I agree with Mike that Trump has a less than 70% chance of the nomination. But the much better sell imo is for the WH. That's where the betting has it badly wrong. He should be triple the price he is.
Which other candidate for the nomination has a higher than 5% chance? DeSantis? Ramaswamy? Like, even if Trump was convicted and the GOP therefore said he couldn't be the nominee - I have no idea who they would pick because the party would be in open civil war. Part of how Trump keeps coming out on top in the GOP is that the party cannot face down the base it created, cannot agree on what they want in a leader, and cannot openly say what their policy agenda would be because it is too cruel for even their own voters to accept openly. Who else has the popularity for a coronation? No one! And if it comes down to the convention to replace him, well that could be anyone, even those who didn't run in the primary!
By lane, numbers-out-of-arse, not an offer to bet:
Christie, Pence, Haley and Scott are all below 5%.
DeSantis averages ~15%. Yes, he once rivalled Trump, but the indictments ended that (potentially in part because he defended Trump instead of putting the boot in there, giving his supporters permission to go back to Trump).
Who there can really push themselves out over Trump or if he gets canned by the RNC? No one, in my view.
It's August, there have been no debates, the voters aren't paying attention yet. One candidate has extremely high name recognition, and also they feel like he needs support. What the polling tells us is that the base don't hate Trump.That's an important data point, but it's not enough to call the race.
We also don't know who the voters are. The only way the anti-Trump candidates might win (absent a very lucky three-way split) is by turning out people who aren't being polled. But they might be able to do that.
Trump is a salutary lesson in the power of people with absolute bullet proof self-confidence, zero shame and the will to trample over dissent. Left to his own devices he will continue to steamroller anyone remotely more nuanced than him in a system (primaries) that favours candidates who look like winners, rather than those with good policies.
I know Johnson over here is pretty shameless and unrepentant, but several times now he's shown he is responsive to being tapped on the shoulder by the men in grey suits when the game looks like it's up. Trump was not, even with everything stacked against him. Not the slightest chink in the armour, and that's a key difference. The only people he blinked in front of were foreign leaders, and GOP members don't seem to worry about that. It's going to be down to the Democrats, the voters, and possibly the justice process, to defeat him.
Trump also blinked in front of himself.
Having left the gate open and the guard-dog locked up, it would have been trivially easy to rob the house. However, conducting an actual coup on Jan 6 would have involved violence and planning he clearly wasn't willing to engage in, preferring instead to hope that a show of force would create the pressure (or 'events') to deliver him the result he wanted.
But had he asked someone with experience in armed conflict to plan and direct the riot (or had a friend-of-a-friend been given the nod to contract someone like that), it would have been a simple task to either intimidate Congress into voting as desired, or to detain (or worse) enough members to ensure the vote went the right way, or both.
As for whether such a vote would be sustained under legal challenge, firstly there's the question of whether it'd even be justiciable, secondly the same or similar tactics could be applied to SCOTUS members, and thirdly it's arguable that the vote was (would have been) the vote and despite the conditions, it was constitutionally valid (particularly true if the absent members were dead rather than just detained).
But going down that road really would have been crossing the Rubicon and establishing a Putinesque dictatorship, and that was clearly beyond what he was willing to risk. Whether that's for lack of imagination or fear of the electric chair had it failed, or just a general squeamishness about authorising force in general (he did less in that regard globally than any president since perhaps Hoover) is open to question.
Let us understand this: Trump genuinely believed he had won the election. Engaging in violence suggests that he lost the election. Right up until the Jan 6th debacle the push was to get the correct result declared. They spent a lot of money on spurious legal challenge, a lot of time pulling together the rival slates of electors, and illegally put a lot of pressure on state officials in not just Georgia to declare the true result.
When Trump told the Georgia officials to "find" the votes needed to declare him the winner he didn't ask them to make these up. He won, by a much bigger margin. They just needed to see sense. And the coup plot for the 6th was simple - Pence recognises the "correct" slates of electors and Trump is declared the rightful winner. Or it goes to the House constitutionally and Trump is declared the rightful winner.
And yet he did engage in violence. He assembled a mob, incited it, stood back the normal security arrangements and protection, and failed to call in the national guard even after the mob had invaded the Capitol (having chanted to kill Pence along the way there).
Whether Trump genuinely believed he won or not - and enough is on record to prove that Trump intended to declare victory *whatever the result* - he should have known that Congress, left to itself, would endorse the Biden votes.
Besides, he could easily have rationalised that if violence was necessary to enforce the 'rightful' election outcome, then it was justified on that basis alone.
There's copious evidence to show that the 'alternative state electors' plan predated the election results.
No, I don’t think that’s characterising the case against her accurately. It omits several lines of evidence. There’s a BBC Panorama that goes through the evidence on iPlayer.
In particular, there was evidence for 2 deaths that the babies had been administered insulin, i.e. deliberately killed. This is different to older cases that were based on statistical interpretation of unusual deaths. Here, there was strong evidence that the babies had been murdered. That doesn’t tell you who did it, of course, but it does rule out that this was just an unlucky coincidence of deaths by natural causes. Letby was present in both cases.
There was evidence pertaining to her behaviour. In one case, a doctor saw her standing over a baby doing nothing while the baby’s oxygen levels were falling. At other times, she was observed paying a lot of attention to babies that she wasn’t assigned to. Various items of paperwork relating to the babies who had died were found under her bed.
Sure, cross check different kinds of evidence. That makes a stronger case.
But be careful about paperwork. Could be explained precisely because the babies had died and she was in trouble and wanted to secure some evidence for herself.
When I was working, I did very occasionally take home a copy of a document if I though I might need it to secure my interests - in one case concerning a work related injury, and in another where a colleague had complained about me and my line manager had handled it very badly and I wanted an accurate record of the meeting in question in case ti went pear shaped. Trivial, sure, and for anything more serious, I'd have gone to the union and lawyered up, but not everyone is so rational
The paperwork she kept does not fit that scenario, nor did she give that as the reason she had the materials in her defence.
Your daily reminder that London buses have been CASHLESS and CONTACTLESS ONLY for years. Amazing as it might seem to some, the elderly, disabled and indeed children use them DAILY!
There are many tragedies in the Lucy Letby case, but to see it now reduced to a rush to compel convicted offenders to attend sentencing hearings, which is completely impossible should the offender choose not to cooperate, is to trivialise the whole tragic case.
No, I don’t think that’s characterising the case against her accurately. It omits several lines of evidence. There’s a BBC Panorama that goes through the evidence on iPlayer.
In particular, there was evidence for 2 deaths that the babies had been administered insulin, i.e. deliberately killed. This is different to older cases that were based on statistical interpretation of unusual deaths. Here, there was strong evidence that the babies had been murdered. That doesn’t tell you who did it, of course, but it does rule out that this was just an unlucky coincidence of deaths by natural causes. Letby was present in both cases.
There was evidence pertaining to her behaviour. In one case, a doctor saw her standing over a baby doing nothing while the baby’s oxygen levels were falling. At other times, she was observed paying a lot of attention to babies that she wasn’t assigned to. Various items of paperwork relating to the babies who had died were found under her bed.
Sure, cross check different kinds of evidence. That makes a stronger case.
But be careful about paperwork. Could be explained precisely because the babies had died and she was in trouble and wanted to secure some evidence for herself.
When I was working, I did very occasionally take home a copy of a document if I though I might need it to secure my interests - in one case concerning a work related injury, and in another where a colleague had complained about me and my line manager had handled it very badly and I wanted an accurate record of the meeting in question in case ti went pear shaped. Trivial, sure, and for anything more serious, I'd have gone to the union and lawyered up, but not everyone is so rational
The paperwork she kept does not fit that scenario, nor did she give that as the reason she had the materials in her defence.
I agree with Mike that Trump has a less than 70% chance of the nomination. But the much better sell imo is for the WH. That's where the betting has it badly wrong. He should be triple the price he is.
Which other candidate for the nomination has a higher than 5% chance? DeSantis? Ramaswamy? Like, even if Trump was convicted and the GOP therefore said he couldn't be the nominee - I have no idea who they would pick because the party would be in open civil war. Part of how Trump keeps coming out on top in the GOP is that the party cannot face down the base it created, cannot agree on what they want in a leader, and cannot openly say what their policy agenda would be because it is too cruel for even their own voters to accept openly. Who else has the popularity for a coronation? No one! And if it comes down to the convention to replace him, well that could be anyone, even those who didn't run in the primary!
By lane, numbers-out-of-arse, not an offer to bet:
Christie, Pence, Haley and Scott are all below 5%.
DeSantis averages ~15%. Yes, he once rivalled Trump, but the indictments ended that (potentially in part because he defended Trump instead of putting the boot in there, giving his supporters permission to go back to Trump).
Who there can really push themselves out over Trump or if he gets canned by the RNC? No one, in my view.
It's August, there have been no debates, the voters aren't paying attention yet. One candidate has extremely high name recognition, and also they feel like he needs support. What the polling tells us is that the base don't hate Trump.That's an important data point, but it's not enough to call the race.
We also don't know who the voters are. The only way the anti-Trump candidates might win (absent a very lucky three-way split) is by turning out people who aren't being polled. But they might be able to do that.
Trump is a salutary lesson in the power of people with absolute bullet proof self-confidence, zero shame and the will to trample over dissent. Left to his own devices he will continue to steamroller anyone remotely more nuanced than him in a system (primaries) that favours candidates who look like winners, rather than those with good policies.
I know Johnson over here is pretty shameless and unrepentant, but several times now he's shown he is responsive to being tapped on the shoulder by the men in grey suits when the game looks like it's up. Trump was not, even with everything stacked against him. Not the slightest chink in the armour, and that's a key difference. The only people he blinked in front of were foreign leaders, and GOP members don't seem to worry about that. It's going to be down to the Democrats, the voters, and possibly the justice process, to defeat him.
Trump also blinked in front of himself.
Having left the gate open and the guard-dog locked up, it would have been trivially easy to rob the house. However, conducting an actual coup on Jan 6 would have involved violence and planning he clearly wasn't willing to engage in, preferring instead to hope that a show of force would create the pressure (or 'events') to deliver him the result he wanted.
But had he asked someone with experience in armed conflict to plan and direct the riot (or had a friend-of-a-friend been given the nod to contract someone like that), it would have been a simple task to either intimidate Congress into voting as desired, or to detain (or worse) enough members to ensure the vote went the right way, or both.
As for whether such a vote would be sustained under legal challenge, firstly there's the question of whether it'd even be justiciable, secondly the same or similar tactics could be applied to SCOTUS members, and thirdly it's arguable that the vote was (would have been) the vote and despite the conditions, it was constitutionally valid (particularly true if the absent members were dead rather than just detained).
But going down that road really would have been crossing the Rubicon and establishing a Putinesque dictatorship, and that was clearly beyond what he was willing to risk. Whether that's for lack of imagination or fear of the electric chair had it failed, or just a general squeamishness about authorising force in general (he did less in that regard globally than any president since perhaps Hoover) is open to question.
Let us understand this: Trump genuinely believed he had won the election. Engaging in violence suggests that he lost the election. Right up until the Jan 6th debacle the push was to get the correct result declared. They spent a lot of money on spurious legal challenge, a lot of time pulling together the rival slates of electors, and illegally put a lot of pressure on state officials in not just Georgia to declare the true result.
When Trump told the Georgia officials to "find" the votes needed to declare him the winner he didn't ask them to make these up. He won, by a much bigger margin. They just needed to see sense. And the coup plot for the 6th was simple - Pence recognises the "correct" slates of electors and Trump is declared the rightful winner. Or it goes to the House constitutionally and Trump is declared the rightful winner.
And yet he did engage in violence. He assembled a mob, incited it, stood back the normal security arrangements and protection, and failed to call in the national guard even after the mob had invaded the Capitol (having chanted to kill Pence along the way there).
Whether Trump genuinely believed he won or not - and enough is on record to prove that Trump intended to declare victory *whatever the result* - he should have known that Congress, left to itself, would endorse the Biden votes.
Besides, he could easily have rationalised that if violence was necessary to enforce the 'rightful' election outcome, then it was justified on that basis alone.
There's copious evidence to show that the 'alternative state electors' plan predated the election results.
There are a few of these about. To be honest, that amounts to "there have been miscarriages of justice in the past, therefore, this may be one too."
I might be wrong, but I think it is beyond doubt that there was someone murdering and attempting to murder the babies. That, obviously doesn't prove Letby's guilt, but it means the relevance of those other cases is much diminished.
Yes, there's a vast statistical difference between:
Person X is correlated with a surprising number of patient deaths Person X is correlated with a surprising number of patient deaths, at least some of whom were murdered.
The table I saw had about 30 nurses on it, none of whom were on shift for more than 7 of the incidents, whereas Letby was there for all 25. On its own I don't think that would constitute very good evidence, but combined with everything else, it is.
Your daily reminder that London buses have been CASHLESS and CONTACTLESS ONLY for years. Amazing as it might seem to some, the elderly, disabled and indeed children use them DAILY!
I know it must be a terrible shock, but a lot of people don't come from the TfL area.
Your daily reminder that London buses have been CASHLESS and CONTACTLESS ONLY for years. Amazing as it might seem to some, the elderly, disabled and indeed children use them DAILY!
"Up to 4 children under 11 years old accompanied by a paying adult travel free on the London Underground. Unaccompanied children between 5 and 10 must have a valid 5-10 Zip Oyster Photocard for free travel."
I've always been against the death penalty. I still am. But reading the victim impact statements on the Letby sentencing is severely challenging my long-held opinions. I was at a funeral of a baby that died at three months of natural causes a few weeks ago and it was absolutely gut-wrenching, terrible. The parents are my friends, they are utterly heartbroken, the grieving process is going to take a long time. It will last all their lives I expect.
Knowing what Letby has done, and the impact it has had on all those families, the dozens of people directly, badly, affected, for the rest of their lives, well it does make make me, for a few seconds, question my long-held beliefs. Lifelong incarceration almost seems too lenient.
"To take a life when a life has been taken, is not justice, it is revenge." - Desmond Tutu.
The death penalty is morally outrageous and vile. She should rot in jail for the rest of her life and think about the impact she has had. Death would be the easy way out.
If we could be 100% certain that the death penalty would only apply to those horrendously guilty, then I'd be OK with that level of revenge for crimes like this.
But we can't.
No manmade system is infallible. Life has risk. I say that a lot lately it seems, but its true - nothing can be perfect, we live in an imperfect world and people will always make mistakes.
