True that! The big picture is that you need trans-governmental incentivisation to make 9 billion people live sustainably. Individuals will always be too poor/busy/selfish/lazy to make the sacrifices required; a few altruistic individuals won’t make any measurable difference. Government needs to set the conditions whereby the cheap, easy choice for the individual is also the environmental one.

Every UK home owner can do something, British houses are themric sieves so insulate. Roof wals, floor windows.
New build so pretty good

Heat using a wood burning stove if you have a renewable wood supply and local air pollution isn’t an issue.
Can’t afford it, sorry

If you have south-facing roof fit PV and a solar water heater.
Had it in the old house, but can’t afford it, sorry.

Use a heat pump hot water tank
Probably can’t afford it.

Don’t fly to Australia when you can take the train/bus to Nice if you really want a hot holiday.
Valid, doesn’t work so well for Islands when time off is finite! Also, if you put all current flying CO2 emissions into trains and buses, I’d be interested to see the savings.

Have CO2 per km as the main criteria when you choose your car if you really feel the need for your car (or more probably your partner does) because we’re all walking, cycling bus riding, hitch-hiking people with no need for a private car, right?
Fuel economy is a big criterion, can’t afford full electric, cycle as much as practical. Buses and walking not practical. We’re not all retired!

Buy locally produced food and reduce meat consumption to what you feel you neeed to stay healthy (if you don’t get on with being vegetarian)
Tick!

Choose to live near you place of work even if that means a more modest house
We work in opposite directions, suspect this is true of lots of people! Also, I move locations.

Most people can do that and more, that’s a huge scale.

For perspective, I’m a 40% taxpayer and she’s not too badly off either, and we’ve no kids. I take your point that taxation reforms could make this stuff cheaper, but I’m just making the point that I can’t afford it and I’m supposedly top 10%……..

Their products do not have a vitreous enamel coating. The frying pans might be very good, since they can be seasoned instead, but I suspect they would not be very good casseroles: acidic sauces would react with the iron and taint the dish, they would probably inevitably rust (and so not last very long, never mind ‘forever’), and the wooden knobs would probably not survive prolonged use in an oven.

You do season them, then you just clean them with water. If they do go rusty, you re-season. Mine is a slow cooker that you can put in the oven. They do iron handles for going in the oven. I did find that the iron lids rusted quick with acidic sauces, but I’ve got the tagine-style one, which is ceramic. I dropped it once, it didn’t break (though the kitchen floor did!)

Look, I was doing my contractually obliged time with the family, a bike ride was hardly an option! Ten pin bowling at a retail park was!

Those of you are are apologists for him – could you please name one tory policy he stopped?

Read his book:

http://netherton-foundry.co.uk/%5B/url%5D

Not cheap but will last forever!

ransos – Member
Evidentiary standard? You mean an accusation? Which is the evidentiary standard and that alone has taken many case to trial.

If I meant accusation, that is what I would’ve said. As for your second sentence, I can see that I may as well try educating pork.

Wow, that’s the second of your posts I’ve read in as many days and thought “he seems nice”.

Of course, you’d have rather less to go round

It was carp that got us into this Brexit mess in the first place!

Be Angry!

I would venture to suggest that the situation in Scotland is better than it is UK wide.

You might be disappointed.
Economist

Chokkablog

For the Tories, Hunt’s name is being bandied around too. All a bit tainted, aren’t they?! Hammond, despite seeming a bit dull, would be my choice.

Off-topic a bit, but I was listening to a podcast chatting about Labour’s succession plan. JC is no spring chicken, of course. This is something they need to think about imo as failing to plan for succession often ends badly! The leading name was Thornberry, then a few others from the left who were perceived as too junior at the mo. What was striking was the lack of any names from the right of the party, I guess, given the election system, they wouldn’t have a hope at present!

I’m sure we wouldn’t agree on everything. I’m a bit Aberdonian too, mind!

Back on thread,it is strange to me that the likes of Jamby and the above would defend tax breaks for private education,surely they favour the free market? If a private business has to rely on handouts then surely it is inefficient.

Agree with this tbh, though I suspect most don’t turn much of a profit after investment etc and therefore the take might be less than you’d think from things like Corp tax. VAT on fees might raise a bit. I don’t think they should have to pay anything a state school doesn’t.
Edited for inept use of the quote function, also, Michael Gove agrees with me! Spectator link[/url]

Petrolhead in the past and still enjoy the act of driving (my modest but cheap Hyundai) as others have said; you don’t have to be caning it, and my passenger-seat mounted speed limiter tends to ensure I don’t, but there’s lots of pleasure to be had in trying to do it well. I too love a road trip!
However, it seems to be impossible to go anywhere these days without getting stuck in bloody traffic at some point! Even if you try and be clever and go early/late, you will still sit on a 10-mile tailback on the M6/M1/M5/A1/M62. And I don’t even live in the South! Public transport is great between big cities but not much use for things like mtbing. Has taken a lot of the enjoyment out of it for me.

Social liberalism!

virtually all private school children end up emotionally stunted as a result of their education or rather lack of it. ask any education professional.

