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?
Many tens if not hundreds of billions.
The Exchequer alone takes (net) many tens of billions from driving, and subsidises (net) public transport by many billions more. The public largely makes economically rational choices so are choosing the roads despite not because of the Exchequer's heavy hand because that is the rational choice and they'd be worse off with alternatives.
As for your supposed externalities you claimed, most of them aren't real for the future.
Congestion - This is largely BS as an externality since the ones who 'pay' for congestion are the ones using the road, if you're using a train, or working from home, then the fact that there was traffic on the road didn't affect you; plus with better infrastructure congestion can be eliminated or reduced anyway. Furthermore how do you measure it? EG if a journey takes 20 minutes in clear traffic, 25 minutes with traffic, or an hour on public transport - then does a 25 minute journey equate to 5 minutes "lost" in congestion? Or 35 minutes gained by not using public transport? Almost all reports into congestion will look at the 'cost' of the lost 5 minutes, and not the 35 more minutes lost had the car not been used.
Noise pollution - not an issue with electric cars.
Carbon emissions - not an issue with electric cars.
Air pollution - not an issue with electric cars.
Road traffic casualties - Roads in the UK are very safe and casualties are incredibly low and falling as cars have improved dramatically in quality and safety.
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 are reading too much into it IMO. Iran probably could get a probe to the Moon (and perhaps even land on it) if it became a national priority. What matters is the science it can do. And as the Indian Mars orbiter shows, that can be problematic: https://blog.jatan.space/p/missing-science-from-mangalyaan
NASA's achievements are massive, and a significant part of that is the way they have shared vast volumes of data with the world. China is much less keen to (allegedly even when an instrument on a satellite was provided by a western country on the agreement data from the instrument would be shared), and I fear India might go the same way.
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.
There are fundamental issues and there are detail issues (comparatively) which may or may not relate to the former.
Basically if you want a civilian Ro-Ro you're starting there: whatever happens in the yard design and fabrication is another matter, and well worthy of attention.
Though some of this is the [edit] kind of innovatory stuff which always causes problems. Not wise to rely on it without spare [edit] ships, that's for sure.
I know it's that there London, but I'm staggered that only 20-30% of passengers greet the driver. I don't often take the bus, but up here in Yorkshire, when I do I always say hello and thank the driver when getting off and just about everybody else does, too. It just seems weird to walk past someone doing something for you (albeit getting paid for that) and ignore them.
ETA: Puts me in mind, a few years back walking York walls with my parents when my wife and I got into conversation with someone who had waited to let us descend the steps at one of the bars. My (southern) dad asked afterwards how we know the lady and found it hard to understand that, having had a conversation with her, we had never met her before that moment.
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.
There will, but it also shows the limits of "just build everything with space for cars".
Once you start putting in enough road and parking space for cars to work well, other ways of getting around start to work pretty badly. That's especially true of edge-of-town offices and shopping centres. Once stuff is dispersed, walking and cycling distances increase and you also struggle to get enough passengers together for attractive public transport to be viable.
Hence town and city centres. And that agglomeration seems to drive productivity which we're going to need to get out of (sweeping gesture) all of this.
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.
If it symbolises anything it's India no longer looking up to Russia.
What amazes me is that 54 years ago a man landed on the moon, and 52 years ago a man was driving an electric car around up there. This was with significantly less computer power than is in an air fryer. Yet all this time later it makes headlines around the world when a craft just lands on the moon. Its like the ZX80 being released now and people being in awe at the 1KB of static RAM.
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.
There are fundamental issues and there are detail issues (comparatively) which may or may not relate to the former.
Basically if you want a civilian Ro-Ro you're starting there: whatever happens in the yard design and fabrication is another matter, and well worthy of attention.
Though some of this is the [edit] kind of innovatory stuff which always causes problems. Not wise to rely on it without spares, that's for sure.
But that can neither explain, nor excuse, this level of delay, cost overrun and incompetence.
Because that was well known before they tendered for the contract.
If Ferguson Marine didn't know it, then that's yet more evidence they should not be building them.
To put it in context, this much larger and more complex vessel was laid down in 2020 and has just entered service.
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?
Many tens if not hundreds of billions.
The Exchequer alone takes (net) many tens of billions from driving, and subsidises (net) public transport by many billions more. The public largely makes economically rational choices so are choosing the roads despite not because of the Exchequer's heavy hand because that is the rational choice and they'd be worse off with alternatives.
As for your supposed externalities you claimed, most of them aren't real for the future.
Congestion - This is largely BS as an externality since the ones who 'pay' for congestion are the ones using the road, if you're using a train, or working from home, then the fact that there was traffic on the road didn't affect you; plus with better infrastructure congestion can be eliminated or reduced anyway. Furthermore how do you measure it? EG if a journey takes 20 minutes in clear traffic, 25 minutes with traffic, or an hour on public transport - then does a 25 minute journey equate to 5 minutes "lost" in congestion? Or 35 minutes gained by not using public transport? Almost all reports into congestion will look at the 'cost' of the lost 5 minutes, and not the 35 more minutes lost had the car not been used.
Noise pollution - not an issue with electric cars.
Carbon emissions - not an issue with electric cars.
Air pollution - not an issue with electric cars.
Road traffic casualties - Roads in the UK are very safe and casualties are incredibly low and falling as cars have improved dramatically in quality and safety.
While I, like you, am an EV advocate, it's not fair to say that noise pollution, carbon emissions and air pollution are not an issue with electric cars:
noise: tyres/wind noise more of an issue than the ICE above a certain speed
carbon emissions: the UK grid is far from carbon neutral at present, albeit the potential is at least there, longer term
air pollution: still particulates from braking etc (but much better than ICE and regenerative braking helps too)
EVs are much better, but all three issues still exist, to varying extents.
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.
If there's parking at A and B, which very often in city centres there isn't.
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.
There will, but it also shows the limits of "just build everything with space for cars".
Once you start putting in enough road and parking space for cars to work well, other ways of getting around start to work pretty badly. That's especially true of edge-of-town offices and shopping centres. Once stuff is dispersed, walking and cycling distances increase and you also struggle to get enough passengers together for attractive public transport to be viable.
Hence town and city centres. And that agglomeration seems to drive productivity which we're going to need to get out of (sweeping gesture) all of this.
Not really. Its perfectly possible to have spread out with dedicated and safe cycle and pedestrian paths. Indeed trying to cram everything into a single space is what increases danger, having bikes, cars and pedestrians on top of each other is not as safe for any of them.
And if you look at the big picture, productivity for cities is much lower than it first appears. For one, look at transport, the Exchequer is heavily subsidising public transport in cities, while heavily taxing driving and more spread out transportation. Pay your own way on an even scale without the Exchequer tilting the scales, and then see how productive things are without the Exchequer picking winners and losers.
