Well there you are see. Man U top 4 @ 8s looking rather good now.
Always bet against overreaction money. 🙂
If they get Cody Gakpo on board, and Savic too, maybe a chance of top 4, I wouldn’t go further than that.
But then West Ham, Pool, Chelsea have made bad starts too, I watched Spurs against Chelsea and first half against wolves, and they definitely didn’t impress me. Arsenal have had easy fixtures, 3.0 at Bournemouth is nothing, plus they don’t have squad depth.
Arsenal and Man Utd have been given goals this round clearly offside even with the naked eye! This years VAR designed by Escher.
On the grounds that it's probably cheaper than heating my house for a week, I've just booked a family holiday for October half term. We're going to Dunkeld. Youngest has a bee in her bonnet about Scotland, and about seeing a mountain, and I'm keen to indulge her. I'm very pleased. Have been hunting about holiday parks, and one is too remote, another not remote enough ... this is just the right balance between pleasant small town, the edges of Highland scenery, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Stirling relatively accessible. Following, I think, DavidL's advice, if we get some good weather we may go to the Cairnwell (I think?). Or possibly Ben Vrackie. We may find a castle to visit. I have just shown her the pictures, and some pictures of the surrounding area, and she is delighted. As am I. I haven't been to Scotland for about 20 years.
The idiot ginger cat has celebrated this development by bringing a live mouse in. Sigh.
Lovely village and station. Many places to visit in and around including Pitlochry
Well there you are see. Man U top 4 @ 8s looking rather good now.
Always bet against overreaction money. 🙂
If they get Cody Gakpo on board, and Savic too, maybe a chance of top 4, I wouldn’t go further than that.
But then West Ham, Pool, Chelsea have made bad starts too, I watched Spurs against Chelsea and first half against wolves, and they definitely didn’t impress me. Arsenal have had easy fixtures, 3.0 at Bournemouth is nothing, plus they don’t have squad depth.
Arsenal and Man Utd have been given goals this round clearly offside even with the naked eye! This years VAR designed by Escher.
United goal tonight was not offside and confirmed by VAR
CoL response immediately according to this with probably a November full budget?
Is this the new regime talking?
Today's article from John Redwood is pretty dismissive of the OBR forecasts, for example.
They do seem to be getting it very wrong very often recently.
It's not easy being an economic forecaster.
What will happen in Ukraine? What will happen with Covid in China? Will China's housing market implode?
Those are just three mega questions that you need to have to have a sensible view on the UK's economic growth, even before we talk about domestic issues.
FWIW I think that Russia will suffer a series of setbacks in Ukraine but prove pretty much impossible for Ukraine to beat. The result will be a painful and difficult draw which will continue the current sanction regime almost indefinitely. Not good for us or inflation generally.
On Covid, the Chinese will eventually recognise that zero Covid just doesn't work and start to join the rest of the world in moving on. May still take a while though. Eventually good but medium rather than short term.
On Chinese housing a bust is surely coming and we are already seeing the consequences with the likes of Evergrande and missed growth targets. Almost certainly bad for us but way worse for the Chinese.
I agree that each of these have the capacity, on their own, of swinging our growth or recession by at least a couple of percent, probably more. But we remain obsessed with the trivia of Brexit. It's an illness.
I sense Russia CAN be beaten. The more interesting question is whether the west really wants them to be beaten. The military aid from Germany, France, Spain and Italy has not been very substantial.
Of course Russia can beaten. The tricky bit is working out how to beat Russia without triggering a nuclear holocaust.
CoL response immediately according to this with probably a November full budget?
Is this the new regime talking?
Today's article from John Redwood is pretty dismissive of the OBR forecasts, for example.
They do seem to be getting it very wrong very often recently.
It's not easy being an economic forecaster.
What will happen in Ukraine? What will happen with Covid in China? Will China's housing market implode?
Those are just three mega questions that you need to have to have a sensible view on the UK's economic growth, even before we talk about domestic issues.
FWIW I think that Russia will suffer a series of setbacks in Ukraine but prove pretty much impossible for Ukraine to beat. The result will be a painful and difficult draw which will continue the current sanction regime almost indefinitely. Not good for us or inflation generally.
On Covid, the Chinese will eventually recognise that zero Covid just doesn't work and start to join the rest of the world in moving on. May still take a while though. Eventually good but medium rather than short term.
On Chinese housing a bust is surely coming and we are already seeing the consequences with the likes of Evergrande and missed growth targets. Almost certainly bad for us but way worse for the Chinese.
I agree that each of these have the capacity, on their own, of swinging our growth or recession by at least a couple of percent, probably more. But we remain obsessed with the trivia of Brexit. It's an illness.
I sense Russia CAN be beaten. The more interesting question is whether the west really wants them to be beaten. The military aid from Germany, France, Spain and Italy has not been very substantial.
Of course Russia can beaten. The tricky bit is working out how to beat Russia without triggering a nuclear holocaust.
It's not especially tricky. They withdrew from around Kyiv without any risk of a nuclear holocaust because they couldn't advance and lost their logistics.
My firm pulled out of doing legal aid work, twenty years ago, not just because the rates were so bad, but because you had to jump through so many hoops to get paid.
This is a problem which was persisted since at least the 1990's. Criminal justice is an area where the expenditure of not very large sums of money by the government would actually yield clear and obvious benefits. These are problems that can be fixed by spending hundreds of millions of pounds, not billions.
And, administering justice is really the most basic function of government.
Once they get past the first few years the average criminal barrister will earn significantly more than the average member of the UK population even if less than corporate lawyers do. However it is mainly the average member of the UK population who pays their fees through taxes paying for CPS and legal aid
More than half of all income tax in the UK comes from top 10% of earners, so technically it isn't really the average member of the UK population who pays.
Taxes paid include VAT and NI and fuel tax etc too, not just income tax all of which also paid by the average member of the population. Plus even some of the top 10% will earn less than the average criminal barrister, let alone a criminal QC who will be on 6 figures
On the grounds that it's probably cheaper than heating my house for a week, I've just booked a family holiday for October half term. We're going to Dunkeld. Youngest has a bee in her bonnet about Scotland, and about seeing a mountain, and I'm keen to indulge her. I'm very pleased. Have been hunting about holiday parks, and one is too remote, another not remote enough ... this is just the right balance between pleasant small town, the edges of Highland scenery, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Stirling relatively accessible. Following, I think, DavidL's advice, if we get some good weather we may go to the Cairnwell (I think?). Or possibly Ben Vrackie. We may find a castle to visit. I have just shown her the pictures, and some pictures of the surrounding area, and she is delighted. As am I. I haven't been to Scotland for about 20 years.
The idiot ginger cat has celebrated this development by bringing a live mouse in. Sigh.
Perthshire is beautiful! The perfect accessible Highlands. So much to do, you won't get to Edinburgh or Glasgow, but Stirling might be a shout. Hermitage walk is on your doorstep. Highland Chocolatier in Grandtully is good for a chocolate tasting. 3 good distilleries - Aberfeldy, Edradour in Pitlochry, Glenturret in Crieff. See red squirrels - Cluny House Gardens in Aberfeldy is the best place. I think The Enchanted Forest is in October too? Always an option if you can get tickets, your daughters would love it: https://www.enchantedforest.org.uk
On the grounds that it's probably cheaper than heating my house for a week, I've just booked a family holiday for October half term. We're going to Dunkeld. Youngest has a bee in her bonnet about Scotland, and about seeing a mountain, and I'm keen to indulge her. I'm very pleased. Have been hunting about holiday parks, and one is too remote, another not remote enough ... this is just the right balance between pleasant small town, the edges of Highland scenery, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Stirling relatively accessible. Following, I think, DavidL's advice, if we get some good weather we may go to the Cairnwell (I think?). Or possibly Ben Vrackie. We may find a castle to visit. I have just shown her the pictures, and some pictures of the surrounding area, and she is delighted. As am I. I haven't been to Scotland for about 20 years.
The idiot ginger cat has celebrated this development by bringing a live mouse in. Sigh.
Honestly, I don't think it's possible to work in the criminal bar for the first decade or so of one's career without (a) having substantial private resources or (b) working in more lucrative areas of law like trusts, probate, tax etc., and cross-subsidising the criminal work.
CoL response immediately according to this with probably a November full budget?
Is this the new regime talking?
Today's article from John Redwood is pretty dismissive of the OBR forecasts, for example.
They do seem to be getting it very wrong very often recently.
It's not easy being an economic forecaster.
What will happen in Ukraine? What will happen with Covid in China? Will China's housing market implode?
Those are just three mega questions that you need to have to have a sensible view on the UK's economic growth, even before we talk about domestic issues.
FWIW I think that Russia will suffer a series of setbacks in Ukraine but prove pretty much impossible for Ukraine to beat. The result will be a painful and difficult draw which will continue the current sanction regime almost indefinitely. Not good for us or inflation generally.
On Covid, the Chinese will eventually recognise that zero Covid just doesn't work and start to join the rest of the world in moving on. May still take a while though. Eventually good but medium rather than short term.
On Chinese housing a bust is surely coming and we are already seeing the consequences with the likes of Evergrande and missed growth targets. Almost certainly bad for us but way worse for the Chinese.
I agree that each of these have the capacity, on their own, of swinging our growth or recession by at least a couple of percent, probably more. But we remain obsessed with the trivia of Brexit. It's an illness.
I sense Russia CAN be beaten. The more interesting question is whether the west really wants them to be beaten. The military aid from Germany, France, Spain and Italy has not been very substantial.
Of course Russia can beaten. The tricky bit is working out how to beat Russia without triggering a nuclear holocaust.
It's not especially tricky. They withdrew from around Kyiv without any risk of a nuclear holocaust because they couldn't advance and lost their logistics.
I doubt very much that Putin would refrain from using tactical nuclear weapons if, for example, the Russians were being driven out of the Donbas area. He is a dictator, and dictators cannot be seen to be weak by their people.
The thwarted attack on Kyiv can be blamed on incompetent generals, but the annexation of the Donbas is the primary aim of the invasion. If it fails, Putin fails, and he will almost certainly use nukes to prevent that. Why wouldn't he?
Once they get past the first few years the average criminal barrister will earn significantly more than the average member of the UK population even if less than corporate lawyers do. However it is mainly the average member of the UK population who pays their fees through taxes paying for CPS and legal aid
More than half of all income tax in the UK comes from top 10% of earners, so technically it isn't really the average member of the UK population who pays.
Taxes paid include VAT and NI and fuel tax etc too, not just income tax all of which also paid by the average member of the population. Plus even some of the top 10% will earn less than the average criminal barrister, let alone a criminal QC who will be on 6 figures
But you were absolutely ferocious a few months ago that NI wasn't a tax at all but a payment of entitlement to dole and pension and NHS.
On the grounds that it's probably cheaper than heating my house for a week, I've just booked a family holiday for October half term. We're going to Dunkeld. Youngest has a bee in her bonnet about Scotland, and about seeing a mountain, and I'm keen to indulge her. I'm very pleased. Have been hunting about holiday parks, and one is too remote, another not remote enough ... this is just the right balance between pleasant small town, the edges of Highland scenery, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Stirling relatively accessible. Following, I think, DavidL's advice, if we get some good weather we may go to the Cairnwell (I think?). Or possibly Ben Vrackie. We may find a castle to visit. I have just shown her the pictures, and some pictures of the surrounding area, and she is delighted. As am I. I haven't been to Scotland for about 20 years.
The idiot ginger cat has celebrated this development by bringing a live mouse in. Sigh.
I'd go for Schiehallion over Vrackie or the Cairnwell (chance of aliens, too - that's where the photo Leon has been going mad about was taken). It's actually less ascent than Vrackie, on an excellent path.
CoL response immediately according to this with probably a November full budget?
Is this the new regime talking?
Today's article from John Redwood is pretty dismissive of the OBR forecasts, for example.
They do seem to be getting it very wrong very often recently.
It's not easy being an economic forecaster.
What will happen in Ukraine? What will happen with Covid in China? Will China's housing market implode?
Those are just three mega questions that you need to have to have a sensible view on the UK's economic growth, even before we talk about domestic issues.
FWIW I think that Russia will suffer a series of setbacks in Ukraine but prove pretty much impossible for Ukraine to beat. The result will be a painful and difficult draw which will continue the current sanction regime almost indefinitely. Not good for us or inflation generally.
On Covid, the Chinese will eventually recognise that zero Covid just doesn't work and start to join the rest of the world in moving on. May still take a while though. Eventually good but medium rather than short term.
On Chinese housing a bust is surely coming and we are already seeing the consequences with the likes of Evergrande and missed growth targets. Almost certainly bad for us but way worse for the Chinese.
