“Politics needs to have principles or we end up with people like Boris Johnson and Liz Truss running the country, Jeremy Corbyn gave a huge boost to the Labour Party.”
Slightly missing the point that Jeremy Corbyn is a huge part of the reason we ended up with Boris Johnson and Liz Truss running the country.
Going even bigger on Uxbridge now. 21 minutes in and we haven't got to Selby yet.
25 minutes in and the loss of Labour's deposit in Somerton and Frome is the focus now.
WATO suggesting Uxbridge looks like 1992. Labour can't seal the deal.
Selby makes an appearance at 13.27.
LAB big favourites but it still looks like 300 - 340. But as I mentioned on here earlier today if they are a bit short of 326 then they can rely on LD for confidence and supply, another 20 - 25 seats.
What Uxbridge does is to give the clearest indication as to how to campaign. Have a morally based national policy and a non-moral 'me' based local campaign, tailored to grudges in each area. Basically the strategy is 'We want to do the right thing (housing, green stuff, net zero, anything that costs the voter money) but your constituency happens to be a justified exception'.
Getting elected policy and running the country policy are going to part company even more. Learn from the LDs.
And if I have to repeat it again then so be it but people aren't about to jump on bikes, even to go a mile or three if they are not a) youngish; or b) of the athletic type to start with. It is a huge faff plus you need all the kit plus it starts raining plus you need to find somewhere to put it plus you aren't sure where you will start and finish and so forth.
In central cities you can use Boris bikes or their equivalents but this is only a small area (anywhere west of Gunnersbury or indeed if you want to cycle from Camden to Flask Walk you are stuffed).
ULEZ zones just concentrate traffic in certain areas where congestion is made worse. I doubt it stops much traffic at all but would be interested to see the stats.
This is just another example of perception vs reality. None of these things are really things that prevent you using a bicycle to get around, they’re just barriers that exist in your mind.
I have commuted to work in jeans & a shirt in all weathers by bicycle. What is this ”kit” you refer to?
In the modern world, e-bikes completely eliminate any need to be athletic, but honestly even before there was no need to be athletic for utility cycling: Out of breath? Go slower! Nobody cares.
& I really don’t understand the start & finish thing. I start at home & finish where-ever I want to get to. Lock the bike up, done. Are there exceptions to this? Sure! But again we have this weird absolutism that if the bike can’t solve /everything/ then it doesn’t deserve consideration. I don’t use the bike all the time: Sometimes I (shock, horror, etc) drive! Or take the train. Neither of these invalidates my bicycle.
It’s fine to not use a bike - lots of people can’t for a variety of perfectly good reasons! - but lots of people seem to have this idea about cycling that it’s somehow meant to be hard work or difficult or they have to do it all the time. None of these things are true: You can cycle a little bit, in ordinary clothes, at comfortable speeds, in whatever weather you’re happy to cycle in.
Nah you don't understand because you are a cyclist. You need kit because you need a helmet and a lock and to know where and what to do at the other end and you might be in a muck sweat or carrying bags to/from Sainsburys, and, if you are in the UK, likely some wet weather kit. Plus you are running a risk several times higher than if you are in a motor vehicle and again, some people aren't comfortable with that.
It is something that is for some people (young, and/or athletic) and manifestly not for others. It's a bit like cafe society - nothing stopping the UK being like France in that respect except that's not what our society is geared up to be like.
That's rather assuming an unchanging society.
Over time, things change. Often slowly, but eventually enormously.
Take Amsterdam: if you look at pictures from 1970 there were bikes, sure. But there were many more cars. Now it is very much the other way around.
"Tim Montgomerie 🇬🇧 @montie Let's pray for all the staff at Coutts. They'll be v busy tmrw closing the accounts of everyone in Uxbridge 2:34 AM · Jul 21, 2023"
Coutts customers do not expect to be morally judged by some counter jumping pleb
The Bud Light of ‘private’ banking.
More seriously, a lot of companies now have a serious problem with ‘activist’ young employees, who believe they should bring politics to the workplace.
Someone will move to fill the gap Coutts have now left open. REAL private banking. “Your politics are entirely your concern, Sir, all we want is your business”
That’s a bit more tempting than “if you say anything vaguely right wing we might publicly dump you and call you a racist grifter”
Yes, I can't help feeling that there might be among Coutts clientele some customers who also have right wing views. Probably to the surprise of its metropolitan staff who assume their own views are universally held.
I absolutely agree with @AndyJS that the Ashes should be six Tests.
And those venues should be:
Edgbaston Lords Trent Bridge Old Trafford Headingley The Oval
I have never been to the Rose Bowl, but am reliably informed it is in the middle of nowhere.
The TV does give a good impression of it being in the middle of nowhere, but that couldn't be further from the truth. There are at least 150,000 people living within 2 miles of the Ground. Its 2 minutes walk from a massive M & S/ Sainsburys Shopping centre, a Mcdonalds, Next, Burger King KFC etc etc
You make it sound like a soulless bowl amid a chain retail park! Exactly what should be avoided on sporting days out. The great thing about Trent Bridge, Old Trafford etc is that they are in the city close to bars and fun. Nottingham in particular is a corking Test day out. Great city.
Old Trafford is clearly the best venue on the metric of being handy for my house. But compared to other test grounds it's situation is not quite as urbane. It is between an area of town best described as commercial, and a large council estate. There is a Wetherspoons and a football pub with a horrible mural of Cristiano Ronaldo on the wall close by, the odd chippy, a Nando's - but not much else. But the centre of town is a 6 minute regular tram service away (though if 20000 people are all leaving at the same time you may wait a few trams before being able to board one!) If I was watching cricket at OT and fancied segueing smoothly into a night out I would start by getting the tram up to Deansgate and going to the Ox Noble on Liverpool Road. Or else walking the fifteen minutes to Chorlton, where there is a great choice.
Agree about Trent Bridge. Just a lovely venue.
But you walk out of Lords and you can be in a Michelin starred restaurant in about 7 minutes. Or a Primrose Hill gastropub
Lords is proper posh
If you want a Michelin starred restaurant after a day at the Test you haven't been drinking properly.
Fair
But on my last visit to Lords - I may have mentioned it, Stokes hit the greatest century in the history of Europe and there was a naked knife fight in the Long Room - I walked out of the ground and within 2 minutes I was deep into St John’s Wood and lots of expensively beautiful young women nibbling quinoa and chaffinch egg salad outside chichi cafes and I realised that’s lords really IS in a posh location
Possibly the poshest location for any major sports ground in the world?
Queens Club, I would have thought.
Burton's Court, with some tennis courts and a football/cricket pitch, upon which 22 squaddies from time to time run around after a ball, is without doubt the sports ground situated in the very most expensive real estate, and poshest environment on the planet.
Labour lost Uxbridge because it wasn't left-wing enough....
David Williams @MrDaveyWilliams · 1h I have resigned as chair of Uxbridge and South Ruislip CLP. I am also resigning my membership of the Labour Party. Politics needs to have principles or we end up with people like Boris Johnson and Liz Truss running the country, Jeremy Corbyn gave a huge boost to the Labour Party
And if I have to repeat it again then so be it but people aren't about to jump on bikes, even to go a mile or three if they are not a) youngish; or b) of the athletic type to start with. It is a huge faff plus you need all the kit plus it starts raining plus you need to find somewhere to put it plus you aren't sure where you will start and finish and so forth.
In central cities you can use Boris bikes or their equivalents but this is only a small area (anywhere west of Gunnersbury or indeed if you want to cycle from Camden to Flask Walk you are stuffed).
ULEZ zones just concentrate traffic in certain areas where congestion is made worse. I doubt it stops much traffic at all but would be interested to see the stats.
This is just another example of perception vs reality. None of these things are really things that prevent you using a bicycle to get around, they’re just barriers that exist in your mind.
I have commuted to work in jeans & a shirt in all weathers by bicycle. What is this ”kit” you refer to?
In the modern world, e-bikes completely eliminate any need to be athletic, but honestly even before there was no need to be athletic for utility cycling: Out of breath? Go slower! Nobody cares.
& I really don’t understand the start & finish thing. I start at home & finish where-ever I want to get to. Lock the bike up, done. Are there exceptions to this? Sure! But again we have this weird absolutism that if the bike can’t solve /everything/ then it doesn’t deserve consideration. I don’t use the bike all the time: Sometimes I (shock, horror, etc) drive! Or take the train. Neither of these invalidates my bicycle.
It’s fine to not use a bike - lots of people can’t for a variety of perfectly good reasons! - but lots of people seem to have this idea about cycling that it’s somehow meant to be hard work or difficult or they have to do it all the time. None of these things are true: You can cycle a little bit, in ordinary clothes, at comfortable speeds, in whatever weather you’re happy to cycle in.
Nah you don't understand because you are a cyclist. You need kit because you need a helmet and a lock and to know where and what to do at the other end and you might be in a muck sweat or carrying bags to/from Sainsburys, and, if you are in the UK, likely some wet weather kit. Plus you are running a risk several times higher than if you are in a motor vehicle and again, some people aren't comfortable with that.
It is something that is for some people (young, and/or athletic) and manifestly not for others. It's a bit like cafe society - nothing stopping the UK being like France in that respect except that's not what our society is geared up to be like.
That's rather assuming an unchanging society.
Over time, things change. Often slowly, but eventually enormously.
Take Amsterdam: if you look at pictures from 1970 there were bikes, sure. But there were many more cars. Now it is very much the other way around.
Mostly because they made cycling more attractive, rather than adding punitive costs to motoring. You have to bring the people with you, rather than the all-stick and no-carrot approach preferred in the UK at the moment.
Chris Mason has interviewed a former Cabinet Minister on the right of the party who says now need a total change of direction, get rid of Hunt and Gove and put in conservatives like Patel and Mogg. Who can it be? Whoever, he's got the winning formula......
I know it’s an unpopular view, but they should have all got behind Liz Truss instead of stabbing her in the back.
I would normally agree that one shouldn’t just depose a sitting PM because their policies have gone down like a lead balloon. You have to tow the party line and give them time to recover.
However, in that instance, the problem wasn’t just that Truss nuked the economy but that she clearly wasn’t up to the job. She panicked, she came across as unsteady and uncomprehending, she went to ground and she shot her authority by sacking Kwarteng and bringing Hunt in.
She just wasn’t going to recover and it was clear for all to see. She didn’t have it in her, and she needed to be put out of the misery before she really went off the rails.
"Tim Montgomerie 🇬🇧 @montie Let's pray for all the staff at Coutts. They'll be v busy tmrw closing the accounts of everyone in Uxbridge 2:34 AM · Jul 21, 2023"
Coutts customers do not expect to be morally judged by some counter jumping pleb
The Bud Light of ‘private’ banking.
More seriously, a lot of companies now have a serious problem with ‘activist’ young employees, who believe they should bring politics to the workplace.
Someone will move to fill the gap Coutts have now left open. REAL private banking. “Your politics are entirely your concern, Sir, all we want is your business”
That’s a bit more tempting than “if you say anything vaguely right wing we might publicly dump you and call you a racist grifter”
This week has been good news for the Hoares and the Swiss.
If there’s one thing that private banking stands for, it’s discretion. Not cancelling someone with a high profile, just because your staff don’t like their beliefs.
I used to work for a company who banked with Hoare's - largely because the founder was such a disreputable rogue that no regular bank would touch him.
"Tim Montgomerie 🇬🇧 @montie Let's pray for all the staff at Coutts. They'll be v busy tmrw closing the accounts of everyone in Uxbridge 2:34 AM · Jul 21, 2023"
Coutts customers do not expect to be morally judged by some counter jumping pleb
The Bud Light of ‘private’ banking.
More seriously, a lot of companies now have a serious problem with ‘activist’ young employees, who believe they should bring politics to the workplace.
Someone will move to fill the gap Coutts have now left open. REAL private banking. “Your politics are entirely your concern, Sir, all we want is your business”
That’s a bit more tempting than “if you say anything vaguely right wing we might publicly dump you and call you a racist grifter”
This week has been good news for the Hoares and the Swiss.
If there’s one thing that private banking stands for, it’s discretion. Not cancelling someone with a high profile, just because your staff don’t like their beliefs.
