohen......
The swastika is the symbol of veganism in Taiwan. (They don't distinguish between vegan and vegetarian). It is prominent on all non-meat establishments. See it a fair bit in India too.
Makes sense given how intolerant so many vegans are.
It’s hard to overstate what a disaster Boris Johnson turned out to be. It’s likely none of the present tensions would be happening in the UK if he hadn’t done this. The worst thing is, I couldn’t tell you if he did it on purpose or by accident. Either is quite possible.
At the time I remember plenty of Brexiteers saying things like "it's not about the numbers, it's about control" and claiming that immigration from the Commonwealth would be less unpopular with the sort of people who don't like immigration than immigration from the EU. I have to say that both arguments seemed implausible at the time.
With the odd exception, I don't think immigration from the commonwealth is a problem. Immigration from India is very visible in my part of the world, but it isn't really a problem: these are by and large skilled immigrants whom Britain has sought and who integrate easily. The problem is illegals and dubious asylum seekers from the Middle East and North Africa.
It's the Euroopeans who have disappeared that I miss the most. You could go round towns and cities all over the UK and it was full of young attractive people speaking a multitude of languages. It's like that in the Sounth of France everywhere and it used to be like that in England. It's difficult to realise how it's changed over the last nine or ten years
You're comparing your current fantasy world with your earlier fantasy world.
Without considering which of them people who live in this country might actually prefer.
Though perhaps one reason you might think there are fewer Europeans in Britain is that many of them have integrated and now speak English.
Not at all. It was a more transitory population. My ex lives the life of a hippy in Crete and lives with a revolving population. She loves it. She's never been happier. Different people turn up at different times and they live a great life. If success is your thing she's had that. If your thing is six pints of beer on a Saturday night then little in the UK will have changed.
The Spanish have a saying about 'The smell of the paint' which is just another way of describing 'the vibe' and to a lot of people it doesn't matter at all. Leon despite his tales of derring do is one of them. I don't think there's a more MOR person on here. He swoons over Taylor swift and thinks Sydney Sweeney is the most alluring person he's seen. That's fine. That's his taste. Take a look at his room featured on here often. Enough said! Not everyone is sensitive to what goes on around them or the styling of the place they live in and that's why some like you and Leon like Brexit and others like me don't
lol
You are a low watt minor-public-school retired tampon advertising executive who lives in a neo fascist enclave surrounded by Russian noovs
You are, without question, the most vulgar person on here
I wanted to flag you for that, but as you consider a PB flag a badge of honour I refrained.
By the way your absolute and total lack of self-awareness is the stuff of legends.
The swastika is the symbol of veganism in Taiwan. (They don't distinguish between vegan and vegetarian). It is prominent on all non-meat establishments. See it a fair bit in India too.
Makes sense given how intolerant so many vegans are.
It was an Aryan and Hindu symbol long before Hitler learned of it. Rather sad, the way he debased it.
The swastika is the symbol of veganism in Taiwan. (They don't distinguish between vegan and vegetarian). It is prominent on all non-meat establishments. See it a fair bit in India too.
Makes sense given how intolerant so many vegans are.
It was an Aryan and Hindu symbol long before Hitler learned of it. Rather sad, the way he debased it.
In the overall scheme of things that was rather minor compared to some of the other things he got up to.
"1. Overhaul of the civil service: replacement of all key leadership positions alligned to political priorities of incoming government. 2. Judicial reform: reasserting parliamentary sovereignty over political judicial activism. 3. Abolition of key QUANGOs, Commisions, "Independent" Bodies that have eroded democratic accountability and led to bureaucratic power-grab over the last 30 years. Without these basics, the next government will, like so many before, be tied in knots by the 'system' and fail to deliver on the priorities of the British people."
So that is: 1. Remove anyone from the machinery of government who doesn't parrot whatever madness is government policy 2. Ensure that all trials deliver the result demanded on X 3. Abolish any arms length agency so that all decisions on all things are made by ministers
The Conservative Party is over. They've gone utterly mad.
The third one I can buy into completely. All Governmental power should be exercised within the electoral system (from Parish to Parliament). Not handed off to semi-independent organisations with their own agendas.
The first two are just batshit crazy by people who don't understand either the British system nor the (very different) American system they are trying to emulate.
