The source said: “We need to get back on track by pursuing things that matter to the people of Scotland, not pushing stuff that the public is vehemently opposed to.
“I expect the gender reforms to be parked somewhere as quickly as possible. Any sensible new leader will want to get that off the front pages, and quickly.”
Privately, senior figures within the SNP are highly critical of Ms Sturgeon’s failure to groom an obvious successor. They fear an unpopular new SNP leader would cause support for both the party and independence to collapse.
On the other Nicola story of the day I was intensely uncomfortable about the police disclosing her alcohol and mental health problems yesterday, not to help in her finding but in an apparent attempt at self vindication. Sometimes authorities just need to have broader shoulders and not disclose what they know. To me, this was one of those times.
I have a friend who lives up there and says the amount of conspiracy theories and amateur sleuths turning up is unreal.
Councillors have received death threats and their details have been removed from the council website.
Stephen Flynn R4 - conference on PretendyRef should be paused until there’s a new leader is in place.
The party’s ruling national executive committee pushed back by a week a meeting scheduled for Saturday to discuss the conference. It is understood that local branches have flooded SNP headquarters with amendments.
The whole plan will be "paused" (dropped) as it applies a pre-existing agenda from the now outgoing leader.
Smart opposition parties should be able to capitalise. If the SNP are now rowing back their positions on pushing forward on this can they now focus on actual issues that affect actual people?
So the opposition in Scotland will not be able to do anything then?
Exactly , the absolute donkeys in opposition will make no progress. I doubt you could scour the world and find a more stupid bunch of no users.
I once went to see Anderson bowl against Gloucestershire.
There was a very good Lancashire attack against a fairly strong Gloucestershire batting lineup on a sporting Cheltenham pitch.
Anderson made the rest of the Lancashire attack look like bungling amateurs. When he was bowling Gloucestershire's batsmen were completely bamboozled. No runs on offer and chances going everywhere. Fortunately most didn't go to hand, but he took two wickets for 25 runs off 14 overs and effected a run out. Mahmood and Bailey were thrashed everywhere and picked up wickets from desperation shots.
Sadly we were deprived of what might have been a very entertaining match when a rainstorm literally blew the covers off and soaked the pitch. But it was some experience.
And not just for me. Never seen Cheltenham College so crowded. There must have been 7,000 in the crowd. They literally ran out of chairs!
On the other Nicola story of the day I was intensely uncomfortable about the police disclosing her alcohol and mental health problems yesterday, not to help in her finding but in an apparent attempt at self vindication. Sometimes authorities just need to have broader shoulders and not disclose what they know. To me, this was one of those times.
I have a friend who lives up there and says the amount of conspiracy theories and amateur sleuths turning up is unreal.
Councillors have received death threats and their details have been removed from the council website.
Whole thing is an utter shit show.
Does anything actually work well in this country at the moment?
Nicola Sturgeon has been a towering figure at the top of Scottish politics for 16 years: a strong leader, formidable opponent and important feminist role model, persisting despite the vitriol and abuse that sadly is synonymous with being a woman in public life. /
Stephen Flynn R4 - conference on PretendyRef should be paused until there’s a new leader is in place.
The party’s ruling national executive committee pushed back by a week a meeting scheduled for Saturday to discuss the conference. It is understood that local branches have flooded SNP headquarters with amendments.
The whole plan will be "paused" (dropped) as it applies a pre-existing agenda from the now outgoing leader.
Smart opposition parties should be able to capitalise. If the SNP are now rowing back their positions on pushing forward on this can they now focus on actual issues that affect actual people?
So the opposition in Scotland will not be able to do anything then?
Exactly , the absolute donkeys in opposition will make no progress. I doubt you could scour the world and find a more stupid bunch of no users.
You don't have to go that far Malc, Wales will do.
Intensely flattered you 'liked' a post I did about Scotland, by the way.
I understand Sunak felling her over the trans issue with his masterful game of 12D chess is the Telegraph and the PB Tory take on Nippy's resignation. My first thoughts were questions over Peter and Nicola"s probity and a story earlier in the week over Police Scotland 's interest in the SNP's funding arrangements.
Speculation that the timing might be due to a story in the Sundays. I guess we will see.
The good news for Nicola is she can always self identify as First Minister whenever she wants
Plenty of scandals bubbling away , one had to hit the surface at some point. Be really nice if it was the witches coven rather than just the missing 600K.
So it’s a far-right conspiracy theory, but it’s also a brilliant idea and more places should do it?
One for the “Peak Guardian” list.
It's a very basic and sensible idea that has been around since God Knows When, which has been given a name so some people now have something to shout about.
Been in our planning system for decades - current term is "placemaking", but also under "sustainability" as in sustainable communities (which confuses some 'deep green' people).
For a bit further back look, for example, at the book about how liveable human communities can be designed to work well "A Pattern Language", by Christopher Alexander, published in 1977 - which takes an interesting approach identifying a design vocabulary of 'patterns'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pattern_Language
There's an interesting obsession parallel at the moment about "Floating Bus Stops" (recently given a name) and a blind organisation called National Federation for the Blind UK who have latched onto it and think that bus-stop bypasses behind bus stops are the end of the world. They do not engage with the reality that shopping service roads in London suburbs have been using identical setups since perhaps the 1930s, with the bus stop separated by a service road for cars and vans.
Really imo just people turning idiot into a verb. If the conspiracy people keep obsessing, it will leave space for practical politicians to implement, then the nuts will move on.
Not sure about "Peak Guardian" - the G has similar levels of nuttiness in it every week, from a different angle. Try Zoe Williams.
I have come across NFB. They have a curious obsession with the danger posed by cyclists and consistently ignore that from drivers, in the face of all evidence (and basic physics).
I tried to get in touch with them with some data from STATS19 and they blocked me.
TBF cars do tend to go along roads and can be heard. Cyclists are bastards who go anywhere at random and can't be heard, if one is blind. Deaf people hate cyclists too as they appear so unpredictably from behind. Just speak to one. Nowhere is safe from cyclists.
On the other Nicola story of the day I was intensely uncomfortable about the police disclosing her alcohol and mental health problems yesterday, not to help in her finding but in an apparent attempt at self vindication. Sometimes authorities just need to have broader shoulders and not disclose what they know. To me, this was one of those times.
I have a friend who lives up there and says the amount of conspiracy theories and amateur sleuths turning up is unreal.
Councillors have received death threats and their details have been removed from the council website.
Whole thing is an utter shit show.
Does anything actually work well in this country at the moment?
“For the SNP, Brexit has turned out to be both the casus belli for its second push for independence and a strategic disaster. The best thing that could happen to Scottish nationalism would be for Britain to rejoin the European Union.”
This is about right I think. The departure of NS makes no difference to the big question of Scottish independence - there was and is no foreseeable route to it because of: Brexit, history, economics and, critically, the Scottish voters don't want it.
It makes a lot of difference to quotidien Scottish and UK politics. NS is a force of nature, as was Salmond. Kate Forbes is the only possible 'force of nature' candidate - jury is out and we may never know. She may have better things to do that face the mob over her centre right opinions.
Finally, suppose we rejoin the EU, in truth it makes little difference whether Scotland is then 'independent' or not. It just means their 'ever closer union' is with rUK +27.
"Scottish voters don't want it" is an odd interpretation of around 50% wanting independence.
NICOLA Sturgeon is prepared to take a second swing at resigning if this first attempt does not pan out, she has announced.
In the unlikely event that her countrymen do not allow her to step down, the Scottish first minister has confirmed she will ignore their opinion and plough on with a second resignation regardless.
“For the SNP, Brexit has turned out to be both the casus belli for its second push for independence and a strategic disaster. The best thing that could happen to Scottish nationalism would be for Britain to rejoin the European Union.”
This is about right I think. The departure of NS makes no difference to the big question of Scottish independence - there was and is no foreseeable route to it because of: Brexit, history, economics and, critically, the Scottish voters don't want it.
It makes a lot of difference to quotidien Scottish and UK politics. NS is a force of nature, as was Salmond. Kate Forbes is the only possible 'force of nature' candidate - jury is out and we may never know. She may have better things to do that face the mob over her centre right opinions.
Finally, suppose we rejoin the EU, in truth it makes little difference whether Scotland is then 'independent' or not. It just means their 'ever closer union' is with rUK +27.
"Scottish voters don't want it" is an odd interpretation of around 50% wanting independence.
On the other Nicola story of the day I was intensely uncomfortable about the police disclosing her alcohol and mental health problems yesterday, not to help in her finding but in an apparent attempt at self vindication. Sometimes authorities just need to have broader shoulders and not disclose what they know. To me, this was one of those times.
I have a friend who lives up there and says the amount of conspiracy theories and amateur sleuths turning up is unreal.
Councillors have received death threats and their details have been removed from the council website.
Whole thing is an utter shit show.
Does anything actually work well in this country at the moment?
Was it because of the police investigation? Was it because she was about to be defeated at her special conference? Was it because of the mounting crises that are engulfing her government? Was it that the slide backwards in the independence polls just left her too exhausted to continue?
Only Nicola Sturgeon knows why she decided to wave goodbye to the SNP today. What we do know is that she leaves behind a party and a movement that will have to deal with the many crises she leaves behind without her political talents.
Hoping to get tickets for the Hundred in a few weeks, I've rather enjoyed it the last two years
Tickets for the T20 Blast are, I think, already available. Cheaper and more cheerful. Last season, it seemed almost every game was in doubt up until the last over. I would urge you to try that competition if you liked the hundred.
The Hundred is like BBC3. In thrall to an adult's perception of teenagers' tastes but terrified it might lose their attention to their smartphones.
Whereas, I suppose, the T20 Blast is like BBC1. You're not supposed to take it too seriously; it's undemanding and upbeat. And the one day tournament like BBC2, and the county championship like BBC4, I suppose.
On the other Nicola story of the day I was intensely uncomfortable about the police disclosing her alcohol and mental health problems yesterday, not to help in her finding but in an apparent attempt at self vindication. Sometimes authorities just need to have broader shoulders and not disclose what they know. To me, this was one of those times.
I have a friend who lives up there and says the amount of conspiracy theories and amateur sleuths turning up is unreal.
Councillors have received death threats and their details have been removed from the council website.
Whole thing is an utter shit show.
Does anything actually work well in this country at the moment?
Apart from Bazball.
I think there are still lots of good breweries producing good beer (not sure about whether any piss-ups have been organised in them recently). The existence of an extensive network of public footpaths is a major plus. The transition of power to a new head of state passed off relatively seamlessly. Getting rid of Liz Truss within seven weeks was admirably efficient and a good advert for Parliamentary democracy (perhaps less so that she became PM, but having a means of correcting mistakes is more important, because they're not always avoidable). Despite fears to the contrary, the electricity grid kept going over the winter and Britain produced a record high amount of wind energy.
Things could be a lot worse. Imagine the Britain of today, but with awful beer, blackouts, Liz Truss firmly ensconced as PM, and no footpaths to keep wandering beta cucks away from the roads?
Hoping to get tickets for the Hundred in a few weeks, I've rather enjoyed it the last two years
Tickets for the T20 Blast are, I think, already available. Cheaper and more cheerful. Last season, it seemed almost every game was in doubt up until the last over. I would urge you to try that competition if you liked the hundred.
The Hundred is like BBC3. In thrall to an adult's perception of teenagers' tastes but terrified it might their attention to their smartphones.
Whereas, I suppose, the T20 Blast is like BBC1. You're not supposed to take it too seriously; it's undemanding and upbeat. And the one day tournament like BBC2, and the county championship like BBC4, I suppose.
The 15-minute cities article struck a chord. Why are the pavements so shocking in our towns and cities?
As a wheelchair user I find myself increasingly deciding to wheel along roads in town centres - nice smooth tarmac compared to uneven, unstable, narrow, highly-cambered pavements.
As an occasional runner but who often has to run in the dark, albeit with a light, I find it safer generally to run on the tarmac road so I don't trip on an unexpected bumps in the pavement. I hop back onto the pavement if a car comes along. I imagine that is very difficult or impossible for you so you are very brave!
So it’s a far-right conspiracy theory, but it’s also a brilliant idea and more places should do it?
One for the “Peak Guardian” list.
It's a very basic and sensible idea that has been around since God Knows When, which has been given a name so some people now have something to shout about.
Been in our planning system for decades - current term is "placemaking", but also under "sustainability" as in sustainable communities (which confuses some 'deep green' people).
For a bit further back look, for example, at the book about how liveable human communities can be designed to work well "A Pattern Language", by Christopher Alexander, published in 1977 - which takes an interesting approach identifying a design vocabulary of 'patterns'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pattern_Language
There's an interesting obsession parallel at the moment about "Floating Bus Stops" (recently given a name) and a blind organisation called National Federation for the Blind UK who have latched onto it and think that bus-stop bypasses behind bus stops are the end of the world. They do not engage with the reality that shopping service roads in London suburbs have been using identical setups since perhaps the 1930s, with the bus stop separated by a service road for cars and vans.
