In a hypothetical world in which Labour did actually win 500 seats as some of the polls say, what would happen to the Tories?
I worry about this. It's been playing on my mind.
Let's enter the world of evolution by natural selection. More precisely, the evolution of antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria and viruses, or drug resistant tumours.
Remove a hundred or so Tory MPs and what remains will still have some sort of ecological diversity. There will be the odd Lee Anderson or Suella type, a few dull but broadly thatcherite Sunaks, a handful of centrists and secret remainers and a few technocratic Tories nobody's heard of. What then grows back will be genetically similar to previous Tory parliamentary parties, and hopefully a little chastened with the populist right faction less powerful.
Get down to 50 though and the surviving MPs are likely to represent very Brexity, very right wing seats and be disproportionately of the Lee Anderson type (though not Lee himself, he would lose his seat). Either by natural disposition or through self-interest. What would then grow back might have quite dangerously mutant political DNA.
That might lock them out of power for a couple of terms, but it could mean that when things eventually swing back their way we would be faced with something much closer to the Trump GOP than we have even today.
I don't know why you think the 50 safest Tory seats are likely to be "of the Lee Anderson type" in that not just Anderson himself but most of his breed of "new" Conservatives who delivered Johnson his majority have relatively marginal seats.
It's probably true that the remaining seats would be strongly Brexit-leaning (as that's where some of the largest majorities are and the ones that will be hardest to dislodge). But the type of MP is, I suspect, more of the "traditional" Conservative type. Not exclusively, of course, but on balance.
I think that depends on what you think is a "traditional" conservative. Sunak would likely keep his seat, and he is seen as a "traditionalist" - but on authoritarian instinct and culture war stuff he is much more radical than past Tories (some of whom even had libertarian instincts). The same for Rees-Mogg; he may seem like a "traditional" Tory, but his presence at the National Conservative Conference and his faith, family and flag politics is much more American than it is Tory. The whole "union" from the Conservative and Unionist Party seems to be faltering with this move - there is no way this new brand of conservative could keep NI and Scotland in the Union - and we're already seeing the rise of interest in Welsh independence.
Wales voted for Brexit anyway and unless Rees Mogg or Braverman are elected UK PM it isn't really an issue for the Union what the Tories do in opposition if Sunak loses to Starmer at the next general election
And Welsh independence desire is growing, especially amongst the young, who were not the most likely demographic to support Brexit. And this was considering the logic of few Tory MPs and what that would mean the party "evolved" into. I think the new Tory party would evolve into something closer to the GOP than it currently is, partly because the Americanisation of our politics and partly because the economic consensus is weakening and so culture wars are easier to ways to split people away from class interest. It is possible that the Tories become the third (or even forth) party behind the LDs and SNP, but if they are the opposition I think it does matter where they stand on policy because they are the most likely party to form a government after Labour. I also don't see Starmer being popular / keeping such a large majority for long as he is mostly winning on the benefit of not being the Tories rather than any real desire for his policy solutions to the problems we face as a nation.
No it isn't, given 47.5% of Welsh voters voted Remain the current support for Welsh independence post Brexit ie about 25-30% is pathetic.
Plaid too an abysmal third place in Wales.
There is no chance of the Tories becoming 3rd or 4th party, indeed electoral calculus currently forecasts 135 Conservative MPs and that is even before they squeeze RefUK and DKs
Personally I would ban all cars except delivery vehicles (which should be electric anyhow) from Central London, I would do this at first by sticking a massive fee to enter Central London onto motorists and increase it every year.
A good starting point would be to pedestrian Oxford Street and environs, save for delivery vehicles. Would transform the area.
Good morning
I really do not understand why anyone would want to drive into the centre of London or indeed Edinburgh
I used to travel to London on business quite frequently before I retired and I cannot ever recall taking my car into central London
However, I would just caution that the rest of the country is not London or Edinburgh and different solutions are required
TBF rather a lot of the rest of the UK is in conurbations bigger than Edinburgh.
Indeed, bigger is better. Gives more space for homes, gardens, roads, bike paths etc. 👍
Edinburgh has over half a million people crushed into a 46 square mile urban area. Milton Keynes by comparison has a quarter of a million people spread out over an 89 square mile urban area.
Hell even Warrington is the same size as Edinburgh, but with only 177k people not over half a million in the same space.
Spread out. Its not as if there's a shortage of free space in Scotland for sprawl.
Low density tends to lead to dispersal of services, meaning you have to drive everywhere. It's the big problem with many US cities.
So long as you spread out services rather than cram them all into the same space so everyone's trying to go to the same destination, that's not at all a problem. And if you sprawl you can have wider roads with dedicated cycle paths physically separated from both pedestrians and cars, so everyone can choose their own mode of transportation.
US cities do not seem a stunningly successful model to follow.
Why does every zealot on here seem to think the US is the only alternative? Its like the insanity that thinks that healthcare is either NHS or American.
I never said to follow US models.
New towns like Warrington and Milton Keynes which I positively mentioned as a successful, British model, would be completely out of place in America. They don't even understand what a roundabout is in America.
We should build more British new towns is my preference. Not go two-footed into American cities, I never suggested that.
MK was very much designed based on US city layouts though, including their zoning rules. Hence all the odd road names like "Silbury Boulevard". The one thing they built that was very non-American was the roundabouts.
I quite like MK in its own retro way, but there are many many towns I would prefer to visit.
Did you read the piece which you link to? What in it suggested to you that the new CalMac ferry might never set sail?
I did. Given the number of mistakes so far, the complexity of RORO ferries, and the political pressure on all this, I just wouldn't be surprised if there is something much more seriously wrong with them.
IANAE, but my friend in the MN is very cautious about working on ferries and has a lot of respect for the CalMac crews. I think MS Estonia has put the fear in him.
I would have said the much bigger concern is they've not only missed every single deadline but as they put right each fault another one appears.
So the Tories are now calling for a tax-cutting bonanza. Will Rishi succumb to the pressure?
Does he want to stimulate demand ?
Playing things fiscally tight is probably best to keep inflation from rising.
He has no good options. Politically, only a new government will have the space to be able to make "tough choices" or introduce changes of direction in policy without undermining the record of the last 13 years. Sunak is very much boxed into a corner. Damned if he does, damned if he doesn't.
Assuming Dorries does step down and force a by election why shouldn't Labour contest it to win? After all Labour were second in Mid Bedfordshire in 2019 not the LDs and on the swing in the Selby by election would win it.
Starmer and the NEC will also not like the fact that LD leaflet is already trashing their candidate as well as the Tories and Dorries
Labour have every right to fight it, but it is an unnecessary reputational risk if they fail and boost to the Tories if they hold on as a consequence. Regardless of the fact they are in 2nd place the LDs are the ones most able to win. In fact without Lab campaigning it would be a slam dunk. If Lab are going to fight it you can't then expect the LDs not to fight them.
The best opportunity for the Tories is for the LDs and Lab to both fight it so I understand why you are keen Lab fight this seat.
I think it's just as likely, maybe more likely, that if the LDs and Lab both fight the seat, the Tories drop to third as it is the Tories squeezing through the middle to win. Coming third would be even more disastrous for the Tories than just losing badly but remaining second. So, I suggest, it may also be the worst opportunity for the Tories if both opposition parties fight.
In a hypothetical world in which Labour did actually win 500 seats as some of the polls say, what would happen to the Tories?
I worry about this. It's been playing on my mind.
Let's enter the world of evolution by natural selection. More precisely, the evolution of antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria and viruses, or drug resistant tumours.
Remove a hundred or so Tory MPs and what remains will still have some sort of ecological diversity. There will be the odd Lee Anderson or Suella type, a few dull but broadly thatcherite Sunaks, a handful of centrists and secret remainers and a few technocratic Tories nobody's heard of. What then grows back will be genetically similar to previous Tory parliamentary parties, and hopefully a little chastened with the populist right faction less powerful.
Get down to 50 though and the surviving MPs are likely to represent very Brexity, very right wing seats and be disproportionately of the Lee Anderson type (though not Lee himself, he would lose his seat). Either by natural disposition or through self-interest. What would then grow back might have quite dangerously mutant political DNA.
That might lock them out of power for a couple of terms, but it could mean that when things eventually swing back their way we would be faced with something much closer to the Trump GOP than we have even today.
I don't know why you think the 50 safest Tory seats are likely to be "of the Lee Anderson type" in that not just Anderson himself but most of his breed of "new" Conservatives who delivered Johnson his majority have relatively marginal seats.
It's probably true that the remaining seats would be strongly Brexit-leaning (as that's where some of the largest majorities are and the ones that will be hardest to dislodge). But the type of MP is, I suspect, more of the "traditional" Conservative type. Not exclusively, of course, but on balance.
I think that depends on what you think is a "traditional" conservative. Sunak would likely keep his seat, and he is seen as a "traditionalist" - but on authoritarian instinct and culture war stuff he is much more radical than past Tories (some of whom even had libertarian instincts). The same for Rees-Mogg; he may seem like a "traditional" Tory, but his presence at the National Conservative Conference and his faith, family and flag politics is much more American than it is Tory. The whole "union" from the Conservative and Unionist Party seems to be faltering with this move - there is no way this new brand of conservative could keep NI and Scotland in the Union - and we're already seeing the rise of interest in Welsh independence.
Wales voted for Brexit anyway and unless Rees Mogg or Braverman are elected UK PM it isn't really an issue for the Union what the Tories do in opposition if Sunak loses to Starmer at the next general election
And Welsh independence desire is growing, especially amongst the young, who were not the most likely demographic to support Brexit. And this was considering the logic of few Tory MPs and what that would mean the party "evolved" into. I think the new Tory party would evolve into something closer to the GOP than it currently is, partly because the Americanisation of our politics and partly because the economic consensus is weakening and so culture wars are easier to ways to split people away from class interest. It is possible that the Tories become the third (or even forth) party behind the LDs and SNP, but if they are the opposition I think it does matter where they stand on policy because they are the most likely party to form a government after Labour. I also don't see Starmer being popular / keeping such a large majority for long as he is mostly winning on the benefit of not being the Tories rather than any real desire for his policy solutions to the problems we face as a nation.
No it isn't, given 48% of Welsh voters voted Remain the current support for Welsh independence ie about 25-30% is pathetic.
Plaid too an abysmal third place in Wales.
There is no chance of the Tories becoming 3rd or 4th party, indeed electoral calculus currently forecasts 135 Conservative MPs and that is even before they squeeze RefUK and DKs
Personally I would ban all cars except delivery vehicles (which should be electric anyhow) from Central London, I would do this at first by sticking a massive fee to enter Central London onto motorists and increase it every year.
A good starting point would be to pedestrian Oxford Street and environs, save for delivery vehicles. Would transform the area.
Good morning
I really do not understand why anyone would want to drive into the centre of London or indeed Edinburgh
I used to travel to London on business quite frequently before I retired and I cannot ever recall taking my car into central London
However, I would just caution that the rest of the country is not London or Edinburgh and different solutions are required
TBF rather a lot of the rest of the UK is in conurbations bigger than Edinburgh.
Indeed, bigger is better. Gives more space for homes, gardens, roads, bike paths etc. 👍
Edinburgh has over half a million people crushed into a 46 square mile urban area. Milton Keynes by comparison has a quarter of a million people spread out over an 89 square mile urban area.
Hell even Warrington is the same size as Edinburgh, but with only 177k people not over half a million in the same space.
Spread out. Its not as if there's a shortage of free space in Scotland for sprawl.
Low density tends to lead to dispersal of services, meaning you have to drive everywhere. It's the big problem with many US cities.
So long as you spread out services rather than cram them all into the same space so everyone's trying to go to the same destination, that's not at all a problem. And if you sprawl you can have wider roads with dedicated cycle paths physically separated from both pedestrians and cars, so everyone can choose their own mode of transportation.
US cities do not seem a stunningly successful model to follow.
Why does every zealot on here seem to think the US is the only alternative? Its like the insanity that thinks that healthcare is either NHS or American.
I never said to follow US models.
New towns like Warrington and Milton Keynes which I positively mentioned as a successful, British model, would be completely out of place in America. They don't even understand what a roundabout is in America.
We should build more British new towns is my preference. Not go two-footed into American cities, I never suggested that.
MK was very much designed based on US city layouts though, including their zoning rules. Hence all the odd road names like "Silbury Boulevard". The one thing they built that was very non-American was the roundabouts.
I quite like MK in its own retro way, but there are many many towns I would prefer to visit.
I purchased my current car from MK. Lots of wheeled robots whiling down the pavements.
Personally I would ban all cars except delivery vehicles (which should be electric anyhow) from Central London, I would do this at first by sticking a massive fee to enter Central London onto motorists and increase it every year.
A good starting point would be to pedestrian Oxford Street and environs, save for delivery vehicles. Would transform the area.
Good morning
I really do not understand why anyone would want to drive into the centre of London or indeed Edinburgh
I used to travel to London on business quite frequently before I retired and I cannot ever recall taking my car into central London
However, I would just caution that the rest of the country is not London or Edinburgh and different solutions are required
TBF rather a lot of the rest of the UK is in conurbations bigger than Edinburgh.
Indeed, bigger is better. Gives more space for homes, gardens, roads, bike paths etc. 👍
Edinburgh has over half a million people crushed into a 46 square mile urban area. Milton Keynes by comparison has a quarter of a million people spread out over an 89 square mile urban area.
Hell even Warrington is the same size as Edinburgh, but with only 177k people not over half a million in the same space.
Spread out. Its not as if there's a shortage of free space in Scotland for sprawl.
Low density tends to lead to dispersal of services, meaning you have to drive everywhere. It's the big problem with many US cities.
So long as you spread out services rather than cram them all into the same space so everyone's trying to go to the same destination, that's not at all a problem. And if you sprawl you can have wider roads with dedicated cycle paths physically separated from both pedestrians and cars, so everyone can choose their own mode of transportation.
US cities do not seem a stunningly successful model to follow.
Why does every zealot on here seem to think the US is the only alternative? Its like the insanity that thinks that healthcare is either NHS or American.
I never said to follow US models.
New towns like Warrington and Milton Keynes which I positively mentioned as a successful, British model, would be completely out of place in America. They don't even understand what a roundabout is in America.
We should build more British new towns is my preference. Not go two-footed into American cities, I never suggested that.
MK was very much designed based on US city layouts though, including their zoning rules. Hence all the odd road names like "Silbury Boulevard". The one thing they built that was very non-American was the roundabouts.
I quite like MK in its own retro way, but there are many many towns I would prefer to visit.
Oh absolutely, it learnt lessons from America, in a good way - but adopted them in a way that suits the UK. In that way its the best of both worlds.
The idea we need to be at either "pole", all cycling, or all driving, is completely false and belied by reality.
The truth is for almost every town in the country, balance is best. A mix of all can work. Which is true in most walks of life, its getting balance that is key.
Hence my proposal that we should have space for pedestrianised footpaths, dedicated cycling, and roads for cars. Not either/or, but all of the above. We have the space for it, if we're willing to use it, and where new towns have been built in the UK it works.
These tend to be the places in the UK where you can find affordable homes and good jobs, rather than only one but not the other. And green spaces. Tree-lined roads rather than sheer concrete. And gardens for your home.
There's actually very little difference in strategy. The Biden strategy is a 'beggar thy neighbour' strategy too, aimed at shoring up the US's economy often at the expense of everyone else's.
The Biden strategy is focused, requires some joined-up thinking and is positive in spirit. The Trump 'strategy' is illiterate, negative and petty. In the policy is the man.
Forgive me if I don't find it particularly positive that 'The Biden Strategy' of a massive debt-funded stimulus caused rampant worldwide inflation even before anything happened in Ukraine.
Did you read the piece which you link to? What in it suggested to you that the new CalMac ferry might never set sail?
I did. Given the number of mistakes so far, the complexity of RORO ferries, and the political pressure on all this, I just wouldn't be surprised if there is something much more seriously wrong with them.
IANAE, but my friend in the MN is very cautious about working on ferries and has a lot of respect for the CalMac crews. I think MS Estonia has put the fear in him.
I would have said the much bigger concern is they've not only missed every single deadline but as they put right each fault another one appears.
There is a generic and unavoidable problem with the basic roro quick on/offloading concept. Vulnerability of bow and stern doors, free surface water on the car deck sloshing around and making momentary lists worse, taking in more water till it destabilises and turns turtle, etc. Princess Victoria foundered in the Irish Sea in 1946 after the stern doors were beaten in in a storm, so it's certainly been known about for at least that long - well before Herald of Free Enterprisea and Estonia. Careful operation is crucial as seen (or rather not) in HFE.
A complete S-400 system costs several hundred million dollars. But they do make a spectacular bang.
https://twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1694295297776656598 A Russian S-400 air defense battery was targeted by Ukrainian forces in Cape Tarkhankut, Crimea- at least one TEL was hit and detonated, with other elements of the system nearby likely suffering damage.
Hitting it is one thing, but how the h*ll did they have a surveillance drone watching it without it being picked up?
That question will be giving all major militaries nightmares. The drones can be very small, hard to detect, hard to hit, and even somewhat autonomous. Something like holographic radar might help; fir instance the stuff produced by this lovely Cambridge company.
Very cool. Ideally you want your actual surveillance drones to be as small as possible on enemy radar, and your decoy drones to look as large as possible, preferably looking like they could be a manned fighter aircraft.
Assuming Dorries does step down and force a by election why shouldn't Labour contest it to win? After all Labour were second in Mid Bedfordshire in 2019 not the LDs and on the swing in the Selby by election would win it.
