He's having a good week, Sir Keir, but he really needs to start appending these kinds of statements with what Labour will do. That's how to start building a government in waiting.
"...He's taking the country absolutely nowhere A Labour government will build HS3 and NPR, no ifs and buts"
etc. for each policy area. There is enough flexibility around timescales and funding that he need not worry about "unfunded promises" accusations, and I'm not sure they would stick anyway. Would just make the Tories look mean to the North.
The accepted wisdom is that LotOs only need to articulate policies once a GE is in sight.
Generally those saying they need a policy from the Opposition NOW are govt supporters; and they only say it when the govt is in trouble.
Agreed. In fact, concrete policies tend to lose votes - it's a major reason for swingback, as the ~Opposition have to say what they want to do and come under attack for it. The only recent example was 2017, where Labour's reputation was awful and highlighting what we actually wanted to do was reassuring - "Hey, that's actually quite sensible".
However, a reputation for having no policies is also dangerous. So a few intermittent commitments in mid-term is about right.
Small print in Integrated Rail Plan: "commitments will be made only to progress individual schemes up to the next stage of development, and a re-authorisation will be required at that point." Cue @hmtreasury scrutiny before anything is built.
The same broken gravity models which have starved the north of investment will now be used to not build any of this stuff either. I've had so many arguments with our own "econometrics" people about the utility of the gravity model. They're addicted to them but compared to real world data they perform extremely poorly. One day, hopefully soon, people will realise that economics isn't a science and the predictive value of gravity modelling is very low. Yet our lives are effectively ruled by them from the treasury.
I always found it funny that the Treasury gravity model that showed leaving the EU was a bad thing found that having no trade deal with the EU at all was better than being in the EEA. If you read the report they just asterisk it out and said "this doesn't make sense so we set it the difference to zero", without stopping to pause about the implications for the overall analysis.
I think Max, and certainly you, are confused about gravity.
The gravity model of trade says that the closer you are to another country, the more likely you are to trade (especially goods) with them.
It’s highly predictive, although Brexiters don’t like this for some reason.
I can’t comment on your Treasury observation, although it sounds like shite.
No, the issue is that where there is nothing or very little it can't properly predict the multiplier so in most cases they set it to zero. So in this scenario where economic development in these northern places is quite low they rate the multiplier will also be very, very low and the absolute GDP gain will be tiny leading to a really low ROI. This also holds for trade deals, the gravity models uprate where stuff already exists and downrates where not a lot or nothing exists. It's fundamentally a broken way to look at any situation or investment. Gravity models would have us all invested in BT in 2005 and completely ignore Apple (and loads of investment houses did that).
I agree obviously on your main point.
Not on trade, though.
It’s pretty obvious why goods trade gets harder and harder the further you are away. So making it harder to trade locally - which is what Brexit does - is just self-defeating.
Anyway, we’ll never agree on that until the numbers come in, perhaps, and maybe not even then.
That doesn't make sense, the gravity models rate a US trade deal really well, it's not to do with geographic location but what already exists. You don't understand it, I think. Gravity models work by looking at clusters of size and economic development, where two large clusters exist (say the UK and US or the UK and EU) it will rate the potential very highly, where there are smaller clusters (say the UK and Morocco which is closer than the US) it will rate the potential very poorly.
That's the basis of how the treasury uses the gravity model and generally the basis of how they work. It's fundamentally flawed and has very, very poor real world predictive value. Yet here we are still governed by them.
Additionally, the gravity model doesn't have the concept of the 10x, it simply can't handle the idea of $1bn turning into $10bn and completely discounts the possibility of that happening. Yet we live in an era of the 10x, an automation company where I was invited to the Series A just did 30x between that Series A and the Series E, in the world of gravity modelling this is impossible.
That's nimby stuff coming not from the leader of the Labour Party but from the MP for Holburn & St Pancras whose constituents are dead against it due to the disruption to the locale. Similar to John McDonnell and the Heathrow expansion. He was against it not as Shadow Chancellor but as the MP for Hayes & Harlington. It's an interesting notion. That in a sense the local MP and the national politician are different people despite also being the same people.
It's a good reason for executive politicians (or, in this case, aspiring executive politicians) to also be members of parliament for specific constituencies. It shows what two-faced ****s they are.
Is that a typo? Surely you mean it's a good reason for them NOT to be MPs for specific constituencies.
I was once told that Sheffield to St Pancras has never been brought below two hours (and it could be quicker now) because there is an employer in Sheffield who has in their T&S policy that train journeys of over two hours can be done first class.
With such a policy - you just ignore the really fast trains.
That's nimby stuff coming not from the leader of the Labour Party but from the MP for Holburn & St Pancras whose constituents are dead against it due to the disruption to the locale. Similar to John McDonnell and the Heathrow expansion. He was against it not as Shadow Chancellor but as the MP for Hayes & Harlington. It's an interesting notion. That in a sense the local MP and the national politician are different people despite also being the same people.
It's a good reason for executive politicians (or, in this case, aspiring executive politicians) to also be members of parliament for specific constituencies. It shows what two-faced ****s they are.
Is that a typo? Surely you mean it's a good reason for them NOT to be MPs for specific constituencies.
No, I think it's good to see them showing their ability (or lack thereof) to stand up to nimbyism.
The truth is, the cancelled program was utterly essential to any attempt to address the appalling underperformance of cities outside London.
This really is two countries - London and the SE, possibly *the* global capital for services - and the rest (65% of the bloody population!) which is now falling behind parts of the old Warsaw Pact in terms of productivity and thereby income levels.
My great hope for Johnson was that he is almost unique in the Tory Party in his affection for large scale infrastructure projects.
But even he couldn’t punch through the disastrous, self-defeating penny-wise mania of the gradgrinds in Treasury.
Forget politics, this is a very sad day for this country.
It's the same awful gravity models you hold so dear that is driving this. The econometricians and their "science" of economics say putting money into these places will yield no multiplier so the treasury has shit canned it.
One day, maybe soon, you'll agree with me that economics is full of bullshit artists who know fuck all about fuck all and the country would be a better place if we stuck them all on a boat and floated it out into the Atlantic.
I’m not an economist, but—-
It’s not the economics profession per se, in fact it’s a kind of perverted accounting that controls Treasury thinking.
As you kind of say, “if it’s not there, don’t build it” seems to be the mantra.
It makes sense if you have no theory whatsoever of how economic growth happens.
It absolutely is the whole bloody profession. They're all useless and like the pretence of being scientists when they aren't. One of my favourite things to do is goad them about how their Nobel prize is a facsimile of the real thing. They really don't like that one and they tend to to off in a huff.
People are always saying that economists are a waste of money. Yet economists continue to be employed, often at quite good salaries. The theory of revealed preference tells me that at least some people therefore don't think economists are a waste of money.
But what is the value they provide.
The claim is that they scientifically analyse the economy, enabling predictions of the effects of various interventions to be made, so that we can choose the optimal course of action.
Or it could just be that they provide the illusion of that so as to justify decisions made to benefit one interest group over another in a way that is harder to challenge.
I can easily see many people being prepared to pay for the latter.
The Government's plan for #NorthernPowerhouseRail. There is some new track, going about half way across the Pennines. (This also shows, as expected, that HS2 will go to Manchester)
That new track seems to connect Warrington with Huddersfield. Ideal for a Thursday night mid-table RL clash in 2050. But not for regional re-generation. Also, why does the "upgrade" stop at Northallerton?
Northallerton is Rishi's train station, he lives a short distance from it.
Well, nobody seems to have discussed today what the Scots might think about the complete foulup over HS2. But seems superfluous when the Yorkshirepersons, monkey-hangers and Geordies are doing an admirable job of assessment already.
Mind, I seem to recall Mr Johnson proclaiming how HS2 would strengthen the sinews of the Union.
Ironically HS2 when completed will speed rail to Scotland
But it will never now be completed. That is the whole point of the news today.
The west coast HS2 will be completed speeding trains to Scotland
As HS2 East has just been partially scrapped you mean "HS2 West will be completed" as HS2 will not be completed.
You are aware that nothing has been committed to. When you say it will be completed. In 2042. It will have had to survive multiple rounds of reauthorisation. Which in the real world we know it will not.
It's a little worse than that, actually: a few years ago, it was decided to move the Birmingham International to Crewe link from HS2 phase 2 to a phase 2a - essentially decoupling it from the main phase 2. Construction is expected to start on 2a in 2024.
Why is this important? The Crewe link allows trains on the classic network to access HS2 phase 1 to London much further north. It also makes it slightly easier to cancel the rest of the western leg as well...
Oh I know, hence my "by 2042 following multiple rounds of reauthorisation" comment.
HS2 is dead. They'll manage the connection to the WCML and then pull the rest. Remember that a few bits of upgrade of existing lines is as good - better even - as a new high speed line.
Whats more, with HS2 dead, the rest of the network is similarly screwed. Fewer trains than now, less freight, more trucks. Again again for some posters, if you run trains at a higher speed on existing lines you reduce capacity which means you reduce the number of trains you can run.
Hurrah!
I'd utterly disagree that HS2 is dead - phase 1 is under construction at the moment, and I cannot see that being cancelled. Phase 2 has been severely trimmed - negatively IMO - and the rest of it has to be felt endangered. But HS2 is not dead.
I've still not had time to read the document: one thing that could mollify some people is for full electrification of the MML to occur from Kettering/Wellingborough to Sheffield. I assume they're not doing that?
Page 10:
We will complete the electrification of the Midland Main Line, allowing high speed journeys from London to Chesterfield and Sheffield in the same times to those originally proposed by HS2, decarbonising the railway, and bringing a long overdue improvement to passenger services.
Thanks. Interestingly, the plan is to continue electrification to Sheffield from Derby (p. 82). I'd have expected an electrified / upgraded Trent Valley route to offer better times to Sheffield.
You don't mean Trent Valley (that's the WCML) - I guess you mean the Erewash line from Toton to Clay Cross Junction? Yeah, I don't know why every Sheffield to London train needs to through Derby and they need to electrify the Erewash line so that they have a diversionary route.
Yep, I got that wrong.
Going all pipedreamy, I also wonder if there's going to be any improvements for the Castle Donington line between Sheet Stores and Stenson? Perhaps a northern curve at Stenson (also perhaps demolishing the house I was born in...)
PB is weighted towards railway fans. It may be news to many that everyone in the north of England travels by car (in the north of Scotland also boat and small plane) and plans to carry on doing so. This is especially true of those who bother to vote and live in Tory or Tory winnable seats.
The number of people appalled by the Aeschylean tragedy of HSwhatever number being cancelled with be dwarfed by the indifferent and those pleased that their rhubarb beds and whippet race tracks are not being subject to compulsory purchase orders to build it.
As a bona fide Yorkshireman I can assure you this is damaging to the Tories.
It's fitting this narrative that Government is prepared to spaff up billions on London and the South but not the North.
Small print in Integrated Rail Plan: "commitments will be made only to progress individual schemes up to the next stage of development, and a re-authorisation will be required at that point." Cue @hmtreasury scrutiny before anything is built.
The same broken gravity models which have starved the north of investment will now be used to not build any of this stuff either. I've had so many arguments with our own "econometrics" people about the utility of the gravity model. They're addicted to them but compared to real world data they perform extremely poorly. One day, hopefully soon, people will realise that economics isn't a science and the predictive value of gravity modelling is very low. Yet our lives are effectively ruled by them from the treasury.
I always found it funny that the Treasury gravity model that showed leaving the EU was a bad thing found that having no trade deal with the EU at all was better than being in the EEA. If you read the report they just asterisk it out and said "this doesn't make sense so we set it the difference to zero", without stopping to pause about the implications for the overall analysis.
I think Max, and certainly you, are confused about gravity.
The gravity model of trade says that the closer you are to another country, the more likely you are to trade (especially goods) with them.
It’s highly predictive, although Brexiters don’t like this for some reason.
I can’t comment on your Treasury observation, although it sounds like shite.
I know exactly what a gravity model is and have actually made them in previous jobs. That is why I end up reading the appendices of Treasury reports to understand economic analyses and the methodologies and assumptions used. You see, I have a preference for knowing what I'm talking about before making an assessment of something. Clearly that's something you don't do given your last sentence.
It’s very clear from listening to the prime minister that the rethink of the eastern leg of HS2 is all about the politics of a new trainline running through Tory seats in midlands without new stations. They’ve clearly been scarred by the first leg from London- Birmingham https://twitter.com/AnushkaAsthana/status/1461331841714167808
There is a “Midlands Engine” prospectus for new transport infrastructure which I presume will also never see the light of day.
There was nothing stopping Boris also funding that if he wanted to bribe those Tory seats.
No, Boris (and the country) has been fucked by Treasury and the Transport Ministry.
I’ll say it again, ex-London and the SE, U.K. economic performance is being overtaken by former Warsaw Pact countries.
My advice to young people living in the North is to move to London. Or perhaps better, just emigrate. This country doesn’t know how or doesn’t want to let you prosper.
Why can't a 'larger than life' PM with a landslide majority won substantially off the back of his own persona stand up to the Treasury?
It requires obstinacy and attention to detail.
Cummings was an absolute shit, but you see why he wanted control of the Treasury spads.
Treasury should be broken up; it’s a failed organisation, but it has the country in a death-grip.
Ah, so it would have required some vision, diligence and grip? Got you. Yep, I'll buy that as a reason.
PB is weighted towards railway fans. It may be news to many that everyone in the north of England travels by car (in the north of Scotland also boat and small plane) and plans to carry on doing so. This is especially true of those who bother to vote and live in Tory or Tory winnable seats.
The number of people appalled by the Aeschylean tragedy of HSwhatever number being cancelled with be dwarfed by the indifferent and those pleased that their rhubarb beds and whippet race tracks are not being subject to compulsory purchase orders to build it.
They probably travel via car and whippet-drawn carriage because the railways are utter shit.
Small print in Integrated Rail Plan: "commitments will be made only to progress individual schemes up to the next stage of development, and a re-authorisation will be required at that point." Cue @hmtreasury scrutiny before anything is built.
The same broken gravity models which have starved the north of investment will now be used to not build any of this stuff either. I've had so many arguments with our own "econometrics" people about the utility of the gravity model. They're addicted to them but compared to real world data they perform extremely poorly. One day, hopefully soon, people will realise that economics isn't a science and the predictive value of gravity modelling is very low. Yet our lives are effectively ruled by them from the treasury.
I always found it funny that the Treasury gravity model that showed leaving the EU was a bad thing found that having no trade deal with the EU at all was better than being in the EEA. If you read the report they just asterisk it out and said "this doesn't make sense so we set it the difference to zero", without stopping to pause about the implications for the overall analysis.
I think Max, and certainly you, are confused about gravity.
The gravity model of trade says that the closer you are to another country, the more likely you are to trade (especially goods) with them.
It’s highly predictive, although Brexiters don’t like this for some reason.
I can’t comment on your Treasury observation, although it sounds like shite.
No, the issue is that where there is nothing or very little it can't properly predict the multiplier so in most cases they set it to zero. So in this scenario where economic development in these northern places is quite low they rate the multiplier will also be very, very low and the absolute GDP gain will be tiny leading to a really low ROI. This also holds for trade deals, the gravity models uprate where stuff already exists and downrates where not a lot or nothing exists. It's fundamentally a broken way to look at any situation or investment. Gravity models would have us all invested in BT in 2005 and completely ignore Apple (and loads of investment houses did that).
Extrapolating the future from the present was the fundamental philosophical reason I switched out of economics. People don't behave in an immutable way. Nor rationally. At all. I understand there have been big advances in behavioural economics since, but the basically deterministic mindset seems to remain.
This is not about homo economicus though.
This is Treasury simply saying, we don’t care how economic growth happens, it’s nowt to do with us.
Imagine if Singapore had thought the same way in 1960.
I get that. It was more a fundamental point about the multiplier. People will act as they have before ceteris paribus. But ceteris simply is never paribus under any circumstances involving human beings and the passage of time. So it is a guess. And uses the application of equations, utterly unfalsifiable ones, to justify it and therefore shut down dissent. Because the econometricians have spoken. See use of OBR forecasts to "prove" policy.
PB is weighted towards railway fans. It may be news to many that everyone in the north of England travels by car (in the north of Scotland also boat and small plane) and plans to carry on doing so. This is especially true of those who bother to vote and live in Tory or Tory winnable seats.
