By: Lincoln 7 - 3rd November 2012 at 14:53
O.K. Lets throw this into the frying pan. We were promised a referendum regarding the EU. but never got it.
If we were to have been given it, how would you vote, IN, or OUT.
N/A to windfarms/ turbines, BTW.
Jim.
Lincoln .7
By: charliehunt - 3rd November 2012 at 13:20
John, We even pay V.A.T. on the shoes we wear, so even when walking we have already been taxed. Why is it that each State in the U.S. has it’s own Tax levels, when I was in C.A. the sales tax was 6%, other States were different:confused:
Jim.
Lincoln .7
State sales taxes are the equivalent of our old purchase tax. In a country the size of the US with autonomous State governance the taxes you pay will vary. Don’t forget that VAT was only introduced because it was one of the many rules of the EU Club which we had to accept when we joined. Not that we voted for it, of course….!
By: silver fox - 3rd November 2012 at 13:07
I do however agree with the tax comments…
One of the reasons why we pay high taxes of course is to help fund the Labour/EU MP’s expense accounts 😉
I take it duck houses, tennis courts, moats etc,etc are acceptable, sadly the fiddlers aren’t confined to any one or even a limited number of political factions.
The majority of politicians have never been as detached from reality as they are at the present time.
By: Lincoln 7 - 3rd November 2012 at 09:22
John, We even pay V.A.T. on the shoes we wear, so even when walking we have already been taxed. Why is it that each State in the U.S. has it’s own Tax levels, when I was in C.A. the sales tax was 6%, other States were different:confused:
Jim.
Lincoln .7
By: bazv - 3rd November 2012 at 05:53
How will taxes (and bureaucracies) solve the problem?
The trouble with the UK is their idea of solving any problem is to charge a tax.
Driving in London? Tax it.
Driving anywhere? Tax fuel as much as you can.
Flying anywhere? Tax it.
I do however agree with the tax comments…
One of the reasons why we pay high taxes of course is to help fund the Labour/EU MP’s expense accounts 😉
By: bazv - 3rd November 2012 at 05:16
Sorry John…I cannot let you get away with that unleaded gasoline comment…;)
Some extracts from the Radford website,I do not normally do long posts but it is clear that the health risks were known about in the good ole USA right from the start in 1921 😉
Leaded gasoline was discovered on Dec. 9, 1921, at the General Motors research labs in Dayton Ohio.
GM researchers tried many different additives and found quite a few that worked well. Ethyl alcohol from cellulosic materials was for many years their strong preference. “Of course” Thomas A. Midgley of GM wrote in a memo to his boss, GM research vice president Charles Kettering, alcohol was “the fuel of the future.”
. The solution was difficult to produce, explosive and quite poisonous, as GM researchers found in the winter of 1922. Even as late as the summer of 1922, Midgley and his assitant T.A. Boyd were championing alcohol fuel from vegetable sources.
GM started marketing its “Ethyl” fluid in 1923. In 1924 it joined with Standard Oil (Exxon) to form a partnership called the Ethyl Corp. Since DuPont was a one-third owner of GM at the time, the three major corporations all had a hand in the development and marketing of leaded gasoline. Other companies quickly joined in, including Andrew Mellon’s Gulf Oil Co.with an exclusive contract for Southeastern U.S. distribution of leaded gasoline. Mellon was Secretary of Treasury during this time and in charge of the Public Health Service, which was investigating leaded gasoline.
The public controversy started when about five workers at a grossly unsafe Standard Oil refinery went violently insane in 1924. Many others were also hospitalized. Public health experts, including Alice Hamilton of Harvard and Yendell Henderson of Yale, vehemently opposed the use of lead in gasoline as a menace to public health. Henderson called it “the single most important question in the field of public health that has ever faced the American public.”
In 1925 the Public Health Service convened a conference on leaded gasoline. The structure of the conference was slanted towards industry, which may have had something to do with the influence of Andrew Mellon. At the conference, Hamilton called GM vp Charles Kettering “nothing but a murderer” for distributing leaded gasoline. Lead poisoning, as Hamilton knew, had been a familiar and dreaded “occupational disease” throughout centuries of European history.
Hamilton also insisted that there were other ways to get an anti-knock (higher octane) fuel.
