Prices of the electricity we use to charge

[Ghost1951]

I am interested in why there is an assumption that NR in France is 'Far Right' (Woosh).

What policies qualify as 'Far Right'? Far right for me is outright fascism. They are nothing like that.

Actual Policies:

• French Law to take priority over EU law.
• Some degree of protectionism to prevent export of jobs
• Non alignment
• Proper response to law breaking and disorder
• Restoring of border controls rather than Shengen open borders
• Control of migration
• No pandering to Islam
• Protection of traditional French culture
• Opposition to 'Punitive Ecology' (net zero type policies).
• Repatriation of industrial jobs
• Emphasis on French values, laïcité (secularism), and cultural homogeneity

Why is this prescription for French society regarded as Far Right?

It isn't anything like the far right some of us remember in Europe where democracy was banned, military dictators controlled everything and imprisoned political opponents.

I can remember when Spain, Portugal and Greece were run by military dictatorships. It was only a handful of years before my birth that Germany and Italy were run by brutal, murderous hard right regimes murdering people. That is teh hard right, not Jason Bardella or the unattractive (to me ) Nigel Farage.

The same misuse of 'hard right' is regularly smeared over Reform which is FAR from hard right. Reform advocates:

• Cut income tax for middle earners.
• Raise the minimum income tax threshold to ease pressure on working families.
• Reduce Corporation Tax to 15% to stimulate investment.
• Scrap Net Zero policies, which they claim hurt British competitiveness.
• Support British energy independence (nuclear, North Sea oil and gas, shale)

• Cut the size of the civil service (“slash waste and bureaucracy”).
• End diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training and “woke culture” in public institutions.
• Root out what they call "institutional political correctness".

• Increase NHS funding, but restructure it.
• Reduce NHS management and bureaucracy.
• Introduce more private-sector partnerships for efficiency.
• Encourage personal health responsibility, including tax incentives for healthier lifestyles.

• Ban teaching of gender ideology and critical race theory in schools.
• Support free speech in universities.
• Reintroduce grammar schools and focus on core academic subjects.
• Reduce focus on “woke agendas.”

• Recruit more police, but focus on visible policing and serious crime.
• Deport all foreign criminals.
• Crack down on grooming gangs and violent crime.
• Restore confidence in the justice system with longer sentences and fewer early releases.

• Zero illegal immigration: Deport anyone arriving illegally (e.g., small boat crossings).
• Leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) if it blocks deportations.
• Reduce legal immigration drastically—limit to skilled workers only.
• Implement an Australian-style points-based system, but stricter than the UK’s current version.
• Increase border force and build proper detention infrastructure.

Hard right??

I don't think it is at all. These are just policies that make sense to a LOT of people in thus country. Other parties have ignored and laughed at these ideas.

 

[Ghost1951]

Decent wages cannot bring manufacturing back.
The root cause is our capitalism is the system is not self regulating. We don't have enough negative feedback mechanism for that. Left to the free market, owners will shut their factories where labour is unionised and salary is 'decent'. In the service market, they'll go for immigrants, legal and illegal.
They need to compete not only with indigeneous firms but also international firms. Apple cannot divorced China, AI needs Indian software engineers for example.
The Chinese style mix of communism and capitalism is in many ways superior to our free market economy.
This said, it's on balance a good thing that our democracy is tested once every hundred years or so by a little bit of far right.

This is what tariffs are all about.

Politicians shrugging about competition from China and the far east is EXACTLY why Trump got into power.

This is my point - ignoring these matters opens the door for new kinds of politicians. Sometimes they are politicians we find it hard to live with.

 

[flecc]

I am interested in why there is an assumption that NR in France is 'Far Right' (Woosh).

What policies qualify as 'Far Right'? Far right for me is outright fascism. They are nothing like that.

Actual Policies:

• French Law to take priority over EU law.
• Some degree of protectionism to prevent export of jobs
• Non alignment
• Proper response to law breaking and disorder
• Restoring of border controls rather than Shengen open borders
• Control of migration
• No pandering to Islam
• Protection of traditional French culture
• Opposition to 'Punitive Ecology' (net zero type policies).
• Repatriation of industrial jobs
• Emphasis on French values, laïcité (secularism), and cultural homogeneity

Why is this prescription for French society regarded as Far Right?

