"71% of the public have an unfavourable rating with Brits"
We hate each other ?
Yes, that seems to be the core problem!
Starmer has found a solution though. He sold UK plc to the Yanks for £150bn yesterday. Not a great price but he is not good at numbers. Now we will have to do what we are told, whether it is burning gas to feed AI data centres, abolishing the Digital tax or whatever. I think that America is allowing Parliament to remain as a decorative part of our constitution, which is a plus for political betting at least.
Good morning
The government are spinning the £150bn investment creating 75,000 jobs across the airwaves this morning
When I heard 75,000 jobs for £150bn I assumed it was misspoken as I would want a whole lot more jobs for that investment, but it appears it is over 10 years on projects that have to pass design, planning and environmental issues and data centres that will consume vast quantities of electricity and water that is not readily available
Add in the cost on consumers bills this seems much like the 1.5 million new homes, all smoke and mirrors
I would suggest this investment would have happened anyway, but it is long term and in that long term is welcome but Starmer has less than 4 years and I doubt very little of it will be noticed by the public who are impatient for change
And on Ed Davey, I don't generally comment too much about him because I respect many of the Lib Dems who post on here, but if I am being honest I wasn't impressed with his stunts and on policy I know and understand his crusade for carers, not least because of his own family issues, and on Europe and WASPI women but I have no idea what his tax and spending policies are and look on him mainly as representing an English, largely south based party, which is reflected when it comes to Wales, and to a degree Scotland, where he struggles to be relevant
I'm surprised it's even 75,000 jobs if it's data centres.
And the problem with modern data centres is they consume stupid amounts of power that they need 24/7/365. So where are the gWs of power to keep them online coming from.
Don't they also need stupid amounts of water for cooling? Luckily there aren't any water shortages..
The gov't doesn't get much right but the announcement of inward investment by Nvidia and Microsoft is good news.
Indeed so, but I have a feeling there will be a devil in the detail somewhere, for example an expected price of electricity that’s a million miles away from Ed Miliband’s vision of the UK having the world’s most expensive energy.
A massive £billions data centre needs a massive £billions power station next door to it these days.
"Ms Porat said that Google remained committed to building renewable energy, but "obviously wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine every hour of the day".
Energy efficiency was being built into "all aspects of AI" microchips, models, and data centres, but it was important to "modernise the grid" to balance off periods of excess capacity, she said."
"71% of the public have an unfavourable rating with Brits"
We hate each other ?
Yes, that seems to be the core problem!
Starmer has found a solution though. He sold UK plc to the Yanks for £150bn yesterday. Not a great price but he is not good at numbers. Now we will have to do what we are told, whether it is burning gas to feed AI data centres, abolishing the Digital tax or whatever. I think that America is allowing Parliament to remain as a decorative part of our constitution, which is a plus for political betting at least.
Good morning
The government are spinning the £150bn investment creating 75,000 jobs across the airwaves this morning
When I heard 75,000 jobs for £150bn I assumed it was misspoken as I would want a whole lot more jobs for that investment, but it appears it is over 10 years on projects that have to pass design, planning and environmental issues and data centres that will consume vast quantities of electricity and water that is not readily available
Add in the cost on consumers bills this seems much like the 1.5 million new homes, all smoke and mirrors
I would suggest this investment would have happened anyway, but it is long term and in that long term is welcome but Starmer has less than 4 years and I doubt very little of it will be noticed by the public who are impatient for change
And on Ed Davey, I don't generally comment too much about him because I respect many of the Lib Dems who post on here, but if I am being honest I wasn't impressed with his stunts and on policy I know and understand his crusade for carers, not least because of his own family issues, and on Europe and WASPI women but I have no idea what his tax and spending policies are and look on him mainly as representing an English, largely south based party, which is reflected when it comes to Wales, and to a degree Scotland, where he struggles to be relevant
I'm surprised it's even 75,000 jobs if it's data centres.
And the problem with modern data centres is they consume stupid amounts of power that they need 24/7/365. So where are the gWs of power to keep them online coming from.
Don't they also need stupid amounts of water for cooling? Luckily there aren't any water shortages..
Apparently and nobody has answered how it is supplied and where from
Nigel Farage is the most popular party leader, but also the second-most unpopular (based on the chart in the header). You know who else was Marmite and how many general elections she won?
And we have independent confirmation of Farage's popularity in his declared earnings of tens of thousands a month from recording personal greetings – remember Up the Ra!
Reportedly it is closer to hundreds of thousands:
Mr Farage's register of interests revealed that he made £27,342 from the service in December (2024), almost double the amount he has previously registered for a single month.
Isn't that sort of service a really good way of laundering money?
You mean laundering contributions?
And just like the other gigs MPs do - speeches, journalism, books, non-executive directorships etc - goes round rules on contributions. Especially foreign contributions.
Re Jimmy Kimmel I listened to the monologue that took him off air. It was the usual endless slagging off of Trump, but the Charlie Kirk bit was very tame and very limited and completely reasonable (in context) compared to the rest. This comes over as an excuse and attempt at censorship. The late night talk show presenters are getting snuffed out one by one. This is not good.
It is even more worrying that MAGA are intent on doing this because the audience for these shows are entirely anti MAGA so the message going out isn't converting anyone, they are full on anti MAGA already.
We are seeing in the last few weeks an attempt at complete censorship. The guy on the Today programme the other day showed that with his comments that the left comments should be censored but MAGA shouldn't because it was 'science' whatever that means.
The gov't doesn't get much right but the announcement of inward investment by Nvidia and Microsoft is good news.
I would be 10 times better if it was British companies. Someone in government had better be questioning the wisdom of out technological dependency on the US.
Only today Huawei set out the roadmap for their computing systems, and it looks very likely that China will be able to stick two fingers up to Trump and his threats in the not too distant future. I would guess that by about 2030 or so it will be obvious to most that China is in the lead and independent.
"71% of the public have an unfavourable rating with Brits"
We hate each other ?
Yes, that seems to be the core problem!
Starmer has found a solution though. He sold UK plc to the Yanks for £150bn yesterday. Not a great price but he is not good at numbers. Now we will have to do what we are told, whether it is burning gas to feed AI data centres, abolishing the Digital tax or whatever. I think that America is allowing Parliament to remain as a decorative part of our constitution, which is a plus for political betting at least.
Good morning
The government are spinning the £150bn investment creating 75,000 jobs across the airwaves this morning
When I heard 75,000 jobs for £150bn I assumed it was misspoken as I would want a whole lot more jobs for that investment, but it appears it is over 10 years on projects that have to pass design, planning and environmental issues and data centres that will consume vast quantities of electricity and water that is not readily available
Add in the cost on consumers bills this seems much like the 1.5 million new homes, all smoke and mirrors
I would suggest this investment would have happened anyway, but it is long term and in that long term is welcome but Starmer has less than 4 years and I doubt very little of it will be noticed by the public who are impatient for change
And on Ed Davey, I don't generally comment too much about him because I respect many of the Lib Dems who post on here, but if I am being honest I wasn't impressed with his stunts and on policy I know and understand his crusade for carers, not least because of his own family issues, and on Europe and WASPI women but I have no idea what his tax and spending policies are and look on him mainly as representing an English, largely south based party, which is reflected when it comes to Wales, and to a degree Scotland, where he struggles to be relevant
I'm surprised it's even 75,000 jobs if it's data centres.
And the problem with modern data centres is they consume stupid amounts of power that they need 24/7/365. So where are the gWs of power to keep them online coming from.
Don't they also need stupid amounts of water for cooling? Luckily there aren't any water shortages..
Just use the Trent, erm, I see what you mean ... with the power stations getting there first.
Are they going to build them on Rannoch Moor? No, not enough nice bistros for tech bros.
"71% of the public have an unfavourable rating with Brits"
We hate each other ?
Yes, that seems to be the core problem!
Starmer has found a solution though. He sold UK plc to the Yanks for £150bn yesterday. Not a great price but he is not good at numbers. Now we will have to do what we are told, whether it is burning gas to feed AI data centres, abolishing the Digital tax or whatever. I think that America is allowing Parliament to remain as a decorative part of our constitution, which is a plus for political betting at least.
Good morning
The government are spinning the £150bn investment creating 75,000 jobs across the airwaves this morning
When I heard 75,000 jobs for £150bn I assumed it was misspoken as I would want a whole lot more jobs for that investment, but it appears it is over 10 years on projects that have to pass design, planning and environmental issues and data centres that will consume vast quantities of electricity and water that is not readily available
Add in the cost on consumers bills this seems much like the 1.5 million new homes, all smoke and mirrors
I would suggest this investment would have happened anyway, but it is long term and in that long term is welcome but Starmer has less than 4 years and I doubt very little of it will be noticed by the public who are impatient for change
And on Ed Davey, I don't generally comment too much about him because I respect many of the Lib Dems who post on here, but if I am being honest I wasn't impressed with his stunts and on policy I know and understand his crusade for carers, not least because of his own family issues, and on Europe and WASPI women but I have no idea what his tax and spending policies are and look on him mainly as representing an English, largely south based party, which is reflected when it comes to Wales, and to a degree Scotland, where he struggles to be relevant
I'm surprised it's even 75,000 jobs if it's data centres.
And the problem with modern data centres is they consume stupid amounts of power that they need 24/7/365. So where are the gWs of power to keep them online coming from.
Don't they also need stupid amounts of water for cooling? Luckily there aren't any water shortages..
"Ms Porat said that the facility would be air-cooled rather than water-cooled and the heat "captured and redeployed to heat schools and homes"."
I LOL at the redeploying the heat to schools and homes. One of those ideas that works well in theory, but often not so well in practice - as so many eastern European citizens can attest. It'll also be really expensive to retrofit to existing schools and homes.
Talking of which:
"The council-owned heat network uses bore-holes in a field to supply ground source heat pumps; it is free for residents to sign up and about half of the homes in the village – 166 properties – were reported to have done so in 2021.
But as it stands only 100 have been connected to the network, at a cost of £14m."
Davey is a lot smarter than people give him credit for being. He's always on the side of the angels (particularly Gaza) without screaming it from the rooftops. A quiet protest against it with the Trump visit that got him plenty of coverage. He's becoming everyone's safe and decent choice. I too wish we had a PM who could be 'nice'
Davey is "everyone's safe and decent choice", but only getting 12-15% in the opinion polls. The LDs are failing to capitalise on Labour and Tory woes.
Agree.
Perhaps some anger would actually do the Lib Dems some good, and spur their supporters on.
You don't often see an angry Lib Dem...
This is "Angry Lib Dem" wrt to Davey's media performance:
Most of us Lib Dems are Lib Dems precisely because we don’t like performative anger in politicians (well there are other reasons too). “Not angry but disappointed” is the appropriate sentiment.
The gov't doesn't get much right but the announcement of inward investment by Nvidia and Microsoft is good news.
Indeed so, but I have a feeling there will be a devil in the detail somewhere, for example an expected price of electricity that’s a million miles away from Ed Miliband’s vision of the UK having the world’s most expensive energy.
A massive £billions data centre needs a massive £billions power station next door to it these days.
"Ms Porat said that Google remained committed to building renewable energy, but "obviously wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine every hour of the day".
Energy efficiency was being built into "all aspects of AI" microchips, models, and data centres, but it was important to "modernise the grid" to balance off periods of excess capacity, she said."
"71% of the public have an unfavourable rating with Brits"
We hate each other ?
Yes, that seems to be the core problem!
Starmer has found a solution though. He sold UK plc to the Yanks for £150bn yesterday. Not a great price but he is not good at numbers. Now we will have to do what we are told, whether it is burning gas to feed AI data centres, abolishing the Digital tax or whatever. I think that America is allowing Parliament to remain as a decorative part of our constitution, which is a plus for political betting at least.
Good morning
The government are spinning the £150bn investment creating 75,000 jobs across the airwaves this morning
When I heard 75,000 jobs for £150bn I assumed it was misspoken as I would want a whole lot more jobs for that investment, but it appears it is over 10 years on projects that have to pass design, planning and environmental issues and data centres that will consume vast quantities of electricity and water that is not readily available
Add in the cost on consumers bills this seems much like the 1.5 million new homes, all smoke and mirrors
I would suggest this investment would have happened anyway, but it is long term and in that long term is welcome but Starmer has less than 4 years and I doubt very little of it will be noticed by the public who are impatient for change
And on Ed Davey, I don't generally comment too much about him because I respect many of the Lib Dems who post on here, but if I am being honest I wasn't impressed with his stunts and on policy I know and understand his crusade for carers, not least because of his own family issues, and on Europe and WASPI women but I have no idea what his tax and spending policies are and look on him mainly as representing an English, largely south based party, which is reflected when it comes to Wales, and to a degree Scotland, where he struggles to be relevant
I'm surprised it's even 75,000 jobs if it's data centres.
And the problem with modern data centres is they consume stupid amounts of power that they need 24/7/365. So where are the gWs of power to keep them online coming from.
Don't they also need stupid amounts of water for cooling? Luckily there aren't any water shortages..
Apparently and nobody has answered how it is supplied and where from
Which is why, for instance, the Scottish Government should have been building datacentres up where they give away water and electricity free in cornflakes packets, and where the climate means less cooling is needed in the first place.
"71% of the public have an unfavourable rating with Brits"
We hate each other ?
Yes, that seems to be the core problem!
Starmer has found a solution though. He sold UK plc to the Yanks for £150bn yesterday. Not a great price but he is not good at numbers. Now we will have to do what we are told, whether it is burning gas to feed AI data centres, abolishing the Digital tax or whatever. I think that America is allowing Parliament to remain as a decorative part of our constitution, which is a plus for political betting at least.
Good morning
The government are spinning the £150bn investment creating 75,000 jobs across the airwaves this morning
When I heard 75,000 jobs for £150bn I assumed it was misspoken as I would want a whole lot more jobs for that investment, but it appears it is over 10 years on projects that have to pass design, planning and environmental issues and data centres that will consume vast quantities of electricity and water that is not readily available
Add in the cost on consumers bills this seems much like the 1.5 million new homes, all smoke and mirrors
I would suggest this investment would have happened anyway, but it is long term and in that long term is welcome but Starmer has less than 4 years and I doubt very little of it will be noticed by the public who are impatient for change
And on Ed Davey, I don't generally comment too much about him because I respect many of the Lib Dems who post on here, but if I am being honest I wasn't impressed with his stunts and on policy I know and understand his crusade for carers, not least because of his own family issues, and on Europe and WASPI women but I have no idea what his tax and spending policies are and look on him mainly as representing an English, largely south based party, which is reflected when it comes to Wales, and to a degree Scotland, where he struggles to be relevant
I'm surprised it's even 75,000 jobs if it's data centres.
And the problem with modern data centres is they consume stupid amounts of power that they need 24/7/365. So where are the gWs of power to keep them online coming from.
Don't they also need stupid amounts of water for cooling? Luckily there aren't any water shortages..
Just use the Trent, erm, I see what you mean ...
Are they going to build them on Rannoch Moor? No, not enough nice bistros for tech bros.
Most data centres now used closed loop water cooling. Think air conditioning on a vast scale.
That’s why they don’t have giant cooling towers belching clouds.
Nigel Farage is the most popular party leader, but also the second-most unpopular (based on the chart in the header). You know who else was Marmite and how many general elections she won?
And we have independent confirmation of Farage's popularity in his declared earnings of tens of thousands a month from recording personal greetings – remember Up the Ra!
Reportedly it is closer to hundreds of thousands:
Mr Farage's register of interests revealed that he made £27,342 from the service in December (2024), almost double the amount he has previously registered for a single month.
Isn't that sort of service a really good way of laundering money?
You mean laundering contributions?
And just like the other gigs MPs do - speeches, journalism, books, non-executive directorships etc - goes round rules on contributions. Especially foreign contributions.
