Climate change is a hoax, the earth is flat and the ruling class are lizard peopleā¦
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@rod - if youāre interested, hereās a blogger who wrote to Vanguard about ethical investments:
Ultmately, sheās continued to be a Vanguard investor so as a ācustomerā, she can voice her opinion.
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Thereās a long way between āclimate change is a hoaxā and āweāre all going to be dead in 12 yearsā. The pace of our impending doom is certainly not agreed and some of the outlandish claims being made deserve the skunk-eye, as does complete denial.
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Some of them certainly have some lizardy qualities
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Lounge lizardā¦
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Thanks for posting that Weenie. I think DIYinvestorUK had also tried to talk to Vanguard but has since divested and is building their own list of greener investments. Some of which I also hold these days.
And itās interesting that trackers that follow āfor goodā indices often contain carbony/oil stocks - there are widely varying definitions of good in the ESG space.
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Good man Andrew you get my stance. Iām not saying itās not changing it obviously is and always will be.
This is the rhetoric that I donāt like
Why? Are we all ignoring history. Nationalisation broadly doesnāt work, it creates huge inefficiencies and stifles innovation.
The only areas where you can justify part of full nationalisation are monopolised critical utilities and infrastructure - which is why I wouldnāt be against nationalisation of some of the failing train lines.
This kind of crazy talk is why Iām in US and EM stocks and out of the UK at the moment. People havenāt been taught history or economics.
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You mean exactly the ones Labour propose to nationalise?
By nationalising services that the supermajority of the polualtion use (public transport, energy, water, data connectivity) those are services that the supermajprity are already paying for, and of hich some are already de-facto monopolies (e.g. rail transport. You cannot decide that Virgin Trains service route A to B poorly and get a train from another company from A to B, for example). If everyone is already paying, and everyone needs the service, then thatās a prime target for nationalisation: everyone still pays (via tax rather than billing) everyone still gets the service, but you remove the overheads of both the profit margin, and gain economies of scale and economies of uniformity and interoperability, as well as saving in eliminating the cost of determination of service (i.e. why āfree at point of useā is a more efficient model than universal enforced health insurance:no overhead from determine what coverage you have via who).
tl;dr: if everyone is already paying for a service, and everyone is already receiving a service, than nationalising that service allows more efficient operation.
More broadly, competition does not automatically lead to efficiency. In a perfect capitalist system inefficient companies are outcompeted by efficient companies, but that also requires all consumers to be perfectly educated about the choice between companies (similar to how ideal socialism require perfect altruism) including all externalities. When was the last time you researched who extracted and refined the fuel oil that propelled the vessel that transported the container that contained the apple you are looking at at the supermarket? Reality sadly provides neither perfectly altruistic citizens or perfectly educated consumers, so neither model works in practice in its pure form. Instead, both systems need to be applied where they work well, rather than universally out of ideology.
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I have a degree in physics, I have first hand experience on climate change data. As we are coming to the end of the last glacial age, the earth is getting warmer. There are hundreds of factors, the sunās cycle, the earthās axial tilt, the feedback loop caused by an increase of greenhouse gases and warmer oceans.
This was always inevitable, humans have sped the process up with the release of greenhouse gases.
In 40-50 millennia we will undergo global cooling, as a new glaciel age sets in.
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Iām not disagreeing with it as you can read from my above statements I just donāt buy the dead in 12 years nonsense and would rather see tax breaks than taxes. If itās all leading to the same thing and can be recognised in the current tax year why not tax breaks over taxes? Problem is the tax wonāt be ringfenced for climate change thatās why tax breaks are never offered up as an alternative
This is what I would prefer to see and it works. Norway has roughly 50/50 in terms of conventional and electric vehicles
The adoption and deployment of zero emission vehicles in Norway has been driven by policy, and actively supported by the government since the 1990s.[26] Among the existing public incentives, all-electric cars and vans are exempt from all non-recurring vehicle fees, including purchase taxes, and 25% VAT on purchase, making electric car purchase price competitive with conventional cars.[
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You could tax and cut at the same time
No one is disputing the earth has been colder or hotter in the past and that the climate, over millions of years, changes. However, the climate can change dramatically due to natural disasters etc. These changes can flood continents, kill of vast numbers of species and change the composition of vegetation around the world. This is the pace of change we are seeing. It is not due to some natural change in the climate cycle (yes they go on all the time). This change is due to an explosion in the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This explosion has been caused my humans and if we do not stop it, feedback loops will force a change upon us we are ill prepared for.
Do you forsee a Krakatoa/ Yellowstone event in the next few years? The Africans are coming up with a good way to stop the Sahara with their Great Wall of Trees.
Itās this stuff I dont understand why would you spray aerosolā¦Much like the ācelebritiesā jetting all over the world to climate conferences. They could die today and their carbon footprint would still be 10x or more of what mine or anyone I know would be for the rest of their lives
Citation needed.
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I dont think the NHS got destroyed by simply having parts of it privatised. I think the main reason for it failing is because many ordinary Brits take the p*** out of it by wanting surgeries/treatment for their vanity desires, people who cant get away from doughnuts end up needing Liposuction/gastric band surgery or requesting services for minuscule reasons that could be solved with a lemsip. Oh and not to mention it being used as a INTERNATIONAL Health Service by the hippy do-gooders who think our services have a secret money tree that will pay for everything so everyone who havent even paid into it by tax should get free stuff. All that accumulates. 
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There is plenty of waste and allocation of funding and procedures where itās not appropriate, but even if you account for that there will not be enough money and resources to meet and provide ācoreā functions in the years to come.
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Whilst I appreciate itās quite impossible to have a rounded opinion on this. Iām not sure your opinion is even close, it reads a bit like a Daily Mail comment.
My partner has just had to go private to remove 2 large lumps from the inside of her lower eyelid (chalazion), we was turned down by the NHS as this was considered cosmetic surgery. The consultant told us it was the largest heād seen in his practice and was shocked the NHS had not made provision.
My partner has been a nurse for 15 in the NHS and working in a privatised version of the NHS and I can categorically confirm that her segment has been run down in order to generate profit. Weāre talking multiple services amalgamating and 12 nurse teams being reduced to 4 or 5, often being ran by senior nurse members in lower pay bands under the premise of being ādevelopmentalā roles. Senior nurses leaving and being replaced by 0 experience nurses. Wholesale quitting across the board due to stress and punitive sickness policies.
Add this to terrible patient behaviour, including racism, aggression and threats. Increased working hours.
Visits to dangerous patients being reduced from 2 nurses to 1.
Thereās a reason every political party is promising investment into the NHS. It isnāt Health tourism, itās underfunding.
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I was talking about those that actually need it. You didnt even read it properly
Wasnt* talking about*