David Gauke, part of the group of pro EU politicians who failed to win the case to remain and just cannot concede they lost
Maybe if they had made a better case they could have won it
Yes, but back to the point he raises. The official numbers show the cost of Brexit being double the cost of Covid. We need tax rises and they're blaming Covid. Logically we will need bigger tax rises and they won't blame Brexit...
It's a fallacious argument. The reason covid implies tax rises is because of the amount of government borrowing. Any direct costs of Brexit are nothing compared to furlough, etc.
Brexit is lost revenue. Furlough is lost revenue *and* increased cost.
Brexit is mostly projected, but not all. Exports to EU are already failing to follow Rest of World performance.
We decided to Brexit. W
This is a very loose comment.
'We' was 52% against 48%, in other words hardly deserving of your all-inclusive pronoun, but in some ways the bigger issue is that we didn't vote for Brexit. We didn't really vote for anything. No one know what the hell we were voting for. The devil in the detail only emerged later and I guarantee you that if we'd known the monster we were about to unleash the country would not have voted for it.
What makes you think I disagree on this point?
I’ve said many times that Cameron was suicidally complacent about his EU referendum [...]
It would have roiled and split the Leave campaign and Cameron would have romped home.
Instead he loftily assumed he was cruising to victory, because he is an arrogant Etonian who fatally over-estimated his own abilities. Because that’s what Eton does. It fills you with self assurance. Often unjustified
It's also because 'he' had just won Indyref, even causing The Queen to purr with pleasure, and thus carried all his self-preening arrogance into the Brexit vote.
Brexit is, without question, the greatest mistake Britain as a nation has made. It eclipses all other colonial, military and foreign policy errors combined.
Thank goodness its pushed mass slavery off the top spot!
And World War One. People always overstate the horror of that error. OK Yes we could have stayed neutral in the Great War, thereby saving a million British lives and a trillion pounds, and probably ensuring we kept the Empire for another century, but what’s that compared to the error of leaving the Customs Union thus adding significant paperwork?
Yeah but WW1 inspired some great poetry and ushered in Expressionism, Surrealism, and Modernism.
Brexit has Farage doing £80-a-pop Cameo shout-outs.
1) If we had stayed out of WWI, the Germans would have won in short order. 2) So, the German Empire, Kaiser etc would have stayed intact 3) Given that the German Empire embraced war as a Good thing, and it had worked twice (1870 and 1914) 4) And that they were planning for WII as part of their planned reparations demands.... 5) The Kaiser Wilhelm instate will probably have a bunch more scientists....
So in about 1940 or so, the highly militaristic German Empire would get some good news about bigger and better bangs. Just in time for the next war.....
Germany winning quickly could also have been a very very good thing = no Hitler, no Nazis, no WW2, probably no Russian Revolution, no communism, no USSR, no Mao, no PRChina, no Cold War
It might have been an unimaginably nicer world and better century, albeit with a stronger Germany dominant in mainland Europe. A price worth paying?
Germany would have imposed a very harsh peace on France, sowing the seeds of the next war. In all likelihood, the Russian government would have collapsed in the aftermath of military defeat, though I don't know if that would have ushered in communism. Again, I think that the peace terms imposed upon defeated Russia would have sowed the seeds for the next war.
Austria-Hungary would have doubled down on repression of the Serbs. The Ottoman Empire would have sought to reclaim Balkan territories. Europe would have remained a powder keg.
I think that's exactly right. Just like everybody else I've ever met who worked for Goldman Sachs, or indeed any big investment bank. Or the big consulting firms like McKinsey.
The interesting question is why their clients let them get away with it.
David Gauke, part of the group of pro EU politicians who failed to win the case to remain and just cannot concede they lost
Maybe if they had made a better case they could have won it
Yes, but back to the point he raises. The official numbers show the cost of Brexit being double the cost of Covid. We need tax rises and they're blaming Covid. Logically we will need bigger tax rises and they won't blame Brexit...
It's a fallacious argument. The reason covid implies tax rises is because of the amount of government borrowing. Any direct costs of Brexit are nothing compared to furlough, etc.
Brexit is lost revenue. Furlough is lost revenue *and* increased cost.
Brexit is mostly projected, but not all. Exports to EU are already failing to follow Rest of World performance.
We decided to Brexit. W
This is a very loose comment.
'We' was 52% against 48%, in other words hardly deserving of your all-inclusive pronoun, but in some ways the bigger issue is that we didn't vote for Brexit. We didn't really vote for anything. No one know what the hell we were voting for. The devil in the detail only emerged later and I guarantee you that if we'd known the monster we were about to unleash the country would not have voted for it.
What makes you think I disagree on this point?
I’ve said many times that Cameron was suicidally complacent about his EU referendum [...]
It would have roiled and split the Leave campaign and Cameron would have romped home.
Instead he loftily assumed he was cruising to victory, because he is an arrogant Etonian who fatally over-estimated his own abilities. Because that’s what Eton does. It fills you with self assurance. Often unjustified
It's also because 'he' had just won Indyref, even causing The Queen to purr with pleasure, and thus carried all his self-preening arrogance into the Brexit vote.
Brexit is, without question, the greatest mistake Britain as a nation has made. It eclipses all other colonial, military and foreign policy errors combined.
Thank goodness its pushed mass slavery off the top spot!
And World War One. People always overstate the horror of that error. OK Yes we could have stayed neutral in the Great War, thereby saving a million British lives and a trillion pounds, and probably ensuring we kept the Empire for another century, but what’s that compared to the error of leaving the Customs Union thus adding significant paperwork?
Yeah but WW1 inspired some great poetry and ushered in Expressionism, Surrealism, and Modernism.
Brexit has Farage doing £80-a-pop Cameo shout-outs.
1) If we had stayed out of WWI, the Germans would have won in short order. 2) So, the German Empire, Kaiser etc would have stayed intact 3) Given that the German Empire embraced war as a Good thing, and it had worked twice (1870 and 1914) 4) And that they were planning for WII as part of their planned reparations demands.... 5) The Kaiser Wilhelm instate will probably have a bunch more scientists....
So in about 1940 or so, the highly militaristic German Empire would get some good news about bigger and better bangs. Just in time for the next war.....
Germany winning quickly could also have been a very very good thing = no Hitler, no Nazis, no WW2, probably no Russian Revolution, no communism, no USSR, no Mao, no PRChina, no Cold War
It might have been an unimaginably nicer world and better century, albeit with a stronger Germany dominant in mainland Europe. A price worth paying?
Germany would have imposed a very harsh peace on France, sowing the seeds of the next war. In all likelihood, the Russian government would have collapsed in the aftermath of military defeat, though I don't know if that would have ushered in communism. Again, I think that the peace terms imposed upon defeated Russia would have sowed the seeds for the next war.
Austria-Hungary would have doubled down on repression of the Serbs. The Ottoman Empire would have sought to reclaim Balkan territories. Europe would have remained a powder keg.
But a powder keg without Hitler, the Nazis, and the Holocaust. That was a uniquely evil aberration, and any alternative history that avoids Hitler (all of them?) is surely ‘better’
“I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live as the greatest he ... the poorest man in England is not at all bound in a strict sense to that Government that he hath not had a voice to put himself under.”
Trouble is Reeves seems to make a very good shadow chancellor. Like Brown in the 1990s. We have this tendency in politics and business to promote people out of jobs they are very good at, and sometimes that's not the right answer. Labour needs someone convincing on the economic and public finances.
She is also quite serious and downbeat (again like Brown). Not a shiny smiley optimist. Given that's also Keir's problem, ideally they would have a fun loving, cheery optimistic leader supported by the clunking fist of an all-destroying shadow CoE.
So what they need is a cheery, fun-loving Northern woman? Pity Victoria Wood died.
Her brother Chris Foote-Wood has a long and distinguished record as a Liberal/Liberal Democrat. I don't know whether she had the same political position.
Pre WW1 France was not, civilisationally, unlike pre WW1 Britain. Pre WW1 Germany was, from the perspective of the 21st century west, a rather darker and more primitive place. I think. Others may be better informed.
Dunno about that, there’s a case to be made that pre WWI France was the most institutionally antisemtic country in Western Europe, and therefore open to a Gallic final solution. Their enthusiastic embrace of the German version doesn’t really contradict that hypothesis.
Is Rachel downbeat? She's a serious figure, that's for sure, but I'm not sure that the "downbeat" cap fits. What is she supposed to do – wave away the fact that households are facing a cost of living crisis and anaemic growth? Identifying the challenges /= downbeat.
I do however agree with PB that Bridget P is a bright and bonny talent – very impressive team in the shadow Treasury that surely signals the way forward for the party.
I think that's exactly right. Just like everybody else I've ever met who worked for Goldman Sachs, or indeed any big investment bank. Or the big consulting firms like McKinsey.
The interesting question is why their clients let them get away with it.
The better question is why all the genuinely clever people are happy accepting being paid less than they could easily get by beating all the morons to the highest-paying jobs available in society. Unless you think the banks are hiring second rate people on purpose, for some reason?
Or, you could think about the extent to which jealousy and other cognitive biases might be colouring your impressions.
David Gauke, part of the group of pro EU politicians who failed to win the case to remain and just cannot concede they lost
Maybe if they had made a better case they could have won it
Yes, but back to the point he raises. The official numbers show the cost of Brexit being double the cost of Covid. We need tax rises and they're blaming Covid. Logically we will need bigger tax rises and they won't blame Brexit...
It's a fallacious argument. The reason covid implies tax rises is because of the amount of government borrowing. Any direct costs of Brexit are nothing compared to furlough, etc.
Brexit is lost revenue. Furlough is lost revenue *and* increased cost.
Brexit is mostly projected, but not all. Exports to EU are already failing to follow Rest of World performance.
We decided to Brexit. W
This is a very loose comment.
'We' was 52% against 48%, in other words hardly deserving of your all-inclusive pronoun, but in some ways the bigger issue is that we didn't vote for Brexit. We didn't really vote for anything. No one know what the hell we were voting for. The devil in the detail only emerged later and I guarantee you that if we'd known the monster we were about to unleash the country would not have voted for it.
What makes you think I disagree on this point?
I’ve said many times that Cameron was suicidally complacent about his EU referendum [...]
It would have roiled and split the Leave campaign and Cameron would have romped home.
Instead he loftily assumed he was cruising to victory, because he is an arrogant Etonian who fatally over-estimated his own abilities. Because that’s what Eton does. It fills you with self assurance. Often unjustified
It's also because 'he' had just won Indyref, even causing The Queen to purr with pleasure, and thus carried all his self-preening arrogance into the Brexit vote.
Brexit is, without question, the greatest mistake Britain as a nation has made. It eclipses all other colonial, military and foreign policy errors combined.
Thank goodness its pushed mass slavery off the top spot!
And World War One. People always overstate the horror of that error. OK Yes we could have stayed neutral in the Great War, thereby saving a million British lives and a trillion pounds, and probably ensuring we kept the Empire for another century, but what’s that compared to the error of leaving the Customs Union thus adding significant paperwork?
Yeah but WW1 inspired some great poetry and ushered in Expressionism, Surrealism, and Modernism.
Brexit has Farage doing £80-a-pop Cameo shout-outs.
1) If we had stayed out of WWI, the Germans would have won in short order. 2) So, the German Empire, Kaiser etc would have stayed intact 3) Given that the German Empire embraced war as a Good thing, and it had worked twice (1870 and 1914) 4) And that they were planning for WII as part of their planned reparations demands.... 5) The Kaiser Wilhelm instate will probably have a bunch more scientists....
So in about 1940 or so, the highly militaristic German Empire would get some good news about bigger and better bangs. Just in time for the next war.....
Germany winning quickly could also have been a very very good thing = no Hitler, no Nazis, no WW2, probably no Russian Revolution, no communism, no USSR, no Mao, no PRChina, no Cold War
It might have been an unimaginably nicer world and better century, albeit with a stronger Germany dominant in mainland Europe. A price worth paying?
Germany would have imposed a very harsh peace on France, sowing the seeds of the next war. In all likelihood, the Russian government would have collapsed in the aftermath of military defeat, though I don't know if that would have ushered in communism. Again, I think that the peace terms imposed upon defeated Russia would have sowed the seeds for the next war.
Austria-Hungary would have doubled down on repression of the Serbs. The Ottoman Empire would have sought to reclaim Balkan territories. Europe would have remained a powder keg.
But a powder keg without Hitler, the Nazis, and the Holocaust. That was a uniquely evil aberration, and any alternative history that avoids Hitler (all of them?) is surely ‘better’
No, Hitler wasn't unique.
Hitler was to some extents a product of his time. A very evil product even for his time, but sadly not unique. There are three other leaders arguably just as bad as Hitler in the 20th century alone. We pay the most attention to Hitler only because we fought against him and he's European.
In an alternative history within the multiverse there's every chance a parallel Hitler could have arisen just as in our own timeline Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot arose. Even worse, in that timeline parallel Hitler could have won the war.
In fact this is a pretty crappy budget, short termist and utterly failing to address the structural crisis that the Tory Hard Brexit is creating for UK PLC.
The MoD got fucked. They are looking at real term cuts for the next three years plus unfunded commitments like the 1.25% employer NI rise and the National Flegship.
The manifesto promise of 0.5% above inflation annual adjustment to defence spending has been casually discarded.
What's new? Tories have been cutting the armed forces since the 1980s, secure in the knowledge that voters will blame Labour for being weak on defence.
1980s? I think you give the Macmillan government and its abandonment of conscription too much credit there.
Its shameful how we armed forces have been run down. We can even man both of Browns white elephant aircraft carriers at the same time.
Why shameful?
It should be an assessment of our need as opposed to a number in itself
We cant man our aircraft carriers.. that's shsmeful enough on its own.
That’s bad planning and should be criticised
I just don’t see any shame attaching to the Uk. The MoD has always varied from useless to downright awful
I’m on a beach in the Aegean, and can’t be arsed to do the research myself, but @Dura_Ace suggested that the defence budget was a manifesto breach.
How many breaches is that now?
I’ve no idea and don’t really care
The manifesto is a statement of intent not a binding commitment
There is a political cost to every decision (whether in a manifesto or not).
Manifesto breaches are a stick that opponents use but I’m not sure it really cuts through to voters
It’s very interesting that you don’t care.
It's also a shot against one of the more common things cited by defenders of FPTP: with a single party in power, you can hold them to their manifesto commitments.
We've got the statement that they're more like guidelines coupled with the observation that voters don't actually hold them to their manifesto, anyway.
Not really. The point is that a manifesto can be discarded if the situation demands it, but under FPTP we can still hold that against the government. If we think there's a good justification for the manifesto being broken (eg an unforeseen pandemic) then we can factor that into our thinking before we vote. If we do not think there's a good justification for the manifesto being broken (eg the Constitution being renamed the Lisbon Treaty) then we can also factor that into our thinking.
Its our choice whether we hold the government to account for its failure to live to its commitments at the next election or not.
Under coalition agreements they get dumped instantly without needing an excuse.
And if the voters disagree with the compromises the parties have made, they will punish the party in question at the next election. In Coalition negotiations, parties have to bear that in mind. That the overall intent (as per Charles' comment) and ideological lean are the important bits and if the parties betray those, they will get badly hit.
Bridget Phillipson is - by quite a long way - the best Labour interviewee I've heard in recent years. She speaks normally and engages. Surely a star of the next decade or so
Attentive readers may note that I was tipping Bridget for great things over a year ago. Very sharp, comes over very well, north-eastern MP.
I have been recently too. She has been growing on me with her appearances on the Sunday Politics Show in the North East. Other labour people like the North of Tyne Mayor or the MP from Durham are positively underwhelming but she is impressive.
Her seat is marginal but I expect will swing back to her at the next GE.
David Gauke, part of the group of pro EU politicians who failed to win the case to remain and just cannot concede they lost
Maybe if they had made a better case they could have won it
Yes, but back to the point he raises. The official numbers show the cost of Brexit being double the cost of Covid. We need tax rises and they're blaming Covid. Logically we will need bigger tax rises and they won't blame Brexit...
It's a fallacious argument. The reason covid implies tax rises is because of the amount of government borrowing. Any direct costs of Brexit are nothing compared to furlough, etc.
Brexit is lost revenue. Furlough is lost revenue *and* increased cost.
Brexit is mostly projected, but not all. Exports to EU are already failing to follow Rest of World performance.
We decided to Brexit. W
This is a very loose comment.
'We' was 52% against 48%, in other words hardly deserving of your all-inclusive pronoun, but in some ways the bigger issue is that we didn't vote for Brexit. We didn't really vote for anything. No one know what the hell we were voting for. The devil in the detail only emerged later and I guarantee you that if we'd known the monster we were about to unleash the country would not have voted for it.
What makes you think I disagree on this point?
I’ve said many times that Cameron was suicidally complacent about his EU referendum [...]
It would have roiled and split the Leave campaign and Cameron would have romped home.
Instead he loftily assumed he was cruising to victory, because he is an arrogant Etonian who fatally over-estimated his own abilities. Because that’s what Eton does. It fills you with self assurance. Often unjustified
It's also because 'he' had just won Indyref, even causing The Queen to purr with pleasure, and thus carried all his self-preening arrogance into the Brexit vote.
Brexit is, without question, the greatest mistake Britain as a nation has made. It eclipses all other colonial, military and foreign policy errors combined.
Thank goodness its pushed mass slavery off the top spot!
And World War One. People always overstate the horror of that error. OK Yes we could have stayed neutral in the Great War, thereby saving a million British lives and a trillion pounds, and probably ensuring we kept the Empire for another century, but what’s that compared to the error of leaving the Customs Union thus adding significant paperwork?
Yeah but WW1 inspired some great poetry and ushered in Expressionism, Surrealism, and Modernism.
Brexit has Farage doing £80-a-pop Cameo shout-outs.
1) If we had stayed out of WWI, the Germans would have won in short order. 2) So, the German Empire, Kaiser etc would have stayed intact 3) Given that the German Empire embraced war as a Good thing, and it had worked twice (1870 and 1914) 4) And that they were planning for WII as part of their planned reparations demands.... 5) The Kaiser Wilhelm instate will probably have a bunch more scientists....
So in about 1940 or so, the highly militaristic German Empire would get some good news about bigger and better bangs. Just in time for the next war.....
Germany winning quickly could also have been a very very good thing = no Hitler, no Nazis, no WW2, probably no Russian Revolution, no communism, no USSR, no Mao, no PRChina, no Cold War
It might have been an unimaginably nicer world and better century, albeit with a stronger Germany dominant in mainland Europe. A price worth paying?
Germany would have imposed a very harsh peace on France, sowing the seeds of the next war. In all likelihood, the Russian government would have collapsed in the aftermath of military defeat, though I don't know if that would have ushered in communism. Again, I think that the peace terms imposed upon defeated Russia would have sowed the seeds for the next war.
Austria-Hungary would have doubled down on repression of the Serbs. The Ottoman Empire would have sought to reclaim Balkan territories. Europe would have remained a powder keg.
But a powder keg without Hitler, the Nazis, and the Holocaust. That was a uniquely evil aberration, and any alternative history that avoids Hitler (all of them?) is surely ‘better’
Stephen Fry (who, as has been pointed out, is a stupid person's idea of a clever person, but in this respect I think he has a point) wrote a counterfactual in which someone went back in time to prevent Hitler being born, only for another, better militaristic lunatic to take power. The west had something of a lucky escape with Hitler, in that he made some very bad military decisions along the way.