It isn't anything like the far right some of us remember in Europe where democracy was banned, military dictators controlled everything and imprisoned political opponents.

I can remember when Spain, Portugal and Greece were run by military dictatorships. It was only a handful of years before my birth that Germany and Italy were run by brutal, murderous hard right regimes murdering people. That is teh hard right, not Jason Bardella or the unattractive (to me ) Nigel Farage.

The same misuse of 'hard right' is regularly smeared over Reform which is FAR from hard right. Reform advocates:

• Cut income tax for middle earners.
• Raise the minimum income tax threshold to ease pressure on working families.
• Reduce Corporation Tax to 15% to stimulate investment.
• Scrap Net Zero policies, which they claim hurt British competitiveness.
• Support British energy independence (nuclear, North Sea oil and gas, shale)

• Cut the size of the civil service (“slash waste and bureaucracy”).
• End diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training and “woke culture” in public institutions.
• Root out what they call "institutional political correctness".

• Increase NHS funding, but restructure it.
• Reduce NHS management and bureaucracy.
• Introduce more private-sector partnerships for efficiency.
• Encourage personal health responsibility, including tax incentives for healthier lifestyles.

• Ban teaching of gender ideology and critical race theory in schools.
• Support free speech in universities.
• Reintroduce grammar schools and focus on core academic subjects.
• Reduce focus on “woke agendas.”

• Recruit more police, but focus on visible policing and serious crime.
• Deport all foreign criminals.
• Crack down on grooming gangs and violent crime.
• Restore confidence in the justice system with longer sentences and fewer early releases.

• Zero illegal immigration: Deport anyone arriving illegally (e.g., small boat crossings).
• Leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) if it blocks deportations.
• Reduce legal immigration drastically—limit to skilled workers only.
• Implement an Australian-style points-based system, but stricter than the UK’s current version.
• Increase border force and build proper detention infrastructure.

Hard right??

I don't think it is at all. These are just policies that make sense to a LOT of people in thus country. Other parties have ignored and laughed at these ideas.

Of course it is extreme right proposed by Reform and NR. It's just populist law, which when implemented effectively results in fascist behaviour.

That is how meanings change dynamically, you've even done it yourself in your post.

You opened by questioning the use of "Far Right", but closed by saying "Hard Right", very revealing.
.

 

[Ghost1951]

Of course it is extreme right proposed by Reform and NR. It's just populist law, which when implemented effectively results in fascist behaviour.

That is how meanings change dynamically, you've even done it yourself in your post.

You opened by questioning the use of "Far Right", but closed by saying "Hard Right", very revealing.
.

The first sentence makes no sense and there is no justification for it. It is merely an opinion. I challenge it.

You could just as easily say that the policies of the governments of 1944 - 51 brought in a number of populist laws:

The 1944 Education Act
Establishing a free NHS
National Insurance Act
New Towns Act
Industrial Injuries (National Insurance) Act

All very populist moves - fascism? No - not that much.

In a democracy, government should respond to the needs and wishes of the people and should treat them as serious individuals with a right to have a say in what happens to them. This means acting on their behalf.

Too many British politicians think the public are some sort of unwise large children who need to be legislated against rather than taken notice of.

Lets consider Switzerland for example. There they have direct democracy in which the people are actually consulted regularly on the specifics of legislation through referenda. Of course - there are many like you who consider this a disastrous way to proceed . God forbid that the people are actually taken notice of, rather than simply being told what their betters have decided for them.

We have this being fought out right now in the House of Commons. The vast majority of the population approve of the Assisted Dying Bill being passed, but - oh no - the people who have spent a lifetime in politics think they know better and many are trying to scupper it.

Most politicians - at least in our society are the very worst people to have any power at all. No wonder they are so despised in general.

Fascism - what rot!

https://www.weforum.org/stories/2017/07/switzerland-direct-democracy-explained/

 

[Woosh]

This is what tariffs are all about.

Politicians shrugging about competition from China and the far east is EXACTLY why Trump got into power.

This is my point - ignoring these matters opens the door for new kinds of politicians. Sometimes they are politicians we find it hard to live with.

