Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. Sign in or register to get started.

Johnson’s making a big mistake on the Women’s soccer team – politicalbetting.com

13567

Comments

  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,772
    Chris said:

    This is the dodgiest statistic I've ever seen:

    @MayorofLondon
    NEW: As a result of our junk food advertising ban on @TfL, nearly 100,000 cases of obesity have been prevented since 2019.

    It’s expected to save the NHS over £200 million. An incredible result.


    https://twitter.com/MayorofLondon/status/1554464060732735488

    Astonishing nonsense.
    We need some kind of public office of bullshitting detection.
    I think the government has an official statistician who has reprimanded the government for misusing statistics. I expect they've just uttered a weary sigh as they realise the effort they will have to go to writing a letter to Khan to correct his nonsense.
    It's called the "Office for National Statistics". Understandable that even people interested [?] in politics are still a bit hazy about it, as it's been in existence for only 26 years ...
    I think it was a different person who reprimanded the government over misuse of statistics, though.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,575
    This is gold.

    https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1554869293581582344
    Seen a lot of Law & Order, haven't seen a twist as good as "Alex Jones' lawyers accidentally sent Sandy Hook parents' lawyers the entire contents of his phone and his long-hidden financials, but they waited 12 days to let him lie" in my life. Just an absolutely wild day.

    The moment in court.
    https://twitter.com/GoAngelo/status/1554876349680173057
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    There must be some massive market for superhero and comic book films - which are essentially all the same - that just totally passes me by.

    It seems dozens are released a year, and they must be popular, yet I haven't seen a single one and have no intention to.

    These films included the greatest comedic moment in cinema history.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsUCRcK7QYc

    Edit - Actually the second best.

    This is the funniest moment in cinematic history, I needed oxygen in the cinema.


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCNN2CnCAww
    You are a funny man, mr TSE

    There are 25 gags in Life Of Brian which are funnier than that, and the coolest scene in all cinema is in Key Largo when Bogart decides to start shooting.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,575
    Jones’ lawyers have a chance to ask him questions following the revelation that they accidentally released a full copy of Jones’ phone data to the plaintiffs.

    They ask Jones if he trusted them to do a good job. I’m not kidding. That’s all.

    https://twitter.com/GoAngelo/status/1554883038785552387
  • There must be some massive market for superhero and comic book films - which are essentially all the same - that just totally passes me by.

    It seems dozens are released a year, and they must be popular, yet I haven't seen a single one and have no intention to.

    Superhero films have made Marvel a gazillion dollars. Most are meh at best from what I have seen, but I won't argue that my "meh" is right and the gazillions of dollars taken is wrong.

    I do have to laugh at the latest DC movie disaster. Batgirl supposedly bombed so badly in the pre screenings that they see it unsalvageable and have decided to bin it as a tax writedown...
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,851

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    carnforth said:

    Nick Clegg joins clique of Meta bosses switching to London

    https:/Yes, is back, part time…

    Clegg is back, and London is back!


    From that thread of articles:

    "Hoberman said: “They also move because they see the US so fractionalised. As San Francisco loses its density [of tech headquarters], there’s a chance for London to be the global leader.”"

    This is absolutely true. Why step over homeless addict in SF when you can be in glorious sunny London? In King's X? With no threat of Trump? And two hours from all of Europe?
    I saw recently that parts of East London have taken over SF for density of tech startups. Kings cross looks like the choice for established tech so will be another huge draw for startups looking for global locations. I know one SAAS company which is currently HQ'd in SF that's considering moving operationally to London from there and leaving behind a small outpost of sales people in NYC. That's the other one that's coming for SF, operational excellence in development by being based in London and sales/GTM based on the East Coast of the US either in NYC or Miami. It's such a better set of timezones. SF used to have the advantage of crossover with APAC countries but with the ease of remote work and setting up remote workers on a single payroll tech companies are choosing to hire locally in Singapore, Melbourne and Wellington.
    FPT

    Yes, and more: as NYC sinks into crime, and is menaced by deeper political division, a lot of business in NYC will come here. Remote working suddenly benefits the UK

    Really. Why would you work in NYC or LA or SF if you can work in London?

    NYC is a truly great city and LA is jolly interesting and SF has a certain beauty, but they have grave downsides, and they are all trillions of miles from anywhere else

    Fly two hours from NYC and you are in, er, Toronto

    Compare that with London, when in 2 hours or less you can be in Paris, Venice, Berlin, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Rome, Florence, Edinburgh, Nice... and the Alps, the Balearics, Sicily, western Ireland, Burgundy, the Algarve, the Black Forest, the Dordogne, the Italian lakes, the Dolomites, Tyrol,...

    There is no comparison. If your job is no longer quite so tied to the Silicon Valley office, you will move to London
    NYC makes sense for a lot of reasons despite the crime (and it's nowhere near as bad as SF) it's got the 2pm-6pm crossover with London, there's already quite a few companies in the area, it's bigger and better connected than SF (which means people have the option of living in NJ and commuting in) and it's only 7h on a cheap business class flight from London for business meetings. For tech startups there's also a fuckton of potential clients on the doorstep in NYC because there's so many financial services companies looking to cut costs. The City is one of the reasons tech has thrived in London, its clients and financing for startups.
    NYC is unquestionably a magnificent city (as I said in my earlier comment), but so is London. And the downsides of NYC - crime, racial tension, MAGA-Trump, divided country, healthcare, opiates, guns - now seem to me to outweigh the downsides of London: weather, greyness, grotty areas

    Both are English-speaking world cities with glorious culture, London has more history, New York City has that skyline

    The proximity of the rest of Europe might be the clincher for me, if I was a highly paid tech exec. And where do you want your kids to grow up? Safely?

    But of course I am biased

    I think we will see more American execs choosing London on a quasi-WFH basis. It will be a complex and remarkable irony if post-Brexit London ascends to world capital status (again?)..... because it is in Europe

    Yes, that's why I think London is a good shout for operational and potentially tax HQ. My point on NYC is more in relation to having the sales function for NA run out of there rather than SF because it has significantly better crossover with London and it's only a 7h flight for when seniors and execs need face to face meetings.

    The London/NYC split works brilliantly for financial services, it being replicated for tech would be no surprise.

    The last piece of the puzzle is higher risk funds in London willing to invest hundreds of millions for series D onwards.
    Yes, I concur

    Finance/sales stuff might stay in NYC but a lot of intellectual/HQ heft will move to London

    Add in the boost from Hong Kong and - perhaps unexpectedly - London could really thrive in the next decade

    I wonder if this is what I sensed in King's X yesterday. Essentially they are - wittingly or not - creating a Silicon Valley in an amazing new London neighborhood, but with added universities and science institutes and art galleries and biochemistry labs and the British Library and the rest, and all of it 300m from St Pancras and the eurostar, and half an hour from Heathrow via the Liz Line, with Shoreditch and the Silicon roundabout just down the road

    It is completely unique. London - esp King's X - has the chance to be THE tech hub for the world, or at least the western world

    If I was the head of Instagram, I'd move from California to King's Cross (never thought I'd write that). Just to see

    Kings Cross? Would you like to know about living there in the before times? Of COURSE you would...

    I moved to that London in July 1999. I had graduated with a Journalism Degree in summer 1998 already working in radio on various short term contracts. By late spring 1999 there was a gap, and I was a bit fed up with the GF I was living with. So moved to London to find a job.

    Which I did in 7 working days. Literally. Arrived Sunday. Agency interviews Monday, job interviews later that week, a 2nd interview the following Monday and started working for Nature the science journal straight away.

    Their office is on Crinan Street, the north end of KX station with the canal basin behind. So I rented a 1 bed mini bedsit at the top of Grays Inn Road and started work. Kings Cross at the time was home to only one thriving industry - hookers. I was propositioned at 8am one morning crossing the road by the station on the way to work! There was so little in the way of facilities in Kings Cross that the company had a free canteen for its employees - there literally being nothing available in the vicinity.

    At the top of Crinan Street was a pub which had been an old canal warehouse - now demolished and the site of Guardian Newspapers building. And a wine bar on Balfe Street. Aside from the Flying Scotsman fight bar on Caledonian Road, that was it.

    The transformation in 20 years is literally mindblowing.
    I knew it in the early 1990s. Memories include trying to go and see a gf in North London, and stupidly getting on a Cambridge non-stopper (the staff were brilliant and did not charge me any extra fare; they got me on the correct train back, and the only cost was a peeved gf). Going on a Monopoly board pub crawl, and going into the divingish-dive where some bored-looking strippers were performing for a couple of bemused-looking tourists. Walking the Regents Canal behind the station in agony, but loving every step. The dinghy narrow low-level platforms. Getting a greasy kebab from a van that must have failed every food-standards law made on out way to someone's digs at ULU. walking down a road, and encountering waves of prostitutes and tourists - and sometimes, perhaps, both. Lots of homeless people.

    I wish I'd made more of those years. They were brilliant, for me at least.

    To be young again...
    Trains and a peeved gf? I hooked back up with an ex whilst I was still in London. We went to a comedy club, went back to hers, had creative sex then slept. Following morning I was awoken to a Class 37 chugging at a red signal practically outside her bedroom window (which was a winner btw in rail enthusiast speak). Which then prompted more sex.

    Where did my life go...?
    Went on sex and booze and clubbing by the sounds of it - and the rest you must have just frittered away on having a good time.
  • IshmaelZ said:

    There must be some massive market for superhero and comic book films - which are essentially all the same - that just totally passes me by.

    It seems dozens are released a year, and they must be popular, yet I haven't seen a single one and have no intention to.

    These films included the greatest comedic moment in cinema history.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsUCRcK7QYc

    Edit - Actually the second best.

    This is the funniest moment in cinematic history, I needed oxygen in the cinema.


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCNN2CnCAww
    You are a funny man, mr TSE

    There are 25 gags in Life Of Brian which are funnier than that, and the coolest scene in all cinema is in Key Largo when Bogart decides to start shooting.
    My own nomination for "coolest scene[s] in all cinema"

    Yakima Canutt - Scenes from "Stagecoach" (1939) directed by John Ford & starring John Wayne
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5__GP5BBm6I
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,772

    Chris said:

    This is the dodgiest statistic I've ever seen:

    @MayorofLondon
    NEW: As a result of our junk food advertising ban on @TfL, nearly 100,000 cases of obesity have been prevented since 2019.

    It’s expected to save the NHS over £200 million. An incredible result.


    https://twitter.com/MayorofLondon/status/1554464060732735488

    Astonishing nonsense.
    We need some kind of public office of bullshitting detection.
    I think the government has an official statistician who has reprimanded the government for misusing statistics. I expect they've just uttered a weary sigh as they realise the effort they will have to go to writing a letter to Khan to correct his nonsense.
    It's called the "Office for National Statistics". Understandable that even people interested [?] in politics are still a bit hazy about it, as it's been in existence for only 26 years ...
    I think it was a different person who reprimanded the government over misuse of statistics, though.
    Yes, it was the director general of the UK Statistics Authority. So not the ONS.

    I don't mind people being pedantic, but people who are pedantic and arrogant about it are shits. But being pedantic, arrogant and wrong. That's hilarious.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,149
    Nigelb said:

    This is gold.

    https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1554869293581582344
    Seen a lot of Law & Order, haven't seen a twist as good as "Alex Jones' lawyers accidentally sent Sandy Hook parents' lawyers the entire contents of his phone and his long-hidden financials, but they waited 12 days to let him lie" in my life. Just an absolutely wild day.

    The moment in court.
    https://twitter.com/GoAngelo/status/1554876349680173057

    It does seem to be even better than the Alistair Carmichael and Holyrood Camp trials ...

    'Plaintiff's lawyer is asking Jones whether on his show this week, he meant to link the judge in this current trial to government-sponsored pedophilia and child abuse. Jones says, "no."

    Lawyer: ROLL THE TAPE.'

    https://twitter.com/BrandyZadrozny/status/1554854409301008385?cxt=HHwWgoCx_Zz2-ZMrAAAA
  • kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    carnforth said:

    Nick Clegg joins clique of Meta bosses switching to London

    https:/Yes, is back, part time…

    Clegg is back, and London is back!


    From that thread of articles:

    "Hoberman said: “They also move because they see the US so fractionalised. As San Francisco loses its density [of tech headquarters], there’s a chance for London to be the global leader.”"

    This is absolutely true. Why step over homeless addict in SF when you can be in glorious sunny London? In King's X? With no threat of Trump? And two hours from all of Europe?
    I saw recently that parts of East London have taken over SF for density of tech startups. Kings cross looks like the choice for established tech so will be another huge draw for startups looking for global locations. I know one SAAS company which is currently HQ'd in SF that's considering moving operationally to London from there and leaving behind a small outpost of sales people in NYC. That's the other one that's coming for SF, operational excellence in development by being based in London and sales/GTM based on the East Coast of the US either in NYC or Miami. It's such a better set of timezones. SF used to have the advantage of crossover with APAC countries but with the ease of remote work and setting up remote workers on a single payroll tech companies are choosing to hire locally in Singapore, Melbourne and Wellington.
    FPT

    Yes, and more: as NYC sinks into crime, and is menaced by deeper political division, a lot of business in NYC will come here. Remote working suddenly benefits the UK

    Really. Why would you work in NYC or LA or SF if you can work in London?

    NYC is a truly great city and LA is jolly interesting and SF has a certain beauty, but they have grave downsides, and they are all trillions of miles from anywhere else

    Fly two hours from NYC and you are in, er, Toronto

    Compare that with London, when in 2 hours or less you can be in Paris, Venice, Berlin, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Rome, Florence, Edinburgh, Nice... and the Alps, the Balearics, Sicily, western Ireland, Burgundy, the Algarve, the Black Forest, the Dordogne, the Italian lakes, the Dolomites, Tyrol,...

    There is no comparison. If your job is no longer quite so tied to the Silicon Valley office, you will move to London
    NYC makes sense for a lot of reasons despite the crime (and it's nowhere near as bad as SF) it's got the 2pm-6pm crossover with London, there's already quite a few companies in the area, it's bigger and better connected than SF (which means people have the option of living in NJ and commuting in) and it's only 7h on a cheap business class flight from London for business meetings. For tech startups there's also a fuckton of potential clients on the doorstep in NYC because there's so many financial services companies looking to cut costs. The City is one of the reasons tech has thrived in London, its clients and financing for startups.
    NYC is unquestionably a magnificent city (as I said in my earlier comment), but so is London. And the downsides of NYC - crime, racial tension, MAGA-Trump, divided country, healthcare, opiates, guns - now seem to me to outweigh the downsides of London: weather, greyness, grotty areas

    Both are English-speaking world cities with glorious culture, London has more history, New York City has that skyline

    The proximity of the rest of Europe might be the clincher for me, if I was a highly paid tech exec. And where do you want your kids to grow up? Safely?

    But of course I am biased

    I think we will see more American execs choosing London on a quasi-WFH basis. It will be a complex and remarkable irony if post-Brexit London ascends to world capital status (again?)..... because it is in Europe

    Yes, that's why I think London is a good shout for operational and potentially tax HQ. My point on NYC is more in relation to having the sales function for NA run out of there rather than SF because it has significantly better crossover with London and it's only a 7h flight for when seniors and execs need face to face meetings.

    The London/NYC split works brilliantly for financial services, it being replicated for tech would be no surprise.

    The last piece of the puzzle is higher risk funds in London willing to invest hundreds of millions for series D onwards.
    Yes, I concur

    Finance/sales stuff might stay in NYC but a lot of intellectual/HQ heft will move to London

    Add in the boost from Hong Kong and - perhaps unexpectedly - London could really thrive in the next decade

    I wonder if this is what I sensed in King's X yesterday. Essentially they are - wittingly or not - creating a Silicon Valley in an amazing new London neighborhood, but with added universities and science institutes and art galleries and biochemistry labs and the British Library and the rest, and all of it 300m from St Pancras and the eurostar, and half an hour from Heathrow via the Liz Line, with Shoreditch and the Silicon roundabout just down the road

    It is completely unique. London - esp King's X - has the chance to be THE tech hub for the world, or at least the western world

    If I was the head of Instagram, I'd move from California to King's Cross (never thought I'd write that). Just to see

    Kings Cross? Would you like to know about living there in the before times? Of COURSE you would...

    I moved to that London in July 1999. I had graduated with a Journalism Degree in summer 1998 already working in radio on various short term contracts. By late spring 1999 there was a gap, and I was a bit fed up with the GF I was living with. So moved to London to find a job.

    Which I did in 7 working days. Literally. Arrived Sunday. Agency interviews Monday, job interviews later that week, a 2nd interview the following Monday and started working for Nature the science journal straight away.

    Their office is on Crinan Street, the north end of KX station with the canal basin behind. So I rented a 1 bed mini bedsit at the top of Grays Inn Road and started work. Kings Cross at the time was home to only one thriving industry - hookers. I was propositioned at 8am one morning crossing the road by the station on the way to work! There was so little in the way of facilities in Kings Cross that the company had a free canteen for its employees - there literally being nothing available in the vicinity.

    At the top of Crinan Street was a pub which had been an old canal warehouse - now demolished and the site of Guardian Newspapers building. And a wine bar on Balfe Street. Aside from the Flying Scotsman fight bar on Caledonian Road, that was it.

    The transformation in 20 years is literally mindblowing.
    I knew it in the early 1990s. Memories include trying to go and see a gf in North London, and stupidly getting on a Cambridge non-stopper (the staff were brilliant and did not charge me any extra fare; they got me on the correct train back, and the only cost was a peeved gf). Going on a Monopoly board pub crawl, and going into the divingish-dive where some bored-looking strippers were performing for a couple of bemused-looking tourists. Walking the Regents Canal behind the station in agony, but loving every step. The dinghy narrow low-level platforms. Getting a greasy kebab from a van that must have failed every food-standards law made on out way to someone's digs at ULU. walking down a road, and encountering waves of prostitutes and tourists - and sometimes, perhaps, both. Lots of homeless people.

    I wish I'd made more of those years. They were brilliant, for me at least.

    To be young again...
    Trains and a peeved gf? I hooked back up with an ex whilst I was still in London. We went to a comedy club, went back to hers, had creative sex then slept. Following morning I was awoken to a Class 37 chugging at a red signal practically outside her bedroom window (which was a winner btw in rail enthusiast speak). Which then prompted more sex.

    Where did my life go...?
    Went on sex and booze and clubbing by the sounds of it - and the rest you must have just frittered away on having a good time.
    Ended up getting a serious gf pregnant when we had break up sex. Took responsibility as not a 'stard, and that made me grow up quickly. Then got (back) together with my wife (who had been an old flame back at uni) and left London.

    Hang on, I hated London. This makes it sound like I had a mega party ...
  • pingping Posts: 3,724
    https://www.ft.com/content/bef7ef5b-335f-4c84-82ac-ac3d5c90c1d6

    FT calls for half point raise tomorrow.

    I think it needs to be more, frankly.
  • Chris said:

    This is the dodgiest statistic I've ever seen:

    @MayorofLondon
    NEW: As a result of our junk food advertising ban on @TfL, nearly 100,000 cases of obesity have been prevented since 2019.

    It’s expected to save the NHS over £200 million. An incredible result.


    https://twitter.com/MayorofLondon/status/1554464060732735488

    Astonishing nonsense.
    We need some kind of public office of bullshitting detection.
    I think the government has an official statistician who has reprimanded the government for misusing statistics. I expect they've just uttered a weary sigh as they realise the effort they will have to go to writing a letter to Khan to correct his nonsense.
    It's called the "Office for National Statistics". Understandable that even people interested [?] in politics are still a bit hazy about it, as it's been in existence for only 26 years ...
    I think it was a different person who reprimanded the government over misuse of statistics, though.
    The UK Statistics Authority reprimanded Boris for false claims on crime and on employment, and the Office for Statistics Regulation got Boris on child poverty.
    https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/boris-johnson-issued-third-warning-26938959
    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-child-poverty-reprimanded-osr-parliament-a9646321.html

    Other Prime Ministerial fibs are available.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,149
    edited August 2022
    https://www.thenational.scot/news/20597426.liz-truss-team-backtracks-nicola-sturgeon-insult-tory-backlash/

    'LIZ Truss’s campaign team has backtracked on the leadership hopeful’s claim that she’ll “ignore” Nicola Sturgeon after it sparked outrage among Scottish Tories and across the political spectrum.'

    https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/20597860.truss-backtracks-sturgeon-comments-backlash/

    (and remember Ms Truss had said that 'what we need to do is show the people of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales what we are delivering for them, and making sure that all of our government policies apply right across the United Kingdom.' Which means the abolition of devolution, and direct rule in NI, on one reading - it does not make sense otherwise. And is a rather silly mistake, which surprises me. Unless it was deliberate raw meat for the Tory oldies. )
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,772
    edited August 2022
    ping said:

    https://www.ft.com/content/bef7ef5b-335f-4c84-82ac-ac3d5c90c1d6

    FT calls for half point raise tomorrow.

    I think it needs to be more, frankly.

    Needs to match the latest Federal Reserve increase to stop the erosion of credibility.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,268
    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    carnforth said:

    Nick Clegg joins clique of Meta bosses switching to London

    https:/Yes, is back, part time…

    Clegg is back, and London is back!


