While we're on about colonial exploitation, it occurs to me that Prigozhin and his Wagner group are the modern analogue of Cecil Rhodes and the British South Africa Company...
I'd say more Sir John Hawkwood's White Company, or the other free companies of the 14th to 16th centuries. I don't think they have any interest in government.
The argument about transport availability & cost highlights both the huge variances in availability and the huge gulf in understanding.
For your outer London resident there are riches in public transport options which are largely paid for out of general taxation. For your cundry bumpkins there is often a complete absence of public transport options despite paying general taxation.
For suburbanites it is optimal to encourage more public transport and less driving. For country folk the choice is driving or not going.*
Road pricing gets talked about as a replacement for fuel duty. And gets shouted at as being patently unfair. Which is probably true the way that shitbox UK would implement it. What we need is subsidised fuel for the countryside and heavier taxes in towns. ULEZ and similar is the right policy, just being implemented poorly.
* Before anyone says "what about walking or cycling", what about them? Too many roads between villages would be lethal to walk / cycle down, and thats before we ask about fitness / safety issues.
Agree. On your *, I agree that investment in walking and cycling, or even public transport, between villages isn't worth it.
But 83% of us live in urban areas, so investment in active and public transport makes sense for most.
Urban areas = towns, not cities.
I got a train (first time in about 5 years) recently, to and from the Airport, got the return train journey yesterday. To get to the train station took a car [in this case taxi] ride.
You seem to view the country as either Edinburgh or Sticksville. Reality is somewhat different.
I grew up in a town in rural Scotland. It had a train station. The main problem is you couldn't walk or cycle to it. Sounds like your problem too.
Even public transport in towns is designed for drivers.
Because cars work.
Towns require cars. The alternative to cars is taxis or buses. And that's the bulk of your 83%
You simply can't get your head around supply/demand, can you?
The only reason Edinburgh has lots of bus users is because there are lots of buses.
The reason Edinburgh has lots of bus users, is its a city. Its not a town, what part of this are you failing to understand?
Nothing wrong with buses existing, but buses in towns are a crappy mode of transportation that only those who can't afford their own car (or can't drive as they lack a licence) would use.
The thing with a car is if you want to get from A to B you drive there and are done.
With buses you are stuck with the bus routes, and in most towns the bus routes don't go between A and B if you aren't trying to get to the town centre. Get a bus into the bus depot in town, then another bus from the depot out of town to your destination. And of course that relies upon the bus turning up, and the bus then follows its route stopping everywhere it has to stop.
My wife doesn't drive, she used to take two buses to get to work which took at least an hour, nearly an hour and a half sometimes one way. It took me 15 minutes to drive it, or 30 minutes return to go pick her up and drive her home.
Good luck finding a parking place at B unless your destination is a supermarket, or you are MD of the company.
I always find a parking place at B. 🤷♂️
Try leaving your bubble from time to time. Saying "oh but what about parking" to someone who drives everywhere and always finds parking, isn't much a problem.
You drive everywhere and always finds parking, in English towns, without a blue badge and without privileged access to private spaces?
I don't want to call you a liar, but happy to call you an outlier. 5 sigma.
Your kidding, right? The rest of the UK is not RBKC outside Harrods. There is plenty of parking all over the country in towns, villages, cities. Some even - gasp if you can believe this - for free.
Name me a town where you can't park without the criteria you specify.
I drove yesterday into Maltby, which is a "town" by anyone's imagination. Parked up briefly in the Tesco Car Park, bought some swim nappies and onto the leisure centre which had ample parking. Parking for picking up items from Worksop post office is a bit iffy mind; the last time I had to properly PLAN and pay for parking was in Manchester (Obviously a city) last weekend meeting some friends, Lower Chatham St carpark nicely close to the motorway though. Parking in Harworth, Carlton, Langold or Oldcotes tends to be trivial though (All villages) - so I'd say the smaller the locality the easier the parking unless it's a tourist hotspot like York.
The argument about transport availability & cost highlights both the huge variances in availability and the huge gulf in understanding.
For your outer London resident there are riches in public transport options which are largely paid for out of general taxation. For your cundry bumpkins there is often a complete absence of public transport options despite paying general taxation.
For suburbanites it is optimal to encourage more public transport and less driving. For country folk the choice is driving or not going.*
Road pricing gets talked about as a replacement for fuel duty. And gets shouted at as being patently unfair. Which is probably true the way that shitbox UK would implement it. What we need is subsidised fuel for the countryside and heavier taxes in towns. ULEZ and similar is the right policy, just being implemented poorly.
* Before anyone says "what about walking or cycling", what about them? Too many roads between villages would be lethal to walk / cycle down, and thats before we ask about fitness / safety issues.
Agree. On your *, I agree that investment in walking and cycling, or even public transport, between villages isn't worth it.
But 83% of us live in urban areas, so investment in active and public transport makes sense for most.
Urban areas = towns, not cities.
I got a train (first time in about 5 years) recently, to and from the Airport, got the return train journey yesterday. To get to the train station took a car [in this case taxi] ride.
You seem to view the country as either Edinburgh or Sticksville. Reality is somewhat different.
I grew up in a town in rural Scotland. It had a train station. The main problem is you couldn't walk or cycle to it. Sounds like your problem too.
Even public transport in towns is designed for drivers.
Because cars work.
Towns require cars. The alternative to cars is taxis or buses. And that's the bulk of your 83%
You simply can't get your head around supply/demand, can you?
The only reason Edinburgh has lots of bus users is because there are lots of buses.
The reason Edinburgh has lots of bus users, is its a city. Its not a town, what part of this are you failing to understand?
Nothing wrong with buses existing, but buses in towns are a crappy mode of transportation that only those who can't afford their own car (or can't drive as they lack a licence) would use.
The thing with a car is if you want to get from A to B you drive there and are done.
With buses you are stuck with the bus routes, and in most towns the bus routes don't go between A and B if you aren't trying to get to the town centre. Get a bus into the bus depot in town, then another bus from the depot out of town to your destination. And of course that relies upon the bus turning up, and the bus then follows its route stopping everywhere it has to stop.
My wife doesn't drive, she used to take two buses to get to work which took at least an hour, nearly an hour and a half sometimes one way. It took me 15 minutes to drive it, or 30 minutes return to go pick her up and drive her home.
Good luck finding a parking place at B unless your destination is a supermarket, or you are MD of the company.
I always find a parking place at B. 🤷♂️
Try leaving your bubble from time to time. Saying "oh but what about parking" to someone who drives everywhere and always finds parking, isn't much a problem.
You drive everywhere and always finds parking, in English towns, without a blue badge and without privileged access to private spaces?
I don't want to call you a liar, but happy to call you an outlier. 5 sigma.
No, its entirely normal.
There's a reason over 90% of travel is via car. People can find parking spaces normally, whether that be in car parks, or on the road. Shops and businesses tend to have car parks for their staff and patrons anyway, and houses have road space in front of them to park on. Where exactly is the problem?
Where do you go to that you can't find easy parking near to?
Rather than trade anecdotes let's look for some third party evidence shall we?
Brixham, Totnes, Torquay, Teignmouth (because the article happens to be about Devon). I have given up bothering trying to shop in the two local market towns pretty much solely on account of parking issues and so has everybody I know. My mum has stopped shopping in Chorley for the same reason so the North West does not appear to be exempt.
What did the CCP really gain from throttling Hong Kong?
They had a magnificent, thriving, near World City in their control and on their doorstep. A glittering gateway and a bright advert for China. Now it plunges down the rankings, it may never recover
I guess they set an example and scared Taiwan. But jeez
It was put to me (when handover was looming, and before that, when the Joint Declaration was being formulated) that China would take over 20 square miles of rubble rather than compromise in inch on its perceived territorial integrity. I guess we are seeing that the same applies to the homogeneity of expressed political views.
The CCP is terrified that people will openly question its legitimacy and here we have one example of that.
Probably true. Deeply sad
I adored the old Hong Kong. Used to be one of my favourite cities on earth. It felt like New York must have felt like - in about 1920. Endless opportunity amid glittering towers. It was the future
Now I wonder if I will ever go there again
I have a lot of great memories of Hong Kong. I once got knocked clean the fuck out by a fellow officer when we were fighting over which of us had the right to steal an old lady's Flying Pigeon in order to cheat in a running race.
That was the same trip where we ended up on Victoria Peak in the hot tub of a notable British businessman with Mongolian (?) prostitutes. He had to get the bus to work with his next the morning and she was in the disheveled remains of a Mongolian's prostitute's notion of an evening dress while he cowered behind his SCMP.
Yeah, the old Hong Kong was FUN. Just the right mix of money, ambition, quirkiness, freedom and a peculiarly elegant raffishness
You’ve probably got more chance of catching that atmos in Shanghai now, rather than HK. The CCP keeps a tighter grip on places it distrusts: Tibet, HK, and soon Taiwan
The argument about transport availability & cost highlights both the huge variances in availability and the huge gulf in understanding.
For your outer London resident there are riches in public transport options which are largely paid for out of general taxation. For your cundry bumpkins there is often a complete absence of public transport options despite paying general taxation.
For suburbanites it is optimal to encourage more public transport and less driving. For country folk the choice is driving or not going.*
Road pricing gets talked about as a replacement for fuel duty. And gets shouted at as being patently unfair. Which is probably true the way that shitbox UK would implement it. What we need is subsidised fuel for the countryside and heavier taxes in towns. ULEZ and similar is the right policy, just being implemented poorly.
* Before anyone says "what about walking or cycling", what about them? Too many roads between villages would be lethal to walk / cycle down, and thats before we ask about fitness / safety issues.
Agree. On your *, I agree that investment in walking and cycling, or even public transport, between villages isn't worth it.
But 83% of us live in urban areas, so investment in active and public transport makes sense for most.
Urban areas = towns, not cities.
I got a train (first time in about 5 years) recently, to and from the Airport, got the return train journey yesterday. To get to the train station took a car [in this case taxi] ride.
You seem to view the country as either Edinburgh or Sticksville. Reality is somewhat different.
I grew up in a town in rural Scotland. It had a train station. The main problem is you couldn't walk or cycle to it. Sounds like your problem too.
Even public transport in towns is designed for drivers.
Because cars work.
Towns require cars. The alternative to cars is taxis or buses. And that's the bulk of your 83%
You simply can't get your head around supply/demand, can you?
The only reason Edinburgh has lots of bus users is because there are lots of buses.
The reason Edinburgh has lots of bus users, is its a city. Its not a town, what part of this are you failing to understand?
Nothing wrong with buses existing, but buses in towns are a crappy mode of transportation that only those who can't afford their own car (or can't drive as they lack a licence) would use.
The thing with a car is if you want to get from A to B you drive there and are done.
With buses you are stuck with the bus routes, and in most towns the bus routes don't go between A and B if you aren't trying to get to the town centre. Get a bus into the bus depot in town, then another bus from the depot out of town to your destination. And of course that relies upon the bus turning up, and the bus then follows its route stopping everywhere it has to stop.
My wife doesn't drive, she used to take two buses to get to work which took at least an hour, nearly an hour and a half sometimes one way. It took me 15 minutes to drive it, or 30 minutes return to go pick her up and drive her home.
Good luck finding a parking place at B unless your destination is a supermarket, or you are MD of the company.
I always find a parking place at B. 🤷♂️
Try leaving your bubble from time to time. Saying "oh but what about parking" to someone who drives everywhere and always finds parking, isn't much a problem.
You drive everywhere and always finds parking, in English towns, without a blue badge and without privileged access to private spaces?
I don't want to call you a liar, but happy to call you an outlier. 5 sigma.
Your kidding, right? The rest of the UK is not RBKC outside Harrods. There is plenty of parking all over the country in towns, villages, cities. Some even - gasp if you can believe this - for free.
Name me a town where you can't park without the criteria you specify.
Bath
Free Car Parks in Bath
Bath University Car Park BA2 7JX – free after 5pm every day, all day on public holidays. Sydney Road BA2 6NS – 4 hours maximum. Raby Mews BA2 4EJ – 2 hours maximum. Sydney Wharf BA2 4BG – 4 hours maximum. Daniel Street BA2 6NB – 2 hours maximum.
Those are just the free ones after a 46 millisecond google.
I was mildly joking. I agree you can generally park in most British towns quite easily. London is an outlier
I find the whole debate enervating and a bit depressing. Cars are shit and destroy townscapes. Thank god they are on the way out
Bath was beautiful and bustling when I was there. The whole centre pedestrianised (access for disabled folk through those rising bollards). Park and ride schemes, railway station. Cafes fully booked out, long queue to buy a book in Toppings.
The argument about transport availability & cost highlights both the huge variances in availability and the huge gulf in understanding.
For your outer London resident there are riches in public transport options which are largely paid for out of general taxation. For your cundry bumpkins there is often a complete absence of public transport options despite paying general taxation.
For suburbanites it is optimal to encourage more public transport and less driving. For country folk the choice is driving or not going.*
Road pricing gets talked about as a replacement for fuel duty. And gets shouted at as being patently unfair. Which is probably true the way that shitbox UK would implement it. What we need is subsidised fuel for the countryside and heavier taxes in towns. ULEZ and similar is the right policy, just being implemented poorly.
* Before anyone says "what about walking or cycling", what about them? Too many roads between villages would be lethal to walk / cycle down, and thats before we ask about fitness / safety issues.
Agree. On your *, I agree that investment in walking and cycling, or even public transport, between villages isn't worth it.
But 83% of us live in urban areas, so investment in active and public transport makes sense for most.
Urban areas = towns, not cities.
I got a train (first time in about 5 years) recently, to and from the Airport, got the return train journey yesterday. To get to the train station took a car [in this case taxi] ride.
You seem to view the country as either Edinburgh or Sticksville. Reality is somewhat different.
I grew up in a town in rural Scotland. It had a train station. The main problem is you couldn't walk or cycle to it. Sounds like your problem too.
Even public transport in towns is designed for drivers.
Because cars work.
Towns require cars. The alternative to cars is taxis or buses. And that's the bulk of your 83%
You simply can't get your head around supply/demand, can you?
The only reason Edinburgh has lots of bus users is because there are lots of buses.
The reason Edinburgh has lots of bus users, is its a city. Its not a town, what part of this are you failing to understand?
Nothing wrong with buses existing, but buses in towns are a crappy mode of transportation that only those who can't afford their own car (or can't drive as they lack a licence) would use.
The thing with a car is if you want to get from A to B you drive there and are done.
With buses you are stuck with the bus routes, and in most towns the bus routes don't go between A and B if you aren't trying to get to the town centre. Get a bus into the bus depot in town, then another bus from the depot out of town to your destination. And of course that relies upon the bus turning up, and the bus then follows its route stopping everywhere it has to stop.
My wife doesn't drive, she used to take two buses to get to work which took at least an hour, nearly an hour and a half sometimes one way. It took me 15 minutes to drive it, or 30 minutes return to go pick her up and drive her home.
But Edinburgh didn't have many bus users either till they reduced the number of lanes available for cars and allocated them to buses.
Honestly, it just sounds like you have rubbish public transport and active travel provision.
Let's fix that
Your stats don't show that, instead you have once again got a very dodgy graphic whose figures don't start at zero on one axis.
Edinburgh did have lots of bus users, over 75k of them, in the mid-90s according to that graphic. Not that you'd realise it if you just looked at the chart rather than reading the numbers.
Going from 5k bus lanes to 60k didn't lead to an 12-fold increase in bus traffic. Instead bus traffic hasn't even doubled in that time. Its gone up by about 50%, which is pathetically low all things considered.
Not to forget that bus traffic increased nationwide due to factors like free bus travel introduction that had absolutely nothing to do with bus lanes either.
I found it *much* easier to commute by bus when they brought in bus lanes, believe me.
Car ownership has been growing, too, and - just as important - cars have been growing bigger. The Morningside MRAP is a thing, using its 4x4 capability to do nothing more than go up the slope from the Canny Man.
Given how many people go on the bus in Edinburgh city centre, that is a *huge* number of people who don't need to drive around and - jusat as importantly in Edinburgh - park.
Much easier for you perhaps, yet despite decades of pushing buses by the Council and Scottish Government etc the demand has barely moved, less than 50% in the past thirty years. So little change, that screwing around with scales on the axis had to be done to make it appear like there had been a big change.
Yes parking is a big issue in cities. That's completely different to towns. Partially because of a lack of willingness to build up - or down. There is nothing more pointless to me than a large open space being used as a car park in a city. Build up a multi story, or better do what is done much more often overseas in car friendly towns and cities and build subterranean car parks under the buildings.
"Good Morning back from #Germany, which has now fallen behind other big nations in Europe w/the exception of Italy. This refutes the thesis that Germany is the biggest economic beneficiary of the introduction of the #Euro."
Not sure I buy the conclusion, but it's an interesting graph.
People forget how bad German growth was at the start of the Euro. If you look at 2005 or so on the chart, Germany was dramatically behind the rest of the Eurozone.
It was only the Schroeder labour market reforms (which were modelled on the Thatcher's reforms) that led to Germany going from sick man of the Euro, to its poster child.
The other stand out on there is Spain. Massive property fuelled growth at the start, followed by a crash, economic reform, and resurgence.
The contrast with Italy, which never bothered with the reform, is remarkable.
On the latest EU actual individual consumption data, Germany is ahead of all of its neighbours except Luxembourg. What's truly remarkable is that Romania is actually slightly ahead of Ireland.
Prices are generally high in Ireland, and so Ireland does badly when you use purchasing power parity statistics. This is partly for unavoidable structural reasons - Ireland is an island with another island between it and the continent - and partly because there are some severe competition problems in certain sectors of the Irish economy - such as Insurance, Banking and Cars - which mean that prices are a lot higher for some things then they would be if there was better competition.
The cars one is particularly surprising given the more rural nature of Ireland outside of Dublin, and the electoral potency of driving issues generally, but there are specific rules in place in order to protect Irish car dealerships from the large UK second-hand car market that keep prices of Irish cars artificially high. I'm kinda baffled that this isn't a big electoral issue over here.
What did the CCP really gain from throttling Hong Kong?
They had a magnificent, thriving, near World City in their control and on their doorstep. A glittering gateway and a bright advert for China. Now it plunges down the rankings, it may never recover
I guess they set an example and scared Taiwan. But jeez
It was put to me (when handover was looming, and before that, when the Joint Declaration was being formulated) that China would take over 20 square miles of rubble rather than compromise in inch on its perceived territorial integrity. I guess we are seeing that the same applies to the homogeneity of expressed political views.
The CCP is terrified that people will openly question its legitimacy and here we have one example of that.
Probably true. Deeply sad
I adored the old Hong Kong. Used to be one of my favourite cities on earth. It felt like New York must have felt like - in about 1920. Endless opportunity amid glittering towers. It was the future
Now I wonder if I will ever go there again
Same here. There was a magic to it and now I wouldn't dream of going there.
Remember the view of Hong Kong, at night, from Tsim Sha Tsui in Kowloon? Probably my favourite urban view on earth
😢
I don't want to go all Leon on you but one of my abiding memories involves just me and one other at night in the rooftop outdoor open air pool of a five star hotel on Kowloon side which has the most stunning views over the harbour.
The argument about transport availability & cost highlights both the huge variances in availability and the huge gulf in understanding.
For your outer London resident there are riches in public transport options which are largely paid for out of general taxation. For your cundry bumpkins there is often a complete absence of public transport options despite paying general taxation.
For suburbanites it is optimal to encourage more public transport and less driving. For country folk the choice is driving or not going.*
Road pricing gets talked about as a replacement for fuel duty. And gets shouted at as being patently unfair. Which is probably true the way that shitbox UK would implement it. What we need is subsidised fuel for the countryside and heavier taxes in towns. ULEZ and similar is the right policy, just being implemented poorly.
* Before anyone says "what about walking or cycling", what about them? Too many roads between villages would be lethal to walk / cycle down, and thats before we ask about fitness / safety issues.
Agree. On your *, I agree that investment in walking and cycling, or even public transport, between villages isn't worth it.
But 83% of us live in urban areas, so investment in active and public transport makes sense for most.
Urban areas = towns, not cities.
I got a train (first time in about 5 years) recently, to and from the Airport, got the return train journey yesterday. To get to the train station took a car [in this case taxi] ride.
You seem to view the country as either Edinburgh or Sticksville. Reality is somewhat different.
I grew up in a town in rural Scotland. It had a train station. The main problem is you couldn't walk or cycle to it. Sounds like your problem too.
Even public transport in towns is designed for drivers.
Because cars work.
Towns require cars. The alternative to cars is taxis or buses. And that's the bulk of your 83%
You simply can't get your head around supply/demand, can you?
The only reason Edinburgh has lots of bus users is because there are lots of buses.
The reason Edinburgh has lots of bus users, is its a city. Its not a town, what part of this are you failing to understand?
Nothing wrong with buses existing, but buses in towns are a crappy mode of transportation that only those who can't afford their own car (or can't drive as they lack a licence) would use.
The thing with a car is if you want to get from A to B you drive there and are done.
With buses you are stuck with the bus routes, and in most towns the bus routes don't go between A and B if you aren't trying to get to the town centre. Get a bus into the bus depot in town, then another bus from the depot out of town to your destination. And of course that relies upon the bus turning up, and the bus then follows its route stopping everywhere it has to stop.
My wife doesn't drive, she used to take two buses to get to work which took at least an hour, nearly an hour and a half sometimes one way. It took me 15 minutes to drive it, or 30 minutes return to go pick her up and drive her home.
Good luck finding a parking place at B unless your destination is a supermarket, or you are MD of the company.
I always find a parking place at B. 🤷♂️
Try leaving your bubble from time to time. Saying "oh but what about parking" to someone who drives everywhere and always finds parking, isn't much a problem.
You drive everywhere and always finds parking, in English towns, without a blue badge and without privileged access to private spaces?
I don't want to call you a liar, but happy to call you an outlier. 5 sigma.
Your kidding, right? The rest of the UK is not RBKC outside Harrods. There is plenty of parking all over the country in towns, villages, cities. Some even - gasp if you can believe this - for free.
Name me a town where you can't park without the criteria you specify.
I drove yesterday into Maltby, which is a "town" by anyone's imagination. Parked up briefly in the Tesco Car Park, bought some swim nappies and onto the leisure centre which had ample parking. Parking for picking up items from Worksop post office is a bit iffy mind; the last time I had to properly PLAN and pay for parking was in Manchester (Obviously a city) last weekend meeting some friends, Lower Chatham St carpark nicely close to the motorway though. Parking in Harworth, Carlton, Langold or Oldcotes tends to be trivial though (All villages) - so I'd say the smaller the locality the easier the parking unless it's a tourist hotspot like York.
I excepted supermarkets, whose USP is extensive free parking. Leisure centres tend to be the same (but it's pay and display in my local town) so that leaves the Post Office, which is a pretty good proxy for all the non-supermarket shops you might otherwise want to visit.
This summer is the first time I’ve felt that London is SERIOUSLY recovering from the twin blows of Covid and Brexit
It might partly be because I’ve travelled so much - and I’ve seen how fucked everywhere else is
Nonetheless my usual “London is back” cheerleading has a bit more conviction about it, than normal
Off out in London tomorrow evening; will report back. I'm still sceptical of "London Is Back" though I v much want it to be.
It’s almost pure anecdata and basically intuitive; you might well conclude I’m deluded
Tho there are some genuine fact-based straws in the wind. International Tourism is back big time (it’s back almost everywhere in Europe). That’s great for the West End obvs
Also the hideous candy shops are being closed down: as a matter of policy. That shows confidence. People are less desperate for rent-payers to fill retail
Finally there’s the matter of comparisons. In an age of great uncertainty, London projects stability. Which feels quite precious now. eg You’re not going to boil to death nor freeze to bits (you might commit suicide because drizzle but hey).
London’s politics is reassuringly centrist. As the EU swings hard right, British politics becomes more moderate. We’ve had our populist moment. Meanwhile London avoids the scourges that afflict American cities: we have almost none of the homeless opioid awfulness, crime is much lower, even the race debate is far less venomous, etc
If you want to live in an English-speaking world city in a stable country, with world class culture, food, history - with access to the nicer bits of Europe but far away from wars and deadly heatwaves and migration waves - London is your only choice
I’m genuinely optimistic
There are only three English-speaking world cities. The other two are Singapore and New York, which are nowhere near Europe.
There are more than three in England alone. Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham and more.
Not to forget that English is spoken in Amsterdam, Lisbon, Frankfurt, Stockholm ... and even in Paris.
I would add Melbourne & Sydney, both over 5 million with highly diverse populations. Jo'burg too?
Top tier world cities where English is the main spoken language are probably limited to London, NYC and maybe LA at a pinch.
Sydney, Chicago, SF/Bay Area probably sit beneath them, and then Melbourne, Auckland, Boston and various others in the division below that (I'd probably sit Manchester and Dublin here too).
Then there are are the cities where English is enough to get by, even if it's not the main spoken language: Hong Kong, Singapore and Dubai at the top, then Amsterdam, Stockholm and Copenhagen. Perhaps Berlin and Budapest.
That’s a very fair list. Tho sadly I think you have to remove Hong Kong since Beijing tightened its grip. It has lost an awful lot of lustre. Who would risk moving there?
It’s probably dropped from near-World City status down to Tier 3 or 4. A tragedy
It will be interesting to see where Hong Kong is in a couple of years time.
Part of my job involves helping clients assess where to locate regional HQs (as well as other activities like R&D or manufacturing). For Asia pretty much nobody chooses HK anymore. This is a massive turnaround from only a decade ago when it was close to level pegging with Singapore. Singapore is now the only game in town unless your main regional market is mainland China or Australia. Even Japanese and Korean companies have AsPac headquarters in Singapore.
The trouble is Singapore is filling up and hideously expensive now. Rents are pricing a lot of people out of the city. It's orders of magnitude worse than London or NYC. So there is an opportunity for a nearby city to lay claim to HQs. Initially for middle office and shared services and eventually for proper headquarters. The two main candidates are KL and Bangkok, and I think Bangkok has the strongest chance - it needs to expand its air links though. That's where Singapore really benefits from being a hub.
Does it have to be particularly nearby ? (Though I guess that makes sense.)
My son who lives in Bangkok travels all over East Asia and Australasia without changing planes. What’s more the educational and sporting opportunities for his children seem better in Bangkok.
Yes Bangkok has good schools for expats. It also has excellent (and comparatively cheap) private healthcare, dentistry etc
If you can make sure you don’t have to drive too much/too far, it’s seductive
But leave town April-May when it hits 45C
Is it more expensive now than 2014 when I visited?
This summer is the first time I’ve felt that London is SERIOUSLY recovering from the twin blows of Covid and Brexit
It might partly be because I’ve travelled so much - and I’ve seen how fucked everywhere else is
Nonetheless my usual “London is back” cheerleading has a bit more conviction about it, than normal
Off out in London tomorrow evening; will report back. I'm still sceptical of "London Is Back" though I v much want it to be.
It’s almost pure anecdata and basically intuitive; you might well conclude I’m deluded
Tho there are some genuine fact-based straws in the wind. International Tourism is back big time (it’s back almost everywhere in Europe). That’s great for the West End obvs
Also the hideous candy shops are being closed down: as a matter of policy. That shows confidence. People are less desperate for rent-payers to fill retail
Finally there’s the matter of comparisons. In an age of great uncertainty, London projects stability. Which feels quite precious now. eg You’re not going to boil to death nor freeze to bits (you might commit suicide because drizzle but hey).
London’s politics is reassuringly centrist. As the EU swings hard right, British politics becomes more moderate. We’ve had our populist moment. Meanwhile London avoids the scourges that afflict American cities: we have almost none of the homeless opioid awfulness, crime is much lower, even the race debate is far less venomous, etc
If you want to live in an English-speaking world city in a stable country, with world class culture, food, history - with access to the nicer bits of Europe but far away from wars and deadly heatwaves and migration waves - London is your only choice
I’m genuinely optimistic
There are only three English-speaking world cities. The other two are Singapore and New York, which are nowhere near Europe.
There are more than three in England alone. Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham and more.
Not to forget that English is spoken in Amsterdam, Lisbon, Frankfurt, Stockholm ... and even in Paris.
I would add Melbourne & Sydney, both over 5 million with highly diverse populations. Jo'burg too?
Top tier world cities where English is the main spoken language are probably limited to London, NYC and maybe LA at a pinch.
Sydney, Chicago, SF/Bay Area probably sit beneath them, and then Melbourne, Auckland, Boston and various others in the division below that (I'd probably sit Manchester and Dublin here too).
Then there are are the cities where English is enough to get by, even if it's not the main spoken language: Hong Kong, Singapore and Dubai at the top, then Amsterdam, Stockholm and Copenhagen. Perhaps Berlin and Budapest.
That’s a very fair list. Tho sadly I think you have to remove Hong Kong since Beijing tightened its grip. It has lost an awful lot of lustre. Who would risk moving there?
It’s probably dropped from near-World City status down to Tier 3 or 4. A tragedy
It will be interesting to see where Hong Kong is in a couple of years time.
Part of my job involves helping clients assess where to locate regional HQs (as well as other activities like R&D or manufacturing). For Asia pretty much nobody chooses HK anymore. This is a massive turnaround from only a decade ago when it was close to level pegging with Singapore. Singapore is now the only game in town unless your main regional market is mainland China or Australia. Even Japanese and Korean companies have AsPac headquarters in Singapore.
The trouble is Singapore is filling up and hideously expensive now. Rents are pricing a lot of people out of the city. It's orders of magnitude worse than London or NYC. So there is an opportunity for a nearby city to lay claim to HQs. Initially for middle office and shared services and eventually for proper headquarters. The two main candidates are KL and Bangkok, and I think Bangkok has the strongest chance - it needs to expand its air links though. That's where Singapore really benefits from being a hub.
Does it have to be particularly nearby ? (Though I guess that makes sense.)
My son who lives in Bangkok travels all over East Asia and Australasia without changing planes. What’s more the educational and sporting opportunities for his children seem better in Bangkok.
