More importantly, to adapt Father Ted, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are both small and far away.
Quite. Remember the argument on PB - one of us argued it was more efficient to import turnips or whatever it was from Australia than to grow our own or get then from the EU.
The constant harping on "cultural" identity is also suspicious.
So fine to flood UK markets with CAP funded EU agricultural products and EU cars competing with UK producers but not a few Australian products?
Fine to allow UK exporters easier access to the EU but not Australian market?
Most Australians are still of British Isles origin and Australia remains the top destination for emigration for emigrants from the UK
Doesn't matter - flooding the UK market with Australian produce thanks to a crap deal is just as stupid, and far worse from a food security point of view.
The percentage of CAP subsidised EU food and fish we flooded our markets with and British farmers had to compete with was far more in the single market than there will ever be from Australian farm produce imported on the same terms as the trade deal we now have with the EU.
Plus of course British exporters now get easier access to the Australian market as they have to the EU market
But short of digging a tunnel through the centre of the Earth (travel time: 42 minutes), there's a limit to how much fresh food it is sensible to send between the UK and Australia.
If you want to make an argument that Brexit leaves Britain poorer but prouder and happier, fair enough.
But the idea that swapping a single market including our immediate neighbours for tariff reductions across the globe is for the birds.
As we're gradually seeing.
Point of pedantry, you can't travel through the centre of the earth due to gravitational issues.
I'm intrigued. It's a fairly standard first year Uni physics question. And by symmetry it feels like it ought to work; falling in energy transfers gravitational to kinetic so you end up with just enough kinetic energy to overcome gravity enough to come to rest at the other portal.
Air resistance is a bit of a bugger, but I'm a physicist- ignoring air resistance is pretty much mandatory.
Is there something I've been missing?
Wasn't this demonstrated at Schiehallion? Which, eerily, was also the site of a frequent poster's favourite UFO/UAP picture. Proof of a hollow earth full of morlocks/grays/space nazis? More trade deal potential I guess.
Just back in the UK for a few days. Driving North on the M6 was pretty interesting. Basically the infrastructure constructed in the 1960s/70s is trying to cope with the traffic levels of 50 years later, and despite band-aid fixes like the so-called "smart Motorways", it is failing badly.
Small fixes in the rail system only upgrade things from a Victorian level and the strikes make the system unusable anyway- last Wednesday I was quoted over £300 for a single ticket on trainline from London to the Cotswolds. In any event it should not take nearly three hours to complete a 90 mile journey.
It left me reflecting that the NHS strikes in England are just another stunning failure of leadership. Everywhere you look the whole country looks dreary and run down. It takes longer to drive to Scotland from the South than it did 30 years ago.
Schools in Scotland are in complete crisis, and previous Scottish excellence in, for example, STEM subjects has just evaporated. At every level political intervention and incompetence is evident, and all the Scottish Parliament can point to is legislation, which- whatever its merits- is addressing the concerns and rights of an stunningly small minority. The point is that everyone has an opinion on Trans rights, whereas few understand the scale of the economic mess that both Scotland and England now face. Several members of my family have had to up sticks and leave Scotland because the systems they rely on do not deliver what they are supposed to do.
Although the party of government is clearly bereft of ideas and talent, the entire political system is sclerotic and creaking. The national conversation is mean and small and leading nowhere: In Scotland the Nats shut down all debate unless on their own terms, and it is a bitter and pointless mess. Brutal and aggressive the atmosphere is increasingly coarse and threatening. In England the milquetoast Tory leadership feebly protest that corruption is not that bad... failing to recognize how angry voters are at the fiasco of the last 6 years.
I am sure that most people, like me after only 4 days here, are just shouting at the TV as some PR bullshit line is paraded past the graphics heavy/information lite interviewers.
If we get the governments we deserve, it seems that the voters must be apathetic and defeated on both sides of the border.
One thing is for sure, the fate of the world is certainly not being decided by the pygmy leaders in either London or in Edinburgh.
This could have been written at any time over the last 40 years.
Just back in the UK for a few days. Driving North on the M6 was pretty interesting. Basically the infrastructure constructed in the 1960s/70s is trying to cope with the traffic levels of 50 years later, and despite band-aid fixes like the so-called "smart Motorways", it is failing badly.
Small fixes in the rail system only upgrade things from a Victorian level and the strikes make the system unusable anyway- last Wednesday I was quoted over £300 for a single ticket on trainline from London to the Cotswolds. In any event it should not take nearly three hours to complete a 90 mile journey.
It left me reflecting that the NHS strikes in England are just another stunning failure of leadership. Everywhere you look the whole country looks dreary and run down. It takes longer to drive to Scotland from the South than it did 30 years ago.
Schools in Scotland are in complete crisis, and previous Scottish excellence in, for example, STEM subjects has just evaporated. At every level political intervention and incompetence is evident, and all the Scottish Parliament can point to is legislation, which- whatever its merits- is addressing the concerns and rights of an stunningly small minority. The point is that everyone has an opinion on Trans rights, whereas few understand the scale of the economic mess that both Scotland and England now face. Several members of my family have had to up sticks and leave Scotland because the systems they rely on do not deliver what they are supposed to do.
Although the party of government is clearly bereft of ideas and talent, the entire political system is sclerotic and creaking. The national conversation is mean and small and leading nowhere: In Scotland the Nats shut down all debate unless on their own terms, and it is a bitter and pointless mess. Brutal and aggressive the atmosphere is increasingly coarse and threatening. In England the milquetoast Tory leadership feebly protest that corruption is not that bad... failing to recognize how angry voters are at the fiasco of the last 6 years.
I am sure that most people, like me after only 4 days here, are just shouting at the TV as some PR bullshit line is paraded past the graphics heavy/information lite interviewers.
If we get the governments we deserve, it seems that the voters must be apathetic and defeated on both sides of the border.
One thing is for sure, the fate of the world is certainly not being decided by the pygmy leaders in either London or in Edinburgh.
Great that you’ve popped back to give us the benefit of your vicariously held opinions. We really don’t get enough of that on PB.
I have to say I have travelled down to Heathrow and back in the last 24 hours to pick up my son and daughter in-law and do not recognise the description of the M6 particularly as I use the toll road.
Furthermore I have travelled to Lossiemouth from Llandudno since 1965 and the travel times are immeasurably better though the A9 lack of dualling is a long standing issue
Yes we have problems but so do many other countries including those in Europe
Just back in the UK for a few days. Driving North on the M6 was pretty interesting. Basically the infrastructure constructed in the 1960s/70s is trying to cope with the traffic levels of 50 years later, and despite band-aid fixes like the so-called "smart Motorways", it is failing badly.
Small fixes in the rail system only upgrade things from a Victorian level and the strikes make the system unusable anyway- last Wednesday I was quoted over £300 for a single ticket on trainline from London to the Cotswolds. In any event it should not take nearly three hours to complete a 90 mile journey.
It left me reflecting that the NHS strikes in England are just another stunning failure of leadership. Everywhere you look the whole country looks dreary and run down. It takes longer to drive to Scotland from the South than it did 30 years ago.
Schools in Scotland are in complete crisis, and previous Scottish excellence in, for example, STEM subjects has just evaporated. At every level political intervention and incompetence is evident, and all the Scottish Parliament can point to is legislation, which- whatever its merits- is addressing the concerns and rights of an stunningly small minority. The point is that everyone has an opinion on Trans rights, whereas few understand the scale of the economic mess that both Scotland and England now face. Several members of my family have had to up sticks and leave Scotland because the systems they rely on do not deliver what they are supposed to do.
Although the party of government is clearly bereft of ideas and talent, the entire political system is sclerotic and creaking. The national conversation is mean and small and leading nowhere: In Scotland the Nats shut down all debate unless on their own terms, and it is a bitter and pointless mess. Brutal and aggressive the atmosphere is increasingly coarse and threatening. In England the milquetoast Tory leadership feebly protest that corruption is not that bad... failing to recognize how angry voters are at the fiasco of the last 6 years.
I am sure that most people, like me after only 4 days here, are just shouting at the TV as some PR bullshit line is paraded past the graphics heavy/information lite interviewers.
If we get the governments we deserve, it seems that the voters must be apathetic and defeated on both sides of the border.
One thing is for sure, the fate of the world is certainly not being decided by the pygmy leaders in either London or in Edinburgh.
Great that you’ve popped back to give us the benefit of your vicariously held opinions. We really don’t get enough of that on PB.
Meh... Home thoughts from home, for a change, and its worse than I thought.
“Misericordia mea effusa est sicut aqua" is a quote from the Bible, specifically from the Old Testament book of Lamentations. It appears in chapter 3, verse 22 and is often translated as "The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end." The phrase is often used to express the idea of God's enduring love and mercy.
I hope this additional context is helpful. Please let me know if you have any further questions.”
Are you sure of that? 'mea' is 'my'.
I think you’re right
“Misericordia mea effusa est sicut aqua“ does not get any google hits. So it seems that ChatGPT invented it out of nothing, then - when quizzed - felt weirdly guilty and created a bogus but plausible sounding Biblical source
That’s the kind of fakery that existing travesty generators have created - we played with early versions at Uni in the 90s.
So we can autogenerate plausible but bullshit journalism. Yeah!
At work, one of the guys did a test and found an example where ChatGPT created some plausible code. With unit tests. Complete with a subtle, but massive error.
It code like a junior coder, on speed, copy and pasting StackOverflow like a demented chimp.
Mr. HYUFD, I may vote for the Conservatives with Sunak as leader. If they bring back Boris Johnson as PM, I will not be.
Maybe but that is not the norm. Before Boris was ousted the Conservatives were polling about 30 to 35%, under Truss they were polling about 20 to 25%, now under Sunak they are polling about 25 to 30%. So overall still worse than Boris was.
Just back in the UK for a few days. Driving North on the M6 was pretty interesting. Basically the infrastructure constructed in the 1960s/70s is trying to cope with the traffic levels of 50 years later, and despite band-aid fixes like the so-called "smart Motorways", it is failing badly.
Small fixes in the rail system only upgrade things from a Victorian level and the strikes make the system unusable anyway- last Wednesday I was quoted over £300 for a single ticket on trainline from London to the Cotswolds. In any event it should not take nearly three hours to complete a 90 mile journey.
It left me reflecting that the NHS strikes in England are just another stunning failure of leadership. Everywhere you look the whole country looks dreary and run down. It takes longer to drive to Scotland from the South than it did 30 years ago.
Schools in Scotland are in complete crisis, and previous Scottish excellence in, for example, STEM subjects has just evaporated. At every level political intervention and incompetence is evident, and all the Scottish Parliament can point to is legislation, which- whatever its merits- is addressing the concerns and rights of an stunningly small minority. The point is that everyone has an opinion on Trans rights, whereas few understand the scale of the economic mess that both Scotland and England now face. Several members of my family have had to up sticks and leave Scotland because the systems they rely on do not deliver what they are supposed to do.
Although the party of government is clearly bereft of ideas and talent, the entire political system is sclerotic and creaking. The national conversation is mean and small and leading nowhere: In Scotland the Nats shut down all debate unless on their own terms, and it is a bitter and pointless mess. Brutal and aggressive the atmosphere is increasingly coarse and threatening. In England the milquetoast Tory leadership feebly protest that corruption is not that bad... failing to recognize how angry voters are at the fiasco of the last 6 years.
I am sure that most people, like me after only 4 days here, are just shouting at the TV as some PR bullshit line is paraded past the graphics heavy/information lite interviewers.
If we get the governments we deserve, it seems that the voters must be apathetic and defeated on both sides of the border.
One thing is for sure, the fate of the world is certainly not being decided by the pygmy leaders in either London or in Edinburgh.
Great that you’ve popped back to give us the benefit of your vicariously held opinions. We really don’t get enough of that on PB.
Meh... Home thoughts from home, for a change, and its worse than I thought.
On balance I think you are wrong but, unlike TUD, I do think it is valuable to have the perspective of someone who has been outside the UK for a while and so can see the changes more starkly.
Just back in the UK for a few days. Driving North on the M6 was pretty interesting. Basically the infrastructure constructed in the 1960s/70s is trying to cope with the traffic levels of 50 years later, and despite band-aid fixes like the so-called "smart Motorways", it is failing badly.
Small fixes in the rail system only upgrade things from a Victorian level and the strikes make the system unusable anyway- last Wednesday I was quoted over £300 for a single ticket on trainline from London to the Cotswolds. In any event it should not take nearly three hours to complete a 90 mile journey.
It left me reflecting that the NHS strikes in England are just another stunning failure of leadership. Everywhere you look the whole country looks dreary and run down. It takes longer to drive to Scotland from the South than it did 30 years ago.
Schools in Scotland are in complete crisis, and previous Scottish excellence in, for example, STEM subjects has just evaporated. At every level political intervention and incompetence is evident, and all the Scottish Parliament can point to is legislation, which- whatever its merits- is addressing the concerns and rights of an stunningly small minority. The point is that everyone has an opinion on Trans rights, whereas few understand the scale of the economic mess that both Scotland and England now face. Several members of my family have had to up sticks and leave Scotland because the systems they rely on do not deliver what they are supposed to do.
Although the party of government is clearly bereft of ideas and talent, the entire political system is sclerotic and creaking. The national conversation is mean and small and leading nowhere: In Scotland the Nats shut down all debate unless on their own terms, and it is a bitter and pointless mess. Brutal and aggressive the atmosphere is increasingly coarse and threatening. In England the milquetoast Tory leadership feebly protest that corruption is not that bad... failing to recognize how angry voters are at the fiasco of the last 6 years.
I am sure that most people, like me after only 4 days here, are just shouting at the TV as some PR bullshit line is paraded past the graphics heavy/information lite interviewers.
If we get the governments we deserve, it seems that the voters must be apathetic and defeated on both sides of the border.
One thing is for sure, the fate of the world is certainly not being decided by the pygmy leaders in either London or in Edinburgh.
The Smart Motorways on the M6 are literally a joke. You can be stuck in a four mile queue of traffic and the hard shoulder shut, or waltzing along at 6am when there's about five cars around while the HS is open and the speed limit is set to 50. Although the worst are the phantom lane closures on all-lane running sections of the M5, which seem to be stuck up solely in proportion to how drunk the manager is.
However, a much, much bigger problem - and I'm not sure whether you saw the first fruits of this at Junction 10 - is that almost all the original overbridges are becoming life expired at once and will need replacing over the next 10-15 years. Which is going to be (a) very expensive and (b) very disruptive.
See also the latest John Burn-Murdoch graph of doom. Austerity worked by keeping current spending going but utterly stuffing capital spend.
Fine for surviving a crisis, but you can't keep doing it. Because things first become less efficient and then they break.
It really doesn't help that the Conservative client vote mostly doesn't mind, as long as the country lasts them out.
More importantly, to adapt Father Ted, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are both small and far away.
Quite. Remember the argument on PB - one of us argued it was more efficient to import turnips or whatever it was from Australia than to grow our own or get then from the EU.
The constant harping on "cultural" identity is also suspicious.
So fine to flood UK markets with CAP funded EU agricultural products and EU cars competing with UK producers but not a few Australian products?
Fine to allow UK exporters easier access to the EU but not Australian market?
Most Australians are still of British Isles origin and Australia remains the top destination for emigration for emigrants from the UK
You really don't get trade deals do you?
There is no one sided flooding the market unless you do a bad deal. The point of a good trade deal is to improve trade for both sides for mutual benefit.
So in idiot language:
Good trade deals are good Bad trade deals are bad
We had a very, very very good trade deal with the EU when we were in the EU, we now have a much worse trade deal
We had no trade deal with Australia. We now have a trade deal that is worse than no trade deal according to many people who understand these things, including many Tories.
How do you not get this?
No we had a very bad trade deal with the EU. We paid vast sums of money for the right to have a massive trade deficit and enhance the ability of companies to move their operations out of the UK to other parts of the EU, often being subsidised by the EU to do so. Whilst we were members of the EEC/EU we were forced to destroy agriculture and food production specifically to adhere to EU quotas. The EU was a disaster for British farming and for British employment.
Well we aren't going to agree on this and I wasn't intending to open up the remain/leave debate again, but I assume if you remove that para from my post you would agree with the point I was trying to make to HYUFD? Happy to remove it to reach consensus.
How shit must the opposition be to not be within a sniff of replacing them (Scotch viewers only).
But it's not Scotch viewers only.
It's a rehash of "Why couldn't Remain beat Leave"
The Nationalists are selling a more popular brand of bullshit.
c.f. Trump
The important question that nobody wants to ask is why does political bullshit sell so well, and how do we stop it?
Seems to me you Yoons are forever plaintively asking the question, and unsurprisingly unable to answer it.
Undoubtedly it'll be the notoriously Nat-supporting BBC, Mail, Express, Sun, Times, Telegraph, Herald, Scotsman, and sundry other shrivelled media organs fooling naive Jocks into supporting the EssEnnPee.
Just back in the UK for a few days. Driving North on the M6 was pretty interesting. Basically the infrastructure constructed in the 1960s/70s is trying to cope with the traffic levels of 50 years later, and despite band-aid fixes like the so-called "smart Motorways", it is failing badly.
Small fixes in the rail system only upgrade things from a Victorian level and the strikes make the system unusable anyway- last Wednesday I was quoted over £300 for a single ticket on trainline from London to the Cotswolds. In any event it should not take nearly three hours to complete a 90 mile journey.
It left me reflecting that the NHS strikes in England are just another stunning failure of leadership. Everywhere you look the whole country looks dreary and run down. It takes longer to drive to Scotland from the South than it did 30 years ago.
Schools in Scotland are in complete crisis, and previous Scottish excellence in, for example, STEM subjects has just evaporated. At every level political intervention and incompetence is evident, and all the Scottish Parliament can point to is legislation, which- whatever its merits- is addressing the concerns and rights of an stunningly small minority. The point is that everyone has an opinion on Trans rights, whereas few understand the scale of the economic mess that both Scotland and England now face. Several members of my family have had to up sticks and leave Scotland because the systems they rely on do not deliver what they are supposed to do.
Although the party of government is clearly bereft of ideas and talent, the entire political system is sclerotic and creaking. The national conversation is mean and small and leading nowhere: In Scotland the Nats shut down all debate unless on their own terms, and it is a bitter and pointless mess. Brutal and aggressive the atmosphere is increasingly coarse and threatening. In England the milquetoast Tory leadership feebly protest that corruption is not that bad... failing to recognize how angry voters are at the fiasco of the last 6 years.
I am sure that most people, like me after only 4 days here, are just shouting at the TV as some PR bullshit line is paraded past the graphics heavy/information lite interviewers.
If we get the governments we deserve, it seems that the voters must be apathetic and defeated on both sides of the border.
One thing is for sure, the fate of the world is certainly not being decided by the pygmy leaders in either London or in Edinburgh.
Great that you’ve popped back to give us the benefit of your vicariously held opinions. We really don’t get enough of that on PB.
I have to say I have travelled down to Heathrow and back in the last 24 hours to pick up my son and daughter in-law and do not recognise the description of the M6 particularly as I use the toll road.
Furthermore I have travelled to Lossiemouth from Llandudno since 1965 and the travel times are immeasurably better though the A9 lack of dualling is a long standing issue
Yes we have problems but so do many other countries including those in Europe
The difference is that other countries do not ignore their problems until it is too late. Travelling on Polish Roads over the past 30 years has been transformed, for example. The speed limit on what is now the A96 is down to 50 in several places, because junctions were never upgraded. I can remember how things were before -say- the Forfar bypass was built in the mid eighties, but since then things have not been maintained. As noted the Motorway viaducts in Birmingham will need to be replaced soon and the costs are going be scarily high. Who has the leadership skills to explain to the Brits how bad things will be if we don´t start fixing things up even at the cost of disruption to millions...
Just back in the UK for a few days. Driving North on the M6 was pretty interesting. Basically the infrastructure constructed in the 1960s/70s is trying to cope with the traffic levels of 50 years later, and despite band-aid fixes like the so-called "smart Motorways", it is failing badly.
Small fixes in the rail system only upgrade things from a Victorian level and the strikes make the system unusable anyway- last Wednesday I was quoted over £300 for a single ticket on trainline from London to the Cotswolds. In any event it should not take nearly three hours to complete a 90 mile journey.
It left me reflecting that the NHS strikes in England are just another stunning failure of leadership. Everywhere you look the whole country looks dreary and run down. It takes longer to drive to Scotland from the South than it did 30 years ago.
