Hideous; like the tank-sized Bentleys an insult to the elegant heritage of the brand. The sort of car a child would design out of Fimo.
Appreciate it's appealing to the core audience of tasteless arrivistes, of course.
Arguably, it is Rolls-Royce's lack of self-delusion regarding its market - giving drug barons, gangsters, rappers, tech bros, nepo babies etc a veneer of respectability whilst appealing to their poor taste - that has kept them in business. Arrivistes have money, and nouveaux-pauvres do not.
Totally, and fair play to them - they're delivering to their target audience and presumably actually growing their business, which is what businesses ought to be doing.
I still think it's minging.
Yes. I keep expecting it to fart and say "better out than in" in a Yorkshire accent.
In practical terms, it looks very hard to drive. The front is so far in front of the driver. The front of the car would arrive at a junction and the driver would still be sat six foot behind the stop line and unable to see the approaching traffic. The only way to pull out would be to stick your nose into the oncoming traffic and hope for the best. And a right bloody nuisance to park, I would have thought, particularly in a supermarket car park. And while it's a big car, it doesn't look like it could easily take all the luggage for a family of five going self catering for two weeks. Exactly what sort of journeys is it good for?
People in that sort of car go shopping and self-catering? I appreciate you are probably joking but your first point sounds like a serious one.
I always emerge from junctions like that. If you are old enough and your truck is large, old and battered enough, it's a de facto right of way situation.
I'm amusing myself by thinking what I would do with one of those, but I think my general point is a reasonable one - if I buy a thing, it is because I think it will serve a particular purpose better than another thing. Presumably that's also true of whoever buys this - they're not buying it for it to sit in a garage. But what purpose does it serve? What journeys can you make for which it is better than an alternative? Not ease of use (going to the supermarket) or fitting a lot of stuff in. And presumably there are also better cars for speed, if that's your thing. And certainly not affordability. I can't imagine any circumstance that the oligarch goes out to his garage and thinks THAT is the car for the journey I'm making today.
The Roller is the car to be driven to important meetings and events particularly where photographers might be. It's not for practicality, speed or efficiency.
For arriving in, not travelling in?
Still hideous.
I know a bloke whose dad used to take his helicopter down from Cheshire to Smith's Lawn. He sent the chauffeur down in the car the night before, to pick him up for the less than a mile from helipad to final destination.
He was from Cheshire? Going to Smith's Lawn? How perfectly ghastly.
*googles Smith's Lawn* - ah - polo.
To weigh in on behalf of the splendid county of Cheshire, it is not JUST footballers and polo players (who, I would imagine, are exclusive: footballer country is in the east of the county: Alderley Edge, Prestbury, etc; while polo country is in the west, beyond Tarporley). Most of Cheshire is pleasant but not stellar; like anywhere else, the towns and villages of Cheshire range from the idyllic to the functional; for every Wilmslow there is a Winsford; for every Mottram St. Andrew there is a No Man's Heath.
Cheshire, the Essex of the North, new Money and celebs and old money and farming and lots of ordinary towns in between too
It's often called the Surrey of the North ("apart from by people from Sussex - for whom the Surrey of the north is Surrey"*) - but you're right, I think Essex is a better comparator. Albeit we do have some hills, and even a bit of the Peak District.
Off topic, but encouraging: "In response to the growing fissure within the GOP over support for the war effort in Ukraine, a conservative group is launching a $2 million campaign urging Republicans in Congress to continue backing the U.S. ally.
Defending Democracy Together, an organization led by Republican strategist Sarah Longwell and conservative political commentator Bill Kristol, is launching “Republicans for Ukraine” to get congressional Republicans to commit to continue funding aid for Ukraine ahead of what is likely to be a lengthy appropriations fight.
The organization gathered testimony from more than 50 pro-Ukraine Republican voters, which will be shared in an ad campaign that will air starting Tuesday until the end of the year." source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/08/15/ukraine-us-aid-republicans-congress/ It's a start. And I am pleased that they are using Republican voters to make the argument.
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
Yes, you see that crap with idiotic idealists choosing to be against parking, so people end up parking on the road rather than having cleverly thought through, integrated parking to go with the buildings.
A multi story block of flats, or multistory office block, there's no reason one or more of the stories can't be a garage for everyone's vehicles, then nobody ends up on the road. But instead idiots who think they know better are against planning for vehicles, so they end up making the vehicles overspill elsewhere and make problems much worse.
Roads should never be a place for parking ideally. They should be a place for driving/cycling/whatever not standing still.
That's usually because car parks are expensive to build / dig and most people (strangely) prefer to be able to look out of a window and see their car..
Land is also expensive. Parking on the road is free, and is parking on communal land rather than your own land. It is an externality and our system encourages.
Off-road parking is often actively discouraged by politicians when it should be positively encouraged - Nottingham is the worst example of this, firms offering private off-road parking for their employees are taxed for it, while those who have on-road parking are not taxed, whereas the tax incentive should be the polar opposite.
This is one of the things Japan does right, there's hardly any socialized parking, and also little or no requirements for off-road parking. If you want to park you pay for it.
The result is that parking is easy and freely available, and you don't need a load of planners with strong opinions about how much you should drive.
I wish we had this in Camden. An excellent local restaurant. Classic bistro food with some Italian flair and British gastropub influences and quite reasonable prices
More importantly, Tripadvisor nailed it. These apps become increasingly usefui
If booking.com rates a hotel over 9/10 it is nearly always excellent (in its genre) - much better/more reliable than any hotel guide
Tripadvisor is best when people leave detailed balanced reviews. That way you really get to understand how a restaurant or hotel is. I try to do this, in fact I enjoy the challenge of imagining myself a newspaper restaurant critic while I write.
5 star reviews are usually too short and uninformative: "great food, wonderful service - will be back", but so too are the usual couple of 1 star reviews. They tend to involve long-winded complaints about how the manager was rude to them or they booked a table but there was no record of the booking. Or they arrived on a Saturday evening as a group of 10 and nobody could accommodate them. Whereas the 3 and (some) 4 star reviews are gold dust. 3 stars usually mean someone has thought carefully about the pluses and minuses and written a thoughtful review. So I tend to zone in on those.
Yes. Avoid the 1 star reviews and be wary of the 5s
The first are often pointless rants or bitter rivals, the latter can be people gaming the system (or trying to)
But at a certain point you get so many reviews it can’t be gamed and that’s where many of these places are now. Which makes the apps really useful
I wonder whether the data is available in a form that would enable a simple algorithm to calculate, across the board, ratings excluding five and one star ratings which, as you say, are the most questionable for different reasons?
I suspect that this would give a better view of quality. There are other ways to do it mathematically, but that kind of thing. There might be quite a good niche in providing an app ranking products and services in that sort of way.
The one-star reviews that annoy me are the very specific ones that are pretty much meaningless in relation to quality of the product, "the waiter informed us the key to the disabled toilet had been misplaced on the Wednesday afternoon when we visited..." or "They delivered a blue widget instead of the orange one I wanted, and it was hard to find the number for customer services..."
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
Yes, you see that crap with idiotic idealists choosing to be against parking, so people end up parking on the road rather than having cleverly thought through, integrated parking to go with the buildings.
A multi story block of flats, or multistory office block, there's no reason one or more of the stories can't be a garage for everyone's vehicles, then nobody ends up on the road. But instead idiots who think they know better are against planning for vehicles, so they end up making the vehicles overspill elsewhere and make problems much worse.
Roads should never be a place for parking ideally. They should be a place for driving/cycling/whatever not standing still.
The problem with this is a large reason why people don't buy a second car, or a car in the first place, is a lack of car parking spots in town and city centres. Demand will follow supply, and in a few years you'll be back to square one.
Then there are all the secondary effects - more cars means more congestion, fewer people feeling comfortable enough to walk and cycle around, and the viability of mass transit like buses falls.
Those car parks eat up space for more flats, adding more pressure on house prices.
Showing once again your anti-car mentality, rather than a pro-cycling one.
But people do buy cars, because they need them, because they work as a mode of transportation and there is no better alternative. The overwhelming majority of people who cycle still have a car, and so they need a place to park their car, and park their bike. Secure parking can be a secure place to put your bike too.
Fewer cars parked on the road means less congestion, people feeling more comfortable to walk and cycle around. People having no alternative but to park on the road means they're parking typically right where cyclists want to cycle - you objected to this the other night posting a photo of someone parked where you wanted to cycle, and since most roads are dual-use there's not normally a ban on parking there so its the cyclists that suffer the most from the lack of parking leading to on-road parking, not drivers. I can quite comfortably park on the road if there's no alternative, and drive around parked vehicles, you're the one who has to move around my vehicle by moving further into the road or mount the pavement if I do though.
As for "eating up space" that's not remotely true. You can build further down, or further up.
Drive into Melbourne's Central Business District and if you want to park at a skyscraper, then for most of them you park under the building. Drive down the ramp under the building and head down into the car park. Ground floor and above is for the building, underneath is for cars. Leaving plenty of road space for one of the world's best tram networks, cycles and anything else you might like rather than a road littered with parked vehicles - what's the harm in that?
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
Yes, you see that crap with idiotic idealists choosing to be against parking, so people end up parking on the road rather than having cleverly thought through, integrated parking to go with the buildings.
A multi story block of flats, or multistory office block, there's no reason one or more of the stories can't be a garage for everyone's vehicles, then nobody ends up on the road. But instead idiots who think they know better are against planning for vehicles, so they end up making the vehicles overspill elsewhere and make problems much worse.
Roads should never be a place for parking ideally. They should be a place for driving/cycling/whatever not standing still.
That's usually because car parks are expensive to build / dig and most people (strangely) prefer to be able to look out of a window and see their car..
Is that not mostly because of the high incidence of car thefts; a problem that’s somehow now getting worse thanks to insecure ‘keyless entry’ systems?
I would think that people prefer to park their car in a secure garage or car park overnight, if one were available.
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
Yes, you see that crap with idiotic idealists choosing to be against parking, so people end up parking on the road rather than having cleverly thought through, integrated parking to go with the buildings.
A multi story block of flats, or multistory office block, there's no reason one or more of the stories can't be a garage for everyone's vehicles, then nobody ends up on the road. But instead idiots who think they know better are against planning for vehicles, so they end up making the vehicles overspill elsewhere and make problems much worse.
Roads should never be a place for parking ideally. They should be a place for driving/cycling/whatever not standing still.
That's usually because car parks are expensive to build / dig and most people (strangely) prefer to be able to look out of a window and see their car..
Land is also expensive. Parking on the road is free, and is parking on communal land rather than your own land. It is an externality and our system encourages.
Off-road parking is often actively discouraged by politicians when it should be positively encouraged - Nottingham is the worst example of this, firms offering private off-road parking for their employees are taxed for it, while those who have on-road parking are not taxed, whereas the tax incentive should be the polar opposite.
This is one of the things Japan does right, there's hardly any socialized parking, and also little or no requirements for off-road parking. If you want to park you pay for it.
The result is that parking is easy and freely available, and you don't need a load of planners with strong opinions about how much you should drive.
Japan does a lot of things right.
The thing is they don't get the planners involved, so the market solves the problems. Need more houses? Build more. Need more parking? Build that.
I wish we had this in Camden. An excellent local restaurant. Classic bistro food with some Italian flair and British gastropub influences and quite reasonable prices
More importantly, Tripadvisor nailed it. These apps become increasingly usefui
If booking.com rates a hotel over 9/10 it is nearly always excellent (in its genre) - much better/more reliable than any hotel guide
Walk around the castle is quite nice - record office tucked inside. Also the (riverine-canaline) docks. And the mediaeval bridge at the bottom of the main street. Cathedral close and what's left of a fine house terrace nearby, courtesy Goering H.
Top tip to visit in Exeter is the Met Office. They do a very informative tour.
There's a nice little guildhall or something on the main street of the old town IIRC.
They used to have a really weird but fascinating museum of boats down at the canal - closed long ago. Was very surrpised to visit Eyemouth in the Scottish Borders some years later and spot some very familiar looking watercraft around the harbour - no idea if they are still there.
Other nice placxe is the pub at the end of the Ship Canal, nice view of the estuary. Might be the ferry terminal for Topsham, but I'm not sure. Cannot speak for its qualities as a pub qua pub, though, as have not been in.
The Cathedral and Cathedral close are splendid, as is Rougemont Park in the centre. There are some excellent old churches in Exeter, too. Then, there are the catacombs, as well. Not everything was destroyed by German bombs.
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
Yes, you see that crap with idiotic idealists choosing to be against parking, so people end up parking on the road rather than having cleverly thought through, integrated parking to go with the buildings.
A multi story block of flats, or multistory office block, there's no reason one or more of the stories can't be a garage for everyone's vehicles, then nobody ends up on the road. But instead idiots who think they know better are against planning for vehicles, so they end up making the vehicles overspill elsewhere and make problems much worse.
Roads should never be a place for parking ideally. They should be a place for driving/cycling/whatever not standing still.
That's usually because car parks are expensive to build / dig and most people (strangely) prefer to be able to look out of a window and see their car..
Land is also expensive. Parking on the road is free, and is parking on communal land rather than your own land. It is an externality and our system encourages.
Off-road parking is often actively discouraged by politicians when it should be positively encouraged - Nottingham is the worst example of this, firms offering private off-road parking for their employees are taxed for it, while those who have on-road parking are not taxed, whereas the tax incentive should be the polar opposite.
This is one of the things Japan does right, there's hardly any socialized parking, and also little or no requirements for off-road parking. If you want to park you pay for it.
The result is that parking is easy and freely available, and you don't need a load of planners with strong opinions about how much you should drive.
Property taxes on empty lots, that sees them used as car parks, alongside the unique and brilliant Kei car concept, that sees people encouraged to buy small city cars over massive SUVs.
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
The Poles were quite literally Communists and hence presumably quite left wing, at least relative to Exeter City Council, which was run by the Conservative Party at the time. I think you have simply decided that because you don't like the Left and you don't like postwar architecture or town planning, the two must therefore be related, whereas they're really not. (We all do this, of course). Postwar development was done quickly because people clamoured for it (they didn't like living in a bomb site) and cheaply because we were broke, and that is why it was so horrible, there was very little ideology involved at all, and to the extent there was ideology I think it was a kind of postwar desire to break with the past, which was shared quite broadly across the political spectrum, and which in many respects was quite admirable. Plus the usual suspect - greedy property developers.
I wish we had this in Camden. An excellent local restaurant. Classic bistro food with some Italian flair and British gastropub influences and quite reasonable prices
More importantly, Tripadvisor nailed it. These apps become increasingly usefui
If booking.com rates a hotel over 9/10 it is nearly always excellent (in its genre) - much better/more reliable than any hotel guide
Tripadvisor is best when people leave detailed balanced reviews. That way you really get to understand how a restaurant or hotel is. I try to do this, in fact I enjoy the challenge of imagining myself a newspaper restaurant critic while I write.
5 star reviews are usually too short and uninformative: "great food, wonderful service - will be back", but so too are the usual couple of 1 star reviews. They tend to involve long-winded complaints about how the manager was rude to them or they booked a table but there was no record of the booking. Or they arrived on a Saturday evening as a group of 10 and nobody could accommodate them. Whereas the 3 and (some) 4 star reviews are gold dust. 3 stars usually mean someone has thought carefully about the pluses and minuses and written a thoughtful review. So I tend to zone in on those.
Yes. Avoid the 1 star reviews and be wary of the 5s
The first are often pointless rants or bitter rivals, the latter can be people gaming the system (or trying to)
But at a certain point you get so many reviews it can’t be gamed and that’s where many of these places are now. Which makes the apps really useful
I wonder whether the data is available in a form that would enable a simple algorithm to calculate, across the board, ratings excluding five and one star ratings which, as you say, are the most questionable for different reasons?
I suspect that this would give a better view of quality. There are other ways to do it mathematically, but that kind of thing. There might be quite a good niche in providing an app ranking products and services in that sort of way.
The one-star reviews that annoy me are the very specific ones that are pretty much meaningless in relation to quality of the product, "the waiter informed us the key to the disabled toilet had been misplaced on the Wednesday afternoon when we visited..." or "They delivered a blue widget instead of the orange one I wanted, and it was hard to find the number for customer services..."
I think we all perform our own algorithmic calculations in our heads. For example a 5 star place with 30 reviews is less reliable than a 4.5 star one with 2,000 reviews. Likewise we always expect hotels to score lower on average than home rentals on Booking.com because people are less squeamish about criticising a hotel than someone's house.
I have been burned a couple of times with very highly rated restaurants on Tripadvisor being mediocre. Those have generally been when people's expectations were lower. A couple of rural pubs with patterned carpets that did chewy roasts and microwave meals for example, but got wonderful ratings. So as a sense-check I also look at the website of the restaurant and particularly the font of the menu. If it's comic sans then it's a no. Likewise if the menu heralds a dish as "our famous [pie/burger etc]..." or has titles like "to start" or "for smaller appetites".
Good font good food. (That rule works well in other Northern European countries too, but falls down in Southern Europe and beyond).
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
Yes, you see that crap with idiotic idealists choosing to be against parking, so people end up parking on the road rather than having cleverly thought through, integrated parking to go with the buildings.
A multi story block of flats, or multistory office block, there's no reason one or more of the stories can't be a garage for everyone's vehicles, then nobody ends up on the road. But instead idiots who think they know better are against planning for vehicles, so they end up making the vehicles overspill elsewhere and make problems much worse.
Roads should never be a place for parking ideally. They should be a place for driving/cycling/whatever not standing still.
That's usually because car parks are expensive to build / dig and most people (strangely) prefer to be able to look out of a window and see their car..
Land is also expensive. Parking on the road is free, and is parking on communal land rather than your own land. It is an externality and our system encourages.
Off-road parking is often actively discouraged by politicians when it should be positively encouraged - Nottingham is the worst example of this, firms offering private off-road parking for their employees are taxed for it, while those who have on-road parking are not taxed, whereas the tax incentive should be the polar opposite.
This is one of the things Japan does right, there's hardly any socialized parking, and also little or no requirements for off-road parking. If you want to park you pay for it.
The result is that parking is easy and freely available, and you don't need a load of planners with strong opinions about how much you should drive.
Japan does a lot of things right.
The thing is they don't get the planners involved, so the market solves the problems. Need more houses? Build more. Need more parking? Build that.
On street parking would be quite an interesting thing to privatise. A council could (I mean in theory - suspect current law prevents this) auction off the right to charge for kerbside parking spaces (and council car park spaces) to the highest bidder (probably for a period - say five or ten years). It'd raise a lot of money for services, and would actually probably be a pretty environmentally friendly policy in terms of incentives, particularly at peak periods.
It won't happen as it would be election-losing, with just about everyone paying more, particularly if you live anywhere near a mainline train station or shopping area (but then shouldn't you think about not bothering with a car anyway?) But it would probably be quite effective.
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
Yes, you see that crap with idiotic idealists choosing to be against parking, so people end up parking on the road rather than having cleverly thought through, integrated parking to go with the buildings.
A multi story block of flats, or multistory office block, there's no reason one or more of the stories can't be a garage for everyone's vehicles, then nobody ends up on the road. But instead idiots who think they know better are against planning for vehicles, so they end up making the vehicles overspill elsewhere and make problems much worse.
Roads should never be a place for parking ideally. They should be a place for driving/cycling/whatever not standing still.
That's usually because car parks are expensive to build / dig and most people (strangely) prefer to be able to look out of a window and see their car..
Is that not mostly because of the high incidence of car thefts; a problem that’s somehow now getting worse thanks to insecure ‘keyless entry’ systems?
I would think that people prefer to park their car in a secure garage or car park overnight, if one were available.
Exactly!
Plus of course while living spaces tend to want natural light, so normally need to be above ground, there's no reason why secure storage needs it. Hence the popularity of underground parking in many places abroad.
Doing it properly takes up no extra square footage of space, reduces the externality of vehicles hogging communal road space, and liberates land on the road for cars/cyclists/buses/trams/whatever that are actually moving rather than stationary.
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
Yes, you see that crap with idiotic idealists choosing to be against parking, so people end up parking on the road rather than having cleverly thought through, integrated parking to go with the buildings.
A multi story block of flats, or multistory office block, there's no reason one or more of the stories can't be a garage for everyone's vehicles, then nobody ends up on the road. But instead idiots who think they know better are against planning for vehicles, so they end up making the vehicles overspill elsewhere and make problems much worse.
Roads should never be a place for parking ideally. They should be a place for driving/cycling/whatever not standing still.
That's usually because car parks are expensive to build / dig and most people (strangely) prefer to be able to look out of a window and see their car..
Land is also expensive. Parking on the road is free, and is parking on communal land rather than your own land. It is an externality and our system encourages.
Off-road parking is often actively discouraged by politicians when it should be positively encouraged - Nottingham is the worst example of this, firms offering private off-road parking for their employees are taxed for it, while those who have on-road parking are not taxed, whereas the tax incentive should be the polar opposite.
This is one of the things Japan does right, there's hardly any socialized parking, and also little or no requirements for off-road parking. If you want to park you pay for it.
The result is that parking is easy and freely available, and you don't need a load of planners with strong opinions about how much you should drive.
Japan does a lot of things right.
The thing is they don't get the planners involved, so the market solves the problems. Need more houses? Build more. Need more parking? Build that.
It does have quite ugly cityscapes though. The messes of overhead wires, misfitting buildings, grey flyovers and underpasses are fun to visit but not something I'd fancy importing to Britain. And the sprawl between Tokyo and Osaka where there's barely a green square mile is quite a strong argument for green belts, made worse by the topography that forces everything into narrow coastal plains.
Hideous; like the tank-sized Bentleys an insult to the elegant heritage of the brand. The sort of car a child would design out of Fimo.
Appreciate it's appealing to the core audience of tasteless arrivistes, of course.
Arguably, it is Rolls-Royce's lack of self-delusion regarding its market - giving drug barons, gangsters, rappers, tech bros, nepo babies etc a veneer of respectability whilst appealing to their poor taste - that has kept them in business. Arrivistes have money, and nouveaux-pauvres do not.
Totally, and fair play to them - they're delivering to their target audience and presumably actually growing their business, which is what businesses ought to be doing.
I still think it's minging.
Yes. I keep expecting it to fart and say "better out than in" in a Yorkshire accent.
In practical terms, it looks very hard to drive. The front is so far in front of the driver. The front of the car would arrive at a junction and the driver would still be sat six foot behind the stop line and unable to see the approaching traffic. The only way to pull out would be to stick your nose into the oncoming traffic and hope for the best. And a right bloody nuisance to park, I would have thought, particularly in a supermarket car park. And while it's a big car, it doesn't look like it could easily take all the luggage for a family of five going self catering for two weeks. Exactly what sort of journeys is it good for?
People in that sort of car go shopping and self-catering? I appreciate you are probably joking but your first point sounds like a serious one.
I always emerge from junctions like that. If you are old enough and your truck is large, old and battered enough, it's a de facto right of way situation.
I'm amusing myself by thinking what I would do with one of those, but I think my general point is a reasonable one - if I buy a thing, it is because I think it will serve a particular purpose better than another thing. Presumably that's also true of whoever buys this - they're not buying it for it to sit in a garage. But what purpose does it serve? What journeys can you make for which it is better than an alternative? Not ease of use (going to the supermarket) or fitting a lot of stuff in. And presumably there are also better cars for speed, if that's your thing. And certainly not affordability. I can't imagine any circumstance that the oligarch goes out to his garage and thinks THAT is the car for the journey I'm making today.
The Roller is the car to be driven to important meetings and events particularly where photographers might be. It's not for practicality, speed or efficiency.
For arriving in, not travelling in?
Still hideous.
I know a bloke whose dad used to take his helicopter down from Cheshire to Smith's Lawn. He sent the chauffeur down in the car the night before, to pick him up for the less than a mile from helipad to final destination.
He was from Cheshire? Going to Smith's Lawn? How perfectly ghastly.
*googles Smith's Lawn* - ah - polo.
To weigh in on behalf of the splendid county of Cheshire, it is not JUST footballers and polo players (who, I would imagine, are exclusive: footballer country is in the east of the county: Alderley Edge, Prestbury, etc; while polo country is in the west, beyond Tarporley). Most of Cheshire is pleasant but not stellar; like anywhere else, the towns and villages of Cheshire range from the idyllic to the functional; for every Wilmslow there is a Winsford; for every Mottram St. Andrew there is a No Man's Heath.
Cheshire, the Essex of the North, new Money and celebs and old money and farming and lots of ordinary towns in between too
It's often called the Surrey of the North ("apart from by people from Sussex - for whom the Surrey of the north is Surrey"*) - but you're right, I think Essex is a better comparator. Albeit we do have some hills, and even a bit of the Peak District.
*From 'People Like Us'
So where is the Surrey of the North then? Lancashire? North Yorkshire?
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
Yes, you see that crap with idiotic idealists choosing to be against parking, so people end up parking on the road rather than having cleverly thought through, integrated parking to go with the buildings.
A multi story block of flats, or multistory office block, there's no reason one or more of the stories can't be a garage for everyone's vehicles, then nobody ends up on the road. But instead idiots who think they know better are against planning for vehicles, so they end up making the vehicles overspill elsewhere and make problems much worse.
Roads should never be a place for parking ideally. They should be a place for driving/cycling/whatever not standing still.
That's usually because car parks are expensive to build / dig and most people (strangely) prefer to be able to look out of a window and see their car..
Land is also expensive. Parking on the road is free, and is parking on communal land rather than your own land. It is an externality and our system encourages.
Off-road parking is often actively discouraged by politicians when it should be positively encouraged - Nottingham is the worst example of this, firms offering private off-road parking for their employees are taxed for it, while those who have on-road parking are not taxed, whereas the tax incentive should be the polar opposite.
This is one of the things Japan does right, there's hardly any socialized parking, and also little or no requirements for off-road parking. If you want to park you pay for it.
The result is that parking is easy and freely available, and you don't need a load of planners with strong opinions about how much you should drive.
Japan does a lot of things right.
The thing is they don't get the planners involved, so the market solves the problems. Need more houses? Build more. Need more parking? Build that.
On street parking would be quite an interesting thing to privatise. A council could (I mean in theory - suspect current law prevents this) auction off the right to charge for kerbside parking spaces (and council car park spaces) to the highest bidder (probably for a period - say five or ten years). It'd raise a lot of money for services, and would actually probably be a pretty environmentally friendly policy in terms of incentives, particularly at peak periods.
It won't happen as it would be election-losing, with just about everyone paying more, particularly if you live anywhere near a mainline train station or shopping area (but then shouldn't you think about not bothering with a car anyway?) But it would probably be quite effective.
The other thing is you'd get cowboy outfits making a mint after probably paying very little to the council for the original rights. It would very quickly become the sort of thing that would have got on to Watchdog.
Giving private companies rights to extract rent and enforce the extraction of rent with their own heavies usually ends in tears.