Yes Bangkok has good schools for expats. It also has excellent (and comparatively cheap) private healthcare, dentistry etc
If you can make sure you don’t have to drive too much/too far, it’s seductive
But leave town April-May when it hits 45C
Is it more expensive now than 2014 when I visited?
Yes. Considerably. As it gets more prosperous so prices rise
It’s still cheap compared to its Asian rivals like Tokyo or Singapore or Seoul but it’s not the bargain it was
This summer is the first time I’ve felt that London is SERIOUSLY recovering from the twin blows of Covid and Brexit
It might partly be because I’ve travelled so much - and I’ve seen how fucked everywhere else is
Nonetheless my usual “London is back” cheerleading has a bit more conviction about it, than normal
Off out in London tomorrow evening; will report back. I'm still sceptical of "London Is Back" though I v much want it to be.
It’s almost pure anecdata and basically intuitive; you might well conclude I’m deluded
Tho there are some genuine fact-based straws in the wind. International Tourism is back big time (it’s back almost everywhere in Europe). That’s great for the West End obvs
Also the hideous candy shops are being closed down: as a matter of policy. That shows confidence. People are less desperate for rent-payers to fill retail
Finally there’s the matter of comparisons. In an age of great uncertainty, London projects stability. Which feels quite precious now. eg You’re not going to boil to death nor freeze to bits (you might commit suicide because drizzle but hey).
London’s politics is reassuringly centrist. As the EU swings hard right, British politics becomes more moderate. We’ve had our populist moment. Meanwhile London avoids the scourges that afflict American cities: we have almost none of the homeless opioid awfulness, crime is much lower, even the race debate is far less venomous, etc
If you want to live in an English-speaking world city in a stable country, with world class culture, food, history - with access to the nicer bits of Europe but far away from wars and deadly heatwaves and migration waves - London is your only choice
I’m genuinely optimistic
There are only three English-speaking world cities. The other two are Singapore and New York, which are nowhere near Europe.
There are more than three in England alone. Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham and more.
Not to forget that English is spoken in Amsterdam, Lisbon, Frankfurt, Stockholm ... and even in Paris.
True but if you are very qualified and an English speaker and a high earner and have your pick of global cities it is likely to be between London, NYC, LA or San Francisco or Singapore as to where you go (maybe Paris if you speak French).
Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham are all interesting significant British cities but they are not top tier world cities
Something that the statistics show is very clearly not the case.
Thousands of people from all over the world, qualified, English speakers and yes high earners too, can and do go to each of those cities.
No one who can afford to live in London voluntarily chooses Birmingham or Manchester. That’s laughable
Why would you do such an insane thing?
Some voluntarily go to Bristol, Brighton or Edinburgh of course, for lifestyle reasons. Others voluntarily go to Amsterdam or Geneva or Dublin for work. But world city wise if you want to be in Europe and an English speaking city then London is indeed the only real choice, in the same way Singapore is now the only choice in Asia after the CCP strangled Hong Kong.
This is part of the problem for levelling up though. London has many geo-economic advantages. RUK does not.
But also Britain is such a small place that you can live in or near a regional city and pretend you're living just outside London because distances are so small compared to most other countries.
The argument about transport availability & cost highlights both the huge variances in availability and the huge gulf in understanding.
For your outer London resident there are riches in public transport options which are largely paid for out of general taxation. For your cundry bumpkins there is often a complete absence of public transport options despite paying general taxation.
For suburbanites it is optimal to encourage more public transport and less driving. For country folk the choice is driving or not going.*
Road pricing gets talked about as a replacement for fuel duty. And gets shouted at as being patently unfair. Which is probably true the way that shitbox UK would implement it. What we need is subsidised fuel for the countryside and heavier taxes in towns. ULEZ and similar is the right policy, just being implemented poorly.
* Before anyone says "what about walking or cycling", what about them? Too many roads between villages would be lethal to walk / cycle down, and thats before we ask about fitness / safety issues.
Agree. On your *, I agree that investment in walking and cycling, or even public transport, between villages isn't worth it.
But 83% of us live in urban areas, so investment in active and public transport makes sense for most.
Urban areas = towns, not cities.
I got a train (first time in about 5 years) recently, to and from the Airport, got the return train journey yesterday. To get to the train station took a car [in this case taxi] ride.
You seem to view the country as either Edinburgh or Sticksville. Reality is somewhat different.
I grew up in a town in rural Scotland. It had a train station. The main problem is you couldn't walk or cycle to it. Sounds like your problem too.
Even public transport in towns is designed for drivers.
Because cars work.
Towns require cars. The alternative to cars is taxis or buses. And that's the bulk of your 83%
You simply can't get your head around supply/demand, can you?
The only reason Edinburgh has lots of bus users is because there are lots of buses.
The reason Edinburgh has lots of bus users, is its a city. Its not a town, what part of this are you failing to understand?
Nothing wrong with buses existing, but buses in towns are a crappy mode of transportation that only those who can't afford their own car (or can't drive as they lack a licence) would use.
The thing with a car is if you want to get from A to B you drive there and are done.
With buses you are stuck with the bus routes, and in most towns the bus routes don't go between A and B if you aren't trying to get to the town centre. Get a bus into the bus depot in town, then another bus from the depot out of town to your destination. And of course that relies upon the bus turning up, and the bus then follows its route stopping everywhere it has to stop.
My wife doesn't drive, she used to take two buses to get to work which took at least an hour, nearly an hour and a half sometimes one way. It took me 15 minutes to drive it, or 30 minutes return to go pick her up and drive her home.
Good luck finding a parking place at B unless your destination is a supermarket, or you are MD of the company.
I always find a parking place at B. 🤷♂️
Try leaving your bubble from time to time. Saying "oh but what about parking" to someone who drives everywhere and always finds parking, isn't much a problem.
You drive everywhere and always finds parking, in English towns, without a blue badge and without privileged access to private spaces?
I don't want to call you a liar, but happy to call you an outlier. 5 sigma.
Your kidding, right? The rest of the UK is not RBKC outside Harrods. There is plenty of parking all over the country in towns, villages, cities. Some even - gasp if you can believe this - for free.
Name me a town where you can't park without the criteria you specify.
Bath
Free Car Parks in Bath
Bath University Car Park BA2 7JX – free after 5pm every day, all day on public holidays. Sydney Road BA2 6NS – 4 hours maximum. Raby Mews BA2 4EJ – 2 hours maximum. Sydney Wharf BA2 4BG – 4 hours maximum. Daniel Street BA2 6NB – 2 hours maximum.
Those are just the free ones after a 46 millisecond google.
I was mildly joking. I agree you can generally park in most British towns quite easily. London is an outlier
I find the whole debate enervating and a bit depressing. Cars are shit and destroy townscapes. Thank god they are on the way out
Summed up by Babmaes Street, a cul-de-sac off Jermyn Street. No parking restrictions, no one knew about it. You could drive there, park up at any time of the evening and return with your car unmolested. Babmaes Street is now developed to within an inch of its life and beyond. There are precious few "hidden" places in London any more.
For some reason I am reminded of the following story.
Instituto Cervantes (Spanish cultural centre in London) sold up their incredibly valuable building near Sloane Square. Moved to Central London.
The building was bought by a Russian oligarch. Who was planning on converting it back to a house. Would be very nice.
Got squatted. The usual types etc. They declared that they would never move, legal stuff etc.
Then, they left overnight. So the story goes, someone explained to them the reputation of said oligarch.
Pro-Putin mafia boss threatens to murder British anti-homelessness activists. What a hero.
Put his picture up over the mantelpiece in every Tory social club now.
Who do I vote for if I'm against London welcoming leading figures in international organised crime? Are there any political parties with the guts not to lick mafia boots?
No idea if he said or did anything.
My point was that the Premier League owners are a group of fine, outstanding, lovely people.
Interrupting their revenue stream would only result in kind words, thoughtful actions and cute fluffy kittens.
The building came under violent attack (bricks, bottles, and poles thrown through windows) when it housed squatters who included many people who had been homeless. The squatters then issued a statement saying "We have been keeping the property clean and tidy and have been trying to look after it for Mr Goncharenko."
That properties owned by billionaires are left unoccupied for years (as this one was) when the homeless sleep on the streets nearby is a social disgrace.
What did the CCP really gain from throttling Hong Kong?
They had a magnificent, thriving, near World City in their control and on their doorstep. A glittering gateway and a bright advert for China. Now it plunges down the rankings, it may never recover
I guess they set an example and scared Taiwan. But jeez
It was put to me (when handover was looming, and before that, when the Joint Declaration was being formulated) that China would take over 20 square miles of rubble rather than compromise in inch on its perceived territorial integrity. I guess we are seeing that the same applies to the homogeneity of expressed political views.
The CCP is terrified that people will openly question its legitimacy and here we have one example of that.
Probably true. Deeply sad
I adored the old Hong Kong. Used to be one of my favourite cities on earth. It felt like New York must have felt like - in about 1920. Endless opportunity amid glittering towers. It was the future
Now I wonder if I will ever go there again
Same here. There was a magic to it and now I wouldn't dream of going there.
Remember the view of Hong Kong, at night, from Tsim Sha Tsui in Kowloon? Probably my favourite urban view on earth
😢
I don't want to go all Leon on you but one of my abiding memories involves just me and one other at night in the rooftop outdoor open air pool of a five star hotel on Kowloon side which has the most stunning views over the harbour.
Yes, that’s almost certainly the same view
It’s the view you get from the rooftop bar of the Peninsula
Sigh
And on that melancholy note, I must work so I can eat so I can earn so I can travel to the far east again. Later
The argument about transport availability & cost highlights both the huge variances in availability and the huge gulf in understanding.
For your outer London resident there are riches in public transport options which are largely paid for out of general taxation. For your cundry bumpkins there is often a complete absence of public transport options despite paying general taxation.
For suburbanites it is optimal to encourage more public transport and less driving. For country folk the choice is driving or not going.*
Road pricing gets talked about as a replacement for fuel duty. And gets shouted at as being patently unfair. Which is probably true the way that shitbox UK would implement it. What we need is subsidised fuel for the countryside and heavier taxes in towns. ULEZ and similar is the right policy, just being implemented poorly.
* Before anyone says "what about walking or cycling", what about them? Too many roads between villages would be lethal to walk / cycle down, and thats before we ask about fitness / safety issues.
Agree. On your *, I agree that investment in walking and cycling, or even public transport, between villages isn't worth it.
But 83% of us live in urban areas, so investment in active and public transport makes sense for most.
Urban areas = towns, not cities.
I got a train (first time in about 5 years) recently, to and from the Airport, got the return train journey yesterday. To get to the train station took a car [in this case taxi] ride.
You seem to view the country as either Edinburgh or Sticksville. Reality is somewhat different.
I grew up in a town in rural Scotland. It had a train station. The main problem is you couldn't walk or cycle to it. Sounds like your problem too.
Even public transport in towns is designed for drivers.
Because cars work.
Towns require cars. The alternative to cars is taxis or buses. And that's the bulk of your 83%
You simply can't get your head around supply/demand, can you?
The only reason Edinburgh has lots of bus users is because there are lots of buses.
The reason Edinburgh has lots of bus users, is its a city. Its not a town, what part of this are you failing to understand?
Nothing wrong with buses existing, but buses in towns are a crappy mode of transportation that only those who can't afford their own car (or can't drive as they lack a licence) would use.
The thing with a car is if you want to get from A to B you drive there and are done.
With buses you are stuck with the bus routes, and in most towns the bus routes don't go between A and B if you aren't trying to get to the town centre. Get a bus into the bus depot in town, then another bus from the depot out of town to your destination. And of course that relies upon the bus turning up, and the bus then follows its route stopping everywhere it has to stop.
My wife doesn't drive, she used to take two buses to get to work which took at least an hour, nearly an hour and a half sometimes one way. It took me 15 minutes to drive it, or 30 minutes return to go pick her up and drive her home.
Good luck finding a parking place at B unless your destination is a supermarket, or you are MD of the company.
I always find a parking place at B. 🤷♂️
Try leaving your bubble from time to time. Saying "oh but what about parking" to someone who drives everywhere and always finds parking, isn't much a problem.
You drive everywhere and always finds parking, in English towns, without a blue badge and without privileged access to private spaces?
I don't want to call you a liar, but happy to call you an outlier. 5 sigma.
Your kidding, right? The rest of the UK is not RBKC outside Harrods. There is plenty of parking all over the country in towns, villages, cities. Some even - gasp if you can believe this - for free.
Name me a town where you can't park without the criteria you specify.
I drove yesterday into Maltby, which is a "town" by anyone's imagination. Parked up briefly in the Tesco Car Park, bought some swim nappies and onto the leisure centre which had ample parking. Parking for picking up items from Worksop post office is a bit iffy mind; the last time I had to properly PLAN and pay for parking was in Manchester (Obviously a city) last weekend meeting some friends, Lower Chatham St carpark nicely close to the motorway though. Parking in Harworth, Carlton, Langold or Oldcotes tends to be trivial though (All villages) - so I'd say the smaller the locality the easier the parking unless it's a tourist hotspot like York.
I excepted supermarkets, whose USP is extensive free parking. Leisure centres tend to be the same (but it's pay and display in my local town) so that leaves the Post Office, which is a pretty good proxy for all the non-supermarket shops you might otherwise want to visit.
So excluding places you might want to go to, there might be a problem?
Where exactly is this supposed problem of yours? And pay and display parking is still parking, nothing wrong with that. So long as there's ample spaces, its clean, well lit and secure. If you're using a service, there's nothing wrong with paying for it.
What did the CCP really gain from throttling Hong Kong?
They had a magnificent, thriving, near World City in their control and on their doorstep. A glittering gateway and a bright advert for China. Now it plunges down the rankings, it may never recover
I guess they set an example and scared Taiwan. But jeez
It was put to me (when handover was looming, and before that, when the Joint Declaration was being formulated) that China would take over 20 square miles of rubble rather than compromise in inch on its perceived territorial integrity. I guess we are seeing that the same applies to the homogeneity of expressed political views.
The CCP is terrified that people will openly question its legitimacy and here we have one example of that.
Probably true. Deeply sad
I adored the old Hong Kong. Used to be one of my favourite cities on earth. It felt like New York must have felt like - in about 1920. Endless opportunity amid glittering towers. It was the future
Now I wonder if I will ever go there again
I have a lot of great memories of Hong Kong. I once got knocked clean the fuck out by a fellow officer when we were fighting over which of us had the right to steal an old lady's Flying Pigeon in order to cheat in a running race.
That was the same trip where we ended up on Victoria Peak in the hot tub of a notable British businessman with Mongolian (?) prostitutes. He had to get the bus to work with his next the morning and she was in the disheveled remains of a Mongolian's prostitute's notion of an evening dress while he cowered behind his SCMP.
Yeah, the old Hong Kong was FUN. Just the right mix of money, ambition, quirkiness, freedom and a peculiarly elegant raffishness
You’ve probably got more chance of catching that atmos in Shanghai now, rather than HK. The CCP keeps a tighter grip on places it distrusts: Tibet, HK, and soon Taiwan
The argument about transport availability & cost highlights both the huge variances in availability and the huge gulf in understanding.
For your outer London resident there are riches in public transport options which are largely paid for out of general taxation. For your cundry bumpkins there is often a complete absence of public transport options despite paying general taxation.
For suburbanites it is optimal to encourage more public transport and less driving. For country folk the choice is driving or not going.*
Road pricing gets talked about as a replacement for fuel duty. And gets shouted at as being patently unfair. Which is probably true the way that shitbox UK would implement it. What we need is subsidised fuel for the countryside and heavier taxes in towns. ULEZ and similar is the right policy, just being implemented poorly.
* Before anyone says "what about walking or cycling", what about them? Too many roads between villages would be lethal to walk / cycle down, and thats before we ask about fitness / safety issues.
Agree. On your *, I agree that investment in walking and cycling, or even public transport, between villages isn't worth it.
But 83% of us live in urban areas, so investment in active and public transport makes sense for most.
Urban areas = towns, not cities.
I got a train (first time in about 5 years) recently, to and from the Airport, got the return train journey yesterday. To get to the train station took a car [in this case taxi] ride.
You seem to view the country as either Edinburgh or Sticksville. Reality is somewhat different.
I grew up in a town in rural Scotland. It had a train station. The main problem is you couldn't walk or cycle to it. Sounds like your problem too.
Even public transport in towns is designed for drivers.
Because cars work.
Towns require cars. The alternative to cars is taxis or buses. And that's the bulk of your 83%
You simply can't get your head around supply/demand, can you?
The only reason Edinburgh has lots of bus users is because there are lots of buses.
The reason Edinburgh has lots of bus users, is its a city. Its not a town, what part of this are you failing to understand?
Nothing wrong with buses existing, but buses in towns are a crappy mode of transportation that only those who can't afford their own car (or can't drive as they lack a licence) would use.
The thing with a car is if you want to get from A to B you drive there and are done.
With buses you are stuck with the bus routes, and in most towns the bus routes don't go between A and B if you aren't trying to get to the town centre. Get a bus into the bus depot in town, then another bus from the depot out of town to your destination. And of course that relies upon the bus turning up, and the bus then follows its route stopping everywhere it has to stop.
My wife doesn't drive, she used to take two buses to get to work which took at least an hour, nearly an hour and a half sometimes one way. It took me 15 minutes to drive it, or 30 minutes return to go pick her up and drive her home.
But Edinburgh didn't have many bus users either till they reduced the number of lanes available for cars and allocated them to buses.
Honestly, it just sounds like you have rubbish public transport and active travel provision.
Let's fix that
Your stats don't show that, instead you have once again got a very dodgy graphic whose figures don't start at zero on one axis.
Edinburgh did have lots of bus users, over 75k of them, in the mid-90s according to that graphic. Not that you'd realise it if you just looked at the chart rather than reading the numbers.
Going from 5k bus lanes to 60k didn't lead to an 12-fold increase in bus traffic. Instead bus traffic hasn't even doubled in that time. Its gone up by about 50%, which is pathetically low all things considered.
Not to forget that bus traffic increased nationwide due to factors like free bus travel introduction that had absolutely nothing to do with bus lanes either.
I found it *much* easier to commute by bus when they brought in bus lanes, believe me.
Car ownership has been growing, too, and - just as important - cars have been growing bigger. The Morningside MRAP is a thing, using its 4x4 capability to do nothing more than go up the slope from the Canny Man.
Given how many people go on the bus in Edinburgh city centre, that is a *huge* number of people who don't need to drive around and - jusat as importantly in Edinburgh - park.
And that's the bit that some overlook.
The places where it's hard/expensive to park (London, obvs, Bath- I bet that Topping's list was a small number of spaces that are always full, Cambridge is similar) are the sort of places that people want to go. Partly for middle-class niceness, sure. But also because they are full of businesses making a good living by serving people's needs. And that's a better, more profitable, use of land than placing cars on it.
In theory, you could get the same effect by rebuilding cities with everything a bit further apart, so that there is more space for cars. But apart from the intrinsic absurdity of that written down, it doesn't seem to work like that in practice. The economic magic happens when people and businesses are close together.
You want your town/city to be more productive? You probably need it to be denser- needn't be Hong Kong, four storey grand terraces and garden squares will be fine. But you can't do that and have ample road and parking space.
This summer is the first time I’ve felt that London is SERIOUSLY recovering from the twin blows of Covid and Brexit
It might partly be because I’ve travelled so much - and I’ve seen how fucked everywhere else is
Nonetheless my usual “London is back” cheerleading has a bit more conviction about it, than normal
Off out in London tomorrow evening; will report back. I'm still sceptical of "London Is Back" though I v much want it to be.
It’s almost pure anecdata and basically intuitive; you might well conclude I’m deluded
Tho there are some genuine fact-based straws in the wind. International Tourism is back big time (it’s back almost everywhere in Europe). That’s great for the West End obvs
Also the hideous candy shops are being closed down: as a matter of policy. That shows confidence. People are less desperate for rent-payers to fill retail
Finally there’s the matter of comparisons. In an age of great uncertainty, London projects stability. Which feels quite precious now. eg You’re not going to boil to death nor freeze to bits (you might commit suicide because drizzle but hey).
London’s politics is reassuringly centrist. As the EU swings hard right, British politics becomes more moderate. We’ve had our populist moment. Meanwhile London avoids the scourges that afflict American cities: we have almost none of the homeless opioid awfulness, crime is much lower, even the race debate is far less venomous, etc
If you want to live in an English-speaking world city in a stable country, with world class culture, food, history - with access to the nicer bits of Europe but far away from wars and deadly heatwaves and migration waves - London is your only choice
I’m genuinely optimistic
There are only three English-speaking world cities. The other two are Singapore and New York, which are nowhere near Europe.
There are more than three in England alone. Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham and more.
Not to forget that English is spoken in Amsterdam, Lisbon, Frankfurt, Stockholm ... and even in Paris.
True but if you are very qualified and an English speaker and a high earner and have your pick of global cities it is likely to be between London, NYC, LA or San Francisco or Singapore as to where you go (maybe Paris if you speak French).
Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham are all interesting significant British cities but they are not top tier world cities
Something that the statistics show is very clearly not the case.
Thousands of people from all over the world, qualified, English speakers and yes high earners too, can and do go to each of those cities.
No one who can afford to live in London voluntarily chooses Birmingham or Manchester. That’s laughable
Why would you do such an insane thing?
Some voluntarily go to Bristol, Brighton or Edinburgh of course, for lifestyle reasons. Others voluntarily go to Amsterdam or Geneva or Dublin for work. But world city wise if you want to be in Europe and an English speaking city then London is indeed the only real choice, in the same way Singapore is now the only choice in Asia after the CCP strangled Hong Kong.
This is part of the problem for levelling up though. London has many geo-economic advantages. RUK does not.
But also Britain is such a small place that you can live in or near a regional city and pretend you're living just outside London because distances are so small compared to most other countries.
I think that works for British natives, but not international ex-pats. They want to be in London not the home counties or somewhere like Warwickshire. In fact they don't generally even want to be in outer London, but proper city London. In my work most of the Brits live in the burbs whilst most of the ex-pats (who are well above 50% in the group I work in) live in small flats in inner London. Same phenomenon as Brits wanting to live in Manhattan when they relocate to New York.
What did the CCP really gain from throttling Hong Kong?
They had a magnificent, thriving, near World City in their control and on their doorstep. A glittering gateway and a bright advert for China. Now it plunges down the rankings, it may never recover
I guess they set an example and scared Taiwan. But jeez
It was put to me (when handover was looming, and before that, when the Joint Declaration was being formulated) that China would take over 20 square miles of rubble rather than compromise in inch on its perceived territorial integrity. I guess we are seeing that the same applies to the homogeneity of expressed political views.
The CCP is terrified that people will openly question its legitimacy and here we have one example of that.
Probably true. Deeply sad
I adored the old Hong Kong. Used to be one of my favourite cities on earth. It felt like New York must have felt like - in about 1920. Endless opportunity amid glittering towers. It was the future
Now I wonder if I will ever go there again
Same here. There was a magic to it and now I wouldn't dream of going there.
Remember the view of Hong Kong, at night, from Tsim Sha Tsui in Kowloon? Probably my favourite urban view on earth
😢
There used to be a transcendentally grim brothel in Tsim Sha Tsui. The walls of the cubicles were cardboard and the pros (straight off the pig farm on the mainland) performed rudimentary ablutions with a bucket of cold water between punters. The whole joint absolutely fucking stank of fried ginger and raw sewage. A real test of fortitude for a young jack on his first cruise. Poignant.
The argument about transport availability & cost highlights both the huge variances in availability and the huge gulf in understanding.
For your outer London resident there are riches in public transport options which are largely paid for out of general taxation. For your cundry bumpkins there is often a complete absence of public transport options despite paying general taxation.
For suburbanites it is optimal to encourage more public transport and less driving. For country folk the choice is driving or not going.*
Road pricing gets talked about as a replacement for fuel duty. And gets shouted at as being patently unfair. Which is probably true the way that shitbox UK would implement it. What we need is subsidised fuel for the countryside and heavier taxes in towns. ULEZ and similar is the right policy, just being implemented poorly.
* Before anyone says "what about walking or cycling", what about them? Too many roads between villages would be lethal to walk / cycle down, and thats before we ask about fitness / safety issues.
Agree. On your *, I agree that investment in walking and cycling, or even public transport, between villages isn't worth it.
But 83% of us live in urban areas, so investment in active and public transport makes sense for most.
Urban areas = towns, not cities.
I got a train (first time in about 5 years) recently, to and from the Airport, got the return train journey yesterday. To get to the train station took a car [in this case taxi] ride.
You seem to view the country as either Edinburgh or Sticksville. Reality is somewhat different.
I grew up in a town in rural Scotland. It had a train station. The main problem is you couldn't walk or cycle to it. Sounds like your problem too.
Even public transport in towns is designed for drivers.
Because cars work.
Towns require cars. The alternative to cars is taxis or buses. And that's the bulk of your 83%
You simply can't get your head around supply/demand, can you?
The only reason Edinburgh has lots of bus users is because there are lots of buses.
The reason Edinburgh has lots of bus users, is its a city. Its not a town, what part of this are you failing to understand?
Nothing wrong with buses existing, but buses in towns are a crappy mode of transportation that only those who can't afford their own car (or can't drive as they lack a licence) would use.
The thing with a car is if you want to get from A to B you drive there and are done.
With buses you are stuck with the bus routes, and in most towns the bus routes don't go between A and B if you aren't trying to get to the town centre. Get a bus into the bus depot in town, then another bus from the depot out of town to your destination. And of course that relies upon the bus turning up, and the bus then follows its route stopping everywhere it has to stop.
My wife doesn't drive, she used to take two buses to get to work which took at least an hour, nearly an hour and a half sometimes one way. It took me 15 minutes to drive it, or 30 minutes return to go pick her up and drive her home.
But Edinburgh didn't have many bus users either till they reduced the number of lanes available for cars and allocated them to buses.
Honestly, it just sounds like you have rubbish public transport and active travel provision.
Let's fix that
Your stats don't show that, instead you have once again got a very dodgy graphic whose figures don't start at zero on one axis.
Edinburgh did have lots of bus users, over 75k of them, in the mid-90s according to that graphic. Not that you'd realise it if you just looked at the chart rather than reading the numbers.
Going from 5k bus lanes to 60k didn't lead to an 12-fold increase in bus traffic. Instead bus traffic hasn't even doubled in that time. Its gone up by about 50%, which is pathetically low all things considered.
Not to forget that bus traffic increased nationwide due to factors like free bus travel introduction that had absolutely nothing to do with bus lanes either.
I found it *much* easier to commute by bus when they brought in bus lanes, believe me.
Car ownership has been growing, too, and - just as important - cars have been growing bigger. The Morningside MRAP is a thing, using its 4x4 capability to do nothing more than go up the slope from the Canny Man.
Given how many people go on the bus in Edinburgh city centre, that is a *huge* number of people who don't need to drive around and - jusat as importantly in Edinburgh - park.
Much easier for you perhaps, yet despite decades of pushing buses by the Council and Scottish Government etc the demand has barely moved, less than 50% in the past thirty years. So little change, that screwing around with scales on the axis had to be done to make it appear like there had been a big change.
Yes parking is a big issue in cities. That's completely different to towns. Partially because of a lack of willingness to build up - or down. There is nothing more pointless to me than a large open space being used as a car park in a city. Build up a multi story, or better do what is done much more often overseas in car friendly towns and cities and build subterranean car parks under the buildings.
A 50% increase in bus rides is massive, turning round a sustained decline into an ongoing increase. And taking a lot of cars off the roads. The typical bus is full at the busy times, so that's anything up to 100 people - of whom many would otherwisde drive. At 1.5 per car, that's about half a mile of crawling cars vanish at once.
And you are obviously not familiar with Edinburgh, in otyher ways. The council have built massive car parks. On the outskirts, often on brownfield sites. Park and Rides. So it's great for car drivers.
The argument about transport availability & cost highlights both the huge variances in availability and the huge gulf in understanding.
For your outer London resident there are riches in public transport options which are largely paid for out of general taxation. For your cundry bumpkins there is often a complete absence of public transport options despite paying general taxation.
For suburbanites it is optimal to encourage more public transport and less driving. For country folk the choice is driving or not going.*
Road pricing gets talked about as a replacement for fuel duty. And gets shouted at as being patently unfair. Which is probably true the way that shitbox UK would implement it. What we need is subsidised fuel for the countryside and heavier taxes in towns. ULEZ and similar is the right policy, just being implemented poorly.
* Before anyone says "what about walking or cycling", what about them? Too many roads between villages would be lethal to walk / cycle down, and thats before we ask about fitness / safety issues.
Agree. On your *, I agree that investment in walking and cycling, or even public transport, between villages isn't worth it.
But 83% of us live in urban areas, so investment in active and public transport makes sense for most.
Urban areas = towns, not cities.
I got a train (first time in about 5 years) recently, to and from the Airport, got the return train journey yesterday. To get to the train station took a car [in this case taxi] ride.
You seem to view the country as either Edinburgh or Sticksville. Reality is somewhat different.
I grew up in a town in rural Scotland. It had a train station. The main problem is you couldn't walk or cycle to it. Sounds like your problem too.
Even public transport in towns is designed for drivers.
Because cars work.
Towns require cars. The alternative to cars is taxis or buses. And that's the bulk of your 83%
You simply can't get your head around supply/demand, can you?
The only reason Edinburgh has lots of bus users is because there are lots of buses.
The reason Edinburgh has lots of bus users, is its a city. Its not a town, what part of this are you failing to understand?
Nothing wrong with buses existing, but buses in towns are a crappy mode of transportation that only those who can't afford their own car (or can't drive as they lack a licence) would use.
The thing with a car is if you want to get from A to B you drive there and are done.
With buses you are stuck with the bus routes, and in most towns the bus routes don't go between A and B if you aren't trying to get to the town centre. Get a bus into the bus depot in town, then another bus from the depot out of town to your destination. And of course that relies upon the bus turning up, and the bus then follows its route stopping everywhere it has to stop.
