Interesting cold plunge in today's ECMWF forecast for next week. I wonder how important the issue of high gas prices will be for the voters of North Shropshire and Old Bexley and Sidcup?
Interesting point. Incidentally I haven't had the heating on at all this year so far because it hasn't been cold enough yet.
Interesting cold plunge in today's ECMWF forecast for next week. I wonder how important the issue of high gas prices will be for the voters of North Shropshire and Old Bexley and Sidcup?
Is this at all reliable? According to all this, it's going to go from +15 to -10 in the space of 6 days where I live
Where are you getting +15 -> -10 from? I think that is overegging it a bit.
There was skill in the day 7-9 forecasts 5-10 years ago, and I'd think they would be better now. But naturally they become more reliable as the forecast lead time reduces.
HS2 should have been a source of huge national pride - connecting the great cities of the English north and midlands to the European high speed network. Instead, we are stopping at Euston and forcing northerners to shuffle along the Euston Road with their bags to reach the Eurostar. Oh, and we are cutting Nottingham, Leeds and Newcastle out of the project entirely.
Absolutely pathetic from the hopeless Boris.
Because you'd have had to level half of Camden for a decade, for about 4 through trains a day, with passport issues unresolved
We've been over this. Several times. It was a lovely dream but it was never going to happen
Are you implying that inconvenience to North Londoners takes precedence over the North of England?
YES
I presume those Northerners who moved to North London after graduation did so for a reason and not because they wanted to rush back up beyond Watford every 5 minutes outside of Christmas and family events.
Nor is there any great reason why Northerners would want to go to London in half the time they do now, agreed
With that approach I take it you would have opposed creation of the railways and the motorway network as well. What? Why would there be any advantage to people moving about the country faster?
We already have a rail network and motorway network we don't need a high speed rail network from London to the North when there is no great demand for it. We also are only a third the landmass of France, they have more room for the TGV without ripping up a big percentage of the countryside. So I have reservations about HS2
Some of us want to get from Scotland to the rest of Europe, as well as much of England, without being dumped at Euston and trekking through London streets or the London underground to our next train.
Believe me,. England seems a lot bigger than France with that sort of nonsense.
Newsnight is suggesting that Chope (and Cash) objected to a vote on the Paterson affair tonight because they want a debate on the motion; the vote tonight was due to be held without any discussion. And they want a debate because they think Paterson has been the victim of a great injustice.
If that's accurate, it's brilliant news. More chance for Labour to benefit from a bit of blue-on-blue action as some Tory MPs try to defend the indefensible.
Interesting cold plunge in today's ECMWF forecast for next week. I wonder how important the issue of high gas prices will be for the voters of North Shropshire and Old Bexley and Sidcup?
Is this at all reliable? According to all this, it's going to go from +15 to -10 in the space of 6 days where I live
Where are you getting +15 -> -10 from? I think that is overegging it a bit.
There was skill in the day 7-9 forecasts 5-10 years ago, and I'd think they would be better now. But naturally they become more reliable as the forecast lead time reduces.
Aberdeenshire. Judging by the colour I'll be firmly in the -8 to -12 (so I assumed -10) region by Thursday next week. It should be 15 degrees this Thursday. Apologies, I mean 7 days not 6.
Are you looking at the 850hPa temperature charts and comparing the temperature 1km up with the surface temperature?
The people who invented the internet were hoping it would increase freedom. It looks like they didn't consider the possibility that it might be used by autocratic leaders to reduce it.
Which goes to show you that intellectually smart people are not necessarily smart in common sense terms
Or, more likely, that complex systems generate unknowable and unimaginable emergent properties that surprise everyone.
HS2 should have been a source of huge national pride - connecting the great cities of the English north and midlands to the European high speed network. Instead, we are stopping at Euston and forcing northerners to shuffle along the Euston Road with their bags to reach the Eurostar. Oh, and we are cutting Nottingham, Leeds and Newcastle out of the project entirely.
Absolutely pathetic from the hopeless Boris.
Because you'd have had to level half of Camden for a decade, for about 4 through trains a day, with passport issues unresolved
We've been over this. Several times. It was a lovely dream but it was never going to happen
Are you implying that inconvenience to North Londoners takes precedence over the North of England?
YES
I presume those Northerners who moved to North London after graduation did so for a reason and not because they wanted to rush back up beyond Watford every 5 minutes outside of Christmas and family events.
Nor is there any great reason why Northerners would want to go to London in half the time they do now, agreed
We can go direct to source and ask one of our PB-ers with such a profile just this.
Okay. I live in Chelsea and drive to North Riding quite a lot. I used to drive it a lot more before lockdown. I don’t do it using train. I didn’t like the idea of HS2 destroying the countryside. There is probably a green argument HS2 would have reduced car traffic, but do you think it would have? But I like driving. Normally I don’t drive it alone, and I do my stint first and then sit in the back with my cams on. I don’t know if this helps? But looking at the comment we are commenting on, it’s quite a closed view about people but all people would be different, some prefer train, some not have reasons to travel so often. And I came before graduation.
I don’t want to be rude, but why is H Y F U D an ass? Or is he an Okapi?
I don't want to relabour old points, but: HS2 isn't about HS2.
The logic for HS2 is as follows: Our railways our full (or were, before the pandemic). There are no more paths. Therefore, we need more track capacity. If we are going to build more track capacity, let's build it to the highest spec possible. We can then separate out fast and slow trains. (Not least because, as a moment's thought will demonstrate, mixtures of fast and slow trains kills capacity: track can accomodate most paths when all the trains on it run at the same speed).
Thus, HS2. Thus, we might cut the journey between Manchester and London in two. But the real benefit to Manchester comes in released capacity on Manchester's local network. You can run a proper suburban service, rather than filling in the gaps between high speed trains.
The same logic applies to NPR.
HS2 therefore may take a handful of car trips off the M6/M1. But indirectly, it will take more cars off Greater Manchester's highway network.
If you compare two days ago with nine days ago, you get a good feel for where we are going. (It's worked in the past). Data for two days ago is incomplete, but not THAT incomplete. So ideally, you want the numbers for two days ago to be comfortably lower - 10% or more - than those for nine days ago. We're not there yet - but nor are we in a situation where two days ago is far higher than nine days ago, which is what it tends to look like at the start of a big uptick. And several regions are flattish or declining - again, the increases are concentrated in those regions which so far have been the least impacted by covid.
I give it another five days of rising cases before the cases by date reported (the earliest but least reliable indicator) tops out and starts to decline.
The people who invented the internet were hoping it would increase freedom. It looks like they didn't consider the possibility that it might be used by autocratic leaders to reduce it.
Which goes to show you that intellectually smart people are not necessarily smart in common sense terms
Or, more likely, that complex systems generate unknowable and unimaginable emergent properties that surprise everyone.
If they were that intelligent they'd have thought of that. Johari Doors.
Interesting cold plunge in today's ECMWF forecast for next week. I wonder how important the issue of high gas prices will be for the voters of North Shropshire and Old Bexley and Sidcup?
Is this at all reliable? According to all this, it's going to go from +15 to -10 in the space of 6 days where I live
Where are you getting +15 -> -10 from? I think that is overegging it a bit.
There was skill in the day 7-9 forecasts 5-10 years ago, and I'd think they would be better now. But naturally they become more reliable as the forecast lead time reduces.
Aberdeenshire. Judging by the colour I'll be firmly in the -8 to -12 (so I assumed -10) region by Thursday next week. It should be 15 degrees this Thursday. Apologies, I mean 7 days not 6.
Are you looking at the 850hPa temperature charts and comparing the temperature 1km up with the surface temperature?
Yes, it seems so. I found the box-and-whisker diagrams instead and it's giving sensible readings now. High chance of below zero, so 15 degree swing on the cards, not 25. Thanks.
Yes, it's a big enough swing in temperature to be getting on with.
