UK Government Thread

Give Kier a chance FFS, it’s not even been 3 weeks yet, before casting sweeping assumptions.

What sweeping assumptions?

What sweeping assumptions?

The cabal of ultra left Hyenas* on here

* copyright acknowledgement @binners

It makes every political thread really boring when the usual few suspects just cluster bomb it with a load of crap.

The cabal of ultra left Hyenas* on here

* copyright acknowledgement @binners

It makes every political thread really boring when the usual few suspects just cluster bomb it with a load of crap.

This plea will fall on deaf ears. It’s just myopic righteousness. We’re all wrong because we don’t agree with the narrow sliver of the politics or economics they adhere to.

There’s no nuance, no understanding or acceptance of different perspectives, and worst of all, no sense of humour.

There’s no nuance

au contraire, rodders, my son.

This plea will fall on deaf ears. It’s just myopic righteousness. We’re all wrong because we don’t agree with the narrow sliver of the politics or economics they adhere to.

Its the narrow sliver of righteous centrists screaming every other view down that’s the problem. I notice they have now got sensitive about labels when they have been applied to them, they couldn’t give a flying **** about labels when they have been screaming “shit thick racists” at the poor, “commie” at anyone to the left of thatcher or “racist pensioner” at the old. Where were the smug self proclaimed “adults in the room” then? Where were you when binners decided that having mocking children in poverty and brown people getting slaughtered in Palestine was such a fun good way of attacking the left, clicking like and egging on the abuse?

And don’t tell me your you/they are sensible ones when the populists say the boiling point of water is a parrot, so they say that the boiling point of water is halfway between 100 and a parrot, because that’s the “sensible balanced position”. And every time the populists become more extreme the centrists step towards them like moths to the flame ever more convinced of their righteousness, while hurling abuse at those they left behind.

Its the narrow sliver of righteous centrists screaming every other view down that’s the problem. I notice they have now got sensitive about labels when they have been applied to them, they couldn’t give a flying **** about labels when they have been screaming “shit thick racists” at the poor, “commie” at anyone to the left of thatcher or “racist pensioner” at the old.
That sounds very much like something out of the Donald Trump play book, Slow clap for you.

Would it really hurt you to step back, and have a think??

centrists screaming
they couldn’t give a flying **** about labels
For someone who doesn’t like lables, you seem to be very sensitive to lables, you cheeky Nazi, you!

Give my regards to Nigel when you see him in hell. Sorry, not hell, wetherspoons.

I am sure trying to paint my words as Trumpian fascism made sense in your head, but it is frankly a rather weird Interpretation.

Although talking of the Trump playbook, the centrists calling of the poor and the leas fortunate does frequently remind me of Trump mocking disabled veterans.

I can’t edit my post now, the quotes and formatting is messed up, but it should be quite obvious what I mean.

Wow! Just… WOW!

yes making sure that minimum wage work pays enough to live on is a priority for me too.

Unemployed people with more than 2 kids not so much.

What would you increase the minimum wage to and how do you think that would work out?  Let’s make it £25 per hour, what are all the things that happen economically when you do that?

And try to remember, the 3rd and 4th kids haven’t decided to be born into poverty but they are in it anyway.  People are unemployed with more than two kids for many reasons but the reasons are irrelevant as regards to any cap, the cap is simply making the kids lives worse (those kids who will become the adults in the country sometime soon)

Kerley – its not just unemployed.  Its child benefit paid to all.  Its in work benefits.  its tax credits.  all affected by the 2 child cap

Except in this case there is nothing to agree with. I didn’t actually say that anyone to the right of Marx is Tory-lite, so what are they agreeing with? Nothing.

They were presumably liking the post because it was seen as having a dig at someone. It’s basically primary school politics, never mind the 6th form.

The only one acting like a child here is you Ernie. You’ve picked one sentence from a rather lengthy post and decided that’s what it is that everyone is liking. I’ll go out on a limb here and say you’re wrong. In fact I know you are because I’m one of the people that liked his post and it had nothing to do with you and the Tory-lite bit. Perhaps go back and read the entire post and have a think about why people might have given it a like that wasn’t anything to do with you.

Yes, well aware of that.  I was directly responding to the comment made about unemployed peoples kids not ‘deserving’ it.  Likewise, if minimum wage was £25 per hour then no doubt a lot less people would be claiming it but minimum wage is another discussion and in this case I would guess being used as a diversion.

