Recent content by andrewgs

A connection from Coventry to HS2 Interchange to send the WCML fasts into Curzon Street is an alternative to four tracking.

There's also the HVDC cables between Scotland and England to bypass grid constraints, the first targetted for 2029 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Green_Links Many of the batteries being built atm are in Scotland. I presume that's to store the curtailed wind energy and discharge it when...

Relative poverty is defined as 60% of the median national household disposable income. It cannot drop in the way you describe. Child poverty rates have not dropped in the last decade. Chart shows relative child poverty rates after deducting housing costs hovering around 30%...

Low fertility has benefits in the short term (lower child benefits and school costs) but significant effects in the long term as there's fewer workers. Politicians elected on 5 year cycles have no incentive to address this within their term. The difficulty labour had with the winter fuel...

This was true when the fertility rate was near replacement levels. However the TFR has fallen from a peak of 1.94 in 2010 to 1.39 in 2025, -28%, so the population pyramid is becoming smaller at bottom due to fewer births, in addition to getting larger at the top. Outside of immigration, the...

One of the good things about fuel duty is it makes driving slower or more efficiently cheaper. Changing to per mile loses that.

It depends how it's sold. If it's revenue neutral there's a lot of people who don't drive at peak times and would end up much better off. And you'd have the benefits of reduced congestion during peak hours! If you could add location too you could really use pricing to reduce congestion. That's...

In the near future schools will need their boilers replaced with heat pumps anyway. At which point I can see most going A2A as you don't need much hot water in most buildings, only for sinks in toilets. Potentially a better use of government funds than the residential grant. Buy the largest...

It's worth interogating those figures a bit, from your article: This article has a little more information https://www.transportxtra.com/publications/transit/news/81079/hampshire-s-believ-to-roll-out-chargers/ It is interesting they've gone with 22 kW chargers rather than 7 kW. This feels a...

In the Netherlands: Translated https://haarlemmermeergemeente.nl/elektrische-auto-opladen

If you're able to charge at home, EVs win out on convience and cost to the extent that it seems crazy not to have an EV, hence my recommendation. Other situations as you're all describing are neutral or worse in cost and/or convience compared to an ICE so I don't recommend. I agree these...

I presume there's similar profit margins on ICEs to EVs so this doesn't make so much sense to me. I saw an arguement that this is in response to Chinese EVs as they're more competitively priced than those made here. Do those friends all have access to home charging? I wouldn't recommend one...

Those roads are not low density, they're 10-15k people / sq km. It's decieving, there's little space dedicated to parking and many have loft conversions. For comparison the tower blocks on Hurst St are 17k p/sq km as they've a load of green space around. Some of the nearby roads, eg Brantwood...

There's also the option to use a battery, charge overnight and use resistive or infrared heating. At current electric off peak rates of 8p/kWh and peak rates of 31p/kWh thats similar to a heat pump operating at a COP a little below 4 after battery losses. The installation cost is lower...

The consulation on this closes today at 23:45 https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/national-planning-policy-framework-proposed-reforms-and-other-changes-to-the-planning-system