"Bernard Jenkin (Con) said it was “beyond belief” that nobody was able to tell the deputy national security adviser that he needed to give the CPS the evidence it needed." I, possibly erroneously, have a generally positive impression of Bernard Jenkin but suggesting that the witness should have been told what to put in their statement doesn't seem to be "beyond belief" in a democratic country with a properly functioning legal system. What would be wrong is a witness being instructed on what to say in their statement.
Funny how Reform voters are so interested in the rather opaque China spying trial collapse, yet completely uninterested in the conviction of a key friend and colleague of Farage for taking bribes to further the interests of Russia.
I wonder why.
Why don't you ask the Westminster Lobby or the UK wide news channels why that is the case, its been a serious problem now since devolution. There has been numerous political scandals in Scotland, Wales and NI for the last twenty five years and they simple do not get reported or forensically scrutinised by the London media. In fact a case in point, Nicola Sturgeon's actual record as FM in Scotland is absolutely terrible, she launched a ferry with no windows or funnels in 2017, it never saw service for another eight years and should never have been launched when it was for that big Sturgeon headline on the Scottish news. But the London media fawned over her and believed the huge spad driven narrative without so much as doing the most basic homework of scraping below the surface. The endless list of SNP government scandals would have ended a Westminster government years ago. And as for the Labour run Welsh government, ditto!
So poor is the UK wide coverage of the devolved areas in the UK and the poor governance or scandals I once watched an episode of Question Time where an audience member in Wales ranted about the Westminster government's poor running of NHS Wales when they had not been in charge of it for years! It was embarrassing and it should have been a huge wake up call to the UK media, but it wasn't. So excuse me if I am not in the least surprised that the conviction of a key friend and colleague of Farage in Wales for taking bribes to further the interests of Russia has been of any more interest to Reform voters UK wide the rest of the UK electorate. And that is because they have probable not even heard about it thanks to the lack of UK wide reporting while the scandal of the Westminster China Spying trial is making the frontpages UK wide.
To be fair to Newsnight, they did run a story a few years back about the ferries scandal in Scotland, but who was watching apart from political anoraks like me? I will go one better, why not ask Reform, Conservative, Labour, Libdem or any other voters on the mainland UK how many of them knew that there was no functioning devolved government at Stormont for three years? You get my point, if the UK media doesn't ever bother to scrutinise or report news from devolved areas in the way they do Westminster, don't bother trying to blame the ordinary voters from parties you don't like for not being aware of it. And I say this as a frustrated member of the Scottish Conservatives who are currently being hammered in the polls here by a faceless Scottish Reform party with no discernable leadership or policies while my party has been the most effective Opposition to the SNP and thankfully saw off the terrible GRR bill and its awful implications for women in Scotland!
Its a problem. I was genuinely impressed by one of yours railing against Swinney openly lying to parliament - and of course the cybernats swing in with misinformation and abuse.
Misinformation by the nats is in part why we have this comprehension mess in Scotland. They have been in office since General Wade and push so much guff in government that the bit of reporting we get is of the guff, and when you question it they say you're against Scotland.
RochdalePioneers, seconded. But we have the added the problem of such poor and hollowed out journalistic reporting from BBC Scotland and STV News which I jokingly call SNP News. Thank god for the again now hollowed out printed media in Scotland for doing all the heavy lifting mostly on their own and mostly ignored by BBC Scotland and STV. I am trying to remember which SNP scandal it was that broke a couple of years ago, but the STV teatime news didn't mention it for two days!
I read an article a couple of days ago about how BBC Scotland was struggling to invest and make enough content and as a result it was struggling to compete with streaming channels. But thanks to the pressure from the SNP Government in Scotland they launched that white elephant of a second channel and all to produce a fecking 'Scottish' evening news programme that no one watches and they were left to fill the rest of their small evening programme with mostly repeats from the BBC Scotland archives from years ago!
How many news journalists or new Scottish programming fell by the way side funding this ridiculous demand by the SNP Government. Its just yet another example of their wasteful incompetent demands in an attempt to appear a nation in waiting for Indy. And do not get me started on the wasteful 'Scottish' extortionately expensive' embassies that do sod all to promote or help Scots abroad and simple give Angus Robertson a reason to visit them on his many travels abroad!
I think you must not be old enough to remember what happened to the Scottish national newspapers.
Scotsman - went from middle of the road to hard Unionist DT emulator, and abandoned its central Edinburgh office building for a new one opposite Holyrood which it then abandoned for some industrial estate somewhere I can't remember
Herald - ditto change from middle of the road, lost so much circulation it had to set up the National as a not very SNP-friendly way of trying to recover some of the lost income
Edit: A decade and more later, I'm still bitterly angry about the Scotsman. I grew up on it and miss it enormously.
OMG! I am loving the desperation of the SNP supporters on here this morning spinning against the hard truth of what has been actually happening in Scotland and in other devolved areas of the UK and calling out the failure of the London centric UK news media to report it. But seriously you embarrass yourself by trying to claim that 'Herald - ditto change from middle of the road, lost so much circulation it had to set up the National as a not very SNP-friendly way of trying to recover some of the lost income'!!!
And suggesting that I might not be old enough to remember what happened to the Scottish national newspapers, I am going to be sixty this year and I have been a political anorak since my mid teens, I have also been posting here for twenty years too! Really, you are claiming that the SNP mouth piece that is the National which is the SNP equivalent of Pravda is a not very SNP-friendly newspaper?! Thankfully I was not holding my coffee when I read this, this comic with sales in the very very low four figures totally directed at the SNP Indy movement is meant to be a money maker for the Herald?! Would that be in the same that the second white elephant of a BBC Scotland channel was meant to push Indy too?
Have you not realised that the National was primarily a Green/SSP paper when it was founded?* It's changed a bit sicne then, but that was very noticeable att he time. Circulation in print form is low partly (but only partly) because it tends to be a younger persons' paper given its politics.
The BBC Scotland channel has to be seen in the wider context of Government subsidy for local newspapers through the BBC etc - and almost all of them are owned by anti-indy owners (not many of them).
*Edit: just because something supports independence doesn't mean it is pro-SNP.
Dyed in the wool unionists , especially bitter and twisted Tories are unable to grasp that fact Carnyx. They are still miffed that they are not lording it over us.
If we get on the wrong side of China, they might stop selling us tat that we don't need.
What am I missing here?
It’s worse than that.
Their plan is to stop selling us things that we might really need, such as EV batteries, so they can instead sell us their cars by denying European and American manufacturers the batteries - because Europe and America don’t have the technology to produce the new improved batteries the Chinese are now making.
This is why Trump is talking about 100% tariffs on China, and other Western nations face the same dilemma.
There is of course a way forward - develop and manufacture batteries in the west.
MURICA - Batteries are ANTIFA UK - Ah, Yes, Brugh, BRITVOLT, er, right, oh EU - we want to make profit from the engines we already make
Electrification is here and it can't be stopped. What the rage baiters foaming on about EVs don't get is that most people don't care that much about cars. Offer them a new one thats easier to drive cheaper to maintain and more reliable and they'll take it. And they are, with EV sales continuing to rise.
ICE is on its way out, and China will rule the world unless the west wakes up and starts investing serious money.
And a reminder
1) A speech about building batteries isn’t building batteries. 2) A report on building batteries isn’t building batteries. 3) A policy on building batteries isn’t building batteries.
Building fuck off gigantic factories building batteries *is* building batteries.
And solar panels. Of all the stupid things the Reform clowns want to do, switch off renewables is top of the heap. We will end up having to reverse course some years later and be so far behind that we will always then be reliant on other countries.
We have abundant renewable sources, with so much energy flowing that we have to pay the companies to dump it as we can't transmit it and we can't consume it quickly enough. The obvious solution is better transmission - needed anyway as so little money has been spent by the private sector - and battery storage. And not just at big sites - local generation and storage.
But no, the fukers want to shut the whole thing down, import more LNG and then we're fine apparently. Asshats the lot of them, whether they turn up to selection meetings in union jack shorts or not.
ALL of that has been pretty clear for a decade. We've certainly been arguing about it here for at least as long as that.
The difference is that all the stuff people said wouldn't happen - renewables cheaper than fossil fuel; EVs cheaper than ICE cars; battery storage capable of solving daily intermittency economically etc has either now happened, or is about to be delivered within this decade.
We've not seriously planned for any of that - while China bet their future on it.
Time to end the denial.
Government, the related state run institutions and large companies in the UK (and Europe in general) operate on the basis of
1) talk but don’t do. 2) denial of change until a decade after it has happened. 3) bankrupt legalism dominating debate and policy. So we have a debate about how many Chinese spies can stand on the head of a pin. Rather than passing an amendment to the law.
2 is fine. By the nature of their role governments should be more conservative on things that impact a lot of people
If we get on the wrong side of China, they might stop selling us tat that we don't need.
What am I missing here?
It’s worse than that.
Their plan is to stop selling us things that we might really need, such as EV batteries, so they can instead sell us their cars by denying European and American manufacturers the batteries - because Europe and America don’t have the technology to produce the new improved batteries the Chinese are now making.
This is why Trump is talking about 100% tariffs on China, and other Western nations face the same dilemma.
We mustn't be dependent on them for anything important.
Since we already do, what do you suggest in the interim ?
Two thirds of the world was already unreliable pre Trump, now it is closer to 90%. Sure we should mitigate our reliance on China, but it is more absurd to pretend we can live fully independently of countries we don't like or trust.
It's one thing to do business with one of a number of countries that we don't like or trust where, if the relationship deteriorates we can switch that trade to a different country with questionable morals, but it's quite another where that country is as big and powerful as China where there is no alternative for many market sectors.
The US is unreliable on tariffs, we can't plan trade there either.
At the end of the day fudge with all these relationships is the only answer. Blaming our politicians for accepting reality is not something we should be doing.
It is, of course, another reason to think about reconsidering our relationship with Europe.
It would be a shame to watch Ukraine join the EU before us.
Even with Europe everyone is in the potentially unreliable category now including us. Chances are at least one of Le Pen, Farage or the AfD will rule within a decade.
I don't think it is unreasonable to suggest that China is less reliable, and more of a threat, than a US run by Trump, or a France run by Le Pen.
I don't think it's useful to simply say - "they're all foreign!" - and throw up your hands at the impossibility of discriminating between them at all.
Absolutely this. I saw someone yesterday suggest we need to be cosying up to China in the light of Trump running America. This seems, at present, insane.
Cosying up is wrong. But so is closing ourselves off.
The US has passed legislation allowing the government to impose a 50% additional tax on overseas holders of US shares. That is us and our pensions. No-one here discusses or notices these things, as we wrongly assume the US is still the same reliable US we have grown up with, it is not.
A couple of US firms who send me royalties have recently asked for W8-BENEs to avoid witholding taxes when before they required only a simple tickbox declaration. Not sure if this is related. No sign of my actually losing money though. Yet.
If we get on the wrong side of China, they might stop selling us tat that we don't need.
What am I missing here?
It’s worse than that.
Their plan is to stop selling us things that we might really need, such as EV batteries, so they can instead sell us their cars by denying European and American manufacturers the batteries - because Europe and America don’t have the technology to produce the new improved batteries the Chinese are now making.
This is why Trump is talking about 100% tariffs on China, and other Western nations face the same dilemma.
There is of course a way forward - develop and manufacture batteries in the west.
MURICA - Batteries are ANTIFA UK - Ah, Yes, Brugh, BRITVOLT, er, right, oh EU - we want to make profit from the engines we already make
Electrification is here and it can't be stopped. What the rage baiters foaming on about EVs don't get is that most people don't care that much about cars. Offer them a new one thats easier to drive cheaper to maintain and more reliable and they'll take it. And they are, with EV sales continuing to rise.
ICE is on its way out, and China will rule the world unless the west wakes up and starts investing serious money.
And a reminder
1) A speech about building batteries isn’t building batteries. 2) A report on building batteries isn’t building batteries. 3) A policy on building batteries isn’t building batteries.
Building fuck off gigantic factories building batteries *is* building batteries.
And solar panels. Of all the stupid things the Reform clowns want to do, switch off renewables is top of the heap. We will end up having to reverse course some years later and be so far behind that we will always then be reliant on other countries.
We have abundant renewable sources, with so much energy flowing that we have to pay the companies to dump it as we can't transmit it and we can't consume it quickly enough. The obvious solution is better transmission - needed anyway as so little money has been spent by the private sector - and battery storage. And not just at big sites - local generation and storage.
But no, the fukers want to shut the whole thing down, import more LNG and then we're fine apparently. Asshats the lot of them, whether they turn up to selection meetings in union jack shorts or not.
Hi Rochdale,
What is the reaction in Aberdeenshire re the large pylon project up your way, are you hearing many opinions either way on the doorstep?
There are "stop the pylons" protestors linking this to Net Zero. But then again they objected to the ones not linked to Net Zero. I get it, pylons are ugly. But they need to go somewhere.
Just to add that it's employing a few of my friends so a big thumbs up from me. One is ex- O&G and doing conversions into electricity transmission.
I am ideologically opposed because I think it reflects our lack of regional pricing - building pylons in Scotland instead of turbines in England.
Ed miliband will be delighted so many new turbines are coming on in Scotland and Scottish waters, makes his job a lot easier. But energy should be built as close to source of use as possible, carting it nearly the full length of the UK is not going to bring energy bills down, the reverse instead
Especially to the Scots. I'm surprised local pricing hasn't been more of an issue politically.
Miliband is not one for listening to communities, if anything he is in thrall to London types who don't want to implement regional pricing.
There's no need for Scotland to overproduce energy when the same companies are being paid to turn off turbines when they produce too much. That money is not going back to communities, it's heading offshore to the site owners. The UK state should be building the entire energy network itself, they can bid for tenders
I am surprised the SNP are not making more hay out of the pricing issue, maybe we will hear more in spring 2026
If we get on the wrong side of China, they might stop selling us tat that we don't need.
What am I missing here?
It’s worse than that.
Their plan is to stop selling us things that we might really need, such as EV batteries, so they can instead sell us their cars by denying European and American manufacturers the batteries - because Europe and America don’t have the technology to produce the new improved batteries the Chinese are now making.
This is why Trump is talking about 100% tariffs on China, and other Western nations face the same dilemma.
We mustn't be dependent on them for anything important.
Since we already do, what do you suggest in the interim ?
Two thirds of the world was already unreliable pre Trump, now it is closer to 90%. Sure we should mitigate our reliance on China, but it is more absurd to pretend we can live fully independently of countries we don't like or trust.
It's one thing to do business with one of a number of countries that we don't like or trust where, if the relationship deteriorates we can switch that trade to a different country with questionable morals, but it's quite another where that country is as big and powerful as China where there is no alternative for many market sectors.
The US is unreliable on tariffs, we can't plan trade there either.
At the end of the day fudge with all these relationships is the only answer. Blaming our politicians for accepting reality is not something we should be doing.
It is, of course, another reason to think about reconsidering our relationship with Europe.
It would be a shame to watch Ukraine join the EU before us.
Even with Europe everyone is in the potentially unreliable category now including us. Chances are at least one of Le Pen, Farage or the AfD will rule within a decade.
I don't think it is unreasonable to suggest that China is less reliable, and more of a threat, than a US run by Trump, or a France run by Le Pen.
I don't think it's useful to simply say - "they're all foreign!" - and throw up your hands at the impossibility of discriminating between them at all.
Absolutely this. I saw someone yesterday suggest we need to be cosying up to China in the light of Trump running America. This seems, at present, insane.
Cosying up is wrong. But so is closing ourselves off.
The US has passed legislation allowing the government to impose a 50% additional tax on overseas holders of US shares. That is us and our pensions. No-one here discusses or notices these things, as we wrongly assume the US is still the same reliable US we have grown up with, it is not.
A couple of US firms who send me royalties have recently asked for W8-BENEs to avoid witholding taxes when before they required only a simple tickbox declaration. Not sure if this is related. No sign of my actually losing money though. Yet.
Don't think related. W8-BEN need to be renewed every 3 years, so some years no action required.
If we get on the wrong side of China, they might stop selling us tat that we don't need.
What am I missing here?
It’s worse than that.
Their plan is to stop selling us things that we might really need, such as EV batteries, so they can instead sell us their cars by denying European and American manufacturers the batteries - because Europe and America don’t have the technology to produce the new improved batteries the Chinese are now making.
This is why Trump is talking about 100% tariffs on China, and other Western nations face the same dilemma.
There is of course a way forward - develop and manufacture batteries in the west.
MURICA - Batteries are ANTIFA UK - Ah, Yes, Brugh, BRITVOLT, er, right, oh EU - we want to make profit from the engines we already make
Electrification is here and it can't be stopped. What the rage baiters foaming on about EVs don't get is that most people don't care that much about cars. Offer them a new one thats easier to drive cheaper to maintain and more reliable and they'll take it. And they are, with EV sales continuing to rise.
ICE is on its way out, and China will rule the world unless the west wakes up and starts investing serious money.
And a reminder
1) A speech about building batteries isn’t building batteries. 2) A report on building batteries isn’t building batteries. 3) A policy on building batteries isn’t building batteries.
Building fuck off gigantic factories building batteries *is* building batteries.
And solar panels. Of all the stupid things the Reform clowns want to do, switch off renewables is top of the heap. We will end up having to reverse course some years later and be so far behind that we will always then be reliant on other countries.
We have abundant renewable sources, with so much energy flowing that we have to pay the companies to dump it as we can't transmit it and we can't consume it quickly enough. The obvious solution is better transmission - needed anyway as so little money has been spent by the private sector - and battery storage. And not just at big sites - local generation and storage.
But no, the fukers want to shut the whole thing down, import more LNG and then we're fine apparently. Asshats the lot of them, whether they turn up to selection meetings in union jack shorts or not.
Hi Rochdale,
What is the reaction in Aberdeenshire re the large pylon project up your way, are you hearing many opinions either way on the doorstep?
There are "stop the pylons" protestors linking this to Net Zero. But then again they objected to the ones not linked to Net Zero. I get it, pylons are ugly. But they need to go somewhere.
Just to add that it's employing a few of my friends so a big thumbs up from me. One is ex- O&G and doing conversions into electricity transmission.
I am ideologically opposed because I think it reflects our lack of regional pricing - building pylons in Scotland instead of turbines in England.
Ed miliband will be delighted so many new turbines are coming on in Scotland and Scottish waters, makes his job a lot easier. But energy should be built as close to source of use as possible, carting it nearly the full length of the UK is not going to bring energy bills down, the reverse instead
Well, the energy is up here - you build turbines where it is windy.
Remember that the alternative being offered is "more gas". Which means for what we can still obtain from the North Sea bringing it ashore in the NE and piping it down the country to English power stations. Or for much of it drilling it up in the US or Qatar and shipping it to a terminal in England then piping it to the power station.
"Bernard Jenkin (Con) said it was “beyond belief” that nobody was able to tell the deputy national security adviser that he needed to give the CPS the evidence it needed." I, possibly erroneously, have a generally positive impression of Bernard Jenkin but suggesting that the witness should have been told what to put in their statement doesn't seem to be "beyond belief" in a democratic country with a properly functioning legal system. What would be wrong is a witness being instructed on what to say in their statement.
Indeed. I have not followed all the twists and turns of this case. But it seems to me that some MPs are losing sense on this issue.
And personally I can’t quite understand why the Tories are going large on this one? I get that they think they’ve got the potential for a scalp. But, and assuming the current administration are playing it straight, the case will turn on the events of the time - where the accused spying for an enemy at the time. So you’ve got to prove two things the spying and the enemy (at that time). Saying the current Government should have done more to keep the case alive misses the point and would surely provide fuel for the defence case.
"Bernard Jenkin (Con) said it was “beyond belief” that nobody was able to tell the deputy national security adviser that he needed to give the CPS the evidence it needed." I, possibly erroneously, have a generally positive impression of Bernard Jenkin but suggesting that the witness should have been told what to put in their statement doesn't seem to be "beyond belief" in a democratic country with a properly functioning legal system. What would be wrong is a witness being instructed on what to say in their statement.
If we get on the wrong side of China, they might stop selling us tat that we don't need.
What am I missing here?
It’s worse than that.
Their plan is to stop selling us things that we might really need, such as EV batteries, so they can instead sell us their cars by denying European and American manufacturers the batteries - because Europe and America don’t have the technology to produce the new improved batteries the Chinese are now making.
This is why Trump is talking about 100% tariffs on China, and other Western nations face the same dilemma.
There is of course a way forward - develop and manufacture batteries in the west.
MURICA - Batteries are ANTIFA UK - Ah, Yes, Brugh, BRITVOLT, er, right, oh EU - we want to make profit from the engines we already make
Electrification is here and it can't be stopped. What the rage baiters foaming on about EVs don't get is that most people don't care that much about cars. Offer them a new one thats easier to drive cheaper to maintain and more reliable and they'll take it. And they are, with EV sales continuing to rise.
ICE is on its way out, and China will rule the world unless the west wakes up and starts investing serious money.
And a reminder
1) A speech about building batteries isn’t building batteries. 2) A report on building batteries isn’t building batteries. 3) A policy on building batteries isn’t building batteries.
Building fuck off gigantic factories building batteries *is* building batteries.
