No deal Brexit impact

[gc100]

20 minutes ago, K78 said:

 

What leads you to these crazy conclusions?

 

Stop watching bbc news and reading the guardian. 

 

Well the picture is different now compared to when I made that post 10 months ago. However clearing the pound has devalued quite significantly since the Brexit referendum result (was at ~1.4 /EURO now at ~1.1/EURO this alone as the biggest impact on the material costs. At that time Bank of England forecast paints a further picture of weakening pound agianst increase in trade barriers, weaker economy etc (see here) in no deal scenario. I have another post about this but duty on materials will add a further ~6% on average to cost. So these are my 'crazy conclusions' at that time. Much of this is a massive unknown and sentiment in the world market but I can only draw on things written from experts in their fields and not facebook, Guardian, or the Daily Hate.

[Ralph]

5 minutes ago, K78 said:

Id personally prefer a hard brexit. 

 

 

I'm not making any comment on whether it's a good or a bad thing but up here I've seen a not insignificant swing in quite a few people away from the union and towards Scottish  independence. I think hard brexit would quite possibly be the last straw.

[ToughButterCup]

29 minutes ago, K78 said:

[...]

I despise what the EU has become. That doesn’t mean I’m a “racist bigot who hates foreigners” as the bbc and guardian say.

[...]

 

Evidence please.

The BBC and Guardian can be (and regularly are) held to account for what they publish.

[Jeremy Harris]

13 minutes ago, AnonymousBosch said:

 

Evidence please.

The BBC and Guardian can be (and regularly are) held to account for what they publish.

 

 

Sadly, like every other media outlet, they do report what they are given, and lobbyists (on all sides) are very adept at pushing out stories that support their own political and economic views.  For example, over the past few weeks there have been a plethora of "no deal means this" stories.  Dig around a bit and much of the time these are pure speculation, with little or no basis in fact.

 

I'm not convinced that these stories emanate from wholly politically motivated sources, either.  There is a great deal of heavy betting going on by those trying to profit out of uncertainty.  If someone can nudge the market (doesn't matter which way) in a direction they want, then they can make money from that.

 

I take the view that all stories in the media are at best exaggerations and at worst just plain wrong, until I can see enough solid evidence to convince me one way or the other.  Journalists in general, including those working for the BBC and the Guardian, are getting increasingly sloppy about fact-checking before publication.  Some of that is driven by the time pressure to get a breaking story out ahead of the competition, some is just lazy journalism.

 

Holding a media outlet to account way after an event has near-zero effect, as the primary impact of any story is in the minutes and hours after publication.  Few people even remember later corrections, let alone change their views as a consequence.

[K78]

38 minutes ago, AnonymousBosch said:

 

Evidence please.

The BBC and Guardian can be (and regularly are) held to account for what they publish.

 

You only have to watch any bbc debate. The Remainer will waffle on for 25 mins and the brexiteer will get 5 mins at the end where they are over spoken and attacked by the presenter and the Remainer.  

 

Its so obvious its obnoxious. 

[K78]

1 hour ago, Ralph said:

 

 

I'm not making any comment on whether it's a good or a bad thing but up here I've seen a not insignificant swing in quite a few people away from the union and towards Scottish  independence. I think hard brexit would quite possibly be the last straw.

 

Again I’m all for democracy. Without meaning to sound rude I’m not sure many south of the border are that concerned. That is the problem with the uk. We don’t produce anything anymore for anyone to care, and most of our money is made in the SE in financial services. 

 

That is why I am pro brexit. We can start manufacturing fishing and farming again instead of importing everything. The 2 options for the vast majority of young people in the uk are McDonald’s or benefits. 

 

I’m not sure adopting the euro and the subsequent upheaval would be a good start for a new, independent nation. I can’t see a case for Scottish independence that would benefit the most vulnerable people in your society. 

Edited August 22, 2019 by K78

[Triassic]

It’s time to end the two party state and move to Proportional Representation. 

[ProDave]

1 minute ago, Triassic said:

It’s time to end the two party state and move to Proportional Representation. 

But the stupid electorate rejected the one and only chance they were ever offered when the LibDems proposed an AV system. I doubt we will get another chance to change the system.

[Ralph]

1 hour ago, K78 said:

Again I’m all for democracy. Without meaning to sound rude I’m not sure many south of the border are that concerned. That is the problem with the uk. We don’t produce anything anymore for anyone to care, and most of our money is made in the SE in financial services. 

 

That is why I am pro brexit. We can start manufacturing fishing and farming again instead of importing everything. The 2 options for the vast majority of young people in the uk are McDonald’s or benefits. 

