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.
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.
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.
Horse has it a little wrong. BR had a commercial restructure which created stand-alone business sectors. The Intercity sector was the most efficient passenger railway *in the world* at the time of privatisation.
The comparisons vs BR are about as relevant 30 years on as comparing 1992 BR against pre modernisation BR from 1962. All of the bad bits of BR are done today. All of the good bits of BR were done until the final collapse of franchising.
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.
Horse has it a little wrong. BR had a commercial restructure which created stand-alone business sectors. The Intercity sector was the most efficient passenger railway *in the world* at the time of privatisation.
The comparisons vs BR are about as relevant 30 years on as comparing 1992 BR against pre modernisation BR from 1962. All of the bad bits of BR are done today. All of the good bits of BR were done until the final collapse of franchising.
I concede to your superior knowledge.
InterCity was profitable, it is odd that no private operator has been able to make a profit.
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?
Do you think passenger numbers increasing this year is because the railways are good? Really?
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?
We privatised the network until it bankrupted itself. We privatised the rolling stock, making a small number of people very wealthy. We privatised freight operations and research and workshops.
We never privatised passenger rail operations which regardless of the name of the operator or the paint scheme remained owned by the Department for Transport.
So privatisation vs nationalisation arguments are moot.
"People now don’t believe me when I say that on the Oxford to Paddington Express... you could once get a beautifully cooked bacon, egg, sausage and mushroom breakfast, with good coffee, freshly-made toast and an actual jar of Cooper’s Oxford Marmalade ready for use on the crisp white tablecloth."
Emphasis mine. I prefer my marmalade on toast, but I guess the tablesloth gave him something to chew on for the journey. His behaviour might explain why it's no longer offered
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.
One wonders why no other country in the world has copied our privatisation experiment. If it was such a marvellous success people would be lining up to copy it.
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.
Horse has it a little wrong. BR had a commercial restructure which created stand-alone business sectors. The Intercity sector was the most efficient passenger railway *in the world* at the time of privatisation.
The comparisons vs BR are about as relevant 30 years on as comparing 1992 BR against pre modernisation BR from 1962. All of the bad bits of BR are done today. All of the good bits of BR were done until the final collapse of franchising.
I concede to your superior knowledge.
InterCity was profitable, it is odd that no private operator has been able to make a profit.
I think that's largely a trick of accounting. In BR days, the way costs were apporttioned between TOC and infrastructure owner (i.e. NR, in today's language) was largely arbitrary.
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.
Horse has it a little wrong. BR had a commercial restructure which created stand-alone business sectors. The Intercity sector was the most efficient passenger railway *in the world* at the time of privatisation.
The comparisons vs BR are about as relevant 30 years on as comparing 1992 BR against pre modernisation BR from 1962. All of the bad bits of BR are done today. All of the good bits of BR were done until the final collapse of franchising.
I concede to your superior knowledge.
InterCity was profitable, it is odd that no private operator has been able to make a profit.
That is also wrong, but very wrong not just a little. Several operators have been very successful commercially. Yes many have gone bust as well, but you can't make sweeping claims like that.
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.
Horse has it a little wrong. BR had a commercial restructure which created stand-alone business sectors. The Intercity sector was the most efficient passenger railway *in the world* at the time of privatisation.
The comparisons vs BR are about as relevant 30 years on as comparing 1992 BR against pre modernisation BR from 1962. All of the bad bits of BR are done today. All of the good bits of BR were done until the final collapse of franchising.
I concede to your superior knowledge.
InterCity was profitable, it is odd that no private operator has been able to make a profit.
That is also wrong, but very wrong not just a little. Several operators have been very successful commercially. Yes many have gone bust as well, but you can't make sweeping claims like that.
I'm not aware of any operator having made a profit on the East Coast or West Coast mainlines? Please correct me where I am wrong.
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.
Horse has it a little wrong. BR had a commercial restructure which created stand-alone business sectors. The Intercity sector was the most efficient passenger railway *in the world* at the time of privatisation.
The comparisons vs BR are about as relevant 30 years on as comparing 1992 BR against pre modernisation BR from 1962. All of the bad bits of BR are done today. All of the good bits of BR were done until the final collapse of franchising.
I concede to your superior knowledge.
InterCity was profitable, it is odd that no private operator has been able to make a profit.
That is also wrong, but very wrong not just a little. Several operators have been very successful commercially. Yes many have gone bust as well, but you can't make sweeping claims like that.
I'm not aware of any operator having made a profit on the East Coast or West Coast mainlines? Please correct me where I am wrong.
West Coast was seriously profitable - which is why WCML train drivers earn so much - ASLEF asked for money and Virgin just paid it out to keep the trains running.
West Coast was seriously profitable - which is why WCML train drivers earn so much - ASLEF asked for money and Virgin just paid it out to keep the trains running.
West Coast was seriously profitable - which is why WCML train drivers earn so much - ASLEF asked for money and Virgin just paid it out to keep the trains running.
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.
You'd take that as pretty strong evidence in many studies - remove supposed cause and observe effect goes away. Here, if so inclined, one could instead view it as $realculprit having the good sense to desist when someone was placed under suspicion and removed. It shows the dangers in statistical evidence (in legal cases) and pattern matching. Partly because 'experts' armed with SPSS cock up or don't understand, treating related events as independent (e.g. that case with the multiple SIDS deaths) and partly because even if done 'right' impressive sounding odds such as 1 in 100k or so look less impressive when you divide by e.g. the number of NICUs and the number of years over which they have operated.
All of which means that stats/patterns are fine for identifying suspects but you (should) need more than that to convict.
I haven't followed this case closely, but AFAIK there are additional things here such as actual evidence of interference in some of the deaths and, of course, the notes. The "I killed them on purpose" bit is hard to explain away, as much as some of the other stuff could have other interpretations. There are oddities - why would any rational person, clearly under suspicion, have kept such notes? But then, why would any rational person commit such crimes. I tend to go with others in assuming here that the jury have done their job. The acquittals on some charges and disagreement on others suggests that they haven't simply been caught up in a witch-hunt but have looked carefully at the evidence and the threshold for conviction.
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.
Horse has it a little wrong. BR had a commercial restructure which created stand-alone business sectors. The Intercity sector was the most efficient passenger railway *in the world* at the time of privatisation.
The comparisons vs BR are about as relevant 30 years on as comparing 1992 BR against pre modernisation BR from 1962. All of the bad bits of BR are done today. All of the good bits of BR were done until the final collapse of franchising.
I concede to your superior knowledge.
InterCity was profitable, it is odd that no private operator has been able to make a profit.
That is also wrong, but very wrong not just a little. Several operators have been very successful commercially. Yes many have gone bust as well, but you can't make sweeping claims like that.
I'm not aware of any operator having made a profit on the East Coast or West Coast mainlines? Please correct me where I am wrong.
West Coast was seriously profitable - which is why WCML train drivers earn so much - ASLEF asked for money and Virgin just paid it out to keep the trains running.
I was a user of the WCML in the early 2000s, endless delays due to "upgrades"* is how I remember it.
*Upgrades I'd never really use after my University time was up.
One wonders why no other country in the world has copied our privatisation experiment. If it was such a marvellous success people would be lining up to copy it.
I was talking to a friend of mine about this yesterday. Apparently there is a very different view of MG between ManU's UK fanbase (who tend to view him as a horrible person best avoided) and ManU's international fanbase (who appear to take a 'boys will be boys' attitude). Here, the UK fanbase appears to have prevailed. For now, at least.
Rumour also has it that he is a rather difficult individual to be around and therefore the club aren't desperate to die in a ditch over keeping him.
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.
Horse has it a little wrong. BR had a commercial restructure which created stand-alone business sectors. The Intercity sector was the most efficient passenger railway *in the world* at the time of privatisation.
The comparisons vs BR are about as relevant 30 years on as comparing 1992 BR against pre modernisation BR from 1962. All of the bad bits of BR are done today. All of the good bits of BR were done until the final collapse of franchising.
I concede to your superior knowledge.
InterCity was profitable, it is odd that no private operator has been able to make a profit.
That is also wrong, but very wrong not just a little. Several operators have been very successful commercially. Yes many have gone bust as well, but you can't make sweeping claims like that.
I'm not aware of any operator having made a profit on the East Coast or West Coast mainlines? Please correct me where I am wrong.
