Trump is very unlikely to win the next presidential election. But he will get the nomination. And that will mean the risk of him doing so is unacceptably high.
This cycling shaming sounds a bit when did you stop beating your wife?
I used to cycle to the station (pre kids) but stopped afterwards when I missed a few trains, and got drenched a couple of times en-route, and it was all too much hassle. Particularly to change into and out of a suit again.
It also didn't help when one of my lights failed on the ride home one Winter evening and someone called me a See You Next Tuesday because I rode the last 1/2 mile without it, and with much mirth.
Far too much hassle and not much fun.
Do It Right. Spare light and spare spare light. Perhaps just the spare if your primary is dynamo driven.
Is yet another reason why the masses aren't going to take up cycling, er, en masse any time soon.
You will be SHOCKED when you find out how much motoring costs!
You leave your front door, maybe do a half jog to the car, get in, put the radio on and off you go. Nice and dry. You then press the button and the lights come on. Or you walk to the bus stop, get on a bus and guess what, the buses come pre-loaded with lights so you don't have to worry about it.
It was critical for America that Trump was charged for the attempted coup. When you read up on the details it most definitely was an attempted coup that built for some time - the charging of the Capitol was only the denouement.
What is at stake is very simple - America. I fear that it would take a black swan event to deny Trump the republican nomination, and he is going to be All In offering people the kind of America they want. War against minorities / women / liberals / deviants / Iran - you name it and he'll offer it.
I can see the 2024 election being a repeat of 2020 only on a bigger scale. Biden will will more votes than the pundits thought possible as people who never vote turn out to keep Trump out. But the electoral college is a perverse thing, and there remains a clear a present danger that Trump does well enough in the EC to keep him in the game. And with the idiocy of their system having TV networks call results we can expect a Roman Roy figure to call key states for Trump whether he has them on not. At least NewsMax and possibly Fox too.
If Trump wins, that is America done. The republic will fall and be replaced by a "Christian" version of Iran.
That dastardly Trump and his heinous attempt to win an election by offering the people what they want.
Some of the people. A minority of people. Where what they want will turn them into an international pariah.
The unfairness of the US electoral system is a totally different issue. They seem happy with it - I'm not aware of any serious moves to change it, and the Democrats are in power.
For the rest, that's democracy. Hoping for a 'black swan event' (I'm not going to probe what that might be) to stop this awful act of people voting for what they want is not your finest hour.
Lets briefly pull this apart: 1. The majority of voters do not back these pro-Trump views. He hasn't won the popular vote yet and won't should he be selected as GOP candidate in 2024. 2. Trump lost the EC in 2020 and instigated a plot to throw it out and simply be declared President by congress. That isn't democracy even under their system 3. Trump will not win the EC in 2024 either. 4. The "black swan" I referred to was in relation to his nomination as the GOP candidate, not to the general election itself 5. We are talking about a minority of voters imposing their views on the majority by illegally and unconstitutionally overturning their democratic system. How can you say "that's democracy"?
States are free to elect whomever they choose. The international community is free to also make choices about how it responds. A US Gilead-style democracy where religious fundamentalists discriminate against people on the basis of their race and religion and sexuality and women are reduced to chattel with bans on contraception and interstate travel is not something that the civilised world would tolerate. As it doesn't the Islamic version in Iran.
Newsflash: I am one of the many cyclists who make up the supposedly 10,000/day bikes along the Embankment. Absolutely tipping it down today and I had only half the right clothes. And even when I'm suited up days like these are miserable on a bike.
When people advocate for increased cycle usage in the UK they really do need to do it in conjunction with the British Meteorogical Office and a cold hard (and wet) dose of reality. They need to understand that a huge number of people are simply not going to get on a bike in these or, frankly, any other conditions.
Oh here we go!
I had a look at the cycle stats for Amsterdam and they hardly vary with weather. In Edinburgh, on a monthly basis, there isn't much seasonal variation either.
We shouldn't have started from there but that's all we have.
Trying to get the UK to be a cycling culture = trying to get the UK to be a cafe culture.
Ain't gonna happen.
Why? Is the weather and topography of the London estuary so very different from Amsterdam? Or Paris, for that matter?
Thanks to Stuart in Romford for finding thos fantastic graphs:
But look at how people actually get around at the moment:
If your cycling provision is made at the expense of existing road provision, that just pisses off the motorists.
Except perhaps in central London, no-one is going to be cycling 10 miles to work in the rain and cold when they have a car in the drive.
As with ULEZ, there need to be more carrots and fewer sticks. The people need to feel that they are being brought along, rather than these things being done to them against their will.
There seems to be some assertion of validity of a point of view on subjects like this based upon nothing more than wishful thinking.
Sure, some people don't mind cycling to work in the cold and rain, and changing at work when they get there, but most do not.
Saying that proportionately more people do so in The Netherlands, so the concerns are unwarranted, isn't going to meaningfully shift the dial back in the UK where topography, infrastructure, commuting patterns - and even climate, at times - are all very different.
The topography of the London basin isn’t so different, though. Nor the other big conurbations. Urban England isn’t very hilly.
And the ask is to change the infrastructure, not simply accept it as fact. Much infrastructure is still a legacy of 1950s and 60s thinking about the role of cars versus other forms of transport.
In turn, commuting patterns follow travel infrastructure.
Saying that it should be different isn't the same as recognising the reality of why it isn't, and will likely never be, and throwing in strawmen lines like 1950s and 1960s attitudes to explain away any difference. This is similar to your histrionics on taps and heat pumps.
You aren't going to get lots of people peddling into the City from Thurrock or Hayes and they'd be fairly mad to do so. Commuting patterns follow economic geography and that can't be changed by a few extra cycle lanes.
What the UK likes to do is competitive recreational road cycling and family cycling in parks and forests at weekends. Commuter cycling is largely localised to professional men in their 30s-50s running to the local station or urban transit within metropolitan areas of big cities.
I have no personal desire or expectation for people to cycle in from Thurrock or Hayes. That’s what a mass transit system is for.
I merely note that the essential topography, and indeed the climate of urban England is not so different from the Netherlands.
So I call bollocks on your claim - which you appear to rehearse in matters as wide ranging as plumbing to heat engineering - that Britain is so unique it has nothing to learn from the fuzzy-wuzzies who start at Calais.
This is just embarrassing, and ignorant. Any child can tell you the difference between the flatness of The Netherlands and urban England. And you've clearly never been to Bristol, Sheffield or Bradford. Not everywhere is like Cambridge.
But keep farting away if it helps clear your bowels.
This is what I’m talking about.
London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool are all pretty flat. All bigger than your aforementioned cities. So is the much vaunted “Oxford-Cambridge corridor”.
Some of us have actually travelled a bit and seen the world. You should try it some time.
And perhaps read up on William of Orange or Van Dyck or something.
The weather thing is weird too. You can change out of your wet stuff at work. Or walk or take the bus.
Or drive, even. But most days the weather is fine for cycling.
"You can change our of your wet stuff at work".
Again, another reason why people aren't going to go anywhere near cycling.
All these "well just put the bike on your back and walk that bit" or "always carry a spare wheel and tool kit because..." or "bring a spare set of clothes to work and change there" you throw out as though they are the easiest thing in the world to navigate and for you they are.
But @Casino is absolutely right. Cycling is for those up to around their 50s and not all of them to start with, and requires preparation and fitness and kit and facilities and attitude that simply are not available now and aren't on anyone's priority list for the foreseeable future. And that is aside from the cycle lanes springing up everywhere.
We shall see! The evidence from Edinburgh and London, and elsewhere in Europe, suggests weather doesn't really have an effect on cycle commuting at all.
Your comment is quite ageist/ableist btw. My parents cycle a lot and are in their 60s. It's often easier with dodgy joints than walking.
My godfather is in his 80s and cycled across Europe last year.
It was critical for America that Trump was charged for the attempted coup. When you read up on the details it most definitely was an attempted coup that built for some time - the charging of the Capitol was only the denouement.
What is at stake is very simple - America. I fear that it would take a black swan event to deny Trump the republican nomination, and he is going to be All In offering people the kind of America they want. War against minorities / women / liberals / deviants / Iran - you name it and he'll offer it.
I can see the 2024 election being a repeat of 2020 only on a bigger scale. Biden will will more votes than the pundits thought possible as people who never vote turn out to keep Trump out. But the electoral college is a perverse thing, and there remains a clear a present danger that Trump does well enough in the EC to keep him in the game. And with the idiocy of their system having TV networks call results we can expect a Roman Roy figure to call key states for Trump whether he has them on not. At least NewsMax and possibly Fox too.
If Trump wins, that is America done. The republic will fall and be replaced by a "Christian" version of Iran.
That dastardly Trump and his heinous attempt to win an election by offering the people what they want.
Some of the people. A minority of people. Where what they want will turn them into an international pariah.
The unfairness of the US electoral system is a totally different issue. They seem happy with it - I'm not aware of any serious moves to change it, and the Democrats are in power.
For the rest, that's democracy. Hoping for a 'black swan event' (I'm not going to probe what that might be) to stop this awful act of people voting for what they want is not your finest hour.
"and the Democrats are in power" They would need to change the constitution. They don't have a two thirds majority in the House or Senate, nor majorities in three quarters of the states. So no, they don't have the power to change it.
"Hoping for a 'black swan event' (I'm not going to probe what that might be) to stop this awful act of people voting for what they want" doesn't seem to be an accurate reflection of what RP wrote.
I posted this late last year and it repays reposting:
Jan 6th was not a coup.
It showed a ragtag mob lead by Steven Shaman in his horns and other deluded no-hope types, no doubt provoked and egged on by Donald Trump, ending up, somehow, in Washington inside the Capitol building which I'm pretty sure no one really thought they would or could ever reach.
Once in, they didn't really know what to do and hung around sitting on chairs and smoking weed.
They were not an organised force seeking to overthrow the state by force although they posed a very real and present danger to those inside the Capitol, both police and legislators, and I can perfectly understand that these people were and have been since traumatised by the experience.
But it was not a coup. The massed forces of the state were pretty quickly brought into play against them and they were relatively quickly subdued. There was neither a shadow administration ready to take over, nor the force at its disposal for it to do so. They had the run of the Capitol but didn't appoint a president or ruling council or a Get Your Arse Over Here DJT And Run The Country Committee. I think they might like to have had DJT back running the place but they didn't actually take any steps to enable it.
Some years ago Otis Ferry and a few mates barged into the House of Commons, shouting the odds about foxhunting. They were given conditional discharges and fined, I believe, as a result. That wasn't a coup either.
As someone who thinks it was a coup attempt I have to admit that is one of the best arguments I have seen to counter my opinion. Nice post @TOPPING for putting that doubt in my mind.
Maybe it has to be taken in conjunction with other stuff eg the attempt to get Pence to not confirm the electoral college vote, the alternative college voters, etc. One probably should be distinguishing between a nutter wearing horns and the organisers of all the activities combined. Trump, in my opinion, was clearly trying to overthrow the properly elected president.
Trump is very unlikely to win the next presidential election. But he will get the nomination. And that will mean the risk of him doing so is unacceptably high.
The stakes are higher in 2024 than in 2020. The media will whip this up, and on the night a Tom Wambsgans character will declare Trump the winner in key states regardless of reality.
OK so its only NewsMax / Fox declaring Trump the winner. But that sets in motion utter chaos which is the cover they will need to allow the GOP in Congress to interfere enough with the post-election process to get what they want. And if they succeed, there won't be any more elections where Americans actually get a free vote.
It was critical for America that Trump was charged for the attempted coup. When you read up on the details it most definitely was an attempted coup that built for some time - the charging of the Capitol was only the denouement.
What is at stake is very simple - America. I fear that it would take a black swan event to deny Trump the republican nomination, and he is going to be All In offering people the kind of America they want. War against minorities / women / liberals / deviants / Iran - you name it and he'll offer it.
I can see the 2024 election being a repeat of 2020 only on a bigger scale. Biden will will more votes than the pundits thought possible as people who never vote turn out to keep Trump out. But the electoral college is a perverse thing, and there remains a clear a present danger that Trump does well enough in the EC to keep him in the game. And with the idiocy of their system having TV networks call results we can expect a Roman Roy figure to call key states for Trump whether he has them on not. At least NewsMax and possibly Fox too.
If Trump wins, that is America done. The republic will fall and be replaced by a "Christian" version of Iran.
That dastardly Trump and his heinous attempt to win an election by offering the people what they want.
Some of the people. A minority of people. Where what they want will turn them into an international pariah.
The unfairness of the US electoral system is a totally different issue. They seem happy with it - I'm not aware of any serious moves to change it, and the Democrats are in power.
For the rest, that's democracy. Hoping for a 'black swan event' (I'm not going to probe what that might be) to stop this awful act of people voting for what they want is not your finest hour.
"and the Democrats are in power" They would need to change the constitution. They don't have a two thirds majority in the House or Senate, nor majorities in three quarters of the states. So no, they don't have the power to change it.
"Hoping for a 'black swan event' (I'm not going to probe what that might be) to stop this awful act of people voting for what they want" doesn't seem to be an accurate reflection of what RP wrote.
Maybe not your finest hour either?
Meh. He doesn't have enough finest hours for me to have any interest in his opinion on what I wrote.
It was critical for America that Trump was charged for the attempted coup. When you read up on the details it most definitely was an attempted coup that built for some time - the charging of the Capitol was only the denouement.
What is at stake is very simple - America. I fear that it would take a black swan event to deny Trump the republican nomination, and he is going to be All In offering people the kind of America they want. War against minorities / women / liberals / deviants / Iran - you name it and he'll offer it.
I can see the 2024 election being a repeat of 2020 only on a bigger scale. Biden will will more votes than the pundits thought possible as people who never vote turn out to keep Trump out. But the electoral college is a perverse thing, and there remains a clear a present danger that Trump does well enough in the EC to keep him in the game. And with the idiocy of their system having TV networks call results we can expect a Roman Roy figure to call key states for Trump whether he has them on not. At least NewsMax and possibly Fox too.
If Trump wins, that is America done. The republic will fall and be replaced by a "Christian" version of Iran.
That dastardly Trump and his heinous attempt to win an election by offering the people what they want.
Some of the people. A minority of people. Where what they want will turn them into an international pariah.
The unfairness of the US electoral system is a totally different issue. They seem happy with it - I'm not aware of any serious moves to change it, and the Democrats are in power.
For the rest, that's democracy. Hoping for a 'black swan event' (I'm not going to probe what that might be) to stop this awful act of people voting for what they want is not your finest hour.
Nothing wrong with "people voting for what they want" but I expect you put that up as a straw man. It would be good if the system allowed people to get what they voted for. The Electoral College plus political redistricting in the US and FPTP in the UK often stop that happening.
"For instance, in 1992, Bill Clinton earned just over 43% of the popular vote but nearly 69% of the Electoral College vote. In 1980, Ronald Reagan earned 51% of the popular vote but 91% of the Electoral College vote. " "While Trump and Hillary Clinton each earned about 47% of the vote in Michigan in 2016, Trump pulled ahead by 0.2% of a point, yet he earned 100% of the state’s 16 electoral votes. Similarly, Trump bested Clinton by 0.7% of votes in Pennsylvania, but earned all 20 of the state’s electoral votes. And although Trump trailed Clinton by just 1.6% in Minnesota, he lost all 10 of the state’s electoral votes. Looking only at the final electoral result does little to reflect how close the contests were in each of these states." https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/02/opinions/problem-changing-the-electoral-college/index.html
I fled to Sidmouth - ok, Exmouth - upon the partial relaxation of lockdown in April 2021.
A massive amount of potential but the seafront felt kind of elderly and tatty.
Shame about the unsightly caravan park at Sandy Bay, which in an ideal world would be protected landscape.
I heard a lot of Brummie down there and it dawned on me that it was essentially the nearest coast to Birmingham (apart from South Wales maybe?)
That honour traditionally goes to Weston-super-Mud. Whether it's geographically quite the closest, or just because of the main road, I don't remember.
Now Weston's a proper dump.
The Exmouth to Starcross ferry is nice, as is Starcross itself.
I would have thought Rhyl and Prestatyn in North Wales would be next closest after Weston. Certainly for the northern parts of the West Midlands, Sutton Coldfield and Walsall.
North Wales is essentially a littoral colony of Liverpool.
Brummies own mid-Wales, but there’s no easily accessible beach. It’s all about getting on the M5 for the denizens of Motor City.
What an ignorant comment from someone who constantly talks down Britain
What a fatuous response from PB’s prime apologist for Tory incompetence.
I live in North Wales and your slur is baseless and ignorant of our population
What slur?
Your comment that North Walians are a literal colony of Liverpool is just wrong, ignorant, and an insult to the community who are very proud of their Welsh heritage and the integration of peoples across the North West of England not just Liverpool
You should take more pro-biotics. It’s not healthy to be so dyspeptic so early in the morning.
PS I said “littoral” not “literal”.
Even so, it's not really true. The amount of scouse-ancestry North Walians is really quite small. The Scouse accent is an urbanised North Walian accent, rather than the other way around.
Where did I say that North Walians were scouse? I did not. I agree with your last sentence, but add Irish to North Walian.
That's what I inferred from North Wales being a littoral colony of Liverpool. I inferred you meant that Liverpuddlians had moved to the North Wales coast, displacing the natives. Whereas I've often reflected on the remarkable degree to which this hasn't happened, compared to, say, urban Lancastrians to the Fylde coast or Londoners to the Sussex coast.
But anyway. Go to Connah's Quay or Buckley or St. Asaph and listen to the accent,and reflect on the way Liverpool grew in the 19th century. Flintshire or (inland) Denbighshire Welsh accents sound in many cases almost indistinguishable from Scouse.
I meant economic colony. Wrexham and Rhyl are surely economic satellites of Merseyside.
Less true of Llandudno but it’d be interesting to know the breakdown of domestic tourists. And BigG himself is an incomer from, I think, Manchester.
You are wrong again as my maternal grandfather was born in Dyserth and we returned to North Wales in 1965 from Edinburgh, I am half Welsh and proud of it
And Wrexham and Rhyl have close border ties especially with Chester and Cheshire, but also in a wider context the whole of the North West that does include Liverpool but also Manchester
Indeed you should witness the huge queues coming to North Wales from England at the weekends to enjoy our wonderful beaches and attractions (less than an hour away ex the traffic queues)
As a Watergate historian, it’s worth noting that nothing Nixon did—and he had plenty of crimes and conspiracies, involving more than 60 people criminally charged—approached the scale and severity of Trump’s assault on American democracy. https://twitter.com/vermontgmg/status/1686531761352609792?s=20
Good point. Viewed at this remove, Nixon's crimes appear almost quaint in comparison
The Democrats have opened Pandoras box and this could go anywhere . THe US is screwed
"Lock her up" was shouted by who, again?
And, it's the Democrats fault that Donald Trump allegedly committed crimes?
You can call a "pox on both your houses" with some degree of accuracy. But to point to the Dems and say the ball is entirely in your court - as you are doing - is willfully blind.
Now, I really, really hate the idea that governments use their political power to pursue political opponents. (Like Trump and the IRS vs Comey, for example.) But at the same time, should your political position shield you from all legal liability?
What of the upcoming tax/wirefraud case in NY? Trump valued properties at one price for the tax authorities and another for mortgages. And this wasn't a 10% difference, it was a multiple. People go to jail for that kind of thing all the time. Should he not be prosecuted, solely because he was President?
What is it about Trump that make otherwise sensible people lose their marbles ?
Hounding Trump will achieve precisely nothing except to make him more popular with his supporters and make diviisions in US society deeper.
As for the legal guff, Hilary is still walking free and has never been near a court nd I dont think anyome seriously expects the Biden\Hunter mess to be investigated before an election.
So you're saying laws actually should not apply to him?
That's his attitude, certainly, and that's what's got him into trouble.
Nobody is 'hounding' him, they're enforcing the multiple laws he's deliberately broken for his own gain.
Im saying the laws should apply to everyone and not just one individual. The US justice system is highly partisan and this is using the law to hamper an opponent who it appears cant be beaten by normal means.
That matter alone says what a poor position the Dems have, Worse now that the principle has been established if Trump were to win the election he can quite happily clear out the DoJ, pack it with his place men like Giuliani and lock up who he pleases as the Dems arent exactly choirboys.
And for the record I think that would be a total bag of shit too,
Trump tried to use the justice system to hound his opponents. It didn't work for him because ultimately the law-breaking of say, Hilary Clinton was quite low level. She should not have done what she did, but she was stupid rather than malign.
Her husband was, in case you've forgotten, impeached for his crimes although he wasn't in the end convicted.
Her husbands case I would actually say was the start of this whole sorry saga, The GOP tried to nobble Clinton by foul means and that set off the tit for tat escalation we have seen ever since.
As for Trump using the justice system, well as you say nobody got convicted. But I dont agree with that either , someone somewhere has to put the genie back in the bottle it just wont be either of the two presidential candidates.
