331–340 of 784 posts
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Lighthouses have only become aesthetic because of their rarity rendering them as quaint or nostalgic. Modern versions and their impacts would be largely protested.
I suspect the real reason behind objections to technology being visible is basically "It makes me feel old by highlighting that I came from a time before X and now everyone will just become accustomed to X!".
The last government intentionally banned the cheapest source of energy, onshore wind, from being built in England, by making it so that a single complaint could stop a project. I cannot believe this article talks about planning constraints and energy prices and doesn't mention that.
We can have cheap clean energy, it requires a small amount of change, oh no, let's destroy everything instead.
I'm going to start suggesting that planning should have a local referendum: approve this set of projects and you'll get cheaper electricity. Disapprove and your bill goes up. Democratic choice, but with consequences.
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Seriously? UK was the only EU member not part of the Schengen Zone as-in it was the only member you couldn't freely immigrate to. As well as it's an island, nobody hoping a boat from Morocco and landing in London. Pakistani's aren't taking your job. The economy is just stagnating. Post-Pandemic is a huge anomaly [1] but the article is talking about stuff pre-2019. [1]: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-br…
I have some friends over there and they (or their employers) are cutting back on their business expenditures, staffing and overall outlook. The new payroll taxes (unemployment insurance?) are going to bite both employers and employees alike. Taxes are too high, there's too much red tape for businesses and successive governments have failed to invest in anything outside of the "south" (e.g. Greater London). I was (hal…
I don't know why you think the north and Scotland would be better off together. The south east would only get richer under such a scenario. Taxes-too-high is a common refrain but income tax + national insurance takes 26% of my 95th-percentile income. Is that so bad?
(for the unfamiliar - the employER has to pay 15% from April - not a typo - of part of your salary in taxes to the government and this is hidden from your payroll taxes as an employee)
What's the % if you include those deductions?
In my case my tax rate is 29% but employers NI is 13% so 42%, going up to 44/45% in April
Fascinatng that `brexit` isn't mentioned once in that article. Making trading harder with your closest neighbour can't be a great move for the economy.
Yes that’s really funny. Im not sure how you can write an article like this and never even mention it once. Brexit was the most stupid thing a country ever did to itself, and the full effects are just starting to come to the surface now. I dont think the UK will ever fully recover from it.
Fascinatng that `brexit` isn't mentioned once in that article. Making trading harder with your closest neighbour can't be a great move for the economy.
Yes that’s really funny. Im not sure how you can write an article like this and never even mention it once. Brexit was the most stupid thing a country ever did to itself, and the full effects are just starting to come to the surface now. I dont think the UK will ever fully recover from it.
Trump tries very hard to make Brexit the second most stupid thing a country did to itself.
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Batteries aren't produced at remotely enough scale to be viable for grid storage. To put this in perspective, the world uses 60 TWh of electricity per day. By comparison global lithium ion battery production was 1.1 TWh [1]. Remember, production capacity is distinct from the actual production figures. It's typical for actual production figures to be ~50% of production capacity. Intermittent sources don't just experie…
Modelling in Australia with simulations that multiply up current wind and solar (using real-time data of actual renewable generation) [1] showed that well over 99% of demand can be delivered with only about five hours of storage, so we're not really talking about days. There will likely always be some gas peaking but we're talking less than a percent per year (maybe a few single digit percent in some places where sol…
Europe, for example, is the other way around for most of the above.
The article characterises that fact as "energy starvation". Wouldn't "efficiency" be a better analysis? Low energy use per GDP or per capita is surely a thoroughly good thing.
Central economic planning - the eternal hope that never works.