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#1

Off the Record / Re: Brexit and the waning days...

Last post by crazy canuck - Today at 07:24:59 AM

Jos, Australia has significant resources.

#2

Off the Record / Re: Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-2...

Last post by crazy canuck - Today at 07:09:22 AM

Ukraine is fighting an actual war and they have developed their own ability to hit targets in Russia.

What does the inter war period have to do with present day Ukraine, fighting to survive?

#3

Off the Record / Re: What does a TRUMP presiden...

Last post by Josquius - Today at 05:32:12 AM

The right don't understand the way the left think and believe we're exactly the same as them only backing another team.
Film at 11.

#4

Off the Record / Re: Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-2...

Last post by Josquius - Today at 05:31:08 AM

Reading about zelensky recently giving a speech on Ukraines ballistic missile programme.

Is it just me, or an I increasingly getting inter-war vibes from the Ukraine war?

What I mean is the war is kind of giving off vibes of what people in the 20s/30s expected another great war to be like.

Scary air power and ballistic missiles all powerful, smashing blocks of cities seemingly at random.... But without the mobile element that caught the west off guard in ww2. The front remains very WW1 styled.

Big vibes of Things to Come or other speculative fiction of the era.

#5

Off the Record / Re: Brexit and the waning days...

Last post by garbon - Today at 04:58:45 AM

#6

Off the Record / Re: Refractory Gauls, or the F...

Last post by Josquius - Today at 03:41:11 AM

Looks like we have a French Liz Truss.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cewn9k0w9rxo

So...finally give people the socialist they voted for?

#7

Off the Record / Re: Brexit and the waning days...

Last post by Josquius - Today at 03:38:58 AM

 

I don't know about natural advantages - I'm not sure have that many compared to, say, Canada or Australia.

True on Canada, they probably have us beat there. Hadn't really considered them before but... Yes. Welcome to the "club for nations that spurn advantages to just about get by" club. Italy, fetch Canada a drink, Argentina, can they sit next to you?

Australia.... I wouldn't put them as high as the UK. The whole giant desert in the middle of nowhere factor looms large.

The UK though has loads of natural advantages.
Good climate (drinks are being held, but here less than most of the world), English speaking, GMT, just off the coast of continental Europe, lots of respect, recognition, cultural clout (its dwindling all the time. Some just naturally, but especially this past decade a lot self inflicted)....
We really should be doing much better than we are.

But I think there are a lot of self-imposed constraints we could choose to ease. Also there's loads of quite alarming news about China in the UK recently, but it is interesting in illustrating where our relative strengths are. There's a lot of focus by China on AI, material science, medicine/life sciences/pharma and aerospace in the UK. Those are areas where we have a really strong base. We've got very good research universities, trusted courts and professional services, strong culture sector etc. That's a solid base but we need to work from it and snap out of the "I would simply be Germany" dreams too many policymakers hold.

I see where you're coming from there. Trouble is with this path the working class get left out which means we head down the far right death spiral.
We need more of a balance. We need to support this higher education side of things, whilst also opening up opportunities for working people.

Yeah. I think that's fair. Japan's bond market is far more domestic than the UK's (about 85% domestic v 70% domestic) - and we're about to get a lot more reliant on international bondholders and shorter term debt as the defined benefit pension schemes wind down as they were a very reliable market for 30 year debt.

Going into the mystic dark arts that area way beyond what I can grasp a bit here, but I do wonder if this is related to the talk of introducing a UK-ISA. More stock market than bond market focussed, but it could be turned that way too.
But yes. Another part of Japan's incestuousness here.

But even in Japan there are challenges. Interest on debt is up to 3% from a pre-pandmic low of 0.2%. Most tellingly though servicing debt accounts for about 22% of the Japanese budget. That's compared with 8-10% of the UK budget. Japan spends signficantly more on debt redemption and interest than on education, public works and defence combined. So even Japan's debt stability is a bit of an open question in a post-QE/central bank funded world.

I'm surprised at this. Not education. But public works seems to be something where Japan spends a tonne.
I wonder whether their system of privatised-but-not-really is masking the numbers here with all that infrastructure officially being private sector spending.

I think the slightly bigger problem is that solar is so good. It is the future of renewables. In part because you've got China building it. But also there's a really strong economy of scale - so roughly every doubling of production reduces actual module price by about 20%. It's totally modular and pretty passive once installed. The generation cycle is daily - that 24 cycle is really good for (current) battery technology. Also it's very low cost to operate - once you buy the kit and install it the rough costs of operation and maintenance is around 7-10% of the cost of electricity.

That's all fantastic globally in a big picture kind of way. It's not great for Britain The problem is Britain's latitude is really, really shit for this given the daily cycle - generation would collapse at exactly the point we consume most energy. So we'd need to massively overproduce solar and batteries for it to work. We've looked at things like building solar in Morocco or Spain with interconnectors - again it's very expensive and the subsea attack risk is very high.

