Stop voting for fucking Tories

[petej]

To the surprise of no one, having been told using hydrogen to heat homes is completely stupid, the legislative arm of the fossil fuel industry has confirmed it will continue its support for hydrogen boilers.

Bamford, JCB guy and large Tory donor, has a company Ryze Hydrogen, that deals in hydrogen fuel industry, headed up by his son! Investment in hydrogen generally is a favour to Bamford for significant donations to the Tory Party and paying for much of Boris's expenses whilst PM and letting him stay in property he either owned or paid for.

You couldn't honestly make this crookedness up, feckin blatant!

It is absolutely insane when you consider the energy flows. Outside of some storage, long distant transport and industrial usages it is a total nonstarter. My wife works in an engineering consultancy and a topic of conversation with one of her colleagues is the ethics on actually bidding on work when you know it is bullshit relating to hydrogen.

[sefton]

Yes, these really are the things weighing most heavily of all on the minds of voters

Sunak Mulls Stamp Duty, Top Earner Tax Cuts to Win Back Voters
Raising 40% income tax threshold, stamp duty cuts on the table
Tories seek to galavanize voters after losing two key seats

That’s my vote bought.

[fishfoodie]

To the surprise of no one, having been told using hydrogen to heat homes is completely stupid, the legislative arm of the fossil fuel industry has confirmed it will continue its support for hydrogen boilers.

Bamford, JCB guy and large Tory donor, has a company Ryze Hydrogen, that deals in hydrogen fuel industry, headed up by his son! Investment in hydrogen generally is a favour to Bamford for significant donations to the Tory Party and paying for much of Boris's expenses whilst PM and letting him stay in property he either owned or paid for.

You couldn't honestly make this crookedness up, feckin blatant!

It is absolutely insane when you consider the energy flows. Outside of some storage, long distant transport and industrial usages it is a total nonstarter. My wife works in an engineering consultancy and a topic of conversation with one of her colleagues is the ethics on actually bidding on work when you know it is bullshit relating to hydrogen.

Festers the expert, but we have both worked in an Industrial plant which used Hydrogen, amoungst a lot of other unpleasant gases; & the precautions taken with Hydrogen & other pyrophorics are above anything that is realistic in a domestic situation, & anyone who doesn't understand that, shouldn't be involved in the discussion at all !!

I've seen equipment weighing several tonnes moved by a tech who opened the wrong valve, & accidentally vented a small amount of pyrophoric gas in the pipe.

I remember a chat with an engineer, about a power outage we had at the factory, & he was pissing himself, because one of the pieces of equipment he owned had been stopped mid-process, & so there was a 6'x1' chamber with a partial pressure of hydrogen, & if any seal failed, he'd have a couple of million worth of process equipment turned into scrap metal.

Even stupid stuff like there were a multitude of sensors on the bulk H tank (which was at the furthest boundary of the site), & if you keyed in a two-way radio near it, the sensors could pick up this & all of a sudden the tank temperature would register as 12,000C, & the valves would slam shut.

Hydrogen gas is an absolute pox to deal with, & will leak from any fitting you could conceivably use economically in domestic setting, & if it leaks, you'd better pray that it burns, & doesn't gather & explode, because it doesn't need an ignition source; someone opening a door, or just walking into a room & moving the molecules around can be enough energy to cause it to explode.

[derriz]

The daftest thing about hydrogen is that when leaked, it has a potent greenhouse effect - albeit indirect but nearly 7 times as potent as CO2. Not only is it a nightmare to handle, it’s filthy if combusted (NOx emissions 10 times that of methane/NG) but it doesn’t even help with the problem of global warming.

[Biffer]

The daftest thing about hydrogen is that when leaked, it has a potent greenhouse effect - albeit indirect but nearly 7 times as potent as CO2. Not only is it a nightmare to handle, it’s filthy if combusted (NOx emissions 10 times that of methane/NG) but it doesn’t even help with the problem of global warming.

Well, yes and no. Most hydrogen production technologies aren’t taking hydrogen afrom elsewhere and adding it to the earths hydrogen cycle, which is really what the problem is with carbon. The H2 will end up as water, which is most likely where it came from anyway, or possibly from an organic chemical in the living world e.g. ammonia or biomass. If it comes from a substance that’s being mined, it’s a problem. The issue with carbon is we’re taking all this carbon that’s been underground for millions of years and adding it to the system.

