Things I learned on PB while catching up with last night's thread: there is an anti-floating-bus-stop brigade.
"Drivers and riders should give way to pedestrians waiting to cross and MUST give way to pedestrians on a zebra crossing"
With the crossing only being a yard wide, the pedestrians were all waiting to cross, so the cyclists were breaking the "should" rather than the "must".
Generally works fine but definitely another challenge for the blind.
Good News this morning that the hard Brexit for the food industry has been delayed again. We needed to have veterinary certificates done for food imports in October - huge cost and faff just to keep ERG wankers happy. The delay (hopefully to never) will stop another big spike in the cost of food, and reduce the risk of rolling shortages this winter.
Once again we're not remotely ready to implement checks of this stuff (as physical checks of the vehicle / goods / paperwork were to follow in the spring), we never will be ready as the government refuse to invest in what we need to Take Back Control of the border, why not just confirm that we remain aligned with EEA standards and will continue to do so?
The Brexiteers really made no plans at all. We now have no control over imports, yet barriers to exports. No wonder the economy is flatlining and inflationary.
That is very unfair. Truss and Kwarteng in particular spent years refining a world leading fiscal system that led us to growth and prosperity.
The UK has a lower than average tax burden. It's part of the reason we get into so much trouble - we try and spend like Denmark, but tax like Australia.
Things I learned on PB while catching up with last night's thread: there is an anti-floating-bus-stop brigade.
"Drivers and riders should give way to pedestrians waiting to cross and MUST give way to pedestrians on a zebra crossing"
With the crossing only being a yard wide, the pedestrians were all waiting to cross, so the cyclists were breaking the "should" rather than the "must".
Generally works fine but definitely another challenge for the blind.
I think BR accused me of not criticising cyclists who don't stop at zebra crossings - of course I do.
Those kind of accusations are just projection from drivers trying to justify their own law-breaking, and a form of whataboutery given the thousands of pedestrians injured by drivers each year.
This is obvious - a bike weighs 10kg. An SUV 2,500kg.
Things I learned on PB while catching up with last night's thread: there is an anti-floating-bus-stop brigade.
"Drivers and riders should give way to pedestrians waiting to cross and MUST give way to pedestrians on a zebra crossing"
With the crossing only being a yard wide, the pedestrians were all waiting to cross, so the cyclists were breaking the "should" rather than the "must".
Generally works fine but definitely another challenge for the blind.
I think BR accused me of not criticising cyclists who don't stop at zebra crossings - of course I do.
Those kind of accusations are just projection from drivers trying to justify their own law-breaking, and a form of whataboutery given the thousands of pedestrians injured by drivers each year.
This is obvious - a bike weighs 10kg. An SUV 2,500kg.
Gentle tip, I get that you love cycling and are a real advocate for it but this is bordering on the fanatical and boring now.
The UK has a lower than average tax burden. It's part of the reason we get into so much trouble - we try and spend like Denmark, but tax like Australia.
According to the tramway museum in Crich, which I had the pleasure to visit yesterday:
I think this hereby concludes our transport discussion.
By the way the Derby dales continue to fascinate. It’s an area I’ve not visited for decades, and strikes me as an English version of la France profonde.
Everything is at least a couple of decades behind here. The shop fronts, the decor, the cuisine (yesterday I had steak pie, peas and beans with gravy for lunch then “tapas” for dinner which was like some 1980s imagined idea of tapas). The dark wooded valleys and dark sandstone towns, all feeling a little bit “Auvergne”.
The little Massif Central of England.
I love the Derbyshire Dales; I feel like explored most of it on foot over the decades, and deeply associate with it.
But I've never been to Crich tramway museum, oddly enough. Probably a case of it being both too near to visit, and there being other things that interested me more.
Things I learned on PB while catching up with last night's thread: there is an anti-floating-bus-stop brigade.
"Drivers and riders should give way to pedestrians waiting to cross and MUST give way to pedestrians on a zebra crossing"
With the crossing only being a yard wide, the pedestrians were all waiting to cross, so the cyclists were breaking the "should" rather than the "must".
Generally works fine but definitely another challenge for the blind.
I think BR accused me of not criticising cyclists who don't stop at zebra crossings - of course I do.
Those kind of accusations are just projection from drivers trying to justify their own law-breaking, and a form of whataboutery given the thousands of pedestrians injured by drivers each year.
This is obvious - a bike weighs 10kg. An SUV 2,500kg.
Gentle tip, I get that you love cycling and are a real advocate for it but this is bordering on the fanatical and boring now.
Actually puts me off.
You seen BR's posts? The man wants to put a motorway through the Meadows. £1 trillion in road building.
The UK has a lower than average tax burden. It's part of the reason we get into so much trouble - we try and spend like Denmark, but tax like Australia.
We seem to have the idea that we can have good quality at low prices.
You see it throughout the public sector - we want to build HS2 at top spec but not pay the top price. We want Scandinavian levels of education, but on a French budget. We have a German style demand for the NHS on a Spanish allowance.
Sadly, no politician will ever stand up and say, ‘Right, if we want this, we have to pay this for it, and if we’re not willing to pay that, we can’t have it.’
So we make up some of the difference with borrowing, which is more expensive in the long run, and the rest by sweating assets, particularly human ones.
And then wonder why everything is more expensive than promised and doesn’t work as well as it should.
Things I learned on PB while catching up with last night's thread: there is an anti-floating-bus-stop brigade.
"Drivers and riders should give way to pedestrians waiting to cross and MUST give way to pedestrians on a zebra crossing"
With the crossing only being a yard wide, the pedestrians were all waiting to cross, so the cyclists were breaking the "should" rather than the "must".
Generally works fine but definitely another challenge for the blind.
I think BR accused me of not criticising cyclists who don't stop at zebra crossings - of course I do.
Those kind of accusations are just projection from drivers trying to justify their own law-breaking, and a form of whataboutery given the thousands of pedestrians injured by drivers each year.
This is obvious - a bike weighs 10kg. An SUV 2,500kg.
Gentle tip, I get that you love cycling and are a real advocate for it but this is bordering on the fanatical and boring now.
Actually puts me off.
You seen BR's posts? The man wants to put a motorway through the Meadows. £1 trillion in road building.
Things I learned on PB while catching up with last night's thread: there is an anti-floating-bus-stop brigade.
"Drivers and riders should give way to pedestrians waiting to cross and MUST give way to pedestrians on a zebra crossing"
With the crossing only being a yard wide, the pedestrians were all waiting to cross, so the cyclists were breaking the "should" rather than the "must".
Generally works fine but definitely another challenge for the blind.
I think BR accused me of not criticising cyclists who don't stop at zebra crossings - of course I do.
Those kind of accusations are just projection from drivers trying to justify their own law-breaking, and a form of whataboutery given the thousands of pedestrians injured by drivers each year.
This is obvious - a bike weighs 10kg. An SUV 2,500kg.
A bit more expensive but I think a traffic light that could be operated by the bus drivers would work best there instead of a pedestrian crossing. So green for cyclists 99% of the time, but red when buses are dropping off.
Most pedestrians fine to cross a 1 yard wide cycle path without a zebra crossing even during rush hour. A challenge either way for disabled and blind, but the false hope of a zebra crossing that doesn't work seems worse than no crossing at all.
As for whataboutery it is natural for each group of road user to feel more anti other users without holding their own behaviour to the same scrutiny. That applies to pedestrians, cyclists, motorists, bus users et al.
Good News this morning that the hard Brexit for the food industry has been delayed again. We needed to have veterinary certificates done for food imports in October - huge cost and faff just to keep ERG wankers happy. The delay (hopefully to never) will stop another big spike in the cost of food, and reduce the risk of rolling shortages this winter.
Once again we're not remotely ready to implement checks of this stuff (as physical checks of the vehicle / goods / paperwork were to follow in the spring), we never will be ready as the government refuse to invest in what we need to Take Back Control of the border, why not just confirm that we remain aligned with EEA standards and will continue to do so?
The Brexiteers really made no plans at all. We now have no control over imports, yet barriers to exports. No wonder the economy is flatlining and inflationary.
What frustrates me about this now is that they are still looking at these measure by measure and making last minute and costly decisions. It is no wonder that business and the economy are struggling - we don't know what the hell the regulatory framework in the next quarter looks like.
The Boris oven-ready (lies!) plan was to be a Third Country. We do checks, the perfidious yerp do checks, business miraculously switches away from our closest and largest market and is all picked up by imports of Australian meat on that Truss "fuck the pommy farmers" trade deal. Or something.
But we binned all of that. Jacob Rees-Mogg himself scrapped the whole concept when declaring that inbound checks would be a matter of "national self-harm". Yet we still plan to bring in parts of them - such as next April checking vet paperwork against trucks and cargoes - despite having neither the infrastructure nor the staff nor the systems nor any purpose other than "lets push inflation up".
So why not look at it all in the round? "Brexit" was leaving the EU. Nothing more, nothing less. We did that. Now we need to live on the outside and that means making the most of every opportunity there is. And the biggie is the EEA market place where not only are we very close, with a huge existing business, we're already almost entirely aligned with its rules!!!! Hallelujah. We can drive the economy and slash inflation and even stop the boats - all we need to do is stop acting like [ban hammers] when it comes to the EU.
Things I learned on PB while catching up with last night's thread: there is an anti-floating-bus-stop brigade.
"Drivers and riders should give way to pedestrians waiting to cross and MUST give way to pedestrians on a zebra crossing"
With the crossing only being a yard wide, the pedestrians were all waiting to cross, so the cyclists were breaking the "should" rather than the "must".
Generally works fine but definitely another challenge for the blind.
I think BR accused me of not criticising cyclists who don't stop at zebra crossings - of course I do.
Those kind of accusations are just projection from drivers trying to justify their own law-breaking, and a form of whataboutery given the thousands of pedestrians injured by drivers each year.
This is obvious - a bike weighs 10kg. An SUV 2,500kg.
Gentle tip, I get that you love cycling and are a real advocate for it but this is bordering on the fanatical and boring now.
Actually puts me off.
You seen BR's posts? The man wants to put a motorway through the Meadows. £1 trillion in road building.
That's fanatical.
You are both fanatical.
Yes, but I'd feel a lot less squashed if Eabhal ran me over, inadvertently or otherwise.
Things I learned on PB while catching up with last night's thread: there is an anti-floating-bus-stop brigade.
"Drivers and riders should give way to pedestrians waiting to cross and MUST give way to pedestrians on a zebra crossing"
With the crossing only being a yard wide, the pedestrians were all waiting to cross, so the cyclists were breaking the "should" rather than the "must".
Generally works fine but definitely another challenge for the blind.
I think BR accused me of not criticising cyclists who don't stop at zebra crossings - of course I do.
Those kind of accusations are just projection from drivers trying to justify their own law-breaking, and a form of whataboutery given the thousands of pedestrians injured by drivers each year.
This is obvious - a bike weighs 10kg. An SUV 2,500kg.
Gentle tip, I get that you love cycling and are a real advocate for it but this is bordering on the fanatical and boring now.
Actually puts me off.
You seen BR's posts? The man wants to put a motorway through the Meadows. £1 trillion in road building.
That's fanatical.
You are both fanatical.
Yes, but I'd feel a lot less squashed if Eabhal ran me over, inadvertently or otherwise.
And my life would be a lot less fun and easy if I could not just get into my car and drive to a public-tranportless play area with my kid.
According to the tramway museum in Crich, which I had the pleasure to visit yesterday:
I think this hereby concludes our transport discussion.
By the way the Derby dales continue to fascinate. It’s an area I’ve not visited for decades, and strikes me as an English version of la France profonde.
Everything is at least a couple of decades behind here. The shop fronts, the decor, the cuisine (yesterday I had steak pie, peas and beans with gravy for lunch then “tapas” for dinner which was like some 1980s imagined idea of tapas). The dark wooded valleys and dark sandstone towns, all feeling a little bit “Auvergne”.
The little Massif Central of England.
I love the Derbyshire Dales; I feel like explored most of it on foot over the decades, and deeply associate with it.
But I've never been to Crich tramway museum, oddly enough. Probably a case of it being both too near to visit, and there being other things that interested me more.
Parenthetically, I seem to recall an argument that the right wing in the UK had successfully campaigned against trams for decades because so many folk thought of them as that ancient and rattly stuff in Beamish etc and never seen the modern kind in Europe. Edit: not that that was the intention of such museums' founders, of course!
He's not the first cricket commentator to court controversy, but unlike those other examples I can't see what on earth he has to do with cricket. It shouldn't be impossible to be on a broadcast if you haven't been related to the sport, but if you're not an ex-cricketer and are involved with a cricket broadcast you need to have some wherewithal and be a 'proper' broadcaster/journalist who has earnt their stripes. For the tennis, Clare Balding presenting Wimbledon coverage fits the bill for instance. I think this is an easy decision for the BBC, get rid for the rest of the broadcasts. Can't think of who could replace him and do a better job...
Things I learned on PB while catching up with last night's thread: there is an anti-floating-bus-stop brigade.
"Drivers and riders should give way to pedestrians waiting to cross and MUST give way to pedestrians on a zebra crossing"
With the crossing only being a yard wide, the pedestrians were all waiting to cross, so the cyclists were breaking the "should" rather than the "must".
Generally works fine but definitely another challenge for the blind.
I think BR accused me of not criticising cyclists who don't stop at zebra crossings - of course I do.
Those kind of accusations are just projection from drivers trying to justify their own law-breaking, and a form of whataboutery given the thousands of pedestrians injured by drivers each year.
This is obvious - a bike weighs 10kg. An SUV 2,500kg.
Gentle tip, I get that you love cycling and are a real advocate for it but this is bordering on the fanatical and boring now.
Actually puts me off.
You seen BR's posts? The man wants to put a motorway through the Meadows. £1 trillion in road building.
That's fanatical.
You are both fanatical.
Yes, but I'd feel a lot less squashed if Eabhal ran me over, inadvertently or otherwise.
And my life would be a lot less fun and easy if I could not just get into my car and drive to a public-tranportless play area with my kid.
ON which, just been reading about the plans for a new station at your place (I think?) - the old Ox-Camb railway line being resurrected with about 50 times the angst of your average Victorian project. Edit: but good to see.
According to the tramway museum in Crich, which I had the pleasure to visit yesterday:
I think this hereby concludes our transport discussion.
By the way the Derby dales continue to fascinate. It’s an area I’ve not visited for decades, and strikes me as an English version of la France profonde.
Everything is at least a couple of decades behind here. The shop fronts, the decor, the cuisine (yesterday I had steak pie, peas and beans with gravy for lunch then “tapas” for dinner which was like some 1980s imagined idea of tapas). The dark wooded valleys and dark sandstone towns, all feeling a little bit “Auvergne”.
The little Massif Central of England.
I love the Derbyshire Dales; I feel like explored most of it on foot over the decades, and deeply associate with it.
But I've never been to Crich tramway museum, oddly enough. Probably a case of it being both too near to visit, and there being other things that interested me more.
I wouldn’t say it merits a full day out. About 2 hours of moderately interesting pottering about, best combined with heights of Abraham and a couple of mills.
I'm staying out of the factionalism over transport modes. Whichever mode you want to promote you have to accept that the costs of installing it are bonkers in the UK which is why we have so little of it.
We have obsessive planners and regulations and endless regulations and enquiries. We put everything out to tender which means expensive and inflexible contracts, or we have the remnants of the in house team who have no budget or staff.
So to add a cycle lane or road or whatever costs a fortune, gets done as cheaply as possible despite the vast cost paid, and then isn't completed to have much purpose because "ooh thats expensive" penny-pinching kicks in and further stages that make the bit thats built worthwhile. We can all point at random bits of infrastructure - built at vast cost that goes nowhere and has no purpose because "ooh thats expensive" kicked in.
We need to boot the spivs out of our public sphere. Until we start paying a sensible cost for infrastructure as most other countries manage to do, we will continue to have not enough of it. Of whichever mode.
The UK has a lower than average tax burden. It's part of the reason we get into so much trouble - we try and spend like Denmark, but tax like Australia.
We seem to have the idea that we can have good quality at low prices.
You see it throughout the public sector - we want to build HS2 at top spec but not pay the top price. We want Scandinavian levels of education, but on a French budget. We have a German style demand for the NHS on a Spanish allowance.
Sadly, no politician will ever stand up and say, ‘Right, if we want this, we have to pay this for it, and if we’re not willing to pay that, we can’t have it.’
So we make up some of the difference with borrowing, which is more expensive in the long run, and the rest by sweating assets, particularly human ones.
And then wonder why everything is more expensive than promised and doesn’t work as well as it should.
The remarkable thing is that the UK has got away with that sort of thing for so long; a couple of generations at least. Which is why the hangover after the high is going to be so painful.
It's been turbocharged by treating the one-off proceeds from selling stuff off as income to underpin recurring spending.
Two conclusions from all of that. One is that the choice at the next election is higher taxes for much worse services or much higher taxes for worse services. Arguing against that is arguing against arithmetic. The other is that mucking around with economic growth is a very dangerous game.
'Over-50s looking for work should consider delivering takeaways and other flexible jobs typically occupied by younger people, the work and pensions secretary has said.
Mel Stride’s comments came during a visit to the London headquarters of the food delivery firm Deliveroo, which has recorded a 62% increase in riders aged over 50 since 2021.
In an interview with the Times during his visit to the food delivery company, Stride said these flexible jobs offered “great opportunities” and that it was “good for people to consider options they might not have otherwise thought of”.'
Things I learned on PB while catching up with last night's thread: there is an anti-floating-bus-stop brigade.
"Drivers and riders should give way to pedestrians waiting to cross and MUST give way to pedestrians on a zebra crossing"
With the crossing only being a yard wide, the pedestrians were all waiting to cross, so the cyclists were breaking the "should" rather than the "must".
Generally works fine but definitely another challenge for the blind.
I think BR accused me of not criticising cyclists who don't stop at zebra crossings - of course I do.
Those kind of accusations are just projection from drivers trying to justify their own law-breaking, and a form of whataboutery given the thousands of pedestrians injured by drivers each year.
This is obvious - a bike weighs 10kg. An SUV 2,500kg.
Gentle tip, I get that you love cycling and are a real advocate for it but this is bordering on the fanatical and boring now.
Actually puts me off.
The active travel/sustainable travel car hating cycling fanatics/extremists are tedious in the extreme.
The claim that people who don't cycle do not do so as they are scared of cars, or some such guff, is totally unfounded. Sure, there will be a few, but there are other reasons too.
Most of us cyclists just enjoy our cycling. I cycle to work daily, I enjoy it. I do not see every cycle journey as a constant battle against motorists, pedestrians or dogs.
I will jump red lights when I think it safe to do so as I will cycle on the pavement when safe to do so as a fair bit of it round by me is dual use.
'Over-50s looking for work should consider delivering takeaways and other flexible jobs typically occupied by younger people, the work and pensions secretary has said.