For another house price to earning ratios tend to be worse, not better, in the cities. If you can earn more in a city but need to spend it all subsidising your landlords lifestyle, while you can have a house of your own, with a garden and a driveway in a town, then are you really better off in the city?
I'd rather live in my area, where my kids can play outside safely to their hearts content, bounce and burn their energy on their 10ft trampoline in our garden etc, than be cooped up in a rented flat in a city.
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.
There are fundamental issues and there are detail issues (comparatively) which may or may not relate to the former.
Basically if you want a civilian Ro-Ro you're starting there: whatever happens in the yard design and fabrication is another matter, and well worthy of attention.
Though some of this is the [edit] kind of innovatory stuff which always causes problems. Not wise to rely on it without spares, that's for sure.
But that can neither explain, nor excuse, this level of delay, cost overrun and incompetence.
Because that was well known before they tendered for the contract.
If Ferguson Marine didn't know it, then that's yet more evidence they should not be building them.
To put it in context, this much larger and more complex vessel was laid down in 2020 and has just entered service.
Oh, quite so. And yet the same basic commissioning organization does a good job of the railways, certainly by UK standards. Which raises some ijnteresting questions in my mind.
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.
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.
And once someone has a car, it becomes both the default and the cheapest marginal cost for almost every journey they make.
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.
There are fundamental issues and there are detail issues (comparatively) which may or may not relate to the former.
Basically if you want a civilian Ro-Ro you're starting there: whatever happens in the yard design and fabrication is another matter, and well worthy of attention.
Though some of this is the [edit] kind of innovatory stuff which always causes problems. Not wise to rely on it without spares, that's for sure.
But that can neither explain, nor excuse, this level of delay, cost overrun and incompetence.
Because that was well known before they tendered for the contract.
If Ferguson Marine didn't know it, then that's yet more evidence they should not be building them.
To put it in context, this much larger and more complex vessel was laid down in 2020 and has just entered service.
Oh, quite so. And yet the same basic commissioning organization does a good job of the railways, certainly by UK standards. Which raises some ijnteresting questions in my mind.
I think in my mind it raises the question posed by Trajan to Pliny the Younger - could it be that someone has profited?
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?
Many tens if not hundreds of billions.
The Exchequer alone takes (net) many tens of billions from driving, and subsidises (net) public transport by many billions more. The public largely makes economically rational choices so are choosing the roads despite not because of the Exchequer's heavy hand because that is the rational choice and they'd be worse off with alternatives.
As for your supposed externalities you claimed, most of them aren't real for the future.
Congestion - This is largely BS as an externality since the ones who 'pay' for congestion are the ones using the road, if you're using a train, or working from home, then the fact that there was traffic on the road didn't affect you; plus with better infrastructure congestion can be eliminated or reduced anyway. Furthermore how do you measure it? EG if a journey takes 20 minutes in clear traffic, 25 minutes with traffic, or an hour on public transport - then does a 25 minute journey equate to 5 minutes "lost" in congestion? Or 35 minutes gained by not using public transport? Almost all reports into congestion will look at the 'cost' of the lost 5 minutes, and not the 35 more minutes lost had the car not been used.
Noise pollution - not an issue with electric cars.
Carbon emissions - not an issue with electric cars.
Air pollution - not an issue with electric cars.
Road traffic casualties - Roads in the UK are very safe and casualties are incredibly low and falling as cars have improved dramatically in quality and safety.
While I, like you, am an EV advocate, it's not fair to say that noise pollution, carbon emissions and air pollution are not an issue with electric cars:
noise: tyres/wind noise more of an issue than the ICE above a certain speed
carbon emissions: the UK grid is far from carbon neutral at present, albeit the potential is at least there, longer term
air pollution: still particulates from braking etc (but much better than ICE and regenerative braking helps too)
EVs are much better, but all three issues still exist, to varying extents.
I'd like to see some citation/numbers on those. As far as I'm aware with regards to noise and air pollution the EVs effectively eliminate the problems and claims that they don't are typically pushed by those with an agenda (either anti-EV/pro-ICE, or anti-car).
As for carbon emissions, yes our grid isn't neutral yet but it needs to get there, and cars will help it get there, as cars can take renewable energy that wouldn't be needed at off-peak times which allows us to build more renewable capacity for on-peak times too.
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.
If there's parking at A and B, which very often in city centres there isn't.
Strangely there are a lot of places people want to go that aren't city or town centres. The only time for example I am in them is to get public transport back out to where I actually want to go. If I could avoid either I would because they are generally ugly places to be
Carbon emissions - not an issue with electric cars.
Air pollution - not an issue with electric cars.
While I don't disagree with the thrust of your comments, in the spirit of pedantic arguing that truly represents the PB way, electric cars do have carbon emissions at present because much of our electricity comes from fossil fuels. This is decreasing and will, hopefully, decrease to zero or near zero, but it certainly isn't there yet.
Likewise, there is air pollution associated with our current electricity generation (again, decreasing). It does help that that air pollution is moved away from the vehicles, which are generally where people are, to electricity generating plants, which are generally further away from people. There is also some air pollution, with particulates, that are associated with tyres on a road -- these remain even with electric cars.
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.
Surely misuse of the apostrophe can be explained away by auto correct. So no error.
Imagine if you lived and worked in Wales with autocorrect adding apostrophe's (thank you autocorrect) wi'lly-ni'lly to all those place name spe'llings inclusive of double 'lls
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?
Many tens if not hundreds of billions.
The Exchequer alone takes (net) many tens of billions from driving, and subsidises (net) public transport by many billions more. The public largely makes economically rational choices so are choosing the roads despite not because of the Exchequer's heavy hand because that is the rational choice and they'd be worse off with alternatives.
As for your supposed externalities you claimed, most of them aren't real for the future.
Congestion - This is largely BS as an externality since the ones who 'pay' for congestion are the ones using the road, if you're using a train, or working from home, then the fact that there was traffic on the road didn't affect you; plus with better infrastructure congestion can be eliminated or reduced anyway. Furthermore how do you measure it? EG if a journey takes 20 minutes in clear traffic, 25 minutes with traffic, or an hour on public transport - then does a 25 minute journey equate to 5 minutes "lost" in congestion? Or 35 minutes gained by not using public transport? Almost all reports into congestion will look at the 'cost' of the lost 5 minutes, and not the 35 more minutes lost had the car not been used.
Noise pollution - not an issue with electric cars.
Carbon emissions - not an issue with electric cars.
Air pollution - not an issue with electric cars.
