41

The Environment / Re: Which scientists say we've just 18 months to "save planet from climate change"?

« on: 11/08/2019 12:23:53 »

from: alancalverd on Yesterday at 13:13:11Meanwhile, how do we go about reducing the human population to a climate-resilient level?

Through international cooperation- which you propose to reduce.

There is at present no international policy for reducing the population, and if anything the EU is concerned about falling birthrates within Europe which are bad for "the economy" - i.e. business.

I have no intention of reducing international cooperation on anything that matters. But the EU is mostly concerned with establishing rules for international competition.

The UK is well positioned to demonstrate the benefits of a reduced population. Someone has to lead by example, and I don't see the EU as being in any way relevant to this exercise.

42

The Environment / Re: Which scientists say we've just 18 months to "save planet from climate change"?

« on: 11/08/2019 12:11:51 »

As I pointed out before, you don't control immigration or migration by pissing off the folks on the other side of the border.

I agree. It's an unavoidable effect, not a cause. But reinstating controlled immigration and temporary migration based on ability and demand rather than "nationality" (including nationality purchased by such schemes as the Portuguese back door) will benefit worthy immigrants from the rest of the world and even help raise wages for Irish workers in the UK.

'

Do you pay these  workers more than you pay yourself?

Yes. I take minimum wage and a profit share, which can be zero.

Do you send your  salary out of the UK?

no

Are you paying more tax because you make more money?[

When, not "because"!

Are you actually benefiting Britain more by making use of the availability of free movement of labour?

No. The service remains the same, more money leaves the country, and there's a chance that I get a bigger profit share but the net result is a loss to Britain, including taxes not paid by, and benefits paid to, the qualified British staff I don't employ.

Good for business, bad for Britain.

43

The Environment / Re: Which scientists say we've just 18 months to "save planet from climate change"?

« on: 10/08/2019 13:33:27 »

Quote from: alancalverd on Today at 09:34:30

with the enthusiastic support of Tony Blair and every employer in the UK - massive resources of cheap skilled labour!

And finally, you realise that there's a benefit which isn't in straight cash paid to or from the EU.That's the sort of thing which costs me the price of a coffee each week. (along with freedom of trade and movement, Euratom, etc) Personally, I think it's good value.

Me too.

I can hire a Romanian consultant for the salary I would have to pay a British houseman - good for business. But he sends most of his salary back to Romania where it is spent in the Romanian economy - bad for Britain.

Polish builders arrive on Monday (£45 from Warsaw to Stansted - cheaper than the train from Leicester, but it's an Irish airline, not BA) fully trained in State technical schools, and take home a pile of cash on Friday, having  done a thoroughly professional job in my clinic. Good for business, bad for Britain, and another example of businesses and governments investing in the EU rather than just subscribing to it.

And so forth.

44

The Environment / Re: Which scientists say we've just 18 months to "save planet from climate change"?

« on: 10/08/2019 13:13:11 »

So, why do you want to leave?

So that we can establish tariffs that reduce our trade deficit with the EU and reduce the consumer cost of imports from the rest of the world; control migration and immigration (not the same thing) with a fair system based on need and  merit rather than nationality; return gradually to a simple legal system based on wrongs rather than rights; make our own rules about state ownership and subsidies; establish a Norwegian-style fishing  policy in protected waters; and eliminate an unaccountable and apparently corrupt level of nondemocratic government. For starters.   

Thanks to parliamentary gamesmanship and David Cameron's lack of a Plan B, it will take a long time to repair the damage caused by unpreparedness, but our grandchildren will be grateful.

"If you want to know what the EU is really for, look back 80 years and ask yourself why the official language of Poland is not German."

The EU was established after the wholesale destruction and Allied occupation of Germany, without which life in Poland would be intolerable. Poland was not a founding member.

Meanwhile, how do we go about reducing the human population to a climate-resilient level? Or any realistic techniques for reversing climate change? Since the half-life of atmospheric CO2 is said to be about 100 years, even halving our per capita consumption of carbon fuels won't do the trick in 12 years, never mind 18 months.

45

Just Chat! / Re: Can science prove God exists?