Tariffs are the wrong tools. Biden's chips act for example is much better. Subsidies are not inflationary and force companies to create good jobs. Tariffs risk reprisals, inflationary and disrupting supply chains. Trump's tariffs is stupid move especially against China. Bessent could have told Trump. Now Trump has to beg for rare earths.

 

[Ghost1951]

Tariffs are the wrong tools. Biden's chips act for example is much better. Subsidies are not inflationary and force companies to create good jobs. Tariffs risk reprisals, inflationary and disrupting supply chains. Trump's tariffs is stupid move especially against China. Bessent could have told Trump. Now Trump has to beg for rare earths.

I was explaining why he was elected.

There may well be much better ways to improve the conditions for local industry. The point is if politicians do nothing and the workers become impoverished, they will vote for people who offer an alternative. Sometimes these new politicians are opportunists like Trump and sometimes they are thoroughly dishonest. I started out trying to explain why we see these new parties springing up to disrupt a moribund and unresponsive system. In the UK, there are large areas of the nation which are remote from vibrant economic hubs with very poor communications routes. When the principle employers of such areas folds and exports jobs, what do we expect the people to do? Take the Welsh Valleys and some of the once vibrant coal fields of parts of Britain. You have substantial populations, tied to an area by family and unsaleable property and no work. Government after government did nothing. When someone comes along offering to do something to improve the situation, who do they vote for? Not the people who sat on their hands for forty years, that's for sure.

 

[Woosh]

..

When the principle employers of such areas folds and exports jobs, what do we expect the people to do?

Retraining is probably the best solution or moving house but I can see a lot won't be able to do these two things. This is where the communist countries have a good solution. You will see large numbers of people employed by local governments to keep their communities squeaky clean and develop tourism.

 

[Ghost1951]

..
Retraining is probably the best solution or moving house but I can see a lot won't be able to do these two things. This is where the communist countries have a good solution. You will see large numbers of people employed by local governments to keep their communities squeaky clean and develop tourism.

I don't think the problems are easy at all - they are not. But inaction is not the answer.

The UK has a bad record of abandoning areas far from London and spending vast amounts on enhancing the richest and most productive places. When I say 'the most productive' that is in the context of modern conditions. The now abandoned places used to be highly profitable and productive until industries moved abroad.

 

[Woosh]

In the 90s, I had a customer in Sheffield, a city suffering from de-industrialisation. My customer started to make medical instruments, surgical kits for hospitals.
His business flourished. You have to be brave in those situations.
A lot of new techs do not depend on location.

 

[flecc]

The first sentence makes no sense and there is no justification for it. It is merely an opinion. I challenge it.

You didn't challenge it, ducking out by avoiding the essential part of what I posted, now highlighted in bold below:

"Of course it is extreme right proposed by Reform and NR. It's just populist law, which when implemented effectively results in fascist behaviour."

None of that draconiian latter part could happen in implementing the mild measures you compared to. They were nothing like as harsh as much of the list you gave of Reform's policies.
.

 

[MikelBikel]

What has all this got to do with "Electricity" the Thread title?
Ere, mod, Surely it should be in the Brexit thread if anywhere, hehe.
But when you're right, you're right on man..
And when you're left, you're left wanting..
But when you're right, as in *correct*, then you are in the CENTRE. Power to the people
(Left vs right is one dimensional thinking, divide and conquer, try expanding one's horizons )

 

[Ghost1951]

You didn't challenge it, ducking out by avoiding the essential part of what I posted, now highlighted in bold below:

"Of course it is extreme right proposed by Reform and NR. It's just populist law, which when implemented effectively results in fascist behaviour."

None of that draconiian latter part could happen in implementing the mild measures you compared to. They were nothing like as harsh as much of the list you gave of Reform's policies.
.

Opinion

Unsupported

No real reasoning or evidence.

Neither NR in France or Reform in the UK have put forward Hard Right or Extreme Right Policies. To claim that they are either extreme right or hard right is just a stupid slur - a favourite tactic of threatened politicians. The polls show why the other parties are rattled.