Road traffic casualties - Roads in the UK are very safe and casualties are incredibly low and falling as cars have improved dramatically in quality and safety.
While I, like you, am an EV advocate, it's not fair to say that noise pollution, carbon emissions and air pollution are not an issue with electric cars:
noise: tyres/wind noise more of an issue than the ICE above a certain speed
carbon emissions: the UK grid is far from carbon neutral at present, albeit the potential is at least there, longer term
air pollution: still particulates from braking etc (but much better than ICE and regenerative braking helps too)
EVs are much better, but all three issues still exist, to varying extents.
I'd like to see some citation/numbers on those. As far as I'm aware with regards to noise and air pollution the EVs effectively eliminate the problems and claims that they don't are typically pushed by those with an agenda (either anti-EV/pro-ICE, or anti-car).
As for carbon emissions, yes our grid isn't neutral yet but it needs to get there, and cars will help it get there, as cars can take renewable energy that wouldn't be needed at off-peak times which allows us to build more renewable capacity for on-peak times too.
I don't know the actual numbers for comparative noise but having lived near major roads beforeit is certainly true that wheel noise is a far greater part of noise pollution than people seem to realise.
But that is by no means an argument against EVs. Getting rid of the engine noise is still a great leap forward.
I struggle with the idea of air pollution being a serious issue with EVs. Water pollution certainly will be though just as it is with ICEs. There is a staggering amount of microplastic/synthetic rubber that ends up in our water courses from tyre wear.
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?
Many tens if not hundreds of billions.
The Exchequer alone takes (net) many tens of billions from driving, and subsidises (net) public transport by many billions more. The public largely makes economically rational choices so are choosing the roads despite not because of the Exchequer's heavy hand because that is the rational choice and they'd be worse off with alternatives.
As for your supposed externalities you claimed, most of them aren't real for the future.
Congestion - This is largely BS as an externality since the ones who 'pay' for congestion are the ones using the road, if you're using a train, or working from home, then the fact that there was traffic on the road didn't affect you; plus with better infrastructure congestion can be eliminated or reduced anyway. Furthermore how do you measure it? EG if a journey takes 20 minutes in clear traffic, 25 minutes with traffic, or an hour on public transport - then does a 25 minute journey equate to 5 minutes "lost" in congestion? Or 35 minutes gained by not using public transport? Almost all reports into congestion will look at the 'cost' of the lost 5 minutes, and not the 35 more minutes lost had the car not been used.
Noise pollution - not an issue with electric cars.
Carbon emissions - not an issue with electric cars.
Air pollution - not an issue with electric cars.
Road traffic casualties - Roads in the UK are very safe and casualties are incredibly low and falling as cars have improved dramatically in quality and safety.
While I, like you, am an EV advocate, it's not fair to say that noise pollution, carbon emissions and air pollution are not an issue with electric cars:
noise: tyres/wind noise more of an issue than the ICE above a certain speed
carbon emissions: the UK grid is far from carbon neutral at present, albeit the potential is at least there, longer term
air pollution: still particulates from braking etc (but much better than ICE and regenerative braking helps too)
EVs are much better, but all three issues still exist, to varying extents.
I'd like to see some citation/numbers on those. As far as I'm aware with regards to noise and air pollution the EVs effectively eliminate the problems and claims that they don't are typically pushed by those with an agenda (either anti-EV/pro-ICE, or anti-car).
(Snip)
From memory, at any decent speed the majority of noise from a road car comes from wind and road resistance, so that will be approximately the same for EV or ICE-powered cars for any speed above typical city speeds. Although this depends so much on the design of cars and the type of tyres.
As for pollution; you get it from tyres and brakes as well. This *should* be increased as EVs are considerably heavier than ICE's of the same type, but brake wear might be reduced due to regen braking.
First song ever to debut at #1 in the US from an artist with no record label. No promotion for it at all, just word of mouth. Brilliant to see cultural moments like that.
See also the film “Sound of Freedom”, which is one of the top films of the summer in the US, made on a tiny budget.
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?
Many tens if not hundreds of billions.
The Exchequer alone takes (net) many tens of billions from driving, and subsidises (net) public transport by many billions more. The public largely makes economically rational choices so are choosing the roads despite not because of the Exchequer's heavy hand because that is the rational choice and they'd be worse off with alternatives.
As for your supposed externalities you claimed, most of them aren't real for the future.
Congestion - This is largely BS as an externality since the ones who 'pay' for congestion are the ones using the road, if you're using a train, or working from home, then the fact that there was traffic on the road didn't affect you; plus with better infrastructure congestion can be eliminated or reduced anyway. Furthermore how do you measure it? EG if a journey takes 20 minutes in clear traffic, 25 minutes with traffic, or an hour on public transport - then does a 25 minute journey equate to 5 minutes "lost" in congestion? Or 35 minutes gained by not using public transport? Almost all reports into congestion will look at the 'cost' of the lost 5 minutes, and not the 35 more minutes lost had the car not been used.
Noise pollution - not an issue with electric cars.
Carbon emissions - not an issue with electric cars.
Air pollution - not an issue with electric cars.
Road traffic casualties - Roads in the UK are very safe and casualties are incredibly low and falling as cars have improved dramatically in quality and safety.
While I, like you, am an EV advocate, it's not fair to say that noise pollution, carbon emissions and air pollution are not an issue with electric cars:
noise: tyres/wind noise more of an issue than the ICE above a certain speed
carbon emissions: the UK grid is far from carbon neutral at present, albeit the potential is at least there, longer term
air pollution: still particulates from braking etc (but much better than ICE and regenerative braking helps too)
EVs are much better, but all three issues still exist, to varying extents.
I'd like to see some citation/numbers on those. As far as I'm aware with regards to noise and air pollution the EVs effectively eliminate the problems and claims that they don't are typically pushed by those with an agenda (either anti-EV/pro-ICE, or anti-car).
As for carbon emissions, yes our grid isn't neutral yet but it needs to get there, and cars will help it get there, as cars can take renewable energy that wouldn't be needed at off-peak times which allows us to build more renewable capacity for on-peak times too.
This, on noise, is quite interesting: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003682X13000790 (does seem to suggest that engine/exhause - i.e. ICE in combination - is the largest component, although perception at different frequencies may also be important)
EVs certainly help (as stated) but they don't eliminate all issues. I'd much rather live next to the M62 with all EVs than with ICEVs, but I'd still prefer not to live there. EVs will however make a big positive difference on our residential A-road (30mph limit) both in noise and pollution.
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?
Many tens if not hundreds of billions.
The Exchequer alone takes (net) many tens of billions from driving, and subsidises (net) public transport by many billions more. The public largely makes economically rational choices so are choosing the roads despite not because of the Exchequer's heavy hand because that is the rational choice and they'd be worse off with alternatives.