The East Coast Mainline is very profitable, whether in private or state hands. However I think all of the franchise operators have forecast they will make even more profits, and therefore higher payments to the DfT, in order to win the franchise. And then they've handed the franchise back when that hasn't happened and they haven't been able to make the reverse-subsidy payments they've promised to the DfT.
Certainly demonstrates a weakness in the franchising model, though you can make a case for blaming the DfT at least as much as the franchisees.
I don't know as much about the West Coast Mainline, bit they're I think there have been issues because the promised upgrade a couple of decades ago wasn't as good as it was supposed to be in terms of increasing train paths.
West Coast was seriously profitable - which is why WCML train drivers earn so much - ASLEF asked for money and Virgin just paid it out to keep the trains running.
Didn't Virgin go bust?
Virgin ECML did.
Wasn't the curse of the ECML that companies had to bid high to get the contract, which meant that they didn't get to keep the profits they made?
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".
Also I bet that you get your electrification cheaper and more predictably costed if you do it at a steady annual pace rather than in a feast-and-famine pattern, because you get to build up and maintain expertise and equipment for the job as you go along...
One wonders why no other country in the world has copied our privatisation experiment. If it was such a marvellous success people would be lining up to copy it.
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.
Yes, it was privatisation in name only. TOCs freedom essentially extended to what colour their liveries were.
"Eleven Minutes Late" by Matthew Engel is quite good on this subject.
I own a thing - the East Coast passenger rail license. I franchise this on an exclusive basis to Sea Containers who brand their operation GNER. They have exclusive rights for an agreed period, at the end of which I can choose to award a new exclusive contract either to the existing franchisee or to someone else. Or not award a franchise at all - merge or combine or reshape the operation to something else.
People called the "privatisation" but it was not. We we privatised things we sold them to a new owner. Five freight operators were privatised. Passenger operations were not. At all times they remained owned by the government. A silly name and stripy paint scheme does not and did not infer ownership. Just as your local McDonalds isn't owned by McDonalds.
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.
Why is revenge wrong? A person may choose, as an act of Grace, to forgive a grievous wrong that had been done to them.
West Coast was seriously profitable - which is why WCML train drivers earn so much - ASLEF asked for money and Virgin just paid it out to keep the trains running.
Didn't Virgin go bust?
Virgin ECML did.
Well then my point is somewhat proven but I concede to it not being 100% correct.
Based on the evidence available to us, we have concluded that the material posted online did not provide a full picture and that Mason did not commit the offences in respect of which he was originally charged.
Quite why Manchester United feel the need to say this, I don't know. If they're that confident, they should back him and put the full facts into the public domain.
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.
I saw Denning in action in the 1970s in the Court of Appeal, and at the time he was still much admired by law students and lawyers. He was of course a man of his time. But he was a great communicator, and made law live in ways which the current lot find hard. In particular they find it hard to turn a judgement into a story. He is by now legally almost an irrelevance.
He lived through a great age of the 'Good Chaps' theory of authority in general, and on the whole believed he was part of it. Its slightly surprising collapse must be taken into account in assessing him. Like Denning I dearly wish it were true, because it is very unclear what better thing can replace it.
West Coast was seriously profitable - which is why WCML train drivers earn so much - ASLEF asked for money and Virgin just paid it out to keep the trains running.
Didn't Virgin go bust?
Virgin ECML did.
Wasn't the curse of the ECML that companies had to bid high to get the contract, which meant that they didn't get to keep the profits they made?
The funny one was the firm that overestimated Network Rail schedule 8 payments (i.e. payments from NR to them for delays due to infrastructure delays). Network Rail performed a lot better than they were expecting.
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.
And your mother and father are downright wrong.
I still use a complex intercity route (Cotswolds-Merseyside) I used to use in the late sixties. It's now far, far, more frequent and flexible, on far, far better (= comfier, faster, more frequent and newer) rolling stock with far, far tastier food and drink en route - and a real choice of operators. Pricing's now on a different model: buying tickets ahead of time offers substantial discounts that weren't available 60 years ago. But for the overwhelming majority of customers on this route (who ARE able to predict when they want to travel), journeys now cost a significantly lower proportion of average wages than they did 60 years ago.
But it's not just some complicated cross-country services: my prime journey (Oxfordshire-London) is, 90% of the time, light years better than the Soviet-style horror show I had to endure from BR in the 1960s. And most of the 10% of the time when it's not better is when the unions arbitrarily decide to go on strike.
It's palpable nonsense to say that BR was better than the system today. And the real reason it's palpable nonsense is that bits of today's train system are a lot worse, bits much the same and bits massively better: crude generalisations almost always lead to sloppily informed, and dangerous, alternatives (like "renationalise").
The one over-simplified one-liner I'd accept is that a distressingly common feature in current poor performances is the Treasury's uninformed micro-management. A feature which would be even more malign and frequent should Britain ever renationalise its railway system.
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.
Moral: don't make damnfool promises that are going to be difficult to keep.
But, and at the risk of making use of the seal the deal cliche, SKS is not maximising the opportunities from this dreary drift into depression. Because he's looking a bit dreary himself. Granted someone like Corbyn, or Ed, would have let the Tories off the hook by banging on too much about things only relevant to their own tribe, but I think Starmer needs to call a halt for now to any more policy announcements that amount to copying the Tories.
The electorate need some hope and they need something beyond the hopeless topics of inflation and austerity, and the divisive culture wars. The Labour front bench have some interesting policies including on infrastructure and housebuilding, education and devolution, but they're not really selling them. That leaves a gap for none of the above votes, or for populists.
Sometimes countries need politicians to leave them alone and not tinker, but at other times they need someone to inject some energy and be a bit hyperactive. Early Blair was very much like that, so - in appearances at least - was the early Con-LD coalition although marred by austerity. The best foreign example I can think of is Sakashvili. Deeply flawed character who made rookie mistakes in foreign policy, but in his time as Georgian leader he transformed much of the country's infrastructure, brought security and tourism to erstwhile lawless areas, put a stop to the de facto secession of the Adjara region and raised Georgia's profile as a serious internationally-focused and ambitious country.
One wonders why no other country in the world has copied our privatisation experiment. If it was such a marvellous success people would be lining up to copy it.
Russia did, to an extent. Admittedly some of the details were a little novel.
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.
I saw Denning in action in the 1970s in the Court of Appeal, and at the time he was still much admired by law students and lawyers. He was of course a man of his time. But he was a great communicator, and made law live in ways which the current lot find hard. In particular they find it hard to turn a judgement into a story. He is by now legally almost an irrelevance.
He lived through a great age of the 'Good Chaps' theory of authority in general, and on the whole believed he was part of it. Its slightly surprising collapse must be taken into account in assessing him. Like Denning I dearly wish it were true, because it is very unclear what better thing can replace it.
Accountability? Why wouldn't that be a good replacement?
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.
Why is revenge wrong? A person may choose, as an act of Grace, to forgive a grievous wrong that had been done to them.
But, why should they be *required* to do so.
An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind, as Gandhi is said to have said (but probably didn't, and it was rather Canadian MP George Perry Graham who first said something along these lines in a 1914 debate on the death penalty).
If he's not been found guilty of a crime can somebody explain the outrage? I am not following this case.
His girlfriend posted images online of her bloodied face and bruised body and a recording of him be threatening towards her.
They are now back together and have had a child together.
Charges were dropped rather than his name being cleared.
But he's still innocent until proven guilty, no?
In the eyes of the law, yes. We have, for obvious reasons, a high standard applied before we remove people's liberty and put them in prison.
But people generally do not need to apply a criminal standard of evidence before deciding they don't want to associate with a particular individual. Manchester United can apply a different standard, though they would probably need to show an employment tribunal that this was made clear to their employees in advance and was applied consistently, if it ever made it that far.
One wonders why no other country in the world has copied our privatisation experiment. If it was such a marvellous success people would be lining up to copy it.
Russia did, to an extent. Admittedly some of the details were a little novel.
Australia and NZ did a lot of the same things, including the deregulation that was also a feature of the Thatcher and Major (and early Blair) years.
In most cases it's not been the ownership of the means of production that's the issue, it's been how the assets and provision are managed and how the companies at the utilities end of the spectrum are regulated.
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.
And your mother and father are downright wrong.