And solar panels. Of all the stupid things the Reform clowns want to do, switch off renewables is top of the heap. We will end up having to reverse course some years later and be so far behind that we will always then be reliant on other countries.
We have abundant renewable sources, with so much energy flowing that we have to pay the companies to dump it as we can't transmit it and we can't consume it quickly enough. The obvious solution is better transmission - needed anyway as so little money has been spent by the private sector - and battery storage. And not just at big sites - local generation and storage.
But no, the fukers want to shut the whole thing down, import more LNG and then we're fine apparently. Asshats the lot of them, whether they turn up to selection meetings in union jack shorts or not.
Hi Rochdale,
What is the reaction in Aberdeenshire re the large pylon project up your way, are you hearing many opinions either way on the doorstep?
There are "stop the pylons" protestors linking this to Net Zero. But then again they objected to the ones not linked to Net Zero. I get it, pylons are ugly. But they need to go somewhere.
Just to add that it's employing a few of my friends so a big thumbs up from me. One is ex- O&G and doing conversions into electricity transmission.
I am ideologically opposed because I think it reflects our lack of regional pricing - building pylons in Scotland instead of turbines in England.
Ed miliband will be delighted so many new turbines are coming on in Scotland and Scottish waters, makes his job a lot easier. But energy should be built as close to source of use as possible, carting it nearly the full length of the UK is not going to bring energy bills down, the reverse instead
Especially to the Scots. I'm surprised local pricing hasn't been more of an issue politically. It's not just in Aberdeenshire (important as it is) that the interconnector pylons are being built, but further southwards (and to the north!), including cross-border connexions (partly marine) to export Borders electricity to the south.
I did see some of the Borders plans last year, put new infrastructure through isolated, rural valleys with low population, hey presto few objections. Local area misses out on the benefits, but a nice new supply line for the populated south. The bill increases won't all be going on the generation or subsidies for shutting turbines off when it's too windy, it's to help pay for infrastructure too
If we get on the wrong side of China, they might stop selling us tat that we don't need.
What am I missing here?
It’s worse than that.
Their plan is to stop selling us things that we might really need, such as EV batteries, so they can instead sell us their cars by denying European and American manufacturers the batteries - because Europe and America don’t have the technology to produce the new improved batteries the Chinese are now making.
This is why Trump is talking about 100% tariffs on China, and other Western nations face the same dilemma.
There is of course a way forward - develop and manufacture batteries in the west.
MURICA - Batteries are ANTIFA UK - Ah, Yes, Brugh, BRITVOLT, er, right, oh EU - we want to make profit from the engines we already make
Electrification is here and it can't be stopped. What the rage baiters foaming on about EVs don't get is that most people don't care that much about cars. Offer them a new one thats easier to drive cheaper to maintain and more reliable and they'll take it. And they are, with EV sales continuing to rise.
ICE is on its way out, and China will rule the world unless the west wakes up and starts investing serious money.
And a reminder
1) A speech about building batteries isn’t building batteries. 2) A report on building batteries isn’t building batteries. 3) A policy on building batteries isn’t building batteries.
Building fuck off gigantic factories building batteries *is* building batteries.
And solar panels. Of all the stupid things the Reform clowns want to do, switch off renewables is top of the heap. We will end up having to reverse course some years later and be so far behind that we will always then be reliant on other countries.
We have abundant renewable sources, with so much energy flowing that we have to pay the companies to dump it as we can't transmit it and we can't consume it quickly enough. The obvious solution is better transmission - needed anyway as so little money has been spent by the private sector - and battery storage. And not just at big sites - local generation and storage.
But no, the fukers want to shut the whole thing down, import more LNG and then we're fine apparently. Asshats the lot of them, whether they turn up to selection meetings in union jack shorts or not.
Hi Rochdale,
What is the reaction in Aberdeenshire re the large pylon project up your way, are you hearing many opinions either way on the doorstep?
There are "stop the pylons" protestors linking this to Net Zero. But then again they objected to the ones not linked to Net Zero. I get it, pylons are ugly. But they need to go somewhere.
Just to add that it's employing a few of my friends so a big thumbs up from me. One is ex- O&G and doing conversions into electricity transmission.
I am ideologically opposed because I think it reflects our lack of regional pricing - building pylons in Scotland instead of turbines in England.
Ed miliband will be delighted so many new turbines are coming on in Scotland and Scottish waters, makes his job a lot easier. But energy should be built as close to source of use as possible, carting it nearly the full length of the UK is not going to bring energy bills down, the reverse instead
Especially to the Scots. I'm surprised local pricing hasn't been more of an issue politically. It's not just in Aberdeenshire (important as it is) that the interconnector pylons are being built, but further southwards (and to the north!), including cross-border connexions (partly marine) to export Borders electricity to the south.
The location issue is a good one, hence Rampion 2.
If we get on the wrong side of China, they might stop selling us tat that we don't need.
What am I missing here?
It’s worse than that.
Their plan is to stop selling us things that we might really need, such as EV batteries, so they can instead sell us their cars by denying European and American manufacturers the batteries - because Europe and America don’t have the technology to produce the new improved batteries the Chinese are now making.
This is why Trump is talking about 100% tariffs on China, and other Western nations face the same dilemma.
We mustn't be dependent on them for anything important.
Since we already do, what do you suggest in the interim ?
Two thirds of the world was already unreliable pre Trump, now it is closer to 90%. Sure we should mitigate our reliance on China, but it is more absurd to pretend we can live fully independently of countries we don't like or trust.
It's one thing to do business with one of a number of countries that we don't like or trust where, if the relationship deteriorates we can switch that trade to a different country with questionable morals, but it's quite another where that country is as big and powerful as China where there is no alternative for many market sectors.
The US is unreliable on tariffs, we can't plan trade there either.
At the end of the day fudge with all these relationships is the only answer. Blaming our politicians for accepting reality is not something we should be doing.
It is, of course, another reason to think about reconsidering our relationship with Europe.
It would be a shame to watch Ukraine join the EU before us.
Even with Europe everyone is in the potentially unreliable category now including us. Chances are at least one of Le Pen, Farage or the AfD will rule within a decade.
I don't think it is unreasonable to suggest that China is less reliable, and more of a threat, than a US run by Trump, or a France run by Le Pen.
I don't think it's useful to simply say - "they're all foreign!" - and throw up your hands at the impossibility of discriminating between them at all.
Absolutely this. I saw someone yesterday suggest we need to be cosying up to China in the light of Trump running America. This seems, at present, insane.
Cosying up is wrong. But so is closing ourselves off.
The US has passed legislation allowing the government to impose a 50% additional tax on overseas holders of US shares. That is us and our pensions. No-one here discusses or notices these things, as we wrongly assume the US is still the same reliable US we have grown up with, it is not.
A couple of US firms who send me royalties have recently asked for W8-BENEs to avoid witholding taxes when before they required only a simple tickbox declaration. Not sure if this is related. No sign of my actually losing money though. Yet.
Don't think related. W8-BEN need to be renewed every 3 years, so some years no action required.
To quote one of them:
"I'm reaching out because there was a change in our compliance obligation. As part of our compliance requirements, we now need to have a completed IRS Form W-8 BEN-E on file for all non-U.S. persons or entities we make payments to."
This is a decent size technical publisher who I imagine/hope were in compliance before.
Funny how Reform voters are so interested in the rather opaque China spying trial collapse, yet completely uninterested in the conviction of a key friend and colleague of Farage for taking bribes to further the interests of Russia.
I wonder why.
Why don't you ask the Westminster Lobby or the UK wide news channels why that is the case, its been a serious problem now since devolution. There has been numerous political scandals in Scotland, Wales and NI for the last twenty five years and they simple do not get reported or forensically scrutinised by the London media. In fact a case in point, Nicola Sturgeon's actual record as FM in Scotland is absolutely terrible, she launched a ferry with no windows or funnels in 2017, it never saw service for another eight years and should never have been launched when it was for that big Sturgeon headline on the Scottish news. But the London media fawned over her and believed the huge spad driven narrative without so much as doing the most basic homework of scraping below the surface. The endless list of SNP government scandals would have ended a Westminster government years ago. And as for the Labour run Welsh government, ditto!
So poor is the UK wide coverage of the devolved areas in the UK and the poor governance or scandals I once watched an episode of Question Time where an audience member in Wales ranted about the Westminster government's poor running of NHS Wales when they had not been in charge of it for years! It was embarrassing and it should have been a huge wake up call to the UK media, but it wasn't. So excuse me if I am not in the least surprised that the conviction of a key friend and colleague of Farage in Wales for taking bribes to further the interests of Russia has been of any more interest to Reform voters UK wide the rest of the UK electorate. And that is because they have probable not even heard about it thanks to the lack of UK wide reporting while the scandal of the Westminster China Spying trial is making the frontpages UK wide.
To be fair to Newsnight, they did run a story a few years back about the ferries scandal in Scotland, but who was watching apart from political anoraks like me? I will go one better, why not ask Reform, Conservative, Labour, Libdem or any other voters on the mainland UK how many of them knew that there was no functioning devolved government at Stormont for three years? You get my point, if the UK media doesn't ever bother to scrutinise or report news from devolved areas in the way they do Westminster, don't bother trying to blame the ordinary voters from parties you don't like for not being aware of it. And I say this as a frustrated member of the Scottish Conservatives who are currently being hammered in the polls here by a faceless Scottish Reform party with no discernable leadership or policies while my party has been the most effective Opposition to the SNP and thankfully saw off the terrible GRR bill and its awful implications for women in Scotland!
Its a problem. I was genuinely impressed by one of yours railing against Swinney openly lying to parliament - and of course the cybernats swing in with misinformation and abuse.
Misinformation by the nats is in part why we have this comprehension mess in Scotland. They have been in office since General Wade and push so much guff in government that the bit of reporting we get is of the guff, and when you question it they say you're against Scotland.
RochdalePioneers, seconded. But we have the added the problem of such poor and hollowed out journalistic reporting from BBC Scotland and STV News which I jokingly call SNP News. Thank god for the again now hollowed out printed media in Scotland for doing all the heavy lifting mostly on their own and mostly ignored by BBC Scotland and STV. I am trying to remember which SNP scandal it was that broke a couple of years ago, but the STV teatime news didn't mention it for two days!
I read an article a couple of days ago about how BBC Scotland was struggling to invest and make enough content and as a result it was struggling to compete with streaming channels. But thanks to the pressure from the SNP Government in Scotland they launched that white elephant of a second channel and all to produce a fecking 'Scottish' evening news programme that no one watches and they were left to fill the rest of their small evening programme with mostly repeats from the BBC Scotland archives from years ago!
How many news journalists or new Scottish programming fell by the way side funding this ridiculous demand by the SNP Government. Its just yet another example of their wasteful incompetent demands in an attempt to appear a nation in waiting for Indy. And do not get me started on the wasteful 'Scottish' extortionately expensive' embassies that do sod all to promote or help Scots abroad and simple give Angus Robertson a reason to visit them on his many travels abroad!
I think you must not be old enough to remember what happened to the Scottish national newspapers.
Scotsman - went from middle of the road to hard Unionist DT emulator, and abandoned its central Edinburgh office building for a new one opposite Holyrood which it then abandoned for some industrial estate somewhere I can't remember
Herald - ditto change from middle of the road, lost so much circulation it had to set up the National as a not very SNP-friendly way of trying to recover some of the lost income
Edit: A decade and more later, I'm still bitterly angry about the Scotsman. I grew up on it and miss it enormously.
OMG! I am loving the desperation of the SNP supporters on here this morning spinning against the hard truth of what has been actually happening in Scotland and in other devolved areas of the UK and calling out the failure of the London centric UK news media to report it. But seriously you embarrass yourself by trying to claim that 'Herald - ditto change from middle of the road, lost so much circulation it had to set up the National as a not very SNP-friendly way of trying to recover some of the lost income'!!!
And suggesting that I might not be old enough to remember what happened to the Scottish national newspapers, I am going to be sixty this year and I have been a political anorak since my mid teens, I have also been posting here for twenty years too! Really, you are claiming that the SNP mouth piece that is the National which is the SNP equivalent of Pravda is a not very SNP-friendly newspaper?! Thankfully I was not holding my coffee when I read this, this comic with sales in the very very low four figures totally directed at the SNP Indy movement is meant to be a money maker for the Herald?! Would that be in the same that the second white elephant of a BBC Scotland channel was meant to push Indy too?
Have you not realised that the National was primarily a Green/SSP paper when it was founded?* It's changed a bit sicne then, but that was very noticeable att he time. Circulation in print form is low partly (but only partly) because it tends to be a younger persons' paper given its politics.
The BBC Scotland channel has to be seen in the wider context of Government subsidy for local newspapers through the BBC etc - and almost all of them are owned by anti-indy owners (not many of them).
*Edit: just because something supports independence doesn't mean it is pro-SNP.
Dyed in the wool unionists , especially bitter and twisted Tories are unable to grasp that fact Carnyx. They are still miffed that they are not lording it over us.
I can't deny it. Lording it over @malcolmg was always a cherished dream of mine.
Imagine my angst at having it dashed from my hands. Sob.
If we get on the wrong side of China, they might stop selling us tat that we don't need.
What am I missing here?
It’s worse than that.
Their plan is to stop selling us things that we might really need, such as EV batteries, so they can instead sell us their cars by denying European and American manufacturers the batteries - because Europe and America don’t have the technology to produce the new improved batteries the Chinese are now making.
This is why Trump is talking about 100% tariffs on China, and other Western nations face the same dilemma.
There is of course a way forward - develop and manufacture batteries in the west.
MURICA - Batteries are ANTIFA UK - Ah, Yes, Brugh, BRITVOLT, er, right, oh EU - we want to make profit from the engines we already make
Electrification is here and it can't be stopped. What the rage baiters foaming on about EVs don't get is that most people don't care that much about cars. Offer them a new one thats easier to drive cheaper to maintain and more reliable and they'll take it. And they are, with EV sales continuing to rise.
ICE is on its way out, and China will rule the world unless the west wakes up and starts investing serious money.
And a reminder
1) A speech about building batteries isn’t building batteries. 2) A report on building batteries isn’t building batteries. 3) A policy on building batteries isn’t building batteries.
Building fuck off gigantic factories building batteries *is* building batteries.
And solar panels. Of all the stupid things the Reform clowns want to do, switch off renewables is top of the heap. We will end up having to reverse course some years later and be so far behind that we will always then be reliant on other countries.
We have abundant renewable sources, with so much energy flowing that we have to pay the companies to dump it as we can't transmit it and we can't consume it quickly enough. The obvious solution is better transmission - needed anyway as so little money has been spent by the private sector - and battery storage. And not just at big sites - local generation and storage.
But no, the fukers want to shut the whole thing down, import more LNG and then we're fine apparently. Asshats the lot of them, whether they turn up to selection meetings in union jack shorts or not.
Hi Rochdale,
What is the reaction in Aberdeenshire re the large pylon project up your way, are you hearing many opinions either way on the doorstep?
There are "stop the pylons" protestors linking this to Net Zero. But then again they objected to the ones not linked to Net Zero. I get it, pylons are ugly. But they need to go somewhere.
Just to add that it's employing a few of my friends so a big thumbs up from me. One is ex- O&G and doing conversions into electricity transmission.
I am ideologically opposed because I think it reflects our lack of regional pricing - building pylons in Scotland instead of turbines in England.
Ed miliband will be delighted so many new turbines are coming on in Scotland and Scottish waters, makes his job a lot easier. But energy should be built as close to source of use as possible, carting it nearly the full length of the UK is not going to bring energy bills down, the reverse instead
Well, the energy is up here - you build turbines where it is windy.
Remember that the alternative being offered is "more gas". Which means for what we can still obtain from the North Sea bringing it ashore in the NE and piping it down the country to English power stations. Or for much of it drilling it up in the US or Qatar and shipping it to a terminal in England then piping it to the power station.
I get that, but I think a lot is down to the need to use gas when its not windy - this week hasn't been great, wind is currently only 7.8% of our energy mix.
I do wonder if the extra turbines in the North East are in large part due to the oil industry jobs needing replaced and being seen to need to do something directly in Aberdeenshire. Hence 'GB energy' etc
Funny how Reform voters are so interested in the rather opaque China spying trial collapse, yet completely uninterested in the conviction of a key friend and colleague of Farage for taking bribes to further the interests of Russia.
I wonder why.
Perhaps because he has been brought to justice, tried and found guilty, whereas spying for China against our MPs has been de facto legalised by this sordid affair.
Funny how Reform voters are so interested in the rather opaque China spying trial collapse, yet completely uninterested in the conviction of a key friend and colleague of Farage for taking bribes to further the interests of Russia.
I wonder why.
Why don't you ask the Westminster Lobby or the UK wide news channels why that is the case, its been a serious problem now since devolution. There has been numerous political scandals in Scotland, Wales and NI for the last twenty five years and they simple do not get reported or forensically scrutinised by the London media. In fact a case in point, Nicola Sturgeon's actual record as FM in Scotland is absolutely terrible, she launched a ferry with no windows or funnels in 2017, it never saw service for another eight years and should never have been launched when it was for that big Sturgeon headline on the Scottish news. But the London media fawned over her and believed the huge spad driven narrative without so much as doing the most basic homework of scraping below the surface. The endless list of SNP government scandals would have ended a Westminster government years ago. And as for the Labour run Welsh government, ditto!
So poor is the UK wide coverage of the devolved areas in the UK and the poor governance or scandals I once watched an episode of Question Time where an audience member in Wales ranted about the Westminster government's poor running of NHS Wales when they had not been in charge of it for years! It was embarrassing and it should have been a huge wake up call to the UK media, but it wasn't. So excuse me if I am not in the least surprised that the conviction of a key friend and colleague of Farage in Wales for taking bribes to further the interests of Russia has been of any more interest to Reform voters UK wide the rest of the UK electorate. And that is because they have probable not even heard about it thanks to the lack of UK wide reporting while the scandal of the Westminster China Spying trial is making the frontpages UK wide.
To be fair to Newsnight, they did run a story a few years back about the ferries scandal in Scotland, but who was watching apart from political anoraks like me? I will go one better, why not ask Reform, Conservative, Labour, Libdem or any other voters on the mainland UK how many of them knew that there was no functioning devolved government at Stormont for three years? You get my point, if the UK media doesn't ever bother to scrutinise or report news from devolved areas in the way they do Westminster, don't bother trying to blame the ordinary voters from parties you don't like for not being aware of it. And I say this as a frustrated member of the Scottish Conservatives who are currently being hammered in the polls here by a faceless Scottish Reform party with no discernable leadership or policies while my party has been the most effective Opposition to the SNP and thankfully saw off the terrible GRR bill and its awful implications for women in Scotland!
Its a problem. I was genuinely impressed by one of yours railing against Swinney openly lying to parliament - and of course the cybernats swing in with misinformation and abuse.
Misinformation by the nats is in part why we have this comprehension mess in Scotland. They have been in office since General Wade and push so much guff in government that the bit of reporting we get is of the guff, and when you question it they say you're against Scotland.
RochdalePioneers, seconded. But we have the added the problem of such poor and hollowed out journalistic reporting from BBC Scotland and STV News which I jokingly call SNP News. Thank god for the again now hollowed out printed media in Scotland for doing all the heavy lifting mostly on their own and mostly ignored by BBC Scotland and STV. I am trying to remember which SNP scandal it was that broke a couple of years ago, but the STV teatime news didn't mention it for two days!
I read an article a couple of days ago about how BBC Scotland was struggling to invest and make enough content and as a result it was struggling to compete with streaming channels. But thanks to the pressure from the SNP Government in Scotland they launched that white elephant of a second channel and all to produce a fecking 'Scottish' evening news programme that no one watches and they were left to fill the rest of their small evening programme with mostly repeats from the BBC Scotland archives from years ago!
How many news journalists or new Scottish programming fell by the way side funding this ridiculous demand by the SNP Government. Its just yet another example of their wasteful incompetent demands in an attempt to appear a nation in waiting for Indy. And do not get me started on the wasteful 'Scottish' extortionately expensive' embassies that do sod all to promote or help Scots abroad and simple give Angus Robertson a reason to visit them on his many travels abroad!
I think you must not be old enough to remember what happened to the Scottish national newspapers.
Scotsman - went from middle of the road to hard Unionist DT emulator, and abandoned its central Edinburgh office building for a new one opposite Holyrood which it then abandoned for some industrial estate somewhere I can't remember
Herald - ditto change from middle of the road, lost so much circulation it had to set up the National as a not very SNP-friendly way of trying to recover some of the lost income
Edit: A decade and more later, I'm still bitterly angry about the Scotsman. I grew up on it and miss it enormously.
OMG! I am loving the desperation of the SNP supporters on here this morning spinning against the hard truth of what has been actually happening in Scotland and in other devolved areas of the UK and calling out the failure of the London centric UK news media to report it. But seriously you embarrass yourself by trying to claim that 'Herald - ditto change from middle of the road, lost so much circulation it had to set up the National as a not very SNP-friendly way of trying to recover some of the lost income'!!!
