LimitedSlipDiff

LimitedSlipDiff

@limitedslipdiff.bsky.social

Having been in read only mode for years, finally trying out posting on social media. I like economics, energy, UK politics, stats, sci-fi, science & cars. I don't like cats.

39 followers42 following845 posts

Will be interesting to see if John Healy and the advisors at HMRC are serious or not at this budget. It is absolutely possible to have a high tax, high spend economy that does well. The Nordics are examples. But this has to be funded from a broad tax base.

Very narrow taxes going after the favourite targets of Labour back benches do not a fiscal policy make. If we want to spend lots on welfare and defence, we all have to pay for it. There are no examples of major countries where this isn't the case.

Sally Rooney is ridiculous. Instead of donating to one of the many charities that help Palestinians directly she chooses to donate to a group of criminals who hit police officers with sledgehammers. Proscription of Palestine Action is wrong, but that doesn't mean they aren't useless criminals.

Comment on Tory proposals to axe red tape to reduce the cost of new builds misses something vital. There are very few rules and regs that are easy to get rid of on their own merit - generally people aren't stupid and don't implement rules that are ridiculous on their own.

Rather, it is the combined weight of all the rules and regs that may cause the additional costs. The phrase 'every raindrop doesn't think its responsible for the flood' comes to mind. That means that every rule or reg you remove has an actual consequence that you are prepared to defend.

Dear @greenparty, around half the people who live between the river and the sea are Jewish. The establishment of an exclusively Palestinian state provides the same ethnic exclusion that Israel does to non Jews today surely? Unless you're suggesting some pogroms to change that?

In the stories about early prisoner releases, the tone seems to be that keeping the person behind bars for a few months is the difference between them being a reformed character, and leaving jail as exactly the same scumbag as they were when they went in. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

bbc.co.ukWe fear for our lives after being told our abusive exes will be freed from jail earlyThree victims of domestic abuse tell the BBC why they feel let down by the early prisoner release scheme.

Surely the scandal here is not early release, but the inadequacy of the criminal justice system in reforming the prisoner and protecting the victims when they get out. Leaving after 50% time served or 33% when the sentence is only 3 years is not going to make much difference in that.

The UK government knows the name of the diplomat who it is alleged was in possession of child abuse images. We can't get him back because of diplomatic immunity. But what we can do is pay for posters with his name and photo to go up around his home city with the message "Check his hard drive".

While a supporter of passing the assisted dying bill today, I would have liked it to have a sunset clause, forcing a review of the operation of the safeguards before it is renewed. We have to get this right, some other countries with these laws have headed down a route few in the UK want.

I don't post on American politics often, but this $5k offer to voters in Trumps recent speech only increases the parallels with Crassus and other patricians in the late Roman republic. A failed military campaign against the Parthians. Subverting democratic norms. Now bribing the electorate.

While Burnham's announcements over the summer on homelessness etc are welcome, everything they do at the moment is twiddling at the edges compared to the budget in the Autumn. How are they going to increase taxes and by how much, what will they spend it on, and measures to increase growth.

Pass rates for GCSE Maths resits have dropped to 15% which makes them functionally useless as a general policy approach to 16 year olds who got a grade 3 or under the first time around. The government's proposal of a stepping stone Level 1 qual is pointless. You still have to resit...

... you just have to do this Level 1 first. This needs a more comprehensive look, including at whether teaching methods for basic maths are entirely rubbish for 30% of pupils. Do the Dep of Ed have any actual education experts who can look at solutions?

If you see a post from someone saying we should have a national care service, ask them for successful European examples of the model of funding, organisation and care delivery they are proposing to show it works. I'm not against social care reform, I'm against the UK (again) ignoring what others do

Am I alone in not particularly caring that more than half of Burnham's cabinet went to Oxbridge? Generally you have to be pretty smart to go there, and I like having smart people in government (FYI I did not go to Oxford or Cambridge university). Skills and experience are way more important.

Am I impressed with the cabinet? Well, it has the usual structural issue that most UK cabinets have - lots of people whose only experience is in politics and so their world view and what they bring to the table is limited. Some of that is fine, but there's too much in the current cabinet.

Why is Andy Burnham messing around with a No10 for the north? Move parliament to the north. Everyone has to leave the palace of Westminster in a few years anyway, use the opportunity to split the political and economic centres. Lots of other European countries do this very successfully.

NHS blood test form. Do you want to book an adult or child appointment? We have an upper age limit of 12 for a child's appointment, but won't tell you that until much later in the process. You should just know this. I mean duh, did you even go to school?

It is absolutely true that UK citizens wouldn't be affected by the monumental screw up that is the new EU border processes for non EU citizens without Brexit. Instead we'd have stories about how our border processes are turning into a disaster zone instead. www.theguardian.com/business/202...

theguardian.comUK summer bookings jump as Britons put off overseas holidays by travel fearsReports of ‘stampede’ for stays near water amid concerns over cancelled flights, higher air fares and EU border delays
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From the stories I've read and experiences from people I know travelling to Europe over the last few months, the solutions aren't hard: - Make sure all the machines for fingerprints etc work - Put in enough machines to cope with busy periods ...