Yes, except there's more of a paper trail for those things, and there are fa fewer of them to check.
It's easy to create 1,000 bots of non-existent people and funnel lots of funds through them.
"71% of the public have an unfavourable rating with Brits"
We hate each other ?
Yes, that seems to be the core problem!
Starmer has found a solution though. He sold UK plc to the Yanks for £150bn yesterday. Not a great price but he is not good at numbers. Now we will have to do what we are told, whether it is burning gas to feed AI data centres, abolishing the Digital tax or whatever. I think that America is allowing Parliament to remain as a decorative part of our constitution, which is a plus for political betting at least.
Good morning
The government are spinning the £150bn investment creating 75,000 jobs across the airwaves this morning
When I heard 75,000 jobs for £150bn I assumed it was misspoken as I would want a whole lot more jobs for that investment, but it appears it is over 10 years on projects that have to pass design, planning and environmental issues and data centres that will consume vast quantities of electricity and water that is not readily available
Add in the cost on consumers bills this seems much like the 1.5 million new homes, all smoke and mirrors
I would suggest this investment would have happened anyway, but it is long term and in that long term is welcome but Starmer has less than 4 years and I doubt very little of it will be noticed by the public who are impatient for change
And on Ed Davey, I don't generally comment too much about him because I respect many of the Lib Dems who post on here, but if I am being honest I wasn't impressed with his stunts and on policy I know and understand his crusade for carers, not least because of his own family issues, and on Europe and WASPI women but I have no idea what his tax and spending policies are and look on him mainly as representing an English, largely south based party, which is reflected when it comes to Wales, and to a degree Scotland, where he struggles to be relevant
I'm surprised it's even 75,000 jobs if it's data centres.
And the problem with modern data centres is they consume stupid amounts of power that they need 24/7/365. So where are the gWs of power to keep them online coming from.
Don't they also need stupid amounts of water for cooling? Luckily there aren't any water shortages..
"Ms Porat said that the facility would be air-cooled rather than water-cooled and the heat "captured and redeployed to heat schools and homes"."
I LOL at the redeploying the heat to schools and homes. One of those ideas that works well in theory, but often not so well in practice - as so many eastern European citizens can attest. It'll also be really expensive to retrofit to existing schools and homes.
Talking of which:
"The council-owned heat network uses bore-holes in a field to supply ground source heat pumps; it is free for residents to sign up and about half of the homes in the village – 166 properties – were reported to have done so in 2021.
But as it stands only 100 have been connected to the network, at a cost of £14m."
It’s another one of those things that we treat as a complicated new idea that might work in theory but has insurmountable obstacles. But that is perfectly normal in much of Scandinavia.
Like our agonising over air source heat pumps which are already the norm in France, or the US headaches attempting to build one small high speed rail line in California.
Everyone likes Sir Ed - he really should be Prime Minister rather than some Old Alleynian.
Sljghtly more seriously, the problem with most politicians is the more people see them and get to know them the less they like them. It's almost as though politics, a trade where success is a result of popularity, is defined by unpopularity.
Governing a country means doing things not everybody likes and those who like it least shout about it the most as we see on here - who'd have thought?
You win elections by promising the moon on a stick. Especially in our current system, the temptation is always to promise a stickier moon than the others.
That's fine, until you enter office and have to admit a bit of a lack of moons. And sticks..
It would be good if someone could win power on a platform of "these are the specific painful things we will need to do", but I don't think you can. Cameron cane closer than many in 2010, but even he was vague on the consequences of percentage cuts.
Yet if you ask people, there's a constant refrain about wanting politicians to be "honest" with them.
The paradox is while honesty may be the best policy in life, it isn't in politics. You lie through your teeth to get elected and when you confront the voters with the truth, they don't like it and call you a liar but if you hadn't lied to them in the first place you wouldn't be in a position to be honest with them.
It's little surprise people of real ability stay away from politics - I would.
Agreed. As a country we could wipe out the debt if we upped income tax for a couple of years. No party would say that because they wouldn't get elected.
Debt is nearly 100% of annual GDP. To wipe it out in two years, tax income would need to rise from 40% of GDP to 90% of an unchanged GDP.
So in basic terms the major tax rates (income tax, NI, VAT, corporation tax, capital gains tax, council tax) would need to more than double, with no adverse effects on behaviour from those asked to pay 90% in income tax.
Everyone likes Sir Ed - he really should be Prime Minister rather than some Old Alleynian.
Sljghtly more seriously, the problem with most politicians is the more people see them and get to know them the less they like them. It's almost as though politics, a trade where success is a result of popularity, is defined by unpopularity.
Governing a country means doing things not everybody likes and those who like it least shout about it the most as we see on here - who'd have thought?
You win elections by promising the moon on a stick. Especially in our current system, the temptation is always to promise a stickier moon than the others.
That's fine, until you enter office and have to admit a bit of a lack of moons. And sticks..
It would be good if someone could win power on a platform of "these are the specific painful things we will need to do", but I don't think you can. Cameron cane closer than many in 2010, but even he was vague on the consequences of percentage cuts.
Yet if you ask people, there's a constant refrain about wanting politicians to be "honest" with them.
The paradox is while honesty may be the best policy in life, it isn't in politics. You lie through your teeth to get elected and when you confront the voters with the truth, they don't like it and call you a liar but if you hadn't lied to them in the first place you wouldn't be in a position to be honest with them.
It's little surprise people of real ability stay away from politics - I would.
Agreed. As a country we could wipe out the debt if we upped income tax for a couple of years. No party would say that because they wouldn't get elected.
Debt is nearly 100% of annual GDP. To wipe it out in two years, tax income would need to rise from 40% of GDP to 90% of an unchanged GDP.
So in basic terms the major tax rates (income tax, NI, VAT, corporation tax, capital gains tax, council tax) would need to more than double, with no adverse effects on behaviour from those asked to pay 90% in income tax.
"71% of the public have an unfavourable rating with Brits"
We hate each other ?
Yes, that seems to be the core problem!
Starmer has found a solution though. He sold UK plc to the Yanks for £150bn yesterday. Not a great price but he is not good at numbers. Now we will have to do what we are told, whether it is burning gas to feed AI data centres, abolishing the Digital tax or whatever. I think that America is allowing Parliament to remain as a decorative part of our constitution, which is a plus for political betting at least.
Good morning
The government are spinning the £150bn investment creating 75,000 jobs across the airwaves this morning
When I heard 75,000 jobs for £150bn I assumed it was misspoken as I would want a whole lot more jobs for that investment, but it appears it is over 10 years on projects that have to pass design, planning and environmental issues and data centres that will consume vast quantities of electricity and water that is not readily available
Add in the cost on consumers bills this seems much like the 1.5 million new homes, all smoke and mirrors
I would suggest this investment would have happened anyway, but it is long term and in that long term is welcome but Starmer has less than 4 years and I doubt very little of it will be noticed by the public who are impatient for change
And on Ed Davey, I don't generally comment too much about him because I respect many of the Lib Dems who post on here, but if I am being honest I wasn't impressed with his stunts and on policy I know and understand his crusade for carers, not least because of his own family issues, and on Europe and WASPI women but I have no idea what his tax and spending policies are and look on him mainly as representing an English, largely south based party, which is reflected when it comes to Wales, and to a degree Scotland, where he struggles to be relevant
I'm surprised it's even 75,000 jobs if it's data centres.
And the problem with modern data centres is they consume stupid amounts of power that they need 24/7/365. So where are the gWs of power to keep them online coming from.
Don't they also need stupid amounts of water for cooling? Luckily there aren't any water shortages..
Just use the Trent, erm, I see what you mean ...
Are they going to build them on Rannoch Moor? No, not enough nice bistros for tech bros.
Most data centres now used closed loop water cooling. Think air conditioning on a vast scale.
That’s why they don’t have giant cooling towers belching clouds.
Good - doesn't surprise me given their Usonian origins.
Nigel Farage is the most popular party leader, but also the second-most unpopular (based on the chart in the header). You know who else was Marmite and how many general elections she won?
And we have independent confirmation of Farage's popularity in his declared earnings of tens of thousands a month from recording personal greetings – remember Up the Ra!
Reportedly it is closer to hundreds of thousands:
Mr Farage's register of interests revealed that he made £27,342 from the service in December (2024), almost double the amount he has previously registered for a single month.
Cameo is good outside income. I can’t see there is a conflict / providing a harmless service to his fans and getting well paid. I’d take £81k for a weekend’s work.
Everyone likes Sir Ed - he really should be Prime Minister rather than some Old Alleynian.
Sljghtly more seriously, the problem with most politicians is the more people see them and get to know them the less they like them. It's almost as though politics, a trade where success is a result of popularity, is defined by unpopularity.
Governing a country means doing things not everybody likes and those who like it least shout about it the most as we see on here - who'd have thought?
You win elections by promising the moon on a stick. Especially in our current system, the temptation is always to promise a stickier moon than the others.
That's fine, until you enter office and have to admit a bit of a lack of moons. And sticks..
It would be good if someone could win power on a platform of "these are the specific painful things we will need to do", but I don't think you can. Cameron cane closer than many in 2010, but even he was vague on the consequences of percentage cuts.
Yet if you ask people, there's a constant refrain about wanting politicians to be "honest" with them.
The paradox is while honesty may be the best policy in life, it isn't in politics. You lie through your teeth to get elected and when you confront the voters with the truth, they don't like it and call you a liar but if you hadn't lied to them in the first place you wouldn't be in a position to be honest with them.
It's little surprise people of real ability stay away from politics - I would.
Agreed. As a country we could wipe out the debt if we upped income tax for a couple of years. No party would say that because they wouldn't get elected.
Debt is nearly 100% of annual GDP. To wipe it out in two years, tax income would need to rise from 40% of GDP to 90% of an unchanged GDP.
So in basic terms the major tax rates (income tax, NI, VAT, corporation tax, capital gains tax, council tax) would need to more than double, with no adverse effects on behaviour from those asked to pay 90% in income tax.
"71% of the public have an unfavourable rating with Brits"
We hate each other ?
Yes, that seems to be the core problem!
Starmer has found a solution though. He sold UK plc to the Yanks for £150bn yesterday. Not a great price but he is not good at numbers. Now we will have to do what we are told, whether it is burning gas to feed AI data centres, abolishing the Digital tax or whatever. I think that America is allowing Parliament to remain as a decorative part of our constitution, which is a plus for political betting at least.
Good morning
The government are spinning the £150bn investment creating 75,000 jobs across the airwaves this morning
When I heard 75,000 jobs for £150bn I assumed it was misspoken as I would want a whole lot more jobs for that investment, but it appears it is over 10 years on projects that have to pass design, planning and environmental issues and data centres that will consume vast quantities of electricity and water that is not readily available
Add in the cost on consumers bills this seems much like the 1.5 million new homes, all smoke and mirrors
I would suggest this investment would have happened anyway, but it is long term and in that long term is welcome but Starmer has less than 4 years and I doubt very little of it will be noticed by the public who are impatient for change
And on Ed Davey, I don't generally comment too much about him because I respect many of the Lib Dems who post on here, but if I am being honest I wasn't impressed with his stunts and on policy I know and understand his crusade for carers, not least because of his own family issues, and on Europe and WASPI women but I have no idea what his tax and spending policies are and look on him mainly as representing an English, largely south based party, which is reflected when it comes to Wales, and to a degree Scotland, where he struggles to be relevant
I'm surprised it's even 75,000 jobs if it's data centres.
And the problem with modern data centres is they consume stupid amounts of power that they need 24/7/365. So where are the gWs of power to keep them online coming from.
Don't they also need stupid amounts of water for cooling? Luckily there aren't any water shortages..
Apparently and nobody has answered how it is supplied and where from
Which is why, for instance, the Scottish Government should have been building datacentres up where they give away water and electricity free in cornflakes packets, and where the climate means less cooling is needed in the first place.
Governments don't really build data centres, but the the Scotiish government is trying to encourage business to do so.
'Ravenscraig is one of five AI-ready sites the developer is progressing across Scotland's central belt.'
Davey is a lot smarter than people give him credit for being. He's always on the side of the angels (particularly Gaza) without screaming it from the rooftops. A quiet protest against it with the Trump visit that got him plenty of coverage. He's becoming everyone's safe and decent choice. I too wish we had a PM who could be 'nice'
Davey is "everyone's safe and decent choice", but only getting 12-15% in the opinion polls. The LDs are failing to capitalise on Labour and Tory woes.
I don't detest the LibDems at all, but to attract more people they need to take some risks and adopt a clear profile.
Everyone likes Sir Ed - he really should be Prime Minister rather than some Old Alleynian.
Sljghtly more seriously, the problem with most politicians is the more people see them and get to know them the less they like them. It's almost as though politics, a trade where success is a result of popularity, is defined by unpopularity.
Governing a country means doing things not everybody likes and those who like it least shout about it the most as we see on here - who'd have thought?
You win elections by promising the moon on a stick. Especially in our current system, the temptation is always to promise a stickier moon than the others.
That's fine, until you enter office and have to admit a bit of a lack of moons. And sticks..
It would be good if someone could win power on a platform of "these are the specific painful things we will need to do", but I don't think you can. Cameron cane closer than many in 2010, but even he was vague on the consequences of percentage cuts.
And literally the one time I think a Government could have admitted the lack of moons was in July - September last year and Starmer / Reeves utterly blew that one chance.
Which means they are now going suffer a death by a 1000 small cuts, each of which drains away a small bit of support until the flood gates truly open.
I agreed with the IFS take that the first budget was always going to be a bit of tinkering and any significant reforms would happen in this upcoming budget. So last chance saloon.
(You could double council tax and largely wipe out the structural deficit - IT is not the only option).
Of course. That's not the solution, that's the problem - finding an extra £50 billion pa. The government and every party balks at reducing the increase in pensions by a couple of hundred a year or less than a fiver a week and so won't touch the triple lock.
To double council tax is roughly to increase the tax of a household by over £2000 pa. That is the stuff of poll tax revolts. TME is currently running at about £20,000 per head, over £40,000 per household. Opinion is highly sensitive to tiny increases let alone massive ones.
Don't get me wrong - I don't think doubling council tax is remotely politically possible. It's just when I look at the tax and spending options that are available it's about the best one, along with freezing hospital spending and binning the triple lock/WFP.
What's mad is you could double council tax to 1% and apply it as flat percentage and that would be a cut for most households. It's that unfair at the moment.
Why does fairness come into it?
Council tax is about funding local activities. Income redistribution should be addressed at a national level.
The gov't doesn't get much right but the announcement of inward investment by Nvidia and Microsoft is good news.
I would be 10 times better if it was British companies. Someone in government had better be questioning the wisdom of out technological dependency on the US.
Only today Huawei set out the roadmap for their computing systems, and it looks very likely that China will be able to stick two fingers up to Trump and his threats in the not too distant future. I would guess that by about 2030 or so it will be obvious to most that China is in the lead and independent.
Your regular reminder that we don’t do taking things to production.
Instead we sweat the assets to death - see Amstrad. See also the anger among “experts” at Arm “wasting” money on R&D.
For £1 billion a year we could have
For a few hundred million a year
And have a rocket that makes Ariane 6 look like a firework.
There’s no magic there. Just telling the usual suspects to fuck off about selling any technology development. And telling them no about wetting their beaks to the tune of 10s of billions.
I think the Greens will take the Brighton/Hove ward from Labour Newham Indies will take the Newham ward I think Labour will hold on in Cardiff, I think its more sticky for them than anywhere else in Wales LDs will fancy taking Leamington from Labour, and probably will Greens should hold Kenilworth ok but the Tories will have thrown the kitchen sink at it and might close the gap
I think you could well be right. Odd that there are five bye-elections, four of them Labour defences though.
And Good Morning to one and all.