And suggesting that I might not be old enough to remember what happened to the Scottish national newspapers, I am going to be sixty this year and I have been a political anorak since my mid teens, I have also been posting here for twenty years too! Really, you are claiming that the SNP mouth piece that is the National which is the SNP equivalent of Pravda is a not very SNP-friendly newspaper?! Thankfully I was not holding my coffee when I read this, this comic with sales in the very very low four figures totally directed at the SNP Indy movement is meant to be a money maker for the Herald?! Would that be in the same that the second white elephant of a BBC Scotland channel was meant to push Indy too?
Have you not realised that the National was primarily a Green/SSP paper when it was founded?* It's changed a bit sicne then, but that was very noticeable att he time. Circulation in print form is low partly (but only partly) because it tends to be a younger persons' paper given its politics.
The BBC Scotland channel has to be seen in the wider context of Government subsidy for local newspapers through the BBC etc - and almost all of them are owned by anti-indy owners (not many of them).
*Edit: just because something supports independence doesn't mean it is pro-SNP.
Dyed in the wool unionists , especially bitter and twisted Tories are unable to grasp that fact Carnyx. They are still miffed that they are not lording it over us.
The very different perceptions of the newspapers are certainly interesting. I hope it is sunny for you this morning. It's not unpleasantly cool and grey here so I am off out to the postbox.
If we get on the wrong side of China, they might stop selling us tat that we don't need.
What am I missing here?
It’s worse than that.
Their plan is to stop selling us things that we might really need, such as EV batteries, so they can instead sell us their cars by denying European and American manufacturers the batteries - because Europe and America don’t have the technology to produce the new improved batteries the Chinese are now making.
This is why Trump is talking about 100% tariffs on China, and other Western nations face the same dilemma.
There is of course a way forward - develop and manufacture batteries in the west.
MURICA - Batteries are ANTIFA UK - Ah, Yes, Brugh, BRITVOLT, er, right, oh EU - we want to make profit from the engines we already make
Electrification is here and it can't be stopped. What the rage baiters foaming on about EVs don't get is that most people don't care that much about cars. Offer them a new one thats easier to drive cheaper to maintain and more reliable and they'll take it. And they are, with EV sales continuing to rise.
ICE is on its way out, and China will rule the world unless the west wakes up and starts investing serious money.
And a reminder
1) A speech about building batteries isn’t building batteries. 2) A report on building batteries isn’t building batteries. 3) A policy on building batteries isn’t building batteries.
Building fuck off gigantic factories building batteries *is* building batteries.
And solar panels. Of all the stupid things the Reform clowns want to do, switch off renewables is top of the heap. We will end up having to reverse course some years later and be so far behind that we will always then be reliant on other countries.
We have abundant renewable sources, with so much energy flowing that we have to pay the companies to dump it as we can't transmit it and we can't consume it quickly enough. The obvious solution is better transmission - needed anyway as so little money has been spent by the private sector - and battery storage. And not just at big sites - local generation and storage.
But no, the fukers want to shut the whole thing down, import more LNG and then we're fine apparently. Asshats the lot of them, whether they turn up to selection meetings in union jack shorts or not.
Hi Rochdale,
What is the reaction in Aberdeenshire re the large pylon project up your way, are you hearing many opinions either way on the doorstep?
There are "stop the pylons" protestors linking this to Net Zero. But then again they objected to the ones not linked to Net Zero. I get it, pylons are ugly. But they need to go somewhere.
Just to add that it's employing a few of my friends so a big thumbs up from me. One is ex- O&G and doing conversions into electricity transmission.
I am ideologically opposed because I think it reflects our lack of regional pricing - building pylons in Scotland instead of turbines in England.
Ed miliband will be delighted so many new turbines are coming on in Scotland and Scottish waters, makes his job a lot easier. But energy should be built as close to source of use as possible, carting it nearly the full length of the UK is not going to bring energy bills down, the reverse instead
If Britain had regional pricing then there would be a clear price signal for two things to happen. Firstly, industry would have much cheaper energy available if it sited itself in Scotland. Secondly, the relatively higher price for electricity down south would provide the incentive to invest in more interconnect capacity to move the electricity to southern England.
The end result would be more efficient use of the electricity generated by wind in Scotland, and lower prices overall.
But I guess the London newspapers would criticise it as London subsidising electricity prices in Scotland.
If we get on the wrong side of China, they might stop selling us tat that we don't need.
What am I missing here?
It’s worse than that.
Their plan is to stop selling us things that we might really need, such as EV batteries, so they can instead sell us their cars by denying European and American manufacturers the batteries - because Europe and America don’t have the technology to produce the new improved batteries the Chinese are now making.
This is why Trump is talking about 100% tariffs on China, and other Western nations face the same dilemma.
There is of course a way forward - develop and manufacture batteries in the west.
MURICA - Batteries are ANTIFA UK - Ah, Yes, Brugh, BRITVOLT, er, right, oh EU - we want to make profit from the engines we already make
Electrification is here and it can't be stopped. What the rage baiters foaming on about EVs don't get is that most people don't care that much about cars. Offer them a new one thats easier to drive cheaper to maintain and more reliable and they'll take it. And they are, with EV sales continuing to rise.
ICE is on its way out, and China will rule the world unless the west wakes up and starts investing serious money.
And a reminder
1) A speech about building batteries isn’t building batteries. 2) A report on building batteries isn’t building batteries. 3) A policy on building batteries isn’t building batteries.
Building fuck off gigantic factories building batteries *is* building batteries.
And solar panels. Of all the stupid things the Reform clowns want to do, switch off renewables is top of the heap. We will end up having to reverse course some years later and be so far behind that we will always then be reliant on other countries.
We have abundant renewable sources, with so much energy flowing that we have to pay the companies to dump it as we can't transmit it and we can't consume it quickly enough. The obvious solution is better transmission - needed anyway as so little money has been spent by the private sector - and battery storage. And not just at big sites - local generation and storage.
But no, the fukers want to shut the whole thing down, import more LNG and then we're fine apparently. Asshats the lot of them, whether they turn up to selection meetings in union jack shorts or not.
Hi Rochdale,
What is the reaction in Aberdeenshire re the large pylon project up your way, are you hearing many opinions either way on the doorstep?
There are "stop the pylons" protestors linking this to Net Zero. But then again they objected to the ones not linked to Net Zero. I get it, pylons are ugly. But they need to go somewhere.
Just to add that it's employing a few of my friends so a big thumbs up from me. One is ex- O&G and doing conversions into electricity transmission.
I am ideologically opposed because I think it reflects our lack of regional pricing - building pylons in Scotland instead of turbines in England.
Ed miliband will be delighted so many new turbines are coming on in Scotland and Scottish waters, makes his job a lot easier. But energy should be built as close to source of use as possible, carting it nearly the full length of the UK is not going to bring energy bills down, the reverse instead
Well, the energy is up here - you build turbines where it is windy.
Remember that the alternative being offered is "more gas". Which means for what we can still obtain from the North Sea bringing it ashore in the NE and piping it down the country to English power stations. Or for much of it drilling it up in the US or Qatar and shipping it to a terminal in England then piping it to the power station.
I get that, but I think a lot is down to the need to use gas when its not windy - this week hasn't been great, wind is currently only 7.8% of our energy mix.
I do wonder if the extra turbines in the North East are in large part due to the oil industry jobs needing replaced and being seen to need to do something directly in Aberdeenshire. Hence 'GB energy' etc
It does make sense to use existing workforces and infrastructure, as you have in Aberdeenshire from O&G. You'll also find that a lot of offshore wind farms are situated close to where there used to be a nuclear or coal plant, so the existing transmission infrastructure can be re-used.
I'm not suggesting that no wind farms should be built in Scotland, just that the current pricing system is leading to an inefficient geographical allocation at the moment.
If we get on the wrong side of China, they might stop selling us tat that we don't need.
What am I missing here?
It’s worse than that.
Their plan is to stop selling us things that we might really need, such as EV batteries, so they can instead sell us their cars by denying European and American manufacturers the batteries - because Europe and America don’t have the technology to produce the new improved batteries the Chinese are now making.
This is why Trump is talking about 100% tariffs on China, and other Western nations face the same dilemma.
There is of course a way forward - develop and manufacture batteries in the west.
MURICA - Batteries are ANTIFA UK - Ah, Yes, Brugh, BRITVOLT, er, right, oh EU - we want to make profit from the engines we already make
Electrification is here and it can't be stopped. What the rage baiters foaming on about EVs don't get is that most people don't care that much about cars. Offer them a new one thats easier to drive cheaper to maintain and more reliable and they'll take it. And they are, with EV sales continuing to rise.
ICE is on its way out, and China will rule the world unless the west wakes up and starts investing serious money.
And a reminder
1) A speech about building batteries isn’t building batteries. 2) A report on building batteries isn’t building batteries. 3) A policy on building batteries isn’t building batteries.
Building fuck off gigantic factories building batteries *is* building batteries.
And solar panels. Of all the stupid things the Reform clowns want to do, switch off renewables is top of the heap. We will end up having to reverse course some years later and be so far behind that we will always then be reliant on other countries.
We have abundant renewable sources, with so much energy flowing that we have to pay the companies to dump it as we can't transmit it and we can't consume it quickly enough. The obvious solution is better transmission - needed anyway as so little money has been spent by the private sector - and battery storage. And not just at big sites - local generation and storage.
But no, the fukers want to shut the whole thing down, import more LNG and then we're fine apparently. Asshats the lot of them, whether they turn up to selection meetings in union jack shorts or not.
Hi Rochdale,
What is the reaction in Aberdeenshire re the large pylon project up your way, are you hearing many opinions either way on the doorstep?
There are "stop the pylons" protestors linking this to Net Zero. But then again they objected to the ones not linked to Net Zero. I get it, pylons are ugly. But they need to go somewhere.
Just to add that it's employing a few of my friends so a big thumbs up from me. One is ex- O&G and doing conversions into electricity transmission.
I am ideologically opposed because I think it reflects our lack of regional pricing - building pylons in Scotland instead of turbines in England.
Ed miliband will be delighted so many new turbines are coming on in Scotland and Scottish waters, makes his job a lot easier. But energy should be built as close to source of use as possible, carting it nearly the full length of the UK is not going to bring energy bills down, the reverse instead
If Britain had regional pricing then there would be a clear price signal for two things to happen. Firstly, industry would have much cheaper energy available if it sited itself in Scotland. Secondly, the relatively higher price for electricity down south would provide the incentive to invest in more interconnect capacity to move the electricity to southern England.
The end result would be more efficient use of the electricity generated by wind in Scotland, and lower prices overall.
But I guess the London newspapers would criticise it as London subsidising electricity prices in Scotland.
The reason I saw for not having local prices was because London would have to pay more..
Which is ironic given how localised standing charges are...
If we get on the wrong side of China, they might stop selling us tat that we don't need.
What am I missing here?
It’s worse than that.
Their plan is to stop selling us things that we might really need, such as EV batteries, so they can instead sell us their cars by denying European and American manufacturers the batteries - because Europe and America don’t have the technology to produce the new improved batteries the Chinese are now making.
This is why Trump is talking about 100% tariffs on China, and other Western nations face the same dilemma.
There is of course a way forward - develop and manufacture batteries in the west.
MURICA - Batteries are ANTIFA UK - Ah, Yes, Brugh, BRITVOLT, er, right, oh EU - we want to make profit from the engines we already make
Electrification is here and it can't be stopped. What the rage baiters foaming on about EVs don't get is that most people don't care that much about cars. Offer them a new one thats easier to drive cheaper to maintain and more reliable and they'll take it. And they are, with EV sales continuing to rise.
ICE is on its way out, and China will rule the world unless the west wakes up and starts investing serious money.
And a reminder
1) A speech about building batteries isn’t building batteries. 2) A report on building batteries isn’t building batteries. 3) A policy on building batteries isn’t building batteries.
Building fuck off gigantic factories building batteries *is* building batteries.
And solar panels. Of all the stupid things the Reform clowns want to do, switch off renewables is top of the heap. We will end up having to reverse course some years later and be so far behind that we will always then be reliant on other countries.
We have abundant renewable sources, with so much energy flowing that we have to pay the companies to dump it as we can't transmit it and we can't consume it quickly enough. The obvious solution is better transmission - needed anyway as so little money has been spent by the private sector - and battery storage. And not just at big sites - local generation and storage.
But no, the fukers want to shut the whole thing down, import more LNG and then we're fine apparently. Asshats the lot of them, whether they turn up to selection meetings in union jack shorts or not.
Hi Rochdale,
What is the reaction in Aberdeenshire re the large pylon project up your way, are you hearing many opinions either way on the doorstep?
There are "stop the pylons" protestors linking this to Net Zero. But then again they objected to the ones not linked to Net Zero. I get it, pylons are ugly. But they need to go somewhere.
Just to add that it's employing a few of my friends so a big thumbs up from me. One is ex- O&G and doing conversions into electricity transmission.
I am ideologically opposed because I think it reflects our lack of regional pricing - building pylons in Scotland instead of turbines in England.
Ed miliband will be delighted so many new turbines are coming on in Scotland and Scottish waters, makes his job a lot easier. But energy should be built as close to source of use as possible, carting it nearly the full length of the UK is not going to bring energy bills down, the reverse instead
Especially to the Scots. I'm surprised local pricing hasn't been more of an issue politically.
Miliband is not one for listening to communities, if anything he is in thrall to London types who don't want to implement regional pricing.
There's no need for Scotland to overproduce energy when the same companies are being paid to turn off turbines when they produce too much. That money is not going back to communities, it's heading offshore to the site owners. The UK state should be building the entire energy network itself, they can bid for tenders
I am surprised the SNP are not making more hay out of the pricing issue, maybe we will hear more in spring 2026
The whole issue also rather takes the wind out of the sails (arf) of the latest wizard wheeze by SLab, namely that the SNP are a bunch of Luddite cave dwellers by not being keen on new nuclear for Scotland. Why the hell would a more or less energy self-sufficient country invest in expensive to build & expensive to decommission plants that would take decades to come on line (& would no doubt be added to Scotland’s ‘notional’ deficit)?
Just away to check how many nuclear plants Norway has.
Funny how Reform voters are so interested in the rather opaque China spying trial collapse, yet completely uninterested in the conviction of a key friend and colleague of Farage for taking bribes to further the interests of Russia.
I wonder why.
Perhaps because he has been brought to justice, tried and found guilty, whereas spying for China against our MPs has been de facto legalised by this sordid affair.
And in any case, he left Reform, four and a half years ago.
If we get on the wrong side of China, they might stop selling us tat that we don't need.
What am I missing here?
It’s worse than that.
Their plan is to stop selling us things that we might really need, such as EV batteries, so they can instead sell us their cars by denying European and American manufacturers the batteries - because Europe and America don’t have the technology to produce the new improved batteries the Chinese are now making.
This is why Trump is talking about 100% tariffs on China, and other Western nations face the same dilemma.
There is of course a way forward - develop and manufacture batteries in the west.
MURICA - Batteries are ANTIFA UK - Ah, Yes, Brugh, BRITVOLT, er, right, oh EU - we want to make profit from the engines we already make
Electrification is here and it can't be stopped. What the rage baiters foaming on about EVs don't get is that most people don't care that much about cars. Offer them a new one thats easier to drive cheaper to maintain and more reliable and they'll take it. And they are, with EV sales continuing to rise.
ICE is on its way out, and China will rule the world unless the west wakes up and starts investing serious money.
And a reminder
1) A speech about building batteries isn’t building batteries. 2) A report on building batteries isn’t building batteries. 3) A policy on building batteries isn’t building batteries.
Building fuck off gigantic factories building batteries *is* building batteries.
And solar panels. Of all the stupid things the Reform clowns want to do, switch off renewables is top of the heap. We will end up having to reverse course some years later and be so far behind that we will always then be reliant on other countries.
We have abundant renewable sources, with so much energy flowing that we have to pay the companies to dump it as we can't transmit it and we can't consume it quickly enough. The obvious solution is better transmission - needed anyway as so little money has been spent by the private sector - and battery storage. And not just at big sites - local generation and storage.
But no, the fukers want to shut the whole thing down, import more LNG and then we're fine apparently. Asshats the lot of them, whether they turn up to selection meetings in union jack shorts or not.
Hi Rochdale,
What is the reaction in Aberdeenshire re the large pylon project up your way, are you hearing many opinions either way on the doorstep?
There are "stop the pylons" protestors linking this to Net Zero. But then again they objected to the ones not linked to Net Zero. I get it, pylons are ugly. But they need to go somewhere.
Just to add that it's employing a few of my friends so a big thumbs up from me. One is ex- O&G and doing conversions into electricity transmission.
I am ideologically opposed because I think it reflects our lack of regional pricing - building pylons in Scotland instead of turbines in England.
Ed miliband will be delighted so many new turbines are coming on in Scotland and Scottish waters, makes his job a lot easier. But energy should be built as close to source of use as possible, carting it nearly the full length of the UK is not going to bring energy bills down, the reverse instead
Well, the energy is up here - you build turbines where it is windy.
Remember that the alternative being offered is "more gas". Which means for what we can still obtain from the North Sea bringing it ashore in the NE and piping it down the country to English power stations. Or for much of it drilling it up in the US or Qatar and shipping it to a terminal in England then piping it to the power station.
I get that, but I think a lot is down to the need to use gas when its not windy - this week hasn't been great, wind is currently only 7.8% of our energy mix.
I do wonder if the extra turbines in the North East are in large part due to the oil industry jobs needing replaced and being seen to need to do something directly in Aberdeenshire. Hence 'GB energy' etc
It does make sense to use existing workforces and infrastructure, as you have in Aberdeenshire from O&G. You'll also find that a lot of offshore wind farms are situated close to where there used to be a nuclear or coal plant, so the existing transmission infrastructure can be re-used.
I'm not suggesting that no wind farms should be built in Scotland, just that the current pricing system is leading to an inefficient geographical allocation at the moment.
Also note the siting of one of the crossborder marine connectors - it leaves the coast at Torness AGCR, presumably not so much as to export nuke power but because it uses preexisting pylon chains in part.
Looking at the GDP numbers, I do see that output has grown by 3%, since December 2023, which if not stellar, is a move in the right direction. It's certainly well ahead of population growth, over that period.
If we get on the wrong side of China, they might stop selling us tat that we don't need.
What am I missing here?
It’s worse than that.
Their plan is to stop selling us things that we might really need, such as EV batteries, so they can instead sell us their cars by denying European and American manufacturers the batteries - because Europe and America don’t have the technology to produce the new improved batteries the Chinese are now making.
This is why Trump is talking about 100% tariffs on China, and other Western nations face the same dilemma.
There is of course a way forward - develop and manufacture batteries in the west.
MURICA - Batteries are ANTIFA UK - Ah, Yes, Brugh, BRITVOLT, er, right, oh EU - we want to make profit from the engines we already make
Electrification is here and it can't be stopped. What the rage baiters foaming on about EVs don't get is that most people don't care that much about cars. Offer them a new one thats easier to drive cheaper to maintain and more reliable and they'll take it. And they are, with EV sales continuing to rise.
ICE is on its way out, and China will rule the world unless the west wakes up and starts investing serious money.
And a reminder
1) A speech about building batteries isn’t building batteries. 2) A report on building batteries isn’t building batteries. 3) A policy on building batteries isn’t building batteries.
Building fuck off gigantic factories building batteries *is* building batteries.
And solar panels. Of all the stupid things the Reform clowns want to do, switch off renewables is top of the heap. We will end up having to reverse course some years later and be so far behind that we will always then be reliant on other countries.
We have abundant renewable sources, with so much energy flowing that we have to pay the companies to dump it as we can't transmit it and we can't consume it quickly enough. The obvious solution is better transmission - needed anyway as so little money has been spent by the private sector - and battery storage. And not just at big sites - local generation and storage.
But no, the fukers want to shut the whole thing down, import more LNG and then we're fine apparently. Asshats the lot of them, whether they turn up to selection meetings in union jack shorts or not.
Hi Rochdale,
What is the reaction in Aberdeenshire re the large pylon project up your way, are you hearing many opinions either way on the doorstep?
There are "stop the pylons" protestors linking this to Net Zero. But then again they objected to the ones not linked to Net Zero. I get it, pylons are ugly. But they need to go somewhere.
Just to add that it's employing a few of my friends so a big thumbs up from me. One is ex- O&G and doing conversions into electricity transmission.
I am ideologically opposed because I think it reflects our lack of regional pricing - building pylons in Scotland instead of turbines in England.
Ed miliband will be delighted so many new turbines are coming on in Scotland and Scottish waters, makes his job a lot easier. But energy should be built as close to source of use as possible, carting it nearly the full length of the UK is not going to bring energy bills down, the reverse instead
Especially to the Scots. I'm surprised local pricing hasn't been more of an issue politically.
Miliband is not one for listening to communities, if anything he is in thrall to London types who don't want to implement regional pricing.
There's no need for Scotland to overproduce energy when the same companies are being paid to turn off turbines when they produce too much. That money is not going back to communities, it's heading offshore to the site owners. The UK state should be building the entire energy network itself, they can bid for tenders
I am surprised the SNP are not making more hay out of the pricing issue, maybe we will hear more in spring 2026
The whole issue also rather takes the wind out of the sails (arf) of the latest wizard wheeze by SLab, namely that the SNP are a bunch of Luddite cave dwellers by not being keen on new nuclear for Scotland. Why the hell would a more or less energy self-sufficient country invest in expensive to build & expensive to decommission plants that would take decades to come on line (& would no doubt be added to Scotland’s ‘notional’ deficit)?
