Marmora Man

There's always been an element of quid pro quo in all these programmes. Note the Chrysler vehicles - every episode features the badge at some stage. Similarly the various tasks require the Apprentices to visit different establishments. THey may give their time / resources for free but they see a return in the publicity.

Hardly a scandal - and not unique to this programme. Presumably it makes it slightly cheaper in production costs thus relieving the licence fee payer. Is any one daft enough to patronise the Sun & Doves on the basis it once formed a 30 second clip on Apprentice - or buy a Chrysler on the same basis?

IMO the programme has lost its original appeal and I would see some businesses not wanting to be associated with the brand - which now seems to represent a bunch of whingeing prima donnas that would not survive more than a week in a real business.

The Dome was built with LOttery money. It made no money during the embarrassing Millenium fiasco and was sold on, for a pittance, to O2. While therefore, in theory, there was no cost to the taxpayer the Lottery was always meant to be for "good causes" not political white elephants - there has thus been an opportunity cost to taxpayers of ?750m worth of real good causes that weren't funded.

I would agree that now however, the centre is a fine concert and exhibition spot - tho' Dylan's concert last Saturday was rather dire!

Children, for parents, are never boring - endlessly frustrating, amusing, charming, worrying, engaging, cute, horrible, clever, underachieving, lazy, untidy, inventive, cheeky and EXPENSIVE. However, they should never be discussed outside of the family.

Is anyone else pleased at the government's defeat over the question of allowing Gurkha veterans to settle in UK?

Given their years of devoted service to the British Army it seems absurd to deny Gurkha veterans the right to live here and use UK services thru' pettifogging bureaucracy and civil service rules.

I have been lucky enough to meet some Gurkha soldiers and their children who were at school with mine. Those I have met are charming, hard working and totally loyal to Britain as well as being some of the finest fighting men in the world. Of the children - one is studying medicine, another dentistry and the third economics. Their presence in UK can only benefit the country.

Politically GB has made another major error in supporting Phil Woolas and the Home Office over this matter. He is beginning to seem accident prone - always dangerous for a politician.

PR - if the "profile" reveals that 90% of users are teetotal vegetarians then I'll understand, and discount accordingly, any lack of response to my my proposal of a beer & bacon butty party.

Much much earlier in the life of this forum I suggested it was just a little right on / guardianista / anti private sector in its outlook. An interesting debate ensued and I would find it amusing, but not necessarily particularly useful, to understand the profile of users.

DC - lowest cost bids are bad news if that's the only criteria. Unfortunately, very often that's how governments prefer it. However, the nuclear industry is mature and, I assume, understands its cost base well as well as the risk matrix. It is very unlikely in this modern litigious climate that any company would cut costs to a point where it endangered life and limb and therefore, by proxy, company existence and profits.

Nuclear fission energy is the necessary stopgap - to allow all to gather thoughts and time to develop more sustainable energy sources for the future. Who wants to bet on useable nuclear fusion energy within 50 years?

PS: It's interesting that a number of us, more usually in opposition, have come together to agree, broadly, on this particular point. Discussion and debate is a good thing.

Agree there was under investment by the Tories but much of that shortfall was made up by Labour's PPP / PFI projects that didn't feature as government borrowing and shouldn't therefore impact on the government spending figures for last 10 years. There is / was a revenue cost but for most projects that was contained within their existing revenue budgets. So, to that extent, Tory under investment cannot explain a significant part of the Labour over spend.

PPP / PFI costs exist in a strange limbo where they don't appear as Government borrowing nor appear on the private sector's balance sheets.

Answers:

1. I'm not a politician.

2. I recognise the issue regarding security of supply - but if UK bought enough uranium now it would give us a 30 year respite to develop other sources of energy and release UK from that problem. It doesn't take too much U235 to fuel a reactor.

3. I wasn't aware we were discussing environmental damage of open cast mining - but there's lots of experience around in recovering to the natural state previous open cast mines for all sorts of minerals.

4. I saw the Faslane article. No damage to the environment, no damage to human life. Primary coolant is water - and difficult to make radioactive - very little particulate would be in that coolant.

5. There is no such thing as 100% safe technology - but there are acceptable levels of risk that we all live in other spheres. EG: Cars at speed are unsafe, at lower speeds they are safer. Parked at 0mph they are safe - but useless. Ditto aircraft, some crash, most don't - we use them regularly. Hot water scalds - but we all boil kettles. Life & technology use is a trade off.