Sigh.
The point is he *tried* to use the justice system to nobble his opponents and he failed because what happened wasn't ultimately significant enough to secure an indictment so the lawyers concerned told him 'no.' Had Clinton not handed over her email server, however belatedly and reluctantly, it might have been different. But that was not his call. Just as this is not Biden's. Or anyone in the government.
What's happening now is they *are* indicting him for multiple crimes he has not only committed but is repeatedly doubling down on.
And if you genuinely think January 6th was bad policing, you are profoundly ignorant of what happened. Again, read the indictment. How would 'bad policing,' for example, have led to a crowd gathering at Trump's urging that wanted to lynch the Vice President?
And if you don't think that, well...
No the point is he has been accused of it. He hasnt been convicted of anything,
And he has been accused of it not directly after the event when logically the state would lock up a real and present danger, but just before an election and by a partisan justice system. You draw one conclusion I draw another.
As for the policing issue London regulary gets trashed by people who shout down with the govt but these are riots not coups. And our police despite their critics handle them quite well. And just to wind you up even further J6 wasnt even a decent riot, I grew up in Ulster so I know what a riot looks like there were no petrol bombs, no stones no tear gas. Because all of those thinsg would have required organisation and hard work and Trump is too chaotic .
He has been INDICTED. That is the difference.
As for your last somewhat incoherent and illogical paragraph, put differently you are saying that should something not be exactly like your memories of a riot in Ulster it must not be a riot and therefore can't be a coup.
As a Watergate historian, it’s worth noting that nothing Nixon did—and he had plenty of crimes and conspiracies, involving more than 60 people criminally charged—approached the scale and severity of Trump’s assault on American democracy. https://twitter.com/vermontgmg/status/1686531761352609792?s=20
Good point. Viewed at this remove, Nixon's crimes appear almost quaint in comparison
The Democrats have opened Pandoras box and this could go anywhere . THe US is screwed
"Lock her up" was shouted by who, again?
And, it's the Democrats fault that Donald Trump allegedly committed crimes?
You can call a "pox on both your houses" with some degree of accuracy. But to point to the Dems and say the ball is entirely in your court - as you are doing - is willfully blind.
Now, I really, really hate the idea that governments use their political power to pursue political opponents. (Like Trump and the IRS vs Comey, for example.) But at the same time, should your political position shield you from all legal liability?
What of the upcoming tax/wirefraud case in NY? Trump valued properties at one price for the tax authorities and another for mortgages. And this wasn't a 10% difference, it was a multiple. People go to jail for that kind of thing all the time. Should he not be prosecuted, solely because he was President?
What is it about Trump that make otherwise sensible people lose their marbles ?
I think as one of the two people most affected on here by this phenomenon perhaps you could tell us?
Ive been indicted myself and had to go to court but never convicted because the charges were nonsense. In my case it was a french trade union trying it on for their own purposes. So so far Trump hasnt been convicted of anything, bar losing a civil case.
An indictment isnt a conviction unless youve decided hes guilty until proven innocent, which in its own way demonstrates the madness of a politicised justice system.
As for your second point Trump is like Brexit , people are so partisan about it they only eve believe one line of propaganda. There is very little room for standing back and looking at things in the round.
The democrats won the popular vote in the last 2 elections and on that basis should win the next one but as Ive said theyve opened Pandoras box so anything could happen.
Losing more than one civil case.
In addition, Trump Organization, his business, has been found guilty of 17 criminal charges and lost other civil cases. His charity, the Donald J Trump Foundation, was found guilty of various charges.
So Clinton level stuff ?
a) Trump and his organisations have lost or settled far more law suits than the Clintons, so no.
b) Is whataboutery all you have to offer?
I think he says upthread he's trolling. I'll take him at his word and stop responding.
well its hardly as if either one of us is going to change our mind.
I believe that NigelB is open to facts but I'll take your word that you're not. Remember cultists can recover, good luck.
ROFL.
So suddenly - despite saying I dont want Trump as president - Im a MAGA man .
Questioning spin is what this site is supposed to do.
But if you want to assume all those politicians and lawyers are telling you the Gods honest truth then do so. But I wont.
I was going to add a 'by the way I don't like Trump' disclaimer to my post upthread, then found I couldn't be arsed. Apparently if you don't think his being re-elected is armageddon, that makes you a cult member. Despite the fact that he's been President before and nothing of any consequence happened.
It’s perhaps worth noting that the actual charges against Trump are of obstruction and conspiracy to obstruct, rather than sedition or treason.
I don’t think he was actually intending to see a mob enter the Capitol, rather he expected the group to hold a protest outside - but there was enough confusion and we saw the result.
It was critical for America that Trump was charged for the attempted coup. When you read up on the details it most definitely was an attempted coup that built for some time - the charging of the Capitol was only the denouement.
What is at stake is very simple - America. I fear that it would take a black swan event to deny Trump the republican nomination, and he is going to be All In offering people the kind of America they want. War against minorities / women / liberals / deviants / Iran - you name it and he'll offer it.
I can see the 2024 election being a repeat of 2020 only on a bigger scale. Biden will will more votes than the pundits thought possible as people who never vote turn out to keep Trump out. But the electoral college is a perverse thing, and there remains a clear a present danger that Trump does well enough in the EC to keep him in the game. And with the idiocy of their system having TV networks call results we can expect a Roman Roy figure to call key states for Trump whether he has them on not. At least NewsMax and possibly Fox too.
If Trump wins, that is America done. The republic will fall and be replaced by a "Christian" version of Iran.
From the diary of James McHenry (1753-1816), Maryland delegate to the Constitutional Convention:
A lady asked Dr. Franklin: “Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy? A republic, replied the Doctor, if you can keep it.”
It was critical for America that Trump was charged for the attempted coup. When you read up on the details it most definitely was an attempted coup that built for some time - the charging of the Capitol was only the denouement.
What is at stake is very simple - America. I fear that it would take a black swan event to deny Trump the republican nomination, and he is going to be All In offering people the kind of America they want. War against minorities / women / liberals / deviants / Iran - you name it and he'll offer it.
I can see the 2024 election being a repeat of 2020 only on a bigger scale. Biden will will more votes than the pundits thought possible as people who never vote turn out to keep Trump out. But the electoral college is a perverse thing, and there remains a clear a present danger that Trump does well enough in the EC to keep him in the game. And with the idiocy of their system having TV networks call results we can expect a Roman Roy figure to call key states for Trump whether he has them on not. At least NewsMax and possibly Fox too.
If Trump wins, that is America done. The republic will fall and be replaced by a "Christian" version of Iran.
That dastardly Trump and his heinous attempt to win an election by offering the people what they want.
Some of the people. A minority of people. Where what they want will turn them into an international pariah.
The unfairness of the US electoral system is a totally different issue. They seem happy with it - I'm not aware of any serious moves to change it, and the Democrats are in power.
For the rest, that's democracy. Hoping for a 'black swan event' (I'm not going to probe what that might be) to stop this awful act of people voting for what they want is not your finest hour.
Lets briefly pull this apart: 1. The majority of voters do not back these pro-Trump views. He hasn't won the popular vote yet and won't should he be selected as GOP candidate in 2024. 2. Trump lost the EC in 2020 and instigated a plot to throw it out and simply be declared President by congress. That isn't democracy even under their system 3. Trump will not win the EC in 2024 either. 4. The "black swan" I referred to was in relation to his nomination as the GOP candidate, not to the general election itself 5. We are talking about a minority of voters imposing their views on the majority by illegally and unconstitutionally overturning their democratic system. How can you say "that's democracy"?
States are free to elect whomever they choose. The international community is free to also make choices about how it responds. A US Gilead-style democracy where religious fundamentalists discriminate against people on the basis of their race and religion and sexuality and women are reduced to chattel with bans on contraception and interstate travel is not something that the civilised world would tolerate. As it doesn't the Islamic version in Iran.
Iran is more tolerant of abortion or transgendered individuals than the US Republican Party.
Trump is very unlikely to win the next presidential election. But he will get the nomination. And that will mean the risk of him doing so is unacceptably high.
This cycling shaming sounds a bit when did you stop beating your wife?
I used to cycle to the station (pre kids) but stopped afterwards when I missed a few trains, and got drenched a couple of times en-route, and it was all too much hassle. Particularly to change into and out of a suit again.
It also didn't help when one of my lights failed on the ride home one Winter evening and someone called me a See You Next Tuesday because I rode the last 1/2 mile without it, and with much mirth.
Far too much hassle and not much fun.
Do It Right. Spare light and spare spare light. Perhaps just the spare if your primary is dynamo driven.
Dynamo driven lights usually include a battery or capacitor these days to keep it on whilst stationary at a junction etc.
I think @Casino_Royale needs an Omafiets, which comes with everything including hub gears, dynamo lights, luggage rack, coaster (pedal backwards) brakes, chain cover, step through frame, built-in frame lock, very comfortable riding position, and will last about 25 years.
Junk. Perfect for Amsterdam which is flat and has plenty of canals for throwing them into but rear only coaster brake is a death sentence anywhere hilly.
I posted this late last year and it repays reposting:
Jan 6th was not a coup.
It showed a ragtag mob lead by Steven Shaman in his horns and other deluded no-hope types, no doubt provoked and egged on by Donald Trump, ending up, somehow, in Washington inside the Capitol building which I'm pretty sure no one really thought they would or could ever reach.
Once in, they didn't really know what to do and hung around sitting on chairs and smoking weed.
They were not an organised force seeking to overthrow the state by force although they posed a very real and present danger to those inside the Capitol, both police and legislators, and I can perfectly understand that these people were and have been since traumatised by the experience.
But it was not a coup. The massed forces of the state were pretty quickly brought into play against them and they were relatively quickly subdued. There was neither a shadow administration ready to take over, nor the force at its disposal for it to do so. They had the run of the Capitol but didn't appoint a president or ruling council or a Get Your Arse Over Here DJT And Run The Country Committee. I think they might like to have had DJT back running the place but they didn't actually take any steps to enable it.
Some years ago Otis Ferry and a few mates barged into the House of Commons, shouting the odds about foxhunting. They were given conditional discharges and fined, I believe, as a result. That wasn't a coup either.
6th January was not a coup, it was a riot. But there was an attempted coup which has been well documented and sufficiently evidenced now. A layered series of options which were enacted wholly or in part: 1 Interfere with state processes to "find" the votes Trump needed to win. The pending legal action in Georgia is in response to Trump's direct attempt to overturn their result 2 Have GOP state legislatures send rival electors. When the GOP ran the state but the vote had gone Democrat, simply send the Trump electors that the election doesn't mandate. If you can stop the genuine electors then all the better 3 The electoral college meets. Chaos thanks to rival slates of electors. Pence then throws the EC out and the election goes to Congress where the GOP majority simply re-elect Trump.
Where this all fell apart is Mike Pence having an attack of conscience. His discussions with Dan Quayle are very well documented - Quayle told him repeatedly and increasingly firmly that he had zero options other than to certify the real electors votes.
Once Pence refused to co-operate with the plot, the frenzy was aimed at him. Either make him change his mind, or simply remove him, have Trump declare martial law, and then send the election to congress. So the riot was to pressure/remove Pence. You say that the mob didn't have a plan. The mob *was* the plan. The shadow administration didn't exist because the coup was being orchestrated by the existing administration to stay in power.
Perhaps the word "coup" has been used as a distraction. But there was an illegal and unconstitutional plot to overturn the election result.
Damn. I posted the same thing, but not nearly as well.
Trump is very unlikely to win the next presidential election. But he will get the nomination. And that will mean the risk of him doing so is unacceptably high.
The stakes are higher in 2024 than in 2020. The media will whip this up, and on the night a Tom Wambsgans character will declare Trump the winner in key states regardless of reality.
OK so its only NewsMax / Fox declaring Trump the winner. But that sets in motion utter chaos which is the cover they will need to allow the GOP in Congress to interfere enough with the post-election process to get what they want. And if they succeed, there won't be any more elections where Americans actually get a free vote.
Yes there will sadly be further efforts to undermine the result.
Fundamentally it was good news for the Democrats and US democracy that Democrats kept the Senate in 2022, because it acts as a bulwark against the rejection of EC votes.
Shunning, as it does, the urban form of Paris intra muros or Manhattan, it feels like a melange of low-rise suburban villages, as organised by the NHS.
At the risk of inciting our anti-tree fanatic, one of the great things about flying into Heathrow over London is seeing how full of trees it is.
Absolutely. London is THE green city. Coming from Auckland, that was not as obvious as it seems now.
London should lean even more into this.
Edinburgh has loads of trees, but what makes London special is the number on the streets themselves. The council flatly refuse to include them in the public realm here.
We take London's greenery for granted. It is by far the greenest capital in Europe (vast spaces like Wimbledon Common/Richmond park help, but there are lovely parks across the city.
Trump is very unlikely to win the next presidential election. But he will get the nomination. And that will mean the risk of him doing so is unacceptably high.
That's democracy.
Indeed it is. And one only needs to look at history to see how fragile it can be when bad faith actors start inserting themselves into the process.
It was critical for America that Trump was charged for the attempted coup. When you read up on the details it most definitely was an attempted coup that built for some time - the charging of the Capitol was only the denouement.
What is at stake is very simple - America. I fear that it would take a black swan event to deny Trump the republican nomination, and he is going to be All In offering people the kind of America they want. War against minorities / women / liberals / deviants / Iran - you name it and he'll offer it.
I can see the 2024 election being a repeat of 2020 only on a bigger scale. Biden will will more votes than the pundits thought possible as people who never vote turn out to keep Trump out. But the electoral college is a perverse thing, and there remains a clear a present danger that Trump does well enough in the EC to keep him in the game. And with the idiocy of their system having TV networks call results we can expect a Roman Roy figure to call key states for Trump whether he has them on not. At least NewsMax and possibly Fox too.
If Trump wins, that is America done. The republic will fall and be replaced by a "Christian" version of Iran.
That dastardly Trump and his heinous attempt to win an election by offering the people what they want.
Some of the people. A minority of people. Where what they want will turn them into an international pariah.
The unfairness of the US electoral system is a totally different issue. They seem happy with it - I'm not aware of any serious moves to change it, and the Democrats are in power.
For the rest, that's democracy. Hoping for a 'black swan event' (I'm not going to probe what that might be) to stop this awful act of people voting for what they want is not your finest hour.
Nothing wrong with "people voting for what they want" but I expect you put that up as a straw man. It would be good if the system allowed people to get what they voted for. The Electoral College plus political redistricting in the US and FPTP in the UK often stop that happening.
"For instance, in 1992, Bill Clinton earned just over 43% of the popular vote but nearly 69% of the Electoral College vote. In 1980, Ronald Reagan earned 51% of the popular vote but 91% of the Electoral College vote. " "While Trump and Hillary Clinton each earned about 47% of the vote in Michigan in 2016, Trump pulled ahead by 0.2% of a point, yet he earned 100% of the state’s 16 electoral votes. Similarly, Trump bested Clinton by 0.7% of votes in Pennsylvania, but earned all 20 of the state’s electoral votes. And although Trump trailed Clinton by just 1.6% in Minnesota, he lost all 10 of the state’s electoral votes. Looking only at the final electoral result does little to reflect how close the contests were in each of these states." https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/02/opinions/problem-changing-the-electoral-college/index.html
I agree, and find attempts to reform the system to reflect the popular vote more closely laudable. I don't see how you could be a democrat and think otherwise. But the projects Kamski posted, far from proving a broad-based and large scale effort to reform the system, seem to show that such things are piecemeal experiments, and I am forced to conclude from that that most people with an influence to bring to bear are happy to let it slide. It's then used to delegitimise 'the winner' under the system, which it shouldn't be.
This cycling shaming sounds a bit when did you stop beating your wife?
I used to cycle to the station (pre kids) but stopped afterwards when I missed a few trains, and got drenched a couple of times en-route, and it was all too much hassle. Particularly to change into and out of a suit again.
It also didn't help when one of my lights failed on the ride home one Winter evening and someone called me a See You Next Tuesday because I rode the last 1/2 mile without it, and with much mirth.
Far too much hassle and not much fun.
Do It Right. Spare light and spare spare light. Perhaps just the spare if your primary is dynamo driven.
Dynamo driven lights usually include a battery or capacitor these days to keep it on whilst stationary at a junction etc.
I think @Casino_Royale needs an Omafiets, which comes with everything including hub gears, dynamo lights, luggage rack, coaster (pedal backwards) brakes, chain cover, step through frame, built-in frame lock, very comfortable riding position, and will last about 25 years.
Junk. Perfect for Amsterdam which is flat and has plenty of canals for throwing them into but rear only coaster brake is a death sentence anywhere hilly.
Also illegal in the UK which requires two independent brakes on a bicycle IIRC.
As a Watergate historian, it’s worth noting that nothing Nixon did—and he had plenty of crimes and conspiracies, involving more than 60 people criminally charged—approached the scale and severity of Trump’s assault on American democracy. https://twitter.com/vermontgmg/status/1686531761352609792?s=20
Good point. Viewed at this remove, Nixon's crimes appear almost quaint in comparison
The Democrats have opened Pandoras box and this could go anywhere . THe US is screwed
"Lock her up" was shouted by who, again?
And, it's the Democrats fault that Donald Trump allegedly committed crimes?
You can call a "pox on both your houses" with some degree of accuracy. But to point to the Dems and say the ball is entirely in your court - as you are doing - is willfully blind.
Now, I really, really hate the idea that governments use their political power to pursue political opponents. (Like Trump and the IRS vs Comey, for example.) But at the same time, should your political position shield you from all legal liability?
What of the upcoming tax/wirefraud case in NY? Trump valued properties at one price for the tax authorities and another for mortgages. And this wasn't a 10% difference, it was a multiple. People go to jail for that kind of thing all the time. Should he not be prosecuted, solely because he was President?
What is it about Trump that make otherwise sensible people lose their marbles ?
Hounding Trump will achieve precisely nothing except to make him more popular with his supporters and make diviisions in US society deeper.
As for the legal guff, Hilary is still walking free and has never been near a court nd I dont think anyome seriously expects the Biden\Hunter mess to be investigated before an election.
So you're saying laws actually should not apply to him?
That's his attitude, certainly, and that's what's got him into trouble.
Nobody is 'hounding' him, they're enforcing the multiple laws he's deliberately broken for his own gain.
Im saying the laws should apply to everyone and not just one individual. The US justice system is highly partisan and this is using the law to hamper an opponent who it appears cant be beaten by normal means.
That matter alone says what a poor position the Dems have, Worse now that the principle has been established if Trump were to win the election he can quite happily clear out the DoJ, pack it with his place men like Giuliani and lock up who he pleases as the Dems arent exactly choirboys.
And for the record I think that would be a total bag of shit too,
Trump tried to use the justice system to hound his opponents. It didn't work for him because ultimately the law-breaking of say, Hilary Clinton was quite low level. She should not have done what she did, but she was stupid rather than malign.
Her husband was, in case you've forgotten, impeached for his crimes although he wasn't in the end convicted.
Her husbands case I would actually say was the start of this whole sorry saga, The GOP tried to nobble Clinton by foul means and that set off the tit for tat escalation we have seen ever since.
As for Trump using the justice system, well as you say nobody got convicted. But I dont agree with that either , someone somewhere has to put the genie back in the bottle it just wont be either of the two presidential candidates.
Sigh.
The point is he *tried* to use the justice system to nobble his opponents and he failed because what happened wasn't ultimately significant enough to secure an indictment so the lawyers concerned told him 'no.' Had Clinton not handed over her email server, however belatedly and reluctantly, it might have been different. But that was not his call. Just as this is not Biden's. Or anyone in the government.
What's happening now is they *are* indicting him for multiple crimes he has not only committed but is repeatedly doubling down on.
And if you genuinely think January 6th was bad policing, you are profoundly ignorant of what happened. Again, read the indictment. How would 'bad policing,' for example, have led to a crowd gathering at Trump's urging that wanted to lynch the Vice President?
And if you don't think that, well...
No the point is he has been accused of it. He hasnt been convicted of anything,
And he has been accused of it not directly after the event when logically the state would lock up a real and present danger, but just before an election and by a partisan justice system. You draw one conclusion I draw another.
As for the policing issue London regulary gets trashed by people who shout down with the govt but these are riots not coups. And our police despite their critics handle them quite well. And just to wind you up even further J6 wasnt even a decent riot, I grew up in Ulster so I know what a riot looks like there were no petrol bombs, no stones no tear gas. Because all of those thinsg would have required organisation and hard work and Trump is too chaotic .
He has been INDICTED. That is the difference.
As for your last somewhat incoherent and illogical paragraph, put differently you are saying that should something not be exactly like your memories of a riot in Ulster it must not be a riot and therefore can't be a coup.