Schools in Scotland are in complete crisis, and previous Scottish excellence in, for example, STEM subjects has just evaporated. At every level political intervention and incompetence is evident, and all the Scottish Parliament can point to is legislation, which- whatever its merits- is addressing the concerns and rights of an stunningly small minority. The point is that everyone has an opinion on Trans rights, whereas few understand the scale of the economic mess that both Scotland and England now face. Several members of my family have had to up sticks and leave Scotland because the systems they rely on do not deliver what they are supposed to do.
Although the party of government is clearly bereft of ideas and talent, the entire political system is sclerotic and creaking. The national conversation is mean and small and leading nowhere: In Scotland the Nats shut down all debate unless on their own terms, and it is a bitter and pointless mess. Brutal and aggressive the atmosphere is increasingly coarse and threatening. In England the milquetoast Tory leadership feebly protest that corruption is not that bad... failing to recognize how angry voters are at the fiasco of the last 6 years.
I am sure that most people, like me after only 4 days here, are just shouting at the TV as some PR bullshit line is paraded past the graphics heavy/information lite interviewers.
If we get the governments we deserve, it seems that the voters must be apathetic and defeated on both sides of the border.
One thing is for sure, the fate of the world is certainly not being decided by the pygmy leaders in either London or in Edinburgh.
Great that you’ve popped back to give us the benefit of your vicariously held opinions. We really don’t get enough of that on PB.
I have to say I have travelled down to Heathrow and back in the last 24 hours to pick up my son and daughter in-law and do not recognise the description of the M6 particularly as I use the toll road.
Furthermore I have travelled to Lossiemouth from Llandudno since 1965 and the travel times are immeasurably better though the A9 lack of dualling is a long standing issue
Yes we have problems but so do many other countries including those in Europe
The difference is that other countries do not ignore their problems until it is too late. Travelling on Polish Roads over the past 30 years has been transformed, for example. The speed limit on what is now the A96 is down to 50 in several places, because junctions were never upgraded. I can remember how things were before -say- the Forfar bypass was built in the mid eighties, but since then things have not been maintained. As noted the Motorway viaducts in Birmingham will need to be replaced soon and the costs are going be scarily high. Who has the leadership skills to explain to the Brits how bad things will be if we don´t start fixing things up even at the cost of disruption to millions...
You do have an incredibly negative view of the UK.
Just back in the UK for a few days. Driving North on the M6 was pretty interesting. Basically the infrastructure constructed in the 1960s/70s is trying to cope with the traffic levels of 50 years later, and despite band-aid fixes like the so-called "smart Motorways", it is failing badly.
Small fixes in the rail system only upgrade things from a Victorian level and the strikes make the system unusable anyway- last Wednesday I was quoted over £300 for a single ticket on trainline from London to the Cotswolds. In any event it should not take nearly three hours to complete a 90 mile journey.
It left me reflecting that the NHS strikes in England are just another stunning failure of leadership. Everywhere you look the whole country looks dreary and run down. It takes longer to drive to Scotland from the South than it did 30 years ago.
Schools in Scotland are in complete crisis, and previous Scottish excellence in, for example, STEM subjects has just evaporated. At every level political intervention and incompetence is evident, and all the Scottish Parliament can point to is legislation, which- whatever its merits- is addressing the concerns and rights of an stunningly small minority. The point is that everyone has an opinion on Trans rights, whereas few understand the scale of the economic mess that both Scotland and England now face. Several members of my family have had to up sticks and leave Scotland because the systems they rely on do not deliver what they are supposed to do.
Although the party of government is clearly bereft of ideas and talent, the entire political system is sclerotic and creaking. The national conversation is mean and small and leading nowhere: In Scotland the Nats shut down all debate unless on their own terms, and it is a bitter and pointless mess. Brutal and aggressive the atmosphere is increasingly coarse and threatening. In England the milquetoast Tory leadership feebly protest that corruption is not that bad... failing to recognize how angry voters are at the fiasco of the last 6 years.
I am sure that most people, like me after only 4 days here, are just shouting at the TV as some PR bullshit line is paraded past the graphics heavy/information lite interviewers.
If we get the governments we deserve, it seems that the voters must be apathetic and defeated on both sides of the border.
One thing is for sure, the fate of the world is certainly not being decided by the pygmy leaders in either London or in Edinburgh.
This could have been written at any time over the last 40 years.
Not in 1987 or 1998 when Thatcher and Blair really were world leading politicians
Caesar was discussed on the last thread, in relation to Sunak's ethics adviser I said 'But Caesar's wife must be above suspicion.'
Cannae add some more classical references?
Julius Caesar is the most famous Caesar in history and a byword for Emperor..
Augustus, surely ? Being the originator of true imperial rule, archetype and dynastic founder.
Also name checked in the biblical Christmas story.
Julius wasn't an Emperor (but may have been an imperator). If Caesar is taken as a synonym of Emperor he arguably was paradoxically not a caesar either. But he does have a claim as dynastic founder, surely? Octavian was adopted but so was Tiberius.
Just back in the UK for a few days. Driving North on the M6 was pretty interesting. Basically the infrastructure constructed in the 1960s/70s is trying to cope with the traffic levels of 50 years later, and despite band-aid fixes like the so-called "smart Motorways", it is failing badly.
Small fixes in the rail system only upgrade things from a Victorian level and the strikes make the system unusable anyway- last Wednesday I was quoted over £300 for a single ticket on trainline from London to the Cotswolds. In any event it should not take nearly three hours to complete a 90 mile journey.
It left me reflecting that the NHS strikes in England are just another stunning failure of leadership. Everywhere you look the whole country looks dreary and run down. It takes longer to drive to Scotland from the South than it did 30 years ago.
Schools in Scotland are in complete crisis, and previous Scottish excellence in, for example, STEM subjects has just evaporated. At every level political intervention and incompetence is evident, and all the Scottish Parliament can point to is legislation, which- whatever its merits- is addressing the concerns and rights of an stunningly small minority. The point is that everyone has an opinion on Trans rights, whereas few understand the scale of the economic mess that both Scotland and England now face. Several members of my family have had to up sticks and leave Scotland because the systems they rely on do not deliver what they are supposed to do.
Although the party of government is clearly bereft of ideas and talent, the entire political system is sclerotic and creaking. The national conversation is mean and small and leading nowhere: In Scotland the Nats shut down all debate unless on their own terms, and it is a bitter and pointless mess. Brutal and aggressive the atmosphere is increasingly coarse and threatening. In England the milquetoast Tory leadership feebly protest that corruption is not that bad... failing to recognize how angry voters are at the fiasco of the last 6 years.
I am sure that most people, like me after only 4 days here, are just shouting at the TV as some PR bullshit line is paraded past the graphics heavy/information lite interviewers.
If we get the governments we deserve, it seems that the voters must be apathetic and defeated on both sides of the border.
One thing is for sure, the fate of the world is certainly not being decided by the pygmy leaders in either London or in Edinburgh.
This could have been written at any time over the last 40 years.
FWIW, I don't agree. I think our infrastructure in this country is pretty good.
It's an awful December due to inflation and strikes, not poor maintenance.
Just back in the UK for a few days. Driving North on the M6 was pretty interesting. Basically the infrastructure constructed in the 1960s/70s is trying to cope with the traffic levels of 50 years later, and despite band-aid fixes like the so-called "smart Motorways", it is failing badly.
Small fixes in the rail system only upgrade things from a Victorian level and the strikes make the system unusable anyway- last Wednesday I was quoted over £300 for a single ticket on trainline from London to the Cotswolds. In any event it should not take nearly three hours to complete a 90 mile journey.
It left me reflecting that the NHS strikes in England are just another stunning failure of leadership. Everywhere you look the whole country looks dreary and run down. It takes longer to drive to Scotland from the South than it did 30 years ago.
Schools in Scotland are in complete crisis, and previous Scottish excellence in, for example, STEM subjects has just evaporated. At every level political intervention and incompetence is evident, and all the Scottish Parliament can point to is legislation, which- whatever its merits- is addressing the concerns and rights of an stunningly small minority. The point is that everyone has an opinion on Trans rights, whereas few understand the scale of the economic mess that both Scotland and England now face. Several members of my family have had to up sticks and leave Scotland because the systems they rely on do not deliver what they are supposed to do.
Although the party of government is clearly bereft of ideas and talent, the entire political system is sclerotic and creaking. The national conversation is mean and small and leading nowhere: In Scotland the Nats shut down all debate unless on their own terms, and it is a bitter and pointless mess. Brutal and aggressive the atmosphere is increasingly coarse and threatening. In England the milquetoast Tory leadership feebly protest that corruption is not that bad... failing to recognize how angry voters are at the fiasco of the last 6 years.
I am sure that most people, like me after only 4 days here, are just shouting at the TV as some PR bullshit line is paraded past the graphics heavy/information lite interviewers.
If we get the governments we deserve, it seems that the voters must be apathetic and defeated on both sides of the border.
One thing is for sure, the fate of the world is certainly not being decided by the pygmy leaders in either London or in Edinburgh.
The Smart Motorways on the M6 are literally a joke. You can be stuck in a four mile queue of traffic and the hard shoulder shut, or waltzing along at 6am when there's about five cars around while the HS is open and the speed limit is set to 50. Although the worst are the phantom lane closures on all-lane running sections of the M5, which seem to be stuck up solely in proportion to how drunk the manager is.
However, a much, much bigger problem - and I'm not sure whether you saw the first fruits of this at Junction 10 - is that almost all the original overbridges are becoming life expired at once and will need replacing over the next 10-15 years. Which is going to be (a) very expensive and (b) very disruptive.
See also the latest John Burn-Murdoch graph of doom. Austerity worked by keeping current spending going but utterly stuffing capital spend.
Fine for surviving a crisis, but you can't keep doing it. Because things first become less efficient and then they break.
It really doesn't help that the Conservative client vote mostly doesn't mind, as long as the country lasts them out.
It was a while back (Blair, I think) that they figured out that halting major road investment could used to push money at things that would win elections (more money for the NHS) while keeping the books balancing.
Any opponent of that could be attacked as anti-Green.
Though there is an interesting problem coming up - as cars go electric, and the sources of electricity become zero carbon, the equations shift….
More importantly, to adapt Father Ted, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are both small and far away.
Quite. Remember the argument on PB - one of us argued it was more efficient to import turnips or whatever it was from Australia than to grow our own or get then from the EU.
The constant harping on "cultural" identity is also suspicious.
So fine to flood UK markets with CAP funded EU agricultural products and EU cars competing with UK producers but not a few Australian products?
Fine to allow UK exporters easier access to the EU but not Australian market?
Most Australians are still of British Isles origin and Australia remains the top destination for emigration for emigrants from the UK
You really don't get trade deals do you?
There is no one sided flooding the market unless you do a bad deal. The point of a good trade deal is to improve trade for both sides for mutual benefit.
So in idiot language:
Good trade deals are good Bad trade deals are bad
We had a very, very very good trade deal with the EU when we were in the EU, we now have a much worse trade deal
We had no trade deal with Australia. We now have a trade deal that is worse than no trade deal according to many people who understand these things, including many Tories.
How do you not get this?
No we had a very bad trade deal with the EU. We paid vast sums of money for the right to have a massive trade deficit and enhance the ability of companies to move their operations out of the UK to other parts of the EU, often being subsidised by the EU to do so. Whilst we were members of the EEC/EU we were forced to destroy agriculture and food production specifically to adhere to EU quotas. The EU was a disaster for British farming and for British employment.
Well we aren't going to agree on this and I wasn't intending to open up the remain/leave debate again, but I assume if you remove that para from my post you would agree with the point I was trying to make to HYUFD? Happy to remove it to reach consensus.
Which seemed to be have free trade and open borders with the EU but protectionism and closed borders for most of the rest of the world.
If Johnson had still been PM, it must be quite likely that Zelensky would have stopped off in the UK as part of his first overseas trip since the beginning of the war.
He was on a C-40B so it must have refuelled somewhere between Rzeszow and JBA. Sunak will be butthurt if it was Mildenhall and they didn't tell him or invite him for a selfie with the great man.
Caesar was discussed on the last thread, in relation to Sunak's ethics adviser I said 'But Caesar's wife must be above suspicion.'
Cannae add some more classical references?
Julius Caesar is the most famous Caesar in history and a byword for Emperor..
Augustus, surely ? Being the originator of true imperial rule, archetype and dynastic founder.
Also name checked in the biblical Christmas story.
Julius wasn't an Emperor (but may have been an imperator). If Caesar is taken as a synonym of Emperor he arguably was paradoxically not a caesar either. But he does have a claim as dynastic founder, surely? Octavian was adopted but so was Tiberius.
Caesar was definitely an imperator - in one definition he was a magistrate with imperium (multiple times). He was also hailed on the battle field by his troops as “imperator”, after victory, multiple times.
It was only later that the First Citizens (Princeps) that we think of as the Emperors appropriated the word Imperator and made it one of their titles.
More importantly, to adapt Father Ted, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are both small and far away.
Quite. Remember the argument on PB - one of us argued it was more efficient to import turnips or whatever it was from Australia than to grow our own or get then from the EU.
The constant harping on "cultural" identity is also suspicious.
So fine to flood UK markets with CAP funded EU agricultural products and EU cars competing with UK producers but not a few Australian products?
Fine to allow UK exporters easier access to the EU but not Australian market?
Most Australians are still of British Isles origin and Australia remains the top destination for emigration for emigrants from the UK
You really don't get trade deals do you?
There is no one sided flooding the market unless you do a bad deal. The point of a good trade deal is to improve trade for both sides for mutual benefit.
So in idiot language:
Good trade deals are good Bad trade deals are bad
We had a very, very very good trade deal with the EU when we were in the EU, we now have a much worse trade deal
We had no trade deal with Australia. We now have a trade deal that is worse than no trade deal according to many people who understand these things, including many Tories.
How do you not get this?
No we had a very bad trade deal with the EU. We paid vast sums of money for the right to have a massive trade deficit and enhance the ability of companies to move their operations out of the UK to other parts of the EU, often being subsidised by the EU to do so. Whilst we were members of the EEC/EU we were forced to destroy agriculture and food production specifically to adhere to EU quotas. The EU was a disaster for British farming and for British employment.
Well we aren't going to agree on this and I wasn't intending to open up the remain/leave debate again, but I assume if you remove that para from my post you would agree with the point I was trying to make to HYUFD? Happy to remove it to reach consensus.
Which seemed to be have free trade and open borders with the EU but protectionism and closed borders for most of the rest of the world.
Nooooo. I never said that. If you read my posts I specially said it is good to have trade deals with everyone. I mean I said just that in a reply to you earlier today so stop putting incorrect words in my mouth.
However it is not good to have bad trade deals and the consensus from those that know is the Australian trade deal is a bad one, including Tories.
How can you not understand this. It was you who started all this with welcoming Truss's Australian deal. I simply pointed out that many consider it to be a poor deal. I would welcome a good deal with anyone.
Just back in the UK for a few days. Driving North on the M6 was pretty interesting. Basically the infrastructure constructed in the 1960s/70s is trying to cope with the traffic levels of 50 years later, and despite band-aid fixes like the so-called "smart Motorways", it is failing badly.
Small fixes in the rail system only upgrade things from a Victorian level and the strikes make the system unusable anyway- last Wednesday I was quoted over £300 for a single ticket on trainline from London to the Cotswolds. In any event it should not take nearly three hours to complete a 90 mile journey.
It left me reflecting that the NHS strikes in England are just another stunning failure of leadership. Everywhere you look the whole country looks dreary and run down. It takes longer to drive to Scotland from the South than it did 30 years ago.
Schools in Scotland are in complete crisis, and previous Scottish excellence in, for example, STEM subjects has just evaporated. At every level political intervention and incompetence is evident, and all the Scottish Parliament can point to is legislation, which- whatever its merits- is addressing the concerns and rights of an stunningly small minority. The point is that everyone has an opinion on Trans rights, whereas few understand the scale of the economic mess that both Scotland and England now face. Several members of my family have had to up sticks and leave Scotland because the systems they rely on do not deliver what they are supposed to do.
Although the party of government is clearly bereft of ideas and talent, the entire political system is sclerotic and creaking. The national conversation is mean and small and leading nowhere: In Scotland the Nats shut down all debate unless on their own terms, and it is a bitter and pointless mess. Brutal and aggressive the atmosphere is increasingly coarse and threatening. In England the milquetoast Tory leadership feebly protest that corruption is not that bad... failing to recognize how angry voters are at the fiasco of the last 6 years.
I am sure that most people, like me after only 4 days here, are just shouting at the TV as some PR bullshit line is paraded past the graphics heavy/information lite interviewers.
If we get the governments we deserve, it seems that the voters must be apathetic and defeated on both sides of the border.
One thing is for sure, the fate of the world is certainly not being decided by the pygmy leaders in either London or in Edinburgh.
Great that you’ve popped back to give us the benefit of your vicariously held opinions. We really don’t get enough of that on PB.
I have to say I have travelled down to Heathrow and back in the last 24 hours to pick up my son and daughter in-law and do not recognise the description of the M6 particularly as I use the toll road.
Furthermore I have travelled to Lossiemouth from Llandudno since 1965 and the travel times are immeasurably better though the A9 lack of dualling is a long standing issue
Yes we have problems but so do many other countries including those in Europe
The difference is that other countries do not ignore their problems until it is too late. Travelling on Polish Roads over the past 30 years has been transformed, for example. The speed limit on what is now the A96 is down to 50 in several places, because junctions were never upgraded. I can remember how things were before -say- the Forfar bypass was built in the mid eighties, but since then things have not been maintained. As noted the Motorway viaducts in Birmingham will need to be replaced soon and the costs are going be scarily high. Who has the leadership skills to explain to the Brits how bad things will be if we don´t start fixing things up even at the cost of disruption to millions...
You do have an incredibly negative view of the UK.
Well, I do have the privilege of seeing other countries where the problems are neither so serious nor so ignored. The astonishing modernization of countries like Estonia and Poland is exciting and actually rather moving, given the horrors of 20th century history.
I am not so much negative as irritated that it did not have to be this way. The issues we face could have been addressed a long time ago but largely for short term political convenience they were let to drift until they became a really serious problem. In a way I am an optimist, I believe that reform can actually deliver us a better country.
Just back in the UK for a few days. Driving North on the M6 was pretty interesting. Basically the infrastructure constructed in the 1960s/70s is trying to cope with the traffic levels of 50 years later, and despite band-aid fixes like the so-called "smart Motorways", it is failing badly.
Small fixes in the rail system only upgrade things from a Victorian level and the strikes make the system unusable anyway- last Wednesday I was quoted over £300 for a single ticket on trainline from London to the Cotswolds. In any event it should not take nearly three hours to complete a 90 mile journey.
It left me reflecting that the NHS strikes in England are just another stunning failure of leadership. Everywhere you look the whole country looks dreary and run down. It takes longer to drive to Scotland from the South than it did 30 years ago.
Schools in Scotland are in complete crisis, and previous Scottish excellence in, for example, STEM subjects has just evaporated. At every level political intervention and incompetence is evident, and all the Scottish Parliament can point to is legislation, which- whatever its merits- is addressing the concerns and rights of an stunningly small minority. The point is that everyone has an opinion on Trans rights, whereas few understand the scale of the economic mess that both Scotland and England now face. Several members of my family have had to up sticks and leave Scotland because the systems they rely on do not deliver what they are supposed to do.
Although the party of government is clearly bereft of ideas and talent, the entire political system is sclerotic and creaking. The national conversation is mean and small and leading nowhere: In Scotland the Nats shut down all debate unless on their own terms, and it is a bitter and pointless mess. Brutal and aggressive the atmosphere is increasingly coarse and threatening. In England the milquetoast Tory leadership feebly protest that corruption is not that bad... failing to recognize how angry voters are at the fiasco of the last 6 years.
I am sure that most people, like me after only 4 days here, are just shouting at the TV as some PR bullshit line is paraded past the graphics heavy/information lite interviewers.
If we get the governments we deserve, it seems that the voters must be apathetic and defeated on both sides of the border.
One thing is for sure, the fate of the world is certainly not being decided by the pygmy leaders in either London or in Edinburgh.
Great that you’ve popped back to give us the benefit of your vicariously held opinions. We really don’t get enough of that on PB.