Starmer and the NEC will also not like the fact that LD leaflet is already trashing their candidate as well as the Tories and Dorries
Labour have every right to fight it, but it is an unnecessary reputational risk if they fail and boost to the Tories if they hold on as a consequence. Regardless of the fact they are in 2nd place the LDs are the ones most able to win. In fact without Lab campaigning it would be a slam dunk. If Lab are going to fight it you can't then expect the LDs not to fight them.
The best opportunity for the Tories is for the LDs and Lab to both fight it so I understand why you are keen Lab fight this seat.
I think it's just as likely, maybe more likely, that if the LDs and Lab both fight the seat, the Tories drop to third as it is the Tories squeezing through the middle to win. Coming third would be even more disastrous for the Tories than just losing badly but remaining second. So, I suggest, it may also be the worst opportunity for the Tories if both opposition parties fight.
I have seen this mentioned before. You? And it is a real possible outcome that I hadn't considered.
I can't believe however that is anyone's actual cunning plan.
It would however be a brilliant outcome. If it happened with the LDs winning I might actually explode.
This is what happened in Eastleigh in 1994.
Although LDs started in second, and Labour weren't as far behind them as the LDs are in mid-Beds. Also the seat wasn't quite as rock solid safe C as Mid Beds.
But given current polling, quite possible.
Labour and the other parties should step aside and allow the LDs to contest as an anticorruption candidate. The analogy to Martin Bell in Tatton 97 is obvious
Did you read the piece which you link to? What in it suggested to you that the new CalMac ferry might never set sail?
I did. Given the number of mistakes so far, the complexity of RORO ferries, and the political pressure on all this, I just wouldn't be surprised if there is something much more seriously wrong with them.
IANAE, but my friend in the MN is very cautious about working on ferries and has a lot of respect for the CalMac crews. I think MS Estonia has put the fear in him.
I would have said the much bigger concern is they've not only missed every single deadline but as they put right each fault another one appears.
There is a generic and unavoidable problem with the basic roro quick on/offloading concept. Vulnerability of bow and stern doors, free surface water on the car deck sloshing around and making momentary lists worse, taking in more water till it destabilises and turns turtle, etc. Princess Victoria foundered in the Irish Sea in 1946 after the stern doors were beaten in in a storm, so it's certainly been known about for at least that long - well before Herald of Free Enterprisea and Estonia. Careful operation is crucial as seen (or rather not) in HFE.
Yes, I agree, but it's not as though this was unknown about when the ferries were designed, is it?
I mean, 1946 and even 1987 and 1994 were some time ago now.
Ferries of this size and design should not be six years late.
In a hypothetical world in which Labour did actually win 500 seats as some of the polls say, what would happen to the Tories?
I worry about this. It's been playing on my mind.
Let's enter the world of evolution by natural selection. More precisely, the evolution of antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria and viruses, or drug resistant tumours.
Remove a hundred or so Tory MPs and what remains will still have some sort of ecological diversity. There will be the odd Lee Anderson or Suella type, a few dull but broadly thatcherite Sunaks, a handful of centrists and secret remainers and a few technocratic Tories nobody's heard of. What then grows back will be genetically similar to previous Tory parliamentary parties, and hopefully a little chastened with the populist right faction less powerful.
Get down to 50 though and the surviving MPs are likely to represent very Brexity, very right wing seats and be disproportionately of the Lee Anderson type (though not Lee himself, he would lose his seat). Either by natural disposition or through self-interest. What would then grow back might have quite dangerously mutant political DNA.
That might lock them out of power for a couple of terms, but it could mean that when things eventually swing back their way we would be faced with something much closer to the Trump GOP than we have even today.
I don't know why you think the 50 safest Tory seats are likely to be "of the Lee Anderson type" in that not just Anderson himself but most of his breed of "new" Conservatives who delivered Johnson his majority have relatively marginal seats.
It's probably true that the remaining seats would be strongly Brexit-leaning (as that's where some of the largest majorities are and the ones that will be hardest to dislodge). But the type of MP is, I suspect, more of the "traditional" Conservative type. Not exclusively, of course, but on balance.
I think that depends on what you think is a "traditional" conservative. Sunak would likely keep his seat, and he is seen as a "traditionalist" - but on authoritarian instinct and culture war stuff he is much more radical than past Tories (some of whom even had libertarian instincts). The same for Rees-Mogg; he may seem like a "traditional" Tory, but his presence at the National Conservative Conference and his faith, family and flag politics is much more American than it is Tory. The whole "union" from the Conservative and Unionist Party seems to be faltering with this move - there is no way this new brand of conservative could keep NI and Scotland in the Union - and we're already seeing the rise of interest in Welsh independence.
Wales voted for Brexit anyway and unless Rees Mogg or Braverman are elected UK PM it isn't really an issue for the Union what the Tories do in opposition if Sunak loses to Starmer at the next general election
And Welsh independence desire is growing, especially amongst the young, who were not the most likely demographic to support Brexit. And this was considering the logic of few Tory MPs and what that would mean the party "evolved" into. I think the new Tory party would evolve into something closer to the GOP than it currently is, partly because the Americanisation of our politics and partly because the economic consensus is weakening and so culture wars are easier to ways to split people away from class interest. It is possible that the Tories become the third (or even forth) party behind the LDs and SNP, but if they are the opposition I think it does matter where they stand on policy because they are the most likely party to form a government after Labour. I also don't see Starmer being popular / keeping such a large majority for long as he is mostly winning on the benefit of not being the Tories rather than any real desire for his policy solutions to the problems we face as a nation.
No it isn't, given 48% of Welsh voters voted Remain the current support for Welsh independence ie about 25-30% is pathetic.
Plaid too an abysmal third place in Wales.
There is no chance of the Tories becoming 3rd or 4th party, indeed electoral calculus currently forecasts 135 Conservative MPs and that is even before they squeeze RefUK and DKs
Unless you get some half decent AS there definitely is.
When Andrew RT Davies is held up as your cream people are going to start turning off you.
Plaid are in disarray now, but it's not that long ago they were the second party and given the right circumstances they could come good again.
This was UK wide but in fact in Wales in 2021 the Tories under RT got their highest voteshare and number of AMs in the Senedd ever and Plaid actually lost voteshare since 2016
Labour are seemingly slipping back in the constituency, they will probably end in third place. the Lib Dems have kept going over the summer break and the betting odds are strongly on them at 1/2 on, mind you they were strongly on Labour at Uxbridge! In the end the result may hinge on the Independent vote, even whether he will ultimately stand given the strong Lib Dem campaign.
We should build more British new towns is my preference. Not go two-footed into American cities, I never suggested that.
We should build more towns with public infrastructure and no cars from day one. I agree.
Cars are terrible.
You are a fanatic and a zealot. Or trolling and taking the piss, I'm not sure.
Just because I don't agree with you it doesn't make me a troll. This is just like Russia all over again. You're very dismissive of people that don't agree with you.
I am not taking the piss. Private transport is indeed the worst form of transport there is.
We should build more British new towns is my preference. Not go two-footed into American cities, I never suggested that.
We should build more towns with public infrastructure and no cars from day one. I agree.
Cars are terrible.
You are a fanatic and a zealot. Or trolling and taking the piss, I'm not sure.
Just because I don't agree with you it doesn't make me a troll. This is just like Russia all over again. You're very dismissive of people that don't agree with you.
I am not taking the piss. Public transport is indeed the worst form of transport there is.
"Public transport is indeed the worst form of transport there is."
Agreed. Expensive, slow, unreliable, doesn't even work without subsidies.
To try and learn any lesson on infrastructure from the USA is nonsensical.
They design their cities to basically be anti cyclists and anti public transport. They make you drive everywhere, if we want to look at proper environmentally friendly, well designed cities we should look at Europe.
We should build more British new towns is my preference. Not go two-footed into American cities, I never suggested that.
We should build more towns with public infrastructure and no cars from day one. I agree.
Cars are terrible.
You are a fanatic and a zealot. Or trolling and taking the piss, I'm not sure.
Just because I don't agree with you it doesn't make me a troll. This is just like Russia all over again. You're very dismissive of people that don't agree with you.
I am not taking the piss. Public transport is indeed the worst form of transport there is.
"Public transport is indeed the worst form of transport there is."
Agreed. Expensive, slow, unreliable, doesn't even work without subsidies.
Private transport is much better. 👍
ROFL, how much does the taxpayer pay for roads every year?
In a hypothetical world in which Labour did actually win 500 seats as some of the polls say, what would happen to the Tories?
I worry about this. It's been playing on my mind.
Let's enter the world of evolution by natural selection. More precisely, the evolution of antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria and viruses, or drug resistant tumours.
Remove a hundred or so Tory MPs and what remains will still have some sort of ecological diversity. There will be the odd Lee Anderson or Suella type, a few dull but broadly thatcherite Sunaks, a handful of centrists and secret remainers and a few technocratic Tories nobody's heard of. What then grows back will be genetically similar to previous Tory parliamentary parties, and hopefully a little chastened with the populist right faction less powerful.
Get down to 50 though and the surviving MPs are likely to represent very Brexity, very right wing seats and be disproportionately of the Lee Anderson type (though not Lee himself, he would lose his seat). Either by natural disposition or through self-interest. What would then grow back might have quite dangerously mutant political DNA.
That might lock them out of power for a couple of terms, but it could mean that when things eventually swing back their way we would be faced with something much closer to the Trump GOP than we have even today.
I don't know why you think the 50 safest Tory seats are likely to be "of the Lee Anderson type" in that not just Anderson himself but most of his breed of "new" Conservatives who delivered Johnson his majority have relatively marginal seats.
It's probably true that the remaining seats would be strongly Brexit-leaning (as that's where some of the largest majorities are and the ones that will be hardest to dislodge). But the type of MP is, I suspect, more of the "traditional" Conservative type. Not exclusively, of course, but on balance.
I think that depends on what you think is a "traditional" conservative. Sunak would likely keep his seat, and he is seen as a "traditionalist" - but on authoritarian instinct and culture war stuff he is much more radical than past Tories (some of whom even had libertarian instincts). The same for Rees-Mogg; he may seem like a "traditional" Tory, but his presence at the National Conservative Conference and his faith, family and flag politics is much more American than it is Tory. The whole "union" from the Conservative and Unionist Party seems to be faltering with this move - there is no way this new brand of conservative could keep NI and Scotland in the Union - and we're already seeing the rise of interest in Welsh independence.
Wales voted for Brexit anyway and unless Rees Mogg or Braverman are elected UK PM it isn't really an issue for the Union what the Tories do in opposition if Sunak loses to Starmer at the next general election
And Welsh independence desire is growing, especially amongst the young, who were not the most likely demographic to support Brexit. And this was considering the logic of few Tory MPs and what that would mean the party "evolved" into. I think the new Tory party would evolve into something closer to the GOP than it currently is, partly because the Americanisation of our politics and partly because the economic consensus is weakening and so culture wars are easier to ways to split people away from class interest. It is possible that the Tories become the third (or even forth) party behind the LDs and SNP, but if they are the opposition I think it does matter where they stand on policy because they are the most likely party to form a government after Labour. I also don't see Starmer being popular / keeping such a large majority for long as he is mostly winning on the benefit of not being the Tories rather than any real desire for his policy solutions to the problems we face as a nation.
No it isn't, given 48% of Welsh voters voted Remain the current support for Welsh independence ie about 25-30% is pathetic.
Plaid too an abysmal third place in Wales.
There is no chance of the Tories becoming 3rd or 4th party, indeed electoral calculus currently forecasts 135 Conservative MPs and that is even before they squeeze RefUK and DKs
Unless you get some half decent AS there definitely is.
When Andrew RT Davies is held up as your cream people are going to start turning off you.
Plaid are in disarray now, but it's not that long ago they were the second party and given the right circumstances they could come good again.
This was UK wide but in fact in Wales in 2021 the Tories under RT got their highest voteshare and number of AMs in the Senedd ever and Plaid actually lost voteshare since 2016
Ah, I slightly misread your comment, I see you mean third place UK wide (which I would agree with). But I stand by my comment on Wales. I could see the Tories going backwards there. The reason you did so well two years ago is Plaid were mired in scandal at the time. It will be interesting to see how well Rhun ap Iorwerth puts that to bed.
We should build more British new towns is my preference. Not go two-footed into American cities, I never suggested that.
We should build more towns with public infrastructure and no cars from day one. I agree.
Cars are terrible.
You are a fanatic and a zealot. Or trolling and taking the piss, I'm not sure.
Why shouldn't we imagine a world without cars? They are a new invention, terribly inefficient, are hugely selfish and exist mostly because all the infrastructure that challenged them were purposefully left to rot so they were the only option. Cars have a utility, but I don't think we should have to imagine a society where each household has like 2 cars each. I think we should indeed design new towns / villages with a hope of households not using cars and having local access to amenities as well as infrastructure to allow them to engage with regional and national hubs.
Did you read the piece which you link to? What in it suggested to you that the new CalMac ferry might never set sail?
I did. Given the number of mistakes so far, the complexity of RORO ferries, and the political pressure on all this, I just wouldn't be surprised if there is something much more seriously wrong with them.
IANAE, but my friend in the MN is very cautious about working on ferries and has a lot of respect for the CalMac crews. I think MS Estonia has put the fear in him.
I would have said the much bigger concern is they've not only missed every single deadline but as they put right each fault another one appears.
They should sell it to the British Army as a Combat Reconnaissance Vehicle.
We should build more British new towns is my preference. Not go two-footed into American cities, I never suggested that.
We should build more towns with public infrastructure and no cars from day one. I agree.
Cars are terrible.
You are a fanatic and a zealot. Or trolling and taking the piss, I'm not sure.
Why shouldn't we imagine a world without cars? They are a new invention, terribly inefficient, are hugely selfish and exist mostly because all the infrastructure that challenged them were purposefully left to rot so they were the only option. Cars have a utility, but I don't think we should have to imagine a society where each household has like 2 cars each. I think we should indeed design new towns / villages with a hope of households not using cars and having local access to amenities as well as infrastructure to allow them to engage with regional and national hubs.
The thing is, I like Bart as a personality and he has some sincerely held beliefs that I respect him standing behind. But he is totally unable to accept any differing point of view if it negates any of his beliefs.
For example I was strongly in favour of self ID but now it's been a disaster I have changed my mind.
Did you read the piece which you link to? What in it suggested to you that the new CalMac ferry might never set sail?
I did. Given the number of mistakes so far, the complexity of RORO ferries, and the political pressure on all this, I just wouldn't be surprised if there is something much more seriously wrong with them.
IANAE, but my friend in the MN is very cautious about working on ferries and has a lot of respect for the CalMac crews. I think MS Estonia has put the fear in him.
I would have said the much bigger concern is they've not only missed every single deadline but as they put right each fault another one appears.
There is a generic and unavoidable problem with the basic roro quick on/offloading concept. Vulnerability of bow and stern doors, free surface water on the car deck sloshing around and making momentary lists worse, taking in more water till it destabilises and turns turtle, etc. Princess Victoria foundered in the Irish Sea in 1946 after the stern doors were beaten in in a storm, so it's certainly been known about for at least that long - well before Herald of Free Enterprisea and Estonia. Careful operation is crucial as seen (or rather not) in HFE.
Yes, I agree, but it's not as though this was unknown about when the ferries were designed, is it?
I mean, 1946 and even 1987 and 1994 were some time ago now.
Ferries of this size and design should not be six years late.
I think the general point is that the MCA will be watching these two like a hawk given the history of the yard and the general vulnerability of ferries.
Glad to be on with the friendly crowd posting and commenting and having a nice well-mannered debate but I have to pop off now, back up to London. Have a good afternoon PB
We should build more British new towns is my preference. Not go two-footed into American cities, I never suggested that.
We should build more towns with public infrastructure and no cars from day one. I agree.
Cars are terrible.
You are a fanatic and a zealot. Or trolling and taking the piss, I'm not sure.
Just because I don't agree with you it doesn't make me a troll. This is just like Russia all over again. You're very dismissive of people that don't agree with you.
I am not taking the piss. Public transport is indeed the worst form of transport there is.
"Public transport is indeed the worst form of transport there is."
Agreed. Expensive, slow, unreliable, doesn't even work without subsidies.
Private transport is much better. 👍
ROFL, how much does the taxpayer pay for roads every year?
About 1/5 of what what the taxpayer pays in VED and Fuel Duty (and VAT on that) alone
The Exchequer fleeces drivers, it doesn't subsidise them.
Oh and public transportation (buses) while being inferior doesn't work without roads either. Nor can businesses or you get deliveries without them either.
Did you read the piece which you link to? What in it suggested to you that the new CalMac ferry might never set sail?
I did. Given the number of mistakes so far, the complexity of RORO ferries, and the political pressure on all this, I just wouldn't be surprised if there is something much more seriously wrong with them.
IANAE, but my friend in the MN is very cautious about working on ferries and has a lot of respect for the CalMac crews. I think MS Estonia has put the fear in him.
I would have said the much bigger concern is they've not only missed every single deadline but as they put right each fault another one appears.
They should sell it to the British Army as a Combat Reconnaissance Vehicle.
Suella Braverman could put the unsinkable but unsailable ferry into dry dock and use it as a prison for small boat people.
Assuming Dorries does step down and force a by election why shouldn't Labour contest it to win? After all Labour were second in Mid Bedfordshire in 2019 not the LDs and on the swing in the Selby by election would win it.
