I don't think they care. They are chasing the higher profit margins that come with selling "premium" models and sacrificing the budget market to the chinese.
Another point about the id range; they rushed it out with half baked software and UX. They probably resolved most of this but it's disturbing that they would do it in the first place.
Finally how much cheaper is electricity? Since 2020 the prices have more then doubled and the prices of charging in service stations are huge. I'm not sure that in the future private vehicles will be affordable as they are today.
> They are chasing the higher profit margins that come with selling "premium" models and sacrificing the budget market to the chinese.
Well, also, they've been increasingly pushing cheap stuff out of the VW brand over the last decade or so. I'd suspect that, when the dust settles, they'll have something around the 20k mark, but it'll be Skoda or SEAT, not VW.
> Finally how much cheaper is electricity? Since 2020 the prices have more than doubled and the prices of charging in service stations are huge.
This may be a regional-differences thing (in particular, I bet it differs at least in timing based on whether you're in a mostly-wind country or a mostly-solar country), but at least in Ireland you can sign up to an electricity plan that gives you electricity for like 8 cent/kWh at 02:00-04:00 (vs ~30c at peak times and ~15c at night); this is explicitly marketed at electric car users. Here's a fairly typical example; note that it actually has EV in the name (though it doesn't actually require one or anything). https://www.electricireland.ie/residential/electricity-and-g...
Unfortunately VW is the only brand of the above they bring to the US. On this side of the pond we don't get the option to buy those others. (unless you import it yourself, but you have to be rich to pay all the costs - last I heard you would have to import 10 for crash testing, and I don't know what else is needed)
Yep this. The EU is one of the champions on regulatory self-owns/own-goals like these by pushing legislation that sounds good on the surface without too much though, but ends up having worse send and third order effects.
Examples like:
Giving preference to diesel vehicles because they produced less C02 than gasoline cars, while ignoring the much worse NOx and particulate for human respiratory heath that diesel engines produce(possible lobby from EU car brands involved).
Denuclearization, because nuclear is scary and dangerous, that pushed energy prices up and use of coal which killed more people via respiratory issues than Chernobyl and Fukushima (possible lobby from Russian oil and gas involved)
Banning ICE cars prematurely before the market, charging infrastructure and consumer demand can catch up on its own, will have similar negative effects.
Good only if public transport gets significantly more coverage end frequency, otherwise more working class people get financially wrecked. Not everyone lives in Amsterdam, Vienna, Berlin or London to not need a car.
And who do you think is gonna work on that? Because politicians aren't gonna start building trains for you where you live, so you're left to fix your own situation by driving a car to work since your boss isn't gonna move his company where you live so you can walk/bike there.
>Even if you love driving eventually you will get old and be unable to drive safely.
Where do you see me saying anything about liking driving? I also don't like brushing my teeth but I still do it because it's a necessity just like driving is for a lot of people in smaller and highly spread out cities where frequent subways/trains are not a thing.
Sure, we can all try to move to big cities with top public transport where you don't need a car, but those cities already have a housing shortage and it's only gonna get worse.
Politicians do what they think voters want them to do. Thus talk to your neighbors about this and point out that they could have good transit service (if you live in the US you might be the only neighborhood in your state, but you can point to other countries). Write letters to your politicians. Attend community meetings. Make sure you build bridges with conservatives - there are many conservatives pro transit messages but nobody knows them. Be careful about bridges with liberals who don't care about transit except as a way to do something else they want (since this results in bad transit which gives those who are against transit another "it can't work here" project to point to).
In the case of our experimental reactors, a large part as I understand it is that they were fooling around in the 60s. Thus a lot of "meh just put it over there" scenarios and such, without much consideration of the consequences.
Another point is that Norway has no way to process the leftover materials, and currently nowhere to store the processed materials.
So we need to ship the highly radioactive stuff abroad, and build a storage facility for when it's processed.
>This meant Ford could purchase parts and materials in large quantities at better prices and schedule regular deliveries, ensuring a steady, reliable delivery of material, which allowed it to maintain just a 10-day supply of parts on hand.
And I thought it was Toyota which pioneered the 'just in time' method.
It's sadly symbolic of the current political direction of the UK. It's probably not too important either way, but the chagos island deal is one of the most one sided I have ever seen. On a darker note the UK was unable to protect the people of Hong Kong when it mattered in another symbol of it's decline. At least they had enough courage and strength to support Ukraine in the early days of the war when nobody else would. Boris Johnson for all his other faults deserves full credit for that
No, it’s not symbolic of anything. The reality is that the UK has long been relegated to the status of a non-world power, but still acts as if it is one by clinging onto its colonial past.