Really imo just people turning idiot into a verb. If the conspiracy people keep obsessing, it will leave space for practical politicians to implement, then the nuts will move on.
Not sure about "Peak Guardian" - the G has similar levels of nuttiness in it every week, from a different angle. Try Zoe Williams.
I have come across NFB. They have a curious obsession with the danger posed by cyclists and consistently ignore that from drivers, in the face of all evidence (and basic physics).
I tried to get in touch with them with some data from STATS19 and they blocked me.
TBF cars do tend to go along roads and can be heard. Cyclists are bastards who go anywhere at random and can't be heard, if one is blind. Deaf people hate cyclists too as they appear so unpredictably from behind. Just speak to one. Nowhere is safe from cyclists.
That's why we need fully segregated, two lane cycle lanes on every city road in Scotland.
“For the SNP, Brexit has turned out to be both the casus belli for its second push for independence and a strategic disaster. The best thing that could happen to Scottish nationalism would be for Britain to rejoin the European Union.”
This is about right I think. The departure of NS makes no difference to the big question of Scottish independence - there was and is no foreseeable route to it because of: Brexit, history, economics and, critically, the Scottish voters don't want it.
It makes a lot of difference to quotidien Scottish and UK politics. NS is a force of nature, as was Salmond. Kate Forbes is the only possible 'force of nature' candidate - jury is out and we may never know. She may have better things to do that face the mob over her centre right opinions.
Finally, suppose we rejoin the EU, in truth it makes little difference whether Scotland is then 'independent' or not. It just means their 'ever closer union' is with rUK +27.
"Scottish voters don't want it" is an odd interpretation of around 50% wanting independence.
“For the SNP, Brexit has turned out to be both the casus belli for its second push for independence and a strategic disaster. The best thing that could happen to Scottish nationalism would be for Britain to rejoin the European Union.”
This is about right I think. The departure of NS makes no difference to the big question of Scottish independence - there was and is no foreseeable route to it because of: Brexit, history, economics and, critically, the Scottish voters don't want it.
It makes a lot of difference to quotidien Scottish and UK politics. NS is a force of nature, as was Salmond. Kate Forbes is the only possible 'force of nature' candidate - jury is out and we may never know. She may have better things to do that face the mob over her centre right opinions.
Finally, suppose we rejoin the EU, in truth it makes little difference whether Scotland is then 'independent' or not. It just means their 'ever closer union' is with rUK +27.
"Scottish voters don't want it" is an odd interpretation of around 50% wanting independence.
Hoping to get tickets for the Hundred in a few weeks, I've rather enjoyed it the last two years
Tickets for the T20 Blast are, I think, already available. Cheaper and more cheerful. Last season, it seemed almost every game was in doubt up until the last over. I would urge you to try that competition if you liked the hundred.
The Hundred is like BBC3. In thrall to an adult's perception of teenagers' tastes but terrified it might their attention to their smartphones.
Whereas, I suppose, the T20 Blast is like BBC1. You're not supposed to take it too seriously; it's undemanding and upbeat. And the one day tournament like BBC2, and the county championship like BBC4, I suppose.
County Championship is Radio Four Long Wave.
All YouTube streams these days for the County Championship, whereas I guess the Hundred is aiming for tiktok.
THE resignation of Nicola Sturgeon as First Minister has come as new calls were being made for an independent public inquiry into the ferry fiasco after the Herald revealed nearly half a billion pounds has been ploughed into the shipyard firm at the centre of the debacle.
Was it because of the police investigation? Was it because she was about to be defeated at her special conference? Was it because of the mounting crises that are engulfing her government? Was it that the slide backwards in the independence polls just left her too exhausted to continue?
Only Nicola Sturgeon knows why she decided to wave goodbye to the SNP today. What we do know is that she leaves behind a party and a movement that will have to deal with the many crises she leaves behind without her political talents.
I have just been to the Killing Fields of Cheoung Ek, south of Phnom Penh
I am glad I went, I fervently never want to see anything like it, ever again. Never never never. “Desolating” does not cover it
I went to bed and Siem Rep, in Cambodia, a few years ago, with the intention of visiting Angkor Wat. What was surprising were the number of very young people about; very few senior citizens or even those in the middle age. There was also a home for children who had lost limbs as a result of minds. It was very very sad. Angkor Wat, on the other hand was amazing!
On the other Nicola story of the day I was intensely uncomfortable about the police disclosing her alcohol and mental health problems yesterday, not to help in her finding but in an apparent attempt at self vindication. Sometimes authorities just need to have broader shoulders and not disclose what they know. To me, this was one of those times.
I have a friend who lives up there and says the amount of conspiracy theories and amateur sleuths turning up is unreal.
Councillors have received death threats and their details have been removed from the council website.
Whole thing is an utter shit show.
Does anything actually work well in this country at the moment?
Apart from Bazball.
HMRC sending out penalty notices is working quite well and in a timely fashion. As to the rest of their operation......
Defence lawyers in rape cases are having excellent results.
The 15-minute cities article struck a chord. Why are the pavements so shocking in our towns and cities?
As a wheelchair user I find myself increasingly deciding to wheel along roads in town centres - nice smooth tarmac compared to uneven, unstable, narrow, highly-cambered pavements.
As an occasional runner but who often has to run in the dark, albeit with a light, I find it safer generally to run on the tarmac road so I don't trip on an unexpected bumps in the pavement. I hop back onto the pavement if a car comes along. I imagine that is very difficult or impossible for you so you are very brave!
Hah yes, but I don't use the road in the dark tbf. And I am only talking about shopping high streets, which should be pedestrianised imo, resistance to which often bizarrely comes from shopkeepers.
That does it, I'm campaigning for Labour in Don Valley.
haha, my dad lives a few doors down from Nick Fletcher's office in Tickhill, a village which actually exemplifies the benefits of independent businesses and local facilities within reasonable walking distance.
He's never in, and there's big telly facing out the shop window of the office which is always switched off.
On the other Nicola story of the day I was intensely uncomfortable about the police disclosing her alcohol and mental health problems yesterday, not to help in her finding but in an apparent attempt at self vindication. Sometimes authorities just need to have broader shoulders and not disclose what they know. To me, this was one of those times.
I have a friend who lives up there and says the amount of conspiracy theories and amateur sleuths turning up is unreal.
Councillors have received death threats and their details have been removed from the council website.
Whole thing is an utter shit show.
Does anything actually work well in this country at the moment?
Apart from Bazball.
I think there are still lots of good breweries producing good beer (not sure about whether any piss-ups have been organised in them recently). The existence of an extensive network of public footpaths is a major plus. The transition of power to a new head of state passed off relatively seamlessly. Getting rid of Liz Truss within seven weeks was admirably efficient and a good advert for Parliamentary democracy (perhaps less so that she became PM, but having a means of correcting mistakes is more important, because they're not always avoidable). Despite fears to the contrary, the electricity grid kept going over the winter and Britain produced a record high amount of wind energy.
Things could be a lot worse. Imagine the Britain of today, but with awful beer, blackouts, Liz Truss firmly ensconced as PM, and no footpaths to keep wandering beta cucks away from the roads?
A lot of decent independent breweries are closing at the moment, sadly - wafer-thin margins being obliterated by rising costs and squeezed consumers, plus the duty system being weighted in the favour of Alan Clark's old fave, the brewers' lobby.
Nonetheless, there is still a vibrant independent brewing scene (especially in cities like Manchester, Sheffield and Nottingham), the heart of which I hope survives this not-recession.
The 15-minute cities article struck a chord. Why are the pavements so shocking in our towns and cities?
As a wheelchair user I find myself increasingly deciding to wheel along roads in town centres - nice smooth tarmac compared to uneven, unstable, narrow, highly-cambered pavements.
Because nobody spends any money on repairing pavements.
I think pavement parking is gong to be a big issue when the road law review comes around, as is blocking of cycle lanes. Especially around difficulty of enforcement / laws which are a mess.
I currently have a van regularly parked 90% across the pavement which is the walking route to the local primary school, and to the shops. Council can't enforce as it is not marked double yellow or zone, and is not yet adopted. Police generally aren't interested.
Plus there is a Transport Select Committee into Accessibility in Transport at present.
Have just watched the 15 minute cities question. What is it about so many 2019 Tory MPs where they look and sound thick as mince?
Back in the 60s, every city wanted a network of motorways. That time is long ago - now people want more fresh air and not being stuck in commuting queues of cars. Or even worse their fresh air outside their house being spoiled by commuting queues of someone else's cars.
So what Mince MP is objecting to is progress. Instead of having everyone commute into the centre in a car have alternatives. Have local shops and businesses - the way it was before the 1960s.
Did the local shopkeepers and business owners of old know they were part of this international socialist conspiracy...?
I've got no issue with the concept (It won't affect me as I live in a village) but the likes of Oxford Council's zoning is a bit police state.
“For the SNP, Brexit has turned out to be both the casus belli for its second push for independence and a strategic disaster. The best thing that could happen to Scottish nationalism would be for Britain to rejoin the European Union.”
This is about right I think. The departure of NS makes no difference to the big question of Scottish independence - there was and is no foreseeable route to it because of: Brexit, history, economics and, critically, the Scottish voters don't want it.
It makes a lot of difference to quotidien Scottish and UK politics. NS is a force of nature, as was Salmond. Kate Forbes is the only possible 'force of nature' candidate - jury is out and we may never know. She may have better things to do that face the mob over her centre right opinions.
Finally, suppose we rejoin the EU, in truth it makes little difference whether Scotland is then 'independent' or not. It just means their 'ever closer union' is with rUK +27.
"Scottish voters don't want it" is an odd interpretation of around 50% wanting independence.
'Scottish voters want it' would be an odd interpretation of the Ref1 result and the persistent hovering between 45-51% polling in favour.
What is needed is persistent voting and polling showing 60%+ firm support for a coherent independence plan in which the difficult questions are addressed and resolved.
Try asking whether a clear majority of Scots want a trade barrier and customs posts at Gretna and Berwick.
Nicola Sturgeon has been a towering figure at the top of Scottish politics for 16 years: a strong leader, formidable opponent and important feminist role model, persisting despite the vitriol and abuse that sadly is synonymous with being a woman in public life. /
The 15-minute cities article struck a chord. Why are the pavements so shocking in our towns and cities?
As a wheelchair user I find myself increasingly deciding to wheel along roads in town centres - nice smooth tarmac compared to uneven, unstable, narrow, highly-cambered pavements.
As an occasional runner but who often has to run in the dark, albeit with a light, I find it safer generally to run on the tarmac road so I don't trip on an unexpected bumps in the pavement. I hop back onto the pavement if a car comes along. I imagine that is very difficult or impossible for you so you are very brave!
Hah yes, but I don't use the road in the dark tbf. And I am only talking about shopping high streets, which should be pedestrianised imo, resistance to which often bizarrely comes from shopkeepers.
Local businesses round me are wedded to the idea that "passing trade" comes entirely from car drivers. This in an area where less than 50% of people have access to a car.
That does it, I'm campaigning for Labour in Don Valley.
haha, my dad lives a few doors down from Nick Fletcher's office in Tickhill, a village which actually exemplifies the benefits of independent businesses and local facilities within reasonable walking distance.
He's never in, and there's big telly facing out the shop window of the office which is always switched off.
What a hypocritical moron this man is. As you say, the good pit villages are a perfect example of 15 minute communities. His village having shops and businesses is not because of a socialist conspiracy. What does he want, nowt in Tickhill and everyone having t' drive in't' Donny for owt?
“For the SNP, Brexit has turned out to be both the casus belli for its second push for independence and a strategic disaster. The best thing that could happen to Scottish nationalism would be for Britain to rejoin the European Union.”
This is about right I think. The departure of NS makes no difference to the big question of Scottish independence - there was and is no foreseeable route to it because of: Brexit, history, economics and, critically, the Scottish voters don't want it.
It makes a lot of difference to quotidien Scottish and UK politics. NS is a force of nature, as was Salmond. Kate Forbes is the only possible 'force of nature' candidate - jury is out and we may never know. She may have better things to do that face the mob over her centre right opinions.
Finally, suppose we rejoin the EU, in truth it makes little difference whether Scotland is then 'independent' or not. It just means their 'ever closer union' is with rUK +27.
"Scottish voters don't want it" is an odd interpretation of around 50% wanting independence.
And as I keep saying, punters pile more and more and more votes onto the SNP when given the chance. There is so much they do wrong, but the idea that they aren't popular is laughable. Well, they *were* popular, we'll have to see where they go from here.
The 15-minute cities article struck a chord. Why are the pavements so shocking in our towns and cities?
As a wheelchair user I find myself increasingly deciding to wheel along roads in town centres - nice smooth tarmac compared to uneven, unstable, narrow, highly-cambered pavements.
As an occasional runner but who often has to run in the dark, albeit with a light, I find it safer generally to run on the tarmac road so I don't trip on an unexpected bumps in the pavement. I hop back onto the pavement if a car comes along. I imagine that is very difficult or impossible for you so you are very brave!
Hah yes, but I don't use the road in the dark tbf. And I am only talking about shopping high streets, which should be pedestrianised imo, resistance to which often bizarrely comes from shopkeepers.
