Henrik Stenson has been removed as Europe's Ryder Cup skipper with immediate effect.
I am sure there are a few million reasons why he won't be too concerned.
Rumoured to be $40m - for someone who hasn’t won a tournament in three years.
I’m sure most of us would take the same decision. Outside the top dozen or so, pro golfers are not making massive bank and have a lot of expenses.
How on earth is LIV intending to get a return on all this ?
These are huge numbers for *checks notes* the 171st ranked golfer in the world.
I think the big question is, how will it work long term? They're signing up big names, but most are way past their best. If you're Cam Smith or Justin Thomas, would you risk jumping ship? What happens if the established tours hold firm and LIV packs up if the Saudis get bored or change their mind? They might find themselves unable to play anywhere.
The opened ended suspensions are going to end up in court. Poulter already won an initial reprieve from his DP World Tour (otherwise known as Europoean Tour) ban. I don't think permanent bans will hold because of anti-trust, PGA Tour supposed not-for-profit status, while being a monopoly (they own a big chunk of DP World Tour) whole load of stuff I have read form sports lawyers saying the PGA Tour really won't want to end up in court as the discovery could shed a light on lots of things they don't really want to talk about.
As for only signing old duffers, they seem to be slowly picking off both current elite players and up and comers. If rumours are true they have got Matsuyama, he is top 20 golfer, Cameron Smith certainly looks on the card. Patrick Reed has gone, Matt Wolf also (he dropped down the rankings, but only a 12-18 months since he was really up there with the best of them).
Lots of rumours more current high rankings players will go after Fed-ex.
I think a lot comes down to the majors. If LIV doesn't get world ranking points, then these golfers drop out of the World Top 50 and lose their exemptions for the majors (unless past champions, of course).
Will Augusta, the PGA (not PGA Tour), USGA, and R&A stand firm with the PGA Tour and DP World Tour?
Absolutely. The majors are complicated by the fact they are all differing entities in which they set their own criteria for eligibility. I have a suspicion the Masters in particular might not ban anybody, that 4 days a year requires them to sell it as the best of the best playing on one of the toughest courses in the world and as a result their tv deal alone is crazy amounts of money....and they ruthlessly interested in the dollar signs.
And two of the other three Majors describe themselves as open championships. Open to everyone, except the LIV Golfers?
No surprise that extremely rich golfers in their greed have signed up to LIV for even more. I read today that West Ham want Jesse Lingard, but are reluctant to pay his full demand of £180,000 a week. For a pretty average footballer. The world's mad.
Golf has an issue where a small number of players get huge sponsors e.g. Rory Nike deal was $100m+....its very easy then to say well I am holding true to my principles and sticking with the PGA Tour when you bagged a $100m in your early 20s. Outside of a handful the sponsorship aren't mega, so you earn what you win.
Then the players expenses are significant, all the travel, the caddie, coach etc etc etc. I am not saying the top 25 players are poor, but say Cam Smith, he has been winning about $2m a year most years of his career, take out all the expenses he might only taking home $1m. Not surprising your head gets turned by somebody offering you 100x upfront.
If you are top 100 player in MLB, NFL, NHL, you are making a hell of a lot more than $1m a year. What the average salary in EPL for a mid 20 year old, $3m?
Big issue with EPL now isn't that your elite players earn $10m+, it is that even youth players are signing contracts which means they are made for life despite not having played a single EPL game. If you get the right agent and look promising, between 18-21 you can earn enough money to be set for life, and then never make it.
The government has granted development consent for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk coast.
The project, mainly funded by the French energy company EDF, is expected to cost in the region of £20bn.
Blimey, sounds quite cheap tbh.
Why do we outsource this stuff to the French govt rather than setting up our own national champion?
Because EDF is a company with a lot of expertise in this, its something they have a competitive advantage in and they'll do it for their best value for money.
Any state-owned "national champion" would be a bloated mess of a 'company' that would operate instead to the advantage of "stakeholders" and lobbyists and bailed out by the taxpayers time and again. 👎
But EDF is state-owned. And yet is "a company with a lot of expertise" who have found a "competitive advantage".
So there is no impediment whatsoever in being state-owned and commercially excellent. In your own words. Yet you oppose it...
Indeed this was exactly the point of my question. We threw the baby out with the bath water with privatisation and forgot that the benefits it brings are down to the implied incentive structure and little else. It’s perfectly possible to create an efficient state owned company if you’re careful about it, as is shown around the world.
Some countries understand strategic resilience and some don’t. Unfortunately we sold off our strategic resilience to fund our structural current account deficit. Sad.
By the way Bart, the “private sector” makes the key components for our nuclear powered subs. But really that’s a charade. It’s a ring fenced unit within Rolls Royce that decades after the Thatcher bail out, still benefits from cost plus govt contracts and has very little turnover of staff, because a) it’s such a cushy number, b) they have to be security cleared and pretty much only employ British nationals.
So it’s private sector but without the upside. And in a similar way, it’s possible to create state sector but without the downside. I’m a Tory at heart but at the first opportunity I’d be nationalising Gupta’s steel interests, as well as the oil refineries owned by Essar and Gary Klesch. Let more competent private sector people run them, with pay structures inversely proportional to the level of state subsidy required to keep them running in the national interest.
I can see where you're coming from, but it's an irrelevance in this case. Our nationalised power company would not have any expertise in building new nuclear power stations, as the government has not ordered any for thirty years. - and some governments were rather cold on nuclear power as well.
So create one. Private sector expertise is out there, so hire them. Instead of having engineers spending our money for the good of a foreign government, hire them to do the exact same job for the good of our government!
Its the same argument as where we have had UK rail passengers paying hugely inflated fares to pay for the pensions of foreign citizens. Bonkers.
Two problems with that 'inflated fares in the UK claim':
1 - It's not "hugely inflated". It's "less subsidised".
Yes, it is too often forgotten that UK fares are actually competitive, save the commuter routes into London which are subsidised much less than those in European large metros.
The problem I always thought was the bewildering array of fare options and the very clunky UX of the ticketing machines.
Some advance fares - especially with competing operators - are extremely cheap. The rest are expensive compared to most similar trips elsewhere. And the same with the tube and the buses. We could choose to cap fares but we don't. When its almost always cheaper to fly internally than get the train we are clearly doing something wrong.
Did you read that article?
I agree that our peaks are too pricey, but perhaps our peaks are too peaky and we have to use price to suppress demand?
He will lionised and idolised, and turned into this great lost leader, treacherously slain by midgets, and replaced by bores
Oh for goodness sake!
He was the architect and engineer of his own downfall. If he had behaved himself he would be going nowhere. Neither you nor Johnson understand that.
The general consensus by all recent polling is that Johnson has been a poor Prime Minister despite his protestations to the contrary. As to the legacy, yes that will be Brexit. He needs to start praying that Brexit starts to look a bit sharper than it has appeared so far.
What?
I said he had to go, when he had to go, because he had to go. And yes he was brought down by his own flaws. The laziness and the irresponsibility, the easy recourse to lies, the libertinism
I'm talking about the FUTURE. He will loom very large for a long time, unless he moves abroad to, say, America. But I doubt he will. He likes London and the UK, this is where his friends and contacts are
Nor do I entirely discount a return. It's not likely, but it is a possibility
Future, what future? What you mean is he will linger like a bad smell.
You hate the guy so much it blinds you
As mayor of London he was fine but it’s been all downhill ever since . The fact you can’t accept that he was destroying the office of PM and had to go suggests you seem blind to that .
Picture the scene in say, 2024, when Prime Minister Liz Yawn Truss is doing an election walkabout in Newent, and the sparse crowds are politely chatting, and looking at their phones, and drifting off.... and then a mop of blonde hair appears
OMFG it's BORIS!!
BORIS!!
Suddenly the crowds rush to get a glimpse, and to shake hands with the great man, and laugh at his feeble but well delivered jokes, and they walk away with a smile, and Liz Wossface remains ignored in the corner. Along with Rishi Sunak
Repeat for PM Starmer at state events, perhaps
At first glance with your double exclamation marks I read "BOORISH", and twice. It works for me!
P.S. The only time I have seen crowds in Newent is at Newent Friday Market, or happy hour at Three Choirs Wines.
He will lionised and idolised, and turned into this great lost leader, treacherously slain by midgets, and replaced by bores
Always happens. In twenty years time people will be asking why politicians today are so crap and looking back to the glory days when titans like Gove, Sharma, Raab and Williamson were around.
The past is always turned to myth.
“The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.”
It's never really happened with James Callaghan, John Major or El Gord. Don't think it'll happen with Theresa May either.
It has happened with Wilson, Thatch and Blair (with Blair more so on the Conservatives side than the Labour side, bizarrely)
It will absolutely happen with Boris. He has been the most high profile and charismatic British politician since Blair, and in some ways is more important than Blair (Brexit, Covid, Ukraine) despite serving a much briefer term
And one advantage of leaving the scene so early is that he won't be tarnished by the sour humdrum years that beckon. Those whom the Gods love best die young, etc
His legend will grow. The lost king
I have a feeling he is more the Bonnie Prince after Culloden than the all conquering hero storming through Lancashire to Derby as the King throws his robes into a case and prepares to flee. His folliwers still believe and lick their wounds and gird themselves for the blowback but Boris will flee to Skye, dressed as Nadine Dorries and live out a drunken and debauched exile in the media.
Yes, I tend to agree, but the King over the Water remained a potent force and myth in Scottish/British politics for a LONG time
He will lionised and idolised, and turned into this great lost leader, treacherously slain by midgets, and replaced by bores
Oh for goodness sake!
He was the architect and engineer of his own downfall. If he had behaved himself he would be going nowhere. Neither you nor Johnson understand that.
The general consensus by all recent polling is that Johnson has been a poor Prime Minister despite his protestations to the contrary. As to the legacy, yes that will be Brexit. He needs to start praying that Brexit starts to look a bit sharper than it has appeared so far.
What?
I said he had to go, when he had to go, because he had to go. And yes he was brought down by his own flaws. The laziness and the irresponsibility, the easy recourse to lies, the libertinism
I'm talking about the FUTURE. He will loom very large for a long time, unless he moves abroad to, say, America. But I doubt he will. He likes London and the UK, this is where his friends and contacts are
Nor do I entirely discount a return. It's not likely, but it is a possibility
Future, what future? What you mean is he will linger like a bad smell.
You hate the guy so much it blinds you
As mayor of London he was fine but it’s been all downhill ever since . The fact you can’t accept that he was destroying the office of PM and had to go suggests you seem blind to that .
As Mayor of London, those in the know suggest he was just hanging onto Livingstone's coat tails.
He will lionised and idolised, and turned into this great lost leader, treacherously slain by midgets, and replaced by bores
Oh for goodness sake!
He was the architect and engineer of his own downfall. If he had behaved himself he would be going nowhere. Neither you nor Johnson understand that.
The general consensus by all recent polling is that Johnson has been a poor Prime Minister despite his protestations to the contrary. As to the legacy, yes that will be Brexit. He needs to start praying that Brexit starts to look a bit sharper than it has appeared so far.
What?
I said he had to go, when he had to go, because he had to go. And yes he was brought down by his own flaws. The laziness and the irresponsibility, the easy recourse to lies, the libertinism
I'm talking about the FUTURE. He will loom very large for a long time, unless he moves abroad to, say, America. But I doubt he will. He likes London and the UK, this is where his friends and contacts are
Nor do I entirely discount a return. It's not likely, but it is a possibility
Future, what future? What you mean is he will linger like a bad smell.
You hate the guy so much it blinds you
As mayor of London he was fine but it’s been all downhill ever since . The fact you can’t accept that he was destroying the office of PM and had to go suggests you seem blind to that .
Or you could read the comment directly above yours, written by me, in this thread, when I said
"I said he had to go, when he had to go, because he had to go"
This is it in a nutshell. Boris Derangement is so bad in you guys, a red mist descends when his name is mentioned and you can't even correctly read comments about him
He will lionised and idolised, and turned into this great lost leader, treacherously slain by midgets, and replaced by bores
Always happens. In twenty years time people will be asking why politicians today are so crap and looking back to the glory days when titans like Gove, Sharma, Raab and Williamson were around.
The past is always turned to myth.
“The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.”
It's never really happened with James Callaghan, John Major or El Gord. Don't think it'll happen with Theresa May either.
It has happened with Wilson, Thatch and Blair (with Blair more so on the Conservatives side than the Labour side, bizarrely)
It will absolutely happen with Boris. He has been the most high profile and charismatic British politician since Blair, and in some ways is more important than Blair (Brexit, Covid, Ukraine) despite serving a much briefer term
And one advantage of leaving the scene so early is that he won't be tarnished by the sour humdrum years that beckon. Those whom the Gods love best die young, etc
His legend will grow. The lost king
I have a feeling he is more the Bonnie Prince after Culloden than the all conquering hero storming through Lancashire to Derby as the King throws his robes into a case and prepares to flee. His folliwers still believe and lick their wounds and gird themselves for the blowback but Boris will flee to Skye, dressed as Nadine Dorries and live out a drunken and debauched exile in the media.
Yes, I tend to agree, but the King over the Water remained a potent force and myth in Scottish/British politics for a LONG time
Yes, see my edit, a long but disappointing shadow!
Henrik Stenson has been removed as Europe's Ryder Cup skipper with immediate effect.
I am sure there are a few million reasons why he won't be too concerned.
Rumoured to be $40m - for someone who hasn’t won a tournament in three years.
I’m sure most of us would take the same decision. Outside the top dozen or so, pro golfers are not making massive bank and have a lot of expenses.
How on earth is LIV intending to get a return on all this ?
These are huge numbers for *checks notes* the 171st ranked golfer in the world.
I think the big question is, how will it work long term? They're signing up big names, but most are way past their best. If you're Cam Smith or Justin Thomas, would you risk jumping ship? What happens if the established tours hold firm and LIV packs up if the Saudis get bored or change their mind? They might find themselves unable to play anywhere.
The opened ended suspensions are going to end up in court. Poulter already won an initial reprieve from his DP World Tour (otherwise known as Europoean Tour) ban. I don't think permanent bans will hold because of anti-trust, PGA Tour supposed not-for-profit status, while being a monopoly (they own a big chunk of DP World Tour) whole load of stuff I have read form sports lawyers saying the PGA Tour really won't want to end up in court as the discovery could shed a light on lots of things they don't really want to talk about.
As for only signing old duffers, they seem to be slowly picking off both current elite players and up and comers. If rumours are true they have got Matsuyama, he is top 20 golfer, Cameron Smith certainly looks on the card. Patrick Reed has gone, Matt Wolf also (he dropped down the rankings, but only a 12-18 months since he was really up there with the best of them).
Lots of rumours more current high rankings players will go after Fed-ex.
I think a lot comes down to the majors. If LIV doesn't get world ranking points, then these golfers drop out of the World Top 50 and lose their exemptions for the majors (unless past champions, of course).
Will Augusta, the PGA (not PGA Tour), USGA, and R&A stand firm with the PGA Tour and DP World Tour?
Absolutely. The majors are complicated by the fact they are all differing entities in which they set their own criteria for eligibility. I have a suspicion the Masters in particular might not ban anybody, that 4 days a year requires them to sell it as the best of the best playing on one of the toughest courses in the world and as a result their tv deal alone is crazy amounts of money....and they ruthlessly interested in the dollar signs.
