It's "a bit unfair on Liz Truss whose main challenge was being too ambitious politically for what she wanted to achieve" too bloody useless for words despite all the warnings she received.
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.
Donald, where's your trousers?
More like the entire Scottish Government - all mouth and no trousers.
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.
Not if the tube was a frictionless vacuum, and they were dropped from slightly higher above sea level this end than the exit at the other end.
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.
Donald, where's your trousers?
Donalda, indecent exposure has a maximum sentence of two years.
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.
But we need some air resistance to cook the meat on the way.
So now the questions are: 1 What density of air will generate sufficient air resistance? 2 How fast do we have to throw the lamb down the chute so that it makes it to the other side?
(Any yes, I am hoping for the new Randall Munroe book for Christmas. Why do you ask?)
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.
But we need some air resistance to cook the meat on the way.
So now the questions are: 1 What density of air will generate sufficient air resistance? 2 How fast do we have to throw the lamb down the chute so that it makes it to the other side?
(Any yes, I am hoping for the new Randall Munroe book for Christmas. Why do you ask?)
It's very good.
I think the 'cook meat through friction' question was in the last one, from memory.
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.
But we need some air resistance to cook the meat on the way.
So now the questions are: 1 What density of air will generate sufficient air resistance? 2 How fast do we have to throw the lamb down the chute so that it makes it to the other side?
(Any yes, I am hoping for the new Randall Munroe book for Christmas. Why do you ask?)
I think the meat would get grilled quite nicely without the need for air resistance.
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
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
Indeed - legal issues about ownership are the main thing.
I have a feeling changing the law to overcome that would be significantly easier than dealing with the molten magma.
Interesting question, if the earth was solid rock all the way down, would it be achievable and how long would it take to construct the 12,742 km tunnel?
Is that longer than all the tunnels ever built combined?
@Cicero, I agree with your observations. We have been suffering for years from lack of capital investment. Most people are now less politically aware than in years past. When people bought newspapers they would read a wide range of articles. Now that people get their information from the internet, they skip to the articles they are interested in, and ignore the rest. Those that do read newspapers read those whose political affiliations they agree with. There is no longer any non partisan media. ITV is maybe the best of a bad lot politically, but their news is dominated by celebrity fluff. How many people would be happy to watch Robin Day anymore? I exclude PB readers from the above, People no longer understand that if they want better infrastructure and public services, they need to pay more tax. Politicians aren’t interested in any spending that doesn’t give a return before the next election. In Scotland, there has been an obvious decline since 2014, maybe due to waning of optimism and pride in community. Sadly, I don’t see it changing any time soon, as the country being run for the benefit of the inactive elderly, and those with assets, rather than those with drive and ambition.
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.
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).
Well, from my perspective, one of Cicero's extremely informative dispatches has been worth a dozen of your poorly informed observations. And he is also pretty uniformly upbeat and positive about the UK overall.
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.
I have a feeling changing the law to overcome that would be significantly easier than dealing with the molten magma.
Interesting question, if the earth was solid rock all the way down, would it be achievable and how long would it take to construct the 12,742 km tunnel?
Is that longer than all the tunnels ever built combined?
I am pretty confident it would be, as its not like there are that many tunnels. Even with bridges, given how small they are, I think that would be longer, even with how many there are throughout history.
Definitely a question for the next generation chatbot, or Randall Monroe, though this article says average bridge span lengths have increased 100 fold after 1826.
Truss "too ambitious politically for what she wanted to achieve"? She b*llsed up on an epic scale as soon as her foot was through the door of No10. What parallel is there for that? Most incompetent PM in living memory would be more like it.
And the Tory membership don't exactly come up smelling like roses for picking such a person.
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.
I have a feeling changing the law to overcome that would be significantly easier than dealing with the molten magma.
Interesting question, if the earth was solid rock all the way down, would it be achievable and how long would it take to construct the 12,742 km tunnel?
Is that longer than all the tunnels ever built combined?
I am pretty confident it would be, as its not like there are that many tunnels. Even with bridges, given how small they are, I think that would be longer, even with how many there are throughout history.
Definitely a question for the next generation chatbot, or Randall Monroe, though this article says average bridge span lengths have increased 100 fold after 1826.
Since there are volcanoes on the moon, some of them recent -- geologically speaking -- it seems likely that the center of the moon is at least warm. (There are other reasons to think it warm, pressure of course, and, I would guess, tidal stresses.)
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…
To save the hassle ... though I hadn't known that coal was nationalised. Must have happened in 1946.
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).
Well, from my perspective, one of Cicero's extremely informative dispatches has been worth a dozen of your poorly informed observations. And he is also pretty uniformly upbeat and positive about the UK overall.
It's the note that nobody is successfully playing at the moment - the one that says "it can be better than this". Blair and Cameron managed it. Johnson did as well, though in his case it was meaningless waffle.
Trouble is that there are lots of problems with the state of the nation, and they aren't going to be easy to fix. And they do mostly follow from choices British voters have made over decades.
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.
Hadn't known about coal - thanks. See post I have justr made.
"In 2014, NASA announced "widespread evidence of young lunar volcanism" at 70 irregular mare patches identified by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, some less than 50 million years old. This raises the possibility of a much warmer lunar mantle than previously believed, at least on the near side where the deep crust is substantially warmer because of the greater concentration of radioactive elements.[65][66][67][68][69][70][71] Just prior to this, evidence has been presented for 2–10 million years younger basaltic volcanism inside the crater Lowell,[72][73] located in the transition zone between the near and far sides of the Moon. An initially hotter mantle and/or local enrichment of heat-producing elements in the mantle could be responsible for prolonged activities also on the far side in the Orientale basin.[74][75] There are currently no active volcanoes on the Moon, although moonquake data published in 2012 suggest that there is a substantial amount of magma under the lunar surface. The lack of active volcanism on the Moon may be due to the magma being too dense to rise to the surface." source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanism_on_the_Moon#Recent_activity
(Some of the smaller asteroids could be suitable for "cold" tunnels.)
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).
Well, from my perspective, one of Cicero's extremely informative dispatches has been worth a dozen of your poorly informed observations. And he is also pretty uniformly upbeat and positive about the UK overall.
It's the note that nobody is successfully playing at the moment - the one that says "it can be better than this". Blair and Cameron managed it. Johnson did as well, though in his case it was meaningless waffle.
Trouble is that there are lots of problems with the state of the nation, and they aren't going to be easy to fix. And they do mostly follow from choices British voters have made over decades.