My wife doesn't drive, she used to take two buses to get to work which took at least an hour, nearly an hour and a half sometimes one way. It took me 15 minutes to drive it, or 30 minutes return to go pick her up and drive her home.
Good luck finding a parking place at B unless your destination is a supermarket, or you are MD of the company.
I always find a parking place at B. 🤷♂️
Try leaving your bubble from time to time. Saying "oh but what about parking" to someone who drives everywhere and always finds parking, isn't much a problem.
You drive everywhere and always finds parking, in English towns, without a blue badge and without privileged access to private spaces?
I don't want to call you a liar, but happy to call you an outlier. 5 sigma.
Your kidding, right? The rest of the UK is not RBKC outside Harrods. There is plenty of parking all over the country in towns, villages, cities. Some even - gasp if you can believe this - for free.
Name me a town where you can't park without the criteria you specify.
I drove yesterday into Maltby, which is a "town" by anyone's imagination. Parked up briefly in the Tesco Car Park, bought some swim nappies and onto the leisure centre which had ample parking. Parking for picking up items from Worksop post office is a bit iffy mind; the last time I had to properly PLAN and pay for parking was in Manchester (Obviously a city) last weekend meeting some friends, Lower Chatham St carpark nicely close to the motorway though. Parking in Harworth, Carlton, Langold or Oldcotes tends to be trivial though (All villages) - so I'd say the smaller the locality the easier the parking unless it's a tourist hotspot like York.
I excepted supermarkets, whose USP is extensive free parking. Leisure centres tend to be the same (but it's pay and display in my local town) so that leaves the Post Office, which is a pretty good proxy for all the non-supermarket shops you might otherwise want to visit.
So excluding places you might want to go to, there might be a problem?
Where exactly is this supposed problem of yours? And pay and display parking is still parking, nothing wrong with that. So long as there's ample spaces, its clean, well lit and secure. If you're using a service, there's nothing wrong with paying for it.
Sure, you can classify places like the post office as not "places you might want to go to." I have already pointed you to an ostensibly well-researched article in a respected newspaper identifying numerous market towns where the problem is critical. If your ambition is limited to weekly shops at tesco I appreciate there is less of a problem for you. As far as paying for it is concerned, some people are poor and some people are lazy. i am one of the two.
The argument about transport availability & cost highlights both the huge variances in availability and the huge gulf in understanding.
For your outer London resident there are riches in public transport options which are largely paid for out of general taxation. For your cundry bumpkins there is often a complete absence of public transport options despite paying general taxation.
For suburbanites it is optimal to encourage more public transport and less driving. For country folk the choice is driving or not going.*
Road pricing gets talked about as a replacement for fuel duty. And gets shouted at as being patently unfair. Which is probably true the way that shitbox UK would implement it. What we need is subsidised fuel for the countryside and heavier taxes in towns. ULEZ and similar is the right policy, just being implemented poorly.
* Before anyone says "what about walking or cycling", what about them? Too many roads between villages would be lethal to walk / cycle down, and thats before we ask about fitness / safety issues.
Agree. On your *, I agree that investment in walking and cycling, or even public transport, between villages isn't worth it.
But 83% of us live in urban areas, so investment in active and public transport makes sense for most.
Urban areas = towns, not cities.
I got a train (first time in about 5 years) recently, to and from the Airport, got the return train journey yesterday. To get to the train station took a car [in this case taxi] ride.
You seem to view the country as either Edinburgh or Sticksville. Reality is somewhat different.
I grew up in a town in rural Scotland. It had a train station. The main problem is you couldn't walk or cycle to it. Sounds like your problem too.
Even public transport in towns is designed for drivers.
Because cars work.
Towns require cars. The alternative to cars is taxis or buses. And that's the bulk of your 83%
You simply can't get your head around supply/demand, can you?
The only reason Edinburgh has lots of bus users is because there are lots of buses.
The reason Edinburgh has lots of bus users, is its a city. Its not a town, what part of this are you failing to understand?
Nothing wrong with buses existing, but buses in towns are a crappy mode of transportation that only those who can't afford their own car (or can't drive as they lack a licence) would use.
The thing with a car is if you want to get from A to B you drive there and are done.
With buses you are stuck with the bus routes, and in most towns the bus routes don't go between A and B if you aren't trying to get to the town centre. Get a bus into the bus depot in town, then another bus from the depot out of town to your destination. And of course that relies upon the bus turning up, and the bus then follows its route stopping everywhere it has to stop.
My wife doesn't drive, she used to take two buses to get to work which took at least an hour, nearly an hour and a half sometimes one way. It took me 15 minutes to drive it, or 30 minutes return to go pick her up and drive her home.
But Edinburgh didn't have many bus users either till they reduced the number of lanes available for cars and allocated them to buses.
Honestly, it just sounds like you have rubbish public transport and active travel provision.
Let's fix that
Your stats don't show that, instead you have once again got a very dodgy graphic whose figures don't start at zero on one axis.
Edinburgh did have lots of bus users, over 75k of them, in the mid-90s according to that graphic. Not that you'd realise it if you just looked at the chart rather than reading the numbers.
Going from 5k bus lanes to 60k didn't lead to an 12-fold increase in bus traffic. Instead bus traffic hasn't even doubled in that time. Its gone up by about 50%, which is pathetically low all things considered.
Not to forget that bus traffic increased nationwide due to factors like free bus travel introduction that had absolutely nothing to do with bus lanes either.
I found it *much* easier to commute by bus when they brought in bus lanes, believe me.
Car ownership has been growing, too, and - just as important - cars have been growing bigger. The Morningside MRAP is a thing, using its 4x4 capability to do nothing more than go up the slope from the Canny Man.
Given how many people go on the bus in Edinburgh city centre, that is a *huge* number of people who don't need to drive around and - jusat as importantly in Edinburgh - park.
And that's the bit that some overlook.
The places where it's hard/expensive to park (London, obvs, Bath- I bet that Topping's list was a small number of spaces that are always full, Cambridge is similar) are the sort of places that people want to go. Partly for middle-class niceness, sure. But also because they are full of businesses making a good living by serving people's needs. And that's a better, more profitable, use of land than placing cars on it.
In theory, you could get the same effect by rebuilding cities with everything a bit further apart, so that there is more space for cars. But apart from the intrinsic absurdity of that written down, it doesn't seem to work like that in practice. The economic magic happens when people and businesses are close together.
You want your town/city to be more productive? You probably need it to be denser- needn't be Hong Kong, four storey grand terraces and garden squares will be fine. But you can't do that and have ample road and parking space.
Of course you can. People do it all over the planet.
Basement parking for customers or employees underneath a business eliminates all the requirements for either on road parking or having more space too.
People in different countries use land differently. It's amusing to me how we only ever seem to build up, very rarely down. In Canada every home has a basement that is a whole story as big as the rest of the house, (not for parking), but having one in this country despite people complaining about a lack of space seems exceptionally rare.
This summer is the first time I’ve felt that London is SERIOUSLY recovering from the twin blows of Covid and Brexit
It might partly be because I’ve travelled so much - and I’ve seen how fucked everywhere else is
Nonetheless my usual “London is back” cheerleading has a bit more conviction about it, than normal
Off out in London tomorrow evening; will report back. I'm still sceptical of "London Is Back" though I v much want it to be.
It’s almost pure anecdata and basically intuitive; you might well conclude I’m deluded
Tho there are some genuine fact-based straws in the wind. International Tourism is back big time (it’s back almost everywhere in Europe). That’s great for the West End obvs
Also the hideous candy shops are being closed down: as a matter of policy. That shows confidence. People are less desperate for rent-payers to fill retail
Finally there’s the matter of comparisons. In an age of great uncertainty, London projects stability. Which feels quite precious now. eg You’re not going to boil to death nor freeze to bits (you might commit suicide because drizzle but hey).
London’s politics is reassuringly centrist. As the EU swings hard right, British politics becomes more moderate. We’ve had our populist moment. Meanwhile London avoids the scourges that afflict American cities: we have almost none of the homeless opioid awfulness, crime is much lower, even the race debate is far less venomous, etc
If you want to live in an English-speaking world city in a stable country, with world class culture, food, history - with access to the nicer bits of Europe but far away from wars and deadly heatwaves and migration waves - London is your only choice
I’m genuinely optimistic
There are only three English-speaking world cities. The other two are Singapore and New York, which are nowhere near Europe.
There are more than three in England alone. Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham and more.
Not to forget that English is spoken in Amsterdam, Lisbon, Frankfurt, Stockholm ... and even in Paris.
True but if you are very qualified and an English speaker and a high earner and have your pick of global cities it is likely to be between London, NYC, LA or San Francisco or Singapore as to where you go (maybe Paris if you speak French).
Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham are all interesting significant British cities but they are not top tier world cities
Something that the statistics show is very clearly not the case.
Thousands of people from all over the world, qualified, English speakers and yes high earners too, can and do go to each of those cities.
No one who can afford to live in London voluntarily chooses Birmingham or Manchester. That’s laughable
Why would you do such an insane thing?
Some voluntarily go to Bristol, Brighton or Edinburgh of course, for lifestyle reasons. Others voluntarily go to Amsterdam or Geneva or Dublin for work. But world city wise if you want to be in Europe and an English speaking city then London is indeed the only real choice, in the same way Singapore is now the only choice in Asia after the CCP strangled Hong Kong.
This is part of the problem for levelling up though. London has many geo-economic advantages. RUK does not.
But also Britain is such a small place that you can live in or near a regional city and pretend you're living just outside London because distances are so small compared to most other countries.
I think that works for British natives, but not international ex-pats. They want to be in London not the home counties or somewhere like Warwickshire. In fact they don't generally even want to be in outer London, but proper city London. In my work most of the Brits live in the burbs whilst most of the ex-pats (who are well above 50% in the group I work in) live in small flats in inner London. Same phenomenon as Brits wanting to live in Manhattan when they relocate to New York.
The argument about transport availability & cost highlights both the huge variances in availability and the huge gulf in understanding.
For your outer London resident there are riches in public transport options which are largely paid for out of general taxation. For your cundry bumpkins there is often a complete absence of public transport options despite paying general taxation.
For suburbanites it is optimal to encourage more public transport and less driving. For country folk the choice is driving or not going.*
Road pricing gets talked about as a replacement for fuel duty. And gets shouted at as being patently unfair. Which is probably true the way that shitbox UK would implement it. What we need is subsidised fuel for the countryside and heavier taxes in towns. ULEZ and similar is the right policy, just being implemented poorly.
* Before anyone says "what about walking or cycling", what about them? Too many roads between villages would be lethal to walk / cycle down, and thats before we ask about fitness / safety issues.
Agree. On your *, I agree that investment in walking and cycling, or even public transport, between villages isn't worth it.
But 83% of us live in urban areas, so investment in active and public transport makes sense for most.
Urban areas = towns, not cities.
I got a train (first time in about 5 years) recently, to and from the Airport, got the return train journey yesterday. To get to the train station took a car [in this case taxi] ride.
You seem to view the country as either Edinburgh or Sticksville. Reality is somewhat different.
I grew up in a town in rural Scotland. It had a train station. The main problem is you couldn't walk or cycle to it. Sounds like your problem too.
Even public transport in towns is designed for drivers.
Because cars work.
Towns require cars. The alternative to cars is taxis or buses. And that's the bulk of your 83%
You simply can't get your head around supply/demand, can you?
The only reason Edinburgh has lots of bus users is because there are lots of buses.
The reason Edinburgh has lots of bus users, is its a city. Its not a town, what part of this are you failing to understand?
Nothing wrong with buses existing, but buses in towns are a crappy mode of transportation that only those who can't afford their own car (or can't drive as they lack a licence) would use.
The thing with a car is if you want to get from A to B you drive there and are done.
With buses you are stuck with the bus routes, and in most towns the bus routes don't go between A and B if you aren't trying to get to the town centre. Get a bus into the bus depot in town, then another bus from the depot out of town to your destination. And of course that relies upon the bus turning up, and the bus then follows its route stopping everywhere it has to stop.
My wife doesn't drive, she used to take two buses to get to work which took at least an hour, nearly an hour and a half sometimes one way. It took me 15 minutes to drive it, or 30 minutes return to go pick her up and drive her home.
Good luck finding a parking place at B unless your destination is a supermarket, or you are MD of the company.
I always find a parking place at B. 🤷♂️
Try leaving your bubble from time to time. Saying "oh but what about parking" to someone who drives everywhere and always finds parking, isn't much a problem.
You drive everywhere and always finds parking, in English towns, without a blue badge and without privileged access to private spaces?
I don't want to call you a liar, but happy to call you an outlier. 5 sigma.
Your kidding, right? The rest of the UK is not RBKC outside Harrods. There is plenty of parking all over the country in towns, villages, cities. Some even - gasp if you can believe this - for free.
Name me a town where you can't park without the criteria you specify.
I drove yesterday into Maltby, which is a "town" by anyone's imagination. Parked up briefly in the Tesco Car Park, bought some swim nappies and onto the leisure centre which had ample parking. Parking for picking up items from Worksop post office is a bit iffy mind; the last time I had to properly PLAN and pay for parking was in Manchester (Obviously a city) last weekend meeting some friends, Lower Chatham St carpark nicely close to the motorway though. Parking in Harworth, Carlton, Langold or Oldcotes tends to be trivial though (All villages) - so I'd say the smaller the locality the easier the parking unless it's a tourist hotspot like York.
I excepted supermarkets, whose USP is extensive free parking. Leisure centres tend to be the same (but it's pay and display in my local town) so that leaves the Post Office, which is a pretty good proxy for all the non-supermarket shops you might otherwise want to visit.
So excluding places you might want to go to, there might be a problem?
Where exactly is this supposed problem of yours? And pay and display parking is still parking, nothing wrong with that. So long as there's ample spaces, its clean, well lit and secure. If you're using a service, there's nothing wrong with paying for it.
Sure, you can classify places like the post office as not "places you might want to go to." I have already pointed you to an ostensibly well-researched article in a respected newspaper identifying numerous market towns where the problem is critical. If your ambition is limited to weekly shops at tesco I appreciate there is less of a problem for you. As far as paying for it is concerned, some people are poor and some people are lazy. i am one of the two.
You shared a clickbait article about what clearly aren't typical towns actually. And I'm sceptical how much credit to give to such clickbait anyway.
My local Post Office is in a local community centre which has a car park. The Post Office where I used to live was in a shop, with a car park. Any Post Office I've ever been to has parking, either it's own, or on the road.
And the emptiest car park I ever go to is the main Post Office depot nearby, if I need to collect a "you were out" parcel. Their car park is unnecessarily big, but it's their land so up to them what they do with it.
Never been to a Post Office you can't park at. Not sure why any town would ever have one, what would be the point of it?
The argument about transport availability & cost highlights both the huge variances in availability and the huge gulf in understanding.
For your outer London resident there are riches in public transport options which are largely paid for out of general taxation. For your cundry bumpkins there is often a complete absence of public transport options despite paying general taxation.
For suburbanites it is optimal to encourage more public transport and less driving. For country folk the choice is driving or not going.*
Road pricing gets talked about as a replacement for fuel duty. And gets shouted at as being patently unfair. Which is probably true the way that shitbox UK would implement it. What we need is subsidised fuel for the countryside and heavier taxes in towns. ULEZ and similar is the right policy, just being implemented poorly.
* Before anyone says "what about walking or cycling", what about them? Too many roads between villages would be lethal to walk / cycle down, and thats before we ask about fitness / safety issues.
Agree. On your *, I agree that investment in walking and cycling, or even public transport, between villages isn't worth it.
But 83% of us live in urban areas, so investment in active and public transport makes sense for most.
Urban areas = towns, not cities.
I got a train (first time in about 5 years) recently, to and from the Airport, got the return train journey yesterday. To get to the train station took a car [in this case taxi] ride.
You seem to view the country as either Edinburgh or Sticksville. Reality is somewhat different.
I grew up in a town in rural Scotland. It had a train station. The main problem is you couldn't walk or cycle to it. Sounds like your problem too.
Even public transport in towns is designed for drivers.
Because cars work.
Towns require cars. The alternative to cars is taxis or buses. And that's the bulk of your 83%
You simply can't get your head around supply/demand, can you?
The only reason Edinburgh has lots of bus users is because there are lots of buses.
The reason Edinburgh has lots of bus users, is its a city. Its not a town, what part of this are you failing to understand?
Nothing wrong with buses existing, but buses in towns are a crappy mode of transportation that only those who can't afford their own car (or can't drive as they lack a licence) would use.
The thing with a car is if you want to get from A to B you drive there and are done.
With buses you are stuck with the bus routes, and in most towns the bus routes don't go between A and B if you aren't trying to get to the town centre. Get a bus into the bus depot in town, then another bus from the depot out of town to your destination. And of course that relies upon the bus turning up, and the bus then follows its route stopping everywhere it has to stop.
My wife doesn't drive, she used to take two buses to get to work which took at least an hour, nearly an hour and a half sometimes one way. It took me 15 minutes to drive it, or 30 minutes return to go pick her up and drive her home.
But Edinburgh didn't have many bus users either till they reduced the number of lanes available for cars and allocated them to buses.
Honestly, it just sounds like you have rubbish public transport and active travel provision.
Let's fix that
Your stats don't show that, instead you have once again got a very dodgy graphic whose figures don't start at zero on one axis.
Edinburgh did have lots of bus users, over 75k of them, in the mid-90s according to that graphic. Not that you'd realise it if you just looked at the chart rather than reading the numbers.
Going from 5k bus lanes to 60k didn't lead to an 12-fold increase in bus traffic. Instead bus traffic hasn't even doubled in that time. Its gone up by about 50%, which is pathetically low all things considered.
Not to forget that bus traffic increased nationwide due to factors like free bus travel introduction that had absolutely nothing to do with bus lanes either.
I found it *much* easier to commute by bus when they brought in bus lanes, believe me.
Car ownership has been growing, too, and - just as important - cars have been growing bigger. The Morningside MRAP is a thing, using its 4x4 capability to do nothing more than go up the slope from the Canny Man.
Given how many people go on the bus in Edinburgh city centre, that is a *huge* number of people who don't need to drive around and - jusat as importantly in Edinburgh - park.
And that's the bit that some overlook.
The places where it's hard/expensive to park (London, obvs, Bath- I bet that Topping's list was a small number of spaces that are always full, Cambridge is similar) are the sort of places that people want to go. Partly for middle-class niceness, sure. But also because they are full of businesses making a good living by serving people's needs. And that's a better, more profitable, use of land than placing cars on it.
In theory, you could get the same effect by rebuilding cities with everything a bit further apart, so that there is more space for cars. But apart from the intrinsic absurdity of that written down, it doesn't seem to work like that in practice. The economic magic happens when people and businesses are close together.
You want your town/city to be more productive? You probably need it to be denser- needn't be Hong Kong, four storey grand terraces and garden squares will be fine. But you can't do that and have ample road and parking space.
Of course you can. People do it all over the planet.
Basement parking for customers or employees underneath a business eliminates all the requirements for either on road parking or having more space too.
People in different countries use land differently. It's amusing to me how we only ever seem to build up, very rarely down. In Canada every home has a basement that is a whole story as big as the rest of the house, (not for parking), but having one in this country despite people complaining about a lack of space seems exceptionally rare.
You'd like one bus to be replaced by about half a mile of road/time pathing and parking space for about 75 cars?
Presumably you think that the Luftwaffe didn't do a good enough job.
PB topics are like spinning plates or juggling balls. We generally seem to be able to maintain 2 or 3 at a time no problem. More than that and things start falling. At the moment we only have two: the hierarchy of world cities, and parking problems in British towns.
I think I can safely reintroduce a third which is the British weather. I mentioned that from this week the Atlantic pattern is looking like it wants to settle down - you get that sense of a personality change in the models even if it's intermittent. The jet is stalling and the isobars widening. But now it is just starting to look as if it really would quite like to give us a proper heatwave in the final third of the month. 3 GFS runs in a row now ending with heatwave conditions, and the latest has 44C in the Loire Valley by the end.
Not saying it's going to happen, but I am sensing some *intention* on the part of the weather. This morning's earlier ensembles from the GFS and ECMWF models had 8 and 9 members hitting upper air values consistent with mid-30s in London. That's around a 33% and 20% chance respectively. One to watch.
I really don't see why the car vs public transport debate generates so much heat. It seems obvious that public transport is more suited to dense urban areas - such as Edinburgh, where I once lived, which has a population of ~520,000 in the city council area over 264 square kilometres - and the car is more suited to sparsely populated rural areas - such as West Cork where I now live, where the whole of County Cork has a population slightly larger than Edinburgh's (~580,000), although about half of those are in Cork city, and the whole county has an area of 7,500 square kilometres, such that the population density in rural West Cork is somewhere between one and two orders of magnitude lower than in Edinburgh, possibly lower.
It should be obvious that if the population density is below 100/km2 then the car will be dominant, and above 1,000/km2 that reliance on cars will cause gridlock and public transport is more suited.
In between that it gets a bit more messy, and obviously people cross the boundaries between one area into another, but I think those thresholds would actually cover most of the land area of Britain and most of the population.
The argument about transport availability & cost highlights both the huge variances in availability and the huge gulf in understanding.
For your outer London resident there are riches in public transport options which are largely paid for out of general taxation. For your cundry bumpkins there is often a complete absence of public transport options despite paying general taxation.
For suburbanites it is optimal to encourage more public transport and less driving. For country folk the choice is driving or not going.*
Road pricing gets talked about as a replacement for fuel duty. And gets shouted at as being patently unfair. Which is probably true the way that shitbox UK would implement it. What we need is subsidised fuel for the countryside and heavier taxes in towns. ULEZ and similar is the right policy, just being implemented poorly.
* Before anyone says "what about walking or cycling", what about them? Too many roads between villages would be lethal to walk / cycle down, and thats before we ask about fitness / safety issues.
Agree. On your *, I agree that investment in walking and cycling, or even public transport, between villages isn't worth it.
But 83% of us live in urban areas, so investment in active and public transport makes sense for most.
Urban areas = towns, not cities.
I got a train (first time in about 5 years) recently, to and from the Airport, got the return train journey yesterday. To get to the train station took a car [in this case taxi] ride.
You seem to view the country as either Edinburgh or Sticksville. Reality is somewhat different.
I grew up in a town in rural Scotland. It had a train station. The main problem is you couldn't walk or cycle to it. Sounds like your problem too.
Even public transport in towns is designed for drivers.
Because cars work.
Towns require cars. The alternative to cars is taxis or buses. And that's the bulk of your 83%
You simply can't get your head around supply/demand, can you?
The only reason Edinburgh has lots of bus users is because there are lots of buses.
The reason Edinburgh has lots of bus users, is its a city. Its not a town, what part of this are you failing to understand?
Nothing wrong with buses existing, but buses in towns are a crappy mode of transportation that only those who can't afford their own car (or can't drive as they lack a licence) would use.
The thing with a car is if you want to get from A to B you drive there and are done.
With buses you are stuck with the bus routes, and in most towns the bus routes don't go between A and B if you aren't trying to get to the town centre. Get a bus into the bus depot in town, then another bus from the depot out of town to your destination. And of course that relies upon the bus turning up, and the bus then follows its route stopping everywhere it has to stop.
My wife doesn't drive, she used to take two buses to get to work which took at least an hour, nearly an hour and a half sometimes one way. It took me 15 minutes to drive it, or 30 minutes return to go pick her up and drive her home.
But Edinburgh didn't have many bus users either till they reduced the number of lanes available for cars and allocated them to buses.
Honestly, it just sounds like you have rubbish public transport and active travel provision.
Let's fix that
Your stats don't show that, instead you have once again got a very dodgy graphic whose figures don't start at zero on one axis.
Edinburgh did have lots of bus users, over 75k of them, in the mid-90s according to that graphic. Not that you'd realise it if you just looked at the chart rather than reading the numbers.
Going from 5k bus lanes to 60k didn't lead to an 12-fold increase in bus traffic. Instead bus traffic hasn't even doubled in that time. Its gone up by about 50%, which is pathetically low all things considered.
Not to forget that bus traffic increased nationwide due to factors like free bus travel introduction that had absolutely nothing to do with bus lanes either.
I found it *much* easier to commute by bus when they brought in bus lanes, believe me.
Car ownership has been growing, too, and - just as important - cars have been growing bigger. The Morningside MRAP is a thing, using its 4x4 capability to do nothing more than go up the slope from the Canny Man.
Given how many people go on the bus in Edinburgh city centre, that is a *huge* number of people who don't need to drive around and - jusat as importantly in Edinburgh - park.
And that's the bit that some overlook.
The places where it's hard/expensive to park (London, obvs, Bath- I bet that Topping's list was a small number of spaces that are always full, Cambridge is similar) are the sort of places that people want to go. Partly for middle-class niceness, sure. But also because they are full of businesses making a good living by serving people's needs. And that's a better, more profitable, use of land than placing cars on it.
In theory, you could get the same effect by rebuilding cities with everything a bit further apart, so that there is more space for cars. But apart from the intrinsic absurdity of that written down, it doesn't seem to work like that in practice. The economic magic happens when people and businesses are close together.
You want your town/city to be more productive? You probably need it to be denser- needn't be Hong Kong, four storey grand terraces and garden squares will be fine. But you can't do that and have ample road and parking space.
Of course you can. People do it all over the planet.
Basement parking for customers or employees underneath a business eliminates all the requirements for either on road parking or having more space too.
People in different countries use land differently. It's amusing to me how we only ever seem to build up, very rarely down. In Canada every home has a basement that is a whole story as big as the rest of the house, (not for parking), but having one in this country despite people complaining about a lack of space seems exceptionally rare.
Except in Victorian suburbs where the sunken lower-ground floor is common with steps up to the main entrance on the hall floor. Our kitchen is in the basement of our house.
The argument about transport availability & cost highlights both the huge variances in availability and the huge gulf in understanding.
For your outer London resident there are riches in public transport options which are largely paid for out of general taxation. For your cundry bumpkins there is often a complete absence of public transport options despite paying general taxation.
For suburbanites it is optimal to encourage more public transport and less driving. For country folk the choice is driving or not going.*
Road pricing gets talked about as a replacement for fuel duty. And gets shouted at as being patently unfair. Which is probably true the way that shitbox UK would implement it. What we need is subsidised fuel for the countryside and heavier taxes in towns. ULEZ and similar is the right policy, just being implemented poorly.
* Before anyone says "what about walking or cycling", what about them? Too many roads between villages would be lethal to walk / cycle down, and thats before we ask about fitness / safety issues.
Agree. On your *, I agree that investment in walking and cycling, or even public transport, between villages isn't worth it.
But 83% of us live in urban areas, so investment in active and public transport makes sense for most.
Urban areas = towns, not cities.
I got a train (first time in about 5 years) recently, to and from the Airport, got the return train journey yesterday. To get to the train station took a car [in this case taxi] ride.
You seem to view the country as either Edinburgh or Sticksville. Reality is somewhat different.
I grew up in a town in rural Scotland. It had a train station. The main problem is you couldn't walk or cycle to it. Sounds like your problem too.
Even public transport in towns is designed for drivers.
Because cars work.
Towns require cars. The alternative to cars is taxis or buses. And that's the bulk of your 83%
You simply can't get your head around supply/demand, can you?
The only reason Edinburgh has lots of bus users is because there are lots of buses.
The reason Edinburgh has lots of bus users, is its a city. Its not a town, what part of this are you failing to understand?
Nothing wrong with buses existing, but buses in towns are a crappy mode of transportation that only those who can't afford their own car (or can't drive as they lack a licence) would use.
The thing with a car is if you want to get from A to B you drive there and are done.
With buses you are stuck with the bus routes, and in most towns the bus routes don't go between A and B if you aren't trying to get to the town centre. Get a bus into the bus depot in town, then another bus from the depot out of town to your destination. And of course that relies upon the bus turning up, and the bus then follows its route stopping everywhere it has to stop.
My wife doesn't drive, she used to take two buses to get to work which took at least an hour, nearly an hour and a half sometimes one way. It took me 15 minutes to drive it, or 30 minutes return to go pick her up and drive her home.
But Edinburgh didn't have many bus users either till they reduced the number of lanes available for cars and allocated them to buses.
Honestly, it just sounds like you have rubbish public transport and active travel provision.
Let's fix that
Your stats don't show that, instead you have once again got a very dodgy graphic whose figures don't start at zero on one axis.
Edinburgh did have lots of bus users, over 75k of them, in the mid-90s according to that graphic. Not that you'd realise it if you just looked at the chart rather than reading the numbers.
Going from 5k bus lanes to 60k didn't lead to an 12-fold increase in bus traffic. Instead bus traffic hasn't even doubled in that time. Its gone up by about 50%, which is pathetically low all things considered.
Not to forget that bus traffic increased nationwide due to factors like free bus travel introduction that had absolutely nothing to do with bus lanes either.
I found it *much* easier to commute by bus when they brought in bus lanes, believe me.
Car ownership has been growing, too, and - just as important - cars have been growing bigger. The Morningside MRAP is a thing, using its 4x4 capability to do nothing more than go up the slope from the Canny Man.
Given how many people go on the bus in Edinburgh city centre, that is a *huge* number of people who don't need to drive around and - jusat as importantly in Edinburgh - park.
And that's the bit that some overlook.
The places where it's hard/expensive to park (London, obvs, Bath- I bet that Topping's list was a small number of spaces that are always full, Cambridge is similar) are the sort of places that people want to go. Partly for middle-class niceness, sure. But also because they are full of businesses making a good living by serving people's needs. And that's a better, more profitable, use of land than placing cars on it.
In theory, you could get the same effect by rebuilding cities with everything a bit further apart, so that there is more space for cars. But apart from the intrinsic absurdity of that written down, it doesn't seem to work like that in practice. The economic magic happens when people and businesses are close together.
You want your town/city to be more productive? You probably need it to be denser- needn't be Hong Kong, four storey grand terraces and garden squares will be fine. But you can't do that and have ample road and parking space.
Of course you can. People do it all over the planet.
