Quicken

The big problem with the union is the inequality of the constituent countries. England will always have the great majority of the population and wealth. Hence we keep getting Tory governments despite Scotland never voting for them. I characterise the UK like this: Wales was conquered, Scotland was a hostile takeover, and NI is a colony.

Don't forget Ireland was part of the UK for over a century from 1801-1922. Hopefully it won't take a war of independence this time...

Never forget that Wales voted for Brexit too. I live in Scotland and post Brexit I'm 100% pro Scottish independence. I can see why the SNP wants a ref while BJ is still PM as he's emblematic of the English Tory problem for Scotland. The vote could be tight though; project fear will be deployed. I think it would be ideal if Scottish Labour became pro-independence. I support Irish unification too. Expect that in the next 20 years.

It's a global tragedy of the commons. Can't we do better than that? Can't we be better than that?

Nope: https://www.gov.uk/tax-national-insurance-after-state-pension-age

You know what's more logical? Taking an ethical lead and stopping doing something selfish and damaging. *sigh*

I mean NI on salaries for people still working over state pension age of course. Not NI on pensions obviously.

I agree. The triple lock is the equivalent of 'the house always wins'. Not remotely sustainable. EDIT to add: Pensioners should pay national insurance too.

So what do we call this pile of awfulness? I've said previously HTB is the UK's sub-prime, so what is all this lot? sub-sub-prime, sub-prime squared, uber-sub-prime (USP), sub-prime-max (hello boeing)? I kinda like sub-prime-max as it is associated with crashing.

Yes and no. It's the sum of the impacts of each person's diet. So fossil fuel based fertilisers are a big problem, plus pesticides, antibiotics, acidification, eutrophication, fresh water. Nemecheck and Poore 2018 was a really powerful study. I read it when it came out but don't have access through the paywall now. Here's a Guardian article about it: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding-meat-and-dairy-is-single-biggest-way-to-reduce-your-impact-on-earth

It's methane not Carbon Dioxide. Humans don't breath out a significant quantity of methane, as well you know. I gave you the IEA breakdown. Farmed animals are not wildlife. Also worth noting that 1.3 billion cows weighs more than 8 billion people. As I said above, the huge damage to biodiversity inflicted by animal agriculture is the bigger issue than climate change. In addition to pasture land cleared of other animals (and often forest/jungle etc), huge areas of intensive cropland including grain, soya and Palm oil are used to feed to farmed animals. Read this: https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food

I'll agree that biodiversity and extinctions are the bigger issue when it comes to farmed ruminants (especially cows) but methane is not a neglibile problem.

No they did not. Agriculture increases the population and the scale is vast. There are well over a billion cows now, weighing in at well over half a billion tonnes. That makes them the highest biomass of any animal species now. In 2010 it was estimated there were 3.6 billion domestic ruminants vs 75 million wild. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022030210001050 Here's an IEA breakdown of global methane emissions from both natural and anthropogenic sources. Look how much bigger agriculture is than the 'other' bar, which includes all wild animals. https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/sources-of-methane-emissions

They'll follow the EU lead. They know they'll follow the EU lead, but they don't want to say they're following the EU lead.

Definition of conservatism.