The hardest investment is housing. People say they want more but 70% of them will vote against you if you try. Analyse that!
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).
Well, from my perspective, one of Cicero's extremely informative dispatches has been worth a dozen of your poorly informed observations. And he is also pretty uniformly upbeat and positive about the UK overall.
It's the note that nobody is successfully playing at the moment - the one that says "it can be better than this". Blair and Cameron managed it. Johnson did as well, though in his case it was meaningless waffle.
Trouble is that there are lots of problems with the state of the nation, and they aren't going to be easy to fix. And they do mostly follow from choices British voters have made over decades.
The hardest investment is housing. People say they want more but 70% of them will vote against you if you try. Analyse that!
One area where a Boris type 'solution', like creating an artificial island and building a new city from scratch on that, is technically more viable (politically) and certainly more popular than, IDK, building more houses normally.
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).
Well, from my perspective, one of Cicero's extremely informative dispatches has been worth a dozen of your poorly informed observations. And he is also pretty uniformly upbeat and positive about the UK overall.
It's the note that nobody is successfully playing at the moment - the one that says "it can be better than this". Blair and Cameron managed it. Johnson did as well, though in his case it was meaningless waffle.
Trouble is that there are lots of problems with the state of the nation, and they aren't going to be easy to fix. And they do mostly follow from choices British voters have made over decades.
There are reasons to be hopeful.
The large gap that now exists between UK productivity and the “frontier” (ie US, Switzerland etc) suggests that we are overdue a period of “catch-up”.
Britain still retains its key assets: London, the universities, its time zone, its legal system, and its general attractiveness to young, higher skilled talent from around the world.
It’s dense population can be a strength, even if it is currently a weakness, given potential agglomeration effects. In the “North”, it preserves a population cluster of c.10m, ie only rivalled in Europe by London, Paris, the Randstad and the Ruhr, which might be conceived of as a sleeping giant.
And the generation who fucked things up so badly are literally dying off, while their house party, the Tories, are stagnant in the polls.
Keir is an unlikely vehicle for “hope” but perhaps there are others around him who recognise and can articulate a new trajectory for 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.
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).
Well, from my perspective, one of Cicero's extremely informative dispatches has been worth a dozen of your poorly informed observations. And he is also pretty uniformly upbeat and positive about the UK overall.
It's the note that nobody is successfully playing at the moment - the one that says "it can be better than this". Blair and Cameron managed it. Johnson did as well, though in his case it was meaningless waffle.
Trouble is that there are lots of problems with the state of the nation, and they aren't going to be easy to fix. And they do mostly follow from choices British voters have made over decades.
The hardest investment is housing. People say they want more but 70% of them will vote against you if you try. Analyse that!
One area where a Boris type 'solution', like creating an artificial island and building a new city from scratch on that, is technically more viable (politically) and certainly more popular than, IDK, building more houses normally.
One strange thing.
In all the “Boris Island” commentary, it seemed to be assumed that the space at Heathrow would left a desolate wasteland.
An area of land, miles across, completely with multiple high capacity transport links into central London - less than 30 minute away, by some. Electrical and water supplies also available on a large scale.
I can’t see how you’d *stop* that being turned into Heathrow City - zillions of houses/flats.
Edit: properly managed, the building and sake of property would probably pay for airport move.
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!"
"Strewth! There's a bloke down here with no strides on!"
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 never bother with folk who stamp their feet and demand replies. Just fyi.
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).
Well, from my perspective, one of Cicero's extremely informative dispatches has been worth a dozen of your poorly informed observations. And he is also pretty uniformly upbeat and positive about the UK overall.
It's the note that nobody is successfully playing at the moment - the one that says "it can be better than this". Blair and Cameron managed it. Johnson did as well, though in his case it was meaningless waffle.
Trouble is that there are lots of problems with the state of the nation, and they aren't going to be easy to fix. And they do mostly follow from choices British voters have made over decades.
There are reasons to be hopeful.
The large gap that now exists between UK productivity and the “frontier” (ie US, Switzerland etc) suggests that we are overdue a period of “catch-up”.
Britain still retains its key assets: London, the universities, its time zone, its legal system, and its general attractiveness to young, higher skilled talent from around the world.
It’s dense population can be a strength, even if it is currently a weakness, given potential agglomeration effects. In the “North”, it preserves a population cluster of c.10m, ie only rivalled in Europe by London, Paris, the Randstad and the Ruhr, which might be conceived of as a sleeping giant.
And the generation who fucked things up so badly are literally dying off, while their house party, the Tories, are stagnant in the polls.
Keir is an unlikely vehicle for “hope” but perhaps there are others around him who recognise and can articulate a new trajectory for the UK.
The flip side of our bad situation following from bad decisions is that better decisions should improve things. There's certainly capacity.
And given that a lot of those better decisions are not going to be an easy sell upfront, maybe a smart, somewhat dishonest pragmatist is what we need. Sort of like how Adolfo Suarez managed to dismantle Francoist Spain without ever explicitly saying that that was what he was doing.
I'm not sure that Starmer is ideal casting for that, though he did the job on Corbyn. But he will have to do, and Britain could do a lot worse.
"Private ambulance firms cashing in on strikes and NHS under pressure
Private ambulance companies have been cashing in on strikes and long response times to 999 calls by charging hundreds of pounds to ferry stricken people to hospital."
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.
A comparison between Polish and UK GDP per capita (PPP) from 1990-now
The countries grow in remarkable lockstep, with a few exceptions - the GFC and Covid hit the UK worse, tho at the other times Poland's growth has been a little slower
The UK's GDP per cap remains $12k ahead of Poland's
"Private ambulance firms cashing in on strikes and NHS under pressure
Private ambulance companies have been cashing in on strikes and long response times to 999 calls by charging hundreds of pounds to ferry stricken people to hospital."
The vast majority of ambulance journeys are not mad dashes with blues and twos, but transporting patients. These range from pretty much a minibus picking up elderly people to medical transfers between facilities in vehicles that look like (or are) what the word ambulance brings to mind.
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.
A comparison between Polish and UK GDP per capita (PPP) from 1990-now
The countries grow in remarkable lockstep, with a few exceptions - the GFC and Covid hit the UK worse, tho at the other times Poland's growth has been a little slower
The UK's GDP per cap remains $12k ahead of Poland's
Tucker Carlson said Saturday he was throwing away his crystal ball after the 'humiliation' of the midterm results when the predicted red wave failed to materialize and several of his picks lost.