Basement parking for customers or employees underneath a business eliminates all the requirements for either on road parking or having more space too.
People in different countries use land differently. It's amusing to me how we only ever seem to build up, very rarely down. In Canada every home has a basement that is a whole story as big as the rest of the house, (not for parking), but having one in this country despite people complaining about a lack of space seems exceptionally rare.
Except in Victorian suburbs where the sunken lower-ground floor is common with steps up to the main entrance on the hall floor. Our kitchen is in the basement of our house.
Inner cities, too. C18 and C19 houses in Edinburgh often have that.
The argument about transport availability & cost highlights both the huge variances in availability and the huge gulf in understanding.
For your outer London resident there are riches in public transport options which are largely paid for out of general taxation. For your cundry bumpkins there is often a complete absence of public transport options despite paying general taxation.
For suburbanites it is optimal to encourage more public transport and less driving. For country folk the choice is driving or not going.*
Road pricing gets talked about as a replacement for fuel duty. And gets shouted at as being patently unfair. Which is probably true the way that shitbox UK would implement it. What we need is subsidised fuel for the countryside and heavier taxes in towns. ULEZ and similar is the right policy, just being implemented poorly.
* Before anyone says "what about walking or cycling", what about them? Too many roads between villages would be lethal to walk / cycle down, and thats before we ask about fitness / safety issues.
Agree. On your *, I agree that investment in walking and cycling, or even public transport, between villages isn't worth it.
But 83% of us live in urban areas, so investment in active and public transport makes sense for most.
Urban areas = towns, not cities.
I got a train (first time in about 5 years) recently, to and from the Airport, got the return train journey yesterday. To get to the train station took a car [in this case taxi] ride.
You seem to view the country as either Edinburgh or Sticksville. Reality is somewhat different.
I grew up in a town in rural Scotland. It had a train station. The main problem is you couldn't walk or cycle to it. Sounds like your problem too.
Even public transport in towns is designed for drivers.
Because cars work.
Towns require cars. The alternative to cars is taxis or buses. And that's the bulk of your 83%
You simply can't get your head around supply/demand, can you?
The only reason Edinburgh has lots of bus users is because there are lots of buses.
The reason Edinburgh has lots of bus users, is its a city. Its not a town, what part of this are you failing to understand?
Nothing wrong with buses existing, but buses in towns are a crappy mode of transportation that only those who can't afford their own car (or can't drive as they lack a licence) would use.
The thing with a car is if you want to get from A to B you drive there and are done.
With buses you are stuck with the bus routes, and in most towns the bus routes don't go between A and B if you aren't trying to get to the town centre. Get a bus into the bus depot in town, then another bus from the depot out of town to your destination. And of course that relies upon the bus turning up, and the bus then follows its route stopping everywhere it has to stop.
My wife doesn't drive, she used to take two buses to get to work which took at least an hour, nearly an hour and a half sometimes one way. It took me 15 minutes to drive it, or 30 minutes return to go pick her up and drive her home.
But Edinburgh didn't have many bus users either till they reduced the number of lanes available for cars and allocated them to buses.
Honestly, it just sounds like you have rubbish public transport and active travel provision.
Let's fix that
Your stats don't show that, instead you have once again got a very dodgy graphic whose figures don't start at zero on one axis.
Edinburgh did have lots of bus users, over 75k of them, in the mid-90s according to that graphic. Not that you'd realise it if you just looked at the chart rather than reading the numbers.
Going from 5k bus lanes to 60k didn't lead to an 12-fold increase in bus traffic. Instead bus traffic hasn't even doubled in that time. Its gone up by about 50%, which is pathetically low all things considered.
Not to forget that bus traffic increased nationwide due to factors like free bus travel introduction that had absolutely nothing to do with bus lanes either.
I found it *much* easier to commute by bus when they brought in bus lanes, believe me.
Car ownership has been growing, too, and - just as important - cars have been growing bigger. The Morningside MRAP is a thing, using its 4x4 capability to do nothing more than go up the slope from the Canny Man.
Given how many people go on the bus in Edinburgh city centre, that is a *huge* number of people who don't need to drive around and - jusat as importantly in Edinburgh - park.
And that's the bit that some overlook.
The places where it's hard/expensive to park (London, obvs, Bath- I bet that Topping's list was a small number of spaces that are always full, Cambridge is similar) are the sort of places that people want to go. Partly for middle-class niceness, sure. But also because they are full of businesses making a good living by serving people's needs. And that's a better, more profitable, use of land than placing cars on it.
In theory, you could get the same effect by rebuilding cities with everything a bit further apart, so that there is more space for cars. But apart from the intrinsic absurdity of that written down, it doesn't seem to work like that in practice. The economic magic happens when people and businesses are close together.
You want your town/city to be more productive? You probably need it to be denser- needn't be Hong Kong, four storey grand terraces and garden squares will be fine. But you can't do that and have ample road and parking space.
Of course you can. People do it all over the planet.
Basement parking for customers or employees underneath a business eliminates all the requirements for either on road parking or having more space too.
People in different countries use land differently. It's amusing to me how we only ever seem to build up, very rarely down. In Canada every home has a basement that is a whole story as big as the rest of the house, (not for parking), but having one in this country despite people complaining about a lack of space seems exceptionally rare.
You'd like one bus to be replaced by about half a mile of road/time pathing and parking space for about 75 cars?
Presumably you think that the Luftwaffe didn't do a good enough job.
What are you talking about?
I have no problems with buses.
And no I'm not suggesting using space for parking.
I was suggesting an alternative to parking spaces. Underground parking means no space at all is used for parking. It's a shame it's so rare in this country, it's something we could learn from elsewhere on.
What did the CCP really gain from throttling Hong Kong?
They had a magnificent, thriving, near World City in their control and on their doorstep. A glittering gateway and a bright advert for China. Now it plunges down the rankings, it may never recover
I guess they set an example and scared Taiwan. But jeez
Holding power matters far more than keeping a territory successful, to the leaders of the CCP.
You could place these people in charge of Switzerland, and they'd turn it into a cesspit, so long as they profited personally.
Also, that the CCP were being entirely disingenuous when they signed the Sino-British Agreement in 1984. They only ever intended to follow it for so long as the realpolitik meant it was in their interests to do so, and no further.
While we're on about colonial exploitation, it occurs to me that Prigozhin and his Wagner group are the modern analogue of Cecil Rhodes and the British South Africa Company...
What slightly puzzles me about Sunak´s attack on the long standing consensus that significantly restrictive green policies are necessary, is the very poor politics of his position.
The fact is that there is a major strand of Tory support that firmly supports the principle of acting on climate change, even if they are not settled on policy details. These are core supporters of the Party, not strictly the "old maids bicycling to Communion" but certainly socially active Tories; the kind who staff Citizens Advice Bureaux, serve as local councilors or as in some other local capacity such as school governors charities or even magistrates. Many view with concern the financial position of their children or grandchildren but are equivocal about the inheritance tax situation. They raise money for local hospitals, they see the daily pressure on the NHS is not a myth.
Increasingly they no longer view the Tories as "their party". Strident right wingers they are not, and while their natural moderation made them abhor Corbyn, increasingly they view the Daily Mail, Trumpian style hostility expressed by the likes of Braverman, Patel and even Sunak himself as hostility directed towards them- and as they watch public services dissolve into a shambles, they are increasingly not sitting on the sidelines any more.
Every Liberal Democrat branch in the country can tell you of these former Conservatives now coming out to campaign for the Lib Dems. This abandonment of a major plank of the green agenda will turn this trickle into something a lot bigger. Places like Surrey, Gloucestershire and Aberdeenshire are seeing the Lib Dems not only running things locally, but now looking like making major progress in the national battle too.
This green U-turn by Sunak could be the final mistake that alienates the Shires from the Tories for the last time.
It's a core vote strategy designed to prevent a total Tory wipe out, aimed at winning the next but one or two elections not the next one.
What core vote, if they have alienated the active middle class?
Retired pensioners.
My retired parents love bussing around for free (primarily to wind me up, I think).
A sleight of hand from Labour could be to neutralise this debate by targeting older people with more free bus/train travel (local routes only, perhaps).
Highly progressive too.
Funny definition of progressive you have.
Please explain how it is progressive to be funding travel for the wealthiest generation, who don't need to get to work, while taxing the transportation of those who are getting to work in order to pay their rent and living expenses?
My retired mum has more disposable income than we do (even though we both earn a reasonable living(, and it drives me mad how she gets free or discounted travel all over the shop (not to mention tickets for things and other various OAP perks).
The difficulty is that there is huge chunk of pensioners who would genuinely struggle to survive without them. Just annoys me that there's a load of retired and well-off boomers freeloading on the top.
Poor diddums, probably worships millionaires but hates pensioners being able to go on a bus. Take a look at yourself in a mirror.
Convincing reasons to think reducing SO2 emissions from ships has caused oceanic warming (ie it's not just correlation). Bad news in itself, good news on the broader level that it shows we can geoengineer the climate
I've been thinking about this. The reason we cut SO2 was that it converted into sulphuric acid, H2SO4, in the clouds causing acid rain which had significantly adverse effects on both life in the oceans and forests, reducing their CO2 absorption, increasing global warming. Chris Peckham mentioned this in his Earth series. Large quantities of SO2 meant that 96% of life in the seas died.
Pumping SO2 into the atmosphere for a short term gain will definitely need a lot more thought.
I really don't see why the car vs public transport debate generates so much heat. It seems obvious that public transport is more suited to dense urban areas - such as Edinburgh, where I once lived, which has a population of ~520,000 in the city council area over 264 square kilometres - and the car is more suited to sparsely populated rural areas - such as West Cork where I now live, where the whole of County Cork has a population slightly larger than Edinburgh's (~580,000), although about half of those are in Cork city, and the whole county has an area of 7,500 square kilometres, such that the population density in rural West Cork is somewhere between one and two orders of magnitude lower than in Edinburgh, possibly lower.
It should be obvious that if the population density is below 100/km2 then the car will be dominant, and above 1,000/km2 that reliance on cars will cause gridlock and public transport is more suited.
In between that it gets a bit more messy, and obviously people cross the boundaries between one area into another, but I think those thresholds would actually cover most of the land area of Britain and most of the population.
I think the issue becomes hot because you have one side who advocate for active travel and public transport who refuse point blank to accept that neither are a good replacement for a car in most spaces. I say this as someone who hasnt owned a motor vehicle for 15 odd years though still have a licence and live somewhere that most people would class as a reasonably good bus service which I do use when I have no choice but to leave the house.
Public transport really is crap. For example going to the supermarket for me involves waiting for the bus which only turns up at all about 95% of the time and is pretty much always late by 5 to 10 minutes when it does turn up. That gets me to the town centre in about 30 minutes once it arrives. I then need to get another bus to get to the supermarket which means another wait of upto 40 minutes before another 15 minute journey. It is not unusual for example to leave my house at 10:50 am and finally get to the supermarket around 12:30pm and that costs me 4£.
To get to the supermarket by car on the other hand takes about 5 minutes.
I really don't see why the car vs public transport debate generates so much heat. It seems obvious that public transport is more suited to dense urban areas - such as Edinburgh, where I once lived, which has a population of ~520,000 in the city council area over 264 square kilometres - and the car is more suited to sparsely populated rural areas - such as West Cork where I now live, where the whole of County Cork has a population slightly larger than Edinburgh's (~580,000), although about half of those are in Cork city, and the whole county has an area of 7,500 square kilometres, such that the population density in rural West Cork is somewhere between one and two orders of magnitude lower than in Edinburgh, possibly lower.
It should be obvious that if the population density is below 100/km2 then the car will be dominant, and above 1,000/km2 that reliance on cars will cause gridlock and public transport is more suited.
In between that it gets a bit more messy, and obviously people cross the boundaries between one area into another, but I think those thresholds would actually cover most of the land area of Britain and most of the population.
Those numbers are very low.
Towns will have a population density of hundreds, even a thousand+ people /km^2 without causing gridlock or having public transport being more suitable.
Cities which need public transport are more in the many thousands or over ten thousand people/km^2.
Convincing reasons to think reducing SO2 emissions from ships has caused oceanic warming (ie it's not just correlation). Bad news in itself, good news on the broader level that it shows we can geoengineer the climate
I've been thinking about this. The reason we cut SO2 was that it converted into sulphuric acid, H2SO4, in the clouds causing acid rain which had significantly adverse effects on both life in the oceans and forests, reducing their CO2 absorption, increasing global warming. Chris Peckham mentioned this in his Earth series. Large quantities of SO2 meant that 96% of life in the seas died.
Pumping SO2 into the atmosphere for a short term gain will definitely need a lot more thought.
It appears that they can generate similar clouds by spraying harmless seawater into the air?
Convincing reasons to think reducing SO2 emissions from ships has caused oceanic warming (ie it's not just correlation). Bad news in itself, good news on the broader level that it shows we can geoengineer the climate
I've been thinking about this. The reason we cut SO2 was that it converted into sulphuric acid, H2SO4, in the clouds causing acid rain which had significantly adverse effects on both life in the oceans and forests, reducing their CO2 absorption, increasing global warming. Chris Peckham mentioned this in his Earth series. Large quantities of SO2 meant that 96% of life in the seas died.
Pumping SO2 into the atmosphere for a short term gain will definitely need a lot more thought.
It appears that they can generate similar clouds by spraying harmless seawater into the air?
People have suggested that, it hasn't happened yet and I wouldn't count my chickens.
Doesn't surprise me that you've fallen for it though, since its being shared as a suggestion by those who are opposed to any action on climate change. Same as such other miracle cures you've suggested in the past like spreading gravel will prevent climate change.
Convincing reasons to think reducing SO2 emissions from ships has caused oceanic warming (ie it's not just correlation). Bad news in itself, good news on the broader level that it shows we can geoengineer the climate
I've been thinking about this. The reason we cut SO2 was that it converted into sulphuric acid, H2SO4, in the clouds causing acid rain which had significantly adverse effects on both life in the oceans and forests, reducing their CO2 absorption, increasing global warming. Chris Peckham mentioned this in his Earth series. Large quantities of SO2 meant that 96% of life in the seas died.
Pumping SO2 into the atmosphere for a short term gain will definitely need a lot more thought.
The biggest issue is SO2 has a much much shorter atmospheric lifetime compared to CO2.
Convincing reasons to think reducing SO2 emissions from ships has caused oceanic warming (ie it's not just correlation). Bad news in itself, good news on the broader level that it shows we can geoengineer the climate
I've been thinking about this. The reason we cut SO2 was that it converted into sulphuric acid, H2SO4, in the clouds causing acid rain which had significantly adverse effects on both life in the oceans and forests, reducing their CO2 absorption, increasing global warming. Chris Peckham mentioned this in his Earth series. Large quantities of SO2 meant that 96% of life in the seas died.
Pumping SO2 into the atmosphere for a short term gain will definitely need a lot more thought.
96% of sea life died? That is a mega mass extinction. Now I know that Packham is a twat of the first order (cannot understand why such a dreadful presenter is on TV at all) but I would be surprised if even he suggested that
It's actually quite striking how you can see the towns of West Cork picked out in figure 19 of this constituency profile (PDF), as places with much lower rates of car ownership (less than 78%). Even in West Cork there are lots of people in small towns (~1,500 inhabitants) who don't have a car. I'm sure they would mostly have relations nearby with a car for those occasions when they did need the use of one, but I'm still really quite surprised it is that low in places.
What slightly puzzles me about Sunak´s attack on the long standing consensus that significantly restrictive green policies are necessary, is the very poor politics of his position.
The fact is that there is a major strand of Tory support that firmly supports the principle of acting on climate change, even if they are not settled on policy details. These are core supporters of the Party, not strictly the "old maids bicycling to Communion" but certainly socially active Tories; the kind who staff Citizens Advice Bureaux, serve as local councilors or as in some other local capacity such as school governors charities or even magistrates. Many view with concern the financial position of their children or grandchildren but are equivocal about the inheritance tax situation. They raise money for local hospitals, they see the daily pressure on the NHS is not a myth.
Increasingly they no longer view the Tories as "their party". Strident right wingers they are not, and while their natural moderation made them abhor Corbyn, increasingly they view the Daily Mail, Trumpian style hostility expressed by the likes of Braverman, Patel and even Sunak himself as hostility directed towards them- and as they watch public services dissolve into a shambles, they are increasingly not sitting on the sidelines any more.
Every Liberal Democrat branch in the country can tell you of these former Conservatives now coming out to campaign for the Lib Dems. This abandonment of a major plank of the green agenda will turn this trickle into something a lot bigger. Places like Surrey, Gloucestershire and Aberdeenshire are seeing the Lib Dems not only running things locally, but now looking like making major progress in the national battle too.
This green U-turn by Sunak could be the final mistake that alienates the Shires from the Tories for the last time.
It's a core vote strategy designed to prevent a total Tory wipe out, aimed at winning the next but one or two elections not the next one.
What core vote, if they have alienated the active middle class?
Retired pensioners.
My retired parents love bussing around for free (primarily to wind me up, I think).
A sleight of hand from Labour could be to neutralise this debate by targeting older people with more free bus/train travel (local routes only, perhaps).
Highly progressive too.
Funny definition of progressive you have.
Please explain how it is progressive to be funding travel for the wealthiest generation, who don't need to get to work, while taxing the transportation of those who are getting to work in order to pay their rent and living expenses?
One think we should do, is move the EV subsidies to cheaper cars.
The £50k+ EV market is up and running. Expanding rapidly. They were the subject of subsidies and encouragement when that is all there was.
What we need is sub £30k EVs - move the subsidies there.
In the US, targeting lower sale prices has encouraged the manufacturers to aim for lower and lower prices.
Yes, you can get new ICE family cars for less than £20k but the cheapest new electric family vehicles are around £30k+
There is no need to subsidise new Teslas, that market is up and running. Investing in charging infrastructure for those who can't charge at home, and encouraging affordability will smooth the transition next.
Incidentally I don't know if its just anecdote but I have recently seen more and more cars being advertised at 0% APR offers. Advert on the radio yesterday for Mazda, local Ford retailer has a giant "speak to us about 0% APR" poster outside etc too.
Considering how interest rates have been going up not down, I'm curious what is behind this? Not looked into it, but wonder if the heat that was seen during COVID is going out of the sales market now so they're appealing more to this now?
Car financing is on The List of Bad Things That Will Happen.
The main trick is to add to the price, and pitch a moderate sounding monthly spread over years.
Same as buying a mobile on a monthly contract. You are actually buying a phone on HP at a murderous interest rate, while locking yourself to a provider for a couple of years.
Here we go:
“ Lloyds Banking Group has been accused of unlawfully taking advantage to “overcharge” drivers by hundreds of millions of pounds on car finance, in a landmark class action at the High Court
“Britain’s biggest high street bank, alongside rivals Santander and MotoNovo Finance, is alleged to have charged excessive interest on a million finance deals between 2015 and 2021. The overall value of the High Court claims against the trio is estimated at £1bn.
“Car dealers and credit brokers allegedly sold finance at higher interest rates in return for higher commission from the lenders. The Financial Conduct Authority banned such “discretionary commission” incentives in 2021, after finding that individual buyers were paying up to £1,100 over the odds on a £10,000, four-year finance package.”
Convincing reasons to think reducing SO2 emissions from ships has caused oceanic warming (ie it's not just correlation). Bad news in itself, good news on the broader level that it shows we can geoengineer the climate
I've been thinking about this. The reason we cut SO2 was that it converted into sulphuric acid, H2SO4, in the clouds causing acid rain which had significantly adverse effects on both life in the oceans and forests, reducing their CO2 absorption, increasing global warming. Chris Peckham mentioned this in his Earth series. Large quantities of SO2 meant that 96% of life in the seas died.
Pumping SO2 into the atmosphere for a short term gain will definitely need a lot more thought.
96% of sea life died? That is a mega mass extinction. Now I know that Packham is a twat of the first order (cannot understand why such a dreadful presenter is on TV at all) but I would be surprised if even he suggested that
I'm sceptical on that figure. Only thing I can find like that is in a specific region, for specifically sea-floor living animals, in a mass disaster near Russia that seems to be getting blamed on a pesticide leak.
Convincing reasons to think reducing SO2 emissions from ships has caused oceanic warming (ie it's not just correlation). Bad news in itself, good news on the broader level that it shows we can geoengineer the climate
I've been thinking about this. The reason we cut SO2 was that it converted into sulphuric acid, H2SO4, in the clouds causing acid rain which had significantly adverse effects on both life in the oceans and forests, reducing their CO2 absorption, increasing global warming. Chris Peckham mentioned this in his Earth series. Large quantities of SO2 meant that 96% of life in the seas died.
Pumping SO2 into the atmosphere for a short term gain will definitely need a lot more thought.
96% of sea life died? That is a mega mass extinction. Now I know that Packham is a twat of the first order (cannot understand why such a dreadful presenter is on TV at all) but I would be surprised if even he suggested that
What slightly puzzles me about Sunak´s attack on the long standing consensus that significantly restrictive green policies are necessary, is the very poor politics of his position.
The fact is that there is a major strand of Tory support that firmly supports the principle of acting on climate change, even if they are not settled on policy details. These are core supporters of the Party, not strictly the "old maids bicycling to Communion" but certainly socially active Tories; the kind who staff Citizens Advice Bureaux, serve as local councilors or as in some other local capacity such as school governors charities or even magistrates. Many view with concern the financial position of their children or grandchildren but are equivocal about the inheritance tax situation. They raise money for local hospitals, they see the daily pressure on the NHS is not a myth.
Increasingly they no longer view the Tories as "their party". Strident right wingers they are not, and while their natural moderation made them abhor Corbyn, increasingly they view the Daily Mail, Trumpian style hostility expressed by the likes of Braverman, Patel and even Sunak himself as hostility directed towards them- and as they watch public services dissolve into a shambles, they are increasingly not sitting on the sidelines any more.
Every Liberal Democrat branch in the country can tell you of these former Conservatives now coming out to campaign for the Lib Dems. This abandonment of a major plank of the green agenda will turn this trickle into something a lot bigger. Places like Surrey, Gloucestershire and Aberdeenshire are seeing the Lib Dems not only running things locally, but now looking like making major progress in the national battle too.
This green U-turn by Sunak could be the final mistake that alienates the Shires from the Tories for the last time.
It's a core vote strategy designed to prevent a total Tory wipe out, aimed at winning the next but one or two elections not the next one.
What core vote, if they have alienated the active middle class?
Retired pensioners.
My retired parents love bussing around for free (primarily to wind me up, I think).
A sleight of hand from Labour could be to neutralise this debate by targeting older people with more free bus/train travel (local routes only, perhaps).
Highly progressive too.
Funny definition of progressive you have.
Please explain how it is progressive to be funding travel for the wealthiest generation, who don't need to get to work, while taxing the transportation of those who are getting to work in order to pay their rent and living expenses?
My retired mum has more disposable income than we do (even though we both earn a reasonable living(, and it drives me mad how she gets free or discounted travel all over the shop (not to mention tickets for things and other various OAP perks).
The difficulty is that there is huge chunk of pensioners who would genuinely struggle to survive without them. Just annoys me that there's a load of retired and well-off boomers freeloading on the top.
Poor diddums, probably worships millionaires but hates pensioners being able to go on a bus. Take a look at yourself in a mirror.
lol wtf are you on about
Nobody knows. Best to ignore him. Probably pissed and his long suffering wife has been nagging him about him spending her pension money on booze again.
Convincing reasons to think reducing SO2 emissions from ships has caused oceanic warming (ie it's not just correlation). Bad news in itself, good news on the broader level that it shows we can geoengineer the climate
I've been thinking about this. The reason we cut SO2 was that it converted into sulphuric acid, H2SO4, in the clouds causing acid rain which had significantly adverse effects on both life in the oceans and forests, reducing their CO2 absorption, increasing global warming. Chris Peckham mentioned this in his Earth series. Large quantities of SO2 meant that 96% of life in the seas died.
Pumping SO2 into the atmosphere for a short term gain will definitely need a lot more thought.
96% of sea life died? That is a mega mass extinction. Now I know that Packham is a twat of the first order (cannot understand why such a dreadful presenter is on TV at all) but I would be surprised if even he suggested that
I'm sceptical on that figure. Only thing I can find like that is in a specific region, for specifically sea-floor living animals, in a mass disaster near Russia that seems to be getting blamed on a pesticide leak.
Convincing reasons to think reducing SO2 emissions from ships has caused oceanic warming (ie it's not just correlation). Bad news in itself, good news on the broader level that it shows we can geoengineer the climate
I've been thinking about this. The reason we cut SO2 was that it converted into sulphuric acid, H2SO4, in the clouds causing acid rain which had significantly adverse effects on both life in the oceans and forests, reducing their CO2 absorption, increasing global warming. Chris Peckham mentioned this in his Earth series. Large quantities of SO2 meant that 96% of life in the seas died.
Pumping SO2 into the atmosphere for a short term gain will definitely need a lot more thought.
96% of sea life died? That is a mega mass extinction. Now I know that Packham is a twat of the first order (cannot understand why such a dreadful presenter is on TV at all) but I would be surprised if even he suggested that
Convincing reasons to think reducing SO2 emissions from ships has caused oceanic warming (ie it's not just correlation). Bad news in itself, good news on the broader level that it shows we can geoengineer the climate
I've been thinking about this. The reason we cut SO2 was that it converted into sulphuric acid, H2SO4, in the clouds causing acid rain which had significantly adverse effects on both life in the oceans and forests, reducing their CO2 absorption, increasing global warming. Chris Peckham mentioned this in his Earth series. Large quantities of SO2 meant that 96% of life in the seas died.
Pumping SO2 into the atmosphere for a short term gain will definitely need a lot more thought.
96% of sea life died? That is a mega mass extinction. Now I know that Packham is a twat of the first order (cannot understand why such a dreadful presenter is on TV at all) but I would be surprised if even he suggested that
Convincing reasons to think reducing SO2 emissions from ships has caused oceanic warming (ie it's not just correlation). Bad news in itself, good news on the broader level that it shows we can geoengineer the climate
I've been thinking about this. The reason we cut SO2 was that it converted into sulphuric acid, H2SO4, in the clouds causing acid rain which had significantly adverse effects on both life in the oceans and forests, reducing their CO2 absorption, increasing global warming. Chris Peckham mentioned this in his Earth series. Large quantities of SO2 meant that 96% of life in the seas died.
Pumping SO2 into the atmosphere for a short term gain will definitely need a lot more thought.
96% of sea life died? That is a mega mass extinction. Now I know that Packham is a twat of the first order (cannot understand why such a dreadful presenter is on TV at all) but I would be surprised if even he suggested that
Large amounts of volcanism caused huge increases in both CO2 and SO2 in the atmosphere, the former increasing temperatures and the latter decreasing it but at the cost of acidifying the ocean. I remember from the 1980s the disastrous consequences for Nordic forests of SO2 pollution.
I don't agree about Packham by the way, I thought his series on autism was excellent.
Convincing reasons to think reducing SO2 emissions from ships has caused oceanic warming (ie it's not just correlation). Bad news in itself, good news on the broader level that it shows we can geoengineer the climate
I've been thinking about this. The reason we cut SO2 was that it converted into sulphuric acid, H2SO4, in the clouds causing acid rain which had significantly adverse effects on both life in the oceans and forests, reducing their CO2 absorption, increasing global warming. Chris Peckham mentioned this in his Earth series. Large quantities of SO2 meant that 96% of life in the seas died.
Pumping SO2 into the atmosphere for a short term gain will definitely need a lot more thought.
The biggest issue is SO2 has a much much shorter atmospheric lifetime compared to CO2.
Yes, because it converts into H2SO4 and then falls as rain. It is not as stable as CO2.
The TfL website states: "Petrol cars that meet the ULEZ standards are generally those first registered with the DVLA after 2005, although cars that meet the standards have been available since 2001 Diesel cars that meet the standards are generally those first registered with the DVLA after September 2015." The RAC website states that: "At 8.4 years old (the average age of cars on UK roads is) the highest since records began in 2000, with almost 10 million vehicles from 2008 and earlier still in action. The average car was built in 2011." In the last week I have only seen five cars to which the charge will apply, and two of those were diesel. How on earth have the Conservatives made this such a big issue?
"This policy only targets some people so why is it an issue".
Would you think that if the policy were something like Section 28?
Non-ULEZ compliant car ownership is not a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010.
I can't see any reference to ULEZ in Magna Carta either.
Section 28 didn't violate the Equality Act 2010 either.
I still opposed it [not when introduced, far too young for that, but when I found out about it] and was glad it was repealed.
I oppose picking on minorities not because its against the law, but because its generally the wrong thing to do.
Now saying that you want to do something because its the right thing to do, despite harming a minority, then that is reasonable. Saying that something is right, because it only harms a minority, that is not.
Do you think ULEZ non-compliant car ownership should be a protected characteristic?
No.
Do you think minorities without protected characteristics should be fair game for abuse?
A person driving a 10 year old diesel in London is not a "minority" the way you are trying to position it. The S28 comparison is a long way from sanity.
A person who needs to drive but drives an old vehicle and can't afford to replace their vehicle absolutely is a minority in London.
Taxing them and encouraging a replacement in their vehicle may be the right thing to do, I've said that all along, but simply because they're a minority doesn't make it right. If its right, it'd still be right, even if they were a majority. And if its wrong, its still wrong, even if they're a minority.
You compared diesel drivers to gay people being persecuted by the state. As you say, "its wrong".
There is more cash being made available for transitioning vehicles for the few who are involved. And again again, these cars are wholly unsuitable mechanically for the "daily driver" doing an average short commute in London. Diesels are not designed for repeated short trips - they break.
So a car a decade old or more being driven on trips that will progressively wreck the engine. People will need to change their cars anyway. How did people who can't afford to replace their vehicles do so when they got old and knackered before ULEZ? You talk like this is something new and dangerous.
No I didn't. Improve your reading comprehension.
I compared an attitude displayed by @strawbrick saying essentially "so what, its only a minority affected" with other times minorities have been picked on by the state.
