Do you want to discuss boring politics? (22 Viewers)

chiefdave

Well-Known Member
I’m hoping by the next election when in any sane country the Conservatives would be put out of action for a generation.
The response to Hancock in the jungle doesn't exactly inspire confidence that will happen. I'd love to say voting in a reality tv is very different to voting in a general election but if his image can be rehabilitated that quickly who knows where the conservatives will be by the time the next election rolls round.
 
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Deleted member 9744

Guest
The response to Hancock in the jungle doesn't exactly inspire confidence that will happen. I'd love to say voting in a reality tv is very different to voting in a general election but if his image can be rehabilitated that quickly who knows where the conservatives will be by the time the next election rolls round.
Sadly I think you are right. People still like characters in their politicians and many are very gullible when presented with posh people.
 

Brighton Sky Blue

Well-Known Member
The response to Hancock in the jungle doesn't exactly inspire confidence that will happen. I'd love to say voting in a reality tv is very different to voting in a general election but if his image can be rehabilitated that quickly who knows where the conservatives will be by the time the next election rolls round.
That’s my thought. I mean just brazenly carrying on with a third PM this year and being massively down in the polls while the economy falls to pieces, most would do the honourable thing and let someone else have a go and inherit the mess.

The teachers’ strike if, and it’s a big if, it passes the plan is to go out on strike on the same days as the nurses, RMT and CWU. That only looks bad on one side and it’s not the striking workers.
 

Sky_Blue_Dreamer

Well-Known Member
Yes the argument that our problems especially climate change is down to overpopulation isn't right at all. The problem is the behaviour of the richest few.
Well, you can to some extent as every increase in population requires more land for housing, food, commerce; more energy to feed the extra demand created; more resources used up. Then that population creates waste that needs to be dealt with.

But certainly in many aspects a select few are causing a massively disproportionate amount of the problems. Yet always seem to be the ones that aren't targeted to deal with them.
 

Sky_Blue_Dreamer

Well-Known Member
Because it produces a lot of energy. As I said it’s shark attacks and plane crashes: big and scary when it happens but very very rare. And our animal brains aren’t good with those sorts of things.

I want to know who is dying from solar? Installers falling off the roof?
So the dinosaurs were right to not be worried about asteroid strikes then?
 

Brighton Sky Blue

Well-Known Member
So the dinosaurs were right to not be worried about asteroid strikes then?
jurassic park dinosaur GIF by Pretty Whiskey / Alex Sautter
 

skybluetony176

Well-Known Member
Did you see Truss’ Japan deal actually reduced trade? Amazing.
It’s not surprising really. There might be a number of factors but the reality is our trade deal is an almost carbon copy of the EU trade deal with Japan, all the analysis I’ve read is that the EU’s is more complete than ours meaning that there’s more opportunity for trade with our neighbours making them a more attractive trading partner so we can’t compete in many areas with our neighbours. We’ve also as a direct result of Brexit not the Japan trade deal lost our ability to be a gateway destination into the EU for all international businesses meaning we’re being bypassed on shipping.
 
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Deleted member 5849

Guest
The response to Hancock in the jungle doesn't exactly inspire confidence that will happen. I'd love to say voting in a reality tv is very different to voting in a general election but if his image can be rehabilitated that quickly who knows where the conservatives will be by the time the next election rolls round.
Next leader, at this rate!
 

skybluetony176

Well-Known Member
But an entirely different disaster because it gives away more than it gets. It takes some skill to be this spectacularly bad at everything they try. This is what happens when you put domestic poll ratings above everything else. It’s all been about “the project” since 2016 Brexit first country second.

Apparently the Australia deal was given some mad political timescale by Truss (G7 appearance or something?) then she literally went to the Aussies and said “what do you want to get it done by this date?” And they took us to the cleaners.
It was an open joke in Australia. Political commentators talking in astonishment about it and MP openly laughing about how they shafted us on TV. Then there’s the small matter that we apparently need 2000 Australia trade deals to regain what we’ve lost from the EU due to brexit.
 

fernandopartridge

Well-Known Member
The response to Hancock in the jungle doesn't exactly inspire confidence that will happen. I'd love to say voting in a reality tv is very different to voting in a general election but if his image can be rehabilitated that quickly who knows where the conservatives will be by the time the next election rolls round.
Though TBF I would wager that a lot of people who bother to vote for I'm a celebrity do not bother voting in elections
 

shmmeee

Well-Known Member
Errrr. The crown can go back on pint glasses so gammons don’t have their nights ruined by unelected bureaucrat in Brussels. The pint glass is always half empty with you isn’t it.

We could always have that couldn’t we? Same as the blue passports (which Croatia has while in the EU).

The only real benefit in most leave voters eyes would be the ending of free movement of people Id imagine. Maybe the ECJ stuff but I fail to believe that was ever a real life concern.
 

fernandopartridge

Well-Known Member
We could always have that couldn’t we? Same as the blue passports (which Croatia has while in the EU).

The only real benefit in most leave voters eyes would be the ending of free movement of people Id imagine. Maybe the ECJ stuff but I fail to believe that was ever a real life concern.
People are quite ignorant of the steps until something gets to the ECJ in any case, domestic courts are still primarily making decisions. It'd be interesting to see how many examples there are of a European court overturning the decision made by a domestic court. Certainly in the area I work in (procurement based on EU directives) all of the case law referred to is from domestic courts which suggests to me that very little actually ends up in the European courts.
 

