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How the U.K. broke its own economy

theatlantic.com

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Re: How the U.K. broke its own economy

#721

Post by robertlagrant »

dijksterhuis wrote: post #562
robertlagrant wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> politicians sometimes lie…? That isn't a big enough reason to assume everyone's been fooled. Or at least, the people who disagree with you have been fooled. That's possible, but it's also possible you've been fooled. So bringing it up one-sided is a bit grating.

i’m going to post the quote above again, with more context from another quote, because you’ve avoided quoting the bit which actually demonstrates that this is a big enough reason to assume that enough people were fooled. > On 27 May, the UK Statistics Authority chair Andrew Dilnot made a stronger statement against Vote Leave, stating that the continued use of the figure was "misleading and undermine[d] trust in offic…

> i find people who lie, and people who defend liars, grating.

Who here is defending liars?

Re: How the U.K. broke its own economy

#722

Post by randomcarbloke »

smcl wrote: post #685
randomcarbloke wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

post '08 and until 2016 the UK economy was the fastest growing in the G7, notably countries that imposed much more severe austerity fared even better - Ireland who are still wedded to the policy continues to thrive, Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian economies all grew at a much faster rate than the UK (and by extension the rest of the G7)

> post '08 and until 2016 the UK economy was the fastest growing in the G7, Found George Osborne's account! Seriously though, you're wrong: - https://www.statista.com/statistics/1370599/g7-country-gdp-g... there is one year (2014) where the UK has a higher GDP growth rate - https://www.statista.com/statistics/1370625/g7-country-gdp-l... when looking at GDP per-capita it tells a similar story

Even reading those you can surely see it was the correct approach.

Re: How the U.K. broke its own economy

#723

Post by robertlagrant »

smackeyacky wrote: post #35
robertlagrant wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that the same? You want to raise the price of energy to make wind etc competitive?

No, you just need fossil fuel energy to be relatively more expensive, not for energy to be more expensive overall. It's happened already but we're currently being held hostage by the coal burners while they scramble to extract the last bit of rent they can.

> No, you just need fossil fuel energy to be relatively more expensive, not for energy to be more expensive overall.

Can you explain exactly what you mean? Say (very made up numbers) coal is $1 per day, and a renewable is $2 per day. I raise the price of coal to $3 per day to make it relatively more expensive. Haven't I just increased the price of energy overall to $2 per day?

Re: How the U.K. broke its own economy

#724

Post by gadders »

sdenton4 wrote: post #693
gadders wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean the same civil service that was against Brexit from the start, still tries to justify it being a bad idea? Amazing. You even didn't include the paragraph prior to your quote: "It's also clear UK services exports - such as advertising and management consulting - have done unexpectedly well since 2021." I realise Brexit was a horrible shock for the middle classes that they are still coming to terms with, but I…

Right - I included the bottom line on trade. There's plenty more context in the article, and only a small sliver is at all good for the Brexiteer. Everyone agrees it's been between 6-30% worse on the trade front, and the OBR estimate is middle-of-the-road in that regard. Enjoy the kool-aid.

"Everyone". Everyone said there would be a run on the pound as well.

Stay delusional.

Re: How the U.K. broke its own economy

#725

Post by smcl »

randomcarbloke wrote: post #722
smcl wrote: post #685

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> post '08 and until 2016 the UK economy was the fastest growing in the G7, Found George Osborne's account! Seriously though, you're wrong: - https://www.statista.com/statistics/1370599/g7-country-gdp-g... there is one year (2014) where the UK has a higher GDP growth rate - https://www.statista.com/statistics/1370625/g7-country-gdp-l... when looking at GDP per-capita it tells a similar story

Even reading those you can surely see it was the correct approach.

Reading the graphs I can see that you were making stuff up and can be safely ignored

Re: How the U.K. broke its own economy

#726

Post by smcl »

WalterBright wrote: post #701
smcl wrote: post #692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The link in that tweet leads to an article: U.S. ambassador on why China competition must be managed while keeping "the peace" Did you click the tweet or did just spend thirty minutes looking for a source to support the "ghost cities" claim, then rush to paste it here without looking that closely at it?

But you don't like that one, though it did talk about massive insolvency in the real estate. Here's another from 2022: https://uschinatoday.org/features/2022/01/11/cities-lost-in-...