Not that bizarre. Make it more difficult for people to put stuff in their cars and they go to out of town centres instead.
One of the other things, separate but linked to that, which is killing town centres is high parking charges.
I have just been to the Killing Fields of Cheoung Ek, south of Phnom Penh
I am glad I went, I fervently never want to see anything like it, ever again. Never never never. “Desolating” does not cover it
I went to bed and Siem Rep, in Cambodia, a few years ago, with the intention of visiting Angkor Wat. What was surprising were the number of very young people about; very few senior citizens or even those in the middle age. There was also a home for children who had lost limbs as a result of minds. It was very very sad. Angkor Wat, on the other hand was amazing!
Cambodia is still scarred today, you walk around and you realise that anyone over about 55 can vividly remember the hallucinatory violence of the Khmer Rouge. And almost every family will have lost people, so even the young suffer a cascade of grief and loss - there are no grandparents to mind the little kids
2-3m killed out of a population of 8m. Nothing compares in its fiercely lunatic sadism. By the end they were torturing and killing people for “laughing”
I’ve spent decades visiting Indochina (inc Cambodia) and I’ve read almost every available book on the Khmer Rouge. The subject compels me, and yet, still, after all this, I don’t really understand how and why it happened
By comparison the Nazi Holocaust is positively sensible. Hideously evil and a monstrous crime, but it had a discernible rationale - kill the Jews, as they are a racial threat to German supremacy
The cruelties of the Khmer Rouge are outwith logic, it started with class-hating Maoism but went way beyond that into a special realm of its own
Russia seems to have invented the concept of a "Jewish Nazi".
This morning Russian state TV host Ruslan Ostashko expresses shock at how the Israeli foreign minister could be visiting a "Nazi state" to meet its "Jewish president, who’s also a Nazi"
This morning Russian state TV host Ruslan Ostashko expresses shock at how the Israeli foreign minister could be visiting a "Nazi state" to meet its "Jewish president, who’s also a Nazi"
It's a meta structure. A conspiracy theory that allows people to rubbish complaints about the various stupidities that city planners are actually doing. If you complain, you are a conspiracy loon.
For example, I was bought up in Oxford. The City Council has spent a couple of decades fouling up the city centre - making it worse for buses and bicycle users. The location of the coach station is actually insane.
Nearby, Abingdon tried to pedestrianise the city centre without bothering to work out the dynamics. So the shopping centre died.
The problem is that some of the planners seem fail to understand the non-linear nature of humans and their artefacts. Imposing fixed solutions is guaranteed to fail.
It's a meta structure. A conspiracy theory that allows people to rubbish complaints about the various stupidities that city planners are actually doing. If you complain, you are a conspiracy loon.
For example, I was bought up in Oxford. The City Council has spent a couple of decades fouling up the city centre - making it worse for buses and bicycle users. The location of the coach station is actually insane.
Nearby, Abingdon tried to pedestrianise the city centre without bothering to work out the dynamics. So the shopping centre died.
The problem is that some of the planners seem fail to understand the non-linear nature of humans and their artefacts. Imposing fixed solutions is guaranteed to fail.
The intensity of the attack in that Grauniad column seems designed to stoke the "conspiracy theory"...
The 15-minute cities article struck a chord. Why are the pavements so shocking in our towns and cities?
As a wheelchair user I find myself increasingly deciding to wheel along roads in town centres - nice smooth tarmac compared to uneven, unstable, narrow, highly-cambered pavements.
Because nobody spends any money on repairing pavements.
I think pavement parking is gong to be a big issue when the road law review comes around, as is blocking of cycle lanes. Especially around difficulty of enforcement / laws which are a mess.
I currently have a van regularly parked 90% across the pavement which is the walking route to the local primary school, and to the shops. Council can't enforce as it is not marked double yellow or zone, and is not yet adopted. Police generally aren't interested.
Plus there is a Transport Select Committee into Accessibility in Transport at present.
Locally, they have built cycle lanes. Then closed them and rebuilt them for months. Each time the road layout becomes more and more confusing. For everyone.
They still haven't given a clear guidance on whether the crossings to the bus stops are enforced in any way. So the pensioners crossing them don't know. The cyclists don't know....
Better yet, where the cycle lanes cross entry roads, no guidance has been provided on whether cars should stop before or in the cycle lane before turning.
Indecision and confusion in traffic. What could go wrong?
The council appears to be implementing this by "Build it. Oh shit. Rebuild it....."
By comparison the Nazi Holocaust is positively sensible. Hideously evil and a monstrous crime, but it had a discernible rationale - kill the Jews, as they are a racial threat to German supremacy
Say what you like about the tenets of national socialism, but at least it's an ethos!
So it’s a far-right conspiracy theory, but it’s also a brilliant idea and more places should do it?
One for the “Peak Guardian” list.
It's a very basic and sensible idea that has been around since God Knows When, which has been given a name so some people now have something to shout about.
Been in our planning system for decades - current term is "placemaking", but also under "sustainability" as in sustainable communities (which confuses some 'deep green' people, who think they own the verb). Because people keen on walking and cycling embrace the idea, parts of the car hoon lobby have gone off at the deep end, and because it sounds leftish so have a few Tory MPs.
For a bit further back look, for example, at the book about how liveable human communities can be designed to work well "A Pattern Language", by Christopher Alexander, published in 1977 - which takes an interesting approach identifying a design vocabulary of 'patterns'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pattern_Language
There's an interesting obsession parallel at the moment about "Floating Bus Stops" (recently given a name) and a blind organisation called National Federation for the Blind UK who have latched onto it and think that bus-stop bypasses behind bus stops are the end of the world. They do not engage with the reality that shopping service roads in London suburbs have been using identical setups since perhaps the 1930s, with the bus stop separated by a service road for cars and vans.
Really imo just people turning idiot into a verb. If the conspiracy people keep obsessing, it will leave space for practical politicians to implement, then the nuts will move on.
Not sure about "Peak Guardian" - the G has similar levels of nuttiness in it every week, from a different angle. Try Zoe Williams.
It's an argument about the primacy of the automobile in urban planning that goes back to 1950s America (exemplified by Robert Moses vs Jane Jacobs). It's an odd one politically, though, as it tends to cut across conventional party politics.
I think the modern issues are perhaps more political and go back further than that. All of the modern problems around motor traffic and the exclusion of everyone else were coming to light in the 1920s and 1930s.
The book I mentioned draws on models going back millennia.
As an aside, one fascinating bit of history is that here we built just under 300 miles of protected cycleway as part of road projects funded by the Ministry of Transport. A lot of it is still there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcKscQLkM3s
The 15-minute cities article struck a chord. Why are the pavements so shocking in our towns and cities?
As a wheelchair user I find myself increasingly deciding to wheel along roads in town centres - nice smooth tarmac compared to uneven, unstable, narrow, highly-cambered pavements.
As an occasional runner but who often has to run in the dark, albeit with a light, I find it safer generally to run on the tarmac road so I don't trip on an unexpected bumps in the pavement. I hop back onto the pavement if a car comes along. I imagine that is very difficult or impossible for you so you are very brave!
Youtube's dashcam channels show three recent trends. Cars jumping lights; cyclists likewise and more blatantly; and pedestrians not hearing electric cars. Round here, electric scooters were very common last year but I can't remember the last time I saw one.
I have just been to the Killing Fields of Cheoung Ek, south of Phnom Penh
I am glad I went, I fervently never want to see anything like it, ever again. Never never never. “Desolating” does not cover it
I went to bed and Siem Rep, in Cambodia, a few years ago, with the intention of visiting Angkor Wat. What was surprising were the number of very young people about; very few senior citizens or even those in the middle age. There was also a home for children who had lost limbs as a result of minds. It was very very sad. Angkor Wat, on the other hand was amazing!
Cambodia is still scarred today, you walk around and you realise that anyone over about 55 can vividly remember the hallucinatory violence of the Khmer Rouge. And almost every family will have lost people, so even the young suffer a cascade of grief and loss - there are no grandparents to mind the little kids
2-3m killed out of a population of 8m. Nothing compares in its fiercely lunatic sadism. By the end they were torturing and killing people for “laughing”
I’ve spent decades visiting Indochina (inc Cambodia) and I’ve read almost every available book on the Khmer Rouge. The subject compels me, and yet, still, after all this, I don’t really understand how and why it happened
By comparison the Nazi Holocaust is positively sensible. Hideously evil and a monstrous crime, but it had a discernible rationale - kill the Jews, as they are a racial threat to German supremacy
The cruelties of the Khmer Rouge are outwith logic, it started with class-hating Maoism but went way beyond that into a special realm of its own
Geonocidal surrealism. The cruelty and horror inherent in some surrealist art, made manifest.
The Maoist intellectuals in Peru who kicked off that fun little civil war admired Pol Pot. They were rather disconcerted when the local peasants weren't impressed with their little horror shows - the Rondas campesinas held their own art exhibitions.
On the other Nicola story of the day I was intensely uncomfortable about the police disclosing her alcohol and mental health problems yesterday, not to help in her finding but in an apparent attempt at self vindication. Sometimes authorities just need to have broader shoulders and not disclose what they know. To me, this was one of those times.
I have a friend who lives up there and says the amount of conspiracy theories and amateur sleuths turning up is unreal.
Councillors have received death threats and their details have been removed from the council website.
Whole thing is an utter shit show.
Its not great. However I have a small beef about the media complaining about people attending the site, making videos for TikTok etc while all the time having reporters AT THE SITE, FOR NO GOOD REASON.
I can only advise anyone reading the front pages shown here of the assembled Brit Nat unionist press on Sturgeon to look elsewhere for a sensible interpretation of the effect of Sturgeon's departure. They are all likely to be unanimously wrong. Only the "Crossroads" headline of the Financial Times is anything other than naive political crowing. At least as likely, is that the response of a large chunk of the Scottish electorate will be similar to that after the 2014 referendum defeat-an SNP surge behind the new leader. One Scottish Labour MP at the time (Ian Davidson) commented that all that was left to do was bayonet the wounded-naturally he lost his seat to the SNP in 2015 :-)
It's a meta structure. A conspiracy theory that allows people to rubbish complaints about the various stupidities that city planners are actually doing. If you complain, you are a conspiracy loon.
For example, I was bought up in Oxford. The City Council has spent a couple of decades fouling up the city centre - making it worse for buses and bicycle users. The location of the coach station is actually insane.
Nearby, Abingdon tried to pedestrianise the city centre without bothering to work out the dynamics. So the shopping centre died.
The problem is that some of the planners seem fail to understand the non-linear nature of humans and their artefacts. Imposing fixed solutions is guaranteed to fail.
A European city that looks similar to Oxford, would have dealt with the issue with loads of underground car parks - rather than telling people who own cars that they now have to take the bus.
I have just been to the Killing Fields of Cheoung Ek, south of Phnom Penh
I am glad I went, I fervently never want to see anything like it, ever again. Never never never. “Desolating” does not cover it
You are such a softcock.
You’ve not been, I take it. And I imagine you never will, as you proudly refuse to travel
I’ll show you the kind of thing you might see, so you do not have to leave your garage where you carefully amplify the noise of your motorbike exhausts
The 15-minute cities article struck a chord. Why are the pavements so shocking in our towns and cities?
As a wheelchair user I find myself increasingly deciding to wheel along roads in town centres - nice smooth tarmac compared to uneven, unstable, narrow, highly-cambered pavements.
Because nobody spends any money on repairing pavements.
I think pavement parking is gong to be a big issue when the road law review comes around, as is blocking of cycle lanes. Especially around difficulty of enforcement / laws which are a mess.
I currently have a van regularly parked 90% across the pavement which is the walking route to the local primary school, and to the shops. Council can't enforce as it is not marked double yellow or zone, and is not yet adopted. Police generally aren't interested.
Plus there is a Transport Select Committee into Accessibility in Transport at present.
Locally, they have built cycle lanes. Then closed them and rebuilt them for months. Each time the road layout becomes more and more confusing. For everyone.
They still haven't given a clear guidance on whether the crossings to the bus stops are enforced in any way. So the pensioners crossing them don't know. The cyclists don't know....
Better yet, where the cycle lanes cross entry roads, no guidance has been provided on whether cars should stop before or in the cycle lane before turning.
Indecision and confusion in traffic. What could go wrong?
The council appears to be implementing this by "Build it. Oh shit. Rebuild it....."
It's a meta structure. A conspiracy theory that allows people to rubbish complaints about the various stupidities that city planners are actually doing. If you complain, you are a conspiracy loon.
For example, I was bought up in Oxford. The City Council has spent a couple of decades fouling up the city centre - making it worse for buses and bicycle users. The location of the coach station is actually insane.
Nearby, Abingdon tried to pedestrianise the city centre without bothering to work out the dynamics. So the shopping centre died.
The problem is that some of the planners seem fail to understand the non-linear nature of humans and their artefacts. Imposing fixed solutions is guaranteed to fail.
A European city that looks similar to Oxford, would have dealt with the issue with loads of underground car parks - rather than telling people who own cars that they now have to take the bus.
