This was tweeted by Sam Coates, deputy political editor of “The Times”.
This – from a snr gvt source – extraordinary. Cabinet ministers who resign will immediately be stripped of the cars and abandoned in mid-Buckinghamshire For those who turn down @bbclaurak offer of a lift, here’s the source naming the name of the local Chequers taxi firm.
So, it looks like Strong & Stable MayBot, who, only two days ago, refused to sack a cabinet minister for blatantly lying about a report into Universal Credit, is going to take back red boxes at the door if they don’t agree to the plan she’s come up with. The plan which David Davis says the EU will reject because it crosses their red lines.
Oh, isn’t she Strong and Stable?
A new generation of talented MPs? Any guesses?
Answers on a postcard to Munguin at Munguin Towers.
.
MUNGUIN'S NEW REPUBLIC 
[Insert emoji expressing total cynicism HERE]
A “new generation of talented MPs”? TORY MPs? You must be joking.
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Here, I have an idea: let today’s Cabinet meeting result in tantrums and hissy fits and personality clashes and clashes between personality disorders, causing the May regime to fall, let another snap election be called as a result, and let all of Scotland’s Tory MSPs – and pretenders to that title – heed their Party’s call in its time of need, leaving no contenders for the position here in the North Britain region.
And if – seriously now – if such a snap election is called before Brexocalypse on 29 March next year, let the SNP stand in it on an independence platform.
Now, some blue sky thinking – so much better than the nasty, gloomy, overcast kind – if we succeed in quarantining England&Wales, with Scotland, Norniron and the Republic remaining in the EU (in effect, anyway, even if not in name), then there will be increased traffic from the French ports to the Irish ports, and between Scotland and Ireland as well. (Even if the Brexit negotiations go well – no laughing at the back there – the delays at English and Welsh customs, for goods at least, are likely to be horrendous.) Cue European funding – matching funding, I think it would be – for a bridge between Scotland and Norniron.
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Yes. Think of all the business that could relocate here.
Think of still having EU passports, and driving licences… freedom of movement…
They’d never let it happen.
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eddjasfreeman
If Theresa May is willing to hit the nuclear option and does call out her Cabinet colleagues (or idiots, as I prefer to designate them) that will almost inevitably lead to a general election. Their Party is split into factions and at least two out of the three of them will look on it as treason. I think it is still the case, correct me if I am wrong, that the PM can call General election?
That would be ‘interesting’ in the sense that – for Scottish Independence – I would hope that the SNP made it perfectly clear that respecting the substantial majority of ‘Vote stay’ voters in Scotland can only be achieved through electing SNP MP’s who are committed to achieving that through independence.
I didn’t explain that adequately, I see the next General Election if it comes soon, as a challenge for the SNP to stand it up as a commitment to genuine democracy and not the ersatz nonsense we are being fed.
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If her government collapses, she can struggle on in a minority with her own ex-cabinet ministers voting against her or she can go to the Queen and tell her that she can no longer command a majority in the House of Commons. I’m not sure if the Queen would have to ask Corbyn if he could govern, but as he couldn’t, I suspect there would have to be a general election.
I think the SNP should make it an election in Scotland on independence. And if there is a majority of Scottish MPs for independence, then I think it should be declared… as long as it is made super clear that that is what will happen.
A majority of pro independence MPs would be 30, 5 fewer than we have at the moment.
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Yeah, an early election of any kind (especially a Westminster one) would allow the SNP to dodge the referendum issue completely, and just go back to Thatcher’s condition.
Baited breath.
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The more of this notion I hear, the more I like it. Also, Brexocalypse (sounds a bit like collapse) is brilliant.
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It’s a great word.
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Clearly they have a sense of humour.
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A “new generation of talented MPs”? TORY MPs?
May is laying their eggs in the chests of suitable hosts as we speak.
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LOL
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Hmm. Conan, that is genius.
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🙄👌🤥🙄🧠🏴
🤡
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Its worse than that – the taxi firm concerned apparently closed down years ago 😀
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Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha … UP to the minute, bang smack tip top Tories.
May’s team can’t even get THAT right.
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Actually I bet she wishes the WC football match fixtures were reversed so England played today – that way she’d know that most of England wouldn’t give a stuff whether their entire economy just blew up, as long as Engerlund are “bringing it home”….
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Oh and a little off topic, but fun, none-the-less.
There is a great deal of fuss being made in the press in Scotland today because an SNP minister, Maree Todd, made some tablet (containing sugar) for some kids as a treat.
Oh, said the Tories and the press, that’s disgusting, it encourages people to make themselves fat.
(Well, no, it doesn’t actually. My mum and my gran used to make tablet for us as kids and no one could call me fat. We just weren’t allowed to have great fat slabs of it every day.)
In any case, the really funny thing is that the Tories appear to be making much of this act of kindness and charity, but haven’t mentioned that one of their councillors actually owns a company that makes tablet and sells it, presumably at a profit.
Click to access BallochmyleAlysonSimmons.pdf
So let’s see. If you are Tory and you sell something that, if taken in large quantities makes kids fat, that’s cool. But if you make up some tablets for a group of kids who have been in care as a wee treat and GIVE it to them, then you are a BAD PERSON.
It’s funny, and at the same time, seriously pathetic.
What about all the dark money, Ruth?
Oh look, she’s back in Afghanistan.
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Wind back 40 years and it was teeth & tablet they were bothered about.
To be fair “they” were right at the time. Now its fat – all about money, not health frankly.
Also I’d be more worried the kids make themselves sick rather than fat – ISTR proper tablet lands on your stomach like, well a tablet of stone. Times may have changed….
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That’s why we only got tiny amounts.
But wow…what a treat it was.
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That’s just Tories being consistent:
Giving things away = bad.
Selling goods/services = good.
Unless you’re talking about sex, then it’s the other way around for some reason.
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Odd that… but then they are Tories…
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seen on twitter
what warrants msm attention?
2 pounds of tablet or
300,000 pounds of dark money
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Clearly the tablet. Turns out to be yet another own goal for the Tories.
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Obviously, Ruthie can’t stay away from the cakes and tablet. Should the caption to this be, “By the time I’ve guzzled my way through this lot, I’ll be this wide”?
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Oh boy, that was corny!