The number of people appalled by the Aeschylean tragedy of HSwhatever number being cancelled with be dwarfed by the indifferent and those pleased that their rhubarb beds and whippet race tracks are not being subject to compulsory purchase orders to build it.
No sir. The CPO threat remains as whilst various things have been scrapped the stewardship of the land has not...
Small print in Integrated Rail Plan: "commitments will be made only to progress individual schemes up to the next stage of development, and a re-authorisation will be required at that point." Cue @hmtreasury scrutiny before anything is built.
The same broken gravity models which have starved the north of investment will now be used to not build any of this stuff either. I've had so many arguments with our own "econometrics" people about the utility of the gravity model. They're addicted to them but compared to real world data they perform extremely poorly. One day, hopefully soon, people will realise that economics isn't a science and the predictive value of gravity modelling is very low. Yet our lives are effectively ruled by them from the treasury.
I always found it funny that the Treasury gravity model that showed leaving the EU was a bad thing found that having no trade deal with the EU at all was better than being in the EEA. If you read the report they just asterisk it out and said "this doesn't make sense so we set it the difference to zero", without stopping to pause about the implications for the overall analysis.
I think Max, and certainly you, are confused about gravity.
The gravity model of trade says that the closer you are to another country, the more likely you are to trade (especially goods) with them.
It’s highly predictive, although Brexiters don’t like this for some reason.
I can’t comment on your Treasury observation, although it sounds like shite.
No, the issue is that where there is nothing or very little it can't properly predict the multiplier so in most cases they set it to zero. So in this scenario where economic development in these northern places is quite low they rate the multiplier will also be very, very low and the absolute GDP gain will be tiny leading to a really low ROI. This also holds for trade deals, the gravity models uprate where stuff already exists and downrates where not a lot or nothing exists. It's fundamentally a broken way to look at any situation or investment. Gravity models would have us all invested in BT in 2005 and completely ignore Apple (and loads of investment houses did that).
I agree obviously on your main point.
Not on trade, though.
It’s pretty obvious why goods trade gets harder and harder the further you are away. So making it harder to trade locally - which is what Brexit does - is just self-defeating.
Anyway, we’ll never agree on that until the numbers come in, perhaps, and maybe not even then.
That doesn't make sense, the gravity models rate a US trade deal really well, it's not to do with geographic location but what already exists. You don't understand it, I think. Gravity models work by looking at clusters of size and economic development, where two large clusters exist (say the UK and US or the UK and EU) it will rate the potential very highly, where there are smaller clusters (say the UK and Morocco which is closer than the US) it will rate the potential very poorly.
That's the basis of how the treasury uses the gravity model and generally the basis of how they work. It's fundamentally flawed and has very, very poor real world predictive value. Yet here we are still governed by them.
Trade is pretty much a function: Value = (Proximity x Economic size) - Regulatory Friction.
Of course a US deal is better than a Morocco one, given the size of the US economy.
We have chosen to increase regulatory friction on our nearest trade partner, and one of the biggest economically for that matter.
This is not at all controversial, unlike infrastructure investment where the battle is between the neo-classists in Treasury and the endogenous growth theories which make much more sense in the real world.
He's having a good week, Sir Keir, but he really needs to start appending these kinds of statements with what Labour will do. That's how to start building a government in waiting.
"...He's taking the country absolutely nowhere A Labour government will build HS3 and NPR, no ifs and buts"
etc. for each policy area. There is enough flexibility around timescales and funding that he need not worry about "unfunded promises" accusations, and I'm not sure they would stick anyway. Would just make the Tories look mean to the North.
The accepted wisdom is that LotOs only need to articulate policies once a GE is in sight.
Generally those saying they need a policy from the Opposition NOW are govt supporters; and they only say it when the govt is in trouble.
Obviously there is truth in this, but the demands of this particular time would suggest that something else is needed from the opposition in addition to waiting modestly on the subs bench sucking an orange.
The current lot have the claim to fame that they and only they could deliver and have delivered Brexit, along with some sub claims about vaccine programmes and so on. There is much truth in the first, and a bit of truth in the second.
They also have Olympic style records in borrowing, taxing and spending, to the extent that they are maxed out on their credit cards, and almost look like the Labour party.
They also look staggeringly sloppy in their presentation and style.
With all that they are level in the polls, when they should be 20 points behind.
Labour need to to exude two things: the capacity to win bigly, and competence with moderation coming out of their ears in warm blasts of steam.
They are not there yet. Further, the Brexit thingy means that they perhaps cannot win without actually telling us, realistically and simply, where they stand on the post Brexit plans, and on things like social care. Three word slogans won't do. They remind us of T May's three word slogans.
I don't think Labour should be 20 points ahead when the pandemic has blotted them out for most of the 2 years that have passed since the election.
It’s very clear from listening to the prime minister that the rethink of the eastern leg of HS2 is all about the politics of a new trainline running through Tory seats in midlands without new stations. They’ve clearly been scarred by the first leg from London- Birmingham https://twitter.com/AnushkaAsthana/status/1461331841714167808
There is a “Midlands Engine” prospectus for new transport infrastructure which I presume will also never see the light of day.
There was nothing stopping Boris also funding that if he wanted to bribe those Tory seats.
No, Boris (and the country) has been fucked by Treasury and the Transport Ministry.
I’ll say it again, ex-London and the SE, U.K. economic performance is being overtaken by former Warsaw Pact countries.
My advice to young people living in the North is to move to London. Or perhaps better, just emigrate. This country doesn’t know how or doesn’t want to let you prosper.
Why can't a 'larger than life' PM with a landslide majority won substantially off the back of his own persona stand up to the Treasury?
Because he's never stood up to anyone in his life. He's always had someone to do the standing up for him. It was Gilligan for cycle lanes in London, Frost for Brexit, Cummings for various things, Bingham for vaccines.
It's clear he doesn't have anyone to drive through levelling-up, or infrastructure improvements, so it dies.
The truth is, the cancelled program was utterly essential to any attempt to address the appalling underperformance of cities outside London.
This really is two countries - London and the SE, possibly *the* global capital for services - and the rest (65% of the bloody population!) which is now falling behind parts of the old Warsaw Pact in terms of productivity and thereby income levels.
My great hope for Johnson was that he is almost unique in the Tory Party in his affection for large scale infrastructure projects.
But even he couldn’t punch through the disastrous, self-defeating penny-wise mania of the gradgrinds in Treasury.
Forget politics, this is a very sad day for this country.
It's the same awful gravity models you hold so dear that is driving this. The econometricians and their "science" of economics say putting money into these places will yield no multiplier so the treasury has shit canned it.
One day, maybe soon, you'll agree with me that economics is full of bullshit artists who know fuck all about fuck all and the country would be a better place if we stuck them all on a boat and floated it out into the Atlantic.
I’m not an economist, but—-
It’s not the economics profession per se, in fact it’s a kind of perverted accounting that controls Treasury thinking.
As you kind of say, “if it’s not there, don’t build it” seems to be the mantra.
It makes sense if you have no theory whatsoever of how economic growth happens.
It absolutely is the whole bloody profession. They're all useless and like the pretence of being scientists when they aren't. One of my favourite things to do is goad them about how their Nobel prize is a facsimile of the real thing. They really don't like that one and they tend to to off in a huff.
People are always saying that economists are a waste of money. Yet economists continue to be employed, often at quite good salaries. The theory of revealed preference tells me that at least some people therefore don't think economists are a waste of money.
But what is the value they provide.
The claim is that they scientifically analyse the economy, enabling predictions of the effects of various interventions to be made, so that we can choose the optimal course of action.
Or it could just be that they provide the illusion of that so as to justify decisions made to benefit one interest group over another in a way that is harder to challenge.
I can easily see many people being prepared to pay for the latter.
Now that David Graebner is sadly departed from this life his great contribution to understanding the world of employment in 'Bullshit Jobs' should be remembered as long as we remember Parkinson's Law or the Peter principle. Economists, wonderful people all, could fit all over the place in Graeber's five categories of pointless employment:
1) flunkies, who serve to make their superiors feel important, e.g., receptionists, administrative assistants, door attendants, makers of websites whose sites neglect ease of use and speed for looks; 2) goons, who act to harm or deceive others on behalf of their employer, e.g., lobbyists, corporate lawyers, telemarketers, public relations specialists, community managers; 3) duct tapers, who temporarily fix problems that could be fixed permanently, e.g., programmers repairing bloated code, airline desk staff who calm passengers whose bags do not arrive; 4) box tickers, who create the appearance that something useful is being done when it is not, e.g., survey administrators, in-house magazine journalists, corporate compliance officers, quality service managers; 5) taskmasters, who manage—or create extra work for—those who do not need it, e.g., middle management, leadership professionals
Final point on why we're all fucked by the Treasury's addiction to outdated models - they are unable to deal with the concept of making something where nothing previously existed. It's why we're in the slow lane for investment outside of a few specialist areas funded by the MoD budget (which the treasury has repeatedly tried to cut). If something is zero in a model it can't ever really amount to much more than that. We've failed to invest in the "zero" value places and "zero" value trade relationships because the treasury has deemed them unworthy by the models. It's a completely farcical way to run a country.
Today they have reasserted the dominance of this failed predictive model in the UK, we're all going to have to get used to it because Labour or Tory, the same wankers in the treasury pushing the same broken models will exist and the nation will be starved of any kind of investment beyond maintenance of what already exists and a few token bits here and there.
Fibre optic is the classic example of this, 20 years ago countries in Eastern Europe, Asia and elsewhere were investing billions into fibre optic cabling despite the value of the internet and ecommerce being fairly low compared to where it is now. We had that opportunity but the same arseholes in the treasury blocked it because the multiplier on increasing the value of the internet was poor at the time. The bean counters can't see beyond their spreadsheets and the rubbish outputs they get from them. We're going to keep missing opportunities until someone goes in and sacks them all.
A more entertaining introduction than "Speaking an ardent pro-EU zealot, who's written as a journalist and for decades against Brexit ..."
Do you not get it Philip. Boris got Brexit over the line. Your Brexit. That most sacred of political achievements. All down to Boris.
And you know what? He was a tosser not giving a damn, still less knowing anything about it or anything else then and he is a tosser not giving a damn, still less knowing anything about it or anything else now.
And he is the guy that is your hero. Boris supported Brexit; he is Brexit. And like everything else he supports it therefore merits a huge scepticism as to its value.
No you don't get it. Boris may be a tosser not giving a damn, but he's our tosser not giving a damn.
If we want a different tosser who will give a damn, then we can vote for one. That's Brexit.
We always could.
But we couldn't vote out Von Der Leyen.
We did vote her out. We literally just voted to leave the EU.
If the only way to vote her out was to leave the EU then it was the right decision to leave the EU wasn't it?
Otherwise if you rule out leaving the EU then that means we're stuck with that forever with no say in our government [for EU jurisdiction stuff] for all eternity until you finally reconcile yourself with actually leaving the EU.
It’s very clear from listening to the prime minister that the rethink of the eastern leg of HS2 is all about the politics of a new trainline running through Tory seats in midlands without new stations. They’ve clearly been scarred by the first leg from London- Birmingham https://twitter.com/AnushkaAsthana/status/1461331841714167808
There is a “Midlands Engine” prospectus for new transport infrastructure which I presume will also never see the light of day.
There was nothing stopping Boris also funding that if he wanted to bribe those Tory seats.
No, Boris (and the country) has been fucked by Treasury and the Transport Ministry.
I’ll say it again, ex-London and the SE, U.K. economic performance is being overtaken by former Warsaw Pact countries.
My advice to young people living in the North is to move to London. Or perhaps better, just emigrate. This country doesn’t know how or doesn’t want to let you prosper.
Why can't a 'larger than life' PM with a landslide majority won substantially off the back of his own persona stand up to the Treasury?
Because he's never stood up to anyone in his life. He's always had someone to do the standing up for him. It was Gilligan for cycle lanes in London, Frost for Brexit, Cummings for various things, Bingham for vaccines.
It's clear he doesn't have anyone to drive through levelling-up, or infrastructure improvements, so it dies.
He's got our man from the north Govey on the job doesn't he?
The truth is, the cancelled program was utterly essential to any attempt to address the appalling underperformance of cities outside London.
This really is two countries - London and the SE, possibly *the* global capital for services - and the rest (65% of the bloody population!) which is now falling behind parts of the old Warsaw Pact in terms of productivity and thereby income levels.
My great hope for Johnson was that he is almost unique in the Tory Party in his affection for large scale infrastructure projects.
But even he couldn’t punch through the disastrous, self-defeating penny-wise mania of the gradgrinds in Treasury.
Forget politics, this is a very sad day for this country.
It's the same awful gravity models you hold so dear that is driving this. The econometricians and their "science" of economics say putting money into these places will yield no multiplier so the treasury has shit canned it.
One day, maybe soon, you'll agree with me that economics is full of bullshit artists who know fuck all about fuck all and the country would be a better place if we stuck them all on a boat and floated it out into the Atlantic.
I’m not an economist, but—-
It’s not the economics profession per se, in fact it’s a kind of perverted accounting that controls Treasury thinking.
As you kind of say, “if it’s not there, don’t build it” seems to be the mantra.
It makes sense if you have no theory whatsoever of how economic growth happens.
It absolutely is the whole bloody profession. They're all useless and like the pretence of being scientists when they aren't. One of my favourite things to do is goad them about how their Nobel prize is a facsimile of the real thing. They really don't like that one and they tend to to off in a huff.
People are always saying that economists are a waste of money. Yet economists continue to be employed, often at quite good salaries. The theory of revealed preference tells me that at least some people therefore don't think economists are a waste of money.
But what is the value they provide.
The claim is that they scientifically analyse the economy, enabling predictions of the effects of various interventions to be made, so that we can choose the optimal course of action.
Or it could just be that they provide the illusion of that so as to justify decisions made to benefit one interest group over another in a way that is harder to challenge.
I can easily see many people being prepared to pay for the latter.
I think there's a lot of truth in what you say. Especially in the public sector - I am certainly not going to defend HMT who I think are probably more at fault than the PM in this disgraceful and short sighted decision and have a baleful history of these kind of penny-pinching moves. They are a disgrace. A lot of them are just 22 year old PPE graduates not proper economists though. As an economist I try to be quite humble about what we can and can't do. Of course it isn't a science. On the other hand, I am often quite surprised at how wrong people can get things when they haven't had any training in economics. Which makes me realise that we do have something to add. My employer certainly seems to think so, for which I am grateful.
Small print in Integrated Rail Plan: "commitments will be made only to progress individual schemes up to the next stage of development, and a re-authorisation will be required at that point." Cue @hmtreasury scrutiny before anything is built.
The same broken gravity models which have starved the north of investment will now be used to not build any of this stuff either. I've had so many arguments with our own "econometrics" people about the utility of the gravity model. They're addicted to them but compared to real world data they perform extremely poorly. One day, hopefully soon, people will realise that economics isn't a science and the predictive value of gravity modelling is very low. Yet our lives are effectively ruled by them from the treasury.
I always found it funny that the Treasury gravity model that showed leaving the EU was a bad thing found that having no trade deal with the EU at all was better than being in the EEA. If you read the report they just asterisk it out and said "this doesn't make sense so we set it the difference to zero", without stopping to pause about the implications for the overall analysis.
I think Max, and certainly you, are confused about gravity.
The gravity model of trade says that the closer you are to another country, the more likely you are to trade (especially goods) with them.
It’s highly predictive, although Brexiters don’t like this for some reason.
I can’t comment on your Treasury observation, although it sounds like shite.
No, the issue is that where there is nothing or very little it can't properly predict the multiplier so in most cases they set it to zero. So in this scenario where economic development in these northern places is quite low they rate the multiplier will also be very, very low and the absolute GDP gain will be tiny leading to a really low ROI. This also holds for trade deals, the gravity models uprate where stuff already exists and downrates where not a lot or nothing exists. It's fundamentally a broken way to look at any situation or investment. Gravity models would have us all invested in BT in 2005 and completely ignore Apple (and loads of investment houses did that).
I agree obviously on your main point.
Not on trade, though.
It’s pretty obvious why goods trade gets harder and harder the further you are away. So making it harder to trade locally - which is what Brexit does - is just self-defeating.
Anyway, we’ll never agree on that until the numbers come in, perhaps, and maybe not even then.
That doesn't make sense, the gravity models rate a US trade deal really well, it's not to do with geographic location but what already exists. You don't understand it, I think. Gravity models work by looking at clusters of size and economic development, where two large clusters exist (say the UK and US or the UK and EU) it will rate the potential very highly, where there are smaller clusters (say the UK and Morocco which is closer than the US) it will rate the potential very poorly.
