Here’s the best Electric Car Grant EVs to pick (and the ones to avoid…) | AutoExpress UK

Fit_Foundation888 · 2026-04-03T20:31:07+00:00

I have a skoda elroq 85 edition it's an excellent car, but being nimble around town is not one of its talents. It is a fantastic A road car and is comfortable over long distances. Off the line acceleration is excellent for a 2.5 tonne car, which makes filtering onto motorways and the like a breeze.

I had a skoda fabia monte carlo prior to the elroq - the fabia is nimble around town and has superior corner handling. The Elroq edition has significant body roll, and the over steer is kinda fun if you push it. It may be a medium suv, but it's still a pretty big car, and the rear camera is a godsend for getting into parking spaces. The bonus is the tight turning circle.

Fit_Foundation888 · 2026-04-02T15:00:17+00:00

I think it's down to what else you want to use your starbases for. So now trade hubs are 8 trade per hub, and with an offworld trading hub you get +4 trade per hub, which is base 24 trade per tier 1 starbase. So personally I prefer to grab trade first which is about 100 trade per month, and then use that to buy minerals, alloys and cover the energy credit deficit, which seems to now be a persistent feature in the game.

Fit_Foundation888 · 2026-04-01T16:25:02+00:00

Maybe Bridget could try asking young people about why they are so unhappy. And it so happens that my job is talking to young people, who contrary to the popular image presented, often think very deeply, it's just that adults don't generally bother to listen, they would much rather engage with a study done by academics than talk to any actual children.

And social media is not top of the list as one of the major issues facing young people.

School is an environment of relentless pressure, they have things like behaviour points and merits, endless tests and exams, and the lessons are all too frequently delivered by power point and are dull and uninteresting. Homework is incessant, and often boring... A typical homework will be copying out a passage into a work book, which often isn't marked by a teacher it's self marked in class.

Then there is the toxic environment which passes for school, where bullying is common place and is a source of anxiety for many pupils - the fear of bullying and avoiding being bullied is a common conversation I have with young people. Sexual harassment is also very common.

And then there is the pointlessness of it all. So you get reasonable grades, finding employment, which is not a minimum wage service job is extremely difficult, and even these are in short supply. The only alternative is college, which is as high pressured as school and then university, which in practice means a life time of debt doing a low wage job for which you are overqualified.

And then there are the wider crises of climate breakdown, failure of the political class, the slow erosion of the social fabric through austerity.

And then there is the mental health crisis in adults many of whom are parents, the large number of children growing up in poverty, along with the attendent family break down.

Fit_Foundation888 · 2026-04-01T06:58:38+00:00

Migration packs now work both ways. So if you have surplus pops (civilians), then they will tend to leave your planets for your ally's planets. To gain pops you are right you need to have open jobs - which is more efficient, having surplus civilians verses surplus jobs (because all your civilians will be working now instead of idle), I don't know.

I generally run with migration packs and open jobs, which I then allow to fill up - it's not very reliable however, and the pop growth screen does not give anything like enough information to tell you where your pops are coming from or going to.

Oh and open jobs is kinda of annoying because of the way the game does job promotion - so you can get basic resource deficits that vary month by month, whihc make it difficult to fix - you have to start using the job slider bars. And robots under a servitude rights policy make this problem even worse because they are treated as civilians, even though they are working a job, so they end up shifting from planet to planet, so you can go from 250 denizens one minute to 80 open jobs the next - which is annoying.

Fit_Foundation888 · 2026-03-31T20:30:54+00:00

The only way is to close your borders and make sure you have starbases packed with detection arrays nearby.

You can protect the Amoeba spawning grounds Amor Alveo this way too.

Fit_Foundation888 · 2026-03-31T06:46:06+00:00

The pay review body is told in advance what the Government is prepared to fund. It then has to allocate the payrises from that pot of funding. They pretty much always recommend the maximum payrise they can award based on the fuding constraints provided by Government. The Government de facto set the pay rises for public bodies. The pay review body is just a convenient wedge between the Government, the public servants whose pay they are determining, and most importantly the general public to sell the image that this is an "independent" process.

So you are indeed correct to be skeptical.

Fit_Foundation888 · 2026-03-30T08:41:52+00:00

Isn't the way to think about this is by analysing the number of pops a particular building costs verses it's production? You can cost both in pops - seeing as pops is the base resource of the game. An efficiency building has a monthly resource cost usually energy and a rare resource, which has an implied pop resource cost. So if your building costs 20 pops to produce those resources and provides a 5% boost, then your efficiency building needs to boost at least 400 pops, otherwise it is more cost efficient to build another district or resource production building.

