BTW the thought that on subject X 'there's nothing new to discover' is not a scientific thought but a quasi religious one. This cannot be known a priori.
That's a fair qualification. I'm going to blame a futile and largely failed attempt to keep down the length of my comment.
More completely what I mean is that there are strong incentives to find such a refutation. Sometimes these can be overlooked for many decades because people haven't looked, or haven't connected two disparate pieces of data, but, in general, as a shorthand, we can be reasonably confident that such a refutation hasn't been found because it doesn't exist.
There is always a slim chance that our entire understanding of science will be turned on its head, and so there is a sense that all scientific knowledge is provisional and incomplete, but for practical purposes it is reasonable to treat well-established scientific knowledge - such as gravity, electromagnetism, and the greenhouse effect - as proven facts, so that for the political purposes of debating appropriate action (or lack of action) we debate the less certain political and economic tradeoffs, rather than imagined scientific uncertainties.
Society has generally wasted a huge amount of effort in having non-scientists attempt to debate (badly) the science of climate change, instead of talking about the real choices that exist in how best to respond to the science (and its uncertainties). Why the so-called climate sceptics decided to attack the science, rather than make a political and economic case for a different approach I have run out of space in this comment to speculate.
Sadly we've gone from the scientifically trained Margaret Thatcher accepting the reality of climate change in 1989 to real-estate mogul Donald Trump declaring it a hoax in 2025.
Next few weeks of polling are going to be interesting.
Probably around 40% if things continue to go well for them over the next 12 months.
Reform's polling gain has primarily come from Labour and Tories, who are now both averaging say 21% and 18% (electoral calculus). Reform are at 30%.
To get up to 40% we're talking both Labour and Conservatives averaging 15% and no further leakage to the Greens or Lib Dems. Sounds possible but feels like we're scraping the bottom of 'people who would vote red/blue if it was a monkey wearing a hat' territory.
Wouldn't surprise me if there's the odd poll with Reform at 40% though.
Bit rum of Nigel just to say 'dunno' when asked about the medical safety of paracetamol. Do we take from this that his government will simply refuse to offer health advice when in office? How will that work if we have another Covid-like crisis?
Farage also took a rather selective refuge behind the (obviously true) point that there is no such thing as absolutely settled science - the Popper point to deal with Hume's celebrated objections to the finality of science and the nature of causation - that to qualify as science all its findings have to be eternally falsifiable.
OTOH there is nothing specially terrible about a non scientist like Farage claiming not to have scientific knowledge.
He's not so reticent to give his opinion of climate science.
Fair point.
Worth noting however that the two subjects are different in kind. The paracetamol/autism question is (relatively) discrete and simple - is there a relevant statistical link between single action X and single outcome Y. Similar to smoking and lung cancer. It is in principle testable and answerable (subject to the usual Popperian qualifications, if like me you are a Popper fan).
'Climate change' is no such thing. As a subject all manner of individual bits and pieces are testable, but the totality is only testable by waiting and seeing, which is little use; and the sheer complexity of the data and the future unknowns mean that as a whole it is not irrational to be doubtful about the reliability of the enterprise.
There is (IMO) a tendency for the climate change 'camp' to have no interest in any counter evidence, and the climate sceptic 'camp' to have no interest in counter evidence either. This trend characterises religion rather than science.
It is obvious to the meanest intellect that there are gigantic commercial, academic and political interests behind both 'camps', obvious also that to many powerful interests it is not helpful for there to be a healthy and reasoned debate.
No. Climate change has already happened. That that is so can be assessed through standard scientific methods. And it has been assessed, and clearly has already happened.
It is difficult to make predictions, particularly about the future, so what happens in the coming years is uncertain in detail, but there's no doubt about the broad outlines.
There are vested interests on one side of the debate that have been clearly documented as repeatedly trying to push a particular answer, and that's fossil fuel companies trying to deny climate change.
There are vested interests on both sides. To a young climate researcher a major paper which leads to a significant grant can make their career. Most scientists are ethical, but not all. Just like most people really.
How can anyone be 'phobic' towards Starmer? He's a grey suit, and there are far, far worse people in, and around politics.
He's not very good at the job, but that's little reason to feel 'phobic' towards him.
It's also interesting that many of the responses agreeing come from people who like Farage, who is a far worse person, and whose ideas are disastrous for this country.
I agree on Starmer not being inspirational and being cautious to a fault - an aspiring technocrat when we need something beyond; even those here opposed to him often complain that he is too indecisive. But he also been notably competent at foreign affairs so far.
I think the Cons and RefUK are phobic towards Starmer, 1) Because the biggest threat they have is that he succeeds, and it works, and 2) Because they have little or nothing to offer themselves, so they have no option other than relying on personality politics.
Personally, I still think we will not be in a position to judge any outcome for 2 years from the Election, and even then it will only be straws in the wind.
His lack of communication cut-through so that the battle is on his home ground eg currently Workers' and Renters' Rights, and reluctance to go for the Opposition in a consistent, brutal manner, makes him his own worst enemy.
Also, the media is tribal as it always is, and chunks of it are now nakedly political.
Among people I know, Starmer is more of a joke than hated.
The endless piling on of regulation and then discovering that the government is ever more unable to do anything without the permission of a court is the most commented.
Which isn’t just about A/C - it also explains how rules on A/C interact with rules on building ventilation and fire safety to make new builds more expensive and less dense. And why the windows keep getting pokier. All because of he cult of “one more extra regulation - and regulations cost nothing”
As someone who was a commercial lawyer but now running a manufacturing business in the UK and Europe, this is how I see him as well. I can't hate him for being unable to transcend the mindset and limited vision that his professional and social circles have granted him. If you haven't started a business, taken real risk, identified unmet needs and matched them, found success by challenging assumptions about the way things have always been done, by being more efficient than the competition, if you've never been anything but a manager, a paper shuffler and a back coverer, then you're a joke to me, but I can't hate you.
And... breathe...
Who was the last PM who started a business? Genuine question, I don't think that any recent PMs has had an entrepreneurial background. Starmer is hardly unique in this regard.
Probably Neville Chamberlain.
Hmm. Not a great precedent. I wonder whether that deal-making business attitude led him down the path of appeasement. FWIW I don't think business people tend to make good politicians. I do think though that it's good to have people in politics who understand the needs of entrepreneurs. There are too many on the left who are completely ignorant of that side of things. Just as there are too many on the right who assume that government has no useful function. And too many on all sides who have no experience of anything at all!
Bit rum of Nigel just to say 'dunno' when asked about the medical safety of paracetamol. Do we take from this that his government will simply refuse to offer health advice when in office? How will that work if we have another Covid-like crisis?
Farage also took a rather selective refuge behind the (obviously true) point that there is no such thing as absolutely settled science - the Popper point to deal with Hume's celebrated objections to the finality of science and the nature of causation - that to qualify as science all its findings have to be eternally falsifiable.
OTOH there is nothing specially terrible about a non scientist like Farage claiming not to have scientific knowledge.
He's not so reticent to give his opinion of climate science.
Fair point.
Worth noting however that the two subjects are different in kind. The paracetamol/autism question is (relatively) discrete and simple - is there a relevant statistical link between single action X and single outcome Y. Similar to smoking and lung cancer. It is in principle testable and answerable (subject to the usual Popperian qualifications, if like me you are a Popper fan).
'Climate change' is no such thing. As a subject all manner of individual bits and pieces are testable, but the totality is only testable by waiting and seeing, which is little use; and the sheer complexity of the data and the future unknowns mean that as a whole it is not irrational to be doubtful about the reliability of the enterprise.
There is (IMO) a tendency for the climate change 'camp' to have no interest in any counter evidence, and the climate sceptic 'camp' to have no interest in counter evidence either. This trend characterises religion rather than science.
It is obvious to the meanest intellect that there are gigantic commercial, academic and political interests behind both 'camps', obvious also that to many powerful interests it is not helpful for there to be a healthy and reasoned debate.
The climate science is a hoax side state easily disproven things, such as that "burning fossil fuels isn't responsible for increasing levels of carbon dioxide because volcanoes", as fact, so that you can't take seriously their participation in any sort of debate on the science.
Within climate science there are, of course, vigorous debates on the large number of uncertainties that are present. Those uncertainties don't involve things like, "is the warning due to fossil fuel burning?" That simply isn't an interesting question for scientists to look at anymore, because there's nothing new to discover.
If there were some evidence to disprove the entire edifice of climate science then that would be a massive discovery for a young scientist, and science creates strong incentives for young scientists to make such breakthroughs. But there's no such evidence.
Accusing climate scientists of being religious about their scientific practice, because they don't take seriously people trying to debate things akin to "is the Earth flat?" is incredibly ignorant and insulting.
Anyway, Trump is busy wrecking all attempts to monitor the climate, wanting to deorbit US earth observation satellites, so we'll soon be in blissful ignorance of how bad it gets.
All fair points except perhaps that I am not accusing proper science of improper conduct. I am suggesting that the politicised camps are bad at dialogue.
BTW the thought that on subject X 'there's nothing new to discover' is not a scientific thought but a quasi religious one. This cannot be known a priori.
It depends upon how narrowly defined subject X is.
I am quite confident in declaring there's no new even prime numbers left to discover.
Fair point except that maths and number theory are not empirical subjects. I should have put the word 'nonanalytic' in front of 'subject'. An analysis of the concept 'even prime numbers' reveals, without examining features of the world, that once you have disclosed the number 2, there are no others as no other number is capable of coming within the definition of 'prime number'. Indeed only prime numbers come within the definition of 'prime number'. Jolly good fun, but empirical method it ain't.
We also know, without examining the features of the world, that there are an infinite number of prime numbers, since this can be proved by examination of numbers themselves.
Unusual set of local elections this week. We have Lab defence in Breckland today. Then tomorrow we have 3 Green defences - in Ashford, Highland, and Manchester. Finally there is an SNP defence in Highland.
Next few weeks of polling are going to be interesting.
Probably around 40% if things continue to go well for them over the next 12 months.
Reform's polling gain has primarily come from Labour and Tories, who are now both averaging say 21% and 18% (electoral calculus). Reform are at 30%.
To get up to 40% we're talking both Labour and Conservatives averaging 15% and no further leakage to the Greens or Lib Dems. Sounds possible but feels like we're scraping the bottom of 'people who would vote red/blue if it was a monkey wearing a hat' territory.
Wouldn't surprise me if there's the odd poll with Reform at 40% though.
Hasn't quite a lot of Tory/Lab support gone to DNV, and quite a lot of Ref support come from DNV?
If they can win more of the current Tory/Lab ->DNV switchers to become Tory/Lab -> Ref switchers, there's room for Ref to go lots higher without a single further current Lab/Tory voter (surely it really is just the core vote now) backing them.
(obviously because most pollsters remove DNV from the numbers this would make the Lab/Tory vote share appear to decline, but that isn't the same time at-all).
I couldn't vote LD because of some of their policies locally. Nice people to a man & woman, but some of their policies, nah.
Why would that stop you from voting for them for a general election? (Unless I suppose they are likely to roll the local policies you dislike out across the country. But policies that are wrong for one area may be right for another)
The policies I dislike would be rolled out across the country.
How can anyone be 'phobic' towards Starmer? He's a grey suit, and there are far, far worse people in, and around politics.
He's not very good at the job, but that's little reason to feel 'phobic' towards him.
It's also interesting that many of the responses agreeing come from people who like Farage, who is a far worse person, and whose ideas are disastrous for this country.
I agree on Starmer not being inspirational and being cautious to a fault - an aspiring technocrat when we need something beyond; even those here opposed to him often complain that he is too indecisive. But he also been notably competent at foreign affairs so far.
I think the Cons and RefUK are phobic towards Starmer, 1) Because the biggest threat they have is that he succeeds, and it works, and 2) Because they have little or nothing to offer themselves, so they have no option other than relying on personality politics.
Personally, I still think we will not be in a position to judge any outcome for 2 years from the Election, and even then it will only be straws in the wind.
His lack of communication cut-through so that the battle is on his home ground eg currently Workers' and Renters' Rights, and reluctance to go for the Opposition in a consistent, brutal manner, makes him his own worst enemy.
Also, the media is tribal as it always is, and chunks of it are now nakedly political.
Among people I know, Starmer is more of a joke than hated.
The endless piling on of regulation and then discovering that the government is ever more unable to do anything without the permission of a court is the most commented.
Which isn’t just about A/C - it also explains how rules on A/C interact with rules on building ventilation and fire safety to make new builds more expensive and less dense. And why the windows keep getting pokier. All because of he cult of “one more extra regulation - and regulations cost nothing”
As someone who was a commercial lawyer but now running a manufacturing business in the UK and Europe, this is how I see him as well. I can't hate him for being unable to transcend the mindset and limited vision that his professional and social circles have granted him. If you haven't started a business, taken real risk, identified unmet needs and matched them, found success by challenging assumptions about the way things have always been done, by being more efficient than the competition, if you've never been anything but a manager, a paper shuffler and a back coverer, then you're a joke to me, but I can't hate you.
And... breathe...
Who was the last PM who started a business? Genuine question, I don't think that any recent PMs has had an entrepreneurial background. Starmer is hardly unique in this regard.
Probably Neville Chamberlain.
Hmm. Not a great precedent. I wonder whether that deal-making business attitude led him down the path of appeasement. FWIW I don't think business people tend to make good politicians. I do think though that it's good to have people in politics who understand the needs of entrepreneurs. There are too many on the left who are completely ignorant of that side of things. Just as there are too many on the right who assume that government has no useful function. And too many on all sides who have no experience of anything at all!
That’s probably correct, but Chamberlain’s disaster in dealing with Hitler has too often masked the fact that he was a conspicuous political success domestically as a notably ‘strong’ Prime Minister. He dominated the political scene for many years with a proven record both as Health Minister in the 1920s and Chancellor in the 1930s before succeeding Baldwin in 1937.
Next few weeks of polling are going to be interesting.
Probably around 40% if things continue to go well for them over the next 12 months.
Only if the country has taken leave of its senses
Plenty of reasons in the next 12 months to suggest that they could go higher.
- unpopular budget - momentum from the 2026 locals/Wales/Scotland - possible economic/bond market turmoil - Tory leadership woes/infighting
I wouldn’t be hugely surprised to see them polling at 35% in a years time, though if Farage can’t help himself with the mini-MAGA stuff it will limit their advance somewhat.
Next few weeks of polling are going to be interesting.
Probably around 40% if things continue to go well for them over the next 12 months.
Only if the country has taken leave of its senses
Plenty of reasons in the next 12 months to suggest that they could go higher.
- unpopular budget - momentum from the 2026 locals/Wales/Scotland - possible economic/bond market turmoil - Tory leadership woes/infighting
I wouldn’t be hugely surprised to see them polling at 35% in a years time, though if Farage can’t help himself with the mini-MAGA stuff it will limit their advance somewhat.
Bond market turmoil would lead to a small conservative revival. Reform aren't a nurse to cling to in uncertain times.
A very expensive operation, and it apparently slows, rather than fully treats, the condition. But great news nonetheless.
Slows it by decades though which for many will be a cure. A sensational development which surely gives hope for other gene therapies. Medicine is going to change radically over the next few years as these come online.
And the expense has to be set against decades of ever more intensive treatment. There should be a major saving here.
Some estimates are that production is down around 40% in the last two months, we’re seeing more and more daily reports of petrol and diesel shortages across russia.
It's going to get a lot worse for them. Apparently they have been keeping other refineries going through maintenance periods. You can do that for a limited period; but the maintenance will eventually need to be done, and it will be harder to do. It is far from being a 'free' change. Much of the damaged stuff isn't just pipework, valves or storage vessels; it is more complex equipment with long lead times. And there are only so many skilled people able to do this work.
I expect to see at least one fire/blast caused by simple bodged / delayed maintenance, rather than Ukrainian action.
How can anyone be 'phobic' towards Starmer? He's a grey suit, and there are far, far worse people in, and around politics.
He's not very good at the job, but that's little reason to feel 'phobic' towards him.
It's also interesting that many of the responses agreeing come from people who like Farage, who is a far worse person, and whose ideas are disastrous for this country.
I agree on Starmer not being inspirational and being cautious to a fault - an aspiring technocrat when we need something beyond; even those here opposed to him often complain that he is too indecisive. But he also been notably competent at foreign affairs so far.
I think the Cons and RefUK are phobic towards Starmer, 1) Because the biggest threat they have is that he succeeds, and it works, and 2) Because they have little or nothing to offer themselves, so they have no option other than relying on personality politics.
Personally, I still think we will not be in a position to judge any outcome for 2 years from the Election, and even then it will only be straws in the wind.
His lack of communication cut-through so that the battle is on his home ground eg currently Workers' and Renters' Rights, and reluctance to go for the Opposition in a consistent, brutal manner, makes him his own worst enemy.
Also, the media is tribal as it always is, and chunks of it are now nakedly political.
Among people I know, Starmer is more of a joke than hated.
The endless piling on of regulation and then discovering that the government is ever more unable to do anything without the permission of a court is the most commented.