It is the purest example yet of Go Woke. Go Broke
Will Coutts be ejecting wealthy clients for transphobia, next? Why not? If they can cancel Farage for being "xenophobic" then surely transphobia is even worse. If I was a Coutts customer I'd be seeking a way out, sharpish, just in case
And if I have to repeat it again then so be it but people aren't about to jump on bikes, even to go a mile or three if they are not a) youngish; or b) of the athletic type to start with. It is a huge faff plus you need all the kit plus it starts raining plus you need to find somewhere to put it plus you aren't sure where you will start and finish and so forth.
In central cities you can use Boris bikes or their equivalents but this is only a small area (anywhere west of Gunnersbury or indeed if you want to cycle from Camden to Flask Walk you are stuffed).
ULEZ zones just concentrate traffic in certain areas where congestion is made worse. I doubt it stops much traffic at all but would be interested to see the stats.
This is just another example of perception vs reality. None of these things are really things that prevent you using a bicycle to get around, they’re just barriers that exist in your mind.
I have commuted to work in jeans & a shirt in all weathers by bicycle. What is this ”kit” you refer to?
In the modern world, e-bikes completely eliminate any need to be athletic, but honestly even before there was no need to be athletic for utility cycling: Out of breath? Go slower! Nobody cares.
& I really don’t understand the start & finish thing. I start at home & finish where-ever I want to get to. Lock the bike up, done. Are there exceptions to this? Sure! But again we have this weird absolutism that if the bike can’t solve /everything/ then it doesn’t deserve consideration. I don’t use the bike all the time: Sometimes I (shock, horror, etc) drive! Or take the train. Neither of these invalidates my bicycle.
It’s fine to not use a bike - lots of people can’t for a variety of perfectly good reasons! - but lots of people seem to have this idea about cycling that it’s somehow meant to be hard work or difficult or they have to do it all the time. None of these things are true: You can cycle a little bit, in ordinary clothes, at comfortable speeds, in whatever weather you’re happy to cycle in.
Nah you don't understand because you are a cyclist. You need kit because you need a helmet and a lock and to know where and what to do at the other end and you might be in a muck sweat or carrying bags to/from Sainsburys, and, if you are in the UK, likely some wet weather kit. Plus you are running a risk several times higher than if you are in a motor vehicle and again, some people aren't comfortable with that.
It is something that is for some people (young, and/or athletic) and manifestly not for others. It's a bit like cafe society - nothing stopping the UK being like France in that respect except that's not what our society is geared up to be like.
That's rather assuming an unchanging society.
Over time, things change. Often slowly, but eventually enormously.
Take Amsterdam: if you look at pictures from 1970 there were bikes, sure. But there were many more cars. Now it is very much the other way around.
Perhaps. I just can't see it right now, which of course is what you are saying. So I am prepared to believe that in 50 years time we might become a cafe cycling society but for all intents and purposes right now I just believe it is fantasy and gesture politics.
Labour lost Uxbridge because it wasn't left-wing enough....
David Williams @MrDaveyWilliams · 1h I have resigned as chair of Uxbridge and South Ruislip CLP. I am also resigning my membership of the Labour Party. Politics needs to have principles or we end up with people like Boris Johnson and Liz Truss running the country, Jeremy Corbyn gave a huge boost to the Labour Party
I think it may be time Sunil wheels out his 2017 Jeremy Corbyn winning bar charts again.
I absolutely agree with @AndyJS that the Ashes should be six Tests.
And those venues should be:
Edgbaston Lords Trent Bridge Old Trafford Headingley The Oval
I have never been to the Rose Bowl, but am reliably informed it is in the middle of nowhere.
The TV does give a good impression of it being in the middle of nowhere, but that couldn't be further from the truth. There are at least 150,000 people living within 2 miles of the Ground. Its 2 minutes walk from a massive M & S/ Sainsburys Shopping centre, a Mcdonalds, Next, Burger King KFC etc etc
You make it sound like a soulless bowl amid a chain retail park! Exactly what should be avoided on sporting days out. The great thing about Trent Bridge, Old Trafford etc is that they are in the city close to bars and fun. Nottingham in particular is a corking Test day out. Great city.
Old Trafford is clearly the best venue on the metric of being handy for my house. But compared to other test grounds it's situation is not quite as urbane. It is between an area of town best described as commercial, and a large council estate. There is a Wetherspoons and a football pub with a horrible mural of Cristiano Ronaldo on the wall close by, the odd chippy, a Nando's - but not much else. But the centre of town is a 6 minute regular tram service away (though if 20000 people are all leaving at the same time you may wait a few trams before being able to board one!) If I was watching cricket at OT and fancied segueing smoothly into a night out I would start by getting the tram up to Deansgate and going to the Ox Noble on Liverpool Road. Or else walking the fifteen minutes to Chorlton, where there is a great choice.
Agree about Trent Bridge. Just a lovely venue.
But you walk out of Lords and you can be in a Michelin starred restaurant in about 7 minutes. Or a Primrose Hill gastropub
Lords is proper posh
If you want a Michelin starred restaurant after a day at the Test you haven't been drinking properly.
Fair
But on my last visit to Lords - I may have mentioned it, Stokes hit the greatest century in the history of Europe and there was a naked knife fight in the Long Room - I walked out of the ground and within 2 minutes I was deep into St John’s Wood and lots of expensively beautiful young women nibbling quinoa and chaffinch egg salad outside chichi cafes and I realised that’s lords really IS in a posh location
Possibly the poshest location for any major sports ground in the world?
Queens Club, I would have thought.
Burton's Court, with some tennis courts and a football/cricket pitch, upon which 22 squaddies from time to time run around after a ball, is without doubt the sports ground situated in the very most expensive real estate, and poshest environment on the planet.
Don't the HAC grounds contain sports pitches?
Yep they absolutely do but I'd bet that dollar for dollar psf prime, indeed the very heart of Chelsea beats Old Street. And also and certainly on the posho-proximity ratio.
Chris Mason has interviewed a former Cabinet Minister on the right of the party who says now need a total change of direction, get rid of Hunt and Gove and put in conservatives like Patel and Mogg. Who can it be? Whoever, he's got the winning formula......
I know it’s an unpopular view, but they should have all got behind Liz Truss instead of stabbing her in the back.
I would normally agree that one shouldn’t just depose a sitting PM because their policies have gone down like a lead balloon. You have to tow the party line and give them time to recover.
However, in that instance, the problem wasn’t just that Truss nuked the economy but that she clearly wasn’t up to the job. She panicked, she came across as unsteady and uncomprehending, she went to ground and she shot her authority by sacking Kwarteng and bringing Hunt in.
She just wasn’t going to recover and it was clear for all to see. She didn’t have it in her, and she needed to be put out of the misery before she really went off the rails.
The problems she faced were mostly from the Sunakites in the PCP, and their friends in the media, who simply couldn’t accept the vote of the membership, and went in hard on her from the day QEII was buried.
Maybe HYUFD was right about the ULEZ hating Hindus after all...
Luke Akehurst @lukeakehurst The other specific issue that came up on the doorstep in Uxbridge was a perception in the Indian-heritage community that Labour is anti-India. This was also a significant factor in the councillor losses in Leicester in May.
Going even bigger on Uxbridge now. 21 minutes in and we haven't got to Selby yet.
25 minutes in and the loss of Labour's deposit in Somerton and Frome is the focus now.
WATO suggesting Uxbridge looks like 1992. Labour can't seal the deal.
Selby makes an appearance at 13.27.
LAB big favourites but it still looks like 300 - 340. But as I mentioned on here earlier today if they are a bit short of 326 then they can rely on LD for confidence and supply, another 20 - 25 seats.
What Uxbridge does is to give the clearest indication as to how to campaign. Have a morally based national policy and a non-moral 'me' based local campaign, tailored to grudges in each area. Basically the strategy is 'We want to do the right thing (housing, green stuff, net zero, anything that costs the voter money) but your constituency happens to be a justified exception'.
Getting elected policy and running the country policy are going to part company even more. Learn from the LDs.
See also Lib Dem nationally "We need more housing" and locally "No new housing here!"
"Tim Montgomerie 🇬🇧 @montie Let's pray for all the staff at Coutts. They'll be v busy tmrw closing the accounts of everyone in Uxbridge 2:34 AM · Jul 21, 2023"
Coutts customers do not expect to be morally judged by some counter jumping pleb
The Bud Light of ‘private’ banking.
More seriously, a lot of companies now have a serious problem with ‘activist’ young employees, who believe they should bring politics to the workplace.
Someone will move to fill the gap Coutts have now left open. REAL private banking. “Your politics are entirely your concern, Sir, all we want is your business”
That’s a bit more tempting than “if you say anything vaguely right wing we might publicly dump you and call you a racist grifter”
This week has been good news for the Hoares and the Swiss.
If there’s one thing that private banking stands for, it’s discretion. Not cancelling someone with a high profile, just because your staff don’t like their beliefs.
It is the purest example yet of Go Woke. Go Broke
Will Coutts be ejecting wealthy clients for transphobia, next? Why not? If they can cancel Farage for being "xenophobic" then surely transphobia is even worse. If I was a Coutts customer I'd be seeking a way out, sharpish, just in case
Where “transphobia” means sharing on Twitter that you bought JK Rowling’s new book.
Congratulations to @HYUFD who said the conservatives would hold Uxbridge
Also a lot of humble pie is needed by all those who dismissed ULEZ as an issue
In the wider context the war against the car is not labour's friend
I'm still not convinced by ULEZ as an issue in London - in a few outer seats, maybe, and imo not in the mayoral election.
However it remains that around 90% of vehicles are *already* compliant, so the number of voters actually affected will be very small. Not sure how it will play electorally - we'll see. I don't see it saving Tory bacon - the outraged gammon vote in Outer London is not imo dominant enough.
Perhaps it's more interesting in the other cities which are introducing Low Emission Zones across the country. Those places where there has not been investment in public transport are perhaps exposed, though there's not a clear correlation.
This is a 2021 graphic, so it may have changed a little.
I think it is the first evidence that the war on cars may not play into labour's hands
It certainly played a part in Uxbridge and already we see calls to move the 2030 deadline for all new cars to be EV and here in Wales we have Drakeford cancelling all new road building, including the 3rd Menai crossing notwithstanding Holyhead is to become a free port, and the ideological change of all 30mph zones in Wales to 20mph by default
It will be interesting how this plays out over the next 15 months
Remember what happens when labour ignore WVM
An urban speed limit of 20 mph in Wales is a lot like ULEZ expansion. It isn't the principle that is wrong, it is the speed and lack of thought in which it is being implemented.
Transport policy is a disaster nationally. There are too many cars, not enough infrastructure (including alternative transport). Driving anywhere is horrendous, particularly in cities. Now that the current Government in Westminster have learned anti - green, anti- safety issues win votes, it is a situation that will undoubtedly get worse.
This is the BS.
Driving anywhere, except a tiny minority of the country in inner cities, is pleasant and convenient. Not horrendous.
Driving is the most freeing, the most liberating, the most self-controlled means of transportation people have in the modern, developed world.
Relying upon others, on 'public transportation' is a farce and a pathetic joke outside of a tiny number of metropolises, and it always will be.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with private transportation. Either environmentally, once we switch to clean technologies, or progressively, or for a matter of convenience.
Personally, I find driving a car is shit everywhere. A bicycle is way more enjoyable.
Nothing wrong environmentally if we pretend hard enough.
I know you like to be the king of wishful thinking, but isn't this a bit much eve for you?
A bicycle is enjoyable for having fun. It is a social activity.
When it comes to moving a serious distance, or moving multiple people a distance, or moving a heavy or bulky quantity of goods - nothing comes close to a private vehicle.
And no pretence necessary. Electric cars are the future, not replacing an eighty mile journey to see relatives with riding a bicycle down the M6.
Bicycles are also widely used for commuting. When I lived in Germany, I used to cycle 5 miles to work every day, unless the weather was particularly bad. As well as saving me money, this kept me fit and left more space on the roads for those who needed to use their cars.
I would commute by bicycle here in the UK, but it's simply too dangerous and unpleasant, so that's another car added to the rush-hour traffic.