[derriz]

Nope. The greenhouse effect is independent of the method of production. Hydrogen produced using electrolysis powered purely by clean carbon free energy, if leaked into the atmosphere is a potent greenhouse gas - via promoting ozone production and slowing the breakdown of methane. Molecule for molecule it’s about 7 times more warming than CO2 over 100 years. Of course this is never mentioned in the fluff pieces about it being as clean as water - although to be fair, conclusive evidence for this only started appearing in the scientific literature in the last 10 or 15 years.

[Biffer]

Nope. The greenhouse effect is independent of the method of production. Hydrogen produced using electrolysis powered purely by clean carbon free energy, if leaked into the atmosphere is a potent greenhouse gas - via promoting ozone production and slowing the breakdown of methane. Molecule for molecule it’s about 7 times more warming than CO2 over 100 years. Of course this is never mentioned in the fluff pieces about it being as clean as water - although to be fair, conclusive evidence for this only started appearing in the scientific literature in the last 10 or 15 years.

But atmospheric hydrogen only lasts for a couple of years, because it’s pretty reactive. Much more so than co2. It’ll end up back as water after that. Hydrogen, I thought, is about 4 times as potent as co2, but it’s not a straight comparison. For a start, there’s a lot more water vapour in the atmosphere, so human change isn’t as big an overall effect. Secondly, the only hydrogen gas we’d add to the atmosphere is by leaks, as we’d be burning it for preference, creating water. The overall amount of hydrogen in the water cycle doesn’t change when you use clean energy to make it via electrolysis. The overall amount of carbon in the carbon cycle does increase when you burn fossil fuels.

The main thing that actually adds water vapour to the atmosphere is warmer air. It’s a feedback of global warming.

[derriz]

It doesn't matter that hydrogen only lasts for a few years in the atmosphere in its pure form. It's the way it reacts with other components of the atmosphere (particularly methane and ozone) which gives it a GWP100 (greenhouse effect over 100 years) which is 12 times more potent than the equivalent amount of leaked CO2. Here's a recent peer-reviewed paper from Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-023-00857-8

The biggest proponents of hydrogen energy are fossil fuel companies - with decades of practice hiding information on the harmful effects of their industry, it's not that surprising that the dirty reality of hydrogen is little known. What's surprising is the number of environmentally conscious people who have also swallowed the "clean hydrogen" propaganda and bullshit.

[Biffer]

It doesn't matter that hydrogen only lasts for a few years in the atmosphere in its pure form. It's the way it reacts with other components of the atmosphere (particularly methane and ozone) which gives it a GWP100 (greenhouse effect over 100 years) which is 12 times more potent than the equivalent amount of leaked CO2. Here's a recent peer-reviewed paper from Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-023-00857-8

The biggest proponents of hydrogen energy are fossil fuel companies - with decades of practice hiding information on the harmful effects of their industry, it's not that surprising that the dirty reality of hydrogen is little known. What's surprising is the number of environmentally conscious people who have also swallowed the "clean hydrogen" propaganda and bullshit.

The GWP of methane is more than twice that of hydrogen (27-30 over a hundred year period), just to put that into perspective.

Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not saying I think hydrogen is the answer, it’s quite clearly not. And I was unaware of the chemical effect on aerosols talked about in the nature paper, so it’s always good to find something new. I’m just saying that comparing the effect of leaks from hydrogen with burning of fossil fuels is comparing apples and oranges. If you replaced methane with hydrogen globally, and assumed similar efficiency around storage, transport and burning, the global warming effect would be less than half as severe. That’s still nowhere near good enough, and those assumptions aren’t great - storage is more difficult, burning a bit more efficient, but tbh it’s the technical and logistical issues around it that are the most nonsensical part of pursuing it.

[Hal Jordan]

Clean hydrogen is easy to hope for because unlike electrification, it doesn't seem to punters and especially politicians to require any changes in habit. Pipe it in, burn it in a boiler. Pump it into a fuel cell EV like petrol or diesel. Stick it in a tank, burn it when needed.

Hydrogen, and I mean clean hydrogen, as opposed to the byproduct of fossil fuels we have now, will have a part to play, but in industrial processes, not in any domestic setting.

