There might not be many such people given he is the most despised UK politician since the end of the Bronze Age but what about those residents of Makerfield who rate Keir Starmer and prefer him as PM to Andy Burnham? Eg Labour people, or others, who think he's doing a good job and wish him to carry on and serve his full term.
They are essentially disenfranchised here, aren't they?
In democracy the losing side means losing. Because someone has to win.
That’s not being disenfranchised.
Everyone gets a punt at it. But winning is… winning.
Yes but you know what I mean. There's no vote available to express the 'I want to stick with Starmer' opinion.
There are.
Burnham getting elected doesn’t mean he gets the job.
Then he has to mount a challenge - get enough MPs to back him. Then the members of the party. And ultimately back to the MPs to decide they will have him as PM (nominal after the Labour internal election, but that’s there)
After all that is when the King gives him the job.
In the very likely leadership challenge, the option to vote for Starmer will be there. Unless he decides nit to run. As I understand it it’s automatic that he’s on the leadership election, if he wants it.
In theory yes Starmer can stand. But in practice the 'mo' behind AB if he wins here will sweep him to #10 - either unopposed or after beating Streeting.
So how would a hypothetical Me vote in Makerfield to show support for Keir Starmer?
Can't do Labour because that's a vote against him. Can't do any opposition party because ditto. Abstain? Achieves nothing.
I suppose all I could do is spoil my ballot by writing "I WANT KEIR TO STAY" across it.
If a few thousand do that it might have some cut-through.
Lots of people's views do not have a candidate choice in lots of elections, particularly in FPTP elections. This is not unusual.
Yes but what's unusual is having no avenue to express support for the government.
Well, I can think of some examples...
2018 West Tyrone by-election, 2013 Mid Ulster by-election, etc. 2008 Haltemprice and Howden by-election Tatton in the 1997 general election arguably Every time a sitting Speaker has contested a general election
And there have been plenty of by-elections where the party of government has clearly not been in the running, although there was a candidate available.
There you go - unusual!
Govt party bound to lose doesn't count. You can still vote them. NI is different kettle. Speaker isn't a contest. The DD vanity affair has elements, yes. As does Bell in his white suit.
But nothing quite like this one.
Tatton was the opposite - there was a government candidate but no candidate for the expected incoming government. Opposition parties stood down in favour of Bell but only as a ruse to defeat Hamilton, he wasn't pledged to support Labour, LD or anyone else.
Edit - Tatton not Tattoo, ruse not rule - bloody autoincorrect!
How the Labour Governments used the Distribution of Industry Act between 1945 to 1950 and 1964 to 70 and 74 to 79 to kill Birmingham through the prism of BSA and Austin It is is really, really good and explains how Birmingham was destroyed by a belief that Development Areas and New Towns were the future and as Birmingham was at full employment it could take de-investment. The Board of Trade de-invested in Birmingham killing BSA, and towards the end Austin-Rover and of course the city.
I look on with this strange Burnham religion with an air of disbelief and some sense of unquiet.
He's elected himself PM beyond any of the normal paths and is foisting a new manifesto on the nation. Or at least if his plan comes to fruition.
It feels to me a very uncomfortable thing.
As to his prospects I'm absolutely amazed that so many seem to be cheering him along. It does seem likely that there will be a frothy Burnham boost. I'm very sure that there will be the most ghastly Burnham crash to follow.
The whole thing just isn't the right way to do UK politics.
I look on with this strange Burnham religion with an air of disbelief and some sense of unquiet.
He's elected himself PM beyond any of the normal paths and is foisting a new manifesto on the nation. Or at least if his plan comes to fruition.
It feels to me a very uncomfortable thing.
As to his prospects I'm absolutely amazed that so many seem to be cheering him along. It does seem likely that there will be a frothy Burnham boost. I'm very sure that there will be the most ghastly Burnham crash to follow.
The whole thing just isn't the right way to do UK politics.
I must say I agree with you.
I also expect him to be worse than Starmer, if more self-promoting about it.
If he dissolves parliament before the 1st September then there is very little scope for him to have to make any difficult decisions. He's still likely to book a lot of losses on those numbers though.
No way he’d throw away a large majority like that.
I was taught this in Politics at school, always bet against a Party that calls an unnecessary GE, it annoys the electorate.
What about an unneccesary by-election?
So you don't think the voters of Makerfield will welcome the unique opportunity given to them to get rid of a serving UK PM who is catastrophically unpopular. I think they'll relish the opportunity.
I tend to agree - that has to be Labour's hope.
I am still not convinced Burnham's résumé has what it takes to win this constituency. Reform have a fantastic candidate in Rob the Plumber ( great CV) and all of Nige and Tice's financial question marks seem to have passed them by with little concern from Johnny voter.
I don't agree that Nige's financial question marks have had no impact. A number of people here responded to the initial reporting of the £5 million saying that nothing would stick because Farage is Trump-like in shrugging off such matters, while others bemoaned that it wasn't getting sufficient attention from the media.
Well, a few weeks on, the story has very much not gone away, with numerous follow-up stories. Farage has appeared rattled and has been hiding from the media precisely when Reform need their best campaigner visible. There is probably much more to come. The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards is investigating and will report: it is hard to imagine that he won't be critical of Farage's choices. The question is only how critical. The plausible end of the range of likely options include Farage being suspended from Parliament for long enough to trigger a recall petition.
Very few things shift the polls, so I don't know if this will. Nor am I brave enough to predict it will definitely be a key point in the Makerfield campaign. But I definitely wouldn't conclude it's not an issue and Farage has gotten away with it.
If Farage faces a recall petition and there's then a by-election in Clacton, there's a chance for a Conservative or an independent win. Are there any betting markets on "will the Conservatives win a by-election" or similar?
Farage has claimed he has paid for the Surrey house out of his Jungle fee. The FT state this fee went into his company and hasn't been withdrawn.
I have looked up his companies. He is only a shareholder in 3. 2 are Reform companies and the other is Thorn in their side Ltd
This company does not need an audit and can submit reduced accounts, which does not include a P&L and there is no information on dividends or salary required or presented.
So this begs the question:
a) How does the FT know the money went into his company and hasn't since been taken out. The cash in bank has only gone up £260k so he may have taken a dividend or salary and of course the latest accounts haven't been filed yet and won't be for sometime.
b) Why did Farage say the Jungle earnings paid for his Surrey house? After all he has lots of other earnings and are they all via his company or charged directly by him? Him stating that seemed like a hostage to fortune. He can no doubt afford the £1.4m without the £5m bung and probably with cash, if he took a big enough dividend, or used any money he kept from gigs that doesn't go through his company and is in his personal account.
I'm not getting where the FT or Farage are coming from with this. I don't understand what the FT think they have on him and I don't understand his defence.
From the FT article:
Farage’s spokesperson told the BBC [...] that he had paid for the Surrey property with his fee for participating in I’m a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here! in late 2023, which was roughly £1.5mn before tax [...]
The Reform leader told the FT last year that his earnings from the reality show were paid to his personal media company Thorn in the Side Ltd.
Accounts for the company show its cash position increased from £300,000 on May 31 2023 to £1.7mn on May 31 2024, and suggest that no dividend was paid out in the period.
The company’s cash position increased from £1.7mn to £2mn between May 2024 and May 2025.
So, you can see the I'm a Celebrity money going into his personal media company's accounts in the 2023/4 year, and you can see the money is still there after the house is bought. Therefore, the money wasn't taken out at the time. Now, it is possible that the company had some other, unknown income of the same size which explains those figures, but it's unlikely.
Thanks for that @bondegezou . I was looking at 2024 and 2025 not 2023. I can now see the cash in hand went up £1,409k. Obviously if it was going into his company tax wouldn't be paid on the receipt at that time, but Corporation tax later. His liabilities increased significantly and the note on that shows the increase was due to the increased Corporation Tax liability as you would expect.
OK so that does look to be a bit of a coincidence, but what you don't know is whether Farage's company actually earns £1 - £1.5m every year and pays it out to him as a dividend every year (so it looks pretty neutral without the benefit of a P/L) which isn't unreasonable, but in the Jungle year the earns were £2.5 - £3m, but still only £1 - £1.5m were paid out in dividends.
However that begs the question as to why Farage said he bought the house with the Jungle earnings if he only used his normal dividend earnings.
So I conclude:
The FT might be onto to something, but only because Farage has given a stupid answer. The FT has no idea (I assume) what he takes in dividends normally
Farage is often bad under pressure and gives stupid answers.
I guess the question is whether Farage is just bad under pressure and gives stupid answers, or whether he's hiding something, which is causing him to give stupid answers. If the truth is unpalatable, he felt he needed to come up with a lie?
Yep. he could just say 'I make a lot of money, as is clear from my HofC declarations and I can afford to buy a £1.4m house with cash so no I did not dip into the £5m gift'
One way of spotting a lie is that it's overly specific and detailed.
I thought of a very very rough and ready way to look at his profits, by working back from his Corporation Tax liability. This really is a dubious calculation but a really rough ballpark (and which could be wildly out) it looks like the profit was around £700k the year before jungle, £1.8m in the jungle year and £1.4m after the jungle year. But take those figure with a huge pinch of salt.
Which raises the further question. Why does a man with such an income need £5 million for "security"?
I would have thought that was obvious; having raised Peter to pay Paul, and not having done so, Paul's going to come for him. With John, Donald and David.
I look on with this strange Burnham religion with an air of disbelief and some sense of unquiet.
He's elected himself PM beyond any of the normal paths and is foisting a new manifesto on the nation. Or at least if his plan comes to fruition.
It feels to me a very uncomfortable thing.
As to his prospects I'm absolutely amazed that so many seem to be cheering him along. It does seem likely that there will be a frothy Burnham boost. I'm very sure that there will be the most ghastly Burnham crash to follow.
The whole thing just isn't the right way to do UK politics.
I must say I agree with you.
I also expect him to be worse than Starmer, if more self-promoting about it.
Couldn't possibly be as bad as that self-promoting s*d, Johnson
An interesting transport project which has been approved for the Hope Valley in teh Peak District.
"Hope Valley Mini Switzerland".
It's a 3 year experiment in integrated rural transport, coordinating Bus / Rail timetables as happens across Switzerland, and integrating ticketing. A slice of London or Manchester practice in a rural area. The process was that a former director of TFL, senior Manager in Chiltern Railways had an idea, developed the concept, advertised for areas interested, asked for Govt approval, and received it.
He knows how to do things, as it took little more than a year
It has measured ("as long as use of private cars is not restricted") support from the Ref UK head of Derbyshire County Council.
I may be wrong, but I suspect this will just mean loads of empty buses cloging up the roads - I think that's been the fate of most similar initiatives.
That said, making the bus timetable work with the train times seems like common sense 101, which is presumably why we don't generally do it.
I'd recommend the presentation. They are very intentional about calling it "Mini Switzerland" (obvs the name is modelled on the Mini Holland active travel projects in London under Boris Johnson, rather than say "linked timetable project", as there is intended to be adoption of a number of ways Swiss Transport is run, and because Hope Valley is isolated with Sheffield at one end and GM at the other it is a good place to try. Plus there is upside as perhaps 1/3 of the population in those cities do not have motor vehicles.
Swiss methods they are embracing aiui include the bus waiting if the train is a few minutes wait, an hourly timetable throughout the day (extra services).
One interesting challenge is that according to someone at the online presentation who lives in Sheffield and walks in the Peaks often Sunday buses hardly exists in Derbyshire (it's the other end from me, so I don't know in detail; @bondegezou might know more).
Me? I don't even know where Derbyshire is. I'm a North Londoner. Events outside zone 6 baffle and confuse me.
Though it is clear that you need to visit ad enjoy Derbyshire, the county with a bit of everything.
