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[miauw62]

I find it interesting how I find majority of populist, right-wing party leaders just so... revolting to just look at. Forget their political agenda, when I see Geert Wilders, Marie Le Pen and now this Nigel Farage, there's just a part of me that says "man, this person looks like a douche by default".

Could be just my mind playing suggestive tricks though.

But does the sexy body of Bart De Wever give you dirty thoughts?

[Sheb]

Maggie De Block took my whole quota of physical repulsion to right-wing Flemish politicians. :p

[miauw62]

Open VLD is fairly moderate, though :v

[Sheb]

Well, OpenVLD might be, but Maggie in her enforcement of migrations rules certainly is not.

[MonkeyHead]

Had a think about this this morning... here are my musings.

For all their hot air and bluster present in the lack of a true political manifesto, the mainly ill informed electorate of the UK appear to still consider UKIP a one-issue party - that issue being to pull out of the EU, linked with their potentially xenophobic stance on immigration ("They dun took our jobs wot I didnt take cos I was happy on them there benefits!"). People are not voting for them for their policies on climate change, education or anything else. As a result, in elections that are linked to that issue (like the recent Euro elections), especially ones with low turn out, their level of support will inflate, especially by absorbing more Euro sceptic Tory voters. Come general election time, UKIP have shown themselves over the last 21 years to be out of their depth due to the broadness of the issues at hand, and their support stumbles - no doubt a hard core of supporters remain, but other voters will vote Tory/Labour/whatever based on wider issues when they may have voted for UKIP on a narrower platform. The obvious sitting duck of a target for the other parties in the general election is to focus on wider issues like the NHS, education, defence etc. where the larger or older parties actually have concrete policies that appeal to the majority of the electorate, and to avoid UKIP the one and only platform that gains them "popular" (and I use that word in a loose sense) support in narrow issue low turn out elections. Press Farage on their plans to build 3 aircraft carriers, or a payment based NHS, and avoid him bringing up the same old "lowest common denominator" drivel that panders to fairly ill informed fears. Hoist them on their own petard, to coin a phrase, instead of bashing them in to bogeymen who can play the victim - which suits them as they can pull the whole "the UK is a victim" thing. Labour has the most to win, clearly, by UKIP standing to slip Tory voters. Ironically, UKIP being on the right could force Labour back to the left, leaving the Tories in the centre.

[10ebbor10]

The cost and Co² emmisions of wind power are hidden though, mostly because it's incapable of providing power on demand. What this results in is that, because wind power doesn't cost anything to produce, they slot in at the bottom of the demand.

See, where a normal situation has this, as it's energy mix

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

or even this, if it has lots of storage

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

A renewable energy system results in this.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Some of you might not see the problem with this, but what's happening is that baseload power has to rapidly activate and deactivate based on power demand. That is not a good thing. This makes operation of those energy sources inefficient, increases pollution, and destabilizes the energy grid. Now, that is with renewables only catering for 20% of the energy produced, and, as you can see a massive amount of wind almost overpowers the grid at some point.

Which is quite bad, if it escalates, then the chances are great that within a few years, energy utilities will have to pay to get rid of their electricity on a daily basis.

A more specific example for the UK though. In order to power the UK with 100% renewables and energy security, you need wind power average energy production twice as big as the average energy consumption, and a 100% efficient storage system capable of providing peak load for more than 3 days straight. And even that gets dangerously low at times.

Well, OpenVLD might be, but Maggie in her enforcement of migrations rules certainly is not.

Rules are the rules. Sure, I know the media likes to hype a story every so often, but they always do.

[Sheb]

True enough, but there isn't nearly enough renewable power in the UK yet for it to be a problem.

As for the rules, they are open to interpretations. The rules says that refugees must prove they are at risk back home. But it's Maggie who sends people threatened by the Talibans because they don't have pictures of the people that threatened them.

[10ebbor10]

True enough, but there isn't nearly enough renewable power in the UK yet for it to be a problem.

It's not an acute problem, but it's a problem. What's point of installing a wind turbine, when the gas generator that has to spin up and down to account for the power loss, overrides both the Co² emission gain and any chance cost benefit. ()

That will be the media overhyping it. There's an entire administration behind it that determines this sort of thing, not one person. Sure, said one person has the ability to override said administration, but that's not the intention of the system.

The Emo-politics, were an entire and complex issue is reduced a single story, preferably one with a tear-jerker ending,  are a blight that has to die.

[Sheb]

Sure, but the administration gets its guidelines from the top. Maggie's priority has been to get as many people out as possible. And don't bullshit me about the media over hyping it, my mom is regularly visiting people at Steenokerzeel, and I get most of my news not from the media, but from the parliamentary questions of my Green MP.

We had Afghans getting shot days after being sent back because they were supposedly safe there.

[LordSlowpoke]

well yes, belgium has no reason to consider americans a threat while afghans do

* LordSlowpoke wiggles eyebrows

[10ebbor10]

Sure, but the administration gets its guidelines from the top. Maggie's priority has been to get as many people out as possible. And don't bullshit me about the media over hyping it, my mom is regularly visiting people at Steenokerzeel, and I get most of my news not from the media, but from the parliamentary questions of my Green MP.

We had Afghans getting shot days after being sent back because they were supposedly safe there.

Both not the most neutral sources, but anyway a chance in this matter in very unlikely. We don't have the capacity to process the refugees, we aren't going to free the money to resolve that, and pretty much every possible coalition is going to continue this approach.

[scriver]

Speaking of Roma/Romani; the candidate for Swedish Feminist Initiative, which won their first seat this year, is also going to be the first Roma in your parliament down there. Which is pretty great. And will hopefully lead to them getting at least one voice on international scale.

[Sheb]

Well, things weren't as bad under the last government. And it's not even a money problem, in many case we're pulling people that already have jobs, are self-sustaining, are paying taxes and putting them into jails for months waiting for a decision on their case.

[smjjames]

Apparently there are some Chechens among the Ukraine rebels and the Chechen leader denies sending any troops. However, given Chechenyas history, wouldn't any volunteers be going for the side fighting against the pro-russians? If they are volunteers, that's one thing, but if they were sent by the moscow backed leader, that's another. I mean, given their history, do you think volunteers would actually go for the pro-russian side?

Though from the businessweek article, it sounds more like a 'solidarity of the rebels' or 'solidarity of the underdogs' kind of thing, if they really are volunteers. Also, a cossack unit from the north Caucasus are also mentioned.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/chechnyas-leader-denies-sending-men-to-fight-with-pro-russian-rebels-in-ukraine/article18880340/

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2014-05-28/chechen-leader-says-he-sent-no-troops-to-ukraine (the actual article title is different though, but meh)

[Ukrainian Ranger]

My Chechen friend dislikes when Kadyrov guys called Chechens... As he says "They chose to be Russians so call them Russians"

Here are a video (VICE news again) featuring those guys.

Of cause those are not volunteers, those are Russian special police forces  straight from North Caucasus. Apparently they are good only to hunt badly armed insurgents, when aviation is not on their side they are not so good