Well i certainly agree here. But that, in a nut shell, is political expediency dont you think? I mean people want stuff now, they dont want it in 20 years time. Its a hard sell to say that this will only work properly in 20/30 years time. Or that you have to pay X now and then generations Y & Z will benefit later (the silver vote wont be too happy about that). The only example i can think of when that has actually worked was the Severn bridge crossing, which had an almost 30 year break in period where it would be all paid for and just maintained by simple road tax. Thats the sort of scales you need to think on in terms of large public infrastructure. And to be fair, the Severn Bridge barely scratches the barrel of how much some of these PFI portfolios are actually worth. Its peanuts in comparison. Some of these PFI portfolios are worth billions. You only really hear about the bad ones in the press. But you can rest assured there are loads all over the country that operate perfectly ok. Which brings me back to my original point of that maybe its down to individual mismanagement of trusts rather than PFI as a whole being bad. Im pretty sure the quality of social housing, for instance, has improved dramatically as a result of PFI investment.
UK Politics - BoJo and chums
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Well i certainly agree here. But that, in a nut shell, is political expediency dont you think? I mean people want stuff now, they dont want it in 20 years time. Its a hard sell to say that this will only work properly in 20/30 years time. Or that you have to pay X now and then generations Y & Z will benefit later (the silver vote wont be too happy about that). The only example i can think of when that has actually worked was the Severn bridge crossing, which had an almost 30 year break in period where it would be all paid for and just maintained by simple road tax. Thats the sort of scales you need to think on in terms of large public infrastructure. And to be fair, the Severn Bridge barely scratches the barrel of how much some of these PFI portfolios are actually worth. Its peanuts in comparison. Some of these PFI portfolios are worth billions. You only really hear about the bad ones in the press. But you can rest assured there are loads all over the country that operate perfectly ok. Which brings me back to my original point of that maybe its down to individual mismanagement of trusts rather than PFI as a whole being bad. Im pretty sure the quality of social housing, for instance, has improved dramatically as a result of PFI investment.
No, I don't. It was dishonest.
Fuel price protestors are causing more disruption than the Insulate Britain protests, and seem to be taking a whole lot less of the risk upon themselves. Anyone want to bet that they will face the same amount of porridge?
Its a bit premature to say they are taking less risk. They have only been going a day. And unlike the insulate protestors, they are not actually blocking the road. They are just driving slowly.
Sadly this is going to become more frequent with the cost of living crisis. Im dreading the autumn.
Sadly this is going to become more frequent with the cost of living crisis. Im dreading the autumn.
I meant that they have vehicles (from the pictures normally particularly large ones) whereas the Insulate Britain people were just sitting in the road. So if an accident was to occur, it is much more likely the the Insulate Britain would be the ones hurt compared to these people.
Driving slowly will have the same impact on emergency services and people needing to get somewhere for a specific time, which was the exact criticism leveled at the Insulate protestors.
Well, at least they are moving. Albeit slowly. When you sit in the middle of the road and glue yourself to the surface or whatever it is they were doing people literally cant go anywhere. Not that i agree with either camp mind. Better to cause disruption to the ones actually profiteering. All this does is get in ordinary peoples way. The very same people who are suffering exactly what they are protesting about.
The big difference is one group want to reduce our fossil fuel use (we could reduce or heating bill by 98% is we built houses better) and the other want to increase it.
MrCynical
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Well some of them have managed to get arrested already, so I wouldn't say it's a completely sure bet that they won't. Probably not as many - it is easier to handcuff a person who's glued to a road than someone who's driving a tractor, albeit a slow moving one. I don't think this protest is going to get a much better public reception than Insulate Britain, for all the same reasons. People stuck in a traffic jam tend not to care that much what "good cause" is being used to justify causing it.
The fuel protests in 2000 were quite successful winning popular support. The government has less room for manouvere now since fuel duty makes up a much smaller proportion of the price of fuel than it did in 2000 and the economic situation is much worse than it was then.
There is no fuel duty on red diesel that those tractors will be running on, I am not quite sure what they are asking for.
Oddly enough a cut in fuel duty.
Pretty sure most of them are complaining about the cost of living. Some people need fuel in their cars.
For mugs like me, i use public transport to get to the office because its far cheaper to do so. And i would resent paying out for a car which i dont really need, is bad for the environment, and i would be doing it just for work and not much else. But then i look at the people in my office and despite public transport being an option for nearly everyone i would say about 90% of people drive into the office. The bus costs me £500 per year. A car would cost far more. Im used to public transport though as i lived in London for 8 years. No one drives in London. Its out in the provinces people have a dependency. Although like i say, some people need them, depending on where they live. Added to which public transport isnt the best unless you live in a city.
I am slightly worried that I am with the torygraph and against the grundiad and indescribably boring. This is about the Online Safety Bill, and here are the takes:
Indescribably boring: Online Safety Bill amendment targets state-backed disinformation
Grundiad: Legislation aims to shield UK internet users from state-backed disinformation
It seems that a likely outcome of this is making it much harder for startups to compete against the big players, as this will create a significant regulatory overhead that the big firms will be able to handle but startups will struggle. Another possibility is driving everyone to decentralised solutions, and I would approve of that, but this is very much the wrong way to go about it.
Indescribably boring: Online Safety Bill amendment targets state-backed disinformation
Social media platforms will have to proactively look for and remove disinformation from foreign state actors which aims to harm the UK, under a proposed amendment to forthcoming online safety laws.
Grundiad: Legislation aims to shield UK internet users from state-backed disinformation
Tech firms will be required to shield internet users from state-sponsored disinformation posing a threat to UK society and democracy, under changes to a landmark online safety bill.
Torygraph: Nadine Dorries 'will have power to censor the internet'
Nadine Dorries will be able to censor the internet unless new powers intended to make tech giants more accountable are reformed, MPs have warned.
It is interesting that the only real world example any give is the grundiad referring to the prank call of Ben Wallace. If that is the best example of harmful "disinformation" then do we really need to censor the internet? A) Who exactly was misinformed by that call? B) Youtube took it down really quickly so this law would change nothing C) If the lesson that is learned from that is we need more censorship not we need better communication security someone really is missing the point. The same people did something very similar to BoJo in 2018, and they did not fix their systems after that.
It seems that a likely outcome of this is making it much harder for startups to compete against the big players, as this will create a significant regulatory overhead that the big firms will be able to handle but startups will struggle. Another possibility is driving everyone to decentralised solutions, and I would approve of that, but this is very much the wrong way to go about it.
Richard Shepherd too https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Shepherd
Most "libertarians" seem to be very selective about which issues they are actually libertarian on but some are sincere.
Its not entirely surprising I dont think to find Tories supporting a libertarian line. A part of the tory party has always been free market libertarians after all. They do also tend to be socially conservative though. Labour kind of go the other way. They are interventionist and big state (speaking very generally here). But tend to be more socially liberal.
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