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thranx on 11 April 2013
MakeAmazing said:
Soleron said:
MakeAmazing said:
Soleron said:

...

I dont agree with selling power/water, but actually most of these monopolies were totally inefficient. Thats governement for you... the bigger the system the more money/red tape thats required. So making them private companies and making competition cuts costs and improves systems on the whole.

How? There is no competition for consumers in water, buses, or rail. For power, gas and telecoms, you can technically choose a supplier, but the physical pipe is the same and providers are clearly operating a cartel because prices go up in lockstep and do not fall when the wholesale price of gas/electricity/bandwidth falls. On the telecoms side, Britain is dense enough for 100Mbit fibre to be basically everywhere but the hills of Scotland, yet I am stuck with a <1Mbit connection on the top tier.

Something like mobile phones can be competitive because four independent physical networks operate and consumers have free choice which holds prices down.

I agree government monopolies are inefficient, but just putting the word private on them doesn't change that. There has to be meaningful competition between independent providers. Privatisation also makes the companies completely unaccountable - Thames Water is losing millions of gallons of water in leaks and they don't care; whereas a Government organisation could be made to change via political/media pressure.

The Coal mines, well lets be honest they are totally a waste of money. We can buy coal and get it shipped from Australia than digging up our own coal. When something is that inefficient there is no point keeping it going. Open coal mines are the most efficient, but we dont have the room over here to do that. Personally i would rather us waste that money we would spend on getting coal out of the ground on solar panels on every house.

Solar panels? In Britain? lololol. No, what we need is lots of new nuclear as a stopgap to clean nuclear fusion. Nuclear is now safe, in addition to being reliable and scalable unlike renewables.

Selling council houses actually helped house hold income and gave people more spending money - so it helped the economy, the *BIG* problem was that no one (conservatives or labour after) had considered building any more. So a bubble was created. The actual idea of people owning their own houses was fine, it was the rest of it that was the problem. In fact no goverment since the 80's has still fixed the housing issue... were still not building them in anywhere near high enough numbers.

Yep. We need to buld lots of houses and ignore planning regulations. They won't do it because house prices will fall...



I dont know why you think Solar panels are bad... there is a perception they still are... but thats like 15 years ago. Think about the tech in your mobile/computer 15 years ago and today, totally different things. Add to the face that electrical devices/bulbs are now much more efficent, we can reduce the energy we use quite easily.

Problems with solar panels in the old days was no many people were making them, and they were costly... they are really getting very efficient now, and because they are making so much of them, the price is dropping (as with all tech). Solar panels work in pretty bad light, and even if they were just for heating or power (either one is good), if we use less general power things improve. I am using gas for heating in my house, and the price just keeps going up and up.. so at some point i will get rid of it for Solar heating.. much more efficient. With gas having to be pumped in from abroad most of the time, you can guess that in the next 10-15 years the price is just going to go up and up. It's that kind of reliance we need to reduce. Solar panels wouldnt mean we dont use other energy sources but it reduces the overall need to bring in fuel/power from abroad and build lots of power stations.

And privatisation, of course there has to be some monopoly... but I have 78mb broadband now when 15 years ago I had a 48k modem. That's progress. The problem has always been a lack of direction from governement and who was going to pay for upgrading the network. Unfortunately the Gov didnt want to add £1 onto peoples bills to pay to upgrade the network, it took time and money from the monopoly to invest in it.


I did a ton of research for solar panels on if its worth it or not to get them. they just aren't cost effective yet. the only reason they are is because they are subsidised by the govenment. with out that they wouldn't be worth it. Its an industry that is being forced on us prematurly. Not to mention the main minerals used for the solar panels is mined in China in ways that are horrible for the enviroment. Solar heating is no way more effiecent than gas, and wont be for a long time. I would really like to see where you are getting you energy numbers from.



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MakeAmazing on 11 April 2013

I never said it was more efficient than gas, i said Solar panels were more efficient than the solar panels produced 10-15 years ago... if people didn't invest in this technology then it wouldn't get better. Electric Cars are a perfect example of such a case.

What i said was that I *personally* don't like gas and it being pumped in large quantities from abroad - this is bad (energy security) and believe the price will continue to rise... thus making the benefit of local energy creation much more beneficial.