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
Yes, you see that crap with idiotic idealists choosing to be against parking, so people end up parking on the road rather than having cleverly thought through, integrated parking to go with the buildings.
A multi story block of flats, or multistory office block, there's no reason one or more of the stories can't be a garage for everyone's vehicles, then nobody ends up on the road. But instead idiots who think they know better are against planning for vehicles, so they end up making the vehicles overspill elsewhere and make problems much worse.
Roads should never be a place for parking ideally. They should be a place for driving/cycling/whatever not standing still.
That's usually because car parks are expensive to build / dig and most people (strangely) prefer to be able to look out of a window and see their car..
Land is also expensive. Parking on the road is free, and is parking on communal land rather than your own land. It is an externality and our system encourages.
Off-road parking is often actively discouraged by politicians when it should be positively encouraged - Nottingham is the worst example of this, firms offering private off-road parking for their employees are taxed for it, while those who have on-road parking are not taxed, whereas the tax incentive should be the polar opposite.
This is one of the things Japan does right, there's hardly any socialized parking, and also little or no requirements for off-road parking. If you want to park you pay for it.
The result is that parking is easy and freely available, and you don't need a load of planners with strong opinions about how much you should drive.
Japan does a lot of things right.
The thing is they don't get the planners involved, so the market solves the problems. Need more houses? Build more. Need more parking? Build that.
It does have quite ugly cityscapes though. The messes of overhead wires, misfitting buildings, grey flyovers and underpasses are fun to visit but not something I'd fancy importing to Britain. And the sprawl between Tokyo and Osaka where there's barely a green square mile is quite a strong argument for green belts, made worse by the topography that forces everything into narrow coastal plains.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
I find the concept of having 16 people living in one subdivided old Georgian home as there's no alternatives for them far more "ugly" than a cityscape where everyone has their own home.
Even if you like the view of the Georgian exterior that hides away what's going on inside.
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
Yes, you see that crap with idiotic idealists choosing to be against parking, so people end up parking on the road rather than having cleverly thought through, integrated parking to go with the buildings.
A multi story block of flats, or multistory office block, there's no reason one or more of the stories can't be a garage for everyone's vehicles, then nobody ends up on the road. But instead idiots who think they know better are against planning for vehicles, so they end up making the vehicles overspill elsewhere and make problems much worse.
Roads should never be a place for parking ideally. They should be a place for driving/cycling/whatever not standing still.
That's usually because car parks are expensive to build / dig and most people (strangely) prefer to be able to look out of a window and see their car..
Land is also expensive. Parking on the road is free, and is parking on communal land rather than your own land. It is an externality and our system encourages.
Off-road parking is often actively discouraged by politicians when it should be positively encouraged - Nottingham is the worst example of this, firms offering private off-road parking for their employees are taxed for it, while those who have on-road parking are not taxed, whereas the tax incentive should be the polar opposite.
This is one of the things Japan does right, there's hardly any socialized parking, and also little or no requirements for off-road parking. If you want to park you pay for it.
The result is that parking is easy and freely available, and you don't need a load of planners with strong opinions about how much you should drive.
Property taxes on empty lots, that sees them used as car parks, alongside the unique and brilliant Kei car concept, that sees people encouraged to buy small city cars over massive SUVs.
I see as predicted I'mnofanofTrumpbutism is back in vogue. To be scrupulously fair, I think some of these lads (despite the occasional fig leaf protestation) are fans of Trump.
Lots of thinly veiled Trumptons on PB.
Speaking personally, I really can't be bothered with prefacing my thoughts on any given issue with 'now I'm no fan of'. Anyone worth discussing something with will engage with the issues. Idiots looking for 'thinly veiled Trumptons' weren't likely to bring much of value to the discussion anyway.
There's no need for you to do that, we already know you're a fan of Putin and anyone who wishes harm on America - like Trump.
Ask for an idiot...
I'm no fan of Trump, but.....
Seriously, you have to understand the visceral hatred so many Americans have for Liberals and Democrats if you are to comprehend how a crook and charlatan like Trump can gain widespread support. His supporters simply do not care what he does or plans to do as long as he voices their loathing for the democratic elite which they believe runs government and treats them with contempt.
The problem is too many people believe in the fallacy that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend".
The likes of Alanbrooke on here show that when they excuse Trump's blatant corruption and criminality and think justice against him is purely politically motivated, rather than the fact that he's a criminal. Or Leon's on again/off again fascination with and excusing of Putin for being "anti-woke".
Even if you dislike "liberals", Trump should be no friend.
Even if you dislike "Tories", Corbyn should be no friend.
I don't dislike "liberals", and I get no particular thrill out of them being scandalised and upset. What I am is deeply suspicious of any situation where we're all encouraged to see particular 'happenings', people, or political viewpoints as an inconceivable evil that we must suspend all norms to stop. If the American people elect Trump, that's their choice; the American Government is an expression of their democratic will. I refuse to wobble my collies about it, especially since it's not even an unknown, given that he's been President before, and (especially from a UK perspective) was fairly benign.
No norms are being suspended. Trump is being prosecuted through regular processes, which include a grand jury considering the case before the indictment is brought.
I'm not speaking about this trial specifically - I haven't been following closely enough to make any point about whether it is normal or otherwise. But there are a lot of people expressing the view that Trump cannot be allowed to win.
Hideous; like the tank-sized Bentleys an insult to the elegant heritage of the brand. The sort of car a child would design out of Fimo.
Appreciate it's appealing to the core audience of tasteless arrivistes, of course.
Arguably, it is Rolls-Royce's lack of self-delusion regarding its market - giving drug barons, gangsters, rappers, tech bros, nepo babies etc a veneer of respectability whilst appealing to their poor taste - that has kept them in business. Arrivistes have money, and nouveaux-pauvres do not.
Totally, and fair play to them - they're delivering to their target audience and presumably actually growing their business, which is what businesses ought to be doing.
I still think it's minging.
Yes. I keep expecting it to fart and say "better out than in" in a Yorkshire accent.
In practical terms, it looks very hard to drive. The front is so far in front of the driver. The front of the car would arrive at a junction and the driver would still be sat six foot behind the stop line and unable to see the approaching traffic. The only way to pull out would be to stick your nose into the oncoming traffic and hope for the best. And a right bloody nuisance to park, I would have thought, particularly in a supermarket car park. And while it's a big car, it doesn't look like it could easily take all the luggage for a family of five going self catering for two weeks. Exactly what sort of journeys is it good for?
People in that sort of car go shopping and self-catering? I appreciate you are probably joking but your first point sounds like a serious one.
I always emerge from junctions like that. If you are old enough and your truck is large, old and battered enough, it's a de facto right of way situation.
I'm amusing myself by thinking what I would do with one of those, but I think my general point is a reasonable one - if I buy a thing, it is because I think it will serve a particular purpose better than another thing. Presumably that's also true of whoever buys this - they're not buying it for it to sit in a garage. But what purpose does it serve? What journeys can you make for which it is better than an alternative? Not ease of use (going to the supermarket) or fitting a lot of stuff in. And presumably there are also better cars for speed, if that's your thing. And certainly not affordability. I can't imagine any circumstance that the oligarch goes out to his garage and thinks THAT is the car for the journey I'm making today.
The Roller is the car to be driven to important meetings and events particularly where photographers might be. It's not for practicality, speed or efficiency.
For arriving in, not travelling in?
Still hideous.
I know a bloke whose dad used to take his helicopter down from Cheshire to Smith's Lawn. He sent the chauffeur down in the car the night before, to pick him up for the less than a mile from helipad to final destination.
He was from Cheshire? Going to Smith's Lawn? How perfectly ghastly.
*googles Smith's Lawn* - ah - polo.
To weigh in on behalf of the splendid county of Cheshire, it is not JUST footballers and polo players (who, I would imagine, are exclusive: footballer country is in the east of the county: Alderley Edge, Prestbury, etc; while polo country is in the west, beyond Tarporley). Most of Cheshire is pleasant but not stellar; like anywhere else, the towns and villages of Cheshire range from the idyllic to the functional; for every Wilmslow there is a Winsford; for every Mottram St. Andrew there is a No Man's Heath.
Cheshire, the Essex of the North, new Money and celebs and old money and farming and lots of ordinary towns in between too
It's often called the Surrey of the North ("apart from by people from Sussex - for whom the Surrey of the north is Surrey"*) - but you're right, I think Essex is a better comparator. Albeit we do have some hills, and even a bit of the Peak District.
*From 'People Like Us'
So where is the Surrey of the North then? Lancashire? North Yorkshire?
"If Amsterdam or Leningrad vie for the title of Venice of the North, then Venice - what compliment is high enough? Venice, with all her civilisation and ancient beauty, Venice with her addiction to curious aquatic means of transport, yes, my friends, Venice is the Henley of the South." - Boris in The Daily Telegraph, 11 March 2004, p. 22.
Hideous; like the tank-sized Bentleys an insult to the elegant heritage of the brand. The sort of car a child would design out of Fimo.
Appreciate it's appealing to the core audience of tasteless arrivistes, of course.
Arguably, it is Rolls-Royce's lack of self-delusion regarding its market - giving drug barons, gangsters, rappers, tech bros, nepo babies etc a veneer of respectability whilst appealing to their poor taste - that has kept them in business. Arrivistes have money, and nouveaux-pauvres do not.
Totally, and fair play to them - they're delivering to their target audience and presumably actually growing their business, which is what businesses ought to be doing.
I still think it's minging.
Yes. I keep expecting it to fart and say "better out than in" in a Yorkshire accent.
In practical terms, it looks very hard to drive. The front is so far in front of the driver. The front of the car would arrive at a junction and the driver would still be sat six foot behind the stop line and unable to see the approaching traffic. The only way to pull out would be to stick your nose into the oncoming traffic and hope for the best. And a right bloody nuisance to park, I would have thought, particularly in a supermarket car park. And while it's a big car, it doesn't look like it could easily take all the luggage for a family of five going self catering for two weeks. Exactly what sort of journeys is it good for?
People in that sort of car go shopping and self-catering? I appreciate you are probably joking but your first point sounds like a serious one.
I always emerge from junctions like that. If you are old enough and your truck is large, old and battered enough, it's a de facto right of way situation.
I'm amusing myself by thinking what I would do with one of those, but I think my general point is a reasonable one - if I buy a thing, it is because I think it will serve a particular purpose better than another thing. Presumably that's also true of whoever buys this - they're not buying it for it to sit in a garage. But what purpose does it serve? What journeys can you make for which it is better than an alternative? Not ease of use (going to the supermarket) or fitting a lot of stuff in. And presumably there are also better cars for speed, if that's your thing. And certainly not affordability. I can't imagine any circumstance that the oligarch goes out to his garage and thinks THAT is the car for the journey I'm making today.
The Roller is the car to be driven to important meetings and events particularly where photographers might be. It's not for practicality, speed or efficiency.
For arriving in, not travelling in?
Still hideous.
I know a bloke whose dad used to take his helicopter down from Cheshire to Smith's Lawn. He sent the chauffeur down in the car the night before, to pick him up for the less than a mile from helipad to final destination.
He was from Cheshire? Going to Smith's Lawn? How perfectly ghastly.
*googles Smith's Lawn* - ah - polo.
To weigh in on behalf of the splendid county of Cheshire, it is not JUST footballers and polo players (who, I would imagine, are exclusive: footballer country is in the east of the county: Alderley Edge, Prestbury, etc; while polo country is in the west, beyond Tarporley). Most of Cheshire is pleasant but not stellar; like anywhere else, the towns and villages of Cheshire range from the idyllic to the functional; for every Wilmslow there is a Winsford; for every Mottram St. Andrew there is a No Man's Heath.
Cheshire, the Essex of the North, new Money and celebs and old money and farming and lots of ordinary towns in between too
It's often called the Surrey of the North ("apart from by people from Sussex - for whom the Surrey of the north is Surrey"*) - but you're right, I think Essex is a better comparator. Albeit we do have some hills, and even a bit of the Peak District.
*From 'People Like Us'
So where is the Surrey of the North then? Lancashire? North Yorkshire?
Hideous; like the tank-sized Bentleys an insult to the elegant heritage of the brand. The sort of car a child would design out of Fimo.
Appreciate it's appealing to the core audience of tasteless arrivistes, of course.
Arguably, it is Rolls-Royce's lack of self-delusion regarding its market - giving drug barons, gangsters, rappers, tech bros, nepo babies etc a veneer of respectability whilst appealing to their poor taste - that has kept them in business. Arrivistes have money, and nouveaux-pauvres do not.
Totally, and fair play to them - they're delivering to their target audience and presumably actually growing their business, which is what businesses ought to be doing.
I still think it's minging.
Yes. I keep expecting it to fart and say "better out than in" in a Yorkshire accent.
In practical terms, it looks very hard to drive. The front is so far in front of the driver. The front of the car would arrive at a junction and the driver would still be sat six foot behind the stop line and unable to see the approaching traffic. The only way to pull out would be to stick your nose into the oncoming traffic and hope for the best. And a right bloody nuisance to park, I would have thought, particularly in a supermarket car park. And while it's a big car, it doesn't look like it could easily take all the luggage for a family of five going self catering for two weeks. Exactly what sort of journeys is it good for?
People in that sort of car go shopping and self-catering? I appreciate you are probably joking but your first point sounds like a serious one.
I always emerge from junctions like that. If you are old enough and your truck is large, old and battered enough, it's a de facto right of way situation.
I'm amusing myself by thinking what I would do with one of those, but I think my general point is a reasonable one - if I buy a thing, it is because I think it will serve a particular purpose better than another thing. Presumably that's also true of whoever buys this - they're not buying it for it to sit in a garage. But what purpose does it serve? What journeys can you make for which it is better than an alternative? Not ease of use (going to the supermarket) or fitting a lot of stuff in. And presumably there are also better cars for speed, if that's your thing. And certainly not affordability. I can't imagine any circumstance that the oligarch goes out to his garage and thinks THAT is the car for the journey I'm making today.
The Roller is the car to be driven to important meetings and events particularly where photographers might be. It's not for practicality, speed or efficiency.
For arriving in, not travelling in?
Still hideous.
I know a bloke whose dad used to take his helicopter down from Cheshire to Smith's Lawn. He sent the chauffeur down in the car the night before, to pick him up for the less than a mile from helipad to final destination.
He was from Cheshire? Going to Smith's Lawn? How perfectly ghastly.
*googles Smith's Lawn* - ah - polo.
To weigh in on behalf of the splendid county of Cheshire, it is not JUST footballers and polo players (who, I would imagine, are exclusive: footballer country is in the east of the county: Alderley Edge, Prestbury, etc; while polo country is in the west, beyond Tarporley). Most of Cheshire is pleasant but not stellar; like anywhere else, the towns and villages of Cheshire range from the idyllic to the functional; for every Wilmslow there is a Winsford; for every Mottram St. Andrew there is a No Man's Heath.
Cheshire, the Essex of the North, new Money and celebs and old money and farming and lots of ordinary towns in between too
It's often called the Surrey of the North ("apart from by people from Sussex - for whom the Surrey of the north is Surrey"*) - but you're right, I think Essex is a better comparator. Albeit we do have some hills, and even a bit of the Peak District.
*From 'People Like Us'
So where is the Surrey of the North then? Lancashire? North Yorkshire?
There's nowhere truly like Surrey in the North because Surrey is a huge beneficiary of rapid and frequent commuter transport into London, and multinational investment from proximity to Heathrow. Nowhere around Manchester or the other Northern cities has the same combination of FDI and public transport density.
If Cheshire is Essex then the posh bits of West and North Yorks are a bit Kent (Harrogate = Tunbridge Wells, York = Canterbury etc).
I wish we had this in Camden. An excellent local restaurant. Classic bistro food with some Italian flair and British gastropub influences and quite reasonable prices
More importantly, Tripadvisor nailed it. These apps become increasingly usefui
If booking.com rates a hotel over 9/10 it is nearly always excellent (in its genre) - much better/more reliable than any hotel guide
Tripadvisor is best when people leave detailed balanced reviews. That way you really get to understand how a restaurant or hotel is. I try to do this, in fact I enjoy the challenge of imagining myself a newspaper restaurant critic while I write.
5 star reviews are usually too short and uninformative: "great food, wonderful service - will be back", but so too are the usual couple of 1 star reviews. They tend to involve long-winded complaints about how the manager was rude to them or they booked a table but there was no record of the booking. Or they arrived on a Saturday evening as a group of 10 and nobody could accommodate them. Whereas the 3 and (some) 4 star reviews are gold dust. 3 stars usually mean someone has thought carefully about the pluses and minuses and written a thoughtful review. So I tend to zone in on those.
Yes. Avoid the 1 star reviews and be wary of the 5s
The first are often pointless rants or bitter rivals, the latter can be people gaming the system (or trying to)
But at a certain point you get so many reviews it can’t be gamed and that’s where many of these places are now. Which makes the apps really useful
I wonder whether the data is available in a form that would enable a simple algorithm to calculate, across the board, ratings excluding five and one star ratings which, as you say, are the most questionable for different reasons?
I suspect that this would give a better view of quality. There are other ways to do it mathematically, but that kind of thing. There might be quite a good niche in providing an app ranking products and services in that sort of way.
The one-star reviews that annoy me are the very specific ones that are pretty much meaningless in relation to quality of the product, "the waiter informed us the key to the disabled toilet had been misplaced on the Wednesday afternoon when we visited..." or "They delivered a blue widget instead of the orange one I wanted, and it was hard to find the number for customer services..."
I think we all perform our own algorithmic calculations in our heads. For example a 5 star place with 30 reviews is less reliable than a 4.5 star one with 2,000 reviews. Likewise we always expect hotels to score lower on average than home rentals on Booking.com because people are less squeamish about criticising a hotel than someone's house.
I have been burned a couple of times with very highly rated restaurants on Tripadvisor being mediocre. Those have generally been when people's expectations were lower. A couple of rural pubs with patterned carpets that did chewy roasts and microwave meals for example, but got wonderful ratings. So as a sense-check I also look at the website of the restaurant and particularly the font of the menu. If it's comic sans then it's a no. Likewise if the menu heralds a dish as "our famous [pie/burger etc]..." or has titles like "to start" or "for smaller appetites".
Good font good food. (That rule works well in other Northern European countries too, but falls down in Southern Europe and beyond).
Some of the reviews on these sites must be quite old now. I've experienced a few places in the past that were great, but then went downhill for one reason or another.
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
Yes, you see that crap with idiotic idealists choosing to be against parking, so people end up parking on the road rather than having cleverly thought through, integrated parking to go with the buildings.
A multi story block of flats, or multistory office block, there's no reason one or more of the stories can't be a garage for everyone's vehicles, then nobody ends up on the road. But instead idiots who think they know better are against planning for vehicles, so they end up making the vehicles overspill elsewhere and make problems much worse.
Roads should never be a place for parking ideally. They should be a place for driving/cycling/whatever not standing still.
That's usually because car parks are expensive to build / dig and most people (strangely) prefer to be able to look out of a window and see their car..
Land is also expensive. Parking on the road is free, and is parking on communal land rather than your own land. It is an externality and our system encourages.
Off-road parking is often actively discouraged by politicians when it should be positively encouraged - Nottingham is the worst example of this, firms offering private off-road parking for their employees are taxed for it, while those who have on-road parking are not taxed, whereas the tax incentive should be the polar opposite.
This is one of the things Japan does right, there's hardly any socialized parking, and also little or no requirements for off-road parking. If you want to park you pay for it.
The result is that parking is easy and freely available, and you don't need a load of planners with strong opinions about how much you should drive.
Japan does a lot of things right.
The thing is they don't get the planners involved, so the market solves the problems. Need more houses? Build more. Need more parking? Build that.
On street parking would be quite an interesting thing to privatise. A council could (I mean in theory - suspect current law prevents this) auction off the right to charge for kerbside parking spaces (and council car park spaces) to the highest bidder (probably for a period - say five or ten years). It'd raise a lot of money for services, and would actually probably be a pretty environmentally friendly policy in terms of incentives, particularly at peak periods.
It won't happen as it would be election-losing, with just about everyone paying more, particularly if you live anywhere near a mainline train station or shopping area (but then shouldn't you think about not bothering with a car anyway?) But it would probably be quite effective.
I see as predicted I'mnofanofTrumpbutism is back in vogue. To be scrupulously fair, I think some of these lads (despite the occasional fig leaf protestation) are fans of Trump.
Lots of thinly veiled Trumptons on PB.
Speaking personally, I really can't be bothered with prefacing my thoughts on any given issue with 'now I'm no fan of'. Anyone worth discussing something with will engage with the issues. Idiots looking for 'thinly veiled Trumptons' weren't likely to bring much of value to the discussion anyway.
There's no need for you to do that, we already know you're a fan of Putin and anyone who wishes harm on America - like Trump.
Ask for an idiot...
I'm no fan of Trump, but.....
Seriously, you have to understand the visceral hatred so many Americans have for Liberals and Democrats if you are to comprehend how a crook and charlatan like Trump can gain widespread support. His supporters simply do not care what he does or plans to do as long as he voices their loathing for the democratic elite which they believe runs government and treats them with contempt.
The direct parallel with Trump is Michael Curley, the Mayor of Boston, who kept getting elected despite it being widely accepted he was a crook and that he served actual jail time more than one. The reason was simple. Most Bostonians hated the Boston Brahmins and so re-elected Curley whom they knew the Brahmins hated.
I noticed @BartholomewRoberts says that Trump should be no friend for those who have grievances with the elite. But that gives those elite no incentive to change. They continue their behaviour ad infinitum and continue to shove it in the face of the poor. It lets them off too easily.
As Dave Chapelle said, what Trump did was open up the doors to the gravy train and showed everyone in the country how everyone on the inside was helping themselves and didn't give a damn about the populace. Now, that included himself but he - at least - was open about that (not paying taxes etc).
Sometimes - and in this phrase I am talking about the American elite - people have to have their faces shoved right in the shit to actually change their behaviour meaningfully. A 2024 Trump victory would probably do that.
Ridiculous. A 2024 Trump victory would just swap some self-serving elite people with different self-serving elite people. It doesn't change anything in a positive manner.
If you want change then vote for change, but Trump isn't that. Please name any lasting, positive, changes that in your eyes Trump made in his first term. I can't think of a single one. His only lasting change was reinforcing the pre-existing conservative majority in the Supreme Court.
Biden, Obama, Dubya etc - everyone else had policies they pushed that got through Congress and made a lasting change, Trump was just interested in self-aggrandisement and enrichment.
The only genuine 'elite' in the US is the ultra wealthy. Trump, of course, handed them a massive tax cut. Deficit funded.
Hideous; like the tank-sized Bentleys an insult to the elegant heritage of the brand. The sort of car a child would design out of Fimo.
Appreciate it's appealing to the core audience of tasteless arrivistes, of course.
Arguably, it is Rolls-Royce's lack of self-delusion regarding its market - giving drug barons, gangsters, rappers, tech bros, nepo babies etc a veneer of respectability whilst appealing to their poor taste - that has kept them in business. Arrivistes have money, and nouveaux-pauvres do not.
Totally, and fair play to them - they're delivering to their target audience and presumably actually growing their business, which is what businesses ought to be doing.
I still think it's minging.
Yes. I keep expecting it to fart and say "better out than in" in a Yorkshire accent.
In practical terms, it looks very hard to drive. The front is so far in front of the driver. The front of the car would arrive at a junction and the driver would still be sat six foot behind the stop line and unable to see the approaching traffic. The only way to pull out would be to stick your nose into the oncoming traffic and hope for the best. And a right bloody nuisance to park, I would have thought, particularly in a supermarket car park. And while it's a big car, it doesn't look like it could easily take all the luggage for a family of five going self catering for two weeks. Exactly what sort of journeys is it good for?
People in that sort of car go shopping and self-catering? I appreciate you are probably joking but your first point sounds like a serious one.
I always emerge from junctions like that. If you are old enough and your truck is large, old and battered enough, it's a de facto right of way situation.
I'm amusing myself by thinking what I would do with one of those, but I think my general point is a reasonable one - if I buy a thing, it is because I think it will serve a particular purpose better than another thing. Presumably that's also true of whoever buys this - they're not buying it for it to sit in a garage. But what purpose does it serve? What journeys can you make for which it is better than an alternative? Not ease of use (going to the supermarket) or fitting a lot of stuff in. And presumably there are also better cars for speed, if that's your thing. And certainly not affordability. I can't imagine any circumstance that the oligarch goes out to his garage and thinks THAT is the car for the journey I'm making today.
The Roller is the car to be driven to important meetings and events particularly where photographers might be. It's not for practicality, speed or efficiency.
For arriving in, not travelling in?
Still hideous.
I know a bloke whose dad used to take his helicopter down from Cheshire to Smith's Lawn. He sent the chauffeur down in the car the night before, to pick him up for the less than a mile from helipad to final destination.
He was from Cheshire? Going to Smith's Lawn? How perfectly ghastly.
*googles Smith's Lawn* - ah - polo.
To weigh in on behalf of the splendid county of Cheshire, it is not JUST footballers and polo players (who, I would imagine, are exclusive: footballer country is in the east of the county: Alderley Edge, Prestbury, etc; while polo country is in the west, beyond Tarporley). Most of Cheshire is pleasant but not stellar; like anywhere else, the towns and villages of Cheshire range from the idyllic to the functional; for every Wilmslow there is a Winsford; for every Mottram St. Andrew there is a No Man's Heath.
Cheshire, the Essex of the North, new Money and celebs and old money and farming and lots of ordinary towns in between too
It's often called the Surrey of the North ("apart from by people from Sussex - for whom the Surrey of the north is Surrey"*) - but you're right, I think Essex is a better comparator. Albeit we do have some hills, and even a bit of the Peak District.
*From 'People Like Us'
So where is the Surrey of the North then? Lancashire? North Yorkshire?
There's nowhere truly like Surrey in the North because Surrey is a huge beneficiary of rapid and frequent commuter transport into London, and multinational investment from proximity to Heathrow. Nowhere around Manchester or the other Northern cities has the same combination of FDI and public transport density.
If Cheshire is Essex then the posh bits of West and North Yorks are a bit Kent (Harrogate = Tunbridge Wells, York = Canterbury etc).
Cheshire is the Surrey of the North then on your standards, as Cheshire is a huge beneficiary of rapid and frequent commuter transport into both Liverpool and Manchester. Along with multinational investment from the proximity to Manchester and John Lennon airports.
The idea the North lacks investment is a myth, even if it's not the same.
I wish we had this in Camden. An excellent local restaurant. Classic bistro food with some Italian flair and British gastropub influences and quite reasonable prices
More importantly, Tripadvisor nailed it. These apps become increasingly usefui
If booking.com rates a hotel over 9/10 it is nearly always excellent (in its genre) - much better/more reliable than any hotel guide
Tripadvisor is best when people leave detailed balanced reviews. That way you really get to understand how a restaurant or hotel is. I try to do this, in fact I enjoy the challenge of imagining myself a newspaper restaurant critic while I write.