So just as we have to accept that we can't prevent accidents or disease, we also have to accept we can't prevent miscarriages of justice.
And if miscarriages of justice can exist, then we can at least ensure that those who are victims of them aren't accidentally killed by the state in the mistaken belief they were guilty.
Forget Letby. Only a few days ago we were talking about the Andrew Malkinson case where he languished in prison for a crime he didn't commit. Compensation can't reward him for that time lost, but at least he's still alive. How many Malkinson's would be dead before they could see a false conviction overturned if we restored the death penalty?
And for that reason, and that reason alone, we must never under any circumstances ever restore the death penalty.
Yep. Although my objection to the DP is wider than this. If the objection is *only* because you can't be sure of guilt it leaves the door open to implement it in certain cases. Cases where the crime is wicked enough and there is zero doubt about the culprit. I can think of some cases like that. You could envisage a new 'superguilty' (ie zero doubt) verdict for these, carrying the DP, and people whose sole objection to the DP is uncertainty of guilt would presumably be ok with this, whereas I wouldn't.
The 'practical' objection to that is that there's no clear dividing line between the superguilty and the normal-guilty, and where grey areas exist, injustices will occur (not to mention that some cases will look superguilty at the time and subsequently be found not to be).
As an aside, there is evidence from before its abolition that where the death penalty was 'in play' juries tended to convict to a higher level of certainty anyway - with the result that some were acquitted when they wouldn't otherwise have been, and had actually done the crime.
Yes. It was more just my attempt to show that if the only thing stopping the DP coming back is uncertainty of guilt then this means the DP is a bit more likely to come back than if the objection to it is on wider grounds, eg that the state (representing 'us') should be better than the murderer.
I've always been against the death penalty. I still am. But reading the victim impact statements on the Letby sentencing is severely challenging my long-held opinions. I was at a funeral of a baby that died at three months of natural causes a few weeks ago and it was absolutely gut-wrenching, terrible. The parents are my friends, they are utterly heartbroken, the grieving process is going to take a long time. It will last all their lives I expect.
Knowing what Letby has done, and the impact it has had on all those families, the dozens of people directly, badly, affected, for the rest of their lives, well it does make make me, for a few seconds, question my long-held beliefs. Lifelong incarceration almost seems too lenient.
"To take a life when a life has been taken, is not justice, it is revenge." - Desmond Tutu.
The death penalty is morally outrageous and vile. She should rot in jail for the rest of her life and think about the impact she has had. Death would be the easy way out.
Oh I agree wholeheartedly. But I must admit there's a part of me, because it is so raw for me seeing the shattering grief of the recently bereaved parents of a young baby I suppose, that would like to see Letby torn apart by a baying crowd for the way she has inflicted this on all those poor babies and their families.
That's not a pleasant thing to admit to myself, or on here, but that's how a small - but also, to me, a surprisingly large - part of me feels.
On the death penalty, I don't think anybody has mentioned the Birmingham Six. So I will. 16 years, IIRC, in prison before they won their appeal. And if, in 1975, we'd had the death penalty, then some if not all of the six would have been goners.
There are many tragedies in the Lucy Letby case, but to see it now reduced to a rush to compel convicted offenders to attend sentencing hearings, which is completely impossible should the offender choose not to cooperate, is to trivialise the whole tragic case.
I'm visualising a scene from Clockwork Orange here...
There are a few of these about. To be honest, that amounts to "there have been miscarriages of justice in the past, therefore, this may be one too."
I might be wrong, but I think it is beyond doubt that there was someone murdering and attempting to murder the babies. That, obviously doesn't prove Letby's guilt, but it means the relevance of those other cases is much diminished.
Yes, there's a vast statistical difference between:
Person X is correlated with a surprising number of patient deaths Person X is correlated with a surprising number of patient deaths, at least some of whom were murdered.
The table I saw had about 30 nurses on it, none of whom were on shift for more than 7 of the incidents, whereas Letby was there for all 25. On its own I don't think that would constitute very good evidence, but combined with everything else, it is.
Technically the second case should read "... were murdered, and no-one else was murdered on other occasions." But quite. You saw the whole table, I assume, not the edited down one that at least one media source used?
I hope someone along the line did a version with solid colour for the official shifts and pale colour for the adjacent ones - just to cover the issue DavidL spotted in his own case.
Your daily reminder that London buses have been CASHLESS and CONTACTLESS ONLY for years. Amazing as it might seem to some, the elderly, disabled and indeed children use them DAILY!
I know it must be a terrible shock, but a lot of people don't come from the TfL area.
There are a few of these about. To be honest, that amounts to "there have been miscarriages of justice in the past, therefore, this may be one too."
I might be wrong, but I think it is beyond doubt that there was someone murdering and attempting to murder the babies. That, obviously doesn't prove Letby's guilt, but it means the relevance of those other cases is much diminished.
There was a blood test relating to one of the babies who was murdered with an insulin overdose that provided considerable evidence it was murder, rather than a series of tragic coincidences.
Within most of our lifetimes, we have had the death penalty for high treason.
And it was wrong then as it is now.
Perhaps. Oddly for such an emotive issue, I don't think I have passionate opinions either way. I wouldn't want a death sentence for Letby I don't think. Though not to be too much of a ratepayer about it, but I do have a slight resentment that we have to keep her for the rest of her life, which will probably cost more than putting her through Eton on a continual loop.
The evidence suggests that the death penalty is far more expensive than prison.
It must never, ever be brought back. It is appalling.
Is that not in America, where people are on death row for decades? In the UK, I think it was quite brisk, you got an appeal, and if that was thrown out, the sentence was carried out. Of course, there were miscarriages of justice.
Indeed. As one of our (at the time) most respected judges put it, in regard to the Birmingham Six: ..If the six men win, it will mean that the police are guilty of perjury, that they are guilty of violence and threats, that the confessions were invented and improperly admitted in evidence and the convictions were erroneous... This is such an appalling vista that every sensible person in the land would say that it cannot be right that these actions should go any further...
"We shouldn't have all these campaigns to get the Birmingham Six released if they'd been hanged. They'd have been forgotten and the whole community would have been satisfied." ..
The obvious argument against the Death Penalty is that as a deterrent it is an utter failure. If it worked as a deterrent then its introduction would stop murders, but historically it makes no difference to the murder rate and some people have argued that it makes things worse (if you are going to hang for murdering one, why worry about doing a dozen?)
The true argument about the Death Penalty is more about whether we, as a society, want to exact revenge on the apparently guilty.
Cost or deterrence is irrelevant. We have to decide if we are the sort of people who want to hear their neck snap or fry them until their eyeballs pop.
Your daily reminder that London buses have been CASHLESS and CONTACTLESS ONLY for years. Amazing as it might seem to some, the elderly, disabled and indeed children use them DAILY!
"Up to 4 children under 11 years old accompanied by a paying adult travel free on the London Underground. Unaccompanied children between 5 and 10 must have a valid 5-10 Zip Oyster Photocard for free travel."
Don’t the elderly travel free? Don’t need cash for ‘free’.
Your daily reminder that London buses have been CASHLESS and CONTACTLESS ONLY for years. Amazing as it might seem to some, the elderly, disabled and indeed children use them DAILY!
"Up to 4 children under 11 years old accompanied by a paying adult travel free on the London Underground. Unaccompanied children between 5 and 10 must have a valid 5-10 Zip Oyster Photocard for free travel."
Not sure how this is relevant to the discussion, but in any case it's referring to the photocard to prove they are under 11 (in practice they are nodded through unless they look obviously much older than 11).
This story was featured on R4 this morning, the phrase killing fields was used. I'm sure when Saudi's smiling tyrant visits us shortly, our pols & officials will be having some firm words with him while they're wanking him off.
How ridiculous - they won't even have firm words with him, they'll just put out some tepid words in a statement once he's out the room.
I know realpolitik involves dealing with awful people, but he could at least pretend he wasn't a bit harder.
We hear a lot about soft power. Rishi & Co are developing the exciting new concept of blancmange power.
Apparently Richi gave an interview today wherein he explained that when he said he would "stop the boats" he did not wish to imply in any way that the boats would in fact be stopped at all...
On the death penalty, I don't think anybody has mentioned the Birmingham Six. So I will. 16 years, IIRC, in prison before they won their appeal. And if, in 1975, we'd had the death penalty, then some if not all of the six would have been goners.
Quite. I waqs thinking of them, actually, but more in the context of the moral panic and fury at the time. And whether this affected the police and forensic scientists involved. However, what I got stuck on was that the technique used and its interpretation, which were unbelievably crap*, had been used on other people anyway, poor sods. So arguably not a consequencde of the hysteria ...
*nitrate test, which had lots of false negatives, e.g. if handlin gplaying cards. Which the poor Six were doing when arrestyed.
On the death penalty, I don't think anybody has mentioned the Birmingham Six. So I will. 16 years, IIRC, in prison before they won their appeal. And if, in 1975, we'd had the death penalty, then some if not all of the six would have been goners.
I'm glad that the judge gave Letby a whole-life tariff for each of the murders. This means that, even if the conviction for some of the murders is overturned, there will be no question of her being released as long as the conviction for any one of the murders stands.
Within most of our lifetimes, we have had the death penalty for high treason.
And it was wrong then as it is now.
Perhaps. Oddly for such an emotive issue, I don't think I have passionate opinions either way. I wouldn't want a death sentence for Letby I don't think. Though not to be too much of a ratepayer about it, but I do have a slight resentment that we have to keep her for the rest of her life, which will probably cost more than putting her through Eton on a continual loop.
The evidence suggests that the death penalty is far more expensive than prison.
It must never, ever be brought back. It is appalling.
Is that not in America, where people are on death row for decades? In the UK, I think it was quite brisk, you got an appeal, and if that was thrown out, the sentence was carried out. Of course, there were miscarriages of justice.
Indeed. As one of our (at the time) most respected judges put it, in regard to the Birmingham Six: ..If the six men win, it will mean that the police are guilty of perjury, that they are guilty of violence and threats, that the confessions were invented and improperly admitted in evidence and the convictions were erroneous... This is such an appalling vista that every sensible person in the land would say that it cannot be right that these actions should go any further...
"We shouldn't have all these campaigns to get the Birmingham Six released if they'd been hanged. They'd have been forgotten and the whole community would have been satisfied." ..
The obvious argument against the Death Penalty is that as a deterrent it is an utter failure. If it worked as a deterrent then its introduction would stop murders, but historically it makes no difference to the murder rate and some people have argued that it makes things worse (if you are going to hang for murdering one, why worry about doing a dozen?)
The true argument about the Death Penalty is more about whether we, as a society, want to exact revenge on the apparently guilty.
Cost or deterrence is irrelevant. We have to decide if we are the sort of people who want to hear their neck snap or fry them until their eyeballs pop.
We are the sort of people who want that. Just look at the opinion polls. A minority would like to believe it is not so, and for that reason the death penalty is a political taboo.
Franchising has failed – the last time I checked 5-6 franchises has been renationalised because the moronic privateers who were running them ran them into the ground.
Renationalise what's left, and start afresh.
A single brand, a single arse to kick, a la TfL but for the whole nation.
Ownership isn't the issue - it is mission. Chiltern Railways had a 20 year franchise and utterly transformed the route. Northern Rail had a much shorter franchise and were not contractually allowed to even recognise that passenger numbers had risen, never mind run enough trains.
Since "privatisation" the DfT in various guises have managed a system which is absurdly complex, expensive and legally restrictive rather than run the railways for the passengers. The franchising structure essentially lumbered the industry and the taxpayer with huge costs, management of which has been the key focus.
A commercial enterprise free to plan long term would be great. A stateco run commercially would be great. Ownership isn't the issue - its the DfT. A perfect example - Lumo, the private sector open access operator pirating for passengers between London and Edinburgh. It may be private, but the kind of train it could buy and the exact specification of the interior was dictated by the DfT. If they strayed from their directions the DfT informed them they would not be granted an open access license.
Lumo trains crush their seats in and have minimal luggage space. This creates major problems. But they had to offer a minimum number of seats in a 5 car train or no operation allowed. The DfT direct the seats thing so that politically they can claim expansion on the East Coast route whilst starving Network Rail of actual investment to add actual capacity.
As usual for the UK we're doing it as cheaply as possible whilst charging as much as possible.
Cost or deterrence is irrelevant. We have to decide if we are the sort of people who want to hear their neck snap or fry them until their eyeballs pop.
And we already know the answer, which is why we must never be given the choice...
Your daily reminder that London buses have been CASHLESS and CONTACTLESS ONLY for years. Amazing as it might seem to some, the elderly, disabled and indeed children use them DAILY!
I know it must be a terrible shock, but a lot of people don't come from the TfL area.
So what? It was an example.
Maybe I won't bother vcisiting London again if this is the average Wockney Canker attitude to the poor sods who get robbed left, right and centre, including TfL.
There are a few of these about. To be honest, that amounts to "there have been miscarriages of justice in the past, therefore, this may be one too."
I might be wrong, but I think it is beyond doubt that there was someone murdering and attempting to murder the babies. That, obviously doesn't prove Letby's guilt, but it means the relevance of those other cases is much diminished.
There was a blood test relating to one of the babies who was murdered with an insulin overdose that provided considerable evidence it was murder, rather than a series of tragic coincidences.
Indeed, and when they looked back over older cases, they found the same (high insulin, low C-peptide) for a second baby.
Your daily reminder that London buses have been CASHLESS and CONTACTLESS ONLY for years. Amazing as it might seem to some, the elderly, disabled and indeed children use them DAILY!
I know it must be a terrible shock, but a lot of people don't come from the TfL area.
So what? It was an example.
Maybe I won't bother vcisiting London again if this is the average Wockney Canker attitude to the poor sods who get robbed left, right and centre, including TfL.
Who is robbing whom? Everyone pays exactly the same rate with the contactless system, just tap your card/phone/watch as you go through the gate.
Your daily reminder that London buses have been CASHLESS and CONTACTLESS ONLY for years. Amazing as it might seem to some, the elderly, disabled and indeed children use them DAILY!
Well, both the elderly and the disabled are given a free card to use, so that hardly demonstrates any great proficiency with cashless financial transactions.
Granted that it demonstrates children are able to keep up with technology, though. It's going to take me a while to recover from the shock of learning that.
Your daily reminder that London buses have been CASHLESS and CONTACTLESS ONLY for years. Amazing as it might seem to some, the elderly, disabled and indeed children use them DAILY!
Well, both the elderly and the disabled are given a free card to use, so that hardly demonstrates any great proficiency with cashless financial transactions.