    From that thread of articles:

    "Hoberman said: “They also move because they see the US so fractionalised. As San Francisco loses its density [of tech headquarters], there’s a chance for London to be the global leader.”"

    This is absolutely true. Why step over homeless addict in SF when you can be in glorious sunny London? In King's X? With no threat of Trump? And two hours from all of Europe?
    I saw recently that parts of East London have taken over SF for density of tech startups. Kings cross looks like the choice for established tech so will be another huge draw for startups looking for global locations. I know one SAAS company which is currently HQ'd in SF that's considering moving operationally to London from there and leaving behind a small outpost of sales people in NYC. That's the other one that's coming for SF, operational excellence in development by being based in London and sales/GTM based on the East Coast of the US either in NYC or Miami. It's such a better set of timezones. SF used to have the advantage of crossover with APAC countries but with the ease of remote work and setting up remote workers on a single payroll tech companies are choosing to hire locally in Singapore, Melbourne and Wellington.
    FPT

    Yes, and more: as NYC sinks into crime, and is menaced by deeper political division, a lot of business in NYC will come here. Remote working suddenly benefits the UK

    Really. Why would you work in NYC or LA or SF if you can work in London?

    NYC is a truly great city and LA is jolly interesting and SF has a certain beauty, but they have grave downsides, and they are all trillions of miles from anywhere else

    Fly two hours from NYC and you are in, er, Toronto

    Compare that with London, when in 2 hours or less you can be in Paris, Venice, Berlin, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Rome, Florence, Edinburgh, Nice... and the Alps, the Balearics, Sicily, western Ireland, Burgundy, the Algarve, the Black Forest, the Dordogne, the Italian lakes, the Dolomites, Tyrol,...

    There is no comparison. If your job is no longer quite so tied to the Silicon Valley office, you will move to London
    NYC makes sense for a lot of reasons despite the crime (and it's nowhere near as bad as SF) it's got the 2pm-6pm crossover with London, there's already quite a few companies in the area, it's bigger and better connected than SF (which means people have the option of living in NJ and commuting in) and it's only 7h on a cheap business class flight from London for business meetings. For tech startups there's also a fuckton of potential clients on the doorstep in NYC because there's so many financial services companies looking to cut costs. The City is one of the reasons tech has thrived in London, its clients and financing for startups.
    NYC is unquestionably a magnificent city (as I said in my earlier comment), but so is London. And the downsides of NYC - crime, racial tension, MAGA-Trump, divided country, healthcare, opiates, guns - now seem to me to outweigh the downsides of London: weather, greyness, grotty areas

    Both are English-speaking world cities with glorious culture, London has more history, New York City has that skyline

    The proximity of the rest of Europe might be the clincher for me, if I was a highly paid tech exec. And where do you want your kids to grow up? Safely?

    But of course I am biased

    I think we will see more American execs choosing London on a quasi-WFH basis. It will be a complex and remarkable irony if post-Brexit London ascends to world capital status (again?)..... because it is in Europe

    Yes, that's why I think London is a good shout for operational and potentially tax HQ. My point on NYC is more in relation to having the sales function for NA run out of there rather than SF because it has significantly better crossover with London and it's only a 7h flight for when seniors and execs need face to face meetings.

    The London/NYC split works brilliantly for financial services, it being replicated for tech would be no surprise.

    The last piece of the puzzle is higher risk funds in London willing to invest hundreds of millions for series D onwards.
    Yes, I concur

    Finance/sales stuff might stay in NYC but a lot of intellectual/HQ heft will move to London

    Add in the boost from Hong Kong and - perhaps unexpectedly - London could really thrive in the next decade

    I wonder if this is what I sensed in King's X yesterday. Essentially they are - wittingly or not - creating a Silicon Valley in an amazing new London neighborhood, but with added universities and science institutes and art galleries and biochemistry labs and the British Library and the rest, and all of it 300m from St Pancras and the eurostar, and half an hour from Heathrow via the Liz Line, with Shoreditch and the Silicon roundabout just down the road

    It is completely unique. London - esp King's X - has the chance to be THE tech hub for the world, or at least the western world

    If I was the head of Instagram, I'd move from California to King's Cross (never thought I'd write that). Just to see

    Kings Cross? Would you like to know about living there in the before times? Of COURSE you would...

    I moved to that London in July 1999. I had graduated with a Journalism Degree in summer 1998 already working in radio on various short term contracts. By late spring 1999 there was a gap, and I was a bit fed up with the GF I was living with. So moved to London to find a job.

    Which I did in 7 working days. Literally. Arrived Sunday. Agency interviews Monday, job interviews later that week, a 2nd interview the following Monday and started working for Nature the science journal straight away.

    Their office is on Crinan Street, the north end of KX station with the canal basin behind. So I rented a 1 bed mini bedsit at the top of Grays Inn Road and started work. Kings Cross at the time was home to only one thriving industry - hookers. I was propositioned at 8am one morning crossing the road by the station on the way to work! There was so little in the way of facilities in Kings Cross that the company had a free canteen for its employees - there literally being nothing available in the vicinity.

    At the top of Crinan Street was a pub which had been an old canal warehouse - now demolished and the site of Guardian Newspapers building. And a wine bar on Balfe Street. Aside from the Flying Scotsman fight bar on Caledonian Road, that was it.

    The transformation in 20 years is literally mindblowing.
    I remember that! Went to see someone in that office a few years earlier, perhaps 1992-3, when it was still very new. I did wince when I turned out of KX and saw the ambience of that street, and I was glad to be getting back to the train while it was still daylight.
    In those days there was a ramp off the end of platform 1 out onto York Road. So you could exit the station, cross the street and be into the Nature building inside 30 seconds. Barely time to wave at Clive Sinclair in his penthouse...
    I need to go back and explore the KX/StP area properly when I next visit my Camden friend; so much change there, including StP itself which was still very much its original state when I knew it, as described in Jack Simmons's history; didn't have time to more than pay homage to Hardy at the eponymous church, and to register the degree of change when passing through it in recent years, which needed a new edition of the history.
    You can spend a whole day there, pretty much

    Explore the new urbanism, check out the art galleries, see St Martin's, go to a movie or a play or a concert in one of the venues, have lunch or dinner (or both) in one of about 40 restaurants. Walk around Camley Street Wildpark, stroll along the Regent's Canal to Camden and Primrose Hill and back, go to the British Library, and more

    All in that one district. Surrounded by industrial history Vs the new Google HQ. Fab
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    HYUFD said:

    rcs1000 said:

    HYUFD said:

    rcs1000 said:

    @Jim_Miller

    On the subject of abortion, and Kansas, there are a couple of interesting conclusions:

    1. Abortion choice supporters aren't simply low motivation Dems. If they were, they would have voted in the Dem primaries yesterday.

    2. On the other hand, they are willing to go out and vote. "No" got comfortably more votes (in absolute terms) that the winning Gubernatorial candidate last time around. Which is absolutely astonishing, considering this was just primary day, and not November.

    3. If abortion goes to ballot propositions, then the Dems don't really benefit... But will they benefit, if it is explicitly in the hands of elected representatives, and that means voting Democrat?

    4. It has long been argued that anti abortion group is the more motivated one. I think that assumption is now looking incorrect.

    5. It has also been argued that "do you think of yourself as pro Choice or pro life?" is a good proxy for support. That has turned out not to be the case.

    6. The Kansas referendum was not framed (by those supporting the amendment) as a ban on abortions, only as allowing the State legislature to make abortion law. The residents of Kansas have voted (overwhelmingly) to not restrict abortion access further. Or perhaps, they considered the risk of a total ban as being too great.

    Only a limited number of states have ballot propositions. But there are some where abortion is basically illegal (like Idaho), where it is possible, and where attitudes are generally pro legalized abortion.

    This could be a very interesting November.

    In most Southern states ballot initiatives are not legal, only legislative referrals. It is the South where opposition to abortion is highest so therefore it will be a key factor in governor and state legislature elections in November
    Dude: only eight states have higher "pro Life" percentages than Kansas. And they voted by 18 points to keep abortion legal.

    14 states have higher percentages saying abortion should be mostly illegal than Kansas actually.

    https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-study/compare/views-about-abortion/by/state/

    Even if only 1 or 2 of them made abortion mostly illegal that would still be a victory for pro life activists compared to the era of Roe v Wade when abortion was legal across the US
    In that more results of rapes and more grossly and miserably disabled infants would be brought into the world to glorify the Lord's name, sure. even in only in a state or two, an outcome worth fighting and praying for.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,575
    A win for Biden.
    (Wildly unpopular) Republican Senate opposition to the Veterans healthcare bill caves.

    https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1554631639585669121
    We'll never be able to repay the debt we owe to those who have worn the uniform, but today, Congress delivered on a promise to our veterans and their families.

    The PACT Act will be the biggest expansion of VA health care in decades. We should all take pride in this moment.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,841
    ping said:

    https://www.ft.com/content/bef7ef5b-335f-4c84-82ac-ac3d5c90c1d6

    FT calls for half point raise tomorrow.

    I think it needs to be more, frankly.

    Full point with a full point next month on top. Then see how the land lies
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,149
    Leon said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    carnforth said:

    Nick Clegg joins clique of Meta bosses switching to London

    https:/Yes, is back, part time…

    Clegg is back, and London is back!


    From that thread of articles:

    "Hoberman said: “They also move because they see the US so fractionalised. As San Francisco loses its density [of tech headquarters], there’s a chance for London to be the global leader.”"

    This is absolutely true. Why step over homeless addict in SF when you can be in glorious sunny London? In King's X? With no threat of Trump? And two hours from all of Europe?
    I saw recently that parts of East London have taken over SF for density of tech startups. Kings cross looks like the choice for established tech so will be another huge draw for startups looking for global locations. I know one SAAS company which is currently HQ'd in SF that's considering moving operationally to London from there and leaving behind a small outpost of sales people in NYC. That's the other one that's coming for SF, operational excellence in development by being based in London and sales/GTM based on the East Coast of the US either in NYC or Miami. It's such a better set of timezones. SF used to have the advantage of crossover with APAC countries but with the ease of remote work and setting up remote workers on a single payroll tech companies are choosing to hire locally in Singapore, Melbourne and Wellington.
    FPT

    Yes, and more: as NYC sinks into crime, and is menaced by deeper political division, a lot of business in NYC will come here. Remote working suddenly benefits the UK

    Really. Why would you work in NYC or LA or SF if you can work in London?

    NYC is a truly great city and LA is jolly interesting and SF has a certain beauty, but they have grave downsides, and they are all trillions of miles from anywhere else

    Fly two hours from NYC and you are in, er, Toronto

    Compare that with London, when in 2 hours or less you can be in Paris, Venice, Berlin, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Rome, Florence, Edinburgh, Nice... and the Alps, the Balearics, Sicily, western Ireland, Burgundy, the Algarve, the Black Forest, the Dordogne, the Italian lakes, the Dolomites, Tyrol,...

    There is no comparison. If your job is no longer quite so tied to the Silicon Valley office, you will move to London
    NYC makes sense for a lot of reasons despite the crime (and it's nowhere near as bad as SF) it's got the 2pm-6pm crossover with London, there's already quite a few companies in the area, it's bigger and better connected than SF (which means people have the option of living in NJ and commuting in) and it's only 7h on a cheap business class flight from London for business meetings. For tech startups there's also a fuckton of potential clients on the doorstep in NYC because there's so many financial services companies looking to cut costs. The City is one of the reasons tech has thrived in London, its clients and financing for startups.
    NYC is unquestionably a magnificent city (as I said in my earlier comment), but so is London. And the downsides of NYC - crime, racial tension, MAGA-Trump, divided country, healthcare, opiates, guns - now seem to me to outweigh the downsides of London: weather, greyness, grotty areas

    Both are English-speaking world cities with glorious culture, London has more history, New York City has that skyline

    The proximity of the rest of Europe might be the clincher for me, if I was a highly paid tech exec. And where do you want your kids to grow up? Safely?

    But of course I am biased

    I think we will see more American execs choosing London on a quasi-WFH basis. It will be a complex and remarkable irony if post-Brexit London ascends to world capital status (again?)..... because it is in Europe

    Yes, that's why I think London is a good shout for operational and potentially tax HQ. My point on NYC is more in relation to having the sales function for NA run out of there rather than SF because it has significantly better crossover with London and it's only a 7h flight for when seniors and execs need face to face meetings.

    The London/NYC split works brilliantly for financial services, it being replicated for tech would be no surprise.

    The last piece of the puzzle is higher risk funds in London willing to invest hundreds of millions for series D onwards.
    Yes, I concur

    Finance/sales stuff might stay in NYC but a lot of intellectual/HQ heft will move to London

    Add in the boost from Hong Kong and - perhaps unexpectedly - London could really thrive in the next decade

    I wonder if this is what I sensed in King's X yesterday. Essentially they are - wittingly or not - creating a Silicon Valley in an amazing new London neighborhood, but with added universities and science institutes and art galleries and biochemistry labs and the British Library and the rest, and all of it 300m from St Pancras and the eurostar, and half an hour from Heathrow via the Liz Line, with Shoreditch and the Silicon roundabout just down the road

    It is completely unique. London - esp King's X - has the chance to be THE tech hub for the world, or at least the western world

    If I was the head of Instagram, I'd move from California to King's Cross (never thought I'd write that). Just to see

    Kings Cross? Would you like to know about living there in the before times? Of COURSE you would...

    I moved to that London in July 1999. I had graduated with a Journalism Degree in summer 1998 already working in radio on various short term contracts. By late spring 1999 there was a gap, and I was a bit fed up with the GF I was living with. So moved to London to find a job.

    Which I did in 7 working days. Literally. Arrived Sunday. Agency interviews Monday, job interviews later that week, a 2nd interview the following Monday and started working for Nature the science journal straight away.

    Their office is on Crinan Street, the north end of KX station with the canal basin behind. So I rented a 1 bed mini bedsit at the top of Grays Inn Road and started work. Kings Cross at the time was home to only one thriving industry - hookers. I was propositioned at 8am one morning crossing the road by the station on the way to work! There was so little in the way of facilities in Kings Cross that the company had a free canteen for its employees - there literally being nothing available in the vicinity.

    At the top of Crinan Street was a pub which had been an old canal warehouse - now demolished and the site of Guardian Newspapers building. And a wine bar on Balfe Street. Aside from the Flying Scotsman fight bar on Caledonian Road, that was it.

    The transformation in 20 years is literally mindblowing.
    I remember that! Went to see someone in that office a few years earlier, perhaps 1992-3, when it was still very new. I did wince when I turned out of KX and saw the ambience of that street, and I was glad to be getting back to the train while it was still daylight.
    In those days there was a ramp off the end of platform 1 out onto York Road. So you could exit the station, cross the street and be into the Nature building inside 30 seconds. Barely time to wave at Clive Sinclair in his penthouse...
    I need to go back and explore the KX/StP area properly when I next visit my Camden friend; so much change there, including StP itself which was still very much its original state when I knew it, as described in Jack Simmons's history; didn't have time to more than pay homage to Hardy at the eponymous church, and to register the degree of change when passing through it in recent years, which needed a new edition of the history.
    You can spend a whole day there, pretty much

    Explore the new urbanism, check out the art galleries, see St Martin's, go to a movie or a play or a concert in one of the venues, have lunch or dinner (or both) in one of about 40 restaurants. Walk around Camley Street Wildpark, stroll along the Regent's Canal to Camden and Primrose Hill and back, go to the British Library, and more

    All in that one district. Surrounded by industrial history Vs the new Google HQ. Fab
    Mm, that's an idea - the canal walk in particular, especially as my chum lives in Camden.

    This reminds me I got hold of this paper some years back for him - archaeological dig. No idea if it is of interest but he was very taken with it.

    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332047927_The_Lock-Keepers_of_Hawley's_Lock_Regent's_Canal_Camden
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,841
    That picture on the chair, alone, in a wheat field is looking pretty apposite rn
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,758

    That picture on the chair, alone, in a wheat field is looking pretty apposite rn
    Really? I would have said it was rather corny.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,841
    edited August 2022

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    carnforth said:

    Nick Clegg joins clique of Meta bosses switching to London

    https:/Yes, is back, part time…

    Clegg is back, and London is back!


    From that thread of articles:

    "Hoberman said: “They also move because they see the US so fractionalised. As San Francisco loses its density [of tech headquarters], there’s a chance for London to be the global leader.”"

    This is absolutely true. Why step over homeless addict in SF when you can be in glorious sunny London? In King's X? With no threat of Trump? And two hours from all of Europe?
    I saw recently that parts of East London have taken over SF for density of tech startups. Kings cross looks like the choice for established tech so will be another huge draw for startups looking for global locations. I know one SAAS company which is currently HQ'd in SF that's considering moving operationally to London from there and leaving behind a small outpost of sales people in NYC. That's the other one that's coming for SF, operational excellence in development by being based in London and sales/GTM based on the East Coast of the US either in NYC or Miami. It's such a better set of timezones. SF used to have the advantage of crossover with APAC countries but with the ease of remote work and setting up remote workers on a single payroll tech companies are choosing to hire locally in Singapore, Melbourne and Wellington.
    FPT

    Yes, and more: as NYC sinks into crime, and is menaced by deeper political division, a lot of business in NYC will come here. Remote working suddenly benefits the UK

    Really. Why would you work in NYC or LA or SF if you can work in London?

    NYC is a truly great city and LA is jolly interesting and SF has a certain beauty, but they have grave downsides, and they are all trillions of miles from anywhere else

    Fly two hours from NYC and you are in, er, Toronto

    Compare that with London, when in 2 hours or less you can be in Paris, Venice, Berlin, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Rome, Florence, Edinburgh, Nice... and the Alps, the Balearics, Sicily, western Ireland, Burgundy, the Algarve, the Black Forest, the Dordogne, the Italian lakes, the Dolomites, Tyrol,...

    There is no comparison. If your job is no longer quite so tied to the Silicon Valley office, you will move to London
    NYC makes sense for a lot of reasons despite the crime (and it's nowhere near as bad as SF) it's got the 2pm-6pm crossover with London, there's already quite a few companies in the area, it's bigger and better connected than SF (which means people have the option of living in NJ and commuting in) and it's only 7h on a cheap business class flight from London for business meetings. For tech startups there's also a fuckton of potential clients on the doorstep in NYC because there's so many financial services companies looking to cut costs. The City is one of the reasons tech has thrived in London, its clients and financing for startups.
    NYC is unquestionably a magnificent city (as I said in my earlier comment), but so is London. And the downsides of NYC - crime, racial tension, MAGA-Trump, divided country, healthcare, opiates, guns - now seem to me to outweigh the downsides of London: weather, greyness, grotty areas

    Both are English-speaking world cities with glorious culture, London has more history, New York City has that skyline

    The proximity of the rest of Europe might be the clincher for me, if I was a highly paid tech exec. And where do you want your kids to grow up? Safely?

    But of course I am biased

    I think we will see more American execs choosing London on a quasi-WFH basis. It will be a complex and remarkable irony if post-Brexit London ascends to world capital status (again?)..... because it is in Europe

    Yes, that's why I think London is a good shout for operational and potentially tax HQ. My point on NYC is more in relation to having the sales function for NA run out of there rather than SF because it has significantly better crossover with London and it's only a 7h flight for when seniors and execs need face to face meetings.

    The London/NYC split works brilliantly for financial services, it being replicated for tech would be no surprise.

    The last piece of the puzzle is higher risk funds in London willing to invest hundreds of millions for series D onwards.
    Yes, I concur

    Finance/sales stuff might stay in NYC but a lot of intellectual/HQ heft will move to London

    Add in the boost from Hong Kong and - perhaps unexpectedly - London could really thrive in the next decade

    I wonder if this is what I sensed in King's X yesterday. Essentially they are - wittingly or not - creating a Silicon Valley in an amazing new London neighborhood, but with added universities and science institutes and art galleries and biochemistry labs and the British Library and the rest, and all of it 300m from St Pancras and the eurostar, and half an hour from Heathrow via the Liz Line, with Shoreditch and the Silicon roundabout just down the road

    It is completely unique. London - esp King's X - has the chance to be THE tech hub for the world, or at least the western world

    If I was the head of Instagram, I'd move from California to King's Cross (never thought I'd write that). Just to see

    Kings Cross? Would you like to know about living there in the before times? Of COURSE you would...

    I moved to that London in July 1999. I had graduated with a Journalism Degree in summer 1998 already working in radio on various short term contracts. By late spring 1999 there was a gap, and I was a bit fed up with the GF I was living with. So moved to London to find a job.

    Which I did in 7 working days. Literally. Arrived Sunday. Agency interviews Monday, job interviews later that week, a 2nd interview the following Monday and started working for Nature the science journal straight away.

    Their office is on Crinan Street, the north end of KX station with the canal basin behind. So I rented a 1 bed mini bedsit at the top of Grays Inn Road and started work. Kings Cross at the time was home to only one thriving industry - hookers. I was propositioned at 8am one morning crossing the road by the station on the way to work! There was so little in the way of facilities in Kings Cross that the company had a free canteen for its employees - there literally being nothing available in the vicinity.