I have to say I have travelled down to Heathrow and back in the last 24 hours to pick up my son and daughter in-law and do not recognise the description of the M6 particularly as I use the toll road.
Furthermore I have travelled to Lossiemouth from Llandudno since 1965 and the travel times are immeasurably better though the A9 lack of dualling is a long standing issue
Yes we have problems but so do many other countries including those in Europe
The difference is that other countries do not ignore their problems until it is too late. Travelling on Polish Roads over the past 30 years has been transformed, for example. The speed limit on what is now the A96 is down to 50 in several places, because junctions were never upgraded. I can remember how things were before -say- the Forfar bypass was built in the mid eighties, but since then things have not been maintained. As noted the Motorway viaducts in Birmingham will need to be replaced soon and the costs are going be scarily high. Who has the leadership skills to explain to the Brits how bad things will be if we don´t start fixing things up even at the cost of disruption to millions...
You do have an incredibly negative view of the UK.
Well, I do have the privilege of seeing other countries where the problems are neither so serious nor so ignored. The astonishing modernization of countries like Estonia and Poland is exciting and actually rather moving, given the horrors of 20th century history.
I am not so much negative as irritated that it did not have to be this way. The issues we face could have been addressed a long time ago but largely for short term political convenience they were let to drift until they became a really serious problem. In a way I am an optimist, I believe that reform can actually deliver us a better country.
More importantly, to adapt Father Ted, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are both small and far away.
Quite. Remember the argument on PB - one of us argued it was more efficient to import turnips or whatever it was from Australia than to grow our own or get then from the EU.
The constant harping on "cultural" identity is also suspicious.
So fine to flood UK markets with CAP funded EU agricultural products and EU cars competing with UK producers but not a few Australian products?
Fine to allow UK exporters easier access to the EU but not Australian market?
Most Australians are still of British Isles origin and Australia remains the top destination for emigration for emigrants from the UK
You really don't get trade deals do you?
There is no one sided flooding the market unless you do a bad deal. The point of a good trade deal is to improve trade for both sides for mutual benefit.
So in idiot language:
Good trade deals are good Bad trade deals are bad
We had a very, very very good trade deal with the EU when we were in the EU, we now have a much worse trade deal
We had no trade deal with Australia. We now have a trade deal that is worse than no trade deal according to many people who understand these things, including many Tories.
How do you not get this?
No we had a very bad trade deal with the EU. We paid vast sums of money for the right to have a massive trade deficit and enhance the ability of companies to move their operations out of the UK to other parts of the EU, often being subsidised by the EU to do so. Whilst we were members of the EEC/EU we were forced to destroy agriculture and food production specifically to adhere to EU quotas. The EU was a disaster for British farming and for British employment.
Well we aren't going to agree on this and I wasn't intending to open up the remain/leave debate again, but I assume if you remove that para from my post you would agree with the point I was trying to make to HYUFD? Happy to remove it to reach consensus.
Yes to some extent. Although I don't agree that trade deals are always necessarily good nor that globalisation has, on balance been a good thing. I think, for example, that amy trade deal we could reach with the US either inside or outside the EU would be bad for British consumers, British agriculture and British manufacturing. I would be very happy if we dropped pursuit of such a deal.
Just back in the UK for a few days. Driving North on the M6 was pretty interesting. Basically the infrastructure constructed in the 1960s/70s is trying to cope with the traffic levels of 50 years later, and despite band-aid fixes like the so-called "smart Motorways", it is failing badly.
Small fixes in the rail system only upgrade things from a Victorian level and the strikes make the system unusable anyway- last Wednesday I was quoted over £300 for a single ticket on trainline from London to the Cotswolds. In any event it should not take nearly three hours to complete a 90 mile journey.
It left me reflecting that the NHS strikes in England are just another stunning failure of leadership. Everywhere you look the whole country looks dreary and run down. It takes longer to drive to Scotland from the South than it did 30 years ago.
Schools in Scotland are in complete crisis, and previous Scottish excellence in, for example, STEM subjects has just evaporated. At every level political intervention and incompetence is evident, and all the Scottish Parliament can point to is legislation, which- whatever its merits- is addressing the concerns and rights of an stunningly small minority. The point is that everyone has an opinion on Trans rights, whereas few understand the scale of the economic mess that both Scotland and England now face. Several members of my family have had to up sticks and leave Scotland because the systems they rely on do not deliver what they are supposed to do.
Although the party of government is clearly bereft of ideas and talent, the entire political system is sclerotic and creaking. The national conversation is mean and small and leading nowhere: In Scotland the Nats shut down all debate unless on their own terms, and it is a bitter and pointless mess. Brutal and aggressive the atmosphere is increasingly coarse and threatening. In England the milquetoast Tory leadership feebly protest that corruption is not that bad... failing to recognize how angry voters are at the fiasco of the last 6 years.
I am sure that most people, like me after only 4 days here, are just shouting at the TV as some PR bullshit line is paraded past the graphics heavy/information lite interviewers.
If we get the governments we deserve, it seems that the voters must be apathetic and defeated on both sides of the border.
One thing is for sure, the fate of the world is certainly not being decided by the pygmy leaders in either London or in Edinburgh.
Great that you’ve popped back to give us the benefit of your vicariously held opinions. We really don’t get enough of that on PB.
I have to say I have travelled down to Heathrow and back in the last 24 hours to pick up my son and daughter in-law and do not recognise the description of the M6 particularly as I use the toll road.
Furthermore I have travelled to Lossiemouth from Llandudno since 1965 and the travel times are immeasurably better though the A9 lack of dualling is a long standing issue
Yes we have problems but so do many other countries including those in Europe
The difference is that other countries do not ignore their problems until it is too late. Travelling on Polish Roads over the past 30 years has been transformed, for example. The speed limit on what is now the A96 is down to 50 in several places, because junctions were never upgraded. I can remember how things were before -say- the Forfar bypass was built in the mid eighties, but since then things have not been maintained. As noted the Motorway viaducts in Birmingham will need to be replaced soon and the costs are going be scarily high. Who has the leadership skills to explain to the Brits how bad things will be if we don´t start fixing things up even at the cost of disruption to millions...
You do have an incredibly negative view of the UK.
Well, I do have the privilege of seeing other countries where the problems are neither so serious nor so ignored. The astonishing modernization of countries like Estonia and Poland is exciting and actually rather moving, given the horrors of 20th century history.
I am not so much negative as irritated that it did not have to be this way. The issues we face could have been addressed a long time ago but largely for short term political convenience they were let to drift until they became a really serious problem. In a way I am an optimist, I believe that reform can actually deliver us a better country.
Just back in the UK for a few days. Driving North on the M6 was pretty interesting. Basically the infrastructure constructed in the 1960s/70s is trying to cope with the traffic levels of 50 years later, and despite band-aid fixes like the so-called "smart Motorways", it is failing badly.
Small fixes in the rail system only upgrade things from a Victorian level and the strikes make the system unusable anyway- last Wednesday I was quoted over £300 for a single ticket on trainline from London to the Cotswolds. In any event it should not take nearly three hours to complete a 90 mile journey.
It left me reflecting that the NHS strikes in England are just another stunning failure of leadership. Everywhere you look the whole country looks dreary and run down. It takes longer to drive to Scotland from the South than it did 30 years ago.
Schools in Scotland are in complete crisis, and previous Scottish excellence in, for example, STEM subjects has just evaporated. At every level political intervention and incompetence is evident, and all the Scottish Parliament can point to is legislation, which- whatever its merits- is addressing the concerns and rights of an stunningly small minority. The point is that everyone has an opinion on Trans rights, whereas few understand the scale of the economic mess that both Scotland and England now face. Several members of my family have had to up sticks and leave Scotland because the systems they rely on do not deliver what they are supposed to do.
Although the party of government is clearly bereft of ideas and talent, the entire political system is sclerotic and creaking. The national conversation is mean and small and leading nowhere: In Scotland the Nats shut down all debate unless on their own terms, and it is a bitter and pointless mess. Brutal and aggressive the atmosphere is increasingly coarse and threatening. In England the milquetoast Tory leadership feebly protest that corruption is not that bad... failing to recognize how angry voters are at the fiasco of the last 6 years.
I am sure that most people, like me after only 4 days here, are just shouting at the TV as some PR bullshit line is paraded past the graphics heavy/information lite interviewers.
If we get the governments we deserve, it seems that the voters must be apathetic and defeated on both sides of the border.
One thing is for sure, the fate of the world is certainly not being decided by the pygmy leaders in either London or in Edinburgh.
Great that you’ve popped back to give us the benefit of your vicariously held opinions. We really don’t get enough of that on PB.
I have to say I have travelled down to Heathrow and back in the last 24 hours to pick up my son and daughter in-law and do not recognise the description of the M6 particularly as I use the toll road.
Furthermore I have travelled to Lossiemouth from Llandudno since 1965 and the travel times are immeasurably better though the A9 lack of dualling is a long standing issue
Yes we have problems but so do many other countries including those in Europe
The difference is that other countries do not ignore their problems until it is too late. Travelling on Polish Roads over the past 30 years has been transformed, for example. The speed limit on what is now the A96 is down to 50 in several places, because junctions were never upgraded. I can remember how things were before -say- the Forfar bypass was built in the mid eighties, but since then things have not been maintained. As noted the Motorway viaducts in Birmingham will need to be replaced soon and the costs are going be scarily high. Who has the leadership skills to explain to the Brits how bad things will be if we don´t start fixing things up even at the cost of disruption to millions...
You do have an incredibly negative view of the UK.
Well, I do have the privilege of seeing other countries where the problems are neither so serious nor so ignored. The astonishing modernization of countries like Estonia and Poland is exciting and actually rather moving, given the horrors of 20th century history.
I am not so much negative as irritated that it did not have to be this way. The issues we face could have been addressed a long time ago but largely for short term political convenience they were let to drift until they became a really serious problem. In a way I am an optimist, I believe that reform can actually deliver us a better country.
Just back in the UK for a few days. Driving North on the M6 was pretty interesting. Basically the infrastructure constructed in the 1960s/70s is trying to cope with the traffic levels of 50 years later, and despite band-aid fixes like the so-called "smart Motorways", it is failing badly.
Small fixes in the rail system only upgrade things from a Victorian level and the strikes make the system unusable anyway- last Wednesday I was quoted over £300 for a single ticket on trainline from London to the Cotswolds. In any event it should not take nearly three hours to complete a 90 mile journey.
It left me reflecting that the NHS strikes in England are just another stunning failure of leadership. Everywhere you look the whole country looks dreary and run down. It takes longer to drive to Scotland from the South than it did 30 years ago.
Schools in Scotland are in complete crisis, and previous Scottish excellence in, for example, STEM subjects has just evaporated. At every level political intervention and incompetence is evident, and all the Scottish Parliament can point to is legislation, which- whatever its merits- is addressing the concerns and rights of an stunningly small minority. The point is that everyone has an opinion on Trans rights, whereas few understand the scale of the economic mess that both Scotland and England now face. Several members of my family have had to up sticks and leave Scotland because the systems they rely on do not deliver what they are supposed to do.
Although the party of government is clearly bereft of ideas and talent, the entire political system is sclerotic and creaking. The national conversation is mean and small and leading nowhere: In Scotland the Nats shut down all debate unless on their own terms, and it is a bitter and pointless mess. Brutal and aggressive the atmosphere is increasingly coarse and threatening. In England the milquetoast Tory leadership feebly protest that corruption is not that bad... failing to recognize how angry voters are at the fiasco of the last 6 years.
I am sure that most people, like me after only 4 days here, are just shouting at the TV as some PR bullshit line is paraded past the graphics heavy/information lite interviewers.
If we get the governments we deserve, it seems that the voters must be apathetic and defeated on both sides of the border.
One thing is for sure, the fate of the world is certainly not being decided by the pygmy leaders in either London or in Edinburgh.
This could have been written at any time over the last 40 years.
FWIW, I don't agree. I think our infrastructure in this country is pretty good.
It's an awful December due to inflation and strikes, not poor maintenance.
I'm interested in your views on this CR as I am aware of you being a professional in the field. It is natural to complain about our own failings on this front which biases us to be negative. Have you seen reputable comparisons?
More importantly, to adapt Father Ted, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are both small and far away.
Quite. Remember the argument on PB - one of us argued it was more efficient to import turnips or whatever it was from Australia than to grow our own or get then from the EU.
The constant harping on "cultural" identity is also suspicious.
So fine to flood UK markets with CAP funded EU agricultural products and EU cars competing with UK producers but not a few Australian products?
Fine to allow UK exporters easier access to the EU but not Australian market?
Most Australians are still of British Isles origin and Australia remains the top destination for emigration for emigrants from the UK
You really don't get trade deals do you?
There is no one sided flooding the market unless you do a bad deal. The point of a good trade deal is to improve trade for both sides for mutual benefit.
So in idiot language:
Good trade deals are good Bad trade deals are bad
We had a very, very very good trade deal with the EU when we were in the EU, we now have a much worse trade deal
We had no trade deal with Australia. We now have a trade deal that is worse than no trade deal according to many people who understand these things, including many Tories.
How do you not get this?
No we had a very bad trade deal with the EU. We paid vast sums of money for the right to have a massive trade deficit and enhance the ability of companies to move their operations out of the UK to other parts of the EU, often being subsidised by the EU to do so. Whilst we were members of the EEC/EU we were forced to destroy agriculture and food production specifically to adhere to EU quotas. The EU was a disaster for British farming and for British employment.
Well we aren't going to agree on this and I wasn't intending to open up the remain/leave debate again, but I assume if you remove that para from my post you would agree with the point I was trying to make to HYUFD? Happy to remove it to reach consensus.
Which seemed to be have free trade and open borders with the EU but protectionism and closed borders for most of the rest of the world.
Nooooo. I never said that. If you read my posts I specially said it is good to have trade deals with everyone. I mean I said just that in a reply to you earlier today so stop putting incorrect words in my mouth.
However it is not good to have bad trade deals and the consensus from those that know is the Australian trade deal is a bad one, including Tories.
How can you not understand this. It was you who started all this with welcoming Truss's Australian deal. I simply pointed out that many consider it to be a poor deal. I would welcome a good deal with anyone.
The trade deal we have with Australia now is little different to the trade deal we have with the EU post Brexit.
Indeed probably more Brits would prefer to add free movement with Australia than restore it with the EU on a forced choice
Just back in the UK for a few days. Driving North on the M6 was pretty interesting. Basically the infrastructure constructed in the 1960s/70s is trying to cope with the traffic levels of 50 years later, and despite band-aid fixes like the so-called "smart Motorways", it is failing badly.
Small fixes in the rail system only upgrade things from a Victorian level and the strikes make the system unusable anyway- last Wednesday I was quoted over £300 for a single ticket on trainline from London to the Cotswolds. In any event it should not take nearly three hours to complete a 90 mile journey.
It left me reflecting that the NHS strikes in England are just another stunning failure of leadership. Everywhere you look the whole country looks dreary and run down. It takes longer to drive to Scotland from the South than it did 30 years ago.
Schools in Scotland are in complete crisis, and previous Scottish excellence in, for example, STEM subjects has just evaporated. At every level political intervention and incompetence is evident, and all the Scottish Parliament can point to is legislation, which- whatever its merits- is addressing the concerns and rights of an stunningly small minority. The point is that everyone has an opinion on Trans rights, whereas few understand the scale of the economic mess that both Scotland and England now face. Several members of my family have had to up sticks and leave Scotland because the systems they rely on do not deliver what they are supposed to do.
Although the party of government is clearly bereft of ideas and talent, the entire political system is sclerotic and creaking. The national conversation is mean and small and leading nowhere: In Scotland the Nats shut down all debate unless on their own terms, and it is a bitter and pointless mess. Brutal and aggressive the atmosphere is increasingly coarse and threatening. In England the milquetoast Tory leadership feebly protest that corruption is not that bad... failing to recognize how angry voters are at the fiasco of the last 6 years.
I am sure that most people, like me after only 4 days here, are just shouting at the TV as some PR bullshit line is paraded past the graphics heavy/information lite interviewers.
If we get the governments we deserve, it seems that the voters must be apathetic and defeated on both sides of the border.
One thing is for sure, the fate of the world is certainly not being decided by the pygmy leaders in either London or in Edinburgh.
This could have been written at any time over the last 40 years.
FWIW, I don't agree. I think our infrastructure in this country is pretty good.
It's an awful December due to inflation and strikes, not poor maintenance.
Hmm, that's not true, our infrastructure is creaking. Our energy supplies are in the red zone, transport infrastructure hasn't really improved in 50 years, our health infrastructure is running at a (growing) deficit, water is a disaster of having water shortages in an island nation that gets a lot of rainfall, new houses are all tiny and unaffordable which is why everyone wants something built in the 1930s or earlier but those houses which are a good size are often poorly insulated and don't have double glazing, even our once perfect airports infrastructure has become neglected and behind the times.
The UK has had a public and private investment deficit of tens of billions per year, the state has preferred to spend money on day to day running of the nation because that's a vote winner and companies have preferred to pay big executive bonuses and huge shareholder dividends, often funded by massive amounts of debt.
Fundamentally, for 40-50 years the UK has underinvested in all forms of infrastructure and now our generation are the unlucky ones who will have to somehow fund that gigantic renewal cost while our parents hollowed everything out to pay themselves bigger bonuses, dividends and pensions.
Just back in the UK for a few days. Driving North on the M6 was pretty interesting. Basically the infrastructure constructed in the 1960s/70s is trying to cope with the traffic levels of 50 years later, and despite band-aid fixes like the so-called "smart Motorways", it is failing badly.
Small fixes in the rail system only upgrade things from a Victorian level and the strikes make the system unusable anyway- last Wednesday I was quoted over £300 for a single ticket on trainline from London to the Cotswolds. In any event it should not take nearly three hours to complete a 90 mile journey.
It left me reflecting that the NHS strikes in England are just another stunning failure of leadership. Everywhere you look the whole country looks dreary and run down. It takes longer to drive to Scotland from the South than it did 30 years ago.
Schools in Scotland are in complete crisis, and previous Scottish excellence in, for example, STEM subjects has just evaporated. At every level political intervention and incompetence is evident, and all the Scottish Parliament can point to is legislation, which- whatever its merits- is addressing the concerns and rights of an stunningly small minority. The point is that everyone has an opinion on Trans rights, whereas few understand the scale of the economic mess that both Scotland and England now face. Several members of my family have had to up sticks and leave Scotland because the systems they rely on do not deliver what they are supposed to do.
Although the party of government is clearly bereft of ideas and talent, the entire political system is sclerotic and creaking. The national conversation is mean and small and leading nowhere: In Scotland the Nats shut down all debate unless on their own terms, and it is a bitter and pointless mess. Brutal and aggressive the atmosphere is increasingly coarse and threatening. In England the milquetoast Tory leadership feebly protest that corruption is not that bad... failing to recognize how angry voters are at the fiasco of the last 6 years.
I am sure that most people, like me after only 4 days here, are just shouting at the TV as some PR bullshit line is paraded past the graphics heavy/information lite interviewers.
If we get the governments we deserve, it seems that the voters must be apathetic and defeated on both sides of the border.
One thing is for sure, the fate of the world is certainly not being decided by the pygmy leaders in either London or in Edinburgh.
This could have been written at any time over the last 40 years.
FWIW, I don't agree. I think our infrastructure in this country is pretty good.
It's an awful December due to inflation and strikes, not poor maintenance.
I'm interested in your views on this CR as I am aware of you being a professional in the field. It is natural to complain about our own failings on this front which biases us to be negative. Have you seen reputable comparisons?
A definite advantage of countries emerging from the pre-1989 mess was that they could start from scratch in a number of areas.
Public infrastructure - in many cases what was there was so inadequate and ancient that there was not the slightest question about wholesale replacement.
Estonia was one that took this advantage and ran with it.
In contrast, we have archeological layers of infrastructure in this country. Only a few years back, they dismantled a bridge at Paddington and discovered that big trucks had been running over what was, essentially, the original bridge that Brunel put in….
It is much easier to bodge something to keep it going to the next election, when you can kind of half make a case that it will work….
More importantly, to adapt Father Ted, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are both small and far away.
Quite. Remember the argument on PB - one of us argued it was more efficient to import turnips or whatever it was from Australia than to grow our own or get then from the EU.
The constant harping on "cultural" identity is also suspicious.