The idea that bikes are inherently recreational rather than utility vehicles is quite silly. They ought to be a perfectly good way of making practical 2-10 mile journeys (like commutes). They can (like cars!) absolutely be recreational too.
I don’t think anyone is seriously suggesting replacing cars with bikes for long journeys. But most people don’t make long journeys that often.
Let’s be careful though, this thread carries an increasing risk of becoming about WFH.
The country is not setup for bikes and most people will not risk their lives dodging arsehole drivers. Not a hope of us being like Europeans whist our politicians are shit.
Neither was the Netherlands in the 60s - it took a lot of bold reforms and infrastructure against the run of public opinion.
You’re right about our politicians being shite though.
Bikes are semi situational though. The Netherlands has the great advantage of being flat.
There is untapped potential still in the UK on this front, but in some places you’re just not going to persuade as many people that they want to cycle up a giant hill every time they come home from work or the shops.
Plenty of flat places in the UK that could do much better with bikes. Manchester, Liverpool, plenty of London, loads of towns. We are way behind notably non-flat countries such as Spain, France and Italy when it comes to bike usage.
There aren't many cities in the country where the terrain is hilly enough to be a real barrier. Sheffield, Bristol, Plymouth - I don't think any others. Nottingham and Leeds undulate a bit but not enough to deter cycling. Personally I'd rather have a bit of up and down on my route - for me, my nearest hill of any sort at all is the Warburton Toll Bridge over the Manchester Ship Canal, which is 7 miles away.
The biggest lump I encounter is the bridge over the M60 by Sharston tip - though if I fancy pretending to be Tom Boonen I've got a lovely tiny steep cobbled hill by work in Jutland Street.
Bradford, especially to the west, is quite hilly.
Yes, I should have included Bradford.
I know exactly the two hills you mean! You barely notice the bridge by Sharston tip in the car: on a bike it's Les Alpes d'Gatley. And cycling down Jutland Street would be insane!
Cue a Four Yorkshiremen type discussion about the steepest/roughest climbs managed...
Zoncolan, Angliru, Mortirolo and Ventoux. Only did the latter when I was 20 and on the hot sauce. I did the first three monsters in my 40s.
And if I have to repeat it again then so be it but people aren't about to jump on bikes, even to go a mile or three if they are not a) youngish; or b) of the athletic type to start with. It is a huge faff plus you need all the kit plus it starts raining plus you need to find somewhere to put it plus you aren't sure where you will start and finish and so forth.
In central cities you can use Boris bikes or their equivalents but this is only a small area (anywhere west of Gunnersbury or indeed if you want to cycle from Camden to Flask Walk you are stuffed).
ULEZ zones just concentrate traffic in certain areas where congestion is made worse. I doubt it stops much traffic at all but would be interested to see the stats.
This is just another example of perception vs reality. None of these things are really things that prevent you using a bicycle to get around, they’re just barriers that exist in your mind.
I have commuted to work in jeans & a shirt in all weathers by bicycle. What is this ”kit” you refer to?
In the modern world, e-bikes completely eliminate any need to be athletic, but honestly even before there was no need to be athletic for utility cycling: Out of breath? Go slower! Nobody cares.
& I really don’t understand the start & finish thing. I start at home & finish where-ever I want to get to. Lock the bike up, done. Are there exceptions to this? Sure! But again we have this weird absolutism that if the bike can’t solve /everything/ then it doesn’t deserve consideration. I don’t use the bike all the time: Sometimes I (shock, horror, etc) drive! Or take the train. Neither of these invalidates my bicycle.
It’s fine to not use a bike - lots of people can’t for a variety of perfectly good reasons! - but lots of people seem to have this idea about cycling that it’s somehow meant to be hard work or difficult or they have to do it all the time. None of these things are true: You can cycle a little bit, in ordinary clothes, at comfortable speeds, in whatever weather you’re happy to cycle in.
Nah you don't understand because you are a cyclist. You need kit because you need a helmet and a lock and to know where and what to do at the other end and you might be in a muck sweat or carrying bags to/from Sainsburys, and, if you are in the UK, likely some wet weather kit. Plus you are running a risk several times higher than if you are in a motor vehicle and again, some people aren't comfortable with that.
It is something that is for some people (young, and/or athletic) and manifestly not for others. It's a bit like cafe society - nothing stopping the UK being like France in that respect except that's not what our society is geared up to be like.
This very true. Your average car commuter probalby needs, to become a cycle commuter: - bike (at least £200, £400+ for anything remotely sane) - lock (£20 plus for a decent one?) - helmet (£50+ or a crappy one that will feel like shit) - some lightweight waterproof cycling jacket (can easily be ~£100 for anything remotely breathable) - gloves for winter (£20+?)
We're at a few hundred, probably half a thousand to get started. Then you need time to find the route that doesn't go on the crazy route you drive - more direct and safer. Then you need to research the showers* at work and maybe get a bag or pannier to take your work-wear. Then get over your fears if you've not cycled for a while.
All this is easier if you have colleagues who live near you and cycle who can advise. But until cycling is more popular, many don't.
It's easy to see how people put it off from this day to someday to one day to never. I only switched due to the kick from the pandemic, selling our second car (which was getting due replacement) and then, when returning to the office, having to choose between buying a new second car for at least a few thousand compared to trying out cycling, initially for free - summer with wife's bike and old cycling gear - and then for about £60/month over 12 months with cycle to work scheme. I'd been talking about trying to cycle to work from our new, more distant house for about three years before that.
*avoidable for a short/slow commute - when I lived within about three miles of the office I cycled in work gear and took it really easy as the slower cycle still saved time compared to showering there.
And if I have to repeat it again then so be it but people aren't about to jump on bikes, even to go a mile or three if they are not a) youngish; or b) of the athletic type to start with. It is a huge faff plus you need all the kit plus it starts raining plus you need to find somewhere to put it plus you aren't sure where you will start and finish and so forth.
In central cities you can use Boris bikes or their equivalents but this is only a small area (anywhere west of Gunnersbury or indeed if you want to cycle from Camden to Flask Walk you are stuffed).
ULEZ zones just concentrate traffic in certain areas where congestion is made worse. I doubt it stops much traffic at all but would be interested to see the stats.
This is just another example of perception vs reality. None of these things are really things that prevent you using a bicycle to get around, they’re just barriers that exist in your mind.
I have commuted to work in jeans & a shirt in all weathers by bicycle. What is this ”kit” you refer to?
In the modern world, e-bikes completely eliminate any need to be athletic, but honestly even before there was no need to be athletic for utility cycling: Out of breath? Go slower! Nobody cares.
& I really don’t understand the start & finish thing. I start at home & finish where-ever I want to get to. Lock the bike up, done. Are there exceptions to this? Sure! But again we have this weird absolutism that if the bike can’t solve /everything/ then it doesn’t deserve consideration. I don’t use the bike all the time: Sometimes I (shock, horror, etc) drive! Or take the train. Neither of these invalidates my bicycle.
It’s fine to not use a bike - lots of people can’t for a variety of perfectly good reasons! - but lots of people seem to have this idea about cycling that it’s somehow meant to be hard work or difficult or they have to do it all the time. None of these things are true: You can cycle a little bit, in ordinary clothes, at comfortable speeds, in whatever weather you’re happy to cycle in.
Nah you don't understand because you are a cyclist. You need kit because you need a helmet and a lock and to know where and what to do at the other end and you might be in a muck sweat or carrying bags to/from Sainsburys, and, if you are in the UK, likely some wet weather kit. Plus you are running a risk several times higher than if you are in a motor vehicle and again, some people aren't comfortable with that.
It is something that is for some people (young, and/or athletic) and manifestly not for others. It's a bit like cafe society - nothing stopping the UK being like France in that respect except that's not what our society is geared up to be like.
That's rather assuming an unchanging society.
Over time, things change. Often slowly, but eventually enormously.
Take Amsterdam: if you look at pictures from 1970 there were bikes, sure. But there were many more cars. Now it is very much the other way around.
Mostly because they made cycling more attractive, rather than adding punitive costs to motoring. You have to bring the people with you, rather than the all-stick and no-carrot approach preferred in the UK at the moment.
Great point. What has the govt done for cycling? Help to buy or whatever it is which is just a scam, plus (in London) the cycle superhighways. Anything else? Can't think of anything.
Maybe HYUFD was right about the ULEZ hating Hindus after all...
Luke Akehurst @lukeakehurst The other specific issue that came up on the doorstep in Uxbridge was a perception in the Indian-heritage community that Labour is anti-India. This was also a significant factor in the councillor losses in Leicester in May.
"Tim Montgomerie 🇬🇧 @montie Let's pray for all the staff at Coutts. They'll be v busy tmrw closing the accounts of everyone in Uxbridge 2:34 AM · Jul 21, 2023"
Coutts customers do not expect to be morally judged by some counter jumping pleb
The Bud Light of ‘private’ banking.
More seriously, a lot of companies now have a serious problem with ‘activist’ young employees, who believe they should bring politics to the workplace.
Someone will move to fill the gap Coutts have now left open. REAL private banking. “Your politics are entirely your concern, Sir, all we want is your business”
That’s a bit more tempting than “if you say anything vaguely right wing we might publicly dump you and call you a racist grifter”
Yes, I can't help feeling that there might be among Coutts clientele some customers who also have right wing views. Probably to the surprise of its metropolitan staff who assume their own views are universally held.
it's like the Daily Telegraph refusing to allow newsagents to sell the paper in the Home Counties
Labour lost Uxbridge because it wasn't left-wing enough....
David Williams @MrDaveyWilliams · 1h I have resigned as chair of Uxbridge and South Ruislip CLP. I am also resigning my membership of the Labour Party. Politics needs to have principles or we end up with people like Boris Johnson and Liz Truss running the country, Jeremy Corbyn gave a huge boost to the Labour Party
I have a strong suspicion he wouldn't have resigned had Labour scraped in. Fine margins.
"Tim Montgomerie 🇬🇧 @montie Let's pray for all the staff at Coutts. They'll be v busy tmrw closing the accounts of everyone in Uxbridge 2:34 AM · Jul 21, 2023"
Coutts customers do not expect to be morally judged by some counter jumping pleb
It is not just that the woke thing that has Ratnered Coutts but the realisation that, as with Ratner's hollow gold jewellery, there is nothing in the private banking offer that is not also offered and usually surpassed by other banks' precious metal cards or Amex black. As several PBers commented, there is no longer even the frisson of passing fancy cheques.
And if I have to repeat it again then so be it but people aren't about to jump on bikes, even to go a mile or three if they are not a) youngish; or b) of the athletic type to start with. It is a huge faff plus you need all the kit plus it starts raining plus you need to find somewhere to put it plus you aren't sure where you will start and finish and so forth.
In central cities you can use Boris bikes or their equivalents but this is only a small area (anywhere west of Gunnersbury or indeed if you want to cycle from Camden to Flask Walk you are stuffed).
ULEZ zones just concentrate traffic in certain areas where congestion is made worse. I doubt it stops much traffic at all but would be interested to see the stats.
This is just another example of perception vs reality. None of these things are really things that prevent you using a bicycle to get around, they’re just barriers that exist in your mind.
I have commuted to work in jeans & a shirt in all weathers by bicycle. What is this ”kit” you refer to?
In the modern world, e-bikes completely eliminate any need to be athletic, but honestly even before there was no need to be athletic for utility cycling: Out of breath? Go slower! Nobody cares.
& I really don’t understand the start & finish thing. I start at home & finish where-ever I want to get to. Lock the bike up, done. Are there exceptions to this? Sure! But again we have this weird absolutism that if the bike can’t solve /everything/ then it doesn’t deserve consideration. I don’t use the bike all the time: Sometimes I (shock, horror, etc) drive! Or take the train. Neither of these invalidates my bicycle.
It’s fine to not use a bike - lots of people can’t for a variety of perfectly good reasons! - but lots of people seem to have this idea about cycling that it’s somehow meant to be hard work or difficult or they have to do it all the time. None of these things are true: You can cycle a little bit, in ordinary clothes, at comfortable speeds, in whatever weather you’re happy to cycle in.