David Gauke, part of the group of pro EU politicians who failed to win the case to remain and just cannot concede they lost
Maybe if they had made a better case they could have won it
Yes, but back to the point he raises. The official numbers show the cost of Brexit being double the cost of Covid. We need tax rises and they're blaming Covid. Logically we will need bigger tax rises and they won't blame Brexit...
It's a fallacious argument. The reason covid implies tax rises is because of the amount of government borrowing. Any direct costs of Brexit are nothing compared to furlough, etc.
Brexit is lost revenue. Furlough is lost revenue *and* increased cost.
Brexit is mostly projected, but not all. Exports to EU are already failing to follow Rest of World performance.
We decided to Brexit. W
This is a very loose comment.
'We' was 52% against 48%, in other words hardly deserving of your all-inclusive pronoun, but in some ways the bigger issue is that we didn't vote for Brexit. We didn't really vote for anything. No one know what the hell we were voting for. The devil in the detail only emerged later and I guarantee you that if we'd known the monster we were about to unleash the country would not have voted for it.
What makes you think I disagree on this point?
I’ve said many times that Cameron was suicidally complacent about his EU referendum [...]
It would have roiled and split the Leave campaign and Cameron would have romped home.
Instead he loftily assumed he was cruising to victory, because he is an arrogant Etonian who fatally over-estimated his own abilities. Because that’s what Eton does. It fills you with self assurance. Often unjustified
It's also because 'he' had just won Indyref, even causing The Queen to purr with pleasure, and thus carried all his self-preening arrogance into the Brexit vote.
Brexit is, without question, the greatest mistake Britain as a nation has made. It eclipses all other colonial, military and foreign policy errors combined.
Thank goodness its pushed mass slavery off the top spot!
And World War One. People always overstate the horror of that error. OK Yes we could have stayed neutral in the Great War, thereby saving a million British lives and a trillion pounds, and probably ensuring we kept the Empire for another century, but what’s that compared to the error of leaving the Customs Union thus adding significant paperwork?
Yeah but WW1 inspired some great poetry and ushered in Expressionism, Surrealism, and Modernism.
Brexit has Farage doing £80-a-pop Cameo shout-outs.
1) If we had stayed out of WWI, the Germans would have won in short order. 2) So, the German Empire, Kaiser etc would have stayed intact 3) Given that the German Empire embraced war as a Good thing, and it had worked twice (1870 and 1914) 4) And that they were planning for WII as part of their planned reparations demands.... 5) The Kaiser Wilhelm instate will probably have a bunch more scientists....
So in about 1940 or so, the highly militaristic German Empire would get some good news about bigger and better bangs. Just in time for the next war.....
Interesting. Is (1) true? Having read Keegan on the subject, I'm not convinced that the BEF was that crucial. We have a very British view of 1914, whereas a wider view has millions of French troops under arms against the invading hordes.
If we had stayed neutral, I think it possible Germany would not have won in 1914.
BUT - I think they would have won in the end. Think Verdun without the British to attack on the Somme. The French in chaos in 1916 with mutinies. Would the USA have come in if Britain was neutral (no need to sink the USA - British shipping).
In fact this is a pretty crappy budget, short termist and utterly failing to address the structural crisis that the Tory Hard Brexit is creating for UK PLC.
The MoD got fucked. They are looking at real term cuts for the next three years plus unfunded commitments like the 1.25% employer NI rise and the National Flegship.
The manifesto promise of 0.5% above inflation annual adjustment to defence spending has been casually discarded.
What's new? Tories have been cutting the armed forces since the 1980s, secure in the knowledge that voters will blame Labour for being weak on defence.
1980s? I think you give the Macmillan government and its abandonment of conscription too much credit there.
Its shameful how we armed forces have been run down. We can even man both of Browns white elephant aircraft carriers at the same time.
Why shameful?
It should be an assessment of our need as opposed to a number in itself
We cant man our aircraft carriers.. that's shsmeful enough on its own.
That’s bad planning and should be criticised
I just don’t see any shame attaching to the Uk. The MoD has always varied from useless to downright awful
I’m on a beach in the Aegean, and can’t be arsed to do the research myself, but @Dura_Ace suggested that the defence budget was a manifesto breach.
How many breaches is that now?
I’ve no idea and don’t really care
The manifesto is a statement of intent not a binding commitment
There is a political cost to every decision (whether in a manifesto or not).
Manifesto breaches are a stick that opponents use but I’m not sure it really cuts through to voters
It’s very interesting that you don’t care.
It's also a shot against one of the more common things cited by defenders of FPTP: with a single party in power, you can hold them to their manifesto commitments.
We've got the statement that they're more like guidelines coupled with the observation that voters don't actually hold them to their manifesto, anyway.
Not really. The point is that a manifesto can be discarded if the situation demands it, but under FPTP we can still hold that against the government. If we think there's a good justification for the manifesto being broken (eg an unforeseen pandemic) then we can factor that into our thinking before we vote. If we do not think there's a good justification for the manifesto being broken (eg the Constitution being renamed the Lisbon Treaty) then we can also factor that into our thinking.
Its our choice whether we hold the government to account for its failure to live to its commitments at the next election or not.
Under coalition agreements they get dumped instantly without needing an excuse.
And if the voters disagree with the compromises the parties have made, they will punish the party in question at the next election. In Coalition negotiations, parties have to bear that in mind. That the overall intent (as per Charles' comment) and ideological lean are the important bits and if the parties betray those, they will get badly hit.
Just ask him: [Clegg image]
Absolutely they were smashed under FPTP and even he lost his seat the following time around. Rather proving my point. If they'd kept the same shares under PR they'd have lost only two-thirds of the seats instead of 90% and he'd have been so high up the list he'd have kept his seat.
Plus of course the UK is more conditioned to parties not betraying their manifestos so such a betrayal stung more. A lot of Lib Dems at the time were bemoaning the fact that on the continent voters are more forgiving of such betrayals as they're used to them.
For me it comes down to trust. Would you trust Rachel Reeves to look after the financial affairs of the nation? It is a different question as to whether I would agree with all her decisions or SKS's decisions (assuming he ever makes any), it is more whether they are likely to be within reasonable parameters.
My answer to that in the John McDonnel years was an absolute and unequivocal no. I don't even remember Chris Leslie in the role and Annaliese Dodds just did not engender any confidence either. For the first time since Balls Labour have someone who meets that test.
It is a necessary but not sufficient condition for voting for them. For Labour to really offer an alternative Government SKS needs to step up or step out.
Leeds has had several great Labour MPs such as Denis Healey, I fear Reeves is more Richard Burgon territory.
Another ludicrous post from you that suggests you know as much about Labour politics as you do about the Glaswegian food scene.
I worked in Leeds for several years, several friends of mine were and are fairly active in the Leeds and West Yorkshire labour scene.
As for Glaswegian food, you need a sense of humour, up to quite recently I had plans to spend a week in Glasgow in next month.
Then Blondie postponed, the gits.
Your 'sense of humour' usually involves posting stereotypes of cities/regions that some people might take seriously. Even if they don't, I should imagine Weegies are wholeheartedly sick of tired 'gags' about deep-fried Mars bars.
Be fair to TSE.
He lives in one of the most caricaturable places in the country.
David Gauke, part of the group of pro EU politicians who failed to win the case to remain and just cannot concede they lost
Maybe if they had made a better case they could have won it
Yes, but back to the point he raises. The official numbers show the cost of Brexit being double the cost of Covid. We need tax rises and they're blaming Covid. Logically we will need bigger tax rises and they won't blame Brexit...
It's a fallacious argument. The reason covid implies tax rises is because of the amount of government borrowing. Any direct costs of Brexit are nothing compared to furlough, etc.
Brexit is lost revenue. Furlough is lost revenue *and* increased cost.
Brexit is mostly projected, but not all. Exports to EU are already failing to follow Rest of World performance.
We decided to Brexit. W
This is a very loose comment.
'We' was 52% against 48%, in other words hardly deserving of your all-inclusive pronoun, but in some ways the bigger issue is that we didn't vote for Brexit. We didn't really vote for anything. No one know what the hell we were voting for. The devil in the detail only emerged later and I guarantee you that if we'd known the monster we were about to unleash the country would not have voted for it.
What makes you think I disagree on this point?
I’ve said many times that Cameron was suicidally complacent about his EU referendum [...]
It would have roiled and split the Leave campaign and Cameron would have romped home.
Instead he loftily assumed he was cruising to victory, because he is an arrogant Etonian who fatally over-estimated his own abilities. Because that’s what Eton does. It fills you with self assurance. Often unjustified
It's also because 'he' had just won Indyref, even causing The Queen to purr with pleasure, and thus carried all his self-preening arrogance into the Brexit vote.
Brexit is, without question, the greatest mistake Britain as a nation has made. It eclipses all other colonial, military and foreign policy errors combined.
Thank goodness its pushed mass slavery off the top spot!
And World War One. People always overstate the horror of that error. OK Yes we could have stayed neutral in the Great War, thereby saving a million British lives and a trillion pounds, and probably ensuring we kept the Empire for another century, but what’s that compared to the error of leaving the Customs Union thus adding significant paperwork?
Yeah but WW1 inspired some great poetry and ushered in Expressionism, Surrealism, and Modernism.
Brexit has Farage doing £80-a-pop Cameo shout-outs.
1) If we had stayed out of WWI, the Germans would have won in short order. 2) So, the German Empire, Kaiser etc would have stayed intact 3) Given that the German Empire embraced war as a Good thing, and it had worked twice (1870 and 1914) 4) And that they were planning for WII as part of their planned reparations demands.... 5) The Kaiser Wilhelm instate will probably have a bunch more scientists....
So in about 1940 or so, the highly militaristic German Empire would get some good news about bigger and better bangs. Just in time for the next war.....
Interesting. Is (1) true? Having read Keegan on the subject, I'm not convinced that the BEF was that crucial. We have a very British view of 1914, whereas a wider view has millions of French troops under arms against the invading hordes.
If we had stayed neutral, I think it possible Germany would not have won in 1914.
BUT - I think they would have won in the end. Think Verdun without the British to attack on the Somme. The French in chaos in 1916 with mutinies. Would the USA have come in if Britain was neutral (no need to sink the USA - British shipping).
They were a coin flip away from Paris in 1914. The BEF may not have stopped them militarily, but their presence gave a confidence to the French government and military that definitely affected the outcome.
With large chunks of French industry under German control, France would not have lasted long, anyway.
David Gauke, part of the group of pro EU politicians who failed to win the case to remain and just cannot concede they lost
Maybe if they had made a better case they could have won it
Yes, but back to the point he raises. The official numbers show the cost of Brexit being double the cost of Covid. We need tax rises and they're blaming Covid. Logically we will need bigger tax rises and they won't blame Brexit...
It's a fallacious argument. The reason covid implies tax rises is because of the amount of government borrowing. Any direct costs of Brexit are nothing compared to furlough, etc.
Brexit is lost revenue. Furlough is lost revenue *and* increased cost.
Brexit is mostly projected, but not all. Exports to EU are already failing to follow Rest of World performance.
We decided to Brexit. W
This is a very loose comment.
'We' was 52% against 48%, in other words hardly deserving of your all-inclusive pronoun, but in some ways the bigger issue is that we didn't vote for Brexit. We didn't really vote for anything. No one know what the hell we were voting for. The devil in the detail only emerged later and I guarantee you that if we'd known the monster we were about to unleash the country would not have voted for it.
What makes you think I disagree on this point?
I’ve said many times that Cameron was suicidally complacent about his EU referendum [...]
It would have roiled and split the Leave campaign and Cameron would have romped home.
Instead he loftily assumed he was cruising to victory, because he is an arrogant Etonian who fatally over-estimated his own abilities. Because that’s what Eton does. It fills you with self assurance. Often unjustified
It's also because 'he' had just won Indyref, even causing The Queen to purr with pleasure, and thus carried all his self-preening arrogance into the Brexit vote.
Brexit is, without question, the greatest mistake Britain as a nation has made. It eclipses all other colonial, military and foreign policy errors combined.
Thank goodness its pushed mass slavery off the top spot!
And World War One. People always overstate the horror of that error. OK Yes we could have stayed neutral in the Great War, thereby saving a million British lives and a trillion pounds, and probably ensuring we kept the Empire for another century, but what’s that compared to the error of leaving the Customs Union thus adding significant paperwork?
Yeah but WW1 inspired some great poetry and ushered in Expressionism, Surrealism, and Modernism.
Brexit has Farage doing £80-a-pop Cameo shout-outs.
1) If we had stayed out of WWI, the Germans would have won in short order. 2) So, the German Empire, Kaiser etc would have stayed intact 3) Given that the German Empire embraced war as a Good thing, and it had worked twice (1870 and 1914) 4) And that they were planning for WII as part of their planned reparations demands.... 5) The Kaiser Wilhelm instate will probably have a bunch more scientists....
So in about 1940 or so, the highly militaristic German Empire would get some good news about bigger and better bangs. Just in time for the next war.....
Germany winning quickly could also have been a very very good thing = no Hitler, no Nazis, no WW2, probably no Russian Revolution, no communism, no USSR, no Mao, no PRChina, no Cold War
It might have been an unimaginably nicer world and better century, albeit with a stronger Germany dominant in mainland Europe. A price worth paying?
Germany would have imposed a very harsh peace on France, sowing the seeds of the next war. In all likelihood, the Russian government would have collapsed in the aftermath of military defeat, though I don't know if that would have ushered in communism. Again, I think that the peace terms imposed upon defeated Russia would have sowed the seeds for the next war.
Austria-Hungary would have doubled down on repression of the Serbs. The Ottoman Empire would have sought to reclaim Balkan territories. Europe would have remained a powder keg.
But a powder keg without Hitler, the Nazis, and the Holocaust. That was a uniquely evil aberration, and any alternative history that avoids Hitler (all of them?) is surely ‘better’
I think the Austro-Hungarian treatment of the Serbs in WWI came quite close to genocide, and would have been worse in victory. Fighting between the Turks and their Balkan enemies was absolutely atrocious.
David Gauke, part of the group of pro EU politicians who failed to win the case to remain and just cannot concede they lost
Maybe if they had made a better case they could have won it
Yes, but back to the point he raises. The official numbers show the cost of Brexit being double the cost of Covid. We need tax rises and they're blaming Covid. Logically we will need bigger tax rises and they won't blame Brexit...
It's a fallacious argument. The reason covid implies tax rises is because of the amount of government borrowing. Any direct costs of Brexit are nothing compared to furlough, etc.
Brexit is lost revenue. Furlough is lost revenue *and* increased cost.
Brexit is mostly projected, but not all. Exports to EU are already failing to follow Rest of World performance.
We decided to Brexit. W
This is a very loose comment.
'We' was 52% against 48%, in other words hardly deserving of your all-inclusive pronoun, but in some ways the bigger issue is that we didn't vote for Brexit. We didn't really vote for anything. No one know what the hell we were voting for. The devil in the detail only emerged later and I guarantee you that if we'd known the monster we were about to unleash the country would not have voted for it.
What makes you think I disagree on this point?
I’ve said many times that Cameron was suicidally complacent about his EU referendum [...]
It would have roiled and split the Leave campaign and Cameron would have romped home.
Instead he loftily assumed he was cruising to victory, because he is an arrogant Etonian who fatally over-estimated his own abilities. Because that’s what Eton does. It fills you with self assurance. Often unjustified
It's also because 'he' had just won Indyref, even causing The Queen to purr with pleasure, and thus carried all his self-preening arrogance into the Brexit vote.
Brexit is, without question, the greatest mistake Britain as a nation has made. It eclipses all other colonial, military and foreign policy errors combined.
Thank goodness its pushed mass slavery off the top spot!
And World War One. People always overstate the horror of that error. OK Yes we could have stayed neutral in the Great War, thereby saving a million British lives and a trillion pounds, and probably ensuring we kept the Empire for another century, but what’s that compared to the error of leaving the Customs Union thus adding significant paperwork?
Yeah but WW1 inspired some great poetry and ushered in Expressionism, Surrealism, and Modernism.
Brexit has Farage doing £80-a-pop Cameo shout-outs.
1) If we had stayed out of WWI, the Germans would have won in short order. 2) So, the German Empire, Kaiser etc would have stayed intact 3) Given that the German Empire embraced war as a Good thing, and it had worked twice (1870 and 1914) 4) And that they were planning for WII as part of their planned reparations demands.... 5) The Kaiser Wilhelm instate will probably have a bunch more scientists....
So in about 1940 or so, the highly militaristic German Empire would get some good news about bigger and better bangs. Just in time for the next war.....
Germany winning quickly could also have been a very very good thing = no Hitler, no Nazis, no WW2, probably no Russian Revolution, no communism, no USSR, no Mao, no PRChina, no Cold War
It might have been an unimaginably nicer world and better century, albeit with a stronger Germany dominant in mainland Europe. A price worth paying?
Its a mistake to imagine that the German regime of 1914 -1918 was that much better than the Nazi's. We have this image that the German army was somehow a decent bunch of chaps just happened to be fighting against us, when the reality is the atrocities were there in 1914-18 too. German victory in Eastern Europe would have given a Germanic empire with repressed peoples. Huge economic rapacity for Germany. The German army after 1945 tried to claim it was an honorable institution, but this was whitewashing of the highest order. The army was complicit in everything that happened on the Eastern Front, and behind. The nature of the regime was similar. I'd recommend Keegan's 'Apocalypse' on how 1914 played out.
David Gauke, part of the group of pro EU politicians who failed to win the case to remain and just cannot concede they lost
Maybe if they had made a better case they could have won it
Yes, but back to the point he raises. The official numbers show the cost of Brexit being double the cost of Covid. We need tax rises and they're blaming Covid. Logically we will need bigger tax rises and they won't blame Brexit...
It's a fallacious argument. The reason covid implies tax rises is because of the amount of government borrowing. Any direct costs of Brexit are nothing compared to furlough, etc.
Brexit is lost revenue. Furlough is lost revenue *and* increased cost.
Brexit is mostly projected, but not all. Exports to EU are already failing to follow Rest of World performance.
We decided to Brexit. W
This is a very loose comment.
'We' was 52% against 48%, in other words hardly deserving of your all-inclusive pronoun, but in some ways the bigger issue is that we didn't vote for Brexit. We didn't really vote for anything. No one know what the hell we were voting for. The devil in the detail only emerged later and I guarantee you that if we'd known the monster we were about to unleash the country would not have voted for it.
What makes you think I disagree on this point?
I’ve said many times that Cameron was suicidally complacent about his EU referendum [...]
It would have roiled and split the Leave campaign and Cameron would have romped home.
Instead he loftily assumed he was cruising to victory, because he is an arrogant Etonian who fatally over-estimated his own abilities. Because that’s what Eton does. It fills you with self assurance. Often unjustified
It's also because 'he' had just won Indyref, even causing The Queen to purr with pleasure, and thus carried all his self-preening arrogance into the Brexit vote.
Brexit is, without question, the greatest mistake Britain as a nation has made. It eclipses all other colonial, military and foreign policy errors combined.
Thank goodness its pushed mass slavery off the top spot!
And World War One. People always overstate the horror of that error. OK Yes we could have stayed neutral in the Great War, thereby saving a million British lives and a trillion pounds, and probably ensuring we kept the Empire for another century, but what’s that compared to the error of leaving the Customs Union thus adding significant paperwork?
Yeah but WW1 inspired some great poetry and ushered in Expressionism, Surrealism, and Modernism.
Brexit has Farage doing £80-a-pop Cameo shout-outs.