Starmer and the NEC will also not like the fact that LD leaflet is already trashing their candidate as well as the Tories and Dorries
Labour have every right to fight it, but it is an unnecessary reputational risk if they fail and boost to the Tories if they hold on as a consequence. Regardless of the fact they are in 2nd place the LDs are the ones most able to win. In fact without Lab campaigning it would be a slam dunk. If Lab are going to fight it you can't then expect the LDs not to fight them.
The best opportunity for the Tories is for the LDs and Lab to both fight it so I understand why you are keen Lab fight this seat.
I think it's just as likely, maybe more likely, that if the LDs and Lab both fight the seat, the Tories drop to third as it is the Tories squeezing through the middle to win. Coming third would be even more disastrous for the Tories than just losing badly but remaining second. So, I suggest, it may also be the worst opportunity for the Tories if both opposition parties fight.
I have seen this mentioned before. You? And it is a real possible outcome that I hadn't considered.
I can't believe however that is anyone's actual cunning plan.
It would however be a brilliant outcome. If it happened with the LDs winning I might actually explode.
This is what happened in Eastleigh in 1994.
Although LDs started in second, and Labour weren't as far behind them as the LDs are in mid-Beds. Also the seat wasn't quite as rock solid safe C as Mid Beds.
But given current polling, quite possible.
Labour and the other parties should step aside and allow the LDs to contest as an anticorruption candidate. The analogy to Martin Bell in Tatton 97 is obvious
I don’t think they need to. Dorries is now very unpopular. The longer this drags on, the more the Tories’ reputation is damaged.
We should build more British new towns is my preference. Not go two-footed into American cities, I never suggested that.
We should build more towns with public infrastructure and no cars from day one. I agree.
Cars are terrible.
You are a fanatic and a zealot. Or trolling and taking the piss, I'm not sure.
Just because I don't agree with you it doesn't make me a troll. This is just like Russia all over again. You're very dismissive of people that don't agree with you.
I am not taking the piss. Public transport is indeed the worst form of transport there is.
"Public transport is indeed the worst form of transport there is."
Agreed. Expensive, slow, unreliable, doesn't even work without subsidies.
Private transport is much better. 👍
ROFL, how much does the taxpayer pay for roads every year?
The exchequer is about £24Bn in profit from drivers.
We should build more British new towns is my preference. Not go two-footed into American cities, I never suggested that.
We should build more towns with public infrastructure and no cars from day one. I agree.
Cars are terrible.
You are a fanatic and a zealot. Or trolling and taking the piss, I'm not sure.
Just because I don't agree with you it doesn't make me a troll. This is just like Russia all over again. You're very dismissive of people that don't agree with you.
I am not taking the piss. Public transport is indeed the worst form of transport there is.
"Public transport is indeed the worst form of transport there is."
Agreed. Expensive, slow, unreliable, doesn't even work without subsidies.
Private transport is much better. 👍
ROFL, how much does the taxpayer pay for roads every year?
About 1/5 of what what the taxpayer pays in VED and Fuel Duty (and VAT on that) alone
The Exchequer fleeces drivers, it doesn't subsidise them.
Oh and public transportation (buses) while being inferior doesn't work without roads either. Nor can businesses or you get deliveries without them either.
Quite. That's why you need to remove as many cars from the road as possible to open them up to commercial drivers and public transport.
Indeed, the initial reason for the investment in cycle provision in the Netherlands was it was the cheapest way to reduce congestion in their towns and cities. That and Kindermoord.
We should build more British new towns is my preference. Not go two-footed into American cities, I never suggested that.
We should build more towns with public infrastructure and no cars from day one. I agree.
Cars are terrible.
You are a fanatic and a zealot. Or trolling and taking the piss, I'm not sure.
Just because I don't agree with you it doesn't make me a troll. This is just like Russia all over again. You're very dismissive of people that don't agree with you.
I am not taking the piss. Public transport is indeed the worst form of transport there is.
"Public transport is indeed the worst form of transport there is."
Agreed. Expensive, slow, unreliable, doesn't even work without subsidies.
Private transport is much better. 👍
ROFL, how much does the taxpayer pay for roads every year?
The exchequer is about £24Bn in profit from drivers.
No consideration of negative externalities? Congestion (economic cost of commute and delivery times is enormous), noise pollution, carbon emissions, air pollution, road traffic casualties...
We should build more British new towns is my preference. Not go two-footed into American cities, I never suggested that.
We should build more towns with public infrastructure and no cars from day one. I agree.
Cars are terrible.
You are a fanatic and a zealot. Or trolling and taking the piss, I'm not sure.
Just because I don't agree with you it doesn't make me a troll. This is just like Russia all over again. You're very dismissive of people that don't agree with you.
I am not taking the piss. Public transport is indeed the worst form of transport there is.
"Public transport is indeed the worst form of transport there is."
Agreed. Expensive, slow, unreliable, doesn't even work without subsidies.
Private transport is much better. 👍
ROFL, how much does the taxpayer pay for roads every year?
The exchequer is about £24Bn in profit from drivers.
Greetings from the Pravda Brewery Beer Theatre, Market Sq, Lviv - where there’s 56 beers on tap!
What a lovely old city, cobbled streets, trams, dozens of street bars. We went to the national museum, but sadly most of the old stuff there had been removed for safety, there was an old Jesuit church basement which was quite funky, and there’s an Apple Museum we’re going to see this afternoon. That’s a museum of old computers, not old apples!
Cheers!
Lviv looks lovely. I must go there once this is all over. My only Ukraine experience is Kyiv, which has its attractions but feels quite Soviet still, or at least did when I was there.
How was the train journey?
How was the thunderbox? We all want to know. Does the door open automatically in the middle of No 2?
Ha ha. It wasn’t actually that bad, a proper toilet rather than a hole in the ground, but my only visit was at the start of the journey, and it turned out there was another facility for the poors so I was only sharing with fellow first class travellers!
We should build more British new towns is my preference. Not go two-footed into American cities, I never suggested that.
We should build more towns with public infrastructure and no cars from day one. I agree.
Cars are terrible.
You are a fanatic and a zealot. Or trolling and taking the piss, I'm not sure.
Just because I don't agree with you it doesn't make me a troll. This is just like Russia all over again. You're very dismissive of people that don't agree with you.
I am not taking the piss. Public transport is indeed the worst form of transport there is.
"Public transport is indeed the worst form of transport there is."
Agreed. Expensive, slow, unreliable, doesn't even work without subsidies.
Private transport is much better. 👍
ROFL, how much does the taxpayer pay for roads every year?
The exchequer is about £24Bn in profit from drivers.
No consideration of negative externalities? Congestion (economic cost of commute and delivery times is enormous), noise pollution, carbon emissions, air pollution, road traffic casualties...
There's VAT on new cars as revenue too, and the subsequent economic activity that being able to drive somewhere can generate. Can you put some numbers on the externalities ?
Do the Telegraph expect her to work pro bono publico?
Dame Alison Rose is to receive £2.4m from NatWest despite being forced to resign over her role in the Nigel Farage “debanking” scandal.
Ms Rose is currently seeing out her 12-month notice period with the banking group.
On Wednesday, the lender said it would still pay her £1.155m in salary for the year, £1.155m in NatWest shares, which she will receive over a five-year period, and £115,566 in pension payments.
I am looking for a way to screw up this afternoon in the confident expectation that someone kind* is going to pay me £2.4m for doing so. What are the chances? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66590997
Assuming Dorries does step down and force a by election why shouldn't Labour contest it to win? After all Labour were second in Mid Bedfordshire in 2019 not the LDs and on the swing in the Selby by election would win it.
Starmer and the NEC will also not like the fact that LD leaflet is already trashing their candidate as well as the Tories and Dorries
Labour have every right to fight it, but it is an unnecessary reputational risk if they fail and boost to the Tories if they hold on as a consequence. Regardless of the fact they are in 2nd place the LDs are the ones most able to win. In fact without Lab campaigning it would be a slam dunk. If Lab are going to fight it you can't then expect the LDs not to fight them.
The best opportunity for the Tories is for the LDs and Lab to both fight it so I understand why you are keen Lab fight this seat.
I think it's just as likely, maybe more likely, that if the LDs and Lab both fight the seat, the Tories drop to third as it is the Tories squeezing through the middle to win. Coming third would be even more disastrous for the Tories than just losing badly but remaining second. So, I suggest, it may also be the worst opportunity for the Tories if both opposition parties fight.
I have seen this mentioned before. You? And it is a real possible outcome that I hadn't considered.
I can't believe however that is anyone's actual cunning plan.
It would however be a brilliant outcome. If it happened with the LDs winning I might actually explode.
This is what happened in Eastleigh in 1994.
Although LDs started in second, and Labour weren't as far behind them as the LDs are in mid-Beds. Also the seat wasn't quite as rock solid safe C as Mid Beds.
But given current polling, quite possible.
Labour and the other parties should step aside and allow the LDs to contest as an anticorruption candidate. The analogy to Martin Bell in Tatton 97 is obvious
We should build more British new towns is my preference. Not go two-footed into American cities, I never suggested that.
We should build more towns with public infrastructure and no cars from day one. I agree.
Cars are terrible.
You are a fanatic and a zealot. Or trolling and taking the piss, I'm not sure.
Why shouldn't we imagine a world without cars? They are a new invention, terribly inefficient, are hugely selfish and exist mostly because all the infrastructure that challenged them were purposefully left to rot so they were the only option. Cars have a utility, but I don't think we should have to imagine a society where each household has like 2 cars each. I think we should indeed design new towns / villages with a hope of households not using cars and having local access to amenities as well as infrastructure to allow them to engage with regional and national hubs.
The thing is, I like Bart as a personality and he has some sincerely held beliefs that I respect him standing behind. But he is totally unable to accept any differing point of view if it negates any of his beliefs.
For example I was strongly in favour of self ID but now it's been a disaster I have changed my mind.
What has Bart changed his mind on?
Europe - I was pro-EU, but during the referendum I was convinced by arguments here and I changed my mind and my vote to leave the EU.
Boris Johnson - I was possibly his biggest fan on this site, but stopped supporting him and called for him to resign well before he did.
Rishi Sunak - I liked him and tipped him from obscurity at 250/1 to be next Prime Minister, but stopped supporting him after he put up National Insurance.
ECHR - Just yesterday I put my hands up to @Richard_Tyndall (who also convinced me I was wrong on Europe) and said I was wrong about the origins of the Court.
Cars - I used to think the future was hydrogen vehicles, I now think its electric.
Nuclear - I used to argue in favour of new nuclear plants. I do not see the point anymore and think they're ridiculously expensive and we should invest in other forms of renewables instead (I do not have any green objections to nuclear).
The Tories - I was a big supporter of the Tories under Cameron, quit as soon as Theresa May became PM (I find her a loathsome xenophobe), rejoined when Boris became PM and quit again when Boris was still PM when he and Sunak put up National Insurance.
Liz Truss - I said I wanted Liz Truss elected to reverse the NI cut. I said she had to go before she did.
Sir Keir Starmer - I had no good word to say about SKS until recently. When he started speaking positively about building more houses, I liked that and said so and that if he means what he says and comes up with good policies about it I might even vote for his party at the next General Election.
Lib Dems - I dislike their NIMBYism. I voted for them at the Local Elections as my local candidate wasn't remotely NIMBY.
Public Sector Pay - I thought it was too high previously, but now I think its too low and that other issues with regards to expenditure are a bigger problem.
That's just off the top of my head. I could go on.
I am looking for a way to screw up this afternoon in the confident expectation that someone kind* is going to pay me £2.4m for doing so. What are the chances? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66590997
*or even a bank, for goodness sake.
Work in banking/financial services regulation for a bank.
Easiest job in the world.
When I screw up I just blame bloody bankers.
(Not that I have ever screwed up, my record is near perfect.)
We should build more British new towns is my preference. Not go two-footed into American cities, I never suggested that.
We should build more towns with public infrastructure and no cars from day one. I agree.
Cars are terrible.
You are a fanatic and a zealot. Or trolling and taking the piss, I'm not sure.
Just because I don't agree with you it doesn't make me a troll. This is just like Russia all over again. You're very dismissive of people that don't agree with you.
I am not taking the piss. Public transport is indeed the worst form of transport there is.
"Public transport is indeed the worst form of transport there is."
Agreed. Expensive, slow, unreliable, doesn't even work without subsidies.
Do the Telegraph expect her to work pro bono publico?
Dame Alison Rose is to receive £2.4m from NatWest despite being forced to resign over her role in the Nigel Farage “debanking” scandal.
Ms Rose is currently seeing out her 12-month notice period with the banking group.
On Wednesday, the lender said it would still pay her £1.155m in salary for the year, £1.155m in NatWest shares, which she will receive over a five-year period, and £115,566 in pension payments.
Personally I would ban all cars except delivery vehicles (which should be electric anyhow) from Central London, I would do this at first by sticking a massive fee to enter Central London onto motorists and increase it every year.
A good starting point would be to pedestrian Oxford Street and environs, save for delivery vehicles. Would transform the area.
Good morning
I really do not understand why anyone would want to drive into the centre of London or indeed Edinburgh
I used to travel to London on business quite frequently before I retired and I cannot ever recall taking my car into central London
However, I would just caution that the rest of the country is not London or Edinburgh and different solutions are required
TBF rather a lot of the rest of the UK is in conurbations bigger than Edinburgh.
Indeed, bigger is better. Gives more space for homes, gardens, roads, bike paths etc. 👍
Edinburgh has over half a million people crushed into a 46 square mile urban area. Milton Keynes by comparison has a quarter of a million people spread out over an 89 square mile urban area.
Hell even Warrington is the same size as Edinburgh, but with only 177k people not over half a million in the same space.
Spread out. Its not as if there's a shortage of free space in Scotland for sprawl.
Low density tends to lead to dispersal of services, meaning you have to drive everywhere. It's the big problem with many US cities.
So long as you spread out services rather than cram them all into the same space so everyone's trying to go to the same destination, that's not at all a problem. And if you sprawl you can have wider roads with dedicated cycle paths physically separated from both pedestrians and cars, so everyone can choose their own mode of transportation.
US cities do not seem a stunningly successful model to follow.
Why does every zealot on here seem to think the US is the only alternative? Its like the insanity that thinks that healthcare is either NHS or American.
I never said to follow US models.
New towns like Warrington and Milton Keynes which I positively mentioned as a successful, British model, would be completely out of place in America. They don't even understand what a roundabout is in America.
We should build more British new towns is my preference. Not go two-footed into American cities, I never suggested that.
A modern British version of Almere, the post-70s Dutch new town, would be interesting.
ULEZ seems an example of how a policy becomes a political football.
We have
1) ULEZ itself - policy of all serious parties 2) ULEZ enforcement - by flat, large charges per day.
It seems that the moderate voices, calling for a better, less regressive taxation method are being left out of the debate.
Some people, including some here, are defending the enforcement in a totemic “if they hate it, we must love it” way.
Other countries have come up with better schemes. Based on vehicle type and mikes driven for instance. Systems that will smoothly adapt to congestion charging in a world where more and more cars are EVs. Systems that reward drivers of small cars.
ULEZ is by no means perfect. My point is that the Tories propose and implement ULEZ, then require the expansion of ULEZ. Then ask if they can take another authority to court because it expanded ULEZ as required by them.
Did they actually require an expansion of ULEZ? Or did they require emissions get cut? Because the two are completely different things.
See eg Manchester where the proposed charged-for zone was scrapped as it was (a) unfair and (b) wouldn't work anyway, and replaced with a better alternative.
Expansion of ULEZ = less pollution in the areas affected.
Which means that ANY HMG argument based on HMG reversing its policy of less pollution was sunk ab initio.
If HMG had argued on the efficiency or the social equity, that might have been different, I suppse. But that would have meant admitting that they weren't really friends of the reactionary backless glove merchants, and losing the latter's votes. .
Killing the first born in every household = less pollution.
Doesn't mean its government policy. Or a good idea.
If there's better ways to reach the objective, without a regressive tax, then that is a better alternative is it not?
In London, the vehicle pollution *is* killing the first born in every household right now, or not far off.
Don't exaggerate. The air quality in London is better than its been for centuries, the era of the Great Smog is long behind us.
That doesn't mean it can't improve even further, and we should try to improve it even further, but that doesn't mean either that regressive taxation is automatically the right way to do it.
Yes, I agree. The problem with ULEZ is that the solution it presents doesn't match the problem it purports to solve. GM's solution is far better. It's baffling how Sadiq Khan goes out of his way to pick fights he doesn't need to. Andy Burnham (who I was very wary of initially) - despite, realistically, having the GM mayoralty as long as he is the Labour candidate - goes out of his way to find voter-acceptable solutions and tries to keep as much of the electorate onside as possible; Sadiq Khan appears to hold large sections of his electorate in utter contempt. Hence AB at the last mayoral election in every single ward in GM. Even Bramhall South and Woodford, even Halebarns, even Bowdon.
Burnham has a trump card - civic pride. Manchester was once a global-scale industrial powerhouse. The city was full of industry, but the city corporation built the pneumatic power systems which enabled them. A proud city which thrived - that is what he is trying to do today.
The Bee Network and shamelessly sticking that bee on everything - worker bees striving individually to make the collective better. There is a buzz about the place, which as a Lancastrian from Greater Manchester is invigorating when I'm back there.
As usual in politics the question is what the opposition would do differently? You can't just be against when the policy is an ethos. You need a replacement ethos, and what would the Tory one be - each bee for himself?
