Topic: Never mind 'Stop the Boats' - STOP THE TORIES

[west_london_red]

I wouldn't completely dismiss Hydrogen. Aberdeen is setting itself up as a Hydrogen hub, as part the transition away from O&G. We have had a fleet of Hydrogen powered buses for years but has recently massively expanded, and the council has a fleet of Hydrogen powere vehicles for its staff. It's true that most of the Hydrogen is blue at the minute, and the carbon capture isn't open yet but it's in progress, along with electrolysis facilities to hook up to all the wind power around here.

When hydrogen is split from water what do they do with the oxygen? Just release it into the atmosphere?

[Elmo!]

When hydrogen is split from water what do they do with the oxygen? Just release it into the atmosphere?

To be honest with you I don't know but there are uses for oxygen in medicine and industry so not sure if they capture it and use it for that. Not sure if it is worth the trouble compared to removing it from the atmosphere.

[McSquared]

When hydrogen is split from water what do they do with the oxygen? Just release it into the atmosphere?

Thought most hydroden comes from natural gas right now.

[west_london_red]

To be honest with you I don't know but there are uses for oxygen in medicine and industry so not sure if they capture it and use it for that. Not sure if it is worth the trouble compared to removing it from the atmosphere.

My train of thought was along the lines of I hope we’re not going to release too much oxygen into the atmosphere and cause some other kind of unforeseen issue, but then remembered obviously that burning the hydrogen will just bond it back to the oxygen that is produced in its separation so the net effect is zero.

[west_london_red]

Thought most hydroden comes from natural gas right now.

It does, but obviously long term we want to get away from using natural gas for obvious reasons.

[PaulF]

I wouldn't completely dismiss Hydrogen. Aberdeen is setting itself up as a Hydrogen hub, as part the transition away from O&G. We have had a fleet of Hydrogen powered buses for years but has recently massively expanded, and the council has a fleet of Hydrogen powere vehicles for its staff. It's true that most of the Hydrogen is blue at the minute, and the carbon capture isn't open yet but it's in progress, along with electrolysis facilities to hook up to all the wind power around here.

I think there's a significant carbon capture happening in abz too.  Though I'm told carbon capture is a complete red herring (admittedly by someone doing a PhD with nuclear interests)

[Machae]

Asked about public perceptions of record profits, Truss added: "I don't think profit is a dirty word, and the fact it's become a dirty word in our society is a massive problem."

"Now, of course, the energy giants, if they're in an oligopoly, should be held to account, and I would make sure they're rigorously held to account.

"But the way we bandy the word around 'profit' (as if) it's something that's dirty and evil, we shouldn't be doing that as Conservatives."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-62513966

[Elmo!]

I think there's a significant carbon capture happening in abz too.  Though I'm told carbon capture is a complete red herring (admittedly by someone doing a PhD with nuclear interests)

Yes this is it: https://theacornproject.uk/about/

I'm not sure about it. Many people say it is just greenwashing to allow O&G companies to keep drilling, and I'm sure there is some truth to that. But at the end of the day we are going to need O&G for a long time yet so might as well reduce the CO2 emissions from it.

[west_london_red]

Asked about public perceptions of record profits, Truss added: "I don't think profit is a dirty word, and the fact it's become a dirty word in our society is a massive problem."

"Now, of course, the energy giants, if they're in an oligopoly, should be held to account, and I would make sure they're rigorously held to account.

"But the way we bandy the word around 'profit' (as if) it's something that's dirty and evil, we shouldn't be doing that as Conservatives."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-62513966

It’s a tricky one because what is too much profit? Where do you draw the line? And obviously some industries are more relevant then others. Look at how much Apple make, it’s absolutely obscene, but at the same time we dont need Apple products to live, you can do without the latest iPhone, you can’t really do without warmth and electricity obviously.