As a Watergate historian, it’s worth noting that nothing Nixon did—and he had plenty of crimes and conspiracies, involving more than 60 people criminally charged—approached the scale and severity of Trump’s assault on American democracy. https://twitter.com/vermontgmg/status/1686531761352609792?s=20
Good point. Viewed at this remove, Nixon's crimes appear almost quaint in comparison
The Democrats have opened Pandoras box and this could go anywhere . THe US is screwed
"Lock her up" was shouted by who, again?
And, it's the Democrats fault that Donald Trump allegedly committed crimes?
You can call a "pox on both your houses" with some degree of accuracy. But to point to the Dems and say the ball is entirely in your court - as you are doing - is willfully blind.
Now, I really, really hate the idea that governments use their political power to pursue political opponents. (Like Trump and the IRS vs Comey, for example.) But at the same time, should your political position shield you from all legal liability?
What of the upcoming tax/wirefraud case in NY? Trump valued properties at one price for the tax authorities and another for mortgages. And this wasn't a 10% difference, it was a multiple. People go to jail for that kind of thing all the time. Should he not be prosecuted, solely because he was President?
What is it about Trump that make otherwise sensible people lose their marbles ?
I think as one of the two people most affected on here by this phenomenon perhaps you could tell us?
Ive been indicted myself and had to go to court but never convicted because the charges were nonsense. In my case it was a french trade union trying it on for their own purposes. So so far Trump hasnt been convicted of anything, bar losing a civil case.
An indictment isnt a conviction unless youve decided hes guilty until proven innocent, which in its own way demonstrates the madness of a politicised justice system.
As for your second point Trump is like Brexit , people are so partisan about it they only eve believe one line of propaganda. There is very little room for standing back and looking at things in the round.
The democrats won the popular vote in the last 2 elections and on that basis should win the next one but as Ive said theyve opened Pandoras box so anything could happen.
Losing more than one civil case.
In addition, Trump Organization, his business, has been found guilty of 17 criminal charges and lost other civil cases. His charity, the Donald J Trump Foundation, was found guilty of various charges.
So Clinton level stuff ?
a) Trump and his organisations have lost or settled far more law suits than the Clintons, so no.
b) Is whataboutery all you have to offer?
I think he says upthread he's trolling. I'll take him at his word and stop responding.
well its hardly as if either one of us is going to change our mind.
I believe that NigelB is open to facts but I'll take your word that you're not. Remember cultists can recover, good luck.
ROFL.
So suddenly - despite saying I dont want Trump as president - Im a MAGA man .
Questioning spin is what this site is supposed to do.
But if you want to assume all those politicians and lawyers are telling you the Gods honest truth then do so. But I wont.
I was going to add a 'by the way I don't like Trump' disclaimer to my post upthread, then found I couldn't be arsed. Apparently if you don't think his being re-elected is armageddon, that makes you a cult member. Despite the fact that he's been President before and nothing of any consequence happened.
“Nothing of any consequence” is an odd take.
Really? A lot more seems to have gone to shit in the world since Biden 're-established America's leadership' upon his accession.
I posted this late last year and it repays reposting:
Jan 6th was not a coup.
It showed a ragtag mob lead by Steven Shaman in his horns and other deluded no-hope types, no doubt provoked and egged on by Donald Trump, ending up, somehow, in Washington inside the Capitol building which I'm pretty sure no one really thought they would or could ever reach.
Once in, they didn't really know what to do and hung around sitting on chairs and smoking weed.
They were not an organised force seeking to overthrow the state by force although they posed a very real and present danger to those inside the Capitol, both police and legislators, and I can perfectly understand that these people were and have been since traumatised by the experience.
But it was not a coup. The massed forces of the state were pretty quickly brought into play against them and they were relatively quickly subdued. There was neither a shadow administration ready to take over, nor the force at its disposal for it to do so. They had the run of the Capitol but didn't appoint a president or ruling council or a Get Your Arse Over Here DJT And Run The Country Committee. I think they might like to have had DJT back running the place but they didn't actually take any steps to enable it.
Some years ago Otis Ferry and a few mates barged into the House of Commons, shouting the odds about foxhunting. They were given conditional discharges and fined, I believe, as a result. That wasn't a coup either.
6th January was not a coup, it was a riot. But there was an attempted coup which has been well documented and sufficiently evidenced now. A layered series of options which were enacted wholly or in part: 1 Interfere with state processes to "find" the votes Trump needed to win. The pending legal action in Georgia is in response to Trump's direct attempt to overturn their result 2 Have GOP state legislatures send rival electors. When the GOP ran the state but the vote had gone Democrat, simply send the Trump electors that the election doesn't mandate. If you can stop the genuine electors then all the better 3 The electoral college meets. Chaos thanks to rival slates of electors. Pence then throws the EC out and the election goes to Congress where the GOP majority simply re-elect Trump.
Where this all fell apart is Mike Pence having an attack of conscience. His discussions with Dan Quayle are very well documented - Quayle told him repeatedly and increasingly firmly that he had zero options other than to certify the real electors votes.
Once Pence refused to co-operate with the plot, the frenzy was aimed at him. Either make him change his mind, or simply remove him, have Trump declare martial law, and then send the election to congress. So the riot was to pressure/remove Pence. You say that the mob didn't have a plan. The mob *was* the plan. The shadow administration didn't exist because the coup was being orchestrated by the existing administration to stay in power.
Perhaps the word "coup" has been used as a distraction. But there was an illegal and unconstitutional plot to overturn the election result.
Damn. I posted the same thing, but not nearly as well.
It was critical for America that Trump was charged for the attempted coup. When you read up on the details it most definitely was an attempted coup that built for some time - the charging of the Capitol was only the denouement.
What is at stake is very simple - America. I fear that it would take a black swan event to deny Trump the republican nomination, and he is going to be All In offering people the kind of America they want. War against minorities / women / liberals / deviants / Iran - you name it and he'll offer it.
I can see the 2024 election being a repeat of 2020 only on a bigger scale. Biden will will more votes than the pundits thought possible as people who never vote turn out to keep Trump out. But the electoral college is a perverse thing, and there remains a clear a present danger that Trump does well enough in the EC to keep him in the game. And with the idiocy of their system having TV networks call results we can expect a Roman Roy figure to call key states for Trump whether he has them on not. At least NewsMax and possibly Fox too.
If Trump wins, that is America done. The republic will fall and be replaced by a "Christian" version of Iran.
That dastardly Trump and his heinous attempt to win an election by offering the people what they want.
Some of the people. A minority of people. Where what they want will turn them into an international pariah.
The unfairness of the US electoral system is a totally different issue. They seem happy with it - I'm not aware of any serious moves to change it, and the Democrats are in power.
For the rest, that's democracy. Hoping for a 'black swan event' (I'm not going to probe what that might be) to stop this awful act of people voting for what they want is not your finest hour.
Nothing wrong with "people voting for what they want" but I expect you put that up as a straw man. It would be good if the system allowed people to get what they voted for. The Electoral College plus political redistricting in the US and FPTP in the UK often stop that happening.
"For instance, in 1992, Bill Clinton earned just over 43% of the popular vote but nearly 69% of the Electoral College vote. In 1980, Ronald Reagan earned 51% of the popular vote but 91% of the Electoral College vote. " "While Trump and Hillary Clinton each earned about 47% of the vote in Michigan in 2016, Trump pulled ahead by 0.2% of a point, yet he earned 100% of the state’s 16 electoral votes. Similarly, Trump bested Clinton by 0.7% of votes in Pennsylvania, but earned all 20 of the state’s electoral votes. And although Trump trailed Clinton by just 1.6% in Minnesota, he lost all 10 of the state’s electoral votes. Looking only at the final electoral result does little to reflect how close the contests were in each of these states." https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/02/opinions/problem-changing-the-electoral-college/index.html
I agree, and find attempts to reform the system to reflect the popular vote more closely laudable. I don't see how you could be a democrat and think otherwise. But the projects Kamski posted, far from proving a broad-based and large scale effort to reform the system, seem to show that such things are piecemeal experiments, and I am forced to conclude from that that most people with an influence to bring to bear are happy to let it slide. It's then used to delegitimise 'the winner' under the system, which it shouldn't be.
I don't have any interest in whether they use an electoral college or not. Its their choice. The concern should be that the system depends on the good will of participants to actually allow it to function.
America's issue is that Trump - and now the GOP - will not accept defeat as being legitimate.
Shunning, as it does, the urban form of Paris intra muros or Manhattan, it feels like a melange of low-rise suburban villages, as organised by the NHS.
At the risk of inciting our anti-tree fanatic, one of the great things about flying into Heathrow over London is seeing how full of trees it is.
Absolutely. London is THE green city. Coming from Auckland, that was not as obvious as it seems now.
London should lean even more into this.
Edinburgh has loads of trees, but what makes London special is the number on the streets themselves. The council flatly refuse to include them in the public realm here.
We take London's greenery for granted. It is by far the greenest capital in Europe (vast spaces like Wimbledon Common/Richmond park help, but there are lovely parks across the city.
That was one reason London - as a whole - coped with the WW2 blitz. The Germans spent rather a lot of money bombing and rocketing grass, flower beds, allotments and woods. And conversely why other and denser towns such as Coventry and Clydebank copped it very badly pro rata.
It’s perhaps worth noting that the actual charges against Trump are of obstruction and conspiracy to obstruct, rather than sedition or treason.
I don’t think he was actually intending to see a mob enter the Capitol, rather he expected the group to hold a protest outside - but there was enough confusion and we saw the result.
He knew they were carrying guns, he demanded that security personnel take the magnetometers away, he told them to march on the Capitol, and he said he'd be there with them. It wasn't confuson that caused the violence. It was premeditation.
I posted this late last year and it repays reposting:
Jan 6th was not a coup.
It showed a ragtag mob lead by Steven Shaman in his horns and other deluded no-hope types, no doubt provoked and egged on by Donald Trump, ending up, somehow, in Washington inside the Capitol building which I'm pretty sure no one really thought they would or could ever reach.
Once in, they didn't really know what to do and hung around sitting on chairs and smoking weed.
They were not an organised force seeking to overthrow the state by force although they posed a very real and present danger to those inside the Capitol, both police and legislators, and I can perfectly understand that these people were and have been since traumatised by the experience.
But it was not a coup. The massed forces of the state were pretty quickly brought into play against them and they were relatively quickly subdued. There was neither a shadow administration ready to take over, nor the force at its disposal for it to do so. They had the run of the Capitol but didn't appoint a president or ruling council or a Get Your Arse Over Here DJT And Run The Country Committee. I think they might like to have had DJT back running the place but they didn't actually take any steps to enable it.
Some years ago Otis Ferry and a few mates barged into the House of Commons, shouting the odds about foxhunting. They were given conditional discharges and fined, I believe, as a result. That wasn't a coup either.
As someone who thinks it was a coup attempt I have to admit that is one of the best arguments I have seen to counter my opinion. Nice post @TOPPING for putting that doubt in my mind.
Maybe it has to be taken in conjunction with other stuff eg the attempt to get Pence to not confirm the electoral college vote, the alternative college voters, etc. One probably should be distinguishing between a nutter wearing horns and the organisers of all the activities combined. Trump, in my opinion, was clearly trying to overthrow the properly elected president.
Yes as @RochdalePioneers has pointed out there were machinations by Pence apparently that perhaps more closely fit the description of a coup.
I fled to Sidmouth - ok, Exmouth - upon the partial relaxation of lockdown in April 2021.
A massive amount of potential but the seafront felt kind of elderly and tatty.
Shame about the unsightly caravan park at Sandy Bay, which in an ideal world would be protected landscape.
I heard a lot of Brummie down there and it dawned on me that it was essentially the nearest coast to Birmingham (apart from South Wales maybe?)
That honour traditionally goes to Weston-super-Mud. Whether it's geographically quite the closest, or just because of the main road, I don't remember.
Now Weston's a proper dump.
The Exmouth to Starcross ferry is nice, as is Starcross itself.
I would have thought Rhyl and Prestatyn in North Wales would be next closest after Weston. Certainly for the northern parts of the West Midlands, Sutton Coldfield and Walsall.
North Wales is essentially a littoral colony of Liverpool.
Brummies own mid-Wales, but there’s no easily accessible beach. It’s all about getting on the M5 for the denizens of Motor City.
What an ignorant comment from someone who constantly talks down Britain
What a fatuous response from PB’s prime apologist for Tory incompetence.
I live in North Wales and your slur is baseless and ignorant of our population
What slur?
Your comment that North Walians are a literal colony of Liverpool is just wrong, ignorant, and an insult to the community who are very proud of their Welsh heritage and the integration of peoples across the North West of England not just Liverpool
You should take more pro-biotics. It’s not healthy to be so dyspeptic so early in the morning.
PS I said “littoral” not “literal”.
Even so, it's not really true. The amount of scouse-ancestry North Walians is really quite small. The Scouse accent is an urbanised North Walian accent, rather than the other way around.
Where did I say that North Walians were scouse? I did not. I agree with your last sentence, but add Irish to North Walian.
That's what I inferred from North Wales being a littoral colony of Liverpool. I inferred you meant that Liverpuddlians had moved to the North Wales coast, displacing the natives. Whereas I've often reflected on the remarkable degree to which this hasn't happened, compared to, say, urban Lancastrians to the Fylde coast or Londoners to the Sussex coast.
But anyway. Go to Connah's Quay or Buckley or St. Asaph and listen to the accent,and reflect on the way Liverpool grew in the 19th century. Flintshire or (inland) Denbighshire Welsh accents sound in many cases almost indistinguishable from Scouse.
I meant economic colony. Wrexham and Rhyl are surely economic satellites of Merseyside.
Less true of Llandudno but it’d be interesting to know the breakdown of domestic tourists. And BigG himself is an incomer from, I think, Manchester.
Or, indeed, retirement colony. One used to speak of the British colony in Mentone, for instance.
2. Trump lost the EC in 2020 and instigated a plot to throw it out and simply be declared President by congress. That isn't democracy even under their system
a group of former top government officials called the Transition Integrity Project actually gamed four possible scenarios, including one that doesn’t look that different from 2016: a big popular win for Mr. Biden, and a narrow electoral defeat, presumably reached after weeks of counting the votes in Pennsylvania. For their war game, they cast John Podesta, who was Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, in the role of Mr. Biden. They expected him, when the votes came in, to concede, just as Mrs. Clinton had.
But Mr. Podesta, playing Mr. Biden, shocked the organizers by saying he felt his party wouldn’t let him concede. Alleging voter suppression, he persuaded the governors of Wisconsin and Michigan to send pro-Biden electors to the Electoral College.
In that scenario, California, Oregon, and Washington then threatened to secede from the United States if Mr. Trump took office as planned. The House named Mr. Biden president; the Senate and White House stuck with Mr. Trump. At that point in the scenario, the nation stopped looking to the media for cues, and waited to see what the military would do.
Neither side in American politics has particularly high regard for the system if it doesn't let them win.
This cycling shaming sounds a bit when did you stop beating your wife?
I used to cycle to the station (pre kids) but stopped afterwards when I missed a few trains, and got drenched a couple of times en-route, and it was all too much hassle. Particularly to change into and out of a suit again.
It also didn't help when one of my lights failed on the ride home one Winter evening and someone called me a See You Next Tuesday because I rode the last 1/2 mile without it, and with much mirth.
Far too much hassle and not much fun.
Do It Right. Spare light and spare spare light. Perhaps just the spare if your primary is dynamo driven.
Dynamo driven lights usually include a battery or capacitor these days to keep it on whilst stationary at a junction etc.
I think @Casino_Royale needs an Omafiets, which comes with everything including hub gears, dynamo lights, luggage rack, coaster (pedal backwards) brakes, chain cover, step through frame, built-in frame lock, very comfortable riding position, and will last about 25 years.
Junk. Perfect for Amsterdam which is flat and has plenty of canals for throwing them into but rear only coaster brake is a death sentence anywhere hilly.
Also illegal in the UK which requires two independent brakes on a bicycle IIRC.
This cycling shaming sounds a bit when did you stop beating your wife?
I used to cycle to the station (pre kids) but stopped afterwards when I missed a few trains, and got drenched a couple of times en-route, and it was all too much hassle. Particularly to change into and out of a suit again.
It also didn't help when one of my lights failed on the ride home one Winter evening and someone called me a See You Next Tuesday because I rode the last 1/2 mile without it, and with much mirth.
Far too much hassle and not much fun.
Do It Right. Spare light and spare spare light. Perhaps just the spare if your primary is dynamo driven.
Dynamo driven lights usually include a battery or capacitor these days to keep it on whilst stationary at a junction etc.
I think @Casino_Royale needs an Omafiets, which comes with everything including hub gears, dynamo lights, luggage rack, coaster (pedal backwards) brakes, chain cover, step through frame, built-in frame lock, very comfortable riding position, and will last about 25 years.
Junk. Perfect for Amsterdam which is flat and has plenty of canals for throwing them into but rear only coaster brake is a death sentence anywhere hilly.
I thought rear only brakes were illegal, which is why even fixies are supposed to have a front brake. How many UK cities and towns are actually flat? Very few.
I used an old touring bike (mudguards, rack, brakes that work) for cycle commuting and solved the 'getting wet' problem mostly by not caring. I also solved the shower / clothes change problem by going slow.
Anyway, most people would be surprised how little it actually rains in this country, even in winter.
I fled to Sidmouth - ok, Exmouth - upon the partial relaxation of lockdown in April 2021.
A massive amount of potential but the seafront felt kind of elderly and tatty.
Shame about the unsightly caravan park at Sandy Bay, which in an ideal world would be protected landscape.
I heard a lot of Brummie down there and it dawned on me that it was essentially the nearest coast to Birmingham (apart from South Wales maybe?)
That honour traditionally goes to Weston-super-Mud. Whether it's geographically quite the closest, or just because of the main road, I don't remember.
Now Weston's a proper dump.
The Exmouth to Starcross ferry is nice, as is Starcross itself.
I would have thought Rhyl and Prestatyn in North Wales would be next closest after Weston. Certainly for the northern parts of the West Midlands, Sutton Coldfield and Walsall.
North Wales is essentially a littoral colony of Liverpool.
Brummies own mid-Wales, but there’s no easily accessible beach. It’s all about getting on the M5 for the denizens of Motor City.
What an ignorant comment from someone who constantly talks down Britain
What a fatuous response from PB’s prime apologist for Tory incompetence.
I live in North Wales and your slur is baseless and ignorant of our population
What slur?
Your comment that North Walians are a literal colony of Liverpool is just wrong, ignorant, and an insult to the community who are very proud of their Welsh heritage and the integration of peoples across the North West of England not just Liverpool
You should take more pro-biotics. It’s not healthy to be so dyspeptic so early in the morning.
PS I said “littoral” not “literal”.
Even so, it's not really true. The amount of scouse-ancestry North Walians is really quite small. The Scouse accent is an urbanised North Walian accent, rather than the other way around.
Where did I say that North Walians were scouse? I did not. I agree with your last sentence, but add Irish to North Walian.
That's what I inferred from North Wales being a littoral colony of Liverpool. I inferred you meant that Liverpuddlians had moved to the North Wales coast, displacing the natives. Whereas I've often reflected on the remarkable degree to which this hasn't happened, compared to, say, urban Lancastrians to the Fylde coast or Londoners to the Sussex coast.
But anyway. Go to Connah's Quay or Buckley or St. Asaph and listen to the accent,and reflect on the way Liverpool grew in the 19th century. Flintshire or (inland) Denbighshire Welsh accents sound in many cases almost indistinguishable from Scouse.
I meant economic colony. Wrexham and Rhyl are surely economic satellites of Merseyside.
Less true of Llandudno but it’d be interesting to know the breakdown of domestic tourists. And BigG himself is an incomer from, I think, Manchester.
Or, indeed, retirement colony. One used to speak of the British colony in Mentone, for instance.
Yes indeed.
BigG seems incredibly touchy about it for reasons unknown.
I think the mere fact of my posting is enough to trigger him. Probably because I regularly call out his various attempts at PR for the current administration.
From reading recent threads, I see his latest angle is to call for some kind of government of national unity on the grounds that while the current lot are transparently useless, the other lot still can’t be trusted.
Newsflash: I am one of the many cyclists who make up the supposedly 10,000/day bikes along the Embankment. Absolutely tipping it down today and I had only half the right clothes. And even when I'm suited up days like these are miserable on a bike.
When people advocate for increased cycle usage in the UK they really do need to do it in conjunction with the British Meteorogical Office and a cold hard (and wet) dose of reality. They need to understand that a huge number of people are simply not going to get on a bike in these or, frankly, any other conditions.
Oh here we go!
I had a look at the cycle stats for Amsterdam and they hardly vary with weather. In Edinburgh, on a monthly basis, there isn't much seasonal variation either.
We shouldn't have started from there but that's all we have.
Trying to get the UK to be a cycling culture = trying to get the UK to be a cafe culture.
Ain't gonna happen.
Why? Is the weather and topography of the London estuary so very different from Amsterdam? Or Paris, for that matter?