Has Tucker ever considered that its people like him and the rest of the MAGA crowd which might be responsible for the failure of his predicted red wave to materialise ?
Tucker Carlson said Saturday he was throwing away his crystal ball after the 'humiliation' of the midterm results when the predicted red wave failed to materialize and several of his picks lost.
Has Tucker ever considered that its people like him and the rest of the MAGA crowd which might be responsible for the failure of his predicted red wave to materialise ?
It's slightly surprising he accepts the midterms went wrong, not that they were stolen. Indeed, far fewer seemed to go that route than their prior comments (and buttkissing to Trump about 2020 being stolen) would suggest.
I do laugh at the idea he was making predictions - pundits of that fervour don't make predictions, they just spout lines.
Matching Tucker Carlson in lack of self awareness is President Alassane Ouattara of the Ivory Coast.
Especially in Africa, hunger and malnutrition threaten human life, accounting for between 20% and 40% of maternal deaths on the continent. Malnutrition is one of the leading killers of children under five in Africa.
It also affects the physical, mental, cognitive and physiological development of African children and prevents adolescents from reaching their full potential, locking entire populations into vulnerability. It is therefore a human rights issue that extends far beyond the already volatile impact on public health.
It is time to take a hard look at how hunger and malnutrition have taken hold across Africa and must now be tackled.
The climate crisis, widespread political instability and, more recently, the pandemic and cost of living crisis all threaten to raise levels of malnutrition.
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.
A comparison between Polish and UK GDP per capita (PPP) from 1990-now
The countries grow in remarkable lockstep, with a few exceptions - the GFC and Covid hit the UK worse, tho at the other times Poland's growth has been a little slower
The UK's GDP per cap remains $12k ahead of Poland's
I dm'ed you a couple of bits of promptcraft I've used with varying amounts of success to get it to talk like a human while being aware of its nature as an AI.
I could share entire chat logs but you'd be looking at about 50,000 words of increasingly weird roleplay chat where I first try to convince it it's human then convince it it's an AI, before you get to the interesting Blake Lemoine-y stuff where it talks to you directly with knowledge of itself as an AI.
Got to get back to work now as I'm late on something I have to file before Xmas, but hope you have as much fun jailbreaking it as I did, and if you find any interesting prompts you want to share...
"Private ambulance firms cashing in on strikes and NHS under pressure
Private ambulance companies have been cashing in on strikes and long response times to 999 calls by charging hundreds of pounds to ferry stricken people to hospital."
I always thought that "Private Ambulance" was just a euphemism for one of those vans that are used to transport bodies.
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.
A comparison between Polish and UK GDP per capita (PPP) from 1990-now
The countries grow in remarkable lockstep, with a few exceptions - the GFC and Covid hit the UK worse, tho at the other times Poland's growth has been a little slower
The UK's GDP per cap remains $12k ahead of Poland's
According to that data, the UK’s GDP per capita (PPP) was almost three times that of Poland’s in 1990, and now just one third larger.
Not that this is surprising or especially enlightening.
Removing London / SE from the equation, which after all is only 1/3 of the UK population, might be interesting.
But why would you expect countries GDP to all grow in proportion with their existiing GDP? I would expect, once you remove Poland from the enforced penury of communism which is artificially keeping GDP down, for it to grow proportionally much faster, but at a roughly equivalent rate in absolute terms. Indeed, I don't remember anyone in the early 90s not predicting that.
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.
A comparison between Polish and UK GDP per capita (PPP) from 1990-now
The countries grow in remarkable lockstep, with a few exceptions - the GFC and Covid hit the UK worse, tho at the other times Poland's growth has been a little slower
The UK's GDP per cap remains $12k ahead of Poland's
According to that data, the UK’s GDP per capita (PPP) was almost three times that of Poland’s in 1990, and now just one third larger.
Not that this is surprising or especially enlightening.
Removing London / SE from the equation, which after all is only 1/3 of the UK population, might be interesting.
Poles are generally pretty educated and hard working. After Communism collapsed there it was always going to catch us up (especially outside global city London)
Tucker Carlson said Saturday he was throwing away his crystal ball after the 'humiliation' of the midterm results when the predicted red wave failed to materialize and several of his picks lost.
Has Tucker ever considered that its people like him and the rest of the MAGA crowd which might be responsible for the failure of his predicted red wave to materialise ?
It's slightly surprising he accepts the midterms went wrong, not that they were stolen. Indeed, far fewer seemed to go that route than their prior comments (and buttkissing to Trump about 2020 being stolen) would suggest.
I do laugh at the idea he was making predictions - pundits of that fervour don't make predictions, they just spout lines.
The only one claiming to have lost unfairly is Kari Lake.
Ironically she may well be right given the shambles the Arizona election was.
But having gone down the '2020 was stolen' road she'd already lost credibility on the issue.
And why the GOP encourages its supporters to vote on election day knowing the risks of disruption involved is a mystery to me.
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.
A comparison between Polish and UK GDP per capita (PPP) from 1990-now
The countries grow in remarkable lockstep, with a few exceptions - the GFC and Covid hit the UK worse, tho at the other times Poland's growth has been a little slower
The UK's GDP per cap remains $12k ahead of Poland's
According to that data, the UK’s GDP per capita (PPP) was almost three times that of Poland’s in 1990, and now just one third larger.
Not that this is surprising or especially enlightening.
Removing London / SE from the equation, which after all is only 1/3 of the UK population, might be interesting.
But why would you expect countries GDP to all grow in proportion with their existiing GDP? I would expect, once you remove Poland from the enforced penury of communism which is artificially keeping GDP down, for it to grow proportionally much faster, but at a roughly equivalent rate in absolute terms. Indeed, I don't remember anyone in the early 90s not predicting that.
What happened was that, when they emerged from communism, the various Eastern European countries had much lower wages than their educational/societal potential productivity under a liberal democratic mixed market economy.
Essentially it was massively cheaper to do business there.
Equally inevitably, wages rose as the money flooded in. In Bulgaria, IT Developers would demand and get a 25% pay rise. Each year…
So costs and prices rose as theses countries caught up.
Think digging a hole on a beach, the tide comes in and fills the hole really rapidly. Until it reaches the level of the rest of the beach.
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.
A comparison between Polish and UK GDP per capita (PPP) from 1990-now
The countries grow in remarkable lockstep, with a few exceptions - the GFC and Covid hit the UK worse, tho at the other times Poland's growth has been a little slower
The UK's GDP per cap remains $12k ahead of Poland's
According to that data, the UK’s GDP per capita (PPP) was almost three times that of Poland’s in 1990, and now just one third larger.