HS2 should have been a source of huge national pride - connecting the great cities of the English north and midlands to the European high speed network. Instead, we are stopping at Euston and forcing northerners to shuffle along the Euston Road with their bags to reach the Eurostar. Oh, and we are cutting Nottingham, Leeds and Newcastle out of the project entirely.
Absolutely pathetic from the hopeless Boris.
Because you'd have had to level half of Camden for a decade, for about 4 through trains a day, with passport issues unresolved
We've been over this. Several times. It was a lovely dream but it was never going to happen
Camden is more important than the rest of the country, obviously.
Looking through posts regarding events in Lverpool, be very careful of the 'mental health issues, loner' story as the top and bottom of this, in particular the idea that mental illness in anyway kind of drives cause.
1. Making a bomb puts you in a right interesting category of 'mentally ill' , if the person made it, with or without direction 2. Having cohorts getting lifted by the cops should be noted until such times as they are cleared of any involvement.
If he couldn't win in Texas in 2018 when there was a blue wave to the Democrats, he certainly won't win statewide in 2022 when the polling suggests a red wave to the GOP
Agreed. The latest Texas results also suggest a Hispanic switch to the GOP.
If you mean the GOP pickup of TX state senate seat on south side of San Antonio, that had more to do with division (read competition) within local Democrats COMBINED with low off-year, special-election runoff turnout.
Not good (from my perspective, not yours!) but methinks less suggestive than you suggest.
Latino voters most likely to switch (or start from scratch) voting Republican as a regular thing, are those living in rural counties, where voters share many of the same perspectives & esp. economic interests as already-overwhelmingly GOP local Anglos.
Of course the coming mid-terms in new-drawn (by Republicans) congressional & legislative seats will show which way the winds are blowing in the Lone Star State.
Certainly any serious Latino defection combined with possible suburban slump linked to Biden's popularity or lack thereof in 2022 would be bad news for Democrats in Texas and across the US.
Sky News: "Conservative MP Caroline Nokes has alleged that Stanley Johnson touched her inappropriately at the Conservative party conference in 2003".
Whatever the rights and wrongs, if it's taken her over 18 years to kick up a fuss over it (co-incidentally whilst Stanley Johnson's son happens to be prime minister), should we really be taking it seriously?
At this point, it's a he says/she says mudslinging exercise; it's not like we can go back through the CCTV at this distance in time, so he's going to have to be presumed innocent unless she's got actual hard evidence to back things up. If I was in Stanley's shoes (guilty or innocent), I'd be instructing my learned friends to write her a letter explaining the concepts of libel and defamation...
On thread - and a nicely written header it is, Morris - I really can't see Boris going this side of a general election. We speculate endlessly about the imminent, or near-imminent demise of party leaders, and it almost never happens. The default setting is that the leader remains. Even a consensus develops that a new leader is needed, the process of bringing that about fails to happen more often than not. Bringing down a party leader is hard, and is one of those jobs which everybody would rather leave to someone else.
Newsnight is suggesting that Chope (and Cash) objected to a vote on the Paterson affair tonight because they want a debate on the motion; the vote tonight was due to be held without any discussion. And they want a debate because they think Paterson has been the victim of a great injustice.
If that's accurate, it's brilliant news. More chance for Labour to benefit from a bit of blue-on-blue action as some Tory MPs try to defend the indefensible.
Surely Paterson has already left the Commons, hence the by-election.
Interesting cold plunge in today's ECMWF forecast for next week. I wonder how important the issue of high gas prices will be for the voters of North Shropshire and Old Bexley and Sidcup?
These by-elections will be an interesting test of Boris's theory that winter elections favour the Conservatives because Labour supporters are less inclined to turn out to vote in bad weather.
Looking through posts regarding events in Lverpool, be very careful of the 'mental health issues, loner' story as the top and bottom of this, in particular the idea that mental illness in anyway kind of drives cause.
1. Making a bomb puts you in a right interesting category of 'mentally ill' , if the person made it, with or without direction 2. Having cohorts getting lifted by the cops should be noted until such times as they are cleared of any involvement.
Deleted further questions. Let's see what tomorrow brings. The story so far is not coherent.
HS2 should have been a source of huge national pride - connecting the great cities of the English north and midlands to the European high speed network. Instead, we are stopping at Euston and forcing northerners to shuffle along the Euston Road with their bags to reach the Eurostar. Oh, and we are cutting Nottingham, Leeds and Newcastle out of the project entirely.
Absolutely pathetic from the hopeless Boris.
Because you'd have had to level half of Camden for a decade, for about 4 through trains a day, with passport issues unresolved
We've been over this. Several times. It was a lovely dream but it was never going to happen
Are you implying that inconvenience to North Londoners takes precedence over the North of England?
YES
I presume those Northerners who moved to North London after graduation did so for a reason and not because they wanted to rush back up beyond Watford every 5 minutes outside of Christmas and family events.
Nor is there any great reason why Northerners would want to go to London in half the time they do now, agreed
We can go direct to source and ask one of our PB-ers with such a profile just this.
Okay. I live in Chelsea and drive to North Riding quite a lot. I used to drive it a lot more before lockdown. I don’t do it using train. I didn’t like the idea of HS2 destroying the countryside. There is probably a green argument HS2 would have reduced car traffic, but do you think it would have? But I like driving. Normally I don’t drive it alone, and I do my stint first and then sit in the back with my cams on. I don’t know if this helps? But looking at the comment we are commenting on, it’s quite a closed view about people but all people would be different, some prefer train, some not have reasons to travel so often. And I came before graduation.
They would have been much better off calling HS2 “Rail Capacity 2100”. The biggest effect of it isn’t to get cars off the roads, as much as it gets lorries off the road by an expansion in rail freight.
While everyone is focussing on how much faster you can get from City A to City B, what’s much more important is separating the high speed passenger services from the slower freight services, allowing many more of the latter on the old main lines.
So rents are rising at fastest pace in 13 years, petrol has never been so expensive in my entire adult life, we’ve decided not to make rail travel potentially cheaper - how long until Rishi messes with student loans as trailed to top it all off?
So rents are rising at fastest pace in 13 years, petrol has never been so expensive in my entire adult life, we’ve decided not to make rail travel potentially cheaper - how long until Rishi messes with student loans as trailed to top it all off?
You honestly think tickets for HS2 trains will be...cheaper?
So rents are rising at fastest pace in 13 years, petrol has never been so expensive in my entire adult life, we’ve decided not to make rail travel potentially cheaper - how long until Rishi messes with student loans as trailed to top it all off?
You honestly think tickets for HS2 trains will be...cheaper?
If there’s more capacity on local lines absolutely
Good morning everyone. Are the wheels coming off the Tories just as a few by-elections loom?
And can I add my thanks to Mr D for something different as a header. It's a period in history that I know very little about, so finding out a bit more is added to my To-Do's. Although sometimes I think that's getting to be a bucket list!
So rents are rising at fastest pace in 13 years, petrol has never been so expensive in my entire adult life, we’ve decided not to make rail travel potentially cheaper - how long until Rishi messes with student loans as trailed to top it all off?
You honestly think tickets for HS2 trains will be...cheaper?
Mobile phone prices didn't rise despite the phone operators splurging untold billions on 3G licenses.
King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.
What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.
So rents are rising at fastest pace in 13 years, petrol has never been so expensive in my entire adult life, we’ve decided not to make rail travel potentially cheaper - how long until Rishi messes with student loans as trailed to top it all off?
You honestly think tickets for HS2 trains will be...cheaper?
If there’s more capacity on local lines absolutely
There’s plenty of capacity on many local lines. Doesn’t make the trains any cheaper to run.
So rents are rising at fastest pace in 13 years, petrol has never been so expensive in my entire adult life, we’ve decided not to make rail travel potentially cheaper - how long until Rishi messes with student loans as trailed to top it all off?
You honestly think tickets for HS2 trains will be...cheaper?
If there’s more capacity on local lines absolutely
If the problem is the lack of capacity on local lines, why not build more capacity on those?
HS2 has always been a white elephant that beggars investment on other lines.