You may not feel that its worth getting them, that is your prerogative, that doesn't mean taking other factors into account that *I don't* feel they are worth getting. I am certainly looking at getting Solar Panels in the next 3-5 years.



thranx on 11 April 2013
MakeAmazing said:
I never said it was more efficient than gas, i said Solar panels were more efficient than the solar panels produced 10-15 years ago... if people didn't invest in this technology then it wouldn't get better. Electric Cars are a perfect example of such a case.

What i said was that I *personally* don't like gas and it being pumped in large quantities from abroad - this is bad (energy security) and believe the price will continue to rise... thus making the benefit of local energy creation much more beneficial.

You may not feel that its worth getting them, that is your prerogative, that doesn't mean taking other factors into account that *I don't* feel they are worth getting. I am certainly looking at getting Solar Panels in the next 3-5 years.


So its better to be reliant on China for the minerals used to make solar panels? I see no different to being dependant on China than being dependant on other nations for oil.



MakeAmazing on 11 April 2013

The price of Solar panels is dropping, the price of Gas is increasing. Why... because getting gas is so much harder than getting minerals.

If we look at this in its basic form, Once i have a set of solar panels, do *I* need to get china to keep digging up the ground - no i don't. But if i had gas, guess what.. I still need to rely on other countries to pump it to me on a regular basis.



Kynes on 11 April 2013
MakeAmazing said:
The price of Solar panels is dropping, the price of Gas is increasing. Why... because getting gas is so much harder than getting minerals.

If we look at this in its basic form, Once i have a set of solar panels, do *I* need to get china to keep digging up the ground - no i don't. But if i had gas, guess what.. I still need to rely on other countries to pump it to me on a regular basis.


http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=natural-gas&months=180



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Esmicksee on 11 April 2013

I'm just glad that one-minute-silences weren't required for this weekend's footy. Whatever you thought of Thatcher, that would've turned out a farce.



thranx on 11 April 2013
MakeAmazing said:
The price of Solar panels is dropping, the price of Gas is increasing. Why... because getting gas is so much harder than getting minerals.

If we look at this in its basic form, Once i have a set of solar panels, do *I* need to get china to keep digging up the ground - no i don't. But if i had gas, guess what.. I still need to rely on other countries to pump it to me on a regular basis.


Great for you, but the country to be totaly dependant on one country for its energy needs is not energy security, its a step back. China will be using all of their minerals for their own gains, they aren't stupid. there is a limited supply, they currently control it, and switching to relying on them is a step back in energy security. Right now the best route to go is nuclear power. Its safe, we have our own source of minerals, it can actually get us off of gasoline.



MakeAmazing on 11 April 2013

China needs to export... thats how they've managed to keep their economy going the last 10+? years. Can the whole world continue to dig up the ground for an indefinite period of time... of course not, its going to hit critical mass at some point... maybe not today, 15, 50? 100 years... who knows. You know what, I cannot do anything about that, but what i can do is try to make my own little bit better... and not rely on future issues.

Where did i say that nuclear wasn't an option? Where did i say that we shouldn't use our own resources where possible. Where did i say that we shouldn't try tidal or thermal energy... i didn't, because generalised statements shouldn't bloody need a thesis and me explaining everything...lol.

We should be using all these things to reduce the amount of energy we need, reducing our reliance on other people. The UK has already started this by land/sea wind farms (which were not designed originally in the UK and I am sure the source of minerals that made them were not from Britain either)... USA (so have others) has created a massive solar array in the desert... strange that governments are doing this and spending billions to do this....

Using the term Gasoline would suggest you are from the USA.. where you have a lot more resources to call from than we do in the UK, so its not really a fair assessment of the situation in the uk.



MikeRox on 11 April 2013

Politics doesn't belong in football. Especially such polarising politics. Football is overly divisive as it is. That would just have been an excuse for riots.



RIP Dad 25/11/51 - 13/12/13. You will be missed but never forgotten.