I still use a complex intercity route (Cotswolds-Merseyside) I used to use in the late sixties. It's now far, far, more frequent and flexible, on far, far better (= comfier, faster, more frequent and newer) rolling stock with far, far tastier food and drink en route - and a real choice of operators. Pricing's now on a different model: buying tickets ahead of time offers substantial discounts that weren't available 60 years ago. But for the overwhelming majority of customers on this route (who ARE able to predict when they want to travel), journeys now cost a significantly lower proportion of average wages than they did 60 years ago.
But it's not just some complicated cross-country services: my prime journey (Oxfordshire-London) is, 90% of the time, light years better than the Soviet-style horror show I had to endure from BR in the 1960s. And most of the 10% of the time when it's not better is when the unions arbitrarily decide to go on strike.
It's palpable nonsense to say that BR was better than the system today. And the real reason it's palpable nonsense is that bits of today's train system are a lot worse, bits much the same and bits massively better: crude generalisations almost always lead to sloppily informed, and dangerous, alternatives (like "renationalise").
The one over-simplified one-liner I'd accept is that a distressingly common feature in current poor performances is the Treasury's uninformed micro-management. A feature which would be even more malign and frequent should Britain ever renationalise its railway system.
That is your opinion - but no less valid than what my parents think.
I have to go now but if you bump me later I'll write up a full reply.
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.
Moral: don't make damnfool promises that are going to be difficult to keep.
But, and at the risk of making use of the seal the deal cliche, SKS is not maximising the opportunities from this dreary drift into depression. Because he's looking a bit dreary himself. Granted someone like Corbyn, or Ed, would have let the Tories off the hook by banging on too much about things only relevant to their own tribe, but I think Starmer needs to call a halt for now to any more policy announcements that amount to copying the Tories.
The electorate need some hope and they need something beyond the hopeless topics of inflation and austerity, and the divisive culture wars. The Labour front bench have some interesting policies including on infrastructure and housebuilding, education and devolution, but they're not really selling them. That leaves a gap for none of the above votes, or for populists.
Sometimes countries need politicians to leave them alone and not tinker, but at other times they need someone to inject some energy and be a bit hyperactive. Early Blair was very much like that, so - in appearances at least - was the early Con-LD coalition although marred by austerity. The best foreign example I can think of is Sakashvili. Deeply flawed character who made rookie mistakes in foreign policy, but in his time as Georgian leader he transformed much of the country's infrastructure, brought security and tourism to erstwhile lawless areas, put a stop to the de facto secession of the Adjara region and raised Georgia's profile as a serious internationally-focused and ambitious country.
Yes, Starmer's wrong here. That's why he's only... (checks) 17% percent ahead in the polls.
One wonders why no other country in the world has copied our privatisation experiment. If it was such a marvellous success people would be lining up to copy it.
Russia did, to an extent. Admittedly some of the details were a little novel.
I think I am right in believing that a lot of Russian stations have the suffix Vauxhall, because the south London station was once a byword for excellence amongst Russian rail enthusuasts.
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.
Why is revenge wrong? A person may choose, as an act of Grace, to forgive a grievous wrong that had been done to them.
But, why should they be *required* to do so.
Why is revenge wrong? In the first place it is highly contentious to suggest it is wrong as lots of traditions affirm its place in the scheme of things.
However, there is the problem identified by Aeschylus, namely the cycle of revenge has to be stopped by some higher principled intervention otherwise it goes on for ever, and grace has no place in things at all.
Secondly, one of the very distinctive features of the Christian tradition, which is still around despite its apparent loss, is that revenge is always wrong, and that evil is only ever overcome by good.
For me the Aeschylus tradition (leave it to the rule of law) and the Jesus tradition (God not you is the judge) have the edge.
The debate over Bidenomics is particularly interesting.
Like many such debates, the honest response ought to be 'I wouldn't start from here' - but given he had no choice in that matter, I think he's done a pretty impressive job (no doubt opinions sharply differ on that).
Free trade and free markets, are on balance a good thing. But either unregulated can be disastrous.
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
West Coast was seriously profitable - which is why WCML train drivers earn so much - ASLEF asked for money and Virgin just paid it out to keep the trains running.
Didn't Virgin go bust?
Virgin ECML did.
It did, but thats not Virgin Trains. Two completely different businesses: Virgin Trains (Virgin 51%, Stagecoach 49%). Virgin Atlantic on rails, with Sir Beard in charge of so much of the proposition (even the cab design of the Voyager train fleet was patented). Almost went bust when Railtrack failed to deliver the full WCML upgrade thus breaking the business model in the franchise. They operated for several years under a direct award contract where the DfT simply instructs them to operate trains and collect fares for a fixed fee.
Virgin Trains East Coast (10% Virgin, 90% Stagecoach). A Virgin frock on a Stagecoach train. Despite the same logo and name as the west coast operation there was no competition issue as both were completely different.
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
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.
And your mother and father are downright wrong.
I still use a complex intercity route (Cotswolds-Merseyside) I used to use in the late sixties. It's now far, far, more frequent and flexible, on far, far better (= comfier, faster, more frequent and newer) rolling stock with far, far tastier food and drink en route - and a real choice of operators. Pricing's now on a different model: buying tickets ahead of time offers substantial discounts that weren't available 60 years ago. But for the overwhelming majority of customers on this route (who ARE able to predict when they want to travel), journeys now cost a significantly lower proportion of average wages than they did 60 years ago.
But it's not just some complicated cross-country services: my prime journey (Oxfordshire-London) is, 90% of the time, light years better than the Soviet-style horror show I had to endure from BR in the 1960s. And most of the 10% of the time when it's not better is when the unions arbitrarily decide to go on strike.
It's palpable nonsense to say that BR was better than the system today. And the real reason it's palpable nonsense is that bits of today's train system are a lot worse, bits much the same and bits massively better: crude generalisations almost always lead to sloppily informed, and dangerous, alternatives (like "renationalise").
The one over-simplified one-liner I'd accept is that a distressingly common feature in current poor performances is the Treasury's uninformed micro-management. A feature which would be even more malign and frequent should Britain ever renationalise its railway system.
Such a comparison is as flawed as a statement that BR was flawless.
Cars in BR times were absolutely crap too, compared to cars today. So were most things.
Privatisation (with actual point of ticket sale competition - as on ECML at present) can work (I know the big operator is in public ownership). Public ownership can also work (and fail) as seen in many examples across Europe. What's probably needed is either privatisation with real competition and good regulation or arms length public ownership. Or a mix of both, with competition between them as on ECML.
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.
Yes, it was privatisation in name only. TOCs freedom essentially extended to what colour their liveries were.
"Eleven Minutes Late" by Matthew Engel is quite good on this subject.
I own a thing - the East Coast passenger rail license. I franchise this on an exclusive basis to Sea Containers who brand their operation GNER. They have exclusive rights for an agreed period, at the end of which I can choose to award a new exclusive contract either to the existing franchisee or to someone else. Or not award a franchise at all - merge or combine or reshape the operation to something else.
People called the "privatisation" but it was not. We we privatised things we sold them to a new owner. Five freight operators were privatised. Passenger operations were not. At all times they remained owned by the government. A silly name and stripy paint scheme does not and did not infer ownership. Just as your local McDonalds isn't owned by McDonalds.
To be fair, some of the liveries were quite nice. So there is 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.
Why is revenge wrong? A person may choose, as an act of Grace, to forgive a grievous wrong that had been done to them.
But, why should they be *required* to do so.
An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind, as Gandhi is said to have said (but probably didn't, and it was rather Canadian MP George Perry Graham who first said something along these lines in a 1914 debate on the death penalty).
The same Gandhi who thought the Jews would show themselves morally superior to the Nazis by submitting willingly to execution.
Almost all of us distinguish between hurting the innocent and punishing the guilty. By all means accept that allowing private revenge would result in anarchy. But, in that case, the State takes it upon itself to exact revenge on behalf of wronged citizens.
The notion that there is no distinction to be drawn between killing the guilty and killing the innocent makes no ethical sense at all.
None of us would read about the deaths of war criminals at the end of WWII and truly think, we make ourselves no better than they are by hanging them.
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.
Which is exactly the moment when you need to hold the line.
Either the death penalty is wrong or it is not.
I believe it is wrong on the basis of making a possible mistake.
That goes for anyone. Anyone. No matter how terrible their crime.
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.