Will I need vaccinations? "A bit of everything" suggests so...
Maybe avoid Eyam plague village then...
It was the bloody southerners that gave it to them. Flea infested cloth delivered to the tailor from London (as you might have guessed I visited it earlier this year.).
I look on with this strange Burnham religion with an air of disbelief and some sense of unquiet.
He's elected himself PM beyond any of the normal paths and is foisting a new manifesto on the nation. Or at least if his plan comes to fruition.
It feels to me a very uncomfortable thing.
As to his prospects I'm absolutely amazed that so many seem to be cheering him along. It does seem likely that there will be a frothy Burnham boost. I'm very sure that there will be the most ghastly Burnham crash to follow.
The whole thing just isn't the right way to do UK politics.
I must say I agree with you.
I also expect him to be worse than Starmer, if more self-promoting about it.
Couldn't possibly be as bad as that self-promoting s*d, Johnson
Could this legendary gentleman please get in touch.
A future Reform government would like to give him a peerage for this outstanding public service.
He can do similar to all the crooks currently sitting in the House of Lords!
Yusuf is a loathsome cxnt ! Really full of himself and another obnoxious arsehole so of course he’d like the Reform voter abusing Reeves . One can only hope he didn’t procreate. We don’t need the UK gene pool suffering further damage !
This will arguably be the harshest spring heat wave in European history
We can see up to 40C in Spain,35C in Central Europe for days. Thousands of records will be pulverized in Spain,Portugal,France,Benelux,UK;SCandinavia,Germany,Alps,Czechia
This will arguably be the harshest spring heat wave in European history
We can see up to 40C in Spain,35C in Central Europe for days. Thousands of records will be pulverized in Spain,Portugal,France,Benelux,UK;SCandinavia,Germany,Alps,Czechia
An interesting transport project which has been approved for the Hope Valley in teh Peak District.
"Hope Valley Mini Switzerland".
It's a 3 year experiment in integrated rural transport, coordinating Bus / Rail timetables as happens across Switzerland, and integrating ticketing. A slice of London or Manchester practice in a rural area. The process was that a former director of TFL, senior Manager in Chiltern Railways had an idea, developed the concept, advertised for areas interested, asked for Govt approval, and received it.
He knows how to do things, as it took little more than a year
It has measured ("as long as use of private cars is not restricted") support from the Ref UK head of Derbyshire County Council.
That’s dangerous if Reform know how to do things like this. I’ve seen the integrated system in Switzerland and Spain. Currently using the excellent SNCF options in France. Hope it works out in a rural area because they need it.
The strategy set out in this paper seeks to establish the conditions for cheap, reliable, and abundant energy at home. A future Restore Britain government would pursue the full development of our offshore oil and gas reserves, the rapid expansion of nuclear energy, the exploitation of onshore shale where viable, and if able to compete some limited role for renewables within a balanced grid. Our overriding objective is to deliver dispatchable power at prices affordable to British households and competitive for British industry.
Let's quote further from the document...
We will also need to embark upon a mass removal of our binding Net Zero commitments, the vast majority of which are smothering our economy to no worthwhile end. This means canning the expensive but locked-in contracts that we already have with subsidised renewables companies.
They are very anti-Net Zero and would do the Trumpian thing of killing renewables just because they're too woke. They claim not to be climate change deniers, but come out with stuff like...
Atmospheric carbon dioxide has been in a general trend of decline since the Eocene period some 51 million years ago, so alarmist notions that fluctuating levels of carbon dioxide as such pose an existential threat to life on earth are scientifically baseless.
And say...
It has given arbitrary privilege to the most expensive and intermittent energy sources, such as onshore wind and solar, while degrading the most cost-efficient and effective, such as oil, gas, and nuclear.
And...
Renewables at present are so expensive, we could in principle lose them all tomorrow without any real effect on the grid besides making it cheaper and stabler.
That is a seriously deluded policy.
(1) Nuclear makes wind and solar look cheap. Now, it's possible that SMRs will change that in future. But right now, new nuclear is (a) expensive and (b) unreliable. There are offshore wind farms with better uptime than some nuclear plants.
(2) Have Advance not looked out the window? If you are all in on hydrocarbons, how do you think your economy does when -say- Russia invades Ukraine or Iran closes the Straits of Hormuz?
(3) If you wanted to put renewables on the same terms as everyone else, and have them just sell into the grid at market rates, then you know what? we'd still have quite a lot of renewables. Their assertation that actually getting rid of renewable generation would reduce prices is utterly deluded. (A more rational policy would be to say you are getting rid of the fixed price contracts for renewable power generation that pay renewables for energy when none is needed. )
I'm all for us doing a Norway. That is, taking advantage of our hydrocarbon reserves. And I'm happy to allow people to have a go at tight gas in the UK.
But at the same time, energy efficiency and renewable power generation are not things to be feared. In the future, all power generation will be solar, even in the UK, because it is going to keep getting cheaper and cheaper.
Why can’t I flag this as trolling?
Are the decommissioning costs included in this? I say this as someone who has supplied the nuclear industry and I certainly don’t want the goods back.
Decom costs are never included for nuclear, the cost of decommissioning that stretches 100 years into the future would make the strike price uncompetitive.
The issue with Reform is that unlike the Tories they seem to have given up trying to appeal to anyone who wouldn’t at least be minded to vote for them in the first place.
This will arguably be the harshest spring heat wave in European history
We can see up to 40C in Spain,35C in Central Europe for days. Thousands of records will be pulverized in Spain,Portugal,France,Benelux,UK;SCandinavia,Germany,Alps,Czechia
Could this legendary gentleman please get in touch.
A future Reform government would like to give him a peerage for this outstanding public service.
He can do similar to all the crooks currently sitting in the House of Lords!
Yusuf is a loathsome cxnt ! Really full of himself and another obnoxious arsehole so of course he’d like the Reform voter abusing Reeves . One can only hope he didn’t procreate. We don’t need the UK gene pool suffering further damage !
He's very brash and American in style, i assume as that plays well on twitter. And increasingly here.
As i've noted before i've seen even some quite moderate people complain about politicians 'faking' being opponents because they have been polite to or just been spotted making friendly small talk with an opponent.
People want to hate others and being cruel to them is popular.
His signature issue was sounding the alarm about the national debt. The MIT-educated engineer designed, and frequently wore, a digital badge that shows in real time how much the U.S. Treasury owes. The debt prompted Massie to vote against Trump’s tax cuts last summer. In March 2020, during the pandemic, Massie blocked unanimous consent on a $2.2 trillion spending bill, forcing the House to return to Washington.
For the record: I think the most important reason the Loser attacked Massie is Massie's persistent demands that the Epstein files be released. Probably.
Any current MPs who might wear a similar badge? If so, they would have my respect.
There might not be many such people given he is the most despised UK politician since the end of the Bronze Age but what about those residents of Makerfield who rate Keir Starmer and prefer him as PM to Andy Burnham? Eg Labour people, or others, who think he's doing a good job and wish him to carry on and serve his full term.
They are essentially disenfranchised here, aren't they?
I think Starmer has bowed to the inevitable. There was no attempt by the NEC or Starmer to obstruct Burnham.
He has welcomed his own political assasin.
Yes, no choice. He didn't have the political capital to block it a 2nd time.
I'm impressed with his composure in public actually. It's a pretty gruesome situation he's in.
May I suggest he knows it is the end of his Premiership and maybe it is a burden removed as he can get back to his family and watching Arsenal
I don't think that Starmer has given up. He probably calculated that he might either have been unable to block Burnham or that if he had then it would have absolutely trashed his remaining credibility within the party, enough to ensure a leadership challenge then materialised and succeeded. He's probably calculated that Makerfield is no shoo in and that if he acts graciously towards accommodating Burnham but Burnham loses his stock will be higher and enough to see off a challenge from one of the other challengers for now. That would buy him a bit of time to turn around the polls which in turn would allow him carry on in the medium term.
It is quite surreal that a serving UK PM should be relying on his party's candidate to lose a by-election in order to help his own survival prospects, but that is where we are at, I think. .
No, I think he is gone either way.
If Burnham wins then I expect Starmer to rapidly resign and an effective Burnham coronation.
If Labour under Starmer are so unpopular that even Burnham can't hold Makerfield, then the clamour will turn to who else can lead the Party and someone else will be needed.
The writing is on the wall either way.
The one thing that Starmer can do now is retire with a modicum of dignity and not be dragged out kicking and screaming.
You are probably right that the writing is on the wall for Starmer whether or not Burnham wins Makerfield. I didn't say otherwise. But I was trying to follow Starmer's own thinking.
There's no reason to think that, as of now, Starmer has given up. The opportunity is there for him to go while retaining some dignity and he's not taken it. So to rationalise his actions, I consider that Starmer must think that he will have a better chance of hanging on should Burnham lose Makerfield than he would have had after trying to block Burnham to an absolute outcry and then facing a leadership challenge in the midst of such an outcry.
The issue with Reform is that unlike the Tories they seem to have given up trying to appeal to anyone who wouldn’t at least be minded to vote for them in the first place.
If the Tories fold, as the JRMs of the world want, then that's fine, they'll pick up a good chunk of the remaining tory vote. There's not much longevity for the Tories in being the polite right wingers, when the attention and new members will go to Reform.
Could this legendary gentleman please get in touch.
A future Reform government would like to give him a peerage for this outstanding public service.
He can do similar to all the crooks currently sitting in the House of Lords!
Yusuf is a loathsome cxnt ! Really full of himself and another obnoxious arsehole so of course he’d like the Reform voter abusing Reeves . One can only hope he didn’t procreate. We don’t need the UK gene pool suffering further damage !
As someone who is also from Sri Lankan origin, may I apologise for Zia. He’s an embarrassment and he’s treated with utter contempt within the expatriate Sri Lankan community here. My wife’s cousin went to school with him at Hampton and he has told us that he was tw*t back then too.
This will arguably be the harshest spring heat wave in European history
We can see up to 40C in Spain,35C in Central Europe for days. Thousands of records will be pulverized in Spain,Portugal,France,Benelux,UK;SCandinavia,Germany,Alps,Czechia
While I am obviously one of those who would love to see Farage brought down, I fear that those who are hoping his downfall will be due to dodgy donations are bound for disappointment. I suspect Farage, and Reform, are the recipients of all sorts of iffy money from iffy people, but I really don't think the public care in the current climate.
Anyhow, I'd rather see Farage and Reform brought down because the voters' eyes are opened to how disastrous, pernicious and nasty their policy proposals are.
The issue with Reform is that unlike the Tories they seem to have given up trying to appeal to anyone who wouldn’t at least be minded to vote for them in the first place.
You know when I think I could vote Reform they do something twattish which makes me remember why I wasn’t minded to vote for them in the first place.
This will arguably be the harshest spring heat wave in European history
We can see up to 40C in Spain,35C in Central Europe for days. Thousands of records will be pulverized in Spain,Portugal,France,Benelux,UK;SCandinavia,Germany,Alps,Czechia
There might not be many such people given he is the most despised UK politician since the end of the Bronze Age but what about those residents of Makerfield who rate Keir Starmer and prefer him as PM to Andy Burnham? Eg Labour people, or others, who think he's doing a good job and wish him to carry on and serve his full term.
They are essentially disenfranchised here, aren't they?
I think Starmer has bowed to the inevitable. There was no attempt by the NEC or Starmer to obstruct Burnham.
He has welcomed his own political assasin.
Yes, no choice. He didn't have the political capital to block it a 2nd time.
I'm impressed with his composure in public actually. It's a pretty gruesome situation he's in.