« on: 10/08/2019 11:49:57 »

And something has gone wrong

How could anything go wrong in the creation of an omnipotent, omniscient being who set the specification in the first place, and has the unmitigated power to put it right? 

You will be telling us next that the god who created earthquakes and congenital syphilis is just and merciful.

46

The Environment / Re: Which scientists say we've just 18 months to "save planet from climate change"?

« on: 10/08/2019 11:38:06 »

The service we buy from the EU as an organisation is not the same as the services we buy and sell to countries that are members of the EU.

which is why I have been careful to distinguish between the membership fee and the money we lose by being members of the cartel.

They won't give us anything - it's not about sentiment.

47

Physiology & Medicine / Re: Does mobile phone tower radiation pose health problems?

« on: 10/08/2019 11:28:35 »

Had this happened to the substation your father visited,

It didn't.

48

Science Experiments / Re: How can I calculate mass from a concentration/time graph?

« on: 10/08/2019 11:18:35 »

I have a graph that shows the concentration of a product increasing as a reaction takes place.

So that well be moles/liter  (concentration) on the y axis, and hours on the x-axis, and the concentration at any time will be the y  value for that time.

49

The Environment / Re: Which scientists say we've just 18 months to "save planet from climate change"?

« on: 10/08/2019 09:34:30 »

in 2004 the "other" 26 members of the EU voted to let Poland in

with the enthusiastic support of Tony Blair and every employer in the UK - massive resources of cheap skilled labour!

What so ****ing special about us?

I live here, not there. It's my money, and I'd prefer to spend it on cheaper food and goods from the rest of the world, and on staff recruited on merit, not nationality. Unfortunately all the pro-EU arguments I have ever seen, have been about sentiment.  The EU is about business, and there is no room for sentiment in business. If you want sentiment, look back 80 years and ask yourself why the official language of Poland is not German.

if you buy services, you pay to do so

The major trade deficit is in goods, not services. The service we buy from the EU is the obligation to import goods from other EU countries without tariff, to host workers from other EU countries without visa limitations, and to discriminate against the rest of the world.

50

Technology / Re: Can we use physics to detect when people look at security devices?

« on: 10/08/2019 00:16:32 »

The amazing part of the double split experiment is simply observing the experiment causes the experiment to change.

Rubbish. If you didn't observe it, how do you know what it did before you observed it?

51

Physiology & Medicine / Re: Does mobile phone tower radiation pose health problems?

« on: 10/08/2019 00:10:22 »

This has hints of a delightful urban legend.

I still have the tapes.

52

The Environment / Re: Which scientists say we've just 18 months to "save planet from climate change"?

« on: 10/08/2019 00:02:42 »

I'd prefer to reduce the population smoothly, painlessly and voluntarily, but not making babies, rather than wait for drought and starvation to do it the hard way. I think it is in chapter 1 of all the driving, sailing and flying manuals: exercise control while you have it, because the laws of physics are indifferent to your comfort and preservation.

53

The Environment / Re: Which scientists say we've just 18 months to "save planet from climate change"?

« on: 09/08/2019 23:55:00 »

For what it's worth, Poland is currently the biggest net drawer.

If I were Polish, I would be in favour of my country's continued membership of the EU. If I were Polish and working in the UK to support a family in Poland, I would be in favour of the UK remaining in the EU. But I'm not.

It's a pity that you can't see the difference between the UK's direct contribution (the membership fee) to the EU, and the UK trade deficit that results from all members exercising the privileges of that membership. 

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Intra-EU_trade_in_goods_-_recent_trends#Intra-EU_trade_in_goods_balance    has some interesting graphs (fig 4a, Tables 2,3)  which show the UK as the biggest loser in the game.

54

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Matchstick physics and central european myths

« on: 09/08/2019 23:35:30 »

Two possible explanations

1. Matches are made of dry wood, which floats. Some are waxed, so they never sink.

2. Nobody had cursed you.

If you let the match burn completely, you may end up with a carbon residue that might eventually sink, especially if you add a bit of soap to the water. Or you could use  vodka or petrol, in which case more of the matches will sink. 