You'd have thought London could do civic pride at least as well as Greater Manchester though. In fact, while I'm not sure how much of a strategic decision this was, or who is responsible, there has been a lot of success in creating a GM civic pride out of nothing. Manchester always had civic pride, as did Bolton, Rochdale, Stockport, and so on ... but they are historically separate and independent towns, wary of one another. The idea of a GM civic pride is new. AB is in many ways quite a good fit for this, being out from the wild west of GM - Leigh is one of the least 'Mancunian' parts of the conurbation.
What would the opposition do differently? Search me. Though it should be said that the role of the GM mayor is not quite that of the London mayor, and districts hold slightly more power; and in the districts there are realistic alternatives to Labour who can make life difficult when difficult decisions have to be made (principally, at present, in planning.)
Also worth noting that the Labour party in GM is a pretty good version of the Labour Party. Granted, there are some on the far left, but to a large extent the party is consensual and driven by an ideology of making things work.
Greater Manchester was tried before - the outlying towns basically having the life sucked out of them by Manchester. Then the Tories abolished it and we had a few decades of disorganised chaos.
Perhaps the change in approach is general relief that there is once again a regional organisation which this time is trying to work with the metropolitan boroughs rather than against them?
Interesting one this, and there's no definitive answer.
Firstly, emotionally, much of GM IS still Lancashire/Cheshire/Yorkshire. But also GM. Some people are very much of the "Cheshire, actually" persuasion, others very much the opposite - some of this is through taste but much through ignorance of local government, history and geography and the relationships between them - a complex subject which lack of interest in is quite forgiveable. But I would say the majority are quite comfortable in overlapping identities: Altrincham can be Altrincham, Cheshire and also part of Greater Manchester. (Is this because there is no longer a Cheshire County Council not to be part of, I wonder? Probably not. Most people simply aren't that interested in that level of detail.)
When GM was abolished in 1986, it didn't go away of course - the concept of an urban area around Manchester was still there, whether it had an elected authority or not. And of course the GM Boroughs had to refer to themselves as something - and of course there was still a GM Fire and Rescue, GM Police, etc, as well as non-state organisations such as the GM Football Association, I think (though others such as rugby and cricket had never seen a need to change their boundaries to match local government reform - and why not, because local government never matched historic counties in the first place - the county boroughs like Manchester, Liverpool, Oldham, etc existed outwith the jurisdiction of Lancashire County Council and no-one minded or said 'actually technically we're not Lancashire' - because local government <> geography.)
Anyway, the 1974-1986 GM authority wasn't the most harmonious of beasts: as you say, there was a lot of tension between Manchester and everyone else; and not actually a great deal of lamentation in the outer boroughs at its demise. The Manchester Labour Party in those days were hard left take-on-the government types, whereas Salford's Labour Party was prepared to work with the government - that, in fact, was how Salford Quays came about, much to the chagrin of the hard left in Manchester who saw their role as to fight Thatcher rather than necessarily to improve Manchester. That lot were removed in an internal putsch the mechanisms of which I am only vaguely aware about 1987 - and since then (possibly coincidentally), the GM authorities have been pretty good at getting on with each other, co-operating rather than competing (up to a point!). The structure we have now has sort of grown organically. We have a mayor who sits on top and is elected, but the districts retain more control than they did in the GMC days. The structure we have represents what GM wants, rather than what any part of it wants. There's still tension (Stockport has withdrawn from the joint plan), but less than there was.
[cont] Anyway, apologies for long rambling reply. It's an interesting question and the answer is definitely feelings-based, and I'm sure others in GM would have different perspectives.
As a final point, I think there was a remarkably similar story in Tyne and Wear.
Oh yes, the Mackems really enjoyed being under the thumb of Geordies.
The biggest pisser for them was the "Tyne and Wear Metro", which for decades went nowhere near Wearside.
This has carried on in a wider context, which was how they ended up with a "North of Tyne" mayor, when pre-1974 County Durham wanted nowt to do with it, fearing another power grab from The Toon.
And from my perspective, Gateshead is in County Durham. Just as it was when I was born there. That's my county. coz that's where I'm from. No Whitehall bureaucrat will tell me any different.
And of course, Middlesbrough will forever be a Small Town in Yorkshire.
Well yes, my point was that the Tyne and Wear county council was typified by (and apologies, I'm away from my own geography so my understanding is far hazier) Newcastle dominance over the others. But post 1986, the five Tyne and Wear authorities were pretty pragmatic about working together and bringing inward investment in to the area e.g. Nissan. They worked together better when they weren't forced to do so. And after 1993, joint working grew organically. The North of Tyne issue has gone differently to what happened in GM, I grant you.
And yes, there's no reason Gateshead should not be described as County Durham - whatever form local government might currently be taking. (There are reasons why you might want local government to reflect historic geography, and also reasons why you might want local government to reflect economic geography - my view tends to the latter but that shouldn't mean that, for example, Gateshead is not County Durham. And I am receptive to arguments the other way.)
One reason why Gateshead shouldn't be described as County Durham is that it hasn't been in said county for almost 50 years, and nobody under 40 thinks of it that way.
Get over it FFS.
What is it then? It isn't Tyne and Wear - that was abolished nearly 40 years ago. It isn't Northumbria. So its reverted back to County Durham.
There is a world of difference between counties and council administrative areas. York is in Yorkshire. Despite not being administered by North Yorkshire County Council.
I think it's pretty easy to explain without having to be a fan of SKS - we live in a de facto two party politick. When the support for the governing party collapses (because it tanks the economy, or has no policies, or is just being cruel in lieu of any policies) the main beneficiary is the second of those two parties. This didn't happen when Corbyn was LOTO because a) Brexit, b) the media outcry at the existence of Corbyn and c) the Tories were still managing the economy for those with mortgages or pensions. Now SKS (who has rolled back every single interesting or new policy proposal he has put forward) is reaping the benefit by standing still and hoping the collapse continues.
It was interesting the other day when a poll of the hypothetical "what if Corbyn was still leader" had Labour ahead by a few points. Even the idea of Corbyn without the shine on his policies (essentially the ephemeral memory of press created Corbyn) was winning enough seats to be the largest party if not a governing amount (I would suggest that in this economy Corbyn's policies would actually be a lot more popular, no matter what the press said, because since the onset of covid many of his policy solutions have been shown to be correct / have become actual government policy).
Broadly agree, and Corbyn as PM in 2017 would bean interesting counterfactual for someone to explore.
This particular poll needs to be weighed against the Redfield one yesterday showing Lab down 6 (mostly to LD and Green). I suspect both are outliers and nothing much is happening, which of course reinforces the "stand still and don't breathe" approach.
FWIW I think Starmer's plan has been to spend most of 2022-2023 quietly lowering expectations and then come out with a couple of vote-winners so that people say "Hey, he does actually want to do something helpful to me", reinforcing the already-visible "time for a change" mood.
We should build more British new towns is my preference. Not go two-footed into American cities, I never suggested that.
We should build more towns with public infrastructure and no cars from day one. I agree.
Cars are terrible.
You are a fanatic and a zealot. Or trolling and taking the piss, I'm not sure.
Just because I don't agree with you it doesn't make me a troll. This is just like Russia all over again. You're very dismissive of people that don't agree with you.
I am not taking the piss. Public transport is indeed the worst form of transport there is.
"Public transport is indeed the worst form of transport there is."
Agreed. Expensive, slow, unreliable, doesn't even work without subsidies.
Private transport is much better. 👍
ROFL, how much does the taxpayer pay for roads every year?
The exchequer is about £24Bn in profit from drivers.
No consideration of negative externalities? Congestion (economic cost of commute and delivery times is enormous), noise pollution, carbon emissions, air pollution, road traffic casualties...
There's VAT on new cars as revenue too, and the subsequent economic activity that being able to drive somewhere can generate. Can you put some numbers on the externalities ?
Can you put a number on the additional economic activity you get from driving versus having a decent public transport system?
Greetings from the Pravda Brewery Beer Theatre, Market Sq, Lviv - where there’s 56 beers on tap!
What a lovely old city, cobbled streets, trams, dozens of street bars. We went to the national museum, but sadly most of the old stuff there had been removed for safety, there was an old Jesuit church basement which was quite funky, and there’s an Apple Museum we’re going to see this afternoon. That’s a museum of old computers, not old apples!
Cheers!
IIRC the Apple Museum had a hefty entry fee why I walked past, years back.
Are you going to Saints Cyril and Methodius Church on Resslova Street? The museum in the basement is worth it.
It was a bit spooky to have seen the film Anthropoid the week before we went - they used a fair bit of actual Prague in it.
The old synagogue isn’t far away from that as well.
Thanks for the suggestions, only here for one day so will see how things go!
Did you read the piece which you link to? What in it suggested to you that the new CalMac ferry might never set sail?
I did. Given the number of mistakes so far, the complexity of RORO ferries, and the political pressure on all this, I just wouldn't be surprised if there is something much more seriously wrong with them.
IANAE, but my friend in the MN is very cautious about working on ferries and has a lot of respect for the CalMac crews. I think MS Estonia has put the fear in him.
I would have said the much bigger concern is they've not only missed every single deadline but as they put right each fault another one appears.
There is a generic and unavoidable problem with the basic roro quick on/offloading concept. Vulnerability of bow and stern doors, free surface water on the car deck sloshing around and making momentary lists worse, taking in more water till it destabilises and turns turtle, etc. Princess Victoria foundered in the Irish Sea in 1946 after the stern doors were beaten in in a storm, so it's certainly been known about for at least that long - well before Herald of Free Enterprisea and Estonia. Careful operation is crucial as seen (or rather not) in HFE.
Baker, who pretty much invented modern military RoRo, designed all his vessels to float and be stable with the vehicle deck artificially flooded. That is, if the doors were open and a mega wave pushed a lot of water in, it would flow out again, without the ship rolling over
I am looking for a way to screw up this afternoon in the confident expectation that someone kind* is going to pay me £2.4m for doing so. What are the chances? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66590997
*or even a bank, for goodness sake.
Work in banking/financial services regulation for a bank.
Easiest job in the world.
When I screw up I just blame bloody bankers.
(Not that I have ever screwed up, my record is near perfect.)
If it's only 'near' perfect that implies you have screwed up at least once.
We should build more British new towns is my preference. Not go two-footed into American cities, I never suggested that.
We should build more towns with public infrastructure and no cars from day one. I agree.
Cars are terrible.
You are a fanatic and a zealot. Or trolling and taking the piss, I'm not sure.
Why shouldn't we imagine a world without cars? They are a new invention, terribly inefficient, are hugely selfish and exist mostly because all the infrastructure that challenged them were purposefully left to rot so they were the only option. Cars have a utility, but I don't think we should have to imagine a society where each household has like 2 cars each. I think we should indeed design new towns / villages with a hope of households not using cars and having local access to amenities as well as infrastructure to allow them to engage with regional and national hubs.
"terribly inefficient"
Perhaps from an energy perspective, but not from an getting-the-job-done perspective. If I want to go from my home into Cambridge, I have four options:
*) Walking. It will take around three hours. *) Cycling. About 45-60 minutes. *) Bus. I have to wait for the bus, then 20-40 minutes, depending on route. *) Drive in my car. Depending on the traffic, 20-30 minutes.
And the same has to be done for the return trip. From a time point of view, and also a not-getting-muddy-or-sweaty point of view, the car is by far the most efficient.
They also exist because they were far better than the alternative - which were horses and/or carts for anyone who did not live in a town.
Having said that, I agree with the general sentiment in your post.
(I have used all four methods to get into town; I mostly drive, but also take the bus.)
Asda here in Belfast becomes the first supermarket to label food products "not for EU". BBC NI news.
So we can eat s***, but EU consumers can't?
You have no idea how much of a massive pain in the arse it is having to fuck around with product labels yet again for the latest Tory sticking plaster solution.
Do the Telegraph expect her to work pro bono publico?
Dame Alison Rose is to receive £2.4m from NatWest despite being forced to resign over her role in the Nigel Farage “debanking” scandal.
Ms Rose is currently seeing out her 12-month notice period with the banking group.
On Wednesday, the lender said it would still pay her £1.155m in salary for the year, £1.155m in NatWest shares, which she will receive over a five-year period, and £115,566 in pension payments.
ULEZ seems an example of how a policy becomes a political football.
We have
1) ULEZ itself - policy of all serious parties 2) ULEZ enforcement - by flat, large charges per day.
It seems that the moderate voices, calling for a better, less regressive taxation method are being left out of the debate.
Some people, including some here, are defending the enforcement in a totemic “if they hate it, we must love it” way.
Other countries have come up with better schemes. Based on vehicle type and mikes driven for instance. Systems that will smoothly adapt to congestion charging in a world where more and more cars are EVs. Systems that reward drivers of small cars.
ULEZ is by no means perfect. My point is that the Tories propose and implement ULEZ, then require the expansion of ULEZ. Then ask if they can take another authority to court because it expanded ULEZ as required by them.
Did they actually require an expansion of ULEZ? Or did they require emissions get cut? Because the two are completely different things.
See eg Manchester where the proposed charged-for zone was scrapped as it was (a) unfair and (b) wouldn't work anyway, and replaced with a better alternative.
Expansion of ULEZ = less pollution in the areas affected.
Which means that ANY HMG argument based on HMG reversing its policy of less pollution was sunk ab initio.
If HMG had argued on the efficiency or the social equity, that might have been different, I suppse. But that would have meant admitting that they weren't really friends of the reactionary backless glove merchants, and losing the latter's votes. .
Killing the first born in every household = less pollution.
Doesn't mean its government policy. Or a good idea.
If there's better ways to reach the objective, without a regressive tax, then that is a better alternative is it not?
In London, the vehicle pollution *is* killing the first born in every household right now, or not far off.
Don't exaggerate. The air quality in London is better than its been for centuries, the era of the Great Smog is long behind us.
That doesn't mean it can't improve even further, and we should try to improve it even further, but that doesn't mean either that regressive taxation is automatically the right way to do it.
Yes, I agree. The problem with ULEZ is that the solution it presents doesn't match the problem it purports to solve. GM's solution is far better. It's baffling how Sadiq Khan goes out of his way to pick fights he doesn't need to. Andy Burnham (who I was very wary of initially) - despite, realistically, having the GM mayoralty as long as he is the Labour candidate - goes out of his way to find voter-acceptable solutions and tries to keep as much of the electorate onside as possible; Sadiq Khan appears to hold large sections of his electorate in utter contempt. Hence AB at the last mayoral election in every single ward in GM. Even Bramhall South and Woodford, even Halebarns, even Bowdon.
Burnham has a trump card - civic pride. Manchester was once a global-scale industrial powerhouse. The city was full of industry, but the city corporation built the pneumatic power systems which enabled them. A proud city which thrived - that is what he is trying to do today.
The Bee Network and shamelessly sticking that bee on everything - worker bees striving individually to make the collective better. There is a buzz about the place, which as a Lancastrian from Greater Manchester is invigorating when I'm back there.
As usual in politics the question is what the opposition would do differently? You can't just be against when the policy is an ethos. You need a replacement ethos, and what would the Tory one be - each bee for himself?
You'd have thought London could do civic pride at least as well as Greater Manchester though. In fact, while I'm not sure how much of a strategic decision this was, or who is responsible, there has been a lot of success in creating a GM civic pride out of nothing. Manchester always had civic pride, as did Bolton, Rochdale, Stockport, and so on ... but they are historically separate and independent towns, wary of one another. The idea of a GM civic pride is new. AB is in many ways quite a good fit for this, being out from the wild west of GM - Leigh is one of the least 'Mancunian' parts of the conurbation.
What would the opposition do differently? Search me. Though it should be said that the role of the GM mayor is not quite that of the London mayor, and districts hold slightly more power; and in the districts there are realistic alternatives to Labour who can make life difficult when difficult decisions have to be made (principally, at present, in planning.)
Also worth noting that the Labour party in GM is a pretty good version of the Labour Party. Granted, there are some on the far left, but to a large extent the party is consensual and driven by an ideology of making things work.
Greater Manchester was tried before - the outlying towns basically having the life sucked out of them by Manchester. Then the Tories abolished it and we had a few decades of disorganised chaos.
Perhaps the change in approach is general relief that there is once again a regional organisation which this time is trying to work with the metropolitan boroughs rather than against them?
Interesting one this, and there's no definitive answer.
Firstly, emotionally, much of GM IS still Lancashire/Cheshire/Yorkshire. But also GM. Some people are very much of the "Cheshire, actually" persuasion, others very much the opposite - some of this is through taste but much through ignorance of local government, history and geography and the relationships between them - a complex subject which lack of interest in is quite forgiveable. But I would say the majority are quite comfortable in overlapping identities: Altrincham can be Altrincham, Cheshire and also part of Greater Manchester. (Is this because there is no longer a Cheshire County Council not to be part of, I wonder? Probably not. Most people simply aren't that interested in that level of detail.)
When GM was abolished in 1986, it didn't go away of course - the concept of an urban area around Manchester was still there, whether it had an elected authority or not. And of course the GM Boroughs had to refer to themselves as something - and of course there was still a GM Fire and Rescue, GM Police, etc, as well as non-state organisations such as the GM Football Association, I think (though others such as rugby and cricket had never seen a need to change their boundaries to match local government reform - and why not, because local government never matched historic counties in the first place - the county boroughs like Manchester, Liverpool, Oldham, etc existed outwith the jurisdiction of Lancashire County Council and no-one minded or said 'actually technically we're not Lancashire' - because local government <> geography.)