May I suggest he knows it is the end of his Premiership and maybe it is a burden removed as he can get back to his family and watching Arsenal
I don't think that Starmer has given up. He probably calculated that he might either have been unable to block Burnham or that if he had then it would have absolutely trashed his remaining credibility within the party, enough to ensure a leadership challenge then materialised and succeeded. He's probably calculated that Makerfield is no shoo in and that if he acts graciously towards accommodating Burnham but Burnham loses his stock will be higher and enough to see off a challenge from one of the other challengers for now. That would buy him a bit of time to turn around the polls which in turn would allow him carry on in the medium term.
It is quite surreal that a serving UK PM should be relying on his party's candidate to lose a by-election in order to help his own survival prospects, but that is where we are at, I think. .
No, I think he is gone either way.
If Burnham wins then I expect Starmer to rapidly resign and an effective Burnham coronation.
If Labour under Starmer are so unpopular that even Burnham can't hold Makerfield, then the clamour will turn to who else can lead the Party and someone else will be needed.
The writing is on the wall either way.
The one thing that Starmer can do now is retire with a modicum of dignity and not be dragged out kicking and screaming.
You are probably right that the writing is on the wall for Starmer whether or not Burnham wins Makerfield. I didn't say otherwise. But I was trying to follow Starmer's own thinking.
There's no reason to think that, as of now, Starmer has given up. The opportunity is there for him to go while retaining some dignity and he's not taken it. So to rationalise his actions, I consider that Starmer must think that he will have a better chance of hanging on should Burnham lose Makerfield than he would have had after trying to block Burnham to an absolute outcry and then facing a leadership challenge in the midst of such an outcry.
I think you made a good point earlier in the thread that Burnham is the insurgent here. I think there’s something in that and it will help him over the line.
The strategy set out in this paper seeks to establish the conditions for cheap, reliable, and abundant energy at home. A future Restore Britain government would pursue the full development of our offshore oil and gas reserves, the rapid expansion of nuclear energy, the exploitation of onshore shale where viable, and if able to compete some limited role for renewables within a balanced grid. Our overriding objective is to deliver dispatchable power at prices affordable to British households and competitive for British industry.
Let's quote further from the document...
We will also need to embark upon a mass removal of our binding Net Zero commitments, the vast majority of which are smothering our economy to no worthwhile end. This means canning the expensive but locked-in contracts that we already have with subsidised renewables companies.
They are very anti-Net Zero and would do the Trumpian thing of killing renewables just because they're too woke. They claim not to be climate change deniers, but come out with stuff like...
Atmospheric carbon dioxide has been in a general trend of decline since the Eocene period some 51 million years ago, so alarmist notions that fluctuating levels of carbon dioxide as such pose an existential threat to life on earth are scientifically baseless.
And say...
It has given arbitrary privilege to the most expensive and intermittent energy sources, such as onshore wind and solar, while degrading the most cost-efficient and effective, such as oil, gas, and nuclear.
And...
Renewables at present are so expensive, we could in principle lose them all tomorrow without any real effect on the grid besides making it cheaper and stabler.
That is a seriously deluded policy.
(1) Nuclear makes wind and solar look cheap. Now, it's possible that SMRs will change that in future. But right now, new nuclear is (a) expensive and (b) unreliable. There are offshore wind farms with better uptime than some nuclear plants.
(2) Have Advance not looked out the window? If you are all in on hydrocarbons, how do you think your economy does when -say- Russia invades Ukraine or Iran closes the Straits of Hormuz?
(3) If you wanted to put renewables on the same terms as everyone else, and have them just sell into the grid at market rates, then you know what? we'd still have quite a lot of renewables. Their assertation that actually getting rid of renewable generation would reduce prices is utterly deluded. (A more rational policy would be to say you are getting rid of the fixed price contracts for renewable power generation that pay renewables for energy when none is needed. )
I'm all for us doing a Norway. That is, taking advantage of our hydrocarbon reserves. And I'm happy to allow people to have a go at tight gas in the UK.
But at the same time, energy efficiency and renewable power generation are not things to be feared. In the future, all power generation will be solar, even in the UK, because it is going to keep getting cheaper and cheaper.
Why can’t I flag this as trolling?
Are the decommissioning costs included in this? I say this as someone who has supplied the nuclear industry and I certainly don’t want the goods back.
Decom costs are never included for nuclear, the cost of decommissioning that stretches 100 years into the future would make the strike price uncompetitive.
The current cumulative cost of decommissioning the UK's nuclear plants and facilities are of the order of £220 billion.
Those costs are needing to be met now. A significant proportion should be included in the strike price.
I think Starmer will do a dignified deal with Burnham.
I think he’d need to set a timeline as to when he’ll stand down .
I expect what will happen is we’ll get MPs nominating and Burnham is likely to win that convincingly . At that point any other candidates will withdraw .
The issue with Reform is that unlike the Tories they seem to have given up trying to appeal to anyone who wouldn’t at least be minded to vote for them in the first place.
They seem to be targeting their appeal on Trump supporting vaccine sceptic fascists banned from the UK:
"The Reform candidate is friends on Facebook with a fascist organiser and archived posts from his now-suspended X account appear to show vaccine scepticism, support for Donald Trump and engagement with a Dutch far-right influencer who was banned from the UK ahead of the Unite the Kingdom rally this weekend."
An interesting transport project which has been approved for the Hope Valley in teh Peak District.
"Hope Valley Mini Switzerland".
It's a 3 year experiment in integrated rural transport, coordinating Bus / Rail timetables as happens across Switzerland, and integrating ticketing. A slice of London or Manchester practice in a rural area. The process was that a former director of TFL, senior Manager in Chiltern Railways had an idea, developed the concept, advertised for areas interested, asked for Govt approval, and received it.
He knows how to do things, as it took little more than a year
It has measured ("as long as use of private cars is not restricted") support from the Ref UK head of Derbyshire County Council.
I may be wrong, but I suspect this will just mean loads of empty buses cloging up the roads - I think that's been the fate of most similar initiatives.
That said, making the bus timetable work with the train times seems like common sense 101, which is presumably why we don't generally do it.
A key difference is that we tend to have more stakeholders needing to reach agreement because buses especially were privatised in bits, so we have "islands of integration" in some places. AIUI in Switzerland they have travelcards covering all forms of public transport nationwide, including fully paid, and half fare and others.
The strategy set out in this paper seeks to establish the conditions for cheap, reliable, and abundant energy at home. A future Restore Britain government would pursue the full development of our offshore oil and gas reserves, the rapid expansion of nuclear energy, the exploitation of onshore shale where viable, and if able to compete some limited role for renewables within a balanced grid. Our overriding objective is to deliver dispatchable power at prices affordable to British households and competitive for British industry.
Let's quote further from the document...
We will also need to embark upon a mass removal of our binding Net Zero commitments, the vast majority of which are smothering our economy to no worthwhile end. This means canning the expensive but locked-in contracts that we already have with subsidised renewables companies.
They are very anti-Net Zero and would do the Trumpian thing of killing renewables just because they're too woke. They claim not to be climate change deniers, but come out with stuff like...
Atmospheric carbon dioxide has been in a general trend of decline since the Eocene period some 51 million years ago, so alarmist notions that fluctuating levels of carbon dioxide as such pose an existential threat to life on earth are scientifically baseless.
And say...
It has given arbitrary privilege to the most expensive and intermittent energy sources, such as onshore wind and solar, while degrading the most cost-efficient and effective, such as oil, gas, and nuclear.
And...
Renewables at present are so expensive, we could in principle lose them all tomorrow without any real effect on the grid besides making it cheaper and stabler.
That is a seriously deluded policy.
(1) Nuclear makes wind and solar look cheap. Now, it's possible that SMRs will change that in future. But right now, new nuclear is (a) expensive and (b) unreliable. There are offshore wind farms with better uptime than some nuclear plants.
(2) Have Advance not looked out the window? If you are all in on hydrocarbons, how do you think your economy does when -say- Russia invades Ukraine or Iran closes the Straits of Hormuz?
(3) If you wanted to put renewables on the same terms as everyone else, and have them just sell into the grid at market rates, then you know what? we'd still have quite a lot of renewables. Their assertation that actually getting rid of renewable generation would reduce prices is utterly deluded. (A more rational policy would be to say you are getting rid of the fixed price contracts for renewable power generation that pay renewables for energy when none is needed. )
I'm all for us doing a Norway. That is, taking advantage of our hydrocarbon reserves. And I'm happy to allow people to have a go at tight gas in the UK.
But at the same time, energy efficiency and renewable power generation are not things to be feared. In the future, all power generation will be solar, even in the UK, because it is going to keep getting cheaper and cheaper.
Why can’t I flag this as trolling?
Are the decommissioning costs included in this? I say this as someone who has supplied the nuclear industry and I certainly don’t want the goods back.
Decom costs are never included for nuclear, the cost of decommissioning that stretches 100 years into the future would make the strike price uncompetitive.
The current cumulative cost of decommissioning the UK's nuclear plants and facilities are of the order of £220 billion.
Those costs are needing to be met now. A significant proportion should be included in the strike price.
An interesting transport project which has been approved for the Hope Valley in teh Peak District.
"Hope Valley Mini Switzerland".
It's a 3 year experiment in integrated rural transport, coordinating Bus / Rail timetables as happens across Switzerland, and integrating ticketing. A slice of London or Manchester practice in a rural area. The process was that a former director of TFL, senior Manager in Chiltern Railways had an idea, developed the concept, advertised for areas interested, asked for Govt approval, and received it.
He knows how to do things, as it took little more than a year
It has measured ("as long as use of private cars is not restricted") support from the Ref UK head of Derbyshire County Council.
I may be wrong, but I suspect this will just mean loads of empty buses cloging up the roads - I think that's been the fate of most similar initiatives.
That said, making the bus timetable work with the train times seems like common sense 101, which is presumably why we don't generally do it.
I'd recommend the presentation. They are very intentional about calling it "Mini Switzerland" (obvs the name is modelled on the Mini Holland active travel projects in London under Boris Johnson, rather than say "linked timetable project", as there is intended to be adoption of a number of ways Swiss Transport is run, and because Hope Valley is isolated with Sheffield at one end and GM at the other it is a good place to try. Plus there is upside as perhaps 1/3 of the population in those cities do not have motor vehicles.
Swiss methods they are embracing aiui include the bus waiting if the train is a few minutes wait, an hourly timetable throughout the day (extra services).
One interesting challenge is that according to someone at the online presentation who lives in Sheffield and walks in the Peaks often Sunday buses hardly exists in Derbyshire (it's the other end from me, so I don't know in detail; @bondegezou might know more).
Me? I don't even know where Derbyshire is. I'm a North Londoner. Events outside zone 6 baffle and confuse me.
The strategy set out in this paper seeks to establish the conditions for cheap, reliable, and abundant energy at home. A future Restore Britain government would pursue the full development of our offshore oil and gas reserves, the rapid expansion of nuclear energy, the exploitation of onshore shale where viable, and if able to compete some limited role for renewables within a balanced grid. Our overriding objective is to deliver dispatchable power at prices affordable to British households and competitive for British industry.
Let's quote further from the document...
We will also need to embark upon a mass removal of our binding Net Zero commitments, the vast majority of which are smothering our economy to no worthwhile end. This means canning the expensive but locked-in contracts that we already have with subsidised renewables companies.
They are very anti-Net Zero and would do the Trumpian thing of killing renewables just because they're too woke. They claim not to be climate change deniers, but come out with stuff like...
Atmospheric carbon dioxide has been in a general trend of decline since the Eocene period some 51 million years ago, so alarmist notions that fluctuating levels of carbon dioxide as such pose an existential threat to life on earth are scientifically baseless.
And say...
It has given arbitrary privilege to the most expensive and intermittent energy sources, such as onshore wind and solar, while degrading the most cost-efficient and effective, such as oil, gas, and nuclear.
And...