But even a quick glance at Chemical Abstracts would have shown the Public Health Service and the news media that GM had gone to the trouble of patenting many alternatives just in case leaded gasoline didn’t work out. Clearly, the public watchdogs were fast asleep.
. Ethyl alcohol from farm products was also a serious competitive threat in Europe until the late 1930s.
These worries were one reason why production schedules were pushed to the limit and unsafe plant conditions were allowed to exist. The haste to beat the competition contributed to the 17 deaths from tetraethyl lead in the 1920s.
As an historian looking to the implications of these events, several items cause particular concern:
First, that it was so easy for industry to distort and nearly bury the history of this environmental disaster under layers of tertiary materials like company reports and public relations memos. Only a chance release of 80 linear feet of raw, unclassified GM files in 1992 provided any primary historical documents to researchers. There are still many thousands of documents held in private that have not been made public, contrary to the assertions by the DuPont and the Ethyl Corp. *
By: J Boyle - 3rd November 2012 at 02:58
How will taxes (and bureaucracies) solve the problem?
The trouble with the UK is their idea of solving any problem is to charge a tax.
Driving in London? Tax it.
Driving anywhere? Tax fuel as much as you can.
Flying anywhere? Tax it.
But at the end of the day, the rich who can afford to pay all the fees are only slightly inconvienced…whereas the middle class and poor can’t afford to do anything.
Doesn’t seem right.
BTW: The USA has had mandatory unleaded auto fuel since 1975…the UK and EU were johnny come latelys on that.
By: Lincoln 7 - 2nd November 2012 at 21:57
John. It’s not a rant at all, I think you may have got the wrong idea of what I was saying, ie, us Brits have had taxes,placed upon us also many other things to stop our emissions,or to try and reduce them, whereby the U.S.A seemingly seems to churn out Tons each year, without anything being done to cut their emissions, however I do see your point, but unless everyone pulls together, it makes our little Island, and the efforts we are trying to make, pointless.
Jim.
Lincoln .7
By: J Boyle - 2nd November 2012 at 20:33
but why arn’t we, the E.U. banging on those Countries like the USA, (Sorry JB) who refuse to sign the Kyoto?.Lincoln .7
Every time you start a new rant, you’re “banging” ion the US…so why stop now? :rolleyes:
Obama has not mentioned Kyoto because he know the majority of people either don’t want it or are very suspicious of it because of the little discussed “fine print” or the good old “unintended consequences”. Remember, a lot of the Democrats $ and power comes from unions and he won’t get their money if they’re out of work.
BTW: On another Forom I beling to, a guy who works at Best Buy is touting their new efficeienf LED lightbulbs.
Cost? $17 each….about 10 pounds. Again, that’s great for the “green” celebrities…but what about the working man?
By: charliehunt - 2nd November 2012 at 19:39
No, Lincoln 7, he is advocating the opposite!
Death knell for wind farms: ‘Enough is Enough’ says minister
Wind farms have been “peppered” across Britain without enough consideration for the countryside and people’s homes, a senior Conservative energy minister admitted last night as he warned “enough is enough”.
By: Lincoln 7 - 2nd November 2012 at 09:02
Re Thread 32, has anyone broken down these costs yet, or able to help.
I would be more than interested to know.The reason being, that John Hays, who was, about 4 yrs ago fighting against a turbine sited about half a mile away from a house in Deeping St Nicholas, South Lincs, the owners had to listen to the noise the turbine made during the night, it caused the couple mental problems to such an extent, I beleive the couple moved out of their house. Hays fought their corner, and it was very clear he was against windfarms.
Now as Energy Minister, he is advocating more.:confused:
Jim.
Lincoln .7
By: silver fox - 1st November 2012 at 21:37
Even with the closure of deep coal mines the UK still produces 10million tons of coal mostly from open cast or open pit mines.
There are plans agreed to open an open cast mine containing 86billion tons of high grade anthracite, this is a very hard almost smokeless coal.
Surprisingly many of these sites are based on ex coal mines and the ground is being stripped away to get the coal rather than tunneling down to it, obviously this is not an option with very deep mines, but I was surprised to find that coal was still available relatively close to the surface even after years of mining.
By: charliehunt - 1st November 2012 at 19:19
At least the USA in spite of that idiot Gore, can see a bit further than its own posterior!