Anyway, the 1974-1986 GM authority wasn't the most harmonious of beasts: as you say, there was a lot of tension between Manchester and everyone else; and not actually a great deal of lamentation in the outer boroughs at its demise. The Manchester Labour Party in those days were hard left take-on-the government types, whereas Salford's Labour Party was prepared to work with the government - that, in fact, was how Salford Quays came about, much to the chagrin of the hard left in Manchester who saw their role as to fight Thatcher rather than necessarily to improve Manchester. That lot were removed in an internal putsch the mechanisms of which I am only vaguely aware about 1987 - and since then (possibly coincidentally), the GM authorities have been pretty good at getting on with each other, co-operating rather than competing (up to a point!). The structure we have now has sort of grown organically. We have a mayor who sits on top and is elected, but the districts retain more control than they did in the GMC days. The structure we have represents what GM wants, rather than what any part of it wants. There's still tension (Stockport has withdrawn from the joint plan), but less than there was.
[cont] Anyway, apologies for long rambling reply. It's an interesting question and the answer is definitely feelings-based, and I'm sure others in GM would have different perspectives.
As a final point, I think there was a remarkably similar story in Tyne and Wear.
Oh yes, the Mackems really enjoyed being under the thumb of Geordies.
The biggest pisser for them was the "Tyne and Wear Metro", which for decades went nowhere near Wearside.
This has carried on in a wider context, which was how they ended up with a "North of Tyne" mayor, when pre-1974 County Durham wanted nowt to do with it, fearing another power grab from The Toon.
And from my perspective, Gateshead is in County Durham. Just as it was when I was born there. That's my county. coz that's where I'm from. No Whitehall bureaucrat will tell me any different.
And of course, Middlesbrough will forever be a Small Town in Yorkshire.
Well yes, my point was that the Tyne and Wear county council was typified by (and apologies, I'm away from my own geography so my understanding is far hazier) Newcastle dominance over the others. But post 1986, the five Tyne and Wear authorities were pretty pragmatic about working together and bringing inward investment in to the area e.g. Nissan. They worked together better when they weren't forced to do so. And after 1993, joint working grew organically. The North of Tyne issue has gone differently to what happened in GM, I grant you.
And yes, there's no reason Gateshead should not be described as County Durham - whatever form local government might currently be taking. (There are reasons why you might want local government to reflect historic geography, and also reasons why you might want local government to reflect economic geography - my view tends to the latter but that shouldn't mean that, for example, Gateshead is not County Durham. And I am receptive to arguments the other way.)
One reason why Gateshead shouldn't be described as County Durham is that it hasn't been in said county for almost 50 years, and nobody under 40 thinks of it that way.
Get over it FFS.
What is it then? It isn't Tyne and Wear - that was abolished nearly 40 years ago. It isn't Northumbria. So its reverted back to County Durham.
There is a world of difference between counties and council administrative areas. York is in Yorkshire. Despite not being administered by North Yorkshire County Council.
Tyne & Wear IS (present tense) a ceremonial county in northeast England.
I am looking for a way to screw up this afternoon in the confident expectation that someone kind* is going to pay me £2.4m for doing so. What are the chances? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66590997
*or even a bank, for goodness sake.
Work in banking/financial services regulation for a bank.
Easiest job in the world.
When I screw up I just blame bloody bankers.
(Not that I have ever screwed up, my record is near perfect.)
If it's only 'near' perfect that implies you have screwed up at least once.
I once used an apostrophe incorrectly in a report.
We should build more British new towns is my preference. Not go two-footed into American cities, I never suggested that.
We should build more towns with public infrastructure and no cars from day one. I agree.
Cars are terrible.
You are a fanatic and a zealot. Or trolling and taking the piss, I'm not sure.
Why shouldn't we imagine a world without cars? They are a new invention, terribly inefficient, are hugely selfish and exist mostly because all the infrastructure that challenged them were purposefully left to rot so they were the only option. Cars have a utility, but I don't think we should have to imagine a society where each household has like 2 cars each. I think we should indeed design new towns / villages with a hope of households not using cars and having local access to amenities as well as infrastructure to allow them to engage with regional and national hubs.
"terribly inefficient"
Perhaps from an energy perspective, but not from an getting-the-job-done perspective. If I want to go from my home into Cambridge, I have four options:
*) Walking. It will take around three hours. *) Cycling. About 45-60 minutes. *) Bus. I have to wait for the bus, then 20-40 minutes, depending on route. *) Drive in my car. Depending on the traffic, 20-30 minutes.
And the same has to be done for the return trip. From a time point of view, and also a not-getting-muddy-or-sweaty point of view, the car is by far the most efficient.
They also exist because they were far better than the alternative - which were horses and/or carts for anyone who did not live in a town.
Having said that, I agree with the general sentiment in your post.
(I have used all four methods to get into town; I mostly drive, but also take the bus.)
You can spend the bus time on PB. That's worth something.
Cycling - you lose 1 hour a day but gain 2 hours of exercise. Also worth something. (but perhaps not worth it if the route isn't segregated etc)
I am looking for a way to screw up this afternoon in the confident expectation that someone kind* is going to pay me £2.4m for doing so. What are the chances? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66590997
*or even a bank, for goodness sake.
Work in banking/financial services regulation for a bank.
Easiest job in the world.
When I screw up I just blame bloody bankers.
(Not that I have ever screwed up, my record is near perfect.)
If it's only 'near' perfect that implies you have screwed up at least once.
I once used an apostrophe incorrectly in a report.
Well, that's unforgivable. I'm surprised you weren't fired on the spot.
We should build more British new towns is my preference. Not go two-footed into American cities, I never suggested that.
We should build more towns with public infrastructure and no cars from day one. I agree.
Cars are terrible.
You are a fanatic and a zealot. Or trolling and taking the piss, I'm not sure.
Just because I don't agree with you it doesn't make me a troll. This is just like Russia all over again. You're very dismissive of people that don't agree with you.
I am not taking the piss. Public transport is indeed the worst form of transport there is.
"Public transport is indeed the worst form of transport there is."
Agreed. Expensive, slow, unreliable, doesn't even work without subsidies.
Private transport is much better. 👍
ROFL, how much does the taxpayer pay for roads every year?
The exchequer is about £24Bn in profit from drivers.
No consideration of negative externalities? Congestion (economic cost of commute and delivery times is enormous), noise pollution, carbon emissions, air pollution, road traffic casualties...
There's VAT on new cars as revenue too, and the subsequent economic activity that being able to drive somewhere can generate. Can you put some numbers on the externalities ?
Can you put a number on the additional economic activity you get from driving versus having a decent public transport system?
The cut in commute times for a start. Generally outside london central your commute time will double with public transport at the least. Time spent commuting is time not spent doing something that provides any economic gains
Labour are seemingly slipping back in the constituency, they will probably end in third place. the Lib Dems have kept going over the summer break and the betting odds are strongly on them at 1/2 on, mind you they were strongly on Labour at Uxbridge! In the end the result may hinge on the Independent vote, even whether he will ultimately stand given the strong Lib Dem campaign.
I agree re the Independent, and we shouldn't rule out the possibility that he'll slip through the middle if he does stand!
Curious what makes you think that Labour are slipping back - is that a hopecast, or do you have evidence? I get nothing from Labour at the moment but appeals to help in the "vigorous" campaigns in mid-Beds and the Scottish constituency. I've no idea whether they're right either, and suspect none of us really do. New poll needed... (Disclosure - I have modest sums on Lab and Con there as value bets, but it's a very thin market.)
I am looking for a way to screw up this afternoon in the confident expectation that someone kind* is going to pay me £2.4m for doing so. What are the chances? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66590997
*or even a bank, for goodness sake.
Charlie Prince fucked Citi in the 2008 GFC
And nearly took down the financial system.
He complained that he only got $91 million as a payoff.
Assuming Dorries does step down and force a by election why shouldn't Labour contest it to win? After all Labour were second in Mid Bedfordshire in 2019 not the LDs and on the swing in the Selby by election would win it.
Starmer and the NEC will also not like the fact that LD leaflet is already trashing their candidate as well as the Tories and Dorries
Labour have every right to fight it, but it is an unnecessary reputational risk if they fail and boost to the Tories if they hold on as a consequence. Regardless of the fact they are in 2nd place the LDs are the ones most able to win. In fact without Lab campaigning it would be a slam dunk. If Lab are going to fight it you can't then expect the LDs not to fight them.
The best opportunity for the Tories is for the LDs and Lab to both fight it so I understand why you are keen Lab fight this seat.
I think it's just as likely, maybe more likely, that if the LDs and Lab both fight the seat, the Tories drop to third as it is the Tories squeezing through the middle to win. Coming third would be even more disastrous for the Tories than just losing badly but remaining second. So, I suggest, it may also be the worst opportunity for the Tories if both opposition parties fight.
I have seen this mentioned before. You? And it is a real possible outcome that I hadn't considered.
I can't believe however that is anyone's actual cunning plan.
It would however be a brilliant outcome. If it happened with the LDs winning I might actually explode.
This is what happened in Eastleigh in 1994.
Although LDs started in second, and Labour weren't as far behind them as the LDs are in mid-Beds. Also the seat wasn't quite as rock solid safe C as Mid Beds.
But given current polling, quite possible.
Labour and the other parties should step aside and allow the LDs to contest as an anticorruption candidate. The analogy to Martin Bell in Tatton 97 is obvious
Bell was a Lib Dem? News to me.
Analogy. Not Identity. "Similar to". Not "the same as".
ULEZ seems an example of how a policy becomes a political football.
We have
1) ULEZ itself - policy of all serious parties 2) ULEZ enforcement - by flat, large charges per day.
It seems that the moderate voices, calling for a better, less regressive taxation method are being left out of the debate.
Some people, including some here, are defending the enforcement in a totemic “if they hate it, we must love it” way.
Other countries have come up with better schemes. Based on vehicle type and mikes driven for instance. Systems that will smoothly adapt to congestion charging in a world where more and more cars are EVs. Systems that reward drivers of small cars.
ULEZ is by no means perfect. My point is that the Tories propose and implement ULEZ, then require the expansion of ULEZ. Then ask if they can take another authority to court because it expanded ULEZ as required by them.
Did they actually require an expansion of ULEZ? Or did they require emissions get cut? Because the two are completely different things.
See eg Manchester where the proposed charged-for zone was scrapped as it was (a) unfair and (b) wouldn't work anyway, and replaced with a better alternative.
Expansion of ULEZ = less pollution in the areas affected.
Which means that ANY HMG argument based on HMG reversing its policy of less pollution was sunk ab initio.
If HMG had argued on the efficiency or the social equity, that might have been different, I suppse. But that would have meant admitting that they weren't really friends of the reactionary backless glove merchants, and losing the latter's votes. .
Killing the first born in every household = less pollution.
Doesn't mean its government policy. Or a good idea.
If there's better ways to reach the objective, without a regressive tax, then that is a better alternative is it not?
In London, the vehicle pollution *is* killing the first born in every household right now, or not far off.
Don't exaggerate. The air quality in London is better than its been for centuries, the era of the Great Smog is long behind us.
That doesn't mean it can't improve even further, and we should try to improve it even further, but that doesn't mean either that regressive taxation is automatically the right way to do it.
Yes, I agree. The problem with ULEZ is that the solution it presents doesn't match the problem it purports to solve. GM's solution is far better. It's baffling how Sadiq Khan goes out of his way to pick fights he doesn't need to. Andy Burnham (who I was very wary of initially) - despite, realistically, having the GM mayoralty as long as he is the Labour candidate - goes out of his way to find voter-acceptable solutions and tries to keep as much of the electorate onside as possible; Sadiq Khan appears to hold large sections of his electorate in utter contempt. Hence AB at the last mayoral election in every single ward in GM. Even Bramhall South and Woodford, even Halebarns, even Bowdon.
Burnham has a trump card - civic pride. Manchester was once a global-scale industrial powerhouse. The city was full of industry, but the city corporation built the pneumatic power systems which enabled them. A proud city which thrived - that is what he is trying to do today.
The Bee Network and shamelessly sticking that bee on everything - worker bees striving individually to make the collective better. There is a buzz about the place, which as a Lancastrian from Greater Manchester is invigorating when I'm back there.
As usual in politics the question is what the opposition would do differently? You can't just be against when the policy is an ethos. You need a replacement ethos, and what would the Tory one be - each bee for himself?
You'd have thought London could do civic pride at least as well as Greater Manchester though. In fact, while I'm not sure how much of a strategic decision this was, or who is responsible, there has been a lot of success in creating a GM civic pride out of nothing. Manchester always had civic pride, as did Bolton, Rochdale, Stockport, and so on ... but they are historically separate and independent towns, wary of one another. The idea of a GM civic pride is new. AB is in many ways quite a good fit for this, being out from the wild west of GM - Leigh is one of the least 'Mancunian' parts of the conurbation.
What would the opposition do differently? Search me. Though it should be said that the role of the GM mayor is not quite that of the London mayor, and districts hold slightly more power; and in the districts there are realistic alternatives to Labour who can make life difficult when difficult decisions have to be made (principally, at present, in planning.)
Also worth noting that the Labour party in GM is a pretty good version of the Labour Party. Granted, there are some on the far left, but to a large extent the party is consensual and driven by an ideology of making things work.
Greater Manchester was tried before - the outlying towns basically having the life sucked out of them by Manchester. Then the Tories abolished it and we had a few decades of disorganised chaos.
Perhaps the change in approach is general relief that there is once again a regional organisation which this time is trying to work with the metropolitan boroughs rather than against them?
Interesting one this, and there's no definitive answer.
Firstly, emotionally, much of GM IS still Lancashire/Cheshire/Yorkshire. But also GM. Some people are very much of the "Cheshire, actually" persuasion, others very much the opposite - some of this is through taste but much through ignorance of local government, history and geography and the relationships between them - a complex subject which lack of interest in is quite forgiveable. But I would say the majority are quite comfortable in overlapping identities: Altrincham can be Altrincham, Cheshire and also part of Greater Manchester. (Is this because there is no longer a Cheshire County Council not to be part of, I wonder? Probably not. Most people simply aren't that interested in that level of detail.)
When GM was abolished in 1986, it didn't go away of course - the concept of an urban area around Manchester was still there, whether it had an elected authority or not. And of course the GM Boroughs had to refer to themselves as something - and of course there was still a GM Fire and Rescue, GM Police, etc, as well as non-state organisations such as the GM Football Association, I think (though others such as rugby and cricket had never seen a need to change their boundaries to match local government reform - and why not, because local government never matched historic counties in the first place - the county boroughs like Manchester, Liverpool, Oldham, etc existed outwith the jurisdiction of Lancashire County Council and no-one minded or said 'actually technically we're not Lancashire' - because local government <> geography.)
Anyway, the 1974-1986 GM authority wasn't the most harmonious of beasts: as you say, there was a lot of tension between Manchester and everyone else; and not actually a great deal of lamentation in the outer boroughs at its demise. The Manchester Labour Party in those days were hard left take-on-the government types, whereas Salford's Labour Party was prepared to work with the government - that, in fact, was how Salford Quays came about, much to the chagrin of the hard left in Manchester who saw their role as to fight Thatcher rather than necessarily to improve Manchester. That lot were removed in an internal putsch the mechanisms of which I am only vaguely aware about 1987 - and since then (possibly coincidentally), the GM authorities have been pretty good at getting on with each other, co-operating rather than competing (up to a point!). The structure we have now has sort of grown organically. We have a mayor who sits on top and is elected, but the districts retain more control than they did in the GMC days. The structure we have represents what GM wants, rather than what any part of it wants. There's still tension (Stockport has withdrawn from the joint plan), but less than there was.
[cont] Anyway, apologies for long rambling reply. It's an interesting question and the answer is definitely feelings-based, and I'm sure others in GM would have different perspectives.
As a final point, I think there was a remarkably similar story in Tyne and Wear.
Oh yes, the Mackems really enjoyed being under the thumb of Geordies.
The biggest pisser for them was the "Tyne and Wear Metro", which for decades went nowhere near Wearside.
This has carried on in a wider context, which was how they ended up with a "North of Tyne" mayor, when pre-1974 County Durham wanted nowt to do with it, fearing another power grab from The Toon.
And from my perspective, Gateshead is in County Durham. Just as it was when I was born there. That's my county. coz that's where I'm from. No Whitehall bureaucrat will tell me any different.
And of course, Middlesbrough will forever be a Small Town in Yorkshire.
Well yes, my point was that the Tyne and Wear county council was typified by (and apologies, I'm away from my own geography so my understanding is far hazier) Newcastle dominance over the others. But post 1986, the five Tyne and Wear authorities were pretty pragmatic about working together and bringing inward investment in to the area e.g. Nissan. They worked together better when they weren't forced to do so. And after 1993, joint working grew organically. The North of Tyne issue has gone differently to what happened in GM, I grant you.
And yes, there's no reason Gateshead should not be described as County Durham - whatever form local government might currently be taking. (There are reasons why you might want local government to reflect historic geography, and also reasons why you might want local government to reflect economic geography - my view tends to the latter but that shouldn't mean that, for example, Gateshead is not County Durham. And I am receptive to arguments the other way.)
One reason why Gateshead shouldn't be described as County Durham is that it hasn't been in said county for almost 50 years, and nobody under 40 thinks of it that way.
Get over it FFS.
What is it then? It isn't Tyne and Wear - that was abolished nearly 40 years ago. It isn't Northumbria. So its reverted back to County Durham.