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First 45 I ever bought. I also remember skimming it into the Forth several years later.
I regret both actions.
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LOL…
I suspect all of us would be a little embarrassed at some point about some of the records we’ve bought.
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Aye, Conan, and based on the Archie, Betty & Veronica comics. I have to admit that when I was a young fella, swapping American comics with my pals, when a Betty & Veronica turned up amongst the Batman, Superman, Green Lantern, etc., issues, I was the eejit that’d swap for the Bettys. My pals thought I was daft – now I think I was ahead of the curve…just that one time though 🙂 I wish I still had them today but, on the other hand, isn’t that why they call them “ephemera”?
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“Strong & stable”, Tris. The only thing that’s usually strong in a stable is the stench of horseshit and it’s long overdue that the Augean stables we call the Houses of Parliament were cleansed.
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Strong smell in the stables, Andi!
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Obviously off topic:
My reply to a deleted comment on the ‘Herald’:
“I agree with this:
“Note to Moderators: Close comments before your paper is seriously embarrassed.”
You are about to make fools of yourselves. And stop deleting comments!
Really!
The chances are that the truth will out and we really, really don’t need a moderator who has pre-determined that outcome. You, sir, are an embarrassment to the mere idea of moderation.
That, sir, you are pretty poor at moderation. Allowing freedom of speech seems to have passed you bye, in favour of what?
And I have done the job you do, and I have done it a heck of a lot better than you.”
Quite a disgraceful failure for this newspaper.
—————
Disgraceful attempt at control by a journalist who is as thick as mince!
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Tris
What ever they cobble together, with or without resignations, won’t be accepted by the EU either way and I have always thought that is May’s plan. I really don’t think she wants a deal at all, she wants to stay PM for a few years and the only way to do that is if she can say the EU are bastards and rejected a very fair and reasonable deal from the UK and just play down the Irish border issue. I don’t trust any of them at all, if there is a deal then they might have to sacrifice Northern Ireland as they can’t afford to see Scotland go as the economy will be right in the toilet but I just don’t believe she wants a deal at all.
Bruce
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Bruce,
That seems about right.
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Yes, I think that’s what she wants. After failing to come up with more or less anything for 18 months, she finally presents a plan that she knows perfectly well isn’t going to be accepted.
But after all this time of it being intransigence in the case of her colleagues, the downfall of his plan will be the awful foreigners.
Clearly the Daily Mail, Express and Torygraph will run with that. And she will be saved.
But then she’ll have to try to come up with something else because there is no way that the Brexiteers will let her away with anything that denies them their freedom.
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… and as the EU, or rather EU legislation, will no longer be standing in the way of Their worst instincts – anyone for a jolly little game of fascist dictatorship and tin soldiers?
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Brexit means exit or ?????? Whatever
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Link doesn’t work for me.
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Conan. It plays on Youtube. It just won’t play on the site.
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Fhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ar27ChFKqA&feature=share
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I love that song.
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That second video, second part is horrific.
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So do I.
Never fucked my mother though.
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Hi Niko.
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Ouch.
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A Fox to be the next PM, by the name of Basil Brush.
The Maybot’s method is to promise much but do little.
I agree that she is for doing a couple of years as PM, then retire on the pension to somewhere warm and cosy with her other half, the one with his finger in the Bahamas.
Her place in history confirmed.
Who remembers who came in second place? nobody.
Who was the first person to fly the Atlantic from Europe to the USA, from East to West, Linberg did it with the prevaling winds, West to East.
Roll on the GE, see were all getting the updating of the voters role, forgive me if i’m wrong but it isn’t that long ago they did the exercise.
The easy solution is to place the border at Hadrian’s Wall again, englandland can be an independant country again.
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Ah… I can remember who came second. It was that awful Leadsome woman whom I managed to irritate so much she blocked me on Twitter.
Can you imagine what she would have done over Brexit? We’d be out by now with no deal and eating rats…
I dunno when they last updated the register. I seem to remember returning something a couple of years ago.
Didn’t they come up with a new way of doing it though?
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Very interesting discussion! Am I to understand that a walk back to London from Chequers would be long and arduous?
And can I assume that “tablet” in Scotland is some sort of candy or sweet pastry? Ironic (from an American perspective) that it was an SNP Minister (therefore presumably a political lefty) who was giving “tablet” to the kids, and a Tory (therefore a damnable right winger) who was complaining about making kids fat and rotting their teeth? The situation is exactly reversed in the USA, where it’s the touchy feely nanny state socialistic liberals who refuse to give their kids candy or soda (even as they indoctrinate them with Karl Marx,) while the right wingers champion free expression, where rotting your kids’ teeth and making them fat is a human right. Actually, as a libertarian-minded slightly left of center moderate, I’m with the American right wingers on this one. AND….happily as it turns out……also with the Scottish sugar loving SNP.
Also, I can’t help but point out once again, my one……ONLY ONE in fact that I can think of……long-standing policy difference with the editorial board of Munguin World Media. Namely, the business of pursuing policy differences with a politician by publishing the most hideous (and irrelevant) photograph of an instantaneous facial grimace by the politico, caught in a fraction of a second by an enterprising photographer. (This has become an absolute art form in American politics.)
Anyway, I have to comment that the especially hideous photo of Theresa May published here looks new. Dare I hope that this means the photograph of her long-ago momentary step toward the wrong car in front of No. 10 has finally been retired from Munguin Media?……..LOL. Thanks to my sources at The Guardian, I’ve managed to locate a video of the entire incident. Note that the ugly facial grimace is almost invisible in real time, whereas otherwise, her expressions are pleasant and good-natured as she happily accommodates the photographers. And we know the thanks she received from one of them. 😉
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Yes, I’m thinking that the Cabinet ministers were mindful of the fact that the distance between London and Chequers is 41 miles (or so says Google).
A long way to walk carrying your overnight case, with no car and no driver. These people reallu don;t know what a bus is, unless they are writing “£350,000,000 a week to the health service” on the side of it.
Probably this is why she got unanimous backing from her team of disagreeable incompetents. First and foremost none of them wanted to have to pay a 41 mile taxi fare and be unable to claim it on expenses.
I doubt that, returned to their natural home in the middle of London, harmony will be long-lived.
