Off Topic Politics Thread

Liam Fox is getting a bit of flak on social media. This Yes minister clip keeps getting shared:

 

Maybe your MP is living in the past!!

 

Cerys Matthews on Channel 4 just said exactly what I have said many times on here about regeneration. It is really annoying that the media is only now paying attention and even then are only focusing on Kensington when like I said and like Cerys Matthews said this is systematic.

The media who have now jumped on the Grenfell and Kensington issue used to just brush it off before with token articles if there was something that stood out but they still do not understand that this "gentrification" is happening nationwide.

Cerys Matthews said that this is about government at all levels with ties to property development and in league with developers and the construction industry transferring public assets into private hands.

For 10- 15 years since the University of Lincoln was opened the people of Lincoln have complained that they get nothing while the University (and surrounding areas get all the money.) You may remember I recently stated that any large building that comes available in this area is turned into student accommodation when if a private developer had sought planning permission to turn office buildings into flats they would have been refused permission to change commercial property into residential (this happens all the time) while the council's preferred partners just buy everything up because they know it will fly through for them.

They refused my favourite pub a change of signage as it didn't fit in with the local area (it was a round sign on the corner of their building) yet then granted holiday inn permission to build a massive modern (cladded) high rise with neon lighting all around it which is the usual flat pack eyesore.

The whole of the Brayford Marina has been gentrified with the houseboats driven off when they tripled the mooring charges. All nice boats on their "marina" now. The whole Uni area which includes the Brayford just expands and expands while the people of Lincoln see nothing.

When we do see regeneration in the council areas that they insist is money being spent on us is a shopping centre and a costa. People round here don;t use Costas? And why do they build all this new shopping area around here? Only took a few weeks to realise why when they started building a vast private development behind it to use that coffee shop.

It will really annoy me because the news is Grenfell/Kensington. Last month the tower block, last week their college, this week their library. It is great the media are taking notice and realising that re-generation is a by word for spending taxpayers money on things their preferred partners can earn from or blatantly transferring public assets to the private sector in the name of "improvement" but they will champion how they stopped a few projects in Kensington and then forget about it all.

There is a widespread problem in this country of open corruption and open gentrification which if complained about they become the polite parent saying to their child "You might not like it but its for your own benefit" without ever caring that we are not children, we can see through their schemes and the benefits they are selling to us are not benefits at all because all they want to do is make money and F*** the people.

I expect this will get the "Tory problem" posts but this is ALL local government of all colours with vested interests to make money for themselves and their preferred partners. Corruption is now legal in this country and just sold as beneficial to all when it benefits everyone except those that is supposedly meant to benefit.

 

Corruption??? Jobs for the boys??? I don't believe it!!! (and somebody has nicked your TV remote and changed the channel from BBC4 to Channel 4!)

 

I take a break from BC news to watch channel 4 news.

 

Michael Gove attempting to prove his environmental credentials here. And I'm not going to knock it. In a similar announcement to French President Macron's move, the UK Government has decided to ban all petrol and diesel vehicles by 2040: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40723581

Now, if my memory and understanding is correct, this is a tad braver than the French announcement. Theirs was that there would be a ban on all new petrol and diesel vehicles [possibly private cars only] by 2040, which I thought was weak, if welcome, at least. Personally, I suspect technology will see that date be late by a decade. The car manufacturers themselves will stop making fossil fuelled cars way before then, and second hand ones will inevitably filter down. I once predicted to a work colleague, on the subject of the World Wide Web, back in 1991, that it would largely replace high street shopping by 2030. He sniggered back then, but I think I'll be late by 5 years, so I'm not making the same forecast mistake again. Technology will come racing in faster than we can believe it because the will is there to do it now.

 

Not just the will to do it, the technology is already here. I predict a surprise new entrant into the electric car market, currently a non-automotive company.

 

Don't electric cars still rely heavily on fossil fuels, to provide the charge? Whatever the post petrol future of motoring turns out to be, I predict it won't be electric cars.

 

Roger Dyson is already on the case I believe.

 

Roger, or James?

 

I also think that electric cars, that store their energy in batteries, are an interim measure. I believe that the converter/power unit will be electric, but the source fuel will be onboard, as it is in fossil-fuelled cars.

 

Indeed. What I meant by 'will' is the acceptance that the fossil-fuel age is coming to an end [we've already established that you'll be fine in petro-chemicals and plastics] and that the infrastructures will now be put in place in a big way.
For example, if we wanted the hydrogen-electric vehicle to replace the fossil-fuelled vehicle it is perfectly possible now, this very moment. Except for one thing - infrastructure. We need the cheap production of hydrogen [been sorted] and transportation, and tanks, and pumps, and outlets. In short, we need a similar infrastructure for hydrogen that we had for petrol and diesel.
It didn't take too long for the infrastructure for fossil-fuels to gear up, over a 100 years ago, and they had to start from virtually nothing.

 

James, I beg his pardon!

 

It seems that all of Theresa May's advisors, strategists and speech writers have now quit. Maybe she will now start tweeting her own thoughts to bring us on a par with the US!

 

the Russian orthodox version of god?

 

Probably be something like the Formula1 cars use that generate electricity while they drive (KERS.). Our cars already charge batteries while they drive so as long as you can make a battery that can charge quicker and hold more then I can see a point where cars generate and then store their own electricity.

 

I'm saying nothing!!

 

He also owns a US based battery technology company.... not just to make his cleaners clean for longer periods either.