There is a world of difference between counties and council administrative areas. York is in Yorkshire. Despite not being administered by North Yorkshire County Council.
Tyne & Wear IS (present tense) a ceremonial county in northeast England.
And this is why Royal Mail has it right by abolishing all reference to counties in postal addresses.
Tyne and Wear. Is not a county. It was abolished in 1986. But it is an administrative area. With various joint bodies and a Lord Lieutenant as remnants from when it was a county.
So when is a county not a county? We had endless fun on Teesside when the idiot local mayor foamed on about county boundaries and got publicly schooled by the Yorkshire Ridings Society about why he was talking nonsense.
Do the Telegraph expect her to work pro bono publico?
Dame Alison Rose is to receive £2.4m from NatWest despite being forced to resign over her role in the Nigel Farage “debanking” scandal.
Ms Rose is currently seeing out her 12-month notice period with the banking group.
On Wednesday, the lender said it would still pay her £1.155m in salary for the year, £1.155m in NatWest shares, which she will receive over a five-year period, and £115,566 in pension payments.
We should build more British new towns is my preference. Not go two-footed into American cities, I never suggested that.
We should build more towns with public infrastructure and no cars from day one. I agree.
Cars are terrible.
You are a fanatic and a zealot. Or trolling and taking the piss, I'm not sure.
Just because I don't agree with you it doesn't make me a troll. This is just like Russia all over again. You're very dismissive of people that don't agree with you.
I am not taking the piss. Public transport is indeed the worst form of transport there is.
"Public transport is indeed the worst form of transport there is."
Agreed. Expensive, slow, unreliable, doesn't even work without subsidies.
Private transport is much better. 👍
ROFL, how much does the taxpayer pay for roads every year?
The exchequer is about £24Bn in profit from drivers.
No consideration of negative externalities? Congestion (economic cost of commute and delivery times is enormous), noise pollution, carbon emissions, air pollution, road traffic casualties...
There's VAT on new cars as revenue too, and the subsequent economic activity that being able to drive somewhere can generate. Can you put some numbers on the externalities ?
Can you put a number on the additional economic activity you get from driving versus having a decent public transport system?
The cut in commute times for a start. Generally outside london central your commute time will double with public transport at the least. Time spent commuting is time not spent doing something that provides any economic gains
I did say "decent public transport".
And a big reason for reducing the number of cars on the road is to reduce congestion. That's the main delay to buses in Edinburgh, for example.
We should build more British new towns is my preference. Not go two-footed into American cities, I never suggested that.
We should build more towns with public infrastructure and no cars from day one. I agree.
Cars are terrible.
You are a fanatic and a zealot. Or trolling and taking the piss, I'm not sure.
Why shouldn't we imagine a world without cars? They are a new invention, terribly inefficient, are hugely selfish and exist mostly because all the infrastructure that challenged them were purposefully left to rot so they were the only option. Cars have a utility, but I don't think we should have to imagine a society where each household has like 2 cars each. I think we should indeed design new towns / villages with a hope of households not using cars and having local access to amenities as well as infrastructure to allow them to engage with regional and national hubs.
"terribly inefficient"
Perhaps from an energy perspective, but not from an getting-the-job-done perspective. If I want to go from my home into Cambridge, I have four options:
*) Walking. It will take around three hours. *) Cycling. About 45-60 minutes. *) Bus. I have to wait for the bus, then 20-40 minutes, depending on route. *) Drive in my car. Depending on the traffic, 20-30 minutes.
And the same has to be done for the return trip. From a time point of view, and also a not-getting-muddy-or-sweaty point of view, the car is by far the most efficient.
They also exist because they were far better than the alternative - which were horses and/or carts for anyone who did not live in a town.
Having said that, I agree with the general sentiment in your post.
(I have used all four methods to get into town; I mostly drive, but also take the bus.)
You can spend the bus time on PB. That's worth something.
Cycling - you lose 1 hour a day but gain 2 hours of exercise. Also worth something. (but perhaps not worth it if the route isn't segregated etc)
Or I need to take my son in as well. Or I have limited time because there're other things I need to be doing. Or I need to bring a lot of shopping back. etc, etc. And the route into Cambridge is fairly poor (something that is being looked at AIUI, but is tied up with the busway that the nimbys are screeching about.)
Anyway, I think I get enough exercise.
Oddly enough, I don't particularly enjoy cycling. I don't dislike it, either, but I much prefer a good walk or run. I've no idea why, but the cycling bug never really caught me. I'll cycle to the shops in decent weather, but it's not something I crave to do. Unlike running and (especially) walking.
We should build more British new towns is my preference. Not go two-footed into American cities, I never suggested that.
We should build more towns with public infrastructure and no cars from day one. I agree.
Cars are terrible.
You are a fanatic and a zealot. Or trolling and taking the piss, I'm not sure.
Just because I don't agree with you it doesn't make me a troll. This is just like Russia all over again. You're very dismissive of people that don't agree with you.
I am not taking the piss. Public transport is indeed the worst form of transport there is.
"Public transport is indeed the worst form of transport there is."
Agreed. Expensive, slow, unreliable, doesn't even work without subsidies.
Private transport is much better. 👍
ROFL, how much does the taxpayer pay for roads every year?
The exchequer is about £24Bn in profit from drivers.
No consideration of negative externalities? Congestion (economic cost of commute and delivery times is enormous), noise pollution, carbon emissions, air pollution, road traffic casualties...
There's VAT on new cars as revenue too, and the subsequent economic activity that being able to drive somewhere can generate. Can you put some numbers on the externalities ?
Can you put a number on the additional economic activity you get from driving versus having a decent public transport system?
The cut in commute times for a start. Generally outside london central your commute time will double with public transport at the least. Time spent commuting is time not spent doing something that provides any economic gains
You'd see a lot of people bashing laptops on pre-Covid commuter trains and they can't all have been playing Angry Birds.
ULEZ seems an example of how a policy becomes a political football.
We have
1) ULEZ itself - policy of all serious parties 2) ULEZ enforcement - by flat, large charges per day.
It seems that the moderate voices, calling for a better, less regressive taxation method are being left out of the debate.
Some people, including some here, are defending the enforcement in a totemic “if they hate it, we must love it” way.
Other countries have come up with better schemes. Based on vehicle type and mikes driven for instance. Systems that will smoothly adapt to congestion charging in a world where more and more cars are EVs. Systems that reward drivers of small cars.
ULEZ is by no means perfect. My point is that the Tories propose and implement ULEZ, then require the expansion of ULEZ. Then ask if they can take another authority to court because it expanded ULEZ as required by them.
Did they actually require an expansion of ULEZ? Or did they require emissions get cut? Because the two are completely different things.
See eg Manchester where the proposed charged-for zone was scrapped as it was (a) unfair and (b) wouldn't work anyway, and replaced with a better alternative.
Expansion of ULEZ = less pollution in the areas affected.
Which means that ANY HMG argument based on HMG reversing its policy of less pollution was sunk ab initio.
If HMG had argued on the efficiency or the social equity, that might have been different, I suppse. But that would have meant admitting that they weren't really friends of the reactionary backless glove merchants, and losing the latter's votes. .
Killing the first born in every household = less pollution.
Doesn't mean its government policy. Or a good idea.
If there's better ways to reach the objective, without a regressive tax, then that is a better alternative is it not?
In London, the vehicle pollution *is* killing the first born in every household right now, or not far off.
Don't exaggerate. The air quality in London is better than its been for centuries, the era of the Great Smog is long behind us.
That doesn't mean it can't improve even further, and we should try to improve it even further, but that doesn't mean either that regressive taxation is automatically the right way to do it.
Yes, I agree. The problem with ULEZ is that the solution it presents doesn't match the problem it purports to solve. GM's solution is far better. It's baffling how Sadiq Khan goes out of his way to pick fights he doesn't need to. Andy Burnham (who I was very wary of initially) - despite, realistically, having the GM mayoralty as long as he is the Labour candidate - goes out of his way to find voter-acceptable solutions and tries to keep as much of the electorate onside as possible; Sadiq Khan appears to hold large sections of his electorate in utter contempt. Hence AB at the last mayoral election in every single ward in GM. Even Bramhall South and Woodford, even Halebarns, even Bowdon.
Burnham has a trump card - civic pride. Manchester was once a global-scale industrial powerhouse. The city was full of industry, but the city corporation built the pneumatic power systems which enabled them. A proud city which thrived - that is what he is trying to do today.
The Bee Network and shamelessly sticking that bee on everything - worker bees striving individually to make the collective better. There is a buzz about the place, which as a Lancastrian from Greater Manchester is invigorating when I'm back there.
As usual in politics the question is what the opposition would do differently? You can't just be against when the policy is an ethos. You need a replacement ethos, and what would the Tory one be - each bee for himself?
You'd have thought London could do civic pride at least as well as Greater Manchester though. In fact, while I'm not sure how much of a strategic decision this was, or who is responsible, there has been a lot of success in creating a GM civic pride out of nothing. Manchester always had civic pride, as did Bolton, Rochdale, Stockport, and so on ... but they are historically separate and independent towns, wary of one another. The idea of a GM civic pride is new. AB is in many ways quite a good fit for this, being out from the wild west of GM - Leigh is one of the least 'Mancunian' parts of the conurbation.
What would the opposition do differently? Search me. Though it should be said that the role of the GM mayor is not quite that of the London mayor, and districts hold slightly more power; and in the districts there are realistic alternatives to Labour who can make life difficult when difficult decisions have to be made (principally, at present, in planning.)
Also worth noting that the Labour party in GM is a pretty good version of the Labour Party. Granted, there are some on the far left, but to a large extent the party is consensual and driven by an ideology of making things work.
Greater Manchester was tried before - the outlying towns basically having the life sucked out of them by Manchester. Then the Tories abolished it and we had a few decades of disorganised chaos.
Perhaps the change in approach is general relief that there is once again a regional organisation which this time is trying to work with the metropolitan boroughs rather than against them?
Interesting one this, and there's no definitive answer.
Firstly, emotionally, much of GM IS still Lancashire/Cheshire/Yorkshire. But also GM. Some people are very much of the "Cheshire, actually" persuasion, others very much the opposite - some of this is through taste but much through ignorance of local government, history and geography and the relationships between them - a complex subject which lack of interest in is quite forgiveable. But I would say the majority are quite comfortable in overlapping identities: Altrincham can be Altrincham, Cheshire and also part of Greater Manchester. (Is this because there is no longer a Cheshire County Council not to be part of, I wonder? Probably not. Most people simply aren't that interested in that level of detail.)
When GM was abolished in 1986, it didn't go away of course - the concept of an urban area around Manchester was still there, whether it had an elected authority or not. And of course the GM Boroughs had to refer to themselves as something - and of course there was still a GM Fire and Rescue, GM Police, etc, as well as non-state organisations such as the GM Football Association, I think (though others such as rugby and cricket had never seen a need to change their boundaries to match local government reform - and why not, because local government never matched historic counties in the first place - the county boroughs like Manchester, Liverpool, Oldham, etc existed outwith the jurisdiction of Lancashire County Council and no-one minded or said 'actually technically we're not Lancashire' - because local government <> geography.)
Anyway, the 1974-1986 GM authority wasn't the most harmonious of beasts: as you say, there was a lot of tension between Manchester and everyone else; and not actually a great deal of lamentation in the outer boroughs at its demise. The Manchester Labour Party in those days were hard left take-on-the government types, whereas Salford's Labour Party was prepared to work with the government - that, in fact, was how Salford Quays came about, much to the chagrin of the hard left in Manchester who saw their role as to fight Thatcher rather than necessarily to improve Manchester. That lot were removed in an internal putsch the mechanisms of which I am only vaguely aware about 1987 - and since then (possibly coincidentally), the GM authorities have been pretty good at getting on with each other, co-operating rather than competing (up to a point!). The structure we have now has sort of grown organically. We have a mayor who sits on top and is elected, but the districts retain more control than they did in the GMC days. The structure we have represents what GM wants, rather than what any part of it wants. There's still tension (Stockport has withdrawn from the joint plan), but less than there was.
[cont] Anyway, apologies for long rambling reply. It's an interesting question and the answer is definitely feelings-based, and I'm sure others in GM would have different perspectives.
As a final point, I think there was a remarkably similar story in Tyne and Wear.
Oh yes, the Mackems really enjoyed being under the thumb of Geordies.
The biggest pisser for them was the "Tyne and Wear Metro", which for decades went nowhere near Wearside.
This has carried on in a wider context, which was how they ended up with a "North of Tyne" mayor, when pre-1974 County Durham wanted nowt to do with it, fearing another power grab from The Toon.
And from my perspective, Gateshead is in County Durham. Just as it was when I was born there. That's my county. coz that's where I'm from. No Whitehall bureaucrat will tell me any different.
And of course, Middlesbrough will forever be a Small Town in Yorkshire.
Well yes, my point was that the Tyne and Wear county council was typified by (and apologies, I'm away from my own geography so my understanding is far hazier) Newcastle dominance over the others. But post 1986, the five Tyne and Wear authorities were pretty pragmatic about working together and bringing inward investment in to the area e.g. Nissan. They worked together better when they weren't forced to do so. And after 1993, joint working grew organically. The North of Tyne issue has gone differently to what happened in GM, I grant you.
And yes, there's no reason Gateshead should not be described as County Durham - whatever form local government might currently be taking. (There are reasons why you might want local government to reflect historic geography, and also reasons why you might want local government to reflect economic geography - my view tends to the latter but that shouldn't mean that, for example, Gateshead is not County Durham. And I am receptive to arguments the other way.)
One reason why Gateshead shouldn't be described as County Durham is that it hasn't been in said county for almost 50 years, and nobody under 40 thinks of it that way.
Get over it FFS.
What is it then? It isn't Tyne and Wear - that was abolished nearly 40 years ago. It isn't Northumbria. So its reverted back to County Durham.
There is a world of difference between counties and council administrative areas. York is in Yorkshire. Despite not being administered by North Yorkshire County Council.
Tyne & Wear IS (present tense) a ceremonial county in northeast England.
And this is why Royal Mail has it right by abolishing all reference to counties in postal addresses.
Tyne and Wear. Is not a county. It was abolished in 1986. But it is an administrative area. With various joint bodies and a Lord Lieutenant as remnants from when it was a county.
So when is a county not a county? We had endless fun on Teesside when the idiot local mayor foamed on about county boundaries and got publicly schooled by the Yorkshire Ridings Society about why he was talking nonsense.
ULEZ seems an example of how a policy becomes a political football.
We have
1) ULEZ itself - policy of all serious parties 2) ULEZ enforcement - by flat, large charges per day.
It seems that the moderate voices, calling for a better, less regressive taxation method are being left out of the debate.
Some people, including some here, are defending the enforcement in a totemic “if they hate it, we must love it” way.
Other countries have come up with better schemes. Based on vehicle type and mikes driven for instance. Systems that will smoothly adapt to congestion charging in a world where more and more cars are EVs. Systems that reward drivers of small cars.
ULEZ is by no means perfect. My point is that the Tories propose and implement ULEZ, then require the expansion of ULEZ. Then ask if they can take another authority to court because it expanded ULEZ as required by them.
Did they actually require an expansion of ULEZ? Or did they require emissions get cut? Because the two are completely different things.
See eg Manchester where the proposed charged-for zone was scrapped as it was (a) unfair and (b) wouldn't work anyway, and replaced with a better alternative.
Expansion of ULEZ = less pollution in the areas affected.
Which means that ANY HMG argument based on HMG reversing its policy of less pollution was sunk ab initio.
If HMG had argued on the efficiency or the social equity, that might have been different, I suppse. But that would have meant admitting that they weren't really friends of the reactionary backless glove merchants, and losing the latter's votes. .
Killing the first born in every household = less pollution.
Doesn't mean its government policy. Or a good idea.
If there's better ways to reach the objective, without a regressive tax, then that is a better alternative is it not?
In London, the vehicle pollution *is* killing the first born in every household right now, or not far off.
Don't exaggerate. The air quality in London is better than its been for centuries, the era of the Great Smog is long behind us.
That doesn't mean it can't improve even further, and we should try to improve it even further, but that doesn't mean either that regressive taxation is automatically the right way to do it.
Yes, I agree. The problem with ULEZ is that the solution it presents doesn't match the problem it purports to solve. GM's solution is far better. It's baffling how Sadiq Khan goes out of his way to pick fights he doesn't need to. Andy Burnham (who I was very wary of initially) - despite, realistically, having the GM mayoralty as long as he is the Labour candidate - goes out of his way to find voter-acceptable solutions and tries to keep as much of the electorate onside as possible; Sadiq Khan appears to hold large sections of his electorate in utter contempt. Hence AB at the last mayoral election in every single ward in GM. Even Bramhall South and Woodford, even Halebarns, even Bowdon.
Burnham has a trump card - civic pride. Manchester was once a global-scale industrial powerhouse. The city was full of industry, but the city corporation built the pneumatic power systems which enabled them. A proud city which thrived - that is what he is trying to do today.
The Bee Network and shamelessly sticking that bee on everything - worker bees striving individually to make the collective better. There is a buzz about the place, which as a Lancastrian from Greater Manchester is invigorating when I'm back there.
As usual in politics the question is what the opposition would do differently? You can't just be against when the policy is an ethos. You need a replacement ethos, and what would the Tory one be - each bee for himself?