I agree that each of these have the capacity, on their own, of swinging our growth or recession by at least a couple of percent, probably more. But we remain obsessed with the trivia of Brexit. It's an illness.
I sense Russia CAN be beaten. The more interesting question is whether the west really wants them to be beaten. The military aid from Germany, France, Spain and Italy has not been very substantial.
Of course Russia can beaten. The tricky bit is working out how to beat Russia without triggering a nuclear holocaust.
It's not especially tricky. They withdrew from around Kyiv without any risk of a nuclear holocaust because they couldn't advance and lost their logistics.
I doubt very much that Putin would refrain from using tactical nuclear weapons if, for example, the Russians were being driven out of the Donbas area. He is a dictator, and dictators cannot be seen to be weak by their people.
The thwarted attack on Kyiv can be blamed on incompetent generals, but the annexation of the Donbas is the primary aim of the invasion. If it fails, Putin fails, and he will almost certainly use nukes to prevent that. Why wouldn't he?
Because it wouldn't prevent it. What target do you think he would use nukes against and what would the military and political benefit to him be?
On the grounds that it's probably cheaper than heating my house for a week, I've just booked a family holiday for October half term. We're going to Dunkeld. Youngest has a bee in her bonnet about Scotland, and about seeing a mountain, and I'm keen to indulge her. I'm very pleased. Have been hunting about holiday parks, and one is too remote, another not remote enough ... this is just the right balance between pleasant small town, the edges of Highland scenery, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Stirling relatively accessible. Following, I think, DavidL's advice, if we get some good weather we may go to the Cairnwell (I think?). Or possibly Ben Vrackie. We may find a castle to visit. I have just shown her the pictures, and some pictures of the surrounding area, and she is delighted. As am I. I haven't been to Scotland for about 20 years.
The idiot ginger cat has celebrated this development by bringing a live mouse in. Sigh.
That part of Scotland has the best tree growing conditions and autumn colours in Europe. Pic of Faskally Wood near Pitlochry, where there will be light show on the Autumn theme
On the grounds that it's probably cheaper than heating my house for a week, I've just booked a family holiday for October half term. We're going to Dunkeld. Youngest has a bee in her bonnet about Scotland, and about seeing a mountain, and I'm keen to indulge her. I'm very pleased. Have been hunting about holiday parks, and one is too remote, another not remote enough ... this is just the right balance between pleasant small town, the edges of Highland scenery, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Stirling relatively accessible. Following, I think, DavidL's advice, if we get some good weather we may go to the Cairnwell (I think?). Or possibly Ben Vrackie. We may find a castle to visit. I have just shown her the pictures, and some pictures of the surrounding area, and she is delighted. As am I. I haven't been to Scotland for about 20 years.
The idiot ginger cat has celebrated this development by bringing a live mouse in. Sigh.
Perthshire is beautiful! The perfect accessible Highlands. So much to do, you won't get to Edinburgh or Glasgow, but Stirling might be a shout. Hermitage walk is on your doorstep. Highland Chocolatier in Grandtully is good for a chocolate tasting. 3 good distilleries - Aberfeldy, Edradour in Pitlochry, Glenturret in Crieff. See red squirrels - Cluny House Gardens in Aberfeldy is the best place. I think The Enchanted Forest is in October too? Always an option if you can get tickets, your daughters would love it: https://www.enchantedforest.org.uk
Quite right about the autumn timing.
Have a look at National Trust for Scotland and Historic Scotland websites, and bring your [English] NT and English Heritage cards if you have them - there is some cross-concession, depending on details.
On the grounds that it's probably cheaper than heating my house for a week, I've just booked a family holiday for October half term. We're going to Dunkeld. Youngest has a bee in her bonnet about Scotland, and about seeing a mountain, and I'm keen to indulge her. I'm very pleased. Have been hunting about holiday parks, and one is too remote, another not remote enough ... this is just the right balance between pleasant small town, the edges of Highland scenery, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Stirling relatively accessible. Following, I think, DavidL's advice, if we get some good weather we may go to the Cairnwell (I think?). Or possibly Ben Vrackie. We may find a castle to visit. I have just shown her the pictures, and some pictures of the surrounding area, and she is delighted. As am I. I haven't been to Scotland for about 20 years.
The idiot ginger cat has celebrated this development by bringing a live mouse in. Sigh.
That part of Scotland has the best tree growing conditions and autumn colours in Europe. Pic of Faskally Wood near Pitlochry, where there will be light show on the Autumn theme
Once they get past the first few years the average criminal barrister will earn significantly more than the average member of the UK population even if less than corporate lawyers do. However it is mainly the average member of the UK population who pays their fees through taxes paying for CPS and legal aid
More than half of all income tax in the UK comes from top 10% of earners, so technically it isn't really the average member of the UK population who pays.
Taxes paid include VAT and NI and fuel tax etc too, not just income tax all of which also paid by the average member of the population. Plus even some of the top 10% will earn less than the average criminal barrister, let alone a criminal QC who will be on 6 figures
Even the median earnings are poor in relation to the seriousness of the job that is expected of them. And, the median figure is distorted upwards by the fact that many members of the criminal bar can earn decent money by prosecuting for HMRC, the Health and Safety Executive and other government agencies. For those who do nothing but legal aid work, earnings are dire.
On the grounds that it's probably cheaper than heating my house for a week, I've just booked a family holiday for October half term. We're going to Dunkeld. Youngest has a bee in her bonnet about Scotland, and about seeing a mountain, and I'm keen to indulge her. I'm very pleased. Have been hunting about holiday parks, and one is too remote, another not remote enough ... this is just the right balance between pleasant small town, the edges of Highland scenery, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Stirling relatively accessible. Following, I think, DavidL's advice, if we get some good weather we may go to the Cairnwell (I think?). Or possibly Ben Vrackie. We may find a castle to visit. I have just shown her the pictures, and some pictures of the surrounding area, and she is delighted. As am I. I haven't been to Scotland for about 20 years.
The idiot ginger cat has celebrated this development by bringing a live mouse in. Sigh.
Don't miss Stirling Castle, whatever you do.
There used to be a really fun escape room in Stirling that would go with the Castle. Not sure if it's suitable for young youngsters - not scary just perhaps tough to work out.
There's also Tullibardine distillery nearby that makes good whisky but isn't as pretty as the other ones I've mentioned.
Once they get past the first few years the average criminal barrister will earn significantly more than the average member of the UK population even if less than corporate lawyers do. However it is mainly the average member of the UK population who pays their fees through taxes paying for CPS and legal aid
More than half of all income tax in the UK comes from top 10% of earners, so technically it isn't really the average member of the UK population who pays.
Taxes paid include VAT and NI and fuel tax etc too, not just income tax all of which also paid by the average member of the population. Plus even some of the top 10% will earn less than the average criminal barrister, let alone a criminal QC who will be on 6 figures
True, but they are also clever people who have spent time and money getting qualified and have options to use their intelligence, skills and training elsewhere. They are going to be paid a lot.
Look- as a taxpayer, I ought to be very happy at the idea of public sector workers being paid as little as possible. But beyond a certain point, it is the equivalent of the government going into Ryman's and stealing printer paper on the grounds that it is helping the hard-pressed taxpayer. And there have been, and are, governments that act that way, but not ones that you (I am sure) or I approve of.
By all means resent paying lawyers, doctors, top civil servants etc. But if you really don't want to pay them, you have to find a way of going without them, which is tricky.
On the grounds that it's probably cheaper than heating my house for a week, I've just booked a family holiday for October half term. We're going to Dunkeld. Youngest has a bee in her bonnet about Scotland, and about seeing a mountain, and I'm keen to indulge her. I'm very pleased. Have been hunting about holiday parks, and one is too remote, another not remote enough ... this is just the right balance between pleasant small town, the edges of Highland scenery, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Stirling relatively accessible. Following, I think, DavidL's advice, if we get some good weather we may go to the Cairnwell (I think?). Or possibly Ben Vrackie. We may find a castle to visit. I have just shown her the pictures, and some pictures of the surrounding area, and she is delighted. As am I. I haven't been to Scotland for about 20 years.
The idiot ginger cat has celebrated this development by bringing a live mouse in. Sigh.
That part of Scotland has the best tree growing conditions and autumn colours in Europe. Pic of Faskally Wood near Pitlochry, where there will be light show on the Autumn theme
There's a very good campsite on that loch where I used to take the kids when they were younger. It is a genuinely beautiful part of Scotland.
Tomorrow afternoon I am being driven to somewhere just south of Fort William, then the next day we are heading to Banff, before returning to Edinburgh via Fraserburgh and Aberdeen. So that should be fun.
How come Italy has a really good efficient high speed train network all over the country… and we are still struggling to build one line from London to Birmingham which will be finished in 2083 and will cost £298 trn?
Because you keep voting Tory.
Non sequitur.
Nope.
To Tory is to serially underfund infrastructure, among other things.
Labour have other issues.
You, Tory voter, are to blame for public squalor.
The one thing HS2 isn't is underfunded.
Maybe engage your brain and put down the bottle.
Do you seriously believe that UK infrastructure is funded to the same extent as it’s European peers?
HS2 is supposed to cost about £45-90m/km, whereas Frog schemes cost £10-20m/km in comparable prices, according to a Parliamentary report.
As Casino Royale said, whatever Boris did with HS2, he didn't underfund it. He loved his huge infrastructure projects.
My Modern Railways has just arrived. I get the impression from the cover that the cost of the TransPennine improvement - not new line vide HS2 - is mind-blowing even by those standards.
Have yet to read it to find out what the cover meant, but this might be worth keeping an eye on.
Lots of difficult land, close together cities which means lots of expensive land to compulsory purchase?
(As an aside to the figures above, I wonder what the price of French high speed rail per km would be if (say) Paris & Lyon were as close as London & Birmingham? I suspect the French per km costs are flattered by the mile after mile of flat farmland they get to cross relatively cheaply.)
CoL response immediately according to this with probably a November full budget?
Is this the new regime talking?
Today's article from John Redwood is pretty dismissive of the OBR forecasts, for example.
They do seem to be getting it very wrong very often recently.
It's not easy being an economic forecaster.
What will happen in Ukraine? What will happen with Covid in China? Will China's housing market implode?
Those are just three mega questions that you need to have to have a sensible view on the UK's economic growth, even before we talk about domestic issues.
FWIW I think that Russia will suffer a series of setbacks in Ukraine but prove pretty much impossible for Ukraine to beat. The result will be a painful and difficult draw which will continue the current sanction regime almost indefinitely. Not good for us or inflation generally.
On Covid, the Chinese will eventually recognise that zero Covid just doesn't work and start to join the rest of the world in moving on. May still take a while though. Eventually good but medium rather than short term.
On Chinese housing a bust is surely coming and we are already seeing the consequences with the likes of Evergrande and missed growth targets. Almost certainly bad for us but way worse for the Chinese.
I agree that each of these have the capacity, on their own, of swinging our growth or recession by at least a couple of percent, probably more. But we remain obsessed with the trivia of Brexit. It's an illness.
I sense Russia CAN be beaten. The more interesting question is whether the west really wants them to be beaten. The military aid from Germany, France, Spain and Italy has not been very substantial.
Of course Russia can beaten. The tricky bit is working out how to beat Russia without triggering a nuclear holocaust.
It's not especially tricky. They withdrew from around Kyiv without any risk of a nuclear holocaust because they couldn't advance and lost their logistics.
I doubt very much that Putin would refrain from using tactical nuclear weapons if, for example, the Russians were being driven out of the Donbas area. He is a dictator, and dictators cannot be seen to be weak by their people.
The thwarted attack on Kyiv can be blamed on incompetent generals, but the annexation of the Donbas is the primary aim of the invasion. If it fails, Putin fails, and he will almost certainly use nukes to prevent that. Why wouldn't he?
Because it wouldn't prevent it. What target do you think he would use nukes against and what would the military and political benefit to him be?
Target: advancing Ukrainian armies. Military benefit: annihilation of said armies. Political benefit: he shows what a strongman he is to his own people and saves his own skin. He's used to playing for high stakes and will gamble that the West won't escalate it to a full nuclear confrontation.
How come Italy has a really good efficient high speed train network all over the country… and we are still struggling to build one line from London to Birmingham which will be finished in 2083 and will cost £298 trn?
Because you keep voting Tory.
Non sequitur.
Nope.
To Tory is to serially underfund infrastructure, among other things.
Labour have other issues.
You, Tory voter, are to blame for public squalor.
The one thing HS2 isn't is underfunded.
Maybe engage your brain and put down the bottle.
Do you seriously believe that UK infrastructure is funded to the same extent as it’s European peers?