Yeah this solar power in the desert thing is something we really need to see happen on a much bigger scale.
Though given recent lessons with the Iberian grid....

We do have a lot of wind. The problem is there is no learning rate for offshore - depending on which study you either see a very weak learning rate. There's on piece of research in the UK that actually shows a negative learning curve - it is becoming more expensive per unit the more we make (offshore wind isn't viable on the scale it is in the UK in many other places - so I'm not sure how much of this is structural v our unique ability to create incredibly expensive, bespoke solutions that somehow don't work).

That is weird. Definitely seems to be another indicator of the Anglo infrastructure disease.

The other really good option would be hydro - but we don't have the geography for that either. So maybe tidal. My understanding is the UK is one of the few places in the world where tidal could work. I can't remember the details but it was a map and the factors where the size of tides - high to low - which needs to be big for tidal to work, plus dense power network and proximity to population centres (all present in the UK). But that's tech that still isn't really viable at scale (yet).

Yes, the lack of progress on tidal is really frustrating. A lot of the schemes I've read about sound really good all round. But there's just something not coming off.

This is where I think that the UK really, really needs to focus on nuclear if we want decarbonised power. Wind has a role to play, so does some solar (particularly in their respective seasons) - but wind is nowhere near as viable a solution as solar is and solar isn't viable in Britain.

Would be nice. Maybe this RR micro-reactor stuff will lead somewhere.
Nuclear seems squeezed from both sides alas. Greens and fossil fuel lobbyists- incidentally been hearing increasing stories of the round about path the fossil fuel companies are taking to stopping change, funding terf and other groups that have far right appeal.

Yeah. I think AI has the potential to do to certain sectors what the 70s and 80s did to industry. We've already seen a drop in graduate recruitment by about a third this year - part of that is also the increase in employers' NI, but I can't help but thing AI is a factor there. I think those entry level jobs are exposed.

Potential for sure.
Though with the current wave, I could be wrong, though I really hope I'm not, I do think it has been oversold.
We're kind of at a .com bubble sort of stage where all these grand ideas are firing off but the technology and state of development just isn't there for them yet.
I also think there is a risk for the government in being very gung ho about AI while simultaneously increasing the cost of employing people.
I do think we're going to see a bit of a reversal on the cuts in the short term as more and more companies realise AI isn't delivering the miracles they expected.

I think pre-Trump America is gone. I think in a way the Biden presidency was almost cruel to Europe in lulling people into a false sense of security that the status quo would be restored - I think it's over. Whether it's a Democrat or a Republican, the style and politeness may change - but I think America does not want to be continuing to be the security guarantor for the third, sixth, seventh, eighth richest countries in the world (plus others) - their focus is going to be the Pacific. And I think protectionism is here to stay.

Yes, probably so.
Even assuming a Harris win I do think we were drifting this way as we have been since the end of the cold war- the resurgence of Russia the past decade or two being a bit of a blip that halted things. Though longer term with Russia thrashing itself on the rocks in Ukraine and eating up the last of its power, along with the middle east declining in importance, US interest was firmly heading away.
With Trump though things have sped up and it has become a far more acrimonious split.  Less of the idea that there's a collaboration here.

On the 30s I'm not sure - millions of people still live in those homes and use those train lines to get into work every day (I used to live in a 30s Homes for Heroes block and it was fantastic - just very well constructed, solid home). Also my impression is there are far fewer legacy problems from those days than post-war building. In the UK and around the world we have huge costs from post-construction: asbestos, cladding, RAAC, the structural flaws from Ronan Point still unfixed in thousands of buildings around the world.

Maybe misworded, wasn't highlighting the 30s in particular but rather that is the point where things went wrong.
30s houses are slightly better than most because they took all the prime easy slots, filling the gaps between towns.
However, the reason people still live in so many of them (like me) is because they're there and there is no other choice. If the UK had a sensible approach to housing then even around my area, far from a top example of an area where demand is too high, I would imagine quite a few of these houses would have been replaced with something grander over the century since.

People still using those trainlines to get into work every day-..... huh? What train lines?
Thats key to the problem here. The introduction of cars led to cities sprawling out in every direction, usually  with little concern for train lines- in the 30s this wasn't nothing, you had metroland in London and some small projects elsewhere, but they were often cancelled due to the war or economic situation.

After the war though then the trains were nowhere to be seen. Even in the new towns that were designed to fix the sprawling cities problem, they were just conceptually broken and car-focussed. Most new towns you'll find have a train line skirting their fringe- this wasn't a design compromise they had to make, it was entirely intentional, the idea being that passenger rail was useless and had no place in the world of cars, the role of railways was to be entirely around freight serving the new towns self-contained industries.
Truly madness.
And we persist with this push for zero holistic thinking isolated estates in the middle of fields.
During New Labour things turned a little but but since 2010 they've been heading the wrong way again.

This leads to weakened communities, weakened economic outcomes, more inequality. its just a disaster. We need to change.

It's already legally required for employers to do a right to work check using one of the Home Office's IDs.