Picking on minorities because they're minorities is not normally reasonable.
If ULEZ is right because its the right thing to do then that is reasonable. If the only defence for it is "it only harms a minority" then that is not a defence. Harming minorities because they're minorities is not OK. Harming them because its the right thing to do is a different matter.
Over time people with old vehicles will replace their vehicles, yes. Which is why targeting new vehicles with higher standards is normally the right thing to do.
However a person who can only afford an old vehicle won't generally replace their old vehicle with a new one. They will typically replace it with another old, just somewhat less-old option as others sell off their vehicle to get a new one.
An 8 year old car in good working order is not something that is broken down and needs replacing yet.
Many policies are going to help some and harm others. Does the number of people helped and the number of people harmed matter?
No, of course not.
How and why people are helped and harmed matters, not the number of people affected.
Indeed most times the state gets involved its by harming more people not very much each, in order to help fewer people more.
Ceteris paribus, taking into account the amount and form of the harm, does the number of people helped and harmed matters? If Policy A will harm 200 people and benefit 2000 people, but Policy B will harm (in the same way) 2000 people and benefit (in the same way) 200 people, then would you agree that Policy A is preferable?
Convincing reasons to think reducing SO2 emissions from ships has caused oceanic warming (ie it's not just correlation). Bad news in itself, good news on the broader level that it shows we can geoengineer the climate
I've been thinking about this. The reason we cut SO2 was that it converted into sulphuric acid, H2SO4, in the clouds causing acid rain which had significantly adverse effects on both life in the oceans and forests, reducing their CO2 absorption, increasing global warming. Chris Peckham mentioned this in his Earth series. Large quantities of SO2 meant that 96% of life in the seas died.
Pumping SO2 into the atmosphere for a short term gain will definitely need a lot more thought.
96% of sea life died? That is a mega mass extinction. Now I know that Packham is a twat of the first order (cannot understand why such a dreadful presenter is on TV at all) but I would be surprised if even he suggested that
Packham is a superb presenter of nature programmes. REALLY knows his shit and transmits his enthusiasm
I find his TwitterX persona quite annoying, but then you simply need to ignore him. Put him on Mute. He never brings the politics to Springwatch (very wisely)
Actions he takes in one case are coming back to haunt him in others. Potential trial schedules are starting to conflict. Even a lawyer representing Trump in one of his criminal indictments could be a witness against him in another.
In some ways, the overlap is inevitable, if only because of the logistical difficulties of litigating so many criminal and civil matters across various jurisdictions. But in other ways, the connections are Trump’s own doing — and could provide advantages to his legal adversaries...
Michael Avenatti (remember him ?) fell foul of a similar, but somewhat less complex legal tangle. His fault, too.
Convincing reasons to think reducing SO2 emissions from ships has caused oceanic warming (ie it's not just correlation). Bad news in itself, good news on the broader level that it shows we can geoengineer the climate
I've been thinking about this. The reason we cut SO2 was that it converted into sulphuric acid, H2SO4, in the clouds causing acid rain which had significantly adverse effects on both life in the oceans and forests, reducing their CO2 absorption, increasing global warming. Chris Peckham mentioned this in his Earth series. Large quantities of SO2 meant that 96% of life in the seas died.
Pumping SO2 into the atmosphere for a short term gain will definitely need a lot more thought.
96% of sea life died? That is a mega mass extinction. Now I know that Packham is a twat of the first order (cannot understand why such a dreadful presenter is on TV at all) but I would be surprised if even he suggested that
Large amounts of volcanism caused huge increases in both CO2 and SO2 in the atmosphere, the former increasing temperatures and the latter decreasing it but at the cost of acidifying the ocean. I remember from the 1980s the disastrous consequences for Nordic forests of SO2 pollution.
I don't agree about Packham by the way, I thought his series on autism was excellent.
I don't particularly like or agree with Packham, David Attenborough he is not, but the BBC earth series was excellent.
Only thing that grated for me was not sequencing the episodes chronologically, rather than by "theme", because as you watch it jumps around a bit and it makes it a bit harder for you to join all the evolutionary dots.
Convincing reasons to think reducing SO2 emissions from ships has caused oceanic warming (ie it's not just correlation). Bad news in itself, good news on the broader level that it shows we can geoengineer the climate
I've been thinking about this. The reason we cut SO2 was that it converted into sulphuric acid, H2SO4, in the clouds causing acid rain which had significantly adverse effects on both life in the oceans and forests, reducing their CO2 absorption, increasing global warming. Chris Peckham mentioned this in his Earth series. Large quantities of SO2 meant that 96% of life in the seas died.
Pumping SO2 into the atmosphere for a short term gain will definitely need a lot more thought.
96% of sea life died? That is a mega mass extinction. Now I know that Packham is a twat of the first order (cannot understand why such a dreadful presenter is on TV at all) but I would be surprised if even he suggested that
Convincing reasons to think reducing SO2 emissions from ships has caused oceanic warming (ie it's not just correlation). Bad news in itself, good news on the broader level that it shows we can geoengineer the climate
I've been thinking about this. The reason we cut SO2 was that it converted into sulphuric acid, H2SO4, in the clouds causing acid rain which had significantly adverse effects on both life in the oceans and forests, reducing their CO2 absorption, increasing global warming. Chris Peckham mentioned this in his Earth series. Large quantities of SO2 meant that 96% of life in the seas died.
Pumping SO2 into the atmosphere for a short term gain will definitely need a lot more thought.
96% of sea life died? That is a mega mass extinction. Now I know that Packham is a twat of the first order (cannot understand why such a dreadful presenter is on TV at all) but I would be surprised if even he suggested that
For some reason I am reminded of the following story.
Instituto Cervantes (Spanish cultural centre in London) sold up their incredibly valuable building near Sloane Square. Moved to Central London.
The building was bought by a Russian oligarch. Who was planning on converting it back to a house. Would be very nice.
Got squatted. The usual types etc. They declared that they would never move, legal stuff etc.
Then, they left overnight. So the story goes, someone explained to them the reputation of said oligarch.
Pro-Putin mafia boss threatens to murder British anti-homelessness activists. What a hero.
Put his picture up over the mantelpiece in every Tory social club now.
Who do I vote for if I'm against London welcoming leading figures in international organised crime? Are there any political parties with the guts not to lick mafia boots?
No idea if he said or did anything.
My point was that the Premier League owners are a group of fine, outstanding, lovely people.
Interrupting their revenue stream would only result in kind words, thoughtful actions and cute fluffy kittens.
The building came under violent attack (bricks, bottles, and poles thrown through windows) when it housed squatters who included many people who had been homeless. The squatters then issued a statement saying "We have been keeping the property clean and tidy and have been trying to look after it for Mr Goncharenko."
That properties owned by billionaires are left unoccupied for years (as this one was) when the homeless sleep on the streets nearby is a social disgrace.
Interesting - so he channeled Mr Dutch Beer.
Do something about Bishops Avenue - nuclear weapon?
Convincing reasons to think reducing SO2 emissions from ships has caused oceanic warming (ie it's not just correlation). Bad news in itself, good news on the broader level that it shows we can geoengineer the climate
I've been thinking about this. The reason we cut SO2 was that it converted into sulphuric acid, H2SO4, in the clouds causing acid rain which had significantly adverse effects on both life in the oceans and forests, reducing their CO2 absorption, increasing global warming. Chris Peckham mentioned this in his Earth series. Large quantities of SO2 meant that 96% of life in the seas died.
Pumping SO2 into the atmosphere for a short term gain will definitely need a lot more thought.
96% of sea life died? That is a mega mass extinction. Now I know that Packham is a twat of the first order (cannot understand why such a dreadful presenter is on TV at all) but I would be surprised if even he suggested that
I'm sceptical on that figure. Only thing I can find like that is in a specific region, for specifically sea-floor living animals, in a mass disaster near Russia that seems to be getting blamed on a pesticide leak.
Convincing reasons to think reducing SO2 emissions from ships has caused oceanic warming (ie it's not just correlation). Bad news in itself, good news on the broader level that it shows we can geoengineer the climate
I've been thinking about this. The reason we cut SO2 was that it converted into sulphuric acid, H2SO4, in the clouds causing acid rain which had significantly adverse effects on both life in the oceans and forests, reducing their CO2 absorption, increasing global warming. Chris Peckham mentioned this in his Earth series. Large quantities of SO2 meant that 96% of life in the seas died.
Pumping SO2 into the atmosphere for a short term gain will definitely need a lot more thought.
The suggested change is creating sea water mists, not pumping out SO2, IIRC
What slightly puzzles me about Sunak´s attack on the long standing consensus that significantly restrictive green policies are necessary, is the very poor politics of his position.
The fact is that there is a major strand of Tory support that firmly supports the principle of acting on climate change, even if they are not settled on policy details. These are core supporters of the Party, not strictly the "old maids bicycling to Communion" but certainly socially active Tories; the kind who staff Citizens Advice Bureaux, serve as local councilors or as in some other local capacity such as school governors charities or even magistrates. Many view with concern the financial position of their children or grandchildren but are equivocal about the inheritance tax situation. They raise money for local hospitals, they see the daily pressure on the NHS is not a myth.
Increasingly they no longer view the Tories as "their party". Strident right wingers they are not, and while their natural moderation made them abhor Corbyn, increasingly they view the Daily Mail, Trumpian style hostility expressed by the likes of Braverman, Patel and even Sunak himself as hostility directed towards them- and as they watch public services dissolve into a shambles, they are increasingly not sitting on the sidelines any more.
Every Liberal Democrat branch in the country can tell you of these former Conservatives now coming out to campaign for the Lib Dems. This abandonment of a major plank of the green agenda will turn this trickle into something a lot bigger. Places like Surrey, Gloucestershire and Aberdeenshire are seeing the Lib Dems not only running things locally, but now looking like making major progress in the national battle too.
This green U-turn by Sunak could be the final mistake that alienates the Shires from the Tories for the last time.
It's a core vote strategy designed to prevent a total Tory wipe out, aimed at winning the next but one or two elections not the next one.
What core vote, if they have alienated the active middle class?
Retired pensioners.
My retired parents love bussing around for free (primarily to wind me up, I think).
A sleight of hand from Labour could be to neutralise this debate by targeting older people with more free bus/train travel (local routes only, perhaps).
Highly progressive too.
Funny definition of progressive you have.
Please explain how it is progressive to be funding travel for the wealthiest generation, who don't need to get to work, while taxing the transportation of those who are getting to work in order to pay their rent and living expenses?
My retired mum has more disposable income than we do (even though we both earn a reasonable living(, and it drives me mad how she gets free or discounted travel all over the shop (not to mention tickets for things and other various OAP perks).
The difficulty is that there is huge chunk of pensioners who would genuinely struggle to survive without them. Just annoys me that there's a load of retired and well-off boomers freeloading on the top.
Poor diddums, probably worships millionaires but hates pensioners being able to go on a bus. Take a look at yourself in a mirror.
Convincing reasons to think reducing SO2 emissions from ships has caused oceanic warming (ie it's not just correlation). Bad news in itself, good news on the broader level that it shows we can geoengineer the climate
I've been thinking about this. The reason we cut SO2 was that it converted into sulphuric acid, H2SO4, in the clouds causing acid rain which had significantly adverse effects on both life in the oceans and forests, reducing their CO2 absorption, increasing global warming. Chris Peckham mentioned this in his Earth series. Large quantities of SO2 meant that 96% of life in the seas died.
Pumping SO2 into the atmosphere for a short term gain will definitely need a lot more thought.
96% of sea life died? That is a mega mass extinction. Now I know that Packham is a twat of the first order (cannot understand why such a dreadful presenter is on TV at all) but I would be surprised if even he suggested that
Large amounts of volcanism caused huge increases in both CO2 and SO2 in the atmosphere, the former increasing temperatures and the latter decreasing it but at the cost of acidifying the ocean. I remember from the 1980s the disastrous consequences for Nordic forests of SO2 pollution.
I don't agree about Packham by the way, I thought his series on autism was excellent.
I don't particularly like or agree with Packham, David Attenborough he is not, but the BBC earth series was excellent.
Only thing that grated for me was not sequencing the episodes chronologically, rather than by "theme", because as you watch it jumps around a bit and it makes it a bit harder for you to join all the evolutionary dots.
I've only watched the first one so far and thought it was very good. Sometimes the explanations are simplified to the point of incoherence. I was also mildly annoyed when he stated things as fact and then commented "other theories are available" but the program was good at the broad sweep and informative.
As I said, his series on autism was excellent. I don't think I have ever watched his nature stuff although my daughter is a fan.
I really don't see why the car vs public transport debate generates so much heat. It seems obvious that public transport is more suited to dense urban areas - such as Edinburgh, where I once lived, which has a population of ~520,000 in the city council area over 264 square kilometres - and the car is more suited to sparsely populated rural areas - such as West Cork where I now live, where the whole of County Cork has a population slightly larger than Edinburgh's (~580,000), although about half of those are in Cork city, and the whole county has an area of 7,500 square kilometres, such that the population density in rural West Cork is somewhere between one and two orders of magnitude lower than in Edinburgh, possibly lower.
It should be obvious that if the population density is below 100/km2 then the car will be dominant, and above 1,000/km2 that reliance on cars will cause gridlock and public transport is more suited.
In between that it gets a bit more messy, and obviously people cross the boundaries between one area into another, but I think those thresholds would actually cover most of the land area of Britain and most of the population.
I think the issue becomes hot because you have one side who advocate for active travel and public transport who refuse point blank to accept that neither are a good replacement for a car in most spaces. I say this as someone who hasnt owned a motor vehicle for 15 odd years though still have a licence and live somewhere that most people would class as a reasonably good bus service which I do use when I have no choice but to leave the house.
Public transport really is crap. For example going to the supermarket for me involves waiting for the bus which only turns up at all about 95% of the time and is pretty much always late by 5 to 10 minutes when it does turn up. That gets me to the town centre in about 30 minutes once it arrives. I then need to get another bus to get to the supermarket which means another wait of upto 40 minutes before another 15 minute journey. It is not unusual for example to leave my house at 10:50 am and finally get to the supermarket around 12:30pm and that costs me 4£.
To get to the supermarket by car on the other hand takes about 5 minutes.
I don't know where you live, but it doesn't sound like a particularly densely populated urban area. In the cities that I've lived in it hasn't been unusual for me to live within easy walking distance of two different supermarkets, let alone others on a single bus journey.
Even in Chippenham, my mother, who has Parkinson's and consequently difficulty in walking long distances, would walk to the supermarket and take a taxi home. I don't think she'd have been able to take a bus there instead.
I'm not opposed to cars, but they're a tool and any tool has its appropriate and efficient use, and other situations where it isn't appropriate or is inefficient. Even in a rural area such as West Cork, one of the local towns gets horrendously gridlocked quite often, because all the parking is located in the town centre, and so people driving around town looking for a parking spot block the traffic trying to cross the town. If they'd just complete the plan to build a car park by the bypass, for which there is a bridge to the town centre across the river, they'd take masses of traffic out of the town centre. But for some reason it is seen as being anti-car to ask them not to park wherever people please, even if it ends up in a worse outcome for everyone.
Even as someone who lives outside of the town and has to drive in I can see that this would make sense for everyone, but sensible changes are blocked as being anti-car. It's completely irrational.
What slightly puzzles me about Sunak´s attack on the long standing consensus that significantly restrictive green policies are necessary, is the very poor politics of his position.
The fact is that there is a major strand of Tory support that firmly supports the principle of acting on climate change, even if they are not settled on policy details. These are core supporters of the Party, not strictly the "old maids bicycling to Communion" but certainly socially active Tories; the kind who staff Citizens Advice Bureaux, serve as local councilors or as in some other local capacity such as school governors charities or even magistrates. Many view with concern the financial position of their children or grandchildren but are equivocal about the inheritance tax situation. They raise money for local hospitals, they see the daily pressure on the NHS is not a myth.
Increasingly they no longer view the Tories as "their party". Strident right wingers they are not, and while their natural moderation made them abhor Corbyn, increasingly they view the Daily Mail, Trumpian style hostility expressed by the likes of Braverman, Patel and even Sunak himself as hostility directed towards them- and as they watch public services dissolve into a shambles, they are increasingly not sitting on the sidelines any more.
Every Liberal Democrat branch in the country can tell you of these former Conservatives now coming out to campaign for the Lib Dems. This abandonment of a major plank of the green agenda will turn this trickle into something a lot bigger. Places like Surrey, Gloucestershire and Aberdeenshire are seeing the Lib Dems not only running things locally, but now looking like making major progress in the national battle too.
This green U-turn by Sunak could be the final mistake that alienates the Shires from the Tories for the last time.
It's a core vote strategy designed to prevent a total Tory wipe out, aimed at winning the next but one or two elections not the next one.
What core vote, if they have alienated the active middle class?
Retired pensioners.
My retired parents love bussing around for free (primarily to wind me up, I think).
A sleight of hand from Labour could be to neutralise this debate by targeting older people with more free bus/train travel (local routes only, perhaps).
Highly progressive too.
Funny definition of progressive you have.
Please explain how it is progressive to be funding travel for the wealthiest generation, who don't need to get to work, while taxing the transportation of those who are getting to work in order to pay their rent and living expenses?
My retired mum has more disposable income than we do (even though we both earn a reasonable living(, and it drives me mad how she gets free or discounted travel all over the shop (not to mention tickets for things and other various OAP perks).
The difficulty is that there is huge chunk of pensioners who would genuinely struggle to survive without them. Just annoys me that there's a load of retired and well-off boomers freeloading on the top.
The problem is that means testing would probably end up costing even more money, what with all the bureaucracy that would be involved.
Convincing reasons to think reducing SO2 emissions from ships has caused oceanic warming (ie it's not just correlation). Bad news in itself, good news on the broader level that it shows we can geoengineer the climate
I've been thinking about this. The reason we cut SO2 was that it converted into sulphuric acid, H2SO4, in the clouds causing acid rain which had significantly adverse effects on both life in the oceans and forests, reducing their CO2 absorption, increasing global warming. Chris Peckham mentioned this in his Earth series. Large quantities of SO2 meant that 96% of life in the seas died.
Pumping SO2 into the atmosphere for a short term gain will definitely need a lot more thought.
96% of sea life died? That is a mega mass extinction. Now I know that Packham is a twat of the first order (cannot understand why such a dreadful presenter is on TV at all) but I would be surprised if even he suggested that
For the fifth time, the geoengineering proponents are not suggesting resuming pumping SO2 into the atmosphere.
Rather, clouds of ocean water.
I accept that but the SO2 issue is a warning that there can be unintended consequences of such actions. Geo-engineering is inherently problematic in such a complex system and mucking about with the only planet we have seems brave in the Yes Minister sense. Of course we muck about with it in an uncontrolled way every day, I accept that.
What slightly puzzles me about Sunak´s attack on the long standing consensus that significantly restrictive green policies are necessary, is the very poor politics of his position.
The fact is that there is a major strand of Tory support that firmly supports the principle of acting on climate change, even if they are not settled on policy details. These are core supporters of the Party, not strictly the "old maids bicycling to Communion" but certainly socially active Tories; the kind who staff Citizens Advice Bureaux, serve as local councilors or as in some other local capacity such as school governors charities or even magistrates. Many view with concern the financial position of their children or grandchildren but are equivocal about the inheritance tax situation. They raise money for local hospitals, they see the daily pressure on the NHS is not a myth.
Increasingly they no longer view the Tories as "their party". Strident right wingers they are not, and while their natural moderation made them abhor Corbyn, increasingly they view the Daily Mail, Trumpian style hostility expressed by the likes of Braverman, Patel and even Sunak himself as hostility directed towards them- and as they watch public services dissolve into a shambles, they are increasingly not sitting on the sidelines any more.
Every Liberal Democrat branch in the country can tell you of these former Conservatives now coming out to campaign for the Lib Dems. This abandonment of a major plank of the green agenda will turn this trickle into something a lot bigger. Places like Surrey, Gloucestershire and Aberdeenshire are seeing the Lib Dems not only running things locally, but now looking like making major progress in the national battle too.
This green U-turn by Sunak could be the final mistake that alienates the Shires from the Tories for the last time.
It's a core vote strategy designed to prevent a total Tory wipe out, aimed at winning the next but one or two elections not the next one.
What core vote, if they have alienated the active middle class?
Retired pensioners.
My retired parents love bussing around for free (primarily to wind me up, I think).
A sleight of hand from Labour could be to neutralise this debate by targeting older people with more free bus/train travel (local routes only, perhaps).
Highly progressive too.
Funny definition of progressive you have.
Please explain how it is progressive to be funding travel for the wealthiest generation, who don't need to get to work, while taxing the transportation of those who are getting to work in order to pay their rent and living expenses?
My retired mum has more disposable income than we do (even though we both earn a reasonable living(, and it drives me mad how she gets free or discounted travel all over the shop (not to mention tickets for things and other various OAP perks).
The difficulty is that there is huge chunk of pensioners who would genuinely struggle to survive without them. Just annoys me that there's a load of retired and well-off boomers freeloading on the top.
Poor diddums, probably worships millionaires but hates pensioners being able to go on a bus. Take a look at yourself in a mirror.
lol wtf are you on about
Nobody knows. Best to ignore him. Probably pissed and his long suffering wife has been nagging him about him spending her pension money on booze again.
Site fcukwit has arrived , you need to read more get yourself more than one sad attempt at insults. You should take your own advice gammonboy.
The argument about transport availability & cost highlights both the huge variances in availability and the huge gulf in understanding.
For your outer London resident there are riches in public transport options which are largely paid for out of general taxation. For your cundry bumpkins there is often a complete absence of public transport options despite paying general taxation.
For suburbanites it is optimal to encourage more public transport and less driving. For country folk the choice is driving or not going.*
Road pricing gets talked about as a replacement for fuel duty. And gets shouted at as being patently unfair. Which is probably true the way that shitbox UK would implement it. What we need is subsidised fuel for the countryside and heavier taxes in towns. ULEZ and similar is the right policy, just being implemented poorly.
* Before anyone says "what about walking or cycling", what about them? Too many roads between villages would be lethal to walk / cycle down, and thats before we ask about fitness / safety issues.
Agree. On your *, I agree that investment in walking and cycling, or even public transport, between villages isn't worth it.
But 83% of us live in urban areas, so investment in active and public transport makes sense for most.
Urban areas = towns, not cities.
I got a train (first time in about 5 years) recently, to and from the Airport, got the return train journey yesterday. To get to the train station took a car [in this case taxi] ride.
You seem to view the country as either Edinburgh or Sticksville. Reality is somewhat different.
I grew up in a town in rural Scotland. It had a train station. The main problem is you couldn't walk or cycle to it. Sounds like your problem too.
Even public transport in towns is designed for drivers.
Because cars work.
Towns require cars. The alternative to cars is taxis or buses. And that's the bulk of your 83%
You simply can't get your head around supply/demand, can you?
The only reason Edinburgh has lots of bus users is because there are lots of buses.
The reason Edinburgh has lots of bus users, is its a city. Its not a town, what part of this are you failing to understand?
Nothing wrong with buses existing, but buses in towns are a crappy mode of transportation that only those who can't afford their own car (or can't drive as they lack a licence) would use.
The thing with a car is if you want to get from A to B you drive there and are done.
With buses you are stuck with the bus routes, and in most towns the bus routes don't go between A and B if you aren't trying to get to the town centre. Get a bus into the bus depot in town, then another bus from the depot out of town to your destination. And of course that relies upon the bus turning up, and the bus then follows its route stopping everywhere it has to stop.
My wife doesn't drive, she used to take two buses to get to work which took at least an hour, nearly an hour and a half sometimes one way. It took me 15 minutes to drive it, or 30 minutes return to go pick her up and drive her home.
Good luck finding a parking place at B unless your destination is a supermarket, or you are MD of the company.
I always find a parking place at B. 🤷♂️
Try leaving your bubble from time to time. Saying "oh but what about parking" to someone who drives everywhere and always finds parking, isn't much a problem.
You drive everywhere and always finds parking, in English towns, without a blue badge and without privileged access to private spaces?
I don't want to call you a liar, but happy to call you an outlier. 5 sigma.
Your kidding, right? The rest of the UK is not RBKC outside Harrods. There is plenty of parking all over the country in towns, villages, cities. Some even - gasp if you can believe this - for free.
Name me a town where you can't park without the criteria you specify.
I drove yesterday into Maltby, which is a "town" by anyone's imagination. Parked up briefly in the Tesco Car Park, bought some swim nappies and onto the leisure centre which had ample parking. Parking for picking up items from Worksop post office is a bit iffy mind; the last time I had to properly PLAN and pay for parking was in Manchester (Obviously a city) last weekend meeting some friends, Lower Chatham St carpark nicely close to the motorway though. Parking in Harworth, Carlton, Langold or Oldcotes tends to be trivial though (All villages) - so I'd say the smaller the locality the easier the parking unless it's a tourist hotspot like York.
I excepted supermarkets, whose USP is extensive free parking. Leisure centres tend to be the same (but it's pay and display in my local town) so that leaves the Post Office, which is a pretty good proxy for all the non-supermarket shops you might otherwise want to visit.
So excluding places you might want to go to, there might be a problem?
Where exactly is this supposed problem of yours? And pay and display parking is still parking, nothing wrong with that. So long as there's ample spaces, its clean, well lit and secure. If you're using a service, there's nothing wrong with paying for it.
Sure, you can classify places like the post office as not "places you might want to go to." I have already pointed you to an ostensibly well-researched article in a respected newspaper identifying numerous market towns where the problem is critical. If your ambition is limited to weekly shops at tesco I appreciate there is less of a problem for you. As far as paying for it is concerned, some people are poor and some people are lazy. i am one of the two.
You shared a clickbait article about what clearly aren't typical towns actually. And I'm sceptical how much credit to give to such clickbait anyway.
My local Post Office is in a local community centre which has a car park. The Post Office where I used to live was in a shop, with a car park. Any Post Office I've ever been to has parking, either it's own, or on the road.
And the emptiest car park I ever go to is the main Post Office depot nearby, if I need to collect a "you were out" parcel. Their car park is unnecessarily big, but it's their land so up to them what they do with it.
Never been to a Post Office you can't park at. Not sure why any town would ever have one, what would be the point of it?
Sure.
Clickbait has a specific meaning: lurid headlines placed on third party websites to induce the idle surfer to follow them to a page full of lurid advertisements for timeshares and penis enlargement and such. I can find no links to that article on third party websites, and, having disabled my adblocker, can see no ads on the page itself. What is the basis for your use of the term, other than that the article destroys your point?
This is nonsense about post offices. The main sorting depot obviously has lots of parking, but other than collect parcels there's generally nothing you can do there. There is no parking at either town centre post Office in my local town.
I really don't see why the car vs public transport debate generates so much heat. It seems obvious that public transport is more suited to dense urban areas - such as Edinburgh, where I once lived, which has a population of ~520,000 in the city council area over 264 square kilometres - and the car is more suited to sparsely populated rural areas - such as West Cork where I now live, where the whole of County Cork has a population slightly larger than Edinburgh's (~580,000), although about half of those are in Cork city, and the whole county has an area of 7,500 square kilometres, such that the population density in rural West Cork is somewhere between one and two orders of magnitude lower than in Edinburgh, possibly lower.
It should be obvious that if the population density is below 100/km2 then the car will be dominant, and above 1,000/km2 that reliance on cars will cause gridlock and public transport is more suited.
In between that it gets a bit more messy, and obviously people cross the boundaries between one area into another, but I think those thresholds would actually cover most of the land area of Britain and most of the population.
I think the issue becomes hot because you have one side who advocate for active travel and public transport who refuse point blank to accept that neither are a good replacement for a car in most spaces. I say this as someone who hasnt owned a motor vehicle for 15 odd years though still have a licence and live somewhere that most people would class as a reasonably good bus service which I do use when I have no choice but to leave the house.
Public transport really is crap. For example going to the supermarket for me involves waiting for the bus which only turns up at all about 95% of the time and is pretty much always late by 5 to 10 minutes when it does turn up. That gets me to the town centre in about 30 minutes once it arrives. I then need to get another bus to get to the supermarket which means another wait of upto 40 minutes before another 15 minute journey. It is not unusual for example to leave my house at 10:50 am and finally get to the supermarket around 12:30pm and that costs me 4£.
To get to the supermarket by car on the other hand takes about 5 minutes.
I don't know where you live, but it doesn't sound like a particularly densely populated urban area. In the cities that I've lived in it hasn't been unusual for me to live within easy walking distance of two different supermarkets, let alone others on a single bus journey.
Even in Chippenham, my mother, who has Parkinson's and consequently difficulty in walking long distances, would walk to the supermarket and take a taxi home. I don't think she'd have been able to take a bus there instead.
I'm not opposed to cars, but they're a tool and any tool has its appropriate and efficient use, and other situations where it isn't appropriate or is inefficient. Even in a rural area such as West Cork, one of the local towns gets horrendously gridlocked quite often, because all the parking is located in the town centre, and so people driving around town looking for a parking spot block the traffic trying to cross the town. If they'd just complete the plan to build a car park by the bypass, for which there is a bridge to the town centre across the river, they'd take masses of traffic out of the town centre. But for some reason it is seen as being anti-car to ask them not to park wherever people please, even if it ends up in a worse outcome for everyone.
Even as someone who lives outside of the town and has to drive in I can see that this would make sense for everyone, but sensible changes are blocked as being anti-car. It's completely irrational.
I live in what Eahbahl would class in an urban area population about 36k , a population density of about 3.6k per square kilometre. Yes I am in walking distance of a local shop but what the fuck use is that to anyone. Its great for incidentals but not for getting most of what you need
Convincing reasons to think reducing SO2 emissions from ships has caused oceanic warming (ie it's not just correlation). Bad news in itself, good news on the broader level that it shows we can geoengineer the climate
I've been thinking about this. The reason we cut SO2 was that it converted into sulphuric acid, H2SO4, in the clouds causing acid rain which had significantly adverse effects on both life in the oceans and forests, reducing their CO2 absorption, increasing global warming. Chris Peckham mentioned this in his Earth series. Large quantities of SO2 meant that 96% of life in the seas died.