[Andy @ Allerton!]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/aug/11/police-failures-soaring-waiting-lists-pool-closures-one-days-news-in-tory-britain

Police failures, soaring waiting lists, pool closures: one day’s news in Tory Britain

Look at the condition of Britain’s public services and despair – this is where the ‘small state’ gets you

Public opinion is moving only in one direction, jolted by each day’s worsening news. It is certainly not towards the ever-shrinking state offered by the two candidates in the Tory leadership race, as most voters realise that nothing but the state protects them from this growing omnicrisis.

Shocking news pours in at an accelerating pace. One day’s inbox can scarcely contain the avalanche of reports on failing public services and households stricken by debt.

As I write – ping! – here comes the Office for National Statistics reporting repossessions by county court bailiffs increased 1,611% between April and June. Expect many more now that Covid restrictions on bailiffs have been lifted. Meanwhile YouGov has found that 54% of people think it’s unlikely they will be able to afford their energy bills this winter.

Or should I choose Andy Cooke, the chief inspector of constabulary, who has pointed to the abject failure of the police? “Dire charge rates” show that a suspect is charged in only 4% of thefts and 3.7% of house burglaries. People will remember those cuts that reduced the number of police officers by 20,000.

The disgrace of private children’s homes making a fortune out of misery is again exposed by the BBC, with companies charging anything they want due to the acute shortage. Ofsted’s chief inspector, Amanda Spielman, warns: “We have companies now in the market who really don’t have very much interest in childcare.”

Feeling hot? More than 60 public swimming pools closed in the last three years, finds another report today.

Ping again! Literally, as I wrote the above sentence, in comes the latest NHS waiting list figures, risen to an unthinkable 6.73m. While two-year waits went down, one-year waits rose. Squeeze one bit of this service and it bursts out elsewhere, after an austerity decade of falling per-patient funding – and no future workforce plan.

The Health Service Journal and Newsnight this week revealed leaked figures showing that published statistics undercount the true number of cancer patients waiting for treatment. The number waiting beyond 104 days, the crucial three months after which they risk “potential harm”, has doubled to more than 10,000. Don’t mention ambulances. Or that even the inadequate NHS pay package is underfunded, so that the NHS will need to cut another £2bn to pay for it.

What of levelling up? Ipsos today published its latest research on attitudes and finds – no surprise – deep discontent and low expectations that the government will make a difference.

If you worry most about the poorest, consider the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s warning this week to the candidates to be prime minister that the money proposed so far doesn’t even cover half the needs of the lowest-income families to avoid destitution. So far, we have only Truss’s revolting sneers about “handouts”.

Apologies for this long list, but that’s just a random day’s inflow of omnicrisis news. Among all these signs of a country not coping, there are things that every voter of every political hue, age, income and region will find profoundly alarming. And yet none of it is reflected in the empty bickering between the candidates, which focus groups show to be wildly out of touch with people’s concerns.

As Gordon Brown steps up with a serious plan, with Keir Starmer due to speak on the crisis on Monday, Ipsos now finds Starmer leads strongly over both Truss and Sunak on virtually every measure.

But Labour too will have to confront with honesty this most dismal reality, now entirely dodged by both Truss and Sunak. Colossal cuts await public services – even defence – on both Tory trajectories according to Ben Zaranko of the Institute for Fiscal Studies. His close analysis warns us to expect a £44bn cut in public services. He ends his report with this sober message:

“An unfortunate series of global shocks have made us poorer … Dividing that economic pain between households, businesses and public services is the unavoidable and unpalatable task facing the next government. Choosing to accept a reduced range and quality of public services is one possible response to becoming a poorer nation. But if the next prime minister does choose to cut rates of corporation tax, national insurance or income tax, and chooses to leave public services worse off heading into a difficult winter, they should be honest and transparent about the choice they have made.”

Those in the disintegrating Tory party deny the crises engulfing them because so much of Britain’s unpreparedness for recession is of their own making. But you can feel the tectonic plates shifting under their feet. The more often they call for a smaller state, the more the public mood will turn away from them.

[PaulF]

On the flip side. I'm reading that Argentina has almost 70 percent inflation, and interest rates to match !

[PaulF]

Winding back to the schools thing. How many would not send their child to a fee paying school on principle? Even if they got the fees fully paid?

