11 hours ago, SteveTheElder said:

Back to EVs, where will we get all the electricity from? (rhetorical question). Only a couple of months ago there was talk of rationing supply.

A very good question!

You can "nudge" people, you can BS people, and you can flat-out lie to people, but reality is the bane of idealists.

https://archive.ph/k8Fgx

They get away with being 'registered Charities', these Think Tanks and Businesses that are influencing governments or used to influence anyone including the general public.

http://nesta.org.uk/team/ravi-gurumurthy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioural_Insights_Team

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited 25 April, 20233 yr by toot

http://current-news.co.uk/conservatives-outline-fresh-500-million-pledge-for-electric-vehicles-new-infrastructure-in-green-revolution

 

Lord David Brownlow. 

He who lent the money for the wallpaper in No.10 Downing Street.

He who helped out Prince Charles now KC3 by buying up properties.

 

Havisham Group.

http://havishamgroup.com/news/havisham-group-backs-electric-car-subscription-platform-elmo

 

http://maddyness.com/uk/2022/04/26/in-the-market-for-your-first-electric-car-get-to-know-elmo

Purple is a good colour as used by Octupus, Pink is a good colour as used by Elmo. 

 

Edited 25 April, 20233 yr by toot

38 minutes ago, toot said:

They get away with being 'registered Charities', these Think Tanks and Businesses that are influencing governments or used to influence anyone including the general public.

http://nesta.org.uk/team/ravi-gurumurthy

The people who think they know best (in this extract referred to as "the anointed") have a pattern of behaviour:

 

STAGE 1. THE “CRISIS”: Some situation exists, whose negative aspects the anointed propose to eliminate. Such a situation is routinely characterized as a “crisis,” even though all human situations have negative aspects, and even though evidence is seldom asked or given to show how the situation at hand is either uniquely bad or threatening to get worse. Sometimes the situation described as a “crisis” has in fact already been getting better for years.

 

STAGE 2. THE “SOLUTION”: Policies to end the “crisis” are advocated by the anointed, who say that these policies will lead to beneficial result A. Critics say that these policies will lead to detrimental result Z. The anointed dismiss these latter claims  as absurd and “simplistic,” if not dishonest.

 

STAGE 3. THE RESULTS: The policies are instituted and lead to detrimental result Z.

 

STAGE 4. THE RESPONSE: Those who attribute detrimental result Z to the policies instituted are dismissed as “simplistic” for ignoring the “complexities” involved, as “many factors” went into determining the outcome. The burden of proof is put on the critics to demonstrate to a certainty that these policies alone were the only possible cause of the worsening that occurred. No burden of proof whatever is put on those who had so confidently predicted improvement. Indeed, it is often asserted that things would have been even worse, were it not for the wonderful programs that mitigated the inevitable damage from other factors.

 

 

Be it climate change or problems in the Middle-East, the pattern is the same. Crisis, proposed solution, detrimental effect, excuses.

You'd think more people would have spotted the pattern. (Source of the 4 stages, Thomas Sowell's excellent book "The Vision of the Anointed". A very interesting and informative book.)

Edited 25 April, 20233 yr by EnterName
removed spurious blank lines

4 hours ago, EnterName said:

(Bold emphasis in quote added by me.)

In that case, you'll love the UK government's behavioural science unit.

https://www.bi.team/

One man's "coaxing people's action" is another man's "propaganda".

It can be benign, or it can be very damaging. I don't much like behavioural science.  I'd rather the government was honest and straightforward, rather than sneaky and subversive.

 

The UK various governments, over the last probably 50 years if one includes the phasing out of lead in petrol, have had various taxation projects to achieve objects of reducing pollutants whether it is lead, Carbon dioxide or nitrous oxide and that has been both carrot and stick it extra tax for high CO2 vehicles and incentives for EVs which do not emit CO2 or NOX (maybe more tyre dust perhaps).

 

Taxation is my field of work having worked for HMCE/HMRC and pwc and therefore interested in taxation efficiency and tax avoidance.

Is not Vehicle Excise Duty and when there was EV incentives pretty transparent ?  

Where is the UK government being sneaky and subversive ?    They do plenty of that in their political actions, voter ID for instance, but anywhere in the area of transport ?  One of the better areas I would have thought.  Do not live in London but have been fascinated to hear the vitriol against the major about ULEZ.  With figure of 10,00 death a year due to poor air quality I am amazed how some Londoner complain about the penalty driving their NOX polluting EURO5 vehicle in London.  Same for Birmingham of course and any city. 