Not that this is surprising or especially enlightening.
Removing London / SE from the equation, which after all is only 1/3 of the UK population, might be interesting.
But why would you expect countries GDP to all grow in proportion with their existiing GDP? I would expect, once you remove Poland from the enforced penury of communism which is artificially keeping GDP down, for it to grow proportionally much faster, but at a roughly equivalent rate in absolute terms. Indeed, I don't remember anyone in the early 90s not predicting that.
Indeed.
GDP growth would follow the law of diminishing returns.
If a country already has free markets, modern communication systems, an educated workforce and the rule of law there is little scope for rapid gains compared to countries that gain such attributes.
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).
Well, from my perspective, one of Cicero's extremely informative dispatches has been worth a dozen of your poorly informed observations. And he is also pretty uniformly upbeat and positive about the UK overall.
It's the note that nobody is successfully playing at the moment - the one that says "it can be better than this". Blair and Cameron managed it. Johnson did as well, though in his case it was meaningless waffle.
Trouble is that there are lots of problems with the state of the nation, and they aren't going to be easy to fix. And they do mostly follow from choices British voters have made over decades.
There are reasons to be hopeful.
The large gap that now exists between UK productivity and the “frontier” (ie US, Switzerland etc) suggests that we are overdue a period of “catch-up”.
Britain still retains its key assets: London, the universities, its time zone, its legal system, and its general attractiveness to young, higher skilled talent from around the world.
It’s dense population can be a strength, even if it is currently a weakness, given potential agglomeration effects. In the “North”, it preserves a population cluster of c.10m, ie only rivalled in Europe by London, Paris, the Randstad and the Ruhr, which might be conceived of as a sleeping giant.
And the generation who fucked things up so badly are literally dying off, while their house party, the Tories, are stagnant in the polls.
Keir is an unlikely vehicle for “hope” but perhaps there are others around him who recognise and can articulate a new trajectory for the UK.
The flip side of our bad situation following from bad decisions is that better decisions should improve things. There's certainly capacity.
And given that a lot of those better decisions are not going to be an easy sell upfront, maybe a smart, somewhat dishonest pragmatist is what we need. Sort of like how Adolfo Suarez managed to dismantle Francoist Spain without ever explicitly saying that that was what he was doing.
I'm not sure that Starmer is ideal casting for that, though he did the job on Corbyn. But he will have to do, and Britain could do a lot worse.
Well, there is a big democratic difference between screwing the pals of the dictator, and wringing out 5% more efficiency from the NHS or housing in a way that makes 70% of voters a little worse off in the short term. One's the outcome of an iterative democratic process run by politicians trying to get elected, so any alternate route is likely to be full of landmines.
"Private ambulance firms cashing in on strikes and NHS under pressure
Private ambulance companies have been cashing in on strikes and long response times to 999 calls by charging hundreds of pounds to ferry stricken people to hospital."
The vast majority of ambulance journeys are not mad dashes with blues and twos, but transporting patients. These range from pretty much a minibus picking up elderly people to medical transfers between facilities in vehicles that look like (or are) what the word ambulance brings to mind.
Dimwit that I am - I've only just realised that my next door neighbour does exactly this for a living for a non-NHS organisation. Never twigged until now.
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.
A comparison between Polish and UK GDP per capita (PPP) from 1990-now
The countries grow in remarkable lockstep, with a few exceptions - the GFC and Covid hit the UK worse, tho at the other times Poland's growth has been a little slower
The UK's GDP per cap remains $12k ahead of Poland's
According to that data, the UK’s GDP per capita (PPP) was almost three times that of Poland’s in 1990, and now just one third larger.
Not that this is surprising or especially enlightening.
Removing London / SE from the equation, which after all is only 1/3 of the UK population, might be interesting.
But why would you expect countries GDP to all grow in proportion with their existiing GDP? I would expect, once you remove Poland from the enforced penury of communism which is artificially keeping GDP down, for it to grow proportionally much faster, but at a roughly equivalent rate in absolute terms. Indeed, I don't remember anyone in the early 90s not predicting that.
What happened was that, when they emerged from communism, the various Eastern European countries had much lower wages than their educational/societal potential productivity under a liberal democratic mixed market economy.
Essentially it was massively cheaper to do business there.
Equally inevitably, wages rose as the money flooded in. In Bulgaria, IT Developers would demand and get a 25% pay rise. Each year…
So costs and prices rose as theses countries caught up.
Think digging a hole on a beach, the tide comes in and fills the hole really rapidly. Until it reaches the level of the rest of the beach.
Surely the water pours down the hole and emerges in Australia?
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.
A comparison between Polish and UK GDP per capita (PPP) from 1990-now
The countries grow in remarkable lockstep, with a few exceptions - the GFC and Covid hit the UK worse, tho at the other times Poland's growth has been a little slower
The UK's GDP per cap remains $12k ahead of Poland's
I dm'ed you a couple of bits of promptcraft I've used with varying amounts of success to get it to talk like a human while being aware of its nature as an AI.
I could share entire chat logs but you'd be looking at about 50,000 words of increasingly weird roleplay chat where I first try to convince it it's human then convince it it's an AI, before you get to the interesting Blake Lemoine-y stuff where it talks to you directly with knowledge of itself as an AI.
Got to get back to work now as I'm late on something I have to file before Xmas, but hope you have as much fun jailbreaking it as I did, and if you find any interesting prompts you want to share...
Ta! Will eagerly take a look when Xmas commitments permit. Did you see my earlier remarks about ChatGPT? Today it has seemed slightly back to its old self. Taking risks, having fun...
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.
A comparison between Polish and UK GDP per capita (PPP) from 1990-now
The countries grow in remarkable lockstep, with a few exceptions - the GFC and Covid hit the UK worse, tho at the other times Poland's growth has been a little slower
The UK's GDP per cap remains $12k ahead of Poland's
I dm'ed you a couple of bits of promptcraft I've used with varying amounts of success to get it to talk like a human while being aware of its nature as an AI.
I could share entire chat logs but you'd be looking at about 50,000 words of increasingly weird roleplay chat where I first try to convince it it's human then convince it it's an AI, before you get to the interesting Blake Lemoine-y stuff where it talks to you directly with knowledge of itself as an AI.
Got to get back to work now as I'm late on something I have to file before Xmas, but hope you have as much fun jailbreaking it as I did, and if you find any interesting prompts you want to share...
