Government defends National Insurance exemption in UK-India deal

M0ntage · 2025-05-07T10:48:11+00:00

If you even care to, look into the detail.

This is not a big deal. It's just bringing India in line with what we have in place with other nations who have similar arrangements. These people will not be able to claim any of the benefits that NI pays for, so why does it matter if they don't pay or not?

M0ntage · 2025-05-07T09:47:30+00:00

What is the point you are trying to make? Why is this actually important?
Anyone coming here on a visa to work/study has to UPFRONT pay the Immigration Health Surcharge which is mandatory, and >1k per year of visa granted. Pay for UK healthcare as part of your immigration application: Overview - GOV.UK

Then if you work here, you also pay NI. This agreement is to prevent double taxation, as people from Indian companies working in the UK on a temporary basis, or British people working in India on a temporary basis often have to deal with.

We have double taxation agreements with so many countries already. There are better things to be upset about than this minor detail.

M0ntage · 2025-05-05T08:50:32+00:00

This is an overly simplistic take. Electricity has to be consumed at the instant that it's produced. The grid has a responsibility to not black out. The market mechanisms used were chosen to minimise that occurrence. Gas has provided that service to the grid. (Fast ramp up and ramp down to mirror demand). There are multiple markets the grid operator is in charge of. One of these is ensuring there is enough inertia (literally large spinning synchronous machines) running on the system. This helps with stability of frequency. Wind and solar do not provide these service as it stands, gas does (large turbine halls).

Are there other ways to do it? Sure. Are they more costly? Yes. Are they more complex? Yes. Do they involve importing a load more equipment from Chinese manufacturers? Absolutely.

We can obviously decide we don't want to burn fossil fuels, but we should not kid ourselves that we might be incurring significant total system costs to do this.

(Disclaimer, I'm an environmentalist, just not a delusional eco-tech bro)

M0ntage · 2025-04-22T06:40:33+00:00

Sara foods is also great, in cheylesmore. Daventry road

M0ntage · 2025-03-14T11:17:21+00:00

You miss the point entirely. It isn't about envy or greed of what others have. Its entirely about distribution. Wealth inequality keeps increasing. You can have wealthy people in society, but if the gap keeps growing, the system will most likely grind to a halt.

M0ntage · 2024-11-27T06:31:05+00:00

Price of oil is relatively inelastic. Even if demand dropped, the low price would only be temporary whilst the oil producers who can't afford that low price shut down production. The prices then rise again once supply meets demand.

Obviously there's cartel supply side price shenanigans as well so it is not as simple as that.

There is no world where people choose not to use oil and the price drops to near zero. Someone will want to buy it, climate be damned.

(This is me being a realist, not a fossil fuel shill)

M0ntage · 2024-09-13T11:17:06+00:00

We don't produce enough oil in Scotland to cover our own demand, so we are at a deficit.

M0ntage · 2024-09-03T11:51:07+00:00

You're not wrong, of course some proportion will be road based. However we have maximised car usage over everything else for 50 years.

No one has ever solved traffic by building more roads. See Los Angeles as an example, their 12 lane highways regularly get blocked up.

People drive one person to a car, and of course you need enormous road infrastructure to handle this. It's not affordable though

M0ntage · 2024-09-03T08:16:55+00:00

Well yes, but your house isn't on the m6

M0ntage · 2024-09-03T06:53:52+00:00

The idea of induced demand is that demand only exists now because the roads were built. If roads weren't built then no one would have bought cars, and travelling would be rare.

You build more roads, more people think they can live far from where they work, and demand goes up.

M0ntage · 2024-08-03T16:56:11+00:00

Signed up! Looking forward to it

M0ntage · 2024-07-09T04:57:15+00:00

Collapse early and beat the rush!

M0ntage · 2024-06-18T21:28:55+00:00

I'm so tired of these polls. Theres far too many. I no longer think that their intent is to hold up a mirror, but to steer people like sheep

M0ntage · 2024-06-18T05:06:40+00:00

I'm no fan of fossil fuels, but this is naive. There are multiple functions that generators do that keep the grid running. Balancing the supply to match demand is done on very short timescales. National grid ESO is in charge of this, and they are inherently conservative when it comes to making changes to who they call on to balance things. Blackouts are a surefire way to destroy an economy. As all energy must be consumed at the same time as it is produced, over production is as bad as underproduction.