Theres a good set next week of 5 too
Lab defence in Thetford in Truss old seat of SW Norfolk on Weds, and 4 on the Thursday 2 x Highland - SNP defence and a Scots Green elected last time unopposed so free for all! Green defence in Ashford Green defence in Burnhams neck of the woods Wythenshaw/Sale
Tain ward is interesting, an older SNP councillor has resigned, third by election in the seat since 2022
I wonder if the Lib Dems will fancy their chances, though Highland wards still have strong showings by independents
"71% of the public have an unfavourable rating with Brits"
We hate each other ?
Yes, that seems to be the core problem!
Starmer has found a solution though. He sold UK plc to the Yanks for £150bn yesterday. Not a great price but he is not good at numbers. Now we will have to do what we are told, whether it is burning gas to feed AI data centres, abolishing the Digital tax or whatever. I think that America is allowing Parliament to remain as a decorative part of our constitution, which is a plus for political betting at least.
Good morning
The government are spinning the £150bn investment creating 75,000 jobs across the airwaves this morning
When I heard 75,000 jobs for £150bn I assumed it was misspoken as I would want a whole lot more jobs for that investment, but it appears it is over 10 years on projects that have to pass design, planning and environmental issues and data centres that will consume vast quantities of electricity and water that is not readily available
Add in the cost on consumers bills this seems much like the 1.5 million new homes, all smoke and mirrors
I would suggest this investment would have happened anyway, but it is long term and in that long term is welcome but Starmer has less than 4 years and I doubt very little of it will be noticed by the public who are impatient for change
And on Ed Davey, I don't generally comment too much about him because I respect many of the Lib Dems who post on here, but if I am being honest I wasn't impressed with his stunts and on policy I know and understand his crusade for carers, not least because of his own family issues, and on Europe and WASPI women but I have no idea what his tax and spending policies are and look on him mainly as representing an English, largely south based party, which is reflected when it comes to Wales, and to a degree Scotland, where he struggles to be relevant
I'm surprised it's even 75,000 jobs if it's data centres.
And the problem with modern data centres is they consume stupid amounts of power that they need 24/7/365. So where are the gWs of power to keep them online coming from.
Don't they also need stupid amounts of water for cooling? Luckily there aren't any water shortages..
"Ms Porat said that the facility would be air-cooled rather than water-cooled and the heat "captured and redeployed to heat schools and homes"."
I LOL at the redeploying the heat to schools and homes. One of those ideas that works well in theory, but often not so well in practice - as so many eastern European citizens can attest. It'll also be really expensive to retrofit to existing schools and homes.
Talking of which:
"The council-owned heat network uses bore-holes in a field to supply ground source heat pumps; it is free for residents to sign up and about half of the homes in the village – 166 properties – were reported to have done so in 2021.
But as it stands only 100 have been connected to the network, at a cost of £14m."
An existing village (with potentially long runs to some properties) seems an odd choice. I can see the appeal versus oil heating, but it would make a lot more sense* to do this kind of thing in new housing estates where you're already digging trenches for utilities and you could fit this rather than gas mains, for example, ensure every house is connected to minimise pipe run per house and the density is likely much higher. Or, more efficiently still, for new developments of flats.
For an existing village, stand alone heat pumps at each property would seem to make more sense.
*how much sense depends on economies of scale in heat pumps versus losses through pipe runs - presumably the heat pumps need to be outputting higher heat of water compared to a newbuild domestic system initially to compensate for losses in the pipework to houses. In this example, the properties likely also need either high temperature water for heating or extensive retrofitting of insulation and larger radiators etc
"71% of the public have an unfavourable rating with Brits"
We hate each other ?
Yes, that seems to be the core problem!
Starmer has found a solution though. He sold UK plc to the Yanks for £150bn yesterday. Not a great price but he is not good at numbers. Now we will have to do what we are told, whether it is burning gas to feed AI data centres, abolishing the Digital tax or whatever. I think that America is allowing Parliament to remain as a decorative part of our constitution, which is a plus for political betting at least.
They are not paying us £150bn. The actual price is a lot lower than that.
They are spending £150bn on their own assets over here - which will have quite large consequences for our electricity grid and water supplies (something that has yet to be properly analysed). The investment is said to create around 7,500 Jons in the Umm which gives some idea of the likely benefits to us.
Low as is my opinion of Nick Clegg, his comments on this investment might be closer to the mark than Starmer's.
The gov't doesn't get much right but the announcement of inward investment by Nvidia and Microsoft is good news.
Indeed so, but I have a feeling there will be a devil in the detail somewhere, for example an expected price of electricity that’s a million miles away from Ed Miliband’s vision of the UK having the world’s most expensive energy.
A massive £billions data centre needs a massive £billions power station next door to it these days.
Actually the demand from these developments might well leave UK consumers with even higher energy costs.
The gov't doesn't get much right but the announcement of inward investment by Nvidia and Microsoft is good news.
Indeed so, but I have a feeling there will be a devil in the detail somewhere, for example an expected price of electricity that’s a million miles away from Ed Miliband’s vision of the UK having the world’s most expensive energy.
A massive £billions data centre needs a massive £billions power station next door to it these days.
The greater risk is we do or say something to piss off Donald Trump - eg we stop crawling up his arse for a day or two - and the whole thing gets pulled in a fit of pique.
"71% of the public have an unfavourable rating with Brits"
We hate each other ?
Yes, that seems to be the core problem!
Starmer has found a solution though. He sold UK plc to the Yanks for £150bn yesterday. Not a great price but he is not good at numbers. Now we will have to do what we are told, whether it is burning gas to feed AI data centres, abolishing the Digital tax or whatever. I think that America is allowing Parliament to remain as a decorative part of our constitution, which is a plus for political betting at least.
Good morning
The government are spinning the £150bn investment creating 75,000 jobs across the airwaves this morning
When I heard 75,000 jobs for £150bn I assumed it was misspoken as I would want a whole lot more jobs for that investment, but it appears it is over 10 years on projects that have to pass design, planning and environmental issues and data centres that will consume vast quantities of electricity and water that is not readily available
Add in the cost on consumers bills this seems much like the 1.5 million new homes, all smoke and mirrors
I would suggest this investment would have happened anyway, but it is long term and in that long term is welcome but Starmer has less than 4 years and I doubt very little of it will be noticed by the public who are impatient for change
And on Ed Davey, I don't generally comment too much about him because I respect many of the Lib Dems who post on here, but if I am being honest I wasn't impressed with his stunts and on policy I know and understand his crusade for carers, not least because of his own family issues, and on Europe and WASPI women but I have no idea what his tax and spending policies are and look on him mainly as representing an English, largely south based party, which is reflected when it comes to Wales, and to a degree Scotland, where he struggles to be relevant
I'm surprised it's even 75,000 jobs if it's data centres.
And the problem with modern data centres is they consume stupid amounts of power that they need 24/7/365. So where are the gWs of power to keep them online coming from.
Don't they also need stupid amounts of water for cooling? Luckily there aren't any water shortages..
"Ms Porat said that the facility would be air-cooled rather than water-cooled and the heat "captured and redeployed to heat schools and homes"."
I LOL at the redeploying the heat to schools and homes. One of those ideas that works well in theory, but often not so well in practice - as so many eastern European citizens can attest. It'll also be really expensive to retrofit to existing schools and homes.
Talking of which:
"The council-owned heat network uses bore-holes in a field to supply ground source heat pumps; it is free for residents to sign up and about half of the homes in the village – 166 properties – were reported to have done so in 2021.
But as it stands only 100 have been connected to the network, at a cost of £14m."
An existing village (with potentially long runs to some properties) seems an odd choice. I can see the appeal versus oil heating, but it would make a lot more sense* to do this kind of thing in new housing estates where you're already digging trenches for utilities and you could fit this rather than gas mains, for example, ensure every house is connected to minimise pipe run per house and the density is likely much higher. Or, more efficiently still, for new developments of flats.
For an existing village, stand alone heat pumps at each property would seem to make more sense.
*how much sense depends on economies of scale in heat pumps versus losses through pipe runs - presumably the heat pumps need to be outputting higher heat of water compared to a newbuild domestic system initially to compensate for losses in the pipework to houses. In this example, the properties likely also need either high temperature water for heating or extensive retrofitting of insulation and larger radiators etc
Or do what Iceland did and create a hot lagoon from the outflow, turn it into a chic tourist attraction and rake in the money.
"71% of the public have an unfavourable rating with Brits"
We hate each other ?
Yes, that seems to be the core problem!
Starmer has found a solution though. He sold UK plc to the Yanks for £150bn yesterday. Not a great price but he is not good at numbers. Now we will have to do what we are told, whether it is burning gas to feed AI data centres, abolishing the Digital tax or whatever. I think that America is allowing Parliament to remain as a decorative part of our constitution, which is a plus for political betting at least.
It is heinous what the revolting scrote has done and is doing to our country.
I think the Greens will take the Brighton/Hove ward from Labour Newham Indies will take the Newham ward I think Labour will hold on in Cardiff, I think its more sticky for them than anywhere else in Wales LDs will fancy taking Leamington from Labour, and probably will Greens should hold Kenilworth ok but the Tories will have thrown the kitchen sink at it and might close the gap
I think you could well be right. Odd that there are five bye-elections, four of them Labour defences though.
And Good Morning to one and all.
Theres a good set next week of 5 too
Lab defence in Thetford in Truss old seat of SW Norfolk on Weds, and 4 on the Thursday 2 x Highland - SNP defence and a Scots Green elected last time unopposed so free for all! Green defence in Ashford Green defence in Burnhams neck of the woods Wythenshaw/Sale
Tain ward is interesting, an older SNP councillor has resigned, third by election in the seat since 2022
I wonder if the Lib Dems will fancy their chances, though Highland wards still have strong showings by independents
Highland does seen a lot more variable in output cycle to cycle
Nigel Farage is the most popular party leader, but also the second-most unpopular (based on the chart in the header). You know who else was Marmite and how many general elections she won?
And we have independent confirmation of Farage's popularity in his declared earnings of tens of thousands a month from recording personal greetings – remember Up the Ra!
Reportedly it is closer to hundreds of thousands:
Mr Farage's register of interests revealed that he made £27,342 from the service in December (2024), almost double the amount he has previously registered for a single month.
Cameo is good outside income. I can’t see there is a conflict / providing a harmless service to his fans and getting well paid. I’d take £81k for a weekend’s work.
"71% of the public have an unfavourable rating with Brits"
We hate each other ?
Yes, that seems to be the core problem!
Starmer has found a solution though. He sold UK plc to the Yanks for £150bn yesterday. Not a great price but he is not good at numbers. Now we will have to do what we are told, whether it is burning gas to feed AI data centres, abolishing the Digital tax or whatever. I think that America is allowing Parliament to remain as a decorative part of our constitution, which is a plus for political betting at least.
Good morning
The government are spinning the £150bn investment creating 75,000 jobs across the airwaves this morning
When I heard 75,000 jobs for £150bn I assumed it was misspoken as I would want a whole lot more jobs for that investment, but it appears it is over 10 years on projects that have to pass design, planning and environmental issues and data centres that will consume vast quantities of electricity and water that is not readily available
Add in the cost on consumers bills this seems much like the 1.5 million new homes, all smoke and mirrors
I would suggest this investment would have happened anyway, but it is long term and in that long term is welcome but Starmer has less than 4 years and I doubt very little of it will be noticed by the public who are impatient for change
And on Ed Davey, I don't generally comment too much about him because I respect many of the Lib Dems who post on here, but if I am being honest I wasn't impressed with his stunts and on policy I know and understand his crusade for carers, not least because of his own family issues, and on Europe and WASPI women but I have no idea what his tax and spending policies are and look on him mainly as representing an English, largely south based party, which is reflected when it comes to Wales, and to a degree Scotland, where he struggles to be relevant
I'm surprised it's even 75,000 jobs if it's data centres.
And the problem with modern data centres is they consume stupid amounts of power that they need 24/7/365. So where are the gWs of power to keep them online coming from.
Don't they also need stupid amounts of water for cooling? Luckily there aren't any water shortages..
There are technical approaches to avoid that, which is a matter of policy and planning conditions.
Davey is a lot smarter than people give him credit for being. He's always on the side of the angels (particularly Gaza) without screaming it from the rooftops. A quiet protest against it with the Trump visit that got him plenty of coverage. He's becoming everyone's safe and decent choice. I too wish we had a PM who could be 'nice'
Davey is "everyone's safe and decent choice", but only getting 12-15% in the opinion polls. The LDs are failing to capitalise on Labour and Tory woes.
I don't detest the LibDems at all, but to attract more people they need to take some risks and adopt a clear profile.
That is very hard to achieve. The media ignore them generally. They are not going to come out with stuff that is extreme and might get attention as that would not be liberal. Sometimes stuff does happen that gets attention, like Iraq. Strong areas like electoral reform are of no interest to most people.
As we have seen sadly the best way of getting the attention of the media and public seems to be to do a bungee jump.
Can you suggest anything that might work? Rejoin the EU might, but realistically it isn't practical in the short term.
Your regular reminder that we don’t do taking things to production.
Instead we sweat the assets to death - see Amstrad. See also the anger among “experts” at Arm “wasting” money on R&D.
For £1 billion a year we could have
For a few hundred million a year
And have a rocket that makes Ariane 6 look like a firework.
There’s no magic there. Just telling the usual suspects to fuck off about selling any technology development. And telling them no about wetting their beaks to the tune of 10s of billions.
But instead we have a billion reasons why not.
It's nuts. We celebrate basically letting the US use our land, power, and water, to sell us their services. Meanwhile just one Chinese company (admittedly a very large one) is building an entire independent computing stack. There will be a tsunami of Chinese tech over the next 5-10 years, and I suspect that for most countries it will be the preferred choice.
Nigel Farage is the most popular party leader, but also the second-most unpopular (based on the chart in the header). You know who else was Marmite and how many general elections she won?
And we have independent confirmation of Farage's popularity in his declared earnings of tens of thousands a month from recording personal greetings – remember Up the Ra!
Reportedly it is closer to hundreds of thousands:
Mr Farage's register of interests revealed that he made £27,342 from the service in December (2024), almost double the amount he has previously registered for a single month.
Cameo is good outside income. I can’t see there is a conflict / providing a harmless service to his fans and getting well paid. I’d take £81k for a weekend’s work.
That's fair comment.
But it depends on reporting etc. his ability to do three or four jobs whilst attending to his constituents in Clacton, and has potential optics problems for Reform UK.
A point which today's earlier discussion on 'cancellation' didn't address at all, was the threats to shut down entire organisations in response to what ought to be protected speech.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr: "There's actions we can take on licensed broadcasters. It's long past the time that...Comcast and Disney say 'We're not gonna run Kimmel anymore...because we licensed broadcasters are running the possibly of fines or licensed revocation from the FCC.'" https://x.com/BulwarkOnline/status/1968392506711613526
"They can just all move to YouTube" really doesn't answer that.
The Jimmy kimmel Windsor Event final prog is OK but a notable graphic towards the end featuring Dash Patel reminiscent of the Monty Python intro is worth watching
"71% of the public have an unfavourable rating with Brits"
We hate each other ?
Yes, that seems to be the core problem!
Starmer has found a solution though. He sold UK plc to the Yanks for £150bn yesterday. Not a great price but he is not good at numbers. Now we will have to do what we are told, whether it is burning gas to feed AI data centres, abolishing the Digital tax or whatever. I think that America is allowing Parliament to remain as a decorative part of our constitution, which is a plus for political betting at least.