Tablet is a delight. Here is Maree’s recipe:
*****
MAREE TODD’S TABLET
Ingredients
2lbs sugar
4oz butter
1 cup milk
1 can condensed milk (I hunt to find non-nestle, currently using one from Lidl)
vanilla extract (I use a small tsp)
Method
Melt sugar, half butter and milk in a large pan and bring to the boil. Add condensed milk and rest of butter and bring to boil again. Boil for 10-20 mins, stirring frequently. (Don’t worry if it catches a bit – it is usually retrievable, just adds to the colour, but don’t wander off and hang out the washing or anything!)
It is ready when the colour changes to a golden caramel and the nature of the boil changes too – it goes from frothy/foamy to plopping like lava (all very scientific!).
You can test at this point if you want – drop a bit of mix into a cup of cold water and it should form a soft ball of toffee (I don’t bother with this anymore but I did when I was learning).
Take it off the heat and add the vanilla then beat for 4-5 mins using electric beaters on a medium setting – you will see it start to look grainy and a more set pattern appears.
I think beating is the key to my tablet, which gives a great texture and seems to make it turn out right whether it is lightly over or underdone – it’s a great trick, avoiding the need for sugar thermometers
Pour into a buttered tin and leave it to cool a bit. Cut while still warm.
*****
You should try it.
Munguin is aware, of course, that you are at odds with his policy of using particularly embarrassing pictures of May and Trump to illustrate his pieces.
He says he has yet to see a picture of May that it anything other than embarrassing. If it isn’t her facial expression, it is her bizarre choice of clothes. He feels that she often looks like she has set out to do a day’s gardening and ended up meeting the queen instead.
Trump’s make up is probably the most embarrassing thing about him, (although his hair is pretty grim too) and it is hard to find a picture of him without it on.
I wonder if he sleeps in it?
🙂
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Actually, I sympathise with her. I’ve been known to walk to the wrong car and then give myself a bit of a look…
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Tris……Yes, a walk back to London from Chequers carrying your overnight bag would be problematic. Seems like the lady of the funny faces can be fiendishly clever in assuring political support…..at least until the politicians return to London. 😉
I’m actually pretty flexible on the politician pictures issue. As you note, Trumpy for example is just too tempting a target to ignore in this regard…..as is Theresa May.
The tablet candy sounds wonderful, although maybe a little touchy in the cooking. I recently encountered a wonderful “health food” at a fast food burger joint here. Wonderful bite-size pieces of cheese which are deep fat fried like french fries. What’s NOT to like about fried cheese? The sort of thing that drives the healthy-food Nazis of the left wing of the American Democratic Party to distraction.
Case in point………There was a liberal mayor of the nanny state People’s Republic of New York City named Bloomberg who decided that sugary soft drinks were making people fat. So he issued an administrative directive that soft drinks could not be served in containers larger than 16 oz within the city. Fortunately, libertarians of various political stripes went to court and got Bloomberg’s soft drink law struck down. So sugary soft drinks once again flow freely in New York City, and the New York health food fanatics wring their hands in despair.
My far left liberal friends never saw a social evil that couldn’t be resolved by legally banning it. Thing is, as much as the left wing elites proclaim their love for humanity, they often have a problem with individual people (who can’t be trusted to do what’s good for them.) American lefties simply don’t trust people to VOTE properly in matters that concern their own well being. New York liberals much prefer government by administrative fiat. The resolution of the soft drink war in the courts of New York was very gratifying.
So beware! There are undoubtedly political forces in Scotland who will be going after candy and soft drinks. First they came for your candy…..then they came for your soft drinks…….THEN……..
It almost happened in New York City. It’s always a danger in nanny state California.
Rant over! (Damnable politicians hostile to candy struck a nerve.)
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LOL… Poor old Bloomberg.
We have an obesity problem here. Of that there is no doubt. Apart from the US, I’ve never seen so many fat people.
This is causing serious problem with the health service. This from Wiki:
Experts have predicted that by the year 2020 one third of the United Kingdom population could be obese.[4][5] Rising levels of obesity are a major challenge to public health.[6] There are expected to be 11 million more obese adults in the UK by 2030, accruing up to 668,000 additional cases of diabetes mellitus, 461,000 cases of heart disease and stroke, 130,000 cases of cancer, with associated medical costs set to increase by £1.9–2.0B per year by 2030.[7] Adult obesity rates have almost quadrupled in the last 25 years.[8][9]
For children, data from the Health Survey for England (HSE) conducted in 2014 and examining patterns of overweight and obesity among children aged 2–15, showed that 17% of children were obese and an additional 14% of children were overweight.[10]
Of course smoking and drinking has financial implications for the NHS too, but people pay vast taxes on cigarettes and alcohol. The UK government (hard right wing) has put taxes on sugary drinks and there are other moves in the pipeline to address the problem.
Of course what we need to do is get people to understand that all of these things (well, except cigarettes) are not bad for you in moderation.
When we were kids we were allowed a small piece of the tablet Granny made. I suspect that some kids eat it until they are very nearly sick…
I guess in the States, the penalties for being fat are expensive health insurance. Here, regardless you get your health care free of charge, regardless.
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Tris……There’s certainly a lot of fat people in the US, but I have a left of center libertarian’s distrust of government programs that seek to modify basic human behavior by force of law; and more fundamentally, my view is that there’s almost NO social problem that can’t be f****d up and made worse when politicians initiate government programs to FIX it. 😉
I do tend to favor sensible and moderately progressive left-of-center politics, but I also tend to think that the far left is only incrementally less crazy than the far right, and are every bit as arrogant at being intellectually superior as the far right is about being morally and spiritually superior.
I do have a left wing friend who lacks a libertarian streak and who describes in detail the social cost arguments that in his view demand that we reorder society and redirect human behavior to achieve a Utopian future. I always tell him that I’ll listen to his arguments about social costs as soon as he listens to mine about how constitutional rights allow people to behave as stupidly as they want to, and trumps his irrelevant social cost arguments any day of the week. When he tells me how we have to ban sweeteners in soft drinks (that he is persuaded by liberal academic intellectuals are responsible for obesity,) I ask him why he isn’t even MORE concerned about the incalculably greater social costs of alcohol and smoking. The answer is that liberals figure that overweight people are easy picking for their social re-engineering, but they know that the smokers and the drinkers wouldn’t put up with it.
