Philosopher

Working from home, if the job allows it, and saying no to social events if you have cold is fair enough. Masks however do have their downsides. The biggest issue is that people who are covering their faces with masks are less likely to get caught if they partake in some kind of criminal behaviour. Since they are also generally single use, they also create quite a bit of litter.

I am uncomfortable with all the lockdowns that happened in 2020 and 2021 and I do think the Covid vaccines were not great in terms of effectiveness, since they generally only reduced the severity of Covid rather than prevented you getting ill in the first place. This is not what I think most people consider a vaccine to be. However, if the vaccines were causing thousands or millions of excess deaths and evidence of it was being suppressed, surely someone on the inside by now would have likely blown the whistle on it.

Knowing his travel habits, Rishi will be advocating that everyone should have their own personal helicopter at the next election!

If you read what I wrote, I said battery storage was not the only factor in dealing with periods of low renewable generation and that it would not be enough on its own. There are also other ways of storing electricity, for example pumped storage hydroelectricity or hydrogen. Electricity imports through interconnectors I suspect will in particular will have a big role when there is more wind in neighbouring countries such as France and Norway.

I have thought about this and think there are four ways ways it will be addressed: 1) Electricity storage through large scale battery and / or pumped storage hydroelectricity. 2) Imports of electricity from places where the wind is blowing. 3) Dynamic pricing of electricity to discourage high use of electricity when there is not much wind or sunshine. This would however would be controversial so I suspect if implemented it would be aimed at industrial and commercial users rather than residential users. 4) Retaining some gas power stations that are only used in situations where options 1 to 3 are still not enough. While this would mean the grid is not completely zero emission, I suspect we could get to a situation where 80% or 90% or the time they are not used at all. The government will probably use some funny accounting trick to claim the grid is fully decarbonised.

Shouldn’t astronomers be studying the wonders of the universe rather than moaning about the names of celestial objects!

One fairly big factor that I do not think has been mentioned is the current dating situation, which for various reasons does not work as well as it seemed to do just 20 years ago for both genders. If you are not in a steady relationship, you are not likely going to have kids. Online dating apps have no real interest in matching potential partners as a successful long term match means two of the app’s users stop using the app, meaning they can no longer make money from them. Hence dating apps focus on quantity over quality, encouraging users to create very basic profiles and to swipe left or right as many times as possible. The end result is that daters go on several dates in which they no very little about the other person, resulting a string of unsuccessful dates. Increasing concerns about sexual harassment puts off many from dating offline and increasingly it is frowned upon to date others in some situations. For example, when I started work 15 years ago, dating at work was quite common, now it is rare. Plus I think there are an increasing number of both men and women who are less keen on relationships then previously.

I never said it was solely due to the poor weather. I only said it was a contributing factor, which probably impacts day trips rather overnight stays. So my guess poor weather has more of an impact on seaside resorts close to major cities such as Brighton and Blackpool. The article does also mention the poor summer weather has not helped seaside resorts Indeed I mentioned several reasons why U.K. seaside resorts may be suffering (not being to travel abroad for 2 years, poor service in many UK hospitality business, high cost of UK holidays, etc). It is likely there are a number of reasons on why seaside resorts are suffering, sure the cost of living crisis is going to be factor, but there are other reasons too.

While I am sure this is a factor for some people, I am not sure it is a big factor as it made out to be. People are still going on holiday, just a lot more of them are going overseas. It could be that overseas is cheaper though. One off day trips to the seaside in my view are very impacted by poor weather and the railway strikes. You are not likely to go to the seaside if it is raining or can’t get there. This summer, weekends in my experience have tended have particularly poor. This weekend for example is going to cool and showery in London, while most of last week was hot and sunny, a pattern that seems to been ongoing since the late June. Likewise the railway strikes are generally occurring on Saturdays.

This is something I thought about too. Many I think will try and travel to Mediterranean destinations in May, June or September in the future, but for those with school age kids, they would be limited to the May half term. I agree there are some very good hotels in the uk, but overall I would say the standard is less good than overseas. In the UK I tend to gravitate towards Premier Inns as I know they are pretty reasonable.

