Iain Roberts

George is doing Dry Not-going-to-prison-uary #TheArchers

We should transition away from gas as quickly as we can, but that's at least a decade and almost certainly more so we also need to protect people during that transition period.

The £8000 for my fairly normal semi was after the grant. We need to come off gas by 2050 to achieve the legal net zero targets, but saying that doesn't give people the money do to it. There's nothing idiotic about stopping people from freezing in their homes.

Having driven a much lower-rated car, I'm 100% sure I would stall an F1 car on the starting line and go nowhere. As long as everyone else avoided me, I wouldn't crash.

That's rude in the Gents too. Unisex loos work well, especially when its cubicles with a loo and sink opening out onto a public corridor.

It may be more common. When I was a student in the 90s, the government rule was that trans women *had* to live as a woman for two years - including using women's toilets - before they could gain access to gender reassignment surgery.

Trans women have been using women's toilets for decades without a problem. The only reason I think anyone's being triggered is because they've been falsely told for the last few years that it's dangerous for trans women to be in women's toilets. The answer is for people to stop telling those lies.

Perhaps, but it's much harder to have the calm conversation if you're being threatened and much easier if you're doing the threatening. Trans people are being told they shouldn't exist in public spaces, or perhaps at all.

That would help, but if someone's threatening your life, it's quite hard to have a cosy chat.

I wish I lived in a country where people didn't bang on about "the trans issue" all the time, one where trans people were allowed to live their lives in peace and fully accepted so there was no trans issue and no need to talk about it.

Natalie Haynes holds the US edition of her book No Friend to This House.

It’s TODAY! Happy US Book Birthday, No Friend to This House 💚🎂 This is what no one tells you, in the songs sung about Jason and the Argo. This part of his quest has been forgotten, but everyone but me…

📗 bookshop.org/p/books/no-f...

🎧 www.amazon.com/No-Friend-Th...

Be sure to put up an umbrella when you're out today, even if there's no rain.

Even if it was easy and cheap, there are finite number of heat pump installers. Training more takes time, so the transition away from gas is always going to take several years even if it was going at full speed (which it isn't). (2/2)

That's good to do, but will take a few years. I wanted to switch to a heat pump last year. Unfortunately, I couldn't but, if I had gone ahead, it would have cost over £8000. A lot of people don't have that sort of money to spare. (1/2)

We could and should, but until that's done we need to protect people from gas shortages.

My favourite *film* that no-one has seen is The Discovery of Heaven, starring Stephen Fry, Greg Wise and Maureen Lipman.

A yellow sun rises behind a busy motorway

Sunrise over the M60 #Photography #Urban #EastCoastKin

Get your free stickers to remind drivers that 20’s plenty To mark the implementation of Oxfordshire’s 275th 20mph scheme, Oxfordshire residents can apply for free wheelie bin stickers to remind motorists to stick to the lower limit.After launching its 20mph ...

Oxfordshire has now launched 275 20mph schemes! All locally requested and approved by Cllrs of all political parties. Because people like 20mph where they live.

Also @oxfordshirecc.bsky.social is giving away FREE 20mph stickers. @20splenty.bsky.social

news.oxfordshire.gov.uk/get-your-fre...

Two youngsters and ageing me sitting at a table with basketball bits and pieces.

We're nearly at the end of the basketball season, but still time to train a couple more young players as table officials. ##BritishBasketball #Basketball

I think the current renewable expansion is going about as fast as it can. One big limiting factor is the National Grid - which is why the Great Grid Upgrade is so important.

Many anti-car campaigners will be pleased to see petrol prices increase, but politically Labour, Greens and Lib Dems would be right to pin the blame on Trump's Iran war, and on Reform UK and the Tories who support it.

We've doubled our gas storage since 2022, so it feels like something we could and should do more on. It's certainly not impossible.

WHO ARE THE SHE MALES? KATE O'MARA, 36, notress, says: "I've never been able to make a man the centre of my life. "I tried hard in my marriage but It didn't work. I'm far too indepen dent and, like a typical Leo, too domineering. So I've found marriage confining. "The tough character I play in The Brothers is practically myself. I'm hardly acting at all! Challenging the male is what I like to do in real life. I regard men as fencing rather than sleeping. partners. And yes, I de frighten them off-1 notice them running like hell "I've been fending for myself since I was fourteen. My father was in the BAF and my mother was an actress so they we were both always away, My life sounds pretty selfish but I have a 13-year-old son to edurate. It is a challenge, to earn my own living and to be totally responsible for myself and my son." ARABELLA MELVILLE, 27, a doctor of psychiatry and a writer, is separated from her husband, She lives with Colin Johnson, with whom she edits a sex magazine, She says: "I used to be very much the submissive wife, but when we separated I went back to my maiden name to regain my own Identify stid lose the demoralising sense of being merely a chattel. "Now I feel subordinate to tho one. I'm not frightened of anyone. My changing attitudes have brought out an aggressive aide to my nature. "The fact that I now believe in myself as a person is 1 апррове, an arrogance which borders on aggression. But, thank goodness, Colin understands me and is happy to let me be what I am a woman with thoughts, feelings and opinions of her own. Colin and I are passionately in love, but we don't have exclusive rights to each other. I have lovers and so does Colin. I believe you can have sex with out love, but I have to have some emotional affinity with my lovers. They have to be friends of mine for a start and I have to like them at Jeast "I don't love them in the deep way that I love Cojin, but I couldn't go in tor purely phytoal orkies."

WHO ARE THE SHE MALES?, asked the Daily Mirror, a day late for #internationalWomensDay and half a century ago, by which they just meant women who take control of their own lives and do things their way. It'll never catch on.

I admire your confidence that there won't be any problems in the Middle East next winter, or the winter after that...or that there won't be a cold snap in March or April. It would be a brave position for the government to take.

I'm not making any such assumption. I accept it's currently stable. I'm saying there's a serious risk it *would* run down if the war - or some other supply shock - continued for long.

Because if there was something that disrupted supplies, like, say, a war with Iran, we'd run out of storage very quickly and people wouldn't have gas to heat their homes. It's how much you're willing to gamble with people's lives.

Exactly. If we don't have enough storage capacity for the next few years, people could be without heating. That's not acceptable - we need sufficient storage while we transition away from gas.

What do you suggest people with gas heating do in the next few years if there's an interruption to supply?

True, but we can only move forward. Get the GGU done, build the renewables, add more connectors, do it at pace. And, in the short term, ensure we have sufficient gas storage for resilience.

Agree 100%. We need to get sufficient wind and solar, battery and possibly nuclear to replace gas for generation, get the pylons and cables installed for the Great Grid Upgrade, and migrate millions of properties from gas to alternatives like heat pumps. That's well underway, but has to be faster.