Which isn’t just about A/C - it also explains how rules on A/C interact with rules on building ventilation and fire safety to make new builds more expensive and less dense. And why the windows keep getting pokier. All because of he cult of “one more extra regulation - and regulations cost nothing”
As someone who was a commercial lawyer but now running a manufacturing business in the UK and Europe, this is how I see him as well. I can't hate him for being unable to transcend the mindset and limited vision that his professional and social circles have granted him. If you haven't started a business, taken real risk, identified unmet needs and matched them, found success by challenging assumptions about the way things have always been done, by being more efficient than the competition, if you've never been anything but a manager, a paper shuffler and a back coverer, then you're a joke to me, but I can't hate you.
And... breathe...
Who was the last PM who started a business? Genuine question, I don't think that any recent PMs has had an entrepreneurial background. Starmer is hardly unique in this regard.
Probably Neville Chamberlain.
Hmm. Not a great precedent. I wonder whether that deal-making business attitude led him down the path of appeasement. FWIW I don't think business people tend to make good politicians. I do think though that it's good to have people in politics who understand the needs of entrepreneurs. There are too many on the left who are completely ignorant of that side of things. Just as there are too many on the right who assume that government has no useful function. And too many on all sides who have no experience of anything at all!
That’s probably correct, but Chamberlain’s disaster in dealing with Hitler has too often masked the fact that he was a conspicuous political success domestically as a notably ‘strong’ Prime Minister. He dominated the political scene for many years with a proven record both as Health Minister in the 1920s and Chancellor in the 1930s before succeeding Baldwin in 1937.
There's an interesting take on Munich by Alec Douglas-Home, who was Chamberlain's PPS at the time. Apparently Chamberlain thought Hitler would renege on it, but decided to make a real song and dance over it ('Peace for our time' etc.) so that when Hitler did renege he'd look like an absolute shit before the world. Which speaks quite highly of Chamberlain if true.
BTW the thought that on subject X 'there's nothing new to discover' is not a scientific thought but a quasi religious one. This cannot be known a priori.
That's a fair qualification. I'm going to blame a futile and largely failed attempt to keep down the length of my comment.
More completely what I mean is that there are strong incentives to find such a refutation. Sometimes these can be overlooked for many decades because people haven't looked, or haven't connected two disparate pieces of data, but, in general, as a shorthand, we can be reasonably confident that such a refutation hasn't been found because it doesn't exist.
There is always a slim chance that our entire understanding of science will be turned on its head, and so there is a sense that all scientific knowledge is provisional and incomplete, but for practical purposes it is reasonable to treat well-established scientific knowledge - such as gravity, electromagnetism, and the greenhouse effect - as proven facts, so that for the political purposes of debating appropriate action (or lack of action) we debate the less certain political and economic tradeoffs, rather than imagined scientific uncertainties.
Society has generally wasted a huge amount of effort in having non-scientists attempt to debate (badly) the science of climate change, instead of talking about the real choices that exist in how best to respond to the science (and its uncertainties). Why the so-called climate sceptics decided to attack the science, rather than make a political and economic case for a different approach I have run out of space in this comment to speculate.
A fair set of points. I am not a climate scientist and personally basically accept the general theory of global warming as a consequence of human activity. I also think that most of the public debate is an elaborate sharing of ignorance.
As to the politics and human side of it, I think there is more to be said and it is principally about trust. When I look at elites, political leaders and opinion formers I get the impression from what they say that they are committed to the standard view of climate change, but I do not draw the same conclusion from what they do. It is a reasonable assumption that, if they believed it, the wealthiest and most powerful with the greatest celebrity profile would be in the vanguard of the necessary change in respect of personal conduct and that this would be unavoidably obvious in its consequences.
Try, for one tiny example, the recent decision to expand massively Gatwick. Contemplate for one moment the nature of celebrity lifestyle.
It is not unreasonable for a non scientist to draw the conclusion that the world's most important and richest people do not believe it, and that it is rational to assume they may be right.
I don't draw that conclusion. One of the reasons I never travel by air.
My life is surrounded by lovely much younger people who travel by air all the time, nearly all of it just for fun.
LibDems need to do a social media advert with Farage tucked in Trump's top shirt pocket in the style of the Alliance days.
Not sure it makes much sense for the LDs to set up as the anti Farage party. They are fighting different constituencies and Reform doing well enough in LD seats stops a Tory comeback which is the threat to their current MPs.
Either they can stay the party of the naice seats, or if they have ambitions beyond that then I'd suggest focusing on their own policies, but getting a fair bit more radical (not by moving left or right, but in challenging the status quo where it is clearly failing).
Why do people keep on making this stuff up about PB bring blind to the allure of MAGA? It happened at the Presidential election too. The majority of PBers don't like Trump but that doesn't mean they think he's unpopular in the US.
In fact, a lot of the doom on here is because we think Trump will run for a third term, upend the constitution, and win.
LibDems need to do a social media advert with Farage tucked in Trump's top shirt pocket in the style of the Alliance days.
Not sure it makes much sense for the LDs to set up as the anti Farage party. They are fighting different constituencies and Reform doing well enough in LD seats stops a Tory comeback which is the threat to their current MPs.
Either they can stay the party of the naice seats, or if they have ambitions beyond that then I'd suggest focusing on their own policies, but getting a fair bit more radical (not by moving left or right, but in challenging the status quo where it is clearly failing).
Afternoon , all.
They also understandably see it as a moral and ideologica calling , though. and at the same time.
As Raphael Behr says in the Grauniad today, if not now for liberal voices to stand up, then when ?
Some estimates are that production is down around 40% in the last two months, we’re seeing more and more daily reports of petrol and diesel shortages across russia.
It's going to get a lot worse for them. Apparently they have been keeping other refineries going through maintenance periods. You can do that for a limited period; but the maintenance will eventually need to be done, and it will be harder to do. It is far from being a 'free' change. Much of the damaged stuff isn't just pipework, valves or storage vessels; it is more complex equipment with long lead times. And there are only so many skilled people able to do this work.
I expect to see at least one fire/blast caused by simple bodged / delayed maintenance, rather than Ukrainian action.
It appears that no O&G facilities within about 1,500km of Ukraine have any meaningful air defences, there’s been a number of facilities targeted more than once, taking out different parts each time.
The fuel shortages are now very close to Moscow, and the Ukranians appear to be able to fly drones at will close to the capital, most seemingly not armed but trying to cause a nuisance by closing airspace and activating air defences there. Air defences that are close to being exhausted.
Bit rum of Nigel just to say 'dunno' when asked about the medical safety of paracetamol. Do we take from this that his government will simply refuse to offer health advice when in office? How will that work if we have another Covid-like crisis?
Farage also took a rather selective refuge behind the (obviously true) point that there is no such thing as absolutely settled science - the Popper point to deal with Hume's celebrated objections to the finality of science and the nature of causation - that to qualify as science all its findings have to be eternally falsifiable.
OTOH there is nothing specially terrible about a non scientist like Farage claiming not to have scientific knowledge.
He's not so reticent to give his opinion of climate science.
Fair point.
Worth noting however that the two subjects are different in kind. The paracetamol/autism question is (relatively) discrete and simple - is there a relevant statistical link between single action X and single outcome Y. Similar to smoking and lung cancer. It is in principle testable and answerable (subject to the usual Popperian qualifications, if like me you are a Popper fan).
'Climate change' is no such thing. As a subject all manner of individual bits and pieces are testable, but the totality is only testable by waiting and seeing, which is little use; and the sheer complexity of the data and the future unknowns mean that as a whole it is not irrational to be doubtful about the reliability of the enterprise.
There is (IMO) a tendency for the climate change 'camp' to have no interest in any counter evidence, and the climate sceptic 'camp' to have no interest in counter evidence either. This trend characterises religion rather than science.
It is obvious to the meanest intellect that there are gigantic commercial, academic and political interests behind both 'camps', obvious also that to many powerful interests it is not helpful for there to be a healthy and reasoned debate.
The climate science is a hoax side state easily disproven things, such as that "burning fossil fuels isn't responsible for increasing levels of carbon dioxide because volcanoes", as fact, so that you can't take seriously their participation in any sort of debate on the science.
Within climate science there are, of course, vigorous debates on the large number of uncertainties that are present. Those uncertainties don't involve things like, "is the warning due to fossil fuel burning?" That simply isn't an interesting question for scientists to look at anymore, because there's nothing new to discover.
If there were some evidence to disprove the entire edifice of climate science then that would be a massive discovery for a young scientist, and science creates strong incentives for young scientists to make such breakthroughs. But there's no such evidence.
Accusing climate scientists of being religious about their scientific practice, because they don't take seriously people trying to debate things akin to "is the Earth flat?" is incredibly ignorant and insulting.
Anyway, Trump is busy wrecking all attempts to monitor the climate, wanting to deorbit US earth observation satellites, so we'll soon be in blissful ignorance of how bad it gets.
All fair points except perhaps that I am not accusing proper science of improper conduct. I am suggesting that the politicised camps are bad at dialogue.
BTW the thought that on subject X 'there's nothing new to discover' is not a scientific thought but a quasi religious one. This cannot be known a priori.
Many scientists thought that physics was all but done in the early years of the 20th century but then some buggers came along with quantum theory and relativity. And now look where we are.
Quantum theory didn't disprove electromagnetism or gravity, though. It showed the world was even more complicated, but much of our previous understanding was still sufficient.
NASA didn't have to use relativity to plot the course of the Apollo missions. Newtonian gravitational mechanics was sufficient.
So even with the vast revolution in physics created by relativity and quantum dynamics, the previous physics wasn't disproved, as such.
How can anyone be 'phobic' towards Starmer? He's a grey suit, and there are far, far worse people in, and around politics.
He's not very good at the job, but that's little reason to feel 'phobic' towards him.
It's also interesting that many of the responses agreeing come from people who like Farage, who is a far worse person, and whose ideas are disastrous for this country.
I agree on Starmer not being inspirational and being cautious to a fault - an aspiring technocrat when we need something beyond; even those here opposed to him often complain that he is too indecisive. But he also been notably competent at foreign affairs so far.
I think the Cons and RefUK are phobic towards Starmer, 1) Because the biggest threat they have is that he succeeds, and it works, and 2) Because they have little or nothing to offer themselves, so they have no option other than relying on personality politics.
Personally, I still think we will not be in a position to judge any outcome for 2 years from the Election, and even then it will only be straws in the wind.
His lack of communication cut-through so that the battle is on his home ground eg currently Workers' and Renters' Rights, and reluctance to go for the Opposition in a consistent, brutal manner, makes him his own worst enemy.
Also, the media is tribal as it always is, and chunks of it are now nakedly political.
Among people I know, Starmer is more of a joke than hated.
The endless piling on of regulation and then discovering that the government is ever more unable to do anything without the permission of a court is the most commented.
Which isn’t just about A/C - it also explains how rules on A/C interact with rules on building ventilation and fire safety to make new builds more expensive and less dense. And why the windows keep getting pokier. All because of he cult of “one more extra regulation - and regulations cost nothing”
As someone who was a commercial lawyer but now running a manufacturing business in the UK and Europe, this is how I see him as well. I can't hate him for being unable to transcend the mindset and limited vision that his professional and social circles have granted him. If you haven't started a business, taken real risk, identified unmet needs and matched them, found success by challenging assumptions about the way things have always been done, by being more efficient than the competition, if you've never been anything but a manager, a paper shuffler and a back coverer, then you're a joke to me, but I can't hate you.
And... breathe...
Who was the last PM who started a business? Genuine question, I don't think that any recent PMs has had an entrepreneurial background. Starmer is hardly unique in this regard.
Probably Neville Chamberlain.
Hmm. Not a great precedent. I wonder whether that deal-making business attitude led him down the path of appeasement. FWIW I don't think business people tend to make good politicians. I do think though that it's good to have people in politics who understand the needs of entrepreneurs. There are too many on the left who are completely ignorant of that side of things. Just as there are too many on the right who assume that government has no useful function. And too many on all sides who have no experience of anything at all!
It fell to Neville Chamberlain in one of the supreme crises of the world to be contradicted by events, to be disappointed in his hopes, and to be deceived and cheated by a wicked man. But what were these hopes in which he was disappointed? What were these wishes in which he was frustrated? What was that faith that was abused? They were surely among the most noble and benevolent instincts of the human heart-the love of peace, the toil for peace, the strife for peace, the pursuit of peace, even at great peril, and certainly to the utter disdain of popularity or clamour. Whatever else history may or may not say about these terrible, tremendous years, we can be sure that Neville Chamberlain acted with perfect sincerity according to his lights and strove to the utmost of his capacity and authority, which were powerful, to save the world from the awful, devastating struggle in which we are now engaged. This alone will stand him in good stead as far as what is called the verdict of history is concerned.
Unusual set of local elections this week. We have Lab defence in Breckland today. Then tomorrow we have 3 Green defences - in Ashford, Highland, and Manchester. Finally there is an SNP defence in Highland.
LibDems need to do a social media advert with Farage tucked in Trump's top shirt pocket in the style of the Alliance days.
Not sure it makes much sense for the LDs to set up as the anti Farage party. They are fighting different constituencies and Reform doing well enough in LD seats stops a Tory comeback which is the threat to their current MPs.
Either they can stay the party of the naice seats, or if they have ambitions beyond that then I'd suggest focusing on their own policies, but getting a fair bit more radical (not by moving left or right, but in challenging the status quo where it is clearly failing).
Afternoon , all.
They also understandably see it as a moral and ideologica calling , though. and at the same time.
As Raphael Behr says in the Grauniad today, if not now for liberal voices to stand up, then when ?
If it is truly a moral calling they should be doing stuff like unilaterally standing aside in certain seats for Labour, SNP and maybe even the Tories. None of which they will do or even consider. Maybe it is a moral whisper more than a moral calling.
How can anyone be 'phobic' towards Starmer? He's a grey suit, and there are far, far worse people in, and around politics.
He's not very good at the job, but that's little reason to feel 'phobic' towards him.
It's also interesting that many of the responses agreeing come from people who like Farage, who is a far worse person, and whose ideas are disastrous for this country.
I agree on Starmer not being inspirational and being cautious to a fault - an aspiring technocrat when we need something beyond; even those here opposed to him often complain that he is too indecisive. But he also been notably competent at foreign affairs so far.
I think the Cons and RefUK are phobic towards Starmer, 1) Because the biggest threat they have is that he succeeds, and it works, and 2) Because they have little or nothing to offer themselves, so they have no option other than relying on personality politics.
Personally, I still think we will not be in a position to judge any outcome for 2 years from the Election, and even then it will only be straws in the wind.
His lack of communication cut-through so that the battle is on his home ground eg currently Workers' and Renters' Rights, and reluctance to go for the Opposition in a consistent, brutal manner, makes him his own worst enemy.
Also, the media is tribal as it always is, and chunks of it are now nakedly political.
Among people I know, Starmer is more of a joke than hated.
The endless piling on of regulation and then discovering that the government is ever more unable to do anything without the permission of a court is the most commented.
Which isn’t just about A/C - it also explains how rules on A/C interact with rules on building ventilation and fire safety to make new builds more expensive and less dense. And why the windows keep getting pokier. All because of he cult of “one more extra regulation - and regulations cost nothing”
As someone who was a commercial lawyer but now running a manufacturing business in the UK and Europe, this is how I see him as well. I can't hate him for being unable to transcend the mindset and limited vision that his professional and social circles have granted him. If you haven't started a business, taken real risk, identified unmet needs and matched them, found success by challenging assumptions about the way things have always been done, by being more efficient than the competition, if you've never been anything but a manager, a paper shuffler and a back coverer, then you're a joke to me, but I can't hate you.
And... breathe...
Who was the last PM who started a business? Genuine question, I don't think that any recent PMs has had an entrepreneurial background. Starmer is hardly unique in this regard.
Probably Neville Chamberlain.
Hmm. Not a great precedent. I wonder whether that deal-making business attitude led him down the path of appeasement. FWIW I don't think business people tend to make good politicians. I do think though that it's good to have people in politics who understand the needs of entrepreneurs. There are too many on the left who are completely ignorant of that side of things. Just as there are too many on the right who assume that government has no useful function. And too many on all sides who have no experience of anything at all!
That’s probably correct, but Chamberlain’s disaster in dealing with Hitler has too often masked the fact that he was a conspicuous political success domestically as a notably ‘strong’ Prime Minister. He dominated the political scene for many years with a proven record both as Health Minister in the 1920s and Chancellor in the 1930s before succeeding Baldwin in 1937.
There's an interesting take on Munich by Alec Douglas-Home, who was Chamberlain's PPS at the time. Apparently Chamberlain thought Hitler would renege on it, but decided to make a real song and dance over it ('Peace for our time' etc.) so that when Hitler did renege he'd look like an absolute shit before the world. Which speaks quite highly of Chamberlain if true.
That’s long been known, if not emphasised in the various primary sources for the period. If we are to believe them, Chamberlain thought -
- that peace should be given the utmost chance - that it was probable that Hitler would renage - that having done everything for peace would unite the country and her allies in opposition to Hitler - buy more time for rearmament. Which was running at the “what else can we spend money on?” level at this point.
LibDems need to do a social media advert with Farage tucked in Trump's top shirt pocket in the style of the Alliance days.