1) If we had stayed out of WWI, the Germans would have won in short order. 2) So, the German Empire, Kaiser etc would have stayed intact 3) Given that the German Empire embraced war as a Good thing, and it had worked twice (1870 and 1914) 4) And that they were planning for WII as part of their planned reparations demands.... 5) The Kaiser Wilhelm instate will probably have a bunch more scientists....
So in about 1940 or so, the highly militaristic German Empire would get some good news about bigger and better bangs. Just in time for the next war.....
Germany winning quickly could also have been a very very good thing = no Hitler, no Nazis, no WW2, probably no Russian Revolution, no communism, no USSR, no Mao, no PRChina, no Cold War
It might have been an unimaginably nicer world and better century, albeit with a stronger Germany dominant in mainland Europe. A price worth paying?
Germany would have imposed a very harsh peace on France, sowing the seeds of the next war. In all likelihood, the Russian government would have collapsed in the aftermath of military defeat, though I don't know if that would have ushered in communism. Again, I think that the peace terms imposed upon defeated Russia would have sowed the seeds for the next war.
Austria-Hungary would have doubled down on repression of the Serbs. The Ottoman Empire would have sought to reclaim Balkan territories. Europe would have remained a powder keg.
But a powder keg without Hitler, the Nazis, and the Holocaust. That was a uniquely evil aberration, and any alternative history that avoids Hitler (all of them?) is surely ‘better’
Stephen Fry (who, as has been pointed out, is a stupid person's idea of a clever person, but in this respect I think he has a point) wrote a counterfactual in which someone went back in time to prevent Hitler being born, only for another, better militaristic lunatic to take power. The west had something of a lucky escape with Hitler, in that he made some very bad military decisions along the way.
Equally he made some very very very lucky decisions.
By 1941 he'd been throwing 6s non stop since about 1933. No wonder he went mad with it.....
David Gauke, part of the group of pro EU politicians who failed to win the case to remain and just cannot concede they lost
Maybe if they had made a better case they could have won it
Yes, but back to the point he raises. The official numbers show the cost of Brexit being double the cost of Covid. We need tax rises and they're blaming Covid. Logically we will need bigger tax rises and they won't blame Brexit...
It's a fallacious argument. The reason covid implies tax rises is because of the amount of government borrowing. Any direct costs of Brexit are nothing compared to furlough, etc.
Brexit is lost revenue. Furlough is lost revenue *and* increased cost.
Brexit is mostly projected, but not all. Exports to EU are already failing to follow Rest of World performance.
We decided to Brexit. W
This is a very loose comment.
'We' was 52% against 48%, in other words hardly deserving of your all-inclusive pronoun, but in some ways the bigger issue is that we didn't vote for Brexit. We didn't really vote for anything. No one know what the hell we were voting for. The devil in the detail only emerged later and I guarantee you that if we'd known the monster we were about to unleash the country would not have voted for it.
What makes you think I disagree on this point?
I’ve said many times that Cameron was suicidally complacent about his EU referendum [...]
It would have roiled and split the Leave campaign and Cameron would have romped home.
Instead he loftily assumed he was cruising to victory, because he is an arrogant Etonian who fatally over-estimated his own abilities. Because that’s what Eton does. It fills you with self assurance. Often unjustified
It's also because 'he' had just won Indyref, even causing The Queen to purr with pleasure, and thus carried all his self-preening arrogance into the Brexit vote.
Brexit is, without question, the greatest mistake Britain as a nation has made. It eclipses all other colonial, military and foreign policy errors combined.
Thank goodness its pushed mass slavery off the top spot!
And World War One. People always overstate the horror of that error. OK Yes we could have stayed neutral in the Great War, thereby saving a million British lives and a trillion pounds, and probably ensuring we kept the Empire for another century, but what’s that compared to the error of leaving the Customs Union thus adding significant paperwork?
Yeah but WW1 inspired some great poetry and ushered in Expressionism, Surrealism, and Modernism.
Brexit has Farage doing £80-a-pop Cameo shout-outs.
1) If we had stayed out of WWI, the Germans would have won in short order. 2) So, the German Empire, Kaiser etc would have stayed intact 3) Given that the German Empire embraced war as a Good thing, and it had worked twice (1870 and 1914) 4) And that they were planning for WII as part of their planned reparations demands.... 5) The Kaiser Wilhelm instate will probably have a bunch more scientists....
So in about 1940 or so, the highly militaristic German Empire would get some good news about bigger and better bangs. Just in time for the next war.....
Germany winning quickly could also have been a very very good thing = no Hitler, no Nazis, no WW2, probably no Russian Revolution, no communism, no USSR, no Mao, no PRChina, no Cold War
It might have been an unimaginably nicer world and better century, albeit with a stronger Germany dominant in mainland Europe. A price worth paying?
Germany would have imposed a very harsh peace on France, sowing the seeds of the next war. In all likelihood, the Russian government would have collapsed in the aftermath of military defeat, though I don't know if that would have ushered in communism. Again, I think that the peace terms imposed upon defeated Russia would have sowed the seeds for the next war.
Austria-Hungary would have doubled down on repression of the Serbs. The Ottoman Empire would have sought to reclaim Balkan territories. Europe would have remained a powder keg.
But a powder keg without Hitler, the Nazis, and the Holocaust. That was a uniquely evil aberration, and any alternative history that avoids Hitler (all of them?) is surely ‘better’
Stephen Fry (who, as has been pointed out, is a stupid person's idea of a clever person, but in this respect I think he has a point) wrote a counterfactual in which someone went back in time to prevent Hitler being born, only for another, better militaristic lunatic to take power. The west had something of a lucky escape with Hitler, in that he made some very bad military decisions along the way.
It was also basically the premise of a Ben Elton time travel novel about trying to prevent WW1 as, twist, the protagonist was actually from a reality where the war lasted longer, and it turned out many others had even worst outcomes.
David Gauke, part of the group of pro EU politicians who failed to win the case to remain and just cannot concede they lost
Maybe if they had made a better case they could have won it
Yes, but back to the point he raises. The official numbers show the cost of Brexit being double the cost of Covid. We need tax rises and they're blaming Covid. Logically we will need bigger tax rises and they won't blame Brexit...
It's a fallacious argument. The reason covid implies tax rises is because of the amount of government borrowing. Any direct costs of Brexit are nothing compared to furlough, etc.
Brexit is lost revenue. Furlough is lost revenue *and* increased cost.
Brexit is mostly projected, but not all. Exports to EU are already failing to follow Rest of World performance.
We decided to Brexit. W
This is a very loose comment.
'We' was 52% against 48%, in other words hardly deserving of your all-inclusive pronoun, but in some ways the bigger issue is that we didn't vote for Brexit. We didn't really vote for anything. No one know what the hell we were voting for. The devil in the detail only emerged later and I guarantee you that if we'd known the monster we were about to unleash the country would not have voted for it.
What makes you think I disagree on this point?
I’ve said many times that Cameron was suicidally complacent about his EU referendum [...]
It would have roiled and split the Leave campaign and Cameron would have romped home.
Instead he loftily assumed he was cruising to victory, because he is an arrogant Etonian who fatally over-estimated his own abilities. Because that’s what Eton does. It fills you with self assurance. Often unjustified
It's also because 'he' had just won Indyref, even causing The Queen to purr with pleasure, and thus carried all his self-preening arrogance into the Brexit vote.
Brexit is, without question, the greatest mistake Britain as a nation has made. It eclipses all other colonial, military and foreign policy errors combined.
Thank goodness its pushed mass slavery off the top spot!
And World War One. People always overstate the horror of that error. OK Yes we could have stayed neutral in the Great War, thereby saving a million British lives and a trillion pounds, and probably ensuring we kept the Empire for another century, but what’s that compared to the error of leaving the Customs Union thus adding significant paperwork?
Yeah but WW1 inspired some great poetry and ushered in Expressionism, Surrealism, and Modernism.
Brexit has Farage doing £80-a-pop Cameo shout-outs.
1) If we had stayed out of WWI, the Germans would have won in short order. 2) So, the German Empire, Kaiser etc would have stayed intact 3) Given that the German Empire embraced war as a Good thing, and it had worked twice (1870 and 1914) 4) And that they were planning for WII as part of their planned reparations demands.... 5) The Kaiser Wilhelm instate will probably have a bunch more scientists....
So in about 1940 or so, the highly militaristic German Empire would get some good news about bigger and better bangs. Just in time for the next war.....
Interesting. Is (1) true? Having read Keegan on the subject, I'm not convinced that the BEF was that crucial. We have a very British view of 1914, whereas a wider view has millions of French troops under arms against the invading hordes.
If we had stayed neutral, I think it possible Germany would not have won in 1914.
BUT - I think they would have won in the end. Think Verdun without the British to attack on the Somme. The French in chaos in 1916 with mutinies. Would the USA have come in if Britain was neutral (no need to sink the USA - British shipping).
They were a coin flip away from Paris in 1914. The BEF may not have stopped them militarily, but their presence gave a confidence to the French government and military that definitely affected the outcome.
With large chunks of French industry under German control, France would not have lasted long, anyway.
I think what most Brits fail or decline to appreciate is how much and widespread the UK troops were under command of the French in WWI. In our collective minds it was the Brits and the Generals who prosecuted the war whereas we were far more there as an adjunct to the French than we care to believe.
Leeds has had several great Labour MPs such as Denis Healey, I fear Reeves is more Richard Burgon territory.
Another ludicrous post from you that suggests you know as much about Labour politics as you do about the Glaswegian food scene.
I worked in Leeds for several years, several friends of mine were and are fairly active in the Leeds and West Yorkshire labour scene.
As for Glaswegian food, you need a sense of humour, up to quite recently I had plans to spend a week in Glasgow in next month.
Then Blondie postponed, the gits.
Your 'sense of humour' usually involves posting stereotypes of cities/regions that some people might take seriously. Even if they don't, I should imagine Weegies are wholeheartedly sick of tired 'gags' about deep-fried Mars bars.
Be fair to TSE.
He lives in one of the most caricaturable places in the country.
A swift German victory in WW1 would have seen most of the French empire being reassigned to Germany. Countries like Vietnam, Syria and Lebanon, maybe even Algeria. The implications go far and wide. Would the Berlin Conference and the scramble for Africa have turned out very differently? Probably. Would the Ottoman empire have clung on in the Middle East and what would that mean for Palestine, Iraq, the land that would eventually become Israel? What would the era of decolonisation and independence have looked like?
That's the fascinating thing about historical counterfactuals: the butterfly effect writ large.
EDIT: of course on reflection I am being anachronistic here. Syria and Lebanon were not French possessions at the time as they were Ottoman. More accurately they would never have fallen to France.
David Gauke, part of the group of pro EU politicians who failed to win the case to remain and just cannot concede they lost
Maybe if they had made a better case they could have won it
Yes, but back to the point he raises. The official numbers show the cost of Brexit being double the cost of Covid. We need tax rises and they're blaming Covid. Logically we will need bigger tax rises and they won't blame Brexit...
It's a fallacious argument. The reason covid implies tax rises is because of the amount of government borrowing. Any direct costs of Brexit are nothing compared to furlough, etc.
Brexit is lost revenue. Furlough is lost revenue *and* increased cost.
Brexit is mostly projected, but not all. Exports to EU are already failing to follow Rest of World performance.
We decided to Brexit. W
This is a very loose comment.
'We' was 52% against 48%, in other words hardly deserving of your all-inclusive pronoun, but in some ways the bigger issue is that we didn't vote for Brexit. We didn't really vote for anything. No one know what the hell we were voting for. The devil in the detail only emerged later and I guarantee you that if we'd known the monster we were about to unleash the country would not have voted for it.
What makes you think I disagree on this point?
I’ve said many times that Cameron was suicidally complacent about his EU referendum [...]
It would have roiled and split the Leave campaign and Cameron would have romped home.
Instead he loftily assumed he was cruising to victory, because he is an arrogant Etonian who fatally over-estimated his own abilities. Because that’s what Eton does. It fills you with self assurance. Often unjustified
It's also because 'he' had just won Indyref, even causing The Queen to purr with pleasure, and thus carried all his self-preening arrogance into the Brexit vote.
Brexit is, without question, the greatest mistake Britain as a nation has made. It eclipses all other colonial, military and foreign policy errors combined.
Thank goodness its pushed mass slavery off the top spot!
And World War One. People always overstate the horror of that error. OK Yes we could have stayed neutral in the Great War, thereby saving a million British lives and a trillion pounds, and probably ensuring we kept the Empire for another century, but what’s that compared to the error of leaving the Customs Union thus adding significant paperwork?
Yeah but WW1 inspired some great poetry and ushered in Expressionism, Surrealism, and Modernism.
Brexit has Farage doing £80-a-pop Cameo shout-outs.
1) If we had stayed out of WWI, the Germans would have won in short order. 2) So, the German Empire, Kaiser etc would have stayed intact 3) Given that the German Empire embraced war as a Good thing, and it had worked twice (1870 and 1914) 4) And that they were planning for WII as part of their planned reparations demands.... 5) The Kaiser Wilhelm instate will probably have a bunch more scientists....
So in about 1940 or so, the highly militaristic German Empire would get some good news about bigger and better bangs. Just in time for the next war.....
Germany winning quickly could also have been a very very good thing = no Hitler, no Nazis, no WW2, probably no Russian Revolution, no communism, no USSR, no Mao, no PRChina, no Cold War
It might have been an unimaginably nicer world and better century, albeit with a stronger Germany dominant in mainland Europe. A price worth paying?
Its a mistake to imagine that the German regime of 1914 -1918 was that much better than the Nazi's. We have this image that the German army was somehow a decent bunch of chaps just happened to be fighting against us, when the reality is the atrocities were there in 1914-18 too. German victory in Eastern Europe would have given a Germanic empire with repressed peoples. Huge economic rapacity for Germany. The German army after 1945 tried to claim it was an honorable institution, but this was whitewashing of the highest order. The army was complicit in everything that happened on the Eastern Front, and behind. The nature of the regime was similar. I'd recommend Keegan's 'Apocalypse' on how 1914 played out.
The front lines in the East in 1914-16, advanced and receded very swiftly. One thing the Germans, Austrians, and Russians were agreed on was, that when territory was recaptured, any local ethnic minorities - inevitably and especially the Jews - would be treated as collaborators with the enemy.
David Gauke, part of the group of pro EU politicians who failed to win the case to remain and just cannot concede they lost
Maybe if they had made a better case they could have won it
Yes, but back to the point he raises. The official numbers show the cost of Brexit being double the cost of Covid. We need tax rises and they're blaming Covid. Logically we will need bigger tax rises and they won't blame Brexit...
It's a fallacious argument. The reason covid implies tax rises is because of the amount of government borrowing. Any direct costs of Brexit are nothing compared to furlough, etc.
Brexit is lost revenue. Furlough is lost revenue *and* increased cost.
Brexit is mostly projected, but not all. Exports to EU are already failing to follow Rest of World performance.
We decided to Brexit. W
This is a very loose comment.
'We' was 52% against 48%, in other words hardly deserving of your all-inclusive pronoun, but in some ways the bigger issue is that we didn't vote for Brexit. We didn't really vote for anything. No one know what the hell we were voting for. The devil in the detail only emerged later and I guarantee you that if we'd known the monster we were about to unleash the country would not have voted for it.
What makes you think I disagree on this point?
I’ve said many times that Cameron was suicidally complacent about his EU referendum [...]
It would have roiled and split the Leave campaign and Cameron would have romped home.
Instead he loftily assumed he was cruising to victory, because he is an arrogant Etonian who fatally over-estimated his own abilities. Because that’s what Eton does. It fills you with self assurance. Often unjustified
It's also because 'he' had just won Indyref, even causing The Queen to purr with pleasure, and thus carried all his self-preening arrogance into the Brexit vote.
Brexit is, without question, the greatest mistake Britain as a nation has made. It eclipses all other colonial, military and foreign policy errors combined.
Thank goodness its pushed mass slavery off the top spot!
And World War One. People always overstate the horror of that error. OK Yes we could have stayed neutral in the Great War, thereby saving a million British lives and a trillion pounds, and probably ensuring we kept the Empire for another century, but what’s that compared to the error of leaving the Customs Union thus adding significant paperwork?
Yeah but WW1 inspired some great poetry and ushered in Expressionism, Surrealism, and Modernism.
Brexit has Farage doing £80-a-pop Cameo shout-outs.
1) If we had stayed out of WWI, the Germans would have won in short order. 2) So, the German Empire, Kaiser etc would have stayed intact 3) Given that the German Empire embraced war as a Good thing, and it had worked twice (1870 and 1914) 4) And that they were planning for WII as part of their planned reparations demands.... 5) The Kaiser Wilhelm instate will probably have a bunch more scientists....
So in about 1940 or so, the highly militaristic German Empire would get some good news about bigger and better bangs. Just in time for the next war.....
Germany winning quickly could also have been a very very good thing = no Hitler, no Nazis, no WW2, probably no Russian Revolution, no communism, no USSR, no Mao, no PRChina, no Cold War
It might have been an unimaginably nicer world and better century, albeit with a stronger Germany dominant in mainland Europe. A price worth paying?
Germany would have imposed a very harsh peace on France, sowing the seeds of the next war. In all likelihood, the Russian government would have collapsed in the aftermath of military defeat, though I don't know if that would have ushered in communism. Again, I think that the peace terms imposed upon defeated Russia would have sowed the seeds for the next war.
Austria-Hungary would have doubled down on repression of the Serbs. The Ottoman Empire would have sought to reclaim Balkan territories. Europe would have remained a powder keg.
But a powder keg without Hitler, the Nazis, and the Holocaust. That was a uniquely evil aberration, and any alternative history that avoids Hitler (all of them?) is surely ‘better’
No, Hitler wasn't unique.
Hitler was to some extents a product of his time. A very evil product even for his time, but sadly not unique. There are three other leaders arguably just as bad as Hitler in the 20th century alone. We pay the most attention to Hitler only because we fought against him and he's European.
In an alternative history within the multiverse there's every chance a parallel Hitler could have arisen just as in our own timeline Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot arose. Even worse, in that timeline parallel Hitler could have won the war.
Pol Pot is all the more remarkable in being so damn recent. Ok his regime collapsed awhile ago but he only died in 1998! I was in secondary school for crying out loud, I feel like I should have heard a lot more about him when he died.
David Gauke, part of the group of pro EU politicians who failed to win the case to remain and just cannot concede they lost
Maybe if they had made a better case they could have won it
Yes, but back to the point he raises. The official numbers show the cost of Brexit being double the cost of Covid. We need tax rises and they're blaming Covid. Logically we will need bigger tax rises and they won't blame Brexit...
It's a fallacious argument. The reason covid implies tax rises is because of the amount of government borrowing. Any direct costs of Brexit are nothing compared to furlough, etc.
Brexit is lost revenue. Furlough is lost revenue *and* increased cost.
Brexit is mostly projected, but not all. Exports to EU are already failing to follow Rest of World performance.
We decided to Brexit. W
This is a very loose comment.
'We' was 52% against 48%, in other words hardly deserving of your all-inclusive pronoun, but in some ways the bigger issue is that we didn't vote for Brexit. We didn't really vote for anything. No one know what the hell we were voting for. The devil in the detail only emerged later and I guarantee you that if we'd known the monster we were about to unleash the country would not have voted for it.
What makes you think I disagree on this point?
I’ve said many times that Cameron was suicidally complacent about his EU referendum [...]