Which brings us back to left wing former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg who enjoyed considerable success at banning smoking in New York City bars and restaurants, and feeling thus emboldened at liberal social engineering, took on obesity with the regulations on sugary soft drinks. That was a step too far, and thank God we had the courts to bat him down.
But left wing fanaticism is as pernicious as the right wing variety , and Bloomberg clearly wants to run for president some day. Thing is, he is (according to Wiki) the 8th richest person in the US and the 11th richest in the world. So with something like 52 BILLION dollars in net worth, Bloomberg could buy and sell Trump almost six times over, and that’s assuming that Trump actually has the 9 Billion that he claims.
So Bloomberg could certainly mount a well funded campaign. 😉
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Yes, Danny. I too believe that people should be able to do what they want with their bodies, as long as it doesn’t affect me. (eg, smoke if you will, but not near me, so I don’t have to get your lung cancer, or get drunk as a skunk but don’t puke in my garden.)
But of course they should take responsibility for what they do. In a country where the state pays for health care, I’m not happy to subsidise people who insist that they can do what they want and out taxes will pick up the bill.
52 Billion… Hmmm. Munguin wants to know if he wants a friend?
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Tris….Here of course, medical issues mostly affect private medical insurance rates, although they’re also a factor in the federal Medicare Program, and the federally financed state Medicaid programs.
Bloomberg had been a lifelong Democrat, but ran for mayor as a Republican in 2001 to replace Republican Rudy Giuliani who was term limited. Bloomberg left the Republican Party while serving as Mayor and was elected to a third term as an independent. He supported Hillary in 2016.
His career has been in financial services and mass media. As a media man, Munguin should definitely do a deal with him. 😉
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Munguin is attracted to that kind of money… He has a plan to take over Bloomberg’s media interests…
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Tris……Shrewd move! 😉
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He’s a shrewd wee animal!, Danny!
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We’re dealing with it here – in the face of rocketing obesity and diabetes rates – by taxing high-sugar soft drinks. Probably a good thing – like minimum pricing for alcohol – as combating dangerous behaviours, and on sound epidemiological grounds. Taxes on cigarettes are a good example. We Scots have notoriously bad teeth – part genetics, part the national sweet tooth. We also put a charge on plastic supermarket bags – usage is hugely down, and the improvement in the environment is very visible. The money from that one goes to charity, I understand. Plastic straws have been banned, plastic cutlery and plates may be next. Environmental protection.
I hated it when it became illegal to smoke in pubs and restaurants, indeed in all indoor public spaces – now I think it’s a damn good thing. Measures to reduce morbidity and mortality are desirable, anything that helps people live longer, healthier lives is good, improving our shared environments is good, the question is how best to go about it.
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Munguinites outwith Scotland may be interested to know that the specialized term for windblown plastic supermarket bags caught in trees is “witches’ knickers”. These are particularly eye-catching in winter, naturally enough. However, since the introduction of the 5p charge for such supermarket bags and an approximately 90% reduction in consumption, Scottish witches have been losing their knickers in flight much less frequently.
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Ha ha…
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Ed…..I was surprised at how relatively easily the smoking bans were implemented nationwide. On the other hand, every libertarian instinct I have is opposed to the environmental stuff about banning plastics for example. I can accept some reasonable taxes that might gently nudge some people toward more responsible behavior on environmental issues, but politicians outright banning things doesn’t work for me……and if they try it, they can burn in hell (not to put too fine a point on it.) 😉 I will go to the barricades if necessary, with a 32 ounce container of sugar laced, full calorie Coca-Cola firmly in hand.
Probably a good thing that I live in a right wing redneck state like Missouri, and NOT in the People’s Republic of California. I do think it’s good that the rivers aren’t sewers anymore, and that the air is breathable in the big cities. On the other hand, I prefer a properly designed and operated nuclear power plant to acres of ugly white wind turbines despoiling the countryside. I’m with the French on the nuclear power issue. So in general I do part ways with the lefties for whom environmentalism has become nothing less than a secular religion…..IMHO. 😉
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PS Ed……I like the Scottish term for plastic supermarket bags caught in trees, but I can’t resist a snarky tongue-in-cheek comment. The supreme convenience of plastic supermarket bags in conveying grocery purchases to your home is eminently self-evident, and I will take plastic grocery bags to the barricades. Yet you have a government which gets so worked up about occasional plastic bags in trees and other inappropriate places that it levies an onerous charge for the privilege of using them. This is while the politicians ignore the incalculably greater visual pollution of giant white wind turbines despoiling the countryside.
This is something that could happen in California. 😉
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I see though that a grandmother in CA, trying to deliver toys to children separated for their parents by the orange moron, has been arrested.
“A grandmother was arrested in Fairfield, CA while attempting to deliver toys and books to children who were separated from their parents at the border
“Liz DeCou is her name. DeCou said, “Why was I arrested for wanting to offer comfort to a child?””
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It’s more a return to older habits. It encourages people to reuse their ordinary supermarket bags, and also to buy longer-lived shopping bags – after all, our grandmothers (almost always our grandmothers) never went shoping without taking their own shopping bags. It’s not just the visual pollution of witches’ knickers, and litter generally, we’re getting worried about marine pollution too, and also the role of plastic bags in bunging up storm drains.
Visual pollution: we’re pretty careful where we put our wind turbines. I think they’re quite elegant, actually. Electricity pylons are uglier.
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Well, if someone asked me if I’d rather live next to a nuclear power station or a wind turbine, I know what I’d chose. But to be fair, not every country is as lax about safety.
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Yes, Ed. But I see Danny’s point.
The freedom to behave as you will is, I think, pretty fundamental. The caveat must be that it has as little effect as possible on others (and in that, I include wildlife).
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The effect on wildlife of wind turbines – i.e., the effect on birds – is actually rather slight, but is generally exaggerated in the meeja. Rather more common causes are collision with / electrocution by power cables – poorly designed arrangements of support struts and insulators are a definite risk (imagine a relatively low-voltage, three-phase set of cables carried on those wooden telegraph pole things. Now imagine the cables supported on a short ceramic insulator mounded on a galvanized steel strut. If you put the cable over the top of the strut, risk of electrocution is high. If you sling them underneath on longer insulators, the risk is significantly reduced).