And two of the other three Majors describe themselves as open championships. Open to everyone, except the LIV Golfers?
No surprise that extremely rich golfers in their greed have signed up to LIV for even more. I read today that West Ham want Jesse Lingard, but are reluctant to pay his full demand of £180,000 a week. For a pretty average footballer. The world's mad.
The whole point, is that the vast majority of professional golfers are nowhere near extremely rich.
On the US Tour, half the players each week “don’t make the cut”, and get paid nothing. They still have to turn up, pay their entry fee, their caddy, their hotel bill - but leave with no cheque.
If professional golfers were all rich, there would be no need for LIV Golf.
The middle ranks of both sports would be far better off economically, working full time as coaches at clubs close to their home.
The 100th ranked guy making $200k prize money per year, before his expenses of coaching and travel, doesn’t leave him with a lot left at the end of the year - for a career that might only last a decade.
I would like to see the train stations nationalised, and the track/operators bundled into private franchises.
Village stations could be run by local volunteers, a kind of national trust operation.
There’s enough bloody rail enthusiasts out there.
An anecdote. I can't remember which station it was, but a while back the locals near one station asked a BR manager for permission to 'do up' their local small station: plant flowers, tidy things up, litter pick, give things a lick of paint. Permission was given, and necessary training give to a few people. From memory, it also included locals taking shifts to greet trains arriving and help out.
Passenger numbers rocketed up. Then another manager came in, and he stopped the nonsense. Passenger numbers slowly fell.
(I wish I could remember which station it was...) Yes, there are problems in having untrained people mucking about near railway lines. But there's also a great deal of goodwill for 'local# stations. The Settle and Carlisle showed how it should be done in the face of adversity in the 1980s; I think some other lines have similar groups.
Precisely the model I was thinking about. Or perhaps, stations could be part owned by the local authority, who might be incentivised to make such places a pleasant gateway to their surrounding neighbourhood.
I think it’s depressing to arrive at - say Slough Station (which I used to do a lot to visit clients on the Bath Road) and be confronted with a dust-blown “Pumpkin Cafe”.
SSP, who also own “Upper Crust” and “Caffe Ritazza”, are menaces.
The government has granted development consent for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk coast.
The project, mainly funded by the French energy company EDF, is expected to cost in the region of £20bn.
Blimey, sounds quite cheap tbh.
Why do we outsource this stuff to the French govt rather than setting up our own national champion?
Because EDF is a company with a lot of expertise in this, its something they have a competitive advantage in and they'll do it for their best value for money.
Any state-owned "national champion" would be a bloated mess of a 'company' that would operate instead to the advantage of "stakeholders" and lobbyists and bailed out by the taxpayers time and again. 👎
But EDF is state-owned. And yet is "a company with a lot of expertise" who have found a "competitive advantage".
So there is no impediment whatsoever in being state-owned and commercially excellent. In your own words. Yet you oppose it...
Indeed this was exactly the point of my question. We threw the baby out with the bath water with privatisation and forgot that the benefits it brings are down to the implied incentive structure and little else. It’s perfectly possible to create an efficient state owned company if you’re careful about it, as is shown around the world.
Some countries understand strategic resilience and some don’t. Unfortunately we sold off our strategic resilience to fund our structural current account deficit. Sad.
By the way Bart, the “private sector” makes the key components for our nuclear powered subs. But really that’s a charade. It’s a ring fenced unit within Rolls Royce that decades after the Thatcher bail out, still benefits from cost plus govt contracts and has very little turnover of staff, because a) it’s such a cushy number, b) they have to be security cleared and pretty much only employ British nationals.
So it’s private sector but without the upside. And in a similar way, it’s possible to create state sector but without the downside. I’m a Tory at heart but at the first opportunity I’d be nationalising Gupta’s steel interests, as well as the oil refineries owned by Essar and Gary Klesch. Let more competent private sector people run them, with pay structures inversely proportional to the level of state subsidy required to keep them running in the national interest.
I can see where you're coming from, but it's an irrelevance in this case. Our nationalised power company would not have any expertise in building new nuclear power stations, as the government has not ordered any for thirty years. - and some governments were rather cold on nuclear power as well.
So create one. Private sector expertise is out there, so hire them. Instead of having engineers spending our money for the good of a foreign government, hire them to do the exact same job for the good of our government!
Its the same argument as where we have had UK rail passengers paying hugely inflated fares to pay for the pensions of foreign citizens. Bonkers.
Two problems with that 'inflated fares in the UK claim':
1 - It's not "hugely inflated". It's "less subsidised".
Yes, it is too often forgotten that UK fares are actually competitive, save the commuter routes into London which are subsidised much less than those in European large metros.
The problem I always thought was the bewildering array of fare options and the very clunky UX of the ticketing machines.
Some advance fares - especially with competing operators - are extremely cheap. The rest are expensive compared to most similar trips elsewhere. And the same with the tube and the buses. We could choose to cap fares but we don't. When its almost always cheaper to fly internally than get the train we are clearly doing something wrong.
Yep - I've heard that one reason for the binning of the new ECML timetable was multiple councils insisting on the open access providers stopping at stations they were currently bypassing.
The government has granted development consent for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk coast.
The project, mainly funded by the French energy company EDF, is expected to cost in the region of £20bn.
Blimey, sounds quite cheap tbh.
Why do we outsource this stuff to the French govt rather than setting up our own national champion?
Because EDF is a company with a lot of expertise in this, its something they have a competitive advantage in and they'll do it for their best value for money.
Any state-owned "national champion" would be a bloated mess of a 'company' that would operate instead to the advantage of "stakeholders" and lobbyists and bailed out by the taxpayers time and again. 👎
But EDF is state-owned. And yet is "a company with a lot of expertise" who have found a "competitive advantage".
So there is no impediment whatsoever in being state-owned and commercially excellent. In your own words. Yet you oppose it...
Indeed this was exactly the point of my question. We threw the baby out with the bath water with privatisation and forgot that the benefits it brings are down to the implied incentive structure and little else. It’s perfectly possible to create an efficient state owned company if you’re careful about it, as is shown around the world.
Some countries understand strategic resilience and some don’t. Unfortunately we sold off our strategic resilience to fund our structural current account deficit. Sad.
By the way Bart, the “private sector” makes the key components for our nuclear powered subs. But really that’s a charade. It’s a ring fenced unit within Rolls Royce that decades after the Thatcher bail out, still benefits from cost plus govt contracts and has very little turnover of staff, because a) it’s such a cushy number, b) they have to be security cleared and pretty much only employ British nationals.
So it’s private sector but without the upside. And in a similar way, it’s possible to create state sector but without the downside. I’m a Tory at heart but at the first opportunity I’d be nationalising Gupta’s steel interests, as well as the oil refineries owned by Essar and Gary Klesch. Let more competent private sector people run them, with pay structures inversely proportional to the level of state subsidy required to keep them running in the national interest.
I can see where you're coming from, but it's an irrelevance in this case. Our nationalised power company would not have any expertise in building new nuclear power stations, as the government has not ordered any for thirty years. - and some governments were rather cold on nuclear power as well.
It's worth emphasising how crap we are at doing these sort of long term projects where long term knowledge / specialist skills are required.
Nuclear power stations is 1 example, unless you continually build them one after another you quickly lose the knowledge required to build them. Equally we treat railways as stop start one off projects when we really do need to be planning what occurs after HS2 so the specialists have their next project ready to go.
That's very true for railways. During the Thatcher / Major governments, many hundreds of miles of railways were electrified. During the 13 years of Labour government that followed, only 9 miles were electrified (Kidsgrove to Crewe). (*) Lots of useful skills and knowledge were lost.
The government should (and in fact, should still) commit to a rolling program, where one line is completed and people move onto the next. Instead, we get four major projects announced at once, and when the first runs into problems due to lack of experience, prices go up.
(*) Never trust Labour with the railways ...
Don't trust either of them. The Tories brought in a private franchising structure so stupid that nobody else in the world copied it, and sold off the infrastructure in such a lax way that the private sector killed a load of people then needed rescuing. And then Labour did little to change the stupid for less stupid.
BTW, the expertise was lost before Labour had the chance to fuck things up. The multi-year hiatus in ordering new trains was enough to bankrupt and close the train manufacturing industry (bar 1 factory), the Rail Technical Centre was sold off and lost, the engineers flitted away.
We then ended up not able to do the basics like string up wires. Or re-signal the "victorian infrastructure" that Shapps Green seems obsessed with. The lunacy of the proposed Manchester South scheme as one example.
What we need is professionals running the shop. Neither party have offered that for decades, so trying to blame one lot for not fixing the other lot's mess is partisan silliness - BOTH were bad.
You can go away with the "private sector killed a load of people" sh*t. Yes, Railtrack had problems. But, in case you had not noticed, so did BR in the decades before. The list is long and inglorious. Mentioning things like Hatfield and not mentioning the likes of Crowden, Clapham, Stafford, Cannon Street, Purley Belgrove, Lockington (all fatal crashes in the ten years before privatisation) is odd.
Unless nationalised deaths are fine, privatised ones are evil?
Not at all! But when there are a list of accidents directly caused by Railtrack not only not maintaining the tracks but not knowing what condition they were in, its hard to argue that the private operator and the structure that was created specifically to be like that wasn't directly responsible.
Its not private ownership as a concept that killed them, its the specific private ownership structure and a total lack of regulation that did it. Would BR have had those accidents? Its possible, possibly different ones as I doubt they would have screwed up that badly.
ISTR you volunteer on a preserved line? I assume then that you know that for every one of the crashes you mention and all the ones before it, the industry looked at what happened and learned lessons and wrote new processes to avoid a repeat. And most of the ones you listed - Purley, Cowden, Stafford, Bellgrove, Cannon Street - were driver errors as opposed to infrastructure failures. As opposed to the Railtrack era crashes where it was crap maintenance done at minimum cost for maximum profits.
The government has granted development consent for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk coast.
The project, mainly funded by the French energy company EDF, is expected to cost in the region of £20bn.
Blimey, sounds quite cheap tbh.
Why do we outsource this stuff to the French govt rather than setting up our own national champion?
Because EDF is a company with a lot of expertise in this, its something they have a competitive advantage in and they'll do it for their best value for money.
Any state-owned "national champion" would be a bloated mess of a 'company' that would operate instead to the advantage of "stakeholders" and lobbyists and bailed out by the taxpayers time and again. 👎
But EDF is state-owned. And yet is "a company with a lot of expertise" who have found a "competitive advantage".
So there is no impediment whatsoever in being state-owned and commercially excellent. In your own words. Yet you oppose it...
Indeed this was exactly the point of my question. We threw the baby out with the bath water with privatisation and forgot that the benefits it brings are down to the implied incentive structure and little else. It’s perfectly possible to create an efficient state owned company if you’re careful about it, as is shown around the world.
Some countries understand strategic resilience and some don’t. Unfortunately we sold off our strategic resilience to fund our structural current account deficit. Sad.
By the way Bart, the “private sector” makes the key components for our nuclear powered subs. But really that’s a charade. It’s a ring fenced unit within Rolls Royce that decades after the Thatcher bail out, still benefits from cost plus govt contracts and has very little turnover of staff, because a) it’s such a cushy number, b) they have to be security cleared and pretty much only employ British nationals.
So it’s private sector but without the upside. And in a similar way, it’s possible to create state sector but without the downside. I’m a Tory at heart but at the first opportunity I’d be nationalising Gupta’s steel interests, as well as the oil refineries owned by Essar and Gary Klesch. Let more competent private sector people run them, with pay structures inversely proportional to the level of state subsidy required to keep them running in the national interest.
I can see where you're coming from, but it's an irrelevance in this case. Our nationalised power company would not have any expertise in building new nuclear power stations, as the government has not ordered any for thirty years. - and some governments were rather cold on nuclear power as well.
So create one. Private sector expertise is out there, so hire them. Instead of having engineers spending our money for the good of a foreign government, hire them to do the exact same job for the good of our government!
Its the same argument as where we have had UK rail passengers paying hugely inflated fares to pay for the pensions of foreign citizens. Bonkers.
Your last paragraph is wrong. In many cases, those 'foreign citizens' ended up paying a subsidy to the UK's rail passengers!
And even they did, the subsidies were tiny, and had very little effect on the 'hugely inflated fares'.
How did that work? Our government paid for Aviva to make a profit which it returns to its owner Deutsche Bahn who use the revenue to require less € from their own government. Our crazy fares subsidised foreigners. Directly.
Many of them made a loss - hence they ended up subsidising the travelling public.
This was a significant reason the franchise system was failing: there were too few groups willing to act as operators, and some of them were getting their fingers burnt.
But Cap and Collar meant that they didn't really make a loss - they took the profits and then handed the franchise back when the profits disappeared.
Anyway, do we both agree that StateCo operators demonstrated that public ownership in the European model works?
That was limited. Some took quite severe haircuts from the franchises.
I don't necessarily agree with that. Since you're evidently focused on safety (given your previous incorrect post), you might want to look at the safety records of French or German railways over the last two decades...
Henrik Stenson has been removed as Europe's Ryder Cup skipper with immediate effect.
I am sure there are a few million reasons why he won't be too concerned.
Rumoured to be $40m - for someone who hasn’t won a tournament in three years.
I’m sure most of us would take the same decision. Outside the top dozen or so, pro golfers are not making massive bank and have a lot of expenses.
How on earth is LIV intending to get a return on all this ?
These are huge numbers for *checks notes* the 171st ranked golfer in the world.
I think the big question is, how will it work long term? They're signing up big names, but most are way past their best. If you're Cam Smith or Justin Thomas, would you risk jumping ship? What happens if the established tours hold firm and LIV packs up if the Saudis get bored or change their mind? They might find themselves unable to play anywhere.
The opened ended suspensions are going to end up in court. Poulter already won an initial reprieve from his DP World Tour (otherwise known as Europoean Tour) ban. I don't think permanent bans will hold because of anti-trust, PGA Tour supposed not-for-profit status, while being a monopoly (they own a big chunk of DP World Tour) whole load of stuff I have read form sports lawyers saying the PGA Tour really won't want to end up in court as the discovery could shed a light on lots of things they don't really want to talk about.
As for only signing old duffers, they seem to be slowly picking off both current elite players and up and comers. If rumours are true they have got Matsuyama, he is top 20 golfer, Cameron Smith certainly looks on the card. Patrick Reed has gone, Matt Wolf also (he dropped down the rankings, but only a 12-18 months since he was really up there with the best of them).
Lots of rumours more current high rankings players will go after Fed-ex.
I think a lot comes down to the majors. If LIV doesn't get world ranking points, then these golfers drop out of the World Top 50 and lose their exemptions for the majors (unless past champions, of course).
Will Augusta, the PGA (not PGA Tour), USGA, and R&A stand firm with the PGA Tour and DP World Tour?
Absolutely. The majors are complicated by the fact they are all differing entities in which they set their own criteria for eligibility. I have a suspicion the Masters in particular might not ban anybody, that 4 days a year requires them to sell it as the best of the best playing on one of the toughest courses in the world and as a result their tv deal alone is crazy amounts of money....and they ruthlessly interested in the dollar signs.