    At the top of Crinan Street was a pub which had been an old canal warehouse - now demolished and the site of Guardian Newspapers building. And a wine bar on Balfe Street. Aside from the Flying Scotsman fight bar on Caledonian Road, that was it.

    The transformation in 20 years is literally mindblowing.
    I knew it in the early 1990s. Memories include trying to go and see a gf in North London, and stupidly getting on a Cambridge non-stopper (the staff were brilliant and did not charge me any extra fare; they got me on the correct train back, and the only cost was a peeved gf). Going on a Monopoly board pub crawl, and going into the divingish-dive where some bored-looking strippers were performing for a couple of bemused-looking tourists. Walking the Regents Canal behind the station in agony, but loving every step. The dinghy narrow low-level platforms. Getting a greasy kebab from a van that must have failed every food-standards law made on out way to someone's digs at ULU. walking down a road, and encountering waves of prostitutes and tourists - and sometimes, perhaps, both. Lots of homeless people.

    I wish I'd made more of those years. They were brilliant, for me at least.

    To be young again...
    Trains and a peeved gf? I hooked back up with an ex whilst I was still in London. We went to a comedy club, went back to hers, had creative sex then slept. Following morning I was awoken to a Class 37 chugging at a red signal practically outside her bedroom window (which was a winner btw in rail enthusiast speak). Which then prompted more sex.

    Where did my life go...?
    I'm not sure hearing about other pb'ers sex lives is any better than Leon's.
    I fell asleep 'in' an ex (actually passed out paralytic). She wasnt happy. It required me bringing her cereal and tea in the spare room she'd gone and slept in after rolling me off her. Good job i was a freaking Studley Mcgoodlad.
    Now i'm completely, permanently, asexual and aromantic. Love is for others, but me it destroys (hat tip Bob Geldof)
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,712
    Carnyx said:

    https://www.thenational.scot/news/20597426.liz-truss-team-backtracks-nicola-sturgeon-insult-tory-backlash/

    'LIZ Truss’s campaign team has backtracked on the leadership hopeful’s claim that she’ll “ignore” Nicola Sturgeon after it sparked outrage among Scottish Tories and across the political spectrum.'

    https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/20597860.truss-backtracks-sturgeon-comments-backlash/

    (and remember Ms Truss had said that 'what we need to do is show the people of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales what we are delivering for them, and making sure that all of our government policies apply right across the United Kingdom.' Which means the abolition of devolution, and direct rule in NI, on one reading - it does not make sense otherwise. And is a rather silly mistake, which surprises me. Unless it was deliberate raw meat for the Tory oldies. )

    However Truss still correctly makes clear she will not allow an indyref2
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    Nigelb said:

    A win for Biden.
    (Wildly unpopular) Republican Senate opposition to the Veterans healthcare bill caves.

    https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1554631639585669121
    We'll never be able to repay the debt we owe to those who have worn the uniform, but today, Congress delivered on a promise to our veterans and their families.

    The PACT Act will be the biggest expansion of VA health care in decades. We should all take pride in this moment.

    The PACT act lash out by the Senate GOP has a whiff of Newt Gingrich's "back of the plane" tantrun
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    carnforth said:

    Nick Clegg joins clique of Meta bosses switching to London

    https:/Yes, is back, part time…

    Clegg is back, and London is back!


    From that thread of articles:

    "Hoberman said: “They also move because they see the US so fractionalised. As San Francisco loses its density [of tech headquarters], there’s a chance for London to be the global leader.”"

    This is absolutely true. Why step over homeless addict in SF when you can be in glorious sunny London? In King's X? With no threat of Trump? And two hours from all of Europe?
    I saw recently that parts of East London have taken over SF for density of tech startups. Kings cross looks like the choice for established tech so will be another huge draw for startups looking for global locations. I know one SAAS company which is currently HQ'd in SF that's considering moving operationally to London from there and leaving behind a small outpost of sales people in NYC. That's the other one that's coming for SF, operational excellence in development by being based in London and sales/GTM based on the East Coast of the US either in NYC or Miami. It's such a better set of timezones. SF used to have the advantage of crossover with APAC countries but with the ease of remote work and setting up remote workers on a single payroll tech companies are choosing to hire locally in Singapore, Melbourne and Wellington.
    FPT

    Yes, and more: as NYC sinks into crime, and is menaced by deeper political division, a lot of business in NYC will come here. Remote working suddenly benefits the UK

    Really. Why would you work in NYC or LA or SF if you can work in London?

    NYC is a truly great city and LA is jolly interesting and SF has a certain beauty, but they have grave downsides, and they are all trillions of miles from anywhere else

    Fly two hours from NYC and you are in, er, Toronto

    Compare that with London, when in 2 hours or less you can be in Paris, Venice, Berlin, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Rome, Florence, Edinburgh, Nice... and the Alps, the Balearics, Sicily, western Ireland, Burgundy, the Algarve, the Black Forest, the Dordogne, the Italian lakes, the Dolomites, Tyrol,...

    There is no comparison. If your job is no longer quite so tied to the Silicon Valley office, you will move to London
    NYC makes sense for a lot of reasons despite the crime (and it's nowhere near as bad as SF) it's got the 2pm-6pm crossover with London, there's already quite a few companies in the area, it's bigger and better connected than SF (which means people have the option of living in NJ and commuting in) and it's only 7h on a cheap business class flight from London for business meetings. For tech startups there's also a fuckton of potential clients on the doorstep in NYC because there's so many financial services companies looking to cut costs. The City is one of the reasons tech has thrived in London, its clients and financing for startups.
    NYC is unquestionably a magnificent city (as I said in my earlier comment), but so is London. And the downsides of NYC - crime, racial tension, MAGA-Trump, divided country, healthcare, opiates, guns - now seem to me to outweigh the downsides of London: weather, greyness, grotty areas

    Both are English-speaking world cities with glorious culture, London has more history, New York City has that skyline

    The proximity of the rest of Europe might be the clincher for me, if I was a highly paid tech exec. And where do you want your kids to grow up? Safely?

    But of course I am biased

    I think we will see more American execs choosing London on a quasi-WFH basis. It will be a complex and remarkable irony if post-Brexit London ascends to world capital status (again?)..... because it is in Europe

    Yes, that's why I think London is a good shout for operational and potentially tax HQ. My point on NYC is more in relation to having the sales function for NA run out of there rather than SF because it has significantly better crossover with London and it's only a 7h flight for when seniors and execs need face to face meetings.

    The London/NYC split works brilliantly for financial services, it being replicated for tech would be no surprise.

    The last piece of the puzzle is higher risk funds in London willing to invest hundreds of millions for series D onwards.
    Yes, I concur

    Finance/sales stuff might stay in NYC but a lot of intellectual/HQ heft will move to London

    Add in the boost from Hong Kong and - perhaps unexpectedly - London could really thrive in the next decade

    I wonder if this is what I sensed in King's X yesterday. Essentially they are - wittingly or not - creating a Silicon Valley in an amazing new London neighborhood, but with added universities and science institutes and art galleries and biochemistry labs and the British Library and the rest, and all of it 300m from St Pancras and the eurostar, and half an hour from Heathrow via the Liz Line, with Shoreditch and the Silicon roundabout just down the road

    It is completely unique. London - esp King's X - has the chance to be THE tech hub for the world, or at least the western world

    If I was the head of Instagram, I'd move from California to King's Cross (never thought I'd write that). Just to see

    Kings Cross? Would you like to know about living there in the before times? Of COURSE you would...

    I moved to that London in July 1999. I had graduated with a Journalism Degree in summer 1998 already working in radio on various short term contracts. By late spring 1999 there was a gap, and I was a bit fed up with the GF I was living with. So moved to London to find a job.

    Which I did in 7 working days. Literally. Arrived Sunday. Agency interviews Monday, job interviews later that week, a 2nd interview the following Monday and started working for Nature the science journal straight away.

    Their office is on Crinan Street, the north end of KX station with the canal basin behind. So I rented a 1 bed mini bedsit at the top of Grays Inn Road and started work. Kings Cross at the time was home to only one thriving industry - hookers. I was propositioned at 8am one morning crossing the road by the station on the way to work! There was so little in the way of facilities in Kings Cross that the company had a free canteen for its employees - there literally being nothing available in the vicinity.

    At the top of Crinan Street was a pub which had been an old canal warehouse - now demolished and the site of Guardian Newspapers building. And a wine bar on Balfe Street. Aside from the Flying Scotsman fight bar on Caledonian Road, that was it.

    The transformation in 20 years is literally mindblowing.
    I knew it in the early 1990s. Memories include trying to go and see a gf in North London, and stupidly getting on a Cambridge non-stopper (the staff were brilliant and did not charge me any extra fare; they got me on the correct train back, and the only cost was a peeved gf). Going on a Monopoly board pub crawl, and going into the divingish-dive where some bored-looking strippers were performing for a couple of bemused-looking tourists. Walking the Regents Canal behind the station in agony, but loving every step. The dinghy narrow low-level platforms. Getting a greasy kebab from a van that must have failed every food-standards law made on out way to someone's digs at ULU. walking down a road, and encountering waves of prostitutes and tourists - and sometimes, perhaps, both. Lots of homeless people.

    I wish I'd made more of those years. They were brilliant, for me at least.

    To be young again...
    Trains and a peeved gf? I hooked back up with an ex whilst I was still in London. We went to a comedy club, went back to hers, had creative sex then slept. Following morning I was awoken to a Class 37 chugging at a red signal practically outside her bedroom window (which was a winner btw in rail enthusiast speak). Which then prompted more sex.

    Where did my life go...?
    I'm not sure hearing about other pb'ers sex lives is any better than Leon's.
    I fell asleep 'in' an ex (actually passed out paralytic). She wasnt happy. It required me bringing her cereal and tea in the spare room she'd gone and slept in after rolling me off her. Good job i was a freaking Studley Mcgoodlad.
    Now i'm completely, permanently, asexual and aromantic. Love is for others, but me it destroys (hat tip Bob Geldof)
    There's still 4 minutes to delete that.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,841
    ydoethur said:

    That picture on the chair, alone, in a wheat field is looking pretty apposite rn
    Really? I would have said it was rather corny.
    Fist bump
  • FFS Rishi. They know your backstory because they've got telly and the interwebs in Wales. Get on with it.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,149
    edited August 2022
    HYUFD said:

    Carnyx said:

    https://www.thenational.scot/news/20597426.liz-truss-team-backtracks-nicola-sturgeon-insult-tory-backlash/

    'LIZ Truss’s campaign team has backtracked on the leadership hopeful’s claim that she’ll “ignore” Nicola Sturgeon after it sparked outrage among Scottish Tories and across the political spectrum.'

    https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/20597860.truss-backtracks-sturgeon-comments-backlash/

    (and remember Ms Truss had said that 'what we need to do is show the people of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales what we are delivering for them, and making sure that all of our government policies apply right across the United Kingdom.' Which means the abolition of devolution, and direct rule in NI, on one reading - it does not make sense otherwise. And is a rather silly mistake, which surprises me. Unless it was deliberate raw meat for the Tory oldies. )

    However Truss still correctly makes clear she will not allow an indyref2
    As one of us said last night, don't you have a nice recording on side B that you could use just sometimes?

    How about this? Some nice Deltic noises (appropriate for the KX parallel discussion of course).

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUvCwm_s3OA
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,758

    ydoethur said:

    That picture on the chair, alone, in a wheat field is looking pretty apposite rn
    Really? I would have said it was rather corny.
    Fist bump
    Ear, ear.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,149
    HYUFD said:

    Carnyx said:

    https://www.thenational.scot/news/20597426.liz-truss-team-backtracks-nicola-sturgeon-insult-tory-backlash/

    'LIZ Truss’s campaign team has backtracked on the leadership hopeful’s claim that she’ll “ignore” Nicola Sturgeon after it sparked outrage among Scottish Tories and across the political spectrum.'

    https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/20597860.truss-backtracks-sturgeon-comments-backlash/

    (and remember Ms Truss had said that 'what we need to do is show the people of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales what we are delivering for them, and making sure that all of our government policies apply right across the United Kingdom.' Which means the abolition of devolution, and direct rule in NI, on one reading - it does not make sense otherwise. And is a rather silly mistake, which surprises me. Unless it was deliberate raw meat for the Tory oldies. )

    However Truss still correctly makes clear she will not allow an indyref2
    In any case, can one apply the notion of 'correctly makes clear' to someone who is so prone to coming out with the stuff she does, and having to backtrack on it?
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    Sinema still seems poised to sink the Reconciliation bill

    Manchin on the other hand is taking names, absolutely tore into a Fox News presenter.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,851

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    carnforth said:

    Nick Clegg joins clique of Meta bosses switching to London

    https:/Yes, is back, part time…

    Clegg is back, and London is back!


    From that thread of articles:

    "Hoberman said: “They also move because they see the US so fractionalised. As San Francisco loses its density [of tech headquarters], there’s a chance for London to be the global leader.”"

    This is absolutely true. Why step over homeless addict in SF when you can be in glorious sunny London? In King's X? With no threat of Trump? And two hours from all of Europe?
    I saw recently that parts of East London have taken over SF for density of tech startups. Kings cross looks like the choice for established tech so will be another huge draw for startups looking for global locations. I know one SAAS company which is currently HQ'd in SF that's considering moving operationally to London from there and leaving behind a small outpost of sales people in NYC. That's the other one that's coming for SF, operational excellence in development by being based in London and sales/GTM based on the East Coast of the US either in NYC or Miami. It's such a better set of timezones. SF used to have the advantage of crossover with APAC countries but with the ease of remote work and setting up remote workers on a single payroll tech companies are choosing to hire locally in Singapore, Melbourne and Wellington.
    FPT

    Yes, and more: as NYC sinks into crime, and is menaced by deeper political division, a lot of business in NYC will come here. Remote working suddenly benefits the UK

    Really. Why would you work in NYC or LA or SF if you can work in London?

    NYC is a truly great city and LA is jolly interesting and SF has a certain beauty, but they have grave downsides, and they are all trillions of miles from anywhere else

    Fly two hours from NYC and you are in, er, Toronto

    Compare that with London, when in 2 hours or less you can be in Paris, Venice, Berlin, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Rome, Florence, Edinburgh, Nice... and the Alps, the Balearics, Sicily, western Ireland, Burgundy, the Algarve, the Black Forest, the Dordogne, the Italian lakes, the Dolomites, Tyrol,...

    There is no comparison. If your job is no longer quite so tied to the Silicon Valley office, you will move to London
    NYC makes sense for a lot of reasons despite the crime (and it's nowhere near as bad as SF) it's got the 2pm-6pm crossover with London, there's already quite a few companies in the area, it's bigger and better connected than SF (which means people have the option of living in NJ and commuting in) and it's only 7h on a cheap business class flight from London for business meetings. For tech startups there's also a fuckton of potential clients on the doorstep in NYC because there's so many financial services companies looking to cut costs. The City is one of the reasons tech has thrived in London, its clients and financing for startups.
    NYC is unquestionably a magnificent city (as I said in my earlier comment), but so is London. And the downsides of NYC - crime, racial tension, MAGA-Trump, divided country, healthcare, opiates, guns - now seem to me to outweigh the downsides of London: weather, greyness, grotty areas

    Both are English-speaking world cities with glorious culture, London has more history, New York City has that skyline

    The proximity of the rest of Europe might be the clincher for me, if I was a highly paid tech exec. And where do you want your kids to grow up? Safely?

    But of course I am biased

    I think we will see more American execs choosing London on a quasi-WFH basis. It will be a complex and remarkable irony if post-Brexit London ascends to world capital status (again?)..... because it is in Europe

    Yes, that's why I think London is a good shout for operational and potentially tax HQ. My point on NYC is more in relation to having the sales function for NA run out of there rather than SF because it has significantly better crossover with London and it's only a 7h flight for when seniors and execs need face to face meetings.

    The London/NYC split works brilliantly for financial services, it being replicated for tech would be no surprise.

    The last piece of the puzzle is higher risk funds in London willing to invest hundreds of millions for series D onwards.
    Yes, I concur

    Finance/sales stuff might stay in NYC but a lot of intellectual/HQ heft will move to London

    Add in the boost from Hong Kong and - perhaps unexpectedly - London could really thrive in the next decade

    I wonder if this is what I sensed in King's X yesterday. Essentially they are - wittingly or not - creating a Silicon Valley in an amazing new London neighborhood, but with added universities and science institutes and art galleries and biochemistry labs and the British Library and the rest, and all of it 300m from St Pancras and the eurostar, and half an hour from Heathrow via the Liz Line, with Shoreditch and the Silicon roundabout just down the road

    It is completely unique. London - esp King's X - has the chance to be THE tech hub for the world, or at least the western world

    If I was the head of Instagram, I'd move from California to King's Cross (never thought I'd write that). Just to see

    Kings Cross? Would you like to know about living there in the before times? Of COURSE you would...

    I moved to that London in July 1999. I had graduated with a Journalism Degree in summer 1998 already working in radio on various short term contracts. By late spring 1999 there was a gap, and I was a bit fed up with the GF I was living with. So moved to London to find a job.

    Which I did in 7 working days. Literally. Arrived Sunday. Agency interviews Monday, job interviews later that week, a 2nd interview the following Monday and started working for Nature the science journal straight away.

    Their office is on Crinan Street, the north end of KX station with the canal basin behind. So I rented a 1 bed mini bedsit at the top of Grays Inn Road and started work. Kings Cross at the time was home to only one thriving industry - hookers. I was propositioned at 8am one morning crossing the road by the station on the way to work! There was so little in the way of facilities in Kings Cross that the company had a free canteen for its employees - there literally being nothing available in the vicinity.

    At the top of Crinan Street was a pub which had been an old canal warehouse - now demolished and the site of Guardian Newspapers building. And a wine bar on Balfe Street. Aside from the Flying Scotsman fight bar on Caledonian Road, that was it.

    The transformation in 20 years is literally mindblowing.
    I knew it in the early 1990s. Memories include trying to go and see a gf in North London, and stupidly getting on a Cambridge non-stopper (the staff were brilliant and did not charge me any extra fare; they got me on the correct train back, and the only cost was a peeved gf). Going on a Monopoly board pub crawl, and going into the divingish-dive where some bored-looking strippers were performing for a couple of bemused-looking tourists. Walking the Regents Canal behind the station in agony, but loving every step. The dinghy narrow low-level platforms. Getting a greasy kebab from a van that must have failed every food-standards law made on out way to someone's digs at ULU. walking down a road, and encountering waves of prostitutes and tourists - and sometimes, perhaps, both. Lots of homeless people.

    I wish I'd made more of those years. They were brilliant, for me at least.

    To be young again...
    Trains and a peeved gf? I hooked back up with an ex whilst I was still in London. We went to a comedy club, went back to hers, had creative sex then slept. Following morning I was awoken to a Class 37 chugging at a red signal practically outside her bedroom window (which was a winner btw in rail enthusiast speak). Which then prompted more sex.

    Where did my life go...?
    Went on sex and booze and clubbing by the sounds of it - and the rest you must have just frittered away on having a good time.
    Ended up getting a serious gf pregnant when we had break up sex. Took responsibility as not a 'stard, and that made me grow up quickly. Then got (back) together with my wife (who had been an old flame back at uni) and left London.

    Hang on, I hated London. This makes it sound like I had a mega party ...
    Sounds like a lot of 'life' is what I'd say. I came to London as an immature 17 year old from a small S Yorks pit village, loaded up with my nature and nurture and, looking back, it was like I was fired into a massive pinball machine, careering around with no rhyme or reason, bong, ping, pong, TILT, bong ping pong, TILT, and this continues, albeit at a far more sedate pace, to this day.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,841
    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    carnforth said:

    Nick Clegg joins clique of Meta bosses switching to London

    https:/Yes, is back, part time…

    Clegg is back, and London is back!


    From that thread of articles:

    "Hoberman said: “They also move because they see the US so fractionalised. As San Francisco loses its density [of tech headquarters], there’s a chance for London to be the global leader.”"

    This is absolutely true. Why step over homeless addict in SF when you can be in glorious sunny London? In King's X? With no threat of Trump? And two hours from all of Europe?
    I saw recently that parts of East London have taken over SF for density of tech startups. Kings cross looks like the choice for established tech so will be another huge draw for startups looking for global locations. I know one SAAS company which is currently HQ'd in SF that's considering moving operationally to London from there and leaving behind a small outpost of sales people in NYC. That's the other one that's coming for SF, operational excellence in development by being based in London and sales/GTM based on the East Coast of the US either in NYC or Miami. It's such a better set of timezones. SF used to have the advantage of crossover with APAC countries but with the ease of remote work and setting up remote workers on a single payroll tech companies are choosing to hire locally in Singapore, Melbourne and Wellington.
    FPT

    Yes, and more: as NYC sinks into crime, and is menaced by deeper political division, a lot of business in NYC will come here. Remote working suddenly benefits the UK

    Really. Why would you work in NYC or LA or SF if you can work in London?