So rents are rising at fastest pace in 13 years, petrol has never been so expensive in my entire adult life, we’ve decided not to make rail travel potentially cheaper - how long until Rishi messes with student loans as trailed to top it all off?
You honestly think tickets for HS2 trains will be...cheaper?
If there’s more capacity on local lines absolutely
This is a crucial point: if HS2 is not built, and no other projects to increase capacity are done, then parts of the network will become increasingly capacity-limited (as some parts of the network were pre-Covid). This means prices will rise, for both passengers and freight. HS2 increases capacity, which may well *decrease* ticket prices as a whole - if compared to an alternative world where it wasn't built.
Covid is the fast curveball in all of this. Currently, it looks as though commuting is going to be hammered, whilst other journeys will recover. But like much infrastructure, HS2 is being built for the demands of future decades, not just the demands for today.
So rents are rising at fastest pace in 13 years, petrol has never been so expensive in my entire adult life, we’ve decided not to make rail travel potentially cheaper - how long until Rishi messes with student loans as trailed to top it all off?
You honestly think tickets for HS2 trains will be...cheaper?
If there’s more capacity on local lines absolutely
If the problem is the lack of capacity on local lines, why not build more capacity on those?
HS2 has always been a white elephant that beggars investment on other lines.
Oh lor, here we go again.
It's no wonder the Treasury are getting away with their sabotage if even highly intelligent people like Foxy can't grasp how taking big fast trains off slow lines is the best way of increasing capacity.
Interesting cold plunge in today's ECMWF forecast for next week. I wonder how important the issue of high gas prices will be for the voters of North Shropshire and Old Bexley and Sidcup?
These by-elections will be an interesting test of Boris's theory that winter elections favour the Conservatives because Labour supporters are less inclined to turn out to vote in bad weather.
Aren't those the sort of Labour voters who came out in numbers to vote for Boris last time because he made them chuckle with his antics and his funny hair and his keeping the foreigners out and that sort of thing?
King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.
What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.
Indeed, Mr D. I don't recall any mention of anything Saxon, apart from Alfred and the Danes, being mentioned in any class I attended. Ydoethur's predecessor's, in SE Essex, just shot straight past that. In spite of there having been one important battle just down the hill from where I lived!
Bravo, MD. There's only one line I'd quibble with;
Incompetent men can sometimes cling to power with surprising tenacity.
BoJo has many incompetencies, but there are two things he is galactically good at.
One is making people like him / want to sleep with him on first impression. The other is kneecapping rivals. His long leadership campaign, 2016-9 was a masterclass in that. As was his recent reshuffle; Sunak can't depose him now, for fear that Truss will get the gig.
Being good at government would get in the way of those two aims, so he doesn't bother. A bit like an F1 car, perfectly optimised to win a specific type of race, otherwise useless.
So, in the short term, expect him to be hard to depose, unless he stomps off in a huff. He's good enough at politics to defy gravity for a long time. But he's bad enough at government that even he can't defy gravity forever.
So rents are rising at fastest pace in 13 years, petrol has never been so expensive in my entire adult life, we’ve decided not to make rail travel potentially cheaper - how long until Rishi messes with student loans as trailed to top it all off?
You honestly think tickets for HS2 trains will be...cheaper?
If there’s more capacity on local lines absolutely
There’s plenty of capacity on many local lines. Doesn’t make the trains any cheaper to run.
Most regional rail is deeply unprofitable in the UK. Historically, the only lines that make money are the Inter City ones (highly profitable) and the South Eastern commuter lines (mildly profitable).
In much of the country, it's a chicken and egg problem. Lines are lightly used, and therefore there are few trains. Few trains (or buses or whatever) means that people can't rely on them to be running when they need them, and therefore will choose to travel by car instead.
The main selling point of HS2 is to allow the North Western backbone of UK rail - which is incredibly busy - to carry more traffic, and to allow fast and slow services to run in parallel. (Overtaking is hard in rail, and is only really possible in incredibly dense areas - like London - and therefore most lines are either very slow or very fast.)
So rents are rising at fastest pace in 13 years, petrol has never been so expensive in my entire adult life, we’ve decided not to make rail travel potentially cheaper - how long until Rishi messes with student loans as trailed to top it all off?
You honestly think tickets for HS2 trains will be...cheaper?
If there’s more capacity on local lines absolutely
This is a crucial point: if HS2 is not built, and no other projects to increase capacity are done, then parts of the network will become increasingly capacity-limited (as some parts of the network were pre-Covid). This means prices will rise, for both passengers and freight. HS2 increases capacity, which may well *decrease* ticket prices as a whole - if compared to an alternative world where it wasn't built.
Covid is the fast curveball in all of this. Currently, it looks as though commuting is going to be hammered, whilst other journeys will recover. But like much infrastructure, HS2 is being built for the demands of future decades, not just the demands for today.
Personally, I think the biggest argument in favour of new railways including HS2 is that in the future most people won’t be able to afford a private vehicle. Politicians can’t make that case, though.
Mr. Jessop, governments generally, and one led to by a buffoon in particular, are terrible at medium term, let alone long term, planning. Alas.
Mr. Romford, cheers. Honorius was good at one of those, at least, when he dishonourably pretended to give Stilicho a promise of safety only to renege upon it and have him slain.
King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.
What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.
"The Vikings" did rather well from depicting the period, and the spin off "Vikings: Valhalla" covering the later period before the Norman conquest looks promising.
The period that seems to be lacking is the early post Roman period. In a generation or two, we abandoned roads, towns and the trappings of urban life, turning back to subsistence farming and more egalitarian social structures.
So rents are rising at fastest pace in 13 years, petrol has never been so expensive in my entire adult life, we’ve decided not to make rail travel potentially cheaper - how long until Rishi messes with student loans as trailed to top it all off?
You honestly think tickets for HS2 trains will be...cheaper?
If there’s more capacity on local lines absolutely
This is a crucial point: if HS2 is not built, and no other projects to increase capacity are done, then parts of the network will become increasingly capacity-limited (as some parts of the network were pre-Covid). This means prices will rise, for both passengers and freight. HS2 increases capacity, which may well *decrease* ticket prices as a whole - if compared to an alternative world where it wasn't built.
Covid is the fast curveball in all of this. Currently, it looks as though commuting is going to be hammered, whilst other journeys will recover. But like much infrastructure, HS2 is being built for the demands of future decades, not just the demands for today.
Can you imagine if Bazalgette's sewers were just built for the population of London in 1850?
So rents are rising at fastest pace in 13 years, petrol has never been so expensive in my entire adult life, we’ve decided not to make rail travel potentially cheaper - how long until Rishi messes with student loans as trailed to top it all off?
You honestly think tickets for HS2 trains will be...cheaper?
If there’s more capacity on local lines absolutely
If the problem is the lack of capacity on local lines, why not build more capacity on those?
HS2 has always been a white elephant that beggars investment on other lines.
Oh lor, here we go again.
It's no wonder the Treasury are getting away with their sabotage if even highly intelligent people like Foxy can't grasp how taking big fast trains off slow lines is the best way of increasing capacity.
Yes but that only helps capacity on the parallel slow line, it does nothing for the rest of the network.
Trains that go from one part of London to one part of Birmingham without feeder lines are pretty pointless. HS2 supposedly passes within 20 miles of my house but there seems no conceivable way that I would want to travel on it, as the feeder line to Birmingham takes an hour to chug 40 miles.
King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.
What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.
"The Vikings" did rather well from depicting the period, and the spin off "Vikings: Valhalla" covering the later period before the Norman conquest looks promising.
The period that seems to be lacking is the early post Roman period. In a generation or two, we abandoned roads, towns and the trappings of urban life, turning back to subsistence farming and more egalitarian social structures.
I think, and I'm very willing to be corrected, that a) current evidence shows it took a bit longer, b) that there is evidence of some cataclysmic climatic events, and c) that there was a nasty outbreak of plague (or similar) at about that time.