Mel Stride’s comments came during a visit to the London headquarters of the food delivery firm Deliveroo, which has recorded a 62% increase in riders aged over 50 since 2021.
In an interview with the Times during his visit to the food delivery company, Stride said these flexible jobs offered “great opportunities” and that it was “good for people to consider options they might not have otherwise thought of”.'
He may need a new job next year so great to see him looking ahead. Well done, Mel.
Things I learned on PB while catching up with last night's thread: there is an anti-floating-bus-stop brigade.
"Drivers and riders should give way to pedestrians waiting to cross and MUST give way to pedestrians on a zebra crossing"
With the crossing only being a yard wide, the pedestrians were all waiting to cross, so the cyclists were breaking the "should" rather than the "must".
Generally works fine but definitely another challenge for the blind.
I think BR accused me of not criticising cyclists who don't stop at zebra crossings - of course I do.
Those kind of accusations are just projection from drivers trying to justify their own law-breaking, and a form of whataboutery given the thousands of pedestrians injured by drivers each year.
This is obvious - a bike weighs 10kg. An SUV 2,500kg.
Gentle tip, I get that you love cycling and are a real advocate for it but this is bordering on the fanatical and boring now.
Actually puts me off.
You seen BR's posts? The man wants to put a motorway through the Meadows. £1 trillion in road building.
That's fanatical.
You are both fanatical.
Yes, but I'd feel a lot less squashed if Eabhal ran me over, inadvertently or otherwise.
And my life would be a lot less fun and easy if I could not just get into my car and drive to a public-tranportless play area with my kid.
ON which, just been reading about the plans for a new station at your place (I think?) - the old Ox-Camb railway line being resurrected with about 50 times the angst of your average Victorian project. Edit: but good to see.
Yep. Oodles of controversy locally. People want housing, but they don't want it near them, or any public transport to it. The Cambourne to Cambridge busway is being fought tooth-and-nail, and the rail link is also being fought by villages to the west of Cambridge (I've been quite impressed by their campaign, if not their message).
'Over-50s looking for work should consider delivering takeaways and other flexible jobs typically occupied by younger people, the work and pensions secretary has said.
Mel Stride’s comments came during a visit to the London headquarters of the food delivery firm Deliveroo, which has recorded a 62% increase in riders aged over 50 since 2021.
In an interview with the Times during his visit to the food delivery company, Stride said these flexible jobs offered “great opportunities” and that it was “good for people to consider options they might not have otherwise thought of”.'
He may need a new job next year so great to see him looking ahead. Well done, Mel.
And the interviewer for evidently making that point - however obliquely.
Bikes? How about luggage? Lumo is an open-access operator on the London to Edinburgh route. Its trains are 5 coaches long, and have wholly inadequate provision for suitcases. When ordering the trains from Hitachi, First group had to obey a directive issued by the DfT about the number of seats. If they removed some seats for luggage racks, they wouldn't be given an open-access licence by Network Rail.
The government have fetishised seat numbers as they cut costs. Operators can't have more rolling stock, or run additional services other than the ones directed by the DfT. So the number of seats has to be maximised. Hence the infamous "ironing board" seat used for commuter trains in Europe and as long haul seats here. Just cram them in - that way whichever berk is transport minister can proclaim that statistically all is well. Any bad experience you may be having (lack of space due to piles of luggage etc) must be a figment of your deranged imagination.
Did you see the RAIB report about the Lumo overspeed traversal of points at Peterborough? One of the things they noted was that because of the reduced luggage rack provision there were more heavy suitcases in the overhead racks which then caused injuries when they fell out as the train lurched sideways...
Bikes? How about luggage? Lumo is an open-access operator on the London to Edinburgh route. Its trains are 5 coaches long, and have wholly inadequate provision for suitcases. When ordering the trains from Hitachi, First group had to obey a directive issued by the DfT about the number of seats. If they removed some seats for luggage racks, they wouldn't be given an open-access licence by Network Rail.
The government have fetishised seat numbers as they cut costs. Operators can't have more rolling stock, or run additional services other than the ones directed by the DfT. So the number of seats has to be maximised. Hence the infamous "ironing board" seat used for commuter trains in Europe and as long haul seats here. Just cram them in - that way whichever berk is transport minister can proclaim that statistically all is well. Any bad experience you may be having (lack of space due to piles of luggage etc) must be a figment of your deranged imagination.
Did you see the RAIB report about the Lumo overspeed traversal of points at Peterborough? One of the things they noted was that because of the reduced luggage rack provision there were more heavy suitcases in the overhead racks which then caused injuries when they fell out as the train lurched sideways...
Interestingly the latest Modern Railways has a mention of the Peterborough incident - and, very worryingly, a later repetition. But also a long section on ECML n general. One issue being discussed - I forget which article - is the need for proper provision for heavy suitcases near the doors, with physical changes being mooted, right down to CCTV to reassure fretful tourists, and separate sections for Edinburgh and Newcastle. I can't recall which operators - possibly several and posdsibly Lumo - the mag is in the recycling bin - but your comment certainly throws a new light on these proposals.
'Over-50s looking for work should consider delivering takeaways and other flexible jobs typically occupied by younger people, the work and pensions secretary has said.
Mel Stride’s comments came during a visit to the London headquarters of the food delivery firm Deliveroo, which has recorded a 62% increase in riders aged over 50 since 2021.
In an interview with the Times during his visit to the food delivery company, Stride said these flexible jobs offered “great opportunities” and that it was “good for people to consider options they might not have otherwise thought of”.'
He may need a new job next year so great to see him looking ahead. Well done, Mel.
And the interviewer for evidently making that point - however obliquely.
To be fair, there is some truth in what he says, even if the message will appear crass coming from him. It is never going to be mainstream but there will be some over 50s it suits who won't have considered such jobs as open to them.
'Over-50s looking for work should consider delivering takeaways and other flexible jobs typically occupied by younger people, the work and pensions secretary has said.
Mel Stride’s comments came during a visit to the London headquarters of the food delivery firm Deliveroo, which has recorded a 62% increase in riders aged over 50 since 2021.
In an interview with the Times during his visit to the food delivery company, Stride said these flexible jobs offered “great opportunities” and that it was “good for people to consider options they might not have otherwise thought of”.'
He may need a new job next year so great to see him looking ahead. Well done, Mel.
And the interviewer for evidently making that point - however obliquely.
To be fair, there is some truth in what he says, even if the message will appear crass coming from him. It is never going to be mainstream but there will be some over 50s it suits who won't have considered such jobs as open to them.
Quite so. It does also mean more jobs for Tory voters and fewer for Labour voters (the young)!
Things I learned on PB while catching up with last night's thread: there is an anti-floating-bus-stop brigade.
"Drivers and riders should give way to pedestrians waiting to cross and MUST give way to pedestrians on a zebra crossing"
With the crossing only being a yard wide, the pedestrians were all waiting to cross, so the cyclists were breaking the "should" rather than the "must".
Generally works fine but definitely another challenge for the blind.
I think BR accused me of not criticising cyclists who don't stop at zebra crossings - of course I do.
Those kind of accusations are just projection from drivers trying to justify their own law-breaking, and a form of whataboutery given the thousands of pedestrians injured by drivers each year.
This is obvious - a bike weighs 10kg. An SUV 2,500kg.
Gentle tip, I get that you love cycling and are a real advocate for it but this is bordering on the fanatical and boring now.
Actually puts me off.
The active travel/sustainable travel car hating cycling fanatics/extremists are tedious in the extreme.
The claim that people who don't cycle do not do so as they are scared of cars, or some such guff, is totally unfounded. Sure, there will be a few, but there are other reasons too.
Most of us cyclists just enjoy our cycling. I cycle to work daily, I enjoy it. I do not see every cycle journey as a constant battle against motorists, pedestrians or dogs.
I will jump red lights when I think it safe to do so as I will cycle on the pavement when safe to do so as a fair bit of it round by me is dual use.
The problem is that the anti-cycling brigade just make stuff up to support their pre-existing prejudice.
Dangerous driving is a huge deterrent. Particularly for women and children (hence the gender imbalance)
The UK has a lower than average tax burden. It's part of the reason we get into so much trouble - we try and spend like Denmark, but tax like Australia.
The political challenge is that in Opposition it's hard to get a mandate for ANY tax increase, and in Government it's tempting to get away with sleight of hand - not increasing personal allowances etc. I treasure the memory of Gordon Brown putting up NI by 1p (still not exactly a tax, but never mind) and getting away with it with almost no dissent, because it was entirely and successfully used to shorten NHS waiting times. The Treasury dislikes hypothecation, but maybe it's the only way to sell the necessary tax rises. I think we pay too little tax, but even I'm not keen on paying more tax generically and seeing it lavished on something I don't agree with.
Good News this morning that the hard Brexit for the food industry has been delayed again. We needed to have veterinary certificates done for food imports in October - huge cost and faff just to keep ERG wankers happy. The delay (hopefully to never) will stop another big spike in the cost of food, and reduce the risk of rolling shortages this winter.
Once again we're not remotely ready to implement checks of this stuff (as physical checks of the vehicle / goods / paperwork were to follow in the spring), we never will be ready as the government refuse to invest in what we need to Take Back Control of the border, why not just confirm that we remain aligned with EEA standards and will continue to do so?
The Brexiteers really made no plans at all. We now have no control over imports, yet barriers to exports. No wonder the economy is flatlining and inflationary.
What frustrates me about this now is that they are still looking at these measure by measure and making last minute and costly decisions. It is no wonder that business and the economy are struggling - we don't know what the hell the regulatory framework in the next quarter looks like.
The Boris oven-ready (lies!) plan was to be a Third Country. We do checks, the perfidious yerp do checks, business miraculously switches away from our closest and largest market and is all picked up by imports of Australian meat on that Truss "fuck the pommy farmers" trade deal. Or something.
But we binned all of that. Jacob Rees-Mogg himself scrapped the whole concept when declaring that inbound checks would be a matter of "national self-harm". Yet we still plan to bring in parts of them - such as next April checking vet paperwork against trucks and cargoes - despite having neither the infrastructure nor the staff nor the systems nor any purpose other than "lets push inflation up".
So why not look at it all in the round? "Brexit" was leaving the EU. Nothing more, nothing less. We did that. Now we need to live on the outside and that means making the most of every opportunity there is. And the biggie is the EEA market place where not only are we very close, with a huge existing business, we're already almost entirely aligned with its rules!!!! Hallelujah. We can drive the economy and slash inflation and even stop the boats - all we need to do is stop acting like [ban hammers] when it comes to the EU.
Yes but you don't understand the 2020s Conservative mindset. Food comes from shops, inflation never goes up, everything is delivered, income is high due to high wage or high pensions, the issues that concern them the most are culture war issues because they think that everything beneath that in Maslov terms (the economy, taxation, imports, exports, law and order, the criminal justice system, transport, defence, housing, light and heavy machinery and the retail sector, etc) can be sorted out by Somebody Else. Until they get past this they will not address the issues you identified because it's not a priority for them.
The UK has a lower than average tax burden. It's part of the reason we get into so much trouble - we try and spend like Denmark, but tax like Australia.
We seem to have the idea that we can have good quality at low prices.
You see it throughout the public sector - we want to build HS2 at top spec but not pay the top price. We want Scandinavian levels of education, but on a French budget. We have a German style demand for the NHS on a Spanish allowance.
Sadly, no politician will ever stand up and say, ‘Right, if we want this, we have to pay this for it, and if we’re not willing to pay that, we can’t have it.’
So we make up some of the difference with borrowing, which is more expensive in the long run, and the rest by sweating assets, particularly human ones.
And then wonder why everything is more expensive than promised and doesn’t work as well as it should.
The highest education ranking in the world is low tax Singapore. The UK has an even more statist and nationalised healthcare system than Scandinavia.
We have higher corporation tax than Ireland, higher income tax than the US and both Australia and Sweden have scrapped inheritance tax
If the BBC are not frantically trying to work out how to move to a subscription model the moment the licence fee is scrapped they're even more stupid than we all thought.
The BBC could easily have subscription for iPlayer. However if even the Tories haven't scrapped the licence fee an incoming Labour government certainly wouldn't
If you want to support public transport (buses), support new roads.
Everyone wins with new roads. Cyclists and drivers.
The thing is the cost of, say, 10 miles of new dual carriageway on average per parliamentary consituency (of course good luck finding available land in many of the most congested areas), would pay for:
- Everyone in the country to have a new high-spec bike, and - Free buses for the duration of the next Parliament, and - A 50% reduction in train fares, for the duration of the next Parliament, and - £250 a year in 'taxi tokens' for every rural dweller who won't benefit from better public tranport, for the duration of the next Parliament, and - A 25% annual rebate on council tax, for the duration of the next Parliament, and - The free installation of EV charging points for 1 in 10 homes, and - HS2, and HS3.
Please explain your figures.
£20m is a rough estimate of the cost per mile of dual carriageway. So 10x £20m = £200m, for 650 constituencies is about the same cost as HS2 alone.
And 10 miles of dual carriageway per constituency would do massively more than all of your suggestions combined. Let alone HS2 alone.
And not all new roads would need to be dual carriageway either.
£20m is the lower bound. £40m seems to be an accepted average figure, with the range anything from £18m to £100m.
So that's 40*650*10 millions = £260bn.
- Everyone in the country to have a new high-spec bike: £400 for 70m people = £28bn, £232bn left. - Free buses for the duration of the next Parliament: annual fares income £2.3bn, times five, £220.5bn left - A 50% reduction in train fares, for the duration of the next Parliament: annual fares income £10.2b, times 2.5, £195bn left - £250 a year in 'taxi tokens' for every rural dweller who won't benefit from better public tranport, for the duration of the next Parliament: 10 million rural dwellers, times £250, times 5, £182.5bn left - A 25% annual rebate on council tax, for the duration of the next Parliament: Council tax raised £44bn annual, divide by 4 times by 5, £127.5bn left - The free installation of EV charging points for 1 in 10 homes: domestic charging point around £1k, times 2.5 million, £125bn left which covers pretty much all of the cost of building HS2 with the HS3 elements reinstated.
OK, I think you've overestimated the cost of construction and you've massively underestimated the cost of your proposals. Its fair to go with a higher estimate for your figures, but then you need to do the same with all your other figures.
£400 is a fairly low spec new bike, 4-figures for a pretty basic high spec bike. £1000 for 70m people = £70bn which is a bit of a difference.
Free buses for the duration of the next Parliament (absolutely zero investment, pure expense) - this would cost much more than the cost of annual fares income, since if buses became free then more people would use them, so the policy would be more expensive. Moderate assumption cost £4.6bn of which £0 would be investment.
A reduction in train fares - Again £0 in investment whatsoever and a policy that does not apply at all to 95% of transportation in the UK. Why would you even consider this as a proposal? And again you've not counted the fact that if fares halved then the cost would rise.
Taxi tokens - again £0 in investment whatsoever. Why would you even consider this?
Rebate on Council Tax - again £0 in investment whatsoever. Why would you even consider this?
EV Charging points - OK finally some actual investment! Thank you. Though investment that only helps those with driveways/off-road parking, which are the ones who least need support as we transition to EV vehicles.
So overall you've taken a proposal that would vastly improve the infrastructure in this country for decades to come, and turned it into a five year piss-up purely on consumption that after five years would have no investment at all to show for it apart from some EV Charging Points and some bikes that go idle for most people. Great job.
On EV charging.
It is clear that the future is fast charging. We are down to 15 minutes for 20-80 charges for high end vehicles. At the current rate of progress, it will be sub 10 minutes for all EVs in a couple of years.
In the US, Tesla has just won the connector standards war. Why? Well, the opposition to using the Tesla plug was only the government, and all the other car makers.
One problem was that they weren’t into actually building chargers. Meanwhile the charger arm of Tesla is profitable and expanding at a compound rate.
The other problem was the shit experience of using the non-Tesla chargers. They seem to have been designed by people who thought that U.K. parking ticket machines/apps are too user friendly.
Lastly. the “standard” plug was insanely bad. Committee design all the way.
What does this tell us :
- Build the fucking super chargers. - Make the system user friendly. Plug in and charge is perfectly possible. - Imposing a standard only works if th standard is good, the implementation is good and it is actually widespread.
I've already been squeezed to the nines by high taxation in recent years - I pay 62% over 100k.
Enough. If I'm taxed any more I'd seriously consider emigrating with my family.
The 100K thing is a weird anomaly which I can't understand either party not fixing - it is obviously unfair for the marginal rate to be higher at £101K than £126K, so even we high-tax fans wouldn't mind if it was straightened out. Charge maybe 44% for the gap between £100K and top rate without the PA taper and it should even out, maybe even generate some extra revenue.
The UK has a lower than average tax burden. It's part of the reason we get into so much trouble - we try and spend like Denmark, but tax like Australia.
We seem to have the idea that we can have good quality at low prices.
You see it throughout the public sector - we want to build HS2 at top spec but not pay the top price. We want Scandinavian levels of education, but on a French budget. We have a German style demand for the NHS on a Spanish allowance.
Sadly, no politician will ever stand up and say, ‘Right, if we want this, we have to pay this for it, and if we’re not willing to pay that, we can’t have it.’
So we make up some of the difference with borrowing, which is more expensive in the long run, and the rest by sweating assets, particularly human ones.
And then wonder why everything is more expensive than promised and doesn’t work as well as it should.
The highest education ranking in the world is low tax Singapore. The UK has an even more statist and nationalised healthcare system than Scandinavia.
We have higher corporation tax than Ireland, higher income tax than the US and both Australia and Sweden have scrapped inheritance tax
That's what happens when you put the spivs in charge.
Bikes? How about luggage? Lumo is an open-access operator on the London to Edinburgh route. Its trains are 5 coaches long, and have wholly inadequate provision for suitcases. When ordering the trains from Hitachi, First group had to obey a directive issued by the DfT about the number of seats. If they removed some seats for luggage racks, they wouldn't be given an open-access licence by Network Rail.
The government have fetishised seat numbers as they cut costs. Operators can't have more rolling stock, or run additional services other than the ones directed by the DfT. So the number of seats has to be maximised. Hence the infamous "ironing board" seat used for commuter trains in Europe and as long haul seats here. Just cram them in - that way whichever berk is transport minister can proclaim that statistically all is well. Any bad experience you may be having (lack of space due to piles of luggage etc) must be a figment of your deranged imagination.
Did you see the RAIB report about the Lumo overspeed traversal of points at Peterborough? One of the things they noted was that because of the reduced luggage rack provision there were more heavy suitcases in the overhead racks which then caused injuries when they fell out as the train lurched sideways...
That RAIB report is quite interesting or a number of reasons. One is that they were very lucky it did not derail. Another is that whilst the report was being prepared, *another* service operated by a different operator did the same thing. This makes it look much more like infrastructure issues played a bigger part than driver training.