So fine to flood UK markets with CAP funded EU agricultural products and EU cars competing with UK producers but not a few Australian products?
Fine to allow UK exporters easier access to the EU but not Australian market?
Most Australians are still of British Isles origin and Australia remains the top destination for emigration for emigrants from the UK
You really don't get trade deals do you?
There is no one sided flooding the market unless you do a bad deal. The point of a good trade deal is to improve trade for both sides for mutual benefit.
So in idiot language:
Good trade deals are good Bad trade deals are bad
We had a very, very very good trade deal with the EU when we were in the EU, we now have a much worse trade deal
We had no trade deal with Australia. We now have a trade deal that is worse than no trade deal according to many people who understand these things, including many Tories.
How do you not get this?
No we had a very bad trade deal with the EU. We paid vast sums of money for the right to have a massive trade deficit and enhance the ability of companies to move their operations out of the UK to other parts of the EU, often being subsidised by the EU to do so. Whilst we were members of the EEC/EU we were forced to destroy agriculture and food production specifically to adhere to EU quotas. The EU was a disaster for British farming and for British employment.
Well we aren't going to agree on this and I wasn't intending to open up the remain/leave debate again, but I assume if you remove that para from my post you would agree with the point I was trying to make to HYUFD? Happy to remove it to reach consensus.
Yes to some extent. Although I don't agree that trade deals are always necessarily good nor that globalisation has, on balance been a good thing. I think, for example, that amy trade deal we could reach with the US either inside or outside the EU would be bad for British consumers, British agriculture and British manufacturing. I would be very happy if we dropped pursuit of such a deal.
I am not sure we have ever been pursuing such a deal. More likely the politicians have sought to pretend they are after a US trade deal to gain votes from those who believe in the Anglosphere whilst knowing all along it had zero chance of happening.
Just back in the UK for a few days. Driving North on the M6 was pretty interesting. Basically the infrastructure constructed in the 1960s/70s is trying to cope with the traffic levels of 50 years later, and despite band-aid fixes like the so-called "smart Motorways", it is failing badly.
Small fixes in the rail system only upgrade things from a Victorian level and the strikes make the system unusable anyway- last Wednesday I was quoted over £300 for a single ticket on trainline from London to the Cotswolds. In any event it should not take nearly three hours to complete a 90 mile journey.
It left me reflecting that the NHS strikes in England are just another stunning failure of leadership. Everywhere you look the whole country looks dreary and run down. It takes longer to drive to Scotland from the South than it did 30 years ago.
Schools in Scotland are in complete crisis, and previous Scottish excellence in, for example, STEM subjects has just evaporated. At every level political intervention and incompetence is evident, and all the Scottish Parliament can point to is legislation, which- whatever its merits- is addressing the concerns and rights of an stunningly small minority. The point is that everyone has an opinion on Trans rights, whereas few understand the scale of the economic mess that both Scotland and England now face. Several members of my family have had to up sticks and leave Scotland because the systems they rely on do not deliver what they are supposed to do.
Although the party of government is clearly bereft of ideas and talent, the entire political system is sclerotic and creaking. The national conversation is mean and small and leading nowhere: In Scotland the Nats shut down all debate unless on their own terms, and it is a bitter and pointless mess. Brutal and aggressive the atmosphere is increasingly coarse and threatening. In England the milquetoast Tory leadership feebly protest that corruption is not that bad... failing to recognize how angry voters are at the fiasco of the last 6 years.
I am sure that most people, like me after only 4 days here, are just shouting at the TV as some PR bullshit line is paraded past the graphics heavy/information lite interviewers.
If we get the governments we deserve, it seems that the voters must be apathetic and defeated on both sides of the border.
One thing is for sure, the fate of the world is certainly not being decided by the pygmy leaders in either London or in Edinburgh.
This could have been written at any time over the last 40 years.
FWIW, I don't agree. I think our infrastructure in this country is pretty good.
It's an awful December due to inflation and strikes, not poor maintenance.
Hmm, that's not true, our infrastructure is creaking. Our energy supplies are in the red zone, transport infrastructure hasn't really improved in 50 years, our health infrastructure is running at a (growing) deficit, water is a disaster of having water shortages in an island nation that gets a lot of rainfall, new houses are all tiny and unaffordable which is why everyone wants something built in the 1930s or earlier but those houses which are a good size are often poorly insulated and don't have double glazing, even our once perfect airports infrastructure has become neglected and behind the times.
The UK has had a public and private investment deficit of tens of billions per year, the state has preferred to spend money on day to day running of the nation because that's a vote winner and companies have preferred to pay big executive bonuses and huge shareholder dividends, often funded by massive amounts of debt.
Fundamentally, for 40-50 years the UK has underinvested in all forms of infrastructure and now our generation are the unlucky ones who will have to somehow fund that gigantic renewal cost while our parents hollowed everything out to pay themselves bigger bonuses, dividends and pensions.
You should see the state of the school I try to work in.
More importantly, to adapt Father Ted, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are both small and far away.
Quite. Remember the argument on PB - one of us argued it was more efficient to import turnips or whatever it was from Australia than to grow our own or get then from the EU.
The constant harping on "cultural" identity is also suspicious.
So fine to flood UK markets with CAP funded EU agricultural products and EU cars competing with UK producers but not a few Australian products?
Fine to allow UK exporters easier access to the EU but not Australian market?
Most Australians are still of British Isles origin and Australia remains the top destination for emigration for emigrants from the UK
You really don't get trade deals do you?
There is no one sided flooding the market unless you do a bad deal. The point of a good trade deal is to improve trade for both sides for mutual benefit.
So in idiot language:
Good trade deals are good Bad trade deals are bad
We had a very, very very good trade deal with the EU when we were in the EU, we now have a much worse trade deal
We had no trade deal with Australia. We now have a trade deal that is worse than no trade deal according to many people who understand these things, including many Tories.
How do you not get this?
No we had a very bad trade deal with the EU. We paid vast sums of money for the right to have a massive trade deficit and enhance the ability of companies to move their operations out of the UK to other parts of the EU, often being subsidised by the EU to do so. Whilst we were members of the EEC/EU we were forced to destroy agriculture and food production specifically to adhere to EU quotas. The EU was a disaster for British farming and for British employment.
Well we aren't going to agree on this and I wasn't intending to open up the remain/leave debate again, but I assume if you remove that para from my post you would agree with the point I was trying to make to HYUFD? Happy to remove it to reach consensus.
Which seemed to be have free trade and open borders with the EU but protectionism and closed borders for most of the rest of the world.
Nooooo. I never said that. If you read my posts I specially said it is good to have trade deals with everyone. I mean I said just that in a reply to you earlier today so stop putting incorrect words in my mouth.
However it is not good to have bad trade deals and the consensus from those that know is the Australian trade deal is a bad one, including Tories.
How can you not understand this. It was you who started all this with welcoming Truss's Australian deal. I simply pointed out that many consider it to be a poor deal. I would welcome a good deal with anyone.
The trade deal we have with Australia now is little different to the trade deal we have with the EU post Brexit.
Indeed probably more Brits would prefer to add free movement with Australia than restore it with the EU on a forced choice
This is so frustrating. You could have two identical trade deals with two different bodies and one can be good and one bad depending on what the other side has to offer. Eg (and this is what I did for a living when I worked for a major computer company for 12 years) if I really need the software from company A, but not from company B and they both want something from me then if I offer them the same deal, then the deal with company A will be a better deal than the deal with company B, EVEN THOUGH IT IS THE SAME DEAL.
Now assuming you understand that then you should understand that the EU being a very different kettle of fish to Australia in just about every aspect means the deal you do should be very different.
So to tell me the deals are identical is not necessarily a good thing at all. It really isn't.
Just back in the UK for a few days. Driving North on the M6 was pretty interesting. Basically the infrastructure constructed in the 1960s/70s is trying to cope with the traffic levels of 50 years later, and despite band-aid fixes like the so-called "smart Motorways", it is failing badly.
Small fixes in the rail system only upgrade things from a Victorian level and the strikes make the system unusable anyway- last Wednesday I was quoted over £300 for a single ticket on trainline from London to the Cotswolds. In any event it should not take nearly three hours to complete a 90 mile journey.
It left me reflecting that the NHS strikes in England are just another stunning failure of leadership. Everywhere you look the whole country looks dreary and run down. It takes longer to drive to Scotland from the South than it did 30 years ago.
Schools in Scotland are in complete crisis, and previous Scottish excellence in, for example, STEM subjects has just evaporated. At every level political intervention and incompetence is evident, and all the Scottish Parliament can point to is legislation, which- whatever its merits- is addressing the concerns and rights of an stunningly small minority. The point is that everyone has an opinion on Trans rights, whereas few understand the scale of the economic mess that both Scotland and England now face. Several members of my family have had to up sticks and leave Scotland because the systems they rely on do not deliver what they are supposed to do.
Although the party of government is clearly bereft of ideas and talent, the entire political system is sclerotic and creaking. The national conversation is mean and small and leading nowhere: In Scotland the Nats shut down all debate unless on their own terms, and it is a bitter and pointless mess. Brutal and aggressive the atmosphere is increasingly coarse and threatening. In England the milquetoast Tory leadership feebly protest that corruption is not that bad... failing to recognize how angry voters are at the fiasco of the last 6 years.
I am sure that most people, like me after only 4 days here, are just shouting at the TV as some PR bullshit line is paraded past the graphics heavy/information lite interviewers.
If we get the governments we deserve, it seems that the voters must be apathetic and defeated on both sides of the border.
One thing is for sure, the fate of the world is certainly not being decided by the pygmy leaders in either London or in Edinburgh.
Great that you’ve popped back to give us the benefit of your vicariously held opinions. We really don’t get enough of that on PB.
I have to say I have travelled down to Heathrow and back in the last 24 hours to pick up my son and daughter in-law and do not recognise the description of the M6 particularly as I use the toll road.
Furthermore I have travelled to Lossiemouth from Llandudno since 1965 and the travel times are immeasurably better though the A9 lack of dualling is a long standing issue
Yes we have problems but so do many other countries including those in Europe
The difference is that other countries do not ignore their problems until it is too late. Travelling on Polish Roads over the past 30 years has been transformed, for example. The speed limit on what is now the A96 is down to 50 in several places, because junctions were never upgraded. I can remember how things were before -say- the Forfar bypass was built in the mid eighties, but since then things have not been maintained. As noted the Motorway viaducts in Birmingham will need to be replaced soon and the costs are going be scarily high. Who has the leadership skills to explain to the Brits how bad things will be if we don´t start fixing things up even at the cost of disruption to millions...
You do have an incredibly negative view of the UK.
Well, I do have the privilege of seeing other countries where the problems are neither so serious nor so ignored. The astonishing modernization of countries like Estonia and Poland is exciting and actually rather moving, given the horrors of 20th century history.
I am not so much negative as irritated that it did not have to be this way. The issues we face could have been addressed a long time ago but largely for short term political convenience they were let to drift until they became a really serious problem. In a way I am an optimist, I believe that reform can actually deliver us a better country.
Surely those countries to a great extent had a clean slate from the early 90s, and have built their infrastructure learning in part from what we had to go through trial and error in the decades previously.
More importantly, to adapt Father Ted, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are both small and far away.
Quite. Remember the argument on PB - one of us argued it was more efficient to import turnips or whatever it was from Australia than to grow our own or get then from the EU.
The constant harping on "cultural" identity is also suspicious.
So fine to flood UK markets with CAP funded EU agricultural products and EU cars competing with UK producers but not a few Australian products?
Fine to allow UK exporters easier access to the EU but not Australian market?
Most Australians are still of British Isles origin and Australia remains the top destination for emigration for emigrants from the UK
Doesn't matter - flooding the UK market with Australian produce thanks to a crap deal is just as stupid, and far worse from a food security point of view.
The percentage of CAP subsidised EU food and fish we flooded our markets with and British farmers had to compete with was far more in the single market than there will ever be from Australian farm produce imported on the same terms as the trade deal we now have with the EU.
Plus of course British exporters now get easier access to the Australian market as they have to the EU market
But short of digging a tunnel through the centre of the Earth (travel time: 42 minutes), there's a limit to how much fresh food it is sensible to send between the UK and Australia.
If you want to make an argument that Brexit leaves Britain poorer but prouder and happier, fair enough.
But the idea that swapping a single market including our immediate neighbours for tariff reductions across the globe is for the birds.
As we're gradually seeing.
Point of pedantry, you can't travel through the centre of the earth due to gravitational issues.
I'm intrigued. It's a fairly standard first year Uni physics question. And by symmetry it feels like it ought to work; falling in energy transfers gravitational to kinetic so you end up with just enough kinetic energy to overcome gravity enough to come to rest at the other portal.
Air resistance is a bit of a bugger, but I'm a physicist- ignoring air resistance is pretty much mandatory.
Is there something I've been missing?
Thermal energy from air friction. but I suppose that is counted in your comment. Though if your travelling mass is magnetic or even just conductive there would be some loss of energy due to induced currents and ?hysteresis.
Edit: or would there? Am I talking nonsense? Wouldn't the centre of the globe be a magnetic equivalent of a Faraday cage? This is where my head starts hurting.
More importantly, to adapt Father Ted, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are both small and far away.
Quite. Remember the argument on PB - one of us argued it was more efficient to import turnips or whatever it was from Australia than to grow our own or get then from the EU.
The constant harping on "cultural" identity is also suspicious.
So fine to flood UK markets with CAP funded EU agricultural products and EU cars competing with UK producers but not a few Australian products?
Fine to allow UK exporters easier access to the EU but not Australian market?
Most Australians are still of British Isles origin and Australia remains the top destination for emigration for emigrants from the UK
Doesn't matter - flooding the UK market with Australian produce thanks to a crap deal is just as stupid, and far worse from a food security point of view.
The percentage of CAP subsidised EU food and fish we flooded our markets with and British farmers had to compete with was far more in the single market than there will ever be from Australian farm produce imported on the same terms as the trade deal we now have with the EU.
Plus of course British exporters now get easier access to the Australian market as they have to the EU market
But short of digging a tunnel through the centre of the Earth (travel time: 42 minutes), there's a limit to how much fresh food it is sensible to send between the UK and Australia.
If you want to make an argument that Brexit leaves Britain poorer but prouder and happier, fair enough.
But the idea that swapping a single market including our immediate neighbours for tariff reductions across the globe is for the birds.
As we're gradually seeing.
Point of pedantry, you can't travel through the centre of the earth due to gravitational issues.
I'm intrigued. It's a fairly standard first year Uni physics question. And by symmetry it feels like it ought to work; falling in energy transfers gravitational to kinetic so you end up with just enough kinetic energy to overcome gravity enough to come to rest at the other portal.
Air resistance is a bit of a bugger, but I'm a physicist- ignoring air resistance is pretty much mandatory.
Is there something I've been missing?
A hole through the centre of the Earth was a plot point in a series of Torchwood. One end was in Shanghai, the other in Buenos Aires.
More importantly, to adapt Father Ted, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are both small and far away.
Quite. Remember the argument on PB - one of us argued it was more efficient to import turnips or whatever it was from Australia than to grow our own or get then from the EU.
The constant harping on "cultural" identity is also suspicious.
So fine to flood UK markets with CAP funded EU agricultural products and EU cars competing with UK producers but not a few Australian products?
Fine to allow UK exporters easier access to the EU but not Australian market?
Most Australians are still of British Isles origin and Australia remains the top destination for emigration for emigrants from the UK
You really don't get trade deals do you?
There is no one sided flooding the market unless you do a bad deal. The point of a good trade deal is to improve trade for both sides for mutual benefit.
So in idiot language:
Good trade deals are good Bad trade deals are bad
We had a very, very very good trade deal with the EU when we were in the EU, we now have a much worse trade deal
We had no trade deal with Australia. We now have a trade deal that is worse than no trade deal according to many people who understand these things, including many Tories.
How do you not get this?
No we had a very bad trade deal with the EU. We paid vast sums of money for the right to have a massive trade deficit and enhance the ability of companies to move their operations out of the UK to other parts of the EU, often being subsidised by the EU to do so. Whilst we were members of the EEC/EU we were forced to destroy agriculture and food production specifically to adhere to EU quotas. The EU was a disaster for British farming and for British employment.
Well we aren't going to agree on this and I wasn't intending to open up the remain/leave debate again, but I assume if you remove that para from my post you would agree with the point I was trying to make to HYUFD? Happy to remove it to reach consensus.
Which seemed to be have free trade and open borders with the EU but protectionism and closed borders for most of the rest of the world.
Nooooo. I never said that. If you read my posts I specially said it is good to have trade deals with everyone. I mean I said just that in a reply to you earlier today so stop putting incorrect words in my mouth.
However it is not good to have bad trade deals and the consensus from those that know is the Australian trade deal is a bad one, including Tories.
How can you not understand this. It was you who started all this with welcoming Truss's Australian deal. I simply pointed out that many consider it to be a poor deal. I would welcome a good deal with anyone.
The trade deal we have with Australia now is little different to the trade deal we have with the EU post Brexit.
Indeed probably more Brits would prefer to add free movement with Australia than restore it with the EU on a forced choice
This is so frustrating. You could have two identical trade deals with two different bodies and one can be good and one bad depending on what the other side has to offer. Eg (and this is what I did for a living when I worked for a major computer company for 12 years) if I really need the software from company A, but not from company B and they both want something from me then if I offer them the same deal, then the deal with company A will be a better deal than the deal with company B, EVEN THOUGH IT IS THE SAME DEAL.
Now assuming you understand that then you should understand that the EU being a very different kettle of fish to Australia in just about every aspect means the deal you do should be very different.
So to tell me the deals are identical is not necessarily a good thing at all. It really isn't.
Yes we are also far more likely to have high imports of subsidised EU food and EU cars and migrants from Eastern Europe than we are high imports from Australia and masses of Australian migrants
Just back in the UK for a few days. Driving North on the M6 was pretty interesting. Basically the infrastructure constructed in the 1960s/70s is trying to cope with the traffic levels of 50 years later, and despite band-aid fixes like the so-called "smart Motorways", it is failing badly.
Small fixes in the rail system only upgrade things from a Victorian level and the strikes make the system unusable anyway- last Wednesday I was quoted over £300 for a single ticket on trainline from London to the Cotswolds. In any event it should not take nearly three hours to complete a 90 mile journey.
It left me reflecting that the NHS strikes in England are just another stunning failure of leadership. Everywhere you look the whole country looks dreary and run down. It takes longer to drive to Scotland from the South than it did 30 years ago.
Schools in Scotland are in complete crisis, and previous Scottish excellence in, for example, STEM subjects has just evaporated. At every level political intervention and incompetence is evident, and all the Scottish Parliament can point to is legislation, which- whatever its merits- is addressing the concerns and rights of an stunningly small minority. The point is that everyone has an opinion on Trans rights, whereas few understand the scale of the economic mess that both Scotland and England now face. Several members of my family have had to up sticks and leave Scotland because the systems they rely on do not deliver what they are supposed to do.
Although the party of government is clearly bereft of ideas and talent, the entire political system is sclerotic and creaking. The national conversation is mean and small and leading nowhere: In Scotland the Nats shut down all debate unless on their own terms, and it is a bitter and pointless mess. Brutal and aggressive the atmosphere is increasingly coarse and threatening. In England the milquetoast Tory leadership feebly protest that corruption is not that bad... failing to recognize how angry voters are at the fiasco of the last 6 years.
I am sure that most people, like me after only 4 days here, are just shouting at the TV as some PR bullshit line is paraded past the graphics heavy/information lite interviewers.
If we get the governments we deserve, it seems that the voters must be apathetic and defeated on both sides of the border.
One thing is for sure, the fate of the world is certainly not being decided by the pygmy leaders in either London or in Edinburgh.
Great that you’ve popped back to give us the benefit of your vicariously held opinions. We really don’t get enough of that on PB.
I have to say I have travelled down to Heathrow and back in the last 24 hours to pick up my son and daughter in-law and do not recognise the description of the M6 particularly as I use the toll road.