Yes. But do we trust every employer to be doing this properly?
We really need stricter monitoring of this- with the majority of the fallout for infractions falling on the employer (look at you uber).

I also think your ease about it is possibly white European traveling in Europe privilege

Maybe. I had to carry ID in Japan too, and I stood out there, but it wasn't a big deal.
For non-white folk in Europe its mostly just about border crossing I've heard lots of complaints- there I am sitting on a train at the Italian-Swiss border, maybe my bag is full of pills..... but no. Let's ignore him. There's a brown guy.

Edit: Although I think digital IDs are already dead. Tech companies saying they're not interested. Government not really building a case, Cabinet minister briefing against it. And a policy going from +35% to -15% approval purely because it's been proposed by this government and this Prime Minister. I think that's possibly the biggest reason to get rid of Starmer. I think he's already so unpopular (like Sunak) that he's now got the "reverse Midas touch" and anything he says, even if it was popular beforehand, will be opposed by most people.

Yeah, maybe so. Not sure of how this can happen though. When is the best time. Mostly I've heard after the locals but that seems to be leaving it a bit late and letting crap happen first.
Tinfoil hat but I half wonder if they're quite happy to see Reform grab local councils in the Labour heartland hoping people will recognise how utterly incompetent they are. Though given how little people know about local government that's not one even a tinfoil hat lets me believe.

#8

Off the Record / Re: The Off Topic Topic

Last post by celedhring - Today at 02:39:12 AM

Having said all that I am fiercely against any form of selection, which is not necessary (and not part of those reforms). I also find the idea of a "gifted" program for toddlers insane and morally wrong.

Yeah, gifted programs for kindergarten looks like from the same root that gave us professional football teams having squads for 5 year olds. Fodder for parents obsessed with their child overachieveing. Give them some time.

On the larger issue, my opinion in any type of selection program that provides unequal outcomes is generally that the issue is not the program itself, but gatekeeping earlier in the chain. Hence why it's important to fix education for all.

Still, I don't care much for gifted programs at early age. My school marked me as gifted when I was a child and my parents decided against putting me in any program. I came out fine and I have always thanked them for their choice. I doubt I would be an arts person if they had entered me, since the program would probably have railroaded me into STEM.

#9

Off the Record / Re: What does a TRUMP presiden...

Last post by Zoupa - Today at 12:18:46 AM

I dunno about you guys, but I love far-right think tank publications that cite articles from the same think tank a whopping 14 times (out of 43 references), along with sources such as twitter posts and frontpagemag.com (motto: Inside Every Progressive Is A Totalitarian Screaming To Get Out).

The author also penned such classics as "The State of Israel's Legal Right to Judea and Samaria", "The Gaza Aid and Starvation Fraud" and the always popular "The Clear and Imminent Legal Danger Posed to Israel by the ICC".

#10

Off the Record / Re: What does a TRUMP presiden...

Last post by Razgovory - October 05, 2025, 11:11:20 PM

None of this tells me they are well tolerated by Hamas or the PA who also take their land without compensation, beat, rape and kill them.

What is your source for this allegation?  I have never heard of it.

https://jcpa.org/article/demographics-dont-lie-the-christian-population-in-pa-and-hamas-controlled-areas-is-declining/#:~:text=Besides%20the%20physical%20property%20desecration,into%20the%20general%20Muslim%20population.

Palestinian Christians report systematic employment discrimination, forcing many to leave their communities to seek opportunities elsewhere. Studies show Christians in the West Bank feel excluded from leadership positions, weakening their social influence.29 A 2022 study indicated a strong desire among Gaza's Christian population to emigrate, twice as strong as that of Muslims. This explains how the Christian population of Gaza dwindled from 5,000 people before Hamas took control to just 1,000 in October 2023. They cited economic and social issues, corruption, security concerns, and religious persecution since Hamas took control in 2007. Reports document violence and discrimination against Christians in Gaza, leading to a significant decline in population.30

Palestinian Christians have also encountered significant obstacles in housing and property rights, both purchasing and selling land. Even internationally recognized holy sites in the West Bank are threatened, vandalized, and desecrated by the PA without consequence.31

This has been a long-standing practice, with Fatah and Arafat's intelligence network intimidating and maltreating the Christian population in Bethlehem with extortion, and confiscation of land and property. They "left them to the mercy of street gangs and other criminal activity, with no protection."32 The PA's judicial system also does not ensure equal protection to Christian landowners. In Bethlehem, a Muslim family from Hebron took possession of the Christian Comtsieh family's land and built a business center atop it without permission. While the Comtsieh family initially won in court, the judge reversed his judgment with no due course.33 In January 2022, a large group of masked men carrying sticks and iron bars attacked Christian brothers Daoud and Daher Nassar on their farm near Bethlehem. The Palestinian courts have worked to confiscate the family farm in their possession since Ottoman times.34

Christian businesses are systematically boycotted and extorted, marginalizing Christian families and pushing them toward financial ruin, with many leaving for survival.35