Nah you don't understand because you are a cyclist. You need kit because you need a helmet and a lock and to know where and what to do at the other end and you might be in a muck sweat or carrying bags to/from Sainsburys, and, if you are in the UK, likely some wet weather kit. Plus you are running a risk several times higher than if you are in a motor vehicle and again, some people aren't comfortable with that.
It is something that is for some people (young, and/or athletic) and manifestly not for others. It's a bit like cafe society - nothing stopping the UK being like France in that respect except that's not what our society is geared up to be like.
That's rather assuming an unchanging society.
Over time, things change. Often slowly, but eventually enormously.
Take Amsterdam: if you look at pictures from 1970 there were bikes, sure. But there were many more cars. Now it is very much the other way around.
Mostly because they made cycling more attractive, rather than adding punitive costs to motoring. You have to bring the people with you, rather than the all-stick and no-carrot approach preferred in the UK at the moment.
Great point. What has the govt done for cycling? Help to buy or whatever it is which is just a scam, plus (in London) the cycle superhighways. Anything else? Can't think of anything.
Boris was starting to do a bit for active travel, before his activities (and then those of his whip) brought him down.
And if I have to repeat it again then so be it but people aren't about to jump on bikes, even to go a mile or three if they are not a) youngish; or b) of the athletic type to start with. It is a huge faff plus you need all the kit plus it starts raining plus you need to find somewhere to put it plus you aren't sure where you will start and finish and so forth.
In central cities you can use Boris bikes or their equivalents but this is only a small area (anywhere west of Gunnersbury or indeed if you want to cycle from Camden to Flask Walk you are stuffed).
ULEZ zones just concentrate traffic in certain areas where congestion is made worse. I doubt it stops much traffic at all but would be interested to see the stats.
This is just another example of perception vs reality. None of these things are really things that prevent you using a bicycle to get around, they’re just barriers that exist in your mind.
I have commuted to work in jeans & a shirt in all weathers by bicycle. What is this ”kit” you refer to?
In the modern world, e-bikes completely eliminate any need to be athletic, but honestly even before there was no need to be athletic for utility cycling: Out of breath? Go slower! Nobody cares.
& I really don’t understand the start & finish thing. I start at home & finish where-ever I want to get to. Lock the bike up, done. Are there exceptions to this? Sure! But again we have this weird absolutism that if the bike can’t solve /everything/ then it doesn’t deserve consideration. I don’t use the bike all the time: Sometimes I (shock, horror, etc) drive! Or take the train. Neither of these invalidates my bicycle.
It’s fine to not use a bike - lots of people can’t for a variety of perfectly good reasons! - but lots of people seem to have this idea about cycling that it’s somehow meant to be hard work or difficult or they have to do it all the time. None of these things are true: You can cycle a little bit, in ordinary clothes, at comfortable speeds, in whatever weather you’re happy to cycle in.
Nah you don't understand because you are a cyclist. You need kit because you need a helmet and a lock and to know where and what to do at the other end and you might be in a muck sweat or carrying bags to/from Sainsburys, and, if you are in the UK, likely some wet weather kit. Plus you are running a risk several times higher than if you are in a motor vehicle and again, some people aren't comfortable with that.
It is something that is for some people (young, and/or athletic) and manifestly not for others. It's a bit like cafe society - nothing stopping the UK being like France in that respect except that's not what our society is geared up to be like.
This very true. Your average car commuter probalby needs, to become a cycle commuter: - bike (at least £200, £400+ for anything remotely sane) - lock (£20 plus for a decent one?) - helmet (£50+ or a crappy one that will feel like shit) - some lightweight waterproof cycling jacket (can easily be ~£100 for anything remotely breathable) - gloves for winter (£20+?)
We're at a few hundred, probably half a thousand to get started. Then you need time to find the route that doesn't go on the crazy route you drive - more direct and safer. Then you need to research the showers* at work and maybe get a bag or pannier to take your work-wear. Then get over your fears if you've not cycled for a while.
All this is easier if you have colleagues who live near you and cycle who can advise. But until cycling is more popular, many don't.
It's easy to see how people put it off from this day to someday to one day to never. I only switched due to the kick from the pandemic, selling our second car (which was getting due replacement) and then, when returning to the office, having to choose between buying a new second car for at least a few thousand compared to trying out cycling, initially for free - summer with wife's bike and old cycling gear - and then for about £60/month over 12 months with cycle to work scheme. I'd been talking about trying to cycle to work from our new, more distant house for about three years before that.
*avoidable for a short/slow commute - when I lived within about three miles of the office I cycled in work gear and took it really easy as the slower cycle still saved time compared to showering there.
Great calcs plus the unpriceable one which is the mentality to throw yourself onto the roads with no protection and having to acquire instantly a "bike smart" aptitude. You simply can't avoid going up the inside of socking great lorries (of the type that you read, quite regularly, squish even careful cyclists), pulling out to go round buses, filtering, having to cross four lanes to turn right, working out what to do when some twat in a car or van is sitting in the cycling bit at traffic lights.
This is the critical element imo. You can't always stay on the superhighways which in any case are sporadic to say the least and not always respected by motorists and that is a learning curve which could be truncated, fatally, at any moment.
We are not a cycling society just as we are not a cafe society (sorry to bang on with that analogy but I believe it is useful). But as @rcs1000 says, perhaps we will become one in 50-100 years.
"Tim Montgomerie 🇬🇧 @montie Let's pray for all the staff at Coutts. They'll be v busy tmrw closing the accounts of everyone in Uxbridge 2:34 AM · Jul 21, 2023"
Coutts customers do not expect to be morally judged by some counter jumping pleb
The Bud Light of ‘private’ banking.
More seriously, a lot of companies now have a serious problem with ‘activist’ young employees, who believe they should bring politics to the workplace.
Someone will move to fill the gap Coutts have now left open. REAL private banking. “Your politics are entirely your concern, Sir, all we want is your business”
That’s a bit more tempting than “if you say anything vaguely right wing we might publicly dump you and call you a racist grifter”
Yes, I can't help feeling that there might be among Coutts clientele some customers who also have right wing views. Probably to the surprise of its metropolitan staff who assume their own views are universally held.
it's like the Daily Telegraph refusing to allow newsagents to sell the paper in the Home Counties
This kind of corporate wokefare is now widespread, just like lawfare is to warfare.
"Doesn't align with our values" is corporate wokespeak for "we hate their opinions and they need to be taught a lesson".
24 overs in 2 hours is a disgrace. Fines don't really cut it, there needs to be a runs penalty for that.
10 runs for every over lost according to time in the innings, with a stopped clock for injuries and reviews, would concentrate the minds of cricketers wonderfully.
The ICC's latest move was to err... reduce player fines for a slow over rate. The issue with making a 10 run penalty (For the bowling side I presume) is the batting side starts gaming it... We simply need earlier starts and potentially later finishes.
Have the Umpires decide who is responsible for delays and award penalty runs appropriately.
One other change I'd make is to add a five run penalty for each failed DRS review. Sometimes players use a review simply because they have one spare, or because they're desperate, and it needlessly wastes time. If a failed review cost runs it would make players review only if they were confident the decision was wrong.
Chris Mason has interviewed a former Cabinet Minister on the right of the party who says now need a total change of direction, get rid of Hunt and Gove and put in conservatives like Patel and Mogg. Who can it be? Whoever, he's got the winning formula......
I know it’s an unpopular view, but they should have all got behind Liz Truss instead of stabbing her in the back.
I would normally agree that one shouldn’t just depose a sitting PM because their policies have gone down like a lead balloon. You have to tow the party line and give them time to recover.
However, in that instance, the problem wasn’t just that Truss nuked the economy but that she clearly wasn’t up to the job. She panicked, she came across as unsteady and uncomprehending, she went to ground and she shot her authority by sacking Kwarteng and bringing Hunt in.
She just wasn’t going to recover and it was clear for all to see. She didn’t have it in her, and she needed to be put out of the misery before she really went off the rails.
The problems she faced were mostly from the Sunakites in the PCP, and their friends in the media, who simply couldn’t accept the vote of the membership, and went in hard on her from the day QEII was buried.
If she had been up to the job, she might have been able to stonewall through any opposition or at least buy herself some time.
"Tim Montgomerie 🇬🇧 @montie Let's pray for all the staff at Coutts. They'll be v busy tmrw closing the accounts of everyone in Uxbridge 2:34 AM · Jul 21, 2023"
Coutts customers do not expect to be morally judged by some counter jumping pleb
It is not just that the woke thing that has Ratnered Coutts but the realisation that, as with Ratner's hollow gold jewellery, there is nothing in the private banking offer that is not also offered and usually surpassed by other banks' precious metal cards or Amex black. As several PBers commented, there is no longer even the frisson of passing fancy cheques.
There is the ability to call Coutts at any time of day or night on any day and have a human being answer and handle your query.
Think Stephen Bush's analysis of Uxbridge is pretty much spot on:
"It’s the narrow Conservative victory in South Ruislip and Uxbridge that is the real shock. I think in this case the simplest explanation is the right one: it’s a reaction to Sadiq Khan’s looming expansion of the Ultra Low Emission Zone to London’s outer boroughs. Although comparatively few cars will actually be hit by the change, my experience speaking to constituents is that many more people believe they will be.
You can see the plausible Conservative line-to-take here: that it shows that when they find a decent wedge issue with the Labour party, Keir Starmer’s lead can be eroded. But you can see a plausible Labour one, too: that in Selby and Ainsty, when the focus is on national issues, as it will be at a general election, the Conservatives are on course for heavy defeat.
I think they’re both right, but I’d rather be in Starmer’s shoes than Rishi Sunak’s. It’s one thing to say “well, if we can find an issue people care about where we are on one side and Labour the other, we can eat away at the Labour lead”. It’s quite another to actually find that issue."
I absolutely agree with @AndyJS that the Ashes should be six Tests.
And those venues should be:
Edgbaston Lords Trent Bridge Old Trafford Headingley The Oval
I have never been to the Rose Bowl, but am reliably informed it is in the middle of nowhere.
The TV does give a good impression of it being in the middle of nowhere, but that couldn't be further from the truth. There are at least 150,000 people living within 2 miles of the Ground. Its 2 minutes walk from a massive M & S/ Sainsburys Shopping centre, a Mcdonalds, Next, Burger King KFC etc etc
You make it sound like a soulless bowl amid a chain retail park! Exactly what should be avoided on sporting days out. The great thing about Trent Bridge, Old Trafford etc is that they are in the city close to bars and fun. Nottingham in particular is a corking Test day out. Great city.
Old Trafford is clearly the best venue on the metric of being handy for my house. But compared to other test grounds it's situation is not quite as urbane. It is between an area of town best described as commercial, and a large council estate. There is a Wetherspoons and a football pub with a horrible mural of Cristiano Ronaldo on the wall close by, the odd chippy, a Nando's - but not much else. But the centre of town is a 6 minute regular tram service away (though if 20000 people are all leaving at the same time you may wait a few trams before being able to board one!) If I was watching cricket at OT and fancied segueing smoothly into a night out I would start by getting the tram up to Deansgate and going to the Ox Noble on Liverpool Road. Or else walking the fifteen minutes to Chorlton, where there is a great choice.
Agree about Trent Bridge. Just a lovely venue.
But you walk out of Lords and you can be in a Michelin starred restaurant in about 7 minutes. Or a Primrose Hill gastropub
Lords is proper posh
If you want a Michelin starred restaurant after a day at the Test you haven't been drinking properly.
Fair
But on my last visit to Lords - I may have mentioned it, Stokes hit the greatest century in the history of Europe and there was a naked knife fight in the Long Room - I walked out of the ground and within 2 minutes I was deep into St John’s Wood and lots of expensively beautiful young women nibbling quinoa and chaffinch egg salad outside chichi cafes and I realised that’s lords really IS in a posh location
Possibly the poshest location for any major sports ground in the world?
Queens Club, I would have thought.
Burton's Court, with some tennis courts and a football/cricket pitch, upon which 22 squaddies from time to time run around after a ball, is without doubt the sports ground situated in the very most expensive real estate, and poshest environment on the planet.
Don't the HAC grounds contain sports pitches?