This reminds me of an interview with the CCP spokesperson from last year when asked about how China sees the UK (timestamped): https://youtu.be/8jZ0KTRUgpU?t=240
you'd be naive to believe anyone saying anything like this. in fact if a speaker with vested interests feels the need to say something like this, then more than likely the reverse is true. the UK often tiptoes where it should stride, and it's in China's interest to keep it that way. it's obviously not a super power and hasn't been since WW2--or Suez depending on how you look at it--but it's still the world's sixth largest economy, has nukes, and has masses of soft and hard power that other powers would prefer that it doesn't make use of
They mostly don’t have a seat because they don’t actually want one - and China would get nervous. it pays better and is more stable for them to be the outsider.
The UK offered residence with a path to citizenship for all BNO holders in Hong Kong, which was pretty much the limits of the UK's power. What are we going to do? Invade Hong Kong? Hold China over a barrel by refusing to sell whatever it is we sell to China (Scotch whisky?)
As for the Chagos islands, it's by far the best thing to get rid of them. There's no value at all and a lot of trouble keeping them.
I heard a Hong Kong national argue that that the end of the agreement should have seen Hong Kong go back to Taiwan, not China, because the initial agreement wasn’t made with the CCP and the Taiwanese government is closer to being the natural successor.
I can only begin to imagine the shit storm this would have caused.
> In a similar vein, Russia should never have got USSR's UN security council seat.
Now that's an interesting counterfactual. The legal case was weak, and certainly they didn't have to on account of Russia's strength. Other than nukes, which a few non-SC members have, a lot of mostly empty land area and a space programme, Russia's credentials as a superpower aren't great when it's not the same country as Ukraine and central Asia and doesn't also hold sway over Warsaw Pact countries. Not sure China necessarily saw them as a friendly counterweight to the West then either. On the other hand, they had the other CIS states all insisting Russia was the true continuation of the USSR, no objections and they probably thought that it would help Russia become friends. Does the world look vastly different if Russia goes through an application process to rejoin the UN and doesn't get a seat on the Security Council? Perhaps not, but I'm sure Mearsheimer et al would explain that every act of violence Russia undertook afterwards was a natural response to it...
The Chagos Islands are very valuable as an unsinkable, static aircraft carrier in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Obviously valuable to a nation with the capability to actually support and operate such an aircraft carrier.
Last time I checked, most countries today, aside from Russia, aren't in the business of invading other countries and expanding territory or forming colonies. The UK will be just fine - it's doing as much as any other western country to keep it's relevance.
I’m unfamiliar, what’s the trouble in keeping them? I thought they’d long ago evicted the natives, and more or less handed the islands over to the Americans—does this move relieve them of either of those headaches?
Is the idea that Chagossian repatriation now becomes a Mauritian problem? Had the British been taking that problem particularly seriously?
Or more to do with the British not really wanting to be caught between the Americans and increasingly assertive regional powers who may be annoyed by the Americans’ stronghold there?
It's a constant source of legal action and negative news. There's not any strategic need for the UK to keep an island in the Indian Ocean. Might as well get rid of the whole mess for someone else to sort out.
I'm sure that showing ourselves as happy to be bullied into paying to give up territory by legal action and negative news will in no way give anyone else ideas about what might be a good way to get stuff they want from us
I don't agree. The UK can still accomplish great things if has the political will, but each time they concede they lose more and more ground. Could they have done more to protect HK? perhaps but they didn't try and now we'll never know.
Again the chagos islands, I know very little about them, but I understand that the islanders themselves hate the deal. And the UK is offering a whole lot of money to keep the military bases they had for free. You can say it was a matter of international law but Mauritius claim to the island is laughable, they are more than 1000 miles away. Also the way the deal was presented as a step away from colonialism etc just feels wrong. Timid apologetics isn't a good way to advance the UKs interest, nor is it helpful for the rest of the world for the UK to be weak and ineffective. Just look at how they helped Ukraine. Again the politicians have no will or national pride to stand up for the UKs interests and it's a shame.
Do we know that? Presumably there were negotiations. Normally both parties in a negotiation start at extreme opposites and make their way somewhere in the middle. Obviously we don’t/won’t know every detail but I don’t know you can say they didn’t try. Simple reality is that the UK wasn’t holding a lot of cards in that negotiation.
How would the UK have kept Hong Kong if China didn't want them to? Would an invasion have been better for the people of Hong Kong? How would the UK have won that battle from that far away?
They could have done quite a lot to piss of the Chinese while still honoring the treaty. The lease was only for the New Territories, but they gave all of HK back. Or they could have tried to give it to the government in Taiwan.
Whether that would have protected the people of Hong Kong is another matter. I think at the time people were still optimistic about the direction China was taking and they might have thought China would be a democracy by 2047.
If you think the UK gov’t was in any position to piss China off then (or now!) without it costing them and anyone else involved far more than it’s worth, I don’t know what to say.