As for your supposed externalities you claimed, most of them aren't real for the future.
Congestion - This is largely BS as an externality since the ones who 'pay' for congestion are the ones using the road, if you're using a train, or working from home, then the fact that there was traffic on the road didn't affect you; plus with better infrastructure congestion can be eliminated or reduced anyway. Furthermore how do you measure it? EG if a journey takes 20 minutes in clear traffic, 25 minutes with traffic, or an hour on public transport - then does a 25 minute journey equate to 5 minutes "lost" in congestion? Or 35 minutes gained by not using public transport? Almost all reports into congestion will look at the 'cost' of the lost 5 minutes, and not the 35 more minutes lost had the car not been used.
Noise pollution - not an issue with electric cars.
Carbon emissions - not an issue with electric cars.
Air pollution - not an issue with electric cars.
Road traffic casualties - Roads in the UK are very safe and casualties are incredibly low and falling as cars have improved dramatically in quality and safety.
While I, like you, am an EV advocate, it's not fair to say that noise pollution, carbon emissions and air pollution are not an issue with electric cars:
noise: tyres/wind noise more of an issue than the ICE above a certain speed
carbon emissions: the UK grid is far from carbon neutral at present, albeit the potential is at least there, longer term
air pollution: still particulates from braking etc (but much better than ICE and regenerative braking helps too)
EVs are much better, but all three issues still exist, to varying extents.
I'd like to see some citation/numbers on those. As far as I'm aware with regards to noise and air pollution the EVs effectively eliminate the problems and claims that they don't are typically pushed by those with an agenda (either anti-EV/pro-ICE, or anti-car).
As for carbon emissions, yes our grid isn't neutral yet but it needs to get there, and cars will help it get there, as cars can take renewable energy that wouldn't be needed at off-peak times which allows us to build more renewable capacity for on-peak times too.
This, on noise, is quite interesting: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003682X13000790 (does seem to suggest that engine/exhause - i.e. ICE in combination - is the largest component, although perception at different frequencies may also be important)
EVs certainly help (as stated) but they don't eliminate all issues. I'd much rather live next to the M62 with all EVs than with ICEVs, but I'd still prefer not to live there. EVs will however make a big positive difference on our residential A-road (30mph limit) both in noise and pollution.
It's the motorbikes, at 2 in the morning on my quiet street, that could really do with being forced EV. That would eliminate about 99% of the ridiculous noise they make.
First song ever to debut at #1 in the US from an artist with no record label. No promotion for it at all, just word of mouth. Brilliant to see cultural moments like that.
See also the film “Sound of Freedom”, which is one of the top films of the summer in the US, made on a tiny budget.
First song ever to debut at #1 in the US from an artist with no record label. No promotion for it at all, just word of mouth. Brilliant to see cultural moments like that.
See also the film “Sound of Freedom”, which is one of the top films of the summer in the US, made on a tiny budget.
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.
If it symbolises anything it's India no longer looking up to Russia.
What amazes me is that 54 years ago a man landed on the moon, and 52 years ago a man was driving an electric car around up there. This was with significantly less computer power than is in an air fryer. Yet all this time later it makes headlines around the world when a craft just lands on the moon. Its like the ZX80 being released now and people being in awe at the 1KB of static RAM.
"54 years ago a man landed on the moon"? Have you never seen Capricorn One?
The first moon landing was Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece.
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.
If there's parking at A and B, which very often in city centres there isn't.
Strangely there are a lot of places people want to go that aren't city or town centres. The only time for example I am in them is to get public transport back out to where I actually want to go. If I could avoid either I would because they are generally ugly places to be
There are also many beautiful city centres, but aside from a handful in Britain (Edinburgh, Oxford, Cambridge, Bath, York, one or two other small cathedral cities and er, that's it) most of them are on the continent or in North Africa and the Middle East. The vast majority of beautiful city centres around the world are wholly or mainly pedestrianised. The medinas of North Africa being probably the apotheosis of the 15 minute city.
First song ever to debut at #1 in the US from an artist with no record label. No promotion for it at all, just word of mouth. Brilliant to see cultural moments like that.
See also the film “Sound of Freedom”, which is one of the top films of the summer in the US, made on a tiny budget.
Both are alt-right nutjob affairs.
Seems to be very popular, Rich Men North of Richmond.
First song ever to debut at #1 in the US from an artist with no record label. No promotion for it at all, just word of mouth. Brilliant to see cultural moments like that.
See also the film “Sound of Freedom”, which is one of the top films of the summer in the US, made on a tiny budget.
Both are alt-right nutjob affairs.
So the far-left nutjobs have been saying.
The thing that intrigues me is the hair-beard colour discontinuity. I haven't been so distracted by something like that since Alistair Darling was in his pomp.
We should all be getting 1 hour of exercise a day (or at least 150 mins a week). That means that most people with a commute less than 10km (6 miles) should be cycling or walking to work.
In England and Wales, 65% of commuters are within 10km of their workplace. 43% are within 5km. Yet only 14% walk or cycle.
First song ever to debut at #1 in the US from an artist with no record label. No promotion for it at all, just word of mouth. Brilliant to see cultural moments like that.
See also the film “Sound of Freedom”, which is one of the top films of the summer in the US, made on a tiny budget.
Both are alt-right nutjob affairs.
Seems to be very popular, Rich Men North of Richmond.
The singer seems to subscribe to 9/11 conspiracy theories, and has been heavily promoted by popular Covid fantasist Joe Rogan.
There are an awful lot of alt-right nut jobs in the US, and a couple on this board.
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.
If it symbolises anything it's India no longer looking up to Russia.
What amazes me is that 54 years ago a man landed on the moon, and 52 years ago a man was driving an electric car around up there. This was with significantly less computer power than is in an air fryer. Yet all this time later it makes headlines around the world when a craft just lands on the moon. Its like the ZX80 being released now and people being in awe at the 1KB of static RAM.
"54 years ago a man landed on the moon"? Have you never seen Capricorn One?
The first moon landing was Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece.
Maybe, I just find it completely bizarre. Walter Kronkite covered the Apollo 11 take off, his ending comment that day was that the Astronauts were embarking on a journey which their children will consider normal and mundane.
That is genuinely what people thought in 1969. 54 years later and an unmanned spacecraft landing on the moon is considered an amazing achievement.
First song ever to debut at #1 in the US from an artist with no record label. No promotion for it at all, just word of mouth. Brilliant to see cultural moments like that.
See also the film “Sound of Freedom”, which is one of the top films of the summer in the US, made on a tiny budget.
Both are alt-right nutjob affairs.
Seems to be very popular, Rich Men North of Richmond.