5 star reviews are usually too short and uninformative: "great food, wonderful service - will be back", but so too are the usual couple of 1 star reviews. They tend to involve long-winded complaints about how the manager was rude to them or they booked a table but there was no record of the booking. Or they arrived on a Saturday evening as a group of 10 and nobody could accommodate them. Whereas the 3 and (some) 4 star reviews are gold dust. 3 stars usually mean someone has thought carefully about the pluses and minuses and written a thoughtful review. So I tend to zone in on those.
Yes. Avoid the 1 star reviews and be wary of the 5s
The first are often pointless rants or bitter rivals, the latter can be people gaming the system (or trying to)
But at a certain point you get so many reviews it can’t be gamed and that’s where many of these places are now. Which makes the apps really useful
I wonder whether the data is available in a form that would enable a simple algorithm to calculate, across the board, ratings excluding five and one star ratings which, as you say, are the most questionable for different reasons?
I suspect that this would give a better view of quality. There are other ways to do it mathematically, but that kind of thing. There might be quite a good niche in providing an app ranking products and services in that sort of way.
The one-star reviews that annoy me are the very specific ones that are pretty much meaningless in relation to quality of the product, "the waiter informed us the key to the disabled toilet had been misplaced on the Wednesday afternoon when we visited..." or "They delivered a blue widget instead of the orange one I wanted, and it was hard to find the number for customer services..."
There's a one-star review for the hotel we'll be staying at in Spain next month where the main complaint seems to be that the staff speak Spanish.
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
Yes, you see that crap with idiotic idealists choosing to be against parking, so people end up parking on the road rather than having cleverly thought through, integrated parking to go with the buildings.
A multi story block of flats, or multistory office block, there's no reason one or more of the stories can't be a garage for everyone's vehicles, then nobody ends up on the road. But instead idiots who think they know better are against planning for vehicles, so they end up making the vehicles overspill elsewhere and make problems much worse.
Roads should never be a place for parking ideally. They should be a place for driving/cycling/whatever not standing still.
That's usually because car parks are expensive to build / dig and most people (strangely) prefer to be able to look out of a window and see their car..
Land is also expensive. Parking on the road is free, and is parking on communal land rather than your own land. It is an externality and our system encourages.
Off-road parking is often actively discouraged by politicians when it should be positively encouraged - Nottingham is the worst example of this, firms offering private off-road parking for their employees are taxed for it, while those who have on-road parking are not taxed, whereas the tax incentive should be the polar opposite.
This is one of the things Japan does right, there's hardly any socialized parking, and also little or no requirements for off-road parking. If you want to park you pay for it.
The result is that parking is easy and freely available, and you don't need a load of planners with strong opinions about how much you should drive.
Property taxes on empty lots, that sees them used as car parks, alongside the unique and brilliant Kei car concept, that sees people encouraged to buy small city cars over massive SUVs.
I wish we had this in Camden. An excellent local restaurant. Classic bistro food with some Italian flair and British gastropub influences and quite reasonable prices
More importantly, Tripadvisor nailed it. These apps become increasingly usefui
If booking.com rates a hotel over 9/10 it is nearly always excellent (in its genre) - much better/more reliable than any hotel guide
Tripadvisor is best when people leave detailed balanced reviews. That way you really get to understand how a restaurant or hotel is. I try to do this, in fact I enjoy the challenge of imagining myself a newspaper restaurant critic while I write.
5 star reviews are usually too short and uninformative: "great food, wonderful service - will be back", but so too are the usual couple of 1 star reviews. They tend to involve long-winded complaints about how the manager was rude to them or they booked a table but there was no record of the booking. Or they arrived on a Saturday evening as a group of 10 and nobody could accommodate them. Whereas the 3 and (some) 4 star reviews are gold dust. 3 stars usually mean someone has thought carefully about the pluses and minuses and written a thoughtful review. So I tend to zone in on those.
Yes. Avoid the 1 star reviews and be wary of the 5s
The first are often pointless rants or bitter rivals, the latter can be people gaming the system (or trying to)
But at a certain point you get so many reviews it can’t be gamed and that’s where many of these places are now. Which makes the apps really useful
I wonder whether the data is available in a form that would enable a simple algorithm to calculate, across the board, ratings excluding five and one star ratings which, as you say, are the most questionable for different reasons?
I suspect that this would give a better view of quality. There are other ways to do it mathematically, but that kind of thing. There might be quite a good niche in providing an app ranking products and services in that sort of way.
The one-star reviews that annoy me are the very specific ones that are pretty much meaningless in relation to quality of the product, "the waiter informed us the key to the disabled toilet had been misplaced on the Wednesday afternoon when we visited..." or "They delivered a blue widget instead of the orange one I wanted, and it was hard to find the number for customer services..."
I think we all perform our own algorithmic calculations in our heads. For example a 5 star place with 30 reviews is less reliable than a 4.5 star one with 2,000 reviews. Likewise we always expect hotels to score lower on average than home rentals on Booking.com because people are less squeamish about criticising a hotel than someone's house.
I have been burned a couple of times with very highly rated restaurants on Tripadvisor being mediocre. Those have generally been when people's expectations were lower. A couple of rural pubs with patterned carpets that did chewy roasts and microwave meals for example, but got wonderful ratings. So as a sense-check I also look at the website of the restaurant and particularly the font of the menu. If it's comic sans then it's a no. Likewise if the menu heralds a dish as "our famous [pie/burger etc]..." or has titles like "to start" or "for smaller appetites".
Good font good food. (That rule works well in other Northern European countries too, but falls down in Southern Europe and beyond).
Number of options on a menu is always a good test for me as well - a high-throughput place with a fairly small menu strikes me as a good sign. A mostly empty pub with 30 different mains... I'm probably just going to have a packet of salt and vinegar and cut my losses.
Some places do have oddly good reps - a pub in the village I grew up in had a 'famous carvery' which attracted people from all over, despite being genuinely average. Where I live now, our local curry place is held up as a culinary gold standard; AFAICT it is a formulaic Bangladeshi 'Indian' with all the usual meals.
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
Yes, you see that crap with idiotic idealists choosing to be against parking, so people end up parking on the road rather than having cleverly thought through, integrated parking to go with the buildings.
A multi story block of flats, or multistory office block, there's no reason one or more of the stories can't be a garage for everyone's vehicles, then nobody ends up on the road. But instead idiots who think they know better are against planning for vehicles, so they end up making the vehicles overspill elsewhere and make problems much worse.
Roads should never be a place for parking ideally. They should be a place for driving/cycling/whatever not standing still.
That's usually because car parks are expensive to build / dig and most people (strangely) prefer to be able to look out of a window and see their car..
Land is also expensive. Parking on the road is free, and is parking on communal land rather than your own land. It is an externality and our system encourages.
Off-road parking is often actively discouraged by politicians when it should be positively encouraged - Nottingham is the worst example of this, firms offering private off-road parking for their employees are taxed for it, while those who have on-road parking are not taxed, whereas the tax incentive should be the polar opposite.
This is one of the things Japan does right, there's hardly any socialized parking, and also little or no requirements for off-road parking. If you want to park you pay for it.
The result is that parking is easy and freely available, and you don't need a load of planners with strong opinions about how much you should drive.
Japan does a lot of things right.
The thing is they don't get the planners involved, so the market solves the problems. Need more houses? Build more. Need more parking? Build that.
On street parking would be quite an interesting thing to privatise. A council could (I mean in theory - suspect current law prevents this) auction off the right to charge for kerbside parking spaces (and council car park spaces) to the highest bidder (probably for a period - say five or ten years). It'd raise a lot of money for services, and would actually probably be a pretty environmentally friendly policy in terms of incentives, particularly at peak periods.
It won't happen as it would be election-losing, with just about everyone paying more, particularly if you live anywhere near a mainline train station or shopping area (but then shouldn't you think about not bothering with a car anyway?) But it would probably be quite effective.
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
Yes, you see that crap with idiotic idealists choosing to be against parking, so people end up parking on the road rather than having cleverly thought through, integrated parking to go with the buildings.
A multi story block of flats, or multistory office block, there's no reason one or more of the stories can't be a garage for everyone's vehicles, then nobody ends up on the road. But instead idiots who think they know better are against planning for vehicles, so they end up making the vehicles overspill elsewhere and make problems much worse.
Roads should never be a place for parking ideally. They should be a place for driving/cycling/whatever not standing still.
That's usually because car parks are expensive to build / dig and most people (strangely) prefer to be able to look out of a window and see their car..
Land is also expensive. Parking on the road is free, and is parking on communal land rather than your own land. It is an externality and our system encourages.
Off-road parking is often actively discouraged by politicians when it should be positively encouraged - Nottingham is the worst example of this, firms offering private off-road parking for their employees are taxed for it, while those who have on-road parking are not taxed, whereas the tax incentive should be the polar opposite.
This is one of the things Japan does right, there's hardly any socialized parking, and also little or no requirements for off-road parking. If you want to park you pay for it.
The result is that parking is easy and freely available, and you don't need a load of planners with strong opinions about how much you should drive.
Property taxes on empty lots, that sees them used as car parks, alongside the unique and brilliant Kei car concept, that sees people encouraged to buy small city cars over massive SUVs.
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
Yes, you see that crap with idiotic idealists choosing to be against parking, so people end up parking on the road rather than having cleverly thought through, integrated parking to go with the buildings.
A multi story block of flats, or multistory office block, there's no reason one or more of the stories can't be a garage for everyone's vehicles, then nobody ends up on the road. But instead idiots who think they know better are against planning for vehicles, so they end up making the vehicles overspill elsewhere and make problems much worse.
Roads should never be a place for parking ideally. They should be a place for driving/cycling/whatever not standing still.
That's usually because car parks are expensive to build / dig and most people (strangely) prefer to be able to look out of a window and see their car..
Land is also expensive. Parking on the road is free, and is parking on communal land rather than your own land. It is an externality and our system encourages.
Off-road parking is often actively discouraged by politicians when it should be positively encouraged - Nottingham is the worst example of this, firms offering private off-road parking for their employees are taxed for it, while those who have on-road parking are not taxed, whereas the tax incentive should be the polar opposite.
This is one of the things Japan does right, there's hardly any socialized parking, and also little or no requirements for off-road parking. If you want to park you pay for it.
The result is that parking is easy and freely available, and you don't need a load of planners with strong opinions about how much you should drive.
Japan does a lot of things right.
The thing is they don't get the planners involved, so the market solves the problems. Need more houses? Build more. Need more parking? Build that.
On street parking would be quite an interesting thing to privatise. A council could (I mean in theory - suspect current law prevents this) auction off the right to charge for kerbside parking spaces (and council car park spaces) to the highest bidder (probably for a period - say five or ten years). It'd raise a lot of money for services, and would actually probably be a pretty environmentally friendly policy in terms of incentives, particularly at peak periods.
It won't happen as it would be election-losing, with just about everyone paying more, particularly if you live anywhere near a mainline train station or shopping area (but then shouldn't you think about not bothering with a car anyway?) But it would probably be quite effective.
The other thing is you'd get cowboy outfits making a mint after probably paying very little to the council for the original rights. It would very quickly become the sort of thing that would have got on to Watchdog.
Giving private companies rights to extract rent and enforce the extraction of rent with their own heavies usually ends in tears.
Plus of course you can't easily retrofit old buildings to reverse the mistakes of the past.
Encouraging new buildings to have sufficient parking rather than relying on off road, via building standards/tax incentives, while taxing construction without sufficient parking for the externality of dumping vehicles on the road may help more but only with new builds.
The move to electric vehicles may help with this as consumers now value off road parking more. My new home I have two parking spaces, but no major front garden as a result (just a small area we have planted wildflower seeds and is now attracting bees already ). In the past I'd park on the road, in communal land, and my lawn would be my own too.
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
The Poles were quite literally Communists and hence presumably quite left wing, at least relative to Exeter City Council, which was run by the Conservative Party at the time. I think you have simply decided that because you don't like the Left and you don't like postwar architecture or town planning, the two must therefore be related, whereas they're really not. (We all do this, of course). Postwar development was done quickly because people clamoured for it (they didn't like living in a bomb site) and cheaply because we were broke, and that is why it was so horrible, there was very little ideology involved at all, and to the extent there was ideology I think it was a kind of postwar desire to break with the past, which was shared quite broadly across the political spectrum, and which in many respects was quite admirable. Plus the usual suspect - greedy property developers.
No. Completely wrong
I have studied this subject quite a lot and I know whereof I speak
See the recent rebuilding of Frankfurt’s Altstadt. The left opposed it (some even called it “Nazi architecture”) and the right forced it through
This happens everywhere. Progressives wants “progressive” architecture because they are “progressive”, narcissistic morons
Virtually all of the infamous architects that mutilated London 1950-2000 were of the Left
There is a different problem of venal right wing private sector bastards but they are less of a systemic issue. Tho they can also do hideous things. See “The Crooked House”
As for Poland the communists built the unbelievably ugly Nova Huta next to beautiful Krakow as a deliberate affront to its “reactionary” loveliness
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
Yes, you see that crap with idiotic idealists choosing to be against parking, so people end up parking on the road rather than having cleverly thought through, integrated parking to go with the buildings.
A multi story block of flats, or multistory office block, there's no reason one or more of the stories can't be a garage for everyone's vehicles, then nobody ends up on the road. But instead idiots who think they know better are against planning for vehicles, so they end up making the vehicles overspill elsewhere and make problems much worse.
Roads should never be a place for parking ideally. They should be a place for driving/cycling/whatever not standing still.
The problem with this is a large reason why people don't buy a second car, or a car in the first place, is a lack of car parking spots in town and city centres. Demand will follow supply, and in a few years you'll be back to square one.
Then there are all the secondary effects - more cars means more congestion, fewer people feeling comfortable enough to walk and cycle around, and the viability of mass transit like buses falls.
Those car parks eat up space for more flats, adding more pressure on house prices.
Showing once again your anti-car mentality, rather than a pro-cycling one.
But people do buy cars, because they need them, because they work as a mode of transportation and there is no better alternative. The overwhelming majority of people who cycle still have a car, and so they need a place to park their car, and park their bike. Secure parking can be a secure place to put your bike too.
Fewer cars parked on the road means less congestion, people feeling more comfortable to walk and cycle around. People having no alternative but to park on the road means they're parking typically right where cyclists want to cycle - you objected to this the other night posting a photo of someone parked where you wanted to cycle, and since most roads are dual-use there's not normally a ban on parking there so its the cyclists that suffer the most from the lack of parking leading to on-road parking, not drivers. I can quite comfortably park on the road if there's no alternative, and drive around parked vehicles, you're the one who has to move around my vehicle by moving further into the road or mount the pavement if I do though.
As for "eating up space" that's not remotely true. You can build further down, or further up.
Drive into Melbourne's Central Business District and if you want to park at a skyscraper, then for most of them you park under the building. Drive down the ramp under the building and head down into the car park. Ground floor and above is for the building, underneath is for cars. Leaving plenty of road space for one of the world's best tram networks, cycles and anything else you might like rather than a road littered with parked vehicles - what's the harm in that?
I'm not anti-car. I'm just pointing out that for cities and towns it's far more efficient and and cost-effective to provide public transport. This makes life significantly easier for commercial drivers (eg vans) who do need the roads to get around.
There is a reason that commercial airports like Heathrow invest in brilliant public transport systems rather than gigantic car parks - it's far easier to shift thousands of people to where you need them to be.
It appears that this thread is now obsolete. Trump will be presenting a report on Monday that will show that the election in Georgia was in fact rigged and that he will therefore be exonerated.
So that would appear to be that. Hope you enjoyed all the speculation while it lasted.
I wish we had this in Camden. An excellent local restaurant. Classic bistro food with some Italian flair and British gastropub influences and quite reasonable prices
More importantly, Tripadvisor nailed it. These apps become increasingly usefui
If booking.com rates a hotel over 9/10 it is nearly always excellent (in its genre) - much better/more reliable than any hotel guide
Tripadvisor is best when people leave detailed balanced reviews. That way you really get to understand how a restaurant or hotel is. I try to do this, in fact I enjoy the challenge of imagining myself a newspaper restaurant critic while I write.
5 star reviews are usually too short and uninformative: "great food, wonderful service - will be back", but so too are the usual couple of 1 star reviews. They tend to involve long-winded complaints about how the manager was rude to them or they booked a table but there was no record of the booking. Or they arrived on a Saturday evening as a group of 10 and nobody could accommodate them. Whereas the 3 and (some) 4 star reviews are gold dust. 3 stars usually mean someone has thought carefully about the pluses and minuses and written a thoughtful review. So I tend to zone in on those.
Yes. Avoid the 1 star reviews and be wary of the 5s
The first are often pointless rants or bitter rivals, the latter can be people gaming the system (or trying to)
But at a certain point you get so many reviews it can’t be gamed and that’s where many of these places are now. Which makes the apps really useful
I wonder whether the data is available in a form that would enable a simple algorithm to calculate, across the board, ratings excluding five and one star ratings which, as you say, are the most questionable for different reasons?
I suspect that this would give a better view of quality. There are other ways to do it mathematically, but that kind of thing. There might be quite a good niche in providing an app ranking products and services in that sort of way.
The one-star reviews that annoy me are the very specific ones that are pretty much meaningless in relation to quality of the product, "the waiter informed us the key to the disabled toilet had been misplaced on the Wednesday afternoon when we visited..." or "They delivered a blue widget instead of the orange one I wanted, and it was hard to find the number for customer services..."
My “favourites” are the 1 star book reviews on Amazon which turn out to be 1 star because “the book arrived 2 days late” or “I bought this thinking it was a toy for my cat”
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
Yes, you see that crap with idiotic idealists choosing to be against parking, so people end up parking on the road rather than having cleverly thought through, integrated parking to go with the buildings.
A multi story block of flats, or multistory office block, there's no reason one or more of the stories can't be a garage for everyone's vehicles, then nobody ends up on the road. But instead idiots who think they know better are against planning for vehicles, so they end up making the vehicles overspill elsewhere and make problems much worse.
Roads should never be a place for parking ideally. They should be a place for driving/cycling/whatever not standing still.
That's usually because car parks are expensive to build / dig and most people (strangely) prefer to be able to look out of a window and see their car..
Land is also expensive. Parking on the road is free, and is parking on communal land rather than your own land. It is an externality and our system encourages.
Off-road parking is often actively discouraged by politicians when it should be positively encouraged - Nottingham is the worst example of this, firms offering private off-road parking for their employees are taxed for it, while those who have on-road parking are not taxed, whereas the tax incentive should be the polar opposite.
This is one of the things Japan does right, there's hardly any socialized parking, and also little or no requirements for off-road parking. If you want to park you pay for it.
The result is that parking is easy and freely available, and you don't need a load of planners with strong opinions about how much you should drive.
Property taxes on empty lots, that sees them used as car parks, alongside the unique and brilliant Kei car concept, that sees people encouraged to buy small city cars over massive SUVs.
Empty houses give you a choice where you move to. And can refurbish/rebuild old ones for cheap, or get quality at a reasonable price, rather than paying a high price for mouldy rundown rubbish as the alternative is homelessness.
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
The Poles were quite literally Communists and hence presumably quite left wing, at least relative to Exeter City Council, which was run by the Conservative Party at the time. I think you have simply decided that because you don't like the Left and you don't like postwar architecture or town planning, the two must therefore be related, whereas they're really not. (We all do this, of course). Postwar development was done quickly because people clamoured for it (they didn't like living in a bomb site) and cheaply because we were broke, and that is why it was so horrible, there was very little ideology involved at all, and to the extent there was ideology I think it was a kind of postwar desire to break with the past, which was shared quite broadly across the political spectrum, and which in many respects was quite admirable. Plus the usual suspect - greedy property developers.
No. Completely wrong
I have studied this subject quite a lot and I know whereof I speak
See the recent rebuilding of Frankfurt’s Altstadt. The left opposed it (some even called it “Nazi architecture”) and the right forced it through
This happens everywhere. Progressives wants “progressive” architecture because they are “progressive”, narcissistic morons
Virtually all of the infamous architects that mutilated London 1950-2000 were of the Left
There is a different problem of venal right wing private sector bastards but they are less of a systemic issue. Tho they can also do hideous things. See “The Crooked Hpuse”
As for Poland the communists built the unbelievably ugly Nova Huta next to beautiful Krakow as a deliberate affront to its “reactionary” loveliness
I wish we had this in Camden. An excellent local restaurant. Classic bistro food with some Italian flair and British gastropub influences and quite reasonable prices
More importantly, Tripadvisor nailed it. These apps become increasingly usefui
If booking.com rates a hotel over 9/10 it is nearly always excellent (in its genre) - much better/more reliable than any hotel guide
Tripadvisor is best when people leave detailed balanced reviews. That way you really get to understand how a restaurant or hotel is. I try to do this, in fact I enjoy the challenge of imagining myself a newspaper restaurant critic while I write.
5 star reviews are usually too short and uninformative: "great food, wonderful service - will be back", but so too are the usual couple of 1 star reviews. They tend to involve long-winded complaints about how the manager was rude to them or they booked a table but there was no record of the booking. Or they arrived on a Saturday evening as a group of 10 and nobody could accommodate them. Whereas the 3 and (some) 4 star reviews are gold dust. 3 stars usually mean someone has thought carefully about the pluses and minuses and written a thoughtful review. So I tend to zone in on those.
Yes. Avoid the 1 star reviews and be wary of the 5s
The first are often pointless rants or bitter rivals, the latter can be people gaming the system (or trying to)
But at a certain point you get so many reviews it can’t be gamed and that’s where many of these places are now. Which makes the apps really useful
I wonder whether the data is available in a form that would enable a simple algorithm to calculate, across the board, ratings excluding five and one star ratings which, as you say, are the most questionable for different reasons?
I suspect that this would give a better view of quality. There are other ways to do it mathematically, but that kind of thing. There might be quite a good niche in providing an app ranking products and services in that sort of way.
The one-star reviews that annoy me are the very specific ones that are pretty much meaningless in relation to quality of the product, "the waiter informed us the key to the disabled toilet had been misplaced on the Wednesday afternoon when we visited..." or "They delivered a blue widget instead of the orange one I wanted, and it was hard to find the number for customer services..."
My “favourites” are the 1 star book reviews on Amazon which turn out to be 1 star because “the book arrived 2 days late” or “I bought this thinking it was a toy for my cat”
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
The Poles were quite literally Communists and hence presumably quite left wing, at least relative to Exeter City Council, which was run by the Conservative Party at the time. I think you have simply decided that because you don't like the Left and you don't like postwar architecture or town planning, the two must therefore be related, whereas they're really not. (We all do this, of course). Postwar development was done quickly because people clamoured for it (they didn't like living in a bomb site) and cheaply because we were broke, and that is why it was so horrible, there was very little ideology involved at all, and to the extent there was ideology I think it was a kind of postwar desire to break with the past, which was shared quite broadly across the political spectrum, and which in many respects was quite admirable. Plus the usual suspect - greedy property developers.
No. Completely wrong
I have studied this subject quite a lot and I know whereof I speak
See the recent rebuilding of Frankfurt’s Altstadt. The left opposed it (some even called it “Nazi architecture”) and the right forced it through
This happens everywhere. Progressives wants “progressive” architecture because they are “progressive”, narcissistic morons
Virtually all of the infamous architects that mutilated London 1950-2000 were of the Left
There is a different problem of venal right wing private sector bastards but they are less of a systemic issue. Tho they can also do hideous things. See “The Crooked Hpuse”
As for Poland the communists built the unbelievably ugly Nova Huta next to beautiful Krakow as a deliberate affront to its “reactionary” loveliness
I think you're mistaken identifying it as a right/left argument. There are plenty of heroes and villains on both sides.
A more realistic way of think about the debate is, for instance, to look at the battle between Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses.
I wish we had this in Camden. An excellent local restaurant. Classic bistro food with some Italian flair and British gastropub influences and quite reasonable prices
More importantly, Tripadvisor nailed it. These apps become increasingly usefui
If booking.com rates a hotel over 9/10 it is nearly always excellent (in its genre) - much better/more reliable than any hotel guide
Tripadvisor is best when people leave detailed balanced reviews. That way you really get to understand how a restaurant or hotel is. I try to do this, in fact I enjoy the challenge of imagining myself a newspaper restaurant critic while I write.
5 star reviews are usually too short and uninformative: "great food, wonderful service - will be back", but so too are the usual couple of 1 star reviews. They tend to involve long-winded complaints about how the manager was rude to them or they booked a table but there was no record of the booking. Or they arrived on a Saturday evening as a group of 10 and nobody could accommodate them. Whereas the 3 and (some) 4 star reviews are gold dust. 3 stars usually mean someone has thought carefully about the pluses and minuses and written a thoughtful review. So I tend to zone in on those.
Yes. Avoid the 1 star reviews and be wary of the 5s
The first are often pointless rants or bitter rivals, the latter can be people gaming the system (or trying to)
But at a certain point you get so many reviews it can’t be gamed and that’s where many of these places are now. Which makes the apps really useful
I wonder whether the data is available in a form that would enable a simple algorithm to calculate, across the board, ratings excluding five and one star ratings which, as you say, are the most questionable for different reasons?
I suspect that this would give a better view of quality. There are other ways to do it mathematically, but that kind of thing. There might be quite a good niche in providing an app ranking products and services in that sort of way.
The one-star reviews that annoy me are the very specific ones that are pretty much meaningless in relation to quality of the product, "the waiter informed us the key to the disabled toilet had been misplaced on the Wednesday afternoon when we visited..." or "They delivered a blue widget instead of the orange one I wanted, and it was hard to find the number for customer services..."
My “favourites” are the 1 star book reviews on Amazon which turn out to be 1 star because “the book arrived 2 days late” or “I bought this thinking it was a toy for my cat”
They’re just trying to spare your feelings.
I remember when thriller writer Tom Knox used to post on here. He told us of a reviewer who left a 1 star review saying “unbelievably, this is even worse than the other two Tom Knox books I read before”
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
Yes, you see that crap with idiotic idealists choosing to be against parking, so people end up parking on the road rather than having cleverly thought through, integrated parking to go with the buildings.
A multi story block of flats, or multistory office block, there's no reason one or more of the stories can't be a garage for everyone's vehicles, then nobody ends up on the road. But instead idiots who think they know better are against planning for vehicles, so they end up making the vehicles overspill elsewhere and make problems much worse.
Roads should never be a place for parking ideally. They should be a place for driving/cycling/whatever not standing still.
That's usually because car parks are expensive to build / dig and most people (strangely) prefer to be able to look out of a window and see their car..
Land is also expensive. Parking on the road is free, and is parking on communal land rather than your own land. It is an externality and our system encourages.