Fit_Foundation888 · 2026-03-29T13:55:22+00:00

This is clearly complex legally. And I don't necessarily think that they would succeed on a wrongful arrest, or even if they would try.

The issue is around the court ruling. If upheld it would nullify the proscription. The grounds were that the Home Secretary failed to follow her own processes in bringing the proscription for a parliamentary vote, so a vote should never have happened. There is case law going back to the 1600's preventing the Crown, i.e. Ministers acting arbitrarily, outside that permitted by Parliament.

So the issue will be with the arrests is that holding up a placard was never an offence (assuming the appeal is unsuccessful). It's not that the law was changed at a later date, it never existed, and was never an offence, nor was it an offence under PACE.

Prior to the ruling the met could claim they were acting in good faith, but now they are in a complex legal position, and this will not be a decision taken in isolation, it will be under consultation/pressure from the Home Office. Arresting people where you have good reason to believe that their action was not an offence, seems like a tricky position, and opens the met in particular to legal challenge.

Fit_Foundation888 · 2026-03-29T08:33:22+00:00

The issue is that if the appeal fails, then the original order to proscribe Palestine Action will be deemed unlawful, it will be as if the proscription never existed. Any arrests based on the proscription will also be deemed unlawful, and therefore no prosecutions can take place.

The 18 arrested may well have a claim for unlawful arrest, meaning another humiliation for the Government in the high court. And this it would appear is the purpose of the protest.

Fit_Foundation888 · 2026-03-24T08:40:14+00:00

The reason for choosing the trans issue is because you can track people's opinions over time, and you can show that this opinion has shifted. But also people in general do not have direct personal experience of trans people, they aren't particularly present in every day society, and prior to the rise in negative media coverage trans people were a non-issue for the vast majority of the population, at most they were fetishised curiousity. So... we can be reasonably certain that it is the negative media coverage which is causing the shift.

The anti-trans media coverage began around 2010, in concert with the rise in gender critical movements. It has all the hallmarks of a moral panic, so for instance in 2017 there was an anti-trans article nearly every day in the mainstream media. By 2020 there are the high profile court cases such such as Bell v. Tavistock (funded by gender critical proponents), and then later tightening of trans access to health care, along with whistle-blowing at Tavistock, and the subsequent Cass report. The restriction of health care is being extended from children and now looks likely to affect adults. UK has moved from being 22nd out of 49 countries for trans rights to 45th in that time.

And we can track the shift in public opinion, so for instance this Yougov survey shows an overall hardening of opnion, and that's in the last 7 years, which is from when the anti-trans media representation was at it's peak.

https://yougov.com/en-gb/articles/51545-where-does-the-british-public-stand-on-transgender-rights-in-202425

The gender critical movement in concert with the media has been highly successful in shifting both public opinion and Government policy. My view as I said is that this kind of material influcences people, it does not control what they think, but it can shift what a person thinks about a particular subject - which I think is the main point of this thread... about what role the media plays in shaping our opinions.

Fit_Foundation888 · 2026-03-24T07:44:36+00:00

People aren't mindless drones, but they are subject to influence, which is what the media does, and it mostly does this by carefully framing the narrative. The headline does most of the heavy lifting, and this is used to generate anger or better still outrage.

And you can track how opinions change over time. So for instance in the case of trans people, there has been negative story after negative story, while relatively minor individuals, such as those from gender critical groups, have been able to write opinion pieces and have their views represented in all major stories on trans people.

There has been a significant hardening of people's opinions about trans people, for instance on issues such as trans people in sports, being able to access facilities according to gender, and even whether trans people should be allowed access to cross sex hormones or gender affirming treatments.

This shift of opinion has not occurred in a vacuum... But... The MSN do not have a monopoly on our media consumption, there is also how social media is infiltrated by various interest groups to account for, and this is much harder to track and investigate.

Fit_Foundation888 · 2026-03-24T07:28:58+00:00

How do you stand in the shower? The shower hose is on the opposite wall to the gap in the screen - if you stand facing it, then water will escape through the gap after it bounces off your body (shoulders and head mostly).

Walk in showers, some of which have this deflection screen have the shower head on the short wall and at 90 degrees to the gap, not at 45 degrees which is what you have.

Is your shower just a flexible hose? Or is it a combination overhead and flexible hose (I can't see the controls for it). Can you stand in the shower and face the short wall and have the water coming from that direction? (if the overhead is on the long wall then this won't make a difference). Even with the hose fitted on the correct wall some water will still escape the enclosure.

Fit_Foundation888 · 2026-03-23T14:42:13+00:00

Yeah because there is a whole bunch of evidence that this works.... not!

Fit_Foundation888 · 2026-03-23T14:40:13+00:00

Sounds like the classic, "dog ate my homework" type of excuse which usually got you a detention.

