Re: OT - Ed Miliband talks out of his fucking arse

middlelight@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

Cold is a relative term. It was cold enough every day to require
*some* heating. I require hot water every day, so the central heating
boiler is run to provide that.

Cold is when you think "it's cold". Heating water for space heating when
you only want hot water is woefully inefficient.

There's a very good reason. Money. It'd be great if there *were*
better public transport, but I'm realistic enough to understand the
costs of putting it in place.
Train tracks area large investment (emphasis on the word investment) but
coach services much less so. There's no good reason why you could not
travel from your house to where you work on a bus.

There's a very good reason - there are no buses that go from where I
live to where I work. I'm not about to criss cross the Greater
Manchester area twice a day when I can drive directly to my
destination by car in a fraction of the time. To do so would be
insane.

I am not familiar with the road layout of Manchester but from what you
tell me I assume there is a ring road. No reason why there could not be
a bus going round the ring road wih additional buses taking passengers
from junctions to inner-city areas.

All are slow and impractical over any great distance. That's why
people fly. It's quick and (fairly) cheap.
Hopefully not cheap for much longer.

Hopefully you're wrong. As long as we don't do anything silly like
apply "green taxes" to airlines, it should remain affordable for the
forseeable future.

Why would that be silly? I think it's a great idea. Flying is
disgustingly cheap considering its environmental impact.

I shop once a week and *do* need a freezer. It's extremely
presumptious to think that because your lifestyle allows you the time
to make these fresh meals every day, that everyone else's does too.
It really doesn't take much time to cook. You can always leave left over
food out and eat it the next day (I do).

I *could* go through next door's bin for scraps. Doesn't mean I'm
going to. :)

You're not really making any point.

A shower a day is over the top??? It's basic bloody hygiene!
I disagree. It's unneccessary and wasteful.

Well I suppose it is if you don't mind being smelly and dirty.

I'd rather go without a bath for 3 days than triple my use of hot water.

It's not just the current government. It's *any* government. This is
what I mean about sixth former ideas. It's all very well imagining
some ideal world, where the government builds convenient,
cost-effective public transport, but this is the real world. Building
public transport costs money. Where does the government get money
from? Taxes. Taxes such as the RFL and the whopping great amounts we
motorists give them every time we fill up our cars. So you're
proposing that the government spend a lot of money on a scheme that,
if successful, will actually cut their own revenues, including the
very revenue that will be used to pay for the scheme itself. Do you
see the fundamental flaw there? If I were the Prime Minister, I
wouldn't implement such a scheme. It would be madness. You know what
I'd do instead? I'd jump on the environmental bandwagon, and make a
lot of noise about how important it was that we tackle climate change.
To show that I meant business, I'd punish those evil, polluting
drivers who refuse to stop using their cars by massively increasing
the RFL and doing nothing to stop the rise in petrol prices (and thus
my own cut of the pump takings). And while I was punishing those
drivers, I'd do absolutely *** all to provide a practical alternative
to them using their cars.
Therre you go, if you tax polluting things enough then you'll end up
with enough money to build a modern, low-energy infrastructure.

Except that *isn't* what it'll be spent on. See, you're back in sixth
form land again.

You're in pub politics land.

Just themoney the government wastes on crap (city academies, quangos, etc. etc.
etc.) is enough to make, at the least, a bloody good start.

And they aren't going to stop wasting it on that crap, because they
clearly don't see it as crap. If they did, they wouldn't spend it on
those things.

You have a point, but when certain areas of spenditure are cut to enable
spenditure in other areas, something has to take priority.

No, people need to learn that their current lifestyles are, by and
large, unsustainable and polluting. People need it drilling into their
heads that they need to changfe their habits.
But they won't change their habits. Why should they? Because you
tell them to? The average man in the street doesn't see any of this
global warming you and your mates are always going on about, so why
should he change?
Well I don't see any of this "banking crisis" and "credit crunch" that
everyone waffles on about, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

So you missed the £500bn that Brown has made available to UK banks,
and the $700bn that the US has had to pump into their financial system
to stop it grinding to a halt?

Of course I didn't miss it, but I don't see any effects of that in my
day to day life, just as you cannot see the concentration of greenhouse
gases in the atmosphere. Doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

People should change their habits because it's the right thing to do.

Sixth form.

It's a black and white issue in my eyes.

Sixth form.

Well you seem to see as a black and white issue but in the opposite
viewpoint, as you are justifying the exploitation of the planet and
cannot even accept that there's something wrong about killing animals
for human gain.

See my comments above. There's also the fact that, as I've stated
before in these threads, I believe a lot of environmentalists are
driven more by a dislike of their fellow humans than by a love of the
planet. The fact that you claim to give a special *** about the
animal kingdom says a lot. Again, it's this naive and idealistic view
of the world, where the natural world is some how intrinsically good
and "right", while the human world is wicked and "wrong". As someone
on here once pointed out, humans are not alien interlopers to the
Earth, they are *part* of the natural world, and therefore, by
extension, everything they do is part of the natural world. There
really isn't this artificial divide between the "natural" world and
the "human" world that many environmentalists would like us to
believe.
What is wrong about caring for animals? Am I somewhat flawed for doing
so?

Nothing wrong with caring for animals, but there's something a bit
warped when you place them above people. I strongly suspect that
you're one of those people who use phrases like "animals are nicer
than people".

Of course. I find it really difficult to hate an animal (I don't think I
can) but it's not hard naming a person that I hate.

I pity animals because they are victims of humans' greed and
wrongdoing.

What wrongdoing? There is no wrongdoing. Humans are using their
brains to exploit their environment for their own benefit. All
animals do that. It just so happens that humans are so far beyond
other animals in terms of their intelligence that they're able to take
this exploitation to an entirely new level.

So you think that vivisection, hunting (of all animals), knowingly
destroying animals' habitats for human gain, kids shooting air rifles at
animals etc. etc. is entirely justified because we supposedly have a
higher IQ than them? I don't think that any of those things are
particuarly intelligent.

Not to mention the fact that they are all fascinating and
beautiful.

I disagree that everything humans do is natural and therefore OK.

How can what humans do not be natural? Humans are a part of nature.

You are right, but you can't compare the total dominance of human beings
to any other animal. We've evolved to something that's just so totally
different. Name me one other species that knowingly destroys its habitat.

If that's your attitude then therefore nuclear fission is natural and OK,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor

"At the only known location, three ore deposits at Oklo in Gabon,
sixteen sites have been discovered so far at which self-sustaining
nuclear fission reactions took place approximately 1.5 billion years
ago"

Alright, I'll rephrase the question. You think that nuclear warfare is
natural and OK?

Given that this took place 1.5 billion years ago, I doubt that it was
down to us nasty, wrongdoing, un-natural humans.

as is vivisection, space travel,

Both are the result of humans understanding how the natural world
around them works, and exploiting that knowledge to their advantage.
Perfectly natural thing for any organism to do.

So you are advocating vivisection, then?

Seeing as we have figured out, to a greater or lesser extent, how the
natural world works (which is a fantastic feat, no doubt about it) don't
you think it makes more sense to use that knowledge to stop us from
fucking it up than to rape it for all its worth?

digging oil and coal out of the ground and burning it, etc...

If any other animal could figure out how to do this, they'd be doing
exactly the same. The fact that the rest of the animal kingdom is so
far behind us in evolutionary terms does not make us wrong. It just
makes us more advanced.

They don't need to dig fossil fuels out of the ground and burn it. If
they did then they wouldn't last very long, would they?
.