That's the basis of how the treasury uses the gravity model and generally the basis of how they work. It's fundamentally flawed and has very, very poor real world predictive value. Yet here we are still governed by them.
Trade is pretty much a function: Value = (Proximity x Economic size) - Regulatory Friction.
Of course a US deal is better than a Morocco one, given the size of the US economy.
We have chosen to increase regulatory friction on our nearest trade partner, and one of the biggest economically for that matter.
This is not at all controversial, unlike infrastructure investment where the battle is between the neo-classists in Treasury and the endogenous growth theories which make much more sense in the real world.
Presumably neo-classists are a bit like neo-classicists but with more elitism.
Small print in Integrated Rail Plan: "commitments will be made only to progress individual schemes up to the next stage of development, and a re-authorisation will be required at that point." Cue @hmtreasury scrutiny before anything is built.
The same broken gravity models which have starved the north of investment will now be used to not build any of this stuff either. I've had so many arguments with our own "econometrics" people about the utility of the gravity model. They're addicted to them but compared to real world data they perform extremely poorly. One day, hopefully soon, people will realise that economics isn't a science and the predictive value of gravity modelling is very low. Yet our lives are effectively ruled by them from the treasury.
I always found it funny that the Treasury gravity model that showed leaving the EU was a bad thing found that having no trade deal with the EU at all was better than being in the EEA. If you read the report they just asterisk it out and said "this doesn't make sense so we set it the difference to zero", without stopping to pause about the implications for the overall analysis.
I think Max, and certainly you, are confused about gravity.
The gravity model of trade says that the closer you are to another country, the more likely you are to trade (especially goods) with them.
It’s highly predictive, although Brexiters don’t like this for some reason.
I can’t comment on your Treasury observation, although it sounds like shite.
No, the issue is that where there is nothing or very little it can't properly predict the multiplier so in most cases they set it to zero. So in this scenario where economic development in these northern places is quite low they rate the multiplier will also be very, very low and the absolute GDP gain will be tiny leading to a really low ROI. This also holds for trade deals, the gravity models uprate where stuff already exists and downrates where not a lot or nothing exists. It's fundamentally a broken way to look at any situation or investment. Gravity models would have us all invested in BT in 2005 and completely ignore Apple (and loads of investment houses did that).
I agree obviously on your main point.
Not on trade, though.
It’s pretty obvious why goods trade gets harder and harder the further you are away. So making it harder to trade locally - which is what Brexit does - is just self-defeating.
Anyway, we’ll never agree on that until the numbers come in, perhaps, and maybe not even then.
That doesn't make sense, the gravity models rate a US trade deal really well, it's not to do with geographic location but what already exists. You don't understand it, I think. Gravity models work by looking at clusters of size and economic development, where two large clusters exist (say the UK and US or the UK and EU) it will rate the potential very highly, where there are smaller clusters (say the UK and Morocco which is closer than the US) it will rate the potential very poorly.
That's the basis of how the treasury uses the gravity model and generally the basis of how they work. It's fundamentally flawed and has very, very poor real world predictive value. Yet here we are still governed by them.
Additionally, the gravity model doesn't have the concept of the 10x, it simply can't handle the idea of $1bn turning into $10bn and completely discounts the possibility of that happening. Yet we live in an era of the 10x, an automation company where I was invited to the Series A just did 30x between that Series A and the Series E, in the world of gravity modelling this is impossible.
The gravity model as used generally is fairly simplistic bullshit that people use because it suits their fairly simplistic predetermined decisions.
And quite frankly its a model for inaction - which may be wedded to why the Treasury loves it so much.
Small print in Integrated Rail Plan: "commitments will be made only to progress individual schemes up to the next stage of development, and a re-authorisation will be required at that point." Cue @hmtreasury scrutiny before anything is built.
The same broken gravity models which have starved the north of investment will now be used to not build any of this stuff either. I've had so many arguments with our own "econometrics" people about the utility of the gravity model. They're addicted to them but compared to real world data they perform extremely poorly. One day, hopefully soon, people will realise that economics isn't a science and the predictive value of gravity modelling is very low. Yet our lives are effectively ruled by them from the treasury.
I always found it funny that the Treasury gravity model that showed leaving the EU was a bad thing found that having no trade deal with the EU at all was better than being in the EEA. If you read the report they just asterisk it out and said "this doesn't make sense so we set it the difference to zero", without stopping to pause about the implications for the overall analysis.
I think Max, and certainly you, are confused about gravity.
The gravity model of trade says that the closer you are to another country, the more likely you are to trade (especially goods) with them.
It’s highly predictive, although Brexiters don’t like this for some reason.
I can’t comment on your Treasury observation, although it sounds like shite.
No, the issue is that where there is nothing or very little it can't properly predict the multiplier so in most cases they set it to zero. So in this scenario where economic development in these northern places is quite low they rate the multiplier will also be very, very low and the absolute GDP gain will be tiny leading to a really low ROI. This also holds for trade deals, the gravity models uprate where stuff already exists and downrates where not a lot or nothing exists. It's fundamentally a broken way to look at any situation or investment. Gravity models would have us all invested in BT in 2005 and completely ignore Apple (and loads of investment houses did that).
I agree obviously on your main point.
Not on trade, though.
It’s pretty obvious why goods trade gets harder and harder the further you are away. So making it harder to trade locally - which is what Brexit does - is just self-defeating.
Anyway, we’ll never agree on that until the numbers come in, perhaps, and maybe not even then.
That doesn't make sense, the gravity models rate a US trade deal really well, it's not to do with geographic location but what already exists. You don't understand it, I think. Gravity models work by looking at clusters of size and economic development, where two large clusters exist (say the UK and US or the UK and EU) it will rate the potential very highly, where there are smaller clusters (say the UK and Morocco which is closer than the US) it will rate the potential very poorly.
That's the basis of how the treasury uses the gravity model and generally the basis of how they work. It's fundamentally flawed and has very, very poor real world predictive value. Yet here we are still governed by them.
Trade is pretty much a function: Value = (Proximity x Economic size) - Regulatory Friction.
Of course a US deal is better than a Morocco one, given the size of the US economy.
We have chosen to increase regulatory friction on our nearest trade partner, and one of the biggest economically for that matter.
This is not at all controversial, unlike infrastructure investment where the battle is between the neo-classists in Treasury and the endogenous growth theories which make much more sense in the real world.
Proximity counts for a lot less than that, at least in an economy which primarily exports services and imports goods. As for Brexit, we've chosen to decouple from the EU which is overly bureaucratic and very, very insular. Being out of the single market is one of the best things this country will do for its future. You disagree, which is fine, but ultimately we will see over the next decade how it plays out (probably from a distance given we're both leaving the country next year).
It’s very clear from listening to the prime minister that the rethink of the eastern leg of HS2 is all about the politics of a new trainline running through Tory seats in midlands without new stations. They’ve clearly been scarred by the first leg from London- Birmingham https://twitter.com/AnushkaAsthana/status/1461331841714167808
There is a “Midlands Engine” prospectus for new transport infrastructure which I presume will also never see the light of day.
There was nothing stopping Boris also funding that if he wanted to bribe those Tory seats.
No, Boris (and the country) has been fucked by Treasury and the Transport Ministry.
I’ll say it again, ex-London and the SE, U.K. economic performance is being overtaken by former Warsaw Pact countries.
My advice to young people living in the North is to move to London. Or perhaps better, just emigrate. This country doesn’t know how or doesn’t want to let you prosper.
Why can't a 'larger than life' PM with a landslide majority won substantially off the back of his own persona stand up to the Treasury?
Because he's never stood up to anyone in his life. He's always had someone to do the standing up for him. It was Gilligan for cycle lanes in London, Frost for Brexit, Cummings for various things, Bingham for vaccines.
It's clear he doesn't have anyone to drive through levelling-up, or infrastructure improvements, so it dies.
He's got our man from the north Govey on the job doesn't he?
Let's see how it plays out.
To really level up, you want the Gove’s New Ministry, BEIS and Transport pulling together.
Let’s see what Gove does, but unfortunately BEIS is run by another “do nothing” Thatcherite* and Transport by some kind of mail order conman wearing a gerbil on his head.
*I’m a great admirer of Thatcher by the way, but her economic view is not fit for 2021.
He's having a good week, Sir Keir, but he really needs to start appending these kinds of statements with what Labour will do. That's how to start building a government in waiting.
"...He's taking the country absolutely nowhere A Labour government will build HS3 and NPR, no ifs and buts"
etc. for each policy area. There is enough flexibility around timescales and funding that he need not worry about "unfunded promises" accusations, and I'm not sure they would stick anyway. Would just make the Tories look mean to the North.
The accepted wisdom is that LotOs only need to articulate policies once a GE is in sight.
Generally those saying they need a policy from the Opposition NOW are govt supporters; and they only say it when the govt is in trouble.
Obviously there is truth in this, but the demands of this particular time would suggest that something else is needed from the opposition in addition to waiting modestly on the subs bench sucking an orange.
The current lot have the claim to fame that they and only they could deliver and have delivered Brexit, along with some sub claims about vaccine programmes and so on. There is much truth in the first, and a bit of truth in the second.
They also have Olympic style records in borrowing, taxing and spending, to the extent that they are maxed out on their credit cards, and almost look like the Labour party.
They also look staggeringly sloppy in their presentation and style.
With all that they are level in the polls, when they should be 20 points behind.
Labour need to to exude two things: the capacity to win bigly, and competence with moderation coming out of their ears in warm blasts of steam.
They are not there yet. Further, the Brexit thingy means that they perhaps cannot win without actually telling us, realistically and simply, where they stand on the post Brexit plans, and on things like social care. Three word slogans won't do. They remind us of T May's three word slogans.
I don't think Labour should be 20 points ahead when the pandemic has blotted them out for most of the 2 years that have passed since the election.
That's the problem for Labour for supporting the government throughout those two years. They haven't built up a track record for independent thought where people could have said yes those guys super astute we always suspected Johnson was a tosser.
The Government's plan for #NorthernPowerhouseRail. There is some new track, going about half way across the Pennines. (This also shows, as expected, that HS2 will go to Manchester)
That new track seems to connect Warrington with Huddersfield. Ideal for a Thursday night mid-table RL clash in 2050. But not for regional re-generation. Also, why does the "upgrade" stop at Northallerton?
Northallerton is Rishi's train station, he lives a short distance from it.
Well, nobody seems to have discussed today what the Scots might think about the complete foulup over HS2. But seems superfluous when the Yorkshirepersons, monkey-hangers and Geordies are doing an admirable job of assessment already.
Mind, I seem to recall Mr Johnson proclaiming how HS2 would strengthen the sinews of the Union.
Ironically HS2 when completed will speed rail to Scotland
But it will never now be completed. That is the whole point of the news today.
The west coast HS2 will be completed speeding trains to Scotland
Well to Glasgow Central - HS2E is required to speed up travel to Edinburgh and everywhere else in Scotland.
Surely with HS2 to Crewe, Edinburgh-Euston will become a lot quicker than Edinburgh-King's Cross?
London to Edinburgh ECML is 4 hours 29 fastest.
Fastest train Crewe to Edinburgh is 3 hours 13.
London Crewe is an hour so you save 16 minutes - provided there are no delays on the route and you don't need to wait 17 minutes (or more likely 45) for a connection.
Pre-pandemic there were regularly 4h20m trains on the ECML from Edinburgh to London. Sometimes I didn't even get refunds for them being late. And the new Azuma timetable was supposed to speed some of them up a bit.
I was and am surprised by the London Edinburgh time as I thought 4 hours was easily possible - 2hrs 30 to Newcastle and 1 hour 30 Newcastle to Edinburgh but I only quoted what I saw.
If (and as shown above) you are correct and the fastest journey time to Edinburgh is 4 hours than it's possible that the HS2 route is 13 minutes slower rather than 16 minutes (assuming no connections) faster.
The proposed May 2022 timetable had hourly fast trains taking 4h4m between Kings Cross and Waverley, so I struggle to see how an HS2 route via Carlisle will be faster.
PB is weighted towards railway fans. It may be news to many that everyone in the north of England travels by car (in the north of Scotland also boat and small plane) and plans to carry on doing so. This is especially true of those who bother to vote and live in Tory or Tory winnable seats.
The number of people appalled by the Aeschylean tragedy of HSwhatever number being cancelled with be dwarfed by the indifferent and those pleased that their rhubarb beds and whippet race tracks are not being subject to compulsory purchase orders to build it.
As a bona fide Yorkshireman I can assure you this is damaging to the Tories.
It's fitting this narrative that Government is prepared to spaff up billions on London and the South but not the North.
It is indeed but as I've argued for years if you really wanted to help the North you'd recognise the North uses roads not rails for almost all transport and economic activity and that rails are a teeny, tiny obsessive primarily for people who work in Manchester or London.
If you really wanted to help the North then tens of billions invested in new motorways and roads - actually new motorways not turning hard shoulders into camera-operated lanes - would help the North far, far more.
More on the lies, damned lies and deception in both the document and Shapps Green's Commons statement.
"Leeds to Bradford in 12 minutes" - but look at the detail and it says "Network Rail is also being asked to take forward an upgrade of the line between Bradford and Leeds via New Pudsey to include speed improvements and electrification. The aim would be to deliver a non-stop journey time between the cities potentially as low as 12 minutes (subject to business case)".
So, like so much of what is being announced that hadn't already been approved, that claim is - as I said - bollocks.
Small print in Integrated Rail Plan: "commitments will be made only to progress individual schemes up to the next stage of development, and a re-authorisation will be required at that point." Cue @hmtreasury scrutiny before anything is built.
The same broken gravity models which have starved the north of investment will now be used to not build any of this stuff either. I've had so many arguments with our own "econometrics" people about the utility of the gravity model. They're addicted to them but compared to real world data they perform extremely poorly. One day, hopefully soon, people will realise that economics isn't a science and the predictive value of gravity modelling is very low. Yet our lives are effectively ruled by them from the treasury.
I always found it funny that the Treasury gravity model that showed leaving the EU was a bad thing found that having no trade deal with the EU at all was better than being in the EEA. If you read the report they just asterisk it out and said "this doesn't make sense so we set it the difference to zero", without stopping to pause about the implications for the overall analysis.
I think Max, and certainly you, are confused about gravity.
The gravity model of trade says that the closer you are to another country, the more likely you are to trade (especially goods) with them.
It’s highly predictive, although Brexiters don’t like this for some reason.
I can’t comment on your Treasury observation, although it sounds like shite.
No, the issue is that where there is nothing or very little it can't properly predict the multiplier so in most cases they set it to zero. So in this scenario where economic development in these northern places is quite low they rate the multiplier will also be very, very low and the absolute GDP gain will be tiny leading to a really low ROI. This also holds for trade deals, the gravity models uprate where stuff already exists and downrates where not a lot or nothing exists. It's fundamentally a broken way to look at any situation or investment. Gravity models would have us all invested in BT in 2005 and completely ignore Apple (and loads of investment houses did that).
I agree obviously on your main point.
Not on trade, though.
It’s pretty obvious why goods trade gets harder and harder the further you are away. So making it harder to trade locally - which is what Brexit does - is just self-defeating.
Anyway, we’ll never agree on that until the numbers come in, perhaps, and maybe not even then.
That doesn't make sense, the gravity models rate a US trade deal really well, it's not to do with geographic location but what already exists. You don't understand it, I think. Gravity models work by looking at clusters of size and economic development, where two large clusters exist (say the UK and US or the UK and EU) it will rate the potential very highly, where there are smaller clusters (say the UK and Morocco which is closer than the US) it will rate the potential very poorly.
That's the basis of how the treasury uses the gravity model and generally the basis of how they work. It's fundamentally flawed and has very, very poor real world predictive value. Yet here we are still governed by them.
Trade is pretty much a function: Value = (Proximity x Economic size) - Regulatory Friction.
Of course a US deal is better than a Morocco one, given the size of the US economy.
We have chosen to increase regulatory friction on our nearest trade partner, and one of the biggest economically for that matter.
This is not at all controversial, unlike infrastructure investment where the battle is between the neo-classists in Treasury and the endogenous growth theories which make much more sense in the real world.
Presumably neo-classists are a bit like neo-classicists but with more elitism.
Ha, yes. That’s the U.K., of course, where an apposite Latin tag all take you much further than actually wanting to invest in the economy.