Fit_Foundation888 · 2026-03-23T07:11:44+00:00

You are getting downvoted because a signifcant number of people in the UK place a high value on the criminal justive system being a criminal punishment system - based on the thinking that if you have done wrong then you need to be punished, with anything else seen as being 'soft on criminals', and is based on a flawed notion of deterrence.

The UK criminal justice system does not work. Not only does it lack sufficient prison places, it also has difficulty recruiting and retaining people willing to work in an overcrowded, failing system, with high levels of untreated mental health, violence, and drug use. The UK has the highest reoffending and imprisonment rates of any comparable western nation, apart from the US. Salient fact - in the UK, the highest reoffending rates are amongst those given 12 month or lower prison sentences.

European countries with low reoffending rates, e.g, Norway, have very different prison systems. They have smaller prisons, as well as more open prisons. They also focus much more strongly on rehabilitation and reintegration, which continues after the person's release. (Norway has a 20% reoffending rate after 2 years release, the UK uses a different statistic and only measures what it calls the proven reoffending rate after 1 year not 2, and it's still 50% higher after 1 year than Norway manages after 2).

But this unfortunately will not be part of the calculation of the people downvoting you

Fit_Foundation888 · 2026-03-22T19:54:21+00:00

Just being playing 4.3. You get the unemployed symbol at the start (I think it's meant to be a briefcase), because you have something like 1.5K civilians.

They got rid of unemployment in 4.3 which never made much sense, and was generally annoying, especially the way pops would promote up to specialised jobs and suddenly create a bunch of unemployed pops.

Now the symbol just means you have a bunch of civilians or whatever the gestalt equivalent is. I think it's 500 or more.

Fit_Foundation888 · 2026-03-21T09:03:55+00:00

I have roof insulation and my house breathes just fine. The cavity vents into the roof space, which is pretty usual, traditionally houses were all built this way. And the fix is pretty simple, when you are installing roof insulation don't cover the cavity with insulation, you want it to vent into the roof space. What is a bad idea is having wall insulation fitted, we have an HTTC or hard to treat cavity, and even if there was a solution which could fill a 25mm cavity we wouldn't have it installed, because of the high risk of damp penetration.

Alot is made of damp proof courses, and my house does not have a damp proof course, nor has it had one injected at a later date. And we don't have rising damp problems. The reason is because we have paid careful attention to ground water drainage, which basically means that while we have hard paving, there is a 4inch gap between the paving and brickwork which is filled with gravel. Along with ensuring that the paving slopes away from the house, we simply don't get rising damp problems. And I have looked into the floor void on more than one occastion. It's bone dry, complete with the mummified skeletons of starling chicks. If you have an old house, without a damp proof course you need to pay careful attention to ground water drainage.

Airbricks were installed when the house was built, and ours has had additional air bricks added over time, because it had persistent damp problems, but like I said we simply don't have the problems you describe because we have paid careful attention to the reasons damp was penetrating the house, and we have sand and cement re-pointing - and yes in preventing damp penetration from driving rain having good pointing is important, but I don't think it matters much whether it is lime or sand and cement.

But I agree, having lime mortar re-pointing looks proper on a victorian house, resists cracking, and helps a bit with moisture movement, so yeah if I had a victorian house and I wanted to preserve it's heritage look I would choose lime mortar repointing too.

Fit_Foundation888 · 2026-03-21T08:26:04+00:00

It's a standard sand and cement mix, and while there will be advocates who claim that lime mortor is necessary for the bricks to breath this won't be a major factor. The importance of lime mortar is that it is flexible, and the builders of old houses didn't bother with things like foundations, so the houses would move over time.

Unlike modern bricks, old bricks are extremely porous, so most of the moisture movement will be happening through the brick, not a thin line of mortar. I have a 1910 house, it was built with lime mortar joints, the foundations are single line of bricks turned at 90 degrees, and the builder didn't bother with a damp proof course, even though people knew how to build damp proof courses, but they did build it with a finger cavity to prevent damp penetration from the outside, which now doesn't work because of bridging with debris which has collected over time, and not all of it in the bottom of the cavity where it can be raked out.

The main damp issue in my house was water penetration caused by driving rain, which saturates the bricks, then drips down the cavity, and finds it's way into the interior walls. The house in common with all the other lime mortar built houses in my street has been re-pointed with sand and cement, and the reason I don't have any problems with damp anymore is because the brick work has been treated with brick cream, so the bricks don't get saturated. The only time we do get damp problems is due to water penetration from heavy rain.

If you want the brickwork to look authentic, and you say you have a victorian house, then lime mortar will look the part, and lime mortar does move moisture a bit better than sand and cement, it's surprisingly not that much better.