Just away to check how many nuclear plants Norway has.
Great argument until you hit google and discover that there are plans to build a couple there (albeit SMRs)
If we get on the wrong side of China, they might stop selling us tat that we don't need.
What am I missing here?
It’s worse than that.
Their plan is to stop selling us things that we might really need, such as EV batteries, so they can instead sell us their cars by denying European and American manufacturers the batteries - because Europe and America don’t have the technology to produce the new improved batteries the Chinese are now making.
This is why Trump is talking about 100% tariffs on China, and other Western nations face the same dilemma.
We mustn't be dependent on them for anything important.
Since we already do, what do you suggest in the interim ?
Two thirds of the world was already unreliable pre Trump, now it is closer to 90%. Sure we should mitigate our reliance on China, but it is more absurd to pretend we can live fully independently of countries we don't like or trust.
It's one thing to do business with one of a number of countries that we don't like or trust where, if the relationship deteriorates we can switch that trade to a different country with questionable morals, but it's quite another where that country is as big and powerful as China where there is no alternative for many market sectors.
The US is unreliable on tariffs, we can't plan trade there either.
At the end of the day fudge with all these relationships is the only answer. Blaming our politicians for accepting reality is not something we should be doing.
It is, of course, another reason to think about reconsidering our relationship with Europe.
It would be a shame to watch Ukraine join the EU before us.
Even with Europe everyone is in the potentially unreliable category now including us. Chances are at least one of Le Pen, Farage or the AfD will rule within a decade.
I don't think it is unreasonable to suggest that China is less reliable, and more of a threat, than a US run by Trump, or a France run by Le Pen.
I don't think it's useful to simply say - "they're all foreign!" - and throw up your hands at the impossibility of discriminating between them at all.
Absolutely this. I saw someone yesterday suggest we need to be cosying up to China in the light of Trump running America. This seems, at present, insane.
Cosying up is wrong. But so is closing ourselves off.
The US has passed legislation allowing the government to impose a 50% additional tax on overseas holders of US shares. That is us and our pensions. No-one here discusses or notices these things, as we wrongly assume the US is still the same reliable US we have grown up with, it is not.
A couple of US firms who send me royalties have recently asked for W8-BENEs to avoid witholding taxes when before they required only a simple tickbox declaration. Not sure if this is related. No sign of my actually losing money though. Yet.
The price of Florida Condos, already falling since 2022 is now headed towards free fall. The US private credit market, now a multiple of the banking system and which was already showing signs of weakness is now showing signs of seizing up. The AI bubble is more evident every day- the $45 billion that Alphabet put in, was basically blown away by DeepSeek- and every day new articles reveal massive misinvestment. Meanwhile the rule of law is trashed every day by a criminal and incompetent administration that regards even basic truth as a matter of negotiation. Arbitrary tariffs are imposed hourly, while public policy is in the hands of a corrupt cabal of criminals. The courts are intimidated and there is ever less clarity about the future direction in Washington. The USD is growing weaker, inflation expectations getting worse, and the crack down on foreigners is creating a brain drain. Trump's infantile foreign policy will most likely blow up in his face- the middle east remains a pit of despair and is not going to change because DJT wants to build a resort of vulgarity on the ruins of Gaza. .
Britain has no eternal friends, no eternal enemies, only eternal interests. Our interests are not served by kow-towing either to Washington or Beijing. However, we need to be polite to both and recognise that for as long as Putin is in the Kremlin there is an immediate threat of Russia launching a military attack against the UK, and has been waging a hybrid war against us and our allies by all means short of miltary- including murder, corruption and subversion. Our laser focus must be to combat that threat. However we must not forget that the US and China are good partners, but not necessarily good friends.
If we get on the wrong side of China, they might stop selling us tat that we don't need.
What am I missing here?
It’s worse than that.
Their plan is to stop selling us things that we might really need, such as EV batteries, so they can instead sell us their cars by denying European and American manufacturers the batteries - because Europe and America don’t have the technology to produce the new improved batteries the Chinese are now making.
This is why Trump is talking about 100% tariffs on China, and other Western nations face the same dilemma.
There is of course a way forward - develop and manufacture batteries in the west.
MURICA - Batteries are ANTIFA UK - Ah, Yes, Brugh, BRITVOLT, er, right, oh EU - we want to make profit from the engines we already make
Electrification is here and it can't be stopped. What the rage baiters foaming on about EVs don't get is that most people don't care that much about cars. Offer them a new one thats easier to drive cheaper to maintain and more reliable and they'll take it. And they are, with EV sales continuing to rise.
ICE is on its way out, and China will rule the world unless the west wakes up and starts investing serious money.
And a reminder
1) A speech about building batteries isn’t building batteries. 2) A report on building batteries isn’t building batteries. 3) A policy on building batteries isn’t building batteries.
Building fuck off gigantic factories building batteries *is* building batteries.
And solar panels. Of all the stupid things the Reform clowns want to do, switch off renewables is top of the heap. We will end up having to reverse course some years later and be so far behind that we will always then be reliant on other countries.
We have abundant renewable sources, with so much energy flowing that we have to pay the companies to dump it as we can't transmit it and we can't consume it quickly enough. The obvious solution is better transmission - needed anyway as so little money has been spent by the private sector - and battery storage. And not just at big sites - local generation and storage.
But no, the fukers want to shut the whole thing down, import more LNG and then we're fine apparently. Asshats the lot of them, whether they turn up to selection meetings in union jack shorts or not.
Hi Rochdale,
What is the reaction in Aberdeenshire re the large pylon project up your way, are you hearing many opinions either way on the doorstep?
There are "stop the pylons" protestors linking this to Net Zero. But then again they objected to the ones not linked to Net Zero. I get it, pylons are ugly. But they need to go somewhere.
Just to add that it's employing a few of my friends so a big thumbs up from me. One is ex- O&G and doing conversions into electricity transmission.
I am ideologically opposed because I think it reflects our lack of regional pricing - building pylons in Scotland instead of turbines in England.
Ed miliband will be delighted so many new turbines are coming on in Scotland and Scottish waters, makes his job a lot easier. But energy should be built as close to source of use as possible, carting it nearly the full length of the UK is not going to bring energy bills down, the reverse instead
Especially to the Scots. I'm surprised local pricing hasn't been more of an issue politically.
Miliband is not one for listening to communities, if anything he is in thrall to London types who don't want to implement regional pricing.
There's no need for Scotland to overproduce energy when the same companies are being paid to turn off turbines when they produce too much. That money is not going back to communities, it's heading offshore to the site owners. The UK state should be building the entire energy network itself, they can bid for tenders
I am surprised the SNP are not making more hay out of the pricing issue, maybe we will hear more in spring 2026
The whole issue also rather takes the wind out of the sails (arf) of the latest wizard wheeze by SLab, namely that the SNP are a bunch of Luddite cave dwellers by not being keen on new nuclear for Scotland. Why the hell would a more or less energy self-sufficient country invest in expensive to build & expensive to decommission plants that would take decades to come on line (& would no doubt be added to Scotland’s ‘notional’ deficit)?
Just away to check how many nuclear plants Norway has.
Great argument until you hit google and discover that there are plans to build a couple there (albeit SMRs)
So that’s zero at the moment.
I guess with a £2tr sovereign wealth fund a couple of SMRs will be fuck around money for Norway.
"Bernard Jenkin (Con) said it was “beyond belief” that nobody was able to tell the deputy national security adviser that he needed to give the CPS the evidence it needed." I, possibly erroneously, have a generally positive impression of Bernard Jenkin but suggesting that the witness should have been told what to put in their statement doesn't seem to be "beyond belief" in a democratic country with a properly functioning legal system. What would be wrong is a witness being instructed on what to say in their statement.
The CPS say they dropped the case because another case earlier this year established that for it to have a good chance of conviction the prosecution needed to point to the government having labelled China a national security risk at the time the alleged offences were committed. Assuming that is true, and since you can't rewrite history, this relates to the previous government and I don't see how anything said by this one could be relevant. Eg, "the previous government did not describe China as a national security risk but this one does, so we'll go for it" - this won't wash because it's the situation at the time of the offences that counts.
If we get on the wrong side of China, they might stop selling us tat that we don't need.
What am I missing here?
It’s worse than that.
Their plan is to stop selling us things that we might really need, such as EV batteries, so they can instead sell us their cars by denying European and American manufacturers the batteries - because Europe and America don’t have the technology to produce the new improved batteries the Chinese are now making.
This is why Trump is talking about 100% tariffs on China, and other Western nations face the same dilemma.
We mustn't be dependent on them for anything important.
Since we already do, what do you suggest in the interim ?
Two thirds of the world was already unreliable pre Trump, now it is closer to 90%. Sure we should mitigate our reliance on China, but it is more absurd to pretend we can live fully independently of countries we don't like or trust.
It's one thing to do business with one of a number of countries that we don't like or trust where, if the relationship deteriorates we can switch that trade to a different country with questionable morals, but it's quite another where that country is as big and powerful as China where there is no alternative for many market sectors.
The US is unreliable on tariffs, we can't plan trade there either.
At the end of the day fudge with all these relationships is the only answer. Blaming our politicians for accepting reality is not something we should be doing.
It is, of course, another reason to think about reconsidering our relationship with Europe.
It would be a shame to watch Ukraine join the EU before us.
Even with Europe everyone is in the potentially unreliable category now including us. Chances are at least one of Le Pen, Farage or the AfD will rule within a decade.
I don't think it is unreasonable to suggest that China is less reliable, and more of a threat, than a US run by Trump, or a France run by Le Pen.
I don't think it's useful to simply say - "they're all foreign!" - and throw up your hands at the impossibility of discriminating between them at all.
Absolutely this. I saw someone yesterday suggest we need to be cosying up to China in the light of Trump running America. This seems, at present, insane.
Cosying up is wrong. But so is closing ourselves off.
The US has passed legislation allowing the government to impose a 50% additional tax on overseas holders of US shares. That is us and our pensions. No-one here discusses or notices these things, as we wrongly assume the US is still the same reliable US we have grown up with, it is not.
If we get on the wrong side of China, they might stop selling us tat that we don't need.
What am I missing here?
It’s worse than that.
Their plan is to stop selling us things that we might really need, such as EV batteries, so they can instead sell us their cars by denying European and American manufacturers the batteries - because Europe and America don’t have the technology to produce the new improved batteries the Chinese are now making.
This is why Trump is talking about 100% tariffs on China, and other Western nations face the same dilemma.
There is of course a way forward - develop and manufacture batteries in the west.
MURICA - Batteries are ANTIFA UK - Ah, Yes, Brugh, BRITVOLT, er, right, oh EU - we want to make profit from the engines we already make
Electrification is here and it can't be stopped. What the rage baiters foaming on about EVs don't get is that most people don't care that much about cars. Offer them a new one thats easier to drive cheaper to maintain and more reliable and they'll take it. And they are, with EV sales continuing to rise.
ICE is on its way out, and China will rule the world unless the west wakes up and starts investing serious money.
And a reminder
1) A speech about building batteries isn’t building batteries. 2) A report on building batteries isn’t building batteries. 3) A policy on building batteries isn’t building batteries.
Building fuck off gigantic factories building batteries *is* building batteries.
And solar panels. Of all the stupid things the Reform clowns want to do, switch off renewables is top of the heap. We will end up having to reverse course some years later and be so far behind that we will always then be reliant on other countries.
We have abundant renewable sources, with so much energy flowing that we have to pay the companies to dump it as we can't transmit it and we can't consume it quickly enough. The obvious solution is better transmission - needed anyway as so little money has been spent by the private sector - and battery storage. And not just at big sites - local generation and storage.
But no, the fukers want to shut the whole thing down, import more LNG and then we're fine apparently. Asshats the lot of them, whether they turn up to selection meetings in union jack shorts or not.
Hi Rochdale,
What is the reaction in Aberdeenshire re the large pylon project up your way, are you hearing many opinions either way on the doorstep?
There are "stop the pylons" protestors linking this to Net Zero. But then again they objected to the ones not linked to Net Zero. I get it, pylons are ugly. But they need to go somewhere.
Just to add that it's employing a few of my friends so a big thumbs up from me. One is ex- O&G and doing conversions into electricity transmission.
I am ideologically opposed because I think it reflects our lack of regional pricing - building pylons in Scotland instead of turbines in England.
Ed miliband will be delighted so many new turbines are coming on in Scotland and Scottish waters, makes his job a lot easier. But energy should be built as close to source of use as possible, carting it nearly the full length of the UK is not going to bring energy bills down, the reverse instead
If Britain had regional pricing then there would be a clear price signal for two things to happen. Firstly, industry would have much cheaper energy available if it sited itself in Scotland. Secondly, the relatively higher price for electricity down south would provide the incentive to invest in more interconnect capacity to move the electricity to southern England.
The end result would be more efficient use of the electricity generated by wind in Scotland, and lower prices overall.
But I guess the London newspapers would criticise it as London subsidising electricity prices in Scotland.
The reason I saw for not having local prices was because London would have to pay more..
Which is ironic given how localised standing charges are...
It's bizarre, in wider context. Imagine if the early railways had to charge everyone the same fare from, say, Euston to Watford as to Birmingham, or coal had to be transported anything from 4 to 400 miles for exactly the same freight charge. (Edit: The capital costs were important, which may make railways a better comparison.)
In reality, of course, industry was where the energy was (and the raw materials) - Wealden iron, Severnside ironmasters, the Forth saltmakers using the unsaleable slack coal from the local pits.
The only other operation I can think of which is based on the Miliband pricing model (OK he didn't invent it but he's certainly due thje credit for it now) is RM and look what it's trying to get out of doing.
"Bernard Jenkin (Con) said it was “beyond belief” that nobody was able to tell the deputy national security adviser that he needed to give the CPS the evidence it needed." I, possibly erroneously, have a generally positive impression of Bernard Jenkin but suggesting that the witness should have been told what to put in their statement doesn't seem to be "beyond belief" in a democratic country with a properly functioning legal system. What would be wrong is a witness being instructed on what to say in their statement.
The CPS say they dropped the case because another case earlier this year established that for it to have a good chance of conviction the prosecution needed to point to the government having labelled China a national security risk at the time the alleged offences were committed. Assuming that is true, and since you can't rewrite history, this relates to the previous government and I don't see how anything said by this one could be relevant. Eg, "the previous government did not describe China as a national security risk this one does, so we'll go for it" - this won't wash because it's the situation at the time of the offences that counts.
But it is all on record - on Wikipedia no less - that the previous government regarded China as a threat. The CPS could simply have read the relevant passages from the Integrated Review Refresh 2023 and the Integrated Review (2021).
I can't help but feel that there's something else going on, and the explanations being provided are a smokescreen.
If we get on the wrong side of China, they might stop selling us tat that we don't need.
What am I missing here?
It’s worse than that.
Their plan is to stop selling us things that we might really need, such as EV batteries, so they can instead sell us their cars by denying European and American manufacturers the batteries - because Europe and America don’t have the technology to produce the new improved batteries the Chinese are now making.
This is why Trump is talking about 100% tariffs on China, and other Western nations face the same dilemma.
There is of course a way forward - develop and manufacture batteries in the west.
MURICA - Batteries are ANTIFA UK - Ah, Yes, Brugh, BRITVOLT, er, right, oh EU - we want to make profit from the engines we already make
Electrification is here and it can't be stopped. What the rage baiters foaming on about EVs don't get is that most people don't care that much about cars. Offer them a new one thats easier to drive cheaper to maintain and more reliable and they'll take it. And they are, with EV sales continuing to rise.
ICE is on its way out, and China will rule the world unless the west wakes up and starts investing serious money.
And a reminder
1) A speech about building batteries isn’t building batteries. 2) A report on building batteries isn’t building batteries. 3) A policy on building batteries isn’t building batteries.
Building fuck off gigantic factories building batteries *is* building batteries.
And solar panels. Of all the stupid things the Reform clowns want to do, switch off renewables is top of the heap. We will end up having to reverse course some years later and be so far behind that we will always then be reliant on other countries.
We have abundant renewable sources, with so much energy flowing that we have to pay the companies to dump it as we can't transmit it and we can't consume it quickly enough. The obvious solution is better transmission - needed anyway as so little money has been spent by the private sector - and battery storage. And not just at big sites - local generation and storage.
But no, the fukers want to shut the whole thing down, import more LNG and then we're fine apparently. Asshats the lot of them, whether they turn up to selection meetings in union jack shorts or not.
Hi Rochdale,
What is the reaction in Aberdeenshire re the large pylon project up your way, are you hearing many opinions either way on the doorstep?
There are "stop the pylons" protestors linking this to Net Zero. But then again they objected to the ones not linked to Net Zero. I get it, pylons are ugly. But they need to go somewhere.
Just to add that it's employing a few of my friends so a big thumbs up from me. One is ex- O&G and doing conversions into electricity transmission.
I am ideologically opposed because I think it reflects our lack of regional pricing - building pylons in Scotland instead of turbines in England.
Ed miliband will be delighted so many new turbines are coming on in Scotland and Scottish waters, makes his job a lot easier. But energy should be built as close to source of use as possible, carting it nearly the full length of the UK is not going to bring energy bills down, the reverse instead
If Britain had regional pricing then there would be a clear price signal for two things to happen. Firstly, industry would have much cheaper energy available if it sited itself in Scotland. Secondly, the relatively higher price for electricity down south would provide the incentive to invest in more interconnect capacity to move the electricity to southern England.
The end result would be more efficient use of the electricity generated by wind in Scotland, and lower prices overall.
But I guess the London newspapers would criticise it as London subsidising electricity prices in Scotland.
It's another mark of just how crap Milliband is that he's set his face against regional pricing.
Worst type of socialist, who thinks his (dubious) personal principles are more useful than the market, as a guide to policy.
"Bernard Jenkin (Con) said it was “beyond belief” that nobody was able to tell the deputy national security adviser that he needed to give the CPS the evidence it needed." I, possibly erroneously, have a generally positive impression of Bernard Jenkin but suggesting that the witness should have been told what to put in their statement doesn't seem to be "beyond belief" in a democratic country with a properly functioning legal system. What would be wrong is a witness being instructed on what to say in their statement.
The CPS say they dropped the case because another case earlier this year established that for it to have a good chance of conviction the prosecution needed to point to the government having labelled China a national security risk at the time the alleged offences were committed. Assuming that is true, and since you can't rewrite history, this relates to the previous government and I don't see how anything said by this one could be relevant. Eg, "the previous government did not describe China as a national security risk but this one does, so we'll go for it" - this won't wash because it's the situation at the time of the offences that counts.
That's the question I keep asking. All the reporting keeps saying "but it's complicated", which isn't any help.
Funny how Reform voters are so interested in the rather opaque China spying trial collapse, yet completely uninterested in the conviction of a key friend and colleague of Farage for taking bribes to further the interests of Russia.
I wonder why.
Perhaps because he has been brought to justice, tried and found guilty, whereas spying for China against our MPs has been de facto legalised by this sordid affair.
And in any case, he left Reform, four and a half years ago.
He was made Reform leader in Wales. That is important. He is seen in photographs with Farage as a key guy in Ukip and the Brexit Party. There is both a question mark over Farage's judgement and his previous warm words for Putin, and of course the two questions coincide.
"Bernard Jenkin (Con) said it was “beyond belief” that nobody was able to tell the deputy national security adviser that he needed to give the CPS the evidence it needed." I, possibly erroneously, have a generally positive impression of Bernard Jenkin but suggesting that the witness should have been told what to put in their statement doesn't seem to be "beyond belief" in a democratic country with a properly functioning legal system. What would be wrong is a witness being instructed on what to say in their statement.
The CPS say they dropped the case because another case earlier this year established that for it to have a good chance of conviction the prosecution needed to point to the government having labelled China a national security risk at the time the alleged offences were committed. Assuming that is true, and since you can't rewrite history, this relates to the previous government and I don't see how anything said by this one could be relevant. Eg, "the previous government did not describe China as a national security risk this one does, so we'll go for it" - this won't wash because it's the situation at the time of the offences that counts.
But it is all on record - on Wikipedia no less - that the previous government regarded China as a threat. The CPS could simply have read the relevant passages from the Integrated Review Refresh 2023 and the Integrated Review (2021).
I can't help but feel that there's something else going on, and the explanations being provided are a smokescreen.
It seems like that. There must be high stakes at play.
Crikey, Survation have found there's a 37% Lab to Reform swing in Caerphilly
Headline Voting Intention (likely voters vs 2021 Senedd elections)
Base: All those likely to vote with undecided squeezed and those still undecided and refused removed If the by-election were held today:
Llŷr Tomos Powell – Reform UK: 42% (+40)
Lindsay Whittle – Plaid Cymru: 38% (+10)
Richard Tunnicliffe – Labour: 12% (-34)
Gareth John Potter – Conservative: 4% (-14)
Steve Aicheler – Liberal Democrat: 1% (-1)
Gareth Hughes – Green Party: 3% (+3)
Excellent for Plaid, east Glamorganshire is quite a way from their normal hunting grounds I think. Looks disastrous for Labour, if that's repeated across the valleys.