Off-road parking is often actively discouraged by politicians when it should be positively encouraged - Nottingham is the worst example of this, firms offering private off-road parking for their employees are taxed for it, while those who have on-road parking are not taxed, whereas the tax incentive should be the polar opposite.
This is one of the things Japan does right, there's hardly any socialized parking, and also little or no requirements for off-road parking. If you want to park you pay for it.
The result is that parking is easy and freely available, and you don't need a load of planners with strong opinions about how much you should drive.
Japan does a lot of things right.
The thing is they don't get the planners involved, so the market solves the problems. Need more houses? Build more. Need more parking? Build that.
On street parking would be quite an interesting thing to privatise. A council could (I mean in theory - suspect current law prevents this) auction off the right to charge for kerbside parking spaces (and council car park spaces) to the highest bidder (probably for a period - say five or ten years). It'd raise a lot of money for services, and would actually probably be a pretty environmentally friendly policy in terms of incentives, particularly at peak periods.
It won't happen as it would be election-losing, with just about everyone paying more, particularly if you live anywhere near a mainline train station or shopping area (but then shouldn't you think about not bothering with a car anyway?) But it would probably be quite effective.
But is that an argument that they shouldn't have done it or that they should have negotiated a better deal?
I’ll put it in the same class as PFI in the UK, that the public sector is pretty much incapable of negotiating contracts with a bunch of hardcore finance professionals, which sees these projects privatise the profits and socialise the losses. The politicians can’t see past the next election, and will take short-term profits over long-term gains - whereas the private equity on the other side of the table can see the long-term advantages.
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
The Poles were quite literally Communists and hence presumably quite left wing, at least relative to Exeter City Council, which was run by the Conservative Party at the time. I think you have simply decided that because you don't like the Left and you don't like postwar architecture or town planning, the two must therefore be related, whereas they're really not. (We all do this, of course). Postwar development was done quickly because people clamoured for it (they didn't like living in a bomb site) and cheaply because we were broke, and that is why it was so horrible, there was very little ideology involved at all, and to the extent there was ideology I think it was a kind of postwar desire to break with the past, which was shared quite broadly across the political spectrum, and which in many respects was quite admirable. Plus the usual suspect - greedy property developers.
No. Completely wrong
I have studied this subject quite a lot and I know whereof I speak
See the recent rebuilding of Frankfurt’s Altstadt. The left opposed it (some even called it “Nazi architecture”) and the right forced it through
This happens everywhere. Progressives wants “progressive” architecture because they are “progressive”, narcissistic morons
Virtually all of the infamous architects that mutilated London 1950-2000 were of the Left
There is a different problem of venal right wing private sector bastards but they are less of a systemic issue. Tho they can also do hideous things. See “The Crooked Hpuse”
As for Poland the communists built the unbelievably ugly Nova Huta next to beautiful Krakow as a deliberate affront to its “reactionary” loveliness
My favourite aesthetic movement, Arts & Crafts, was largely socialist, albeit one flavoured with liberalism and a British idiosyncrasy.
Putting architecture on a left-right spectrum is unhelpful tbh. The petty, the small-minded and the philistine exist across the whole thing.
I wish we had this in Camden. An excellent local restaurant. Classic bistro food with some Italian flair and British gastropub influences and quite reasonable prices
More importantly, Tripadvisor nailed it. These apps become increasingly usefui
If booking.com rates a hotel over 9/10 it is nearly always excellent (in its genre) - much better/more reliable than any hotel guide
Tripadvisor is best when people leave detailed balanced reviews. That way you really get to understand how a restaurant or hotel is. I try to do this, in fact I enjoy the challenge of imagining myself a newspaper restaurant critic while I write.
5 star reviews are usually too short and uninformative: "great food, wonderful service - will be back", but so too are the usual couple of 1 star reviews. They tend to involve long-winded complaints about how the manager was rude to them or they booked a table but there was no record of the booking. Or they arrived on a Saturday evening as a group of 10 and nobody could accommodate them. Whereas the 3 and (some) 4 star reviews are gold dust. 3 stars usually mean someone has thought carefully about the pluses and minuses and written a thoughtful review. So I tend to zone in on those.
Yes. Avoid the 1 star reviews and be wary of the 5s
The first are often pointless rants or bitter rivals, the latter can be people gaming the system (or trying to)
But at a certain point you get so many reviews it can’t be gamed and that’s where many of these places are now. Which makes the apps really useful
I wonder whether the data is available in a form that would enable a simple algorithm to calculate, across the board, ratings excluding five and one star ratings which, as you say, are the most questionable for different reasons?
I suspect that this would give a better view of quality. There are other ways to do it mathematically, but that kind of thing. There might be quite a good niche in providing an app ranking products and services in that sort of way.
The one-star reviews that annoy me are the very specific ones that are pretty much meaningless in relation to quality of the product, "the waiter informed us the key to the disabled toilet had been misplaced on the Wednesday afternoon when we visited..." or "They delivered a blue widget instead of the orange one I wanted, and it was hard to find the number for customer services..."
I think we all perform our own algorithmic calculations in our heads. For example a 5 star place with 30 reviews is less reliable than a 4.5 star one with 2,000 reviews. Likewise we always expect hotels to score lower on average than home rentals on Booking.com because people are less squeamish about criticising a hotel than someone's house.
I have been burned a couple of times with very highly rated restaurants on Tripadvisor being mediocre. Those have generally been when people's expectations were lower. A couple of rural pubs with patterned carpets that did chewy roasts and microwave meals for example, but got wonderful ratings. So as a sense-check I also look at the website of the restaurant and particularly the font of the menu. If it's comic sans then it's a no. Likewise if the menu heralds a dish as "our famous [pie/burger etc]..." or has titles like "to start" or "for smaller appetites".
Good font good food. (That rule works well in other Northern European countries too, but falls down in Southern Europe and beyond).
Some of the reviews on these sites must be quite old now. I've experienced a few places in the past that were great, but then went downhill for one reason or another.
The other anomalies I've been coming across are in reviews of hotels and rental properties in Georgia (the country, not the state that's just indicted Trump). There are clearly some proprietors who delight in offering a differentiated level of hospitality depending on nationality - specifically whether or not one hails from the former imperial power.
One in particular has 9+ ratings on Booking.com from people from all over the world, then a handful of 1-pointers with damning headlines. Then you notice all the 1-pointers are from Russians, and include complaints that the owner refused to take their booking on account they represent a terrorist state, or stated they were full when they clearly had availability. The property had a big Ukraine flag on its Facebook page and posts about "making no concessions to pigs" so you'd have thought that might be a clue.
In the US, anyone who wants to complain about post-WWII architecture should read Tom Wolfe' s "From Bauhaus to Our House" -- before commenting. (I haven't spent enough time in Britain to know whether the same applies there, though, presumably, to a lesser extent.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_Bauhaus_to_Our_House
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
Yes, you see that crap with idiotic idealists choosing to be against parking, so people end up parking on the road rather than having cleverly thought through, integrated parking to go with the buildings.
A multi story block of flats, or multistory office block, there's no reason one or more of the stories can't be a garage for everyone's vehicles, then nobody ends up on the road. But instead idiots who think they know better are against planning for vehicles, so they end up making the vehicles overspill elsewhere and make problems much worse.
Roads should never be a place for parking ideally. They should be a place for driving/cycling/whatever not standing still.
The problem with this is a large reason why people don't buy a second car, or a car in the first place, is a lack of car parking spots in town and city centres. Demand will follow supply, and in a few years you'll be back to square one.
Then there are all the secondary effects - more cars means more congestion, fewer people feeling comfortable enough to walk and cycle around, and the viability of mass transit like buses falls.
Those car parks eat up space for more flats, adding more pressure on house prices.
Showing once again your anti-car mentality, rather than a pro-cycling one.
But people do buy cars, because they need them, because they work as a mode of transportation and there is no better alternative. The overwhelming majority of people who cycle still have a car, and so they need a place to park their car, and park their bike. Secure parking can be a secure place to put your bike too.
Fewer cars parked on the road means less congestion, people feeling more comfortable to walk and cycle around. People having no alternative but to park on the road means they're parking typically right where cyclists want to cycle - you objected to this the other night posting a photo of someone parked where you wanted to cycle, and since most roads are dual-use there's not normally a ban on parking there so its the cyclists that suffer the most from the lack of parking leading to on-road parking, not drivers. I can quite comfortably park on the road if there's no alternative, and drive around parked vehicles, you're the one who has to move around my vehicle by moving further into the road or mount the pavement if I do though.
As for "eating up space" that's not remotely true. You can build further down, or further up.
Drive into Melbourne's Central Business District and if you want to park at a skyscraper, then for most of them you park under the building. Drive down the ramp under the building and head down into the car park. Ground floor and above is for the building, underneath is for cars. Leaving plenty of road space for one of the world's best tram networks, cycles and anything else you might like rather than a road littered with parked vehicles - what's the harm in that?
I'm not anti-car. I'm just pointing out that for cities and towns it's far more efficient and and cost-effective to provide public transport. This makes life significantly easier for commercial drivers (eg vans) who do need the roads to get around.
There is a reason that commercial airports like Heathrow invest in brilliant public transport systems rather than gigantic car parks - it's far easier to shift thousands of people to where you need them to be.
It's not either/or, it's far more effective to do both.
There isn't a city on the planet without cars. Public transport and cars can work well together, not be enemies.
Getting cars off the road and onto private parking liberates road space for public transport/cycling etc. Insisting on a lack of off-road parking leads to on road parking, which hurts cycling etc.
The whole of Melbourne is built with both trams and cars in mind, not either-or. Driving there is weird coming straight from UK, despite driving on same side of road as us in order to turn right you must be in the left lane to do a "hook turn" because of the trams. Which works.
It appears that this thread has become redundant. Trump will be presenting a report on Monday that will show that the election in Georgia was in fact rigged and that he will therefore be exonerated.
So that would appear to be that. Hope you enjoyed all the speculation while it lasted.
World popcorn prices up 8% since that announcement.
I wish we had this in Camden. An excellent local restaurant. Classic bistro food with some Italian flair and British gastropub influences and quite reasonable prices
More importantly, Tripadvisor nailed it. These apps become increasingly usefui
If booking.com rates a hotel over 9/10 it is nearly always excellent (in its genre) - much better/more reliable than any hotel guide
Tripadvisor is best when people leave detailed balanced reviews. That way you really get to understand how a restaurant or hotel is. I try to do this, in fact I enjoy the challenge of imagining myself a newspaper restaurant critic while I write.
5 star reviews are usually too short and uninformative: "great food, wonderful service - will be back", but so too are the usual couple of 1 star reviews. They tend to involve long-winded complaints about how the manager was rude to them or they booked a table but there was no record of the booking. Or they arrived on a Saturday evening as a group of 10 and nobody could accommodate them. Whereas the 3 and (some) 4 star reviews are gold dust. 3 stars usually mean someone has thought carefully about the pluses and minuses and written a thoughtful review. So I tend to zone in on those.
Yes. Avoid the 1 star reviews and be wary of the 5s
The first are often pointless rants or bitter rivals, the latter can be people gaming the system (or trying to)
But at a certain point you get so many reviews it can’t be gamed and that’s where many of these places are now. Which makes the apps really useful
I wonder whether the data is available in a form that would enable a simple algorithm to calculate, across the board, ratings excluding five and one star ratings which, as you say, are the most questionable for different reasons?
I suspect that this would give a better view of quality. There are other ways to do it mathematically, but that kind of thing. There might be quite a good niche in providing an app ranking products and services in that sort of way.
The one-star reviews that annoy me are the very specific ones that are pretty much meaningless in relation to quality of the product, "the waiter informed us the key to the disabled toilet had been misplaced on the Wednesday afternoon when we visited..." or "They delivered a blue widget instead of the orange one I wanted, and it was hard to find the number for customer services..."
I think we all perform our own algorithmic calculations in our heads. For example a 5 star place with 30 reviews is less reliable than a 4.5 star one with 2,000 reviews. Likewise we always expect hotels to score lower on average than home rentals on Booking.com because people are less squeamish about criticising a hotel than someone's house.
I have been burned a couple of times with very highly rated restaurants on Tripadvisor being mediocre. Those have generally been when people's expectations were lower. A couple of rural pubs with patterned carpets that did chewy roasts and microwave meals for example, but got wonderful ratings. So as a sense-check I also look at the website of the restaurant and particularly the font of the menu. If it's comic sans then it's a no. Likewise if the menu heralds a dish as "our famous [pie/burger etc]..." or has titles like "to start" or "for smaller appetites".
Good font good food. (That rule works well in other Northern European countries too, but falls down in Southern Europe and beyond).
Number of options on a menu is always a good test for me as well - a high-throughput place with a fairly small menu strikes me as a good sign. A mostly empty pub with 30 different mains... I'm probably just going to have a packet of salt and vinegar and cut my losses.
Some places do have oddly good reps - a pub in the village I grew up in had a 'famous carvery' which attracted people from all over, despite being genuinely average. Where I live now, our local curry place is held up as a culinary gold standard; AFAICT it is a formulaic Bangladeshi 'Indian' with all the usual meals.
Indian restaurants seem to fall in a narrow range of never brilliant but never terrible. Bad provincial Chinese OTOH....
Conservative retired judge says Trump ‘corroded and corrupted American democracy’ https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/conservative-retired-judge-says-trump-corroded-and-corrupted-american-democracy An influential group of Republican legal voices called for a Jan. 2024 trial date to be set for Donald Trump for his attempt to overturn the presidential election. The group included former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Michael Luttig, a retired federal judge and one of the nation's leading conservative legal minds...
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
Yes, you see that crap with idiotic idealists choosing to be against parking, so people end up parking on the road rather than having cleverly thought through, integrated parking to go with the buildings.
A multi story block of flats, or multistory office block, there's no reason one or more of the stories can't be a garage for everyone's vehicles, then nobody ends up on the road. But instead idiots who think they know better are against planning for vehicles, so they end up making the vehicles overspill elsewhere and make problems much worse.
Roads should never be a place for parking ideally. They should be a place for driving/cycling/whatever not standing still.
The problem with this is a large reason why people don't buy a second car, or a car in the first place, is a lack of car parking spots in town and city centres. Demand will follow supply, and in a few years you'll be back to square one.
Then there are all the secondary effects - more cars means more congestion, fewer people feeling comfortable enough to walk and cycle around, and the viability of mass transit like buses falls.
Those car parks eat up space for more flats, adding more pressure on house prices.
Showing once again your anti-car mentality, rather than a pro-cycling one.
But people do buy cars, because they need them, because they work as a mode of transportation and there is no better alternative. The overwhelming majority of people who cycle still have a car, and so they need a place to park their car, and park their bike. Secure parking can be a secure place to put your bike too.
Fewer cars parked on the road means less congestion, people feeling more comfortable to walk and cycle around. People having no alternative but to park on the road means they're parking typically right where cyclists want to cycle - you objected to this the other night posting a photo of someone parked where you wanted to cycle, and since most roads are dual-use there's not normally a ban on parking there so its the cyclists that suffer the most from the lack of parking leading to on-road parking, not drivers. I can quite comfortably park on the road if there's no alternative, and drive around parked vehicles, you're the one who has to move around my vehicle by moving further into the road or mount the pavement if I do though.
As for "eating up space" that's not remotely true. You can build further down, or further up.
Drive into Melbourne's Central Business District and if you want to park at a skyscraper, then for most of them you park under the building. Drive down the ramp under the building and head down into the car park. Ground floor and above is for the building, underneath is for cars. Leaving plenty of road space for one of the world's best tram networks, cycles and anything else you might like rather than a road littered with parked vehicles - what's the harm in that?
I'm not anti-car. I'm just pointing out that for cities and towns it's far more efficient and and cost-effective to provide public transport. This makes life significantly easier for commercial drivers (eg vans) who do need the roads to get around.
There is a reason that commercial airports like Heathrow invest in brilliant public transport systems rather than gigantic car parks - it's far easier to shift thousands of people to where you need them to be.
It's not either/or, it's far more effective to do both.
There isn't a city on the planet without cars. Public transport and cars can work well together, not be enemies.
Getting cars off the road and onto private parking liberates road space for public transport/cycling etc. Insisting on a lack of off-road parking leads to on road parking, which hurts cycling etc.
The whole of Melbourne is built with both trams and cars in mind, not either-or. Driving there is weird coming straight from UK, despite driving on same side of road as us in order to turn right you must be in the left lane to do a "hook turn" because of the trams. Which works.
Hunter Biden's lawyer, Christopher Clark is withdrawing from his representation of Biden because he says he might be a witness in future legal battles over the collapse of the plea deal.. https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1691460193996132352
In the US, anyone who wants to complain about post-WWII architecture should read Tom Wolfe' s "From Bauhaus to Our House" -- before commenting. (I haven't spent enough time in Britain to know whether the same applies there, though, presumably, to a lesser extent.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_Bauhaus_to_Our_House
A brilliant book. And yes, it absolutely applies in Britain
Wolfe nails the left wing progressive tendency to do away with all lovely ornament (“reactionary”) and pursue ugliness as a kind of ideal (“daring”)
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
Yes, you see that crap with idiotic idealists choosing to be against parking, so people end up parking on the road rather than having cleverly thought through, integrated parking to go with the buildings.
A multi story block of flats, or multistory office block, there's no reason one or more of the stories can't be a garage for everyone's vehicles, then nobody ends up on the road. But instead idiots who think they know better are against planning for vehicles, so they end up making the vehicles overspill elsewhere and make problems much worse.
Roads should never be a place for parking ideally. They should be a place for driving/cycling/whatever not standing still.
The problem with this is a large reason why people don't buy a second car, or a car in the first place, is a lack of car parking spots in town and city centres. Demand will follow supply, and in a few years you'll be back to square one.
Then there are all the secondary effects - more cars means more congestion, fewer people feeling comfortable enough to walk and cycle around, and the viability of mass transit like buses falls.
Those car parks eat up space for more flats, adding more pressure on house prices.
Showing once again your anti-car mentality, rather than a pro-cycling one.
But people do buy cars, because they need them, because they work as a mode of transportation and there is no better alternative. The overwhelming majority of people who cycle still have a car, and so they need a place to park their car, and park their bike. Secure parking can be a secure place to put your bike too.
Fewer cars parked on the road means less congestion, people feeling more comfortable to walk and cycle around. People having no alternative but to park on the road means they're parking typically right where cyclists want to cycle - you objected to this the other night posting a photo of someone parked where you wanted to cycle, and since most roads are dual-use there's not normally a ban on parking there so its the cyclists that suffer the most from the lack of parking leading to on-road parking, not drivers. I can quite comfortably park on the road if there's no alternative, and drive around parked vehicles, you're the one who has to move around my vehicle by moving further into the road or mount the pavement if I do though.
As for "eating up space" that's not remotely true. You can build further down, or further up.
Drive into Melbourne's Central Business District and if you want to park at a skyscraper, then for most of them you park under the building. Drive down the ramp under the building and head down into the car park. Ground floor and above is for the building, underneath is for cars. Leaving plenty of road space for one of the world's best tram networks, cycles and anything else you might like rather than a road littered with parked vehicles - what's the harm in that?
I'm not anti-car. I'm just pointing out that for cities and towns it's far more efficient and and cost-effective to provide public transport. This makes life significantly easier for commercial drivers (eg vans) who do need the roads to get around.
There is a reason that commercial airports like Heathrow invest in brilliant public transport systems rather than gigantic car parks - it's far easier to shift thousands of people to where you need them to be.
It's not either/or, it's far more effective to do both.
There isn't a city on the planet without cars. Public transport and cars can work well together, not be enemies.
Getting cars off the road and onto private parking liberates road space for public transport/cycling etc. Insisting on a lack of off-road parking leads to on road parking, which hurts cycling etc.
The whole of Melbourne is built with both trams and cars in mind, not either-or. Driving there is weird coming straight from UK, despite driving on same side of road as us in order to turn right you must be in the left lane to do a "hook turn" because of the trams. Which works.
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
Yes, you see that crap with idiotic idealists choosing to be against parking, so people end up parking on the road rather than having cleverly thought through, integrated parking to go with the buildings.
A multi story block of flats, or multistory office block, there's no reason one or more of the stories can't be a garage for everyone's vehicles, then nobody ends up on the road. But instead idiots who think they know better are against planning for vehicles, so they end up making the vehicles overspill elsewhere and make problems much worse.
Roads should never be a place for parking ideally. They should be a place for driving/cycling/whatever not standing still.
The problem with this is a large reason why people don't buy a second car, or a car in the first place, is a lack of car parking spots in town and city centres. Demand will follow supply, and in a few years you'll be back to square one.
Then there are all the secondary effects - more cars means more congestion, fewer people feeling comfortable enough to walk and cycle around, and the viability of mass transit like buses falls.
Those car parks eat up space for more flats, adding more pressure on house prices.
Showing once again your anti-car mentality, rather than a pro-cycling one.
But people do buy cars, because they need them, because they work as a mode of transportation and there is no better alternative. The overwhelming majority of people who cycle still have a car, and so they need a place to park their car, and park their bike. Secure parking can be a secure place to put your bike too.
Fewer cars parked on the road means less congestion, people feeling more comfortable to walk and cycle around. People having no alternative but to park on the road means they're parking typically right where cyclists want to cycle - you objected to this the other night posting a photo of someone parked where you wanted to cycle, and since most roads are dual-use there's not normally a ban on parking there so its the cyclists that suffer the most from the lack of parking leading to on-road parking, not drivers. I can quite comfortably park on the road if there's no alternative, and drive around parked vehicles, you're the one who has to move around my vehicle by moving further into the road or mount the pavement if I do though.
As for "eating up space" that's not remotely true. You can build further down, or further up.
Drive into Melbourne's Central Business District and if you want to park at a skyscraper, then for most of them you park under the building. Drive down the ramp under the building and head down into the car park. Ground floor and above is for the building, underneath is for cars. Leaving plenty of road space for one of the world's best tram networks, cycles and anything else you might like rather than a road littered with parked vehicles - what's the harm in that?
I'm not anti-car. I'm just pointing out that for cities and towns it's far more efficient and and cost-effective to provide public transport. This makes life significantly easier for commercial drivers (eg vans) who do need the roads to get around.
There is a reason that commercial airports like Heathrow invest in brilliant public transport systems rather than gigantic car parks - it's far easier to shift thousands of people to where you need them to be.
It's not either/or, it's far more effective to do both.
There isn't a city on the planet without cars. Public transport and cars can work well together, not be enemies.
Getting cars off the road and onto private parking liberates road space for public transport/cycling etc. Insisting on a lack of off-road parking leads to on road parking, which hurts cycling etc.
The whole of Melbourne is built with both trams and cars in mind, not either-or. Driving there is weird coming straight from UK, despite driving on same side of road as us in order to turn right you must be in the left lane to do a "hook turn" because of the trams. Which works.
Compromise - park and ride?
Avoids clogging the city with cars, folk who live out of town can get into town. Space for central parking can be converted into flats or parks.
Safer for pedestrians and cyclists, brilliant for commercial drivers, etc etc
Works really well in Edinburgh (too well - they keep reaching capacity).
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
The Poles were quite literally Communists and hence presumably quite left wing, at least relative to Exeter City Council, which was run by the Conservative Party at the time. I think you have simply decided that because you don't like the Left and you don't like postwar architecture or town planning, the two must therefore be related, whereas they're really not. (We all do this, of course). Postwar development was done quickly because people clamoured for it (they didn't like living in a bomb site) and cheaply because we were broke, and that is why it was so horrible, there was very little ideology involved at all, and to the extent there was ideology I think it was a kind of postwar desire to break with the past, which was shared quite broadly across the political spectrum, and which in many respects was quite admirable. Plus the usual suspect - greedy property developers.
No. Completely wrong
I have studied this subject quite a lot and I know whereof I speak
See the recent rebuilding of Frankfurt’s Altstadt. The left opposed it (some even called it “Nazi architecture”) and the right forced it through
This happens everywhere. Progressives wants “progressive” architecture because they are “progressive”, narcissistic morons
Virtually all of the infamous architects that mutilated London 1950-2000 were of the Left
There is a different problem of venal right wing private sector bastards but they are less of a systemic issue. Tho they can also do hideous things. See “The Crooked Hpuse”
As for Poland the communists built the unbelievably ugly Nova Huta next to beautiful Krakow as a deliberate affront to its “reactionary” loveliness
My favourite aesthetic movement, Arts & Crafts, was largely socialist, albeit one flavoured with liberalism and a British idiosyncrasy.
Putting architecture on a left-right spectrum is unhelpful tbh. The petty, the small-minded and the philistine exist across the whole thing.
Yes, there's a "taste" dimension that could be added to the political compass, and also I think explains the aesthetics of some religions.
Crudely, at one end there is twee or bling: a love of ornamentation, glittery things and detail. In religion that's high catholicism and maximalist Hinduism. The architectural examples include mock tudor, arts and crafts and footballers' mansions.
At the other end there is austere minimalism: eliminate all decoration, ban depictions of the prophet, drink only water and eat lotus leaves. As pursued by protestants, the Taliban and post-war town planners. The architectural examples being pretty obvious.
Not that the bits in between are necessarily better. Much developer new build these days is neither flouncy nor austere but awkwardly neither.
I wish we had this in Camden. An excellent local restaurant. Classic bistro food with some Italian flair and British gastropub influences and quite reasonable prices
More importantly, Tripadvisor nailed it. These apps become increasingly usefui
If booking.com rates a hotel over 9/10 it is nearly always excellent (in its genre) - much better/more reliable than any hotel guide
Tripadvisor is best when people leave detailed balanced reviews. That way you really get to understand how a restaurant or hotel is. I try to do this, in fact I enjoy the challenge of imagining myself a newspaper restaurant critic while I write.
5 star reviews are usually too short and uninformative: "great food, wonderful service - will be back", but so too are the usual couple of 1 star reviews. They tend to involve long-winded complaints about how the manager was rude to them or they booked a table but there was no record of the booking. Or they arrived on a Saturday evening as a group of 10 and nobody could accommodate them. Whereas the 3 and (some) 4 star reviews are gold dust. 3 stars usually mean someone has thought carefully about the pluses and minuses and written a thoughtful review. So I tend to zone in on those.
Yes. Avoid the 1 star reviews and be wary of the 5s
The first are often pointless rants or bitter rivals, the latter can be people gaming the system (or trying to)
But at a certain point you get so many reviews it can’t be gamed and that’s where many of these places are now. Which makes the apps really useful
I wonder whether the data is available in a form that would enable a simple algorithm to calculate, across the board, ratings excluding five and one star ratings which, as you say, are the most questionable for different reasons?
I suspect that this would give a better view of quality. There are other ways to do it mathematically, but that kind of thing. There might be quite a good niche in providing an app ranking products and services in that sort of way.
The one-star reviews that annoy me are the very specific ones that are pretty much meaningless in relation to quality of the product, "the waiter informed us the key to the disabled toilet had been misplaced on the Wednesday afternoon when we visited..." or "They delivered a blue widget instead of the orange one I wanted, and it was hard to find the number for customer services..."