The problem isn't the Park and Ride scheme in Oxford.
The problem is the bizarre, idiotic and ridiculous implementation of the various ideas.
I'm all for cycling in Oxford - grew up building my own bikes etc.
For example, when the Park and Ride scheme was put in, they didn't provide any security. So it became Park and Steal. And then objected to being forced to put in security, because the cost would "break the business case".
Then they didn't actually follow through on the logic of a pedestrianised city centre and insisted on running giant coaches through it to the coach station. Apparently, since huge coaches are Public Transport, they can't harm cyclists.
I have just been to the Killing Fields of Cheoung Ek, south of Phnom Penh
I am glad I went, I fervently never want to see anything like it, ever again. Never never never. “Desolating” does not cover it
You are such a softcock.
You’ve not been, I take it. And I imagine you never will, as you proudly refuse to travel
I’ll show you the kind of thing you might see, so you do not have to leave your garage where you carefully amplify the noise of your motorbike exhausts
Big fucking deal. They weren't killing the kids while you were there having a Cornetto and watching.
Have just watched the 15 minute cities question. What is it about so many 2019 Tory MPs where they look and sound thick as mince?
Back in the 60s, every city wanted a network of motorways. That time is long ago - now people want more fresh air and not being stuck in commuting queues of cars. Or even worse their fresh air outside their house being spoiled by commuting queues of someone else's cars.
So what Mince MP is objecting to is progress. Instead of having everyone commute into the centre in a car have alternatives. Have local shops and businesses - the way it was before the 1960s.
Did the local shopkeepers and business owners of old know they were part of this international socialist conspiracy...?
I've got no issue with the concept (It won't affect me as I live in a village) but the likes of Oxford Council's zoning is a bit police state.
Sure, implementation is always going to be the fiddly bit. I grew up under Rochdale MBC who proudly created the Pennine "Townships". In the early 1990s this was an odd term to use. Some of the zoning decisions this led to were sub-optimal, but that has been the case for a long time. The pockets of hardcore racism and violence in so many east Lancashire towns was as a direct result of zoning migrants and investments into specific areas.
The wider point is that morons like Mince MP are suggesting that having local shops and services is bad. So people should be forced to use cars and buses which he will be proud to vote against funding.
The 15-minute cities article struck a chord. Why are the pavements so shocking in our towns and cities?
As a wheelchair user I find myself increasingly deciding to wheel along roads in town centres - nice smooth tarmac compared to uneven, unstable, narrow, highly-cambered pavements.
Because nobody spends any money on repairing pavements.
I think pavement parking is gong to be a big issue when the road law review comes around, as is blocking of cycle lanes. Especially around difficulty of enforcement / laws which are a mess.
I currently have a van regularly parked 90% across the pavement which is the walking route to the local primary school, and to the shops. Council can't enforce as it is not marked double yellow or zone, and is not yet adopted. Police generally aren't interested.
Plus there is a Transport Select Committee into Accessibility in Transport at present.
Locally, they have built cycle lanes. Then closed them and rebuilt them for months. Each time the road layout becomes more and more confusing. For everyone.
They still haven't given a clear guidance on whether the crossings to the bus stops are enforced in any way. So the pensioners crossing them don't know. The cyclists don't know....
Better yet, where the cycle lanes cross entry roads, no guidance has been provided on whether cars should stop before or in the cycle lane before turning.
Indecision and confusion in traffic. What could go wrong?
The council appears to be implementing this by "Build it. Oh shit. Rebuild it....."
Consult the Highway Code.
Ah yes. So a cyclist comes to junction with no markings, quickly pulls out his/her phone and checks what to do in the Highway code.
Better yet, there are some faint remains of markings under a layer of asphalt.
What is needed is a clear and simple setup that everyone understands. There is a very worrying amount of hard braking going on at the moment - cars, busses and cyclists doing hard stops to avoid something. This tells me that it isn't working.
Plus the cycle lanes have been mostly closed for a year and half - since they opened!
I have just been to the Killing Fields of Cheoung Ek, south of Phnom Penh
I am glad I went, I fervently never want to see anything like it, ever again. Never never never. “Desolating” does not cover it
A fair few lefties who think Hitler was the most evil of all evil dictators might want to swing by though.
I’m not really using an evil-o-meter. Hitler would surely be right at the top of that, with maybe Mao and Stalin
It’s the weird self-harming sadism of the Khmer Rouge that strikes me
Lots of historians have tried to explain it, and failed. Yes it was commie and class based but they also slaughtered trillions of peasants. Yes initially it was urban v rural but in the end the entire nation was crucified by itself. They nailed themselves up
The Khmers themselves sometimes say they have a uniquely dark streak in their national character. The Black Khmer, the Khmer Noir (hence the Khmer Rouge). Normally this is reined in by Buddhism, but if you take that away….or so the theory goes
I have just been to the Killing Fields of Cheoung Ek, south of Phnom Penh
I am glad I went, I fervently never want to see anything like it, ever again. Never never never. “Desolating” does not cover it
You are such a softcock.
You’ve not been, I take it. And I imagine you never will, as you proudly refuse to travel
I’ll show you the kind of thing you might see, so you do not have to leave your garage where you carefully amplify the noise of your motorbike exhausts
Samuel Johnson on the Giant's Causeway: "Worth seeing, yes, but not worth going to see".
I have just been to the Killing Fields of Cheoung Ek, south of Phnom Penh
I am glad I went, I fervently never want to see anything like it, ever again. Never never never. “Desolating” does not cover it
A fair few lefties who think Hitler was the most evil of all evil dictators might want to swing by though.
I’m not really using an evil-o-meter. Hitler would surely be right at the top of that, with maybe Mao and Stalin
It’s the weird self-harming sadism of the Khmer Rouge that strikes me
Lots of historians have tried to explain it, and failed. Yes it was commie and class based but they also slaughtered trillions of peasants. Yes initially it was urban v rural but in the end the entire nation was crucified by itself. They nailed themselves up
The Khmers themselves sometimes say they have a uniquely dark streak in their national character. The Black Khmer, the Khmer Noir (hence the Khmer Rouge). Normally this is reined in by Buddhism, but if you take that away….or so the theory goes
Men Without Gods do mad things
Men Without Gods do mad things.
Lots of religious murder out there. Basically man is often pretty shit to other man.
I currently have a van regularly parked 90% across the pavement which is the walking route to the local primary school, and to the shops. Council can't enforce as it is not marked double yellow or zone, and is not yet adopted. Police generally aren't interested.
Direct action that shit. One of the many things I learned from hunt sabbing is that broken glass from a fluorescent light tube in the oil filler will completely destroy an engine in a few hours while leaving no trace of shenanigans.
I have just been to the Killing Fields of Cheoung Ek, south of Phnom Penh
I am glad I went, I fervently never want to see anything like it, ever again. Never never never. “Desolating” does not cover it
You are such a softcock.
You’ve not been, I take it. And I imagine you never will, as you proudly refuse to travel
I’ll show you the kind of thing you might see, so you do not have to leave your garage where you carefully amplify the noise of your motorbike exhausts
Big fucking deal. They weren't killing the kids while you were there having a Cornetto and watching.
The last time I was here was in 2009. I went to the UN trial of Comrade Duch in an auditorium on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. Such a strange thing, this wizened old man in the centre of an auditorium - with 3000 people watching, as he was tried for his crimes - i.e. running the Torture Chamber of Tuol Sleng and also the Killing Fields of Cheoung Ek (pictured here)
At one point in the trial Duch was asked if he “regretted anything”. He calmly replied, in a deadpan voice, “I am sorry for all the babies we smashed against trees, and so forth”.
At this point I heard a weird noise I have never heard before, nor since: it was the sound of 3000 Cambodians quietly sobbing. The assembled parents of those babies that Duch and his men smashed to death against trees
And now, 15 years later, I have seen it. There it is. The baby smashing tree
I currently have a van regularly parked 90% across the pavement which is the walking route to the local primary school, and to the shops. Council can't enforce as it is not marked double yellow or zone, and is not yet adopted. Police generally aren't interested.
Direct action that shit. One of the many things I learned from hunt sabbing is that broken glass from a fluorescent light tube in the oil filler will completely destroy an engine in a few hours while leaving no trace of shenanigans.
I have just been to the Killing Fields of Cheoung Ek, south of Phnom Penh
I am glad I went, I fervently never want to see anything like it, ever again. Never never never. “Desolating” does not cover it
A fair few lefties who think Hitler was the most evil of all evil dictators might want to swing by though.
I’m not really using an evil-o-meter. Hitler would surely be right at the top of that, with maybe Mao and Stalin
It’s the weird self-harming sadism of the Khmer Rouge that strikes me
Lots of historians have tried to explain it, and failed. Yes it was commie and class based but they also slaughtered trillions of peasants. Yes initially it was urban v rural but in the end the entire nation was crucified by itself. They nailed themselves up
The Khmers themselves sometimes say they have a uniquely dark streak in their national character. The Black Khmer, the Khmer Noir (hence the Khmer Rouge). Normally this is reined in by Buddhism, but if you take that away….or so the theory goes
Men Without Gods do mad things
No such thing as "uniquely dark streaks in national characters"
... but ok it lubes the wheels of this sort of conversation, so I'll butt out.
The 15-minute cities article struck a chord. Why are the pavements so shocking in our towns and cities?
As a wheelchair user I find myself increasingly deciding to wheel along roads in town centres - nice smooth tarmac compared to uneven, unstable, narrow, highly-cambered pavements.
Because nobody spends any money on repairing pavements.
I think pavement parking is gong to be a big issue when the road law review comes around, as is blocking of cycle lanes. Especially around difficulty of enforcement / laws which are a mess.
I currently have a van regularly parked 90% across the pavement which is the walking route to the local primary school, and to the shops. Council can't enforce as it is not marked double yellow or zone, and is not yet adopted. Police generally aren't interested.
Plus there is a Transport Select Committee into Accessibility in Transport at present.
Locally, they have built cycle lanes. Then closed them and rebuilt them for months. Each time the road layout becomes more and more confusing. For everyone.
They still haven't given a clear guidance on whether the crossings to the bus stops are enforced in any way. So the pensioners crossing them don't know. The cyclists don't know....
Better yet, where the cycle lanes cross entry roads, no guidance has been provided on whether cars should stop before or in the cycle lane before turning.
Indecision and confusion in traffic. What could go wrong?
The council appears to be implementing this by "Build it. Oh shit. Rebuild it....."
There's a bundle of questions there. How to avoid rabbit holes?
Good national guidelines exist in LTN 1/20, but Councils soft pedal them to save money, plus they don't have people who know how to sweat the detail and get it right - so they end up with huge amount of rework (some great examples around).
An example in London is where TFL roads follow guidelines for bus stops (ideally bus stop and waiting space and shelter on a large enough island, mini zebra crossing across the cycle track to get there, appropriate kerb heights for guide dogs and so on), but Boroughs often go for cheaper solutions that cause more conflict, known as "Bus Stop Boarders (BSBs)", where the people get off the bus straight onto the cycle track.
The BSBs are actually a second rate design for really tight spaces. Similarly in my area, for decades the Council went for the bottom possible option for cycling - shared pavements, which are not good enough for reasonable cycle commuting (too slow) and cause conflict.
I can post the legal position on crossings on bus stops if you like, but they are different to on-carriageway zebras - essentially because pedestrians are far safer around bikes at 10-12mph than bikes or peds are around motor vehicles at 20-40mph.
The "stop in the cycle lane or before" is a design issue in each case. A normal way to do the design would be a 5m space for one car next to the road after a "bent out" cycle track. Or a "bent in" cycle track crossing where the cycles cross close to the carriageway, so the driver has decent sightlines. The important thing is that everyone is able to tell what everyone else will be likely to do. In NL they have regulations about how much cycle track must be visible before it crosses a road, by type of road. That's what I mean by sweating the detail to make it practical and safe.
Of course there are also the complexities around transition and changing road culture, plus currently political overlays.
I have just been to the Killing Fields of Cheoung Ek, south of Phnom Penh
I am glad I went, I fervently never want to see anything like it, ever again. Never never never. “Desolating” does not cover it
A fair few lefties who think Hitler was the most evil of all evil dictators might want to swing by though.
I’m not really using an evil-o-meter. Hitler would surely be right at the top of that, with maybe Mao and Stalin
It’s the weird self-harming sadism of the Khmer Rouge that strikes me
Lots of historians have tried to explain it, and failed. Yes it was commie and class based but they also slaughtered trillions of peasants. Yes initially it was urban v rural but in the end the entire nation was crucified by itself. They nailed themselves up
The Khmers themselves sometimes say they have a uniquely dark streak in their national character. The Black Khmer, the Khmer Noir (hence the Khmer Rouge). Normally this is reined in by Buddhism, but if you take that away….or so the theory goes
Men Without Gods do mad things
Men Without Gods do mad things.
Lots of religious murder out there. Basically man is often pretty shit to other man.
It's a grim but interesting question.