This thread is a shit show, and I’m not seeing any winners.

Anyone on the left thought there may actually be more to it than just waving a magic wand and saying make it so. Even the Tories had woken up to the fact that the child benefit rules were grossly unfair based on the income of the highest earner. Just maybe they want to resolve that and base the threshold on household income, maybe at the same time help fund the cap removal by reducing the income threshold to say £60k, does a household with a £60k gross income really need child benefit. Any I imagine there’s work to be done behind the scenes to make sure the mechanisms can be put in place to make it all work and I doubt they want to reduce the threshold weeks into their tenure.

They can’t do everything all at once and have already shown they actually do have a plan unlike Rishi and I haven’t heard much moaning about what they have announced so far.

Lefties you lost (actually you were never in it to win it in the first place as there was no credible party standing with your views) get over it. You sound like whiny teenagers just looking for an argument, just like the 7 grand standing MPs who are now suspended.

As above every debate just get bombed into submission and if you think the dirty centrists are now pretty intolerant I wonder why, maybe it’s the constant and unproductive repetition of the same old cliches. We all have a world we like to live in, unfortunately that’s not the one that challenges us everyday.

Its the narrow sliver of righteous centrists screaming every other view down that’s the problem

Of course it is. Lack of self awareness does seem to affect left, right and centre.

This thread is a shit show, and I’m not seeing any winners.

It keeps the shit in one place so there are lots of winners.

If we were actually discussing the subject of the thread title instead of the same spirit-crushingly tedious posters going on and on and on and on about their present hobby horse, there are a number of other issues this morning, outside the lefty bubble:

There’s Labours anouncement this morning on energy generation, acccelerating the net zero target? – Offshore wind to power 20m homes within five years, Starmer to pledge. We could talk about that?

In complete contrast to this, Tom Tugendhat, who is apparently the ‘moderate’ candidate is already wooing the nutters by a continuation of the culture wars and rubbishing net zero, and advocating withdrawal from the ECHR. So much for ‘moderate’. So anyone thinking the Tory party isn’t about to disapear off to the far right is in for a reality intrusion. Looks like the next incarnation of HM Opposition is going to just be an extension of Reform. Shall we talk about that?

Tom Tugendhat thinks he’s a ‘common sense Conservative’.
He thinks he can be trusted.
He thinks it’s fine to leave the ECHR.
He thinks more divisive culture war and less net zero is fine too.
Tom has learned nothing.
What a nasty, feeble little man he is. pic.twitter.com/jJKDevdm9U

— sarah murphy (@13sarahmurphy) July 24, 2024

In other exciting news, for those who like their insular, self-absorbed comfort zone, it looks like theres soon to be a new ‘Rebel Alliance’ you can all join. What fun!

Thursday's front page: Corbyn trying to form rebel alliance to fight Starmer #TomorrowsPapersToday

Latest from @HugoGye and @RichardVaughan1 here: https://t.co/mSJ7z1Tzvl pic.twitter.com/obr7kppO2d

— The i paper (@theipaper) July 24, 2024

And, even more excitingly, theres a catchy new slogan and an internet petition you can all sign. Of course there is…

Starmers suspension of the 7 is designed to punish those with principles and scare new MPs into submission.

Poor kids will pay the highest price for his ego driven antics.

Please give this petition your full support. https://t.co/n4RXUmNOGA pic.twitter.com/nAX5c0GkYf

— Jess Barnard (@JessicaLBarnard) July 24, 2024

The ‘thread is a shit show’ response –  appears when it’s not going with a consensus of the centre right on here that believe they’re the progressives.

We’ve heard it all before.

If Starmer keeps up with his conservative authoritarian ways then expect heavy criticism.

#Standwiththe7

There’s Labours anouncement this morning on energy generation, acccelerating the net zero target? – Offshore wind to power 20m homes within five years, Starmer to pledge. We could talk about that?

8 3bn of public money in the hope of 60bn of private money. What a plan.

What happens when the private money doesn’t appear?

These are such flacid and pointless ideas.  There’s either a problem that needs fixing or not.

Standwiththe7

As opposed to being on the side of Tory policy that you hate when it suits.

rone, you are not supposed to look past the headlines.  The headlines are to keep the likes of binners happy.