It would have roiled and split the Leave campaign and Cameron would have romped home.
Instead he loftily assumed he was cruising to victory, because he is an arrogant Etonian who fatally over-estimated his own abilities. Because that’s what Eton does. It fills you with self assurance. Often unjustified
It's also because 'he' had just won Indyref, even causing The Queen to purr with pleasure, and thus carried all his self-preening arrogance into the Brexit vote.
Brexit is, without question, the greatest mistake Britain as a nation has made. It eclipses all other colonial, military and foreign policy errors combined.
Thank goodness its pushed mass slavery off the top spot!
And World War One. People always overstate the horror of that error. OK Yes we could have stayed neutral in the Great War, thereby saving a million British lives and a trillion pounds, and probably ensuring we kept the Empire for another century, but what’s that compared to the error of leaving the Customs Union thus adding significant paperwork?
Yeah but WW1 inspired some great poetry and ushered in Expressionism, Surrealism, and Modernism.
Brexit has Farage doing £80-a-pop Cameo shout-outs.
1) If we had stayed out of WWI, the Germans would have won in short order. 2) So, the German Empire, Kaiser etc would have stayed intact 3) Given that the German Empire embraced war as a Good thing, and it had worked twice (1870 and 1914) 4) And that they were planning for WII as part of their planned reparations demands.... 5) The Kaiser Wilhelm instate will probably have a bunch more scientists....
So in about 1940 or so, the highly militaristic German Empire would get some good news about bigger and better bangs. Just in time for the next war.....
Interesting. Is (1) true? Having read Keegan on the subject, I'm not convinced that the BEF was that crucial. We have a very British view of 1914, whereas a wider view has millions of French troops under arms against the invading hordes.
If we had stayed neutral, I think it possible Germany would not have won in 1914.
BUT - I think they would have won in the end. Think Verdun without the British to attack on the Somme. The French in chaos in 1916 with mutinies. Would the USA have come in if Britain was neutral (no need to sink the USA - British shipping).
They were a coin flip away from Paris in 1914. The BEF may not have stopped them militarily, but their presence gave a confidence to the French government and military that definitely affected the outcome.
With large chunks of French industry under German control, France would not have lasted long, anyway.
I think what most Brits fail or decline to appreciate is how much and widespread the UK troops were under command of the French in WWI. In our collective minds it was the Brits and the Generals who prosecuted the war whereas we were far more there as an adjunct to the French than we care to believe.
David Gauke, part of the group of pro EU politicians who failed to win the case to remain and just cannot concede they lost
Maybe if they had made a better case they could have won it
Yes, but back to the point he raises. The official numbers show the cost of Brexit being double the cost of Covid. We need tax rises and they're blaming Covid. Logically we will need bigger tax rises and they won't blame Brexit...
It's a fallacious argument. The reason covid implies tax rises is because of the amount of government borrowing. Any direct costs of Brexit are nothing compared to furlough, etc.
Brexit is lost revenue. Furlough is lost revenue *and* increased cost.
Brexit is mostly projected, but not all. Exports to EU are already failing to follow Rest of World performance.
We decided to Brexit. W
This is a very loose comment.
'We' was 52% against 48%, in other words hardly deserving of your all-inclusive pronoun, but in some ways the bigger issue is that we didn't vote for Brexit. We didn't really vote for anything. No one know what the hell we were voting for. The devil in the detail only emerged later and I guarantee you that if we'd known the monster we were about to unleash the country would not have voted for it.
What makes you think I disagree on this point?
I’ve said many times that Cameron was suicidally complacent about his EU referendum [...]
It would have roiled and split the Leave campaign and Cameron would have romped home.
Instead he loftily assumed he was cruising to victory, because he is an arrogant Etonian who fatally over-estimated his own abilities. Because that’s what Eton does. It fills you with self assurance. Often unjustified
It's also because 'he' had just won Indyref, even causing The Queen to purr with pleasure, and thus carried all his self-preening arrogance into the Brexit vote.
Brexit is, without question, the greatest mistake Britain as a nation has made. It eclipses all other colonial, military and foreign policy errors combined.
Thank goodness its pushed mass slavery off the top spot!
And World War One. People always overstate the horror of that error. OK Yes we could have stayed neutral in the Great War, thereby saving a million British lives and a trillion pounds, and probably ensuring we kept the Empire for another century, but what’s that compared to the error of leaving the Customs Union thus adding significant paperwork?
Yeah but WW1 inspired some great poetry and ushered in Expressionism, Surrealism, and Modernism.
Brexit has Farage doing £80-a-pop Cameo shout-outs.
1) If we had stayed out of WWI, the Germans would have won in short order. 2) So, the German Empire, Kaiser etc would have stayed intact 3) Given that the German Empire embraced war as a Good thing, and it had worked twice (1870 and 1914) 4) And that they were planning for WII as part of their planned reparations demands.... 5) The Kaiser Wilhelm instate will probably have a bunch more scientists....
So in about 1940 or so, the highly militaristic German Empire would get some good news about bigger and better bangs. Just in time for the next war.....
Germany winning quickly could also have been a very very good thing = no Hitler, no Nazis, no WW2, probably no Russian Revolution, no communism, no USSR, no Mao, no PRChina, no Cold War
It might have been an unimaginably nicer world and better century, albeit with a stronger Germany dominant in mainland Europe. A price worth paying?
Germany would have imposed a very harsh peace on France, sowing the seeds of the next war. In all likelihood, the Russian government would have collapsed in the aftermath of military defeat, though I don't know if that would have ushered in communism. Again, I think that the peace terms imposed upon defeated Russia would have sowed the seeds for the next war.
Austria-Hungary would have doubled down on repression of the Serbs. The Ottoman Empire would have sought to reclaim Balkan territories. Europe would have remained a powder keg.
But a powder keg without Hitler, the Nazis, and the Holocaust. That was a uniquely evil aberration, and any alternative history that avoids Hitler (all of them?) is surely ‘better’
Fascism appeared in Italy first, crushed by war debt and stunned by its military reverses. Then spread. Who is to say whether the economic consequences of the Wall Street crash, which sowed the seeds fir the politics, would have fallen differently?
Independent carrying stories of major salami slicing, which will kill quite a few of the benefits. Including killing the Nottm/Derby station, and putting chunks of it on existing tracks.
I think that's exactly right. Just like everybody else I've ever met who worked for Goldman Sachs, or indeed any big investment bank. Or the big consulting firms like McKinsey.
The interesting question is why their clients let them get away with it.
The better question is why all the genuinely clever people are happy accepting being paid less than they could easily get by beating all the morons to the highest-paying jobs available in society. Unless you think the banks are hiring second rate people on purpose, for some reason?
Or, you could think about the extent to which jealousy and other cognitive biases might be colouring your impressions.
Because they are clever enough to know that money isn’t everything?
David Gauke, part of the group of pro EU politicians who failed to win the case to remain and just cannot concede they lost
Maybe if they had made a better case they could have won it
Yes, but back to the point he raises. The official numbers show the cost of Brexit being double the cost of Covid. We need tax rises and they're blaming Covid. Logically we will need bigger tax rises and they won't blame Brexit...
It's a fallacious argument. The reason covid implies tax rises is because of the amount of government borrowing. Any direct costs of Brexit are nothing compared to furlough, etc.
Brexit is lost revenue. Furlough is lost revenue *and* increased cost.
Brexit is mostly projected, but not all. Exports to EU are already failing to follow Rest of World performance.
We decided to Brexit. W
This is a very loose comment.
'We' was 52% against 48%, in other words hardly deserving of your all-inclusive pronoun, but in some ways the bigger issue is that we didn't vote for Brexit. We didn't really vote for anything. No one know what the hell we were voting for. The devil in the detail only emerged later and I guarantee you that if we'd known the monster we were about to unleash the country would not have voted for it.
What makes you think I disagree on this point?
I’ve said many times that Cameron was suicidally complacent about his EU referendum [...]
It would have roiled and split the Leave campaign and Cameron would have romped home.
Instead he loftily assumed he was cruising to victory, because he is an arrogant Etonian who fatally over-estimated his own abilities. Because that’s what Eton does. It fills you with self assurance. Often unjustified
It's also because 'he' had just won Indyref, even causing The Queen to purr with pleasure, and thus carried all his self-preening arrogance into the Brexit vote.
Brexit is, without question, the greatest mistake Britain as a nation has made. It eclipses all other colonial, military and foreign policy errors combined.
Thank goodness its pushed mass slavery off the top spot!
And World War One. People always overstate the horror of that error. OK Yes we could have stayed neutral in the Great War, thereby saving a million British lives and a trillion pounds, and probably ensuring we kept the Empire for another century, but what’s that compared to the error of leaving the Customs Union thus adding significant paperwork?
Yeah but WW1 inspired some great poetry and ushered in Expressionism, Surrealism, and Modernism.
Brexit has Farage doing £80-a-pop Cameo shout-outs.
1) If we had stayed out of WWI, the Germans would have won in short order. 2) So, the German Empire, Kaiser etc would have stayed intact 3) Given that the German Empire embraced war as a Good thing, and it had worked twice (1870 and 1914) 4) And that they were planning for WII as part of their planned reparations demands.... 5) The Kaiser Wilhelm instate will probably have a bunch more scientists....
So in about 1940 or so, the highly militaristic German Empire would get some good news about bigger and better bangs. Just in time for the next war.....
Interesting. Is (1) true? Having read Keegan on the subject, I'm not convinced that the BEF was that crucial. We have a very British view of 1914, whereas a wider view has millions of French troops under arms against the invading hordes.
If we had stayed neutral, I think it possible Germany would not have won in 1914.
BUT - I think they would have won in the end. Think Verdun without the British to attack on the Somme. The French in chaos in 1916 with mutinies. Would the USA have come in if Britain was neutral (no need to sink the USA - British shipping).
They were a coin flip away from Paris in 1914. The BEF may not have stopped them militarily, but their presence gave a confidence to the French government and military that definitely affected the outcome.
With large chunks of French industry under German control, France would not have lasted long, anyway.
I think what most Brits fail or decline to appreciate is how much and widespread the UK troops were under command of the French in WWI. In our collective minds it was the Brits and the Generals who prosecuted the war whereas we were far more there as an adjunct to the French than we care to believe.
I think that's exactly right. Just like everybody else I've ever met who worked for Goldman Sachs, or indeed any big investment bank. Or the big consulting firms like McKinsey.
The interesting question is why their clients let them get away with it.
The better question is why all the genuinely clever people are happy accepting being paid less than they could easily get by beating all the morons to the highest-paying jobs available in society. Unless you think the banks are hiring second rate people on purpose, for some reason?
Or, you could think about the extent to which jealousy and other cognitive biases might be colouring your impressions.
Because they are clever enough to know that money isn’t everything?
Just a guess.
Yes good point. It also pre-supposes that they all do something they passionately enjoy and have managed to combine both that vocation with the means to sustain themselves (and their families) comfortably.
Such people no doubt exist. Many more will nevertheless be wage slaves only not as comfortable wage slaves as the GS/IB/consultant types.
David Gauke, part of the group of pro EU politicians who failed to win the case to remain and just cannot concede they lost
Maybe if they had made a better case they could have won it
Yes, but back to the point he raises. The official numbers show the cost of Brexit being double the cost of Covid. We need tax rises and they're blaming Covid. Logically we will need bigger tax rises and they won't blame Brexit...
It's a fallacious argument. The reason covid implies tax rises is because of the amount of government borrowing. Any direct costs of Brexit are nothing compared to furlough, etc.
Brexit is lost revenue. Furlough is lost revenue *and* increased cost.
Brexit is mostly projected, but not all. Exports to EU are already failing to follow Rest of World performance.
We decided to Brexit. W
This is a very loose comment.
'We' was 52% against 48%, in other words hardly deserving of your all-inclusive pronoun, but in some ways the bigger issue is that we didn't vote for Brexit. We didn't really vote for anything. No one know what the hell we were voting for. The devil in the detail only emerged later and I guarantee you that if we'd known the monster we were about to unleash the country would not have voted for it.
What makes you think I disagree on this point?
I’ve said many times that Cameron was suicidally complacent about his EU referendum [...]
It would have roiled and split the Leave campaign and Cameron would have romped home.
Instead he loftily assumed he was cruising to victory, because he is an arrogant Etonian who fatally over-estimated his own abilities. Because that’s what Eton does. It fills you with self assurance. Often unjustified
It's also because 'he' had just won Indyref, even causing The Queen to purr with pleasure, and thus carried all his self-preening arrogance into the Brexit vote.
Brexit is, without question, the greatest mistake Britain as a nation has made. It eclipses all other colonial, military and foreign policy errors combined.
Thank goodness its pushed mass slavery off the top spot!
And World War One. People always overstate the horror of that error. OK Yes we could have stayed neutral in the Great War, thereby saving a million British lives and a trillion pounds, and probably ensuring we kept the Empire for another century, but what’s that compared to the error of leaving the Customs Union thus adding significant paperwork?
Yeah but WW1 inspired some great poetry and ushered in Expressionism, Surrealism, and Modernism.
Brexit has Farage doing £80-a-pop Cameo shout-outs.
1) If we had stayed out of WWI, the Germans would have won in short order. 2) So, the German Empire, Kaiser etc would have stayed intact 3) Given that the German Empire embraced war as a Good thing, and it had worked twice (1870 and 1914) 4) And that they were planning for WII as part of their planned reparations demands.... 5) The Kaiser Wilhelm instate will probably have a bunch more scientists....
So in about 1940 or so, the highly militaristic German Empire would get some good news about bigger and better bangs. Just in time for the next war.....
Interesting. Is (1) true? Having read Keegan on the subject, I'm not convinced that the BEF was that crucial. We have a very British view of 1914, whereas a wider view has millions of French troops under arms against the invading hordes.
If we had stayed neutral, I think it possible Germany would not have won in 1914.
BUT - I think they would have won in the end. Think Verdun without the British to attack on the Somme. The French in chaos in 1916 with mutinies. Would the USA have come in if Britain was neutral (no need to sink the USA - British shipping).
They were a coin flip away from Paris in 1914. The BEF may not have stopped them militarily, but their presence gave a confidence to the French government and military that definitely affected the outcome.
With large chunks of French industry under German control, France would not have lasted long, anyway.
I think what most Brits fail or decline to appreciate is how much and widespread the UK troops were under command of the French in WWI. In our collective minds it was the Brits and the Generals who prosecuted the war whereas we were far more there as an adjunct to the French than we care to believe.
David Gauke, part of the group of pro EU politicians who failed to win the case to remain and just cannot concede they lost
Maybe if they had made a better case they could have won it
Yes, but back to the point he raises. The official numbers show the cost of Brexit being double the cost of Covid. We need tax rises and they're blaming Covid. Logically we will need bigger tax rises and they won't blame Brexit...
It's a fallacious argument. The reason covid implies tax rises is because of the amount of government borrowing. Any direct costs of Brexit are nothing compared to furlough, etc.
Brexit is lost revenue. Furlough is lost revenue *and* increased cost.
Brexit is mostly projected, but not all. Exports to EU are already failing to follow Rest of World performance.
We decided to Brexit. W
This is a very loose comment.
'We' was 52% against 48%, in other words hardly deserving of your all-inclusive pronoun, but in some ways the bigger issue is that we didn't vote for Brexit. We didn't really vote for anything. No one know what the hell we were voting for. The devil in the detail only emerged later and I guarantee you that if we'd known the monster we were about to unleash the country would not have voted for it.
What makes you think I disagree on this point?
I’ve said many times that Cameron was suicidally complacent about his EU referendum [...]
It would have roiled and split the Leave campaign and Cameron would have romped home.
Instead he loftily assumed he was cruising to victory, because he is an arrogant Etonian who fatally over-estimated his own abilities. Because that’s what Eton does. It fills you with self assurance. Often unjustified
It's also because 'he' had just won Indyref, even causing The Queen to purr with pleasure, and thus carried all his self-preening arrogance into the Brexit vote.
Brexit is, without question, the greatest mistake Britain as a nation has made. It eclipses all other colonial, military and foreign policy errors combined.
Thank goodness its pushed mass slavery off the top spot!
And World War One. People always overstate the horror of that error. OK Yes we could have stayed neutral in the Great War, thereby saving a million British lives and a trillion pounds, and probably ensuring we kept the Empire for another century, but what’s that compared to the error of leaving the Customs Union thus adding significant paperwork?
Yeah but WW1 inspired some great poetry and ushered in Expressionism, Surrealism, and Modernism.
Brexit has Farage doing £80-a-pop Cameo shout-outs.
1) If we had stayed out of WWI, the Germans would have won in short order. 2) So, the German Empire, Kaiser etc would have stayed intact 3) Given that the German Empire embraced war as a Good thing, and it had worked twice (1870 and 1914) 4) And that they were planning for WII as part of their planned reparations demands.... 5) The Kaiser Wilhelm instate will probably have a bunch more scientists....
So in about 1940 or so, the highly militaristic German Empire would get some good news about bigger and better bangs. Just in time for the next war.....
Germany winning quickly could also have been a very very good thing = no Hitler, no Nazis, no WW2, probably no Russian Revolution, no communism, no USSR, no Mao, no PRChina, no Cold War
It might have been an unimaginably nicer world and better century, albeit with a stronger Germany dominant in mainland Europe. A price worth paying?
Germany would have imposed a very harsh peace on France, sowing the seeds of the next war. In all likelihood, the Russian government would have collapsed in the aftermath of military defeat, though I don't know if that would have ushered in communism. Again, I think that the peace terms imposed upon defeated Russia would have sowed the seeds for the next war.
Austria-Hungary would have doubled down on repression of the Serbs. The Ottoman Empire would have sought to reclaim Balkan territories. Europe would have remained a powder keg.
But a powder keg without Hitler, the Nazis, and the Holocaust. That was a uniquely evil aberration, and any alternative history that avoids Hitler (all of them?) is surely ‘better’
No, Hitler wasn't unique.
Hitler was to some extents a product of his time. A very evil product even for his time, but sadly not unique. There are three other leaders arguably just as bad as Hitler in the 20th century alone. We pay the most attention to Hitler only because we fought against him and he's European.
In an alternative history within the multiverse there's every chance a parallel Hitler could have arisen just as in our own timeline Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot arose. Even worse, in that timeline parallel Hitler could have won the war.
Pol Pot is all the more remarkable in being so damn recent. Ok his regime collapsed awhile ago but he only died in 1998! I was in secondary school for crying out loud, I feel like I should have heard a lot more about him when he died.
There are still major players in the Khmer Rouge still alive as well as plenty involved in atrocities at a lower ranking level.
Independent carrying stories of major salami slicing, which will kill quite a few of the benefits. Including killing the Nottm/Derby station, and putting chunks of it on existing tracks.
Is it true? Problem I have is that the Indy is not reliable.
There seems to be a lot of issues round the eastern leg where they seem to have missed the fact, a train route isn't much use if it doesn't stop at important towns / cities on the route.
Leeds - Sheffield - Nottingham / Derby - all add millions of potential customers to the route.
The reality is that for reasons unknown they seem to want to save costs without thinking through the consequences of those cuts.
David Gauke, part of the group of pro EU politicians who failed to win the case to remain and just cannot concede they lost
Maybe if they had made a better case they could have won it
Yes, but back to the point he raises. The official numbers show the cost of Brexit being double the cost of Covid. We need tax rises and they're blaming Covid. Logically we will need bigger tax rises and they won't blame Brexit...
