The previous government who did a decent job bringing in renewables allowed costs to get out of control. This is part of putting a lid on that but is not being sold well. It should be, "yes to renewables but we need lower electricity bills as well."

Surely the issue is not whether the blockade is legal, but what it is actually achieving - beyond reinforcing effectively the same blockade applied by Iran that you want removed as your current main war aim.

My one life hack here is stay the night at an airport hotel before early morning flights. Check in at 8pm and go to bed. You will actually get a night's sleep before strolling over to the terminal. The £100 or so room rate is peanuts compared with a business class upgrade, and worth more.

Depends how much sleep you deprive yourself of to make early morning flights. Day time? Once you the passenger realise you are the product, not the customer, of the airport, you can serenely accept your role and maybe you will eventually get to Abu Dhabi or Zurich.

Thing is the SNP has a government to run. They will be the government regardless of their manifesto commitments. How does an ultimately unserious policy help them with that?

As a military historian, what are the precedents for enemies operating the same blockade and variously pretending it's open and closed?

Also oil markets are different from shares etc because they involve a physical product people want/need/possess, deciding whether to buy/sell now/later/at all, to hedge/not hedge - now with huge uncertainty.

I knew the previous owner. It's one of the most gorgeous houses in Edinburgh. A few coats of paint would sort it out.

Thing about futures on commodities - naive view - is they serve a business purpose and are indicators of that purpose. Someone wants to lock in a price for actual stuff another thinks they can make a profit on. If they think no idea what's going on, let's not bother, the market prices accordingly

There may be thinking about better to break the cable than the device when the connection gets stressed. That justification was put forward when they moved from mini USB to micro USB many years ago.

As someone working in a bank I would have been an ex-employee - and potentially behind bars - if I had accepted tips.

Tipping is partly about making employment a variable rather than a fixed cost. The employee carries the risk of fewer customers rather than the business owner.

The US counter-blockade prevents Iran from monetising its own blockade, but it doesn't directly remove Iran's leverage over Hormuz and might be counter-productive to America's actual goal of getting transit going again.

Given the supposed bill of £150 for a party of three, I think the customers might be the ones to complain about only getting starters.

Sock - sock - pootle around your house for at least the next thirty minutes - shoe - shoe.

Pointed out to me, commodities markets mostly serve a business purpose, not just speculation.

Oil turns up having transited Hormuz before it closed, so maybe no huge demand for spot yet. Futures are to lock in a price. Producers, the main hedgers don't have that incentive now. etc

Undoubtedly. But the Qing govt signed leases with several countries including another UK one. Most were given up by 1930 and China could have done the same for Hong Kong if it had wanted to. HK was a British colony obvs, but one maintained at the discretion of the Chinese govt.

1 January 1973? UK joined the EC. Relevant to this discussion it was the date of implementation of the 1971 Immigration Act, which effectively rendered Commonwealth citizens the same as all foreigners.

Dunnottar Castle

Has to be a Scottish castle for me. Dunnottar for its fantastic location.

Lunch in London. Dinner in Paris.

From the article, it looks like Motability have introduced black boxes to reduce high sky costs of insurance on young people included in their standard lease rates, and not for political reasons.

Understandable as they have to balance books but the edge cases will be horrible.

I guess my long winded post is saying, I'm not very interested in going to the moon. It doesn't inspire me in the way other places on earth do!

I think the reasoning is subtle. Excel gives you 80% of what you need. It isn't that 80% is good enough. It's that 80% is what you do first. At which point you're stuck with it.

I would quite like to visit India and Japan. I probably won't go to either for not particularly strong reasons. With no hesitation I would choose them over the moon. You have the culture, people, constant interest.

It would be cool to see the earth from a distance but that's kind of it

GCC hate Iran but if America walks away they have no option but deal with them. ie pay them. Hormuz reopens.

Everyone knows where they stand. Seems bullish from where we are today as my uninformed take.

Also Scottish Government lobbying to be clear.

Maybe all governments are under industry capture. SG not supporting zonal pricing despite strong consumer pressure in Scotland to do so, gives pause for thought nevertheless.

Khan Khan has a certain ring

Likely. It gives US some leverage when negotiations do happen.

Another reason for Kharg if we assume US must capture an island, any island. It's a lot smaller than Qeshm (130KM long, 150K pop) and presumably easier to capture and hold.

Taking Kharg makes a kind of sense in the specific context though. It gives the US a counter to trade: Iran, you get a working oil industry back and you open Hormuz in exchange. Qeshm has no trading value.

Not saying it's a good idea either.

HTML was big in those days