I think we all perform our own algorithmic calculations in our heads. For example a 5 star place with 30 reviews is less reliable than a 4.5 star one with 2,000 reviews. Likewise we always expect hotels to score lower on average than home rentals on Booking.com because people are less squeamish about criticising a hotel than someone's house.
I have been burned a couple of times with very highly rated restaurants on Tripadvisor being mediocre. Those have generally been when people's expectations were lower. A couple of rural pubs with patterned carpets that did chewy roasts and microwave meals for example, but got wonderful ratings. So as a sense-check I also look at the website of the restaurant and particularly the font of the menu. If it's comic sans then it's a no. Likewise if the menu heralds a dish as "our famous [pie/burger etc]..." or has titles like "to start" or "for smaller appetites".
Good font good food. (That rule works well in other Northern European countries too, but falls down in Southern Europe and beyond).
Number of options on a menu is always a good test for me as well - a high-throughput place with a fairly small menu strikes me as a good sign. A mostly empty pub with 30 different mains... I'm probably just going to have a packet of salt and vinegar and cut my losses.
Some places do have oddly good reps - a pub in the village I grew up in had a 'famous carvery' which attracted people from all over, despite being genuinely average. Where I live now, our local curry place is held up as a culinary gold standard; AFAICT it is a formulaic Bangladeshi 'Indian' with all the usual meals.
Indian restaurants seem to fall in a narrow range of never brilliant but never terrible. Bad provincial Chinese OTOH....
There is a clear formula with the standard UK Indian, using reliable base sauce and an accepted canon of dishes. Once the system is up and running, it's kind of foolproof beyond obvious basics that affect all eateries like hygiene and service.
The gradual expansion of better Indian food place in the UK is great to see - even if it's under the guise of street food or whatever, there's more and more to be found that give us more of a sense of the great breadth and depth of that vast cuisine.
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
Yes, you see that crap with idiotic idealists choosing to be against parking, so people end up parking on the road rather than having cleverly thought through, integrated parking to go with the buildings.
A multi story block of flats, or multistory office block, there's no reason one or more of the stories can't be a garage for everyone's vehicles, then nobody ends up on the road. But instead idiots who think they know better are against planning for vehicles, so they end up making the vehicles overspill elsewhere and make problems much worse.
Roads should never be a place for parking ideally. They should be a place for driving/cycling/whatever not standing still.
The problem with this is a large reason why people don't buy a second car, or a car in the first place, is a lack of car parking spots in town and city centres. Demand will follow supply, and in a few years you'll be back to square one.
Then there are all the secondary effects - more cars means more congestion, fewer people feeling comfortable enough to walk and cycle around, and the viability of mass transit like buses falls.
Those car parks eat up space for more flats, adding more pressure on house prices.
Showing once again your anti-car mentality, rather than a pro-cycling one.
But people do buy cars, because they need them, because they work as a mode of transportation and there is no better alternative. The overwhelming majority of people who cycle still have a car, and so they need a place to park their car, and park their bike. Secure parking can be a secure place to put your bike too.
Fewer cars parked on the road means less congestion, people feeling more comfortable to walk and cycle around. People having no alternative but to park on the road means they're parking typically right where cyclists want to cycle - you objected to this the other night posting a photo of someone parked where you wanted to cycle, and since most roads are dual-use there's not normally a ban on parking there so its the cyclists that suffer the most from the lack of parking leading to on-road parking, not drivers. I can quite comfortably park on the road if there's no alternative, and drive around parked vehicles, you're the one who has to move around my vehicle by moving further into the road or mount the pavement if I do though.
As for "eating up space" that's not remotely true. You can build further down, or further up.
Drive into Melbourne's Central Business District and if you want to park at a skyscraper, then for most of them you park under the building. Drive down the ramp under the building and head down into the car park. Ground floor and above is for the building, underneath is for cars. Leaving plenty of road space for one of the world's best tram networks, cycles and anything else you might like rather than a road littered with parked vehicles - what's the harm in that?
I'm not anti-car. I'm just pointing out that for cities and towns it's far more efficient and and cost-effective to provide public transport. This makes life significantly easier for commercial drivers (eg vans) who do need the roads to get around.
There is a reason that commercial airports like Heathrow invest in brilliant public transport systems rather than gigantic car parks - it's far easier to shift thousands of people to where you need them to be.
It's not either/or, it's far more effective to do both.
There isn't a city on the planet without cars. Public transport and cars can work well together, not be enemies.
Getting cars off the road and onto private parking liberates road space for public transport/cycling etc. Insisting on a lack of off-road parking leads to on road parking, which hurts cycling etc.
The whole of Melbourne is built with both trams and cars in mind, not either-or. Driving there is weird coming straight from UK, despite driving on same side of road as us in order to turn right you must be in the left lane to do a "hook turn" because of the trams. Which works.
Compromise - park and ride?
Avoids clogging the city with cars, folk who live out of town can get into town. Space for central parking can be converted into flats or parks.
Works really well in Edinburgh (too well - they keep reaching capacity).
Park and ride absolutely can be a part of the mix, as a supplement to both driving and public transport. It's not an alternative to either though and people living in the city who own cars will still need places to park them, ideally not on the roads.
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
The Poles were quite literally Communists and hence presumably quite left wing, at least relative to Exeter City Council, which was run by the Conservative Party at the time. I think you have simply decided that because you don't like the Left and you don't like postwar architecture or town planning, the two must therefore be related, whereas they're really not. (We all do this, of course). Postwar development was done quickly because people clamoured for it (they didn't like living in a bomb site) and cheaply because we were broke, and that is why it was so horrible, there was very little ideology involved at all, and to the extent there was ideology I think it was a kind of postwar desire to break with the past, which was shared quite broadly across the political spectrum, and which in many respects was quite admirable. Plus the usual suspect - greedy property developers.
No. Completely wrong
I have studied this subject quite a lot and I know whereof I speak
See the recent rebuilding of Frankfurt’s Altstadt. The left opposed it (some even called it “Nazi architecture”) and the right forced it through
This happens everywhere. Progressives wants “progressive” architecture because they are “progressive”, narcissistic morons
Virtually all of the infamous architects that mutilated London 1950-2000 were of the Left
There is a different problem of venal right wing private sector bastards but they are less of a systemic issue. Tho they can also do hideous things. See “The Crooked Hpuse”
As for Poland the communists built the unbelievably ugly Nova Huta next to beautiful Krakow as a deliberate affront to its “reactionary” loveliness
My favourite aesthetic movement, Arts & Crafts, was largely socialist, albeit one flavoured with liberalism and a British idiosyncrasy.
Putting architecture on a left-right spectrum is unhelpful tbh. The petty, the small-minded and the philistine exist across the whole thing.
To me, the "Tilt" warning, is when architects talk about how they are going shape the society around their building(s) by the architecture, in cod socio-political language. As opposed to talking like normal people.
It isn't always Marxist, but it carries a strong element of "I will beat the square pegs into these round holes, in the name of my genius."
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
Yes, you see that crap with idiotic idealists choosing to be against parking, so people end up parking on the road rather than having cleverly thought through, integrated parking to go with the buildings.
A multi story block of flats, or multistory office block, there's no reason one or more of the stories can't be a garage for everyone's vehicles, then nobody ends up on the road. But instead idiots who think they know better are against planning for vehicles, so they end up making the vehicles overspill elsewhere and make problems much worse.
Roads should never be a place for parking ideally. They should be a place for driving/cycling/whatever not standing still.
The problem with this is a large reason why people don't buy a second car, or a car in the first place, is a lack of car parking spots in town and city centres. Demand will follow supply, and in a few years you'll be back to square one.
Then there are all the secondary effects - more cars means more congestion, fewer people feeling comfortable enough to walk and cycle around, and the viability of mass transit like buses falls.
Those car parks eat up space for more flats, adding more pressure on house prices.
Showing once again your anti-car mentality, rather than a pro-cycling one.
But people do buy cars, because they need them, because they work as a mode of transportation and there is no better alternative. The overwhelming majority of people who cycle still have a car, and so they need a place to park their car, and park their bike. Secure parking can be a secure place to put your bike too.
Fewer cars parked on the road means less congestion, people feeling more comfortable to walk and cycle around. People having no alternative but to park on the road means they're parking typically right where cyclists want to cycle - you objected to this the other night posting a photo of someone parked where you wanted to cycle, and since most roads are dual-use there's not normally a ban on parking there so its the cyclists that suffer the most from the lack of parking leading to on-road parking, not drivers. I can quite comfortably park on the road if there's no alternative, and drive around parked vehicles, you're the one who has to move around my vehicle by moving further into the road or mount the pavement if I do though.
As for "eating up space" that's not remotely true. You can build further down, or further up.
Drive into Melbourne's Central Business District and if you want to park at a skyscraper, then for most of them you park under the building. Drive down the ramp under the building and head down into the car park. Ground floor and above is for the building, underneath is for cars. Leaving plenty of road space for one of the world's best tram networks, cycles and anything else you might like rather than a road littered with parked vehicles - what's the harm in that?
I'm not anti-car. I'm just pointing out that for cities and towns it's far more efficient and and cost-effective to provide public transport. This makes life significantly easier for commercial drivers (eg vans) who do need the roads to get around.
There is a reason that commercial airports like Heathrow invest in brilliant public transport systems rather than gigantic car parks - it's far easier to shift thousands of people to where you need them to be.
It's not either/or, it's far more effective to do both.
There isn't a city on the planet without cars. Public transport and cars can work well together, not be enemies.
Getting cars off the road and onto private parking liberates road space for public transport/cycling etc. Insisting on a lack of off-road parking leads to on road parking, which hurts cycling etc.
The whole of Melbourne is built with both trams and cars in mind, not either-or. Driving there is weird coming straight from UK, despite driving on same side of road as us in order to turn right you must be in the left lane to do a "hook turn" because of the trams. Which works.
Compromise - park and ride?
Avoids clogging the city with cars, folk who live out of town can get into town. Space for central parking can be converted into flats or parks.
Works really well in Edinburgh (too well - they keep reaching capacity).
Park and ride absolutely can be a part of the mix, as a supplement to both driving and public transport. It's not an alternative to either though and people living in the city who own cars will still need places to park them, ideally not on the roads.
Give it 15 years and only a small minority in cities will own cars - there will be a rapid switch to the bike/public transport/walk + car club combo. That's my plan.
I wish we had this in Camden. An excellent local restaurant. Classic bistro food with some Italian flair and British gastropub influences and quite reasonable prices
More importantly, Tripadvisor nailed it. These apps become increasingly usefui
If booking.com rates a hotel over 9/10 it is nearly always excellent (in its genre) - much better/more reliable than any hotel guide
Tripadvisor is best when people leave detailed balanced reviews. That way you really get to understand how a restaurant or hotel is. I try to do this, in fact I enjoy the challenge of imagining myself a newspaper restaurant critic while I write.
5 star reviews are usually too short and uninformative: "great food, wonderful service - will be back", but so too are the usual couple of 1 star reviews. They tend to involve long-winded complaints about how the manager was rude to them or they booked a table but there was no record of the booking. Or they arrived on a Saturday evening as a group of 10 and nobody could accommodate them. Whereas the 3 and (some) 4 star reviews are gold dust. 3 stars usually mean someone has thought carefully about the pluses and minuses and written a thoughtful review. So I tend to zone in on those.
Yes. Avoid the 1 star reviews and be wary of the 5s
The first are often pointless rants or bitter rivals, the latter can be people gaming the system (or trying to)
But at a certain point you get so many reviews it can’t be gamed and that’s where many of these places are now. Which makes the apps really useful
I wonder whether the data is available in a form that would enable a simple algorithm to calculate, across the board, ratings excluding five and one star ratings which, as you say, are the most questionable for different reasons?
I suspect that this would give a better view of quality. There are other ways to do it mathematically, but that kind of thing. There might be quite a good niche in providing an app ranking products and services in that sort of way.
The one-star reviews that annoy me are the very specific ones that are pretty much meaningless in relation to quality of the product, "the waiter informed us the key to the disabled toilet had been misplaced on the Wednesday afternoon when we visited..." or "They delivered a blue widget instead of the orange one I wanted, and it was hard to find the number for customer services..."
This is a genuinely good idea
An app that quickly crunches crowd sourced data and weeds out the weird reviews at either end of the bell curve
As @TimS says, a restaurant with 2000 reviews averaging 4.4 is a better bet than one with 30 reviews averaging 4.8
The app should also weigh the newness of reviews. Newer = better. And basically ignore any reviews posted during covid
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
Yes, you see that crap with idiotic idealists choosing to be against parking, so people end up parking on the road rather than having cleverly thought through, integrated parking to go with the buildings.
A multi story block of flats, or multistory office block, there's no reason one or more of the stories can't be a garage for everyone's vehicles, then nobody ends up on the road. But instead idiots who think they know better are against planning for vehicles, so they end up making the vehicles overspill elsewhere and make problems much worse.
Roads should never be a place for parking ideally. They should be a place for driving/cycling/whatever not standing still.
The problem with this is a large reason why people don't buy a second car, or a car in the first place, is a lack of car parking spots in town and city centres. Demand will follow supply, and in a few years you'll be back to square one.
Then there are all the secondary effects - more cars means more congestion, fewer people feeling comfortable enough to walk and cycle around, and the viability of mass transit like buses falls.
Those car parks eat up space for more flats, adding more pressure on house prices.
Showing once again your anti-car mentality, rather than a pro-cycling one.
But people do buy cars, because they need them, because they work as a mode of transportation and there is no better alternative. The overwhelming majority of people who cycle still have a car, and so they need a place to park their car, and park their bike. Secure parking can be a secure place to put your bike too.
Fewer cars parked on the road means less congestion, people feeling more comfortable to walk and cycle around. People having no alternative but to park on the road means they're parking typically right where cyclists want to cycle - you objected to this the other night posting a photo of someone parked where you wanted to cycle, and since most roads are dual-use there's not normally a ban on parking there so its the cyclists that suffer the most from the lack of parking leading to on-road parking, not drivers. I can quite comfortably park on the road if there's no alternative, and drive around parked vehicles, you're the one who has to move around my vehicle by moving further into the road or mount the pavement if I do though.
As for "eating up space" that's not remotely true. You can build further down, or further up.
Drive into Melbourne's Central Business District and if you want to park at a skyscraper, then for most of them you park under the building. Drive down the ramp under the building and head down into the car park. Ground floor and above is for the building, underneath is for cars. Leaving plenty of road space for one of the world's best tram networks, cycles and anything else you might like rather than a road littered with parked vehicles - what's the harm in that?
I'm not anti-car. I'm just pointing out that for cities and towns it's far more efficient and and cost-effective to provide public transport. This makes life significantly easier for commercial drivers (eg vans) who do need the roads to get around.
There is a reason that commercial airports like Heathrow invest in brilliant public transport systems rather than gigantic car parks - it's far easier to shift thousands of people to where you need them to be.
It's not either/or, it's far more effective to do both.
There isn't a city on the planet without cars. Public transport and cars can work well together, not be enemies.
Getting cars off the road and onto private parking liberates road space for public transport/cycling etc. Insisting on a lack of off-road parking leads to on road parking, which hurts cycling etc.
The whole of Melbourne is built with both trams and cars in mind, not either-or. Driving there is weird coming straight from UK, despite driving on same side of road as us in order to turn right you must be in the left lane to do a "hook turn" because of the trams. Which works.
Compromise - park and ride?
Avoids clogging the city with cars, folk who live out of town can get into town. Space for central parking can be converted into flats or parks.
Safer for pedestrians and cyclists, brilliant for commercial drivers, etc etc
Works really well in Edinburgh (too well - they keep reaching capacity).
Multistoreys close to the main inner ringroad of a city are never a bad idea I think. When I went to Manchester a few weeks ago, I parked up at Lower Chatham St car park which I thought was particularly well placed very near the inner relief route. Drivers by and large (Well not me) don't particularly want to drive through city centres looking for a place to park.
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
The Poles were quite literally Communists and hence presumably quite left wing, at least relative to Exeter City Council, which was run by the Conservative Party at the time. I think you have simply decided that because you don't like the Left and you don't like postwar architecture or town planning, the two must therefore be related, whereas they're really not. (We all do this, of course). Postwar development was done quickly because people clamoured for it (they didn't like living in a bomb site) and cheaply because we were broke, and that is why it was so horrible, there was very little ideology involved at all, and to the extent there was ideology I think it was a kind of postwar desire to break with the past, which was shared quite broadly across the political spectrum, and which in many respects was quite admirable. Plus the usual suspect - greedy property developers.
No. Completely wrong
I have studied this subject quite a lot and I know whereof I speak
See the recent rebuilding of Frankfurt’s Altstadt. The left opposed it (some even called it “Nazi architecture”) and the right forced it through
This happens everywhere. Progressives wants “progressive” architecture because they are “progressive”, narcissistic morons
Virtually all of the infamous architects that mutilated London 1950-2000 were of the Left
There is a different problem of venal right wing private sector bastards but they are less of a systemic issue. Tho they can also do hideous things. See “The Crooked House”
As for Poland the communists built the unbelievably ugly Nova Huta next to beautiful Krakow as a deliberate affront to its “reactionary” loveliness
You said that Exeter's ugly postwar redevelopment was due to the Left, despite it being carried out by a Conservative council and blessed by the town's Tory MP, and with much of the effort coming from private sector developers. And you offered Poland as a counterexample of sensitive reconstruction, despite Poland being run be actual Marxist Leninists! A desire to sweep away the Victorian and Georgian past and embrace the potential of new materials and construction methods and build cities around the motor car was quite broad-based in the postwar era - look at US cities, no hotbed of Radical Leftism, where developers and politicians were very aggressive in erasing historical areas and buildings, such as New York's original Penn Station. People on the Left may be more prone to this kind of desire to improve things and break with the past, and I would guess that a lot of leading architects are Left wing in the same way educated professionals and creative skew to the left more broadly. But I think you are generalising and overextrapolating, as your clearly factually incorrect statement on Exeter illustrates!
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
The Poles were quite literally Communists and hence presumably quite left wing, at least relative to Exeter City Council, which was run by the Conservative Party at the time. I think you have simply decided that because you don't like the Left and you don't like postwar architecture or town planning, the two must therefore be related, whereas they're really not. (We all do this, of course). Postwar development was done quickly because people clamoured for it (they didn't like living in a bomb site) and cheaply because we were broke, and that is why it was so horrible, there was very little ideology involved at all, and to the extent there was ideology I think it was a kind of postwar desire to break with the past, which was shared quite broadly across the political spectrum, and which in many respects was quite admirable. Plus the usual suspect - greedy property developers.
No. Completely wrong
I have studied this subject quite a lot and I know whereof I speak
See the recent rebuilding of Frankfurt’s Altstadt. The left opposed it (some even called it “Nazi architecture”) and the right forced it through
This happens everywhere. Progressives wants “progressive” architecture because they are “progressive”, narcissistic morons
Virtually all of the infamous architects that mutilated London 1950-2000 were of the Left
There is a different problem of venal right wing private sector bastards but they are less of a systemic issue. Tho they can also do hideous things. See “The Crooked Hpuse”
As for Poland the communists built the unbelievably ugly Nova Huta next to beautiful Krakow as a deliberate affront to its “reactionary” loveliness
My favourite aesthetic movement, Arts & Crafts, was largely socialist, albeit one flavoured with liberalism and a British idiosyncrasy.
Putting architecture on a left-right spectrum is unhelpful tbh. The petty, the small-minded and the philistine exist across the whole thing.
To me, the "Tilt" warning, is when architects talk about how they are going shape the society around their building(s) by the architecture, in cod socio-political language. As opposed to talking like normal people.
It isn't always Marxist, but it carries a strong element of "I will beat the square pegs into these round holes, in the name of my genius."
Yes, buildings should exist to serve people, not the other way around.
That's why Japan works and has good housing, and people here are piled high in expensive, shoddy, mouldy buildings or face homelessness.
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
The Poles were quite literally Communists and hence presumably quite left wing, at least relative to Exeter City Council, which was run by the Conservative Party at the time. I think you have simply decided that because you don't like the Left and you don't like postwar architecture or town planning, the two must therefore be related, whereas they're really not. (We all do this, of course). Postwar development was done quickly because people clamoured for it (they didn't like living in a bomb site) and cheaply because we were broke, and that is why it was so horrible, there was very little ideology involved at all, and to the extent there was ideology I think it was a kind of postwar desire to break with the past, which was shared quite broadly across the political spectrum, and which in many respects was quite admirable. Plus the usual suspect - greedy property developers.
No. Completely wrong
I have studied this subject quite a lot and I know whereof I speak
See the recent rebuilding of Frankfurt’s Altstadt. The left opposed it (some even called it “Nazi architecture”) and the right forced it through
This happens everywhere. Progressives wants “progressive” architecture because they are “progressive”, narcissistic morons
Virtually all of the infamous architects that mutilated London 1950-2000 were of the Left
There is a different problem of venal right wing private sector bastards but they are less of a systemic issue. Tho they can also do hideous things. See “The Crooked Hpuse”
As for Poland the communists built the unbelievably ugly Nova Huta next to beautiful Krakow as a deliberate affront to its “reactionary” loveliness
My favourite aesthetic movement, Arts & Crafts, was largely socialist, albeit one flavoured with liberalism and a British idiosyncrasy.
Putting architecture on a left-right spectrum is unhelpful tbh. The petty, the small-minded and the philistine exist across the whole thing.
To me, the "Tilt" warning, is when architects talk about how they are going shape the society around their building(s) by the architecture, in cod socio-political language. As opposed to talking like normal people.
It isn't always Marxist, but it carries a strong element of "I will beat the square pegs into these round holes, in the name of my genius."
I've said this before, but no profession is quite as susceptible to misplaced arrongance as architecture. Or at least none that we are left to suffer the effects of for so long.
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
Yes, you see that crap with idiotic idealists choosing to be against parking, so people end up parking on the road rather than having cleverly thought through, integrated parking to go with the buildings.
A multi story block of flats, or multistory office block, there's no reason one or more of the stories can't be a garage for everyone's vehicles, then nobody ends up on the road. But instead idiots who think they know better are against planning for vehicles, so they end up making the vehicles overspill elsewhere and make problems much worse.
Roads should never be a place for parking ideally. They should be a place for driving/cycling/whatever not standing still.
The problem with this is a large reason why people don't buy a second car, or a car in the first place, is a lack of car parking spots in town and city centres. Demand will follow supply, and in a few years you'll be back to square one.
Then there are all the secondary effects - more cars means more congestion, fewer people feeling comfortable enough to walk and cycle around, and the viability of mass transit like buses falls.
Those car parks eat up space for more flats, adding more pressure on house prices.
Showing once again your anti-car mentality, rather than a pro-cycling one.
But people do buy cars, because they need them, because they work as a mode of transportation and there is no better alternative. The overwhelming majority of people who cycle still have a car, and so they need a place to park their car, and park their bike. Secure parking can be a secure place to put your bike too.
Fewer cars parked on the road means less congestion, people feeling more comfortable to walk and cycle around. People having no alternative but to park on the road means they're parking typically right where cyclists want to cycle - you objected to this the other night posting a photo of someone parked where you wanted to cycle, and since most roads are dual-use there's not normally a ban on parking there so its the cyclists that suffer the most from the lack of parking leading to on-road parking, not drivers. I can quite comfortably park on the road if there's no alternative, and drive around parked vehicles, you're the one who has to move around my vehicle by moving further into the road or mount the pavement if I do though.
As for "eating up space" that's not remotely true. You can build further down, or further up.
Drive into Melbourne's Central Business District and if you want to park at a skyscraper, then for most of them you park under the building. Drive down the ramp under the building and head down into the car park. Ground floor and above is for the building, underneath is for cars. Leaving plenty of road space for one of the world's best tram networks, cycles and anything else you might like rather than a road littered with parked vehicles - what's the harm in that?
I'm not anti-car. I'm just pointing out that for cities and towns it's far more efficient and and cost-effective to provide public transport. This makes life significantly easier for commercial drivers (eg vans) who do need the roads to get around.
There is a reason that commercial airports like Heathrow invest in brilliant public transport systems rather than gigantic car parks - it's far easier to shift thousands of people to where you need them to be.
It's not either/or, it's far more effective to do both.
There isn't a city on the planet without cars. Public transport and cars can work well together, not be enemies.
Getting cars off the road and onto private parking liberates road space for public transport/cycling etc. Insisting on a lack of off-road parking leads to on road parking, which hurts cycling etc.
The whole of Melbourne is built with both trams and cars in mind, not either-or. Driving there is weird coming straight from UK, despite driving on same side of road as us in order to turn right you must be in the left lane to do a "hook turn" because of the trams. Which works.
Compromise - park and ride?
Avoids clogging the city with cars, folk who live out of town can get into town. Space for central parking can be converted into flats or parks.
Works really well in Edinburgh (too well - they keep reaching capacity).
Park and ride absolutely can be a part of the mix, as a supplement to both driving and public transport. It's not an alternative to either though and people living in the city who own cars will still need places to park them, ideally not on the roads.
Give it 15 years and only a small minority in cities will own cars - there will be a rapid switch to the bike/public transport/walk + car club combo. That's my plan.
And you claim to not have an anti-car attitude? You don't see me saying I only want small minority to ever cycle, or walk or take public transport.
People in cities shouldn't be confined to only their own city, that's a very small-minded attitude.
Thankfully your vision shouldn't come to pass as most people wherever they live have friends and family around the entire country, and want to visit places in the entire country and not just their own locale. Even in London a majority of houses have at least 1 car, with 12% of homes having 2 or more cars.
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
The Poles were quite literally Communists and hence presumably quite left wing, at least relative to Exeter City Council, which was run by the Conservative Party at the time. I think you have simply decided that because you don't like the Left and you don't like postwar architecture or town planning, the two must therefore be related, whereas they're really not. (We all do this, of course). Postwar development was done quickly because people clamoured for it (they didn't like living in a bomb site) and cheaply because we were broke, and that is why it was so horrible, there was very little ideology involved at all, and to the extent there was ideology I think it was a kind of postwar desire to break with the past, which was shared quite broadly across the political spectrum, and which in many respects was quite admirable. Plus the usual suspect - greedy property developers.
No. Completely wrong
I have studied this subject quite a lot and I know whereof I speak
See the recent rebuilding of Frankfurt’s Altstadt. The left opposed it (some even called it “Nazi architecture”) and the right forced it through
This happens everywhere. Progressives wants “progressive” architecture because they are “progressive”, narcissistic morons
Virtually all of the infamous architects that mutilated London 1950-2000 were of the Left
There is a different problem of venal right wing private sector bastards but they are less of a systemic issue. Tho they can also do hideous things. See “The Crooked Hpuse”
As for Poland the communists built the unbelievably ugly Nova Huta next to beautiful Krakow as a deliberate affront to its “reactionary” loveliness
My favourite aesthetic movement, Arts & Crafts, was largely socialist, albeit one flavoured with liberalism and a British idiosyncrasy.