Furthermore I have travelled to Lossiemouth from Llandudno since 1965 and the travel times are immeasurably better though the A9 lack of dualling is a long standing issue
Yes we have problems but so do many other countries including those in Europe
The difference is that other countries do not ignore their problems until it is too late. Travelling on Polish Roads over the past 30 years has been transformed, for example. The speed limit on what is now the A96 is down to 50 in several places, because junctions were never upgraded. I can remember how things were before -say- the Forfar bypass was built in the mid eighties, but since then things have not been maintained. As noted the Motorway viaducts in Birmingham will need to be replaced soon and the costs are going be scarily high. Who has the leadership skills to explain to the Brits how bad things will be if we don´t start fixing things up even at the cost of disruption to millions...
You do have an incredibly negative view of the UK.
Well, I do have the privilege of seeing other countries where the problems are neither so serious nor so ignored. The astonishing modernization of countries like Estonia and Poland is exciting and actually rather moving, given the horrors of 20th century history.
I am not so much negative as irritated that it did not have to be this way. The issues we face could have been addressed a long time ago but largely for short term political convenience they were let to drift until they became a really serious problem. In a way I am an optimist, I believe that reform can actually deliver us a better country.
Surely those countries to a great extent had a clean slate from the early 90s, and have built their infrastructure learning in part from what we had to go through trial and error in the decades previously.
More importantly, to adapt Father Ted, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are both small and far away.
Quite. Remember the argument on PB - one of us argued it was more efficient to import turnips or whatever it was from Australia than to grow our own or get then from the EU.
The constant harping on "cultural" identity is also suspicious.
So fine to flood UK markets with CAP funded EU agricultural products and EU cars competing with UK producers but not a few Australian products?
Fine to allow UK exporters easier access to the EU but not Australian market?
Most Australians are still of British Isles origin and Australia remains the top destination for emigration for emigrants from the UK
You really don't get trade deals do you?
There is no one sided flooding the market unless you do a bad deal. The point of a good trade deal is to improve trade for both sides for mutual benefit.
So in idiot language:
Good trade deals are good Bad trade deals are bad
We had a very, very very good trade deal with the EU when we were in the EU, we now have a much worse trade deal
We had no trade deal with Australia. We now have a trade deal that is worse than no trade deal according to many people who understand these things, including many Tories.
How do you not get this?
No we had a very bad trade deal with the EU. We paid vast sums of money for the right to have a massive trade deficit and enhance the ability of companies to move their operations out of the UK to other parts of the EU, often being subsidised by the EU to do so. Whilst we were members of the EEC/EU we were forced to destroy agriculture and food production specifically to adhere to EU quotas. The EU was a disaster for British farming and for British employment.
Well we aren't going to agree on this and I wasn't intending to open up the remain/leave debate again, but I assume if you remove that para from my post you would agree with the point I was trying to make to HYUFD? Happy to remove it to reach consensus.
Yes to some extent. Although I don't agree that trade deals are always necessarily good nor that globalisation has, on balance been a good thing. I think, for example, that amy trade deal we could reach with the US either inside or outside the EU would be bad for British consumers, British agriculture and British manufacturing. I would be very happy if we dropped pursuit of such a deal.
I am not sure we have ever been pursuing such a deal. More likely the politicians have sought to pretend they are after a US trade deal to gain votes from those who believe in the Anglosphere whilst knowing all along it had zero chance of happening.
There is no desire for a trade deal with the US given we already are a net exporter there and don't want to be flooded with US imports.
Nor with India given it would require easier immigration from India than now which is hardly a great desire in the redwall
Ambulance strike set for the 28th Dec called off because they "care about patients" to be rescheduled to another day, January 11th when the caring, presumably, ceases or at least is put on the backburner.
More importantly, to adapt Father Ted, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are both small and far away.
Quite. Remember the argument on PB - one of us argued it was more efficient to import turnips or whatever it was from Australia than to grow our own or get then from the EU.
The constant harping on "cultural" identity is also suspicious.
So fine to flood UK markets with CAP funded EU agricultural products and EU cars competing with UK producers but not a few Australian products?
Fine to allow UK exporters easier access to the EU but not Australian market?
Most Australians are still of British Isles origin and Australia remains the top destination for emigration for emigrants from the UK
You really don't get trade deals do you?
There is no one sided flooding the market unless you do a bad deal. The point of a good trade deal is to improve trade for both sides for mutual benefit.
So in idiot language:
Good trade deals are good Bad trade deals are bad
We had a very, very very good trade deal with the EU when we were in the EU, we now have a much worse trade deal
We had no trade deal with Australia. We now have a trade deal that is worse than no trade deal according to many people who understand these things, including many Tories.
How do you not get this?
No we had a very bad trade deal with the EU. We paid vast sums of money for the right to have a massive trade deficit and enhance the ability of companies to move their operations out of the UK to other parts of the EU, often being subsidised by the EU to do so. Whilst we were members of the EEC/EU we were forced to destroy agriculture and food production specifically to adhere to EU quotas. The EU was a disaster for British farming and for British employment.
Well we aren't going to agree on this and I wasn't intending to open up the remain/leave debate again, but I assume if you remove that para from my post you would agree with the point I was trying to make to HYUFD? Happy to remove it to reach consensus.
Yes to some extent. Although I don't agree that trade deals are always necessarily good nor that globalisation has, on balance been a good thing. I think, for example, that amy trade deal we could reach with the US either inside or outside the EU would be bad for British consumers, British agriculture and British manufacturing. I would be very happy if we dropped pursuit of such a deal.
I think I agree with that and this might be dancing on a pinhead but my point was that if we can agree a deal that is mutually beneficial with anyone we should. That does not mean it is possible and I take your point re the USA specifically, especially when considering the wider impacts of such a deal ie it might look good on paper but might in the long run not be for the wider good of the country. Generally in priority order: Good trade deal, no trade deal, bad trade deal. Deals that are one sided (regardless of who the winner is) are always bad deals. Something I learnt early on is even getting one over on a supplier, always backfires.
More importantly, to adapt Father Ted, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are both small and far away.
Quite. Remember the argument on PB - one of us argued it was more efficient to import turnips or whatever it was from Australia than to grow our own or get then from the EU.
The constant harping on "cultural" identity is also suspicious.
So fine to flood UK markets with CAP funded EU agricultural products and EU cars competing with UK producers but not a few Australian products?
Fine to allow UK exporters easier access to the EU but not Australian market?
Most Australians are still of British Isles origin and Australia remains the top destination for emigration for emigrants from the UK
Doesn't matter - flooding the UK market with Australian produce thanks to a crap deal is just as stupid, and far worse from a food security point of view.
The percentage of CAP subsidised EU food and fish we flooded our markets with and British farmers had to compete with was far more in the single market than there will ever be from Australian farm produce imported on the same terms as the trade deal we now have with the EU.
Plus of course British exporters now get easier access to the Australian market as they have to the EU market
But short of digging a tunnel through the centre of the Earth (travel time: 42 minutes), there's a limit to how much fresh food it is sensible to send between the UK and Australia.
If you want to make an argument that Brexit leaves Britain poorer but prouder and happier, fair enough.
But the idea that swapping a single market including our immediate neighbours for tariff reductions across the globe is for the birds.
As we're gradually seeing.
Point of pedantry, you can't travel through the centre of the earth due to gravitational issues.
I'm intrigued. It's a fairly standard first year Uni physics question. And by symmetry it feels like it ought to work; falling in energy transfers gravitational to kinetic so you end up with just enough kinetic energy to overcome gravity enough to come to rest at the other portal.
Air resistance is a bit of a bugger, but I'm a physicist- ignoring air resistance is pretty much mandatory.
Is there something I've been missing?
Thermal energy from air friction. but I suppose that is counted in your comment. Though if your travelling mass is magnetic or even just conductive there would be some loss of energy due to induced currents and ?hysteresis.
Edit: or would there? Am I talking nonsense? Wouldn't the centre of the globe be a magnetic equivalent of a Faraday cage? This is where my head starts hurting.
If such a hole existed and you jumped into it, you would fall towards the center of the Earth due to the Earth's gravitational field. The gravitational acceleration at the Earth's surface is about 9.8 meters per second squared, so you would accelerate towards the center of the Earth at that rate as you fell.
As you fell deeper into the Earth, you would encounter increasing levels of pressure and temperature. The temperature and pressure inside the Earth increase with depth due to the weight of the overlying material. At the core-mantle boundary, the temperature is estimated to be around 5700 degrees Celsius and the pressure is about 3.5 million times atmospheric pressure at sea level. These conditions would be lethal to a human.
Even if you were able to withstand the high temperatures and pressures, you would eventually reach the center of the Earth and then begin falling back towards the surface on the other side of the planet. The journey through the Earth would take about 42 minutes, and you would emerge from the hole on the other side of the Earth with a velocity that would be equal in magnitude but opposite in direction to the velocity with which you entered the hole.
More importantly, to adapt Father Ted, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are both small and far away.
Quite. Remember the argument on PB - one of us argued it was more efficient to import turnips or whatever it was from Australia than to grow our own or get then from the EU.
The constant harping on "cultural" identity is also suspicious.
So fine to flood UK markets with CAP funded EU agricultural products and EU cars competing with UK producers but not a few Australian products?
Fine to allow UK exporters easier access to the EU but not Australian market?
Most Australians are still of British Isles origin and Australia remains the top destination for emigration for emigrants from the UK
Doesn't matter - flooding the UK market with Australian produce thanks to a crap deal is just as stupid, and far worse from a food security point of view.
The percentage of CAP subsidised EU food and fish we flooded our markets with and British farmers had to compete with was far more in the single market than there will ever be from Australian farm produce imported on the same terms as the trade deal we now have with the EU.
Plus of course British exporters now get easier access to the Australian market as they have to the EU market
But short of digging a tunnel through the centre of the Earth (travel time: 42 minutes), there's a limit to how much fresh food it is sensible to send between the UK and Australia.
If you want to make an argument that Brexit leaves Britain poorer but prouder and happier, fair enough.
But the idea that swapping a single market including our immediate neighbours for tariff reductions across the globe is for the birds.
As we're gradually seeing.
Point of pedantry, you can't travel through the centre of the earth due to gravitational issues.
I'm intrigued. It's a fairly standard first year Uni physics question. And by symmetry it feels like it ought to work; falling in energy transfers gravitational to kinetic so you end up with just enough kinetic energy to overcome gravity enough to come to rest at the other portal.
Air resistance is a bit of a bugger, but I'm a physicist- ignoring air resistance is pretty much mandatory.
Is there something I've been missing?
Thermal energy from air friction. but I suppose that is counted in your comment. Though if your travelling mass is magnetic or even just conductive there would be some loss of energy due to induced currents and ?hysteresis.
Edit: or would there? Am I talking nonsense? Wouldn't the centre of the globe be a magnetic equivalent of a Faraday cage? This is where my head starts hurting.
I seem to remember that it takes just over 42 minutes to get to the other side
Here is a possible plot for a science fiction movie with a transgender interest based on the idea of drilling a hole through the center of the Earth:
The movie follows the story of a transgender scientist named Alex, who has always been fascinated by the idea of drilling a hole through the center of the Earth. Despite being met with skepticism and ridicule from their colleagues, Alex is determined to prove that it is possible.
After years of research and development, Alex finally succeeds in creating a drill that is capable of withstanding the extreme temperatures and pressures that would be encountered during the journey through the Earth. With a team of international scientists and engineers, Alex sets out to drill the hole and make the journey to the other side of the planet.
As the team descends deeper into the Earth, they encounter all sorts of challenges and dangers, including underground rivers of molten lava, giant cave-dwelling creatures, and unexpected geological phenomena. Along the way, Alex must confront their own personal demons, including their own self-doubt and the judgment of others who do not understand their transgender identity.
As they near the center of the Earth, the team must make a life-or-death decision: turn back or continue on to the other side. In the end, they choose to continue and emerge from the hole on the other side of the Earth, where they are greeted as heroes and hailed as pioneers. The movie ends with Alex finally gaining the acceptance and respect that they have always deserved.
More importantly, to adapt Father Ted, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are both small and far away.
Quite. Remember the argument on PB - one of us argued it was more efficient to import turnips or whatever it was from Australia than to grow our own or get then from the EU.
The constant harping on "cultural" identity is also suspicious.
So fine to flood UK markets with CAP funded EU agricultural products and EU cars competing with UK producers but not a few Australian products?
Fine to allow UK exporters easier access to the EU but not Australian market?
Most Australians are still of British Isles origin and Australia remains the top destination for emigration for emigrants from the UK
Doesn't matter - flooding the UK market with Australian produce thanks to a crap deal is just as stupid, and far worse from a food security point of view.
The percentage of CAP subsidised EU food and fish we flooded our markets with and British farmers had to compete with was far more in the single market than there will ever be from Australian farm produce imported on the same terms as the trade deal we now have with the EU.
Plus of course British exporters now get easier access to the Australian market as they have to the EU market
But short of digging a tunnel through the centre of the Earth (travel time: 42 minutes), there's a limit to how much fresh food it is sensible to send between the UK and Australia.
If you want to make an argument that Brexit leaves Britain poorer but prouder and happier, fair enough.
But the idea that swapping a single market including our immediate neighbours for tariff reductions across the globe is for the birds.
As we're gradually seeing.
Point of pedantry, you can't travel through the centre of the earth due to gravitational issues.
I'm not sure that's the biggest problem with plans for a uk-Australia tunnel
Just back in the UK for a few days. Driving North on the M6 was pretty interesting. Basically the infrastructure constructed in the 1960s/70s is trying to cope with the traffic levels of 50 years later, and despite band-aid fixes like the so-called "smart Motorways", it is failing badly.
Small fixes in the rail system only upgrade things from a Victorian level and the strikes make the system unusable anyway- last Wednesday I was quoted over £300 for a single ticket on trainline from London to the Cotswolds. In any event it should not take nearly three hours to complete a 90 mile journey.
It left me reflecting that the NHS strikes in England are just another stunning failure of leadership. Everywhere you look the whole country looks dreary and run down. It takes longer to drive to Scotland from the South than it did 30 years ago.
Schools in Scotland are in complete crisis, and previous Scottish excellence in, for example, STEM subjects has just evaporated. At every level political intervention and incompetence is evident, and all the Scottish Parliament can point to is legislation, which- whatever its merits- is addressing the concerns and rights of an stunningly small minority. The point is that everyone has an opinion on Trans rights, whereas few understand the scale of the economic mess that both Scotland and England now face. Several members of my family have had to up sticks and leave Scotland because the systems they rely on do not deliver what they are supposed to do.
Although the party of government is clearly bereft of ideas and talent, the entire political system is sclerotic and creaking. The national conversation is mean and small and leading nowhere: In Scotland the Nats shut down all debate unless on their own terms, and it is a bitter and pointless mess. Brutal and aggressive the atmosphere is increasingly coarse and threatening. In England the milquetoast Tory leadership feebly protest that corruption is not that bad... failing to recognize how angry voters are at the fiasco of the last 6 years.
I am sure that most people, like me after only 4 days here, are just shouting at the TV as some PR bullshit line is paraded past the graphics heavy/information lite interviewers.
If we get the governments we deserve, it seems that the voters must be apathetic and defeated on both sides of the border.
One thing is for sure, the fate of the world is certainly not being decided by the pygmy leaders in either London or in Edinburgh.
Great that you’ve popped back to give us the benefit of your vicariously held opinions. We really don’t get enough of that on PB.
I have to say I have travelled down to Heathrow and back in the last 24 hours to pick up my son and daughter in-law and do not recognise the description of the M6 particularly as I use the toll road.
Furthermore I have travelled to Lossiemouth from Llandudno since 1965 and the travel times are immeasurably better though the A9 lack of dualling is a long standing issue
Yes we have problems but so do many other countries including those in Europe
The difference is that other countries do not ignore their problems until it is too late. Travelling on Polish Roads over the past 30 years has been transformed, for example. The speed limit on what is now the A96 is down to 50 in several places, because junctions were never upgraded. I can remember how things were before -say- the Forfar bypass was built in the mid eighties, but since then things have not been maintained. As noted the Motorway viaducts in Birmingham will need to be replaced soon and the costs are going be scarily high. Who has the leadership skills to explain to the Brits how bad things will be if we don´t start fixing things up even at the cost of disruption to millions...
You do have an incredibly negative view of the UK.
Well, I do have the privilege of seeing other countries where the problems are neither so serious nor so ignored. The astonishing modernization of countries like Estonia and Poland is exciting and actually rather moving, given the horrors of 20th century history.
I am not so much negative as irritated that it did not have to be this way. The issues we face could have been addressed a long time ago but largely for short term political convenience they were let to drift until they became a really serious problem. In a way I am an optimist, I believe that reform can actually deliver us a better country.
Surely those countries to a great extent had a clean slate from the early 90s, and have built their infrastructure learning in part from what we had to go through trial and error in the decades previously.
More importantly, to adapt Father Ted, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are both small and far away.
Quite. Remember the argument on PB - one of us argued it was more efficient to import turnips or whatever it was from Australia than to grow our own or get then from the EU.
The constant harping on "cultural" identity is also suspicious.
So fine to flood UK markets with CAP funded EU agricultural products and EU cars competing with UK producers but not a few Australian products?
Fine to allow UK exporters easier access to the EU but not Australian market?
Most Australians are still of British Isles origin and Australia remains the top destination for emigration for emigrants from the UK
Doesn't matter - flooding the UK market with Australian produce thanks to a crap deal is just as stupid, and far worse from a food security point of view.
The percentage of CAP subsidised EU food and fish we flooded our markets with and British farmers had to compete with was far more in the single market than there will ever be from Australian farm produce imported on the same terms as the trade deal we now have with the EU.
Plus of course British exporters now get easier access to the Australian market as they have to the EU market
But short of digging a tunnel through the centre of the Earth (travel time: 42 minutes), there's a limit to how much fresh food it is sensible to send between the UK and Australia.
If you want to make an argument that Brexit leaves Britain poorer but prouder and happier, fair enough.
But the idea that swapping a single market including our immediate neighbours for tariff reductions across the globe is for the birds.
As we're gradually seeing.
Point of pedantry, you can't travel through the centre of the earth due to gravitational issues.
I'm not sure that's the biggest problem with plans for a uk-Australia tunnel
All you’d need would be -
- nearly infinite, cheap quantities of unobtanium. - a method of tunnelling that not merely tunnels at 100s of meters per second, but magics away the material removed.
More importantly, to adapt Father Ted, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are both small and far away.
Quite. Remember the argument on PB - one of us argued it was more efficient to import turnips or whatever it was from Australia than to grow our own or get then from the EU.
The constant harping on "cultural" identity is also suspicious.
So fine to flood UK markets with CAP funded EU agricultural products and EU cars competing with UK producers but not a few Australian products?
Fine to allow UK exporters easier access to the EU but not Australian market?
Most Australians are still of British Isles origin and Australia remains the top destination for emigration for emigrants from the UK
Doesn't matter - flooding the UK market with Australian produce thanks to a crap deal is just as stupid, and far worse from a food security point of view.
The percentage of CAP subsidised EU food and fish we flooded our markets with and British farmers had to compete with was far more in the single market than there will ever be from Australian farm produce imported on the same terms as the trade deal we now have with the EU.
Plus of course British exporters now get easier access to the Australian market as they have to the EU market
But short of digging a tunnel through the centre of the Earth (travel time: 42 minutes), there's a limit to how much fresh food it is sensible to send between the UK and Australia.
If you want to make an argument that Brexit leaves Britain poorer but prouder and happier, fair enough.
But the idea that swapping a single market including our immediate neighbours for tariff reductions across the globe is for the birds.
As we're gradually seeing.
Point of pedantry, you can't travel through the centre of the earth due to gravitational issues.
I'm intrigued. It's a fairly standard first year Uni physics question. And by symmetry it feels like it ought to work; falling in energy transfers gravitational to kinetic so you end up with just enough kinetic energy to overcome gravity enough to come to rest at the other portal.
Air resistance is a bit of a bugger, but I'm a physicist- ignoring air resistance is pretty much mandatory.
Is there something I've been missing?
Thermal energy from air friction. but I suppose that is counted in your comment. Though if your travelling mass is magnetic or even just conductive there would be some loss of energy due to induced currents and ?hysteresis.
Edit: or would there? Am I talking nonsense? Wouldn't the centre of the globe be a magnetic equivalent of a Faraday cage? This is where my head starts hurting.
I seem to remember that it takes just over 42 minutes to get to the other side
So if you start The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars on your ipod as you jump in, you'll know you have 3 minutes to straighten your hair as Rock 'n' Roll Suicide fades out.