It’s very clear from listening to the prime minister that the rethink of the eastern leg of HS2 is all about the politics of a new trainline running through Tory seats in midlands without new stations. They’ve clearly been scarred by the first leg from London- Birmingham https://twitter.com/AnushkaAsthana/status/1461331841714167808
There is a “Midlands Engine” prospectus for new transport infrastructure which I presume will also never see the light of day.
There was nothing stopping Boris also funding that if he wanted to bribe those Tory seats.
No, Boris (and the country) has been fucked by Treasury and the Transport Ministry.
I’ll say it again, ex-London and the SE, U.K. economic performance is being overtaken by former Warsaw Pact countries.
My advice to young people living in the North is to move to London. Or perhaps better, just emigrate. This country doesn’t know how or doesn’t want to let you prosper.
Why can't a 'larger than life' PM with a landslide majority won substantially off the back of his own persona stand up to the Treasury?
Because he's never stood up to anyone in his life. He's always had someone to do the standing up for him. It was Gilligan for cycle lanes in London, Frost for Brexit, Cummings for various things, Bingham for vaccines.
It's clear he doesn't have anyone to drive through levelling-up, or infrastructure improvements, so it dies.
He's got our man from the north Govey on the job doesn't he?
Let's see how it plays out.
Given that today's announcement is the equivalent of a cricket ball to the bollox while someone else went with a baseball bat to both legs and an arm, Gove is going to have great difficult delivering anything now.
A more entertaining introduction than "Speaking an ardent pro-EU zealot, who's written as a journalist and for decades against Brexit ..."
Do you not get it Philip. Boris got Brexit over the line. Your Brexit. That most sacred of political achievements. All down to Boris.
And you know what? He was a tosser not giving a damn, still less knowing anything about it or anything else then and he is a tosser not giving a damn, still less knowing anything about it or anything else now.
And he is the guy that is your hero. Boris supported Brexit; he is Brexit. And like everything else he supports it therefore merits a huge scepticism as to its value.
No you don't get it. Boris may be a tosser not giving a damn, but he's our tosser not giving a damn.
If we want a different tosser who will give a damn, then we can vote for one. That's Brexit.
We always could.
But we couldn't vote out Von Der Leyen.
We did vote her out. We literally just voted to leave the EU.
If the only way to vote her out was to leave the EU then it was the right decision to leave the EU wasn't it?
Otherwise if you rule out leaving the EU then that means we're stuck with that forever with no say in our government [for EU jurisdiction stuff] for all eternity until you finally reconcile yourself with actually leaving the EU.
Well whether it was the right decision or not is a matter for debate but we always held the democratic, sovereign right to reject it. So we could vote out UvdL and did so.
Equally while in, we compromised. As do many states around the planet when international relations and trade are concerned. Compromise. Did we get everything we wanted all the time? No. Did we influence each element? Yes.
But the argument that we had no democratic say was demolished in 2016. And yet you are still trotting out the under the yoke of the EU line.
It’s very clear from listening to the prime minister that the rethink of the eastern leg of HS2 is all about the politics of a new trainline running through Tory seats in midlands without new stations. They’ve clearly been scarred by the first leg from London- Birmingham https://twitter.com/AnushkaAsthana/status/1461331841714167808
There is a “Midlands Engine” prospectus for new transport infrastructure which I presume will also never see the light of day.
There was nothing stopping Boris also funding that if he wanted to bribe those Tory seats.
No, Boris (and the country) has been fucked by Treasury and the Transport Ministry.
I’ll say it again, ex-London and the SE, U.K. economic performance is being overtaken by former Warsaw Pact countries.
My advice to young people living in the North is to move to London. Or perhaps better, just emigrate. This country doesn’t know how or doesn’t want to let you prosper.
Why can't a 'larger than life' PM with a landslide majority won substantially off the back of his own persona stand up to the Treasury?
Because he's never stood up to anyone in his life. He's always had someone to do the standing up for him. It was Gilligan for cycle lanes in London, Frost for Brexit, Cummings for various things, Bingham for vaccines.
It's clear he doesn't have anyone to drive through levelling-up, or infrastructure improvements, so it dies.
He's got our man from the north Govey on the job doesn't he?
Let's see how it plays out.
*I’m a great admirer of Thatcher by the way, but her economic view is not fit for 2021.
Small print in Integrated Rail Plan: "commitments will be made only to progress individual schemes up to the next stage of development, and a re-authorisation will be required at that point." Cue @hmtreasury scrutiny before anything is built.
The same broken gravity models which have starved the north of investment will now be used to not build any of this stuff either. I've had so many arguments with our own "econometrics" people about the utility of the gravity model. They're addicted to them but compared to real world data they perform extremely poorly. One day, hopefully soon, people will realise that economics isn't a science and the predictive value of gravity modelling is very low. Yet our lives are effectively ruled by them from the treasury.
I always found it funny that the Treasury gravity model that showed leaving the EU was a bad thing found that having no trade deal with the EU at all was better than being in the EEA. If you read the report they just asterisk it out and said "this doesn't make sense so we set it the difference to zero", without stopping to pause about the implications for the overall analysis.
I think Max, and certainly you, are confused about gravity.
The gravity model of trade says that the closer you are to another country, the more likely you are to trade (especially goods) with them.
It’s highly predictive, although Brexiters don’t like this for some reason.
I can’t comment on your Treasury observation, although it sounds like shite.
I know exactly what a gravity model is and have actually made them in previous jobs. That is why I end up reading the appendices of Treasury reports to understand economic analyses and the methodologies and assumptions used. You see, I have a preference for knowing what I'm talking about before making an assessment of something. Clearly that's something you don't do given your last sentence.
Incidentally, for anyone wanting to see this, you can look at Appendix A, Table A.2 in the HMT report of the long term economic impact of leaving the EU. It is a classic example of analysts putting their finger on the scale so as not to produce politically inconvenient results for their bosses. Having made economic models, I know well how you can make lots of little assumptions that add up to a big difference to the headline number. Journalists are too mathematically illiterate to understand these so just naively report the top line.
I hope Boris Johnson suffers erectile dysfunction for the rest of his very long life and that not even viagra can fix his issue.
That's the only fitting punishment for Boris Johnson and his betrayal of the North.
The North Midlands (i.e. Sheffield) will still benefit, however.
How? Boris and co have just cut Midland mainline capacity by 10% but haven't realised yet.
Presumably you mean Derby to Sheffield? Surely taking intercity trains off the MML south of East Mids Parkway is a boost for the southern end of the MML.
Which consultancy or civil servant came up with this plan? I can't believe this is Grant Shapps' homework.
Is it butchery of an original plan caused by the treasury continually asking what can be done for a few billion less?
In summary, soft, decadent, urbanised, civilised peoples are in general *much more successful* at waging war than simple, tough, hardy desert/steppe/jungle peoples, because the successful delivery of violence depends hugely upon good organisation and logistics. Over the course of 5,000 years , relatively small (relative to overall population size) highly trained, professional armies have proved by far the most effective war machines.
What a shambles. You can hardly see the screw ups for the screw ups atm. Johnson seems to be unravelling at a rate of knots, yet I find I'm taking no pleasure in it. It's the patriot in me, I suppose. When all's said and done I want the best for the UK. And the fact is, this bloke is our PM and quite likely to remain so for years, so I'd love to see him use this rocky period to reinvent himself. People do this sometimes so why not here. Let's see the facing of some hard truths then a reboot. Let's see a new Boris Johnson, one with integrity, grip and vision. Let's see a proper grown-up prime minister for what I like to think is a proper grown-up country. If I were advising him that's the 'tough love' message I'd give.
As a patriot who's probably overly bothered about our image abroad I am hoping the collapse comes fully, quickly and humiliatingly because I'd dearly love the rest of the world to stop conflating "Boris" with "Britain". We need to cut the knot, like - for a while at least - the USA did by turfing out Trump and electing Biden.
That doesn't require a change of government necessarily, it just needs a new leader (Rishi will do, Liz would not) who doesn't come across as a clown, seems morally upstanding and has a less antagonistic attitude to our neighbours particularly Ireland. Every time Britain is seen to be targeting Ireland the rest of the world thinks "there they go again".
Italy struggled to shake off the shadow of Berlusconi and he kept coming back. Our own Berlusconi needs to be more cleanly extricated from government.
So let him be gone and let's start rebuilding our global brand.
Yes, I fear my Johnson 'reboot' is probably a pipedream. Nevertheless that would genuinely be my advice to him. Finger out, red boxes, upgrade the cabinet with talent not stoolies, and please please please stop making stupid jokes about everything.
You strip out the stupid jokes and there's nothing left.
I can totally relate to that.
I think maybe you're being mean to me but it's ambiguous enough for me to pretend to myself that you're not.
It’s very clear from listening to the prime minister that the rethink of the eastern leg of HS2 is all about the politics of a new trainline running through Tory seats in midlands without new stations. They’ve clearly been scarred by the first leg from London- Birmingham https://twitter.com/AnushkaAsthana/status/1461331841714167808
There is a “Midlands Engine” prospectus for new transport infrastructure which I presume will also never see the light of day.
There was nothing stopping Boris also funding that if he wanted to bribe those Tory seats.
No, Boris (and the country) has been fucked by Treasury and the Transport Ministry.
I’ll say it again, ex-London and the SE, U.K. economic performance is being overtaken by former Warsaw Pact countries.
My advice to young people living in the North is to move to London. Or perhaps better, just emigrate. This country doesn’t know how or doesn’t want to let you prosper.
Why can't a 'larger than life' PM with a landslide majority won substantially off the back of his own persona stand up to the Treasury?
Because he's never stood up to anyone in his life. He's always had someone to do the standing up for him. It was Gilligan for cycle lanes in London, Frost for Brexit, Cummings for various things, Bingham for vaccines.
It's clear he doesn't have anyone to drive through levelling-up, or infrastructure improvements, so it dies.
He's got our man from the north Govey on the job doesn't he?
Let's see how it plays out.
Given that today's announcement is the equivalent of a cricket ball to the bollox while someone else went with a baseball bat to both legs and an arm, Gove is going to have great difficult delivering anything now.
I was a HS2E fan - but since it was not really going to affect me I'll cope.
If Nippy actually cared about Scotland she'd call BJ's bluff and start building HS2E from Aberdeen.
But everyone knows she hates Aberdeen and the Shire for voting No.
Poland issued an ultimatum to Belarus - either it will stabilise the situation on the border by 21 November, or Poland will close the railway crossing at Kuznica.
PB is weighted towards railway fans. It may be news to many that everyone in the north of England travels by car (in the north of Scotland also boat and small plane) and plans to carry on doing so. This is especially true of those who bother to vote and live in Tory or Tory winnable seats.
The number of people appalled by the Aeschylean tragedy of HSwhatever number being cancelled with be dwarfed by the indifferent and those pleased that their rhubarb beds and whippet race tracks are not being subject to compulsory purchase orders to build it.
As a bona fide Yorkshireman I can assure you this is damaging to the Tories.
It's fitting this narrative that Government is prepared to spaff up billions on London and the South but not the North.
It is indeed but as I've argued for years if you really wanted to help the North you'd recognise the North uses roads not rails for almost all transport and economic activity and that rails are a teeny, tiny obsessive primarily for people who work in Manchester or London.
If you really wanted to help the North then tens of billions invested in new motorways and roads - actually new motorways not turning hard shoulders into camera-operated lanes - would help the North far, far more.
The key issue for “the North” - which is one of only three or four massive population sprawls in Europe* is that it needs properly joining up so that firms can access a larger labour pool, and employees can access a larger jobs market.
Maybe you can do this all with roads, but - admittedly as a southerner - it seems unlikely given the population density and amount of land available.
*The others are the Randstand, the Ruhr, and Northern Italy.
That line is remarkably fast when I caught it 2 years ago. 3 years ago I think the journey time from York to Liverpool was 2 hours 30, since that line was improved (and the other Manchester improvements so you bypass Piccadilly) it's 2 hours (25 minutes Leeds, 1 hour to Manchester, 35 to Liverpool).
The more people look at these plans the more flaws there are going to be found.
The Government's plan for #NorthernPowerhouseRail. There is some new track, going about half way across the Pennines. (This also shows, as expected, that HS2 will go to Manchester)
That new track seems to connect Warrington with Huddersfield. Ideal for a Thursday night mid-table RL clash in 2050. But not for regional re-generation. Also, why does the "upgrade" stop at Northallerton?
Northallerton is Rishi's train station, he lives a short distance from it.
Well, nobody seems to have discussed today what the Scots might think about the complete foulup over HS2. But seems superfluous when the Yorkshirepersons, monkey-hangers and Geordies are doing an admirable job of assessment already.
Mind, I seem to recall Mr Johnson proclaiming how HS2 would strengthen the sinews of the Union.
Ironically HS2 when completed will speed rail to Scotland
You could not make it up. When will you realise G that you cannot polish a turd and we all know it.
PB is weighted towards railway fans. It may be news to many that everyone in the north of England travels by car (in the north of Scotland also boat and small plane) and plans to carry on doing so. This is especially true of those who bother to vote and live in Tory or Tory winnable seats.
The number of people appalled by the Aeschylean tragedy of HSwhatever number being cancelled with be dwarfed by the indifferent and those pleased that their rhubarb beds and whippet race tracks are not being subject to compulsory purchase orders to build it.
As a bona fide Yorkshireman I can assure you this is damaging to the Tories.
It's fitting this narrative that Government is prepared to spaff up billions on London and the South but not the North.
It is indeed but as I've argued for years if you really wanted to help the North you'd recognise the North uses roads not rails for almost all transport and economic activity and that rails are a teeny, tiny obsessive primarily for people who work in Manchester or London.
If you really wanted to help the North then tens of billions invested in new motorways and roads - actually new motorways not turning hard shoulders into camera-operated lanes - would help the North far, far more.
Aren't you making the mistake Max is accusing the Treasury of making, of not being able to imagine that the future could be anything but a slightly modified version of the status quo?
PB is weighted towards railway fans. It may be news to many that everyone in the north of England travels by car (in the north of Scotland also boat and small plane) and plans to carry on doing so. This is especially true of those who bother to vote and live in Tory or Tory winnable seats.
The number of people appalled by the Aeschylean tragedy of HSwhatever number being cancelled with be dwarfed by the indifferent and those pleased that their rhubarb beds and whippet race tracks are not being subject to compulsory purchase orders to build it.
As a bona fide Yorkshireman I can assure you this is damaging to the Tories.
It's fitting this narrative that Government is prepared to spaff up billions on London and the South but not the North.
It is indeed but as I've argued for years if you really wanted to help the North you'd recognise the North uses roads not rails for almost all transport and economic activity and that rails are a teeny, tiny obsessive primarily for people who work in Manchester or London.
If you really wanted to help the North then tens of billions invested in new motorways and roads - actually new motorways not turning hard shoulders into camera-operated lanes - would help the North far, far more.
How does that get you anywhere any faster? - it may remove a few traffic jams (I would however seriously doubt it) but you can still only travel at 70mph.
The Government's plan for #NorthernPowerhouseRail. There is some new track, going about half way across the Pennines. (This also shows, as expected, that HS2 will go to Manchester)
That new track seems to connect Warrington with Huddersfield. Ideal for a Thursday night mid-table RL clash in 2050. But not for regional re-generation. Also, why does the "upgrade" stop at Northallerton?
Northallerton is Rishi's train station, he lives a short distance from it.
Well, nobody seems to have discussed today what the Scots might think about the complete foulup over HS2. But seems superfluous when the Yorkshirepersons, monkey-hangers and Geordies are doing an admirable job of assessment already.
Mind, I seem to recall Mr Johnson proclaiming how HS2 would strengthen the sinews of the Union.
Ironically HS2 when completed will speed rail to Scotland
But it will never now be completed. That is the whole point of the news today.
Same as all those billions spent in London benefit us, they think we button up the back.
It’s very clear from listening to the prime minister that the rethink of the eastern leg of HS2 is all about the politics of a new trainline running through Tory seats in midlands without new stations. They’ve clearly been scarred by the first leg from London- Birmingham https://twitter.com/AnushkaAsthana/status/1461331841714167808
There is a “Midlands Engine” prospectus for new transport infrastructure which I presume will also never see the light of day.
There was nothing stopping Boris also funding that if he wanted to bribe those Tory seats.
No, Boris (and the country) has been fucked by Treasury and the Transport Ministry.
I’ll say it again, ex-London and the SE, U.K. economic performance is being overtaken by former Warsaw Pact countries.