[Gerry Attrick]

The more I hear and read policies and opinions from Liz Truss the more worried I become. I never thought I’d say it but the policies of Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson could seem like halcyon days. I don’t think the vulnerable are going to get any support.

[Red-Soldier]

The more I hear and read policies and opinions from Liz Truss the more worried I become. I never thought I’d say it but the policies of Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson could seem like halcyon days. I don’t think the vulnerable are going to get any support.

I agree.

If she doesn't make any serious changes to what she's been saying, a significant proportion of society are going to be truly fucked!

[Riquende]

The more I hear and read policies and opinions from Liz Truss the more worried I become. I never thought I’d say it but the policies of Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson could seem like halcyon days. I don’t think the vulnerable are going to get any support.

Possibly.

But I still maintain that what the candidates are saying now, to get elected by a small group of hyper-partisan voters who cannot later hold the winner accountable, isn't going to reflect completely how they try to govern.

There's also the fact that a bruising leadership contest is going to lead to two distinct factions in the party, and a PM Truss may struggle to get more controversial policies through parliament if a significant section of Sunak supporters don't fall in line.

[Jiminy Cricket]

Eventually renewable energy will be the only type available, Germany has a plan to generate enough power for most of Europe by setting up huge solar panel arrays in the Sahara desert, read about it a while ago, it will only cover less than 1% of the Saharan land mass.

Edit it's actually only 0.3%, and the plan was conceived over a decade ago.

https://inhabitat.com/worlds-largest-solar-project-sahara-desert/#:~:text=If%20just%200.3%25%20of%20the%20Saharan%20Desert%20was,and%20investments%20to%20create%20such%20a%20massive%20project.

That was 13 years ago.   Have they started building it yet?

No, but they have put their towels down.

A cracking retake on a classic old joke there, Dr.

[Jiminy Cricket]

My train of thought was along the lines of I hope we’re not going to release too much oxygen into the atmosphere and cause some other kind of unforeseen issue, but then remembered obviously that burning the hydrogen will just bond it back to the oxygen that is produced in its separation so the net effect is zero.

I'm no chemist, but wouldn't hydrogen (when used) recombine with free oxygen in the atmosphere to produce water again? So, releasing the oxygen produced during electrolysis would balance out.

[TepidT2O]

[TepidT2O]

Hydrogen fuel cell technology is very unlikely to become large scale for a whole number of reasons. These range from the fuel cell stability, but also the storage and transportation of hydrogen.

Plus, producing the hydrogen takes loads of energy.

Pure electric is the future for most, not fuel cell technology

[Sangria]

Possibly.

But I still maintain that what the candidates are saying now, to get elected by a small group of hyper-partisan voters who cannot later hold the winner accountable, isn't going to reflect completely how they try to govern.

There's also the fact that a bruising leadership contest is going to lead to two distinct factions in the party, and a PM Truss may struggle to get more controversial policies through parliament if a significant section of Sunak supporters don't fall in line.

Are there any Sunak supporters? I see Johnson supporters, but I don't see anyone else having a personal following.

[Lusty]

I don't actually know how me and my husband are going to cope come October, so I'm doing the sensible thing and pretending it's not happening.

This is actually official government policy.

[Riquende]

Are there any Sunak supporters? I see Johnson supporters, but I don't see anyone else having a personal following.

I only mean it in the sense of MPs who aren't backing Truss for leadership, not fans of Sunak especially. There's a limit to what a PM can try to ram through parliament whatever their majority.

[Yorkykopite]

It’s a tricky one because what is too much profit? Where do you draw the line? And obviously some industries are more relevant then others. Look at how much Apple make, it’s absolutely obscene, but at the same time we dont need Apple products to live, you can do without the latest iPhone, you can’t really do without warmth and electricity obviously.

Think you've missed the point there WLR. Truss is saying the "massive problem" is that profit has become a "dirty word" (it hasn't). The "massive problem" she apparently cannot see, even though she is talking specifically about energy prices, is energy prices.