Point of order. Caerphilly is now considered as part of Gwent. They have also won the neighbouring Islwyn seat previously, so not that unknown for them.
I prefer historic counties, the ones where Middlesborough is in the right place.
Middlesbrough !
It is historic? Not even two centuries old. (Seriously, an interesting place ...)
"Bernard Jenkin (Con) said it was “beyond belief” that nobody was able to tell the deputy national security adviser that he needed to give the CPS the evidence it needed." I, possibly erroneously, have a generally positive impression of Bernard Jenkin but suggesting that the witness should have been told what to put in their statement doesn't seem to be "beyond belief" in a democratic country with a properly functioning legal system. What would be wrong is a witness being instructed on what to say in their statement.
AOC: I don't care if someone likes me or not. That will never change the fact that I'm going to fight for them to have health care. I want MAGA to have health care. I want MAGA to be paid a living wage.
But he doesn't want people based on their political affiliation to benefit. And that is the difference between an authoritarian and a leader of a democracy. https://x.com/Acyn/status/1978648540680503595
If we get on the wrong side of China, they might stop selling us tat that we don't need.
What am I missing here?
It’s worse than that.
Their plan is to stop selling us things that we might really need, such as EV batteries, so they can instead sell us their cars by denying European and American manufacturers the batteries - because Europe and America don’t have the technology to produce the new improved batteries the Chinese are now making.
This is why Trump is talking about 100% tariffs on China, and other Western nations face the same dilemma.
We mustn't be dependent on them for anything important.
Since we already do, what do you suggest in the interim ?
Two thirds of the world was already unreliable pre Trump, now it is closer to 90%. Sure we should mitigate our reliance on China, but it is more absurd to pretend we can live fully independently of countries we don't like or trust.
It's one thing to do business with one of a number of countries that we don't like or trust where, if the relationship deteriorates we can switch that trade to a different country with questionable morals, but it's quite another where that country is as big and powerful as China where there is no alternative for many market sectors.
The US is unreliable on tariffs, we can't plan trade there either.
At the end of the day fudge with all these relationships is the only answer. Blaming our politicians for accepting reality is not something we should be doing.
It is, of course, another reason to think about reconsidering our relationship with Europe.
It would be a shame to watch Ukraine join the EU before us.
Even with Europe everyone is in the potentially unreliable category now including us. Chances are at least one of Le Pen, Farage or the AfD will rule within a decade.
I don't think it is unreasonable to suggest that China is less reliable, and more of a threat, than a US run by Trump, or a France run by Le Pen.
I don't think it's useful to simply say - "they're all foreign!" - and throw up your hands at the impossibility of discriminating between them at all.
Absolutely this. I saw someone yesterday suggest we need to be cosying up to China in the light of Trump running America. This seems, at present, insane.
Cosying up is wrong. But so is closing ourselves off.
The US has passed legislation allowing the government to impose a 50% additional tax on overseas holders of US shares. That is us and our pensions. No-one here discusses or notices these things, as we wrongly assume the US is still the same reliable US we have grown up with, it is not.
"Bernard Jenkin (Con) said it was “beyond belief” that nobody was able to tell the deputy national security adviser that he needed to give the CPS the evidence it needed." I, possibly erroneously, have a generally positive impression of Bernard Jenkin but suggesting that the witness should have been told what to put in their statement doesn't seem to be "beyond belief" in a democratic country with a properly functioning legal system. What would be wrong is a witness being instructed on what to say in their statement.
The CPS say they dropped the case because another case earlier this year established that for it to have a good chance of conviction the prosecution needed to point to the government having labelled China a national security risk at the time the alleged offences were committed. Assuming that is true, and since you can't rewrite history, this relates to the previous government and I don't see how anything said by this one could be relevant. Eg, "the previous government did not describe China as a national security risk this one does, so we'll go for it" - this won't wash because it's the situation at the time of the offences that counts.
But it is all on record - on Wikipedia no less - that the previous government regarded China as a threat. The CPS could simply have read the relevant passages from the Integrated Review Refresh 2023 and the Integrated Review (2021).
I can't help but feel that there's something else going on, and the explanations being provided are a smokescreen.
About the only person I have seen worth following on this is David Allen Green, who, IMO brings us up to date as far as can be done today:
The only thing I would add is that in guessing what lies behind it all, Ockham's razor + common sense + cockup + our dependence on China + the need to complexify and spread possible blame fairly thinly between anyone who matters, supplies the necessary material.
"Bernard Jenkin (Con) said it was “beyond belief” that nobody was able to tell the deputy national security adviser that he needed to give the CPS the evidence it needed." I, possibly erroneously, have a generally positive impression of Bernard Jenkin but suggesting that the witness should have been told what to put in their statement doesn't seem to be "beyond belief" in a democratic country with a properly functioning legal system. What would be wrong is a witness being instructed on what to say in their statement.
The CPS say they dropped the case because another case earlier this year established that for it to have a good chance of conviction the prosecution needed to point to the government having labelled China a national security risk at the time the alleged offences were committed. Assuming that is true, and since you can't rewrite history, this relates to the previous government and I don't see how anything said by this one could be relevant. Eg, "the previous government did not describe China as a national security risk this one does, so we'll go for it" - this won't wash because it's the situation at the time of the offences that counts.
But it is all on record - on Wikipedia no less - that the previous government regarded China as a threat. The CPS could simply have read the relevant passages from the Integrated Review Refresh 2023 and the Integrated Review (2021).
I can't help but feel that there's something else going on, and the explanations being provided are a smokescreen.
About the only person I have seen worth following on this is David Allen Green, who, IMO brings us up to date as far as can be done today:
The only thing I would add is that in guessing what lies behind it all, Ockham's razor + common sense + cockup + our dependence on China + the need to complexify and spread possible blame fairly thinly between anyone who matters, supplies the necessary material.
I posted this earlier. It is a very important read for Kemi and the PB Tories. I doubt either will do so.
If we get on the wrong side of China, they might stop selling us tat that we don't need.
What am I missing here?
It’s worse than that.
Their plan is to stop selling us things that we might really need, such as EV batteries, so they can instead sell us their cars by denying European and American manufacturers the batteries - because Europe and America don’t have the technology to produce the new improved batteries the Chinese are now making.
This is why Trump is talking about 100% tariffs on China, and other Western nations face the same dilemma.
We mustn't be dependent on them for anything important.
Since we already do, what do you suggest in the interim ?
Two thirds of the world was already unreliable pre Trump, now it is closer to 90%. Sure we should mitigate our reliance on China, but it is more absurd to pretend we can live fully independently of countries we don't like or trust.
It's one thing to do business with one of a number of countries that we don't like or trust where, if the relationship deteriorates we can switch that trade to a different country with questionable morals, but it's quite another where that country is as big and powerful as China where there is no alternative for many market sectors.
The US is unreliable on tariffs, we can't plan trade there either.
At the end of the day fudge with all these relationships is the only answer. Blaming our politicians for accepting reality is not something we should be doing.
It is, of course, another reason to think about reconsidering our relationship with Europe.
It would be a shame to watch Ukraine join the EU before us.
Even with Europe everyone is in the potentially unreliable category now including us. Chances are at least one of Le Pen, Farage or the AfD will rule within a decade.
I don't think it is unreasonable to suggest that China is less reliable, and more of a threat, than a US run by Trump, or a France run by Le Pen.
I don't think it's useful to simply say - "they're all foreign!" - and throw up your hands at the impossibility of discriminating between them at all.
Absolutely this. I saw someone yesterday suggest we need to be cosying up to China in the light of Trump running America. This seems, at present, insane.
Cosying up is wrong. But so is closing ourselves off.
The US has passed legislation allowing the government to impose a 50% additional tax on overseas holders of US shares. That is us and our pensions. No-one here discusses or notices these things, as we wrongly assume the US is still the same reliable US we have grown up with, it is not.
If we get on the wrong side of China, they might stop selling us tat that we don't need.
What am I missing here?
It’s worse than that.
Their plan is to stop selling us things that we might really need, such as EV batteries, so they can instead sell us their cars by denying European and American manufacturers the batteries - because Europe and America don’t have the technology to produce the new improved batteries the Chinese are now making.
This is why Trump is talking about 100% tariffs on China, and other Western nations face the same dilemma.
There is of course a way forward - develop and manufacture batteries in the west.
MURICA - Batteries are ANTIFA UK - Ah, Yes, Brugh, BRITVOLT, er, right, oh EU - we want to make profit from the engines we already make
Electrification is here and it can't be stopped. What the rage baiters foaming on about EVs don't get is that most people don't care that much about cars. Offer them a new one thats easier to drive cheaper to maintain and more reliable and they'll take it. And they are, with EV sales continuing to rise.
ICE is on its way out, and China will rule the world unless the west wakes up and starts investing serious money.
And a reminder
1) A speech about building batteries isn’t building batteries. 2) A report on building batteries isn’t building batteries. 3) A policy on building batteries isn’t building batteries.
Building fuck off gigantic factories building batteries *is* building batteries.
And solar panels. Of all the stupid things the Reform clowns want to do, switch off renewables is top of the heap. We will end up having to reverse course some years later and be so far behind that we will always then be reliant on other countries.
We have abundant renewable sources, with so much energy flowing that we have to pay the companies to dump it as we can't transmit it and we can't consume it quickly enough. The obvious solution is better transmission - needed anyway as so little money has been spent by the private sector - and battery storage. And not just at big sites - local generation and storage.
But no, the fukers want to shut the whole thing down, import more LNG and then we're fine apparently. Asshats the lot of them, whether they turn up to selection meetings in union jack shorts or not.
Hi Rochdale,
What is the reaction in Aberdeenshire re the large pylon project up your way, are you hearing many opinions either way on the doorstep?
There are "stop the pylons" protestors linking this to Net Zero. But then again they objected to the ones not linked to Net Zero. I get it, pylons are ugly. But they need to go somewhere.
Just to add that it's employing a few of my friends so a big thumbs up from me. One is ex- O&G and doing conversions into electricity transmission.
I am ideologically opposed because I think it reflects our lack of regional pricing - building pylons in Scotland instead of turbines in England.
Ed miliband will be delighted so many new turbines are coming on in Scotland and Scottish waters, makes his job a lot easier. But energy should be built as close to source of use as possible, carting it nearly the full length of the UK is not going to bring energy bills down, the reverse instead
If we get on the wrong side of China, they might stop selling us tat that we don't need.
What am I missing here?
It’s worse than that.
Their plan is to stop selling us things that we might really need, such as EV batteries, so they can instead sell us their cars by denying European and American manufacturers the batteries - because Europe and America don’t have the technology to produce the new improved batteries the Chinese are now making.
This is why Trump is talking about 100% tariffs on China, and other Western nations face the same dilemma.
There is of course a way forward - develop and manufacture batteries in the west.
MURICA - Batteries are ANTIFA UK - Ah, Yes, Brugh, BRITVOLT, er, right, oh EU - we want to make profit from the engines we already make
Electrification is here and it can't be stopped. What the rage baiters foaming on about EVs don't get is that most people don't care that much about cars. Offer them a new one thats easier to drive cheaper to maintain and more reliable and they'll take it. And they are, with EV sales continuing to rise.
ICE is on its way out, and China will rule the world unless the west wakes up and starts investing serious money.
And a reminder
1) A speech about building batteries isn’t building batteries. 2) A report on building batteries isn’t building batteries. 3) A policy on building batteries isn’t building batteries.
Building fuck off gigantic factories building batteries *is* building batteries.
And solar panels. Of all the stupid things the Reform clowns want to do, switch off renewables is top of the heap. We will end up having to reverse course some years later and be so far behind that we will always then be reliant on other countries.
We have abundant renewable sources, with so much energy flowing that we have to pay the companies to dump it as we can't transmit it and we can't consume it quickly enough. The obvious solution is better transmission - needed anyway as so little money has been spent by the private sector - and battery storage. And not just at big sites - local generation and storage.
But no, the fukers want to shut the whole thing down, import more LNG and then we're fine apparently. Asshats the lot of them, whether they turn up to selection meetings in union jack shorts or not.
Hi Rochdale,
What is the reaction in Aberdeenshire re the large pylon project up your way, are you hearing many opinions either way on the doorstep?
There are "stop the pylons" protestors linking this to Net Zero. But then again they objected to the ones not linked to Net Zero. I get it, pylons are ugly. But they need to go somewhere.
Just to add that it's employing a few of my friends so a big thumbs up from me. One is ex- O&G and doing conversions into electricity transmission.
I am ideologically opposed because I think it reflects our lack of regional pricing - building pylons in Scotland instead of turbines in England.
Ed miliband will be delighted so many new turbines are coming on in Scotland and Scottish waters, makes his job a lot easier. But energy should be built as close to source of use as possible, carting it nearly the full length of the UK is not going to bring energy bills down, the reverse instead
As ever - the wind turbines are put where there is regular wind. A while back we had someone on PB trying to sell the “wind turbines only on top of the poors” line.
Then someone else posted a map of areas of reliable wind in the British Isles.
Strangely the areas where the turbines are, are those with lots of wind. The areas without turbines don’t have much wind.
That and offshore construction being *easier* for gigantic (and more efficient) turbines is why offshore is growing so fast.
If we get on the wrong side of China, they might stop selling us tat that we don't need.
What am I missing here?
It’s worse than that.
Their plan is to stop selling us things that we might really need, such as EV batteries, so they can instead sell us their cars by denying European and American manufacturers the batteries - because Europe and America don’t have the technology to produce the new improved batteries the Chinese are now making.
This is why Trump is talking about 100% tariffs on China, and other Western nations face the same dilemma.
We mustn't be dependent on them for anything important.
Since we already do, what do you suggest in the interim ?
Two thirds of the world was already unreliable pre Trump, now it is closer to 90%. Sure we should mitigate our reliance on China, but it is more absurd to pretend we can live fully independently of countries we don't like or trust.
It's one thing to do business with one of a number of countries that we don't like or trust where, if the relationship deteriorates we can switch that trade to a different country with questionable morals, but it's quite another where that country is as big and powerful as China where there is no alternative for many market sectors.
The US is unreliable on tariffs, we can't plan trade there either.
At the end of the day fudge with all these relationships is the only answer. Blaming our politicians for accepting reality is not something we should be doing.
It is, of course, another reason to think about reconsidering our relationship with Europe.
It would be a shame to watch Ukraine join the EU before us.
Even with Europe everyone is in the potentially unreliable category now including us. Chances are at least one of Le Pen, Farage or the AfD will rule within a decade.
I don't think it is unreasonable to suggest that China is less reliable, and more of a threat, than a US run by Trump, or a France run by Le Pen.
I don't think it's useful to simply say - "they're all foreign!" - and throw up your hands at the impossibility of discriminating between them at all.
Absolutely this. I saw someone yesterday suggest we need to be cosying up to China in the light of Trump running America. This seems, at present, insane.
Cosying up is wrong. But so is closing ourselves off.
The US has passed legislation allowing the government to impose a 50% additional tax on overseas holders of US shares. That is us and our pensions. No-one here discusses or notices these things, as we wrongly assume the US is still the same reliable US we have grown up with, it is not.
"Bernard Jenkin (Con) said it was “beyond belief” that nobody was able to tell the deputy national security adviser that he needed to give the CPS the evidence it needed." I, possibly erroneously, have a generally positive impression of Bernard Jenkin but suggesting that the witness should have been told what to put in their statement doesn't seem to be "beyond belief" in a democratic country with a properly functioning legal system. What would be wrong is a witness being instructed on what to say in their statement.
The CPS say they dropped the case because another case earlier this year established that for it to have a good chance of conviction the prosecution needed to point to the government having labelled China a national security risk at the time the alleged offences were committed. Assuming that is true, and since you can't rewrite history, this relates to the previous government and I don't see how anything said by this one could be relevant. Eg, "the previous government did not describe China as a national security risk but this one does, so we'll go for it" - this won't wash because it's the situation at the time of the offences that counts.
That's the question I keep asking. All the reporting keeps saying "but it's complicated", which isn't any help.
I think it is interesting that in todays urgent question both Emily Thornberry, chair of the foreign affairs select committee and Matt Western, chair joint committee on national security strategy, both labour, were critical of the situation and together with the chairs of the home office, and justice committee are to convene a joint and urgent 'formal inquiry' and asked that civil servants and ministers to be called to testify to this committee
For me that is the correct forum to establish the facts, and whether or not the government and Starmer's position is established as correct or otherwise
This is not a story that is going away, and next week the decision on the London China Embassy is due and as for trade talks with China, then who knows ?
Crikey, Survation have found there's a 37% Lab to Reform swing in Caerphilly
Headline Voting Intention (likely voters vs 2021 Senedd elections)
Base: All those likely to vote with undecided squeezed and those still undecided and refused removed If the by-election were held today:
Llŷr Tomos Powell – Reform UK: 42% (+40)
Lindsay Whittle – Plaid Cymru: 38% (+10)
Richard Tunnicliffe – Labour: 12% (-34)
Gareth John Potter – Conservative: 4% (-14)
Steve Aicheler – Liberal Democrat: 1% (-1)
Gareth Hughes – Green Party: 3% (+3)
Excellent for Plaid, east Glamorganshire is quite a way from their normal hunting grounds I think. Looks disastrous for Labour, if that's repeated across the valleys.
Point of order. Caerphilly is now considered as part of Gwent. They have also won the neighbouring Islwyn seat previously, so not that unknown for them.
I prefer historic counties, the ones where Middlesborough is in the right place.
Middlesbrough !
It is historic? Not even two centuries old. (Seriously, an interesting place ...)
I've been there. It was horrible.
It's a tribute to the locals work ethic that they managed to create such a massive polluted sh*thole in less than 200 years... I hope they manage to regenerate it into a much nicer place, a particular lowlight of my experience there was taking the wrong exit from the railway station, rapidly retraced my tracks, made '90s Kings X look salubrious.
"Bernard Jenkin (Con) said it was “beyond belief” that nobody was able to tell the deputy national security adviser that he needed to give the CPS the evidence it needed." I, possibly erroneously, have a generally positive impression of Bernard Jenkin but suggesting that the witness should have been told what to put in their statement doesn't seem to be "beyond belief" in a democratic country with a properly functioning legal system. What would be wrong is a witness being instructed on what to say in their statement.
The CPS say they dropped the case because another case earlier this year established that for it to have a good chance of conviction the prosecution needed to point to the government having labelled China a national security risk at the time the alleged offences were committed. Assuming that is true, and since you can't rewrite history, this relates to the previous government and I don't see how anything said by this one could be relevant. Eg, "the previous government did not describe China as a national security risk this one does, so we'll go for it" - this won't wash because it's the situation at the time of the offences that counts.
But it is all on record - on Wikipedia no less - that the previous government regarded China as a threat. The CPS could simply have read the relevant passages from the Integrated Review Refresh 2023 and the Integrated Review (2021).
I can't help but feel that there's something else going on, and the explanations being provided are a smokescreen.
I see two other possibilities if we're in 'more than meets the eye' mode.
The CPS are lying and they dropped the case not because they thought they'd lose it but because the government (this government) wanted it dropped so as not to jeopardise relations with China.
The CPS are not lying but they've made a bad judgement call. Either there was in fact enough evidence that the previous government had designated China a national security threat, or alternatively they could probably have won the case without it.
We'd have a very big and quite big scandal respectively if either of these emerge as being true. I'd be surprised, personally, but let's see where it goes.
Pfizer's CEO says China is overtaking the U.S. in biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, and that a key reason behind this is because "we spend more time trying to think about how to slow down China rather than think how we can become better."
Here's the whole quote: “They filed more patents this year than the U.S. That’s never happened in history. Five years ago, the split was 90%-10%... The gap is closing, but they probably will become [better than us] unless we get our act together. We spend more time trying to think about how to slow down China rather than think how we can become better than them. We need to have regulatory changes here. We need to have stability. Tariffs and pricing was not helping.”
He's right of course, and it's an argument I make constantly myself: you don't get better by wishing ill will on others, but by improving yourself for the sake of your own people. It's common sense, and when you hear all the "China bad" talk it's more often than not a way to deflect from the fact that they're not working on "ourselves good."
Another interesting aspect here, though, is that China overtaking the U.S. in pharma innovation completely undermines the pharma industry's decades-old narrative that astronomical drug prices are necessary for R&D.
If China - with very low government-negotiated drug costs - can file more patents than the U.S. and close a 90%-10% gap in just five years (!), it's painfully obvious that innovation doesn't require American consumers to pay multiples more than patients in other countries... https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1978653217664758118
"Bernard Jenkin (Con) said it was “beyond belief” that nobody was able to tell the deputy national security adviser that he needed to give the CPS the evidence it needed." I, possibly erroneously, have a generally positive impression of Bernard Jenkin but suggesting that the witness should have been told what to put in their statement doesn't seem to be "beyond belief" in a democratic country with a properly functioning legal system. What would be wrong is a witness being instructed on what to say in their statement.