It would be interesting to know exactly how much of that increased spending went to the military.

Defence spending '97 = ?25.2bn

Defence spending '10 = ?39.5bn

That's a 56% increase over 13 years - compared with a 73% increase in GDP and a 112% increase on Gov't spending. During that period Britain's Armed Forces have been involved in two wars - lost upwards of 300 personnel killed and over 5,000 wounded, many severely - throughout that period it has been claimed by those with real knowledge of current defence matters that the forces needed better equipment and support.

Investing in nuclear energy now would give us a 30 year + respite to develop "free" energy as long as we ignore inefficient landscape destructive wind farms.

My mind boggles at the mixed arguments in your brief response.

I'll grant you that the private sector is made up of individuals working in the private sector - but without business and its employees there would be no income to be taxed. Low costs are the secret of business success - not some kind of perverse incentive. The man / company / country that can make a widget at least cost and same quality will, usually, win the most business.

To lay the blame for UK's current situation solely at the feet of "the private sector" is illogical. The public sector has grown at a rate far in excess of the GDP - it has not yielded the efficiencies promised by the government and the difference has been funded by borrowing and increased taxes.

GDP 1997 = ?815.9bn

a. Govt Spend 1997 = ?318.3bn (39.01% of GDP)

b. GDP 2010 = ?1,412.0 (Red book estimate)

c. Govt Spend 2010 = ?677.8bn (48% of GDP - a 23% growth in ratio, funded by extra tax and / or borrowing)

d. GDP growth '97 - '10 = 173%

e. Govt spend growth = 212%

The difference between d. and e. illustrates the failure of this government.

I have no objection to paying for necessary government spending. I dispute strongly the need for large government and high taxes (as you know quite well). I do not believe the government has the right to take more than 50% of anyone's income - no matter what their income or profession. The taxes on earning more than ?100,000 are spiteful, politically inspired and unlikely to generate anything like the sums quoted by comical Ali. It has, as ever, transpired that the small print of the budget indicates that the ?100,000 ands ?150,000 thresholds are not going to be uprated in line with inflation so fiscal drag will capture more and more people in this cynical tax ploy - it will be salaried staff on PAYE that pay the extra taxes and not the "super rich" who will be able to avoid this tax thru' careful tax planning. So yet again the more ordinary middle class professional will suffer.

Is the private sector being asked to pay for everything? Did I miss a memo - how do you make that out?

Sean, By definition the private sector pays for everything. Government spends taxes - these are raised primarily from taxes on goods, business and, to a lesser extent, from taxes on individuals. Since the public sector doesn't produce anything it is not creating any taxable revenues - and while the significant proportion of the workforce that is now public sector employed pay their taxes this is simply recycling government money.

Governments often assume that they are spending "Government money" but they're not, they are spending money raised by taxes on the private sector. This government has achieved the neat trick of raising money not just from today's private sector but from tomorrow's also due to it's excessive spending over the last 12 years and current borrowing.

Great to also that the East Dulwich Deli won in its category. That's two winners within 100 yards of each other.

6 ft is fine - it keeps me private but as I'm 6ft 5" I can see over it.

Sean,

You're almost falling into that "cautionary principle" again. As you remark nothing can be 100% safe - but we can be pretty damn sure.

One of the problems with nuclear power is the perception that it is, somehow, more dangerous / evil / horrendous than everything else. Only a vet small % is highly radioactive with long half lives - the majority of the "nuclear waste" is things like gloves, protective clothing / materials, containers and so on that have been contaminated (but not rendered absolutely and lethally poisonous) through proximity.

A submarine nuclear reactor is not a lot larger than a domestic dustbin and would provide sufficient power for a town of about 100,000 people. It has a working life og about 30 years and, once finished with, only the nuclear core (maybe 10% of a domestic dustbin is highly radioactive - tho' parts of the primary system are also radioactive to a lesser extent. That's not a huge volume of nuclear waste in return for 3 million person years of power.

Answers:

1. Impossible.

2. Extremely unlikely - careful selection of location makes plane crashes, earthquakes, tsunamis a minimal problem, this along with correct design that will ensure automatic shutdown.