The Guardian is reporting that many UK seaside towns are in trouble this year: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/aug/25/usually-its-packed-in-august-uk-seaside-towns-suffer-in-cost-of-living-crisis The article mostly blames the cost of living crisis, the high cost of UK holidays and to a lesser extent, poor weather, lack of attractions and international travel reopening. My thoughts are: Cabin fever from being stuck in this country for two years. Last year many still I think played it safe and went on holiday in the UK in case travel restrictions returned. This year it was obvious most international tourist destinations would be open, so many would have been eager to get out of the UK. I think this is the biggest reason. Poor service from many UK hospitality businesses. Two years ago I did the West Highland Way in Scotland. Only two out of the five hotels had hot water in the showers, an issue I have rarely come across overseas. Most of the hotels clearly needed refurbishment. Many of the hotels were clearly short staffed and stuff like slow service or early closing of bars was common. One hotel refused to serve even coffee as they were short staffed. The article does not mention this one at all. Poor weather this summer. Obviously the weather is a lot worse that last summer. Though I do not think it has been that poor and there have certainly been worse summers in recent years. June was quite good. Railway strikes. You never know if your well laid travel plans will be thrown into chaos by a strike resulting in you having to scramble to arrange alternative transport or book an expensive additional night’s accommodation. Admittedly this one only affects those who use the railways to get to where they are going. Again the article does not mention this. Lack of attractions. In my experience the UK is actually not too bad in this respect, there usually is some castle, stately home or other attraction to visit nearby. The UK is also very good for hiking with many accessible hiking paths. There is certainly more historical stuff in the UK than the United States, Canada and Australia, though probably not as much as France and Italy. I suspect this could be more an issue for those with kids. High cost of UK holidays. This summer I was in Spain which was definitely cheaper than a comparable holiday would be in the UK. However Spain I think does have a reputation for being a cheap destination. Last summer I was in Central Europe and while cheaper than the UK, it was not much so. Go to the United States and your holiday will almost certainly be more expensive.

My guess is that pay at the top and bottom ends of the scale are rising quickly, e.g 10% or more, but pay in the middle is increasing more slowly, e.g 3% to 5%. The minimum wage increased by 9.7% in April, so that would have meant all minimum wage salaries will have gone up by at least 9.7%. But some lower end wages will have gone up more, e,g. Pret’s wages went up 19% between April 2022 and April 2023 according to the caterer: https://www.thecaterer.com/news/pret-a-manger-third-pay-rise-12-months This could be due to the labour shortage being more acute in lower end service jobs, perhaps due to a lot of overseas staff going back home as a result of Brexit and Covid At the top end, I do get the impression that salaries in banking and software engineering are going up quite a bit, though I am sure someone here is going to say that this is not the case! Finally, some unionised private sector staff do seem to have negotiated increases of 10% or more, e.g at BT, where the increase was between 6% and 16% this year: https://news.sky.com/story/bt-workers-and-union-reach-agreement-after-strikes-12757396#:~:text=From 1 April%2C pay is,than a one-off payment. However, I am not sure this is a big factor as unionised staff are not that common in the private sector now.

Central London seems to be one of the few places in the UK where property has not been good investment over the past decade. Between 2016 and 2019, Brexit significantly reduced the number of wealthy Europeans wanting to live in London. Between 2020 and 2022, living in Central London was less desirable due to Covid, hence a lot sold up and moved to the country.

This does not explain why there were five other locations in the UK that had a temperate at or above 40 C on the 19th July 2022.

Russia’s economy probably shrank by between 2% to 3% in 2022, while the IMF predicted the UK grew by 4.1% in 2022. Therefore I think it is a bit misleading to say the UK is performing worse than Russia.

On paper this flat is reasonably sized for a one bed. However looking at the photos it does look fairly cramped and definitely looks smaller than a 48.5 square metre flat should be. I think this is due to all the diagonal walls and triangular corners. While they may look pretty, from a space utilisation perspective such layouts I think are quite inefficient as most furniture is designed to fit into conventional rectangular or square rooms, meaning with such a floor plan you end up with a lot of wasted space.

Where I work in Central London, there have been quite a few pubs and eateries that have shut down over the past few months. These were a mix of chains and independents. Furthermore, there are number of vacant properties that have been vacant for several months. While there will obviously be other factors, such as the high energy bills, greedy landlords and the shift to hybrid working, I suspect the rail strikes could for many have been the final straw.