Not sure it makes much sense for the LDs to set up as the anti Farage party. They are fighting different constituencies and Reform doing well enough in LD seats stops a Tory comeback which is the threat to their current MPs.
Either they can stay the party of the naice seats, or if they have ambitions beyond that then I'd suggest focusing on their own policies, but getting a fair bit more radical (not by moving left or right, but in challenging the status quo where it is clearly failing).
Afternoon , all.
They also understandably see it as a moral and ideologica calling , though. and at the same time.
As Raphael Behr says in the Grauniad today, if not now for liberal voices to stand up, then when ?
If it is truly a moral calling they should be doing stuff like unilaterally standing aside in certain seats for Labour, SNP and maybe even the Tories. None of which they will do or even consider. Maybe it is a moral whisper more than a moral calling.
And I think the standing up should come from offering radical reform of the status quo within the tradition of western liberal democracy rather than attacking the Refukkers, which is the easy and unproductive option.
Bit rum of Nigel just to say 'dunno' when asked about the medical safety of paracetamol. Do we take from this that his government will simply refuse to offer health advice when in office? How will that work if we have another Covid-like crisis?
Farage also took a rather selective refuge behind the (obviously true) point that there is no such thing as absolutely settled science - the Popper point to deal with Hume's celebrated objections to the finality of science and the nature of causation - that to qualify as science all its findings have to be eternally falsifiable.
OTOH there is nothing specially terrible about a non scientist like Farage claiming not to have scientific knowledge.
He's not so reticent to give his opinion of climate science.
Fair point.
Worth noting however that the two subjects are different in kind. The paracetamol/autism question is (relatively) discrete and simple - is there a relevant statistical link between single action X and single outcome Y. Similar to smoking and lung cancer. It is in principle testable and answerable (subject to the usual Popperian qualifications, if like me you are a Popper fan).
'Climate change' is no such thing. As a subject all manner of individual bits and pieces are testable, but the totality is only testable by waiting and seeing, which is little use; and the sheer complexity of the data and the future unknowns mean that as a whole it is not irrational to be doubtful about the reliability of the enterprise.
There is (IMO) a tendency for the climate change 'camp' to have no interest in any counter evidence, and the climate sceptic 'camp' to have no interest in counter evidence either. This trend characterises religion rather than science.
It is obvious to the meanest intellect that there are gigantic commercial, academic and political interests behind both 'camps', obvious also that to many powerful interests it is not helpful for there to be a healthy and reasoned debate.
The climate science is a hoax side state easily disproven things, such as that "burning fossil fuels isn't responsible for increasing levels of carbon dioxide because volcanoes", as fact, so that you can't take seriously their participation in any sort of debate on the science.
Within climate science there are, of course, vigorous debates on the large number of uncertainties that are present. Those uncertainties don't involve things like, "is the warning due to fossil fuel burning?" That simply isn't an interesting question for scientists to look at anymore, because there's nothing new to discover.
If there were some evidence to disprove the entire edifice of climate science then that would be a massive discovery for a young scientist, and science creates strong incentives for young scientists to make such breakthroughs. But there's no such evidence.
Accusing climate scientists of being religious about their scientific practice, because they don't take seriously people trying to debate things akin to "is the Earth flat?" is incredibly ignorant and insulting.
Anyway, Trump is busy wrecking all attempts to monitor the climate, wanting to deorbit US earth observation satellites, so we'll soon be in blissful ignorance of how bad it gets.
All fair points except perhaps that I am not accusing proper science of improper conduct. I am suggesting that the politicised camps are bad at dialogue.
BTW the thought that on subject X 'there's nothing new to discover' is not a scientific thought but a quasi religious one. This cannot be known a priori.
Many scientists thought that physics was all but done in the early years of the 20th century but then some buggers came along with quantum theory and relativity. And now look where we are.
Quantum theory didn't disprove electromagnetism or gravity, though. It showed the world was even more complicated, but much of our previous understanding was still sufficient.
NASA didn't have to use relativity to plot the course of the Apollo missions. Newtonian gravitational mechanics was sufficient.
So even with the vast revolution in physics created by relativity and quantum dynamics, the previous physics wasn't disproved, as such.
Well, it has to be said that Einstein originally became world-famous because of a rather different interpretation.
"Revolution in Science, Newtonian ideas ovrthrown", the Times said in its headline at the time.
In a different era, Galileo's works were an example of scientific progress by direct refutation.
Bit rum of Nigel just to say 'dunno' when asked about the medical safety of paracetamol. Do we take from this that his government will simply refuse to offer health advice when in office? How will that work if we have another Covid-like crisis?
Farage also took a rather selective refuge behind the (obviously true) point that there is no such thing as absolutely settled science - the Popper point to deal with Hume's celebrated objections to the finality of science and the nature of causation - that to qualify as science all its findings have to be eternally falsifiable.
OTOH there is nothing specially terrible about a non scientist like Farage claiming not to have scientific knowledge.
He's not so reticent to give his opinion of climate science.
Fair point.
Worth noting however that the two subjects are different in kind. The paracetamol/autism question is (relatively) discrete and simple - is there a relevant statistical link between single action X and single outcome Y. Similar to smoking and lung cancer. It is in principle testable and answerable (subject to the usual Popperian qualifications, if like me you are a Popper fan).
'Climate change' is no such thing. As a subject all manner of individual bits and pieces are testable, but the totality is only testable by waiting and seeing, which is little use; and the sheer complexity of the data and the future unknowns mean that as a whole it is not irrational to be doubtful about the reliability of the enterprise.
There is (IMO) a tendency for the climate change 'camp' to have no interest in any counter evidence, and the climate sceptic 'camp' to have no interest in counter evidence either. This trend characterises religion rather than science.
It is obvious to the meanest intellect that there are gigantic commercial, academic and political interests behind both 'camps', obvious also that to many powerful interests it is not helpful for there to be a healthy and reasoned debate.
The climate science is a hoax side state easily disproven things, such as that "burning fossil fuels isn't responsible for increasing levels of carbon dioxide because volcanoes", as fact, so that you can't take seriously their participation in any sort of debate on the science.
Within climate science there are, of course, vigorous debates on the large number of uncertainties that are present. Those uncertainties don't involve things like, "is the warning due to fossil fuel burning?" That simply isn't an interesting question for scientists to look at anymore, because there's nothing new to discover.
If there were some evidence to disprove the entire edifice of climate science then that would be a massive discovery for a young scientist, and science creates strong incentives for young scientists to make such breakthroughs. But there's no such evidence.
Accusing climate scientists of being religious about their scientific practice, because they don't take seriously people trying to debate things akin to "is the Earth flat?" is incredibly ignorant and insulting.
Anyway, Trump is busy wrecking all attempts to monitor the climate, wanting to deorbit US earth observation satellites, so we'll soon be in blissful ignorance of how bad it gets.
All fair points except perhaps that I am not accusing proper science of improper conduct. I am suggesting that the politicised camps are bad at dialogue.
BTW the thought that on subject X 'there's nothing new to discover' is not a scientific thought but a quasi religious one. This cannot be known a priori.
Many scientists thought that physics was all but done in the early years of the 20th century but then some buggers came along with quantum theory and relativity. And now look where we are.
Quantum theory didn't disprove electromagnetism or gravity, though. It showed the world was even more complicated, but much of our previous understanding was still sufficient.
NASA didn't have to use relativity to plot the course of the Apollo missions. Newtonian gravitational mechanics was sufficient.
So even with the vast revolution in physics created by relativity and quantum dynamics, the previous physics wasn't disproved, as such.
Well, Einstein origiinally became world-famous because of a rather different interptetation.
"Revolution in Science, Newtonian ideas ovrthrown", the Times said in its headline at the time.
In a different area, Gallileo's works were also an example of scientific progress by direct refutation.
Which headline is false.
Relativity added on top of Newtonian theory effects that occur at vast scales or tiny ones
See orbital calculations which become increasingly accurate (compared to the observed values) as you add effects from Relativity and later theories on top of the Newtonian basic answer.
How can anyone be 'phobic' towards Starmer? He's a grey suit, and there are far, far worse people in, and around politics.
He's not very good at the job, but that's little reason to feel 'phobic' towards him.
It's also interesting that many of the responses agreeing come from people who like Farage, who is a far worse person, and whose ideas are disastrous for this country.
I agree on Starmer not being inspirational and being cautious to a fault - an aspiring technocrat when we need something beyond; even those here opposed to him often complain that he is too indecisive. But he also been notably competent at foreign affairs so far.
I think the Cons and RefUK are phobic towards Starmer, 1) Because the biggest threat they have is that he succeeds, and it works, and 2) Because they have little or nothing to offer themselves, so they have no option other than relying on personality politics.
Personally, I still think we will not be in a position to judge any outcome for 2 years from the Election, and even then it will only be straws in the wind.
His lack of communication cut-through so that the battle is on his home ground eg currently Workers' and Renters' Rights, and reluctance to go for the Opposition in a consistent, brutal manner, makes him his own worst enemy.
Also, the media is tribal as it always is, and chunks of it are now nakedly political.
Among people I know, Starmer is more of a joke than hated.
The endless piling on of regulation and then discovering that the government is ever more unable to do anything without the permission of a court is the most commented.
Which isn’t just about A/C - it also explains how rules on A/C interact with rules on building ventilation and fire safety to make new builds more expensive and less dense. And why the windows keep getting pokier. All because of he cult of “one more extra regulation - and regulations cost nothing”
That's a great article.
The Part O building regulations do seem egregiously bad. Passive house design tends to maximise glazing and solar gain, so it's bizarre to see regulations that explicitly forbid that design.
Solar gain would be good in a cool, sunny climate but not such a good idea for summer in a warming climate. So a good passive design would be well-insulated, utilizing waste appliance heat and occupants heat output to maintain temperature in winter and be shaded from direct sunlight to minimize solar gain in summer so you don't roast.
The piece linked just seems confused.
He is not clear about what he wants, nor does he - for example - clearly differentiate between a reversible A2A heat pump and air conditioning, which are very different.
And he's pulling all sorts of thins from all sorts of places in a general perambulation.
Nor, also for example, does he recognise that reversible (as opposed to non reversible) A2A heat pumps are available under Govt backed schemes (it could be simpler, but they are there), or that A2A heat pumps generally do not need sudsidy as they are not very expensive.
I think he's right to question dual-aspect apartments, but to cast doubt on "two required stairwells" is not a very strong position.
Passive house design does not maximise glazing - it tends to reduce glazing because it recognises that walls are about 10x more efficient at providing insulation. People wanting certified passive houses spend their time juggling to optimise windows to match their needs (which is a good design discipline); it's also usual that keeping it cool in summer is a bigger challenge than keeping it warm in winter, so keeping solar gain under control is key.
To most people, Aircon vs A2A heatpump looks the same. Exactly - someone trying to make an argument should be talking clearly about the significant difference - is "3x energy consumption for trad aircon" a fair description of that(?), rather than obfuscating.
I'm still not clear what he wants - his title and Britain Remade's campaign page are "Legalise Aircon" and "Let us have home air con." As far as I know that is where we are already.
A2A is generally not available under government schemes. You get a VAT exemption. I'd call that VAT exemption a renewables scheme, and given the lower cost of A2A, perhaps where it should sit - rather then us throwing subsidy at things that don't need it.
Installation isn’t insurer cheap - needs to be done by a qualified engineer (coolant pipes)
I went through this for my loft conversion. My costings are that for a house it would be perhaps a little more than a boiler replacement (that is, just the boiler). Eg a 1x5 12,000 btu multi-way split is available this morning at £2500 + install. (Appliances Direct)"
The point being made is that mandating no air conditioning in the design leads to the multi aspect requirement - which then makes the “corridor between 2 stairwells” much harder and reduces density. AFAIK there is no such mandate. You can install a reversible A2A heat pump in your new or existing house whenever you like. Or you can use one that requires a single hole in the wall with all the gubbins inside. Or, like me, you can use a portable one.
There are discouragements to traditional energy gobbling forms of aircon, for that reason and perhaps (have not checked) other reasons. That seems a good thing.
That's his real problem imo - he's campaigning against something that does not exist, and exaggerating his claim. In that respect, it is quite like the 'they are banning fun nationwide' nonsense from the other day, built on a single difficult case. I think to understand that, we begin to need to look at the guy's organisation - which appeared run by former Con SPADS, portraying itself as a grassroots network of "ordinary people".
Further, the passive requirement then drives down window size. I'm not actually aware of any "passive" requirement either (Ireland more or less have it for newbuild, but not the UK), but perhaps you mean the more demanding Building Regs requirements?
All driven by an “A/C is evil” doctrine which recognises neither changes in technology or the steadily growing amount of green ‘leccy I don't see any such doctrine.
LibDems need to do a social media advert with Farage tucked in Trump's top shirt pocket in the style of the Alliance days.
Not sure it makes much sense for the LDs to set up as the anti Farage party. They are fighting different constituencies and Reform doing well enough in LD seats stops a Tory comeback which is the threat to their current MPs.
Either they can stay the party of the naice seats, or if they have ambitions beyond that then I'd suggest focusing on their own policies, but getting a fair bit more radical (not by moving left or right, but in challenging the status quo where it is clearly failing).
Afternoon , all.
They also understandably see it as a moral and ideologica calling , though. and at the same time.
As Raphael Behr says in the Grauniad today, if not now for liberal voices to stand up, then when ?
If it is truly a moral calling they should be doing stuff like unilaterally standing aside in certain seats for Labour, SNP and maybe even the Tories. None of which they will do or even consider. Maybe it is a moral whisper more than a moral calling.
And I think the standing up should come from offering radical reform of the status quo within the tradition of western liberal democracy rather than attacking the Refukkers, which is the easy and unproductive option.
I was just about to say this.
What Id like from the Lib Dems is a bit more of the “we get the frustrations with the system, but Reform will break things more. We are on the side of those that want to change the system but who think Reform can’t provide that change, or will provide it in a damaging and divisive way.”
LibDems need to do a social media advert with Farage tucked in Trump's top shirt pocket in the style of the Alliance days.
Not sure it makes much sense for the LDs to set up as the anti Farage party. They are fighting different constituencies and Reform doing well enough in LD seats stops a Tory comeback which is the threat to their current MPs.
Either they can stay the party of the naice seats, or if they have ambitions beyond that then I'd suggest focusing on their own policies, but getting a fair bit more radical (not by moving left or right, but in challenging the status quo where it is clearly failing).
Afternoon , all.
They also understandably see it as a moral and ideologica calling , though. and at the same time.
As Raphael Behr says in the Grauniad today, if not now for liberal voices to stand up, then when ?
If it is truly a moral calling they should be doing stuff like unilaterally standing aside in certain seats for Labour, SNP and maybe even the Tories. None of which they will do or even consider. Maybe it is a moral whisper more than a moral calling.
And I think the standing up should come from offering radical reform of the status quo within the tradition of western liberal democracy rather than attacking the Refukkers, which is the easy and unproductive option.
I was just about to say this.
What Id like from the Lib Dems is a bit more of the “we get the frustrations with the system, but Reform will break things more. We are on the side of those that want to change the system but who think Reform can’t provide that change, or will provide it in a damaging and divisive way.”
A very expensive operation, and it apparently slows, rather than fully treats, the condition. But great news nonetheless.
Slows it by decades though which for many will be a cure. A sensational development which surely gives hope for other gene therapies. Medicine is going to change radically over the next few years as these come online.
And the expense has to be set against decades of ever more intensive treatment. There should be a major saving here.
Ironically as pb debates the philosophy of science, this news comes not via a peer-reviewed journal but from a drugs company press release.
BTW the thought that on subject X 'there's nothing new to discover' is not a scientific thought but a quasi religious one. This cannot be known a priori.
That's a fair qualification. I'm going to blame a futile and largely failed attempt to keep down the length of my comment.
More completely what I mean is that there are strong incentives to find such a refutation. Sometimes these can be overlooked for many decades because people haven't looked, or haven't connected two disparate pieces of data, but, in general, as a shorthand, we can be reasonably confident that such a refutation hasn't been found because it doesn't exist.
There is always a slim chance that our entire understanding of science will be turned on its head, and so there is a sense that all scientific knowledge is provisional and incomplete, but for practical purposes it is reasonable to treat well-established scientific knowledge - such as gravity, electromagnetism, and the greenhouse effect - as proven facts, so that for the political purposes of debating appropriate action (or lack of action) we debate the less certain political and economic tradeoffs, rather than imagined scientific uncertainties.
Society has generally wasted a huge amount of effort in having non-scientists attempt to debate (badly) the science of climate change, instead of talking about the real choices that exist in how best to respond to the science (and its uncertainties). Why the so-called climate sceptics decided to attack the science, rather than make a political and economic case for a different approach I have run out of space in this comment to speculate.
A fair set of points. I am not a climate scientist and personally basically accept the general theory of global warming as a consequence of human activity. I also think that most of the public debate is an elaborate sharing of ignorance.
As to the politics and human side of it, I think there is more to be said and it is principally about trust. When I look at elites, political leaders and opinion formers I get the impression from what they say that they are committed to the standard view of climate change, but I do not draw the same conclusion from what they do. It is a reasonable assumption that, if they believed it, the wealthiest and most powerful with the greatest celebrity profile would be in the vanguard of the necessary change in respect of personal conduct and that this would be unavoidably obvious in its consequences.