    NYC is a truly great city and LA is jolly interesting and SF has a certain beauty, but they have grave downsides, and they are all trillions of miles from anywhere else

    Fly two hours from NYC and you are in, er, Toronto

    Compare that with London, when in 2 hours or less you can be in Paris, Venice, Berlin, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Rome, Florence, Edinburgh, Nice... and the Alps, the Balearics, Sicily, western Ireland, Burgundy, the Algarve, the Black Forest, the Dordogne, the Italian lakes, the Dolomites, Tyrol,...

    There is no comparison. If your job is no longer quite so tied to the Silicon Valley office, you will move to London
    NYC makes sense for a lot of reasons despite the crime (and it's nowhere near as bad as SF) it's got the 2pm-6pm crossover with London, there's already quite a few companies in the area, it's bigger and better connected than SF (which means people have the option of living in NJ and commuting in) and it's only 7h on a cheap business class flight from London for business meetings. For tech startups there's also a fuckton of potential clients on the doorstep in NYC because there's so many financial services companies looking to cut costs. The City is one of the reasons tech has thrived in London, its clients and financing for startups.
    NYC is unquestionably a magnificent city (as I said in my earlier comment), but so is London. And the downsides of NYC - crime, racial tension, MAGA-Trump, divided country, healthcare, opiates, guns - now seem to me to outweigh the downsides of London: weather, greyness, grotty areas

    Both are English-speaking world cities with glorious culture, London has more history, New York City has that skyline

    The proximity of the rest of Europe might be the clincher for me, if I was a highly paid tech exec. And where do you want your kids to grow up? Safely?

    But of course I am biased

    I think we will see more American execs choosing London on a quasi-WFH basis. It will be a complex and remarkable irony if post-Brexit London ascends to world capital status (again?)..... because it is in Europe

    Yes, that's why I think London is a good shout for operational and potentially tax HQ. My point on NYC is more in relation to having the sales function for NA run out of there rather than SF because it has significantly better crossover with London and it's only a 7h flight for when seniors and execs need face to face meetings.

    The London/NYC split works brilliantly for financial services, it being replicated for tech would be no surprise.

    The last piece of the puzzle is higher risk funds in London willing to invest hundreds of millions for series D onwards.
    Yes, I concur

    Finance/sales stuff might stay in NYC but a lot of intellectual/HQ heft will move to London

    Add in the boost from Hong Kong and - perhaps unexpectedly - London could really thrive in the next decade

    I wonder if this is what I sensed in King's X yesterday. Essentially they are - wittingly or not - creating a Silicon Valley in an amazing new London neighborhood, but with added universities and science institutes and art galleries and biochemistry labs and the British Library and the rest, and all of it 300m from St Pancras and the eurostar, and half an hour from Heathrow via the Liz Line, with Shoreditch and the Silicon roundabout just down the road

    It is completely unique. London - esp King's X - has the chance to be THE tech hub for the world, or at least the western world

    If I was the head of Instagram, I'd move from California to King's Cross (never thought I'd write that). Just to see

    Kings Cross? Would you like to know about living there in the before times? Of COURSE you would...

    I moved to that London in July 1999. I had graduated with a Journalism Degree in summer 1998 already working in radio on various short term contracts. By late spring 1999 there was a gap, and I was a bit fed up with the GF I was living with. So moved to London to find a job.

    Which I did in 7 working days. Literally. Arrived Sunday. Agency interviews Monday, job interviews later that week, a 2nd interview the following Monday and started working for Nature the science journal straight away.

    Their office is on Crinan Street, the north end of KX station with the canal basin behind. So I rented a 1 bed mini bedsit at the top of Grays Inn Road and started work. Kings Cross at the time was home to only one thriving industry - hookers. I was propositioned at 8am one morning crossing the road by the station on the way to work! There was so little in the way of facilities in Kings Cross that the company had a free canteen for its employees - there literally being nothing available in the vicinity.

    At the top of Crinan Street was a pub which had been an old canal warehouse - now demolished and the site of Guardian Newspapers building. And a wine bar on Balfe Street. Aside from the Flying Scotsman fight bar on Caledonian Road, that was it.

    The transformation in 20 years is literally mindblowing.
    I knew it in the early 1990s. Memories include trying to go and see a gf in North London, and stupidly getting on a Cambridge non-stopper (the staff were brilliant and did not charge me any extra fare; they got me on the correct train back, and the only cost was a peeved gf). Going on a Monopoly board pub crawl, and going into the divingish-dive where some bored-looking strippers were performing for a couple of bemused-looking tourists. Walking the Regents Canal behind the station in agony, but loving every step. The dinghy narrow low-level platforms. Getting a greasy kebab from a van that must have failed every food-standards law made on out way to someone's digs at ULU. walking down a road, and encountering waves of prostitutes and tourists - and sometimes, perhaps, both. Lots of homeless people.

    I wish I'd made more of those years. They were brilliant, for me at least.

    To be young again...
    Trains and a peeved gf? I hooked back up with an ex whilst I was still in London. We went to a comedy club, went back to hers, had creative sex then slept. Following morning I was awoken to a Class 37 chugging at a red signal practically outside her bedroom window (which was a winner btw in rail enthusiast speak). Which then prompted more sex.

    Where did my life go...?
    I'm not sure hearing about other pb'ers sex lives is any better than Leon's.
    I fell asleep 'in' an ex (actually passed out paralytic). She wasnt happy. It required me bringing her cereal and tea in the spare room she'd gone and slept in after rolling me off her. Good job i was a freaking Studley Mcgoodlad.
    Now i'm completely, permanently, asexual and aromantic. Love is for others, but me it destroys (hat tip Bob Geldof)
    There's still 4 minutes to delete that.
    Nah, ive done worse things than fall asleep on the job. I'm fairly useless. But i do make excellent cereal and tea
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517
    Carnyx said:

    HYUFD said:

    Carnyx said:

    https://www.thenational.scot/news/20597426.liz-truss-team-backtracks-nicola-sturgeon-insult-tory-backlash/

    'LIZ Truss’s campaign team has backtracked on the leadership hopeful’s claim that she’ll “ignore” Nicola Sturgeon after it sparked outrage among Scottish Tories and across the political spectrum.'

    https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/20597860.truss-backtracks-sturgeon-comments-backlash/

    (and remember Ms Truss had said that 'what we need to do is show the people of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales what we are delivering for them, and making sure that all of our government policies apply right across the United Kingdom.' Which means the abolition of devolution, and direct rule in NI, on one reading - it does not make sense otherwise. And is a rather silly mistake, which surprises me. Unless it was deliberate raw meat for the Tory oldies. )

    However Truss still correctly makes clear she will not allow an indyref2
    As one of us said last night, don't you have a nice recording on side B that you could use just sometimes?

    How about this? Some nice Deltic noises (appropriate for the KX parallel discussion of course).

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUvCwm_s3OA
    Pah. Deltics. Over-rated rubbish. Like racehorses, they lasted only twenty years before they were sent to the knacker's yard.

    Some Class 37's are still going 60 years later without seeing the glue factory.
  • rcs1000 said:

    I've just put some music onto my new computer, and despite putting nearly a thousand tracks on, I've realised I have none beginning with X or Z.

    So, classic music tracks whose titles begin with 'x' or 'z' ? ;)

    Jean Michel jarre had an album which started with "z" iirc.

    Zero by the Smashing Pumpkins.
  • kicorsekicorse Posts: 431
    Lennon said:

    First. Like the football team.

    Edit: And why on earth has Johnson made this decision - it seems like such an obvious own goal that I feel I must be missing something.

    Maybe worrying that he is so unpopular that they might say no, or more likely, that he might be humiliated at the event by someone who strongly dislikes him and is much more popular than him? Trump had such issues with sports champions who were expected to go to the White House (not that Johnson is as much of a hate-figure as Trump - he clearly isn't - it's just an example).
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,149

    Carnyx said:

    HYUFD said:

    Carnyx said:

    https://www.thenational.scot/news/20597426.liz-truss-team-backtracks-nicola-sturgeon-insult-tory-backlash/

    'LIZ Truss’s campaign team has backtracked on the leadership hopeful’s claim that she’ll “ignore” Nicola Sturgeon after it sparked outrage among Scottish Tories and across the political spectrum.'

    https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/20597860.truss-backtracks-sturgeon-comments-backlash/

    (and remember Ms Truss had said that 'what we need to do is show the people of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales what we are delivering for them, and making sure that all of our government policies apply right across the United Kingdom.' Which means the abolition of devolution, and direct rule in NI, on one reading - it does not make sense otherwise. And is a rather silly mistake, which surprises me. Unless it was deliberate raw meat for the Tory oldies. )

    However Truss still correctly makes clear she will not allow an indyref2
    As one of us said last night, don't you have a nice recording on side B that you could use just sometimes?

    How about this? Some nice Deltic noises (appropriate for the KX parallel discussion of course).

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUvCwm_s3OA
    Pah. Deltics. Over-rated rubbish. Like racehorses, they lasted only twenty years before they were sent to the knacker's yard.

    Some Class 37's are still going 60 years later without seeing the glue factory.
    TBF their replacement by the 125s came early. But my dad used to take me to the path that went near the ECML to see them when they were new.
  • rcs1000 said:

    I've just put some music onto my new computer, and despite putting nearly a thousand tracks on, I've realised I have none beginning with X or Z.

    So, classic music tracks whose titles begin with 'x' or 'z' ? ;)

    Jean Michel jarre had an album which started with "z" iirc.

    Zero by the Smashing Pumpkins.
    And if we're doing artists/bands, ZZ Top.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,587

    rcs1000 said:

    I've just put some music onto my new computer, and despite putting nearly a thousand tracks on, I've realised I have none beginning with X or Z.

    So, classic music tracks whose titles begin with 'x' or 'z' ? ;)

    Jean Michel jarre had an album which started with "z" iirc.

    Zero by the Smashing Pumpkins.
    Zenyatta Mondatta by The Police
  • MISTYMISTY Posts: 1,594
    ping said:

    https://www.ft.com/content/bef7ef5b-335f-4c84-82ac-ac3d5c90c1d6

    FT calls for half point raise tomorrow.

    I think it needs to be more, frankly.

    Listening to Minford, Truss's supposed guru, he thinks tax cuts help embolden the BoE to fight inflation, because they aren't so worried about screwing growth in the process.

  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,575
    edited August 2022
    Carnyx said:

    https://www.thenational.scot/news/20597426.liz-truss-team-backtracks-nicola-sturgeon-insult-tory-backlash/

    'LIZ Truss’s campaign team has backtracked on the leadership hopeful’s claim that she’ll “ignore” Nicola Sturgeon after it sparked outrage among Scottish Tories and across the political spectrum.'

    https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/20597860.truss-backtracks-sturgeon-comments-backlash/

    (and remember Ms Truss had said that 'what we need to do is show the people of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales what we are delivering for them, and making sure that all of our government policies apply right across the United Kingdom.' Which means the abolition of devolution, and direct rule in NI, on one reading - it does not make sense otherwise. And is a rather silly mistake, which surprises me. Unless it was deliberate raw meat for the Tory oldies. )

    You turn if you want to; the lady … probably got there first.

    And not just the once.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,043
    Alistair said:

    Sinema still seems poised to sink the Reconciliation bill

    Manchin on the other hand is taking names, absolutely tore into a Fox News presenter.

    LBJ wouldn't have let this kind of shit happen. Sinema would be in the 'yay' lobby.

  • Carnyx said:

    HYUFD said:

    Carnyx said:

    https://www.thenational.scot/news/20597426.liz-truss-team-backtracks-nicola-sturgeon-insult-tory-backlash/

    'LIZ Truss’s campaign team has backtracked on the leadership hopeful’s claim that she’ll “ignore” Nicola Sturgeon after it sparked outrage among Scottish Tories and across the political spectrum.'

    https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/20597860.truss-backtracks-sturgeon-comments-backlash/

    (and remember Ms Truss had said that 'what we need to do is show the people of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales what we are delivering for them, and making sure that all of our government policies apply right across the United Kingdom.' Which means the abolition of devolution, and direct rule in NI, on one reading - it does not make sense otherwise. And is a rather silly mistake, which surprises me. Unless it was deliberate raw meat for the Tory oldies. )

    However Truss still correctly makes clear she will not allow an indyref2
    As one of us said last night, don't you have a nice recording on side B that you could use just sometimes?

    How about this? Some nice Deltic noises (appropriate for the KX parallel discussion of course).

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUvCwm_s3OA
    My first train set was the Lima model Class 55 55006 "The Fife & Forfar Yeomanry". Must have been c.1980.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517
    Carnyx said:

    HYUFD said:

    Carnyx said:

    https://www.thenational.scot/news/20597426.liz-truss-team-backtracks-nicola-sturgeon-insult-tory-backlash/

    'LIZ Truss’s campaign team has backtracked on the leadership hopeful’s claim that she’ll “ignore” Nicola Sturgeon after it sparked outrage among Scottish Tories and across the political spectrum.'

    https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/20597860.truss-backtracks-sturgeon-comments-backlash/

    (and remember Ms Truss had said that 'what we need to do is show the people of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales what we are delivering for them, and making sure that all of our government policies apply right across the United Kingdom.' Which means the abolition of devolution, and direct rule in NI, on one reading - it does not make sense otherwise. And is a rather silly mistake, which surprises me. Unless it was deliberate raw meat for the Tory oldies. )

    However Truss still correctly makes clear she will not allow an indyref2
    As one of us said last night, don't you have a nice recording on side B that you could use just sometimes?

    How about this? Some nice Deltic noises (appropriate for the KX parallel discussion of course).

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUvCwm_s3OA
    Or rather than that Deltic rubbish, this song about King's Cross, whose video even features Leon's gasholders.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFlFaX7YXs4

    for Roger, I *think* the video was directed by the late Derek Jarman.
  • DynamoDynamo Posts: 651
    edited August 2022

    rcs1000 said:

    I've just put some music onto my new computer, and despite putting nearly a thousand tracks on, I've realised I have none beginning with X or Z.

    So, classic music tracks whose titles begin with 'x' or 'z' ? ;)

    Jean Michel jarre had an album which started with "z" iirc.

    Zero by the Smashing Pumpkins.
    And if we're doing artists/bands, ZZ Top.
    Or the lovely French singer Zaz:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nCwH9pBRqQ

    The original of course is from 1968.

    The day a song like that comes out about London...that'll be the day...
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670

    Alistair said:

    Sinema still seems poised to sink the Reconciliation bill

    Manchin on the other hand is taking names, absolutely tore into a Fox News presenter.

    LBJ wouldn't have let this kind of shit happen. Sinema would be in the 'yay' lobby.

    LBJ had 68 senators to work with.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    On stroke now so now E R Wayne

    subtitle fail for this wazzock introducing Liz and trying to speak Welsh
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,226
    edited August 2022
    So Rishi has the backing of failed leaders Hague and Howard, and also ran leadership hopefuls Hunt and Shapps. While Truss has now scored fellow nominees Tudendhat, Javid, Mordaunt, Braverman and Zahawi, as well as party faithful favourite Wallace. A pretty broad church there.

    The GCHQ suspension of voting plays into her hands under the circumstances, because it also means votes can’t be recast. So the effective voting date is being brought forward not back.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517
    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    HYUFD said:

    Carnyx said:

    https://www.thenational.scot/news/20597426.liz-truss-team-backtracks-nicola-sturgeon-insult-tory-backlash/

    'LIZ Truss’s campaign team has backtracked on the leadership hopeful’s claim that she’ll “ignore” Nicola Sturgeon after it sparked outrage among Scottish Tories and across the political spectrum.'

    https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/20597860.truss-backtracks-sturgeon-comments-backlash/

    (and remember Ms Truss had said that 'what we need to do is show the people of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales what we are delivering for them, and making sure that all of our government policies apply right across the United Kingdom.' Which means the abolition of devolution, and direct rule in NI, on one reading - it does not make sense otherwise. And is a rather silly mistake, which surprises me. Unless it was deliberate raw meat for the Tory oldies. )

    However Truss still correctly makes clear she will not allow an indyref2
    As one of us said last night, don't you have a nice recording on side B that you could use just sometimes?

    How about this? Some nice Deltic noises (appropriate for the KX parallel discussion of course).

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUvCwm_s3OA
    Pah. Deltics. Over-rated rubbish. Like racehorses, they lasted only twenty years before they were sent to the knacker's yard.

    Some Class 37's are still going 60 years later without seeing the glue factory.
    TBF their replacement by the 125s came early. But my dad used to take me to the path that went near the ECML to see them when they were new.
    AFAIAA the Deltics were very troublesome locomotives to operate, partly saved only by the fact they had two engines, rather than one, so when one failed the other could limp it home.

    Having said that, a dear friend of mine was on an HST that caught fire one night near Loughborough. It was not a pleasant experience.
  • EPGEPG Posts: 5,996
    For actual tracks that people bought the only one that comes to mind is Olivia Newton John and ELO doing "Xanadu".
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,268
    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    carnforth said:

    Nick Clegg joins clique of Meta bosses switching to London

    https:/Yes, is back, part time…

    Clegg is back, and London is back!


    From that thread of articles:

    "Hoberman said: “They also move because they see the US so fractionalised. As San Francisco loses its density [of tech headquarters], there’s a chance for London to be the global leader.”"

    This is absolutely true. Why step over homeless addict in SF when you can be in glorious sunny London? In King's X? With no threat of Trump? And two hours from all of Europe?
    I saw recently that parts of East London have taken over SF for density of tech startups. Kings cross looks like the choice for established tech so will be another huge draw for startups looking for global locations. I know one SAAS company which is currently HQ'd in SF that's considering moving operationally to London from there and leaving behind a small outpost of sales people in NYC. That's the other one that's coming for SF, operational excellence in development by being based in London and sales/GTM based on the East Coast of the US either in NYC or Miami. It's such a better set of timezones. SF used to have the advantage of crossover with APAC countries but with the ease of remote work and setting up remote workers on a single payroll tech companies are choosing to hire locally in Singapore, Melbourne and Wellington.
    FPT

    Yes, and more: as NYC sinks into crime, and is menaced by deeper political division, a lot of business in NYC will come here. Remote working suddenly benefits the UK

    Really. Why would you work in NYC or LA or SF if you can work in London?

    NYC is a truly great city and LA is jolly interesting and SF has a certain beauty, but they have grave downsides, and they are all trillions of miles from anywhere else

    Fly two hours from NYC and you are in, er, Toronto

    Compare that with London, when in 2 hours or less you can be in Paris, Venice, Berlin, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Rome, Florence, Edinburgh, Nice... and the Alps, the Balearics, Sicily, western Ireland, Burgundy, the Algarve, the Black Forest, the Dordogne, the Italian lakes, the Dolomites, Tyrol,...

    There is no comparison. If your job is no longer quite so tied to the Silicon Valley office, you will move to London
    NYC makes sense for a lot of reasons despite the crime (and it's nowhere near as bad as SF) it's got the 2pm-6pm crossover with London, there's already quite a few companies in the area, it's bigger and better connected than SF (which means people have the option of living in NJ and commuting in) and it's only 7h on a cheap business class flight from London for business meetings. For tech startups there's also a fuckton of potential clients on the doorstep in NYC because there's so many financial services companies looking to cut costs. The City is one of the reasons tech has thrived in London, its clients and financing for startups.
    NYC is unquestionably a magnificent city (as I said in my earlier comment), but so is London. And the downsides of NYC - crime, racial tension, MAGA-Trump, divided country, healthcare, opiates, guns - now seem to me to outweigh the downsides of London: weather, greyness, grotty areas

    Both are English-speaking world cities with glorious culture, London has more history, New York City has that skyline

    The proximity of the rest of Europe might be the clincher for me, if I was a highly paid tech exec. And where do you want your kids to grow up? Safely?

    But of course I am biased

    I think we will see more American execs choosing London on a quasi-WFH basis. It will be a complex and remarkable irony if post-Brexit London ascends to world capital status (again?)..... because it is in Europe

    Yes, that's why I think London is a good shout for operational and potentially tax HQ. My point on NYC is more in relation to having the sales function for NA run out of there rather than SF because it has significantly better crossover with London and it's only a 7h flight for when seniors and execs need face to face meetings.

    The London/NYC split works brilliantly for financial services, it being replicated for tech would be no surprise.

    The last piece of the puzzle is higher risk funds in London willing to invest hundreds of millions for series D onwards.
    Yes, I concur

    Finance/sales stuff might stay in NYC but a lot of intellectual/HQ heft will move to London

    Add in the boost from Hong Kong and - perhaps unexpectedly - London could really thrive in the next decade

    I wonder if this is what I sensed in King's X yesterday. Essentially they are - wittingly or not - creating a Silicon Valley in an amazing new London neighborhood, but with added universities and science institutes and art galleries and biochemistry labs and the British Library and the rest, and all of it 300m from St Pancras and the eurostar, and half an hour from Heathrow via the Liz Line, with Shoreditch and the Silicon roundabout just down the road

    It is completely unique. London - esp King's X - has the chance to be THE tech hub for the world, or at least the western world

    If I was the head of Instagram, I'd move from California to King's Cross (never thought I'd write that). Just to see

    Kings Cross? Would you like to know about living there in the before times? Of COURSE you would...