Does the belief that they are doing God's work make the diminish the terror (because it acknowledges a higher power who might hold the terrorist accountable) or worse (because God is telling them to do it)? Would the Inquisitors, or Cromwell's Major Generals, have been crueller had God not been watching them?
Nicola Sturgeon has been a towering figure at the top of Scottish politics for 16 years: a strong leader, formidable opponent and important feminist role model, persisting despite the vitriol and abuse that sadly is synonymous with being a woman in public life. /
Plenty of it on here, too. 'Nippy' for one thing, though I suspect some folk don't realise the meaning.
An epithet she adopted with pride when early political opponents thought she was bossy.
For those south of the border, A Nippy Sweetie is:
A person, usually female, who annoys people just by talking. Mostly used in southern Scotland and Glasgow media. That bird over there looks alright but she's a right nippy sweetie.
But there is a fair history of insults being turned around, as Danny Alexander could tell you:
It's a meta structure. A conspiracy theory that allows people to rubbish complaints about the various stupidities that city planners are actually doing. If you complain, you are a conspiracy loon.
For example, I was bought up in Oxford. The City Council has spent a couple of decades fouling up the city centre - making it worse for buses and bicycle users. The location of the coach station is actually insane.
Nearby, Abingdon tried to pedestrianise the city centre without bothering to work out the dynamics. So the shopping centre died.
The problem is that some of the planners seem fail to understand the non-linear nature of humans and their artefacts. Imposing fixed solutions is guaranteed to fail.
A European city that looks similar to Oxford, would have dealt with the issue with loads of underground car parks - rather than telling people who own cars that they now have to take the bus.
The problem isn't the Park and Ride scheme in Oxford.
The problem is the bizarre, idiotic and ridiculous implementation of the various ideas.
I'm all for cycling in Oxford - grew up building my own bikes etc.
For example, when the Park and Ride scheme was put in, they didn't provide any security. So it became Park and Steal. And then objected to being forced to put in security, because the cost would "break the business case".
Then they didn't actually follow through on the logic of a pedestrianised city centre and insisted on running giant coaches through it to the coach station. Apparently, since huge coaches are Public Transport, they can't harm cyclists.
Which is why the shopkeepers get so annoyed with the council. There’s almost never a joined-up approach, so the result is more likely a drop in visitor numbers, at the expense of out-of-town shops and other local towns. When they first introduced the P&R is Salisbury, the last bus was at 6pm and there was one bus every half an hour, from a bus station more than half a mile from the shops.
The starting point is usually “There’s too much traffic, so how can we get fewer cars in the town centre?”, rather than “There’s to much traffic, so how can we reduce the pinch points that cause the congestion, to make the traffic flow better?”
The 15-minute cities article struck a chord. Why are the pavements so shocking in our towns and cities?
As a wheelchair user I find myself increasingly deciding to wheel along roads in town centres - nice smooth tarmac compared to uneven, unstable, narrow, highly-cambered pavements.
Because nobody spends any money on repairing pavements.
I think pavement parking is gong to be a big issue when the road law review comes around, as is blocking of cycle lanes. Especially around difficulty of enforcement / laws which are a mess.
I currently have a van regularly parked 90% across the pavement which is the walking route to the local primary school, and to the shops. Council can't enforce as it is not marked double yellow or zone, and is not yet adopted. Police generally aren't interested.
Plus there is a Transport Select Committee into Accessibility in Transport at present.
Locally, they have built cycle lanes. Then closed them and rebuilt them for months. Each time the road layout becomes more and more confusing. For everyone.
They still haven't given a clear guidance on whether the crossings to the bus stops are enforced in any way. So the pensioners crossing them don't know. The cyclists don't know....
Better yet, where the cycle lanes cross entry roads, no guidance has been provided on whether cars should stop before or in the cycle lane before turning.
Indecision and confusion in traffic. What could go wrong?
The council appears to be implementing this by "Build it. Oh shit. Rebuild it....."
There's a bundle of questions there. How to avoid rabbit holes?
Good national guidelines exist in LTN 1/20, but Councils soft pedal them to save money, plus they don't have people who know how to sweat the detail and get it right - so they end up with huge amount of rework (some great examples around).
An example in London is where TFL roads follow guidelines for bus stops (ideally bus stop and waiting space and shelter on a large enough island, mini zebra crossing across the cycle track to get there, appropriate kerb heights for guide dogs and so on), but Boroughs often go for cheaper solutions that cause more conflict, known as "Bus Stop Boarders (BSBs)", where the people get off the bus straight onto the cycle track.
The BSBs are actually a second rate design for really tight spaces. Similarly in my area, for decades the Council went for the bottom possible option for cycling - shared pavements, which are not good enough for reasonable cycle commuting (too slow) and cause conflict.
I can post the legal position on crossings on bus stops if you like, but they are different to on-carriageway zebras - essentially because pedestrians are far safer around bikes at 10-12mph than bikes or peds are around motor vehicles at 20-40mph.
The "stop in the cycle lane or before" is a design issue in each case. A normal way to do the design would be a 5m space for one car next to the road after a "bent out" cycle track. Or a "bent in" cycle track crossing where the cycles cross close to the carriageway, so the driver has decent sightlines. The important thing is that everyone is able to tell what everyone else will be likely to do. In NL they have regulations about how much cycle track must be visible before it crosses a road, by type of road. That's what I mean by sweating the detail to make it practical and safe.
Of course there are also the complexities around transition and changing road culture, plus currently political overlays.
The bent in cycle tracks are one of the things they are re-re-re-implementing badly.
"That's what I mean by sweating the detail to make it practical and safe." - THIS
I have just been to the Killing Fields of Cheoung Ek, south of Phnom Penh
I am glad I went, I fervently never want to see anything like it, ever again. Never never never. “Desolating” does not cover it
A fair few lefties who think Hitler was the most evil of all evil dictators might want to swing by though.
I’m not really using an evil-o-meter. Hitler would surely be right at the top of that, with maybe Mao and Stalin
It’s the weird self-harming sadism of the Khmer Rouge that strikes me
Lots of historians have tried to explain it, and failed. Yes it was commie and class based but they also slaughtered trillions of peasants. Yes initially it was urban v rural but in the end the entire nation was crucified by itself. They nailed themselves up
The Khmers themselves sometimes say they have a uniquely dark streak in their national character. The Black Khmer, the Khmer Noir (hence the Khmer Rouge). Normally this is reined in by Buddhism, but if you take that away….or so the theory goes
Men Without Gods do mad things
No such thing as "uniquely dark streaks in national characters"
... but ok it lubes the wheels of this sort of conversation, so I'll butt out.
I’m not sure there is “no such thing”, but, more pertinently, this is not my theory. It’s a theory i have heard from historians, some of them actually Cambodian, so there you go
I have just been to the Killing Fields of Cheoung Ek, south of Phnom Penh
I am glad I went, I fervently never want to see anything like it, ever again. Never never never. “Desolating” does not cover it
A fair few lefties who think Hitler was the most evil of all evil dictators might want to swing by though.
I’m not really using an evil-o-meter. Hitler would surely be right at the top of that, with maybe Mao and Stalin
It’s the weird self-harming sadism of the Khmer Rouge that strikes me
Lots of historians have tried to explain it, and failed. Yes it was commie and class based but they also slaughtered trillions of peasants. Yes initially it was urban v rural but in the end the entire nation was crucified by itself. They nailed themselves up
The Khmers themselves sometimes say they have a uniquely dark streak in their national character. The Black Khmer, the Khmer Noir (hence the Khmer Rouge). Normally this is reined in by Buddhism, but if you take that away….or so the theory goes
Men Without Gods do mad things
Men Without Gods do mad things.
Lots of religious murder out there. Basically man is often pretty shit to other man.
It's a grim but interesting question.
Does the belief that they are doing God's work make the diminish the terror (because it acknowledges a higher power who might hold the terrorist accountable) or worse (because God is telling them to do it)? Would the Inquisitors, or Cromwell's Major Generals, have been crueller had God not been watching them?
The most evil regimes have often been atheistic or quasi atheistic
The Nazis The USSR under Stalin and Lenin Mao’s China Pol Pot’s Cambodia
However this may just be coincidence, atheism as a way of thinking is a fairly recent phenomenon, and it’s only recently that humanity has gained the industrial ability (trains, gas chambers, et al) to slaughter people en masse
And there were plenty of super religious societies in the past that were phenomenally sadistic, The Aztecs were quite out there
The 15-minute cities article struck a chord. Why are the pavements so shocking in our towns and cities?
As a wheelchair user I find myself increasingly deciding to wheel along roads in town centres - nice smooth tarmac compared to uneven, unstable, narrow, highly-cambered pavements.
As an occasional runner but who often has to run in the dark, albeit with a light, I find it safer generally to run on the tarmac road so I don't trip on an unexpected bumps in the pavement. I hop back onto the pavement if a car comes along. I imagine that is very difficult or impossible for you so you are very brave!
Hah yes, but I don't use the road in the dark tbf. And I am only talking about shopping high streets, which should be pedestrianised imo, resistance to which often bizarrely comes from shopkeepers.
Not that bizarre. Make it more difficult for people to put stuff in their cars and they go to out of town centres instead.
One of the other things, separate but linked to that, which is killing town centres is high parking charges.
Blimey, even I can carry a bag of shopping a few hundred yards to a car.
(Agree about car-parking charges, though. Also the sheer difficulty of paying for parking in, for example, my local town Shaftesbury last time I tried: coin-meter full, card-reader broken, pay-by-app no signal to down load yet another new parking app.)
Nicola Sturgeon has been a towering figure at the top of Scottish politics for 16 years: a strong leader, formidable opponent and important feminist role model, persisting despite the vitriol and abuse that sadly is synonymous with being a woman in public life. /
Plenty of it on here, too. 'Nippy' for one thing, though I suspect some folk don't realise the meaning.
An epithet she adopted with pride when early political opponents thought she was bossy.
For those south of the border, A Nippy Sweetie is:
A person, usually female, who annoys people just by talking. Mostly used in southern Scotland and Glasgow media. That bird over there looks alright but she's a right nippy sweetie.
But there is a fair history of insults being turned around, as Danny Alexander could tell you:
Considering how she seems to aggravate so many people by just existing its a perfect nickname, no wonder she decided to own it.
I saw voxpops on The Nine last night (Scottish news programme for my south of the wall friends) and she is either Christ or the AntiChrist depending on who they speak to. Baffling that one person can be so polarising.
And then you remember. She is the face of Independence. And for perhaps a quarter or third of the population she is the face of the kind of progressive politics they really hate. The SNP may be better finding someone who can bridge across these divides next time.
I currently have a van regularly parked 90% across the pavement which is the walking route to the local primary school, and to the shops. Council can't enforce as it is not marked double yellow or zone, and is not yet adopted. Police generally aren't interested.
Direct action that shit. One of the many things I learned from hunt sabbing is that broken glass from a fluorescent light tube in the oil filler will completely destroy an engine in a few hours while leaving no trace of shenanigans.
The 15-minute cities article struck a chord. Why are the pavements so shocking in our towns and cities?
As a wheelchair user I find myself increasingly deciding to wheel along roads in town centres - nice smooth tarmac compared to uneven, unstable, narrow, highly-cambered pavements.
Because nobody spends any money on repairing pavements.
I think pavement parking is gong to be a big issue when the road law review comes around, as is blocking of cycle lanes. Especially around difficulty of enforcement / laws which are a mess.
I currently have a van regularly parked 90% across the pavement which is the walking route to the local primary school, and to the shops. Council can't enforce as it is not marked double yellow or zone, and is not yet adopted. Police generally aren't interested.
Plus there is a Transport Select Committee into Accessibility in Transport at present.
Locally, they have built cycle lanes. Then closed them and rebuilt them for months. Each time the road layout becomes more and more confusing. For everyone.
They still haven't given a clear guidance on whether the crossings to the bus stops are enforced in any way. So the pensioners crossing them don't know. The cyclists don't know....
Better yet, where the cycle lanes cross entry roads, no guidance has been provided on whether cars should stop before or in the cycle lane before turning.
Indecision and confusion in traffic. What could go wrong?
The council appears to be implementing this by "Build it. Oh shit. Rebuild it....."
Consult the Highway Code.
Ah yes. So a cyclist comes to junction with no markings, quickly pulls out his/her phone and checks what to do in the Highway code.
Better yet, there are some faint remains of markings under a layer of asphalt.
What is needed is a clear and simple setup that everyone understands. There is a very worrying amount of hard braking going on at the moment - cars, busses and cyclists doing hard stops to avoid something. This tells me that it isn't working.
Plus the cycle lanes have been mostly closed for a year and half - since they opened!
That highlights another set of issues - maintenance. If a marking is nearly invisible, should it be followed? A problem since old ones are often not completely removed.
The 2 year old Fendon Road "Dutch Roundabout" in Cambridge is interesting, and largely a success - but the 20mph zone signs are closer to the pedestrian crossings than the HWC emergency stopping distance from 20mph, for one thing. So when people drive to reach 20mph at the sign, they end up on the crossing if not observing properly. Again - detail.