Barclay: We are in trouble with our 40 new hospitals pledge PM: That is disappointing [looks at members of the Cabinet] … this isn’t good, any ideas Lucy Frazer: I have a plan and it is for a much bigger number PM: Go on LF: 100 chessboards PM: 100 are you sure? LF: in parks
I think taxes should be raised for high earners, and I'm not even a usual Labour supporter. So I assume most of their supporters won't be happy if the policy is not to raise them.
I'm not LAB at all. However I think personal allowance should be increased to £15,000pa. Every one should get this including post £100k so no more taper. Beyond the PA it should be 20% on the first £50,000; 40% on the next £50,000; 50%+ beyond that. So everyone on £150,000 or less would be better off, those above it can/should pay more 👍
One of the big problems with big cliff edges, such as now at £100k, it is all the wrong incentives for economic output. Basically don't work more, don't strive to get promoted any further, instead negotiation for 4 days a week or more holiday and get £99k. Which is again a drag on productivity and GDP.
Agreed the personal allowance restriction is an absolute abomination. My proposal gets rid of it and charges a fair effective rate of IT of 50% post £115,000 actual earnings. It helps those £100,000 to £150,000 not uncommon earnings now but makes those post £150,000 pay more. I would not be adverse to 60% IT post £200,000 taxable income.
It is indeed, but the biggest abomination of all is the Universal Credit Taper applying alongside Income Tax and National Insurance.
That leaves low earning people on a real marginal tax rate of 70% plus. Even more if repaying Student Loans too.
If it were up to me I'd look to abolish all welfare, all exceptions to taxation etc, and replace it all with a UBI which is given to everyone [no exceptions], and then a flat tax rate of maybe 40% on everything earned [again no exceptions]. Maybe 50% at £100k+
Oddly enough - and afiar - that was the Scottish Green Party manifesto commitment.
Did it include abolishing welfare? Or just introducing a UBI as an extra layer?
The key for a UBI to work is all other stuff must be abolished. The UBI replaces it all [except maybe exceptional non-income related cases like disability support].
As I remember - yes. One of the offsets to the cost was reducing the overhead of all the byzantine processes of the current system(s).
The main reason for UBI (heck the reason why I think we should still increase pensions but charge the tax rates for pensioners to reflect the change) is to reduce the cost of claim processing...
The number of staff who would become redundant would be in the 100k’s
The fraud reduction inherent in a simple, lifelong, monthly payment….
David ‘not that one’ Davies. His constituency is going at the next GE, funnily enough. Do you want [x] for a neighbour has… bad associations.
I remember the Tories trying hard to capitalise on anti-traveller sentiment back in 2005. Again, this is an example of a government who are seemingly campaigning from opposition.
As far as I can tell from that there's nothing wrong with it.
No wonder there is a fall in prosecutions and arrests of burglars and robbers etc if the police are wasting time with things like that
Things I learned on PB while catching up with last night's thread: there is an anti-floating-bus-stop brigade.
"Drivers and riders should give way to pedestrians waiting to cross and MUST give way to pedestrians on a zebra crossing"
With the crossing only being a yard wide, the pedestrians were all waiting to cross, so the cyclists were breaking the "should" rather than the "must".
Generally works fine but definitely another challenge for the blind.
I think BR accused me of not criticising cyclists who don't stop at zebra crossings - of course I do.
Those kind of accusations are just projection from drivers trying to justify their own law-breaking, and a form of whataboutery given the thousands of pedestrians injured by drivers each year.
This is obvious - a bike weighs 10kg. An SUV 2,500kg.
Gentle tip, I get that you love cycling and are a real advocate for it but this is bordering on the fanatical and boring now.
Actually puts me off.
The active travel/sustainable travel car hating cycling fanatics/extremists are tedious in the extreme.
The claim that people who don't cycle do not do so as they are scared of cars, or some such guff, is totally unfounded. Sure, there will be a few, but there are other reasons too.
Most of us cyclists just enjoy our cycling. I cycle to work daily, I enjoy it. I do not see every cycle journey as a constant battle against motorists, pedestrians or dogs.
I will jump red lights when I think it safe to do so as I will cycle on the pavement when safe to do so as a fair bit of it round by me is dual use.
The problem is that the anti-cycling brigade just make stuff up to support their pre-existing prejudice.
Dangerous driving is a huge deterrent. Particularly for women and children (hence the gender imbalance)
Indeed. My step-daughter recently got a part-time job about a mile and a half away from our home, and, not being a driver, decided to cycle there. She's new to cycling and was too scared to ride on the busy road, so she used the pavement instead (there being no cycling infrastructure at all). Then she was shouted at for riding on the pavement, and then again a couple of weeks later, this time coming home in tears. Now she's packed in the job, partly because of the cycling issues, and is looking for something closer to home. She'll probably never cycle again now
David ‘not that one’ Davies. His constituency is going at the next GE, funnily enough. Do you want [x] for a neighbour has… bad associations.
I remember the Tories trying hard to capitalise on anti-traveller sentiment back in 2005. Again, this is an example of a government who are seemingly campaigning from opposition.
As far as I can tell from that there's nothing wrong with it.
No wonder there is a fall in prosecutions and arrests of burglars and robbers etc if the police are wasting time with things like that
Specific reference to ethnicity in a clearly derogatory context. He could have said 'transient caravan users' or similar.
Bikes? How about luggage? Lumo is an open-access operator on the London to Edinburgh route. Its trains are 5 coaches long, and have wholly inadequate provision for suitcases. When ordering the trains from Hitachi, First group had to obey a directive issued by the DfT about the number of seats. If they removed some seats for luggage racks, they wouldn't be given an open-access licence by Network Rail.
The government have fetishised seat numbers as they cut costs. Operators can't have more rolling stock, or run additional services other than the ones directed by the DfT. So the number of seats has to be maximised. Hence the infamous "ironing board" seat used for commuter trains in Europe and as long haul seats here. Just cram them in - that way whichever berk is transport minister can proclaim that statistically all is well. Any bad experience you may be having (lack of space due to piles of luggage etc) must be a figment of your deranged imagination.
Did you see the RAIB report about the Lumo overspeed traversal of points at Peterborough? One of the things they noted was that because of the reduced luggage rack provision there were more heavy suitcases in the overhead racks which then caused injuries when they fell out as the train lurched sideways...
Interestingly the latest Modern Railways has a mention of the Peterborough incident - and, very worryingly, a later repetition. But also a long section on ECML n general. One issue being discussed - I forget which article - is the need for proper provision for heavy suitcases near the doors, with physical changes being mooted, right down to CCTV to reassure fretful tourists, and separate sections for Edinburgh and Newcastle. I can't recall which operators - possibly several and posdsibly Lumo - the mag is in the recycling bin - but your comment certainly throws a new light on these proposals.
There is a tried and tested solution - create a secure space on the train where luggage and bikes and large items can be stored. Ironically the old trains which the Azumas have almost entirely replaced had that exact thing...
The Tories are so utterly useless that the tax burden is at an all time high on people like me that actually work hard and earn a good wage, yet homelessness has never been worse, the NHS is on its knees, the trains are always late, bills are going up and everything seems to be run from abroad because we can't do it here.
The Tories hate the UK - and they hate people like me.
Bikes? How about luggage? Lumo is an open-access operator on the London to Edinburgh route. Its trains are 5 coaches long, and have wholly inadequate provision for suitcases. When ordering the trains from Hitachi, First group had to obey a directive issued by the DfT about the number of seats. If they removed some seats for luggage racks, they wouldn't be given an open-access licence by Network Rail.
The government have fetishised seat numbers as they cut costs. Operators can't have more rolling stock, or run additional services other than the ones directed by the DfT. So the number of seats has to be maximised. Hence the infamous "ironing board" seat used for commuter trains in Europe and as long haul seats here. Just cram them in - that way whichever berk is transport minister can proclaim that statistically all is well. Any bad experience you may be having (lack of space due to piles of luggage etc) must be a figment of your deranged imagination.
Did you see the RAIB report about the Lumo overspeed traversal of points at Peterborough? One of the things they noted was that because of the reduced luggage rack provision there were more heavy suitcases in the overhead racks which then caused injuries when they fell out as the train lurched sideways...
Interestingly the latest Modern Railways has a mention of the Peterborough incident - and, very worryingly, a later repetition. But also a long section on ECML n general. One issue being discussed - I forget which article - is the need for proper provision for heavy suitcases near the doors, with physical changes being mooted, right down to CCTV to reassure fretful tourists, and separate sections for Edinburgh and Newcastle. I can't recall which operators - possibly several and posdsibly Lumo - the mag is in the recycling bin - but your comment certainly throws a new light on these proposals.
There is a tried and tested solution - create a secure space on the train where luggage and bikes and large items can be stored. Ironically the old trains which the Azumas have almost entirely replaced had that exact thing...
At the risk of going all Yorkie (appropriately enough for the ECML) the even older* trains had a thing called the "guard's van" with a big metal cage and a through corridor next to it and resident guard and all. Many a trip at peak times I spent inside the cage sitting on my rucksack rather than stand in the passenger coaches.
*admittedly the Deltic hauled ones. Not sure about the 125s.
If you want to support public transport (buses), support new roads.
Everyone wins with new roads. Cyclists and drivers.
The thing is the cost of, say, 10 miles of new dual carriageway on average per parliamentary consituency (of course good luck finding available land in many of the most congested areas), would pay for:
- Everyone in the country to have a new high-spec bike, and - Free buses for the duration of the next Parliament, and - A 50% reduction in train fares, for the duration of the next Parliament, and - £250 a year in 'taxi tokens' for every rural dweller who won't benefit from better public tranport, for the duration of the next Parliament, and - A 25% annual rebate on council tax, for the duration of the next Parliament, and - The free installation of EV charging points for 1 in 10 homes, and - HS2, and HS3.
Please explain your figures.
£20m is a rough estimate of the cost per mile of dual carriageway. So 10x £20m = £200m, for 650 constituencies is about the same cost as HS2 alone.
And 10 miles of dual carriageway per constituency would do massively more than all of your suggestions combined. Let alone HS2 alone.
And not all new roads would need to be dual carriageway either.
£20m is the lower bound. £40m seems to be an accepted average figure, with the range anything from £18m to £100m.
So that's 40*650*10 millions = £260bn.
- Everyone in the country to have a new high-spec bike: £400 for 70m people = £28bn, £232bn left. - Free buses for the duration of the next Parliament: annual fares income £2.3bn, times five, £220.5bn left - A 50% reduction in train fares, for the duration of the next Parliament: annual fares income £10.2b, times 2.5, £195bn left - £250 a year in 'taxi tokens' for every rural dweller who won't benefit from better public tranport, for the duration of the next Parliament: 10 million rural dwellers, times £250, times 5, £182.5bn left - A 25% annual rebate on council tax, for the duration of the next Parliament: Council tax raised £44bn annual, divide by 4 times by 5, £127.5bn left - The free installation of EV charging points for 1 in 10 homes: domestic charging point around £1k, times 2.5 million, £125bn left which covers pretty much all of the cost of building HS2 with the HS3 elements reinstated.
OK, I think you've overestimated the cost of construction and you've massively underestimated the cost of your proposals. Its fair to go with a higher estimate for your figures, but then you need to do the same with all your other figures.
£400 is a fairly low spec new bike, 4-figures for a pretty basic high spec bike. £1000 for 70m people = £70bn which is a bit of a difference.
Free buses for the duration of the next Parliament (absolutely zero investment, pure expense) - this would cost much more than the cost of annual fares income, since if buses became free then more people would use them, so the policy would be more expensive. Moderate assumption cost £4.6bn of which £0 would be investment.
A reduction in train fares - Again £0 in investment whatsoever and a policy that does not apply at all to 95% of transportation in the UK. Why would you even consider this as a proposal? And again you've not counted the fact that if fares halved then the cost would rise.
Taxi tokens - again £0 in investment whatsoever. Why would you even consider this?
Rebate on Council Tax - again £0 in investment whatsoever. Why would you even consider this?
EV Charging points - OK finally some actual investment! Thank you. Though investment that only helps those with driveways/off-road parking, which are the ones who least need support as we transition to EV vehicles.
So overall you've taken a proposal that would vastly improve the infrastructure in this country for decades to come, and turned it into a five year piss-up purely on consumption that after five years would have no investment at all to show for it apart from some EV Charging Points and some bikes that go idle for most people. Great job.
On EV charging.
It is clear that the future is fast charging. We are down to 15 minutes for 20-80 charges for high end vehicles. At the current rate of progress, it will be sub 10 minutes for all EVs in a couple of years.
In the US, Tesla has just won the connector standards war. Why? Well, the opposition to using the Tesla plug was only the government, and all the other car makers.
One problem was that they weren’t into actually building chargers. Meanwhile the charger arm of Tesla is profitable and expanding at a compound rate.
The other problem was the shit experience of using the non-Tesla chargers. They seem to have been designed by people who thought that U.K. parking ticket machines/apps are too user friendly.
Lastly. the “standard” plug was insanely bad. Committee design all the way.
What does this tell us :
- Build the fucking super chargers. - Make the system user friendly. Plug in and charge is perfectly possible. - Imposing a standard only works if th standard is good, the implementation is good and it is actually widespread.
Happily the UK didn't go down the Type 1 connector rabbit hole. We use the effective global standard of CCS2. Yes its a big connector but it is universal. And the new v4 superchargers now being installed have a tap to pay feature for non-Tesla drivers.
If the BBC are not frantically trying to work out how to move to a subscription model the moment the licence fee is scrapped they're even more stupid than we all thought.
The BBC could easily have subscription for iPlayer. However if even the Tories haven't scrapped the licence fee an incoming Labour government certainly wouldn't
No they couldn't - not allowed under their Royal Charter.
Things I learned on PB while catching up with last night's thread: there is an anti-floating-bus-stop brigade.
"Drivers and riders should give way to pedestrians waiting to cross and MUST give way to pedestrians on a zebra crossing"
With the crossing only being a yard wide, the pedestrians were all waiting to cross, so the cyclists were breaking the "should" rather than the "must".
Generally works fine but definitely another challenge for the blind.
I think BR accused me of not criticising cyclists who don't stop at zebra crossings - of course I do.
Those kind of accusations are just projection from drivers trying to justify their own law-breaking, and a form of whataboutery given the thousands of pedestrians injured by drivers each year.
This is obvious - a bike weighs 10kg. An SUV 2,500kg.
Gentle tip, I get that you love cycling and are a real advocate for it but this is bordering on the fanatical and boring now.
Actually puts me off.
The active travel/sustainable travel car hating cycling fanatics/extremists are tedious in the extreme.
The claim that people who don't cycle do not do so as they are scared of cars, or some such guff, is totally unfounded. Sure, there will be a few, but there are other reasons too.
Most of us cyclists just enjoy our cycling. I cycle to work daily, I enjoy it. I do not see every cycle journey as a constant battle against motorists, pedestrians or dogs.
I will jump red lights when I think it safe to do so as I will cycle on the pavement when safe to do so as a fair bit of it round by me is dual use.
The problem is that the anti-cycling brigade just make stuff up to support their pre-existing prejudice.
Dangerous driving is a huge deterrent. Particularly for women and children (hence the gender imbalance)
Indeed. My step-daughter recently got a part-time job about a mile and a half away from our home, and, not being a driver, decided to cycle there. She's new to cycling and was too scared to ride on the busy road, so she used the pavement instead (there being no cycling infrastructure at all). Then she was shouted at for riding on the pavement, and then again a couple of weeks later, this time coming home in tears. Now she's packed in the job, partly because of the cycling issues, and is looking for something closer to home. She'll probably never cycle again now
Cycling on the pavement can be fairly inconsiderate to other users of the pavement. Many pavements are simply not designed for cycling on, being too narrow or with too much street furniture. She should not have been shouted at, though.
Makes good points that while the Labour candidate was a Camden councillor imposed by Labour HQ the Tories local association picked a local Hillingdon councillor born and raised in the area who won
If the BBC are not frantically trying to work out how to move to a subscription model the moment the licence fee is scrapped they're even more stupid than we all thought.
The BBC could easily have subscription for iPlayer. However if even the Tories haven't scrapped the licence fee an incoming Labour government certainly wouldn't
No they couldn't - not allowed under their Royal Charter.
It would be if the licence fee was cut or removed. The BBC could have adverts too during high viewer programmes like Strictly
Things I learned on PB while catching up with last night's thread: there is an anti-floating-bus-stop brigade.
"Drivers and riders should give way to pedestrians waiting to cross and MUST give way to pedestrians on a zebra crossing"
With the crossing only being a yard wide, the pedestrians were all waiting to cross, so the cyclists were breaking the "should" rather than the "must".
Generally works fine but definitely another challenge for the blind.
I think BR accused me of not criticising cyclists who don't stop at zebra crossings - of course I do.
Those kind of accusations are just projection from drivers trying to justify their own law-breaking, and a form of whataboutery given the thousands of pedestrians injured by drivers each year.
This is obvious - a bike weighs 10kg. An SUV 2,500kg.
Gentle tip, I get that you love cycling and are a real advocate for it but this is bordering on the fanatical and boring now.
Actually puts me off.
The active travel/sustainable travel car hating cycling fanatics/extremists are tedious in the extreme.
The claim that people who don't cycle do not do so as they are scared of cars, or some such guff, is totally unfounded. Sure, there will be a few, but there are other reasons too.
Most of us cyclists just enjoy our cycling. I cycle to work daily, I enjoy it. I do not see every cycle journey as a constant battle against motorists, pedestrians or dogs.
I will jump red lights when I think it safe to do so as I will cycle on the pavement when safe to do so as a fair bit of it round by me is dual use.
The problem is that the anti-cycling brigade just make stuff up to support their pre-existing prejudice.
Dangerous driving is a huge deterrent. Particularly for women and children (hence the gender imbalance)
Indeed. My step-daughter recently got a part-time job about a mile and a half away from our home, and, not being a driver, decided to cycle there. She's new to cycling and was too scared to ride on the busy road, so she used the pavement instead (there being no cycling infrastructure at all). Then she was shouted at for riding on the pavement, and then again a couple of weeks later, this time coming home in tears. Now she's packed in the job, partly because of the cycling issues, and is looking for something closer to home. She'll probably never cycle again now
Sorry to hear that, but pavements are not suitable for cycling. Hope she can get some practice in on quieter roads; thats how most of us learned to cycle, I guess?
David ‘not that one’ Davies. His constituency is going at the next GE, funnily enough. Do you want [x] for a neighbour has… bad associations.
I remember the Tories trying hard to capitalise on anti-traveller sentiment back in 2005. Again, this is an example of a government who are seemingly campaigning from opposition.
As far as I can tell from that there's nothing wrong with it.
No wonder there is a fall in prosecutions and arrests of burglars and robbers etc if the police are wasting time with things like that
Specific reference to ethnicity in a clearly derogatory context. He could have said 'transient caravan users' or similar.
It was not a criminal matter to ask local residents if they want travellers sites near them, he is an elected representative after all.
Taxpayers pay the police to catch criminals not investigate the politically incorrect
If you want to support public transport (buses), support new roads.