It’s honestly amazing that China didn’t apply more ‘direct’ pressure to get HK bad sooner. There is nothing the UK likely would have done about it. Bad for business I guess? Macau transferred over around the same time.
The Qing dynasty ‘remnants’ in Taiwan would have just been steamrolled if they’d gone anywhere near it. And not like there was any real cultural reason why HK’ers would accept them anyway, or that the Qing were well loved. CCP steamrolled them in mainland China like they did because they were, by all accounts, terrible.
>If you think the UK gov’t was in any position to piss China off then (or now!) without it costing them and anyone else involved far more than it’s worth, I don’t know what to say.
Oh no, I definitely don't think that.
>It’s honestly amazing that China didn’t apply more ‘direct’ pressure to get HK bad sooner. There is nothing the UK likely would have done about it. Bad for business I guess? Macau transferred over around the same time.
The 80-90's were a bit too early to take such a risk I think, now they wouldn't take such a deal. The British likely got the best deal they could get.
>The Qing dynasty ‘remnants’ in Taiwan would have just been steamrolled if they’d gone anywhere near it. And not like there was any real cultural reason why HK’ers would accept them anyway, or that the Qing were well loved. CCP steamrolled them in mainland China like they did because they were, by all accounts, terrible.
The Republic of China government is no more (or less) a Qing dynasty remnant than the CCP is. They were indeed terrible, but that's a long time a go, most people involved are dead by now and the country has changed a lot. The CCP on the other hand is going back to the Mao era.
The civil war took two decades, in which the Kuomintang nearly defeated the Communists and had to fight off the Japanese while the Communists got bankrolled by the Soviets. I'd hardly call that steamrolled.
They might mean “retaliate to the violation of the treaty they signed”. Hong Kong was supposed to get fifty years of autonomy; the National Security Law ended that prematurely.
The UK long ago lost any ability to meaningfully enforce those terms. Or do you expect them to somehow start torpedoing Chinese boats in the Straight or something to make China pay?
As to how they think that has anything to do with their points, it doesn’t of course - and the UK agreed, which is why they left. Also, because it’s not like the UK had any other choice.
Not only were the PLA and CCP massively popular because of the insane corruption and hyperinflation under the Nationalists, the ROC imposed (at the time), the longest martial law in human history [1]
Taiwan is democratic today, because of transitional justice, but at the time when the PRC succeeded the ROC in China, the nationalists led by Chiang were as dictatorial as you can get
The UK had no ready means to replace their (far more significant than anyone expected) losses, and were at the very far end of their logistics chain. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falklands_War]. Which for the UK is crazy embarrassing. ‘Sun Never Sets on The British Empire’ and all.
They lost 6 ships (including 2 destroyers and 2 frigates), 24 helicopters, and 10 fighters + 255 KIA in the debacle. If the french hadn’t disabled those missiles, it would have been an even bigger mess. Do you think the UK gov’t wants to admit they got saved by the French?
If Argentina had their act even a little more together, or had even a little more commitment, there is nothing the UK could have done about it - except maybe nuke Buenos Aires. Which would probably have been a step too far, even for Thatcher.
Argentina was expecting zero resistance and got embarrassed they lost ships and soldiers too, and pulled out because it was making the Argentinian gov’t look bad.
But it was also really embarrassing for the UK. They had more losses there than they did fighting the Gulf War alongside the US.
> Do you think citizens of Hong Kong would choose the Chinese rule of today, or go back to British rule if they could?
I think the people that lived there in 1997 would absolutely want to go back to British rule. But you have to remember that it's been nearly 30 years since it went to Chinese rule. All the young people there prefer Chinese rule, because they grew up with schools teaching them that the British were bad and the Chinese were good.
And at the same time, the most pro-British people left, either going to the USA or Canada, or actually taking advantage of the UKs right-to-return programs and going to the UK itself.
So if you asked the people who lived there today, they majority say they prefer Chinese rule.
My prediction is that they will no longer operate as an SEZ within the decade and will be folded fully into China.
That was over a decade ago. There is almost an entire generation that has come up since then, being told China is good and British is bad. And in the meantime China made protesting illegal, and now rounds up and ships off anyone who protests.
However what that shows is that the majority of adults in HK (74%) feel an attachment to China, and in the meantime China is making it illegal to disagree with them.
>> Hong Kongers ages 35 and older are more likely than their younger counterparts to feel very close to China.
> That's the exact opposite of what you claim.
No, it's not. What I said was young people have been growing up with propaganda, and of the people who were there for the changeover and remember it (people over 35), the ones who don't like China have left the country because they could. The ones under 35 (well technically 28) don't have that option, because you had to be born before the changeover to get the British citizenship, which is what lets you easily move to Canada, Australia, and lots of other places.
