loaf

Someone has pointed out that the 'crime number' Mr Heading keeps pestering local public figures about on Twitter is most likely a Royal Mail delivery tracking code.

I think that's absolutely fair comment.

Look, I get it that you're all very attached to your quaint internal combustion engines, just bear in mind that at some point they will be thought of in the same way as those steam powered traction engines of yesteryear... Toot toot!

I would agree that it is very much about the money, in the sense that oil companies have lots of it to spend on disinformation about alternatives to petroleum. Aside from that, I'm not sure what you are objecting to. You can either believe that fossil fuels are a finite resource that is going to run out of at some point, or you don't. Your choice, but I think a clue is that we did stop making dinosaurs a while ago now.

I agree, but I think there is a wider context. Let's say you proved conclusively that EVs had no better net environmental impact as an ICE vehicle right now, the next generation EVs will be an improvement on battery efficiency, range, materials etc, and it continues. Meanwhile the "greenness" of the power source is also improving as fossil fuel reliance diminishes. It's a works in progress, and progress is being made. Meanwhile, people can get all sentimental about their petroleum engines, but at some point petroleum will become so rare and expensive that the average Joe will not be able to run an ICE engine. So hopefully by that time battery technology, generation technology and so on will be efficient, suitable and accessible for EVs to take over.

True. Comparative figures are harder to come by. Edit: Although I will say that there are fewer moving parts involved in all electric vehicles. Less to go wrong, less to manufacture, less to dispose of. Batteries apparently have a recycleable life after being used in vehicles, but I'm yet to be convinced of that being viable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isle_of_Man_to_England_Interconnector The island is a consumer of the UK National Grid. But this is rather a distraction from the original point: The cartoon is trying to suggest that centralised generation of energy is as dirty and polluting as running an ICE engine, to make ICE car owners feel better, presumably. Some of them really love that cartoon. But it's a faulty premise at best. To remove the concept from people's beloved vehicles for a moment, there are numerous reasons why we don't personally all run diesel electricity generators in our back yards rather than rely on centralised generation. Aside from efficiencies of generating at scale, there are valid issues of noise, smell, smoke and localised pollution, all similarly valid for vehicles too. Add to that the fact that it's not actually a monolithic, smoke-pumping, fossil fuel burning power station generating the electricity (as implied by the cartoon), but facts and figures available in real time show that renewables and non fossil-fuels are already doing most of the heavy lifting - and that's continuously improving. So the point (and the reason for my original reply) is that the cartoon is anything but 'so true'.

https://grid.iamkate.com/ Live UK national grid statistics. Yesterday 13.3% of the grid was powered by fossil fuels.

Resembles Steve Bannon tactics: Take literally any report that surfaces of a vehicle fire and repost it, saying it was an EV, even if it wasn't. Be relentless. Fill all forms of social media. The aim is to destroy faith in electric vehicles, increase insurance costs and eventually collapse the EV market altogether.

Scrolling through it, it’s like a modern take on the ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy’ scene in The Shining.

I didn't realise that he has an active presence on Twitter. Reading the posts on his account gives you some insight into what he does all day, every day.

Market Place

In the same vein as the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, perhaps Mr Guard could be persuaded to deliver an Isle of Man Government Annual Bollocking, listing the chores he set on previous occasions and noting "That bedroom is still a disgrace, young man."

This. Something going on about their dynamic. Like he had to prove that he'd go that far. As he said, "Love makes you do crazy things."

I did NAHT see that coming.

It's fine - Just the fact that you operate a nutters enclosure is probably something I should be aware of now. I've been a casual member of the forum since 2004 and I didn't realise. But for what it's worth, invariably a lot of people just hit the most recent threads and read the last comments.

Oh fair enough, if it's like a special penned off area. Probably needs a warning attached somewhere. I'm a bit fuzzy on the whole 'free speech' thing. I might claim that my right to free speech is denied if someone was trying to prevent me distributing leaflets to the young and vulnerable to convince them to drink brake fluid cleaner as it'll give them eternal life, but it would also be the right thing to do.

Are you up to the challenges of a psychological evaluation?

I tend to find the 'Nobody is indispensable' reaction is the one that typically occurs under these circumstances.

Were you envisaging, or hoping for, any positive outcomes from opposing the government on social media? How did you hope to see this playing out, if it were not going to end the way it did?

Am I too late for the cake puns?

Soon he can reassure himself that jail is not jail.

Shouldn't you be capslockchris?

I'm one of the few remaining people who simply were crap at school rather than it being due to some deep-seated medical condition.

I suspect that evolution, natural selection etc. seems to carry on without being significantly affected by conscious efforts to influence it. On this basis, I am not so willing to accept the belief held by some of the vegetarian fraternity, for example, which is that they think that they are furthering the evolutionary development of the species by not eating meat. I think in reality, their motives are much shorter-term - exercising control on the body, vainly wanting to be thin amongst a generally overweight population, wanting to be treated specially, and of course disliking the idea of killing fluffy things - rather than thinking they are contributing to some higher, nobler cause. However, the adoption of social behaviours to develop species is not uncommon in the animal kingdom, certainly not exclusive to humans, and I would be more likely to accept that the human species is now (consciously or otherwise) valuing the act of protecting the weaker and less physically capable amongst them, because their strengths may well lie in intellect and reasoning, and that as a social creature, these strengths can benefit the whole 'tribe'. I think that the whole genetic lottery is still going on perfectly well despite our conscious actions - we simply do not take in every day just how lucky we as individuals are to be 'the ones', to be alive. We're developing our strength of intellect in a relatively small trade-off in physical strength. Therefore, the community takes care to punish, ridicule and ostracise thuggish behaviour...