Everyone wins with new roads. Cyclists and drivers.
The thing is the cost of, say, 10 miles of new dual carriageway on average per parliamentary consituency (of course good luck finding available land in many of the most congested areas), would pay for:
- Everyone in the country to have a new high-spec bike, and - Free buses for the duration of the next Parliament, and - A 50% reduction in train fares, for the duration of the next Parliament, and - £250 a year in 'taxi tokens' for every rural dweller who won't benefit from better public tranport, for the duration of the next Parliament, and - A 25% annual rebate on council tax, for the duration of the next Parliament, and - The free installation of EV charging points for 1 in 10 homes, and - HS2, and HS3.
Please explain your figures.
£20m is a rough estimate of the cost per mile of dual carriageway. So 10x £20m = £200m, for 650 constituencies is about the same cost as HS2 alone.
And 10 miles of dual carriageway per constituency would do massively more than all of your suggestions combined. Let alone HS2 alone.
And not all new roads would need to be dual carriageway either.
£20m is the lower bound. £40m seems to be an accepted average figure, with the range anything from £18m to £100m.
So that's 40*650*10 millions = £260bn.
- Everyone in the country to have a new high-spec bike: £400 for 70m people = £28bn, £232bn left. - Free buses for the duration of the next Parliament: annual fares income £2.3bn, times five, £220.5bn left - A 50% reduction in train fares, for the duration of the next Parliament: annual fares income £10.2b, times 2.5, £195bn left - £250 a year in 'taxi tokens' for every rural dweller who won't benefit from better public tranport, for the duration of the next Parliament: 10 million rural dwellers, times £250, times 5, £182.5bn left - A 25% annual rebate on council tax, for the duration of the next Parliament: Council tax raised £44bn annual, divide by 4 times by 5, £127.5bn left - The free installation of EV charging points for 1 in 10 homes: domestic charging point around £1k, times 2.5 million, £125bn left which covers pretty much all of the cost of building HS2 with the HS3 elements reinstated.
OK, I think you've overestimated the cost of construction and you've massively underestimated the cost of your proposals. Its fair to go with a higher estimate for your figures, but then you need to do the same with all your other figures.
£400 is a fairly low spec new bike, 4-figures for a pretty basic high spec bike. £1000 for 70m people = £70bn which is a bit of a difference.
Free buses for the duration of the next Parliament (absolutely zero investment, pure expense) - this would cost much more than the cost of annual fares income, since if buses became free then more people would use them, so the policy would be more expensive. Moderate assumption cost £4.6bn of which £0 would be investment.
A reduction in train fares - Again £0 in investment whatsoever and a policy that does not apply at all to 95% of transportation in the UK. Why would you even consider this as a proposal? And again you've not counted the fact that if fares halved then the cost would rise.
Taxi tokens - again £0 in investment whatsoever. Why would you even consider this?
Rebate on Council Tax - again £0 in investment whatsoever. Why would you even consider this?
EV Charging points - OK finally some actual investment! Thank you. Though investment that only helps those with driveways/off-road parking, which are the ones who least need support as we transition to EV vehicles.
So overall you've taken a proposal that would vastly improve the infrastructure in this country for decades to come, and turned it into a five year piss-up purely on consumption that after five years would have no investment at all to show for it apart from some EV Charging Points and some bikes that go idle for most people. Great job.
On EV charging.
It is clear that the future is fast charging. We are down to 15 minutes for 20-80 charges for high end vehicles. At the current rate of progress, it will be sub 10 minutes for all EVs in a couple of years.
In the US, Tesla has just won the connector standards war. Why? Well, the opposition to using the Tesla plug was only the government, and all the other car makers.
One problem was that they weren’t into actually building chargers. Meanwhile the charger arm of Tesla is profitable and expanding at a compound rate.
The other problem was the shit experience of using the non-Tesla chargers. They seem to have been designed by people who thought that U.K. parking ticket machines/apps are too user friendly.
Lastly. the “standard” plug was insanely bad. Committee design all the way.
What does this tell us :
- Build the fucking super chargers. - Make the system user friendly. Plug in and charge is perfectly possible. - Imposing a standard only works if th standard is good, the implementation is good and it is actually widespread.
Happily the UK didn't go down the Type 1 connector rabbit hole. We use the effective global standard of CCS2. Yes its a big connector but it is universal. And the new v4 superchargers now being installed have a tap to pay feature for non-Tesla drivers.
The payment should be automatic via a handshake with the car's systems.
Tesla are still miles ahead in chargers that exist and work. Installing one small charger in a supermarket car park and then leaving it broken is fuckwittery. The problem is that it's "We have EV chargers" presentee'ism - alot of the providers still see it as a cost, and problem. So minimum effort.
The Tesla charger outfit actually makes a profit. So they, as an organisation are wired (ha!) to think "Lets get some more of that".
Am I the only one on here who still believes in low taxes?
You can't tax yourself into prosperity - that's like standing in a bucket and trying to pull yourself up by the handles - and tax levels on earners are already obscene, and fiscal drag is making them worse.
Instead, we need to accept the State doing less. I think we spend far too much on older voters and they need to take more personal responsibility, work a bit longer, save a bit more, and make more provision for themselves.
You have forgotten about growth. If the economy expands we can have low taxes and high government spending.
David ‘not that one’ Davies. His constituency is going at the next GE, funnily enough. Do you want [x] for a neighbour has… bad associations.
I remember the Tories trying hard to capitalise on anti-traveller sentiment back in 2005. Again, this is an example of a government who are seemingly campaigning from opposition.
As far as I can tell from that there's nothing wrong with it.
No wonder there is a fall in prosecutions and arrests of burglars and robbers etc if the police are wasting time with things like that
He aSpecific reference to ethnicity in a clearly derogatory context. He could have said 'transient caravan users' or similar.
It was not a criminal matter to ask local residents of they want travellers sites near them, he is an elected representative after all.
Taxpayers pay the police to catch criminals not investigate the politically incorrect
Look again at the wording of the [edit] leaflet/postcard. Just look at it. And look at the law on protected characteristics.
Things I learned on PB while catching up with last night's thread: there is an anti-floating-bus-stop brigade.
"Drivers and riders should give way to pedestrians waiting to cross and MUST give way to pedestrians on a zebra crossing"
With the crossing only being a yard wide, the pedestrians were all waiting to cross, so the cyclists were breaking the "should" rather than the "must".
Generally works fine but definitely another challenge for the blind.
I think BR accused me of not criticising cyclists who don't stop at zebra crossings - of course I do.
Those kind of accusations are just projection from drivers trying to justify their own law-breaking, and a form of whataboutery given the thousands of pedestrians injured by drivers each year.
This is obvious - a bike weighs 10kg. An SUV 2,500kg.
Gentle tip, I get that you love cycling and are a real advocate for it but this is bordering on the fanatical and boring now.
Actually puts me off.
The active travel/sustainable travel car hating cycling fanatics/extremists are tedious in the extreme.
The claim that people who don't cycle do not do so as they are scared of cars, or some such guff, is totally unfounded. Sure, there will be a few, but there are other reasons too.
Most of us cyclists just enjoy our cycling. I cycle to work daily, I enjoy it. I do not see every cycle journey as a constant battle against motorists, pedestrians or dogs.
I will jump red lights when I think it safe to do so as I will cycle on the pavement when safe to do so as a fair bit of it round by me is dual use.
The problem is that the anti-cycling brigade just make stuff up to support their pre-existing prejudice.
Dangerous driving is a huge deterrent. Particularly for women and children (hence the gender imbalance)
Indeed. My step-daughter recently got a part-time job about a mile and a half away from our home, and, not being a driver, decided to cycle there. She's new to cycling and was too scared to ride on the busy road, so she used the pavement instead (there being no cycling infrastructure at all). Then she was shouted at for riding on the pavement, and then again a couple of weeks later, this time coming home in tears. Now she's packed in the job, partly because of the cycling issues, and is looking for something closer to home. She'll probably never cycle again now
Cycling on the pavement can be fairly inconsiderate to other users of the pavement. Many pavements are simply not designed for cycling on, being too narrow or with too much street furniture. She should not have been shouted at, though.
Yes, I wasn't terribly happy about her cycling on the pavement, although it is quite wide for most of the way and not that crowded. But I could well understand her fear of the road traffic and reluctantly condoned her pavement riding, so long as she was considerate to pedestrians. The point of the post was more with to do with the lack of cycling infrastructure for those who fear cycling on the road and the resulting curtailment of their freedom.
Things I learned on PB while catching up with last night's thread: there is an anti-floating-bus-stop brigade.
"Drivers and riders should give way to pedestrians waiting to cross and MUST give way to pedestrians on a zebra crossing"
With the crossing only being a yard wide, the pedestrians were all waiting to cross, so the cyclists were breaking the "should" rather than the "must".
Generally works fine but definitely another challenge for the blind.
I think BR accused me of not criticising cyclists who don't stop at zebra crossings - of course I do.
Those kind of accusations are just projection from drivers trying to justify their own law-breaking, and a form of whataboutery given the thousands of pedestrians injured by drivers each year.
This is obvious - a bike weighs 10kg. An SUV 2,500kg.
Gentle tip, I get that you love cycling and are a real advocate for it but this is bordering on the fanatical and boring now.
Actually puts me off.
The active travel/sustainable travel car hating cycling fanatics/extremists are tedious in the extreme.
The claim that people who don't cycle do not do so as they are scared of cars, or some such guff, is totally unfounded. Sure, there will be a few, but there are other reasons too.
Most of us cyclists just enjoy our cycling. I cycle to work daily, I enjoy it. I do not see every cycle journey as a constant battle against motorists, pedestrians or dogs.
I will jump red lights when I think it safe to do so as I will cycle on the pavement when safe to do so as a fair bit of it round by me is dual use.
The problem is that the anti-cycling brigade just make stuff up to support their pre-existing prejudice.
Dangerous driving is a huge deterrent. Particularly for women and children (hence the gender imbalance)
It is a deterrent, I never said it wasn't, you claimed it was what deterred everyone. There are other deterrents too.
I am not even sure there is an anti cycling brigade apart from on social media where you have car hating cycling fanatics of the cycling mikey/Jeremy vine brigade arguing all the time with the "all cyclists need road tax and insurance" brigade. Although as I said here, I do think insurance for cyclists is a good thing. I did get attacked for daring to suggest it but I have it through my membership of CyclingUK and I stand by it
I have never experienced any anti cycling sentiment in the real world. My work colleagues, friends, family are all very supportive of my cycling and I managed to lobby my employer to put in improved cycle rack provision.
Alot of the concern I see about LTN's/Anti car measures comes about from either the impact on businesses or the lack of consultation, they just go ahead and implement and that is that. Yet Active travel fanatics are happy to demonise reasonable objections. Some of the measures, like closing Askew Road in Gateshead, just make no sense apart from inconveniencing car drivers. Apart from happy clappy news segments on the joys of the measure the only person I have ever seen cycling on that bit of road is me and I have been there many many times since the change.
Bikes? How about luggage? Lumo is an open-access operator on the London to Edinburgh route. Its trains are 5 coaches long, and have wholly inadequate provision for suitcases. When ordering the trains from Hitachi, First group had to obey a directive issued by the DfT about the number of seats. If they removed some seats for luggage racks, they wouldn't be given an open-access licence by Network Rail.
The government have fetishised seat numbers as they cut costs. Operators can't have more rolling stock, or run additional services other than the ones directed by the DfT. So the number of seats has to be maximised. Hence the infamous "ironing board" seat used for commuter trains in Europe and as long haul seats here. Just cram them in - that way whichever berk is transport minister can proclaim that statistically all is well. Any bad experience you may be having (lack of space due to piles of luggage etc) must be a figment of your deranged imagination.
Did you see the RAIB report about the Lumo overspeed traversal of points at Peterborough? One of the things they noted was that because of the reduced luggage rack provision there were more heavy suitcases in the overhead racks which then caused injuries when they fell out as the train lurched sideways...
Interestingly the latest Modern Railways has a mention of the Peterborough incident - and, very worryingly, a later repetition. But also a long section on ECML n general. One issue being discussed - I forget which article - is the need for proper provision for heavy suitcases near the doors, with physical changes being mooted, right down to CCTV to reassure fretful tourists, and separate sections for Edinburgh and Newcastle. I can't recall which operators - possibly several and posdsibly Lumo - the mag is in the recycling bin - but your comment certainly throws a new light on these proposals.
There is a tried and tested solution - create a secure space on the train where luggage and bikes and large items can be stored. Ironically the old trains which the Azumas have almost entirely replaced had that exact thing...
At the risk of going all Yorkie (appropriately enough for the ECML) the even older* trains had a thing called the "guard's van" with a big metal cage and a through corridor next to it and resident guard and all. Many a trip at peak times I spent inside the cage sitting on my rucksack rather than stand in the passenger coaches.
*admittedly the Deltic hauled ones. Not sure about the 125s.
They had a guards van. Used a lot less after privatisation as the newer better operators couldn't be bothered with the cost.
Bikes? How about luggage? Lumo is an open-access operator on the London to Edinburgh route. Its trains are 5 coaches long, and have wholly inadequate provision for suitcases. When ordering the trains from Hitachi, First group had to obey a directive issued by the DfT about the number of seats. If they removed some seats for luggage racks, they wouldn't be given an open-access licence by Network Rail.
The government have fetishised seat numbers as they cut costs. Operators can't have more rolling stock, or run additional services other than the ones directed by the DfT. So the number of seats has to be maximised. Hence the infamous "ironing board" seat used for commuter trains in Europe and as long haul seats here. Just cram them in - that way whichever berk is transport minister can proclaim that statistically all is well. Any bad experience you may be having (lack of space due to piles of luggage etc) must be a figment of your deranged imagination.
Did you see the RAIB report about the Lumo overspeed traversal of points at Peterborough? One of the things they noted was that because of the reduced luggage rack provision there were more heavy suitcases in the overhead racks which then caused injuries when they fell out as the train lurched sideways...
Interestingly the latest Modern Railways has a mention of the Peterborough incident - and, very worryingly, a later repetition. But also a long section on ECML n general. One issue being discussed - I forget which article - is the need for proper provision for heavy suitcases near the doors, with physical changes being mooted, right down to CCTV to reassure fretful tourists, and separate sections for Edinburgh and Newcastle. I can't recall which operators - possibly several and posdsibly Lumo - the mag is in the recycling bin - but your comment certainly throws a new light on these proposals.
There is a tried and tested solution - create a secure space on the train where luggage and bikes and large items can be stored. Ironically the old trains which the Azumas have almost entirely replaced had that exact thing...
At the risk of going all Yorkie (appropriately enough for the ECML) the even older* trains had a thing called the "guard's van" with a big metal cage and a through corridor next to it and resident guard and all. Many a trip at peak times I spent inside the cage sitting on my rucksack rather than stand in the passenger coaches.
*admittedly the Deltic hauled ones. Not sure about the 125s.
They had a guards van. Used a lot less after privatisation as the newer better operators couldn't be bothered with the cost.
Thanks - I had some notion of that but the privatisation change confused me.
David ‘not that one’ Davies. His constituency is going at the next GE, funnily enough. Do you want [x] for a neighbour has… bad associations.
I remember the Tories trying hard to capitalise on anti-traveller sentiment back in 2005. Again, this is an example of a government who are seemingly campaigning from opposition.
As far as I can tell from that there's nothing wrong with it.
No wonder there is a fall in prosecutions and arrests of burglars and robbers etc if the police are wasting time with things like that
He aSpecific reference to ethnicity in a clearly derogatory context. He could have said 'transient caravan users' or similar.
It was not a criminal matter to ask local residents of they want travellers sites near them, he is an elected representative after all.
Taxpayers pay the police to catch criminals not investigate the politically incorrect
Look again at the wording of the [edit] leaflet/postcard. Just look at it. And look at the law on protected characteristics.
It should not have been a criminal matter and if the police pursue it further I could we'll see Sunak and Braverman amending or even scrapping the Equality Act to make that clear
"I’ve been trying to pin it down but there is something lacking in his approach and how it comes out on TV."
He's softly spoken and he doesn't come across as strong. Many gumbies whichever of Britain's castes they belong to prefer a strong leader who they can imagine sorting everyone out, giving 'em what for, and doing things like travelling all the way to "Europe" and telling foreigners where to get off. That's one of the prime minister's problems.
There's also the fact that many habitual Tory voters think they've voted Tory all their lives and they're f*cked if they'll continue if the guy the Tories give them as prime minister isn't white.
50-50 Penny Mordaunt, Union Jack-face, Order of the Loud Voice and True Confidence, takes over before the election?
Things I learned on PB while catching up with last night's thread: there is an anti-floating-bus-stop brigade.
"Drivers and riders should give way to pedestrians waiting to cross and MUST give way to pedestrians on a zebra crossing"
With the crossing only being a yard wide, the pedestrians were all waiting to cross, so the cyclists were breaking the "should" rather than the "must".
Generally works fine but definitely another challenge for the blind.
I think BR accused me of not criticising cyclists who don't stop at zebra crossings - of course I do.
Those kind of accusations are just projection from drivers trying to justify their own law-breaking, and a form of whataboutery given the thousands of pedestrians injured by drivers each year.
This is obvious - a bike weighs 10kg. An SUV 2,500kg.
Gentle tip, I get that you love cycling and are a real advocate for it but this is bordering on the fanatical and boring now.
Actually puts me off.
The active travel/sustainable travel car hating cycling fanatics/extremists are tedious in the extreme.
The claim that people who don't cycle do not do so as they are scared of cars, or some such guff, is totally unfounded. Sure, there will be a few, but there are other reasons too.
Most of us cyclists just enjoy our cycling. I cycle to work daily, I enjoy it. I do not see every cycle journey as a constant battle against motorists, pedestrians or dogs.
I will jump red lights when I think it safe to do so as I will cycle on the pavement when safe to do so as a fair bit of it round by me is dual use.
The problem is that the anti-cycling brigade just make stuff up to support their pre-existing prejudice.
Dangerous driving is a huge deterrent. Particularly for women and children (hence the gender imbalance)
Indeed. My step-daughter recently got a part-time job about a mile and a half away from our home, and, not being a driver, decided to cycle there. She's new to cycling and was too scared to ride on the busy road, so she used the pavement instead (there being no cycling infrastructure at all). Then she was shouted at for riding on the pavement, and then again a couple of weeks later, this time coming home in tears. Now she's packed in the job, partly because of the cycling issues, and is looking for something closer to home. She'll probably never cycle again now
Cycling on the pavement can be fairly inconsiderate to other users of the pavement. Many pavements are simply not designed for cycling on, being too narrow or with too much street furniture. She should not have been shouted at, though.
Quite a few of the pavements around here are designated dual use. Sometimes there are issues with trees, not so much street furniture, but as they are designated dual use they seem to work pretty well for all users.
If you want to support public transport (buses), support new roads.
Everyone wins with new roads. Cyclists and drivers.