Yep they absolutely do but I'd bet that dollar for dollar psf prime, indeed the very heart of Chelsea beats Old Street. And also and certainly on the posho-proximity ratio.
Given that I started this debate, I should point out that I asked for "major sports grounds"
Distinguished as the Honourable Artillery Company might be, and expensive as Burton Court is (£8m for 3 beds?? eesh, London property can still surprise) they don't qualify as "major sports grounds"
I am standing by Lord's, I've yet to see a rival
It is so unusual because cricket is so comparatively ancient and thus its oldest, most iconic venue ended up very near the centre of a world city (because back then north Marylebone was all fields)
I guess the equivalent would be if the Yankees home ground was not in the Bronx, but somewhere on the Upper East Side
I absolutely agree with @AndyJS that the Ashes should be six Tests.
And those venues should be:
Edgbaston Lords Trent Bridge Old Trafford Headingley The Oval
I have never been to the Rose Bowl, but am reliably informed it is in the middle of nowhere.
The TV does give a good impression of it being in the middle of nowhere, but that couldn't be further from the truth. There are at least 150,000 people living within 2 miles of the Ground. Its 2 minutes walk from a massive M & S/ Sainsburys Shopping centre, a Mcdonalds, Next, Burger King KFC etc etc
You make it sound like a soulless bowl amid a chain retail park! Exactly what should be avoided on sporting days out. The great thing about Trent Bridge, Old Trafford etc is that they are in the city close to bars and fun. Nottingham in particular is a corking Test day out. Great city.
Old Trafford is clearly the best venue on the metric of being handy for my house. But compared to other test grounds it's situation is not quite as urbane. It is between an area of town best described as commercial, and a large council estate. There is a Wetherspoons and a football pub with a horrible mural of Cristiano Ronaldo on the wall close by, the odd chippy, a Nando's - but not much else. But the centre of town is a 6 minute regular tram service away (though if 20000 people are all leaving at the same time you may wait a few trams before being able to board one!) If I was watching cricket at OT and fancied segueing smoothly into a night out I would start by getting the tram up to Deansgate and going to the Ox Noble on Liverpool Road. Or else walking the fifteen minutes to Chorlton, where there is a great choice.
Agree about Trent Bridge. Just a lovely venue.
But you walk out of Lords and you can be in a Michelin starred restaurant in about 7 minutes. Or a Primrose Hill gastropub
Lords is proper posh
If you want a Michelin starred restaurant after a day at the Test you haven't been drinking properly.
Fair
But on my last visit to Lords - I may have mentioned it, Stokes hit the greatest century in the history of Europe and there was a naked knife fight in the Long Room - I walked out of the ground and within 2 minutes I was deep into St John’s Wood and lots of expensively beautiful young women nibbling quinoa and chaffinch egg salad outside chichi cafes and I realised that’s lords really IS in a posh location
Possibly the poshest location for any major sports ground in the world?
Queens Club, I would have thought.
Burton's Court, with some tennis courts and a football/cricket pitch, upon which 22 squaddies from time to time run around after a ball, is without doubt the sports ground situated in the very most expensive real estate, and poshest environment on the planet.
Don't the HAC grounds contain sports pitches?
Yep they absolutely do but I'd bet that dollar for dollar psf prime, indeed the very heart of Chelsea beats Old Street. And also and certainly on the posho-proximity ratio.
Given that I started this debate, I should point out that I asked for "major sports grounds"
Distinguished as the Honourable Artillery Company might be, and expensive as Burton Court is (£8m for 3 beds?? eesh, London property can still surprise) they don't qualify as "major sports grounds"
I am standing by Lord's, I've yet to see a rival
It is so unusual because cricket is so comparatively ancient and thus its oldest, most iconic venue ended up very near the centre of a world city (because back then north Marylebone was all fields)
I guess the equivalent would be if the Yankees home ground was not in the Bronx, but somewhere on the Upper East Side
Monaco for the Grand Prix, where they turn almost the whole country into a sporting venue?
"Tim Montgomerie 🇬🇧 @montie Let's pray for all the staff at Coutts. They'll be v busy tmrw closing the accounts of everyone in Uxbridge 2:34 AM · Jul 21, 2023"
Coutts customers do not expect to be morally judged by some counter jumping pleb
The Bud Light of ‘private’ banking.
More seriously, a lot of companies now have a serious problem with ‘activist’ young employees, who believe they should bring politics to the workplace.
Someone will move to fill the gap Coutts have now left open. REAL private banking. “Your politics are entirely your concern, Sir, all we want is your business”
That’s a bit more tempting than “if you say anything vaguely right wing we might publicly dump you and call you a racist grifter”
This week has been good news for the Hoares and the Swiss.
If there’s one thing that private banking stands for, it’s discretion. Not cancelling someone with a high profile, just because your staff don’t like their beliefs.
It is the purest example yet of Go Woke. Go Broke
Will Coutts be ejecting wealthy clients for transphobia, next? Why not? If they can cancel Farage for being "xenophobic" then surely transphobia is even worse. If I was a Coutts customer I'd be seeking a way out, sharpish, just in case
The very notion that these people possess "values" that customers are expected to share, is what is laughable.
I absolutely agree with @AndyJS that the Ashes should be six Tests.
And those venues should be:
Edgbaston Lords Trent Bridge Old Trafford Headingley The Oval
I have never been to the Rose Bowl, but am reliably informed it is in the middle of nowhere.
The TV does give a good impression of it being in the middle of nowhere, but that couldn't be further from the truth. There are at least 150,000 people living within 2 miles of the Ground. Its 2 minutes walk from a massive M & S/ Sainsburys Shopping centre, a Mcdonalds, Next, Burger King KFC etc etc
You make it sound like a soulless bowl amid a chain retail park! Exactly what should be avoided on sporting days out. The great thing about Trent Bridge, Old Trafford etc is that they are in the city close to bars and fun. Nottingham in particular is a corking Test day out. Great city.
Old Trafford is clearly the best venue on the metric of being handy for my house. But compared to other test grounds it's situation is not quite as urbane. It is between an area of town best described as commercial, and a large council estate. There is a Wetherspoons and a football pub with a horrible mural of Cristiano Ronaldo on the wall close by, the odd chippy, a Nando's - but not much else. But the centre of town is a 6 minute regular tram service away (though if 20000 people are all leaving at the same time you may wait a few trams before being able to board one!) If I was watching cricket at OT and fancied segueing smoothly into a night out I would start by getting the tram up to Deansgate and going to the Ox Noble on Liverpool Road. Or else walking the fifteen minutes to Chorlton, where there is a great choice.
Agree about Trent Bridge. Just a lovely venue.
But you walk out of Lords and you can be in a Michelin starred restaurant in about 7 minutes. Or a Primrose Hill gastropub
Lords is proper posh
If you want a Michelin starred restaurant after a day at the Test you haven't been drinking properly.
Fair
But on my last visit to Lords - I may have mentioned it, Stokes hit the greatest century in the history of Europe and there was a naked knife fight in the Long Room - I walked out of the ground and within 2 minutes I was deep into St John’s Wood and lots of expensively beautiful young women nibbling quinoa and chaffinch egg salad outside chichi cafes and I realised that’s lords really IS in a posh location
Possibly the poshest location for any major sports ground in the world?
Queens Club, I would have thought.
Burton's Court, with some tennis courts and a football/cricket pitch, upon which 22 squaddies from time to time run around after a ball, is without doubt the sports ground situated in the very most expensive real estate, and poshest environment on the planet.
Don't the HAC grounds contain sports pitches?
Yep they absolutely do but I'd bet that dollar for dollar psf prime, indeed the very heart of Chelsea beats Old Street. And also and certainly on the posho-proximity ratio.
Given that I started this debate, I should point out that I asked for "major sports grounds"
Distinguished as the Honourable Artillery Company might be, and expensive as Burton Court is (£8m for 3 beds?? eesh, London property can still surprise) they don't qualify as "major sports grounds"
I am standing by Lord's, I've yet to see a rival
It is so unusual because cricket is so comparatively ancient and thus its oldest, most iconic venue ended up very near the centre of a world city (because back then north Marylebone was all fields)
I guess the equivalent would be if the Yankees home ground was not in the Bronx, but somewhere on the Upper East Side
It's also astonishing because cricket grounds are huge. How many millions of pounds must the land be worth?
"Tim Montgomerie 🇬🇧 @montie Let's pray for all the staff at Coutts. They'll be v busy tmrw closing the accounts of everyone in Uxbridge 2:34 AM · Jul 21, 2023"
Coutts customers do not expect to be morally judged by some counter jumping pleb
The Bud Light of ‘private’ banking.
More seriously, a lot of companies now have a serious problem with ‘activist’ young employees, who believe they should bring politics to the workplace.
Someone will move to fill the gap Coutts have now left open. REAL private banking. “Your politics are entirely your concern, Sir, all we want is your business”
That’s a bit more tempting than “if you say anything vaguely right wing we might publicly dump you and call you a racist grifter”
This week has been good news for the Hoares and the Swiss.
If there’s one thing that private banking stands for, it’s discretion. Not cancelling someone with a high profile, just because your staff don’t like their beliefs.
It is the purest example yet of Go Woke. Go Broke
Will Coutts be ejecting wealthy clients for transphobia, next? Why not? If they can cancel Farage for being "xenophobic" then surely transphobia is even worse. If I was a Coutts customer I'd be seeking a way out, sharpish, just in case
This could actually prove worse than the Ratner episode. Both involved upper-management types being judgmental about their customers, but with Ratner at least the customers were council-house dwellers with poor taste in jewellery. Here we're talking about some of the richest and most powerful people on the planet possibly being assessed behind their backs. Why wouldn't they tell a supplier with that attitude to poke it?
Maybe HYUFD was right about the ULEZ hating Hindus after all...
Luke Akehurst @lukeakehurst The other specific issue that came up on the doorstep in Uxbridge was a perception in the Indian-heritage community that Labour is anti-India. This was also a significant factor in the councillor losses in Leicester in May.
Good afternoon everyone, especially @HYUFD. Thanks to your information I placed a modest winning bet on the Tories retaining Uxbridge. I we ever meet I will be happy to buy you a pint from my winnings. I wonder whether the recently introduced Glasgow ULEZ will be a topic in the presumably forthcoming Rutherglen by election?
"Tim Montgomerie 🇬🇧 @montie Let's pray for all the staff at Coutts. They'll be v busy tmrw closing the accounts of everyone in Uxbridge 2:34 AM · Jul 21, 2023"
Coutts customers do not expect to be morally judged by some counter jumping pleb
The Bud Light of ‘private’ banking.
More seriously, a lot of companies now have a serious problem with ‘activist’ young employees, who believe they should bring politics to the workplace.
Someone will move to fill the gap Coutts have now left open. REAL private banking. “Your politics are entirely your concern, Sir, all we want is your business”
That’s a bit more tempting than “if you say anything vaguely right wing we might publicly dump you and call you a racist grifter”
This week has been good news for the Hoares and the Swiss.
If there’s one thing that private banking stands for, it’s discretion. Not cancelling someone with a high profile, just because your staff don’t like their beliefs.
It is the purest example yet of Go Woke. Go Broke
Will Coutts be ejecting wealthy clients for transphobia, next? Why not? If they can cancel Farage for being "xenophobic" then surely transphobia is even worse. If I was a Coutts customer I'd be seeking a way out, sharpish, just in case
The very notion that these people possess "values" that customers are expected to share, is what is laughable.
It's a euphemism for opinions, of course, and they are deliberately muddying the waters so they don't have to engage with that.
"Tim Montgomerie 🇬🇧 @montie Let's pray for all the staff at Coutts. They'll be v busy tmrw closing the accounts of everyone in Uxbridge 2:34 AM · Jul 21, 2023"
Coutts customers do not expect to be morally judged by some counter jumping pleb
It is not just that the woke thing that has Ratnered Coutts but the realisation that, as with Ratner's hollow gold jewellery, there is nothing in the private banking offer that is not also offered and usually surpassed by other banks' precious metal cards or Amex black. As several PBers commented, there is no longer even the frisson of passing fancy cheques.