Pumping SO2 into the atmosphere for a short term gain will definitely need a lot more thought.
96% of sea life died? That is a mega mass extinction. Now I know that Packham is a twat of the first order (cannot understand why such a dreadful presenter is on TV at all) but I would be surprised if even he suggested that
For the fifth time, the geoengineering proponents are not suggesting resuming pumping SO2 into the atmosphere.
Rather, clouds of ocean water.
I accept that but the SO2 issue is a warning that there can be unintended consequences of such actions. Geo-engineering is inherently problematic in such a complex system and mucking about with the only planet we have seems brave in the Yes Minister sense. Of course we muck about with it in an uncontrolled way every day, I accept that.
I think you have this exactly the wrong way round. Cutting SO2 emissions seems to have dramatically accelerated ocean warming in the space of a couple of years.
That is a genuine climate emergency.
The greater risk is not conducting the experiment.
Convincing reasons to think reducing SO2 emissions from ships has caused oceanic warming (ie it's not just correlation). Bad news in itself, good news on the broader level that it shows we can geoengineer the climate
I've been thinking about this. The reason we cut SO2 was that it converted into sulphuric acid, H2SO4, in the clouds causing acid rain which had significantly adverse effects on both life in the oceans and forests, reducing their CO2 absorption, increasing global warming. Chris Peckham mentioned this in his Earth series. Large quantities of SO2 meant that 96% of life in the seas died.
Pumping SO2 into the atmosphere for a short term gain will definitely need a lot more thought.
96% of sea life died? That is a mega mass extinction. Now I know that Packham is a twat of the first order (cannot understand why such a dreadful presenter is on TV at all) but I would be surprised if even he suggested that
I'm sceptical on that figure. Only thing I can find like that is in a specific region, for specifically sea-floor living animals, in a mass disaster near Russia that seems to be getting blamed on a pesticide leak.
Can't find anything like 96% for oceans globally, that just doesn't pass the sniff test.
Was he referring to the end of the Permian, aka the "Great Dying"? That was a little while ago now.
Aren’t we always saying that politics needs to have a longer term perspective on things?
Indeed. Although I suspect having too long term a perspective is not great either. Entropy always wins...
I wonder what the ideal parliament length would be for government in terms of providing enough long term stability to get things done. Is 5 years too short? On the other hand, it seems 15 years is too long.
Convincing reasons to think reducing SO2 emissions from ships has caused oceanic warming (ie it's not just correlation). Bad news in itself, good news on the broader level that it shows we can geoengineer the climate
I've been thinking about this. The reason we cut SO2 was that it converted into sulphuric acid, H2SO4, in the clouds causing acid rain which had significantly adverse effects on both life in the oceans and forests, reducing their CO2 absorption, increasing global warming. Chris Peckham mentioned this in his Earth series. Large quantities of SO2 meant that 96% of life in the seas died.
Pumping SO2 into the atmosphere for a short term gain will definitely need a lot more thought.
96% of sea life died? That is a mega mass extinction. Now I know that Packham is a twat of the first order (cannot understand why such a dreadful presenter is on TV at all) but I would be surprised if even he suggested that
For the fifth time, the geoengineering proponents are not suggesting resuming pumping SO2 into the atmosphere.
Rather, clouds of ocean water.
I accept that but the SO2 issue is a warning that there can be unintended consequences of such actions. Geo-engineering is inherently problematic in such a complex system and mucking about with the only planet we have seems brave in the Yes Minister sense. Of course we muck about with it in an uncontrolled way every day, I accept that.
I think you have this exactly the wrong way round. Cutting SO2 emissions seems to have dramatically accelerated ocean warming in the space of a couple of years.
That is a genuine climate emergency.
The greater risk is not conducting the experiment.
IANAE on this but. The removal of the SO2 trails has increased localised warming, particularly in areas with dense shipping such as the north Atlantic. But it will also have reduced the acidification of the seas and encouraged some algae and plankton to thrive which will have drawn more CO2 out of the atmosphere reducing the rate of increase generally. Localised gains may be more evident than general improvements.
Increasing cloud reflectivity using sea water puts a lot more chlorine in the air. If even a proportion of that was converted into hydrochloric acid we may have similar problems.
I really don't see why the car vs public transport debate generates so much heat. It seems obvious that public transport is more suited to dense urban areas - such as Edinburgh, where I once lived, which has a population of ~520,000 in the city council area over 264 square kilometres - and the car is more suited to sparsely populated rural areas - such as West Cork where I now live, where the whole of County Cork has a population slightly larger than Edinburgh's (~580,000), although about half of those are in Cork city, and the whole county has an area of 7,500 square kilometres, such that the population density in rural West Cork is somewhere between one and two orders of magnitude lower than in Edinburgh, possibly lower.
It should be obvious that if the population density is below 100/km2 then the car will be dominant, and above 1,000/km2 that reliance on cars will cause gridlock and public transport is more suited.
In between that it gets a bit more messy, and obviously people cross the boundaries between one area into another, but I think those thresholds would actually cover most of the land area of Britain and most of the population.
I think the issue becomes hot because you have one side who advocate for active travel and public transport who refuse point blank to accept that neither are a good replacement for a car in most spaces. I say this as someone who hasnt owned a motor vehicle for 15 odd years though still have a licence and live somewhere that most people would class as a reasonably good bus service which I do use when I have no choice but to leave the house.
Public transport really is crap. For example going to the supermarket for me involves waiting for the bus which only turns up at all about 95% of the time and is pretty much always late by 5 to 10 minutes when it does turn up. That gets me to the town centre in about 30 minutes once it arrives. I then need to get another bus to get to the supermarket which means another wait of upto 40 minutes before another 15 minute journey. It is not unusual for example to leave my house at 10:50 am and finally get to the supermarket around 12:30pm and that costs me 4£.
To get to the supermarket by car on the other hand takes about 5 minutes.
I don't know where you live, but it doesn't sound like a particularly densely populated urban area. In the cities that I've lived in it hasn't been unusual for me to live within easy walking distance of two different supermarkets, let alone others on a single bus journey.
Even in Chippenham, my mother, who has Parkinson's and consequently difficulty in walking long distances, would walk to the supermarket and take a taxi home. I don't think she'd have been able to take a bus there instead.
I'm not opposed to cars, but they're a tool and any tool has its appropriate and efficient use, and other situations where it isn't appropriate or is inefficient. Even in a rural area such as West Cork, one of the local towns gets horrendously gridlocked quite often, because all the parking is located in the town centre, and so people driving around town looking for a parking spot block the traffic trying to cross the town. If they'd just complete the plan to build a car park by the bypass, for which there is a bridge to the town centre across the river, they'd take masses of traffic out of the town centre. But for some reason it is seen as being anti-car to ask them not to park wherever people please, even if it ends up in a worse outcome for everyone.
Even as someone who lives outside of the town and has to drive in I can see that this would make sense for everyone, but sensible changes are blocked as being anti-car. It's completely irrational.
I live in what Eahbahl would class in an urban area population about 36k , a population density of about 3.6k per square kilometre. Yes I am in walking distance of a local shop but what the fuck use is that to anyone. Its great for incidentals but not for getting most of what you need
I wasn't talking about a little shop. I meant what I said - an actual supermarket. I find it weird that you can live in a reasonably substantial urban area and not be in walking distance of a proper supermarket.
I've never paid much attention to it when choosing where to live, haven't had the luxury of being able to choose exactly where to live in a city - I've always taken the place I could afford - but that has always landed me within walking distance of a supermarket. I'm a bit surprised.
Convincing reasons to think reducing SO2 emissions from ships has caused oceanic warming (ie it's not just correlation). Bad news in itself, good news on the broader level that it shows we can geoengineer the climate
I've been thinking about this. The reason we cut SO2 was that it converted into sulphuric acid, H2SO4, in the clouds causing acid rain which had significantly adverse effects on both life in the oceans and forests, reducing their CO2 absorption, increasing global warming. Chris Peckham mentioned this in his Earth series. Large quantities of SO2 meant that 96% of life in the seas died.
Pumping SO2 into the atmosphere for a short term gain will definitely need a lot more thought.
96% of sea life died? That is a mega mass extinction. Now I know that Packham is a twat of the first order (cannot understand why such a dreadful presenter is on TV at all) but I would be surprised if even he suggested that
I'm sceptical on that figure. Only thing I can find like that is in a specific region, for specifically sea-floor living animals, in a mass disaster near Russia that seems to be getting blamed on a pesticide leak.
Can't find anything like 96% for oceans globally, that just doesn't pass the sniff test.
Was he referring to the end of the Permian, aka the "Great Dying"? That was a little while ago now.
Aren’t we always saying that politics needs to have a longer term perspective on things?
Indeed. Although I suspect having too long term a perspective is not great either. Entropy always wins...
I wonder what the ideal parliament length would be for government in terms of providing enough long term stability to get things done. Is 5 years too short? On the other hand, it seems 15 years is too long.
Given discussion of the Permian mass extinction, I think we should go for Parliamentary terms of 250 million years. No short-term planning about the human race as if it’s the only important species to worry about.
OT -- just been served my first hard-core porn on X so maybe Elon knew something when he renamed Twitter after laying off the team whose job it is to filter out this sort of thing.
ETA of course I'd now be one meeting with HR away from dismissal if I'd been looking for tractors in a public place.
The argument about transport availability & cost highlights both the huge variances in availability and the huge gulf in understanding.
For your outer London resident there are riches in public transport options which are largely paid for out of general taxation. For your cundry bumpkins there is often a complete absence of public transport options despite paying general taxation.
For suburbanites it is optimal to encourage more public transport and less driving. For country folk the choice is driving or not going.*
Road pricing gets talked about as a replacement for fuel duty. And gets shouted at as being patently unfair. Which is probably true the way that shitbox UK would implement it. What we need is subsidised fuel for the countryside and heavier taxes in towns. ULEZ and similar is the right policy, just being implemented poorly.
* Before anyone says "what about walking or cycling", what about them? Too many roads between villages would be lethal to walk / cycle down, and thats before we ask about fitness / safety issues.
Agree. On your *, I agree that investment in walking and cycling, or even public transport, between villages isn't worth it.
But 83% of us live in urban areas, so investment in active and public transport makes sense for most.
Urban areas = towns, not cities.
I got a train (first time in about 5 years) recently, to and from the Airport, got the return train journey yesterday. To get to the train station took a car [in this case taxi] ride.
You seem to view the country as either Edinburgh or Sticksville. Reality is somewhat different.
I grew up in a town in rural Scotland. It had a train station. The main problem is you couldn't walk or cycle to it. Sounds like your problem too.
Even public transport in towns is designed for drivers.
Because cars work.
Towns require cars. The alternative to cars is taxis or buses. And that's the bulk of your 83%
You simply can't get your head around supply/demand, can you?
The only reason Edinburgh has lots of bus users is because there are lots of buses.
The reason Edinburgh has lots of bus users, is its a city. Its not a town, what part of this are you failing to understand?
Nothing wrong with buses existing, but buses in towns are a crappy mode of transportation that only those who can't afford their own car (or can't drive as they lack a licence) would use.
The thing with a car is if you want to get from A to B you drive there and are done.
With buses you are stuck with the bus routes, and in most towns the bus routes don't go between A and B if you aren't trying to get to the town centre. Get a bus into the bus depot in town, then another bus from the depot out of town to your destination. And of course that relies upon the bus turning up, and the bus then follows its route stopping everywhere it has to stop.
My wife doesn't drive, she used to take two buses to get to work which took at least an hour, nearly an hour and a half sometimes one way. It took me 15 minutes to drive it, or 30 minutes return to go pick her up and drive her home.
Good luck finding a parking place at B unless your destination is a supermarket, or you are MD of the company.
I always find a parking place at B. 🤷♂️
Try leaving your bubble from time to time. Saying "oh but what about parking" to someone who drives everywhere and always finds parking, isn't much a problem.
You drive everywhere and always finds parking, in English towns, without a blue badge and without privileged access to private spaces?
I don't want to call you a liar, but happy to call you an outlier. 5 sigma.
Your kidding, right? The rest of the UK is not RBKC outside Harrods. There is plenty of parking all over the country in towns, villages, cities. Some even - gasp if you can believe this - for free.
Name me a town where you can't park without the criteria you specify.
I drove yesterday into Maltby, which is a "town" by anyone's imagination. Parked up briefly in the Tesco Car Park, bought some swim nappies and onto the leisure centre which had ample parking. Parking for picking up items from Worksop post office is a bit iffy mind; the last time I had to properly PLAN and pay for parking was in Manchester (Obviously a city) last weekend meeting some friends, Lower Chatham St carpark nicely close to the motorway though. Parking in Harworth, Carlton, Langold or Oldcotes tends to be trivial though (All villages) - so I'd say the smaller the locality the easier the parking unless it's a tourist hotspot like York.
I excepted supermarkets, whose USP is extensive free parking. Leisure centres tend to be the same (but it's pay and display in my local town) so that leaves the Post Office, which is a pretty good proxy for all the non-supermarket shops you might otherwise want to visit.
So excluding places you might want to go to, there might be a problem?
Where exactly is this supposed problem of yours? And pay and display parking is still parking, nothing wrong with that. So long as there's ample spaces, its clean, well lit and secure. If you're using a service, there's nothing wrong with paying for it.
Sure, you can classify places like the post office as not "places you might want to go to." I have already pointed you to an ostensibly well-researched article in a respected newspaper identifying numerous market towns where the problem is critical. If your ambition is limited to weekly shops at tesco I appreciate there is less of a problem for you. As far as paying for it is concerned, some people are poor and some people are lazy. i am one of the two.
You shared a clickbait article about what clearly aren't typical towns actually. And I'm sceptical how much credit to give to such clickbait anyway.
My local Post Office is in a local community centre which has a car park. The Post Office where I used to live was in a shop, with a car park. Any Post Office I've ever been to has parking, either it's own, or on the road.
And the emptiest car park I ever go to is the main Post Office depot nearby, if I need to collect a "you were out" parcel. Their car park is unnecessarily big, but it's their land so up to them what they do with it.
Never been to a Post Office you can't park at. Not sure why any town would ever have one, what would be the point of it?
Sure.
Clickbait has a specific meaning: lurid headlines placed on third party websites to induce the idle surfer to follow them to a page full of lurid advertisements for timeshares and penis enlargement and such. I can find no links to that article on third party websites, and, having disabled my adblocker, can see no ads on the page itself. What is the basis for your use of the term, other than that the article destroys your point?
This is nonsense about post offices. The main sorting depot obviously has lots of parking, but other than collect parcels there's generally nothing you can do there. There is no parking at either town centre post Office in my local town.
No ads on the page itself? This is what popped up when I clicked on the page, covering a third of my screen. [EDIT the ad is so big, that PB Vanilla is now shrinking my screenshot of it]
Then under the article is this ad.
The Grauniad is full of ads and clickbait, just begging letters are its ads not penis pumps, and the clickbait is bullshit like that you just shared that it thinks people will share and click
I simply don't believe that you do not have a Post Office you can drive to, I don't believe it. Not my experience at all, and if you go to the Post Office website they're very happy to provide details of where you can drive to in order to get Post Office services.
Please feel free to name any town that you can't drive to and park near a Post Office, as its BS in my eyes.
I really don't see why the car vs public transport debate generates so much heat. It seems obvious that public transport is more suited to dense urban areas - such as Edinburgh, where I once lived, which has a population of ~520,000 in the city council area over 264 square kilometres - and the car is more suited to sparsely populated rural areas - such as West Cork where I now live, where the whole of County Cork has a population slightly larger than Edinburgh's (~580,000), although about half of those are in Cork city, and the whole county has an area of 7,500 square kilometres, such that the population density in rural West Cork is somewhere between one and two orders of magnitude lower than in Edinburgh, possibly lower.
It should be obvious that if the population density is below 100/km2 then the car will be dominant, and above 1,000/km2 that reliance on cars will cause gridlock and public transport is more suited.
In between that it gets a bit more messy, and obviously people cross the boundaries between one area into another, but I think those thresholds would actually cover most of the land area of Britain and most of the population.
I think the issue becomes hot because you have one side who advocate for active travel and public transport who refuse point blank to accept that neither are a good replacement for a car in most spaces. I say this as someone who hasnt owned a motor vehicle for 15 odd years though still have a licence and live somewhere that most people would class as a reasonably good bus service which I do use when I have no choice but to leave the house.
Public transport really is crap. For example going to the supermarket for me involves waiting for the bus which only turns up at all about 95% of the time and is pretty much always late by 5 to 10 minutes when it does turn up. That gets me to the town centre in about 30 minutes once it arrives. I then need to get another bus to get to the supermarket which means another wait of upto 40 minutes before another 15 minute journey. It is not unusual for example to leave my house at 10:50 am and finally get to the supermarket around 12:30pm and that costs me 4£.
To get to the supermarket by car on the other hand takes about 5 minutes.
I don't know where you live, but it doesn't sound like a particularly densely populated urban area. In the cities that I've lived in it hasn't been unusual for me to live within easy walking distance of two different supermarkets, let alone others on a single bus journey.
Even in Chippenham, my mother, who has Parkinson's and consequently difficulty in walking long distances, would walk to the supermarket and take a taxi home. I don't think she'd have been able to take a bus there instead.
I'm not opposed to cars, but they're a tool and any tool has its appropriate and efficient use, and other situations where it isn't appropriate or is inefficient. Even in a rural area such as West Cork, one of the local towns gets horrendously gridlocked quite often, because all the parking is located in the town centre, and so people driving around town looking for a parking spot block the traffic trying to cross the town. If they'd just complete the plan to build a car park by the bypass, for which there is a bridge to the town centre across the river, they'd take masses of traffic out of the town centre. But for some reason it is seen as being anti-car to ask them not to park wherever people please, even if it ends up in a worse outcome for everyone.
Even as someone who lives outside of the town and has to drive in I can see that this would make sense for everyone, but sensible changes are blocked as being anti-car. It's completely irrational.
I live in what Eahbahl would class in an urban area population about 36k , a population density of about 3.6k per square kilometre. Yes I am in walking distance of a local shop but what the fuck use is that to anyone. Its great for incidentals but not for getting most of what you need
I wasn't talking about a little shop. I meant what I said - an actual supermarket. I find it weird that you can live in a reasonably substantial urban area and not be in walking distance of a proper supermarket.
I've never paid much attention to it when choosing where to live, haven't had the luxury of being able to choose exactly where to live in a city - I've always taken the place I could afford - but that has always landed me within walking distance of a supermarket. I'm a bit surprised.
Shrugs the supermarket is on the other edge of town to me, I am on one edge its on the other. The only other major supermarket in town is a marks and spencers food hall and a lidl. I don't goto the M&S one because expense of it even though would cut out the second bus. There is also a large lidl but it is 100 yards from the one I go to. All the rest are the tesco express type
I really don't see why the car vs public transport debate generates so much heat. It seems obvious that public transport is more suited to dense urban areas - such as Edinburgh, where I once lived, which has a population of ~520,000 in the city council area over 264 square kilometres - and the car is more suited to sparsely populated rural areas - such as West Cork where I now live, where the whole of County Cork has a population slightly larger than Edinburgh's (~580,000), although about half of those are in Cork city, and the whole county has an area of 7,500 square kilometres, such that the population density in rural West Cork is somewhere between one and two orders of magnitude lower than in Edinburgh, possibly lower.
It should be obvious that if the population density is below 100/km2 then the car will be dominant, and above 1,000/km2 that reliance on cars will cause gridlock and public transport is more suited.
In between that it gets a bit more messy, and obviously people cross the boundaries between one area into another, but I think those thresholds would actually cover most of the land area of Britain and most of the population.
I think the issue becomes hot because you have one side who advocate for active travel and public transport who refuse point blank to accept that neither are a good replacement for a car in most spaces. I say this as someone who hasnt owned a motor vehicle for 15 odd years though still have a licence and live somewhere that most people would class as a reasonably good bus service which I do use when I have no choice but to leave the house.
Public transport really is crap. For example going to the supermarket for me involves waiting for the bus which only turns up at all about 95% of the time and is pretty much always late by 5 to 10 minutes when it does turn up. That gets me to the town centre in about 30 minutes once it arrives. I then need to get another bus to get to the supermarket which means another wait of upto 40 minutes before another 15 minute journey. It is not unusual for example to leave my house at 10:50 am and finally get to the supermarket around 12:30pm and that costs me 4£.
To get to the supermarket by car on the other hand takes about 5 minutes.
I don't know where you live, but it doesn't sound like a particularly densely populated urban area. In the cities that I've lived in it hasn't been unusual for me to live within easy walking distance of two different supermarkets, let alone others on a single bus journey.
Even in Chippenham, my mother, who has Parkinson's and consequently difficulty in walking long distances, would walk to the supermarket and take a taxi home. I don't think she'd have been able to take a bus there instead.
I'm not opposed to cars, but they're a tool and any tool has its appropriate and efficient use, and other situations where it isn't appropriate or is inefficient. Even in a rural area such as West Cork, one of the local towns gets horrendously gridlocked quite often, because all the parking is located in the town centre, and so people driving around town looking for a parking spot block the traffic trying to cross the town. If they'd just complete the plan to build a car park by the bypass, for which there is a bridge to the town centre across the river, they'd take masses of traffic out of the town centre. But for some reason it is seen as being anti-car to ask them not to park wherever people please, even if it ends up in a worse outcome for everyone.
Even as someone who lives outside of the town and has to drive in I can see that this would make sense for everyone, but sensible changes are blocked as being anti-car. It's completely irrational.
I live in what Eahbahl would class in an urban area population about 36k , a population density of about 3.6k per square kilometre. Yes I am in walking distance of a local shop but what the fuck use is that to anyone. Its great for incidentals but not for getting most of what you need
I wasn't talking about a little shop. I meant what I said - an actual supermarket. I find it weird that you can live in a reasonably substantial urban area and not be in walking distance of a proper supermarket.
I've never paid much attention to it when choosing where to live, haven't had the luxury of being able to choose exactly where to live in a city - I've always taken the place I could afford - but that has always landed me within walking distance of a supermarket. I'm a bit surprised.
Shrugs the supermarket is on the other edge of town to me, I am on one edge its on the other. The only other major supermarket in town is a marks and spencers food hall and a lidl. I don't goto the M&S one because expense of it even though would cut out the second bus. There is also a large lidl but it is 100 yards from the one I go to. All the rest are the tesco express type
It depends on your income level. A surprising number of people don’t realise that being a short walk from a full sized supermarket, a zone 2 tube station and a row of bus stops on the high street is a sign of wealth, in London.
I really don't see why the car vs public transport debate generates so much heat. It seems obvious that public transport is more suited to dense urban areas - such as Edinburgh, where I once lived, which has a population of ~520,000 in the city council area over 264 square kilometres - and the car is more suited to sparsely populated rural areas - such as West Cork where I now live, where the whole of County Cork has a population slightly larger than Edinburgh's (~580,000), although about half of those are in Cork city, and the whole county has an area of 7,500 square kilometres, such that the population density in rural West Cork is somewhere between one and two orders of magnitude lower than in Edinburgh, possibly lower.
It should be obvious that if the population density is below 100/km2 then the car will be dominant, and above 1,000/km2 that reliance on cars will cause gridlock and public transport is more suited.
In between that it gets a bit more messy, and obviously people cross the boundaries between one area into another, but I think those thresholds would actually cover most of the land area of Britain and most of the population.
I think the issue becomes hot because you have one side who advocate for active travel and public transport who refuse point blank to accept that neither are a good replacement for a car in most spaces. I say this as someone who hasnt owned a motor vehicle for 15 odd years though still have a licence and live somewhere that most people would class as a reasonably good bus service which I do use when I have no choice but to leave the house.
Public transport really is crap. For example going to the supermarket for me involves waiting for the bus which only turns up at all about 95% of the time and is pretty much always late by 5 to 10 minutes when it does turn up. That gets me to the town centre in about 30 minutes once it arrives. I then need to get another bus to get to the supermarket which means another wait of upto 40 minutes before another 15 minute journey. It is not unusual for example to leave my house at 10:50 am and finally get to the supermarket around 12:30pm and that costs me 4£.
To get to the supermarket by car on the other hand takes about 5 minutes.
I don't know where you live, but it doesn't sound like a particularly densely populated urban area. In the cities that I've lived in it hasn't been unusual for me to live within easy walking distance of two different supermarkets, let alone others on a single bus journey.
Even in Chippenham, my mother, who has Parkinson's and consequently difficulty in walking long distances, would walk to the supermarket and take a taxi home. I don't think she'd have been able to take a bus there instead.
I'm not opposed to cars, but they're a tool and any tool has its appropriate and efficient use, and other situations where it isn't appropriate or is inefficient. Even in a rural area such as West Cork, one of the local towns gets horrendously gridlocked quite often, because all the parking is located in the town centre, and so people driving around town looking for a parking spot block the traffic trying to cross the town. If they'd just complete the plan to build a car park by the bypass, for which there is a bridge to the town centre across the river, they'd take masses of traffic out of the town centre. But for some reason it is seen as being anti-car to ask them not to park wherever people please, even if it ends up in a worse outcome for everyone.
Even as someone who lives outside of the town and has to drive in I can see that this would make sense for everyone, but sensible changes are blocked as being anti-car. It's completely irrational.
I live in what Eahbahl would class in an urban area population about 36k , a population density of about 3.6k per square kilometre. Yes I am in walking distance of a local shop but what the fuck use is that to anyone. Its great for incidentals but not for getting most of what you need
I wasn't talking about a little shop. I meant what I said - an actual supermarket. I find it weird that you can live in a reasonably substantial urban area and not be in walking distance of a proper supermarket.
I've never paid much attention to it when choosing where to live, haven't had the luxury of being able to choose exactly where to live in a city - I've always taken the place I could afford - but that has always landed me within walking distance of a supermarket. I'm a bit surprised.
City != town.
The nearest supermarket to me is over 5 miles from me. Not a problem since supermarkets are a destination people can drive to, but I wouldn't call that walking distance.
I really don't see why the car vs public transport debate generates so much heat. It seems obvious that public transport is more suited to dense urban areas - such as Edinburgh, where I once lived, which has a population of ~520,000 in the city council area over 264 square kilometres - and the car is more suited to sparsely populated rural areas - such as West Cork where I now live, where the whole of County Cork has a population slightly larger than Edinburgh's (~580,000), although about half of those are in Cork city, and the whole county has an area of 7,500 square kilometres, such that the population density in rural West Cork is somewhere between one and two orders of magnitude lower than in Edinburgh, possibly lower.
It should be obvious that if the population density is below 100/km2 then the car will be dominant, and above 1,000/km2 that reliance on cars will cause gridlock and public transport is more suited.
In between that it gets a bit more messy, and obviously people cross the boundaries between one area into another, but I think those thresholds would actually cover most of the land area of Britain and most of the population.
I think the issue becomes hot because you have one side who advocate for active travel and public transport who refuse point blank to accept that neither are a good replacement for a car in most spaces. I say this as someone who hasnt owned a motor vehicle for 15 odd years though still have a licence and live somewhere that most people would class as a reasonably good bus service which I do use when I have no choice but to leave the house.
Public transport really is crap. For example going to the supermarket for me involves waiting for the bus which only turns up at all about 95% of the time and is pretty much always late by 5 to 10 minutes when it does turn up. That gets me to the town centre in about 30 minutes once it arrives. I then need to get another bus to get to the supermarket which means another wait of upto 40 minutes before another 15 minute journey. It is not unusual for example to leave my house at 10:50 am and finally get to the supermarket around 12:30pm and that costs me 4£.
To get to the supermarket by car on the other hand takes about 5 minutes.
I don't know where you live, but it doesn't sound like a particularly densely populated urban area. In the cities that I've lived in it hasn't been unusual for me to live within easy walking distance of two different supermarkets, let alone others on a single bus journey.
Even in Chippenham, my mother, who has Parkinson's and consequently difficulty in walking long distances, would walk to the supermarket and take a taxi home. I don't think she'd have been able to take a bus there instead.
I'm not opposed to cars, but they're a tool and any tool has its appropriate and efficient use, and other situations where it isn't appropriate or is inefficient. Even in a rural area such as West Cork, one of the local towns gets horrendously gridlocked quite often, because all the parking is located in the town centre, and so people driving around town looking for a parking spot block the traffic trying to cross the town. If they'd just complete the plan to build a car park by the bypass, for which there is a bridge to the town centre across the river, they'd take masses of traffic out of the town centre. But for some reason it is seen as being anti-car to ask them not to park wherever people please, even if it ends up in a worse outcome for everyone.
Even as someone who lives outside of the town and has to drive in I can see that this would make sense for everyone, but sensible changes are blocked as being anti-car. It's completely irrational.
I live in what Eahbahl would class in an urban area population about 36k , a population density of about 3.6k per square kilometre. Yes I am in walking distance of a local shop but what the fuck use is that to anyone. Its great for incidentals but not for getting most of what you need
I wasn't talking about a little shop. I meant what I said - an actual supermarket. I find it weird that you can live in a reasonably substantial urban area and not be in walking distance of a proper supermarket.
I've never paid much attention to it when choosing where to live, haven't had the luxury of being able to choose exactly where to live in a city - I've always taken the place I could afford - but that has always landed me within walking distance of a supermarket. I'm a bit surprised.
Shrugs the supermarket is on the other edge of town to me, I am on one edge its on the other. The only other major supermarket in town is a marks and spencers food hall and a lidl. I don't goto the M&S one because expense of it even though would cut out the second bus. There is also a large lidl but it is 100 yards from the one I go to. All the rest are the tesco express type
All advocates of public transport and active transport are going to do is create more people like me. Pretty much never leave the house and order most stuff online.