Moral: don't make damnfool promises that are going to be difficult to keep.
But, and at the risk of making use of the seal the deal cliche, SKS is not maximising the opportunities from this dreary drift into depression. Because he's looking a bit dreary himself. Granted someone like Corbyn, or Ed, would have let the Tories off the hook by banging on too much about things only relevant to their own tribe, but I think Starmer needs to call a halt for now to any more policy announcements that amount to copying the Tories.
The electorate need some hope and they need something beyond the hopeless topics of inflation and austerity, and the divisive culture wars. The Labour front bench have some interesting policies including on infrastructure and housebuilding, education and devolution, but they're not really selling them. That leaves a gap for none of the above votes, or for populists.
Sometimes countries need politicians to leave them alone and not tinker, but at other times they need someone to inject some energy and be a bit hyperactive. Early Blair was very much like that, so - in appearances at least - was the early Con-LD coalition although marred by austerity. The best foreign example I can think of is Sakashvili. Deeply flawed character who made rookie mistakes in foreign policy, but in his time as Georgian leader he transformed much of the country's infrastructure, brought security and tourism to erstwhile lawless areas, put a stop to the de facto secession of the Adjara region and raised Georgia's profile as a serious internationally-focused and ambitious country.
Yes, Starmer's wrong here. That's why he's only... (checks) 17% percent ahead in the polls.
He's doing fine, yes, but this is an opportunity to put it beyond doubt. Otherwise the danger is that slow creep back closer to parity. The lead is already a little smaller than it was a few months ago despite the government doing nothing remotely positive in the intervening period.
Based on the evidence available to us, we have concluded that the material posted online did not provide a full picture and that Mason did not commit the offences in respect of which he was originally charged.
Quite why Manchester United feel the need to say this, I don't know. If they're that confident, they should back him and put the full facts into the public domain.
The recording is pretty damning. He did not commit offences. He did some truly awful things which bring the football club into reputational difficulties.
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?
Two points:
(a) for my own satisfaction, it's good to know.
(b) I don't have as much faith in defence lawyers as you do when it comes to technical evidence and stats.
Based on the evidence available to us, we have concluded that the material posted online did not provide a full picture and that Mason did not commit the offences in respect of which he was originally charged.
Quite why Manchester United feel the need to say this, I don't know. If they're that confident, they should back him and put the full facts into the public domain.
The recording is pretty damning. He did not commit offences. He did some truly awful things which bring the football club into reputational difficulties.
And yet - given that the couple in question are still together and now have a child - I'd suggest that there is at the very least something we don't know about this particular case.
It's my cautiously held belief, based upon understanding from FOAFs, that MG is an absolutely horrible man. But I maintain that we don't know a lot of what was going on in this particular case.
Based on the evidence available to us, we have concluded that the material posted online did not provide a full picture and that Mason did not commit the offences in respect of which he was originally charged.
Quite why Manchester United feel the need to say this, I don't know. If they're that confident, they should back him and put the full facts into the public domain.
The recording is pretty damning. He did not commit offences. He did some truly awful things which bring the football club into reputational difficulties.
My sister (legal background) reckons the recording might have been inadmissible in court. Not sure if the legal bods on here have any thoughts.
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.
Why is revenge wrong? A person may choose, as an act of Grace, to forgive a grievous wrong that had been done to them.
But, why should they be *required* to do so.
An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind, as Gandhi is said to have said (but probably didn't, and it was rather Canadian MP George Perry Graham who first said something along these lines in a 1914 debate on the death penalty).
The same Gandhi who thought the Jews would show themselves morally superior to the Nazis by submitting willingly to execution.
Almost all of us distinguish between hurting the innocent and punishing the guilty. By all means accept that allowing private revenge would result in anarchy. But, in that case, the State takes it upon itself to exact revenge on behalf of wronged citizens.
The notion that there is no distinction to be drawn between killing the guilty and killing the innocent makes no ethical sense at all.
None of use would read about the deaths of war criminals at the end of WWII and truly think, we make ourselves no better than they are by hanging them.
It also shows how different the British empire was to the Nazi, despite that distinction being willfully ignored in many opinion columns today.
Britain was progressively granting India more self-governance, albeit too slowly and with some prejudice influencing that, but it was still coming and ultimately he succeeded in shaming The Raj into independence.
In any other empire Gandhi would have been executed
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.
Which is exactly the moment when you need to hold the line.
Either the death penalty is wrong or it is not.
I believe it is wrong on the basis of making a possible mistake.
That goes for anyone. Anyone. No matter how terrible their crime.
I believe it's wrong on that basis, and also wrong from a civil liberties point of view: I don't trust the state with that kind of power. And finally because it doesn't work as a deterrent anyway.
I'm relieved Sunak hasn't decided to pounce on the Letby story. But I expect if they ever did try to pull this one it would be while in opposition, and probably following a male murderer rather than a female. A lot of more conservative older people would still feel squeamish about executing a woman.
He can make a fortune playing in Saudi Arabia. And find a welcoming culture with regards to the place of women.
The Saudi government’s behaviour towards Ethiopian migrants on their southern border, ie. gunning them down and leaving their corpses to rot in the sun, shows their true colours.
It is the other side of the coin (pun intended) of their mega-league megabucks football. It’s a state run, state-funded league and those who take the cash to sportswash that nasty country’s reputation are complicit.
One wonders why no other country in the world has copied our privatisation experiment. If it was such a marvellous success people would be lining up to copy it.
Russia did, to an extent. Admittedly some of the details were a little novel.
I think I am right in believing that a lot of Russian stations have the suffix Vauxhall, because the south London station was once a byword for excellence amongst Russian rail enthusuasts.
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.
And your mother and father are downright wrong.
I still use a complex intercity route (Cotswolds-Merseyside) I used to use in the late sixties. It's now far, far, more frequent and flexible, on far, far better (= comfier, faster, more frequent and newer) rolling stock with far, far tastier food and drink en route - and a real choice of operators. Pricing's now on a different model: buying tickets ahead of time offers substantial discounts that weren't available 60 years ago. But for the overwhelming majority of customers on this route (who ARE able to predict when they want to travel), journeys now cost a significantly lower proportion of average wages than they did 60 years ago.
But it's not just some complicated cross-country services: my prime journey (Oxfordshire-London) is, 90% of the time, light years better than the Soviet-style horror show I had to endure from BR in the 1960s. And most of the 10% of the time when it's not better is when the unions arbitrarily decide to go on strike.
It's palpable nonsense to say that BR was better than the system today. And the real reason it's palpable nonsense is that bits of today's train system are a lot worse, bits much the same and bits massively better: crude generalisations almost always lead to sloppily informed, and dangerous, alternatives (like "renationalise").
The one over-simplified one-liner I'd accept is that a distressingly common feature in current poor performances is the Treasury's uninformed micro-management. A feature which would be even more malign and frequent should Britain ever renationalise its railway system.
When you say Oxfordshire, are we talking about a route which operates into London Paddington? Its just that you are using the 1960s as a comparator. In 1976 BR introduced the fastest diesel trains in the world out of Paddington. The HST was both comfier and faster than the current IEP operation. And likely much cheaper for turn up and go flexible journeys.
Again again. BR got loads right. And loads wrong. It all depended on the political climate at the time.
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.
Why is revenge wrong? A person may choose, as an act of Grace, to forgive a grievous wrong that had been done to them.
But, why should they be *required* to do so.
I think it depends on what you consider the cause of crime. In my mind, crime is not always or even primarily a moral failure / active choice of the individual - a lot of crime (petty theft, muggings, homelessness related crime, etc) are either the result of poverty or mental illness. For those crimes, we should be looking at the evidence for lowering recidivism (which currently points towards a social model of dealing with people who commit crimes, where rehabilitation and assisting people back into society seems to work better than locking someone up and throwing away the key).
There are some people who do things because they enjoy doing bad things and do not need to do bad things to survive / get by. Some of these people are psychopaths or sociopaths - in which case I would say they fall into the mentally ill category and probably can't be held fully responsible for their actions. The rest is where I find things difficult. I agree there is a place for revenge in catharsis, but on an individual basis not on a systemic one. The systemic aim of justice should be the hope that every individual can be brought back into society; the state should not have the power to put people to death - especially when the states judgement is not that trustworthy. If victims are not appeased by that, I can understand it, but I don't think that can be helped - what the state can do is make sure that ample social and mental health support is provided to help victims find catharsis however they can.