Granted that it demonstrates children are able to keep up with technology, though. It's going to take me a while to recover from the shock of learning that.
They don't get a free card if they are visitors, do they?
Franchising has failed – the last time I checked 5-6 franchises has been renationalised because the moronic privateers who were running them ran them into the ground.
Renationalise what's left, and start afresh.
A single brand, a single arse to kick, a la TfL but for the whole nation.
Ownership isn't the issue - it is mission. Chiltern Railways had a 20 year franchise and utterly transformed the route. Northern Rail had a much shorter franchise and were not contractually allowed to even recognise that passenger numbers had risen, never mind run enough trains.
Since "privatisation" the DfT in various guises have managed a system which is absurdly complex, expensive and legally restrictive rather than run the railways for the passengers. The franchising structure essentially lumbered the industry and the taxpayer with huge costs, management of which has been the key focus.
A commercial enterprise free to plan long term would be great. A stateco run commercially would be great. Ownership isn't the issue - its the DfT. A perfect example - Lumo, the private sector open access operator pirating for passengers between London and Edinburgh. It may be private, but the kind of train it could buy and the exact specification of the interior was dictated by the DfT. If they strayed from their directions the DfT informed them they would not be granted an open access license.
Lumo trains crush their seats in and have minimal luggage space. This creates major problems. But they had to offer a minimum number of seats in a 5 car train or no operation allowed. The DfT direct the seats thing so that politically they can claim expansion on the East Coast route whilst starving Network Rail of actual investment to add actual capacity.
As usual for the UK we're doing it as cheaply as possible whilst charging as much as possible.
Worth watching Ben Elton's The Great Railway Disaster if you haven't already see it. Some elements are stronger than others but some of the examples he gives of moronic attitudes to investment make one wince.
There are many tragedies in the Lucy Letby case, but to see it now reduced to a rush to compel convicted offenders to attend sentencing hearings, which is completely impossible should the offender choose not to cooperate, is to trivialise the whole tragic case.
The issue is justice needs to be seen to be done - and if the convict isn't there it's not fully seen
I think this is the second case where the televised sentencing has been done without the defendant being there. I wonder if the issue is
sentence is going to be televised sentencing is delayed overnight to allow TC cameras to be set up Because the delay has occurred the convicted defendant doesn't attend because the result and sentence isn't going to change.
I've always been against the death penalty. I still am. But reading the victim impact statements on the Letby sentencing is severely challenging my long-held opinions. I was at a funeral of a baby that died at three months of natural causes a few weeks ago and it was absolutely gut-wrenching, terrible. The parents are my friends, they are utterly heartbroken, the grieving process is going to take a long time. It will last all their lives I expect.
Knowing what Letby has done, and the impact it has had on all those families, the dozens of people directly, badly, affected, for the rest of their lives, well it does make make me, for a few seconds, question my long-held beliefs. Lifelong incarceration almost seems too lenient.
"To take a life when a life has been taken, is not justice, it is revenge." - Desmond Tutu.
The death penalty is morally outrageous and vile. She should rot in jail for the rest of her life and think about the impact she has had. Death would be the easy way out.
Oh I agree wholeheartedly. But I must admit there's a part of me, because it is so raw for me seeing the shattering grief of the recently bereaved parents of a young baby I suppose, that would like to see Letby torn apart by a baying crowd for the way she has inflicted this on all those poor babies and their families.
That's not a pleasant thing to admit to myself, or on here, but that's how a small - but also, to me, a surprisingly large - part of me feels.
It's absolutely natural human instinct, and I don't think we can blame anyone for feeling that way. Which is why we need saints like Tutu to point away from that instinct, because the only way out of the cycle of hurt and revenge is for someone entitled to retribution to say they don't want it.
(Saint almost certainly is the right word here. I spent some time living in Mirfield; he had some connections with Yorkshire via the monks there, who were big in the anti apartheid thing. Everyone who I met who had met him bloody loved him.)
Within most of our lifetimes, we have had the death penalty for high treason.
And it was wrong then as it is now.
Perhaps. Oddly for such an emotive issue, I don't think I have passionate opinions either way. I wouldn't want a death sentence for Letby I don't think. Though not to be too much of a ratepayer about it, but I do have a slight resentment that we have to keep her for the rest of her life, which will probably cost more than putting her through Eton on a continual loop.
The evidence suggests that the death penalty is far more expensive than prison.
It must never, ever be brought back. It is appalling.
Is that not in America, where people are on death row for decades? In the UK, I think it was quite brisk, you got an appeal, and if that was thrown out, the sentence was carried out. Of course, there were miscarriages of justice.
Indeed. As one of our (at the time) most respected judges put it, in regard to the Birmingham Six: ..If the six men win, it will mean that the police are guilty of perjury, that they are guilty of violence and threats, that the confessions were invented and improperly admitted in evidence and the convictions were erroneous... This is such an appalling vista that every sensible person in the land would say that it cannot be right that these actions should go any further...
"We shouldn't have all these campaigns to get the Birmingham Six released if they'd been hanged. They'd have been forgotten and the whole community would have been satisfied." ..
The obvious argument against the Death Penalty is that as a deterrent it is an utter failure. If it worked as a deterrent then its introduction would stop murders, but historically it makes no difference to the murder rate and some people have argued that it makes things worse (if you are going to hang for murdering one, why worry about doing a dozen?)
The true argument about the Death Penalty is more about whether we, as a society, want to exact revenge on the apparently guilty.
Cost or deterrence is irrelevant. We have to decide if we are the sort of people who want to hear their neck snap or fry them until their eyeballs pop.
Yes I do think it boils down to this. Do we want the state doing this on our behalf? The 'pros v cons' calculus is important but you have to process that question first.
Within most of our lifetimes, we have had the death penalty for high treason.
And it was wrong then as it is now.
Perhaps. Oddly for such an emotive issue, I don't think I have passionate opinions either way. I wouldn't want a death sentence for Letby I don't think. Though not to be too much of a ratepayer about it, but I do have a slight resentment that we have to keep her for the rest of her life, which will probably cost more than putting her through Eton on a continual loop.
The evidence suggests that the death penalty is far more expensive than prison.
It must never, ever be brought back. It is appalling.
Is that not in America, where people are on death row for decades? In the UK, I think it was quite brisk, you got an appeal, and if that was thrown out, the sentence was carried out. Of course, there were miscarriages of justice.
Indeed. As one of our (at the time) most respected judges put it, in regard to the Birmingham Six: ..If the six men win, it will mean that the police are guilty of perjury, that they are guilty of violence and threats, that the confessions were invented and improperly admitted in evidence and the convictions were erroneous... This is such an appalling vista that every sensible person in the land would say that it cannot be right that these actions should go any further...
"We shouldn't have all these campaigns to get the Birmingham Six released if they'd been hanged. They'd have been forgotten and the whole community would have been satisfied." ..
The obvious argument against the Death Penalty is that as a deterrent it is an utter failure. If it worked as a deterrent then its introduction would stop murders, but historically it makes no difference to the murder rate and some people have argued that it makes things worse (if you are going to hang for murdering one, why worry about doing a dozen?)
The true argument about the Death Penalty is more about whether we, as a society, want to exact revenge on the apparently guilty.
Cost or deterrence is irrelevant. We have to decide if we are the sort of people who want to hear their neck snap or fry them until their eyeballs pop.
Yes I do think it boils down to this. Do we want the state doing this on our behalf? The 'pros v cons' calculus is important but you have to process that question first.
And, also, someone has to do the executing. Do we want those folk to get a frisson (to put it politely) or PTSD?
Your daily reminder that London buses have been CASHLESS and CONTACTLESS ONLY for years. Amazing as it might seem to some, the elderly, disabled and indeed children use them DAILY!
I know it must be a terrible shock, but a lot of people don't come from the TfL area.
Indeed and those of who aren't are equally able to embrace modern, more safer technology over antiquated and deadly inferior ones.
Franchising has failed – the last time I checked 5-6 franchises has been renationalised because the moronic privateers who were running them ran them into the ground.
Renationalise what's left, and start afresh.
A single brand, a single arse to kick, a la TfL but for the whole nation.
Ownership isn't the issue - it is mission. Chiltern Railways had a 20 year franchise and utterly transformed the route. Northern Rail had a much shorter franchise and were not contractually allowed to even recognise that passenger numbers had risen, never mind run enough trains.
Since "privatisation" the DfT in various guises have managed a system which is absurdly complex, expensive and legally restrictive rather than run the railways for the passengers. The franchising structure essentially lumbered the industry and the taxpayer with huge costs, management of which has been the key focus.
A commercial enterprise free to plan long term would be great. A stateco run commercially would be great. Ownership isn't the issue - its the DfT. A perfect example - Lumo, the private sector open access operator pirating for passengers between London and Edinburgh. It may be private, but the kind of train it could buy and the exact specification of the interior was dictated by the DfT. If they strayed from their directions the DfT informed them they would not be granted an open access license.
Lumo trains crush their seats in and have minimal luggage space. This creates major problems. But they had to offer a minimum number of seats in a 5 car train or no operation allowed. The DfT direct the seats thing so that politically they can claim expansion on the East Coast route whilst starving Network Rail of actual investment to add actual capacity.
As usual for the UK we're doing it as cheaply as possible whilst charging as much as possible.
No joined up thinking either. We should mandate 100% mobile coverage on all train lines but Network Rail are not forced to give up their infrastructure which they already use for GSM-R.
Your daily reminder that London buses have been CASHLESS and CONTACTLESS ONLY for years. Amazing as it might seem to some, the elderly, disabled and indeed children use them DAILY!
Well, both the elderly and the disabled are given a free card to use, so that hardly demonstrates any great proficiency with cashless financial transactions.
Granted that it demonstrates children are able to keep up with technology, though. It's going to take me a while to recover from the shock of learning that.
Within most of our lifetimes, we have had the death penalty for high treason.
And it was wrong then as it is now.
Perhaps. Oddly for such an emotive issue, I don't think I have passionate opinions either way. I wouldn't want a death sentence for Letby I don't think. Though not to be too much of a ratepayer about it, but I do have a slight resentment that we have to keep her for the rest of her life, which will probably cost more than putting her through Eton on a continual loop.
The evidence suggests that the death penalty is far more expensive than prison.
It must never, ever be brought back. It is appalling.
Is that not in America, where people are on death row for decades? In the UK, I think it was quite brisk, you got an appeal, and if that was thrown out, the sentence was carried out. Of course, there were miscarriages of justice.
Indeed. As one of our (at the time) most respected judges put it, in regard to the Birmingham Six: ..If the six men win, it will mean that the police are guilty of perjury, that they are guilty of violence and threats, that the confessions were invented and improperly admitted in evidence and the convictions were erroneous... This is such an appalling vista that every sensible person in the land would say that it cannot be right that these actions should go any further...
"We shouldn't have all these campaigns to get the Birmingham Six released if they'd been hanged. They'd have been forgotten and the whole community would have been satisfied." ..
The obvious argument against the Death Penalty is that as a deterrent it is an utter failure. If it worked as a deterrent then its introduction would stop murders, but historically it makes no difference to the murder rate and some people have argued that it makes things worse (if you are going to hang for murdering one, why worry about doing a dozen?)
The true argument about the Death Penalty is more about whether we, as a society, want to exact revenge on the apparently guilty.
Cost or deterrence is irrelevant. We have to decide if we are the sort of people who want to hear their neck snap or fry them until their eyeballs pop.
Yes I do think it boils down to this. Do we want the state doing this on our behalf? The 'pros v cons' calculus is important but you have to process that question first.
Franchising has failed – the last time I checked 5-6 franchises has been renationalised because the moronic privateers who were running them ran them into the ground.
Renationalise what's left, and start afresh.
A single brand, a single arse to kick, a la TfL but for the whole nation.
Ownership isn't the issue - it is mission. Chiltern Railways had a 20 year franchise and utterly transformed the route. Northern Rail had a much shorter franchise and were not contractually allowed to even recognise that passenger numbers had risen, never mind run enough trains.
Since "privatisation" the DfT in various guises have managed a system which is absurdly complex, expensive and legally restrictive rather than run the railways for the passengers. The franchising structure essentially lumbered the industry and the taxpayer with huge costs, management of which has been the key focus.
A commercial enterprise free to plan long term would be great. A stateco run commercially would be great. Ownership isn't the issue - its the DfT. A perfect example - Lumo, the private sector open access operator pirating for passengers between London and Edinburgh. It may be private, but the kind of train it could buy and the exact specification of the interior was dictated by the DfT. If they strayed from their directions the DfT informed them they would not be granted an open access license.
Lumo trains crush their seats in and have minimal luggage space. This creates major problems. But they had to offer a minimum number of seats in a 5 car train or no operation allowed. The DfT direct the seats thing so that politically they can claim expansion on the East Coast route whilst starving Network Rail of actual investment to add actual capacity.
As usual for the UK we're doing it as cheaply as possible whilst charging as much as possible.
Worth watching Ben Elton's The Great Railway Disaster if you haven't already see it. Some elements are stronger than others but some of the examples he gives of moronic attitudes to investment make one wince.
And one of the biggest issues has been the lack of a proper unified ticketing system. Someone uised to a simple daily trip on TfL has no ****ing idea what it is like on the rest of the [edit] UK network, or rather networks.
The lack of ticket offices with knowledgerable folk [edit] will make it much, much harder for many people to avoid the traps.
I've always been against the death penalty. I still am. But reading the victim impact statements on the Letby sentencing is severely challenging my long-held opinions. I was at a funeral of a baby that died at three months of natural causes a few weeks ago and it was absolutely gut-wrenching, terrible. The parents are my friends, they are utterly heartbroken, the grieving process is going to take a long time. It will last all their lives I expect.
Knowing what Letby has done, and the impact it has had on all those families, the dozens of people directly, badly, affected, for the rest of their lives, well it does make make me, for a few seconds, question my long-held beliefs. Lifelong incarceration almost seems too lenient.
"To take a life when a life has been taken, is not justice, it is revenge." - Desmond Tutu.
The death penalty is morally outrageous and vile. She should rot in jail for the rest of her life and think about the impact she has had. Death would be the easy way out.
Oh I agree wholeheartedly. But I must admit there's a part of me, because it is so raw for me seeing the shattering grief of the recently bereaved parents of a young baby I suppose, that would like to see Letby torn apart by a baying crowd for the way she has inflicted this on all those poor babies and their families.
That's not a pleasant thing to admit to myself, or on here, but that's how a small - but also, to me, a surprisingly large - part of me feels.