Unusual and interesting analogy but Boris has very rarely found a form of public spending that he doesn't like. The shoes for his men may not have lived up to the promises of being "fantastic" (just as he described the new northern rail plans yesterday) but shoes they would have got.
So rents are rising at fastest pace in 13 years, petrol has never been so expensive in my entire adult life, we’ve decided not to make rail travel potentially cheaper - how long until Rishi messes with student loans as trailed to top it all off?
You honestly think tickets for HS2 trains will be...cheaper?
If there’s more capacity on local lines absolutely
If the problem is the lack of capacity on local lines, why not build more capacity on those?
HS2 has always been a white elephant that beggars investment on other lines.
Oh lor, here we go again.
It's no wonder the Treasury are getting away with their sabotage if even highly intelligent people like Foxy can't grasp how taking big fast trains off slow lines is the best way of increasing capacity.
Yes but that only helps capacity on the parallel slow line, it does nothing for the rest of the network.
Trains that go from one part of London to one part of Birmingham without feeder lines are pretty pointless. HS2 supposedly passes within 20 miles of my house but there seems no conceivable way that I would want to travel on it, as the feeder line to Birmingham takes an hour to chug 40 miles.
No, it doesn't, Foxy, it opens pathways on all the lines that connect to them for more trains to run.
For example, if HS2 isn't built the proposals to reopen the Ivanhoe line in Leicestershire are going nowhere as there will be nowhere for the trains to run to at either end.
Similarly, if Cannock wants trains to Stafford, we need HS2 for pathways from Rugeley Trent Valley. Or if Lichfield wants trains to Burton we need to reduce pressure on the line from Tamworth to Derby. Neither line runs parallel to HS2 but the lines they connect to do.
We've been through this in exhaustive detail. But if you don't want to listen I can't force you to.
NEW: A Conservative MP, Christopher Chope, objected to the government's motion to finally approve the standards committee's findings on Owen Paterson. It means govt has to reschedule, probably with a debate. Sleaze agony prolonged
Chope is the one who objects to everything isn't he? On some bizarre principle that only government bills should pass. He is best known for his role in killing the bill that made upskirting photos illegal.
If only they had taken a photo of the Paterson findings up some aide's skirt. He wou
I enjoyed Morris Dancer's piece, but I wonder whether the problem is in identifying the shoe ahead of time.
You could imagine that the argument made to Johnson during the infamous Telegraph dinner was that he had to pay the small price of saving Owen Paterson in order to keep his loyal army of Brexiteer backbenchers, who had won him so many recent political battles that had made him Emperor Prime Minister, happy, loyal and not at all rebellious. Perhaps Johnson saw the minor matter of kicking Paterson's suspension into the long grass of a Parliamentary committee as equivalent to the small price of buying his army new shoes.
And, if we think about it, Johnson could be forgiven for thinking this was the accurate appraisal of the facts. The Brexiteer backbenchers were his Praetorian Guard, and they had many reasons to be unhappy - months of Covid restrictions still rankles, tax rises, COP26 - to have one of their number dragged over the coals could have been the frayed footwear that sent them over the edge.
Given all the previous offences to standards of probity and good governance committed by B Johnson it was a massive surprise that this was one that has - at least temporarily - broken the inaccountability shield that normally shrouds the Prime Minister.
As Morris Dancer's example demonstrates, predicting where this might end up is impossible. The mob is fickle.
There's something in your general point, but given the furore that has erupted from it, the clear unhappiness that was displayed at the time from the rank and file, and that Boris decided to try and force their hand with a last minute 3-line whip, I think it was pretty obvious this is a show they could tell was going to be a problem, even if they underestimated how big a problem.
Were the Brexiteer awkward squad really in such uproar they needed mollifying in such a way which would cause obvious problems? They had not caused him any major difficulty. Surely not all the Brexiteers were lined up in outrage about Paterson such that protecting him would mollify them?
As explanations go, and given his history, I'm more inclined to think Boris saw personal advantage in doing it and that he could manage the fallout, rather than he was doing Paterson, or Paterson's mates, a favour to keep them on board.
The Standards Commissioner was the target all along. No other explanation makes any sense.
And why was the Standards Commissioner the target? Because she is coming after Boris over various "bizarre irregularities with his account" over bungs to number 10. Why is that a problem? Because Boris knows how deep in the shit he is on this one - so go after the Commissioner, cast doubt on the whole system, deflect, evade.
King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.
What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.
"The Vikings" did rather well from depicting the period, and the spin off "Vikings: Valhalla" covering the later period before the Norman conquest looks promising.
The period that seems to be lacking is the early post Roman period. In a generation or two, we abandoned roads, towns and the trappings of urban life, turning back to subsistence farming and more egalitarian social structures.
Perhaps we can find out about the latter in person, second time around?
Unusual and interesting analogy but Boris has very rarely found a form of public spending that he doesn't like. The shoes for his men may not have lived up to the promises of being "fantastic" (just as he described the new northern rail plans yesterday) but shoes they would have got.
Unless Chris Grayling was put in charge of procurement.
In which case each soldier would have gotten a pair of choux.
Sinn Fein VI at 37% in the Republic of Ireland: a record high.
SF also leading VI in Northern Ireland. Irish politics in both north and south are undergoing dramatic change.
There's a seachange happening in N Ireland's political landscape that as usual is not being discussed or understood in the rest of UK....
One problem is that the Good Friday Agreement fossilised things in a sectarian divide.
Were Irish unification ever achieved, perhaps the ossification of the GFA might be the most useful tool in preventing Antrim becoming the place of resistance of HYUFD's imagination.
So rents are rising at fastest pace in 13 years, petrol has never been so expensive in my entire adult life, we’ve decided not to make rail travel potentially cheaper - how long until Rishi messes with student loans as trailed to top it all off?
You honestly think tickets for HS2 trains will be...cheaper?
Mobile phone prices didn't rise despite the phone operators splurging untold billions on 3G licenses.
Private companies competing in a genuinely competitive market.
HS2 is paid for by the tax payer. Ultimately, the government has to decide how much the user pays.
So rents are rising at fastest pace in 13 years, petrol has never been so expensive in my entire adult life, we’ve decided not to make rail travel potentially cheaper - how long until Rishi messes with student loans as trailed to top it all off?
You honestly think tickets for HS2 trains will be...cheaper?
If there’s more capacity on local lines absolutely
If the problem is the lack of capacity on local lines, why not build more capacity on those?
HS2 has always been a white elephant that beggars investment on other lines.
Oh lor, here we go again.
It's no wonder the Treasury are getting away with their sabotage if even highly intelligent people like Foxy can't grasp how taking big fast trains off slow lines is the best way of increasing capacity.
Yes but that only helps capacity on the parallel slow line, it does nothing for the rest of the network.
Trains that go from one part of London to one part of Birmingham without feeder lines are pretty pointless. HS2 supposedly passes within 20 miles of my house but there seems no conceivable way that I would want to travel on it, as the feeder line to Birmingham takes an hour to chug 40 miles.
Nope, Trains that go direct from Birmingham to London are brilliant because it moves fast express trains to a different track allowing the new spare capacity to be used for more localised services (say more Coventry / Birmingham trains).
And that's before the increased capacity that is created by ensuring all trains run at the same speed on tracks.
Regarding direct connections from the North to Paris etc - it doesn't work. You can't run trains from London to the wider continent because of our passport check requirements. As an example the aforementioned Amsterdam - London service. Where you have to get off in Brussels and go through passport control and then get back on.
Nor does St Pancras have sufficient room to host HS1 and HS2 services* - a new station is needed and there is no room there. A travelator connection between St Pancras and Euston is doable and is cheaper and less destructive.
*part of the reason we need HS2 East is because of St Pancras. Cost cutting means there are just 4 platforms for Midland Mainline Services. Nowhere near enough, no room to expand, so trains need to be run to somewhere else.
Isn’t MPs spending more time debating the standards to which they should be held accountable, a good thing?
The problem is that the Tories were trying to fix the problem on the quiet and Chope throw a spanner in the works, so now it has to be fixed in a debate with the additional publicity it creates.