My advice to young people living in the North is to move to London. Or perhaps better, just emigrate. This country doesn’t know how or doesn’t want to let you prosper.
Why can't a 'larger than life' PM with a landslide majority won substantially off the back of his own persona stand up to the Treasury?
Because he's never stood up to anyone in his life. He's always had someone to do the standing up for him. It was Gilligan for cycle lanes in London, Frost for Brexit, Cummings for various things, Bingham for vaccines.
It's clear he doesn't have anyone to drive through levelling-up, or infrastructure improvements, so it dies.
He's got our man from the north Govey on the job doesn't he?
Let's see how it plays out.
*I’m a great admirer of Thatcher by the way, but her economic view is not fit for 2021.
You a MMT fan?
(Apologies, since you gave me a decent response)
No.
But I do note:
- U.K. prints it’s own money. - The fear that 100% debt-to-GDP impaired economic growth has pretty much been debunked. - Interest rates are very low.
I therefore wonder why the hell we want to fetishise debt levels over the future prosperity of 65% of the country.
Anyway, my point about Thatcher was more about the general theory that you can deregulate your way to growth. That’s pretty much played out: the U.K. is low regulation, and high labour flexibility. Yet the “North” is still poor, and getting (comparatively) poorer. Why?
The Government's plan for #NorthernPowerhouseRail. There is some new track, going about half way across the Pennines. (This also shows, as expected, that HS2 will go to Manchester)
That new track seems to connect Warrington with Huddersfield. Ideal for a Thursday night mid-table RL clash in 2050. But not for regional re-generation. Also, why does the "upgrade" stop at Northallerton?
Northallerton is Rishi's train station, he lives a short distance from it.
Well, nobody seems to have discussed today what the Scots might think about the complete foulup over HS2. But seems superfluous when the Yorkshirepersons, monkey-hangers and Geordies are doing an admirable job of assessment already.
Mind, I seem to recall Mr Johnson proclaiming how HS2 would strengthen the sinews of the Union.
Ironically HS2 when completed will speed rail to Scotland
You could not make it up. When will you realise G that you cannot polish a turd and we all know it.
You can, but only atop an Edinburgh hotel near Waverley station (ironically enough).
The Government's plan for #NorthernPowerhouseRail. There is some new track, going about half way across the Pennines. (This also shows, as expected, that HS2 will go to Manchester)
That new track seems to connect Warrington with Huddersfield. Ideal for a Thursday night mid-table RL clash in 2050. But not for regional re-generation. Also, why does the "upgrade" stop at Northallerton?
Northallerton is Rishi's train station, he lives a short distance from it.
Well, nobody seems to have discussed today what the Scots might think about the complete foulup over HS2. But seems superfluous when the Yorkshirepersons, monkey-hangers and Geordies are doing an admirable job of assessment already.
Mind, I seem to recall Mr Johnson proclaiming how HS2 would strengthen the sinews of the Union.
Ironically HS2 when completed will speed rail to Scotland
But it will never now be completed. That is the whole point of the news today.
The west coast HS2 will be completed speeding trains to Scotland
The Government's plan for #NorthernPowerhouseRail. There is some new track, going about half way across the Pennines. (This also shows, as expected, that HS2 will go to Manchester)
That new track seems to connect Warrington with Huddersfield. Ideal for a Thursday night mid-table RL clash in 2050. But not for regional re-generation. Also, why does the "upgrade" stop at Northallerton?
Northallerton is Rishi's train station, he lives a short distance from it.
Well, nobody seems to have discussed today what the Scots might think about the complete foulup over HS2. But seems superfluous when the Yorkshirepersons, monkey-hangers and Geordies are doing an admirable job of assessment already.
Mind, I seem to recall Mr Johnson proclaiming how HS2 would strengthen the sinews of the Union.
Ironically HS2 when completed will speed rail to Scotland
You could not make it up. When will you realise G that you cannot polish a turd and we all know it.
As a manager at my wife's company has been known to put it when faced with making a case, for a client, for something that is complete bollocks: "It's true that you can't polish a turd, but you can roll it in glitter"
It’s very clear from listening to the prime minister that the rethink of the eastern leg of HS2 is all about the politics of a new trainline running through Tory seats in midlands without new stations. They’ve clearly been scarred by the first leg from London- Birmingham https://twitter.com/AnushkaAsthana/status/1461331841714167808
There is a “Midlands Engine” prospectus for new transport infrastructure which I presume will also never see the light of day.
There was nothing stopping Boris also funding that if he wanted to bribe those Tory seats.
No, Boris (and the country) has been fucked by Treasury and the Transport Ministry.
I’ll say it again, ex-London and the SE, U.K. economic performance is being overtaken by former Warsaw Pact countries.
My advice to young people living in the North is to move to London. Or perhaps better, just emigrate. This country doesn’t know how or doesn’t want to let you prosper.
Why can't a 'larger than life' PM with a landslide majority won substantially off the back of his own persona stand up to the Treasury?
Because he's never stood up to anyone in his life. He's always had someone to do the standing up for him. It was Gilligan for cycle lanes in London, Frost for Brexit, Cummings for various things, Bingham for vaccines.
It's clear he doesn't have anyone to drive through levelling-up, or infrastructure improvements, so it dies.
He's got our man from the north Govey on the job doesn't he?
Let's see how it plays out.
*I’m a great admirer of Thatcher by the way, but her economic view is not fit for 2021.
You a MMT fan?
(Apologies, since you gave me a decent response)
No.
But I do note:
- U.K. prints it’s own money. - The fear that 100% debt-to-GDP impaired economic growth has pretty much been debunked. - Interest rates are very low.
I therefore wonder why the hell we want to fetishise debt levels over the future prosperity of 65% of the country.
Anyway, my point about Thatcher was more about the general theory that you can deregulate your way to growth. That’s pretty much played out: the U.K. is low regulation, and high labour flexibility. Yet the “North” is still poor, and getting (comparatively) poorer. Why?
I don't know why.
I'll guess your answer might be infrastructure?
I agree we should be borrowing heavily in these times of low interest rates (which won't be along for much longer by my reading.)
It’s very clear from listening to the prime minister that the rethink of the eastern leg of HS2 is all about the politics of a new trainline running through Tory seats in midlands without new stations. They’ve clearly been scarred by the first leg from London- Birmingham https://twitter.com/AnushkaAsthana/status/1461331841714167808
There is a “Midlands Engine” prospectus for new transport infrastructure which I presume will also never see the light of day.
There was nothing stopping Boris also funding that if he wanted to bribe those Tory seats.
No, Boris (and the country) has been fucked by Treasury and the Transport Ministry.
I’ll say it again, ex-London and the SE, U.K. economic performance is being overtaken by former Warsaw Pact countries.
My advice to young people living in the North is to move to London. Or perhaps better, just emigrate. This country doesn’t know how or doesn’t want to let you prosper.
Why can't a 'larger than life' PM with a landslide majority won substantially off the back of his own persona stand up to the Treasury?
Because he's never stood up to anyone in his life. He's always had someone to do the standing up for him. It was Gilligan for cycle lanes in London, Frost for Brexit, Cummings for various things, Bingham for vaccines.
It's clear he doesn't have anyone to drive through levelling-up, or infrastructure improvements, so it dies.
He's got our man from the north Govey on the job doesn't he?
Let's see how it plays out.
*I’m a great admirer of Thatcher by the way, but her economic view is not fit for 2021.
You a MMT fan?
(Apologies, since you gave me a decent response)
No.
But I do note:
- U.K. prints it’s own money. - The fear that 100% debt-to-GDP impaired economic growth has pretty much been debunked. - Interest rates are very low.
I therefore wonder why the hell we want to fetishise debt levels over the future prosperity of 65% of the country.
Anyway, my point about Thatcher was more about the general theory that you can deregulate your way to growth. That’s pretty much played out: the U.K. is low regulation, and high labour flexibility. Yet the “North” is still poor, and getting (comparatively) poorer. Why?
My issue with MMT is that it would clearly work - up to the point when it all explodes in an almighty explosion of inflation.
The problem is that you really want another guinea pig to find out what the explosion point is.
It’s very clear from listening to the prime minister that the rethink of the eastern leg of HS2 is all about the politics of a new trainline running through Tory seats in midlands without new stations. They’ve clearly been scarred by the first leg from London- Birmingham https://twitter.com/AnushkaAsthana/status/1461331841714167808
There is a “Midlands Engine” prospectus for new transport infrastructure which I presume will also never see the light of day.
There was nothing stopping Boris also funding that if he wanted to bribe those Tory seats.
No, Boris (and the country) has been fucked by Treasury and the Transport Ministry.
I’ll say it again, ex-London and the SE, U.K. economic performance is being overtaken by former Warsaw Pact countries.
My advice to young people living in the North is to move to London. Or perhaps better, just emigrate. This country doesn’t know how or doesn’t want to let you prosper.
Why can't a 'larger than life' PM with a landslide majority won substantially off the back of his own persona stand up to the Treasury?
Because he's never stood up to anyone in his life. He's always had someone to do the standing up for him. It was Gilligan for cycle lanes in London, Frost for Brexit, Cummings for various things, Bingham for vaccines.
It's clear he doesn't have anyone to drive through levelling-up, or infrastructure improvements, so it dies.
He's got our man from the north Govey on the job doesn't he?
Let's see how it plays out.
*I’m a great admirer of Thatcher by the way, but her economic view is not fit for 2021.
You a MMT fan?
(Apologies, since you gave me a decent response)
No.
But I do note:
- U.K. prints it’s own money. - The fear that 100% debt-to-GDP impaired economic growth has pretty much been debunked. - Interest rates are very low.
I therefore wonder why the hell we want to fetishise debt levels over the future prosperity of 65% of the country.
Anyway, my point about Thatcher was more about the general theory that you can deregulate your way to growth. That’s pretty much played out: the U.K. is low regulation, and high labour flexibility. Yet the “North” is still poor, and getting (comparatively) poorer. Why?
My issue with MMT is that it would clearly work - up to the point when it all explodes in an almighty explosion of inflation.
The problem is that you really want another guinea pig to find out what the explosion point is.
It’s very clear from listening to the prime minister that the rethink of the eastern leg of HS2 is all about the politics of a new trainline running through Tory seats in midlands without new stations. They’ve clearly been scarred by the first leg from London- Birmingham https://twitter.com/AnushkaAsthana/status/1461331841714167808
There is a “Midlands Engine” prospectus for new transport infrastructure which I presume will also never see the light of day.
There was nothing stopping Boris also funding that if he wanted to bribe those Tory seats.
No, Boris (and the country) has been fucked by Treasury and the Transport Ministry.
I’ll say it again, ex-London and the SE, U.K. economic performance is being overtaken by former Warsaw Pact countries.
My advice to young people living in the North is to move to London. Or perhaps better, just emigrate. This country doesn’t know how or doesn’t want to let you prosper.
Why can't a 'larger than life' PM with a landslide majority won substantially off the back of his own persona stand up to the Treasury?
Because he's never stood up to anyone in his life. He's always had someone to do the standing up for him. It was Gilligan for cycle lanes in London, Frost for Brexit, Cummings for various things, Bingham for vaccines.
It's clear he doesn't have anyone to drive through levelling-up, or infrastructure improvements, so it dies.
He's got our man from the north Govey on the job doesn't he?
Let's see how it plays out.
*I’m a great admirer of Thatcher by the way, but her economic view is not fit for 2021.
You a MMT fan?
(Apologies, since you gave me a decent response)
No.
But I do note:
- U.K. prints it’s own money. - The fear that 100% debt-to-GDP impaired economic growth has pretty much been debunked. - Interest rates are very low.
I therefore wonder why the hell we want to fetishise debt levels over the future prosperity of 65% of the country.
Anyway, my point about Thatcher was more about the general theory that you can deregulate your way to growth. That’s pretty much played out: the U.K. is low regulation, and high labour flexibility. Yet the “North” is still poor, and getting (comparatively) poorer. Why?
One of my friends pointed this out last night, we need a £350bn infrastructure renewal plan, borrowing costs are still at historic lows and the UK's economic potential and productivity is hampered by just how shit the infrastructure is. Boris talks about build back better but that means taking a risk, sacking the bean counters and investing in the future. We need better and more secure energy, we need better rail transport and full electrification of all railways, we need better waterways and to fix our victorian water infrastructure (and bin privatisation of water companies), we need housebuilding and to lead the way in net zero.
As he pointed out, to get to net zero it's going to cost us hundreds of billions either way, if we spend it now maybe it will be a 10% higher cost but it puts the UK on the front foot and companies here can export goods and services to others trying to reach net zero by 2040 and 2050. Instead we will do nothing, realise that Germany, the US and Asia have stolen a march on us and end up importing net zero for slightly less money but with the bulk of it spent overseas.
That’s pretty much played out: the U.K. is low regulation, and high labour flexibility. Yet the “North” is still poor, and getting (comparatively) poorer. Why?
How does this sit with your assertion that "Trade is pretty much a function: Value = (Proximity x Economic size) - Regulatory Friction"?
It’s very clear from listening to the prime minister that the rethink of the eastern leg of HS2 is all about the politics of a new trainline running through Tory seats in midlands without new stations. They’ve clearly been scarred by the first leg from London- Birmingham https://twitter.com/AnushkaAsthana/status/1461331841714167808
There is a “Midlands Engine” prospectus for new transport infrastructure which I presume will also never see the light of day.
There was nothing stopping Boris also funding that if he wanted to bribe those Tory seats.
No, Boris (and the country) has been fucked by Treasury and the Transport Ministry.
I’ll say it again, ex-London and the SE, U.K. economic performance is being overtaken by former Warsaw Pact countries.
My advice to young people living in the North is to move to London. Or perhaps better, just emigrate. This country doesn’t know how or doesn’t want to let you prosper.
Why can't a 'larger than life' PM with a landslide majority won substantially off the back of his own persona stand up to the Treasury?
Because he's never stood up to anyone in his life. He's always had someone to do the standing up for him. It was Gilligan for cycle lanes in London, Frost for Brexit, Cummings for various things, Bingham for vaccines.
It's clear he doesn't have anyone to drive through levelling-up, or infrastructure improvements, so it dies.
He's got our man from the north Govey on the job doesn't he?
Let's see how it plays out.
*I’m a great admirer of Thatcher by the way, but her economic view is not fit for 2021.
You a MMT fan?
(Apologies, since you gave me a decent response)
No.
But I do note:
- U.K. prints it’s own money. - The fear that 100% debt-to-GDP impaired economic growth has pretty much been debunked. - Interest rates are very low.
I therefore wonder why the hell we want to fetishise debt levels over the future prosperity of 65% of the country.
Anyway, my point about Thatcher was more about the general theory that you can deregulate your way to growth. That’s pretty much played out: the U.K. is low regulation, and high labour flexibility. Yet the “North” is still poor, and getting (comparatively) poorer. Why?
I don't know why.
I'll guess your answer might be infrastructure?
I agree we should be borrowing heavily in these times of low interest rates (which won't be along for much longer by my reading.)
Infrastructure + Skills + Local Autonomy is the magic recipe.
He's having a good week, Sir Keir, but he really needs to start appending these kinds of statements with what Labour will do. That's how to start building a government in waiting.
"...He's taking the country absolutely nowhere A Labour government will build HS3 and NPR, no ifs and buts"
etc. for each policy area. There is enough flexibility around timescales and funding that he need not worry about "unfunded promises" accusations, and I'm not sure they would stick anyway. Would just make the Tories look mean to the North.
The accepted wisdom is that LotOs only need to articulate policies once a GE is in sight.
Generally those saying they need a policy from the Opposition NOW are govt supporters; and they only say it when the govt is in trouble.
Obviously there is truth in this, but the demands of this particular time would suggest that something else is needed from the opposition in addition to waiting modestly on the subs bench sucking an orange.
The current lot have the claim to fame that they and only they could deliver and have delivered Brexit, along with some sub claims about vaccine programmes and so on. There is much truth in the first, and a bit of truth in the second.
They also have Olympic style records in borrowing, taxing and spending, to the extent that they are maxed out on their credit cards, and almost look like the Labour party.
They also look staggeringly sloppy in their presentation and style.
With all that they are level in the polls, when they should be 20 points behind.
Labour need to to exude two things: the capacity to win bigly, and competence with moderation coming out of their ears in warm blasts of steam.