It's a fallacious argument. The reason covid implies tax rises is because of the amount of government borrowing. Any direct costs of Brexit are nothing compared to furlough, etc.
Brexit is lost revenue. Furlough is lost revenue *and* increased cost.
Brexit is mostly projected, but not all. Exports to EU are already failing to follow Rest of World performance.
We decided to Brexit. W
This is a very loose comment.
'We' was 52% against 48%, in other words hardly deserving of your all-inclusive pronoun, but in some ways the bigger issue is that we didn't vote for Brexit. We didn't really vote for anything. No one know what the hell we were voting for. The devil in the detail only emerged later and I guarantee you that if we'd known the monster we were about to unleash the country would not have voted for it.
What makes you think I disagree on this point?
I’ve said many times that Cameron was suicidally complacent about his EU referendum [...]
It would have roiled and split the Leave campaign and Cameron would have romped home.
Instead he loftily assumed he was cruising to victory, because he is an arrogant Etonian who fatally over-estimated his own abilities. Because that’s what Eton does. It fills you with self assurance. Often unjustified
It's also because 'he' had just won Indyref, even causing The Queen to purr with pleasure, and thus carried all his self-preening arrogance into the Brexit vote.
Brexit is, without question, the greatest mistake Britain as a nation has made. It eclipses all other colonial, military and foreign policy errors combined.
You’ll be unsurprised to hear that I completely disagree on Brexit.
Brexit means Brexit. When people ask for a dividend or benefit of Brexit, I say ‘Brexit’. That’s it. Brexit IS the benefit of Brexit. We now rule ourselves. We can elect and eject all the politicians who make the decisions, and THEY cannot hide behind ‘rules from Brussels’
Will aspects of this be painful and costly? For sure. Just like having a kid is horribly and unavoidably expensive
So gloriously wrong.
We don't rule ourselves. We haven't for decades. Multi-nationals, the media and internet rule us not nation states and it's testament to their power that someone as intelligent as you could be so deluded.
There is no real power in a nation state and has not been since the 1980's.
I think that's exactly right. Just like everybody else I've ever met who worked for Goldman Sachs, or indeed any big investment bank. Or the big consulting firms like McKinsey.
The interesting question is why their clients let them get away with it.
The better question is why all the genuinely clever people are happy accepting being paid less than they could easily get by beating all the morons to the highest-paying jobs available in society. Unless you think the banks are hiring second rate people on purpose, for some reason?
Or, you could think about the extent to which jealousy and other cognitive biases might be colouring your impressions.
Because they are clever enough to know that money isn’t everything?
Just a guess.
I prefer the "idiots hire idiots" hypothesis. Also works in relation to political leaders and (shadow) cabinets.
David Gauke, part of the group of pro EU politicians who failed to win the case to remain and just cannot concede they lost
Maybe if they had made a better case they could have won it
Yes, but back to the point he raises. The official numbers show the cost of Brexit being double the cost of Covid. We need tax rises and they're blaming Covid. Logically we will need bigger tax rises and they won't blame Brexit...
It's a fallacious argument. The reason covid implies tax rises is because of the amount of government borrowing. Any direct costs of Brexit are nothing compared to furlough, etc.
Brexit is lost revenue. Furlough is lost revenue *and* increased cost.
Brexit is mostly projected, but not all. Exports to EU are already failing to follow Rest of World performance.
We decided to Brexit. W
This is a very loose comment.
'We' was 52% against 48%, in other words hardly deserving of your all-inclusive pronoun, but in some ways the bigger issue is that we didn't vote for Brexit. We didn't really vote for anything. No one know what the hell we were voting for. The devil in the detail only emerged later and I guarantee you that if we'd known the monster we were about to unleash the country would not have voted for it.
What makes you think I disagree on this point?
I’ve said many times that Cameron was suicidally complacent about his EU referendum [...]
It would have roiled and split the Leave campaign and Cameron would have romped home.
Instead he loftily assumed he was cruising to victory, because he is an arrogant Etonian who fatally over-estimated his own abilities. Because that’s what Eton does. It fills you with self assurance. Often unjustified
It's also because 'he' had just won Indyref, even causing The Queen to purr with pleasure, and thus carried all his self-preening arrogance into the Brexit vote.
Brexit is, without question, the greatest mistake Britain as a nation has made. It eclipses all other colonial, military and foreign policy errors combined.
You’ll be unsurprised to hear that I completely disagree on Brexit.
Brexit means Brexit. When people ask for a dividend or benefit of Brexit, I say ‘Brexit’. That’s it. Brexit IS the benefit of Brexit. We now rule ourselves. We can elect and eject all the politicians who make the decisions, and THEY cannot hide behind ‘rules from Brussels’
Will aspects of this be painful and costly? For sure. Just like having a kid is horribly and unavoidably expensive
So gloriously wrong.
We don't rule ourselves. We haven't for decades. Multi-nationals, the media and internet rule us not nation states and it's testament to their power that someone as intelligent as you could be so deluded.
There is no real power in a nation state and has not been since the 1980's.
You don't think the idea that states have no power has taken a battering due to covid?
Pre WW1 France was not, civilisationally, unlike pre WW1 Britain. Pre WW1 Germany was, from the perspective of the 21st century west, a rather darker and more primitive place. I think. Others may be better informed.
Dunno about that, there’s a case to be made that pre WWI France was the most institutionally antisemtic country in Western Europe, and therefore open to a Gallic final solution. Their enthusiastic embrace of the German version doesn’t really contradict that hypothesis.
'Of the 340,000 Jews living in metropolitan/continental France in 1940, more than 75,000 were deported to death camps, where about 72,500 were murdered. The government of Vichy France and the French police organized and implemented the roundups of Jews.'
The fact that French state organised the round up and transportation of 72,500 Jews to their murders implies a certain ease with the process, no? Italy by contrast managed not to be complicit in the Holocaust until the fall of Mussolini and Germany becoming their de facto rulers; it was Germany that then enacted the round up of Italian Jews, albeit with help from the Italian police. Even then a smaller proportion of the Italian Jewish population were transported and murdered.
On the plus side (if it can be called that), it did give us the sublime works of Primo Levi, though I dare say he could have done without that formative experience.
You only have to watch University Challenge to know that some apparently very clever and - in other areas - knowledgeable people are terrible when it comes to British geography.
One team in the current series of Uni Challenge thought that Falmouth was inland.
As a footnote to my last remark, politicians are irrelevant. I haven't watched or read anything about the Budget and it won't have any impact on my life.
Zuckerberg, Bezos, Branson, Musk, Arnault, Barclay brothers, Murdoch, Usmanov, social media influencers and bot controllers etc. etc. ... these are the power brokers in today's world. Politicians in the UK? Petty pawns in a minor game.
There's a lovely description near the end of the Lord of the Rings, a trilogy not without its literary problems, where the old guard sit and talk together. They no longer need to use words. They can just look at each other in their little huddle and see and understand each other's thoughts. They have become mere shadows and to anyone looking on, they are more like ghosts.
As a footnote to my last remark, politicians are irrelevant. I haven't watched or read anything about the Budget and it won't have any impact on my life.
Zuckerberg, Bezos, Branson, Musk, Arnault, Barclay brothers, Murdoch, Usmanov, social media influencers and bot controllers etc. etc. ... these are the power brokers in today's world. Politicians in the UK? Petty pawns in a minor game.
How do you square this with your view on Brexit? If the state (or collection of states) is powerless, what difference does it make?
Independent carrying stories of major salami slicing, which will kill quite a few of the benefits. Including killing the Nottm/Derby station, and putting chunks of it on existing tracks.
Is it true? Problem I have is that the Indy is not reliable.
There seems to be a lot of issues round the eastern leg where they seem to have missed the fact, a train route isn't much use if it doesn't stop at important towns / cities on the route.
Leeds - Sheffield - Nottingham / Derby - all add millions of potential customers to the route.
The reality is that for reasons unknown they seem to want to save costs without thinking through the consequences of those cuts.
They seem to keep removing major cities - Nottingham being the latest one. They should just get it done - properly. Including linking to HS1 and the continent.
As a footnote to my last remark, politicians are irrelevant. I haven't watched or read anything about the Budget and it won't have any impact on my life.
Zuckerberg, Bezos, Branson, Musk, Arnault, Barclay brothers, Murdoch, Usmanov, social media influencers and bot controllers etc. etc. ... these are the power brokers in today's world. Politicians in the UK? Petty pawns in a minor game.
How do you square this with your view on Brexit? If the state (or collection of states) is powerless, what difference does it make?
Because the only way to counter the global supra-national forces is as national affiliates. The EU as a collective did wield some power, including power to contain those aforementioned. Little nations like Britain, really don't.
The terrible irony and disappointment of the EU is that it was corrupt and centralised. We certainly could have stayed in and contributed to its reformation.
But if you really want, genuinely and non-confrontationally, to know where I'm coming from ... I'm a radical libertarian, against state power and increasingly disengaging from modern life.
Independent carrying stories of major salami slicing, which will kill quite a few of the benefits. Including killing the Nottm/Derby station, and putting chunks of it on existing tracks.
Is it true? Problem I have is that the Indy is not reliable.
There seems to be a lot of issues round the eastern leg where they seem to have missed the fact, a train route isn't much use if it doesn't stop at important towns / cities on the route.
Leeds - Sheffield - Nottingham / Derby - all add millions of potential customers to the route.
The reality is that for reasons unknown they seem to want to save costs without thinking through the consequences of those cuts.
They seem to keep removing major cities - Nottingham being the latest one. They should just get it done - properly. Including linking to HS1 and the continent.
How much value is there to linking it to the continent?
I would hazard a guess that a train from Manchester to Paris would cost much more than a flight.
A swift German victory in WW1 would have seen most of the French empire being reassigned to Germany. Countries like Vietnam, Syria and Lebanon, maybe even Algeria. The implications go far and wide. Would the Berlin Conference and the scramble for Africa have turned out very differently? Probably. Would the Ottoman empire have clung on in the Middle East and what would that mean for Palestine, Iraq, the land that would eventually become Israel? What would the era of decolonisation and independence have looked like?
That's the fascinating thing about historical counterfactuals: the butterfly effect writ large.
EDIT: of course on reflection I am being anachronistic here. Syria and Lebanon were not French possessions at the time as they were Ottoman. More accurately they would never have fallen to France.
You're implicitly imagining that a German victory in WWI would have been followed by a couple of decades of peace in Europe, but it's much more likely to follow the pattern of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars - where there were seven separate wars of various coalitions.
A German victory in 1914 that Britain had stayed out of would have seen conflict between Britain and Germany before too long. And likely conflict between an expansionist Germany and other countries in various directions.
The chief difference is Britain would mainly have fought the conflict by sea, rather than in the trenches, and we may well have suffered a lot less as a result and still defeat German militarism, albeit over a longer period.
As a footnote to my last remark, politicians are irrelevant. I haven't watched or read anything about the Budget and it won't have any impact on my life.
Zuckerberg, Bezos, Branson, Musk, Arnault, Barclay brothers, Murdoch, Usmanov, social media influencers and bot controllers etc. etc. ... these are the power brokers in today's world. Politicians in the UK? Petty pawns in a minor game.
How do you square this with your view on Brexit? If the state (or collection of states) is powerless, what difference does it make?
Because the only way to counter the global supra-national forces is as national affiliates. The EU as a collective did wield some power, including power to contain those aforementioned. Little nations like Britain, really don't.
The terrible irony and disappointment of the EU is that it was corrupt and centralised. We certainly could have stayed in and contributed to its reformation.
But if you really want, genuinely and non-confrontationally, to know where I'm coming from ... I'm a radical libertarian, against state power and increasingly disengaging from modern life.
You want to weaken state power, and you oppose Brexit because you believe it weakens the state?
Independent carrying stories of major salami slicing, which will kill quite a few of the benefits. Including killing the Nottm/Derby station, and putting chunks of it on existing tracks.
Is it true? Problem I have is that the Indy is not reliable.
There seems to be a lot of issues round the eastern leg where they seem to have missed the fact, a train route isn't much use if it doesn't stop at important towns / cities on the route.
Leeds - Sheffield - Nottingham / Derby - all add millions of potential customers to the route.
The reality is that for reasons unknown they seem to want to save costs without thinking through the consequences of those cuts.
They seem to keep removing major cities - Nottingham being the latest one. They should just get it done - properly. Including linking to HS1 and the continent.
How much value is there to linking it to the continent?
I would hazard a guess that a train from Manchester to Paris would cost much more than a flight.
At a fraction of the carbon emissions. Also, a nicer experience and city centre to city centre. Look at how Eurostar has removed the demand for the London-Paris air route.
It seems the French filched fishing boat was UK-flagged, but is owned by a Canadian company.
Does that make any difference to anything?
It was owned by one of the big Scottish Shellfish companies aiui, and based in Shorerham.
It does have a license, but there was a cockup with the existence of that licensing arriving on the list that France received from Brussels, or a query over it being withdrawn later.
There was some extensive but poor coverage on WATO, but the only party they did not interview was the Jersey Government, who are the ones who set the licensing regime. And they failed to push the French local politician on his narrative.
Speaking of HS2, has anyone else been to Euston recently? I was there last week and it's currently the grottiest railway station I think I've ever been to: eclipsing anything in Asia. The loos are absolutely disgusting.
I only hope this is because of HS2 development? Does anyone know? The fact that it doesn't really link properly to King's Cross-St Pancras is also one of the more bizarre aspects of HS2.
David Gauke, part of the group of pro EU politicians who failed to win the case to remain and just cannot concede they lost
Maybe if they had made a better case they could have won it
Yes, but back to the point he raises. The official numbers show the cost of Brexit being double the cost of Covid. We need tax rises and they're blaming Covid. Logically we will need bigger tax rises and they won't blame Brexit...
It's a fallacious argument. The reason covid implies tax rises is because of the amount of government borrowing. Any direct costs of Brexit are nothing compared to furlough, etc.
Brexit is lost revenue. Furlough is lost revenue *and* increased cost.
Brexit is mostly projected, but not all. Exports to EU are already failing to follow Rest of World performance.
We decided to Brexit. W
This is a very loose comment.
'We' was 52% against 48%, in other words hardly deserving of your all-inclusive pronoun, but in some ways the bigger issue is that we didn't vote for Brexit. We didn't really vote for anything. No one know what the hell we were voting for. The devil in the detail only emerged later and I guarantee you that if we'd known the monster we were about to unleash the country would not have voted for it.
What makes you think I disagree on this point?
I’ve said many times that Cameron was suicidally complacent about his EU referendum [...]
It would have roiled and split the Leave campaign and Cameron would have romped home.
Instead he loftily assumed he was cruising to victory, because he is an arrogant Etonian who fatally over-estimated his own abilities. Because that’s what Eton does. It fills you with self assurance. Often unjustified
It's also because 'he' had just won Indyref, even causing The Queen to purr with pleasure, and thus carried all his self-preening arrogance into the Brexit vote.
Brexit is, without question, the greatest mistake Britain as a nation has made. It eclipses all other colonial, military and foreign policy errors combined.
You’ll be unsurprised to hear that I completely disagree on Brexit.
Brexit means Brexit. When people ask for a dividend or benefit of Brexit, I say ‘Brexit’. That’s it. Brexit IS the benefit of Brexit. We now rule ourselves. We can elect and eject all the politicians who make the decisions, and THEY cannot hide behind ‘rules from Brussels’
Will aspects of this be painful and costly? For sure. Just like having a kid is horribly and unavoidably expensive
So gloriously wrong.
We don't rule ourselves. We haven't for decades. Multi-nationals, the media and internet rule us not nation states and it's testament to their power that someone as intelligent as you could be so deluded.
There is no real power in a nation state and has not been since the 1980's.
If that were true then Brexit or not Brexit would make no difference, as the EU would suffer from the same powerlessness.
The exclusive power to tax, make treaties (NATO for example), legislate, compel, forbid, imprison, declare war and criminalise are by no means trivial. All these belong to various arms of the nation state. And that's without starting on education, welfare and the NHS.
In fact this is a pretty crappy budget, short termist and utterly failing to address the structural crisis that the Tory Hard Brexit is creating for UK PLC.
The MoD got fucked. They are looking at real term cuts for the next three years plus unfunded commitments like the 1.25% employer NI rise and the National Flegship.
The manifesto promise of 0.5% above inflation annual adjustment to defence spending has been casually discarded.
What's new? Tories have been cutting the armed forces since the 1980s, secure in the knowledge that voters will blame Labour for being weak on defence.
1980s? I think you give the Macmillan government and its abandonment of conscription too much credit there.
Its shameful how we armed forces have been run down. We can even man both of Browns white elephant aircraft carriers at the same time.
Why shameful?
It should be an assessment of our need as opposed to a number in itself
We cant man our aircraft carriers.. that's shsmeful enough on its own.
That’s bad planning and should be criticised
I just don’t see any shame attaching to the Uk. The MoD has always varied from useless to downright awful
I’m on a beach in the Aegean, and can’t be arsed to do the research myself, but @Dura_Ace suggested that the defence budget was a manifesto breach.
How many breaches is that now?
I’ve no idea and don’t really care
The manifesto is a statement of intent not a binding commitment
There is a political cost to every decision (whether in a manifesto or not).
Manifesto breaches are a stick that opponents use but I’m not sure it really cuts through to voters
It’s very interesting that you don’t care.
It's also a shot against one of the more common things cited by defenders of FPTP: with a single party in power, you can hold them to their manifesto commitments.
We've got the statement that they're more like guidelines coupled with the observation that voters don't actually hold them to their manifesto, anyway.
Not really. The point is that a manifesto can be discarded if the situation demands it, but under FPTP we can still hold that against the government. If we think there's a good justification for the manifesto being broken (eg an unforeseen pandemic) then we can factor that into our thinking before we vote. If we do not think there's a good justification for the manifesto being broken (eg the Constitution being renamed the Lisbon Treaty) then we can also factor that into our thinking.
Its our choice whether we hold the government to account for its failure to live to its commitments at the next election or not.
Under coalition agreements they get dumped instantly without needing an excuse.
And if the voters disagree with the compromises the parties have made, they will punish the party in question at the next election. In Coalition negotiations, parties have to bear that in mind. That the overall intent (as per Charles' comment) and ideological lean are the important bits and if the parties betray those, they will get badly hit.
Just ask him: [Clegg image]
Absolutely they were smashed under FPTP and even he lost his seat the following time around. Rather proving my point. If they'd kept the same shares under PR they'd have lost only two-thirds of the seats instead of 90% and he'd have been so high up the list he'd have kept his seat.
Plus of course the UK is more conditioned to parties not betraying their manifestos so such a betrayal stung more. A lot of Lib Dems at the time were bemoaning the fact that on the continent voters are more forgiving of such betrayals as they're used to them.
So thanks for proving my point for me.
Do you really want to sound like HYUFD? Because all the "thanks for proving my point for me" comes over very much like him; you're better than that.
Under PR, the Lib Dems would have lost considerable number of seats. Two thirds of whatever they had. They would have been driven out of Government and born the scars for years - just like they have done so.
Depending on the method used, Clegg may well have kept his seat. You know full well that closed list PR is not the only method. STV is the preferred method of the Lib Dems and it's very much in the voters power to punish MPs directly under STV. And of course, Clegg kept his seat on the first election following under PR (and was planning on stepping down by the 2020 election, anyway; he had to be persuaded to stand again due to the snappy.)
And whether or not an MP keeps their seat is one thing; he lost power as DPM, he lost power as Leader of the Lib Dems (had he not resigned, he'd have been turfed out) and he was humiliated by his party losing so much support and him taking the lion's share of the blame. All things that happen under PR as easily as under FPTP.