Which would mean that those over 35 that are still there are the ones that were already pro-China. So that tracks with the data.
In other words, China is indoctrinating the youth and the people who have to option to leave and hate China are leaving, so only the people that love China or were indoctrinated by it are left behind.
That's a possible explanation, but I'm not completely convinced it is without numbers. Maybe it's those under 35 who don't remember the bad of the British rule?
But even then, less than 50% of people under 35 call themselves Chinese (not even both Hong Konger and Chinese). And half of the adults call China a major threat, 22% a minor threat. Those are pretty bad numbers for indoctrination.
Do you think the subjects of British colonies ever had much of a say in the matter?
If they really really wanted too, they could have tried to go the USA route and kick both parties out and be independent. But there is approximately zero chance they would have succeeded, eh?
Are you aware that is an impossible situation in the UK and that you should never listen to journalists or economists on this topic. They haven’t a clue what they are talking about.
Look at the one month Treasury bill to see the actual situation.
I don't know how much I trust bond buyers and other "Market participants" to have a meaningful long-term view of a financial position with the many destabilising factors we are seeing (Social, Climate, etc..). They are accurate until they aren't.
Maybe 20 years from now, you will be on a resort laughing at the treasury bill rates of 2025 and compare their accuracy to pets.com.
They are having a meaningful view that is misinterpreted deliberately by those with agendas - either anti government agendas or more free money agendas.
Rising rates at long maturities is a signal of uncertainty. The market is wanting shorter maturities. So stop issuing the long stuff the market doesn’t want and issue the shorter stuff it does want. Even to the point of leaving all of it on overnight until the dust settles
I know and it's a crying shame, we should be doing everything we can to encourage innovation and growth, not finding new ways to tax businesses and the people who run them. The conservatives kind of gutted public services, but the governments priority atm should really be on increasing prosperity. I can only think of one recent prime minister who had that vision and the less said about her the better.
If you fully understand the disbelief, you'd understand why you, being the one advancing the claim, should provide the source(s) you are using for your Bayesian priors so that, assuming those information sources are of sufficient quality, we can also have the benefit of your knowledge. Until then, it is only rational that people reject your claim.
I'm not sure what all that sophistry is about seeing as this is easily available information that anyone can find out about with literally 2 seconds of googling. Anyway heres a report from the bbc https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2r2ejlvm1o .
No one cares about "fascism" or "communism"; these labels distract from the root of the problem: authoritarianism. Mind you, without excessive power and authority, neither hardcore fascists nor hardcore communists can do that much.
At this stage communism has been tried and failed so many times that it's silly to conclude that it isn't inherently evil. It's just hubris to think you could do it better yourself.
So he's taking the War on Drugs to the cartels. He looks to be really serious about this. Also he's undermining a dictator who's hated by most of his country. Those are supposed to be good things unless I'm missing something.
Not on the level of responding to fith generation fighter jets. Most of their advances are in quadcopter technology. They both started with ww2 tactics. Its not surprising that they would take advantage of the low hanging fruits of 75 years of progress. If anything it's shocking how little both sides have changed fundamental tactics like not using meatwaves, which went out of fashion in ww1.
WW2 planes never suffered from confused sensors bringing the plane down and they were much much cheaper and effective. Look at the kill rate of the spitfire. Even heavy bombers had a decent chance of bringing down fighters.
They had some pretty advanced anti aircraft systems. Also they are invisible to radar so they were truly surprised attacks coming out of the blue. So yes, it would be.
They said the same thing about the F-117 in 1999. It was shot down by a Soviet era AA. It was said once, "Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed". The same applies here. Comparing bombing Iran to a conflict with China is delusional, put plainly the capabilities of the aircraft have never actually been tested against a competent peer - when it actually matters.
That F-117 was because it was flying every day for months on the same route at the same time and they lucked out with radar catching the plane during the couple seconds it's bomb doors were open.
You're missing the point entirely. The adversary in 1999 was not remotely near peer. So say arrogance there costs you only one plane, which nonetheless becomes infamous as a cautionary tale about superpower hubris. The same against China will be far more fatal. Also, fwiw conflict with China is routinely simulated by American war planners, and to put it plainly there is no longer any plausible scenario where America "wins handily" in the Taiwan strait. Your suggestion that this is even possible is therefore vaguely amusing. Maybe also look to the past decades of American war fighting. When was the last time we felt like we outright "won" a war? When against a peer or near peer? Mission accomplished?
Another point about the id range; they rushed it out with half baked software and UX. They probably resolved most of this but it's disturbing that they would do it in the first place.
Finally how much cheaper is electricity? Since 2020 the prices have more then doubled and the prices of charging in service stations are huge. I'm not sure that in the future private vehicles will be affordable as they are today.
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