They are not there yet. Further, the Brexit thingy means that they perhaps cannot win without actually telling us, realistically and simply, where they stand on the post Brexit plans, and on things like social care. Three word slogans won't do. They remind us of T May's three word slogans.
I don't think Labour should be 20 points ahead when the pandemic has blotted them out for most of the 2 years that have passed since the election.
That's the problem for Labour for supporting the government throughout those two years. They haven't built up a track record for independent thought where people could have said yes those guys super astute we always suspected Johnson was a tosser.
It's a bit late now. imo.
Not to dispute the general point - that oppositions need to look different to what they're opposing - but this wasn't so easy to do with the pandemic. For 2 main reasons:
Polling told them very strongly that the public did not want to see Labour harassing a government that was by and large seen to be doing its best in a national emergency akin to a war.
Labour and most of the public were in broad agreement with the general thrust of the government's Covid response. This being legal & guidance restrictions to combat the waves of infection and prevent the NHS collapsing, roll out the vaccine to end the pandemic.
It’s very clear from listening to the prime minister that the rethink of the eastern leg of HS2 is all about the politics of a new trainline running through Tory seats in midlands without new stations. They’ve clearly been scarred by the first leg from London- Birmingham https://twitter.com/AnushkaAsthana/status/1461331841714167808
There is a “Midlands Engine” prospectus for new transport infrastructure which I presume will also never see the light of day.
There was nothing stopping Boris also funding that if he wanted to bribe those Tory seats.
No, Boris (and the country) has been fucked by Treasury and the Transport Ministry.
I’ll say it again, ex-London and the SE, U.K. economic performance is being overtaken by former Warsaw Pact countries.
My advice to young people living in the North is to move to London. Or perhaps better, just emigrate. This country doesn’t know how or doesn’t want to let you prosper.
Why can't a 'larger than life' PM with a landslide majority won substantially off the back of his own persona stand up to the Treasury?
Because he's never stood up to anyone in his life. He's always had someone to do the standing up for him. It was Gilligan for cycle lanes in London, Frost for Brexit, Cummings for various things, Bingham for vaccines.
It's clear he doesn't have anyone to drive through levelling-up, or infrastructure improvements, so it dies.
He's got our man from the north Govey on the job doesn't he?
Let's see how it plays out.
*I’m a great admirer of Thatcher by the way, but her economic view is not fit for 2021.
You a MMT fan?
(Apologies, since you gave me a decent response)
No.
But I do note:
- U.K. prints it’s own money. - The fear that 100% debt-to-GDP impaired economic growth has pretty much been debunked. - Interest rates are very low.
I therefore wonder why the hell we want to fetishise debt levels over the future prosperity of 65% of the country.
Anyway, my point about Thatcher was more about the general theory that you can deregulate your way to growth. That’s pretty much played out: the U.K. is low regulation, and high labour flexibility. Yet the “North” is still poor, and getting (comparatively) poorer. Why?
I don't know why.
I'll guess your answer might be infrastructure?
I agree we should be borrowing heavily in these times of low interest rates (which won't be along for much longer by my reading.)
Infrastructure + Skills + Local Autonomy is the magic recipe.
Like the Local Autonomy that got us out of the EU you mean
That’s pretty much played out: the U.K. is low regulation, and high labour flexibility. Yet the “North” is still poor, and getting (comparatively) poorer. Why?
How does this sit with your assertion that "Trade is pretty much a function: Value = (Proximity x Economic size) - Regulatory Friction"?
You are confusing “trade” with “growth”, although the two things are obviously related.
It is true that Leeds is very much likely to “trade” more with Bradford, but that tells us nothing really about growth in Leeds or Bradford.
Well - back, depollyped and with the sinuses bored out; and explicit instruction to sneeze with open mouth to avoid pushing them back the other way ;-) .
Imagine you are a private firm, looking to invest in the U.K.
Are you gonna put your money in the North, after today, when the government has decided it’s not worth investing in?
You are not.
Be honest - you would take one look and start investigating the none UK options.
I wonder if PBers do invest locally? A few years ago I funded a startup gym near here (tartup funding more 3-4 years later), which is now coming good after years of hard work. For me it is part of my pension planning.
There are now half a dozen staff on the team, therapists based there, and a cafe about to open.
It’s very clear from listening to the prime minister that the rethink of the eastern leg of HS2 is all about the politics of a new trainline running through Tory seats in midlands without new stations. They’ve clearly been scarred by the first leg from London- Birmingham https://twitter.com/AnushkaAsthana/status/1461331841714167808
There is a “Midlands Engine” prospectus for new transport infrastructure which I presume will also never see the light of day.
There was nothing stopping Boris also funding that if he wanted to bribe those Tory seats.
No, Boris (and the country) has been fucked by Treasury and the Transport Ministry.
I’ll say it again, ex-London and the SE, U.K. economic performance is being overtaken by former Warsaw Pact countries.
My advice to young people living in the North is to move to London. Or perhaps better, just emigrate. This country doesn’t know how or doesn’t want to let you prosper.
Why can't a 'larger than life' PM with a landslide majority won substantially off the back of his own persona stand up to the Treasury?
Because he's never stood up to anyone in his life. He's always had someone to do the standing up for him. It was Gilligan for cycle lanes in London, Frost for Brexit, Cummings for various things, Bingham for vaccines.
It's clear he doesn't have anyone to drive through levelling-up, or infrastructure improvements, so it dies.
He's got our man from the north Govey on the job doesn't he?
Let's see how it plays out.
*I’m a great admirer of Thatcher by the way, but her economic view is not fit for 2021.
You a MMT fan?
(Apologies, since you gave me a decent response)
No.
But I do note:
- U.K. prints it’s own money. - The fear that 100% debt-to-GDP impaired economic growth has pretty much been debunked. - Interest rates are very low.
I therefore wonder why the hell we want to fetishise debt levels over the future prosperity of 65% of the country.
Anyway, my point about Thatcher was more about the general theory that you can deregulate your way to growth. That’s pretty much played out: the U.K. is low regulation, and high labour flexibility. Yet the “North” is still poor, and getting (comparatively) poorer. Why?
I don't know why.
I'll guess your answer might be infrastructure?
I agree we should be borrowing heavily in these times of low interest rates (which won't be along for much longer by my reading.)
Infrastructure + Skills + Local Autonomy is the magic recipe.
Like the Local Autonomy that got us out of the EU you mean
Sorry, couldn't resist.
It’s actually a fair point. But Westminster (to my mind) had massive autonomy within the EU, especially outside the Euro.
Whereas, in the U.K., local government is astonishingly feeble. International studies basically put U.K. (and Ireland) in a bucket with some dodgy East European countries that only got “democracy” about twenty years ago.
Well - back, depollyped and with the sinuses bored out; and explicit instruction to sneeze with open mouth to avoid pushing them back the other way ;-) .
Imagine you are a private firm, looking to invest in the U.K.
Are you gonna put your money in the North, after today, when the government has decided it’s not worth investing in?
You are not.
Be honest - you would take one look and start investigating the none UK options.
I wonder if PBers do invest locally? A few years ago I funded a startup gym near here (about 25k and 25k 3-4 years later), which is now coming good after years of hard work. For me it is part of my pension planning.
There are now half a dozen staff on the team, therapists based there, and a cafe about to open.
Do others do similar? Any examples?
I put about £500 into our community shop a few years back; not really expecting any payback other than capital refund, but I have benefited considerably from the wider range of foods etc. But maybe not what you are looking for.
That’s pretty much played out: the U.K. is low regulation, and high labour flexibility. Yet the “North” is still poor, and getting (comparatively) poorer. Why?
How does this sit with your assertion that "Trade is pretty much a function: Value = (Proximity x Economic size) - Regulatory Friction"?
The problem for the UK outside of London and the SE is geography. There's an arc of prosperity that runs from Northern Italy through Switzerland, South and West Germany, France and the Low Countries and across the Channel. It ends in the Chilterns. With better transport infrastructure you can shrink the effective distance between the other parts of the UK and those prosperous regions of Western Europe. With fewer trade barriers you can also encourage trade and boost productivity. I just don't see any logic right now in the Government's approach, I think it is more or less bound to mean a further deterioration in the standard of living in the rest of the UK vs London and the SE. It's tragic, really.
My dad did lots of work on sewage farms. Tomato plants were everywhere for this reason.
As far as I know he was never brave enough to pick any ...
As I may have mentioned my dad fought in the Korean War. Though he didn’t talk that much abut it, one thing he did say was that the whole country smelled of shit. Human excrement was the main fertiliser and it being a largely agricultural country, the reek was pervasive. Bully beef and tinned jam all round..
It’s very clear from listening to the prime minister that the rethink of the eastern leg of HS2 is all about the politics of a new trainline running through Tory seats in midlands without new stations. They’ve clearly been scarred by the first leg from London- Birmingham https://twitter.com/AnushkaAsthana/status/1461331841714167808
There is a “Midlands Engine” prospectus for new transport infrastructure which I presume will also never see the light of day.
There was nothing stopping Boris also funding that if he wanted to bribe those Tory seats.
No, Boris (and the country) has been fucked by Treasury and the Transport Ministry.
I’ll say it again, ex-London and the SE, U.K. economic performance is being overtaken by former Warsaw Pact countries.
My advice to young people living in the North is to move to London. Or perhaps better, just emigrate. This country doesn’t know how or doesn’t want to let you prosper.
Why can't a 'larger than life' PM with a landslide majority won substantially off the back of his own persona stand up to the Treasury?
Because he's never stood up to anyone in his life. He's always had someone to do the standing up for him. It was Gilligan for cycle lanes in London, Frost for Brexit, Cummings for various things, Bingham for vaccines.
It's clear he doesn't have anyone to drive through levelling-up, or infrastructure improvements, so it dies.
He's made the Gove appointment. I took that to be a sign of intent but maybe I'm being a bit optimistic there.
It’s very clear from listening to the prime minister that the rethink of the eastern leg of HS2 is all about the politics of a new trainline running through Tory seats in midlands without new stations. They’ve clearly been scarred by the first leg from London- Birmingham https://twitter.com/AnushkaAsthana/status/1461331841714167808
There is a “Midlands Engine” prospectus for new transport infrastructure which I presume will also never see the light of day.
There was nothing stopping Boris also funding that if he wanted to bribe those Tory seats.
No, Boris (and the country) has been fucked by Treasury and the Transport Ministry.
I’ll say it again, ex-London and the SE, U.K. economic performance is being overtaken by former Warsaw Pact countries.
My advice to young people living in the North is to move to London. Or perhaps better, just emigrate. This country doesn’t know how or doesn’t want to let you prosper.
Why can't a 'larger than life' PM with a landslide majority won substantially off the back of his own persona stand up to the Treasury?
Because he's never stood up to anyone in his life. He's always had someone to do the standing up for him. It was Gilligan for cycle lanes in London, Frost for Brexit, Cummings for various things, Bingham for vaccines.
It's clear he doesn't have anyone to drive through levelling-up, or infrastructure improvements, so it dies.
He's got our man from the north Govey on the job doesn't he?
Let's see how it plays out.
*I’m a great admirer of Thatcher by the way, but her economic view is not fit for 2021.
You a MMT fan?
(Apologies, since you gave me a decent response)
No.
But I do note:
- U.K. prints it’s own money. - The fear that 100% debt-to-GDP impaired economic growth has pretty much been debunked. - Interest rates are very low.
I therefore wonder why the hell we want to fetishise debt levels over the future prosperity of 65% of the country.
Anyway, my point about Thatcher was more about the general theory that you can deregulate your way to growth. That’s pretty much played out: the U.K. is low regulation, and high labour flexibility. Yet the “North” is still poor, and getting (comparatively) poorer. Why?
I don't know why.
I'll guess your answer might be infrastructure?
I agree we should be borrowing heavily in these times of low interest rates (which won't be along for much longer by my reading.)
Infrastructure + Skills + Local Autonomy is the magic recipe.
Like the Local Autonomy that got us out of the EU you mean
Sorry, couldn't resist.
It’s actually a fair point. But Westminster (to my mind) had massive autonomy within the EU, especially outside the Euro.
Whereas, in the U.K., local government is astonishingly feeble. International studies basically put U.K. (and Ireland) in a bucket with some dodgy East European countries that only got “democracy” about twenty years ago.
It’s very clear from listening to the prime minister that the rethink of the eastern leg of HS2 is all about the politics of a new trainline running through Tory seats in midlands without new stations. They’ve clearly been scarred by the first leg from London- Birmingham https://twitter.com/AnushkaAsthana/status/1461331841714167808
There is a “Midlands Engine” prospectus for new transport infrastructure which I presume will also never see the light of day.
There was nothing stopping Boris also funding that if he wanted to bribe those Tory seats.
No, Boris (and the country) has been fucked by Treasury and the Transport Ministry.
I’ll say it again, ex-London and the SE, U.K. economic performance is being overtaken by former Warsaw Pact countries.
My advice to young people living in the North is to move to London. Or perhaps better, just emigrate. This country doesn’t know how or doesn’t want to let you prosper.
Why can't a 'larger than life' PM with a landslide majority won substantially off the back of his own persona stand up to the Treasury?
Because he's never stood up to anyone in his life. He's always had someone to do the standing up for him. It was Gilligan for cycle lanes in London, Frost for Brexit, Cummings for various things, Bingham for vaccines.
It's clear he doesn't have anyone to drive through levelling-up, or infrastructure improvements, so it dies.
He's made the Gove appointment. I took that to be a sign of intent but maybe I'm being a bit optimistic there.
It's also a question whether he expects Mr Gove to succeed. And what the consequences might be for Mr Gove's career.
An interesting calculation - which now has to be redone.
Well - back, depollyped and with the sinuses bored out; and explicit instruction to sneeze with open mouth to avoid pushing them back the other way ;-) .
Imagine you are a private firm, looking to invest in the U.K.
Are you gonna put your money in the North, after today, when the government has decided it’s not worth investing in?
You are not.
Be honest - you would take one look and start investigating the none UK options.
I wonder if PBers do invest locally? A few years ago I funded a startup gym near here (tartup funding more 3-4 years later), which is now coming good after years of hard work. For me it is part of my pension planning.
There are now half a dozen staff on the team, therapists based there, and a cafe about to open.
Do others do similar? Any examples?
Wish I could say yes, but I’ve pissed away all my money on property and child-raising in recent years.
I’ve been asked to put 10k into a digital start-up, and I’m told i can claim 5k back from HMRC and a further 2.5k if it fails. Perhaps others here can tell me if that’s true.
My dad did lots of work on sewage farms. Tomato plants were everywhere for this reason.
As far as I know he was never brave enough to pick any ...
As I may have mentioned my dad fought in the Korean War. Though he didn’t talk that much abut it, one thing he did say was that the whole country smelled of shit. Human excrement was the main fertiliser and it being a largely agricultural country, the reek was pervasive. Bully beef and tinned jam all round..
Your Dad?
I only found out at his funeral that my grandad fought there.
It’s very clear from listening to the prime minister that the rethink of the eastern leg of HS2 is all about the politics of a new trainline running through Tory seats in midlands without new stations. They’ve clearly been scarred by the first leg from London- Birmingham https://twitter.com/AnushkaAsthana/status/1461331841714167808
There is a “Midlands Engine” prospectus for new transport infrastructure which I presume will also never see the light of day.
There was nothing stopping Boris also funding that if he wanted to bribe those Tory seats.
No, Boris (and the country) has been fucked by Treasury and the Transport Ministry.
I’ll say it again, ex-London and the SE, U.K. economic performance is being overtaken by former Warsaw Pact countries.
My advice to young people living in the North is to move to London. Or perhaps better, just emigrate. This country doesn’t know how or doesn’t want to let you prosper.
Why can't a 'larger than life' PM with a landslide majority won substantially off the back of his own persona stand up to the Treasury?
Because he's never stood up to anyone in his life. He's always had someone to do the standing up for him. It was Gilligan for cycle lanes in London, Frost for Brexit, Cummings for various things, Bingham for vaccines.
It's clear he doesn't have anyone to drive through levelling-up, or infrastructure improvements, so it dies.
He's got our man from the north Govey on the job doesn't he?
Let's see how it plays out.
*I’m a great admirer of Thatcher by the way, but her economic view is not fit for 2021.
You a MMT fan?
(Apologies, since you gave me a decent response)
No.
But I do note:
- U.K. prints it’s own money. - The fear that 100% debt-to-GDP impaired economic growth has pretty much been debunked. - Interest rates are very low.
I therefore wonder why the hell we want to fetishise debt levels over the future prosperity of 65% of the country.