Thanks to Stuart in Romford for finding thos fantastic graphs:
But look at how people actually get around at the moment:
If your cycling provision is made at the expense of existing road provision, that just pisses off the motorists.
Except perhaps in central London, no-one is going to be cycling 10 miles to work in the rain and cold when they have a car in the drive.
As with ULEZ, there need to be more carrots and fewer sticks. The people need to feel that they are being brought along, rather than these things being done to them against their will.
There seems to be some assertion of validity of a point of view on subjects like this based upon nothing more than wishful thinking.
Sure, some people don't mind cycling to work in the cold and rain, and changing at work when they get there, but most do not.
Saying that proportionately more people do so in The Netherlands, so the concerns are unwarranted, isn't going to meaningfully shift the dial back in the UK where topography, infrastructure, commuting patterns - and even climate, at times - are all very different.
The topography of the London basin isn’t so different, though. Nor the other big conurbations. Urban England isn’t very hilly.
And the ask is to change the infrastructure, not simply accept it as fact. Much infrastructure is still a legacy of 1950s and 60s thinking about the role of cars versus other forms of transport.
In turn, commuting patterns follow travel infrastructure.
Saying that it should be different isn't the same as recognising the reality of why it isn't, and will likely never be, and throwing in strawmen lines like 1950s and 1960s attitudes to explain away any difference. This is similar to your histrionics on taps and heat pumps.
You aren't going to get lots of people peddling into the City from Thurrock or Hayes and they'd be fairly mad to do so. Commuting patterns follow economic geography and that can't be changed by a few extra cycle lanes.
What the UK likes to do is competitive recreational road cycling and family cycling in parks and forests at weekends. Commuter cycling is largely localised to professional men in their 30s-50s running to the local station or urban transit within metropolitan areas of big cities.
I have no personal desire or expectation for people to cycle in from Thurrock or Hayes. That’s what a mass transit system is for.
I merely note that the essential topography, and indeed the climate of urban England is not so different from the Netherlands.
So I call bollocks on your claim - which you appear to rehearse in matters as wide ranging as plumbing to heat engineering - that Britain is so unique it has nothing to learn from the fuzzy-wuzzies who start at Calais.
This is just embarrassing, and ignorant. Any child can tell you the difference between the flatness of The Netherlands and urban England. And you've clearly never been to Bristol, Sheffield or Bradford. Not everywhere is like Cambridge.
But keep farting away if it helps clear your bowels.
This is what I’m talking about.
London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool are all pretty flat. All bigger than your aforementioned cities. So is the much vaunted “Oxford-Cambridge corridor”.
Some of us have actually travelled a bit and seen the world. You should try it some time.
And perhaps read up on William of Orange or Van Dyck or something.
The weather thing is weird too. You can change out of your wet stuff at work. Or walk or take the bus.
Or drive, even. But most days the weather is fine for cycling.
Provision of showering/change facilities at work is a big driver for getting people to cycle. Something a the firms around Aberdeen provide
Certainly for long distance commutes. But most will just a be a few miles, similar to car commutes.
I was interested looking at the stats this morning that the average London commute is 7 miles each way. A lot will be less than that but accordingly a lot will be more. The problem we have is that we have encouraged an economy that relies on centres of employment with dormitory centres around them - London and the suburbs being the most obvious example - rather than a more dispersed employment pattern. I am not sure this is something that can now be reversed. The fact that places like Peterborough are commutor towns for London is really an indictment of our post war economic national strategy.
We speak as if we haven't just got rid of Britain Trump here.
The UK and the US are in a mess, the Tories must go and the Reps must lose. Social democratic decade is needed to clean the rot.
Yes, because the Democrats and Labour in power solve all the Wests problems. The west is in a mess and will be whoever is in charge. It will just be more managed decline.
BigG seems incredibly touchy about it for reasons unknown.
I think the mere fact of my posting is enough to trigger him. Probably because I regularly call out his various attempts at PR for the current administration.
From reading recent threads, I see his latest angle is to call for some kind of government of national unity on the grounds that while the current lot are transparently useless, the other lot still can’t be trusted.
Be careful, he will pop his eBay police hat on shortly and arrest you with his toy car.
We speak as if we haven't just got rid of Britain Trump here.
The UK and the US are in a mess, the Tories must go and the Reps must lose. Social democratic decade is needed to clean the rot.
Yes, because the Democrats and Labour in power solve all the Wests problems. The west is in a mess and will be whoever is in charge. It will just be more managed decline.
As a Watergate historian, it’s worth noting that nothing Nixon did—and he had plenty of crimes and conspiracies, involving more than 60 people criminally charged—approached the scale and severity of Trump’s assault on American democracy. https://twitter.com/vermontgmg/status/1686531761352609792?s=20
Good point. Viewed at this remove, Nixon's crimes appear almost quaint in comparison
The Democrats have opened Pandoras box and this could go anywhere . THe US is screwed
"Lock her up" was shouted by who, again?
And, it's the Democrats fault that Donald Trump allegedly committed crimes?
You can call a "pox on both your houses" with some degree of accuracy. But to point to the Dems and say the ball is entirely in your court - as you are doing - is willfully blind.
Now, I really, really hate the idea that governments use their political power to pursue political opponents. (Like Trump and the IRS vs Comey, for example.) But at the same time, should your political position shield you from all legal liability?
What of the upcoming tax/wirefraud case in NY? Trump valued properties at one price for the tax authorities and another for mortgages. And this wasn't a 10% difference, it was a multiple. People go to jail for that kind of thing all the time. Should he not be prosecuted, solely because he was President?
What is it about Trump that make otherwise sensible people lose their marbles ?
Hounding Trump will achieve precisely nothing except to make him more popular with his supporters and make diviisions in US society deeper.
As for the legal guff, Hilary is still walking free and has never been near a court nd I dont think anyome seriously expects the Biden\Hunter mess to be investigated before an election.
So you're saying laws actually should not apply to him?
That's his attitude, certainly, and that's what's got him into trouble.
Nobody is 'hounding' him, they're enforcing the multiple laws he's deliberately broken for his own gain.
Im saying the laws should apply to everyone and not just one individual. The US justice system is highly partisan and this is using the law to hamper an opponent who it appears cant be beaten by normal means.
That matter alone says what a poor position the Dems have, Worse now that the principle has been established if Trump were to win the election he can quite happily clear out the DoJ, pack it with his place men like Giuliani and lock up who he pleases as the Dems arent exactly choirboys.
And for the record I think that would be a total bag of shit too,
Trump tried to use the justice system to hound his opponents. It didn't work for him because ultimately the law-breaking of say, Hilary Clinton was quite low level. She should not have done what she did, but she was stupid rather than malign.
Her husband was, in case you've forgotten, impeached for his crimes although he wasn't in the end convicted.
Her husbands case I would actually say was the start of this whole sorry saga, The GOP tried to nobble Clinton by foul means and that set off the tit for tat escalation we have seen ever since.
As for Trump using the justice system, well as you say nobody got convicted. But I dont agree with that either , someone somewhere has to put the genie back in the bottle it just wont be either of the two presidential candidates.
Sigh.
The point is he *tried* to use the justice system to nobble his opponents and he failed because what happened wasn't ultimately significant enough to secure an indictment so the lawyers concerned told him 'no.' Had Clinton not handed over her email server, however belatedly and reluctantly, it might have been different. But that was not his call. Just as this is not Biden's. Or anyone in the government.
What's happening now is they *are* indicting him for multiple crimes he has not only committed but is repeatedly doubling down on.
And if you genuinely think January 6th was bad policing, you are profoundly ignorant of what happened. Again, read the indictment. How would 'bad policing,' for example, have led to a crowd gathering at Trump's urging that wanted to lynch the Vice President?
And if you don't think that, well...
No the point is he has been accused of it. He hasnt been convicted of anything,
And he has been accused of it not directly after the event when logically the state would lock up a real and present danger, but just before an election and by a partisan justice system. You draw one conclusion I draw another.
As for the policing issue London regulary gets trashed by people who shout down with the govt but these are riots not coups. And our police despite their critics handle them quite well. And just to wind you up even further J6 wasnt even a decent riot, I grew up in Ulster so I know what a riot looks like there were no petrol bombs, no stones no tear gas. Because all of those thinsg would have required organisation and hard work and Trump is too chaotic .
He has been INDICTED. That is the difference.
As for your last somewhat incoherent and illogical paragraph, put differently you are saying that should something not be exactly like your memories of a riot in Ulster it must not be a riot and therefore can't be a coup.
As a Watergate historian, it’s worth noting that nothing Nixon did—and he had plenty of crimes and conspiracies, involving more than 60 people criminally charged—approached the scale and severity of Trump’s assault on American democracy. https://twitter.com/vermontgmg/status/1686531761352609792?s=20
Good point. Viewed at this remove, Nixon's crimes appear almost quaint in comparison
The Democrats have opened Pandoras box and this could go anywhere . THe US is screwed
"Lock her up" was shouted by who, again?
And, it's the Democrats fault that Donald Trump allegedly committed crimes?
You can call a "pox on both your houses" with some degree of accuracy. But to point to the Dems and say the ball is entirely in your court - as you are doing - is willfully blind.
Now, I really, really hate the idea that governments use their political power to pursue political opponents. (Like Trump and the IRS vs Comey, for example.) But at the same time, should your political position shield you from all legal liability?
What of the upcoming tax/wirefraud case in NY? Trump valued properties at one price for the tax authorities and another for mortgages. And this wasn't a 10% difference, it was a multiple. People go to jail for that kind of thing all the time. Should he not be prosecuted, solely because he was President?
What is it about Trump that make otherwise sensible people lose their marbles ?
I think as one of the two people most affected on here by this phenomenon perhaps you could tell us?
Ive been indicted myself and had to go to court but never convicted because the charges were nonsense. In my case it was a french trade union trying it on for their own purposes. So so far Trump hasnt been convicted of anything, bar losing a civil case.
An indictment isnt a conviction unless youve decided hes guilty until proven innocent, which in its own way demonstrates the madness of a politicised justice system.
As for your second point Trump is like Brexit , people are so partisan about it they only eve believe one line of propaganda. There is very little room for standing back and looking at things in the round.
The democrats won the popular vote in the last 2 elections and on that basis should win the next one but as Ive said theyve opened Pandoras box so anything could happen.
Losing more than one civil case.
In addition, Trump Organization, his business, has been found guilty of 17 criminal charges and lost other civil cases. His charity, the Donald J Trump Foundation, was found guilty of various charges.
So Clinton level stuff ?
a) Trump and his organisations have lost or settled far more law suits than the Clintons, so no.
b) Is whataboutery all you have to offer?
I think he says upthread he's trolling. I'll take him at his word and stop responding.
well its hardly as if either one of us is going to change our mind.
I believe that NigelB is open to facts but I'll take your word that you're not. Remember cultists can recover, good luck.
ROFL.
So suddenly - despite saying I dont want Trump as president - Im a MAGA man .
Questioning spin is what this site is supposed to do.
But if you want to assume all those politicians and lawyers are telling you the Gods honest truth then do so. But I wont.
I was going to add a 'by the way I don't like Trump' disclaimer to my post upthread, then found I couldn't be arsed. Apparently if you don't think his being re-elected is armageddon, that makes you a cult member. Despite the fact that he's been President before and nothing of any consequence happened.
“Nothing of any consequence” is an odd take.
Really? A lot more seems to have gone to shit in the world since Biden 're-established America's leadership' upon his accession.
Whether more has “gone to shit in the world” during Biden’s presidency is another matter. Were that true, that wouldn’t mean that nothing of any consequence happened under Trump.
Also, given the COVID-19 pandemic happened during Trump’s presidency, it is ludicrous to suggest that more has “gone to shit in the world” under Biden.
This cycling shaming sounds a bit when did you stop beating your wife?
I used to cycle to the station (pre kids) but stopped afterwards when I missed a few trains, and got drenched a couple of times en-route, and it was all too much hassle. Particularly to change into and out of a suit again.
It also didn't help when one of my lights failed on the ride home one Winter evening and someone called me a See You Next Tuesday because I rode the last 1/2 mile without it, and with much mirth.
Far too much hassle and not much fun.
Do It Right. Spare light and spare spare light. Perhaps just the spare if your primary is dynamo driven.
Dynamo driven lights usually include a battery or capacitor these days to keep it on whilst stationary at a junction etc.
I think @Casino_Royale needs an Omafiets, which comes with everything including hub gears, dynamo lights, luggage rack, coaster (pedal backwards) brakes, chain cover, step through frame, built-in frame lock, very comfortable riding position, and will last about 25 years.
Junk. Perfect for Amsterdam which is flat and has plenty of canals for throwing them into but rear only coaster brake is a death sentence anywhere hilly.
Also illegal in the UK which requires two independent brakes on a bicycle IIRC.
But what about all those hipsters on fixies??
Omafiets has 'proper' brakes as well.
Fixies* will always be sold with at least one handlebar-mounted brake, usually for the front wheel - and more often than not brakes both fore and aft, because that's what most people want and need. But a single brake satisfies the legal requirement as pedalling backwards qualifies as the second.
The brakeless ones will either have been altered post-purchase, or (as was the classical style of the 80s and 90s bike messenger) be a repurposed track bike.
*Point of order that I own and ride a fixie and cannot by any definition be deemed 'a hipster**'. The trend seems to be very much over now, anyway.
**I'm not sure more than few hundred actual hipsters have ever existed at any given time - it was media shorthand for 'young trendy people', most of whom were just boring young people into boring young people stuff; twas ever thus. Though it seems like a word that isn't much used these days.
Trump is very unlikely to win the next presidential election. But he will get the nomination. And that will mean the risk of him doing so is unacceptably high.
I fled to Sidmouth - ok, Exmouth - upon the partial relaxation of lockdown in April 2021.
A massive amount of potential but the seafront felt kind of elderly and tatty.
Shame about the unsightly caravan park at Sandy Bay, which in an ideal world would be protected landscape.
I heard a lot of Brummie down there and it dawned on me that it was essentially the nearest coast to Birmingham (apart from South Wales maybe?)
That honour traditionally goes to Weston-super-Mud. Whether it's geographically quite the closest, or just because of the main road, I don't remember.
Now Weston's a proper dump.
The Exmouth to Starcross ferry is nice, as is Starcross itself.
I would have thought Rhyl and Prestatyn in North Wales would be next closest after Weston. Certainly for the northern parts of the West Midlands, Sutton Coldfield and Walsall.
North Wales is essentially a littoral colony of Liverpool.
Brummies own mid-Wales, but there’s no easily accessible beach. It’s all about getting on the M5 for the denizens of Motor City.
What an ignorant comment from someone who constantly talks down Britain
What a fatuous response from PB’s prime apologist for Tory incompetence.
I live in North Wales and your slur is baseless and ignorant of our population
What slur?
Your comment that North Walians are a literal colony of Liverpool is just wrong, ignorant, and an insult to the community who are very proud of their Welsh heritage and the integration of peoples across the North West of England not just Liverpool
You should take more pro-biotics. It’s not healthy to be so dyspeptic so early in the morning.
PS I said “littoral” not “literal”.
Even so, it's not really true. The amount of scouse-ancestry North Walians is really quite small. The Scouse accent is an urbanised North Walian accent, rather than the other way around.
Where did I say that North Walians were scouse? I did not. I agree with your last sentence, but add Irish to North Walian.
That's what I inferred from North Wales being a littoral colony of Liverpool. I inferred you meant that Liverpuddlians had moved to the North Wales coast, displacing the natives. Whereas I've often reflected on the remarkable degree to which this hasn't happened, compared to, say, urban Lancastrians to the Fylde coast or Londoners to the Sussex coast.
But anyway. Go to Connah's Quay or Buckley or St. Asaph and listen to the accent,and reflect on the way Liverpool grew in the 19th century. Flintshire or (inland) Denbighshire Welsh accents sound in many cases almost indistinguishable from Scouse.
I meant economic colony. Wrexham and Rhyl are surely economic satellites of Merseyside.
Less true of Llandudno but it’d be interesting to know the breakdown of domestic tourists. And BigG himself is an incomer from, I think, Manchester.
Or, indeed, retirement colony. One used to speak of the British colony in Mentone, for instance.
Yes indeed.
BigG seems incredibly touchy about it for reasons unknown.
I think the mere fact of my posting is enough to trigger him. Probably because I regularly call out his various attempts at PR for the current administration.
From reading recent threads, I see his latest angle is to call for some kind of government of national unity on the grounds that while the current lot are transparently useless, the other lot still can’t be trusted.
Missed that last. The logical implication is of course that the LDs, SNP and SF would bring a considerable improvement to that pair. Surely not what he means ...
Newsflash: I am one of the many cyclists who make up the supposedly 10,000/day bikes along the Embankment. Absolutely tipping it down today and I had only half the right clothes. And even when I'm suited up days like these are miserable on a bike.
When people advocate for increased cycle usage in the UK they really do need to do it in conjunction with the British Meteorogical Office and a cold hard (and wet) dose of reality. They need to understand that a huge number of people are simply not going to get on a bike in these or, frankly, any other conditions.
Oh here we go!
I had a look at the cycle stats for Amsterdam and they hardly vary with weather. In Edinburgh, on a monthly basis, there isn't much seasonal variation either.
We shouldn't have started from there but that's all we have.
Trying to get the UK to be a cycling culture = trying to get the UK to be a cafe culture.
Ain't gonna happen.
Why? Is the weather and topography of the London estuary so very different from Amsterdam? Or Paris, for that matter?
Thanks to Stuart in Romford for finding thos fantastic graphs:
But look at how people actually get around at the moment:
If your cycling provision is made at the expense of existing road provision, that just pisses off the motorists.
Except perhaps in central London, no-one is going to be cycling 10 miles to work in the rain and cold when they have a car in the drive.
As with ULEZ, there need to be more carrots and fewer sticks. The people need to feel that they are being brought along, rather than these things being done to them against their will.
According to that chart upthread, 80% of the country live in urban conurbations, so the 10 miles thing seems a bit of a red herring.
London has a medieval road pattern, and the carriageways are not very wide. But even so, not enough space is given over to pedestrians or cyclists.
I think the point on reallocating roadspace is that motor vehicles have had all of it for half a century, so that is where it is coming back from as we rebalance priorities to give individuals choice in how they travel. And inevitably there will be bit of a backlash from those attached to, or benefitting from, the legacy forms of transport.
The remorseless cycles vs motor vehicles logic is that as a way of moving people in urban settings cycles are 4 or 5 times more efficient than the normal usage patterns for motor vehicles. Both are dominated by single occupancy use, and a pedal cycle is 0.75m wide by 1.7m long and can easily coexist with other modes, whilst a normal individual motor vehicle is 2m wide by 5m long and have to be further apart, and other road users have to be protected from them because of the danger.
Where we see it is in 3m cycle tracks carrying more people than 10m of 2 or 3 x vehicle lanes, whilst still having spare capacity. We are seeing that in a number of places now, and it will appear in many more.
I think that quadricycles will have a larger role to play - for example Citroen Ami or Renault Twizy, initially perhaps replacing 2nd vehicles.
I think a couple of places to watch in London are the Embankment, which as I pointed out yesterday carries approx 10-12k cycles on a weekday - when only 20% of London has decent quality cycle infra within a 400m distance. I predict that in 5 years that will be 20k per day, and 30k per day in 10-15 years, unless a fruitloop like Susan Hall becomes Mayor.
The other is Kensington High Street, where RBKC have given one of two lanes over to parking, and forced the several thousands of cycles per day into a single lane with all the motor vehicles. Not sure how that will play out, apart form likely an increase in Killed and Seriously Injured people.
Outside London watch places like Manchester, Nottingham, Bristol and the West Midlands.
As a Watergate historian, it’s worth noting that nothing Nixon did—and he had plenty of crimes and conspiracies, involving more than 60 people criminally charged—approached the scale and severity of Trump’s assault on American democracy. https://twitter.com/vermontgmg/status/1686531761352609792?s=20
Good point. Viewed at this remove, Nixon's crimes appear almost quaint in comparison
The Democrats have opened Pandoras box and this could go anywhere . THe US is screwed
"Lock her up" was shouted by who, again?
And, it's the Democrats fault that Donald Trump allegedly committed crimes?
You can call a "pox on both your houses" with some degree of accuracy. But to point to the Dems and say the ball is entirely in your court - as you are doing - is willfully blind.
Now, I really, really hate the idea that governments use their political power to pursue political opponents. (Like Trump and the IRS vs Comey, for example.) But at the same time, should your political position shield you from all legal liability?
What of the upcoming tax/wirefraud case in NY? Trump valued properties at one price for the tax authorities and another for mortgages. And this wasn't a 10% difference, it was a multiple. People go to jail for that kind of thing all the time. Should he not be prosecuted, solely because he was President?
What is it about Trump that make otherwise sensible people lose their marbles ?
Hounding Trump will achieve precisely nothing except to make him more popular with his supporters and make diviisions in US society deeper.