The CPS say they dropped the case because another case earlier this year established that for it to have a good chance of conviction the prosecution needed to point to the government having labelled China a national security risk at the time the alleged offences were committed. Assuming that is true, and since you can't rewrite history, this relates to the previous government and I don't see how anything said by this one could be relevant. Eg, "the previous government did not describe China as a national security risk this one does, so we'll go for it" - this won't wash because it's the situation at the time of the offences that counts.
But it is all on record - on Wikipedia no less - that the previous government regarded China as a threat. The CPS could simply have read the relevant passages from the Integrated Review Refresh 2023 and the Integrated Review (2021).
I can't help but feel that there's something else going on, and the explanations being provided are a smokescreen.
I see two other possibilities if we're in 'more than meets the eye' mode.
The CPS are lying and they dropped the case not because they thought they'd lose it but because the government (this government) wanted it dropped so as not to jeopardise relations with China.
The CPS are not lying but they've made a bad judgement call. Either there was in fact enough evidence that the previous government had designated China a national security threat, or alternatively they could probably have won the case without it.
We'd have a very big and quite big scandal respectively if either of these emerge as being true. I'd be surprised, personally, but let's see where it goes.
I take it you haven’t read David Allen Green’s post. Where he clear shows that CPS were initially trying to prosecute using a law that wasn’t in place at the time the offences were committed.
The high street betting shops were there for money laundering through the FOBTs, the Gambling companies knew what was going on and were happy to take their cut of it.
"Bernard Jenkin (Con) said it was “beyond belief” that nobody was able to tell the deputy national security adviser that he needed to give the CPS the evidence it needed." I, possibly erroneously, have a generally positive impression of Bernard Jenkin but suggesting that the witness should have been told what to put in their statement doesn't seem to be "beyond belief" in a democratic country with a properly functioning legal system. What would be wrong is a witness being instructed on what to say in their statement.
The CPS say they dropped the case because another case earlier this year established that for it to have a good chance of conviction the prosecution needed to point to the government having labelled China a national security risk at the time the alleged offences were committed. Assuming that is true, and since you can't rewrite history, this relates to the previous government and I don't see how anything said by this one could be relevant. Eg, "the previous government did not describe China as a national security risk this one does, so we'll go for it" - this won't wash because it's the situation at the time of the offences that counts.
But it is all on record - on Wikipedia no less - that the previous government regarded China as a threat. The CPS could simply have read the relevant passages from the Integrated Review Refresh 2023 and the Integrated Review (2021).
I can't help but feel that there's something else going on, and the explanations being provided are a smokescreen.
I work in IT, in banks.
The official position, provided to banks openly, was that China was on the list of state actors who were
- infiltrating finance - Stealing info - Engaging in electronic espionage - Setting up and testing attacks on infrastructure (usually through proxies)
It’s been that way for years.
Everyone knows this.
Hell, when a cheap laser cuter at a communal workshop crashed when we didn’t connect it to the internet… no one was surprised that was because it was forwarding all designs cut to an IP address in China. That waste than a decade ago.
We fixed the laser cutter by getting it to send DXF that weren’t the designs. Generated from stills in a movie, IIRC.
If we get on the wrong side of China, they might stop selling us tat that we don't need.
What am I missing here?
It’s worse than that.
Their plan is to stop selling us things that we might really need, such as EV batteries, so they can instead sell us their cars by denying European and American manufacturers the batteries - because Europe and America don’t have the technology to produce the new improved batteries the Chinese are now making.
This is why Trump is talking about 100% tariffs on China, and other Western nations face the same dilemma.
There is of course a way forward - develop and manufacture batteries in the west.
MURICA - Batteries are ANTIFA UK - Ah, Yes, Brugh, BRITVOLT, er, right, oh EU - we want to make profit from the engines we already make
Electrification is here and it can't be stopped. What the rage baiters foaming on about EVs don't get is that most people don't care that much about cars. Offer them a new one thats easier to drive cheaper to maintain and more reliable and they'll take it. And they are, with EV sales continuing to rise.
ICE is on its way out, and China will rule the world unless the west wakes up and starts investing serious money.
And a reminder
1) A speech about building batteries isn’t building batteries. 2) A report on building batteries isn’t building batteries. 3) A policy on building batteries isn’t building batteries.
Building fuck off gigantic factories building batteries *is* building batteries.
And solar panels. Of all the stupid things the Reform clowns want to do, switch off renewables is top of the heap. We will end up having to reverse course some years later and be so far behind that we will always then be reliant on other countries.
We have abundant renewable sources, with so much energy flowing that we have to pay the companies to dump it as we can't transmit it and we can't consume it quickly enough. The obvious solution is better transmission - needed anyway as so little money has been spent by the private sector - and battery storage. And not just at big sites - local generation and storage.
But no, the fukers want to shut the whole thing down, import more LNG and then we're fine apparently. Asshats the lot of them, whether they turn up to selection meetings in union jack shorts or not.
Hi Rochdale,
What is the reaction in Aberdeenshire re the large pylon project up your way, are you hearing many opinions either way on the doorstep?
There are "stop the pylons" protestors linking this to Net Zero. But then again they objected to the ones not linked to Net Zero. I get it, pylons are ugly. But they need to go somewhere.
Just to add that it's employing a few of my friends so a big thumbs up from me. One is ex- O&G and doing conversions into electricity transmission.
I am ideologically opposed because I think it reflects our lack of regional pricing - building pylons in Scotland instead of turbines in England.
Ed miliband will be delighted so many new turbines are coming on in Scotland and Scottish waters, makes his job a lot easier. But energy should be built as close to source of use as possible, carting it nearly the full length of the UK is not going to bring energy bills down, the reverse instead
If we get on the wrong side of China, they might stop selling us tat that we don't need.
What am I missing here?
It’s worse than that.
Their plan is to stop selling us things that we might really need, such as EV batteries, so they can instead sell us their cars by denying European and American manufacturers the batteries - because Europe and America don’t have the technology to produce the new improved batteries the Chinese are now making.
This is why Trump is talking about 100% tariffs on China, and other Western nations face the same dilemma.
There is of course a way forward - develop and manufacture batteries in the west.
MURICA - Batteries are ANTIFA UK - Ah, Yes, Brugh, BRITVOLT, er, right, oh EU - we want to make profit from the engines we already make
Electrification is here and it can't be stopped. What the rage baiters foaming on about EVs don't get is that most people don't care that much about cars. Offer them a new one thats easier to drive cheaper to maintain and more reliable and they'll take it. And they are, with EV sales continuing to rise.
ICE is on its way out, and China will rule the world unless the west wakes up and starts investing serious money.
And a reminder
1) A speech about building batteries isn’t building batteries. 2) A report on building batteries isn’t building batteries. 3) A policy on building batteries isn’t building batteries.
Building fuck off gigantic factories building batteries *is* building batteries.
And solar panels. Of all the stupid things the Reform clowns want to do, switch off renewables is top of the heap. We will end up having to reverse course some years later and be so far behind that we will always then be reliant on other countries.
We have abundant renewable sources, with so much energy flowing that we have to pay the companies to dump it as we can't transmit it and we can't consume it quickly enough. The obvious solution is better transmission - needed anyway as so little money has been spent by the private sector - and battery storage. And not just at big sites - local generation and storage.
But no, the fukers want to shut the whole thing down, import more LNG and then we're fine apparently. Asshats the lot of them, whether they turn up to selection meetings in union jack shorts or not.
Hi Rochdale,
What is the reaction in Aberdeenshire re the large pylon project up your way, are you hearing many opinions either way on the doorstep?
There are "stop the pylons" protestors linking this to Net Zero. But then again they objected to the ones not linked to Net Zero. I get it, pylons are ugly. But they need to go somewhere.
Just to add that it's employing a few of my friends so a big thumbs up from me. One is ex- O&G and doing conversions into electricity transmission.
I am ideologically opposed because I think it reflects our lack of regional pricing - building pylons in Scotland instead of turbines in England.
Ed miliband will be delighted so many new turbines are coming on in Scotland and Scottish waters, makes his job a lot easier. But energy should be built as close to source of use as possible, carting it nearly the full length of the UK is not going to bring energy bills down, the reverse instead
As ever - the wind turbines are put where there is regular wind. A while back we had someone on PB trying to sell the “wind turbines only on top of the poors” line.
Then someone else posted a map of areas of reliable wind in the British Isles.
Strangely the areas where the turbines are, are those with lots of wind. The areas without turbines don’t have much wind.
That and offshore construction being *easier* for gigantic (and more efficient) turbines is why offshore is growing so fast.
There's several problems with the scattergun offshore wind approach right now.
1) infrastructure/power lines are not up to the job at present, meaning more cost onto consumers via increased bills to pay for the new lines and upgrades 2) reliability - great when they work, not so good today, so extra power sources are still needed 3) battery power doesn't seem to be there yet in terms of storage for the scale of energy produced. Maybe in future it will improve 4) larger projects are encountering difficulties, costs being the biggest one. Hornsea 4 cancelled, so 2 million homes won't be able to be powered by that project 5) they still need a deal of assurance from UK government re CFD subs, contracts and project viability. Offshore windfarm owners will be getting a bit tetchy over the rise of Reform and their promise to roll back Net zero 6) there is a lot of bureaucracy in the planning process. From the drawing board to first power generation, it can be more than 10 years. Mr Starmer has pledged to cut that time frame, however it may take a year or two to implement
Miliband could offset a lot of the concerns, by helping communities and opting for regional pricing. He chose not to, to please his London pals
There's plenty of scope in the North Sea for Mr Miliband to power the south of England with wind energy if he wishes, cut down on the infrastructure costs
"Bernard Jenkin (Con) said it was “beyond belief” that nobody was able to tell the deputy national security adviser that he needed to give the CPS the evidence it needed." I, possibly erroneously, have a generally positive impression of Bernard Jenkin but suggesting that the witness should have been told what to put in their statement doesn't seem to be "beyond belief" in a democratic country with a properly functioning legal system. What would be wrong is a witness being instructed on what to say in their statement.
Indeed. I have not followed all the twists and turns of this case. But it seems to me that some MPs are losing sense on this issue.
And personally I can’t quite understand why the Tories are going large on this one? I get that they think they’ve got the potential for a scalp. But, and assuming the current administration are playing it straight, the case will turn on the events of the time - where the accused spying for an enemy at the time. So you’ve got to prove two things the spying and the enemy (at that time). Saying the current Government should have done more to keep the case alive misses the point and would surely provide fuel for the defence case.
What am I missing?
The Tories are right to ask questions, because it’s a national security issue and they are literally doing their job as the opposition in these circumstances to ask them. As Labour would be if the boot were on the other foot.
The thing about all this is it’s messy and complicated. I consider myself relatively clued up on current affairs, but I am finding it incredibly difficult to get my head around this one. From what I can gather, the crux of the issue is basically that the government is saying the prosecution could not continue because of the position of the previous government. That is either demonstrably true, based on a legal assessment that has been made somewhere (I assume at CPS level) or it isn’t. If that legal assessment itself was flawed (which some seem to be saying it was) then the question goes back to the judgement of those who made the assessment. What I don’t understand is the CPS/government nexus in all of this. Was it the case that the CPS made the determination but that determination was made because of representations made by the current government or civil servants (in which case that widens the blame game) or was that determination made independently based on the judgement of the CPS. That I think is the question we still don’t have a clear answer to.
"Bernard Jenkin (Con) said it was “beyond belief” that nobody was able to tell the deputy national security adviser that he needed to give the CPS the evidence it needed." I, possibly erroneously, have a generally positive impression of Bernard Jenkin but suggesting that the witness should have been told what to put in their statement doesn't seem to be "beyond belief" in a democratic country with a properly functioning legal system. What would be wrong is a witness being instructed on what to say in their statement.
The CPS say they dropped the case because another case earlier this year established that for it to have a good chance of conviction the prosecution needed to point to the government having labelled China a national security risk at the time the alleged offences were committed. Assuming that is true, and since you can't rewrite history, this relates to the previous government and I don't see how anything said by this one could be relevant. Eg, "the previous government did not describe China as a national security risk this one does, so we'll go for it" - this won't wash because it's the situation at the time of the offences that counts.
But it is all on record - on Wikipedia no less - that the previous government regarded China as a threat. The CPS could simply have read the relevant passages from the Integrated Review Refresh 2023 and the Integrated Review (2021).
I can't help but feel that there's something else going on, and the explanations being provided are a smokescreen.
I see two other possibilities if we're in 'more than meets the eye' mode.
The CPS are lying and they dropped the case not because they thought they'd lose it but because the government (this government) wanted it dropped so as not to jeopardise relations with China.
The CPS are not lying but they've made a bad judgement call. Either there was in fact enough evidence that the previous government had designated China a national security threat, or alternatively they could probably have won the case without it.
We'd have a very big and quite big scandal respectively if either of these emerge as being true. I'd be surprised, personally, but let's see where it goes.
I take it you haven’t read David Allen Green’s post. Where he clear shows that CPS were initially trying to prosecute using a law that wasn’t in place at the time the offences were committed.
This should be required reading for anyone commenting on this matter on PB. It is very well written and clarifies a fair few questions.
The high street betting shops were there for money laundering through the FOBTs, the Gambling companies knew what was going on and were happy to take their cut of it.
Guess it’s just nail bars, vape shops and barbers now then.
"Bernard Jenkin (Con) said it was “beyond belief” that nobody was able to tell the deputy national security adviser that he needed to give the CPS the evidence it needed." I, possibly erroneously, have a generally positive impression of Bernard Jenkin but suggesting that the witness should have been told what to put in their statement doesn't seem to be "beyond belief" in a democratic country with a properly functioning legal system. What would be wrong is a witness being instructed on what to say in their statement.
The CPS say they dropped the case because another case earlier this year established that for it to have a good chance of conviction the prosecution needed to point to the government having labelled China a national security risk at the time the alleged offences were committed. Assuming that is true, and since you can't rewrite history, this relates to the previous government and I don't see how anything said by this one could be relevant. Eg, "the previous government did not describe China as a national security risk but this one does, so we'll go for it" - this won't wash because it's the situation at the time of the offences that counts.
That's the question I keep asking. All the reporting keeps saying "but it's complicated", which isn't any help.
I think it is interesting that in todays urgent question both Emily Thornberry, chair of the foreign affairs select committee and Matt Western, chair joint committee on national security strategy, both labour, were critical of the situation and together with the chairs of the home office, and justice committee are to convene a joint and urgent 'formal inquiry' and asked that civil servants and ministers to be called to testify to this committee
For me that is the correct forum to establish the facts, and whether or not the government and Starmer's position is established as correct or otherwise
This is not a story that is going away, and next week the decision on the London China Embassy is due and as for trade talks with China, then who knows ?
Have you read this? You will find it very helpful.
"The Trump administration has secretly authorized the C.I.A. to conduct covert action in Venezuela, according to U.S. officials, stepping up a campaign against Nicolás Maduro, the country’s authoritarian leader."
The China affair does demonstrate how utterly pathetic Labour Party communications under Starmer have become.
Two Senior Tories, Tugenhadt and Kearns accidentally recruit alleged Chinese spies, and as a result the Labour Government falls.
One couldn't make it up.
Yes, I'm sure it would go down well if they said "it's your own fault for hiring them".
It's perhaps a question of judgement, like Starmer recruiting Mandelson.
Additionally the information one of them passed on about Tugenhadt and Hunt and who they supported for Tory Leader when Liz Truss became PM was apart from anything else, wholly wrong.
The high street betting shops were there for money laundering through the FOBTs, the Gambling companies knew what was going on and were happy to take their cut of it.
Guess it’s just nail bars, vape shops and barbers now then.
and greengrocers, industry evolves, you don't see many internet cafes these days.
They were ... two years younger than Vance. And no, the 'jokes' weren't "edgy".
Vance on public outrage over the "I love Hitler" group chat: "Grow up! Focus on the real issues. Don't focus on what kids say in group chats... The reality is that kids do stupid things, especially young boys — they tell edgy, offensive jokes. That's what kids do." https://x.com/BulwarkOnline/status/1978515991714799876
The VP openly defending Hitler fans and rape apologists.
The high street betting shops were there for money laundering through the FOBTs, the Gambling companies knew what was going on and were happy to take their cut of it.
Guess it’s just nail bars, vape shops and barbers now then.
"Bernard Jenkin (Con) said it was “beyond belief” that nobody was able to tell the deputy national security adviser that he needed to give the CPS the evidence it needed." I, possibly erroneously, have a generally positive impression of Bernard Jenkin but suggesting that the witness should have been told what to put in their statement doesn't seem to be "beyond belief" in a democratic country with a properly functioning legal system. What would be wrong is a witness being instructed on what to say in their statement.
The CPS say they dropped the case because another case earlier this year established that for it to have a good chance of conviction the prosecution needed to point to the government having labelled China a national security risk at the time the alleged offences were committed. Assuming that is true, and since you can't rewrite history, this relates to the previous government and I don't see how anything said by this one could be relevant. Eg, "the previous government did not describe China as a national security risk but this one does, so we'll go for it" - this won't wash because it's the situation at the time of the offences that counts.
That's the question I keep asking. All the reporting keeps saying "but it's complicated", which isn't any help.
I think it is interesting that in todays urgent question both Emily Thornberry, chair of the foreign affairs select committee and Matt Western, chair joint committee on national security strategy, both labour, were critical of the situation and together with the chairs of the home office, and justice committee are to convene a joint and urgent 'formal inquiry' and asked that civil servants and ministers to be called to testify to this committee
For me that is the correct forum to establish the facts, and whether or not the government and Starmer's position is established as correct or otherwise
This is not a story that is going away, and next week the decision on the London China Embassy is due and as for trade talks with China, then who knows ?
Have you read this? You will find it very helpful.
Pelosi still has it. Shame she's a couple of decades too old.
Question: Why did you refuse the National Guard on January 6th?
Pelosi: *Turns Around* Shut up. I did not refuse the National Guard. The President didn’t send it! Why are you coming here with Republican talking points as if you are a serious journalist? https://x.com/Acyn/status/1978571649479053816
"Bernard Jenkin (Con) said it was “beyond belief” that nobody was able to tell the deputy national security adviser that he needed to give the CPS the evidence it needed." I, possibly erroneously, have a generally positive impression of Bernard Jenkin but suggesting that the witness should have been told what to put in their statement doesn't seem to be "beyond belief" in a democratic country with a properly functioning legal system. What would be wrong is a witness being instructed on what to say in their statement.
The CPS say they dropped the case because another case earlier this year established that for it to have a good chance of conviction the prosecution needed to point to the government having labelled China a national security risk at the time the alleged offences were committed. Assuming that is true, and since you can't rewrite history, this relates to the previous government and I don't see how anything said by this one could be relevant. Eg, "the previous government did not describe China as a national security risk this one does, so we'll go for it" - this won't wash because it's the situation at the time of the offences that counts.
But it is all on record - on Wikipedia no less - that the previous government regarded China as a threat. The CPS could simply have read the relevant passages from the Integrated Review Refresh 2023 and the Integrated Review (2021).
I can't help but feel that there's something else going on, and the explanations being provided are a smokescreen.
I see two other possibilities if we're in 'more than meets the eye' mode.
The CPS are lying and they dropped the case not because they thought they'd lose it but because the government (this government) wanted it dropped so as not to jeopardise relations with China.
The CPS are not lying but they've made a bad judgement call. Either there was in fact enough evidence that the previous government had designated China a national security threat, or alternatively they could probably have won the case without it.
We'd have a very big and quite big scandal respectively if either of these emerge as being true. I'd be surprised, personally, but let's see where it goes.
I take it you haven’t read David Allen Green’s post. Where he clear shows that CPS were initially trying to prosecute using a law that wasn’t in place at the time the offences were committed.
Hadn't but now have. He seems to be postulating conspiracy with a potential assist from cock-up.
The high street betting shops were there for money laundering through the FOBTs, the Gambling companies knew what was going on and were happy to take their cut of it.
Guess it’s just nail bars, vape shops and barbers now then.
Don't forget the odd charity shop.
They are useful for me, as well as the CEX shops, for getting old TV DVDs to rip for my strap on hard drives. But it’s a fair point.
They were ... two years younger than Vance. And no, the 'jokes' weren't "edgy".
Vance on public outrage over the "I love Hitler" group chat: "Grow up! Focus on the real issues. Don't focus on what kids say in group chats... The reality is that kids do stupid things, especially young boys — they tell edgy, offensive jokes. That's what kids do." https://x.com/BulwarkOnline/status/1978515991714799876
The VP openly defending Hitler fans and rape apologists.
Indeed, focus on the real issues like revoking visas for comments and offensive jokes re Charlie Kirk.
"Bernard Jenkin (Con) said it was “beyond belief” that nobody was able to tell the deputy national security adviser that he needed to give the CPS the evidence it needed." I, possibly erroneously, have a generally positive impression of Bernard Jenkin but suggesting that the witness should have been told what to put in their statement doesn't seem to be "beyond belief" in a democratic country with a properly functioning legal system. What would be wrong is a witness being instructed on what to say in their statement.
The CPS say they dropped the case because another case earlier this year established that for it to have a good chance of conviction the prosecution needed to point to the government having labelled China a national security risk at the time the alleged offences were committed. Assuming that is true, and since you can't rewrite history, this relates to the previous government and I don't see how anything said by this one could be relevant. Eg, "the previous government did not describe China as a national security risk this one does, so we'll go for it" - this won't wash because it's the situation at the time of the offences that counts.