PVA

Well-Known Member
On the subject of European courts its equal parts amusing and depressing that arch Brexiteer Owen Paterson is taking the government to European Court.
 

skybluetony176

Well-Known Member
On the subject of European courts its equal parts amusing and depressing that arch Brexiteer Owen Paterson is taking the government to European Court.
Everyone is a Eurosceptic. Right until they need them. Brexiteers Bamford and Dyson also have a history of using the European courts to try and get their own way. Mind you I think they both lost, might explain at least Dyson stance because he was once a dribbling europhile and said not joining the Euro was a massive mistake for British industry.
 

duffer

Well-Known Member
But for the number of reactors there’s been very few serious incidents which is why you’re pulling out one from 40 years ago that required people to override safety systems. Systems that have fail safes in modern reactors.

The bottom line is for base load it’s fossil fuels or nuclear and fossil fuels are significantly more dangerous.

Ok, so you've moved away from the nuclear being safer than renewable argument, which was always a bit thin tbh, but you're now positing technology as the saviour against humans doing dumb things whilst ignoring the fact that the technology is controlled and designed by humans.

The technology initially engaged properly in Fukushima in 2011, and yet they still had to evacuate more than 150,000 people. So you don't have to dig back very far to find potential issues even with supposedly up to date processes in a nation that would generally be recognised as technically extremely competent.

Again I'm not anti-Nuclear but thinking that we're somehow immune to the mistakes of our predecessors because our technology, processes, or foresight is now perfect is a fallacy exposed by history.

As for your last bit, in essence saying it's either Nuclear or fossil, that would seem to disregard renewable energy completely, which is odd imho. Is that what you meant to say?

My personal opinion is that the primary drive should be towards renewable, with investment equal to or actually beyond what is currently spent on nuclear power, and then you can look at the minimum nuclear energy requirements needed to take up the slack.

Nuclear is incredibly expensive to commission and decommission, with very long lead and even longer roll-off timescales, and holds an inherent risk that can't be completely ignored. I'd argue that you minimise those problems by looking elsewhere for solutions as much as possible, and then looking at nuclear as the next least worst option. At the moment I think we're going at it the wrong way, as ever though, just imho.
 

shmmeee

Well-Known Member
Ok, so you've moved away from the nuclear being safer than renewable argument, which was always a bit thin tbh, but you're now positing technology as the saviour against humans doing dumb things whilst ignoring the fact that the technology is controlled and designed by humans.

The technology initially engaged properly in Fukushima in 2011, and yet they still had to evacuate more than 150,000 people. So you don't have to dig back very far to find potential issues even with supposedly up to date processes in a nation that would generally be recognised as technically extremely competent.

Again I'm not anti-Nuclear but thinking that we're somehow immune to the mistakes of our predecessors because our technology, processes, or foresight is now perfect is a fallacy exposed by history.

As for your last bit, in essence saying it's either Nuclear or fossil, that would seem to disregard renewable energy completely, which is odd imho. Is that what you meant to say?

My personal opinion is that the primary drive should be towards renewable, with investment equal to or actually beyond what is currently spent on nuclear power, and then you can look at the minimum nuclear energy requirements needed to take up the slack.

Nuclear is incredibly expensive to commission and decommission, with very long lead and even longer roll-off timescales, and holds an inherent risk that can't be completely ignored. I'd argue that you minimise those problems by looking elsewhere for solutions as much as possible, and then looking at nuclear as the next least worst option. At the moment I think we're going at it the wrong way, as ever though, just imho.

For base load, yeah. Ideally you’d do storage but the cost and tech of batteries just isn’t there yet and the efficiency of something like pumped water storage i dont think compares.

So we need something that provides that load when renewables can’t, currently that’s natural gas, but that’s not an option from a climate perspective.

Fukushima needed an earthquake and a tsunami to take it down and even then did very little actual damage if you look at the reports.

Obviously long term the answer is distributed Solar and wind plus battery storage, maybe even using electric cars as storage. But we have an ancient grid that would need a lot of work to get there and a huge investment in solar in particular. Solar (and IMO ground source heat) should absolutely be part of building requirements going forwards and mass insulation is now both a climate and cost of living essential, but ultimately we need something to replace natural gas stations in this country.

And as I showed per kilowatt hour produced even including Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear is safer than everything bar wind and solar.

Whatever we do is going to be eyewateringly expensive. That’s what happens if you ignore a problem for 30 years sadly. The most likely way to get to the numbers you need with solar is residential solar which is by most studies more expensive than nuclear. Utility solar is much cheaper but harder to find places to put that much generation.
 

skybluetony176

Well-Known Member

shmmeee

Well-Known Member
“Over the two years to the end of 2021, Brexit increased food prices by around 6 per cent overall.”

Vs the Brexit pledge of Brexit would lower food prices by 20%. So basically people voted for food prices to be 25% lower than they currently are in reality.

It’s almost like economics doesn’t respect democracy 🤔
 

Brighton Sky Blue

Well-Known Member
“Over the two years to the end of 2021, Brexit increased food prices by around 6 per cent overall.”

Vs the Brexit pledge of Brexit would lower food prices by 20%. So basically people voted for food prices to be 25% lower than they currently are in reality.
In response to Blackford saying ‘why can’t he admit that Brexit was a mistake’ Sunak went off about ‘controlling our own borders’ in the same session as one of his own backbenchers asked ‘when are we going to stop them crossing the Channel’.

He also went on about Labour being the party of ‘strikes, high inflation and high debt’. Is he genuinely that dense?
 

skybluetony176

Well-Known Member
In response to Blackford saying ‘why can’t he admit that Brexit was a mistake’ Sunak went off about ‘controlling our own borders’ in the same session as one of his own backbenchers asked ‘when are we going to stop them crossing the Channel’.

He also went on about Labour being the party of ‘strikes, high inflation and high debt’. Is he genuinely that dense?
He’s not that dense. He just thinks voters are.
 

shmmeee

Well-Known Member


Labour seat but Tory until 2015 and pretty much in line with seat predictions based on national polling. That swing tho.
 

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