[Biffer]

Clean hydrogen is easy to hope for because unlike electrification, it doesn't seem to punters and especially politicians to require any changes in habit. Pipe it in, burn it in a boiler. Pump it into a fuel cell EV like petrol or diesel. Stick it in a tank, burn it when needed.

Hydrogen, and I mean clean hydrogen, as opposed to the byproduct of fossil fuels we have now, will have a part to play, but in industrial processes, not in any domestic setting.

This is the thing I've been banging on about for more than a decade. For the last hundred and fifty years, the answer to any energy requirement was 'here's some oil/coal'. In the future there won't be one answer. Hydrogen will be used for some things, different types of renewables for a lot of different types of use, nuclear for some, biofuels for a bit, and yes, still a bit of fossil fuels too. But people want a silver bullet.

[Big D]

Yes, these really are the things weighing most heavily of all on the minds of voters

Sunak Mulls Stamp Duty, Top Earner Tax Cuts to Win Back Voters
Raising 40% income tax threshold, stamp duty cuts on the table
Tories seek to galavanize voters after losing two key seats

I can see tax thresholds being an easy winner for political parties across the UK for those earning at or close to the 40% tax bracket.

Easy wins in Scotland would be review the tax brackets, make the child benefit system fairer (one person earning 60k* not eligible but a couple each earning £50k (£100k total) get the whole lot and review council tax rates.

Bribing the electorate is nothing new.

^yes £60k is a lot of money but the system is skewed. I didn't know about the high earner tax until a mate got hammered on it.

[dpedin]

Yes, these really are the things weighing most heavily of all on the minds of voters

Sunak Mulls Stamp Duty, Top Earner Tax Cuts to Win Back Voters
Raising 40% income tax threshold, stamp duty cuts on the table
Tories seek to galavanize voters after losing two key seats

I can see tax thresholds being an easy winner for political parties across the UK for those earning at or close to the 40% tax bracket.

Easy wins in Scotland would be review the tax brackets, make the child benefit system fairer (one person earning 60k* not eligible but a couple each earning £50k (£100k total) get the whole lot and review council tax rates.

Bribing the electorate is nothing new.

^yes £60k is a lot of money but the system is skewed. I didn't know about the high earner tax until a mate got hammered on it.

Fiscal drag - not putting up tax thresholds in line with inflation - has been the Head Boys biggest increase in tax. Dragging more people into higher tax thresholds has meant a huge increase in tax take for the Gov and at the same time hit those lower/middle income the hardest. There is an argument for looking to increase the lower thresholds to help folk on lowest/middle incomes. I cant see any argument for increasing the tax threshold at the top end as the impact on the higher earners is marginal and more just a political bribe. Same argument applies to the child benefit payment as more folk, due to high inflation and resulting higher wage increases get dragged into the trap you describe.

To be honest the time to try and bribe the voters with tax cuts has long gone - even the majority of tory voters are sick of the crooked, fraudulent, sex pest, racist and bigoted twats now in Gov. Sure a bunch of red necked gammons in middle England will always be bought over by the phoney culture was tripe but the majority are just sick of the Tories now and want a change.

[Biffer]

Yes, these really are the things weighing most heavily of all on the minds of voters

Sunak Mulls Stamp Duty, Top Earner Tax Cuts to Win Back Voters
Raising 40% income tax threshold, stamp duty cuts on the table
Tories seek to galavanize voters after losing two key seats

I can see tax thresholds being an easy winner for political parties across the UK for those earning at or close to the 40% tax bracket.

Easy wins in Scotland would be review the tax brackets, make the child benefit system fairer (one person earning 60k* not eligible but a couple each earning £50k (£100k total) get the whole lot and review council tax rates.

Bribing the electorate is nothing new.

^yes £60k is a lot of money but the system is skewed. I didn't know about the high earner tax until a mate got hammered on it.

The problem with the higher tax bracket in Scotland is the mismatch against the NI bracket. Because the tax bracket was frozen in Scotland, any money earnt between £43,663 and £50,270 is taxed at a marginal rate of 54.25%. Once above £50,270 it comes down to 44.25%. In England you're taxed at 33.25% for that income between £43k and £50k.