3. Proper design should ensure automatic shutdown in event of any problem - no mater how created.

4. The actual quantity of truly radioactive waste is tiny - and there are ways of storing this safely.

Cost - renewables have high costs as well. Only tidal power, and to a lesser extent, wave power, is reliable enough to work in our part of the world. Forget wind & solar power.

OK - to put the question more clearly to anti nuclear team:

What are your concerns?

1. Likelihood of a reactor turning into a bomb?

2. Likelihood of a major disaster creating major nuclear fallout?

3. Likelihood of it becoming a terrorist target - with effect of 1 or 2 above?

4. Long term "pollution" of storing nuclear waste?

5. Something else entirely?

Once the questions are posed rationally then brational answers can be providedd.

Chernobyl was a crap design managed by crap engineers in a crap system. Modern designs are very very much better.

I spent much of 15 years (almost) within less than 100 foot of a nuclear reactor. To date - no problems. IN fact the incidence of cancfers for nuclear submariners tends to be lower than the national average (we spent a lot of time out of natural sunshine and not close to other radiological sources such as Radon.

Nuclear isn't scary when you get to know it.

BTW - I was on duty when satellite intelligence of the Chernobyl reactor problem was detected - for a brief (very brief) moment there was a worry that it might be the presage of something far more scary - like WWIII

skidmarks Wrote:

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> So building a tidal barrier out millions of tonnes

> concrete or mining, processing and transporting

> uranium from Australia has no carbon footprint?

I didn't suggest it was carbon free - just that is was a renewable source.

onsidering there is no CO2 produced.

Not CO2 free - remember the manufacturing of the turbines, associated machinery and the cables from the turbines to the point of transformation / storage - often excessive as the windy places are a long way from the places of use. EG: The planned Eastern Highlands windfarms with 200 miles of pylons marching across some of Scotland's most beautiful landscapes - including the Wallace Memorial.

Wind farms are inefficient AND they ruin the landscape. Nuclear and hydro (preferably tidal) are far better.

Ted Max Wrote:

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> Or ... if only 20% of all kids should get in to

> University, say, you could propose that only the

> top performing 20% of those at private schools get

> into Uni.

>

> The rest of them can either join the army, clergy

> or go into The Company.

Or better still - improve state education to the point where private education becomes redundant - as was becoming the case in the 60's until political point scoring decided that grammar schools were diversive and elitist.

If the Butler Act education reforms had been left alone (perhaps with some upward tweeking of quality at the Secondary Moderns & Technical schools) we would today be left with just a handful of private schools - used mostly for expensive babysitting by those unable (thru' overseas employment / Armed Forces commitments etc) or unwilling to look after their children at home.

Skidmarks - your storage is sensible and already in use to store the power generated by conventional (gas, coal, nuclear, hydroelectric etc) generators which work best if kept at a steady state - so during the night and other low useage times the excess can be stored as you suggest. There is some loss of power during the process as the power recovery by hydroelectricty cannot be 100%.

However, to use the excess power from windfarms in a similar way doesn't make quite the same sense. Windfarm only generate power when the wind blows - so they are inherently inefficient already and can't provide enough power to make a substantial difference to the grid anyway. If the power they do generate is diverted to a storage facility and then recovered there is a secondary loss of power as above - making them yet more inefficient.

If you are seeking natural / renewable sources of power look at tidal and wave energy - predictable and incredibly powerful, plus the fact that nowhere in UK is more than 120 miles from the coast - much is far closer. Nuclear power also has much to recommend it.

I heard the same programme and recommend mlteenie's recommendation. You could also listen to it not he BBC Listen Again service.

Could do with a decent proper barbers - not a hairdresser for men.

Did anyone read the article about Robin Knox Johnson - this man sailed single handedly around the world in a 21ft yacht. On starting out he was still recovering from jaundice. Later on the journey he had appendicitis and treated it with antibiotics & whisky. His chronometer broke - meaning he couldn't fix his position at sea accurately and his radio broke down after 100 days - leaving him to finish the remainder (250 days) of the journey with no contact with the outside world. He faced mountainous seas around Cape Horn, major storms at sea and all the perils of a single handed voyage with no external support whatsoever.

But - the BBC decided that for health and safety reasons, when filming him for their programme "Dogs of War", he had to have a safety person on standby while he lit a primus stove.

Does anyone have a better story of pointless H&S thinking?