If the only benefit of FPTP is to (maybe, eventually) sack him as a politician, as happened with, say, Zak Goldsmith, then it's a rather small benefit (and one that the Government can get around, anyway. Just ask Baron Goldsmith.
Independent carrying stories of major salami slicing, which will kill quite a few of the benefits. Including killing the Nottm/Derby station, and putting chunks of it on existing tracks.
Is it true? Problem I have is that the Indy is not reliable.
There seems to be a lot of issues round the eastern leg where they seem to have missed the fact, a train route isn't much use if it doesn't stop at important towns / cities on the route.
Leeds - Sheffield - Nottingham / Derby - all add millions of potential customers to the route.
The reality is that for reasons unknown they seem to want to save costs without thinking through the consequences of those cuts.
They seem to keep removing major cities - Nottingham being the latest one. They should just get it done - properly. Including linking to HS1 and the continent.
Nottingham was never on the line, it was always a Parkway wasn't it, as was Sheffield originally. I didn't have a problem with that, the Meadowhall stop suited me as it would a load of folk from out of town, but what you have to have in that case is proper rapid transit shuttle to the centre and of a suitable grade that it's almost as if you haven't left HS2. And Supertram taking 15-20 minutes to trundle into the main Midland station isn't quite that mark.
Speaking of HS2, has anyone else been to Euston recently? I was there last week and it's currently the grottiest railway station I think I've ever been to: eclipsing anything in Asia. The loos are absolutely disgusting.
I only hope this is because of HS2 development? Does anyone know? The fact that it doesn't really link properly to King's Cross-St Pancras is also one of the more bizarre aspects of HS2.
The original Euston fell victim to post-war planning vandalism.
Independent carrying stories of major salami slicing, which will kill quite a few of the benefits. Including killing the Nottm/Derby station, and putting chunks of it on existing tracks.
Is it true? Problem I have is that the Indy is not reliable.
There seems to be a lot of issues round the eastern leg where they seem to have missed the fact, a train route isn't much use if it doesn't stop at important towns / cities on the route.
Leeds - Sheffield - Nottingham / Derby - all add millions of potential customers to the route.
The reality is that for reasons unknown they seem to want to save costs without thinking through the consequences of those cuts.
They seem to keep removing major cities - Nottingham being the latest one. They should just get it done - properly. Including linking to HS1 and the continent.
How much value is there to linking it to the continent?
I would hazard a guess that a train from Manchester to Paris would cost much more than a flight.
At a fraction of the carbon emissions. Also, a nicer experience and city centre to city centre. Look at how Eurostar has removed the demand for the London-Paris air route.
Probably at absolutely zero difference to carbon emissions would be my guess. And taking hours longer than a direct flight.
The idea we can reduce emissions by not flying is pathetic. The drop in consumption will be negligible and won't be matched by the rest of the world and won't take us to zero emissions.
The ONLY way to reach net zero is to have it so that flights etc generate zero emissions. There are multiple companies working on this and I expect they'll have success long before HS2 finishes construction.
Sorry independistas, they're upgrading a roundabout in Falkirk. It's over.
Seems a shame to redevelop Inverness Castle, too. Do the locals get any say before it's bulldozed and flats are built? Seems to be taking the 'levelling' part a bit too far!
Speaking of HS2, has anyone else been to Euston recently? I was there last week and it's currently the grottiest railway station I think I've ever been to: eclipsing anything in Asia. The loos are absolutely disgusting.
I only hope this is because of HS2 development? Does anyone know? The fact that it doesn't really link properly to King's Cross-St Pancras is also one of the more bizarre aspects of HS2.
The original Euston fell victim to post-war planning vandalism.
Wow. Thank you for this. What a stunning station it was
David Gauke, part of the group of pro EU politicians who failed to win the case to remain and just cannot concede they lost
Maybe if they had made a better case they could have won it
Yes, but back to the point he raises. The official numbers show the cost of Brexit being double the cost of Covid. We need tax rises and they're blaming Covid. Logically we will need bigger tax rises and they won't blame Brexit...
It's a fallacious argument. The reason covid implies tax rises is because of the amount of government borrowing. Any direct costs of Brexit are nothing compared to furlough, etc.
Brexit is lost revenue. Furlough is lost revenue *and* increased cost.
Brexit is mostly projected, but not all. Exports to EU are already failing to follow Rest of World performance.
We decided to Brexit. W
This is a very loose comment.
'We' was 52% against 48%, in other words hardly deserving of your all-inclusive pronoun, but in some ways the bigger issue is that we didn't vote for Brexit. We didn't really vote for anything. No one know what the hell we were voting for. The devil in the detail only emerged later and I guarantee you that if we'd known the monster we were about to unleash the country would not have voted for it.
What makes you think I disagree on this point?
I’ve said many times that Cameron was suicidally complacent about his EU referendum [...]
It would have roiled and split the Leave campaign and Cameron would have romped home.
Instead he loftily assumed he was cruising to victory, because he is an arrogant Etonian who fatally over-estimated his own abilities. Because that’s what Eton does. It fills you with self assurance. Often unjustified
It's also because 'he' had just won Indyref, even causing The Queen to purr with pleasure, and thus carried all his self-preening arrogance into the Brexit vote.
Brexit is, without question, the greatest mistake Britain as a nation has made. It eclipses all other colonial, military and foreign policy errors combined.
Thank goodness its pushed mass slavery off the top spot!
And World War One. People always overstate the horror of that error. OK Yes we could have stayed neutral in the Great War, thereby saving a million British lives and a trillion pounds, and probably ensuring we kept the Empire for another century, but what’s that compared to the error of leaving the Customs Union thus adding significant paperwork?
Yeah but WW1 inspired some great poetry and ushered in Expressionism, Surrealism, and Modernism.
Brexit has Farage doing £80-a-pop Cameo shout-outs.
1) If we had stayed out of WWI, the Germans would have won in short order. 2) So, the German Empire, Kaiser etc would have stayed intact 3) Given that the German Empire embraced war as a Good thing, and it had worked twice (1870 and 1914) 4) And that they were planning for WII as part of their planned reparations demands.... 5) The Kaiser Wilhelm instate will probably have a bunch more scientists....
So in about 1940 or so, the highly militaristic German Empire would get some good news about bigger and better bangs. Just in time for the next war.....
Germany winning quickly could also have been a very very good thing = no Hitler, no Nazis, no WW2, probably no Russian Revolution, no communism, no USSR, no Mao, no PRChina, no Cold War
It might have been an unimaginably nicer world and better century, albeit with a stronger Germany dominant in mainland Europe. A price worth paying?
Its a mistake to imagine that the German regime of 1914 -1918 was that much better than the Nazi's. We have this image that the German army was somehow a decent bunch of chaps just happened to be fighting against us, when the reality is the atrocities were there in 1914-18 too. German victory in Eastern Europe would have given a Germanic empire with repressed peoples. Huge economic rapacity for Germany. The German army after 1945 tried to claim it was an honorable institution, but this was whitewashing of the highest order. The army was complicit in everything that happened on the Eastern Front, and behind. The nature of the regime was similar. I'd recommend Keegan's 'Apocalypse' on how 1914 played out.
And there was me thinking the Nazis' Hunger Plan was inspired by the British blockade in the first world war which killed 100s of thousands of German civilians.
Speaking of HS2, has anyone else been to Euston recently? I was there last week and it's currently the grottiest railway station I think I've ever been to: eclipsing anything in Asia. The loos are absolutely disgusting.
I only hope this is because of HS2 development? Does anyone know? The fact that it doesn't really link properly to King's Cross-St Pancras is also one of the more bizarre aspects of HS2.
It's a shocking decision to fail to link up the lines – a very British fudge.
(and you are right about Euston – horrible station, the worst of the major London termini by far)
Independent carrying stories of major salami slicing, which will kill quite a few of the benefits. Including killing the Nottm/Derby station, and putting chunks of it on existing tracks.
Is it true? Problem I have is that the Indy is not reliable.
There seems to be a lot of issues round the eastern leg where they seem to have missed the fact, a train route isn't much use if it doesn't stop at important towns / cities on the route.
Leeds - Sheffield - Nottingham / Derby - all add millions of potential customers to the route.
The reality is that for reasons unknown they seem to want to save costs without thinking through the consequences of those cuts.
They seem to keep removing major cities - Nottingham being the latest one. They should just get it done - properly. Including linking to HS1 and the continent.
How much value is there to linking it to the continent?
I would hazard a guess that a train from Manchester to Paris would cost much more than a flight.
At a fraction of the carbon emissions. Also, a nicer experience and city centre to city centre. Look at how Eurostar has removed the demand for the London-Paris air route.
Probably at absolutely zero difference to carbon emissions would be my guess. And taking hours longer than a direct flight.
The idea we can reduce emissions by not flying is pathetic. The drop in consumption will be negligible and won't be matched by the rest of the world and won't take us to zero emissions.
The ONLY way to reach net zero is to have it so that flights etc generate zero emissions. There are multiple companies working on this and I expect they'll have success long before HS2 finishes construction.
Would it take hours longer once you have factored in the ludicrous faffing about involved in flying? Show me your working.
Take London to Glasgow – the Campaign for Better Transport recently ran a 'race' between plane and train, city centre to city centre. The train took just two minutes more (i.e. the train person arrived just two minutes after the plane competitor). The carbon emissions on the train were 1/6th of the plane. And there was far less faffing around.
Speaking of HS2, has anyone else been to Euston recently? I was there last week and it's currently the grottiest railway station I think I've ever been to: eclipsing anything in Asia. The loos are absolutely disgusting.
I only hope this is because of HS2 development? Does anyone know? The fact that it doesn't really link properly to King's Cross-St Pancras is also one of the more bizarre aspects of HS2.
The original Euston fell victim to post-war planning vandalism.
Wow. Thank you for this. What a stunning station it was
That is extraordinary. Which idiot pulled this down? A disastrous decision.
It had, however, been already diminished by having streets built in front of it. Originally it was a wide open space. One of the pictures above is from victorian times, the other from just before the second world war.
Independent carrying stories of major salami slicing, which will kill quite a few of the benefits. Including killing the Nottm/Derby station, and putting chunks of it on existing tracks.
Is it true? Problem I have is that the Indy is not reliable.
There seems to be a lot of issues round the eastern leg where they seem to have missed the fact, a train route isn't much use if it doesn't stop at important towns / cities on the route.
Leeds - Sheffield - Nottingham / Derby - all add millions of potential customers to the route.
The reality is that for reasons unknown they seem to want to save costs without thinking through the consequences of those cuts.
They seem to keep removing major cities - Nottingham being the latest one. They should just get it done - properly. Including linking to HS1 and the continent.
Nottingham was never on the line, it was always a Parkway wasn't it, as was Sheffield originally. I didn't have a problem with that, the Meadowhall stop suited me as it would a load of folk from out of town, but what you have to have in that case is proper rapid transit shuttle to the centre and of a suitable grade that it's almost as if you haven't left HS2. And Supertram taking 15-20 minutes to trundle into the main Midland station isn't quite that mark.
Toton is west Nottingham effectively isn't it? Assume there would be a tram extension to take people into town although I accept that it's not as good as a city centre stop.
Manchester-Paris is a good deal shorter than London-Lyon – a popular Eurostar route in the summer.
I've done London to Montpelier. Quite a haul but still less hassle, and more comfortable, than flying in my view.
Yes, me too – the problem with that route is that you run out of high speed line before you get to the south of France proper. Ditto when going to the Cote D'Azur.
Independent carrying stories of major salami slicing, which will kill quite a few of the benefits. Including killing the Nottm/Derby station, and putting chunks of it on existing tracks.
Is it true? Problem I have is that the Indy is not reliable.
There seems to be a lot of issues round the eastern leg where they seem to have missed the fact, a train route isn't much use if it doesn't stop at important towns / cities on the route.
Leeds - Sheffield - Nottingham / Derby - all add millions of potential customers to the route.
The reality is that for reasons unknown they seem to want to save costs without thinking through the consequences of those cuts.
They seem to keep removing major cities - Nottingham being the latest one. They should just get it done - properly. Including linking to HS1 and the continent.
Nottingham was never on the line, it was always a Parkway wasn't it, as was Sheffield originally. I didn't have a problem with that, the Meadowhall stop suited me as it would a load of folk from out of town, but what you have to have in that case is proper rapid transit shuttle to the centre and of a suitable grade that it's almost as if you haven't left HS2. And Supertram taking 15-20 minutes to trundle into the main Midland station isn't quite that mark.
The last plans I saw for that were for a 10 minute rail shuttle to the centre of Nottm and Derby.
Sorry independistas, they're upgrading a roundabout in Falkirk. It's over.
Seems a shame to redevelop Inverness Castle, too. Do the locals get any say before it's bulldozed and flats are built? Seems to be taking the 'levelling' part a bit too far!
It's just had a shitload of development including a viewpoint from its highest tower Not sure what else they want done, a roller coaster or water slide maybe?
Speaking of HS2, has anyone else been to Euston recently? I was there last week and it's currently the grottiest railway station I think I've ever been to: eclipsing anything in Asia. The loos are absolutely disgusting.
I only hope this is because of HS2 development? Does anyone know? The fact that it doesn't really link properly to King's Cross-St Pancras is also one of the more bizarre aspects of HS2.
The original Euston fell victim to post-war planning vandalism.
Wow. Thank you for this. What a stunning station it was
That is extraordinary. Which idiot pulled this down? A disastrous decision.
Just imagine it at rush hour. It wouldn't be a pretty sight!
It seems the French filched fishing boat was UK-flagged, but is owned by a Canadian company.
Does that make any difference to anything?
It was owned by one of the big Scottish Shellfish companies aiui, and based in Shorerham.
It does have a license, but there was a cockup with the existence of that licensing arriving on the list that France received from Brussels, or a query over it being withdrawn later.
There was some extensive but poor coverage on WATO, but the only party they did not interview was the Jersey Government, who are the ones who set the licensing regime. And they failed to push the French local politician on his narrative.
It seems the French filched fishing boat was UK-flagged, but is owned by a Canadian company.
Does that make any difference to anything?
It was owned by one of the big Scottish Shellfish companies aiui, and based in Shorerham.
It does have a license, but there was a cockup with the existence of that licensing arriving on the list that France received from Brussels, or a query over it being withdrawn later.
There was some extensive but poor coverage on WATO, but the only party they did not interview was the Jersey Government, who are the ones who set the licensing regime. And they failed to push the French local politician on his narrative.
Speaking of HS2, has anyone else been to Euston recently? I was there last week and it's currently the grottiest railway station I think I've ever been to: eclipsing anything in Asia. The loos are absolutely disgusting.
I only hope this is because of HS2 development? Does anyone know? The fact that it doesn't really link properly to King's Cross-St Pancras is also one of the more bizarre aspects of HS2.
The original Euston fell victim to post-war planning vandalism.
Wow. Thank you for this. What a stunning station it was
That is extraordinary. Which idiot pulled this down? A disastrous decision.
Just imagine it at rush hour. It wouldn't be a pretty sight!
It would be a hell of a lot prettier than the current Euston at rush hour!
Sorry independistas, they're upgrading a roundabout in Falkirk. It's over.
Seems a shame to redevelop Inverness Castle, too. Do the locals get any say before it's bulldozed and flats are built? Seems to be taking the 'levelling' part a bit too far!
It's just had a shitload of development including a viewpoint from its highest tower Not sure what else they want done, a roller coaster or water slide maybe?
"That this House approves Her Majesty's Government's decision of principle to join the European Communities on the basis of the arrangements which have been negotiated."
Neighbour had a work trip to the US. Tested before departure: Negative Tested on arrival (feeling a bit iffy): Positive 2 weeks self-isolation, missed his work meetings, then back home over a week later than planned.
This is why I don't want to go on any overseas work trips!
I think that's exactly right. Just like everybody else I've ever met who worked for Goldman Sachs, or indeed any big investment bank. Or the big consulting firms like McKinsey.
The interesting question is why their clients let them get away with it.
The better question is why all the genuinely clever people are happy accepting being paid less than they could easily get by beating all the morons to the highest-paying jobs available in society. Unless you think the banks are hiring second rate people on purpose, for some reason?
Or, you could think about the extent to which jealousy and other cognitive biases might be colouring your impressions.
Because they are clever enough to know that money isn’t everything?
Just a guess.
What, all of them? None of the cleverest (say) million people in the UK want to do a 5-10 year stint as an investment banker, earn enough to retire on, and spend the rest of their lives doing things that really matter?
Every year, the top several thousand most coveted, prestigious, high-paid grad positions available in the UK go entirely to candidates from the second tier of possible applicants, because all of the top tier have ruled themselves out?
Independent carrying stories of major salami slicing, which will kill quite a few of the benefits. Including killing the Nottm/Derby station, and putting chunks of it on existing tracks.
Is it true? Problem I have is that the Indy is not reliable.
There seems to be a lot of issues round the eastern leg where they seem to have missed the fact, a train route isn't much use if it doesn't stop at important towns / cities on the route.
Leeds - Sheffield - Nottingham / Derby - all add millions of potential customers to the route.
The reality is that for reasons unknown they seem to want to save costs without thinking through the consequences of those cuts.
They seem to keep removing major cities - Nottingham being the latest one. They should just get it done - properly. Including linking to HS1 and the continent.
How much value is there to linking it to the continent?
I would hazard a guess that a train from Manchester to Paris would cost much more than a flight.
At a fraction of the carbon emissions. Also, a nicer experience and city centre to city centre. Look at how Eurostar has removed the demand for the London-Paris air route.
Probably at absolutely zero difference to carbon emissions would be my guess. And taking hours longer than a direct flight.
The idea we can reduce emissions by not flying is pathetic. The drop in consumption will be negligible and won't be matched by the rest of the world and won't take us to zero emissions.
The ONLY way to reach net zero is to have it so that flights etc generate zero emissions. There are multiple companies working on this and I expect they'll have success long before HS2 finishes construction.
Would it take hours longer once you have factored in the ludicrous faffing about involved in flying? Show me your working.
Take London to Glasgow – the Campaign for Better Transport recently ran a 'race' between plane and train, city centre to city centre. The train took just two minutes more (i.e. the train person arrived just two minutes after the plane competitor). The carbon emissions on the train were 1/6th of the plane. And there was far less faffing around.
Again the only way to get to net zero is to have net zero aviation. So emissions are not a factor, it will be zero vs zero.
You sound like someone ten years ago saying we shouldn't have roads because cars emit emissions - except that the future is emission-free cars.
Yes two minutes sounds about right London to Glasgow, but Manchester to Paris via London is a further distance isn't it? The further the distance, the better aviation and the less of an issue the aviation faf is.
Speaking of HS2, has anyone else been to Euston recently? I was there last week and it's currently the grottiest railway station I think I've ever been to: eclipsing anything in Asia. The loos are absolutely disgusting.
I only hope this is because of HS2 development? Does anyone know? The fact that it doesn't really link properly to King's Cross-St Pancras is also one of the more bizarre aspects of HS2.
The original Euston fell victim to post-war planning vandalism.
Wow. Thank you for this. What a stunning station it was
That is extraordinary. Which idiot pulled this down? A disastrous decision.
Just imagine it at rush hour. It wouldn't be a pretty sight!
Get with the programme. We don't have rush hour any more.
Independent carrying stories of major salami slicing, which will kill quite a few of the benefits. Including killing the Nottm/Derby station, and putting chunks of it on existing tracks.