    I moved to that London in July 1999. I had graduated with a Journalism Degree in summer 1998 already working in radio on various short term contracts. By late spring 1999 there was a gap, and I was a bit fed up with the GF I was living with. So moved to London to find a job.

    Which I did in 7 working days. Literally. Arrived Sunday. Agency interviews Monday, job interviews later that week, a 2nd interview the following Monday and started working for Nature the science journal straight away.

    Their office is on Crinan Street, the north end of KX station with the canal basin behind. So I rented a 1 bed mini bedsit at the top of Grays Inn Road and started work. Kings Cross at the time was home to only one thriving industry - hookers. I was propositioned at 8am one morning crossing the road by the station on the way to work! There was so little in the way of facilities in Kings Cross that the company had a free canteen for its employees - there literally being nothing available in the vicinity.

    At the top of Crinan Street was a pub which had been an old canal warehouse - now demolished and the site of Guardian Newspapers building. And a wine bar on Balfe Street. Aside from the Flying Scotsman fight bar on Caledonian Road, that was it.

    The transformation in 20 years is literally mindblowing.
    I remember that! Went to see someone in that office a few years earlier, perhaps 1992-3, when it was still very new. I did wince when I turned out of KX and saw the ambience of that street, and I was glad to be getting back to the train while it was still daylight.
    In those days there was a ramp off the end of platform 1 out onto York Road. So you could exit the station, cross the street and be into the Nature building inside 30 seconds. Barely time to wave at Clive Sinclair in his penthouse...
    I need to go back and explore the KX/StP area properly when I next visit my Camden friend; so much change there, including StP itself which was still very much its original state when I knew it, as described in Jack Simmons's history; didn't have time to more than pay homage to Hardy at the eponymous church, and to register the degree of change when passing through it in recent years, which needed a new edition of the history.
    You can spend a whole day there, pretty much

    Explore the new urbanism, check out the art galleries, see St Martin's, go to a movie or a play or a concert in one of the venues, have lunch or dinner (or both) in one of about 40 restaurants. Walk around Camley Street Wildpark, stroll along the Regent's Canal to Camden and Primrose Hill and back, go to the British Library, and more

    All in that one district. Surrounded by industrial history Vs the new Google HQ. Fab
    Mm, that's an idea - the canal walk in particular, especially as my chum lives in Camden.

    This reminds me I got hold of this paper some years back for him - archaeological dig. No idea if it is of interest but he was very taken with it.

    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332047927_The_Lock-Keepers_of_Hawley's_Lock_Regent's_Canal_Camden
    Fascinating

    I had a little historical frisson yesterday. The HS2 guys are digging right outside my front door. I had a chat with one of them, a nice guy, and seriously Irish

    And it occurred to me that this was a superb echo of when the very first railways were built, when Irish navvies would have worked in the exact same spot, then gone off to drink in the Dublin Castle (hence its name)

    They would have worked by the houses in this famous print, middle right. One of these houses, as it happens, being the house where I now live


  • My main takeaway from yesterday's US primary elections, aside from being heartened (in more ways than one) by the defeat of the Kansas anti-abortion state constitutional referendum, is mixed feelings re: results of three US House primaries where Republicans who voted to impeach Trump after Jan 2021 ran for renomination to Congress.

    > in Michigan 3rd District, incumbent Peter Meijer lost GOP primary to former Trump official and current endorsee John Gibbs, by 48% to 52%; the latter now faces Democrat Hillary Scholten, who lost to Meijer by (I think) 7% in 2020 but should be more competitive against a red-meat right-winger in this urban/surburban swing district centered on Grand Rapids, Jerry Ford's old home town & political base.

    > in Washington State, similar outcomes in both 3rd and 4th CDs; with roughly half the final primary turnout counted; would expect the latter votes in both district to trend more toward Republicans esp. conservative ones than the votes counted last night.

    **in WA CD03, Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez with 32% and incumbent Republican Jaime Herrera Beutler with 24.5% are the Top Two finishers going forward to the general. Trailing in 3rd place and probably too far behind to catch up is Republican MAGA-man Joe Kent with 20% whose right-wing support was cannibalized (with major assist from super-PAC tv blitz) by religious conservative Republican Heidi St John with 15%. Combined vote for Democrats is currently 35% versus 60% for Republicans, suggesting that incumbent JHB will return to Congress despite voting to impeach her own party's POTUS. PROVIDED that most Republicans and associated Independents re-unite behind her AND enough of the Democrats who clearly voted for her in the primary stick with her in the general.

    ** in WA CD04, incumbent Republican Dan Newhouse currently has 27% while only Democrat on ballot Doug White has 26%. Trailing the Top Two right now is super-Trumper and 2020 GOP gubernatorial nominee Republican Loren Culp with 22%; five other GOPers garnered 25% between them, for a combined Republican total of 74%. My take is that Newhouse will clearly make it forward to the general AND is likely to prevail against whomever gets the second spot, whether it's the Democrat by uniting most of the Republicans OR whether he faces Culp, because then they split the GOP vote, but Newhouse gets large vote from Democrats - same way he got to Congress in first place.

    Personally would have voted yesterday for any of the three GOPers - Meijer, Herrera Beutler and Newhouse - in their primary. AND would back that vote up, if they made it that far, in the general.

    Because they actually had the courage to put their political careers and future on the line, for the good of their country.

  • Both Rishi and Liz pledge to be bold.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,149
    Leon said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    carnforth said:

    Nick Clegg joins clique of Meta bosses switching to London

    https:/Yes, is back, part time…

    Clegg is back, and London is back!


    From that thread of articles:

    "Hoberman said: “They also move because they see the US so fractionalised. As San Francisco loses its density [of tech headquarters], there’s a chance for London to be the global leader.”"

    This is absolutely true. Why step over homeless addict in SF when you can be in glorious sunny London? In King's X? With no threat of Trump? And two hours from all of Europe?
    I saw recently that parts of East London have taken over SF for density of tech startups. Kings cross looks like the choice for established tech so will be another huge draw for startups looking for global locations. I know one SAAS company which is currently HQ'd in SF that's considering moving operationally to London from there and leaving behind a small outpost of sales people in NYC. That's the other one that's coming for SF, operational excellence in development by being based in London and sales/GTM based on the East Coast of the US either in NYC or Miami. It's such a better set of timezones. SF used to have the advantage of crossover with APAC countries but with the ease of remote work and setting up remote workers on a single payroll tech companies are choosing to hire locally in Singapore, Melbourne and Wellington.
    FPT

    Yes, and more: as NYC sinks into crime, and is menaced by deeper political division, a lot of business in NYC will come here. Remote working suddenly benefits the UK

    Really. Why would you work in NYC or LA or SF if you can work in London?

    NYC is a truly great city and LA is jolly interesting and SF has a certain beauty, but they have grave downsides, and they are all trillions of miles from anywhere else

    Fly two hours from NYC and you are in, er, Toronto

    Compare that with London, when in 2 hours or less you can be in Paris, Venice, Berlin, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Rome, Florence, Edinburgh, Nice... and the Alps, the Balearics, Sicily, western Ireland, Burgundy, the Algarve, the Black Forest, the Dordogne, the Italian lakes, the Dolomites, Tyrol,...

    There is no comparison. If your job is no longer quite so tied to the Silicon Valley office, you will move to London
    NYC makes sense for a lot of reasons despite the crime (and it's nowhere near as bad as SF) it's got the 2pm-6pm crossover with London, there's already quite a few companies in the area, it's bigger and better connected than SF (which means people have the option of living in NJ and commuting in) and it's only 7h on a cheap business class flight from London for business meetings. For tech startups there's also a fuckton of potential clients on the doorstep in NYC because there's so many financial services companies looking to cut costs. The City is one of the reasons tech has thrived in London, its clients and financing for startups.
    NYC is unquestionably a magnificent city (as I said in my earlier comment), but so is London. And the downsides of NYC - crime, racial tension, MAGA-Trump, divided country, healthcare, opiates, guns - now seem to me to outweigh the downsides of London: weather, greyness, grotty areas

    Both are English-speaking world cities with glorious culture, London has more history, New York City has that skyline

    The proximity of the rest of Europe might be the clincher for me, if I was a highly paid tech exec. And where do you want your kids to grow up? Safely?

    But of course I am biased

    I think we will see more American execs choosing London on a quasi-WFH basis. It will be a complex and remarkable irony if post-Brexit London ascends to world capital status (again?)..... because it is in Europe

    Yes, that's why I think London is a good shout for operational and potentially tax HQ. My point on NYC is more in relation to having the sales function for NA run out of there rather than SF because it has significantly better crossover with London and it's only a 7h flight for when seniors and execs need face to face meetings.

    The London/NYC split works brilliantly for financial services, it being replicated for tech would be no surprise.

    The last piece of the puzzle is higher risk funds in London willing to invest hundreds of millions for series D onwards.
    Yes, I concur

    Finance/sales stuff might stay in NYC but a lot of intellectual/HQ heft will move to London

    Add in the boost from Hong Kong and - perhaps unexpectedly - London could really thrive in the next decade

    I wonder if this is what I sensed in King's X yesterday. Essentially they are - wittingly or not - creating a Silicon Valley in an amazing new London neighborhood, but with added universities and science institutes and art galleries and biochemistry labs and the British Library and the rest, and all of it 300m from St Pancras and the eurostar, and half an hour from Heathrow via the Liz Line, with Shoreditch and the Silicon roundabout just down the road

    It is completely unique. London - esp King's X - has the chance to be THE tech hub for the world, or at least the western world

    If I was the head of Instagram, I'd move from California to King's Cross (never thought I'd write that). Just to see

    Kings Cross? Would you like to know about living there in the before times? Of COURSE you would...

    I moved to that London in July 1999. I had graduated with a Journalism Degree in summer 1998 already working in radio on various short term contracts. By late spring 1999 there was a gap, and I was a bit fed up with the GF I was living with. So moved to London to find a job.

    Which I did in 7 working days. Literally. Arrived Sunday. Agency interviews Monday, job interviews later that week, a 2nd interview the following Monday and started working for Nature the science journal straight away.

    Their office is on Crinan Street, the north end of KX station with the canal basin behind. So I rented a 1 bed mini bedsit at the top of Grays Inn Road and started work. Kings Cross at the time was home to only one thriving industry - hookers. I was propositioned at 8am one morning crossing the road by the station on the way to work! There was so little in the way of facilities in Kings Cross that the company had a free canteen for its employees - there literally being nothing available in the vicinity.

    At the top of Crinan Street was a pub which had been an old canal warehouse - now demolished and the site of Guardian Newspapers building. And a wine bar on Balfe Street. Aside from the Flying Scotsman fight bar on Caledonian Road, that was it.

    The transformation in 20 years is literally mindblowing.
    I remember that! Went to see someone in that office a few years earlier, perhaps 1992-3, when it was still very new. I did wince when I turned out of KX and saw the ambience of that street, and I was glad to be getting back to the train while it was still daylight.
    In those days there was a ramp off the end of platform 1 out onto York Road. So you could exit the station, cross the street and be into the Nature building inside 30 seconds. Barely time to wave at Clive Sinclair in his penthouse...
    I need to go back and explore the KX/StP area properly when I next visit my Camden friend; so much change there, including StP itself which was still very much its original state when I knew it, as described in Jack Simmons's history; didn't have time to more than pay homage to Hardy at the eponymous church, and to register the degree of change when passing through it in recent years, which needed a new edition of the history.
    You can spend a whole day there, pretty much

    Explore the new urbanism, check out the art galleries, see St Martin's, go to a movie or a play or a concert in one of the venues, have lunch or dinner (or both) in one of about 40 restaurants. Walk around Camley Street Wildpark, stroll along the Regent's Canal to Camden and Primrose Hill and back, go to the British Library, and more

    All in that one district. Surrounded by industrial history Vs the new Google HQ. Fab
    Mm, that's an idea - the canal walk in particular, especially as my chum lives in Camden.

    This reminds me I got hold of this paper some years back for him - archaeological dig. No idea if it is of interest but he was very taken with it.

    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332047927_The_Lock-Keepers_of_Hawley's_Lock_Regent's_Canal_Camden
    Fascinating

    I had a little historical frisson yesterday. The HS2 guys are digging right outside my front door. I had a chat with one of them, a nice guy, and seriously Irish

    And it occurred to me that this was a superb echo of when the very first railways were built, when Irish navvies would have worked in the exact same spot, then gone off to drink in the Dublin Castle (hence its name)

    They would have worked by the houses in this famous print, middle right. One of these houses, as it happens, being the house where I now live


    My friend made a point of showing me the Dublin Castle and other 'national' pubs when we were talking about the history of Camden!
  • I think we need to take a moment and appreciate just how fucked Alex Jones is.

    More than stepmom fucked.
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 9,688
    Leon said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    carnforth said:

    Nick Clegg joins clique of Meta bosses switching to London

    https:/Yes, is back, part time…

    Clegg is back, and London is back!


    From that thread of articles:

    "Hoberman said: “They also move because they see the US so fractionalised. As San Francisco loses its density [of tech headquarters], there’s a chance for London to be the global leader.”"

    This is absolutely true. Why step over homeless addict in SF when you can be in glorious sunny London? In King's X? With no threat of Trump? And two hours from all of Europe?
    I saw recently that parts of East London have taken over SF for density of tech startups. Kings cross looks like the choice for established tech so will be another huge draw for startups looking for global locations. I know one SAAS company which is currently HQ'd in SF that's considering moving operationally to London from there and leaving behind a small outpost of sales people in NYC. That's the other one that's coming for SF, operational excellence in development by being based in London and sales/GTM based on the East Coast of the US either in NYC or Miami. It's such a better set of timezones. SF used to have the advantage of crossover with APAC countries but with the ease of remote work and setting up remote workers on a single payroll tech companies are choosing to hire locally in Singapore, Melbourne and Wellington.
    FPT

    Yes, and more: as NYC sinks into crime, and is menaced by deeper political division, a lot of business in NYC will come here. Remote working suddenly benefits the UK

    Really. Why would you work in NYC or LA or SF if you can work in London?

    NYC is a truly great city and LA is jolly interesting and SF has a certain beauty, but they have grave downsides, and they are all trillions of miles from anywhere else

    Fly two hours from NYC and you are in, er, Toronto

    Compare that with London, when in 2 hours or less you can be in Paris, Venice, Berlin, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Rome, Florence, Edinburgh, Nice... and the Alps, the Balearics, Sicily, western Ireland, Burgundy, the Algarve, the Black Forest, the Dordogne, the Italian lakes, the Dolomites, Tyrol,...

    There is no comparison. If your job is no longer quite so tied to the Silicon Valley office, you will move to London
    NYC makes sense for a lot of reasons despite the crime (and it's nowhere near as bad as SF) it's got the 2pm-6pm crossover with London, there's already quite a few companies in the area, it's bigger and better connected than SF (which means people have the option of living in NJ and commuting in) and it's only 7h on a cheap business class flight from London for business meetings. For tech startups there's also a fuckton of potential clients on the doorstep in NYC because there's so many financial services companies looking to cut costs. The City is one of the reasons tech has thrived in London, its clients and financing for startups.
    NYC is unquestionably a magnificent city (as I said in my earlier comment), but so is London. And the downsides of NYC - crime, racial tension, MAGA-Trump, divided country, healthcare, opiates, guns - now seem to me to outweigh the downsides of London: weather, greyness, grotty areas

    Both are English-speaking world cities with glorious culture, London has more history, New York City has that skyline

    The proximity of the rest of Europe might be the clincher for me, if I was a highly paid tech exec. And where do you want your kids to grow up? Safely?

    But of course I am biased

    I think we will see more American execs choosing London on a quasi-WFH basis. It will be a complex and remarkable irony if post-Brexit London ascends to world capital status (again?)..... because it is in Europe

    Yes, that's why I think London is a good shout for operational and potentially tax HQ. My point on NYC is more in relation to having the sales function for NA run out of there rather than SF because it has significantly better crossover with London and it's only a 7h flight for when seniors and execs need face to face meetings.

    The London/NYC split works brilliantly for financial services, it being replicated for tech would be no surprise.

    The last piece of the puzzle is higher risk funds in London willing to invest hundreds of millions for series D onwards.
    Yes, I concur

    Finance/sales stuff might stay in NYC but a lot of intellectual/HQ heft will move to London

    Add in the boost from Hong Kong and - perhaps unexpectedly - London could really thrive in the next decade

    I wonder if this is what I sensed in King's X yesterday. Essentially they are - wittingly or not - creating a Silicon Valley in an amazing new London neighborhood, but with added universities and science institutes and art galleries and biochemistry labs and the British Library and the rest, and all of it 300m from St Pancras and the eurostar, and half an hour from Heathrow via the Liz Line, with Shoreditch and the Silicon roundabout just down the road

    It is completely unique. London - esp King's X - has the chance to be THE tech hub for the world, or at least the western world

    If I was the head of Instagram, I'd move from California to King's Cross (never thought I'd write that). Just to see

    Kings Cross? Would you like to know about living there in the before times? Of COURSE you would...

    I moved to that London in July 1999. I had graduated with a Journalism Degree in summer 1998 already working in radio on various short term contracts. By late spring 1999 there was a gap, and I was a bit fed up with the GF I was living with. So moved to London to find a job.

    Which I did in 7 working days. Literally. Arrived Sunday. Agency interviews Monday, job interviews later that week, a 2nd interview the following Monday and started working for Nature the science journal straight away.

    Their office is on Crinan Street, the north end of KX station with the canal basin behind. So I rented a 1 bed mini bedsit at the top of Grays Inn Road and started work. Kings Cross at the time was home to only one thriving industry - hookers. I was propositioned at 8am one morning crossing the road by the station on the way to work! There was so little in the way of facilities in Kings Cross that the company had a free canteen for its employees - there literally being nothing available in the vicinity.

    At the top of Crinan Street was a pub which had been an old canal warehouse - now demolished and the site of Guardian Newspapers building. And a wine bar on Balfe Street. Aside from the Flying Scotsman fight bar on Caledonian Road, that was it.

    The transformation in 20 years is literally mindblowing.
    I remember that! Went to see someone in that office a few years earlier, perhaps 1992-3, when it was still very new. I did wince when I turned out of KX and saw the ambience of that street, and I was glad to be getting back to the train while it was still daylight.
    In those days there was a ramp off the end of platform 1 out onto York Road. So you could exit the station, cross the street and be into the Nature building inside 30 seconds. Barely time to wave at Clive Sinclair in his penthouse...
    I need to go back and explore the KX/StP area properly when I next visit my Camden friend; so much change there, including StP itself which was still very much its original state when I knew it, as described in Jack Simmons's history; didn't have time to more than pay homage to Hardy at the eponymous church, and to register the degree of change when passing through it in recent years, which needed a new edition of the history.
    You can spend a whole day there, pretty much

    Explore the new urbanism, check out the art galleries, see St Martin's, go to a movie or a play or a concert in one of the venues, have lunch or dinner (or both) in one of about 40 restaurants. Walk around Camley Street Wildpark, stroll along the Regent's Canal to Camden and Primrose Hill and back, go to the British Library, and more

    All in that one district. Surrounded by industrial history Vs the new Google HQ. Fab
    Mm, that's an idea - the canal walk in particular, especially as my chum lives in Camden.

    This reminds me I got hold of this paper some years back for him - archaeological dig. No idea if it is of interest but he was very taken with it.

    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332047927_The_Lock-Keepers_of_Hawley's_Lock_Regent's_Canal_Camden
    Fascinating

    I had a little historical frisson yesterday. The HS2 guys are digging right outside my front door. I had a chat with one of them, a nice guy, and seriously Irish

    And it occurred to me that this was a superb echo of when the very first railways were built, when Irish navvies would have worked in the exact same spot, then gone off to drink in the Dublin Castle (hence its name)

    They would have worked by the houses in this famous print, middle right. One of these houses, as it happens, being the house where I now live


    An apparently empty land beyond!
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 23,929
    edited August 2022
    Liz majors on national insurance, corporation tax and the green levy. But she's not attacking Rishi's record in government. That's the other lot making blue on blue attacks, you understand.
  • TazTaz Posts: 10,704
    EPG said:

    For actual tracks that people bought the only one that comes to mind is Olivia Newton John and ELO doing "Xanadu".

    Although not starting with an ‘X’ The Legend of Xanadu by Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich is an absolute belter.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517
    Leon said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    carnforth said:

    Nick Clegg joins clique of Meta bosses switching to London

    https:/Yes, is back, part time…

    Clegg is back, and London is back!


    From that thread of articles:

    "Hoberman said: “They also move because they see the US so fractionalised. As San Francisco loses its density [of tech headquarters], there’s a chance for London to be the global leader.”"