There is the ability to call Coutts at any time of day or night on any day and have a human being answer and handle your query.
Concierges are ten a penny. Every posh bank and/or card has them.
"Tim Montgomerie 🇬🇧 @montie Let's pray for all the staff at Coutts. They'll be v busy tmrw closing the accounts of everyone in Uxbridge 2:34 AM · Jul 21, 2023"
Coutts customers do not expect to be morally judged by some counter jumping pleb
The Bud Light of ‘private’ banking.
More seriously, a lot of companies now have a serious problem with ‘activist’ young employees, who believe they should bring politics to the workplace.
Someone will move to fill the gap Coutts have now left open. REAL private banking. “Your politics are entirely your concern, Sir, all we want is your business”
That’s a bit more tempting than “if you say anything vaguely right wing we might publicly dump you and call you a racist grifter”
This week has been good news for the Hoares and the Swiss.
If there’s one thing that private banking stands for, it’s discretion. Not cancelling someone with a high profile, just because your staff don’t like their beliefs.
It is the purest example yet of Go Woke. Go Broke
Will Coutts be ejecting wealthy clients for transphobia, next? Why not? If they can cancel Farage for being "xenophobic" then surely transphobia is even worse. If I was a Coutts customer I'd be seeking a way out, sharpish, just in case
The very notion that these people possess "values" that customers are expected to share, is what is laughable.
Is it? I would have thought unadulterated greed might be one.
Think Stephen Bush's analysis of Uxbridge is pretty much spot on:
"It’s the narrow Conservative victory in South Ruislip and Uxbridge that is the real shock. I think in this case the simplest explanation is the right one: it’s a reaction to Sadiq Khan’s looming expansion of the Ultra Low Emission Zone to London’s outer boroughs. Although comparatively few cars will actually be hit by the change, my experience speaking to constituents is that many more people believe they will be.
You can see the plausible Conservative line-to-take here: that it shows that when they find a decent wedge issue with the Labour party, Keir Starmer’s lead can be eroded. But you can see a plausible Labour one, too: that in Selby and Ainsty, when the focus is on national issues, as it will be at a general election, the Conservatives are on course for heavy defeat.
I think they’re both right, but I’d rather be in Starmer’s shoes than Rishi Sunak’s. It’s one thing to say “well, if we can find an issue people care about where we are on one side and Labour the other, we can eat away at the Labour lead”. It’s quite another to actually find that issue."
Right issue, right place, right moment. And with an issue and place that made Labour the government and on the defensive.
Lib Dems have been the masters of that for decades. Much harder for a governing party to do at a General Election. If you don't believe me, ask Nick Clegg.
Chris Mason has interviewed a former Cabinet Minister on the right of the party who says now need a total change of direction, get rid of Hunt and Gove and put in conservatives like Patel and Mogg. Who can it be? Whoever, he's got the winning formula......
I know it’s an unpopular view, but they should have all got behind Liz Truss instead of stabbing her in the back.
I would normally agree that one shouldn’t just depose a sitting PM because their policies have gone down like a lead balloon. You have to tow the party line and give them time to recover.
However, in that instance, the problem wasn’t just that Truss nuked the economy but that she clearly wasn’t up to the job. She panicked, she came across as unsteady and uncomprehending, she went to ground and she shot her authority by sacking Kwarteng and bringing Hunt in.
She just wasn’t going to recover and it was clear for all to see. She didn’t have it in her, and she needed to be put out of the misery before she really went off the rails.
The problems she faced were mostly from the Sunakites in the PCP, and their friends in the media, who simply couldn’t accept the vote of the membership, and went in hard on her from the day QEII was buried.
If she had been up to the job, she might have been able to stonewall through any opposition or at least buy herself some time.
She wasn’t, so she couldn’t.
Nah, the Sunakites had decided in advance that they would undermine her from the day she was elected. It was only the Queen’s passing that delayed her departure.
As far as I'm concerned people's political opinions should be professionally irrelevant in doing business, as a matter of course, unless they are breaking the law.
On holidays in Bulgaria. Is there a way of watching the Ashes.. somehow? Or am I limited to forever refreshing the BBC Sport live feed on the website!
I don't know what Sky's countermeasures are, but I can listen to TMS abroad if I use a VPN and pick a country like France to connect to a server.
Someone did say in a comment elsewhere that if you use a VPN you can watch the Australian TV coverage on Channel 9, which is being streamed online, I think their online service I is called 9go. I haven't tried that, though.
I absolutely agree with @AndyJS that the Ashes should be six Tests.
And those venues should be:
Edgbaston Lords Trent Bridge Old Trafford Headingley The Oval
I have never been to the Rose Bowl, but am reliably informed it is in the middle of nowhere.
The TV does give a good impression of it being in the middle of nowhere, but that couldn't be further from the truth. There are at least 150,000 people living within 2 miles of the Ground. Its 2 minutes walk from a massive M & S/ Sainsburys Shopping centre, a Mcdonalds, Next, Burger King KFC etc etc
You make it sound like a soulless bowl amid a chain retail park! Exactly what should be avoided on sporting days out. The great thing about Trent Bridge, Old Trafford etc is that they are in the city close to bars and fun. Nottingham in particular is a corking Test day out. Great city.
Old Trafford is clearly the best venue on the metric of being handy for my house. But compared to other test grounds it's situation is not quite as urbane. It is between an area of town best described as commercial, and a large council estate. There is a Wetherspoons and a football pub with a horrible mural of Cristiano Ronaldo on the wall close by, the odd chippy, a Nando's - but not much else. But the centre of town is a 6 minute regular tram service away (though if 20000 people are all leaving at the same time you may wait a few trams before being able to board one!) If I was watching cricket at OT and fancied segueing smoothly into a night out I would start by getting the tram up to Deansgate and going to the Ox Noble on Liverpool Road. Or else walking the fifteen minutes to Chorlton, where there is a great choice.
Agree about Trent Bridge. Just a lovely venue.
But you walk out of Lords and you can be in a Michelin starred restaurant in about 7 minutes. Or a Primrose Hill gastropub
Lords is proper posh
If you want a Michelin starred restaurant after a day at the Test you haven't been drinking properly.
Fair
But on my last visit to Lords - I may have mentioned it, Stokes hit the greatest century in the history of Europe and there was a naked knife fight in the Long Room - I walked out of the ground and within 2 minutes I was deep into St John’s Wood and lots of expensively beautiful young women nibbling quinoa and chaffinch egg salad outside chichi cafes and I realised that’s lords really IS in a posh location
Possibly the poshest location for any major sports ground in the world?
Queens Club, I would have thought.
Burton's Court, with some tennis courts and a football/cricket pitch, upon which 22 squaddies from time to time run around after a ball, is without doubt the sports ground situated in the very most expensive real estate, and poshest environment on the planet.
Don't the HAC grounds contain sports pitches?
Yep they absolutely do but I'd bet that dollar for dollar psf prime, indeed the very heart of Chelsea beats Old Street. And also and certainly on the posho-proximity ratio.
Given that I started this debate, I should point out that I asked for "major sports grounds"
Distinguished as the Honourable Artillery Company might be, and expensive as Burton Court is (£8m for 3 beds?? eesh, London property can still surprise) they don't qualify as "major sports grounds"
I am standing by Lord's, I've yet to see a rival
It is so unusual because cricket is so comparatively ancient and thus its oldest, most iconic venue ended up very near the centre of a world city (because back then north Marylebone was all fields)
I guess the equivalent would be if the Yankees home ground was not in the Bronx, but somewhere on the Upper East Side
Are you saying that the annual Coldstream Guards Past vs Present Colonel Sir Brian Barttelot Bt Memorial Cricket Match does not qualify as "major"?
Chris Mason has interviewed a former Cabinet Minister on the right of the party who says now need a total change of direction, get rid of Hunt and Gove and put in conservatives like Patel and Mogg. Who can it be? Whoever, he's got the winning formula......
I know it’s an unpopular view, but they should have all got behind Liz Truss instead of stabbing her in the back.
I would normally agree that one shouldn’t just depose a sitting PM because their policies have gone down like a lead balloon. You have to tow the party line and give them time to recover.
However, in that instance, the problem wasn’t just that Truss nuked the economy but that she clearly wasn’t up to the job. She panicked, she came across as unsteady and uncomprehending, she went to ground and she shot her authority by sacking Kwarteng and bringing Hunt in.
She just wasn’t going to recover and it was clear for all to see. She didn’t have it in her, and she needed to be put out of the misery before she really went off the rails.
The problems she faced were mostly from the Sunakites in the PCP, and their friends in the media, who simply couldn’t accept the vote of the membership, and went in hard on her from the day QEII was buried.
If she had been up to the job, she might have been able to stonewall through any opposition or at least buy herself some time.
She wasn’t, so she couldn’t.
Nah, the Sunakites had decided in advance that they would undermine her from the day she was elected. It was only the Queen’s passing that delayed her departure.
Didn't realise it was Sunak and his acolytes wrote that stupid budget and fired the Chancellor.
"Tim Montgomerie 🇬🇧 @montie Let's pray for all the staff at Coutts. They'll be v busy tmrw closing the accounts of everyone in Uxbridge 2:34 AM · Jul 21, 2023"
Coutts customers do not expect to be morally judged by some counter jumping pleb
It is not just that the woke thing that has Ratnered Coutts but the realisation that, as with Ratner's hollow gold jewellery, there is nothing in the private banking offer that is not also offered and usually surpassed by other banks' precious metal cards or Amex black. As several PBers commented, there is no longer even the frisson of passing fancy cheques.
There is the ability to call Coutts at any time of day or night on any day and have a human being answer and handle your query.
Concierges are ten a penny. Every posh bank and/or card has them.
"Tim Montgomerie 🇬🇧 @montie Let's pray for all the staff at Coutts. They'll be v busy tmrw closing the accounts of everyone in Uxbridge 2:34 AM · Jul 21, 2023"
Coutts customers do not expect to be morally judged by some counter jumping pleb
The Bud Light of ‘private’ banking.
More seriously, a lot of companies now have a serious problem with ‘activist’ young employees, who believe they should bring politics to the workplace.
Someone will move to fill the gap Coutts have now left open. REAL private banking. “Your politics are entirely your concern, Sir, all we want is your business”
That’s a bit more tempting than “if you say anything vaguely right wing we might publicly dump you and call you a racist grifter”
This week has been good news for the Hoares and the Swiss.
If there’s one thing that private banking stands for, it’s discretion. Not cancelling someone with a high profile, just because your staff don’t like their beliefs.
It is the purest example yet of Go Woke. Go Broke
Will Coutts be ejecting wealthy clients for transphobia, next? Why not? If they can cancel Farage for being "xenophobic" then surely transphobia is even worse. If I was a Coutts customer I'd be seeking a way out, sharpish, just in case
The very notion that these people possess "values" that customers are expected to share, is what is laughable.
Is it? I would have thought unadulterated greed might be one.
I would have thought that is a behaviour, rather than a value. It's not something that would even need to be articulated in this organisation.
This is the bank that laundered £264m cash, for a Bradford jeweller, over the course of five years, a client which had a declared turnover of £15m.
When you hear a bank talk about its values, or ethics, or equity and diversity, it's a case of "the louder he spoke of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons."
Chris Mason has interviewed a former Cabinet Minister on the right of the party who says now need a total change of direction, get rid of Hunt and Gove and put in conservatives like Patel and Mogg. Who can it be? Whoever, he's got the winning formula......
I know it’s an unpopular view, but they should have all got behind Liz Truss instead of stabbing her in the back.
I would normally agree that one shouldn’t just depose a sitting PM because their policies have gone down like a lead balloon. You have to tow the party line and give them time to recover.
However, in that instance, the problem wasn’t just that Truss nuked the economy but that she clearly wasn’t up to the job. She panicked, she came across as unsteady and uncomprehending, she went to ground and she shot her authority by sacking Kwarteng and bringing Hunt in.
She just wasn’t going to recover and it was clear for all to see. She didn’t have it in her, and she needed to be put out of the misery before she really went off the rails.
The problems she faced were mostly from the Sunakites in the PCP, and their friends in the media, who simply couldn’t accept the vote of the membership, and went in hard on her from the day QEII was buried.