MikeRox on 11 April 2013
slowmo said:
MikeRox said:
MakeAmazing said:

I dont agree with selling power/water, but actually most of these monopolies were totally inefficient. Thats governement for you... the bigger the system the more money/red tape thats required. So making them private companies and making competition cuts costs and improves systems on the whole.

The Coal mines, well lets be honest they are totally a waste of money. We can buy coal and get it shipped from Australia than digging up our own coal. When something is that inefficient there is no point keeping it going. Open coal mines are the most efficient, but we dont have the room over here to do that. Personally i would rather us waste that money we would spend on getting coal out of the ground on solar panels on every house.

Selling council houses actually helped house hold income and gave people more spending money - so it helped the economy, the *BIG* problem was that no one (conservatives or labour after) had considered building any more. So a bubble was created. The actual idea of people owning their own houses was fine, it was the rest of it that was the problem. In fact no goverment since the 80's has still fixed the housing issue... were still not building them in anywhere near high enough numbers.

 

The problem we have right now, is Labour, Conservatives and Lib Dems are all pretty much reading from the same rhetoric, just worded/phrased differently. There is no big ideas from any of them to actually fix our current economy. Margaret Thatcher had these ideas, she implemented them. It worked spectacularly (hence unemployment turned a corner, people in general (looking at the nation as a whole) etc became better off. There were no constant rolling black outs with power. Rubbish was collected (in the 70s it was left in the street). Most of the haters, simply don't understand the reality of what life was like in Britain in the late 70s, like me, they hadn't been born at that point. It improved for the vast majority of people. Unlike the idiots posting hate on Facebook etc however, I've actually studied our history a bit more and have concluded I'm so glad I was born in 1983!

However, the communities and industries she devestated, took an utter hammering and it's easy to see why they have and never will forgive her.

Our economy right now is heading down a similar path and if we carry on having the lame duck career politicians running our country (be it Labour/Lib Dem or Tory) fiddling with little things while Rome is burning, only a figure as divisive as Thatcher would be able to bring anything back from the brink.

I disagree with a lot of the things she has done, however nobody has bothered to turn any of this around. You'd think she was the last politician in power from the way idiots (yes, they are idiots) blame her for current issues. We've had 5 general elections since she was in power. Warning signs for things like Housing/the upcoming energy crisis/Financial crash [more a result of Blair/Brown's continued relaxation of financial regulations] etc have all been around for over a decade. They chose not to act. Can't blame Thatcher for that. What was right for the country in the 80s wasn't still right in the mid 90s and even less so in the mid 00s.


A lot of heavy engineering industry has never recovered from her policies and the wide spread privatization has resulted in more expensive and poorer services.  The point being, you couldn't undo what she did, too much changed too quickly without any understanding of the ramifications.  As you rightly say, others have made mistakes since but you don't seem to have any issue planting blame at their feet it seems while expecting people to turn a blind eye to what Thatchers government got very very wrong.  The only idiots are those pretending events of the past didn't happen.  I heard a fine upstanding Tory this morning state that mining was done because we were running out of coal.  That of course is a lie they have tried to perpetuate to hide the fact they mistreated so many workers.  


I think the MyVoice in today's I sums a lot of it up perfectly for me:

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/grace-dent-thatchers-children-we-may-be-but-these-death-parties-are-just-childish-8567288.html

Some key excerpts:

I also question how, in 2013, one female with power during the 1980s appears to now be carrying the can for thousands of decisions made by thousands of men. 

Obviously, if you are genuinely an ex-miner or the family of one, the thought of you raising a glass to the end of a very painful era is wholly understandable. I wish you well. The truth is, of course, there is no end to this era. We’re almost precisely in the same state, government-wise, as we were. So, on the other hand, if you’re 25 and have the time and the gumption to stand about in Brixton waving a bottle of prosecco, your time could be used more profitably by doing actual work in politics. The left needs passionate young blood right now. And if you’re still so very angry about milk being snatched in the 1970s – well, believe me, schoolchildren are starving right now and this ire could be used to get milk reinstated.

In fact if you’re truly so angry about Thatcher’s legacy you might have noticed there isn’t time for any parties. Celebrating death seems to me rather childish, when there’s adult work to be done.



RIP Dad 25/11/51 - 13/12/13. You will be missed but never forgotten.