buctootim

A lot of this discussion is pissing against the wind anyhow. At some stage soon we will need to have a much wider debate about who lives and who dies. As medical treatment advances more and more people can be kept alive for longer. That means more people kept alive to draw more pension and to still be alive to later contract a new illness that also needs to be treated. Whilst ability to treat disease increases our capacity to pay for it doesn't - so instead we just make everyone wait. All rationing by waiting does is lead to ever more people disabled by illness and claiming benefits which in itself reduces society's ability to pay for healthcare and benefits. When I worked for the NHS we experimented with QALYs - a measure to prioritise access to treatment by gauging how many more good quality extra life years a treatment would bring - but politicians bottled difficult choices then. Its bound to come around again. Countries across the globe are battling the same aging and sick population issues. The difficult choices that will throw up will make the right to die controversy pale into insignificance.

That's the most bizarre statement I've read here for ages - against stiff competition. You know its not 1967 anymore right?

Not really. The BBC and mediazone only cite numbers where the can certify a death from publicly available sources - againsta backdrop of the Kremlin doing everything they can to hide losses - including mass unmarked burials on the battlefield

The strategy for at least the past 18 months has been to extract a high price for every square Km occupied with the intention of gradually bleeding Russia out. That seems to be working. Yes Ukraine is gradually losing land, but not that much and at incredibly high cost to Russia in terms of men and materiel they cant replace at anywhere near the rate they are losing it. Economically Russia is running out of money too. With interest rates at 21% much of Russian industry cant afford their loans and people cant afford their mortgages. Tax base is down expenditure way up. The unspoken plan seems to be to get Ukraine to survive until the end of 2025, at which point Russia wont be able to sustain its war effort. It's also important to remember Ukraine hasnt even introduced conscription for 18-28 year olds yet. They have a big chunk of manpower they can call on in reserve

Ah fair enough, i read it as change. Still a flawed point though because 60% of UK electricity comes from renewables + nuclear and that figure is growing year on year by around 3%. That autocar link gives a battery decline rate of 73% of life left after 200k - which is way more than I thought it would be. That said i do think hydrogen will be the long term solution, not battery

As Lighthouse says its a nonsense point. EV battery life typically exceeds the engine life of a hydrocarbons car. The US mandates a minimum life of 100,000 miles but typical usable life is nearer 200,000 How long do batteries last in electric cars? | Autocar.

True. It's a £129 billion black hole deficit this year alone. Way bigger

How much for Agform now? Still holding out for that big bucks deal which is imminent?

Also, whilst some Britons were making money from the transatlantic trade, it was Africans who were capturing and selling the slaves. Hows that going to work

Harris has averaged a c2.5 - 3% lead over Trump for the past months but that has gradually narrowed over the past couple of weeks to 1.8% with most of the swing states polling as even. Its super tight. Interesting though in the Senate race the Democrats have started to pull away in nearly all of the swing states. It could be Trump gets elected but both the Senate and and the House are Democrat controlled and completely tie his hands.

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So you're preferring to believe the findings of one poll on one day over the far far far more accurate poll of polls aggregating literally hundreds of polls. That figures.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/us/elections/polls-president.html https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/national/

She's not losing. She is consistently ahead in the national poll of polls and crtitcally important, ahead in most of the swing states

If hundreds or thousands of them defect it could well have a domino effect on Russian troops. This just as likely to be a catalyst for defeat as it is a bolster to the front line