Try, for one tiny example, the recent decision to expand massively Gatwick. Contemplate for one moment the nature of celebrity lifestyle.
It is not unreasonable for a non scientist to draw the conclusion that the world's most important and richest people do not believe it, and that it is rational to assume they may be right.
I don't draw that conclusion. One of the reasons I never travel by air.
My life is surrounded by lovely much younger people who travel by air all the time, nearly all of it just for fun.
What sort of person finds air travel fun, unless they have a private jet?
How can anyone be 'phobic' towards Starmer? He's a grey suit, and there are far, far worse people in, and around politics.
He's not very good at the job, but that's little reason to feel 'phobic' towards him.
It's also interesting that many of the responses agreeing come from people who like Farage, who is a far worse person, and whose ideas are disastrous for this country.
I agree on Starmer not being inspirational and being cautious to a fault - an aspiring technocrat when we need something beyond; even those here opposed to him often complain that he is too indecisive. But he also been notably competent at foreign affairs so far.
I think the Cons and RefUK are phobic towards Starmer, 1) Because the biggest threat they have is that he succeeds, and it works, and 2) Because they have little or nothing to offer themselves, so they have no option other than relying on personality politics.
Personally, I still think we will not be in a position to judge any outcome for 2 years from the Election, and even then it will only be straws in the wind.
His lack of communication cut-through so that the battle is on his home ground eg currently Workers' and Renters' Rights, and reluctance to go for the Opposition in a consistent, brutal manner, makes him his own worst enemy.
Also, the media is tribal as it always is, and chunks of it are now nakedly political.
Among people I know, Starmer is more of a joke than hated.
The endless piling on of regulation and then discovering that the government is ever more unable to do anything without the permission of a court is the most commented.
Which isn’t just about A/C - it also explains how rules on A/C interact with rules on building ventilation and fire safety to make new builds more expensive and less dense. And why the windows keep getting pokier. All because of he cult of “one more extra regulation - and regulations cost nothing”
As someone who was a commercial lawyer but now running a manufacturing business in the UK and Europe, this is how I see him as well. I can't hate him for being unable to transcend the mindset and limited vision that his professional and social circles have granted him. If you haven't started a business, taken real risk, identified unmet needs and matched them, found success by challenging assumptions about the way things have always been done, by being more efficient than the competition, if you've never been anything but a manager, a paper shuffler and a back coverer, then you're a joke to me, but I can't hate you.
And... breathe...
Who was the last PM who started a business? Genuine question, I don't think that any recent PMs has had an entrepreneurial background. Starmer is hardly unique in this regard.
Probably Neville Chamberlain.
Hmm. Not a great precedent. I wonder whether that deal-making business attitude led him down the path of appeasement. FWIW I don't think business people tend to make good politicians. I do think though that it's good to have people in politics who understand the needs of entrepreneurs. There are too many on the left who are completely ignorant of that side of things. Just as there are too many on the right who assume that government has no useful function. And too many on all sides who have no experience of anything at all!
That’s probably correct, but Chamberlain’s disaster in dealing with Hitler has too often masked the fact that he was a conspicuous political success domestically as a notably ‘strong’ Prime Minister. He dominated the political scene for many years with a proven record both as Health Minister in the 1920s and Chancellor in the 1930s before succeeding Baldwin in 1937.
There's an interesting take on Munich by Alec Douglas-Home, who was Chamberlain's PPS at the time. Apparently Chamberlain thought Hitler would renege on it, but decided to make a real song and dance over it ('Peace for our time' etc.) so that when Hitler did renege he'd look like an absolute shit before the world. Which speaks quite highly of Chamberlain if true.
Does it?
It means he sold out the Czechs, who would have had a better chance of defending themselves than the Poles, just to buy a little more time. I think less of him for knowing that.
BTW the thought that on subject X 'there's nothing new to discover' is not a scientific thought but a quasi religious one. This cannot be known a priori.
That's a fair qualification. I'm going to blame a futile and largely failed attempt to keep down the length of my comment.
More completely what I mean is that there are strong incentives to find such a refutation. Sometimes these can be overlooked for many decades because people haven't looked, or haven't connected two disparate pieces of data, but, in general, as a shorthand, we can be reasonably confident that such a refutation hasn't been found because it doesn't exist.
There is always a slim chance that our entire understanding of science will be turned on its head, and so there is a sense that all scientific knowledge is provisional and incomplete, but for practical purposes it is reasonable to treat well-established scientific knowledge - such as gravity, electromagnetism, and the greenhouse effect - as proven facts, so that for the political purposes of debating appropriate action (or lack of action) we debate the less certain political and economic tradeoffs, rather than imagined scientific uncertainties.
Society has generally wasted a huge amount of effort in having non-scientists attempt to debate (badly) the science of climate change, instead of talking about the real choices that exist in how best to respond to the science (and its uncertainties). Why the so-called climate sceptics decided to attack the science, rather than make a political and economic case for a different approach I have run out of space in this comment to speculate.
A fair set of points. I am not a climate scientist and personally basically accept the general theory of global warming as a consequence of human activity. I also think that most of the public debate is an elaborate sharing of ignorance.
As to the politics and human side of it, I think there is more to be said and it is principally about trust. When I look at elites, political leaders and opinion formers I get the impression from what they say that they are committed to the standard view of climate change, but I do not draw the same conclusion from what they do. It is a reasonable assumption that, if they believed it, the wealthiest and most powerful with the greatest celebrity profile would be in the vanguard of the necessary change in respect of personal conduct and that this would be unavoidably obvious in its consequences.
Try, for one tiny example, the recent decision to expand massively Gatwick. Contemplate for one moment the nature of celebrity lifestyle.
It is not unreasonable for a non scientist to draw the conclusion that the world's most important and richest people do not believe it, and that it is rational to assume they may be right.
I don't draw that conclusion. One of the reasons I never travel by air.
My life is surrounded by lovely much younger people who travel by air all the time, nearly all of it just for fun.
What sort of person finds air travel fun, unless they have a private jet?
Unusual set of local elections this week. We have Lab defence in Breckland today. Then tomorrow we have 3 Green defences - in Ashford, Highland, and Manchester. Finally there is an SNP defence in Highland.
The Thetford by election today should be a straightforward Ref gain. On current polling they ought to be getting 45% plus with Lab and Con on about 20 each and Lib Dems with the remaining 5 to 10% If Reform are less than 10% clear they probably arent on track to take SW Norfolk clearly. If they fail to win this ward they arent that close to taking it at all
I’m in a quandary wondering what to do with my second vote in next year’s Holyrood election. My constituency vote will be for the SNP. On present polls, there’s no point giving my regional vote to the SNP. They are likely to win so many constituencies that they won’t get any additional MSPs. I will never vote for the Greens or Reform. Alba are unlikely to pick up sufficient votes to gain an MSP. Do I vote for them anyway, or give my regional vote to the Lib Dems, who are the most sensible of the rest?
How can anyone be 'phobic' towards Starmer? He's a grey suit, and there are far, far worse people in, and around politics.
He's not very good at the job, but that's little reason to feel 'phobic' towards him.
It's also interesting that many of the responses agreeing come from people who like Farage, who is a far worse person, and whose ideas are disastrous for this country.
I agree on Starmer not being inspirational and being cautious to a fault - an aspiring technocrat when we need something beyond; even those here opposed to him often complain that he is too indecisive. But he also been notably competent at foreign affairs so far.
I think the Cons and RefUK are phobic towards Starmer, 1) Because the biggest threat they have is that he succeeds, and it works, and 2) Because they have little or nothing to offer themselves, so they have no option other than relying on personality politics.
Personally, I still think we will not be in a position to judge any outcome for 2 years from the Election, and even then it will only be straws in the wind.
His lack of communication cut-through so that the battle is on his home ground eg currently Workers' and Renters' Rights, and reluctance to go for the Opposition in a consistent, brutal manner, makes him his own worst enemy.
Also, the media is tribal as it always is, and chunks of it are now nakedly political.
Among people I know, Starmer is more of a joke than hated.
The endless piling on of regulation and then discovering that the government is ever more unable to do anything without the permission of a court is the most commented.
Which isn’t just about A/C - it also explains how rules on A/C interact with rules on building ventilation and fire safety to make new builds more expensive and less dense. And why the windows keep getting pokier. All because of he cult of “one more extra regulation - and regulations cost nothing”
That's a great article.
The Part O building regulations do seem egregiously bad. Passive house design tends to maximise glazing and solar gain, so it's bizarre to see regulations that explicitly forbid that design.
Solar gain would be good in a cool, sunny climate but not such a good idea for summer in a warming climate. So a good passive design would be well-insulated, utilizing waste appliance heat and occupants heat output to maintain temperature in winter and be shaded from direct sunlight to minimize solar gain in summer so you don't roast.
The piece linked just seems confused.
He is not clear about what he wants, nor does he - for example - clearly differentiate between a reversible A2A heat pump and air conditioning, which are very different.
And he's pulling all sorts of thins from all sorts of places in a general perambulation.
Nor, also for example, does he recognise that reversible (as opposed to non reversible) A2A heat pumps are available under Govt backed schemes (it could be simpler, but they are there), or that A2A heat pumps generally do not need sudsidy as they are not very expensive.
I think he's right to question dual-aspect apartments, but to cast doubt on "two required stairwells" is not a very strong position.
Passive house design does not maximise glazing - it tends to reduce glazing because it recognises that walls are about 10x more efficient at providing insulation. People wanting certified passive houses spend their time juggling to optimise windows to match their needs (which is a good design discipline); it's also usual that keeping it cool in summer is a bigger challenge than keeping it warm in winter, so keeping solar gain under control is key.
(Comments in italics.)
To most people, Aircon vs A2A heatpump looks the same. Exactly - someone trying to make an argument should be talking clearly about the significant difference - is "3x energy consumption for trad aircon" a fair description(?), rather than obfuscating.
A2A is generally not available under government schemes. You get a VAT exemption. I'd call that VAT exemption a renewables scheme, and given the lower cost of A2A, perhaps where it should sit - rather then us throwing subsidy at things that don't need it.
Installation isn’t insurer cheap - needs to be done by a qualified engineer (coolant pipes)
I went through this for my loft conversion. My costings are that for a house it would be perhaps a little more than a boiler replacement (that is, just the boiler). Eg a 1x5 12,000 btu multi-way split is available this morning at £2500 + install. (Appliances Direct)"
The point being made is that mandating no air conditioning in the design leads to the multi aspect requirement - which then makes the “corridor between 2 stairwells” much harder and reduces density. AFAIK there is no such mandate. You can install a reversible A2A heat pump in your new or existing house whenever you like. Or you can use one that requires a single hole in the wall with all the gubbins inside. Or, like me, you can use a portable one.
There are discouragements to traditional energy gobbling forms of aircon, for that reason and perhaps (have not checked) other reasons. That seems a good thing.
That's his real problem imo - he's campaigning against something that does not exist, and exaggerating his claim. In that respect, it is quite like the 'they are banning fun nationwide' nonsense from the other day, built on a single difficult case. I think to understand that, we begin to need to look at the guy's organisation - which appeared run by former Con SPADS, portraying itself as a grassroots network of "ordinary people".
Further, the passive requirement then drives down window size. I'm not actually aware of any "passive" requirement either (Ireland more or less have it for newbuild, but not the UK), but perhaps you mean the more demanding Building Regs requirements?
All driven by an “A/C is evil” doctrine which recognises neither changes in technology or the steadily growing amount of green ‘leccy I don't see any such doctrine.
The presumption of using “passive” cooling in design is indeed written into the part O building regulations. As is a prejudice against active cooling.
I actually encountered pushback when installing A2A - the local planning guy was upset that “I wanted to install A/C”. I got the distinct impression that if he could, he would have blocked the application.
He seemed confused when I said no, that’s an A2A system.
The cost of install dominates the cost of system. Much as with domestic solar. For example, I hung the outside units on the wall of the side return of the house. That meant scaffolding and provision of electric power to that location. And it’s not 13 amp flex, either. Big cables, run all the way to the fuse box, isolation switches on the wall next to the units - lots of fun.
Lastly, portable A/C units are expensive to run and generally inefficient.
Unusual set of local elections this week. We have Lab defence in Breckland today. Then tomorrow we have 3 Green defences - in Ashford, Highland, and Manchester. Finally there is an SNP defence in Highland.
The Thetford by election today should be a straightforward Ref gain. On current polling they ought to be getting 45% plus with Lab and Con on about 20 each and Lib Dems with the remaining 5 to 10% If Reform are less than 10% clear they probably arent on track to take SW Norfolk clearly. If they fail to win this ward they arent that close to taking it at all
My prediction on the VoteUK site was Ref 45%, Lab 20%, Con 20%, LD 15%. Maybe I've put the LDs a touch high but on the other hand there isn't a Green candidate.
Unusual set of local elections this week. We have Lab defence in Breckland today. Then tomorrow we have 3 Green defences - in Ashford, Highland, and Manchester. Finally there is an SNP defence in Highland.
The Thetford by election today should be a straightforward Ref gain. On current polling they ought to be getting 45% plus with Lab and Con on about 20 each and Lib Dems with the remaining 5 to 10% If Reform are less than 10% clear they probably arent on track to take SW Norfolk clearly. If they fail to win this ward they arent that close to taking it at all
Why is it on a Wednesday? Do they have a week of days they can count on the fingers of one hand?
A very expensive operation, and it apparently slows, rather than fully treats, the condition. But great news nonetheless.
That's very interesting.
The diagnosis and counselling process is very expensive, and takes up quite a chunk of Senior Consultant time and lab analysis - so combined with management of the disease amongst those who lose the genetic lottery there could be a cost-balance in favour (to be cold-blooded about it).
BTW the thought that on subject X 'there's nothing new to discover' is not a scientific thought but a quasi religious one. This cannot be known a priori.
That's a fair qualification. I'm going to blame a futile and largely failed attempt to keep down the length of my comment.
More completely what I mean is that there are strong incentives to find such a refutation. Sometimes these can be overlooked for many decades because people haven't looked, or haven't connected two disparate pieces of data, but, in general, as a shorthand, we can be reasonably confident that such a refutation hasn't been found because it doesn't exist.
There is always a slim chance that our entire understanding of science will be turned on its head, and so there is a sense that all scientific knowledge is provisional and incomplete, but for practical purposes it is reasonable to treat well-established scientific knowledge - such as gravity, electromagnetism, and the greenhouse effect - as proven facts, so that for the political purposes of debating appropriate action (or lack of action) we debate the less certain political and economic tradeoffs, rather than imagined scientific uncertainties.
Society has generally wasted a huge amount of effort in having non-scientists attempt to debate (badly) the science of climate change, instead of talking about the real choices that exist in how best to respond to the science (and its uncertainties). Why the so-called climate sceptics decided to attack the science, rather than make a political and economic case for a different approach I have run out of space in this comment to speculate.
A fair set of points. I am not a climate scientist and personally basically accept the general theory of global warming as a consequence of human activity. I also think that most of the public debate is an elaborate sharing of ignorance.
As to the politics and human side of it, I think there is more to be said and it is principally about trust. When I look at elites, political leaders and opinion formers I get the impression from what they say that they are committed to the standard view of climate change, but I do not draw the same conclusion from what they do. It is a reasonable assumption that, if they believed it, the wealthiest and most powerful with the greatest celebrity profile would be in the vanguard of the necessary change in respect of personal conduct and that this would be unavoidably obvious in its consequences.
Try, for one tiny example, the recent decision to expand massively Gatwick. Contemplate for one moment the nature of celebrity lifestyle.
It is not unreasonable for a non scientist to draw the conclusion that the world's most important and richest people do not believe it, and that it is rational to assume they may be right.
I don't draw that conclusion. One of the reasons I never travel by air.
My life is surrounded by lovely much younger people who travel by air all the time, nearly all of it just for fun.
What sort of person finds air travel fun, unless they have a private jet?
If everyone followed Taylor Swift's example regarding Co2 pollution, humanity would be extinct in about a decade according to my fag packet maths @:)
BTW the thought that on subject X 'there's nothing new to discover' is not a scientific thought but a quasi religious one. This cannot be known a priori.
That's a fair qualification. I'm going to blame a futile and largely failed attempt to keep down the length of my comment.
More completely what I mean is that there are strong incentives to find such a refutation. Sometimes these can be overlooked for many decades because people haven't looked, or haven't connected two disparate pieces of data, but, in general, as a shorthand, we can be reasonably confident that such a refutation hasn't been found because it doesn't exist.
There is always a slim chance that our entire understanding of science will be turned on its head, and so there is a sense that all scientific knowledge is provisional and incomplete, but for practical purposes it is reasonable to treat well-established scientific knowledge - such as gravity, electromagnetism, and the greenhouse effect - as proven facts, so that for the political purposes of debating appropriate action (or lack of action) we debate the less certain political and economic tradeoffs, rather than imagined scientific uncertainties.
Society has generally wasted a huge amount of effort in having non-scientists attempt to debate (badly) the science of climate change, instead of talking about the real choices that exist in how best to respond to the science (and its uncertainties). Why the so-called climate sceptics decided to attack the science, rather than make a political and economic case for a different approach I have run out of space in this comment to speculate.