And two of the other three Majors describe themselves as open championships. Open to everyone, except the LIV Golfers?
No surprise that extremely rich golfers in their greed have signed up to LIV for even more. I read today that West Ham want Jesse Lingard, but are reluctant to pay his full demand of £180,000 a week. For a pretty average footballer. The world's mad.
The whole point, is that the vast majority of professional golfers are nowhere near extremely rich.
On the US Tour, half the players each week “don’t make the cut”, and get paid nothing. They still have to turn up, pay their entry fee, their caddy, their hotel bill - but leave with no cheque.
If professional golfers were all rich, there would be no need for LIV Golf.
Tennis is terrible sport really in terms of money...if you aren't top 100 you aren't even making a living. And of course because it is a man-o-man sport, if you are poorly ranked you have to keep facing the best players in early rounds, so it favours winner takes all.
Liam Brody said he has only made money during a single year of his career. He needs to win a round of a major to pay for his coaching team and costs him $20k a year in restringing rackets alone. Despite one good year where he bought a property, he can't afford to pay the mortgage without a lodger.
The government has granted development consent for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk coast.
The project, mainly funded by the French energy company EDF, is expected to cost in the region of £20bn.
Blimey, sounds quite cheap tbh.
Why do we outsource this stuff to the French govt rather than setting up our own national champion?
Because EDF is a company with a lot of expertise in this, its something they have a competitive advantage in and they'll do it for their best value for money.
Any state-owned "national champion" would be a bloated mess of a 'company' that would operate instead to the advantage of "stakeholders" and lobbyists and bailed out by the taxpayers time and again. 👎
But EDF is state-owned. And yet is "a company with a lot of expertise" who have found a "competitive advantage".
So there is no impediment whatsoever in being state-owned and commercially excellent. In your own words. Yet you oppose it...
Indeed this was exactly the point of my question. We threw the baby out with the bath water with privatisation and forgot that the benefits it brings are down to the implied incentive structure and little else. It’s perfectly possible to create an efficient state owned company if you’re careful about it, as is shown around the world.
Some countries understand strategic resilience and some don’t. Unfortunately we sold off our strategic resilience to fund our structural current account deficit. Sad.
By the way Bart, the “private sector” makes the key components for our nuclear powered subs. But really that’s a charade. It’s a ring fenced unit within Rolls Royce that decades after the Thatcher bail out, still benefits from cost plus govt contracts and has very little turnover of staff, because a) it’s such a cushy number, b) they have to be security cleared and pretty much only employ British nationals.
So it’s private sector but without the upside. And in a similar way, it’s possible to create state sector but without the downside. I’m a Tory at heart but at the first opportunity I’d be nationalising Gupta’s steel interests, as well as the oil refineries owned by Essar and Gary Klesch. Let more competent private sector people run them, with pay structures inversely proportional to the level of state subsidy required to keep them running in the national interest.
I can see where you're coming from, but it's an irrelevance in this case. Our nationalised power company would not have any expertise in building new nuclear power stations, as the government has not ordered any for thirty years. - and some governments were rather cold on nuclear power as well.
So create one. Private sector expertise is out there, so hire them. Instead of having engineers spending our money for the good of a foreign government, hire them to do the exact same job for the good of our government!
Its the same argument as where we have had UK rail passengers paying hugely inflated fares to pay for the pensions of foreign citizens. Bonkers.
Two problems with that 'inflated fares in the UK claim':
1 - It's not "hugely inflated". It's "less subsidised".
Yes, it is too often forgotten that UK fares are actually competitive, save the commuter routes into London which are subsidised much less than those in European large metros.
The problem I always thought was the bewildering array of fare options and the very clunky UX of the ticketing machines.
Some advance fares - especially with competing operators - are extremely cheap. The rest are expensive compared to most similar trips elsewhere. And the same with the tube and the buses. We could choose to cap fares but we don't. When its almost always cheaper to fly internally than get the train we are clearly doing something wrong.
Did you read that article?
I agree that our peaks are too pricey, but perhaps our peaks are too peaky and we have to use price to suppress demand?
Yes I read it. And I am well aware of the absurdities in fare pricing including shoulder periods. Such lunacy could be removed. But is so often written into the franchise agreement.
He will lionised and idolised, and turned into this great lost leader, treacherously slain by midgets, and replaced by bores
Oh for goodness sake!
He was the architect and engineer of his own downfall. If he had behaved himself he would be going nowhere. Neither you nor Johnson understand that.
The general consensus by all recent polling is that Johnson has been a poor Prime Minister despite his protestations to the contrary. As to the legacy, yes that will be Brexit. He needs to start praying that Brexit starts to look a bit sharper than it has appeared so far.
What?
I said he had to go, when he had to go, because he had to go. And yes he was brought down by his own flaws. The laziness and the irresponsibility, the easy recourse to lies, the libertinism
I'm talking about the FUTURE. He will loom very large for a long time, unless he moves abroad to, say, America. But I doubt he will. He likes London and the UK, this is where his friends and contacts are
Nor do I entirely discount a return. It's not likely, but it is a possibility
Future, what future? What you mean is he will linger like a bad smell.
You hate the guy so much it blinds you
As mayor of London he was fine but it’s been all downhill ever since . The fact you can’t accept that he was destroying the office of PM and had to go suggests you seem blind to that .
Or you could read the comment directly above yours, written by me, in this thread, when I said
"I said he had to go, when he had to go, because he had to go"
This is it in a nutshell. Boris Derangement is so bad in you guys, a red mist descends when his name is mentioned and you can't even correctly read comments about him
Well, I'll say this. If La Truss becomes PM, I'll miss him five minutes after the announcement. OK, ten minutes.
@Leon Before I waste more time putting combinations of parrot and Estonia and Tory into Twitter and Reddit, is there a more precise combination I might try to find out what on earth you’re talking about?
The government has granted development consent for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk coast.
The project, mainly funded by the French energy company EDF, is expected to cost in the region of £20bn.
Blimey, sounds quite cheap tbh.
Why do we outsource this stuff to the French govt rather than setting up our own national champion?
Because EDF is a company with a lot of expertise in this, its something they have a competitive advantage in and they'll do it for their best value for money.
Any state-owned "national champion" would be a bloated mess of a 'company' that would operate instead to the advantage of "stakeholders" and lobbyists and bailed out by the taxpayers time and again. 👎
But EDF is state-owned. And yet is "a company with a lot of expertise" who have found a "competitive advantage".
So there is no impediment whatsoever in being state-owned and commercially excellent. In your own words. Yet you oppose it...
Indeed this was exactly the point of my question. We threw the baby out with the bath water with privatisation and forgot that the benefits it brings are down to the implied incentive structure and little else. It’s perfectly possible to create an efficient state owned company if you’re careful about it, as is shown around the world.
Some countries understand strategic resilience and some don’t. Unfortunately we sold off our strategic resilience to fund our structural current account deficit. Sad.
By the way Bart, the “private sector” makes the key components for our nuclear powered subs. But really that’s a charade. It’s a ring fenced unit within Rolls Royce that decades after the Thatcher bail out, still benefits from cost plus govt contracts and has very little turnover of staff, because a) it’s such a cushy number, b) they have to be security cleared and pretty much only employ British nationals.
So it’s private sector but without the upside. And in a similar way, it’s possible to create state sector but without the downside. I’m a Tory at heart but at the first opportunity I’d be nationalising Gupta’s steel interests, as well as the oil refineries owned by Essar and Gary Klesch. Let more competent private sector people run them, with pay structures inversely proportional to the level of state subsidy required to keep them running in the national interest.
I can see where you're coming from, but it's an irrelevance in this case. Our nationalised power company would not have any expertise in building new nuclear power stations, as the government has not ordered any for thirty years. - and some governments were rather cold on nuclear power as well.
It's worth emphasising how crap we are at doing these sort of long term projects where long term knowledge / specialist skills are required.
Nuclear power stations is 1 example, unless you continually build them one after another you quickly lose the knowledge required to build them. Equally we treat railways as stop start one off projects when we really do need to be planning what occurs after HS2 so the specialists have their next project ready to go.
That's very true for railways. During the Thatcher / Major governments, many hundreds of miles of railways were electrified. During the 13 years of Labour government that followed, only 9 miles were electrified (Kidsgrove to Crewe). (*) Lots of useful skills and knowledge were lost.
The government should (and in fact, should still) commit to a rolling program, where one line is completed and people move onto the next. Instead, we get four major projects announced at once, and when the first runs into problems due to lack of experience, prices go up.
(*) Never trust Labour with the railways ...
Don't trust either of them. The Tories brought in a private franchising structure so stupid that nobody else in the world copied it, and sold off the infrastructure in such a lax way that the private sector killed a load of people then needed rescuing. And then Labour did little to change the stupid for less stupid.
BTW, the expertise was lost before Labour had the chance to fuck things up. The multi-year hiatus in ordering new trains was enough to bankrupt and close the train manufacturing industry (bar 1 factory), the Rail Technical Centre was sold off and lost, the engineers flitted away.
We then ended up not able to do the basics like string up wires. Or re-signal the "victorian infrastructure" that Shapps Green seems obsessed with. The lunacy of the proposed Manchester South scheme as one example.
What we need is professionals running the shop. Neither party have offered that for decades, so trying to blame one lot for not fixing the other lot's mess is partisan silliness - BOTH were bad.
You can go away with the "private sector killed a load of people" sh*t. Yes, Railtrack had problems. But, in case you had not noticed, so did BR in the decades before. The list is long and inglorious. Mentioning things like Hatfield and not mentioning the likes of Crowden, Clapham, Stafford, Cannon Street, Purley Belgrove, Lockington (all fatal crashes in the ten years before privatisation) is odd.
Unless nationalised deaths are fine, privatised ones are evil?
Not at all! But when there are a list of accidents directly caused by Railtrack not only not maintaining the tracks but not knowing what condition they were in, its hard to argue that the private operator and the structure that was created specifically to be like that wasn't directly responsible.
Its not private ownership as a concept that killed them, its the specific private ownership structure and a total lack of regulation that did it. Would BR have had those accidents? Its possible, possibly different ones as I doubt they would have screwed up that badly.
ISTR you volunteer on a preserved line? I assume then that you know that for every one of the crashes you mention and all the ones before it, the industry looked at what happened and learned lessons and wrote new processes to avoid a repeat. And most of the ones you listed - Purley, Cowden, Stafford, Bellgrove, Cannon Street - were driver errors as opposed to infrastructure failures. As opposed to the Railtrack era crashes where it was crap maintenance done at minimum cost for maximum profits.
I might suggest you are wrong on that. As an example off the top of my head, Clapham Junction was caused by crap maintenance done at minimum cost. (Not that I blame the poor sod who did the work...)
And you might notice that drivers were part of the privatised parts of the system: and as you say, that's been *much* better since privatisation.AS has lack of fatal crashes called by train maintenance failures. You can't have it both ways.
The government has granted development consent for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk coast.
The project, mainly funded by the French energy company EDF, is expected to cost in the region of £20bn.
Blimey, sounds quite cheap tbh.
Why do we outsource this stuff to the French govt rather than setting up our own national champion?
Because EDF is a company with a lot of expertise in this, its something they have a competitive advantage in and they'll do it for their best value for money.
Any state-owned "national champion" would be a bloated mess of a 'company' that would operate instead to the advantage of "stakeholders" and lobbyists and bailed out by the taxpayers time and again. 👎
But EDF is state-owned. And yet is "a company with a lot of expertise" who have found a "competitive advantage".
So there is no impediment whatsoever in being state-owned and commercially excellent. In your own words. Yet you oppose it...
Indeed this was exactly the point of my question. We threw the baby out with the bath water with privatisation and forgot that the benefits it brings are down to the implied incentive structure and little else. It’s perfectly possible to create an efficient state owned company if you’re careful about it, as is shown around the world.
Some countries understand strategic resilience and some don’t. Unfortunately we sold off our strategic resilience to fund our structural current account deficit. Sad.
By the way Bart, the “private sector” makes the key components for our nuclear powered subs. But really that’s a charade. It’s a ring fenced unit within Rolls Royce that decades after the Thatcher bail out, still benefits from cost plus govt contracts and has very little turnover of staff, because a) it’s such a cushy number, b) they have to be security cleared and pretty much only employ British nationals.
So it’s private sector but without the upside. And in a similar way, it’s possible to create state sector but without the downside. I’m a Tory at heart but at the first opportunity I’d be nationalising Gupta’s steel interests, as well as the oil refineries owned by Essar and Gary Klesch. Let more competent private sector people run them, with pay structures inversely proportional to the level of state subsidy required to keep them running in the national interest.
I can see where you're coming from, but it's an irrelevance in this case. Our nationalised power company would not have any expertise in building new nuclear power stations, as the government has not ordered any for thirty years. - and some governments were rather cold on nuclear power as well.
It's worth emphasising how crap we are at doing these sort of long term projects where long term knowledge / specialist skills are required.
Nuclear power stations is 1 example, unless you continually build them one after another you quickly lose the knowledge required to build them. Equally we treat railways as stop start one off projects when we really do need to be planning what occurs after HS2 so the specialists have their next project ready to go.
That's very true for railways. During the Thatcher / Major governments, many hundreds of miles of railways were electrified. During the 13 years of Labour government that followed, only 9 miles were electrified (Kidsgrove to Crewe). (*) Lots of useful skills and knowledge were lost.
The government should (and in fact, should still) commit to a rolling program, where one line is completed and people move onto the next. Instead, we get four major projects announced at once, and when the first runs into problems due to lack of experience, prices go up.
(*) Never trust Labour with the railways ...
Don't trust either of them. The Tories brought in a private franchising structure so stupid that nobody else in the world copied it, and sold off the infrastructure in such a lax way that the private sector killed a load of people then needed rescuing. And then Labour did little to change the stupid for less stupid.
BTW, the expertise was lost before Labour had the chance to fuck things up. The multi-year hiatus in ordering new trains was enough to bankrupt and close the train manufacturing industry (bar 1 factory), the Rail Technical Centre was sold off and lost, the engineers flitted away.
We then ended up not able to do the basics like string up wires. Or re-signal the "victorian infrastructure" that Shapps Green seems obsessed with. The lunacy of the proposed Manchester South scheme as one example.
What we need is professionals running the shop. Neither party have offered that for decades, so trying to blame one lot for not fixing the other lot's mess is partisan silliness - BOTH were bad.
Since 1979 Labour have had thirteen years to get the railways right. In that time the Conservatives have had thirty.
He will lionised and idolised, and turned into this great lost leader, treacherously slain by midgets, and replaced by bores
Always happens. In twenty years time people will be asking why politicians today are so crap and looking back to the glory days when titans like Gove, Sharma, Raab and Williamson were around.
The past is always turned to myth.
“The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.”
It's never really happened with James Callaghan, John Major or El Gord. Don't think it'll happen with Theresa May either.
It has happened with Wilson, Thatch and Blair (with Blair more so on the Conservatives side than the Labour side, bizarrely)
It will absolutely happen with Boris. He has been the most high profile and charismatic British politician since Blair, and in some ways is more important than Blair (Brexit, Covid, Ukraine) despite serving a much briefer term
And one advantage of leaving the scene so early is that he won't be tarnished by the sour humdrum years that beckon. Those whom the Gods love best die young, etc
His legend will grow. The lost king
So what ?
