Westminstenders: Local Elections Madness

[RedToothBrush]

This week has gone from banging your head against the wall to wanting to bang your head through it.

Labour have voted to support a 2nd ref as their EU election campaign strategy. Only for Corbyn to ignore it. And a row has broken out.

Change UK seem well on track to make everyone else look professional and to look as 'liberal elite' as humanly possible in a real life reverse paraody of themselves.

The Brexit Party is going from strength to strength with the most wtf candidates imaginable and Farage is happy cos his mate is coming to tea with the Queen.

The Liberal Democrats have decided that anti semitism is OK in an effort to keep Labour seats.

And the Conservatives. Where to start? Probably with the Tory Leadership Election infighting which looks suspiciously as if its now breached national security.

As for Brexit. No one really wants to talk about it. Local elections are next week. May is now apparently supporting the Malthouse Compromise. Be warned, it is difficult to see it as anything but a Trojan Horse for No Deal. Not that everyone has worked this out yet. But until we have the blood bath of the local elections over and done with on Thursday, don't expect much to happen.

Then expect the Tories to lose their minds...

A quick look at the news headlines and there is a picture of a couple of young ladies protesting about the use of fossil fuels.
Both are wearing sunglasses which are oil products. You have to face facts that being an animal on the planet 'uses' resources and most have some impact. Of course the human animal is the most destructive by a massive degree, part through it's desire to want more of everything, and to have a notion of 'free time' to do something that they don't class as work. Pushing the boundaries of where it is possible to live and then breeding and filling those spaces is problematic for the planet.

Obv this isn't a cycling pro/con thread but my experience of commuting and being behind cyclists in a car is not yours, a car slowing for a few moments is hardly adding to the pollution experienced across the UK.

We need more people cycling into work, not less and with modern pedal assist electric bikes, there is now no excuse and with cycling, comes more infrastructure, sure i wish they'd build it first but they don't, demand needs to be there first.

Yes agree other countries do school busses and around here, it is provided for secondary school children, why not all children?

Eco 'friendly' buses and cars are a con. They are better than the older versions but still a long way off eco. There is a lot of basic physics involved, you have to do a certain amount of 'work' to shift weights around. Yes you can make things more efficient, and you can reduce the emissions of various pollutants, but underneath it all it is all 'bad'.
Because you can't see a vehicle belching out smoke does not mean that an equivalent amount of 'consumption' isn't going on elsewhere. Electric cars are simply displacement. No emissions around the city, but power stations elsewhere provide the energy. Covering your roof with solar PV panels would hardly provide the charge necessary to run a car, apart from the obvious that you would usually charge your car at night.

Apparently the best way to curb population growth is to improve living standards, by investing in health (esp reproductive health and contraception) and education and improving infant mortality rates, so that there is less pressure for people to have more children. The longer term problem is that you then end up with ageing societies, but then you could encourage longer working lives, possibly working fewer hours...
I’m waiting for the day when solar power is cheap enough to turn countries in Africa and Asia into the new industrial powerhouses of the world.

I was meaning house roof, not car roof. A typical house roof area can provide sufficient power (about 3KW) to boil a kettle, on a sunny day.
I have not looked at figures, maybe someone looking at electric cars could comment, but I feel that charging a car requires 30 Amps (7kW) for many hours?

LOL at leClerc’s be-sunglassed “young ladies”. Quaint!

{LOL at leClerc’s be-sunglassed “young ladies”. Quaint!}
I work on the principle of being at least polite until I know someone.
Those two might actually go home of an evening and rip the legs off cute kittens, but from the photo I can't tell.

Voted. The big issue here is the parish council elections - we are hoping for a clean sweep of the bent buggers who've been in charge for 20 years and replacing every single one of them with FriendsofVillage. Think they will probably win.

Local council election - 2 UKIP, 2 Con, 2 Lab, 1 Lib, 1 Green. I went LibDem and Green (well there wasn't much choice!) but am not at all confident that UKIP wont get in.

borntobequiet - yes re reproductive health, however again that is biased against poorer countries who tend to have less access to healthcare in general. They aren't usually the ones causing the pollution in the first place, however it can change their lives drastically having access to contraception. Ethically it is an interesting one. America going anti-choice is a contradiction in progress here too.

Is it impolite to use the phrase 'young women'?

I wasn’t being critical...I was a young lady once...I’m an old one now. Well I’m mostly ladylike and don’t swear much in company.

Of course a bus isn't eco friendly but its a lot less polluting than 50 or 60 cars each carrying 1 child to school.