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.
And your mother and father are downright wrong.
I still use a complex intercity route (Cotswolds-Merseyside) I used to use in the late sixties. It's now far, far, more frequent and flexible, on far, far better (= comfier, faster, more frequent and newer) rolling stock with far, far tastier food and drink en route - and a real choice of operators. Pricing's now on a different model: buying tickets ahead of time offers substantial discounts that weren't available 60 years ago. But for the overwhelming majority of customers on this route (who ARE able to predict when they want to travel), journeys now cost a significantly lower proportion of average wages than they did 60 years ago.
But it's not just some complicated cross-country services: my prime journey (Oxfordshire-London) is, 90% of the time, light years better than the Soviet-style horror show I had to endure from BR in the 1960s. And most of the 10% of the time when it's not better is when the unions arbitrarily decide to go on strike.
It's palpable nonsense to say that BR was better than the system today. And the real reason it's palpable nonsense is that bits of today's train system are a lot worse, bits much the same and bits massively better: crude generalisations almost always lead to sloppily informed, and dangerous, alternatives (like "renationalise").
The one over-simplified one-liner I'd accept is that a distressingly common feature in current poor performances is the Treasury's uninformed micro-management. A feature which would be even more malign and frequent should Britain ever renationalise its railway system.
That was 60 years back, yes?
The de Havilland Comet was top of the range, the Moris Minor a miracle of its age. You can consider that even with our poor investment levels, the rolling stock, signalling and coffee will have improved simply by buying new stuff when the old stuff is irreparable.
One wonders why no other country in the world has copied our privatisation experiment. If it was such a marvellous success people would be lining up to copy it.
Russia did, to an extent. Admittedly some of the details were a little novel.
Australia and NZ did a lot of the same things, including the deregulation that was also a feature of the Thatcher and Major (and early Blair) years.
In most cases it's not been the ownership of the means of production that's the issue, it's been how the assets and provision are managed and how the companies at the utilities end of the spectrum are regulated.
Absolutely. The endless debate between proponents of market and state is one of the most sterile in politics. It has bedevilled the UK since (at least) WWII.
One wonders why no other country in the world has copied our privatisation experiment. If it was such a marvellous success people would be lining up to copy it.
Russia did, to an extent. Admittedly some of the details were a little novel.
I think I am right in believing that a lot of Russian stations have the suffix Vauxhall, because the south London station was once a byword for excellence amongst Russian rail enthusuasts.
Ha, yes, I'd heard that too!
In Russia it is permanently associated with excellent stations; here we associate it with fifth tier football.
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.
Based on the evidence available to us, we have concluded that the material posted online did not provide a full picture and that Mason did not commit the offences in respect of which he was originally charged.
Quite why Manchester United feel the need to say this, I don't know. If they're that confident, they should back him and put the full facts into the public domain.
The recording is pretty damning. He did not commit offences. He did some truly awful things which bring the football club into reputational difficulties.
My sister (legal background) reckons the recording might have been inadmissible in court. Not sure if the legal bods on here have any thoughts.
Sure! It may well not have been. But it didn't get to court. Charges were dropped. He is legally innocent of what he was charged with. But the recording and other evidence in the public sphere show that he did some awful things which damage the reputation of ManU.
As a player he had the world at his feet. Now he will be lucky if he can salvage a carer with the head choppers or perhaps in Turkey.
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.
Why is revenge wrong? A person may choose, as an act of Grace, to forgive a grievous wrong that had been done to them.
But, why should they be *required* to do so.
An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind, as Gandhi is said to have said (but probably didn't, and it was rather Canadian MP George Perry Graham who first said something along these lines in a 1914 debate on the death penalty).
The same Gandhi who thought the Jews would show themselves morally superior to the Nazis by submitting willingly to execution.
Almost all of us distinguish between hurting the innocent and punishing the guilty. By all means accept that allowing private revenge would result in anarchy. But, in that case, the State takes it upon itself to exact revenge on behalf of wronged citizens.
The notion that there is no distinction to be drawn between killing the guilty and killing the innocent makes no ethical sense at all.
None of use would read about the deaths of war criminals at the end of WWII and truly think, we make ourselves no better than they are by hanging them.
It also shows how different the British empire was to the Nazi, despite that distinction being willfully ignored in many opinion columns today.
Britain was progressively granting India more self-governance, albeit too slowly and with some prejudice influencing that, but it was still coming and ultimately he succeeded in shaming The Raj into independence.
In any other empire Gandhi would have been executed
Reading Keith Lowe's Savage Continent, it's clear that the Allied authorities realised there was a need to exact revenge (time limited, though it was) in the immediate aftermath of WWII. Sometimes, it was down to local US and British commanders telling the partisans they had 48 hours to settle scores, before order was restored. In other cases, it was handing over groups like Ustasha for summary execution. Or it could be, as at Dachau, summarily executing concentration camp guards.
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...
The other difference between TfL, and real railway travel, is that in TfL you don't need to say where you are going (on the whole), just a band/zone if that, and you go in and out via automatic barriers. It's about as sophisticated as a starter Triang train set.
In the real world , who knows what journey, on what train, under what rules, [edit] often by which route, for what company, one is being charged for at the beginning of the trip, never mind the end? Many stations - you can't even clock out, because there are or will soon be no staff.And even if you can, how does the company know where you have been?
And without someone in a ticket office to explain if need be, plus in the real world of cash, infirm people, broken down phones and lack of access to computers for many people.
Of course, it is so much easier to be patronising when one is 40 and healthy. But in the current ticketing system ...
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.
Why is revenge wrong? A person may choose, as an act of Grace, to forgive a grievous wrong that had been done to them.
But, why should they be *required* to do so.
I never said that revenge is wrong. I said that we have to choose whether revenge is a priority for society.
For me, revenge - the deliberate inflicting of harm/death - solves nothing except to ruin more lives.
Based on the evidence available to us, we have concluded that the material posted online did not provide a full picture and that Mason did not commit the offences in respect of which he was originally charged.
Quite why Manchester United feel the need to say this, I don't know. If they're that confident, they should back him and put the full facts into the public domain.
The recording is pretty damning. He did not commit offences. He did some truly awful things which bring the football club into reputational difficulties.
The odd and unexplained aspect was the CPS talk of new evidence when they dropped the charges (besides the original complainant withdrawing). Things might be less open and shut than the recording suggests.
But in any case, it is hard to see an upside and it is not surprising MUFC have let him go, and perhaps Greenwood can rebuild his career overseas.
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.
Why is revenge wrong? A person may choose, as an act of Grace, to forgive a grievous wrong that had been done to them.
But, why should they be *required* to do so.
An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind, as Gandhi is said to have said (but probably didn't, and it was rather Canadian MP George Perry Graham who first said something along these lines in a 1914 debate on the death penalty).
The same Gandhi who thought the Jews would show themselves morally superior to the Nazis by submitting willingly to execution.
Almost all of us distinguish between hurting the innocent and punishing the guilty. By all means accept that allowing private revenge would result in anarchy. But, in that case, the State takes it upon itself to exact revenge on behalf of wronged citizens.
The notion that there is no distinction to be drawn between killing the guilty and killing the innocent makes no ethical sense at all.
None of use would read about the deaths of war criminals at the end of WWII and truly think, we make ourselves no better than they are by hanging them.
It also shows how different the British empire was to the Nazi, despite that distinction being willfully ignored in many opinion columns today.
Britain was progressively granting India more self-governance, albeit too slowly and with some prejudice influencing that, but it was still coming and ultimately he succeeded in shaming The Raj into independence.
In any other empire Gandhi would have been executed
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.
Because BR worked so well ...
The privatised companies saw passenger numbers soar, when BR had overseen decades of decline. Oddly, the inflexion point was almost exactly at the moment of privatisation.
To the extent that privatisation 'failed' it was usually down to not being able to generate enough income for the Treasury / survive on the subsidy provided; a standard against which the renationalised routes are not held to equivalently.
One wonders why no other country in the world has copied our privatisation experiment. If it was such a marvellous success people would be lining up to copy it.
Russia did, to an extent. Admittedly some of the details were a little novel.
I think I am right in believing that a lot of Russian stations have the suffix Vauxhall, because the south London station was once a byword for excellence amongst Russian rail enthusuasts.