A fair set of points. I am not a climate scientist and personally basically accept the general theory of global warming as a consequence of human activity. I also think that most of the public debate is an elaborate sharing of ignorance.
As to the politics and human side of it, I think there is more to be said and it is principally about trust. When I look at elites, political leaders and opinion formers I get the impression from what they say that they are committed to the standard view of climate change, but I do not draw the same conclusion from what they do. It is a reasonable assumption that, if they believed it, the wealthiest and most powerful with the greatest celebrity profile would be in the vanguard of the necessary change in respect of personal conduct and that this would be unavoidably obvious in its consequences.
Try, for one tiny example, the recent decision to expand massively Gatwick. Contemplate for one moment the nature of celebrity lifestyle.
It is not unreasonable for a non scientist to draw the conclusion that the world's most important and richest people do not believe it, and that it is rational to assume they may be right.
I don't draw that conclusion. One of the reasons I never travel by air.
My life is surrounded by lovely much younger people who travel by air all the time, nearly all of it just for fun.
What sort of person finds air travel fun, unless they have a private jet?
I love air travel, if I'm sat by the window. The process of getting through an airport can be stressful. But the flight itself - on a clear day, I can think of nothing I would rather do than look out of the window of an aeroplane at the geography below. (Obviously this is a bit boring if you're over a massive ocean - I'm assuming your flight passes within sight of land for much of it.)
A very expensive operation, and it apparently slows, rather than fully treats, the condition. But great news nonetheless.
That's very interesting.
The diagnosis and counselling process is very expensive, and takes up quite a chunk of Senior Consultant time and lab analysis - so combined with management of the disease amongst those who lose the genetic lottery there could be a cost-balance in favour (to be cold-blooded about it).
This is the kind of thing that is expensive and difficult now. But in a few years will drop in cost, massively.
BTW the thought that on subject X 'there's nothing new to discover' is not a scientific thought but a quasi religious one. This cannot be known a priori.
That's a fair qualification. I'm going to blame a futile and largely failed attempt to keep down the length of my comment.
More completely what I mean is that there are strong incentives to find such a refutation. Sometimes these can be overlooked for many decades because people haven't looked, or haven't connected two disparate pieces of data, but, in general, as a shorthand, we can be reasonably confident that such a refutation hasn't been found because it doesn't exist.
There is always a slim chance that our entire understanding of science will be turned on its head, and so there is a sense that all scientific knowledge is provisional and incomplete, but for practical purposes it is reasonable to treat well-established scientific knowledge - such as gravity, electromagnetism, and the greenhouse effect - as proven facts, so that for the political purposes of debating appropriate action (or lack of action) we debate the less certain political and economic tradeoffs, rather than imagined scientific uncertainties.
Society has generally wasted a huge amount of effort in having non-scientists attempt to debate (badly) the science of climate change, instead of talking about the real choices that exist in how best to respond to the science (and its uncertainties). Why the so-called climate sceptics decided to attack the science, rather than make a political and economic case for a different approach I have run out of space in this comment to speculate.
A fair set of points. I am not a climate scientist and personally basically accept the general theory of global warming as a consequence of human activity. I also think that most of the public debate is an elaborate sharing of ignorance.
As to the politics and human side of it, I think there is more to be said and it is principally about trust. When I look at elites, political leaders and opinion formers I get the impression from what they say that they are committed to the standard view of climate change, but I do not draw the same conclusion from what they do. It is a reasonable assumption that, if they believed it, the wealthiest and most powerful with the greatest celebrity profile would be in the vanguard of the necessary change in respect of personal conduct and that this would be unavoidably obvious in its consequences.
Try, for one tiny example, the recent decision to expand massively Gatwick. Contemplate for one moment the nature of celebrity lifestyle.
It is not unreasonable for a non scientist to draw the conclusion that the world's most important and richest people do not believe it, and that it is rational to assume they may be right.
I don't draw that conclusion. One of the reasons I never travel by air.
My life is surrounded by lovely much younger people who travel by air all the time, nearly all of it just for fun.
What sort of person finds air travel fun, unless they have a private jet?
I used to travel a lot for work and hated it. Now I love it, but I get the same excitement from trains and ferries (not so much buses but still a wee buzz).
Bit rum of Nigel just to say 'dunno' when asked about the medical safety of paracetamol. Do we take from this that his government will simply refuse to offer health advice when in office? How will that work if we have another Covid-like crisis?
Farage also took a rather selective refuge behind the (obviously true) point that there is no such thing as absolutely settled science - the Popper point to deal with Hume's celebrated objections to the finality of science and the nature of causation - that to qualify as science all its findings have to be eternally falsifiable.
OTOH there is nothing specially terrible about a non scientist like Farage claiming not to have scientific knowledge.
He's not so reticent to give his opinion of climate science.
Fair point.
Worth noting however that the two subjects are different in kind. The paracetamol/autism question is (relatively) discrete and simple - is there a relevant statistical link between single action X and single outcome Y. Similar to smoking and lung cancer. It is in principle testable and answerable (subject to the usual Popperian qualifications, if like me you are a Popper fan).
'Climate change' is no such thing. As a subject all manner of individual bits and pieces are testable, but the totality is only testable by waiting and seeing, which is little use; and the sheer complexity of the data and the future unknowns mean that as a whole it is not irrational to be doubtful about the reliability of the enterprise.
There is (IMO) a tendency for the climate change 'camp' to have no interest in any counter evidence, and the climate sceptic 'camp' to have no interest in counter evidence either. This trend characterises religion rather than science.
It is obvious to the meanest intellect that there are gigantic commercial, academic and political interests behind both 'camps', obvious also that to many powerful interests it is not helpful for there to be a healthy and reasoned debate.
The climate science is a hoax side state easily disproven things, such as that "burning fossil fuels isn't responsible for increasing levels of carbon dioxide because volcanoes", as fact, so that you can't take seriously their participation in any sort of debate on the science.
Within climate science there are, of course, vigorous debates on the large number of uncertainties that are present. Those uncertainties don't involve things like, "is the warning due to fossil fuel burning?" That simply isn't an interesting question for scientists to look at anymore, because there's nothing new to discover.
If there were some evidence to disprove the entire edifice of climate science then that would be a massive discovery for a young scientist, and science creates strong incentives for young scientists to make such breakthroughs. But there's no such evidence.
Accusing climate scientists of being religious about their scientific practice, because they don't take seriously people trying to debate things akin to "is the Earth flat?" is incredibly ignorant and insulting.
Anyway, Trump is busy wrecking all attempts to monitor the climate, wanting to deorbit US earth observation satellites, so we'll soon be in blissful ignorance of how bad it gets.
All fair points except perhaps that I am not accusing proper science of improper conduct. I am suggesting that the politicised camps are bad at dialogue.
BTW the thought that on subject X 'there's nothing new to discover' is not a scientific thought but a quasi religious one. This cannot be known a priori.
Many scientists thought that physics was all but done in the early years of the 20th century but then some buggers came along with quantum theory and relativity. And now look where we are.
Quantum theory didn't disprove electromagnetism or gravity, though. It showed the world was even more complicated, but much of our previous understanding was still sufficient.
NASA didn't have to use relativity to plot the course of the Apollo missions. Newtonian gravitational mechanics was sufficient.
So even with the vast revolution in physics created by relativity and quantum dynamics, the previous physics wasn't disproved, as such.
I don't think I implied that the physics was wrong, rather than there was a lot more complexity to be discovered.
Bit rum of Nigel just to say 'dunno' when asked about the medical safety of paracetamol. Do we take from this that his government will simply refuse to offer health advice when in office? How will that work if we have another Covid-like crisis?
Farage also took a rather selective refuge behind the (obviously true) point that there is no such thing as absolutely settled science - the Popper point to deal with Hume's celebrated objections to the finality of science and the nature of causation - that to qualify as science all its findings have to be eternally falsifiable.
OTOH there is nothing specially terrible about a non scientist like Farage claiming not to have scientific knowledge.
He's not so reticent to give his opinion of climate science.
Fair point.
Worth noting however that the two subjects are different in kind. The paracetamol/autism question is (relatively) discrete and simple - is there a relevant statistical link between single action X and single outcome Y. Similar to smoking and lung cancer. It is in principle testable and answerable (subject to the usual Popperian qualifications, if like me you are a Popper fan).
'Climate change' is no such thing. As a subject all manner of individual bits and pieces are testable, but the totality is only testable by waiting and seeing, which is little use; and the sheer complexity of the data and the future unknowns mean that as a whole it is not irrational to be doubtful about the reliability of the enterprise.
There is (IMO) a tendency for the climate change 'camp' to have no interest in any counter evidence, and the climate sceptic 'camp' to have no interest in counter evidence either. This trend characterises religion rather than science.
It is obvious to the meanest intellect that there are gigantic commercial, academic and political interests behind both 'camps', obvious also that to many powerful interests it is not helpful for there to be a healthy and reasoned debate.
No. Climate change has already happened. That that is so can be assessed through standard scientific methods. And it has been assessed, and clearly has already happened.
It is difficult to make predictions, particularly about the future, so what happens in the coming years is uncertain in detail, but there's no doubt about the broad outlines.
There are vested interests on one side of the debate that have been clearly documented as repeatedly trying to push a particular answer, and that's fossil fuel companies trying to deny climate change.
There are vested interests on both sides. To a young climate researcher a major paper which leads to a significant grant can make their career. Most scientists are ethical, but not all. Just like most people really.
Science is a human activity and thus susceptible to human foibles. But it's ridiculous to try to both-sides this. We know of a large, organised and well-funded misinformation campaign by fossil fuel companies and there is nothing comparable on the other side.
A very expensive operation, and it apparently slows, rather than fully treats, the condition. But great news nonetheless.
Slows it by decades though which for many will be a cure. A sensational development which surely gives hope for other gene therapies. Medicine is going to change radically over the next few years as these come online.
And the expense has to be set against decades of ever more intensive treatment. There should be a major saving here.
Ironically as pb debates the philosophy of science, this news comes not via a peer-reviewed journal but from a drugs company press release.
The journal publication comes later, of course. The immediate review is conducted, with slightly more depatch, by the medicines regulators.
Incidentally, this isn't entirely true: ..It starts with a safe virus that has been altered to contain a specially designed sequence of DNA. This is infused deep into the brain.. The various AAV viral vectors used in numerous clinical trials have not been 100% safe, with occasional fatalities in clinical trials.
In a disease as awful as Huntington's, that's certainly a risk worth taking. But it has ended the development of some other therapies.
Bit rum of Nigel just to say 'dunno' when asked about the medical safety of paracetamol. Do we take from this that his government will simply refuse to offer health advice when in office? How will that work if we have another Covid-like crisis?
Farage also took a rather selective refuge behind the (obviously true) point that there is no such thing as absolutely settled science - the Popper point to deal with Hume's celebrated objections to the finality of science and the nature of causation - that to qualify as science all its findings have to be eternally falsifiable.
OTOH there is nothing specially terrible about a non scientist like Farage claiming not to have scientific knowledge.
He's not so reticent to give his opinion of climate science.
Fair point.
Worth noting however that the two subjects are different in kind. The paracetamol/autism question is (relatively) discrete and simple - is there a relevant statistical link between single action X and single outcome Y. Similar to smoking and lung cancer. It is in principle testable and answerable (subject to the usual Popperian qualifications, if like me you are a Popper fan).
'Climate change' is no such thing. As a subject all manner of individual bits and pieces are testable, but the totality is only testable by waiting and seeing, which is little use; and the sheer complexity of the data and the future unknowns mean that as a whole it is not irrational to be doubtful about the reliability of the enterprise.
There is (IMO) a tendency for the climate change 'camp' to have no interest in any counter evidence, and the climate sceptic 'camp' to have no interest in counter evidence either. This trend characterises religion rather than science.
It is obvious to the meanest intellect that there are gigantic commercial, academic and political interests behind both 'camps', obvious also that to many powerful interests it is not helpful for there to be a healthy and reasoned debate.
No. Climate change has already happened. That that is so can be assessed through standard scientific methods. And it has been assessed, and clearly has already happened.
It is difficult to make predictions, particularly about the future, so what happens in the coming years is uncertain in detail, but there's no doubt about the broad outlines.
There are vested interests on one side of the debate that have been clearly documented as repeatedly trying to push a particular answer, and that's fossil fuel companies trying to deny climate change.
There are vested interests on both sides. To a young climate researcher a major paper which leads to a significant grant can make their career. Most scientists are ethical, but not all. Just like most people really.
Science is a human activity and thus susceptible to human foibles. But it's ridiculous to try to both-sides this. We know of a large, organised and well-funded misinformation campaign by fossil fuel companies and there is nothing comparable on the other side.
It's not like Big Bicycle are bribing people like me to post stuff on the internet, is it?
(Though if anyone from Brompton is lurking, I'd like one in green).
People who don't mind ID cards because they say they're already been tracked, monitored and videoed all the time anyway is the perfect example of boiled frog syndrome imo. They end up supporting something they never would have 20 years ago because of a day by day incremental process which they don't notice as it happens.
How can anyone be 'phobic' towards Starmer? He's a grey suit, and there are far, far worse people in, and around politics.
He's not very good at the job, but that's little reason to feel 'phobic' towards him.
It's also interesting that many of the responses agreeing come from people who like Farage, who is a far worse person, and whose ideas are disastrous for this country.
I agree on Starmer not being inspirational and being cautious to a fault - an aspiring technocrat when we need something beyond; even those here opposed to him often complain that he is too indecisive. But he also been notably competent at foreign affairs so far.
I think the Cons and RefUK are phobic towards Starmer, 1) Because the biggest threat they have is that he succeeds, and it works, and 2) Because they have little or nothing to offer themselves, so they have no option other than relying on personality politics.
Personally, I still think we will not be in a position to judge any outcome for 2 years from the Election, and even then it will only be straws in the wind.
His lack of communication cut-through so that the battle is on his home ground eg currently Workers' and Renters' Rights, and reluctance to go for the Opposition in a consistent, brutal manner, makes him his own worst enemy.
Also, the media is tribal as it always is, and chunks of it are now nakedly political.
Among people I know, Starmer is more of a joke than hated.
The endless piling on of regulation and then discovering that the government is ever more unable to do anything without the permission of a court is the most commented.
Which isn’t just about A/C - it also explains how rules on A/C interact with rules on building ventilation and fire safety to make new builds more expensive and less dense. And why the windows keep getting pokier. All because of he cult of “one more extra regulation - and regulations cost nothing”
As someone who was a commercial lawyer but now running a manufacturing business in the UK and Europe, this is how I see him as well. I can't hate him for being unable to transcend the mindset and limited vision that his professional and social circles have granted him. If you haven't started a business, taken real risk, identified unmet needs and matched them, found success by challenging assumptions about the way things have always been done, by being more efficient than the competition, if you've never been anything but a manager, a paper shuffler and a back coverer, then you're a joke to me, but I can't hate you.
And... breathe...
Who was the last PM who started a business? Genuine question, I don't think that any recent PMs has had an entrepreneurial background. Starmer is hardly unique in this regard.
Probably Neville Chamberlain.
Hmm. Not a great precedent. I wonder whether that deal-making business attitude led him down the path of appeasement. FWIW I don't think business people tend to make good politicians. I do think though that it's good to have people in politics who understand the needs of entrepreneurs. There are too many on the left who are completely ignorant of that side of things. Just as there are too many on the right who assume that government has no useful function. And too many on all sides who have no experience of anything at all!
That’s probably correct, but Chamberlain’s disaster in dealing with Hitler has too often masked the fact that he was a conspicuous political success domestically as a notably ‘strong’ Prime Minister. He dominated the political scene for many years with a proven record both as Health Minister in the 1920s and Chancellor in the 1930s before succeeding Baldwin in 1937.
There's an interesting take on Munich by Alec Douglas-Home, who was Chamberlain's PPS at the time. Apparently Chamberlain thought Hitler would renege on it, but decided to make a real song and dance over it ('Peace for our time' etc.) so that when Hitler did renege he'd look like an absolute shit before the world. Which speaks quite highly of Chamberlain if true.
Does it?
It means he sold out the Czechs, who would have had a better chance of defending themselves than the Poles, just to buy a little more time. I think less of him for knowing that.
No easy answer, an early version of the Kobayshi Maru? If Britain and France had gone to war in 1938, with the Czech's better able to fight things would have turned out differently, but we cannot be sure how. If I recall correctly we didn't have the Spitfire ready in 1938, only the Hurricane, and the French would likely have still suffered from the their intense desire to avoid 1914-18 again and would likely have performed poorly (individual gallantry and valour excepted, as was the case in 1940). The other argument of course is that we should have fought in 1939 too, and did not. The idea that we would have fought a year earlier seems unlikely.
Unusual set of local elections this week. We have Lab defence in Breckland today. Then tomorrow we have 3 Green defences - in Ashford, Highland, and Manchester. Finally there is an SNP defence in Highland.