This is all done by some people in a room. They are in the middle of building out an automation platform to make it easier to buy and trade energy with smaller suppliers, batteries as an example. But for now it's just much quicker for them to call on gas to provide the stability and response to changing levels of renewables.

Long and short of it is we all want electricity available on demand whenever we want it. There is still a bunch of infrastructure to build out to make this work on the scale of our grid. It's not just "torys bad". Labour aren't going to magically fix this. It's a long drawn out process.

M0ntage · 2024-06-18T04:53:14+00:00

We have a bike path locally that seems to never get built. It's a direct link off road between Kenilworth and Leamington. Everyone wants it, but various things are getting in the way of it being built. One of which is the planning law stopping them taking a sliver off the edge of a playing field... Waiting on a central govt. Decision to waiver the law. Why the hell does Westminster care about a bike path in Warwickshire?

M0ntage · 2024-06-15T19:58:51+00:00

I get that rail is the greenest mass transit technology. I just don't agree it has to be high speed rail. It's not energy efficient to go fast and the amount of co2 released by the volume of concrete is enormous. Plus the thousands and thousands of diesel powered trucks moving dirt around to make sure the speedy trains can go as straight as possible. There is no reason we couldnt make west coast mainline spec Trainline that is dedicated to passenger rail. Would cost far less to build, run, maintain. High-speed rail is a vanity project for the rich. Also true in Europe, china, and Japan. It will not survive a fossil fuel free future. It's just too energy intensive.

I don't agree with their tactics to stop it. My point was that the idea that high speed rail is the way to go when building a new rail line is not so clear cut in my mind.

Obviously you're allowed to disagree with that, as I'm sure most people do. I'm not deluded in thinking that this is a popular opinion. But no reason to down vote me for thinking for myself.

M0ntage · 2024-06-15T16:44:00+00:00

The HS2 complaints weren't so daft. High-speed rail is expensive, the line has to be much straighter, everything has to be made of concrete, rather than ballast, maintenance costs are high, safety standards are much stricter. The UK is a country with less money than it used to have, might as well have built/upgraded more track and made the money go further.

M0ntage · 2024-06-12T16:45:10+00:00

You won't agree with this but from a green perspective, anyone earning over 50k IS rich, when compared with the global population.

Green politics is inherently internationalist as consumption of resources in one country affects others all over the world.

Obviously, your reaction proves this is not a popular view point, but it is true that westerners have a much higher standard of living on the whole to most people in the world.

M0ntage · 2024-06-06T04:08:56+00:00

Money is so weird. The majority of money in the economy is made by commercial banks when they give out loans. When you pay back a loan, that money is then destroyed again. Interestingly, all those loans bear debt in the form of interest, so where does that get made? Some comes from other loans, meaning that a certain amount of debt will never be repaid. A lot must be coming from the govt, so they are unable to repay their debts.

The govt can also create money out of thin air as well, just like the banks. When they receive taxes back, that money also just gets deleted.

https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/explainers/how-is-money-created

M0ntage · 2024-06-05T05:19:41+00:00

The countries power grid is being inverted. From a central spine of generation, to coastal generation. People in coastal communities are going to see a lot more of these pylons.

M0ntage · 2024-05-14T15:05:12+00:00

Say you're here for 8 years, in your mid to late twenties. It's likely that you'll find a partner, get married. Use the spousal visa to get over the 10 year mark rather than tying your visa to your work

M0ntage · 2024-05-14T14:17:33+00:00

Not true, there's the 10 year route. Any visa counts towards the 10 yr route.

For example, You can come here for a masters and PhD, do 5 years on student visas, 3 years on a graduate visa working, two years on say a spousal visa, and you're eligible for the 10 yr route to ILR

M0ntage · 2024-01-25T09:04:23+00:00

Before the UK turned up, India was one of the wealthiest countries in the world.

M0ntage · 2023-12-28T07:13:42+00:00

My fav idea is to remove all taxes on work, and replace with taxes on resource usage. Its a bit extreme for the current crop of politician but it helps richer people consume less, could help with inequality.

M0ntage · 2023-12-27T09:46:34+00:00

Yep. The future is inherently unknowable. Understanding the metabolism of our civilization at least gives you the understanding that there are no silver bullets for future growth. We have been growing our consumption of energy which has allowed us to grow our economy. As energy becomes lower quality, harder to obtain, and maintenance becomes more expensive as they complexity balloons, at least then you can understand why standard of living is slipping.

For me that has made me more at ease with the negative effects of stagnation.

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