HS2 is supposed to cost about £45-90m/km, whereas Frog schemes cost £10-20m/km in comparable prices, according to a Parliamentary report.
As Casino Royale said, whatever Boris did with HS2, he didn't underfund it. He loved his huge infrastructure projects.
My Modern Railways has just arrived. I get the impression from the cover that the cost of the TransPennine improvement - not new line vide HS2 - is mind-blowing even by those standards.
Have yet to read it to find out what the cover meant, but this might be worth keeping an eye on.
Lots of difficult land, close together cities which means lots of expensive land to compulsory purchase?
(As an aside to the figures above, I wonder what the price of French high speed rail per km would be if (say) Paris & Lyon were as close as London & Birmingham? I suspect the French per km costs are flattered by the mile after mile of flat farmland they get to cross relatively cheaply.)
Wouldn't surprise me, though it will be interesting to see.
On the grounds that it's probably cheaper than heating my house for a week, I've just booked a family holiday for October half term. We're going to Dunkeld. Youngest has a bee in her bonnet about Scotland, and about seeing a mountain, and I'm keen to indulge her. I'm very pleased. Have been hunting about holiday parks, and one is too remote, another not remote enough ... this is just the right balance between pleasant small town, the edges of Highland scenery, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Stirling relatively accessible. Following, I think, DavidL's advice, if we get some good weather we may go to the Cairnwell (I think?). Or possibly Ben Vrackie. We may find a castle to visit. I have just shown her the pictures, and some pictures of the surrounding area, and she is delighted. As am I. I haven't been to Scotland for about 20 years.
The idiot ginger cat has celebrated this development by bringing a live mouse in. Sigh.
Perthshire is beautiful! The perfect accessible Highlands. So much to do, you won't get to Edinburgh or Glasgow, but Stirling might be a shout. Hermitage walk is on your doorstep. Highland Chocolatier in Grandtully is good for a chocolate tasting. 3 good distilleries - Aberfeldy, Edradour in Pitlochry, Glenturret in Crieff. See red squirrels - Cluny House Gardens in Aberfeldy is the best place. I think The Enchanted Forest is in October too? Always an option if you can get tickets, your daughters would love it: https://www.enchantedforest.org.uk
Thanks! The Enchanted Forest looks amazing - daughters and wife would definitely love it. And red squirrels! Definitely one for the list.
I don't want to sound hyperbolic but this winter is going to be very, very bad for a lot of people.
I just do not see how Liz Truss does not do something to help.
And if she does do something, will you give her credit, or say its not enough no matter what?
Are we allowed to say it's not enough if, for instance, it's not enough? I mean, she is obviously going to do something.
Hence the caveat "no matter what" but CHB is acting as if Truss is nailed on to do nothing.
Didn't he say the exact opposite, "I just do not see how Liz Truss does not do something to help"? She will clearly do something, probably quite a lot. If she doesn't she can expect civil unrest on a massive scale. She's not an idiot.
Just translating the Danish package to help people through the winter. It seems fairly modest and detrerminedly environmental - about 5% electricity price reduction and 5% top-up to the personal allowance. No change on petrol - it's partly being sold as a natural consequence of the increasing supply of renewable electricity from wind etc.
On the grounds that it's probably cheaper than heating my house for a week, I've just booked a family holiday for October half term. We're going to Dunkeld. Youngest has a bee in her bonnet about Scotland, and about seeing a mountain, and I'm keen to indulge her. I'm very pleased. Have been hunting about holiday parks, and one is too remote, another not remote enough ... this is just the right balance between pleasant small town, the edges of Highland scenery, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Stirling relatively accessible. Following, I think, DavidL's advice, if we get some good weather we may go to the Cairnwell (I think?). Or possibly Ben Vrackie. We may find a castle to visit. I have just shown her the pictures, and some pictures of the surrounding area, and she is delighted. As am I. I haven't been to Scotland for about 20 years.
The idiot ginger cat has celebrated this development by bringing a live mouse in. Sigh.
Perthshire is beautiful! The perfect accessible Highlands. So much to do, you won't get to Edinburgh or Glasgow, but Stirling might be a shout. Hermitage walk is on your doorstep. Highland Chocolatier in Grandtully is good for a chocolate tasting. 3 good distilleries - Aberfeldy, Edradour in Pitlochry, Glenturret in Crieff. See red squirrels - Cluny House Gardens in Aberfeldy is the best place. I think The Enchanted Forest is in October too? Always an option if you can get tickets, your daughters would love it: https://www.enchantedforest.org.uk
Thanks! The Enchanted Forest looks amazing - daughters and wife would definitely love it. And red squirrels! Definitely one for the list.
You're welcome, excited for you. If you know you want to do TEF, buy tickets soon, they go fairly fast.
On the grounds that it's probably cheaper than heating my house for a week, I've just booked a family holiday for October half term. We're going to Dunkeld. Youngest has a bee in her bonnet about Scotland, and about seeing a mountain, and I'm keen to indulge her. I'm very pleased. Have been hunting about holiday parks, and one is too remote, another not remote enough ... this is just the right balance between pleasant small town, the edges of Highland scenery, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Stirling relatively accessible. Following, I think, DavidL's advice, if we get some good weather we may go to the Cairnwell (I think?). Or possibly Ben Vrackie. We may find a castle to visit. I have just shown her the pictures, and some pictures of the surrounding area, and she is delighted. As am I. I haven't been to Scotland for about 20 years.
The idiot ginger cat has celebrated this development by bringing a live mouse in. Sigh.
Perthshire is beautiful! The perfect accessible Highlands. So much to do, you won't get to Edinburgh or Glasgow, but Stirling might be a shout. Hermitage walk is on your doorstep. Highland Chocolatier in Grandtully is good for a chocolate tasting. 3 good distilleries - Aberfeldy, Edradour in Pitlochry, Glenturret in Crieff. See red squirrels - Cluny House Gardens in Aberfeldy is the best place. I think The Enchanted Forest is in October too? Always an option if you can get tickets, your daughters would love it: https://www.enchantedforest.org.uk
Quite right about the autumn timing.
Have a look at National Trust for Scotland and Historic Scotland websites, and bring your [English] NT and English Heritage cards if you have them - there is some cross-concession, depending on details.
I once spent New Year's Eve in Aberfeldy. Very Scottish. Thoroughly enjoyable. Pub shut before midnight so that everyone including staff could be in the town square for a knees up and a share of lots of passed around bottles of whisky at midnight.
Once they get past the first few years the average criminal barrister will earn significantly more than the average member of the UK population even if less than corporate lawyers do. However it is mainly the average member of the UK population who pays their fees through taxes paying for CPS and legal aid
You do not know what you are talking about. No surprise there.
The government is in battle on many fronts and no realistic way of putting down all the uprisings. And I expect a severe recession is likely before things calm down.
I'd bet on Labour being 20 points ahead in at least one poll before the end of winter.
CoL response immediately according to this with probably a November full budget?
Is this the new regime talking?
Today's article from John Redwood is pretty dismissive of the OBR forecasts, for example.
They do seem to be getting it very wrong very often recently.
It's not easy being an economic forecaster.
What will happen in Ukraine? What will happen with Covid in China? Will China's housing market implode?
Those are just three mega questions that you need to have to have a sensible view on the UK's economic growth, even before we talk about domestic issues.
FWIW I think that Russia will suffer a series of setbacks in Ukraine but prove pretty much impossible for Ukraine to beat. The result will be a painful and difficult draw which will continue the current sanction regime almost indefinitely. Not good for us or inflation generally.
On Covid, the Chinese will eventually recognise that zero Covid just doesn't work and start to join the rest of the world in moving on. May still take a while though. Eventually good but medium rather than short term.
On Chinese housing a bust is surely coming and we are already seeing the consequences with the likes of Evergrande and missed growth targets. Almost certainly bad for us but way worse for the Chinese.
I agree that each of these have the capacity, on their own, of swinging our growth or recession by at least a couple of percent, probably more. But we remain obsessed with the trivia of Brexit. It's an illness.
I sense Russia CAN be beaten. The more interesting question is whether the west really wants them to be beaten. The military aid from Germany, France, Spain and Italy has not been very substantial.
Of course Russia can beaten. The tricky bit is working out how to beat Russia without triggering a nuclear holocaust.
It's not especially tricky. They withdrew from around Kyiv without any risk of a nuclear holocaust because they couldn't advance and lost their logistics.
I doubt very much that Putin would refrain from using tactical nuclear weapons if, for example, the Russians were being driven out of the Donbas area. He is a dictator, and dictators cannot be seen to be weak by their people.
The thwarted attack on Kyiv can be blamed on incompetent generals, but the annexation of the Donbas is the primary aim of the invasion. If it fails, Putin fails, and he will almost certainly use nukes to prevent that. Why wouldn't he?
Because it wouldn't prevent it. What target do you think he would use nukes against and what would the military and political benefit to him be?
Target: advancing Ukrainian armies. Military benefit: annihilation of said armies. Political benefit: he shows was a strongman he is to his own people and saves his own skin. He's used to playing for high stakes and will gamble that the West won't escalate it to a full nuclear confrontation.
What effect do you think he could achieve that he couldn't achieve with conventional weapons? The Ukrainian army isn't going to conveniently form a target for him.
CoL response immediately according to this with probably a November full budget?
Is this the new regime talking?
Today's article from John Redwood is pretty dismissive of the OBR forecasts, for example.
They do seem to be getting it very wrong very often recently.
It's not easy being an economic forecaster.
What will happen in Ukraine? What will happen with Covid in China? Will China's housing market implode?
Those are just three mega questions that you need to have to have a sensible view on the UK's economic growth, even before we talk about domestic issues.
FWIW I think that Russia will suffer a series of setbacks in Ukraine but prove pretty much impossible for Ukraine to beat. The result will be a painful and difficult draw which will continue the current sanction regime almost indefinitely. Not good for us or inflation generally.
On Covid, the Chinese will eventually recognise that zero Covid just doesn't work and start to join the rest of the world in moving on. May still take a while though. Eventually good but medium rather than short term.
On Chinese housing a bust is surely coming and we are already seeing the consequences with the likes of Evergrande and missed growth targets. Almost certainly bad for us but way worse for the Chinese.
I agree that each of these have the capacity, on their own, of swinging our growth or recession by at least a couple of percent, probably more. But we remain obsessed with the trivia of Brexit. It's an illness.
I sense Russia CAN be beaten. The more interesting question is whether the west really wants them to be beaten. The military aid from Germany, France, Spain and Italy has not been very substantial.
Of course Russia can beaten. The tricky bit is working out how to beat Russia without triggering a nuclear holocaust.
The Viet Cong managed to kick the USA's arse without triggering one.
CoL response immediately according to this with probably a November full budget?
Is this the new regime talking?
Today's article from John Redwood is pretty dismissive of the OBR forecasts, for example.
They do seem to be getting it very wrong very often recently.
It's not easy being an economic forecaster.
What will happen in Ukraine? What will happen with Covid in China? Will China's housing market implode?
Those are just three mega questions that you need to have to have a sensible view on the UK's economic growth, even before we talk about domestic issues.
FWIW I think that Russia will suffer a series of setbacks in Ukraine but prove pretty much impossible for Ukraine to beat. The result will be a painful and difficult draw which will continue the current sanction regime almost indefinitely. Not good for us or inflation generally.
On Covid, the Chinese will eventually recognise that zero Covid just doesn't work and start to join the rest of the world in moving on. May still take a while though. Eventually good but medium rather than short term.
On Chinese housing a bust is surely coming and we are already seeing the consequences with the likes of Evergrande and missed growth targets. Almost certainly bad for us but way worse for the Chinese.
I agree that each of these have the capacity, on their own, of swinging our growth or recession by at least a couple of percent, probably more. But we remain obsessed with the trivia of Brexit. It's an illness.
I sense Russia CAN be beaten. The more interesting question is whether the west really wants them to be beaten. The military aid from Germany, France, Spain and Italy has not been very substantial.
Of course Russia can beaten. The tricky bit is working out how to beat Russia without triggering a nuclear holocaust.
It's not especially tricky. They withdrew from around Kyiv without any risk of a nuclear holocaust because they couldn't advance and lost their logistics.
I doubt very much that Putin would refrain from using tactical nuclear weapons if, for example, the Russians were being driven out of the Donbas area. He is a dictator, and dictators cannot be seen to be weak by their people.
The thwarted attack on Kyiv can be blamed on incompetent generals, but the annexation of the Donbas is the primary aim of the invasion. If it fails, Putin fails, and he will almost certainly use nukes to prevent that. Why wouldn't he?