The thing is the cost of, say, 10 miles of new dual carriageway on average per parliamentary consituency (of course good luck finding available land in many of the most congested areas), would pay for:
- Everyone in the country to have a new high-spec bike, and - Free buses for the duration of the next Parliament, and - A 50% reduction in train fares, for the duration of the next Parliament, and - £250 a year in 'taxi tokens' for every rural dweller who won't benefit from better public tranport, for the duration of the next Parliament, and - A 25% annual rebate on council tax, for the duration of the next Parliament, and - The free installation of EV charging points for 1 in 10 homes, and - HS2, and HS3.
Please explain your figures.
£20m is a rough estimate of the cost per mile of dual carriageway. So 10x £20m = £200m, for 650 constituencies is about the same cost as HS2 alone.
And 10 miles of dual carriageway per constituency would do massively more than all of your suggestions combined. Let alone HS2 alone.
And not all new roads would need to be dual carriageway either.
£20m is the lower bound. £40m seems to be an accepted average figure, with the range anything from £18m to £100m.
So that's 40*650*10 millions = £260bn.
- Everyone in the country to have a new high-spec bike: £400 for 70m people = £28bn, £232bn left. - Free buses for the duration of the next Parliament: annual fares income £2.3bn, times five, £220.5bn left - A 50% reduction in train fares, for the duration of the next Parliament: annual fares income £10.2b, times 2.5, £195bn left - £250 a year in 'taxi tokens' for every rural dweller who won't benefit from better public tranport, for the duration of the next Parliament: 10 million rural dwellers, times £250, times 5, £182.5bn left - A 25% annual rebate on council tax, for the duration of the next Parliament: Council tax raised £44bn annual, divide by 4 times by 5, £127.5bn left - The free installation of EV charging points for 1 in 10 homes: domestic charging point around £1k, times 2.5 million, £125bn left which covers pretty much all of the cost of building HS2 with the HS3 elements reinstated.
OK, I think you've overestimated the cost of construction and you've massively underestimated the cost of your proposals. Its fair to go with a higher estimate for your figures, but then you need to do the same with all your other figures.
£400 is a fairly low spec new bike, 4-figures for a pretty basic high spec bike. £1000 for 70m people = £70bn which is a bit of a difference.
Free buses for the duration of the next Parliament (absolutely zero investment, pure expense) - this would cost much more than the cost of annual fares income, since if buses became free then more people would use them, so the policy would be more expensive. Moderate assumption cost £4.6bn of which £0 would be investment.
A reduction in train fares - Again £0 in investment whatsoever and a policy that does not apply at all to 95% of transportation in the UK. Why would you even consider this as a proposal? And again you've not counted the fact that if fares halved then the cost would rise.
Taxi tokens - again £0 in investment whatsoever. Why would you even consider this?
Rebate on Council Tax - again £0 in investment whatsoever. Why would you even consider this?
EV Charging points - OK finally some actual investment! Thank you. Though investment that only helps those with driveways/off-road parking, which are the ones who least need support as we transition to EV vehicles.
So overall you've taken a proposal that would vastly improve the infrastructure in this country for decades to come, and turned it into a five year piss-up purely on consumption that after five years would have no investment at all to show for it apart from some EV Charging Points and some bikes that go idle for most people. Great job.
On EV charging.
It is clear that the future is fast charging. We are down to 15 minutes for 20-80 charges for high end vehicles. At the current rate of progress, it will be sub 10 minutes for all EVs in a couple of years.
In the US, Tesla has just won the connector standards war. Why? Well, the opposition to using the Tesla plug was only the government, and all the other car makers.
One problem was that they weren’t into actually building chargers. Meanwhile the charger arm of Tesla is profitable and expanding at a compound rate.
The other problem was the shit experience of using the non-Tesla chargers. They seem to have been designed by people who thought that U.K. parking ticket machines/apps are too user friendly.
Lastly. the “standard” plug was insanely bad. Committee design all the way.
What does this tell us :
- Build the fucking super chargers. - Make the system user friendly. Plug in and charge is perfectly possible. - Imposing a standard only works if th standard is good, the implementation is good and it is actually widespread.
Happily the UK didn't go down the Type 1 connector rabbit hole. We use the effective global standard of CCS2. Yes its a big connector but it is universal. And the new v4 superchargers now being installed have a tap to pay feature for non-Tesla drivers.
The payment should be automatic via a handshake with the car's systems.
Tesla are still miles ahead in chargers that exist and work. Installing one small charger in a supermarket car park and then leaving it broken is fuckwittery. The problem is that it's "We have EV chargers" presentee'ism - alot of the providers still see it as a cost, and problem. So minimum effort.
The Tesla charger outfit actually makes a profit. So they, as an organisation are wired (ha!) to think "Lets get some more of that".
I fear that getting that kind of handshake for payment is impossible with so many different car and charger manufacturer combinations.
The joy of superchargers is that they manage to be simplicity itself to use, deliver a far quicker charge than almost every other charger / car in most uses, and is a lot cheaper than most other chargers. Like 25 - 50% cheaper.
Barclay: We are in trouble with our 40 new hospitals pledge PM: That is disappointing [looks at members of the Cabinet] … this isn’t good, any ideas Lucy Frazer: I have a plan and it is for a much bigger number PM: Go on LF: 100 chessboards PM: 100 are you sure? LF: in parks
David ‘not that one’ Davies. His constituency is going at the next GE, funnily enough. Do you want [x] for a neighbour has… bad associations.
I remember the Tories trying hard to capitalise on anti-traveller sentiment back in 2005. Again, this is an example of a government who are seemingly campaigning from opposition.
As far as I can tell from that there's nothing wrong with it.
No wonder there is a fall in prosecutions and arrests of burglars and robbers etc if the police are wasting time with things like that
He aSpecific reference to ethnicity in a clearly derogatory context. He could have said 'transient caravan users' or similar.
It was not a criminal matter to ask local residents of they want travellers sites near them, he is an elected representative after all.
Taxpayers pay the police to catch criminals not investigate the politically incorrect
Look again at the wording of the [edit] leaflet/postcard. Just look at it. And look at the law on protected characteristics.
It should not have been a criminal matter and if the police pursue it further I could we'll see Sunak and Braverman amending or even scrapping the Equality Act to make that clear
Well, you obviously realised there was a problem, because you carefully failed to refer to one of the two categories of caravan user which are very clearly named in that leaflet.
Next Tory manifesto: "Bring back the right to put "No ******, ******* or Dogs" in your B&B window!"
If the BBC are not frantically trying to work out how to move to a subscription model the moment the licence fee is scrapped they're even more stupid than we all thought.
The BBC could easily have subscription for iPlayer. However if even the Tories haven't scrapped the licence fee an incoming Labour government certainly wouldn't
No they couldn't - not allowed under their Royal Charter.
Something has to change.
The discussions are already under way for the end of broadcast TV. The bandwidth will be repurposed. This will happen in every country, round the world. Much as digital TV happened.
The BBC has an instinctive collective belief that a subscription model would destroy the BBC. That not enough people would opt in.
Which is why the BBC representative on the Digital TV committee was proud that he had got deleted a requirement that a FreeView compliant TV had to support subscription. Since this meant that enough manufacturers would bring out cheap models that didn't support subscription. Which in turn meant the BBC couldn't be asked - "Why don't you just encrypt, and give license payers a key?"
They should have sorted out the world wide rights for all shows *going forward*, and gone to subscription, long ago.
I reckon that enough foreigners would pay for the full BBC package that we could have a BBC wholly funded by foreign subscription. Free to UK residents....
Now wouldn't that be an awesome pitch? - "No more TV tax. Totally independent of the government. Oh, and free to you."
If you want to support public transport (buses), support new roads.
Everyone wins with new roads. Cyclists and drivers.
The thing is the cost of, say, 10 miles of new dual carriageway on average per parliamentary consituency (of course good luck finding available land in many of the most congested areas), would pay for:
- Everyone in the country to have a new high-spec bike, and - Free buses for the duration of the next Parliament, and - A 50% reduction in train fares, for the duration of the next Parliament, and - £250 a year in 'taxi tokens' for every rural dweller who won't benefit from better public tranport, for the duration of the next Parliament, and - A 25% annual rebate on council tax, for the duration of the next Parliament, and - The free installation of EV charging points for 1 in 10 homes, and - HS2, and HS3.
Please explain your figures.
£20m is a rough estimate of the cost per mile of dual carriageway. So 10x £20m = £200m, for 650 constituencies is about the same cost as HS2 alone.
And 10 miles of dual carriageway per constituency would do massively more than all of your suggestions combined. Let alone HS2 alone.
And not all new roads would need to be dual carriageway either.
£20m is the lower bound. £40m seems to be an accepted average figure, with the range anything from £18m to £100m.
So that's 40*650*10 millions = £260bn.
- Everyone in the country to have a new high-spec bike: £400 for 70m people = £28bn, £232bn left. - Free buses for the duration of the next Parliament: annual fares income £2.3bn, times five, £220.5bn left - A 50% reduction in train fares, for the duration of the next Parliament: annual fares income £10.2b, times 2.5, £195bn left - £250 a year in 'taxi tokens' for every rural dweller who won't benefit from better public tranport, for the duration of the next Parliament: 10 million rural dwellers, times £250, times 5, £182.5bn left - A 25% annual rebate on council tax, for the duration of the next Parliament: Council tax raised £44bn annual, divide by 4 times by 5, £127.5bn left - The free installation of EV charging points for 1 in 10 homes: domestic charging point around £1k, times 2.5 million, £125bn left which covers pretty much all of the cost of building HS2 with the HS3 elements reinstated.
OK, I think you've overestimated the cost of construction and you've massively underestimated the cost of your proposals. Its fair to go with a higher estimate for your figures, but then you need to do the same with all your other figures.
£400 is a fairly low spec new bike, 4-figures for a pretty basic high spec bike. £1000 for 70m people = £70bn which is a bit of a difference.
Free buses for the duration of the next Parliament (absolutely zero investment, pure expense) - this would cost much more than the cost of annual fares income, since if buses became free then more people would use them, so the policy would be more expensive. Moderate assumption cost £4.6bn of which £0 would be investment.
A reduction in train fares - Again £0 in investment whatsoever and a policy that does not apply at all to 95% of transportation in the UK. Why would you even consider this as a proposal? And again you've not counted the fact that if fares halved then the cost would rise.
Taxi tokens - again £0 in investment whatsoever. Why would you even consider this?
Rebate on Council Tax - again £0 in investment whatsoever. Why would you even consider this?
EV Charging points - OK finally some actual investment! Thank you. Though investment that only helps those with driveways/off-road parking, which are the ones who least need support as we transition to EV vehicles.
So overall you've taken a proposal that would vastly improve the infrastructure in this country for decades to come, and turned it into a five year piss-up purely on consumption that after five years would have no investment at all to show for it apart from some EV Charging Points and some bikes that go idle for most people. Great job.
On EV charging.
It is clear that the future is fast charging. We are down to 15 minutes for 20-80 charges for high end vehicles. At the current rate of progress, it will be sub 10 minutes for all EVs in a couple of years.
In the US, Tesla has just won the connector standards war. Why? Well, the opposition to using the Tesla plug was only the government, and all the other car makers.
One problem was that they weren’t into actually building chargers. Meanwhile the charger arm of Tesla is profitable and expanding at a compound rate.
The other problem was the shit experience of using the non-Tesla chargers. They seem to have been designed by people who thought that U.K. parking ticket machines/apps are too user friendly.
Lastly. the “standard” plug was insanely bad. Committee design all the way.
What does this tell us :
- Build the fucking super chargers. - Make the system user friendly. Plug in and charge is perfectly possible. - Imposing a standard only works if th standard is good, the implementation is good and it is actually widespread.
Happily the UK didn't go down the Type 1 connector rabbit hole. We use the effective global standard of CCS2. Yes its a big connector but it is universal. And the new v4 superchargers now being installed have a tap to pay feature for non-Tesla drivers.
The payment should be automatic via a handshake with the car's systems.
Tesla are still miles ahead in chargers that exist and work. Installing one small charger in a supermarket car park and then leaving it broken is fuckwittery. The problem is that it's "We have EV chargers" presentee'ism - alot of the providers still see it as a cost, and problem. So minimum effort.
The Tesla charger outfit actually makes a profit. So they, as an organisation are wired (ha!) to think "Lets get some more of that".
I fear that getting that kind of handshake for payment is impossible with so many different car and charger manufacturer combinations.
The joy of superchargers is that they manage to be simplicity itself to use, deliver a far quicker charge than almost every other charger / car in most uses, and is a lot cheaper than most other chargers. Like 25 - 50% cheaper.
Is there any particular reason the payment system just be the same as pay at pump for ICE fuelling ?
I think taxes should be raised for high earners, and I'm not even a usual Labour supporter. So I assume most of their supporters won't be happy if the policy is not to raise them.
I'm not LAB at all. However I think personal allowance should be increased to £15,000pa. Every one should get this including post £100k so no more taper. Beyond the PA it should be 20% on the first £50,000; 40% on the next £50,000; 50%+ beyond that. So everyone on £150,000 or less would be better off, those above it can/should pay more 👍
One of the big problems with big cliff edges, such as now at £100k, it is all the wrong incentives for economic output. Basically don't work more, don't strive to get promoted any further, instead negotiation for 4 days a week or more holiday and get £99k. Which is again a drag on productivity and GDP.
Agreed the personal allowance restriction is an absolute abomination. My proposal gets rid of it and charges a fair effective rate of IT of 50% post £115,000 actual earnings. It helps those £100,000 to £150,000 not uncommon earnings now but makes those post £150,000 pay more. I would not be adverse to 60% IT post £200,000 taxable income.
It is indeed, but the biggest abomination of all is the Universal Credit Taper applying alongside Income Tax and National Insurance.
That leaves low earning people on a real marginal tax rate of 70% plus. Even more if repaying Student Loans too.
If it were up to me I'd look to abolish all welfare, all exceptions to taxation etc, and replace it all with a UBI which is given to everyone [no exceptions], and then a flat tax rate of maybe 40% on everything earned [again no exceptions]. Maybe 50% at £100k+
Oddly enough - and afiar - that was the Scottish Green Party manifesto commitment.
Did it include abolishing welfare? Or just introducing a UBI as an extra layer?
The key for a UBI to work is all other stuff must be abolished. The UBI replaces it all [except maybe exceptional non-income related cases like disability support].
As I remember - yes. One of the offsets to the cost was reducing the overhead of all the byzantine processes of the current system(s).
The main reason for UBI (heck the reason why I think we should still increase pensions but charge the tax rates for pensioners to reflect the change) is to reduce the cost of claim processing...
The number of staff who would become redundant would be in the 100k’s
The fraud reduction inherent in a simple, lifelong payment
If you want to support public transport (buses), support new roads.
Everyone wins with new roads. Cyclists and drivers.
The thing is the cost of, say, 10 miles of new dual carriageway on average per parliamentary consituency (of course good luck finding available land in many of the most congested areas), would pay for:
- Everyone in the country to have a new high-spec bike, and - Free buses for the duration of the next Parliament, and - A 50% reduction in train fares, for the duration of the next Parliament, and - £250 a year in 'taxi tokens' for every rural dweller who won't benefit from better public tranport, for the duration of the next Parliament, and - A 25% annual rebate on council tax, for the duration of the next Parliament, and - The free installation of EV charging points for 1 in 10 homes, and - HS2, and HS3.
Please explain your figures.
£20m is a rough estimate of the cost per mile of dual carriageway. So 10x £20m = £200m, for 650 constituencies is about the same cost as HS2 alone.
And 10 miles of dual carriageway per constituency would do massively more than all of your suggestions combined. Let alone HS2 alone.
And not all new roads would need to be dual carriageway either.
£20m is the lower bound. £40m seems to be an accepted average figure, with the range anything from £18m to £100m.
So that's 40*650*10 millions = £260bn.
- Everyone in the country to have a new high-spec bike: £400 for 70m people = £28bn, £232bn left. - Free buses for the duration of the next Parliament: annual fares income £2.3bn, times five, £220.5bn left - A 50% reduction in train fares, for the duration of the next Parliament: annual fares income £10.2b, times 2.5, £195bn left - £250 a year in 'taxi tokens' for every rural dweller who won't benefit from better public tranport, for the duration of the next Parliament: 10 million rural dwellers, times £250, times 5, £182.5bn left - A 25% annual rebate on council tax, for the duration of the next Parliament: Council tax raised £44bn annual, divide by 4 times by 5, £127.5bn left - The free installation of EV charging points for 1 in 10 homes: domestic charging point around £1k, times 2.5 million, £125bn left which covers pretty much all of the cost of building HS2 with the HS3 elements reinstated.
OK, I think you've overestimated the cost of construction and you've massively underestimated the cost of your proposals. Its fair to go with a higher estimate for your figures, but then you need to do the same with all your other figures.
£400 is a fairly low spec new bike, 4-figures for a pretty basic high spec bike. £1000 for 70m people = £70bn which is a bit of a difference.
Free buses for the duration of the next Parliament (absolutely zero investment, pure expense) - this would cost much more than the cost of annual fares income, since if buses became free then more people would use them, so the policy would be more expensive. Moderate assumption cost £4.6bn of which £0 would be investment.
A reduction in train fares - Again £0 in investment whatsoever and a policy that does not apply at all to 95% of transportation in the UK. Why would you even consider this as a proposal? And again you've not counted the fact that if fares halved then the cost would rise.
Taxi tokens - again £0 in investment whatsoever. Why would you even consider this?
Rebate on Council Tax - again £0 in investment whatsoever. Why would you even consider this?
EV Charging points - OK finally some actual investment! Thank you. Though investment that only helps those with driveways/off-road parking, which are the ones who least need support as we transition to EV vehicles.
So overall you've taken a proposal that would vastly improve the infrastructure in this country for decades to come, and turned it into a five year piss-up purely on consumption that after five years would have no investment at all to show for it apart from some EV Charging Points and some bikes that go idle for most people. Great job.
On EV charging.
It is clear that the future is fast charging. We are down to 15 minutes for 20-80 charges for high end vehicles. At the current rate of progress, it will be sub 10 minutes for all EVs in a couple of years.
In the US, Tesla has just won the connector standards war. Why? Well, the opposition to using the Tesla plug was only the government, and all the other car makers.
One problem was that they weren’t into actually building chargers. Meanwhile the charger arm of Tesla is profitable and expanding at a compound rate.
The other problem was the shit experience of using the non-Tesla chargers. They seem to have been designed by people who thought that U.K. parking ticket machines/apps are too user friendly.
Lastly. the “standard” plug was insanely bad. Committee design all the way.
What does this tell us :
- Build the fucking super chargers. - Make the system user friendly. Plug in and charge is perfectly possible. - Imposing a standard only works if th standard is good, the implementation is good and it is actually widespread.
Happily the UK didn't go down the Type 1 connector rabbit hole. We use the effective global standard of CCS2. Yes its a big connector but it is universal. And the new v4 superchargers now being installed have a tap to pay feature for non-Tesla drivers.
