Rob Blackie

House effects seem to have quite a big influence for the Green vote right now. Any idea why? Thank you.

Phone snatching is an epidemic across London - but Southwark hosts some of the worst hotspots in the capital.

Liberal Democrats have a plan to tackle crime and ASB in Southwark - double community safety wardens, invest in CCTV, and give our young people more opportunities.

Ethnic minority presence in the boardroom.

FTSE 100: 98/100 firms, from 52% in 2019
56% > 1 person
20% of board roles in FTSE100

FTSE 250: 205/350 firms (82%), from 22% in 2019

Parker Review 2026

This is on average, plenty of people who won't fit it I'm sure.

What is happening to British ‘conservativism’? This is a far-Right conspiracy theory found in the manifestos of mass murders. journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1...

You Gov: Britons tend to think that King Charles's planned state visit to the US should be cancelled, as Lib Dem leader Ed Davey calls on the government to call the trip off in response the US-Iran conflict

Should be cancelled: 46%
Should go ahead: 36%

Reform’s policy to cancel Indefinite Leave to Remain would result in pensioners being deported - people who have worked here for decades and earned their pension.

When this is pointed out to Reform they don’t deny it.

Share this video to make sure your friends know who Reform really are.

For this reason the biggest parties at any one time have disproportionately less well informed voters on average than the smaller parties.

And the biggest bands will have the same....

In consumer marketing the general reckoning is that almost all growth comes from people who aren't very interested and don't consume very often. e.g. Typical *additional* Diet Coke drinker will drink it once every 3 months... but there are lots of them.

Same with voters: Swing = Less knowledge.

Guest post: What the UK can learn from carbon pricing schemes around the world The UK government has set itself an unprecedented challenge in legislating to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, the first major economy to do so. It now faces the task of actually reach...

From here if you want to read more:
www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-w...

The point of a carbon tax is that you tax at source - so all forms of carbon are taxed equally.

However this tends to mean that it's mildly regressive:

They did provide me with one when I went back and asked - I think I paid about £1 to ride it up a mountain and back....

Thanks.

Thanks btw for all the interesting things I've seen you post!

Got it. If we did that where do we expect electricity to come from in dark windless periods?

I assume batteries, demand suppression? Any other interesting stuff on the horizon?

I did something similar in Kyrgyzstan 20 years ago. It was brilliant, though the nomads I rented a horse from initially just gave me a horse to ride bareback....

during the oil/gas crisis caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraime it was striking how some right-wingers tried to gaslight the public into believing the *biggest* problem with their soaring bills (at the time) was green levies rather than the oil/gas price going through the roof

This whole discussion is about what his policy is! People aren't asking politicians for technical analysis, they are asking what people would do in response....

Obviously you are more expert than me, but is it really less realistic than the alternatives?

Eg Nuclear realistically quite slow and expensive...

Up to him what he says but his actual policy is a carbon tax of £90bn per year = £1,500 per taxpayer per year.

This is explicitly designed to be paid by everybody - so yes that is his policy.

I've had this too.... it's a very confusing system!

We can, and should, transition to renewables - and in fact I've worked on that for most of my career.

But it's a fantasy to say it is costless - the investments have to come from somewhere!

Pretty obvious when anybody stops to think about it. If you are borrowing at 6% then a £1m plot of land costs £60,000 a year to hold onto!

I mean - if we'd had an argument with Trump and been as well off as, say, Spain, would it really be much worse than the position we are in now?

At least we'd be having a conversation about realistic policy options.

Starmer has a choice:

1. "This war is probably going to screw the economy. But here's my plan to try and minimize it", OR

2. "It's all going to be ok".

2. is not going to be believed, and Trump's so unreliable there's limited upside - so I really don't see the case for 1.

e.g. My battery can do about 1/4 of my daily electricity use (we use a lot because part of our house is electric heated).... so to scale up to a week of electricity I'd need a battery that currently costs maybe £40k.

I can see that dropping by 80% over the next 10 years but probably not 95%?

Possibly - but there's a power in diversity of sources. Batteries prices have fallen a lot (and I love mine!) but you still need the power to charge them. And while they are very good at moving things from off-peak to peak, it's quite a lot harder to deal with a week of windless cloudy weather.

Logically he should be saying yes shouldn't he?

If you want net zero by 2040 then higher prices today are a critical part of speeding this.

Xlinks Capturing and Connecting the Power of Nature Simon Morrish founded Xlinks in 2019 to build towards the concept of ‘One World, One Sun, One Grid’ – quite literally.

* This works because a Sahara sunset is later than a British one (closer to the equator), and wind power there peaks after Moroccan sunset.

The project is still possible:

xlinks.co

A couple of years ago the Conservatives turned down an opportunity to build a huge electricity cable to Morocco - to bring solar & wind power on dark winter evenings* - which would have substantially reduced the UK's reliance on fossil fuels - and helped to protect us.

They turned it down.