I asked one. They said a part of the male anatomy, comes in pairs.

binners – Member
They don’t take dimwits apparently.
I’ve met plenty of privately educated people who are a living, braying testament to that definitely not being the case

I’ve met plenty who are very sharp, capable people. I suspect there’s a mixture, just like with comp-educated folk, except you don’t zone in on them being a thicko quite so much when they haven’t got a posh accent?

For example, a parent aged 45 wanting to have enough to pay for, or pay off, £50,000 of school fees in 10 years’ time (when 55) could easily cover this with the £58,320 he could receive in tax relief on pension contributions, according to Legal & General.

That’s nothing to do with the tax status of the schools (and I agree in principle they should be taxed as any other business) that’s just avoiding tax through pension contributions, and spending the saving on school fees in this case. Tax relief on pension contributions is a well-established way of nudging people to behave in a certain way deemed desirable, ie to save for their old age. Open to anybody…

their attitude to education is so much better than ours. The motivation, the positive attitude of poor and uneducated parents to their kids receiving good education and the appreciation that an education (and a pretty crap one at that) was a ticket to a better life makes me ashamed to be British

Hear this a lot, and was just as guilty of it myself as a snot-nosed brat! What has no cost has no value, etc!

These little drones; have they got the range and payload to reach it and do some damage while it’s standing off in blue water?

Lots of talk about networking and entitlement, but in my experience (fairly ropey comp myself but quite a few friends who were boarding school boys), it’s more subtle than that. By a thousand subtle cues, they were imbued with the notion that they were the movers and shakers of tomorrow. Our guidance was more “get yourself a career”. I didn’t know anyone going to Oxbridge, it just wasn’t a thing. They were coached for the interviews.
Also, it’s tempting to characterise parents of boarding school kids as sheikhs/toffs/oligarchs, but the reality is most are middle-class folk making sacrifices to meet the fees, so as some have said the law of unintended consequences should be borne in mind by anyone messing with the system!

On a more boring note, if you’re flying it within 6 km of an airfield, give the Tower a call

I’m sure oob is big enough to look after himself. I read your post as implying that he wasn’t capable of thought. I read his as making the suggestion, via a narrative device, that neoliberalism was a least-worst option, rather than suggesting that you had said that. Isn’t language fun?
Anyway, have a nice Christmas.

He questioned a possible contradiction in your loyalties. You called him stupid. One is debate, the other is abuse.

Edit for double post.

ransos – Member
I thought you were saying you detest neoliberalism, but you are happy to run the economy on a neoliberal basis so we can stay in a neoliberal trade group because you think that’s better than not doing so. I guess you weren’t.
Vanishingly unlikely.

Not very nice, is it?

Poopscoop, the Rafale (the French maritime jet) is cats and traps only, there is no STOVL variant. There’s lots more to the operation of useful air power off a carrier than how many jets you’ve got and how sexy they are. There are pros and cons to every approach. I believe the Admiral Kuznetsov is quite compromised by its short deck, so despite being cat and trap equipped, the jets’ load has to be low to enable them to get off the deck!

All kit ever procured has its issues and limitations, especially at the beginning of its service life. Once it beds in and develops, however (and assuming the funding is there to keep developing F35), we usually make a success of it. The Tornado F3 is a good example! As I understand it, F35 is such a game-changer that the US and other partners are still figuring out how the tactics etc are going to work. Regarding the asymmetric warfare/COIN argument, I guess you can argue that, with resources constrained, a F35 does COIN better than a Reaper does when the other team has an Air Force?

“It’s what we imposed on them ”

Colonial guilt trumping history a bit there!

But given that Portugal would be taxing him 365 days a year, you’re effectively arguing for double taxation.

Tbf Jamba didn’t say he’d be routeing his earnings through a Cayman-based shell company via a Zurich nameplate, I read it that he’d pay local taxes in either the U.K. or Portugal/France/wherever he lives, depending on which is lower. In the absence of US style top-up laws, seems reasonable to me!
Also Junkyard, $1.26m for top 1%, really? Given that top 10% was apparently about £40k, and I remember hearing that Labour’s proposed tax increases on those earning £80k+ only affected the top 2%, that seems like a very bendy line!

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jan/10/uk-inequality-working-people-pensions-ons

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/business-40644850

Mixed picture I suggest.

Scotland is a lot better on public services, education in particular.

Seriously?

Igm, WWI broke out between 2 military alliances. During the Cold War, the nations of Western Europe (and more importantly North America) were united in the same military alliance. I’d suggest that the political union that became the EU certainly played its part in meshing them together, but NATO (and it’s nuclear weapons more than its tanks) was the decisive factor in stopping the Cold War turning hot.
Tj, you can make that argument against any military deterrence task. Deterrent is better than war, no?

I think ninfan’s making the point that NATO kept the peace in Western Europe against the threat, not the EU.

I don’t give way to BMW’s…shame me!

I don’t use an apostrophe to pluralise an abbreviation;).

Molgrips’ biggest problem is apparent reasonableness, receptiveness to others’ point of view and lack of an axe to grind.

Military kids get up to £6k per term, subject to quite stringent qualifying criteria. The parents have to make up the rest. Numbers are falling and use of the few state boarding schools is encouraged. Boarding is the essential bit, not private.

(Can’t post smileys for some reason but lol, as the kids say!)