Renewables at present are so expensive, we could in principle lose them all tomorrow without any real effect on the grid besides making it cheaper and stabler.
That is a seriously deluded policy.
(1) Nuclear makes wind and solar look cheap. Now, it's possible that SMRs will change that in future. But right now, new nuclear is (a) expensive and (b) unreliable. There are offshore wind farms with better uptime than some nuclear plants.
(2) Have Advance not looked out the window? If you are all in on hydrocarbons, how do you think your economy does when -say- Russia invades Ukraine or Iran closes the Straits of Hormuz?
(3) If you wanted to put renewables on the same terms as everyone else, and have them just sell into the grid at market rates, then you know what? we'd still have quite a lot of renewables. Their assertation that actually getting rid of renewable generation would reduce prices is utterly deluded. (A more rational policy would be to say you are getting rid of the fixed price contracts for renewable power generation that pay renewables for energy when none is needed. )
I'm all for us doing a Norway. That is, taking advantage of our hydrocarbon reserves. And I'm happy to allow people to have a go at tight gas in the UK.
But at the same time, energy efficiency and renewable power generation are not things to be feared. In the future, all power generation will be solar, even in the UK, because it is going to keep getting cheaper and cheaper.
Why can’t I flag this as trolling?
Are the decommissioning costs included in this? I say this as someone who has supplied the nuclear industry and I certainly don’t want the goods back.
Decom costs are never included for nuclear, the cost of decommissioning that stretches 100 years into the future would make the strike price uncompetitive.
The current cumulative cost of decommissioning the UK's nuclear plants and facilities are of the order of £220 billion.
Those costs are needing to be met now. A significant proportion should be included in the strike price.
You need to discount that back; I suspect that the discounted number (while still seriously large) is in the low to mid 10s of billions rather than 200bn+.
This will arguably be the harshest spring heat wave in European history
We can see up to 40C in Spain,35C in Central Europe for days. Thousands of records will be pulverized in Spain,Portugal,France,Benelux,UK;SCandinavia,Germany,Alps,Czechia
The strategy set out in this paper seeks to establish the conditions for cheap, reliable, and abundant energy at home. A future Restore Britain government would pursue the full development of our offshore oil and gas reserves, the rapid expansion of nuclear energy, the exploitation of onshore shale where viable, and if able to compete some limited role for renewables within a balanced grid. Our overriding objective is to deliver dispatchable power at prices affordable to British households and competitive for British industry.
Let's quote further from the document...
We will also need to embark upon a mass removal of our binding Net Zero commitments, the vast majority of which are smothering our economy to no worthwhile end. This means canning the expensive but locked-in contracts that we already have with subsidised renewables companies.
They are very anti-Net Zero and would do the Trumpian thing of killing renewables just because they're too woke. They claim not to be climate change deniers, but come out with stuff like...
Atmospheric carbon dioxide has been in a general trend of decline since the Eocene period some 51 million years ago, so alarmist notions that fluctuating levels of carbon dioxide as such pose an existential threat to life on earth are scientifically baseless.
And say...
It has given arbitrary privilege to the most expensive and intermittent energy sources, such as onshore wind and solar, while degrading the most cost-efficient and effective, such as oil, gas, and nuclear.
And...
Renewables at present are so expensive, we could in principle lose them all tomorrow without any real effect on the grid besides making it cheaper and stabler.
That is a seriously deluded policy.
(1) Nuclear makes wind and solar look cheap. Now, it's possible that SMRs will change that in future. But right now, new nuclear is (a) expensive and (b) unreliable. There are offshore wind farms with better uptime than some nuclear plants.
(2) Have Advance not looked out the window? If you are all in on hydrocarbons, how do you think your economy does when -say- Russia invades Ukraine or Iran closes the Straits of Hormuz?
(3) If you wanted to put renewables on the same terms as everyone else, and have them just sell into the grid at market rates, then you know what? we'd still have quite a lot of renewables. Their assertation that actually getting rid of renewable generation would reduce prices is utterly deluded. (A more rational policy would be to say you are getting rid of the fixed price contracts for renewable power generation that pay renewables for energy when none is needed. )
I'm all for us doing a Norway. That is, taking advantage of our hydrocarbon reserves. And I'm happy to allow people to have a go at tight gas in the UK.
But at the same time, energy efficiency and renewable power generation are not things to be feared. In the future, all power generation will be solar, even in the UK, because it is going to keep getting cheaper and cheaper.
Why can’t I flag this as trolling?
Are the decommissioning costs included in this? I say this as someone who has supplied the nuclear industry and I certainly don’t want the goods back.
He already knows about it ! He gets the "this is a troll" emails .
This will arguably be the harshest spring heat wave in European history
We can see up to 40C in Spain,35C in Central Europe for days. Thousands of records will be pulverized in Spain,Portugal,France,Benelux,UK;SCandinavia,Germany,Alps,Czechia
Could this legendary gentleman please get in touch.
A future Reform government would like to give him a peerage for this outstanding public service.
He can do similar to all the crooks currently sitting in the House of Lords!
Yusuf is a loathsome cxnt ! Really full of himself and another obnoxious arsehole so of course he’d like the Reform voter abusing Reeves . One can only hope he didn’t procreate. We don’t need the UK gene pool suffering further damage !
As someone who is also from Sri Lankan origin, may I apologise for Zia. He’s an embarrassment and he’s treated with utter contempt within the expatriate Sri Lankan community here. My wife’s cousin went to school with him at Hampton and he has told us that he was tw*t back then too.
My Sri Lankan background wife is similarly mortified by his antics.
Could this legendary gentleman please get in touch.
A future Reform government would like to give him a peerage for this outstanding public service.
He can do similar to all the crooks currently sitting in the House of Lords!
Yusuf is a loathsome cxnt ! Really full of himself and another obnoxious arsehole so of course he’d like the Reform voter abusing Reeves . One can only hope he didn’t procreate. We don’t need the UK gene pool suffering further damage !
As someone who is also from Sri Lankan origin, may I apologise for Zia. He’s an embarrassment and he’s treated with utter contempt within the expatriate Sri Lankan community here. My wife’s cousin went to school with him at Hampton and he has told us that he was tw*t back then too.
I don't think you need to feel residual embarrassment for people of similar ethnic origin. He's just a douche, which is something that transcends race, nationality, and culture.
An interesting transport project which has been approved for the Hope Valley in teh Peak District.
"Hope Valley Mini Switzerland".
It's a 3 year experiment in integrated rural transport, coordinating Bus / Rail timetables as happens across Switzerland, and integrating ticketing. A slice of London or Manchester practice in a rural area. The process was that a former director of TFL, senior Manager in Chiltern Railways had an idea, developed the concept, advertised for areas interested, asked for Govt approval, and received it.
He knows how to do things, as it took little more than a year
It has measured ("as long as use of private cars is not restricted") support from the Ref UK head of Derbyshire County Council.
I may be wrong, but I suspect this will just mean loads of empty buses cloging up the roads - I think that's been the fate of most similar initiatives.
That said, making the bus timetable work with the train times seems like common sense 101, which is presumably why we don't generally do it.
I'd recommend the presentation. They are very intentional about calling it "Mini Switzerland" (obvs the name is modelled on the Mini Holland active travel projects in London under Boris Johnson, rather than say "linked timetable project", as there is intended to be adoption of a number of ways Swiss Transport is run, and because Hope Valley is isolated with Sheffield at one end and GM at the other it is a good place to try. Plus there is upside as perhaps 1/3 of the population in those cities do not have motor vehicles.
Swiss methods they are embracing aiui include the bus waiting if the train is a few minutes wait, an hourly timetable throughout the day (extra services).
One interesting challenge is that according to someone at the online presentation who lives in Sheffield and walks in the Peaks often Sunday buses hardly exists in Derbyshire (it's the other end from me, so I don't know in detail; @bondegezou might know more).
Me? I don't even know where Derbyshire is. I'm a North Londoner. Events outside zone 6 baffle and confuse me.
This will arguably be the harshest spring heat wave in European history
We can see up to 40C in Spain,35C in Central Europe for days. Thousands of records will be pulverized in Spain,Portugal,France,Benelux,UK;SCandinavia,Germany,Alps,Czechia
This will arguably be the harshest spring heat wave in European history
We can see up to 40C in Spain,35C in Central Europe for days. Thousands of records will be pulverized in Spain,Portugal,France,Benelux,UK;SCandinavia,Germany,Alps,Czechia
“ Name a UK politician who has failed to declare a donation of similar size.
Or even can you name a UK politician who has failed to declare a donation of a fifth as much?”
How exactly are we supposed to name someone who has taken money we know nothing about for taking the money?.
Peter.
We clearly do know in some cases: that's why we're taking about Farage. And there are many cases of the world discovering about donations not being declared.... but nothing like Farage's £5 million.
The strategy set out in this paper seeks to establish the conditions for cheap, reliable, and abundant energy at home. A future Restore Britain government would pursue the full development of our offshore oil and gas reserves, the rapid expansion of nuclear energy, the exploitation of onshore shale where viable, and if able to compete some limited role for renewables within a balanced grid. Our overriding objective is to deliver dispatchable power at prices affordable to British households and competitive for British industry.
Let's quote further from the document...
We will also need to embark upon a mass removal of our binding Net Zero commitments, the vast majority of which are smothering our economy to no worthwhile end. This means canning the expensive but locked-in contracts that we already have with subsidised renewables companies.
They are very anti-Net Zero and would do the Trumpian thing of killing renewables just because they're too woke. They claim not to be climate change deniers, but come out with stuff like...
Atmospheric carbon dioxide has been in a general trend of decline since the Eocene period some 51 million years ago, so alarmist notions that fluctuating levels of carbon dioxide as such pose an existential threat to life on earth are scientifically baseless.
And say...
It has given arbitrary privilege to the most expensive and intermittent energy sources, such as onshore wind and solar, while degrading the most cost-efficient and effective, such as oil, gas, and nuclear.
And...
Renewables at present are so expensive, we could in principle lose them all tomorrow without any real effect on the grid besides making it cheaper and stabler.
That is a seriously deluded policy.
(1) Nuclear makes wind and solar look cheap. Now, it's possible that SMRs will change that in future. But right now, new nuclear is (a) expensive and (b) unreliable. There are offshore wind farms with better uptime than some nuclear plants.
(2) Have Advance not looked out the window? If you are all in on hydrocarbons, how do you think your economy does when -say- Russia invades Ukraine or Iran closes the Straits of Hormuz?
(3) If you wanted to put renewables on the same terms as everyone else, and have them just sell into the grid at market rates, then you know what? we'd still have quite a lot of renewables. Their assertation that actually getting rid of renewable generation would reduce prices is utterly deluded. (A more rational policy would be to say you are getting rid of the fixed price contracts for renewable power generation that pay renewables for energy when none is needed. )
I'm all for us doing a Norway. That is, taking advantage of our hydrocarbon reserves. And I'm happy to allow people to have a go at tight gas in the UK.
But at the same time, energy efficiency and renewable power generation are not things to be feared. In the future, all power generation will be solar, even in the UK, because it is going to keep getting cheaper and cheaper.
Why can’t I flag this as trolling?
Are the decommissioning costs included in this? I say this as someone who has supplied the nuclear industry and I certainly don’t want the goods back.
Decom costs are never included for nuclear, the cost of decommissioning that stretches 100 years into the future would make the strike price uncompetitive.
The current cumulative cost of decommissioning the UK's nuclear plants and facilities are of the order of £220 billion.
Those costs are needing to be met now. A significant proportion should be included in the strike price.
You need to discount that back; I suspect that the discounted number (while still seriously large) is in the low to mid 10s of billions rather than 200bn+.
