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    The cost of the welfare state - challenges posed and solutions

    My point is that health spending increases more than state pension and adult social care combined do. All are a result of an increasing elderly population. Yet health spending rarely comes up in discussions about pensions even though it's the same problem; it relies on younger working...
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    The cost of the welfare state - challenges posed and solutions

    Health spending is a bigger issue than adult social care and the state pension combined: OBR’s Central Fiscal 50 year Projection: source % of GDP FY 2030/1 FY 2075/6 Health 8.4 13.5 Adult Social Care 1.2 1.8 Education 4.3 3.4 State Pension 5.0 8.6 Other welfare benefits...
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    (Fantasy) A through-running commuter rail tunnel for Birmingham

    A connection from Coventry to HS2 Interchange to send the WCML fasts into Curzon Street is an alternative to four tracking.
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    Wind Power and UK Energy Use

    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...
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    The cost of the welfare state - challenges posed and solutions

    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%...
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    The cost of the welfare state - challenges posed and solutions

    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...
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    The cost of the welfare state - challenges posed and solutions

    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...
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    Taxing road users by mile

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

    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...
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    Should schools in the UK be fitted with air conditioning?

    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...
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    UK switching to electric vehicles discussion

    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...
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    UK switching to electric vehicles discussion

    In the Netherlands: Translated https://haarlemmermeergemeente.nl/elektrische-auto-opladen
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    UK switching to electric vehicles discussion

    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...
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    UK switching to electric vehicles discussion

    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...
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    Fantasy - Deconflicting services at Herne Hill

    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...
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    Air source heat pumps vs. other options

    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...
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    Sites for Labour's New Towns that already have rail connections

    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
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    Inequality between generations

    I must recommend this lecture on the topic which quantifies much of the comments on this thread.
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    Modelling performance and range of Hitachi 80x Trimode trains, and implications for future mainline electrification

    https://turntide.com/products/energy-storage/ has a graph of capacity vs cycles. It shows a capacity of 80% after 3300 cycles for a 1C rate (1C = charge in 1 hour) 3300 cycles / 3? cycles per day gives 1100 days before dropping to 80% capacity. Your 80x-B proposal has a capacity of 3.85MWh and...
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    Modelling performance and range of Hitachi 80x Trimode trains, and implications for future mainline electrification

    8 MW for 2.75MWh pack Leaf MY14-17 https://ev-database.org/uk/car/1019/Nissan-LEAF-24-kWh batteries had a max charge rate of 46 kW, which reduces with SOC. DC charging between 10% to 80% averages at 36 kW. Scaling the Leaf's charging power of 36 kW for a 24 kWh pack to your proposed 2.75MWh...

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