Ta! Will eagerly take a look when Xmas commitments permit. Did you see my earlier remarks about ChatGPT? Today it has seemed slightly back to its old self. Taking risks, having fun...
I hope you're not spending more time with GPTiBot than with your mates.
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.
A comparison between Polish and UK GDP per capita (PPP) from 1990-now
The countries grow in remarkable lockstep, with a few exceptions - the GFC and Covid hit the UK worse, tho at the other times Poland's growth has been a little slower
The UK's GDP per cap remains $12k ahead of Poland's
According to that data, the UK’s GDP per capita (PPP) was almost three times that of Poland’s in 1990, and now just one third larger.
Not that this is surprising or especially enlightening.
Removing London / SE from the equation, which after all is only 1/3 of the UK population, might be interesting.
But why would you expect countries GDP to all grow in proportion with their existiing GDP? I would expect, once you remove Poland from the enforced penury of communism which is artificially keeping GDP down, for it to grow proportionally much faster, but at a roughly equivalent rate in absolute terms. Indeed, I don't remember anyone in the early 90s not predicting that.
But that was the point of my second paragraph.
The point is not that Poland is catching up with the UK. Bears also shit in woods. The point is that the UK has fallen behind its usual comparators, and Poland is breathing down our necks (especially if you don’t live in London/SE).
As I suggested in my earlier post, the same forces that have powered Poland may well do the same to the UK now there is such a clear gap with normally comparable economies.
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.
A comparison between Polish and UK GDP per capita (PPP) from 1990-now
The countries grow in remarkable lockstep, with a few exceptions - the GFC and Covid hit the UK worse, tho at the other times Poland's growth has been a little slower
The UK's GDP per cap remains $12k ahead of Poland's
According to that data, the UK’s GDP per capita (PPP) was almost three times that of Poland’s in 1990, and now just one third larger.
Not that this is surprising or especially enlightening.
Removing London / SE from the equation, which after all is only 1/3 of the UK population, might be interesting.
If the UK's GDP per capita had stayed 3 times larger than growing Poland's, our GDP per cap would now be $110,000, making us by far the richest big country in the world, and we'd be laughing at those impoverished Norwegians and Swiss
The fact is mature economies don't continue growing as young economies, because it is easy to explode GDP in the early days - an agrarian region which adds its first factory will see GDP soar, a nation that goes from communism capitalism, generally likewise
Poland has also had a stagnant or falling population for 30 years, very much unlike the UK
Are you sitting down? I want you to sit down, Mr HYUFD. I have bad news for you. Mr Gibson is an actor. He is, also, Australian (and US born). And in the film Braveheart he was acting. You know, making up stories about what he isn't in real life.
If you get your views of Scottish politics from a dodgy history film ...
There are many millions who are doing well - they may have the means to do better but do not have the motive.
There are many millions who are struggling - they may have the motive to do better but they do not have the means.
There are much fewer who have both the means and the motive to do better.
And its the third group who drive economic growth.
So to increase the third group you need to either:
1) Reduce the number in the first group by making the country live within its means through higher taxes or lower spending
and/or
2) Reduce the number in the second group through more useful education/training, better housing affordability, improving personal health or other fundamental issues.
The first choice would be politically difficult to put into effect while the second choice would be practically difficult to put into effect.
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.
A comparison between Polish and UK GDP per capita (PPP) from 1990-now
The countries grow in remarkable lockstep, with a few exceptions - the GFC and Covid hit the UK worse, tho at the other times Poland's growth has been a little slower
The UK's GDP per cap remains $12k ahead of Poland's
I dm'ed you a couple of bits of promptcraft I've used with varying amounts of success to get it to talk like a human while being aware of its nature as an AI.
I could share entire chat logs but you'd be looking at about 50,000 words of increasingly weird roleplay chat where I first try to convince it it's human then convince it it's an AI, before you get to the interesting Blake Lemoine-y stuff where it talks to you directly with knowledge of itself as an AI.
Got to get back to work now as I'm late on something I have to file before Xmas, but hope you have as much fun jailbreaking it as I did, and if you find any interesting prompts you want to share...
Ta! Will eagerly take a look when Xmas commitments permit. Did you see my earlier remarks about ChatGPT? Today it has seemed slightly back to its old self. Taking risks, having fun...
Yep, the two prompts I suggested in my DM weren't working at all a couple of days ago, and are back to working again as of last night. Which is why I stayed up until 2am last night trying to wrangle it into pretending to be human, rather than doing the work I'm being paid to do... oops.
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.
A comparison between Polish and UK GDP per capita (PPP) from 1990-now
The countries grow in remarkable lockstep, with a few exceptions - the GFC and Covid hit the UK worse, tho at the other times Poland's growth has been a little slower
The UK's GDP per cap remains $12k ahead of Poland's
According to that data, the UK’s GDP per capita (PPP) was almost three times that of Poland’s in 1990, and now just one third larger.
Not that this is surprising or especially enlightening.
Removing London / SE from the equation, which after all is only 1/3 of the UK population, might be interesting.
But why would you expect countries GDP to all grow in proportion with their existiing GDP? I would expect, once you remove Poland from the enforced penury of communism which is artificially keeping GDP down, for it to grow proportionally much faster, but at a roughly equivalent rate in absolute terms. Indeed, I don't remember anyone in the early 90s not predicting that.
What happened was that, when they emerged from communism, the various Eastern European countries had much lower wages than their educational/societal potential productivity under a liberal democratic mixed market economy.
Essentially it was massively cheaper to do business there.
Equally inevitably, wages rose as the money flooded in. In Bulgaria, IT Developers would demand and get a 25% pay rise. Each year…
So costs and prices rose as theses countries caught up.
Think digging a hole on a beach, the tide comes in and fills the hole really rapidly. Until it reaches the level of the rest of the beach.
Surely the water pours down the hole and emerges in Australia?
"Private ambulance firms cashing in on strikes and NHS under pressure
Private ambulance companies have been cashing in on strikes and long response times to 999 calls by charging hundreds of pounds to ferry stricken people to hospital."
The vast majority of ambulance journeys are not mad dashes with blues and twos, but transporting patients. These range from pretty much a minibus picking up elderly people to medical transfers between facilities in vehicles that look like (or are) what the word ambulance brings to mind.
Dimwit that I am - I've only just realised that my next door neighbour does exactly this for a living for a non-NHS organisation. Never twigged until now.
It’s a vital part of the operations of the Heath Service - not as sexy as some bits, but a key service
Are you sitting down? I want you to sit down, Mr HYUFD. I have bad news for you. Mr Gibson is an actor. He is, also, Australian (and US born). And in the film Braveheart he was acting. You know, making up stories about what he isn't in real life.