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by the trans debate. Inevitably some very much not the best minds also fallen by the wayside. The woman's face on the right is a picture in its own right.
Yes to some extent. Although I don't agree that trade deals are always necessarily good nor that globalisation has, on balance been a good thing. I think, for example, that amy trade deal we could reach with the US either inside or outside the EU would be bad for British consumers, British agriculture and British manufacturing. I would be very happy if we dropped pursuit of such a deal.
I think I agree with that and this might be dancing on a pinhead but my point was that if we can agree a deal that is mutually beneficial with anyone we should. That does not mean it is possible and I take your point re the USA specifically, especially when considering the wider impacts of such a deal ie it might look good on paper but might in the long run not be for the wider good of the country. Generally in priority order: Good trade deal, no trade deal, bad trade deal. Deals that are one sided (regardless of who the winner is) are always bad deals. Something I learnt early on is even getting one over on a supplier, always backfires.
My specialist subject up to a point, and I'll have a shot at putting both sides. Other things being equal, removal of impediments to trade is always good, so I agree with the Government's wish to sign lots of them. The snag tends to be that one or more sectors will lose out to cheaper foreign competition. The recent Australian trade deal was undoubtedly good for British whisky exporters and the City, bad for British agriculture, according to the Government's own Impact Assessment. That's because we are really good at finance and whisky, and not very competitive in agriculture, so overall the Government came up with a positive balance. If one sees everything in cash terms - as I think the Truss wing of the Government does - then that's fine.
But - that's at the expense of food security and animal welfare and environmental standards in food production. None of that has a cash value, so they don't turn up in the Impact Assessment. But they're why NGOs like mine (and former Defra secretary George Eustice) are critical of that particular deal, and like Richard we are very sceptical about a US trade deal. By contrast, the trade deal with New Zealand was pretty good on both environment and welfare counts as their standards are comparable to ours, perhaps a little better.
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by the trans debate. Inevitably some very much not the best minds also fallen by the wayside. The woman's face on the right is a picture in its own right.
I will never cease to speculate as to the point she thought was being made here. And I bloody love the expression on the face at bottom right.
More importantly, to adapt Father Ted, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are both small and far away.
Quite. Remember the argument on PB - one of us argued it was more efficient to import turnips or whatever it was from Australia than to grow our own or get then from the EU.
The constant harping on "cultural" identity is also suspicious.
So fine to flood UK markets with CAP funded EU agricultural products and EU cars competing with UK producers but not a few Australian products?
Fine to allow UK exporters easier access to the EU but not Australian market?
Most Australians are still of British Isles origin and Australia remains the top destination for emigration for emigrants from the UK
Doesn't matter - flooding the UK market with Australian produce thanks to a crap deal is just as stupid, and far worse from a food security point of view.
The percentage of CAP subsidised EU food and fish we flooded our markets with and British farmers had to compete with was far more in the single market than there will ever be from Australian farm produce imported on the same terms as the trade deal we now have with the EU.
Plus of course British exporters now get easier access to the Australian market as they have to the EU market
But short of digging a tunnel through the centre of the Earth (travel time: 42 minutes), there's a limit to how much fresh food it is sensible to send between the UK and Australia.
If you want to make an argument that Brexit leaves Britain poorer but prouder and happier, fair enough.
But the idea that swapping a single market including our immediate neighbours for tariff reductions across the globe is for the birds.
As we're gradually seeing.
Point of pedantry, you can't travel through the centre of the earth due to gravitational issues.
I'm intrigued. It's a fairly standard first year Uni physics question. And by symmetry it feels like it ought to work; falling in energy transfers gravitational to kinetic so you end up with just enough kinetic energy to overcome gravity enough to come to rest at the other portal.
Air resistance is a bit of a bugger, but I'm a physicist- ignoring air resistance is pretty much mandatory.
Is there something I've been missing?
Thermal energy from air friction. but I suppose that is counted in your comment. Though if your travelling mass is magnetic or even just conductive there would be some loss of energy due to induced currents and ?hysteresis.
Edit: or would there? Am I talking nonsense? Wouldn't the centre of the globe be a magnetic equivalent of a Faraday cage? This is where my head starts hurting.
If such a hole existed and you jumped into it, you would fall towards the center of the Earth due to the Earth's gravitational field. The gravitational acceleration at the Earth's surface is about 9.8 meters per second squared, so you would accelerate towards the center of the Earth at that rate as you fell.
As you fell deeper into the Earth, you would encounter increasing levels of pressure and temperature. The temperature and pressure inside the Earth increase with depth due to the weight of the overlying material. At the core-mantle boundary, the temperature is estimated to be around 5700 degrees Celsius and the pressure is about 3.5 million times atmospheric pressure at sea level. These conditions would be lethal to a human.
Even if you were able to withstand the high temperatures and pressures, you would eventually reach the center of the Earth and then begin falling back towards the surface on the other side of the planet. The journey through the Earth would take about 42 minutes, and you would emerge from the hole on the other side of the Earth with a velocity that would be equal in magnitude but opposite in direction to the velocity with which you entered the hole.
Here is a possible plot for a science fiction movie with a transgender interest based on the idea of drilling a hole through the center of the Earth:
The movie follows the story of a transgender scientist named Alex, who has always been fascinated by the idea of drilling a hole through the center of the Earth. Despite being met with skepticism and ridicule from their colleagues, Alex is determined to prove that it is possible.
After years of research and development, Alex finally succeeds in creating a drill that is capable of withstanding the extreme temperatures and pressures that would be encountered during the journey through the Earth. With a team of international scientists and engineers, Alex sets out to drill the hole and make the journey to the other side of the planet.
As the team descends deeper into the Earth, they encounter all sorts of challenges and dangers, including underground rivers of molten lava, giant cave-dwelling creatures, and unexpected geological phenomena. Along the way, Alex must confront their own personal demons, including their own self-doubt and the judgment of others who do not understand their transgender identity.
As they near the center of the Earth, the team must make a life-or-death decision: turn back or continue on to the other side. In the end, they choose to continue and emerge from the hole on the other side of the Earth, where they are greeted as heroes and hailed as pioneers. The movie ends with Alex finally gaining the acceptance and respect that they have always deserved.
More importantly, to adapt Father Ted, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are both small and far away.
Quite. Remember the argument on PB - one of us argued it was more efficient to import turnips or whatever it was from Australia than to grow our own or get then from the EU.
The constant harping on "cultural" identity is also suspicious.
So fine to flood UK markets with CAP funded EU agricultural products and EU cars competing with UK producers but not a few Australian products?
Fine to allow UK exporters easier access to the EU but not Australian market?
Most Australians are still of British Isles origin and Australia remains the top destination for emigration for emigrants from the UK
Doesn't matter - flooding the UK market with Australian produce thanks to a crap deal is just as stupid, and far worse from a food security point of view.
The percentage of CAP subsidised EU food and fish we flooded our markets with and British farmers had to compete with was far more in the single market than there will ever be from Australian farm produce imported on the same terms as the trade deal we now have with the EU.
Plus of course British exporters now get easier access to the Australian market as they have to the EU market
But short of digging a tunnel through the centre of the Earth (travel time: 42 minutes), there's a limit to how much fresh food it is sensible to send between the UK and Australia.
If you want to make an argument that Brexit leaves Britain poorer but prouder and happier, fair enough.
But the idea that swapping a single market including our immediate neighbours for tariff reductions across the globe is for the birds.
As we're gradually seeing.
Point of pedantry, you can't travel through the centre of the earth due to gravitational issues.
I'm not sure that's the biggest problem with plans for a uk-Australia tunnel
Indeed - legal issues about ownership are the main thing.
Here is a possible plot for a science fiction movie with a transgender interest based on the idea of drilling a hole through the center of the Earth:
The movie follows the story of a transgender scientist named Alex, who has always been fascinated by the idea of drilling a hole through the center of the Earth. Despite being met with skepticism and ridicule from their colleagues, Alex is determined to prove that it is possible.
After years of research and development, Alex finally succeeds in creating a drill that is capable of withstanding the extreme temperatures and pressures that would be encountered during the journey through the Earth. With a team of international scientists and engineers, Alex sets out to drill the hole and make the journey to the other side of the planet.
As the team descends deeper into the Earth, they encounter all sorts of challenges and dangers, including underground rivers of molten lava, giant cave-dwelling creatures, and unexpected geological phenomena. Along the way, Alex must confront their own personal demons, including their own self-doubt and the judgment of others who do not understand their transgender identity.
As they near the center of the Earth, the team must make a life-or-death decision: turn back or continue on to the other side. In the end, they choose to continue and emerge from the hole on the other side of the Earth, where they are greeted as heroes and hailed as pioneers. The movie ends with Alex finally gaining the acceptance and respect that they have always deserved.
It'll never work.
No.
As Alex emerges blinking into the fierce Northern Terroitory sunshine the cry will go up "Strewth! There's a bloke over there dressed like a Sheila!"
More importantly, to adapt Father Ted, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are both small and far away.
Quite. Remember the argument on PB - one of us argued it was more efficient to import turnips or whatever it was from Australia than to grow our own or get then from the EU.
The constant harping on "cultural" identity is also suspicious.
So fine to flood UK markets with CAP funded EU agricultural products and EU cars competing with UK producers but not a few Australian products?
Fine to allow UK exporters easier access to the EU but not Australian market?
Most Australians are still of British Isles origin and Australia remains the top destination for emigration for emigrants from the UK
Doesn't matter - flooding the UK market with Australian produce thanks to a crap deal is just as stupid, and far worse from a food security point of view.
The percentage of CAP subsidised EU food and fish we flooded our markets with and British farmers had to compete with was far more in the single market than there will ever be from Australian farm produce imported on the same terms as the trade deal we now have with the EU.
Plus of course British exporters now get easier access to the Australian market as they have to the EU market
But short of digging a tunnel through the centre of the Earth (travel time: 42 minutes), there's a limit to how much fresh food it is sensible to send between the UK and Australia.
If you want to make an argument that Brexit leaves Britain poorer but prouder and happier, fair enough.
But the idea that swapping a single market including our immediate neighbours for tariff reductions across the globe is for the birds.
As we're gradually seeing.
Point of pedantry, you can't travel through the centre of the earth due to gravitational issues.
I'm not sure that's the biggest problem with plans for a uk-Australia tunnel
Indeed - legal issues about ownership are the main thing.
At common law the landowner owns the land all the way down, with the crown having the mineral rights. So if you start from England you're good until at least the centre.
Here is a possible plot for a science fiction movie with a transgender interest based on the idea of drilling a hole through the center of the Earth:
The movie follows the story of a transgender scientist named Alex, who has always been fascinated by the idea of drilling a hole through the center of the Earth. Despite being met with skepticism and ridicule from their colleagues, Alex is determined to prove that it is possible.
After years of research and development, Alex finally succeeds in creating a drill that is capable of withstanding the extreme temperatures and pressures that would be encountered during the journey through the Earth. With a team of international scientists and engineers, Alex sets out to drill the hole and make the journey to the other side of the planet.
As the team descends deeper into the Earth, they encounter all sorts of challenges and dangers, including underground rivers of molten lava, giant cave-dwelling creatures, and unexpected geological phenomena. Along the way, Alex must confront their own personal demons, including their own self-doubt and the judgment of others who do not understand their transgender identity.
As they near the center of the Earth, the team must make a life-or-death decision: turn back or continue on to the other side. In the end, they choose to continue and emerge from the hole on the other side of the Earth, where they are greeted as heroes and hailed as pioneers. The movie ends with Alex finally gaining the acceptance and respect that they have always deserved.
It'll never work.
No.
As Alex emerges blinking into the fierce Northern Terroitory sunshine the cry will go up "Strewth! There's a bloke over there dressed like a Sheila!"
It'd make an interesting university interview question, given the logical deductions involved, as well as the permuted possibilities: Alex is in itself a genderless contraction of both Alexandra as well as Alexander.
More importantly, to adapt Father Ted, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are both small and far away.
Quite. Remember the argument on PB - one of us argued it was more efficient to import turnips or whatever it was from Australia than to grow our own or get then from the EU.
The constant harping on "cultural" identity is also suspicious.
So fine to flood UK markets with CAP funded EU agricultural products and EU cars competing with UK producers but not a few Australian products?
Fine to allow UK exporters easier access to the EU but not Australian market?
Most Australians are still of British Isles origin and Australia remains the top destination for emigration for emigrants from the UK
Doesn't matter - flooding the UK market with Australian produce thanks to a crap deal is just as stupid, and far worse from a food security point of view.
The percentage of CAP subsidised EU food and fish we flooded our markets with and British farmers had to compete with was far more in the single market than there will ever be from Australian farm produce imported on the same terms as the trade deal we now have with the EU.
Plus of course British exporters now get easier access to the Australian market as they have to the EU market
But short of digging a tunnel through the centre of the Earth (travel time: 42 minutes), there's a limit to how much fresh food it is sensible to send between the UK and Australia.
If you want to make an argument that Brexit leaves Britain poorer but prouder and happier, fair enough.
But the idea that swapping a single market including our immediate neighbours for tariff reductions across the globe is for the birds.
As we're gradually seeing.
Point of pedantry, you can't travel through the centre of the earth due to gravitational issues.
I'm not sure that's the biggest problem with plans for a uk-Australia tunnel
Indeed - legal issues about ownership are the main thing.
At common law the landowner owns the land all the way down, with the crown having the mineral rights. So if you start from England you're good until at least the centre.
Er, no. Landowner holds the mineral rights unless specifically excluded (e.g. for oil). Edit: hence all those coal mines, gravel pits, etc. making money for landowners.
Just back in the UK for a few days. Driving North on the M6 was pretty interesting. Basically the infrastructure constructed in the 1960s/70s is trying to cope with the traffic levels of 50 years later, and despite band-aid fixes like the so-called "smart Motorways", it is failing badly.
Small fixes in the rail system only upgrade things from a Victorian level and the strikes make the system unusable anyway- last Wednesday I was quoted over £300 for a single ticket on trainline from London to the Cotswolds. In any event it should not take nearly three hours to complete a 90 mile journey.
It left me reflecting that the NHS strikes in England are just another stunning failure of leadership. Everywhere you look the whole country looks dreary and run down. It takes longer to drive to Scotland from the South than it did 30 years ago.
Schools in Scotland are in complete crisis, and previous Scottish excellence in, for example, STEM subjects has just evaporated. At every level political intervention and incompetence is evident, and all the Scottish Parliament can point to is legislation, which- whatever its merits- is addressing the concerns and rights of an stunningly small minority. The point is that everyone has an opinion on Trans rights, whereas few understand the scale of the economic mess that both Scotland and England now face. Several members of my family have had to up sticks and leave Scotland because the systems they rely on do not deliver what they are supposed to do.
Although the party of government is clearly bereft of ideas and talent, the entire political system is sclerotic and creaking. The national conversation is mean and small and leading nowhere: In Scotland the Nats shut down all debate unless on their own terms, and it is a bitter and pointless mess. Brutal and aggressive the atmosphere is increasingly coarse and threatening. In England the milquetoast Tory leadership feebly protest that corruption is not that bad... failing to recognize how angry voters are at the fiasco of the last 6 years.
I am sure that most people, like me after only 4 days here, are just shouting at the TV as some PR bullshit line is paraded past the graphics heavy/information lite interviewers.
If we get the governments we deserve, it seems that the voters must be apathetic and defeated on both sides of the border.
One thing is for sure, the fate of the world is certainly not being decided by the pygmy leaders in either London or in Edinburgh.
This could have been written at any time over the last 40 years.
FWIW, I don't agree. I think our infrastructure in this country is pretty good.
It's an awful December due to inflation and strikes, not poor maintenance.
UK infrastructure scores 6/10 - it's improved in the last two decades, and is better than most of the US and some of Europe, but is noticeably worse than Germany or France, let alone Switzerland or Singapore.
I'd probably be slightly kinder about London, where there has been a lot of investment, and where (despite the organic nature of the place), it's pretty easy to get around.
More importantly, to adapt Father Ted, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are both small and far away.
Quite. Remember the argument on PB - one of us argued it was more efficient to import turnips or whatever it was from Australia than to grow our own or get then from the EU.
The constant harping on "cultural" identity is also suspicious.
So fine to flood UK markets with CAP funded EU agricultural products and EU cars competing with UK producers but not a few Australian products?
Fine to allow UK exporters easier access to the EU but not Australian market?
Most Australians are still of British Isles origin and Australia remains the top destination for emigration for emigrants from the UK
Doesn't matter - flooding the UK market with Australian produce thanks to a crap deal is just as stupid, and far worse from a food security point of view.
The percentage of CAP subsidised EU food and fish we flooded our markets with and British farmers had to compete with was far more in the single market than there will ever be from Australian farm produce imported on the same terms as the trade deal we now have with the EU.
Plus of course British exporters now get easier access to the Australian market as they have to the EU market
But short of digging a tunnel through the centre of the Earth (travel time: 42 minutes), there's a limit to how much fresh food it is sensible to send between the UK and Australia.
If you want to make an argument that Brexit leaves Britain poorer but prouder and happier, fair enough.
But the idea that swapping a single market including our immediate neighbours for tariff reductions across the globe is for the birds.
As we're gradually seeing.
Point of pedantry, you can't travel through the centre of the earth due to gravitational issues.
I'm not sure that's the biggest problem with plans for a uk-Australia tunnel
Indeed - legal issues about ownership are the main thing.
At common law the landowner owns the land all the way down, with the crown having the mineral rights. So if you start from England you're good until at least the centre.
Er, no. Landowner holds the mineral rights unless specifically excluded (e.g. for oil).
Main exclusions are oil, gas, coal, gold and silver. So, yes, you are right but in a pretty qualified way.
More importantly, to adapt Father Ted, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are both small and far away.
Quite. Remember the argument on PB - one of us argued it was more efficient to import turnips or whatever it was from Australia than to grow our own or get then from the EU.
The constant harping on "cultural" identity is also suspicious.
So fine to flood UK markets with CAP funded EU agricultural products and EU cars competing with UK producers but not a few Australian products?
Fine to allow UK exporters easier access to the EU but not Australian market?
Most Australians are still of British Isles origin and Australia remains the top destination for emigration for emigrants from the UK
Doesn't matter - flooding the UK market with Australian produce thanks to a crap deal is just as stupid, and far worse from a food security point of view.
The percentage of CAP subsidised EU food and fish we flooded our markets with and British farmers had to compete with was far more in the single market than there will ever be from Australian farm produce imported on the same terms as the trade deal we now have with the EU.
Plus of course British exporters now get easier access to the Australian market as they have to the EU market
But short of digging a tunnel through the centre of the Earth (travel time: 42 minutes), there's a limit to how much fresh food it is sensible to send between the UK and Australia.
If you want to make an argument that Brexit leaves Britain poorer but prouder and happier, fair enough.
But the idea that swapping a single market including our immediate neighbours for tariff reductions across the globe is for the birds.
As we're gradually seeing.
Point of pedantry, you can't travel through the centre of the earth due to gravitational issues.
I'm not sure that's the biggest problem with plans for a uk-Australia tunnel
Indeed - legal issues about ownership are the main thing.
At common law the landowner owns the land all the way down, with the crown having the mineral rights. So if you start from England you're good until at least the centre.
Ah, but the tunnel would need to keep narrowing all the way down. Think of it like a triangle with the point being the center of the Earth.
So @Kde is correct: land ownership disputes make this a complete nonstarter.
More importantly, to adapt Father Ted, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are both small and far away.
Quite. Remember the argument on PB - one of us argued it was more efficient to import turnips or whatever it was from Australia than to grow our own or get then from the EU.
The constant harping on "cultural" identity is also suspicious.
So fine to flood UK markets with CAP funded EU agricultural products and EU cars competing with UK producers but not a few Australian products?
Fine to allow UK exporters easier access to the EU but not Australian market?
Most Australians are still of British Isles origin and Australia remains the top destination for emigration for emigrants from the UK
Doesn't matter - flooding the UK market with Australian produce thanks to a crap deal is just as stupid, and far worse from a food security point of view.
The percentage of CAP subsidised EU food and fish we flooded our markets with and British farmers had to compete with was far more in the single market than there will ever be from Australian farm produce imported on the same terms as the trade deal we now have with the EU.
Plus of course British exporters now get easier access to the Australian market as they have to the EU market
But short of digging a tunnel through the centre of the Earth (travel time: 42 minutes), there's a limit to how much fresh food it is sensible to send between the UK and Australia.