You'd have thought London could do civic pride at least as well as Greater Manchester though. In fact, while I'm not sure how much of a strategic decision this was, or who is responsible, there has been a lot of success in creating a GM civic pride out of nothing. Manchester always had civic pride, as did Bolton, Rochdale, Stockport, and so on ... but they are historically separate and independent towns, wary of one another. The idea of a GM civic pride is new. AB is in many ways quite a good fit for this, being out from the wild west of GM - Leigh is one of the least 'Mancunian' parts of the conurbation.
What would the opposition do differently? Search me. Though it should be said that the role of the GM mayor is not quite that of the London mayor, and districts hold slightly more power; and in the districts there are realistic alternatives to Labour who can make life difficult when difficult decisions have to be made (principally, at present, in planning.)
Also worth noting that the Labour party in GM is a pretty good version of the Labour Party. Granted, there are some on the far left, but to a large extent the party is consensual and driven by an ideology of making things work.
Greater Manchester was tried before - the outlying towns basically having the life sucked out of them by Manchester. Then the Tories abolished it and we had a few decades of disorganised chaos.
Perhaps the change in approach is general relief that there is once again a regional organisation which this time is trying to work with the metropolitan boroughs rather than against them?
Interesting one this, and there's no definitive answer.
Firstly, emotionally, much of GM IS still Lancashire/Cheshire/Yorkshire. But also GM. Some people are very much of the "Cheshire, actually" persuasion, others very much the opposite - some of this is through taste but much through ignorance of local government, history and geography and the relationships between them - a complex subject which lack of interest in is quite forgiveable. But I would say the majority are quite comfortable in overlapping identities: Altrincham can be Altrincham, Cheshire and also part of Greater Manchester. (Is this because there is no longer a Cheshire County Council not to be part of, I wonder? Probably not. Most people simply aren't that interested in that level of detail.)
When GM was abolished in 1986, it didn't go away of course - the concept of an urban area around Manchester was still there, whether it had an elected authority or not. And of course the GM Boroughs had to refer to themselves as something - and of course there was still a GM Fire and Rescue, GM Police, etc, as well as non-state organisations such as the GM Football Association, I think (though others such as rugby and cricket had never seen a need to change their boundaries to match local government reform - and why not, because local government never matched historic counties in the first place - the county boroughs like Manchester, Liverpool, Oldham, etc existed outwith the jurisdiction of Lancashire County Council and no-one minded or said 'actually technically we're not Lancashire' - because local government <> geography.)
Anyway, the 1974-1986 GM authority wasn't the most harmonious of beasts: as you say, there was a lot of tension between Manchester and everyone else; and not actually a great deal of lamentation in the outer boroughs at its demise. The Manchester Labour Party in those days were hard left take-on-the government types, whereas Salford's Labour Party was prepared to work with the government - that, in fact, was how Salford Quays came about, much to the chagrin of the hard left in Manchester who saw their role as to fight Thatcher rather than necessarily to improve Manchester. That lot were removed in an internal putsch the mechanisms of which I am only vaguely aware about 1987 - and since then (possibly coincidentally), the GM authorities have been pretty good at getting on with each other, co-operating rather than competing (up to a point!). The structure we have now has sort of grown organically. We have a mayor who sits on top and is elected, but the districts retain more control than they did in the GMC days. The structure we have represents what GM wants, rather than what any part of it wants. There's still tension (Stockport has withdrawn from the joint plan), but less than there was.
[cont] Anyway, apologies for long rambling reply. It's an interesting question and the answer is definitely feelings-based, and I'm sure others in GM would have different perspectives.
As a final point, I think there was a remarkably similar story in Tyne and Wear.
Oh yes, the Mackems really enjoyed being under the thumb of Geordies.
The biggest pisser for them was the "Tyne and Wear Metro", which for decades went nowhere near Wearside.
This has carried on in a wider context, which was how they ended up with a "North of Tyne" mayor, when pre-1974 County Durham wanted nowt to do with it, fearing another power grab from The Toon.
And from my perspective, Gateshead is in County Durham. Just as it was when I was born there. That's my county. coz that's where I'm from. No Whitehall bureaucrat will tell me any different.
And of course, Middlesbrough will forever be a Small Town in Yorkshire.
Well yes, my point was that the Tyne and Wear county council was typified by (and apologies, I'm away from my own geography so my understanding is far hazier) Newcastle dominance over the others. But post 1986, the five Tyne and Wear authorities were pretty pragmatic about working together and bringing inward investment in to the area e.g. Nissan. They worked together better when they weren't forced to do so. And after 1993, joint working grew organically. The North of Tyne issue has gone differently to what happened in GM, I grant you.
And yes, there's no reason Gateshead should not be described as County Durham - whatever form local government might currently be taking. (There are reasons why you might want local government to reflect historic geography, and also reasons why you might want local government to reflect economic geography - my view tends to the latter but that shouldn't mean that, for example, Gateshead is not County Durham. And I am receptive to arguments the other way.)
One reason why Gateshead shouldn't be described as County Durham is that it hasn't been in said county for almost 50 years, and nobody under 40 thinks of it that way.
Get over it FFS.
What is it then? It isn't Tyne and Wear - that was abolished nearly 40 years ago. It isn't Northumbria. So its reverted back to County Durham.
There is a world of difference between counties and council administrative areas. York is in Yorkshire. Despite not being administered by North Yorkshire County Council.
Tyne & Wear IS (present tense) a ceremonial county in northeast England.
And this is why Royal Mail has it right by abolishing all reference to counties in postal addresses.
Tyne and Wear. Is not a county. It was abolished in 1986. But it is an administrative area. With various joint bodies and a Lord Lieutenant as remnants from when it was a county.
So when is a county not a county? We had endless fun on Teesside when the idiot local mayor foamed on about county boundaries and got publicly schooled by the Yorkshire Ridings Society about why he was talking nonsense.
ULEZ seems an example of how a policy becomes a political football.
We have
1) ULEZ itself - policy of all serious parties 2) ULEZ enforcement - by flat, large charges per day.
It seems that the moderate voices, calling for a better, less regressive taxation method are being left out of the debate.
Some people, including some here, are defending the enforcement in a totemic “if they hate it, we must love it” way.
Other countries have come up with better schemes. Based on vehicle type and mikes driven for instance. Systems that will smoothly adapt to congestion charging in a world where more and more cars are EVs. Systems that reward drivers of small cars.
ULEZ is by no means perfect. My point is that the Tories propose and implement ULEZ, then require the expansion of ULEZ. Then ask if they can take another authority to court because it expanded ULEZ as required by them.
Did they actually require an expansion of ULEZ? Or did they require emissions get cut? Because the two are completely different things.
See eg Manchester where the proposed charged-for zone was scrapped as it was (a) unfair and (b) wouldn't work anyway, and replaced with a better alternative.
Expansion of ULEZ = less pollution in the areas affected.
Which means that ANY HMG argument based on HMG reversing its policy of less pollution was sunk ab initio.
If HMG had argued on the efficiency or the social equity, that might have been different, I suppse. But that would have meant admitting that they weren't really friends of the reactionary backless glove merchants, and losing the latter's votes. .
Killing the first born in every household = less pollution.
Doesn't mean its government policy. Or a good idea.
If there's better ways to reach the objective, without a regressive tax, then that is a better alternative is it not?
In London, the vehicle pollution *is* killing the first born in every household right now, or not far off.
Don't exaggerate. The air quality in London is better than its been for centuries, the era of the Great Smog is long behind us.
That doesn't mean it can't improve even further, and we should try to improve it even further, but that doesn't mean either that regressive taxation is automatically the right way to do it.
Yes, I agree. The problem with ULEZ is that the solution it presents doesn't match the problem it purports to solve. GM's solution is far better. It's baffling how Sadiq Khan goes out of his way to pick fights he doesn't need to. Andy Burnham (who I was very wary of initially) - despite, realistically, having the GM mayoralty as long as he is the Labour candidate - goes out of his way to find voter-acceptable solutions and tries to keep as much of the electorate onside as possible; Sadiq Khan appears to hold large sections of his electorate in utter contempt. Hence AB at the last mayoral election in every single ward in GM. Even Bramhall South and Woodford, even Halebarns, even Bowdon.
Burnham has a trump card - civic pride. Manchester was once a global-scale industrial powerhouse. The city was full of industry, but the city corporation built the pneumatic power systems which enabled them. A proud city which thrived - that is what he is trying to do today.
The Bee Network and shamelessly sticking that bee on everything - worker bees striving individually to make the collective better. There is a buzz about the place, which as a Lancastrian from Greater Manchester is invigorating when I'm back there.
As usual in politics the question is what the opposition would do differently? You can't just be against when the policy is an ethos. You need a replacement ethos, and what would the Tory one be - each bee for himself?
You'd have thought London could do civic pride at least as well as Greater Manchester though. In fact, while I'm not sure how much of a strategic decision this was, or who is responsible, there has been a lot of success in creating a GM civic pride out of nothing. Manchester always had civic pride, as did Bolton, Rochdale, Stockport, and so on ... but they are historically separate and independent towns, wary of one another. The idea of a GM civic pride is new. AB is in many ways quite a good fit for this, being out from the wild west of GM - Leigh is one of the least 'Mancunian' parts of the conurbation.
What would the opposition do differently? Search me. Though it should be said that the role of the GM mayor is not quite that of the London mayor, and districts hold slightly more power; and in the districts there are realistic alternatives to Labour who can make life difficult when difficult decisions have to be made (principally, at present, in planning.)
Also worth noting that the Labour party in GM is a pretty good version of the Labour Party. Granted, there are some on the far left, but to a large extent the party is consensual and driven by an ideology of making things work.
Greater Manchester was tried before - the outlying towns basically having the life sucked out of them by Manchester. Then the Tories abolished it and we had a few decades of disorganised chaos.
Perhaps the change in approach is general relief that there is once again a regional organisation which this time is trying to work with the metropolitan boroughs rather than against them?
Interesting one this, and there's no definitive answer.
Firstly, emotionally, much of GM IS still Lancashire/Cheshire/Yorkshire. But also GM. Some people are very much of the "Cheshire, actually" persuasion, others very much the opposite - some of this is through taste but much through ignorance of local government, history and geography and the relationships between them - a complex subject which lack of interest in is quite forgiveable. But I would say the majority are quite comfortable in overlapping identities: Altrincham can be Altrincham, Cheshire and also part of Greater Manchester. (Is this because there is no longer a Cheshire County Council not to be part of, I wonder? Probably not. Most people simply aren't that interested in that level of detail.)
When GM was abolished in 1986, it didn't go away of course - the concept of an urban area around Manchester was still there, whether it had an elected authority or not. And of course the GM Boroughs had to refer to themselves as something - and of course there was still a GM Fire and Rescue, GM Police, etc, as well as non-state organisations such as the GM Football Association, I think (though others such as rugby and cricket had never seen a need to change their boundaries to match local government reform - and why not, because local government never matched historic counties in the first place - the county boroughs like Manchester, Liverpool, Oldham, etc existed outwith the jurisdiction of Lancashire County Council and no-one minded or said 'actually technically we're not Lancashire' - because local government <> geography.)
Anyway, the 1974-1986 GM authority wasn't the most harmonious of beasts: as you say, there was a lot of tension between Manchester and everyone else; and not actually a great deal of lamentation in the outer boroughs at its demise. The Manchester Labour Party in those days were hard left take-on-the government types, whereas Salford's Labour Party was prepared to work with the government - that, in fact, was how Salford Quays came about, much to the chagrin of the hard left in Manchester who saw their role as to fight Thatcher rather than necessarily to improve Manchester. That lot were removed in an internal putsch the mechanisms of which I am only vaguely aware about 1987 - and since then (possibly coincidentally), the GM authorities have been pretty good at getting on with each other, co-operating rather than competing (up to a point!). The structure we have now has sort of grown organically. We have a mayor who sits on top and is elected, but the districts retain more control than they did in the GMC days. The structure we have represents what GM wants, rather than what any part of it wants. There's still tension (Stockport has withdrawn from the joint plan), but less than there was.
[cont] Anyway, apologies for long rambling reply. It's an interesting question and the answer is definitely feelings-based, and I'm sure others in GM would have different perspectives.
As a final point, I think there was a remarkably similar story in Tyne and Wear.
Oh yes, the Mackems really enjoyed being under the thumb of Geordies.
The biggest pisser for them was the "Tyne and Wear Metro", which for decades went nowhere near Wearside.
This has carried on in a wider context, which was how they ended up with a "North of Tyne" mayor, when pre-1974 County Durham wanted nowt to do with it, fearing another power grab from The Toon.
And from my perspective, Gateshead is in County Durham. Just as it was when I was born there. That's my county. coz that's where I'm from. No Whitehall bureaucrat will tell me any different.
And of course, Middlesbrough will forever be a Small Town in Yorkshire.
Well yes, my point was that the Tyne and Wear county council was typified by (and apologies, I'm away from my own geography so my understanding is far hazier) Newcastle dominance over the others. But post 1986, the five Tyne and Wear authorities were pretty pragmatic about working together and bringing inward investment in to the area e.g. Nissan. They worked together better when they weren't forced to do so. And after 1993, joint working grew organically. The North of Tyne issue has gone differently to what happened in GM, I grant you.
And yes, there's no reason Gateshead should not be described as County Durham - whatever form local government might currently be taking. (There are reasons why you might want local government to reflect historic geography, and also reasons why you might want local government to reflect economic geography - my view tends to the latter but that shouldn't mean that, for example, Gateshead is not County Durham. And I am receptive to arguments the other way.)
One reason why Gateshead shouldn't be described as County Durham is that it hasn't been in said county for almost 50 years, and nobody under 40 thinks of it that way.
Get over it FFS.
What is it then? It isn't Tyne and Wear - that was abolished nearly 40 years ago. It isn't Northumbria. So its reverted back to County Durham.
There is a world of difference between counties and council administrative areas. York is in Yorkshire. Despite not being administered by North Yorkshire County Council.
Tyne & Wear IS (present tense) a ceremonial county in northeast England.
And this is why Royal Mail has it right by abolishing all reference to counties in postal addresses.
Tyne and Wear. Is not a county. It was abolished in 1986. But it is an administrative area. With various joint bodies and a Lord Lieutenant as remnants from when it was a county.
So when is a county not a county? We had endless fun on Teesside when the idiot local mayor foamed on about county boundaries and got publicly schooled by the Yorkshire Ridings Society about why he was talking nonsense.
Did you read the piece which you link to? What in it suggested to you that the new CalMac ferry might never set sail?
I did. Given the number of mistakes so far, the complexity of RORO ferries, and the political pressure on all this, I just wouldn't be surprised if there is something much more seriously wrong with them.
IANAE, but my friend in the MN is very cautious about working on ferries and has a lot of respect for the CalMac crews. I think MS Estonia has put the fear in him.
I would have said the much bigger concern is they've not only missed every single deadline but as they put right each fault another one appears.
There is a generic and unavoidable problem with the basic roro quick on/offloading concept. Vulnerability of bow and stern doors, free surface water on the car deck sloshing around and making momentary lists worse, taking in more water till it destabilises and turns turtle, etc. Princess Victoria foundered in the Irish Sea in 1946 after the stern doors were beaten in in a storm, so it's certainly been known about for at least that long - well before Herald of Free Enterprisea and Estonia. Careful operation is crucial as seen (or rather not) in HFE.
Yes, I agree, but it's not as though this was unknown about when the ferries were designed, is it?
I mean, 1946 and even 1987 and 1994 were some time ago now.
Ferries of this size and design should not be six years late.
Sure, but the ro-ro issue is not the immediate issue with the CalMac ship - or rather it is an issue, but it's something that can't be done much with*. It explains Eabhal's friend's comments re the basic concept and re the CalMac crews. Which would also apply to any decent ferry crew organization.
*Re Malmesbury's point earlier, I'm not sure if it is possible to design an "acceptable-to-market" civilian ferry with that inherent safety feature, as opposed to a Landing Ship Tank without the grey paint.
We should build more British new towns is my preference. Not go two-footed into American cities, I never suggested that.
We should build more towns with public infrastructure and no cars from day one. I agree.
Cars are terrible.
You are a fanatic and a zealot. Or trolling and taking the piss, I'm not sure.
Just because I don't agree with you it doesn't make me a troll. This is just like Russia all over again. You're very dismissive of people that don't agree with you.
I am not taking the piss. Public transport is indeed the worst form of transport there is.
"Public transport is indeed the worst form of transport there is."
Agreed. Expensive, slow, unreliable, doesn't even work without subsidies.
Private transport is much better. 👍
ROFL, how much does the taxpayer pay for roads every year?
The exchequer is about £24Bn in profit from drivers.
No consideration of negative externalities? Congestion (economic cost of commute and delivery times is enormous), noise pollution, carbon emissions, air pollution, road traffic casualties...
There's VAT on new cars as revenue too, and the subsequent economic activity that being able to drive somewhere can generate. Can you put some numbers on the externalities ?
Can you put a number on the additional economic activity you get from driving versus having a decent public transport system?
The cut in commute times for a start. Generally outside london central your commute time will double with public transport at the least. Time spent commuting is time not spent doing something that provides any economic gains
You'd see a lot of people bashing laptops on pre-Covid commuter trains and they can't all have been playing Angry Birds.
I am looking for a way to screw up this afternoon in the confident expectation that someone kind* is going to pay me £2.4m for doing so. What are the chances? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66590997
*or even a bank, for goodness sake.
Charlie Prince fucked Citi in the 2008 GFC
And nearly took down the financial system.
He complained that he only got $91 million as a payoff.
