Monitoring picks up rare (probable) consequences of Covid infection.
Acute tubulointerstitial nephritis with or without uveitis: a novel form of post-acute COVID-19 syndrome in children https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.23.23284848v1 Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, we observed a striking increase in the incidence of acute tubulointerstitial nephritis (aTIN) without or with uveitis (TINUs) among children. This prompted us to examine whether SARS-CoV-2 might be the underlying trigger...
The paper goes on to note "Interestingly, the aTIN/TINUs incidence declined after April 2021. The vaccination campaign, herd immunity and emergence of new variants might have contributed to this trend..."
The U.S. is planning to send Ukraine the Abrams main battle tank in its more advanced M1A2 configuration, rather than the older A1 version that the military has in storage, according to three people with knowledge of the deliberations - Politico https://twitter.com/Faytuks/status/1618656055353016322
They’ll have fun, against the WWII-era T-34s the enemy is proudly showing off today. 80-year-old tanks.
I think it’s fair to say, that the Russians are now struggling to field any more tanks, and that whatever the West can supply to Ukraine is going to make a massive difference in short order.
That depends. The skills and resources on the critical path aren’t the crews that will be fighting in them, but the guys who’ll be servicing and maintaining and repairing them. Those modern tanks are mightily complicated, and very hungry for spare parts.
Definitely agree. Tank warfare, done properly, is a huge logistical operation.
Not done properly, like the Russians last February, it results in expensive pieces of equipment being abandoned because they have no fuel or ammo, or they can’t be repaired in the field.
And yet you didn’t even give me a ‘like’ for my incisive to-the-point analysis? That’s just churlish, falling short of the standards to which any long-serving PB’er should aspire….
"There are people dying because they cannot get scans." Singer @rodstewart offers to fund scans for a number of patients stuck on long NHS waiting lists, after recently attending a private clinic which was "empty". #NHSinCrisis: trib.al/a6zLoxt 📺 Sky 501 and YouTube
What a gent
As I mentioned a few days ago, though not life threatening, my mother spent an extra 3 days occupying a bed in hospital last week because they couldn't get an MRI scan for her. What is particularly galling, and does come back in this instance to the question of funding, is that within the same trust there are MRI scanners which were bought with money raised by local communities but they can't be used effectively because of the lack of trained staff.
Interesting that Rod is suggesting Keir Starmer's plan.
If it is a sensible plan then it doesn't matter where it originates. We need more cross fertilisation of ideas without the inevitable cries of 'selling out' or 'stealing clothes' that normally accompany them. Yet another failing of our current party system.
Well yes. It's 'if it is a sensible plan that's the issue'. Labour's plan isn't sensible, although its far from their traditional nonsense. Reeves is very credible.
Nobody has a sensible plan, and the problem is spending. The nanny state will break. The idea that all needs should be tended to wasn't ever a policy - it's just creeped in.
I don't disagree but there are certain basic things it is right to fund because they save us money as a society in the long run. Having trained staff to run scanners which can then save huge amounts of time, money and effort and free up bed space for other sick people seems eminently sensible to me.
No doubt, but you'll undoubtedly see that you are sidestepping the big issue (As we all do now!).
The U.S. is planning to send Ukraine the Abrams main battle tank in its more advanced M1A2 configuration, rather than the older A1 version that the military has in storage, according to three people with knowledge of the deliberations - Politico https://twitter.com/Faytuks/status/1618656055353016322
They’ll have fun, against the WWII-era T-34s the enemy is proudly showing off today. 80-year-old tanks.
I think it’s fair to say, that the Russians are now struggling to field any more tanks, and that whatever the West can supply to Ukraine is going to make a massive difference in short order.
That depends. The skills and resources on the critical path aren’t the crews that will be fighting in them, but the guys who’ll be servicing and maintaining and repairing them. Those modern tanks are mightily complicated, and very hungry for spare parts.
Definitely agree. Tank warfare, done properly, is a huge logistical operation.
Not done properly, like the Russians last February, it results in expensive pieces of equipment being abandoned because they have no fuel or ammo, or they can’t be repaired in the field.
1) the Russians aren’t going to use a T34 - they haven’t resorted to the rusting T-55s they have. Yet. 2) The Ukrainians have been running a range of tanks since the start of the war. Given what we know of loses and successes, they are ahead of the Russians. Adaptability seems to be a forte of their military.
The U.S. is planning to send Ukraine the Abrams main battle tank in its more advanced M1A2 configuration, rather than the older A1 version that the military has in storage, according to three people with knowledge of the deliberations - Politico https://twitter.com/Faytuks/status/1618656055353016322
They’ll have fun, against the WWII-era T-34s the enemy is proudly showing off today. 80-year-old tanks.
I think it’s fair to say, that the Russians are now struggling to field any more tanks, and that whatever the West can supply to Ukraine is going to make a massive difference in short order.
That depends. The skills and resources on the critical path aren’t the crews that will be fighting in them, but the guys who’ll be servicing and maintaining and repairing them. Those modern tanks are mightily complicated, and very hungry for spare parts.
Definitely agree. Tank warfare, done properly, is a huge logistical operation.
Not done properly, like the Russians last February, it results in expensive pieces of equipment being abandoned because they have no fuel or ammo, or they can’t be repaired in the field.
1) the Russians aren’t going to use a T34 - they haven’t resorted to the rusting T-55s they have. Yet. 2) The Ukrainians have been running a range of tanks since the start of the war. Given what we know of loses and successes, they are ahead of the Russians. Adaptability seems to be a forte of their military.
To be clear, the T34 Twitter thing was supposed to be a joke. For now.
Just as the EU was blamed for most things before Brexit the reverse is now happening .
I can imagine it’s frustrating for Leavers but what goes around comes around !
This blame-Brexit campaign is possibly going to succeed as well
I used to scoff at predictions we would Rejoin. Now I am not so sure at all. Tho the Rejoiners need to act fairly fast - next 5-10 years - because the UK will in time pivot further away from the EU, as it necessarily develops a new economic model that actually works
As shown on TV last night
Yep. I can see the polls and I can see the trend. We are possibly heading for Rejoin if the Rejoiners play it cleverly
That said the Remainers have shown crass ineptitude and boorish arrogance in the past, and if they allow people like you to be heard, gloating, sniping and bitterly exulting, they will badly miss the window of opportunity
We left. We were told leaving the EU would be beneficial to the nation. Shouldn't the Leavers who told us to suck up our defeat in 2016 be cracking on with making Brexit work?
Everybody should.
Brexit's fucked. Lost cause. It's like one of those doddery, blind 19 year old Labradors that people can't bear to have euthanised because they loved its younger self so very much. So they persist with cocktails of drugs and 2 grand vet bills while kidding themselves they see signs of improvement as they clean up yet more liquid shit.
Nope. Brexit is a part of history, a given fact, an axiom. What we do from here is for everyone to decide. Everyone does want to make the country better than it is at the moment, right?
"Brexit was a mistake. An act of self-harm based on a delusional outdated view of Britain and the world. What do you have to say for yourself, Leavers?"
"It happened."
This is about where we are with the debate, I think.
This debate should be over. The Brexit facts are these:
We have left
We have little prospect of joining any time soon, including "best of both worlds" arrangements such as the Single Market
Brexit causes friction, reduces opportunities and influence, and makes us poorer
The debate should be how we deal with this, eg
Brexit reduces our tax base. Should we raise taxes to maintain public services or accept these will be degraded?
Should we join EU initiatives such as Galileo as second-class participants, but these initiatives might be useful to us?
Do we dynamically re-align our regs with EU equivalents to stay in line with changes made by the EU?
Do we agree a more liberal visa regime with the EU to partially allow citizens and enterprises to go about their business?
etc
All of which boils down to “How do we manage the decline?” rather than “How do we take advantage of the opportunity?”.
So long as government keeps looking to answer the first question, the decline is inevitable.
So what's your alternative list of opportunities ?
*Ditch HS2, or bring the current work to some sort of reasonable conclusion - perhaps build a garden city at the end of it that we were planning to build anyway.
What has HS2 got to do with the EU - it's core infrastructure that has been sold inappropriately since the very first announcement.
HS2 (in it's initial enterity) is core infrastructure to allow more trains to / from London and Birmingham while allowing increased capacity for slower local services on the old lines.
And given you started with a completely irrelevant hobbyhorse topic - I doubt you've given the other ideas any thought either.
Regarding the origins and the inexplicable ability of this project to radically increase its costs whilst never getting shitcanned, you may find the following blogpost from back in 2015 (when this was a slightly less expensive white elephant) interesting:
At the time the TENs were outlined in the Treaty of Rome, the original Trans-European Network Member States were not obliged to upgrade or complete existing infrastructure. But this changed when such obligations were included in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty.
In 2011 the European Commission put forward two more proposals which significantly overhauled the operation of TEN-T. The first moved the programme from a voluntary to a compulsory basis (i.e. Member States would be forced to introduce transport network changes specified in an EU Regulation). For this, the UK Government estimates it would cost between £64 and £137 billion. The second proposal was for a Connecting Europe Facility to put the budget for TEN-T on a multi-year footing and this would obviously see a significant increase to the budget.
As for the merits of the project itself, I'd be interested to read a single cost-benefit analysis where it returns more than its current projected cost.
It would appear to be you who needs to give these issues more thought, not me. Like most extreme remainers, you aren't prepared to contemplate the fact that the EU has always worked via national Governments implementing its agenda (and obliging the EU by helpfully absorbing any flak), because it doesn't fit with your narrative about complaining right wing Tories 'blaming the EU for everything', which along with 'The Sun' is your main way of dismissing the loss of the referendum. The truth is that whilst some complained, UK Governments of all colours have swiftly and quietly implemented EU directives and memoranda disguised as their own reforms.
What is now apparent is that the same people see the fact that we've actually left the EU as no impediment to continuing exactly the same practise.
Importantly, though, it should be noted that the benefits captured by the SOBC are pretty limited. Little attempt is made to monetise the two most important benefits, i.e. increased capacity on the existing railway (which you can either use to run more trains or you can capture as increased reliability), and almost no attempt made to quantify land value uplifts via LUTI models (since treasury, and therefore DfT, don't accept them).
Funnily enough, combining the two topics of the EU and High Speed Rail, one of the arguments against HSR comes from a study commissioned by the EU itself back in the early 2000s looking at High Speed rail in France. It found that, contrary to the claims, although there was a very slight increase in GDP which could be attributed to the new rail network, it had exactly the reverse effect that had been touted for it - namely that rather than increasing investment in the regions, it actually sucked investment out of the regions and into Paris.
Yes, that's recognised. The hope is that general uplift in economic activity cause by a) better long distance connectivity, and, in my view more importantly b) better local connectivity enabled by removing fast trains and therefore enabling more local trains to be run outweighs any drain to the capital.
Following a quick glance at the reports you link to, I must say I am a little nonplussed. I have never come across a report that didn't have an executive summary, and had I been a Minister I would certainly have gone back to the authors and told them to add one.
A report whose findings allege tens of billions more in economic benefits (bringing it into the black vs. the ballooning costs), than previous work, whose findings also happened to arrive at economic benefits that outweighed the then costs, has a very unpromising starting point, and this certainly doesn't inspire confidence.
It’s probably the first time in twenty years he’s not had to take the blue pill.
Best 11 seconds of his life.
TBF, Leon seems to have been red pilled fairly recently.
He only goes there because independent research has established that Thai men have the seventh smallest penises in the world (I’d offer you a link, but it would lower the tone in here, and Google is your perpetual friend…).
The U.S. is planning to send Ukraine the Abrams main battle tank in its more advanced M1A2 configuration, rather than the older A1 version that the military has in storage, according to three people with knowledge of the deliberations - Politico https://twitter.com/Faytuks/status/1618656055353016322
They’ll have fun, against the WWII-era T-34s the enemy is proudly showing off today. 80-year-old tanks.
I think it’s fair to say, that the Russians are now struggling to field any more tanks, and that whatever the West can supply to Ukraine is going to make a massive difference in short order.
That depends. The skills and resources on the critical path aren’t the crews that will be fighting in them, but the guys who’ll be servicing and maintaining and repairing them. Those modern tanks are mightily complicated, and very hungry for spare parts.
Definitely agree. Tank warfare, done properly, is a huge logistical operation.
Not done properly, like the Russians last February, it results in expensive pieces of equipment being abandoned because they have no fuel or ammo, or they can’t be repaired in the field.
And yet you didn’t even give me a ‘like’ for my incisive to-the-point analysis? That’s just churlish, falling short of the standards to which any long-serving PB’er should aspire….
Yet more evidence the BBC is a hotbed of extreme Yoons dedicated to the crushing of the noble SNP.
(To save Stuart the effort.)
Edit - although TBF that may actually be good news for the SNP. Otherwise the lead story on Reporting Scotland tonight would be about substantial cuts to teacher numbers due to a funding crisis, in defiance of Edinburgh's orders.
I can't and I don't think ever I will get to grips with 'blah blah woman did whatever, when she was a man'. I don't even think I want to.
There's not the slightest chance that this ridiculousness is going to continue. You're just what you are, and you can behave in any way you choose entirely independently of that.
I don’t think Britain will Brejoin, although I concede it is likelier than I ever thought it might be.
As @Driver notes, nobody has really made the case for why the EU is better (apart from trade). There needs to be a hearts, not just minds, case.
No one really though the EU was a fantastic fault -free organisation. And the bits I really liked, such as FoM where the bits everyone else hated.
The EU's single USP was membership is less sub optimal, and by a country mile, than non membership.
Not that I advocate rejoin. That ship sailed when Boris Johnson " done Brexit".
And that, of course, isn't a USP. If one side is saying "this is bad but that's worse" and the other side is saying "this is good", there's only one winner.
They should have been saying we were taking the good things about the EU for granted. An upbeat campaign about all the things we'd lose. Unfortunately they got bogged down in trying to counter Johnson's lies which proved a very successful distraction to people who had been fed a load of rubbish by some malign newspaper proprietors.
They should have run an updated Dunlop campaign of 45 years ago. The government's campaign was complacent. They didn't take the trouble to get the basics right
I can't and I don't think ever I will get to grips with 'blah blah woman did whatever, when she was a man'. I don't even think I want to.
There's not the slightest chance that this ridiculousness is going to continue. You're just what you are, and you can behave in any way you choose entirely independently of that.
On the other hand you’re also not going to eliminate people wanting to be addressed as and treated as something other than their birth gender. So a sensible way forward that minimises harm to both trans people and biological women is going to have to come at some point.
We’ve managed to arrive - after a few decades admittedly - at reasonable ways of balancing sexual freedom on the one hand and safeguarding of vulnerable people (mainly women faced with male predation) on the other. So it should hopefully be possible to achieve the same on trans issues.
I don’t think Britain will Brejoin, although I concede it is likelier than I ever thought it might be.
As @Driver notes, nobody has really made the case for why the EU is better (apart from trade). There needs to be a hearts, not just minds, case.
No one really though the EU was a fantastic fault -free organisation. And the bits I really liked, such as FoM where the bits everyone else hated.
The EU's single USP was membership is less sub optimal, and by a country mile, than non membership.
Not that I advocate rejoin. That ship sailed when Boris Johnson " done Brexit".
And that, of course, isn't a USP. If one side is saying "this is bad but that's worse" and the other side is saying "this is good", there's only one winner.
They should have been saying we were taking the good things about the EU for granted. An upbeat campaign about all the things we'd lose. Unfortunately they got bogged down in trying to counter Johnson's lies which proved a very successful distraction to people who had been fed a load of rubbish by some malign newspaper proprietors.
They should have run an updated Dunlop campaign of 45 years ago. The government's campaign was complacent. They didn't take the trouble to get the basics right
It was Cameron's 'renegotiation' that fucked remain. A few modest wins, acknowledgement of a 'two speed Europe', and some domestic tidying up of the universal benefits system to ensure that Polish people couldn't get child benefit for their kids living in Poland etc., would have seen remain romp home and Cameron a double-hero.
As a people, the days of the British as a warrior race are well behind us. Give us an easy comfortable win and we'll take it. Cameron did not do the above because he was a committed europhile and a cocky shit to boot.
ICYMI - Exclusive -STV News has learned double rapist Adam Graham, who was sent to Cornton Vale prison after identifying as a woman, attended a beauty course at a Ayrshire College while awaiting trial for the attacks - taking classes alongside young girls.
ICYMI - Exclusive -STV News has learned double rapist Adam Graham, who was sent to Cornton Vale prison after identifying as a woman, attended a beauty course at a Ayrshire College while awaiting trial for the attacks - taking classes alongside young girls.
I don’t think Britain will Brejoin, although I concede it is likelier than I ever thought it might be.
As @Driver notes, nobody has really made the case for why the EU is better (apart from trade). There needs to be a hearts, not just minds, case.
No one really though the EU was a fantastic fault -free organisation. And the bits I really liked, such as FoM where the bits everyone else hated.
The EU's single USP was membership is less sub optimal, and by a country mile, than non membership.
Not that I advocate rejoin. That ship sailed when Boris Johnson " done Brexit".
And that, of course, isn't a USP. If one side is saying "this is bad but that's worse" and the other side is saying "this is good", there's only one winner.
They should have been saying we were taking the good things about the EU for granted. An upbeat campaign about all the things we'd lose. Unfortunately they got bogged down in trying to counter Johnson's lies which proved a very successful distraction to people who had been fed a load of rubbish by some malign newspaper proprietors.
They should have run an updated Dunlop campaign of 45 years ago. The government's campaign was complacent. They didn't take the trouble to get the basics right
There are two different kinds of women. There is a woman defined by biological sex & a woman defined by gender identity. Both are equally valid. All women, including trans women, suffer from misogyny, discrimination, hate crime & rape. Unite! WATCH
I can't and I don't think ever I will get to grips with 'blah blah woman did whatever, when she was a man'. I don't even think I want to.
There's not the slightest chance that this ridiculousness is going to continue. You're just what you are, and you can behave in any way you choose entirely independently of that.
On the other hand you’re also not going to eliminate people wanting to be addressed as and treated as something other than their birth gender. So a sensible way forward that minimises harm to both trans people and biological women is going to have to come at some point.
We’ve managed to arrive - after a few decades admittedly - at reasonable ways of balancing sexual freedom on the one hand and safeguarding of vulnerable people (mainly women faced with male predation) on the other. So it should hopefully be possible to achieve the same on trans issues.
Sadly, the unpleasant conflict seems to be rather the point.
It seems blindingly obvious to me that someone should be entitled to legal recognition as their new gender when they've undergone reassignment surgery and not before. Whilst they are on their way, they should be allowed as much privacy and courtesy as can be afforded, but whilst you're a man physically, you're a man legally. You can't become a Quantity Surveyor or a Nurse just by getting a notion in your head, so why should you become a woman or a man?
Just as the EU was blamed for most things before Brexit the reverse is now happening .
I can imagine it’s frustrating for Leavers but what goes around comes around !
This blame-Brexit campaign is possibly going to succeed as well
I used to scoff at predictions we would Rejoin. Now I am not so sure at all. Tho the Rejoiners need to act fairly fast - next 5-10 years - because the UK will in time pivot further away from the EU, as it necessarily develops a new economic model that actually works
As shown on TV last night
Yep. I can see the polls and I can see the trend. We are possibly heading for Rejoin if the Rejoiners play it cleverly
That said the Remainers have shown crass ineptitude and boorish arrogance in the past, and if they allow people like you to be heard, gloating, sniping and bitterly exulting, they will badly miss the window of opportunity
We left. We were told leaving the EU would be beneficial to the nation. Shouldn't the Leavers who told us to suck up our defeat in 2016 be cracking on with making Brexit work?
Everybody should.