Putting architecture on a left-right spectrum is unhelpful tbh. The petty, the small-minded and the philistine exist across the whole thing.
To me, the "Tilt" warning, is when architects talk about how they are going shape the society around their building(s) by the architecture, in cod socio-political language. As opposed to talking like normal people.
It isn't always Marxist, but it carries a strong element of "I will beat the square pegs into these round holes, in the name of my genius."
Yes, buildings should exist to serve people, not the other way around.
That's why Japan works and has good housing, and people here are piled high in expensive, shoddy, mouldy buildings or face homelessness.
Have you been to Japan? Serious question
I find it hard to believe anyone who has been there could talk such gibberish. I’ve lived in Japan
Japan is full of cheap ugly tatty architecture. Partly because the people can’t be arsed to build permanent and beautiful structures because of the constant threat of earthquakes, tsunamis and generalised disaster
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
The Poles were quite literally Communists and hence presumably quite left wing, at least relative to Exeter City Council, which was run by the Conservative Party at the time. I think you have simply decided that because you don't like the Left and you don't like postwar architecture or town planning, the two must therefore be related, whereas they're really not. (We all do this, of course). Postwar development was done quickly because people clamoured for it (they didn't like living in a bomb site) and cheaply because we were broke, and that is why it was so horrible, there was very little ideology involved at all, and to the extent there was ideology I think it was a kind of postwar desire to break with the past, which was shared quite broadly across the political spectrum, and which in many respects was quite admirable. Plus the usual suspect - greedy property developers.
No. Completely wrong
I have studied this subject quite a lot and I know whereof I speak
See the recent rebuilding of Frankfurt’s Altstadt. The left opposed it (some even called it “Nazi architecture”) and the right forced it through
This happens everywhere. Progressives wants “progressive” architecture because they are “progressive”, narcissistic morons
Virtually all of the infamous architects that mutilated London 1950-2000 were of the Left
There is a different problem of venal right wing private sector bastards but they are less of a systemic issue. Tho they can also do hideous things. See “The Crooked Hpuse”
As for Poland the communists built the unbelievably ugly Nova Huta next to beautiful Krakow as a deliberate affront to its “reactionary” loveliness
My favourite aesthetic movement, Arts & Crafts, was largely socialist, albeit one flavoured with liberalism and a British idiosyncrasy.
Putting architecture on a left-right spectrum is unhelpful tbh. The petty, the small-minded and the philistine exist across the whole thing.
Yes, there's a "taste" dimension that could be added to the political compass, and also I think explains the aesthetics of some religions.
Crudely, at one end there is twee or bling: a love of ornamentation, glittery things and detail. In religion that's high catholicism and maximalist Hinduism. The architectural examples include mock tudor, arts and crafts and footballers' mansions.
At the other end there is austere minimalism: eliminate all decoration, ban depictions of the prophet, drink only water and eat lotus leaves. As pursued by protestants, the Taliban and post-war town planners. The architectural examples being pretty obvious.
Not that the bits in between are necessarily better. Much developer new build these days is neither flouncy nor austere but awkwardly neither.
Yep, and while it can definitely go too far, I'm in the 'ornamentation and tchotchkes plz' camp. Lots of pretty and interesting things seem to me better than no pretty and interesting things.
There are good examples of simple aesthetics of course, and living or working somewhere to provide focus and reduce clutter has an obvious value too. I'm not chucking it out. But even there there's a world between Adolf Loos and Doncaster South Bus Station.
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
The Poles were quite literally Communists and hence presumably quite left wing, at least relative to Exeter City Council, which was run by the Conservative Party at the time. I think you have simply decided that because you don't like the Left and you don't like postwar architecture or town planning, the two must therefore be related, whereas they're really not. (We all do this, of course). Postwar development was done quickly because people clamoured for it (they didn't like living in a bomb site) and cheaply because we were broke, and that is why it was so horrible, there was very little ideology involved at all, and to the extent there was ideology I think it was a kind of postwar desire to break with the past, which was shared quite broadly across the political spectrum, and which in many respects was quite admirable. Plus the usual suspect - greedy property developers.
No. Completely wrong
I have studied this subject quite a lot and I know whereof I speak
See the recent rebuilding of Frankfurt’s Altstadt. The left opposed it (some even called it “Nazi architecture”) and the right forced it through
This happens everywhere. Progressives wants “progressive” architecture because they are “progressive”, narcissistic morons
Virtually all of the infamous architects that mutilated London 1950-2000 were of the Left
There is a different problem of venal right wing private sector bastards but they are less of a systemic issue. Tho they can also do hideous things. See “The Crooked Hpuse”
As for Poland the communists built the unbelievably ugly Nova Huta next to beautiful Krakow as a deliberate affront to its “reactionary” loveliness
My favourite aesthetic movement, Arts & Crafts, was largely socialist, albeit one flavoured with liberalism and a British idiosyncrasy.
Putting architecture on a left-right spectrum is unhelpful tbh. The petty, the small-minded and the philistine exist across the whole thing.
To me, the "Tilt" warning, is when architects talk about how they are going shape the society around their building(s) by the architecture, in cod socio-political language. As opposed to talking like normal people.
It isn't always Marxist, but it carries a strong element of "I will beat the square pegs into these round holes, in the name of my genius."
Yes, buildings should exist to serve people, not the other way around.
That's why Japan works and has good housing, and people here are piled high in expensive, shoddy, mouldy buildings or face homelessness.
Have you been to Japan? Serious question
I find it hard to believe anyone who has been there could talk such gibberish. I’ve lived in Japan
Japan is full of cheap ugly tatty architecture. Partly because the people can’t be arsed to build permanent and beautiful structures because of the constant threat of earthquakes, tsunamis and generalised disaster
Good.
That's what we need more of in this country. 👍
We put too much into too few permanent structures rather than building up what people need.
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
The Poles were quite literally Communists and hence presumably quite left wing, at least relative to Exeter City Council, which was run by the Conservative Party at the time. I think you have simply decided that because you don't like the Left and you don't like postwar architecture or town planning, the two must therefore be related, whereas they're really not. (We all do this, of course). Postwar development was done quickly because people clamoured for it (they didn't like living in a bomb site) and cheaply because we were broke, and that is why it was so horrible, there was very little ideology involved at all, and to the extent there was ideology I think it was a kind of postwar desire to break with the past, which was shared quite broadly across the political spectrum, and which in many respects was quite admirable. Plus the usual suspect - greedy property developers.
No. Completely wrong
I have studied this subject quite a lot and I know whereof I speak
See the recent rebuilding of Frankfurt’s Altstadt. The left opposed it (some even called it “Nazi architecture”) and the right forced it through
This happens everywhere. Progressives wants “progressive” architecture because they are “progressive”, narcissistic morons
Virtually all of the infamous architects that mutilated London 1950-2000 were of the Left
There is a different problem of venal right wing private sector bastards but they are less of a systemic issue. Tho they can also do hideous things. See “The Crooked Hpuse”
As for Poland the communists built the unbelievably ugly Nova Huta next to beautiful Krakow as a deliberate affront to its “reactionary” loveliness
My favourite aesthetic movement, Arts & Crafts, was largely socialist, albeit one flavoured with liberalism and a British idiosyncrasy.
Putting architecture on a left-right spectrum is unhelpful tbh. The petty, the small-minded and the philistine exist across the whole thing.
To me, the "Tilt" warning, is when architects talk about how they are going shape the society around their building(s) by the architecture, in cod socio-political language. As opposed to talking like normal people.
It isn't always Marxist, but it carries a strong element of "I will beat the square pegs into these round holes, in the name of my genius."
I've said this before, but no profession is quite as susceptible to misplaced arrongance as architecture. Or at least none that we are left to suffer the effects of for so long.
I wish we had this in Camden. An excellent local restaurant. Classic bistro food with some Italian flair and British gastropub influences and quite reasonable prices
More importantly, Tripadvisor nailed it. These apps become increasingly usefui
If booking.com rates a hotel over 9/10 it is nearly always excellent (in its genre) - much better/more reliable than any hotel guide
Tripadvisor is best when people leave detailed balanced reviews. That way you really get to understand how a restaurant or hotel is. I try to do this, in fact I enjoy the challenge of imagining myself a newspaper restaurant critic while I write.
5 star reviews are usually too short and uninformative: "great food, wonderful service - will be back", but so too are the usual couple of 1 star reviews. They tend to involve long-winded complaints about how the manager was rude to them or they booked a table but there was no record of the booking. Or they arrived on a Saturday evening as a group of 10 and nobody could accommodate them. Whereas the 3 and (some) 4 star reviews are gold dust. 3 stars usually mean someone has thought carefully about the pluses and minuses and written a thoughtful review. So I tend to zone in on those.
Yes. Avoid the 1 star reviews and be wary of the 5s
The first are often pointless rants or bitter rivals, the latter can be people gaming the system (or trying to)
But at a certain point you get so many reviews it can’t be gamed and that’s where many of these places are now. Which makes the apps really useful
I wonder whether the data is available in a form that would enable a simple algorithm to calculate, across the board, ratings excluding five and one star ratings which, as you say, are the most questionable for different reasons?
I suspect that this would give a better view of quality. There are other ways to do it mathematically, but that kind of thing. There might be quite a good niche in providing an app ranking products and services in that sort of way.
The one-star reviews that annoy me are the very specific ones that are pretty much meaningless in relation to quality of the product, "the waiter informed us the key to the disabled toilet had been misplaced on the Wednesday afternoon when we visited..." or "They delivered a blue widget instead of the orange one I wanted, and it was hard to find the number for customer services..."
This is a genuinely good idea
An app that quickly crunches crowd sourced data and weeds out the weird reviews at either end of the bell curve
As @TimS says, a restaurant with 2000 reviews averaging 4.4 is a better bet than one with 30 reviews averaging 4.8
The app should also weigh the newness of reviews. Newer = better. And basically ignore any reviews posted during covid
Agreed. I have an airBnB host friend who is bitter about the one exception to good reviews, from someone who wrote "Her home is very inconvenient for where I wanted to go". She wants to reply "So why did you sodding stay here then?" but is wary of getting into an argument - customer always right etc.
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
Yes, you see that crap with idiotic idealists choosing to be against parking, so people end up parking on the road rather than having cleverly thought through, integrated parking to go with the buildings.
A multi story block of flats, or multistory office block, there's no reason one or more of the stories can't be a garage for everyone's vehicles, then nobody ends up on the road. But instead idiots who think they know better are against planning for vehicles, so they end up making the vehicles overspill elsewhere and make problems much worse.
Roads should never be a place for parking ideally. They should be a place for driving/cycling/whatever not standing still.
The problem with this is a large reason why people don't buy a second car, or a car in the first place, is a lack of car parking spots in town and city centres. Demand will follow supply, and in a few years you'll be back to square one.
Then there are all the secondary effects - more cars means more congestion, fewer people feeling comfortable enough to walk and cycle around, and the viability of mass transit like buses falls.
Those car parks eat up space for more flats, adding more pressure on house prices.
Showing once again your anti-car mentality, rather than a pro-cycling one.
But people do buy cars, because they need them, because they work as a mode of transportation and there is no better alternative. The overwhelming majority of people who cycle still have a car, and so they need a place to park their car, and park their bike. Secure parking can be a secure place to put your bike too.
Fewer cars parked on the road means less congestion, people feeling more comfortable to walk and cycle around. People having no alternative but to park on the road means they're parking typically right where cyclists want to cycle - you objected to this the other night posting a photo of someone parked where you wanted to cycle, and since most roads are dual-use there's not normally a ban on parking there so its the cyclists that suffer the most from the lack of parking leading to on-road parking, not drivers. I can quite comfortably park on the road if there's no alternative, and drive around parked vehicles, you're the one who has to move around my vehicle by moving further into the road or mount the pavement if I do though.
As for "eating up space" that's not remotely true. You can build further down, or further up.
Drive into Melbourne's Central Business District and if you want to park at a skyscraper, then for most of them you park under the building. Drive down the ramp under the building and head down into the car park. Ground floor and above is for the building, underneath is for cars. Leaving plenty of road space for one of the world's best tram networks, cycles and anything else you might like rather than a road littered with parked vehicles - what's the harm in that?
I'm not anti-car. I'm just pointing out that for cities and towns it's far more efficient and and cost-effective to provide public transport. This makes life significantly easier for commercial drivers (eg vans) who do need the roads to get around.
There is a reason that commercial airports like Heathrow invest in brilliant public transport systems rather than gigantic car parks - it's far easier to shift thousands of people to where you need them to be.
It's not either/or, it's far more effective to do both.
There isn't a city on the planet without cars. Public transport and cars can work well together, not be enemies.
Getting cars off the road and onto private parking liberates road space for public transport/cycling etc. Insisting on a lack of off-road parking leads to on road parking, which hurts cycling etc.
The whole of Melbourne is built with both trams and cars in mind, not either-or. Driving there is weird coming straight from UK, despite driving on same side of road as us in order to turn right you must be in the left lane to do a "hook turn" because of the trams. Which works.
Compromise - park and ride?
Avoids clogging the city with cars, folk who live out of town can get into town. Space for central parking can be converted into flats or parks.
Works really well in Edinburgh (too well - they keep reaching capacity).
Park and ride absolutely can be a part of the mix, as a supplement to both driving and public transport. It's not an alternative to either though and people living in the city who own cars will still need places to park them, ideally not on the roads.
Give it 15 years and only a small minority in cities will own cars - there will be a rapid switch to the bike/public transport/walk + car club combo. That's my plan.
And you claim to not have an anti-car attitude? You don't see me saying I only want small minority to ever cycle, or walk or take public transport.
People in cities shouldn't be confined to only their own city, that's a very small-minded attitude.
Thankfully your vision shouldn't come to pass as most people wherever they live have friends and family around the entire country, and want to visit places in the entire country and not just their own locale. Even in London a majority of houses have at least 1 car, with 12% of homes having 2 or more cars.
Are you aware of what car club is?
I didn't say anything you claim I said. You have got into your head that people are out for your "freedom", but what I'm suggesting is benign and sensible.
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
The Poles were quite literally Communists and hence presumably quite left wing, at least relative to Exeter City Council, which was run by the Conservative Party at the time. I think you have simply decided that because you don't like the Left and you don't like postwar architecture or town planning, the two must therefore be related, whereas they're really not. (We all do this, of course). Postwar development was done quickly because people clamoured for it (they didn't like living in a bomb site) and cheaply because we were broke, and that is why it was so horrible, there was very little ideology involved at all, and to the extent there was ideology I think it was a kind of postwar desire to break with the past, which was shared quite broadly across the political spectrum, and which in many respects was quite admirable. Plus the usual suspect - greedy property developers.
No. Completely wrong
I have studied this subject quite a lot and I know whereof I speak
See the recent rebuilding of Frankfurt’s Altstadt. The left opposed it (some even called it “Nazi architecture”) and the right forced it through
This happens everywhere. Progressives wants “progressive” architecture because they are “progressive”, narcissistic morons
Virtually all of the infamous architects that mutilated London 1950-2000 were of the Left
There is a different problem of venal right wing private sector bastards but they are less of a systemic issue. Tho they can also do hideous things. See “The Crooked Hpuse”
As for Poland the communists built the unbelievably ugly Nova Huta next to beautiful Krakow as a deliberate affront to its “reactionary” loveliness
My favourite aesthetic movement, Arts & Crafts, was largely socialist, albeit one flavoured with liberalism and a British idiosyncrasy.
Putting architecture on a left-right spectrum is unhelpful tbh. The petty, the small-minded and the philistine exist across the whole thing.
To me, the "Tilt" warning, is when architects talk about how they are going shape the society around their building(s) by the architecture, in cod socio-political language. As opposed to talking like normal people.
It isn't always Marxist, but it carries a strong element of "I will beat the square pegs into these round holes, in the name of my genius."
I've said this before, but no profession is quite as susceptible to misplaced arrongance as architecture. Or at least none that we are left to suffer the effects of for so long.
Arrongance is an excellent neologism.
As unDictator, a lot of architects will be sentenced to Poundbry.
For those interested, an update on the trial of Lucy Letby (which of course is still subject to all the rules of sub judice), the jury went out on July 10th, a majority direction was given on 8th August, and the jury continues deliberating today.
That is astounding. I only occasionally have a jury out overnight. Yesterday's took about 2 hours. I have never had a jury take more than a day and a bit.
The trial started way back in October, and she’s accused of I think seven murders and a dozen attempted murders.
If a jury is out for that long, it must mean doubt. So I think they can either fail to reach a verdict or find her not guilty.
A jury being out that long often means nine are convinced but there are a couple of hold-outs. The fact a couple of people out of eleven (in this case) means there is doubt... but is it reasonable? The others think not.
Genuinely divided juries tend to decide quite quickly as those convinced of the defendant's guilt realise a guilty verdict just won't happen. Not always, but very often, if a jury is out for less than an hour then "not guilty" is likely, but if they are out for days the reverse.
I say nothing on the merits of the case, by the way, which I've not followed. It's just that really long deliberations suggest a lot, but not all, of the jury members are firmly convinced of guilt.
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
The Poles were quite literally Communists and hence presumably quite left wing, at least relative to Exeter City Council, which was run by the Conservative Party at the time. I think you have simply decided that because you don't like the Left and you don't like postwar architecture or town planning, the two must therefore be related, whereas they're really not. (We all do this, of course). Postwar development was done quickly because people clamoured for it (they didn't like living in a bomb site) and cheaply because we were broke, and that is why it was so horrible, there was very little ideology involved at all, and to the extent there was ideology I think it was a kind of postwar desire to break with the past, which was shared quite broadly across the political spectrum, and which in many respects was quite admirable. Plus the usual suspect - greedy property developers.
No. Completely wrong
I have studied this subject quite a lot and I know whereof I speak
See the recent rebuilding of Frankfurt’s Altstadt. The left opposed it (some even called it “Nazi architecture”) and the right forced it through
This happens everywhere. Progressives wants “progressive” architecture because they are “progressive”, narcissistic morons
Virtually all of the infamous architects that mutilated London 1950-2000 were of the Left
There is a different problem of venal right wing private sector bastards but they are less of a systemic issue. Tho they can also do hideous things. See “The Crooked House”
As for Poland the communists built the unbelievably ugly Nova Huta next to beautiful Krakow as a deliberate affront to its “reactionary” loveliness
You said that Exeter's ugly postwar redevelopment was due to the Left, despite it being carried out by a Conservative council and blessed by the town's Tory MP, and with much of the effort coming from private sector developers. And you offered Poland as a counterexample of sensitive reconstruction, despite Poland being run be actual Marxist Leninists! A desire to sweep away the Victorian and Georgian past and embrace the potential of new materials and construction methods and build cities around the motor car was quite broad-based in the postwar era - look at US cities, no hotbed of Radical Leftism, where developers and politicians were very aggressive in erasing historical areas and buildings, such as New York's original Penn Station. People on the Left may be more prone to this kind of desire to improve things and break with the past, and I would guess that a lot of leading architects are Left wing in the same way educated professionals and creative skew to the left more broadly. But I think you are generalising and overextrapolating, as your clearly factually incorrect statement on Exeter illustrates!
I present you, ladies and gentlemen, with Poland’s Nowa Huta
“As intended, the colourless concrete conurbation of Kraków's Nowa Huta district is the direct antithesis of the city's Old Town. Ornate architecture, cobbled lanes and tourist crowds? Not here.
“One of only two entirely pre-planned socialist realism cities ever built (the other being Magnitogorsk in Russia’s Ural Mountains), this Orwellian encampment is one of the finest examples of deliberate social engineering in the world. For tourists, but also for Poles, a visit is akin to travelling back in time to the communist era in Poland.”
Similar vibe. This is Osama bin Laden touring Sweden with his (big) family in a pink Cadillac. Wonder what he hated so much about the West that he decided to blow it up.
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
Yes, you see that crap with idiotic idealists choosing to be against parking, so people end up parking on the road rather than having cleverly thought through, integrated parking to go with the buildings.
A multi story block of flats, or multistory office block, there's no reason one or more of the stories can't be a garage for everyone's vehicles, then nobody ends up on the road. But instead idiots who think they know better are against planning for vehicles, so they end up making the vehicles overspill elsewhere and make problems much worse.
Roads should never be a place for parking ideally. They should be a place for driving/cycling/whatever not standing still.
The problem with this is a large reason why people don't buy a second car, or a car in the first place, is a lack of car parking spots in town and city centres. Demand will follow supply, and in a few years you'll be back to square one.
Then there are all the secondary effects - more cars means more congestion, fewer people feeling comfortable enough to walk and cycle around, and the viability of mass transit like buses falls.
Those car parks eat up space for more flats, adding more pressure on house prices.
Showing once again your anti-car mentality, rather than a pro-cycling one.
But people do buy cars, because they need them, because they work as a mode of transportation and there is no better alternative. The overwhelming majority of people who cycle still have a car, and so they need a place to park their car, and park their bike. Secure parking can be a secure place to put your bike too.
Fewer cars parked on the road means less congestion, people feeling more comfortable to walk and cycle around. People having no alternative but to park on the road means they're parking typically right where cyclists want to cycle - you objected to this the other night posting a photo of someone parked where you wanted to cycle, and since most roads are dual-use there's not normally a ban on parking there so its the cyclists that suffer the most from the lack of parking leading to on-road parking, not drivers. I can quite comfortably park on the road if there's no alternative, and drive around parked vehicles, you're the one who has to move around my vehicle by moving further into the road or mount the pavement if I do though.
As for "eating up space" that's not remotely true. You can build further down, or further up.
Drive into Melbourne's Central Business District and if you want to park at a skyscraper, then for most of them you park under the building. Drive down the ramp under the building and head down into the car park. Ground floor and above is for the building, underneath is for cars. Leaving plenty of road space for one of the world's best tram networks, cycles and anything else you might like rather than a road littered with parked vehicles - what's the harm in that?
I'm not anti-car. I'm just pointing out that for cities and towns it's far more efficient and and cost-effective to provide public transport. This makes life significantly easier for commercial drivers (eg vans) who do need the roads to get around.
There is a reason that commercial airports like Heathrow invest in brilliant public transport systems rather than gigantic car parks - it's far easier to shift thousands of people to where you need them to be.
It's not either/or, it's far more effective to do both.
There isn't a city on the planet without cars. Public transport and cars can work well together, not be enemies.
Getting cars off the road and onto private parking liberates road space for public transport/cycling etc. Insisting on a lack of off-road parking leads to on road parking, which hurts cycling etc.
The whole of Melbourne is built with both trams and cars in mind, not either-or. Driving there is weird coming straight from UK, despite driving on same side of road as us in order to turn right you must be in the left lane to do a "hook turn" because of the trams. Which works.
Compromise - park and ride?
Avoids clogging the city with cars, folk who live out of town can get into town. Space for central parking can be converted into flats or parks.
Works really well in Edinburgh (too well - they keep reaching capacity).
Park and ride absolutely can be a part of the mix, as a supplement to both driving and public transport. It's not an alternative to either though and people living in the city who own cars will still need places to park them, ideally not on the roads.
Give it 15 years and only a small minority in cities will own cars - there will be a rapid switch to the bike/public transport/walk + car club combo. That's my plan.
And you claim to not have an anti-car attitude? You don't see me saying I only want small minority to ever cycle, or walk or take public transport.
People in cities shouldn't be confined to only their own city, that's a very small-minded attitude.
Thankfully your vision shouldn't come to pass as most people wherever they live have friends and family around the entire country, and want to visit places in the entire country and not just their own locale. Even in London a majority of houses have at least 1 car, with 12% of homes having 2 or more cars.
Are you aware of what car club is?
I didn't say anything you claim I said.
Basically like a time share for cars rather than having their own. Which like Leon's vision of a world made up of taxis may be useful for those who almost never need private transportation but isn't much use when most people want access to their own vehicle whenever they want/need it - which is often at the same time as others want/need theirs too.
A good system should allow all modes of transportation, without prejudice. If cycling is better then, let people choose to cycle. And where driving, they can get into their car and drive. No problems with that, why do you object to it?
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
The Poles were quite literally Communists and hence presumably quite left wing, at least relative to Exeter City Council, which was run by the Conservative Party at the time. I think you have simply decided that because you don't like the Left and you don't like postwar architecture or town planning, the two must therefore be related, whereas they're really not. (We all do this, of course). Postwar development was done quickly because people clamoured for it (they didn't like living in a bomb site) and cheaply because we were broke, and that is why it was so horrible, there was very little ideology involved at all, and to the extent there was ideology I think it was a kind of postwar desire to break with the past, which was shared quite broadly across the political spectrum, and which in many respects was quite admirable. Plus the usual suspect - greedy property developers.
No. Completely wrong
I have studied this subject quite a lot and I know whereof I speak
See the recent rebuilding of Frankfurt’s Altstadt. The left opposed it (some even called it “Nazi architecture”) and the right forced it through
This happens everywhere. Progressives wants “progressive” architecture because they are “progressive”, narcissistic morons
Virtually all of the infamous architects that mutilated London 1950-2000 were of the Left
There is a different problem of venal right wing private sector bastards but they are less of a systemic issue. Tho they can also do hideous things. See “The Crooked Hpuse”
As for Poland the communists built the unbelievably ugly Nova Huta next to beautiful Krakow as a deliberate affront to its “reactionary” loveliness
My favourite aesthetic movement, Arts & Crafts, was largely socialist, albeit one flavoured with liberalism and a British idiosyncrasy.
Putting architecture on a left-right spectrum is unhelpful tbh. The petty, the small-minded and the philistine exist across the whole thing.
To me, the "Tilt" warning, is when architects talk about how they are going shape the society around their building(s) by the architecture, in cod socio-political language. As opposed to talking like normal people.
It isn't always Marxist, but it carries a strong element of "I will beat the square pegs into these round holes, in the name of my genius."
I've said this before, but no profession is quite as susceptible to misplaced arrongance as architecture. Or at least none that we are left to suffer the effects of for so long.
Arrongance is an excellent neologism.
As unDictator, a lot of architects will be sentenced to Poundbry.
Cruel and unusual punishment. Blue Lias, Marlstone, and Oolite all used in the same street ... the uncanny valley, only worse. Much worse.
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
The Poles were quite literally Communists and hence presumably quite left wing, at least relative to Exeter City Council, which was run by the Conservative Party at the time. I think you have simply decided that because you don't like the Left and you don't like postwar architecture or town planning, the two must therefore be related, whereas they're really not. (We all do this, of course). Postwar development was done quickly because people clamoured for it (they didn't like living in a bomb site) and cheaply because we were broke, and that is why it was so horrible, there was very little ideology involved at all, and to the extent there was ideology I think it was a kind of postwar desire to break with the past, which was shared quite broadly across the political spectrum, and which in many respects was quite admirable. Plus the usual suspect - greedy property developers.