Prince was a lawyer, so no doubt worth every penny. Imagine how much more he'd have got in the bloated public sector.
Dunno, but that's some serious flag action behind Modi!
Congratulations to India, though.
Dear British Government Now that India can put things on extraterrestrial objects, can you please cut the foreign aid to India to zero because I would like a space rocket with a Union Jack on it plz XXX viewcode
Certainly the willingness of Russian soldiers to fight and die for a pointless imperialistic war continues to disappoint those of us hoping for a Ukrainian victory, but as long as China does not provide replacements for Russian losses in military equipment I am confident that Ukraine will prevail.
Apparently one of Russia's pilots just took advantage of the generous deal Ukraine is offering on used helicopters. Either that or he got very badly lost, which seems to be the story the Russians are going for.
More information on this story. The pilot might have a book and film deal by the end of the day.A military helicopter loaded with spare parts and his family moved ahead of time. That's a lot of planning.
Incidentally, (and not much talked about), ISRO should be launching people into space within three or four years. IMO that's much harder, and much more impressive, than today's landing, great though that was. And the rocket they'll be using is already in service, with no failures after seven launches.
Did you read the piece which you link to? What in it suggested to you that the new CalMac ferry might never set sail?
I did. Given the number of mistakes so far, the complexity of RORO ferries, and the political pressure on all this, I just wouldn't be surprised if there is something much more seriously wrong with them.
IANAE, but my friend in the MN is very cautious about working on ferries and has a lot of respect for the CalMac crews. I think MS Estonia has put the fear in him.
I would have said the much bigger concern is they've not only missed every single deadline but as they put right each fault another one appears.
There is a generic and unavoidable problem with the basic roro quick on/offloading concept. Vulnerability of bow and stern doors, free surface water on the car deck sloshing around and making momentary lists worse, taking in more water till it destabilises and turns turtle, etc. Princess Victoria foundered in the Irish Sea in 1946 after the stern doors were beaten in in a storm, so it's certainly been known about for at least that long - well before Herald of Free Enterprisea and Estonia. Careful operation is crucial as seen (or rather not) in HFE.
Yes, I agree, but it's not as though this was unknown about when the ferries were designed, is it?
I mean, 1946 and even 1987 and 1994 were some time ago now.
Ferries of this size and design should not be six years late.
Sure, but the ro-ro issue is not the immediate issue with the CalMac ship - or rather it is an issue, but it's something that can't be done much with*. It explains Eabhal's friend's comments re the basic concept and re the CalMac crews. Which would also apply to any decent ferry crew organization.
*Re Malmesbury's point earlier, I'm not sure if it is possible to design an "acceptable-to-market" civilian ferry with that inherent safety feature, as opposed to a Landing Ship Tank without the grey paint.
Dangerous goods (whisky) too, why they all have open car decks (with one exception - Isle of Mull).
I think CalMac are unusual for having such large vessels with open decks and a small draft . Lots of design compromises as a result, so you get these bespoke ferries.
We should build more British new towns is my preference. Not go two-footed into American cities, I never suggested that.
We should build more towns with public infrastructure and no cars from day one. I agree.
Cars are terrible.
You are a fanatic and a zealot. Or trolling and taking the piss, I'm not sure.
Just because I don't agree with you it doesn't make me a troll. This is just like Russia all over again. You're very dismissive of people that don't agree with you.
I am not taking the piss. Public transport is indeed the worst form of transport there is.
"Public transport is indeed the worst form of transport there is."
Agreed. Expensive, slow, unreliable, doesn't even work without subsidies.
Private transport is much better. 👍
ROFL, how much does the taxpayer pay for roads every year?
The exchequer is about £24Bn in profit from drivers.
No consideration of negative externalities? Congestion (economic cost of commute and delivery times is enormous), noise pollution, carbon emissions, air pollution, road traffic casualties...
There's VAT on new cars as revenue too, and the subsequent economic activity that being able to drive somewhere can generate. Can you put some numbers on the externalities ?
Can you put a number on the additional economic activity you get from driving versus having a decent public transport system?
The cut in commute times for a start. Generally outside london central your commute time will double with public transport at the least. Time spent commuting is time not spent doing something that provides any economic gains
I did say "decent public transport".
And a big reason for reducing the number of cars on the road is to reduce congestion. That's the main delay to buses in Edinburgh, for example.
Even with decent public transport it will still be a hub and spoke system where to get from a to b you will likely need to go to c first and change. A car you can go straight from a to b. As I have mentioned before where I live has a fairly decent bus sytem. Most places I want to go would take 10 to 15 min by car. They all pretty much take an hour plus by public transport because I have to go somewhere else from a and then wait for another bus to take me to b.
We should build more British new towns is my preference. Not go two-footed into American cities, I never suggested that.
We should build more towns with public infrastructure and no cars from day one. I agree.
Cars are terrible.
You are a fanatic and a zealot. Or trolling and taking the piss, I'm not sure.
Just because I don't agree with you it doesn't make me a troll. This is just like Russia all over again. You're very dismissive of people that don't agree with you.
I am not taking the piss. Public transport is indeed the worst form of transport there is.
"Public transport is indeed the worst form of transport there is."
Agreed. Expensive, slow, unreliable, doesn't even work without subsidies.
Private transport is much better. 👍
ROFL, how much does the taxpayer pay for roads every year?
The exchequer is about £24Bn in profit from drivers.
No consideration of negative externalities? Congestion (economic cost of commute and delivery times is enormous), noise pollution, carbon emissions, air pollution, road traffic casualties...
There's VAT on new cars as revenue too, and the subsequent economic activity that being able to drive somewhere can generate. Can you put some numbers on the externalities ?
Can you put a number on the additional economic activity you get from driving versus having a decent public transport system?
The cut in commute times for a start. Generally outside london central your commute time will double with public transport at the least. Time spent commuting is time not spent doing something that provides any economic gains
I did say "decent public transport".
And a big reason for reducing the number of cars on the road is to reduce congestion. That's the main delay to buses in Edinburgh, for example.
Even with decent public transport it will still be a hub and spoke system where to get from a to b you will likely need to go to c first and change. A car you can go straight from a to b. As I have mentioned before where I live has a fairly decent bus sytem. Most places I want to go would take 10 to 15 min by car. They all pretty much take an hour plus by public transport because I have to go somewhere else from a and then wait for another bus to take me to b.
Fair enough. Even with improvements in public transport, there will always be cases where people still need a car.
But it's an amazing achievement, especially as the failure rate of these missions is so high. It's also been done on a relative shoestring.
Congrats to ISRO.
Yep it really is an amazing achievement.
I'm conscious that Modi was watching on from BRICS.
Just feels kind-of symbolic, with the US a mess (imho), but perhaps I'm reading too much into this.
You could argue the real shift in world power here is not from the US to BRICS, but from Russia (which crashed its own attempt a couple of days before and has been fading from the space race for a while) and the new space powers: China, India, EU, UAE etc.
Did you read the piece which you link to? What in it suggested to you that the new CalMac ferry might never set sail?
I did. Given the number of mistakes so far, the complexity of RORO ferries, and the political pressure on all this, I just wouldn't be surprised if there is something much more seriously wrong with them.
IANAE, but my friend in the MN is very cautious about working on ferries and has a lot of respect for the CalMac crews. I think MS Estonia has put the fear in him.
I would have said the much bigger concern is they've not only missed every single deadline but as they put right each fault another one appears.
There is a generic and unavoidable problem with the basic roro quick on/offloading concept. Vulnerability of bow and stern doors, free surface water on the car deck sloshing around and making momentary lists worse, taking in more water till it destabilises and turns turtle, etc. Princess Victoria foundered in the Irish Sea in 1946 after the stern doors were beaten in in a storm, so it's certainly been known about for at least that long - well before Herald of Free Enterprisea and Estonia. Careful operation is crucial as seen (or rather not) in HFE.
Yes, I agree, but it's not as though this was unknown about when the ferries were designed, is it?
I mean, 1946 and even 1987 and 1994 were some time ago now.
Ferries of this size and design should not be six years late.
Sure, but the ro-ro issue is not the immediate issue with the CalMac ship - or rather it is an issue, but it's something that can't be done much with*. It explains Eabhal's friend's comments re the basic concept and re the CalMac crews. Which would also apply to any decent ferry crew organization.
*Re Malmesbury's point earlier, I'm not sure if it is possible to design an "acceptable-to-market" civilian ferry with that inherent safety feature, as opposed to a Landing Ship Tank without the grey paint.
Well, in that case I think we're talking at cross purposes.
My point is that every time the yard thinks it's getting on top of things, it finds a new way to mess up.
You were saying that ROROs are so complex and things can go wrong so badly that they need to be careful.
To which my answer is, yes I know the design is vulnerable but they surely knew that at the time they designed it and it isn't an excuse for this many cockups.
Comments
Plaid too an abysmal third place in Wales.
There is no chance of the Tories becoming 3rd or 4th party, indeed electoral calculus currently forecasts 135 Conservative MPs and that is even before they squeeze RefUK and DKs
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/homepage.html
I quite like MK in its own retro way, but there are many many towns I would prefer to visit.
When Andrew RT Davies is held up as your cream people are going to start turning off you.
Plaid are in disarray now, but it's not that long ago they were the second party and given the right circumstances they could come good again.
The idea we need to be at either "pole", all cycling, or all driving, is completely false and belied by reality.
The truth is for almost every town in the country, balance is best. A mix of all can work. Which is true in most walks of life, its getting balance that is key.
Hence my proposal that we should have space for pedestrianised footpaths, dedicated cycling, and roads for cars. Not either/or, but all of the above. We have the space for it, if we're willing to use it, and where new towns have been built in the UK it works.
These tend to be the places in the UK where you can find affordable homes and good jobs, rather than only one but not the other. And green spaces. Tree-lined roads rather than sheer concrete. And gardens for your home.
What's not to love?
Nurses with small pay rise = inflationary
Cars are terrible.
I have never tried to get away from my supporting Jezza.
I mean, 1946 and even 1987 and 1994 were some time ago now.
Ferries of this size and design should not be six years late.
In the end the result may hinge on the Independent vote, even whether he will ultimately stand given the strong Lib Dem campaign.
I am not taking the piss. Private transport is indeed the worst form of transport there is.
Agreed. Expensive, slow, unreliable, doesn't even work without subsidies.
Private transport is much better. 👍
They design their cities to basically be anti cyclists and anti public transport. They make you drive everywhere, if we want to look at proper environmentally friendly, well designed cities we should look at Europe.
For example I was strongly in favour of self ID but now it's been a disaster I have changed my mind.
What has Bart changed his mind on?
Sometimes external people can get better clarity on issues and solutions, sometimes they lack appropriate info or insight, it depends.
The Exchequer fleeces drivers, it doesn't subsidise them.
Oh and public transportation (buses) while being inferior doesn't work without roads either. Nor can businesses or you get deliveries without them either.
Expenditure:
Road expenditure ~ £11.3 Bn
Revenue:
Vehicle Excise duty ~ £7Bn
Fuel duty/VAT ~ £28Bn
Indeed, the initial reason for the investment in cycle provision in the Netherlands was it was the cheapest way to reduce congestion in their towns and cities. That and Kindermoord.
Can you put some numbers on the externalities ?
Do the Telegraph expect her to work pro bono publico?
Dame Alison Rose is to receive £2.4m from NatWest despite being forced to resign over her role in the Nigel Farage “debanking” scandal.
Ms Rose is currently seeing out her 12-month notice period with the banking group.
On Wednesday, the lender said it would still pay her £1.155m in salary for the year, £1.155m in NatWest shares, which she will receive over a five-year period, and £115,566 in pension payments.
The pay deal totals around £2.43m.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/08/23/natwest-alison-rose-pay-24m-nigel-farage-debanking/
Asda here in Belfast becomes the first supermarket to label food products "not for EU". BBC NI news.
So we can eat s***, but EU consumers can't?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66590997
*or even a bank, for goodness sake.
News to me.
Boris Johnson - I was possibly his biggest fan on this site, but stopped supporting him and called for him to resign well before he did.
Rishi Sunak - I liked him and tipped him from obscurity at 250/1 to be next Prime Minister, but stopped supporting him after he put up National Insurance.
ECHR - Just yesterday I put my hands up to @Richard_Tyndall (who also convinced me I was wrong on Europe) and said I was wrong about the origins of the Court.
Cars - I used to think the future was hydrogen vehicles, I now think its electric.
Nuclear - I used to argue in favour of new nuclear plants. I do not see the point anymore and think they're ridiculously expensive and we should invest in other forms of renewables instead (I do not have any green objections to nuclear).
The Tories - I was a big supporter of the Tories under Cameron, quit as soon as Theresa May became PM (I find her a loathsome xenophobe), rejoined when Boris became PM and quit again when Boris was still PM when he and Sunak put up National Insurance.
Liz Truss - I said I wanted Liz Truss elected to reverse the NI cut. I said she had to go before she did.
Sir Keir Starmer - I had no good word to say about SKS until recently. When he started speaking positively about building more houses, I liked that and said so and that if he means what he says and comes up with good policies about it I might even vote for his party at the next General Election.
Lib Dems - I dislike their NIMBYism. I voted for them at the Local Elections as my local candidate wasn't remotely NIMBY.
Public Sector Pay - I thought it was too high previously, but now I think its too low and that other issues with regards to expenditure are a bigger problem.
That's just off the top of my head. I could go on.
Easiest job in the world.
When I screw up I just blame bloody bankers.
(Not that I have ever screwed up, my record is near perfect.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almere
There is a world of difference between counties and council administrative areas. York is in Yorkshire. Despite not being administered by North Yorkshire County Council.
This particular poll needs to be weighed against the Redfield one yesterday showing Lab down 6 (mostly to LD and Green). I suspect both are outliers and nothing much is happening, which of course reinforces the "stand still and don't breathe" approach.
FWIW I think Starmer's plan has been to spend most of 2022-2023 quietly lowering expectations and then come out with a couple of vote-winners so that people say "Hey, he does actually want to do something helpful to me", reinforcing the already-visible "time for a change" mood.
Perhaps from an energy perspective, but not from an getting-the-job-done perspective. If I want to go from my home into Cambridge, I have four options:
*) Walking. It will take around three hours.
*) Cycling. About 45-60 minutes.
*) Bus. I have to wait for the bus, then 20-40 minutes, depending on route.
*) Drive in my car. Depending on the traffic, 20-30 minutes.
And the same has to be done for the return trip. From a time point of view, and also a not-getting-muddy-or-sweaty point of view, the car is by far the most efficient.
They also exist because they were far better than the alternative - which were horses and/or carts for anyone who did not live in a town.
Having said that, I agree with the general sentiment in your post.
(I have used all four methods to get into town; I mostly drive, but also take the bus.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyne_and_Wear
Cycling - you lose 1 hour a day but gain 2 hours of exercise. Also worth something. (but perhaps not worth it if the route isn't segregated etc)
Curious what makes you think that Labour are slipping back - is that a hopecast, or do you have evidence? I get nothing from Labour at the moment but appeals to help in the "vigorous" campaigns in mid-Beds and the Scottish constituency. I've no idea whether they're right either, and suspect none of us really do. New poll needed... (Disclosure - I have modest sums on Lab and Con there as value bets, but it's a very thin market.)
And nearly took down the financial system.
He complained that he only got $91 million as a payoff.
So I present my plum tomato update
Tyne and Wear. Is not a county. It was abolished in 1986. But it is an administrative area. With various joint bodies and a Lord Lieutenant as remnants from when it was a county.
So when is a county not a county? We had endless fun on Teesside when the idiot local mayor foamed on about county boundaries and got publicly schooled by the Yorkshire Ridings Society about why he was talking nonsense.
And a big reason for reducing the number of cars on the road is to reduce congestion. That's the main delay to buses in Edinburgh, for example.
Anyway, I think I get enough exercise.
Oddly enough, I don't particularly enjoy cycling. I don't dislike it, either, but I much prefer a good walk or run. I've no idea why, but the cycling bug never really caught me. I'll cycle to the shops in decent weather, but it's not something I crave to do. Unlike running and (especially) walking.
Oh my.
[Pokes needles in own eyes]
😀😀😀😀
But it's an amazing achievement, especially as the failure rate of these missions is so high. It's also been done on a relative shoestring.
Congrats to ISRO.
Congratulations to India, though.
*Re Malmesbury's point earlier, I'm not sure if it is possible to design an "acceptable-to-market" civilian ferry with that inherent safety feature, as opposed to a Landing Ship Tank without the grey paint.
Now that India can put things on extraterrestrial objects, can you please cut the foreign aid to India to zero because I would like a space rocket with a Union Jack on it plz
XXX viewcode
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Human_Spaceflight_Programme
I think CalMac are unusual for having such large vessels with open decks and a small draft . Lots of design compromises as a result, so you get these bespoke ferries.
I'm conscious that Modi was watching on from BRICS.
Just feels kind-of symbolic, with the US a mess (imho), but perhaps I'm reading too much into this.
SNP: 37% (=)
LAB: 35% (+1)
CON: 17% (=)
LDM: 6% (-3)
via
@Survation
, 18 Aug
(Changes with 28 Jun)
https://twitter.com/OprosUK/status/1694330903726620789?s=20
My point is that every time the yard thinks it's getting on top of things, it finds a new way to mess up.
You were saying that ROROs are so complex and things can go wrong so badly that they need to be careful.
To which my answer is, yes I know the design is vulnerable but they surely knew that at the time they designed it and it isn't an excuse for this many cockups.