[Dr. Beaker]

Asked about public perceptions of record profits, Truss added: "I don't think profit is a dirty word, and the fact it's become a dirty word in our society is a massive problem."

"Now, of course, the energy giants, if they're in an oligopoly, should be held to account, and I would make sure they're rigorously held to account.

"But the way we bandy the word around 'profit' (as if) it's something that's dirty and evil, we shouldn't be doing that as Conservatives."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-62513966

But the question wasn't about profits, it was about record profits at a time when a very large proportion of our population can't pay their fuel bills.

[west_london_red]

The more I hear and read policies and opinions from Liz Truss the more worried I become. I never thought I’d say it but the policies of Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson could seem like halcyon days. I don’t think the vulnerable are going to get any support.

Even if you put aside the cost of living crisis and her non-plans, the rest of it (cut taxes, borrow more, attack the unions, war on woke, etc etc) is pretty frightening, then you have the daily increases in energy prices (the number £5,000 is now being thrown around) and yes, its very worrying.

[Jm55]

Asked about public perceptions of record profits, Truss added: "I don't think profit is a dirty word, and the fact it's become a dirty word in our society is a massive problem."

"Now, of course, the energy giants, if they're in an oligopoly, should be held to account, and I would make sure they're rigorously held to account.

"But the way we bandy the word around 'profit' (as if) it's something that's dirty and evil, we shouldn't be doing that as Conservatives."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-62513966

The problem isn’t the profits the problem is the profits being made in industry providing products which are essential to modern life whilst the people funding those profits cannot afford to do so and will therefore have to go without other essential products (or get into unassailable debt) in order to keep up with.

It’s truly frightening that Truss seems to be using this crisis as an opportunity to show how ‘conservative’ she is rather than using it as an opportunity to show some empathy to the public.

She’s a fucking witch, like Thatcher without the brains.

Hopefully we’re singing Lizzie’s in the mud before long as well, the Tory c*nt.

[killer-heels]

Truss will u-turn the second she is in government. What she is saying now robotically is because she has been programmed by her advisors to say the stuff her base wants her to say. Once she is PM, her need and want to be PM means she will give extra support out, because she will be uploaded with the general electorate programme.

[LuverlyRita]

a PM Truss may struggle to get more controversial policies through parliament if a significant section of Sunak supporters don't fall in line.

But they always fall in line don't they? All it takes is a threat from the whips, a promise of a job, knighthood or a seat in the HOL and they'll say black is white 

[Yorkykopite]

Truss will u-turn the second she is in government. What she is saying now robotically is because she has been programmed by her advisors to say the stuff her base wants her to say. Once she is PM, her need and want to be PM means she will give extra support out, because she will be uploaded with the general electorate programme.

I think that's a definite possibility.

The contest after all is structured to make people lie. The Labour party contest was the same (although the candidates were not as venal as the Tory ones, and the average member wasn't quite as insane).

[Circa1892]

Winding back to the schools thing. How many would not send their child to a fee paying school on principle? Even if they got the fees fully paid?

Me 100%.

It’s fucking weird. People come out weird. You don’t mix with wider sets of people.

[LuverlyRita]

On the flip side. I'm reading that Argentina has almost 70 percent inflation, and interest rates to match !

Given the rate at which this country is falling apart, that could be us in the near future    If Putin has helped bank-roll Brexit and Johnson's Tory party, he's certainly got good value for his money

[redtel]

The problem isn’t the profits the problem is the profits being made in industry providing products which are essential to modern life whilst the people funding those profits cannot afford to do so and will therefore have to go without other essential products (or get into unassailable debt) in order to keep up with.

It’s truly frightening that Truss seems to be using this crisis as an opportunity to show how ‘conservative’ she is rather than using it as an opportunity to show some empathy to the public.

She’s a fucking witch, like Thatcher without the brains.

Hopefully we’re singing Lizzie’s in the mud before long as well, the Tory c*nt.

As this slanging match between Truss and Sunak drags on and on she seems to have found the need to say “as a Conservative” at every opportunity.