The payment should be automatic via a handshake with the car's systems.
Tesla are still miles ahead in chargers that exist and work. Installing one small charger in a supermarket car park and then leaving it broken is fuckwittery. The problem is that it's "We have EV chargers" presentee'ism - alot of the providers still see it as a cost, and problem. So minimum effort.
The Tesla charger outfit actually makes a profit. So they, as an organisation are wired (ha!) to think "Lets get some more of that".
I fear that getting that kind of handshake for payment is impossible with so many different car and charger manufacturer combinations.
The joy of superchargers is that they manage to be simplicity itself to use, deliver a far quicker charge than almost every other charger / car in most uses, and is a lot cheaper than most other chargers. Like 25 - 50% cheaper.
Put the handshake in the standard. There are already examples of it being done.
Superchargers aren't just Tesla, now. But it is rather telling that people assume.
Bikes? How about luggage? Lumo is an open-access operator on the London to Edinburgh route. Its trains are 5 coaches long, and have wholly inadequate provision for suitcases. When ordering the trains from Hitachi, First group had to obey a directive issued by the DfT about the number of seats. If they removed some seats for luggage racks, they wouldn't be given an open-access licence by Network Rail.
The government have fetishised seat numbers as they cut costs. Operators can't have more rolling stock, or run additional services other than the ones directed by the DfT. So the number of seats has to be maximised. Hence the infamous "ironing board" seat used for commuter trains in Europe and as long haul seats here. Just cram them in - that way whichever berk is transport minister can proclaim that statistically all is well. Any bad experience you may be having (lack of space due to piles of luggage etc) must be a figment of your deranged imagination.
Did you see the RAIB report about the Lumo overspeed traversal of points at Peterborough? One of the things they noted was that because of the reduced luggage rack provision there were more heavy suitcases in the overhead racks which then caused injuries when they fell out as the train lurched sideways...
Interestingly the latest Modern Railways has a mention of the Peterborough incident - and, very worryingly, a later repetition. But also a long section on ECML n general. One issue being discussed - I forget which article - is the need for proper provision for heavy suitcases near the doors, with physical changes being mooted, right down to CCTV to reassure fretful tourists, and separate sections for Edinburgh and Newcastle. I can't recall which operators - possibly several and posdsibly Lumo - the mag is in the recycling bin - but your comment certainly throws a new light on these proposals.
There is a tried and tested solution - create a secure space on the train where luggage and bikes and large items can be stored. Ironically the old trains which the Azumas have almost entirely replaced had that exact thing...
At the risk of going all Yorkie (appropriately enough for the ECML) the even older* trains had a thing called the "guard's van" with a big metal cage and a through corridor next to it and resident guard and all. Many a trip at peak times I spent inside the cage sitting on my rucksack rather than stand in the passenger coaches.
*admittedly the Deltic hauled ones. Not sure about the 125s.
If you want to support public transport (buses), support new roads.
Everyone wins with new roads. Cyclists and drivers.
The thing is the cost of, say, 10 miles of new dual carriageway on average per parliamentary consituency (of course good luck finding available land in many of the most congested areas), would pay for:
- Everyone in the country to have a new high-spec bike, and - Free buses for the duration of the next Parliament, and - A 50% reduction in train fares, for the duration of the next Parliament, and - £250 a year in 'taxi tokens' for every rural dweller who won't benefit from better public tranport, for the duration of the next Parliament, and - A 25% annual rebate on council tax, for the duration of the next Parliament, and - The free installation of EV charging points for 1 in 10 homes, and - HS2, and HS3.
Please explain your figures.
£20m is a rough estimate of the cost per mile of dual carriageway. So 10x £20m = £200m, for 650 constituencies is about the same cost as HS2 alone.
And 10 miles of dual carriageway per constituency would do massively more than all of your suggestions combined. Let alone HS2 alone.
And not all new roads would need to be dual carriageway either.
£20m is the lower bound. £40m seems to be an accepted average figure, with the range anything from £18m to £100m.
So that's 40*650*10 millions = £260bn.
- Everyone in the country to have a new high-spec bike: £400 for 70m people = £28bn, £232bn left. - Free buses for the duration of the next Parliament: annual fares income £2.3bn, times five, £220.5bn left - A 50% reduction in train fares, for the duration of the next Parliament: annual fares income £10.2b, times 2.5, £195bn left - £250 a year in 'taxi tokens' for every rural dweller who won't benefit from better public tranport, for the duration of the next Parliament: 10 million rural dwellers, times £250, times 5, £182.5bn left - A 25% annual rebate on council tax, for the duration of the next Parliament: Council tax raised £44bn annual, divide by 4 times by 5, £127.5bn left - The free installation of EV charging points for 1 in 10 homes: domestic charging point around £1k, times 2.5 million, £125bn left which covers pretty much all of the cost of building HS2 with the HS3 elements reinstated.
OK, I think you've overestimated the cost of construction and you've massively underestimated the cost of your proposals. Its fair to go with a higher estimate for your figures, but then you need to do the same with all your other figures.
£400 is a fairly low spec new bike, 4-figures for a pretty basic high spec bike. £1000 for 70m people = £70bn which is a bit of a difference.
Free buses for the duration of the next Parliament (absolutely zero investment, pure expense) - this would cost much more than the cost of annual fares income, since if buses became free then more people would use them, so the policy would be more expensive. Moderate assumption cost £4.6bn of which £0 would be investment.
A reduction in train fares - Again £0 in investment whatsoever and a policy that does not apply at all to 95% of transportation in the UK. Why would you even consider this as a proposal? And again you've not counted the fact that if fares halved then the cost would rise.
Taxi tokens - again £0 in investment whatsoever. Why would you even consider this?
Rebate on Council Tax - again £0 in investment whatsoever. Why would you even consider this?
EV Charging points - OK finally some actual investment! Thank you. Though investment that only helps those with driveways/off-road parking, which are the ones who least need support as we transition to EV vehicles.
So overall you've taken a proposal that would vastly improve the infrastructure in this country for decades to come, and turned it into a five year piss-up purely on consumption that after five years would have no investment at all to show for it apart from some EV Charging Points and some bikes that go idle for most people. Great job.
On EV charging.
It is clear that the future is fast charging. We are down to 15 minutes for 20-80 charges for high end vehicles. At the current rate of progress, it will be sub 10 minutes for all EVs in a couple of years.
In the US, Tesla has just won the connector standards war. Why? Well, the opposition to using the Tesla plug was only the government, and all the other car makers.
One problem was that they weren’t into actually building chargers. Meanwhile the charger arm of Tesla is profitable and expanding at a compound rate.
The other problem was the shit experience of using the non-Tesla chargers. They seem to have been designed by people who thought that U.K. parking ticket machines/apps are too user friendly.
Lastly. the “standard” plug was insanely bad. Committee design all the way.
What does this tell us :
- Build the fucking super chargers. - Make the system user friendly. Plug in and charge is perfectly possible. - Imposing a standard only works if th standard is good, the implementation is good and it is actually widespread.
Happily the UK didn't go down the Type 1 connector rabbit hole. We use the effective global standard of CCS2. Yes its a big connector but it is universal. And the new v4 superchargers now being installed have a tap to pay feature for non-Tesla drivers.
The payment should be automatic via a handshake with the car's systems.
Tesla are still miles ahead in chargers that exist and work. Installing one small charger in a supermarket car park and then leaving it broken is fuckwittery. The problem is that it's "We have EV chargers" presentee'ism - alot of the providers still see it as a cost, and problem. So minimum effort.
The Tesla charger outfit actually makes a profit. So they, as an organisation are wired (ha!) to think "Lets get some more of that".
I fear that getting that kind of handshake for payment is impossible with so many different car and charger manufacturer combinations.
The joy of superchargers is that they manage to be simplicity itself to use, deliver a far quicker charge than almost every other charger / car in most uses, and is a lot cheaper than most other chargers. Like 25 - 50% cheaper.
Is there any particular reason the payment system just be the same as pay at pump for ICE fuelling ?
Why not make it better? Your car is talking to the supercharging system anyway.
Barclay: We are in trouble with our 40 new hospitals pledge PM: That is disappointing [looks at members of the Cabinet] … this isn’t good, any ideas Lucy Frazer: I have a plan and it is for a much bigger number PM: Go on LF: 100 chessboards PM: 100 are you sure? LF: in parks
Bikes? How about luggage? Lumo is an open-access operator on the London to Edinburgh route. Its trains are 5 coaches long, and have wholly inadequate provision for suitcases. When ordering the trains from Hitachi, First group had to obey a directive issued by the DfT about the number of seats. If they removed some seats for luggage racks, they wouldn't be given an open-access licence by Network Rail.
The government have fetishised seat numbers as they cut costs. Operators can't have more rolling stock, or run additional services other than the ones directed by the DfT. So the number of seats has to be maximised. Hence the infamous "ironing board" seat used for commuter trains in Europe and as long haul seats here. Just cram them in - that way whichever berk is transport minister can proclaim that statistically all is well. Any bad experience you may be having (lack of space due to piles of luggage etc) must be a figment of your deranged imagination.
Did you see the RAIB report about the Lumo overspeed traversal of points at Peterborough? One of the things they noted was that because of the reduced luggage rack provision there were more heavy suitcases in the overhead racks which then caused injuries when they fell out as the train lurched sideways...
Interestingly the latest Modern Railways has a mention of the Peterborough incident - and, very worryingly, a later repetition. But also a long section on ECML n general. One issue being discussed - I forget which article - is the need for proper provision for heavy suitcases near the doors, with physical changes being mooted, right down to CCTV to reassure fretful tourists, and separate sections for Edinburgh and Newcastle. I can't recall which operators - possibly several and posdsibly Lumo - the mag is in the recycling bin - but your comment certainly throws a new light on these proposals.
There is a tried and tested solution - create a secure space on the train where luggage and bikes and large items can be stored. Ironically the old trains which the Azumas have almost entirely replaced had that exact thing...
At the risk of going all Yorkie (appropriately enough for the ECML) the even older* trains had a thing called the "guard's van" with a big metal cage and a through corridor next to it and resident guard and all. Many a trip at peak times I spent inside the cage sitting on my rucksack rather than stand in the passenger coaches.
*admittedly the Deltic hauled ones. Not sure about the 125s.
If you want to support public transport (buses), support new roads.
Everyone wins with new roads. Cyclists and drivers.
The thing is the cost of, say, 10 miles of new dual carriageway on average per parliamentary consituency (of course good luck finding available land in many of the most congested areas), would pay for:
- Everyone in the country to have a new high-spec bike, and - Free buses for the duration of the next Parliament, and - A 50% reduction in train fares, for the duration of the next Parliament, and - £250 a year in 'taxi tokens' for every rural dweller who won't benefit from better public tranport, for the duration of the next Parliament, and - A 25% annual rebate on council tax, for the duration of the next Parliament, and - The free installation of EV charging points for 1 in 10 homes, and - HS2, and HS3.
Please explain your figures.
£20m is a rough estimate of the cost per mile of dual carriageway. So 10x £20m = £200m, for 650 constituencies is about the same cost as HS2 alone.
And 10 miles of dual carriageway per constituency would do massively more than all of your suggestions combined. Let alone HS2 alone.
And not all new roads would need to be dual carriageway either.
£20m is the lower bound. £40m seems to be an accepted average figure, with the range anything from £18m to £100m.
So that's 40*650*10 millions = £260bn.
- Everyone in the country to have a new high-spec bike: £400 for 70m people = £28bn, £232bn left. - Free buses for the duration of the next Parliament: annual fares income £2.3bn, times five, £220.5bn left - A 50% reduction in train fares, for the duration of the next Parliament: annual fares income £10.2b, times 2.5, £195bn left - £250 a year in 'taxi tokens' for every rural dweller who won't benefit from better public tranport, for the duration of the next Parliament: 10 million rural dwellers, times £250, times 5, £182.5bn left - A 25% annual rebate on council tax, for the duration of the next Parliament: Council tax raised £44bn annual, divide by 4 times by 5, £127.5bn left - The free installation of EV charging points for 1 in 10 homes: domestic charging point around £1k, times 2.5 million, £125bn left which covers pretty much all of the cost of building HS2 with the HS3 elements reinstated.
OK, I think you've overestimated the cost of construction and you've massively underestimated the cost of your proposals. Its fair to go with a higher estimate for your figures, but then you need to do the same with all your other figures.
£400 is a fairly low spec new bike, 4-figures for a pretty basic high spec bike. £1000 for 70m people = £70bn which is a bit of a difference.
Free buses for the duration of the next Parliament (absolutely zero investment, pure expense) - this would cost much more than the cost of annual fares income, since if buses became free then more people would use them, so the policy would be more expensive. Moderate assumption cost £4.6bn of which £0 would be investment.
A reduction in train fares - Again £0 in investment whatsoever and a policy that does not apply at all to 95% of transportation in the UK. Why would you even consider this as a proposal? And again you've not counted the fact that if fares halved then the cost would rise.
Taxi tokens - again £0 in investment whatsoever. Why would you even consider this?
Rebate on Council Tax - again £0 in investment whatsoever. Why would you even consider this?
EV Charging points - OK finally some actual investment! Thank you. Though investment that only helps those with driveways/off-road parking, which are the ones who least need support as we transition to EV vehicles.
So overall you've taken a proposal that would vastly improve the infrastructure in this country for decades to come, and turned it into a five year piss-up purely on consumption that after five years would have no investment at all to show for it apart from some EV Charging Points and some bikes that go idle for most people. Great job.
On EV charging.
It is clear that the future is fast charging. We are down to 15 minutes for 20-80 charges for high end vehicles. At the current rate of progress, it will be sub 10 minutes for all EVs in a couple of years.
In the US, Tesla has just won the connector standards war. Why? Well, the opposition to using the Tesla plug was only the government, and all the other car makers.
One problem was that they weren’t into actually building chargers. Meanwhile the charger arm of Tesla is profitable and expanding at a compound rate.
The other problem was the shit experience of using the non-Tesla chargers. They seem to have been designed by people who thought that U.K. parking ticket machines/apps are too user friendly.
Lastly. the “standard” plug was insanely bad. Committee design all the way.
What does this tell us :
- Build the fucking super chargers. - Make the system user friendly. Plug in and charge is perfectly possible. - Imposing a standard only works if th standard is good, the implementation is good and it is actually widespread.
Happily the UK didn't go down the Type 1 connector rabbit hole. We use the effective global standard of CCS2. Yes its a big connector but it is universal. And the new v4 superchargers now being installed have a tap to pay feature for non-Tesla drivers.
The payment should be automatic via a handshake with the car's systems.
Tesla are still miles ahead in chargers that exist and work. Installing one small charger in a supermarket car park and then leaving it broken is fuckwittery. The problem is that it's "We have EV chargers" presentee'ism - alot of the providers still see it as a cost, and problem. So minimum effort.
The Tesla charger outfit actually makes a profit. So they, as an organisation are wired (ha!) to think "Lets get some more of that".
I fear that getting that kind of handshake for payment is impossible with so many different car and charger manufacturer combinations.
The joy of superchargers is that they manage to be simplicity itself to use, deliver a far quicker charge than almost every other charger / car in most uses, and is a lot cheaper than most other chargers. Like 25 - 50% cheaper.
Is there any particular reason the payment system just be the same as pay at pump for ICE fuelling ?
Why not make it better? Your car is talking to the supercharging system anyway.
If it's possible with a direct handshake system, sure - but I've got visions of car parking apps mk X
FPT - We were talking about what might happen if elements in Britain went for a coup. AFAIAA nobody mentioned the last time this is known to have happened, which was in 2019. I've now looked at the data and it unambiguously shows that in 32.8% of possible universes the PM and the attorney general had the Supreme Court's doors locked shut, and consequently there was no de-prorogation, and a "no deal Brexit" ensued.
In other news, from across the ocean, I thought this was interesting
5 January 2020: "Concerned for Mr Pence’s safety, his chief of staff, Marc Short, then alerted the head of the vice president’s Secret Service detail."
And what did the head of said detail do? Now those would be very interesting documents indeed. Because when you have a coup attempt, law goes completely out of the window. Never mind what Montesquieu wrote about the "separation of powers", or anything about "checks and balances". That's completely irrelevant. It's a question of who talks to whom, whose phone is still working, what guys with what weapons, in what locations, answer to what other guys.
If you want to support public transport (buses), support new roads.
Everyone wins with new roads. Cyclists and drivers.
The thing is the cost of, say, 10 miles of new dual carriageway on average per parliamentary consituency (of course good luck finding available land in many of the most congested areas), would pay for:
- Everyone in the country to have a new high-spec bike, and - Free buses for the duration of the next Parliament, and - A 50% reduction in train fares, for the duration of the next Parliament, and - £250 a year in 'taxi tokens' for every rural dweller who won't benefit from better public tranport, for the duration of the next Parliament, and - A 25% annual rebate on council tax, for the duration of the next Parliament, and - The free installation of EV charging points for 1 in 10 homes, and - HS2, and HS3.
Please explain your figures.
£20m is a rough estimate of the cost per mile of dual carriageway. So 10x £20m = £200m, for 650 constituencies is about the same cost as HS2 alone.
And 10 miles of dual carriageway per constituency would do massively more than all of your suggestions combined. Let alone HS2 alone.
And not all new roads would need to be dual carriageway either.
£20m is the lower bound. £40m seems to be an accepted average figure, with the range anything from £18m to £100m.
So that's 40*650*10 millions = £260bn.
- Everyone in the country to have a new high-spec bike: £400 for 70m people = £28bn, £232bn left. - Free buses for the duration of the next Parliament: annual fares income £2.3bn, times five, £220.5bn left - A 50% reduction in train fares, for the duration of the next Parliament: annual fares income £10.2b, times 2.5, £195bn left - £250 a year in 'taxi tokens' for every rural dweller who won't benefit from better public tranport, for the duration of the next Parliament: 10 million rural dwellers, times £250, times 5, £182.5bn left - A 25% annual rebate on council tax, for the duration of the next Parliament: Council tax raised £44bn annual, divide by 4 times by 5, £127.5bn left - The free installation of EV charging points for 1 in 10 homes: domestic charging point around £1k, times 2.5 million, £125bn left which covers pretty much all of the cost of building HS2 with the HS3 elements reinstated.
OK, I think you've overestimated the cost of construction and you've massively underestimated the cost of your proposals. Its fair to go with a higher estimate for your figures, but then you need to do the same with all your other figures.
£400 is a fairly low spec new bike, 4-figures for a pretty basic high spec bike. £1000 for 70m people = £70bn which is a bit of a difference.
Free buses for the duration of the next Parliament (absolutely zero investment, pure expense) - this would cost much more than the cost of annual fares income, since if buses became free then more people would use them, so the policy would be more expensive. Moderate assumption cost £4.6bn of which £0 would be investment.
