grahamwalkernrg.bsky.social
Research @ VaasaETT
Previously @ Petrologica
Alum University of Essex
Views inevitably my own.
283 posts
767 followers
1,128 following
Active Commenter
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This is the canonical text on this issue en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%84n...
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Excellent quote from an unnamed ex-Tory MP in there: "The Conservative Party has a history of treating people very badly and continues to do so"!
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Anyhow, same here - the career needs tending to.
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Your contention is surely not that few people engage in the political process because they are not interested in £93k p.a.? Access to the right networks is a much bigger factor - they didn't go to the right schools or universities, they aren't in the "right" careers, their parents were not MPs etc.
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Never mind one of the 1 million people on a zero hours contract? Or would they not be quality candidates by definition?
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Cool, so what your saying is you have no evidence that "a high proportion of people are put off by the job insecurity"? Are you seriously telling me that someone on average salary wouldn't grab the chance to earn £93k for potentially five years with both hands?
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I'd rather see you evidence your statement that "only zealots and nutters" are willing to interrupt their "careers", when the average male salary is 1/3rd of base MPs' pay. 23% of MPs went to Oxbridge and 20% private school, it rather suggesting other factors are significantly more important.
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Open list voting would go quite some way to address your problems with quality, lack of MPs independence, and party control of candidates. No chance of being enacted.
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The reason I think job insecurity is irrelevant is that a large proportion of MPs are prepared to accept the supposed job insecurity and pay cuts to do the job, and most UK citizens would jump at the chance of the pay and conditions.
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The vast majority of working people in the UK would be increasing their pay and pensions drastically if they became MPs. If the existing social safety net is not enough for MPs, guess what? They can increase the social safety net for everyone, rather than just themselves.
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And I think there are at least two misconceptions here - that (primarily or only) people with "careers" are "quality" candidates, and that people with careers don't currently interrupt their careers to be MPs, whereas they manifestly do all the time.
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It's not the only way *I* am judging them - that is how the system is set up. That is literally the only actual requirement to be an MP. You have mistaken my statement of how the system functions as an endorsement.
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Then why write that people "choose MPs who are casino chips" for the party leader?
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So your argument should be with party candidate selection processes - which are often opaque and gerrymandered - rather than trying to address that through pay.
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I didn't say quality candidates weren't important, just that there is no requirement that they be any good. And in any event, like everyone else, I don't "choose" the candidates to be MPs - parties do, and most seats are safe.
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In 2010 more than half of MPs took a salary cut to do the job www.hansardsociety.org.uk/blog/the-fir...
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There is no "quality" requirement for being an MP. That is not down to pay - you get paid 3x the average male salary and a bucketload of perks, and the last PM took a huge pay cut to do the job. The only requirement is that you can win an election.
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There are many more "capable people" who didn't go to private school, didn't go to Oxbridge, and aren't in professions, who would jump at the chance to earn £93k for a few years.
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And it flatly contradicts your first response - that there is no shortage of applicants for the job. As Sir Humphrey once said, you could fill the Commons tens of times over with prospective MPs.
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I don't agree at all with the first paragraph. The professions are hugely overrepresented in parliament, working class backgrounds are few (and those from working class backgrounds would jump at the chance). The previous prime minister was a billionaire and he still went into politics.
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14 years if he had just been an MP means his pension is at least £26k p.a. (current female median income!). As he held various extra responsibilities and was a minister, it is definitely more.
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I'm lost - what safety net do you need beyond what is available to the general public, given that you have been paid a minimum of 3x the average male salary +expenses, get final salary pension, resettlement grant etc? If he can't turn the cachet of having been an MP into a job that's surely on him.
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The key to winning at both politics and elections is realizing that future opinions — "latent opinion" — is different from what we can measure about public opinion using polls _today_. Future opinion is downstream of both what leaders do *and* don't do today. The future is not exogenous
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Which, btw, also includes hydrogen boilers in homes
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This is around the same time as Greenpeace's "Efficiencity" www.liftstudios.ca/efficiencity/
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"Lol," said the scorpion. "Lmao."
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Not only the b/e price but also acreage degradation is a factor, and the changed focus from the boom years (production growth even if not profitable) to later, more majors-dominated years (make money). Even prior to the falling oil price production growth was likely to pare this year.
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*ecological
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They are a favourite of the ecoloical modernist/WePlanet crowd, naturally.
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Not a great outcome for Stubb here either, imo - just yesterday saying "Trump's losing patience with Putin, you'll see"
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I say I say I say, do you know lowering taxes might increase the revenue raised?
No but if you hum it I'll try to play along.
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It wasn't possible to do that in the first place, of course. Even if the algorithm is "only" showing you things that it thinks will lead to more advertising revenue due to being interesting to you personally, guess what? That's an editorial line! It's a thing publishers do all the time!
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Meanwhile James Lovelock (RIP) was being wheeled out as being a greenie who had had a Damascene conversion to nuclear - rather than having supported it basically all his life.
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The minister in the film delivers the immortal line "I never thought I'd say this, but come back nuclear all is forgiven"
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One of their newsletters suggested that what nuclear needed was a short film showing what a disaster it would be if the lights went out due to lack of nuclear. 6-9 months later, there was a Newsnight special with just such a film...
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The way the narrative was developed was what I focussed on, very interesting interplay between things floating around in the industry already and suggestions from the govt. The role of Bernard Ingham's Supporters of Nuclear Energy as a kind of clearing house was interesting.
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I started a PhD in 2009 on Labour's decisions to back away from its 2003 white paper and support nuclear (2004-2006). The Blair phrase in 2005 was "nuclear is back with a vengeance".
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And if it is about Bowling Alone, why is the policy prescription for that "less immigration" rather than government investment in "social glue" activities?
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It helps that the KAJ song is just much better than Vikman's
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People say it was good, but I hear it was a case of "the emperor's new clothes"
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Wording was something like: "hello i am calling about job [sic]. please add me on whatsapp" autohangup
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Sounds exactly like one I had yday.
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"Sure Jesus *said* a lot of stuff about eyes of needles and so on, but his *revealed preferences* show..."
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At least does not contradict the lobby's claim that 2/3 units that were not operating were doing so because of low prices (2 have no reason given for being out, 1 was refueling).
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Confrentes - in cold shutdown at the time of the blackout (no reason given). Shutdown due to high temperature reading in a recirculation pump while ramping up on 5th May
Trillo - refueling at the time of the blackout, so shutdown
Vandellos II - auto shutdown, running at the time of the blackout
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Also useful: the events reported to the regulator:
Almaraz - unit 2 auto-shutdown due to black out, unit 1 was already shut-down (unknown reason)
Asco - both reactors auto-shutdown. Previously (14th April) unit 1 failed a containment enclosure leak test
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This may also be useful, PWC's analysis of costs (tally's with the lobby's numbers so perhaps prepared for them?). Really does hammer home though - if you are losing money on every MWh generated, why are you running at 90% capacity factor? www.pwc.es/es/publicaci...
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Certainly the nuclear lobby has been complaining about profitability for a good long while (see the link) - and has maintained a 90% capacity factor for ages despite that. www.foronuclear.org/en/updates/n...
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Whatever the final say on how this blackout happened, on the face of it something looks to be wrong in Spain's market if the nuke fleet is generating at half power right at the moment you need frequency stabilisation. Whether the solution is price, market regs, etc. remains to be seen.