No, those are the decommissioning costs we are exposed to today. Why should those be discounted back? The entities who are going to be undertaking the costs aren't going to take a seriously discounted invoice!
You'd have a point if the costs had been put into a sinking fund, as for North Sea oil and gas facilities. But they haven't.
This will arguably be the harshest spring heat wave in European history
We can see up to 40C in Spain,35C in Central Europe for days. Thousands of records will be pulverized in Spain,Portugal,France,Benelux,UK;SCandinavia,Germany,Alps,Czechia
“ Name a UK politician who has failed to declare a donation of similar size.
Or even can you name a UK politician who has failed to declare a donation of a fifth as much?”
How exactly are we supposed to name someone who has taken money we know nothing about for taking the money?.
Peter.
We clearly do know in some cases: that's why we're taking about Farage. And there are many cases of the world discovering about donations not being declared.... but nothing like Farage's £5 million.
Do you ever do any work?
Looking at your comments today the one-man-rebuttal-unit has been switched on and posting every 10 minutes since about 6.40am.
You had a couple of 90 minute gaps. I presume that's where your students experience your exciting lectures.
The strategy set out in this paper seeks to establish the conditions for cheap, reliable, and abundant energy at home. A future Restore Britain government would pursue the full development of our offshore oil and gas reserves, the rapid expansion of nuclear energy, the exploitation of onshore shale where viable, and if able to compete some limited role for renewables within a balanced grid. Our overriding objective is to deliver dispatchable power at prices affordable to British households and competitive for British industry.
Let's quote further from the document...
We will also need to embark upon a mass removal of our binding Net Zero commitments, the vast majority of which are smothering our economy to no worthwhile end. This means canning the expensive but locked-in contracts that we already have with subsidised renewables companies.
They are very anti-Net Zero and would do the Trumpian thing of killing renewables just because they're too woke. They claim not to be climate change deniers, but come out with stuff like...
Atmospheric carbon dioxide has been in a general trend of decline since the Eocene period some 51 million years ago, so alarmist notions that fluctuating levels of carbon dioxide as such pose an existential threat to life on earth are scientifically baseless.
And say...
It has given arbitrary privilege to the most expensive and intermittent energy sources, such as onshore wind and solar, while degrading the most cost-efficient and effective, such as oil, gas, and nuclear.
And...
Renewables at present are so expensive, we could in principle lose them all tomorrow without any real effect on the grid besides making it cheaper and stabler.
That is a seriously deluded policy.
(1) Nuclear makes wind and solar look cheap. Now, it's possible that SMRs will change that in future. But right now, new nuclear is (a) expensive and (b) unreliable. There are offshore wind farms with better uptime than some nuclear plants.
(2) Have Advance not looked out the window? If you are all in on hydrocarbons, how do you think your economy does when -say- Russia invades Ukraine or Iran closes the Straits of Hormuz?
(3) If you wanted to put renewables on the same terms as everyone else, and have them just sell into the grid at market rates, then you know what? we'd still have quite a lot of renewables. Their assertation that actually getting rid of renewable generation would reduce prices is utterly deluded. (A more rational policy would be to say you are getting rid of the fixed price contracts for renewable power generation that pay renewables for energy when none is needed. )
I'm all for us doing a Norway. That is, taking advantage of our hydrocarbon reserves. And I'm happy to allow people to have a go at tight gas in the UK.
But at the same time, energy efficiency and renewable power generation are not things to be feared. In the future, all power generation will be solar, even in the UK, because it is going to keep getting cheaper and cheaper.
Why can’t I flag this as trolling?
Are the decommissioning costs included in this? I say this as someone who has supplied the nuclear industry and I certainly don’t want the goods back.
As PB admins, it is impossible to flag posts by Robert or myself.
The strategy set out in this paper seeks to establish the conditions for cheap, reliable, and abundant energy at home. A future Restore Britain government would pursue the full development of our offshore oil and gas reserves, the rapid expansion of nuclear energy, the exploitation of onshore shale where viable, and if able to compete some limited role for renewables within a balanced grid. Our overriding objective is to deliver dispatchable power at prices affordable to British households and competitive for British industry.
Let's quote further from the document...
We will also need to embark upon a mass removal of our binding Net Zero commitments, the vast majority of which are smothering our economy to no worthwhile end. This means canning the expensive but locked-in contracts that we already have with subsidised renewables companies.
They are very anti-Net Zero and would do the Trumpian thing of killing renewables just because they're too woke. They claim not to be climate change deniers, but come out with stuff like...
Atmospheric carbon dioxide has been in a general trend of decline since the Eocene period some 51 million years ago, so alarmist notions that fluctuating levels of carbon dioxide as such pose an existential threat to life on earth are scientifically baseless.
And say...
It has given arbitrary privilege to the most expensive and intermittent energy sources, such as onshore wind and solar, while degrading the most cost-efficient and effective, such as oil, gas, and nuclear.
And...
Renewables at present are so expensive, we could in principle lose them all tomorrow without any real effect on the grid besides making it cheaper and stabler.
That is a seriously deluded policy.
(1) Nuclear makes wind and solar look cheap. Now, it's possible that SMRs will change that in future. But right now, new nuclear is (a) expensive and (b) unreliable. There are offshore wind farms with better uptime than some nuclear plants.
(2) Have Advance not looked out the window? If you are all in on hydrocarbons, how do you think your economy does when -say- Russia invades Ukraine or Iran closes the Straits of Hormuz?
(3) If you wanted to put renewables on the same terms as everyone else, and have them just sell into the grid at market rates, then you know what? we'd still have quite a lot of renewables. Their assertation that actually getting rid of renewable generation would reduce prices is utterly deluded. (A more rational policy would be to say you are getting rid of the fixed price contracts for renewable power generation that pay renewables for energy when none is needed. )
I'm all for us doing a Norway. That is, taking advantage of our hydrocarbon reserves. And I'm happy to allow people to have a go at tight gas in the UK.
But at the same time, energy efficiency and renewable power generation are not things to be feared. In the future, all power generation will be solar, even in the UK, because it is going to keep getting cheaper and cheaper.
Why can’t I flag this as trolling?
Are the decommissioning costs included in this? I say this as someone who has supplied the nuclear industry and I certainly don’t want the goods back.
Decom costs are never included for nuclear, the cost of decommissioning that stretches 100 years into the future would make the strike price uncompetitive.
The current cumulative cost of decommissioning the UK's nuclear plants and facilities are of the order of £220 billion.
Those costs are needing to be met now. A significant proportion should be included in the strike price.
You need to discount that back; I suspect that the discounted number (while still seriously large) is in the low to mid 10s of billions rather than 200bn+.
No, those are the decommissioning costs we are exposed to today. Why should those be discounted back? The entities who are going to be undertaking the costs aren't going to take a seriously discounted invoice!
Hard disagree.
You are completely correct that we will need to pay very large amounts of money in the future.
But if I know I need to pay you $100 in twenty years time, I don't need to save $100, I just need to save (say) $40, because I know compount interest will take care of the rest.
We don't need to put aside 220bn now, we need to put aside (some very large but not quite as ridiculous) sum.
This will arguably be the harshest spring heat wave in European history
We can see up to 40C in Spain,35C in Central Europe for days. Thousands of records will be pulverized in Spain,Portugal,France,Benelux,UK;SCandinavia,Germany,Alps,Czechia
“ Name a UK politician who has failed to declare a donation of similar size.
Or even can you name a UK politician who has failed to declare a donation of a fifth as much?”
How exactly are we supposed to name someone who has taken money we know nothing about for taking the money?.
Peter.
We clearly do know in some cases: that's why we're taking about Farage. And there are many cases of the world discovering about donations not being declared.... but nothing like Farage's £5 million.
Do you ever do any work?
Looking at your comments today the one-man-rebuttal-unit has been switched on and posting every 10 minutes since about 6.40am.
You had a couple of 90 minute gaps. I presume that's where your students experience your exciting lectures.
“ Name a UK politician who has failed to declare a donation of similar size.
Or even can you name a UK politician who has failed to declare a donation of a fifth as much?”
How exactly are we supposed to name someone who has taken money we know nothing about for taking the money?.
Peter.
We clearly do know in some cases: that's why we're taking about Farage. And there are many cases of the world discovering about donations not being declared.... but nothing like Farage's £5 million.
Do you ever do any work?
Looking at your comments today the one-man-rebuttal-unit has been switched on and posting every 10 minutes since about 6.40am.
You had a couple of 90 minute gaps. I presume that's where your students experience your exciting lectures.
There might not be many such people given he is the most despised UK politician since the end of the Bronze Age but what about those residents of Makerfield who rate Keir Starmer and prefer him as PM to Andy Burnham? Eg Labour people, or others, who think he's doing a good job and wish him to carry on and serve his full term.
They are essentially disenfranchised here, aren't they?
I think Starmer has bowed to the inevitable. There was no attempt by the NEC or Starmer to obstruct Burnham.
He has welcomed his own political assasin.
Yes, no choice. He didn't have the political capital to block it a 2nd time.
I'm impressed with his composure in public actually. It's a pretty gruesome situation he's in.
May I suggest he knows it is the end of his Premiership and maybe it is a burden removed as he can get back to his family and watching Arsenal
I don't think that Starmer has given up. He probably calculated that he might either have been unable to block Burnham or that if he had then it would have absolutely trashed his remaining credibility within the party, enough to ensure a leadership challenge then materialised and succeeded. He's probably calculated that Makerfield is no shoo in and that if he acts graciously towards accommodating Burnham but Burnham loses his stock will be higher and enough to see off a challenge from one of the other challengers for now. That would buy him a bit of time to turn around the polls which in turn would allow him carry on in the medium term.
It is quite surreal that a serving UK PM should be relying on his party's candidate to lose a by-election in order to help his own survival prospects, but that is where we are at, I think. .
No, I think he is gone either way.
If Burnham wins then I expect Starmer to rapidly resign and an effective Burnham coronation.
If Labour under Starmer are so unpopular that even Burnham can't hold Makerfield, then the clamour will turn to who else can lead the Party and someone else will be needed.
The writing is on the wall either way.
The one thing that Starmer can do now is retire with a modicum of dignity and not be dragged out kicking and screaming.
You are probably right that the writing is on the wall for Starmer whether or not Burnham wins Makerfield. I didn't say otherwise. But I was trying to follow Starmer's own thinking.
There's no reason to think that, as of now, Starmer has given up. The opportunity is there for him to go while retaining some dignity and he's not taken it. So to rationalise his actions, I consider that Starmer must think that he will have a better chance of hanging on should Burnham lose Makerfield than he would have had after trying to block Burnham to an absolute outcry and then facing a leadership challenge in the midst of such an outcry.
Yes, he's toast if Labour win this by-election but if they don't he's got a chance of surviving.
It's an odd position for a Labour leader to be in.
I can heartily recommend the restaurant J Sheekey.
It is perfect for working class Northerners in London.
However, once again somebody getting hit on the tracks causes so much disruption, it feels like more and more people are having incidents with trains in recent years.
The strategy set out in this paper seeks to establish the conditions for cheap, reliable, and abundant energy at home. A future Restore Britain government would pursue the full development of our offshore oil and gas reserves, the rapid expansion of nuclear energy, the exploitation of onshore shale where viable, and if able to compete some limited role for renewables within a balanced grid. Our overriding objective is to deliver dispatchable power at prices affordable to British households and competitive for British industry.
Let's quote further from the document...
We will also need to embark upon a mass removal of our binding Net Zero commitments, the vast majority of which are smothering our economy to no worthwhile end. This means canning the expensive but locked-in contracts that we already have with subsidised renewables companies.
They are very anti-Net Zero and would do the Trumpian thing of killing renewables just because they're too woke. They claim not to be climate change deniers, but come out with stuff like...