No. Completely wrong
I have studied this subject quite a lot and I know whereof I speak
See the recent rebuilding of Frankfurt’s Altstadt. The left opposed it (some even called it “Nazi architecture”) and the right forced it through
This happens everywhere. Progressives wants “progressive” architecture because they are “progressive”, narcissistic morons
Virtually all of the infamous architects that mutilated London 1950-2000 were of the Left
There is a different problem of venal right wing private sector bastards but they are less of a systemic issue. Tho they can also do hideous things. See “The Crooked Hpuse”
As for Poland the communists built the unbelievably ugly Nova Huta next to beautiful Krakow as a deliberate affront to its “reactionary” loveliness
My favourite aesthetic movement, Arts & Crafts, was largely socialist, albeit one flavoured with liberalism and a British idiosyncrasy.
Putting architecture on a left-right spectrum is unhelpful tbh. The petty, the small-minded and the philistine exist across the whole thing.
To me, the "Tilt" warning, is when architects talk about how they are going shape the society around their building(s) by the architecture, in cod socio-political language. As opposed to talking like normal people.
It isn't always Marxist, but it carries a strong element of "I will beat the square pegs into these round holes, in the name of my genius."
Good design is mostly invisible, because it's the things that get in our way and make things difficult that we notice. But the cult of the great architect encourages people who want their design to be noticed.
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
The Poles were quite literally Communists and hence presumably quite left wing, at least relative to Exeter City Council, which was run by the Conservative Party at the time. I think you have simply decided that because you don't like the Left and you don't like postwar architecture or town planning, the two must therefore be related, whereas they're really not. (We all do this, of course). Postwar development was done quickly because people clamoured for it (they didn't like living in a bomb site) and cheaply because we were broke, and that is why it was so horrible, there was very little ideology involved at all, and to the extent there was ideology I think it was a kind of postwar desire to break with the past, which was shared quite broadly across the political spectrum, and which in many respects was quite admirable. Plus the usual suspect - greedy property developers.
No. Completely wrong
I have studied this subject quite a lot and I know whereof I speak
See the recent rebuilding of Frankfurt’s Altstadt. The left opposed it (some even called it “Nazi architecture”) and the right forced it through
This happens everywhere. Progressives wants “progressive” architecture because they are “progressive”, narcissistic morons
Virtually all of the infamous architects that mutilated London 1950-2000 were of the Left
There is a different problem of venal right wing private sector bastards but they are less of a systemic issue. Tho they can also do hideous things. See “The Crooked Hpuse”
As for Poland the communists built the unbelievably ugly Nova Huta next to beautiful Krakow as a deliberate affront to its “reactionary” loveliness
My favourite aesthetic movement, Arts & Crafts, was largely socialist, albeit one flavoured with liberalism and a British idiosyncrasy.
Putting architecture on a left-right spectrum is unhelpful tbh. The petty, the small-minded and the philistine exist across the whole thing.
To me, the "Tilt" warning, is when architects talk about how they are going shape the society around their building(s) by the architecture, in cod socio-political language. As opposed to talking like normal people.
It isn't always Marxist, but it carries a strong element of "I will beat the square pegs into these round holes, in the name of my genius."
Yes, buildings should exist to serve people, not the other way around.
That's why Japan works and has good housing, and people here are piled high in expensive, shoddy, mouldy buildings or face homelessness.
Have you been to Japan? Serious question
I find it hard to believe anyone who has been there could talk such gibberish. I’ve lived in Japan
Japan is full of cheap ugly tatty architecture. Partly because the people can’t be arsed to build permanent and beautiful structures because of the constant threat of earthquakes, tsunamis and generalised disaster
Good.
That's what we need more of in this country. 👍
We put too much into too few permanent structures rather than building up what people need.
In the US, anyone who wants to complain about post-WWII architecture should read Tom Wolfe' s "From Bauhaus to Our House" -- before commenting. (I haven't spent enough time in Britain to know whether the same applies there, though, presumably, to a lesser extent.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_Bauhaus_to_Our_House
A brilliant book. And yes, it absolutely applies in Britain
Wolfe nails the left wing progressive tendency to do away with all lovely ornament (“reactionary”) and pursue ugliness as a kind of ideal (“daring”)
It's pretty hard to get past "no accounting for taste" in these things, though. I grew up in a sleek tower block in Denmark (I don't want a lot of tiresome "lovely ornaments"), and the pleasant experience makes me like tower blocks that other people find soulless. Conversely Prince Charles grew up amid grand monuments to British tradition, so he wants to protect them. It's one area where I'm pretty much in favour of a free market - let people try to live where they like and/or find affordable, and builders will try to accommodate them. Town planning comes in because we want whole districts to create a common flavour (like central Warsaw, as you say), but we shouldn't require every district to have the same "approved" flavour - whether "Marxist" or "reactionary".
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
Yes, you see that crap with idiotic idealists choosing to be against parking, so people end up parking on the road rather than having cleverly thought through, integrated parking to go with the buildings.
A multi story block of flats, or multistory office block, there's no reason one or more of the stories can't be a garage for everyone's vehicles, then nobody ends up on the road. But instead idiots who think they know better are against planning for vehicles, so they end up making the vehicles overspill elsewhere and make problems much worse.
Roads should never be a place for parking ideally. They should be a place for driving/cycling/whatever not standing still.
The problem with this is a large reason why people don't buy a second car, or a car in the first place, is a lack of car parking spots in town and city centres. Demand will follow supply, and in a few years you'll be back to square one.
Then there are all the secondary effects - more cars means more congestion, fewer people feeling comfortable enough to walk and cycle around, and the viability of mass transit like buses falls.
Those car parks eat up space for more flats, adding more pressure on house prices.
Showing once again your anti-car mentality, rather than a pro-cycling one.
But people do buy cars, because they need them, because they work as a mode of transportation and there is no better alternative. The overwhelming majority of people who cycle still have a car, and so they need a place to park their car, and park their bike. Secure parking can be a secure place to put your bike too.
Fewer cars parked on the road means less congestion, people feeling more comfortable to walk and cycle around. People having no alternative but to park on the road means they're parking typically right where cyclists want to cycle - you objected to this the other night posting a photo of someone parked where you wanted to cycle, and since most roads are dual-use there's not normally a ban on parking there so its the cyclists that suffer the most from the lack of parking leading to on-road parking, not drivers. I can quite comfortably park on the road if there's no alternative, and drive around parked vehicles, you're the one who has to move around my vehicle by moving further into the road or mount the pavement if I do though.
As for "eating up space" that's not remotely true. You can build further down, or further up.
Drive into Melbourne's Central Business District and if you want to park at a skyscraper, then for most of them you park under the building. Drive down the ramp under the building and head down into the car park. Ground floor and above is for the building, underneath is for cars. Leaving plenty of road space for one of the world's best tram networks, cycles and anything else you might like rather than a road littered with parked vehicles - what's the harm in that?
I'm not anti-car. I'm just pointing out that for cities and towns it's far more efficient and and cost-effective to provide public transport. This makes life significantly easier for commercial drivers (eg vans) who do need the roads to get around.
There is a reason that commercial airports like Heathrow invest in brilliant public transport systems rather than gigantic car parks - it's far easier to shift thousands of people to where you need them to be.
It's not either/or, it's far more effective to do both.
There isn't a city on the planet without cars. Public transport and cars can work well together, not be enemies.
Getting cars off the road and onto private parking liberates road space for public transport/cycling etc. Insisting on a lack of off-road parking leads to on road parking, which hurts cycling etc.
The whole of Melbourne is built with both trams and cars in mind, not either-or. Driving there is weird coming straight from UK, despite driving on same side of road as us in order to turn right you must be in the left lane to do a "hook turn" because of the trams. Which works.
Compromise - park and ride?
Avoids clogging the city with cars, folk who live out of town can get into town. Space for central parking can be converted into flats or parks.
Works really well in Edinburgh (too well - they keep reaching capacity).
Park and ride absolutely can be a part of the mix, as a supplement to both driving and public transport. It's not an alternative to either though and people living in the city who own cars will still need places to park them, ideally not on the roads.
Give it 15 years and only a small minority in cities will own cars - there will be a rapid switch to the bike/public transport/walk + car club combo. That's my plan.
I looked into car clubs as an alternative when I lived in Edinburgh and I could never make it add up for our use cases. It feels like it should work.
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
Yes, you see that crap with idiotic idealists choosing to be against parking, so people end up parking on the road rather than having cleverly thought through, integrated parking to go with the buildings.
A multi story block of flats, or multistory office block, there's no reason one or more of the stories can't be a garage for everyone's vehicles, then nobody ends up on the road. But instead idiots who think they know better are against planning for vehicles, so they end up making the vehicles overspill elsewhere and make problems much worse.
Roads should never be a place for parking ideally. They should be a place for driving/cycling/whatever not standing still.
The problem with this is a large reason why people don't buy a second car, or a car in the first place, is a lack of car parking spots in town and city centres. Demand will follow supply, and in a few years you'll be back to square one.
Then there are all the secondary effects - more cars means more congestion, fewer people feeling comfortable enough to walk and cycle around, and the viability of mass transit like buses falls.
Those car parks eat up space for more flats, adding more pressure on house prices.
Showing once again your anti-car mentality, rather than a pro-cycling one.
But people do buy cars, because they need them, because they work as a mode of transportation and there is no better alternative. The overwhelming majority of people who cycle still have a car, and so they need a place to park their car, and park their bike. Secure parking can be a secure place to put your bike too.
Fewer cars parked on the road means less congestion, people feeling more comfortable to walk and cycle around. People having no alternative but to park on the road means they're parking typically right where cyclists want to cycle - you objected to this the other night posting a photo of someone parked where you wanted to cycle, and since most roads are dual-use there's not normally a ban on parking there so its the cyclists that suffer the most from the lack of parking leading to on-road parking, not drivers. I can quite comfortably park on the road if there's no alternative, and drive around parked vehicles, you're the one who has to move around my vehicle by moving further into the road or mount the pavement if I do though.
As for "eating up space" that's not remotely true. You can build further down, or further up.
Drive into Melbourne's Central Business District and if you want to park at a skyscraper, then for most of them you park under the building. Drive down the ramp under the building and head down into the car park. Ground floor and above is for the building, underneath is for cars. Leaving plenty of road space for one of the world's best tram networks, cycles and anything else you might like rather than a road littered with parked vehicles - what's the harm in that?
I'm not anti-car. I'm just pointing out that for cities and towns it's far more efficient and and cost-effective to provide public transport. This makes life significantly easier for commercial drivers (eg vans) who do need the roads to get around.
There is a reason that commercial airports like Heathrow invest in brilliant public transport systems rather than gigantic car parks - it's far easier to shift thousands of people to where you need them to be.
It's not either/or, it's far more effective to do both.
There isn't a city on the planet without cars. Public transport and cars can work well together, not be enemies.
Getting cars off the road and onto private parking liberates road space for public transport/cycling etc. Insisting on a lack of off-road parking leads to on road parking, which hurts cycling etc.
The whole of Melbourne is built with both trams and cars in mind, not either-or. Driving there is weird coming straight from UK, despite driving on same side of road as us in order to turn right you must be in the left lane to do a "hook turn" because of the trams. Which works.
Compromise - park and ride?
Avoids clogging the city with cars, folk who live out of town can get into town. Space for central parking can be converted into flats or parks.
Works really well in Edinburgh (too well - they keep reaching capacity).
Park and ride absolutely can be a part of the mix, as a supplement to both driving and public transport. It's not an alternative to either though and people living in the city who own cars will still need places to park them, ideally not on the roads.
Give it 15 years and only a small minority in cities will own cars - there will be a rapid switch to the bike/public transport/walk + car club combo. That's my plan.
And you claim to not have an anti-car attitude? You don't see me saying I only want small minority to ever cycle, or walk or take public transport.
People in cities shouldn't be confined to only their own city, that's a very small-minded attitude.
Thankfully your vision shouldn't come to pass as most people wherever they live have friends and family around the entire country, and want to visit places in the entire country and not just their own locale. Even in London a majority of houses have at least 1 car, with 12% of homes having 2 or more cars.
Are you aware of what car club is?
I didn't say anything you claim I said.
Basically like a time share for cars rather than having their own. Which like Leon's vision of a world made up of taxis may be useful for those who almost never need private transportation but isn't much use when most people want access to their own vehicle whenever they want/need it - which is often at the same time as others want/need theirs too.
A good system should allow all modes of transportation, without prejudice. If cycling is better then, let people choose to cycle. And where driving, they can get into their car and drive. No problems with that, why do you object to it?
Because of the negative externalities associated with driving in city centres. Your freedom to drive inhibits the freedom of others to walk, cycle and bus around their towns and cities.
Everyone else has worked this out and sensible councils are implementing it. Yours is a minority position and car dominated urban areas are coming to an end.
The great flaw in the plan is the reduction in bus services, and increased cost of those that remain. That's the nut that needs cracked in the next 5 years.
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
The Poles were quite literally Communists and hence presumably quite left wing, at least relative to Exeter City Council, which was run by the Conservative Party at the time. I think you have simply decided that because you don't like the Left and you don't like postwar architecture or town planning, the two must therefore be related, whereas they're really not. (We all do this, of course). Postwar development was done quickly because people clamoured for it (they didn't like living in a bomb site) and cheaply because we were broke, and that is why it was so horrible, there was very little ideology involved at all, and to the extent there was ideology I think it was a kind of postwar desire to break with the past, which was shared quite broadly across the political spectrum, and which in many respects was quite admirable. Plus the usual suspect - greedy property developers.
No. Completely wrong
I have studied this subject quite a lot and I know whereof I speak
See the recent rebuilding of Frankfurt’s Altstadt. The left opposed it (some even called it “Nazi architecture”) and the right forced it through
This happens everywhere. Progressives wants “progressive” architecture because they are “progressive”, narcissistic morons
Virtually all of the infamous architects that mutilated London 1950-2000 were of the Left
There is a different problem of venal right wing private sector bastards but they are less of a systemic issue. Tho they can also do hideous things. See “The Crooked Hpuse”
As for Poland the communists built the unbelievably ugly Nova Huta next to beautiful Krakow as a deliberate affront to its “reactionary” loveliness
My favourite aesthetic movement, Arts & Crafts, was largely socialist, albeit one flavoured with liberalism and a British idiosyncrasy.
Putting architecture on a left-right spectrum is unhelpful tbh. The petty, the small-minded and the philistine exist across the whole thing.
To me, the "Tilt" warning, is when architects talk about how they are going shape the society around their building(s) by the architecture, in cod socio-political language. As opposed to talking like normal people.
It isn't always Marxist, but it carries a strong element of "I will beat the square pegs into these round holes, in the name of my genius."
I've said this before, but no profession is quite as susceptible to misplaced arrongance as architecture. Or at least none that we are left to suffer the effects of for so long.
Arrongance is an excellent neologism.
Spotted as soon as I posted and rather than stealth edit thought 'nah, stet'.
I wish we had this in Camden. An excellent local restaurant. Classic bistro food with some Italian flair and British gastropub influences and quite reasonable prices
More importantly, Tripadvisor nailed it. These apps become increasingly usefui
If booking.com rates a hotel over 9/10 it is nearly always excellent (in its genre) - much better/more reliable than any hotel guide
Tripadvisor is best when people leave detailed balanced reviews. That way you really get to understand how a restaurant or hotel is. I try to do this, in fact I enjoy the challenge of imagining myself a newspaper restaurant critic while I write.
5 star reviews are usually too short and uninformative: "great food, wonderful service - will be back", but so too are the usual couple of 1 star reviews. They tend to involve long-winded complaints about how the manager was rude to them or they booked a table but there was no record of the booking. Or they arrived on a Saturday evening as a group of 10 and nobody could accommodate them. Whereas the 3 and (some) 4 star reviews are gold dust. 3 stars usually mean someone has thought carefully about the pluses and minuses and written a thoughtful review. So I tend to zone in on those.
Yes. Avoid the 1 star reviews and be wary of the 5s
The first are often pointless rants or bitter rivals, the latter can be people gaming the system (or trying to)
But at a certain point you get so many reviews it can’t be gamed and that’s where many of these places are now. Which makes the apps really useful
I wonder whether the data is available in a form that would enable a simple algorithm to calculate, across the board, ratings excluding five and one star ratings which, as you say, are the most questionable for different reasons?
I suspect that this would give a better view of quality. There are other ways to do it mathematically, but that kind of thing. There might be quite a good niche in providing an app ranking products and services in that sort of way.
The one-star reviews that annoy me are the very specific ones that are pretty much meaningless in relation to quality of the product, "the waiter informed us the key to the disabled toilet had been misplaced on the Wednesday afternoon when we visited..." or "They delivered a blue widget instead of the orange one I wanted, and it was hard to find the number for customer services..."
I think we all perform our own algorithmic calculations in our heads. For example a 5 star place with 30 reviews is less reliable than a 4.5 star one with 2,000 reviews. Likewise we always expect hotels to score lower on average than home rentals on Booking.com because people are less squeamish about criticising a hotel than someone's house.
I have been burned a couple of times with very highly rated restaurants on Tripadvisor being mediocre. Those have generally been when people's expectations were lower. A couple of rural pubs with patterned carpets that did chewy roasts and microwave meals for example, but got wonderful ratings. So as a sense-check I also look at the website of the restaurant and particularly the font of the menu. If it's comic sans then it's a no. Likewise if the menu heralds a dish as "our famous [pie/burger etc]..." or has titles like "to start" or "for smaller appetites".
Good font good food. (That rule works well in other Northern European countries too, but falls down in Southern Europe and beyond).
Number of options on a menu is always a good test for me as well - a high-throughput place with a fairly small menu strikes me as a good sign. A mostly empty pub with 30 different mains... I'm probably just going to have a packet of salt and vinegar and cut my losses.
Some places do have oddly good reps - a pub in the village I grew up in had a 'famous carvery' which attracted people from all over, despite being genuinely average. Where I live now, our local curry place is held up as a culinary gold standard; AFAICT it is a formulaic Bangladeshi 'Indian' with all the usual meals.
Indian restaurants seem to fall in a narrow range of never brilliant but never terrible. Bad provincial Chinese OTOH....
With Chinese restaurants, I think the rule of thumb is "the worse the sign the better the restaurant" as the superstition is to get a new sign on moving in as proprietor, but never replace it whilst you remain as it's bad luck. So a tatty sign means the restaurant has survived for many years under continuous ownership. Whereas for other types of restaurant, it's an indicator of laziness and low standards.
If you get food poisoning due to this advice, then standard disclaimers apply.
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
The Poles were quite literally Communists and hence presumably quite left wing, at least relative to Exeter City Council, which was run by the Conservative Party at the time. I think you have simply decided that because you don't like the Left and you don't like postwar architecture or town planning, the two must therefore be related, whereas they're really not. (We all do this, of course). Postwar development was done quickly because people clamoured for it (they didn't like living in a bomb site) and cheaply because we were broke, and that is why it was so horrible, there was very little ideology involved at all, and to the extent there was ideology I think it was a kind of postwar desire to break with the past, which was shared quite broadly across the political spectrum, and which in many respects was quite admirable. Plus the usual suspect - greedy property developers.
No. Completely wrong
I have studied this subject quite a lot and I know whereof I speak
See the recent rebuilding of Frankfurt’s Altstadt. The left opposed it (some even called it “Nazi architecture”) and the right forced it through
This happens everywhere. Progressives wants “progressive” architecture because they are “progressive”, narcissistic morons
Virtually all of the infamous architects that mutilated London 1950-2000 were of the Left
There is a different problem of venal right wing private sector bastards but they are less of a systemic issue. Tho they can also do hideous things. See “The Crooked Hpuse”
As for Poland the communists built the unbelievably ugly Nova Huta next to beautiful Krakow as a deliberate affront to its “reactionary” loveliness
My favourite aesthetic movement, Arts & Crafts, was largely socialist, albeit one flavoured with liberalism and a British idiosyncrasy.
Putting architecture on a left-right spectrum is unhelpful tbh. The petty, the small-minded and the philistine exist across the whole thing.
To me, the "Tilt" warning, is when architects talk about how they are going shape the society around their building(s) by the architecture, in cod socio-political language. As opposed to talking like normal people.
It isn't always Marxist, but it carries a strong element of "I will beat the square pegs into these round holes, in the name of my genius."
I've said this before, but no profession is quite as susceptible to misplaced arrongance as architecture. Or at least none that we are left to suffer the effects of for so long.
I envy you for never having had dealings with the civil servants of the DfE.
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
Yes, you see that crap with idiotic idealists choosing to be against parking, so people end up parking on the road rather than having cleverly thought through, integrated parking to go with the buildings.
A multi story block of flats, or multistory office block, there's no reason one or more of the stories can't be a garage for everyone's vehicles, then nobody ends up on the road. But instead idiots who think they know better are against planning for vehicles, so they end up making the vehicles overspill elsewhere and make problems much worse.
Roads should never be a place for parking ideally. They should be a place for driving/cycling/whatever not standing still.
The problem with this is a large reason why people don't buy a second car, or a car in the first place, is a lack of car parking spots in town and city centres. Demand will follow supply, and in a few years you'll be back to square one.
Then there are all the secondary effects - more cars means more congestion, fewer people feeling comfortable enough to walk and cycle around, and the viability of mass transit like buses falls.
Those car parks eat up space for more flats, adding more pressure on house prices.
Showing once again your anti-car mentality, rather than a pro-cycling one.
But people do buy cars, because they need them, because they work as a mode of transportation and there is no better alternative. The overwhelming majority of people who cycle still have a car, and so they need a place to park their car, and park their bike. Secure parking can be a secure place to put your bike too.
Fewer cars parked on the road means less congestion, people feeling more comfortable to walk and cycle around. People having no alternative but to park on the road means they're parking typically right where cyclists want to cycle - you objected to this the other night posting a photo of someone parked where you wanted to cycle, and since most roads are dual-use there's not normally a ban on parking there so its the cyclists that suffer the most from the lack of parking leading to on-road parking, not drivers. I can quite comfortably park on the road if there's no alternative, and drive around parked vehicles, you're the one who has to move around my vehicle by moving further into the road or mount the pavement if I do though.
As for "eating up space" that's not remotely true. You can build further down, or further up.
Drive into Melbourne's Central Business District and if you want to park at a skyscraper, then for most of them you park under the building. Drive down the ramp under the building and head down into the car park. Ground floor and above is for the building, underneath is for cars. Leaving plenty of road space for one of the world's best tram networks, cycles and anything else you might like rather than a road littered with parked vehicles - what's the harm in that?
I'm not anti-car. I'm just pointing out that for cities and towns it's far more efficient and and cost-effective to provide public transport. This makes life significantly easier for commercial drivers (eg vans) who do need the roads to get around.
There is a reason that commercial airports like Heathrow invest in brilliant public transport systems rather than gigantic car parks - it's far easier to shift thousands of people to where you need them to be.
It's not either/or, it's far more effective to do both.
There isn't a city on the planet without cars. Public transport and cars can work well together, not be enemies.
Getting cars off the road and onto private parking liberates road space for public transport/cycling etc. Insisting on a lack of off-road parking leads to on road parking, which hurts cycling etc.
The whole of Melbourne is built with both trams and cars in mind, not either-or. Driving there is weird coming straight from UK, despite driving on same side of road as us in order to turn right you must be in the left lane to do a "hook turn" because of the trams. Which works.
Compromise - park and ride?
Avoids clogging the city with cars, folk who live out of town can get into town. Space for central parking can be converted into flats or parks.
Works really well in Edinburgh (too well - they keep reaching capacity).
Park and ride absolutely can be a part of the mix, as a supplement to both driving and public transport. It's not an alternative to either though and people living in the city who own cars will still need places to park them, ideally not on the roads.
Give it 15 years and only a small minority in cities will own cars - there will be a rapid switch to the bike/public transport/walk + car club combo. That's my plan.
I looked into car clubs as an alternative when I lived in Edinburgh and I could never make it add up for our use cases. It feels like it should work.
It was significantly cheaper for me but there wasn't enough provision a few years ago. There will be a critical mass moment where they have a couple of cars for each street and car ownership will drop significantly.
The demand is there. My car hasn't moved in a week.
I wish we had this in Camden. An excellent local restaurant. Classic bistro food with some Italian flair and British gastropub influences and quite reasonable prices
More importantly, Tripadvisor nailed it. These apps become increasingly usefui
If booking.com rates a hotel over 9/10 it is nearly always excellent (in its genre) - much better/more reliable than any hotel guide
Tripadvisor is best when people leave detailed balanced reviews. That way you really get to understand how a restaurant or hotel is. I try to do this, in fact I enjoy the challenge of imagining myself a newspaper restaurant critic while I write.
5 star reviews are usually too short and uninformative: "great food, wonderful service - will be back", but so too are the usual couple of 1 star reviews. They tend to involve long-winded complaints about how the manager was rude to them or they booked a table but there was no record of the booking. Or they arrived on a Saturday evening as a group of 10 and nobody could accommodate them. Whereas the 3 and (some) 4 star reviews are gold dust. 3 stars usually mean someone has thought carefully about the pluses and minuses and written a thoughtful review. So I tend to zone in on those.
Yes. Avoid the 1 star reviews and be wary of the 5s
The first are often pointless rants or bitter rivals, the latter can be people gaming the system (or trying to)
But at a certain point you get so many reviews it can’t be gamed and that’s where many of these places are now. Which makes the apps really useful
I wonder whether the data is available in a form that would enable a simple algorithm to calculate, across the board, ratings excluding five and one star ratings which, as you say, are the most questionable for different reasons?
I suspect that this would give a better view of quality. There are other ways to do it mathematically, but that kind of thing. There might be quite a good niche in providing an app ranking products and services in that sort of way.
The one-star reviews that annoy me are the very specific ones that are pretty much meaningless in relation to quality of the product, "the waiter informed us the key to the disabled toilet had been misplaced on the Wednesday afternoon when we visited..." or "They delivered a blue widget instead of the orange one I wanted, and it was hard to find the number for customer services..."
I think we all perform our own algorithmic calculations in our heads. For example a 5 star place with 30 reviews is less reliable than a 4.5 star one with 2,000 reviews. Likewise we always expect hotels to score lower on average than home rentals on Booking.com because people are less squeamish about criticising a hotel than someone's house.
I have been burned a couple of times with very highly rated restaurants on Tripadvisor being mediocre. Those have generally been when people's expectations were lower. A couple of rural pubs with patterned carpets that did chewy roasts and microwave meals for example, but got wonderful ratings. So as a sense-check I also look at the website of the restaurant and particularly the font of the menu. If it's comic sans then it's a no. Likewise if the menu heralds a dish as "our famous [pie/burger etc]..." or has titles like "to start" or "for smaller appetites".
