Luckily we can do both. Push for better air quality, but don’t dismiss achievements that happen in other areas at the same time.

Maybe some do, but mine just looks like this:

They are, but their stems and centre piece are plastic, which just ends up in landfill or litter. A reusable brooch is more environmentally friendly, but at least now they have paper stems and (im assuming) paper centre pieces so when they get thrown away they’re not so bad.

One thing I do find nuts is that the poppys have only just moved to paper stems. Every year they’d be busy handing these things out only for the plastic stem and centre to end up in landfill. I bought one of the reusable metal brooch versions a while ago, and just wear that each year, but it’s sad that the disposable nature of them wasn’t taken into consideration when they were designed.

Give her a medal

I have to say this is my concern as well. Deregulation rarely works well for the environment or climate because it’s shorthand for ‘letting businesses do what they want’ and businesses don’t tend to care about anything other than profit.

People have become so reactionary to LLMs and other AI stuff. It seems there’s a “omg it’s so cool everybody should use it to the max. Let’s blindly trust it!” camp and a “it’s awful and shouldn’t exist, burn it all! No algorithms or machine learning anywhere. New tech is bad!”

Both camps are just as stupid. There’s zero nuance in the discussion about this stuff, and it’s tiring.

Well said.

Sure, but the original quote was:

Everyone anywhere using one on the job should be fired

There’s no nuance there it’s just AI = bad. I agree that it’s shouldn’t, in its current form, be used as a substitute for skill in important situations. You’re totally right there.

‘Everyone anywhere’? That’s an amazingly broad statement. What’re you defining as ‘using one’? If I use ChatGPT to rewrite a paragraph, should I be fired? What about if a non native speaker uses it to remove grammatical errors from an email, should they be fired? How about using it for assisting with coding errors? Or generating draft product marketing copy? Or summarising content for third parties to make it easier to understand? Still a fireable offence? How about generating insights from data? Assistance with Roadmap prioritisation? Generating summaries of meeting notes or presentations? Helping users with learning disabilities understand complex information? Or helping them with letters, emails etc? How about if it use it to remind me of tasks? Or managing my routines?

All of them are men, thanks to titles that can be passed only to male heirs, all are white and most are over the age of 70. Of the 92 hereditary peers, 42 are Conservatives and 28 are crossbenchers.

No big loss then…

From the same study you linked:

However, if each lost quality adjusted life year is considered to be worth €22 200, the net effect is reversed to be €70 200 (€71.600 when adjusted with propensity score) per individual in favour of non-smoking.

Then there are the risks to other people from second hand smoke: https://www.nhsinform.scot/healthy-living/stopping-smoking/reasons-to-stop/dangers-of-second-hand-smoke/

Cool!

The wealth of our nation is built upon our historic ability to capture the ingenuity and industry of our people, and the willingness of many to trade risk for reward. It’s become a dirty word, but our renewal must also mean a renewal for capitalism.

In other words ‘Make us richer’. Cunts, the lot of them.

…and make sure that a green belt established in the middle of the 20th century works properly for the 21st.

I sincerely hope this bit isn’t code for “we’re going to build houses wherever the fuck we want, to hell with your biodiversity and local wildlife”.

Also a shit load more houses are only half the requirement. Those houses need to be well insulated, well built, fitted with renewable energy generation and water recycling and supported with appropriate infrastructure such as public transport and additional schools, GP surgeries etc. They also need to be fit for local purpose. Not every location needs another ‘exclusive development of 4 - 5 bedroom homes’, nor do they all need 5000 red brick cookie-cutter Barrett homes and flats.

You can’t just brand 5 acres of shit-tier housing admist a sea of concrete and tarmac and fuck-all else as a successful job done. There needs to be more thought as to how the housing will be used and how well it integrates into the local environment and infrastructure.

It’d also be great if they made at least some effort to make them even remotely pleasant places to look at/drive through/live nearby. Green spaces, trees, water, hedges, grass, greenery. These don’t only benefit wildlife they also make it nicer for people - both those living there and those living nearby. A vague attempt to match local architectural styles would help as well. Make it look like it belongs, not like someone just copy-pasted the same half-dozen house designs all across the country.

But all of these extra requirements cost money and therefore less profit for the housing developers, so I can guess the likelihood of them happening…

Good.

the chancellor, foreign secretary and health secretary all warned separately that the public has lost faith in mainstream politics and that if they fail, voters will turn toward the far-left or far-right.

Oh no, not the far-left!

Whilst any investment in green energy is to be applauded, I’m not sure why the government feels it necessary to go cap-in-hand to private business via what feels like PFI 2.0 to raise money. We’re one of the wealthiest countries in the world, the issue isn’t lack of funds it’s where those funds are accumulated. Tax the rich appropriately and we wouldn’t need to be reliant on dangling the carrot of profit in front of businesses just to help pay for our countries future.

Well, that’s a sobering read.

£66bn and counting…

Disruptive protests help activists causes:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/07/disruptive-protest-helps-not-hinders-activists-cause-experts-say