To me it varies. I am fairly sympathetic to nurses, paramedics and teachers as their wages from what I understand have fallen in real terms over the last 15 years. The government does have to these staff a decent wage, otherwise they would move to the private sector or to different industries. However I do think an increase in line or greater than inflation is not realistic due to poor state of public finances. Therefore the 6% or 7% you mention I think for these sectors is a fair offer. Railway staff, particularly train drivers I have far less sympathy for. Most of them already earn far more than average and on very good T & Cs. UK train drivers for example are by the best paid in Europe according to this article: https://www.euronews.com/travel/2022/12/23/train-strikes-these-are-the-countries-that-pay-train-drivers-the-most-and-the-least-in-eur Rail unions also seem unable to accept that things have changed in the railways in the last few years. For example they are against ticket office closures even though the vast majority of train tickets are bought online or through ticket machines. It is just not sensible to pay staff whose role is increasingly becoming redundant due to technological changes. So the railway strikes to me seem to more about greed and maintaining union power rather than genuine concerns about cost of living. Ultimately, the government does not have a bottomless pit of money. Rewarding one set of public or quasi public sector workers a large pay rise would lead to either more cuts and / or further tax increases.

I know of quite a few pubs and restaurants that have closed in Borough area of London in the last couple of years, including three within the last two months. There are also quite a few that never seem busy and I can’t see them lasting long. The only new things opening seem to be coffee shops, takeaways and these new kitchen halls. Oddly places like Pret and Starbucks don’t seem to have suffered from the shift to WFH / hybrid. With these kitchen halls, I too don’t get the appeal of them. I would much rather eat somewhere that has comfortable seating, proper cutlery and quiet enough to have a conversation, rather than sitting on a wooden bench in a noisy hall with food served on a paper plate. I think the appeal of these places must be a combination of them being cheaper than traditional restaurants and being able to cater for multiple tastes.

The Bakerloo Line was hardly the busiest tube line even before Covid. After Embankment southbound there are only three stops, so you would have expected to have emptied out by that stage. Before someone says Waterloo station is the next stop from Embankment, in the morning peak, most people would be coming from Waterloo, not going to Waterloo.

At traffic lights, which usually determine road capacity, pedal cyclists do take up a fifth of road capacity, hence why at junctions with a lot of cyclists you see loads of cyclists bunched up together at the front in the space that would otherwise be occupied by a car.

A pedal bike takes up a fifth the road space of a car.

Climate change is obviously a massive issue that needs to be rectified ASAP. However I am not sure edicts such as that people should not drive on certain days are the way to go. All this will do is alienate people and lead to the suspicion that it is being used an excuse to control people. This could backfire if the electorate vote in candidates, such as Trump who are against any climate change reduction policies. Instead I think we should be focusing on technical innovation. Already we have the means to decarbonise road transport pretty much completely. Behavioural change should be encouraged through taxation, e.g taxing highly polluting cars more, but not by forcing people to change their behaviour. People can still do what they want, they would just pay more for it if it is environmentally damaging. The additional tax revenue could, for example be used to speed up the rollout of electric charging points or to subside zero emission vehicles.

I did read somewhere that global warming was resulting the jet stream frequently shifting very far to the the south over North America, allowing cold air to frequently flood south over the North America continent. This was only really occurring in North America though. Hence severe cold spells have been common in North America but not Europe in recent years

I know there is a lot of scepticism of heat records due to the weather station being to close to this or that. However places as diverse as St James Park in Central London, Charlwood in Surrey, Wittering in Cambridgeshire and Bramham in Yorkshire all recorded temperatures of 40C or within 0.2 of 40C. They can’t all have had something their affecting their temperature record reliability. The locations where temperatures were at or very close to 40C on that day were roughly located in 50 mile west to east wide area stretching from just of south of London to North Yorkshire, which is quite a large area and suggests these records are accurate. See page 7 from this report: https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/binaries/content/assets/metofficegovuk/pdf/weather/learn-about/uk-past-events/interesting/2022/2022_03_july_heatwave_v1.pdf. As for the RAF Coningsby record, there are a lot less flight movements at an RAF base than Heathrow, which frequently records the hottest UK temperature.