The truth is that you've always been something of a fan. And those who might think of him like that, sometime down the road, are likely to be the same. That might be a problem for the Conservative party, and for whichever unfortunate they decide to inflict on us as PM this time around, but I don't think anyone else give two hoots. Or is likely to.
It’s pretty clear something strange happened in yesterday’s vote so the true level of support for the candidates is hard to gage .
The 32 TT votes up for grabs would never break to give Truss 15 .
How many Sunak supporters gave votes to Truss ?
I suspect 15 TT voters went to Badenoch to knock out Truss, they may now go to Mordaunt having failed to do that, again to try and knock out Truss. Maybe some Sunak voters went to Truss or some Badenoch voters switched to Truss yesterday. If another 10 to 15 Badenoch MPs went to Mourdant, even if all the other Badenoch MPs went to Truss then Mordaunt could be through.
Sizewell C specs look identical to Hinkley point C. I presume they think it can be done for 20 billion as it'll be a copy and paste of the Hinkley one ?
Yes. I'm working on the project.
So it’s going to be another, late and over budget?
The government has granted development consent for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk coast.
The project, mainly funded by the French energy company EDF, is expected to cost in the region of £20bn.
Blimey, sounds quite cheap tbh.
Why do we outsource this stuff to the French govt rather than setting up our own national champion?
Because EDF is a company with a lot of expertise in this, its something they have a competitive advantage in and they'll do it for their best value for money.
Any state-owned "national champion" would be a bloated mess of a 'company' that would operate instead to the advantage of "stakeholders" and lobbyists and bailed out by the taxpayers time and again. 👎
But EDF is state-owned. And yet is "a company with a lot of expertise" who have found a "competitive advantage".
So there is no impediment whatsoever in being state-owned and commercially excellent. In your own words. Yet you oppose it...
Indeed this was exactly the point of my question. We threw the baby out with the bath water with privatisation and forgot that the benefits it brings are down to the implied incentive structure and little else. It’s perfectly possible to create an efficient state owned company if you’re careful about it, as is shown around the world.
Some countries understand strategic resilience and some don’t. Unfortunately we sold off our strategic resilience to fund our structural current account deficit. Sad.
By the way Bart, the “private sector” makes the key components for our nuclear powered subs. But really that’s a charade. It’s a ring fenced unit within Rolls Royce that decades after the Thatcher bail out, still benefits from cost plus govt contracts and has very little turnover of staff, because a) it’s such a cushy number, b) they have to be security cleared and pretty much only employ British nationals.
So it’s private sector but without the upside. And in a similar way, it’s possible to create state sector but without the downside. I’m a Tory at heart but at the first opportunity I’d be nationalising Gupta’s steel interests, as well as the oil refineries owned by Essar and Gary Klesch. Let more competent private sector people run them, with pay structures inversely proportional to the level of state subsidy required to keep them running in the national interest.
I can see where you're coming from, but it's an irrelevance in this case. Our nationalised power company would not have any expertise in building new nuclear power stations, as the government has not ordered any for thirty years. - and some governments were rather cold on nuclear power as well.
So create one. Private sector expertise is out there, so hire them. Instead of having engineers spending our money for the good of a foreign government, hire them to do the exact same job for the good of our government!
Its the same argument as where we have had UK rail passengers paying hugely inflated fares to pay for the pensions of foreign citizens. Bonkers.
Two problems with that 'inflated fares in the UK claim':
1 - It's not "hugely inflated". It's "less subsidised".
Yes, it is too often forgotten that UK fares are actually competitive, save the commuter routes into London which are subsidised much less than those in European large metros.
The problem I always thought was the bewildering array of fare options and the very clunky UX of the ticketing machines.
Some advance fares - especially with competing operators - are extremely cheap. The rest are expensive compared to most similar trips elsewhere. And the same with the tube and the buses. We could choose to cap fares but we don't. When its almost always cheaper to fly internally than get the train we are clearly doing something wrong.
Did you read that article?
I agree that our peaks are too pricey, but perhaps our peaks are too peaky and we have to use price to suppress demand?
Yes I read it. And I am well aware of the absurdities in fare pricing including shoulder periods. Such lunacy could be removed. But is so often written into the franchise agreement.
My point - perhaps not clearly made - is that this is the “British model”.
The UK chooses to deter peak usage via price, perhaps because of the over-centrality of London in the network. In return, off peak is cheaper.
European systems don’t.
But I don’t necessarily think this makes the UK system worse.
This is just a pricing point. I accept the whole thing is up for debate again post-Covid, which is interesting as it seemed pretty much “settled” until just a few years ago.
Henrik Stenson has been removed as Europe's Ryder Cup skipper with immediate effect.
I am sure there are a few million reasons why he won't be too concerned.
Rumoured to be $40m - for someone who hasn’t won a tournament in three years.
I’m sure most of us would take the same decision. Outside the top dozen or so, pro golfers are not making massive bank and have a lot of expenses.
How on earth is LIV intending to get a return on all this ?
These are huge numbers for *checks notes* the 171st ranked golfer in the world.
Quite. It's not a commercial proposition. The return is 'soft' - to improve the image of Saudi.
Initially it isn't. But if they make it work and become THE golf league, $100 million here or there is nothing. They are throwing something like $4bn at the project, but have a look how much PGA Tour have sold their rights for, last round of deals was about $3bn.
The big question I think is the majors. If they ban all the LIV golfers (and make it stick), I think that is problematic. But if they carry on with the well if you qualify you can play, I think there will be more elite golfers who say $100m to sign, thank you very much, and I will still play the big boy events.
I don't think the product itself will fly. Quicker play is the only thing that might be an improvement on the current game. Apart from that it fails on every level. The team aspect in particular doesn't work for golf. Ok, the Ryder and Presidents Cups, where there's an "Us v the USA" dynamic, but otherwise no. I mean, who the fuck is going to care if Dustin Johnson's "Chew Boy Riders" or Lee Westwood's "Big Girth Inc" win some 54 hole event at the likes of Trump National? Or indeed which individual wins when all of them are on mega money deals anyway? No, it won't attract the fans, hence won't attract the tv money, hence won't achieve lift off. It'll last as long as the Saudis are prepared to lose money doing it and then peter out.
Another issue of single "contractor" sports compared to team sports, you are literally responsible for every single expense. Compare that to EPL footballers, they don't pay for anything. All their meals are provided by the club, they spend a large part of the time in hotels (normal now for even the home team to stay in hotels prior to games), they are given literally everything even down to underpants. During COVID the clubs even went down Tescos for them if they wanted a chocolate bar and come and deliver it.
Peter Crouch joked that away games with Liverpool he turned up with a washbag and that was it. When he stopped it took him quite a long to adjust to the fact that isn't how the real world works.
The government has granted development consent for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk coast.
The project, mainly funded by the French energy company EDF, is expected to cost in the region of £20bn.
Blimey, sounds quite cheap tbh.
Why do we outsource this stuff to the French govt rather than setting up our own national champion?
Because EDF is a company with a lot of expertise in this, its something they have a competitive advantage in and they'll do it for their best value for money.
Any state-owned "national champion" would be a bloated mess of a 'company' that would operate instead to the advantage of "stakeholders" and lobbyists and bailed out by the taxpayers time and again. 👎
But EDF is state-owned. And yet is "a company with a lot of expertise" who have found a "competitive advantage".
So there is no impediment whatsoever in being state-owned and commercially excellent. In your own words. Yet you oppose it...
Indeed this was exactly the point of my question. We threw the baby out with the bath water with privatisation and forgot that the benefits it brings are down to the implied incentive structure and little else. It’s perfectly possible to create an efficient state owned company if you’re careful about it, as is shown around the world.
Some countries understand strategic resilience and some don’t. Unfortunately we sold off our strategic resilience to fund our structural current account deficit. Sad.
By the way Bart, the “private sector” makes the key components for our nuclear powered subs. But really that’s a charade. It’s a ring fenced unit within Rolls Royce that decades after the Thatcher bail out, still benefits from cost plus govt contracts and has very little turnover of staff, because a) it’s such a cushy number, b) they have to be security cleared and pretty much only employ British nationals.
So it’s private sector but without the upside. And in a similar way, it’s possible to create state sector but without the downside. I’m a Tory at heart but at the first opportunity I’d be nationalising Gupta’s steel interests, as well as the oil refineries owned by Essar and Gary Klesch. Let more competent private sector people run them, with pay structures inversely proportional to the level of state subsidy required to keep them running in the national interest.
I can see where you're coming from, but it's an irrelevance in this case. Our nationalised power company would not have any expertise in building new nuclear power stations, as the government has not ordered any for thirty years. - and some governments were rather cold on nuclear power as well.
It's worth emphasising how crap we are at doing these sort of long term projects where long term knowledge / specialist skills are required.
Nuclear power stations is 1 example, unless you continually build them one after another you quickly lose the knowledge required to build them. Equally we treat railways as stop start one off projects when we really do need to be planning what occurs after HS2 so the specialists have their next project ready to go.
That's very true for railways. During the Thatcher / Major governments, many hundreds of miles of railways were electrified. During the 13 years of Labour government that followed, only 9 miles were electrified (Kidsgrove to Crewe). (*) Lots of useful skills and knowledge were lost.
The government should (and in fact, should still) commit to a rolling program, where one line is completed and people move onto the next. Instead, we get four major projects announced at once, and when the first runs into problems due to lack of experience, prices go up.
(*) Never trust Labour with the railways ...
Don't trust either of them. The Tories brought in a private franchising structure so stupid that nobody else in the world copied it, and sold off the infrastructure in such a lax way that the private sector killed a load of people then needed rescuing. And then Labour did little to change the stupid for less stupid.
BTW, the expertise was lost before Labour had the chance to fuck things up. The multi-year hiatus in ordering new trains was enough to bankrupt and close the train manufacturing industry (bar 1 factory), the Rail Technical Centre was sold off and lost, the engineers flitted away.
We then ended up not able to do the basics like string up wires. Or re-signal the "victorian infrastructure" that Shapps Green seems obsessed with. The lunacy of the proposed Manchester South scheme as one example.
What we need is professionals running the shop. Neither party have offered that for decades, so trying to blame one lot for not fixing the other lot's mess is partisan silliness - BOTH were bad.
Since 1979 Labour have had thirteen years to get the railways right. In that time the Conservatives have had thirty.
And in those 30 years what projects have the Tory parties not binned. The Electrification of the Leeds Manchester line should be finished now but thanks to 12 years of Government arsing about it's so far cost £1bn and wasted £190m. https://t.co/PDOnY8QiUk
@Leon Before I waste more time putting combinations of parrot and Estonia and Tory into Twitter and Reddit, is there a more precise combination I might try to find out what on earth you’re talking about?
It was a prank
I was trying to find a combination of words which would be sufficiently plausible to get people googling a possible rumour, and yet, when you look at them, obviously absurd
The key was the mad word order
" the Cabinet Minister with the Estonian start up and the whole parrot gay thing jesus"
The government has granted development consent for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk coast.
The project, mainly funded by the French energy company EDF, is expected to cost in the region of £20bn.
Blimey, sounds quite cheap tbh.
Why do we outsource this stuff to the French govt rather than setting up our own national champion?
Because EDF is a company with a lot of expertise in this, its something they have a competitive advantage in and they'll do it for their best value for money.
Any state-owned "national champion" would be a bloated mess of a 'company' that would operate instead to the advantage of "stakeholders" and lobbyists and bailed out by the taxpayers time and again. 👎
But EDF is state-owned. And yet is "a company with a lot of expertise" who have found a "competitive advantage".
So there is no impediment whatsoever in being state-owned and commercially excellent. In your own words. Yet you oppose it...
Indeed this was exactly the point of my question. We threw the baby out with the bath water with privatisation and forgot that the benefits it brings are down to the implied incentive structure and little else. It’s perfectly possible to create an efficient state owned company if you’re careful about it, as is shown around the world.
Some countries understand strategic resilience and some don’t. Unfortunately we sold off our strategic resilience to fund our structural current account deficit. Sad.
By the way Bart, the “private sector” makes the key components for our nuclear powered subs. But really that’s a charade. It’s a ring fenced unit within Rolls Royce that decades after the Thatcher bail out, still benefits from cost plus govt contracts and has very little turnover of staff, because a) it’s such a cushy number, b) they have to be security cleared and pretty much only employ British nationals.
So it’s private sector but without the upside. And in a similar way, it’s possible to create state sector but without the downside. I’m a Tory at heart but at the first opportunity I’d be nationalising Gupta’s steel interests, as well as the oil refineries owned by Essar and Gary Klesch. Let more competent private sector people run them, with pay structures inversely proportional to the level of state subsidy required to keep them running in the national interest.
I can see where you're coming from, but it's an irrelevance in this case. Our nationalised power company would not have any expertise in building new nuclear power stations, as the government has not ordered any for thirty years. - and some governments were rather cold on nuclear power as well.
So create one. Private sector expertise is out there, so hire them. Instead of having engineers spending our money for the good of a foreign government, hire them to do the exact same job for the good of our government!
Its the same argument as where we have had UK rail passengers paying hugely inflated fares to pay for the pensions of foreign citizens. Bonkers.
Personally I'm not entirely sure of the need for nuclear. Renewables of various stripes are getting better and better. We have the dependability of tidal ranges all over the UK, we have excess wind power generation that we need to recover, and once we do that, as Malmesbury said, the potential for offshore wind is nearly limitless.
Nuclear is expensive, dubious environmentally, and dangerous. How often have we heard terrible warnings of nuclear power stations being caught in fighting (most recently in Ukraine)? If we are going to prod Putin and potentially China, is it really a great idea to be carpeted in nuclear power stations when we do so? Landlocked France, I can understand it. We have plenty of other options.
Only tidal as a continual 24/7 baseline supply though and I don't think any of us know the reasons behind it being rejected out of hand.
Storage is still very much a work in progress and that means we have to cover for extreme events like a week without wind...
Store the excess 'leccy as hydrogen (using electrolysers) or even ammonia or methanol when the wind generation exceeds grid capacity. Basically balancing demand over time
We can export excess to our neighbours in Europe once wind capacity ramps up.
Not really. It is already widely recognised that nobody knows why antidepressants work and that it is more complicated than "not enough serotonin." The evidence is very good that they do work though.
If this sort of thing floats your boat try Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe. An expose of Big Pharma and the Sackler family and their contribution to the world prescription opioid crisis. Fascinating stuff.
The government has granted development consent for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk coast.
The project, mainly funded by the French energy company EDF, is expected to cost in the region of £20bn.
Blimey, sounds quite cheap tbh.
Why do we outsource this stuff to the French govt rather than setting up our own national champion?
Because EDF is a company with a lot of expertise in this, its something they have a competitive advantage in and they'll do it for their best value for money.
Any state-owned "national champion" would be a bloated mess of a 'company' that would operate instead to the advantage of "stakeholders" and lobbyists and bailed out by the taxpayers time and again. 👎
But EDF is state-owned. And yet is "a company with a lot of expertise" who have found a "competitive advantage".