Good morning
The government are spinning the £150bn investment creating 75,000 jobs across the airwaves this morning
When I heard 75,000 jobs for £150bn I assumed it was misspoken as I would want a whole lot more jobs for that investment, but it appears it is over 10 years on projects that have to pass design, planning and environmental issues and data centres that will consume vast quantities of electricity and water that is not readily available
Add in the cost on consumers bills this seems much like the 1.5 million new homes, all smoke and mirrors
I would suggest this investment would have happened anyway, but it is long term and in that long term is welcome but Starmer has less than 4 years and I doubt very little of it will be noticed by the public who are impatient for change
And on Ed Davey, I don't generally comment too much about him because I respect many of the Lib Dems who post on here, but if I am being honest I wasn't impressed with his stunts and on policy I know and understand his crusade for carers, not least because of his own family issues, and on Europe and WASPI women but I have no idea what his tax and spending policies are and look on him mainly as representing an English, largely south based party, which is reflected when it comes to Wales, and to a degree Scotland, where he struggles to be relevant
I'm surprised it's even 75,000 jobs if it's data centres.
And the problem with modern data centres is they consume stupid amounts of power that they need 24/7/365. So where are the gWs of power to keep them online coming from.
Don't they also need stupid amounts of water for cooling? Luckily there aren't any water shortages..
"Ms Porat said that the facility would be air-cooled rather than water-cooled and the heat "captured and redeployed to heat schools and homes"."
I LOL at the redeploying the heat to schools and homes. One of those ideas that works well in theory, but often not so well in practice - as so many eastern European citizens can attest. It'll also be really expensive to retrofit to existing schools and homes.
Talking of which:
"The council-owned heat network uses bore-holes in a field to supply ground source heat pumps; it is free for residents to sign up and about half of the homes in the village – 166 properties – were reported to have done so in 2021.
But as it stands only 100 have been connected to the network, at a cost of £14m."
An existing village (with potentially long runs to some properties) seems an odd choice. I can see the appeal versus oil heating, but it would make a lot more sense* to do this kind of thing in new housing estates where you're already digging trenches for utilities and you could fit this rather than gas mains, for example, ensure every house is connected to minimise pipe run per house and the density is likely much higher. Or, more efficiently still, for new developments of flats.
For an existing village, stand alone heat pumps at each property would seem to make more sense.
*how much sense depends on economies of scale in heat pumps versus losses through pipe runs - presumably the heat pumps need to be outputting higher heat of water compared to a newbuild domestic system initially to compensate for losses in the pipework to houses. In this example, the properties likely also need either high temperature water for heating or extensive retrofitting of insulation and larger radiators etc
Or do what Iceland did and create a hot lagoon from the outflow, turn it into a chic tourist attraction and rake in the money.
Scotland should totally get on that: 'the mocha loch'
With apologies for the lack of similarity between the ch in mocha and loch, but most tourists would probably pronounce them similarly.
The gov't doesn't get much right but the announcement of inward investment by Nvidia and Microsoft is good news.
I would be 10 times better if it was British companies. Someone in government had better be questioning the wisdom of out technological dependency on the US.
Only today Huawei set out the roadmap for their computing systems, and it looks very likely that China will be able to stick two fingers up to Trump and his threats in the not too distant future. I would guess that by about 2030 or so it will be obvious to most that China is in the lead and independent.
Everyone likes Sir Ed - he really should be Prime Minister rather than some Old Alleynian.
Sljghtly more seriously, the problem with most politicians is the more people see them and get to know them the less they like them. It's almost as though politics, a trade where success is a result of popularity, is defined by unpopularity.
Governing a country means doing things not everybody likes and those who like it least shout about it the most as we see on here - who'd have thought?
You win elections by promising the moon on a stick. Especially in our current system, the temptation is always to promise a stickier moon than the others.
That's fine, until you enter office and have to admit a bit of a lack of moons. And sticks..
It would be good if someone could win power on a platform of "these are the specific painful things we will need to do", but I don't think you can. Cameron cane closer than many in 2010, but even he was vague on the consequences of percentage cuts.
Yet if you ask people, there's a constant refrain about wanting politicians to be "honest" with them.
The paradox is while honesty may be the best policy in life, it isn't in politics. You lie through your teeth to get elected and when you confront the voters with the truth, they don't like it and call you a liar but if you hadn't lied to them in the first place you wouldn't be in a position to be honest with them.
It's little surprise people of real ability stay away from politics - I would.
Agreed. As a country we could wipe out the debt if we upped income tax for a couple of years. No party would say that because they wouldn't get elected.
Debt is nearly 100% of annual GDP. To wipe it out in two years, tax income would need to rise from 40% of GDP to 90% of an unchanged GDP.
So in basic terms the major tax rates (income tax, NI, VAT, corporation tax, capital gains tax, council tax) would need to more than double, with no adverse effects on behaviour from those asked to pay 90% in income tax.
Total tax is around 36% of GDP. So the major taxes would more likely have to triple…
Ah yes of course, State spending is around 40% but tax income closer to 36% - which is why we’re in this mess in the first place!
I still think the govt might have got away with say a 2-3 point increase in the headline income tax rates, so long as they’d done it last year and made clear it was to last only the length of this Parliament.
Instead they did all that annoying tinkering, which cost a lot of political capital but raised very little by way of actual revenue.
Your regular reminder that we don’t do taking things to production.
Instead we sweat the assets to death - see Amstrad. See also the anger among “experts” at Arm “wasting” money on R&D.
For £1 billion a year we could have
For a few hundred million a year
And have a rocket that makes Ariane 6 look like a firework.
There’s no magic there. Just telling the usual suspects to fuck off about selling any technology development. And telling them no about wetting their beaks to the tune of 10s of billions.
But instead we have a billion reasons why not.
It's nuts. We celebrate basically letting the US use our land, power, and water, to sell us their services. Meanwhile just one Chinese company (admittedly a very large one) is building an entire independent computing stack. There will be a tsunami of Chinese tech over the next 5-10 years, and I suspect that for most countries it will be the preferred choice.
We are effectively letting them build the utilities of the next couple of decade here. And they will extract a large price for that, just as the overseas owners of today's utilities do.
Your regular reminder that we don’t do taking things to production.
Instead we sweat the assets to death - see Amstrad. See also the anger among “experts” at Arm “wasting” money on R&D.
For £1 billion a year we could have
For a few hundred million a year
And have a rocket that makes Ariane 6 look like a firework.
There’s no magic there. Just telling the usual suspects to fuck off about selling any technology development. And telling them no about wetting their beaks to the tune of 10s of billions.
But instead we have a billion reasons why not.
It's nuts. We celebrate basically letting the US use our land, power, and water, to sell us their services. Meanwhile just one Chinese company (admittedly a very large one) is building an entire independent computing stack. There will be a tsunami of Chinese tech over the next 5-10 years, and I suspect that for most countries it will be the preferred choice.
By then the US mayhave a worse record on freedom and human rights than China too.
"71% of the public have an unfavourable rating with Brits"
We hate each other ?
Yes, that seems to be the core problem!
Starmer has found a solution though. He sold UK plc to the Yanks for £150bn yesterday. Not a great price but he is not good at numbers. Now we will have to do what we are told, whether it is burning gas to feed AI data centres, abolishing the Digital tax or whatever. I think that America is allowing Parliament to remain as a decorative part of our constitution, which is a plus for political betting at least.
Good morning
The government are spinning the £150bn investment creating 75,000 jobs across the airwaves this morning
When I heard 75,000 jobs for £150bn I assumed it was misspoken as I would want a whole lot more jobs for that investment, but it appears it is over 10 years on projects that have to pass design, planning and environmental issues and data centres that will consume vast quantities of electricity and water that is not readily available
Add in the cost on consumers bills this seems much like the 1.5 million new homes, all smoke and mirrors
I would suggest this investment would have happened anyway, but it is long term and in that long term is welcome but Starmer has less than 4 years and I doubt very little of it will be noticed by the public who are impatient for change
And on Ed Davey, I don't generally comment too much about him because I respect many of the Lib Dems who post on here, but if I am being honest I wasn't impressed with his stunts and on policy I know and understand his crusade for carers, not least because of his own family issues, and on Europe and WASPI women but I have no idea what his tax and spending policies are and look on him mainly as representing an English, largely south based party, which is reflected when it comes to Wales, and to a degree Scotland, where he struggles to be relevant
I'm surprised it's even 75,000 jobs if it's data centres.
And the problem with modern data centres is they consume stupid amounts of power that they need 24/7/365. So where are the gWs of power to keep them online coming from.
Don't they also need stupid amounts of water for cooling? Luckily there aren't any water shortages..
Just use the Trent, erm, I see what you mean ...
Are they going to build them on Rannoch Moor? No, not enough nice bistros for tech bros.
Most data centres now used closed loop water cooling. Think air conditioning on a vast scale.
That’s why they don’t have giant cooling towers belching clouds.
Good - doesn't surprise me given their Usonian origins.
Presumably air-cooling wouldn't be closed loop, so how would they capture that heat?
Nigel Farage is the most popular party leader, but also the second-most unpopular (based on the chart in the header). You know who else was Marmite and how many general elections she won?
And we have independent confirmation of Farage's popularity in his declared earnings of tens of thousands a month from recording personal greetings – remember Up the Ra!
Reportedly it is closer to hundreds of thousands:
Mr Farage's register of interests revealed that he made £27,342 from the service in December (2024), almost double the amount he has previously registered for a single month.
Isn't that sort of service a really good way of laundering money?
You mean laundering contributions?
And just like the other gigs MPs do - speeches, journalism, books, non-executive directorships etc - goes round rules on contributions. Especially foreign contributions.
Cameo seems a hard way to launder money, presumably the messages have to be recorded and are relatively low £/message. A series of "limited edition" Nigel Farage NFTs would be the twin-turbo donation laundering option, assuming that the authorities haven't twigged NFTs.
Your regular reminder that we don’t do taking things to production.
Instead we sweat the assets to death - see Amstrad. See also the anger among “experts” at Arm “wasting” money on R&D.
For £1 billion a year we could have
For a few hundred million a year
And have a rocket that makes Ariane 6 look like a firework.
There’s no magic there. Just telling the usual suspects to fuck off about selling any technology development. And telling them no about wetting their beaks to the tune of 10s of billions.
But instead we have a billion reasons why not.
It's nuts. We celebrate basically letting the US use our land, power, and water, to sell us their services. Meanwhile just one Chinese company (admittedly a very large one) is building an entire independent computing stack. There will be a tsunami of Chinese tech over the next 5-10 years, and I suspect that for most countries it will be the preferred choice.
Or we could do what the Chinese *do*
Take the investment. Build the infrastructure with joy.
Take on the supply & technology chain, piece by piece.
End up with parallel data centres, running U.K. owned code on U.K. chips. In about 25 years.
Your regular reminder that we don’t do taking things to production.
Instead we sweat the assets to death - see Amstrad. See also the anger among “experts” at Arm “wasting” money on R&D.
For £1 billion a year we could have
For a few hundred million a year
And have a rocket that makes Ariane 6 look like a firework.
There’s no magic there. Just telling the usual suspects to fuck off about selling any technology development. And telling them no about wetting their beaks to the tune of 10s of billions.
But instead we have a billion reasons why not.
It's nuts. We celebrate basically letting the US use our land, power, and water, to sell us their services. Meanwhile just one Chinese company (admittedly a very large one) is building an entire independent computing stack. There will be a tsunami of Chinese tech over the next 5-10 years, and I suspect that for most countries it will be the preferred choice.
We are effectively letting them build the utilities of the next couple of decade here. And they will extract a large price for that, just as the overseas owners of today's utilities do.
I'm not sure what the alternative to kissing up to the yanks is, practically speaking. We could have chosen to build a counterweight among like minded European democracies but we've closed that door. As a result we have made ourselves wholly dependent on the US, just at the point that that country is transforming itself into a fascist state. Great choice.
The Jimmy kimmel Windsor Event final prog is OK but a notable graphic towards the end featuring Dash Patel reminiscent of the Monty Python intro is worth watching
A point which today's earlier discussion on 'cancellation' didn't address at all, was the threats to shut down entire organisations in response to what ought to be protected speech.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr: "There's actions we can take on licensed broadcasters. It's long past the time that...Comcast and Disney say 'We're not gonna run Kimmel anymore...because we licensed broadcasters are running the possibly of fines or licensed revocation from the FCC.'" https://x.com/BulwarkOnline/status/1968392506711613526
"They can just all move to YouTube" really doesn't answer that.
I believe the UK has banned broadcasters whose govts it doesn’t like and people here, on PB as well as in the wider UK, have wanted the same for GB News as well.
Davey is a lot smarter than people give him credit for being. He's always on the side of the angels (particularly Gaza) without screaming it from the rooftops. A quiet protest against it with the Trump visit that got him plenty of coverage. He's becoming everyone's safe and decent choice. I too wish we had a PM who could be 'nice'
Davey is "everyone's safe and decent choice", but only getting 12-15% in the opinion polls. The LDs are failing to capitalise on Labour and Tory woes.
I don't detest the LibDems at all, but to attract more people they need to take some risks and adopt a clear profile.
That is very hard to achieve. The media ignore them generally. They are not going to come out with stuff that is extreme and might get attention as that would not be liberal. Sometimes stuff does happen that gets attention, like Iraq. Strong areas like electoral reform are of no interest to most people.
As we have seen sadly the best way of getting the attention of the media and public seems to be to do a bungee jump.
Can you suggest anything that might work? Rejoin the EU might, but realistically it isn't practical in the short term.
Something big and radical on tax, for example:
Abolish NI and roll into income tax and corporation tax
Get rid of the cliff edges - move the bands and rates as needed to compensate, but lose all the tapers
Introduce a wealth/property tax and abolish council tax
Abolish inheritance tax, but tax inheritors, either as income tax or a lifetime/yearly tax-free gift allowance
Off the top of my head and some likely stupid ideas, but tearing up the tax system and starting again would be radical, big news and could also be rooted in liberal principles. Full of risk too, but a good revision should be sellable.
Davey is a lot smarter than people give him credit for being. He's always on the side of the angels (particularly Gaza) without screaming it from the rooftops. A quiet protest against it with the Trump visit that got him plenty of coverage. He's becoming everyone's safe and decent choice. I too wish we had a PM who could be 'nice'
Davey is "everyone's safe and decent choice", but only getting 12-15% in the opinion polls. The LDs are failing to capitalise on Labour and Tory woes.
I don't detest the LibDems at all, but to attract more people they need to take some risks and adopt a clear profile.
The LibDems do have a clear profile as the Waitrose party.
The risk would be to leave that comfort zone to try to appeal to other demographics.
Nigel Farage is the most popular party leader, but also the second-most unpopular (based on the chart in the header). You know who else was Marmite and how many general elections she won?
And we have independent confirmation of Farage's popularity in his declared earnings of tens of thousands a month from recording personal greetings – remember Up the Ra!
Reportedly it is closer to hundreds of thousands:
Mr Farage's register of interests revealed that he made £27,342 from the service in December (2024), almost double the amount he has previously registered for a single month.
I thought that was for unemployed entertainers to raise some cash during the pandemic, and when they all went back to the day jobs of acting and telling jokes it would die a death.
Edit: so I looked it up (so you don’t need to), he’s charging $100 for a personal greeting and $5,000 for a corporate greeting. That’s a lot of Happy Brithdays if he’s making £30k a month after commission, although presumably a few Americans are paying the corporate rate for remote speeches. https://www.cameo.com/nigelfarage
Jay from the Inbetweeners is still making million plus a year out of it.
I guess if you were an actor in something that’s now a cult TV show or movie, but that doesn’t really pay much any more, it can serve as an online version of the comic conventions where they do meet-and-greets.
I can imagine getting Nigel Farage to sing Happy Brithday to some woke student who hates his guts might be worth $100 as a prank among friends or parents, but there’s obviously a lot of people doing it if he’s making six figures a year!