Ha, yes, I'd heard that too!
In Russia it is permanently associated with excellent stations; here we associate it with fifth tier football.
I think the first terminus was at pleasure gardens which had been called voksal from the Vauxhall ones in London - hence the transfer to railway station meaning. As if we called a station a Battersea.
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.
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.
Why is revenge wrong? A person may choose, as an act of Grace, to forgive a grievous wrong that had been done to them.
But, why should they be *required* to do so.
An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind, as Gandhi is said to have said (but probably didn't, and it was rather Canadian MP George Perry Graham who said something along these lines in a
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.
Why is revenge wrong? A person may choose, as an act of Grace, to forgive a grievous wrong that had been done to them.
But, why should they be *required* to do so.
An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind, as Gandhi is said to have said (but probably didn't, and it was rather Canadian MP George Perry Graham who first said something along these lines in a 1914 debate on the death penalty).
The same Gandhi who thought the Jews would show themselves morally superior to the Nazis by submitting willingly to execution.
But, as I said, Gandhi didn't say it, so you need to pick on GP Graham!
Based on the evidence available to us, we have concluded that the material posted online did not provide a full picture and that Mason did not commit the offences in respect of which he was originally charged.
Quite why Manchester United feel the need to say this, I don't know. If they're that confident, they should back him and put the full facts into the public domain.
The recording is pretty damning. He did not commit offences. He did some truly awful things which bring the football club into reputational difficulties.
And yet - given that the couple in question are still together and now have a child - I'd suggest that there is at the very least something we don't know about this particular case.
It's my cautiously held belief, based upon understanding from FOAFs, that MG is an absolutely horrible man. But I maintain that we don't know a lot of what was going on in this particular case.
Without any prejudice to the specific case either way, I think it's important to point out that people in abusive domestic relationships often return to their abusive partners, multiple times, and so it really doesn't tell us anything about the specific case.
It simply isn't an observation that enables you to determine anything about what is going on.
Neither, also, does Manchester United's decision. That will primarily have been based on what they thought the public would think.
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.
And your mother and father are downright wrong.
I still use a complex intercity route (Cotswolds-Merseyside) I used to use in the late sixties. It's now far, far, more frequent and flexible, on far, far better (= comfier, faster, more frequent and newer) rolling stock with far, far tastier food and drink en route - and a real choice of operators. Pricing's now on a different model: buying tickets ahead of time offers substantial discounts that weren't available 60 years ago. But for the overwhelming majority of customers on this route (who ARE able to predict when they want to travel), journeys now cost a significantly lower proportion of average wages than they did 60 years ago.
But it's not just some complicated cross-country services: my prime journey (Oxfordshire-London) is, 90% of the time, light years better than the Soviet-style horror show I had to endure from BR in the 1960s. And most of the 10% of the time when it's not better is when the unions arbitrarily decide to go on strike.
It's palpable nonsense to say that BR was better than the system today. And the real reason it's palpable nonsense is that bits of today's train system are a lot worse, bits much the same and bits massively better: crude generalisations almost always lead to sloppily informed, and dangerous, alternatives (like "renationalise").
The one over-simplified one-liner I'd accept is that a distressingly common feature in current poor performances is the Treasury's uninformed micro-management. A feature which would be even more malign and frequent should Britain ever renationalise its railway system.
When you say Oxfordshire, are we talking about a route which operates into London Paddington? Its just that you are using the 1960s as a comparator. In 1976 BR introduced the fastest diesel trains in the world out of Paddington. The HST was both comfier and faster than the current IEP operation. And likely much cheaper for turn up and go flexible journeys.
Again again. BR got loads right. And loads wrong. It all depended on the political climate at the time.
I was on that line from time to time at the time, and others, when HST came in. It was a massive improvement.
One point: the seating. The seats were not crammed in in the modern manner, and there was decent room to put luggage. Byt DfT targets have wrecked that, even in the surviving HSTs. It's a real concvern as one gets older and one's body less flexible.
I find the debate on here about BR vs. privatisation almost as sterile as the Brexit debate. The anti-BR side constantly point out how much better railways are now than in the 60s and 70s. Well I never! It would be pretty astonishing given technological advances since then if they weren't, wouldn't it? As somebody pointed out above, we don't compare cars from that era with cars now.
(Incidentally, I'm biased because my late father worked for BR for 40 years. He told many tales of great success, and many tales of great failure, with most stuff in between. Much like now).
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...
The other difference between TfL, and real railway travel, is that in TfL you don't need to say where you are going (on the whole), just a band/zone if that, and you go in and out via automatic barriers. It's about as sophisticated as a starter Triang train set.
In the real world , who knows what journey, on what train, under what rules, [edit] often by which route, for what company, one is being charged for at the beginning of the trip, never mind the end? Many stations - you can't even clock out, because there are or will soon be no staff.And even if you can, how does the company know where you have been?
And without someone in a ticket office to explain if need be, plus in the real world of cash, infirm people, broken down phones and lack of access to computers for many people.
Of course, it is so much easier to be patronising when one is 40 and healthy. But in the current ticketing system ...
There is an ongoing exercise to simplify fares, and that really is needed. The problem is that when they say simplify what they mean is remove many of the cheap fares. Its ludicrous that a return ticket can cost 10p more than a single. Its also ludicrous if the "single fares only" implementation puts so many journeys up by a lot by changing the restrictions on and availability of the cheaper fares.
The number one thing that could be done is abolish operator-restricted fares. There is no longer competition between DfT-mandated operators such as Northern and Avanti and Transpennine. So remove much of the confusion by removing the silos.
Get off the plane at Gatwick and you have a choice of a single operator with three brands going to London, all competing with each other. Have the misfortune of getting on the Southern-operated Gatwick Express instead of the Southern-operated Southern service and the fare is double for a journey only a few minutes faster on the same family of train operating on the exact same route.
Based on the evidence available to us, we have concluded that the material posted online did not provide a full picture and that Mason did not commit the offences in respect of which he was originally charged.
Quite why Manchester United feel the need to say this, I don't know. If they're that confident, they should back him and put the full facts into the public domain.
The recording is pretty damning. He did not commit offences. He did some truly awful things which bring the football club into reputational difficulties.
My sister (legal background) reckons the recording might have been inadmissible in court. Not sure if the legal bods on here have any thoughts.
A recording of events or words which are part of the alleged action of an alleged offence is in principle admissible as part of the evidence, just as a photograph or document in writing would be. This is as long as there is an evidence trail to show that the recording links to the alleged actions. In the old lingo it is part of the 'Res gestae'.
This is quite different from the admissibility of, for example, an alleged recording of a later alleged confession, where different issues arise.
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.
Why is revenge wrong? A person may choose, as an act of Grace, to forgive a grievous wrong that had been done to them.
But, why should they be *required* to do so.
An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind, as Gandhi is said to have said (but probably didn't, and it was rather Canadian MP George Perry Graham who first said something along these lines in a 1914 debate on the death penalty).
The same Gandhi who thought the Jews would show themselves morally superior to the Nazis by submitting willingly to execution.
Almost all of us distinguish between hurting the innocent and punishing the guilty. By all means accept that allowing private revenge would result in anarchy. But, in that case, the State takes it upon itself to exact revenge on behalf of wronged citizens.
The notion that there is no distinction to be drawn between killing the guilty and killing the innocent makes no ethical sense at all.
None of use would read about the deaths of war criminals at the end of WWII and truly think, we make ourselves no better than they are by hanging them.
It also shows how different the British empire was to the Nazi, despite that distinction being willfully ignored in many opinion columns today.
Britain was progressively granting India more self-governance, albeit too slowly and with some prejudice influencing that, but it was still coming and ultimately he succeeded in shaming The Raj into independence.
In any other empire Gandhi would have been executed
I could be persuaded that the British Empire was the most benign Empire in history and yet, it was still an offence against human decency and continues to be a stain on Britain's reputation that the country has not properly reckoned with.
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.
Why is revenge wrong? A person may choose, as an act of Grace, to forgive a grievous wrong that had been done to them.
But, why should they be *required* to do so.
An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind, as Gandhi is said to have said (but probably didn't, and it was rather Canadian MP George Perry Graham who said something along these lines in a
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.
Why is revenge wrong? A person may choose, as an act of Grace, to forgive a grievous wrong that had been done to them.
But, why should they be *required* to do so.