Would either of the parties I referenced deliver? I have no idea. Like a lot of people in the UK, I am not inclined to cast my vote that way, but I do KNOW that the mainstream parties have let a lot of people down.

I am interested to see how Labour do. I hope they do well, though I have not voted for them in thirty or more years. So far, they have made some good noises about house building, planning reform and some other things. We will need to give them time to show if they can make a difference. I will be watching closely to see how they do on migration. Highly qualified migrants - great! unqualified people looking to do low level jobs more cheaply and with terrible conditions - not acceptable.

Illegal swarms arriving every calm day in rubber boats - absolutely intolerable. Worse still, funding them to the tune of about £6Bn. Deport immediately. That isn't hard right. It is common sense. Fascist? Not remotely. Tell that to the USA, tell it to New Zealand, Tell it to Australia, tell it to Canada. No country will a decent lifestyle allows undocumented migrants to arrive in boats on beaches. They ALL deport them or imprison them.

 

[Woosh]

What has all this got to do with "Electricity" the Thread title?

The connection is France and brexit. Our history intertwined for a thousand years. France got nuclear solutions for electricity generation right, UK is playing catch up with wind.

 

[flecc]

Opinion

Unsupported

No real reasoning or evidence.

History is the evidence, harsh policies implemented always lead to ever harsher enforcement action.

And so is Trump's populism and its consequences evidence.

Not that any of this matters, if Reform ever do get into power they will no doubt chicken out and fail to deliver their policies.
.

 

[MikelBikel]

Next, the ten Least depreciating cars are...

 

[Ghost1951]

History is the evidence, harsh policies implemented always lead to ever harsher enforcement action.

And so is Trump's populism and its consequences evidence.

Not that any of this matters, if Reform ever do get into power they will no doubt chicken out and fail to deliver their policies.
.

I think the last point you make about whether Reform would implement policies with any efficiency is possibly true.

The first one is wrong. You can not possibly look at historical events and then say, 'This happened when unconnected people did x, and they went too far, so we can not do x.' That just isn't logic. There are serious issues which need dealing with. It is our responsibility to deal with them, or this country will become a high rise dystopia with ever less freedom for all of us. The more dense population becomes the less free people are. I know you watched the Simon Reeve series on Scandinavia. I was impressed by the space those people have, how well off they were, the cultural homogeneity and trust they had both of government and one another. Then they came to southern Sweden where a very different situation was and is developing. You no doubt saw it too.

 

[Ghost1951]

Your mobile phone with modern technology can transmit a few miles. If you see an outside live BBC broadcast, they use a massive dish antenna on a truck to broadcast about 50 miles. The guys on the moon needed to transmit 1/2 million miles, and signal strength is an inverse square law, so you need 100 times the power to transmit 10 times as far. An average mobile TV transmitter uses around 8kw to transmit 50 miles. It would need 800kw to transmit 500 miles, and 800MW to transmit from the moon. Let's say, there isn't as much information in the moon broadcast as normal TV. To get it down to the level of a couple of hundred watts, which is about as much as they could spare, the information would have to be 1/ 4,000,000 of a normal TV broadcast. The antennae on the lander were about the size of a frying pan. What do you reckon?

It is all about the bit rate of the data being transmitted. Slow it down enough and you can transmit intelligible telemetry with 10 milliwatts and get it to Australia from the north of England. I did it yesterday as it happens.

The TV transmitted to Earth by the men on the Apollo Moon landings was extremely low quality. This wasn't because it was fake, it was because they had to compromise between video quality (essentially the bit rate of the data transmitted) and the power budget of the transmitters on the moon. The video transmitter used had only 7 watts. THAT is why such a fuzzy quality TV system was used. TV usually has a high bit rate, but more bits means more power or very massive antennas with lots of gain at both ends.

If you transmit information at a very low bit rate, you can get amazing distances.

Voyager 2 is 15.3 Billion miles from Earth right now. It has a transmitter with 23 watts and a high gain dish antenna of 12 feet diameter with a gain of 48dbi at x band frequencies. This effectively means the antenna gain is approximately 36,000 times the 24 watts. At the receiving end on earth the antennas are massive 70 meter dishes with huge amounts of gain. The voyager probes have backed off the bit rate of their transmissions now to 160 bits per second. You probably have about 70 million bits per second on your adsl if you live in a city.