He presumably hasn't realised that Sunak is in Richmond (well, actually Kirby Sigston is east and a little south or Richmond) when he's not south of there, in London.
First song ever to debut at #1 in the US from an artist with no record label. No promotion for it at all, just word of mouth. Brilliant to see cultural moments like that.
See also the film “Sound of Freedom”, which is one of the top films of the summer in the US, made on a tiny budget.
Both are alt-right nutjob affairs.
So the far-left nutjobs have been saying.
The thing that intrigues me is the hair-beard colour discontinuity. I haven't been so distracted by something like that since Alistair Darling was in his pomp.
Alistair Darling had a pomp? Are you sure it wasn't just wind?
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.
If it symbolises anything it's India no longer looking up to Russia.
What amazes me is that 54 years ago a man landed on the moon, and 52 years ago a man was driving an electric car around up there. This was with significantly less computer power than is in an air fryer. Yet all this time later it makes headlines around the world when a craft just lands on the moon. Its like the ZX80 being released now and people being in awe at the 1KB of static RAM.
"54 years ago a man landed on the moon"? Have you never seen Capricorn One?
The first moon landing was Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece.
Oooh! I might have to watch that again. Haven't seen it in years. Don't think Kubrick directed it though...
First song ever to debut at #1 in the US from an artist with no record label. No promotion for it at all, just word of mouth. Brilliant to see cultural moments like that.
See also the film “Sound of Freedom”, which is one of the top films of the summer in the US, made on a tiny budget.
Both are alt-right nutjob affairs.
Seems to be very popular, Rich Men North of Richmond.
Watching the media and cultural Establishment reaction, to independent artists having success on their own terms, is rather amusing. They’re saying all sorts of things to try and discredit independents, especially conservative independents.
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.
If there's parking at A and B, which very often in city centres there isn't.
Strangely there are a lot of places people want to go that aren't city or town centres. The only time for example I am in them is to get public transport back out to where I actually want to go. If I could avoid either I would because they are generally ugly places to be
There are also many beautiful city centres, but aside from a handful in Britain (Edinburgh, Oxford, Cambridge, Bath, York, one or two other small cathedral cities and er, that's it) most of them are on the continent or in North Africa and the Middle East. The vast majority of beautiful city centres around the world are wholly or mainly pedestrianised. The medinas of North Africa being probably the apotheosis of the 15 minute city.
Glasgow, Manchester and Liverpool each have their merits. Bristol and Newcastle too.
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?
Many tens if not hundreds of billions.
The Exchequer alone takes (net) many tens of billions from driving, and subsidises (net) public transport by many billions more. The public largely makes economically rational choices so are choosing the roads despite not because of the Exchequer's heavy hand because that is the rational choice and they'd be worse off with alternatives.
As for your supposed externalities you claimed, most of them aren't real for the future.
Congestion - This is largely BS as an externality since the ones who 'pay' for congestion are the ones using the road, if you're using a train, or working from home, then the fact that there was traffic on the road didn't affect you; plus with better infrastructure congestion can be eliminated or reduced anyway. Furthermore how do you measure it? EG if a journey takes 20 minutes in clear traffic, 25 minutes with traffic, or an hour on public transport - then does a 25 minute journey equate to 5 minutes "lost" in congestion? Or 35 minutes gained by not using public transport? Almost all reports into congestion will look at the 'cost' of the lost 5 minutes, and not the 35 more minutes lost had the car not been used.
Noise pollution - not an issue with electric cars.
Carbon emissions - not an issue with electric cars.
Air pollution - not an issue with electric cars.
Road traffic casualties - Roads in the UK are very safe and casualties are incredibly low and falling as cars have improved dramatically in quality and safety.
While I, like you, am an EV advocate, it's not fair to say that noise pollution, carbon emissions and air pollution are not an issue with electric cars:
noise: tyres/wind noise more of an issue than the ICE above a certain speed
carbon emissions: the UK grid is far from carbon neutral at present, albeit the potential is at least there, longer term
air pollution: still particulates from braking etc (but much better than ICE and regenerative braking helps too)
EVs are much better, but all three issues still exist, to varying extents.
I'd like to see some citation/numbers on those. As far as I'm aware with regards to noise and air pollution the EVs effectively eliminate the problems and claims that they don't are typically pushed by those with an agenda (either anti-EV/pro-ICE, or anti-car).
As for carbon emissions, yes our grid isn't neutral yet but it needs to get there, and cars will help it get there, as cars can take renewable energy that wouldn't be needed at off-peak times which allows us to build more renewable capacity for on-peak times too.
This, on noise, is quite interesting: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003682X13000790 (does seem to suggest that engine/exhause - i.e. ICE in combination - is the largest component, although perception at different frequencies may also be important)
EVs certainly help (as stated) but they don't eliminate all issues. I'd much rather live next to the M62 with all EVs than with ICEVs, but I'd still prefer not to live there. EVs will however make a big positive difference on our residential A-road (30mph limit) both in noise and pollution.
EVs will certainly help with pollution, but I'm not sure they'll make a huge difference to noise. With the odd exception, the engine/exhaust noise from most modern ICE cars is pretty low for most of the time. As I sit here in my home office, the noise coming from the busy road outside is mostly tyre noise, to the extent that it is often difficult to distinguish EVs from ICEVs.
First song ever to debut at #1 in the US from an artist with no record label. No promotion for it at all, just word of mouth. Brilliant to see cultural moments like that.
See also the film “Sound of Freedom”, which is one of the top films of the summer in the US, made on a tiny budget.
Both are alt-right nutjob affairs.
Seems to be very popular, Rich Men North of Richmond.
Watching the media and cultural Establishment reaction, to independent artists having success on their own terms, is rather amusing. They’re saying all sorts of things to try and discredit independents, especially conservative independents.
It’s mostly because the people involved are conspiracy-spouting loons.
Regarding cars, can we stop with the absolutism. Do we need to build more roads? Yes. Do we need less cars driving into town and city centres? Yes. It isn't either / or. If everyone tries to drive into town at the same time (in EVs or not) then we need to flatten everything for roads and car parks.
But encouraging the use of public transport doesn't mean completely ban cars - they're still needed when pick ups / drop offs / collection of stuff / one call on a bigger journey / the elderly and disabled need access happen.
An example of stupidity. My last weekend staying in Newcastle. By far and away the cheapest parking option was to drive into town and park at Central station (where they have an excellent weekend deal). Park and ride options expensive and less safe. Bonkers.
Carbon emissions - not an issue with electric cars.
Air pollution - not an issue with electric cars.
