[Yug]

Can someone explain to these morons that members of a "thinktank" really should be capable of thinking

A report that hugely overestimated the cost to the UK of reaching net zero emissions has been retracted by the rightwing thinktank that published it.

The Civitas pamphlet published on Thursday claimed to offer a “realistic” estimate of the cost – £4.5tn – and said “the government needs to be honest with the British people”. However, factual errors were quickly pointed out after publication.

The most serious error was the confusion by the report’s author, Ewen Stewart, between power capacity in megawatts (MW) with electricity generation in megawatt hours (MWh). As a result, he presented an unrealistic “£1.3m per MWh” figure for the cost for onshore wind power. The true number is more than 10,000 times lower at about £50 to £70 per MWh. Another error was mixing up billions with trillions...

https://amp.theguardian.com/environment ... ual-errors

Basic errors which even a seven year-old would be capable of spotting.

[Andy McDandy]

Think tanks are more about selling an idea than forming complex ideas that work.

Take for example, "Do you think that unelected* foreign judges should be able to tell Britain to release dangerous criminals from prison?".

Now take "Do you think the UK should have the same approach to human rights as Putin's Russia?"

Same idea, 2 different takes.

The problem is that while that sort of debate club dickery might wash in the Oxford Union, it doesn't work in reality. But these people go on to become SpAds, get full of their own self-importance, and work in an environment where their survival depends on them having access to the minister they've attached themselves to. Which means denying access to anyone else, believing their own bullshit, and fucking over anyone who threatens to burst that bubble.

In a way, Dominic Cummings was right - the system is broken, and his rise was proof if ever needed.

*Yes, yes, I know....

[Tubby Isaacs]

I know this doesn't really fit here- the climate is the bigger issue, as Just Stop Oil would rightly say themselves.

I am though increasingly despairing at them. I actually quite like the "soup throwing" stuff, much more than blocking the M25. It doesn't damage anything, and if you can draw attention to the low pay of the people who clean it up, all the better. But I think this is deeply irresponsible. You're not going to be able to argue away criminal damage as freedom of expression, You're going to be deeply in the shit, the more so if you insist on filming yourself breaking court orders and keep telling everyone you'll do it again. Absurdly recently, some of them were going to politicians' home addresses (and not ones obviously at fault on the issue) and sticking stuff through the letterbox, saying "this can't be illegal, it's like a postman!" However decentralised a movement you are, you need someone in there who'll say "It's not like a postman, any more than someone praying outside an abortion clinic is like your local vicar. Don't do this!"

Prison is fucking awful. You don't propel people towards it like Just Stop Oil are.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I've not looked at Roger Hallam properly before. I'm not entirely reassured.

https://juststopoil.org/2023/01/12/engl ... er-hallam/

This is the photo of himself he's chosen. If he isn't a cult leader, he likes cult leader chic.

A few years ago, when I started my research at King’s College London, my supervisor told me I was the best PhD candidate he’d ever had. A few weeks later, he was already getting annoyed with me. He said if I continued to speak the truth, I would make myself “irrelevant”. He didn’t say exactly that. They never do, do they? But that’s what he meant.

Donald Trump meets Alan Parker Urban Warrior. I don't know what the PhD was in, but probably nothing to do with criminal justice.

They arrested me. 36 hours in a police cell. The interview by the police involved 200 Questions. 200 times I said “No comment”. Not one question on me talking about James Hansen, ex-head of NASA, and his colleagues’ latest memo confirming the world will pass 1.5 degrees in 2024. Not one question on me saying that the worst episode of suffering and injustice in human history more than justifies nonviolent disruption under English Common Law. Right of Necessity. Some evidence cannot be collected. Police procedure has become politicised. You might call it that.

This is like some Telegraph BTL nutter. "Why didn't they ask me whether I was a Freeman on the Land?" Funnily enough, you don't get to choose what the cops ask you when you're nicked. If you want a defence, ask your lawyer.

Five minutes in court. The magistrate put me on remand. For a speech. “Anything else?”. She does not look at me. “Chop chop, time is up”. No time to lose, at least when it’s her time

That "for a speech" thing again. See also the stuff they're posting in that tweet about Article 10 of the Human Rights Act. This "they can't do you for speaking" bollocks seems to have come right from the top. I only hope the people currently heading for jail weren't taken in by it.

There is, in fairness, some moving stuff about how awful the prison is. Perhaps instead of leading the charge for getting young people locked up, he could have stressed this point more?

[The Weeping Angel]

I remember when Roger Hallam came out against ULEZ.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Ha ha, I didn't know that. I see he objects not just to it being regressive, which is a fair point, but for it being "intrusive". Because the feds might get you, maaaan, I presume. How can anything that regulates congestion or air quality not be?

Even the Evening Standard was praising Khan this week for the results of the ULEZ expansion.

[Killer Whale]

He's the white settler who bought a smallholding near Llandeilo and expected to be able to do English Home Counties market gardening in damp Carmarthenshire, isn't he?
Man's a fuckwit.

[kreuzberger]

I used to rather like Tampa, especially the Cuban area, Ybor. Thanks to my ex's ex, his new wife, and her substantial inheritance, we spent much of the winter of 2003 in the neighbourhood.

St. Pete's was even more lovely - a pound of shrimp, endless bottles of Boston pale ale, and shooting the breeze with Chicago snowbird media types.

I guess little will remain of either in the morning.