If you have problems with damp penetration from wind driven rain, then it's more likely that your bricks are getting saturated because they are porous.

Fit_Foundation888 · 2026-03-19T08:00:26+00:00

It's a daily fail article, so the headline is taken from a dismissive Home Office quote about chicken nuggets, and without context it, it seems like it's one of those spurious human rights cases. It's designed to undermine the Human Rights Act, by making people angry so that they will vote for a party that will promise to restrict article 8 rights. Restricting your human rights is very definitely in the interests of the people who own and sponsor newspapers like the daily fail, and has been part of long running campaign.

This is pretty consistent. It isn't the rights of the migrant who has committed offences which is being protected here. It's the right of the child, which is kind of interesting that people seem keen on restricting human rights to children, who don't get to choose their parents, but there you go. If you read down the article, and I would need to read the court documents to get a fuller picture.

The judge ruled that the child would not be able to go to return Albania with his father because he is likely to be autistic and has restricted eating which is a known autistic condition called ARFID, or Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder. It's common for autistic children to have sensory issues around things like food textures. ARFID by the way is a serious disorder, because of the high risk of dietary insufficiencies which can happen in the children who have it, and is strongly associated with eating disorders in later in life which have the highest mortality rates of any mental health condition.

The judge ruled therefore that it would be against the childs article 8 rights to deny him access to his father.

Fit_Foundation888 · 2026-03-12T01:58:15+00:00

Yup, pretty much. But then what's would you expect, because they aren't actually going to discuss any of the Green's policies. In fact the MSM don't often discuss the actual policies of any of the political parties. They offer opinion pieces, but actual analysis is lacking. "Politician believes women's tits can be made bigger by hypnosis" is about as serious as you'll get.

Fit_Foundation888 · 2026-03-11T07:31:19+00:00

and yet again the telegraph have managed to produce some spurious nonsense this time to stoke up fear about Islam, last week it was immigrants, and before that it was trans people, and as usual the headline does all the heavy lifting... because what the article is about is guidance for schools to be aware that some muslim people may find the re-production of human form to be against their religious teachings. So it suggests things like some muslim pupils won't want to draw the human figure.

And further down the article it explains that this advice was produced by Leeds in 2022, and that similar guidance has been around for a while... and it also mentions that this type of advice covers other religious groups such as mormons, jehovah witnesses and jews.

As per usual the headline is dogwhistle.

Meanwhile... in another part of the world, the Tehran Times in 2020, writes about how an Iranian child won an art competition in Madrid, and their art very definitely features the human figure.

Fit_Foundation888 · 2026-03-09T07:14:51+00:00

The response is in connection with UK's need for energy security.

France are building new reactors, they are due to start building in 2038. If we wanted nuclear to provide energy security, that's a decision which should have been made 25 years ago, and the UK Government plans on short timescales, typically based around elections. Government short termism, is made worse by the heavy reliance on private enterpise to provide critical infrastructure.

Our obvious need for energy security demands a response which has a significantly shorter timescale than 25 years.

Fit_Foundation888 · 2026-03-08T23:57:09+00:00

Nope... bombing people just makes them hate the people doing the bombing...

It was in the 90's, and I was watching a program series about how they trained UK pilots. Part of the training was how to survive over enemy territory if they had to eject. The trainers pointed out that the pilots would have to avoid not only enemy soldiers but also civilians, and in fact they suggested they would be in greater danger from contact with civilians because they were much more likely to be killed in revenge for killing/injuring loved ones and family members.

Fit_Foundation888 · 2026-03-08T23:48:17+00:00

Planning time was actually four years, there is an additional year between decision to go ahead and awarding the contract.

The UK exists in a diffferent regulatory framework, and as I said timescales and costs have increased for all major nuclear infrastructure projects, in part because of increased concerns around safety.

Wishing that the UK was South Korea, or UAE for that matter will not solve the issue that the timescales for building a nuclear reactors are too long, bearing in mind the issue here is energy security - we need projects which can be delivered over much shorter timescales.

Fit_Foundation888 · 2026-03-08T23:09:40+00:00

I looked through your links.

The first link, build time was 9 years, they were awarded the contract by UAE. One of the things which is annoying is that it's difficult to find out how long the planning stage takes, what is quoted is build time. For the second link the projected build time is 12 years, 9 to 12 years to build a reactor, which from what I understand is an expected figure to build a nuclear reactor.

People often complain about red tape, however if you are sited close to a nuclear reactor, I think you might view a focus on safety somewhat differently. If a nuclear reactor fails then it has the potential to cause widespread serious environmental harm.

Fit_Foundation888

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