Atmospheric carbon dioxide has been in a general trend of decline since the Eocene period some 51 million years ago, so alarmist notions that fluctuating levels of carbon dioxide as such pose an existential threat to life on earth are scientifically baseless.
And say...
It has given arbitrary privilege to the most expensive and intermittent energy sources, such as onshore wind and solar, while degrading the most cost-efficient and effective, such as oil, gas, and nuclear.
And...
Renewables at present are so expensive, we could in principle lose them all tomorrow without any real effect on the grid besides making it cheaper and stabler.
That is a seriously deluded policy.
(1) Nuclear makes wind and solar look cheap. Now, it's possible that SMRs will change that in future. But right now, new nuclear is (a) expensive and (b) unreliable. There are offshore wind farms with better uptime than some nuclear plants.
(2) Have Advance not looked out the window? If you are all in on hydrocarbons, how do you think your economy does when -say- Russia invades Ukraine or Iran closes the Straits of Hormuz?
(3) If you wanted to put renewables on the same terms as everyone else, and have them just sell into the grid at market rates, then you know what? we'd still have quite a lot of renewables. Their assertation that actually getting rid of renewable generation would reduce prices is utterly deluded. (A more rational policy would be to say you are getting rid of the fixed price contracts for renewable power generation that pay renewables for energy when none is needed. )
I'm all for us doing a Norway. That is, taking advantage of our hydrocarbon reserves. And I'm happy to allow people to have a go at tight gas in the UK.
But at the same time, energy efficiency and renewable power generation are not things to be feared. In the future, all power generation will be solar, even in the UK, because it is going to keep getting cheaper and cheaper.
Why can’t I flag this as trolling?
Are the decommissioning costs included in this? I say this as someone who has supplied the nuclear industry and I certainly don’t want the goods back.
As PB admins, it is impossible to flag posts by Robert or myself.
All sorts of restrictions. For example I've found it impossible to like @tse's puns too. I've not actually tried the website on this matter of course.
This will arguably be the harshest spring heat wave in European history
We can see up to 40C in Spain,35C in Central Europe for days. Thousands of records will be pulverized in Spain,Portugal,France,Benelux,UK;SCandinavia,Germany,Alps,Czechia
The strategy set out in this paper seeks to establish the conditions for cheap, reliable, and abundant energy at home. A future Restore Britain government would pursue the full development of our offshore oil and gas reserves, the rapid expansion of nuclear energy, the exploitation of onshore shale where viable, and if able to compete some limited role for renewables within a balanced grid. Our overriding objective is to deliver dispatchable power at prices affordable to British households and competitive for British industry.
Let's quote further from the document...
We will also need to embark upon a mass removal of our binding Net Zero commitments, the vast majority of which are smothering our economy to no worthwhile end. This means canning the expensive but locked-in contracts that we already have with subsidised renewables companies.
They are very anti-Net Zero and would do the Trumpian thing of killing renewables just because they're too woke. They claim not to be climate change deniers, but come out with stuff like...
Atmospheric carbon dioxide has been in a general trend of decline since the Eocene period some 51 million years ago, so alarmist notions that fluctuating levels of carbon dioxide as such pose an existential threat to life on earth are scientifically baseless.
And say...
It has given arbitrary privilege to the most expensive and intermittent energy sources, such as onshore wind and solar, while degrading the most cost-efficient and effective, such as oil, gas, and nuclear.
And...
Renewables at present are so expensive, we could in principle lose them all tomorrow without any real effect on the grid besides making it cheaper and stabler.
That is a seriously deluded policy.
(1) Nuclear makes wind and solar look cheap. Now, it's possible that SMRs will change that in future. But right now, new nuclear is (a) expensive and (b) unreliable. There are offshore wind farms with better uptime than some nuclear plants.
(2) Have Advance not looked out the window? If you are all in on hydrocarbons, how do you think your economy does when -say- Russia invades Ukraine or Iran closes the Straits of Hormuz?
(3) If you wanted to put renewables on the same terms as everyone else, and have them just sell into the grid at market rates, then you know what? we'd still have quite a lot of renewables. Their assertation that actually getting rid of renewable generation would reduce prices is utterly deluded. (A more rational policy would be to say you are getting rid of the fixed price contracts for renewable power generation that pay renewables for energy when none is needed. )
I'm all for us doing a Norway. That is, taking advantage of our hydrocarbon reserves. And I'm happy to allow people to have a go at tight gas in the UK.
But at the same time, energy efficiency and renewable power generation are not things to be feared. In the future, all power generation will be solar, even in the UK, because it is going to keep getting cheaper and cheaper.
Why can’t I flag this as trolling?
Are the decommissioning costs included in this? I say this as someone who has supplied the nuclear industry and I certainly don’t want the goods back.
Decom costs are never included for nuclear, the cost of decommissioning that stretches 100 years into the future would make the strike price uncompetitive.
The current cumulative cost of decommissioning the UK's nuclear plants and facilities are of the order of £220 billion.
Those costs are needing to be met now. A significant proportion should be included in the strike price.
You need to discount that back; I suspect that the discounted number (while still seriously large) is in the low to mid 10s of billions rather than 200bn+.
No, those are the decommissioning costs we are exposed to today. Why should those be discounted back? The entities who are going to be undertaking the costs aren't going to take a seriously discounted invoice!
Hard disagree.
You are completely correct that we will need to pay very large amounts of money in the future.
But if I know I need to pay you $100 in twenty years time, I don't need to save $100, I just need to save (say) $40, because I know compount interest will take care of the rest.
We don't need to put aside 220bn now, we need to put aside (some very large but not quite as ridiculous) sum.
But it has not been put aside. (And if it had, it would have been nabbed!)
It sits there, being a bloody huge amount that future generations will have to face. Compound interest makes it worse if there has been no provision made.
“ Name a UK politician who has failed to declare a donation of similar size.
Or even can you name a UK politician who has failed to declare a donation of a fifth as much?”
How exactly are we supposed to name someone who has taken money we know nothing about for taking the money?.
Peter.
We clearly do know in some cases: that's why we're taking about Farage. And there are many cases of the world discovering about donations not being declared.... but nothing like Farage's £5 million.
Do you ever do any work?
Looking at your comments today the one-man-rebuttal-unit has been switched on and posting every 10 minutes since about 6.40am.
You had a couple of 90 minute gaps. I presume that's where your students experience your exciting lectures.
Always lovely to know you're being monitored.
Now Casino has a very easy and cushy public sector (NHS) job he's got to do something to pass the hours when some of us have real work to do.
The issue with Reform is that unlike the Tories they seem to have given up trying to appeal to anyone who wouldn’t at least be minded to vote for them in the first place.
They seem to be targeting their appeal on Trump supporting vaccine sceptic fascists banned from the UK:
"The Reform candidate is friends on Facebook with a fascist organiser and archived posts from his now-suspended X account appear to show vaccine scepticism, support for Donald Trump and engagement with a Dutch far-right influencer who was banned from the UK ahead of the Unite the Kingdom rally this weekend."
The Ref UK candidate Mr Kenyon is interesting around the edges, but I don't know if any media will explore that - Youtubers and Reform Watchers will.
I don't know who is managing his comms strategy.
The line I noticed in his "this is me" tape was around 'Labour and the other parties having MPs who were privately educated and parachuted in to their constituencies.
That's going to be embarrassing for his own party and him when he asked, given how few of Starmer's given that 90% of Starmer's cabinet were state educated, and nearly all of the Reform top dogs were at private school (Exceptions: Anderson and Rosindell), and how few of them are locals in their constituencies (i think that is only Anderson).
I can heartily recommend the restaurant J Sheekey.
It is perfect for working class Northerners in London.
However, once again somebody getting hit on the tracks causes so much disruption, it feels like more and more people are having incidents with trains in recent years.
I mean there’s a legend that the famous professional wrestler Ravishing Rick Rude died after injecting Viagra down there. May be true may be nonsense. Most wrestlers back then were druggies.
‘ Doctors are warning about a dangerous online trend called “ballmaxxing” where men inject saline or surgical lubricants into their testicles to temporarily enlarge them
Experts say the practice can cause infections, nerve damage and even permanent testicular damage’
Firstly, private school numbers have already dropped further than expected in the first year of VAT as it is putting extra pressure on the State sector, but, secondly, the biggest problem is entry-level attrition.
Parents with kids already in them will move heaven and earth to complete their education, unless they face personal bankruptcy otherwise, but there's a far larger number now that won't ever sign-up for them in the first place, and this is driving insolvencies and closures. I know bursars in three different private schools and their enrolment forecasts are looking awful for next year, with the critical year being 2030. Two of them have each other on their watchlist.
Most independent schools operate on tight margins, some even relying on local council bursaries, and community donations. Even a modest drop in pupil numbers can significantly disrupt financial stability. Most costs are fixed (staff salaries, facilities maintenance, utilities) and income reduction can quickly lead to operational and cash flow deficits. Once reserves are depleted, which may only last a couple of years, the risk of insolvency becomes acute.
Most commentary on the subject comes from a position of pure ignorance. And this will become increasingly apparent as this Parliament progresees.
Firstly, private school numbers have already dropped further than expected in the first year of VAT as it is putting extra pressure on the State sector, but, secondly, the biggest problem is entry-level attrition.
Parents with kids already in them will move heaven and earth to complete their education, unless they face personal bankruptcy otherwise, but there's a far larger number now that won't ever sign-up for them in the first place, and this is driving insolvencies and closures. I know bursars in three different private schools and their enrolment forecasts are looking awful for next year, with the critical year being 2030. Two of them have each other on their watchlist.
Most independent schools operate on tight margins, some even relying on local council bursaries, and community donations. Even a modest drop in pupil numbers can significantly disrupt financial stability. Most costs are fixed (staff salaries, facilities maintenance, utilities) and income reduction can quickly lead to operational and cash flow deficits. Once reserves are depleted, which may only last a couple of years, the risk of insolvency becomes acute.
Most commentary on the subject comes from a position of pure ignorance. And this will become increasingly apparent as this Parliament progresees.
“ Name a UK politician who has failed to declare a donation of similar size.
Or even can you name a UK politician who has failed to declare a donation of a fifth as much?”
How exactly are we supposed to name someone who has taken money we know nothing about for taking the money?.
Peter.
We clearly do know in some cases: that's why we're taking about Farage. And there are many cases of the world discovering about donations not being declared.... but nothing like Farage's £5 million.
I wonder how the by-election would be impacted by learning that Burnham had received £5m from a crypto billionaire? (Whilst mayor but before becoming an MP again...)
I can heartily recommend the restaurant J Sheekey.
It is perfect for working class Northerners in London.
However, once again somebody getting hit on the tracks causes so much disruption, it feels like more and more people are having incidents with trains in recent years.
That £34 set menu looks quite reasonable...
JohnO had that, I had the caviar followed by fish & chips.
“ Name a UK politician who has failed to declare a donation of similar size.
Or even can you name a UK politician who has failed to declare a donation of a fifth as much?”
How exactly are we supposed to name someone who has taken money we know nothing about for taking the money?.
Peter.
We clearly do know in some cases: that's why we're taking about Farage. And there are many cases of the world discovering about donations not being declared.... but nothing like Farage's £5 million.
Do you ever do any work?
Looking at your comments today the one-man-rebuttal-unit has been switched on and posting every 10 minutes since about 6.40am.
You had a couple of 90 minute gaps. I presume that's where your students experience your exciting lectures.
Always lovely to know you're being monitored.
It's not exactly Mi6 mate.
I just noticed you've posted all day long on every page by reading this thread.
Bezos on Trump: "I think he's a more mature, more disciplined version of himself than he was in his first term. Trump has lots of good ideas. He's been right about a lot of things. You have to give him credit where credit is due."