While I don't disagree with the thrust of your comments, in the spirit of pedantic arguing that truly represents the PB way, electric cars do have carbon emissions at present because much of our electricity comes from fossil fuels. This is decreasing and will, hopefully, decrease to zero or near zero, but it certainly isn't there yet.
Likewise, there is air pollution associated with our current electricity generation (again, decreasing). It does help that that air pollution is moved away from the vehicles, which are generally where people are, to electricity generating plants, which are generally further away from people. There is also some air pollution, with particulates, that are associated with tyres on a road -- these remain even with electric cars.
Well indeed our general electric supply does emit emissions, and would even if transportation stopped overnight. But as I've said, I believe here that cars are part of the solution, not part of the problem, when it comes to climate change which probably requires a complete change in mindset.
We need to scale up our renewable electricity supply in order to be able to cope with peak demand, without relying upon coal or gas, in order to have zero-carbon energy. But to have reliable peak supply would leave us with far too much off-peak supply. So there needs to be some sort of offsetting.
Cars at home are the perfect solution to that conundrum. Being large scale batteries they can be charged off-peak while leaving peak supply available for that which unavoidably needs it. In this way we balance peak and off peak supply and demand, which allows for a cleaner, greener future.
Without cars, getting to net zero would be much harder, not easier.
First song ever to debut at #1 in the US from an artist with no record label. No promotion for it at all, just word of mouth. Brilliant to see cultural moments like that.
See also the film “Sound of Freedom”, which is one of the top films of the summer in the US, made on a tiny budget.
Both are alt-right nutjob affairs.
Seems to be very popular, Rich Men North of Richmond.
Watching the media and cultural Establishment reaction, to independent artists having success on their own terms, is rather amusing. They’re saying all sorts of things to try and discredit independents, especially conservative independents.
Yep, shocking how edgy independent musical talents like Right Said Fred have been discredited.
We should all be getting 1 hour of exercise a day (or at least 150 mins a week). That means that most people with a commute less than 10km (6 miles) should be cycling or walking to work.
In England and Wales, 65% of commuters are within 10km of their workplace. 43% are within 5km. Yet only 14% walk or cycle.
Whatever happened to "protect the NHS"?
Rather assumes the only time to exercise is on the commute, rather than other times.
Many people exercise while at work, a lot of people are on their feet much or all of the day and not just sat behind a desk.
While others might want to exercise before or after work instead.
A 5 mile commute can be driven in 10-15 minutes which leaves you plenty of day to get your exercise in when not driving.
Plus exercise makes you sweaty which isn't an ideal way to start your workday.
Personally I'd rather exercise by going for a jog or ride my bike to and around the park near where I live, or a jog along the river I live near, than go for a jog or cycle in my work clothes before work.
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.
If it symbolises anything it's India no longer looking up to Russia.
What amazes me is that 54 years ago a man landed on the moon, and 52 years ago a man was driving an electric car around up there. This was with significantly less computer power than is in an air fryer. Yet all this time later it makes headlines around the world when a craft just lands on the moon. Its like the ZX80 being released now and people being in awe at the 1KB of static RAM.
"54 years ago a man landed on the moon"? Have you never seen Capricorn One?
The first moon landing was Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece.
Oooh! I might have to watch that again. Haven't seen it in years. Don't think Kubrick directed it though...
No, the legend has it that Kubrick filmed the actual moon landings.
I am not a conspiracy theorist generally, but cotton suits, shadows of the astronauts and flags blowing in the breeze. Do me a favour. Oh, and Richard Nixon was President.
First song ever to debut at #1 in the US from an artist with no record label. No promotion for it at all, just word of mouth. Brilliant to see cultural moments like that.
See also the film “Sound of Freedom”, which is one of the top films of the summer in the US, made on a tiny budget.
Both are alt-right nutjob affairs.
Seems to be very popular, Rich Men North of Richmond.
Watching the media and cultural Establishment reaction, to independent artists having success on their own terms, is rather amusing. They’re saying all sorts of things to try and discredit independents, especially conservative independents.
It’s mostly because the people involved are conspiracy-spouting loons.
It helps that they're been presented as "The thing the Woke Liberal Elite don't want you to see", so when you point out the faults with that movie for example, they're just dismissed.
First song ever to debut at #1 in the US from an artist with no record label. No promotion for it at all, just word of mouth. Brilliant to see cultural moments like that.
See also the film “Sound of Freedom”, which is one of the top films of the summer in the US, made on a tiny budget.
First song ever to debut at #1 in the US from an artist with no record label. No promotion for it at all, just word of mouth. Brilliant to see cultural moments like that.
See also the film “Sound of Freedom”, which is one of the top films of the summer in the US, made on a tiny budget.
Both are alt-right nutjob affairs.
Attention seeking former eighties and nineties cult singer Billy Bragg has done a counter song to one of them.
Carbon emissions - not an issue with electric cars.
Air pollution - not an issue with electric cars.
While I don't disagree with the thrust of your comments, in the spirit of pedantic arguing that truly represents the PB way, electric cars do have carbon emissions at present because much of our electricity comes from fossil fuels. This is decreasing and will, hopefully, decrease to zero or near zero, but it certainly isn't there yet.
Likewise, there is air pollution associated with our current electricity generation (again, decreasing). It does help that that air pollution is moved away from the vehicles, which are generally where people are, to electricity generating plants, which are generally further away from people. There is also some air pollution, with particulates, that are associated with tyres on a road -- these remain even with electric cars.
Well indeed our general electric supply does emit emissions, and would even if transportation stopped overnight. But as I've said, I believe here that cars are part of the solution, not part of the problem, when it comes to climate change which probably requires a complete change in mindset.
We need to scale up our renewable electricity supply in order to be able to cope with peak demand, without relying upon coal or gas, in order to have zero-carbon energy. But to have reliable peak supply would leave us with far too much off-peak supply. So there needs to be some sort of offsetting.
Cars at home are the perfect solution to that conundrum. Being large scale batteries they can be charged off-peak while leaving peak supply available for that which unavoidably needs it. In this way we balance peak and off peak supply and demand, which allows for a cleaner, greener future.
Without cars, getting to net zero would be much harder, not easier.
More accurately, having a load of large batteries scattered around the country should make it easier to get to net zero. From a net zero point of view, there's no need to have said batteries mounted on wheels and zooming around; they could just as well be static home batteries. But if we are to have batteries on wheels, we may as well also use as storage them to help us reach net zero.
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.
If there's parking at A and B, which very often in city centres there isn't.