Brexit's fucked. Lost cause. It's like one of those doddery, blind 19 year old Labradors that people can't bear to have euthanised because they loved its younger self so very much. So they persist with cocktails of drugs and 2 grand vet bills while kidding themselves they see signs of improvement as they clean up yet more liquid shit.
Nope. Brexit is a part of history, a given fact, an axiom. What we do from here is for everyone to decide. Everyone does want to make the country better than it is at the moment, right?
"Brexit was a mistake. An act of self-harm based on a delusional outdated view of Britain and the world. What do you have to say for yourself, Leavers?"
"It happened."
This is about where we are with the debate, I think.
This debate should be over. The Brexit facts are these:
We have left
We have little prospect of joining any time soon, including "best of both worlds" arrangements such as the Single Market
Brexit causes friction, reduces opportunities and influence, and makes us poorer
The debate should be how we deal with this, eg
Brexit reduces our tax base. Should we raise taxes to maintain public services or accept these will be degraded?
Should we join EU initiatives such as Galileo as second-class participants, but these initiatives might be useful to us?
Do we dynamically re-align our regs with EU equivalents to stay in line with changes made by the EU?
Do we agree a more liberal visa regime with the EU to partially allow citizens and enterprises to go about their business?
etc
All of which boils down to “How do we manage the decline?” rather than “How do we take advantage of the opportunity?”.
So long as government keeps looking to answer the first question, the decline is inevitable.
So what's your alternative list of opportunities ?
*Ditch HS2, or bring the current work to some sort of reasonable conclusion - perhaps build a garden city at the end of it that we were planning to build anyway.
What has HS2 got to do with the EU - it's core infrastructure that has been sold inappropriately since the very first announcement.
HS2 (in it's initial enterity) is core infrastructure to allow more trains to / from London and Birmingham while allowing increased capacity for slower local services on the old lines.
And given you started with a completely irrelevant hobbyhorse topic - I doubt you've given the other ideas any thought either.
Regarding the origins and the inexplicable ability of this project to radically increase its costs whilst never getting shitcanned, you may find the following blogpost from back in 2015 (when this was a slightly less expensive white elephant) interesting:
At the time the TENs were outlined in the Treaty of Rome, the original Trans-European Network Member States were not obliged to upgrade or complete existing infrastructure. But this changed when such obligations were included in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty.
In 2011 the European Commission put forward two more proposals which significantly overhauled the operation of TEN-T. The first moved the programme from a voluntary to a compulsory basis (i.e. Member States would be forced to introduce transport network changes specified in an EU Regulation). For this, the UK Government estimates it would cost between £64 and £137 billion. The second proposal was for a Connecting Europe Facility to put the budget for TEN-T on a multi-year footing and this would obviously see a significant increase to the budget.
As for the merits of the project itself, I'd be interested to read a single cost-benefit analysis where it returns more than its current projected cost.
It would appear to be you who needs to give these issues more thought, not me. Like most extreme remainers, you aren't prepared to contemplate the fact that the EU has always worked via national Governments implementing its agenda (and obliging the EU by helpfully absorbing any flak), because it doesn't fit with your narrative about complaining right wing Tories 'blaming the EU for everything', which along with 'The Sun' is your main way of dismissing the loss of the referendum. The truth is that whilst some complained, UK Governments of all colours have swiftly and quietly implemented EU directives and memoranda disguised as their own reforms.
What is now apparent is that the same people see the fact that we've actually left the EU as no impediment to continuing exactly the same practise.
Importantly, though, it should be noted that the benefits captured by the SOBC are pretty limited. Little attempt is made to monetise the two most important benefits, i.e. increased capacity on the existing railway (which you can either use to run more trains or you can capture as increased reliability), and almost no attempt made to quantify land value uplifts via LUTI models (since treasury, and therefore DfT, don't accept them).
Funnily enough, combining the two topics of the EU and High Speed Rail, one of the arguments against HSR comes from a study commissioned by the EU itself back in the early 2000s looking at High Speed rail in France. It found that, contrary to the claims, although there was a very slight increase in GDP which could be attributed to the new rail network, it had exactly the reverse effect that had been touted for it - namely that rather than increasing investment in the regions, it actually sucked investment out of the regions and into Paris.
Which is precisely the argument of those who advocated a new Liverpool-Hull line instead.
Indeed. Cross country, intra region rail improvements/new projects would do far more good in my opinion.
The primary need is for ambitious and growing mass metro networks in Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds/Bradford. Their systems are pathetic compared with European counterparts.
Secondarily, the great northern cluster of Liverpool to Hull needs a high speed connection, and a second one that connects that to the loop that goes from Sheffield to Nottingham/Derby to Birmingham and back to Liverpool and Manchester.
As you note, there is no “regional” business case for HS2. The business case is about overall network capacity which probably ultimately benefits London first.
There are two different kinds of women. There is a woman defined by biological sex & a woman defined by gender identity. Both are equally valid. All women, including trans women, suffer from misogyny, discrimination, hate crime & rape. Unite! WATCH
I don’t think Britain will Brejoin, although I concede it is likelier than I ever thought it might be.
As @Driver notes, nobody has really made the case for why the EU is better (apart from trade). There needs to be a hearts, not just minds, case.
No one really though the EU was a fantastic fault -free organisation. And the bits I really liked, such as FoM where the bits everyone else hated.
The EU's single USP was membership is less sub optimal, and by a country mile, than non membership.
Not that I advocate rejoin. That ship sailed when Boris Johnson " done Brexit".
And that, of course, isn't a USP. If one side is saying "this is bad but that's worse" and the other side is saying "this is good", there's only one winner.
They should have been saying we were taking the good things about the EU for granted. An upbeat campaign about all the things we'd lose. Unfortunately they got bogged down in trying to counter Johnson's lies which proved a very successful distraction to people who had been fed a load of rubbish by some malign newspaper proprietors.
They should have run an updated Dunlop campaign of 45 years ago. The government's campaign was complacent. They didn't take the trouble to get the basics right
Difficulty with that was that Team Leave persuaded themselves, and enough of the country, that those things would continue to happen without a political superstructure to manage them.
I don't know whose theory it is, but I read it somewhere and it seems convincing.
Some people see cooperation as like ships sailing across an ocean. You don't need much infrastructure, just individual will. Others see it like travelling on land- you need a road to be maintained, but then it's easy.
That seems to explain a lot, including the idea that Britain would really be emotionally happier transplanted to somewhere in the Pacific.
I can't and I don't think ever I will get to grips with 'blah blah woman did whatever, when she was a man'. I don't even think I want to.
There's not the slightest chance that this ridiculousness is going to continue. You're just what you are, and you can behave in any way you choose entirely independently of that.
On the other hand you’re also not going to eliminate people wanting to be addressed as and treated as something other than their birth gender. So a sensible way forward that minimises harm to both trans people and biological women is going to have to come at some point.
We’ve managed to arrive - after a few decades admittedly - at reasonable ways of balancing sexual freedom on the one hand and safeguarding of vulnerable people (mainly women faced with male predation) on the other. So it should hopefully be possible to achieve the same on trans issues.
Sadly, the unpleasant conflict seems to be rather the point.
It seems blindingly obvious to me that someone should be entitled to legal recognition as their new gender when they've undergone reassignment surgery and not before. Whilst they are on their way, they should be allowed as much privacy and courtesy as can be afforded, but whilst you're a man physically, you're a man legally. You can't become a Quantity Surveyor or a Nurse just by getting a notion in your head, so why should you become a woman or a man?
The slight problem is that, to some people, that position is evil. Literally. Not even to be discussed. No compromise with The Devil….
The U.S. is planning to send Ukraine the Abrams main battle tank in its more advanced M1A2 configuration, rather than the older A1 version that the military has in storage, according to three people with knowledge of the deliberations - Politico https://twitter.com/Faytuks/status/1618656055353016322
They’ll have fun, against the WWII-era T-34s the enemy is proudly showing off today. 80-year-old tanks.
I think it’s fair to say, that the Russians are now struggling to field any more tanks, and that whatever the West can supply to Ukraine is going to make a massive difference in short order.
That depends. The skills and resources on the critical path aren’t the crews that will be fighting in them, but the guys who’ll be servicing and maintaining and repairing them. Those modern tanks are mightily complicated, and very hungry for spare parts.
Definitely agree. Tank warfare, done properly, is a huge logistical operation.
Not done properly, like the Russians last February, it results in expensive pieces of equipment being abandoned because they have no fuel or ammo, or they can’t be repaired in the field.
1) the Russians aren’t going to use a T34 - they haven’t resorted to the rusting T-55s they have. Yet. 2) The Ukrainians have been running a range of tanks since the start of the war. Given what we know of loses and successes, they are ahead of the Russians. Adaptability seems to be a forte of their military.
To be clear, the T34 Twitter thing was supposed to be a joke. For now.
The Laotian T34 s are for parades and movies, a bit like the BoB flight, it seems.
I don’t think Britain will Brejoin, although I concede it is likelier than I ever thought it might be.
As @Driver notes, nobody has really made the case for why the EU is better (apart from trade). There needs to be a hearts, not just minds, case.
No one really though the EU was a fantastic fault -free organisation. And the bits I really liked, such as FoM where the bits everyone else hated.
The EU's single USP was membership is less sub optimal, and by a country mile, than non membership.
Not that I advocate rejoin. That ship sailed when Boris Johnson " done Brexit".
And that, of course, isn't a USP. If one side is saying "this is bad but that's worse" and the other side is saying "this is good", there's only one winner.
They should have been saying we were taking the good things about the EU for granted. An upbeat campaign about all the things we'd lose. Unfortunately they got bogged down in trying to counter Johnson's lies which proved a very successful distraction to people who had been fed a load of rubbish by some malign newspaper proprietors.
They should have run an updated Dunlop campaign of 45 years ago. The government's campaign was complacent. They didn't take the trouble to get the basics right
Difficulty with that was that Team Leave persuaded themselves, and enough of the country, that those things would continue to happen without a political superstructure to manage them.
I don't know whose theory it is, but I read it somewhere and it seems convincing.
Some people see cooperation as like ships sailing across an ocean. You don't need much infrastructure, just individual will. Others see it like travelling on land- you need a road to be maintained, but then it's easy.
That seems to explain a lot, including the idea that Britain would really be emotionally happier transplanted to somewhere in the Pacific.
Your last point is kind of revealing. Britain doesn’t see itself as a European power. I’m not sure about Pacific, maybe Atlantic power is more accurate.
Europe is - to the great majority - just a place to go on holiday.
Of course this mental model is itself a hangover from Empire, but Brexiters get very, very angry when this is mentioned.
All countries have delusions. This is one of Britain’s.
Just as the EU was blamed for most things before Brexit the reverse is now happening .
I can imagine it’s frustrating for Leavers but what goes around comes around !
This blame-Brexit campaign is possibly going to succeed as well
I used to scoff at predictions we would Rejoin. Now I am not so sure at all. Tho the Rejoiners need to act fairly fast - next 5-10 years - because the UK will in time pivot further away from the EU, as it necessarily develops a new economic model that actually works
As shown on TV last night
Yep. I can see the polls and I can see the trend. We are possibly heading for Rejoin if the Rejoiners play it cleverly
That said the Remainers have shown crass ineptitude and boorish arrogance in the past, and if they allow people like you to be heard, gloating, sniping and bitterly exulting, they will badly miss the window of opportunity
We left. We were told leaving the EU would be beneficial to the nation. Shouldn't the Leavers who told us to suck up our defeat in 2016 be cracking on with making Brexit work?
Everybody should.
Brexit's fucked. Lost cause. It's like one of those doddery, blind 19 year old Labradors that people can't bear to have euthanised because they loved its younger self so very much. So they persist with cocktails of drugs and 2 grand vet bills while kidding themselves they see signs of improvement as they clean up yet more liquid shit.
Nope. Brexit is a part of history, a given fact, an axiom. What we do from here is for everyone to decide. Everyone does want to make the country better than it is at the moment, right?
"Brexit was a mistake. An act of self-harm based on a delusional outdated view of Britain and the world. What do you have to say for yourself, Leavers?"
"It happened."
This is about where we are with the debate, I think.
This debate should be over. The Brexit facts are these:
We have left
We have little prospect of joining any time soon, including "best of both worlds" arrangements such as the Single Market
Brexit causes friction, reduces opportunities and influence, and makes us poorer
The debate should be how we deal with this, eg
Brexit reduces our tax base. Should we raise taxes to maintain public services or accept these will be degraded?
Should we join EU initiatives such as Galileo as second-class participants, but these initiatives might be useful to us?
Do we dynamically re-align our regs with EU equivalents to stay in line with changes made by the EU?
Do we agree a more liberal visa regime with the EU to partially allow citizens and enterprises to go about their business?
etc
All of which boils down to “How do we manage the decline?” rather than “How do we take advantage of the opportunity?”.
So long as government keeps looking to answer the first question, the decline is inevitable.
So what's your alternative list of opportunities ?
*Ditch HS2, or bring the current work to some sort of reasonable conclusion - perhaps build a garden city at the end of it that we were planning to build anyway.
What has HS2 got to do with the EU - it's core infrastructure that has been sold inappropriately since the very first announcement.
HS2 (in it's initial enterity) is core infrastructure to allow more trains to / from London and Birmingham while allowing increased capacity for slower local services on the old lines.
And given you started with a completely irrelevant hobbyhorse topic - I doubt you've given the other ideas any thought either.
Regarding the origins and the inexplicable ability of this project to radically increase its costs whilst never getting shitcanned, you may find the following blogpost from back in 2015 (when this was a slightly less expensive white elephant) interesting:
At the time the TENs were outlined in the Treaty of Rome, the original Trans-European Network Member States were not obliged to upgrade or complete existing infrastructure. But this changed when such obligations were included in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty.
In 2011 the European Commission put forward two more proposals which significantly overhauled the operation of TEN-T. The first moved the programme from a voluntary to a compulsory basis (i.e. Member States would be forced to introduce transport network changes specified in an EU Regulation). For this, the UK Government estimates it would cost between £64 and £137 billion. The second proposal was for a Connecting Europe Facility to put the budget for TEN-T on a multi-year footing and this would obviously see a significant increase to the budget.
As for the merits of the project itself, I'd be interested to read a single cost-benefit analysis where it returns more than its current projected cost.
It would appear to be you who needs to give these issues more thought, not me. Like most extreme remainers, you aren't prepared to contemplate the fact that the EU has always worked via national Governments implementing its agenda (and obliging the EU by helpfully absorbing any flak), because it doesn't fit with your narrative about complaining right wing Tories 'blaming the EU for everything', which along with 'The Sun' is your main way of dismissing the loss of the referendum. The truth is that whilst some complained, UK Governments of all colours have swiftly and quietly implemented EU directives and memoranda disguised as their own reforms.
What is now apparent is that the same people see the fact that we've actually left the EU as no impediment to continuing exactly the same practise.
Importantly, though, it should be noted that the benefits captured by the SOBC are pretty limited. Little attempt is made to monetise the two most important benefits, i.e. increased capacity on the existing railway (which you can either use to run more trains or you can capture as increased reliability), and almost no attempt made to quantify land value uplifts via LUTI models (since treasury, and therefore DfT, don't accept them).
Funnily enough, combining the two topics of the EU and High Speed Rail, one of the arguments against HSR comes from a study commissioned by the EU itself back in the early 2000s looking at High Speed rail in France. It found that, contrary to the claims, although there was a very slight increase in GDP which could be attributed to the new rail network, it had exactly the reverse effect that had been touted for it - namely that rather than increasing investment in the regions, it actually sucked investment out of the regions and into Paris.
Which is precisely the argument of those who advocated a new Liverpool-Hull line instead.
Indeed. Cross country, intra region rail improvements/new projects would do far more good in my opinion.
The primary need is for ambitious and growing mass metro networks in Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds/Bradford. Their systems are pathetic compared with European counterparts.
Secondarily, the great northern cluster of Liverpool to Hull needs a high speed connection, and a second one that connects that to the loop that goes from Sheffield to Nottingham/Derby to Birmingham and back to Liverpool and Manchester.
As you note, there is no “regional” business case for HS2. The business case is about overall network capacity which probably ultimately benefits London first.
The big win from HS2 is being able to convert London to MK / Bedford / Cambridge + Peterborough into high capacity regional suburban networks by taking the long distance trains away. But that's a tough sell. Which highlights two things, I reckon:
1 There is a lot more public sector infrastructure investment that makes sense that we ought to be doing. I didn't comment when some of our more commercial friends were taking about getting new work computers yesterday, because my response would have been intemperate. But if you consider the rubbish IT in schools and hospitals, and the TPA rants when they buy decent equipment, it's not hard to see why we're so inefficient in the public sector.
2 Trying to get this stuff supported by voters is hard. We'd rather have stuff that benefits us now than things that benefit our children more. It's a problem, and I don't know how to fix it.
I don’t think Britain will Brejoin, although I concede it is likelier than I ever thought it might be.
As @Driver notes, nobody has really made the case for why the EU is better (apart from trade). There needs to be a hearts, not just minds, case.
No one really though the EU was a fantastic fault -free organisation. And the bits I really liked, such as FoM where the bits everyone else hated.
The EU's single USP was membership is less sub optimal, and by a country mile, than non membership.
Not that I advocate rejoin. That ship sailed when Boris Johnson " done Brexit".
And that, of course, isn't a USP. If one side is saying "this is bad but that's worse" and the other side is saying "this is good", there's only one winner.
They should have been saying we were taking the good things about the EU for granted. An upbeat campaign about all the things we'd lose. Unfortunately they got bogged down in trying to counter Johnson's lies which proved a very successful distraction to people who had been fed a load of rubbish by some malign newspaper proprietors.
Ironically, one of the 'lies' that the Remain campaign spent time countering was Boris Johnson's idea of a second referendum after a Leave vote. Cameron said it would be undemocratic.
Just as the EU was blamed for most things before Brexit the reverse is now happening .
I can imagine it’s frustrating for Leavers but what goes around comes around !
This blame-Brexit campaign is possibly going to succeed as well
I used to scoff at predictions we would Rejoin. Now I am not so sure at all. Tho the Rejoiners need to act fairly fast - next 5-10 years - because the UK will in time pivot further away from the EU, as it necessarily develops a new economic model that actually works
As shown on TV last night
Yep. I can see the polls and I can see the trend. We are possibly heading for Rejoin if the Rejoiners play it cleverly
That said the Remainers have shown crass ineptitude and boorish arrogance in the past, and if they allow people like you to be heard, gloating, sniping and bitterly exulting, they will badly miss the window of opportunity
We left. We were told leaving the EU would be beneficial to the nation. Shouldn't the Leavers who told us to suck up our defeat in 2016 be cracking on with making Brexit work?
Everybody should.
Brexit's fucked. Lost cause. It's like one of those doddery, blind 19 year old Labradors that people can't bear to have euthanised because they loved its younger self so very much. So they persist with cocktails of drugs and 2 grand vet bills while kidding themselves they see signs of improvement as they clean up yet more liquid shit.
Nope. Brexit is a part of history, a given fact, an axiom. What we do from here is for everyone to decide. Everyone does want to make the country better than it is at the moment, right?
"Brexit was a mistake. An act of self-harm based on a delusional outdated view of Britain and the world. What do you have to say for yourself, Leavers?"
"It happened."
This is about where we are with the debate, I think.
This debate should be over. The Brexit facts are these:
We have left
We have little prospect of joining any time soon, including "best of both worlds" arrangements such as the Single Market
Brexit causes friction, reduces opportunities and influence, and makes us poorer
The debate should be how we deal with this, eg
Brexit reduces our tax base. Should we raise taxes to maintain public services or accept these will be degraded?