There a great episode of Frasier where Derek Jacobi plays a washed up actor who is signing stuff at some Trekkie convention; ‘The Show Must Go Off”, absolutely superb
Nigel Farage is the most popular party leader, but also the second-most unpopular (based on the chart in the header). You know who else was Marmite and how many general elections she won?
And we have independent confirmation of Farage's popularity in his declared earnings of tens of thousands a month from recording personal greetings – remember Up the Ra!
Reportedly it is closer to hundreds of thousands:
Mr Farage's register of interests revealed that he made £27,342 from the service in December (2024), almost double the amount he has previously registered for a single month.
Cameo is good outside income. I can’t see there is a conflict / providing a harmless service to his fans and getting well paid. I’d take £81k for a weekend’s work.
Some big price differences.
Tom Felton charging almost 800 quid a vid !
Le Tiss £26 or so..
Le Tissier ended up being cancelled for his views on vaccines.
I’m sure those like Jessop whining about Kimmel rushed to support him at the time
Your regular reminder that we don’t do taking things to production.
Instead we sweat the assets to death - see Amstrad. See also the anger among “experts” at Arm “wasting” money on R&D.
For £1 billion a year we could have
For a few hundred million a year
And have a rocket that makes Ariane 6 look like a firework.
There’s no magic there. Just telling the usual suspects to fuck off about selling any technology development. And telling them no about wetting their beaks to the tune of 10s of billions.
But instead we have a billion reasons why not.
It's nuts. We celebrate basically letting the US use our land, power, and water, to sell us their services. Meanwhile just one Chinese company (admittedly a very large one) is building an entire independent computing stack. There will be a tsunami of Chinese tech over the next 5-10 years, and I suspect that for most countries it will be the preferred choice.
Or we could do what the Chinese *do*
Take the investment. Build the infrastructure with joy.
Take on the supply & technology chain, piece by piece.
End up with parallel data centres, running U.K. owned code on U.K. chips. In about 25 years.
The Chinese economy is ten times bigger than ours in PPP terms. Actions that are feasible for an economy that is 20% of global output are not necessarily feasible for countries that are 2% of it.
There's apparently yet another new word to add to the majesty of the English language.
To be "Coldplayed" - it means to be found out and to express outward signs of embarrassment and guilt.
Example - "when they told everyone I was a Lib Dem, I felt really coldplayed". Does that work?
Over to our linguistic experts - perhaps those whose primary source of income is the English language mayhap (I thought I;d throw that in)?
Talking of Coldplay - they seem to have become a hit among my daughter’s generation. They headed en masse to the recent gig in London.
Not heard the expression you mention, though.
My older daughter, 19, is really into “shoegazing” (the music not the hobby)
First Shoegazing song I remember was Ride ‘Unfamiliar’ in 1990/91. I was 16 and working in a record shop with the hair completely covering my face look, a bit like their singer
Davey is a lot smarter than people give him credit for being. He's always on the side of the angels (particularly Gaza) without screaming it from the rooftops. A quiet protest against it with the Trump visit that got him plenty of coverage. He's becoming everyone's safe and decent choice. I too wish we had a PM who could be 'nice'
Davey is "everyone's safe and decent choice", but only getting 12-15% in the opinion polls. The LDs are failing to capitalise on Labour and Tory woes.
I don't detest the LibDems at all, but to attract more people they need to take some risks and adopt a clear profile.
That is very hard to achieve. The media ignore them generally. They are not going to come out with stuff that is extreme and might get attention as that would not be liberal. Sometimes stuff does happen that gets attention, like Iraq. Strong areas like electoral reform are of no interest to most people.
As we have seen sadly the best way of getting the attention of the media and public seems to be to do a bungee jump.
Can you suggest anything that might work? Rejoin the EU might, but realistically it isn't practical in the short term.
Something big and radical on tax, for example:
Abolish NI and roll into income tax and corporation tax
Get rid of the cliff edges - move the bands and rates as needed to compensate, but lose all the tapers
Introduce a wealth/property tax and abolish council tax
Abolish inheritance tax, but tax inheritors, either as income tax or a lifetime/yearly tax-free gift allowance
Off the top of my head and some likely stupid ideas, but tearing up the tax system and starting again would be radical, big news and could also be rooted in liberal principles. Full of risk too, but a good revision should be sellable.
Agree with 2 and 1. We tax work via NI. Insane. Tax income more and work less.
A point which today's earlier discussion on 'cancellation' didn't address at all, was the threats to shut down entire organisations in response to what ought to be protected speech.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr: "There's actions we can take on licensed broadcasters. It's long past the time that...Comcast and Disney say 'We're not gonna run Kimmel anymore...because we licensed broadcasters are running the possibly of fines or licensed revocation from the FCC.'" https://x.com/BulwarkOnline/status/1968392506711613526
"They can just all move to YouTube" really doesn't answer that.
I believe the UK has banned broadcasters whose govts it doesn’t like and people here, on PB as well as in the wider UK, have wanted the same for GB News as well.
But that’s okay I guess
It’s only bad if they can pin it on Trump. Start with OrangeManBad and work backwards.
Don’t mind that Fallon was telling a whole load of lies about a politically-charged murder, that’s designed to inflame tensions at a difficult time and before the victim has even been buried.
On topic, I think Gross positives are better than net ratings. Too often ‘meh’ politicians look good on the latter measure. It doesn’t really matter if you are small net negative if you have over 30 positives, don’t knows don’t count really, but they make people who no one has heard of look better than they are
Your regular reminder that we don’t do taking things to production.
Instead we sweat the assets to death - see Amstrad. See also the anger among “experts” at Arm “wasting” money on R&D.
For £1 billion a year we could have
For a few hundred million a year
And have a rocket that makes Ariane 6 look like a firework.
There’s no magic there. Just telling the usual suspects to fuck off about selling any technology development. And telling them no about wetting their beaks to the tune of 10s of billions.
But instead we have a billion reasons why not.
It's nuts. We celebrate basically letting the US use our land, power, and water, to sell us their services. Meanwhile just one Chinese company (admittedly a very large one) is building an entire independent computing stack. There will be a tsunami of Chinese tech over the next 5-10 years, and I suspect that for most countries it will be the preferred choice.
Or we could do what the Chinese *do*
Take the investment. Build the infrastructure with joy.
Take on the supply & technology chain, piece by piece.
End up with parallel data centres, running U.K. owned code on U.K. chips. In about 25 years.
The Chinese economy is ten times bigger than ours in PPP terms. Actions that are feasible for an economy that is 20% of global output are not necessarily feasible for countries that are 2% of it.
The obvious solution is European collaboration. Dangers of pork barreling, but Airbus, from the outside at least, looks like a relative success story and indication that it is possible to take on the US in major industries.
A point which today's earlier discussion on 'cancellation' didn't address at all, was the threats to shut down entire organisations in response to what ought to be protected speech.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr: "There's actions we can take on licensed broadcasters. It's long past the time that...Comcast and Disney say 'We're not gonna run Kimmel anymore...because we licensed broadcasters are running the possibly of fines or licensed revocation from the FCC.'" https://x.com/BulwarkOnline/status/1968392506711613526
"They can just all move to YouTube" really doesn't answer that.
I believe the UK has banned broadcasters whose govts it doesn’t like and people here, on PB as well as in the wider UK, have wanted the same for GB News as well.
But that’s okay I guess
Russia today? that was OFCOM applying its regulations on GB News, I think the call is for OFCOM to be evenhanded in applying its regulations, for example elected politicians fronting news programmes, rather than banning it.
On topic, I think Gross positives are better than net ratings. Too often ‘meh’ politicians look good on the latter measure. It doesn’t really matter if you are small net negative if you have over 30 positives, don’t knows don’t count really, but they make people who no one has heard of look better than they are
I actually wrote a blog about this a few years ago
"71% of the public have an unfavourable rating with Brits"
We hate each other ?
Yes, that seems to be the core problem!
Starmer has found a solution though. He sold UK plc to the Yanks for £150bn yesterday. Not a great price but he is not good at numbers. Now we will have to do what we are told, whether it is burning gas to feed AI data centres, abolishing the Digital tax or whatever. I think that America is allowing Parliament to remain as a decorative part of our constitution, which is a plus for political betting at least.
Good morning
The government are spinning the £150bn investment creating 75,000 jobs across the airwaves this morning
When I heard 75,000 jobs for £150bn I assumed it was misspoken as I would want a whole lot more jobs for that investment, but it appears it is over 10 years on projects that have to pass design, planning and environmental issues and data centres that will consume vast quantities of electricity and water that is not readily available
Add in the cost on consumers bills this seems much like the 1.5 million new homes, all smoke and mirrors
I would suggest this investment would have happened anyway, but it is long term and in that long term is welcome but Starmer has less than 4 years and I doubt very little of it will be noticed by the public who are impatient for change
And on Ed Davey, I don't generally comment too much about him because I respect many of the Lib Dems who post on here, but if I am being honest I wasn't impressed with his stunts and on policy I know and understand his crusade for carers, not least because of his own family issues, and on Europe and WASPI women but I have no idea what his tax and spending policies are and look on him mainly as representing an English, largely south based party, which is reflected when it comes to Wales, and to a degree Scotland, where he struggles to be relevant
I'm surprised it's even 75,000 jobs if it's data centres.
And the problem with modern data centres is they consume stupid amounts of power that they need 24/7/365. So where are the gWs of power to keep them online coming from.
Don't they also need stupid amounts of water for cooling? Luckily there aren't any water shortages..
Just use the Trent, erm, I see what you mean ...
Are they going to build them on Rannoch Moor? No, not enough nice bistros for tech bros.
Most data centres now used closed loop water cooling. Think air conditioning on a vast scale.
That’s why they don’t have giant cooling towers belching clouds.
Good - doesn't surprise me given their Usonian origins.
Presumably air-cooling wouldn't be closed loop, so how would they capture that heat?
It’s just heat exchange. Hot water comes out of the data centre cooling system. You can either dump the heat into air, or into people’s homes to heat them, or whatever. Then the water (now coldish) goes back to the data centre.
Your regular reminder that we don’t do taking things to production.
Instead we sweat the assets to death - see Amstrad. See also the anger among “experts” at Arm “wasting” money on R&D.
For £1 billion a year we could have
For a few hundred million a year
And have a rocket that makes Ariane 6 look like a firework.
There’s no magic there. Just telling the usual suspects to fuck off about selling any technology development. And telling them no about wetting their beaks to the tune of 10s of billions.
But instead we have a billion reasons why not.
It's nuts. We celebrate basically letting the US use our land, power, and water, to sell us their services. Meanwhile just one Chinese company (admittedly a very large one) is building an entire independent computing stack. There will be a tsunami of Chinese tech over the next 5-10 years, and I suspect that for most countries it will be the preferred choice.
Or we could do what the Chinese *do*
Take the investment. Build the infrastructure with joy.
Take on the supply & technology chain, piece by piece.
End up with parallel data centres, running U.K. owned code on U.K. chips. In about 25 years.
The Chinese economy is ten times bigger than ours in PPP terms. Actions that are feasible for an economy that is 20% of global output are not necessarily feasible for countries that are 2% of it.
A billion a year is a rounding error in our economy. For that investment we could have had a U.K. LEO data constellation, *making a profit*
Taiwan is hardly the largest economy on the planet - yet chip production…
South Korea is building ICBMs (barely disguised) for peanuts
"71% of the public have an unfavourable rating with Brits"
We hate each other ?
Yes, that seems to be the core problem!
Starmer has found a solution though. He sold UK plc to the Yanks for £150bn yesterday. Not a great price but he is not good at numbers. Now we will have to do what we are told, whether it is burning gas to feed AI data centres, abolishing the Digital tax or whatever. I think that America is allowing Parliament to remain as a decorative part of our constitution, which is a plus for political betting at least.
Good morning
The government are spinning the £150bn investment creating 75,000 jobs across the airwaves this morning
When I heard 75,000 jobs for £150bn I assumed it was misspoken as I would want a whole lot more jobs for that investment, but it appears it is over 10 years on projects that have to pass design, planning and environmental issues and data centres that will consume vast quantities of electricity and water that is not readily available
Add in the cost on consumers bills this seems much like the 1.5 million new homes, all smoke and mirrors
I would suggest this investment would have happened anyway, but it is long term and in that long term is welcome but Starmer has less than 4 years and I doubt very little of it will be noticed by the public who are impatient for change
And on Ed Davey, I don't generally comment too much about him because I respect many of the Lib Dems who post on here, but if I am being honest I wasn't impressed with his stunts and on policy I know and understand his crusade for carers, not least because of his own family issues, and on Europe and WASPI women but I have no idea what his tax and spending policies are and look on him mainly as representing an English, largely south based party, which is reflected when it comes to Wales, and to a degree Scotland, where he struggles to be relevant
I'm surprised it's even 75,000 jobs if it's data centres.
And the problem with modern data centres is they consume stupid amounts of power that they need 24/7/365. So where are the gWs of power to keep them online coming from.
Don't they also need stupid amounts of water for cooling? Luckily there aren't any water shortages..
Just use the Trent, erm, I see what you mean ...
Are they going to build them on Rannoch Moor? No, not enough nice bistros for tech bros.
Most data centres now used closed loop water cooling. Think air conditioning on a vast scale.
That’s why they don’t have giant cooling towers belching clouds.
Good - doesn't surprise me given their Usonian origins.
Presumably air-cooling wouldn't be closed loop, so how would they capture that heat?
It’s just heat exchange. Hot water comes out of the data centre cooling system. You can either dump the heat into air, or into people’s homes to heat them, or whatever. Then the water (now coldish) goes back to the data centre.
That would work best somewhere like Ravenscraig where the data centre can be built in conjunction with new houses, instead of trying to retrofit.
The comedy writers for these late night shows have lost their way. Its not able coming up with good gags, its all about political point scoring.
Yes the president is a douche bag, but its not your job to every night hold him to account (that is what the news media is there for), it was supposed to be to write some funny gags that America could do a bit of escapism after a hard days work.
The straw that broke the camel’s back with Kimmel, making up his own untruths about a political assassination.
These shows all stopped being funny and a way to unwind a long time ago, and this was the excuse that the network affiliates needed to pull the plug.
As with Colbert before him, the show has been losing money for a long time, as going out to alienate half your audience does that.
The new South Park episode didn’t come out last night either, one suspects a hasty rewrite of much of the material didn’t happen in time.
LOL. You do realise how many 'untruths' your side were saying in the aftermath? And how differently Republicans who celebrated the deaths of Melissa Hortman and her husband? Utah senator Mike Lee is still in place, as an example.
This is nothing about jokes, or offence. It is about control of speech.
At the risk of feeding the troll, what exactly did Sen. Mike Lee say in the aftermath of the murder of Melissa Hortman?
The articles below reference a couple of posts: (I) saying that “this is what happens when Marxists don’t get their way” and another with a picture of the killer captioned “nightmare on waltz street”.
Ah okay thanks. So he was making comments about the murderer rather than the victim, which were called insensitive by friends of the victim, and which Sen. Lee took down after the friends spoke to him in person.
As opposed to this week, where people have been openly mocking the victim himself, saying he deserved it and compiling lists of who should be the next victims.
Show me any elected official, let alone a senator, who “openly mocking the victim [Kirk] himself, saying he deserved it and compiling lists of who should be the next victims.” I would be very surprised.
In the clip someone posted Kimmel barely said anything about Kirk but focused on Trump’s lack of empathy. It’s not very funny, but neither is it offensive.
The NY Post collated a list of inappropriate comments from elected officials on the day of the shooting, starting with Rep. Ilhan Omar and Gov. JB Pritzker.
It's not unreasonable to take issue with many of Charlie Kirk's positons, while deeply regretting his murder and hoping that the perpetrator is appropriately punished.
Just as you correctly noted that George Floyd was far from being as pure as driven snow.
I personally don’t understand anyone celebrating a murder, or inded saying anything more than it’s a horrible event and offering prayers and support to the family of the deceased.