I did records for a couple meetings of the parties to the AEWA (Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds) and (the avian bit of) the CMS (Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals) conventions, which is how I know these things. Did you know that the Circumpontine flyway is a Thing? It’s a bird migration route that goes round the western end of the Black Sea, and the recommendation was that no one should put wind turbines under it. Similarly, no one should be putting up wind turbines anywhere near the Strait of Gibraltar, as that sees an immense density of migratory birds crossing there as the shortest crossing between Europe and Africa (no thermals over open water, so they don’t get a chance to save energy by getting extra lift from rising air).
If people really wanted to reduce bird mortality in the UK, they would tackle the biggest threat to birdlife of all: domestic cats.
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I’m all for that!!!
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Tris……I’d not seen the story about the California grandmother. No doubt Trump’s immigration enforcers are a bit on edge as they scramble to comply with several court rulings that compel the reunification of the separated families on very short time schedules.
I see that the threat to civilization posed by plastic bags in trees had struck California. So California became the only state that has banned them.
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-plastic-bag-ban-anniversary-20171118-story.html
The extent to which people will sacrifice convenience (and money) to cave to the whims of politicians who pander to environmental extremists is beyond belief (IMHO). I would have a LOT of trouble living with the politically correct liberals of California. I’m certainly no fan of Trump, but I have to acknowledge the extent to which the antics of left wing California crazy people prompted right wing crazy people in other states of conservative centrist America to elect him. As the left has become more strident and extreme, the huge generic lead once enjoyed in polling for the upcoming midterms has shrunk to just a few points. No one is talking about a “wave election” that will easily sweep Democrats to power in Congress anymore. ;-(
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PS: I could live with a reasonable number of carefully placed wind turbines. But that’s not what happens when environmental extremists take control of a state government. I give you California:
Miles and miles of what were once pristine windy California mountain passes have turned white with wind turbines as far as the eye can see. There’s a relatively few power line pylons, but the number of individual wind turbines must be almost literally uncountable.
It’s one thing when sensible people like Scots decide to make a beneficial contribution to the environment. But we’re talking freekin AMERICA here. Nothing is ever done sensibly and moderately in America. If one or two wind turbines is good, then ONE OR TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND must be better. This is visual pollution on steroids.
First the California environmental extremists took our convenient plastic shopping bags…….THEN they utterly destroyed the land. All in a misguided effort to save the planet from the human race. The lefties proclaim to the stars their love for humanity; unfortunately they don’t care very much for individual people, who obstinately refuse to do the “right” things, and therefore cannot be allowed to live their lives in peace.
As for the call to return to “older habits,” and the way granny used to do things, that is REALLY a non-starter for me. There’s a reason that people don’t do that. Because life was brutal back then, and over time, we’ve found better…….EASIER…….ways to do things. And BTW the lefties never just “encourage” anyone to do anything. They inflict THEIR view of responsible human behavior on others by FORCE OF LAW. When the lefties are finished saving the planet from the human race, there won’t be a human right left standing.
I’ll say it again. There was a reason that Trump was elected that didn’t have anything to do with hatred of foreigners. That certainly doesn’t totally explain the middle class vote in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan for example. There, and in lots of other places, hard working common people got tired of being looked down on and told what do and think by the liberal elite. And there are no more elitist a******s than the environmental activist fanatics who have taken over the state government of California.
Rant #2 (or maybe it’s #3) now concluded. 😉
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LOL… I give you that… That is one ugly sight!
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“Ugly sight!” Yea Tris….ain’t it so……LOL.
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PS…….Perhaps of interest. The article in the San Diego paper seems to show that even California has come to its senses in placing some restrictions on the wind energy industry.
But Big Wind has become a big money, tax subsidized business; so in some areas, there is pushback against the “land-devouring, subsidy-fueled sprawl of Big Wind.” From an op-ed that is obviously not neutral in the environmental wars. But the facts may be right, or not. It is after all a war, and radical environmentalists take no prisoners in their battle to save Mother Earth from the human race.
I urge you to take a second look before approving a proposal to level Edinburgh Castle and build a wind farm. 😉
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/sd-fi-california-wind-20170825-story.html
http://www.insidesources.com/rural-america-keeps-rejecting-big-wind/
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Well, we could level Buckingham Palace and Westminster, although, with all the hot air that comes out of there, maybe we should just use that to heat a million homes.
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Oh dear… what an eyesore! I am quite, quite sure that that would never have been allowed here.
** WARNING: AUTHOR IS SUFFERING FROM INSOMNIA **YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR OWN LEVEL OF BOREDOM**
The trend here in Scotland is for fewer and larger turbines, and to have them offshore. You have to remember that Scotland is absurdly windy and has an absurdly high percentage of Europe’s total wind power potential – something like a quarter. Solar – not so much; in fact we underestimate the potential there, as it seems counterintuitive that they still provide some power / heat some water even on cloudy days. Tidal power: the largest flow turbines – i.e., turbines that are not based on impounding tidal water – in the world are being installed in the Pentland Firth, north of the Scottish mainland (I was very seasick up there once, many years ago). This was given the usual coverage in the mainstream meeja, i.e., none.
So-called sin taxes – even before tobacco and alcohol were recognized as the public health problems they are – were always a way for governments to cash in on people’s addictions and desires, and, conversely, have always seen constant attempts by the bluenosed, puritan types to ban certain things altogether – I seem to remember a little incident a while ago involving people dumping large quantities of tea in some harbour or other, and a little experiment somewhere banning alcohol that ended up putting vast amounts of money into the hands of organized crime, and another with drugs, including even cannabis, that in some places resulted in mass incarceration and consequent disenfranchisement. (The disenfranchisement doesn’t happen here, by the way, certainly not to the same extent.)
