Gavin Ellwood

Environmental Scientist (DipHE) | Pragmatic energy policy | North Sea realism & net zero trade-offs | Data over dogma

[Gavin Ellwood @86gavin]

@FarmingUK I would but the government could help with relief and or legislation/changes etc etc, always us picking up the tab. Llike many, I struggle a lot with the cost of living especially now being disabled but I'd still pay as the farmers are robbed blind on milk in particular

[Martin Lewis @MartinSLewis]

STUDENT LOAN NEWS: The Treasury Committee of MPs has put out its report into student loans. Here's my view:-

I’ve long condemned the Chancellor’s planned freeze of the student loan repayment threshold next April as immoral and a breach of natural justice. So today is an important moment, as the cross-party Treasury Committee of MPs echoes this language in calling out a “moral obligation” for this to be reversed.

Changing terms for future students is a political choice, but that’s not what is planned next year. Freezing the threshold on existing Plan 2 loans effectively increases the amount those with those loans must repay each year. It is a retrospective, one-sided contractual change that would not be allowed in almost any other circumstance or sector. Worse, those hit often signed these contracts while just 18, with little or no explanation of what they were getting into.

This has to stop, and never be allowed again. That’s why one of the Committee’s most important proposals is that the Government should effectively be bound by the same Consumer Duty for student loans as a commercial lender, backed by proper fairness rules. Though it is only taking about student loan promotions, I think it should be for all student loan behaviour.

I have been pushing for this for over a decade. In 2016 we even got Wes Streeting, then a new MP, to propose FCA regulation of student loans and place restrictions on negative changes as a parliamentary amendment. It was rejected. Had that protection been in place, it could have stopped successive governments tinkering with the system, resulting in a horrific degradation of the original terms.

I hope this report, feeding into a new administration, means there is now a realistic chance of stopping the planned freeze and any future freezes.

Yet let’s be clear: that alone will not fix the Plan 2 student loan crisis - it’ll just stop it getting even worse. The report is titled "Student loans: broken and unfair?". There is no need for the question mark. The repayment threshold should be many thousands of pounds higher, interest should be reduced, maintenance thresholds need uprating, and the whole system, including the way it is communicated, needs a fundamental reset.

Here is the report: https://t.co/MPIOFE7mjy
Here is the MSE submission to the report: https://t.co/RIUPRO2svQ

[Gavin Ellwood @86gavin]

@JohnCleese No they have a choice not to eat it just as we do. Lets make it all vegan for vegans by that argument, live and let live for sure but if youre in another country via immigration whether new or historical respect of values go both wats, you have the choice and thats fair & equal

[Gavin Ellwood @86gavin]

@NeilStirzaker @HeidiBachram Zionism is a political movement and you can and do have zionist Christians, zionist atheists and so on. Just like there's many Jews who arent zionists.
The lines are getting blurred on purpose to shut people up for chritissising Israel in the israel Gaza war.

[Gavin Ellwood @86gavin]

@jeremycorbyn He was up there with Thatcher and didn't think i would say that especially being from a North east mining village. What a spinless narcissist he was puppeted by the elite like all of them. That's why you couldn't get in JC, they couldn't let a real person in who they dont own

[Jeremy Corbyn @jeremycorbyn]

Keir Starmer could have ended child poverty, homelessness and the grotesque levels of inequality in this country.

Instead, he abandoned those in need, destroyed our civil liberties and facilitated genocide in Gaza.

That is how this Prime Minister will be remembered - and that is the legacy of moral and political bankruptcy he leaves behind.

The crises in our society are not going away. Neither are we - and we will keep fighting for a more equal, peaceful and dignified society for all.

[Gavin Ellwood @86gavin]

@empire_res66190 Different wing same bird, will end up in the same destination. They've (governments) got about as much control as a sex addict in a f*cking brothel

[Gavin Ellwood @86gavin]

@CRamzSSG @Dakota_Meyer @POTUS He dropped more f*king bangers than an alcoholic nazzi with the shakes

[Gavin Ellwood @86gavin]

@Kabbage1977 @BasilTheGreat Absolutely true

[Richard Seiler @richardseiler]

𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘵 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦

Jeremy Clarkson has never pretended to be anything other than exactly what he is

Brutally honest. No oil painting. A pot belly, a lifelong smoker, a drinker. Not exactly the modern alpha male or is he?