If she had been up to the job, she might have been able to stonewall through any opposition or at least buy herself some time.
She wasn’t, so she couldn’t.
Nah, the Sunakites had decided in advance that they would undermine her from the day she was elected. It was only the Queen’s passing that delayed her departure.
Most party leaders suffer undermining from their internal enemies. It's not particularly nice, but leaders who can't cope with it shouldn't be in the bloody circus.
And the collapse of Truss's leadership was a spectacular thing;
Too incompetent to get it to work so will ask my brother-in-law if he can decipher it later!
If you aren't able to watch ESPNcricinfo ball-by-ball text is the best I find. Much prompter then the BBC - almost as quick as the "Oh no!..." posts on PB.
"Tim Montgomerie 🇬🇧 @montie Let's pray for all the staff at Coutts. They'll be v busy tmrw closing the accounts of everyone in Uxbridge 2:34 AM · Jul 21, 2023"
Coutts customers do not expect to be morally judged by some counter jumping pleb
The Bud Light of ‘private’ banking.
More seriously, a lot of companies now have a serious problem with ‘activist’ young employees, who believe they should bring politics to the workplace.
Someone will move to fill the gap Coutts have now left open. REAL private banking. “Your politics are entirely your concern, Sir, all we want is your business”
That’s a bit more tempting than “if you say anything vaguely right wing we might publicly dump you and call you a racist grifter”
This week has been good news for the Hoares and the Swiss.
If there’s one thing that private banking stands for, it’s discretion. Not cancelling someone with a high profile, just because your staff don’t like their beliefs.
It is the purest example yet of Go Woke. Go Broke
Will Coutts be ejecting wealthy clients for transphobia, next? Why not? If they can cancel Farage for being "xenophobic" then surely transphobia is even worse. If I was a Coutts customer I'd be seeking a way out, sharpish, just in case
The very notion that these people possess "values" that customers are expected to share, is what is laughable.
Is it? I would have thought unadulterated greed might be one.
I would have thought that is a behaviour, rather than a value. It's not something that would even need to be articulated in this organisation.
This is the bank that laundered £264m cash, for a Bradford jeweller, over the course of five years, a client which had a declared turnover of £15m.
When you hear a bank talk about its values, or ethics, or equity and diversity, it's a case of "the louder he spoke of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons."
The whole DEI and ESG industry, is about to face a massive backlash.
It’ll start in the US, in the long buildup to their elections next year.
"Tim Montgomerie 🇬🇧 @montie Let's pray for all the staff at Coutts. They'll be v busy tmrw closing the accounts of everyone in Uxbridge 2:34 AM · Jul 21, 2023"
Calling the then Prince Charles "stupid" for accepting a million euros in cash in a suitcase from a Qatari sheikh may have been more "essential" to what Coutts did (bearing in mind that they're bankers to the royal family) than e.g. the tweet in which Nigel Farage likes the anti-trans skit by Ricky Gervais.
There's this rightwing discourse that many people are strapped up in bureaucratic and supposedly left-liberal restrictions, whether it's the BBC or big private-sector businesses or whatever...
... but seriously, which of those two tweets do we think is likely to have upset people more at Coutts? The one that included a link to Ricky Gervais mocking trans bullshit, or the one that called the now king "stupid" for receiving loads of foreign cash in a suitcase?
Also - who does Oleg Tinkov bank with? He's the Russian businessman who Britain recently unsanctioned. I can't believe it was just because Richard Branson said please unsanction him.
I'm still pessimistic about the rain and worried about the time being taken out of the game, but, my isn't it wonderful to see Australia suffer in the field in the way England bowlers have suffered so often in my lifetime.
"Tim Montgomerie 🇬🇧 @montie Let's pray for all the staff at Coutts. They'll be v busy tmrw closing the accounts of everyone in Uxbridge 2:34 AM · Jul 21, 2023"
Calling the then Prince Charles "stupid" for accepting a million euros in cash in a suitcase from a Saudi sheikh may have been more "essential" to what Coutts did (bearing in mind that they're bankers to the royal family) than e.g. the tweet in which he likes the anti-trans skit by Ricky Gervais.
Also - who does Oleg Tinkov bank with? He's the Russian businessman who Britain recently unsanctioned. I can't believe it was just because Richard Branson said please unsanction him.
Why should a bank give a sh!t what their customers post on Twitter?
My Dad will be delighted with this scorecard. He finds it utterly infuriating to see bowlers score as high as batsmen. No so-called 'all rounders' in his day.
"Tim Montgomerie 🇬🇧 @montie Let's pray for all the staff at Coutts. They'll be v busy tmrw closing the accounts of everyone in Uxbridge 2:34 AM · Jul 21, 2023"
Coutts customers do not expect to be morally judged by some counter jumping pleb
The Bud Light of ‘private’ banking.
More seriously, a lot of companies now have a serious problem with ‘activist’ young employees, who believe they should bring politics to the workplace.
Someone will move to fill the gap Coutts have now left open. REAL private banking. “Your politics are entirely your concern, Sir, all we want is your business”
That’s a bit more tempting than “if you say anything vaguely right wing we might publicly dump you and call you a racist grifter”
Yes, I can't help feeling that there might be among Coutts clientele some customers who also have right wing views. Probably to the surprise of its metropolitan staff who assume their own views are universally held.
it's like the Daily Telegraph refusing to allow newsagents to sell the paper in the Home Counties
This kind of corporate wokefare is now widespread, just like lawfare is to warfare.
"Doesn't align with our values" is corporate wokespeak for "we hate their opinions and they need to be taught a lesson".
Yeah, we will need to regulate companies and tell them what to do, so we can build our Conservative utopia where companies are freed from regulation and not told what to do!!!
"Tim Montgomerie 🇬🇧 @montie Let's pray for all the staff at Coutts. They'll be v busy tmrw closing the accounts of everyone in Uxbridge 2:34 AM · Jul 21, 2023"
Coutts customers do not expect to be morally judged by some counter jumping pleb
The Bud Light of ‘private’ banking.
More seriously, a lot of companies now have a serious problem with ‘activist’ young employees, who believe they should bring politics to the workplace.
Someone will move to fill the gap Coutts have now left open. REAL private banking. “Your politics are entirely your concern, Sir, all we want is your business”
That’s a bit more tempting than “if you say anything vaguely right wing we might publicly dump you and call you a racist grifter”
Yes, I can't help feeling that there might be among Coutts clientele some customers who also have right wing views. Probably to the surprise of its metropolitan staff who assume their own views are universally held.
it's like the Daily Telegraph refusing to allow newsagents to sell the paper in the Home Counties
This kind of corporate wokefare is now widespread, just like lawfare is to warfare.
"Doesn't align with our values" is corporate wokespeak for "we hate their opinions and they need to be taught a lesson".
Yeah, it's everywhere
You can get away with it in the arts, to an extent, but even there it is corrosive and damaging, but in.... private banking?!
As far as I'm concerned people's political opinions should be professionally irrelevant in doing business, as a matter of course, unless they are breaking the law.
This was taken for granted by almost everyone until about 5 years ago.
"Tim Montgomerie 🇬🇧 @montie Let's pray for all the staff at Coutts. They'll be v busy tmrw closing the accounts of everyone in Uxbridge 2:34 AM · Jul 21, 2023"
Calling the then Prince Charles "stupid" for accepting a million euros in cash in a suitcase from a Saudi sheikh may have been more "essential" to what Coutts did (bearing in mind that they're bankers to the royal family) than e.g. the tweet in which Nigel Farage likes the anti-trans skit by Ricky Gervais.
There's this rightwing discourse that many people are strapped up in bureaucratic and supposedly left-liberal restrictions, whether it's the BBC or big private-sector businesses or whatever...
... but seriously, which of those two tweets do we think is likely to have upset people more at Coutts? The one that included a link to Ricky Gervais mocking trans bullshit, or the one that called the now king "stupid" for receiving loads of foreign cash in a suitcase?
Also - who does Oleg Tinkov bank with? He's the Russian businessman who Britain recently unsanctioned. I can't believe it was just because Richard Branson said please unsanction him.
That sounds like fair comment about Prince Charles.
"Tim Montgomerie 🇬🇧 @montie Let's pray for all the staff at Coutts. They'll be v busy tmrw closing the accounts of everyone in Uxbridge 2:34 AM · Jul 21, 2023"
Coutts customers do not expect to be morally judged by some counter jumping pleb
It is not just that the woke thing that has Ratnered Coutts but the realisation that, as with Ratner's hollow gold jewellery, there is nothing in the private banking offer that is not also offered and usually surpassed by other banks' precious metal cards or Amex black. As several PBers commented, there is no longer even the frisson of passing fancy cheques.
There is the ability to call Coutts at any time of day or night on any day and have a human being answer and handle your query.
Concierges are ten a penny. Every posh bank and/or card has them.
One other thing about Coutts - the average personal banker there isn’t what you expect.
Double glazing salesman types. A friend worked there and I met some. Selling from a script was their thing. Imagine the comedy of trying to sell pensions to people with seven figure incomes from investments - yes, they were trying to pressure sell to their own customers!
Plus they had no understanding it seemed, of how things worked. Lots of loans got signed off, by a client taking them out to lunch.
"Tim Montgomerie 🇬🇧 @montie Let's pray for all the staff at Coutts. They'll be v busy tmrw closing the accounts of everyone in Uxbridge 2:34 AM · Jul 21, 2023"
Coutts customers do not expect to be morally judged by some counter jumping pleb
It is not just that the woke thing that has Ratnered Coutts but the realisation that, as with Ratner's hollow gold jewellery, there is nothing in the private banking offer that is not also offered and usually surpassed by other banks' precious metal cards or Amex black. As several PBers commented, there is no longer even the frisson of passing fancy cheques.
There is the ability to call Coutts at any time of day or night on any day and have a human being answer and handle your query.
Concierges are ten a penny. Every posh bank and/or card has them.
Ah well then. Perhaps no big differentiation.
Presumably because I'd been researching the Farage/Coutts kerfuffle, Youtube kept showing me videos about Amex Black and other cards. So far as I can tell, they are great for frequent flyers because they offer cash back on air fares along with access to posh airport lounges (which you'd probably get anyway for flying first class).
"Tim Montgomerie 🇬🇧 @montie Let's pray for all the staff at Coutts. They'll be v busy tmrw closing the accounts of everyone in Uxbridge 2:34 AM · Jul 21, 2023"
Coutts customers do not expect to be morally judged by some counter jumping pleb
The Bud Light of ‘private’ banking.
More seriously, a lot of companies now have a serious problem with ‘activist’ young employees, who believe they should bring politics to the workplace.
Someone will move to fill the gap Coutts have now left open. REAL private banking. “Your politics are entirely your concern, Sir, all we want is your business”
That’s a bit more tempting than “if you say anything vaguely right wing we might publicly dump you and call you a racist grifter”
Yes, I can't help feeling that there might be among Coutts clientele some customers who also have right wing views. Probably to the surprise of its metropolitan staff who assume their own views are universally held.
it's like the Daily Telegraph refusing to allow newsagents to sell the paper in the Home Counties
This kind of corporate wokefare is now widespread, just like lawfare is to warfare.
"Doesn't align with our values" is corporate wokespeak for "we hate their opinions and they need to be taught a lesson".
Yeah, we will need to regulate companies and tell them what to do, so we can build our Conservative utopia where companies are freed from regulation and not told what to do!!!
I love miserable cricketers. Jimmy smacks it for four and looks like his cats just been sick. YJB gets his 50 and looks like he's just been told his daughter has failed her audition for the school play. I don't want them to be miserable. I want them to be happy. But they don't half engender some sympathy.
I'm still pessimistic about the rain and worried about the time being taken out of the game, but, my isn't it wonderful to see Australia suffer in the field in the way England bowlers have suffered so often in my lifetime.
I'm quietly praying that England have access to some ultra-superb weather forecasting that means they expect two sessions on Sunday. Or something
This is only Bairstow's third fifty in the second match innings while playing as a wicketkeeper out of 21 innings. His record batting after keeping wicket is pretty abysmal, so this is a noteworthy innings.