 

I’m not sure adopting the euro and the subsequent upheaval would be a good start for a new, independent nation. I can’t see a case for Scottish independence that would benefit the most vulnerable people in your society. 

Edited 1 hour ago by K78

I don't think you're rude at all,  it's probably how a lot of people  south of the border think and that may well just be adding to feeling that we may as well go it alone. Personally I'm not sure if it would be a good idea or not and I'm inherently suspicious of nationalism and flag waving. 
 

Brexit may well be better in the long term but the short term impact could be absolutely brutal for some. 

[andyscotland]

37 minutes ago, ProDave said:

But the stupid electorate rejected the one and only chance they were ever offered when the LibDems proposed an AV system. I doubt we will get another chance to change the system.

 

I actually wouldn't blame the electorate here. AV is not a proportional system and would actually produce less proportional results in the UK than FPTP. It's not worth changing the system to something worse just for the sake of it.

 

The Lib Dems were not originally offering AV, indeed Clegg described it as a "miserable little compromise". In the coalition negotiations the Conservatives rejected proper PR but offered a referendum on AV instead. The Lib Dems should never have accepted that trade : it should have been clear that whichever way the vote went it would almost certainly rule out a change to proportional representation for a very considerable period.

[scottishjohn]

1 hour ago, Triassic said:

It’s time to end the two party state and move to Proportional Representation. 

and you will end up with what happened when a commitee was employed to design a horse

you get a camel -

[SteamyTea]

The only thing I would change about our voting system is that uncast votes go to the incumbent party, or in the case of a referendum, the status quo.

As long as everyone is away of that, they know what not voting means.  Hopefully it will get better voter engagement and reduce tactical voting.

Edited August 22, 2019 by SteamyTea

[Jeremy Harris]

14 hours ago, AnonymousBosch said:

 

Evidence please.

The BBC and Guardian can be (and regularly are) held to account for what they publish.

 

This is a classic bit of BBC reporting, written by someone with little understanding of English (it's not political): https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-49344152

 

Headline and first paragraph of the story (my emphasis):

 

Quote

'Being trans felt guilty - so I asked to be electrocuted'

 

On a dull autumn day in 1964, two NHS doctors strapped a 17-year-old boy into a wooden chair in a dark, windowless room and covered him in electrodes. During hours of so-called therapy, they repeatedly electrocuted him while showing him images of women's clothing.

 

One assumes that the NHS had perfected the art of repeatedly bringing people back from the dead by  1964, then...

 

This was just a random story from this morning's headlines.  There are similarly poorly reported stories every single day on the BBC, just like there are on pretty much every media outlet.

[SteamyTea]

9 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

they repeatedly electrocuted him while showing him images of women's clothing.

I know someone that would pay good money for that.

Odd though as he installs fire alarms systems.

 

I always wished that someone had offered me a packet of fags when I was 13 and been told to smoke them all.  I would have developed an aversion to nicotine.

Or I would have had a free packet of Marlboro. 

[Jeremy Harris]

Just to be even-handed, and show that the other media outlet quoted earlier is just as bad, take a look at this story (untrue headline: "Rail line in Hampshire is world's first to be powered by solar farm") and then apply a modicum of common sense to it: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/aug/22/rail-line-in-hampshire-is-worlds-first-to-be-powered-by-solar-farm

 

As a hint, the motor in my (fairly small) car is rated at 125 kW, so it isn't hard to guess that 30 kWp of PV isn't going to have any significant impact on the power drawn from the grid to run a train (a very quick check suggests that trains on this line generally have motors rated at around  2,000 kW: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_444).

[SteamyTea]

Enough to run it for 15 hours each year.

About the time it takes to get from London to Penzance and back.

 

[Jeremy Harris]

3 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

Enough to run it for 15 hours each year.

About the time it takes to get from London to Penzance and back.

 

 

The point really is about the fake headlines, both in this bit of Guardian reporting and in the BBC story.  Both are essentially untrue.

 

London to Penzance and back is a total distance of around 900km.  British trains seem to average around 18 kWh/km (source: "Estimating emissions from railway traffic"), so 900km would need around 16,200 kWh.  A 30 kWp array, situated near Aldershot, and positioned to get maximum output (which I doubt this array will be, as it's track side) would generate about 31,100 kWh (source: PVGIS), so, if this PV array were powering electric trains ( which it isn't) then it could almost power two return trips from London to Penzance.

[SteamyTea]

Does that 18 kWh/km include stopping and starting, every 15 minutes after Exeter.

That is the part of the journey that takes all the time.