Should we join EU initiatives such as Galileo as second-class participants, but these initiatives might be useful to us?
Do we dynamically re-align our regs with EU equivalents to stay in line with changes made by the EU?
Do we agree a more liberal visa regime with the EU to partially allow citizens and enterprises to go about their business?
etc
All of which boils down to “How do we manage the decline?” rather than “How do we take advantage of the opportunity?”.
So long as government keeps looking to answer the first question, the decline is inevitable.
So what's your alternative list of opportunities ?
*Ditch HS2, or bring the current work to some sort of reasonable conclusion - perhaps build a garden city at the end of it that we were planning to build anyway.
What has HS2 got to do with the EU - it's core infrastructure that has been sold inappropriately since the very first announcement.
HS2 (in it's initial enterity) is core infrastructure to allow more trains to / from London and Birmingham while allowing increased capacity for slower local services on the old lines.
And given you started with a completely irrelevant hobbyhorse topic - I doubt you've given the other ideas any thought either.
Regarding the origins and the inexplicable ability of this project to radically increase its costs whilst never getting shitcanned, you may find the following blogpost from back in 2015 (when this was a slightly less expensive white elephant) interesting:
At the time the TENs were outlined in the Treaty of Rome, the original Trans-European Network Member States were not obliged to upgrade or complete existing infrastructure. But this changed when such obligations were included in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty.
In 2011 the European Commission put forward two more proposals which significantly overhauled the operation of TEN-T. The first moved the programme from a voluntary to a compulsory basis (i.e. Member States would be forced to introduce transport network changes specified in an EU Regulation). For this, the UK Government estimates it would cost between £64 and £137 billion. The second proposal was for a Connecting Europe Facility to put the budget for TEN-T on a multi-year footing and this would obviously see a significant increase to the budget.
As for the merits of the project itself, I'd be interested to read a single cost-benefit analysis where it returns more than its current projected cost.
It would appear to be you who needs to give these issues more thought, not me. Like most extreme remainers, you aren't prepared to contemplate the fact that the EU has always worked via national Governments implementing its agenda (and obliging the EU by helpfully absorbing any flak), because it doesn't fit with your narrative about complaining right wing Tories 'blaming the EU for everything', which along with 'The Sun' is your main way of dismissing the loss of the referendum. The truth is that whilst some complained, UK Governments of all colours have swiftly and quietly implemented EU directives and memoranda disguised as their own reforms.
What is now apparent is that the same people see the fact that we've actually left the EU as no impediment to continuing exactly the same practise.
Importantly, though, it should be noted that the benefits captured by the SOBC are pretty limited. Little attempt is made to monetise the two most important benefits, i.e. increased capacity on the existing railway (which you can either use to run more trains or you can capture as increased reliability), and almost no attempt made to quantify land value uplifts via LUTI models (since treasury, and therefore DfT, don't accept them).
Funnily enough, combining the two topics of the EU and High Speed Rail, one of the arguments against HSR comes from a study commissioned by the EU itself back in the early 2000s looking at High Speed rail in France. It found that, contrary to the claims, although there was a very slight increase in GDP which could be attributed to the new rail network, it had exactly the reverse effect that had been touted for it - namely that rather than increasing investment in the regions, it actually sucked investment out of the regions and into Paris.
Which is precisely the argument of those who advocated a new Liverpool-Hull line instead.
Indeed. Cross country, intra region rail improvements/new projects would do far more good in my opinion.
The primary need is for ambitious and growing mass metro networks in Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds/Bradford. Their systems are pathetic compared with European counterparts.
Secondarily, the great northern cluster of Liverpool to Hull needs a high speed connection, and a second one that connects that to the loop that goes from Sheffield to Nottingham/Derby to Birmingham and back to Liverpool and Manchester.
As you note, there is no “regional” business case for HS2. The business case is about overall network capacity which probably ultimately benefits London first.
The big win from HS2 is being able to convert London to MK / Bedford / Cambridge + Peterborough into high capacity regional suburban networks by taking the long distance trains away. But that's a tough sell. Which highlights two things, I reckon:
1 There is a lot more public sector infrastructure investment that makes sense that we ought to be doing. I didn't comment when some of our more commercial friends were taking about getting new work computers yesterday, because my response would have been intemperate. But if you consider the rubbish IT in schools and hospitals, and the TPA rants when they buy decent equipment, it's not hard to see why we're so inefficient in the public sector.
2 Trying to get this stuff supported by voters is hard. We'd rather have stuff that benefits us now than things that benefit our children more. It's a problem, and I don't know how to fix it.
On (2), the problem is compounded today by the fact that the voting population is so much older than it used to be. No political leader has been able to tell hard truths to that generation since I don’t know when, and the current government draws its dwindling support entirely from that group.
Even Keir doesn’t think he can win without persuading at least some of them over, and by persuading I mean avoiding certain realities.
I don’t think Britain will Brejoin, although I concede it is likelier than I ever thought it might be.
As @Driver notes, nobody has really made the case for why the EU is better (apart from trade). There needs to be a hearts, not just minds, case.
No one really though the EU was a fantastic fault -free organisation. And the bits I really liked, such as FoM where the bits everyone else hated.
The EU's single USP was membership is less sub optimal, and by a country mile, than non membership.
Not that I advocate rejoin. That ship sailed when Boris Johnson " done Brexit".
And that, of course, isn't a USP. If one side is saying "this is bad but that's worse" and the other side is saying "this is good", there's only one winner.
They should have been saying we were taking the good things about the EU for granted. An upbeat campaign about all the things we'd lose. Unfortunately they got bogged down in trying to counter Johnson's lies which proved a very successful distraction to people who had been fed a load of rubbish by some malign newspaper proprietors.
They should have run an updated Dunlop campaign of 45 years ago. The government's campaign was complacent. They didn't take the trouble to get the basics right
Difficulty with that was that Team Leave persuaded themselves, and enough of the country, that those things would continue to happen without a political superstructure to manage them.
I don't know whose theory it is, but I read it somewhere and it seems convincing.
Some people see cooperation as like ships sailing across an ocean. You don't need much infrastructure, just individual will. Others see it like travelling on land- you need a road to be maintained, but then it's easy.
That seems to explain a lot, including the idea that Britain would really be emotionally happier transplanted to somewhere in the Pacific.
Your last point is kind of revealing. Britain doesn’t see itself as a European power. I’m not sure about Pacific, maybe Atlantic power is more accurate.
Europe is - to the great majority - just a place to go on holiday.
Of course this mental model is itself a hangover from Empire, but Brexiters get very, very angry when this is mentioned.
All countries have delusions. This is one of Britain’s.
I don’t think Britain will Brejoin, although I concede it is likelier than I ever thought it might be.
As @Driver notes, nobody has really made the case for why the EU is better (apart from trade). There needs to be a hearts, not just minds, case.
No one really though the EU was a fantastic fault -free organisation. And the bits I really liked, such as FoM where the bits everyone else hated.
The EU's single USP was membership is less sub optimal, and by a country mile, than non membership.
Not that I advocate rejoin. That ship sailed when Boris Johnson " done Brexit".
And that, of course, isn't a USP. If one side is saying "this is bad but that's worse" and the other side is saying "this is good", there's only one winner.
They should have been saying we were taking the good things about the EU for granted. An upbeat campaign about all the things we'd lose. Unfortunately they got bogged down in trying to counter Johnson's lies which proved a very successful distraction to people who had been fed a load of rubbish by some malign newspaper proprietors.
Ironically, one of the 'lies' that the Remain campaign spent time countering was Boris Johnson's idea of a second referendum after a Leave vote. Cameron said it would be undemocratic.
The U.S. is planning to send Ukraine the Abrams main battle tank in its more advanced M1A2 configuration, rather than the older A1 version that the military has in storage, according to three people with knowledge of the deliberations - Politico https://twitter.com/Faytuks/status/1618656055353016322
They’ll have fun, against the WWII-era T-34s the enemy is proudly showing off today. 80-year-old tanks.
I think it’s fair to say, that the Russians are now struggling to field any more tanks, and that whatever the West can supply to Ukraine is going to make a massive difference in short order.
That depends. The skills and resources on the critical path aren’t the crews that will be fighting in them, but the guys who’ll be servicing and maintaining and repairing them. Those modern tanks are mightily complicated, and very hungry for spare parts.
Definitely agree. Tank warfare, done properly, is a huge logistical operation.
Not done properly, like the Russians last February, it results in expensive pieces of equipment being abandoned because they have no fuel or ammo, or they can’t be repaired in the field.
1) the Russians aren’t going to use a T34 - they haven’t resorted to the rusting T-55s they have. Yet. 2) The Ukrainians have been running a range of tanks since the start of the war. Given what we know of loses and successes, they are ahead of the Russians. Adaptability seems to be a forte of their military.
To be clear, the T34 Twitter thing was supposed to be a joke. For now.
The Laotian T34 s are for parades and movies, a bit like the BoB flight, it seems.
Old tanks are probably quite useful to stick on street corners in Russia to ensure the more agitated parts of the populace behave and thus free up less terrible equipment for where it’s needed.
Tiananmen Square didn’t need the highest tech tanks, just ones that could squash people and had machine guns. So the message is maybe, we’ve got plenty of kit so don’t get any ideas.
I don’t think Britain will Brejoin, although I concede it is likelier than I ever thought it might be.
As @Driver notes, nobody has really made the case for why the EU is better (apart from trade). There needs to be a hearts, not just minds, case.
No one really though the EU was a fantastic fault -free organisation. And the bits I really liked, such as FoM where the bits everyone else hated.
The EU's single USP was membership is less sub optimal, and by a country mile, than non membership.
Not that I advocate rejoin. That ship sailed when Boris Johnson " done Brexit".
And that, of course, isn't a USP. If one side is saying "this is bad but that's worse" and the other side is saying "this is good", there's only one winner.
They should have been saying we were taking the good things about the EU for granted. An upbeat campaign about all the things we'd lose. Unfortunately they got bogged down in trying to counter Johnson's lies which proved a very successful distraction to people who had been fed a load of rubbish by some malign newspaper proprietors.
They should have run an updated Dunlop campaign of 45 years ago. The government's campaign was complacent. They didn't take the trouble to get the basics right
Difficulty with that was that Team Leave persuaded themselves, and enough of the country, that those things would continue to happen without a political superstructure to manage them.
I don't know whose theory it is, but I read it somewhere and it seems convincing.
Some people see cooperation as like ships sailing across an ocean. You don't need much infrastructure, just individual will. Others see it like travelling on land- you need a road to be maintained, but then it's easy.
That seems to explain a lot, including the idea that Britain would really be emotionally happier transplanted to somewhere in the Pacific.
Your last point is kind of revealing. Britain doesn’t see itself as a European power. I’m not sure about Pacific, maybe Atlantic power is more accurate.
Europe is - to the great majority - just a place to go on holiday.
Of course this mental model is itself a hangover from Empire, but Brexiters get very, very angry when this is mentioned.
All countries have delusions. This is one of Britain’s.
Britain is not a country.
Feel free to write a green-inked letter to the UN, then.
I don’t think Britain will Brejoin, although I concede it is likelier than I ever thought it might be.
As @Driver notes, nobody has really made the case for why the EU is better (apart from trade). There needs to be a hearts, not just minds, case.
No one really though the EU was a fantastic fault -free organisation. And the bits I really liked, such as FoM where the bits everyone else hated.
The EU's single USP was membership is less sub optimal, and by a country mile, than non membership.
Not that I advocate rejoin. That ship sailed when Boris Johnson " done Brexit".
And that, of course, isn't a USP. If one side is saying "this is bad but that's worse" and the other side is saying "this is good", there's only one winner.
They should have been saying we were taking the good things about the EU for granted. An upbeat campaign about all the things we'd lose. Unfortunately they got bogged down in trying to counter Johnson's lies which proved a very successful distraction to people who had been fed a load of rubbish by some malign newspaper proprietors.
They should have run an updated Dunlop campaign of 45 years ago. The government's campaign was complacent. They didn't take the trouble to get the basics right
Difficulty with that was that Team Leave persuaded themselves, and enough of the country, that those things would continue to happen without a political superstructure to manage them.
I don't know whose theory it is, but I read it somewhere and it seems convincing.
Some people see cooperation as like ships sailing across an ocean. You don't need much infrastructure, just individual will. Others see it like travelling on land- you need a road to be maintained, but then it's easy.
That seems to explain a lot, including the idea that Britain would really be emotionally happier transplanted to somewhere in the Pacific.
Your last point is kind of revealing. Britain doesn’t see itself as a European power. I’m not sure about Pacific, maybe Atlantic power is more accurate.
Europe is - to the great majority - just a place to go on holiday.
Of course this mental model is itself a hangover from Empire, but Brexiters get very, very angry when this is mentioned.
All countries have delusions. This is one of Britain’s.
Britain is not a country.
Feel free to write a green-inked letter to the UN, then.
Technically, it's The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Just as the EU was blamed for most things before Brexit the reverse is now happening .
I can imagine it’s frustrating for Leavers but what goes around comes around !
This blame-Brexit campaign is possibly going to succeed as well
I used to scoff at predictions we would Rejoin. Now I am not so sure at all. Tho the Rejoiners need to act fairly fast - next 5-10 years - because the UK will in time pivot further away from the EU, as it necessarily develops a new economic model that actually works
As shown on TV last night
Yep. I can see the polls and I can see the trend. We are possibly heading for Rejoin if the Rejoiners play it cleverly
That said the Remainers have shown crass ineptitude and boorish arrogance in the past, and if they allow people like you to be heard, gloating, sniping and bitterly exulting, they will badly miss the window of opportunity
We left. We were told leaving the EU would be beneficial to the nation. Shouldn't the Leavers who told us to suck up our defeat in 2016 be cracking on with making Brexit work?
Everybody should.
Brexit's fucked. Lost cause. It's like one of those doddery, blind 19 year old Labradors that people can't bear to have euthanised because they loved its younger self so very much. So they persist with cocktails of drugs and 2 grand vet bills while kidding themselves they see signs of improvement as they clean up yet more liquid shit.
Nope. Brexit is a part of history, a given fact, an axiom. What we do from here is for everyone to decide. Everyone does want to make the country better than it is at the moment, right?
"Brexit was a mistake. An act of self-harm based on a delusional outdated view of Britain and the world. What do you have to say for yourself, Leavers?"
"It happened."
This is about where we are with the debate, I think.
This debate should be over. The Brexit facts are these:
We have left
We have little prospect of joining any time soon, including "best of both worlds" arrangements such as the Single Market
Brexit causes friction, reduces opportunities and influence, and makes us poorer
The debate should be how we deal with this, eg
Brexit reduces our tax base. Should we raise taxes to maintain public services or accept these will be degraded?
Should we join EU initiatives such as Galileo as second-class participants, but these initiatives might be useful to us?
Do we dynamically re-align our regs with EU equivalents to stay in line with changes made by the EU?
Do we agree a more liberal visa regime with the EU to partially allow citizens and enterprises to go about their business?
etc
All of which boils down to “How do we manage the decline?” rather than “How do we take advantage of the opportunity?”.
So long as government keeps looking to answer the first question, the decline is inevitable.
So what's your alternative list of opportunities ?
*Ditch HS2, or bring the current work to some sort of reasonable conclusion - perhaps build a garden city at the end of it that we were planning to build anyway.
What has HS2 got to do with the EU - it's core infrastructure that has been sold inappropriately since the very first announcement.
HS2 (in it's initial enterity) is core infrastructure to allow more trains to / from London and Birmingham while allowing increased capacity for slower local services on the old lines.
And given you started with a completely irrelevant hobbyhorse topic - I doubt you've given the other ideas any thought either.
Regarding the origins and the inexplicable ability of this project to radically increase its costs whilst never getting shitcanned, you may find the following blogpost from back in 2015 (when this was a slightly less expensive white elephant) interesting:
At the time the TENs were outlined in the Treaty of Rome, the original Trans-European Network Member States were not obliged to upgrade or complete existing infrastructure. But this changed when such obligations were included in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty.
In 2011 the European Commission put forward two more proposals which significantly overhauled the operation of TEN-T. The first moved the programme from a voluntary to a compulsory basis (i.e. Member States would be forced to introduce transport network changes specified in an EU Regulation). For this, the UK Government estimates it would cost between £64 and £137 billion. The second proposal was for a Connecting Europe Facility to put the budget for TEN-T on a multi-year footing and this would obviously see a significant increase to the budget.
As for the merits of the project itself, I'd be interested to read a single cost-benefit analysis where it returns more than its current projected cost.
It would appear to be you who needs to give these issues more thought, not me. Like most extreme remainers, you aren't prepared to contemplate the fact that the EU has always worked via national Governments implementing its agenda (and obliging the EU by helpfully absorbing any flak), because it doesn't fit with your narrative about complaining right wing Tories 'blaming the EU for everything', which along with 'The Sun' is your main way of dismissing the loss of the referendum. The truth is that whilst some complained, UK Governments of all colours have swiftly and quietly implemented EU directives and memoranda disguised as their own reforms.
What is now apparent is that the same people see the fact that we've actually left the EU as no impediment to continuing exactly the same practise.
Importantly, though, it should be noted that the benefits captured by the SOBC are pretty limited. Little attempt is made to monetise the two most important benefits, i.e. increased capacity on the existing railway (which you can either use to run more trains or you can capture as increased reliability), and almost no attempt made to quantify land value uplifts via LUTI models (since treasury, and therefore DfT, don't accept them).
Funnily enough, combining the two topics of the EU and High Speed Rail, one of the arguments against HSR comes from a study commissioned by the EU itself back in the early 2000s looking at High Speed rail in France. It found that, contrary to the claims, although there was a very slight increase in GDP which could be attributed to the new rail network, it had exactly the reverse effect that had been touted for it - namely that rather than increasing investment in the regions, it actually sucked investment out of the regions and into Paris.
Which is precisely the argument of those who advocated a new Liverpool-Hull line instead.
Indeed. Cross country, intra region rail improvements/new projects would do far more good in my opinion.
The primary need is for ambitious and growing mass metro networks in Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds/Bradford. Their systems are pathetic compared with European counterparts.
Secondarily, the great northern cluster of Liverpool to Hull needs a high speed connection, and a second one that connects that to the loop that goes from Sheffield to Nottingham/Derby to Birmingham and back to Liverpool and Manchester.
As you note, there is no “regional” business case for HS2. The business case is about overall network capacity which probably ultimately benefits London first.
The big win from HS2 is being able to convert London to MK / Bedford / Cambridge + Peterborough into high capacity regional suburban networks by taking the long distance trains away. But that's a tough sell. Which highlights two things, I reckon:
1 There is a lot more public sector infrastructure investment that makes sense that we ought to be doing. I didn't comment when some of our more commercial friends were taking about getting new work computers yesterday, because my response would have been intemperate. But if you consider the rubbish IT in schools and hospitals, and the TPA rants when they buy decent equipment, it's not hard to see why we're so inefficient in the public sector.
2 Trying to get this stuff supported by voters is hard. We'd rather have stuff that benefits us now than things that benefit our children more. It's a problem, and I don't know how to fix it.
1. Agreed.
2. I don't think getting "this stuff supported by voters" is the issue. Most voters don't have strong feelings. Were there wholesale protests against the Channel tunnel? Crossrail? The M25? No. (Aside from environmental protests which are usually a small minority.)
No, the issue is politicians. And more specifically the short-termism of politicians.
The U.S. is planning to send Ukraine the Abrams main battle tank in its more advanced M1A2 configuration, rather than the older A1 version that the military has in storage, according to three people with knowledge of the deliberations - Politico https://twitter.com/Faytuks/status/1618656055353016322
They’ll have fun, against the WWII-era T-34s the enemy is proudly showing off today. 80-year-old tanks.