It's not that I "don't like that one" - it was a tweet containing a headline that looked like it linked to an article about Ghost Cities but actually linked to something else entirely, and you didn't realise because you didn't open it. Maybe it hinted at other problems in China, I am certain there are many problems there! But you wanted to make a point about ghost cities, and this article didn't make that point.

And this next one you've sent me is just someone writing a "hey have y'all heard about those 'Ghost Cities' in China?" article. You might as well have just linked to your prior comment saying "google ghost cities china".

Re: How the U.K. broke its own economy

#727

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

Manuel_D wrote: post #679
specialist wrote: post #634

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you arguing for or against offshore wind? Tackling climate crisis requires All The Above. Wind, nukes, solar farms, tidal, whatever, by themselves, aren't silver bullets. We also need heat pumps, renovations (insulation, air sealing), district heating, etc. That's just for housing. We could also talk all day about industry and agriculture. As the saying goes: The opportunities are insurmountable!

Nuclear power is indeed a silver bullet. France supplied > 85% of its electricity demand with nuclear (with the rest being filled by pre-existing hydroelectricity). As is hydroelectricity and geothermal power for those countries with the appropriate geography. E.g. Norward produces 100% of electricity through hydro. Non-intermittent sources of energy don't need to be supplemented by alternative sources of energy.

Whenever a cold spell hits France 10 GW of fossil production is started and 15 GW of exports turns to 5 GW of fossil based imports.

The French grid would collapse without 30 GW of fossil based production to manage cold spells.

Re: How the U.K. broke its own economy

#728

Post by Dylanfm »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #80

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.

It's not as simple as just installing more wind turbines. The grid needs improvement and we need things like regional pricing. See https://wastedwind.energy for example.

Re: How the U.K. broke its own economy

#729

Post by Tainnor »

jajko wrote: post #355
drawfloat wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’d had a decade of zero growth and 30 years of industrial decline in the North. The country was not doing well, that’s the primary reason it was inevitable putting a big button marked “do not press, posh boy David Cameron says he doesn’t want you to but has no other solutions. Ignore the people saying it will fix the country” would result in the button being pressed. The economy was doing well for some parts of the…

Well now its not doing that well anywhere, bravo. Thats the problem with populists - they easily find some real issue and point to it, blaming all even completely unrelated woes on it. So far so good. But the solution part is where all populists fail, since actually addressing it and its root causes always has to involve admitting that no, problem is actually much more complex, different etc. than I was voted for. Li…

> Swiss have most direct democracy in the world, and they vote sanely even on emotional topics thinking of greater good

eh, somewhat.

There are still plenty of emotionally charged decisions being made by Swiss voters, like banning all minarets (in a country that had ... 3 minarets before), blanket granting all pensioneers one additional month of payment per year or routinely wrecking your relationship with the EU.

I agree that on average, the Swiss voters don't do too badly. But it's also easier to vote rationally and for the common good when you're as well off as the Swiss are.

Re: How the U.K. broke its own economy

#730

Post by DrScientist »

kragen wrote: post #672
DrScientist wrote: post #655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mining rock is energy intensive - I think I read somewhere about 15% of the worlds electricity is spent on mining activities. There is a danger that if you spend 300x more energy to enrich your uranium then you might achieve netzero - but not in a good way.

It doesn't affect the amount of energy required to enrich the uranium once it's been extracted from the rock, just the amount of energy required to extract the uranium from the rock. It just requires leaching the uranium from a larger amount of material. I understand that you might randomly spread FUD like this if you haven't bothered to do any calculations at all because you don't care whether what you're saying is…

Your calculations are ignoring the costs of enrichment - you can't just feed soil into your reactor - whereas you can just feed the raw coal into your furnace.

Now I freely admit I don't know the costs of enrichment. I just used your numbers - you said you'd just have to mine 300 times as much rock - and obviously that's 300 times more expensive - for something which is already not energy cheap.

ie to convince me you have to show the full costs of mining and enrichment, to the point you actually have a fuel that's reactor ready.

And even if that's net positive energy - I'd suspect you'd be much better in investing in wind, hydro, tidal and solar and a decent storage and grid system.

Sometimes I feel nuclear is fetishised because it's cool science - however I'm more interested in practical solutions, and if that means a simple wind or water turbine - so be it.

Happy to be convinced otherwise - but you need to show the numbers.

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