Best Of

Political analysis of the week.
(Truncated for brevity.)

https://x.com/CAgovernor/status/2001479563222954403
Trump tonight:

Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me..

Interesting article on the Labour new housing policy.
My guess is that it gets well and truly crippled, but if it were actually delivered to its potential, it could be transformative.
The excerpt points out the necessity for accompanying transport investment.

https://www.samdumitriu.com/p/labour-are-finally-taking-the-housing
..To be clear, this isn’t a policy for sprawl. New developments must exceed minimum density standards of 40dph (dwelling per hectare) for all stations and 50dph for the best connected stations. There is an expectation that in urban areas even higher densities will be reached.

It is hard to overstate how big this is. The Government could easily exceed its 1.5 million home target for the Parliament just by building near stations in London and the South East. And that doesn’t even adjust for the higher densities sought in urban areas. If it survives consultation, and you best believe there will be an almighty fight, it will be the single most powerful pro-supply move in post-war Britain.

This is radical by British standards, but there is precedent. New Zealand’s most expensive cities have built at a clip since successive governments brought in measures to create a similar ‘default yes’ to densification near city centres and busy transport corridors. One study suggested that over six years the policy cut Auckland’s rents by nearly a third. If the same happened in the capital, the average Londoner would save £9,000 each year.

California, one of the few places with a housing crisis as bad as our own, is trying something similar. They have just passed SB79, a major reform that will permit up to nine-storey development near bus, tube, and train stations.

There will be challenges. Building near train stations will mean busier trains. ..

Good news for those of us stuck in traffic caused by low density housing sprawl with no public transport provision - looking at you Midlothian Council, bunch of freeloading carbrain numpties.

Will our developers go for this? Entirely against the ethos of maximising their land values by building as inefficiently as possible. We might have to make building sprawl harder.

High density and no (more) public transport on the other hand raises the question of where to park cars.

Ah, the Winchburgh Station saga. Permission granted in 2012, no one's bothered to fund it, massive congestion in the west of the city.

They used to weigh the Scottish Labour vote in Scotland 28 years ago too, its why Gordon Brown pushed for devolution in Scotland and Wales, he hoped to create two Labour fiefdoms what ever the political party was in Government at Westminster. Sadly they created in fact three devolved Parliaments that were never fit for purpose or ever going to have a governing administration that was ever going to be anywhere near as accountable as the the Government at Westminster with a Parliament and second chamber and a Speaker of the House of Commons that had the powers to hold them to account. Holyrood right now is a complete joke and not fit for purporse after 18 years with the SNP in charge.

But that is down to the last Labour Government in charge at Westminster who originally delivered devolution. The sad thing is that I may not have voted for it, but I really wanted it to work and I still do. But when you create a devolved Parliament where the governing party and their FM and their Cabinet Ministers behaviour are totally unaccountable and untouchable no matter how badly they behave, you turn that administration into a banana republic. And the London political journalists should take a good long hard look at what they have ignored in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland while they threw genuine and well deserved indepth scrutiny at the governments at Westminster in the last 28 years. Talk about two tier journalistic reporting!!

There is absolutely no genuine safe guards in our devolved governments and that includes the very ineffectual local media and TV news. Up here in Scotland if there is a big Westminster government scandal it gets wall to wall coverage, but when it comes to Holyrood, tumble weed or no coverage at all.....

Every day shows more cheating by the Aussies, this series is tainted.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/videos/cm21rpmellzo

It's possible that he believed he'd caught it.
There have been more glaring examples.

It's not the catch / non-catch that's the issue, it's the air-swipe on the second ball which somehow triggered snicko, even though it looked like you could drive a bus between bat and ball.

Although let’s be fair, Smith would’ve found some other incredibly stupid way to screw it all up.

I've never trusted snicko, much preferred hotspot.

None of which excuses a poor batting and bowling performance. If the Ashes are to remain the "be all and end all" for English cricket then the squad have to play warm-up games in Australian conditions.

Hotspot is rubbish in hot climates.

Are you suggesting that it's not appropriate to play Test Cricket in Australia?

Furthermore, are you suggesting that would be a bad thing?

Every day shows more cheating by the Aussies, this series is tainted.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/videos/cm21rpmellzo

It's possible that he believed he'd caught it.
There have been more glaring examples.

It's not the catch / non-catch that's the issue, it's the air-swipe on the second ball which somehow triggered snicko, even though it looked like you could drive a bus between bat and ball.

Although let’s be fair, Smith would’ve found some other incredibly stupid way to screw it all up.

I've never trusted snicko, much preferred hotspot.

None of which excuses a poor batting and bowling performance. If the Ashes are to remain the "be all and end all" for English cricket then the squad have to play warm-up games in Australian conditions.

Hotspot is rubbish in hot climates.

Are you suggesting that it's not appropriate to play Test Cricket in Australia?

Furthermore, are you suggesting that would be a bad thing?

Tbf England have already made that a policy choice.