Given that the labour manifesto committed to green energy with GBE by 2030, I’m not sure that it’s really news to say lots of houses will be powered by wind in 2029. That much was obvious. The real news will be when they decide how they will keep the grid up when the wind isn’t blowing.

No interest in discussing anything else other than you present hobby horse then? No? Didn’t think so, but it was worth a punt, I suppose.

Where I live there’s a place down by the river where the local nutters get together to drink cider and shout at buses. This thread, like every other politics threads on here, has just become that.

Again.

The ‘thread is a shit show’ response –  appears when it’s not going with a consensus of the centre right on here that believe they’re the progressives.

No, it’s when the same handful of posters dominate political threads with increasing vehemence in circulsr arguments over EXACTLY how many angels are dancing on the head of that pin.

You can see it on any political thread on here.

The ‘thread is a shit show’ response –  appears when it’s not going with a consensus of the centre right on here that believe they’re the progressives.

No, it happens when the same voices outweigh everyone else on thread to the point where everyone else just gives up. Honestly I reckon the best things that the big hitters could do would be to take a sabbatical and let other folks get a word in edge ways for a change.

I’m not sure that it’s really news to say lots of houses will be powered by wind in 2029

That and it seems to be linked to the existing plans by the crown estate. Seems like they might be trying a variant on PFI with crown estate which could be interesting.

The real news will be when they decide how they will keep the grid up when the wind isn’t blowing.

Yes. Beyond hydrostorage this doesnt seem to come up much unlike elsewhere in Europe with the various salt heat storage and release.

The real news will be when they decide how they will keep the grid up when the wind isn’t blowing.

Do we know the stats for average days when the wind isn’t blowing with offshore wind? Serious question?

Purely anecdotal I know, but when I open my curtains every morning, the first thing I see are the wind urbines over the valley on Scout Moor. I often hear (mostly Daily Mailish) people object to them say that ‘what happens when the wind doesn’t blow?’, but I know from experience (we’ve been here 14 years) that you can literally count the days per year that the turbines aren’t turning on the fingers of one hand. I would imagine that out in the North Sea thats reduced even further

Heres the view of the turbines from our house (taken with a zoom lense in a cloud inversion in the valley). Lovely isn’t it? I just don’t get the objections at all to them, but for the last 10 years the NIMBY’s have been winning. I find it quite refreshing that the ban on onshore wind has been lifted as it was complete insanity, especially somewhere like this where its a post-industrial landscape full of disused quarries etc, so it seems a bit late in the day to be objecting to wind turbines

They are more likely to be generating too much electricity rather than none. The grid upgrades are the most important factor in all this, and I’d like to hear more about that. There was some info as regards planning changes, but it’s all down to the implementation.

I’m not sure that it’s really news to say lots of houses will be powered by wind in 2029

Oh I don’t know, it did seem unlikely to happen a short while ago, so it is an improvement. But the private finance segment of the commitment does seem a bit of bait and switch from the state owned clean energy company promised before the election. And 8 billion is considerably less than 28 billion, I know they had already backed away from that but cutting it to less than a third is worse than feared.

Battery storage will be important in the UK re renewables. Planning constraints even for that, have been tricky in recent years.

Yeah there’s plenty of data on low/no wind days. In part solar can mitigate. It’s all quite complex though, and maintaining a constant base load is a challenge.

It’s not the biggie though, grid capacity is by far the bigger problem. Installing it is both expensive and hard to counter the nimbyism. That’ll be a big political problem for Labour in the years ahead.

It’s why for me a reduction in consumption is also incredibly important. Insulating out absolutely dire housing stock can really help here. Which hopefully Labour will be picking up on. Then moving to things such as circular economy models to utilise waste heat etc can also mitigate.

Probably a separate thread on cc/green transition could be an idea.

The ‘thread is a shit show’ response –  appears when it’s not going with a consensus of the centre right on here that believe they’re the progressives.

No, it’s when you don’t respond to reasonable questions about your qualifications and the evidence that you have to opine about modern monetary theory.

“There’s loads of evidence for it” isn’t a real answer, especially when you’re making unorthodox claims.

I’ve looked for the evidence myself, as far as I can see, it’s a theory that could work if it weren’t for the fact of human behaviour. Just like many other discredited economic theories.