Here in Scotland, in fact in Europe generally, and in addition to the public health / epidemiologically based taxes and bans, quite a lot of the stuff we’re doing is for environmental reasons, some of it in response to Europe-wide moves in that direction. Politically, in Europe as a whole, there is effectively no chance that climate-change deniers and environment-trashers such as the utterly astounding but now deposed Scott Pruitt would be put in charge of continent-wide environmental protection, no chance that any mainstream politician would have a problem if asked about the age of the Earth for fear of their ultraconservative, right-wing “Christian” base, except they might not know for sure that the most recent best estimate if 4.54 ±0.05 billion years, and no one could get away with trying to censor school textbooks to excise all mention of evolution, or rewrite them to plug creationism, nor could they try to avoid teaching 16-year-old biology students about anything to do with sex.
Incidentally, what happened in Flint, Michigan with the water and the lead piping is again unimaginable over here: in Scotland in particular, with our soft water – there are only a couple of exceptions to that in the whole country – the problem of lead in water has long been recognized as a public health hazard -for many decades now – with no new installations allowed within my own living memory. In fact, grants were made available for the removal and replacement of lead piping, water tanks and so on. That is, until Margaret Thatcher came along and stopped the grants. The water in both Grantham and London is hard, as it is everywhere in the south-east of England, and that quite effectively stops the lead leaching out of the pipes. Ergo, to Margaret Thatcher, lead pipes were not a problem.
We stopped using lead paint too, even on our iconic Forth Bridge – stripping and repainting it was quite a major exercise and took years, though they claim that it will be a long time before it needs more than the occasional touch-up.
On the subject of pigments – in the Victorian age, arsenic used to be used as a pigment in wallpaper, among other things. You will have heard the stories about Napoleon’s death on St Helena being caused by the arsenic in the wallpaper. In the UK, the industrial lobby succeeded in blocking moves to ban the stuff for decades, until the public had already boycotted products containing it, in fact. That was a hazard that was effectively gone by the twentieth century in the UK, though it has resurfaced more recently in places such as Bangladesh: the tube wells that were put in everywhere there to provide clean water supplies from underground often bring up toxic concentrations of arsenic as well.
Here’s a rather beautifully illustrated article on the subject, entitled “Death by Wallpaper: The Alluring Arsenic Colors that Poisoned the Victorian Age”: http://tinyurl.com/yact3m43.
Even if you can’t be bothered reading the article, here’s one of the illustrations – a dress made of wallpaper samples (a dominotière is a (female) wallpaper-maker): https://hyperallergic.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/witchfever01-768×1181.jpg
From our point of view over here, the “centre” in American politics looks skewed very far to the right; conversely, what you may think of as leftist in California is part of the mainstream consensus here.
Returning to the supermarket bag charge of 5p – 6.65¢ at the last count – I too found it annoying when it first came in, and didn’t like it, but it really isn’t that onerous and it really has had a positive and noticeable effect on our urban environment. That is even before we start thinking about marine pollution and so on. Old supermarket shopping bags, along with plastic wrapping from packs of soft drinks in cans and so on, are recyclable as well – the larger supermarkets will take them back for that purpose – and we long ago stopped using the kind of packaging for six-packs that is made from a sheet of tough polythene with six round holes, because of the known hazard to wildlife.
A recent interesting example of public-behaviour-modifying carrots, as opposed to public-behaviour-modifying sticks, is electric cars. There is a carbon-based tax on purchases of petrol- and diesel-engined cars in the UK which is not applied to electric cars, and a network of public charging points has been set up where you can charge up your car – for free! I was talking to the driver last time I was in an electrically-powered taxi and he told me that his nice new model could do 177 miles on a full charge; that means he can get to Edinburgh airport and back from Dundee on one charge, and he can get to Glasgow airport on a full charge, get his motor charged up again on a high-power charger in half an hour tops for free, in other words, time for a leisurely cup of tea and a scone, which you would want anyway after that drive. Mind you, at airport prices for his coffee and a bun…
Diesel-powered cars are on the way out: at one point they were considered a Good Thing because of their higher efficiency in converting fuel to vehicle miles, and as a result reduce carbon emissions. However, the problem of hazardous particulates in the exhaust has proved intractable, so they are being phased out. Here’s an article about that (the comments on it are quite amusing – see if you can guess which are by Unionists): http://tinyurl.com/yaqquht5.
In the solid waste stream, we are operating on the “zero to landfill” principle, so called; we are moving towards renewable, zero-carbon energy supplies; and we are trying to reduce our environmental footprint. All this is in line with agreed European policy generally and our obligations under various treaties and conventions in the related areas. And it’s working.
We are taking other public-health measures that can be viewed as liberty-infringing, such as banning handguns, ensuring that people with TB don’t go around infecting other people, and making it more expensive to get pissed out of your brain on cheap cider and lager. Other initiatives of proven effectiveness – needle exchanges, provision of safe rooms where addicts can inject, all moves that can reduce the transmission of blood-borne viruses and other hazards of shared and dirty needles – are currently being blocked by the Westminster regime.
I find it quite amusing how a certain type of conservative mindset will vacillate between defending our individual liberty to poison ourselves if we want to, on libertarian grounds; banning such poisons because of their social conservatism, which delights in telling other people what they may and may not do; and turning a blind eye because they’re money-spinners for them. It’s that last position that gives us the direct nexus between conservatism and organized crime.
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Danny, I managed to read the San Diego Tribune article because I have a VPN I can use to pretend I’m in the US, but currently their site is not available in Europe.
On the subject of “coastal elites”, the Trump phenomenon and so on – that has no real equivalent here in Scotland. In England, the disaffected went over to UKIP, but then the Conservatives here have a track record of not giving a damn about the Lower Orders, and have now absorbed – or been absorbed by – UKIP. In Scotland, there is very little support for UKIP and not all that much for the Ruth Davidson Party either.
We have more of a consensus about many things here, including, for example, abortion rights – no one likes abortion, and no woman I have ever known would have one for fun or as a trivial matter at all, but we basically agree that we have struck a workable balance on the subject. Only extreme right-wing nutters and a few sincere, theologically based believers would even dream of trying to ban it, because we know that the side-effects of banning legal and safe abortion are far, far worse.
Other Scotland-based Munguinites may disagree about any or all of the above – come forward and make yourselves known! We are not afraid to be challenged! It takes quite a lot to make us run away and hide, and do a spot of abject whimpering!
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Erratum: the carbon tax is on the purchase price of the car, it is on the road licence – your car is given a rating based on grams of carbon per mile, or something like that, which puts you into a particular road-tax band. Electric cars are zero-rated.
