“If Italy and Estonia can afford it, so can we”
Not necessarily Geoff. In Italy most benefits are very poor. Public money (ie my money and yours as taxpayers) is not a bottomless pit.
Choices have to be made. For every promise made by, say, a Socialist government, something has to be cut or some section of the country’s economy or population has to pay more. It’s important to understand what government will take away or who’s paying more when you want anything extra.
Is this true? Obviously eventually it is but I’m not sure spending more here means cutting it from there generally, doing a better job at getting in money and managing it is a good start, and something that most central governments are not great at as they tend to target only the low hanging fruit so to speak, Joe and Joanna Bloggs who pay what they should and don’t put up a fight.
Absolutely kirstea. Much better would be received if efficiency was added as well. The NHS being a perfect case in point - a bottomless pit where there is so much wastage.
It is according to this government and it’s cronies. If you put together the money embezzled from the government during the pandemic, and add to that the billions payed for overpriced and in many cases useless PPI and other services, millions of heat pumps could have been installed.
And for a bit of good news 
Offshore WIND: UK Offshore Wind Pipeline Now at 86 GW | Offshore Wind.
According to the UK chancellor, in his speech this afternoon, the nasty EU was holding back the UK government from helping people make energy efficiency savings in thier homes by making them add 5% VAT to the bills for energy efficiency work. Now the nasty EU can’t stop them, they will get rid of the 5% VAT. What the UK is offering people to encourage them to do energy efficiency work in thier homes is paltry, and nowhere near the help you can get in France.
A friend of mine runs a ‘super-insulation’ or ‘thinsulation’ manufacturing company. He worked out that the money spent on bailing out the banks over 2007-9 would have been enough to make almost every house in the UK a passive house. It’s not a question of money, but of priorities.
Money spent on insulation, switching to renewables, subsidising public transport, etc, is not current-account spending anyway - it is investment that will reduce future spending (not to mention helping to save civilisation!). As such, it is not inflationary - and therefore does not require any increase in taxation.
(I hope you don’t believe the old myth that government income and expenditure is in any way similar to household or business budgeting - it isn’t. The vast majority of all money in circulation is created out of thin air, and becomes the taxable income of many people while it circulates.)
But you also raise an ethical issue. What price civilisation? There are many contingencies where a cost/benefit approach is entirely out of place. Do you think Churchill, or Zelenskiy, faced with the prospect of invasion, should have calculated the effects on future tax levels before resisting?
Some things are simply more important than money.
iNews: Rishi Sunak cuts VAT on energy-saving materials like solar panels to zero.
Positive, of course - but modest. I noticed the UK media made a big fuss over the 5p cut in fuel duty - France just made a 15p cut! Not that I regard that as positive…
I agree Tim but most of those investors have a very limited investment plan ie let’s make as much money as we can now and help our children to inherit. Sorry guys when your grandchildren want a drink of water the biggest ingot of gold won’t be enough. The guys with the water will give you a dribble take the gold and before leaving shoot you if you’re lucky. As they would say there’s loads of mugs out there. Sorry Tim but I’m deeply pessimistic and fear a complete dystopia
The Independent: Microplastics found in human blood for first time in ‘extremely concerning’ study.
As we’ve remarked before in this thread, environmentalists are increasingly using the courts to force governments, and the EU, to keep their promises…
And another fascinating Guardian article today - making the case for energy conservation and efficiency as the top priority. Both governments and the energy industry tend to emphasise technological fixes because they are still focused on competition and growth - but in fact investment in simply doing less, and using less energy, is the best solution.
Some good news!
https://chemicalwatch.com/452084/holland-barrett-bans-oxybenzone-and-octinoxate-from-global-sunscreen-range
Like this thread Geof, not many seem interested.
It is rather like a couple of bald men in a sinking boat fighting over a comb.
PSML 
Interestingly, my daughter has just emailed me about a ‘Climate Fresk’ workshop she had this week (she’s a student at the Ecole européenne de chimie polymères et matériaux de Strasbourg). It does I think starkly illustrate how educated young people are feeling - and their frustration that many older people don’t seem very interested…
At the end we had a discussion session to speak about how we felt. As you can imagine we all felt quite down afterwards, even though I already knew the scale of the potential consequences, being confronted directly with a timeline brings a strong feeling of dread and powerlessness. I’m finding these feelings increasingly hard to ignore.
Anyway despite these emotions, I thought it was an excellent idea and taught us about climate change in an interactive way… I reckon many adults (highschool students?) would benefit from taking part. After all one of the biggest challenges now is spreading awareness amongst the general population - being part of the scientific community it’s obvious to me that we’re being constantly made aware of all these issues, this year alone I’ve had countless courses, conferences and workshops on the subject of climate change and our role in sustainable development (within the chemical industry but also in our day to day lives), but I wonder what awareness is like among those who don’t have access to all these resources. I know people who don’t see the urgency of the climate crisis and the only way I can comprehend that is because of a lack of information. I don’t see how anyone could have all these facts in front of them and still decide that we don’t need to act.
What do you think? Is the major problem lack of awareness or is human greed and selfishness to blame?
Good question, eh?
She’s interested in becoming a Fresk facilitator - I wonder what people think of it - @vero ? - it’s French but also available in English.
https://fresqueduclimat.org/memo/en/game/grid/#top=
There’s an English leaflet here:
What a good idea! I have a daughter in London working for Terracycle who shares your daughter’s concerns.