Do we know the stats for average days when the wind isn’t blowing with offshore wind?

There dont seem to be many good recent figures. Its made more difficult that since the farms are distributed you are unlikely to get them all off at the same time.

However its worth noting they can still be turning and not producing either because its too slow or because its too fast. The latter its either because they need to be disengaged to avoid damage (very high winds) or the grid cant handle the power being produced.

No interest in discussing anything else other than you present hobby horse then? No? Didn’t think so, but it was worth a punt, I suppose.

Where I live there’s a place down by the river where the local nutters get together to drink cider and shout at buses. This thread, like every other politics threads on here, has just become that.

Again.

Not disagreeing with any of that, but we ALL need to take a moment before pressing “submit” to try and make sure we are not adding to the problem.

Sometimes it’s best to know when to stop wasting bandwidth, shrug our shoulders and accept that what we want to type isn’t helping the discussion, and is just to make us feel good.

@dissonance – again purely anecdotally, the times they’re not turning tend to be when its REALLY windy and I’ve presumed its so they’re not damaged. I remember riding up there one Saurday morning and as we got up to the turbines you literally couldn’t stand up, even though it’d felt ok in the valley. We got down off there pretty sharpish :D

I love the things and love riding up there and always saw the effective ban on onshore wind as the absolute height of idealogically driven madness..

I’m quite enjoying the opinions on windless days, batteries, solar and grid capacity.

I’ve worked in the area for 30 years, occasionally speak on national stages on the subject etc so I know a little.

A lot of the misconceptions are down to assuming energy balance means power balance, and annual energy use is meaningful when annual energy storage is yet to be practically available  (the recent call for long term storage was based around 4 hours I think, though I may have misremembered that).

Windless days across the UK are exceedingly rare and present battery technology probably offers a solution if we throw enough money at it.

Interseasonal production and use is more challenging, solar in the summer, heating in the winter.  Batteries are unlikely to sort that.  Over-production of electricity with associated hydrogen production in the summer, followed by hydrogen CCGT (or other generation) and heat pumps in the winter might.  Hydrogen boilers in homes have logistical problems.

Grid capacity is an issue if you want to run a 1950s style grid. So don’t do that. There are other cheaper and better grid models.

Feel free to look me up (Iain Miller) – some of my ranting is probably available via reputable channels on the web.

I certainly don’t know all the answers, though I have a better handle on what the questions are than most.
And if we have sense, we don’t wait until we have all the answers before we start implementing solutions.

The government are probably looking at the right installation actions at present – whether best as a nationalised  company I will leave to your political preferences.

https://ourworldindata.org/

Is a good port of call for decent data on these things.

@igm clearly has a lot of expertise. I’m far lower down the food chain, completely new to the field, but am researching some of the political problems of the move to net zero.

What’s your stance on what the grid mix will look like in 2050 @igm? A very broad and probably impossible to answer question I know!

Honestly I reckon the best things that the big hitters could do would be to take a sabbatical and let other folks get a word in edge ways for a change.

And there we have it. Any lefty types should shut the f*** up. I’ve always known there’s an active effort on here – mostly lead by binners – to silence any opinions that don’t fit in with the centrist-establishment consensus so it’s nice to have it in black and white.

What’s your stance on what the grid mix will look like in 2050 @igm?

Ha. Accurate predictions of the future are always difficult. And just looking at generation doesn’t work, demand, storage and timing, plus social changes need thinking about.

Less nuclear than people think – even though I think we probably need some.
Plenty of wind, plenty of solar.
Lots of diversified generation locations – homes, businesses etc – because it gets round some of the grid capacity issue.
Storage moving to point of generation or demand rather than half way up the system which merely exacerbates the grid capacity issue (note that homes and businesses will be both generation and demand points – play with that).
Hydrogen will have a role, but probably not what people think.
More efficient solar installations (both cell performance and where you can put them).
More efficient heat pumps – that’s starting already.
Some reasonable insulation – maybe?
And change in usage habits – transport in particular will become expensive so it will change.
The actively balanced “grid” becoming about the 400V and 11kV systems not the 400kV system which will become more passive.
Machines taking over from people in designing and operating the energy system – and we’re starting to do that now.

Chose any of the above, ignore others, add your own.

Just do not pretend that wind by wire will replace coal by wire in a 1950s style.