    This is absolutely true. Why step over homeless addict in SF when you can be in glorious sunny London? In King's X? With no threat of Trump? And two hours from all of Europe?
    I saw recently that parts of East London have taken over SF for density of tech startups. Kings cross looks like the choice for established tech so will be another huge draw for startups looking for global locations. I know one SAAS company which is currently HQ'd in SF that's considering moving operationally to London from there and leaving behind a small outpost of sales people in NYC. That's the other one that's coming for SF, operational excellence in development by being based in London and sales/GTM based on the East Coast of the US either in NYC or Miami. It's such a better set of timezones. SF used to have the advantage of crossover with APAC countries but with the ease of remote work and setting up remote workers on a single payroll tech companies are choosing to hire locally in Singapore, Melbourne and Wellington.
    FPT

    Yes, and more: as NYC sinks into crime, and is menaced by deeper political division, a lot of business in NYC will come here. Remote working suddenly benefits the UK

    Really. Why would you work in NYC or LA or SF if you can work in London?

    NYC is a truly great city and LA is jolly interesting and SF has a certain beauty, but they have grave downsides, and they are all trillions of miles from anywhere else

    Fly two hours from NYC and you are in, er, Toronto

    Compare that with London, when in 2 hours or less you can be in Paris, Venice, Berlin, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Rome, Florence, Edinburgh, Nice... and the Alps, the Balearics, Sicily, western Ireland, Burgundy, the Algarve, the Black Forest, the Dordogne, the Italian lakes, the Dolomites, Tyrol,...

    There is no comparison. If your job is no longer quite so tied to the Silicon Valley office, you will move to London
    NYC makes sense for a lot of reasons despite the crime (and it's nowhere near as bad as SF) it's got the 2pm-6pm crossover with London, there's already quite a few companies in the area, it's bigger and better connected than SF (which means people have the option of living in NJ and commuting in) and it's only 7h on a cheap business class flight from London for business meetings. For tech startups there's also a fuckton of potential clients on the doorstep in NYC because there's so many financial services companies looking to cut costs. The City is one of the reasons tech has thrived in London, its clients and financing for startups.
    NYC is unquestionably a magnificent city (as I said in my earlier comment), but so is London. And the downsides of NYC - crime, racial tension, MAGA-Trump, divided country, healthcare, opiates, guns - now seem to me to outweigh the downsides of London: weather, greyness, grotty areas

    Both are English-speaking world cities with glorious culture, London has more history, New York City has that skyline

    The proximity of the rest of Europe might be the clincher for me, if I was a highly paid tech exec. And where do you want your kids to grow up? Safely?

    But of course I am biased

    I think we will see more American execs choosing London on a quasi-WFH basis. It will be a complex and remarkable irony if post-Brexit London ascends to world capital status (again?)..... because it is in Europe

    Yes, that's why I think London is a good shout for operational and potentially tax HQ. My point on NYC is more in relation to having the sales function for NA run out of there rather than SF because it has significantly better crossover with London and it's only a 7h flight for when seniors and execs need face to face meetings.

    The London/NYC split works brilliantly for financial services, it being replicated for tech would be no surprise.

    The last piece of the puzzle is higher risk funds in London willing to invest hundreds of millions for series D onwards.
    Yes, I concur

    Finance/sales stuff might stay in NYC but a lot of intellectual/HQ heft will move to London

    Add in the boost from Hong Kong and - perhaps unexpectedly - London could really thrive in the next decade

    I wonder if this is what I sensed in King's X yesterday. Essentially they are - wittingly or not - creating a Silicon Valley in an amazing new London neighborhood, but with added universities and science institutes and art galleries and biochemistry labs and the British Library and the rest, and all of it 300m from St Pancras and the eurostar, and half an hour from Heathrow via the Liz Line, with Shoreditch and the Silicon roundabout just down the road

    It is completely unique. London - esp King's X - has the chance to be THE tech hub for the world, or at least the western world

    If I was the head of Instagram, I'd move from California to King's Cross (never thought I'd write that). Just to see

    Kings Cross? Would you like to know about living there in the before times? Of COURSE you would...

    I moved to that London in July 1999. I had graduated with a Journalism Degree in summer 1998 already working in radio on various short term contracts. By late spring 1999 there was a gap, and I was a bit fed up with the GF I was living with. So moved to London to find a job.

    Which I did in 7 working days. Literally. Arrived Sunday. Agency interviews Monday, job interviews later that week, a 2nd interview the following Monday and started working for Nature the science journal straight away.

    Their office is on Crinan Street, the north end of KX station with the canal basin behind. So I rented a 1 bed mini bedsit at the top of Grays Inn Road and started work. Kings Cross at the time was home to only one thriving industry - hookers. I was propositioned at 8am one morning crossing the road by the station on the way to work! There was so little in the way of facilities in Kings Cross that the company had a free canteen for its employees - there literally being nothing available in the vicinity.

    At the top of Crinan Street was a pub which had been an old canal warehouse - now demolished and the site of Guardian Newspapers building. And a wine bar on Balfe Street. Aside from the Flying Scotsman fight bar on Caledonian Road, that was it.

    The transformation in 20 years is literally mindblowing.
    I remember that! Went to see someone in that office a few years earlier, perhaps 1992-3, when it was still very new. I did wince when I turned out of KX and saw the ambience of that street, and I was glad to be getting back to the train while it was still daylight.
    In those days there was a ramp off the end of platform 1 out onto York Road. So you could exit the station, cross the street and be into the Nature building inside 30 seconds. Barely time to wave at Clive Sinclair in his penthouse...
    I need to go back and explore the KX/StP area properly when I next visit my Camden friend; so much change there, including StP itself which was still very much its original state when I knew it, as described in Jack Simmons's history; didn't have time to more than pay homage to Hardy at the eponymous church, and to register the degree of change when passing through it in recent years, which needed a new edition of the history.
    You can spend a whole day there, pretty much

    Explore the new urbanism, check out the art galleries, see St Martin's, go to a movie or a play or a concert in one of the venues, have lunch or dinner (or both) in one of about 40 restaurants. Walk around Camley Street Wildpark, stroll along the Regent's Canal to Camden and Primrose Hill and back, go to the British Library, and more

    All in that one district. Surrounded by industrial history Vs the new Google HQ. Fab
    Mm, that's an idea - the canal walk in particular, especially as my chum lives in Camden.

    This reminds me I got hold of this paper some years back for him - archaeological dig. No idea if it is of interest but he was very taken with it.

    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332047927_The_Lock-Keepers_of_Hawley's_Lock_Regent's_Canal_Camden
    Fascinating

    I had a little historical frisson yesterday. The HS2 guys are digging right outside my front door. I had a chat with one of them, a nice guy, and seriously Irish

    And it occurred to me that this was a superb echo of when the very first railways were built, when Irish navvies would have worked in the exact same spot, then gone off to drink in the Dublin Castle (hence its name)

    They would have worked by the houses in this famous print, middle right. One of these houses, as it happens, being the house where I now live


    There's an Irish island (not Craggy...) on which most of the males are all tunnellers, and have been for generations.

    I *think* it's Arranmore in Donegal, but might misremember.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,043
    I missed that Javid has gone Truss.

    Sunak out at 12.

  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,043
    The "protokill" Bill says a clearly tired Truss.
  • I think we need to take a moment and appreciate just how fucked Alex Jones is.

    More than stepmom fucked.

    You do realise they're just actresses, and not actually stepmoms? Right? RIGHT?
  • TazTaz Posts: 10,704

    I think we need to take a moment and appreciate just how fucked Alex Jones is.

    More than stepmom fucked.

    He was trying to sell his supplements during his testimony !
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,625

    Carnyx said:

    HYUFD said:

    Carnyx said:

    https://www.thenational.scot/news/20597426.liz-truss-team-backtracks-nicola-sturgeon-insult-tory-backlash/

    'LIZ Truss’s campaign team has backtracked on the leadership hopeful’s claim that she’ll “ignore” Nicola Sturgeon after it sparked outrage among Scottish Tories and across the political spectrum.'

    https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/20597860.truss-backtracks-sturgeon-comments-backlash/

    (and remember Ms Truss had said that 'what we need to do is show the people of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales what we are delivering for them, and making sure that all of our government policies apply right across the United Kingdom.' Which means the abolition of devolution, and direct rule in NI, on one reading - it does not make sense otherwise. And is a rather silly mistake, which surprises me. Unless it was deliberate raw meat for the Tory oldies. )

    However Truss still correctly makes clear she will not allow an indyref2
    As one of us said last night, don't you have a nice recording on side B that you could use just sometimes?

    How about this? Some nice Deltic noises (appropriate for the KX parallel discussion of course).

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUvCwm_s3OA
    Pah. Deltics. Over-rated rubbish. Like racehorses, they lasted only twenty years before they were sent to the knacker's yard.

    Some Class 37's are still going 60 years later without seeing the glue factory.
    Though, when they re-engined a German E-boat with Deltics, it became faster, longer range and more reliable.

    Better than the legendary E Boat diesels…
  • Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    HYUFD said:

    Carnyx said:

    https://www.thenational.scot/news/20597426.liz-truss-team-backtracks-nicola-sturgeon-insult-tory-backlash/

    'LIZ Truss’s campaign team has backtracked on the leadership hopeful’s claim that she’ll “ignore” Nicola Sturgeon after it sparked outrage among Scottish Tories and across the political spectrum.'

    https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/20597860.truss-backtracks-sturgeon-comments-backlash/

    (and remember Ms Truss had said that 'what we need to do is show the people of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales what we are delivering for them, and making sure that all of our government policies apply right across the United Kingdom.' Which means the abolition of devolution, and direct rule in NI, on one reading - it does not make sense otherwise. And is a rather silly mistake, which surprises me. Unless it was deliberate raw meat for the Tory oldies. )

    However Truss still correctly makes clear she will not allow an indyref2
    As one of us said last night, don't you have a nice recording on side B that you could use just sometimes?

    How about this? Some nice Deltic noises (appropriate for the KX parallel discussion of course).

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUvCwm_s3OA
    Pah. Deltics. Over-rated rubbish. Like racehorses, they lasted only twenty years before they were sent to the knacker's yard.

    Some Class 37's are still going 60 years later without seeing the glue factory.
    TBF their replacement by the 125s came early. But my dad used to take me to the path that went near the ECML to see them when they were new.
    AFAIAA the Deltics were very troublesome locomotives to operate, partly saved only by the fact they had two engines, rather than one, so when one failed the other could limp it home.

    Having said that, a dear friend of mine was on an HST that caught fire one night near Loughborough. It was not a pleasant experience.
    The Class 23 "Baby Deltics", which just had the one engine, were very unreliable, barely lasting a decade in service.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,043

    I think we need to take a moment and appreciate just how fucked Alex Jones is.

    More than stepmom fucked.

    He certainly looked a very stressed and tired person on those clips.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,043

    Both Rishi and Liz pledge to be bold.

    Do they still make Bold washing powder?
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    The "protokill" Bill says a clearly tired Truss.

    Kill Bill was indeed released in two parts. Proto kill bill and deutero kill bill.
  • Both Rishi and Liz pledge to be bold.

    Do they still make Bold washing powder?
    I see your Bold and raise you:

    image
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,575

    Both Rishi and Liz pledge to be bold.

    How daring.
  • EPGEPG Posts: 5,996
    Taz said:

    EPG said:

    For actual tracks that people bought the only one that comes to mind is Olivia Newton John and ELO doing "Xanadu".

    Although not starting with an ‘X’ The Legend of Xanadu by Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich is an absolute belter.
    True, but we are where we are.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,884

    I think we need to take a moment and appreciate just how fucked Alex Jones is.

    More than stepmom fucked.

    You do realise they're just actresses, and not actually stepmoms? Right? RIGHT?
    Some of them must be, by the law of averages.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,840
    Alex Jones needs help. It isn't an act.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842
    I'm watching Mcolgan, like a normal person
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517
    edited August 2022

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    HYUFD said:

    Carnyx said:

    https://www.thenational.scot/news/20597426.liz-truss-team-backtracks-nicola-sturgeon-insult-tory-backlash/

    'LIZ Truss’s campaign team has backtracked on the leadership hopeful’s claim that she’ll “ignore” Nicola Sturgeon after it sparked outrage among Scottish Tories and across the political spectrum.'

    https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/20597860.truss-backtracks-sturgeon-comments-backlash/

    (and remember Ms Truss had said that 'what we need to do is show the people of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales what we are delivering for them, and making sure that all of our government policies apply right across the United Kingdom.' Which means the abolition of devolution, and direct rule in NI, on one reading - it does not make sense otherwise. And is a rather silly mistake, which surprises me. Unless it was deliberate raw meat for the Tory oldies. )

    However Truss still correctly makes clear she will not allow an indyref2
    As one of us said last night, don't you have a nice recording on side B that you could use just sometimes?

    How about this? Some nice Deltic noises (appropriate for the KX parallel discussion of course).

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUvCwm_s3OA
    Pah. Deltics. Over-rated rubbish. Like racehorses, they lasted only twenty years before they were sent to the knacker's yard.

    Some Class 37's are still going 60 years later without seeing the glue factory.
    TBF their replacement by the 125s came early. But my dad used to take me to the path that went near the ECML to see them when they were new.
    AFAIAA the Deltics were very troublesome locomotives to operate, partly saved only by the fact they had two engines, rather than one, so when one failed the other could limp it home.

    Having said that, a dear friend of mine was on an HST that caught fire one night near Loughborough. It was not a pleasant experience.
    The Class 23 "Baby Deltics", which just had the one engine, were very unreliable, barely lasting a decade in service.
    Indeed. But that was over the lifespan of their larger brothers, who are worshipped by enthusiasts.

    A Baby Deltic should have been preserved; one nearly was. I think there's a scheme to rebuild one from a 'spare' small Deltic engine and a Class 37.

    Edit: and a class of only 10 was always going to be short-lived, when other classes had hundreds made.
  • Alistair said:

    Sinema still seems poised to sink the Reconciliation bill

    Manchin on the other hand is taking names, absolutely tore into a Fox News presenter.

    Good cop, bad cop? Working on/over the usual suspects in US Senate GOP?
  • TazTaz Posts: 10,704
    Pulpstar said:

    I'm watching Mcolgan, like a normal person

    We’ve got TalkTV on for the wagatha thing as my wife is invested in it. I’m about to watch a YouTube video about John Cantlie.
  • Leon said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    carnforth said:

    Nick Clegg joins clique of Meta bosses switching to London

    https:/Yes, is back, part time…

    Clegg is back, and London is back!


    From that thread of articles:

    "Hoberman said: “They also move because they see the US so fractionalised. As San Francisco loses its density [of tech headquarters], there’s a chance for London to be the global leader.”"

    This is absolutely true. Why step over homeless addict in SF when you can be in glorious sunny London? In King's X? With no threat of Trump? And two hours from all of Europe?
    I saw recently that parts of East London have taken over SF for density of tech startups. Kings cross looks like the choice for established tech so will be another huge draw for startups looking for global locations. I know one SAAS company which is currently HQ'd in SF that's considering moving operationally to London from there and leaving behind a small outpost of sales people in NYC. That's the other one that's coming for SF, operational excellence in development by being based in London and sales/GTM based on the East Coast of the US either in NYC or Miami. It's such a better set of timezones. SF used to have the advantage of crossover with APAC countries but with the ease of remote work and setting up remote workers on a single payroll tech companies are choosing to hire locally in Singapore, Melbourne and Wellington.
    FPT

    Yes, and more: as NYC sinks into crime, and is menaced by deeper political division, a lot of business in NYC will come here. Remote working suddenly benefits the UK

    Really. Why would you work in NYC or LA or SF if you can work in London?

    NYC is a truly great city and LA is jolly interesting and SF has a certain beauty, but they have grave downsides, and they are all trillions of miles from anywhere else

    Fly two hours from NYC and you are in, er, Toronto

    Compare that with London, when in 2 hours or less you can be in Paris, Venice, Berlin, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Rome, Florence, Edinburgh, Nice... and the Alps, the Balearics, Sicily, western Ireland, Burgundy, the Algarve, the Black Forest, the Dordogne, the Italian lakes, the Dolomites, Tyrol,...

    There is no comparison. If your job is no longer quite so tied to the Silicon Valley office, you will move to London
    NYC makes sense for a lot of reasons despite the crime (and it's nowhere near as bad as SF) it's got the 2pm-6pm crossover with London, there's already quite a few companies in the area, it's bigger and better connected than SF (which means people have the option of living in NJ and commuting in) and it's only 7h on a cheap business class flight from London for business meetings. For tech startups there's also a fuckton of potential clients on the doorstep in NYC because there's so many financial services companies looking to cut costs. The City is one of the reasons tech has thrived in London, its clients and financing for startups.
    NYC is unquestionably a magnificent city (as I said in my earlier comment), but so is London. And the downsides of NYC - crime, racial tension, MAGA-Trump, divided country, healthcare, opiates, guns - now seem to me to outweigh the downsides of London: weather, greyness, grotty areas

    Both are English-speaking world cities with glorious culture, London has more history, New York City has that skyline

    The proximity of the rest of Europe might be the clincher for me, if I was a highly paid tech exec. And where do you want your kids to grow up? Safely?

    But of course I am biased

    I think we will see more American execs choosing London on a quasi-WFH basis. It will be a complex and remarkable irony if post-Brexit London ascends to world capital status (again?)..... because it is in Europe

    Yes, that's why I think London is a good shout for operational and potentially tax HQ. My point on NYC is more in relation to having the sales function for NA run out of there rather than SF because it has significantly better crossover with London and it's only a 7h flight for when seniors and execs need face to face meetings.

    The London/NYC split works brilliantly for financial services, it being replicated for tech would be no surprise.

    The last piece of the puzzle is higher risk funds in London willing to invest hundreds of millions for series D onwards.
    Yes, I concur

    Finance/sales stuff might stay in NYC but a lot of intellectual/HQ heft will move to London

    Add in the boost from Hong Kong and - perhaps unexpectedly - London could really thrive in the next decade

    I wonder if this is what I sensed in King's X yesterday. Essentially they are - wittingly or not - creating a Silicon Valley in an amazing new London neighborhood, but with added universities and science institutes and art galleries and biochemistry labs and the British Library and the rest, and all of it 300m from St Pancras and the eurostar, and half an hour from Heathrow via the Liz Line, with Shoreditch and the Silicon roundabout just down the road

    It is completely unique. London - esp King's X - has the chance to be THE tech hub for the world, or at least the western world

    If I was the head of Instagram, I'd move from California to King's Cross (never thought I'd write that). Just to see

    Kings Cross? Would you like to know about living there in the before times? Of COURSE you would...

    I moved to that London in July 1999. I had graduated with a Journalism Degree in summer 1998 already working in radio on various short term contracts. By late spring 1999 there was a gap, and I was a bit fed up with the GF I was living with. So moved to London to find a job.

    Which I did in 7 working days. Literally. Arrived Sunday. Agency interviews Monday, job interviews later that week, a 2nd interview the following Monday and started working for Nature the science journal straight away.

    Their office is on Crinan Street, the north end of KX station with the canal basin behind. So I rented a 1 bed mini bedsit at the top of Grays Inn Road and started work. Kings Cross at the time was home to only one thriving industry - hookers. I was propositioned at 8am one morning crossing the road by the station on the way to work! There was so little in the way of facilities in Kings Cross that the company had a free canteen for its employees - there literally being nothing available in the vicinity.

    At the top of Crinan Street was a pub which had been an old canal warehouse - now demolished and the site of Guardian Newspapers building. And a wine bar on Balfe Street. Aside from the Flying Scotsman fight bar on Caledonian Road, that was it.

    The transformation in 20 years is literally mindblowing.
    I remember that! Went to see someone in that office a few years earlier, perhaps 1992-3, when it was still very new. I did wince when I turned out of KX and saw the ambience of that street, and I was glad to be getting back to the train while it was still daylight.
    In those days there was a ramp off the end of platform 1 out onto York Road. So you could exit the station, cross the street and be into the Nature building inside 30 seconds. Barely time to wave at Clive Sinclair in his penthouse...
    I need to go back and explore the KX/StP area properly when I next visit my Camden friend; so much change there, including StP itself which was still very much its original state when I knew it, as described in Jack Simmons's history; didn't have time to more than pay homage to Hardy at the eponymous church, and to register the degree of change when passing through it in recent years, which needed a new edition of the history.
    You can spend a whole day there, pretty much

    Explore the new urbanism, check out the art galleries, see St Martin's, go to a movie or a play or a concert in one of the venues, have lunch or dinner (or both) in one of about 40 restaurants. Walk around Camley Street Wildpark, stroll along the Regent's Canal to Camden and Primrose Hill and back, go to the British Library, and more

    All in that one district. Surrounded by industrial history Vs the new Google HQ. Fab
    Mm, that's an idea - the canal walk in particular, especially as my chum lives in Camden.

    This reminds me I got hold of this paper some years back for him - archaeological dig. No idea if it is of interest but he was very taken with it.