I would strongly agree with that if it weren't for the extreme likelihood that none of the powers would be handed down to localities.
It would all be Whitehall.
Agreed. It wold have to be as part of a much wider redistribution of powers down the chain to local level. But even centralised at Whitehall would be better than the current arrangement where semi-autonomous organisations wield vast amounts of power with little or no effective oversight and no direct democratic control.
"1. Overhaul of the civil service: replacement of all key leadership positions alligned to political priorities of incoming government. 2. Judicial reform: reasserting parliamentary sovereignty over political judicial activism. 3. Abolition of key QUANGOs, Commisions, "Independent" Bodies that have eroded democratic accountability and led to bureaucratic power-grab over the last 30 years. Without these basics, the next government will, like so many before, be tied in knots by the 'system' and fail to deliver on the priorities of the British people."
So that is: 1. Remove anyone from the machinery of government who doesn't parrot whatever madness is government policy 2. Ensure that all trials deliver the result demanded on X 3. Abolish any arms length agency so that all decisions on all things are made by ministers
The Conservative Party is over. They've gone utterly mad.
The third one I can buy into completely. All Governmental power should be exercised within the electoral system (from Parish to Parliament). Not handed off to semi-independent organisations with their own agendas.
The first two are just batshit crazy by people who don't understand either the British system nor the (very different) American system they are trying to emulate.
You don't think that it's good that some decisions are depoliticised and handed over to an arms length body? When, for example, NICE reviews the evidence of whether a drug is effective, or the MHRA reviews whether a new hip implant is safe, I think it's better that those decisions are NOT taken by politicians.
I am not suggesting they are taken by politicians directly. But they should be directly part of the relevant department within Government rather than being farmed off so politicians can claim they are not responsible for decisions. NICE is a good example. They are already making political decisions based on available public funding rather than the actual effectiveness of drugs or treatments. If such decisions are to be made then they should be the responsibility of the elected politicians.
It’s hard to overstate what a disaster Boris Johnson turned out to be. It’s likely none of the present tensions would be happening in the UK if he hadn’t done this. The worst thing is, I couldn’t tell you if he did it on purpose or by accident. Either is quite possible.
At the time I remember plenty of Brexiteers saying things like "it's not about the numbers, it's about control" and claiming that immigration from the Commonwealth would be less unpopular with the sort of people who don't like immigration than immigration from the EU. I have to say that both arguments seemed implausible at the time.
With the odd exception, I don't think immigration from the commonwealth is a problem. Immigration from India is very visible in my part of the world, but it isn't really a problem: these are by and large skilled immigrants whom Britain has sought and who integrate easily. The problem is illegals and dubious asylum seekers from the Middle East and North Africa.
It's the Euroopeans who have disappeared that I miss the most. You could go round towns and cities all over the UK and it was full of young attractive people speaking a multitude of languages. It's like that in the Sounth of France everywhere and it used to be like that in England. It's difficult to realise how it's changed over the last nine or ten years
You're comparing your current fantasy world with your earlier fantasy world.
Without considering which of them people who live in this country might actually prefer.
Though perhaps one reason you might think there are fewer Europeans in Britain is that many of them have integrated and now speak English.
Not at all. It was a more transitory population. My ex lives the life of a hippy in Crete and lives with a revolving population. She loves it. She's never been happier. Different people turn up at different times and they live a great life. If success is your thing she's had that. If your thing is six pints of beer on a Saturday night then little in the UK will have changed.
The Spanish have a saying about 'The smell of the paint' which is just another way of describing 'the vibe' and to a lot of people it doesn't matter at all. Leon despite his tales of derring do is one of them. I don't think there's a more MOR person on here. He swoons over Taylor swift and thinks Sydney Sweeney is the most alluring person he's seen. That's fine. That's his taste. Take a look at his room featured on here often. Enough said! Not everyone is sensitive to what goes on around them or the styling of the place they live in and that's why some like you and Leon like Brexit and others like me don't
lol
You are a low watt minor-public-school retired tampon advertising executive who lives in a neo fascist enclave surrounded by Russian noovs
You are, without question, the most vulgar person on here
I don't think Roger has ever sunk to vulgarly displaying pics of his garish soft furnishings, but chacun à son goût.