You are allowed to feel the way you feel but fundamentally I believe you to be a good person because you are open to talk about it and acknowledge you are wrong. That is a good thing of which you should be congratulated as many do not think as intelligently as you.
Your daily reminder that London buses have been CASHLESS and CONTACTLESS ONLY for years. Amazing as it might seem to some, the elderly, disabled and indeed children use them DAILY!
I know it must be a terrible shock, but a lot of people don't come from the TfL area.
Indeed and those of who aren't are equally able to embrace modern, more safer technology over antiquated and deadly inferior ones.
Within most of our lifetimes, we have had the death penalty for high treason.
And it was wrong then as it is now.
Perhaps. Oddly for such an emotive issue, I don't think I have passionate opinions either way. I wouldn't want a death sentence for Letby I don't think. Though not to be too much of a ratepayer about it, but I do have a slight resentment that we have to keep her for the rest of her life, which will probably cost more than putting her through Eton on a continual loop.
The evidence suggests that the death penalty is far more expensive than prison.
It must never, ever be brought back. It is appalling.
Is that not in America, where people are on death row for decades? In the UK, I think it was quite brisk, you got an appeal, and if that was thrown out, the sentence was carried out. Of course, there were miscarriages of justice.
Indeed. As one of our (at the time) most respected judges put it, in regard to the Birmingham Six: ..If the six men win, it will mean that the police are guilty of perjury, that they are guilty of violence and threats, that the confessions were invented and improperly admitted in evidence and the convictions were erroneous... This is such an appalling vista that every sensible person in the land would say that it cannot be right that these actions should go any further...
"We shouldn't have all these campaigns to get the Birmingham Six released if they'd been hanged. They'd have been forgotten and the whole community would have been satisfied." ..
I've always thought that quotation one of the most chilling things I've ever read. Quite evil really, and incredible he even felt able to express it openly.
There are a few of these about. To be honest, that amounts to "there have been miscarriages of justice in the past, therefore, this may be one too."
I might be wrong, but I think it is beyond doubt that there was someone murdering and attempting to murder the babies. That, obviously doesn't prove Letby's guilt, but it means the relevance of those other cases is much diminished.
Yes, there's a vast statistical difference between:
Person X is correlated with a surprising number of patient deaths Person X is correlated with a surprising number of patient deaths, at least some of whom were murdered.
The table I saw had about 30 nurses on it, none of whom were on shift for more than 7 of the incidents, whereas Letby was there for all 25. On its own I don't think that would constitute very good evidence, but combined with everything else, it is.
Technically the second case should read "... were murdered, and no-one else was murdered on other occasions." But quite. You saw the whole table, I assume, not the edited down one that at least one media source used?
I hope someone along the line did a version with solid colour for the official shifts and pale colour for the adjacent ones - just to cover the issue DavidL spotted in his own case.
There are a few of these about. To be honest, that amounts to "there have been miscarriages of justice in the past, therefore, this may be one too."
I might be wrong, but I think it is beyond doubt that there was someone murdering and attempting to murder the babies. That, obviously doesn't prove Letby's guilt, but it means the relevance of those other cases is much diminished.
Yes, there's a vast statistical difference between:
Person X is correlated with a surprising number of patient deaths Person X is correlated with a surprising number of patient deaths, at least some of whom were murdered.
The table I saw had about 30 nurses on it, none of whom were on shift for more than 7 of the incidents, whereas Letby was there for all 25. On its own I don't think that would constitute very good evidence, but combined with everything else, it is.
Technically the second case should read "... were murdered, and no-one else was murdered on other occasions." But quite. You saw the whole table, I assume, not the edited down one that at least one media source used?
I hope someone along the line did a version with solid colour for the official shifts and pale colour for the adjacent ones - just to cover the issue DavidL spotted in his own case.
Franchising has failed – the last time I checked 5-6 franchises has been renationalised because the moronic privateers who were running them ran them into the ground.
Renationalise what's left, and start afresh.
A single brand, a single arse to kick, a la TfL but for the whole nation.
Ownership isn't the issue - it is mission. Chiltern Railways had a 20 year franchise and utterly transformed the route. Northern Rail had a much shorter franchise and were not contractually allowed to even recognise that passenger numbers had risen, never mind run enough trains.
Since "privatisation" the DfT in various guises have managed a system which is absurdly complex, expensive and legally restrictive rather than run the railways for the passengers. The franchising structure essentially lumbered the industry and the taxpayer with huge costs, management of which has been the key focus.
A commercial enterprise free to plan long term would be great. A stateco run commercially would be great. Ownership isn't the issue - its the DfT. A perfect example - Lumo, the private sector open access operator pirating for passengers between London and Edinburgh. It may be private, but the kind of train it could buy and the exact specification of the interior was dictated by the DfT. If they strayed from their directions the DfT informed them they would not be granted an open access license.
Lumo trains crush their seats in and have minimal luggage space. This creates major problems. But they had to offer a minimum number of seats in a 5 car train or no operation allowed. The DfT direct the seats thing so that politically they can claim expansion on the East Coast route whilst starving Network Rail of actual investment to add actual capacity.
As usual for the UK we're doing it as cheaply as possible whilst charging as much as possible.
Worth watching Ben Elton's The Great Railway Disaster if you haven't already see it. Some elements are stronger than others but some of the examples he gives of moronic attitudes to investment make one wince.
And one of the biggest issues has been the lack of a proper unified ticketing system. Someone uised to a simple daily trip on TfL has no ****ing idea what it is like on the rest of the network.
The lack of ticket offices with knowledgerable folk makes it much, much harder for many people to avoid the traps.
I can confirm, I landed at Heathrow and had to get the train across London and it was totally baffling. I couldn't tell what ticket I needed, there was nobody to help, and you couldn't hear WTF the announcer was saying about where the train was going because he didn't enunciate the words properly. It must be way worse for people who don't speak much English.
Honestly if there was a single manager involved who gave a fuck they could watch people trying to understand it for a day and fix it all, I bet they're confusing thousands of people in the same way every day.
Franchising has failed – the last time I checked 5-6 franchises has been renationalised because the moronic privateers who were running them ran them into the ground.
Renationalise what's left, and start afresh.
A single brand, a single arse to kick, a la TfL but for the whole nation.
Ownership isn't the issue - it is mission. Chiltern Railways had a 20 year franchise and utterly transformed the route. Northern Rail had a much shorter franchise and were not contractually allowed to even recognise that passenger numbers had risen, never mind run enough trains.
Since "privatisation" the DfT in various guises have managed a system which is absurdly complex, expensive and legally restrictive rather than run the railways for the passengers. The franchising structure essentially lumbered the industry and the taxpayer with huge costs, management of which has been the key focus.
A commercial enterprise free to plan long term would be great. A stateco run commercially would be great. Ownership isn't the issue - its the DfT. A perfect example - Lumo, the private sector open access operator pirating for passengers between London and Edinburgh. It may be private, but the kind of train it could buy and the exact specification of the interior was dictated by the DfT. If they strayed from their directions the DfT informed them they would not be granted an open access license.
Lumo trains crush their seats in and have minimal luggage space. This creates major problems. But they had to offer a minimum number of seats in a 5 car train or no operation allowed. The DfT direct the seats thing so that politically they can claim expansion on the East Coast route whilst starving Network Rail of actual investment to add actual capacity.
As usual for the UK we're doing it as cheaply as possible whilst charging as much as possible.
Worth watching Ben Elton's The Great Railway Disaster if you haven't already see it. Some elements are stronger than others but some of the examples he gives of moronic attitudes to investment make one wince.
And one of the biggest issues has been the lack of a proper unified ticketing system. Someone uised to a simple daily trip on TfL has no ****ing idea what it is like on the rest of the [edit] UK network, or rather networks.
The lack of ticket offices with knowledgerable folk [edit] will make it much, much harder for many people to avoid the traps.
Yes, it should be possible to tap your card at the start of your journey, and again at the end of it, and automatically have the cheapest fare charged. Anywhere in the country.
Same as with the various car charging schemes, one should be able to register one’s car once nationally, and receive a bill at the end of the month.
Too many transport solutions rely on convoluted rules and income from fines, so they make the system as complex as possible to try and catch people out. It’s the sort of thing that really annoys people.
Meanwhile, while everyone's been appalled by the Letby case or following the football, the Post Office Board has written to the Business Select Committee saying that no, the Board members will not be repaying the bonuses they awarded themselves for complying with the Inquiry even though -
- they have not complied with the Inquiry's demands - the accounts they were responsible for were misleading - the bonuses were justified by false information contained in those accounts.
This case, the endless NHS and police scandals and much else are symptomatic of a country with public organizations which are functional only in a basic way because they are running on fuel in the tank - structures, systems, practices etc., - created by previous generations.
But those running them now don't know how to put fuel in the tank or maintain the car. Or even where they're supposed to be driving to.
But what they are mostly good at is nicking the valuable bits out of the car, causing accidents and running away from those accidents as fast as possible.
Lots of people employed by these organisations, especially at the top, seem to think they exist principally for the benefit of those inside them - not to serve any actual purpose or function for others. So reputation (untethered to any actual achievement) becomes more important than anything else. My heart sinks when I see those passive aggressive notices saying that staff have a right to do their jobs without being assaulted etc - not because I disagree with the sentiment (good manners to those providing a service to you should be a given) - but because it so often indicates an organisation which thinks that it is doing you - the customer, client, patient etc., - an enormous favour in bothering to deal with you at all.
Politics is fast becoming broken in this country.
I can only admire the optimism of that last sentence.
It implies that it's not already broken beyond repair.
Disgusting behaviour from the Post Office, but sadly not in any way unexpected.
Meanwhile, while everyone's been appalled by the Letby case or following the football, the Post Office Board has written to the Business Select Committee saying that no, the Board members will not be repaying the bonuses they awarded themselves for complying with the Inquiry even though -
- they have not complied with the Inquiry's demands - the accounts they were responsible for were misleading - the bonuses were justified by false information contained in those accounts.
This case, the endless NHS and police scandals and much else are symptomatic of a country with public organizations which are functional only in a basic way because they are running on fuel in the tank - structures, systems, practices etc., - created by previous generations.
But those running them now don't know how to put fuel in the tank or maintain the car. Or even where they're supposed to be driving to.
But what they are mostly good at is nicking the valuable bits out of the car, causing accidents and running away from those accidents as fast as possible.
Lots of people employed by these organisations, especially at the top, seem to think they exist principally for the benefit of those inside them - not to serve any actual purpose or function for others. So reputation (untethered to any actual achievement) becomes more important than anything else. My heart sinks when I see those passive aggressive notices saying that staff have a right to do their jobs without being assaulted etc - not because I disagree with the sentiment (good manners to those providing a service to you should be a given) - but because it so often indicates an organisation which thinks that it is doing you - the customer, client, patient etc., - an enormous favour in bothering to deal with you at all.
Politics is fast becoming broken in this country.
I can only admire the optimism of that last sentence.
It implies that it's not already broken beyond repair.
Disgusting behaviour from the Post Office, but sadly not in any way unexpected.
NU10K
I look forward to the interviews, in a gloss magazine perhaps. A photo study of a lovely country house, and a chat, with a trembling lip, about the difficulty and pain the scandal has caused - nasty people blaming them for doing their jobs correctly.
One of the Letby Nursing Managers, Alison Kelly, now in charge of nursing in Salford and Rochdale, has been suspended. The scruffy herbert who was the CEO has retired - after a number of other well-paid jobs - with his pension to France.
I trust that Alison Kelly is on full pay, and has her lawyers paid for by her new employers?
Isn't it Ian Harvey, the former medical director, who has reired to France? "Scruffy Herbert", AKA Tony Chambers, the former Chief Executive, has gone on to hold a surprising number of posts as interim chief Executive of NHS Trusts. (Don't people ever ask at job interviews: "Why did you leave your last post?")
You may well be right. At any event, a lot of these people went on to get other posts. Why? I just don't know how they can sleep at night. Even if they genuinely thought they were trying to do the right thing, knowing that on their watch babies were killed in part because of their actions and failure to act should induce a sense of shame and guilt which - if it happened to me - would make me unfit to do anything.
Or want to do anything, frankly.
How could you - in all conscience - ask or expect people to trust you, unless you had really understood what you did wrong and were open about that and really determined to make amends. And even then ....
There seems to be a lack of shame in the public sector, possibly in society in general. Back in the 80s I attended an inquiry into the murder of a psychiatric social worker in the mental hospital where she worked by an ex-patient. The community care arrangements for the discharged patient had collapsed, her condition deteriorated and she fixated on this social worker, who had tried to help her. The point is that many of those involved: two psychiatrists, a housing officer and a community social worker, had had breakdowns after the murder and felt unable to continue in their career.
In the Letby case, it is difficult to see those professionals involved suffering even a temporary blip in their career.
In the 60s, after being involved in a sex scandal, John Profumo spent decades working in the East End as a form of redemption. Matt Hancock appeared on "I'm a Celebrity...."
Shame and guilt are essentially religious concepts. It is no surprise they are on the decline.
There are a few of these about. To be honest, that amounts to "there have been miscarriages of justice in the past, therefore, this may be one too."
I might be wrong, but I think it is beyond doubt that there was someone murdering and attempting to murder the babies. That, obviously doesn't prove Letby's guilt, but it means the relevance of those other cases is much diminished.
Yes, there's a vast statistical difference between:
Person X is correlated with a surprising number of patient deaths Person X is correlated with a surprising number of patient deaths, at least some of whom were murdered.
The table I saw had about 30 nurses on it, none of whom were on shift for more than 7 of the incidents, whereas Letby was there for all 25. On its own I don't think that would constitute very good evidence, but combined with everything else, it is.
Technically the second case should read "... were murdered, and no-one else was murdered on other occasions." But quite. You saw the whole table, I assume, not the edited down one that at least one media source used?
I hope someone along the line did a version with solid colour for the official shifts and pale colour for the adjacent ones - just to cover the issue DavidL spotted in his own case.
Thank you. That's just the official shifts, but one hopes that the obvious issue DavidL spotted in his case has been covered.
There was a lengthy trial with many, many days of evidence and cross-examination. Is it not reasonable to presume, as a starting point, that the defence lawyers knew what they were doing and that random people on the Internet thinking about this for a few minutes are unlikely to come up with major flaws in the case?
Franchising has failed – the last time I checked 5-6 franchises has been renationalised because the moronic privateers who were running them ran them into the ground.
Renationalise what's left, and start afresh.
A single brand, a single arse to kick, a la TfL but for the whole nation.