If you want to make an argument that Brexit leaves Britain poorer but prouder and happier, fair enough.
But the idea that swapping a single market including our immediate neighbours for tariff reductions across the globe is for the birds.
As we're gradually seeing.
Point of pedantry, you can't travel through the centre of the earth due to gravitational issues.
I'm not sure that's the biggest problem with plans for a uk-Australia tunnel
Indeed - legal issues about ownership are the main thing.
At common law the landowner owns the land all the way down, with the crown having the mineral rights. So if you start from England you're good until at least the centre.
Er, no. Landowner holds the mineral rights unless specifically excluded (e.g. for oil). Edit: hence all those coal mines, gravel pits, etc. making money for landowners.
You’re both wrong to the extent that I was about to go up to the attic to get out my law school notes to prove it but then I had a horrible realisation that my life will end one day and this is not the way I want to spend it…
Just back in the UK for a few days. Driving North on the M6 was pretty interesting. Basically the infrastructure constructed in the 1960s/70s is trying to cope with the traffic levels of 50 years later, and despite band-aid fixes like the so-called "smart Motorways", it is failing badly.
Small fixes in the rail system only upgrade things from a Victorian level and the strikes make the system unusable anyway- last Wednesday I was quoted over £300 for a single ticket on trainline from London to the Cotswolds. In any event it should not take nearly three hours to complete a 90 mile journey.
It left me reflecting that the NHS strikes in England are just another stunning failure of leadership. Everywhere you look the whole country looks dreary and run down. It takes longer to drive to Scotland from the South than it did 30 years ago.
Schools in Scotland are in complete crisis, and previous Scottish excellence in, for example, STEM subjects has just evaporated. At every level political intervention and incompetence is evident, and all the Scottish Parliament can point to is legislation, which- whatever its merits- is addressing the concerns and rights of an stunningly small minority. The point is that everyone has an opinion on Trans rights, whereas few understand the scale of the economic mess that both Scotland and England now face. Several members of my family have had to up sticks and leave Scotland because the systems they rely on do not deliver what they are supposed to do.
Although the party of government is clearly bereft of ideas and talent, the entire political system is sclerotic and creaking. The national conversation is mean and small and leading nowhere: In Scotland the Nats shut down all debate unless on their own terms, and it is a bitter and pointless mess. Brutal and aggressive the atmosphere is increasingly coarse and threatening. In England the milquetoast Tory leadership feebly protest that corruption is not that bad... failing to recognize how angry voters are at the fiasco of the last 6 years.
I am sure that most people, like me after only 4 days here, are just shouting at the TV as some PR bullshit line is paraded past the graphics heavy/information lite interviewers.
If we get the governments we deserve, it seems that the voters must be apathetic and defeated on both sides of the border.
One thing is for sure, the fate of the world is certainly not being decided by the pygmy leaders in either London or in Edinburgh.
Great that you’ve popped back to give us the benefit of your vicariously held opinions. We really don’t get enough of that on PB.
I have to say I have travelled down to Heathrow and back in the last 24 hours to pick up my son and daughter in-law and do not recognise the description of the M6 particularly as I use the toll road.
Furthermore I have travelled to Lossiemouth from Llandudno since 1965 and the travel times are immeasurably better though the A9 lack of dualling is a long standing issue
Yes we have problems but so do many other countries including those in Europe
The difference is that other countries do not ignore their problems until it is too late. Travelling on Polish Roads over the past 30 years has been transformed, for example. The speed limit on what is now the A96 is down to 50 in several places, because junctions were never upgraded. I can remember how things were before -say- the Forfar bypass was built in the mid eighties, but since then things have not been maintained. As noted the Motorway viaducts in Birmingham will need to be replaced soon and the costs are going be scarily high. Who has the leadership skills to explain to the Brits how bad things will be if we don´t start fixing things up even at the cost of disruption to millions...
You could argue the same about the US - they have a gleaming military, glitzy business HQs and a large number of rich people who invest in their own properties, and philanthropy takes care of universities and the like, but otherwise the public realm looks shabby and run down, the stations, airports and subways are diabolical, and the roads are mixed (although better after a lot of recent repair - the one benefit I can see from Trump). It reflects on the balance of priorities, which are much more weighted toward public services in Europe than the English speaking world.
More importantly, to adapt Father Ted, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are both small and far away.
Quite. Remember the argument on PB - one of us argued it was more efficient to import turnips or whatever it was from Australia than to grow our own or get then from the EU.
The constant harping on "cultural" identity is also suspicious.
So fine to flood UK markets with CAP funded EU agricultural products and EU cars competing with UK producers but not a few Australian products?
Fine to allow UK exporters easier access to the EU but not Australian market?
Most Australians are still of British Isles origin and Australia remains the top destination for emigration for emigrants from the UK
Doesn't matter - flooding the UK market with Australian produce thanks to a crap deal is just as stupid, and far worse from a food security point of view.
The percentage of CAP subsidised EU food and fish we flooded our markets with and British farmers had to compete with was far more in the single market than there will ever be from Australian farm produce imported on the same terms as the trade deal we now have with the EU.
Plus of course British exporters now get easier access to the Australian market as they have to the EU market
But short of digging a tunnel through the centre of the Earth (travel time: 42 minutes), there's a limit to how much fresh food it is sensible to send between the UK and Australia.
If you want to make an argument that Brexit leaves Britain poorer but prouder and happier, fair enough.
But the idea that swapping a single market including our immediate neighbours for tariff reductions across the globe is for the birds.
As we're gradually seeing.
Point of pedantry, you can't travel through the centre of the earth due to gravitational issues.
I'm not sure that's the biggest problem with plans for a uk-Australia tunnel
Indeed - legal issues about ownership are the main thing.
At common law the landowner owns the land all the way down, with the crown having the mineral rights. So if you start from England you're good until at least the centre.
Er, no. Landowner holds the mineral rights unless specifically excluded (e.g. for oil). Edit: hence all those coal mines, gravel pits, etc. making money for landowners.
You’re both wrong to the extent that I was about to go up to the attic to get out my law school notes to prove it but then I had a horrible realisation that my life will end one day and this is not the way I want to spend it…
True, but these are absolutely the sort of Bigendian Heresy debates that keep me coming back to PB.
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by the trans debate. Inevitably some very much not the best minds also fallen by the wayside. The woman's face on the right is a picture in its own right.
A bit more like that at Westminster would improve attandence
Just back in the UK for a few days. Driving North on the M6 was pretty interesting. Basically the infrastructure constructed in the 1960s/70s is trying to cope with the traffic levels of 50 years later, and despite band-aid fixes like the so-called "smart Motorways", it is failing badly.
Small fixes in the rail system only upgrade things from a Victorian level and the strikes make the system unusable anyway- last Wednesday I was quoted over £300 for a single ticket on trainline from London to the Cotswolds. In any event it should not take nearly three hours to complete a 90 mile journey.
It left me reflecting that the NHS strikes in England are just another stunning failure of leadership. Everywhere you look the whole country looks dreary and run down. It takes longer to drive to Scotland from the South than it did 30 years ago.
Schools in Scotland are in complete crisis, and previous Scottish excellence in, for example, STEM subjects has just evaporated. At every level political intervention and incompetence is evident, and all the Scottish Parliament can point to is legislation, which- whatever its merits- is addressing the concerns and rights of an stunningly small minority. The point is that everyone has an opinion on Trans rights, whereas few understand the scale of the economic mess that both Scotland and England now face. Several members of my family have had to up sticks and leave Scotland because the systems they rely on do not deliver what they are supposed to do.
Although the party of government is clearly bereft of ideas and talent, the entire political system is sclerotic and creaking. The national conversation is mean and small and leading nowhere: In Scotland the Nats shut down all debate unless on their own terms, and it is a bitter and pointless mess. Brutal and aggressive the atmosphere is increasingly coarse and threatening. In England the milquetoast Tory leadership feebly protest that corruption is not that bad... failing to recognize how angry voters are at the fiasco of the last 6 years.
I am sure that most people, like me after only 4 days here, are just shouting at the TV as some PR bullshit line is paraded past the graphics heavy/information lite interviewers.
If we get the governments we deserve, it seems that the voters must be apathetic and defeated on both sides of the border.
One thing is for sure, the fate of the world is certainly not being decided by the pygmy leaders in either London or in Edinburgh.
This could have been written at any time over the last 40 years.
FWIW, I don't agree. I think our infrastructure in this country is pretty good.
It's an awful December due to inflation and strikes, not poor maintenance.
UK infrastructure scores 6/10 - it's improved in the last two decades, and is better than most of the US and some of Europe, but is noticeably worse than Germany or France, let alone Switzerland or Singapore.
I'd probably be slightly kinder about London, where there has been a lot of investment, and where (despite the organic nature of the place), it's pretty easy to get around.
I’m not sure where this number comes from, or what it included (does it include hospitals, classrooms, and courts; does it include private housing?) but I’d suggest that the UK is below middling.
In the bits of Europe we’d think comparable, it’s probably only Italy that is worse.
The US has shite public infrastructure but it’s so vast that you don’t experience it in quite the same way as you do in densely occupied Britain. And the private housing is often massive. Also the national and state parks seem very well funded, which has surprised me.
Related to the topic: For some time I have been pondering over the possibility that democracies choose better leaders when times are bad than when they are good. That's true, I think of both elected and appointed leaders.
For example, during World War II, William Knudsen and Henry J. Kaiser went to workd for FDR, as recounted in Arthur Herman's "Freedom's Forge". And I can think of many similar examples, even a few in other nations, though I haven't thought of any formal way of testing the hypothesis.
In my speculations, I have begun to think this happens because talented people are more willing to serve -- and because voters demand more from their leaders.
So, the disappointment many of you have had in your leaders this year may be something we should expect when times are middling, except for COVID.
(The COVID exception has a precedent, at least in the US. After the great 1918-1919 influenza pandemic was over, Americans mostly tried to forget about it, rather than learn from the terrible losses.)
More importantly, to adapt Father Ted, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are both small and far away.
Quite. Remember the argument on PB - one of us argued it was more efficient to import turnips or whatever it was from Australia than to grow our own or get then from the EU.
The constant harping on "cultural" identity is also suspicious.
So fine to flood UK markets with CAP funded EU agricultural products and EU cars competing with UK producers but not a few Australian products?
Fine to allow UK exporters easier access to the EU but not Australian market?
Most Australians are still of British Isles origin and Australia remains the top destination for emigration for emigrants from the UK
Doesn't matter - flooding the UK market with Australian produce thanks to a crap deal is just as stupid, and far worse from a food security point of view.
The percentage of CAP subsidised EU food and fish we flooded our markets with and British farmers had to compete with was far more in the single market than there will ever be from Australian farm produce imported on the same terms as the trade deal we now have with the EU.
Plus of course British exporters now get easier access to the Australian market as they have to the EU market
But short of digging a tunnel through the centre of the Earth (travel time: 42 minutes), there's a limit to how much fresh food it is sensible to send between the UK and Australia.
If you want to make an argument that Brexit leaves Britain poorer but prouder and happier, fair enough.
But the idea that swapping a single market including our immediate neighbours for tariff reductions across the globe is for the birds.
As we're gradually seeing.
Point of pedantry, you can't travel through the centre of the earth due to gravitational issues.
I'm not sure that's the biggest problem with plans for a uk-Australia tunnel
Indeed - legal issues about ownership are the main thing.
At common law the landowner owns the land all the way down, with the crown having the mineral rights. So if you start from England you're good until at least the centre.
Er, no. Landowner holds the mineral rights unless specifically excluded (e.g. for oil). Edit: hence all those coal mines, gravel pits, etc. making money for landowners.
You’re both wrong to the extent that I was about to go up to the attic to get out my law school notes to prove it but then I had a horrible realisation that my life will end one day and this is not the way I want to spend it…
I think if you live in deep mining country the Duke of Omnium may have reserved mineral rights in a conveyance of your house in 1883 so that he could extend his deep arsenic and tin mines sideways under you (and laugh when you disappear down a sinkhole). Manorial rights are probably in there too.
More importantly, to adapt Father Ted, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are both small and far away.
Quite. Remember the argument on PB - one of us argued it was more efficient to import turnips or whatever it was from Australia than to grow our own or get then from the EU.
The constant harping on "cultural" identity is also suspicious.
So fine to flood UK markets with CAP funded EU agricultural products and EU cars competing with UK producers but not a few Australian products?
Fine to allow UK exporters easier access to the EU but not Australian market?
Most Australians are still of British Isles origin and Australia remains the top destination for emigration for emigrants from the UK
Doesn't matter - flooding the UK market with Australian produce thanks to a crap deal is just as stupid, and far worse from a food security point of view.
The percentage of CAP subsidised EU food and fish we flooded our markets with and British farmers had to compete with was far more in the single market than there will ever be from Australian farm produce imported on the same terms as the trade deal we now have with the EU.
Plus of course British exporters now get easier access to the Australian market as they have to the EU market
But short of digging a tunnel through the centre of the Earth (travel time: 42 minutes), there's a limit to how much fresh food it is sensible to send between the UK and Australia.
If you want to make an argument that Brexit leaves Britain poorer but prouder and happier, fair enough.
But the idea that swapping a single market including our immediate neighbours for tariff reductions across the globe is for the birds.
As we're gradually seeing.
Point of pedantry, you can't travel through the centre of the earth due to gravitational issues.
I'm intrigued. It's a fairly standard first year Uni physics question. And by symmetry it feels like it ought to work; falling in energy transfers gravitational to kinetic so you end up with just enough kinetic energy to overcome gravity enough to come to rest at the other portal.
Air resistance is a bit of a bugger, but I'm a physicist- ignoring air resistance is pretty much mandatory.
Is there something I've been missing?
Thermal energy from air friction. but I suppose that is counted in your comment. Though if your travelling mass is magnetic or even just conductive there would be some loss of energy due to induced currents and ?hysteresis.
Edit: or would there? Am I talking nonsense? Wouldn't the centre of the globe be a magnetic equivalent of a Faraday cage? This is where my head starts hurting.
If such a hole existed and you jumped into it, you would fall towards the center of the Earth due to the Earth's gravitational field. The gravitational acceleration at the Earth's surface is about 9.8 meters per second squared, so you would accelerate towards the center of the Earth at that rate as you fell.
As you fell deeper into the Earth, you would encounter increasing levels of pressure and temperature. The temperature and pressure inside the Earth increase with depth due to the weight of the overlying material. At the core-mantle boundary, the temperature is estimated to be around 5700 degrees Celsius and the pressure is about 3.5 million times atmospheric pressure at sea level. These conditions would be lethal to a human.
Even if you were able to withstand the high temperatures and pressures, you would eventually reach the center of the Earth and then begin falling back towards the surface on the other side of the planet. The journey through the Earth would take about 42 minutes, and you would emerge from the hole on the other side of the Earth with a velocity that would be equal in magnitude but opposite in direction to the velocity with which you entered the hole.
We wouldn’t need to travel - just drop the packages of lamb down in either direction, and they would arrive ready-cooked.
More importantly, to adapt Father Ted, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are both small and far away.
Quite. Remember the argument on PB - one of us argued it was more efficient to import turnips or whatever it was from Australia than to grow our own or get then from the EU.
The constant harping on "cultural" identity is also suspicious.
So fine to flood UK markets with CAP funded EU agricultural products and EU cars competing with UK producers but not a few Australian products?
Fine to allow UK exporters easier access to the EU but not Australian market?
Most Australians are still of British Isles origin and Australia remains the top destination for emigration for emigrants from the UK
Doesn't matter - flooding the UK market with Australian produce thanks to a crap deal is just as stupid, and far worse from a food security point of view.
The percentage of CAP subsidised EU food and fish we flooded our markets with and British farmers had to compete with was far more in the single market than there will ever be from Australian farm produce imported on the same terms as the trade deal we now have with the EU.
Plus of course British exporters now get easier access to the Australian market as they have to the EU market
But short of digging a tunnel through the centre of the Earth (travel time: 42 minutes), there's a limit to how much fresh food it is sensible to send between the UK and Australia.
If you want to make an argument that Brexit leaves Britain poorer but prouder and happier, fair enough.
But the idea that swapping a single market including our immediate neighbours for tariff reductions across the globe is for the birds.
As we're gradually seeing.
Point of pedantry, you can't travel through the centre of the earth due to gravitational issues.
I'm intrigued. It's a fairly standard first year Uni physics question. And by symmetry it feels like it ought to work; falling in energy transfers gravitational to kinetic so you end up with just enough kinetic energy to overcome gravity enough to come to rest at the other portal.
Air resistance is a bit of a bugger, but I'm a physicist- ignoring air resistance is pretty much mandatory.
Is there something I've been missing?
Thermal energy from air friction. but I suppose that is counted in your comment. Though if your travelling mass is magnetic or even just conductive there would be some loss of energy due to induced currents and ?hysteresis.
Edit: or would there? Am I talking nonsense? Wouldn't the centre of the globe be a magnetic equivalent of a Faraday cage? This is where my head starts hurting.
If such a hole existed and you jumped into it, you would fall towards the center of the Earth due to the Earth's gravitational field. The gravitational acceleration at the Earth's surface is about 9.8 meters per second squared, so you would accelerate towards the center of the Earth at that rate as you fell.
As you fell deeper into the Earth, you would encounter increasing levels of pressure and temperature. The temperature and pressure inside the Earth increase with depth due to the weight of the overlying material. At the core-mantle boundary, the temperature is estimated to be around 5700 degrees Celsius and the pressure is about 3.5 million times atmospheric pressure at sea level. These conditions would be lethal to a human.
Even if you were able to withstand the high temperatures and pressures, you would eventually reach the center of the Earth and then begin falling back towards the surface on the other side of the planet. The journey through the Earth would take about 42 minutes, and you would emerge from the hole on the other side of the Earth with a velocity that would be equal in magnitude but opposite in direction to the velocity with which you entered the hole.
We wouldn’t need to travel - just drop the packages of lamb down in either direction, and they would arrive ready-cooked.
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by the trans debate. Inevitably some very much not the best minds also fallen by the wayside. The woman's face on the right is a picture in its own right.
More importantly, to adapt Father Ted, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are both small and far away.
Quite. Remember the argument on PB - one of us argued it was more efficient to import turnips or whatever it was from Australia than to grow our own or get then from the EU.
The constant harping on "cultural" identity is also suspicious.
So fine to flood UK markets with CAP funded EU agricultural products and EU cars competing with UK producers but not a few Australian products?
Fine to allow UK exporters easier access to the EU but not Australian market?
Most Australians are still of British Isles origin and Australia remains the top destination for emigration for emigrants from the UK
Doesn't matter - flooding the UK market with Australian produce thanks to a crap deal is just as stupid, and far worse from a food security point of view.
The percentage of CAP subsidised EU food and fish we flooded our markets with and British farmers had to compete with was far more in the single market than there will ever be from Australian farm produce imported on the same terms as the trade deal we now have with the EU.
Plus of course British exporters now get easier access to the Australian market as they have to the EU market
But short of digging a tunnel through the centre of the Earth (travel time: 42 minutes), there's a limit to how much fresh food it is sensible to send between the UK and Australia.
If you want to make an argument that Brexit leaves Britain poorer but prouder and happier, fair enough.
But the idea that swapping a single market including our immediate neighbours for tariff reductions across the globe is for the birds.
As we're gradually seeing.
Point of pedantry, you can't travel through the centre of the earth due to gravitational issues.
I'm not sure that's the biggest problem with plans for a uk-Australia tunnel
Put it this way,
I wouldn't have raised the possibility while Boris was still PM.
More importantly, to adapt Father Ted, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are both small and far away.
Quite. Remember the argument on PB - one of us argued it was more efficient to import turnips or whatever it was from Australia than to grow our own or get then from the EU.
The constant harping on "cultural" identity is also suspicious.
So fine to flood UK markets with CAP funded EU agricultural products and EU cars competing with UK producers but not a few Australian products?
Fine to allow UK exporters easier access to the EU but not Australian market?
Most Australians are still of British Isles origin and Australia remains the top destination for emigration for emigrants from the UK
Doesn't matter - flooding the UK market with Australian produce thanks to a crap deal is just as stupid, and far worse from a food security point of view.
The percentage of CAP subsidised EU food and fish we flooded our markets with and British farmers had to compete with was far more in the single market than there will ever be from Australian farm produce imported on the same terms as the trade deal we now have with the EU.