Bezos on Trump: "I think he's a more mature, more disciplined version of himself than he was in his first term. Trump has lots of good ideas. He's been right about a lot of things. You have to give him credit where credit is due."
Let me translate that for you: "Both Amazon and Blue Origina are highly dependent on the goodwill of the Trump administration."
I think Starmer will do a dignified deal with Burnham.
I think he’d need to set a timeline as to when he’ll stand down .
I expect what will happen is we’ll get MPs nominating and Burnham is likely to win that convincingly . At that point any other candidates will withdraw .
Yes he will need to set a reasonable timeline, and appoint Burnham to the Cabinet. I think Burnham will be easy to work with. It could be a challenge for Starmer but Burnham will help him. He will be his principal aide.
Firstly, private school numbers have already dropped further than expected in the first year of VAT as it is putting extra pressure on the State sector, but, secondly, the biggest problem is entry-level attrition.
Parents with kids already in them will move heaven and earth to complete their education, unless they face personal bankruptcy otherwise, but there's a far larger number now that won't ever sign-up for them in the first place, and this is driving insolvencies and closures. I know bursars in three different private schools and their enrolment forecasts are looking awful for next year, with the critical year being 2030. Two of them have each other on their watchlist.
Most independent schools operate on tight margins, some even relying on local council bursaries, and community donations. Even a modest drop in pupil numbers can significantly disrupt financial stability. Most costs are fixed (staff salaries, facilities maintenance, utilities) and income reduction can quickly lead to operational and cash flow deficits. Once reserves are depleted, which may only last a couple of years, the risk of insolvency becomes acute.
Most commentary on the subject comes from a position of pure ignorance. And this will become increasingly apparent as this Parliament progresees.
I don't think anyone is going to disagree there - the impact will be at the ages that a person can enter state schools so children aged 4 and then aged 11. Leave at any other time and your child will be going from a private school to the local sink school that has spaces.
An interesting transport project which has been approved for the Hope Valley in teh Peak District.
"Hope Valley Mini Switzerland".
It's a 3 year experiment in integrated rural transport, coordinating Bus / Rail timetables as happens across Switzerland, and integrating ticketing. A slice of London or Manchester practice in a rural area. The process was that a former director of TFL, senior Manager in Chiltern Railways had an idea, developed the concept, advertised for areas interested, asked for Govt approval, and received it.
He knows how to do things, as it took little more than a year
It has measured ("as long as use of private cars is not restricted") support from the Ref UK head of Derbyshire County Council.
I may be wrong, but I suspect this will just mean loads of empty buses cloging up the roads - I think that's been the fate of most similar initiatives.
That said, making the bus timetable work with the train times seems like common sense 101, which is presumably why we don't generally do it.
I'd recommend the presentation. They are very intentional about calling it "Mini Switzerland" (obvs the name is modelled on the Mini Holland active travel projects in London under Boris Johnson, rather than say "linked timetable project", as there is intended to be adoption of a number of ways Swiss Transport is run, and because Hope Valley is isolated with Sheffield at one end and GM at the other it is a good place to try. Plus there is upside as perhaps 1/3 of the population in those cities do not have motor vehicles.
Swiss methods they are embracing aiui include the bus waiting if the train is a few minutes wait, an hourly timetable throughout the day (extra services).
One interesting challenge is that according to someone at the online presentation who lives in Sheffield and walks in the Peaks often Sunday buses hardly exists in Derbyshire (it's the other end from me, so I don't know in detail; @bondegezou might know more).
Me? I don't even know where Derbyshire is. I'm a North Londoner. Events outside zone 6 baffle and confuse me.
The issue with Reform is that unlike the Tories they seem to have given up trying to appeal to anyone who wouldn’t at least be minded to vote for them in the first place.
They seem to be targeting their appeal on Trump supporting vaccine sceptic fascists banned from the UK:
"The Reform candidate is friends on Facebook with a fascist organiser and archived posts from his now-suspended X account appear to show vaccine scepticism, support for Donald Trump and engagement with a Dutch far-right influencer who was banned from the UK ahead of the Unite the Kingdom rally this weekend."
The Ref UK candidate Mr Kenyon is interesting around the edges, but I don't know if any media will explore that - Youtubers and Reform Watchers will.
I don't know who is managing his comms strategy.
The line I noticed in his "this is me" tape was around 'Labour and the other parties having MPs who were privately educated and parachuted in to their constituencies.
That's going to be embarrassing for his own party and him when he asked, given how few of Starmer's given that 90% of Starmer's cabinet were state educated, and nearly all of the Reform top dogs were at private school (Exceptions: Anderson and Rosindell), and how few of them are locals in their constituencies (i think that is only Anderson).
Rosindell is very much Mr Romford. Not sure if he was actually born in the constituency (may have been just outside) but certainly grew up in Romford, attended local schools and I don't think he's ever lived anywhere else.
The strategy set out in this paper seeks to establish the conditions for cheap, reliable, and abundant energy at home. A future Restore Britain government would pursue the full development of our offshore oil and gas reserves, the rapid expansion of nuclear energy, the exploitation of onshore shale where viable, and if able to compete some limited role for renewables within a balanced grid. Our overriding objective is to deliver dispatchable power at prices affordable to British households and competitive for British industry.
Let's quote further from the document...
We will also need to embark upon a mass removal of our binding Net Zero commitments, the vast majority of which are smothering our economy to no worthwhile end. This means canning the expensive but locked-in contracts that we already have with subsidised renewables companies.
They are very anti-Net Zero and would do the Trumpian thing of killing renewables just because they're too woke. They claim not to be climate change deniers, but come out with stuff like...
Atmospheric carbon dioxide has been in a general trend of decline since the Eocene period some 51 million years ago, so alarmist notions that fluctuating levels of carbon dioxide as such pose an existential threat to life on earth are scientifically baseless.
And say...
It has given arbitrary privilege to the most expensive and intermittent energy sources, such as onshore wind and solar, while degrading the most cost-efficient and effective, such as oil, gas, and nuclear.
And...
Renewables at present are so expensive, we could in principle lose them all tomorrow without any real effect on the grid besides making it cheaper and stabler.
That is a seriously deluded policy.
(1) Nuclear makes wind and solar look cheap. Now, it's possible that SMRs will change that in future. But right now, new nuclear is (a) expensive and (b) unreliable. There are offshore wind farms with better uptime than some nuclear plants.
(2) Have Advance not looked out the window? If you are all in on hydrocarbons, how do you think your economy does when -say- Russia invades Ukraine or Iran closes the Straits of Hormuz?
(3) If you wanted to put renewables on the same terms as everyone else, and have them just sell into the grid at market rates, then you know what? we'd still have quite a lot of renewables. Their assertation that actually getting rid of renewable generation would reduce prices is utterly deluded. (A more rational policy would be to say you are getting rid of the fixed price contracts for renewable power generation that pay renewables for energy when none is needed. )
I'm all for us doing a Norway. That is, taking advantage of our hydrocarbon reserves. And I'm happy to allow people to have a go at tight gas in the UK.
But at the same time, energy efficiency and renewable power generation are not things to be feared. In the future, all power generation will be solar, even in the UK, because it is going to keep getting cheaper and cheaper.
Why can’t I flag this as trolling?
Are the decommissioning costs included in this? I say this as someone who has supplied the nuclear industry and I certainly don’t want the goods back.
Decom costs are never included for nuclear, the cost of decommissioning that stretches 100 years into the future would make the strike price uncompetitive.
The current cumulative cost of decommissioning the UK's nuclear plants and facilities are of the order of £220 billion.
Those costs are needing to be met now. A significant proportion should be included in the strike price.
You need to discount that back; I suspect that the discounted number (while still seriously large) is in the low to mid 10s of billions rather than 200bn+.
No, those are the decommissioning costs we are exposed to today. Why should those be discounted back? The entities who are going to be undertaking the costs aren't going to take a seriously discounted invoice!
Hard disagree.
You are completely correct that we will need to pay very large amounts of money in the future.
But if I know I need to pay you $100 in twenty years time, I don't need to save $100, I just need to save (say) $40, because I know compount interest will take care of the rest.
We don't need to put aside 220bn now, we need to put aside (some very large but not quite as ridiculous) sum.
So you mean that in driving up the risk free rate, Rachel is successfully reducing our current liabilities?
Bezos on Trump: "I think he's a more mature, more disciplined version of himself than he was in his first term. Trump has lots of good ideas. He's been right about a lot of things. You have to give him credit where credit is due."
You have to say shit like that, don't you, if you want to partake.
“ Name a UK politician who has failed to declare a donation of similar size.
Or even can you name a UK politician who has failed to declare a donation of a fifth as much?”
How exactly are we supposed to name someone who has taken money we know nothing about for taking the money?.
Peter.
We clearly do know in some cases: that's why we're taking about Farage. And there are many cases of the world discovering about donations not being declared.... but nothing like Farage's £5 million.
Do you ever do any work?
Looking at your comments today the one-man-rebuttal-unit has been switched on and posting every 10 minutes since about 6.40am.
You had a couple of 90 minute gaps. I presume that's where your students experience your exciting lectures.
What’s your subject for lectures Bondezeglou ?
I did a public-facing event Monday evening talking about large language models in healthcare. My last regular lecture was on the use of statistical process control in healthcare. But digital health and/or evaluation methods in general.
Bezos on Trump: "I think he's a more mature, more disciplined version of himself than he was in his first term. Trump has lots of good ideas. He's been right about a lot of things. You have to give him credit where credit is due."
Like Trump or hate him I don't see how it could possibly be sincerely argued he's been more disciplined. He lashes out constantly, changed his tariff policy day by day, and has fired multiple senior officials.
But when you suck up you have to go all the way. People should be happy, even the techbro oligarchs must still bend the knee to at least one government.
The issue with Reform is that unlike the Tories they seem to have given up trying to appeal to anyone who wouldn’t at least be minded to vote for them in the first place.
They seem to be targeting their appeal on Trump supporting vaccine sceptic fascists banned from the UK:
"The Reform candidate is friends on Facebook with a fascist organiser and archived posts from his now-suspended X account appear to show vaccine scepticism, support for Donald Trump and engagement with a Dutch far-right influencer who was banned from the UK ahead of the Unite the Kingdom rally this weekend."
The Ref UK candidate Mr Kenyon is interesting around the edges, but I don't know if any media will explore that - Youtubers and Reform Watchers will.
I don't know who is managing his comms strategy.
The line I noticed in his "this is me" tape was around 'Labour and the other parties having MPs who were privately educated and parachuted in to their constituencies.
That's going to be embarrassing for his own party and him when he asked, given how few of Starmer's given that 90% of Starmer's cabinet were state educated, and nearly all of the Reform top dogs were at private school (Exceptions: Anderson and Rosindell), and how few of them are locals in their constituencies (i think that is only Anderson).
Rosindell is very much Mr Romford. Not sure if he was actually born in the constituency (may have been just outside) but certainly grew up in Romford, attended local schools and I don't think he's ever lived anywhere else.
I mean there’s a legend that the famous professional wrestler Ravishing Rick Rude died after injecting Viagra down there. May be true may be nonsense. Most wrestlers back then were druggies.
‘ Doctors are warning about a dangerous online trend called “ballmaxxing” where men inject saline or surgical lubricants into their testicles to temporarily enlarge them
Experts say the practice can cause infections, nerve damage and even permanent testicular damage’
I can heartily recommend the restaurant J Sheekey.
It is perfect for working class Northerners in London.
However, once again somebody getting hit on the tracks causes so much disruption, it feels like more and more people are having incidents with trains in recent years.
The issue with Reform is that unlike the Tories they seem to have given up trying to appeal to anyone who wouldn’t at least be minded to vote for them in the first place.