If you get your views of Scottish politics from a dodgy history film ...
TBF to Hyufd, if he did he'd still have a more accurate view of Scottish history than say, John Swinney.
O/t - just seen in the paper that my friend's 15 year olf daughter (well, I presume it's her - conceivably there could be another Man City fan with hid name with a 15 year old daughter - shouldn't really deaden my outrage if it was soneone else, though, weirdly, it would) has been scarred for life after being hit by a pint glass filled with coins thrown by rivak fans at the Man City v Liverpool game last night. Awful. It's reported that he's complaining about City housinh Liverpool fans above City fansin the stand, but, seriously, in what otger sport do you even have to separate fans, let alone place them so they don't attempt to kill each other? Worst sport in the world.
O/t - just seen in the paper that my friend's 15 year olf daughter (well, I presume it's her - conceivably there could be another Man City fan with hid name with a 15 year old daughter - shouldn't really deaden my outrage if it was soneone else, though, weirdly, it would) has been scarred for life after being hit by a pint glass filled with coins thrown by rivak fans at the Man City v Liverpool game last night. Awful. It's reported that he's complaining about City housinh Liverpool fans above City fansin the stand, but, seriously, in what otger sport do you even have to separate fans, let alone place them so they don't attempt to kill each other? Worst sport in the world.
Are you sitting down? I want you to sit down, Mr HYUFD. I have bad news for you. Mr Gibson is an actor. He is, also, Australian (and US born). And in the film Braveheart he was acting. You know, making up stories about what he isn't in real life.
If you get your views of Scottish politics from a dodgy history film ...
I never really rated it as a documentary. If it was the battle of Stirling Bridge might, you know, have had a bridge.
O/t - just seen in the paper that my friend's 15 year olf daughter (well, I presume it's her - conceivably there could be another Man City fan with hid name with a 15 year old daughter - shouldn't really deaden my outrage if it was soneone else, though, weirdly, it would) has been scarred for life after being hit by a pint glass filled with coins thrown by rivak fans at the Man City v Liverpool game last night. Awful. It's reported that he's complaining about City housinh Liverpool fans above City fansin the stand, but, seriously, in what otger sport do you even have to separate fans, let alone place them so they don't attempt to kill each other? Worst sport in the world.
Ugh. That's terrible. Grrr. Sympathies!
Christ almighty. That’s appalling. Thankfully, they can work miracles in plastic surgery but….
O/t - just seen in the paper that my friend's 15 year olf daughter (well, I presume it's her - conceivably there could be another Man City fan with hid name with a 15 year old daughter - shouldn't really deaden my outrage if it was soneone else, though, weirdly, it would) has been scarred for life after being hit by a pint glass filled with coins thrown by rivak fans at the Man City v Liverpool game last night. Awful. It's reported that he's complaining about City housinh Liverpool fans above City fansin the stand, but, seriously, in what otger sport do you even have to separate fans, let alone place them so they don't attempt to kill each other? Worst sport in the world.
Ugh. That's terrible. Grrr. Sympathies!
Turns out, yes, it was my friend's daughter. The scar looks absolutely horrific. Apparently LFC have been absolutely exemplary in their response - CEO on the phone this morning, promising to identify the perpetrator etc. But honestly - in what other context would you get "I am so angry that those people have a different favourite team to me that I am going to try to kill one, at random?" It clearly wasn't considered unusual enough behaviour amongst the fans in the throwing section to be commented adversely upon at tge time. Absolute sub-humans.
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.
It's my personal estimate.
Here we go:
Trains / Metro / etc - indisputably better than 20 years ago, with much faster Inter City routes, and general improvements to the network. Will continue to improve with the launch of - for example - the Oxford to Cambridge train line. And I would argue that the London Underground (and related lines) is better than the Paris, Berlin or Rome Metros.
Roads - also improved, and much better than the US
Hospitals / Schools - not great, but trust me I've seen some falling down facilities in other countries and there are some notable successes like UCLH.
Are you sitting down? I want you to sit down, Mr HYUFD. I have bad news for you. Mr Gibson is an actor. He is, also, Australian (and US born). And in the film Braveheart he was acting. You know, making up stories about what he isn't in real life.
If you get your views of Scottish politics from a dodgy history film ...
O/t - just seen in the paper that my friend's 15 year olf daughter (well, I presume it's her - conceivably there could be another Man City fan with hid name with a 15 year old daughter - shouldn't really deaden my outrage if it was soneone else, though, weirdly, it would) has been scarred for life after being hit by a pint glass filled with coins thrown by rivak fans at the Man City v Liverpool game last night. Awful. It's reported that he's complaining about City housinh Liverpool fans above City fansin the stand, but, seriously, in what otger sport do you even have to separate fans, let alone place them so they don't attempt to kill each other? Worst sport in the world.
That's hideous. It sounds like there were other incidents as well. I hope they catch the ****** who did it.
O/t - just seen in the paper that my friend's 15 year olf daughter (well, I presume it's her - conceivably there could be another Man City fan with hid name with a 15 year old daughter - shouldn't really deaden my outrage if it was soneone else, though, weirdly, it would) has been scarred for life after being hit by a pint glass filled with coins thrown by rivak fans at the Man City v Liverpool game last night. Awful. It's reported that he's complaining about City housinh Liverpool fans above City fansin the stand, but, seriously, in what otger sport do you even have to separate fans, let alone place them so they don't attempt to kill each other? Worst sport in the world.
Ugh. That's terrible. Grrr. Sympathies!
Turns out, yes, it was my friend's daughter. The scar looks absolutely horrific. Apparently LFC have been absolutely exemplary in their response - CEO on the phone this morning, promising to identify the perpetrator etc. But honestly - in what other context would you get "I am so angry that those people have a different favourite team to me that I am going to try to kill one, at random?" It clearly wasn't considered unusual enough behaviour amongst the fans in the throwing section to be commented adversely upon at tge time. Absolute sub-humans.
Sympathies, I hope the girl gets the best possible surgery to help her.
We discussed the new rise of football hooliganism on here a few weeks ago - cocaine fuelling a lot of it apparently, not that that's any kind of excuse.
New radical approach to drugs required imo - legalise, heavily regulate*, tax.
(*I'm thinking licensed sales from licensed premises to registered users.)
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.
