What is going on in the UK?

[Samson]

That's ridiculous and self-contradicting.
"we don't get to choose how reckless people act, so we are responsible if they act reckless"
Wut, again.

I mean, I understand what you say. But that's just the exact same reasoning as blaming the victim.

We get to choose between two worlds, one in which kids on ebikes are chased by police in motor vehicles and one in which they do not. In one world fewer kids die in police chases and there are more kids riding ebikes, and the other is the opposite. Weighing up these costs and benefits is what politics is all about.

You can call it blame, you can call it responsibility, but that is just semantics. Decisions have consequences, and analysing these consequences and choosing the ones we want is the exercise of power.

 

[EnglishEdward]

It has not been established that the police were chasing that kid in Ely.

Following is not the same as chasing.

And it is not usually possible to rapidly distinguish between a large child and a small adult from behind.

 

[Klaus Hergersheimer]

It has not been established that the police were chasing that kid in Ely.

Following is not the same as chasing.

And it is not usually possible to rapidly distinguish between a large child and a small adult from behind.

The kids were fleeing the cops because they were afraid of the cops, and that's a bad thing and thus the cops' fault, and they should hand out ice cream instead of being scary. I guess.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Is the Corbyn party gaining any ground, or is it dead in the water?

It gets worse.

They have set up a limited company to receive membership subscriptions, and are now in dispute about them.

Stand-off over £800,000 Your Party membership fees

Your Party officials accuse Zarah Sultana of withholding funds despite publicly agreeing to transfer the money.

www.bbc.co.uk

I know not whether this is because some thought to control the party by controlling the company with the money,
or whether the banks were unwilling to transfer the money without there being a company to receive it.

 

[Kyriakos]

He is sadly too old by now anyway. Too bad they robbed him of his chance with the vile lies about antisemitism.

 

[danjuno]

The kids were fleeing the cops because they were afraid of the cops, and that's a bad thing and thus the cops' fault, and they should hand out ice cream instead of being scary. I guess.

Instead of mocking the death of kids, maybe actually look up how this works. Even here in the US, its not unheard of for police to back off (if not entirely, then at least hang back with sirens and lights off) if there's a noticable risk they'll wreck out and kill themselves or others. You literally see this on TV all the time. And don't tell me the UK doesn't have lighter units capable of a more appropriate response.

 

[Akka]

We get to choose between two worlds, one in which kids on ebikes are chased by police in motor vehicles and one in which they do not. In one world fewer kids die in police chases and there are more kids riding ebikes, and the other is the opposite. Weighing up these costs and benefits is what politics is all about.

I'll get the world where we don't blame the homeowner because the robber jumped down a cliff because he ran away after getting confronted.

 

[Senethro]

Police are public servants and public servants should be able to interact with the public without making them corpses. That is skillfully and without unnecessary intimidation that makes for unpredictable results.

 

[Samson]

Drax still burning 250-year-old trees sourced from forests in Canada

Drax power plant has continued to burn 250-year-old trees sourced from some of Canada’s oldest forests despite growing scrutiny of its sustainability claims, forestry experts say.

A new report suggests it is “highly likely” that Britain’s biggest power plant sourced some wood from ecologically valuable forests as recently as this summer. Drax, Britain’s single biggest source of carbon emissions, has received billions of pounds in subsidies from burning biomass derived largely from wood.

The report, by Stand.earth, a Canadian environmental non-profit, claims that a subsidiary of Drax Group received hundreds of truckloads of whole logs at its biomass pellet sites throughout 2024 and into 2025, which were likely to have included trees that were hundreds of years old.

The report could raise fresh questions for the owner of the North Yorkshire power plant, which has been forced in recent years to defend its sustainability claims while receiving more than £2m a day in green energy subsidies from UK bill payers.

The report’s findings suggest that the power plant was burning “irreplaceable” trees even as its owners lobbied the UK government for the additional green energy subsidies, which were granted earlier this week.

The company has claimed that it sources wood only from “well‐managed, sustainable forests” to manufacture the pellets that are shipped from its sites in Canada and the US to be burned at its UK power plant.

But these claims have been questioned by Britain’s energy regulator and the Financial Conduct Authority after a BBC Panorama documentary in 2022 reported that Drax had cut down primary forests in Canada to turn into wood pellets.

The latest investigation into the company’s green credentials, seen by the Guardian, uses official data from the government of British Columbia, along with satellite monitoring, to back claims that a Canadian subsidiary owned by Drax sourced 250-year-old trees to manufacture biomass pellets as recently as this year.

The report claims that the company received 90 truckloads of logs sourced from “old-growth forests” in the Skeena region of British Columbia, home to some of Canada’s largest undeveloped wilderness areas.