Because it wouldn't prevent it. What target do you think he would use nukes against and what would the military and political benefit to him be?
Target: advancing Ukrainian armies. Military benefit: annihilation of said armies. Political benefit: he shows was a strongman he is to his own people and saves his own skin. He's used to playing for high stakes and will gamble that the West won't escalate it to a full nuclear confrontation.
What effect do you think he could achieve that he couldn't achieve with conventional weapons? The Ukrainian army isn't going to conveniently form a target for him.
The state of RU military during this conflict they will probably tactically nuke one of their own BTGs by mistake.
There's a significant belief around that if the War ends prices will simply return to the status quo ante. And then the feckless poor will be rolling in it. So we shouldn't do owt at all.
Regarding striking, it's always going to be more needed in the public sector than private because there is a monopoly employer (the government) in so many cases setting the price.
If an employer won't negotiate salary/pay on an individual basis then they can't complain when employees are forced to negotiate on a collective basis. And that includes withdrawing labour if the pay doesn't meet their requirements.
Well there you are see. Man U top 4 @ 8s looking rather good now.
Always bet against overreaction money. 🙂
If they get Cody Gakpo on board, and Savic too, maybe a chance of top 4, I wouldn’t go further than that.
But then West Ham, Pool, Chelsea have made bad starts too, I watched Spurs against Chelsea and first half against wolves, and they definitely didn’t impress me. Arsenal have had easy fixtures, 3.0 at Bournemouth is nothing, plus they don’t have squad depth.
Arsenal and Man Utd have been given goals this round clearly offside even with the naked eye! This years VAR designed by Escher.
United goal tonight was not offside and confirmed by VAR
And they outplayed Liverpool
LFC at home to Bournemouth now surprisingly becomes a huge game.
There's a significant belief around that if the War ends prices will simply return to the status quo ante. And then the feckless poor will be rolling in it. So we shouldn't do owt at all.
I've been calling a 20 point Labour lead for ages, just as I previously called previous leads. I have been I am happy to say for once, ahead of the curve.
Once they get past the first few years the average criminal barrister will earn significantly more than the average member of the UK population even if less than corporate lawyers do. However it is mainly the average member of the UK population who pays their fees through taxes paying for CPS and legal aid
You do not know what you are talking about. No surprise there.
Honestly, I don't think it's possible to work in the criminal bar for the first decade or so of one's career without (a) having substantial private resources or (b) working in more lucrative areas of law like trusts, probate, tax etc., and cross-subsidising the criminal work.
Yes, it doesn't seem widely appreciated that the strike is purely about the criminal law/public defender rates. People point at the big income from private practice, and no doubt that's going up too, but the question is whether lawyer can afford to do the public stuff.
Once they get past the first few years the average criminal barrister will earn significantly more than the average member of the UK population even if less than corporate lawyers do. However it is mainly the average member of the UK population who pays their fees through taxes paying for CPS and legal aid
You do not know what you are talking about. No surprise there.
Which challenges the point that the average criminal barrister earns £79,800 a year where? That puts them comfortably in the top 10% of earners for the CJ work they do
Once they get past the first few years the average criminal barrister will earn significantly more than the average member of the UK population even if less than corporate lawyers do. However it is mainly the average member of the UK population who pays their fees through taxes paying for CPS and legal aid
More than half of all income tax in the UK comes from top 10% of earners, so technically it isn't really the average member of the UK population who pays.
Taxes paid include VAT and NI and fuel tax etc too, not just income tax all of which also paid by the average member of the population. Plus even some of the top 10% will earn less than the average criminal barrister, let alone a criminal QC who will be on 6 figures
But you were absolutely ferocious a few months ago that NI wasn't a tax at all but a payment of entitlement to dole and pension and NHS.
Once they get past the first few years the average criminal barrister will earn significantly more than the average member of the UK population even if less than corporate lawyers do. However it is mainly the average member of the UK population who pays their fees through taxes paying for CPS and legal aid
More than half of all income tax in the UK comes from top 10% of earners, so technically it isn't really the average member of the UK population who pays.
Taxes paid include VAT and NI and fuel tax etc too, not just income tax all of which also paid by the average member of the population. Plus even some of the top 10% will earn less than the average criminal barrister, let alone a criminal QC who will be on 6 figures
True, but they are also clever people who have spent time and money getting qualified and have options to use their intelligence, skills and training elsewhere. They are going to be paid a lot.
Look- as a taxpayer, I ought to be very happy at the idea of public sector workers being paid as little as possible. But beyond a certain point, it is the equivalent of the government going into Ryman's and stealing printer paper on the grounds that it is helping the hard-pressed taxpayer. And there have been, and are, governments that act that way, but not ones that you (I am sure) or I approve of.
By all means resent paying lawyers, doctors, top civil servants etc. But if you really don't want to pay them, you have to find a way of going without them, which is tricky.
But they are not paid nothing, they are paid on average almost £80k a year rising to almost £300k a year if they make QC. Yes more could be done at the junior aid but junior criminal barristers have never been well paid, plenty have always wanted to do it though
CoL response immediately according to this with probably a November full budget?
Is this the new regime talking?
Today's article from John Redwood is pretty dismissive of the OBR forecasts, for example.
They do seem to be getting it very wrong very often recently.
It's not easy being an economic forecaster.
What will happen in Ukraine? What will happen with Covid in China? Will China's housing market implode?
Those are just three mega questions that you need to have to have a sensible view on the UK's economic growth, even before we talk about domestic issues.
FWIW I think that Russia will suffer a series of setbacks in Ukraine but prove pretty much impossible for Ukraine to beat. The result will be a painful and difficult draw which will continue the current sanction regime almost indefinitely. Not good for us or inflation generally.
On Covid, the Chinese will eventually recognise that zero Covid just doesn't work and start to join the rest of the world in moving on. May still take a while though. Eventually good but medium rather than short term.
On Chinese housing a bust is surely coming and we are already seeing the consequences with the likes of Evergrande and missed growth targets. Almost certainly bad for us but way worse for the Chinese.
I agree that each of these have the capacity, on their own, of swinging our growth or recession by at least a couple of percent, probably more. But we remain obsessed with the trivia of Brexit. It's an illness.
I sense Russia CAN be beaten. The more interesting question is whether the west really wants them to be beaten. The military aid from Germany, France, Spain and Italy has not been very substantial.
Of course Russia can beaten. The tricky bit is working out how to beat Russia without triggering a nuclear holocaust.
The Viet Cong managed to kick the USA's arse without triggering one.
First, from Megan McArdle (perhaps my current favorite columnist): "So it’s not exactly surprising that many of those voters have sided with the amoral narcissist who acts like he respects them, rather than the institutionalists who actually have the right of the matter.
Second, from Henry Olsen (who is less negative about Trump than I am): "The same poll found that only 34 percent of independents approved of Biden’s job performance. So nearly all of the undecided voters are independents who don’t approve of Biden. What direction do you think those voters will break when they vote in November?
Maybe this time really is different, and Democrats can swim against the extreme partisan tides of our recent elections. But if I were a betting man, I wouldn’t wager on it." source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/19/polling-history-senate-midterms-job-approval/ (Olsen says that 538 "for close states all overestimated the Democrats’ performance when compared with the actual results." (I haven't checked that, but someone should.)
So Olsen says don't bet on the Democrats, and McArdle says Trump may screw things up for the Republicans.
The FSB says the perpetrator of the murder of Dugina was Ukrainian citizen Natalia Vovk who escaped to Estonia: TASS:
"'(T)he [FSB] has solved the murder of Russian journalist Darya Dugina, born in 1992,' the FSB stressed... '(T)he crime was prepared and committed by Ukrainian secret services.' Its perpetrator was identified as a citizen of Ukraine, Natalia Vovk, born in 1979.
She had arrived in Russia on July 23, 2022, together with her daughter Sofya Shaban, born in 2010. 'On the day of the murder, Vovk and Shaban attended the ... festival Tradition, where Dugina was ...an honorary guest.
On August 21, after a remote-controlled explosion of the Toyota Land Cruiser Prado car Dugina was driving, Vovk and her daughter left through the Pskov Region to Estonia,' the FSB said.
To plot the murder and gather information about Dugina’s lifestyle, Vovk and her daughter rented an apartment ... in the ...building where the victim lived. To spy on the journalist, the criminal used a Mini Cooper car. When entering Russia, the vehicle carried a license plate of the Donetsk People's Republic..., in Moscow - [one] of Kazakhstan..., and when leaving - a Ukrainian [one].
"Seven hours before the attack, Dugin had issued a vitriolic... post ...saying ...the war in Ukraine was now more important than Putin's presidency.
Dugin had claimed the war and 'desperate resistance of the Atlanto-Nazi regime in Kyiv' demands from Russia 'internal transformations'.
The tone was strongly critical of Putin.
'Increasing attacks on Crimea, attempts to arrange a nuclear explosion in Zaporizhzhya, declarations of a counter-offensive on Kherson, Zelensky's firm refusal to compromise, the West's persistence in cutting off all ties with Russia – all these are signs that they have decided to stand until the end,' he wrote.
'They can be understood: Russia actually (and this is not propaganda) challenged the West as a civilisation. So we have to go all the way to the end, too.
'The Supreme Commander-in-Chief [Putin] said that we haven't really started anything yet. Now we have to start. Whether you want it or not, we'll have to.'
He warned: 'Now the question is not whether the government wants or does not want change. Such changes are simply inevitable - even if you stand to death against their beginning, it will be possible to delay it for no more than 6 months. And then they will come anyway.'
Crucially he warned Putin that the military operation, crushing Ukraine and defeating the West 'is now more important than the power [itself].'
'The mighty forces of history have come into play, the tectonic plates have shifted. Let the old regime bury its dead. A new Russian time is coming.'"
Perhaps Dugin was "strongly critical of Putin" hours before the attack, but the Heil doesn't show that.
"(T)here are growing fears ...the attack was conducted by Putin's own loyal agents amid rumours they want to oust [him] from power."
"median", there, not "mean". Always a warning of something odd about the distribution.
And it's juniors who do most of the donkey work in courts and legal aid. "the median pay for a junior barrister was £12,700 per year."
What's not clear to me is if this is take home or if their chambers gets a cut.
60k is not a high gross income for someone working in the legal profession. This is obviously prior to deductions like employer NI, pensions etc. It would be after you have done probably two postgraduate degrees and worked at sub minimum wage for 2 years and built up years of experience working for about 80 hours a week.
Barristers in other areas of law will be earning 10 times that. Obviously most of these criminal barristers are doing a public service. They know that they can go and quit, and join other areas of law, and quickly increase their salary to a substantial degree.
They can shut down the criminal justice system, and good luck to them. It is what they have to do, to make the government see the problem, otherwise they will just carry on cutting their pay. In the end, you either have a criminal justice system, or you don't. The problems with making up an alternative cut price justice system on the hoof will quickly reveal themselves and the government won't even try it, although perhaps a useful idiot will be assigned the task, I can think of a prime contender.
The frontrunner to become Italy's next prime minister has been condemned for posting a video of a Ukrainian woman being raped by an asylum seeker in an Italian city.
Giorgia Meloni, leader of the nationalist Brothers of Italy party, was accused on Monday of shameful electioneering by her rivals after sharing the footage.
A 55-year-old woman was assaulted on a pavement in the city of Piacenza early Sunday by an asylum seeker from Guinea, local officials said.
On the grounds that it's probably cheaper than heating my house for a week, I've just booked a family holiday for October half term. We're going to Dunkeld. Youngest has a bee in her bonnet about Scotland, and about seeing a mountain, and I'm keen to indulge her. I'm very pleased. Have been hunting about holiday parks, and one is too remote, another not remote enough ... this is just the right balance between pleasant small town, the edges of Highland scenery, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Stirling relatively accessible. Following, I think, DavidL's advice, if we get some good weather we may go to the Cairnwell (I think?). Or possibly Ben Vrackie. We may find a castle to visit. I have just shown her the pictures, and some pictures of the surrounding area, and she is delighted. As am I. I haven't been to Scotland for about 20 years.
The idiot ginger cat has celebrated this development by bringing a live mouse in. Sigh.
I'd go for Schiehallion over Vrackie or the Cairnwell (chance of aliens, too - that's where the photo Leon has been going mad about was taken). It's actually less ascent than Vrackie, on an excellent path.
Definitely agree. Cairnwell is a sad place in summer (and most of the winter too, often). Schiehallion should also avoid any deer stalking disappointments as the main approach is owned by the John Muir Trust.
For autumn colour, a shortish walk and a bit of a literary reference I quite like The Birks of Aberfeldy - which are best after heavy rain - but just about anywhere round there is good. Killiecrankie etc
I often drop in at Scone Palace on the way past for personal reasons but if you like big trees then do have a look round the arboretum there.