So there is no impediment whatsoever in being state-owned and commercially excellent. In your own words. Yet you oppose it...
Indeed this was exactly the point of my question. We threw the baby out with the bath water with privatisation and forgot that the benefits it brings are down to the implied incentive structure and little else. It’s perfectly possible to create an efficient state owned company if you’re careful about it, as is shown around the world.
Some countries understand strategic resilience and some don’t. Unfortunately we sold off our strategic resilience to fund our structural current account deficit. Sad.
By the way Bart, the “private sector” makes the key components for our nuclear powered subs. But really that’s a charade. It’s a ring fenced unit within Rolls Royce that decades after the Thatcher bail out, still benefits from cost plus govt contracts and has very little turnover of staff, because a) it’s such a cushy number, b) they have to be security cleared and pretty much only employ British nationals.
So it’s private sector but without the upside. And in a similar way, it’s possible to create state sector but without the downside. I’m a Tory at heart but at the first opportunity I’d be nationalising Gupta’s steel interests, as well as the oil refineries owned by Essar and Gary Klesch. Let more competent private sector people run them, with pay structures inversely proportional to the level of state subsidy required to keep them running in the national interest.
I can see where you're coming from, but it's an irrelevance in this case. Our nationalised power company would not have any expertise in building new nuclear power stations, as the government has not ordered any for thirty years. - and some governments were rather cold on nuclear power as well.
It's worth emphasising how crap we are at doing these sort of long term projects where long term knowledge / specialist skills are required.
Nuclear power stations is 1 example, unless you continually build them one after another you quickly lose the knowledge required to build them. Equally we treat railways as stop start one off projects when we really do need to be planning what occurs after HS2 so the specialists have their next project ready to go.
That's very true for railways. During the Thatcher / Major governments, many hundreds of miles of railways were electrified. During the 13 years of Labour government that followed, only 9 miles were electrified (Kidsgrove to Crewe). (*) Lots of useful skills and knowledge were lost.
The government should (and in fact, should still) commit to a rolling program, where one line is completed and people move onto the next. Instead, we get four major projects announced at once, and when the first runs into problems due to lack of experience, prices go up.
(*) Never trust Labour with the railways ...
Don't trust either of them. The Tories brought in a private franchising structure so stupid that nobody else in the world copied it, and sold off the infrastructure in such a lax way that the private sector killed a load of people then needed rescuing. And then Labour did little to change the stupid for less stupid.
BTW, the expertise was lost before Labour had the chance to fuck things up. The multi-year hiatus in ordering new trains was enough to bankrupt and close the train manufacturing industry (bar 1 factory), the Rail Technical Centre was sold off and lost, the engineers flitted away.
We then ended up not able to do the basics like string up wires. Or re-signal the "victorian infrastructure" that Shapps Green seems obsessed with. The lunacy of the proposed Manchester South scheme as one example.
What we need is professionals running the shop. Neither party have offered that for decades, so trying to blame one lot for not fixing the other lot's mess is partisan silliness - BOTH were bad.
You can go away with the "private sector killed a load of people" sh*t. Yes, Railtrack had problems. But, in case you had not noticed, so did BR in the decades before. The list is long and inglorious. Mentioning things like Hatfield and not mentioning the likes of Crowden, Clapham, Stafford, Cannon Street, Purley Belgrove, Lockington (all fatal crashes in the ten years before privatisation) is odd.
Unless nationalised deaths are fine, privatised ones are evil?
Not at all! But when there are a list of accidents directly caused by Railtrack not only not maintaining the tracks but not knowing what condition they were in, its hard to argue that the private operator and the structure that was created specifically to be like that wasn't directly responsible.
Its not private ownership as a concept that killed them, its the specific private ownership structure and a total lack of regulation that did it. Would BR have had those accidents? Its possible, possibly different ones as I doubt they would have screwed up that badly.
ISTR you volunteer on a preserved line? I assume then that you know that for every one of the crashes you mention and all the ones before it, the industry looked at what happened and learned lessons and wrote new processes to avoid a repeat. And most of the ones you listed - Purley, Cowden, Stafford, Bellgrove, Cannon Street - were driver errors as opposed to infrastructure failures. As opposed to the Railtrack era crashes where it was crap maintenance done at minimum cost for maximum profits.
I might suggest you are wrong on that. As an example off the top of my head, Clapham Junction was caused by crap maintenance done at minimum cost. (Not that I blame the poor sod who did the work...)
And you might notice that drivers were part of the privatised parts of the system: and as you say, that's been *much* better since privatisation.AS has lack of fatal crashes called by train maintenance failures. You can't have it both ways.
I wasn't aware that I was trying to have it any way. If you want to excuse Railtrack thats up to you. On the bright side they went bust and we don't have to worry about them any more.
Henrik Stenson has been removed as Europe's Ryder Cup skipper with immediate effect.
I am sure there are a few million reasons why he won't be too concerned.
Rumoured to be $40m - for someone who hasn’t won a tournament in three years.
I’m sure most of us would take the same decision. Outside the top dozen or so, pro golfers are not making massive bank and have a lot of expenses.
How on earth is LIV intending to get a return on all this ?
These are huge numbers for *checks notes* the 171st ranked golfer in the world.
Quite. It's not a commercial proposition. The return is 'soft' - to improve the image of Saudi.
Initially it isn't. But if they make it work and become THE golf league, $100 million here or there is nothing. They are throwing something like $4bn at the project, but have a look how much PGA Tour have sold their rights for, last round of deals was about $3bn.
The big question I think is the majors. If they ban all the LIV golfers (and make it stick), I think that is problematic. But if they carry on with the well if you qualify you can play, I think there will be more elite golfers who say $100m to sign, thank you very much, and I will still play the big boy events.
I don't think the product itself will fly. Quicker play is the only thing that might be an improvement on the current game. Apart from that it fails on every level. The team aspect in particular doesn't work for golf. Ok, the Ryder and Presidents Cups, where there's an "Us v the USA" dynamic, but otherwise no. I mean, who the fuck is going to care if Dustin Johnson's "Chew Boy Riders" or Lee Westwood's "Big Girth Inc" win some 54 hole event at the likes of Trump National? Or indeed which individual wins when all of them are on mega money deals anyway? No, it won't attract the fans, hence won't attract the tv money, hence won't achieve lift off. It'll last as long as the Saudis are prepared to lose money doing it and then peter out.
The team thing I am far from convinced by, although match play in general is very popular (perhaps they go down that route). The fact they got a big cheque to join, well that doesn't stop us getting excited by the EPL when even the crappy benchwarmers are on $3m a year.
I wouldn't underestimate the speed of play element. It is far better for spectators and tv.
What LIV has shown is they are willing to try different things. The PGA Tour have already announced they will also run more events without a cut.
The logical thing has always been to have a few of these special LIV events that revolve around the weeks when PGA tour is playing the events that nobody cares about and let the players play both.
The government has granted development consent for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk coast.
The project, mainly funded by the French energy company EDF, is expected to cost in the region of £20bn.
Blimey, sounds quite cheap tbh.
Why do we outsource this stuff to the French govt rather than setting up our own national champion?
Because EDF is a company with a lot of expertise in this, its something they have a competitive advantage in and they'll do it for their best value for money.
Any state-owned "national champion" would be a bloated mess of a 'company' that would operate instead to the advantage of "stakeholders" and lobbyists and bailed out by the taxpayers time and again. 👎
But EDF is state-owned. And yet is "a company with a lot of expertise" who have found a "competitive advantage".
So there is no impediment whatsoever in being state-owned and commercially excellent. In your own words. Yet you oppose it...
Indeed this was exactly the point of my question. We threw the baby out with the bath water with privatisation and forgot that the benefits it brings are down to the implied incentive structure and little else. It’s perfectly possible to create an efficient state owned company if you’re careful about it, as is shown around the world.
Some countries understand strategic resilience and some don’t. Unfortunately we sold off our strategic resilience to fund our structural current account deficit. Sad.
By the way Bart, the “private sector” makes the key components for our nuclear powered subs. But really that’s a charade. It’s a ring fenced unit within Rolls Royce that decades after the Thatcher bail out, still benefits from cost plus govt contracts and has very little turnover of staff, because a) it’s such a cushy number, b) they have to be security cleared and pretty much only employ British nationals.
So it’s private sector but without the upside. And in a similar way, it’s possible to create state sector but without the downside. I’m a Tory at heart but at the first opportunity I’d be nationalising Gupta’s steel interests, as well as the oil refineries owned by Essar and Gary Klesch. Let more competent private sector people run them, with pay structures inversely proportional to the level of state subsidy required to keep them running in the national interest.
I can see where you're coming from, but it's an irrelevance in this case. Our nationalised power company would not have any expertise in building new nuclear power stations, as the government has not ordered any for thirty years. - and some governments were rather cold on nuclear power as well.
So create one. Private sector expertise is out there, so hire them. Instead of having engineers spending our money for the good of a foreign government, hire them to do the exact same job for the good of our government!
Its the same argument as where we have had UK rail passengers paying hugely inflated fares to pay for the pensions of foreign citizens. Bonkers.
Personally I'm not entirely sure of the need for nuclear. Renewables of various stripes are getting better and better. We have the dependability of tidal ranges all over the UK, we have excess wind power generation that we need to recover, and once we do that, as Malmesbury said, the potential for offshore wind is nearly limitless.
Nuclear is expensive, dubious environmentally, and dangerous. How often have we heard terrible warnings of nuclear power stations being caught in fighting (most recently in Ukraine)? If we are going to prod Putin and potentially China, is it really a great idea to be carpeted in nuclear power stations when we do so? Landlocked France, I can understand it. We have plenty of other options.
Only tidal as a continual 24/7 baseline supply though and I don't think any of us know the reasons behind it being rejected out of hand.
Storage is still very much a work in progress and that means we have to cover for extreme events like a week without wind...
Store the excess 'leccy as hydrogen (using electrolysers) or even ammonia or methanol when the wind generation exceeds grid capacity. Basically balancing demand over time
We can export excess to our neighbours in Europe once wind capacity ramps up.
AIUI hydrogen conversion is very inefficient; you'd need a lot of excess capacity.
'“There’s not a single office tenant here,” he says. “Not one. They were trying to rent them out, then the pandemic happened and – poof! – we got ourselves a ghost town. A Job Centre finally opened here a few months ago, so at least I’ve got some company now.”
[...]
Today, the place has a Ballardian air. On a sunny weekday lunchtime, a ripped topless man is the sole inhabitant of the district’s central square, doing press-ups on the manicured lawn and admiring his reflection in the empty plate glass windows. After a long time walking the length of the blocks, trying doorways and pressing buzzers in search of life, I find another man sitting on a kerb sipping a coffee. An office worker, at last?
“We’re filming an advert for Marks & Spencer,” he tells me. “It’s an ideal location because there are never any people around. If we’re careful with the shots, we can sort of make it look like a normal place.”'
@Leon Before I waste more time putting combinations of parrot and Estonia and Tory into Twitter and Reddit, is there a more precise combination I might try to find out what on earth you’re talking about?
It was a prank
I was trying to find a combination of words which would be sufficiently plausible to get people googling a possible rumour, and yet, when you look at them, obviously absurd
The key was the mad word order
" the Cabinet Minister with the Estonian start up and the whole parrot gay thing jesus"
The government has granted development consent for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk coast.
The project, mainly funded by the French energy company EDF, is expected to cost in the region of £20bn.
Blimey, sounds quite cheap tbh.
Why do we outsource this stuff to the French govt rather than setting up our own national champion?
Because EDF is a company with a lot of expertise in this, its something they have a competitive advantage in and they'll do it for their best value for money.
Any state-owned "national champion" would be a bloated mess of a 'company' that would operate instead to the advantage of "stakeholders" and lobbyists and bailed out by the taxpayers time and again. 👎
But EDF is state-owned. And yet is "a company with a lot of expertise" who have found a "competitive advantage".
So there is no impediment whatsoever in being state-owned and commercially excellent. In your own words. Yet you oppose it...
Indeed this was exactly the point of my question. We threw the baby out with the bath water with privatisation and forgot that the benefits it brings are down to the implied incentive structure and little else. It’s perfectly possible to create an efficient state owned company if you’re careful about it, as is shown around the world.
Some countries understand strategic resilience and some don’t. Unfortunately we sold off our strategic resilience to fund our structural current account deficit. Sad.
By the way Bart, the “private sector” makes the key components for our nuclear powered subs. But really that’s a charade. It’s a ring fenced unit within Rolls Royce that decades after the Thatcher bail out, still benefits from cost plus govt contracts and has very little turnover of staff, because a) it’s such a cushy number, b) they have to be security cleared and pretty much only employ British nationals.
So it’s private sector but without the upside. And in a similar way, it’s possible to create state sector but without the downside. I’m a Tory at heart but at the first opportunity I’d be nationalising Gupta’s steel interests, as well as the oil refineries owned by Essar and Gary Klesch. Let more competent private sector people run them, with pay structures inversely proportional to the level of state subsidy required to keep them running in the national interest.
I can see where you're coming from, but it's an irrelevance in this case. Our nationalised power company would not have any expertise in building new nuclear power stations, as the government has not ordered any for thirty years. - and some governments were rather cold on nuclear power as well.
So create one. Private sector expertise is out there, so hire them. Instead of having engineers spending our money for the good of a foreign government, hire them to do the exact same job for the good of our government!
Its the same argument as where we have had UK rail passengers paying hugely inflated fares to pay for the pensions of foreign citizens. Bonkers.
Personally I'm not entirely sure of the need for nuclear. Renewables of various stripes are getting better and better. We have the dependability of tidal ranges all over the UK, we have excess wind power generation that we need to recover, and once we do that, as Malmesbury said, the potential for offshore wind is nearly limitless.
Nuclear is expensive, dubious environmentally, and dangerous. How often have we heard terrible warnings of nuclear power stations being caught in fighting (most recently in Ukraine)? If we are going to prod Putin and potentially China, is it really a great idea to be carpeted in nuclear power stations when we do so? Landlocked France, I can understand it. We have plenty of other options.
Only tidal as a continual 24/7 baseline supply though and I don't think any of us know the reasons behind it being rejected out of hand.
Storage is still very much a work in progress and that means we have to cover for extreme events like a week without wind...
Store the excess 'leccy as hydrogen (using electrolysers) or even ammonia or methanol when the wind generation exceeds grid capacity. Basically balancing demand over time
We can export excess to our neighbours in Europe once wind capacity ramps up.
AIUI hydrogen conversion is very inefficient; you'd need a lot of excess capacity.
Yep - it's about 65% efficiency so you are losing 33% as a minimum unless and until someone invents a better approach and manages to get High Temperature Electrolysis working
Yes, what happened to these guys ? Curiously silent since then.
https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1549533976645230592 Remember how Trump's two top Secret Service agents were practically marching up to capitol hill to impeach Cassidy Hutchinson's claims about them telling her about Trump's feral freakout in the POTUS limo? What happened to that? I thought they were going to clear things up.
What with that and deleting all their text messages from the 5th and 6th 2021, the Secret Service hasn't covered itself with glory recently.
It’s pretty clear something strange happened in yesterday’s vote so the true level of support for the candidates is hard to gage .