Is it true? Problem I have is that the Indy is not reliable.
There seems to be a lot of issues round the eastern leg where they seem to have missed the fact, a train route isn't much use if it doesn't stop at important towns / cities on the route.
Leeds - Sheffield - Nottingham / Derby - all add millions of potential customers to the route.
The reality is that for reasons unknown they seem to want to save costs without thinking through the consequences of those cuts.
They seem to keep removing major cities - Nottingham being the latest one. They should just get it done - properly. Including linking to HS1 and the continent.
How much value is there to linking it to the continent?
I would hazard a guess that a train from Manchester to Paris would cost much more than a flight.
At a fraction of the carbon emissions. Also, a nicer experience and city centre to city centre. Look at how Eurostar has removed the demand for the London-Paris air route.
Probably at absolutely zero difference to carbon emissions would be my guess. And taking hours longer than a direct flight.
The idea we can reduce emissions by not flying is pathetic. The drop in consumption will be negligible and won't be matched by the rest of the world and won't take us to zero emissions.
The ONLY way to reach net zero is to have it so that flights etc generate zero emissions. There are multiple companies working on this and I expect they'll have success long before HS2 finishes construction.
Would it take hours longer once you have factored in the ludicrous faffing about involved in flying? Show me your working.
Take London to Glasgow – the Campaign for Better Transport recently ran a 'race' between plane and train, city centre to city centre. The train took just two minutes more (i.e. the train person arrived just two minutes after the plane competitor). The carbon emissions on the train were 1/6th of the plane. And there was far less faffing around.
Again the only way to get to net zero is to have net zero aviation. So emissions are not a factor, it will be zero vs zero.
You sound like someone ten years ago saying we shouldn't have roads because cars emit emissions - except that the future is emission-free cars.
Yes two minutes sounds about right London to Glasgow, but Manchester to Paris via London is a further distance isn't it? The further the distance, the better aviation and the less of an issue the aviation faf is.
There's not a huge amount in it, distance wise. And remember my OP was about direct high-speed services Manchester-Paris – London to Glasgow is not high speed!
My estimate is that a high speed Manchester to Paris route would be very competitive indeed with the air route.
"That this House approves Her Majesty's Government's decision of principle to join the European Communities on the basis of the arrangements which have been negotiated."
Trains can also travel through the night, which saves you a day a la the Caledonian Sleeper*.
*again a very popular option.
Except when they cancel the Aberdeen portion due to staff shortages, throw everyone off the train in the early hours at Waverley and make them catch a bus to Aberdeen.
Neighbour had a work trip to the US. Tested before departure: Negative Tested on arrival (feeling a bit iffy): Positive 2 weeks self-isolation, missed his work meetings, then back home over a week later than planned.
This is why I don't want to go on any overseas work trips!
You don't need to test in a whole host of locations though – double-vaxxed QR code is sufficient.
Trains can also travel through the night, which saves you a day a la the Caledonian Sleeper*.
*again a very popular option.
Except when they cancel the Aberdeen portion due to staff shortages, throw everyone off the train in the early hours at Waverley and make them catch a bus to Aberdeen.
Independent carrying stories of major salami slicing, which will kill quite a few of the benefits. Including killing the Nottm/Derby station, and putting chunks of it on existing tracks.
Is it true? Problem I have is that the Indy is not reliable.
There seems to be a lot of issues round the eastern leg where they seem to have missed the fact, a train route isn't much use if it doesn't stop at important towns / cities on the route.
Leeds - Sheffield - Nottingham / Derby - all add millions of potential customers to the route.
The reality is that for reasons unknown they seem to want to save costs without thinking through the consequences of those cuts.
They seem to keep removing major cities - Nottingham being the latest one. They should just get it done - properly. Including linking to HS1 and the continent.
How much value is there to linking it to the continent?
I would hazard a guess that a train from Manchester to Paris would cost much more than a flight.
At a fraction of the carbon emissions. Also, a nicer experience and city centre to city centre. Look at how Eurostar has removed the demand for the London-Paris air route.
Probably at absolutely zero difference to carbon emissions would be my guess. And taking hours longer than a direct flight.
The idea we can reduce emissions by not flying is pathetic. The drop in consumption will be negligible and won't be matched by the rest of the world and won't take us to zero emissions.
The ONLY way to reach net zero is to have it so that flights etc generate zero emissions. There are multiple companies working on this and I expect they'll have success long before HS2 finishes construction.
Would it take hours longer once you have factored in the ludicrous faffing about involved in flying? Show me your working.
Take London to Glasgow – the Campaign for Better Transport recently ran a 'race' between plane and train, city centre to city centre. The train took just two minutes more (i.e. the train person arrived just two minutes after the plane competitor). The carbon emissions on the train were 1/6th of the plane. And there was far less faffing around.
Again the only way to get to net zero is to have net zero aviation. So emissions are not a factor, it will be zero vs zero.
You sound like someone ten years ago saying we shouldn't have roads because cars emit emissions - except that the future is emission-free cars.
Yes two minutes sounds about right London to Glasgow, but Manchester to Paris via London is a further distance isn't it? The further the distance, the better aviation and the less of an issue the aviation faf is.
There's not a huge amount in it, distance wise. And remember my OP was about direct high-speed services Manchester-Paris – London to Glasgow is not high speed!
My estimate is that a high speed Manchester to Paris route would be very competitive indeed with the air route.
I can't imagine there'd be any direct routes that didn't stop in London, since it needs to travel that way anyway its just going to stop there.
And how much would this train ticket cost versus a flight doing the same route? Once you recognise that both have zero emissions.
Independent carrying stories of major salami slicing, which will kill quite a few of the benefits. Including killing the Nottm/Derby station, and putting chunks of it on existing tracks.
Is it true? Problem I have is that the Indy is not reliable.
There seems to be a lot of issues round the eastern leg where they seem to have missed the fact, a train route isn't much use if it doesn't stop at important towns / cities on the route.
Leeds - Sheffield - Nottingham / Derby - all add millions of potential customers to the route.
The reality is that for reasons unknown they seem to want to save costs without thinking through the consequences of those cuts.
They seem to keep removing major cities - Nottingham being the latest one. They should just get it done - properly. Including linking to HS1 and the continent.
How much value is there to linking it to the continent?
I would hazard a guess that a train from Manchester to Paris would cost much more than a flight.
At a fraction of the carbon emissions. Also, a nicer experience and city centre to city centre. Look at how Eurostar has removed the demand for the London-Paris air route.
Probably at absolutely zero difference to carbon emissions would be my guess. And taking hours longer than a direct flight.
The idea we can reduce emissions by not flying is pathetic. The drop in consumption will be negligible and won't be matched by the rest of the world and won't take us to zero emissions.
The ONLY way to reach net zero is to have it so that flights etc generate zero emissions. There are multiple companies working on this and I expect they'll have success long before HS2 finishes construction.
Would it take hours longer once you have factored in the ludicrous faffing about involved in flying? Show me your working.
Take London to Glasgow – the Campaign for Better Transport recently ran a 'race' between plane and train, city centre to city centre. The train took just two minutes more (i.e. the train person arrived just two minutes after the plane competitor). The carbon emissions on the train were 1/6th of the plane. And there was far less faffing around.
Again the only way to get to net zero is to have net zero aviation. So emissions are not a factor, it will be zero vs zero.
You sound like someone ten years ago saying we shouldn't have roads because cars emit emissions - except that the future is emission-free cars.
Yes two minutes sounds about right London to Glasgow, but Manchester to Paris via London is a further distance isn't it? The further the distance, the better aviation and the less of an issue the aviation faf is.
Planes are a bit harder to get to zero emissions than almost anything else because of the weight constraints.
The option being pursued with most vigour is finding non fossil fuels - from algae, say - but this only addresses less than one half of the climate impact from flying because of the warming effects from water vapour and nitrous oxides released directly into the upper troposphere.
So it makes sense to encourage the use of rail for intra-continental journeys and only use flying where it's harder to avoid, such as crossing oceans. And the faster we can stop burning fossil fuels where we have a zero carbon alternative (electricity, surface transport) then the more time we will have to work out alternatives for the harder bits.
David Gauke, part of the group of pro EU politicians who failed to win the case to remain and just cannot concede they lost
Maybe if they had made a better case they could have won it
Yes, but back to the point he raises. The official numbers show the cost of Brexit being double the cost of Covid. We need tax rises and they're blaming Covid. Logically we will need bigger tax rises and they won't blame Brexit...
It's a fallacious argument. The reason covid implies tax rises is because of the amount of government borrowing. Any direct costs of Brexit are nothing compared to furlough, etc.
Brexit is lost revenue. Furlough is lost revenue *and* increased cost.
Brexit is mostly projected, but not all. Exports to EU are already failing to follow Rest of World performance.
We decided to Brexit. W
This is a very loose comment.
'We' was 52% against 48%, in other words hardly deserving of your all-inclusive pronoun, but in some ways the bigger issue is that we didn't vote for Brexit. We didn't really vote for anything. No one know what the hell we were voting for. The devil in the detail only emerged later and I guarantee you that if we'd known the monster we were about to unleash the country would not have voted for it.
What makes you think I disagree on this point?
I’ve said many times that Cameron was suicidally complacent about his EU referendum [...]
It would have roiled and split the Leave campaign and Cameron would have romped home.
Instead he loftily assumed he was cruising to victory, because he is an arrogant Etonian who fatally over-estimated his own abilities. Because that’s what Eton does. It fills you with self assurance. Often unjustified
It's also because 'he' had just won Indyref, even causing The Queen to purr with pleasure, and thus carried all his self-preening arrogance into the Brexit vote.
Brexit is, without question, the greatest mistake Britain as a nation has made. It eclipses all other colonial, military and foreign policy errors combined.
Thank goodness its pushed mass slavery off the top spot!
And World War One. People always overstate the horror of that error. OK Yes we could have stayed neutral in the Great War, thereby saving a million British lives and a trillion pounds, and probably ensuring we kept the Empire for another century, but what’s that compared to the error of leaving the Customs Union thus adding significant paperwork?
Yeah but WW1 inspired some great poetry and ushered in Expressionism, Surrealism, and Modernism.
Brexit has Farage doing £80-a-pop Cameo shout-outs.
1) If we had stayed out of WWI, the Germans would have won in short order. 2) So, the German Empire, Kaiser etc would have stayed intact 3) Given that the German Empire embraced war as a Good thing, and it had worked twice (1870 and 1914) 4) And that they were planning for WII as part of their planned reparations demands.... 5) The Kaiser Wilhelm instate will probably have a bunch more scientists....
So in about 1940 or so, the highly militaristic German Empire would get some good news about bigger and better bangs. Just in time for the next war.....
Germany winning quickly could also have been a very very good thing = no Hitler, no Nazis, no WW2, probably no Russian Revolution, no communism, no USSR, no Mao, no PRChina, no Cold War
It might have been an unimaginably nicer world and better century, albeit with a stronger Germany dominant in mainland Europe. A price worth paying?
Its a mistake to imagine that the German regime of 1914 -1918 was that much better than the Nazi's. We have this image that the German army was somehow a decent bunch of chaps just happened to be fighting against us, when the reality is the atrocities were there in 1914-18 too. German victory in Eastern Europe would have given a Germanic empire with repressed peoples. Huge economic rapacity for Germany. The German army after 1945 tried to claim it was an honorable institution, but this was whitewashing of the highest order. The army was complicit in everything that happened on the Eastern Front, and behind. The nature of the regime was similar. I'd recommend Keegan's 'Apocalypse' on how 1914 played out.
And there was me thinking the Nazis' Hunger Plan was inspired by the British blockade in the first world war which killed 100s of thousands of German civilians.
Wow - did I touch a nerve? Seriously, in wars, terrible things happen and nations try to avoid their own people dying. The blockade of Germany by the British was our attempt to help with the war. i'm not claiming moral right and wrong, just pointing out that the Nazi regime and that of the Kaiser were not as different as is often portrayed. You only need to look at Brest-Litovsk to see that.
Independent carrying stories of major salami slicing, which will kill quite a few of the benefits. Including killing the Nottm/Derby station, and putting chunks of it on existing tracks.
Is it true? Problem I have is that the Indy is not reliable.
There seems to be a lot of issues round the eastern leg where they seem to have missed the fact, a train route isn't much use if it doesn't stop at important towns / cities on the route.
Leeds - Sheffield - Nottingham / Derby - all add millions of potential customers to the route.
The reality is that for reasons unknown they seem to want to save costs without thinking through the consequences of those cuts.
They seem to keep removing major cities - Nottingham being the latest one. They should just get it done - properly. Including linking to HS1 and the continent.
How much value is there to linking it to the continent?
I would hazard a guess that a train from Manchester to Paris would cost much more than a flight.
At a fraction of the carbon emissions. Also, a nicer experience and city centre to city centre. Look at how Eurostar has removed the demand for the London-Paris air route.
Probably at absolutely zero difference to carbon emissions would be my guess. And taking hours longer than a direct flight.
The idea we can reduce emissions by not flying is pathetic. The drop in consumption will be negligible and won't be matched by the rest of the world and won't take us to zero emissions.
The ONLY way to reach net zero is to have it so that flights etc generate zero emissions. There are multiple companies working on this and I expect they'll have success long before HS2 finishes construction.
Would it take hours longer once you have factored in the ludicrous faffing about involved in flying? Show me your working.
Take London to Glasgow – the Campaign for Better Transport recently ran a 'race' between plane and train, city centre to city centre. The train took just two minutes more (i.e. the train person arrived just two minutes after the plane competitor). The carbon emissions on the train were 1/6th of the plane. And there was far less faffing around.
Again the only way to get to net zero is to have net zero aviation. So emissions are not a factor, it will be zero vs zero.
You sound like someone ten years ago saying we shouldn't have roads because cars emit emissions - except that the future is emission-free cars.
Yes two minutes sounds about right London to Glasgow, but Manchester to Paris via London is a further distance isn't it? The further the distance, the better aviation and the less of an issue the aviation faf is.
There's not a huge amount in it, distance wise. And remember my OP was about direct high-speed services Manchester-Paris – London to Glasgow is not high speed!
My estimate is that a high speed Manchester to Paris route would be very competitive indeed with the air route.
I can't imagine there'd be any direct routes that didn't stop in London, since it needs to travel that way anyway its just going to stop there.
And how much would this train ticket cost versus a flight doing the same route? Once you recognise that both have zero emissions.
It could stop there, sure, but would be a direct service under my suggestion.
Who knows what the price would be? Certainly the new Amsterdam-London direct Eurostar service is competitive.
I wouldn't be subsidising short haul air for sure. I'm not convinced that zero emissions air travel is a realistic near-term prospect.
Independent carrying stories of major salami slicing, which will kill quite a few of the benefits. Including killing the Nottm/Derby station, and putting chunks of it on existing tracks.
Is it true? Problem I have is that the Indy is not reliable.
There seems to be a lot of issues round the eastern leg where they seem to have missed the fact, a train route isn't much use if it doesn't stop at important towns / cities on the route.
Leeds - Sheffield - Nottingham / Derby - all add millions of potential customers to the route.
The reality is that for reasons unknown they seem to want to save costs without thinking through the consequences of those cuts.
They seem to keep removing major cities - Nottingham being the latest one. They should just get it done - properly. Including linking to HS1 and the continent.
How much value is there to linking it to the continent?
I would hazard a guess that a train from Manchester to Paris would cost much more than a flight.
At a fraction of the carbon emissions. Also, a nicer experience and city centre to city centre. Look at how Eurostar has removed the demand for the London-Paris air route.
Probably at absolutely zero difference to carbon emissions would be my guess. And taking hours longer than a direct flight.
The idea we can reduce emissions by not flying is pathetic. The drop in consumption will be negligible and won't be matched by the rest of the world and won't take us to zero emissions.
The ONLY way to reach net zero is to have it so that flights etc generate zero emissions. There are multiple companies working on this and I expect they'll have success long before HS2 finishes construction.
Would it take hours longer once you have factored in the ludicrous faffing about involved in flying? Show me your working.
Take London to Glasgow – the Campaign for Better Transport recently ran a 'race' between plane and train, city centre to city centre. The train took just two minutes more (i.e. the train person arrived just two minutes after the plane competitor). The carbon emissions on the train were 1/6th of the plane. And there was far less faffing around.
Again the only way to get to net zero is to have net zero aviation. So emissions are not a factor, it will be zero vs zero.
You sound like someone ten years ago saying we shouldn't have roads because cars emit emissions - except that the future is emission-free cars.
Yes two minutes sounds about right London to Glasgow, but Manchester to Paris via London is a further distance isn't it? The further the distance, the better aviation and the less of an issue the aviation faf is.
There's not a huge amount in it, distance wise. And remember my OP was about direct high-speed services Manchester-Paris – London to Glasgow is not high speed!
My estimate is that a high speed Manchester to Paris route would be very competitive indeed with the air route.
I can't imagine there'd be any direct routes that didn't stop in London, since it needs to travel that way anyway its just going to stop there.
And how much would this train ticket cost versus a flight doing the same route? Once you recognise that both have zero emissions.
It could stop there, sure, but would be a direct service under my suggestion.
Who knows what the price would be? Certainly the new Amsterdam-London direct Eurostar service is competitive.
I wouldn't be subsidising short haul air for sure. I'm not convinced that zero emissions air travel is a realistic near-term prospect.
Who's talking about subsidies?
I think zero emission air travel will probably be with us before HS2 (including all its legs) has finished construction.
Pre WW1 France was not, civilisationally, unlike pre WW1 Britain. Pre WW1 Germany was, from the perspective of the 21st century west, a rather darker and more primitive place. I think. Others may be better informed.
Dunno about that, there’s a case to be made that pre WWI France was the most institutionally antisemtic country in Western Europe, and therefore open to a Gallic final solution. Their enthusiastic embrace of the German version doesn’t really contradict that hypothesis.
'Of the 340,000 Jews living in metropolitan/continental France in 1940, more than 75,000 were deported to death camps, where about 72,500 were murdered. The government of Vichy France and the French police organized and implemented the roundups of Jews.'
The fact that French state organised the round up and transportation of 72,500 Jews to their murders implies a certain ease with the process, no?
No. For a start 'a certain ease with the process' would be the Netherlands, who sent off 102,000 of their c.140,000 Jews to their deaths, or Greece, where c.60,000 of c.70,000 were killed - not France, a country with one of the lowest death rates in Europe. Secondly, as the linked page explained, and which you totally read before responding to me, "In the occupied zone, the French police were effectively controlled by the German authorities... [who] took increasing charge of the persecution of Jews, while the Vichy authorities were forced towards a more sensitive approach by public opinion." Neither of these suggests "ease," let alone the "enthusiasm" you originally claimed.
Thirdly, you said the French "enthusiastically embraced" the Final Solution - the Final Solution, of course, being genocide not deportatation. But once again, as the linked page (which you totally read before responding to me) says: 'At the time, it was announced that the Reich had created a homeland for Jews somewhere in Eastern Europe, to which all of the Jews of Europe would be "resettled", and was portrayed as a utopia. In the spring of 1942, the claim that "resettlement in the East" meant going to the mysterious Jewish homeland in Eastern Europe was widely believed in France, even by most Jews'.
So the French didn't understand the purpose of the deportations, and even so did them half-heartedly and worse than many other nations in Europe. The real question is why you're so eager to play down the historical specificity of the Holocaust: it seems odd that after nearly a century Scottish Nationalists are still carrying water for the Nazis.