There's loads of interesting places - you won't run short.
Don't forget to look for the beavers! They are everywhere on the Tay catchment. There's plenty of evidence to be seen all over.
On the grounds that it's probably cheaper than heating my house for a week, I've just booked a family holiday for October half term. We're going to Dunkeld. Youngest has a bee in her bonnet about Scotland, and about seeing a mountain, and I'm keen to indulge her. I'm very pleased. Have been hunting about holiday parks, and one is too remote, another not remote enough ... this is just the right balance between pleasant small town, the edges of Highland scenery, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Stirling relatively accessible. Following, I think, DavidL's advice, if we get some good weather we may go to the Cairnwell (I think?). Or possibly Ben Vrackie. We may find a castle to visit. I have just shown her the pictures, and some pictures of the surrounding area, and she is delighted. As am I. I haven't been to Scotland for about 20 years.
The idiot ginger cat has celebrated this development by bringing a live mouse in. Sigh.
Cat is convinced it is NOT gonna be invited to go along on your holiday. And is naturally pissed off.
Cunning critter is getting back at you, via quintessentially feline "offering" it KNOWS you do NOT want.
On the grounds that it's probably cheaper than heating my house for a week, I've just booked a family holiday for October half term. We're going to Dunkeld. Youngest has a bee in her bonnet about Scotland, and about seeing a mountain, and I'm keen to indulge her. I'm very pleased. Have been hunting about holiday parks, and one is too remote, another not remote enough ... this is just the right balance between pleasant small town, the edges of Highland scenery, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Stirling relatively accessible. Following, I think, DavidL's advice, if we get some good weather we may go to the Cairnwell (I think?). Or possibly Ben Vrackie. We may find a castle to visit. I have just shown her the pictures, and some pictures of the surrounding area, and she is delighted. As am I. I haven't been to Scotland for about 20 years.
The idiot ginger cat has celebrated this development by bringing a live mouse in. Sigh.
Try a pint in the Taybank in Dunkeld, you might even catch rabid Nat (though not too rabid to turn down an OBE) Dougie Maclean riffing.
So it’s not a crisis budget. No. It’s a "targeted fiscal event" - therefore, as it’s not a budget at all, ohhhh no, usual sensible checks and balances and scrutiny of what government doing in this “not a budget” from things like the Office for Budgetary Responsibility won’t apply.
2010 Tories build the OBR to prove they are responsible with the nations money and financial health - 2022 the Tories burn down the OBR to prove they are irresponsible with the nations money and financial health.
It’s so simple really, for change just read “exactly what Sneaky Boris would try to get away with only without the old showbiz, charisma and powers of persuading us better times lie ahead.”
Will the last one cashing out the “Liz to get poll bounce” please turn out the light.
The FSB says the perpetrator of the murder of Dugina was Ukrainian citizen Natalia Vovk who escaped to Estonia: TASS:
"'(T)he [FSB] has solved the murder of Russian journalist Darya Dugina, born in 1992,' the FSB stressed... '(T)he crime was prepared and committed by Ukrainian secret services.' Its perpetrator was identified as a citizen of Ukraine, Natalia Vovk, born in 1979.
She had arrived in Russia on July 23, 2022, together with her daughter Sofya Shaban, born in 2010. 'On the day of the murder, Vovk and Shaban attended the ... festival Tradition, where Dugina was ...an honorary guest.
On August 21, after a remote-controlled explosion of the Toyota Land Cruiser Prado car Dugina was driving, Vovk and her daughter left through the Pskov Region to Estonia,' the FSB said.
To plot the murder and gather information about Dugina’s lifestyle, Vovk and her daughter rented an apartment ... in the ...building where the victim lived. To spy on the journalist, the criminal used a Mini Cooper car. When entering Russia, the vehicle carried a license plate of the Donetsk People's Republic..., in Moscow - [one] of Kazakhstan..., and when leaving - a Ukrainian [one].
"Seven hours before the attack, Dugin had issued a vitriolic... post ...saying ...the war in Ukraine was now more important than Putin's presidency.
Dugin had claimed the war and 'desperate resistance of the Atlanto-Nazi regime in Kyiv' demands from Russia 'internal transformations'.
The tone was strongly critical of Putin.
'Increasing attacks on Crimea, attempts to arrange a nuclear explosion in Zaporizhzhya, declarations of a counter-offensive on Kherson, Zelensky's firm refusal to compromise, the West's persistence in cutting off all ties with Russia – all these are signs that they have decided to stand until the end,' he wrote.
'They can be understood: Russia actually (and this is not propaganda) challenged the West as a civilisation. So we have to go all the way to the end, too.
'The Supreme Commander-in-Chief [Putin] said that we haven't really started anything yet. Now we have to start. Whether you want it or not, we'll have to.'
He warned: 'Now the question is not whether the government wants or does not want change. Such changes are simply inevitable - even if you stand to death against their beginning, it will be possible to delay it for no more than 6 months. And then they will come anyway.'
Crucially he warned Putin that the military operation, crushing Ukraine and defeating the West 'is now more important than the power [itself].'
'The mighty forces of history have come into play, the tectonic plates have shifted. Let the old regime bury its dead. A new Russian time is coming.'"
Perhaps Dugin was "strongly critical of Putin" hours before the attack, but the Heil doesn't show that.
"(T)here are growing fears ...the attack was conducted by Putin's own loyal agents amid rumours they want to oust [him] from power."
The Mail stuff is saying Putin's a pussy and needs replacing. Sounds pretty critical.
First, from Megan McArdle (perhaps my current favorite columnist): "So it’s not exactly surprising that many of those voters have sided with the amoral narcissist who acts like he respects them, rather than the institutionalists who actually have the right of the matter.
Second, from Henry Olsen (who is less negative about Trump than I am): "The same poll found that only 34 percent of independents approved of Biden’s job performance. So nearly all of the undecided voters are independents who don’t approve of Biden. What direction do you think those voters will break when they vote in November?
Maybe this time really is different, and Democrats can swim against the extreme partisan tides of our recent elections. But if I were a betting man, I wouldn’t wager on it." source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/19/polling-history-senate-midterms-job-approval/ (Olsen says that 538 "for close states all overestimated the Democrats’ performance when compared with the actual results." (I haven't checked that, but someone should.)
So Olsen says don't bet on the Democrats, and McArdle says Trump may screw things up for the Republicans.
Me? I'm still thinking about the problem.
It is worth remembering that Senate races don't necessarily move in lockstep with the House and Presidential approval.
In 2018, the Republicans lost the House by 8%, and yet gained two Senate seats.
Graphene pioneer Paragraf threatens to quit UK over government ‘paralysis’
One of the UK’s most promising science-based start-ups has threatened to leave the country over what its boss called political “paralysis” and a lack of clarity in national industrial strategy.
"'(T)he [FSB] has solved the murder of Russian journalist Darya Dugina, born in 1992,' the FSB stressed... '(T)he crime was prepared and committed by Ukrainian secret services.' Its perpetrator was identified as a citizen of Ukraine, Natalia Vovk, born in 1979.
She had arrived in Russia on July 23, 2022, together with her daughter Sofya Shaban, born in 2010. 'On the day of the murder, Vovk and Shaban attended the ... festival Tradition, where Dugina was ...an honorary guest.
In Ukraine, it is traditional for secret agents to take their 12 year old daughters on assassination missions.
Graphene pioneer Paragraf threatens to quit UK over government ‘paralysis’
One of the UK’s most promising science-based start-ups has threatened to leave the country over what its boss called political “paralysis” and a lack of clarity in national industrial strategy.
Don’t worry, Kwasi Kwarteng, when he gets into Treasury, will address the issues with industrial strategy left by the numpty in BEIS, one…er…Kwasi Kwarteng.
Graphene pioneer Paragraf threatens to quit UK over government ‘paralysis’
One of the UK’s most promising science-based start-ups has threatened to leave the country over what its boss called political “paralysis” and a lack of clarity in national industrial strategy.
Graphene pioneer Paragraf threatens to quit UK over government ‘paralysis’
One of the UK’s most promising science-based start-ups has threatened to leave the country over what its boss called political “paralysis” and a lack of clarity in national industrial strategy.
The graphene bubble has burst, and the government has halted the subsidies? Try fleecing some US investors instead?
Thomas cited issues including post-Brexit difficulties in attracting talent and incoherent or insufficient support for firms spun out of university research, as well as a lack of clarity on issues ranging from the implications of new national security rules to delays in forumlating a strategy for the semiconductor industry.
Graphene pioneer Paragraf threatens to quit UK over government ‘paralysis’
One of the UK’s most promising science-based start-ups has threatened to leave the country over what its boss called political “paralysis” and a lack of clarity in national industrial strategy.
The graphene bubble has burst, and the government has halted the subsidies? Try fleecing some US investors instead?
Thomas cited issues including post-Brexit difficulties in attracting talent and incoherent or insufficient support for firms spun out of university research, as well as a lack of clarity on issues ranging from the implications of new national security rules to delays in forumlating a strategy for the semiconductor industry.
Graphene pioneer Paragraf threatens to quit UK over government ‘paralysis’
One of the UK’s most promising science-based start-ups has threatened to leave the country over what its boss called political “paralysis” and a lack of clarity in national industrial strategy.
Graphene pioneer Paragraf threatens to quit UK over government ‘paralysis’
One of the UK’s most promising science-based start-ups has threatened to leave the country over what its boss called political “paralysis” and a lack of clarity in national industrial strategy.
The graphene bubble has burst, and the government has halted the subsidies? Try fleecing some US investors instead?
Thomas cited issues including post-Brexit difficulties in attracting talent and incoherent or insufficient support for firms spun out of university research, as well as a lack of clarity on issues ranging from the implications of new national security rules to delays in forumlating a strategy for the semiconductor industry.
Brexit really screwed the pooch.
There is the basic problem that we don’t have a domestic semiconductor manufacturing industry of any significance, which was always a potential problem for a promising startup like Paragraf. But it’s true that Brexit in general, and the current administration in particular, have very likely exacerbated the difficulties faced.
The motion is long on narrative and hyperbolic claims and short on legal substance. At times, it ignores significant problems that a legitimate legal motion would take head on…
"'(T)he [FSB] has solved the murder of Russian journalist Darya Dugina, born in 1992,' the FSB stressed... '(T)he crime was prepared and committed by Ukrainian secret services.' Its perpetrator was identified as a citizen of Ukraine, Natalia Vovk, born in 1979.
She had arrived in Russia on July 23, 2022, together with her daughter Sofya Shaban, born in 2010. 'On the day of the murder, Vovk and Shaban attended the ... festival Tradition, where Dugina was ...an honorary guest.
In Ukraine, it is traditional for secret agents to take their 12 year old daughters on assassination missions.
It’s about the only assassination the Russians have managed to “solve” in the last decade. That they did so in two days is impressive, if only for the absurdity of the claim.
It massively more likely that this was arranged by Putin’s regime. Silences a critic*, who had real political ambitions of her own, and fabricates a motive for increased bombing of Ukraine.
https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1561872055720726528 Russia has not yet targeted government buildings in Kyiv. And this US alert doesn’t say that’s what Russia is planning to do. But there have been calls in the past 24 hours by Russian officials & propagandists to hit Ukraine government buildings after the killing of Daria Dugina.…
Unlike the cut price British ones, some German politicians don’t come cheap.
https://twitter.com/minna_alander/status/1561634385572597760 Since there’s still some disbelief about this outside of Germany: yes, an “environmental foundation” founded by Minister President of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Manuela Schwesig (SPD), received €192 million from Gazprom via their subsidiary NordStream 2 AG, in Feb-Nov 2021…
Graphene pioneer Paragraf threatens to quit UK over government ‘paralysis’
One of the UK’s most promising science-based start-ups has threatened to leave the country over what its boss called political “paralysis” and a lack of clarity in national industrial strategy.
The graphene bubble has burst, and the government has halted the subsidies? Try fleecing some US investors instead?
Thomas cited issues including post-Brexit difficulties in attracting talent and incoherent or insufficient support for firms spun out of university research, as well as a lack of clarity on issues ranging from the implications of new national security rules to delays in forumlating a strategy for the semiconductor industry.
Brexit really screwed the pooch.
There is the basic problem that we don’t have a domestic semiconductor manufacturing industry of any significance, which was always a potential problem for a promising startup like Paragraf. But it’s true that Brexit in general, and the current administration in particular, have very likely exacerbated the difficulties faced.