Ownership isn't the issue - it is mission. Chiltern Railways had a 20 year franchise and utterly transformed the route. Northern Rail had a much shorter franchise and were not contractually allowed to even recognise that passenger numbers had risen, never mind run enough trains.
Since "privatisation" the DfT in various guises have managed a system which is absurdly complex, expensive and legally restrictive rather than run the railways for the passengers. The franchising structure essentially lumbered the industry and the taxpayer with huge costs, management of which has been the key focus.
A commercial enterprise free to plan long term would be great. A stateco run commercially would be great. Ownership isn't the issue - its the DfT. A perfect example - Lumo, the private sector open access operator pirating for passengers between London and Edinburgh. It may be private, but the kind of train it could buy and the exact specification of the interior was dictated by the DfT. If they strayed from their directions the DfT informed them they would not be granted an open access license.
Lumo trains crush their seats in and have minimal luggage space. This creates major problems. But they had to offer a minimum number of seats in a 5 car train or no operation allowed. The DfT direct the seats thing so that politically they can claim expansion on the East Coast route whilst starving Network Rail of actual investment to add actual capacity.
As usual for the UK we're doing it as cheaply as possible whilst charging as much as possible.
Worth watching Ben Elton's The Great Railway Disaster if you haven't already see it. Some elements are stronger than others but some of the examples he gives of moronic attitudes to investment make one wince.
And one of the biggest issues has been the lack of a proper unified ticketing system. Someone uised to a simple daily trip on TfL has no ****ing idea what it is like on the rest of the network.
The lack of ticket offices with knowledgerable folk makes it much, much harder for many people to avoid the traps.
I can confirm, I landed at Heathrow and had to get the train across London and it was totally baffling. I couldn't tell what ticket I needed, there was nobody to help, and you couldn't hear WTF the announcer was saying about where the train was going because he didn't enunciate the words properly. It must be way worse for people who don't speak much English.
Honestly if there was a single manager involved who gave a fuck they could watch people trying to understand it for a day and fix it all, I bet they're confusing thousands of people in the same way every day.
Really? It's pretty obvious and there are maps everywhere. I've never struggled in any major city to use the rapid transit system. I just look at the route map and/or consult my phone.
On the death penalty, I don't think anybody has mentioned the Birmingham Six. So I will. 16 years, IIRC, in prison before they won their appeal. And if, in 1975, we'd had the death penalty, then some if not all of the six would have been goners.
See Denning quote upthread.
Denning made some controversial comments as he got older but was still one of our most brilliant judges
Franchising has failed – the last time I checked 5-6 franchises has been renationalised because the moronic privateers who were running them ran them into the ground.
Renationalise what's left, and start afresh.
A single brand, a single arse to kick, a la TfL but for the whole nation.
Ownership isn't the issue - it is mission. Chiltern Railways had a 20 year franchise and utterly transformed the route. Northern Rail had a much shorter franchise and were not contractually allowed to even recognise that passenger numbers had risen, never mind run enough trains.
Since "privatisation" the DfT in various guises have managed a system which is absurdly complex, expensive and legally restrictive rather than run the railways for the passengers. The franchising structure essentially lumbered the industry and the taxpayer with huge costs, management of which has been the key focus.
A commercial enterprise free to plan long term would be great. A stateco run commercially would be great. Ownership isn't the issue - its the DfT. A perfect example - Lumo, the private sector open access operator pirating for passengers between London and Edinburgh. It may be private, but the kind of train it could buy and the exact specification of the interior was dictated by the DfT. If they strayed from their directions the DfT informed them they would not be granted an open access license.
Lumo trains crush their seats in and have minimal luggage space. This creates major problems. But they had to offer a minimum number of seats in a 5 car train or no operation allowed. The DfT direct the seats thing so that politically they can claim expansion on the East Coast route whilst starving Network Rail of actual investment to add actual capacity.
As usual for the UK we're doing it as cheaply as possible whilst charging as much as possible.
Worth watching Ben Elton's The Great Railway Disaster if you haven't already see it. Some elements are stronger than others but some of the examples he gives of moronic attitudes to investment make one wince.
And one of the biggest issues has been the lack of a proper unified ticketing system. Someone uised to a simple daily trip on TfL has no ****ing idea what it is like on the rest of the network.
The lack of ticket offices with knowledgerable folk makes it much, much harder for many people to avoid the traps.
I can confirm, I landed at Heathrow and had to get the train across London and it was totally baffling. I couldn't tell what ticket I needed, there was nobody to help, and you couldn't hear WTF the announcer was saying about where the train was going because he didn't enunciate the words properly. It must be way worse for people who don't speak much English.
Honestly if there was a single manager involved who gave a fuck they could watch people trying to understand it for a day and fix it all, I bet they're confusing thousands of people in the same way every day.
Isn't that basically the business model for Heathrow/Gatwick Express? Charge an absurd premium to grockles who have no way of knowing better?
Sometimes, the profit motive doesn't lead to better services.
Franchising has failed – the last time I checked 5-6 franchises has been renationalised because the moronic privateers who were running them ran them into the ground.
Renationalise what's left, and start afresh.
A single brand, a single arse to kick, a la TfL but for the whole nation.
Ownership isn't the issue - it is mission. Chiltern Railways had a 20 year franchise and utterly transformed the route. Northern Rail had a much shorter franchise and were not contractually allowed to even recognise that passenger numbers had risen, never mind run enough trains.
Since "privatisation" the DfT in various guises have managed a system which is absurdly complex, expensive and legally restrictive rather than run the railways for the passengers. The franchising structure essentially lumbered the industry and the taxpayer with huge costs, management of which has been the key focus.
A commercial enterprise free to plan long term would be great. A stateco run commercially would be great. Ownership isn't the issue - its the DfT. A perfect example - Lumo, the private sector open access operator pirating for passengers between London and Edinburgh. It may be private, but the kind of train it could buy and the exact specification of the interior was dictated by the DfT. If they strayed from their directions the DfT informed them they would not be granted an open access license.
Lumo trains crush their seats in and have minimal luggage space. This creates major problems. But they had to offer a minimum number of seats in a 5 car train or no operation allowed. The DfT direct the seats thing so that politically they can claim expansion on the East Coast route whilst starving Network Rail of actual investment to add actual capacity.
As usual for the UK we're doing it as cheaply as possible whilst charging as much as possible.
Worth watching Ben Elton's The Great Railway Disaster if you haven't already see it. Some elements are stronger than others but some of the examples he gives of moronic attitudes to investment make one wince.
And one of the biggest issues has been the lack of a proper unified ticketing system. Someone uised to a simple daily trip on TfL has no ****ing idea what it is like on the rest of the [edit] UK network, or rather networks.
The lack of ticket offices with knowledgerable folk [edit] will make it much, much harder for many people to avoid the traps.
Yes, it should be possible to tap your card at the start of your journey, and again at the end of it, and automatically have the cheapest fare charged. Anywhere in the country.
Same as with the various car charging schemes, one should be able to register one’s car once nationally, and receive a bill at the end of the month.
Too many transport solutions rely on convoluted rules and income from fines, so they make the system as complex as possible to try and catch people out. It’s the sort of thing that really annoys people.
Spot on, which is another reason to have a single national operator and a law that says passengers automatically pay the cheapest fare (which is the TfL contactless system). TfL I believe carries more passengers each day than the rest of the rail network combined, so it's perfectly possible to do this. Just needs a single body and political will.
The existing ticketing system (outside London) is shambolic.
Franchising has failed – the last time I checked 5-6 franchises has been renationalised because the moronic privateers who were running them ran them into the ground.
Renationalise what's left, and start afresh.
A single brand, a single arse to kick, a la TfL but for the whole nation.
Ownership isn't the issue - it is mission. Chiltern Railways had a 20 year franchise and utterly transformed the route. Northern Rail had a much shorter franchise and were not contractually allowed to even recognise that passenger numbers had risen, never mind run enough trains.
Since "privatisation" the DfT in various guises have managed a system which is absurdly complex, expensive and legally restrictive rather than run the railways for the passengers. The franchising structure essentially lumbered the industry and the taxpayer with huge costs, management of which has been the key focus.
A commercial enterprise free to plan long term would be great. A stateco run commercially would be great. Ownership isn't the issue - its the DfT. A perfect example - Lumo, the private sector open access operator pirating for passengers between London and Edinburgh. It may be private, but the kind of train it could buy and the exact specification of the interior was dictated by the DfT. If they strayed from their directions the DfT informed them they would not be granted an open access license.
Lumo trains crush their seats in and have minimal luggage space. This creates major problems. But they had to offer a minimum number of seats in a 5 car train or no operation allowed. The DfT direct the seats thing so that politically they can claim expansion on the East Coast route whilst starving Network Rail of actual investment to add actual capacity.
As usual for the UK we're doing it as cheaply as possible whilst charging as much as possible.
Worth watching Ben Elton's The Great Railway Disaster if you haven't already see it. Some elements are stronger than others but some of the examples he gives of moronic attitudes to investment make one wince.
And one of the biggest issues has been the lack of a proper unified ticketing system. Someone uised to a simple daily trip on TfL has no ****ing idea what it is like on the rest of the [edit] UK network, or rather networks.
The lack of ticket offices with knowledgerable folk [edit] will make it much, much harder for many people to avoid the traps.
Yes, it should be possible to tap your card at the start of your journey, and again at the end of it, and automatically have the cheapest fare charged. Anywhere in the country.
Same as with the various car charging schemes, one should be able to register one’s car once nationally, and receive a bill at the end of the month.
Too many transport solutions rely on convoluted rules and income from fines, so they make the system as complex as possible to try and catch people out. It’s the sort of thing that really annoys people.
I think a national ticketing system that operates as a direct debit would be amazing. You get charged full price for each transaction, but get a big discount at the end of the month if you travel 4x a week or something. It's transparent, with each line given a rating for how expensive it is (ECML "A" etc).
You could even have an fun awards system - 100% off all travel if you manage to go on every rail line in the UK. I can think of one PBer...
Franchising has failed – the last time I checked 5-6 franchises has been renationalised because the moronic privateers who were running them ran them into the ground.
Renationalise what's left, and start afresh.
A single brand, a single arse to kick, a la TfL but for the whole nation.
Ownership isn't the issue - it is mission. Chiltern Railways had a 20 year franchise and utterly transformed the route. Northern Rail had a much shorter franchise and were not contractually allowed to even recognise that passenger numbers had risen, never mind run enough trains.
Since "privatisation" the DfT in various guises have managed a system which is absurdly complex, expensive and legally restrictive rather than run the railways for the passengers. The franchising structure essentially lumbered the industry and the taxpayer with huge costs, management of which has been the key focus.
A commercial enterprise free to plan long term would be great. A stateco run commercially would be great. Ownership isn't the issue - its the DfT. A perfect example - Lumo, the private sector open access operator pirating for passengers between London and Edinburgh. It may be private, but the kind of train it could buy and the exact specification of the interior was dictated by the DfT. If they strayed from their directions the DfT informed them they would not be granted an open access license.
Lumo trains crush their seats in and have minimal luggage space. This creates major problems. But they had to offer a minimum number of seats in a 5 car train or no operation allowed. The DfT direct the seats thing so that politically they can claim expansion on the East Coast route whilst starving Network Rail of actual investment to add actual capacity.
As usual for the UK we're doing it as cheaply as possible whilst charging as much as possible.
Worth watching Ben Elton's The Great Railway Disaster if you haven't already see it. Some elements are stronger than others but some of the examples he gives of moronic attitudes to investment make one wince.
And one of the biggest issues has been the lack of a proper unified ticketing system. Someone uised to a simple daily trip on TfL has no ****ing idea what it is like on the rest of the network.
The lack of ticket offices with knowledgerable folk makes it much, much harder for many people to avoid the traps.
I can confirm, I landed at Heathrow and had to get the train across London and it was totally baffling. I couldn't tell what ticket I needed, there was nobody to help, and you couldn't hear WTF the announcer was saying about where the train was going because he didn't enunciate the words properly. It must be way worse for people who don't speak much English.
Honestly if there was a single manager involved who gave a fuck they could watch people trying to understand it for a day and fix it all, I bet they're confusing thousands of people in the same way every day.
Isn't that basically the business model for Heathrow/Gatwick Express? Charge an absurd premium to grockles who have no way of knowing better?
Frequently, the profit motive leads to worse services.
I've always been against the death penalty. I still am. But reading the victim impact statements on the Letby sentencing is severely challenging my long-held opinions. I was at a funeral of a baby that died at three months of natural causes a few weeks ago and it was absolutely gut-wrenching, terrible. The parents are my friends, they are utterly heartbroken, the grieving process is going to take a long time. It will last all their lives I expect.
Knowing what Letby has done, and the impact it has had on all those families, the dozens of people directly, badly, affected, for the rest of their lives, well it does make make me, for a few seconds, question my long-held beliefs. Lifelong incarceration almost seems too lenient.
"To take a life when a life has been taken, is not justice, it is revenge." - Desmond Tutu.
The death penalty is morally outrageous and vile. She should rot in jail for the rest of her life and think about the impact she has had. Death would be the easy way out.
If we could be 100% certain that the death penalty would only apply to those horrendously guilty, then I'd be OK with that level of revenge for crimes like this.
But we can't.
No manmade system is infallible. Life has risk. I say that a lot lately it seems, but its true - nothing can be perfect, we live in an imperfect world and people will always make mistakes.
So just as we have to accept that we can't prevent accidents or disease, we also have to accept we can't prevent miscarriages of justice.
And if miscarriages of justice can exist, then we can at least ensure that those who are victims of them aren't accidentally killed by the state in the mistaken belief they were guilty.
Forget Letby. Only a few days ago we were talking about the Andrew Malkinson case where he languished in prison for a crime he didn't commit. Compensation can't reward him for that time lost, but at least he's still alive. How many Malkinson's would be dead before they could see a false conviction overturned if we restored the death penalty?
And for that reason, and that reason alone, we must never under any circumstances ever restore the death penalty.
And if we do explicitly pursue revenge through the justice system, we need to be honest about it.
We can also be confident that there will always be a desire to go a little bit further with revenge, and if we're using it for that, we need to have a decent argument over where and why we draw the line.
We'd expect to start with quick, painless (or as painless as possible) and merciful executions. And when we still have horrendous crimes and our anger comes forth again in a desire to make revenge more meaningful, the contradiction of "revenge" and "merciful" will be the first thing on the chopping block. "Why should we strive to make this monster's end so quick and painless!?!?"