On crossings across sideroads, they tend sometimes to use Give Way markings for the cars, in addition to road hump markings where a hump has been used. But there's a lot of learning process to go through, and we do need public information films. The Govt insistence on govt-funded projects following guidelines is a good start, but is not being followed everywhere.
I have just been to the Killing Fields of Cheoung Ek, south of Phnom Penh
I am glad I went, I fervently never want to see anything like it, ever again. Never never never. “Desolating” does not cover it
A fair few lefties who think Hitler was the most evil of all evil dictators might want to swing by though.
I’m not really using an evil-o-meter. Hitler would surely be right at the top of that, with maybe Mao and Stalin
It’s the weird self-harming sadism of the Khmer Rouge that strikes me
Lots of historians have tried to explain it, and failed. Yes it was commie and class based but they also slaughtered trillions of peasants. Yes initially it was urban v rural but in the end the entire nation was crucified by itself. They nailed themselves up
The Khmers themselves sometimes say they have a uniquely dark streak in their national character. The Black Khmer, the Khmer Noir (hence the Khmer Rouge). Normally this is reined in by Buddhism, but if you take that away….or so the theory goes
Men Without Gods do mad things
Men Without Gods do mad things.
Lots of religious murder out there. Basically man is often pretty shit to other man.
It's a grim but interesting question.
Does the belief that they are doing God's work make the diminish the terror (because it acknowledges a higher power who might hold the terrorist accountable) or worse (because God is telling them to do it)? Would the Inquisitors, or Cromwell's Major Generals, have been crueller had God not been watching them?
The most evil regimes have often been atheistic or quasi atheistic
The Nazis The USSR under Stalin and Lenin Mao’s China Pol Pot’s Cambodia
However this may just be coincidence, atheism as a way of thinking is a fairly recent phenomenon, and it’s only recently that humanity has gained the industrial ability (trains, gas chambers, et al) to slaughter people en masse
And there were plenty of super religious societies in the past that were phenomenally sadistic, The Aztecs were quite out there
Do young people in the West have any awareness of the Khmer Rouge, or Pol Pot, or any of it?
My guess is no. I remember being shocked when my then 22 year old niece asked me (after a discussion of this subject) “who is Pol Pot”? She was and is well educated and intelligent, yet this horribly important chunk of history had completely passed her by
That was 10 years ago and I seriously doubt that things have got better, indeed I have evidence they have not (someone else asked me a similar question recently)
I currently have a van regularly parked 90% across the pavement which is the walking route to the local primary school, and to the shops. Council can't enforce as it is not marked double yellow or zone, and is not yet adopted. Police generally aren't interested.
Direct action that shit. One of the many things I learned from hunt sabbing is that broken glass from a fluorescent light tube in the oil filler will completely destroy an engine in a few hours while leaving no trace of shenanigans.
Breaking in to release the bonnet to open the oil filler might leave a few traces though, shirley?
In any event, if the dumb twat's engine is destroyed with no trace how's he going to learn that it was the poor parking that cost him.
I favour letting down a tyre for maximum inconvenience at little long-term damage/risk.
I have just been to the Killing Fields of Cheoung Ek, south of Phnom Penh
I am glad I went, I fervently never want to see anything like it, ever again. Never never never. “Desolating” does not cover it
A fair few lefties who think Hitler was the most evil of all evil dictators might want to swing by though.
I’m not really using an evil-o-meter. Hitler would surely be right at the top of that, with maybe Mao and Stalin
It’s the weird self-harming sadism of the Khmer Rouge that strikes me
Lots of historians have tried to explain it, and failed. Yes it was commie and class based but they also slaughtered trillions of peasants. Yes initially it was urban v rural but in the end the entire nation was crucified by itself. They nailed themselves up
The Khmers themselves sometimes say they have a uniquely dark streak in their national character. The Black Khmer, the Khmer Noir (hence the Khmer Rouge). Normally this is reined in by Buddhism, but if you take that away….or so the theory goes
Men Without Gods do mad things
Men Without Gods do mad things.
Lots of religious murder out there. Basically man is often pretty shit to other man.
It's a grim but interesting question.
Does the belief that they are doing God's work make the diminish the terror (because it acknowledges a higher power who might hold the terrorist accountable) or worse (because God is telling them to do it)? Would the Inquisitors, or Cromwell's Major Generals, have been crueller had God not been watching them?
The most evil regimes have often been atheistic or quasi atheistic
The Nazis The USSR under Stalin and Lenin Mao’s China Pol Pot’s Cambodia
However this may just be coincidence, atheism as a way of thinking is a fairly recent phenomenon, and it’s only recently that humanity has gained the industrial ability (trains, gas chambers, et al) to slaughter people en masse
And there were plenty of super religious societies in the past that were phenomenally sadistic, The Aztecs were quite out there
There is no point in blaming God for human evils if you think there isn't a god. If that's true then humans acting and thinking humanly do all these evils, whether they are atheist or religious. The problem of human evil is as much a problem for humanists as it is for the religious.
I have just been to the Killing Fields of Cheoung Ek, south of Phnom Penh
I am glad I went, I fervently never want to see anything like it, ever again. Never never never. “Desolating” does not cover it
A fair few lefties who think Hitler was the most evil of all evil dictators might want to swing by though.
I’m not really using an evil-o-meter. Hitler would surely be right at the top of that, with maybe Mao and Stalin
It’s the weird self-harming sadism of the Khmer Rouge that strikes me
Lots of historians have tried to explain it, and failed. Yes it was commie and class based but they also slaughtered trillions of peasants. Yes initially it was urban v rural but in the end the entire nation was crucified by itself. They nailed themselves up
The Khmers themselves sometimes say they have a uniquely dark streak in their national character. The Black Khmer, the Khmer Noir (hence the Khmer Rouge). Normally this is reined in by Buddhism, but if you take that away….or so the theory goes
Men Without Gods do mad things
Men Without Gods do mad things.
Lots of religious murder out there. Basically man is often pretty shit to other man.
It's a grim but interesting question.
Does the belief that they are doing God's work make the diminish the terror (because it acknowledges a higher power who might hold the terrorist accountable) or worse (because God is telling them to do it)? Would the Inquisitors, or Cromwell's Major Generals, have been crueller had God not been watching them?
The most evil regimes have often been atheistic or quasi atheistic
The Nazis The USSR under Stalin and Lenin Mao’s China Pol Pot’s Cambodia
However this may just be coincidence, atheism as a way of thinking is a fairly recent phenomenon, and it’s only recently that humanity has gained the industrial ability (trains, gas chambers, et al) to slaughter people en masse
And there were plenty of super religious societies in the past that were phenomenally sadistic, The Aztecs were quite out there
The most evil regimes have generally had some strong belief system where a higher cause justifies the atrocities. It doesn't really matter whether it's theological.
That may be religion - killing unbelievers to force conversion and save more souls It may be political - protecting the higher cause, e.g. communism, from the evil within (or without) It may be racial - protecting the purity of the 'native' peoples' whose land this really is
That's probably why real democracies don't tend to do such bad things, at least to their own societies. There are too many viewpoints, nuance and shades of grey to get enough people to fervently believe in the justification of killing many of their fellow citizens. Killing citizens of other countries is still possible at large scale.
The 15-minute cities article struck a chord. Why are the pavements so shocking in our towns and cities?
As a wheelchair user I find myself increasingly deciding to wheel along roads in town centres - nice smooth tarmac compared to uneven, unstable, narrow, highly-cambered pavements.
Because nobody spends any money on repairing pavements.
I think pavement parking is gong to be a big issue when the road law review comes around, as is blocking of cycle lanes. Especially around difficulty of enforcement / laws which are a mess.
I currently have a van regularly parked 90% across the pavement which is the walking route to the local primary school, and to the shops. Council can't enforce as it is not marked double yellow or zone, and is not yet adopted. Police generally aren't interested.
Plus there is a Transport Select Committee into Accessibility in Transport at present.
Locally, they have built cycle lanes. Then closed them and rebuilt them for months. Each time the road layout becomes more and more confusing. For everyone.
They still haven't given a clear guidance on whether the crossings to the bus stops are enforced in any way. So the pensioners crossing them don't know. The cyclists don't know....
Better yet, where the cycle lanes cross entry roads, no guidance has been provided on whether cars should stop before or in the cycle lane before turning.
Indecision and confusion in traffic. What could go wrong?
The council appears to be implementing this by "Build it. Oh shit. Rebuild it....."
There's a bundle of questions there. How to avoid rabbit holes?
Good national guidelines exist in LTN 1/20, but Councils soft pedal them to save money, plus they don't have people who know how to sweat the detail and get it right - so they end up with huge amount of rework (some great examples around).
An example in London is where TFL roads follow guidelines for bus stops (ideally bus stop and waiting space and shelter on a large enough island, mini zebra crossing across the cycle track to get there, appropriate kerb heights for guide dogs and so on), but Boroughs often go for cheaper solutions that cause more conflict, known as "Bus Stop Boarders (BSBs)", where the people get off the bus straight onto the cycle track.
The BSBs are actually a second rate design for really tight spaces. Similarly in my area, for decades the Council went for the bottom possible option for cycling - shared pavements, which are not good enough for reasonable cycle commuting (too slow) and cause conflict.
I can post the legal position on crossings on bus stops if you like, but they are different to on-carriageway zebras - essentially because pedestrians are far safer around bikes at 10-12mph than bikes or peds are around motor vehicles at 20-40mph.
The "stop in the cycle lane or before" is a design issue in each case. A normal way to do the design would be a 5m space for one car next to the road after a "bent out" cycle track. Or a "bent in" cycle track crossing where the cycles cross close to the carriageway, so the driver has decent sightlines. The important thing is that everyone is able to tell what everyone else will be likely to do. In NL they have regulations about how much cycle track must be visible before it crosses a road, by type of road. That's what I mean by sweating the detail to make it practical and safe.
Of course there are also the complexities around transition and changing road culture, plus currently political overlays.
The bent in cycle tracks are one of the things they are re-re-re-implementing badly.
"That's what I mean by sweating the detail to make it practical and safe." - THIS
Absolutely - one of the "basic principles" in the LTN1/20 is that cycle infra design should be by teams including people who cycle on the roads. Our local one in Notts is light on that.
So it needs very active and knowledgeable local lobby groups. Two problems are 1 - that here it is normally only a fortnight to comment, which is not a lot when the thing needs a ground up reworking, and 2 - that national funding comes in short cycles demanding immediate responses.
I have just been to the Killing Fields of Cheoung Ek, south of Phnom Penh
I am glad I went, I fervently never want to see anything like it, ever again. Never never never. “Desolating” does not cover it
A fair few lefties who think Hitler was the most evil of all evil dictators might want to swing by though.
I’m not really using an evil-o-meter. Hitler would surely be right at the top of that, with maybe Mao and Stalin
It’s the weird self-harming sadism of the Khmer Rouge that strikes me
Lots of historians have tried to explain it, and failed. Yes it was commie and class based but they also slaughtered trillions of peasants. Yes initially it was urban v rural but in the end the entire nation was crucified by itself. They nailed themselves up
The Khmers themselves sometimes say they have a uniquely dark streak in their national character. The Black Khmer, the Khmer Noir (hence the Khmer Rouge). Normally this is reined in by Buddhism, but if you take that away….or so the theory goes
Men Without Gods do mad things
Men Without Gods do mad things.
Lots of religious murder out there. Basically man is often pretty shit to other man.
It's a grim but interesting question.
Does the belief that they are doing God's work make the diminish the terror (because it acknowledges a higher power who might hold the terrorist accountable) or worse (because God is telling them to do it)? Would the Inquisitors, or Cromwell's Major Generals, have been crueller had God not been watching them?
The most evil regimes have often been atheistic or quasi atheistic
The Nazis The USSR under Stalin and Lenin Mao’s China Pol Pot’s Cambodia
However this may just be coincidence, atheism as a way of thinking is a fairly recent phenomenon, and it’s only recently that humanity has gained the industrial ability (trains, gas chambers, et al) to slaughter people en masse
And there were plenty of super religious societies in the past that were phenomenally sadistic, The Aztecs were quite out there
The atheistic or quasi atheistic societies you list used a form of state religion as part of their thing. Consider -
- A book or 2 (which most didn't read) defined the society. Apparently - Only the anointed priests could interpret the book(s). DIY interpretation a major heresy. - The state is threatened by heresy everywhere. Witches under every bed. - The all powerful, perfect state is therefore under constant threat. - This is assuaged by regularly finding nests of heretics. - Problems with the society are always caused by heretics. Since the plan is perfect. Therefore the solution to every problem is to find more heretics.
The 15-minute cities article struck a chord. Why are the pavements so shocking in our towns and cities?
As a wheelchair user I find myself increasingly deciding to wheel along roads in town centres - nice smooth tarmac compared to uneven, unstable, narrow, highly-cambered pavements.
As an occasional runner but who often has to run in the dark, albeit with a light, I find it safer generally to run on the tarmac road so I don't trip on an unexpected bumps in the pavement. I hop back onto the pavement if a car comes along. I imagine that is very difficult or impossible for you so you are very brave!