But it is all on record - on Wikipedia no less - that the previous government regarded China as a threat. The CPS could simply have read the relevant passages from the Integrated Review Refresh 2023 and the Integrated Review (2021).
I can't help but feel that there's something else going on, and the explanations being provided are a smokescreen.
I see two other possibilities if we're in 'more than meets the eye' mode.
The CPS are lying and they dropped the case not because they thought they'd lose it but because the government (this government) wanted it dropped so as not to jeopardise relations with China.
The CPS are not lying but they've made a bad judgement call. Either there was in fact enough evidence that the previous government had designated China a national security threat, or alternatively they could probably have won the case without it.
We'd have a very big and quite big scandal respectively if either of these emerge as being true. I'd be surprised, personally, but let's see where it goes.
I take it you haven’t read David Allen Green’s post. Where he clear shows that CPS were initially trying to prosecute using a law that wasn’t in place at the time the offences were committed.
Hadn't but now have. He seems to be postulating conspiracy with a potential assist from cock-up.
That's very much the PB Tory interpretation. I thought he cleared quite a lot up and his criticism is now levelled more at the CPS than anyone else.
Latest update from the world of University woke. An email tells me we are no longer to use BAME as "... the term has faced criticism over recent years for its tendency both to overgeneralise by grouping diverse communities under one label and simultaneously to exclude other ethnic identities."
Wouldn't the world be better if we were all just people?
I had two issues with BAME. 1) The B. Redundancy. Surely everyone in the B category is also in the ME category? It's like Cheshire West and Chester. 2) The ME. Syntax. It was never adequately explained why Minority Ethnic was more correct than Ethnic Minority. Again, like Cheshire West and Chester.
I have no objection to the 'A'. We don't normally include ands in acronyms and abbreviations, but it's not a hard and fast rule. (Cheshire West and Chester, of course, abbreviates to CWAC.)
None of these terms seems to last more than about five years now. They used to last a couple of decades.
The ever-changing language is precisely the point. It allows people using the ‘wrong’ language to be chastised for doing so, and the use of the ‘correct’ language is used to virtue-signal to the in-group.
"Bernard Jenkin (Con) said it was “beyond belief” that nobody was able to tell the deputy national security adviser that he needed to give the CPS the evidence it needed." I, possibly erroneously, have a generally positive impression of Bernard Jenkin but suggesting that the witness should have been told what to put in their statement doesn't seem to be "beyond belief" in a democratic country with a properly functioning legal system. What would be wrong is a witness being instructed on what to say in their statement.
The CPS say they dropped the case because another case earlier this year established that for it to have a good chance of conviction the prosecution needed to point to the government having labelled China a national security risk at the time the alleged offences were committed. Assuming that is true, and since you can't rewrite history, this relates to the previous government and I don't see how anything said by this one could be relevant. Eg, "the previous government did not describe China as a national security risk this one does, so we'll go for it" - this won't wash because it's the situation at the time of the offences that counts.
But it is all on record - on Wikipedia no less - that the previous government regarded China as a threat. The CPS could simply have read the relevant passages from the Integrated Review Refresh 2023 and the Integrated Review (2021).
I can't help but feel that there's something else going on, and the explanations being provided are a smokescreen.
I see two other possibilities if we're in 'more than meets the eye' mode.
The CPS are lying and they dropped the case not because they thought they'd lose it but because the government (this government) wanted it dropped so as not to jeopardise relations with China.
The CPS are not lying but they've made a bad judgement call. Either there was in fact enough evidence that the previous government had designated China a national security threat, or alternatively they could probably have won the case without it.
We'd have a very big and quite big scandal respectively if either of these emerge as being true. I'd be surprised, personally, but let's see where it goes.
I take it you haven’t read David Allen Green’s post. Where he clear shows that CPS were initially trying to prosecute using a law that wasn’t in place at the time the offences were committed.
Hadn't but now have. He seems to be postulating conspiracy with a potential assist from cock-up.
That's very much the PB Tory interpretation. I thought he cleared quite a lot up and his criticism is now levelled more at the CPS than anyone else.
Read his final paragraph which goes to the heart of the controversy
Apparently the joint select committee are to call the CPS and Collins together with others so let's see what is established
"Bernard Jenkin (Con) said it was “beyond belief” that nobody was able to tell the deputy national security adviser that he needed to give the CPS the evidence it needed." I, possibly erroneously, have a generally positive impression of Bernard Jenkin but suggesting that the witness should have been told what to put in their statement doesn't seem to be "beyond belief" in a democratic country with a properly functioning legal system. What would be wrong is a witness being instructed on what to say in their statement.
The CPS say they dropped the case because another case earlier this year established that for it to have a good chance of conviction the prosecution needed to point to the government having labelled China a national security risk at the time the alleged offences were committed. Assuming that is true, and since you can't rewrite history, this relates to the previous government and I don't see how anything said by this one could be relevant. Eg, "the previous government did not describe China as a national security risk this one does, so we'll go for it" - this won't wash because it's the situation at the time of the offences that counts.
But it is all on record - on Wikipedia no less - that the previous government regarded China as a threat. The CPS could simply have read the relevant passages from the Integrated Review Refresh 2023 and the Integrated Review (2021).
I can't help but feel that there's something else going on, and the explanations being provided are a smokescreen.
I see two other possibilities if we're in 'more than meets the eye' mode.
The CPS are lying and they dropped the case not because they thought they'd lose it but because the government (this government) wanted it dropped so as not to jeopardise relations with China.
The CPS are not lying but they've made a bad judgement call. Either there was in fact enough evidence that the previous government had designated China a national security threat, or alternatively they could probably have won the case without it.
We'd have a very big and quite big scandal respectively if either of these emerge as being true. I'd be surprised, personally, but let's see where it goes.
I take it you haven’t read David Allen Green’s post. Where he clear shows that CPS were initially trying to prosecute using a law that wasn’t in place at the time the offences were committed.
Hadn't but now have. He seems to be postulating conspiracy with a potential assist from cock-up.
That's very much the PB Tory interpretation. I thought he cleared quite a lot up and his criticism is now levelled more at the CPS than anyone else.
The post I read ended with a steer to something untoward having happened that isn't being disclosed. Does he mean just at the CPS then by your reading?
"Bernard Jenkin (Con) said it was “beyond belief” that nobody was able to tell the deputy national security adviser that he needed to give the CPS the evidence it needed." I, possibly erroneously, have a generally positive impression of Bernard Jenkin but suggesting that the witness should have been told what to put in their statement doesn't seem to be "beyond belief" in a democratic country with a properly functioning legal system. What would be wrong is a witness being instructed on what to say in their statement.
The CPS say they dropped the case because another case earlier this year established that for it to have a good chance of conviction the prosecution needed to point to the government having labelled China a national security risk at the time the alleged offences were committed. Assuming that is true, and since you can't rewrite history, this relates to the previous government and I don't see how anything said by this one could be relevant. Eg, "the previous government did not describe China as a national security risk but this one does, so we'll go for it" - this won't wash because it's the situation at the time of the offences that counts.
That's the question I keep asking. All the reporting keeps saying "but it's complicated", which isn't any help.
I think it is interesting that in todays urgent question both Emily Thornberry, chair of the foreign affairs select committee and Matt Western, chair joint committee on national security strategy, both labour, were critical of the situation and together with the chairs of the home office, and justice committee are to convene a joint and urgent 'formal inquiry' and asked that civil servants and ministers to be called to testify to this committee
For me that is the correct forum to establish the facts, and whether or not the government and Starmer's position is established as correct or otherwise
This is not a story that is going away, and next week the decision on the London China Embassy is due and as for trade talks with China, then who knows ?
Have you read this? You will find it very helpful.
Yes and if you read the final paragraph that is exactly the issue to be investigated by the joint select committees
The general thread is the CPS are asking for evidence they don't need from the Government. He does caveat that by suggesting the Government was under no obligation not to supply that albeit unnecessary information. I conclude he is suggesting that it was the CPS and not the Government who collapsed the prosecution.
Crikey, Survation have found there's a 37% Lab to Reform swing in Caerphilly
Headline Voting Intention (likely voters vs 2021 Senedd elections)
Base: All those likely to vote with undecided squeezed and those still undecided and refused removed If the by-election were held today:
Llŷr Tomos Powell – Reform UK: 42% (+40)
Lindsay Whittle – Plaid Cymru: 38% (+10)
Richard Tunnicliffe – Labour: 12% (-34)
Gareth John Potter – Conservative: 4% (-14)
Steve Aicheler – Liberal Democrat: 1% (-1)
Gareth Hughes – Green Party: 3% (+3)
Excellent for Plaid, east Glamorganshire is quite a way from their normal hunting grounds I think. Looks disastrous for Labour, if that's repeated across the valleys.
Point of order. Caerphilly is now considered as part of Gwent. They have also won the neighbouring Islwyn seat previously, so not that unknown for them.
I prefer historic counties, the ones where Middlesborough is in the right place.
Middlesbrough !
It is historic? Not even two centuries old. (Seriously, an interesting place ...)
I've been there. It was horrible.
It's a tribute to the locals work ethic that they managed to create such a massive polluted sh*thole in less than 200 years... I hope they manage to regenerate it into a much nicer place, a particular lowlight of my experience there was taking the wrong exit from the railway station, rapidly retraced my tracks, made '90s Kings X look salubrious.
There is no right exit from Middlesbrough railway station.
At least if you go out on the north side you aren't far from the police station.
As if going to Boro isn't bad enough, I had to go there to sit exams!
"Bernard Jenkin (Con) said it was “beyond belief” that nobody was able to tell the deputy national security adviser that he needed to give the CPS the evidence it needed." I, possibly erroneously, have a generally positive impression of Bernard Jenkin but suggesting that the witness should have been told what to put in their statement doesn't seem to be "beyond belief" in a democratic country with a properly functioning legal system. What would be wrong is a witness being instructed on what to say in their statement.
The CPS say they dropped the case because another case earlier this year established that for it to have a good chance of conviction the prosecution needed to point to the government having labelled China a national security risk at the time the alleged offences were committed. Assuming that is true, and since you can't rewrite history, this relates to the previous government and I don't see how anything said by this one could be relevant. Eg, "the previous government did not describe China as a national security risk but this one does, so we'll go for it" - this won't wash because it's the situation at the time of the offences that counts.
That's the question I keep asking. All the reporting keeps saying "but it's complicated", which isn't any help.
I think it is interesting that in todays urgent question both Emily Thornberry, chair of the foreign affairs select committee and Matt Western, chair joint committee on national security strategy, both labour, were critical of the situation and together with the chairs of the home office, and justice committee are to convene a joint and urgent 'formal inquiry' and asked that civil servants and ministers to be called to testify to this committee
For me that is the correct forum to establish the facts, and whether or not the government and Starmer's position is established as correct or otherwise
This is not a story that is going away, and next week the decision on the London China Embassy is due and as for trade talks with China, then who knows ?
Have you read this? You will find it very helpful.
Yes and if you read the final paragraph that is exactly the issue to be investigated by the joint select committees
The general thread is the CPS are asking for evidence they don't need from the Government. He does caveat that by suggesting the Government was under no obligation not to supply that albeit unnecessary information. I conclude he is suggesting that it was the CPS and not the Government who collapsed the prosecution.
Apols if posted earlier (couldn't see it) Labour in fourth on their lowest ever share in a poll (they are behind Greens before rounding) Find Out Now voting intention: 🟦 Reform UK: 32% (-) 🔵 Conservatives: 17% (-) 🟢 Greens: 15% (-) 🔴 Labour: 15% (-2) 🟠 Lib Dems: 12% (-)
Changes from 8th October [Find Out Now, 15th October, N=2,705]
"Bernard Jenkin (Con) said it was “beyond belief” that nobody was able to tell the deputy national security adviser that he needed to give the CPS the evidence it needed." I, possibly erroneously, have a generally positive impression of Bernard Jenkin but suggesting that the witness should have been told what to put in their statement doesn't seem to be "beyond belief" in a democratic country with a properly functioning legal system. What would be wrong is a witness being instructed on what to say in their statement.
The CPS say they dropped the case because another case earlier this year established that for it to have a good chance of conviction the prosecution needed to point to the government having labelled China a national security risk at the time the alleged offences were committed. Assuming that is true, and since you can't rewrite history, this relates to the previous government and I don't see how anything said by this one could be relevant. Eg, "the previous government did not describe China as a national security risk but this one does, so we'll go for it" - this won't wash because it's the situation at the time of the offences that counts.
That's the question I keep asking. All the reporting keeps saying "but it's complicated", which isn't any help.
I think it is interesting that in todays urgent question both Emily Thornberry, chair of the foreign affairs select committee and Matt Western, chair joint committee on national security strategy, both labour, were critical of the situation and together with the chairs of the home office, and justice committee are to convene a joint and urgent 'formal inquiry' and asked that civil servants and ministers to be called to testify to this committee
For me that is the correct forum to establish the facts, and whether or not the government and Starmer's position is established as correct or otherwise
This is not a story that is going away, and next week the decision on the London China Embassy is due and as for trade talks with China, then who knows ?
Have you read this? You will find it very helpful.
Yes and if you read the final paragraph that is exactly the issue to be investigated by the joint select committees
The general thread is the CPS are asking for evidence they don't need from the Government. He does caveat that by suggesting the Government was under no obligation not to supply that albeit unnecessary information. I conclude he is suggesting that it was the CPS and not the Government who collapsed the prosecution.
And if so the joint select committee will agree but it all depends on whether Collins acted entirely on his own with no discussion with government advisors or ministers or not
"Bernard Jenkin (Con) said it was “beyond belief” that nobody was able to tell the deputy national security adviser that he needed to give the CPS the evidence it needed." I, possibly erroneously, have a generally positive impression of Bernard Jenkin but suggesting that the witness should have been told what to put in their statement doesn't seem to be "beyond belief" in a democratic country with a properly functioning legal system. What would be wrong is a witness being instructed on what to say in their statement.
The CPS say they dropped the case because another case earlier this year established that for it to have a good chance of conviction the prosecution needed to point to the government having labelled China a national security risk at the time the alleged offences were committed. Assuming that is true, and since you can't rewrite history, this relates to the previous government and I don't see how anything said by this one could be relevant. Eg, "the previous government did not describe China as a national security risk this one does, so we'll go for it" - this won't wash because it's the situation at the time of the offences that counts.
But it is all on record - on Wikipedia no less - that the previous government regarded China as a threat. The CPS could simply have read the relevant passages from the Integrated Review Refresh 2023 and the Integrated Review (2021).
I can't help but feel that there's something else going on, and the explanations being provided are a smokescreen.
I see two other possibilities if we're in 'more than meets the eye' mode.
The CPS are lying and they dropped the case not because they thought they'd lose it but because the government (this government) wanted it dropped so as not to jeopardise relations with China.
The CPS are not lying but they've made a bad judgement call. Either there was in fact enough evidence that the previous government had designated China a national security threat, or alternatively they could probably have won the case without it.
We'd have a very big and quite big scandal respectively if either of these emerge as being true. I'd be surprised, personally, but let's see where it goes.
I take it you haven’t read David Allen Green’s post. Where he clear shows that CPS were initially trying to prosecute using a law that wasn’t in place at the time the offences were committed.
Hadn't but now have. He seems to be postulating conspiracy with a potential assist from cock-up.
That's very much the PB Tory interpretation. I thought he cleared quite a lot up and his criticism is now levelled more at the CPS than anyone else.
The post I read ended with a steer to something untoward having happened that isn't being disclosed. Does he mean just at the CPS then by your reading?
My interpretation is the CPS have asked for evidence they don't need to successfully prosecute the case. He also suggests that the Government was under no obligation not to decline to answer. I read it that the case was collapsed by an error by the CPS rather than by the Government protecting their political and trading interests with China ( which it is clear, for pragmatic reasons, they were). You can conclude the Government were being shifty, but their evidence was not imperative to prosecute the case.
"The Trump administration has secretly authorized the C.I.A. to conduct covert action in Venezuela, according to U.S. officials, stepping up a campaign against Nicolás Maduro, the country’s authoritarian leader."
@DPJHodges Just to be crystal clear. Keir Starmer said in the House yesterday:
“What was on issue in the trial is not the position of the current Government, but the position of the last Government”.
That statement was a clear, provable lie. Collins literally cut and pasted from the Labour manifesto because the position of the current government was key to the trial.
Apols if posted earlier (couldn't see it) Labour in fourth on their lowest ever share in a poll (they are behind Greens before rounding) Find Out Now voting intention: 🟦 Reform UK: 32% (-) 🔵 Conservatives: 17% (-) 🟢 Greens: 15% (-) 🔴 Labour: 15% (-2) 🟠 Lib Dems: 12% (-)
Changes from 8th October [Find Out Now, 15th October, N=2,705]
Apols if posted earlier (couldn't see it) Labour in fourth on their lowest ever share in a poll (they are behind Greens before rounding) Find Out Now voting intention: 🟦 Reform UK: 32% (-) 🔵 Conservatives: 17% (-) 🟢 Greens: 15% (-) 🔴 Labour: 15% (-2) 🟠 Lib Dems: 12% (-)
Changes from 8th October [Find Out Now, 15th October, N=2,705]
Apols if posted earlier (couldn't see it) Labour in fourth on their lowest ever share in a poll (they are behind Greens before rounding) Find Out Now voting intention: 🟦 Reform UK: 32% (-) 🔵 Conservatives: 17% (-) 🟢 Greens: 15% (-) 🔴 Labour: 15% (-2) 🟠 Lib Dems: 12% (-)
Changes from 8th October [Find Out Now, 15th October, N=2,705]
Which translates at Reform 434, Lib Dems 57, Labour 38, Conservative 31, Green 19. For London, it's Reform 31, Labour 21, Green 9, Lib Dem and Conservatives 6 each, and Your Party 2.
Although, if polling were showing anything like that, in the run up to the GE, I expect that the left wing vote would converge on either Labour, the Lib Dems, or the Greens.
Funny how Reform voters are so interested in the rather opaque China spying trial collapse, yet completely uninterested in the conviction of a key friend and colleague of Farage for taking bribes to further the interests of Russia.
I wonder why.
Why don't you ask the Westminster Lobby or the UK wide news channels why that is the case, its been a serious problem now since devolution. There has been numerous political scandals in Scotland, Wales and NI for the last twenty five years and they simple do not get reported or forensically scrutinised by the London media. In fact a case in point, Nicola Sturgeon's actual record as FM in Scotland is absolutely terrible, she launched a ferry with no windows or funnels in 2017, it never saw service for another eight years and should never have been launched when it was for that big Sturgeon headline on the Scottish news. But the London media fawned over her and believed the huge spad driven narrative without so much as doing the most basic homework of scraping below the surface. The endless list of SNP government scandals would have ended a Westminster government years ago. And as for the Labour run Welsh government, ditto!
So poor is the UK wide coverage of the devolved areas in the UK and the poor governance or scandals I once watched an episode of Question Time where an audience member in Wales ranted about the Westminster government's poor running of NHS Wales when they had not been in charge of it for years! It was embarrassing and it should have been a huge wake up call to the UK media, but it wasn't. So excuse me if I am not in the least surprised that the conviction of a key friend and colleague of Farage in Wales for taking bribes to further the interests of Russia has been of any more interest to Reform voters UK wide the rest of the UK electorate. And that is because they have probable not even heard about it thanks to the lack of UK wide reporting while the scandal of the Westminster China Spying trial is making the frontpages UK wide.
To be fair to Newsnight, they did run a story a few years back about the ferries scandal in Scotland, but who was watching apart from political anoraks like me? I will go one better, why not ask Reform, Conservative, Labour, Libdem or any other voters on the mainland UK how many of them knew that there was no functioning devolved government at Stormont for three years? You get my point, if the UK media doesn't ever bother to scrutinise or report news from devolved areas in the way they do Westminster, don't bother trying to blame the ordinary voters from parties you don't like for not being aware of it. And I say this as a frustrated member of the Scottish Conservatives who are currently being hammered in the polls here by a faceless Scottish Reform party with no discernable leadership or policies while my party has been the most effective Opposition to the SNP and thankfully saw off the terrible GRR bill and its awful implications for women in Scotland!
Its a problem. I was genuinely impressed by one of yours railing against Swinney openly lying to parliament - and of course the cybernats swing in with misinformation and abuse.
Misinformation by the nats is in part why we have this comprehension mess in Scotland. They have been in office since General Wade and push so much guff in government that the bit of reporting we get is of the guff, and when you question it they say you're against Scotland.
RochdalePioneers, seconded. But we have the added the problem of such poor and hollowed out journalistic reporting from BBC Scotland and STV News which I jokingly call SNP News. Thank god for the again now hollowed out printed media in Scotland for doing all the heavy lifting mostly on their own and mostly ignored by BBC Scotland and STV. I am trying to remember which SNP scandal it was that broke a couple of years ago, but the STV teatime news didn't mention it for two days!
I read an article a couple of days ago about how BBC Scotland was struggling to invest and make enough content and as a result it was struggling to compete with streaming channels. But thanks to the pressure from the SNP Government in Scotland they launched that white elephant of a second channel and all to produce a fecking 'Scottish' evening news programme that no one watches and they were left to fill the rest of their small evening programme with mostly repeats from the BBC Scotland archives from years ago!