I am interested in ultra low power digital communications and have made a balloon tracker beacon out of a Raspberry Pi pico and a GPS unit. This sends EXTREMELY low bit rate digital data at the snail like speed of 1.4 bits per second to the Amateur Radio Weak Signal Propagation Network, a distributed network of automatic receivers reporting to a central database.

Yesterday my beacon made at the cost of £12, sent out about 150, 4 minute digital messages, 40 bits long and was detected and correctly decoded at these locations.



Note the one in Australia - 16,000 km with one hundredth of a watt transmit power - basically a GPIO pin on a Raspberry Pi board, doing a square wave at 14.097Mhz.

Go slow enough on the data rate and you can get right around the world with flea power.

All I did was cobble together the two boards (Raspberry Pi Pico (£8) and a Chinese GPS unit (£4) and load some software made by a clever person, and then I strung a wire outside of a window down the garden to radiate the tiny output of the development board GPIO pin.

Ultimately, I am going to get a much smaller GPS unit for my balloon beacon, and then I am going to fly it. I am in contact with people who have had these balloons flying for more than eight months at about 38000, to 40,000 feet. They transmit telemetry when teh sun is on their solar panels and give their call sign, power transmitted, location, altitude and board temperature. Mine does all that too right now, but it isn't moving and is at 130 metres. Its temperature is 18C because it is in my house. I need to lighten the GPS, make a suitable small solar array and get some hydrogen and a few Chinese party balloons.

pico‐WSPRer (aka Cheapest Tracker in the World™)

Minimalist WSPR tracker for pico-balloons utilizing Raspberry Pi Pico (or Rp2040) as the RF generator (aka The Cheapest Tracker In The World™). More info: [WIKI](https://github.com/EngineerGuy314/p...

github.com

 

[Woosh]

You can not possibly look at historical events and then say, 'This happened when unconnected people did x, and they went too far, so we can not do x.' That just isn't logic.

it's wisdom. If someone tries to repeat the same trick (eg tariffs1930: Smoot-Hawley, President Hoover and now Trump) and expects a different outcome what would you say?

 

[Ghost1951]

it's wisdom. If someone tries to repeat the same trick (eg tariffs1930: Smoot-Hawley, President Hoover and now Trump) and expects a different outcome what would you say?

I did not recommend what Trump did, tariffing against the whole world, as far as i recall. I was explaining the motivation, that ought to be in the minds of any democratic politician; to keep in mind the needs of the domestic workforce, and to try to maintain their standard of living. Also, there are stategic issues. De-industrialusation could be a disaster.

That said, and you know my view of Trump, There is a case for barriers against China. It manipulates its currency to make its products artificially cheap and runs very out of balance trade in imported goods.

Trump's tariffs against pretty much all other partners were uncalled for.

 

[flecc]

You can not possibly look at historical events and then say, 'This happened when unconnected people did x, and they went too far, so we can not do x.' That just isn't logic.

Of course I can since it is entirely logical to note how people repeat history. That is because they are not unconnected, they are connected by their unchanging human responses to repeats of stimuli.

The right wing declare populist policies so the people vote for them, giving the right a surge in popularity. We've seen it time upon time, most recently in France, Austria, The Netherlands, Germany. Going back very much further we saw it in Spain and Italy.

Fortunately their populaces have been much closer to how that led to the entirely predictable excesses of Franco, Mussolini, Hitler and his henchmen so tend to see the dangers in time to back off.

So I can reliably judge from history.

I know you watched the Simon Reeve series on Scandinavia. I was impressed by the space those people have, how well off they were, the cultural homogeneity and trust they had both of government and one another. Then they came to southern Sweden where a very different situation was and is developing. You no doubt saw it too.

The Norwegian government have wisely taken a hard line in enforcing integration which has paid off to date. The Swedish government has been more lax by just expecting it to happen among their incredibly diverse population.

Population density and ethnic roots have little to do with integration though. London outclasses both those countries in terms of population density and diversity, yet is by far the best integrated part of the UK and I would claim better than the Scandinavian countries in those respects, not needing to enforce integration.
.