We aren't going to get on a bike or walk, neither are we going to use public transport unless we absolutely have to. I lived in slough for 35 years before here which again has good public transport as long as you have one of two destinations central london or reading.....public transport was an asshole there too. At least in slough I was living in an area where I could walk to a supermarket that was decent....still had to get a taxi home though
Convincing reasons to think reducing SO2 emissions from ships has caused oceanic warming (ie it's not just correlation). Bad news in itself, good news on the broader level that it shows we can geoengineer the climate
I've been thinking about this. The reason we cut SO2 was that it converted into sulphuric acid, H2SO4, in the clouds causing acid rain which had significantly adverse effects on both life in the oceans and forests, reducing their CO2 absorption, increasing global warming. Chris Peckham mentioned this in his Earth series. Large quantities of SO2 meant that 96% of life in the seas died.
Pumping SO2 into the atmosphere for a short term gain will definitely need a lot more thought.
It appears that they can generate similar clouds by spraying harmless seawater into the air?
People have suggested that, it hasn't happened yet and I wouldn't count my chickens.
Doesn't surprise me that you've fallen for it though, since its being shared as a suggestion by those who are opposed to any action on climate change. Same as such other miracle cures you've suggested in the past like spreading gravel will prevent climate change.
Is there any special reason for this dickish response?
I haven't 'fallen' for anything, I was merely adding some information to Davidl's suggestion that the plan would be to put the frowned-upon sulphur component back into ship fuel to reverse the warming effect. A poster down-thread has said the same thing, I take it you'll be spraying your particular brand of gormless invective in his direction too?
I really don't see why the car vs public transport debate generates so much heat. It seems obvious that public transport is more suited to dense urban areas - such as Edinburgh, where I once lived, which has a population of ~520,000 in the city council area over 264 square kilometres - and the car is more suited to sparsely populated rural areas - such as West Cork where I now live, where the whole of County Cork has a population slightly larger than Edinburgh's (~580,000), although about half of those are in Cork city, and the whole county has an area of 7,500 square kilometres, such that the population density in rural West Cork is somewhere between one and two orders of magnitude lower than in Edinburgh, possibly lower.
It should be obvious that if the population density is below 100/km2 then the car will be dominant, and above 1,000/km2 that reliance on cars will cause gridlock and public transport is more suited.
In between that it gets a bit more messy, and obviously people cross the boundaries between one area into another, but I think those thresholds would actually cover most of the land area of Britain and most of the population.
I think the issue becomes hot because you have one side who advocate for active travel and public transport who refuse point blank to accept that neither are a good replacement for a car in most spaces. I say this as someone who hasnt owned a motor vehicle for 15 odd years though still have a licence and live somewhere that most people would class as a reasonably good bus service which I do use when I have no choice but to leave the house.
Public transport really is crap. For example going to the supermarket for me involves waiting for the bus which only turns up at all about 95% of the time and is pretty much always late by 5 to 10 minutes when it does turn up. That gets me to the town centre in about 30 minutes once it arrives. I then need to get another bus to get to the supermarket which means another wait of upto 40 minutes before another 15 minute journey. It is not unusual for example to leave my house at 10:50 am and finally get to the supermarket around 12:30pm and that costs me 4£.
To get to the supermarket by car on the other hand takes about 5 minutes.
I don't know where you live, but it doesn't sound like a particularly densely populated urban area. In the cities that I've lived in it hasn't been unusual for me to live within easy walking distance of two different supermarkets, let alone others on a single bus journey.
Even in Chippenham, my mother, who has Parkinson's and consequently difficulty in walking long distances, would walk to the supermarket and take a taxi home. I don't think she'd have been able to take a bus there instead.
I'm not opposed to cars, but they're a tool and any tool has its appropriate and efficient use, and other situations where it isn't appropriate or is inefficient. Even in a rural area such as West Cork, one of the local towns gets horrendously gridlocked quite often, because all the parking is located in the town centre, and so people driving around town looking for a parking spot block the traffic trying to cross the town. If they'd just complete the plan to build a car park by the bypass, for which there is a bridge to the town centre across the river, they'd take masses of traffic out of the town centre. But for some reason it is seen as being anti-car to ask them not to park wherever people please, even if it ends up in a worse outcome for everyone.
Even as someone who lives outside of the town and has to drive in I can see that this would make sense for everyone, but sensible changes are blocked as being anti-car. It's completely irrational.
I live in what Eahbahl would class in an urban area population about 36k , a population density of about 3.6k per square kilometre. Yes I am in walking distance of a local shop but what the fuck use is that to anyone. Its great for incidentals but not for getting most of what you need
I wasn't talking about a little shop. I meant what I said - an actual supermarket. I find it weird that you can live in a reasonably substantial urban area and not be in walking distance of a proper supermarket.
I've never paid much attention to it when choosing where to live, haven't had the luxury of being able to choose exactly where to live in a city - I've always taken the place I could afford - but that has always landed me within walking distance of a supermarket. I'm a bit surprised.
Shrugs the supermarket is on the other edge of town to me, I am on one edge its on the other. The only other major supermarket in town is a marks and spencers food hall and a lidl. I don't goto the M&S one because expense of it even though would cut out the second bus. There is also a large lidl but it is 100 yards from the one I go to. All the rest are the tesco express type
All advocates of public transport and active transport are going to do is create more people like me. Pretty much never leave the house and order most stuff online.
We aren't going to get on a bike or walk, neither are we going to use public transport unless we absolutely have to. I lived in slough for 35 years before here which again has good public transport as long as you have one of two destinations central london or reading.....public transport was an asshole there too. At least in slough I was living in an area where I could walk to a supermarket that was decent....still had to get a taxi home though
There's a lot of truth in what you say. Many of the proponents of active travel and public transport (myself included...) live in areas where it is actually an option, even if sometimes a difficult one. For many others, it is not a practical option - and that's leaving aside health issues that might prevent it. Making travel more difficult for those who cannot get by without a car is utterly wrong.
However, I see it a bit like meat-eating. Many people like me don't want to stop eating meat - we like it. But perhaps we could cut down a little on the *amount* of meat we eat. Likewise, for some people 1 in 5 journeys might be possible actively or via public transport. Nowhere near enough to get rid of a car, but every car journey stopped helps a teeny weeny bit. And might even get you fitter.
Seawater cloud injection is probably one of the safer forms of geoengineering and as such worth investigating, especially now we have a real world analogue to look at. It won't wipe out global warming alone though, just slow it down / mask it.
The argument about transport availability & cost highlights both the huge variances in availability and the huge gulf in understanding.
For your outer London resident there are riches in public transport options which are largely paid for out of general taxation. For your cundry bumpkins there is often a complete absence of public transport options despite paying general taxation.
For suburbanites it is optimal to encourage more public transport and less driving. For country folk the choice is driving or not going.*
Road pricing gets talked about as a replacement for fuel duty. And gets shouted at as being patently unfair. Which is probably true the way that shitbox UK would implement it. What we need is subsidised fuel for the countryside and heavier taxes in towns. ULEZ and similar is the right policy, just being implemented poorly.
* Before anyone says "what about walking or cycling", what about them? Too many roads between villages would be lethal to walk / cycle down, and thats before we ask about fitness / safety issues.
Agree. On your *, I agree that investment in walking and cycling, or even public transport, between villages isn't worth it.
But 83% of us live in urban areas, so investment in active and public transport makes sense for most.
Urban areas = towns, not cities.
I got a train (first time in about 5 years) recently, to and from the Airport, got the return train journey yesterday. To get to the train station took a car [in this case taxi] ride.
You seem to view the country as either Edinburgh or Sticksville. Reality is somewhat different.
I grew up in a town in rural Scotland. It had a train station. The main problem is you couldn't walk or cycle to it. Sounds like your problem too.
Even public transport in towns is designed for drivers.
Because cars work.
Towns require cars. The alternative to cars is taxis or buses. And that's the bulk of your 83%
You simply can't get your head around supply/demand, can you?
The only reason Edinburgh has lots of bus users is because there are lots of buses.
The reason Edinburgh has lots of bus users, is its a city. Its not a town, what part of this are you failing to understand?
Nothing wrong with buses existing, but buses in towns are a crappy mode of transportation that only those who can't afford their own car (or can't drive as they lack a licence) would use.
The thing with a car is if you want to get from A to B you drive there and are done.
With buses you are stuck with the bus routes, and in most towns the bus routes don't go between A and B if you aren't trying to get to the town centre. Get a bus into the bus depot in town, then another bus from the depot out of town to your destination. And of course that relies upon the bus turning up, and the bus then follows its route stopping everywhere it has to stop.
My wife doesn't drive, she used to take two buses to get to work which took at least an hour, nearly an hour and a half sometimes one way. It took me 15 minutes to drive it, or 30 minutes return to go pick her up and drive her home.
Good luck finding a parking place at B unless your destination is a supermarket, or you are MD of the company.
I always find a parking place at B. 🤷♂️
Try leaving your bubble from time to time. Saying "oh but what about parking" to someone who drives everywhere and always finds parking, isn't much a problem.
You drive everywhere and always finds parking, in English towns, without a blue badge and without privileged access to private spaces?
I don't want to call you a liar, but happy to call you an outlier. 5 sigma.
Your kidding, right? The rest of the UK is not RBKC outside Harrods. There is plenty of parking all over the country in towns, villages, cities. Some even - gasp if you can believe this - for free.
Name me a town where you can't park without the criteria you specify.
Bath
Free Car Parks in Bath
Bath University Car Park BA2 7JX – free after 5pm every day, all day on public holidays. Sydney Road BA2 6NS – 4 hours maximum. Raby Mews BA2 4EJ – 2 hours maximum. Sydney Wharf BA2 4BG – 4 hours maximum. Daniel Street BA2 6NB – 2 hours maximum.
Those are just the free ones after a 46 millisecond google.
I was mildly joking. I agree you can generally park in most British towns quite easily. London is an outlier
I find the whole debate enervating and a bit depressing. Cars are shit and destroy townscapes. Thank god they are on the way out
What utter nonsense. A "Leon" post just to see who would bite.
One issue creeping up on the Tories unawares is the increasingly rapid death of bus travel. If you live in a big place you likely still have buses - possibly less frequent and more expensive.
If you live outside of a big place, your bus options likely to be increasingly threatened with not being there at all. Access to buses so that village ladies can go to town and shop has been a successful Tory campaign topic in the past, yet now there is silence as what services are left are removed.
There is still a lunatic mentality that government - national or local - has no place running services and if it tried it would be terrible. And yet we have an awful lot of councils essentially being held hostage and hard bargained by Arriva. Which is the german government...
Convincing reasons to think reducing SO2 emissions from ships has caused oceanic warming (ie it's not just correlation). Bad news in itself, good news on the broader level that it shows we can geoengineer the climate
I've been thinking about this. The reason we cut SO2 was that it converted into sulphuric acid, H2SO4, in the clouds causing acid rain which had significantly adverse effects on both life in the oceans and forests, reducing their CO2 absorption, increasing global warming. Chris Peckham mentioned this in his Earth series. Large quantities of SO2 meant that 96% of life in the seas died.
Pumping SO2 into the atmosphere for a short term gain will definitely need a lot more thought.
96% of sea life died? That is a mega mass extinction. Now I know that Packham is a twat of the first order (cannot understand why such a dreadful presenter is on TV at all) but I would be surprised if even he suggested that
I'm sceptical on that figure. Only thing I can find like that is in a specific region, for specifically sea-floor living animals, in a mass disaster near Russia that seems to be getting blamed on a pesticide leak.
Can't find anything like 96% for oceans globally, that just doesn't pass the sniff test.
Was he referring to the end of the Permian, aka the "Great Dying"? That was a little while ago now.
Aren’t we always saying that politics needs to have a longer term perspective on things?
Indeed. Although I suspect having too long term a perspective is not great either. Entropy always wins...
I wonder what the ideal parliament length would be for government in terms of providing enough long term stability to get things done. Is 5 years too short? On the other hand, it seems 15 years is too long.
The 1935 Parliament lasted 10 years. There was a brief stutter half-way through but in the end it worked quite well.
The argument about transport availability & cost highlights both the huge variances in availability and the huge gulf in understanding.
For your outer London resident there are riches in public transport options which are largely paid for out of general taxation. For your cundry bumpkins there is often a complete absence of public transport options despite paying general taxation.
For suburbanites it is optimal to encourage more public transport and less driving. For country folk the choice is driving or not going.*
Road pricing gets talked about as a replacement for fuel duty. And gets shouted at as being patently unfair. Which is probably true the way that shitbox UK would implement it. What we need is subsidised fuel for the countryside and heavier taxes in towns. ULEZ and similar is the right policy, just being implemented poorly.
* Before anyone says "what about walking or cycling", what about them? Too many roads between villages would be lethal to walk / cycle down, and thats before we ask about fitness / safety issues.
Agree. On your *, I agree that investment in walking and cycling, or even public transport, between villages isn't worth it.
But 83% of us live in urban areas, so investment in active and public transport makes sense for most.
Urban areas = towns, not cities.
I got a train (first time in about 5 years) recently, to and from the Airport, got the return train journey yesterday. To get to the train station took a car [in this case taxi] ride.
You seem to view the country as either Edinburgh or Sticksville. Reality is somewhat different.
I grew up in a town in rural Scotland. It had a train station. The main problem is you couldn't walk or cycle to it. Sounds like your problem too.
Even public transport in towns is designed for drivers.
Because cars work.
Towns require cars. The alternative to cars is taxis or buses. And that's the bulk of your 83%
You simply can't get your head around supply/demand, can you?
The only reason Edinburgh has lots of bus users is because there are lots of buses.
The reason Edinburgh has lots of bus users, is its a city. Its not a town, what part of this are you failing to understand?
Nothing wrong with buses existing, but buses in towns are a crappy mode of transportation that only those who can't afford their own car (or can't drive as they lack a licence) would use.
The thing with a car is if you want to get from A to B you drive there and are done.
With buses you are stuck with the bus routes, and in most towns the bus routes don't go between A and B if you aren't trying to get to the town centre. Get a bus into the bus depot in town, then another bus from the depot out of town to your destination. And of course that relies upon the bus turning up, and the bus then follows its route stopping everywhere it has to stop.
My wife doesn't drive, she used to take two buses to get to work which took at least an hour, nearly an hour and a half sometimes one way. It took me 15 minutes to drive it, or 30 minutes return to go pick her up and drive her home.
Good luck finding a parking place at B unless your destination is a supermarket, or you are MD of the company.
I always find a parking place at B. 🤷♂️
Try leaving your bubble from time to time. Saying "oh but what about parking" to someone who drives everywhere and always finds parking, isn't much a problem.
You drive everywhere and always finds parking, in English towns, without a blue badge and without privileged access to private spaces?
I don't want to call you a liar, but happy to call you an outlier. 5 sigma.
Your kidding, right? The rest of the UK is not RBKC outside Harrods. There is plenty of parking all over the country in towns, villages, cities. Some even - gasp if you can believe this - for free.
Name me a town where you can't park without the criteria you specify.
I drove yesterday into Maltby, which is a "town" by anyone's imagination. Parked up briefly in the Tesco Car Park, bought some swim nappies and onto the leisure centre which had ample parking. Parking for picking up items from Worksop post office is a bit iffy mind; the last time I had to properly PLAN and pay for parking was in Manchester (Obviously a city) last weekend meeting some friends, Lower Chatham St carpark nicely close to the motorway though. Parking in Harworth, Carlton, Langold or Oldcotes tends to be trivial though (All villages) - so I'd say the smaller the locality the easier the parking unless it's a tourist hotspot like York.
I excepted supermarkets, whose USP is extensive free parking. Leisure centres tend to be the same (but it's pay and display in my local town) so that leaves the Post Office, which is a pretty good proxy for all the non-supermarket shops you might otherwise want to visit.
So excluding places you might want to go to, there might be a problem?
Where exactly is this supposed problem of yours? And pay and display parking is still parking, nothing wrong with that. So long as there's ample spaces, its clean, well lit and secure. If you're using a service, there's nothing wrong with paying for it.
Sure, you can classify places like the post office as not "places you might want to go to." I have already pointed you to an ostensibly well-researched article in a respected newspaper identifying numerous market towns where the problem is critical. If your ambition is limited to weekly shops at tesco I appreciate there is less of a problem for you. As far as paying for it is concerned, some people are poor and some people are lazy. i am one of the two.
You shared a clickbait article about what clearly aren't typical towns actually. And I'm sceptical how much credit to give to such clickbait anyway.
My local Post Office is in a local community centre which has a car park. The Post Office where I used to live was in a shop, with a car park. Any Post Office I've ever been to has parking, either it's own, or on the road.
And the emptiest car park I ever go to is the main Post Office depot nearby, if I need to collect a "you were out" parcel. Their car park is unnecessarily big, but it's their land so up to them what they do with it.
Never been to a Post Office you can't park at. Not sure why any town would ever have one, what would be the point of it?
Sure.
Clickbait has a specific meaning: lurid headlines placed on third party websites to induce the idle surfer to follow them to a page full of lurid advertisements for timeshares and penis enlargement and such. I can find no links to that article on third party websites, and, having disabled my adblocker, can see no ads on the page itself. What is the basis for your use of the term, other than that the article destroys your point?
This is nonsense about post offices. The main sorting depot obviously has lots of parking, but other than collect parcels there's generally nothing you can do there. There is no parking at either town centre post Office in my local town.
No ads on the page itself? This is what popped up when I clicked on the page, covering a third of my screen. [EDIT the ad is so big, that PB Vanilla is now shrinking my screenshot of it]
Then under the article is this ad.
The Grauniad is full of ads and clickbait, just begging letters are its ads not penis pumps, and the clickbait is bullshit like that you just shared that it thinks people will share and click
I simply don't believe that you do not have a Post Office you can drive to, I don't believe it. Not my experience at all, and if you go to the Post Office website they're very happy to provide details of where you can drive to in order to get Post Office services.
Please feel free to name any town that you can't drive to and park near a Post Office, as its BS in my eyes.
I have an aversion for paying to park. That is not rational and probably costs me more in petrol, but even with that irrationality on my part I can normally find some free parking in most places I go. Might involve a brisk walk. If I was willing to pay I can't think of any places you can't park. To take an example that I know well Guildford has car parks and on-street parking that you pay for, but I am aware of free on street parking within the walking distance of the centre from every direction. It does require a bit of effort and stubbornness not to fork out to find them but it can be done. I was visiting my son in Cambridge on Sunday. Again it can be done here with a little research and once you know the spots you are ok for future visits.
The argument about transport availability & cost highlights both the huge variances in availability and the huge gulf in understanding.
For your outer London resident there are riches in public transport options which are largely paid for out of general taxation. For your cundry bumpkins there is often a complete absence of public transport options despite paying general taxation.
For suburbanites it is optimal to encourage more public transport and less driving. For country folk the choice is driving or not going.*
Road pricing gets talked about as a replacement for fuel duty. And gets shouted at as being patently unfair. Which is probably true the way that shitbox UK would implement it. What we need is subsidised fuel for the countryside and heavier taxes in towns. ULEZ and similar is the right policy, just being implemented poorly.
* Before anyone says "what about walking or cycling", what about them? Too many roads between villages would be lethal to walk / cycle down, and thats before we ask about fitness / safety issues.
Agree. On your *, I agree that investment in walking and cycling, or even public transport, between villages isn't worth it.
But 83% of us live in urban areas, so investment in active and public transport makes sense for most.
Urban areas = towns, not cities.
I got a train (first time in about 5 years) recently, to and from the Airport, got the return train journey yesterday. To get to the train station took a car [in this case taxi] ride.
You seem to view the country as either Edinburgh or Sticksville. Reality is somewhat different.
I grew up in a town in rural Scotland. It had a train station. The main problem is you couldn't walk or cycle to it. Sounds like your problem too.
Even public transport in towns is designed for drivers.
Because cars work.
Towns require cars. The alternative to cars is taxis or buses. And that's the bulk of your 83%
You simply can't get your head around supply/demand, can you?
The only reason Edinburgh has lots of bus users is because there are lots of buses.
The reason Edinburgh has lots of bus users, is its a city. Its not a town, what part of this are you failing to understand?
Nothing wrong with buses existing, but buses in towns are a crappy mode of transportation that only those who can't afford their own car (or can't drive as they lack a licence) would use.
The thing with a car is if you want to get from A to B you drive there and are done.
With buses you are stuck with the bus routes, and in most towns the bus routes don't go between A and B if you aren't trying to get to the town centre. Get a bus into the bus depot in town, then another bus from the depot out of town to your destination. And of course that relies upon the bus turning up, and the bus then follows its route stopping everywhere it has to stop.
My wife doesn't drive, she used to take two buses to get to work which took at least an hour, nearly an hour and a half sometimes one way. It took me 15 minutes to drive it, or 30 minutes return to go pick her up and drive her home.
Good luck finding a parking place at B unless your destination is a supermarket, or you are MD of the company.
I always find a parking place at B. 🤷♂️
Try leaving your bubble from time to time. Saying "oh but what about parking" to someone who drives everywhere and always finds parking, isn't much a problem.
You drive everywhere and always finds parking, in English towns, without a blue badge and without privileged access to private spaces?
I don't want to call you a liar, but happy to call you an outlier. 5 sigma.
Your kidding, right? The rest of the UK is not RBKC outside Harrods. There is plenty of parking all over the country in towns, villages, cities. Some even - gasp if you can believe this - for free.
Name me a town where you can't park without the criteria you specify.
I drove yesterday into Maltby, which is a "town" by anyone's imagination. Parked up briefly in the Tesco Car Park, bought some swim nappies and onto the leisure centre which had ample parking. Parking for picking up items from Worksop post office is a bit iffy mind; the last time I had to properly PLAN and pay for parking was in Manchester (Obviously a city) last weekend meeting some friends, Lower Chatham St carpark nicely close to the motorway though. Parking in Harworth, Carlton, Langold or Oldcotes tends to be trivial though (All villages) - so I'd say the smaller the locality the easier the parking unless it's a tourist hotspot like York.
I excepted supermarkets, whose USP is extensive free parking. Leisure centres tend to be the same (but it's pay and display in my local town) so that leaves the Post Office, which is a pretty good proxy for all the non-supermarket shops you might otherwise want to visit.
So excluding places you might want to go to, there might be a problem?
Where exactly is this supposed problem of yours? And pay and display parking is still parking, nothing wrong with that. So long as there's ample spaces, its clean, well lit and secure. If you're using a service, there's nothing wrong with paying for it.
Sure, you can classify places like the post office as not "places you might want to go to." I have already pointed you to an ostensibly well-researched article in a respected newspaper identifying numerous market towns where the problem is critical. If your ambition is limited to weekly shops at tesco I appreciate there is less of a problem for you. As far as paying for it is concerned, some people are poor and some people are lazy. i am one of the two.
You shared a clickbait article about what clearly aren't typical towns actually. And I'm sceptical how much credit to give to such clickbait anyway.
My local Post Office is in a local community centre which has a car park. The Post Office where I used to live was in a shop, with a car park. Any Post Office I've ever been to has parking, either it's own, or on the road.
And the emptiest car park I ever go to is the main Post Office depot nearby, if I need to collect a "you were out" parcel. Their car park is unnecessarily big, but it's their land so up to them what they do with it.
Never been to a Post Office you can't park at. Not sure why any town would ever have one, what would be the point of it?
Sure.
Clickbait has a specific meaning: lurid headlines placed on third party websites to induce the idle surfer to follow them to a page full of lurid advertisements for timeshares and penis enlargement and such. I can find no links to that article on third party websites, and, having disabled my adblocker, can see no ads on the page itself. What is the basis for your use of the term, other than that the article destroys your point?
This is nonsense about post offices. The main sorting depot obviously has lots of parking, but other than collect parcels there's generally nothing you can do there. There is no parking at either town centre post Office in my local town.
No ads on the page itself? This is what popped up when I clicked on the page, covering a third of my screen. [EDIT the ad is so big, that PB Vanilla is now shrinking my screenshot of it]
Then under the article is this ad.
The Grauniad is full of ads and clickbait, just begging letters are its ads not penis pumps, and the clickbait is bullshit like that you just shared that it thinks people will share and click
I simply don't believe that you do not have a Post Office you can drive to, I don't believe it. Not my experience at all, and if you go to the Post Office website they're very happy to provide details of where you can drive to in order to get Post Office services.
Please feel free to name any town that you can't drive to and park near a Post Office, as its BS in my eyes.
Not seeing the bait element here, Barty. And I don't want to park "near" the PO I want to park at it, and without faffing about with coins and parking apps and similar balls, and walking 10 minutes.
I think this is a generational thing. you regard all that shit as "easy parking." Not how it used to be.
I wonder whether the way Trump's legal woes are dominating the media agenda in the US makes it difficult for anyone else to attract attention. For example, I think it makes it harder for a Democrat opponent to Biden to get airtime. While Trump's woes are a good reason for the Republicans to pick someone else to run for President, how does a someone else build momentum when they can't get a word in edgeways?
How many people who criticise cities in the Midlands and North have actually spent more than 10 minutes in them?
[...tots up time in head on how long in cities in North and Midlands...over a decade]
Fair point. I have spent a fair while in points from Brum upwards, and there are many nice places (York, the Yorkshire Dales) and there are ratholes (Middlesbrough!). Similarly in the South there are nice places (Haslemere, Aundel) and ratholes (Southend on Sea).
The argument about transport availability & cost highlights both the huge variances in availability and the huge gulf in understanding.
For your outer London resident there are riches in public transport options which are largely paid for out of general taxation. For your cundry bumpkins there is often a complete absence of public transport options despite paying general taxation.
For suburbanites it is optimal to encourage more public transport and less driving. For country folk the choice is driving or not going.*
Road pricing gets talked about as a replacement for fuel duty. And gets shouted at as being patently unfair. Which is probably true the way that shitbox UK would implement it. What we need is subsidised fuel for the countryside and heavier taxes in towns. ULEZ and similar is the right policy, just being implemented poorly.
* Before anyone says "what about walking or cycling", what about them? Too many roads between villages would be lethal to walk / cycle down, and thats before we ask about fitness / safety issues.
Agree. On your *, I agree that investment in walking and cycling, or even public transport, between villages isn't worth it.
But 83% of us live in urban areas, so investment in active and public transport makes sense for most.
Urban areas = towns, not cities.
I got a train (first time in about 5 years) recently, to and from the Airport, got the return train journey yesterday. To get to the train station took a car [in this case taxi] ride.
You seem to view the country as either Edinburgh or Sticksville. Reality is somewhat different.
I grew up in a town in rural Scotland. It had a train station. The main problem is you couldn't walk or cycle to it. Sounds like your problem too.
Even public transport in towns is designed for drivers.
Because cars work.
Towns require cars. The alternative to cars is taxis or buses. And that's the bulk of your 83%
You simply can't get your head around supply/demand, can you?
The only reason Edinburgh has lots of bus users is because there are lots of buses.
The reason Edinburgh has lots of bus users, is its a city. Its not a town, what part of this are you failing to understand?
Nothing wrong with buses existing, but buses in towns are a crappy mode of transportation that only those who can't afford their own car (or can't drive as they lack a licence) would use.
The thing with a car is if you want to get from A to B you drive there and are done.
With buses you are stuck with the bus routes, and in most towns the bus routes don't go between A and B if you aren't trying to get to the town centre. Get a bus into the bus depot in town, then another bus from the depot out of town to your destination. And of course that relies upon the bus turning up, and the bus then follows its route stopping everywhere it has to stop.
My wife doesn't drive, she used to take two buses to get to work which took at least an hour, nearly an hour and a half sometimes one way. It took me 15 minutes to drive it, or 30 minutes return to go pick her up and drive her home.
Good luck finding a parking place at B unless your destination is a supermarket, or you are MD of the company.
I always find a parking place at B. 🤷♂️
Try leaving your bubble from time to time. Saying "oh but what about parking" to someone who drives everywhere and always finds parking, isn't much a problem.
You drive everywhere and always finds parking, in English towns, without a blue badge and without privileged access to private spaces?
I don't want to call you a liar, but happy to call you an outlier. 5 sigma.
Your kidding, right? The rest of the UK is not RBKC outside Harrods. There is plenty of parking all over the country in towns, villages, cities. Some even - gasp if you can believe this - for free.
Name me a town where you can't park without the criteria you specify.
I drove yesterday into Maltby, which is a "town" by anyone's imagination. Parked up briefly in the Tesco Car Park, bought some swim nappies and onto the leisure centre which had ample parking. Parking for picking up items from Worksop post office is a bit iffy mind; the last time I had to properly PLAN and pay for parking was in Manchester (Obviously a city) last weekend meeting some friends, Lower Chatham St carpark nicely close to the motorway though. Parking in Harworth, Carlton, Langold or Oldcotes tends to be trivial though (All villages) - so I'd say the smaller the locality the easier the parking unless it's a tourist hotspot like York.
I excepted supermarkets, whose USP is extensive free parking. Leisure centres tend to be the same (but it's pay and display in my local town) so that leaves the Post Office, which is a pretty good proxy for all the non-supermarket shops you might otherwise want to visit.
So excluding places you might want to go to, there might be a problem?
Where exactly is this supposed problem of yours? And pay and display parking is still parking, nothing wrong with that. So long as there's ample spaces, its clean, well lit and secure. If you're using a service, there's nothing wrong with paying for it.
Sure, you can classify places like the post office as not "places you might want to go to." I have already pointed you to an ostensibly well-researched article in a respected newspaper identifying numerous market towns where the problem is critical. If your ambition is limited to weekly shops at tesco I appreciate there is less of a problem for you. As far as paying for it is concerned, some people are poor and some people are lazy. i am one of the two.
You shared a clickbait article about what clearly aren't typical towns actually. And I'm sceptical how much credit to give to such clickbait anyway.
My local Post Office is in a local community centre which has a car park. The Post Office where I used to live was in a shop, with a car park. Any Post Office I've ever been to has parking, either it's own, or on the road.
And the emptiest car park I ever go to is the main Post Office depot nearby, if I need to collect a "you were out" parcel. Their car park is unnecessarily big, but it's their land so up to them what they do with it.
Never been to a Post Office you can't park at. Not sure why any town would ever have one, what would be the point of it?
Sure.