New lighting
£20 John Lewis lamp (discount - with new special bulbs fitted). In front, a £60 piece of vintage 1960s Murano glass - geode
Inside the geode - a perfect Neolithic flint arrowhead found by me, in Gobekli Tepe, as I talked to the great Klaus Schmidt - the first journalist to properly do that - in 2006 - and as he walked me around the site (then almost completely unknown)
That visit led to the book that led to the ££££ that bought me the flat where that arrowhead now lies in its bowl of Venetian amber
Beat that. You can’t. No one can beat that, sorry. It’s a perfect narrative loop done with cheap lighting, vintage glass and 12,000 year old flint carved by the men who changed the world. And bought my flat
I cannot regard Howe as a villain. It is not his fault that the Tories obsessed about Europe for the subsequent 30 years to the detriment of themselves and the country. It is not is fault that Thatcher went on too long undoing some of the good that she had done with his considerable assistance.
What I am concerned about is where are the Howes of today? He was a serious intellectual heavyweight who thought deeply about public policy and the public good. Like every human he wasn't always right but he was deeply focused on that public good, ahead even of party political considerations. I cannot think of his equivalent in the House of Commons today. Instead, our most prominent politicians are interested in sound bites, social media, clickbait and, above all, themselves. They are obsessed with what sounds good rather than what is good. Gestures instead of substance. It's sad.
Edit, see this fracking nonsense this morning.
This is what concerns me when I look at the UK today: the fundamentally unserious nature of political commentary and by extension politics itself. The number of commentators with a deep and layered understanding of political realities has given way to celebrity presenters who obsess about political theatre and process but fail to understand anything about political ideologies or even the basic mechanisms of administration. The contrast between say Charles Wheeler of thirty years ago and Naga Munchetty of today is pretty astonishing. Thus when people like Gove or Johnson, or Farage for that matter, come up with superficial and even absurd ideas then their media pals do not analyse them as ideas but simply in terms of shallow political positioning, because human interest is all they (and apparently we) really understand. The result is that really bad ideas get adopted with little scrutiny and both policy making and even public administration itself are degraded. The fact that so many politicians in the current crop of Tories were media workers themselves compounded the problem. Gove may have had "enough of experts", and I think that tells you that he had lost the plot in terms of enacting reasonable or even workable legislation. It has been said that Brexit was a fundamentally unserious policy and has been executed in such a ridiculous way as to guarantee its failure: that is where this fundamental lack of seriousness in British politics brought us.
Both policies (bright ideas) and the execution of policy (actually enacting workable laws) have much lower priority than presentation and media management, and this is why Britain is failing to address the multiple crises that it faces. All is not well in Estonia, but it is not considered being a nerdy swot to have read books and to be able to engage with the various experts in policy and execution in an organised and serious way.
Basically the UK needs to get real, but apparently a few hundred flag shaggers are more important than reform of our tax code and a total overhaul of our public administration and infrastructure. That, of course is what the Mail, Murdoch etc are misdirecting you towards, and ultimately it results in the Trump world of cretins.
If I am permitted to use the single word "This" very sparingly in the PB commenters style guide, then:
It’s hard to overstate what a disaster Boris Johnson turned out to be. It’s likely none of the present tensions would be happening in the UK if he hadn’t done this. The worst thing is, I couldn’t tell you if he did it on purpose or by accident. Either is quite possible.
At the time I remember plenty of Brexiteers saying things like "it's not about the numbers, it's about control" and claiming that immigration from the Commonwealth would be less unpopular with the sort of people who don't like immigration than immigration from the EU. I have to say that both arguments seemed implausible at the time.
With the odd exception, I don't think immigration from the commonwealth is a problem. Immigration from India is very visible in my part of the world, but it isn't really a problem: these are by and large skilled immigrants whom Britain has sought and who integrate easily. The problem is illegals and dubious asylum seekers from the Middle East and North Africa.
It's the Euroopeans who have disappeared that I miss the most. You could go round towns and cities all over the UK and it was full of young attractive people speaking a multitude of languages. It's like that in the Sounth of France everywhere and it used to be like that in England. It's difficult to realise how it's changed over the last nine or ten years
You're comparing your current fantasy world with your earlier fantasy world.
Without considering which of them people who live in this country might actually prefer.
Though perhaps one reason you might think there are fewer Europeans in Britain is that many of them have integrated and now speak English.