An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind, as Gandhi is said to have said (but probably didn't, and it was rather Canadian MP George Perry Graham who first said something along these lines in a 1914 debate on the death penalty).
The same Gandhi who thought the Jews would show themselves morally superior to the Nazis by submitting willingly to execution.
But, as I said, Gandhi didn't say it, so you need to pick on GP Graham!
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.
And your mother and father are downright wrong.
I still use a complex intercity route (Cotswolds-Merseyside) I used to use in the late sixties. It's now far, far, more frequent and flexible, on far, far better (= comfier, faster, more frequent and newer) rolling stock with far, far tastier food and drink en route - and a real choice of operators. Pricing's now on a different model: buying tickets ahead of time offers substantial discounts that weren't available 60 years ago. But for the overwhelming majority of customers on this route (who ARE able to predict when they want to travel), journeys now cost a significantly lower proportion of average wages than they did 60 years ago.
But it's not just some complicated cross-country services: my prime journey (Oxfordshire-London) is, 90% of the time, light years better than the Soviet-style horror show I had to endure from BR in the 1960s. And most of the 10% of the time when it's not better is when the unions arbitrarily decide to go on strike.
It's palpable nonsense to say that BR was better than the system today. And the real reason it's palpable nonsense is that bits of today's train system are a lot worse, bits much the same and bits massively better: crude generalisations almost always lead to sloppily informed, and dangerous, alternatives (like "renationalise").
The one over-simplified one-liner I'd accept is that a distressingly common feature in current poor performances is the Treasury's uninformed micro-management. A feature which would be even more malign and frequent should Britain ever renationalise its railway system.
When you say Oxfordshire, are we talking about a route which operates into London Paddington? Its just that you are using the 1960s as a comparator. In 1976 BR introduced the fastest diesel trains in the world out of Paddington. The HST was both comfier and faster than the current IEP operation. And likely much cheaper for turn up and go flexible journeys.
Again again. BR got loads right. And loads wrong. It all depended on the political climate at the time.
One of the reasons my train connection into London is a million times better than it was in the 1960s is I now have a choice between a 10 minute walk to my own station (with direct trains to Paddington four times more frequent than 60 years ago) and a 15 minute drive to Oxford Parkway (which didn't have a direct connection to London then).
On both direct trains to London and the complexities of travel to elsewhere in Britain, it's the real choice privatisation has brought that makes the present system so much better than relying entirely on the UK government.
Based on the evidence available to us, we have concluded that the material posted online did not provide a full picture and that Mason did not commit the offences in respect of which he was originally charged.
Quite why Manchester United feel the need to say this, I don't know. If they're that confident, they should back him and put the full facts into the public domain.
The recording is pretty damning. He did not commit offences. He did some truly awful things which bring the football club into reputational difficulties.
And yet - given that the couple in question are still together and now have a child - I'd suggest that there is at the very least something we don't know about this particular case.
It's my cautiously held belief, based upon understanding from FOAFs, that MG is an absolutely horrible man. But I maintain that we don't know a lot of what was going on in this particular case.
Without any prejudice to the specific case either way, I think it's important to point out that people in abusive domestic relationships often return to their abusive partners, multiple times, and so it really doesn't tell us anything about the specific case.
It simply isn't an observation that enables you to determine anything about what is going on.
Neither, also, does Manchester United's decision. That will primarily have been based on what they thought the public would think.
I suspect it will be primarily based upon how much moolah they can get from Saudi for him.
Comments
Managerialist statist declinism isn't what the Tory party, or the country, want these days. It's no wonder his polling is through the floor.
Have now replied in full, and may now leave you in peace for a bit.
Thanks enormously for your help.
The comparisons vs BR are about as relevant 30 years on as comparing 1992 BR against pre modernisation BR from 1962. All of the bad bits of BR are done today. All of the good bits of BR were done until the final collapse of franchising.
InterCity was profitable, it is odd that no private operator has been able to make a profit.
https://news.sky.com/story/mason-greenwood-will-not-play-for-manchester-united-after-attempted-rape-charge-dropped-12934726
We never privatised passenger rail operations which regardless of the name of the operator or the paint scheme remained owned by the Department for Transport.
So privatisation vs nationalisation arguments are moot.
"People now don’t believe me when I say that on the Oxford to Paddington Express... you could once get a beautifully cooked bacon, egg, sausage and mushroom breakfast, with good coffee, freshly-made toast and an actual jar of Cooper’s Oxford Marmalade ready for use on the crisp white tablecloth."
Emphasis mine. I prefer my marmalade on toast, but I guess the tablesloth gave him something to chew on for the journey. His behaviour might explain why it's no longer offered
Rishi Sunak is unable to confirm whether he will be able to 'stop by the boats' by the next general election.
'I want it to be done as soon as possible but I also want to be honest with people that it is a complex problem,' he says.
https://twitter.com/ITVNewsPolitics/status/1693564902634352833
Moral: don't make damnfool promises that are going to be difficult to keep.
"Eleven Minutes Late" by Matthew Engel is quite good on this subject.
They are now back together and have had a child together.
Charges were dropped rather than his name being cleared.
https://x.com/footballreprt/status/1487801311907229705?s=46
All of which means that stats/patterns are fine for identifying suspects but you (should) need more than that to convict.
I haven't followed this case closely, but AFAIK there are additional things here such as actual evidence of interference in some of the deaths and, of course, the notes. The "I killed them on purpose" bit is hard to explain away, as much as some of the other stuff could have other interpretations. There are oddities - why would any rational person, clearly under suspicion, have kept such notes? But then, why would any rational person commit such crimes. I tend to go with others in assuming here that the jury have done their job. The acquittals on some charges and disagreement on others suggests that they haven't simply been caught up in a witch-hunt but have looked carefully at the evidence and the threshold for conviction.
*Upgrades I'd never really use after my University time was up.
Rumour also has it that he is a rather difficult individual to be around and therefore the club aren't desperate to die in a ditch over keeping him.
Certainly demonstrates a weakness in the franchising model, though you can make a case for blaming the DfT at least as much as the franchisees.
I don't know as much about the West Coast Mainline, bit they're I think there have been issues because the promised upgrade a couple of decades ago wasn't as good as it was supposed to be in terms of increasing train paths.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Terry#FA_charges
Ultimately, businesses can kick you out for less than criminal behaviour. Note, they aren't sacking him, just not letting him play for them again.
People called the "privatisation" but it was not. We we privatised things we sold them to a new owner. Five freight operators were privatised. Passenger operations were not. At all times they remained owned by the government. A silly name and stripy paint scheme does not and did not infer ownership. Just as your local McDonalds isn't owned by McDonalds.
But, why should they be *required* to do so.
Quite why Manchester United feel the need to say this, I don't know. If they're that confident, they should back him and put the full facts into the public domain.
He lived through a great age of the 'Good Chaps' theory of authority in general, and on the whole believed he was part of it. Its slightly surprising collapse must be taken into account in assessing him. Like Denning I dearly wish it were true, because it is very unclear what better thing can replace it.
I still use a complex intercity route (Cotswolds-Merseyside) I used to use in the late sixties. It's now far, far, more frequent and flexible, on far, far better (= comfier, faster, more frequent and newer) rolling stock with far, far tastier food and drink en route - and a real choice of operators. Pricing's now on a different model: buying tickets ahead of time offers substantial discounts that weren't available 60 years ago. But for the overwhelming majority of customers on this route (who ARE able to predict when they want to travel), journeys now cost a significantly lower proportion of average wages than they did 60 years ago.
But it's not just some complicated cross-country services: my prime journey (Oxfordshire-London) is, 90% of the time, light years better than the Soviet-style horror show I had to endure from BR in the 1960s. And most of the 10% of the time when it's not better is when the unions arbitrarily decide to go on strike.
It's palpable nonsense to say that BR was better than the system today. And the real reason it's palpable nonsense is that bits of today's train system are a lot worse, bits much the same and bits massively better: crude generalisations almost always lead to sloppily informed, and dangerous, alternatives (like "renationalise").
The one over-simplified one-liner I'd accept is that a distressingly common feature in current poor performances is the Treasury's uninformed micro-management. A feature which would be even more malign and frequent should Britain ever renationalise its railway system.