... - Proper queuing systems so if you've done the registration you don't get lumped in with the people who have done it - Enough border guards working in busy times to cope with the flow - Queue monitoring software to advise if things are going wrong and proper response if they start to.

It is absolutely true that UK citizens wouldn't be affected by the monumental screw up that is the new EU border processes for non EU citizens without Brexit. Instead we'd have stories about how our border processes are turning into a disaster zone instead. www.theguardian.com/business/202...

theguardian.comUK summer bookings jump as Britons put off overseas holidays by travel fearsReports of ‘stampede’ for stays near water amid concerns over cancelled flights, higher air fares and EU border delays

It is entirely possible to not subject citizens of a third country to incompetence at the border, huge delays and massive queues that mean you might miss your flight, and still keep your border secure. Many EU airports manage it, just not enough to avoid brits voting with their wallets.

And we wonder why it takes so long and costs so much to deliver any kind of infrastructure in the UK. Months wasted and hundreds of thousands of pounds on one part of the public sector suing another. The system for building things is completely broken. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

bbc.co.ukHS2 tunnel extension did not have planning permission, court rulesThe Court of Appeal finds the tunnel extension did not benefit from existing planning permission.

I'm all for passive cooling strategies for your home, but when its over 30C for 5 days in a row (and over 35C for 2 days) there is only so much passive cooling can do in a home designed for the cold, damp usual weather in the UK. Portable aircon to the rescue!

Sarah Pochin, a Reform MP, tweeted this last night: "England won the football last night. And thank god they did because, on the occasions that England lose their football matches, the incidents of domestic violence go through the roof. So, boys. Keep winning."

Defending a country is a top priority for a government, and I have sympathy for John Healy in being unhappy with the financial settlement for the MoD. But as a former Treasury minister he must know that HMT is always skeptical that the MoD will just waste any additional money it's given.

The MoD's track record in defence procurement is risible. Armoured vehicles that make the soldiers inside sick. A single air wing shared between two carriers. Destroyers that can't operate in warm water. A laughable drone programme (Watchkeeper) being replaced by another bad one (Corvus).

A good lesson in thinking about the numbers that you quote. The figure below is nearly the entirely daily amount of water provided by Scottish Water. This should give you pause before quoting it as in reality it mistakes per day for per year figures.

Oliver@oliver48.bsky.social

Putting billionaire profit before people "Data centres set to devour up to 1.37 billion litres of water EVERY SINGLE DAY" Buyers: BlackRock, Digital Realty, Equinix Users: Google, Meta, Oracle, OpenAI "The UK government ... allows projects to bypass local planning dispute" via @UnityNewsNet

LimitedSlipDiff reposted

Reposting antisemitic conspiracy theories otherwise known as personal and family problems, it seems.

Politics UK@politicsuk.com

🚨 UPDATE: Chris Kennedy shared posts describing the attack on the Jewish ambulances in London as a "false flag" He apologised and removed the shares then pulled out Via Bill Curtis, The Times

Have been reading the sad story about the Italian divers who died in the Maldives. Never dived in caves, but I did in wrecks which can have similar challenges and was pretty surprised at what seems to be reported about they way they went about it. Using normal air mix, no primary guideline etc

Diving below 30m has its challenges in open water, diving in an environment where you can't just surface needs significant preparation and training. Hopefully others will learn lessons for the future. Just because you've done 5000 dives in open water doesn't mean you know how to cave dive.

Interesting analysis with some proper detail and work behind it. Worth a read.

Jan Rosenow@janrosenow.bsky.social

NEW ANALYSIS: Do renewables make electricity cheaper or more expensive? I pulled together wholesale and retail data across Europe and the US. Wholesale prices track gas exposure, not renewables share. Retail prices barely track either. Read full piece👇 janrosenow.substack.com/p/do-renewab...

Rare to see sensible comment on housing policy.

Anna Clarke@annaclarke.bsky.social

Price is the mechanism that tends to prevent people over-consuming housing if they don't need to. Make it cheaper and existing tenants are more likely to keep that spare room they don't really need, while another household can't find anything to rent, so becomes homeless.

LimitedSlipDiff reposted

I'm appalled by politicians and the media who think it's perfectly acceptable for a sitting Labour MP to stand down to enable a sitting Labour Mayor to stand down in order to contest the ensuing by-election. No wonder people have no faith in politicians or the media. So disrespectful to voters.

While I don't want a Labour leadership challenge because I'm not sure any of the others will be much better and I'm not a fan of the kind of political chaos it will cause, I am enjoying the frustration from Andy Burnham seeing yet another chance to become PM slip through his fingers.

"Them? I didn't know they were noble?" said Io. "They're all very rich and have had millions of people butchered or tortured to death merely for reasons of expediency and pride" said the Lady. The watching gods nodded solemnly. That was certainly noble behaviour.

I need to manipulate the Bluesky algorithm into giving me much less US internal politics. There was some kind of decision on a case about voting rights this week and its clogging up my feed. I don't care about domestic US politics as I don't live there. I need to convince Bluesky of this.

Interesting how the discourse over trans women in elite sport has changed over time. A few years ago the guardian would have been horrified at considering publishing an opinion article like this. Now they published this alongside an opposite one by Moira Quinn - two opposing views.