The Thetford by election today should be a straightforward Ref gain. On current polling they ought to be getting 45% plus with Lab and Con on about 20 each and Lib Dems with the remaining 5 to 10% If Reform are less than 10% clear they probably arent on track to take SW Norfolk clearly. If they fail to win this ward they arent that close to taking it at all
Why is it on a Wednesday? Do they have a week of days they can count on the fingers of one hand?
Bit rum of Nigel just to say 'dunno' when asked about the medical safety of paracetamol. Do we take from this that his government will simply refuse to offer health advice when in office? How will that work if we have another Covid-like crisis?
Farage also took a rather selective refuge behind the (obviously true) point that there is no such thing as absolutely settled science - the Popper point to deal with Hume's celebrated objections to the finality of science and the nature of causation - that to qualify as science all its findings have to be eternally falsifiable.
OTOH there is nothing specially terrible about a non scientist like Farage claiming not to have scientific knowledge.
He's not so reticent to give his opinion of climate science.
Fair point.
Worth noting however that the two subjects are different in kind. The paracetamol/autism question is (relatively) discrete and simple - is there a relevant statistical link between single action X and single outcome Y. Similar to smoking and lung cancer. It is in principle testable and answerable (subject to the usual Popperian qualifications, if like me you are a Popper fan).
'Climate change' is no such thing. As a subject all manner of individual bits and pieces are testable, but the totality is only testable by waiting and seeing, which is little use; and the sheer complexity of the data and the future unknowns mean that as a whole it is not irrational to be doubtful about the reliability of the enterprise.
There is (IMO) a tendency for the climate change 'camp' to have no interest in any counter evidence, and the climate sceptic 'camp' to have no interest in counter evidence either. This trend characterises religion rather than science.
It is obvious to the meanest intellect that there are gigantic commercial, academic and political interests behind both 'camps', obvious also that to many powerful interests it is not helpful for there to be a healthy and reasoned debate.
The climate science is a hoax side state easily disproven things, such as that "burning fossil fuels isn't responsible for increasing levels of carbon dioxide because volcanoes", as fact, so that you can't take seriously their participation in any sort of debate on the science.
Within climate science there are, of course, vigorous debates on the large number of uncertainties that are present. Those uncertainties don't involve things like, "is the warning due to fossil fuel burning?" That simply isn't an interesting question for scientists to look at anymore, because there's nothing new to discover.
If there were some evidence to disprove the entire edifice of climate science then that would be a massive discovery for a young scientist, and science creates strong incentives for young scientists to make such breakthroughs. But there's no such evidence.
Accusing climate scientists of being religious about their scientific practice, because they don't take seriously people trying to debate things akin to "is the Earth flat?" is incredibly ignorant and insulting.
Anyway, Trump is busy wrecking all attempts to monitor the climate, wanting to deorbit US earth observation satellites, so we'll soon be in blissful ignorance of how bad it gets.
All fair points except perhaps that I am not accusing proper science of improper conduct. I am suggesting that the politicised camps are bad at dialogue.
BTW the thought that on subject X 'there's nothing new to discover' is not a scientific thought but a quasi religious one. This cannot be known a priori.
Many scientists thought that physics was all but done in the early years of the 20th century but then some buggers came along with quantum theory and relativity. And now look where we are.
Quantum theory didn't disprove electromagnetism or gravity, though. It showed the world was even more complicated, but much of our previous understanding was still sufficient.
NASA didn't have to use relativity to plot the course of the Apollo missions. Newtonian gravitational mechanics was sufficient.
So even with the vast revolution in physics created by relativity and quantum dynamics, the previous physics wasn't disproved, as such.
I don't think I implied that the physics was wrong, rather than there was a lot more complexity to be discovered.
Sure, but when people use this example in relation to climate science they normally are implying that all of climate science could be wrong.
Unusual set of local elections this week. We have Lab defence in Breckland today. Then tomorrow we have 3 Green defences - in Ashford, Highland, and Manchester. Finally there is an SNP defence in Highland.
Greens tend to fade in the autumn.
Or is that just trees?
They have already faded in Highland - there is no Green candidate.
A very expensive operation, and it apparently slows, rather than fully treats, the condition. But great news nonetheless.
Slows it by decades though which for many will be a cure. A sensational development which surely gives hope for other gene therapies. Medicine is going to change radically over the next few years as these come online.
And the expense has to be set against decades of ever more intensive treatment. There should be a major saving here.
A decent comparison might perhaps be drugs that mitigated but did not cure diseases such as AIDS and various types of cancer.
Unusual set of local elections this week. We have Lab defence in Breckland today. Then tomorrow we have 3 Green defences - in Ashford, Highland, and Manchester. Finally there is an SNP defence in Highland.
The Thetford by election today should be a straightforward Ref gain. On current polling they ought to be getting 45% plus with Lab and Con on about 20 each and Lib Dems with the remaining 5 to 10% If Reform are less than 10% clear they probably arent on track to take SW Norfolk clearly. If they fail to win this ward they arent that close to taking it at all
Why is it on a Wednesday? Do they have a week of days they can count on the fingers of one hand?
Another interesting bit of research into a widely used painkiller just dropped.
Alcohol use and risk of dementia in diverse populations: evidence from cohort, case–control and Mendelian randomisation approaches
https://ebm.bmj.com/content/early/2025/09/16/bmjebm-2025-113913 ...These findings provide evidence for a relationship between all types of alcohol use and increased dementia risk. While correlational observational data suggested a protective effect of light drinking, this could be in part attributable to reduced drinking seen in early dementia; genetic analyses did not support any protective effect, suggesting that any level of alcohol consumption may contribute to dementia risk. Public health strategies that reduce the prevalence of alcohol use disorder could potentially lower the incidence of dementia by up to 16%.
How can anyone be 'phobic' towards Starmer? He's a grey suit, and there are far, far worse people in, and around politics.
He's not very good at the job, but that's little reason to feel 'phobic' towards him.
It's also interesting that many of the responses agreeing come from people who like Farage, who is a far worse person, and whose ideas are disastrous for this country.
I agree on Starmer not being inspirational and being cautious to a fault - an aspiring technocrat when we need something beyond; even those here opposed to him often complain that he is too indecisive. But he also been notably competent at foreign affairs so far.
I think the Cons and RefUK are phobic towards Starmer, 1) Because the biggest threat they have is that he succeeds, and it works, and 2) Because they have little or nothing to offer themselves, so they have no option other than relying on personality politics.
Personally, I still think we will not be in a position to judge any outcome for 2 years from the Election, and even then it will only be straws in the wind.
His lack of communication cut-through so that the battle is on his home ground eg currently Workers' and Renters' Rights, and reluctance to go for the Opposition in a consistent, brutal manner, makes him his own worst enemy.
Also, the media is tribal as it always is, and chunks of it are now nakedly political.
Among people I know, Starmer is more of a joke than hated.
The endless piling on of regulation and then discovering that the government is ever more unable to do anything without the permission of a court is the most commented.
Which isn’t just about A/C - it also explains how rules on A/C interact with rules on building ventilation and fire safety to make new builds more expensive and less dense. And why the windows keep getting pokier. All because of he cult of “one more extra regulation - and regulations cost nothing”
As someone who was a commercial lawyer but now running a manufacturing business in the UK and Europe, this is how I see him as well. I can't hate him for being unable to transcend the mindset and limited vision that his professional and social circles have granted him. If you haven't started a business, taken real risk, identified unmet needs and matched them, found success by challenging assumptions about the way things have always been done, by being more efficient than the competition, if you've never been anything but a manager, a paper shuffler and a back coverer, then you're a joke to me, but I can't hate you.
And... breathe...
Who was the last PM who started a business? Genuine question, I don't think that any recent PMs has had an entrepreneurial background. Starmer is hardly unique in this regard.
Probably Neville Chamberlain.
Hmm. Not a great precedent. I wonder whether that deal-making business attitude led him down the path of appeasement. FWIW I don't think business people tend to make good politicians. I do think though that it's good to have people in politics who understand the needs of entrepreneurs. There are too many on the left who are completely ignorant of that side of things. Just as there are too many on the right who assume that government has no useful function. And too many on all sides who have no experience of anything at all!
That’s probably correct, but Chamberlain’s disaster in dealing with Hitler has too often masked the fact that he was a conspicuous political success domestically as a notably ‘strong’ Prime Minister. He dominated the political scene for many years with a proven record both as Health Minister in the 1920s and Chancellor in the 1930s before succeeding Baldwin in 1937.
There's an interesting take on Munich by Alec Douglas-Home, who was Chamberlain's PPS at the time. Apparently Chamberlain thought Hitler would renege on it, but decided to make a real song and dance over it ('Peace for our time' etc.) so that when Hitler did renege he'd look like an absolute shit before the world. Which speaks quite highly of Chamberlain if true.
Does it?
It means he sold out the Czechs, who would have had a better chance of defending themselves than the Poles, just to buy a little more time. I think less of him for knowing that.
No easy answer, an early version of the Kobayshi Maru? If Britain and France had gone to war in 1938, with the Czech's better able to fight things would have turned out differently, but we cannot be sure how. If I recall correctly we didn't have the Spitfire ready in 1938, only the Hurricane, and the French would likely have still suffered from the their intense desire to avoid 1914-18 again and would likely have performed poorly (individual gallantry and valour excepted, as was the case in 1940). The other argument of course is that we should have fought in 1939 too, and did not. The idea that we would have fought a year earlier seems unlikely.
Going to war in late 1939 was problematic enough.
When you look at the equipment problems the UK had, and the planned development for 1941 (the original German date for war ready) - the 17lbr gun would have been the standard anti-tank gun, in 1941. As a simple example.
The RAF was to be equipped with 400mph+ fighters, with uniform 20mm cannon armament.
The bombers would have all have been from the Standard Bomber Project - 5,000 of them, bigger than B-17, uniformly defended by 20mm cannon. And so on.
How can anyone be 'phobic' towards Starmer? He's a grey suit, and there are far, far worse people in, and around politics.
He's not very good at the job, but that's little reason to feel 'phobic' towards him.
It's also interesting that many of the responses agreeing come from people who like Farage, who is a far worse person, and whose ideas are disastrous for this country.
I agree on Starmer not being inspirational and being cautious to a fault - an aspiring technocrat when we need something beyond; even those here opposed to him often complain that he is too indecisive. But he also been notably competent at foreign affairs so far.
I think the Cons and RefUK are phobic towards Starmer, 1) Because the biggest threat they have is that he succeeds, and it works, and 2) Because they have little or nothing to offer themselves, so they have no option other than relying on personality politics.
Personally, I still think we will not be in a position to judge any outcome for 2 years from the Election, and even then it will only be straws in the wind.
His lack of communication cut-through so that the battle is on his home ground eg currently Workers' and Renters' Rights, and reluctance to go for the Opposition in a consistent, brutal manner, makes him his own worst enemy.
Also, the media is tribal as it always is, and chunks of it are now nakedly political.
Among people I know, Starmer is more of a joke than hated.
The endless piling on of regulation and then discovering that the government is ever more unable to do anything without the permission of a court is the most commented.
Which isn’t just about A/C - it also explains how rules on A/C interact with rules on building ventilation and fire safety to make new builds more expensive and less dense. And why the windows keep getting pokier. All because of he cult of “one more extra regulation - and regulations cost nothing”
As someone who was a commercial lawyer but now running a manufacturing business in the UK and Europe, this is how I see him as well. I can't hate him for being unable to transcend the mindset and limited vision that his professional and social circles have granted him. If you haven't started a business, taken real risk, identified unmet needs and matched them, found success by challenging assumptions about the way things have always been done, by being more efficient than the competition, if you've never been anything but a manager, a paper shuffler and a back coverer, then you're a joke to me, but I can't hate you.
And... breathe...
Who was the last PM who started a business? Genuine question, I don't think that any recent PMs has had an entrepreneurial background. Starmer is hardly unique in this regard.
Probably Neville Chamberlain.
Hmm. Not a great precedent. I wonder whether that deal-making business attitude led him down the path of appeasement. FWIW I don't think business people tend to make good politicians. I do think though that it's good to have people in politics who understand the needs of entrepreneurs. There are too many on the left who are completely ignorant of that side of things. Just as there are too many on the right who assume that government has no useful function. And too many on all sides who have no experience of anything at all!
That’s probably correct, but Chamberlain’s disaster in dealing with Hitler has too often masked the fact that he was a conspicuous political success domestically as a notably ‘strong’ Prime Minister. He dominated the political scene for many years with a proven record both as Health Minister in the 1920s and Chancellor in the 1930s before succeeding Baldwin in 1937.
There's an interesting take on Munich by Alec Douglas-Home, who was Chamberlain's PPS at the time. Apparently Chamberlain thought Hitler would renege on it, but decided to make a real song and dance over it ('Peace for our time' etc.) so that when Hitler did renege he'd look like an absolute shit before the world. Which speaks quite highly of Chamberlain if true.
Does it?
It means he sold out the Czechs, who would have had a better chance of defending themselves than the Poles, just to buy a little more time. I think less of him for knowing that.
No easy answer, an early version of the Kobayshi Maru? If Britain and France had gone to war in 1938, with the Czech's better able to fight things would have turned out differently, but we cannot be sure how. If I recall correctly we didn't have the Spitfire ready in 1938, only the Hurricane, and the French would likely have still suffered from the their intense desire to avoid 1914-18 again and would likely have performed poorly (individual gallantry and valour excepted, as was the case in 1940). The other argument of course is that we should have fought in 1939 too, and did not. The idea that we would have fought a year earlier seems unlikely.
My view of Chamberlain was that he genuinely thought Britain, France and Czechsolavakia could not have defeated Germany in 1938. He knew Hitler would not stop there but he still did his best to buy another year to rearm, after which Britain would be better placed. He knowingly sacrificed his reputation in history - he knew he'd look foolish when Hitler reneged - for another 12 months to prepare. I think therefore he was a bit of a hero - even though for perfectly forgivable reasons he probably overestimated Germany's strength in 1938, and arguably fighting in 1938 would have led to a better outcome. Based on the intelligence he had, he made the right decision, even at the expense of his place in history.
Unusual set of local elections this week. We have Lab defence in Breckland today. Then tomorrow we have 3 Green defences - in Ashford, Highland, and Manchester. Finally there is an SNP defence in Highland.
The Thetford by election today should be a straightforward Ref gain. On current polling they ought to be getting 45% plus with Lab and Con on about 20 each and Lib Dems with the remaining 5 to 10% If Reform are less than 10% clear they probably arent on track to take SW Norfolk clearly. If they fail to win this ward they arent that close to taking it at all
My prediction on the VoteUK site was Ref 45%, Lab 20%, Con 20%, LD 15%. Maybe I've put the LDs a touch high but on the other hand there isn't a Green candidate.
Its district council and smallish overall turnout likely so a decent turnout of what support they have might see them into double figures, but Thetford and Breckland generally is lean pickings for Libs, although they picked up one ward in 2023. Today's LD candidate Mr Ian Minto got 3.8% in Thetford Priory in Mays by election and he and the Green got 8% between them. A similar result today is relatively likely
Unusual set of local elections this week. We have Lab defence in Breckland today. Then tomorrow we have 3 Green defences - in Ashford, Highland, and Manchester. Finally there is an SNP defence in Highland.
The Thetford by election today should be a straightforward Ref gain. On current polling they ought to be getting 45% plus with Lab and Con on about 20 each and Lib Dems with the remaining 5 to 10% If Reform are less than 10% clear they probably arent on track to take SW Norfolk clearly. If they fail to win this ward they arent that close to taking it at all
Why is it on a Wednesday? Do they have a week of days they can count on the fingers of one hand?
Because Norfolk is fucking cool
Or fucking their cousins
Norfolk is the best English county by a distance. FACT.
Unusual set of local elections this week. We have Lab defence in Breckland today. Then tomorrow we have 3 Green defences - in Ashford, Highland, and Manchester. Finally there is an SNP defence in Highland.
The Thetford by election today should be a straightforward Ref gain. On current polling they ought to be getting 45% plus with Lab and Con on about 20 each and Lib Dems with the remaining 5 to 10% If Reform are less than 10% clear they probably arent on track to take SW Norfolk clearly. If they fail to win this ward they arent that close to taking it at all
Why is it on a Wednesday? Do they have a week of days they can count on the fingers of one hand?
Because Norfolk is fucking cool
Or fucking their cousins
Norfolk is the best English county by a distance. FACT.
I agree it's better than my home county of Staffordshire
Unusual set of local elections this week. We have Lab defence in Breckland today. Then tomorrow we have 3 Green defences - in Ashford, Highland, and Manchester. Finally there is an SNP defence in Highland.
The Thetford by election today should be a straightforward Ref gain. On current polling they ought to be getting 45% plus with Lab and Con on about 20 each and Lib Dems with the remaining 5 to 10% If Reform are less than 10% clear they probably arent on track to take SW Norfolk clearly. If they fail to win this ward they arent that close to taking it at all
Why is it on a Wednesday? Do they have a week of days they can count on the fingers of one hand?
Because Norfolk is fucking cool
Or fucking their cousins
Norfolk is the best English county by a distance. FACT.
I agree it's better than my home county of Staffordshire
Staffs is on the acceptable list. Not like somewhere scuzzy like Suffolk
Early reports suggest it was during the unloading of detainees and that it is detainees that have been shot with 2 reported fatalities and other injuries at this stage.