There’s two American killings that have really made me wake up this year. The murder of Charlie Kirk is one, and the murder of Brian Thompson the other. No-one ever deserves to be assasinated in this way, and the reaction to these two killings in particular has been astonishing to witness.
Yes, but who has "celebrated a murder" over Charlie Kirk?
And highlighting Kirk's statements on the acceptability of gun violence, that empathy is a bad thing, that black people Muslims and women are inferior etc is just highlighting his teachings and illustrating who he was.
It’s the same group of people celebrating both murders, the online left, and the Charlie quotes you mention are all a long way out of context, deliberately so to try and paint him in a negative light - before his body is even cold.
He was a middle-of-the-road conservative Christian youth movement leader, who believed in marriage and didn’t believe in abortion.
I think you are off on both points here, @Sandpit . It's a both sides thing; Charlie Kirk made light of the attack on Nancy Pelosi, for example.
On Kirk, I'm happy with my very first description of him as an "Apostle for the Culture War", which captures his religio-political value system/approach, and also his highly divisive politics. I'm doing the background for a possible weekend header (not this weekend) - as my exposure to Kirk was around PBers who posted maybe a dozen tweets on here (we mainly do soundbites), and following up.
His journey has imo been quite parallel to JD Vance's, starting out with billionaire's money, and making much noise whilst young. In Kirk's case he is not a middle-of-the-road anything - he is a Christian Nationalist (specifically since about 2020), and I would suggest can reasonably be thought of as a Maga Evangelical version of Vance's integralist Roman Catholic. That is, both want to replace the USA constitution with something aligned to a "Christian State" polity.
The three who were Trump's social media 'Marketing Trinity' were Vance, Kirk and Musk afaics.
In the events I have seen, he does not do dialogue - he does quick Q&As where he has the final word, usually in soundbites and factoids, and moves on before anyone can critique or respond. His soundbites often don't stand up when examined, and are sometimes entirely fictional. But he also has other models I am still looking at.
For example in the Oxford Union event this summer in the first few minutes he said something about Trump's majority meaning it was OK for them to remove 130 year old legal rulings, and act on it on birth right citizenship, ignoring that Trump's majority is just 1%, and that their detention has snared mainly innocent people. It also included a requote of Trump's "thousands of white farmers buried by the roadside in South Africa" lie, which has long been shown to be false. Here he is stating that one: https://youtu.be/xnqSNEiLTeY?t=318
But I'm still digging on the topic.
I think part of Vance's game in doing the Charlie Kirk show in the VP's office (which is unlawful use of Govt resources for partisan politics) is because he wants to tie the constituency to himself.
Texas University student expelled for mocking Charlie Kirk murder Unnamed student imitated moment 31-year-old was shot in footage shared online ... In footage shared online, the individual can be heard screaming “Charlie Kirk got hit in the neck, b----!” while slapping his neck and imitating the recoil of a bullet’s impact.
The student then climbs onto a statue in front of the crowd, slapping his neck again and shaking his body before falling to the ground, mimicking the moment Kirk was shot during a rally at Utah Valley University.
The clip sparked outrage from politicians, including Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, who demanded the university expel the student “immediately”.
“Hey Texas State. This conduct is not accepted at our schools. Expel this student immediately. Mocking assassinations must have consequences,” Mr Abbott wrote on X.
Your regular reminder that we don’t do taking things to production.
Instead we sweat the assets to death - see Amstrad. See also the anger among “experts” at Arm “wasting” money on R&D.
For £1 billion a year we could have
For a few hundred million a year
And have a rocket that makes Ariane 6 look like a firework.
There’s no magic there. Just telling the usual suspects to fuck off about selling any technology development. And telling them no about wetting their beaks to the tune of 10s of billions.
But instead we have a billion reasons why not.
It's nuts. We celebrate basically letting the US use our land, power, and water, to sell us their services. Meanwhile just one Chinese company (admittedly a very large one) is building an entire independent computing stack. There will be a tsunami of Chinese tech over the next 5-10 years, and I suspect that for most countries it will be the preferred choice.
We are effectively letting them build the utilities of the next couple of decade here. And they will extract a large price for that, just as the overseas owners of today's utilities do.
I'm not sure what the alternative to kissing up to the yanks is, practically speaking. We could have chosen to build a counterweight among like minded European democracies but we've closed that door. As a result we have made ourselves wholly dependent on the US, just at the point that that country is transforming itself into a fascist state. Great choice.
There's no immediate alternative; that will take some time. But for now we shouldn't be viewing this as an unalloyed good, and ought to be extracting what concessions we can.
Building this stuff will be a very long way from cost free in terms of externalities, and we ought to be defining those externalities, prior to the deals and not afterwards, when it's too late to avoid paying all the costs ourselves.
"I am pleased to inform our many U.S.A. Patriots that I am designating ANTIFA, A SICK, DANGEROUS, RADICAL LEFT DISASTER, AS A MAJOR TERRORIST ORGANIZATION..." - President Donald J. Trump https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/1968472434224337221
Texas University student expelled for mocking Charlie Kirk murder Unnamed student imitated moment 31-year-old was shot in footage shared online ... In footage shared online, the individual can be heard screaming “Charlie Kirk got hit in the neck, b----!” while slapping his neck and imitating the recoil of a bullet’s impact.
The student then climbs onto a statue in front of the crowd, slapping his neck again and shaking his body before falling to the ground, mimicking the moment Kirk was shot during a rally at Utah Valley University.
The clip sparked outrage from politicians, including Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, who demanded the university expel the student “immediately”.
“Hey Texas State. This conduct is not accepted at our schools. Expel this student immediately. Mocking assassinations must have consequences,” Mr Abbott wrote on X.
A point which today's earlier discussion on 'cancellation' didn't address at all, was the threats to shut down entire organisations in response to what ought to be protected speech.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr: "There's actions we can take on licensed broadcasters. It's long past the time that...Comcast and Disney say 'We're not gonna run Kimmel anymore...because we licensed broadcasters are running the possibly of fines or licensed revocation from the FCC.'" https://x.com/BulwarkOnline/status/1968392506711613526
"They can just all move to YouTube" really doesn't answer that.
I believe the UK has banned broadcasters whose govts it doesn’t like and people here, on PB as well as in the wider UK, have wanted the same for GB News as well.
But that’s okay I guess
So no answer, apart from whataboutery.
JD Vance: "Our own government encouraged private companies to silence people...Under Donald Trump's leadership, we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer it in the public square." (Feb. 2025) https://x.com/OfTheBraveUSA/status/1968499750115615135
And of course there is mo impartiality obligation on US news organisations. Otherwise Fox would have been shut down long since.
Your regular reminder that we don’t do taking things to production.
Instead we sweat the assets to death - see Amstrad. See also the anger among “experts” at Arm “wasting” money on R&D.
For £1 billion a year we could have
For a few hundred million a year
And have a rocket that makes Ariane 6 look like a firework.
There’s no magic there. Just telling the usual suspects to fuck off about selling any technology development. And telling them no about wetting their beaks to the tune of 10s of billions.
But instead we have a billion reasons why not.
It's nuts. We celebrate basically letting the US use our land, power, and water, to sell us their services. Meanwhile just one Chinese company (admittedly a very large one) is building an entire independent computing stack. There will be a tsunami of Chinese tech over the next 5-10 years, and I suspect that for most countries it will be the preferred choice.
Or we could do what the Chinese *do*
Take the investment. Build the infrastructure with joy.
Take on the supply & technology chain, piece by piece.
End up with parallel data centres, running U.K. owned code on U.K. chips. In about 25 years.
The Chinese economy is ten times bigger than ours in PPP terms. Actions that are feasible for an economy that is 20% of global output are not necessarily feasible for countries that are 2% of it.
The obvious solution is European collaboration. Dangers of pork barreling, but Airbus, from the outside at least, looks like a relative success story and indication that it is possible to take on the US in major industries.
European co-operation would probably be okay so long as it was done privately.
Any attempt to create something like another Airbus would be pulled into the EU and its structures, mired in bureaucracy and required to be split politically around all members, with no say for those who aren’t.
Think of the SLS rocket in the US, made in all 48 contiguous States, and in at least 300 Congressional districts, but way over time budget and not close to meeting its goals. As opposed to SpaceX.
"I am pleased to inform our many U.S.A. Patriots that I am designating ANTIFA, A SICK, DANGEROUS, RADICAL LEFT DISASTER, AS A MAJOR TERRORIST ORGANIZATION..." - President Donald J. Trump https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/1968472434224337221
Texas University student expelled for mocking Charlie Kirk murder Unnamed student imitated moment 31-year-old was shot in footage shared online ... In footage shared online, the individual can be heard screaming “Charlie Kirk got hit in the neck, b----!” while slapping his neck and imitating the recoil of a bullet’s impact.
The student then climbs onto a statue in front of the crowd, slapping his neck again and shaking his body before falling to the ground, mimicking the moment Kirk was shot during a rally at Utah Valley University.
The clip sparked outrage from politicians, including Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, who demanded the university expel the student “immediately”.
“Hey Texas State. This conduct is not accepted at our schools. Expel this student immediately. Mocking assassinations must have consequences,” Mr Abbott wrote on X.
A point which today's earlier discussion on 'cancellation' didn't address at all, was the threats to shut down entire organisations in response to what ought to be protected speech.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr: "There's actions we can take on licensed broadcasters. It's long past the time that...Comcast and Disney say 'We're not gonna run Kimmel anymore...because we licensed broadcasters are running the possibly of fines or licensed revocation from the FCC.'" https://x.com/BulwarkOnline/status/1968392506711613526
"They can just all move to YouTube" really doesn't answer that.
I believe the UK has banned broadcasters whose govts it doesn’t like and people here, on PB as well as in the wider UK, have wanted the same for GB News as well.
But that’s okay I guess
Russia today? that was OFCOM applying its regulations on GB News, I think the call is for OFCOM to be evenhanded in applying its regulations, for example elected politicians fronting news programmes, rather than banning it.
People want it banned. Of course they do.
Oh it’s just ‘regulations.’ That’s okay then. Rather like the FCC statement
"I am pleased to inform our many U.S.A. Patriots that I am designating ANTIFA, A SICK, DANGEROUS, RADICAL LEFT DISASTER, AS A MAJOR TERRORIST ORGANIZATION..." - President Donald J. Trump https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/1968472434224337221
The Reichstag fire says hi.
Antifa looks a lot like a (less politically successful) version of Trump's MAGA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifa_(United_States) ..In his article "The Rise of the Violent Left" for The Atlantic, Beinart writes that antifa activists "prefer direct action: They pressure venues to deny white supremacists space to meet. They pressure employers to fire them and landlords to evict them. And when people they deem racists and fascists manage to assemble, antifa's partisans try to break up their gatherings, including by force." According to historian Mark Bray, an expert on the movement, the "vast majority of anti-fascist organizing is nonviolent. But their willingness to physically defend themselves and others from white supremacist violence and preemptively shut down fascist organizing efforts before they turn deadly distinguishes them from liberal anti-racists."..
Not my cup of tea at all. But it's deeply dubious that it can be proscribed as a terrorist organisation.
Of course Trump's court will very likely say otherwise.
"71% of the public have an unfavourable rating with Brits"
We hate each other ?
Yes, that seems to be the core problem!
Starmer has found a solution though. He sold UK plc to the Yanks for £150bn yesterday. Not a great price but he is not good at numbers. Now we will have to do what we are told, whether it is burning gas to feed AI data centres, abolishing the Digital tax or whatever. I think that America is allowing Parliament to remain as a decorative part of our constitution, which is a plus for political betting at least.
Good morning
The government are spinning the £150bn investment creating 75,000 jobs across the airwaves this morning
When I heard 75,000 jobs for £150bn I assumed it was misspoken as I would want a whole lot more jobs for that investment, but it appears it is over 10 years on projects that have to pass design, planning and environmental issues and data centres that will consume vast quantities of electricity and water that is not readily available
Add in the cost on consumers bills this seems much like the 1.5 million new homes, all smoke and mirrors
I would suggest this investment would have happened anyway, but it is long term and in that long term is welcome but Starmer has less than 4 years and I doubt very little of it will be noticed by the public who are impatient for change
And on Ed Davey, I don't generally comment too much about him because I respect many of the Lib Dems who post on here, but if I am being honest I wasn't impressed with his stunts and on policy I know and understand his crusade for carers, not least because of his own family issues, and on Europe and WASPI women but I have no idea what his tax and spending policies are and look on him mainly as representing an English, largely south based party, which is reflected when it comes to Wales, and to a degree Scotland, where he struggles to be relevant
I'm surprised it's even 75,000 jobs if it's data centres.
And the problem with modern data centres is they consume stupid amounts of power that they need 24/7/365. So where are the gWs of power to keep them online coming from.
Don't they also need stupid amounts of water for cooling? Luckily there aren't any water shortages..
Just use the Trent, erm, I see what you mean ...
Are they going to build them on Rannoch Moor? No, not enough nice bistros for tech bros.
Most data centres now used closed loop water cooling. Think air conditioning on a vast scale.
That’s why they don’t have giant cooling towers belching clouds.
Good - doesn't surprise me given their Usonian origins.
Presumably air-cooling wouldn't be closed loop, so how would they capture that heat?
It’s just heat exchange. Hot water comes out of the data centre cooling system. You can either dump the heat into air, or into people’s homes to heat them, or whatever. Then the water (now coldish) goes back to the data centre.
As someone whose tech and engineering knowledge would make a Neanderthal blush with pity could I ask if the following has been considered and if so/not what are the things that would make it impossible.
If they built data centres in modular waterproof “boxes” which were then anchored underwater in the North Sea, for example, couldn’t they massively reduce their need for electricity for cooling by benefiting from the cooler ambient temperatures of the deeper water and using the surrounding cold water to aid some sort of cooling system.
I know it might all seem a bit 1960s underseasea kingdom with these worlds under the sea but they could be serviced from adapted closed rigs above for housing staff and kit.
I’m probably going to look an absolute moron for suggesting as brighter minds have inevitably looked for options but thought I would ask anyway.
"71% of the public have an unfavourable rating with Brits"
We hate each other ?
Yes, that seems to be the core problem!
Starmer has found a solution though. He sold UK plc to the Yanks for £150bn yesterday. Not a great price but he is not good at numbers. Now we will have to do what we are told, whether it is burning gas to feed AI data centres, abolishing the Digital tax or whatever. I think that America is allowing Parliament to remain as a decorative part of our constitution, which is a plus for political betting at least.
Good morning
The government are spinning the £150bn investment creating 75,000 jobs across the airwaves this morning
When I heard 75,000 jobs for £150bn I assumed it was misspoken as I would want a whole lot more jobs for that investment, but it appears it is over 10 years on projects that have to pass design, planning and environmental issues and data centres that will consume vast quantities of electricity and water that is not readily available
Add in the cost on consumers bills this seems much like the 1.5 million new homes, all smoke and mirrors
I would suggest this investment would have happened anyway, but it is long term and in that long term is welcome but Starmer has less than 4 years and I doubt very little of it will be noticed by the public who are impatient for change
And on Ed Davey, I don't generally comment too much about him because I respect many of the Lib Dems who post on here, but if I am being honest I wasn't impressed with his stunts and on policy I know and understand his crusade for carers, not least because of his own family issues, and on Europe and WASPI women but I have no idea what his tax and spending policies are and look on him mainly as representing an English, largely south based party, which is reflected when it comes to Wales, and to a degree Scotland, where he struggles to be relevant
I'm surprised it's even 75,000 jobs if it's data centres.
And the problem with modern data centres is they consume stupid amounts of power that they need 24/7/365. So where are the gWs of power to keep them online coming from.
Don't they also need stupid amounts of water for cooling? Luckily there aren't any water shortages..