A reduction in train fares - Again £0 in investment whatsoever and a policy that does not apply at all to 95% of transportation in the UK. Why would you even consider this as a proposal? And again you've not counted the fact that if fares halved then the cost would rise.
Taxi tokens - again £0 in investment whatsoever. Why would you even consider this?
Rebate on Council Tax - again £0 in investment whatsoever. Why would you even consider this?
EV Charging points - OK finally some actual investment! Thank you. Though investment that only helps those with driveways/off-road parking, which are the ones who least need support as we transition to EV vehicles.
So overall you've taken a proposal that would vastly improve the infrastructure in this country for decades to come, and turned it into a five year piss-up purely on consumption that after five years would have no investment at all to show for it apart from some EV Charging Points and some bikes that go idle for most people. Great job.
On EV charging.
It is clear that the future is fast charging. We are down to 15 minutes for 20-80 charges for high end vehicles. At the current rate of progress, it will be sub 10 minutes for all EVs in a couple of years.
In the US, Tesla has just won the connector standards war. Why? Well, the opposition to using the Tesla plug was only the government, and all the other car makers.
One problem was that they weren’t into actually building chargers. Meanwhile the charger arm of Tesla is profitable and expanding at a compound rate.
The other problem was the shit experience of using the non-Tesla chargers. They seem to have been designed by people who thought that U.K. parking ticket machines/apps are too user friendly.
Lastly. the “standard” plug was insanely bad. Committee design all the way.
What does this tell us :
- Build the fucking super chargers. - Make the system user friendly. Plug in and charge is perfectly possible. - Imposing a standard only works if th standard is good, the implementation is good and it is actually widespread.
Happily the UK didn't go down the Type 1 connector rabbit hole. We use the effective global standard of CCS2. Yes its a big connector but it is universal. And the new v4 superchargers now being installed have a tap to pay feature for non-Tesla drivers.
The payment should be automatic via a handshake with the car's systems.
Tesla are still miles ahead in chargers that exist and work. Installing one small charger in a supermarket car park and then leaving it broken is fuckwittery. The problem is that it's "We have EV chargers" presentee'ism - alot of the providers still see it as a cost, and problem. So minimum effort.
The Tesla charger outfit actually makes a profit. So they, as an organisation are wired (ha!) to think "Lets get some more of that".
I fear that getting that kind of handshake for payment is impossible with so many different car and charger manufacturer combinations.
The joy of superchargers is that they manage to be simplicity itself to use, deliver a far quicker charge than almost every other charger / car in most uses, and is a lot cheaper than most other chargers. Like 25 - 50% cheaper.
Is there any particular reason the payment system just be the same as pay at pump for ICE fuelling ?
No reason other than the free market. 40 different charging networks, each with a different tariff, different rules and so often a different app. They want your details so they can make revenue from user data. A few of them let you tap a credit card - usually at a higher price than if you hand over all your data.
I've made several videos featuring the joys of public charging. Park up. Get the cable out the frunk, plug it in. Go to the app (or download the app!) for the network you're plugged into. Make sure you have a credit card registered. Select the correct charger. Ask it to start. You then have to wait for the app to communicate to the company whose charger it is (often the back office payment company is not the one who own the actual charger) which hopefully then starts a charge.
Bikes? How about luggage? Lumo is an open-access operator on the London to Edinburgh route. Its trains are 5 coaches long, and have wholly inadequate provision for suitcases. When ordering the trains from Hitachi, First group had to obey a directive issued by the DfT about the number of seats. If they removed some seats for luggage racks, they wouldn't be given an open-access licence by Network Rail.
The government have fetishised seat numbers as they cut costs. Operators can't have more rolling stock, or run additional services other than the ones directed by the DfT. So the number of seats has to be maximised. Hence the infamous "ironing board" seat used for commuter trains in Europe and as long haul seats here. Just cram them in - that way whichever berk is transport minister can proclaim that statistically all is well. Any bad experience you may be having (lack of space due to piles of luggage etc) must be a figment of your deranged imagination.
Did you see the RAIB report about the Lumo overspeed traversal of points at Peterborough? One of the things they noted was that because of the reduced luggage rack provision there were more heavy suitcases in the overhead racks which then caused injuries when they fell out as the train lurched sideways...
Interestingly the latest Modern Railways has a mention of the Peterborough incident - and, very worryingly, a later repetition. But also a long section on ECML n general. One issue being discussed - I forget which article - is the need for proper provision for heavy suitcases near the doors, with physical changes being mooted, right down to CCTV to reassure fretful tourists, and separate sections for Edinburgh and Newcastle. I can't recall which operators - possibly several and posdsibly Lumo - the mag is in the recycling bin - but your comment certainly throws a new light on these proposals.
There is a tried and tested solution - create a secure space on the train where luggage and bikes and large items can be stored. Ironically the old trains which the Azumas have almost entirely replaced had that exact thing...
At the risk of going all Yorkie (appropriately enough for the ECML) the even older* trains had a thing called the "guard's van" with a big metal cage and a through corridor next to it and resident guard and all. Many a trip at peak times I spent inside the cage sitting on my rucksack rather than stand in the passenger coaches.
*admittedly the Deltic hauled ones. Not sure about the 125s.
You were a wild lad in them days.
Much safer than being with some passengers!
For whom?
Now I have a vision of the Train Guard school - "It's a bit like lion taming, the trick is to get the dangerous passengers in the cage, but are them think it's their idea. Now, everyone take your ticket machine.... "
Barclay: We are in trouble with our 40 new hospitals pledge PM: That is disappointing [looks at members of the Cabinet] … this isn’t good, any ideas Lucy Frazer: I have a plan and it is for a much bigger number PM: Go on LF: 100 chessboards PM: 100 are you sure? LF: in parks
"100 chessboards" is the announcement you make after a primary school fundraiser, not central government.
Apparently even the chess community are embarrassed by this
And yet the spokesman for British Chess on R4 this morning was delighted, pointing out that it’s good for kids to learn that they can spend an hour concentrating on something as a break from social media short termism. He also pointed out that over the last couple of decades the UK has slipped from 2nd in world chess rankings to 18th.
Now I know it’s not remotely as important as the Women’s football World Cup but I would rather a government that tried to find marginal gains where a nudge here and there might lead to some kids finding they are good at something they otherwise might not have pursued which might lead to great things.
Things I learned on PB while catching up with last night's thread: there is an anti-floating-bus-stop brigade.
"Drivers and riders should give way to pedestrians waiting to cross and MUST give way to pedestrians on a zebra crossing"
With the crossing only being a yard wide, the pedestrians were all waiting to cross, so the cyclists were breaking the "should" rather than the "must".
Generally works fine but definitely another challenge for the blind.
I think BR accused me of not criticising cyclists who don't stop at zebra crossings - of course I do.
Those kind of accusations are just projection from drivers trying to justify their own law-breaking, and a form of whataboutery given the thousands of pedestrians injured by drivers each year.
This is obvious - a bike weighs 10kg. An SUV 2,500kg.
Gentle tip, I get that you love cycling and are a real advocate for it but this is bordering on the fanatical and boring now.
Actually puts me off.
The active travel/sustainable travel car hating cycling fanatics/extremists are tedious in the extreme.
The claim that people who don't cycle do not do so as they are scared of cars, or some such guff, is totally unfounded. Sure, there will be a few, but there are other reasons too.
Most of us cyclists just enjoy our cycling. I cycle to work daily, I enjoy it. I do not see every cycle journey as a constant battle against motorists, pedestrians or dogs.
I will jump red lights when I think it safe to do so as I will cycle on the pavement when safe to do so as a fair bit of it round by me is dual use.
The problem is that the anti-cycling brigade just make stuff up to support their pre-existing prejudice.
Dangerous driving is a huge deterrent. Particularly for women and children (hence the gender imbalance)
It is a deterrent, I never said it wasn't, you claimed it was what deterred everyone. There are other deterrents too.
I am not even sure there is an anti cycling brigade apart from on social media where you have car hating cycling fanatics of the cycling mikey/Jeremy vine brigade arguing all the time with the "all cyclists need road tax and insurance" brigade. Although as I said here, I do think insurance for cyclists is a good thing. I did get attacked for daring to suggest it but I have it through my membership of CyclingUK and I stand by it
I have never experienced any anti cycling sentiment in the real world. My work colleagues, friends, family are all very supportive of my cycling and I managed to lobby my employer to put in improved cycle rack provision.
Alot of the concern I see about LTN's/Anti car measures comes about from either the impact on businesses or the lack of consultation, they just go ahead and implement and that is that. Yet Active travel fanatics are happy to demonise reasonable objections. Some of the measures, like closing Askew Road in Gateshead, just make no sense apart from inconveniencing car drivers. Apart from happy clappy news segments on the joys of the measure the only person I have ever seen cycling on that bit of road is me and I have been there many many times since the change.
My main concern with cycling is that nothing is being done about the increasing problem of powered bikes that are really mopeds/motorcycles.
They've caused at least one nasty accident in the neighbourhood. There will be more. The cycling infrastructure that has just been built is entirely wrong and quite dangerous for them to use, but use it, they do.
David ‘not that one’ Davies. His constituency is going at the next GE, funnily enough. Do you want [x] for a neighbour has… bad associations.
I remember the Tories trying hard to capitalise on anti-traveller sentiment back in 2005. Again, this is an example of a government who are seemingly campaigning from opposition.
As far as I can tell from that there's nothing wrong with it.
No wonder there is a fall in prosecutions and arrests of burglars and robbers etc if the police are wasting time with things like that
Specific reference to ethnicity in a clearly derogatory context. He could have said 'transient caravan users' or similar.
We are currently on Shetland in our touring caravan. We promise not to rob or intimidate anyone!
Thank you for your letter. China takes it's climate commitments very seriously, this is why we are committed to net zero by 2060 and have world leading renewable energy production which we continue to invest in.
I've already been squeezed to the nines by high taxation in recent years - I pay 62% over 100k.
Enough. If I'm taxed any more I'd seriously consider emigrating with my family.
The 100K thing is a weird anomaly which I can't understand either party not fixing - it is obviously unfair for the marginal rate to be higher at £101K than £126K, so even we high-tax fans wouldn't mind if it was straightened out. Charge maybe 44% for the gap between £100K and top rate without the PA taper and it should even out, maybe even generate some extra revenue.
They rip you completely , take away your tax allowance and ethn sting you, even worse in Scotland thanks to eth thick SNP who believe they can just soak high earners to pay for their follies and not drive them away. Another £86M needed for their botched DRS scheme.
If you want to support public transport (buses), support new roads.
Everyone wins with new roads. Cyclists and drivers.
The thing is the cost of, say, 10 miles of new dual carriageway on average per parliamentary consituency (of course good luck finding available land in many of the most congested areas), would pay for:
- Everyone in the country to have a new high-spec bike, and - Free buses for the duration of the next Parliament, and - A 50% reduction in train fares, for the duration of the next Parliament, and - £250 a year in 'taxi tokens' for every rural dweller who won't benefit from better public tranport, for the duration of the next Parliament, and - A 25% annual rebate on council tax, for the duration of the next Parliament, and - The free installation of EV charging points for 1 in 10 homes, and - HS2, and HS3.
Please explain your figures.
£20m is a rough estimate of the cost per mile of dual carriageway. So 10x £20m = £200m, for 650 constituencies is about the same cost as HS2 alone.
And 10 miles of dual carriageway per constituency would do massively more than all of your suggestions combined. Let alone HS2 alone.
And not all new roads would need to be dual carriageway either.
£20m is the lower bound. £40m seems to be an accepted average figure, with the range anything from £18m to £100m.
So that's 40*650*10 millions = £260bn.
- Everyone in the country to have a new high-spec bike: £400 for 70m people = £28bn, £232bn left. - Free buses for the duration of the next Parliament: annual fares income £2.3bn, times five, £220.5bn left - A 50% reduction in train fares, for the duration of the next Parliament: annual fares income £10.2b, times 2.5, £195bn left - £250 a year in 'taxi tokens' for every rural dweller who won't benefit from better public tranport, for the duration of the next Parliament: 10 million rural dwellers, times £250, times 5, £182.5bn left - A 25% annual rebate on council tax, for the duration of the next Parliament: Council tax raised £44bn annual, divide by 4 times by 5, £127.5bn left - The free installation of EV charging points for 1 in 10 homes: domestic charging point around £1k, times 2.5 million, £125bn left which covers pretty much all of the cost of building HS2 with the HS3 elements reinstated.
OK, I think you've overestimated the cost of construction and you've massively underestimated the cost of your proposals. Its fair to go with a higher estimate for your figures, but then you need to do the same with all your other figures.
£400 is a fairly low spec new bike, 4-figures for a pretty basic high spec bike. £1000 for 70m people = £70bn which is a bit of a difference.
Free buses for the duration of the next Parliament (absolutely zero investment, pure expense) - this would cost much more than the cost of annual fares income, since if buses became free then more people would use them, so the policy would be more expensive. Moderate assumption cost £4.6bn of which £0 would be investment.
A reduction in train fares - Again £0 in investment whatsoever and a policy that does not apply at all to 95% of transportation in the UK. Why would you even consider this as a proposal? And again you've not counted the fact that if fares halved then the cost would rise.
Taxi tokens - again £0 in investment whatsoever. Why would you even consider this?
Rebate on Council Tax - again £0 in investment whatsoever. Why would you even consider this?
EV Charging points - OK finally some actual investment! Thank you. Though investment that only helps those with driveways/off-road parking, which are the ones who least need support as we transition to EV vehicles.
So overall you've taken a proposal that would vastly improve the infrastructure in this country for decades to come, and turned it into a five year piss-up purely on consumption that after five years would have no investment at all to show for it apart from some EV Charging Points and some bikes that go idle for most people. Great job.
On EV charging.
It is clear that the future is fast charging. We are down to 15 minutes for 20-80 charges for high end vehicles. At the current rate of progress, it will be sub 10 minutes for all EVs in a couple of years.
In the US, Tesla has just won the connector standards war. Why? Well, the opposition to using the Tesla plug was only the government, and all the other car makers.
One problem was that they weren’t into actually building chargers. Meanwhile the charger arm of Tesla is profitable and expanding at a compound rate.
The other problem was the shit experience of using the non-Tesla chargers. They seem to have been designed by people who thought that U.K. parking ticket machines/apps are too user friendly.
Lastly. the “standard” plug was insanely bad. Committee design all the way.
What does this tell us :
- Build the fucking super chargers. - Make the system user friendly. Plug in and charge is perfectly possible. - Imposing a standard only works if th standard is good, the implementation is good and it is actually widespread.
Happily the UK didn't go down the Type 1 connector rabbit hole. We use the effective global standard of CCS2. Yes its a big connector but it is universal. And the new v4 superchargers now being installed have a tap to pay feature for non-Tesla drivers.
The payment should be automatic via a handshake with the car's systems.
Tesla are still miles ahead in chargers that exist and work. Installing one small charger in a supermarket car park and then leaving it broken is fuckwittery. The problem is that it's "We have EV chargers" presentee'ism - alot of the providers still see it as a cost, and problem. So minimum effort.
The Tesla charger outfit actually makes a profit. So they, as an organisation are wired (ha!) to think "Lets get some more of that".
I fear that getting that kind of handshake for payment is impossible with so many different car and charger manufacturer combinations.
The joy of superchargers is that they manage to be simplicity itself to use, deliver a far quicker charge than almost every other charger / car in most uses, and is a lot cheaper than most other chargers. Like 25 - 50% cheaper.
Is there any particular reason the payment system just be the same as pay at pump for ICE fuelling ?
No reason other than the free market. 40 different charging networks, each with a different tariff, different rules and so often a different app. They want your details so they can make revenue from user data. A few of them let you tap a credit card - usually at a higher price than if you hand over all your data.
I've made several videos featuring the joys of public charging. Park up. Get the cable out the frunk, plug it in. Go to the app (or download the app!) for the network you're plugged into. Make sure you have a credit card registered. Select the correct charger. Ask it to start. You then have to wait for the app to communicate to the company whose charger it is (often the back office payment company is not the one who own the actual charger) which hopefully then starts a charge.
Barclay: We are in trouble with our 40 new hospitals pledge PM: That is disappointing [looks at members of the Cabinet] … this isn’t good, any ideas Lucy Frazer: I have a plan and it is for a much bigger number PM: Go on LF: 100 chessboards PM: 100 are you sure? LF: in parks
"100 chessboards" is the announcement you make after a primary school fundraiser, not central government.
Apparently even the chess community are embarrassed by this
I liked your post, but actually why not? It's a 100% positive thing to do, unlike almost everything else this government has done. Small gains are good gains.
Things I learned on PB while catching up with last night's thread: there is an anti-floating-bus-stop brigade.
"Drivers and riders should give way to pedestrians waiting to cross and MUST give way to pedestrians on a zebra crossing"
With the crossing only being a yard wide, the pedestrians were all waiting to cross, so the cyclists were breaking the "should" rather than the "must".
Generally works fine but definitely another challenge for the blind.
I think BR accused me of not criticising cyclists who don't stop at zebra crossings - of course I do.
Those kind of accusations are just projection from drivers trying to justify their own law-breaking, and a form of whataboutery given the thousands of pedestrians injured by drivers each year.
This is obvious - a bike weighs 10kg. An SUV 2,500kg.
Gentle tip, I get that you love cycling and are a real advocate for it but this is bordering on the fanatical and boring now.
Actually puts me off.
The active travel/sustainable travel car hating cycling fanatics/extremists are tedious in the extreme.
The claim that people who don't cycle do not do so as they are scared of cars, or some such guff, is totally unfounded. Sure, there will be a few, but there are other reasons too.
Most of us cyclists just enjoy our cycling. I cycle to work daily, I enjoy it. I do not see every cycle journey as a constant battle against motorists, pedestrians or dogs.
I will jump red lights when I think it safe to do so as I will cycle on the pavement when safe to do so as a fair bit of it round by me is dual use.
The problem is that the anti-cycling brigade just make stuff up to support their pre-existing prejudice.
Dangerous driving is a huge deterrent. Particularly for women and children (hence the gender imbalance)
It is a deterrent, I never said it wasn't, you claimed it was what deterred everyone. There are other deterrents too.
I am not even sure there is an anti cycling brigade apart from on social media where you have car hating cycling fanatics of the cycling mikey/Jeremy vine brigade arguing all the time with the "all cyclists need road tax and insurance" brigade. Although as I said here, I do think insurance for cyclists is a good thing. I did get attacked for daring to suggest it but I have it through my membership of CyclingUK and I stand by it
I have never experienced any anti cycling sentiment in the real world. My work colleagues, friends, family are all very supportive of my cycling and I managed to lobby my employer to put in improved cycle rack provision.
Alot of the concern I see about LTN's/Anti car measures comes about from either the impact on businesses or the lack of consultation, they just go ahead and implement and that is that. Yet Active travel fanatics are happy to demonise reasonable objections. Some of the measures, like closing Askew Road in Gateshead, just make no sense apart from inconveniencing car drivers. Apart from happy clappy news segments on the joys of the measure the only person I have ever seen cycling on that bit of road is me and I have been there many many times since the change.