I think it’s fair to say, that the Russians are now struggling to field any more tanks, and that whatever the West can supply to Ukraine is going to make a massive difference in short order.
That depends. The skills and resources on the critical path aren’t the crews that will be fighting in them, but the guys who’ll be servicing and maintaining and repairing them. Those modern tanks are mightily complicated, and very hungry for spare parts.
Definitely agree. Tank warfare, done properly, is a huge logistical operation.
Not done properly, like the Russians last February, it results in expensive pieces of equipment being abandoned because they have no fuel or ammo, or they can’t be repaired in the field.
1) the Russians aren’t going to use a T34 - they haven’t resorted to the rusting T-55s they have. Yet. 2) The Ukrainians have been running a range of tanks since the start of the war. Given what we know of loses and successes, they are ahead of the Russians. Adaptability seems to be a forte of their military.
To be clear, the T34 Twitter thing was supposed to be a joke. For now.
The Laotian T34 s are for parades and movies, a bit like the BoB flight, it seems.
Old tanks are probably quite useful to stick on street corners in Russia to ensure the more agitated parts of the populace behave and thus free up less terrible equipment for where it’s needed.
Tiananmen Square didn’t need the highest tech tanks, just ones that could squash people and had machine guns. So the message is maybe, we’ve got plenty of kit so don’t get any ideas.
'We've had to scrounge some kit from Laos' is hardly the way to convince the population that all is well on the kit-supply front.
I don’t think Britain will Brejoin, although I concede it is likelier than I ever thought it might be.
As @Driver notes, nobody has really made the case for why the EU is better (apart from trade). There needs to be a hearts, not just minds, case.
No one really though the EU was a fantastic fault -free organisation. And the bits I really liked, such as FoM where the bits everyone else hated.
The EU's single USP was membership is less sub optimal, and by a country mile, than non membership.
Not that I advocate rejoin. That ship sailed when Boris Johnson " done Brexit".
And that, of course, isn't a USP. If one side is saying "this is bad but that's worse" and the other side is saying "this is good", there's only one winner.
They should have been saying we were taking the good things about the EU for granted. An upbeat campaign about all the things we'd lose. Unfortunately they got bogged down in trying to counter Johnson's lies which proved a very successful distraction to people who had been fed a load of rubbish by some malign newspaper proprietors.
They should have run an updated Dunlop campaign of 45 years ago. The government's campaign was complacent. They didn't take the trouble to get the basics right
They should have got Michael Palin and John Cleese to do a “What has the EU ever done for us?”
Although Cleese has gone full-gammon these days.
in the sense it would have been a confident campaign I think that would have been a good idea. You couldn't help but feel the government were on the back foot from the word go. You really can't run a successful campaign when you look apologetic. 'OK It's not very good but it could be worse' was never the way to go.
Just as the EU was blamed for most things before Brexit the reverse is now happening .
I can imagine it’s frustrating for Leavers but what goes around comes around !
This blame-Brexit campaign is possibly going to succeed as well
I used to scoff at predictions we would Rejoin. Now I am not so sure at all. Tho the Rejoiners need to act fairly fast - next 5-10 years - because the UK will in time pivot further away from the EU, as it necessarily develops a new economic model that actually works
As shown on TV last night
Yep. I can see the polls and I can see the trend. We are possibly heading for Rejoin if the Rejoiners play it cleverly
That said the Remainers have shown crass ineptitude and boorish arrogance in the past, and if they allow people like you to be heard, gloating, sniping and bitterly exulting, they will badly miss the window of opportunity
We left. We were told leaving the EU would be beneficial to the nation. Shouldn't the Leavers who told us to suck up our defeat in 2016 be cracking on with making Brexit work?
Everybody should.
Brexit's fucked. Lost cause. It's like one of those doddery, blind 19 year old Labradors that people can't bear to have euthanised because they loved its younger self so very much. So they persist with cocktails of drugs and 2 grand vet bills while kidding themselves they see signs of improvement as they clean up yet more liquid shit.
Nope. Brexit is a part of history, a given fact, an axiom. What we do from here is for everyone to decide. Everyone does want to make the country better than it is at the moment, right?
"Brexit was a mistake. An act of self-harm based on a delusional outdated view of Britain and the world. What do you have to say for yourself, Leavers?"
"It happened."
This is about where we are with the debate, I think.
This debate should be over. The Brexit facts are these:
We have left
We have little prospect of joining any time soon, including "best of both worlds" arrangements such as the Single Market
Brexit causes friction, reduces opportunities and influence, and makes us poorer
The debate should be how we deal with this, eg
Brexit reduces our tax base. Should we raise taxes to maintain public services or accept these will be degraded?
Should we join EU initiatives such as Galileo as second-class participants, but these initiatives might be useful to us?
Do we dynamically re-align our regs with EU equivalents to stay in line with changes made by the EU?
Do we agree a more liberal visa regime with the EU to partially allow citizens and enterprises to go about their business?
etc
All of which boils down to “How do we manage the decline?” rather than “How do we take advantage of the opportunity?”.
So long as government keeps looking to answer the first question, the decline is inevitable.
So what's your alternative list of opportunities ?
*Ditch HS2, or bring the current work to some sort of reasonable conclusion - perhaps build a garden city at the end of it that we were planning to build anyway.
What has HS2 got to do with the EU - it's core infrastructure that has been sold inappropriately since the very first announcement.
HS2 (in it's initial enterity) is core infrastructure to allow more trains to / from London and Birmingham while allowing increased capacity for slower local services on the old lines.
And given you started with a completely irrelevant hobbyhorse topic - I doubt you've given the other ideas any thought either.
Regarding the origins and the inexplicable ability of this project to radically increase its costs whilst never getting shitcanned, you may find the following blogpost from back in 2015 (when this was a slightly less expensive white elephant) interesting:
At the time the TENs were outlined in the Treaty of Rome, the original Trans-European Network Member States were not obliged to upgrade or complete existing infrastructure. But this changed when such obligations were included in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty.
In 2011 the European Commission put forward two more proposals which significantly overhauled the operation of TEN-T. The first moved the programme from a voluntary to a compulsory basis (i.e. Member States would be forced to introduce transport network changes specified in an EU Regulation). For this, the UK Government estimates it would cost between £64 and £137 billion. The second proposal was for a Connecting Europe Facility to put the budget for TEN-T on a multi-year footing and this would obviously see a significant increase to the budget.
As for the merits of the project itself, I'd be interested to read a single cost-benefit analysis where it returns more than its current projected cost.
It would appear to be you who needs to give these issues more thought, not me. Like most extreme remainers, you aren't prepared to contemplate the fact that the EU has always worked via national Governments implementing its agenda (and obliging the EU by helpfully absorbing any flak), because it doesn't fit with your narrative about complaining right wing Tories 'blaming the EU for everything', which along with 'The Sun' is your main way of dismissing the loss of the referendum. The truth is that whilst some complained, UK Governments of all colours have swiftly and quietly implemented EU directives and memoranda disguised as their own reforms.
What is now apparent is that the same people see the fact that we've actually left the EU as no impediment to continuing exactly the same practise.
Importantly, though, it should be noted that the benefits captured by the SOBC are pretty limited. Little attempt is made to monetise the two most important benefits, i.e. increased capacity on the existing railway (which you can either use to run more trains or you can capture as increased reliability), and almost no attempt made to quantify land value uplifts via LUTI models (since treasury, and therefore DfT, don't accept them).
Funnily enough, combining the two topics of the EU and High Speed Rail, one of the arguments against HSR comes from a study commissioned by the EU itself back in the early 2000s looking at High Speed rail in France. It found that, contrary to the claims, although there was a very slight increase in GDP which could be attributed to the new rail network, it had exactly the reverse effect that had been touted for it - namely that rather than increasing investment in the regions, it actually sucked investment out of the regions and into Paris.
Which is precisely the argument of those who advocated a new Liverpool-Hull line instead.
Indeed. Cross country, intra region rail improvements/new projects would do far more good in my opinion.
The primary need is for ambitious and growing mass metro networks in Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds/Bradford. Their systems are pathetic compared with European counterparts.
Secondarily, the great northern cluster of Liverpool to Hull needs a high speed connection, and a second one that connects that to the loop that goes from Sheffield to Nottingham/Derby to Birmingham and back to Liverpool and Manchester.
As you note, there is no “regional” business case for HS2. The business case is about overall network capacity which probably ultimately benefits London first.
The big win from HS2 is being able to convert London to MK / Bedford / Cambridge + Peterborough into high capacity regional suburban networks by taking the long distance trains away. But that's a tough sell. Which highlights two things, I reckon:
1 There is a lot more public sector infrastructure investment that makes sense that we ought to be doing. I didn't comment when some of our more commercial friends were taking about getting new work computers yesterday, because my response would have been intemperate. But if you consider the rubbish IT in schools and hospitals, and the TPA rants when they buy decent equipment, it's not hard to see why we're so inefficient in the public sector.
2 Trying to get this stuff supported by voters is hard. We'd rather have stuff that benefits us now than things that benefit our children more. It's a problem, and I don't know how to fix it.
On (2), the problem is compounded today by the fact that the voting population is so much older than it used to be. No political leader has been able to tell hard truths to that generation since I don’t know when, and the current government draws its dwindling support entirely from that group.
Even Keir doesn’t think he can win without persuading at least some of them over, and by persuading I mean avoiding certain realities.
And, Boring as he is, I think I trust Starmer's judgement on this.
But there is a generation that has pulled the system to its advantage throughout (more, freer sex in the 60s and 70s, housing windfalls, tax cuts and stingy pensions for their parents from the 80s, tax rises, more generous pensions and no new houses now). That's democracy for you.
The bulginess of the UK's population pyramid... How unusual is it, and what are its consequences? Someone needs to do a PhD on that
I don’t think Britain will Brejoin, although I concede it is likelier than I ever thought it might be.
As @Driver notes, nobody has really made the case for why the EU is better (apart from trade). There needs to be a hearts, not just minds, case.
No one really though the EU was a fantastic fault -free organisation. And the bits I really liked, such as FoM where the bits everyone else hated.
The EU's single USP was membership is less sub optimal, and by a country mile, than non membership.
Not that I advocate rejoin. That ship sailed when Boris Johnson " done Brexit".
And that, of course, isn't a USP. If one side is saying "this is bad but that's worse" and the other side is saying "this is good", there's only one winner.
They should have been saying we were taking the good things about the EU for granted. An upbeat campaign about all the things we'd lose. Unfortunately they got bogged down in trying to counter Johnson's lies which proved a very successful distraction to people who had been fed a load of rubbish by some malign newspaper proprietors.
They should have run an updated Dunlop campaign of 45 years ago. The government's campaign was complacent. They didn't take the trouble to get the basics right
Difficulty with that was that Team Leave persuaded themselves, and enough of the country, that those things would continue to happen without a political superstructure to manage them.
I don't know whose theory it is, but I read it somewhere and it seems convincing.
Some people see cooperation as like ships sailing across an ocean. You don't need much infrastructure, just individual will. Others see it like travelling on land- you need a road to be maintained, but then it's easy.
That seems to explain a lot, including the idea that Britain would really be emotionally happier transplanted to somewhere in the Pacific.
Your last point is kind of revealing. Britain doesn’t see itself as a European power. I’m not sure about Pacific, maybe Atlantic power is more accurate.
Europe is - to the great majority - just a place to go on holiday.
Of course this mental model is itself a hangover from Empire, but Brexiters get very, very angry when this is mentioned.
All countries have delusions. This is one of Britain’s.
I don't think this argument really stands up. Being detached from the continental mainland is a fact of geography, not a delusion, and it played a big role in our history and psyche well before there was a British Empire.
My vote would go to . . . wait for it . . . Memphis, Tennessee. (With honorable mention for Memphis, Egypt.)
Underlined (perhaps) by the recent funeral at Graceland, for the late Lisa Marie Presley, daughter of Elvis & Priscilla Presley.
Which among other notables featured . . . wait for it . . . Sarah, Duchess of York (aka "Fergie" at least in USA).
"The Crossroads" of song, story & legend is further south, in Mississippi. But Memphis, Tenn. is a major cultural including musical junction, bridge and highway, from east to west (and visa versa), to north and south (ditto).
PLUS up and down (as in feeling the blues) and number of other directions.
I don’t think Britain will Brejoin, although I concede it is likelier than I ever thought it might be.
As @Driver notes, nobody has really made the case for why the EU is better (apart from trade). There needs to be a hearts, not just minds, case.
No one really though the EU was a fantastic fault -free organisation. And the bits I really liked, such as FoM where the bits everyone else hated.
The EU's single USP was membership is less sub optimal, and by a country mile, than non membership.
Not that I advocate rejoin. That ship sailed when Boris Johnson " done Brexit".
And that, of course, isn't a USP. If one side is saying "this is bad but that's worse" and the other side is saying "this is good", there's only one winner.
They should have been saying we were taking the good things about the EU for granted. An upbeat campaign about all the things we'd lose. Unfortunately they got bogged down in trying to counter Johnson's lies which proved a very successful distraction to people who had been fed a load of rubbish by some malign newspaper proprietors.
They should have run an updated Dunlop campaign of 45 years ago. The government's campaign was complacent. They didn't take the trouble to get the basics right
Difficulty with that was that Team Leave persuaded themselves, and enough of the country, that those things would continue to happen without a political superstructure to manage them.
I don't know whose theory it is, but I read it somewhere and it seems convincing.
Some people see cooperation as like ships sailing across an ocean. You don't need much infrastructure, just individual will. Others see it like travelling on land- you need a road to be maintained, but then it's easy.
That seems to explain a lot, including the idea that Britain would really be emotionally happier transplanted to somewhere in the Pacific.
Your last point is kind of revealing. Britain doesn’t see itself as a European power. I’m not sure about Pacific, maybe Atlantic power is more accurate.
Europe is - to the great majority - just a place to go on holiday.
Of course this mental model is itself a hangover from Empire, but Brexiters get very, very angry when this is mentioned.
All countries have delusions. This is one of Britain’s.
Britain is not a country.
Quite right. Allowing the Brexiters to use the term means they don't need to worry about the Schroedinger's statelet that is NI - is it in Europe or out of it?
I don’t think Britain will Brejoin, although I concede it is likelier than I ever thought it might be.
As @Driver notes, nobody has really made the case for why the EU is better (apart from trade). There needs to be a hearts, not just minds, case.
No one really though the EU was a fantastic fault -free organisation. And the bits I really liked, such as FoM where the bits everyone else hated.
The EU's single USP was membership is less sub optimal, and by a country mile, than non membership.
Not that I advocate rejoin. That ship sailed when Boris Johnson " done Brexit".
And that, of course, isn't a USP. If one side is saying "this is bad but that's worse" and the other side is saying "this is good", there's only one winner.
They should have been saying we were taking the good things about the EU for granted. An upbeat campaign about all the things we'd lose. Unfortunately they got bogged down in trying to counter Johnson's lies which proved a very successful distraction to people who had been fed a load of rubbish by some malign newspaper proprietors.
They should have run an updated Dunlop campaign of 45 years ago. The government's campaign was complacent. They didn't take the trouble to get the basics right
Difficulty with that was that Team Leave persuaded themselves, and enough of the country, that those things would continue to happen without a political superstructure to manage them.
I don't know whose theory it is, but I read it somewhere and it seems convincing.
Some people see cooperation as like ships sailing across an ocean. You don't need much infrastructure, just individual will. Others see it like travelling on land- you need a road to be maintained, but then it's easy.
That seems to explain a lot, including the idea that Britain would really be emotionally happier transplanted to somewhere in the Pacific.
Your last point is kind of revealing. Britain doesn’t see itself as a European power. I’m not sure about Pacific, maybe Atlantic power is more accurate.
Europe is - to the great majority - just a place to go on holiday.
Of course this mental model is itself a hangover from Empire, but Brexiters get very, very angry when this is mentioned.
All countries have delusions. This is one of Britain’s.
It is both, the majority of the Anglosphere ie Canada, the USA, Australia and NZ are of British, Anglo Saxon origin.
However geographically the UK is part of the European continent even if an island
Just as the EU was blamed for most things before Brexit the reverse is now happening .
I can imagine it’s frustrating for Leavers but what goes around comes around !
This blame-Brexit campaign is possibly going to succeed as well
I used to scoff at predictions we would Rejoin. Now I am not so sure at all. Tho the Rejoiners need to act fairly fast - next 5-10 years - because the UK will in time pivot further away from the EU, as it necessarily develops a new economic model that actually works
As shown on TV last night
Yep. I can see the polls and I can see the trend. We are possibly heading for Rejoin if the Rejoiners play it cleverly
That said the Remainers have shown crass ineptitude and boorish arrogance in the past, and if they allow people like you to be heard, gloating, sniping and bitterly exulting, they will badly miss the window of opportunity
We left. We were told leaving the EU would be beneficial to the nation. Shouldn't the Leavers who told us to suck up our defeat in 2016 be cracking on with making Brexit work?
Everybody should.
Brexit's fucked. Lost cause. It's like one of those doddery, blind 19 year old Labradors that people can't bear to have euthanised because they loved its younger self so very much. So they persist with cocktails of drugs and 2 grand vet bills while kidding themselves they see signs of improvement as they clean up yet more liquid shit.
Nope. Brexit is a part of history, a given fact, an axiom. What we do from here is for everyone to decide. Everyone does want to make the country better than it is at the moment, right?
"Brexit was a mistake. An act of self-harm based on a delusional outdated view of Britain and the world. What do you have to say for yourself, Leavers?"
"It happened."
This is about where we are with the debate, I think.
This debate should be over. The Brexit facts are these:
We have left
We have little prospect of joining any time soon, including "best of both worlds" arrangements such as the Single Market
Brexit causes friction, reduces opportunities and influence, and makes us poorer
The debate should be how we deal with this, eg
Brexit reduces our tax base. Should we raise taxes to maintain public services or accept these will be degraded?
Should we join EU initiatives such as Galileo as second-class participants, but these initiatives might be useful to us?
Do we dynamically re-align our regs with EU equivalents to stay in line with changes made by the EU?
Do we agree a more liberal visa regime with the EU to partially allow citizens and enterprises to go about their business?
etc
All of which boils down to “How do we manage the decline?” rather than “How do we take advantage of the opportunity?”.
So long as government keeps looking to answer the first question, the decline is inevitable.
So what's your alternative list of opportunities ?
*Ditch HS2, or bring the current work to some sort of reasonable conclusion - perhaps build a garden city at the end of it that we were planning to build anyway.
What has HS2 got to do with the EU - it's core infrastructure that has been sold inappropriately since the very first announcement.
HS2 (in it's initial enterity) is core infrastructure to allow more trains to / from London and Birmingham while allowing increased capacity for slower local services on the old lines.
And given you started with a completely irrelevant hobbyhorse topic - I doubt you've given the other ideas any thought either.
Regarding the origins and the inexplicable ability of this project to radically increase its costs whilst never getting shitcanned, you may find the following blogpost from back in 2015 (when this was a slightly less expensive white elephant) interesting:
At the time the TENs were outlined in the Treaty of Rome, the original Trans-European Network Member States were not obliged to upgrade or complete existing infrastructure. But this changed when such obligations were included in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty.
In 2011 the European Commission put forward two more proposals which significantly overhauled the operation of TEN-T. The first moved the programme from a voluntary to a compulsory basis (i.e. Member States would be forced to introduce transport network changes specified in an EU Regulation). For this, the UK Government estimates it would cost between £64 and £137 billion. The second proposal was for a Connecting Europe Facility to put the budget for TEN-T on a multi-year footing and this would obviously see a significant increase to the budget.