    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332047927_The_Lock-Keepers_of_Hawley's_Lock_Regent's_Canal_Camden
    Fascinating

    I had a little historical frisson yesterday. The HS2 guys are digging right outside my front door. I had a chat with one of them, a nice guy, and seriously Irish

    And it occurred to me that this was a superb echo of when the very first railways were built, when Irish navvies would have worked in the exact same spot, then gone off to drink in the Dublin Castle (hence its name)

    They would have worked by the houses in this famous print, middle right. One of these houses, as it happens, being the house where I now live


    Yikes! (or Begob!) That first step is a REAL doozy!
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517

    Carnyx said:

    HYUFD said:

    Carnyx said:

    https://www.thenational.scot/news/20597426.liz-truss-team-backtracks-nicola-sturgeon-insult-tory-backlash/

    'LIZ Truss’s campaign team has backtracked on the leadership hopeful’s claim that she’ll “ignore” Nicola Sturgeon after it sparked outrage among Scottish Tories and across the political spectrum.'

    https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/20597860.truss-backtracks-sturgeon-comments-backlash/

    (and remember Ms Truss had said that 'what we need to do is show the people of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales what we are delivering for them, and making sure that all of our government policies apply right across the United Kingdom.' Which means the abolition of devolution, and direct rule in NI, on one reading - it does not make sense otherwise. And is a rather silly mistake, which surprises me. Unless it was deliberate raw meat for the Tory oldies. )

    However Truss still correctly makes clear she will not allow an indyref2
    As one of us said last night, don't you have a nice recording on side B that you could use just sometimes?

    How about this? Some nice Deltic noises (appropriate for the KX parallel discussion of course).

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUvCwm_s3OA
    Pah. Deltics. Over-rated rubbish. Like racehorses, they lasted only twenty years before they were sent to the knacker's yard.

    Some Class 37's are still going 60 years later without seeing the glue factory.
    Though, when they re-engined a German E-boat with Deltics, it became faster, longer range and more reliable.

    Better than the legendary E Boat diesels…
    This is from memory, but ISTR reading that the problem is the engine cycle. On a boat, you run at a set power for very long periods, frequently hours - and as the Deltics were originally marine engines, that was what they were designed for. Loco engines have frequent power changes every few minutes, and this played havoc with them. The same with the original HST Ventura engines, where (I think) the frequent power changes would pull oil into the exhausts. If enough built up, you got an exhaust fire. It was also partly responsible for the famous clag when an HST started off.

    Both the Deltic and Ventura were developments of engines designed for the Admiralty.
  • Both Rishi and Liz pledge to be bold.

    Do they still make Bold washing powder?
    I see your Bold and raise you:

    image
    And I raise you more concentrated, useless Persil


  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517
    If you want a bad day:

    The village supermarket's petrol station got water into its fuel today, meaning many cars broke down. There are allegations it was known about last night, but the morning shift opened up as usual...

    An expensive problem for Mozzies.
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,165
    edited August 2022
    WASPI woman asking a question to Rishi. I’ll back him if he tells her to do one.

    EDIT: He did! As politely as possible, of course.
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 9,688

    If you want a bad day:

    The village supermarket's petrol station got water into its fuel today, meaning many cars broke down. There are allegations it was known about last night, but the morning shift opened up as usual...

    An expensive problem for Mozzies.

    "Mozzies" ?
  • kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    carnforth said:

    Nick Clegg joins clique of Meta bosses switching to London

    https:/Yes, is back, part time…

    Clegg is back, and London is back!


    From that thread of articles:

    "Hoberman said: “They also move because they see the US so fractionalised. As San Francisco loses its density [of tech headquarters], there’s a chance for London to be the global leader.”"

    This is absolutely true. Why step over homeless addict in SF when you can be in glorious sunny London? In King's X? With no threat of Trump? And two hours from all of Europe?
    I saw recently that parts of East London have taken over SF for density of tech startups. Kings cross looks like the choice for established tech so will be another huge draw for startups looking for global locations. I know one SAAS company which is currently HQ'd in SF that's considering moving operationally to London from there and leaving behind a small outpost of sales people in NYC. That's the other one that's coming for SF, operational excellence in development by being based in London and sales/GTM based on the East Coast of the US either in NYC or Miami. It's such a better set of timezones. SF used to have the advantage of crossover with APAC countries but with the ease of remote work and setting up remote workers on a single payroll tech companies are choosing to hire locally in Singapore, Melbourne and Wellington.
    FPT

    Yes, and more: as NYC sinks into crime, and is menaced by deeper political division, a lot of business in NYC will come here. Remote working suddenly benefits the UK

    Really. Why would you work in NYC or LA or SF if you can work in London?

    NYC is a truly great city and LA is jolly interesting and SF has a certain beauty, but they have grave downsides, and they are all trillions of miles from anywhere else

    Fly two hours from NYC and you are in, er, Toronto

    Compare that with London, when in 2 hours or less you can be in Paris, Venice, Berlin, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Rome, Florence, Edinburgh, Nice... and the Alps, the Balearics, Sicily, western Ireland, Burgundy, the Algarve, the Black Forest, the Dordogne, the Italian lakes, the Dolomites, Tyrol,...

    There is no comparison. If your job is no longer quite so tied to the Silicon Valley office, you will move to London
    NYC makes sense for a lot of reasons despite the crime (and it's nowhere near as bad as SF) it's got the 2pm-6pm crossover with London, there's already quite a few companies in the area, it's bigger and better connected than SF (which means people have the option of living in NJ and commuting in) and it's only 7h on a cheap business class flight from London for business meetings. For tech startups there's also a fuckton of potential clients on the doorstep in NYC because there's so many financial services companies looking to cut costs. The City is one of the reasons tech has thrived in London, its clients and financing for startups.
    NYC is unquestionably a magnificent city (as I said in my earlier comment), but so is London. And the downsides of NYC - crime, racial tension, MAGA-Trump, divided country, healthcare, opiates, guns - now seem to me to outweigh the downsides of London: weather, greyness, grotty areas

    Both are English-speaking world cities with glorious culture, London has more history, New York City has that skyline

    The proximity of the rest of Europe might be the clincher for me, if I was a highly paid tech exec. And where do you want your kids to grow up? Safely?

    But of course I am biased

    I think we will see more American execs choosing London on a quasi-WFH basis. It will be a complex and remarkable irony if post-Brexit London ascends to world capital status (again?)..... because it is in Europe

    Yes, that's why I think London is a good shout for operational and potentially tax HQ. My point on NYC is more in relation to having the sales function for NA run out of there rather than SF because it has significantly better crossover with London and it's only a 7h flight for when seniors and execs need face to face meetings.

    The London/NYC split works brilliantly for financial services, it being replicated for tech would be no surprise.

    The last piece of the puzzle is higher risk funds in London willing to invest hundreds of millions for series D onwards.
    Yes, I concur

    Finance/sales stuff might stay in NYC but a lot of intellectual/HQ heft will move to London

    Add in the boost from Hong Kong and - perhaps unexpectedly - London could really thrive in the next decade

    I wonder if this is what I sensed in King's X yesterday. Essentially they are - wittingly or not - creating a Silicon Valley in an amazing new London neighborhood, but with added universities and science institutes and art galleries and biochemistry labs and the British Library and the rest, and all of it 300m from St Pancras and the eurostar, and half an hour from Heathrow via the Liz Line, with Shoreditch and the Silicon roundabout just down the road

    It is completely unique. London - esp King's X - has the chance to be THE tech hub for the world, or at least the western world

    If I was the head of Instagram, I'd move from California to King's Cross (never thought I'd write that). Just to see

    Kings Cross? Would you like to know about living there in the before times? Of COURSE you would...

    I moved to that London in July 1999. I had graduated with a Journalism Degree in summer 1998 already working in radio on various short term contracts. By late spring 1999 there was a gap, and I was a bit fed up with the GF I was living with. So moved to London to find a job.

    Which I did in 7 working days. Literally. Arrived Sunday. Agency interviews Monday, job interviews later that week, a 2nd interview the following Monday and started working for Nature the science journal straight away.

    Their office is on Crinan Street, the north end of KX station with the canal basin behind. So I rented a 1 bed mini bedsit at the top of Grays Inn Road and started work. Kings Cross at the time was home to only one thriving industry - hookers. I was propositioned at 8am one morning crossing the road by the station on the way to work! There was so little in the way of facilities in Kings Cross that the company had a free canteen for its employees - there literally being nothing available in the vicinity.

    At the top of Crinan Street was a pub which had been an old canal warehouse - now demolished and the site of Guardian Newspapers building. And a wine bar on Balfe Street. Aside from the Flying Scotsman fight bar on Caledonian Road, that was it.

    The transformation in 20 years is literally mindblowing.
    I knew it in the early 1990s. Memories include trying to go and see a gf in North London, and stupidly getting on a Cambridge non-stopper (the staff were brilliant and did not charge me any extra fare; they got me on the correct train back, and the only cost was a peeved gf). Going on a Monopoly board pub crawl, and going into the divingish-dive where some bored-looking strippers were performing for a couple of bemused-looking tourists. Walking the Regents Canal behind the station in agony, but loving every step. The dinghy narrow low-level platforms. Getting a greasy kebab from a van that must have failed every food-standards law made on out way to someone's digs at ULU. walking down a road, and encountering waves of prostitutes and tourists - and sometimes, perhaps, both. Lots of homeless people.

    I wish I'd made more of those years. They were brilliant, for me at least.

    To be young again...
    Trains and a peeved gf? I hooked back up with an ex whilst I was still in London. We went to a comedy club, went back to hers, had creative sex then slept. Following morning I was awoken to a Class 37 chugging at a red signal practically outside her bedroom window (which was a winner btw in rail enthusiast speak). Which then prompted more sex.

    Where did my life go...?
    Went on sex and booze and clubbing by the sounds of it - and the rest you must have just frittered away on having a good time.
    Ended up getting a serious gf pregnant when we had break up sex. Took responsibility as not a 'stard, and that made me grow up quickly. Then got (back) together with my wife (who had been an old flame back at uni) and left London.

    Hang on, I hated London. This makes it sound like I had a mega party ...
    Sounds like a lot of 'life' is what I'd say. I came to London as an immature 17 year old from a small S Yorks pit village, loaded up with my nature and nurture and, looking back, it was like I was fired into a massive pinball machine, careering around with no rhyme or reason, bong, ping, pong, TILT, bong ping pong, TILT, and this continues, albeit at a far more sedate pace, to this day.
    I did quite a bit of TILT
  • ohnotnowohnotnow Posts: 2,804
    Leon said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    carnforth said:

    Nick Clegg joins clique of Meta bosses switching to London

    https:/Yes, is back, part time…

    Clegg is back, and London is back!


    From that thread of articles:

    "Hoberman said: “They also move because they see the US so fractionalised. As San Francisco loses its density [of tech headquarters], there’s a chance for London to be the global leader.”"

    This is absolutely true. Why step over homeless addict in SF when you can be in glorious sunny London? In King's X? With no threat of Trump? And two hours from all of Europe?
    I saw recently that parts of East London have taken over SF for density of tech startups. Kings cross looks like the choice for established tech so will be another huge draw for startups looking for global locations. I know one SAAS company which is currently HQ'd in SF that's considering moving operationally to London from there and leaving behind a small outpost of sales people in NYC. That's the other one that's coming for SF, operational excellence in development by being based in London and sales/GTM based on the East Coast of the US either in NYC or Miami. It's such a better set of timezones. SF used to have the advantage of crossover with APAC countries but with the ease of remote work and setting up remote workers on a single payroll tech companies are choosing to hire locally in Singapore, Melbourne and Wellington.
    FPT

    Yes, and more: as NYC sinks into crime, and is menaced by deeper political division, a lot of business in NYC will come here. Remote working suddenly benefits the UK

    Really. Why would you work in NYC or LA or SF if you can work in London?

    NYC is a truly great city and LA is jolly interesting and SF has a certain beauty, but they have grave downsides, and they are all trillions of miles from anywhere else

    Fly two hours from NYC and you are in, er, Toronto

    Compare that with London, when in 2 hours or less you can be in Paris, Venice, Berlin, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Rome, Florence, Edinburgh, Nice... and the Alps, the Balearics, Sicily, western Ireland, Burgundy, the Algarve, the Black Forest, the Dordogne, the Italian lakes, the Dolomites, Tyrol,...

    There is no comparison. If your job is no longer quite so tied to the Silicon Valley office, you will move to London
    NYC makes sense for a lot of reasons despite the crime (and it's nowhere near as bad as SF) it's got the 2pm-6pm crossover with London, there's already quite a few companies in the area, it's bigger and better connected than SF (which means people have the option of living in NJ and commuting in) and it's only 7h on a cheap business class flight from London for business meetings. For tech startups there's also a fuckton of potential clients on the doorstep in NYC because there's so many financial services companies looking to cut costs. The City is one of the reasons tech has thrived in London, its clients and financing for startups.
    NYC is unquestionably a magnificent city (as I said in my earlier comment), but so is London. And the downsides of NYC - crime, racial tension, MAGA-Trump, divided country, healthcare, opiates, guns - now seem to me to outweigh the downsides of London: weather, greyness, grotty areas

    Both are English-speaking world cities with glorious culture, London has more history, New York City has that skyline

    The proximity of the rest of Europe might be the clincher for me, if I was a highly paid tech exec. And where do you want your kids to grow up? Safely?

    But of course I am biased

    I think we will see more American execs choosing London on a quasi-WFH basis. It will be a complex and remarkable irony if post-Brexit London ascends to world capital status (again?)..... because it is in Europe

    Yes, that's why I think London is a good shout for operational and potentially tax HQ. My point on NYC is more in relation to having the sales function for NA run out of there rather than SF because it has significantly better crossover with London and it's only a 7h flight for when seniors and execs need face to face meetings.

    The London/NYC split works brilliantly for financial services, it being replicated for tech would be no surprise.

    The last piece of the puzzle is higher risk funds in London willing to invest hundreds of millions for series D onwards.
    Yes, I concur

    Finance/sales stuff might stay in NYC but a lot of intellectual/HQ heft will move to London

    Add in the boost from Hong Kong and - perhaps unexpectedly - London could really thrive in the next decade

    I wonder if this is what I sensed in King's X yesterday. Essentially they are - wittingly or not - creating a Silicon Valley in an amazing new London neighborhood, but with added universities and science institutes and art galleries and biochemistry labs and the British Library and the rest, and all of it 300m from St Pancras and the eurostar, and half an hour from Heathrow via the Liz Line, with Shoreditch and the Silicon roundabout just down the road

    It is completely unique. London - esp King's X - has the chance to be THE tech hub for the world, or at least the western world

    If I was the head of Instagram, I'd move from California to King's Cross (never thought I'd write that). Just to see

    Kings Cross? Would you like to know about living there in the before times? Of COURSE you would...

    I moved to that London in July 1999. I had graduated with a Journalism Degree in summer 1998 already working in radio on various short term contracts. By late spring 1999 there was a gap, and I was a bit fed up with the GF I was living with. So moved to London to find a job.

    Which I did in 7 working days. Literally. Arrived Sunday. Agency interviews Monday, job interviews later that week, a 2nd interview the following Monday and started working for Nature the science journal straight away.

    Their office is on Crinan Street, the north end of KX station with the canal basin behind. So I rented a 1 bed mini bedsit at the top of Grays Inn Road and started work. Kings Cross at the time was home to only one thriving industry - hookers. I was propositioned at 8am one morning crossing the road by the station on the way to work! There was so little in the way of facilities in Kings Cross that the company had a free canteen for its employees - there literally being nothing available in the vicinity.

    At the top of Crinan Street was a pub which had been an old canal warehouse - now demolished and the site of Guardian Newspapers building. And a wine bar on Balfe Street. Aside from the Flying Scotsman fight bar on Caledonian Road, that was it.

    The transformation in 20 years is literally mindblowing.
    I remember that! Went to see someone in that office a few years earlier, perhaps 1992-3, when it was still very new. I did wince when I turned out of KX and saw the ambience of that street, and I was glad to be getting back to the train while it was still daylight.
    In those days there was a ramp off the end of platform 1 out onto York Road. So you could exit the station, cross the street and be into the Nature building inside 30 seconds. Barely time to wave at Clive Sinclair in his penthouse...
    I need to go back and explore the KX/StP area properly when I next visit my Camden friend; so much change there, including StP itself which was still very much its original state when I knew it, as described in Jack Simmons's history; didn't have time to more than pay homage to Hardy at the eponymous church, and to register the degree of change when passing through it in recent years, which needed a new edition of the history.
    You can spend a whole day there, pretty much

    Explore the new urbanism, check out the art galleries, see St Martin's, go to a movie or a play or a concert in one of the venues, have lunch or dinner (or both) in one of about 40 restaurants. Walk around Camley Street Wildpark, stroll along the Regent's Canal to Camden and Primrose Hill and back, go to the British Library, and more

    All in that one district. Surrounded by industrial history Vs the new Google HQ. Fab
    Mm, that's an idea - the canal walk in particular, especially as my chum lives in Camden.

    This reminds me I got hold of this paper some years back for him - archaeological dig. No idea if it is of interest but he was very taken with it.

    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332047927_The_Lock-Keepers_of_Hawley's_Lock_Regent's_Canal_Camden
    Fascinating

    I had a little historical frisson yesterday. The HS2 guys are digging right outside my front door. I had a chat with one of them, a nice guy, and seriously Irish

    And it occurred to me that this was a superb echo of when the very first railways were built, when Irish navvies would have worked in the exact same spot, then gone off to drink in the Dublin Castle (hence its name)

    They would have worked by the houses in this famous print, middle right. One of these houses, as it happens, being the house where I now live


    There's a quite good Melvin Bragg thing (possibly an In Our Time) about the first railways to come out of London. Broad arch of the story is that it was too expensive to roll them through the already posh parts, so they ploughed them through the slums. Middle-class people from the posh parts who could afford the newfangled trains were then exposed to the slums in ways they hadn't been before and lo-and-behold huge reforms began.
  • tlg86 said:

    WASPI woman asking a question to Rishi. I’ll back him if he tells her to do one.

    EDIT: He did! As politely as possible, of course.

    The Waspi women question would have been better directed to Liz Truss, who would not have to defend her own record.
  • Pulpstar said:

    I'm watching Mcolgan, like a normal person

    She only went and won it!
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,840
    ohnotnow said:

    Leon said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    carnforth said:

    Nick Clegg joins clique of Meta bosses switching to London

    https:/Yes, is back, part time…

    Clegg is back, and London is back!


    From that thread of articles:

    "Hoberman said: “They also move because they see the US so fractionalised. As San Francisco loses its density [of tech headquarters], there’s a chance for London to be the global leader.”"

    This is absolutely true. Why step over homeless addict in SF when you can be in glorious sunny London? In King's X? With no threat of Trump? And two hours from all of Europe?
    I saw recently that parts of East London have taken over SF for density of tech startups. Kings cross looks like the choice for established tech so will be another huge draw for startups looking for global locations. I know one SAAS company which is currently HQ'd in SF that's considering moving operationally to London from there and leaving behind a small outpost of sales people in NYC. That's the other one that's coming for SF, operational excellence in development by being based in London and sales/GTM based on the East Coast of the US either in NYC or Miami. It's such a better set of timezones. SF used to have the advantage of crossover with APAC countries but with the ease of remote work and setting up remote workers on a single payroll tech companies are choosing to hire locally in Singapore, Melbourne and Wellington.
    FPT

    Yes, and more: as NYC sinks into crime, and is menaced by deeper political division, a lot of business in NYC will come here. Remote working suddenly benefits the UK

    Really. Why would you work in NYC or LA or SF if you can work in London?

    NYC is a truly great city and LA is jolly interesting and SF has a certain beauty, but they have grave downsides, and they are all trillions of miles from anywhere else

    Fly two hours from NYC and you are in, er, Toronto

    Compare that with London, when in 2 hours or less you can be in Paris, Venice, Berlin, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Rome, Florence, Edinburgh, Nice... and the Alps, the Balearics, Sicily, western Ireland, Burgundy, the Algarve, the Black Forest, the Dordogne, the Italian lakes, the Dolomites, Tyrol,...

    There is no comparison. If your job is no longer quite so tied to the Silicon Valley office, you will move to London
    NYC makes sense for a lot of reasons despite the crime (and it's nowhere near as bad as SF) it's got the 2pm-6pm crossover with London, there's already quite a few companies in the area, it's bigger and better connected than SF (which means people have the option of living in NJ and commuting in) and it's only 7h on a cheap business class flight from London for business meetings. For tech startups there's also a fuckton of potential clients on the doorstep in NYC because there's so many financial services companies looking to cut costs. The City is one of the reasons tech has thrived in London, its clients and financing for startups.
    NYC is unquestionably a magnificent city (as I said in my earlier comment), but so is London. And the downsides of NYC - crime, racial tension, MAGA-Trump, divided country, healthcare, opiates, guns - now seem to me to outweigh the downsides of London: weather, greyness, grotty areas

    Both are English-speaking world cities with glorious culture, London has more history, New York City has that skyline

    The proximity of the rest of Europe might be the clincher for me, if I was a highly paid tech exec. And where do you want your kids to grow up? Safely?

    But of course I am biased

    I think we will see more American execs choosing London on a quasi-WFH basis. It will be a complex and remarkable irony if post-Brexit London ascends to world capital status (again?)..... because it is in Europe

    Yes, that's why I think London is a good shout for operational and potentially tax HQ. My point on NYC is more in relation to having the sales function for NA run out of there rather than SF because it has significantly better crossover with London and it's only a 7h flight for when seniors and execs need face to face meetings.