As for the legal guff, Hilary is still walking free and has never been near a court nd I dont think anyome seriously expects the Biden\Hunter mess to be investigated before an election.
So you're saying laws actually should not apply to him?
That's his attitude, certainly, and that's what's got him into trouble.
Nobody is 'hounding' him, they're enforcing the multiple laws he's deliberately broken for his own gain.
Im saying the laws should apply to everyone and not just one individual. The US justice system is highly partisan and this is using the law to hamper an opponent who it appears cant be beaten by normal means.
That matter alone says what a poor position the Dems have, Worse now that the principle has been established if Trump were to win the election he can quite happily clear out the DoJ, pack it with his place men like Giuliani and lock up who he pleases as the Dems arent exactly choirboys.
And for the record I think that would be a total bag of shit too,
Trump tried to use the justice system to hound his opponents. It didn't work for him because ultimately the law-breaking of say, Hilary Clinton was quite low level. She should not have done what she did, but she was stupid rather than malign.
Her husband was, in case you've forgotten, impeached for his crimes although he wasn't in the end convicted.
Her husbands case I would actually say was the start of this whole sorry saga, The GOP tried to nobble Clinton by foul means and that set off the tit for tat escalation we have seen ever since.
As for Trump using the justice system, well as you say nobody got convicted. But I dont agree with that either , someone somewhere has to put the genie back in the bottle it just wont be either of the two presidential candidates.
Sigh.
The point is he *tried* to use the justice system to nobble his opponents and he failed because what happened wasn't ultimately significant enough to secure an indictment so the lawyers concerned told him 'no.' Had Clinton not handed over her email server, however belatedly and reluctantly, it might have been different. But that was not his call. Just as this is not Biden's. Or anyone in the government.
What's happening now is they *are* indicting him for multiple crimes he has not only committed but is repeatedly doubling down on.
And if you genuinely think January 6th was bad policing, you are profoundly ignorant of what happened. Again, read the indictment. How would 'bad policing,' for example, have led to a crowd gathering at Trump's urging that wanted to lynch the Vice President?
And if you don't think that, well...
No the point is he has been accused of it. He hasnt been convicted of anything,
And he has been accused of it not directly after the event when logically the state would lock up a real and present danger, but just before an election and by a partisan justice system. You draw one conclusion I draw another.
As for the policing issue London regulary gets trashed by people who shout down with the govt but these are riots not coups. And our police despite their critics handle them quite well. And just to wind you up even further J6 wasnt even a decent riot, I grew up in Ulster so I know what a riot looks like there were no petrol bombs, no stones no tear gas. Because all of those thinsg would have required organisation and hard work and Trump is too chaotic .
He has been INDICTED. That is the difference.
As for your last somewhat incoherent and illogical paragraph, put differently you are saying that should something not be exactly like your memories of a riot in Ulster it must not be a riot and therefore can't be a coup.
As a Watergate historian, it’s worth noting that nothing Nixon did—and he had plenty of crimes and conspiracies, involving more than 60 people criminally charged—approached the scale and severity of Trump’s assault on American democracy. https://twitter.com/vermontgmg/status/1686531761352609792?s=20
Good point. Viewed at this remove, Nixon's crimes appear almost quaint in comparison
The Democrats have opened Pandoras box and this could go anywhere . THe US is screwed
"Lock her up" was shouted by who, again?
And, it's the Democrats fault that Donald Trump allegedly committed crimes?
You can call a "pox on both your houses" with some degree of accuracy. But to point to the Dems and say the ball is entirely in your court - as you are doing - is willfully blind.
Now, I really, really hate the idea that governments use their political power to pursue political opponents. (Like Trump and the IRS vs Comey, for example.) But at the same time, should your political position shield you from all legal liability?
What of the upcoming tax/wirefraud case in NY? Trump valued properties at one price for the tax authorities and another for mortgages. And this wasn't a 10% difference, it was a multiple. People go to jail for that kind of thing all the time. Should he not be prosecuted, solely because he was President?
What is it about Trump that make otherwise sensible people lose their marbles ?
I think as one of the two people most affected on here by this phenomenon perhaps you could tell us?
Ive been indicted myself and had to go to court but never convicted because the charges were nonsense. In my case it was a french trade union trying it on for their own purposes. So so far Trump hasnt been convicted of anything, bar losing a civil case.
An indictment isnt a conviction unless youve decided hes guilty until proven innocent, which in its own way demonstrates the madness of a politicised justice system.
As for your second point Trump is like Brexit , people are so partisan about it they only eve believe one line of propaganda. There is very little room for standing back and looking at things in the round.
The democrats won the popular vote in the last 2 elections and on that basis should win the next one but as Ive said theyve opened Pandoras box so anything could happen.
Losing more than one civil case.
In addition, Trump Organization, his business, has been found guilty of 17 criminal charges and lost other civil cases. His charity, the Donald J Trump Foundation, was found guilty of various charges.
So Clinton level stuff ?
a) Trump and his organisations have lost or settled far more law suits than the Clintons, so no.
b) Is whataboutery all you have to offer?
I think he says upthread he's trolling. I'll take him at his word and stop responding.
well its hardly as if either one of us is going to change our mind.
I believe that NigelB is open to facts but I'll take your word that you're not. Remember cultists can recover, good luck.
ROFL.
So suddenly - despite saying I dont want Trump as president - Im a MAGA man .
Questioning spin is what this site is supposed to do.
But if you want to assume all those politicians and lawyers are telling you the Gods honest truth then do so. But I wont.
I was going to add a 'by the way I don't like Trump' disclaimer to my post upthread, then found I couldn't be arsed. Apparently if you don't think his being re-elected is armageddon, that makes you a cult member. Despite the fact that he's been President before and nothing of any consequence happened.
“Nothing of any consequence” is an odd take.
Really? A lot more seems to have gone to shit in the world since Biden 're-established America's leadership' upon his accession.
Whether more has “gone to shit in the world” during Biden’s presidency is another matter. Were that true, that wouldn’t mean that nothing of any consequence happened under Trump.
Also, given the COVID-19 pandemic happened during Trump’s presidency, it is ludicrous to suggest that more has “gone to shit in the world” under Biden.
I assume some level of intelligent interpretation of my comments. Of course things that are of consequence happen every day. A more precise way of expressing my sentiments would be to say 'by the standards of his antecedents, and to an extent his successor, no significant disasters appear to have been caused as a direct result of his Presidency' - more precise, but more of a hassle to type, and read, when we both know what I meant.
I posted this late last year and it repays reposting:
Jan 6th was not a coup.
It showed a ragtag mob lead by Steven Shaman in his horns and other deluded no-hope types, no doubt provoked and egged on by Donald Trump, ending up, somehow, in Washington inside the Capitol building which I'm pretty sure no one really thought they would or could ever reach.
Once in, they didn't really know what to do and hung around sitting on chairs and smoking weed.
They were not an organised force seeking to overthrow the state by force although they posed a very real and present danger to those inside the Capitol, both police and legislators, and I can perfectly understand that these people were and have been since traumatised by the experience.
But it was not a coup. The massed forces of the state were pretty quickly brought into play against them and they were relatively quickly subdued. There was neither a shadow administration ready to take over, nor the force at its disposal for it to do so. They had the run of the Capitol but didn't appoint a president or ruling council or a Get Your Arse Over Here DJT And Run The Country Committee. I think they might like to have had DJT back running the place but they didn't actually take any steps to enable it.
Some years ago Otis Ferry and a few mates barged into the House of Commons, shouting the odds about foxhunting. They were given conditional discharges and fined, I believe, as a result. That wasn't a coup either.
6th January was not a coup, it was a riot. But there was an attempted coup which has been well documented and sufficiently evidenced now. A layered series of options which were enacted wholly or in part: 1 Interfere with state processes to "find" the votes Trump needed to win. The pending legal action in Georgia is in response to Trump's direct attempt to overturn their result 2 Have GOP state legislatures send rival electors. When the GOP ran the state but the vote had gone Democrat, simply send the Trump electors that the election doesn't mandate. If you can stop the genuine electors then all the better 3 The electoral college meets. Chaos thanks to rival slates of electors. Pence then throws the EC out and the election goes to Congress where the GOP majority simply re-elect Trump.
Where this all fell apart is Mike Pence having an attack of conscience. His discussions with Dan Quayle are very well documented - Quayle told him repeatedly and increasingly firmly that he had zero options other than to certify the real electors votes.
Once Pence refused to co-operate with the plot, the frenzy was aimed at him. Either make him change his mind, or simply remove him, have Trump declare martial law, and then send the election to congress. So the riot was to pressure/remove Pence. You say that the mob didn't have a plan. The mob *was* the plan. The shadow administration didn't exist because the coup was being orchestrated by the existing administration to stay in power.
Perhaps the word "coup" has been used as a distraction. But there was an illegal and unconstitutional plot to overturn the election result.
Pence could have done what Trump wished him to, if he'd wanted. Tom Cotton would have done.
That Trump is in the running for possible re-election is the fault of the Republican senators who voted not guilty at his second impeachment trial.
This cycling shaming sounds a bit when did you stop beating your wife?
I used to cycle to the station (pre kids) but stopped afterwards when I missed a few trains, and got drenched a couple of times en-route, and it was all too much hassle. Particularly to change into and out of a suit again.
It also didn't help when one of my lights failed on the ride home one Winter evening and someone called me a See You Next Tuesday because I rode the last 1/2 mile without it, and with much mirth.
Far too much hassle and not much fun.
Do It Right. Spare light and spare spare light. Perhaps just the spare if your primary is dynamo driven.
Dynamo driven lights usually include a battery or capacitor these days to keep it on whilst stationary at a junction etc.
I think @Casino_Royale needs an Omafiets, which comes with everything including hub gears, dynamo lights, luggage rack, coaster (pedal backwards) brakes, chain cover, step through frame, built-in frame lock, very comfortable riding position, and will last about 25 years.
Junk. Perfect for Amsterdam which is flat and has plenty of canals for throwing them into but rear only coaster brake is a death sentence anywhere hilly.
Also illegal in the UK which requires two independent brakes on a bicycle IIRC.
But what about all those hipsters on fixies??
They could probably get away with arguing that the ability to push back on the pedals counts as one brake; legally they need a second brake somewhere.
It was critical for America that Trump was charged for the attempted coup. When you read up on the details it most definitely was an attempted coup that built for some time - the charging of the Capitol was only the denouement.
What is at stake is very simple - America. I fear that it would take a black swan event to deny Trump the republican nomination, and he is going to be All In offering people the kind of America they want. War against minorities / women / liberals / deviants / Iran - you name it and he'll offer it.
I can see the 2024 election being a repeat of 2020 only on a bigger scale. Biden will will more votes than the pundits thought possible as people who never vote turn out to keep Trump out. But the electoral college is a perverse thing, and there remains a clear a present danger that Trump does well enough in the EC to keep him in the game. And with the idiocy of their system having TV networks call results we can expect a Roman Roy figure to call key states for Trump whether he has them on not. At least NewsMax and possibly Fox too.
If Trump wins, that is America done. The republic will fall and be replaced by a "Christian" version of Iran.
That dastardly Trump and his heinous attempt to win an election by offering the people what they want.
Some of the people. A minority of people. Where what they want will turn them into an international pariah.
The unfairness of the US electoral system is a totally different issue. They seem happy with it - I'm not aware of any serious moves to change it, and the Democrats are in power.
For the rest, that's democracy. Hoping for a 'black swan event' (I'm not going to probe what that might be) to stop this awful act of people voting for what they want is not your finest hour.
"and the Democrats are in power" They would need to change the constitution. They don't have a two thirds majority in the House or Senate, nor majorities in three quarters of the states. So no, they don't have the power to change it.
"Hoping for a 'black swan event' (I'm not going to probe what that might be) to stop this awful act of people voting for what they want" doesn't seem to be an accurate reflection of what RP wrote.
Maybe not your finest hour either?
Meh. He doesn't have enough finest hours for me to have any interest in his opinion on what I wrote.
He was able to celebrate the appointment of a PM that he really wanted, which is more than I can say about the last couple of decades...
I think the point on reallocating roadspace is that motor vehicles have had all of it for half a century, so that is where it is coming back from as we rebalance priorities to give individuals choice in how they travel. And inevitably there will be bit of a backlash from those attached to, or benefitting from, the legacy forms of transport.
Yet we wonder why the cycling enthusiasts come across as primarily anti-car rather than pro-bike.
If you want to improve cycling provision then it needs to be *new* roadway, not “repurposing” the existing road to make driving more difficult.
Newsflash: I am one of the many cyclists who make up the supposedly 10,000/day bikes along the Embankment. Absolutely tipping it down today and I had only half the right clothes. And even when I'm suited up days like these are miserable on a bike.
When people advocate for increased cycle usage in the UK they really do need to do it in conjunction with the British Meteorogical Office and a cold hard (and wet) dose of reality. They need to understand that a huge number of people are simply not going to get on a bike in these or, frankly, any other conditions.
Oh here we go!
I had a look at the cycle stats for Amsterdam and they hardly vary with weather. In Edinburgh, on a monthly basis, there isn't much seasonal variation either.
We shouldn't have started from there but that's all we have.
Trying to get the UK to be a cycling culture = trying to get the UK to be a cafe culture.
Ain't gonna happen.
Why? Is the weather and topography of the London estuary so very different from Amsterdam? Or Paris, for that matter?
Paris? Your kidding. It is a very brave cyclist that chances their arm around eg the Place de la Concorde. Even in an Uber I fear imminent death every time I head away from the GdN.
I haven’t been to Paris since the before-times, but I’m there in a week or so. I thought the whole city had gone quite cycle-mad. I’ll report back.
No doubt this report will be upbeat and positive in contrast to your steadfast determination to always see the worst in Britain.
I'd recommend trying out a Velib, but they are doing it in a revolutionary, less considered than London, style, and it is easy to fall off the edge of the new cycle-friendly stuff and find yourself back in manic, dangerous old Paris.
This cycling shaming sounds a bit when did you stop beating your wife?
I used to cycle to the station (pre kids) but stopped afterwards when I missed a few trains, and got drenched a couple of times en-route, and it was all too much hassle. Particularly to change into and out of a suit again.
It also didn't help when one of my lights failed on the ride home one Winter evening and someone called me a See You Next Tuesday because I rode the last 1/2 mile without it, and with much mirth.
Far too much hassle and not much fun.
Do It Right. Spare light and spare spare light. Perhaps just the spare if your primary is dynamo driven.
Dynamo driven lights usually include a battery or capacitor these days to keep it on whilst stationary at a junction etc.
I think @Casino_Royale needs an Omafiets, which comes with everything including hub gears, dynamo lights, luggage rack, coaster (pedal backwards) brakes, chain cover, step through frame, built-in frame lock, very comfortable riding position, and will last about 25 years.
Junk. Perfect for Amsterdam which is flat and has plenty of canals for throwing them into but rear only coaster brake is a death sentence anywhere hilly.
Also illegal in the UK which requires two independent brakes on a bicycle IIRC.
But what about all those hipsters on fixies??
Omafiets has 'proper' brakes as well.
Fixies* will always be sold with at least one handlebar-mounted brake, usually for the front wheel - and more often than not brakes both fore and aft, because that's what most people want and need. But a single brake satisfies the legal requirement as pedalling backwards qualifies as the second.
The brakeless ones will either have been altered post-purchase, or (as was the classical style of the 80s and 90s bike messenger) be a repurposed track bike.
*Point of order that I own and ride a fixie and cannot by any definition be deemed 'a hipster**'. The trend seems to be very much over now, anyway.
**I'm not sure more than few hundred actual hipsters have ever existed at any given time - it was media shorthand for 'young trendy people', most of whom were just boring young people into boring young people stuff; twas ever thus. Though it seems like a word that isn't much used these days.
I once saw a hipster being brutally attacked by a crow in Green Park. It made him drop his iPhone and whenever he attempted to retrieve it the crow would sweep down and attack him remorselessly. I would have helped him but I was laughing so much I couldn't move.
We speak as if we haven't just got rid of Britain Trump here.
The UK and the US are in a mess, the Tories must go and the Reps must lose. Social democratic decade is needed to clean the rot.
Yes, because the Democrats and Labour in power solve all the Wests problems. The west is in a mess and will be whoever is in charge. It will just be more managed decline.
That vs nuclear war with Trump.
I don’t see the risk of nuclear war growing perceptibly under Trump. Indeed given he is ambivalent at best and actively anti-Ukraine at worst on the whole Russia thing, he’s more likely to just let Vlad have what he wants.
We speak as if we haven't just got rid of Britain Trump here.
The UK and the US are in a mess, the Tories must go and the Reps must lose. Social democratic decade is needed to clean the rot.
Yes, because the Democrats and Labour in power solve all the Wests problems. The west is in a mess and will be whoever is in charge. It will just be more managed decline.
A bit of decent management would at least be a refreshing change. Though I can't say I'm confidently predicting that from Labour.
There does seem to be quite a bit of strawmanning going on this morning. Opponents of the current government predicting a change will "solve all the West's problems" are vanishingly rare. And AlanB. seems to have the odd idea that there's a horde of folk arguing that Democrats are as pure as the driven snow.
I think the point on reallocating roadspace is that motor vehicles have had all of it for half a century, so that is where it is coming back from as we rebalance priorities to give individuals choice in how they travel. And inevitably there will be bit of a backlash from those attached to, or benefitting from, the legacy forms of transport.
Yet we wonder why the cycling enthusiasts come across as primarily anti-car rather than pro-bike.
If you want to improve cycling provision then it needs to be *new* roadway, not “repurposing” the existing road to make driving more difficult.
It was critical for America that Trump was charged for the attempted coup. When you read up on the details it most definitely was an attempted coup that built for some time - the charging of the Capitol was only the denouement.
What is at stake is very simple - America. I fear that it would take a black swan event to deny Trump the republican nomination, and he is going to be All In offering people the kind of America they want. War against minorities / women / liberals / deviants / Iran - you name it and he'll offer it.
I can see the 2024 election being a repeat of 2020 only on a bigger scale. Biden will will more votes than the pundits thought possible as people who never vote turn out to keep Trump out. But the electoral college is a perverse thing, and there remains a clear a present danger that Trump does well enough in the EC to keep him in the game. And with the idiocy of their system having TV networks call results we can expect a Roman Roy figure to call key states for Trump whether he has them on not. At least NewsMax and possibly Fox too.
If Trump wins, that is America done. The republic will fall and be replaced by a "Christian" version of Iran.
That dastardly Trump and his heinous attempt to win an election by offering the people what they want.
Some of the people. A minority of people. Where what they want will turn them into an international pariah.
The unfairness of the US electoral system is a totally different issue. They seem happy with it - I'm not aware of any serious moves to change it, and the Democrats are in power.
For the rest, that's democracy. Hoping for a 'black swan event' (I'm not going to probe what that might be) to stop this awful act of people voting for what they want is not your finest hour.
"and the Democrats are in power" They would need to change the constitution. They don't have a two thirds majority in the House or Senate, nor majorities in three quarters of the states. So no, they don't have the power to change it.
"Hoping for a 'black swan event' (I'm not going to probe what that might be) to stop this awful act of people voting for what they want" doesn't seem to be an accurate reflection of what RP wrote.
Maybe not your finest hour either?
Meh. He doesn't have enough finest hours for me to have any interest in his opinion on what I wrote.
He was able to celebrate the appointment of a PM that he really wanted, which is more than I can say about the last couple of decades...
I wasn't - I didn't want Truss; I said that she was an appalling, cringe-making candidate, who would be like May but even odder. I warmed to her during the campaign, and more afterwards, but I didn't 'really want' her to be PM. I can't think of anyone on the Tory front benches who I 'really want' to be PM. Probably nobody in the entire HOC.
I think the point on reallocating roadspace is that motor vehicles have had all of it for half a century, so that is where it is coming back from as we rebalance priorities to give individuals choice in how they travel. And inevitably there will be bit of a backlash from those attached to, or benefitting from, the legacy forms of transport.
Yet we wonder why the cycling enthusiasts come across as primarily anti-car rather than pro-bike.
If you want to improve cycling provision then it needs to be *new* roadway, not “repurposing” the existing road to make driving more difficult.
Where is this new roadway going to be in, say, central Edinburgh? Or in the suburbs? Obviously not on the pavement. So ...
@MattW is the acknowledged expert on cycling infrastructure. I’m sure his predictions that cycling can be expected to triple in coming years is right.
I’m hopeful about Birmingham and Nottingham too.
I remember when I posted that it was a shame that cities outside London lacked cyclehire schemes and I was denounced as a cappuccino supping metro elitist.
As a Watergate historian, it’s worth noting that nothing Nixon did—and he had plenty of crimes and conspiracies, involving more than 60 people criminally charged—approached the scale and severity of Trump’s assault on American democracy. https://twitter.com/vermontgmg/status/1686531761352609792?s=20
Good point. Viewed at this remove, Nixon's crimes appear almost quaint in comparison
The Democrats have opened Pandoras box and this could go anywhere . THe US is screwed
"Lock her up" was shouted by who, again?