King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.
What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.
"The Vikings" did rather well from depicting the period, and the spin off "Vikings: Valhalla" covering the later period before the Norman conquest looks promising.
The period that seems to be lacking is the early post Roman period. In a generation or two, we abandoned roads, towns and the trappings of urban life, turning back to subsistence farming and more egalitarian social structures.
Perhaps we can find out about the latter in person, second time around?
The Dark Ages were only dark in the sense of the abandonment of Christianity, and also literacy. It happened between 409 and 450 or so, so a couple of generations. There seems surprisingly little evidence of resistance to going back to a simpler more sustainable communitarian lifestyle once the Romans stopped enforcing the alternative.
HS2 should have been a source of huge national pride - connecting the great cities of the English north and midlands to the European high speed network. Instead, we are stopping at Euston and forcing northerners to shuffle along the Euston Road with their bags to reach the Eurostar. Oh, and we are cutting Nottingham, Leeds and Newcastle out of the project entirely.
Absolutely pathetic from the hopeless Boris.
Because you'd have had to level half of Camden for a decade, for about 4 through trains a day, with passport issues unresolved
We've been over this. Several times. It was a lovely dream but it was never going to happen
Are you implying that inconvenience to North Londoners takes precedence over the North of England?
YES
I presume those Northerners who moved to North London after graduation did so for a reason and not because they wanted to rush back up beyond Watford every 5 minutes outside of Christmas and family events.
Nor is there any great reason why Northerners would want to go to London in half the time they do now, agreed
We can go direct to source and ask one of our PB-ers with such a profile just this.
Okay. I live in Chelsea and drive to North Riding quite a lot. I used to drive it a lot more before lockdown. I don’t do it using train. I didn’t like the idea of HS2 destroying the countryside. There is probably a green argument HS2 would have reduced car traffic, but do you think it would have? But I like driving. Normally I don’t drive it alone, and I do my stint first and then sit in the back with my cams on. I don’t know if this helps? But looking at the comment we are commenting on, it’s quite a closed view about people but all people would be different, some prefer train, some not have reasons to travel so often. And I came before graduation.
They would have been much better off calling HS2 “Rail Capacity 2100”. The biggest effect of it isn’t to get cars off the roads, as much as it gets lorries off the road by an expansion in rail freight.
While everyone is focussing on how much faster you can get from City A to City B, what’s much more important is separating the high speed passenger services from the slower freight services, allowing many more of the latter on the old main lines.
I think I've pointed out multiple times on here that the HS2 project became a problem the second people started talking about faster trains and the media grabbed hold of it.
The entire project is a question of capacity, the speed was just a byproduct of having the ability to build a new line to newer more modern standards.
King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.
What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.
"The Vikings" did rather well from depicting the period, and the spin off "Vikings: Valhalla" covering the later period before the Norman conquest looks promising.
The period that seems to be lacking is the early post Roman period. In a generation or two, we abandoned roads, towns and the trappings of urban life, turning back to subsistence farming and more egalitarian social structures.
Perhaps we can find out about the latter in person, second time around?
The Dark Ages were only dark in the sense of the abandonment of Christianity, and also literacy. It happened between 409 and 450 or so, so a couple of generations. There seems surprisingly little evidence of resistance to going back to a simpler more sustainable communitarian lifestyle once the Romans stopped enforcing the alternative.
Regarding direct connections from the North to Paris etc - it doesn't work. You can't run trains from London to the wider continent because of our passport check requirements. As an example the aforementioned Amsterdam - London service. Where you have to get off in Brussels and go through passport control and then get back on.
Eurostar has launched a new direct connection between the capital cities of the Netherlands and the United Kingdom that starts from £40 (US$50) each way. The train also stops in the Dutch city of Rotterdam (which is a three-and-a-half-hour journey to London) and Brussels (two hours to London) along the way.
Prior to the introduction of this new Amsterdam-London route, rail passengers had to take a high-speed Thalys train from Amsterdam to Brussels and then transfer to a Eurostar train from Brussels to London. There is no longer any need to transfer. A direct Eurostar train from London to Amsterdam has been available since 2018—this is the first time the direct Eurostar service is available in the direction of Amsterdam to London.
HS2 should have been a source of huge national pride - connecting the great cities of the English north and midlands to the European high speed network. Instead, we are stopping at Euston and forcing northerners to shuffle along the Euston Road with their bags to reach the Eurostar. Oh, and we are cutting Nottingham, Leeds and Newcastle out of the project entirely.
Absolutely pathetic from the hopeless Boris.
Because you'd have had to level half of Camden for a decade, for about 4 through trains a day, with passport issues unresolved
We've been over this. Several times. It was a lovely dream but it was never going to happen
Are you implying that inconvenience to North Londoners takes precedence over the North of England?
YES
I presume those Northerners who moved to North London after graduation did so for a reason and not because they wanted to rush back up beyond Watford every 5 minutes outside of Christmas and family events.
Nor is there any great reason why Northerners would want to go to London in half the time they do now, agreed
We can go direct to source and ask one of our PB-ers with such a profile just this.
Okay. I live in Chelsea and drive to North Riding quite a lot. I used to drive it a lot more before lockdown. I don’t do it using train. I didn’t like the idea of HS2 destroying the countryside. There is probably a green argument HS2 would have reduced car traffic, but do you think it would have? But I like driving. Normally I don’t drive it alone, and I do my stint first and then sit in the back with my cams on. I don’t know if this helps? But looking at the comment we are commenting on, it’s quite a closed view about people but all people would be different, some prefer train, some not have reasons to travel so often. And I came before graduation.
They would have been much better off calling HS2 “Rail Capacity 2100”. The biggest effect of it isn’t to get cars off the roads, as much as it gets lorries off the road by an expansion in rail freight.
While everyone is focussing on how much faster you can get from City A to City B, what’s much more important is separating the high speed passenger services from the slower freight services, allowing many more of the latter on the old main lines.
I think I've pointed out multiple times on here that the HS2 project became a problem the second people started talking about faster trains and the media grabbed hold of it.
The entire project is a question of capacity, the speed was just a byproduct of having the ability to build a new line to newer more modern standards.
You say that, but as I understand it, the reason the speeds are so fast is that the business case needed the big journey time savings.
Regarding direct connections from the North to Paris etc - it doesn't work. You can't run trains from London to the wider continent because of our passport check requirements. As an example the aforementioned Amsterdam - London service. Where you have to get off in Brussels and go through passport control and then get back on.
Eurostar has launched a new direct connection between the capital cities of the Netherlands and the United Kingdom that starts from £40 (US$50) each way. The train also stops in the Dutch city of Rotterdam (which is a three-and-a-half-hour journey to London) and Brussels (two hours to London) along the way.
Prior to the introduction of this new Amsterdam-London route, rail passengers had to take a high-speed Thalys train from Amsterdam to Brussels and then transfer to a Eurostar train from Brussels to London. There is no longer any need to transfer. A direct Eurostar train from London to Amsterdam has been available since 2018—this is the first time the direct Eurostar service is available in the direction of Amsterdam to London.
Just so you know, some of our trains might need to stop at Brussels-Midi/Zuid for less than half an hour for border security reasons. This wait is scheduled into your journey time – so you won’t be late. You won’t be able to leave the train during the wait.
The Amsterdam - London journey time is 30 minutes longer because of this than the London- Amsterdam time.
Regarding direct connections from the North to Paris etc - it doesn't work. You can't run trains from London to the wider continent because of our passport check requirements. As an example the aforementioned Amsterdam - London service. Where you have to get off in Brussels and go through passport control and then get back on.
Eurostar has launched a new direct connection between the capital cities of the Netherlands and the United Kingdom that starts from £40 (US$50) each way. The train also stops in the Dutch city of Rotterdam (which is a three-and-a-half-hour journey to London) and Brussels (two hours to London) along the way.