    The London/NYC split works brilliantly for financial services, it being replicated for tech would be no surprise.

    The last piece of the puzzle is higher risk funds in London willing to invest hundreds of millions for series D onwards.
    Yes, I concur

    Finance/sales stuff might stay in NYC but a lot of intellectual/HQ heft will move to London

    Add in the boost from Hong Kong and - perhaps unexpectedly - London could really thrive in the next decade

    I wonder if this is what I sensed in King's X yesterday. Essentially they are - wittingly or not - creating a Silicon Valley in an amazing new London neighborhood, but with added universities and science institutes and art galleries and biochemistry labs and the British Library and the rest, and all of it 300m from St Pancras and the eurostar, and half an hour from Heathrow via the Liz Line, with Shoreditch and the Silicon roundabout just down the road

    It is completely unique. London - esp King's X - has the chance to be THE tech hub for the world, or at least the western world

    If I was the head of Instagram, I'd move from California to King's Cross (never thought I'd write that). Just to see

    Kings Cross? Would you like to know about living there in the before times? Of COURSE you would...

    I moved to that London in July 1999. I had graduated with a Journalism Degree in summer 1998 already working in radio on various short term contracts. By late spring 1999 there was a gap, and I was a bit fed up with the GF I was living with. So moved to London to find a job.

    Which I did in 7 working days. Literally. Arrived Sunday. Agency interviews Monday, job interviews later that week, a 2nd interview the following Monday and started working for Nature the science journal straight away.

    Their office is on Crinan Street, the north end of KX station with the canal basin behind. So I rented a 1 bed mini bedsit at the top of Grays Inn Road and started work. Kings Cross at the time was home to only one thriving industry - hookers. I was propositioned at 8am one morning crossing the road by the station on the way to work! There was so little in the way of facilities in Kings Cross that the company had a free canteen for its employees - there literally being nothing available in the vicinity.

    At the top of Crinan Street was a pub which had been an old canal warehouse - now demolished and the site of Guardian Newspapers building. And a wine bar on Balfe Street. Aside from the Flying Scotsman fight bar on Caledonian Road, that was it.

    The transformation in 20 years is literally mindblowing.
    I remember that! Went to see someone in that office a few years earlier, perhaps 1992-3, when it was still very new. I did wince when I turned out of KX and saw the ambience of that street, and I was glad to be getting back to the train while it was still daylight.
    In those days there was a ramp off the end of platform 1 out onto York Road. So you could exit the station, cross the street and be into the Nature building inside 30 seconds. Barely time to wave at Clive Sinclair in his penthouse...
    I need to go back and explore the KX/StP area properly when I next visit my Camden friend; so much change there, including StP itself which was still very much its original state when I knew it, as described in Jack Simmons's history; didn't have time to more than pay homage to Hardy at the eponymous church, and to register the degree of change when passing through it in recent years, which needed a new edition of the history.
    You can spend a whole day there, pretty much

    Explore the new urbanism, check out the art galleries, see St Martin's, go to a movie or a play or a concert in one of the venues, have lunch or dinner (or both) in one of about 40 restaurants. Walk around Camley Street Wildpark, stroll along the Regent's Canal to Camden and Primrose Hill and back, go to the British Library, and more

    All in that one district. Surrounded by industrial history Vs the new Google HQ. Fab
    Mm, that's an idea - the canal walk in particular, especially as my chum lives in Camden.

    This reminds me I got hold of this paper some years back for him - archaeological dig. No idea if it is of interest but he was very taken with it.

    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332047927_The_Lock-Keepers_of_Hawley's_Lock_Regent's_Canal_Camden
    Fascinating

    I had a little historical frisson yesterday. The HS2 guys are digging right outside my front door. I had a chat with one of them, a nice guy, and seriously Irish

    And it occurred to me that this was a superb echo of when the very first railways were built, when Irish navvies would have worked in the exact same spot, then gone off to drink in the Dublin Castle (hence its name)

    They would have worked by the houses in this famous print, middle right. One of these houses, as it happens, being the house where I now live


    There's a quite good Melvin Bragg thing (possibly an In Our Time) about the first railways to come out of London. Broad arch of the story is that it was too expensive to roll them through the already posh parts, so they ploughed them through the slums. Middle-class people from the posh parts who could afford the newfangled trains were then exposed to the slums in ways they hadn't been before and lo-and-behold huge reforms began.
    And many were made destitute and homeless. Compensation paid to landlords not tenants. Agar Town and Tomlin's New Town, north of Hyde Park, were totally demolished.
    56 000 people displaced in about a decade in London.
    The slums moved further out, and the centre became more gentrified.
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    What a finish.
  • tlg86 said:

    WASPI woman asking a question to Rishi. I’ll back him if he tells her to do one.

    EDIT: He did! As politely as possible, of course.

    What was the question?
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    10k might be my favourite distance to watch.
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,165

    tlg86 said:

    WASPI woman asking a question to Rishi. I’ll back him if he tells her to do one.

    EDIT: He did! As politely as possible, of course.

    The Waspi women question would have been better directed to Liz Truss, who would not have to defend her own record.
    Would Truss have given her the time of day? I guess the rest of the audience thought the woman asking the question was an idiot.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842
    Pulpstar said:

    I'm watching Mcolgan, like a normal person

    Well that was the right choice.
    Has Liz pledged to nuke Scotland or Rishi got the prison hulks ready ?
  • Alistair said:

    What a finish.

    Commonwealth Games? What's happened?
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842
    Alistair said:

    10k might be my favourite distance to watch.

    It's certainly hard enough to run
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,149
    dixiedean said:

    ohnotnow said:

    Leon said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    carnforth said:

    Nick Clegg joins clique of Meta bosses switching to London

    https:/Yes, is back, part time…

    Clegg is back, and London is back!


    From that thread of articles:

    "Hoberman said: “They also move because they see the US so fractionalised. As San Francisco loses its density [of tech headquarters], there’s a chance for London to be the global leader.”"

    This is absolutely true. Why step over homeless addict in SF when you can be in glorious sunny London? In King's X? With no threat of Trump? And two hours from all of Europe?
    I saw recently that parts of East London have taken over SF for density of tech startups. Kings cross looks like the choice for established tech so will be another huge draw for startups looking for global locations. I know one SAAS company which is currently HQ'd in SF that's considering moving operationally to London from there and leaving behind a small outpost of sales people in NYC. That's the other one that's coming for SF, operational excellence in development by being based in London and sales/GTM based on the East Coast of the US either in NYC or Miami. It's such a better set of timezones. SF used to have the advantage of crossover with APAC countries but with the ease of remote work and setting up remote workers on a single payroll tech companies are choosing to hire locally in Singapore, Melbourne and Wellington.
    FPT

    Yes, and more: as NYC sinks into crime, and is menaced by deeper political division, a lot of business in NYC will come here. Remote working suddenly benefits the UK

    Really. Why would you work in NYC or LA or SF if you can work in London?

    NYC is a truly great city and LA is jolly interesting and SF has a certain beauty, but they have grave downsides, and they are all trillions of miles from anywhere else

    Fly two hours from NYC and you are in, er, Toronto

    Compare that with London, when in 2 hours or less you can be in Paris, Venice, Berlin, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Rome, Florence, Edinburgh, Nice... and the Alps, the Balearics, Sicily, western Ireland, Burgundy, the Algarve, the Black Forest, the Dordogne, the Italian lakes, the Dolomites, Tyrol,...

    There is no comparison. If your job is no longer quite so tied to the Silicon Valley office, you will move to London
    NYC makes sense for a lot of reasons despite the crime (and it's nowhere near as bad as SF) it's got the 2pm-6pm crossover with London, there's already quite a few companies in the area, it's bigger and better connected than SF (which means people have the option of living in NJ and commuting in) and it's only 7h on a cheap business class flight from London for business meetings. For tech startups there's also a fuckton of potential clients on the doorstep in NYC because there's so many financial services companies looking to cut costs. The City is one of the reasons tech has thrived in London, its clients and financing for startups.
    NYC is unquestionably a magnificent city (as I said in my earlier comment), but so is London. And the downsides of NYC - crime, racial tension, MAGA-Trump, divided country, healthcare, opiates, guns - now seem to me to outweigh the downsides of London: weather, greyness, grotty areas

    Both are English-speaking world cities with glorious culture, London has more history, New York City has that skyline

    The proximity of the rest of Europe might be the clincher for me, if I was a highly paid tech exec. And where do you want your kids to grow up? Safely?

    But of course I am biased

    I think we will see more American execs choosing London on a quasi-WFH basis. It will be a complex and remarkable irony if post-Brexit London ascends to world capital status (again?)..... because it is in Europe

    Yes, that's why I think London is a good shout for operational and potentially tax HQ. My point on NYC is more in relation to having the sales function for NA run out of there rather than SF because it has significantly better crossover with London and it's only a 7h flight for when seniors and execs need face to face meetings.

    The London/NYC split works brilliantly for financial services, it being replicated for tech would be no surprise.

    The last piece of the puzzle is higher risk funds in London willing to invest hundreds of millions for series D onwards.
    Yes, I concur

    Finance/sales stuff might stay in NYC but a lot of intellectual/HQ heft will move to London

    Add in the boost from Hong Kong and - perhaps unexpectedly - London could really thrive in the next decade

    I wonder if this is what I sensed in King's X yesterday. Essentially they are - wittingly or not - creating a Silicon Valley in an amazing new London neighborhood, but with added universities and science institutes and art galleries and biochemistry labs and the British Library and the rest, and all of it 300m from St Pancras and the eurostar, and half an hour from Heathrow via the Liz Line, with Shoreditch and the Silicon roundabout just down the road

    It is completely unique. London - esp King's X - has the chance to be THE tech hub for the world, or at least the western world

    If I was the head of Instagram, I'd move from California to King's Cross (never thought I'd write that). Just to see

    Kings Cross? Would you like to know about living there in the before times? Of COURSE you would...

    I moved to that London in July 1999. I had graduated with a Journalism Degree in summer 1998 already working in radio on various short term contracts. By late spring 1999 there was a gap, and I was a bit fed up with the GF I was living with. So moved to London to find a job.

    Which I did in 7 working days. Literally. Arrived Sunday. Agency interviews Monday, job interviews later that week, a 2nd interview the following Monday and started working for Nature the science journal straight away.

    Their office is on Crinan Street, the north end of KX station with the canal basin behind. So I rented a 1 bed mini bedsit at the top of Grays Inn Road and started work. Kings Cross at the time was home to only one thriving industry - hookers. I was propositioned at 8am one morning crossing the road by the station on the way to work! There was so little in the way of facilities in Kings Cross that the company had a free canteen for its employees - there literally being nothing available in the vicinity.

    At the top of Crinan Street was a pub which had been an old canal warehouse - now demolished and the site of Guardian Newspapers building. And a wine bar on Balfe Street. Aside from the Flying Scotsman fight bar on Caledonian Road, that was it.

    The transformation in 20 years is literally mindblowing.
    I remember that! Went to see someone in that office a few years earlier, perhaps 1992-3, when it was still very new. I did wince when I turned out of KX and saw the ambience of that street, and I was glad to be getting back to the train while it was still daylight.
    In those days there was a ramp off the end of platform 1 out onto York Road. So you could exit the station, cross the street and be into the Nature building inside 30 seconds. Barely time to wave at Clive Sinclair in his penthouse...
    I need to go back and explore the KX/StP area properly when I next visit my Camden friend; so much change there, including StP itself which was still very much its original state when I knew it, as described in Jack Simmons's history; didn't have time to more than pay homage to Hardy at the eponymous church, and to register the degree of change when passing through it in recent years, which needed a new edition of the history.
    You can spend a whole day there, pretty much

    Explore the new urbanism, check out the art galleries, see St Martin's, go to a movie or a play or a concert in one of the venues, have lunch or dinner (or both) in one of about 40 restaurants. Walk around Camley Street Wildpark, stroll along the Regent's Canal to Camden and Primrose Hill and back, go to the British Library, and more

    All in that one district. Surrounded by industrial history Vs the new Google HQ. Fab
    Mm, that's an idea - the canal walk in particular, especially as my chum lives in Camden.

    This reminds me I got hold of this paper some years back for him - archaeological dig. No idea if it is of interest but he was very taken with it.

    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332047927_The_Lock-Keepers_of_Hawley's_Lock_Regent's_Canal_Camden
    Fascinating

    I had a little historical frisson yesterday. The HS2 guys are digging right outside my front door. I had a chat with one of them, a nice guy, and seriously Irish

    And it occurred to me that this was a superb echo of when the very first railways were built, when Irish navvies would have worked in the exact same spot, then gone off to drink in the Dublin Castle (hence its name)

    They would have worked by the houses in this famous print, middle right. One of these houses, as it happens, being the house where I now live


    There's a quite good Melvin Bragg thing (possibly an In Our Time) about the first railways to come out of London. Broad arch of the story is that it was too expensive to roll them through the already posh parts, so they ploughed them through the slums. Middle-class people from the posh parts who could afford the newfangled trains were then exposed to the slums in ways they hadn't been before and lo-and-behold huge reforms began.
    And many were made destitute and homeless. Compensation paid to landlords not tenants. Agar Town and Tomlin's New Town, north of Hyde Park, were totally demolished.
    56 000 people displaced in about a decade in London.
    The slums moved further out, and the centre became more gentrified.
    I had to double check you weren't talking about the 1990-2010 era at KX!
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,281
    ohnotnow said:

    Leon said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    carnforth said:

    Nick Clegg joins clique of Meta bosses switching to London

    https:/Yes, is back, part time…

    Clegg is back, and London is back!


    From that thread of articles:

    "Hoberman said: “They also move because they see the US so fractionalised. As San Francisco loses its density [of tech headquarters], there’s a chance for London to be the global leader.”"

    This is absolutely true. Why step over homeless addict in SF when you can be in glorious sunny London? In King's X? With no threat of Trump? And two hours from all of Europe?
    I saw recently that parts of East London have taken over SF for density of tech startups. Kings cross looks like the choice for established tech so will be another huge draw for startups looking for global locations. I know one SAAS company which is currently HQ'd in SF that's considering moving operationally to London from there and leaving behind a small outpost of sales people in NYC. That's the other one that's coming for SF, operational excellence in development by being based in London and sales/GTM based on the East Coast of the US either in NYC or Miami. It's such a better set of timezones. SF used to have the advantage of crossover with APAC countries but with the ease of remote work and setting up remote workers on a single payroll tech companies are choosing to hire locally in Singapore, Melbourne and Wellington.
    FPT

    Yes, and more: as NYC sinks into crime, and is menaced by deeper political division, a lot of business in NYC will come here. Remote working suddenly benefits the UK

    Really. Why would you work in NYC or LA or SF if you can work in London?

    NYC is a truly great city and LA is jolly interesting and SF has a certain beauty, but they have grave downsides, and they are all trillions of miles from anywhere else

    Fly two hours from NYC and you are in, er, Toronto

    Compare that with London, when in 2 hours or less you can be in Paris, Venice, Berlin, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Rome, Florence, Edinburgh, Nice... and the Alps, the Balearics, Sicily, western Ireland, Burgundy, the Algarve, the Black Forest, the Dordogne, the Italian lakes, the Dolomites, Tyrol,...

    There is no comparison. If your job is no longer quite so tied to the Silicon Valley office, you will move to London
    NYC makes sense for a lot of reasons despite the crime (and it's nowhere near as bad as SF) it's got the 2pm-6pm crossover with London, there's already quite a few companies in the area, it's bigger and better connected than SF (which means people have the option of living in NJ and commuting in) and it's only 7h on a cheap business class flight from London for business meetings. For tech startups there's also a fuckton of potential clients on the doorstep in NYC because there's so many financial services companies looking to cut costs. The City is one of the reasons tech has thrived in London, its clients and financing for startups.
    NYC is unquestionably a magnificent city (as I said in my earlier comment), but so is London. And the downsides of NYC - crime, racial tension, MAGA-Trump, divided country, healthcare, opiates, guns - now seem to me to outweigh the downsides of London: weather, greyness, grotty areas

    Both are English-speaking world cities with glorious culture, London has more history, New York City has that skyline

    The proximity of the rest of Europe might be the clincher for me, if I was a highly paid tech exec. And where do you want your kids to grow up? Safely?

    But of course I am biased

    I think we will see more American execs choosing London on a quasi-WFH basis. It will be a complex and remarkable irony if post-Brexit London ascends to world capital status (again?)..... because it is in Europe

    Yes, that's why I think London is a good shout for operational and potentially tax HQ. My point on NYC is more in relation to having the sales function for NA run out of there rather than SF because it has significantly better crossover with London and it's only a 7h flight for when seniors and execs need face to face meetings.

    The London/NYC split works brilliantly for financial services, it being replicated for tech would be no surprise.

    The last piece of the puzzle is higher risk funds in London willing to invest hundreds of millions for series D onwards.
    Yes, I concur

    Finance/sales stuff might stay in NYC but a lot of intellectual/HQ heft will move to London

    Add in the boost from Hong Kong and - perhaps unexpectedly - London could really thrive in the next decade

    I wonder if this is what I sensed in King's X yesterday. Essentially they are - wittingly or not - creating a Silicon Valley in an amazing new London neighborhood, but with added universities and science institutes and art galleries and biochemistry labs and the British Library and the rest, and all of it 300m from St Pancras and the eurostar, and half an hour from Heathrow via the Liz Line, with Shoreditch and the Silicon roundabout just down the road

    It is completely unique. London - esp King's X - has the chance to be THE tech hub for the world, or at least the western world

    If I was the head of Instagram, I'd move from California to King's Cross (never thought I'd write that). Just to see

    Kings Cross? Would you like to know about living there in the before times? Of COURSE you would...

    I moved to that London in July 1999. I had graduated with a Journalism Degree in summer 1998 already working in radio on various short term contracts. By late spring 1999 there was a gap, and I was a bit fed up with the GF I was living with. So moved to London to find a job.

    Which I did in 7 working days. Literally. Arrived Sunday. Agency interviews Monday, job interviews later that week, a 2nd interview the following Monday and started working for Nature the science journal straight away.

    Their office is on Crinan Street, the north end of KX station with the canal basin behind. So I rented a 1 bed mini bedsit at the top of Grays Inn Road and started work. Kings Cross at the time was home to only one thriving industry - hookers. I was propositioned at 8am one morning crossing the road by the station on the way to work! There was so little in the way of facilities in Kings Cross that the company had a free canteen for its employees - there literally being nothing available in the vicinity.

    At the top of Crinan Street was a pub which had been an old canal warehouse - now demolished and the site of Guardian Newspapers building. And a wine bar on Balfe Street. Aside from the Flying Scotsman fight bar on Caledonian Road, that was it.

    The transformation in 20 years is literally mindblowing.
    I remember that! Went to see someone in that office a few years earlier, perhaps 1992-3, when it was still very new. I did wince when I turned out of KX and saw the ambience of that street, and I was glad to be getting back to the train while it was still daylight.
    In those days there was a ramp off the end of platform 1 out onto York Road. So you could exit the station, cross the street and be into the Nature building inside 30 seconds. Barely time to wave at Clive Sinclair in his penthouse...
    I need to go back and explore the KX/StP area properly when I next visit my Camden friend; so much change there, including StP itself which was still very much its original state when I knew it, as described in Jack Simmons's history; didn't have time to more than pay homage to Hardy at the eponymous church, and to register the degree of change when passing through it in recent years, which needed a new edition of the history.
    You can spend a whole day there, pretty much

    Explore the new urbanism, check out the art galleries, see St Martin's, go to a movie or a play or a concert in one of the venues, have lunch or dinner (or both) in one of about 40 restaurants. Walk around Camley Street Wildpark, stroll along the Regent's Canal to Camden and Primrose Hill and back, go to the British Library, and more

    All in that one district. Surrounded by industrial history Vs the new Google HQ. Fab
    Mm, that's an idea - the canal walk in particular, especially as my chum lives in Camden.

    This reminds me I got hold of this paper some years back for him - archaeological dig. No idea if it is of interest but he was very taken with it.

    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332047927_The_Lock-Keepers_of_Hawley's_Lock_Regent's_Canal_Camden
    Fascinating

    I had a little historical frisson yesterday. The HS2 guys are digging right outside my front door. I had a chat with one of them, a nice guy, and seriously Irish

    And it occurred to me that this was a superb echo of when the very first railways were built, when Irish navvies would have worked in the exact same spot, then gone off to drink in the Dublin Castle (hence its name)

    They would have worked by the houses in this famous print, middle right. One of these houses, as it happens, being the house where I now live


    There's a quite good Melvin Bragg thing (possibly an In Our Time) about the first railways to come out of London. Broad arch of the story is that it was too expensive to roll them through the already posh parts, so they ploughed them through the slums. Middle-class people from the posh parts who could afford the newfangled trains were then exposed to the slums in ways they hadn't been before and lo-and-behold huge reforms began.
    You got me looking for that In Our Time railway episode, which sounds fascinating.

    I haven't found it (yet) but there are a mind-blowing 959 IOT episodes! Of which I've listened to about a dozen.

    You have sorted out my podcast listening for the next few months. Thanks!
This discussion has been closed.