55

Technology / Re: Can we use physics to detect when people look at security devices?

« on: 09/08/2019 16:28:28 »

The only way you would know that someone had perceived the device, would be to  decode their brain signals and recognise the bit that recognises the device. A PIR detector would be a lot simpler.

56

Marine Science / Re: Could Portuguese Men of war deter whales and dolphins

« on: 09/08/2019 16:21:50 »

More likely that the mammals are pursuing their usual prey, which prefers colder water. I'd be surprised if a PMOW sting penetrated dolphin skin as easily as human.

57

Physiology & Medicine / Re: Does mobile phone tower radiation pose health problems?

« on: 09/08/2019 16:15:42 »

Seems as though you have a strong case for demonstrating blind correlation, and worth investigating.

58

Physiology & Medicine / Re: Does mobile phone tower radiation pose health problems?

« on: 09/08/2019 10:38:36 »

My father was deputed to investigate the noise spectrum from a new electricity substation, in response to a barrage of complaints from the neighbours. After a week he returned with some delightful tapes of the dawn chorus and not a hint of mains hum, as the station had not yet been connected to the grid.

59

The Environment / Re: Which scientists say we've just 18 months to "save planet from climate change"?

« on: 09/08/2019 08:31:03 »

Your Brexit stupidity has cost those that live outside the UK, who draw income from the UK investments approx 30% of their income.  The pound is almost at parity with the euro £1.08 = 1€ it was trading at approx. 1.3 before Brexit. Your Brexit stupidity has raised the price of a beer for those holidaying in the EU by 30%. The cost of house purchases up by 30% .  The people deriving their income in Europe felt nothing, due to Brexit.

I find it difficult to sympathise with those who choose to live abroad and extract money from the UK, or to spend their holidays propping up other people's economies.

Unlike Her Majesty's Government, I have chosen to invest in the EU rather than pay for it, and my shares in non-UK companies are doing nicely, thank you, because they have a strong home market and governmental encouragement. 

The British obsession with house prices is one of the reasons this country is less prosperous than it should be. We spend more on housing, both as a fraction of GDP and per square meter of habitable space, than any nation other than Hong Kong. The result is a non-mobile workforce and an exceptionally limited home market for manufactured products: it's very difficult to export if you don't have a home market. Part of the problem is political and media obsession with "the economy" which includes all transactions, from drugs and prostitution to house sales and fine art auctions. "Economic growth" thus has very little to do with economic health or prosperity. A rise in house prices makes a cheap headline but damages prosperity. Decriminalising drugs and building council housing for rent would go a long way to biasing the UK economy towards matters of substance.

60

The Environment / Re: Which scientists say we've just 18 months to "save planet from climate change"?

« on: 08/08/2019 23:10:47 »

And the "big difference" is that all 3 have a negative balance of payments with the EU and are in this regard, the same.

So who is winning, if the major members of the EU are losing? Not Greece (bankrupt) nor Spain (massive unemployment) or Italy (all sorts of balance of payments problems). If everyone in the game is losing money, what's the point of a common market?
'

I guess you are seeking to avoid the obvious.

No, I just don't want to be accused of cherrypicking.

The  ONS condemned Boris for his use of a dishonestly exaggerated figure written on a bus.

It was clear to me that joining the Common Market was bad for the UK,  before Boris Johnson was born.

According to the ONS our net direct contribution to the EU central fund is £267,000,000 per week (£363,000,000 gross before rebate )(https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/governmentpublicsectorandtaxes/publicsectorfinance/articles/theukcontributiontotheeubudget/2017-10-31),  plus a net trade deficit of £1.15 bn per week (https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/CBP-7851).

It's difficult to find comparable figures for other countries but here's a quote from the most Europhilic of sources
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/apr/08/why-the-uk-trade-deficit-with-the-eu...

08/04/2018 · The deficit with Germany has increased by 5% a year, with France by 7% a year and with the rest of the EU by 11% a year.

and it's worth noting that Germany's annual export of goods to the rest of the EU is about 8 times as large as the UK's. France, about 2 x. That's what I meant by investing in the EU rather than paying for it.