Anyway, my point about Thatcher was more about the general theory that you can deregulate your way to growth. That’s pretty much played out: the U.K. is low regulation, and high labour flexibility. Yet the “North” is still poor, and getting (comparatively) poorer. Why?
I don't know why.
I'll guess your answer might be infrastructure?
I agree we should be borrowing heavily in these times of low interest rates (which won't be along for much longer by my reading.)
Infrastructure + Skills + Local Autonomy is the magic recipe.
Like the Local Autonomy that got us out of the EU you mean
Sorry, couldn't resist.
It’s actually a fair point. But Westminster (to my mind) had massive autonomy within the EU, especially outside the Euro.
Whereas, in the U.K., local government is astonishingly feeble. International studies basically put U.K. (and Ireland) in a bucket with some dodgy East European countries that only got “democracy” about twenty years ago.
Ireland is massively more centralized than the UK
Which will be hurting them. But perhaps less so given both pop and geo size.
It’s very clear from listening to the prime minister that the rethink of the eastern leg of HS2 is all about the politics of a new trainline running through Tory seats in midlands without new stations. They’ve clearly been scarred by the first leg from London- Birmingham https://twitter.com/AnushkaAsthana/status/1461331841714167808
There is a “Midlands Engine” prospectus for new transport infrastructure which I presume will also never see the light of day.
There was nothing stopping Boris also funding that if he wanted to bribe those Tory seats.
No, Boris (and the country) has been fucked by Treasury and the Transport Ministry.
I’ll say it again, ex-London and the SE, U.K. economic performance is being overtaken by former Warsaw Pact countries.
My advice to young people living in the North is to move to London. Or perhaps better, just emigrate. This country doesn’t know how or doesn’t want to let you prosper.
Why can't a 'larger than life' PM with a landslide majority won substantially off the back of his own persona stand up to the Treasury?
Because he's never stood up to anyone in his life. He's always had someone to do the standing up for him. It was Gilligan for cycle lanes in London, Frost for Brexit, Cummings for various things, Bingham for vaccines.
It's clear he doesn't have anyone to drive through levelling-up, or infrastructure improvements, so it dies.
He's made the Gove appointment. I took that to be a sign of intent but maybe I'm being a bit optimistic there.
Yep but as I've just pointed out today Gove has been given 2 smashed legs and a broken arm to deal with before he starts work.
He's now on the back foot because literally every project that has been promised and hyped up for the past 2 years has just been jettisoned.
PB is weighted towards railway fans. It may be news to many that everyone in the north of England travels by car (in the north of Scotland also boat and small plane) and plans to carry on doing so. This is especially true of those who bother to vote and live in Tory or Tory winnable seats.
The number of people appalled by the Aeschylean tragedy of HSwhatever number being cancelled with be dwarfed by the indifferent and those pleased that their rhubarb beds and whippet race tracks are not being subject to compulsory purchase orders to build it.
As a bona fide Yorkshireman I can assure you this is damaging to the Tories.
It's fitting this narrative that Government is prepared to spaff up billions on London and the South but not the North.
It is indeed but as I've argued for years if you really wanted to help the North you'd recognise the North uses roads not rails for almost all transport and economic activity and that rails are a teeny, tiny obsessive primarily for people who work in Manchester or London.
If you really wanted to help the North then tens of billions invested in new motorways and roads - actually new motorways not turning hard shoulders into camera-operated lanes - would help the North far, far more.
How does that get you anywhere any faster? - it may remove a few traffic jams (I would however seriously doubt it) but you can still only travel at 70mph.
70mph is reasonably fast. The problem is both that you can't always do 70mp and that you're forced to go on a much longer journey because you have to follow the limited amount of roads that are available.
If you were to build a string of new motorways, it would remove a lot of traffic jams, as vehicles wouldn't all be piled into the same pinch points like the M60 or M6/M62 interchange. But equally importantly it would allow more direct routes, so you wouldn't be compelled to go on stupidly long detours simply because the limited motorway network takes you that way.
I gave the example earlier today of Aintree to Bolton. They're 22 miles apart so should be about 18 minutes apart at 70mph but instead its a 1 hour journey. As the crow flies that's basically a straight line West to East and the M58 takes you halfway there in a virtually straight line. But because the M58 was only half-built, that's not the route to go.
Instead according to Google Maps the quickest route to take is to go South on the M57 past Knowsley until you reach the M62 interchange, then East on the M62 past Warrington until you get to Eccles, Manchester and the M60, through Manchester on the M60 until you reach the M61, then back North again on the A666.
What should be an 18 minutes point to point 70mph journey instead takes an hour, across four different motorways, going South then North again, and through some of the most congested roads in the Northwest in Manchester because there is no alternative built.
My dad did lots of work on sewage farms. Tomato plants were everywhere for this reason.
As far as I know he was never brave enough to pick any ...
As I may have mentioned my dad fought in the Korean War. Though he didn’t talk that much abut it, one thing he did say was that the whole country smelled of shit. Human excrement was the main fertiliser and it being a largely agricultural country, the reek was pervasive. Bully beef and tinned jam all round..
Your Dad?
I only found out at his funeral that my grandad fought there.
I didn't realise you were such an old fart.
Just wait till you grow a bit older. Then someone else will be calling you an o. f.
It’s very clear from listening to the prime minister that the rethink of the eastern leg of HS2 is all about the politics of a new trainline running through Tory seats in midlands without new stations. They’ve clearly been scarred by the first leg from London- Birmingham https://twitter.com/AnushkaAsthana/status/1461331841714167808
There is a “Midlands Engine” prospectus for new transport infrastructure which I presume will also never see the light of day.
There was nothing stopping Boris also funding that if he wanted to bribe those Tory seats.
No, Boris (and the country) has been fucked by Treasury and the Transport Ministry.
I’ll say it again, ex-London and the SE, U.K. economic performance is being overtaken by former Warsaw Pact countries.
My advice to young people living in the North is to move to London. Or perhaps better, just emigrate. This country doesn’t know how or doesn’t want to let you prosper.
Why can't a 'larger than life' PM with a landslide majority won substantially off the back of his own persona stand up to the Treasury?
Because he's never stood up to anyone in his life. He's always had someone to do the standing up for him. It was Gilligan for cycle lanes in London, Frost for Brexit, Cummings for various things, Bingham for vaccines.
It's clear he doesn't have anyone to drive through levelling-up, or infrastructure improvements, so it dies.
He's got our man from the north Govey on the job doesn't he?
Let's see how it plays out.
Given that today's announcement is the equivalent of a cricket ball to the bollox while someone else went with a baseball bat to both legs and an arm, Gove is going to have great difficult delivering anything now.
Gove is another useless turd in any case, good for nothing he will produce nothing.
My dad did lots of work on sewage farms. Tomato plants were everywhere for this reason.
As far as I know he was never brave enough to pick any ...
As I may have mentioned my dad fought in the Korean War. Though he didn’t talk that much abut it, one thing he did say was that the whole country smelled of shit. Human excrement was the main fertiliser and it being a largely agricultural country, the reek was pervasive. Bully beef and tinned jam all round..
Your Dad?
I only found out at his funeral that my grandad fought there.
I didn't realise you were such an old fart.
Just wait till you grow a bit older. Then someone else will be calling you an o. f.
The state of my liver means it will be quite a close call if I make it that far to be honest.
That’s pretty much played out: the U.K. is low regulation, and high labour flexibility. Yet the “North” is still poor, and getting (comparatively) poorer. Why?
How does this sit with your assertion that "Trade is pretty much a function: Value = (Proximity x Economic size) - Regulatory Friction"?
You are confusing “trade” with “growth”, although the two things are obviously related.
It is true that Leeds is very much likely to “trade” more with Bradford, but that tells us nothing really about growth in Leeds or Bradford.
The point is that the treasury rates the clusters that govern economic development between Leeds and Birmingham and Leeds and London as low potential (lower than £4bn apparently). It's they say making the proximity part of the equation makes no difference to the overall picture. It's like the UK/Morocco example I was talking about, the official rating is extremely low, like hilariously so. Yet as we know there are multiple UK/Morocco deals in the pipeline including a solar energy interconnect, investment by UK companies in Moroccan infrastructure, export of planning services, export of solar energy expertise etc... The treasury model says that this relationship is of zero value and will always be of zero value, yet those projects will add up to tens of billions in value within a few years for both countries.
Proximity is a much smaller factor than, IMO, inertia.
PB is weighted towards railway fans. It may be news to many that everyone in the north of England travels by car (in the north of Scotland also boat and small plane) and plans to carry on doing so. This is especially true of those who bother to vote and live in Tory or Tory winnable seats.
The number of people appalled by the Aeschylean tragedy of HSwhatever number being cancelled with be dwarfed by the indifferent and those pleased that their rhubarb beds and whippet race tracks are not being subject to compulsory purchase orders to build it.
As a bona fide Yorkshireman I can assure you this is damaging to the Tories.
It's fitting this narrative that Government is prepared to spaff up billions on London and the South but not the North.
It is indeed but as I've argued for years if you really wanted to help the North you'd recognise the North uses roads not rails for almost all transport and economic activity and that rails are a teeny, tiny obsessive primarily for people who work in Manchester or London.
If you really wanted to help the North then tens of billions invested in new motorways and roads - actually new motorways not turning hard shoulders into camera-operated lanes - would help the North far, far more.
How does that get you anywhere any faster? - it may remove a few traffic jams (I would however seriously doubt it) but you can still only travel at 70mph.
70mph is reasonably fast. The problem is both that you can't always do 70mp and that you're forced to go on a much longer journey because you have to follow the limited amount of roads that are available.
If you were to build a string of new motorways, it would remove a lot of traffic jams, as vehicles wouldn't all be piled into the same pinch points like the M60 or M6/M62 interchange. But equally importantly it would allow more direct routes, so you wouldn't be compelled to go on stupidly long detours simply because the limited motorway network takes you that way.
I gave the example earlier today of Aintree to Bolton. They're 22 miles apart so should be about 18 minutes apart at 70mph but instead its a 1 hour journey. As the crow flies that's basically a straight line West to East and the M58 takes you halfway there in a virtually straight line. But because the M58 was only half-built, that's not the route to go.
Instead according to Google Maps the quickest route to take is to go South on the M57 past Knowsley until you reach the M62 interchange, then East on the M62 past Warrington until you get to Eccles, Manchester and the M60, through Manchester on the M60 until you reach the M61, then back North again on the A666.
What should be an 18 minutes point to point 70mph journey instead takes an hour, across four different motorways, going South then North again, and through some of the most congested roads in the Northwest in Manchester because there is no alternative built.
Its maddening.
But there isn't enough demand to justify a direct road from Aintree to Bolton, you can only build the roads that have sufficient demand to warrant them being built.
And for reasons why your dream road will never be built see @MaxPB and @Gardenwalker 's discussion regarding Gravity models and their inability to go beyond amplifying what already exists.
It’s very clear from listening to the prime minister that the rethink of the eastern leg of HS2 is all about the politics of a new trainline running through Tory seats in midlands without new stations. They’ve clearly been scarred by the first leg from London- Birmingham https://twitter.com/AnushkaAsthana/status/1461331841714167808
There is a “Midlands Engine” prospectus for new transport infrastructure which I presume will also never see the light of day.
There was nothing stopping Boris also funding that if he wanted to bribe those Tory seats.
No, Boris (and the country) has been fucked by Treasury and the Transport Ministry.
I’ll say it again, ex-London and the SE, U.K. economic performance is being overtaken by former Warsaw Pact countries.
My advice to young people living in the North is to move to London. Or perhaps better, just emigrate. This country doesn’t know how or doesn’t want to let you prosper.
Why can't a 'larger than life' PM with a landslide majority won substantially off the back of his own persona stand up to the Treasury?
Because he's never stood up to anyone in his life. He's always had someone to do the standing up for him. It was Gilligan for cycle lanes in London, Frost for Brexit, Cummings for various things, Bingham for vaccines.
It's clear he doesn't have anyone to drive through levelling-up, or infrastructure improvements, so it dies.
He's got our man from the north Govey on the job doesn't he?
Let's see how it plays out.
Given that today's announcement is the equivalent of a cricket ball to the bollox while someone else went with a baseball bat to both legs and an arm, Gove is going to have great difficult delivering anything now.
I was a HS2E fan - but since it was not really going to affect me I'll cope.
If Nippy actually cared about Scotland she'd call BJ's bluff and start building HS2E from Aberdeen.
But everyone knows she hates Aberdeen and the Shire for voting No.
It’s very clear from listening to the prime minister that the rethink of the eastern leg of HS2 is all about the politics of a new trainline running through Tory seats in midlands without new stations. They’ve clearly been scarred by the first leg from London- Birmingham https://twitter.com/AnushkaAsthana/status/1461331841714167808
There is a “Midlands Engine” prospectus for new transport infrastructure which I presume will also never see the light of day.
There was nothing stopping Boris also funding that if he wanted to bribe those Tory seats.
No, Boris (and the country) has been fucked by Treasury and the Transport Ministry.
I’ll say it again, ex-London and the SE, U.K. economic performance is being overtaken by former Warsaw Pact countries.
My advice to young people living in the North is to move to London. Or perhaps better, just emigrate. This country doesn’t know how or doesn’t want to let you prosper.
Why can't a 'larger than life' PM with a landslide majority won substantially off the back of his own persona stand up to the Treasury?
Because he's never stood up to anyone in his life. He's always had someone to do the standing up for him. It was Gilligan for cycle lanes in London, Frost for Brexit, Cummings for various things, Bingham for vaccines.
It's clear he doesn't have anyone to drive through levelling-up, or infrastructure improvements, so it dies.
He's got our man from the north Govey on the job doesn't he?
Let's see how it plays out.
*I’m a great admirer of Thatcher by the way, but her economic view is not fit for 2021.
You a MMT fan?
(Apologies, since you gave me a decent response)
No.
But I do note:
- U.K. prints it’s own money. - The fear that 100% debt-to-GDP impaired economic growth has pretty much been debunked. - Interest rates are very low.
I therefore wonder why the hell we want to fetishise debt levels over the future prosperity of 65% of the country.
Anyway, my point about Thatcher was more about the general theory that you can deregulate your way to growth. That’s pretty much played out: the U.K. is low regulation, and high labour flexibility. Yet the “North” is still poor, and getting (comparatively) poorer. Why?
I don't know why.
I'll guess your answer might be infrastructure?
I agree we should be borrowing heavily in these times of low interest rates (which won't be along for much longer by my reading.)
Infrastructure + Skills + Local Autonomy is the magic recipe.
Local Autonomy can be too local though. Put it down to the sub-city region level and it's too small for politicians to care about economic development and just focus on NIMBY issues.
I also think infrastructure needs to be about more than telecoms and travel. If you want to keep the newly skilled people leaving you need to spend a lot on making the place nice to live. Concrete brutalism and high rises are disastrous for this. You need community based streets, trees, parks, public art, little shops and restaurants.
My dad did lots of work on sewage farms. Tomato plants were everywhere for this reason.
As far as I know he was never brave enough to pick any ...
As I may have mentioned my dad fought in the Korean War. Though he didn’t talk that much abut it, one thing he did say was that the whole country smelled of shit. Human excrement was the main fertiliser and it being a largely agricultural country, the reek was pervasive. Bully beef and tinned jam all round..
Heard that when a lot of elderly, rural folk were re-housed in the 90's in tower blocks in Seoul, they would go out each evening and dutifully do their patriotic duty and shit in the stairwells. This may be apocryphal.
It’s very clear from listening to the prime minister that the rethink of the eastern leg of HS2 is all about the politics of a new trainline running through Tory seats in midlands without new stations. They’ve clearly been scarred by the first leg from London- Birmingham https://twitter.com/AnushkaAsthana/status/1461331841714167808
There is a “Midlands Engine” prospectus for new transport infrastructure which I presume will also never see the light of day.
There was nothing stopping Boris also funding that if he wanted to bribe those Tory seats.
No, Boris (and the country) has been fucked by Treasury and the Transport Ministry.
I’ll say it again, ex-London and the SE, U.K. economic performance is being overtaken by former Warsaw Pact countries.
My advice to young people living in the North is to move to London. Or perhaps better, just emigrate. This country doesn’t know how or doesn’t want to let you prosper.
Why can't a 'larger than life' PM with a landslide majority won substantially off the back of his own persona stand up to the Treasury?