As for the merits of the project itself, I'd be interested to read a single cost-benefit analysis where it returns more than its current projected cost.
It would appear to be you who needs to give these issues more thought, not me. Like most extreme remainers, you aren't prepared to contemplate the fact that the EU has always worked via national Governments implementing its agenda (and obliging the EU by helpfully absorbing any flak), because it doesn't fit with your narrative about complaining right wing Tories 'blaming the EU for everything', which along with 'The Sun' is your main way of dismissing the loss of the referendum. The truth is that whilst some complained, UK Governments of all colours have swiftly and quietly implemented EU directives and memoranda disguised as their own reforms.
What is now apparent is that the same people see the fact that we've actually left the EU as no impediment to continuing exactly the same practise.
Importantly, though, it should be noted that the benefits captured by the SOBC are pretty limited. Little attempt is made to monetise the two most important benefits, i.e. increased capacity on the existing railway (which you can either use to run more trains or you can capture as increased reliability), and almost no attempt made to quantify land value uplifts via LUTI models (since treasury, and therefore DfT, don't accept them).
Funnily enough, combining the two topics of the EU and High Speed Rail, one of the arguments against HSR comes from a study commissioned by the EU itself back in the early 2000s looking at High Speed rail in France. It found that, contrary to the claims, although there was a very slight increase in GDP which could be attributed to the new rail network, it had exactly the reverse effect that had been touted for it - namely that rather than increasing investment in the regions, it actually sucked investment out of the regions and into Paris.
Which is precisely the argument of those who advocated a new Liverpool-Hull line instead.
Indeed. Cross country, intra region rail improvements/new projects would do far more good in my opinion.
The primary need is for ambitious and growing mass metro networks in Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds/Bradford. Their systems are pathetic compared with European counterparts.
Secondarily, the great northern cluster of Liverpool to Hull needs a high speed connection, and a second one that connects that to the loop that goes from Sheffield to Nottingham/Derby to Birmingham and back to Liverpool and Manchester.
As you note, there is no “regional” business case for HS2. The business case is about overall network capacity which probably ultimately benefits London first.
The big win from HS2 is being able to convert London to MK / Bedford / Cambridge + Peterborough into high capacity regional suburban networks by taking the long distance trains away. But that's a tough sell. Which highlights two things, I reckon:
1 There is a lot more public sector infrastructure investment that makes sense that we ought to be doing. I didn't comment when some of our more commercial friends were taking about getting new work computers yesterday, because my response would have been intemperate. But if you consider the rubbish IT in schools and hospitals, and the TPA rants when they buy decent equipment, it's not hard to see why we're so inefficient in the public sector.
2 Trying to get this stuff supported by voters is hard. We'd rather have stuff that benefits us now than things that benefit our children more. It's a problem, and I don't know how to fix it.
On (2), the problem is compounded today by the fact that the voting population is so much older than it used to be. No political leader has been able to tell hard truths to that generation since I don’t know when, and the current government draws its dwindling support entirely from that group.
Even Keir doesn’t think he can win without persuading at least some of them over, and by persuading I mean avoiding certain realities.
The median age of the average voter is now about 50 of course
Up until now, the answer from ministers has been that it is not responsible for SPS operational matters on where prisoners are placed within the prison estate but the FM has now been able to reveal that "this prisoner" will not be incarcerated in Cornton Vale. #FMQs
Make no mistake. This is a comprehensive defeat and singular humiliation for Sturgeon. All that "criminals won't try to get into female spaces", all that "most marginalised people", all that "be kind and respect a self declared identity" That house of cards just utterly collapsed
Is it though? I haven't followed this very closely, but hasn't someone (apparently) trying to abuse self-ID to get sent to a women's prison just been denied that opportunity?
(Happy to be corrected if I'm wrong, but it seems to show (i) that yes, some people will try to take the piss, but (ii) that won't be permitted)
I am afraid that neither Yvette Cooper nor Ms Sturgeon understand the consequences of the current law, the Haldane judgment or what the GRR Bill will mean. This case exemplifies all the issues which equality lawyers and others have been raising. It is understandable that Cooper does not want to make Labour seem like a party on the side of rapists and Sturgeon wants to avoid bad publicity. But this case has blown all the arguments for the GRR Bill - in its current form - straight out of the water.
As for the arguments that risk assessment by the prison service will solve all the issues, that doesn't work either for some pretty obvious reasons.
I will do a separate post explaining why because there is so much misunderstanding of what the law actually says.
(If you're very lucky - 🤭 - I may even do it as a header.)
My vote would go to . . . wait for it . . . Memphis, Tennessee. (With honorable mention for Memphis, Egypt.)
Underlined (perhaps) by the recent funeral at Graceland, for the late Lisa Marie Presley, daughter of Elvis & Priscilla Presley.
Which among other notables featured . . . wait for it . . . Sarah, Duchess of York (aka "Fergie" at least in USA).
"The Crossroads" of song, story & legend is further south, in Mississippi. But Memphis, Tenn. is a major cultural including musical junction, bridge and highway, from east to west (and visa versa), to north and south (ditto).
PLUS up and down (as in feeling the blues) and number of other directions.
I thought the article was interesting. I haven’t been to Córdoba, and now I’d quite like to go.
If I was restricting my “most influential cities of music” to the 20th century onwards, and popular music only, it would probably be something like (with a clear bias toward the UK):
New York London New Orleans Kingston Los Angeles Detroit Manchester Chicago Memphis Liverpool San Francisco Paris Havana Berlin Rio de Janeiro Atlanta Nashville Birmingham Stockholm Brussels Tokyo Seattle Bristol Sheffield Seoul
ChatGPT getting coverage on R4, live. Entered some essays into an exam but so far getting poor marks…
There's a member going around calling it a mansplaining machine - it churns out confident and plausible seeming rubbish, but makes numerous and fundamental errors.
Just as the EU was blamed for most things before Brexit the reverse is now happening .
I can imagine it’s frustrating for Leavers but what goes around comes around !
This blame-Brexit campaign is possibly going to succeed as well
I used to scoff at predictions we would Rejoin. Now I am not so sure at all. Tho the Rejoiners need to act fairly fast - next 5-10 years - because the UK will in time pivot further away from the EU, as it necessarily develops a new economic model that actually works
As shown on TV last night
Yep. I can see the polls and I can see the trend. We are possibly heading for Rejoin if the Rejoiners play it cleverly
That said the Remainers have shown crass ineptitude and boorish arrogance in the past, and if they allow people like you to be heard, gloating, sniping and bitterly exulting, they will badly miss the window of opportunity
We left. We were told leaving the EU would be beneficial to the nation. Shouldn't the Leavers who told us to suck up our defeat in 2016 be cracking on with making Brexit work?
Everybody should.
Brexit's fucked. Lost cause. It's like one of those doddery, blind 19 year old Labradors that people can't bear to have euthanised because they loved its younger self so very much. So they persist with cocktails of drugs and 2 grand vet bills while kidding themselves they see signs of improvement as they clean up yet more liquid shit.
Nope. Brexit is a part of history, a given fact, an axiom. What we do from here is for everyone to decide. Everyone does want to make the country better than it is at the moment, right?
"Brexit was a mistake. An act of self-harm based on a delusional outdated view of Britain and the world. What do you have to say for yourself, Leavers?"
"It happened."
This is about where we are with the debate, I think.
This debate should be over. The Brexit facts are these:
We have left
We have little prospect of joining any time soon, including "best of both worlds" arrangements such as the Single Market
Brexit causes friction, reduces opportunities and influence, and makes us poorer
The debate should be how we deal with this, eg
Brexit reduces our tax base. Should we raise taxes to maintain public services or accept these will be degraded?
Should we join EU initiatives such as Galileo as second-class participants, but these initiatives might be useful to us?
Do we dynamically re-align our regs with EU equivalents to stay in line with changes made by the EU?
Do we agree a more liberal visa regime with the EU to partially allow citizens and enterprises to go about their business?
etc
All of which boils down to “How do we manage the decline?” rather than “How do we take advantage of the opportunity?”.
So long as government keeps looking to answer the first question, the decline is inevitable.
So what's your alternative list of opportunities ?
*Ditch HS2, or bring the current work to some sort of reasonable conclusion - perhaps build a garden city at the end of it that we were planning to build anyway.
What has HS2 got to do with the EU - it's core infrastructure that has been sold inappropriately since the very first announcement.
HS2 (in it's initial enterity) is core infrastructure to allow more trains to / from London and Birmingham while allowing increased capacity for slower local services on the old lines.
And given you started with a completely irrelevant hobbyhorse topic - I doubt you've given the other ideas any thought either.
Regarding the origins and the inexplicable ability of this project to radically increase its costs whilst never getting shitcanned, you may find the following blogpost from back in 2015 (when this was a slightly less expensive white elephant) interesting:
At the time the TENs were outlined in the Treaty of Rome, the original Trans-European Network Member States were not obliged to upgrade or complete existing infrastructure. But this changed when such obligations were included in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty.
In 2011 the European Commission put forward two more proposals which significantly overhauled the operation of TEN-T. The first moved the programme from a voluntary to a compulsory basis (i.e. Member States would be forced to introduce transport network changes specified in an EU Regulation). For this, the UK Government estimates it would cost between £64 and £137 billion. The second proposal was for a Connecting Europe Facility to put the budget for TEN-T on a multi-year footing and this would obviously see a significant increase to the budget.
As for the merits of the project itself, I'd be interested to read a single cost-benefit analysis where it returns more than its current projected cost.
It would appear to be you who needs to give these issues more thought, not me. Like most extreme remainers, you aren't prepared to contemplate the fact that the EU has always worked via national Governments implementing its agenda (and obliging the EU by helpfully absorbing any flak), because it doesn't fit with your narrative about complaining right wing Tories 'blaming the EU for everything', which along with 'The Sun' is your main way of dismissing the loss of the referendum. The truth is that whilst some complained, UK Governments of all colours have swiftly and quietly implemented EU directives and memoranda disguised as their own reforms.
What is now apparent is that the same people see the fact that we've actually left the EU as no impediment to continuing exactly the same practise.
Importantly, though, it should be noted that the benefits captured by the SOBC are pretty limited. Little attempt is made to monetise the two most important benefits, i.e. increased capacity on the existing railway (which you can either use to run more trains or you can capture as increased reliability), and almost no attempt made to quantify land value uplifts via LUTI models (since treasury, and therefore DfT, don't accept them).
Funnily enough, combining the two topics of the EU and High Speed Rail, one of the arguments against HSR comes from a study commissioned by the EU itself back in the early 2000s looking at High Speed rail in France. It found that, contrary to the claims, although there was a very slight increase in GDP which could be attributed to the new rail network, it had exactly the reverse effect that had been touted for it - namely that rather than increasing investment in the regions, it actually sucked investment out of the regions and into Paris.
Which is precisely the argument of those who advocated a new Liverpool-Hull line instead.
Indeed. Cross country, intra region rail improvements/new projects would do far more good in my opinion.
The primary need is for ambitious and growing mass metro networks in Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds/Bradford. Their systems are pathetic compared with European counterparts.
Secondarily, the great northern cluster of Liverpool to Hull needs a high speed connection, and a second one that connects that to the loop that goes from Sheffield to Nottingham/Derby to Birmingham and back to Liverpool and Manchester.
As you note, there is no “regional” business case for HS2. The business case is about overall network capacity which probably ultimately benefits London first.
The big win from HS2 is being able to convert London to MK / Bedford / Cambridge + Peterborough into high capacity regional suburban networks by taking the long distance trains away. But that's a tough sell. Which highlights two things, I reckon:
1 There is a lot more public sector infrastructure investment that makes sense that we ought to be doing. I didn't comment when some of our more commercial friends were taking about getting new work computers yesterday, because my response would have been intemperate. But if you consider the rubbish IT in schools and hospitals, and the TPA rants when they buy decent equipment, it's not hard to see why we're so inefficient in the public sector.
2 Trying to get this stuff supported by voters is hard. We'd rather have stuff that benefits us now than things that benefit our children more. It's a problem, and I don't know how to fix it.
On (2), the problem is compounded today by the fact that the voting population is so much older than it used to be. No political leader has been able to tell hard truths to that generation since I don’t know when, and the current government draws its dwindling support entirely from that group.
Even Keir doesn’t think he can win without persuading at least some of them over, and by persuading I mean avoiding certain realities.
The median age of the average voter is now about 50 of course
The median potential voter or the median voting voter?
I don’t think Britain will Brejoin, although I concede it is likelier than I ever thought it might be.
As @Driver notes, nobody has really made the case for why the EU is better (apart from trade). There needs to be a hearts, not just minds, case.
No one really though the EU was a fantastic fault -free organisation. And the bits I really liked, such as FoM where the bits everyone else hated.
The EU's single USP was membership is less sub optimal, and by a country mile, than non membership.
Not that I advocate rejoin. That ship sailed when Boris Johnson " done Brexit".
And that, of course, isn't a USP. If one side is saying "this is bad but that's worse" and the other side is saying "this is good", there's only one winner.
They should have been saying we were taking the good things about the EU for granted. An upbeat campaign about all the things we'd lose. Unfortunately they got bogged down in trying to counter Johnson's lies which proved a very successful distraction to people who had been fed a load of rubbish by some malign newspaper proprietors.
They should have run an updated Dunlop campaign of 45 years ago. The government's campaign was complacent. They didn't take the trouble to get the basics right
Difficulty with that was that Team Leave persuaded themselves, and enough of the country, that those things would continue to happen without a political superstructure to manage them.
I don't know whose theory it is, but I read it somewhere and it seems convincing.
Some people see cooperation as like ships sailing across an ocean. You don't need much infrastructure, just individual will. Others see it like travelling on land- you need a road to be maintained, but then it's easy.
That seems to explain a lot, including the idea that Britain would really be emotionally happier transplanted to somewhere in the Pacific.
Your last point is kind of revealing. Britain doesn’t see itself as a European power. I’m not sure about Pacific, maybe Atlantic power is more accurate.
Europe is - to the great majority - just a place to go on holiday.
Of course this mental model is itself a hangover from Empire, but Brexiters get very, very angry when this is mentioned.
All countries have delusions. This is one of Britain’s.
I don’t think Britain will Brejoin, although I concede it is likelier than I ever thought it might be.
As @Driver notes, nobody has really made the case for why the EU is better (apart from trade). There needs to be a hearts, not just minds, case.
No one really though the EU was a fantastic fault -free organisation. And the bits I really liked, such as FoM where the bits everyone else hated.
The EU's single USP was membership is less sub optimal, and by a country mile, than non membership.
Not that I advocate rejoin. That ship sailed when Boris Johnson " done Brexit".
And that, of course, isn't a USP. If one side is saying "this is bad but that's worse" and the other side is saying "this is good", there's only one winner.
They should have been saying we were taking the good things about the EU for granted. An upbeat campaign about all the things we'd lose. Unfortunately they got bogged down in trying to counter Johnson's lies which proved a very successful distraction to people who had been fed a load of rubbish by some malign newspaper proprietors.
They should have run an updated Dunlop campaign of 45 years ago. The government's campaign was complacent. They didn't take the trouble to get the basics right
Difficulty with that was that Team Leave persuaded themselves, and enough of the country, that those things would continue to happen without a political superstructure to manage them.
I don't know whose theory it is, but I read it somewhere and it seems convincing.
Some people see cooperation as like ships sailing across an ocean. You don't need much infrastructure, just individual will. Others see it like travelling on land- you need a road to be maintained, but then it's easy.
That seems to explain a lot, including the idea that Britain would really be emotionally happier transplanted to somewhere in the Pacific.
Your last point is kind of revealing. Britain doesn’t see itself as a European power. I’m not sure about Pacific, maybe Atlantic power is more accurate.
Europe is - to the great majority - just a place to go on holiday.
Of course this mental model is itself a hangover from Empire, but Brexiters get very, very angry when this is mentioned.
All countries have delusions. This is one of Britain’s.
Britain is not a country.
Quite right. Allowing the Brexiters to use the term means they don't need to worry about the Schroedinger's statelet that is NI - is it in Europe or out of it?
I’m a Remainer.
The knicker-twisting response from you and Stuart is quite revealing, really.
Just as the EU was blamed for most things before Brexit the reverse is now happening .
I can imagine it’s frustrating for Leavers but what goes around comes around !
This blame-Brexit campaign is possibly going to succeed as well
I used to scoff at predictions we would Rejoin. Now I am not so sure at all. Tho the Rejoiners need to act fairly fast - next 5-10 years - because the UK will in time pivot further away from the EU, as it necessarily develops a new economic model that actually works
As shown on TV last night
Yep. I can see the polls and I can see the trend. We are possibly heading for Rejoin if the Rejoiners play it cleverly
That said the Remainers have shown crass ineptitude and boorish arrogance in the past, and if they allow people like you to be heard, gloating, sniping and bitterly exulting, they will badly miss the window of opportunity
We left. We were told leaving the EU would be beneficial to the nation. Shouldn't the Leavers who told us to suck up our defeat in 2016 be cracking on with making Brexit work?
Everybody should.
Brexit's fucked. Lost cause. It's like one of those doddery, blind 19 year old Labradors that people can't bear to have euthanised because they loved its younger self so very much. So they persist with cocktails of drugs and 2 grand vet bills while kidding themselves they see signs of improvement as they clean up yet more liquid shit.
Nope. Brexit is a part of history, a given fact, an axiom. What we do from here is for everyone to decide. Everyone does want to make the country better than it is at the moment, right?
"Brexit was a mistake. An act of self-harm based on a delusional outdated view of Britain and the world. What do you have to say for yourself, Leavers?"
"It happened."
This is about where we are with the debate, I think.
This debate should be over. The Brexit facts are these:
We have left
We have little prospect of joining any time soon, including "best of both worlds" arrangements such as the Single Market
Brexit causes friction, reduces opportunities and influence, and makes us poorer
The debate should be how we deal with this, eg
Brexit reduces our tax base. Should we raise taxes to maintain public services or accept these will be degraded?
Should we join EU initiatives such as Galileo as second-class participants, but these initiatives might be useful to us?
Do we dynamically re-align our regs with EU equivalents to stay in line with changes made by the EU?
Do we agree a more liberal visa regime with the EU to partially allow citizens and enterprises to go about their business?
etc
All of which boils down to “How do we manage the decline?” rather than “How do we take advantage of the opportunity?”.
So long as government keeps looking to answer the first question, the decline is inevitable.
So what's your alternative list of opportunities ?
*Ditch HS2, or bring the current work to some sort of reasonable conclusion - perhaps build a garden city at the end of it that we were planning to build anyway.
What has HS2 got to do with the EU - it's core infrastructure that has been sold inappropriately since the very first announcement.
HS2 (in it's initial enterity) is core infrastructure to allow more trains to / from London and Birmingham while allowing increased capacity for slower local services on the old lines.
And given you started with a completely irrelevant hobbyhorse topic - I doubt you've given the other ideas any thought either.
Regarding the origins and the inexplicable ability of this project to radically increase its costs whilst never getting shitcanned, you may find the following blogpost from back in 2015 (when this was a slightly less expensive white elephant) interesting:
At the time the TENs were outlined in the Treaty of Rome, the original Trans-European Network Member States were not obliged to upgrade or complete existing infrastructure. But this changed when such obligations were included in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty.
In 2011 the European Commission put forward two more proposals which significantly overhauled the operation of TEN-T. The first moved the programme from a voluntary to a compulsory basis (i.e. Member States would be forced to introduce transport network changes specified in an EU Regulation). For this, the UK Government estimates it would cost between £64 and £137 billion. The second proposal was for a Connecting Europe Facility to put the budget for TEN-T on a multi-year footing and this would obviously see a significant increase to the budget.