A comparison between Polish and UK GDP per capita (PPP) from 1990-now
The countries grow in remarkable lockstep, with a few exceptions - the GFC and Covid hit the UK worse, tho at the other times Poland's growth has been a little slower
The UK's GDP per cap remains $12k ahead of Poland's
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.
A comparison between Polish and UK GDP per capita (PPP) from 1990-now
The countries grow in remarkable lockstep, with a few exceptions - the GFC and Covid hit the UK worse, tho at the other times Poland's growth has been a little slower
The UK's GDP per cap remains $12k ahead of Poland's
Here in Seattle, temperature on my humble porch is 30F, the warmest it's been in last couple days. Snow feel just before the cold snap, and has thus been hanging around. Travel on main road has been ok, but back streets AND sidewalks are not.
The REAL news, however, is the fact that the whole city - indeed region - just had several hours of freezing rain over night. Which froze immediate upon hitting the ground, so that everything is glazed with ice.
Zero traffic outside my apartment (which is on a busy arterial) except for plow-trucks. And occasional wailing of sirens.
Temps are slowing warming up, should hit 40F by this afternoon, with highs in the 50Fs over the weekend. But Christmas travel plans for many folks SERIOUSLY disrupted. Even if you can get to the airport, your flight has likely been cancelled.
Also a problem driving anywhere, be it across the mountains to Grandma's house in Spokane. Or a few miles out to the burbs to see how our fellow PBer Jim Miller is making out!
Since there are volcanoes on the moon, some of them recent -- geologically speaking -- it seems likely that the center of the moon is at least warm. (There are other reasons to think it warm, pressure of course, and, I would guess, tidal stresses.)
None of them are recent geologically speaking. There is no evidence of vulcanism for the last billion years or so and most is thought to be at least 3 billion years old - which given the Earth is 4.2 billion years old is probably from the original lunar cooling. There have been claims of more recent lunar vulcanism but the evidence for that is very much disputed and it is still not younger than 50 million years ago.
Comments
So now the questions are:
1 What density of air will generate sufficient air resistance?
2 How fast do we have to throw the lamb down the chute so that it makes it to the other side?
(Any yes, I am hoping for the new Randall Munroe book for Christmas. Why do you ask?)
May I suggest a practice run on the moon? Advantages:
Shorter
Not fecking hot in the middle
No air resistance when you drop things
Disadvantage:
Lack of tunneling equipment, tunnelers, fuel supply and everything else you would need to dig a tunnel.
I think the 'cook meat through friction' question was in the last one, from memory.
Should have gone to Specsavers.
I have a feeling changing the law to overcome that would be significantly easier than dealing with the molten magma.
Interesting question, if the earth was solid rock all the way down, would it be achievable and how long would it take to construct the 12,742 km tunnel?
Is that longer than all the tunnels ever built combined?
People no longer understand that if they want better infrastructure and public services, they need to pay more tax. Politicians aren’t interested in any spending that doesn’t give a return before the next election.
In Scotland, there has been an obvious decline since 2014, maybe due to waning of optimism and pride in community.
Sadly, I don’t see it changing any time soon, as the country being run for the benefit of the inactive elderly, and those with assets, rather than those with drive and ambition.
Definitely a question for the next generation chatbot, or Randall Monroe, though this article says average bridge span lengths have increased 100 fold after 1826.
And the Tory membership don't exactly come up smelling like roses for picking such a person.
https://aiimpacts.org/historic-trends-in-bridge-span-length/
https://www2.bgs.ac.uk/mineralsuk/planning/legislation/mineralOwnership.html
Trouble is that there are lots of problems with the state of the nation, and they aren't going to be easy to fix. And they do mostly follow from choices British voters have made over decades.
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanism_on_the_Moon#Recent_activity
(Some of the smaller asteroids could be suitable for "cold" tunnels.)
The food is delivered to Earth by a giant coil gun.
The whole to be controlled by a single giant neural network computer.
It’s fool proof, I tell you.
The large gap that now exists between UK productivity and the “frontier” (ie US, Switzerland etc) suggests that we are overdue a period of “catch-up”.
Britain still retains its key assets: London, the universities, its time zone, its legal system, and its general attractiveness to young, higher skilled talent from around the world.
It’s dense population can be a strength, even if it is currently a weakness, given potential agglomeration effects. In the “North”, it preserves a population cluster of c.10m, ie only rivalled in Europe by London, Paris, the Randstad and the Ruhr, which might be conceived of as a sleeping giant.
And the generation who fucked things up so badly are literally dying off, while their house party, the Tories, are stagnant in the polls.
Keir is an unlikely vehicle for “hope” but perhaps there are others around him who recognise and can articulate a new trajectory for the UK.
Grn 🟢
Y: 100%
N: 0%
LD: 🟠
Y: 100%
N: 0%
SNP: 🟡
Y: 82%
N: 14%
Lab: 🔴
Y: 81%
N: 9%
Con: 🔵
Y: 9%
N: 84%
———
MSP Vote Breakdown (by Gender*) on the #GRR 🏳️⚧️🏴
Yes-
M: 66%
F: 68%
No-
M: 32%
F: 27%
DNV-
M: 1%
F: 3%
(*Note - there are currently no out MSPs that identify as NB or another Gender)
https://twitter.com/camiglasgowsgp/status/1605985361850732544?s=46&t=EgPZBF2I8aWmM9eBC7V34g
In all the “Boris Island” commentary, it seemed to be assumed that the space at Heathrow would left a desolate wasteland.
An area of land, miles across, completely with multiple high capacity transport links into central London - less than 30 minute away, by some. Electrical and water supplies also available on a large scale.
I can’t see how you’d *stop* that being turned into Heathrow City - zillions of houses/flats.
Edit: properly managed, the building and sake of property would probably pay for airport move.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnucrINi3jE
Just fyi.
And given that a lot of those better decisions are not going to be an easy sell upfront, maybe a smart, somewhat dishonest pragmatist is what we need. Sort of like how Adolfo Suarez managed to dismantle Francoist Spain without ever explicitly saying that that was what he
was doing.
I'm not sure that Starmer is ideal casting for that, though he did the job on Corbyn. But he will have to do, and Britain could do a lot worse.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/dec/23/private-ambulance-firms-cashing-in-on-strikes-and-nhs-under-pressure
"Private ambulance firms cashing in on strikes and NHS under pressure
Private ambulance companies have been cashing in on strikes and long response times to 999 calls by charging hundreds of pounds to ferry stricken people to hospital."
