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Forlornehope

Listed below are comments made by Forlornehope between Friday, 1st May 2009 and Monday, 7th December 2009.

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Efficiently tackling inefficiency 5:21pm on 07 Dec 2009 To get a saving you need to reduce the amount that you spend either on employing people or on buying stuff. Efficiency saving sound friendly enough but unless the numbers employed by the government go down or the government is buying fewer goods and services it doesn't make any real difference. Someone somewhere has to feel the pain or nothing is really happening.
Efficiency trap 2:58pm on 07 Dec 2009 Actual savings can only be from spending less on employing people or buying fewer goods and services. When things are described as "efficiency savings" it means that output, of either goods or services, is maintained. However, the pain for either employees or suppliers is real or else there is no saving. So when the government says it's going to get efficiency savings the questions are simple:

"How much less are you spending on employing people and how much less are you spending on buying stuff?"

If they cannot answer those questions it's all the stuff that comes out the back of a bull.
A flight that almost cost me my marriage 4:24pm on 06 Dec 2009 As you point out, flying is currently a very low percentage of total emissions, about 3%. There is at least a 50% improvement in fuel efficiency over the next thirty years, it comes from improved operations (more direct routing, less time on the ground etc.), improved airframes and improved engines. Those curvy bits on the wingtips are not just there to make the new aeroplanes look pretty nor are the fancy curves on the fans of the new engines. Add to that the fact that flight testing of second generation biofuels is well advanced and the green flying-phobia looks to have less of a case. 50% improvement combined wiht 50% biofuels means that we could have four times as much flying without any increased impact or the same amount with a quarter the impact or anything in between.

BTW if you accept that the various climate models are reasonable, you will have a problem with the higher estimates of additional forcing from high level emissions. The models work pretty well without including them. You could join the climate sceptics and reject the models, otherwise you could cool off on aviation and go and insulate your loft!
Why was David Nutt sacked? 08:10am on 02 Nov 2009 There was a recent report on bullying bosses that found, not surprisingly, that they were usually aware of their incompetence and took it out on their more qualified subordinates. Now we have here an ex-postman and an Imperial College Professor. If there ever was any chance of AJ for PM this should have sunk it.
Map of the Week: How green is your valley? 4:14pm on 22 Sep 2009 Off peak electricity used to be very cheap in Scotland with very little premium on the peak rate for dual meters. This encouraged a lot more use of storage heaters than in England. It could account for some of the difference in energy consumption. With two big nuclear AGR power stations the SSEB had a mamoth base load to deal with so that they had a strong incentive to sell their nightime power.
The baroness and the illegal immigrant 12:49pm on 22 Sep 2009 If it had been anyone else in any other position, it might have been acceptable to keep them in post. She is attorney general and it was her law that she took through Parliament. For her to remain in post simply demonstrates that she is a person without any sense of honour who by that fact is not fit to hold public office.
Statistical gender bending 6:27pm on 07 Aug 2009 It is worth noting that for those under 40, single and without children, women are paid slightly more than men. This does rather demolish the argument that careers advisors are pointing girls in the wrong direction!
My shirt's hairier than yours 10:52am on 13 May 2009 A problem with the LibDem proposal is what happens if the MP loses money on the sale of the house? This is quite possible in present conditions and if the taxpayer is going to take any profit, it would only be equitable if the taxpayer took any loss. This suggestion, like much LibDem policy, has not really been thought through.
Royal Mail and HMG's creative accounting 5:56pm on 11 May 2009 In what way are public sector pension liabilities different from other future government expenditure, for example on running the NHS? It does not make sense to capitalise these expenses, so why do it for pensions? One argument is that pensions constitute contractual guarantees but tell that to those whose occupational pensions got torpedoed by Mr Brown!
Busted 10:19am on 01 May 2009 Anyone who worked in manufacturing through the last three decades will have experienced the very large gains in productivity that were obtained by "lean production". While there is always room for further improvement, there was a very big one-off gain here. Similar one-off gains were experienced when overmanned industries were privatised; a clear example is power stations that run with one third the number of staff required under the CEGB. It is often forgotten that five years after the miners' strike 80% as much coal was being mined with 20% of the number of miners. In service industries, telephone and later internet banking have delivered similar productivity gains. Unless and until such approaches are applied in the public sector the scope for further economic growth can be expected to fall well below the trend of the last decades.

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