As for the merits of the project itself, I'd be interested to read a single cost-benefit analysis where it returns more than its current projected cost.
It would appear to be you who needs to give these issues more thought, not me. Like most extreme remainers, you aren't prepared to contemplate the fact that the EU has always worked via national Governments implementing its agenda (and obliging the EU by helpfully absorbing any flak), because it doesn't fit with your narrative about complaining right wing Tories 'blaming the EU for everything', which along with 'The Sun' is your main way of dismissing the loss of the referendum. The truth is that whilst some complained, UK Governments of all colours have swiftly and quietly implemented EU directives and memoranda disguised as their own reforms.
What is now apparent is that the same people see the fact that we've actually left the EU as no impediment to continuing exactly the same practise.
Importantly, though, it should be noted that the benefits captured by the SOBC are pretty limited. Little attempt is made to monetise the two most important benefits, i.e. increased capacity on the existing railway (which you can either use to run more trains or you can capture as increased reliability), and almost no attempt made to quantify land value uplifts via LUTI models (since treasury, and therefore DfT, don't accept them).
Funnily enough, combining the two topics of the EU and High Speed Rail, one of the arguments against HSR comes from a study commissioned by the EU itself back in the early 2000s looking at High Speed rail in France. It found that, contrary to the claims, although there was a very slight increase in GDP which could be attributed to the new rail network, it had exactly the reverse effect that had been touted for it - namely that rather than increasing investment in the regions, it actually sucked investment out of the regions and into Paris.
Which is precisely the argument of those who advocated a new Liverpool-Hull line instead.
Indeed. Cross country, intra region rail improvements/new projects would do far more good in my opinion.
The primary need is for ambitious and growing mass metro networks in Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds/Bradford. Their systems are pathetic compared with European counterparts.
Secondarily, the great northern cluster of Liverpool to Hull needs a high speed connection, and a second one that connects that to the loop that goes from Sheffield to Nottingham/Derby to Birmingham and back to Liverpool and Manchester.
As you note, there is no “regional” business case for HS2. The business case is about overall network capacity which probably ultimately benefits London first.
The big win from HS2 is being able to convert London to MK / Bedford / Cambridge + Peterborough into high capacity regional suburban networks by taking the long distance trains away. But that's a tough sell. Which highlights two things, I reckon:
1 There is a lot more public sector infrastructure investment that makes sense that we ought to be doing. I didn't comment when some of our more commercial friends were taking about getting new work computers yesterday, because my response would have been intemperate. But if you consider the rubbish IT in schools and hospitals, and the TPA rants when they buy decent equipment, it's not hard to see why we're so inefficient in the public sector.
2 Trying to get this stuff supported by voters is hard. We'd rather have stuff that benefits us now than things that benefit our children more. It's a problem, and I don't know how to fix it.
On (2), the problem is compounded today by the fact that the voting population is so much older than it used to be. No political leader has been able to tell hard truths to that generation since I don’t know when, and the current government draws its dwindling support entirely from that group.
Even Keir doesn’t think he can win without persuading at least some of them over, and by persuading I mean avoiding certain realities.
The median age of the average voter is now about 50 of course
And that's something of a problem. There is a massive temptation for such voters to think "I won't see the long term benefit of projects that will take 30 years to begin to pay off, give me the money now." And even if individual voters aren't selfish, there's a temptation for political candidates to pander to that thinking, in case they are.
I am really concerned that "As long as it lasts me out, that's fine" is becoming a national motto. And if that's the case, we really are heading for the national equivalent of Reluctant Conscripted Stepmom on Pornhub territory.
Up until now, the answer from ministers has been that it is not responsible for SPS operational matters on where prisoners are placed within the prison estate but the FM has now been able to reveal that "this prisoner" will not be incarcerated in Cornton Vale. #FMQs
Make no mistake. This is a comprehensive defeat and singular humiliation for Sturgeon. All that "criminals won't try to get into female spaces", all that "most marginalised people", all that "be kind and respect a self declared identity" That house of cards just utterly collapsed
Is it though? I haven't followed this very closely, but hasn't someone (apparently) trying to abuse self-ID to get sent to a women's prison just been denied that opportunity?
(Happy to be corrected if I'm wrong, but it seems to show (i) that yes, some people will try to take the piss, but (ii) that won't be permitted)
I am afraid that neither Yvette Cooper nor Ms Sturgeon understand the consequences of the current law, the Haldane judgment or what the GRR Bill will mean. This case exemplifies all the issues which equality lawyers and others have been raising. It is understandable that Cooper does not want to make Labour seem like a party on the side of rapists and Sturgeon wants to avoid bad publicity. But this case has blown all the arguments for the GRR Bill - in its current form - straight out of the water.
As for the arguments that risk assessment by the prison service will solve all the issues, that doesn't work either for some pretty obvious reasons.
I will do a separate post explaining why because there is so much misunderstanding of what the law actually says.
(If you're very lucky - 🤭 - I may even do it as a header.)
Would I be right in thinking that, the moment the pretendy rapist woman in this case gets his hands on some kind of official gender recognition document, he can simply use human rights legislation to force the Scottish authorities to put him in a women's jail? You'll know the ins and outs both of what existing gender recognition legislation, and the proposed Scottish reforms, imply than I do: if the law insists that this man is now a woman then, presumably, he cannot continue to be held in a men's prison?
Is this all going to end up with special jails having to be constructed for pretendy women, and in that case how are the genuine trans people going to be sorted out from the piss-takers?
Is this all going to end up with special jails having to be constructed for pretendy women, and in that case how are the genuine trans people going to be sorted out from the piss-takers?
This is my problem with a lot of the discourse on the subject (not specifically your comment) - plenty of people just think it shouldn't go ahead because a very small number of particularly maladjusted people might misuse it.
It's absolutely right to be concerned about these issues and how to deal with and safeguard against them, but for many people it seems the fact there's even any potential for any misuse at all is more than enough reason for it not to go ahead.
Problem is if you applied that logic to all sorts of other things then it would quickly result in total paralysis and/or all sorts of crazy unreasonable situations.
Is this all going to end up with special jails having to be constructed for pretendy women, and in that case how are the genuine trans people going to be sorted out from the piss-takers?
This is my problem with a lot of the discourse on the subject (not specifically your comment) - plenty of people just think it shouldn't go ahead because a very small number of particularly maladjusted people might misuse it.
It's absolutely right to be concerned about these issues and how to deal with and safeguard against them, but for many people it seems the fact there's even any potential for any misuse at all is more than enough reason for it not to go ahead.
Problem is if you applied that logic to all sorts of other things then it would quickly result in total paralysis and/or all sorts of crazy unreasonable situations.
I get that there are some tricky areas around this stuff, but that rapists shouldn't be in women's prisons seems quite an easy conclusion to come to.
Is this all going to end up with special jails having to be constructed for pretendy women, and in that case how are the genuine trans people going to be sorted out from the piss-takers?
This is my problem with a lot of the discourse on the subject (not specifically your comment) - plenty of people just think it shouldn't go ahead because a very small number of particularly maladjusted people might misuse it.
It's absolutely right to be concerned about these issues and how to deal with and safeguard against them, but for many people it seems the fact there's even any potential for any misuse at all is more than enough reason for it not to go ahead.
Problem is if you applied that logic to all sorts of other things then it would quickly result in total paralysis and/or all sorts of crazy unreasonable situations.
I get that there are some tricky areas around this stuff, but that rapists shouldn't be in women's prisons seems quite an easy conclusion to come to.
You could say the same about rapists being in men's prisons too.
Up until now, the answer from ministers has been that it is not responsible for SPS operational matters on where prisoners are placed within the prison estate but the FM has now been able to reveal that "this prisoner" will not be incarcerated in Cornton Vale. #FMQs
Make no mistake. This is a comprehensive defeat and singular humiliation for Sturgeon. All that "criminals won't try to get into female spaces", all that "most marginalised people", all that "be kind and respect a self declared identity" That house of cards just utterly collapsed
Is it though? I haven't followed this very closely, but hasn't someone (apparently) trying to abuse self-ID to get sent to a women's prison just been denied that opportunity?
(Happy to be corrected if I'm wrong, but it seems to show (i) that yes, some people will try to take the piss, but (ii) that won't be permitted)
I am afraid that neither Yvette Cooper nor Ms Sturgeon understand the consequences of the current law, the Haldane judgment or what the GRR Bill will mean. This case exemplifies all the issues which equality lawyers and others have been raising. It is understandable that Cooper does not want to make Labour seem like a party on the side of rapists and Sturgeon wants to avoid bad publicity. But this case has blown all the arguments for the GRR Bill - in its current form - straight out of the water.
As for the arguments that risk assessment by the prison service will solve all the issues, that doesn't work either for some pretty obvious reasons.
I will do a separate post explaining why because there is so much misunderstanding of what the law actually says.
(If you're very lucky - 🤭 - I may even do it as a header.)
Would I be right in thinking that, the moment the pretendy rapist woman in this case gets his hands on some kind of official gender recognition document, he can simply use human rights legislation to force the Scottish authorities to put him in a women's jail? You'll know the ins and outs both of what existing gender recognition legislation, and the proposed Scottish reforms, imply than I do: if the law insists that this man is now a woman then, presumably, he cannot continue to be held in a men's prison?
Is this all going to end up with special jails having to be constructed for pretendy women, and in that case how are the genuine trans people going to be sorted out from the piss-takers?
Previously I believe the answer was that someone with a GRC would by default be housed in the women’s estate, but that a risk assessment would be applied that would see them sent elsewhere if they were deemed a risk to women - notably anyone convicted them or previously of sexual offenses would fall under this category IIRC. (NB, there is a problem with this system around disclosure of trans status where I do agree with Cyclefree that is seems there is a gap that could be abused by individuals with the goal of gaining access to the womens estate, due to the legal restrictions placed how knowledge of someone’s trans status could be communicated within the system without their consent.)
Is this all going to end up with special jails having to be constructed for pretendy women, and in that case how are the genuine trans people going to be sorted out from the piss-takers?
This is my problem with a lot of the discourse on the subject (not specifically your comment) - plenty of people just think it shouldn't go ahead because a very small number of particularly maladjusted people might misuse it.
It's absolutely right to be concerned about these issues and how to deal with and safeguard against them, but for many people it seems the fact there's even any potential for any misuse at all is more than enough reason for it not to go ahead.
Problem is if you applied that logic to all sorts of other things then it would quickly result in total paralysis and/or all sorts of crazy unreasonable situations.
I get that there are some tricky areas around this stuff, but that rapists shouldn't be in women's prisons seems quite an easy conclusion to come to.
No argument from me there. But that's a reason for improving the safeguarding (which was the clearest failing of the debate and votes in the Scottish parliament), not a reason to bin the whole thing for people who want to legitimately make use of it.
Up until now, the answer from ministers has been that it is not responsible for SPS operational matters on where prisoners are placed within the prison estate but the FM has now been able to reveal that "this prisoner" will not be incarcerated in Cornton Vale. #FMQs
Make no mistake. This is a comprehensive defeat and singular humiliation for Sturgeon. All that "criminals won't try to get into female spaces", all that "most marginalised people", all that "be kind and respect a self declared identity" That house of cards just utterly collapsed
Is it though? I haven't followed this very closely, but hasn't someone (apparently) trying to abuse self-ID to get sent to a women's prison just been denied that opportunity?
(Happy to be corrected if I'm wrong, but it seems to show (i) that yes, some people will try to take the piss, but (ii) that won't be permitted)
I am afraid that neither Yvette Cooper nor Ms Sturgeon understand the consequences of the current law, the Haldane judgment or what the GRR Bill will mean. This case exemplifies all the issues which equality lawyers and others have been raising. It is understandable that Cooper does not want to make Labour seem like a party on the side of rapists and Sturgeon wants to avoid bad publicity. But this case has blown all the arguments for the GRR Bill - in its current form - straight out of the water.
As for the arguments that risk assessment by the prison service will solve all the issues, that doesn't work either for some pretty obvious reasons.
I will do a separate post explaining why because there is so much misunderstanding of what the law actually says.
(If you're very lucky - 🤭 - I may even do it as a header.)
Would I be right in thinking that, the moment the pretendy rapist woman in this case gets his hands on some kind of official gender recognition document, he can simply use human rights legislation to force the Scottish authorities to put him in a women's jail? You'll know the ins and outs both of what existing gender recognition legislation, and the proposed Scottish reforms, imply than I do: if the law insists that this man is now a woman then, presumably, he cannot continue to be held in a men's prison?
Is this all going to end up with special jails having to be constructed for pretendy women, and in that case how are the genuine trans people going to be sorted out from the piss-takers?
Previously I believe the answer was that someone with a GRC would by default be housed in the women’s estate, but that a risk assessment would be applied that would see them sent elsewhere if they were deemed a risk to women - notably anyone convicted them or previously of sexual offenses would fall under this category IIRC.
Which is worth reading, although here's the excerpt explaining the relevant conclusion:
In 2017, our analysis of the BES data suggests that turnout among over 55s was 83.35%, compared to 58.15% of those under 55. Likewise, turnout was 84.34% vs. 63.06% for over and under 65s respectively. Combining these BES estimates of turnout with LFS estimates of nationality and ONS population estimates, we arrive at the following figures: the over 55s constituted 48.35% of the voting public in 2017, and the over 65s, 30.27%. If we assume that both turnout and the proportion of those disenfranchised due to their nationality remain constant, over 55s will constitute over half of the voting public by 2020 as a result of projected demographic change.
The grey vote is so huge, and contains so many outright homeowners, expectant heirs to property windfalls, and those already in receipt of state pensions or expecting to be so in the near future, that nobody will dare piss them off when it comes to their core interests: the triple lock, keeping house prices buoyant (if necessary through market rigging mechanisms, such as help to buy and refusing to challenge Nimbyism,) and prioritising the taxation of incomes over that of assets and estates.
This, in a nutshell, is why Britain is terminally screwed. Robbed of the ability to tax the old more, all the Government can do to pay for their ever-growing numbers and demands is to tax everyone else completely into the ground. The irony of all this is that 19th century theorists once postulated that democracy could never last for very long, because the great mass of the poor would soon learn to vote to help themselves to all the wealth of the rich, precipitating social collapse. They never anticipated that a great mass of wealthy codgers would actually destroy the state by helping themselves to the wages of their children and grandchildren. But here we are.
Under the Levido plan, Sunak will focus on his five promises during 2023, most of which should be achievable because of the current trajectory of the economy. Stopping small boats could prove to be the most difficult to attain.
Then, according to Tory MPs briefed by chancellor Jeremy Hunt, the spring Budget of 2024 will be the pivotal moment in this parliament, when growth returns and tax cuts become possible.
The template for the strategy is John Major’s unlikely Tory election victory in 1992, when he persuaded voters that the UK was “on the right track”, even though the party appeared exhausted after 13 years in power.
Is this all going to end up with special jails having to be constructed for pretendy women, and in that case how are the genuine trans people going to be sorted out from the piss-takers?
This is my problem with a lot of the discourse on the subject (not specifically your comment) - plenty of people just think it shouldn't go ahead because a very small number of particularly maladjusted people might misuse it.
It's absolutely right to be concerned about these issues and how to deal with and safeguard against them, but for many people it seems the fact there's even any potential for any misuse at all is more than enough reason for it not to go ahead.
Problem is if you applied that logic to all sorts of other things then it would quickly result in total paralysis and/or all sorts of crazy unreasonable situations.
I get that there are some tricky areas around this stuff, but that rapists shouldn't be in women's prisons seems quite an easy conclusion to come to.
You could say the same about rapists being in men's prisons too.
Where the offence was against another man? Perhaps solitary confinement would be appropriate. Where it was against a woman? General population.
But let me ask you. Do you think it's appropriate to stick a rapist - one that has not been castrated - in a women's prison?
Is this all going to end up with special jails having to be constructed for pretendy women, and in that case how are the genuine trans people going to be sorted out from the piss-takers?
This is my problem with a lot of the discourse on the subject (not specifically your comment) - plenty of people just think it shouldn't go ahead because a very small number of particularly maladjusted people might misuse it.
It's absolutely right to be concerned about these issues and how to deal with and safeguard against them, but for many people it seems the fact there's even any potential for any misuse at all is more than enough reason for it not to go ahead.
Problem is if you applied that logic to all sorts of other things then it would quickly result in total paralysis and/or all sorts of crazy unreasonable situations.
I get that there are some tricky areas around this stuff, but that rapists shouldn't be in women's prisons seems quite an easy conclusion to come to.
No argument from me there. But that's a reason for improving the safeguarding (which was the clearest failing of the debate and votes in the Scottish parliament), not a reason to bin the whole thing for people who want to legitimately make use of it.
Didn't the SNP block an amendment about this sort of thing?
Which is worth reading, although here's the excerpt explaining the relevant conclusion:
In 2017, our analysis of the BES data suggests that turnout among over 55s was 83.35%, compared to 58.15% of those under 55. Likewise, turnout was 84.34% vs. 63.06% for over and under 65s respectively. Combining these BES estimates of turnout with LFS estimates of nationality and ONS population estimates, we arrive at the following figures: the over 55s constituted 48.35% of the voting public in 2017, and the over 65s, 30.27%. If we assume that both turnout and the proportion of those disenfranchised due to their nationality remain constant, over 55s will constitute over half of the voting public by 2020 as a result of projected demographic change.
The grey vote is so huge, and contains so many outright homeowners, expectant heirs to property windfalls, and those already in receipt of state pensions or expecting to be so in the near future, that nobody will dare piss them off when it comes to their core interests: the triple lock, keeping house prices buoyant (if necessary through market rigging mechanisms, such as help to buy and refusing to challenge Nimbyism,) and prioritising the taxation of incomes over that of assets and estates.
This, in a nutshell, is why Britain is terminally screwed. Robbed of the ability to tax the old more, all the Government can do to pay for their ever-growing numbers and demands is to tax everyone else completely into the ground. The irony of all this is that 19th century theorists once postulated that democracy could never last for very long, because the great mass of the poor would soon learn to vote to help themselves to all the wealth of the rich, precipitating social collapse. They never anticipated that a great mass of wealthy codgers would actually destroy the state by helping themselves to the wages of their children and grandchildren. But here we are.
Their children and grandchildren will inherit more than any generation before them however
Is this all going to end up with special jails having to be constructed for pretendy women, and in that case how are the genuine trans people going to be sorted out from the piss-takers?
This is my problem with a lot of the discourse on the subject (not specifically your comment) - plenty of people just think it shouldn't go ahead because a very small number of particularly maladjusted people might misuse it.
It's absolutely right to be concerned about these issues and how to deal with and safeguard against them, but for many people it seems the fact there's even any potential for any misuse at all is more than enough reason for it not to go ahead.
Problem is if you applied that logic to all sorts of other things then it would quickly result in total paralysis and/or all sorts of crazy unreasonable situations.
I get that there are some tricky areas around this stuff, but that rapists shouldn't be in women's prisons seems quite an easy conclusion to come to.
You could say the same about rapists being in men's prisons too.
Where the offence was against another man? Perhaps solitary confinement would be appropriate. Where it was against a woman? General population.
But let me ask you. Do you think it's appropriate to stick a rapist - one that has not been castrated - in a women's prison?
To answer your last question, no I don't think it's appropriate. Not the general population of a women's prison anyway.
Up until now, the answer from ministers has been that it is not responsible for SPS operational matters on where prisoners are placed within the prison estate but the FM has now been able to reveal that "this prisoner" will not be incarcerated in Cornton Vale. #FMQs
Make no mistake. This is a comprehensive defeat and singular humiliation for Sturgeon. All that "criminals won't try to get into female spaces", all that "most marginalised people", all that "be kind and respect a self declared identity" That house of cards just utterly collapsed
Is it though? I haven't followed this very closely, but hasn't someone (apparently) trying to abuse self-ID to get sent to a women's prison just been denied that opportunity?