Hah yes, but I don't use the road in the dark tbf. And I am only talking about shopping high streets, which should be pedestrianised imo, resistance to which often bizarrely comes from shopkeepers.
Not that bizarre. Make it more difficult for people to put stuff in their cars and they go to out of town centres instead.
One of the other things, separate but linked to that, which is killing town centres is high parking charges.
Blimey, even I can carry a bag of shopping a few hundred yards to a car.
(Agree about car-parking charges, though. Also the sheer difficulty of paying for parking in, for example, my local town Shaftesbury last time I tried: coin-meter full, card-reader broken, pay-by-app no signal to down load yet another new parking app.)
There are some parking machines that you select the tariff and then just tap your card - easy. The RUH in Bath has this, and its great (even if expensive).
And then there are the rest... Wiltshire has a app based one, which to use I have to constantly 2FA my card. i could fully sign up I suppose, but when I can see its possible to tap and go (see above) I don't see why I should.
I have just been to the Killing Fields of Cheoung Ek, south of Phnom Penh
I am glad I went, I fervently never want to see anything like it, ever again. Never never never. “Desolating” does not cover it
A fair few lefties who think Hitler was the most evil of all evil dictators might want to swing by though.
I’m not really using an evil-o-meter. Hitler would surely be right at the top of that, with maybe Mao and Stalin
It’s the weird self-harming sadism of the Khmer Rouge that strikes me
Lots of historians have tried to explain it, and failed. Yes it was commie and class based but they also slaughtered trillions of peasants. Yes initially it was urban v rural but in the end the entire nation was crucified by itself. They nailed themselves up
The Khmers themselves sometimes say they have a uniquely dark streak in their national character. The Black Khmer, the Khmer Noir (hence the Khmer Rouge). Normally this is reined in by Buddhism, but if you take that away….or so the theory goes
Men Without Gods do mad things
Men Without Gods do mad things.
Lots of religious murder out there. Basically man is often pretty shit to other man.
It's a grim but interesting question.
Does the belief that they are doing God's work make the diminish the terror (because it acknowledges a higher power who might hold the terrorist accountable) or worse (because God is telling them to do it)? Would the Inquisitors, or Cromwell's Major Generals, have been crueller had God not been watching them?
I don't think it makes any difference. Religion is simply a different justifying rationale, a different end to justify the means. The end could be literally anything.
I currently have a van regularly parked 90% across the pavement which is the walking route to the local primary school, and to the shops. Council can't enforce as it is not marked double yellow or zone, and is not yet adopted. Police generally aren't interested.
Direct action that shit. One of the many things I learned from hunt sabbing is that broken glass from a fluorescent light tube in the oil filler will completely destroy an engine in a few hours while leaving no trace of shenanigans.
Breaking in to release the bonnet to open the oil filler might leave a few traces though, shirley?
In any event, if the dumb twat's engine is destroyed with no trace how's he going to learn that it was the poor parking that cost him.
I favour letting down a tyre for maximum inconvenience at little long-term damage/risk.
Make it at least two - he can change one and drive away, he won't have two spares...
I currently have a van regularly parked 90% across the pavement which is the walking route to the local primary school, and to the shops. Council can't enforce as it is not marked double yellow or zone, and is not yet adopted. Police generally aren't interested.
Direct action that shit. One of the many things I learned from hunt sabbing is that broken glass from a fluorescent light tube in the oil filler will completely destroy an engine in a few hours while leaving no trace of shenanigans.
Breaking in to release the bonnet to open the oil filler might leave a few traces though, shirley?
For older vehicle with a Bowden cable on the bonnet release you can do it seconds, either from the front or from underneath, with a welding rod with a bend on the end.
I have just been to the Killing Fields of Cheoung Ek, south of Phnom Penh
I am glad I went, I fervently never want to see anything like it, ever again. Never never never. “Desolating” does not cover it
A fair few lefties who think Hitler was the most evil of all evil dictators might want to swing by though.
I’m not really using an evil-o-meter. Hitler would surely be right at the top of that, with maybe Mao and Stalin
It’s the weird self-harming sadism of the Khmer Rouge that strikes me
Lots of historians have tried to explain it, and failed. Yes it was commie and class based but they also slaughtered trillions of peasants. Yes initially it was urban v rural but in the end the entire nation was crucified by itself. They nailed themselves up
The Khmers themselves sometimes say they have a uniquely dark streak in their national character. The Black Khmer, the Khmer Noir (hence the Khmer Rouge). Normally this is reined in by Buddhism, but if you take that away….or so the theory goes
Men Without Gods do mad things
Men Without Gods do mad things.
Lots of religious murder out there. Basically man is often pretty shit to other man.
It's a grim but interesting question.
Does the belief that they are doing God's work make the diminish the terror (because it acknowledges a higher power who might hold the terrorist accountable) or worse (because God is telling them to do it)? Would the Inquisitors, or Cromwell's Major Generals, have been crueller had God not been watching them?
The most evil regimes have often been atheistic or quasi atheistic
The Nazis The USSR under Stalin and Lenin Mao’s China Pol Pot’s Cambodia
However this may just be coincidence, atheism as a way of thinking is a fairly recent phenomenon, and it’s only recently that humanity has gained the industrial ability (trains, gas chambers, et al) to slaughter people en masse
And there were plenty of super religious societies in the past that were phenomenally sadistic, The Aztecs were quite out there
There is no point in blaming God for human evils if you think there isn't a god. If that's true then humans acting and thinking humanly do all these evils, whether they are atheist or religious. The problem of human evil is as much a problem for humanists as it is for the religious.
You can blame religion though. Although, as per my other comment replying to Leon, it's strong beliefs more than religion per se that I think can lead to such atrocities.
Do young people in the West have any awareness of the Khmer Rouge, or Pol Pot, or any of it?
My guess is no. I remember being shocked when my then 22 year old niece asked me (after a discussion of this subject) “who is Pol Pot”? She was and is well educated and intelligent, yet this horribly important chunk of history had completely passed her by
That was 10 years ago and I seriously doubt that things have got better, indeed I have evidence they have not (someone else asked me a similar question recently)
Too far away (Nazi Germany being an existential threat and flying bombers over the UK and all). Remote little Cambodia? No need to think about that.
I also think this applies to Mao's China. How much do our youngsters know about Mao? Probably not much. I'm not sure about quite a few on PB on that front TBH.
The 15-minute cities article struck a chord. Why are the pavements so shocking in our towns and cities?
As a wheelchair user I find myself increasingly deciding to wheel along roads in town centres - nice smooth tarmac compared to uneven, unstable, narrow, highly-cambered pavements.
As an occasional runner but who often has to run in the dark, albeit with a light, I find it safer generally to run on the tarmac road so I don't trip on an unexpected bumps in the pavement. I hop back onto the pavement if a car comes along. I imagine that is very difficult or impossible for you so you are very brave!
Hah yes, but I don't use the road in the dark tbf. And I am only talking about shopping high streets, which should be pedestrianised imo, resistance to which often bizarrely comes from shopkeepers.
Not that bizarre. Make it more difficult for people to put stuff in their cars and they go to out of town centres instead.
One of the other things, separate but linked to that, which is killing town centres is high parking charges.
Blimey, even I can carry a bag of shopping a few hundred yards to a car.
(Agree about car-parking charges, though. Also the sheer difficulty of paying for parking in, for example, my local town Shaftesbury last time I tried: coin-meter full, card-reader broken, pay-by-app no signal to down load yet another new parking app.)
"I can carry a bag of shopping a few hundred yards to a car"
Good for you.
But can everyone? Can the pensioner get her trolley to wheel over the crapulent pavement? Can she get it onto the bus?
The sane way to do this, is to think of use cases. A large number of them. How does each work?
As opposed to "I hate X. Lets drop a lead weight on that".
I currently have a van regularly parked 90% across the pavement which is the walking route to the local primary school, and to the shops. Council can't enforce as it is not marked double yellow or zone, and is not yet adopted. Police generally aren't interested.
Direct action that shit. One of the many things I learned from hunt sabbing is that broken glass from a fluorescent light tube in the oil filler will completely destroy an engine in a few hours while leaving no trace of shenanigans.
Breaking in to release the bonnet to open the oil filler might leave a few traces though, shirley?
For older vehicle with a Bowden cable on the bonnet release you can do it seconds, either from the front or from underneath, with a welding rod with a bend on the end.
The 15-minute cities article struck a chord. Why are the pavements so shocking in our towns and cities?
As a wheelchair user I find myself increasingly deciding to wheel along roads in town centres - nice smooth tarmac compared to uneven, unstable, narrow, highly-cambered pavements.
Because nobody spends any money on repairing pavements.
I think pavement parking is gong to be a big issue when the road law review comes around, as is blocking of cycle lanes. Especially around difficulty of enforcement / laws which are a mess.
I currently have a van regularly parked 90% across the pavement which is the walking route to the local primary school, and to the shops. Council can't enforce as it is not marked double yellow or zone, and is not yet adopted. Police generally aren't interested.
Plus there is a Transport Select Committee into Accessibility in Transport at present.
Locally, they have built cycle lanes. Then closed them and rebuilt them for months. Each time the road layout becomes more and more confusing. For everyone.
They still haven't given a clear guidance on whether the crossings to the bus stops are enforced in any way. So the pensioners crossing them don't know. The cyclists don't know....
Better yet, where the cycle lanes cross entry roads, no guidance has been provided on whether cars should stop before or in the cycle lane before turning.
Indecision and confusion in traffic. What could go wrong?
The council appears to be implementing this by "Build it. Oh shit. Rebuild it....."
There's a bundle of questions there. How to avoid rabbit holes?
Good national guidelines exist in LTN 1/20, but Councils soft pedal them to save money, plus they don't have people who know how to sweat the detail and get it right - so they end up with huge amount of rework (some great examples around).
An example in London is where TFL roads follow guidelines for bus stops (ideally bus stop and waiting space and shelter on a large enough island, mini zebra crossing across the cycle track to get there, appropriate kerb heights for guide dogs and so on), but Boroughs often go for cheaper solutions that cause more conflict, known as "Bus Stop Boarders (BSBs)", where the people get off the bus straight onto the cycle track.
The BSBs are actually a second rate design for really tight spaces. Similarly in my area, for decades the Council went for the bottom possible option for cycling - shared pavements, which are not good enough for reasonable cycle commuting (too slow) and cause conflict.
I can post the legal position on crossings on bus stops if you like, but they are different to on-carriageway zebras - essentially because pedestrians are far safer around bikes at 10-12mph than bikes or peds are around motor vehicles at 20-40mph.
The "stop in the cycle lane or before" is a design issue in each case. A normal way to do the design would be a 5m space for one car next to the road after a "bent out" cycle track. Or a "bent in" cycle track crossing where the cycles cross close to the carriageway, so the driver has decent sightlines. The important thing is that everyone is able to tell what everyone else will be likely to do. In NL they have regulations about how much cycle track must be visible before it crosses a road, by type of road. That's what I mean by sweating the detail to make it practical and safe.
Of course there are also the complexities around transition and changing road culture, plus currently political overlays.
The bent in cycle tracks are one of the things they are re-re-re-implementing badly.
"That's what I mean by sweating the detail to make it practical and safe." - THIS
There's a nice proverb about designing schemes - "if you need to put signs up to tell people what to do, you've got it wrong". Which is about expectation and appearance, and eg why people drive to the "felt safe speed" appearance of the street, rather than to the marked speed limit.
Comments
Councillors have received death threats and their details have been removed from the council website.
Whole thing is an utter shit show.
There was a very good Lancashire attack against a fairly strong Gloucestershire batting lineup on a sporting Cheltenham pitch.
Anderson made the rest of the Lancashire attack look like bungling amateurs. When he was bowling Gloucestershire's batsmen were completely bamboozled. No runs on offer and chances going everywhere. Fortunately most didn't go to hand, but he took two wickets for 25 runs off 14 overs and effected a run out. Mahmood and Bailey were thrashed everywhere and picked up wickets from desperation shots.
Sadly we were deprived of what might have been a very entertaining match when a rainstorm literally blew the covers off and soaked the pitch. But it was some experience.
And not just for me. Never seen Cheltenham College so crowded. There must have been 7,000 in the crowd. They literally ran out of chairs!
Apart from Bazball.
Intensely flattered you 'liked' a post I did about Scotland, by the way.
https://whatscotlandthinks.org/questions/how-would-you-vote-in-the-in-a-scottish-independence-referendum-if-held-now-ask/?removed
In the unlikely event that her countrymen do not allow her to step down, the Scottish first minister has confirmed she will ignore their opinion and plough on with a second resignation regardless.
https://www.thedailymash.co.uk/politics/sturgeon-prepared-to-hold-second-resignation-if-this-one-doesnt-work-20230215231670
50% have been persuaded by the snake oil salesmen SNP and the blatantly pro Nat media so don't count.
At the risk of incurring the wrath of Anabozina, simples.