Not at all. It was a more transitory population. My ex lives the life of a hippy in Crete and lives with a revolving population. She loves it. She's never been happier. Different people turn up at different times and they live a great life. If success is your thing she's had that. If your thing is six pints of beer on a Saturday night then little in the UK will have changed.
The Spanish have a saying about 'The smell of the paint' which is just another way of describing 'the vibe' and to a lot of people it doesn't matter at all. Leon despite his tales of derring do is one of them. I don't think there's a more MOR person on here. He swoons over Taylor swift and thinks Sydney Sweeney is the most alluring person he's seen. That's fine. That's his taste. Take a look at his room featured on here often. Enough said! Not everyone is sensitive to what goes on around them or the styling of the place they live in and that's why some like you and Leon like Brexit and others like me don't
lol
You are a low watt minor-public-school retired tampon advertising executive who lives in a neo fascist enclave surrounded by Russian noovs
You are, without question, the most vulgar person on here
I don't think Roger has ever sunk to vulgarly displaying pics of his garish soft furnishings, but chacun à son goût.
Or tried to flex about earning "several hundred pounds" (lol) as if he were a cash-in-hand gardener.
The flex is that I get you lot to argue my memes and theses - sometimes even providing me with lines - and I take them away and sell them
Bit like that Union Jack selling guy, except I exist
It’s hard to overstate what a disaster Boris Johnson turned out to be. It’s likely none of the present tensions would be happening in the UK if he hadn’t done this. The worst thing is, I couldn’t tell you if he did it on purpose or by accident. Either is quite possible.
At the time I remember plenty of Brexiteers saying things like "it's not about the numbers, it's about control" and claiming that immigration from the Commonwealth would be less unpopular with the sort of people who don't like immigration than immigration from the EU. I have to say that both arguments seemed implausible at the time.
With the odd exception, I don't think immigration from the commonwealth is a problem. Immigration from India is very visible in my part of the world, but it isn't really a problem: these are by and large skilled immigrants whom Britain has sought and who integrate easily. The problem is illegals and dubious asylum seekers from the Middle East and North Africa.
It's the Euroopeans who have disappeared that I miss the most. You could go round towns and cities all over the UK and it was full of young attractive people speaking a multitude of languages. It's like that in the Sounth of France everywhere and it used to be like that in England. It's difficult to realise how it's changed over the last nine or ten years
You're comparing your current fantasy world with your earlier fantasy world.
Without considering which of them people who live in this country might actually prefer.
Though perhaps one reason you might think there are fewer Europeans in Britain is that many of them have integrated and now speak English.
Not at all. It was a more transitory population. My ex lives the life of a hippy in Crete and lives with a revolving population. She loves it. She's never been happier. Different people turn up at different times and they live a great life. If success is your thing she's had that. If your thing is six pints of beer on a Saturday night then little in the UK will have changed.
The Spanish have a saying about 'The smell of the paint' which is just another way of describing 'the vibe' and to a lot of people it doesn't matter at all. Leon despite his tales of derring do is one of them. I don't think there's a more MOR person on here. He swoons over Taylor swift and thinks Sydney Sweeney is the most alluring person he's seen. That's fine. That's his taste. Take a look at his room featured on here often. Enough said! Not everyone is sensitive to what goes on around them or the styling of the place they live in and that's why some like you and Leon like Brexit and others like me don't
So what you're saying is that the Europeans who live in Britain are the 'wrong' sort of Europeans.
That we now have Europeans who have integrated and speak English and have average lives with average families while doing average jobs and living in average houses in average towns.
And not 'citizens of anywhere' who would flutter around spending a season here and a year there while always talking in their own language.
My point was only that what I miss about not being in the EU is nothing to do with what colour people are or what hotels people are being put up in or whether they get here by plane or rubber boat just that the vibe was so much better when we were in. Its not a thing I can or want to quantify. I loved the feeling of being European which feels much less so now. Now we're English visiting Europe. The difference is subtle but it's there. I'm sure there are many more important reasons for hating Brexit but that's my No1.
It’s hard to overstate what a disaster Boris Johnson turned out to be. It’s likely none of the present tensions would be happening in the UK if he hadn’t done this. The worst thing is, I couldn’t tell you if he did it on purpose or by accident. Either is quite possible.
