Ferdinand

The earthquake was 2015, rather than 2010 - though the seeds were 2010.. 2010 was the coalition Government. 2015 the Tories scooped nearly all the seats in the SW - LDs went from 15 to zero. Factors include the minor partner in a coalition usually suffers, the Tories ran a very good micro-targeted campaign in 2015, and perhaps the loss of the Referendum for voting reform. It was also a "vote Labour, get SNP" election, when the SNP won 56 from 59 seats in Scotland.

The dstinction I am drawing is between eg supplying 20 vehicles capable of long term precision strikes (HIMARS / M270), which has destabilised the supply lines of Russian forces and driven back eg supply bases and airfields, or supplying 100 (which is what Ukr said they needed) and the long range ATACMS missiles 1-2 months ago, which would have let Ukr sink the entire Back Sea Fleet at it's moorings and destroy the Kerch Bridge (for a start). But there are a lot of cross- and undercurrents. One of them is the amount of Ukrainian farmland now owned by foreign investment, including Western, interests - a huge issue in Ukraine, given the history of confiscation and collectivation, weak rule of law etc. https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/blog/who-really-benefits-creation-land-market-ukraine An issue to watch in relations with the EU and USA. F

Unfortunately, perhaps possibly. Though the Q was related specifically to Green Belt between villages, and the reply was noncommital (important issue; Minister will look at it - sensible by Liz Truss). And there will be a real problem kneecapping the Planning Insprectorate, as they are the ones who define the interpretation of planning law in almost al cases. It's intensely political. LDs won a couple of byelections in the S recently by turbo-pandering to Nimbies, and Home Counties Tories. The Tories have not forgotten how Devon / Cornwall was largely LD up until 2015, and the LDs are targeting the 'Blue Wall'.

Unfortunately, perhaps possibly. Though the Q was related specifically to Green Belt between villages, and the reply was noncommital (important issue; Minnister will look at it - sensible by PM Truss). And there will be a real problem kneecapping the Planning Insprectorate, as they are the ones who define the interpretation of planning law in almost al cases.

His desired legacy is to recreate the territory of the USSR as a new Russian Empire (or Imperial Space if you prefer). His potential loss if he goes nuclear is Mother Russia, and especially the Western End of it, as a scorched, radioactive wasteland. I doubt he will do that, or others will let him do it. Personally I think the question is basically moot. There is no alternative other than fully to support Ukraine. Not supporting Ukraine is an invitation to Putin or his replacement to attempt to repeat the performance for Moldova, Baltic states, Scandinavia, Poland. Surely we have learnt that lesson after the previous performances in Chechnya and Georgia, and now Ukraine? If it doesn't stop, the alternative is that it will continue. The risk of escalation is a risk we do not have the alternative of not taking. It is a risk that has to be managed, as we will not get a better opportunity to stop Putin's create-more-failed-states games. If he knows he is not going to be stopped having sent his army to rape, and abuse, and destroy, and murder their way across Ukraine, and is allowed to get away with something, then why on earth *would* he stop? His worldview is the Stalinist one that human lives and peoples can be thrown away, destroyed or moved, as he wishes, for his convenience. Do we want to keep a prosperous, stable Europe? If we don't defend it, we will lose it. And do we want to support the development of democratic, free countries in the eastern half of Europe? We could lose that too. The long game is that Russia (or dis-integrated Russia) will become one of those free, democratic states. As an aside, I think that countries like Poland (which may become the leading land military in Europe) and the Scandi / Baltic State bloc, and in due course Ukraine, are working to put themselves in strong enough positions that Russia won't dare touch them for a century such is the bloody nose it would get. So perhaps any long term decision to compromise with Russia was already impossible anyway. For our comfort, Putin has been making these threats since the start, repeat and repeat and repeat. And done nothing. I suspect that he has been warned that if he goes nuclear NATO will intervene full bore, and he has zero chance in such a conflict. Ferdinand * I think one provocative though cynical question that I have heard asked is whether the USA is trying to 'help Ukraine win', or 'prevent Ukraine from losing' (as a way of weakening one of their two key global opponents). It's difficult to distinguish that from managing the potential for escalation that you wrote about. I don't think any other Western country thinks in those terms now on that scale, except maybe those that were rearming Russia before they woke up **, but the USA still deals in global level strategies. ** I don't want that distinction to be quite that clear - I think that the whole of the West (except countries bordering Russia such as Finland) was asleep for far too long, but some more than others.

Yes - interesting. I'm also hearing noises about a reform of the electricity market, which is also being contemplated by the European Commission for those countries whose markets they control. https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-weigh-option-power-market-reform-bloc-race-gas-storage/ A question here from Sir Peter Bottomley trying to get the Planning Inspectorate castrated in favour of Nimbies is interesting: F