Besides Brexit, which never helps, this government does seem better at announcing that it is broadly in favour of, or against, something, than actually doing anything about it. I'd wager Jacob Rees-Mogg has not moved any of the emergency exit signs in the Dartford Tunnel, for instance. Likewise new British technology companies.
On the grounds that it's probably cheaper than heating my house for a week, I've just booked a family holiday for October half term. We're going to Dunkeld. Youngest has a bee in her bonnet about Scotland, and about seeing a mountain, and I'm keen to indulge her. I'm very pleased. Have been hunting about holiday parks, and one is too remote, another not remote enough ... this is just the right balance between pleasant small town, the edges of Highland scenery, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Stirling relatively accessible. Following, I think, DavidL's advice, if we get some good weather we may go to the Cairnwell (I think?). Or possibly Ben Vrackie. We may find a castle to visit. I have just shown her the pictures, and some pictures of the surrounding area, and she is delighted. As am I. I haven't been to Scotland for about 20 years.
The idiot ginger cat has celebrated this development by bringing a live mouse in. Sigh.
That part of Scotland has the best tree growing conditions and autumn colours in Europe. Pic of Faskally Wood near Pitlochry, where there will be light show on the Autumn theme
Unlike the cut price British ones, some German politicians don’t come cheap.
https://twitter.com/minna_alander/status/1561634385572597760 Since there’s still some disbelief about this outside of Germany: yes, an “environmental foundation” founded by Minister President of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Manuela Schwesig (SPD), received €192 million from Gazprom via their subsidiary NordStream 2 AG, in Feb-Nov 2021…
What's extraordinary is not just the amount, but the fact that it was given over a ten month period.
Fast work. I wonder what the long-term political effect of many small eastern working together against Russia will be? Will there be long-term cooperation in other areas?
"Today after 25 years of sabotage was restored the railway connection between Moldova and Ukraine. For @Ukrzaliznytsia it took less than 1 month (!) to construct a 21-km long link Berezine - Basarabyaska. This transport corridor will let to fix the bottleneck between 2 countries."
I was just catching up on some of HYUFD's deluded comments about speeding up infrastructure programs using infinite resources. Speaking as a professional building multi-billion usd infrastructure projects - there is a technical term for this strategy:
The Telegraph currently offers a 3-month free trial but remember to cancel before it rolls over to charging a tenner a month (set a calendar reminder or something).
Blair's gist is:- GCSEs are pointless. A-levels are too narrow because of AI and automation, and something like the International Baccalaureate would be better (although aiui many schools that have tried IB or Pre-U are returning to A-levels). Exams should be largely replaced by continuous assessment. Ofsted ratings are pointless because parents do not use their assessments to choose schools.
I can't see anything there that has not been said by other people (even by me and others on pb) but maybe Blair is taken more seriously in Whitehall, and there will be a new EdSec in a fortnight.
Ironic to have an education piece under a pb header asking if Our best days are still to come?
Football: pleasantly surprised Manchester United beat Liverpool last night (backed it with a free bet at 5). Surprised also that Juventus only drew with Sampdoria.
F1: markets now up, beyond win (already had a little on Perez each way at 23).
CoL response immediately according to this with probably a November full budget?
Is this the new regime talking?
Today's article from John Redwood is pretty dismissive of the OBR forecasts, for example.
They do seem to be getting it very wrong very often recently.
It's not easy being an economic forecaster.
What will happen in Ukraine? What will happen with Covid in China? Will China's housing market implode?
Those are just three mega questions that you need to have to have a sensible view on the UK's economic growth, even before we talk about domestic issues.
FWIW I think that Russia will suffer a series of setbacks in Ukraine but prove pretty much impossible for Ukraine to beat. The result will be a painful and difficult draw which will continue the current sanction regime almost indefinitely. Not good for us or inflation generally.
On Covid, the Chinese will eventually recognise that zero Covid just doesn't work and start to join the rest of the world in moving on. May still take a while though. Eventually good but medium rather than short term.
On Chinese housing a bust is surely coming and we are already seeing the consequences with the likes of Evergrande and missed growth targets. Almost certainly bad for us but way worse for the Chinese.
I agree that each of these have the capacity, on their own, of swinging our growth or recession by at least a couple of percent, probably more. But we remain obsessed with the trivia of Brexit. It's an illness.
I sense Russia CAN be beaten. The more interesting question is whether the west really wants them to be beaten. The military aid from Germany, France, Spain and Italy has not been very substantial.
Of course Russia can beaten. The tricky bit is working out how to beat Russia without triggering a nuclear holocaust.
The Viet Cong managed to kick the USA's arse without triggering one.
The USA wasn't a dictatorship.
Although it was being run by Nixon, whose behaviour had become so erratic that Robert Schlesinger issued secret instructions that any launch order from the White House should be checked with him or Henry Kissinger before being actioned.
The question is whether Shoygu would, or would want to, do something similar if Putin had his own bunker moment.
So it’s not a crisis budget. No. It’s a "targeted fiscal event" - therefore, as it’s not a budget at all, ohhhh no, usual sensible checks and balances and scrutiny of what government doing in this “not a budget” from things like the Office for Budgetary Responsibility won’t apply.
2010 Tories build the OBR to prove they are responsible with the nations money and financial health - 2022 the Tories burn down the OBR to prove they are irresponsible with the nations money and financial health.
It’s so simple really, for change just read “exactly what Sneaky Boris would try to get away with only without the old showbiz, charisma and powers of persuading us better times lie ahead.”
Will the last one cashing out the “Liz to get poll bounce” please turn out the light.
Creating the OBR was probably the best thing the 2010-2022 Tory government did. If they burn that down now there really won't be any kind of positive legacy from these miserable, wasted years.
The Telegraph currently offers a 3-month free trial but remember to cancel before it rolls over to charging a tenner a month (set a calendar reminder or something).
Blair's gist is:- GCSEs are pointless. A-levels are too narrow because of AI and automation, and something like the International Baccalaureate would be better (although aiui many schools that have tried IB or Pre-U are returning to A-levels). Exams should be largely replaced by continuous assessment. Ofsted ratings are pointless because parents do not use their assessments to choose schools.
I can't see anything there that has not been said by other people (even by me and others on pb) but maybe Blair is taken more seriously in Whitehall, and there will be a new EdSec in a fortnight.
Ironic to have an education piece under a pb header asking if Our best days are still to come?
Good morning
I recently managed to get a year digital access to the telegraph for £29
CoL response immediately according to this with probably a November full budget?
Is this the new regime talking?
Today's article from John Redwood is pretty dismissive of the OBR forecasts, for example.
They do seem to be getting it very wrong very often recently.
It's not easy being an economic forecaster.
What will happen in Ukraine? What will happen with Covid in China? Will China's housing market implode?
Those are just three mega questions that you need to have to have a sensible view on the UK's economic growth, even before we talk about domestic issues.
FWIW I think that Russia will suffer a series of setbacks in Ukraine but prove pretty much impossible for Ukraine to beat. The result will be a painful and difficult draw which will continue the current sanction regime almost indefinitely. Not good for us or inflation generally.
On Covid, the Chinese will eventually recognise that zero Covid just doesn't work and start to join the rest of the world in moving on. May still take a while though. Eventually good but medium rather than short term.
On Chinese housing a bust is surely coming and we are already seeing the consequences with the likes of Evergrande and missed growth targets. Almost certainly bad for us but way worse for the Chinese.
I agree that each of these have the capacity, on their own, of swinging our growth or recession by at least a couple of percent, probably more. But we remain obsessed with the trivia of Brexit. It's an illness.
I sense Russia CAN be beaten. The more interesting question is whether the west really wants them to be beaten. The military aid from Germany, France, Spain and Italy has not been very substantial.
Of course Russia can beaten. The tricky bit is working out how to beat Russia without triggering a nuclear holocaust.
It's not especially tricky. They withdrew from around Kyiv without any risk of a nuclear holocaust because they couldn't advance and lost their logistics.
I doubt very much that Putin would refrain from using tactical nuclear weapons if, for example, the Russians were being driven out of the Donbas area. He is a dictator, and dictators cannot be seen to be weak by their people.
The thwarted attack on Kyiv can be blamed on incompetent generals, but the annexation of the Donbas is the primary aim of the invasion. If it fails, Putin fails, and he will almost certainly use nukes to prevent that. Why wouldn't he?
The Russians did not use nukes when they got their backsides kicked out of Afghanistan after ten years of bitter conflict.
If Putin is made enough to use nukes, he will use nukes under any pretence. If we allow our fear of his using nukes to stop helping Ukraine, he will use that fear against us again. "If you do not buy our gas, it will be a threat to Russia." or "Give us those dissidents."
Worse, it will tell other evil regimes that just the threat of nukes will cause us to back down from doing the right thing - and this will cause them to want nukes all the more. Whereas if we do not give in to that fear, then nukes become less attractive.
It is understandable to be scared, but we should not allow fear to enable us to be continually blackmailed by that fear - especially when giving in to that fear is morally the wrong thing to do.
I was just catching up on some of HYUFD's deluded comments about speeding up infrastructure programs using infinite resources. Speaking as a professional building multi-billion usd infrastructure projects - there is a technical term for this strategy:
ABSOLUTE BOLLOCKS.
That is going a bit too far. To begin with I simply want the Government to understand that engineering resources are specialists who could up sticks and move abroad in weeks.
Which means that we need to establish a long term strategy of having a long term plan of fully committed new infrastructure projects where people leave project 1 move on to project 2 and know that in x years time projects 4 and 5 are in planning waiting for them
The Telegraph currently offers a 3-month free trial but remember to cancel before it rolls over to charging a tenner a month (set a calendar reminder or something).
Blair's gist is:- GCSEs are pointless. A-levels are too narrow because of AI and automation, and something like the International Baccalaureate would be better (although aiui many schools that have tried IB or Pre-U are returning to A-levels). Exams should be largely replaced by continuous assessment. Ofsted ratings are pointless because parents do not use their assessments to choose schools.
I can't see anything there that has not been said by other people (even by me and others on pb) but maybe Blair is taken more seriously in Whitehall, and there will be a new EdSec in a fortnight.
Ironic to have an education piece under a pb header asking if Our best days are still to come?
I haven't read the article, but to take your summary in order:
1) Agree with him. They are not leaving exams, they are so badly written they don't really tell you very much and because they're so prescriptive you have to spend ages undoing the damage before you can do anything useful. Plus they cost a fortune.
2) Narrowness isn't really the issue, although it is an issue. The issue, again, that they don't set people up for further study and the exams are not well written or well assessed.
3) Depends on the subject. In some subjects exams are sensible and probably the best choice for assessment. In others they are at best a blunt instrument and in some they're actually worse than useless (art springs to mind). However, while there needs to be a sortout of them you would need to give serious thought beforehand to who would actually be running them.
4) There are all sorts of issues with OFSTED of which the fact that their ratings are more nonsensical than a Cummings excuse for breaking lockdown is just one. The fact that they are wilfully committing major safeguarding breaches during inspections to test school policies on the matter, for example, is a much bigger problem. The fact that their role is not really to improve education but to bring schools firmly under the thumb of the DfE to justify everyone's jobs is another. The fact it is run by a failed investment manager who literally does not know what safeguarding is and is responsible for the appalling state of our exam system tells you all you need to know about the system's real priorities.
The difficulty is that making such changes now, on top of the years of changes we've already had, would be even more exhausting and demoralising for staff and see the leaving rate rise rapidly.
One reason Felix spouted so much nonsense on workload and accused me of being lazy, a bad time manager and feckless despite having been a teacher himself is because he only went through one major reorganisation, in the 1980s with the introduction of GCSEs and the National Curriculum, which didn't actually affect History that much (and on his own account, he never bothered to do the work himself and got everyone around him to do it, which might explain why everyone around him complained about workload).
More recent reforms have involved truly shocking amounts of work, because the entire curriculum, assessment system and indeed basic philosophy has been repeatedly changing and OFSTED have repeatedly demanded detailed documentation to show how it's been done (despite their public claims they wouldn't). This would be similar, if it went ahead.
The system's at snapping point. If they tried to shake it, it will break entirely because the goodwill Cyclefree refers to simply isn't there anymore.
"'(T)he [FSB] has solved the murder of Russian journalist Darya Dugina, born in 1992,' the FSB stressed... '(T)he crime was prepared and committed by Ukrainian secret services.' Its perpetrator was identified as a citizen of Ukraine, Natalia Vovk, born in 1979.
She had arrived in Russia on July 23, 2022, together with her daughter Sofya Shaban, born in 2010. 'On the day of the murder, Vovk and Shaban attended the ... festival Tradition, where Dugina was ...an honorary guest.