Because he's never stood up to anyone in his life. He's always had someone to do the standing up for him. It was Gilligan for cycle lanes in London, Frost for Brexit, Cummings for various things, Bingham for vaccines.
It's clear he doesn't have anyone to drive through levelling-up, or infrastructure improvements, so it dies.
He's got our man from the north Govey on the job doesn't he?
Let's see how it plays out.
Given that today's announcement is the equivalent of a cricket ball to the bollox while someone else went with a baseball bat to both legs and an arm, Gove is going to have great difficult delivering anything now.
I was a HS2E fan - but since it was not really going to affect me I'll cope.
If Nippy actually cared about Scotland she'd call BJ's bluff and start building HS2E from Aberdeen.
But everyone knows she hates Aberdeen and the Shire for voting No.
The Shire?
Hobbits?
Aberdeenshire - voted 60pc No, thus saving Scotland from the prospect of South Sudan MK 2
That’s pretty much played out: the U.K. is low regulation, and high labour flexibility. Yet the “North” is still poor, and getting (comparatively) poorer. Why?
How does this sit with your assertion that "Trade is pretty much a function: Value = (Proximity x Economic size) - Regulatory Friction"?
The problem for the UK outside of London and the SE is geography. There's an arc of prosperity that runs from Northern Italy through Switzerland, South and West Germany, France and the Low Countries and across the Channel. It ends in the Chilterns. With better transport infrastructure you can shrink the effective distance between the other parts of the UK and those prosperous regions of Western Europe. With fewer trade barriers you can also encourage trade and boost productivity. I just don't see any logic right now in the Government's approach, I think it is more or less bound to mean a further deterioration in the standard of living in the rest of the UK vs London and the SE. It's tragic, really.
Broadly agree, though I’d note that comparative success of some isolated areas - Barcelona, Scandinavia, Vienna.
It’s about both inter and *intra* connectivity, availability of local skills, etc.
As for the government’s growth strategy, there seriously isn’t one. I’m not even making a political point.
It really is a tragedy for this country which, despite rumours to the contrary, I do love.
'Dilnot told the Treasury select committee that the change meant about 60% of older people who end up needing social care would lose out, compared with the plan he proposed. He said it would “hit people in regions of the country with lower house prices, so there is a north-south axis to this”.
He said: “The people who are most harshly affected by this change are people with assets of exactly £106,000. But everybody with assets of less than £186,000 would do less well under what the government is proposing than the proposals that we made and the proposals that were legislated for. That was a big change announced yesterday. It finds savings exclusively from the less well-off group.”'
It’s very clear from listening to the prime minister that the rethink of the eastern leg of HS2 is all about the politics of a new trainline running through Tory seats in midlands without new stations. They’ve clearly been scarred by the first leg from London- Birmingham https://twitter.com/AnushkaAsthana/status/1461331841714167808
There is a “Midlands Engine” prospectus for new transport infrastructure which I presume will also never see the light of day.
There was nothing stopping Boris also funding that if he wanted to bribe those Tory seats.
No, Boris (and the country) has been fucked by Treasury and the Transport Ministry.
I’ll say it again, ex-London and the SE, U.K. economic performance is being overtaken by former Warsaw Pact countries.
My advice to young people living in the North is to move to London. Or perhaps better, just emigrate. This country doesn’t know how or doesn’t want to let you prosper.
Why can't a 'larger than life' PM with a landslide majority won substantially off the back of his own persona stand up to the Treasury?
Because he's never stood up to anyone in his life. He's always had someone to do the standing up for him. It was Gilligan for cycle lanes in London, Frost for Brexit, Cummings for various things, Bingham for vaccines.
It's clear he doesn't have anyone to drive through levelling-up, or infrastructure improvements, so it dies.
He's got our man from the north Govey on the job doesn't he?
Let's see how it plays out.
*I’m a great admirer of Thatcher by the way, but her economic view is not fit for 2021.
You a MMT fan?
(Apologies, since you gave me a decent response)
No.
But I do note:
- U.K. prints it’s own money. - The fear that 100% debt-to-GDP impaired economic growth has pretty much been debunked. - Interest rates are very low.
I therefore wonder why the hell we want to fetishise debt levels over the future prosperity of 65% of the country.
Anyway, my point about Thatcher was more about the general theory that you can deregulate your way to growth. That’s pretty much played out: the U.K. is low regulation, and high labour flexibility. Yet the “North” is still poor, and getting (comparatively) poorer. Why?
I don't know why.
I'll guess your answer might be infrastructure?
I agree we should be borrowing heavily in these times of low interest rates (which won't be along for much longer by my reading.)
Infrastructure + Skills + Local Autonomy is the magic recipe.
Local Autonomy can be too local though. Put it down to the sub-city region level and it's too small for politicians to care about economic development and just focus on NIMBY issues.
I also think infrastructure needs to be about more than telecoms and travel. If you want to keep the newly skilled people leaving you need to spend a lot on making the place nice to live. Concrete brutalism and high rises are disastrous for this. You need community based streets, trees, parks, public art, little shops and restaurants.
Comments
However, a reputation for having no policies is also dangerous. So a few intermittent commitments in mid-term is about right.
The claim is that they scientifically analyse the economy, enabling predictions of the effects of various interventions to be made, so that we can choose the optimal course of action.
Or it could just be that they provide the illusion of that so as to justify decisions made to benefit one interest group over another in a way that is harder to challenge.
I can easily see many people being prepared to pay for the latter.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/nov/18/support-for-populist-sentiment-falls-across-europe-survey-finds
Going all pipedreamy, I also wonder if there's going to be any improvements for the Castle Donington line between Sheet Stores and Stenson? Perhaps a northern curve at Stenson (also perhaps demolishing the house I was born in...)
It's fitting this narrative that Government is prepared to spaff up billions on London and the South but not the North.
38m
"To have to withdraw in this House and then scuttle out like a beetle and tweet it is, I think, utterly disrespectful to this House"
Jacob Rees-Mogg criticises Labour leader Keir Starmer for calling Boris Johnson a "coward"
https://bbc.in/3FqgCsS
https://twitter.com/BBCPolitics/status/1461330751824216073
Trigger warning for Scott - he misuses the word retweet in the clip. Don't get yourself too wound up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Midlands_Parkway_railway_station
But ceteris simply is never paribus under any circumstances involving human beings and the passage of time.
So it is a guess. And uses the application of equations, utterly unfalsifiable ones, to justify it and therefore shut down dissent. Because the econometricians have spoken.
See use of OBR forecasts to "prove" policy.
Value = (Proximity x Economic size) - Regulatory Friction.
Of course a US deal is better than a Morocco one, given the size of the US economy.
We have chosen to increase regulatory friction on our nearest trade partner, and one of the biggest economically for that matter.
This is not at all controversial, unlike infrastructure investment where the battle is between the neo-classists in Treasury and the endogenous growth theories which make much more sense in the real world.
It's clear he doesn't have anyone to drive through levelling-up, or infrastructure improvements, so it dies.
1) flunkies, who serve to make their superiors feel important, e.g., receptionists, administrative assistants, door attendants, makers of websites whose sites neglect ease of use and speed for looks;
2) goons, who act to harm or deceive others on behalf of their employer, e.g., lobbyists, corporate lawyers, telemarketers, public relations specialists, community managers;
3) duct tapers, who temporarily fix problems that could be fixed permanently, e.g., programmers repairing bloated code, airline desk staff who calm passengers whose bags do not arrive;
4) box tickers, who create the appearance that something useful is being done when it is not, e.g., survey administrators, in-house magazine journalists, corporate compliance officers, quality service managers;
5) taskmasters, who manage—or create extra work for—those who do not need it, e.g., middle management, leadership professionals
Today they have reasserted the dominance of this failed predictive model in the UK, we're all going to have to get used to it because Labour or Tory, the same wankers in the treasury pushing the same broken models will exist and the nation will be starved of any kind of investment beyond maintenance of what already exists and a few token bits here and there.
Fibre optic is the classic example of this, 20 years ago countries in Eastern Europe, Asia and elsewhere were investing billions into fibre optic cabling despite the value of the internet and ecommerce being fairly low compared to where it is now. We had that opportunity but the same arseholes in the treasury blocked it because the multiplier on increasing the value of the internet was poor at the time. The bean counters can't see beyond their spreadsheets and the rubbish outputs they get from them. We're going to keep missing opportunities until someone goes in and sacks them all.
Otherwise if you rule out leaving the EU then that means we're stuck with that forever with no say in our government [for EU jurisdiction stuff] for all eternity until you finally reconcile yourself with actually leaving the EU.
Let's see how it plays out.
As an economist I try to be quite humble about what we can and can't do. Of course it isn't a science. On the other hand, I am often quite surprised at how wrong people can get things when they haven't had any training in economics. Which makes me realise that we do have something to add. My employer certainly seems to think so, for which I am grateful.
And quite frankly its a model for inaction - which may be wedded to why the Treasury loves it so much.
Let’s see what Gove does, but unfortunately BEIS is run by another “do nothing” Thatcherite* and Transport by some kind of mail order conman wearing a gerbil on his head.
*I’m a great admirer of Thatcher by the way, but her economic view is not fit for 2021.
It's a bit late now. imo.
If you really wanted to help the North then tens of billions invested in new motorways and roads - actually new motorways not turning hard shoulders into camera-operated lanes - would help the North far, far more.
"Leeds to Bradford in 12 minutes" - but look at the detail and it says "Network Rail is also being asked to take forward an upgrade of the line between Bradford and Leeds via New Pudsey to include speed improvements and electrification. The aim would be to deliver a non-stop journey time between the cities potentially as low as 12 minutes (subject to business case)".
So, like so much of what is being announced that hadn't already been approved, that claim is - as I said - bollocks.
That’s the U.K., of course, where an apposite Latin tag all take you much further than actually wanting to invest in the economy.
Equally while in, we compromised. As do many states around the planet when international relations and trade are concerned. Compromise. Did we get everything we wanted all the time? No. Did we influence each element? Yes.
But the argument that we had no democratic say was demolished in 2016. And yet you are still trotting out the under the yoke of the EU line.
(Apologies, since you gave me a decent response)
Is it butchery of an original plan caused by the treasury continually asking what can be done for a few billion less?
https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-part-i-war-at-the-dawn-of-civilization/
In summary, soft, decadent, urbanised, civilised peoples are in general *much more successful* at waging war than simple, tough, hardy desert/steppe/jungle peoples, because the successful delivery of violence depends hugely upon good organisation and logistics. Over the course of 5,000 years , relatively small (relative to overall population size) highly trained, professional armies have proved by far the most effective war machines.
If Nippy actually cared about Scotland she'd call BJ's bluff and start building HS2E from Aberdeen.
But everyone knows she hates Aberdeen and the Shire for voting No.
https://twitter.com/TadeuszGiczan/status/1461346808970440709?s=20
NPRFiddlers Ferry, Sankey and Latchford will supposedly cut Liverpool to Manchester journey times from 50 to 35 minutes.Decent! Except they quote to "Manchester Piccadilly". As the express services now go to Victoria lets look at how that compares. And you can see services today with 2 stops doing the journey in 35 minutes... https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:G82161/2021-11-18/detailed#allox_id=0
Maybe you can do this all with roads, but - admittedly as a southerner - it seems unlikely given the population density and amount of land available.
*The others are the Randstand, the Ruhr, and Northern Italy.
That line is remarkably fast when I caught it 2 years ago. 3 years ago I think the journey time from York to Liverpool was 2 hours 30, since that line was improved (and the other Manchester improvements so you bypass Piccadilly) it's 2 hours (25 minutes Leeds, 1 hour to Manchester, 35 to Liverpool).
The more people look at these plans the more flaws there are going to be found.
https://twitter.com/kentindell/status/1461100613140467721?s=21
But I do note:
- U.K. prints it’s own money.
- The fear that 100% debt-to-GDP impaired economic growth has pretty much been debunked.
- Interest rates are very low.
I therefore wonder why the hell we want to fetishise debt levels over the future prosperity of 65% of the country.
Anyway, my point about Thatcher was more about the general theory that you can deregulate your way to growth. That’s pretty much played out: the U.K. is low regulation, and high labour flexibility. Yet the “North” is still poor, and getting (comparatively) poorer. Why?
"It's true that you can't polish a turd, but you can roll it in glitter"
I'll guess your answer might be infrastructure?
I agree we should be borrowing heavily in these times of low interest rates (which won't be along for much longer by my reading.)
The problem is that you really want another guinea pig to find out what the explosion point is.
As far as I know he was never brave enough to pick any ...
Are you gonna put your money in the North, after today, when the government has decided it’s not worth investing in?
You are not.
As he pointed out, to get to net zero it's going to cost us hundreds of billions either way, if we spend it now maybe it will be a 10% higher cost but it puts the UK on the front foot and companies here can export goods and services to others trying to reach net zero by 2040 and 2050. Instead we will do nothing, realise that Germany, the US and Asia have stolen a march on us and end up importing net zero for slightly less money but with the bulk of it spent overseas.
Polling told them very strongly that the public did not want to see Labour harassing a government that was by and large seen to be doing its best in a national emergency akin to a war.
Labour and most of the public were in broad agreement with the general thrust of the government's Covid response. This being legal & guidance restrictions to combat the waves of infection and prevent the NHS collapsing, roll out the vaccine to end the pandemic.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
It is true that Leeds is very much likely to “trade” more with Bradford, but that tells us nothing really about growth in Leeds or Bradford.
There are now half a dozen staff on the team, therapists based there, and a cafe about to open.
Do others do similar? Any examples?
But Westminster (to my mind) had massive autonomy within the EU, especially outside the Euro.
Whereas, in the U.K., local government is astonishingly feeble. International studies basically put U.K. (and Ireland) in a bucket with some dodgy East European countries that only got “democracy” about twenty years ago.
An interesting calculation - which now has to be redone.
I’ve been asked to put 10k into a digital start-up, and I’m told i can claim 5k back from HMRC and a further 2.5k if it fails. Perhaps others here can tell me if that’s true.
I only found out at his funeral that my grandad fought there.
I didn't realise you were such an old fart.
But perhaps less so given both pop and geo size.
He's now on the back foot because literally every project that has been promised and hyped up for the past 2 years has just been jettisoned.
If you were to build a string of new motorways, it would remove a lot of traffic jams, as vehicles wouldn't all be piled into the same pinch points like the M60 or M6/M62 interchange. But equally importantly it would allow more direct routes, so you wouldn't be compelled to go on stupidly long detours simply because the limited motorway network takes you that way.
I gave the example earlier today of Aintree to Bolton. They're 22 miles apart so should be about 18 minutes apart at 70mph but instead its a 1 hour journey. As the crow flies that's basically a straight line West to East and the M58 takes you halfway there in a virtually straight line. But because the M58 was only half-built, that's not the route to go.
Instead according to Google Maps the quickest route to take is to go South on the M57 past Knowsley until you reach the M62 interchange, then East on the M62 past Warrington until you get to Eccles, Manchester and the M60, through Manchester on the M60 until you reach the M61, then back North again on the A666.
What should be an 18 minutes point to point 70mph journey instead takes an hour, across four different motorways, going South then North again, and through some of the most congested roads in the Northwest in Manchester because there is no alternative built.
Its maddening.
Proximity is a much smaller factor than, IMO, inertia.
And for reasons why your dream road will never be built see @MaxPB and @Gardenwalker 's discussion regarding Gravity models and their inability to go beyond amplifying what already exists.
Hobbits?
I also think infrastructure needs to be about more than telecoms and travel. If you want to keep the newly skilled people leaving you need to spend a lot on making the place nice to live. Concrete brutalism and high rises are disastrous for this. You need community based streets, trees, parks, public art, little shops and restaurants.
This may be apocryphal.
It’s about both inter and *intra* connectivity, availability of local skills, etc.
As for the government’s growth strategy, there seriously isn’t one. I’m not even making a political point.
It really is a tragedy for this country which, despite rumours to the contrary, I do love.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/nov/18/six-in-10-elderly-care-users-in-england-set-to-lose-out-from-costs-cap
'Dilnot told the Treasury select committee that the change meant about 60% of older people who end up needing social care would lose out, compared with the plan he proposed. He said it would “hit people in regions of the country with lower house prices, so there is a north-south axis to this”.
He said: “The people who are most harshly affected by this change are people with assets of exactly £106,000. But everybody with assets of less than £186,000 would do less well under what the government is proposing than the proposals that we made and the proposals that were legislated for. That was a big change announced yesterday. It finds savings exclusively from the less well-off group.”'