Just use the Trent, erm, I see what you mean ...
Are they going to build them on Rannoch Moor? No, not enough nice bistros for tech bros.
Most data centres now used closed loop water cooling. Think air conditioning on a vast scale.
That’s why they don’t have giant cooling towers belching clouds.
Good - doesn't surprise me given their Usonian origins.
Presumably air-cooling wouldn't be closed loop, so how would they capture that heat?
It’s just heat exchange. Hot water comes out of the data centre cooling system. You can either dump the heat into air, or into people’s homes to heat them, or whatever. Then the water (now coldish) goes back to the data centre.
As someone whose tech and engineering knowledge would make a Neanderthal blush with pity could I ask if the following has been considered and if so/not what are the things that would make it impossible.
If they built data centres in modular waterproof “boxes” which were then anchored underwater in the North Sea, for example, couldn’t they massively reduce their need for electricity for cooling by benefiting from the cooler ambient temperatures of the deeper water and using the surrounding cold water to aid some sort of cooling system.
I know it might all seem a bit 1960s underseasea kingdom with these worlds under the sea but they could be serviced from adapted closed rigs above for housing staff and kit.
I’m probably going to look an absolute moron for suggesting as brighter minds have inevitably looked for options but thought I would ask anyway.
They already immerse the chips in a cooling fluid (I forget what it is). I assume if they did as you suggested then the increased cost of maintenance would outweigh the savings from cooling.
"71% of the public have an unfavourable rating with Brits"
We hate each other ?
Yes, that seems to be the core problem!
Starmer has found a solution though. He sold UK plc to the Yanks for £150bn yesterday. Not a great price but he is not good at numbers. Now we will have to do what we are told, whether it is burning gas to feed AI data centres, abolishing the Digital tax or whatever. I think that America is allowing Parliament to remain as a decorative part of our constitution, which is a plus for political betting at least.
Good morning
The government are spinning the £150bn investment creating 75,000 jobs across the airwaves this morning
When I heard 75,000 jobs for £150bn I assumed it was misspoken as I would want a whole lot more jobs for that investment, but it appears it is over 10 years on projects that have to pass design, planning and environmental issues and data centres that will consume vast quantities of electricity and water that is not readily available
Add in the cost on consumers bills this seems much like the 1.5 million new homes, all smoke and mirrors
I would suggest this investment would have happened anyway, but it is long term and in that long term is welcome but Starmer has less than 4 years and I doubt very little of it will be noticed by the public who are impatient for change
And on Ed Davey, I don't generally comment too much about him because I respect many of the Lib Dems who post on here, but if I am being honest I wasn't impressed with his stunts and on policy I know and understand his crusade for carers, not least because of his own family issues, and on Europe and WASPI women but I have no idea what his tax and spending policies are and look on him mainly as representing an English, largely south based party, which is reflected when it comes to Wales, and to a degree Scotland, where he struggles to be relevant
I'm surprised it's even 75,000 jobs if it's data centres.
And the problem with modern data centres is they consume stupid amounts of power that they need 24/7/365. So where are the gWs of power to keep them online coming from.
Don't they also need stupid amounts of water for cooling? Luckily there aren't any water shortages..
Just use the Trent, erm, I see what you mean ...
Are they going to build them on Rannoch Moor? No, not enough nice bistros for tech bros.
Most data centres now used closed loop water cooling. Think air conditioning on a vast scale.
That’s why they don’t have giant cooling towers belching clouds.
Good - doesn't surprise me given their Usonian origins.
Presumably air-cooling wouldn't be closed loop, so how would they capture that heat?
It’s just heat exchange. Hot water comes out of the data centre cooling system. You can either dump the heat into air, or into people’s homes to heat them, or whatever. Then the water (now coldish) goes back to the data centre.
We need more Thanet Earths to go alongside.
Old power station sites do seem to be a vaguely sane plan though. Grid connections and cooling water.
"71% of the public have an unfavourable rating with Brits"
We hate each other ?
Yes, that seems to be the core problem!
Starmer has found a solution though. He sold UK plc to the Yanks for £150bn yesterday. Not a great price but he is not good at numbers. Now we will have to do what we are told, whether it is burning gas to feed AI data centres, abolishing the Digital tax or whatever. I think that America is allowing Parliament to remain as a decorative part of our constitution, which is a plus for political betting at least.
Good morning
The government are spinning the £150bn investment creating 75,000 jobs across the airwaves this morning
When I heard 75,000 jobs for £150bn I assumed it was misspoken as I would want a whole lot more jobs for that investment, but it appears it is over 10 years on projects that have to pass design, planning and environmental issues and data centres that will consume vast quantities of electricity and water that is not readily available
Add in the cost on consumers bills this seems much like the 1.5 million new homes, all smoke and mirrors
I would suggest this investment would have happened anyway, but it is long term and in that long term is welcome but Starmer has less than 4 years and I doubt very little of it will be noticed by the public who are impatient for change
And on Ed Davey, I don't generally comment too much about him because I respect many of the Lib Dems who post on here, but if I am being honest I wasn't impressed with his stunts and on policy I know and understand his crusade for carers, not least because of his own family issues, and on Europe and WASPI women but I have no idea what his tax and spending policies are and look on him mainly as representing an English, largely south based party, which is reflected when it comes to Wales, and to a degree Scotland, where he struggles to be relevant
I'm surprised it's even 75,000 jobs if it's data centres.
And the problem with modern data centres is they consume stupid amounts of power that they need 24/7/365. So where are the gWs of power to keep them online coming from.
Don't they also need stupid amounts of water for cooling? Luckily there aren't any water shortages..
Just use the Trent, erm, I see what you mean ...
Are they going to build them on Rannoch Moor? No, not enough nice bistros for tech bros.
Most data centres now used closed loop water cooling. Think air conditioning on a vast scale.
That’s why they don’t have giant cooling towers belching clouds.
Good - doesn't surprise me given their Usonian origins.
Presumably air-cooling wouldn't be closed loop, so how would they capture that heat?
It’s just heat exchange. Hot water comes out of the data centre cooling system. You can either dump the heat into air, or into people’s homes to heat them, or whatever. Then the water (now coldish) goes back to the data centre.
As someone whose tech and engineering knowledge would make a Neanderthal blush with pity could I ask if the following has been considered and if so/not what are the things that would make it impossible.
If they built data centres in modular waterproof “boxes” which were then anchored underwater in the North Sea, for example, couldn’t they massively reduce their need for electricity for cooling by benefiting from the cooler ambient temperatures of the deeper water and using the surrounding cold water to aid some sort of cooling system.
I know it might all seem a bit 1960s underseasea kingdom with these worlds under the sea but they could be serviced from adapted closed rigs above for housing staff and kit.
I’m probably going to look an absolute moron for suggesting as brighter minds have inevitably looked for options but thought I would ask anyway.
You are Bill Gates AICMFP. You may remember Microsoft trialling underwater datacentres in Scotland, although this programme has now ended. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Natick
"71% of the public have an unfavourable rating with Brits"
We hate each other ?
Yes, that seems to be the core problem!
Starmer has found a solution though. He sold UK plc to the Yanks for £150bn yesterday. Not a great price but he is not good at numbers. Now we will have to do what we are told, whether it is burning gas to feed AI data centres, abolishing the Digital tax or whatever. I think that America is allowing Parliament to remain as a decorative part of our constitution, which is a plus for political betting at least.
Good morning
The government are spinning the £150bn investment creating 75,000 jobs across the airwaves this morning
When I heard 75,000 jobs for £150bn I assumed it was misspoken as I would want a whole lot more jobs for that investment, but it appears it is over 10 years on projects that have to pass design, planning and environmental issues and data centres that will consume vast quantities of electricity and water that is not readily available
Add in the cost on consumers bills this seems much like the 1.5 million new homes, all smoke and mirrors
I would suggest this investment would have happened anyway, but it is long term and in that long term is welcome but Starmer has less than 4 years and I doubt very little of it will be noticed by the public who are impatient for change
And on Ed Davey, I don't generally comment too much about him because I respect many of the Lib Dems who post on here, but if I am being honest I wasn't impressed with his stunts and on policy I know and understand his crusade for carers, not least because of his own family issues, and on Europe and WASPI women but I have no idea what his tax and spending policies are and look on him mainly as representing an English, largely south based party, which is reflected when it comes to Wales, and to a degree Scotland, where he struggles to be relevant
I'm surprised it's even 75,000 jobs if it's data centres.
And the problem with modern data centres is they consume stupid amounts of power that they need 24/7/365. So where are the gWs of power to keep them online coming from.
Don't they also need stupid amounts of water for cooling? Luckily there aren't any water shortages..
Just use the Trent, erm, I see what you mean ...
Are they going to build them on Rannoch Moor? No, not enough nice bistros for tech bros.
Most data centres now used closed loop water cooling. Think air conditioning on a vast scale.
That’s why they don’t have giant cooling towers belching clouds.
Good - doesn't surprise me given their Usonian origins.
Presumably air-cooling wouldn't be closed loop, so how would they capture that heat?
It’s just heat exchange. Hot water comes out of the data centre cooling system. You can either dump the heat into air, or into people’s homes to heat them, or whatever. Then the water (now coldish) goes back to the data centre.
As someone whose tech and engineering knowledge would make a Neanderthal blush with pity could I ask if the following has been considered and if so/not what are the things that would make it impossible.
If they built data centres in modular waterproof “boxes” which were then anchored underwater in the North Sea, for example, couldn’t they massively reduce their need for electricity for cooling by benefiting from the cooler ambient temperatures of the deeper water and using the surrounding cold water to aid some sort of cooling system.
I know it might all seem a bit 1960s underseasea kingdom with these worlds under the sea but they could be serviced from adapted closed rigs above for housing staff and kit.
I’m probably going to look an absolute moron for suggesting as brighter minds have inevitably looked for options but thought I would ask anyway.
They already immerse the chips in a cooling fluid (I forget what it is). I assume if they did as you suggested then the increased cost of maintenance would outweigh the savings from cooling.
Microsoft experimented with underwater data centres a while back. The attempt was reported as successful but has never been repeated but I suspect that's because power consumption (so cooling requirements) have increased significantly since then...
Your regular reminder that we don’t do taking things to production.
Instead we sweat the assets to death - see Amstrad. See also the anger among “experts” at Arm “wasting” money on R&D.
For £1 billion a year we could have
For a few hundred million a year
And have a rocket that makes Ariane 6 look like a firework.
There’s no magic there. Just telling the usual suspects to fuck off about selling any technology development. And telling them no about wetting their beaks to the tune of 10s of billions.
But instead we have a billion reasons why not.
It's nuts. We celebrate basically letting the US use our land, power, and water, to sell us their services. Meanwhile just one Chinese company (admittedly a very large one) is building an entire independent computing stack. There will be a tsunami of Chinese tech over the next 5-10 years, and I suspect that for most countries it will be the preferred choice.
We are effectively letting them build the utilities of the next couple of decade here. And they will extract a large price for that, just as the overseas owners of today's utilities do.
I'm not sure what the alternative to kissing up to the yanks is, practically speaking. We could have chosen to build a counterweight among like minded European democracies but we've closed that door. As a result we have made ourselves wholly dependent on the US, just at the point that that country is transforming itself into a fascist state. Great choice.
There's no immediate alternative; that will take some time. But for now we shouldn't be viewing this as an unalloyed good, and ought to be extracting what concessions we can.
Building this stuff will be a very long way from cost free in terms of externalities, and we ought to be defining those externalities, prior to the deals and not afterwards, when it's too late to avoid paying all the costs ourselves.
It’s about building stuff as an incremental process….
1) build a foreign owned factory 2) build the infrastructure to support it 3) gradually build the supply chain to 1) 4) build your own factories to use 3) and the domestic skills gained in 1) & 2)
"71% of the public have an unfavourable rating with Brits"
We hate each other ?
Yes, that seems to be the core problem!
Starmer has found a solution though. He sold UK plc to the Yanks for £150bn yesterday. Not a great price but he is not good at numbers. Now we will have to do what we are told, whether it is burning gas to feed AI data centres, abolishing the Digital tax or whatever. I think that America is allowing Parliament to remain as a decorative part of our constitution, which is a plus for political betting at least.
Good morning
The government are spinning the £150bn investment creating 75,000 jobs across the airwaves this morning
When I heard 75,000 jobs for £150bn I assumed it was misspoken as I would want a whole lot more jobs for that investment, but it appears it is over 10 years on projects that have to pass design, planning and environmental issues and data centres that will consume vast quantities of electricity and water that is not readily available
Add in the cost on consumers bills this seems much like the 1.5 million new homes, all smoke and mirrors
I would suggest this investment would have happened anyway, but it is long term and in that long term is welcome but Starmer has less than 4 years and I doubt very little of it will be noticed by the public who are impatient for change
And on Ed Davey, I don't generally comment too much about him because I respect many of the Lib Dems who post on here, but if I am being honest I wasn't impressed with his stunts and on policy I know and understand his crusade for carers, not least because of his own family issues, and on Europe and WASPI women but I have no idea what his tax and spending policies are and look on him mainly as representing an English, largely south based party, which is reflected when it comes to Wales, and to a degree Scotland, where he struggles to be relevant
I'm surprised it's even 75,000 jobs if it's data centres.
And the problem with modern data centres is they consume stupid amounts of power that they need 24/7/365. So where are the gWs of power to keep them online coming from.
Don't they also need stupid amounts of water for cooling? Luckily there aren't any water shortages..
Just use the Trent, erm, I see what you mean ...
Are they going to build them on Rannoch Moor? No, not enough nice bistros for tech bros.
Most data centres now used closed loop water cooling. Think air conditioning on a vast scale.
That’s why they don’t have giant cooling towers belching clouds.
Good - doesn't surprise me given their Usonian origins.
Presumably air-cooling wouldn't be closed loop, so how would they capture that heat?
It’s just heat exchange. Hot water comes out of the data centre cooling system. You can either dump the heat into air, or into people’s homes to heat them, or whatever. Then the water (now coldish) goes back to the data centre.
As someone whose tech and engineering knowledge would make a Neanderthal blush with pity could I ask if the following has been considered and if so/not what are the things that would make it impossible.
If they built data centres in modular waterproof “boxes” which were then anchored underwater in the North Sea, for example, couldn’t they massively reduce their need for electricity for cooling by benefiting from the cooler ambient temperatures of the deeper water and using the surrounding cold water to aid some sort of cooling system.
I know it might all seem a bit 1960s underseasea kingdom with these worlds under the sea but they could be serviced from adapted closed rigs above for housing staff and kit.
I’m probably going to look an absolute moron for suggesting as brighter minds have inevitably looked for options but thought I would ask anyway.
Microsoft experimented with an underwater data centre. I am out on a walk, so cannot link to it, but Google is your friend.
The gov't doesn't get much right but the announcement of inward investment by Nvidia and Microsoft is good news.
Indeed so, but I have a feeling there will be a devil in the detail somewhere, for example an expected price of electricity that’s a million miles away from Ed Miliband’s vision of the UK having the world’s most expensive energy.
A massive £billions data centre needs a massive £billions power station next door to it these days.
"Ms Porat said that Google remained committed to building renewable energy, but "obviously wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine every hour of the day".
Energy efficiency was being built into "all aspects of AI" microchips, models, and data centres, but it was important to "modernise the grid" to balance off periods of excess capacity, she said."
On topic, bit harsh on Ed Davey who is not that wide. Who is the most popular GB narrow party leader?
Let me have men about me that are fat, Sleek-headed men and such as sleep a-nights. Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look, He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.
"71% of the public have an unfavourable rating with Brits"
We hate each other ?
Yes, that seems to be the core problem!
