r/TheRestIsPolitics

I would first caveat that no heat pump user should use a default electricity tariff. However, the energy price cap is illustrative about the general trends.

Compare July 2025 to July 2026:

1. Electricity: 1.16% increase from 25.73p/kWh to 26.03p/kWh
2. Gas: 13% increase from 6.33p/kWh to 7.16p/kWh

Now, some of this are due to policy changes made by the government. However, given there's only 5% VAT on gas it is inherently the case that electricity has more room for manoeuvre. Electricity has tons of added policy costs which could be shifted without too much unintended consequences.

Combined together this means that the heat-pump user will be experiencing far more consistent heating costs over this period of crisis than the gas boiler user. For those who want sustainable bills which fluctuate less during crises the choice should be obvious.

How to educate the public about the need to innovate to reduce price volatility is a hard problem but these data certainly helps.

Just choosing to ignore the endless paragraphs of clear plagiarism (including copied errors) we’ve all seen? Of course LJM have no other motive to clear him 😳 Can’t take this guy seriously.

Obviously RIP

Been listening to TRIP for years, love both it and TRIP Leading. But one of the biggest issues facing the podcast these days is that Rory just... doesn't have much to say anymore that's interesting. What made him interesting initially on the podcast were his roles in parliament, his ministerial positions, his Afghanistan experience, he's mayoral run, his Conservative leadership bid, and those topics have all just been bled dry. There's nothing much more he can provide there that's interesting to the listener.

Where he could be providing some more value is with the connections he's made over the years that can give him insights, and we see glimpses of this from time to time. Unfortunately, his heavy reliance on AI (which seems to do much of his thinking for him these days) means I have to doubt if the opinion he holds has been formed by AI or has been informed by someone in-the-know or with specialist knowledge.

Alistair at least still has a high profile and a large circle of influential people that means when he says something, you know he's considered it from a perspective most of us listeners don't have access to. But with Rory now... what does he provide, except some contrarian heat in some interviews?

Title. Rory has a wildly uninformed position on how the technologies actually work and their limitations and it's quite sad to hear him sing its praises when he clearly does not really comprehend how LLMs work or their actual use cases.

Would be cool to get someone in tech like Cory Doctorow on to provide an educated and measured counterargument to Rory's "At All Costs" infatuation with the technology.

I'm really struggling with this. When I first listened to the pod he seemed to discuss his walks and retreats and even his big idea of turning the London Greenbelt into a national park (or forest maybe?) which gave this idea that he was someone who deeply cared.

Recently though, he seems so focused on potential threats that he's willing to rip up everything else. The most recent episode with Caroline Lucas, Rory kept saying 'we have to build data centres' but wouldn't say how and it just sounded like a desperate cry more than a plan. And I suspect that he knows there isn't an environmentally friendly way to do it (environmental to a degree I know it's never going to be perfect and all buildings will have an impact) and doesn't want to say that.

I'm not totally against Rory (though I am sick of the line the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow) but to me he is coming across as dismissive of these issues over what he feels is important, or is this he plays devil's advocate and pushes back on 'leftist' ideas?

“The local businessman, a thirty something father of three, explained to Chan that it was getting harder to run a small business. He worried if the day was coming when he wouldn't be able to support his children properly. He didn't trust Farage but he was going to vote for him anyway, a sentiment I had heard thousands of times. Besides, Binface made him angry. It was demoralising for a grown man, who sometimes lay awake at night worrying about the bills, to be asked to vote for a Radio 4 comedian in fancy dress.”

My thoughts were similar when this Binface stuff began. The considerable number of MPs and the chattering classes (Alastair) think so little of democracy in this country they want the people of Clacton to vote for a man with a bin on his head.

Thoughts?

Ok, I have just started listening. I will listen to the end. But Rory has already introduced this guy with the usual fawning platitudes- astonishing person, truly remarkable etc. As an Irish person who's very familiar with Mercer's stance on veterans- ie they should be allowed to shoot unarmed children in the back with absolute impunity- this makes me pretty queasy and angry. I think Mercer's position is an utter disgrace.

Mercer has never proposed any alternative pathway to justice and accountability for the families of the victims of Bloody Sunday. Just "Don't prosecute- no matter what." What kind of a message does that send to the many many citizens of various nations who have been oppressed and brutalised by the British military machine over many decades and indeed centuries?

I rarely if ever post on Reddit but I cannot stand Mercer so just had to get that off my chest. Would be interested to hear the thoughts of others.

I’m curious because he refused to answer when asked if the king was “White British”

Does the UK have a native population? Or is everyone an immigrant?

What are your thoughts?

In pretty much all European countries, legal immigration from third world countries, i.e. people who are visibly foreign, far eclipses illegal immigration. There are 30 to 40 million non-EU origin residents in the EU for example.

Even in countries like Poland, you have practically zero illegal immigration, but you have lots of Indians, other south east Asians, Latin Americans and Africans.

Yet the rhetoric from the right is always about the illegals and they conflate things so much that in short order they are talking about Arabs and Islam.

I find it all extremely odd. I think the party propagandists are banking on the hope the people who are most concerned about immigrants cannot distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants. They see brown people walking down the street and they think they landed here on a dinky boat, when they probably flew here on AirIndia and are on a postgraduate study visa.

What further muddles the water are demographics that are ethnically non-European, but they are legal residents or even citizens, BUT, they are Arabs and/or Muslim. Those seem to be lumped in with the "illegal immigrants" even though they legally aren't.

Either way, I find the rhetoric is not very clear on who they are upset about, and maybe this is on purpose, to conflate different people together to make the problem seem worse than it is.

BTW, I am not saying that legal immigration isn't something that shouldn't also be debated, but so far it seems like they purposefully refuse to touch the topic, maybe because it would rob steam away from their main rhetorical argument.

C4 News had this clown on tonight talking about global politics. 

Sounded like nothing more than a troll shilling for US dominance by climate change denial whilst claiming austerity as the only way forward for UK/Europe.

 Clearly thinks lies can fly in the face of reality indefinitely (wildfires, what wildfires?) Also shows a clueless inability to learn lessons from history. Has the pretentious fool forgotten how “well” austerity works or is he a fan of food banks and boarded-up shop windows?

Professor of Global History?? Pffft…guy’s an idiot.

Is he not into football because he's not into sports or because football is considered more of a working class sport in the UK?

Do upper class people tend to shun football?

In today's episode (6th August) they mentioned they had written about their summer reading recommendations in the TRIP newsletter. I signed up this evening to read it, but can't seem to read back issues. Anyone care to share the list here please?