And, it's the Democrats fault that Donald Trump allegedly committed crimes?
You can call a "pox on both your houses" with some degree of accuracy. But to point to the Dems and say the ball is entirely in your court - as you are doing - is willfully blind.
Now, I really, really hate the idea that governments use their political power to pursue political opponents. (Like Trump and the IRS vs Comey, for example.) But at the same time, should your political position shield you from all legal liability?
What of the upcoming tax/wirefraud case in NY? Trump valued properties at one price for the tax authorities and another for mortgages. And this wasn't a 10% difference, it was a multiple. People go to jail for that kind of thing all the time. Should he not be prosecuted, solely because he was President?
What is it about Trump that make otherwise sensible people lose their marbles ?
Hounding Trump will achieve precisely nothing except to make him more popular with his supporters and make diviisions in US society deeper.
As for the legal guff, Hilary is still walking free and has never been near a court nd I dont think anyome seriously expects the Biden\Hunter mess to be investigated before an election.
So you're saying laws actually should not apply to him?
That's his attitude, certainly, and that's what's got him into trouble.
Nobody is 'hounding' him, they're enforcing the multiple laws he's deliberately broken for his own gain.
Im saying the laws should apply to everyone and not just one individual. The US justice system is highly partisan and this is using the law to hamper an opponent who it appears cant be beaten by normal means.
That matter alone says what a poor position the Dems have, Worse now that the principle has been established if Trump were to win the election he can quite happily clear out the DoJ, pack it with his place men like Giuliani and lock up who he pleases as the Dems arent exactly choirboys.
And for the record I think that would be a total bag of shit too,
Trump tried to use the justice system to hound his opponents. It didn't work for him because ultimately the law-breaking of say, Hilary Clinton was quite low level. She should not have done what she did, but she was stupid rather than malign.
Her husband was, in case you've forgotten, impeached for his crimes although he wasn't in the end convicted.
Her husbands case I would actually say was the start of this whole sorry saga, The GOP tried to nobble Clinton by foul means and that set off the tit for tat escalation we have seen ever since.
As for Trump using the justice system, well as you say nobody got convicted. But I dont agree with that either , someone somewhere has to put the genie back in the bottle it just wont be either of the two presidential candidates.
Sigh.
The point is he *tried* to use the justice system to nobble his opponents and he failed because what happened wasn't ultimately significant enough to secure an indictment so the lawyers concerned told him 'no.' Had Clinton not handed over her email server, however belatedly and reluctantly, it might have been different. But that was not his call. Just as this is not Biden's. Or anyone in the government.
What's happening now is they *are* indicting him for multiple crimes he has not only committed but is repeatedly doubling down on.
And if you genuinely think January 6th was bad policing, you are profoundly ignorant of what happened. Again, read the indictment. How would 'bad policing,' for example, have led to a crowd gathering at Trump's urging that wanted to lynch the Vice President?
And if you don't think that, well...
No the point is he has been accused of it. He hasnt been convicted of anything,
And he has been accused of it not directly after the event when logically the state would lock up a real and present danger, but just before an election and by a partisan justice system. You draw one conclusion I draw another.
As for the policing issue London regulary gets trashed by people who shout down with the govt but these are riots not coups. And our police despite their critics handle them quite well. And just to wind you up even further J6 wasnt even a decent riot, I grew up in Ulster so I know what a riot looks like there were no petrol bombs, no stones no tear gas. Because all of those thinsg would have required organisation and hard work and Trump is too chaotic .
He has been INDICTED. That is the difference.
As for your last somewhat incoherent and illogical paragraph, put differently you are saying that should something not be exactly like your memories of a riot in Ulster it must not be a riot and therefore can't be a coup.
As a Watergate historian, it’s worth noting that nothing Nixon did—and he had plenty of crimes and conspiracies, involving more than 60 people criminally charged—approached the scale and severity of Trump’s assault on American democracy. https://twitter.com/vermontgmg/status/1686531761352609792?s=20
Good point. Viewed at this remove, Nixon's crimes appear almost quaint in comparison
The Democrats have opened Pandoras box and this could go anywhere . THe US is screwed
"Lock her up" was shouted by who, again?
And, it's the Democrats fault that Donald Trump allegedly committed crimes?
You can call a "pox on both your houses" with some degree of accuracy. But to point to the Dems and say the ball is entirely in your court - as you are doing - is willfully blind.
Now, I really, really hate the idea that governments use their political power to pursue political opponents. (Like Trump and the IRS vs Comey, for example.) But at the same time, should your political position shield you from all legal liability?
What of the upcoming tax/wirefraud case in NY? Trump valued properties at one price for the tax authorities and another for mortgages. And this wasn't a 10% difference, it was a multiple. People go to jail for that kind of thing all the time. Should he not be prosecuted, solely because he was President?
What is it about Trump that make otherwise sensible people lose their marbles ?
I think as one of the two people most affected on here by this phenomenon perhaps you could tell us?
Ive been indicted myself and had to go to court but never convicted because the charges were nonsense. In my case it was a french trade union trying it on for their own purposes. So so far Trump hasnt been convicted of anything, bar losing a civil case.
An indictment isnt a conviction unless youve decided hes guilty until proven innocent, which in its own way demonstrates the madness of a politicised justice system.
As for your second point Trump is like Brexit , people are so partisan about it they only eve believe one line of propaganda. There is very little room for standing back and looking at things in the round.
The democrats won the popular vote in the last 2 elections and on that basis should win the next one but as Ive said theyve opened Pandoras box so anything could happen.
Losing more than one civil case.
In addition, Trump Organization, his business, has been found guilty of 17 criminal charges and lost other civil cases. His charity, the Donald J Trump Foundation, was found guilty of various charges.
So Clinton level stuff ?
a) Trump and his organisations have lost or settled far more law suits than the Clintons, so no.
b) Is whataboutery all you have to offer?
I think he says upthread he's trolling. I'll take him at his word and stop responding.
well its hardly as if either one of us is going to change our mind.
I believe that NigelB is open to facts but I'll take your word that you're not. Remember cultists can recover, good luck.
ROFL.
So suddenly - despite saying I dont want Trump as president - Im a MAGA man .
Questioning spin is what this site is supposed to do.
But if you want to assume all those politicians and lawyers are telling you the Gods honest truth then do so. But I wont.
I was going to add a 'by the way I don't like Trump' disclaimer to my post upthread, then found I couldn't be arsed. Apparently if you don't think his being re-elected is armageddon, that makes you a cult member. Despite the fact that he's been President before and nothing of any consequence happened.
“Nothing of any consequence” is an odd take.
Really? A lot more seems to have gone to shit in the world since Biden 're-established America's leadership' upon his accession.
Whether more has “gone to shit in the world” during Biden’s presidency is another matter. Were that true, that wouldn’t mean that nothing of any consequence happened under Trump.
Also, given the COVID-19 pandemic happened during Trump’s presidency, it is ludicrous to suggest that more has “gone to shit in the world” under Biden.
I suppose it depends how you stack the Russian invasion of Ukraine & inflation rearing it's ugly head globally vs the Covid pandemic.
It was critical for America that Trump was charged for the attempted coup. When you read up on the details it most definitely was an attempted coup that built for some time - the charging of the Capitol was only the denouement.
What is at stake is very simple - America. I fear that it would take a black swan event to deny Trump the republican nomination, and he is going to be All In offering people the kind of America they want. War against minorities / women / liberals / deviants / Iran - you name it and he'll offer it.
I can see the 2024 election being a repeat of 2020 only on a bigger scale. Biden will will more votes than the pundits thought possible as people who never vote turn out to keep Trump out. But the electoral college is a perverse thing, and there remains a clear a present danger that Trump does well enough in the EC to keep him in the game. And with the idiocy of their system having TV networks call results we can expect a Roman Roy figure to call key states for Trump whether he has them on not. At least NewsMax and possibly Fox too.
If Trump wins, that is America done. The republic will fall and be replaced by a "Christian" version of Iran.
That dastardly Trump and his heinous attempt to win an election by offering the people what they want.
Some of the people. A minority of people. Where what they want will turn them into an international pariah.
The unfairness of the US electoral system is a totally different issue. They seem happy with it - I'm not aware of any serious moves to change it, and the Democrats are in power.
For the rest, that's democracy. Hoping for a 'black swan event' (I'm not going to probe what that might be) to stop this awful act of people voting for what they want is not your finest hour.
"and the Democrats are in power" They would need to change the constitution. They don't have a two thirds majority in the House or Senate, nor majorities in three quarters of the states. So no, they don't have the power to change it.
"Hoping for a 'black swan event' (I'm not going to probe what that might be) to stop this awful act of people voting for what they want" doesn't seem to be an accurate reflection of what RP wrote.
Maybe not your finest hour either?
Meh. He doesn't have enough finest hours for me to have any interest in his opinion on what I wrote.
He was able to celebrate the appointment of a PM that he really wanted, which is more than I can say about the last couple of decades...
I wasn't - I didn't want Truss; I said that she was an appalling, cringe-making candidate, who would be like May but even odder. I warmed to her during the campaign, and more afterwards, but I didn't 'really want' her to be PM. I can't think of anyone on the Tory front benches who I 'really want' to be PM. Probably nobody in the entire HOC.
Where's Louis Mountbatten when you really need him?
I think the point on reallocating roadspace is that motor vehicles have had all of it for half a century, so that is where it is coming back from as we rebalance priorities to give individuals choice in how they travel. And inevitably there will be bit of a backlash from those attached to, or benefitting from, the legacy forms of transport.
Yet we wonder why the cycling enthusiasts come across as primarily anti-car rather than pro-bike.
If you want to improve cycling provision then it needs to be *new* roadway, not “repurposing” the existing road to make driving more difficult.
We speak as if we haven't just got rid of Britain Trump here.
The UK and the US are in a mess, the Tories must go and the Reps must lose. Social democratic decade is needed to clean the rot.
Yes, because the Democrats and Labour in power solve all the Wests problems. The west is in a mess and will be whoever is in charge. It will just be more managed decline.
That vs nuclear war with Trump.
I don’t see the risk of nuclear war growing perceptibly under Trump. Indeed given he is ambivalent at best and actively anti-Ukraine at worst on the whole Russia thing, he’s more likely to just let Vlad have what he wants.
Newsflash: I am one of the many cyclists who make up the supposedly 10,000/day bikes along the Embankment. Absolutely tipping it down today and I had only half the right clothes. And even when I'm suited up days like these are miserable on a bike.
When people advocate for increased cycle usage in the UK they really do need to do it in conjunction with the British Meteorogical Office and a cold hard (and wet) dose of reality. They need to understand that a huge number of people are simply not going to get on a bike in these or, frankly, any other conditions.
Oh here we go!
I had a look at the cycle stats for Amsterdam and they hardly vary with weather. In Edinburgh, on a monthly basis, there isn't much seasonal variation either.
We shouldn't have started from there but that's all we have.
Trying to get the UK to be a cycling culture = trying to get the UK to be a cafe culture.
Ain't gonna happen.
Why? Is the weather and topography of the London estuary so very different from Amsterdam? Or Paris, for that matter?
Thanks to Stuart in Romford for finding thos fantastic graphs:
But look at how people actually get around at the moment:
If your cycling provision is made at the expense of existing road provision, that just pisses off the motorists.
Except perhaps in central London, no-one is going to be cycling 10 miles to work in the rain and cold when they have a car in the drive.
As with ULEZ, there need to be more carrots and fewer sticks. The people need to feel that they are being brought along, rather than these things being done to them against their will.
There seems to be some assertion of validity of a point of view on subjects like this based upon nothing more than wishful thinking.
Sure, some people don't mind cycling to work in the cold and rain, and changing at work when they get there, but most do not.
Saying that proportionately more people do so in The Netherlands, so the concerns are unwarranted, isn't going to meaningfully shift the dial back in the UK where topography, infrastructure, commuting patterns - and even climate, at times - are all very different.
The topography of the London basin isn’t so different, though. Nor the other big conurbations. Urban England isn’t very hilly.
And the ask is to change the infrastructure, not simply accept it as fact. Much infrastructure is still a legacy of 1950s and 60s thinking about the role of cars versus other forms of transport.
In turn, commuting patterns follow travel infrastructure.
Saying that it should be different isn't the same as recognising the reality of why it isn't, and will likely never be, and throwing in strawmen lines like 1950s and 1960s attitudes to explain away any difference. This is similar to your histrionics on taps and heat pumps.
You aren't going to get lots of people peddling into the City from Thurrock or Hayes and they'd be fairly mad to do so. Commuting patterns follow economic geography and that can't be changed by a few extra cycle lanes.
What the UK likes to do is competitive recreational road cycling and family cycling in parks and forests at weekends. Commuter cycling is largely localised to professional men in their 30s-50s running to the local station or urban transit within metropolitan areas of big cities.
I have no personal desire or expectation for people to cycle in from Thurrock or Hayes. That’s what a mass transit system is for.
I merely note that the essential topography, and indeed the climate of urban England is not so different from the Netherlands.
So I call bollocks on your claim - which you appear to rehearse in matters as wide ranging as plumbing to heat engineering - that Britain is so unique it has nothing to learn from the fuzzy-wuzzies who start at Calais.
This is just embarrassing, and ignorant. Any child can tell you the difference between the flatness of The Netherlands and urban England. And you've clearly never been to Bristol, Sheffield or Bradford. Not everywhere is like Cambridge.
But keep farting away if it helps clear your bowels.
This is what I’m talking about.
London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool are all pretty flat. All bigger than your aforementioned cities. So is the much vaunted “Oxford-Cambridge corridor”.
Some of us have actually travelled a bit and seen the world. You should try it some time.
And perhaps read up on William of Orange or Van Dyck or something.
The weather thing is weird too. You can change out of your wet stuff at work. Or walk or take the bus.
Or drive, even. But most days the weather is fine for cycling.
"You can change our of your wet stuff at work".
Again, another reason why people aren't going to go anywhere near cycling.
All these "well just put the bike on your back and walk that bit" or "always carry a spare wheel and tool kit because..." or "bring a spare set of clothes to work and change there" you throw out as though they are the easiest thing in the world to navigate and for you they are.
But @Casino is absolutely right. Cycling is for those up to around their 50s and not all of them to start with, and requires preparation and fitness and kit and facilities and attitude that simply are not available now and aren't on anyone's priority list for the foreseeable future. And that is aside from the cycle lanes springing up everywhere.
I think you're underestimating the potential for slow, incremental change. The same style of argument was deployed against renewables and EVs over the last decade.
@MattW is the acknowledged expert on cycling infrastructure. I’m sure his predictions that cycling can be expected to triple in coming years is right.
I’m hopeful about Birmingham and Nottingham too.
I remember when I posted that it was a shame that cities outside London lacked cyclehire schemes and I was denounced as a cappuccino supping metro elitist.
A small, but very useful scheme - Brompton offer cycle hire
I'm seeing on the trains an increasing number of people who've obviously hired one (the colour scheme is quiet, but noticeable) for a day out - train out to somewhere in the country side, unfold and ride.
For those who don't know them, Brompton folding bikes are allowed on all trains because they are so compact. They are, in addition, very rideable, compared to other small wheel bikes.
It was critical for America that Trump was charged for the attempted coup. When you read up on the details it most definitely was an attempted coup that built for some time - the charging of the Capitol was only the denouement.
What is at stake is very simple - America. I fear that it would take a black swan event to deny Trump the republican nomination, and he is going to be All In offering people the kind of America they want. War against minorities / women / liberals / deviants / Iran - you name it and he'll offer it.
I can see the 2024 election being a repeat of 2020 only on a bigger scale. Biden will will more votes than the pundits thought possible as people who never vote turn out to keep Trump out. But the electoral college is a perverse thing, and there remains a clear a present danger that Trump does well enough in the EC to keep him in the game. And with the idiocy of their system having TV networks call results we can expect a Roman Roy figure to call key states for Trump whether he has them on not. At least NewsMax and possibly Fox too.
If Trump wins, that is America done. The republic will fall and be replaced by a "Christian" version of Iran.
That dastardly Trump and his heinous attempt to win an election by offering the people what they want.
Some of the people. A minority of people. Where what they want will turn them into an international pariah.
The unfairness of the US electoral system is a totally different issue. They seem happy with it - I'm not aware of any serious moves to change it, and the Democrats are in power.
For the rest, that's democracy. Hoping for a 'black swan event' (I'm not going to probe what that might be) to stop this awful act of people voting for what they want is not your finest hour.
"and the Democrats are in power" They would need to change the constitution. They don't have a two thirds majority in the House or Senate, nor majorities in three quarters of the states. So no, they don't have the power to change it.
"Hoping for a 'black swan event' (I'm not going to probe what that might be) to stop this awful act of people voting for what they want" doesn't seem to be an accurate reflection of what RP wrote.
Maybe not your finest hour either?
Meh. He doesn't have enough finest hours for me to have any interest in his opinion on what I wrote.
He was able to celebrate the appointment of a PM that he really wanted, which is more than I can say about the last couple of decades...
I wasn't - I didn't want Truss; I said that she was an appalling, cringe-making candidate, who would be like May but even odder. I warmed to her during the campaign, and more afterwards, but I didn't 'really want' her to be PM. I can't think of anyone on the Tory front benches who I 'really want' to be PM. Probably nobody in the entire HOC.
Where's Louis Mountbatten when you really need him?
I'm not sure I trust the military to take over either tbh. Can we have a coup by that lady who did the vaccines? She seems OK.
Shunning, as it does, the urban form of Paris intra muros or Manhattan, it feels like a melange of low-rise suburban villages, as organised by the NHS.
Ladies and gentlemen, the enviable “urban form of Manhattan”, as per today’s New York Times
= 100,000 homeless people, and getting worse every day
I think the point on reallocating roadspace is that motor vehicles have had all of it for half a century, so that is where it is coming back from as we rebalance priorities to give individuals choice in how they travel. And inevitably there will be bit of a backlash from those attached to, or benefitting from, the legacy forms of transport.
Yet we wonder why the cycling enthusiasts come across as primarily anti-car rather than pro-bike.
If you want to improve cycling provision then it needs to be *new* roadway, not “repurposing” the existing road to make driving more difficult.
If only we had wide boulevards everywhere...
There's actually a cycling scheme being built outside my front door at this very moment. We argued with the council that it was a really crap design and Mrs Flatlander used her landscape design skillz to send them a revised plan based on actual use (she is also a cyclist). They've ploughed ahead with their crap design anyway. [None of the highways staff actually live locally. The tree officer lives in Scotland!]
There is an existing pedestrian route in the middle of a tree-lined verge that is de-facto mixed use already, but rather than just accepting that they've dug up half the grass to move the pedestrians to a new pavement alongside the main road.
Obviously 99% of people are going to ignore that and continue to walk the tree lined route, which will lead to conflict.
I think the problem is that a lot of these schemes are centrally funded and as such have to meet a very rigid set of standards. The council want the money to keep their not-very-arms-length (ahem) contractors going, so will go with any old scheme that will get a grant.
I think the point on reallocating roadspace is that motor vehicles have had all of it for half a century, so that is where it is coming back from as we rebalance priorities to give individuals choice in how they travel. And inevitably there will be bit of a backlash from those attached to, or benefitting from, the legacy forms of transport.
Yet we wonder why the cycling enthusiasts come across as primarily anti-car rather than pro-bike.
If you want to improve cycling provision then it needs to be *new* roadway, not “repurposing” the existing road to make driving more difficult.
Pro-bike is pro-car. It's not a zero-sum game.
Wanting to increase taxes on cars, and wanting to reduce the number of lanes available to them, are both very much anti-car.
It’s not a zero-sum game if you’re adding *new* roads.
Newsflash: I am one of the many cyclists who make up the supposedly 10,000/day bikes along the Embankment. Absolutely tipping it down today and I had only half the right clothes. And even when I'm suited up days like these are miserable on a bike.
When people advocate for increased cycle usage in the UK they really do need to do it in conjunction with the British Meteorogical Office and a cold hard (and wet) dose of reality. They need to understand that a huge number of people are simply not going to get on a bike in these or, frankly, any other conditions.
Oh here we go!
I had a look at the cycle stats for Amsterdam and they hardly vary with weather. In Edinburgh, on a monthly basis, there isn't much seasonal variation either.
We shouldn't have started from there but that's all we have.
Trying to get the UK to be a cycling culture = trying to get the UK to be a cafe culture.
Ain't gonna happen.
Why? Is the weather and topography of the London estuary so very different from Amsterdam? Or Paris, for that matter?
Thanks to Stuart in Romford for finding thos fantastic graphs:
But look at how people actually get around at the moment:
If your cycling provision is made at the expense of existing road provision, that just pisses off the motorists.
Except perhaps in central London, no-one is going to be cycling 10 miles to work in the rain and cold when they have a car in the drive.