The 32 TT votes up for grabs would never break to give Truss 15 .
How many Sunak supporters gave votes to Truss ?
I suspect 15 TT voters went to Badenoch to knock out Truss, they may now go to Mordaunt having failed to do that, again to try and knock out Truss. Maybe some Sunak voters went to Truss or some Badenoch voters switched to Truss yesterday. If another 10 to 15 Badenoch MPs went to Mourdant, even if all the other Badenoch MPs went to Truss then Mordaunt could be through.
Your first statement, although not impossible, is I would have thought unlikely. "If" is doing an awful lot of heavy lifting elsewhere too.
Not really. It is already widely recognised that nobody knows why antidepressants work and that it is more complicated than "not enough serotonin." The evidence is very good that they do work though.
Oh indeed. The question of why they do work though is a fascinating one. This seems to exclude serotonin levels as a cause from the picture altogether.
Yes, what happened to these guys ? Curiously silent since then.
https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1549533976645230592 Remember how Trump's two top Secret Service agents were practically marching up to capitol hill to impeach Cassidy Hutchinson's claims about them telling her about Trump's feral freakout in the POTUS limo? What happened to that? I thought they were going to clear things up.
What with that and deleting all their text messages from the 5th and 6th 2021, the Secret Service hasn't covered itself with glory recently.
It was a coup. Sadly it seems Biden has left it too late, and there’s a real risk of Trump returning. I’m which case my wife will insist we return to the UK.
Not really. It is already widely recognised that nobody knows why antidepressants work and that it is more complicated than "not enough serotonin." The evidence is very good that they do work though.
Yes I was on antidepressants and they probably saved my life in addition to counselling.
The government has granted development consent for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk coast.
The project, mainly funded by the French energy company EDF, is expected to cost in the region of £20bn.
Blimey, sounds quite cheap tbh.
Why do we outsource this stuff to the French govt rather than setting up our own national champion?
Because EDF is a company with a lot of expertise in this, its something they have a competitive advantage in and they'll do it for their best value for money.
Any state-owned "national champion" would be a bloated mess of a 'company' that would operate instead to the advantage of "stakeholders" and lobbyists and bailed out by the taxpayers time and again. 👎
But EDF is state-owned. And yet is "a company with a lot of expertise" who have found a "competitive advantage".
So there is no impediment whatsoever in being state-owned and commercially excellent. In your own words. Yet you oppose it...
Indeed this was exactly the point of my question. We threw the baby out with the bath water with privatisation and forgot that the benefits it brings are down to the implied incentive structure and little else. It’s perfectly possible to create an efficient state owned company if you’re careful about it, as is shown around the world.
Some countries understand strategic resilience and some don’t. Unfortunately we sold off our strategic resilience to fund our structural current account deficit. Sad.
By the way Bart, the “private sector” makes the key components for our nuclear powered subs. But really that’s a charade. It’s a ring fenced unit within Rolls Royce that decades after the Thatcher bail out, still benefits from cost plus govt contracts and has very little turnover of staff, because a) it’s such a cushy number, b) they have to be security cleared and pretty much only employ British nationals.
So it’s private sector but without the upside. And in a similar way, it’s possible to create state sector but without the downside. I’m a Tory at heart but at the first opportunity I’d be nationalising Gupta’s steel interests, as well as the oil refineries owned by Essar and Gary Klesch. Let more competent private sector people run them, with pay structures inversely proportional to the level of state subsidy required to keep them running in the national interest.
I can see where you're coming from, but it's an irrelevance in this case. Our nationalised power company would not have any expertise in building new nuclear power stations, as the government has not ordered any for thirty years. - and some governments were rather cold on nuclear power as well.
It's worth emphasising how crap we are at doing these sort of long term projects where long term knowledge / specialist skills are required.
Nuclear power stations is 1 example, unless you continually build them one after another you quickly lose the knowledge required to build them. Equally we treat railways as stop start one off projects when we really do need to be planning what occurs after HS2 so the specialists have their next project ready to go.
That's very true for railways. During the Thatcher / Major governments, many hundreds of miles of railways were electrified. During the 13 years of Labour government that followed, only 9 miles were electrified (Kidsgrove to Crewe). (*) Lots of useful skills and knowledge were lost.
The government should (and in fact, should still) commit to a rolling program, where one line is completed and people move onto the next. Instead, we get four major projects announced at once, and when the first runs into problems due to lack of experience, prices go up.
(*) Never trust Labour with the railways ...
Don't trust either of them. The Tories brought in a private franchising structure so stupid that nobody else in the world copied it, and sold off the infrastructure in such a lax way that the private sector killed a load of people then needed rescuing. And then Labour did little to change the stupid for less stupid.
BTW, the expertise was lost before Labour had the chance to fuck things up. The multi-year hiatus in ordering new trains was enough to bankrupt and close the train manufacturing industry (bar 1 factory), the Rail Technical Centre was sold off and lost, the engineers flitted away.
We then ended up not able to do the basics like string up wires. Or re-signal the "victorian infrastructure" that Shapps Green seems obsessed with. The lunacy of the proposed Manchester South scheme as one example.
What we need is professionals running the shop. Neither party have offered that for decades, so trying to blame one lot for not fixing the other lot's mess is partisan silliness - BOTH were bad.
You can go away with the "private sector killed a load of people" sh*t. Yes, Railtrack had problems. But, in case you had not noticed, so did BR in the decades before. The list is long and inglorious. Mentioning things like Hatfield and not mentioning the likes of Crowden, Clapham, Stafford, Cannon Street, Purley Belgrove, Lockington (all fatal crashes in the ten years before privatisation) is odd.
Unless nationalised deaths are fine, privatised ones are evil?
Not at all! But when there are a list of accidents directly caused by Railtrack not only not maintaining the tracks but not knowing what condition they were in, its hard to argue that the private operator and the structure that was created specifically to be like that wasn't directly responsible.
Its not private ownership as a concept that killed them, its the specific private ownership structure and a total lack of regulation that did it. Would BR have had those accidents? Its possible, possibly different ones as I doubt they would have screwed up that badly.
ISTR you volunteer on a preserved line? I assume then that you know that for every one of the crashes you mention and all the ones before it, the industry looked at what happened and learned lessons and wrote new processes to avoid a repeat. And most of the ones you listed - Purley, Cowden, Stafford, Bellgrove, Cannon Street - were driver errors as opposed to infrastructure failures. As opposed to the Railtrack era crashes where it was crap maintenance done at minimum cost for maximum profits.
I might suggest you are wrong on that. As an example off the top of my head, Clapham Junction was caused by crap maintenance done at minimum cost. (Not that I blame the poor sod who did the work...)
And you might notice that drivers were part of the privatised parts of the system: and as you say, that's been *much* better since privatisation.AS has lack of fatal crashes called by train maintenance failures. You can't have it both ways.
I wasn't aware that I was trying to have it any way. If you want to excuse Railtrack thats up to you. On the bright side they went bust and we don't have to worry about them any more.
If you want to excuse BR for its similar rate of crashes, that's up to you.
The bright side is that we had 12 years with no passenger fatalities in a train crash, and 15 years with only one (the Stonehaven derailment). That's something to feel good about, even if it did happen in a part-privatised system. Long may it continue.
Picture the scene in say, 2024, when Prime Minister Liz Yawn Truss is doing an election walkabout in Newent, and the sparse crowds are politely chatting, and looking at their phones, and drifting off.... and then a mop of blonde hair appears
OMFG it's BORIS!!
BORIS!!
Suddenly the crowds rush to get a glimpse, and to shake hands with the great man, and laugh at his feeble but well delivered jokes, and they walk away with a smile, and Liz Wossface remains ignored in the corner. Along with Rishi Sunak
Repeat for PM Starmer at state events, perhaps
That's certainly how it plays out in his head. And those who have remained loyal still love him. It's the other version of Boris Derangment Syndrome. So what happens next?
If you were the next Conservative Leader, how do you handle Boris? Try to keep him onside, or try to crush him at his point of maximum weakness?
@Leon Before I waste more time putting combinations of parrot and Estonia and Tory into Twitter and Reddit, is there a more precise combination I might try to find out what on earth you’re talking about?
It was a prank
I was trying to find a combination of words which would be sufficiently plausible to get people googling a possible rumour, and yet, when you look at them, obviously absurd
The key was the mad word order
" the Cabinet Minister with the Estonian start up and the whole parrot gay thing jesus"
The "whole parrot gay thing jesus"??
Apologies. It amused me for half a minute
I see. So @Cicero is still the only one with the goodies on the alleged Uk govt scandal being discussed in Finland
Picture the scene in say, 2024, when Prime Minister Liz Yawn Truss is doing an election walkabout in Newent, and the sparse crowds are politely chatting, and looking at their phones, and drifting off.... and then a mop of blonde hair appears
OMFG it's BORIS!!
BORIS!!
Suddenly the crowds rush to get a glimpse, and to shake hands with the great man, and laugh at his feeble but well delivered jokes, and they walk away with a smile, and Liz Wossface remains ignored in the corner. Along with Rishi Sunak
Repeat for PM Starmer at state events, perhaps
That's certainly how it plays out in his head. And those who have remained loyal still love him. It's the other version of Boris Derangment Syndrome. So what happens next?
If you were the next Conservative Leader, how do you handle Boris? Try to keep him onside, or try to crush him at his point of maximum weakness?
Seriously? Wait for the Privileges Committee report and then remove the whip.
Not really. It is already widely recognised that nobody knows why antidepressants work and that it is more complicated than "not enough serotonin." The evidence is very good that they do work though.
Depression for some is unavoidable, and every treatment that works a godsend. Deeply unfashionable, but I know people whose lives have been saved by ECT.
OTOH just as prison can be described as an expensive way of making bad people worse, modern life can be described as an experiment in what happens when you do your best as a society to maximise the possibility of everyone being depressed.
From which starting point an interesting array of strategies emerge.
Not really. It is already widely recognised that nobody knows why antidepressants work and that it is more complicated than "not enough serotonin." The evidence is very good that they do work though.
Yes I was on antidepressants and they probably saved my life in addition to counselling.
Sympathies. As a teenager I thought I was depressed (I had a few reasons to be at the time), but when I grew older and got to know more people, I realised it had been nothing more than teenage angst. I've since seen the Black Dog stalking other people, and it's hideous. I've never suffered anything like that, and I hope I never do.
Picture the scene in say, 2024, when Prime Minister Liz Yawn Truss is doing an election walkabout in Newent, and the sparse crowds are politely chatting, and looking at their phones, and drifting off.... and then a mop of blonde hair appears
OMFG it's BORIS!!
BORIS!!
Suddenly the crowds rush to get a glimpse, and to shake hands with the great man, and laugh at his feeble but well delivered jokes, and they walk away with a smile, and Liz Wossface remains ignored in the corner. Along with Rishi Sunak
Repeat for PM Starmer at state events, perhaps
You have a ridiculous crush on this shallow worthless man. Man up for heaven's sake. Have some self-respect STOP
But where I agree with you about Johnson - indeed I've said this before myself a few times - is that he is a genuine star for a certain type of voter and it's no sure thing the Tories will do better at the polls without him than with him STOP
Plenty of Leavers in those traditional ex Labour seats voted "Boris" not Conservative - in their minds - at GE19 and they'll be pissed off that he's been ousted just for being - again in their minds - his roguish adorable self STOP
So, yes, some will come back to the Tories with him gone, but they'll lose votes too. It's a matter of what the net impact will be STOP
Picture the scene in say, 2024, when Prime Minister Liz Yawn Truss is doing an election walkabout in Newent, and the sparse crowds are politely chatting, and looking at their phones, and drifting off.... and then a mop of blonde hair appears
OMFG it's BORIS!!
BORIS!!
Suddenly the crowds rush to get a glimpse, and to shake hands with the great man, and laugh at his feeble but well delivered jokes, and they walk away with a smile, and Liz Wossface remains ignored in the corner. Along with Rishi Sunak
Repeat for PM Starmer at state events, perhaps
That's certainly how it plays out in his head. And those who have remained loyal still love him. It's the other version of Boris Derangment Syndrome. So what happens next?
If you were the next Conservative Leader, how do you handle Boris? Try to keep him onside, or try to crush him at his point of maximum weakness?
Seriously? Wait for the Privileges Committee report and then remove the whip.
@Leon Before I waste more time putting combinations of parrot and Estonia and Tory into Twitter and Reddit, is there a more precise combination I might try to find out what on earth you’re talking about?
It was a prank
I was trying to find a combination of words which would be sufficiently plausible to get people googling a possible rumour, and yet, when you look at them, obviously absurd
The key was the mad word order
" the Cabinet Minister with the Estonian start up and the whole parrot gay thing jesus"
The "whole parrot gay thing jesus"??
Apologies. It amused me for half a minute
I see. So @Cicero is still the only one with the goodies on the alleged Uk govt scandal being discussed in Finland
A search of Finnish social media has revealed nothing.
Cicero needs to cough up, or at least provide a bloody hint.
Everyone seems to be on anti-depressants these days.
Seriously, it’s getting to the point where to not be on them is becoming stubbornly retro, like refusing to have a television in the house.
In which case perhaps we need to ask whether it’s society itself which is sick, just like RD Laing suggested.
Social media has a lot to answer for....back in the day you might have heard there are rich people who live certain lives not available to you, but everything was really based in the reality of what you saw around yourself, now people are bombarded by (most faked) images of what seems like everybody else living these amazing lives....then you used to go to your local pub and chat up ladies and again there wasn't infinite bombardment of 10 out of 10 beautiful people...instead people on dating apps and unless you are a 10 out of 10 you are going to struggle to get a date with anybody but a 1...and of course you get bombarded by toxicity from every which way for the smallest step "out of line" is filmed and spread across social media.
Then all the stresses of modern western world with house prices, student debt, etc etc etc.
If you get sucked into that from a very early age not surprising people can be very down about their life.
Picture the scene in say, 2024, when Prime Minister Liz Yawn Truss is doing an election walkabout in Newent, and the sparse crowds are politely chatting, and looking at their phones, and drifting off.... and then a mop of blonde hair appears
OMFG it's BORIS!!
BORIS!!
Suddenly the crowds rush to get a glimpse, and to shake hands with the great man, and laugh at his feeble but well delivered jokes, and they walk away with a smile, and Liz Wossface remains ignored in the corner. Along with Rishi Sunak
Repeat for PM Starmer at state events, perhaps
You have a ridiculous crush on this shallow worthless man. Man up for heaven's sake. Have some self-respect STOP
But where I agree with you about Johnson - indeed I've said this before myself a few times - is that he is a genuine star for a certain type of voter and it's no sure thing the Tories will do better at the polls without him than with him STOP
Plenty of Leavers in those traditional ex Labour seats voted "Boris" not Conservative - in their minds - at GE19 and they'll be pissed off that he's been ousted just for being - again in their minds - his roguish adorable self STOP
So, yes, some will come back to the Tories with him gone, but they'll lose votes too. It's a matter of what the net impact will be STOP
Are you using an over literal voice dictation machine?
By the way @Leon, I only just watched that video of Tim Peake being interviewed by Richard Madeley that you sent.