 

34 minutes ago, lol-lol said:

 

  With figure of 10,00 death a year due to poor air quality I am amazed how some Londoner complain about the penalty driving their NOX polluting EURO5 vehicle in London.  Same for Birmingham of course and any city. 

 

 

You do realise that figure has been largely debunked now don't you?  It's not 'deaths' it's a statistical analysis with very wide confidence levels and an 'equivalence' number.

 

Winton Centre Cambridge

38 minutes ago, skomaz said:

 

You do realise that figure has been largely debunked now don't you?  It's not 'deaths' it's a statistical analysis with very wide confidence levels and an 'equivalence' number.

 

Winton Centre Cambridge

 

I had seen several articles that the figure was under question and I do like some of the other ways of putting a number on the figure like the 340,000 years of life number this study also mentions.   So whether it is 29,000 or 60,000 as also mentioned it is many thousands per year and much put down to NOX and PM 2.5 which mainly come from ICE powered vehicles.

 

It is a ball park number which these studies have generally come up with numbers in this area of several tens of thousand of lives ended and third of a million years of lives ended earlier whether that is a young child dying from an asthma attack or an elderly person losing a few years of the end of their life.

 

Despite some considerable improvement in air quality over the last few decades still a long way to go and getting ICE cars out of cities and to me preferable out of the country is a target of both local and national government in the UK.

 

4 hours ago, lol-lol said:

Where is the UK government being sneaky and subversive ?

The fact that they have a "Behavioural Science Unit", nicknamed "The Nudge Unit" is somewhat of a clue, @lol-lol.

The whole point of being sneaky and subversive is that people aren't supposed to notice what you're up to.

Sneaky: marked by stealth, furtiveness, or shiftiness

Subversive: Seeking or intended to subvert an established system or institution.

 

The job of the nudge unit is to stealthily encourage people to change their behaviour without them noticing. I'd say that is both sneaky and subversive.

30 minutes ago, EnterName said:

The job of the nudge unit is to stealthily encourage people to change their behaviour without them noticing

 

When I read that I thought that there were at least 2 on here, until I read the last bit!!!

On 25/04/2023 at 08:12, Rooted said:

http://current-news.co.uk/conservatives-outline-fresh-500-million-pledge-for-electric-vehicles-new-infrastructure-in-green-revolution

 

Lord David Brownlow. 

He who lent the money for the wallpaper in No.10 Downing Street.

He who helped out Prince Charles now KC3 by buying up properties.

 

Havisham Group.

http://havishamgroup.com/news/havisham-group-backs-electric-car-subscription-platform-elmo

 

http://maddyness.com/uk/2022/04/26/in-the-market-for-your-first-electric-car-get-to-know-elmo

Purple is a good colour as used by Octupus, Pink is a good colour as used by Elmo. 

 

About that wallpaper....

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12738715/Radio-4-Nick-Robinsons-flippant-apology-row-Boriss-non-existent-gold-wallpaper-Tories-tell-record-straight-live-air.html

The story of the money lent by Lord Brownlow is not in doubt is it regardless of what materials and contractors were used, or the interior designer?

2 hours ago, Rooted said:

The story of the money lent by Lord Brownlow is not in doubt is it regardless of what materials and contractors were used, or the interior designer?

Time will tell. It looks like that particular story has had it's time and perhaps a different and more accurate representation of what actually took place may emerge.

Or not.

OT but did the Prime Minister and wife have the No.11 flat freshened up a bit or painted / papered over at their or tax payers expense or was the last but one Prime Minister made to have it back in an acceptable condition for whoever was next going to be occupying it.

 

As to painted walls, or lined and painted and then Gold Leaf or Gold paint wall Stencilling, it is not something easy to tell what has been done just from pictures.

 

A £30,000 a year allowance.  Lovely stuff.

 

Edited 12 November, 20232 yr by Rooted

12 minutes ago, Rooted said:

OT but did the Prime Minister and wife have the No.11 flat freshened up a bit or painted / papered over at their or tax payers expense or was the last but one Prime Minister made to have it back in an acceptable condition for whoever was next going to be occupying it.

 

As to painted walls, or lined and painted and then Gold Leaf or Gold paint wall Stencilling, it is not something easy to tell what has been done just from pictures.

 

Quote

Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt later told LBC that the paper had been painted over since Johnson left Downing Street. Speaking to Andrew Marr, Hunt said: ‘It's gone! It wasn't me – it was removed before I went – but I must admit when I went in, out of curiosity, I went and had a look and it had been painted over.’

https://www.tatler.com/article/lulu-lytle-gold-wallpaper-downing-street