And somehow that is the whole point

I have watched him for most of my life
First as a motoring journalist who could make you want a car you would never own and never need
Then as something bigger
The loudest, funniest, most unfiltered mouthpiece the ordinary person ever had
A man who said the thing everyone was thinking while the rest of television tiptoed around it

From Top Gear he built something that should not have worked
Three middle aged men, The Stig, a track and a chemistry you cannot manufacture
James May the patient one
Richard Hammond the brave one
And Clarkson the force of nature dragging both of them into chaos and somehow back out again

When it all fell apart at the BBC he could have disappeared
The fracas was not his finest hour and he never pretended it was
He owned it, apologized and carried on
No reinvention, no groveling tour, no carefully managed comeback
He just kept being himself and let the work speak

The move to Amazon and The Grand Tour proved something I think a lot of people missed
The format was never the magic
The men were
You can take three friends out of a studio and drop them anywhere on earth and the loyalty between them travels with them

But it is Clarkson's Farm where the whole picture finally comes into focus

Here is a man with nothing left to prove walking into a field he barely understands and refusing to fake competence he does not have
He has run that farm at break even and then at an outright loss in full public view
No editing it into a success story
No pretending the numbers work when they do not
His farm manager hands him one brutal truth after another and he sits there and takes it

A whole season swallowed by drought even after he leaned into robotics and the most advanced farming money could buy
Technology was supposed to be the answer and the weather did not care
He showed that too
Most people would have cut it

And through all of it he has done something quietly remarkable
He has dragged the plight of the British farmer into the light
The paperwork, the council, the margins that vanish, the weather that ruins a year of work in a week
People who had never thought about where their food comes from suddenly cared because he made them care

And then there is the part nobody warned me about
Men who raise animals for meat and still love them
Who name them, worry about them, sit with them
Who treat them with respect and dignity right up to the moment they cannot keep them
And feel the full weight of sending them off

He does not hide that
He lets the camera sit in the discomfort of it
The grief of a man who knows the deal he made and still finds it hard

That is not weakness
That is honesty most people are far too afraid to show

We live in an age that rewards the polished, the curated, the carefully built personal brand
And here is a scruffy, swearing, chain smoking farmer who has done the opposite of all of it and won
He stayed exactly who he was while the world begged him to become a product

That is the whole secret
There is no act
There never was

And that is exactly why we keep watching

Praying for a full recovery mate, looking forward to another season of Clarkson's Farms!

[Gavin Ellwood @86gavin]

@benonwine A hairdryer 😆

[Lady Featherdown 💅🪶 @Melissag0ec]

A Soldier tells his truth about serving in Afghanistan. I don’t know how I would reconcile this, tragic, I imagine he had all the power in the world to stop it, but he was simply paralysed by the system.

[Gavin Ellwood @86gavin]

@Keir_Starmer Many issues here, but I'll go with 'yet we're still paying premium for importing fuel when North Sea is there. Over £60mil savings you could put towards green projects, jobs and economy boost, energy security & it may help boost your rep slightly which couldn't harm at the mo' 🤔

[Engineer Rick 🇺🇸 @engrbecker]

@GuntherEagleman @BullTheoryio Elon and all engineers create wealth
🚀✈️🌉🏗️🏢💰

[The Shift @andrenftart]

🇬🇧 Is the UK political system about to break?

Is this the beginning of a political shift nobody saw coming?

A 4-month-old party just mobilized 1,000+ volunteers for a single by-election.
Restore Britain. Never heard of them? Neither had most people in January.

Here's what's happening:
- Labour leads at 45%
- Reform at 40%
- Restore Britain at 8% and splitting the right-wing vote
- June 18 could decide which direction the UK goes

In 4 months, Restore Britain went from zero to 1,000 volunteers on the streets.

When mainstream parties fail people -
new ones don't ask permission.
They just show up.

#TheShift #WorldChangingThings

[HJB News @HJB_News__]

A third of UK mosques have been caught marrying under age girls.

A West Yorkshire Imam said "Under Sharia law it's legal".

In Birmingham an Imam
brushed off "Kaffirs, it doesn't matter, it's legal under Sharia law".

[Gavin Ellwood @86gavin]

Why keep throwing billions at imported oil & gas when we could slash costs with North Sea production & reinvest the savings straight into renewables? Policy change now—no more wasted cash! @Keir_Starmer
@Conservatives @Ed_Miliband
@ClaireCoutinho @RupertLowe10 @FinancialTimes

[Gavin Ellwood @86gavin]

@JeffBezos Bottom half- Guess this is bottom half of tax system>Also sounds similar to-Bottom half of society-THEN>Makes up only 3% yet its meaningful to the person-Simlar to-contributes nothing but its your share so have a say- an alt view but sounds like a compliment from a narcissist🤣

[Gavin Ellwood @86gavin]

Why keep throwing billions at imported oil & gas when we could slash costs with North Sea production & reinvest the savings straight into renewables? Policy change now—no more wasted cash! @Keir_Starmer
@Conservatives @Ed_Miliband
@ClaireCoutinho @RupertLowe10 @FinancialTimes

[Gavin Ellwood @86gavin]

Can’t believe it, Gutted 🤯😭
#RIPCatherineOHara

[Christy @Christy56074523]

Catherine O'Hara Passes Away at 71 https://t.co/z4nRxLZ0kU