By: Lincoln 7 - 1st November 2012 at 19:19
I thought UK coal was not as desirable due to the large sulphur content.
I think the real concern is people’s usage patterns of energy which strongly needs looked at. We are all so used to having hot water for a shower any time of the day, or being in different rooms with lights on and TVs/computers running away – not to mention the amount of energy lost is so many homes in the UK through inadequate insulation.
It is going to take educating people of how they can reduce the energy they use, in combination with different renewable energy sources to reduce the need for fossil-fuel energy.
I think those who are unaware of how to switch lights off etc, will get a wake up call when they receive the utility bills this Winter.
Jim.
Lincoln .7
By: Lincoln 7 - 1st November 2012 at 19:11
Of course it is, but, don’t breathe a word to the general public!!:rolleyes:
Rather like ORGANIC food, how do you tell the difference?. I recon it,s just yet another way of squeezing Oranges to get the very last drop out of it,
I consider myself, an Organic Orange 😉 and I for one am blood* fed up with being squeezed.
It,s O.K. for any Government pushing the words Carbon Footprints down our throats, but why arn’t we, the E.U. banging on those Countries like the USA, (Sorry JB) who refuse to sign the Kyoto?. treaty, I wonder if signing the Treaty is part of Obamas pre election promises,:rolleyes:
Jim.
Lincoln .7
By: charliehunt - 1st November 2012 at 17:43
That is one of the draw backs with Green Energy, it’s expensive.
Of course it is, but, don’t breathe a word to the general public!!:rolleyes:
By: AlanR - 1st November 2012 at 17:31
There was a recent story in the media here about someone who put a wind generator on his property atop a buff a few miles south of where I live. A state of the art system for his home cost $87,000 (50,000 pounds).
Even with the ability to sell surplus back to the power grid, he’ll never break even in his lifetime.
That is one of the draw backs with Green Energy, it’s expensive.
You can get solar panels for electricity installed for free, but you effectively
agree to the company owning your roof for the next 25yrs. Then there are
big problems if you come to sell.
By: charliehunt - 1st November 2012 at 16:24
I can’t help on the Shale issue..
This might help.
http://oilprice.com/Energy/Natural-Gas/How-the-US-Shale-Boom-Will-Change-the-World.html
By: ThreeSpool - 1st November 2012 at 16:19
Charlie, so have we got shed loads of coal, but the mines need pumping out, and repairs to machinery, not used for years, I am sure in this day and age we could get them up and running, but as has been said we obtain supplies from Aus and other Countries.Just think of the unemployed who would probably jump at the chance of working for a decent Miners wage.
Jim
Lincoln .7
I thought UK coal was not as desirable due to the large sulphur content.
I think the real concern is people’s usage patterns of energy which strongly needs looked at. We are all so used to having hot water for a shower any time of the day, or being in different rooms with lights on and TVs/computers running away – not to mention the amount of energy lost is so many homes in the UK through inadequate insulation.
It is going to take educating people of how they can reduce the energy they use, in combination with different renewable energy sources to reduce the need for fossil-fuel energy.
By: J Boyle - 1st November 2012 at 16:10
I can’t help on the Shale issue…except that some (most) environmental groups are against it.
Also, we have a lot of people who are against coal…not just burning it here in power plants, but exporting it as well.
But I don’t hear many saying what energy forms they do approve of.
Re: wind turbines…
Based on my experiences in Texas several years ago…they were built in Germany. The heads on some of these units were the size of porta cabin.
Very clever technology, not only do they automatically point to where the wind is coming from, the pitch of the blades automatically changes to get the maximum power.
The blades are made here in the US.
Each blade was delivered to the site by one long lorry. Just the other week, I saw one on a truck heading to Montana. It was an extra-long load, so it required escort vehiles front and rear. Each turbine has three blades, so the “carbon footprint” must be huge due to delivery alone.
There are specialized trade schools for turbine maintenance and repair. A growing field.
There was a recent story in the media here about someone who put a wind generator on his property atop a buff a few miles south of where I live. A state of the art system for his home cost $87,000 (50,000 pounds).
Even with the ability to sell surplus back to the power grid, he’ll never break even in his lifetime.
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October 31, 2012 at 9:21 am