Unfortunately we know what you are Liz and as mentioned pretty soon I’m sure we will be saying The Witch Is Back.

Profit can be a dirty word especially when you see the profits made by companies owned by friends of the Government in the year ending after Covid. Obscene and criminal.

[Andy @ Allerton!]

The problem isn’t the profits the problem is the profits being made in industry providing products which are essential to modern life whilst the people funding those profits cannot afford to do so and will therefore have to go without other essential products (or get into unassailable debt) in order to keep up with.

It’s truly frightening that Truss seems to be using this crisis as an opportunity to show how ‘conservative’ she is rather than using it as an opportunity to show some empathy to the public.

She’s a fucking witch, like Thatcher without the brains.

Hopefully we’re singing Lizzie’s in the mud before long as well, the Tory c*nt.

She's horrible.

If anyone needs any evidence that the current Conservative Party cares nothing for the UK or it's people then listen to her

I have suspected that the real reason for Brexit (Apart from quick scam and money for those involved) was the rip the UK into a mini-me version of the US where we turn into a place where social services is a pipedream.

[killer-heels]

I think that's a definite possibility.

The contest after all is structured to make people lie. The Labour party contest was the same (although the candidates were not as venal as the Tory ones, and the average member wasn't quite as insane).

She will still lean very right, but she will give out more support because not only is the looming crisis so serious (and acknowledged by even hard core right wing commentators that support will be needed) but also because it will be electorally suicidal for her not to. She has crafted her career in order to become PM, which for a person of her limitations is quite staggering and the belief she has in her 'talent'.

[Jiminy Cricket]

I'm no chemist, but wouldn't hydrogen (when used) recombine with free oxygen in the atmosphere to produce water again? So, releasing the oxygen produced during electrolysis would balance out.

Yeah. I read only the first half of WLR's post.

[KillieRed]

Winding back to the schools thing. How many would not send their child to a fee paying school on principle? Even if they got the fees fully paid?

I’ve heard so many negative stories from people who went to private schools or sent their kids there. Being private, of course profit (that dirty word again) is the first consideration & educational coverage can be as patchy as state schools. An all round educational & life experience is not guaranteed, and the quality of the paid education naturally varies. You might say it’s market driven. There’s also classism, and if your face doesn’t fit you will be pushed to the social fringes even if you are paying the same fees. This, of course, can happen in our state schools too.

[LuverlyRita]

You must watch channel4 news, there is a +1hr channel I believe. I missed the beginning but some bod absolutely tears the government apart over gas prices and tells them exactly what they should be doing. If you can, watch it.

He didn't just tell the government what to do, he suggested the meeting that Johnson actually attended with so-called "industry leaders" was a PR stunt. I haven't checked this up but he claimed that the people round the table were just "Suppliers" i.e the middle men who act as the public face of the industry by operating call centres, employing sales forces, organising meter readings, sending out bills and collecting your money. The huge price hikes don't start with them.

[Andy @ Allerton!]

Winding back to the schools thing. How many would not send their child to a fee paying school on principle? Even if they got the fees fully paid?

Not got kids, but if I had then no way I'd send them to a private school

Some very, ,very, very strange people in this world and most of them seem to have come from that environment

I'd rather than children integrate to their local community and learn something of the world rather than whatever the fuck they 'learn' in those schools.

Weirdos.

[LuverlyRita]

I’ve heard so many negative stories from people who went to private schools or sent their kids there. Being private, of course profit (that dirty word again) is the first consideration

I still can't get over the fact that they can register as charities. I'd be lobbing taxes onto Eton big time - if only for the damage they've helped do to the country by churning out arrogant, incompetent turds like Johnson.

[LuverlyRita]

Not got kids, but if I had then no way I'd send them to a private school

Some very, ,very, very strange people in this world and most of them seem to have come from that environment

So many come out of private schools with the idea that they're "better than the rest". Having been throught the state education system, I've no idea if they go into private schools with that belief (which then grows courtesy of being amongst so many like minded pupils) or whether that attitude is ingrained in them by the schools themselves