My main concern with cycling is that nothing is being done about the increasing problem of powered bikes that are really mopeds/motorcycles.
They've caused at least one nasty accident in the neighbourhood. There will be more. The cycling infrastructure that has just been built is entirely wrong and quite dangerous for them to use, but use it, they do.
I have the same objections to e-scooters. The latter simply shouldn't be allowed on public roads IMO.
Bikes? How about luggage? Lumo is an open-access operator on the London to Edinburgh route. Its trains are 5 coaches long, and have wholly inadequate provision for suitcases. When ordering the trains from Hitachi, First group had to obey a directive issued by the DfT about the number of seats. If they removed some seats for luggage racks, they wouldn't be given an open-access licence by Network Rail.
The government have fetishised seat numbers as they cut costs. Operators can't have more rolling stock, or run additional services other than the ones directed by the DfT. So the number of seats has to be maximised. Hence the infamous "ironing board" seat used for commuter trains in Europe and as long haul seats here. Just cram them in - that way whichever berk is transport minister can proclaim that statistically all is well. Any bad experience you may be having (lack of space due to piles of luggage etc) must be a figment of your deranged imagination.
Did you see the RAIB report about the Lumo overspeed traversal of points at Peterborough? One of the things they noted was that because of the reduced luggage rack provision there were more heavy suitcases in the overhead racks which then caused injuries when they fell out as the train lurched sideways...
Interestingly the latest Modern Railways has a mention of the Peterborough incident - and, very worryingly, a later repetition. But also a long section on ECML n general. One issue being discussed - I forget which article - is the need for proper provision for heavy suitcases near the doors, with physical changes being mooted, right down to CCTV to reassure fretful tourists, and separate sections for Edinburgh and Newcastle. I can't recall which operators - possibly several and posdsibly Lumo - the mag is in the recycling bin - but your comment certainly throws a new light on these proposals.
There is a tried and tested solution - create a secure space on the train where luggage and bikes and large items can be stored. Ironically the old trains which the Azumas have almost entirely replaced had that exact thing...
At the risk of going all Yorkie (appropriately enough for the ECML) the even older* trains had a thing called the "guard's van" with a big metal cage and a through corridor next to it and resident guard and all. Many a trip at peak times I spent inside the cage sitting on my rucksack rather than stand in the passenger coaches.
*admittedly the Deltic hauled ones. Not sure about the 125s.
You were a wild lad in them days.
Many moons ago I used to pick up the papers at the station , one night a dog bolted out of the guard's van and legged it up the platform with guard running after it shouting "stop that dug it's a parcel". Story made it to the Herald Diary.
Barclay: We are in trouble with our 40 new hospitals pledge PM: That is disappointing [looks at members of the Cabinet] … this isn’t good, any ideas Lucy Frazer: I have a plan and it is for a much bigger number PM: Go on LF: 100 chessboards PM: 100 are you sure? LF: in parks
"100 chessboards" is the announcement you make after a primary school fundraiser, not central government.
Apparently even the chess community are embarrassed by this
And yet the spokesman for British Chess on R4 this morning was delighted, pointing out that it’s good for kids to learn that they can spend an hour concentrating on something as a break from social media short termism. He also pointed out that over the last couple of decades the UK has slipped from 2nd in world chess rankings to 18th.
Now I know it’s not remotely as important as the Women’s football World Cup but I would rather a government that tried to find marginal gains where a nudge here and there might lead to some kids finding they are good at something they otherwise might not have pursued which might lead to great things.
It will be great if chess tables are installed in parks. A cultural change in a positive direction for once! What kind of idiot mocks the idea of playing chess in the park?
Go boards would be good too.
There's no differentiation in the inheritance of intelligence, though - not among healthy babies. "Finding they're good at" - what's this, reincarnation or smth? (OMG, I hope that's not where Sunak is coming from. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt though.)
Bikes? How about luggage? Lumo is an open-access operator on the London to Edinburgh route. Its trains are 5 coaches long, and have wholly inadequate provision for suitcases. When ordering the trains from Hitachi, First group had to obey a directive issued by the DfT about the number of seats. If they removed some seats for luggage racks, they wouldn't be given an open-access licence by Network Rail.
The government have fetishised seat numbers as they cut costs. Operators can't have more rolling stock, or run additional services other than the ones directed by the DfT. So the number of seats has to be maximised. Hence the infamous "ironing board" seat used for commuter trains in Europe and as long haul seats here. Just cram them in - that way whichever berk is transport minister can proclaim that statistically all is well. Any bad experience you may be having (lack of space due to piles of luggage etc) must be a figment of your deranged imagination.
Did you see the RAIB report about the Lumo overspeed traversal of points at Peterborough? One of the things they noted was that because of the reduced luggage rack provision there were more heavy suitcases in the overhead racks which then caused injuries when they fell out as the train lurched sideways...
Interestingly the latest Modern Railways has a mention of the Peterborough incident - and, very worryingly, a later repetition. But also a long section on ECML n general. One issue being discussed - I forget which article - is the need for proper provision for heavy suitcases near the doors, with physical changes being mooted, right down to CCTV to reassure fretful tourists, and separate sections for Edinburgh and Newcastle. I can't recall which operators - possibly several and posdsibly Lumo - the mag is in the recycling bin - but your comment certainly throws a new light on these proposals.
There is a tried and tested solution - create a secure space on the train where luggage and bikes and large items can be stored. Ironically the old trains which the Azumas have almost entirely replaced had that exact thing...
At the risk of going all Yorkie (appropriately enough for the ECML) the even older* trains had a thing called the "guard's van" with a big metal cage and a through corridor next to it and resident guard and all. Many a trip at peak times I spent inside the cage sitting on my rucksack rather than stand in the passenger coaches.
*admittedly the Deltic hauled ones. Not sure about the 125s.
You were a wild lad in them days.
Many moons ago I used to pick up the papers at the station , one night a dog bolted out of the guard's van and legged it up the platform with guard running after it shouting "stop that dug it's a parcel". Story made it to the Herald Diary.
once a dog’s gone, it’s gone. No good the guard bitching about it.
According to the tramway museum in Crich, which I had the pleasure to visit yesterday:
I think this hereby concludes our transport discussion.
By the way the Derby dales continue to fascinate. It’s an area I’ve not visited for decades, and strikes me as an English version of la France profonde.
Everything is at least a couple of decades behind here. The shop fronts, the decor, the cuisine (yesterday I had steak pie, peas and beans with gravy for lunch then “tapas” for dinner which was like some 1980s imagined idea of tapas). The dark wooded valleys and dark sandstone towns, all feeling a little bit “Auvergne”.
The little Massif Central of England.
I love the Derbyshire Dales; I feel like explored most of it on foot over the decades, and deeply associate with it.
But I've never been to Crich tramway museum, oddly enough. Probably a case of it being both too near to visit, and there being other things that interested me more.
Comments
With the crossing only being a yard wide, the pedestrians were all waiting to cross, so the cyclists were breaking the "should" rather than the "must".
Generally works fine but definitely another challenge for the blind.
Those kind of accusations are just projection from drivers trying to justify their own law-breaking, and a form of whataboutery given the thousands of pedestrians injured by drivers each year.
This is obvious - a bike weighs 10kg. An SUV 2,500kg.
Actually puts me off.
But I've never been to Crich tramway museum, oddly enough. Probably a case of it being both too near to visit, and there being other things that interested me more.
That's fanatical.
You see it throughout the public sector - we want to build HS2 at top spec but not pay the top price. We want Scandinavian levels of education, but on a French budget. We have a German style demand for the NHS on a Spanish allowance.
Sadly, no politician will ever stand up and say, ‘Right, if we want this, we have to pay this for it, and if we’re not willing to pay that, we can’t have it.’
So we make up some of the difference with borrowing, which is more expensive in the long run, and the rest by sweating assets, particularly human ones.
And then wonder why everything is more expensive than promised and doesn’t work as well as it should.
Most pedestrians fine to cross a 1 yard wide cycle path without a zebra crossing even during rush hour. A challenge either way for disabled and blind, but the false hope of a zebra crossing that doesn't work seems worse than no crossing at all.
As for whataboutery it is natural for each group of road user to feel more anti other users without holding their own behaviour to the same scrutiny. That applies to pedestrians, cyclists, motorists, bus users et al.
The Boris oven-ready (lies!) plan was to be a Third Country. We do checks, the perfidious yerp do checks, business miraculously switches away from our closest and largest market and is all picked up by imports of Australian meat on that Truss "fuck the pommy farmers" trade deal. Or something.
But we binned all of that. Jacob Rees-Mogg himself scrapped the whole concept when declaring that inbound checks would be a matter of "national self-harm". Yet we still plan to bring in parts of them - such as next April checking vet paperwork against trucks and cargoes - despite having neither the infrastructure nor the staff nor the systems nor any purpose other than "lets push inflation up".
So why not look at it all in the round? "Brexit" was leaving the EU. Nothing more, nothing less. We did that. Now we need to live on the outside and that means making the most of every opportunity there is. And the biggie is the EEA market place where not only are we very close, with a huge existing business, we're already almost entirely aligned with its rules!!!! Hallelujah. We can drive the economy and slash inflation and even stop the boats - all we need to do is stop acting like [ban hammers] when it comes to the EU.
I think this is an easy decision for the BBC, get rid for the rest of the broadcasts. Can't think of who could replace him and do a better job...
We have obsessive planners and regulations and endless regulations and enquiries. We put everything out to tender which means expensive and inflexible contracts, or we have the remnants of the in house team who have no budget or staff.
So to add a cycle lane or road or whatever costs a fortune, gets done as cheaply as possible despite the vast cost paid, and then isn't completed to have much purpose because "ooh thats expensive" penny-pinching kicks in and further stages that make the bit thats built worthwhile. We can all point at random bits of infrastructure - built at vast cost that goes nowhere and has no purpose because "ooh thats expensive" kicked in.
We need to boot the spivs out of our public sphere. Until we start paying a sensible cost for infrastructure as most other countries manage to do, we will continue to have not enough of it. Of whichever mode.
It's been turbocharged by treating the one-off proceeds from selling stuff off as income to underpin recurring spending.
Two conclusions from all of that. One is that the choice at the next election is higher taxes for much worse services or much higher taxes for worse services. Arguing against that is arguing against arithmetic. The other is that mucking around with economic growth is a very dangerous game.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/aug/02/oldest-species-swimming-jellyfish-discovered-505m-year-old-fossils
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/aug/02/newly-discovered-whale-species-could-have-been-heaviest-animal-ever
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/aug/03/over-50s-could-deliver-takeaways-says-work-and-pensions-secretary-mel-stride
'Over-50s looking for work should consider delivering takeaways and other flexible jobs typically occupied by younger people, the work and pensions secretary has said.
Mel Stride’s comments came during a visit to the London headquarters of the food delivery firm Deliveroo, which has recorded a 62% increase in riders aged over 50 since 2021.
In an interview with the Times during his visit to the food delivery company, Stride said these flexible jobs offered “great opportunities” and that it was “good for people to consider options they might not have otherwise thought of”.'
The claim that people who don't cycle do not do so as they are scared of cars, or some such guff, is totally unfounded. Sure, there will be a few, but there are other reasons too.
Most of us cyclists just enjoy our cycling. I cycle to work daily, I enjoy it. I do not see every cycle journey as a constant battle against motorists, pedestrians or dogs.
I will jump red lights when I think it safe to do so as I will cycle on the pavement when safe to do so as a fair bit of it round by me is dual use.
JFBI.
Just ***ing build it.
Dangerous driving is a huge deterrent. Particularly for women and children (hence the gender imbalance)
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/906698/walking-and-cycling-statistics-england-2019.pdf
We have higher corporation tax than Ireland, higher income tax than the US and both Australia and Sweden have scrapped inheritance tax
It is clear that the future is fast charging. We are down to 15 minutes for 20-80 charges for high end vehicles. At the current rate of progress, it will be sub 10 minutes for all EVs in a couple of years.
In the US, Tesla has just won the connector standards war. Why? Well, the opposition to using the Tesla plug was only the government, and all the other car makers.
One problem was that they weren’t into actually building chargers. Meanwhile the charger arm of Tesla is profitable and expanding at a compound rate.
The other problem was the shit experience of using the non-Tesla chargers. They seem to have been designed by people who thought that U.K. parking ticket machines/apps are too user friendly.
Lastly. the “standard” plug was insanely bad. Committee design all the way.
What does this tell us :
- Build the fucking super chargers.
- Make the system user friendly. Plug in and charge is perfectly possible.
- Imposing a standard only works if th standard is good, the implementation is good and it is actually widespread.
PM: That is disappointing [looks at members of the Cabinet] … this isn’t good, any ideas
Lucy Frazer: I have a plan and it is for a much bigger number
PM: Go on
LF: 100 chessboards
PM: 100 are you sure?
LF: in parks
(from https://twitter.com/forwardnotback/status/1686745545182703617 )
The fraud reduction inherent in a simple, lifelong, monthly payment….
https://twitter.com/ScouseAtheist/status/1685936162043523073/photo/1
The Tories hate the UK - and they hate people like me.
*admittedly the Deltic hauled ones. Not sure about the 125s.
Taxpayers pay the police to catch criminals not investigate the politically incorrect
Tesla are still miles ahead in chargers that exist and work. Installing one small charger in a supermarket car park and then leaving it broken is fuckwittery. The problem is that it's "We have EV chargers" presentee'ism - alot of the providers still see it as a cost, and problem. So minimum effort.
The Tesla charger outfit actually makes a profit. So they, as an organisation are wired (ha!) to think "Lets get some more of that".
I am not even sure there is an anti cycling brigade apart from on social media where you have car hating cycling fanatics of the cycling mikey/Jeremy vine brigade arguing all the time with the "all cyclists need road tax and insurance" brigade. Although as I said here, I do think insurance for cyclists is a good thing. I did get attacked for daring to suggest it but I have it through my membership of CyclingUK and I stand by it
I have never experienced any anti cycling sentiment in the real world. My work colleagues, friends, family are all very supportive of my cycling and I managed to lobby my employer to put in improved cycle rack provision.
Alot of the concern I see about LTN's/Anti car measures comes about from either the impact on businesses or the lack of consultation, they just go ahead and implement and that is that. Yet Active travel fanatics are happy to demonise reasonable objections. Some of the measures, like closing Askew Road in Gateshead, just make no sense apart from inconveniencing car drivers. Apart from happy clappy news segments on the joys of the measure the only person I have ever seen cycling on that bit of road is me and I have been there many many times since the change.
He's softly spoken and he doesn't come across as strong. Many gumbies whichever of Britain's castes they belong to prefer a strong leader who they can imagine sorting everyone out, giving 'em what for, and doing things like travelling all the way to "Europe" and telling foreigners where to get off. That's one of the prime minister's problems.
There's also the fact that many habitual Tory voters think they've voted Tory all their lives and they're f*cked if they'll continue if the guy the Tories give them as prime minister isn't white.
50-50 Penny Mordaunt, Union Jack-face, Order of the Loud Voice and True Confidence, takes over before the election?
The joy of superchargers is that they manage to be simplicity itself to use, deliver a far quicker charge than almost every other charger / car in most uses, and is a lot cheaper than most other chargers. Like 25 - 50% cheaper.
Apparently even the chess community are embarrassed by this
Next Tory manifesto: "Bring back the right to put "No ******, ******* or Dogs" in your B&B window!"
The discussions are already under way for the end of broadcast TV. The bandwidth will be repurposed. This will happen in every country, round the world. Much as digital TV happened.
The BBC has an instinctive collective belief that a subscription model would destroy the BBC. That not enough people would opt in.
Which is why the BBC representative on the Digital TV committee was proud that he had got deleted a requirement that a FreeView compliant TV had to support subscription. Since this meant that enough manufacturers would bring out cheap models that didn't support subscription. Which in turn meant the BBC couldn't be asked - "Why don't you just encrypt, and give license payers a key?"
They should have sorted out the world wide rights for all shows *going forward*, and gone to subscription, long ago.
I reckon that enough foreigners would pay for the full BBC package that we could have a BBC wholly funded by foreign subscription. Free to UK residents....
Now wouldn't that be an awesome pitch? - "No more TV tax. Totally independent of the government. Oh, and free to you."
The fraud reduction inherent in a simple, lifelong payment Put the handshake in the standard. There are already examples of it being done.
Superchargers aren't just Tesla, now. But it is rather telling that people assume.
This is not going to help save the planet.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/china-s-2023-coal-approvals-grow-over-50-gw-greenpeace-says/ar-AA1eIGQS?ocid=entnewsntp&cvid=2977a2020d8b45f19ce2774086134b9f&ei=11
In other news, from across the ocean, I thought this was interesting
https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/08/02/mike-pence-star-witness-in-donald-trump-indictment-trial/
5 January 2020: "Concerned for Mr Pence’s safety, his chief of staff, Marc Short, then alerted the head of the vice president’s Secret Service detail."
And what did the head of said detail do? Now those would be very interesting documents indeed. Because when you have a coup attempt, law goes completely out of the window. Never mind what Montesquieu wrote about the "separation of powers", or anything about "checks and balances". That's completely irrelevant. It's a question of who talks to whom, whose phone is still working, what guys with what weapons, in what locations, answer to what other guys.
I've made several videos featuring the joys of public charging. Park up. Get the cable out the frunk, plug it in. Go to the app (or download the app!) for the network you're plugged into. Make sure you have a credit card registered. Select the correct charger. Ask it to start. You then have to wait for the app to communicate to the company whose charger it is (often the back office payment company is not the one who own the actual charger) which hopefully then starts a charge.
Now I have a vision of the Train Guard school - "It's a bit like lion taming, the trick is to get the dangerous passengers in the cage, but are them think it's their idea. Now, everyone take your ticket machine.... "
Now I know it’s not remotely as important as the Women’s football World Cup but I would rather a government that tried to find marginal gains where a nudge here and there might lead to some kids finding they are good at something they otherwise might not have pursued which might lead to great things.
They've caused at least one nasty accident in the neighbourhood. There will be more. The cycling infrastructure that has just been built is entirely wrong and quite dangerous for them to use, but use it, they do.
Thank you for your letter. China takes it's climate commitments very seriously, this is why we are committed to net zero by 2060 and have world leading renewable energy production which we continue to invest in.
Sincerely,
Xi
Another £86M needed for their botched DRS scheme.
Remember how often your gut reaction calls ('Lockdown, now') are wrong?
Story made it to the Herald Diary.
What kind of idiot mocks the idea of playing chess in the park?
Go boards would be good too.
There's no differentiation in the inheritance of intelligence, though - not among healthy babies. "Finding they're good at" - what's this, reincarnation or smth? (OMG, I hope that's not where Sunak is coming from. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt though.)
Greenpeace should disband and the money be put towards useful projects, like developing carbon capture systems.