In Ukraine, it is traditional for secret agents to take their 12 year old daughters on assassination missions.
They really do believe in bring you child to work days to ensure everyone gets some work experience
So it’s not a crisis budget. No. It’s a "targeted fiscal event" - therefore, as it’s not a budget at all, ohhhh no, usual sensible checks and balances and scrutiny of what government doing in this “not a budget” from things like the Office for Budgetary Responsibility won’t apply.
2010 Tories build the OBR to prove they are responsible with the nations money and financial health - 2022 the Tories burn down the OBR to prove they are irresponsible with the nations money and financial health.
It’s so simple really, for change just read “exactly what Sneaky Boris would try to get away with only without the old showbiz, charisma and powers of persuading us better times lie ahead.”
Will the last one cashing out the “Liz to get poll bounce” please turn out the light.
Creating the OBR was probably the best thing the 2010-2022 Tory government did. If they burn that down now there really won't be any kind of positive legacy from these miserable, wasted years.
There was a great reforming agenda from 2010-2013 in areas like education, welfare, pensions, tax and budgetary responsibility and then the Coalition ran out of puff due to the squabbles over Lords Reform, the aftermath of the AV referendum and the EU. It drastically underfunded defence. Climate change initiatives went pretty well - good progress was made after 2010.
What surprised me was how thin the Conservative prospectus was between 2015 and 2016, before the EU referendum. After I think Industrial Strategy and Levelling Up have been good initiatives but insufficiently funded to deliver regional infrastructure and town regeneration.
NHS and pensions have crowded out almost everything else - it is very likely this would have happened under a Labour administration as well, but with a much higher tax base.
I was just catching up on some of HYUFD's deluded comments about speeding up infrastructure programs using infinite resources. Speaking as a professional building multi-billion usd infrastructure projects - there is a technical term for this strategy:
ABSOLUTE BOLLOCKS.
That is going a bit too far. To begin with I simply want the Government to understand that engineering resources are specialists who could up sticks and move abroad in weeks.
Which means that we need to establish a long term strategy of having a long term plan of fully committed new infrastructure projects where people leave project 1 move on to project 2 and know that in x years time projects 4 and 5 are in planning waiting for them
The thing is that engineering and megaproject resources are limited and aren't particularly fungible with others - the experience and training takes years.
So you can't really throw money at it to accelerate the supply cap; it would probably just inflate prices - you can build apprenticeship schools and fund more university places for engineers but the payoff takes years and you need a steady downstream pipeline, like you say, for future employment.
We probably already have this but it's in energy for the forseeable and not transport.
So it’s not a crisis budget. No. It’s a "targeted fiscal event" - therefore, as it’s not a budget at all, ohhhh no, usual sensible checks and balances and scrutiny of what government doing in this “not a budget” from things like the Office for Budgetary Responsibility won’t apply.
2010 Tories build the OBR to prove they are responsible with the nations money and financial health - 2022 the Tories burn down the OBR to prove they are irresponsible with the nations money and financial health.
It’s so simple really, for change just read “exactly what Sneaky Boris would try to get away with only without the old showbiz, charisma and powers of persuading us better times lie ahead.”
Will the last one cashing out the “Liz to get poll bounce” please turn out the light.
Creating the OBR was probably the best thing the 2010-2022 Tory government did. If they burn that down now there really won't be any kind of positive legacy from these miserable, wasted years.
There was a great reforming agenda from 2010-2013 in areas like education, welfare, pensions, tax and budgetary responsibility and then the Coalition ran out of puff due to the squabbles over Lords Reform, the aftermath of the AV referendum and the EU. It drastically underfunded defence. Climate change initiatives went pretty well - good progress was made after 2010.
You've left Lansley's health reforms off your list.
But the bigger problem is, yes, they made major reforms in all those areas and every single one has been a calamitous failure. Pensions are an even worse shambles than under Brown, which is saying something. UC has never worked as intended. Education, well, the best thing that can be said is that the people running it were just very thick and that's maybe why their reforms achieved the opposite of what was intended. Tax and budgetary responsibility is again a mess (IR35 says hello) and on energy policy as we can now see they got it spectacularly wrong.
The coalition was the best government of the last fifty years. Which says a great deal about the other governments in that time.
"'(T)he [FSB] has solved the murder of Russian journalist Darya Dugina, born in 1992,' the FSB stressed... '(T)he crime was prepared and committed by Ukrainian secret services.' Its perpetrator was identified as a citizen of Ukraine, Natalia Vovk, born in 1979.
She had arrived in Russia on July 23, 2022, together with her daughter Sofya Shaban, born in 2010. 'On the day of the murder, Vovk and Shaban attended the ... festival Tradition, where Dugina was ...an honorary guest.
In Ukraine, it is traditional for secret agents to take their 12 year old daughters on assassination missions.
They really do believe in bring you child to work days to ensure everyone gets some work experience
"'(T)he [FSB] has solved the murder of Russian journalist Darya Dugina, born in 1992,' the FSB stressed... '(T)he crime was prepared and committed by Ukrainian secret services.' Its perpetrator was identified as a citizen of Ukraine, Natalia Vovk, born in 1979.
She had arrived in Russia on July 23, 2022, together with her daughter Sofya Shaban, born in 2010. 'On the day of the murder, Vovk and Shaban attended the ... festival Tradition, where Dugina was ...an honorary guest.
In Ukraine, it is traditional for secret agents to take their 12 year old daughters on assassination missions.
They really do believe in bring you child to work days to ensure everyone gets some work experience
Graphene pioneer Paragraf threatens to quit UK over government ‘paralysis’
One of the UK’s most promising science-based start-ups has threatened to leave the country over what its boss called political “paralysis” and a lack of clarity in national industrial strategy.
The graphene bubble has burst, and the government has halted the subsidies? Try fleecing some US investors instead?
Thomas cited issues including post-Brexit difficulties in attracting talent and incoherent or insufficient support for firms spun out of university research, as well as a lack of clarity on issues ranging from the implications of new national security rules to delays in forumlating a strategy for the semiconductor industry.
Brexit really screwed the pooch.
There is the basic problem that we don’t have a domestic semiconductor manufacturing industry of any significance, which was always a potential problem for a promising startup like Paragraf. But it’s true that Brexit in general, and the current administration in particular, have very likely exacerbated the difficulties faced.
Besides Brexit, which never helps, this government does seem better at announcing that it is broadly in favour of, or against, something, than actually doing anything about it. I'd wager Jacob Rees-Mogg has not moved any of the emergency exit signs in the Dartford Tunnel, for instance. Likewise new British technology companies.
I doubt there is a single minister who has any idea what Paragraf does.
"'(T)he [FSB] has solved the murder of Russian journalist Darya Dugina, born in 1992,' the FSB stressed... '(T)he crime was prepared and committed by Ukrainian secret services.' Its perpetrator was identified as a citizen of Ukraine, Natalia Vovk, born in 1979.
She had arrived in Russia on July 23, 2022, together with her daughter Sofya Shaban, born in 2010. 'On the day of the murder, Vovk and Shaban attended the ... festival Tradition, where Dugina was ...an honorary guest.
In Ukraine, it is traditional for secret agents to take their 12 year old daughters on assassination missions.
They really do believe in bring you child to work days to ensure everyone gets some work experience
Graphene pioneer Paragraf threatens to quit UK over government ‘paralysis’
One of the UK’s most promising science-based start-ups has threatened to leave the country over what its boss called political “paralysis” and a lack of clarity in national industrial strategy.
The graphene bubble has burst, and the government has halted the subsidies? Try fleecing some US investors instead?
Thomas cited issues including post-Brexit difficulties in attracting talent and incoherent or insufficient support for firms spun out of university research, as well as a lack of clarity on issues ranging from the implications of new national security rules to delays in forumlating a strategy for the semiconductor industry.
Brexit really screwed the pooch.
There is the basic problem that we don’t have a domestic semiconductor manufacturing industry of any significance, which was always a potential problem for a promising startup like Paragraf. But it’s true that Brexit in general, and the current administration in particular, have very likely exacerbated the difficulties faced.
Besides Brexit, which never helps, this government does seem better at announcing that it is broadly in favour of, or against, something, than actually doing anything about it. I'd wager Jacob Rees-Mogg has not moved any of the emergency exit signs in the Dartford Tunnel, for instance. Likewise new British technology companies.
I doubt there is a single minister who has any idea what Paragraf does.
The system's at snapping point. If they tried to shake it, it will break entirely because the goodwill Cyclefree refers to simply isn't there anymore.
There is no goodwill left anywhere within the public sector - the goodwill has been abused for so long that it's gone and is very unlikely to ever return...
Comments
But then West Ham, Pool, Chelsea have made bad starts too, I watched Spurs against Chelsea and first half against wolves, and they definitely didn’t impress me. Arsenal have had easy fixtures, 3.0 at Bournemouth is nothing, plus they don’t have squad depth.
Arsenal and Man Utd have been given goals this round clearly offside even with the naked eye! This years VAR designed by Escher.
Have a great holiday
And they outplayed Liverpool
This is a problem which was persisted since at least the 1990's. Criminal justice is an area where the expenditure of not very large sums of money by the government would actually yield clear and obvious benefits. These are problems that can be fixed by spending hundreds of millions of pounds, not billions.
And, administering justice is really the most basic function of government.
The thwarted attack on Kyiv can be blamed on incompetent generals, but the annexation of the Donbas is the primary aim of the invasion. If it fails, Putin fails, and he will almost certainly use nukes to prevent that. Why wouldn't he?
https://www.walkhighlands.co.uk/munros/schiehallion.php
Loch Tummel and Loch Rannoch are beautiful too.
Have a look at National Trust for Scotland and Historic Scotland websites, and bring your [English] NT and English Heritage cards if you have them - there is some cross-concession, depending on details.
But NB some ongoing works - https://members.historic-scotland.gov.uk/places
There's also Tullibardine distillery nearby that makes good whisky but isn't as pretty as the other ones I've mentioned.
Look- as a taxpayer, I ought to be very happy at the idea of public sector workers being paid as little as possible. But beyond a certain point, it is the equivalent of the government going into Ryman's and stealing printer paper on the grounds that it is helping the hard-pressed taxpayer. And there have been, and are, governments that act that way, but not ones that you (I am sure) or I approve of.
By all means resent paying lawyers, doctors, top civil servants etc. But if you really don't want to pay them, you have to find a way of going without them, which is tricky.
(As an aside to the figures above, I wonder what the price of French high speed rail per km would be if (say) Paris & Lyon were as close as London & Birmingham? I suspect the French per km costs are flattered by the mile after mile of flat farmland they get to cross relatively cheaply.)
@drjennings
·
10h
Inflation at 19% after a decade of stagnant real wages is going to mean acute levels of deprivation.
It's also why, with the greatest respect to my friends and fellow twitter wafflers, I find all the talk of a polling honeymoon for Truss preposterous.
https://twitter.com/drjennings/status/1561680671701180416
From the Bellamy Review - https://twitter.com/rcrimmins7/status/1561819403846651907?s=21&t=B7XM114mLHEVmphBUu8XSg
I'd bet on Labour being 20 points ahead in at least one poll before the end of winter.
And then the feckless poor will be rolling in it. So we shouldn't do owt at all.
If an employer won't negotiate salary/pay on an individual basis then they can't complain when employees are forced to negotiate on a collective basis. And that includes withdrawing labour if the pay doesn't meet their requirements.
Welcome to the 20 point lead club @Ratters
First, from Megan McArdle (perhaps my current favorite columnist): "So it’s not exactly surprising that many of those voters have sided with the amoral narcissist who acts like he respects them, rather than the institutionalists who actually have the right of the matter.
This is bad for the Republican Party, which is going to lose at least some elections it should have won in November, and bad for America, which needs two healthy political parties — and certainly doesn’t need another four years of Trump."
source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/21/trump-endorsements-senate-midterms-blowback/
Second, from Henry Olsen (who is less negative about Trump than I am): "The same poll found that only 34 percent of independents approved of Biden’s job performance. So nearly all of the undecided voters are independents who don’t approve of Biden. What direction do you think those voters will break when they vote in November?
Maybe this time really is different, and Democrats can swim against the extreme partisan tides of our recent elections. But if I were a betting man, I wouldn’t wager on it."
source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/19/polling-history-senate-midterms-job-approval/
(Olsen says that 538 "for close states all overestimated the Democrats’ performance when compared with the actual results." (I haven't checked that, but someone should.)
So Olsen says don't bet on the Democrats, and McArdle says Trump may screw things up for the Republicans.
Me? I'm still thinking about the problem.
