The blunt truth is that solar may not be the right technology for a country where the sun does not shine as much as we would like it to' | Writes Matthew Lynn
I am convinced these “journalists” are very thick.
You have to remember that the journalist is not engaged in a market where truth and intelligence wins, but where they are in a struggle for attention that they win by pandering to the assumptions and base instincts of their readers.
Britain is a country that believes it is uniquely cursed by a cloudy and rainy climate while all the time Ireland is right there, with a wetter and cloudier climate. Writing an article that says solar won't work in Britain because of cloud is the easiest of easy articles to write, that will raise many a wry chuckle from its readers, and many a shake of the head from those readers at the daft people installing solar panels.
The journalist knows exactly what they are doing and why, and making a rational judgement on energy policy is nothing to do with it.
The average Telegraph writer hasn't updated their mental map of the world since the fall of Thatcher. That's fine, because the average Telegraph reader prefers it that way.
I feel like the Left have slowly moved on from Thatcher in the last few years, one day perhaps the Right will follow.
Brexit is the new Thatcher. Were it not for that, Thatcher-hating could have managed 100 years...
And yet Brexit loving hasn't replaced Thatcher loving.
Because for better or worse, Thatcher really was transformational. Brexit is merely a scapegoat.
No, our EU membership was the scapegoat. Blamed for problems it had next to nothing to do with. Brexit was the product of that.
I don't think that's true at all.
Insofar as one can judge from the polls and the campaign, we left the EU because of three factors overall:
- unsustainable EU immigration around 300 times higher than forecast from Eastern Europe (13k were forecast and around 4m showed up) - loss of control over 50-80% of our laws - huge net payments into the EU's unaccountable and often corrupt and incompetent bureaucracy
All of those are intimately related to the EU, though the spineless incompetence of too many of our governments in dealing with it was also crucial. Either way, the EU was blamed for factors for which the EU was responsible, and a majority of voters decided that that didn't outweigh the (largely overrated imho) advantages of membership.
You think that membership of the world's largest and most successful free trade association was an overrated advantage?
Fairy nuff.
I think it was Algakirk that summed up the situation succinctly. If we are outside, we have a trade issue (your point) but if we are inside, we have a politics issue. (loss of control). We were sold a trade group but it morphed into a political group.
And if Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan is to be believed, the EU political project has not gone far enough which is why the EU lags the US in growth.
What makes it worse is that there's a basically unavoidable tradeoff here. Reducing trade frictions is a good thing, but it requires the same rules to apply on both sides of the ex-border. (And whilst those shared rules could be an agreement not to have rules, that's mostly not what people want.)
Working out what those rules are is intrinsically a political thing. The only question is whether you do that through existing national politicians or elect a distinct set of representatives to a transnational body.
Beyond a certain point, if you want more trade, you need more politics to agree the rules of that trade. If you want more control, you need to do less trade with those outside your control. If you want more trade but don't want to be involved in the politics, you need to accept others taking the decisions for you. (See Plato on the downside of not taking part in politics.)
Any of those could be a valid landing point, but the tradeoff is inevitable. The idea of 'just a common market, no politics' is broadly tosh. The CPTPP is another data point on that graph. Much less politics, because it's a much thinner agreement.
Bonnie Greer doing her bit for an ongoing special relationship.
US banned Black soldiers in WW2 from eating in homes; going to pubs etc The British ignored the bans. My late dad got to have a home cooked meal. US segregated the pubs! So folks here fought white GIs so that guys like my dad could have a pint.
Governor DeSantis says the United States should reconsider being close allies with the United Kingdom because they have imported the Third World and we do not share a common culture anymore. https://x.com/ReOpenChris/status/2041999975286992995
That common culture being "those Brit lapdogs used to do whatever we said and were delighted to be our useful idiot ally, it's sad they aren't like that any more"
Your regular reminder that we have 5 openly sectarian MPs, Lancashire County Council includes a 'men and women should be kept separate' party and if polls are right Birmingham will be run after May by a party whose main concern is a desolate strip of the Middle East.
Hard to say RonDS is wrong that we have imported a third world culture.
We also have a bunch of openly sectarian Northern Ireland MPs.
There are also plenty of frum Jews in North London who share views on the separation of men and women that aren't so very different to your County Council members.
Northern Ireland has famously never caused any political trouble so we should be relaxed about replicating it on a larger scale in England.
The US is not exactly short of openly sectarian political representatives either... ...so we should be getting along just fine?
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Working out what those rules are is intrinsically a political thing. The only question is whether you do that through existing national politicians or elect a distinct set of representatives to a transnational body.
Beyond a certain point, if you want more trade, you need more politics to agree the rules of that trade. If you want more control, you need to do less trade with those outside your control. If you want more trade but don't want to be involved in the politics, you need to accept others taking the decisions for you. (See Plato on the downside of not taking part in politics.)
Any of those could be a valid landing point, but the tradeoff is inevitable. The idea of 'just a common market, no politics' is broadly tosh. The CPTPP is another data point on that graph. Much less politics, because it's a much thinner agreement.