They seem to be targeting their appeal on Trump supporting vaccine sceptic fascists banned from the UK:
"The Reform candidate is friends on Facebook with a fascist organiser and archived posts from his now-suspended X account appear to show vaccine scepticism, support for Donald Trump and engagement with a Dutch far-right influencer who was banned from the UK ahead of the Unite the Kingdom rally this weekend."
The Ref UK candidate Mr Kenyon is interesting around the edges, but I don't know if any media will explore that - Youtubers and Reform Watchers will.
I don't know who is managing his comms strategy.
The line I noticed in his "this is me" tape was around 'Labour and the other parties having MPs who were privately educated and parachuted in to their constituencies.
That's going to be embarrassing for his own party and him when he asked, given how few of Starmer's given that 90% of Starmer's cabinet were state educated, and nearly all of the Reform top dogs were at private school (Exceptions: Anderson and Rosindell), and how few of them are locals in their constituencies (i think that is only Anderson).
I'd wager that the only private school educated, multi-millionaire ex City trader in Clacton is a certain Nigel Farage when he deigns to drop in.
An interesting transport project which has been approved for the Hope Valley in teh Peak District.
"Hope Valley Mini Switzerland".
It's a 3 year experiment in integrated rural transport, coordinating Bus / Rail timetables as happens across Switzerland, and integrating ticketing. A slice of London or Manchester practice in a rural area. The process was that a former director of TFL, senior Manager in Chiltern Railways had an idea, developed the concept, advertised for areas interested, asked for Govt approval, and received it.
He knows how to do things, as it took little more than a year
It has measured ("as long as use of private cars is not restricted") support from the Ref UK head of Derbyshire County Council.
I may be wrong, but I suspect this will just mean loads of empty buses cloging up the roads - I think that's been the fate of most similar initiatives.
That said, making the bus timetable work with the train times seems like common sense 101, which is presumably why we don't generally do it.
I'd recommend the presentation. They are very intentional about calling it "Mini Switzerland" (obvs the name is modelled on the Mini Holland active travel projects in London under Boris Johnson, rather than say "linked timetable project", as there is intended to be adoption of a number of ways Swiss Transport is run, and because Hope Valley is isolated with Sheffield at one end and GM at the other it is a good place to try. Plus there is upside as perhaps 1/3 of the population in those cities do not have motor vehicles.
Swiss methods they are embracing aiui include the bus waiting if the train is a few minutes wait, an hourly timetable throughout the day (extra services).
One interesting challenge is that according to someone at the online presentation who lives in Sheffield and walks in the Peaks often Sunday buses hardly exists in Derbyshire (it's the other end from me, so I don't know in detail; @bondegezou might know more).
Me? I don't even know where Derbyshire is. I'm a North Londoner. Events outside zone 6 baffle and confuse me.
“ Name a UK politician who has failed to declare a donation of similar size.
Or even can you name a UK politician who has failed to declare a donation of a fifth as much?”
How exactly are we supposed to name someone who has taken money we know nothing about for taking the money?.
Peter.
We clearly do know in some cases: that's why we're taking about Farage. And there are many cases of the world discovering about donations not being declared.... but nothing like Farage's £5 million.
Do you ever do any work?
Looking at your comments today the one-man-rebuttal-unit has been switched on and posting every 10 minutes since about 6.40am.
You had a couple of 90 minute gaps. I presume that's where your students experience your exciting lectures.
What’s your subject for lectures Bondezeglou ?
I did a public-facing event Monday evening talking about large language models in healthcare. My last regular lecture was on the use of statistical process control in healthcare. But digital health and/or evaluation methods in general.
Interesting. I used to do Statistical Process Control on alternator components at Lucas in the eighties in a quality role.
Take a batch of five every two hours and measure them.
Comments
Edit - Tatton not Tattoo, ruse not rule - bloody autoincorrect!
He's elected himself PM beyond any of the normal paths and is foisting a new manifesto on the nation. Or at least if his plan comes to fruition.
It feels to me a very uncomfortable thing.
As to his prospects I'm absolutely amazed that so many seem to be cheering him along. It does seem likely that there will be a frothy Burnham boost. I'm very sure that there will be the most ghastly Burnham crash to follow.
The whole thing just isn't the right way to do UK politics.
I also expect him to be worse than Starmer, if more self-promoting about it.
https://x.com/ZiaYusufUK/status/2057135138304147516
Could this legendary gentleman please get in touch.
A future Reform government would like to give him a peerage for this outstanding public service.
He can do similar to all the crooks currently sitting in the House of Lords!
Extreme Temperatures Around The World
@extremetemps
HISTORY IS COMING: 40c IN EUROPE
This will arguably be the harshest spring heat wave in European history
We can see up to 40C in Spain,35C in Central Europe for days.
Thousands of records will be pulverized in Spain,Portugal,France,Benelux,UK;SCandinavia,Germany,Alps,Czechia
https://x.com/extremetemps/status/2057100306773668211
#brace
It’s the sort of barracking that is common in politics, sadly, across the divide and even in the commons.
Mind you it’s counter productive as it has simply engendered sympathy for Reeves.
Also Zia Yusuf is making a mistake making a hero of this guy.
As i've noted before i've seen even some quite moderate people complain about politicians 'faking' being opponents because they have been polite to or just been spotted making friendly small talk with an opponent.
People want to hate others and being cruel to them is popular.
For the record: I think the most important reason the Loser attacked Massie is Massie's persistent demands that the Epstein files be released. Probably.
Any current MPs who might wear a similar badge? If so, they would have my respect.
There's no reason to think that, as of now, Starmer has given up. The opportunity is there for him to go while retaining some dignity and he's not taken it. So to rationalise his actions, I consider that Starmer must think that he will have a better chance of hanging on should Burnham lose Makerfield than he would have had after trying to block Burnham to an absolute outcry and then facing a leadership challenge in the midst of such an outcry.
Flee to Derbyshire. We used to joke we could see three neighbours - when the fog lifted.
Anyhow, I'd rather see Farage and Reform brought down because the voters' eyes are opened to how disastrous, pernicious and nasty their policy proposals are.
Sometimes having a fight to settle something is better than avoiding it.
Or even can you name a UK politician who has failed to declare a donation of a fifth as much?”
How exactly are we supposed to name someone who has taken money we know nothing about for taking the money?.
Peter.
I thought the hottest day was in 2022?
Does he think the British people are all.fools.?
Those costs are needing to be met now. A significant proportion should be included in the strike price.
I expect what will happen is we’ll get MPs nominating and Burnham is likely to win that convincingly . At that point any other candidates will withdraw .
"The Reform candidate is friends on Facebook with a fascist organiser and archived posts from his now-suspended X account appear to show vaccine scepticism, support for Donald Trump and engagement with a Dutch far-right influencer who was banned from the UK ahead of the Unite the Kingdom rally this weekend."
But that's all ok, cos he's a plumber.
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-politics/2026/05/reform-unveils-its-challenger-to-andy-burnham
Perhaps I need a holiday this summer !
What do you have that we need to be protected from?
The extremity of this event is the time of year. It’s May.
Nicely timed for the start of my Sabbatical rail travels.
So are they predicting as hot as that?
I've never quite understood the Yanks coming. There are no links such as groups of people settling in whta became the USA.
Happy days, RSPW and others.
You'd have a point if the costs had been put into a sinking fund, as for North Sea oil and gas facilities. But they haven't.
Looking at your comments today the one-man-rebuttal-unit has been switched on and posting every 10 minutes since about 6.40am.
You had a couple of 90 minute gaps. I presume that's where your students experience your exciting lectures.
You are completely correct that we will need to pay very large amounts of money in the future.
But if I know I need to pay you $100 in twenty years time, I don't need to save $100, I just need to save (say) $40, because I know compount interest will take care of the rest.
We don't need to put aside 220bn now, we need to put aside (some very large but not quite as ridiculous) sum.
I just hope we seriously get on top of fossil fuels in the next few years. And the only way that's going to happen is to electrify everything.
We're stuck with this for centuries now.
It's an odd position for a Labour leader to be in.
It is perfect for working class Northerners in London.
However, once again somebody getting hit on the tracks causes so much disruption, it feels like more and more people are having incidents with trains in recent years.
And it wasn't in May.
As the guy says it is still Spring!
It sits there, being a bloody huge amount that future generations will have to face. Compound interest makes it worse if there has been no provision made.
I don't know who is managing his comms strategy.
The line I noticed in his "this is me" tape was around 'Labour and the other parties having MPs who were privately educated and parachuted in to their constituencies.
That's going to be embarrassing for his own party and him when he asked, given how few of Starmer's given that 90% of Starmer's cabinet were state educated, and nearly all of the Reform top dogs were at private school (Exceptions: Anderson and Rosindell), and how few of them are locals in their constituencies (i think that is only Anderson).
I mean there’s a legend that the famous professional wrestler Ravishing Rick Rude died after injecting Viagra down there. May be true may be nonsense. Most wrestlers back then were druggies.
‘ Doctors are warning about a dangerous online trend called “ballmaxxing” where men inject saline or surgical lubricants into their testicles to temporarily enlarge them
Experts say the practice can cause infections, nerve damage and even permanent testicular damage’
https://x.com/picturesfoider/status/2057039288571981991?s=61
Firstly, private school numbers have already dropped further than expected in the first year of VAT as it is putting extra pressure on the State sector, but, secondly, the biggest problem is entry-level attrition.
Parents with kids already in them will move heaven and earth to complete their education, unless they face personal bankruptcy otherwise, but there's a far larger number now that won't ever sign-up for them in the first place, and this is driving insolvencies and closures. I know bursars in three different private schools and their enrolment forecasts are looking awful for next year, with the critical year being 2030. Two of them have each other on their watchlist.
Most independent schools operate on tight margins, some even relying on local council bursaries, and community donations. Even a modest drop in pupil numbers can significantly disrupt financial stability. Most costs are fixed (staff salaries, facilities maintenance, utilities) and income reduction can quickly lead to operational and cash flow deficits. Once reserves are depleted, which may only last a couple of years, the risk of insolvency becomes acute.
Most commentary on the subject comes from a position of pure ignorance. And this will become increasingly apparent as this Parliament progresees.
Firstly, private school numbers have already dropped further than expected in the first year of VAT as it is putting extra pressure on the State sector, but, secondly, the biggest problem is entry-level attrition.
Parents with kids already in them will move heaven and earth to complete their education, unless they face personal bankruptcy otherwise, but there's a far larger number now that won't ever sign-up for them in the first place, and this is driving insolvencies and closures. I know bursars in three different private schools and their enrolment forecasts are looking awful for next year, with the critical year being 2030. Two of them have each other on their watchlist.
Most independent schools operate on tight margins, some even relying on local council bursaries, and community donations. Even a modest drop in pupil numbers can significantly disrupt financial stability. Most costs are fixed (staff salaries, facilities maintenance, utilities) and income reduction can quickly lead to operational and cash flow deficits. Once reserves are depleted, which may only last a couple of years, the risk of insolvency becomes acute.
Most commentary on the subject comes from a position of pure ignorance. And this will become increasingly apparent as this Parliament progresees.
I just noticed you've posted all day long on every page by reading this thread.
Bezos on Trump: "I think he's a more mature, more disciplined version of himself than he was in his first term. Trump has lots of good ideas. He's been right about a lot of things. You have to give him credit where credit is due."
I think Burnham will be easy to work with. It could be a challenge for Starmer but Burnham will help him. He will be his principal aide.
The NFU said it was the best agricultural deal for the UK since the UK left the EU as the government didn’t allow a lowering of poultry standards .
But when you suck up you have to go all the way. People should be happy, even the techbro oligarchs must still bend the knee to at least one government.
NEW THREAD
There are more than two zones?
Take a batch of five every two hours and measure them.
Happy times.