Plus of course British exporters now get easier access to the Australian market as they have to the EU market
But short of digging a tunnel through the centre of the Earth (travel time: 42 minutes), there's a limit to how much fresh food it is sensible to send between the UK and Australia.
If you want to make an argument that Brexit leaves Britain poorer but prouder and happier, fair enough.
But the idea that swapping a single market including our immediate neighbours for tariff reductions across the globe is for the birds.
As we're gradually seeing.
Point of pedantry, you can't travel through the centre of the earth due to gravitational issues.
I'm intrigued. It's a fairly standard first year Uni physics question. And by symmetry it feels like it ought to work; falling in energy transfers gravitational to kinetic so you end up with just enough kinetic energy to overcome gravity enough to come to rest at the other portal.
Air resistance is a bit of a bugger, but I'm a physicist- ignoring air resistance is pretty much mandatory.
Is there something I've been missing?
Thermal energy from air friction. but I suppose that is counted in your comment. Though if your travelling mass is magnetic or even just conductive there would be some loss of energy due to induced currents and ?hysteresis.
Edit: or would there? Am I talking nonsense? Wouldn't the centre of the globe be a magnetic equivalent of a Faraday cage? This is where my head starts hurting.
If such a hole existed and you jumped into it, you would fall towards the center of the Earth due to the Earth's gravitational field. The gravitational acceleration at the Earth's surface is about 9.8 meters per second squared, so you would accelerate towards the center of the Earth at that rate as you fell.
As you fell deeper into the Earth, you would encounter increasing levels of pressure and temperature. The temperature and pressure inside the Earth increase with depth due to the weight of the overlying material. At the core-mantle boundary, the temperature is estimated to be around 5700 degrees Celsius and the pressure is about 3.5 million times atmospheric pressure at sea level. These conditions would be lethal to a human.
Even if you were able to withstand the high temperatures and pressures, you would eventually reach the center of the Earth and then begin falling back towards the surface on the other side of the planet. The journey through the Earth would take about 42 minutes, and you would emerge from the hole on the other side of the Earth with a velocity that would be equal in magnitude but opposite in direction to the velocity with which you entered the hole.
We wouldn’t need to travel - just drop the packages of lamb down in either direction, and they would arrive ready-cooked.
No they wouldn't. They'd stop at the core.
If you could build such a tunnel, keeping it a vacuum would be a trivial exercise, in comparison.
Assuming a perfectly spherical Earth*, the package dropped through the tunnel would reach the surface at the same velocity it was dropped with.
More importantly, to adapt Father Ted, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are both small and far away.
Quite. Remember the argument on PB - one of us argued it was more efficient to import turnips or whatever it was from Australia than to grow our own or get then from the EU.
The constant harping on "cultural" identity is also suspicious.
So fine to flood UK markets with CAP funded EU agricultural products and EU cars competing with UK producers but not a few Australian products?
Fine to allow UK exporters easier access to the EU but not Australian market?
Most Australians are still of British Isles origin and Australia remains the top destination for emigration for emigrants from the UK
Doesn't matter - flooding the UK market with Australian produce thanks to a crap deal is just as stupid, and far worse from a food security point of view.
The percentage of CAP subsidised EU food and fish we flooded our markets with and British farmers had to compete with was far more in the single market than there will ever be from Australian farm produce imported on the same terms as the trade deal we now have with the EU.
Plus of course British exporters now get easier access to the Australian market as they have to the EU market
But short of digging a tunnel through the centre of the Earth (travel time: 42 minutes), there's a limit to how much fresh food it is sensible to send between the UK and Australia.
If you want to make an argument that Brexit leaves Britain poorer but prouder and happier, fair enough.
But the idea that swapping a single market including our immediate neighbours for tariff reductions across the globe is for the birds.
As we're gradually seeing.
Point of pedantry, you can't travel through the centre of the earth due to gravitational issues.
I'm not sure that's the biggest problem with plans for a uk-Australia tunnel
Put it this way,
I wouldn't have raised the possibility while Boris was still PM.
Just in case.
I would - I could have probably raked in hundreds of thousands in consultant's fees exploring the possibility despite having no experience in tunnelling or construction, before it was then ruled out.
More importantly, to adapt Father Ted, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are both small and far away.
Quite. Remember the argument on PB - one of us argued it was more efficient to import turnips or whatever it was from Australia than to grow our own or get then from the EU.
The constant harping on "cultural" identity is also suspicious.
So fine to flood UK markets with CAP funded EU agricultural products and EU cars competing with UK producers but not a few Australian products?
Fine to allow UK exporters easier access to the EU but not Australian market?
Most Australians are still of British Isles origin and Australia remains the top destination for emigration for emigrants from the UK
Doesn't matter - flooding the UK market with Australian produce thanks to a crap deal is just as stupid, and far worse from a food security point of view.
The percentage of CAP subsidised EU food and fish we flooded our markets with and British farmers had to compete with was far more in the single market than there will ever be from Australian farm produce imported on the same terms as the trade deal we now have with the EU.
Plus of course British exporters now get easier access to the Australian market as they have to the EU market
But short of digging a tunnel through the centre of the Earth (travel time: 42 minutes), there's a limit to how much fresh food it is sensible to send between the UK and Australia.
If you want to make an argument that Brexit leaves Britain poorer but prouder and happier, fair enough.
But the idea that swapping a single market including our immediate neighbours for tariff reductions across the globe is for the birds.
As we're gradually seeing.
Point of pedantry, you can't travel through the centre of the earth due to gravitational issues.
I'm intrigued. It's a fairly standard first year Uni physics question. And by symmetry it feels like it ought to work; falling in energy transfers gravitational to kinetic so you end up with just enough kinetic energy to overcome gravity enough to come to rest at the other portal.
Air resistance is a bit of a bugger, but I'm a physicist- ignoring air resistance is pretty much mandatory.
Is there something I've been missing?
Thermal energy from air friction. but I suppose that is counted in your comment. Though if your travelling mass is magnetic or even just conductive there would be some loss of energy due to induced currents and ?hysteresis.
Edit: or would there? Am I talking nonsense? Wouldn't the centre of the globe be a magnetic equivalent of a Faraday cage? This is where my head starts hurting.
If such a hole existed and you jumped into it, you would fall towards the center of the Earth due to the Earth's gravitational field. The gravitational acceleration at the Earth's surface is about 9.8 meters per second squared, so you would accelerate towards the center of the Earth at that rate as you fell.
As you fell deeper into the Earth, you would encounter increasing levels of pressure and temperature. The temperature and pressure inside the Earth increase with depth due to the weight of the overlying material. At the core-mantle boundary, the temperature is estimated to be around 5700 degrees Celsius and the pressure is about 3.5 million times atmospheric pressure at sea level. These conditions would be lethal to a human.
Even if you were able to withstand the high temperatures and pressures, you would eventually reach the center of the Earth and then begin falling back towards the surface on the other side of the planet. The journey through the Earth would take about 42 minutes, and you would emerge from the hole on the other side of the Earth with a velocity that would be equal in magnitude but opposite in direction to the velocity with which you entered the hole.
We wouldn’t need to travel - just drop the packages of lamb down in either direction, and they would arrive ready-cooked.
No they wouldn't. They'd stop at the core.
As long as you threw them in with sufficient force and so long as you completely ignore air resistance, you'd be fine.
If Johnson had still been PM, it must be quite likely that Zelensky would have stopped off in the UK as part of his first overseas trip since the beginning of the war.
He was on a C-40B so it must have refuelled somewhere between Rzeszow and JBA. Sunak will be butthurt if it was Mildenhall and they didn't tell him or invite him for a selfie with the great man.
Not as hurt as Sturgeon would be if it refuelled at Prestwick and she didn’t get a selfie.
Just back in the UK for a few days. Driving North on the M6 was pretty interesting. Basically the infrastructure constructed in the 1960s/70s is trying to cope with the traffic levels of 50 years later, and despite band-aid fixes like the so-called "smart Motorways", it is failing badly.
Small fixes in the rail system only upgrade things from a Victorian level and the strikes make the system unusable anyway- last Wednesday I was quoted over £300 for a single ticket on trainline from London to the Cotswolds. In any event it should not take nearly three hours to complete a 90 mile journey.
It left me reflecting that the NHS strikes in England are just another stunning failure of leadership. Everywhere you look the whole country looks dreary and run down. It takes longer to drive to Scotland from the South than it did 30 years ago.
Schools in Scotland are in complete crisis, and previous Scottish excellence in, for example, STEM subjects has just evaporated. At every level political intervention and incompetence is evident, and all the Scottish Parliament can point to is legislation, which- whatever its merits- is addressing the concerns and rights of an stunningly small minority. The point is that everyone has an opinion on Trans rights, whereas few understand the scale of the economic mess that both Scotland and England now face. Several members of my family have had to up sticks and leave Scotland because the systems they rely on do not deliver what they are supposed to do.
Although the party of government is clearly bereft of ideas and talent, the entire political system is sclerotic and creaking. The national conversation is mean and small and leading nowhere: In Scotland the Nats shut down all debate unless on their own terms, and it is a bitter and pointless mess. Brutal and aggressive the atmosphere is increasingly coarse and threatening. In England the milquetoast Tory leadership feebly protest that corruption is not that bad... failing to recognize how angry voters are at the fiasco of the last 6 years.
I am sure that most people, like me after only 4 days here, are just shouting at the TV as some PR bullshit line is paraded past the graphics heavy/information lite interviewers.
If we get the governments we deserve, it seems that the voters must be apathetic and defeated on both sides of the border.
One thing is for sure, the fate of the world is certainly not being decided by the pygmy leaders in either London or in Edinburgh.
Great that you’ve popped back to give us the benefit of your vicariously held opinions. We really don’t get enough of that on PB.
I have to say I have travelled down to Heathrow and back in the last 24 hours to pick up my son and daughter in-law and do not recognise the description of the M6 particularly as I use the toll road.
Furthermore I have travelled to Lossiemouth from Llandudno since 1965 and the travel times are immeasurably better though the A9 lack of dualling is a long standing issue
Yes we have problems but so do many other countries including those in Europe
The difference is that other countries do not ignore their problems until it is too late. Travelling on Polish Roads over the past 30 years has been transformed, for example. The speed limit on what is now the A96 is down to 50 in several places, because junctions were never upgraded. I can remember how things were before -say- the Forfar bypass was built in the mid eighties, but since then things have not been maintained. As noted the Motorway viaducts in Birmingham will need to be replaced soon and the costs are going be scarily high. Who has the leadership skills to explain to the Brits how bad things will be if we don´t start fixing things up even at the cost of disruption to millions...
You do have an incredibly negative view of the UK.
I could have informed you of that fact, before you wasted 5 minutes of your life wading through one of Cicero's dolorous diaries from the front (this time our hero faces slow traffic and potholes).
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by the trans debate. Inevitably some very much not the best minds also fallen by the wayside. The woman's face on the right is a picture in its own right.
Thanks for the beaver shot - any progress on you actually deciding whether you support the Tory amendment, or think the SNP, Labour and the LDs were right to strike it down? Or will you just stick to posting all the unpleasant people on the opposite side of the debate to try and convince you that your side are the 'goodies'?
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by the trans debate. Inevitably some very much not the best minds also fallen by the wayside. The woman's face on the right is a picture in its own right.
A bit more like that at Westminster would improve attandence
Comments
The children agreed that writing greetings messages on dead German terrorists is Peak Christmas
https://youtu.be/DlQoXP2XH68
Furthermore I have travelled to Lossiemouth from Llandudno since 1965 and the travel times are immeasurably better though the A9 lack of dualling is a long standing issue
Yes we have problems but so do many other countries including those in Europe
So we can autogenerate plausible but bullshit journalism. Yeah!
At work, one of the guys did a test and found an example where ChatGPT created some plausible code. With unit tests. Complete with a subtle, but massive error.
It code like a junior coder, on speed, copy and pasting StackOverflow like a demented chimp.
It's a rehash of "Why couldn't Remain beat Leave"
The Nationalists are selling a more popular brand of bullshit.
c.f. Trump
The important question that nobody wants to ask is why does political bullshit sell so well, and how do we stop it?
“At least I won’t embarrass you abroad”
*think Biden said this to Republican Senators, before the election?
https://youtu.be/VJgOimrO2GU
Fine for surviving a crisis, but you can't keep doing it. Because things first become less efficient and then they break.
It really doesn't help that the Conservative client vote mostly doesn't mind, as long as the country lasts them out.
But @ydoethur will be getting lots more Milo out of his puns, I’m sure.
Or is that me being Seneca’l?
Undoubtedly it'll be the notoriously Nat-supporting BBC, Mail, Express, Sun, Times, Telegraph, Herald, Scotsman, and sundry other shrivelled media organs fooling naive Jocks into supporting the EssEnnPee.
TSMC in talks with suppliers over first European plant.
Gotta do what it takes to make this happen.
https://mobile.twitter.com/nathanbenaich/status/1606180875951300608
Cicero might be, on balance, wrong. But equally he might be right.
It's an awful December due to inflation and strikes, not poor maintenance.
Any opponent of that could be attacked as anti-Green.
Though there is an interesting problem coming up - as cars go electric, and the sources of electricity become zero carbon, the equations shift….
The Zoomers are really, really shit at actual Government.
You know this, and still you will vote for them so they can be really, really shit at it even more.
It's sad...
https://mobile.twitter.com/SlavaUk30722777/status/1605926483671023617
I bet you haven't heard Paint it Black played on a bandura and accordion yet🥰 By Tetiana Mazur and Sergii Shamrai
Though with a deeply grim history of Russian suppression.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandura
It was only later that the First Citizens (Princeps) that we think of as the Emperors appropriated the word Imperator and made it one of their titles.
However it is not good to have bad trade deals and the consensus from those that know is the Australian trade deal is a bad one, including Tories.
How can you not understand this. It was you who started all this with welcoming Truss's Australian deal. I simply pointed out that many consider it to be a poor deal. I would welcome a good deal with anyone.
I am not so much negative as irritated that it did not have to be this way. The issues we face could have been addressed a long time ago but largely for short term political convenience they were let to drift until they became a really serious problem. In a way I am an optimist, I believe that reform can actually deliver us a better country.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-23/uk-stocks-shunned-for-seventh-year-with-biggest-outflows-ever
Indeed probably more Brits would prefer to add free movement with Australia than restore it with the EU on a forced choice
Discussions ongoing in Whitehall about extending those payments to other Military Aid to Civilian Authority tasks in future too
https://twitter.com/NatashaC/status/1606264146877636611
So the Government has the money to pay people, just not the will to pay the people who do the job normally...
The UK has had a public and private investment deficit of tens of billions per year, the state has preferred to spend money on day to day running of the nation because that's a vote winner and companies have preferred to pay big executive bonuses and huge shareholder dividends, often funded by massive amounts of debt.
Fundamentally, for 40-50 years the UK has underinvested in all forms of infrastructure and now our generation are the unlucky ones who will have to somehow fund that gigantic renewal cost while our parents hollowed everything out to pay themselves bigger bonuses, dividends and pensions.
Public infrastructure - in many cases what was there was so inadequate and ancient that there was not the slightest question about wholesale replacement.
Estonia was one that took this advantage and ran with it.
In contrast, we have archeological layers of infrastructure in this country. Only a few years back, they dismantled a bridge at Paddington and discovered that big trucks had been running over what was, essentially, the original bridge that Brunel put in….
It is much easier to bodge something to keep it going to the next election, when you can kind of half make a case that it will work….
It's hilarious.
Now assuming you understand that then you should understand that the EU being a very different kettle of fish to Australia in just about every aspect means the deal you do should be very different.
So to tell me the deals are identical is not necessarily a good thing at all. It really isn't.
One end was in Shanghai, the other in Buenos Aires.
Nor with India given it would require easier immigration from India than now which is hardly a great desire in the redwall
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/ambulance-union-calls-off-strike-on-december-28/ar-AA15B5I2?ocid=entnewsntp&cvid=a2c231c6eb9a4aa4b0d51a5830678dc7
As you fell deeper into the Earth, you would encounter increasing levels of pressure and temperature. The temperature and pressure inside the Earth increase with depth due to the weight of the overlying material. At the core-mantle boundary, the temperature is estimated to be around 5700 degrees Celsius and the pressure is about 3.5 million times atmospheric pressure at sea level. These conditions would be lethal to a human.
Even if you were able to withstand the high temperatures and pressures, you would eventually reach the center of the Earth and then begin falling back towards the surface on the other side of the planet. The journey through the Earth would take about 42 minutes, and you would emerge from the hole on the other side of the Earth with a velocity that would be equal in magnitude but opposite in direction to the velocity with which you entered the hole.
The movie follows the story of a transgender scientist named Alex, who has always been fascinated by the idea of drilling a hole through the center of the Earth. Despite being met with skepticism and ridicule from their colleagues, Alex is determined to prove that it is possible.
After years of research and development, Alex finally succeeds in creating a drill that is capable of withstanding the extreme temperatures and pressures that would be encountered during the journey through the Earth. With a team of international scientists and engineers, Alex sets out to drill the hole and make the journey to the other side of the planet.
As the team descends deeper into the Earth, they encounter all sorts of challenges and dangers, including underground rivers of molten lava, giant cave-dwelling creatures, and unexpected geological phenomena. Along the way, Alex must confront their own personal demons, including their own self-doubt and the judgment of others who do not understand their transgender identity.
As they near the center of the Earth, the team must make a life-or-death decision: turn back or continue on to the other side. In the end, they choose to continue and emerge from the hole on the other side of the Earth, where they are greeted as heroes and hailed as pioneers. The movie ends with Alex finally gaining the acceptance and respect that they have always deserved.
Just sounds so _ancient_ somehow.
- nearly infinite, cheap quantities of unobtanium.
- a method of tunnelling that not merely tunnels at 100s of meters per second, but magics away the material removed.
As outlined in this handy documentary - https://youtu.be/b_HhiU1mOwU
Inevitably some very much not the best minds also fallen by the wayside. The woman's face on the right is a picture in its own right.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-64063397
But - that's at the expense of food security and animal welfare and environmental standards in food production. None of that has a cash value, so they don't turn up in the Impact Assessment. But they're why NGOs like mine (and former Defra secretary George Eustice) are critical of that particular deal, and like Richard we are very sceptical about a US trade deal. By contrast, the trade deal with New Zealand was pretty good on both environment and welfare counts as their standards are comparable to ours, perhaps a little better.
https://mobile.twitter.com/AmericanFietser/status/1606148699645612032
As Alex emerges blinking into the fierce Northern Terroitory sunshine the cry will go up "Strewth! There's a bloke over there dressed like a Sheila!"
I'd probably be slightly kinder about London, where there has been a lot of investment, and where (despite the organic nature of the place), it's pretty easy to get around.
So @Kde is correct: land ownership disputes make this a complete nonstarter.
realisation that my life will end one day and this is not the way I want to spend it…
In the bits of Europe we’d think comparable, it’s probably only Italy that is worse.
The US has shite public infrastructure but it’s so vast that you don’t experience it in quite the same way as you do in densely occupied Britain. And the private housing is often massive. Also the national and state parks seem very well funded, which has surprised me.
For example, during World War II, William Knudsen and Henry J. Kaiser went to workd for FDR, as recounted in Arthur Herman's "Freedom's Forge". And I can think of many similar examples, even a few in other nations, though I haven't thought of any formal way of testing the hypothesis.
In my speculations, I have begun to think this happens because talented people are more willing to serve -- and because voters demand more from their leaders.
So, the disappointment many of you have had in your leaders this year may be something we should expect when times are middling, except for COVID.
(The COVID exception has a precedent, at least in the US. After the great 1918-1919 influenza pandemic was over, Americans mostly tried to forget about it, rather than learn from the terrible losses.)
We wouldn’t need to travel - just drop the packages of lamb down in either direction, and they would arrive ready-cooked.
I wouldn't have raised the possibility while Boris was still PM.
Just in case.
Assuming a perfectly spherical Earth*, the package dropped through the tunnel would reach the surface at the same velocity it was dropped with.
*it isn’t.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-64076644
"Scottish government to impose pay deal on nurses.
Talks between the health secretary and unions have ended without a new pay offer being made.
Sources have told the BBC the Scottish government will now impose its existing offer which is worth an average of 7.5%."