After all, the entire point will be revenge. Why not add a bit of pain and suffering so the criminal's final moments are those of agony and despair? Isn't that more fitting, considering what they put their victim or victims through?
Just a slippery slope argument? Maybe - but historically, executions became ever more painful and gruesome because the point of them was revenge. Why shouldn't we add pain and suffering to the death? Why shouldn't we fit in a bit of judicious (and judicial) torture in there? Why shouldn't we torture them to death? Hanging, drawing, and quartering is still in the history books.
Because we're civilized? Because it's wrong to torture people or cause unnecessary pain and harm? Because that's just revenge? We've stepped past all three of those in moving towards judicial killing for revenge, after all.
Everyone will have their own point at where they'd draw the line when it comes to revenge killing and/or torture. Opening this particular gate means we're in the domain where that becomes a subjective argument on what we can stomach at any particular time. Dangerous territory.
On the death penalty, I don't think anybody has mentioned the Birmingham Six. So I will. 16 years, IIRC, in prison before they won their appeal. And if, in 1975, we'd had the death penalty, then some if not all of the six would have been goners.
See Denning quote upthread.
Denning made some controversial comments as he got older but was still one of our most brilliant judges
...who was perfectly willing to kill people if it meant maintaining faith in the system. Whilst he is in a horrible way correct - the criminal justice system is a way of keeping civil society going - it's not a stance I would hold with.
I've always been against the death penalty. I still am. But reading the victim impact statements on the Letby sentencing is severely challenging my long-held opinions. I was at a funeral of a baby that died at three months of natural causes a few weeks ago and it was absolutely gut-wrenching, terrible. The parents are my friends, they are utterly heartbroken, the grieving process is going to take a long time. It will last all their lives I expect.
Knowing what Letby has done, and the impact it has had on all those families, the dozens of people directly, badly, affected, for the rest of their lives, well it does make make me, for a few seconds, question my long-held beliefs. Lifelong incarceration almost seems too lenient.
"To take a life when a life has been taken, is not justice, it is revenge." - Desmond Tutu.
The death penalty is morally outrageous and vile. She should rot in jail for the rest of her life and think about the impact she has had. Death would be the easy way out.
Oh I agree wholeheartedly. But I must admit there's a part of me, because it is so raw for me seeing the shattering grief of the recently bereaved parents of a young baby I suppose, that would like to see Letby torn apart by a baying crowd for the way she has inflicted this on all those poor babies and their families.
That's not a pleasant thing to admit to myself, or on here, but that's how a small - but also, to me, a surprisingly large - part of me feels.
The very extended time hat the jury took makes me especially dubious about that. I know that doesn't amount to "reasonable doubt", but it does suggest some doubt.
But putting that aside, I know what you mean, though on balance I think life in prison is the right answer.
Franchising has failed – the last time I checked 5-6 franchises has been renationalised because the moronic privateers who were running them ran them into the ground.
Renationalise what's left, and start afresh.
A single brand, a single arse to kick, a la TfL but for the whole nation.
Ownership isn't the issue - it is mission. Chiltern Railways had a 20 year franchise and utterly transformed the route. Northern Rail had a much shorter franchise and were not contractually allowed to even recognise that passenger numbers had risen, never mind run enough trains.
Since "privatisation" the DfT in various guises have managed a system which is absurdly complex, expensive and legally restrictive rather than run the railways for the passengers. The franchising structure essentially lumbered the industry and the taxpayer with huge costs, management of which has been the key focus.
A commercial enterprise free to plan long term would be great. A stateco run commercially would be great. Ownership isn't the issue - its the DfT. A perfect example - Lumo, the private sector open access operator pirating for passengers between London and Edinburgh. It may be private, but the kind of train it could buy and the exact specification of the interior was dictated by the DfT. If they strayed from their directions the DfT informed them they would not be granted an open access license.
Lumo trains crush their seats in and have minimal luggage space. This creates major problems. But they had to offer a minimum number of seats in a 5 car train or no operation allowed. The DfT direct the seats thing so that politically they can claim expansion on the East Coast route whilst starving Network Rail of actual investment to add actual capacity.
As usual for the UK we're doing it as cheaply as possible whilst charging as much as possible.
Worth watching Ben Elton's The Great Railway Disaster if you haven't already see it. Some elements are stronger than others but some of the examples he gives of moronic attitudes to investment make one wince.
And one of the biggest issues has been the lack of a proper unified ticketing system. Someone uised to a simple daily trip on TfL has no ****ing idea what it is like on the rest of the [edit] UK network, or rather networks.
The lack of ticket offices with knowledgerable folk [edit] will make it much, much harder for many people to avoid the traps.
Yes, it should be possible to tap your card at the start of your journey, and again at the end of it, and automatically have the cheapest fare charged. Anywhere in the country.
Same as with the various car charging schemes, one should be able to register one’s car once nationally, and receive a bill at the end of the month.
Too many transport solutions rely on convoluted rules and income from fines, so they make the system as complex as possible to try and catch people out. It’s the sort of thing that really annoys people.
Spot on, which is another reason to have a single national operator and a law that says passengers automatically pay the cheapest fare (which is the TfL contactless system). TfL I believe carries more passengers each day than the rest of the rail network combined, so it's perfectly possible to do this. Just needs a single body and political will.
The existing ticketing system (outside London) is shambolic.
The existing ticketing system is what happens if you spend 30 years kicking the can down the road without thought as to how it's really working
I make no judgment on whether this is total nonsense or not but can somebody in the medical field comment on how accurate these claims are? Somebody has sent this to me and I would like to get back to them with an answer other than just "sounds like nonsense mate"
There are a few of these about. To be honest, that amounts to "there have been miscarriages of justice in the past, therefore, this may be one too."
I might be wrong, but I think it is beyond doubt that there was someone murdering and attempting to murder the babies. That, obviously doesn't prove Letby's guilt, but it means the relevance of those other cases is much diminished.
Yes, there's a vast statistical difference between:
Person X is correlated with a surprising number of patient deaths Person X is correlated with a surprising number of patient deaths, at least some of whom were murdered.
The table I saw had about 30 nurses on it, none of whom were on shift for more than 7 of the incidents, whereas Letby was there for all 25. On its own I don't think that would constitute very good evidence, but combined with everything else, it is.
The other aspect is that, as soon as she was removed from the ward, these incidents stopped. That's a bit harder to put down to coincidence.
British Rail was the most efficient railway in Europe and after sectorisation (a model which much of Europe then copied) it was making improvements. What it needed was more investment and a long-term interest in seeing it work. The Tories decided to play politics instead.
I've always been against the death penalty. I still am. But reading the victim impact statements on the Letby sentencing is severely challenging my long-held opinions. I was at a funeral of a baby that died at three months of natural causes a few weeks ago and it was absolutely gut-wrenching, terrible. The parents are my friends, they are utterly heartbroken, the grieving process is going to take a long time. It will last all their lives I expect.
Knowing what Letby has done, and the impact it has had on all those families, the dozens of people directly, badly, affected, for the rest of their lives, well it does make make me, for a few seconds, question my long-held beliefs. Lifelong incarceration almost seems too lenient.
"To take a life when a life has been taken, is not justice, it is revenge." - Desmond Tutu.
The death penalty is morally outrageous and vile. She should rot in jail for the rest of her life and think about the impact she has had. Death would be the easy way out.
Oh I agree wholeheartedly. But I must admit there's a part of me, because it is so raw for me seeing the shattering grief of the recently bereaved parents of a young baby I suppose, that would like to see Letby torn apart by a baying crowd for the way she has inflicted this on all those poor babies and their families.
That's not a pleasant thing to admit to myself, or on here, but that's how a small - but also, to me, a surprisingly large - part of me feels.
The very extended time hat the jury took makes me especially dubious about that. I know that doesn't amount to "reasonable doubt", but it does suggest some doubt.
But putting that aside, I know what you mean, though on balance I think life in prison is the right answer.
It suggests some doubt on some of the counts. I believe Letby was found not guilty on a couple of the attempted murder charges.
We've no way of knowing what the jury spent their time deliberating on.
On the death penalty, I don't think anybody has mentioned the Birmingham Six. So I will. 16 years, IIRC, in prison before they won their appeal. And if, in 1975, we'd had the death penalty, then some if not all of the six would have been goners.
See Denning quote upthread.
Denning made some controversial comments as he got older but was still one of our most brilliant judges
Hard to have too much faith in the brilliance of someone who thinks it's okay to murder innocent people in order to cover up the failings of the criminal justice system.
There are many tragedies in the Lucy Letby case, but to see it now reduced to a rush to compel convicted offenders to attend sentencing hearings, which is completely impossible should the offender choose not to cooperate, is to trivialise the whole tragic case.
I'm visualising a scene from Clockwork Orange here...
British Rail was the most efficient railway in Europe and after sectorisation (a model which much of Europe then copied) it was making improvements. What it needed was more investment and a long-term interest in seeing it work. The Tories decided to play politics instead.
Ironically it looks like it was Thatcher who had the best record of investment in rail infrastructure.
I've always been against the death penalty. I still am. But reading the victim impact statements on the Letby sentencing is severely challenging my long-held opinions. I was at a funeral of a baby that died at three months of natural causes a few weeks ago and it was absolutely gut-wrenching, terrible. The parents are my friends, they are utterly heartbroken, the grieving process is going to take a long time. It will last all their lives I expect.
Knowing what Letby has done, and the impact it has had on all those families, the dozens of people directly, badly, affected, for the rest of their lives, well it does make make me, for a few seconds, question my long-held beliefs. Lifelong incarceration almost seems too lenient.
"To take a life when a life has been taken, is not justice, it is revenge." - Desmond Tutu.
The death penalty is morally outrageous and vile. She should rot in jail for the rest of her life and think about the impact she has had. Death would be the easy way out.
Oh I agree wholeheartedly. But I must admit there's a part of me, because it is so raw for me seeing the shattering grief of the recently bereaved parents of a young baby I suppose, that would like to see Letby torn apart by a baying crowd for the way she has inflicted this on all those poor babies and their families.
That's not a pleasant thing to admit to myself, or on here, but that's how a small - but also, to me, a surprisingly large - part of me feels.
The very extended time hat the jury took makes me especially dubious about that. I know that doesn't amount to "reasonable doubt", but it does suggest some doubt.
But putting that aside, I know what you mean, though on balance I think life in prison is the right answer.
They had a large number of charges to consider. While they found Letby guilty on 14 charges, they found her not guilty on 2 charges of attempted murder and failed to reach a decision on 4 charges of attempted murder. So, yes, clearly that was reasonable doubt with respect to 6 of the charges.
I don't think that should be taken to mean that all of their decisions were in doubt. For all we know, they decided on the 14 guilty charges very quickly and then spent the rest of the time debating the other 6. We don't know, and we never should know under British law on juries.
Franchising has failed – the last time I checked 5-6 franchises has been renationalised because the moronic privateers who were running them ran them into the ground.
Renationalise what's left, and start afresh.
A single brand, a single arse to kick, a la TfL but for the whole nation.
Ownership isn't the issue - it is mission. Chiltern Railways had a 20 year franchise and utterly transformed the route. Northern Rail had a much shorter franchise and were not contractually allowed to even recognise that passenger numbers had risen, never mind run enough trains.
Since "privatisation" the DfT in various guises have managed a system which is absurdly complex, expensive and legally restrictive rather than run the railways for the passengers. The franchising structure essentially lumbered the industry and the taxpayer with huge costs, management of which has been the key focus.
A commercial enterprise free to plan long term would be great. A stateco run commercially would be great. Ownership isn't the issue - its the DfT. A perfect example - Lumo, the private sector open access operator pirating for passengers between London and Edinburgh. It may be private, but the kind of train it could buy and the exact specification of the interior was dictated by the DfT. If they strayed from their directions the DfT informed them they would not be granted an open access license.
Lumo trains crush their seats in and have minimal luggage space. This creates major problems. But they had to offer a minimum number of seats in a 5 car train or no operation allowed. The DfT direct the seats thing so that politically they can claim expansion on the East Coast route whilst starving Network Rail of actual investment to add actual capacity.
As usual for the UK we're doing it as cheaply as possible whilst charging as much as possible.
Worth watching Ben Elton's The Great Railway Disaster if you haven't already see it. Some elements are stronger than others but some of the examples he gives of moronic attitudes to investment make one wince.
And one of the biggest issues has been the lack of a proper unified ticketing system. Someone uised to a simple daily trip on TfL has no ****ing idea what it is like on the rest of the network.
The lack of ticket offices with knowledgerable folk makes it much, much harder for many people to avoid the traps.
I can confirm, I landed at Heathrow and had to get the train across London and it was totally baffling. I couldn't tell what ticket I needed, there was nobody to help, and you couldn't hear WTF the announcer was saying about where the train was going because he didn't enunciate the words properly. It must be way worse for people who don't speak much English.
Honestly if there was a single manager involved who gave a fuck they could watch people trying to understand it for a day and fix it all, I bet they're confusing thousands of people in the same way every day.
Why didn't you understand your choices? 1 Heathrow Express. Lots of Posters, used to be ticket sellers touting for business. Heathrow Airport desperately hoping their cash cow keeps squeezing milk from unsuspecting tourists 2 Liz Line. Reasonably quick, reasonably cheap. An ongoing row between TfL and RDG mean that its fares in the core remain a bit wobbly bobby when it comes to rules / validity 3 Piccadilly Line. Slow and cheap, unless you do anything other than touch in/out in which case slow/expensive.
Well I say "cheap". None are cheap compared to the continent.
On the death penalty, I don't think anybody has mentioned the Birmingham Six. So I will. 16 years, IIRC, in prison before they won their appeal. And if, in 1975, we'd had the death penalty, then some if not all of the six would have been goners.
See Denning quote upthread.
Denning made some controversial comments as he got older but was still one of our most brilliant judges
...who was perfectly willing to kill people if it meant maintaining faith in the system. Whilst he is in a horrible way correct - the criminal justice system is a way of keeping civil society going - it's not a stance I would hold with.
Denning was an opponent of capital punishment by his death, many of his judgements however are still cited today in civil law as well as criminal
British Rail was the most efficient railway in Europe and after sectorisation (a model which much of Europe then copied) it was making improvements. What it needed was more investment and a long-term interest in seeing it work. The Tories decided to play politics instead.
Ironically it looks like it was Thatcher who had the best record of investment in rail infrastructure.
Was it ever in her plans to privatise the railway? I'm told that (famously) she opposed the deregulation of the London bus network because she saw it as too big an animal.