Clickbait has a specific meaning: lurid headlines placed on third party websites to induce the idle surfer to follow them to a page full of lurid advertisements for timeshares and penis enlargement and such. I can find no links to that article on third party websites, and, having disabled my adblocker, can see no ads on the page itself. What is the basis for your use of the term, other than that the article destroys your point?
This is nonsense about post offices. The main sorting depot obviously has lots of parking, but other than collect parcels there's generally nothing you can do there. There is no parking at either town centre post Office in my local town.
No ads on the page itself? This is what popped up when I clicked on the page, covering a third of my screen. [EDIT the ad is so big, that PB Vanilla is now shrinking my screenshot of it]
Then under the article is this ad.
The Grauniad is full of ads and clickbait, just begging letters are its ads not penis pumps, and the clickbait is bullshit like that you just shared that it thinks people will share and click
I simply don't believe that you do not have a Post Office you can drive to, I don't believe it. Not my experience at all, and if you go to the Post Office website they're very happy to provide details of where you can drive to in order to get Post Office services.
Please feel free to name any town that you can't drive to and park near a Post Office, as its BS in my eyes.
Not seeing the bait element here, Barty. And I don't want to park "near" the PO I want to park at it, and without faffing about with coins and parking apps and similar balls, and walking 10 minutes.
I think this is a generational thing. you regard all that shit as "easy parking." Not how it used to be.
Guardian doesn't have ads for me. I use Adblocker. The fundraising popup is very occasional.
I really don't see why the car vs public transport debate generates so much heat. It seems obvious that public transport is more suited to dense urban areas - such as Edinburgh, where I once lived, which has a population of ~520,000 in the city council area over 264 square kilometres - and the car is more suited to sparsely populated rural areas - such as West Cork where I now live, where the whole of County Cork has a population slightly larger than Edinburgh's (~580,000), although about half of those are in Cork city, and the whole county has an area of 7,500 square kilometres, such that the population density in rural West Cork is somewhere between one and two orders of magnitude lower than in Edinburgh, possibly lower.
It should be obvious that if the population density is below 100/km2 then the car will be dominant, and above 1,000/km2 that reliance on cars will cause gridlock and public transport is more suited.
In between that it gets a bit more messy, and obviously people cross the boundaries between one area into another, but I think those thresholds would actually cover most of the land area of Britain and most of the population.
I think the issue becomes hot because you have one side who advocate for active travel and public transport who refuse point blank to accept that neither are a good replacement for a car in most spaces. I say this as someone who hasnt owned a motor vehicle for 15 odd years though still have a licence and live somewhere that most people would class as a reasonably good bus service which I do use when I have no choice but to leave the house.
Public transport really is crap. For example going to the supermarket for me involves waiting for the bus which only turns up at all about 95% of the time and is pretty much always late by 5 to 10 minutes when it does turn up. That gets me to the town centre in about 30 minutes once it arrives. I then need to get another bus to get to the supermarket which means another wait of upto 40 minutes before another 15 minute journey. It is not unusual for example to leave my house at 10:50 am and finally get to the supermarket around 12:30pm and that costs me 4£.
To get to the supermarket by car on the other hand takes about 5 minutes.
I don't know where you live, but it doesn't sound like a particularly densely populated urban area. In the cities that I've lived in it hasn't been unusual for me to live within easy walking distance of two different supermarkets, let alone others on a single bus journey.
Even in Chippenham, my mother, who has Parkinson's and consequently difficulty in walking long distances, would walk to the supermarket and take a taxi home. I don't think she'd have been able to take a bus there instead.
I'm not opposed to cars, but they're a tool and any tool has its appropriate and efficient use, and other situations where it isn't appropriate or is inefficient. Even in a rural area such as West Cork, one of the local towns gets horrendously gridlocked quite often, because all the parking is located in the town centre, and so people driving around town looking for a parking spot block the traffic trying to cross the town. If they'd just complete the plan to build a car park by the bypass, for which there is a bridge to the town centre across the river, they'd take masses of traffic out of the town centre. But for some reason it is seen as being anti-car to ask them not to park wherever people please, even if it ends up in a worse outcome for everyone.
Even as someone who lives outside of the town and has to drive in I can see that this would make sense for everyone, but sensible changes are blocked as being anti-car. It's completely irrational.
I live in what Eahbahl would class in an urban area population about 36k , a population density of about 3.6k per square kilometre. Yes I am in walking distance of a local shop but what the fuck use is that to anyone. Its great for incidentals but not for getting most of what you need
I wasn't talking about a little shop. I meant what I said - an actual supermarket. I find it weird that you can live in a reasonably substantial urban area and not be in walking distance of a proper supermarket.
I've never paid much attention to it when choosing where to live, haven't had the luxury of being able to choose exactly where to live in a city - I've always taken the place I could afford - but that has always landed me within walking distance of a supermarket. I'm a bit surprised.
Shrugs the supermarket is on the other edge of town to me, I am on one edge its on the other. The only other major supermarket in town is a marks and spencers food hall and a lidl. I don't goto the M&S one because expense of it even though would cut out the second bus. There is also a large lidl but it is 100 yards from the one I go to. All the rest are the tesco express type
It depends on your income level. A surprising number of people don’t realise that being a short walk from a full sized supermarket, a zone 2 tube station and a row of bus stops on the high street is a sign of wealth, in London.
But I've always bought/rented the cheapest properties in the places that I've lived in, and I've always been within walking distance of a supermarket. This was even true in the small town I lived in in the Forest of Dean, and although Exeter likes to style itself as a capital city, it's really not that big.
Actually, there was one place where we weren't within walking distance of a supermarket, and that was Bracknell - perhaps coincidentally somewhere that was designed around the car.
Bad town planning forces people to use cars, but there's no particular need why they have to be so designed.
What slightly puzzles me about Sunak´s attack on the long standing consensus that significantly restrictive green policies are necessary, is the very poor politics of his position.
The fact is that there is a major strand of Tory support that firmly supports the principle of acting on climate change, even if they are not settled on policy details. These are core supporters of the Party, not strictly the "old maids bicycling to Communion" but certainly socially active Tories; the kind who staff Citizens Advice Bureaux, serve as local councilors or as in some other local capacity such as school governors charities or even magistrates. Many view with concern the financial position of their children or grandchildren but are equivocal about the inheritance tax situation. They raise money for local hospitals, they see the daily pressure on the NHS is not a myth.
Increasingly they no longer view the Tories as "their party". Strident right wingers they are not, and while their natural moderation made them abhor Corbyn, increasingly they view the Daily Mail, Trumpian style hostility expressed by the likes of Braverman, Patel and even Sunak himself as hostility directed towards them- and as they watch public services dissolve into a shambles, they are increasingly not sitting on the sidelines any more.
Every Liberal Democrat branch in the country can tell you of these former Conservatives now coming out to campaign for the Lib Dems. This abandonment of a major plank of the green agenda will turn this trickle into something a lot bigger. Places like Surrey, Gloucestershire and Aberdeenshire are seeing the Lib Dems not only running things locally, but now looking like making major progress in the national battle too.
This green U-turn by Sunak could be the final mistake that alienates the Shires from the Tories for the last time.
It's a core vote strategy designed to prevent a total Tory wipe out, aimed at winning the next but one or two elections not the next one.
What core vote, if they have alienated the active middle class?
Retired pensioners.
My retired parents love bussing around for free (primarily to wind me up, I think).
A sleight of hand from Labour could be to neutralise this debate by targeting older people with more free bus/train travel (local routes only, perhaps).
Highly progressive too.
Funny definition of progressive you have.
Please explain how it is progressive to be funding travel for the wealthiest generation, who don't need to get to work, while taxing the transportation of those who are getting to work in order to pay their rent and living expenses?
My retired mum has more disposable income than we do (even though we both earn a reasonable living(, and it drives me mad how she gets free or discounted travel all over the shop (not to mention tickets for things and other various OAP perks).
The difficulty is that there is huge chunk of pensioners who would genuinely struggle to survive without them. Just annoys me that there's a load of retired and well-off boomers freeloading on the top.
Poor diddums, probably worships millionaires but hates pensioners being able to go on a bus. Take a look at yourself in a mirror.
lol wtf are you on about
Nobody knows. Best to ignore him. Probably pissed and his long suffering wife has been nagging him about him spending her pension money on booze again.
Site fcukwit has arrived , you need to read more get yourself more than one sad attempt at insults. You should take your own advice gammonboy.
What did the CCP really gain from throttling Hong Kong?
They had a magnificent, thriving, near World City in their control and on their doorstep. A glittering gateway and a bright advert for China. Now it plunges down the rankings, it may never recover
I guess they set an example and scared Taiwan. But jeez
Holding power matters far more than keeping a territory successful, to the leaders of the CCP.
You could place these people in charge of Switzerland, and they'd turn it into a cesspit, so long as they profited personally.
The three most successful low tax countries on the planet are Ireland, Switzerland and Singapore. It's probably no coincidence that all three are also militarily neutral. Ireland isn't politically neutral because it's an EU member, but it isn't in NATO. They also have relatively low levels of corruption. Neutrality and low corruption allows them to attract money from everywhere without fear of state capture through either grift or geopolitics.
Political risk has gone higher up the list of location factors than it was before - roughly - the 2014 Ukraine invasion. Since 2014 we've seen political risk featuring more and more in multinationals' decisions driven by the Scottish and Catalan independences referendums, the Brexit vote, Trump, multiple ratchets on the Russian journey to pariah state from Crimea onwards, China's crackdown in Hong Kong and its threats to Taiwan. Meanwhile Singapore, Ireland and Switzerland sail serenely on, untouched by any of this except as beneficiaries (Ireland post-Brexit - and would also have benefited post Scottish Indy; Singapore post-HK; Switzerland post EU Russian sanctions, sadly).
These three are also in the goldilocks position of being small and outward facing enough to focus their economies on attracting FDI while being large, developed and (more recently) transparent enough not to be punished internationally as classic tax havens or spurned by investors as hard to get to or lonely outposts.
Singapore and Switzerland do have quite formidable militaries. Ireland benefits from being protected by NATO, without having to contribute towards it.
Neutral countries are either heavily armed with their own indigenous industries, or shelter under another's umbrella. Neutral countries that don't do this soon stop being neutral or stop being countries. Ukraine (assuming it was neutral - apols if it wasn't) is giving us an object lesson in this.
The argument about transport availability & cost highlights both the huge variances in availability and the huge gulf in understanding.
For your outer London resident there are riches in public transport options which are largely paid for out of general taxation. For your cundry bumpkins there is often a complete absence of public transport options despite paying general taxation.
For suburbanites it is optimal to encourage more public transport and less driving. For country folk the choice is driving or not going.*
Road pricing gets talked about as a replacement for fuel duty. And gets shouted at as being patently unfair. Which is probably true the way that shitbox UK would implement it. What we need is subsidised fuel for the countryside and heavier taxes in towns. ULEZ and similar is the right policy, just being implemented poorly.
* Before anyone says "what about walking or cycling", what about them? Too many roads between villages would be lethal to walk / cycle down, and thats before we ask about fitness / safety issues.
Agree. On your *, I agree that investment in walking and cycling, or even public transport, between villages isn't worth it.
But 83% of us live in urban areas, so investment in active and public transport makes sense for most.
Urban areas = towns, not cities.
I got a train (first time in about 5 years) recently, to and from the Airport, got the return train journey yesterday. To get to the train station took a car [in this case taxi] ride.
You seem to view the country as either Edinburgh or Sticksville. Reality is somewhat different.
I grew up in a town in rural Scotland. It had a train station. The main problem is you couldn't walk or cycle to it. Sounds like your problem too.
Even public transport in towns is designed for drivers.
Because cars work.
Towns require cars. The alternative to cars is taxis or buses. And that's the bulk of your 83%
You simply can't get your head around supply/demand, can you?
The only reason Edinburgh has lots of bus users is because there are lots of buses.
The reason Edinburgh has lots of bus users, is its a city. Its not a town, what part of this are you failing to understand?
Nothing wrong with buses existing, but buses in towns are a crappy mode of transportation that only those who can't afford their own car (or can't drive as they lack a licence) would use.
The thing with a car is if you want to get from A to B you drive there and are done.
With buses you are stuck with the bus routes, and in most towns the bus routes don't go between A and B if you aren't trying to get to the town centre. Get a bus into the bus depot in town, then another bus from the depot out of town to your destination. And of course that relies upon the bus turning up, and the bus then follows its route stopping everywhere it has to stop.
My wife doesn't drive, she used to take two buses to get to work which took at least an hour, nearly an hour and a half sometimes one way. It took me 15 minutes to drive it, or 30 minutes return to go pick her up and drive her home.
Good luck finding a parking place at B unless your destination is a supermarket, or you are MD of the company.
I always find a parking place at B. 🤷♂️
Try leaving your bubble from time to time. Saying "oh but what about parking" to someone who drives everywhere and always finds parking, isn't much a problem.
You drive everywhere and always finds parking, in English towns, without a blue badge and without privileged access to private spaces?
I don't want to call you a liar, but happy to call you an outlier. 5 sigma.
Your kidding, right? The rest of the UK is not RBKC outside Harrods. There is plenty of parking all over the country in towns, villages, cities. Some even - gasp if you can believe this - for free.
Name me a town where you can't park without the criteria you specify.
I drove yesterday into Maltby, which is a "town" by anyone's imagination. Parked up briefly in the Tesco Car Park, bought some swim nappies and onto the leisure centre which had ample parking. Parking for picking up items from Worksop post office is a bit iffy mind; the last time I had to properly PLAN and pay for parking was in Manchester (Obviously a city) last weekend meeting some friends, Lower Chatham St carpark nicely close to the motorway though. Parking in Harworth, Carlton, Langold or Oldcotes tends to be trivial though (All villages) - so I'd say the smaller the locality the easier the parking unless it's a tourist hotspot like York.
I excepted supermarkets, whose USP is extensive free parking. Leisure centres tend to be the same (but it's pay and display in my local town) so that leaves the Post Office, which is a pretty good proxy for all the non-supermarket shops you might otherwise want to visit.
So excluding places you might want to go to, there might be a problem?
Where exactly is this supposed problem of yours? And pay and display parking is still parking, nothing wrong with that. So long as there's ample spaces, its clean, well lit and secure. If you're using a service, there's nothing wrong with paying for it.
Sure, you can classify places like the post office as not "places you might want to go to." I have already pointed you to an ostensibly well-researched article in a respected newspaper identifying numerous market towns where the problem is critical. If your ambition is limited to weekly shops at tesco I appreciate there is less of a problem for you. As far as paying for it is concerned, some people are poor and some people are lazy. i am one of the two.
You shared a clickbait article about what clearly aren't typical towns actually. And I'm sceptical how much credit to give to such clickbait anyway.
My local Post Office is in a local community centre which has a car park. The Post Office where I used to live was in a shop, with a car park. Any Post Office I've ever been to has parking, either it's own, or on the road.
And the emptiest car park I ever go to is the main Post Office depot nearby, if I need to collect a "you were out" parcel. Their car park is unnecessarily big, but it's their land so up to them what they do with it.
Never been to a Post Office you can't park at. Not sure why any town would ever have one, what would be the point of it?
Sure.
Clickbait has a specific meaning: lurid headlines placed on third party websites to induce the idle surfer to follow them to a page full of lurid advertisements for timeshares and penis enlargement and such. I can find no links to that article on third party websites, and, having disabled my adblocker, can see no ads on the page itself. What is the basis for your use of the term, other than that the article destroys your point?
This is nonsense about post offices. The main sorting depot obviously has lots of parking, but other than collect parcels there's generally nothing you can do there. There is no parking at either town centre post Office in my local town.
No ads on the page itself? This is what popped up when I clicked on the page, covering a third of my screen. [EDIT the ad is so big, that PB Vanilla is now shrinking my screenshot of it]
Then under the article is this ad.
The Grauniad is full of ads and clickbait, just begging letters are its ads not penis pumps, and the clickbait is bullshit like that you just shared that it thinks people will share and click
I simply don't believe that you do not have a Post Office you can drive to, I don't believe it. Not my experience at all, and if you go to the Post Office website they're very happy to provide details of where you can drive to in order to get Post Office services.
Please feel free to name any town that you can't drive to and park near a Post Office, as its BS in my eyes.
Not seeing the bait element here, Barty. And I don't want to park "near" the PO I want to park at it, and without faffing about with coins and parking apps and similar balls, and walking 10 minutes.
I think this is a generational thing. you regard all that shit as "easy parking." Not how it used to be.
Guardian doesn't have ads for me. I use Adblocker. The fundraising popup is very occasional.
Don't worry they have learned from Cambridge Analytica and are getting their value from you.
Seawater cloud injection is probably one of the safer forms of geoengineering and as such worth investigating, especially now we have a real world analogue to look at. It won't wipe out global warming alone though, just slow it down / mask it.
Come on now, world temperatures are either rising or falling. There isn't a class hierarchy of cooling that it's only a 'mask' if it isn't forcing people to give up their cars or remodel their houses.
Comments
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/29/car-parking-spaces-wars-britain-worst
Brixham, Totnes, Torquay, Teignmouth (because the article happens to be about Devon). I have given up bothering trying to shop in the two local market towns pretty much solely on account of parking issues and so has everybody I know. My mum has stopped shopping in Chorley for the same reason so the North West does not appear to be exempt.
You’ve probably got more chance of catching that atmos in Shanghai now, rather than HK. The CCP keeps a tighter grip on places it distrusts: Tibet, HK, and soon Taiwan
Brilliant!
Yes parking is a big issue in cities. That's completely different to towns. Partially because of a lack of willingness to build up - or down. There is nothing more pointless to me than a large open space being used as a car park in a city. Build up a multi story, or better do what is done much more often overseas in car friendly towns and cities and build subterranean car parks under the buildings.
The cars one is particularly surprising given the more rural nature of Ireland outside of Dublin, and the electoral potency of driving issues generally, but there are specific rules in place in order to protect Irish car dealerships from the large UK second-hand car market that keep prices of Irish cars artificially high. I'm kinda baffled that this isn't a big electoral issue over here.
It’s still cheap compared to its Asian rivals like Tokyo or Singapore or Seoul but it’s not the bargain it was
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jan/29/bricks-bottles-hurled-windows-central-london-squat-belgravia-eaton-square
In the end they were evicted lawfully by bailiffs:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-38824923
I call them brave.
That properties owned by billionaires are left unoccupied for years (as this one was) when the homeless sleep on the streets nearby is a social disgrace.
It’s the view you get from the rooftop bar of the Peninsula
Sigh
And on that melancholy note, I must work so I can eat so I can earn so I can travel to the far east again. Later
Where exactly is this supposed problem of yours? And pay and display parking is still parking, nothing wrong with that. So long as there's ample spaces, its clean, well lit and secure. If you're using a service, there's nothing wrong with paying for it.
The places where it's hard/expensive to park (London, obvs, Bath- I bet that Topping's list was a small number of spaces that are always full, Cambridge is similar) are the sort of places that people want to go. Partly for middle-class niceness, sure. But also because they are full of businesses making a good living by serving people's needs. And that's a better, more profitable, use of land than placing cars on it.
In theory, you could get the same effect by rebuilding cities with everything a bit further apart, so that there is more space for cars. But apart from the intrinsic absurdity of that written down, it doesn't seem to work like that in practice. The economic magic happens when people and businesses are close together.
You want your town/city to be more productive? You probably need it to be denser- needn't be Hong Kong, four storey grand terraces and garden squares will be fine. But you can't do that and have ample road and parking space.
And you are obviously not familiar with Edinburgh, in otyher ways. The council have built massive car parks. On the outskirts, often on brownfield sites. Park and Rides. So it's great for car drivers.
Basement parking for customers or employees underneath a business eliminates all the requirements for either on road parking or having more space too.
People in different countries use land differently. It's amusing to me how we only ever seem to build up, very rarely down. In Canada every home has a basement that is a whole story as big as the rest of the house, (not for parking), but having one in this country despite people complaining about a lack of space seems exceptionally rare.
My local Post Office is in a local community centre which has a car park. The Post Office where I used to live was in a shop, with a car park. Any Post Office I've ever been to has parking, either it's own, or on the road.
And the emptiest car park I ever go to is the main Post Office depot nearby, if I need to collect a "you were out" parcel. Their car park is unnecessarily big, but it's their land so up to them what they do with it.
Never been to a Post Office you can't park at. Not sure why any town would ever have one, what would be the point of it?
Presumably you think that the Luftwaffe didn't do a good enough job.
I think I can safely reintroduce a third which is the British weather. I mentioned that from this week the Atlantic pattern is looking like it wants to settle down - you get that sense of a personality change in the models even if it's intermittent. The jet is stalling and the isobars widening. But now it is just starting to look as if it really would quite like to give us a proper heatwave in the final third of the month. 3 GFS runs in a row now ending with heatwave conditions, and the latest has 44C in the Loire Valley by the end.
Not saying it's going to happen, but I am sensing some *intention* on the part of the weather. This morning's earlier ensembles from the GFS and ECMWF models had 8 and 9 members hitting upper air values consistent with mid-30s in London. That's around a 33% and 20% chance respectively. One to watch.
It should be obvious that if the population density is below 100/km2 then the car will be dominant, and above 1,000/km2 that reliance on cars will cause gridlock and public transport is more suited.
In between that it gets a bit more messy, and obviously people cross the boundaries between one area into another, but I think those thresholds would actually cover most of the land area of Britain and most of the population.
I have no problems with buses.
And no I'm not suggesting using space for parking.
I was suggesting an alternative to parking spaces. Underground parking means no space at all is used for parking. It's a shame it's so rare in this country, it's something we could learn from elsewhere on.
The rule of law matters not a jot to them.
Also see William Walker
Pumping SO2 into the atmosphere for a short term gain will definitely need a lot more thought.
Public transport really is crap. For example going to the supermarket for me involves waiting for the bus which only turns up at all about 95% of the time and is pretty much always late by 5 to 10 minutes when it does turn up. That gets me to the town centre in about 30 minutes once it arrives. I then need to get another bus to get to the supermarket which means another wait of upto 40 minutes before another 15 minute journey. It is not unusual for example to leave my house at 10:50 am and finally get to the supermarket around 12:30pm and that costs me 4£.
To get to the supermarket by car on the other hand takes about 5 minutes.
Towns will have a population density of hundreds, even a thousand+ people /km^2 without causing gridlock or having public transport being more suitable.
Cities which need public transport are more in the many thousands or over ten thousand people/km^2.
Doesn't surprise me that you've fallen for it though, since its being shared as a suggestion by those who are opposed to any action on climate change. Same as such other miracle cures you've suggested in the past like spreading gravel will prevent climate change.
EDIT: he had a spell at Leicester if memory serves.
“ Lloyds Banking Group has been accused of unlawfully taking advantage to “overcharge” drivers by hundreds of millions of pounds on car finance, in a landmark class action at the High Court
“Britain’s biggest high street bank, alongside rivals Santander and MotoNovo Finance, is alleged to have charged excessive interest on a million finance deals between 2015 and 2021. The overall value of the High Court claims against the trio is estimated at £1bn.
“Car dealers and credit brokers allegedly sold finance at higher interest rates in return for higher commission from the lenders. The Financial Conduct Authority banned such “discretionary commission” incentives in 2021, after finding that individual buyers were paying up to £1,100 over the odds on a £10,000, four-year finance package.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/personal-banking/personal-loans/lloyds-faces-high-court-claim-car-finance-overcharging/
Jamboree participants to leave Saemangeum early due to Typhoon Khanun
https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=356529
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/10/06/95-of-marine-life-on-sea-floor-killed-in-kamchatka-eco-disaster-scientists-say-a71672
Can't find anything like 96% for oceans globally, that just doesn't pass the sniff test.
Right to stop SO2 emissions, because acid rain is bad, no need to mix up an ancient issue with what's happening now.
Large amounts of volcanism caused huge increases in both CO2 and SO2 in the atmosphere, the former increasing temperatures and the latter decreasing it but at the cost of acidifying the ocean. I remember from the 1980s the disastrous consequences for Nordic forests of SO2 pollution.
I don't agree about Packham by the way, I thought his series on autism was excellent.
I find his TwitterX persona quite annoying, but then you simply need to ignore him. Put him on Mute. He never brings the politics to Springwatch (very wisely)
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/07/trump-legal-web-00110037
Donald Trump’s expanding web of legal troubles is becoming ever more intertwined.
Actions he takes in one case are coming back to haunt him in others. Potential trial schedules are starting to conflict. Even a lawyer representing Trump in one of his criminal indictments could be a witness against him in another.
In some ways, the overlap is inevitable, if only because of the logistical difficulties of litigating so many criminal and civil matters across various jurisdictions. But in other ways, the connections are Trump’s own doing — and could provide advantages to his legal adversaries...
Michael Avenatti (remember him ?) fell foul of a similar, but somewhat less complex legal tangle.
His fault, too.
Only thing that grated for me was not sequencing the episodes chronologically, rather than by "theme", because as you watch it jumps around a bit and it makes it a bit harder for you to join all the evolutionary dots.
Rather, clouds of ocean water.
Do something about Bishops Avenue - nuclear weapon?
As I said, his series on autism was excellent. I don't think I have ever watched his nature stuff although my daughter is a fan.
Even in Chippenham, my mother, who has Parkinson's and consequently difficulty in walking long distances, would walk to the supermarket and take a taxi home. I don't think she'd have been able to take a bus there instead.
I'm not opposed to cars, but they're a tool and any tool has its appropriate and efficient use, and other situations where it isn't appropriate or is inefficient. Even in a rural area such as West Cork, one of the local towns gets horrendously gridlocked quite often, because all the parking is located in the town centre, and so people driving around town looking for a parking spot block the traffic trying to cross the town. If they'd just complete the plan to build a car park by the bypass, for which there is a bridge to the town centre across the river, they'd take masses of traffic out of the town centre. But for some reason it is seen as being anti-car to ask them not to park wherever people please, even if it ends up in a worse outcome for everyone.
Even as someone who lives outside of the town and has to drive in I can see that this would make sense for everyone, but sensible changes are blocked as being anti-car. It's completely irrational.
Foreskin in all his glory
Clickbait has a specific meaning: lurid headlines placed on third party websites to induce the idle surfer to follow them to a page full of lurid advertisements for timeshares and penis enlargement and such. I can find no links to that article on third party websites, and, having disabled my adblocker, can see no ads on the page itself. What is the basis for your use of the term, other than that the article destroys your point?
This is nonsense about post offices. The main sorting depot obviously has lots of parking, but other than collect parcels there's generally nothing you can do there. There is no parking at either town centre post Office in my local town.
Cutting SO2 emissions seems to have dramatically accelerated ocean warming in the space of a couple of years.
That is a genuine climate emergency.
The greater risk is not conducting the experiment.
I wonder what the ideal parliament length would be for government in terms of providing enough long term stability to get things done. Is 5 years too short? On the other hand, it seems 15 years is too long.
Increasing cloud reflectivity using sea water puts a lot more chlorine in the air. If even a proportion of that was converted into hydrochloric acid we may have similar problems.
I've never paid much attention to it when choosing where to live, haven't had the luxury of being able to choose exactly where to live in a city - I've always taken the place I could afford - but that has always landed me within walking distance of a supermarket. I'm a bit surprised.
ETA of course I'd now be one meeting with HR away from dismissal if I'd been looking for tractors in a public place.
Then under the article is this ad.
The Grauniad is full of ads and clickbait, just begging letters are its ads not penis pumps, and the clickbait is bullshit like that you just shared that it thinks people will share and click
I simply don't believe that you do not have a Post Office you can drive to, I don't believe it. Not my experience at all, and if you go to the Post Office website they're very happy to provide details of where you can drive to in order to get Post Office services.
Please feel free to name any town that you can't drive to and park near a Post Office, as its BS in my eyes.
The nearest supermarket to me is over 5 miles from me. Not a problem since supermarkets are a destination people can drive to, but I wouldn't call that walking distance.
We aren't going to get on a bike or walk, neither are we going to use public transport unless we absolutely have to. I lived in slough for 35 years before here which again has good public transport as long as you have one of two destinations central london or reading.....public transport was an asshole there too. At least in slough I was living in an area where I could walk to a supermarket that was decent....still had to get a taxi home though
I haven't 'fallen' for anything, I was merely adding some information to Davidl's suggestion that the plan would be to put the frowned-upon sulphur component back into ship fuel to reverse the warming effect. A poster down-thread has said the same thing, I take it you'll be spraying your particular brand of gormless invective in his direction too?
As for the efficacy of dressing agricultural fields with rock dust, take it up with Sheffield University: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/news/managing-uk-agriculture-rock-dust-could-absorb-45-cent-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide-needed-net-zero
Utter bellend.
However, I see it a bit like meat-eating. Many people like me don't want to stop eating meat - we like it. But perhaps we could cut down a little on the *amount* of meat we eat. Likewise, for some people 1 in 5 journeys might be possible actively or via public transport. Nowhere near enough to get rid of a car, but every car journey stopped helps a teeny weeny bit. And might even get you fitter.
If you live outside of a big place, your bus options likely to be increasingly threatened with not being there at all. Access to buses so that village ladies can go to town and shop has been a successful Tory campaign topic in the past, yet now there is silence as what services are left are removed.
There is still a lunatic mentality that government - national or local - has no place running services and if it tried it would be terrible. And yet we have an awful lot of councils essentially being held hostage and hard bargained by Arriva. Which is the german government...
https://twitter.com/liberal_reform/status/1688538206570971136?s=20
I think this is a generational thing. you regard all that shit as "easy parking." Not how it used to be.
Fair point. I have spent a fair while in points from Brum upwards, and there are many nice places (York, the Yorkshire Dales) and there are ratholes (Middlesbrough!). Similarly in the South there are nice places (Haslemere, Aundel) and ratholes (Southend on Sea).
Actually, there was one place where we weren't within walking distance of a supermarket, and that was Bracknell - perhaps coincidentally somewhere that was designed around the car.
Bad town planning forces people to use cars, but there's no particular need why they have to be so designed.
QED.