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Aaargh… the carbon-related tax is NOT on the purchase price of the car, it is on the road tax licence. Whatever it’s called.
Oh, one of the incentives for governments that underlies the move to electric cars is the European air quality standards they signed up to – it’s become evident that we are never going to meet some of them unless we get rid of internal combustion engines in our cities pretty much completely. I am not quite sure they – the governments – knew what they were getting into, actually; though the standards themselves are sound and thoroughly defensible on public health grounds, meeting them has proven to be rather – consequential. However, electric car technology is advancing fast, so this may become a non-problem quite soon anyway.
Iceland and the Faeroes, as I understand it, already have 100% of their cars running on electricity.
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Ed……a few comments.
Even though we had a bad experience trying to ban alcohol, that didn’t stop the war on drugs. A war which by all accounts was already lost back in the Nixon administration. Now we have states that are making marijuana legal and a federal government where it remains illegal. The plan seems to be that both sides pretend not to notice the other.
I had forgotten that the English murdered Napoleon with green wallpaper. Looks like an interesting article. I had no idea what a dominotière is……although it looked like a dirty French word. 😉
Sounds like you get a better deal in Scotland on those plastic bags than Californians do. The L.A. Times says that they cost 10 cents each in California. I can’t help but point out that people still end up using plastic bags that will ultimately find their way into the environment, except now you have to pay money for them. So ultimately the pollution is the same, but now someone is making money on it. Free enterprise in action!
Here in Missouri I have NEVER EVER seen a plastic bag in a tree or along a street or highway or anywhere else in the environment where it shouldn’t be. So I would snarkily suggest that the horrendous plastic bag in tree “problem” has a way of only occurring where fanatical environmentalism is rampant. It seems self evident therefore that plastic bags are being PLANTED in the trees by throngs of environmental fanatics. Never forget, those people ARE tree-huggers. 😉
I’m going to miss Scott Pruitt. It was pretty entertaining to see what new corruption he could came up with on any given day to enrich himself from the public purse. Now we have Trump’s number two guy in charge at EPA. That guy is a shill for the coal industry. The Times says that Pruitt may go back to Oklahoma where he served as state Attorney General and frequently sued the EPA on behalf of corrupt Oklahoma gas and oil interests. The people in Oklahoma seem to feel that he was unfairly persecuted in Washington by damnable liberals.
Even as a dyed in the wool libertarian with no love for the nanny state, I’m not against electric cars, which are pretty popular here. I’m just against the heavy hand of government doing anything to encourage or discourage people to accept or reject them with carrot or stick. I’m a very reasonable guy. 😉
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I don’t much like being nannied either.
The reason for the push for electric cars is that it’s not just our air pollution standards that we’ll fall foul of if we don’t get rid of all or most internal combustion engines in our cities, but also our climate change responsibilities. There are not just the voluntary Paris climate change agreement ones, there are some European standards as well. It’s also seen as part of our move to renewable electricity along the Icelandic model; we have projects in place to have an HVDC interconnector with Norway to the east, and the Icelanders have been trying to sell the notion of an interconnector between them and us, via the Faeroes, if I have it right. That would rather neatly deal with those days when the wind doesn’t blow, and usefully spread the time of peak load on the system as a whole.
The tax breaks on electric car purchases are not so much an incentive to buy them but a removal of disincentives, because it allays some of the extra cost. The free fuel and the network of charging points – the theory there is that as we’re going to have to do this anyway, and as it is in our best interests to do so, we might as well get it done and over with as soon as possible. If everyone has switched over anyway, then there’s no need for future clashes when people are forced with having to give up their old bangers. I’m sure the Icelanders have some old-style classic cars on their roads, though what they run them on I don’t know!
I forgot, the Norwegians have done much the same thing – the Swedes who visit Oslo say the air there is very noticeably better than in Stockholm (I’m going from memory here, always a risky business, but I can’t find the original article I read).
One of the things that no one in the USA ever seems to take into account is that when the US signs up to some international agreement on other, that agreement is binding on every American within US jurisdiction too (it’s easy enough to get away with breaching those terms, particularly if your local legislation breaches them too, but that’s the principle, anyway). This is true of the UK as well. In contrast, it is set forth in black and white in the German Basic Law, i.e., the German Constitution – and the people responsible for that were – you guessed it – the Americans and the British, principally, after WWII. The European State that gets hauled up for breaching EU and other European law the most? You’ll never guess.
I’d say that legislation and regulation is frequently desirable, and if not desirable, frequently necessary. Los Angeles would not have breathable air if the car manufacturers had had their way, and with without mileage and safety standards as well, Americans would still be driving around in gas guzzlers belching smoke with lots of sharp edges inside, exploding fuel tanks, and no airbags or safety belts. Well, maybe not, but you get my point. A lot of what the manufacturers did was in response to regulations that they did everything in their power to stop at the time, and the rest was – I believe – the result of competition for superior Japanese and European cars.
Enough of that – I have been taking up far too much bandwidth – when are you planning to come and visit us here in Scotland, Danny?
Oh – maybe the paucity of witches’ knickers in Mississippi is caused by a scarcity of witches with broomstick-piloting licences; or maybe it has something to do with American cities being (generally) more spread out, unlike our far more densely populated cities in Scotland: more people per square mile, hence more supermarket bags per square mile.
Do you have deposits on drinks cans and bottles in Mississippi? I rather wish they would bring that back here. It helped keep NYC clean when I lived there, as well as providing a (very small) income stream for the homeless.
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Ed. It may have been me.
Dani was living in Sweden, a pretty green country anyway, but he had a mate over from Hungary and they took a weekend trip to Oslo.
He said that there were virtually no petrol vehicles there at all now. It made being in the town centre a lot more pleasant not breathing in vast amounts of horrific fumes.
I walked up from the town to Baxter Park the other day. It was hot and there was no wind. Despite all the electric busses, the air in the rush hour, on Victoria Road, was foul. I was wishing that I could be in Oslo!
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Sheesh – “without regulations and legislation”, and “competition from” not “competition for”.
What carrots can we dangle in front of you to induce you to come and visit us here in Scotland, Danny?
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Munguin said that Danny could have access to the Presidential suite in Munguin Towers if he visited.