(Happy to be corrected if I'm wrong, but it seems to show (i) that yes, some people will try to take the piss, but (ii) that won't be permitted)
I am afraid that neither Yvette Cooper nor Ms Sturgeon understand the consequences of the current law, the Haldane judgment or what the GRR Bill will mean. This case exemplifies all the issues which equality lawyers and others have been raising. It is understandable that Cooper does not want to make Labour seem like a party on the side of rapists and Sturgeon wants to avoid bad publicity. But this case has blown all the arguments for the GRR Bill - in its current form - straight out of the water.
As for the arguments that risk assessment by the prison service will solve all the issues, that doesn't work either for some pretty obvious reasons.
I will do a separate post explaining why because there is so much misunderstanding of what the law actually says.
(If you're very lucky - 🤭 - I may even do it as a header.)
Would I be right in thinking that, the moment the pretendy rapist woman in this case gets his hands on some kind of official gender recognition document, he can simply use human rights legislation to force the Scottish authorities to put him in a women's jail? You'll know the ins and outs both of what existing gender recognition legislation, and the proposed Scottish reforms, imply than I do: if the law insists that this man is now a woman then, presumably, he cannot continue to be held in a men's prison?
Is this all going to end up with special jails having to be constructed for pretendy women, and in that case how are the genuine trans people going to be sorted out from the piss-takers?
Previously I believe the answer was that someone with a GRC would by default be housed in the women’s estate, but that a risk assessment would be applied that would see them sent elsewhere if they were deemed a risk to women - notably anyone convicted them or previously of sexual offenses would fall under this category IIRC. (NB, there is a problem with this system around disclosure of trans status where I do agree with Cyclefree that is seems there is a gap that could be abused by individuals with the goal of gaining access to the womens estate, due to the legal restrictions placed how knowledge of someone’s trans status could be communicated within the system without their consent.)
Which is worth reading, although here's the excerpt explaining the relevant conclusion:
In 2017, our analysis of the BES data suggests that turnout among over 55s was 83.35%, compared to 58.15% of those under 55. Likewise, turnout was 84.34% vs. 63.06% for over and under 65s respectively. Combining these BES estimates of turnout with LFS estimates of nationality and ONS population estimates, we arrive at the following figures: the over 55s constituted 48.35% of the voting public in 2017, and the over 65s, 30.27%. If we assume that both turnout and the proportion of those disenfranchised due to their nationality remain constant, over 55s will constitute over half of the voting public by 2020 as a result of projected demographic change.
The grey vote is so huge, and contains so many outright homeowners, expectant heirs to property windfalls, and those already in receipt of state pensions or expecting to be so in the near future, that nobody will dare piss them off when it comes to their core interests: the triple lock, keeping house prices buoyant (if necessary through market rigging mechanisms, such as help to buy and refusing to challenge Nimbyism,) and prioritising the taxation of incomes over that of assets and estates.
This, in a nutshell, is why Britain is terminally screwed. Robbed of the ability to tax the old more, all the Government can do to pay for their ever-growing numbers and demands is to tax everyone else completely into the ground. The irony of all this is that 19th century theorists once postulated that democracy could never last for very long, because the great mass of the poor would soon learn to vote to help themselves to all the wealth of the rich, precipitating social collapse. They never anticipated that a great mass of wealthy codgers would actually destroy the state by helping themselves to the wages of their children and grandchildren. But here we are.
Their children and grandchildren will inherit more than any generation before them however
Will the median inheritor be older or younger than the median voter?
Up until now, the answer from ministers has been that it is not responsible for SPS operational matters on where prisoners are placed within the prison estate but the FM has now been able to reveal that "this prisoner" will not be incarcerated in Cornton Vale. #FMQs
Make no mistake. This is a comprehensive defeat and singular humiliation for Sturgeon. All that "criminals won't try to get into female spaces", all that "most marginalised people", all that "be kind and respect a self declared identity" That house of cards just utterly collapsed
Is it though? I haven't followed this very closely, but hasn't someone (apparently) trying to abuse self-ID to get sent to a women's prison just been denied that opportunity?
(Happy to be corrected if I'm wrong, but it seems to show (i) that yes, some people will try to take the piss, but (ii) that won't be permitted)
I am afraid that neither Yvette Cooper nor Ms Sturgeon understand the consequences of the current law, the Haldane judgment or what the GRR Bill will mean. This case exemplifies all the issues which equality lawyers and others have been raising. It is understandable that Cooper does not want to make Labour seem like a party on the side of rapists and Sturgeon wants to avoid bad publicity. But this case has blown all the arguments for the GRR Bill - in its current form - straight out of the water.
As for the arguments that risk assessment by the prison service will solve all the issues, that doesn't work either for some pretty obvious reasons.
I will do a separate post explaining why because there is so much misunderstanding of what the law actually says.
(If you're very lucky - 🤭 - I may even do it as a header.)
Would I be right in thinking that, the moment the pretendy rapist woman in this case gets his hands on some kind of official gender recognition document, he can simply use human rights legislation to force the Scottish authorities to put him in a women's jail? You'll know the ins and outs both of what existing gender recognition legislation, and the proposed Scottish reforms, imply than I do: if the law insists that this man is now a woman then, presumably, he cannot continue to be held in a men's prison?
Is this all going to end up with special jails having to be constructed for pretendy women, and in that case how are the genuine trans people going to be sorted out from the piss-takers?
Previously I believe the answer was that someone with a GRC would by default be housed in the women’s estate, but that a risk assessment would be applied that would see them sent elsewhere if they were deemed a risk to women - notably anyone convicted them or previously of sexual offenses would fall under this category IIRC.
Presumably an updated version will be forthcoming.
Sounds reasonable to me.
Mostly yes, but note my edit - it is (or was) not permissible to communicate the trans status of a prisoner without the consent of the holder of a GRC. So (in principle) someone with the goal of gaining access to the female estate could obtain a GRC & then insist on being held in the female estate & keep their GRC “secret”. Legally in that case it seems (according to the old guidance) that the system’s hands were tied. (This understanding is based on my reading of the guidance & could be mistaken though.)
I think the GRC crowd were / are absolutely correct about this particular issue, assuming my reading is correct.
Which is worth reading, although here's the excerpt explaining the relevant conclusion:
In 2017, our analysis of the BES data suggests that turnout among over 55s was 83.35%, compared to 58.15% of those under 55. Likewise, turnout was 84.34% vs. 63.06% for over and under 65s respectively. Combining these BES estimates of turnout with LFS estimates of nationality and ONS population estimates, we arrive at the following figures: the over 55s constituted 48.35% of the voting public in 2017, and the over 65s, 30.27%. If we assume that both turnout and the proportion of those disenfranchised due to their nationality remain constant, over 55s will constitute over half of the voting public by 2020 as a result of projected demographic change.
The grey vote is so huge, and contains so many outright homeowners, expectant heirs to property windfalls, and those already in receipt of state pensions or expecting to be so in the near future, that nobody will dare piss them off when it comes to their core interests: the triple lock, keeping house prices buoyant (if necessary through market rigging mechanisms, such as help to buy and refusing to challenge Nimbyism,) and prioritising the taxation of incomes over that of assets and estates.
This, in a nutshell, is why Britain is terminally screwed. Robbed of the ability to tax the old more, all the Government can do to pay for their ever-growing numbers and demands is to tax everyone else completely into the ground. The irony of all this is that 19th century theorists once postulated that democracy could never last for very long, because the great mass of the poor would soon learn to vote to help themselves to all the wealth of the rich, precipitating social collapse. They never anticipated that a great mass of wealthy codgers would actually destroy the state by helping themselves to the wages of their children and grandchildren. But here we are.
I agree with all of this.
I’d just add that other countries are in a similar position, if not worse, when it comes to demographics.
Restoring freedom of movement seems like one of the things Britain could do to further retard demographic decadence. I would be tempted to open up freedom of movement with the rest of the Anglosphere, too.
Up until now, the answer from ministers has been that it is not responsible for SPS operational matters on where prisoners are placed within the prison estate but the FM has now been able to reveal that "this prisoner" will not be incarcerated in Cornton Vale. #FMQs
Make no mistake. This is a comprehensive defeat and singular humiliation for Sturgeon. All that "criminals won't try to get into female spaces", all that "most marginalised people", all that "be kind and respect a self declared identity" That house of cards just utterly collapsed
Is it though? I haven't followed this very closely, but hasn't someone (apparently) trying to abuse self-ID to get sent to a women's prison just been denied that opportunity?
(Happy to be corrected if I'm wrong, but it seems to show (i) that yes, some people will try to take the piss, but (ii) that won't be permitted)
I am afraid that neither Yvette Cooper nor Ms Sturgeon understand the consequences of the current law, the Haldane judgment or what the GRR Bill will mean. This case exemplifies all the issues which equality lawyers and others have been raising. It is understandable that Cooper does not want to make Labour seem like a party on the side of rapists and Sturgeon wants to avoid bad publicity. But this case has blown all the arguments for the GRR Bill - in its current form - straight out of the water.
As for the arguments that risk assessment by the prison service will solve all the issues, that doesn't work either for some pretty obvious reasons.
I will do a separate post explaining why because there is so much misunderstanding of what the law actually says.
(If you're very lucky - 🤭 - I may even do it as a header.)
Would I be right in thinking that, the moment the pretendy rapist woman in this case gets his hands on some kind of official gender recognition document, he can simply use human rights legislation to force the Scottish authorities to put him in a women's jail? You'll know the ins and outs both of what existing gender recognition legislation, and the proposed Scottish reforms, imply than I do: if the law insists that this man is now a woman then, presumably, he cannot continue to be held in a men's prison?
Is this all going to end up with special jails having to be constructed for pretendy women, and in that case how are the genuine trans people going to be sorted out from the piss-takers?
Previously I believe the answer was that someone with a GRC would by default be housed in the women’s estate, but that a risk assessment would be applied that would see them sent elsewhere if they were deemed a risk to women - notably anyone convicted them or previously of sexual offenses would fall under this category IIRC. (NB, there is a problem with this system around disclosure of trans status where I do agree with Cyclefree that is seems there is a gap that could be abused by individuals with the goal of gaining access to the womens estate, due to the legal restrictions placed how knowledge of someone’s trans status could be communicated within the system without their consent.)
Is this all going to end up with special jails having to be constructed for pretendy women, and in that case how are the genuine trans people going to be sorted out from the piss-takers?
This is my problem with a lot of the discourse on the subject (not specifically your comment) - plenty of people just think it shouldn't go ahead because a very small number of particularly maladjusted people might misuse it.
It's absolutely right to be concerned about these issues and how to deal with and safeguard against them, but for many people it seems the fact there's even any potential for any misuse at all is more than enough reason for it not to go ahead.
Problem is if you applied that logic to all sorts of other things then it would quickly result in total paralysis and/or all sorts of crazy unreasonable situations.
I get that there are some tricky areas around this stuff, but that rapists shouldn't be in women's prisons seems quite an easy conclusion to come to.
No argument from me there. But that's a reason for improving the safeguarding (which was the clearest failing of the debate and votes in the Scottish parliament), not a reason to bin the whole thing for people who want to legitimately make use of it.
Didn't the SNP block an amendment about this sort of thing?
Yes, voted against one I think, which I most definitely and strongly disagreed with. I think that should be corrected, if the SNP are going to try again to bring back amended legislation or proposals that HMG aren't going to veto.
But personally I think that is solvable whilst still preserving most of the rest of the principles of the legislation to allow it to be useful for the people who aren't planning to use it for nefarious purposes.
It's going to be a terrible night for the Tories. Repeat ad nauseum until GE day....
Do you honestly believe, as we write, they don't deserve to be under scrutiny for the personal behaviour of a number of cabinet and senior party members? In terms of political policy too, you have the likes of Braverman rowing back on earlier pledges (for example, over Windrush) to placate the swivel-eyed contingent.
If your party, for whom you are shedding your tear learned to behave themselves, adopt moderate and civil policy and encouraged Sunak to dispose of the b****** contingent from cabinet their polling would most likely be more satisfactory for supporters like yourself.
Which is worth reading, although here's the excerpt explaining the relevant conclusion:
In 2017, our analysis of the BES data suggests that turnout among over 55s was 83.35%, compared to 58.15% of those under 55. Likewise, turnout was 84.34% vs. 63.06% for over and under 65s respectively. Combining these BES estimates of turnout with LFS estimates of nationality and ONS population estimates, we arrive at the following figures: the over 55s constituted 48.35% of the voting public in 2017, and the over 65s, 30.27%. If we assume that both turnout and the proportion of those disenfranchised due to their nationality remain constant, over 55s will constitute over half of the voting public by 2020 as a result of projected demographic change.
The grey vote is so huge, and contains so many outright homeowners, expectant heirs to property windfalls, and those already in receipt of state pensions or expecting to be so in the near future, that nobody will dare piss them off when it comes to their core interests: the triple lock, keeping house prices buoyant (if necessary through market rigging mechanisms, such as help to buy and refusing to challenge Nimbyism,) and prioritising the taxation of incomes over that of assets and estates.
This, in a nutshell, is why Britain is terminally screwed. Robbed of the ability to tax the old more, all the Government can do to pay for their ever-growing numbers and demands is to tax everyone else completely into the ground. The irony of all this is that 19th century theorists once postulated that democracy could never last for very long, because the great mass of the poor would soon learn to vote to help themselves to all the wealth of the rich, precipitating social collapse. They never anticipated that a great mass of wealthy codgers would actually destroy the state by helping themselves to the wages of their children and grandchildren. But here we are.
Their children and grandchildren will inherit more than any generation before them however
Many people don’t have wealthy parents.
I know that’s difficult for you to compute, though, as it appears to be outside the field of your large language model.
Which is worth reading, although here's the excerpt explaining the relevant conclusion:
In 2017, our analysis of the BES data suggests that turnout among over 55s was 83.35%, compared to 58.15% of those under 55. Likewise, turnout was 84.34% vs. 63.06% for over and under 65s respectively. Combining these BES estimates of turnout with LFS estimates of nationality and ONS population estimates, we arrive at the following figures: the over 55s constituted 48.35% of the voting public in 2017, and the over 65s, 30.27%. If we assume that both turnout and the proportion of those disenfranchised due to their nationality remain constant, over 55s will constitute over half of the voting public by 2020 as a result of projected demographic change.
The grey vote is so huge, and contains so many outright homeowners, expectant heirs to property windfalls, and those already in receipt of state pensions or expecting to be so in the near future, that nobody will dare piss them off when it comes to their core interests: the triple lock, keeping house prices buoyant (if necessary through market rigging mechanisms, such as help to buy and refusing to challenge Nimbyism,) and prioritising the taxation of incomes over that of assets and estates.
This, in a nutshell, is why Britain is terminally screwed. Robbed of the ability to tax the old more, all the Government can do to pay for their ever-growing numbers and demands is to tax everyone else completely into the ground. The irony of all this is that 19th century theorists once postulated that democracy could never last for very long, because the great mass of the poor would soon learn to vote to help themselves to all the wealth of the rich, precipitating social collapse. They never anticipated that a great mass of wealthy codgers would actually destroy the state by helping themselves to the wages of their children and grandchildren. But here we are.
Their children and grandchildren will inherit more than any generation before them however
Being reduced to penury for most of your life whilst you wait for your rich elders to finally kick the bucket is a sub-optimal situation to place the young and middle-aged in, to put it mildly. And that, of course, assumes that you have rich elders to inherit from in the first place. If you don't you're royally screwed, and you can forget about much hope of social mobility in a set-up like that. People who are born poor will, overwhelmingly, grow up poor, grow old poor and die poor.
Which is worth reading, although here's the excerpt explaining the relevant conclusion:
In 2017, our analysis of the BES data suggests that turnout among over 55s was 83.35%, compared to 58.15% of those under 55. Likewise, turnout was 84.34% vs. 63.06% for over and under 65s respectively. Combining these BES estimates of turnout with LFS estimates of nationality and ONS population estimates, we arrive at the following figures: the over 55s constituted 48.35% of the voting public in 2017, and the over 65s, 30.27%. If we assume that both turnout and the proportion of those disenfranchised due to their nationality remain constant, over 55s will constitute over half of the voting public by 2020 as a result of projected demographic change.
The grey vote is so huge, and contains so many outright homeowners, expectant heirs to property windfalls, and those already in receipt of state pensions or expecting to be so in the near future, that nobody will dare piss them off when it comes to their core interests: the triple lock, keeping house prices buoyant (if necessary through market rigging mechanisms, such as help to buy and refusing to challenge Nimbyism,) and prioritising the taxation of incomes over that of assets and estates.
This, in a nutshell, is why Britain is terminally screwed. Robbed of the ability to tax the old more, all the Government can do to pay for their ever-growing numbers and demands is to tax everyone else completely into the ground. The irony of all this is that 19th century theorists once postulated that democracy could never last for very long, because the great mass of the poor would soon learn to vote to help themselves to all the wealth of the rich, precipitating social collapse. They never anticipated that a great mass of wealthy codgers would actually destroy the state by helping themselves to the wages of their children and grandchildren. But here we are.
Their children and grandchildren will inherit more than any generation before them however
Many people don’t have wealthy parents.
I know that’s difficult for you to compute, though, as it appears to be outside the field of your large language model.
He's a member of the Conservative Party, which exists only to defend the interests of the already wealthy and to redistribute money upwards. It's all they believe in and all they are good for.
The Redfield & Wilton (R&W) "Red Wall" polling looks poor for the Conservatives.
The swing since 1997 in these seats is 17.5% (the England swing for R&W's main VI poll was 18.5%) and that takes us well down into the 200s in the list of marginal Conservative seats - actually, 238, Bedfordshire South West, would fall on this swing.
Including DKs, Labour leads 46-24 with DKs on 13%. It's worth noting the Dks include 18% of the 2019 Conservative vote which remains the last vestige of hope currently if they en masse suddenly switch back.
The actual breakdown of the 2019 GE Conservative vote is 51% Conservative, 18% Labour, 18% DK and 10% Reform.
The newest poll out is the People's Polling survey which did its fieldwork on Tuesday and produced a 29 point Labour lead though most of that seems to be a big move from Green to Labour. The swing is a colossal 20.5% from Conservative to Labour and would mean the 295th most marginal Conservative seat, Sevenoaks, goes Labour. I've seen no tables as yet but will take a look when I can.
Which is worth reading, although here's the excerpt explaining the relevant conclusion:
In 2017, our analysis of the BES data suggests that turnout among over 55s was 83.35%, compared to 58.15% of those under 55. Likewise, turnout was 84.34% vs. 63.06% for over and under 65s respectively. Combining these BES estimates of turnout with LFS estimates of nationality and ONS population estimates, we arrive at the following figures: the over 55s constituted 48.35% of the voting public in 2017, and the over 65s, 30.27%. If we assume that both turnout and the proportion of those disenfranchised due to their nationality remain constant, over 55s will constitute over half of the voting public by 2020 as a result of projected demographic change.
The grey vote is so huge, and contains so many outright homeowners, expectant heirs to property windfalls, and those already in receipt of state pensions or expecting to be so in the near future, that nobody will dare piss them off when it comes to their core interests: the triple lock, keeping house prices buoyant (if necessary through market rigging mechanisms, such as help to buy and refusing to challenge Nimbyism,) and prioritising the taxation of incomes over that of assets and estates.