 

[EnglishEdward]

IIRC historically Drax was powered by UK mined coal.

There is nothing magic about the CO2 produced from
burning forests as opposed to the CO2 from burning coal.
The only difference is a trivial variation in carbon 12/14 ratios.
Both isotopes have the same impact on global warming.

The acceleration of the closure of coal mining merely cost jobs,
and burdened the UK public and industry with the new subsidy.

It was in my opinion a right proper muddle produced by mixing
misplaced environmentalism (greenery) and false electricity markets.

 

[Senethro]

IIRC historically Drax was powered by UK mined coal.

There is nothing magic about the CO2 produced from
burning forests as opposed to the CO2 from burning coal.
The only difference is a trivial variation in carbon 12/14 ratios.
Both isotopes have the same impact on global warming.

The acceleration of the closure of coal mining merely cost jobs,
and burdened the UK public and industry with the new subsidy.

It was in my opinion a right proper muddle produced by mixing
misplaced environmentalism (greenery) and false electricity markets.

True but not the point. 250 year old woodlands (primary forest/ancient forest) accumulate ecological value and features that younger woodlands don't have.

I was about to say that UK doesn't have any - but when seeking confirmation this is clearly not true. There are areas of England that have been continuously forest covered since 1600. However, they've been significantly more disturbed by human activity which is why they don't look like ancient forests in Germany.

The green and pleasant land does not know what a real forest is.

 

[Samson]

I do generally support the idea of children not having free access to the internet at school, but when I look at the actual incidents that lead to the current case against the education secretary I have to wonder if this is the most productive way to solve the problem.

The issues are of three types:

> at school people can show you their screen without invitation
> she had been shown “dick pics” in school changing rooms

My first thought about this was "That is illegal", but it is possible it falls through the cracks between cyberflashing (which requires you sending an unsolicited image, and indecent exposure which requires the genitals to be real. If that is the case there should be a solution, and suing the education secretary is not obviously it.

> at school people can airdrop you videos
> she had been shown anime porn in WhatsApp groups

There was time in the last millennia where you could put storage on public networks and it not fill up with porn, but that time has long gone. I do not get what problem airdrop is trying to solve that so any people leave their personal storage space available on a pubic wireless network, but if you do it should not be a surprise that it fills up with porn. I am not sure if there ever was a time when you could expose a public messaging contact and be able to safely load images sent to it, but I never experienced it. Whether anime porn is worse that the goatse image or the data tracking that taught many people this lesson decades ago is worse, but we have had solutions to this problem for as long as I have had email. If you cannot protect yourself in the same way with WhatsApp then the core of the problem is not with the schools rules but WhatsApp, and there is an easy solution to that.

That is before we get to the point that it is illegal cyberflashing, so there are other people that seem more relevant to sue.

> a student had accessed Omegle, a video chatroom, in her year 9 form room

I read this as "on a computer owned by the school". In that case this is nothing to do with smart phones, and I think is a serious failure of the school IT.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Well if going off the point to Germany.

Perhaps the Germans still have 300 year old forest because they still mine coal.

 

[Senethro]

Well if going off the point to Germany.

Perhaps the Germans still have 300 year old forest because they still mine coal.

Maybe the various UK goverments screwed over coal mining counties because they wanted to, not because they had to at the behest of some green conspiracy? Maybe direct your grudge somewhere useful.

 

[Samson]

Well if going off the point to Germany.

Perhaps the Germans still have 300 year old forest because they still mine coal.

I think UK deforestation has more to do with ship building than power generation.

 

[EnglishEdward]

@ Senethro

I was replying to Samson's posting.

I made no reference to green conspiracy.

And you are trying to personalise this by mentioning "grudge".

@ Samson

I think that a higher population density was a relevant factor in the UK.

 

[PhroX]

I think UK deforestation has more to do with ship building than power generation.

It actually goes back much earlier than major demands from shipbuilding started, and was was primarily done for the same reason most modern deforestation (e.g. in the Amazon) is done: farming. England was pretty much entirely deforested by the 1100s IIRC, though parts of Scotland did last longer (not sure where Wales falls).

 

[Senethro]

@ Senethro

I was replying to Samson's posting.

I made no reference to green conspiracy.

And you are trying to personalise this by mentioning "grudge".

Maybe have better opinions then? You could always not trivialize climate change or habitat destruction, or imply they're in opposition to human development due to "misplaced environmentalism" etc.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Maybe have better opinions then? You could always not trivialize climate change or habitat destruction, or imply they're in opposition to human development due to "misplaced environmentalism" etc.

None of which I have done.

 

[danjuno]

None of which I have done.

It was in my opinion a right proper muddle produced by mixing
misplaced environmentalism (greenery) and false electricity markets.

You know people can just scroll up, right?