The whole NI / Income tax thing is bullshit. For the rest of the UK, the tax rates are actually 33.25% below £50k, 43.25% above it (up to £125k). But they push this 20%/40% difference and its' a genuinely intentional deception.

[SaintK]

Talking of tax. Who'd ever have thought this?

The influential Tory donors behind the JCB digger empire could be hit with a bill for more than £500m to settle a longrunning investigation by HM Revenue and Customs, the Guardian can reveal.
The investigation into Anthony Bamford, a Tory peer, and his brother Mark, the director of a subsidiary of the Conservative party, is understood to span a complex network of offshore tax havens and companies.
The inquiry is understood to be targeting efforts by the Bamford dynasty to aggressively minimise the payment of UK taxes and covers two decades.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ ... inquiry

[tabascoboy]

You'd think to remove the freeze on increases to the basic rate Personal Tax Allowance would be a big win - but I guess that helps the "wrong people"

[C69]

Yes, these really are the things weighing most heavily of all on the minds of voters

Sunak Mulls Stamp Duty, Top Earner Tax Cuts to Win Back Voters
Raising 40% income tax threshold, stamp duty cuts on the table
Tories seek to galavanize voters after losing two key seats

That’s my vote bought.

Why aren't I surprised. Bourgeois Churchtown lickspittle.

[fishfoodie]

That champion of free speech,

Braverman to quiz police boss over Met response at Gaza protest

Home Secretary Suella Braverman is to quiz Met chief Sir Mark Rowley about the force's response to incidents during a pro-Palestinian protest.

A video posted online appeared to show a man chanting "jihad" during a rally by an Islamist group in London.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67190812

who is all for free speech & hate speech, when it's anti-immigrant, or racist, or misogynist, or anything else that is beloved of the Tories

New free speech law to protect against wokery and cancel culture

Writing for The Telegraph, Suella Braverman, the Attorney General, says proposed new Bill will ‘strengthen’ freedom of expression

Freedom of speech is to be enshrined in a new British bill of rights to protect against wokery, political correctness and the advance of European-style privacy laws.

Dominic Raab, the Justice Secretary, wants the “quintessentially British” human right of freedom of expression to be given “extra weight”, because of his concerns that it is being whittled away by privacy concerns and the rise of “cancel culture”.

...

Ministers are looking to see what lessons could be learned from other countries with fierce freedom of speech laws, such as the US with its first amendment, and South Africa’s constitutional right to freedom of expression.

“However unedifying someone’s views, they have a right to articulate them within the bounds of decency and other laws,” said a source.

“It is making sure we don’t go down the route of cancel culture, where people feel they cannot speak freely because of fear of recriminations.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/1 ... l-culture/

[sefton]

Yes, these really are the things weighing most heavily of all on the minds of voters

That’s my vote bought.

Why aren't I surprised. Bourgeois Churchtown lickspittle.

You’re playing the long game and waiting for them to buy you off by scrapping the 45p rate.

[C69]

That’s my vote bought.

Why aren't I surprised. Bourgeois Churchtown lickspittle.

You’re playing the long game and waiting for them to buy you off by scrapping the 45p rate.

lOl my household income is nowhere near that

[sefton]

Why aren't I surprised. Bourgeois Churchtown lickspittle.

You’re playing the long game and waiting for them to buy you off by scrapping the 45p rate.

lOl my household income is nowhere near that

Same excuse as Philip Green.

[C69]

You’re playing the long game and waiting for them to buy you off by scrapping the 45p rate.

lOl my household income is nowhere near that

Same excuse as Philip Green.

Er weeps for you

[Hal Jordan]

If you want to know why Sunak is Prime Minister and there will be no general election until the bitter end, next week the cap on bankers bonuses is to be lifted. Expect many more months of this sort of thing.

[dpedin]

If you want to know why Sunak is Prime Minister and there will be no general election until the bitter end, next week the cap on bankers bonuses is to be lifted. Expect many more months of this sort of thing.

This ... plus they aren't now going ahead with their Election promise to get rid of no fault evictions due to the lobbying from their own MPs who also happen to be landlords! Apparently they have made such a shitshow of the court system they have decided that, because of their own ineptness and feck up of the courts systems, they cant have delays in landlords getting court approval to evict troublesome tenants. You honestly couldn't make this naked self serving crookedness up! Cnuts the lot of them!