Most successful British astronaut of all time says these aren’t an earthly technology, the debate is really whether they’re alien drones or time travellers or something else. British public shrugs, British establishment has nothing to say either.
Meanwhile in the US the legislative noose tightens, new UAP whistleblower protection laws passing through both houses of Congress as we speak.
Did you see Lue Elizondo’s formal submission to the Pentagon Inspector General, which was recently released? He named specific individuals who he said illegally blocked information from flowing up the chain of command and who destroyed evidence, because it clashed with their religious beliefs. And directed the IG to the sever location of a 23 min long video that he indicates represents irrefutable proof that Dorothy’s not in Kansas.
Criminal penalty for lying on that form is oh, only 20 years.
'“There’s not a single office tenant here,” he says. “Not one. They were trying to rent them out, then the pandemic happened and – poof! – we got ourselves a ghost town. A Job Centre finally opened here a few months ago, so at least I’ve got some company now.”
[...]
Today, the place has a Ballardian air. On a sunny weekday lunchtime, a ripped topless man is the sole inhabitant of the district’s central square, doing press-ups on the manicured lawn and admiring his reflection in the empty plate glass windows. After a long time walking the length of the blocks, trying doorways and pressing buzzers in search of life, I find another man sitting on a kerb sipping a coffee. An office worker, at last?
“We’re filming an advert for Marks & Spencer,” he tells me. “It’s an ideal location because there are never any people around. If we’re careful with the shots, we can sort of make it look like a normal place.”'
And yet there were similar articles about the Shard a few years after it was finished and "empty" - now it is a huge success
And multiple similar articles fastened on to Canary Wharf, in its struggling early days, it was called Thatcher's doomed vanity project, devoid of tenants, blah blah; look at it now
Indeed these accusations are themselves a rich part of London history. Two enormous houses were built in the mid Victorian era in Knightsbridge, kittycorner from Harrods. They were so big they were like palaces, and at first they were nicknamed "Malta and Gibraltar". Why? Because "like Malta and Gibraltar, they will never be taken". ie Never have a tenant
See also Tobacco Dock in Docklands
"After the London Docklands ceased seaborne trade, the warehouse and surrounding areas fell into dereliction until Tobacco Dock was turned into a shopping centre which opened in 1989. However, due to the early 1990s recession, it was forced to close two years later. In 2003 English Heritage placed it on its 'at risk' register, preventing many developers from attempting a rejuvenation of the former London Docklands site. For TWO DECADES Tobacco Dock stood largely empty; it was used as a barracks for military personnel providing security to the 2012 London Olympics."
"As part of their commercial launch, they will be exhibiting at the sold out Xerocon, at Tobacco Dock, London, on 20th and 21st July in partnership with leading accountancy app Xero."
I wonder what the funding model for Sizewell C is, HPC made some sense because it doesn't pay any RoI until it generates electricity. All of the risk sits with EDF. I worry that the government is going to be on the hook for SC in a way that we weren't for HPC. The risk of unlimited delays and cost overruns would sit with the taxpayer under the new arrangement. It doesn't keep EDF in line over costs and delivery time frames.
It's Regulated Asset Base model to lower the WACC that caused a much higher cost at HPC.
Yes, what happened to these guys ? Curiously silent since then.
https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1549533976645230592 Remember how Trump's two top Secret Service agents were practically marching up to capitol hill to impeach Cassidy Hutchinson's claims about them telling her about Trump's feral freakout in the POTUS limo? What happened to that? I thought they were going to clear things up.
What with that and deleting all their text messages from the 5th and 6th 2021, the Secret Service hasn't covered itself with glory recently.
Should add. I shared that article not in any way to diss anti-depressants. I've been on them myself for long periods. And needed to be. But because I take a keen interest in why I needed them then, but don't now?
The government has granted development consent for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk coast.
The project, mainly funded by the French energy company EDF, is expected to cost in the region of £20bn.
Blimey, sounds quite cheap tbh.
Why do we outsource this stuff to the French govt rather than setting up our own national champion?
Because EDF is a company with a lot of expertise in this, its something they have a competitive advantage in and they'll do it for their best value for money.
Any state-owned "national champion" would be a bloated mess of a 'company' that would operate instead to the advantage of "stakeholders" and lobbyists and bailed out by the taxpayers time and again. 👎
But EDF is state-owned. And yet is "a company with a lot of expertise" who have found a "competitive advantage".
So there is no impediment whatsoever in being state-owned and commercially excellent. In your own words. Yet you oppose it...
Indeed this was exactly the point of my question. We threw the baby out with the bath water with privatisation and forgot that the benefits it brings are down to the implied incentive structure and little else. It’s perfectly possible to create an efficient state owned company if you’re careful about it, as is shown around the world.
Some countries understand strategic resilience and some don’t. Unfortunately we sold off our strategic resilience to fund our structural current account deficit. Sad.
By the way Bart, the “private sector” makes the key components for our nuclear powered subs. But really that’s a charade. It’s a ring fenced unit within Rolls Royce that decades after the Thatcher bail out, still benefits from cost plus govt contracts and has very little turnover of staff, because a) it’s such a cushy number, b) they have to be security cleared and pretty much only employ British nationals.
So it’s private sector but without the upside. And in a similar way, it’s possible to create state sector but without the downside. I’m a Tory at heart but at the first opportunity I’d be nationalising Gupta’s steel interests, as well as the oil refineries owned by Essar and Gary Klesch. Let more competent private sector people run them, with pay structures inversely proportional to the level of state subsidy required to keep them running in the national interest.
I can see where you're coming from, but it's an irrelevance in this case. Our nationalised power company would not have any expertise in building new nuclear power stations, as the government has not ordered any for thirty years. - and some governments were rather cold on nuclear power as well.
So create one. Private sector expertise is out there, so hire them. Instead of having engineers spending our money for the good of a foreign government, hire them to do the exact same job for the good of our government!
Its the same argument as where we have had UK rail passengers paying hugely inflated fares to pay for the pensions of foreign citizens. Bonkers.
Personally I'm not entirely sure of the need for nuclear. Renewables of various stripes are getting better and better. We have the dependability of tidal ranges all over the UK, we have excess wind power generation that we need to recover, and once we do that, as Malmesbury said, the potential for offshore wind is nearly limitless.
Nuclear is expensive, dubious environmentally, and dangerous. How often have we heard terrible warnings of nuclear power stations being caught in fighting (most recently in Ukraine)? If we are going to prod Putin and potentially China, is it really a great idea to be carpeted in nuclear power stations when we do so? Landlocked France, I can understand it. We have plenty of other options.
Only tidal as a continual 24/7 baseline supply though and I don't think any of us know the reasons behind it being rejected out of hand.
Storage is still very much a work in progress and that means we have to cover for extreme events like a week without wind...
Store the excess 'leccy as hydrogen (using electrolysers) or even ammonia or methanol when the wind generation exceeds grid capacity. Basically balancing demand over time
We can export excess to our neighbours in Europe once wind capacity ramps up.
AIUI hydrogen conversion is very inefficient; you'd need a lot of excess capacity.
Yep - it's about 65% efficiency so you are losing 33% as a minimum unless and until someone invents a better approach and manages to get High Temperature Electrolysis working
The efficiency is coming down - and the largest installations in the world are tiny. Shell's investment in 200MW in Rotterdam will be the biggest when it starts.
As for excess electricity - we could simply stop paying wind farms not to produce when supply exceeds demand.
It is coming - although I guess it won't be in the UK now Johnson's history
The government has granted development consent for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk coast.
The project, mainly funded by the French energy company EDF, is expected to cost in the region of £20bn.
Blimey, sounds quite cheap tbh.
Why do we outsource this stuff to the French govt rather than setting up our own national champion?
Because EDF is a company with a lot of expertise in this, its something they have a competitive advantage in and they'll do it for their best value for money.
Any state-owned "national champion" would be a bloated mess of a 'company' that would operate instead to the advantage of "stakeholders" and lobbyists and bailed out by the taxpayers time and again. 👎
But EDF is state-owned. And yet is "a company with a lot of expertise" who have found a "competitive advantage".
So there is no impediment whatsoever in being state-owned and commercially excellent. In your own words. Yet you oppose it...
Indeed this was exactly the point of my question. We threw the baby out with the bath water with privatisation and forgot that the benefits it brings are down to the implied incentive structure and little else. It’s perfectly possible to create an efficient state owned company if you’re careful about it, as is shown around the world.
Some countries understand strategic resilience and some don’t. Unfortunately we sold off our strategic resilience to fund our structural current account deficit. Sad.
By the way Bart, the “private sector” makes the key components for our nuclear powered subs. But really that’s a charade. It’s a ring fenced unit within Rolls Royce that decades after the Thatcher bail out, still benefits from cost plus govt contracts and has very little turnover of staff, because a) it’s such a cushy number, b) they have to be security cleared and pretty much only employ British nationals.
So it’s private sector but without the upside. And in a similar way, it’s possible to create state sector but without the downside. I’m a Tory at heart but at the first opportunity I’d be nationalising Gupta’s steel interests, as well as the oil refineries owned by Essar and Gary Klesch. Let more competent private sector people run them, with pay structures inversely proportional to the level of state subsidy required to keep them running in the national interest.
I can see where you're coming from, but it's an irrelevance in this case. Our nationalised power company would not have any expertise in building new nuclear power stations, as the government has not ordered any for thirty years. - and some governments were rather cold on nuclear power as well.
So create one. Private sector expertise is out there, so hire them. Instead of having engineers spending our money for the good of a foreign government, hire them to do the exact same job for the good of our government!
Its the same argument as where we have had UK rail passengers paying hugely inflated fares to pay for the pensions of foreign citizens. Bonkers.
Personally I'm not entirely sure of the need for nuclear. Renewables of various stripes are getting better and better. We have the dependability of tidal ranges all over the UK, we have excess wind power generation that we need to recover, and once we do that, as Malmesbury said, the potential for offshore wind is nearly limitless.
Nuclear is expensive, dubious environmentally, and dangerous. How often have we heard terrible warnings of nuclear power stations being caught in fighting (most recently in Ukraine)? If we are going to prod Putin and potentially China, is it really a great idea to be carpeted in nuclear power stations when we do so? Landlocked France, I can understand it. We have plenty of other options.
Only tidal as a continual 24/7 baseline supply though and I don't think any of us know the reasons behind it being rejected out of hand.
Storage is still very much a work in progress and that means we have to cover for extreme events like a week without wind...
Store the excess 'leccy as hydrogen (using electrolysers) or even ammonia or methanol when the wind generation exceeds grid capacity. Basically balancing demand over time
We can export excess to our neighbours in Europe once wind capacity ramps up.
AIUI hydrogen conversion is very inefficient; you'd need a lot of excess capacity.
Yep - it's about 65% efficiency so you are losing 33% as a minimum unless and until someone invents a better approach and manages to get High Temperature Electrolysis working
The efficiency is coming down - and the largest installations in the world are tiny. Shell's investment in 200MW in Rotterdam will be the biggest when it starts.
As for excess electricity - we could simply stop paying wind farms not to produce when supply exceeds demand.
It is coming - although I guess it won't be in the UK now Johnson's history
Everyone seems to be on anti-depressants these days.
Seriously, it’s getting to the point where to not be on them is becoming stubbornly retro, like refusing to have a television in the house.
In which case perhaps we need to ask whether it’s society itself which is sick, just like RD Laing suggested.
Social media has a lot to answer for....back in the day you might have heard there are rich people who live certain lives not available to you, but everything was really based in the reality of what you saw around yourself, now people are bombarded by (most faked) images of what seems like everybody else living these amazing lives....then you used to go to your local pub and chat up ladies and again there wasn't infinite bombardment of 10 out of 10 beautiful people...instead people on dating apps and unless you are a 10 out of 10 you are going to struggle to get a date with anybody but a 1...and of course you get bombarded by toxicity from every which way for the smallest step "out of line" is filmed and spread across social media.
Then all the stresses of modern western world with house prices, student debt, etc etc etc.
If you get sucked into that from a very early age not surprising people can be very down about their life.
The exaggeration of the “normal” level of “success” is compounded by the ludicrous rush to achieve said “success” in 60 seconds or less.
'“There’s not a single office tenant here,” he says. “Not one. They were trying to rent them out, then the pandemic happened and – poof! – we got ourselves a ghost town. A Job Centre finally opened here a few months ago, so at least I’ve got some company now.”
[...]
Today, the place has a Ballardian air. On a sunny weekday lunchtime, a ripped topless man is the sole inhabitant of the district’s central square, doing press-ups on the manicured lawn and admiring his reflection in the empty plate glass windows. After a long time walking the length of the blocks, trying doorways and pressing buzzers in search of life, I find another man sitting on a kerb sipping a coffee. An office worker, at last?
“We’re filming an advert for Marks & Spencer,” he tells me. “It’s an ideal location because there are never any people around. If we’re careful with the shots, we can sort of make it look like a normal place.”'
And yet there were similar articles about the Shard a few years after it was finished and "empty" - now it is a huge success
And multiple similar articles fastened on to Canary Wharf, in its struggling early days, it was called Thatcher's doomed vanity project, devoid of tenants, blah blah; look at it now
Indeed these accusations are themselves a rich part of London history. Two enormous houses were built in the mid Victorian era in Knightsbridge, kittycorner from Harrods. They were so big they were like palaces, and at first they were nicknamed "Malta and Gibraltar". Why? Because "like Malta and Gibraltar, they will never be taken". ie Never have a tenant
See also Tobacco Dock in Docklands
"After the London Docklands ceased seaborne trade, the warehouse and surrounding areas fell into dereliction until Tobacco Dock was turned into a shopping centre which opened in 1989. However, due to the early 1990s recession, it was forced to close two years later. In 2003 English Heritage placed it on its 'at risk' register, preventing many developers from attempting a rejuvenation of the former London Docklands site. For TWO DECADES Tobacco Dock stood largely empty; it was used as a barracks for military personnel providing security to the 2012 London Olympics."
"As part of their commercial launch, they will be exhibiting at the sold out Xerocon, at Tobacco Dock, London, on 20th and 21st July in partnership with leading accountancy app Xero."
Everyone seems to be on anti-depressants these days.
Seriously, it’s getting to the point where to not be on them is becoming stubbornly retro, like refusing to have a television in the house.
In which case perhaps we need to ask whether it’s society itself which is sick, just like RD Laing suggested.
Social media has a lot to answer for....back in the day you might have heard there are rich people who live certain lives not available to you, but everything was really based in the reality of what you saw around yourself, now people are bombarded by (most faked) images of what seems like everybody else living these amazing lives....then you used to go to your local pub and chat up ladies and again there wasn't infinite bombardment of 10 out of 10 beautiful people...instead people on dating apps and unless you are a 10 out of 10 you are going to struggle to get a date with anybody but a 1...and of course you get bombarded by toxicity from every which way for the smallest step "out of line" is filmed and spread across social media.
Then all the stresses of modern western world with house prices, student debt, etc etc etc.
If you get sucked into that from a very early age not surprising people can be very down about their life.
The exaggeration of the “normal” level of “success” is compounded by the ludicrous rush to achieve said “success” in 60 seconds or less.
What you mean you didn't have a garage full of lambos by the time you were 25 like everybody else?