No reason why buses can't be introduced that run on hydrogen, we ve hydrogen trains in Germany in public use.

jasjas1973
Using hydrogen is another 'displacement' technology. I am not knocking it as it enables variants of existing technology (internal combustion engine) to be used in cities so 'pollutants' there are minimised. However hydrogen has to be produced so requiring 'power' from something else.
Hydro electric from damming rivers causes environmental problems as the water temperature changes, often killing the former ecosystem.
There really is no 'free lunch'.

Cancer patient told 'Brexit chaos' has indefinitely delayed life-saving treatment

'It's a farce, this is my life on the line here,' says Richard Kelly after being told ongoing confusion over Brexit means cutting-edge cancer therapies can't be budgeted for

www.independent.co.uk/news/health/brexit-cancer-treatment-delay-radiation-sirt-bristol-life-saving-a8896181.html

Elections :
Polling station downstairs from where I am working today is reporting higher than expected footfall.

Climate Change
The UK has the lowest building regs in Europe for

• insulation
• low energy lighting
• energy recovery
• feed in tariffs

Thank you George Osborne for rolling back the small steps Gordon Brown took

It should be illegal to build ANY new home/ office / factory that does not have

• PV panels on the roof
• solar hot water
• LED lighting with reaction switches pre fitted
• ground source heating
• grey water recovery

Why do warehouses not have solar farms on their rooves?
Why does my gym not have ground source under its car park?
PROFIT

My local supermarket has just been rebuilt and the car park area is mostly covered with rain/sun shields which are entirely solar panels.
They could perhaps have been a bit more inventive with glass roof panels as well so that lighting isn't necessary during the majority of the day.

There is a small eco-homes development being built in my city. Close to the city centre and public transport. The houses have PV on the roof, triple glazing, MVHR etc and are apparently so well-insulated that they don't have/need central heating. As far as I can tell, it is so popular that I can't get an appointment to view the show house for the next 6 weeks.

What is striking to me, is that it's the only development around here that is utilising all this readily-available eco-technology. All the other brand-new houses being thrown up are, it seems, being built to whatever the shoddy minimum UK standards are.

I suppose you could say that at least, even the conventional new-builds are better than the swathes of draughty old properties that most of us "enjoy."

Space heating in winter is THE BIGGEST use of energy in Northern Europe
solar panels on a June day are a drop in the ocean compared with central heating in January
Building regs are key

We are definitely in the minority in walking the kids to/from school/nursery, even in our quiet market town. School is 12mins walk from our front door at 4yr old pace, less if he scoots or runs. Nursery is 18mins (unless the 2yr old wants to walk in which cases it takes about 6 geological ages). Our NDNs kids go to the same school as DS and if we collect DS from school and come straight home we are always home before them as the road which the school is on is a giant traffic jam. There seems to be a general perception that driving is always quicker and it frequently isn't.

That said, I drive a fair bit for work as the locations I need to get to often rule out public transport and the distances (and need to carry equipment) knock out cycling. So I'm no environmental angle

This has reminded me about when I had a job offer withdrawn because the few home visits I needed to do a month were not permitted by bicycle or on foot. If Nurse Gladys Emmanuel could do it every day, I could have done it once a month. Transport to the place of work was excellent with buses and trains running frequently and stopping within 5 mins walk of home and the workplace so no concerns about me getting to work at all.

Bear in mind that any talk of shrinking the population terrifies the ruling classes. As long as there are more people than places, they have control. If the population were to shrink so there are more places than people, they lose their power.

It's pretty much what did for feudalism in England after the Black Death.

Which is why all the big, male institutions have made the reproductive rights their gift. And why everywhere you look that is sliding backwards into feudalism is working very hard to ensure those babies keep-a-comin'. So the religious right in the US, Catholic church ... all have a vested interest in ensuring there's more mouths than food. Just like Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin all fetishised "battle for births" ....

I would love to be able to walk my kids to school.
Not possible when the only school that is reasonably walkable is too far away to get a place.
It would take us 7 mins maximum to walk there. Quicker than driving.

250yds it seems is too far away.

Our primary school is 1.2 miles away. It's a bloody hilly trek too. We need a school bus again but despite trying everything possible we remain bus-less.

Oh I'd LOVE an electric car!

Voted. I was the only "customer" at 9.05am.

I'm very interested in turnout as they've moved all the polling stations to a local "hub" that isn't really that convenient for anyone 🙄

Going to take mum to vote at 3pm.