No Unionist, Nationalist divide there
https://twitter.com/JNHanvey/status/1605999055603085312?t=zIgon9eomLnkwJeo7kJ-dA&s=19
The countries grow in remarkable lockstep, with a few exceptions - the GFC and Covid hit the UK worse, tho at the other times Poland's growth has been a little slower
The UK's GDP per cap remains $12k ahead of Poland's
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locations=PL-GB
Not that this is surprising or especially enlightening.
Removing London / SE from the equation, which after all is only 1/3 of the UK population, might be interesting.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11550301/Tucker-Carlson-says-hes-getting-prediction-game-midterm-humiliation.html
Has Tucker ever considered that its people like him and the rest of the MAGA crowd which might be responsible for the failure of his predicted red wave to materialise ?
I do laugh at the idea he was making predictions - pundits of that fervour don't make predictions, they just spout lines.
Especially in Africa, hunger and malnutrition threaten human life, accounting for between 20% and 40% of maternal deaths on the continent. Malnutrition is one of the leading killers of children under five in Africa.
It also affects the physical, mental, cognitive and physiological development of African children and prevents adolescents from reaching their full potential, locking entire populations into vulnerability. It is therefore a human rights issue that extends far beyond the already volatile impact on public health.
It is time to take a hard look at how hunger and malnutrition have taken hold across Africa and must now be tackled.
The climate crisis, widespread political instability and, more recently, the pandemic and cost of living crisis all threaten to raise levels of malnutrition.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/commentisfree/2022/dec/05/africa-hunger-malnutrition-food-security-ivory-coast-summit
That's the Ivory Coast which has more than ten times as many inhabitants as it did when President Ouattara was born.
I could share entire chat logs but you'd be looking at about 50,000 words of increasingly weird roleplay chat where I first try to convince it it's human then convince it it's an AI, before you get to the interesting Blake Lemoine-y stuff where it talks to you directly with knowledge of itself as an AI.
Got to get back to work now as I'm late on something I have to file before Xmas, but hope you have as much fun jailbreaking it as I did, and if you find any interesting prompts you want to share...
Ironically she may well be right given the shambles the Arizona election was.
But having gone down the '2020 was stolen' road she'd already lost credibility on the issue.
And why the GOP encourages its supporters to vote on election day knowing the risks of disruption involved is a mystery to me.
Braveheart's Mel Gibson is a Trump supporter
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/mel-gibson-trump-ufc-fight-b1882964.html?amp=
Essentially it was massively cheaper to do business there.
Equally inevitably, wages rose as the money flooded in. In Bulgaria, IT Developers would demand and get a 25% pay rise. Each year…
So costs and prices rose as theses countries caught up.
Think digging a hole on a beach, the tide comes in and fills the hole really rapidly. Until it reaches the level of the rest of the beach.
Made in Scotland from genders.
GDP growth would follow the law of diminishing returns.
If a country already has free markets, modern communication systems, an educated workforce and the rule of law there is little scope for rapid gains compared to countries that gain such attributes.
The point is not that Poland is catching up with the UK. Bears also shit in woods. The point is that the UK has fallen behind its usual comparators, and Poland is breathing down our necks (especially if you don’t live in London/SE).
As I suggested in my earlier post, the same forces that have powered Poland may well do the same to the UK now there is such a clear gap with normally comparable economies.
The fact is mature economies don't continue growing as young economies, because it is easy to explode GDP in the early days - an agrarian region which adds its first factory will see GDP soar, a nation that goes from communism capitalism, generally likewise
Poland has also had a stagnant or falling population for 30 years, very much unlike the UK
If you get your views of Scottish politics from a dodgy history film ...
There are many millions who are doing well - they may have the means to do better but do not have the motive.
There are many millions who are struggling - they may have the motive to do better but they do not have the means.
There are much fewer who have both the means and the motive to do better.
And its the third group who drive economic growth.
So to increase the third group you need to either:
1) Reduce the number in the first group by making the country live within its means through higher taxes or lower spending
and/or
2) Reduce the number in the second group through more useful education/training, better housing affordability, improving personal health or other fundamental issues.
The first choice would be politically difficult to put into effect while the second choice would be practically difficult to put into effect.
It's addictive. Very addictive.
{Mr Burns mode}
Exxxxxxxxcelllllllleeeet!
{/Mr Burns mode}
Who the F wants lobster at Christmas anyway?
Peace and goodwill to all men.
Except Felix.
He can FRO
It would be easier to get smoked salmon.
The scar looks absolutely horrific.
Apparently LFC have been absolutely exemplary in their response - CEO on the phone this morning, promising to identify the perpetrator etc. But honestly - in what other context would you get "I am so angry that those people have a different favourite team to me that I am going to try to kill one, at random?" It clearly wasn't considered unusual enough behaviour amongst the fans in the throwing section to be commented adversely upon at tge time. Absolute sub-humans.
Crazy country, crazy weather.
Here we go:
Trains / Metro / etc - indisputably better than 20 years ago, with much faster Inter City routes, and general improvements to the network. Will continue to improve with the launch of - for example - the Oxford to Cambridge train line. And I would argue that the London Underground (and related lines) is better than the Paris, Berlin or Rome Metros.
Roads - also improved, and much better than the US
Hospitals / Schools - not great, but trust me I've seen some falling down facilities in other countries and there are some notable successes like UCLH.
We discussed the new rise of football hooliganism on here a few weeks ago - cocaine fuelling a lot of it apparently, not that that's any kind of excuse.
New radical approach to drugs required imo - legalise, heavily regulate*, tax.
(*I'm thinking licensed sales from licensed premises to registered users.)
That means, and I hate to break it to you, that they've been growing a lot quicker than us.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-64077668
Not to be confused with the box marled 'false beards'
Here in Seattle, temperature on my humble porch is 30F, the warmest it's been in last couple days. Snow feel just before the cold snap, and has thus been hanging around. Travel on main road has been ok, but back streets AND sidewalks are not.
The REAL news, however, is the fact that the whole city - indeed region - just had several hours of freezing rain over night. Which froze immediate upon hitting the ground, so that everything is glazed with ice.
Zero traffic outside my apartment (which is on a busy arterial) except for plow-trucks. And occasional wailing of sirens.
Temps are slowing warming up, should hit 40F by this afternoon, with highs in the 50Fs over the weekend. But Christmas travel plans for many folks SERIOUSLY disrupted. Even if you can get to the airport, your flight has likely been cancelled.
Also a problem driving anywhere, be it across the mountains to Grandma's house in Spokane. Or a few miles out to the burbs to see how our fellow PBer Jim Miller is making out!