Was it because of the police investigation? Was it because she was about to be defeated at her special conference? Was it because of the mounting crises that are engulfing her government? Was it that the slide backwards in the independence polls just left her too exhausted to continue?
Only Nicola Sturgeon knows why she decided to wave goodbye to the SNP today. What we do know is that she leaves behind a party and a movement that will have to deal with the many crises she leaves behind without her political talents.
https://www.notesonnationalism.com/p/nicola-sturgeons-legacy
The Hundred is like BBC3. In thrall to an adult's perception of teenagers' tastes but terrified it might lose their attention to their smartphones.
Whereas, I suppose, the T20 Blast is like BBC1. You're not supposed to take it too seriously; it's undemanding and upbeat.
And the one day tournament like BBC2, and the county championship like BBC4, I suppose.
I am glad I went, I fervently never want to see anything like it, ever again. Never never never. “Desolating” does not cover it
Things could be a lot worse. Imagine the Britain of today, but with awful beer, blackouts, Liz Truss firmly ensconced as PM, and no footpaths to keep wandering beta cucks away from the roads?
https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/scottish-independence-scotland-would-vote-no-to-independence-by-12-point-margin-poll-finds-4024888
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/homenews/23325134.ferguson-marine-sturgeon-quit-inquiry-demanded-500m-bill/?ref=twtrec
Angkor Wat, on the other hand was amazing!
Every year Jimmy Anderson has taken a Test wicket for England.
A thread... 🧵
#NZvENG #BBCCricket #JimmyAnderson
https://twitter.com/bbctms/status/1626146236360273920?s=20
Defence lawyers in rape cases are having excellent results.
Centrica's profits are up.
He's never in, and there's big telly facing out the shop window of the office which is always switched off.
Nonetheless, there is still a vibrant independent brewing scene (especially in cities like Manchester, Sheffield and Nottingham), the heart of which I hope survives this not-recession.
Deeply satisfying.
What is needed is persistent voting and polling showing 60%+ firm support for a coherent independence plan in which the difficult questions are addressed and resolved.
Try asking whether a clear majority of Scots want a trade barrier and customs posts at Gretna and Berwick.
One of the other things, separate but linked to that, which is killing town centres is high parking charges.
2-3m killed out of a population of 8m. Nothing compares in its fiercely lunatic sadism. By the end they were torturing and killing people for “laughing”
I’ve spent decades visiting Indochina (inc Cambodia) and I’ve read almost every available book on the Khmer Rouge. The subject compels me, and yet, still, after all this, I don’t really understand how and why it happened
By comparison the Nazi Holocaust is positively sensible. Hideously evil and a monstrous crime, but it had a discernible rationale - kill the Jews, as they are a racial threat to German supremacy
The cruelties of the Khmer Rouge are outwith logic, it started with class-hating Maoism but went way beyond that into a special realm of its own
This morning Russian state TV host Ruslan Ostashko expresses shock at how the Israeli foreign minister could be visiting a "Nazi state" to meet its "Jewish president, who’s also a Nazi"
Maybe because Ukraine isn’t a Nazi state and Zelensky isn’t a Nazi? Just an idea
https://twitter.com/francis_scarr/status/1626152933833293828?s=20
If you complain, you are a conspiracy loon.
For example, I was bought up in Oxford. The City Council has spent a couple of decades fouling up the city centre - making it worse for buses and bicycle users. The location of the coach station is actually insane.
Nearby, Abingdon tried to pedestrianise the city centre without bothering to work out the dynamics. So the shopping centre died.
The problem is that some of the planners seem fail to understand the non-linear nature of humans and their artefacts. Imposing fixed solutions is guaranteed to fail.
They still haven't given a clear guidance on whether the crossings to the bus stops are enforced in any way. So the pensioners crossing them don't know. The cyclists don't know....
Better yet, where the cycle lanes cross entry roads, no guidance has been provided on whether cars should stop before or in the cycle lane before turning.
Indecision and confusion in traffic. What could go wrong?
The council appears to be implementing this by "Build it. Oh shit. Rebuild it....."
There's also political background - lobbying and funding by the auto industry, and consortia buying up and reducing public transit systems. Essentially 'let's push competitors out and make them dependent on us'.
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/apr/25/story-cities-los-angeles-great-american-streetcar-scandal
The book I mentioned draws on models going back millennia.
As an aside, one fascinating bit of history is that here we built just under 300 miles of protected cycleway as part of road projects funded by the Ministry of Transport. A lot of it is still there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcKscQLkM3s
The Maoist intellectuals in Peru who kicked off that fun little civil war admired Pol Pot. They were rather disconcerted when the local peasants weren't impressed with their little horror shows - the Rondas campesinas held their own art exhibitions.
Only the "Crossroads" headline of the Financial Times is anything other than naive political crowing.
At least as likely, is that the response of a large chunk of the Scottish electorate will be similar to that after the 2014 referendum defeat-an SNP surge behind the new leader. One Scottish Labour MP at the time (Ian Davidson) commented that all that was left to do was bayonet the wounded-naturally he lost his seat to the SNP in 2015 :-)
I’ll show you the kind of thing you might see, so you do not have to leave your garage where you carefully amplify the noise of your motorbike exhausts
The problem is the bizarre, idiotic and ridiculous implementation of the various ideas.
I'm all for cycling in Oxford - grew up building my own bikes etc.
For example, when the Park and Ride scheme was put in, they didn't provide any security. So it became Park and Steal. And then objected to being forced to put in security, because the cost would "break the business case".
Then they didn't actually follow through on the logic of a pedestrianised city centre and insisted on running giant coaches through it to the coach station.
Apparently, since huge coaches are Public Transport, they can't harm cyclists.
The wider point is that morons like Mince MP are suggesting that having local shops and services is bad. So people should be forced to use cars and buses which he will be proud to vote against funding.
Better yet, there are some faint remains of markings under a layer of asphalt.
What is needed is a clear and simple setup that everyone understands. There is a very worrying amount of hard braking going on at the moment - cars, busses and cyclists doing hard stops to avoid something. This tells me that it isn't working.
Plus the cycle lanes have been mostly closed for a year and half - since they opened!
It’s the weird self-harming sadism of the Khmer Rouge that strikes me
Lots of historians have tried to explain it, and failed. Yes it was commie and class based but they also slaughtered trillions of peasants. Yes initially it was urban v rural but in the end the entire nation was crucified by itself. They nailed themselves up
The Khmers themselves sometimes say they have a uniquely dark streak in their national character. The Black Khmer, the Khmer Noir (hence the Khmer Rouge). Normally this is reined in by Buddhism, but if you take that away….or so the theory goes
Men Without Gods do mad things
Without Godsdo mad things.Lots of religious murder out there. Basically man is often pretty shit to other man.
At one point in the trial Duch was asked if he “regretted anything”. He calmly replied, in a deadpan voice, “I am sorry for all the babies we smashed against trees, and so forth”.
At this point I heard a weird noise I have never heard before, nor since: it was the sound of 3000 Cambodians quietly sobbing. The assembled parents of those babies that Duch and his men smashed to death against trees
And now, 15 years later, I have seen it. There it is. The baby smashing tree
... but ok it lubes the wheels of this sort of conversation, so I'll butt out.
Good national guidelines exist in LTN 1/20, but Councils soft pedal them to save money, plus they don't have people who know how to sweat the detail and get it right - so they end up with huge amount of rework (some great examples around).
An example in London is where TFL roads follow guidelines for bus stops (ideally bus stop and waiting space and shelter on a large enough island, mini zebra crossing across the cycle track to get there, appropriate kerb heights for guide dogs and so on), but Boroughs often go for cheaper solutions that cause more conflict, known as "Bus Stop Boarders (BSBs)", where the people get off the bus straight onto the cycle track.
The BSBs are actually a second rate design for really tight spaces. Similarly in my area, for decades the Council went for the bottom possible option for cycling - shared pavements, which are not good enough for reasonable cycle commuting (too slow) and cause conflict.
I can post the legal position on crossings on bus stops if you like, but they are different to on-carriageway zebras - essentially because pedestrians are far safer around bikes at 10-12mph than bikes or peds are around motor vehicles at 20-40mph.
The "stop in the cycle lane or before" is a design issue in each case. A normal way to do the design would be a 5m space for one car next to the road after a "bent out" cycle track. Or a "bent in" cycle track crossing where the cycles cross close to the carriageway, so the driver has decent sightlines. The important thing is that everyone is able to tell what everyone else will be likely to do. In NL they have regulations about how much cycle track must be visible before it crosses a road, by type of road. That's what I mean by sweating the detail to make it practical and safe.
Of course there are also the complexities around transition and changing road culture, plus currently political overlays.
Does the belief that they are doing God's work make the diminish the terror (because it acknowledges a higher power who might hold the terrorist accountable) or worse (because God is telling them to do it)? Would the Inquisitors, or Cromwell's Major Generals, have been crueller had God not been watching them?
A person, usually female, who annoys people just by talking. Mostly used in southern Scotland and Glasgow media.
That bird over there looks alright but she's a right nippy sweetie.
But there is a fair history of insults being turned around, as Danny Alexander could tell you:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-23161039
The starting point is usually “There’s too much traffic, so how can we get fewer cars in the town centre?”, rather than “There’s to much traffic, so how can we reduce the pinch points that cause the congestion, to make the traffic flow better?”
"That's what I mean by sweating the detail to make it practical and safe." - THIS
The Nazis
The USSR under Stalin and Lenin
Mao’s China
Pol Pot’s Cambodia
However this may just be coincidence, atheism as a way of thinking is a fairly recent phenomenon, and it’s only recently that humanity has gained the industrial ability (trains, gas chambers, et al) to slaughter people en masse
And there were plenty of super religious societies in the past that were phenomenally sadistic, The Aztecs were quite out there
(Agree about car-parking charges, though. Also the sheer difficulty of paying for parking in, for example, my local town Shaftesbury last time I tried: coin-meter full, card-reader broken, pay-by-app no signal to down load yet another new parking app.)
I saw voxpops on The Nine last night (Scottish news programme for my south of the wall friends) and she is either Christ or the AntiChrist depending on who they speak to. Baffling that one person can be so polarising.
And then you remember. She is the face of Independence. And for perhaps a quarter or third of the population she is the face of the kind of progressive politics they really hate. The SNP may be better finding someone who can bridge across these divides next time.
The 2 year old Fendon Road "Dutch Roundabout" in Cambridge is interesting, and largely a success - but the 20mph zone signs are closer to the pedestrian crossings than the HWC emergency stopping distance from 20mph, for one thing. So when people drive to reach 20mph at the sign, they end up on the crossing if not observing properly. Again - detail.
On crossings across sideroads, they tend sometimes to use Give Way markings for the cars, in addition to road hump markings where a hump has been used. But there's a lot of learning process to go through, and we do need public information films. The Govt insistence on govt-funded projects following guidelines is a good start, but is not being followed everywhere.
... to be on that list.
Do young people in the West have any awareness of the Khmer Rouge, or Pol Pot, or any of it?
My guess is no. I remember being shocked when my then 22 year old niece asked me (after a discussion of this subject) “who is Pol Pot”? She was and is well educated and intelligent, yet this horribly important chunk of history had completely passed her by
That was 10 years ago and I seriously doubt that things have got better, indeed I have evidence they have not (someone else asked me a similar question recently)
In any event, if the dumb twat's engine is destroyed with no trace how's he going to learn that it was the poor parking that cost him.
I favour letting down a tyre for maximum inconvenience at little long-term damage/risk.
That may be religion - killing unbelievers to force conversion and save more souls
It may be political - protecting the higher cause, e.g. communism, from the evil within (or without)
It may be racial - protecting the purity of the 'native' peoples' whose land this really is
That's probably why real democracies don't tend to do such bad things, at least to their own societies. There are too many viewpoints, nuance and shades of grey to get enough people to fervently believe in the justification of killing many of their fellow citizens. Killing citizens of other countries is still possible at large scale.
So it needs very active and knowledgeable local lobby groups. Two problems are 1 - that here it is normally only a fortnight to comment, which is not a lot when the thing needs a ground up reworking, and 2 - that national funding comes in short cycles demanding immediate responses.
- A book or 2 (which most didn't read) defined the society. Apparently
- Only the anointed priests could interpret the book(s). DIY interpretation a major heresy.
- The state is threatened by heresy everywhere. Witches under every bed.
- The all powerful, perfect state is therefore under constant threat.
- This is assuaged by regularly finding nests of heretics.
- Problems with the society are always caused by heretics. Since the plan is perfect. Therefore the solution to every problem is to find more heretics.
And then there are the rest... Wiltshire has a app based one, which to use I have to constantly 2FA my card. i could fully sign up I suppose, but when I can see its possible to tap and go (see above) I don't see why I should.
I also think this applies to Mao's China. How much do our youngsters know about Mao? Probably not much. I'm not sure about quite a few on PB on that front TBH.
Good for you.
But can everyone? Can the pensioner get her trolley to wheel over the crapulent pavement? Can she get it onto the bus?
The sane way to do this, is to think of use cases. A large number of them. How does each work?
As opposed to "I hate X. Lets drop a lead weight on that".