This, in a nutshell, is why Britain is terminally screwed. Robbed of the ability to tax the old more, all the Government can do to pay for their ever-growing numbers and demands is to tax everyone else completely into the ground. The irony of all this is that 19th century theorists once postulated that democracy could never last for very long, because the great mass of the poor would soon learn to vote to help themselves to all the wealth of the rich, precipitating social collapse. They never anticipated that a great mass of wealthy codgers would actually destroy the state by helping themselves to the wages of their children and grandchildren. But here we are.
Their children and grandchildren will inherit more than any generation before them however
Many people don’t have wealthy parents.
I know that’s difficult for you to compute, though, as it appears to be outside the field of your large language model.
He's a member of the Conservative Party, which exists only to defend the interests of the already wealthy and to redistribute money upwards. It's all they believe in and all they are good for.
I’m not sure that’s always been the way.
There was a time when the Tories extended their sympathies to the aspirant class, and even to some extent the broad swathe of middle Britain.
Which is worth reading, although here's the excerpt explaining the relevant conclusion:
In 2017, our analysis of the BES data suggests that turnout among over 55s was 83.35%, compared to 58.15% of those under 55. Likewise, turnout was 84.34% vs. 63.06% for over and under 65s respectively. Combining these BES estimates of turnout with LFS estimates of nationality and ONS population estimates, we arrive at the following figures: the over 55s constituted 48.35% of the voting public in 2017, and the over 65s, 30.27%. If we assume that both turnout and the proportion of those disenfranchised due to their nationality remain constant, over 55s will constitute over half of the voting public by 2020 as a result of projected demographic change.
The grey vote is so huge, and contains so many outright homeowners, expectant heirs to property windfalls, and those already in receipt of state pensions or expecting to be so in the near future, that nobody will dare piss them off when it comes to their core interests: the triple lock, keeping house prices buoyant (if necessary through market rigging mechanisms, such as help to buy and refusing to challenge Nimbyism,) and prioritising the taxation of incomes over that of assets and estates.
This, in a nutshell, is why Britain is terminally screwed. Robbed of the ability to tax the old more, all the Government can do to pay for their ever-growing numbers and demands is to tax everyone else completely into the ground. The irony of all this is that 19th century theorists once postulated that democracy could never last for very long, because the great mass of the poor would soon learn to vote to help themselves to all the wealth of the rich, precipitating social collapse. They never anticipated that a great mass of wealthy codgers would actually destroy the state by helping themselves to the wages of their children and grandchildren. But here we are.
Hang on. Most of that wealth you are talking about came about entirely outside of the expectations of the Governments of the last 30 or 40 years - indeed to some extent in spite of their efforts or at least only indirectly from them screwing up. If anything has gone wrong it is the growth in the size of the state and Government spending so blaming the pensioners for something that has been entirely out of their hands and creating this artificial conflict between young and old simply because it suits your own bigoted ideas is utter bollocks.
And as someone has pointed out, that wealth then gets transferred to the young (who again I should point out will very soon be old) when the current crop of pensioners die.
Rather than looking avariciously at an income source to prop up your broken system maybe you should look at fixing the system instead.
I don’t think Britain will Brejoin, although I concede it is likelier than I ever thought it might be.
As @Driver notes, nobody has really made the case for why the EU is better (apart from trade). There needs to be a hearts, not just minds, case.
Correct. That was the problem in 2016. Living in Spain I voted Remain as it made sense personally. I'd probably have voted the same way if I was living in the UK but less enthusiastically - many Remain voters I think simply didn't buy into the glories of FOM, cheap nannies and the freedom to send their 18 year old to study almost anywhere in Europe where all the foreign kids speak English anyway. The trade thing is clearly sensible economics but the case was very badly made and didn't convince enough people. Undoubtedly too there was a failure of young people to come out and vote for the project.
Under the Levido plan, Sunak will focus on his five promises during 2023, most of which should be achievable because of the current trajectory of the economy. Stopping small boats could prove to be the most difficult to attain.
Then, according to Tory MPs briefed by chancellor Jeremy Hunt, the spring Budget of 2024 will be the pivotal moment in this parliament, when growth returns and tax cuts become possible.
The template for the strategy is John Major’s unlikely Tory election victory in 1992, when he persuaded voters that the UK was “on the right track”, even though the party appeared exhausted after 13 years in power.
Five promises sounds more New Labour pledge card than Major.
Which is worth reading, although here's the excerpt explaining the relevant conclusion:
In 2017, our analysis of the BES data suggests that turnout among over 55s was 83.35%, compared to 58.15% of those under 55. Likewise, turnout was 84.34% vs. 63.06% for over and under 65s respectively. Combining these BES estimates of turnout with LFS estimates of nationality and ONS population estimates, we arrive at the following figures: the over 55s constituted 48.35% of the voting public in 2017, and the over 65s, 30.27%. If we assume that both turnout and the proportion of those disenfranchised due to their nationality remain constant, over 55s will constitute over half of the voting public by 2020 as a result of projected demographic change.
The grey vote is so huge, and contains so many outright homeowners, expectant heirs to property windfalls, and those already in receipt of state pensions or expecting to be so in the near future, that nobody will dare piss them off when it comes to their core interests: the triple lock, keeping house prices buoyant (if necessary through market rigging mechanisms, such as help to buy and refusing to challenge Nimbyism,) and prioritising the taxation of incomes over that of assets and estates.
This, in a nutshell, is why Britain is terminally screwed. Robbed of the ability to tax the old more, all the Government can do to pay for their ever-growing numbers and demands is to tax everyone else completely into the ground. The irony of all this is that 19th century theorists once postulated that democracy could never last for very long, because the great mass of the poor would soon learn to vote to help themselves to all the wealth of the rich, precipitating social collapse. They never anticipated that a great mass of wealthy codgers would actually destroy the state by helping themselves to the wages of their children and grandchildren. But here we are.
Hang on. Most of that wealth you are talking about came about entirely outside of the expectations of the Governments of the last 30 or 40 years - indeed to some extent in spite of their efforts or at least only indirectly from them screwing up. If anything has gone wrong it is the growth in the size of the state and Government spending so blaming the pensioners for something that has been entirely out of their hands and creating this artificial conflict between young and old simply because it suits your own bigoted ideas is utter bollocks.
And as someone has pointed out, that wealth then gets transferred to the young (who again I should point out will very soon be old) when the current crop of pensioners die.
Rather than looking avariciously at an income source to prop up your broken system maybe you should look at fixing the system instead.
The size of Britain’s state is on the smaller side compared with peer economies (although less so of late).
This is one of your pet madnesses, alongside climate change denial, enthusiasm for totally open borders, and Casaubonian Brexitry.
Comments
Acute tubulointerstitial nephritis with or without uveitis: a novel form of post-acute COVID-19 syndrome in children
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.23.23284848v1
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, we observed a striking increase in the incidence of acute tubulointerstitial nephritis (aTIN) without or with uveitis (TINUs) among children. This prompted us to examine whether SARS-CoV-2 might be the underlying trigger...
The paper goes on to note "Interestingly, the aTIN/TINUs incidence declined after April 2021. The vaccination campaign, herd immunity and emergence of new variants might have contributed to this trend..."
Best 11 seconds of his life.
2) The Ukrainians have been running a range of tanks since the start of the war. Given what we know of loses and successes, they are ahead of the Russians. Adaptability seems to be a forte of their military.
For now.
A report whose findings allege tens of billions more in economic benefits (bringing it into the black vs. the ballooning costs), than previous work, whose findings also happened to arrive at economic benefits that outweighed the then costs, has a very unpromising starting point, and this certainly doesn't inspire confidence.
(To save Stuart the effort.)
Edit - although TBF that may actually be good news for the SNP. Otherwise the lead story on Reporting Scotland tonight would be about substantial cuts to teacher numbers due to a funding crisis, in defiance of Edinburgh's orders.
There's not the slightest chance that this ridiculousness is going to continue. You're just what you are, and you can behave in any way you choose entirely independently of that.
They should have run an updated Dunlop campaign of 45 years ago. The government's campaign was complacent. They didn't take the trouble to get the basics right
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztnIwu5aM7g
We’ve managed to arrive - after a few decades admittedly - at reasonable ways of balancing sexual freedom on the one hand and safeguarding of vulnerable people (mainly women faced with male predation) on the other. So it should hopefully be possible to achieve the same on trans issues.
As a people, the days of the British as a warrior race are well behind us. Give us an easy comfortable win and we'll take it. Cameron did not do the above because he was a committed europhile and a cocky shit to boot.
ICYMI - Exclusive -STV News has learned double rapist Adam Graham, who was sent to Cornton Vale prison after identifying as a woman, attended a beauty course at a Ayrshire College while awaiting trial for the attacks - taking classes alongside young girls.
https://twitter.com/gordonchree/status/1618675169509130242
Although Cleese has gone full-gammon these days.
Their Polling Station podcast
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iw4o9hLceok
https://twitter.com/ginadavidsonlbc/status/1618650849965654037
There are two different kinds of women. There is a woman defined by biological sex & a woman defined by gender identity. Both are equally valid. All women, including trans women, suffer from misogyny, discrimination, hate crime & rape. Unite! WATCH
https://twitter.com/PeterTatchell/status/1525008117200785408
It seems blindingly obvious to me that someone should be entitled to legal recognition as their new gender when they've undergone reassignment surgery and not before. Whilst they are on their way, they should be allowed as much privacy and courtesy as can be afforded, but whilst you're a man physically, you're a man legally. You can't become a Quantity Surveyor or a Nurse just by getting a notion in your head, so why should you become a woman or a man?
Buzzfeed to use AI to generate content not writers.
See below for the 10 reasons why.
Number 9 will shock you.
https://twitter.com/grdecter/status/1618667445614694403?s=61&t=bkWsvKM4tiAzNtUGLiVb_A
Secondarily, the great northern cluster of Liverpool to Hull needs a high speed connection, and a second one that connects that to the loop that goes from Sheffield to Nottingham/Derby to Birmingham and back to Liverpool and Manchester.
As you note, there is no “regional” business case for HS2. The business case is about overall network capacity which probably ultimately benefits London first.
At least, that’s where I am these days.
Although I try to avoid an opinion as it’s so incredibly treacherous.
A woman *can* be a trans woman.
But usually and in every day usage, a woman is a biological woman.
I don't know whose theory it is, but I read it somewhere and it seems convincing.
Some people see cooperation as like ships sailing across an ocean. You don't need much infrastructure, just individual will. Others see it like travelling on land- you need a road to be maintained, but then it's easy.
That seems to explain a lot, including the idea that Britain would really be emotionally happier transplanted to somewhere in the Pacific.
- “For which party did you vote in the 2019 General Election? ”
Possible responses:
Con
Lab
PC
LD
Grn
BP
Errrrr… 3rd largest party missing. Pourquoi ?
Valid point.
Mind you, up until 2014, was Jockland not part of “The Red Wall”?
Britain doesn’t see itself as a European power.
I’m not sure about Pacific, maybe Atlantic power is more accurate.
Europe is - to the great majority - just a place to go on holiday.
Of course this mental model is itself a hangover from Empire, but Brexiters get very, very angry when this is mentioned.
All countries have delusions. This is one of Britain’s.
1 There is a lot more public sector infrastructure investment that makes sense that we ought to be doing. I didn't comment when some of our more commercial friends were taking about getting new work computers yesterday, because my response would have been intemperate. But if you consider the rubbish IT in schools and hospitals, and the TPA rants when they buy decent equipment, it's not hard to see why we're so inefficient in the public sector.
2 Trying to get this stuff supported by voters is hard. We'd rather have stuff that benefits us now than things that benefit our children more. It's a problem, and I don't know how to fix it.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/feb/22/david-cameron-ridicules-boris-johnsons-second-referendum-idea
Even Keir doesn’t think he can win without persuading at least some of them over, and by persuading I mean avoiding certain realities.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9frVTgoKSI
"This is the one thing we didn't want to happen"
Tiananmen Square didn’t need the highest tech tanks, just ones that could squash people and had machine guns. So the message is maybe, we’ve got plenty of kit so don’t get any ideas.
2. I don't think getting "this stuff supported by voters" is the issue. Most voters don't have strong feelings. Were there wholesale protests against the Channel tunnel? Crossrail? The M25? No. (Aside from environmental protests which are usually a small minority.)
No, the issue is politicians. And more specifically the short-termism of politicians.
I need to update the SSL Certificate for the site, so there may be some downtime / weird errors. Please bear with me.
But there is a generation that has pulled the system to its advantage throughout (more, freer sex in the 60s and 70s, housing windfalls, tax cuts and stingy pensions for their parents from the 80s, tax rises, more generous pensions and no new houses now). That's democracy for you.
The bulginess of the UK's population pyramid... How unusual is it, and what are its consequences? Someone needs to do a PhD on that
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jan/26/nadhim-zahawi-faces-questions-over-source-of-30m-unsecured-loans-to-wifes-property-company
Underlined (perhaps) by the recent funeral at Graceland, for the late Lisa Marie Presley, daughter of Elvis & Priscilla Presley.
Which among other notables featured . . . wait for it . . . Sarah, Duchess of York (aka "Fergie" at least in USA).
"The Crossroads" of song, story & legend is further south, in Mississippi. But Memphis, Tenn. is a major cultural including musical junction, bridge and highway, from east to west (and visa versa), to north and south (ditto).
PLUS up and down (as in feeling the blues) and number of other directions.
However geographically the UK is part of the European continent even if an island
As for the arguments that risk assessment by the prison service will solve all the issues, that doesn't work either for some pretty obvious reasons.
I will do a separate post explaining why because there is so much misunderstanding of what the law actually says.
(If you're very lucky - 🤭 - I may even do it as a header.)
I haven’t been to Córdoba, and now I’d quite like to go.
If I was restricting my “most influential cities of music” to the 20th century onwards, and popular music only, it would probably be something like (with a clear bias toward the UK):
New York
London
New Orleans
Kingston
Los Angeles
Detroit
Manchester
Chicago
Memphis
Liverpool
San Francisco
Paris
Havana
Berlin
Rio de Janeiro
Atlanta
Nashville
Birmingham
Stockholm
Brussels
Tokyo
Seattle
Bristol
Sheffield
Seoul
The knicker-twisting response from you and Stuart is quite revealing, really.
I am really concerned that "As long as it lasts me out, that's fine" is becoming a national motto. And if that's the case, we really are heading for the national equivalent of Reluctant Conscripted Stepmom on Pornhub territory.
Is this all going to end up with special jails having to be constructed for pretendy women, and in that case how are the genuine trans people going to be sorted out from the piss-takers?
It's absolutely right to be concerned about these issues and how to deal with and safeguard against them, but for many people it seems the fact there's even any potential for any misuse at all is more than enough reason for it not to go ahead.
Problem is if you applied that logic to all sorts of other things then it would quickly result in total paralysis and/or all sorts of crazy unreasonable situations.
Previously I believe the answer was that someone with a GRC would by default be housed in the women’s estate, but that a risk assessment would be applied that would see them sent elsewhere if they were deemed a risk to women - notably anyone convicted them or previously of sexual offenses would fall under this category IIRC. (NB, there is a problem with this system around disclosure of trans status where I do agree with Cyclefree that is seems there is a gap that could be abused by individuals with the goal of gaining access to the womens estate, due to the legal restrictions placed how knowledge of someone’s trans status could be communicated within the system without their consent.)
The previous guidance is here:https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/863610/transgender-pf.pdf
Presumably an updated version will be forthcoming.
https://blogs.bath.ac.uk/iprblog/2019/05/21/the-rise-of-the-grey-vote/
Which is worth reading, although here's the excerpt explaining the relevant conclusion:
In 2017, our analysis of the BES data suggests that turnout among over 55s was 83.35%, compared to 58.15% of those under 55. Likewise, turnout was 84.34% vs. 63.06% for over and under 65s respectively. Combining these BES estimates of turnout with LFS estimates of nationality and ONS population estimates, we arrive at the following figures: the over 55s constituted 48.35% of the voting public in 2017, and the over 65s, 30.27%. If we assume that both turnout and the proportion of those disenfranchised due to their nationality remain constant, over 55s will constitute over half of the voting public by 2020 as a result of projected demographic change.
The grey vote is so huge, and contains so many outright homeowners, expectant heirs to property windfalls, and those already in receipt of state pensions or expecting to be so in the near future, that nobody will dare piss them off when it comes to their core interests: the triple lock, keeping house prices buoyant (if necessary through market rigging mechanisms, such as help to buy and refusing to challenge Nimbyism,) and prioritising the taxation of incomes over that of assets and estates.
This, in a nutshell, is why Britain is terminally screwed. Robbed of the ability to tax the old more, all the Government can do to pay for their ever-growing numbers and demands is to tax everyone else completely into the ground. The irony of all this is that 19th century theorists once postulated that democracy could never last for very long, because the great mass of the poor would soon learn to vote to help themselves to all the wealth of the rich, precipitating social collapse. They never anticipated that a great mass of wealthy codgers would actually destroy the state by helping themselves to the wages of their children and grandchildren. But here we are.
Under the Levido plan, Sunak will focus on his five promises during 2023, most of which should be achievable because of the current trajectory of the economy. Stopping small boats could prove to be the most difficult to attain.
Then, according to Tory MPs briefed by chancellor Jeremy Hunt, the spring Budget of 2024 will be the pivotal moment in this parliament, when growth returns and tax cuts become possible.
The template for the strategy is John Major’s unlikely Tory election victory in 1992, when he persuaded voters that the UK was “on the right track”, even though the party appeared exhausted after 13 years in power.
But let me ask you. Do you think it's appropriate to stick a rapist - one that has not been castrated - in a women's prison?
I think the GRC crowd were / are absolutely correct about this particular issue, assuming my reading is correct.
I’d just add that other countries are in a similar position, if not worse, when it comes to demographics.
Restoring freedom of movement seems like one of the things Britain could do to further retard demographic decadence. I would be tempted to open up freedom of movement with the rest of the Anglosphere, too.
But personally I think that is solvable whilst still preserving most of the rest of the principles of the legislation to allow it to be useful for the people who aren't planning to use it for nefarious purposes.
If your party, for whom you are shedding your tear learned to behave themselves, adopt moderate and civil policy and encouraged Sunak to dispose of the b****** contingent from cabinet their polling would most likely be more satisfactory for supporters like yourself.
I know that’s difficult for you to compute, though, as it appears to be outside the field of your large language model.
The Redfield & Wilton (R&W) "Red Wall" polling looks poor for the Conservatives.
The swing since 1997 in these seats is 17.5% (the England swing for R&W's main VI poll was 18.5%) and that takes us well down into the 200s in the list of marginal Conservative seats - actually, 238, Bedfordshire South West, would fall on this swing.
Including DKs, Labour leads 46-24 with DKs on 13%. It's worth noting the Dks include 18% of the 2019 Conservative vote which remains the last vestige of hope currently if they en masse suddenly switch back.
The actual breakdown of the 2019 GE Conservative vote is 51% Conservative, 18% Labour, 18% DK and 10% Reform.
The newest poll out is the People's Polling survey which did its fieldwork on Tuesday and produced a 29 point Labour lead though most of that seems to be a big move from Green to Labour. The swing is a colossal 20.5% from Conservative to Labour and would mean the 295th most marginal Conservative seat, Sevenoaks, goes Labour. I've seen no tables as yet but will take a look when I can.
There was a time when the Tories extended their sympathies to the aspirant class, and even to some extent the broad swathe of middle Britain.
That ended some time ago, though.
Otherwise people just give up, and argue over ever smaller pieces of pie.
And as someone has pointed out, that wealth then gets transferred to the young (who again I should point out will very soon be old) when the current crop of pensioners die.
Rather than looking avariciously at an income source to prop up your broken system maybe you should look at fixing the system instead.
This is one of your pet madnesses, alongside climate change denial, enthusiasm for totally open borders, and Casaubonian Brexitry.