As with ULEZ, there need to be more carrots and fewer sticks. The people need to feel that they are being brought along, rather than these things being done to them against their will.
There seems to be some assertion of validity of a point of view on subjects like this based upon nothing more than wishful thinking.
Sure, some people don't mind cycling to work in the cold and rain, and changing at work when they get there, but most do not.
Saying that proportionately more people do so in The Netherlands, so the concerns are unwarranted, isn't going to meaningfully shift the dial back in the UK where topography, infrastructure, commuting patterns - and even climate, at times - are all very different.
The topography of the London basin isn’t so different, though. Nor the other big conurbations. Urban England isn’t very hilly.
And the ask is to change the infrastructure, not simply accept it as fact. Much infrastructure is still a legacy of 1950s and 60s thinking about the role of cars versus other forms of transport.
In turn, commuting patterns follow travel infrastructure.
Saying that it should be different isn't the same as recognising the reality of why it isn't, and will likely never be, and throwing in strawmen lines like 1950s and 1960s attitudes to explain away any difference. This is similar to your histrionics on taps and heat pumps.
You aren't going to get lots of people peddling into the City from Thurrock or Hayes and they'd be fairly mad to do so. Commuting patterns follow economic geography and that can't be changed by a few extra cycle lanes.
What the UK likes to do is competitive recreational road cycling and family cycling in parks and forests at weekends. Commuter cycling is largely localised to professional men in their 30s-50s running to the local station or urban transit within metropolitan areas of big cities.
I have no personal desire or expectation for people to cycle in from Thurrock or Hayes. That’s what a mass transit system is for.
I merely note that the essential topography, and indeed the climate of urban England is not so different from the Netherlands.
So I call bollocks on your claim - which you appear to rehearse in matters as wide ranging as plumbing to heat engineering - that Britain is so unique it has nothing to learn from the fuzzy-wuzzies who start at Calais.
This is just embarrassing, and ignorant. Any child can tell you the difference between the flatness of The Netherlands and urban England. And you've clearly never been to Bristol, Sheffield or Bradford. Not everywhere is like Cambridge.
But keep farting away if it helps clear your bowels.
This is what I’m talking about.
London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool are all pretty flat. All bigger than your aforementioned cities. So is the much vaunted “Oxford-Cambridge corridor”.
Some of us have actually travelled a bit and seen the world. You should try it some time.
And perhaps read up on William of Orange or Van Dyck or something.
The weather thing is weird too. You can change out of your wet stuff at work. Or walk or take the bus.
Or drive, even. But most days the weather is fine for cycling.
"You can change our of your wet stuff at work".
Again, another reason why people aren't going to go anywhere near cycling.
All these "well just put the bike on your back and walk that bit" or "always carry a spare wheel and tool kit because..." or "bring a spare set of clothes to work and change there" you throw out as though they are the easiest thing in the world to navigate and for you they are.
But @Casino is absolutely right. Cycling is for those up to around their 50s and not all of them to start with, and requires preparation and fitness and kit and facilities and attitude that simply are not available now and aren't on anyone's priority list for the foreseeable future. And that is aside from the cycle lanes springing up everywhere.
I think you're underestimating the potential for slow, incremental change. The same style of argument was deployed against renewables and EVs over the last decade.
One thing I struggle with is the extent to which I should point out dangerous driving (particularly people on their phone).
It's one of the biggest reasons why people don't cycle in the UK, so either needs to be resolved with more enforcement or segregated cycle provision.
But I'm worried pointing it out puts more people off cycling.
I think the point on reallocating roadspace is that motor vehicles have had all of it for half a century, so that is where it is coming back from as we rebalance priorities to give individuals choice in how they travel. And inevitably there will be bit of a backlash from those attached to, or benefitting from, the legacy forms of transport.
Yet we wonder why the cycling enthusiasts come across as primarily anti-car rather than pro-bike.
If you want to improve cycling provision then it needs to be *new* roadway, not “repurposing” the existing road to make driving more difficult.
Where is this new roadway going to be in, say, central Edinburgh? Or in the suburbs? Obviously not on the pavement. So ...
@MattW is the acknowledged expert on cycling infrastructure. I’m sure his predictions that cycling can be expected to triple in coming years is right.
I’m hopeful about Birmingham and Nottingham too.
I remember when I posted that it was a shame that cities outside London lacked cyclehire schemes and I was denounced as a cappuccino supping metro elitist.
A small, but very useful scheme - Brompton offer cycle hire
I'm seeing on the trains an increasing number of people who've obviously hired one (the colour scheme is quiet, but noticeable) for a day out - train out to somewhere in the country side, unfold and ride.
For those who don't know them, Brompton folding bikes are allowed on all trains because they are so compact. They are, in addition, very rideable, compared to other small wheel bikes.
Bromptons are very cool, as well as a British manufacturing success story.
I think the point on reallocating roadspace is that motor vehicles have had all of it for half a century, so that is where it is coming back from as we rebalance priorities to give individuals choice in how they travel. And inevitably there will be bit of a backlash from those attached to, or benefitting from, the legacy forms of transport.
Yet we wonder why the cycling enthusiasts come across as primarily anti-car rather than pro-bike.
If you want to improve cycling provision then it needs to be *new* roadway, not “repurposing” the existing road to make driving more difficult.
Pro-bike is pro-car. It's not a zero-sum game.
I still like my scheme to dig the A4/M4, within London, into the ground, using a tunnelling shield, Marc Brunel style.
Put all the ugly shit below ground. Shops, house and nice cycle way on the surface when you are done.
It would be paid for by the property created, and the increase in the value of the properties within 100 yards of the road....
It was critical for America that Trump was charged for the attempted coup. When you read up on the details it most definitely was an attempted coup that built for some time - the charging of the Capitol was only the denouement.
What is at stake is very simple - America. I fear that it would take a black swan event to deny Trump the republican nomination, and he is going to be All In offering people the kind of America they want. War against minorities / women / liberals / deviants / Iran - you name it and he'll offer it.
I can see the 2024 election being a repeat of 2020 only on a bigger scale. Biden will will more votes than the pundits thought possible as people who never vote turn out to keep Trump out. But the electoral college is a perverse thing, and there remains a clear a present danger that Trump does well enough in the EC to keep him in the game. And with the idiocy of their system having TV networks call results we can expect a Roman Roy figure to call key states for Trump whether he has them on not. At least NewsMax and possibly Fox too.
If Trump wins, that is America done. The republic will fall and be replaced by a "Christian" version of Iran.
That dastardly Trump and his heinous attempt to win an election by offering the people what they want.
Some of the people. A minority of people. Where what they want will turn them into an international pariah.
The unfairness of the US electoral system is a totally different issue. They seem happy with it - I'm not aware of any serious moves to change it, and the Democrats are in power.
For the rest, that's democracy. Hoping for a 'black swan event' (I'm not going to probe what that might be) to stop this awful act of people voting for what they want is not your finest hour.
"and the Democrats are in power" They would need to change the constitution. They don't have a two thirds majority in the House or Senate, nor majorities in three quarters of the states. So no, they don't have the power to change it.
"Hoping for a 'black swan event' (I'm not going to probe what that might be) to stop this awful act of people voting for what they want" doesn't seem to be an accurate reflection of what RP wrote.
Maybe not your finest hour either?
Meh. He doesn't have enough finest hours for me to have any interest in his opinion on what I wrote.
He was able to celebrate the appointment of a PM that he really wanted, which is more than I can say about the last couple of decades...
I wasn't - I didn't want Truss; I said that she was an appalling, cringe-making candidate, who would be like May but even odder. I warmed to her during the campaign, and more afterwards, but I didn't 'really want' her to be PM. I can't think of anyone on the Tory front benches who I 'really want' to be PM. Probably nobody in the entire HOC.
Where's Louis Mountbatten when you really need him?
I'm not sure I trust the military to take over either tbh. Can we have a coup by that lady who did the vaccines? She seems OK.
You must mean the woman who said we shouldn't vaccinate the whole population because the side effects were so dangerous?
It doesn't surprise me one little bit that you think she was "OK" and should take over the country.
Shunning, as it does, the urban form of Paris intra muros or Manhattan, it feels like a melange of low-rise suburban villages, as organised by the NHS.
Ladies and gentlemen, the enviable “urban form of Manhattan”, as per today’s New York Times
= 100,000 homeless people, and getting worse every day
Another snowflake. I merely noted the difference. Manhattan architecture can be enviable, the lack of green space is claustrophobic and of course the US is a social disaster.
I think the point on reallocating roadspace is that motor vehicles have had all of it for half a century, so that is where it is coming back from as we rebalance priorities to give individuals choice in how they travel. And inevitably there will be bit of a backlash from those attached to, or benefitting from, the legacy forms of transport.
Yet we wonder why the cycling enthusiasts come across as primarily anti-car rather than pro-bike.
If you want to improve cycling provision then it needs to be *new* roadway, not “repurposing” the existing road to make driving more difficult.
Where is this new roadway going to be in, say, central Edinburgh? Or in the suburbs? Obviously not on the pavement. So ...
There was room found for a tramway.
Exactly. In the roadway, for much of the distance within the inner city (some on an old railway IIRC).
@MattW is the acknowledged expert on cycling infrastructure. I’m sure his predictions that cycling can be expected to triple in coming years is right.
I’m hopeful about Birmingham and Nottingham too.
I remember when I posted that it was a shame that cities outside London lacked cyclehire schemes and I was denounced as a cappuccino supping metro elitist.
Why is he an acknowledged expert in cycling infrastrucure? Did he build them? Plan them? Use them?
Newsflash: I am one of the many cyclists who make up the supposedly 10,000/day bikes along the Embankment. Absolutely tipping it down today and I had only half the right clothes. And even when I'm suited up days like these are miserable on a bike.
When people advocate for increased cycle usage in the UK they really do need to do it in conjunction with the British Meteorogical Office and a cold hard (and wet) dose of reality. They need to understand that a huge number of people are simply not going to get on a bike in these or, frankly, any other conditions.
Oh here we go!
I had a look at the cycle stats for Amsterdam and they hardly vary with weather. In Edinburgh, on a monthly basis, there isn't much seasonal variation either.
We shouldn't have started from there but that's all we have.
Trying to get the UK to be a cycling culture = trying to get the UK to be a cafe culture.
Ain't gonna happen.
Why? Is the weather and topography of the London estuary so very different from Amsterdam? Or Paris, for that matter?
Thanks to Stuart in Romford for finding thos fantastic graphs:
But look at how people actually get around at the moment:
If your cycling provision is made at the expense of existing road provision, that just pisses off the motorists.
Except perhaps in central London, no-one is going to be cycling 10 miles to work in the rain and cold when they have a car in the drive.
As with ULEZ, there need to be more carrots and fewer sticks. The people need to feel that they are being brought along, rather than these things being done to them against their will.
There seems to be some assertion of validity of a point of view on subjects like this based upon nothing more than wishful thinking.
Sure, some people don't mind cycling to work in the cold and rain, and changing at work when they get there, but most do not.
Saying that proportionately more people do so in The Netherlands, so the concerns are unwarranted, isn't going to meaningfully shift the dial back in the UK where topography, infrastructure, commuting patterns - and even climate, at times - are all very different.
The topography of the London basin isn’t so different, though. Nor the other big conurbations. Urban England isn’t very hilly.
And the ask is to change the infrastructure, not simply accept it as fact. Much infrastructure is still a legacy of 1950s and 60s thinking about the role of cars versus other forms of transport.
In turn, commuting patterns follow travel infrastructure.
Saying that it should be different isn't the same as recognising the reality of why it isn't, and will likely never be, and throwing in strawmen lines like 1950s and 1960s attitudes to explain away any difference. This is similar to your histrionics on taps and heat pumps.
You aren't going to get lots of people peddling into the City from Thurrock or Hayes and they'd be fairly mad to do so. Commuting patterns follow economic geography and that can't be changed by a few extra cycle lanes.
What the UK likes to do is competitive recreational road cycling and family cycling in parks and forests at weekends. Commuter cycling is largely localised to professional men in their 30s-50s running to the local station or urban transit within metropolitan areas of big cities.
I have no personal desire or expectation for people to cycle in from Thurrock or Hayes. That’s what a mass transit system is for.
I merely note that the essential topography, and indeed the climate of urban England is not so different from the Netherlands.
So I call bollocks on your claim - which you appear to rehearse in matters as wide ranging as plumbing to heat engineering - that Britain is so unique it has nothing to learn from the fuzzy-wuzzies who start at Calais.
This is just embarrassing, and ignorant. Any child can tell you the difference between the flatness of The Netherlands and urban England. And you've clearly never been to Bristol, Sheffield or Bradford. Not everywhere is like Cambridge.
But keep farting away if it helps clear your bowels.
This is what I’m talking about.
London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool are all pretty flat. All bigger than your aforementioned cities. So is the much vaunted “Oxford-Cambridge corridor”.
Some of us have actually travelled a bit and seen the world. You should try it some time.
And perhaps read up on William of Orange or Van Dyck or something.
The weather thing is weird too. You can change out of your wet stuff at work. Or walk or take the bus.
Or drive, even. But most days the weather is fine for cycling.
"You can change our of your wet stuff at work".
Again, another reason why people aren't going to go anywhere near cycling.
All these "well just put the bike on your back and walk that bit" or "always carry a spare wheel and tool kit because..." or "bring a spare set of clothes to work and change there" you throw out as though they are the easiest thing in the world to navigate and for you they are.
But @Casino is absolutely right. Cycling is for those up to around their 50s and not all of them to start with, and requires preparation and fitness and kit and facilities and attitude that simply are not available now and aren't on anyone's priority list for the foreseeable future. And that is aside from the cycle lanes springing up everywhere.
I think you're underestimating the potential for slow, incremental change. The same style of argument was deployed against renewables and EVs over the last decade.
I'm sure there will be slow incremental change. Much like Leon's decadal change in car ownership. But it's all speculation. Arguably the oil price shock in the '70s, or the recent petrol price hikes, should have flipped the UK to a cycling society but it is still going to happen "some time in the future". Great.
That is different from saying everyone should get on their bikes now and just bring a spare Shimano 105 Di2 R7150 with you just in case.
I think the point on reallocating roadspace is that motor vehicles have had all of it for half a century, so that is where it is coming back from as we rebalance priorities to give individuals choice in how they travel. And inevitably there will be bit of a backlash from those attached to, or benefitting from, the legacy forms of transport.
Yet we wonder why the cycling enthusiasts come across as primarily anti-car rather than pro-bike.
If you want to improve cycling provision then it needs to be *new* roadway, not “repurposing” the existing road to make driving more difficult.
Pro-bike is pro-car. It's not a zero-sum game.
I still like my scheme to dig the A4/M4, within London, into the ground, using a tunnelling shield, Marc Brunel style.
Put all the ugly shit below ground. Shops, house and nice cycle way on the surface when you are done.
It would be paid for by the property created, and the increase in the value of the properties within 100 yards of the road....
Riding on Crossrail at the weekend I marvelled at how them managed to thread the running tunnels through all of the existing infrastructure. In several places the clearance is *tight*. How much more subterranean infrastructure could be added is debatable.
Essentially they think it comes down not to whether Trump was advised that he was breaching the Constitution (clearly true) but whether he "internalised" (believed) the advice. That may be hard to determine. It's likely to go to the Supreme Court in the end, I assume.
It was critical for America that Trump was charged for the attempted coup. When you read up on the details it most definitely was an attempted coup that built for some time - the charging of the Capitol was only the denouement.
What is at stake is very simple - America. I fear that it would take a black swan event to deny Trump the republican nomination, and he is going to be All In offering people the kind of America they want. War against minorities / women / liberals / deviants / Iran - you name it and he'll offer it.
I can see the 2024 election being a repeat of 2020 only on a bigger scale. Biden will will more votes than the pundits thought possible as people who never vote turn out to keep Trump out. But the electoral college is a perverse thing, and there remains a clear a present danger that Trump does well enough in the EC to keep him in the game. And with the idiocy of their system having TV networks call results we can expect a Roman Roy figure to call key states for Trump whether he has them on not. At least NewsMax and possibly Fox too.
If Trump wins, that is America done. The republic will fall and be replaced by a "Christian" version of Iran.
That dastardly Trump and his heinous attempt to win an election by offering the people what they want.
Some of the people. A minority of people. Where what they want will turn them into an international pariah.
The unfairness of the US electoral system is a totally different issue. They seem happy with it - I'm not aware of any serious moves to change it, and the Democrats are in power.
For the rest, that's democracy. Hoping for a 'black swan event' (I'm not going to probe what that might be) to stop this awful act of people voting for what they want is not your finest hour.
"and the Democrats are in power" They would need to change the constitution. They don't have a two thirds majority in the House or Senate, nor majorities in three quarters of the states. So no, they don't have the power to change it.
"Hoping for a 'black swan event' (I'm not going to probe what that might be) to stop this awful act of people voting for what they want" doesn't seem to be an accurate reflection of what RP wrote.
Maybe not your finest hour either?
Meh. He doesn't have enough finest hours for me to have any interest in his opinion on what I wrote.
He was able to celebrate the appointment of a PM that he really wanted, which is more than I can say about the last couple of decades...
I wasn't - I didn't want Truss; I said that she was an appalling, cringe-making candidate, who would be like May but even odder. I warmed to her during the campaign, and more afterwards, but I didn't 'really want' her to be PM. I can't think of anyone on the Tory front benches who I 'really want' to be PM. Probably nobody in the entire HOC.
Where's Louis Mountbatten when you really need him?
I'm not sure I trust the military to take over either tbh. Can we have a coup by that lady who did the vaccines? She seems OK.
You must mean the woman who said we shouldn't vaccinate the whole population because the side effects were so dangerous?
It doesn't surprise me one little bit that you think she was "OK" and should take over the country.
It was critical for America that Trump was charged for the attempted coup. When you read up on the details it most definitely was an attempted coup that built for some time - the charging of the Capitol was only the denouement.
What is at stake is very simple - America. I fear that it would take a black swan event to deny Trump the republican nomination, and he is going to be All In offering people the kind of America they want. War against minorities / women / liberals / deviants / Iran - you name it and he'll offer it.
I can see the 2024 election being a repeat of 2020 only on a bigger scale. Biden will will more votes than the pundits thought possible as people who never vote turn out to keep Trump out. But the electoral college is a perverse thing, and there remains a clear a present danger that Trump does well enough in the EC to keep him in the game. And with the idiocy of their system having TV networks call results we can expect a Roman Roy figure to call key states for Trump whether he has them on not. At least NewsMax and possibly Fox too.
If Trump wins, that is America done. The republic will fall and be replaced by a "Christian" version of Iran.
That dastardly Trump and his heinous attempt to win an election by offering the people what they want.
Some of the people. A minority of people. Where what they want will turn them into an international pariah.
The unfairness of the US electoral system is a totally different issue. They seem happy with it - I'm not aware of any serious moves to change it, and the Democrats are in power.
For the rest, that's democracy. Hoping for a 'black swan event' (I'm not going to probe what that might be) to stop this awful act of people voting for what they want is not your finest hour.
"and the Democrats are in power" They would need to change the constitution. They don't have a two thirds majority in the House or Senate, nor majorities in three quarters of the states. So no, they don't have the power to change it.
"Hoping for a 'black swan event' (I'm not going to probe what that might be) to stop this awful act of people voting for what they want" doesn't seem to be an accurate reflection of what RP wrote.
Maybe not your finest hour either?
Meh. He doesn't have enough finest hours for me to have any interest in his opinion on what I wrote.
He was able to celebrate the appointment of a PM that he really wanted, which is more than I can say about the last couple of decades...
I wasn't - I didn't want Truss; I said that she was an appalling, cringe-making candidate, who would be like May but even odder. I warmed to her during the campaign, and more afterwards, but I didn't 'really want' her to be PM. I can't think of anyone on the Tory front benches who I 'really want' to be PM. Probably nobody in the entire HOC.
Where's Louis Mountbatten when you really need him?
I'm not sure I trust the military to take over either tbh. Can we have a coup by that lady who did the vaccines? She seems OK.
You must mean the woman who said we shouldn't vaccinate the whole population because the side effects were so dangerous?
It doesn't surprise me one little bit that you think she was "OK" and should take over the country.
The human race truly is too stupid to survive.
Bingham did a pretty good job coordinating the manufacturing and procurement for the UK. I don't think that qualifies her to be PM, though.
I think the point on reallocating roadspace is that motor vehicles have had all of it for half a century, so that is where it is coming back from as we rebalance priorities to give individuals choice in how they travel. And inevitably there will be bit of a backlash from those attached to, or benefitting from, the legacy forms of transport.
Yet we wonder why the cycling enthusiasts come across as primarily anti-car rather than pro-bike.
If you want to improve cycling provision then it needs to be *new* roadway, not “repurposing” the existing road to make driving more difficult.
Pro-bike is pro-car. It's not a zero-sum game.