Munguin of course, uses the Imperial suite.
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Ed….Tris……
Ed……I’m in Missouri (postal code MO)…..NOT Mississippi (postal code MS). Now Missouri is certainly not urbane sophisticated England……..”a blessed plot, that other Eden, demi-paradise”…….but neither is it one of those damnable southern states like Mississippi, full of secessionist gun-totin Bible-thumpin right wing fanatics who lynch Democrats for sport. As for travel from Missouri, there’s the fact that when Missourians travel roughly the distance in which Scots are in Paris, we are in OMAHA (Nebraska.) To get to Paris for example we get on a jet plane and fly about three hours……which just gets us the east coast of America and the western edge of the Atlantic Ocean……THEN another EIGHT hours or so to Paris. Sadly, there are no supersonic accommodations anymore. 😉
I can see that having some international standardization for recharging electric car batteries would be very convenient. I wonder if the countries of Europe have an integrated electrical grid like the USA and Canada. In the summer, when there’s a heat wave in the east for example, and the electrical demand from air conditioning is utilizing peak generating capacity in New York, Boston, Washington, etc, maybe there’s milder weather and unused generating capacity in the Midwest and West. So power is routed east on the grid to avoid the need for voltage reductions (brownouts.)
There have been federal pollution emission standards for American cars for a long time, and it’s had a beneficial effect. Los Angeles is no long smothering in smog, and the air in the big eastern cities is much cleaner and more breathable. California……which sets its own more stringent state rules on pretty much everything……..has vehicle pollution standards that are much stricter than federal standards. California gasoline is even blended differently than gasoline in the rest of the country. Motorists who travel across the country and hardly notice the state borders they pass, might be surprised the first time they have to stop at the California state line for agricultural inspection. A reminder that Movies and TV and media in L.A……and even the computer industry in Silicon Valley, are not California’s biggest industries. Those industries pale in relation to agriculture as the biggest industry in California. (Effectively at the last accounting, the fifth largest “country” by economic power in the world…..and yet with agriculture as its largest industry.)
So if you have fruits and vegetables in the car you better get them eaten before you reach the California line. They WILL get dumped in the trash by the inspector. I’ve even had the inspector open the car trunk and take a close look at cookies and commercial snacks. So far at least, California doesn’t require a passport to enter the state, but I imagine that’s coming.
As for traveling, I do generally accept presidential suite accommodations. The imperial suite always strikes me as a bit “showy”……lacking the common touch. 😉 I’m always amused at travel information videos that provide information for Americans going to Europe. The problem being that Americans may suffer culture shock when they discover that not everyplace is like the USA. This often involves:
1) Extremely small hotel rooms in Paris for enormous prices.
2) Pickpockets are everywhere, and no one seems to worry much about it. So don’t freak out when you find someone ELSE’S hand in YOUR pocket. It’s part of European culture.
3) In tourist season at world famous locations, the lines to gain admittance are endless, and the entrance fees are pricey.
4) The service industry people……waiters, hotel workers, etc……..are NOT all that into SERVING you. They may be civil, maybe even efficient, but they won’t be especially friendly (by USA standards), and they won’t go the extra mile for you (such as coming back to your table later if you’re not ready to place your order when they are there to take it.)
5) As for Paris, the Parisians will be arrogant and condescending. However, Americans should not take this personally, since Parisians are arrogant and condescending to everyone, even other Frenchmen. (Sort of like the way native New Yorkers treat people from the hinterlands…..like Missouri.)
6) To avoid European culture shock, go to England. England is more like America than Europe, and they have the courtesy to speak your language.
7) However, traditional English food is awful. In London restaurants, ethnic cuisine of the world is a better bet.
8) And something else involving public restrooms in certain European countries that is so disgusting it’s best left unsaid. Think about a toilet in which they didn’t install any “seat” above the sewer. And in Paris, don’t worry about the strange fixture in the bathroom that no American has ever seen. It’s not really needed and it’s ALSO disgusting.
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Oops – how did I get that wrong? Missouri … I do know the difference!
I was thinking that electric cars are fine as runabouts for our conditions here in urban Scotland but not so good when you have long distances to travel and heavy loads to haul. I guess that will take longer. Here in Dundee we have hybrid buses, though.
Electricity – the continental European countries are all interconnected. The EU came out with some technical recommendations about the transmission capacity that should be installed between countries – enough to cope with a major failure in one of them, basically. In other words, the whole of EU Europe is one synchronized electricity grid. In fact it’s even bigger than that – it goes down through the Balkans to Greece and Turkey. From there it was extended to Syria and Israel (at least), but Lord knows what the situation is there at the moment. At the other end, Spain and Morocco are tied together, and with the other countries of the Maghreb. From Israel, the connection goes on to Egypt. The weak link used to be Libya – not enough interconnection capacity to keep the whole thing together all the way round the Mediterranean.
Part of the rationale for that is future-oriented – solar power from the Sahara, basically.
Between the UK and the Continong, and the UK and Ireland, the undersea distances are too long for HVAC cables, so they have to use HVDC. That means the UK doesn’t need to be synchronized with mainland Europe.
The only larger machine on earth is the telephone network, if you like to look at it like that.
The rest I will have to leave for now – tired, after midnight, beauty sleep desperately needed…
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Danny,
For your amusement I have stood in front of a mirror, and I cannot for the life of me, do that grimace. It is a clowns art form.
Try it.
Can you do it?
Betcha can’t 🙂
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Douglas…….I’ll have to check this out, but I’m sure that I won’t even come close. Theresa May does seem to have a knack for the truly hideous momentary grimace that makes her particularly susceptible to this form of political mischief.
When I first saw this picture, I couldn’t imagine what circumstance could possibly have prompted it. Later, I was amazed at how truly instantaneous the fleeting expression was. Just the thing to be captured by a modern digital video camera.
…………..Yep dc……..I couldn’t do it. Not even in the ball park…..LOL.
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She reminds me a bit of a girner.
https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2015/04/02/19/Anne-Woods.jpg?w968h681
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Ouch…
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I understand that for official girning competitions, the competitor sticks their head through a horse collar.
Presumably that makes the effort official.
But what do I know about anything anyway?
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Well, clearly a fair bit more than I do about girning competitions… 🙂
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