The shooter described as white male and as having killed himself.
First rhetoric linking this as an attack on ICE enforcement, but could also be an attack on perceived illegals themselves.
Deep breath and facts required, at this stage it's another incident that could have various motives.
A very expensive operation, and it apparently slows, rather than fully treats, the condition. But great news nonetheless.
That's very interesting.
The diagnosis and counselling process is very expensive, and takes up quite a chunk of Senior Consultant time and lab analysis - so combined with management of the disease amongst those who lose the genetic lottery there could be a cost-balance in favour (to be cold-blooded about it).
This is the kind of thing that is expensive and difficult now. But in a few years will drop in cost, massively.
One hopes so.
The personal cost to people who have it, and those who have potential to have it, is harrowing. Source: personal experience - I had Huntingdons (not sure about an apostrophe) two generations back in the family in the male line. There is a 50:50 chance of each child getting the disease at each generation.
My dad went through the counselling process because a sibling was considering having children - the cost/benefit to him was around finding out that if he had it his mind would disintegrate at some point in the future being a blight on his life immediately vs getting maybe 20 years of "ignorance is bliss" if he had it or "knowing he was free" if he did not. The knowledge for my sibling swung his decision; on his own imo he would have let the sleeping dog lie.
Fortunately he was negative. I had one cousin who had it and died in his 40s, another with children who has taken the test and come out negative, and a third with children who afaik has not taken the test but never takes about it. Their dad had it and was sometimes violent; one cousin says they feel they never knew their dad properly, because they were not sure whether the occasional violence was "my dad" or "the disease". That last cousin changed her career from teaching to counselling for that reason.
My Grandfather on that side was also violent - I always jump first to WW1 PTSD as a cause, but it could be Huntingdons too.
I have known people make decisions, for example, not to have children.
How can anyone be 'phobic' towards Starmer? He's a grey suit, and there are far, far worse people in, and around politics.
He's not very good at the job, but that's little reason to feel 'phobic' towards him.
It's also interesting that many of the responses agreeing come from people who like Farage, who is a far worse person, and whose ideas are disastrous for this country.
He wants to introduce ID cards.
We already have them, driving licences, mobile phones etc
Unusual set of local elections this week. We have Lab defence in Breckland today. Then tomorrow we have 3 Green defences - in Ashford, Highland, and Manchester. Finally there is an SNP defence in Highland.
How can anyone be 'phobic' towards Starmer? He's a grey suit, and there are far, far worse people in, and around politics.
He's not very good at the job, but that's little reason to feel 'phobic' towards him.
It's also interesting that many of the responses agreeing come from people who like Farage, who is a far worse person, and whose ideas are disastrous for this country.
He wants to introduce ID cards.
We already have them, driving licences, mobile phones etc
Mobile phones do not prove who you are and driving licences are not, and cannot, be held by the entire population.
Early reports suggest it was during the unloading of detainees and that it is detainees that have been shot with 2 reported fatalities and other injuries at this stage.
The shooter described as white male and as having killed himself.
First rhetoric linking this as an attack on ICE enforcement, but could also be an attack on perceived illegals themselves.
Deep breath and facts required, at this stage it's another incident that could have various motives.
The atmosphere in the US feels exceptionally charged right now, and rather delicate. As much as these incidents themselves are terrible, I fear where they will lead.
Up to now I’ve always thought Unherd was a weird, gammony howl of angst from (mostly) men worrying about not being kissed or being cancelled or laughed at. However from today I feel… …exactly the same.
Bit rum of Nigel just to say 'dunno' when asked about the medical safety of paracetamol. Do we take from this that his government will simply refuse to offer health advice when in office? How will that work if we have another Covid-like crisis?
Farage also took a rather selective refuge behind the (obviously true) point that there is no such thing as absolutely settled science - the Popper point to deal with Hume's celebrated objections to the finality of science and the nature of causation - that to qualify as science all its findings have to be eternally falsifiable.
OTOH there is nothing specially terrible about a non scientist like Farage claiming not to have scientific knowledge.
He's not so reticent to give his opinion of climate science.
Fair point.
Worth noting however that the two subjects are different in kind. The paracetamol/autism question is (relatively) discrete and simple - is there a relevant statistical link between single action X and single outcome Y. Similar to smoking and lung cancer. It is in principle testable and answerable (subject to the usual Popperian qualifications, if like me you are a Popper fan).
'Climate change' is no such thing. As a subject all manner of individual bits and pieces are testable, but the totality is only testable by waiting and seeing, which is little use; and the sheer complexity of the data and the future unknowns mean that as a whole it is not irrational to be doubtful about the reliability of the enterprise.
There is (IMO) a tendency for the climate change 'camp' to have no interest in any counter evidence, and the climate sceptic 'camp' to have no interest in counter evidence either. This trend characterises religion rather than science.
It is obvious to the meanest intellect that there are gigantic commercial, academic and political interests behind both 'camps', obvious also that to many powerful interests it is not helpful for there to be a healthy and reasoned debate.
The climate science is a hoax side state easily disproven things, such as that "burning fossil fuels isn't responsible for increasing levels of carbon dioxide because volcanoes", as fact, so that you can't take seriously their participation in any sort of debate on the science.
Within climate science there are, of course, vigorous debates on the large number of uncertainties that are present. Those uncertainties don't involve things like, "is the warning due to fossil fuel burning?" That simply isn't an interesting question for scientists to look at anymore, because there's nothing new to discover.
If there were some evidence to disprove the entire edifice of climate science then that would be a massive discovery for a young scientist, and science creates strong incentives for young scientists to make such breakthroughs. But there's no such evidence.
Accusing climate scientists of being religious about their scientific practice, because they don't take seriously people trying to debate things akin to "is the Earth flat?" is incredibly ignorant and insulting.
Anyway, Trump is busy wrecking all attempts to monitor the climate, wanting to deorbit US earth observation satellites, so we'll soon be in blissful ignorance of how bad it gets.
An essential cause of climate change is the bulge in the world's population, from 2.5 billion in 1950 to over 8 billion today. Clearly it needs to be reduced, but there are inevitable disagreements about who goes first and how. President Trump and his colleague RFK Jr have made a significant gesture by offering millions of Americans to the slaughter, using inappropriate healthcare as their chosen method. Given the average American releases 100 times more CO2 into the atmosphere than the average third world peasant this is a generous and praiseworthy initiative.
It's unlikely to be the most polluting Americans though.
Indeed. They should be starting with Bill Gates and Al Gore, responsible for more carbon emissions than almost every other Americans, despite their preaching of environmentalism to the rest of us.
Early reports suggest it was during the unloading of detainees and that it is detainees that have been shot with 2 reported fatalities and other injuries at this stage.
The shooter described as white male and as having killed himself.
First rhetoric linking this as an attack on ICE enforcement, but could also be an attack on perceived illegals themselves.
Deep breath and facts required, at this stage it's another incident that could have various motives.
Either is possible, but why attack immigrants when ICE is already rounding them up?
Early reports suggest it was during the unloading of detainees and that it is detainees that have been shot with 2 reported fatalities and other injuries at this stage.
The shooter described as white male and as having killed himself.
First rhetoric linking this as an attack on ICE enforcement, but could also be an attack on perceived illegals themselves.
Deep breath and facts required, at this stage it's another incident that could have various motives.
Either is possible, but why attack immigrants when ICE is already rounding them up?
Speculating either way is perhaps unhelpful. We could just wait and see what comes to light.
Up to now I’ve always thought Unherd was a weird, gammony howl of angst from (mostly) men worrying about not being kissed or being cancelled or laughed at. However from today I feel… …exactly the same.
Early reports suggest it was during the unloading of detainees and that it is detainees that have been shot with 2 reported fatalities and other injuries at this stage.
The shooter described as white male and as having killed himself.
First rhetoric linking this as an attack on ICE enforcement, but could also be an attack on perceived illegals themselves.
Deep breath and facts required, at this stage it's another incident that could have various motives.
Either is possible, but why attack immigrants when ICE is already rounding them up?
LibDems need to do a social media advert with Farage tucked in Trump's top shirt pocket in the style of the Alliance days.
Not sure it makes much sense for the LDs to set up as the anti Farage party. They are fighting different constituencies and Reform doing well enough in LD seats stops a Tory comeback which is the threat to their current MPs.
Either they can stay the party of the naice seats, or if they have ambitions beyond that then I'd suggest focusing on their own policies, but getting a fair bit more radical (not by moving left or right, but in challenging the status quo where it is clearly failing).
Afternoon , all.
They also understandably see it as a moral and ideologica calling , though. and at the same time.
As Raphael Behr says in the Grauniad today, if not now for liberal voices to stand up, then when ?
Hence why, after eight years of political freedom, this year I have joined up again
Another interesting bit of research into a widely used painkiller just dropped.
Alcohol use and risk of dementia in diverse populations: evidence from cohort, case–control and Mendelian randomisation approaches
https://ebm.bmj.com/content/early/2025/09/16/bmjebm-2025-113913 ...These findings provide evidence for a relationship between all types of alcohol use and increased dementia risk. While correlational observational data suggested a protective effect of light drinking, this could be in part attributable to reduced drinking seen in early dementia; genetic analyses did not support any protective effect, suggesting that any level of alcohol consumption may contribute to dementia risk. Public health strategies that reduce the prevalence of alcohol use disorder could potentially lower the incidence of dementia by up to 16%.
How can anyone be 'phobic' towards Starmer? He's a grey suit, and there are far, far worse people in, and around politics.
He's not very good at the job, but that's little reason to feel 'phobic' towards him.
It's also interesting that many of the responses agreeing come from people who like Farage, who is a far worse person, and whose ideas are disastrous for this country.
He wants to introduce ID cards.
We already have them, driving licences, mobile phones etc
Mobile phones do not prove who you are and driving licences are not, and cannot, be held by the entire population.
The usual solution to this is “non-driving” driving licences that don’t demonstrate permission to drive a motorised vehicle.
How can anyone be 'phobic' towards Starmer? He's a grey suit, and there are far, far worse people in, and around politics.
He's not very good at the job, but that's little reason to feel 'phobic' towards him.
It's also interesting that many of the responses agreeing come from people who like Farage, who is a far worse person, and whose ideas are disastrous for this country.
I agree on Starmer not being inspirational and being cautious to a fault - an aspiring technocrat when we need something beyond; even those here opposed to him often complain that he is too indecisive. But he also been notably competent at foreign affairs so far.
I think the Cons and RefUK are phobic towards Starmer, 1) Because the biggest threat they have is that he succeeds, and it works, and 2) Because they have little or nothing to offer themselves, so they have no option other than relying on personality politics.
Personally, I still think we will not be in a position to judge any outcome for 2 years from the Election, and even then it will only be straws in the wind.
His lack of communication cut-through so that the battle is on his home ground eg currently Workers' and Renters' Rights, and reluctance to go for the Opposition in a consistent, brutal manner, makes him his own worst enemy.
Also, the media is tribal as it always is, and chunks of it are now nakedly political.
Among people I know, Starmer is more of a joke than hated.
The endless piling on of regulation and then discovering that the government is ever more unable to do anything without the permission of a court is the most commented.
Which isn’t just about A/C - it also explains how rules on A/C interact with rules on building ventilation and fire safety to make new builds more expensive and less dense. And why the windows keep getting pokier. All because of he cult of “one more extra regulation - and regulations cost nothing”
As someone who was a commercial lawyer but now running a manufacturing business in the UK and Europe, this is how I see him as well. I can't hate him for being unable to transcend the mindset and limited vision that his professional and social circles have granted him. If you haven't started a business, taken real risk, identified unmet needs and matched them, found success by challenging assumptions about the way things have always been done, by being more efficient than the competition, if you've never been anything but a manager, a paper shuffler and a back coverer, then you're a joke to me, but I can't hate you.
And... breathe...
Who was the last PM who started a business? Genuine question, I don't think that any recent PMs has had an entrepreneurial background. Starmer is hardly unique in this regard.
Probably Neville Chamberlain.
Hmm. Not a great precedent. I wonder whether that deal-making business attitude led him down the path of appeasement. FWIW I don't think business people tend to make good politicians. I do think though that it's good to have people in politics who understand the needs of entrepreneurs. There are too many on the left who are completely ignorant of that side of things. Just as there are too many on the right who assume that government has no useful function. And too many on all sides who have no experience of anything at all!
That’s probably correct, but Chamberlain’s disaster in dealing with Hitler has too often masked the fact that he was a conspicuous political success domestically as a notably ‘strong’ Prime Minister. He dominated the political scene for many years with a proven record both as Health Minister in the 1920s and Chancellor in the 1930s before succeeding Baldwin in 1937.
While grubby, Munich gave us time to accelerate the rearming process I believe
BTW the thought that on subject X 'there's nothing new to discover' is not a scientific thought but a quasi religious one. This cannot be known a priori.
That's a fair qualification. I'm going to blame a futile and largely failed attempt to keep down the length of my comment.
More completely what I mean is that there are strong incentives to find such a refutation. Sometimes these can be overlooked for many decades because people haven't looked, or haven't connected two disparate pieces of data, but, in general, as a shorthand, we can be reasonably confident that such a refutation hasn't been found because it doesn't exist.
There is always a slim chance that our entire understanding of science will be turned on its head, and so there is a sense that all scientific knowledge is provisional and incomplete, but for practical purposes it is reasonable to treat well-established scientific knowledge - such as gravity, electromagnetism, and the greenhouse effect - as proven facts, so that for the political purposes of debating appropriate action (or lack of action) we debate the less certain political and economic tradeoffs, rather than imagined scientific uncertainties.
Society has generally wasted a huge amount of effort in having non-scientists attempt to debate (badly) the science of climate change, instead of talking about the real choices that exist in how best to respond to the science (and its uncertainties). Why the so-called climate sceptics decided to attack the science, rather than make a political and economic case for a different approach I have run out of space in this comment to speculate.
A fair set of points. I am not a climate scientist and personally basically accept the general theory of global warming as a consequence of human activity. I also think that most of the public debate is an elaborate sharing of ignorance.
As to the politics and human side of it, I think there is more to be said and it is principally about trust. When I look at elites, political leaders and opinion formers I get the impression from what they say that they are committed to the standard view of climate change, but I do not draw the same conclusion from what they do. It is a reasonable assumption that, if they believed it, the wealthiest and most powerful with the greatest celebrity profile would be in the vanguard of the necessary change in respect of personal conduct and that this would be unavoidably obvious in its consequences.
Try, for one tiny example, the recent decision to expand massively Gatwick. Contemplate for one moment the nature of celebrity lifestyle.
It is not unreasonable for a non scientist to draw the conclusion that the world's most important and richest people do not believe it, and that it is rational to assume they may be right.
I don't draw that conclusion. One of the reasons I never travel by air.
My life is surrounded by lovely much younger people who travel by air all the time, nearly all of it just for fun.
What sort of person finds air travel fun, unless they have a private jet?
I love air travel, if I'm sat by the window. The process of getting through an airport can be stressful. But the flight itself - on a clear day, I can think of nothing I would rather do than look out of the window of an aeroplane at the geography below. (Obviously this is a bit boring if you're over a massive ocean - I'm assuming your flight passes within sight of land for much of it.)
We have flown round the world many times over the years, but the most boring flight was Sydney to Johannesburg entirely over the ocean in daytime for 15 hours with nothing to see
Tories are releasing more McSweeney revelations later today. I get the impression they are timing this all to come to a head as Conference starts for Labour.
How can anyone be 'phobic' towards Starmer? He's a grey suit, and there are far, far worse people in, and around politics.
He's not very good at the job, but that's little reason to feel 'phobic' towards him.
It's also interesting that many of the responses agreeing come from people who like Farage, who is a far worse person, and whose ideas are disastrous for this country.
I agree on Starmer not being inspirational and being cautious to a fault - an aspiring technocrat when we need something beyond; even those here opposed to him often complain that he is too indecisive. But he also been notably competent at foreign affairs so far.
I think the Cons and RefUK are phobic towards Starmer, 1) Because the biggest threat they have is that he succeeds, and it works, and 2) Because they have little or nothing to offer themselves, so they have no option other than relying on personality politics.
Personally, I still think we will not be in a position to judge any outcome for 2 years from the Election, and even then it will only be straws in the wind.
His lack of communication cut-through so that the battle is on his home ground eg currently Workers' and Renters' Rights, and reluctance to go for the Opposition in a consistent, brutal manner, makes him his own worst enemy.
Also, the media is tribal as it always is, and chunks of it are now nakedly political.
Among people I know, Starmer is more of a joke than hated.
The endless piling on of regulation and then discovering that the government is ever more unable to do anything without the permission of a court is the most commented.
Which isn’t just about A/C - it also explains how rules on A/C interact with rules on building ventilation and fire safety to make new builds more expensive and less dense. And why the windows keep getting pokier. All because of he cult of “one more extra regulation - and regulations cost nothing”
As someone who was a commercial lawyer but now running a manufacturing business in the UK and Europe, this is how I see him as well. I can't hate him for being unable to transcend the mindset and limited vision that his professional and social circles have granted him. If you haven't started a business, taken real risk, identified unmet needs and matched them, found success by challenging assumptions about the way things have always been done, by being more efficient than the competition, if you've never been anything but a manager, a paper shuffler and a back coverer, then you're a joke to me, but I can't hate you.