Wanting to increase taxes on cars, and wanting to reduce the number of lanes available to them, are both very much anti-car.
It’s not a zero-sum game if you’re adding *new* roads.
Several problems with that.
One- as as been pointed out already, there's no space for new roads in the kind of places we're talking about. It's all built up.
Two- history largely shows that increasing road space to meet demand is a fool's errand; you tend to end up with three lanes of congestion rather than two.
Three- history also largely shows that transferring space from cars to other modes of transport ends up as a win-win. Because almost anything else is more space efficient than single occupancy cars, modal shift leads to better journeys for everyone, including those who remain in their cars. It just takes time to get there.
But car enthusiasts struggle with that, not helped by gobshite politicians.
Essentially they think it comes down not to whether Trump was advised that he was breaching the Constitution (clearly true) but whether he "internalised" (believed) the advice. That may be hard to determine. It's likely to go to the Supreme Court in the end, I assume.
Some off the evidence for the Jack Smith investigation and indictment includes trump telling pence he was 'too honest' when he refused to go along with the fake elector scheme. That certainly indicates he knew what he was attempting was illegal
Shunning, as it does, the urban form of Paris intra muros or Manhattan, it feels like a melange of low-rise suburban villages, as organised by the NHS.
Ladies and gentlemen, the enviable “urban form of Manhattan”, as per today’s New York Times
= 100,000 homeless people, and getting worse every day
Another snowflake. I merely noted the difference. Manhattan architecture can be enviable, the lack of green space is claustrophobic and of course the US is a social disaster.
I’ve finally diagnosed you. You’re not stupid, far from it, in fact you are often insightful. Yet you make negative, scornful remarks about all aspects of the UK to an extent which is beyond rationality, and sometimes approaches pathology
It’s plain old Cultural Cringe, but quite eloquently done. You’re a kiwi. London and the UK is simultaneously the beloved mother country, but also the old hag from whose shadow you desire to escape - while never quite managing it. Hence your obsessive return to the subject - and to PB, where you can vent your Oedipal weirdness
Having now identified this to my own satisfaction, I shall observe the rest of your commentary with wry gratification at my own percipience
@MattW is the acknowledged expert on cycling infrastructure. I’m sure his predictions that cycling can be expected to triple in coming years is right.
I’m hopeful about Birmingham and Nottingham too.
I remember when I posted that it was a shame that cities outside London lacked cyclehire schemes and I was denounced as a cappuccino supping metro elitist.
A small, but very useful scheme - Brompton offer cycle hire
I'm seeing on the trains an increasing number of people who've obviously hired one (the colour scheme is quiet, but noticeable) for a day out - train out to somewhere in the country side, unfold and ride.
For those who don't know them, Brompton folding bikes are allowed on all trains because they are so compact. They are, in addition, very rideable, compared to other small wheel bikes.
I took one of those to Istanbul on Turkish Air years ago. Which was ... interesting. I bought the Brompton clip-on bag for luggage, and the "turn it into a piece of luggage" bag for the folded bicycle. Rental is now £5 per day I think. On a separate note, E-Bromptons are superb; I have a mate who bought a secondhand Brompton, and put a Swytch E-Kit on it, and carries her manual folding wheelchair strapped to the back or towed so she can commute around doing her job, and use the wheelchair on arrival.
I would not claim local expert status , maybe local nerd, however Active Travel England have capacity ratings for delivering active travel infra, and the only places reaching Level 3 out of 4 are West Midlands, West Yorkshire, Nottingham, Leicester and Greater Manchester.
The key attributes seem to be consistent long term strategy, and secure long term funding streams. All government seems to be "respond within X weeks and spend it within X months", so favours areas with pre-existing expertise and pre-prepared proposals, I think London would be on that list, but the exercise was outside London - as it has a long term programme since Ken Livingstone was Mayor.
Shunning, as it does, the urban form of Paris intra muros or Manhattan, it feels like a melange of low-rise suburban villages, as organised by the NHS.
Ladies and gentlemen, the enviable “urban form of Manhattan”, as per today’s New York Times
= 100,000 homeless people, and getting worse every day
Another snowflake. I merely noted the difference. Manhattan architecture can be enviable, the lack of green space is claustrophobic and of course the US is a social disaster.
Good job nobody is arguing for the UK to move to a social model more like the US, then.
Newsflash: I am one of the many cyclists who make up the supposedly 10,000/day bikes along the Embankment. Absolutely tipping it down today and I had only half the right clothes. And even when I'm suited up days like these are miserable on a bike.
When people advocate for increased cycle usage in the UK they really do need to do it in conjunction with the British Meteorogical Office and a cold hard (and wet) dose of reality. They need to understand that a huge number of people are simply not going to get on a bike in these or, frankly, any other conditions.
Oh here we go!
I had a look at the cycle stats for Amsterdam and they hardly vary with weather. In Edinburgh, on a monthly basis, there isn't much seasonal variation either.
We shouldn't have started from there but that's all we have.
Trying to get the UK to be a cycling culture = trying to get the UK to be a cafe culture.
Ain't gonna happen.
Why? Is the weather and topography of the London estuary so very different from Amsterdam? Or Paris, for that matter?
Thanks to Stuart in Romford for finding thos fantastic graphs:
But look at how people actually get around at the moment:
If your cycling provision is made at the expense of existing road provision, that just pisses off the motorists.
Except perhaps in central London, no-one is going to be cycling 10 miles to work in the rain and cold when they have a car in the drive.
As with ULEZ, there need to be more carrots and fewer sticks. The people need to feel that they are being brought along, rather than these things being done to them against their will.
According to that chart upthread, 80% of the country live in urban conurbations, so the 10 miles thing seems a bit of a red herring.
London has a medieval road pattern, and the carriageways are not very wide. But even so, not enough space is given over to pedestrians or cyclists.
I think the point on reallocating roadspace is that motor vehicles have had all of it for half a century, so that is where it is coming back from as we rebalance priorities to give individuals choice in how they travel. And inevitably there will be bit of a backlash from those attached to, or benefitting from, the legacy forms of transport.
The remorseless cycles vs motor vehicles logic is that as a way of moving people in urban settings cycles are 4 or 5 times more efficient than the normal usage patterns for motor vehicles. Both are dominated by single occupancy use, and a pedal cycle is 0.75m wide by 1.7m long and can easily coexist with other modes, whilst a normal individual motor vehicle is 2m wide by 5m long and have to be further apart, and other road users have to be protected from them because of the danger.
Where we see it is in 3m cycle tracks carrying more people than 10m of 2 or 3 x vehicle lanes, whilst still having spare capacity. We are seeing that in a number of places now, and it will appear in many more.
I think that quadricycles will have a larger role to play - for example Citroen Ami or Renault Twizy, initially perhaps replacing 2nd vehicles.
I think a couple of places to watch in London are the Embankment, which as I pointed out yesterday carries approx 10-12k cycles on a weekday - when only 20% of London has decent quality cycle infra within a 400m distance. I predict that in 5 years that will be 20k per day, and 30k per day in 10-15 years, unless a fruitloop like Susan Hall becomes Mayor.
The other is Kensington High Street, where RBKC have given one of two lanes over to parking, and forced the several thousands of cycles per day into a single lane with all the motor vehicles. Not sure how that will play out, apart form likely an increase in Killed and Seriously Injured people.
Outside London watch places like Manchester, Nottingham, Bristol and the West Midlands.
On capacity:
I found TfL's logic behind building the two major cycle superhighways (East-West via the Embankment, North-South) really interesting. Basically their projections showed that n,000 more people would want to get across London every day by 2030, and the Tube and buses would be at capacity. Building another Tube line is prohibitively expensive and it's not clear there'd be space anyway. There certainly isn't space for more roads.
The cycle superhighways were the cheapest and easiest way to deliver that capacity, while also providing massive safety improvements. I don't see that equation changing any time soon.
Comments
1. The majority of voters do not back these pro-Trump views. He hasn't won the popular vote yet and won't should he be selected as GOP candidate in 2024.
2. Trump lost the EC in 2020 and instigated a plot to throw it out and simply be declared President by congress. That isn't democracy even under their system
3. Trump will not win the EC in 2024 either.
4. The "black swan" I referred to was in relation to his nomination as the GOP candidate, not to the general election itself
5. We are talking about a minority of voters imposing their views on the majority by illegally and unconstitutionally overturning their democratic system. How can you say "that's democracy"?
States are free to elect whomever they choose. The international community is free to also make choices about how it responds. A US Gilead-style democracy where religious fundamentalists discriminate against people on the basis of their race and religion and sexuality and women are reduced to chattel with bans on contraception and interstate travel is not something that the civilised world would tolerate. As it doesn't the Islamic version in Iran.
Youve now got the J6 Posse after you.
Your best move is mention Brexit and theyll all go off in a new direction.
Your comment is quite ageist/ableist btw. My parents cycle a lot and are in their 60s. It's often easier with dodgy joints than walking.
My godfather is in his 80s and cycled across Europe last year.
https://geoportal.statistics.gov.uk/documents/international-territorial-levels-1-and-2-january-2021-map-in-united-kingdom-1/explore
63% would change to the winner of popular vote winning the presidency
35% want to keep electoral college
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/08/05/majority-of-americans-continue-to-favor-moving-away-from-electoral-college/
"I'm not aware of any serious moves to change it"
There have been several attempts, including this:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact
"and the Democrats are in power"
They would need to change the constitution. They don't have a two thirds majority in the House or Senate, nor majorities in three quarters of the states. So no, they don't have the power to change it.
"Hoping for a 'black swan event' (I'm not going to probe what that might be) to stop this awful act of people voting for what they want" doesn't seem to be an accurate reflection of what RP wrote.
Maybe not your finest hour either?
Maybe it has to be taken in conjunction with other stuff eg the attempt to get Pence to not confirm the electoral college vote, the alternative college voters, etc. One probably should be distinguishing between a nutter wearing horns and the organisers of all the activities combined. Trump, in my opinion, was clearly trying to overthrow the properly elected president.
OK so its only NewsMax / Fox declaring Trump the winner. But that sets in motion utter chaos which is the cover they will need to allow the GOP in Congress to interfere enough with the post-election process to get what they want. And if they succeed, there won't be any more elections where Americans actually get a free vote.
The Electoral College plus political redistricting in the US and FPTP in the UK often stop that happening.
"For instance, in 1992, Bill Clinton earned just over 43% of the popular vote but nearly 69% of the Electoral College vote. In 1980, Ronald Reagan earned 51% of the popular vote but 91% of the Electoral College vote. "
"While Trump and Hillary Clinton each earned about 47% of the vote in Michigan in 2016, Trump pulled ahead by 0.2% of a point, yet he earned 100% of the state’s 16 electoral votes. Similarly, Trump bested Clinton by 0.7% of votes in Pennsylvania, but earned all 20 of the state’s electoral votes. And although Trump trailed Clinton by just 1.6% in Minnesota, he lost all 10 of the state’s electoral votes. Looking only at the final electoral result does little to reflect how close the contests were in each of these states."
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/02/opinions/problem-changing-the-electoral-college/index.html
And Wrexham and Rhyl have close border ties especially with Chester and Cheshire, but also in a wider context the whole of the North West that does include Liverpool but also Manchester
Indeed you should witness the huge queues coming to North Wales from England at the weekends to enjoy our wonderful beaches and attractions (less than an hour away ex the traffic queues)
I don’t think he was actually intending to see a mob enter the Capitol, rather he expected the group to hold a protest outside - but there was enough confusion and we saw the result.
Excellent post by @TOPPING and an excellent response @RochdalePioneers
Fundamentally it was good news for the Democrats and US democracy that Democrats kept the Senate in 2022, because it acts as a bulwark against the rejection of EC votes.
The UK and the US are in a mess, the Tories must go and the Reps must lose. Social democratic decade is needed to clean the rot.
We take London's greenery for granted. It is by far the greenest capital in Europe (vast spaces like Wimbledon Common/Richmond park help, but there are lovely parks across the city.
America's issue is that Trump - and now the GOP - will not accept defeat as being legitimate.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/28/trump-jan-6-rally-guns-capitol-attack
a group of former top government officials called the Transition Integrity Project actually gamed four possible scenarios, including one that doesn’t look that different from 2016: a big popular win for Mr. Biden, and a narrow electoral defeat, presumably reached after weeks of counting the votes in Pennsylvania. For their war game, they cast John Podesta, who was Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, in the role of Mr. Biden. They expected him, when the votes came in, to concede, just as Mrs. Clinton had.
But Mr. Podesta, playing Mr. Biden, shocked the organizers by saying he felt his party wouldn’t let him concede. Alleging voter suppression, he persuaded the governors of Wisconsin and Michigan to send pro-Biden electors to the Electoral College.
In that scenario, California, Oregon, and Washington then threatened to secede from the United States if Mr. Trump took office as planned. The House named Mr. Biden president; the Senate and White House stuck with Mr. Trump. At that point in the scenario, the nation stopped looking to the media for cues, and waited to see what the military would do.
Neither side in American politics has particularly high regard for the system if it doesn't let them win.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIwyON6SA-k
I used an old touring bike (mudguards, rack, brakes that work) for cycle commuting and solved the 'getting wet' problem mostly by not caring. I also solved the shower / clothes change problem by going slow.
Anyway, most people would be surprised how little it actually rains in this country, even in winter.
BigG seems incredibly touchy about it for reasons unknown.
I think the mere fact of my posting is enough to trigger him. Probably because I regularly call out his various attempts at PR for the current administration.
From reading recent threads, I see his latest angle is to call for some kind of government of national unity on the grounds that while the current lot are transparently useless, the other lot still can’t be trusted.
Also, in terms of route miles, the Wolverhampton Station tram extension.
Also, given the COVID-19 pandemic happened during Trump’s presidency, it is ludicrous to suggest that more has “gone to shit in the world” under Biden.
Fixies* will always be sold with at least one handlebar-mounted brake, usually for the front wheel - and more often than not brakes both fore and aft, because that's what most people want and need. But a single brake satisfies the legal requirement as pedalling backwards qualifies as the second.
The brakeless ones will either have been altered post-purchase, or (as was the classical style of the 80s and 90s bike messenger) be a repurposed track bike.
*Point of order that I own and ride a fixie and cannot by any definition be deemed 'a hipster**'. The trend seems to be very much over now, anyway.
**I'm not sure more than few hundred actual hipsters have ever existed at any given time - it was media shorthand for 'young trendy people', most of whom were just boring young people into boring young people stuff; twas ever thus. Though it seems like a word that isn't much used these days.
Trump 74 million votes
#SoreLoserman
The remorseless cycles vs motor vehicles logic is that as a way of moving people in urban settings cycles are 4 or 5 times more efficient than the normal usage patterns for motor vehicles. Both are dominated by single occupancy use, and a pedal cycle is 0.75m wide by 1.7m long and can easily coexist with other modes, whilst a normal individual motor vehicle is 2m wide by 5m long and have to be further apart, and other road users have to be protected from them because of the danger.
Where we see it is in 3m cycle tracks carrying more people than 10m of 2 or 3 x vehicle lanes, whilst still having spare capacity. We are seeing that in a number of places now, and it will appear in many more.
I think that quadricycles will have a larger role to play - for example Citroen Ami or Renault Twizy, initially perhaps replacing 2nd vehicles.
I think a couple of places to watch in London are the Embankment, which as I pointed out yesterday carries approx 10-12k cycles on a weekday - when only 20% of London has decent quality cycle infra within a 400m distance. I predict that in 5 years that will be 20k per day, and 30k per day in 10-15 years, unless a fruitloop like Susan Hall becomes Mayor.
The other is Kensington High Street, where RBKC have given one of two lanes over to parking, and forced the several thousands of cycles per day into a single lane with all the motor vehicles. Not sure how that will play out, apart form likely an increase in Killed and Seriously Injured people.
Outside London watch places like Manchester, Nottingham, Bristol and the West Midlands.
That Trump is in the running for possible re-election is the fault of the Republican senators who voted not guilty at his second impeachment trial.
If you want to improve cycling provision then it needs to be *new* roadway, not “repurposing” the existing road to make driving more difficult.
NB: not a reason to vote for him.
Though I can't say I'm confidently predicting that from Labour.
There does seem to be quite a bit of strawmanning going on this morning.
Opponents of the current government predicting a change will "solve all the West's problems" are vanishingly rare.
And AlanB. seems to have the odd idea that there's a horde of folk arguing that Democrats are as pure as the driven snow.
I’m hopeful about Birmingham and Nottingham too.
I remember when I posted that it was a shame that cities outside London lacked cyclehire schemes and I was denounced as a cappuccino supping metro elitist.
The same style of argument was deployed against renewables and EVs over the last decade.
https://bromptonhire.com/our-locations/
A number are next to rail/tube stations.
I'm seeing on the trains an increasing number of people who've obviously hired one (the colour scheme is quiet, but noticeable) for a day out - train out to somewhere in the country side, unfold and ride.
For those who don't know them, Brompton folding bikes are allowed on all trains because they are so compact. They are, in addition, very rideable, compared to other small wheel bikes.
Simply divine. The majority of the world's rose oil comes from here.
= 100,000 homeless people, and getting worse every day
There's actually a cycling scheme being built outside my front door at this very moment. We argued with the council that it was a really crap design and Mrs Flatlander used her landscape design skillz to send them a revised plan based on actual use (she is also a cyclist). They've ploughed ahead with their crap design anyway. [None of the highways staff actually live locally. The tree officer lives in Scotland!]
There is an existing pedestrian route in the middle of a tree-lined verge that is de-facto mixed use already, but rather than just accepting that they've dug up half the grass to move the pedestrians to a new pavement alongside the main road.
Obviously 99% of people are going to ignore that and continue to walk the tree lined route, which will lead to conflict.
I think the problem is that a lot of these schemes are centrally funded and as such have to meet a very rigid set of standards. The council want the money to keep their not-very-arms-length (ahem) contractors going, so will go with any old scheme that will get a grant.
It’s not a zero-sum game if you’re adding *new* roads.
https://twitter.com/UAWeapons/status/1686653746279747584
It's one of the biggest reasons why people don't cycle in the UK, so either needs to be resolved with more enforcement or segregated cycle provision.
But I'm worried pointing it out puts more people off cycling.
That is not a metaphor.
Put all the ugly shit below ground. Shops, house and nice cycle way on the surface when you are done.
It would be paid for by the property created, and the increase in the value of the properties within 100 yards of the road....
It doesn't surprise me one little bit that you think she was "OK" and should take over the country.
The human race truly is too stupid to survive.
Manhattan architecture can be enviable, the lack of green space is claustrophobic and of course the US is a social disaster.
That is different from saying everyone should get on their bikes now and just bring a spare Shimano 105 Di2 R7150 with you just in case.
https://thedispatch.activehosted.com/index.php?action=social&chash=01d8bae291b1e4724443375634ccfa0e.1631&nosocial=1
Essentially they think it comes down not to whether Trump was advised that he was breaching the Constitution (clearly true) but whether he "internalised" (believed) the advice. That may be hard to determine. It's likely to go to the Supreme Court in the end, I assume.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-15/only-labour-can-fix-the-nhs-says-boris-johnson-s-vaccine-czar#xj4y7vzkg
I ratrher think [edit] that when LG sees those, she'll be scratched from LG's shopping list for posters.
I don't think that qualifies her to be PM, though.
One- as as been pointed out already, there's no space for new roads in the kind of places we're talking about. It's all built up.
Two- history largely shows that increasing road space to meet demand is a fool's errand; you tend to end up with three lanes of congestion rather than two.
Three- history also largely shows that transferring space from cars to other modes of transport ends up as a win-win. Because almost anything else is more space efficient than single occupancy cars, modal shift leads to better journeys for everyone, including those who remain in their cars. It just takes time to get there.
But car enthusiasts struggle with that, not helped by gobshite politicians.
It’s plain old Cultural Cringe, but quite eloquently done. You’re a kiwi. London and the UK is simultaneously the beloved mother country, but also the old hag from whose shadow you desire to
escape - while never quite managing it. Hence your obsessive return to the subject - and to PB, where you can vent your Oedipal weirdness
Having now identified this to my own satisfaction, I shall observe the rest of your commentary with wry gratification at my own percipience
I would not claim local expert status
The key attributes seem to be consistent long term strategy, and secure long term funding streams. All government seems to be "respond within X weeks and spend it within X months", so favours areas with pre-existing expertise and pre-prepared proposals, I think London would be on that list, but the exercise was outside London - as it has a long term programme since Ken Livingstone was Mayor.
Oh.
Bugger.
I found TfL's logic behind building the two major cycle superhighways (East-West via the Embankment, North-South) really interesting. Basically their projections showed that n,000 more people would want to get across London every day by 2030, and the Tube and buses would be at capacity. Building another Tube line is prohibitively expensive and it's not clear there'd be space anyway. There certainly isn't space for more roads.
The cycle superhighways were the cheapest and easiest way to deliver that capacity, while also providing massive safety improvements. I don't see that equation changing any time soon.