A few thouights: 1 - Gas is still flowing to Europe through pipelines via Ukraine, Yamal system I think. From Reuters yesterday. Presumably transit fees are still being paid. For comparison full capacity of Nordstream One is 170 million cubic m per day, so about 25% of that if I read it correctly. Nominations for Russian gas flows into Slovakia from Ukraine via the Velke Kapusany border point were about 36.7 million cubic metres (mcm) per day for Tuesday, little changed from the previous day, data from the Ukrainian transmission system operator showed. Russia's Gazprom (GAZP.MM) said on Tuesday that it will ship 42.4 mcm of gas to Europe via Ukraine via the Sudzha entry point, in line with the previous day. Eastbound gas flows via the Yamal-Europe pipeline to Poland from Germany at the Mallnow metering point on the German border were at 551,464 kilowatt-hours per hour (kWh/h) between 0800 and 0900 CET on Tuesday, data from operator Gascade showed. You are probably better placed than me to put that in context. Though I agree that Putin has shot nearly all his bolts. Once exports to Europe are zero and a decent buffer is in place, he has lost all leverage. 2 - I think all of this will be a good indicator of Truss's political acumen. If she keeps the option of getting a pound or thirty billion of flesh from suppliers, it is a positive sign. 3 - There seem to be some significant reverse ferrets on inflation predictions from commentators and forecasters on the package without the subtleties above, such as via the BBC bekow suggesting that the peak could be 10.8% rather than 14.8%. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-62817391 (LOL. I see they have now changed the headline to the doom-mongering "Bank of England warns it cannot stop UK falling into recession"). Gotta love the meeja. 4. There's a bit of interesting politicking going on by France "we will exchange supportive gas exports to Germany for supportive electricity imports, as we do from Spain". The electric imports are already in place, at approx 15% of French demand from those 2 sources at present. Plus another 5-6% from the UK, which for some reason did not get mentioned. The Fr/De pipeline is just being finished and has very approx around 5% of the capacity of UK-continental gas pipelines. 5 - The North Sea Link UK-No interconnector has pretty much reversed its usual No>UKflow for much of the time at present. I assume this is to do with Norway preserving its Hydro reserves. F

FT is not owned by Murdoch. Surprisingly it is owned by Nikkei. Unfortunately no one else buys me a FT sub, so that's all I can see. It needs a subscriber who can "share" it. I haven't seen it anywhere else yet, I'm afraid.

La Truss has cover for introducing a levy on non-gas Energy Producers from EuCo, it seems: https://www.ft.com/content/ab469e2d-8e87-44ee-855b-f46b5b2dd17e ---------------------------------- EU seeks windfall tax trigger well below market rate Brussels wants to hit non-gas power generators with new levy to help households through the energy crisis

Thank-you - I hadn't spotted that.

Yes but the £7000 is media-wazzocks, wazzocking. I'm quite interested in why Rees-Mogg has been made Business Secretary. He is a good investor, but I'm not sure that is the skillset needed for a period that needs mainly long-term strategy plus diplomacy. I guess he is used to dealing with large projects, though. Penny Mordaunt as Leader of the House should be interesting; she can be quite vigorous. I think we can expect to see some pompous shadow ministers being thoroughly debagged.

I think a bill frozen at a typical £2,500 might still do that. But I'd be more attracted to say freezing the price for the first 2000 kWh of elec, and 10000 kWh of gas. Plus some targeted funding for some groups. Should be implementable easily, and politically snip off both a big chunk of the cost and the 'helping rich people' jibe. And will incentivise reductions.

Can you add peripheral skirt insulation round it inside or outside? That increases the heat escape conduction path, and over time heats up the patch of ground. F

Once SWMBO moves him into it, it is precisely the fabric of his house !

Move into a tent in the garden?

Ooops. Surely the other half of that deal is to make it one way by making sure you can switch out easily? Octopussy, when I looked, had no penalties. But it was still a lorra lorra extra dosh.

That's David Graeber, a self-proclaimed anarchist who was a player in Occupy, amongst other things. 😆 Not going down *that* rabbithole. 🙂

Shouldn't that make you one of the max beneficiaries of whatever package emerges? Council Tax band G is a bit steep, especially as a lot of current attractive sounding argumentation is about levelling up Council Tax to be proportional to property value. I had sight of some property taxes in the US the other day whilst comparing the areas around New York and London. In Montclair NY they seem to be about 5x what they are here in the equivalent area for the equivalent house.

Yes. Imo our UK domestic media consists mainly of attention-seeking toss-wazzocks, and the dominant priority is clicks. I've heard both sides of that reported on I think the BBC WS news and the Telegraph "Ukraine latest" podcasts, which is a 1 hour conversation every weekday. In a couple of cross-party quite high quality political groups I am in, there's quite a bit of nasty hate politics around 'boomers the most selfish generation ever', 'generation theft' and so on. There was a bigger-than-usual outbreak wrt pension increases during Covid, and I'm expecting another one. The triple lock is not popular ,despite having only delivered about £600 a year pension uplift over what it would have been over 12 years. Actually John Major and Gordon Brown made quite good decisions around increasing pension age, and the % of our GDP spent on benefits for old people has been reducing for years. I think the numbers are 5.4% of GDP in the mid-2010s down to 4.9%, and a slow increase starting in the near future. We are actually well-positioned as a country. Add in that we have about the best demographic profile in Western Europe, except Ireland, for affording pensions, and the whole thing is a monumental red herring. IMO we need a basic state pension at perhaps 70% of minimum wage (that idea is from the Netherlands), roll a lot of the minor benefits into it (eg Warm Homes Grant), then perhaps relatively increase the tax levels for higher income pensioners. F

Note to @gpawson Sept / Oct are also the Trade Sale period for Howdens - it would probably need the order placed in the sale period. So it may well be worth you going in to the branch you choose to get an account at, and asking.

You mentioned bells. It was probably me pulling the other one.

Serious q: How does that affect imports and exports of electricity, and our participation in international supply pools? is that similar to the action taken by Spain and Portugal back in June? https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_22_3550 Do we have to move in sync with other countries on this?

OT: I noticed the other day that my baseload had hopped up from 80W to about 150W. Turns out that I had left the hall lights on, and they were still Compact Flashes, not LEDs. Time for a change.

teresting moves on the continent. €65bn support package from Germany for its public. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-04/german-government-agrees-on-energy-relief-plan-worth-65-billion Pro-rata that's about the equivalent of a £45bn package here to give the same support per pop. Liquidity guarantees for power companies: https://www.rferl.org/a/sweden-finland-energy-companies-guarantee/32018086.html We'll see soon whether Fizz Liz is going to continue to deny support where it is most needed by adopting the wrong basic values for the time. F

Someone needs to pull the other one.