Indeed. And this is an unsuitable topic for indulging in artistic licence.

If someone doesn't like me- and decides to say so- however loudly and for whatever reason- that is their right as far as I'm concerned. If they were damaging me or my property or impeding me going about my lawful business or otherwise breaching the peace then that would be another matter. Sticks and stones etc. It is simply not viable to to use the law to tell people they have to like each other.

I don't know what he expects after months of coming up with no policies, criticising government policy but then ultimately voting in support of it, and then announcing a policy blitz that still contains no policies. One might reasonably ask why he volunteered for the job if he doesn't want to do anything. Not that the threat of another Labour government appeals- but it's not healthy for there to be no effective opposition in Parliament at all

Greater cost efficiency is always desirable. The reason people get angry is that the government has provided no evidence that its 'green' agenda can deliver that, and even if it can, that the necessary spending could not be repurposed elsewhere to give a greater return on investment. Furthermore, the reality is that battery-powered EVs still take too long to charge and deliver inadequate range- by inadequate I mean inferior to my old gas-guzzler. One should not assume that any problem can be solved or any technology conjured into existence simply by throwing money at it or legislating to 'make it so'.

The argument that our towns are suffering with poor air quality begs the question- compared to what? The emissions standards are a lot more stringent and the air quality a lot better than when I was young. One should not seek to endlessly improve becomes there comes a point where the return on investment starts to diminish exponentially (this is the basis of the Pareto Principle'.

Ultimately- if government does absolutely nothing then a huge amount of money won't have to be spent, the pressure on the car industry to sell undesirable cars will be alleviated, and the need to replace fossil fuels will eventually be met by the free market anyway in response to the fact that those fuels will become ever more scarce as reserves are depleted.

In the mean-time, trying to interfere so egregiously in the free market as to try to ban the sale of the vehicles that people actually prefer to buy strikes me as about as un-conservative a policy as I can imagine.

At the risk of nitpicking, the statement that vaccination is 100% effective against the risk of serious illness and death can't be true because it would imply that the risk of death/illness was zero- which it never is. Risks may be small, but they are only ever zero if they defy the laws of physics.

Perhaps I'm being pedantic, but failing to recognise the difference between improbable and impossible is indicative of sloppy reasoning- and the latter is always worrisome.

Private organisations that don't hold a monopoly have to compete with each other to stay in business. Failing to be cost-effective poses an existential threat to a business. Clearly this is not the case for the NHS, so it's hardly surprising if profit-making companies can deliver more cost-effectively.

I have long had the impression that there is mentality in the NHS that seeks to monopolise healthcare provision in this country- and therefore does not like to make use of the private sector. If purchased private sector capacity has gone unused for no convincing reason then that only adds weight to my suspicions.

It is amusing to see trade relations consistently portrayed in a way that's not really been valid since the 18th century.

One could argue that- if trade sanctions cause a population to adopt a siege mentality and bolster support for the misbehaving government- that the population is also largely complicit , in which case they are as legitimate a target for sanctions as their own government. Moral musings aside though, continuing to trade with a country that's behaving badly continues to furnish it with resources, and- in the case of China- continues to afford it access to valuable western technology and expertise that we might be better off at least trying to deny them.

It is painfully obvious that the authors are defending their own vested interests here. I'm sure they know perfectly well that the economy of China for example, is heavily based on manufacturing while ours is service-based. Service jobs can be done remotely much more easily than manufacturing jobs.

The technological means to allow telecommuting has been available for a few years now, but paradigm shifts are generally resisted by established businesses. Nonetheless the pandemic has forced that overdue paradigm shift to occur, and I very much doubt that things will return to 'normal' once the pandemic has abated. But I don't know- the only way to be sure is to wait and see. The rational thing to do therefore would be to at least suspend work on HS2 until we are in a position to assess how travel demand has been affected long-term. This implies some cost penalties, but given that the HS2 business-case was shaky even before the pandemic, there is the potential for at least a £100 billion saving if the post-pandemic case is revealed to be too weak to justify the spend.

The Chancellor needs to find some savings somewhere- and this is one of the few areas that a big saving could be made without impacting adversely on voter's quality of life.

An equivalent to the First Amendment to the US Constitution appeals to me.