At the time I remember plenty of Brexiteers saying things like "it's not about the numbers, it's about control" and claiming that immigration from the Commonwealth would be less unpopular with the sort of people who don't like immigration than immigration from the EU. I have to say that both arguments seemed implausible at the time.
With the odd exception, I don't think immigration from the commonwealth is a problem. Immigration from India is very visible in my part of the world, but it isn't really a problem: these are by and large skilled immigrants whom Britain has sought and who integrate easily. The problem is illegals and dubious asylum seekers from the Middle East and North Africa.
It's the Euroopeans who have disappeared that I miss the most. You could go round towns and cities all over the UK and it was full of young attractive people speaking a multitude of languages. It's like that in the Sounth of France everywhere and it used to be like that in England. It's difficult to realise how it's changed over the last nine or ten years
You're comparing your current fantasy world with your earlier fantasy world.
Without considering which of them people who live in this country might actually prefer.
Though perhaps one reason you might think there are fewer Europeans in Britain is that many of them have integrated and now speak English.
Not at all. It was a more transitory population. My ex lives the life of a hippy in Crete and lives with a revolving population. She loves it. She's never been happier. Different people turn up at different times and they live a great life. If success is your thing she's had that. If your thing is six pints of beer on a Saturday night then little in the UK will have changed.
The Spanish have a saying about 'The smell of the paint' which is just another way of describing 'the vibe' and to a lot of people it doesn't matter at all. Leon despite his tales of derring do is one of them. I don't think there's a more MOR person on here. He swoons over Taylor swift and thinks Sydney Sweeney is the most alluring person he's seen. That's fine. That's his taste. Take a look at his room featured on here often. Enough said! Not everyone is sensitive to what goes on around them or the styling of the place they live in and that's why some like you and Leon like Brexit and others like me don't
lol
You are a low watt minor-public-school retired tampon advertising executive who lives in a neo fascist enclave surrounded by Russian noovs
You are, without question, the most vulgar person on here
I wanted to flag you for that, but as you consider a PB flag a badge of honour I refrained.
By the way your absolute and total lack of self-awareness is the stuff of legends.
Leon is looking to increase his flag count. Therefore it is incumbent on the rest of us to never flag him, however much it is justified.
Comments
Any ideas on this genuine query ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F39M2mqm7og&t=631s
Enjoy!
This is actually where the environmentalists missed a trick. If only they had just let the firms go ahead and try fracking it would have been bleeding obvious within a very short time that it was uneconomic and pointless. Because they opposed it, it has become a cause celebre for the Right to the point where economics is no longer a factor.
I live somewhere with probably half the population being immigrants who were not born here. They come from all over the world to work in the finance industry, legal industry and service industry. More are now from Kenya and the Philippines in the service industry so an additional “vibe”.
It’s also perfectly ok for people to take comfort in being surrounded by people “like them”, it’s natural. Funnily enough if you venture outside of the South of France into the majority of the country that isn’t Paris, the Alps or the Dordogne it’s incredibly white, French, monocultural. Guess what, most of the world consists of countries where away from the cities the population is largely the same race, culture, religion.
You can compare us to your southern France utopia but frankly it has as many problems as the rest of us
Solar is interesting because they deteriorate so slowly and the cost of getting on a roof (safely) to replace them is high. They'll have a very long cycle but the old ones will still have some life in them. I think they'll end up as fencing as us already the case in the Netherlands.
All his lovely neighbours in that lovely place are neo-fash
He’s a ludicrous dummy who went to Millfield. The school for people to stupid to go to a comprehensive. Ignore
Wind is slightly more complicated - and in any event requires ongoing regular maintenance.
But the EOL thing is a bit of a red herring. The cost of both includes depreciation of the asset.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c07p2n39d18o
Ex-Reform councillor denies threats to kill wife
Net emigration post 2020, true, but not enough to overtake the net immigration 2016-2020.
It is prominent on all non-meat establishments. See it a fair bit in India too.
Says it’s a “poll by the Times of 400 Members of the country landowners association” which means it is tiny, unrepresentative and self selecting
It’s voodoo
(Which is a shame, it’s nice to see Labour on zero)
Oh, wait...
He's already recouped the cost of his holiday.