Not sure what her view was on BR. Major of course privatised it, in one of the greatest fudges and blunders in transport history.
I've always been against the death penalty. I still am. But reading the victim impact statements on the Letby sentencing is severely challenging my long-held opinions. I was at a funeral of a baby that died at three months of natural causes a few weeks ago and it was absolutely gut-wrenching, terrible. The parents are my friends, they are utterly heartbroken, the grieving process is going to take a long time. It will last all their lives I expect.
Knowing what Letby has done, and the impact it has had on all those families, the dozens of people directly, badly, affected, for the rest of their lives, well it does make make me, for a few seconds, question my long-held beliefs. Lifelong incarceration almost seems too lenient.
"To take a life when a life has been taken, is not justice, it is revenge." - Desmond Tutu.
The death penalty is morally outrageous and vile. She should rot in jail for the rest of her life and think about the impact she has had. Death would be the easy way out.
Oh I agree wholeheartedly. But I must admit there's a part of me, because it is so raw for me seeing the shattering grief of the recently bereaved parents of a young baby I suppose, that would like to see Letby torn apart by a baying crowd for the way she has inflicted this on all those poor babies and their families.
That's not a pleasant thing to admit to myself, or on here, but that's how a small - but also, to me, a surprisingly large - part of me feels.
The very extended time hat the jury took makes me especially dubious about that. I know that doesn't amount to "reasonable doubt", but it does suggest some doubt.
But putting that aside, I know what you mean, though on balance I think life in prison is the right answer.
It suggests some doubt on some of the counts. I believe Letby was found not guilty on a couple of the attempted murder charges.
We've no way of knowing what the jury spent their time deliberating on.
Well, there clearly was doubt on the overall charge list given, as you say, she was acquitted on some charges and the jury was unable to reach a verdict on others.
We shouldn't second-guess the jury and how much doubt they were in on the guilty verdicts returned. Considering that they didn't return down-the-line guilties does imply a certain degree of conscientiousness and application to the tasks they were charged with though, and that they considered the evidence individually.
British Rail was the most efficient railway in Europe and after sectorisation (a model which much of Europe then copied) it was making improvements. What it needed was more investment and a long-term interest in seeing it work. The Tories decided to play politics instead.
Ironically it looks like it was Thatcher who had the best record of investment in rail infrastructure.
That graph is damning in so many ways. So much for "Investment for a purpose".
On the death penalty, I don't think anybody has mentioned the Birmingham Six. So I will. 16 years, IIRC, in prison before they won their appeal. And if, in 1975, we'd had the death penalty, then some if not all of the six would have been goners.
See Denning quote upthread.
Denning made some controversial comments as he got older but was still one of our most brilliant judges
Brilliant - but with an intellectual arrogance to match. And somewhat deficient, ironically, in judgment.
British Rail was the most efficient railway in Europe and after sectorisation (a model which much of Europe then copied) it was making improvements. What it needed was more investment and a long-term interest in seeing it work. The Tories decided to play politics instead.
Ironically it looks like it was Thatcher who had the best record of investment in rail infrastructure.
Was it ever in her plans to privatise the railway? I'm told that (famously) she opposed the deregulation of the London bus network because she saw it as too big an animal.
Not sure what her view was on BR. Major of course privatised it, in one of the greatest fudges and blunders in transport history.
Remember that Thatcher commissioned a future of BR report which proposed with a straight face that 84% of the network be shut down.
On the death penalty: this is precisely the kind of case where there might well be a miscarriage of justice. Complex, technical, reliance on expert advice.
I don't doubt the conviction but I can imagine how it could go wrong in similar cases.
Exactly what I was thinking. Remember @DavidL 's post a few days back about the problems of uncritical analysis of attendance records.
Also add as other factors to your first para: big moral panic and hysteria in the newspapers (though the judge will no doubt have done his best to eradicate that as an issue in this and other cases, it can potentially affect police, supporting agencies, and CPS).
One thing that would worry me very much - already does, it's hardly confined to the issue of capital punishment - is the decline in forensic scientific support in general.
Good post.
The one case of clearly wrongful conviction that I know much about is James Hanratty, for the 'A6' murder. There is little doubt that moral panic and press hysteria played a significant part in the outcome.
Actually, the weight of evidence now is probably that Hanratty was guilty, following DNA analysis. However, at the time, it did seem a weak conviction.
When it came in, the DNA result surprised me but on further investigation it turned out it too was unconvincing.
It is impossible to say with any certainty whether Hanratty did or didn't do it. Opinion on that remains divided to this day. There is however a strong consensus that on the evidence given at the trial he should not have been found guilty. Even those who believe he did do it tend to accept that on the trial evidence, he should have been acquitted.
It is also now accepted that the prosecution withheld from the defence important evidence that should have been given to them, even under the less rigorous rules in place at the time. It may well have made the difference. If he had been tried today under present rules it is likely the judge would have dismissed the case. And the case should not have been held in Bedford, close to the scene of the crime. It should have been at the Old Bailey.
It can never be proved that Hanratty did NOT do it. On the balance of probabilities I would say not, but you have to respect the opposite view. We will never know. The police made a real mess of the investigation to the extent that both then and now a watertight case could not be constructed in respect of any of the suspects.
The DNA investigation is interesting in its own right. It is certainly not conclusive, but I think it has finally put to rest any further appeals or inquiries into this fascinating case.
I make no judgment on whether this is total nonsense or not but can somebody in the medical field comment on how accurate these claims are? Somebody has sent this to me and I would like to get back to them with an answer other than just "sounds like nonsense mate"
Much of that consists of stating that things said by expert witnesses in court aren't true, but the person writing it is not an expert on those subjects. Rather, they are drawing on this site, https://rexvlucyletby2023.com/ That site focuses on the forensic pathology evidence -- it doesn't cover any of the other evidence, the "confession" note, her observed behaviour, the materials under her bed -- but it's way outside my areas of expertise to be able to comment on what it does say.
It appears that any high profile event attracts contrarians who are very sure of their conclusions. I wonder about the psychology of this whereby people rush to disagree with the orthodoxy.
If one is to be objective, it would be difficult to conclude that privatisation of the trains has been anything other than a disaster.
Can I refer you to the passenger / passenger-mile numbers between 1945-90s and 1990s-today?
An opinion is anything but 'objective'. But privatisation would have worked a lot better without the meddling hand of the DfT micromanaging things.
Bits of it worked very well (Chiltern), other bits were a disaster (Connex). The issue is the structure - despite large increases in both fares and passengers, government subsidy quintupled. The contracts for all structure is vastly less inefficient than the sectorised BR it replaced.
Where the operators were allowed to grow passenger numbers (again Chiltern) there was a transformation in service. That is no different to BR's sparks effect when electrifying the west coast or the impact of the HST. Where the operators were instructed to price passengers off the network (Northern, Cross Country) the passenger growth was directly restricted - same with recent idiocy around Northern and Transpennine. That is no different to 1980s directives to BR to price passengers off the network.
As I said earlier, ownership is not the issue. If the Railways are seen as a societal need and economic driver as they are elsewhere in Europe, they are a success whomever owns them. When they are seen as a "who will pay" drain on the economy, they are awful. Once again the British disease of the last 50 years is that investment has become synonymous with waste.
Good. The sentence isn't used enough IMHO, it should be the default for all murderers.
I think we could only manage that if we had transportation, which I would bring back. I'd build prisons in Sub-Saharan Africa and send violent criminals there.
Why should we dump our violent criminals on Africa? We wouldn’t take theirs after all.
I'd think about it if they wished to pay us enough to house them securely in the UK. Work is work.
If one is to be objective, it would be difficult to conclude that privatisation of the trains has been anything other than a disaster.
Can I refer you to the passenger / passenger-mile numbers between 1945-90s and 1990s-today?
An opinion is anything but 'objective'. But privatisation would have worked a lot better without the meddling hand of the DfT micromanaging things.
I've looked at that graph and the numbers started increasing prior to privatisation. My hypothesis is that we would have seen exactly the same thing even if British Rail was still around. It was not the railways being so good that passengers came back.
The railways now are terrible and passenger numbers are still very high. That is because people have no other choice, hence why railways should not be in the position they are.
I've always been against the death penalty. I still am. But reading the victim impact statements on the Letby sentencing is severely challenging my long-held opinions. I was at a funeral of a baby that died at three months of natural causes a few weeks ago and it was absolutely gut-wrenching, terrible. The parents are my friends, they are utterly heartbroken, the grieving process is going to take a long time. It will last all their lives I expect.
Knowing what Letby has done, and the impact it has had on all those families, the dozens of people directly, badly, affected, for the rest of their lives, well it does make make me, for a few seconds, question my long-held beliefs. Lifelong incarceration almost seems too lenient.
"To take a life when a life has been taken, is not justice, it is revenge." - Desmond Tutu.
The death penalty is morally outrageous and vile. She should rot in jail for the rest of her life and think about the impact she has had. Death would be the easy way out.
Oh I agree wholeheartedly. But I must admit there's a part of me, because it is so raw for me seeing the shattering grief of the recently bereaved parents of a young baby I suppose, that would like to see Letby torn apart by a baying crowd for the way she has inflicted this on all those poor babies and their families.
That's not a pleasant thing to admit to myself, or on here, but that's how a small - but also, to me, a surprisingly large - part of me feels.
The very extended time hat the jury took makes me especially dubious about that. I know that doesn't amount to "reasonable doubt", but it does suggest some doubt.
But putting that aside, I know what you mean, though on balance I think life in prison is the right answer.
It suggests some doubt on some of the counts. I believe Letby was found not guilty on a couple of the attempted murder charges.
We've no way of knowing what the jury spent their time deliberating on.
Well, there clearly was doubt on the overall charge list given, as you say, she was acquitted on some charges and the jury was unable to reach a verdict on others.
We shouldn't second-guess the jury and how much doubt they were in on the guilty verdicts returned. Considering that they didn't return down-the-line guilties does imply a certain degree of conscientiousness and application to the tasks they were charged with though, and that they considered the evidence individually.
Given the length of the trial, the nature of the charges, and the time spent deliberating on their verdict, I think the jury in this case deserves a lot of [anonymous] praise.
It's fashionable these days to bemoan the behaviour and lack of judgement of our fellow citizens generally, when it comes to things like NIMBYs, voting for low-tax/high-spend policies, lots of stuff during Covid, and for myriad other reasons. But the jury here were given a serious task and appear to have approached it with an exemplary degree of seriousness.
British Rail was the most efficient railway in Europe and after sectorisation (a model which much of Europe then copied) it was making improvements. What it needed was more investment and a long-term interest in seeing it work. The Tories decided to play politics instead.
There speaks somebody who never used British Rail.
British Rail was the most efficient railway in Europe and after sectorisation (a model which much of Europe then copied) it was making improvements. What it needed was more investment and a long-term interest in seeing it work. The Tories decided to play politics instead.
There speaks somebody who never used British Rail.
But my mother and father did for decades. And they maintain it is worse now than it ever was then.
I've always been against the death penalty. I still am. But reading the victim impact statements on the Letby sentencing is severely challenging my long-held opinions. I was at a funeral of a baby that died at three months of natural causes a few weeks ago and it was absolutely gut-wrenching, terrible. The parents are my friends, they are utterly heartbroken, the grieving process is going to take a long time. It will last all their lives I expect.
Knowing what Letby has done, and the impact it has had on all those families, the dozens of people directly, badly, affected, for the rest of their lives, well it does make make me, for a few seconds, question my long-held beliefs. Lifelong incarceration almost seems too lenient.
"To take a life when a life has been taken, is not justice, it is revenge." - Desmond Tutu.
The death penalty is morally outrageous and vile. She should rot in jail for the rest of her life and think about the impact she has had. Death would be the easy way out.
Oh I agree wholeheartedly. But I must admit there's a part of me, because it is so raw for me seeing the shattering grief of the recently bereaved parents of a young baby I suppose, that would like to see Letby torn apart by a baying crowd for the way she has inflicted this on all those poor babies and their families.
That's not a pleasant thing to admit to myself, or on here, but that's how a small - but also, to me, a surprisingly large - part of me feels.
The very extended time hat the jury took makes me especially dubious about that. I know that doesn't amount to "reasonable doubt", but it does suggest some doubt.
But putting that aside, I know what you mean, though on balance I think life in prison is the right answer.
Yes, I agree, lock her up and throw away the key.
I'm not normally so viscerally affected by this kind of thing. Not like me at all.
It's a good thing the justice system is dispassionate.
If one is to be objective, it would be difficult to conclude that privatisation of the trains has been anything other than a disaster.
Can I refer you to the passenger / passenger-mile numbers between 1945-90s and 1990s-today?
An opinion is anything but 'objective'. But privatisation would have worked a lot better without the meddling hand of the DfT micromanaging things.
Aha, the old "it would all have been fine, if..." line of argument.
Well privatisation has had three decades and it's far from fine. It has been an ugly, failed experiment, turning our railway into an international laughing stock.
If one is to be objective, it would be difficult to conclude that privatisation of the trains has been anything other than a disaster.
Can I refer you to the passenger / passenger-mile numbers between 1945-90s and 1990s-today?
An opinion is anything but 'objective'. But privatisation would have worked a lot better without the meddling hand of the DfT micromanaging things.
Bits of it worked very well (Chiltern), other bits were a disaster (Connex). The issue is the structure - despite large increases in both fares and passengers, government subsidy quintupled. The contracts for all structure is vastly less inefficient than the sectorised BR it replaced.
Where the operators were allowed to grow passenger numbers (again Chiltern) there was a transformation in service. That is no different to BR's sparks effect when electrifying the west coast or the impact of the HST. Where the operators were instructed to price passengers off the network (Northern, Cross Country) the passenger growth was directly restricted - same with recent idiocy around Northern and Transpennine. That is no different to 1980s directives to BR to price passengers off the network.
As I said earlier, ownership is not the issue. If the Railways are seen as a societal need and economic driver as they are elsewhere in Europe, they are a success whomever owns them. When they are seen as a "who will pay" drain on the economy, they are awful. Once again the British disease of the last 50 years is that investment has become synonymous with waste.
The bigger problem with public services, IMO, is that 'spending' is considered the synonymous with 'investment'.
British Rail was the most efficient railway in Europe and after sectorisation (a model which much of Europe then copied) it was making improvements. What it needed was more investment and a long-term interest in seeing it work. The Tories decided to play politics instead.
There speaks somebody who never used British Rail.
But my mother and father did for decades. And they maintain it is worse now than it ever was then.