Prior to the introduction of this new Amsterdam-London route, rail passengers had to take a high-speed Thalys train from Amsterdam to Brussels and then transfer to a Eurostar train from Brussels to London. There is no longer any need to transfer. A direct Eurostar train from London to Amsterdam has been available since 2018—this is the first time the direct Eurostar service is available in the direction of Amsterdam to London.
I didn't say transfer! A quick regoogle and they have changed the process. The train still stops in Brussels for passport control, but you stay on the train, locked in for half an hour whilst Border Force check everyone's paperwork.
My point stands. Its a through train, but with a very long stop to check passports. Don't forget that thanks to our new deal with the EU we need to be stamped out of their country as well as in to ours, so any services will need to be routed via a Border Control Post set up for such an operation.
Germany looked at it - would have used Brussels like Amsterdam and decided not to. Supposedly Renfe want to run through from Spain - how they manage the border issue is unknown. Long distance rail is never going to be as easy as it is where you have freedom of movement.
So rents are rising at fastest pace in 13 years, petrol has never been so expensive in my entire adult life, we’ve decided not to make rail travel potentially cheaper - how long until Rishi messes with student loans as trailed to top it all off?
You honestly think tickets for HS2 trains will be...cheaper?
If there’s more capacity on local lines absolutely
If the problem is the lack of capacity on local lines, why not build more capacity on those?
HS2 has always been a white elephant that beggars investment on other lines.
Network effects.
Say you have a line that could be reopened - as someone mentioned below, the Ivanhoe line in your area between Burton and Leicester is a good choice. There are various issues to reopening this, which is why it has never happened - mining subsidence and the Leicester south-facing connection being two. But the main one is that the connections at both ends - Burton and Leicester - are onto busy main lines.
Railway traffic planning work on the basis of 'paths': essentially slots that trains fit into. The amount of traffic a line can carry depends on the number of paths on it, which depends in turn on block size, speed of traffic etc. If you want (say) one train an hour on the Ivanhoe line, then you need to find one path per hour on the lines at either end - and if you are talking about 1 tph in both directions, then it's two paths. If those lines are filled with express trains, then it becomes difficult to find the paths for that new traffic.
Building a new high-speed route creates 'extra' paths, and allows more local traffic.
HS2 should have been a source of huge national pride - connecting the great cities of the English north and midlands to the European high speed network. Instead, we are stopping at Euston and forcing northerners to shuffle along the Euston Road with their bags to reach the Eurostar. Oh, and we are cutting Nottingham, Leeds and Newcastle out of the project entirely.
Absolutely pathetic from the hopeless Boris.
Because you'd have had to level half of Camden for a decade, for about 4 through trains a day, with passport issues unresolved
We've been over this. Several times. It was a lovely dream but it was never going to happen
Are you implying that inconvenience to North Londoners takes precedence over the North of England?
YES
I presume those Northerners who moved to North London after graduation did so for a reason and not because they wanted to rush back up beyond Watford every 5 minutes outside of Christmas and family events.
Nor is there any great reason why Northerners would want to go to London in half the time they do now, agreed
We can go direct to source and ask one of our PB-ers with such a profile just this.
Okay. I live in Chelsea and drive to North Riding quite a lot. I used to drive it a lot more before lockdown. I don’t do it using train. I didn’t like the idea of HS2 destroying the countryside. There is probably a green argument HS2 would have reduced car traffic, but do you think it would have? But I like driving. Normally I don’t drive it alone, and I do my stint first and then sit in the back with my cams on. I don’t know if this helps? But looking at the comment we are commenting on, it’s quite a closed view about people but all people would be different, some prefer train, some not have reasons to travel so often. And I came before graduation.
They would have been much better off calling HS2 “Rail Capacity 2100”. The biggest effect of it isn’t to get cars off the roads, as much as it gets lorries off the road by an expansion in rail freight.
While everyone is focussing on how much faster you can get from City A to City B, what’s much more important is separating the high speed passenger services from the slower freight services, allowing many more of the latter on the old main lines.
I think I've pointed out multiple times on here that the HS2 project became a problem the second people started talking about faster trains and the media grabbed hold of it.
The entire project is a question of capacity, the speed was just a byproduct of having the ability to build a new line to newer more modern standards.
You say that, but as I understand it, the reason the speeds are so fast is that the business case needed the big journey time savings.
Yep because until 2019 the business case value judgements were based on increases in house prices (you think I jest but that was why London has got significantly more investment until the flaw in the business model was pointed out and finally fixed).
So rents are rising at fastest pace in 13 years, petrol has never been so expensive in my entire adult life, we’ve decided not to make rail travel potentially cheaper - how long until Rishi messes with student loans as trailed to top it all off?
You honestly think tickets for HS2 trains will be...cheaper?
If there’s more capacity on local lines absolutely
If the problem is the lack of capacity on local lines, why not build more capacity on those?
HS2 has always been a white elephant that beggars investment on other lines.
Network effects.
Say you have a line that could be reopened - as someone mentioned below, the Ivanhoe line in your area between Burton and Leicester is a good choice. There are various issues to reopening this, which is why it has never happened - mining subsidence and the Leicester south-facing connection being two. But the main one is that the connections at both ends - Burton and Leicester - are onto busy main lines.
Railway traffic planning work on the basis of 'paths': essentially slots that trains fit into. The amount of traffic a line can carry depends on the number of paths on it, which depends in turn on block size, speed of traffic etc. If you want (say) one train an hour on the Ivanhoe line, then you need to find one path per hour on the lines at either end - and if you are talking about 1 tph in both directions, then it's two paths. If those lines are filled with express trains, then it becomes difficult to find the paths for that new traffic.
Building a new high-speed route creates 'extra' paths, and allows more local traffic.
And to be clearer
Building a new high-speed line shifts x trains an hour to the new track, freeing x "extra paths" for use by more local services.
Medium term it opens up even more paths as with all trains being the same speed it's possible to reduce the window between services to change from say 12 services an hour to 16 services an hour.
So rents are rising at fastest pace in 13 years, petrol has never been so expensive in my entire adult life, we’ve decided not to make rail travel potentially cheaper - how long until Rishi messes with student loans as trailed to top it all off?
You honestly think tickets for HS2 trains will be...cheaper?
If there’s more capacity on local lines absolutely
If the problem is the lack of capacity on local lines, why not build more capacity on those?
HS2 has always been a white elephant that beggars investment on other lines.
Network effects.
Say you have a line that could be reopened - as someone mentioned below, the Ivanhoe line in your area between Burton and Leicester is a good choice. There are various issues to reopening this, which is why it has never happened - mining subsidence and the Leicester south-facing connection being two. But the main one is that the connections at both ends - Burton and Leicester - are onto busy main lines.
Railway traffic planning work on the basis of 'paths': essentially slots that trains fit into. The amount of traffic a line can carry depends on the number of paths on it, which depends in turn on block size, speed of traffic etc. If you want (say) one train an hour on the Ivanhoe line, then you need to find one path per hour on the lines at either end - and if you are talking about 1 tph in both directions, then it's two paths. If those lines are filled with express trains, then it becomes difficult to find the paths for that new traffic.
Building a new high-speed route creates 'extra' paths, and allows more local traffic.
And to be clearer
Building a new high-speed line shifts x trains and hour to the new track, freeing up those "extra paths" for use by more local services.
British government spent months refusing FOIs to publish list of politically connected firms on a ‘VIP’ lane for covid contracts
Now the information just happens to have been leaked. Hmmm…
Interesting -- but isn't that normally what happens with FOI requests (not just to Govt)
I am particularly interested as I have two FOI requests pending at the moment against a public institution. As well as a Data Access request.
I am expecting all these to be bounced back with "too costly" -- what is the accumulated wisdom on pb.com regarding successful FOI/Data Access requests?
How do we get these institutions to spill the beans? Has anyone had any great successes?
King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.
What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.
"The Vikings" did rather well from depicting the period, and the spin off "Vikings: Valhalla" covering the later period before the Norman conquest looks promising.