According to research by the Country Land and Business Association (CLA), which represents 28,000 farmers and rural businesses across England and Wales, almost 80 per cent of farmers are worried their business will not survive the next ten years. None of those surveyed said they would vote for Labour in a general election.
The poll, conducted among 490 CLA members, found that 40 per cent “strongly agree” and 38 per cent “agree” with the statement: “I am worried that my business will not survive the next ten years.” More than 30 per cent have “seriously” considered selling their farm and leaving the industry in the next five years.
Nearly 70 per cent say they will be forced to sell land or take on debt to keep their business running, while almost half expect they will have to sell at least a quarter of their farm.
The anxiety stems largely from Labour’s inheritance tax reforms. From April 2026, inherited agricultural assets worth more than £1 million will face a 20 per cent tax charge. Previously, such assets were exempt. The government expects the policy to raise £520 million annually by 2029.
Since the announcement last October, around 90 per cent of farmers have delayed or paused investment, with more than a quarter holding back over £150,000.
Victoria Vyvyan, president of the CLA, said: “The Treasury says these reforms will barely touch rural Britain. Our polling shows they will force hard choices on farms that have sustained communities for generations — selling land, laying off staff and shelving plans for the future. Already families are weighing up which parts of their business they can afford to keep. Some are holding back investment, others are wondering if they can hand the farm on at all.”
The poll revealed striking political consequences. While 38 per cent of farmers said they would back the Conservatives, 36 per cent favoured Reform UK. The Liberal Democrats attracted just under 4 per cent, while 21 per cent were undecided. Labour secured zero support.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/aug/24/how-riverfords-guy-singh-watson-became-the-most-brutally-honest-farmer-in-britain
“But the easiest way to get money out of the farming sector would be to capture the 100-fold increase in land value when planning permission is granted to build houses on it,” he says. “I don’t see why the farmer should be the beneficiary of that. Maybe they should get double the agricultural value, but the rest of it should go into the public purse.” His rough estimate of how much that would raise when the government’s target of 300,000 new homes are built is £10bn – 25 times more than the inheritance tax changes...
Id quite happily scrap the IHT thing for any farm worth less than (say) £50m, and replace it with this.
As I said, it will be relatively small because all the infrastructure for the turbines remains, from access tracks to transmission. Indeed the LCOE is the cost of returning the site to original use, so will massively overstate the costs if you're actually just replacing the turbines instead.
(Note for awareness this argument is a favourite of climate deniers all over the internet, almost as common as the volcano one).
"Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit | Farm to Fork Summit: Poll…" https://eciu.net/media/press-releases/2024/farm-to-fork-summit-poll-reveals-farmers-more-worried-about-climate-change-and-show-stronger-support-for-net-zero-than-public#:~:text=Farm to Fork Summit: Poll reveals farmers more worried about,for net zero than public&text=Farmers see extreme weather as,over the next ten years.
In Britain we associate the hard or far right with unlovely and downtrodden towns, cities, regions. This is probably true of most western countries
However in France it is quite often the nicest and richest corners that are far right. Like villefranche sur mer where roger chooses to live
Last year I went to the source of le penisme, south Brittany near Carnac where the le pens have their compound. It’s very pleasant. Much nicer than inland Brittany (which can be seriously bleak)
My theory is that the rich far right French and Roger are voting le pen to PRESERVE what they have
I also think this is beginning to happen in the UK. See my posh Notting Hill friends switching to Reform
EVs? https://www.youtube.com/@JustGetATesla- moving to 3 videos a week has helped embed my new £30 a day average revenue. Plus increasing amounts of paid sponsors and referral sales
But I have to admit there are better advocates for Britain in Europe.
In recent years, FN/RN have expanded into bleak towns in the North East that used to vote Communist.
"1. Overhaul of the civil service: replacement of all key leadership positions alligned to political priorities of incoming government.
2. Judicial reform: reasserting parliamentary sovereignty over political judicial activism.
3. Abolition of key QUANGOs, Commisions, "Independent" Bodies that have eroded democratic accountability and led to bureaucratic power-grab over the last 30 years.
Without these basics, the next government will, like so many before, be tied in knots by the 'system' and fail to deliver on the priorities of the British people."