Starmer has found a solution though. He sold UK plc to the Yanks for £150bn yesterday. Not a great price but he is not good at numbers. Now we will have to do what we are told, whether it is burning gas to feed AI data centres, abolishing the Digital tax or whatever. I think that America is allowing Parliament to remain as a decorative part of our constitution, which is a plus for political betting at least.
Good morning
The government are spinning the £150bn investment creating 75,000 jobs across the airwaves this morning
When I heard 75,000 jobs for £150bn I assumed it was misspoken as I would want a whole lot more jobs for that investment, but it appears it is over 10 years on projects that have to pass design, planning and environmental issues and data centres that will consume vast quantities of electricity and water that is not readily available
Add in the cost on consumers bills this seems much like the 1.5 million new homes, all smoke and mirrors
I would suggest this investment would have happened anyway, but it is long term and in that long term is welcome but Starmer has less than 4 years and I doubt very little of it will be noticed by the public who are impatient for change
And on Ed Davey, I don't generally comment too much about him because I respect many of the Lib Dems who post on here, but if I am being honest I wasn't impressed with his stunts and on policy I know and understand his crusade for carers, not least because of his own family issues, and on Europe and WASPI women but I have no idea what his tax and spending policies are and look on him mainly as representing an English, largely south based party, which is reflected when it comes to Wales, and to a degree Scotland, where he struggles to be relevant
I'm surprised it's even 75,000 jobs if it's data centres.
And the problem with modern data centres is they consume stupid amounts of power that they need 24/7/365. So where are the gWs of power to keep them online coming from.
Don't they also need stupid amounts of water for cooling? Luckily there aren't any water shortages..
Just use the Trent, erm, I see what you mean ...
Are they going to build them on Rannoch Moor? No, not enough nice bistros for tech bros.
Most data centres now used closed loop water cooling. Think air conditioning on a vast scale.
That’s why they don’t have giant cooling towers belching clouds.
Good - doesn't surprise me given their Usonian origins.
Presumably air-cooling wouldn't be closed loop, so how would they capture that heat?
It’s just heat exchange. Hot water comes out of the data centre cooling system. You can either dump the heat into air, or into people’s homes to heat them, or whatever. Then the water (now coldish) goes back to the data centre.
As someone whose tech and engineering knowledge would make a Neanderthal blush with pity could I ask if the following has been considered and if so/not what are the things that would make it impossible.
If they built data centres in modular waterproof “boxes” which were then anchored underwater in the North Sea, for example, couldn’t they massively reduce their need for electricity for cooling by benefiting from the cooler ambient temperatures of the deeper water and using the surrounding cold water to aid some sort of cooling system.
I know it might all seem a bit 1960s underseasea kingdom with these worlds under the sea but they could be serviced from adapted closed rigs above for housing staff and kit.
I’m probably going to look an absolute moron for suggesting as brighter minds have inevitably looked for options but thought I would ask anyway.
Microsoft experimented with an underwater data centre. I am out on a walk, so cannot link to it, but Google is your friend.
The experiment failed
1) seawater ruins everything. 2) seawater vapour really ruins everything 3) maratime operations are expensive 4) sticking something in a can and putting it in the water isn’t efficient cooling. So you still need elaborate heat exchange technology.
In the end, it would be cheaper to build your conventional data centre next to the sea and use pumped seawater to cool a primary loop.
Davey is a lot smarter than people give him credit for being. He's always on the side of the angels (particularly Gaza) without screaming it from the rooftops. A quiet protest against it with the Trump visit that got him plenty of coverage. He's becoming everyone's safe and decent choice. I too wish we had a PM who could be 'nice'
Davey is "everyone's safe and decent choice", but only getting 12-15% in the opinion polls. The LDs are failing to capitalise on Labour and Tory woes.
I don't detest the LibDems at all, but to attract more people they need to take some risks and adopt a clear profile.
The LibDems do have a clear profile as the Waitrose party.
The risk would be to leave that comfort zone to try to appeal to other demographics.
...and when they do that, PB ultras will shout, "but what do actually stand FOR?".
I think Ed Davey understands the trap that his opponents want to lay, and lets the local campaigns do their thing.
Comments
(the music not the hobby)
Energy efficiency was being built into "all aspects of AI" microchips, models, and data centres, but it was important to "modernise the grid" to balance off periods of excess capacity, she said."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crmek723dz9o
And they won't pay for modernising the grid. So we'll end up paying £billions to support their £billions investment...
And just like the other gigs MPs do - speeches, journalism, books, non-executive directorships etc - goes round rules on contributions. Especially foreign contributions.
It is even more worrying that MAGA are intent on doing this because the audience for these shows are entirely anti MAGA so the message going out isn't converting anyone, they are full on anti MAGA already.
We are seeing in the last few weeks an attempt at complete censorship. The guy on the Today programme the other day showed that with his comments that the left comments should be censored but MAGA shouldn't because it was 'science' whatever that means.
Only today Huawei set out the roadmap for their computing systems, and it looks very likely that China will be able to stick two fingers up to Trump and his threats in the not too distant future. I would guess that by about 2030 or so it will be obvious to most that China is in the lead and independent.
Are they going to build them on Rannoch Moor? No, not enough nice bistros for tech bros.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crmek723dz9o
I LOL at the redeploying the heat to schools and homes. One of those ideas that works well in theory, but often not so well in practice - as so many eastern European citizens can attest. It'll also be really expensive to retrofit to existing schools and homes.
Talking of which:
"The council-owned heat network uses bore-holes in a field to supply ground source heat pumps; it is free for residents to sign up and about half of the homes in the village – 166 properties – were reported to have done so in 2021.
But as it stands only 100 have been connected to the network, at a cost of £14m."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1kw7md728do
That’s why they don’t have giant cooling towers belching clouds.
It's easy to create 1,000 bots of non-existent people and funnel lots of funds through them.
Like our agonising over air source heat pumps which are already the norm in France, or the US headaches attempting to build one small high speed rail line in California.
'Ravenscraig is one of five AI-ready sites the developer is progressing across Scotland's central belt.'
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c70xwgl181yo
Council tax is about funding local activities. Income redistribution should be addressed at a national level.
Instead we sweat the assets to death - see Amstrad. See also the anger among “experts” at Arm “wasting” money on R&D.
For £1 billion a year we could have
For a few hundred million a year
And have a rocket that makes Ariane 6 look like a firework.
There’s no magic there. Just telling the usual suspects to fuck off about selling any technology development. And telling them no about wetting their beaks to the tune of 10s of billions.
But instead we have a billion reasons why not.
I wonder if the Lib Dems will fancy their chances, though Highland wards still have strong showings by independents
For an existing village, stand alone heat pumps at each property would seem to make more sense.
*how much sense depends on economies of scale in heat pumps versus losses through pipe runs - presumably the heat pumps need to be outputting higher heat of water compared to a newbuild domestic system initially to compensate for losses in the pipework to houses. In this example, the properties likely also need either high temperature water for heating or extensive retrofitting of insulation and larger radiators etc
The actual price is a lot lower than that.
They are spending £150bn on their own assets over here - which will have quite large consequences for our electricity grid and water supplies (something that has yet to be properly analysed). The investment is said to create around 7,500 Jons in the Umm which gives some idea of the likely benefits to us.
Low as is my opinion of Nick Clegg, his comments on this investment might be closer to the mark than Starmer's.
Tom Felton charging almost 800 quid a vid !
Le Tiss £26 or so..
As we have seen sadly the best way of getting the attention of the media and public seems to be to do a bungee jump.
Can you suggest anything that might work? Rejoin the EU might, but realistically it isn't practical in the short term.
But it depends on reporting etc. his ability to do three or four jobs whilst attending to his constituents in Clacton, and has potential optics problems for Reform UK.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr: "There's actions we can take on licensed broadcasters. It's long past the time that...Comcast and Disney say 'We're not gonna run Kimmel anymore...because we licensed broadcasters are running the possibly of fines or licensed revocation from the FCC.'"
https://x.com/BulwarkOnline/status/1968392506711613526
"They can just all move to YouTube" really doesn't answer that.
https://www.youtube.com/jimmykimmellive
With apologies for the lack of similarity between the ch in mocha and loch, but most tourists would probably pronounce them similarly.
It would be, at the very least, 100 times better.
I still think the govt might have got away with say a 2-3 point increase in the headline income tax rates, so long as they’d done it last year and made clear it was to last only the length of this Parliament.
Instead they did all that annoying tinkering, which cost a lot of political capital but raised very little by way of actual revenue.
And they will extract a large price for that, just as the overseas owners of today's utilities do.
A series of "limited edition" Nigel Farage NFTs would be the twin-turbo donation laundering option, assuming that the authorities haven't twigged NFTs.
Take the investment. Build the infrastructure with joy.
Take on the supply & technology chain, piece by piece.
End up with parallel data centres, running U.K. owned code on U.K. chips. In about 25 years.
But that’s okay I guess
- Abolish NI and roll into income tax and corporation tax
- Get rid of the cliff edges - move the bands and rates as needed to compensate, but lose all the tapers
- Introduce a wealth/property tax and abolish council tax
- Abolish inheritance tax, but tax inheritors, either as income tax or a lifetime/yearly tax-free gift allowance
Off the top of my head and some likely stupid ideas, but tearing up the tax system and starting again would be radical, big news and could also be rooted in liberal principles. Full of risk too, but a good revision should be sellable.Resolution Foundation founder says Britain must ‘get back to having some spoils of growth to share’
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/09/18/stop-punishing-rich-resolution-foundation-founder-labour/ (£££)
Liz Truss was right.
The risk would be to leave that comfort zone to try to appeal to other demographics.
I’m sure those like Jessop whining about Kimmel rushed to support him at the time
Don’t mind that Fallon was telling a whole load of lies about a politically-charged murder, that’s designed to inflame tensions at a difficult time and before the victim has even been buried.
on GB News, I think the call is for OFCOM to be evenhanded in applying its regulations, for example elected politicians fronting news programmes, rather than banning it.
http://aboutasfarasdelgados.blogspot.com/2021/03/the-optical-illusion-of-net-ratings.html
Taiwan is hardly the largest economy on the planet - yet chip production…
South Korea is building ICBMs (barely disguised) for peanuts
And so on.
On Kirk, I'm happy with my very first description of him as an "Apostle for the Culture War", which captures his religio-political value system/approach, and also his highly divisive politics. I'm doing the background for a possible weekend header (not this weekend) - as my exposure to Kirk was around PBers who posted maybe a dozen tweets on here (we mainly do soundbites), and following up.
His journey has imo been quite parallel to JD Vance's, starting out with billionaire's money, and making much noise whilst young. In Kirk's case he is not a middle-of-the-road anything - he is a Christian Nationalist (specifically since about 2020), and I would suggest can reasonably be thought of as a Maga Evangelical version of Vance's integralist Roman Catholic. That is, both want to replace the USA constitution with something aligned to a "Christian State" polity.
The three who were Trump's social media 'Marketing Trinity' were Vance, Kirk and Musk afaics.
In the events I have seen, he does not do dialogue - he does quick Q&As where he has the final word, usually in soundbites and factoids, and moves on before anyone can critique or respond. His soundbites often don't stand up when examined, and are sometimes entirely fictional. But he also has other models I am still looking at.
For example in the Oxford Union event this summer in the first few minutes he said something about Trump's majority meaning it was OK for them to remove 130 year old legal rulings, and act on it on birth right citizenship, ignoring that Trump's majority is just 1%, and that their detention has snared mainly innocent people. It also included a requote of Trump's "thousands of white farmers buried by the roadside in South Africa" lie, which has long been shown to be false. Here he is stating that one:
https://youtu.be/xnqSNEiLTeY?t=318
But I'm still digging on the topic.
I think part of Vance's game in doing the Charlie Kirk show in the VP's office (which is unlawful use of Govt resources for partisan politics) is because he wants to tie the constituency to himself.
https://x.com/obseyxx/status/1968370027343778039?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
Unnamed student imitated moment 31-year-old was shot in footage shared online
...
In footage shared online, the individual can be heard screaming “Charlie Kirk got hit in the neck, b----!” while slapping his neck and imitating the recoil of a bullet’s impact.
The student then climbs onto a statue in front of the crowd, slapping his neck again and shaking his body before falling to the ground, mimicking the moment Kirk was shot during a rally at Utah Valley University.
The clip sparked outrage from politicians, including Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, who demanded the university expel the student “immediately”.
“Hey Texas State. This conduct is not accepted at our schools. Expel this student immediately. Mocking assassinations must have consequences,” Mr Abbott wrote on X.
On Tuesday, Kelly Damphouse, the Texas State University president, announced that the school had identified and expelled the student.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2025/09/17/texas-university-student-recreate-charlie-kirk-murder/ (£££)
Free speech!
But for now we shouldn't be viewing this as an unalloyed good, and ought to be extracting what concessions we can.
Building this stuff will be a very long way from cost free in terms of externalities, and we ought to be defining those externalities, prior to the deals and not afterwards, when it's too late to avoid paying all the costs ourselves.
https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/1968472434224337221
JD Vance: "Our own government encouraged private companies to silence people...Under Donald Trump's leadership, we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer it in the public square." (Feb. 2025)
https://x.com/OfTheBraveUSA/status/1968499750115615135
And of course there is mo impartiality obligation on US news organisations. Otherwise Fox would have been shut down long since.
Any attempt to create something like another Airbus would be pulled into the EU and its structures, mired in bureaucracy and required to be split politically around all members, with no say for those who aren’t.
Think of the SLS rocket in the US, made in all 48 contiguous States, and in at least 300 Congressional districts, but way over time budget and not close to meeting its goals. As opposed to SpaceX.
Oh it’s just ‘regulations.’ That’s okay then. Rather like the FCC statement
https://youtu.be/Gg-mEo2lZjA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifa_(United_States)
..In his article "The Rise of the Violent Left" for The Atlantic, Beinart writes that antifa activists "prefer direct action: They pressure venues to deny white supremacists space to meet. They pressure employers to fire them and landlords to evict them. And when people they deem racists and fascists manage to assemble, antifa's partisans try to break up their gatherings, including by force." According to historian Mark Bray, an expert on the movement, the "vast majority of anti-fascist organizing is nonviolent. But their willingness to physically defend themselves and others from white supremacist violence and preemptively shut down fascist organizing efforts before they turn deadly distinguishes them from liberal anti-racists."..
Not my cup of tea at all.
But it's deeply dubious that it can be proscribed as a terrorist organisation.
Of course Trump's court will very likely say otherwise.
Disney learned nothing from Andor.
https://bsky.app/profile/anamariecox.bsky.social/post/3lz3la4dgus2d
If they built data centres in modular waterproof “boxes” which were then anchored underwater in the North Sea, for example, couldn’t they massively reduce their need for electricity for cooling by benefiting from the cooler ambient temperatures of the deeper water and using the surrounding cold water to aid some sort of cooling system.
I know it might all seem a bit 1960s underseasea kingdom with these worlds under the sea but they could be serviced from adapted closed rigs above for housing staff and kit.
I’m probably going to look an absolute moron for suggesting as brighter minds have inevitably looked for options but thought I would ask anyway.
We now wait the airship from Boulogne carrying 300,000 asylum seekers as part of the reciprocal scheme
Old power station sites do seem to be a vaguely sane plan though. Grid connections and cooling water.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Natick
1) build a foreign owned factory
2) build the infrastructure to support it
3) gradually build the supply chain to 1)
4) build your own factories to use 3) and the domestic skills gained in 1) & 2)
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep a-nights.
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look,
He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.
1) seawater ruins everything.
2) seawater vapour really ruins everything
3) maratime operations are expensive
4) sticking something in a can and putting it in the water isn’t efficient cooling. So you still need elaborate heat exchange technology.
In the end, it would be cheaper to build your conventional data centre next to the sea and use pumped seawater to cool a primary loop.
I think Ed Davey understands the trap that his opponents want to lay, and lets the local campaigns do their thing.