Strangely there are a lot of places people want to go that aren't city or town centres. The only time for example I am in them is to get public transport back out to where I actually want to go. If I could avoid either I would because they are generally ugly places to be
There are also many beautiful city centres, but aside from a handful in Britain (Edinburgh, Oxford, Cambridge, Bath, York, one or two other small cathedral cities and er, that's it) most of them are on the continent or in North Africa and the Middle East. The vast majority of beautiful city centres around the world are wholly or mainly pedestrianised. The medinas of North Africa being probably the apotheosis of the 15 minute city.
Glasgow, Manchester and Liverpool each have their merits. Bristol and Newcastle too.
Birmingham and Portsmouth not so much.
Not sure about Sheffield, Leeds, and Southampton.
Southampton doesn't really have a well defined centre (at least, that was my experience when living there). Rather a few different areas where you might end up on e.g. a night out or a shopping trip (notably, those two purposes would be in quite different areas). That also has it's appeal, of course.
Leeds has nice bits in the middle, but not a compelling centre (possibly related: traffic is very much a part of the city centre).
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.
If there's parking at A and B, which very often in city centres there isn't.
Strangely there are a lot of places people want to go that aren't city or town centres. The only time for example I am in them is to get public transport back out to where I actually want to go. If I could avoid either I would because they are generally ugly places to be
There are also many beautiful city centres, but aside from a handful in Britain (Edinburgh, Oxford, Cambridge, Bath, York, one or two other small cathedral cities and er, that's it) most of them are on the continent or in North Africa and the Middle East. The vast majority of beautiful city centres around the world are wholly or mainly pedestrianised. The medinas of North Africa being probably the apotheosis of the 15 minute city.
Glasgow, Manchester and Liverpool each have their merits. Bristol and Newcastle too.
Birmingham and Portsmouth not so much.
Not sure about Sheffield, Leeds, and Southampton.
Portsmouth is a lot better than it used to be. Gunwharf Quays is bog standard outlet village, but it has opened up that bit of the waterfront and Old Portsmouth proper. The Spinnaker is dumb, but fun.
Meanwhile the Tricorn was demolished in 2004, once the city worked out how to do without the parking. And Jonathan Meades ("You don't go knocking down Stonehenge or Lincoln Cathedral. I think buildings like the Tricorn were as good as that.") can get into the sea.
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.
If there's parking at A and B, which very often in city centres there isn't.
Strangely there are a lot of places people want to go that aren't city or town centres. The only time for example I am in them is to get public transport back out to where I actually want to go. If I could avoid either I would because they are generally ugly places to be
There are also many beautiful city centres, but aside from a handful in Britain (Edinburgh, Oxford, Cambridge, Bath, York, one or two other small cathedral cities and er, that's it) most of them are on the continent or in North Africa and the Middle East. The vast majority of beautiful city centres around the world are wholly or mainly pedestrianised. The medinas of North Africa being probably the apotheosis of the 15 minute city.
Glasgow, Manchester and Liverpool each have their merits. Bristol and Newcastle too.
Birmingham and Portsmouth not so much.
Not sure about Sheffield, Leeds, and Southampton.
Southampton doesn't really have a well defined centre (at least, that was my experience when living there). Rather a few different areas where you might end up on e.g. a night out or a shopping trip (notably, those two purposes would be in quite different areas). That also has it's appeal, of course.
Leeds has nice bits in the middle, but not a compelling centre (possibly related: traffic is very much a part of the city centre).
Gloucester was lovely and walkable. Pedestrianised centre and quays area. Chester and York too.
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
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.
There are fundamental issues and there are detail issues (comparatively) which may or may not relate to the former.
Basically if you want a civilian Ro-Ro you're starting there: whatever happens in the yard design and fabrication is another matter, and well worthy of attention.
Though some of this is the [edit] kind of innovatory stuff which always causes problems. Not wise to rely on it without spares, that's for sure.
But that can neither explain, nor excuse, this level of delay, cost overrun and incompetence.
Because that was well known before they tendered for the contract.
If Ferguson Marine didn't know it, then that's yet more evidence they should not be building them.
To put it in context, this much larger and more complex vessel was laid down in 2020 and has just entered service.
Carbon emissions - not an issue with electric cars.
Air pollution - not an issue with electric cars.
While I don't disagree with the thrust of your comments, in the spirit of pedantic arguing that truly represents the PB way, electric cars do have carbon emissions at present because much of our electricity comes from fossil fuels. This is decreasing and will, hopefully, decrease to zero or near zero, but it certainly isn't there yet.
Likewise, there is air pollution associated with our current electricity generation (again, decreasing). It does help that that air pollution is moved away from the vehicles, which are generally where people are, to electricity generating plants, which are generally further away from people. There is also some air pollution, with particulates, that are associated with tyres on a road -- these remain even with electric cars.
Well indeed our general electric supply does emit emissions, and would even if transportation stopped overnight. But as I've said, I believe here that cars are part of the solution, not part of the problem, when it comes to climate change which probably requires a complete change in mindset.
We need to scale up our renewable electricity supply in order to be able to cope with peak demand, without relying upon coal or gas, in order to have zero-carbon energy. But to have reliable peak supply would leave us with far too much off-peak supply. So there needs to be some sort of offsetting.
Cars at home are the perfect solution to that conundrum. Being large scale batteries they can be charged off-peak while leaving peak supply available for that which unavoidably needs it. In this way we balance peak and off peak supply and demand, which allows for a cleaner, greener future.
Without cars, getting to net zero would be much harder, not easier.
More accurately, having a load of large batteries scattered around the country should make it easier to get to net zero. From a net zero point of view, there's no need to have said batteries mounted on wheels and zooming around; they could just as well be home batteries. But if we are to have batteries on wheels, we may as well also use as storage them to help us reach net zero.
Well yes, indeed, batteries without the wheels would work too - but people buy the batteries because of the wheels, without the wheels few would have or buy the batteries.
40 million vehicles on the road. Lets say 30 million become electric at an average of 100 kWh capacity. That's 3 billion kWh, 3 million MWh, 3,000 GWh or 3 TWh of distributed energy storage.
There's currently 16 GWh of energy storage operating across the UK, so adding 3 TWh of distributed storage would utterly dwarf that and make the switch to renewables almost infinitely easier.
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
Do UKers riding on public transit ever take out their phones and other devices, and do something approaching work while commuting?
Commonplace, indeed the norm, in Seattle. Which surely accounts for some "economic gains".
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.
If there's parking at A and B, which very often in city centres there isn't.
Strangely there are a lot of places people want to go that aren't city or town centres. The only time for example I am in them is to get public transport back out to where I actually want to go. If I could avoid either I would because they are generally ugly places to be
There are also many beautiful city centres, but aside from a handful in Britain (Edinburgh, Oxford, Cambridge, Bath, York, one or two other small cathedral cities and er, that's it) most of them are on the continent or in North Africa and the Middle East. The vast majority of beautiful city centres around the world are wholly or mainly pedestrianised. The medinas of North Africa being probably the apotheosis of the 15 minute city.