"Tim Montgomerie 🇬🇧 @montie Let's pray for all the staff at Coutts. They'll be v busy tmrw closing the accounts of everyone in Uxbridge 2:34 AM · Jul 21, 2023"
Coutts customers do not expect to be morally judged by some counter jumping pleb
It is not just that the woke thing that has Ratnered Coutts but the realisation that, as with Ratner's hollow gold jewellery, there is nothing in the private banking offer that is not also offered and usually surpassed by other banks' precious metal cards or Amex black. As several PBers commented, there is no longer even the frisson of passing fancy cheques.
There is the ability to call Coutts at any time of day or night on any day and have a human being answer and handle your query.
Concierges are ten a penny. Every posh bank and/or card has them.
One other thing about Coutts - the average personal banker there isn’t what you expect.
Double glazing salesman types. A friend worked there and I met some. Selling from a script was their thing. Imagine the comedy of trying to sell pensions to people with seven figure incomes from investments - yes, they were trying to pressure sell to their own customers!
Plus they had no understanding it seemed, of how things worked. Lots of loans got signed off, by a client taking them out to lunch.
That's part of the joke. There's nothing prestigious about Coutts any more, it's just a Nat West brand.
Too incompetent to get it to work so will ask my brother-in-law if he can decipher it later!
If you aren't able to watch ESPNcricinfo ball-by-ball text is the best I find. Much prompter then the BBC - almost as quick as the "Oh no!..." posts on PB.
"Tim Montgomerie 🇬🇧 @montie Let's pray for all the staff at Coutts. They'll be v busy tmrw closing the accounts of everyone in Uxbridge 2:34 AM · Jul 21, 2023"
Coutts customers do not expect to be morally judged by some counter jumping pleb
The Bud Light of ‘private’ banking.
More seriously, a lot of companies now have a serious problem with ‘activist’ young employees, who believe they should bring politics to the workplace.
Someone will move to fill the gap Coutts have now left open. REAL private banking. “Your politics are entirely your concern, Sir, all we want is your business”
That’s a bit more tempting than “if you say anything vaguely right wing we might publicly dump you and call you a racist grifter”
Yes, I can't help feeling that there might be among Coutts clientele some customers who also have right wing views. Probably to the surprise of its metropolitan staff who assume their own views are universally held.
it's like the Daily Telegraph refusing to allow newsagents to sell the paper in the Home Counties
This kind of corporate wokefare is now widespread, just like lawfare is to warfare.
"Doesn't align with our values" is corporate wokespeak for "we hate their opinions and they need to be taught a lesson".
Yeah, we will need to regulate companies and tell them what to do, so we can build our Conservative utopia where companies are freed from regulation and not told what to do!!!
"Tim Montgomerie 🇬🇧 @montie Let's pray for all the staff at Coutts. They'll be v busy tmrw closing the accounts of everyone in Uxbridge 2:34 AM · Jul 21, 2023"
Calling the then Prince Charles "stupid" for accepting a million euros in cash in a suitcase from a Saudi sheikh may have been more "essential" to what Coutts did (bearing in mind that they're bankers to the royal family) than e.g. the tweet in which he likes the anti-trans skit by Ricky Gervais.
Also - who does Oleg Tinkov bank with? He's the Russian businessman who Britain recently unsanctioned. I can't believe it was just because Richard Branson said please unsanction him.
Why should a bank give a sh!t what their customers post on Twitter?
Could be because the monarch is more powerful than is usually believed - or those who see it as their role to defend the guy's interests are.
There are state disinformation counterers (other terms are available) who have priority access to escalation at e.g. Facebook. Why not at Coutts?
Welcome to the corporate state. Nothing to do with woke.
Johnny Diamond going very big on the 1992 narrative.
It'd be good to have a list of these people so they can be punished come the time. I'm happy to take that on.
Just turn your fire on the entire Government shill BBC. It's pointless wasting time picking out the non-Tories.
Ok good call. But sometimes I just think they like to stoke up uncertainty to retain casual viewer interest in a flagship event, be it a general election or the boat race. Tories are 3 lengths back at Barnes Bridge on my monitor. They need a big negative Labour 'event', eg the cox to have a funny turn and topple overboard.
Comments
“Politics needs to have principles or we end up with people like Boris Johnson and Liz Truss running the country, Jeremy Corbyn gave a huge boost to the Labour Party.”
Slightly missing the point that Jeremy Corbyn is a huge part of the reason we ended up with Boris Johnson and Liz Truss running the country.
Getting elected policy and running the country policy are going to part company even more. Learn from the LDs.
Over time, things change. Often slowly, but eventually enormously.
Take Amsterdam: if you look at pictures from 1970 there were bikes, sure. But there were many more cars. Now it is very much the other way around.
On holidays in Bulgaria. Is there a way of watching the Ashes.. somehow? Or am I limited to forever refreshing the BBC Sport live feed on the website!
David Williams
@MrDaveyWilliams
·
1h
I have resigned as chair of Uxbridge and South Ruislip CLP. I am also resigning my membership of the Labour Party.
Politics needs to have principles or we end up with people like Boris Johnson and Liz Truss running the country,
Jeremy Corbyn gave a huge boost to the Labour Party
However, in that instance, the problem wasn’t just that Truss nuked the economy but that she clearly wasn’t up to the job. She panicked, she came across as unsteady and uncomprehending, she went to ground and she shot her authority by sacking Kwarteng and bringing Hunt in.
She just wasn’t going to recover and it was clear for all to see. She didn’t have it in her, and she needed to be put out of the misery before she really went off the rails.
Will Coutts be ejecting wealthy clients for transphobia, next? Why not? If they can cancel Farage for being "xenophobic" then surely transphobia is even worse. If I was a Coutts customer I'd be seeking a way out, sharpish, just in case
cafecycling society but for all intents and purposes right now I just believe it is fantasy and gesture politics.Edit: 3-bed flat: £8.5m
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/136367312#/?channel=RES_BUY
Luke Akehurst
@lukeakehurst
The other specific issue that came up on the doorstep in Uxbridge was a perception in the Indian-heritage community that Labour is anti-India. This was also a significant factor in the councillor losses in Leicester in May.
- bike (at least £200, £400+ for anything remotely sane)
- lock (£20 plus for a decent one?)
- helmet (£50+ or a crappy one that will feel like shit)
- some lightweight waterproof cycling jacket (can easily be ~£100 for anything remotely breathable)
- gloves for winter (£20+?)
We're at a few hundred, probably half a thousand to get started. Then you need time to find the route that doesn't go on the crazy route you drive - more direct and safer. Then you need to research the showers* at work and maybe get a bag or pannier to take your work-wear. Then get over your fears if you've not cycled for a while.
All this is easier if you have colleagues who live near you and cycle who can advise. But until cycling is more popular, many don't.
It's easy to see how people put it off from this day to someday to one day to never. I only switched due to the kick from the pandemic, selling our second car (which was getting due replacement) and then, when returning to the office, having to choose between buying a new second car for at least a few thousand compared to trying out cycling, initially for free - summer with wife's bike and old cycling gear - and then for about £60/month over 12 months with cycle to work scheme. I'd been talking about trying to cycle to work from our new, more distant house for about three years before that.
*avoidable for a short/slow commute - when I lived within about three miles of the office I cycled in work gear and took it really easy as the slower cycle still saved time compared to showering there.
Fading to nothingness since.
This is the critical element imo. You can't always stay on the superhighways which in any case are sporadic to say the least and not always respected by motorists and that is a learning curve which could be truncated, fatally, at any moment.
We are not a cycling society just as we are not a cafe society (sorry to bang on with that analogy but I believe it is useful). But as @rcs1000 says, perhaps we will become one in 50-100 years.
"Doesn't align with our values" is corporate wokespeak for "we hate their opinions and they need to be taught a lesson".
One other change I'd make is to add a five run penalty for each failed DRS review. Sometimes players use a review simply because they have one spare, or because they're desperate, and it needlessly wastes time. If a failed review cost runs it would make players review only if they were confident the decision was wrong.
She wasn’t, so she couldn’t.
"It’s the narrow Conservative victory in South Ruislip and Uxbridge that is the real shock. I think in this case the simplest explanation is the right one: it’s a reaction to Sadiq Khan’s looming expansion of the Ultra Low Emission Zone to London’s outer boroughs. Although comparatively few cars will actually be hit by the change, my experience speaking to constituents is that many more people believe they will be.
You can see the plausible Conservative line-to-take here: that it shows that when they find a decent wedge issue with the Labour party, Keir Starmer’s lead can be eroded. But you can see a plausible Labour one, too: that in Selby and Ainsty, when the focus is on national issues, as it will be at a general election, the Conservatives are on course for heavy defeat.
I think they’re both right, but I’d rather be in Starmer’s shoes than Rishi Sunak’s. It’s one thing to say “well, if we can find an issue people care about where we are on one side and Labour the other, we can eat away at the Labour lead”. It’s quite another to actually find that issue."
Diminutive left-hander tied 26th in 2014 Open at Hoylake. Runner-up in 2017 US Open and sixth in Open last year. Playing well.
Harman was 110/1 with Bet365 and 100/1 generally, according to Wednesday's Racing Post.
Distinguished as the Honourable Artillery Company might be, and expensive as Burton Court is (£8m for 3 beds?? eesh, London property can still surprise) they don't qualify as "major sports grounds"
I am standing by Lord's, I've yet to see a rival
It is so unusual because cricket is so comparatively ancient and thus its oldest, most iconic venue ended up very near the centre of a world city (because back then north Marylebone was all fields)
I guess the equivalent would be if the Yankees home ground was not in the Bronx, but somewhere on the Upper East Side
I wonder whether the recently introduced Glasgow ULEZ will be a topic in the presumably forthcoming Rutherglen by election?
Too incompetent to get it to work so will ask my brother-in-law if he can decipher it later!
Lib Dems have been the masters of that for decades. Much harder for a governing party to do at a General Election. If you don't believe me, ask Nick Clegg.
Someone did say in a comment elsewhere that if you use a VPN you can watch the Australian TV coverage on Channel 9, which is being streamed online, I think their online service I is called 9go. I haven't tried that, though.
This is the bank that laundered £264m cash, for a Bradford jeweller, over the course of five years, a client which had a declared turnover of £15m.
When you hear a bank talk about its values, or ethics, or equity and diversity, it's a case of "the louder he spoke of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons."
And the collapse of Truss's leadership was a spectacular thing;
https://www.espncricinfo.com/series/the-ashes-2023-1336037/england-vs-australia-4th-test-1336046/ball-by-ball-commentary
Have a great holiday!
It’ll start in the US, in the long buildup to their elections next year.
https://archive.is/tQRva
Calling the then Prince Charles "stupid" for accepting a million euros in cash in a suitcase from a Qatari sheikh may have been more "essential" to what Coutts did (bearing in mind that they're bankers to the royal family) than e.g. the tweet in which Nigel Farage likes the anti-trans skit by Ricky Gervais.
There's this rightwing discourse that many people are strapped up in bureaucratic and supposedly left-liberal restrictions, whether it's the BBC or big private-sector businesses or whatever...
... but seriously, which of those two tweets do we think is likely to have upset people more at Coutts? The one that included a link to Ricky Gervais mocking trans bullshit, or the one that called the now king "stupid" for receiving loads of foreign cash in a suitcase?
Also - who does Oleg Tinkov bank with? He's the Russian businessman who Britain recently unsanctioned. I can't believe it was just because Richard Branson said please unsanction him.
You can get away with it in the arts, to an extent, but even there it is corrosive and damaging, but in.... private banking?!
lol
Poor old Coutts. The heart weeps
Double glazing salesman types. A friend worked there and I met some. Selling from a script was their thing. Imagine the comedy of trying to sell pensions to people with seven figure incomes from investments - yes, they were trying to pressure sell to their own customers!
Plus they had no understanding it seemed, of how things worked. Lots of loans got signed off, by a client taking them out to lunch.
I don't want them to be miserable. I want them to be happy. But they don't half engender some sympathy.
There are state disinformation counterers (other terms are available) who have priority access to escalation at e.g. Facebook. Why not at Coutts?
Welcome to the corporate state. Nothing to do with woke.