And... breathe...
Who was the last PM who started a business? Genuine question, I don't think that any recent PMs has had an entrepreneurial background. Starmer is hardly unique in this regard.
Probably Neville Chamberlain.
Hmm. Not a great precedent. I wonder whether that deal-making business attitude led him down the path of appeasement. FWIW I don't think business people tend to make good politicians. I do think though that it's good to have people in politics who understand the needs of entrepreneurs. There are too many on the left who are completely ignorant of that side of things. Just as there are too many on the right who assume that government has no useful function. And too many on all sides who have no experience of anything at all!
That’s probably correct, but Chamberlain’s disaster in dealing with Hitler has too often masked the fact that he was a conspicuous political success domestically as a notably ‘strong’ Prime Minister. He dominated the political scene for many years with a proven record both as Health Minister in the 1920s and Chancellor in the 1930s before succeeding Baldwin in 1937.
While grubby, Munich gave us time to accelerate the rearming process I believe
I've seen it argued that the Czechs were strong enough that backing them to fight might have delayed the Nazis for longer than giving in to them. Always assuming that Hitler went ahead with an invasion of Czechoslovakia and didn't back down.
How can anyone be 'phobic' towards Starmer? He's a grey suit, and there are far, far worse people in, and around politics.
He's not very good at the job, but that's little reason to feel 'phobic' towards him.
It's also interesting that many of the responses agreeing come from people who like Farage, who is a far worse person, and whose ideas are disastrous for this country.
I agree on Starmer not being inspirational and being cautious to a fault - an aspiring technocrat when we need something beyond; even those here opposed to him often complain that he is too indecisive. But he also been notably competent at foreign affairs so far.
I think the Cons and RefUK are phobic towards Starmer, 1) Because the biggest threat they have is that he succeeds, and it works, and 2) Because they have little or nothing to offer themselves, so they have no option other than relying on personality politics.
Personally, I still think we will not be in a position to judge any outcome for 2 years from the Election, and even then it will only be straws in the wind.
His lack of communication cut-through so that the battle is on his home ground eg currently Workers' and Renters' Rights, and reluctance to go for the Opposition in a consistent, brutal manner, makes him his own worst enemy.
Also, the media is tribal as it always is, and chunks of it are now nakedly political.
Among people I know, Starmer is more of a joke than hated.
The endless piling on of regulation and then discovering that the government is ever more unable to do anything without the permission of a court is the most commented.
Which isn’t just about A/C - it also explains how rules on A/C interact with rules on building ventilation and fire safety to make new builds more expensive and less dense. And why the windows keep getting pokier. All because of he cult of “one more extra regulation - and regulations cost nothing”
As someone who was a commercial lawyer but now running a manufacturing business in the UK and Europe, this is how I see him as well. I can't hate him for being unable to transcend the mindset and limited vision that his professional and social circles have granted him. If you haven't started a business, taken real risk, identified unmet needs and matched them, found success by challenging assumptions about the way things have always been done, by being more efficient than the competition, if you've never been anything but a manager, a paper shuffler and a back coverer, then you're a joke to me, but I can't hate you.
And... breathe...
Who was the last PM who started a business? Genuine question, I don't think that any recent PMs has had an entrepreneurial background. Starmer is hardly unique in this regard.
Probably Neville Chamberlain.
Hmm. Not a great precedent. I wonder whether that deal-making business attitude led him down the path of appeasement. FWIW I don't think business people tend to make good politicians. I do think though that it's good to have people in politics who understand the needs of entrepreneurs. There are too many on the left who are completely ignorant of that side of things. Just as there are too many on the right who assume that government has no useful function. And too many on all sides who have no experience of anything at all!
That’s probably correct, but Chamberlain’s disaster in dealing with Hitler has too often masked the fact that he was a conspicuous political success domestically as a notably ‘strong’ Prime Minister. He dominated the political scene for many years with a proven record both as Health Minister in the 1920s and Chancellor in the 1930s before succeeding Baldwin in 1937.
While grubby, Munich gave us time to accelerate the rearming process I believe
Biggest mistake, while entirely understandable, was not invading Germany (beyond a tiny go from the French, AIR?) while they were busy with Poland in 1939. It was so thinly defended, the war could have been over before it started.
Tories are releasing more McSweeney revelations later today. I get the impression they are timing this all to come to a head as Conference starts for Labour.
Can’t really get my head around it all, other than the fact that someone clearly wants him gone. It doesn’t seem to have hit the headlines yet (at least, not beyond the Telegraph).
A seat which could be LD v Reform at the next election is Torbay. There aren't that many of them, possible LD/Ref contests.
LibDems and Reform really do seem to be the polar opposite of each other. Europe, Trump and Climate Change spring to mind. Maybe they (still) agree on PR?
Comments
To get up to 40% we're talking both Labour and Conservatives averaging 15% and no further leakage to the Greens or Lib Dems. Sounds possible but feels like we're scraping the bottom of 'people who would vote red/blue if it was a monkey wearing a hat' territory.
Wouldn't surprise me if there's the odd poll with Reform at 40% though.
We also know, without examining the features of the world, that there are an infinite number of prime numbers, since this can be proved by examination of numbers themselves.
"Huntington's disease successfully treated for first time"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cevz13xkxpro
A very expensive operation, and it apparently slows, rather than fully treats, the condition. But great news nonetheless.
If they can win more of the current Tory/Lab ->DNV switchers to become Tory/Lab -> Ref switchers, there's room for Ref to go lots higher without a single further current Lab/Tory voter (surely it really is just the core vote now) backing them.
(obviously because most pollsters remove DNV from the numbers this would make the Lab/Tory vote share appear to decline, but that isn't the same time at-all).
- unpopular budget
- momentum from the 2026 locals/Wales/Scotland
- possible economic/bond market turmoil
- Tory leadership woes/infighting
I wouldn’t be hugely surprised to see them polling at 35% in a years time, though if Farage can’t help himself with the mini-MAGA stuff it will limit their advance somewhat.
Basalt Bliss (US edition) has just offered to buy me a pair and send me abroad for a day to test them. Gonna pick them up later
Intrigued if they actually work
Farage is a bet-welcher. Unsurprising.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2025/sep/24/labour-tories-conservatives-reform-uk-politics-live-news-updates
And the expense has to be set against decades of ever more intensive treatment. There should be a major saving here.
I expect to see at least one fire/blast caused by simple bodged / delayed maintenance, rather than Ukrainian action.
As to the politics and human side of it, I think there is more to be said and it is principally about trust. When I look at elites, political leaders and opinion formers I get the impression from what they say that they are committed to the standard view of climate change, but I do not draw the same conclusion from what they do. It is a reasonable assumption that, if they believed it, the wealthiest and most powerful with the greatest celebrity profile would be in the vanguard of the necessary change in respect of personal conduct and that this would be unavoidably obvious in its consequences.
Try, for one tiny example, the recent decision to expand massively Gatwick. Contemplate for one moment the nature of celebrity lifestyle.
It is not unreasonable for a non scientist to draw the conclusion that the world's most important and richest people do not believe it, and that it is rational to assume they may be right.
I don't draw that conclusion. One of the reasons I never travel by air.
My life is surrounded by lovely much younger people who travel by air all the time, nearly all of it just for fun.
Either they can stay the party of the naice seats, or if they have ambitions beyond that then I'd suggest focusing on their own policies, but getting a fair bit more radical (not by moving left or right, but in challenging the status quo where it is clearly failing).
https://www.natesilver.net/p/trump-approval-ratings-nate-silver-bulletin
It's not massively dissimilar to Biden's during his presidency, US politics is as invariant and binary as it has been in recent history.
They also understandably see it as a moral and ideologica calling , though. and at the same time.
As Raphael Behr says in the Grauniad today, if not now for liberal voices to stand up, then when ?
The fuel shortages are now very close to Moscow, and the Ukranians appear to be able to fly drones at will close to the capital, most seemingly not armed but trying to cause a nuisance by closing airspace and activating air defences there. Air defences that are close to being exhausted.
NASA didn't have to use relativity to plot the course of the Apollo missions. Newtonian gravitational mechanics was sufficient.
So even with the vast revolution in physics created by relativity and quantum dynamics, the previous physics wasn't disproved, as such.
It fell to Neville Chamberlain in one of the supreme crises of the world to be contradicted by events, to be disappointed in his hopes, and to be deceived and cheated by a wicked man. But what were these hopes in which he was disappointed? What were these wishes in which he was frustrated? What was that faith that was abused? They were surely among the most noble and benevolent instincts of the human heart-the love of peace, the toil for peace, the strife for peace, the pursuit of peace, even at great peril, and certainly to the utter disdain of popularity or clamour. Whatever else history may or may not say about these terrible, tremendous years, we can be sure that Neville Chamberlain acted with perfect sincerity according to his lights and strove to the utmost of his capacity and authority, which were powerful, to save the world from the awful, devastating struggle in which we are now engaged. This alone will stand him in good stead as far as what is called the verdict of history is concerned.
Or is that just trees?
- that peace should be given the utmost chance
- that it was probable that Hitler would renage
- that having done everything for peace would unite the country and her allies in opposition to Hitler
- buy more time for rearmament. Which was running at the “what else can we spend money on?” level at this point.
"Revolution in Science, Newtonian ideas ovrthrown", the Times said in its headline at the time.
In a different era, Galileo's works were an example of scientific progress by direct refutation.
Relativity added on top of Newtonian theory effects that occur at vast scales or tiny ones
See orbital calculations which become increasingly accurate (compared to the observed values) as you add effects from Relativity and later theories on top of the Newtonian basic answer.
To most people, Aircon vs A2A heatpump looks the same.
Exactly - someone trying to make an argument should be talking clearly about the significant difference - is "3x energy consumption for trad aircon" a fair description of that(?), rather than obfuscating.
I'm still not clear what he wants - his title and Britain Remade's campaign page are "Legalise Aircon" and "Let us have home air con." As far as I know that is where we are already.
A2A is generally not available under government schemes. You get a VAT exemption.
I'd call that VAT exemption a renewables scheme, and given the lower cost of A2A, perhaps where it should sit - rather then us throwing subsidy at things that don't need it.
Installation isn’t insurer cheap - needs to be done by a qualified engineer (coolant pipes)
I went through this for my loft conversion.
My costings are that for a house it would be perhaps a little more than a boiler replacement (that is, just the boiler). Eg a 1x5 12,000 btu multi-way split is available this morning at £2500 + install. (Appliances Direct)"
The point being made is that mandating no air conditioning in the design leads to the multi aspect requirement - which then makes the “corridor between 2 stairwells” much harder and reduces density.
AFAIK there is no such mandate. You can install a reversible A2A heat pump in your new or existing house whenever you like. Or you can use one that requires a single hole in the wall with all the gubbins inside. Or, like me, you can use a portable one.
There are discouragements to traditional energy gobbling forms of aircon, for that reason and perhaps (have not checked) other reasons. That seems a good thing.
That's his real problem imo - he's campaigning against something that does not exist, and exaggerating his claim. In that respect, it is quite like the 'they are banning fun nationwide' nonsense from the other day, built on a single difficult case. I think to understand that, we begin to need to look at the guy's organisation - which appeared run by former Con SPADS, portraying itself as a grassroots network of "ordinary people".
Further, the passive requirement then drives down window size.
I'm not actually aware of any "passive" requirement either (Ireland more or less have it for newbuild, but not the UK), but perhaps you mean the more demanding Building Regs requirements?
All driven by an “A/C is evil” doctrine which recognises neither changes in technology or the steadily growing amount of green ‘leccy
I don't see any such doctrine.
What Id like from the Lib Dems is a bit more of the “we get the frustrations with the system, but Reform will break things more. We are on the side of those that want to change the system but who think Reform can’t provide that change, or will provide it in a damaging and divisive way.”
It means he sold out the Czechs, who would have had a better chance of defending themselves than the Poles, just to buy a little more time. I think less of him for knowing that.
If Reform are less than 10% clear they probably arent on track to take SW Norfolk clearly. If they fail to win this ward they arent that close to taking it at all
I actually encountered pushback when installing A2A - the local planning guy was upset that “I wanted to install A/C”. I got the distinct impression that if he could, he would have blocked the application.
He seemed confused when I said no, that’s an A2A system.
The cost of install dominates the cost of system. Much as with domestic solar. For example, I hung the outside units on the wall of the side return of the house. That meant scaffolding and provision of electric power to that location. And it’s not 13 amp flex, either. Big cables, run all the way to the fuse box, isolation switches on the wall next to the units - lots of fun.
Lastly, portable A/C units are expensive to run and generally inefficient.
Do they have a week of days they can count on the fingers of one hand?
The diagnosis and counselling process is very expensive, and takes up quite a chunk of Senior Consultant time and lab analysis - so combined with management of the disease amongst those who lose the genetic lottery there could be a cost-balance in favour (to be cold-blooded about it).
The process of getting through an airport can be stressful.
But the flight itself - on a clear day, I can think of nothing I would rather do than look out of the window of an aeroplane at the geography below. (Obviously this is a bit boring if you're over a massive ocean - I'm assuming your flight passes within sight of land for much of it.)
The immediate review is conducted, with slightly more depatch, by the medicines regulators.
Incidentally, this isn't entirely true:
..It starts with a safe virus that has been altered to contain a specially designed sequence of DNA.
This is infused deep into the brain..
The various AAV viral vectors used in numerous clinical trials have not been 100% safe, with occasional fatalities in clinical trials.
In a disease as awful as Huntington's, that's certainly a risk worth taking. But it has ended the development of some other therapies.
(Though if anyone from Brompton is lurking, I'd like one in green).
The other argument of course is that we should have fought in 1939 too, and did not. The idea that we would have fought a year earlier seems unlikely.
https://news.sky.com/story/donald-trump-is-racist-sexist-and-islamophobic-says-sadiq-khan-amid-feud-with-us-president-13437207
Alcohol use and risk of dementia in diverse populations: evidence from cohort, case–control and Mendelian randomisation approaches
https://ebm.bmj.com/content/early/2025/09/16/bmjebm-2025-113913
...These findings provide evidence for a relationship between all types of alcohol use and increased dementia risk. While correlational observational data suggested a protective effect of light drinking, this could be in part attributable to reduced drinking seen in early dementia; genetic analyses did not support any protective effect, suggesting that any level of alcohol consumption may contribute to dementia risk. Public health strategies that reduce the prevalence of alcohol use disorder could potentially lower the incidence of dementia by up to 16%.
When you look at the equipment problems the UK had, and the planned development for 1941 (the original German date for war ready) - the 17lbr gun would have been the standard anti-tank gun, in 1941. As a simple example.
The RAF was to be equipped with 400mph+ fighters, with uniform 20mm cannon armament.
The bombers would have all have been from the Standard Bomber Project - 5,000 of them, bigger than B-17, uniformly defended by 20mm cannon. And so on.
Today's LD candidate Mr Ian Minto got 3.8% in Thetford Priory in Mays by election and he and the Green got 8% between them. A similar result today is relatively likely
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c4g2k71vv7yt
Early reports suggest it was during the unloading of detainees and that it is detainees that have been shot with 2 reported fatalities and other injuries at this stage.
The shooter described as white male and as having killed himself.
First rhetoric linking this as an attack on ICE enforcement, but could also be an attack on perceived illegals themselves.
Deep breath and facts required, at this stage it's another incident that could have various motives.
The personal cost to people who have it, and those who have potential to have it, is harrowing. Source: personal experience - I had Huntingdons (not sure about an apostrophe) two generations back in the family in the male line. There is a 50:50 chance of each child getting the disease at each generation.
My dad went through the counselling process because a sibling was considering having children - the cost/benefit to him was around finding out that if he had it his mind would disintegrate at some point in the future being a blight on his life immediately vs getting maybe 20 years of "ignorance is bliss" if he had it or "knowing he was free" if he did not. The knowledge for my sibling swung his decision; on his own imo he would have let the sleeping dog lie.
Fortunately he was negative. I had one cousin who had it and died in his 40s, another with children who has taken the test and come out negative, and a third with children who afaik has not taken the test but never takes about it. Their dad had it and was sometimes violent; one cousin says they feel they never knew their dad properly, because they were not sure whether the occasional violence was "my dad" or "the disease". That last cousin changed her career from teaching to counselling for that reason.
My Grandfather on that side was also violent - I always jump first to WW1 PTSD as a cause, but it could be Huntingdons too.
I have known people make decisions, for example, not to have children.
That's FOUR they have actually lost in Durham now.
https://democracy.durham.gov.uk/mgUserInfo.aspx?UID=28118
( https://www.facebook.com/ReformUKEasington/posts/introducing-jack-mcglenen-one-of-our-younger-candidates-ready-to-represent-the-p/622747370740732/ )
(Things to do - have a good afternoon all.)
However from today I feel…
…exactly the same.
https://x.com/unherd/status/1966153004794683872?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
NickHewynHolmes @HewynNick
Sep 18
Seriously? What is wrong with you public schoolboys?
Eww…
(The piece is by Rowan Pelling.)