[SaintK]

What an absolutely useless excuse of a minister

[Sandstorm]

What an absolutely useless excuse of a minister

I don't like the fat bint either, but I can't see what she said about forecasting the rain for Babet as being overly stupid.

[SaintK]

I don't like the fat bint either, but I can't see what she said about forecasting the rain for Babet as being overly stupid.

They'd been warning and forecasting the direction and potential amount of rain for about a week before.
She's just making excuses for the lack of investment in flood defences and funding for the EA
She's been a pathetic excuse in every role she's somehow been given

[Sandstorm]

I don't like the fat bint either, but I can't see what she said about forecasting the rain for Babet as being overly stupid.

They'd been warning and forecasting the direction and potential amount of rain for about a week before.
She's just making excuses for the lack of investment in flood defences and funding for the EA
She's been a pathetic excuse in every role she's somehow been given

[Slick]

I kind of agree with Sandy, I think most of our defences, natural and otherwise, are set up for the prevailing conditions. I also think she is desperate for excuses.

"Spring tides, which feels a bit odd with it being Autumn" is my favourite part though..... who didn't understand their briefing...

[Tichtheid]

"Spring tides, which feels a bit odd with it being Autumn" is my favourite part though..... who didn't understand their briefing...

I've long since stopped watching these examples of how inept and incapable these people are, but did she really say that?

It's not exactly specialist knowledge.

[inactionman]

I kind of agree with Sandy, I think most of our defences, natural and otherwise, are set up for the prevailing conditions. I also think she is desperate for excuses.

"Spring tides, which feels a bit odd with it being Autumn" is my favourite part though..... who didn't understand their briefing...

I originally refused to watch it, as it's rarely good for my blood pressure, but I might now watch it just for that statement. She must be joking, surely?

She really is hapless, which is a polite way of saying utterly incompetent.

[Slick]

Actually, on second view it's even worse , she actually drops "spring" for the next sentence as she thinks she is sounding stupid

[inactionman]

Oh God, she did say it.

[Tichtheid]

I forced myself to watch it, SaintK calls it correctly, there was nothing wrong with the forecasting, despite what she says.

[Sandstorm]

Oh God, she did say it.

I also stopped before that part the first time I watched it. Horror show.

[dpedin]

It doesnt matter where the rain comes from - West, East or wherever - once it hits the ground it inevitably goes down the way! Something to do with gravity apparently? Everyone seems to have forgotten the 'Beast from the East'! Even I knew the storm was coming, where it was going from and what its impact was likely to be - how? I followed the Met Office app on my feckin phone. As a result it was pretty easy to identify which areas were going to be hit hardest, such as Brechin, with all the run off down Glen Prosen and Glen Cova into the Esk. Its not like Brechin hasn't flooded before.

Coffey is a unadulterated feckin lazy bawbag and in a cabinet of indolent, incompetent twats she really is up there with the thickest of them and may well win first prize now that Mad Nad and Blonde Billy Bunter have left. I know the competition is fierce but she has certainly got the competition reeling!

[petej]

I kind of agree with Sandy, I think most of our defences, natural and otherwise, are set up for the prevailing conditions. I also think she is desperate for excuses.

"Spring tides, which feels a bit odd with it being Autumn" is my favourite part though..... who didn't understand their briefing...

Spring instead of neap tides will have an impact on flooding. The spring has nothing to do with the season Spring. A clever person would have stated bigger tides coincided with the storm.

[Raggs]

Quite amusing :D

[C69]

The rucks were in the wrong place
The wind was from the wrong direction
The dog ate my homework

[Camroc2]

I kind of agree with Sandy, I think most of our defences, natural and otherwise, are set up for the prevailing conditions. I also think she is desperate for excuses.

"Spring tides, which feels a bit odd with it being Autumn" is my favourite part though..... who didn't understand their briefing...

Spring instead of neap tides will have an impact on flooding. The spring has nothing to do with the season Spring. A clever person would have stated bigger tides coincided with the storm.

Also a blocking high pressure over Scandinavia meant that Babet stopped moving over Ireland and Britain with the heavy rain clouds circulating the centre discharging their moisture content. The rain coming from the east was just this circulation around the centre of the low pressure Atlantic storm.