The period that seems to be lacking is the early post Roman period. In a generation or two, we abandoned roads, towns and the trappings of urban life, turning back to subsistence farming and more egalitarian social structures.
Perhaps we can find out about the latter in person, second time around?
The Dark Ages were only dark in the sense of the abandonment of Christianity, and also literacy. It happened between 409 and 450 or so, so a couple of generations. There seems surprisingly little evidence of resistance to going back to a simpler more sustainable communitarian lifestyle once the Romans stopped enforcing the alternative.
I've always thought of 5th/6th century Britain as being like the world of Mad Max or Threads.
She wrote a similar article about a year ago about eastern Europe. I think she is incredible, one of the very best and articulate journalists writing today. I subscribed to the Atlantic because of the earlier article but have since let it lapse. I may renew. Journalism of this standard really needs encouraged.
The people who invented the internet were hoping it would increase freedom. It looks like they didn't consider the possibility that it might be used by autocratic leaders to reduce it.
If 'the bad guys' win in the USA and democracy fails there, which seems depressingly plausible, then the world will be a much darker place.
The people who invented the internet were hoping it would increase freedom. It looks like they didn't consider the possibility that it might be used by autocratic leaders to reduce it.
If 'the bad guys' win in the USA and democracy fails there, which seems depressingly plausible, then the world will be a much darker place.
Indeed, the risks are real. The next time Trump supporters or the like seek to invade democratic institutions it will not be a joke which "only" killed 3 people. The failure to hold those responsible for that to account is deeply ominous.
Regarding direct connections from the North to Paris etc - it doesn't work. You can't run trains from London to the wider continent because of our passport check requirements. As an example the aforementioned Amsterdam - London service. Where you have to get off in Brussels and go through passport control and then get back on.
Eurostar has launched a new direct connection between the capital cities of the Netherlands and the United Kingdom that starts from £40 (US$50) each way. The train also stops in the Dutch city of Rotterdam (which is a three-and-a-half-hour journey to London) and Brussels (two hours to London) along the way.
Prior to the introduction of this new Amsterdam-London route, rail passengers had to take a high-speed Thalys train from Amsterdam to Brussels and then transfer to a Eurostar train from Brussels to London. There is no longer any need to transfer. A direct Eurostar train from London to Amsterdam has been available since 2018—this is the first time the direct Eurostar service is available in the direction of Amsterdam to London.
I didn't say transfer! A quick regoogle and they have changed the process. The train still stops in Brussels for passport control, but you stay on the train, locked in for half an hour whilst Border Force check everyone's paperwork.
My point stands. Its a through train, but with a very long stop to check passports. Don't forget that thanks to our new deal with the EU we need to be stamped out of their country as well as in to ours, so any services will need to be routed via a Border Control Post set up for such an operation.
Germany looked at it - would have used Brussels like Amsterdam and decided not to. Supposedly Renfe want to run through from Spain - how they manage the border issue is unknown. Long distance rail is never going to be as easy as it is where you have freedom of movement.
By freedom of movement what you mean is no borders (as opposed to the single market freedom of movement).
We were never in Schengen (though, with the current state of the English Channel, we might as well be). We could still be in the EU and the check by the British border force at Brussels would still be necessary. I guess it's not worth having our people at Amsterdam as it's (EDIT: two) trains a day. A 25 minute stop isn't the end of the world and clearly Eurostar think it's worthwhile to run the train.
The people who invented the internet were hoping it would increase freedom. It looks like they didn't consider the possibility that it might be used by autocratic leaders to reduce it.
If 'the bad guys' win in the USA and democracy fails there, which seems depressingly plausible, then the world will be a much darker place.
I did write an alt.history dystopia, in which the leaders of the USA, Russia, Belarus, Saudi Arabia, and the UK (following a coup in which the King and most MPs are killed) form a mutual alliance committed to repressing democracy worldwide, and one commentator remarked she couldn't enjoy it because it sounded so plausible.
For me the most depressing and curious one is China. After the Deng Xiaoping reforms while not the end of history it did seem as though there was little chance of regression. What Xi has done, both on the mainland and in Hong Kong is simply dreadful and as the article notes, a huge regressive step. And largely unnecessary, given the wealth that a reforming China was delivering to its citizens.
King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.
What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.
I think there's enough dramatic material for at least an average of a series per monarch in a retelling of England's story from the beginning.
Comments
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-59253057
There was skill in the day 7-9 forecasts 5-10 years ago, and I'd think they would be better now. But naturally they become more reliable as the forecast lead time reduces.
Believe me,. England seems a lot bigger than France with that sort of nonsense.
The gift that keeps on giving.
HS2 isn't about HS2.
The logic for HS2 is as follows:
Our railways our full (or were, before the pandemic). There are no more paths.
Therefore, we need more track capacity.
If we are going to build more track capacity, let's build it to the highest spec possible. We can then separate out fast and slow trains. (Not least because, as a moment's thought will demonstrate, mixtures of fast and slow trains kills capacity: track can accomodate most paths when all the trains on it run at the same speed).
Thus, HS2. Thus, we might cut the journey between Manchester and London in two. But the real benefit to Manchester comes in released capacity on Manchester's local network. You can run a proper suburban service, rather than filling in the gaps between high speed trains.
The same logic applies to NPR.
HS2 therefore may take a handful of car trips off the M6/M1. But indirectly, it will take more cars off Greater Manchester's highway network.
https://twitter.com/skynews/status/1460382525566689284?s=21
I like this data.
https://twitter.com/RP131/status/1460288073619714051/photo/1
If you compare two days ago with nine days ago, you get a good feel for where we are going. (It's worked in the past). Data for two days ago is incomplete, but not THAT incomplete. So ideally, you want the numbers for two days ago to be comfortably lower - 10% or more - than those for nine days ago. We're not there yet - but nor are we in a situation where two days ago is far higher than nine days ago, which is what it tends to look like at the start of a big uptick. And several regions are flattish or declining - again, the increases are concentrated in those regions which so far have been the least impacted by covid.
I give it another five days of rising cases before the cases by date reported (the earliest but least reliable indicator) tops out and starts to decline.
Johari Doors.
1. Making a bomb puts you in a right interesting category of 'mentally ill' , if the person made it, with or without direction
2. Having cohorts getting lifted by the cops should be noted until such times as they are cleared of any involvement.
Not good (from my perspective, not yours!) but methinks less suggestive than you suggest.
Latino voters most likely to switch (or start from scratch) voting Republican as a regular thing, are those living in rural counties, where voters share many of the same perspectives & esp. economic interests as already-overwhelmingly GOP local Anglos.
Of course the coming mid-terms in new-drawn (by Republicans) congressional & legislative seats will show which way the winds are blowing in the Lone Star State.
Certainly any serious Latino defection combined with possible suburban slump linked to Biden's popularity or lack thereof in 2022 would be bad news for Democrats in Texas and across the US.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/nov/15/government-pauses-plan-to-abolish-technical-qualifications
Zahawi and Zahawi. So good he paid himself twice.
At this point, it's a he says/she says mudslinging exercise; it's not like we can go back through the CCTV at this distance in time, so he's going to have to be presumed innocent unless she's got actual hard evidence to back things up. If I was in Stanley's shoes (guilty or innocent), I'd be instructing my learned friends to write her a letter explaining the concepts of libel and defamation...
We speculate endlessly about the imminent, or near-imminent demise of party leaders, and it almost never happens. The default setting is that the leader remains. Even a consensus develops that a new leader is needed, the process of bringing that about fails to happen more often than not. Bringing down a party leader is hard, and is one of those jobs which everybody would rather leave to someone else.
No one should be forcibly touching anyone. Simple.
While everyone is focussing on how much faster you can get from City A to City B, what’s much more important is separating the high speed passenger services from the slower freight services, allowing many more of the latter on the old main lines.
SF also leading VI in Northern Ireland. Irish politics in both north and south are undergoing dramatic change.
Thanks for the kind comments.
Mr. Gate, that's not true. We can build things that are in or proximate to London.