Yet passenger numbers objectively say the complete polar opposite.
British Rail was the most efficient railway in Europe and after sectorisation (a model which much of Europe then copied) it was making improvements. What it needed was more investment and a long-term interest in seeing it work. The Tories decided to play politics instead.
There speaks somebody who never used British Rail.
But my mother and father did for decades. And they maintain it is worse now than it ever was then.
That doesn't match my memory of BR. My memory of it is that it was at least as unreliable as today, dirty, and with far fewer services. Though maybe services would have been added to meet demand had BR continued.
If one is to be objective, it would be difficult to conclude that privatisation of the trains has been anything other than a disaster.
Can I refer you to the passenger / passenger-mile numbers between 1945-90s and 1990s-today?
An opinion is anything but 'objective'. But privatisation would have worked a lot better without the meddling hand of the DfT micromanaging things.
Aha, the old "it would all have been fine, if..." line of argument.
Well privatisation has had three decades and it's far from fine. It has been an ugly, failed experiment, turning our railway into an international laughing stock.
Get rid.
I suspect I use the railway more than most here. I find it pretty decent on price, service and availability; my biggest bugbear is the staff who decide to vote to have a few days unpaid leave every month or so.....
If one is to be objective, it would be difficult to conclude that privatisation of the trains has been anything other than a disaster.
Can I refer you to the passenger / passenger-mile numbers between 1945-90s and 1990s-today?
An opinion is anything but 'objective'. But privatisation would have worked a lot better without the meddling hand of the DfT micromanaging things.
Aha, the old "it would all have been fine, if..." line of argument.
Well privatisation has had three decades and it's far from fine. It has been an ugly, failed experiment, turning our railway into an international laughing stock.
Get rid.
Failed?
Passenger numbers have shot up dramatically.
If that's 'failure' then what does 'success' look like?
Voters do not think Rishi Sunak is responsible for reducing inflation even though he said last week that his plan was behind the rate falling to its lowest level since Russia invaded Ukraine.
A YouGov poll for The Times found that only 8 per cent of voters credited government policy for the fall in inflation, which dropped to 6.8 per cent last month, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics last week.
More people, 17 per cent, believe the Bank of England is responsible despite criticism of its response to high inflation. In June Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, blamed flaws in the Bank’s economic forecasting after it failed to get a grip on runaway inflation.
The polling suggests that the most commonly believed reason for the fall in inflation is external factors such as global oil and gas prices. Thirty-eight per cent cited external factors, but 31 per cent said they did not know what was responsible for the easing of price rises.
The polling is more stark in red wall seats in northern England, where only 5 per cent thought government policy had brought inflation down.
Even Conservative voters do not think Sunak or his government is responsible, with only 12 per cent of those who voted Tory in 2019 citing government policy as responsible for the drop.
The polling suggests Sunak will not be rewarded at the next election for tackling inflation despite it being the most important of his five pledges.
British Rail was the most efficient railway in Europe and after sectorisation (a model which much of Europe then copied) it was making improvements. What it needed was more investment and a long-term interest in seeing it work. The Tories decided to play politics instead.
There speaks somebody who never used British Rail.
But my mother and father did for decades. And they maintain it is worse now than it ever was then.
Yet passenger numbers objectively say the complete polar opposite.
Lol! I am currently reading Three Men In A Boat, and although it is the most anecdotal of evidence the chapter I just finished does rather suggest a poor rail service is not a new malaise.
Voters do not think Rishi Sunak is responsible for reducing inflation even though he said last week that his plan was behind the rate falling to its lowest level since Russia invaded Ukraine.
A YouGov poll for The Times found that only 8 per cent of voters credited government policy for the fall in inflation, which dropped to 6.8 per cent last month, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics last week.
More people, 17 per cent, believe the Bank of England is responsible despite criticism of its response to high inflation. In June Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, blamed flaws in the Bank’s economic forecasting after it failed to get a grip on runaway inflation.
The polling suggests that the most commonly believed reason for the fall in inflation is external factors such as global oil and gas prices. Thirty-eight per cent cited external factors, but 31 per cent said they did not know what was responsible for the easing of price rises.
The polling is more stark in red wall seats in northern England, where only 5 per cent thought government policy had brought inflation down.
Even Conservative voters do not think Sunak or his government is responsible, with only 12 per cent of those who voted Tory in 2019 citing government policy as responsible for the drop.
The polling suggests Sunak will not be rewarded at the next election for tackling inflation despite it being the most important of his five pledges.
As I mentioned just the other day, Rishi is so useless he's failed to explain that hitting his target still means prices will be higher. People were polled on this and they thought he meant that prices would go down.
Comments
Person X is correlated with a surprising number of patient deaths
Person X is correlated with a surprising number of patient deaths, at least some of whom were murdered.
The table I saw had about 30 nurses on it, none of whom were on shift for more than 7 of the incidents, whereas Letby was there for all 25. On its own I don't think that would constitute very good evidence, but combined with everything else, it is.
That's not a pleasant thing to admit to myself, or on here, but that's how a small - but also, to me, a surprisingly large - part of me feels.
I hope someone along the line did a version with solid colour for the official shifts and pale colour for the adjacent ones - just to cover the issue DavidL spotted in his own case.
The true argument about the Death Penalty is more about whether we, as a society, want to exact revenge on the apparently guilty.
Cost or deterrence is irrelevant. We have to decide if we are the sort of people who want to hear their neck snap or fry them until their eyeballs pop.
I do enjoy these daft arguments tho.
*nitrate test, which had lots of false negatives, e.g. if handlin gplaying cards. Which the poor Six were doing when arrestyed.
Since "privatisation" the DfT in various guises have managed a system which is absurdly complex, expensive and legally restrictive rather than run the railways for the passengers. The franchising structure essentially lumbered the industry and the taxpayer with huge costs, management of which has been the key focus.
A commercial enterprise free to plan long term would be great. A stateco run commercially would be great. Ownership isn't the issue - its the DfT. A perfect example - Lumo, the private sector open access operator pirating for passengers between London and Edinburgh. It may be private, but the kind of train it could buy and the exact specification of the interior was dictated by the DfT. If they strayed from their directions the DfT informed them they would not be granted an open access license.
Lumo trains crush their seats in and have minimal luggage space. This creates major problems. But they had to offer a minimum number of seats in a 5 car train or no operation allowed. The DfT direct the seats thing so that politically they can claim expansion on the East Coast route whilst starving Network Rail of actual investment to add actual capacity.
As usual for the UK we're doing it as cheaply as possible whilst charging as much as possible.
It really is that simple.
Granted that it demonstrates children are able to keep up with technology, though. It's going to take me a while to recover from the shock of learning that.
I think this is the second case where the televised sentencing has been done without the defendant being there. I wonder if the issue is
sentence is going to be televised
sentencing is delayed overnight to allow TC cameras to be set up
Because the delay has occurred the convicted defendant doesn't attend because the result and sentence isn't going to change.
(Saint almost certainly is the right word here. I spent some time living in Mirfield; he had some connections with Yorkshire via the monks there, who were big in the anti apartheid thing. Everyone who I met who had met him bloody loved him.)
The lack of ticket offices with knowledgerable folk [edit] will make it much, much harder for many people to avoid the traps.
https://dm1zcrsul8wju.cloudfront.net/sites/rcn_nspace/files/styles/ckeditor_image_style/public/presence_report_edited_-_blurred_-_web.jpg?itok=L9haUb-R
Honestly if there was a single manager involved who gave a fuck they could watch people trying to understand it for a day and fix it all, I bet they're confusing thousands of people in the same way every day.
Same as with the various car charging schemes, one should be able to register one’s car once nationally, and receive a bill at the end of the month.
Too many transport solutions rely on convoluted rules and income from fines, so they make the system as complex as possible to try and catch people out. It’s the sort of thing that really annoys people.
Sometimes, the profit motive doesn't lead to better services.
The existing ticketing system (outside London) is shambolic.
You could even have an fun awards system - 100% off all travel if you manage to go on every rail line in the UK. I can think of one PBer...
We can also be confident that there will always be a desire to go a little bit further with revenge, and if we're using it for that, we need to have a decent argument over where and why we draw the line.
We'd expect to start with quick, painless (or as painless as possible) and merciful executions. And when we still have horrendous crimes and our anger comes forth again in a desire to make revenge more meaningful, the contradiction of "revenge" and "merciful" will be the first thing on the chopping block. "Why should we strive to make this monster's end so quick and painless!?!?"
After all, the entire point will be revenge. Why not add a bit of pain and suffering so the criminal's final moments are those of agony and despair? Isn't that more fitting, considering what they put their victim or victims through?
Just a slippery slope argument? Maybe - but historically, executions became ever more painful and gruesome because the point of them was revenge. Why shouldn't we add pain and suffering to the death? Why shouldn't we fit in a bit of judicious (and judicial) torture in there? Why shouldn't we torture them to death? Hanging, drawing, and quartering is still in the history books.
Because we're civilized? Because it's wrong to torture people or cause unnecessary pain and harm? Because that's just revenge? We've stepped past all three of those in moving towards judicial killing for revenge, after all.
Everyone will have their own point at where they'd draw the line when it comes to revenge killing and/or torture. Opening this particular gate means we're in the domain where that becomes a subjective argument on what we can stomach at any particular time. Dangerous territory.
But putting that aside, I know what you mean, though on balance I think life in prison is the right answer.
I make no judgment on whether this is total nonsense or not but can somebody in the medical field comment on how accurate these claims are? Somebody has sent this to me and I would like to get back to them with an answer other than just "sounds like nonsense mate"
We've no way of knowing what the jury spent their time deliberating on.
I don't think that should be taken to mean that all of their decisions were in doubt. For all we know, they decided on the 14 guilty charges very quickly and then spent the rest of the time debating the other 6. We don't know, and we never should know under British law on juries.
1 Heathrow Express. Lots of Posters, used to be ticket sellers touting for business. Heathrow Airport desperately hoping their cash cow keeps squeezing milk from unsuspecting tourists
2 Liz Line. Reasonably quick, reasonably cheap. An ongoing row between TfL and RDG mean that its fares in the core remain a bit wobbly bobby when it comes to rules / validity
3 Piccadilly Line. Slow and cheap, unless you do anything other than touch in/out in which case slow/expensive.
Well I say "cheap". None are cheap compared to the continent.
Not sure what her view was on BR. Major of course privatised it, in one of the greatest fudges and blunders in transport history.
We shouldn't second-guess the jury and how much doubt they were in on the guilty verdicts returned. Considering that they didn't return down-the-line guilties does imply a certain degree of conscientiousness and application to the tasks they were charged with though, and that they considered the evidence individually.
And somewhat deficient, ironically, in judgment.
An opinion is anything but 'objective'. But privatisation would have worked a lot better without the meddling hand of the DfT micromanaging things.
It is impossible to say with any certainty whether Hanratty did or didn't do it. Opinion on that remains divided to this day. There is however a strong consensus that on the evidence given at the trial he should not have been found guilty. Even those who believe he did do it tend to accept that on the trial evidence, he should have been acquitted.
It is also now accepted that the prosecution withheld from the defence important evidence that should have been given to them, even under the less rigorous rules in place at the time. It may well have made the difference. If he had been tried today under present rules it is likely the judge would have dismissed the case. And the case should not have been held in Bedford, close to the scene of the crime. It should have been at the Old Bailey.
It can never be proved that Hanratty did NOT do it. On the balance of probabilities I would say not, but you have to respect the opposite view. We will never know. The police made a real mess of the investigation to the extent that both then and now a watertight case could not be constructed in respect of any of the suspects.
The DNA investigation is interesting in its own right. It is certainly not conclusive, but I think it has finally put to rest any further appeals or inquiries into this fascinating case.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10921277/PETER-HITCHENS-stupidity-ministers-train-firms-wrecked-railways-not-unions.html
It appears that any high profile event attracts contrarians who are very sure of their conclusions. I wonder about the psychology of this whereby people rush to disagree with the orthodoxy.
Where the operators were allowed to grow passenger numbers (again Chiltern) there was a transformation in service. That is no different to BR's sparks effect when electrifying the west coast or the impact of the HST. Where the operators were instructed to price passengers off the network (Northern, Cross Country) the passenger growth was directly restricted - same with recent idiocy around Northern and Transpennine. That is no different to 1980s directives to BR to price passengers off the network.
As I said earlier, ownership is not the issue. If the Railways are seen as a societal need and economic driver as they are elsewhere in Europe, they are a success whomever owns them. When they are seen as a "who will pay" drain on the economy, they are awful. Once again the British disease of the last 50 years is that investment has become synonymous with waste.
The railways now are terrible and passenger numbers are still very high. That is because people have no other choice, hence why railways should not be in the position they are.
It's fashionable these days to bemoan the behaviour and lack of judgement of our fellow citizens generally, when it comes to things like NIMBYs, voting for low-tax/high-spend policies, lots of stuff during Covid, and for myriad other reasons. But the jury here were given a serious task and appear to have approached it with an exemplary degree of seriousness.
I'm not normally so viscerally affected by this kind of thing. Not like me at all.
It's a good thing the justice system is dispassionate.
Well privatisation has had three decades and it's far from fine. It has been an ugly, failed experiment, turning our railway into an international laughing stock.
Get rid.
Passenger numbers have shot up dramatically.
If that's 'failure' then what does 'success' look like?
Voters do not think Rishi Sunak is responsible for reducing inflation even though he said last week that his plan was behind the rate falling to its lowest level since Russia invaded Ukraine.
A YouGov poll for The Times found that only 8 per cent of voters credited government policy for the fall in inflation, which dropped to 6.8 per cent last month, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics last week.
More people, 17 per cent, believe the Bank of England is responsible despite criticism of its response to high inflation. In June Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, blamed flaws in the Bank’s economic forecasting after it failed to get a grip on runaway inflation.
The polling suggests that the most commonly believed reason for the fall in inflation is external factors such as global oil and gas prices. Thirty-eight per cent cited external factors, but 31 per cent said they did not know what was responsible for the easing of price rises.
The polling is more stark in red wall seats in northern England, where only 5 per cent thought government policy had brought inflation down.
Even Conservative voters do not think Sunak or his government is responsible, with only 12 per cent of those who voted Tory in 2019 citing government policy as responsible for the drop.
The polling suggests Sunak will not be rewarded at the next election for tackling inflation despite it being the most important of his five pledges.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rishi-sunak-wins-no-credit-from-voters-for-lower-inflation-z3jl207wq
So he's been an absolute prat.
"Failing upwards" comes to mind.