Good font good food. (That rule works well in other Northern European countries too, but falls down in Southern Europe and beyond).
Number of options on a menu is always a good test for me as well - a high-throughput place with a fairly small menu strikes me as a good sign. A mostly empty pub with 30 different mains... I'm probably just going to have a packet of salt and vinegar and cut my losses.
Some places do have oddly good reps - a pub in the village I grew up in had a 'famous carvery' which attracted people from all over, despite being genuinely average. Where I live now, our local curry place is held up as a culinary gold standard; AFAICT it is a formulaic Bangladeshi 'Indian' with all the usual meals.
Indian restaurants seem to fall in a narrow range of never brilliant but never terrible. Bad provincial Chinese OTOH....
With Chinese restaurants, I think the rule of thumb is "the worse the sign the better the restaurant" as the superstition is to get a new sign on moving in as proprietor, but never replace it whilst you remain as it's bad luck. So a tatty sign means the restaurant has survived for many years under continuous ownership. Whereas for other types of restaurant, it's an indicator of laziness and low standards.
If you get food poisoning due to this advice, then standard disclaimers apply.
Nice one. Never heard that advice before. Makes sense
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
The Poles were quite literally Communists and hence presumably quite left wing, at least relative to Exeter City Council, which was run by the Conservative Party at the time. I think you have simply decided that because you don't like the Left and you don't like postwar architecture or town planning, the two must therefore be related, whereas they're really not. (We all do this, of course). Postwar development was done quickly because people clamoured for it (they didn't like living in a bomb site) and cheaply because we were broke, and that is why it was so horrible, there was very little ideology involved at all, and to the extent there was ideology I think it was a kind of postwar desire to break with the past, which was shared quite broadly across the political spectrum, and which in many respects was quite admirable. Plus the usual suspect - greedy property developers.
No. Completely wrong
I have studied this subject quite a lot and I know whereof I speak
See the recent rebuilding of Frankfurt’s Altstadt. The left opposed it (some even called it “Nazi architecture”) and the right forced it through
This happens everywhere. Progressives wants “progressive” architecture because they are “progressive”, narcissistic morons
Virtually all of the infamous architects that mutilated London 1950-2000 were of the Left
There is a different problem of venal right wing private sector bastards but they are less of a systemic issue. Tho they can also do hideous things. See “The Crooked House”
As for Poland the communists built the unbelievably ugly Nova Huta next to beautiful Krakow as a deliberate affront to its “reactionary” loveliness
You said that Exeter's ugly postwar redevelopment was due to the Left, despite it being carried out by a Conservative council and blessed by the town's Tory MP, and with much of the effort coming from private sector developers. And you offered Poland as a counterexample of sensitive reconstruction, despite Poland being run be actual Marxist Leninists! A desire to sweep away the Victorian and Georgian past and embrace the potential of new materials and construction methods and build cities around the motor car was quite broad-based in the postwar era - look at US cities, no hotbed of Radical Leftism, where developers and politicians were very aggressive in erasing historical areas and buildings, such as New York's original Penn Station. People on the Left may be more prone to this kind of desire to improve things and break with the past, and I would guess that a lot of leading architects are Left wing in the same way educated professionals and creative skew to the left more broadly. But I think you are generalising and overextrapolating, as your clearly factually incorrect statement on Exeter illustrates!
I present you, ladies and gentlemen, with Poland’s Nowa Huta
“As intended, the colourless concrete conurbation of Kraków's Nowa Huta district is the direct antithesis of the city's Old Town. Ornate architecture, cobbled lanes and tourist crowds? Not here.
“One of only two entirely pre-planned socialist realism cities ever built (the other being Magnitogorsk in Russia’s Ural Mountains), this Orwellian encampment is one of the finest examples of deliberate social engineering in the world. For tourists, but also for Poles, a visit is akin to travelling back in time to the communist era in Poland.”
I think I’ll stick to old Krakow when I’m there next week!
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
Yes, you see that crap with idiotic idealists choosing to be against parking, so people end up parking on the road rather than having cleverly thought through, integrated parking to go with the buildings.
A multi story block of flats, or multistory office block, there's no reason one or more of the stories can't be a garage for everyone's vehicles, then nobody ends up on the road. But instead idiots who think they know better are against planning for vehicles, so they end up making the vehicles overspill elsewhere and make problems much worse.
Roads should never be a place for parking ideally. They should be a place for driving/cycling/whatever not standing still.
The problem with this is a large reason why people don't buy a second car, or a car in the first place, is a lack of car parking spots in town and city centres. Demand will follow supply, and in a few years you'll be back to square one.
Then there are all the secondary effects - more cars means more congestion, fewer people feeling comfortable enough to walk and cycle around, and the viability of mass transit like buses falls.
Those car parks eat up space for more flats, adding more pressure on house prices.
Showing once again your anti-car mentality, rather than a pro-cycling one.
But people do buy cars, because they need them, because they work as a mode of transportation and there is no better alternative. The overwhelming majority of people who cycle still have a car, and so they need a place to park their car, and park their bike. Secure parking can be a secure place to put your bike too.
Fewer cars parked on the road means less congestion, people feeling more comfortable to walk and cycle around. People having no alternative but to park on the road means they're parking typically right where cyclists want to cycle - you objected to this the other night posting a photo of someone parked where you wanted to cycle, and since most roads are dual-use there's not normally a ban on parking there so its the cyclists that suffer the most from the lack of parking leading to on-road parking, not drivers. I can quite comfortably park on the road if there's no alternative, and drive around parked vehicles, you're the one who has to move around my vehicle by moving further into the road or mount the pavement if I do though.
As for "eating up space" that's not remotely true. You can build further down, or further up.
Drive into Melbourne's Central Business District and if you want to park at a skyscraper, then for most of them you park under the building. Drive down the ramp under the building and head down into the car park. Ground floor and above is for the building, underneath is for cars. Leaving plenty of road space for one of the world's best tram networks, cycles and anything else you might like rather than a road littered with parked vehicles - what's the harm in that?
I'm not anti-car. I'm just pointing out that for cities and towns it's far more efficient and and cost-effective to provide public transport. This makes life significantly easier for commercial drivers (eg vans) who do need the roads to get around.
There is a reason that commercial airports like Heathrow invest in brilliant public transport systems rather than gigantic car parks - it's far easier to shift thousands of people to where you need them to be.
It's not either/or, it's far more effective to do both.
There isn't a city on the planet without cars. Public transport and cars can work well together, not be enemies.
Getting cars off the road and onto private parking liberates road space for public transport/cycling etc. Insisting on a lack of off-road parking leads to on road parking, which hurts cycling etc.
The whole of Melbourne is built with both trams and cars in mind, not either-or. Driving there is weird coming straight from UK, despite driving on same side of road as us in order to turn right you must be in the left lane to do a "hook turn" because of the trams. Which works.
Compromise - park and ride?
Avoids clogging the city with cars, folk who live out of town can get into town. Space for central parking can be converted into flats or parks.
Works really well in Edinburgh (too well - they keep reaching capacity).
Park and ride absolutely can be a part of the mix, as a supplement to both driving and public transport. It's not an alternative to either though and people living in the city who own cars will still need places to park them, ideally not on the roads.
The problem with park-and-ride schemes, is that they’re really expensive to do properly, and don’t fit most people’s use case of the city.
No, I’m not paying £4 a person for a bus that runs every half-hour, the bus needs to be free and run every five minutes. At least not when it costs £10 to park for a few hours in the city.
Do you mean High Street or Sidwell Street/Paris Street?
The High Street has a lot of post-war dross on it, but also some older and rather fine architecture, and the Princesshay shopping centre, which isn't my sort of thing but not bad as they go.
Sidwell Street/Paris Street has long been slated for demolition/redevelopment, although as so often with these things, it isn't totally clear when.
Sidwell. Grotesque
I am now in a charming restaurant having lunch but, distressingly, it is full of photos of luscious pre war Exeter before the Luftwaffe and the left wing developers got the better of it
None of those responsible for the postwar rebuilding of Exeter could be considered left wing. The city council was run by the Conservatives, had a Tory MP (who praised the reconstruction efforts) and rebuilding efforts only gained momentum when the Tories returned to government in Westminster and relaxed the planning rules. Much of the development was left to the private sector, including an enterprising development firm that saw big opportunities in postwar reconstruction and later became Land Securities. I doubt that they were a hotbed of Marxism. Postwar reconstruction was generally shoddy not for ideological reasons but because politicians and the public were desperate for it to happen quickly, and the country was broke. In construction you can have it nice, you can have it quick or you can have it cheap. If you aim for quick and cheap too, you are certainly not going to get nice.
And yet the impoverished Poles managed to rebuild all of central Warsaw, intact, as it was, and it is now delightful and quaint (and entirely “fake”, but who cares)
A lot of the urge to build ugly crap came from left wing architects and town planners ideologically opposed to traditional “beauty” - which was seen as regressive and Tory and hierarchical and all that shite. They still do it NOW - see the way lefty architects react to anything proposed by Prince Charles
I agree evil greedy right wing developers could be at fault as well
Yes, you see that crap with idiotic idealists choosing to be against parking, so people end up parking on the road rather than having cleverly thought through, integrated parking to go with the buildings.
A multi story block of flats, or multistory office block, there's no reason one or more of the stories can't be a garage for everyone's vehicles, then nobody ends up on the road. But instead idiots who think they know better are against planning for vehicles, so they end up making the vehicles overspill elsewhere and make problems much worse.
Roads should never be a place for parking ideally. They should be a place for driving/cycling/whatever not standing still.
The problem with this is a large reason why people don't buy a second car, or a car in the first place, is a lack of car parking spots in town and city centres. Demand will follow supply, and in a few years you'll be back to square one.
Then there are all the secondary effects - more cars means more congestion, fewer people feeling comfortable enough to walk and cycle around, and the viability of mass transit like buses falls.
Those car parks eat up space for more flats, adding more pressure on house prices.
Showing once again your anti-car mentality, rather than a pro-cycling one.
But people do buy cars, because they need them, because they work as a mode of transportation and there is no better alternative. The overwhelming majority of people who cycle still have a car, and so they need a place to park their car, and park their bike. Secure parking can be a secure place to put your bike too.
Fewer cars parked on the road means less congestion, people feeling more comfortable to walk and cycle around. People having no alternative but to park on the road means they're parking typically right where cyclists want to cycle - you objected to this the other night posting a photo of someone parked where you wanted to cycle, and since most roads are dual-use there's not normally a ban on parking there so its the cyclists that suffer the most from the lack of parking leading to on-road parking, not drivers. I can quite comfortably park on the road if there's no alternative, and drive around parked vehicles, you're the one who has to move around my vehicle by moving further into the road or mount the pavement if I do though.
As for "eating up space" that's not remotely true. You can build further down, or further up.
Drive into Melbourne's Central Business District and if you want to park at a skyscraper, then for most of them you park under the building. Drive down the ramp under the building and head down into the car park. Ground floor and above is for the building, underneath is for cars. Leaving plenty of road space for one of the world's best tram networks, cycles and anything else you might like rather than a road littered with parked vehicles - what's the harm in that?
I'm not anti-car. I'm just pointing out that for cities and towns it's far more efficient and and cost-effective to provide public transport. This makes life significantly easier for commercial drivers (eg vans) who do need the roads to get around.
There is a reason that commercial airports like Heathrow invest in brilliant public transport systems rather than gigantic car parks - it's far easier to shift thousands of people to where you need them to be.
It's not either/or, it's far more effective to do both.
There isn't a city on the planet without cars. Public transport and cars can work well together, not be enemies.
Getting cars off the road and onto private parking liberates road space for public transport/cycling etc. Insisting on a lack of off-road parking leads to on road parking, which hurts cycling etc.
The whole of Melbourne is built with both trams and cars in mind, not either-or. Driving there is weird coming straight from UK, despite driving on same side of road as us in order to turn right you must be in the left lane to do a "hook turn" because of the trams. Which works.
Compromise - park and ride?
Avoids clogging the city with cars, folk who live out of town can get into town. Space for central parking can be converted into flats or parks.
Works really well in Edinburgh (too well - they keep reaching capacity).
Park and ride absolutely can be a part of the mix, as a supplement to both driving and public transport. It's not an alternative to either though and people living in the city who own cars will still need places to park them, ideally not on the roads.
Give it 15 years and only a small minority in cities will own cars - there will be a rapid switch to the bike/public transport/walk + car club combo. That's my plan.
And you claim to not have an anti-car attitude? You don't see me saying I only want small minority to ever cycle, or walk or take public transport.
People in cities shouldn't be confined to only their own city, that's a very small-minded attitude.
Thankfully your vision shouldn't come to pass as most people wherever they live have friends and family around the entire country, and want to visit places in the entire country and not just their own locale. Even in London a majority of houses have at least 1 car, with 12% of homes having 2 or more cars.
Are you aware of what car club is?
I didn't say anything you claim I said.
Basically like a time share for cars rather than having their own. Which like Leon's vision of a world made up of taxis may be useful for those who almost never need private transportation but isn't much use when most people want access to their own vehicle whenever they want/need it - which is often at the same time as others want/need theirs too.
A good system should allow all modes of transportation, without prejudice. If cycling is better then, let people choose to cycle. And where driving, they can get into their car and drive. No problems with that, why do you object to it?
Because of the negative externalities associated with driving in city centres. Your freedom to drive inhibits the freedom of others to walk, cycle and bus around their towns and cities.
Everyone else has worked this out and sensible councils are implementing it. Yours is a minority position and car dominated urban areas are coming to an end.
The great flaw in the plan is the reduction in bus services, and increased cost of those that remain. That's the nut that needs cracked in the next 5 years.
The problem with this - and I say it as someone who supports the ULEZ concept - is that if you make it more difficult for people to go into town and city centres then they will take the hint and do all their shopping and entertainment in those big malls and shopping parks on the fringes of the cities.
It then becomes that classic retort. The operation was a success but the patient died.
Comments
Albeit we do have some hills, and even a bit of the Peak District.
*From 'People Like Us'
Defending Democracy Together, an organization led by Republican strategist Sarah Longwell and conservative political commentator Bill Kristol, is launching “Republicans for Ukraine” to get congressional Republicans to commit to continue funding aid for Ukraine ahead of what is likely to be a lengthy appropriations fight.
The organization gathered testimony from more than 50 pro-Ukraine Republican voters, which will be shared in an ad campaign that will air starting Tuesday until the end of the year."
source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/08/15/ukraine-us-aid-republicans-congress/
It's a start. And I am pleased that they are using Republican voters to make the argument.
The result is that parking is easy and freely available, and you don't need a load of planners with strong opinions about how much you should drive.
I suspect that this would give a better view of quality. There are other ways to do it mathematically, but that kind of thing. There might be quite a good niche in providing an app ranking products and services in that sort of way.
The one-star reviews that annoy me are the very specific ones that are pretty much meaningless in relation to quality of the product, "the waiter informed us the key to the disabled toilet had been misplaced on the Wednesday afternoon when we visited..." or "They delivered a blue widget instead of the orange one I wanted, and it was hard to find the number for customer services..."
But people do buy cars, because they need them, because they work as a mode of transportation and there is no better alternative. The overwhelming majority of people who cycle still have a car, and so they need a place to park their car, and park their bike. Secure parking can be a secure place to put your bike too.
Fewer cars parked on the road means less congestion, people feeling more comfortable to walk and cycle around. People having no alternative but to park on the road means they're parking typically right where cyclists want to cycle - you objected to this the other night posting a photo of someone parked where you wanted to cycle, and since most roads are dual-use there's not normally a ban on parking there so its the cyclists that suffer the most from the lack of parking leading to on-road parking, not drivers. I can quite comfortably park on the road if there's no alternative, and drive around parked vehicles, you're the one who has to move around my vehicle by moving further into the road or mount the pavement if I do though.
As for "eating up space" that's not remotely true. You can build further down, or further up.
Drive into Melbourne's Central Business District and if you want to park at a skyscraper, then for most of them you park under the building. Drive down the ramp under the building and head down into the car park. Ground floor and above is for the building, underneath is for cars. Leaving plenty of road space for one of the world's best tram networks, cycles and anything else you might like rather than a road littered with parked vehicles - what's the harm in that?
I would think that people prefer to park their car in a secure garage or car park overnight, if one were available.
The thing is they don't get the planners involved, so the market solves the problems. Need more houses? Build more. Need more parking? Build that.
I have been burned a couple of times with very highly rated restaurants on Tripadvisor being mediocre. Those have generally been when people's expectations were lower. A couple of rural pubs with patterned carpets that did chewy roasts and microwave meals for example, but got wonderful ratings. So as a sense-check I also look at the website of the restaurant and particularly the font of the menu. If it's comic sans then it's a no. Likewise if the menu heralds a dish as "our famous [pie/burger etc]..." or has titles like "to start" or "for smaller appetites".
Good font good food. (That rule works well in other Northern European countries too, but falls down in Southern Europe and beyond).
It won't happen as it would be election-losing, with just about everyone paying more, particularly if you live anywhere near a mainline train station or shopping area (but then shouldn't you think about not bothering with a car anyway?) But it would probably be quite effective.
Plus of course while living spaces tend to want natural light, so normally need to be above ground, there's no reason why secure storage needs it. Hence the popularity of underground parking in many places abroad.
Doing it properly takes up no extra square footage of space, reduces the externality of vehicles hogging communal road space, and liberates land on the road for cars/cyclists/buses/trams/whatever that are actually moving rather than stationary.
Giving private companies rights to extract rent and enforce the extraction of rent with their own heavies usually ends in tears.
I find the concept of having 16 people living in one subdivided old Georgian home as there's no alternatives for them far more "ugly" than a cityscape where everyone has their own home.
Even if you like the view of the Georgian exterior that hides away what's going on inside.
- Boris in The Daily Telegraph, 11 March 2004, p. 22.
"he most expensive street in the golden triangle is Fulwith Mill Lane on the South Side of Harrogate, where the average house price is £1.7 million."
If Cheshire is Essex then the posh bits of West and North Yorks are a bit Kent (Harrogate = Tunbridge Wells, York = Canterbury etc).
https://chicago.suntimes.com/city-hall/2022/5/26/23143356/chicago-parking-meters-75-year-lease-daley-city-council-audit-skyway-loop-garages-krislov
Trump, of course, handed them a massive tax cut. Deficit funded.
The idea the North lacks investment is a myth, even if it's not the same.
I can order coffee and beer. I'll be fine.
So many of the UK’s problems are solved with a massive programme of housebuilding.
Some places do have oddly good reps - a pub in the village I grew up in had a 'famous carvery' which attracted people from all over, despite being genuinely average. Where I live now, our local curry place is held up as a culinary gold standard; AFAICT it is a formulaic Bangladeshi 'Indian' with all the usual meals.
Encouraging new buildings to have sufficient parking rather than relying on off road, via building standards/tax incentives, while taxing construction without sufficient parking for the externality of dumping vehicles on the road may help more but only with new builds.
The move to electric vehicles may help with this as consumers now value off road parking more. My new home I have two parking spaces, but no major front garden as a result (just a small area we have planted wildflower seeds and is now attracting bees already
I have studied this subject quite a lot and I know whereof I speak
See the recent rebuilding of Frankfurt’s Altstadt. The left opposed it (some even called it “Nazi architecture”) and the right forced it through
This happens everywhere. Progressives wants “progressive” architecture because they are “progressive”, narcissistic morons
Virtually all of the infamous architects that mutilated London 1950-2000 were of the Left
There is a different problem of venal right wing private sector bastards but they are less of a systemic issue. Tho they can also do hideous things. See “The Crooked House”
As for Poland the communists built the unbelievably ugly Nova Huta next to beautiful Krakow as a deliberate affront to its “reactionary” loveliness
There is a reason that commercial airports like Heathrow invest in brilliant public transport systems rather than gigantic car parks - it's far easier to shift thousands of people to where you need them to be.
So that would appear to be that. Hope you enjoyed all the speculation while it lasted.
Amazon which turn out to be 1 star because “the book arrived 2 days late” or “I bought this thinking it was a toy for my cat”
We need that too.
Empty houses give you a choice where you move to. And can refurbish/rebuild old ones for cheap, or get quality at a reasonable price, rather than paying a high price for mouldy rundown rubbish as the alternative is homelessness.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_the_Republic,_Berlin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Palace
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38kH3_s6Em8
A more realistic way of think about the debate is, for instance, to look at the battle between Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses.
True story
Putting architecture on a left-right spectrum is unhelpful tbh. The petty, the small-minded and the philistine exist across the whole thing.
One in particular has 9+ ratings on Booking.com from people from all over the world, then a handful of 1-pointers with damning headlines. Then you notice all the 1-pointers are from Russians, and include complaints that the owner refused to take their booking on account they represent a terrorist state, or stated they were full when they clearly had availability. The property had a big Ukraine flag on its Facebook page and posts about "making no concessions to pigs" so you'd have thought that might be a clue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_Bauhaus_to_Our_House
There isn't a city on the planet without cars. Public transport and cars can work well together, not be enemies.
Getting cars off the road and onto private parking liberates road space for public transport/cycling etc. Insisting on a lack of off-road parking leads to on road parking, which hurts cycling etc.
The whole of Melbourne is built with both trams and cars in mind, not either-or. Driving there is weird coming straight from UK, despite driving on same side of road as us in order to turn right you must be in the left lane to do a "hook turn" because of the trams. Which works.
Bad news for English rugby.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/conservative-retired-judge-says-trump-corroded-and-corrupted-american-democracy
An influential group of Republican legal voices called for a Jan. 2024 trial date to be set for Donald Trump for his attempt to overturn the presidential election. The group included former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Michael Luttig, a retired federal judge and one of the nation's leading conservative legal minds...
https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1691460193996132352
Wolfe nails the left wing progressive tendency to do away with all lovely ornament (“reactionary”) and pursue ugliness as a kind of ideal (“daring”)
Not sure replacing cars with gondolas would work.
Avoids clogging the city with cars, folk who live out of town can get into town. Space for central parking can be converted into flats or parks.
Safer for pedestrians and cyclists, brilliant for commercial drivers, etc etc
Works really well in Edinburgh (too well - they keep reaching capacity).
Crudely, at one end there is twee or bling: a love of ornamentation, glittery things and detail. In religion that's high catholicism and maximalist Hinduism. The architectural examples include mock tudor, arts and crafts and footballers' mansions.
At the other end there is austere minimalism: eliminate all decoration, ban depictions of the prophet, drink only water and eat lotus leaves. As pursued by protestants, the Taliban and post-war town planners. The architectural examples being pretty obvious.
Not that the bits in between are necessarily better. Much developer new build these days is neither flouncy nor austere but awkwardly neither.
The gradual expansion of better Indian food place in the UK is great to see - even if it's under the guise of street food or whatever, there's more and more to be found that give us more of a sense of the great breadth and depth of that vast cuisine.
part of the mix, as a supplement to both driving and public transport. It's not an alternative to either though and people living in the city who own cars will still need places to park them, ideally not on the roads.
It isn't always Marxist, but it carries a strong element of "I will beat the square pegs into these round holes, in the name of my genius."
This is a genuinely good idea
An app that quickly crunches crowd sourced data and weeds out the weird reviews at either end of the bell curve
As @TimS says, a restaurant with 2000 reviews averaging 4.4 is a better bet than one with 30 reviews averaging 4.8
The app should also weigh the newness of reviews. Newer = better. And basically ignore any reviews posted during covid
A desire to sweep away the Victorian and Georgian past and embrace the potential of new materials and construction methods and build cities around the motor car was quite broad-based in the postwar era - look at US cities, no hotbed of Radical Leftism, where developers and politicians were very aggressive in erasing historical areas and buildings, such as New York's original Penn Station. People on the Left may be more prone to this kind of desire to improve things and break with the past, and I would guess that a lot of leading architects are Left wing in the same way educated professionals and creative skew to the left more broadly. But I think you are generalising and overextrapolating, as your clearly factually incorrect statement on Exeter illustrates!
That's why Japan works and has good housing, and people here are piled high in expensive, shoddy, mouldy buildings or face homelessness.
People in cities shouldn't be confined to only their own city, that's a very small-minded attitude.
Thankfully your vision shouldn't come to pass as most people wherever they live have friends and family around the entire country, and want to visit places in the entire country and not just their own locale. Even in London a majority of houses have at least 1 car, with 12% of homes having 2 or more cars.
I find it hard to believe anyone who has been there could talk such gibberish. I’ve lived in Japan
Japan is full of cheap ugly tatty architecture. Partly because the people can’t be arsed to build permanent and beautiful structures because of the constant threat of earthquakes, tsunamis and generalised disaster
There are good examples of simple aesthetics of course, and living or working somewhere to provide focus and reduce clutter has an obvious value too. I'm not chucking it out. But even there there's a world between Adolf Loos and Doncaster South Bus Station.
That's what we need more of in this country. 👍
We put too much into too few permanent structures rather than building up what people need.
I didn't say anything you claim I said. You have got into your head that people are out for your "freedom", but what I'm suggesting is benign and sensible.
Genuinely divided juries tend to decide quite quickly as those convinced of the defendant's guilt realise a guilty verdict just won't happen. Not always, but very often, if a jury is out for less than an hour then "not guilty" is likely, but if they are out for days the reverse.
I say nothing on the merits of the case, by the way, which I've not followed. It's just that really long deliberations suggest a lot, but not all, of the jury members are firmly convinced of guilt.
“As intended, the colourless concrete conurbation of Kraków's Nowa Huta district is the direct antithesis of the city's Old Town. Ornate architecture, cobbled lanes and tourist crowds? Not here.
“One of only two entirely pre-planned socialist realism cities ever built (the other being Magnitogorsk in Russia’s Ural Mountains), this Orwellian encampment is one of the finest examples of deliberate social engineering in the world. For tourists, but also for Poles, a visit is akin to travelling back in time to the communist era in Poland.”
A good system should allow all modes of transportation, without prejudice. If cycling is better then, let people choose to cycle. And where driving, they can get into their car and drive. No problems with that, why do you object to it?
Never forgotten being shown these ... yet what of the many that did not suyrvive?
http://blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/maps/2017/04/21/further-outlook-stormy/
Everyone else has worked this out and sensible councils are implementing it. Yours is a minority position and car dominated urban areas are coming to an end.
The great flaw in the plan is the reduction in bus services, and increased cost of those that remain. That's the nut that needs cracked in the next 5 years.
If you get food poisoning due to this advice, then standard disclaimers apply.
The demand is there. My car hasn't moved in a week.
👍
put forward a spurious argument as to why it really won Georgia, before Sleepy Joe STOLE THE ELECTION helped by the WOKE TRAITORS of the KEMP PARTY
No, I’m not paying £4 a person for a bus that runs every half-hour, the bus needs to be free and run every five minutes. At least not when it costs £10 to park for a few hours in the city.
It then becomes that classic retort. The operation was a success but the patient died.