HS2 going to Manchester (that's still on, right?) is almost as bad as the whole southern bit getting completed but Yorkshire missing out.
I wonder if anyone's compared the sums spent on track and trace failure with this leg of HS2.
We could very likely have spent a good £10bn less and got better results with the right system.
And can I add my thanks to Mr D for something different as a header. It's a period in history that I know very little about, so finding out a bit more is added to my To-Do's.
Although sometimes I think that's getting to be a bucket list!
What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.
HS2 has always been a white elephant that beggars investment on other lines.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/sportsnews/article-10204837/Eric-Abidal-questioned-French-police-relation-attack-PSG-womens-star.html
Covid is the fast curveball in all of this. Currently, it looks as though commuting is going to be hammered, whilst other journeys will recover. But like much infrastructure, HS2 is being built for the demands of future decades, not just the demands for today.
It's no wonder the Treasury are getting away with their sabotage if even highly intelligent people like Foxy can't grasp how taking big fast trains off slow lines is the best way of increasing capacity.
Ydoethur's predecessor's, in SE Essex, just shot straight past that. In spite of there having been one important battle just down the hill from where I lived!
Incompetent men can sometimes cling to power with surprising tenacity.
BoJo has many incompetencies, but there are two things he is galactically good at.
One is making people like him / want to sleep with him on first impression. The other is kneecapping rivals. His long leadership campaign, 2016-9 was a masterclass in that. As was his recent reshuffle; Sunak can't depose him now, for fear that Truss will get the gig.
Being good at government would get in the way of those two aims, so he doesn't bother. A bit like an F1 car, perfectly optimised to win a specific type of race, otherwise useless.
So, in the short term, expect him to be hard to depose, unless he stomps off in a huff. He's good enough at politics to defy gravity for a long time. But he's bad enough at government that even he can't defy gravity forever.
In much of the country, it's a chicken and egg problem. Lines are lightly used, and therefore there are few trains. Few trains (or buses or whatever) means that people can't rely on them to be running when they need them, and therefore will choose to travel by car instead.
The main selling point of HS2 is to allow the North Western backbone of UK rail - which is incredibly busy - to carry more traffic, and to allow fast and slow services to run in parallel. (Overtaking is hard in rail, and is only really possible in incredibly dense areas - like London - and therefore most lines are either very slow or very fast.)
Mr. Romford, cheers. Honorius was good at one of those, at least, when he dishonourably pretended to give Stilicho a promise of safety only to renege upon it and have him slain.
The period that seems to be lacking is the early post Roman period. In a generation or two, we abandoned roads, towns and the trappings of urban life, turning back to subsistence farming and more egalitarian social structures.
Trains that go from one part of London to one part of Birmingham without feeder lines are pretty pointless. HS2 supposedly passes within 20 miles of my house but there seems no conceivable way that I would want to travel on it, as the feeder line to Birmingham takes an hour to chug 40 miles.
For example, if HS2 isn't built the proposals to reopen the Ivanhoe line in Leicestershire are going nowhere as there will be nowhere for the trains to run to at either end.
Similarly, if Cannock wants trains to Stafford, we need HS2 for pathways from Rugeley Trent Valley. Or if Lichfield wants trains to Burton we need to reduce pressure on the line from Tamworth to Derby. Neither line runs parallel to HS2 but the lines they connect to do.
We've been through this in exhaustive detail. But if you don't want to listen I can't force you to.
Have a good morning.
Whoops Apocalypse...
In which case each soldier would have gotten a pair of choux.
HS2 is paid for by the tax payer. Ultimately, the government has to decide how much the user pays.
And that's before the increased capacity that is created by ensuring all trains run at the same speed on tracks.
Nor does St Pancras have sufficient room to host HS1 and HS2 services* - a new station is needed and there is no room there. A travelator connection between St Pancras and Euston is doable and is cheaper and less destructive.
*part of the reason we need HS2 East is because of St Pancras. Cost cutting means there are just 4 platforms for Midland Mainline Services. Nowhere near enough, no room to expand, so trains need to be run to somewhere else.
The entire project is a question of capacity, the speed was just a byproduct of having the ability to build a new line to newer more modern standards.
Abandoning Christianity is known as progress
https://www.afar.com/magazine/theres-now-a-direct-high-speed-train-from-amsterdam-to-london/amp
Eurostar has launched a new direct connection between the capital cities of the Netherlands and the United Kingdom that starts from £40 (US$50) each way. The train also stops in the Dutch city of Rotterdam (which is a three-and-a-half-hour journey to London) and Brussels (two hours to London) along the way.
Prior to the introduction of this new Amsterdam-London route, rail passengers had to take a high-speed Thalys train from Amsterdam to Brussels and then transfer to a Eurostar train from Brussels to London. There is no longer any need to transfer. A direct Eurostar train from London to Amsterdam has been available since 2018—this is the first time the direct Eurostar service is available in the direction of Amsterdam to London.
Just so you know, some of our trains might need to stop at Brussels-Midi/Zuid for less than half an hour for border security reasons. This wait is scheduled into your journey time – so you won’t be late. You won’t be able to leave the train during the wait.
The Amsterdam - London journey time is 30 minutes longer because of this than the London- Amsterdam time.
Now the information just happens to have been leaked. Hmmm…
https://www.politico.eu/article/conservative-uk-ppe-contracts-feldman-audit/
My point stands. Its a through train, but with a very long stop to check passports. Don't forget that thanks to our new deal with the EU we need to be stamped out of their country as well as in to ours, so any services will need to be routed via a Border Control Post set up for such an operation.
Germany looked at it - would have used Brussels like Amsterdam and decided not to. Supposedly Renfe want to run through from Spain - how they manage the border issue is unknown. Long distance rail is never going to be as easy as it is where you have freedom of movement.
Say you have a line that could be reopened - as someone mentioned below, the Ivanhoe line in your area between Burton and Leicester is a good choice. There are various issues to reopening this, which is why it has never happened - mining subsidence and the Leicester south-facing connection being two. But the main one is that the connections at both ends - Burton and Leicester - are onto busy main lines.
Railway traffic planning work on the basis of 'paths': essentially slots that trains fit into. The amount of traffic a line can carry depends on the number of paths on it, which depends in turn on block size, speed of traffic etc. If you want (say) one train an hour on the Ivanhoe line, then you need to find one path per hour on the lines at either end - and if you are talking about 1 tph in both directions, then it's two paths. If those lines are filled with express trains, then it becomes difficult to find the paths for that new traffic.
Building a new high-speed route creates 'extra' paths, and allows more local traffic.
Building a new high-speed line shifts x trains an hour to the new track, freeing x "extra paths" for use by more local services.
Medium term it opens up even more paths as with all trains being the same speed it's possible to reduce the window between services to change from say 12 services an hour to 16 services an hour.
I am particularly interested as I have two FOI requests pending at the moment against a public institution. As well as a Data Access request.
I am expecting all these to be bounced back with "too costly" -- what is the accumulated wisdom on pb.com regarding successful FOI/Data Access requests?
How do we get these institutions to spill the beans? Has anyone had any great successes?
The full list of firms awarded lucrative PPE contracts via the VIP lane - and who referred them.
https://www.politico.eu/article/conservative-uk-ppe-contracts-feldman-audit/
https://twitter.com/alisonkilling/status/1460243389060952074?s=21
We were never in Schengen (though, with the current state of the English Channel, we might as well be). We could still be in the EU and the check by the British border force at Brussels would still be necessary. I guess it's not worth having our people at Amsterdam as it's (EDIT: two) trains a day. A 25 minute stop isn't the end of the world and clearly Eurostar think it's worthwhile to run the train.
https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:C02556/2021-11-16/detailed
For me the most depressing and curious one is China. After the Deng Xiaoping reforms while not the end of history it did seem as though there was little chance of regression. What Xi has done, both on the mainland and in Hong Kong is simply dreadful and as the article notes, a huge regressive step. And largely unnecessary, given the wealth that a reforming China was delivering to its citizens.