How many news journalists or new Scottish programming fell by the way side funding this ridiculous demand by the SNP Government. Its just yet another example of their wasteful incompetent demands in an attempt to appear a nation in waiting for Indy. And do not get me started on the wasteful 'Scottish' extortionately expensive' embassies that do sod all to promote or help Scots abroad and simple give Angus Robertson a reason to visit them on his many travels abroad!
I think you must not be old enough to remember what happened to the Scottish national newspapers.
Scotsman - went from middle of the road to hard Unionist DT emulator, and abandoned its central Edinburgh office building for a new one opposite Holyrood which it then abandoned for some industrial estate somewhere I can't remember
Herald - ditto change from middle of the road, lost so much circulation it had to set up the National as a not very SNP-friendly way of trying to recover some of the lost income
Edit: A decade and more later, I'm still bitterly angry about the Scotsman. I grew up on it and miss it enormously.
OMG! I am loving the desperation of the SNP supporters on here this morning spinning against the hard truth of what has been actually happening in Scotland and in other devolved areas of the UK and calling out the failure of the London centric UK news media to report it. But seriously you embarrass yourself by trying to claim that 'Herald - ditto change from middle of the road, lost so much circulation it had to set up the National as a not very SNP-friendly way of trying to recover some of the lost income'!!!
And suggesting that I might not be old enough to remember what happened to the Scottish national newspapers, I am going to be sixty this year and I have been a political anorak since my mid teens, I have also been posting here for twenty years too! Really, you are claiming that the SNP mouth piece that is the National which is the SNP equivalent of Pravda is a not very SNP-friendly newspaper?! Thankfully I was not holding my coffee when I read this, this comic with sales in the very very low four figures totally directed at the SNP Indy movement is meant to be a money maker for the Herald?! Would that be in the same that the second white elephant of a BBC Scotland channel was meant to push Indy too?
Have you not realised that the National was primarily a Green/SSP paper when it was founded?* It's changed a bit sicne then, but that was very noticeable att he time. Circulation in print form is low partly (but only partly) because it tends to be a younger persons' paper given its politics.
The BBC Scotland channel has to be seen in the wider context of Government subsidy for local newspapers through the BBC etc - and almost all of them are owned by anti-indy owners (not many of them).
*Edit: just because something supports independence doesn't mean it is pro-SNP.
Dyed in the wool unionists , especially bitter and twisted Tories are unable to grasp that fact Carnyx. They are still miffed that they are not lording it over us.
I can't deny it. Lording it over @malcolmg was always a cherished dream of mine.
Imagine my angst at having it dashed from my hands. Sob.
It's a real turnup for the books, that's for sure.
If we get on the wrong side of China, they might stop selling us tat that we don't need.
What am I missing here?
It’s worse than that.
Their plan is to stop selling us things that we might really need, such as EV batteries, so they can instead sell us their cars by denying European and American manufacturers the batteries - because Europe and America don’t have the technology to produce the new improved batteries the Chinese are now making.
This is why Trump is talking about 100% tariffs on China, and other Western nations face the same dilemma.
There is of course a way forward - develop and manufacture batteries in the west.
MURICA - Batteries are ANTIFA UK - Ah, Yes, Brugh, BRITVOLT, er, right, oh EU - we want to make profit from the engines we already make
Electrification is here and it can't be stopped. What the rage baiters foaming on about EVs don't get is that most people don't care that much about cars. Offer them a new one thats easier to drive cheaper to maintain and more reliable and they'll take it. And they are, with EV sales continuing to rise.
ICE is on its way out, and China will rule the world unless the west wakes up and starts investing serious money.
And a reminder
1) A speech about building batteries isn’t building batteries. 2) A report on building batteries isn’t building batteries. 3) A policy on building batteries isn’t building batteries.
Building fuck off gigantic factories building batteries *is* building batteries.
And solar panels. Of all the stupid things the Reform clowns want to do, switch off renewables is top of the heap. We will end up having to reverse course some years later and be so far behind that we will always then be reliant on other countries.
We have abundant renewable sources, with so much energy flowing that we have to pay the companies to dump it as we can't transmit it and we can't consume it quickly enough. The obvious solution is better transmission - needed anyway as so little money has been spent by the private sector - and battery storage. And not just at big sites - local generation and storage.
But no, the fukers want to shut the whole thing down, import more LNG and then we're fine apparently. Asshats the lot of them, whether they turn up to selection meetings in union jack shorts or not.
Hi Rochdale,
What is the reaction in Aberdeenshire re the large pylon project up your way, are you hearing many opinions either way on the doorstep?
There are "stop the pylons" protestors linking this to Net Zero. But then again they objected to the ones not linked to Net Zero. I get it, pylons are ugly. But they need to go somewhere.
Just to add that it's employing a few of my friends so a big thumbs up from me. One is ex- O&G and doing conversions into electricity transmission.
I am ideologically opposed because I think it reflects our lack of regional pricing - building pylons in Scotland instead of turbines in England.
Ed miliband will be delighted so many new turbines are coming on in Scotland and Scottish waters, makes his job a lot easier. But energy should be built as close to source of use as possible, carting it nearly the full length of the UK is not going to bring energy bills down, the reverse instead
Especially to the Scots. I'm surprised local pricing hasn't been more of an issue politically. It's not just in Aberdeenshire (important as it is) that the interconnector pylons are being built, but further southwards (and to the north!), including cross-border connexions (partly marine) to export Borders electricity to the south.
I did see some of the Borders plans last year, put new infrastructure through isolated, rural valleys with low population, hey presto few objections. Local area misses out on the benefits, but a nice new supply line for the populated south. The bill increases won't all be going on the generation or subsidies for shutting turbines off when it's too windy, it's to help pay for infrastructure too
Yet another reason to support SMR nuclear power. Generate the power near where it’s needed.
"Bernard Jenkin (Con) said it was “beyond belief” that nobody was able to tell the deputy national security adviser that he needed to give the CPS the evidence it needed." I, possibly erroneously, have a generally positive impression of Bernard Jenkin but suggesting that the witness should have been told what to put in their statement doesn't seem to be "beyond belief" in a democratic country with a properly functioning legal system. What would be wrong is a witness being instructed on what to say in their statement.
The CPS say they dropped the case because another case earlier this year established that for it to have a good chance of conviction the prosecution needed to point to the government having labelled China a national security risk at the time the alleged offences were committed. Assuming that is true, and since you can't rewrite history, this relates to the previous government and I don't see how anything said by this one could be relevant. Eg, "the previous government did not describe China as a national security risk but this one does, so we'll go for it" - this won't wash because it's the situation at the time of the offences that counts.
That's the question I keep asking. All the reporting keeps saying "but it's complicated", which isn't any help.
I think it is interesting that in todays urgent question both Emily Thornberry, chair of the foreign affairs select committee and Matt Western, chair joint committee on national security strategy, both labour, were critical of the situation and together with the chairs of the home office, and justice committee are to convene a joint and urgent 'formal inquiry' and asked that civil servants and ministers to be called to testify to this committee
For me that is the correct forum to establish the facts, and whether or not the government and Starmer's position is established as correct or otherwise
This is not a story that is going away, and next week the decision on the London China Embassy is due and as for trade talks with China, then who knows ?
Have you read this? You will find it very helpful.
Yes and if you read the final paragraph that is exactly the issue to be investigated by the joint select committees
The general thread is the CPS are asking for evidence they don't need from the Government. He does caveat that by suggesting the Government was under no obligation not to supply that albeit unnecessary information. I conclude he is suggesting that it was the CPS and not the Government who collapsed the prosecution.
Apols if posted earlier (couldn't see it) Labour in fourth on their lowest ever share in a poll (they are behind Greens before rounding) Find Out Now voting intention: 🟦 Reform UK: 32% (-) 🔵 Conservatives: 17% (-) 🟢 Greens: 15% (-) 🔴 Labour: 15% (-2) 🟠 Lib Dems: 12% (-)
Changes from 8th October [Find Out Now, 15th October, N=2,705]
No I think that is the first posting of many.
So who gets Labour's minus two?
Lost to rounding, everyone on the same as last week otherwise
@DPJHodges Just to be crystal clear. Keir Starmer said in the House yesterday:
“What was on issue in the trial is not the position of the current Government, but the position of the last Government”.
That statement was a clear, provable lie. Collins literally cut and pasted from the Labour manifesto because the position of the current government was key to the trial.
"Bernard Jenkin (Con) said it was “beyond belief” that nobody was able to tell the deputy national security adviser that he needed to give the CPS the evidence it needed." I, possibly erroneously, have a generally positive impression of Bernard Jenkin but suggesting that the witness should have been told what to put in their statement doesn't seem to be "beyond belief" in a democratic country with a properly functioning legal system. What would be wrong is a witness being instructed on what to say in their statement.
The CPS say they dropped the case because another case earlier this year established that for it to have a good chance of conviction the prosecution needed to point to the government having labelled China a national security risk at the time the alleged offences were committed. Assuming that is true, and since you can't rewrite history, this relates to the previous government and I don't see how anything said by this one could be relevant. Eg, "the previous government did not describe China as a national security risk this one does, so we'll go for it" - this won't wash because it's the situation at the time of the offences that counts.
But it is all on record - on Wikipedia no less - that the previous government regarded China as a threat. The CPS could simply have read the relevant passages from the Integrated Review Refresh 2023 and the Integrated Review (2021).
I can't help but feel that there's something else going on, and the explanations being provided are a smokescreen.
About the only person I have seen worth following on this is David Allen Green, who, IMO brings us up to date as far as can be done today:
The only thing I would add is that in guessing what lies behind it all, Ockham's razor + common sense + cockup + our dependence on China + the need to complexify and spread possible blame fairly thinly between anyone who matters, supplies the necessary material.
On the face of the evidence presented by DAG in your link it is hard to understand the decision by the CPS.
And I would also think whoever it was at the CPS who said that the prosecution collapsed because the government refused to provide the necessary evidence is obliged to resign.
Comments
I, possibly erroneously, have a generally positive impression of Bernard Jenkin but suggesting that the witness should have been told what to put in their statement doesn't seem to be "beyond belief" in a democratic country with a properly functioning legal system.
What would be wrong is a witness being instructed on what to say in their statement.
There's no need for Scotland to overproduce energy when the same companies are being paid to turn off turbines when they produce too much. That money is not going back to communities, it's heading offshore to the site owners. The UK state should be building the entire energy network itself, they can bid for tenders
I am surprised the SNP are not making more hay out of the pricing issue, maybe we will hear more in spring 2026
Remember that the alternative being offered is "more gas". Which means for what we can still obtain from the North Sea bringing it ashore in the NE and piping it down the country to English power stations. Or for much of it drilling it up in the US or Qatar and shipping it to a terminal in England then piping it to the power station.
And personally I can’t quite understand why the Tories are going large on this one? I get that they think they’ve got the potential for a scalp. But, and assuming the current administration are playing it straight, the case will turn on the events of the time - where the accused spying for an enemy at the time. So you’ve got to prove two things the spying and the enemy (at that time). Saying the current Government should have done more to keep the case alive misses the point and would surely provide fuel for the defence case.
What am I missing?
https://davidallengreen.com/
"I'm reaching out because there was a change in our compliance obligation. As part of our compliance requirements, we now need to have a completed IRS Form W-8 BEN-E on file for all non-U.S. persons or entities we make payments to."
This is a decent size technical publisher who I imagine/hope were in compliance before.
Imagine my angst at having it dashed from my hands. Sob.
I do wonder if the extra turbines in the North East are in large part due to the oil industry jobs needing replaced and being seen to need to do something directly in Aberdeenshire. Hence 'GB energy' etc
The end result would be more efficient use of the electricity generated by wind in Scotland, and lower prices overall.
But I guess the London newspapers would criticise it as London subsidising electricity prices in Scotland.
I'm not suggesting that no wind farms should be built in Scotland, just that the current pricing system is leading to an inefficient geographical allocation at the moment.
Which is ironic given how localised standing charges are...
Just away to check how many nuclear plants Norway has.
Britain has no eternal friends, no eternal enemies, only eternal interests. Our interests are not served by kow-towing either to Washington or Beijing. However, we need to be polite to both and recognise that for as long as Putin is in the Kremlin there is an immediate threat of Russia launching a military attack against the UK, and has been waging a hybrid war against us and our allies by all means short of miltary- including murder, corruption and subversion. Our laser focus must be to combat that threat. However we must not forget that the US and China are good partners, but not necessarily good friends.
I guess with a £2tr sovereign wealth fund a couple of SMRs will be fuck around money for Norway.
Shameful.
Frankly an embarrassment to the select group of people called Nigel.
In reality, of course, industry was where the energy was (and the raw materials) - Wealden iron, Severnside ironmasters, the Forth saltmakers using the unsaleable slack coal from the local pits.
The only other operation I can think of which is based on the Miliband pricing model (OK he didn't invent it but he's certainly due thje credit for it now) is RM and look what it's trying to get out of doing.
I can't help but feel that there's something else going on, and the explanations being provided are a smokescreen.
Worst type of socialist, who thinks his (dubious) personal principles are more useful than the market, as a guide to policy.
All the reporting keeps saying "but it's complicated", which isn't any help.
Betting firm Paddy Power to close 57 shops in UK and Ireland
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgm444xlllo
https://x.com/Acyn/status/1978557549248184503
AOC: I don't care if someone likes me or not. That will never change the fact that I'm going to fight for them to have health care. I want MAGA to have health care. I want MAGA to be paid a living wage.
But he doesn't want people based on their political affiliation to benefit. And that is the difference between an authoritarian and a leader of a democracy.
https://x.com/Acyn/status/1978648540680503595
https://davidallengreen.com/2025/10/what-the-chinese-spying-case-witness-statements-reveal/
The only thing I would add is that in guessing what lies behind it all, Ockham's razor + common sense + cockup + our dependence on China + the need to complexify and spread possible blame fairly thinly between anyone who matters, supplies the necessary material.
Then someone else posted a map of areas of reliable wind in the British Isles.
Strangely the areas where the turbines are, are those with lots of wind. The areas without turbines don’t have much wind.
That and offshore construction being *easier* for gigantic (and more efficient) turbines is why offshore is growing so fast.
For me that is the correct forum to establish the facts, and whether or not the government and Starmer's position is established as correct or otherwise
This is not a story that is going away, and next week the decision on the London China Embassy is due and as for trade talks with China, then who knows ?
I hope they manage to regenerate it into a much nicer place, a particular lowlight of my experience there was taking the wrong exit from the railway station, rapidly retraced my tracks, made '90s Kings X look salubrious.
The CPS are lying and they dropped the case not because they thought they'd lose it but because the government (this government) wanted it dropped so as not to jeopardise relations with China.
The CPS are not lying but they've made a bad judgement call. Either there was in fact enough evidence that the previous government had designated China a national security threat, or alternatively they could probably have won the case without it.
We'd have a very big and quite big scandal respectively if either of these emerge as being true. I'd be surprised, personally, but let's see where it goes.
Two Senior Tories, Tugenhadt and Kearns accidentally recruit alleged Chinese spies, and as a result the Labour Government falls.
One couldn't make it up.
This is actually fascinating in several respect.
Pfizer's CEO says China is overtaking the U.S. in biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, and that a key reason behind this is because "we spend more time trying to think about how to slow down China rather than think how we can become better."
Here's the whole quote: “They filed more patents this year than the U.S. That’s never happened in history. Five years ago, the split was 90%-10%... The gap is closing, but they probably will become [better than us] unless we get our act together. We spend more time trying to think about how to slow down China rather than think how we can become better than them. We need to have regulatory changes here. We need to have stability. Tariffs and pricing was not helping.”
He's right of course, and it's an argument I make constantly myself: you don't get better by wishing ill will on others, but by improving yourself for the sake of your own people. It's common sense, and when you hear all the "China bad" talk it's more often than not a way to deflect from the fact that they're not working on "ourselves good."
Another interesting aspect here, though, is that China overtaking the U.S. in pharma innovation completely undermines the pharma industry's decades-old narrative that astronomical drug prices are necessary for R&D.
If China - with very low government-negotiated drug costs - can file more patents than the U.S. and close a 90%-10% gap in just five years (!), it's painfully obvious that innovation doesn't require American consumers to pay multiples more than patients in other countries...
https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1978653217664758118
I tend to agree with this view.
I don't know much about national security but I fear it may be fruitless to attempt to defeat this formidable nation.
The official position, provided to banks openly, was that China was on the list of state actors who were
- infiltrating finance
- Stealing info
- Engaging in electronic espionage
- Setting up and testing attacks on infrastructure (usually through proxies)
It’s been that way for years.
Everyone knows this.
Hell, when a cheap laser cuter at a communal workshop crashed when we didn’t connect it to the internet… no one was surprised that was because it was forwarding all designs cut to an IP address in China. That waste than a decade ago.
We fixed the laser cutter by getting it to send DXF that weren’t the designs. Generated from stills in a movie, IIRC.
1) infrastructure/power lines are not up to the job at present, meaning more cost onto consumers via increased bills to pay for the new lines and upgrades
2) reliability - great when they work, not so good today, so extra power sources are still needed
3) battery power doesn't seem to be there yet in terms of storage for the scale of energy produced. Maybe in future it will improve
4) larger projects are encountering difficulties, costs being the biggest one. Hornsea 4 cancelled, so 2 million homes won't be able to be powered by that project
5) they still need a deal of assurance from UK government re CFD subs, contracts and project viability. Offshore windfarm owners will be getting a bit tetchy over the rise of Reform and their promise to roll back Net zero
6) there is a lot of bureaucracy in the planning process. From the drawing board to first power generation, it can be more than 10 years. Mr Starmer has pledged to cut that time frame, however it may take a year or two to implement
Miliband could offset a lot of the concerns, by helping communities and opting for regional pricing. He chose not to, to please his London pals
There's plenty of scope in the North Sea for Mr Miliband to power the south of England with wind energy if he wishes, cut down on the infrastructure costs
The thing about all this is it’s messy and complicated. I consider myself relatively clued up on current affairs, but I am finding it incredibly difficult to get my head around this one. From what I can gather, the crux of the issue is basically that the government is saying the prosecution could not continue because of the position of the previous government. That is either demonstrably true, based on a legal assessment that has been made somewhere (I assume at CPS level) or it isn’t. If that legal assessment itself was flawed (which some seem to be saying it was) then the question goes back to the judgement of those who made the assessment. What I don’t understand is the CPS/government nexus in all of this. Was it the case that the CPS made the determination but that determination was made because of representations made by the current government or civil servants (in which case that widens the blame game) or was that determination made independently based on the judgement of the CPS. That I think is the question we still don’t have a clear answer to.
https://davidallengreen.com/
"The Trump administration has secretly authorized the C.I.A. to conduct covert action in Venezuela, according to U.S. officials, stepping up a campaign against Nicolás Maduro, the country’s authoritarian leader."
It's still covert action if you leak it to the New York Times...
https://x.com/michaeldweiss/status/1978569726046457903
Additionally the information one of them passed on about Tugenhadt and Hunt and who they supported for Tory Leader when Liz Truss became PM was apart from anything else, wholly wrong.
And no, the 'jokes' weren't "edgy".
Vance on public outrage over the "I love Hitler" group chat: "Grow up! Focus on the real issues. Don't focus on what kids say in group chats... The reality is that kids do stupid things, especially young boys — they tell edgy, offensive jokes. That's what kids do."
https://x.com/BulwarkOnline/status/1978515991714799876
The VP openly defending Hitler fans and rape apologists.
The chums of China at Westminster will tell them stuff for free.
Shame she's a couple of decades too old.
Question: Why did you refuse the National Guard on January 6th?
Pelosi: *Turns Around* Shut up. I did not refuse the National Guard. The President didn’t send it! Why are you coming here with Republican talking points as if you are a serious journalist?
https://x.com/Acyn/status/1978571649479053816
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/15/us-visas-charlie-kirk-reaction
Apparently the joint select committee are to call the CPS and Collins together with others so let's see what is established
At least if you go out on the north side you aren't far from the police station.
As if going to Boro isn't bad enough, I had to go there to sit exams!
Labour in fourth on their lowest ever share in a poll (they are behind Greens before rounding)
Find Out Now voting intention:
🟦 Reform UK: 32% (-)
🔵 Conservatives: 17% (-)
🟢 Greens: 15% (-)
🔴 Labour: 15% (-2)
🟠 Lib Dems: 12% (-)
Changes from 8th October
[Find Out Now, 15th October, N=2,705]
@DPJHodges
Just to be crystal clear. Keir Starmer said in the House yesterday:
“What was on issue in the trial is not the position of the current Government, but the position of the last Government”.
That statement was a clear, provable lie. Collins literally cut and pasted from the Labour manifesto because the position of the current government was key to the trial.
So who gets Labour's minus two?
Although, if polling were showing anything like that, in the run up to the GE, I expect that the left wing vote would converge on either Labour, the Lib Dems, or the Greens.
And I would also think whoever it was at the CPS who said that the prosecution collapsed because the government refused to provide the necessary evidence is obliged to resign.