"'(T)he [FSB] has solved the murder of Russian journalist Darya Dugina, born in 1992,' the FSB stressed... '(T)he crime was prepared and committed by Ukrainian secret services.' Its perpetrator was identified as a citizen of Ukraine, Natalia Vovk, born in 1979.
She had arrived in Russia on July 23, 2022, together with her daughter Sofya Shaban, born in 2010. 'On the day of the murder, Vovk and Shaban attended the ... festival Tradition, where Dugina was ...an honorary guest.
On August 21, after a remote-controlled explosion of the Toyota Land Cruiser Prado car Dugina was driving, Vovk and her daughter left through the Pskov Region to Estonia,' the FSB said.
To plot the murder and gather information about Dugina’s lifestyle, Vovk and her daughter rented an apartment ... in the ...building where the victim lived. To spy on the journalist, the criminal used a Mini Cooper car. When entering Russia, the vehicle carried a license plate of the Donetsk People's Republic..., in Moscow - [one] of Kazakhstan..., and when leaving - a Ukrainian [one].
Video footage of Vovk.
Write-up in the Heil:
"Seven hours before the attack, Dugin had issued a vitriolic... post ...saying ...the war in Ukraine was now more important than Putin's presidency.
Dugin had claimed the war and 'desperate resistance of the Atlanto-Nazi regime in Kyiv' demands from Russia 'internal transformations'.
The tone was strongly critical of Putin.
'Increasing attacks on Crimea, attempts to arrange a nuclear explosion in Zaporizhzhya, declarations of a counter-offensive on Kherson, Zelensky's firm refusal to compromise, the West's persistence in cutting off all ties with Russia – all these are signs that they have decided to stand until the end,' he wrote.
'They can be understood: Russia actually (and this is not propaganda) challenged the West as a civilisation. So we have to go all the way to the end, too.
'The Supreme Commander-in-Chief [Putin] said that we haven't really started anything yet. Now we have to start. Whether you want it or not, we'll have to.'
He warned: 'Now the question is not whether the government wants or does not want change. Such changes are simply inevitable - even if you stand to death against their beginning, it will be possible to delay it for no more than 6 months. And then they will come anyway.'
Crucially he warned Putin that the military operation, crushing Ukraine and defeating the West 'is now more important than the power [itself].'
'The mighty forces of history have come into play, the tectonic plates have shifted. Let the old regime bury its dead. A new Russian time is coming.'"
Perhaps Dugin was "strongly critical of Putin" hours before the attack, but the Heil doesn't show that.
"(T)here are growing fears ...the attack was conducted by Putin's own loyal agents amid rumours they want to oust [him] from power."
Barristers in other areas of law will be earning 10 times that. Obviously most of these criminal barristers are doing a public service. They know that they can go and quit, and join other areas of law, and quickly increase their salary to a substantial degree.
They can shut down the criminal justice system, and good luck to them. It is what they have to do, to make the government see the problem, otherwise they will just carry on cutting their pay. In the end, you either have a criminal justice system, or you don't. The problems with making up an alternative cut price justice system on the hoof will quickly reveal themselves and the government won't even try it, although perhaps a useful idiot will be assigned the task, I can think of a prime contender.
“Police bust £2m cannabis factory at former West Bromwich Magistrates' Court”
https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/black-country/police-bust-2m-cannabis-factory-24820914
These criminals don’t fear justice. Risk of getting caught is low. Justice system defunded and easy to game. Sentences pathetic.
The frontrunner to become Italy's next prime minister has been condemned for posting a video of a Ukrainian woman being raped by an asylum seeker in an Italian city.
Giorgia Meloni, leader of the nationalist Brothers of Italy party, was accused on Monday of shameful electioneering by her rivals after sharing the footage.
A 55-year-old woman was assaulted on a pavement in the city of Piacenza early Sunday by an asylum seeker from Guinea, local officials said.
For autumn colour, a shortish walk and a bit of a literary reference I quite like The Birks of Aberfeldy - which are best after heavy rain - but just about anywhere round there is good. Killiecrankie etc
I often drop in at Scone Palace on the way past for personal reasons but if you like big trees then do have a look round the arboretum there.
There's loads of interesting places - you won't run short.
Don't forget to look for the beavers! They are everywhere on the Tay catchment. There's plenty of evidence to be seen all over.
Cunning critter is getting back at you, via quintessentially feline "offering" it KNOWS you do NOT want.
2010 Tories build the OBR to prove they are responsible with the nations money and financial health - 2022 the Tories burn down the OBR to prove they are irresponsible with the nations money and financial health.
It’s so simple really, for change just read “exactly what Sneaky Boris would try to get away with only without the old showbiz, charisma and powers of persuading us better times lie ahead.”
Will the last one cashing out the “Liz to get poll bounce” please turn out the light.
In 2018, the Republicans lost the House by 8%, and yet gained two Senate seats.
One of the UK’s most promising science-based start-ups has threatened to leave the country over what its boss called political “paralysis” and a lack of clarity in national industrial strategy.
Paragraf, a leader in efforts to commercialise graphene for electronic devices, is likely to move its base to the United States because the UK government “just doesn’t know what it’s doing”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/graphene-pioneer-paragraf-threatens-to-quit-uk-over-government-paralysis-gmm8tsqjw (£££)
Liverpool shooting: Girl, 9, shot dead and two injured
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-62642060
But it’s true that Brexit in general, and the current administration in particular, have very likely exacerbated the difficulties faced.
A couple of interesting threads look at the shenanigans.
https://twitter.com/renato_mariotti/status/1561856891734691842
On its face, this motion appears to be more of a PR move than a part of a serious legal strategy.
The motion is long on narrative and hyperbolic claims and short on legal substance. At times, it ignores significant problems that a legitimate legal motion would take head on…
https://twitter.com/OrinKerr/status/1558714519244795904
Some are arguing, as does @AndrewCMcCarthy below, that the warrant used to search Mar-A-Lago was a general warrant that violates the 4th Amendment.
I think this is incorrect. Here's a thread that explains my view, looking at the relevant caselaw….
It massively more likely that this was arranged by Putin’s regime. Silences a critic*, who had real political ambitions of her own, and fabricates a motive for increased bombing of Ukraine.
https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1561872055720726528
Russia has not yet targeted government buildings in Kyiv. And this US alert doesn’t say that’s what Russia is planning to do. But there have been calls in the past 24 hours by Russian officials & propagandists to hit Ukraine government buildings after the killing of Daria Dugina.…
(*One more extreme even than the current regime.)
https://twitter.com/minna_alander/status/1561634385572597760
Since there’s still some disbelief about this outside of Germany: yes, an “environmental foundation” founded by Minister President of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Manuela Schwesig (SPD), received €192 million from Gazprom via their subsidiary NordStream 2 AG, in Feb-Nov 2021…
1.08 Liz Truss 93%
13.5 Rishi Sunak 7%
Next Conservative leader
1.07 Liz Truss 93%
13.5 Rishi Sunak 7%
Minister's plea over fears thousands of families will drop out because of soaring household costs
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/08/22/money-ukraine-refugee-hosts-should-doubled/ (£££)
"Today after 25 years of sabotage was restored the railway connection between Moldova and Ukraine. For
@Ukrzaliznytsia
it took less than 1 month (!) to construct a 21-km long link Berezine - Basarabyaska. This transport corridor will let to fix the bottleneck between 2 countries."
https://twitter.com/Leshchenkos/status/1561794319186595844
ABSOLUTE BOLLOCKS.
Writing in The Telegraph, the former PM said GCSEs and A-levels leave students 'poorly prepared for work' and should be scrapped
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/08/23/tony-blair-rip-current-exam-system-unfit-modern-world/ (£££)
Blair's piece is at
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/23/time-scrap-gcses-a-levels/ (£££)
The Telegraph currently offers a 3-month free trial but remember to cancel before it rolls over to charging a tenner a month (set a calendar reminder or something).
Blair's gist is:-
GCSEs are pointless.
A-levels are too narrow because of AI and automation, and something like the International Baccalaureate would be better (although aiui many schools that have tried IB or Pre-U are returning to A-levels).
Exams should be largely replaced by continuous assessment.
Ofsted ratings are pointless because parents do not use their assessments to choose schools.
I can't see anything there that has not been said by other people (even by me and others on pb) but maybe Blair is taken more seriously in Whitehall, and there will be a new EdSec in a fortnight.
Ironic to have an education piece under a pb header asking if Our best days are still to come?
Football: pleasantly surprised Manchester United beat Liverpool last night (backed it with a free bet at 5). Surprised also that Juventus only drew with Sampdoria.
F1: markets now up, beyond win (already had a little on Perez each way at 23).
The question is whether Shoygu would, or would want to, do something similar if Putin had his own bunker moment.
I recently managed to get a year digital access to the telegraph for £29
If Putin is made enough to use nukes, he will use nukes under any pretence. If we allow our fear of his using nukes to stop helping Ukraine, he will use that fear against us again. "If you do not buy our gas, it will be a threat to Russia." or "Give us those dissidents."
Worse, it will tell other evil regimes that just the threat of nukes will cause us to back down from doing the right thing - and this will cause them to want nukes all the more. Whereas if we do not give in to that fear, then nukes become less attractive.
It is understandable to be scared, but we should not allow fear to enable us to be continually blackmailed by that fear - especially when giving in to that fear is morally the wrong thing to do.
Which means that we need to establish a long term strategy of having a long term plan of fully committed new infrastructure projects where people leave project 1 move on to project 2 and know that in x years time projects 4 and 5 are in planning waiting for them
1) Agree with him. They are not leaving exams, they are so badly written they don't really tell you very much and because they're so prescriptive you have to spend ages undoing the damage before you can do anything useful. Plus they cost a fortune.
2) Narrowness isn't really the issue, although it is an issue. The issue, again, that they don't set people up for further study and the exams are not well written or well assessed.
3) Depends on the subject. In some subjects exams are sensible and probably the best choice for assessment. In others they are at best a blunt instrument and in some they're actually worse than useless (art springs to mind). However, while there needs to be a sortout of them you would need to give serious thought beforehand to who would actually be running them.
4) There are all sorts of issues with OFSTED of which the fact that their ratings are more nonsensical than a Cummings excuse for breaking lockdown is just one. The fact that they are wilfully committing major safeguarding breaches during inspections to test school policies on the matter, for example, is a much bigger problem. The fact that their role is not really to improve education but to bring schools firmly under the thumb of the DfE to justify everyone's jobs is another. The fact it is run by a failed investment manager who literally does not know what safeguarding is and is responsible for the appalling state of our exam system tells you all you need to know about the system's real priorities.
The difficulty is that making such changes now, on top of the years of changes we've already had, would be even more exhausting and demoralising for staff and see the leaving rate rise rapidly.
One reason Felix spouted so much nonsense on workload and accused me of being lazy, a bad time manager and feckless despite having been a teacher himself is because he only went through one major reorganisation, in the 1980s with the introduction of GCSEs and the National Curriculum, which didn't actually affect History that much (and on his own account, he never bothered to do the work himself and got everyone around him to do it, which might explain why everyone around him complained about workload).
More recent reforms have involved truly shocking amounts of work, because the entire curriculum, assessment system and indeed basic philosophy has been repeatedly changing and OFSTED have repeatedly demanded detailed documentation to show how it's been done (despite their public claims they wouldn't). This would be similar, if it went ahead.
The system's at snapping point. If they tried to shake it, it will break entirely because the goodwill Cyclefree refers to simply isn't there anymore.
What surprised me was how thin the Conservative prospectus was between 2015 and 2016, before the EU referendum. After I think Industrial Strategy and Levelling Up have been good initiatives but insufficiently funded to deliver regional infrastructure and town regeneration.
NHS and pensions have crowded out almost everything else - it is very likely this would have happened under a Labour administration as well, but with a much higher tax base.
So you can't really throw money at it to accelerate the supply cap; it would probably just inflate prices - you can build apprenticeship schools and fund more university places for engineers but the payoff takes years and you need a steady downstream pipeline, like you say, for future employment.
We probably already have this but it's in energy for the forseeable and not transport.
But the bigger problem is, yes, they made major reforms in all those areas and every single one has been a calamitous failure. Pensions are an even worse shambles than under Brown, which is saying something. UC has never worked as intended. Education, well, the best thing that can be said is that the people running it were just very thick and that's maybe why their reforms achieved the opposite of what was intended. Tax and budgetary responsibility is again a mess (IR35 says hello) and on energy policy as we can now see they got it spectacularly wrong.
The coalition was the best government of the last fifty years. Which says a great deal about the other governments in that time.
Tonight, 7pm, Birmingham.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XSCXoS0ISQ (Times Radio)
(Other downstreaming links will become available)
(Not that whoever it was managed it.)