The electorate need some hope and they need something beyond the hopeless topics of inflation and austerity, and the divisive culture wars. The Labour front bench have some interesting policies including on infrastructure and housebuilding, education and devolution, but they're not really selling them. That leaves a gap for none of the above votes, or for populists.
Sometimes countries need politicians to leave them alone and not tinker, but at other times they need someone to inject some energy and be a bit hyperactive. Early Blair was very much like that, so - in appearances at least - was the early Con-LD coalition although marred by austerity. The best foreign example I can think of is Sakashvili. Deeply flawed character who made rookie mistakes in foreign policy, but in his time as Georgian leader he transformed much of the country's infrastructure, brought security and tourism to erstwhile lawless areas, put a stop to the de facto secession of the Adjara region and raised Georgia's profile as a serious internationally-focused and ambitious country.
Admittedly some of the details were a little novel.
But people generally do not need to apply a criminal standard of evidence before deciding they don't want to associate with a particular individual. Manchester United can apply a different standard, though they would probably need to show an employment tribunal that this was made clear to their employees in advance and was applied consistently, if it ever made it that far.
In most cases it's not been the ownership of the means of production that's the issue, it's been how the assets and provision are managed and how the companies at the utilities end of the spectrum are regulated.
I have to go now but if you bump me later I'll write up a full reply.
However, there is the problem identified by Aeschylus, namely the cycle of revenge has to be stopped by some higher principled intervention otherwise it goes on for ever, and grace has no place in things at all.
Secondly, one of the very distinctive features of the Christian tradition, which is still around despite its apparent loss, is that revenge is always wrong, and that evil is only ever overcome by good.
For me the Aeschylus tradition (leave it to the rule of law) and the Jesus tradition (God not you is the judge) have the edge.
Like many such debates, the honest response ought to be 'I wouldn't start from here' - but given he had no choice in that matter, I think he's done a pretty impressive job (no doubt opinions sharply differ on that).
Free trade and free markets, are on balance a good thing. But either unregulated can be disastrous.
A Republican’s Lament for Democrats Past
Longtime GOP trade rep Robert Zoellick accuses Biden of failing to embrace the economic errors of Clinton and Obama.
https://prospect.org/economy/2023-08-21-republicans-lament-democrats-past/
I needed to go for a walk after reading the judges summing up and comments.
Just upsetting in every respect.
Virgin Trains (Virgin 51%, Stagecoach 49%). Virgin Atlantic on rails, with Sir Beard in charge of so much of the proposition (even the cab design of the Voyager train fleet was patented). Almost went bust when Railtrack failed to deliver the full WCML upgrade thus breaking the business model in the franchise. They operated for several years under a direct award contract where the DfT simply instructs them to operate trains and collect fares for a fixed fee.
Virgin Trains East Coast (10% Virgin, 90% Stagecoach). A Virgin frock on a Stagecoach train. Despite the same logo and name as the west coast operation there was no competition issue as both were completely different.
Cars in BR times were absolutely crap too, compared to cars today. So were most things.
Privatisation (with actual point of ticket sale competition - as on ECML at present) can work (I know the big operator is in public ownership). Public ownership can also work (and fail) as seen in many examples across Europe. What's probably needed is either privatisation with real competition and good regulation or arms length public ownership. Or a mix of both, with competition between them as on ECML.
Almost all of us distinguish between hurting the innocent and punishing the guilty. By all means accept that allowing private revenge would result in anarchy. But, in that case, the State takes it upon itself to exact revenge on behalf of wronged citizens.
The notion that there is no distinction to be drawn between killing the guilty and killing the innocent makes no ethical sense at all.
None of us would read about the deaths of war criminals at the end of WWII and truly think, we make ourselves no better than they are by hanging them.
Either the death penalty is wrong or it is not.
I believe it is wrong on the basis of making a possible mistake.
That goes for anyone. Anyone. No matter how terrible their crime.
(a) for my own satisfaction, it's good to know.
(b) I don't have as much faith in defence lawyers as you do when it comes to technical evidence and stats.
It's my cautiously held belief, based upon understanding from FOAFs, that MG is an absolutely horrible man. But I maintain that we don't know a lot of what was going on in this particular case.
Britain was progressively granting India more self-governance, albeit too slowly and with some prejudice influencing that, but it was still coming and ultimately he succeeded in shaming The Raj into independence.
In any other empire Gandhi would have been executed
I'm relieved Sunak hasn't decided to pounce on the Letby story. But I expect if they ever did try to pull this one it would be while in opposition, and probably following a male murderer rather than a female. A lot of more conservative older people would still feel squeamish about executing a woman.
It is the other side of the coin (pun intended) of their mega-league megabucks football. It’s a state run, state-funded league and those who take the cash to sportswash that nasty country’s reputation are complicit.
Again again. BR got loads right. And loads wrong. It all depended on the political climate at the time.
I'd be interested to know how many of the replies he's visited.
What is the world's most underrated city?
https://twitter.com/culturaltutor/status/1693353979474792498
There are some people who do things because they enjoy doing bad things and do not need to do bad things to survive / get by. Some of these people are psychopaths or sociopaths - in which case I would say they fall into the mentally ill category and probably can't be held fully responsible for their actions. The rest is where I find things difficult. I agree there is a place for revenge in catharsis, but on an individual basis not on a systemic one. The systemic aim of justice should be the hope that every individual can be brought back into society; the state should not have the power to put people to death - especially when the states judgement is not that trustworthy. If victims are not appeased by that, I can understand it, but I don't think that can be helped - what the state can do is make sure that ample social and mental health support is provided to help victims find catharsis however they can.
The de Havilland Comet was top of the range, the Moris Minor a miracle of its age. You can consider that even with our poor investment levels, the rolling stock, signalling and coffee will have improved simply by buying new stuff when the old stuff is irreparable.
The endless debate between proponents of market and state is one of the most sterile in politics. It has bedevilled the UK since (at least) WWII.
In Russia it is permanently associated with excellent stations; here we associate it with fifth tier football.
As a player he had the world at his feet. Now he will be lucky if he can salvage a carer with the head choppers or perhaps in Turkey.
For a lot of people, it was cathartic.
In the real world , who knows what journey, on what train, under what rules, [edit] often by which route, for what company, one is being charged for at the beginning of the trip, never mind the end? Many stations - you can't even clock out, because there are or will soon be no staff.And even if you can, how does the company know where you have been?
And without someone in a ticket office to explain if need be, plus in the real world of cash, infirm people, broken down phones and lack of access to computers for many people.
Of course, it is so much easier to be patronising when one is 40 and healthy. But in the current ticketing system ...
For me, revenge - the deliberate inflicting of harm/death - solves nothing except to ruin more lives.
But in any case, it is hard to see an upside and it is not surprising MUFC have let him go, and perhaps Greenwood can rebuild his career overseas.
The privatised companies saw passenger numbers soar, when BR had overseen decades of decline. Oddly, the inflexion point was almost exactly at the moment of privatisation.
To the extent that privatisation 'failed' it was usually down to not being able to generate enough income for the Treasury / survive on the subsidy provided; a standard against which the renationalised routes are not held to equivalently.
https://www.vauxhallandkennington.org.uk/vokzals.html
Not that you need a conviction to sack someone.
It simply isn't an observation that enables you to determine anything about what is going on.
Neither, also, does Manchester United's decision. That will primarily have been based on what they thought the public would think.
One point: the seating. The seats were not crammed in in the modern manner, and there was decent room to put luggage. Byt DfT targets have wrecked that, even in the surviving HSTs. It's a real concvern as one gets older and one's body less flexible.
(Incidentally, I'm biased because my late father worked for BR for 40 years. He told many tales of great success, and many tales of great failure, with most stuff in between. Much like now).
The number one thing that could be done is abolish operator-restricted fares. There is no longer competition between DfT-mandated operators such as Northern and Avanti and Transpennine. So remove much of the confusion by removing the silos.
Get off the plane at Gatwick and you have a choice of a single operator with three brands going to London, all competing with each other. Have the misfortune of getting on the Southern-operated Gatwick Express instead of the Southern-operated Southern service and the fare is double for a journey only a few minutes faster on the same family of train operating on the exact same route.
This is quite different from the admissibility of, for example, an alleged recording of a later alleged confession, where different issues arise.
On both direct trains to London and the complexities of travel to elsewhere in Britain, it's the real choice privatisation has brought that makes the present system so much better than relying entirely on the UK government.