Edited August 23, 2019 by SteamyTea

[jack]

3 hours ago, JSHarris said:

This is a classic bit of BBC reporting, written by someone with little understanding of English (it's not political): https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-49344152

...

One assumes that the NHS had perfected the art of repeatedly bringing people back from the dead by  1964, then...

 

I think it's been a while since the word "electrocuted" definitively meant death by electric shock. Its use in that article is more informal than I'd hope for from a newspaper, but no worse than that imo.

 

[Jeremy Harris]

15 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

Does that 18 kWh/km include stopping and starting, every 15 minutes after Exeter.

That is the part of the journey that takes all the time.

 

 

It's just the average figure for UK railways, AFAICS.   It seems a bit lower than I would have thought, as my car averages about 4.1 miles/kWh, which works out at about 0.39 kWh/km.  My ~1.35 tonne car apparently uses about 2.2% of the energy of a train per km, yet is only about 0.6% of the weight. 

 

Rolling resistance is a fair bit lower for a train, but train aerodynamic drag is probably greater, and drag makes up a significant part of overall power consumption, especially at high speeds.  I'd have expected train and car energy use to scale reasonably well with mass, but it seems this isn't the case.  Makes me wonder how accurate that 18 kWh/km figure is.  Might need to do a bit more checking around.

[Bitpipe]

Normally when politicians make a big claim or promise, or enact a policy, the actual measurable consequences are so faraway in time to insulate them from any effective criticism until long after they are gone - hence their apparent comfort in making such claims in the first place.

 

Should a no deal exit happen on 31st October then the initial impact will be immediate and plain to see, others should materialise within weeks and months.

 

We'll then see if it's project fear or project fact and will be interesting so see how the politicians deal with it. 

 

BTW - I'm not looking to tell anyone here that their view is right or wrong,  just that we should find out which predictions were mostly correct, reasonably quickly.

[Bitpipe]

Regarding press bias - all news outlets have a brand that they filter the same story through through whether it's sensational or sober, left or right, etc.

 

You, as the reader, choose the brand that aligns with your views and bias and will often reject other news brand's interpretation of the same story as wrong.

 

Regarding accuracy, the press is primarily in the business of processing and selling content quickly and don't have the time or expertise (or desire) to deeply analyse every story whether science based or 18th century classical literature - story gets written, sub editor plucks a headline that may or may not reflect the content and away it goes.

 

So you'll always find endless examples of poorly researched, interpreted or written articles in any paper on any subject.

 

Unless you want your news delivered in a peer reviewed journal, 18 months after the event, then this will never change.

[SteamyTea]

Don't we, as the public, have to trust journalists to know their subject, regardless of personnel views.

Maybe a few should be taken to court for misrepresentation.

[Jeremy Harris]

My concern is that the majority of people will make decisions on important things, based on fake stories that have been reported by the media. 

 

For decades we've had increasingly poor, even outright untrue, stories about the EU.  Most can probably recall some of the funniest  fake stories, like the EU dictating that cucumbers or bananas had to be straight, or that UK passports had to be red (these were all made-up stories by the media, UK passports could have been rainbow coloured with a flowery border as far as the EU is concerned).  Like wise we've recently had a flurry of media stories along the lines of "this disaster will happen if we leave the EU with no deal".  The majority of this sort of reporting is, as POTUS might say, "fake news" (it's about the only thing he's ever said that I largely agree with).

 

Sometimes there are half-hearted attempts to try and  set the record straight on stories that have been reported.  Radio 4 has a short programme that sets out to fact check stories, More or Less ( https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qshd ), but I doubt it has a significant impact on the way most people interpret media news reporting.

 

This short snippet from More or Less highlights one aspect of Brexit reporting: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p04fq3sp

 

 

[scottishjohn]

4 hours ago, JSHarris said:

Just to be even-handed, and show that the other media outlet quoted earlier is just as bad, take a look at this story (untrue headline: "Rail line in Hampshire is world's first to be powered by solar farm") and then apply a modicum of common sense to it: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/aug/22/rail-line-in-hampshire-is-worlds-first-to-be-powered-by-solar-farm

 

As a hint, the motor in my (fairly small) car is rated at 125 kW, so it isn't hard to guess that 30 kWp of PV isn't going to have any significant impact on the power drawn from the grid to run a train (a very quick check suggests that trains on this line generally have motors rated at around  2,000 kW: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_444).

first thing is that they probably have got the solar rating wrong 

think it should be MW not KW--but even then  would still need a serious battery storage to smooth things out

I know that 30 acres would give about 10mw where we are and that is smallest size really anyone is interested in for a solar farm 

Edited August 23, 2019 by scottishjohn