By the way @Leon, I only just watched that video of Tim Peake being interviewed by Richard Madeley that you sent.
Most successful British astronaut of all time says these aren’t an earthly technology, the debate is really whether they’re alien drones or time travellers or something else. British public shrugs, British establishment has nothing to say either.
Meanwhile in the US the legislative noose tightens, new UAP whistleblower protection laws passing through both houses of Congress as we speak.
Did you see Lue Elizondo’s formal submission to the Pentagon Inspector General, which was recently released? He named specific individuals who he said illegally blocked information from flowing up the chain of command and who destroyed evidence, because it clashed with their religious beliefs. And directed the IG to the sever location of a 23 min long video that he indicates represents irrefutable proof that Dorothy’s not in Kansas.
Criminal penalty for lying on that form is oh, only 20 years.
My present supposition is that this is all dark psy-ops in the US government, either to confuse the Chinese or to cover some genuinely amazing tech that the US has developed. But the spooks are exploiting/harnessing a core of true believers, who think there really IS something unworldly Up There, despite the notable lack of hard evidence
Should add. I shared that article not in any way to diss anti-depressants. I've been on them myself for long periods. And needed to be. But because I take a keen interest in why I needed them then, but don't now?
I think that it also indicates that we need to study a lot more closely why they work. If it is not because they are boosting seratonin, for example (which may simply be boosted as an indirect result of whatever is working) what is the mechanism that helps? And, having found it, can we make that part work better?
Henrik Stenson has been removed as Europe's Ryder Cup skipper with immediate effect.
I am sure there are a few million reasons why he won't be too concerned.
Rumoured to be $40m - for someone who hasn’t won a tournament in three years.
I’m sure most of us would take the same decision. Outside the top dozen or so, pro golfers are not making massive bank and have a lot of expenses.
How on earth is LIV intending to get a return on all this ?
These are huge numbers for *checks notes* the 171st ranked golfer in the world.
Quite. It's not a commercial proposition. The return is 'soft' - to improve the image of Saudi.
Initially it isn't. But if they make it work and become THE golf league, $100 million here or there is nothing. They are throwing something like $4bn at the project, but have a look how much PGA Tour have sold their rights for, last round of deals was about $3bn.
The big question I think is the majors. If they ban all the LIV golfers (and make it stick), I think that is problematic. But if they carry on with the well if you qualify you can play, I think there will be more elite golfers who say $100m to sign, thank you very much, and I will still play the big boy events.
I don't think the product itself will fly. Quicker play is the only thing that might be an improvement on the current game. Apart from that it fails on every level. The team aspect in particular doesn't work for golf. Ok, the Ryder and Presidents Cups, where there's an "Us v the USA" dynamic, but otherwise no. I mean, who the fuck is going to care if Dustin Johnson's "Chew Boy Riders" or Lee Westwood's "Big Girth Inc" win some 54 hole event at the likes of Trump National? Or indeed which individual wins when all of them are on mega money deals anyway? No, it won't attract the fans, hence won't attract the tv money, hence won't achieve lift off. It'll last as long as the Saudis are prepared to lose money doing it and then peter out.
The team thing I am far from convinced by, although match play in general is very popular (perhaps they go down that route). The fact they got a big cheque to join, well that doesn't stop us getting excited by the EPL when even the crappy benchwarmers are on $3m a year.
I wouldn't underestimate the speed of play element. It is far better for spectators and tv.
What LIV has shown is they are willing to try different things. The PGA Tour have already announced they will also run more events without a cut.
The logical thing has always been to have a few of these special LIV events that revolve around the weeks when PGA tour is playing the events that nobody cares about and let the players play both.
It can be an addition to the game, sure, but not its future. And yes slow play IS a bane.
Everyone seems to be on anti-depressants these days.
Seriously, it’s getting to the point where to not be on them is becoming stubbornly retro, like refusing to have a television in the house.
In which case perhaps we need to ask whether it’s society itself which is sick, just like RD Laing suggested.
Social media has a lot to answer for....back in the day you might have heard there are rich people who live certain lives not available to you, but everything was really based in the reality of what you saw around yourself, now people are bombarded by (most faked) images of what seems like everybody else living these amazing lives....then you used to go to your local pub and chat up ladies and again there wasn't infinite bombardment of 10 out of 10 beautiful people...instead people on dating apps and unless you are a 10 out of 10 you are going to struggle to get a date with anybody but a 1...and of course you get bombarded by toxicity from every which way for the smallest step "out of line" is filmed and spread across social media.
Then all the stresses of modern western world with house prices, student debt, etc etc etc.
If you get sucked into that from a very early age not surprising people can be very down about their life.
The exaggeration of the “normal” level of “success” is compounded by the ludicrous rush to achieve said “success” in 60 seconds or less.
Success will soon equal able to turn the central heating on.
Comments
Then the players expenses are significant, all the travel, the caddie, coach etc etc etc. I am not saying the top 25 players are poor, but say Cam Smith, he has been winning about $2m a year most years of his career, take out all the expenses he might only taking home $1m. Not surprising your head gets turned by somebody offering you 100x upfront.
If you are top 100 player in MLB, NFL, NHL, you are making a hell of a lot more than $1m a year. What the average salary in EPL for a mid 20 year old, $3m?
Big issue with EPL now isn't that your elite players earn $10m+, it is that even youth players are signing contracts which means they are made for life despite not having played a single EPL game. If you get the right agent and look promising, between 18-21 you can earn enough money to be set for life, and then never make it.
I agree that our peaks are too pricey, but perhaps our peaks are too peaky and we have to use price to suppress demand?
P.S. The only time I have seen crowds in Newent is at Newent Friday Market, or happy hour at Three Choirs Wines.
"I said he had to go, when he had to go, because he had to go"
This is it in a nutshell. Boris Derangement is so bad in you guys, a red mist descends when his name is mentioned and you can't even correctly read comments about him
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/jul/20/empty-promise-the-fantasy-city-within-a-city-that-turned-into-a-ghost-town
The 100th ranked guy making $200k prize money per year, before his expenses of coaching and travel, doesn’t leave him with a lot left at the end of the year - for a career that might only last a decade.
Or perhaps, stations could be part owned by the local authority, who might be incentivised to make such places a pleasant gateway to their surrounding neighbourhood.
I think it’s depressing to arrive at - say Slough Station (which I used to do a lot to visit clients on the Bath Road) and be confronted with a dust-blown “Pumpkin Cafe”.
SSP, who also own “Upper Crust” and “Caffe Ritazza”, are menaces.
I accept this may be a niche view.
Lumo charge £50 from Newcastle, LNER charge £80
Its not private ownership as a concept that killed them, its the specific private ownership structure and a total lack of regulation that did it. Would BR have had those accidents? Its possible, possibly different ones as I doubt they would have screwed up that badly.
ISTR you volunteer on a preserved line? I assume then that you know that for every one of the crashes you mention and all the ones before it, the industry looked at what happened and learned lessons and wrote new processes to avoid a repeat. And most of the ones you listed - Purley, Cowden, Stafford, Bellgrove, Cannon Street - were driver errors as opposed to infrastructure failures. As opposed to the Railtrack era crashes where it was crap maintenance done at minimum cost for maximum profits.
I don't necessarily agree with that. Since you're evidently focused on safety (given your previous incorrect post), you might want to look at the safety records of French or German railways over the last two decades...
The 32 TT votes up for grabs would never break to give Truss 15 .
How many Sunak supporters gave votes to Truss ?
Liam Brody said he has only made money during a single year of his career. He needs to win a round of a major to pay for his coaching team and costs him $20k a year in restringing rackets alone. Despite one good year where he bought a property, he can't afford to pay the mortgage without a lodger.
Or a bit of both.
I can’t see Tom > Truss switchers numbering more than 2 or 3.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jul/20/scientists-question-widespread-use-of-antidepressants-after-survey-on-serotonin
And you might notice that drivers were part of the privatised parts of the system: and as you say, that's been *much* better since privatisation.AS has lack of fatal crashes called by train maintenance failures. You can't have it both ways.
The truth is that you've always been something of a fan. And those who might think of him like that, sometime down the road, are likely to be the same.
That might be a problem for the Conservative party, and for whichever unfortunate they decide to inflict on us as PM this time around, but I don't think anyone else give two hoots. Or is likely to.
The UK chooses to deter peak usage via price, perhaps because of the over-centrality of London in the network. In return, off peak is cheaper.
European systems don’t.
But I don’t necessarily think this makes the UK system worse.
This is just a pricing point. I accept the whole thing is up for debate again post-Covid, which is interesting as it seemed pretty much “settled” until just a few years ago.
Peter Crouch joked that away games with Liverpool he turned up with a washbag and that was it. When he stopped it took him quite a long to adjust to the fact that isn't how the real world works.
This will change in the final 2 . She might be favourite but I don’t think it’s impossible for Sunak to overtake her .
I was trying to find a combination of words which would be sufficiently plausible to get people googling a possible rumour, and yet, when you look at them, obviously absurd
The key was the mad word order
" the Cabinet Minister with the Estonian start up and the whole parrot gay thing jesus"
The "whole parrot gay thing jesus"??
Apologies. It amused me for half a minute
Of course people don't really know how each would perform in the role do in reality some will probably close the gap more.
We can export excess to our neighbours in Europe once wind capacity ramps up.
If this sort of thing floats your boat try Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe. An expose of Big Pharma and the Sackler family and their contribution to the world prescription opioid crisis. Fascinating stuff.
I wouldn't underestimate the speed of play element. It is far better for spectators and tv.
What LIV has shown is they are willing to try different things. The PGA Tour have already announced they will also run more events without a cut.
The logical thing has always been to have a few of these special LIV events that revolve around the weeks when PGA tour is playing the events that nobody cares about and let the players play both.
https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/latest-news-headlines/hydrogen-technology-faces-efficiency-disadvantage-in-power-storage-race-65162028
[...]
Today, the place has a Ballardian air. On a sunny weekday lunchtime, a ripped topless man is the sole inhabitant of the district’s central square, doing press-ups on the manicured lawn and admiring his reflection in the empty plate glass windows. After a long time walking the length of the blocks, trying doorways and pressing buzzers in search of life, I find another man sitting on a kerb sipping a coffee. An office worker, at last?
“We’re filming an advert for Marks & Spencer,” he tells me. “It’s an ideal location because there are never any people around. If we’re careful with the shots, we can sort of make it look like a normal place.”'
Curiously silent since then.
https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1549533976645230592
Remember how Trump's two top Secret Service agents were practically marching up to capitol hill to impeach Cassidy Hutchinson's claims about them telling her about Trump's feral freakout in the POTUS limo? What happened to that? I thought they were going to clear things up.
What with that and deleting all their text messages from the 5th and 6th 2021, the Secret Service hasn't covered itself with glory recently.
The question of why they do work though is a fascinating one.
This seems to exclude serotonin levels as a cause from the picture altogether.
Sadly it seems Biden has left it too late, and there’s a real risk of Trump returning.
I’m which case my wife will insist we return to the UK.
Trump should be prison.
There’s a lesson here for Sunak Rishi, perhaps.
The bright side is that we had 12 years with no passenger fatalities in a train crash, and 15 years with only one (the Stonehaven derailment). That's something to feel good about, even if it did happen in a part-privatised system. Long may it continue.
If you were the next Conservative Leader, how do you handle Boris? Try to keep him onside, or try to crush him at his point of maximum weakness?
But he has mere weeks. So many vote early.
Seriously, it’s getting to the point where to not be on them is becoming stubbornly retro, like refusing to have a television in the house.
In which case perhaps we need to ask whether it’s society itself which is sick, just like RD Laing suggested.
Wait for the Privileges Committee report and then remove the whip.
OTOH just as prison can be described as an expensive way of making bad people worse, modern life can be described as an experiment in what happens when you do your best as a society to maximise the possibility of everyone being depressed.
From which starting point an interesting array of strategies emerge.
But where I agree with you about Johnson - indeed I've said this before myself a few times - is that he is a genuine star for a certain type of voter and it's no sure thing the Tories will do better at the polls without him than with him STOP
Plenty of Leavers in those traditional ex Labour seats voted "Boris" not Conservative - in their minds - at GE19 and they'll be pissed off that he's been ousted just for being - again in their minds - his roguish adorable self STOP
So, yes, some will come back to the Tories with him gone, but they'll lose votes too. It's a matter of what the net impact will be STOP
Cicero needs to cough up, or at least provide a bloody hint.
Is it 4pm?
Then all the stresses of modern western world with house prices, student debt, etc etc etc.
If you get sucked into that from a very early age not surprising people can be very down about their life.
https://twitter.com/ITVNewsPolitics/status/1549738560647045122?s=20&t=wVPiik6W5cKMAasDlDltnw
Most successful British astronaut of all time says these aren’t an earthly technology, the debate is really whether they’re alien drones or time travellers or something else. British public shrugs, British establishment has nothing to say either.
Meanwhile in the US the legislative noose tightens, new UAP whistleblower protection laws passing through both houses of Congress as we speak.
Did you see Lue Elizondo’s formal submission to the Pentagon Inspector General, which was recently released? He named specific individuals who he said illegally blocked information from flowing up the chain of command and who destroyed evidence, because it clashed with their religious beliefs. And directed the IG to the sever location of a 23 min long video that he indicates represents irrefutable proof that Dorothy’s not in Kansas.
Criminal penalty for lying on that form is oh, only 20 years.
And yet there were similar articles about the Shard a few years after it was finished and "empty" - now it is a huge success
And multiple similar articles fastened on to Canary Wharf, in its struggling early days, it was called Thatcher's doomed vanity project, devoid of tenants, blah blah; look at it now
Indeed these accusations are themselves a rich part of London history. Two enormous houses were built in the mid Victorian era in Knightsbridge, kittycorner from Harrods. They were so big they were like palaces, and at first they were nicknamed "Malta and Gibraltar". Why? Because "like Malta and Gibraltar, they will never be taken". ie Never have a tenant
See also Tobacco Dock in Docklands
"After the London Docklands ceased seaborne trade, the warehouse and surrounding areas fell into dereliction until Tobacco Dock was turned into a shopping centre which opened in 1989. However, due to the early 1990s recession, it was forced to close two years later. In 2003 English Heritage placed it on its 'at risk' register, preventing many developers from attempting a rejuvenation of the former London Docklands site. For TWO DECADES Tobacco Dock stood largely empty; it was used as a barracks for military personnel providing security to the 2012 London Olympics."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Dock
And now?
They've turned it into a highly successful events venue
https://www.theresident.co.uk/things-to-do/london-craft-beer-festival-9127264
"As part of their commercial launch, they will be exhibiting at the sold out Xerocon, at Tobacco Dock, London, on 20th and 21st July in partnership with leading accountancy app Xero."
https://ffnews.com/newsarticle/be-a-know-it-all-the-solution-to-the-61-billion-late-payment-problem-has-launched/
Feel free to DM if you want to know more.
But because I take a keen interest in why I needed them then, but don't now?
As for excess electricity - we could simply stop paying wind farms not to produce when supply exceeds demand.
It is coming - although I guess it won't be in the UK now Johnson's history
@DPJHodges
Sunak v Truss shows that - despite all the hype - the Tory Party is still serious about governing."
https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1549411568311574530