So that is:
1. Remove anyone from the machinery of government who doesn't parrot whatever madness is government policy
2. Ensure that all trials deliver the result demanded on X
3. Abolish any arms length agency so that all decisions on all things are made by ministers
The Conservative Party is over. They've gone utterly mad.
Sounds like a triple win to me.
Both May and Starmer carefully cultivated a public image as dutiful and competent. The dutiful part I can buy into, certainly with May at least. But competent? That seems very much to have been vibes with both.
Starmer, in ensuring Labour opposition to May's Brexit deal, played a still-underestimated role in both her failure and Johnson's subsequent 2019 triumph.
I presume Starmer to have been a forensic, competent and dutiful public servant when DPP for, to quote Gilbert and Sullivan on their fictional politician Sir Joseph Porter, 'he told me so himself'.
I have yet to see proof that he quite understands exactly what a Prime Minister is actually meant to do - he seemed initially to think the role that of benevolent figurehead, and did not seem to realise that the politicians do actually need to tell civil servants what to do. Now No.10 briefings suggest that the civil servants are being blamed, Cummings-style. Sunak had a similar lack of ideological direction but was probably slightly more competent.
Just as the public in its wisdom witheld a majority from May, so it has granted Starmer an extraordinarily large one. If he fails, he will have fewer excuses than her.
As for Stewart: Like any good Etonian whose parents got their money's worth, Stewart is supremely confident in his own ability to do better job than whoever is currently in the position he wants.
I did like him in government, but he now seems to have settled on a position as eternal commentator from the sidelines. This removes any consequence from those of his assessments which turn out to be wrong, and it is better for both his ego and bank account. Whatever his aims might once might have been, his purpose now is only to sound good.
The first two are just batshit crazy by people who don't understand either the British system nor the (very different) American system they are trying to emulate.
I don’t think addressing this is necessarily a bad thing.
And, as with Cameron, admiring him is also a marker of mediocrity
The Spanish have a saying about 'The smell of the paint' which is just another way of describing 'the vibe' and to a lot of people it doesn't matter at all. Leon despite his tales of derring do is one of them. I don't think there's a more MOR person on here. He swoons over Taylor swift and thinks Sydney Sweeney is the most alluring person he's seen. That's fine. That's his taste. Take a look at his room featured on here often. Enough said! Not everyone is sensitive to what goes on around them or the styling of the place they live in and that's why some like you and Leon like Brexit and others like me don't
Both policies (bright ideas) and the execution of policy (actually enacting workable laws) have much lower priority than presentation and media management, and this is why Britain is failing to address the multiple crises that it faces. All is not well in Estonia, but it is not considered being a nerdy swot to have read books and to be able to engage with the various experts in policy and execution in an organised and serious way.
Basically the UK needs to get real, but apparently a few hundred flag shaggers are more important than reform of our tax code and a total overhaul of our public administration and infrastructure. That, of course is what the Mail, Murdoch etc are misdirecting you towards, and ultimately it results in the Trump world of cretins.
You are a low watt minor-public-school retired tampon advertising executive who lives in a neo fascist enclave surrounded by Russian noovs
You are, without question, the most vulgar person on here
https://www.tribunemag.co.uk/2025/08/spains-far-right-problem
That we now have Europeans who have integrated and speak English and have average lives with average families while doing average jobs and living in average houses in average towns.
And not 'citizens of anywhere' who would flutter around spending a season here and a year there while always talking in their own language.
It would all be Whitehall.
Top marks for ingenuity.
A similar approach in Scotland would require lots of blue paint.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svitEEpI07E
By the way your absolute and total lack of self-awareness is the stuff of legends.
He was an evil, evil, idiot
£20 John Lewis lamp (discount - with new special bulbs fitted). In front, a £60 piece of vintage 1960s Murano glass - geode
Inside the geode - a perfect Neolithic flint arrowhead found by me, in Gobekli Tepe, as I talked to the great Klaus Schmidt - the first journalist to properly do that - in 2006 - and as he walked me around the site (then almost completely unknown)
That visit led to the book that led to the ££££ that bought me the flat where that arrowhead now lies in its bowl of Venetian amber
Beat that. You can’t. No one can beat that, sorry. It’s a perfect narrative loop done with cheap lighting, vintage glass and 12,000 year old flint carved by the men who changed the world. And bought my flat
THIS
Bit like that Union Jack selling guy, except I exist