Speaking of HS2, has anyone else been to Euston recently? I was there last week and it's currently the grottiest railway station I think I've ever been to: eclipsing anything in Asia. The loos are absolutely disgusting.
I only hope this is because of HS2 development? Does anyone know? The fact that it doesn't really link properly to King's Cross-St Pancras is also one of the more bizarre aspects of HS2.
David Gauke, part of the group of pro EU politicians who failed to win the case to remain and just cannot concede they lost
Maybe if they had made a better case they could have won it
Yes, but back to the point he raises. The official numbers show the cost of Brexit being double the cost of Covid. We need tax rises and they're blaming Covid. Logically we will need bigger tax rises and they won't blame Brexit...
It's a fallacious argument. The reason covid implies tax rises is because of the amount of government borrowing. Any direct costs of Brexit are nothing compared to furlough, etc.
Brexit is lost revenue. Furlough is lost revenue *and* increased cost.
Brexit is mostly projected, but not all. Exports to EU are already failing to follow Rest of World performance.
We decided to Brexit. W
This is a very loose comment.
'We' was 52% against 48%, in other words hardly deserving of your all-inclusive pronoun, but in some ways the bigger issue is that we didn't vote for Brexit. We didn't really vote for anything. No one know what the hell we were voting for. The devil in the detail only emerged later and I guarantee you that if we'd known the monster we were about to unleash the country would not have voted for it.
What makes you think I disagree on this point?
I’ve said many times that Cameron was suicidally complacent about his EU referendum [...]
It would have roiled and split the Leave campaign and Cameron would have romped home.
Instead he loftily assumed he was cruising to victory, because he is an arrogant Etonian who fatally over-estimated his own abilities. Because that’s what Eton does. It fills you with self assurance. Often unjustified
It's also because 'he' had just won Indyref, even causing The Queen to purr with pleasure, and thus carried all his self-preening arrogance into the Brexit vote.
Brexit is, without question, the greatest mistake Britain as a nation has made. It eclipses all other colonial, military and foreign policy errors combined.
Thank goodness its pushed mass slavery off the top spot!
And World War One. People always overstate the horror of that error. OK Yes we could have stayed neutral in the Great War, thereby saving a million British lives and a trillion pounds, and probably ensuring we kept the Empire for another century, but what’s that compared to the error of leaving the Customs Union thus adding significant paperwork?
Yeah but WW1 inspired some great poetry and ushered in Expressionism, Surrealism, and Modernism.
Brexit has Farage doing £80-a-pop Cameo shout-outs.
1) If we had stayed out of WWI, the Germans would have won in short order. 2) So, the German Empire, Kaiser etc would have stayed intact 3) Given that the German Empire embraced war as a Good thing, and it had worked twice (1870 and 1914) 4) And that they were planning for WII as part of their planned reparations demands.... 5) The Kaiser Wilhelm instate will probably have a bunch more scientists....
So in about 1940 or so, the highly militaristic German Empire would get some good news about bigger and better bangs. Just in time for the next war.....
Germany winning quickly could also have been a very very good thing = no Hitler, no Nazis, no WW2, probably no Russian Revolution, no communism, no USSR, no Mao, no PRChina, no Cold War
It might have been an unimaginably nicer world and better century, albeit with a stronger Germany dominant in mainland Europe. A price worth paying?
Its a mistake to imagine that the German regime of 1914 -1918 was that much better than the Nazi's. We have this image that the German army was somehow a decent bunch of chaps just happened to be fighting against us, when the reality is the atrocities were there in 1914-18 too. German victory in Eastern Europe would have given a Germanic empire with repressed peoples. Huge economic rapacity for Germany. The German army after 1945 tried to claim it was an honorable institution, but this was whitewashing of the highest order. The army was complicit in everything that happened on the Eastern Front, and behind. The nature of the regime was similar. I'd recommend Keegan's 'Apocalypse' on how 1914 played out.
And there was me thinking the Nazis' Hunger Plan was inspired by the British blockade in the first world war which killed 100s of thousands of German civilians.
The Nazis' Hunger Plan was inspired by fact that due to the dislocation of the war (young men in the army, all the transport etc) there was not enough food in Europe and the conquered territories to feed everyone. So starving the local Untermensch was seen as a two-for-one.
Independent carrying stories of major salami slicing, which will kill quite a few of the benefits. Including killing the Nottm/Derby station, and putting chunks of it on existing tracks.
Is it true? Problem I have is that the Indy is not reliable.
There seems to be a lot of issues round the eastern leg where they seem to have missed the fact, a train route isn't much use if it doesn't stop at important towns / cities on the route.
Leeds - Sheffield - Nottingham / Derby - all add millions of potential customers to the route.
The reality is that for reasons unknown they seem to want to save costs without thinking through the consequences of those cuts.
They seem to keep removing major cities - Nottingham being the latest one. They should just get it done - properly. Including linking to HS1 and the continent.
How much value is there to linking it to the continent?
I would hazard a guess that a train from Manchester to Paris would cost much more than a flight.
At a fraction of the carbon emissions. Also, a nicer experience and city centre to city centre. Look at how Eurostar has removed the demand for the London-Paris air route.
Probably at absolutely zero difference to carbon emissions would be my guess. And taking hours longer than a direct flight.
The idea we can reduce emissions by not flying is pathetic. The drop in consumption will be negligible and won't be matched by the rest of the world and won't take us to zero emissions.
The ONLY way to reach net zero is to have it so that flights etc generate zero emissions. There are multiple companies working on this and I expect they'll have success long before HS2 finishes construction.
Would it take hours longer once you have factored in the ludicrous faffing about involved in flying? Show me your working.
Take London to Glasgow – the Campaign for Better Transport recently ran a 'race' between plane and train, city centre to city centre. The train took just two minutes more (i.e. the train person arrived just two minutes after the plane competitor). The carbon emissions on the train were 1/6th of the plane. And there was far less faffing around.
Again the only way to get to net zero is to have net zero aviation. So emissions are not a factor, it will be zero vs zero.
You sound like someone ten years ago saying we shouldn't have roads because cars emit emissions - except that the future is emission-free cars.
Yes two minutes sounds about right London to Glasgow, but Manchester to Paris via London is a further distance isn't it? The further the distance, the better aviation and the less of an issue the aviation faf is.
There's not a huge amount in it, distance wise. And remember my OP was about direct high-speed services Manchester-Paris – London to Glasgow is not high speed!
My estimate is that a high speed Manchester to Paris route would be very competitive indeed with the air route.
I can't imagine there'd be any direct routes that didn't stop in London, since it needs to travel that way anyway its just going to stop there.
And how much would this train ticket cost versus a flight doing the same route? Once you recognise that both have zero emissions.
'Just going to stop there' = terminate at a station which isn't even linked with HS1. So sod off and get out and walk with your luggage, every single one of you, every single train.
One might think that it was designed by Londoners who assume everyone wants to go to or from London. Why get all upset about knocking a few buildings down in Camden to make a direct link? Look what is happeniong all along the railway northwards ...?!
Pre WW1 France was not, civilisationally, unlike pre WW1 Britain. Pre WW1 Germany was, from the perspective of the 21st century west, a rather darker and more primitive place. I think. Others may be better informed.
Dunno about that, there’s a case to be made that pre WWI France was the most institutionally antisemtic country in Western Europe, and therefore open to a Gallic final solution. Their enthusiastic embrace of the German version doesn’t really contradict that hypothesis.
'Of the 340,000 Jews living in metropolitan/continental France in 1940, more than 75,000 were deported to death camps, where about 72,500 were murdered. The government of Vichy France and the French police organized and implemented the roundups of Jews.'
The fact that French state organised the round up and transportation of 72,500 Jews to their murders implies a certain ease with the process, no?
No. For a start 'a certain ease with the process' would be the Netherlands, who sent off 102,000 of their c.140,000 Jews to their deaths, or Greece, where c.60,000 of c.70,000 were killed - not France, a country with one of the lowest death rates in Europe. Secondly, as the linked page explained, and which you totally read before responding to me, "In the occupied zone, the French police were effectively controlled by the German authorities... [who] took increasing charge of the persecution of Jews, while the Vichy authorities were forced towards a more sensitive approach by public opinion." Neither of these suggests "ease," let alone the "enthusiasm" you originally claimed.
Thirdly, you said the French "enthusiastically embraced" the Final Solution - the Final Solution, of course, being genocide not deportatation. But once again, as the linked page (which you totally read before responding to me) says: 'At the time, it was announced that the Reich had created a homeland for Jews somewhere in Eastern Europe, to which all of the Jews of Europe would be "resettled", and was portrayed as a utopia. In the spring of 1942, the claim that "resettlement in the East" meant going to the mysterious Jewish homeland in Eastern Europe was widely believed in France, even by most Jews'.
So the French didn't understand the purpose of the deportations, and even so did them half-heartedly and worse than many other nations in Europe. The real question is why you're so eager to play down the historical specificity of the Holocaust: it seems odd that after nearly a century Scottish Nationalists are still carrying water for the Nazis.
Golly, light blue fuse paper and stand back from a word vomit.
Comments
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Austria-Hungary would have doubled down on repression of the Serbs. The Ottoman Empire would have sought to reclaim Balkan territories. Europe would have remained a powder keg.
The interesting question is why their clients let them get away with it.
I do however agree with PB that Bridget P is a bright and bonny talent – very impressive team in the shadow Treasury that surely signals the way forward for the party.
Or, you could think about the extent to which jealousy and other cognitive biases might be colouring your impressions.
Hitler was to some extents a product of his time. A very evil product even for his time, but sadly not unique. There are three other leaders arguably just as bad as Hitler in the 20th century alone. We pay the most attention to Hitler only because we fought against him and he's European.
In an alternative history within the multiverse there's every chance a parallel Hitler could have arisen just as in our own timeline Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot arose. Even worse, in that timeline parallel Hitler could have won the war.
Just ask him:
Her seat is marginal but I expect will swing back to her at the next GE.
The west had something of a lucky escape with Hitler, in that he made some very bad military decisions along the way.
If we had stayed neutral, I think it possible Germany would not have won in 1914.
BUT - I think they would have won in the end. Think Verdun without the British to attack on the Somme. The French in chaos in 1916 with mutinies. Would the USA have come in if Britain was neutral (no need to sink the USA - British shipping).
Plus of course the UK is more conditioned to parties not betraying their manifestos so such a betrayal stung more. A lot of Lib Dems at the time were bemoaning the fact that on the continent voters are more forgiving of such betrayals as they're used to them.
So thanks for proving my point for me.
My answer to that in the John McDonnel years was an absolute and unequivocal no. I don't even remember Chris Leslie in the role and Annaliese Dodds just did not engender any confidence either. For the first time since Balls Labour have someone who meets that test.
It is a necessary but not sufficient condition for voting for them. For Labour to really offer an alternative Government SKS needs to step up or step out.
He lives in one of the most caricaturable places in the country.
With large chunks of French industry under German control, France would not have lasted long, anyway.
By 1941 he'd been throwing 6s non stop since about 1933. No wonder he went mad with it.....
That's the fascinating thing about historical counterfactuals: the butterfly effect writ large.
EDIT: of course on reflection I am being anachronistic here. Syria and Lebanon were not French possessions at the time as they were Ottoman. More accurately they would never have fallen to France.
Has anyone seen anything on this, yet?
Independent carrying stories of major salami slicing, which will kill quite a few of the benefits. Including killing the Nottm/Derby station, and putting chunks of it on existing tracks.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/northern-powerhouse-rail-hs2-levelling-up-b1934935.html
Is it true? Problem I have is that the Indy is not reliable.
Just a guess.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Despard
Such people no doubt exist. Many more will nevertheless be wage slaves only not as comfortable wage slaves as the GS/IB/consultant types.
Leeds - Sheffield - Nottingham / Derby - all add millions of potential customers to the route.
The reality is that for reasons unknown they seem to want to save costs without thinking through the consequences of those cuts.
We don't rule ourselves. We haven't for decades. Multi-nationals, the media and internet rule us not nation states and it's testament to their power that someone as intelligent as you could be so deluded.
There is no real power in a nation state and has not been since the 1980's.
'Of the 340,000 Jews living in metropolitan/continental France in 1940, more than 75,000 were deported to death camps, where about 72,500 were murdered. The government of Vichy France and the French police organized and implemented the roundups of Jews.'
The fact that French state organised the round up and transportation of 72,500 Jews to their murders implies a certain ease with the process, no? Italy by contrast managed not to be complicit in the Holocaust until the fall of Mussolini and Germany becoming their de facto rulers; it was Germany that then enacted the round up of Italian Jews, albeit with help from the Italian police. Even then a smaller proportion of the Italian Jewish population were transported and murdered.
On the plus side (if it can be called that), it did give us the sublime works of Primo Levi, though I dare say he could have done without that formative experience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiIml-R7l8k&t=11s
You only have to watch University Challenge to know that some apparently very clever and - in other areas - knowledgeable people are terrible when it comes to British geography.
One team in the current series of Uni Challenge thought that Falmouth was inland.
Zuckerberg, Bezos, Branson, Musk, Arnault, Barclay brothers, Murdoch, Usmanov, social media influencers and bot controllers etc. etc. ... these are the power brokers in today's world. Politicians in the UK? Petty pawns in a minor game.
You don't seem to put much stock in democracy and strike me as more of an Anglophobe anyway.
That's Brexit and that is Brexiteers.
The terrible irony and disappointment of the EU is that it was corrupt and centralised. We certainly could have stayed in and contributed to its reformation.
But if you really want, genuinely and non-confrontationally, to know where I'm coming from ... I'm a radical libertarian, against state power and increasingly disengaging from modern life.
I would hazard a guess that a train from Manchester to Paris would cost much more than a flight.
A German victory in 1914 that Britain had stayed out of would have seen conflict between Britain and Germany before too long. And likely conflict between an expansionist Germany and other countries in various directions.
The chief difference is Britain would mainly have fought the conflict by sea, rather than in the trenches, and we may well have suffered a lot less as a result and still defeat German militarism, albeit over a longer period.
It does have a license, but there was a cockup with the existence of that licensing arriving on the list that France received from Brussels, or a query over it being withdrawn later.
There was some extensive but poor coverage on WATO, but the only party they did not interview was the Jersey Government, who are the ones who set the licensing regime. And they failed to push the French local politician on his narrative.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59073715
I only hope this is because of HS2 development? Does anyone know? The fact that it doesn't really link properly to King's Cross-St Pancras is also one of the more bizarre aspects of HS2.
The exclusive power to tax, make treaties (NATO for example), legislate, compel, forbid, imprison, declare war and criminalise are by no means trivial. All these belong to various arms of the nation state. And that's without starting on education, welfare and the NHS.
Under PR, the Lib Dems would have lost considerable number of seats. Two thirds of whatever they had. They would have been driven out of Government and born the scars for years - just like they have done so.
Depending on the method used, Clegg may well have kept his seat. You know full well that closed list PR is not the only method. STV is the preferred method of the Lib Dems and it's very much in the voters power to punish MPs directly under STV. And of course, Clegg kept his seat on the first election following under PR (and was planning on stepping down by the 2020 election, anyway; he had to be persuaded to stand again due to the snappy.)
And whether or not an MP keeps their seat is one thing; he lost power as DPM, he lost power as Leader of the Lib Dems (had he not resigned, he'd have been turfed out) and he was humiliated by his party losing so much support and him taking the lion's share of the blame. All things that happen under PR as easily as under FPTP.
If the only benefit of FPTP is to (maybe, eventually) sack him as a politician, as happened with, say, Zak Goldsmith, then it's a rather small benefit (and one that the Government can get around, anyway. Just ask Baron Goldsmith.
It's over.
The idea we can reduce emissions by not flying is pathetic. The drop in consumption will be negligible and won't be matched by the rest of the world and won't take us to zero emissions.
The ONLY way to reach net zero is to have it so that flights etc generate zero emissions. There are multiple companies working on this and I expect they'll have success long before HS2 finishes construction.
(and you are right about Euston – horrible station, the worst of the major London termini by far)
Take London to Glasgow – the Campaign for Better Transport recently ran a 'race' between plane and train, city centre to city centre. The train took just two minutes more (i.e. the train person arrived just two minutes after the plane competitor). The carbon emissions on the train were 1/6th of the plane. And there was far less faffing around.
That is extraordinary. Which idiot pulled this down? A disastrous decision.
*again a very popular option.
It had, however, been already diminished by having streets built in front of it. Originally it was a wide open space. One of the pictures above is from victorian times, the other from just before the second world war.
https://www.clearwater.ca/en/our-story/history/
"That this House approves Her Majesty's Government's decision of principle to join the European Communities on the basis of the arrangements which have been negotiated."
https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/1971-10-28/debates/f7b49d76-2531-4c3e-9af3-bf15653b73f7/EuropeanCommunities
Neighbour had a work trip to the US.
Tested before departure: Negative
Tested on arrival (feeling a bit iffy): Positive
2 weeks self-isolation, missed his work meetings, then back home over a week later than planned.
This is why I don't want to go on any overseas work trips!
Every year, the top several thousand most coveted, prestigious, high-paid grad positions available in the UK go entirely to candidates from the second tier of possible applicants, because all of the top tier have ruled themselves out?
Really?
You sound like someone ten years ago saying we shouldn't have roads because cars emit emissions - except that the future is emission-free cars.
Yes two minutes sounds about right London to Glasgow, but Manchester to Paris via London is a further distance isn't it? The further the distance, the better aviation and the less of an issue the aviation faf is.
My estimate is that a high speed Manchester to Paris route would be very competitive indeed with the air route.
As if one Tufton Beamish weren't enough, he was preceded as MP for Lewes by his father, Rear-Admiral Tufton Beamish.
And how much would this train ticket cost versus a flight doing the same route? Once you recognise that both have zero emissions.
The option being pursued with most vigour is finding non fossil fuels - from algae, say - but this only addresses less than one half of the climate impact from flying because of the warming effects from water vapour and nitrous oxides released directly into the upper troposphere.
So it makes sense to encourage the use of rail for intra-continental journeys and only use flying where it's harder to avoid, such as crossing oceans. And the faster we can stop burning fossil fuels where we have a zero carbon alternative (electricity, surface transport) then the more time we will have to work out alternatives for the harder bits.
Who knows what the price would be? Certainly the new Amsterdam-London direct Eurostar service is competitive.
I wouldn't be subsidising short haul air for sure. I'm not convinced that zero emissions air travel is a realistic near-term prospect.
I think zero emission air travel will probably be with us before HS2 (including all its legs) has finished construction.
Thirdly, you said the French "enthusiastically embraced" the Final Solution - the Final Solution, of course, being genocide not deportatation. But once again, as the linked page (which you totally read before responding to me) says: 'At the time, it was announced that the Reich had created a homeland for Jews somewhere in Eastern Europe, to which all of the Jews of Europe would be "resettled", and was portrayed as a utopia. In the spring of 1942, the claim that "resettlement in the East" meant going to the mysterious Jewish homeland in Eastern Europe was widely believed in France, even by most Jews'.
So the French didn't understand the purpose of the deportations, and even so did them half-heartedly and worse than many other nations in Europe. The real question is why you're so eager to play down the historical specificity of the Holocaust: it seems odd that after nearly a century Scottish Nationalists are still carrying water for the Nazis.
One might think that it was designed by Londoners who assume everyone wants to go to or from London. Why get all upset about knocking a few buildings down in Camden to make a direct link? Look what is happeniong all along the railway northwards ...?!