Glasgow, Manchester and Liverpool each have their merits. Bristol and Newcastle too.
Birmingham and Portsmouth not so much.
Not sure about Sheffield, Leeds, and Southampton.
Dore, in Sheffield, is fabulous. Unbelievably posh. Leeds has a fine Victorian city centre.
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.
If there's parking at A and B, which very often in city centres there isn't.
Strangely there are a lot of places people want to go that aren't city or town centres. The only time for example I am in them is to get public transport back out to where I actually want to go. If I could avoid either I would because they are generally ugly places to be
There are also many beautiful city centres, but aside from a handful in Britain (Edinburgh, Oxford, Cambridge, Bath, York, one or two other small cathedral cities and er, that's it) most of them are on the continent or in North Africa and the Middle East. The vast majority of beautiful city centres around the world are wholly or mainly pedestrianised. The medinas of North Africa being probably the apotheosis of the 15 minute city.
Glasgow, Manchester and Liverpool each have their merits. Bristol and Newcastle too.
Birmingham and Portsmouth not so much.
Not sure about Sheffield, Leeds, and Southampton.
Portsmouth is a lot better than it used to be. Gunwharf Quays is bog standard outlet village, but it has opened up that bit of the waterfront and Old Portsmouth proper. The Spinnaker is dumb, but fun.
Meanwhile the Tricorn was demolished in 2004, once the city worked out how to do without the parking. And Jonathan Meades ("You don't go knocking down Stonehenge or Lincoln Cathedral. I think buildings like the Tricorn were as good as that.") can get into the sea.
Fairly easy to do in Portsmouth.
Used to be a grim trek round the Gunwharf wall to the Harbour station, Gos\port ferry for the assorted heritage there, Common Hard and Dockyard, if you were staying at the Point like we used to (by far the best tourist accommodation area for the character). Sounds a huge improvement to be able to go direct on the seafront. Must go again.
First song ever to debut at #1 in the US from an artist with no record label. No promotion for it at all, just word of mouth. Brilliant to see cultural moments like that.
See also the film “Sound of Freedom”, which is one of the top films of the summer in the US, made on a tiny budget.
First song ever to debut at #1 in the US from an artist with no record label. No promotion for it at all, just word of mouth. Brilliant to see cultural moments like that.
See also the film “Sound of Freedom”, which is one of the top films of the summer in the US, made on a tiny budget.
Both are alt-right nutjob affairs.
Attention seeking former eighties and nineties cult singer Billy Bragg has done a counter song to one of them.
That is very unfair on Billy Bragg. Attention seeking? Cult singer?
He didn't want to change the world, he wasn't looking for a new England.
First song ever to debut at #1 in the US from an artist with no record label. No promotion for it at all, just word of mouth. Brilliant to see cultural moments like that.
See also the film “Sound of Freedom”, which is one of the top films of the summer in the US, made on a tiny budget.
Both are alt-right nutjob affairs.
Seems to be very popular, Rich Men North of Richmond.
Watching the media and cultural Establishment reaction, to independent artists having success on their own terms, is rather amusing. They’re saying all sorts of things to try and discredit independents, especially conservative independents.
Yep, shocking how edgy independent musical talents like Right Said Fred have been discredited.
Some have gone so far as to accuse them of being too sexy, I believe.
First song ever to debut at #1 in the US from an artist with no record label. No promotion for it at all, just word of mouth. Brilliant to see cultural moments like that.
See also the film “Sound of Freedom”, which is one of the top films of the summer in the US, made on a tiny budget.
Both are alt-right nutjob affairs.
Seems to be very popular, Rich Men North of Richmond.
The singer seems to subscribe to 9/11 conspiracy theories, and has been heavily promoted by popular Covid fantasist Joe Rogan.
There are an awful lot of alt-right nut jobs in the US, and a couple on this board.
The title "Rich Men North of Richmond" is not exactly hiding that tendency, is it?
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.
If it symbolises anything it's India no longer looking up to Russia.
What amazes me is that 54 years ago a man landed on the moon, and 52 years ago a man was driving an electric car around up there. This was with significantly less computer power than is in an air fryer. Yet all this time later it makes headlines around the world when a craft just lands on the moon. Its like the ZX80 being released now and people being in awe at the 1KB of static RAM.
"54 years ago a man landed on the moon"? Have you never seen Capricorn One?
The first moon landing was Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece.
Oooh! I might have to watch that again. Haven't seen it in years. Don't think Kubrick directed it though...
No, the legend has it that Kubrick filmed the actual moon landings.
I am not a conspiracy theorist generally, but cotton suits, shadows of the astronauts and flags blowing in the breeze. Do me a favour. Oh, and Richard Nixon was President.
I think the 'Moon Landing' set in Diamonds Are Forever (Bond steals the moon buggy for reasons that escape me) is a reference to the moon landing conspiracy.
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.
If it symbolises anything it's India no longer looking up to Russia.
What amazes me is that 54 years ago a man landed on the moon, and 52 years ago a man was driving an electric car around up there. This was with significantly less computer power than is in an air fryer. Yet all this time later it makes headlines around the world when a craft just lands on the moon. Its like the ZX80 being released now and people being in awe at the 1KB of static RAM.
"54 years ago a man landed on the moon"? Have you never seen Capricorn One?
The first moon landing was Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece.
Oooh! I might have to watch that again. Haven't seen it in years. Don't think Kubrick directed it though...
No, the legend has it that Kubrick filmed the actual moon landings.
I am not a conspiracy theorist generally, but cotton suits, shadows of the astronauts and flags blowing in the breeze. Do me a favour. Oh, and Richard Nixon was President.
I am aware of that particular legend. There is an awful lot of misinformation set out as "fact" and misunderstanding of how things work as "proof".
It was the middle of the cold war so I get the reason why a desperate administration might fake some piece of propaganda. But having beaten the Soviets to land on the moon, why repeatedly keep faking it?
The reason we can't go back now is simple - we're not crazy enough to take the same risks and spend the same money. We can't replicate the old analogue technology (such as a Rocketdyne F5 engine), and we're unwilling to burn oceans of cash to ask men to take absurd risks.
Off topic, but this brief description may interest most of you: "MEXICO CITY — Xóchitl Gálvez is a Mexican original. She’s a radiant, broad-faced Indigenous woman who grew up in extreme poverty, studied math over the protests of her abusive, alcoholic father, and battled her way to building a prosperous tech company and becoming a senator. Now she is rocking Mexican politics.
Gálvez is the leading opposition candidate running to succeed President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Clothed in a simple embroidered dress during an interview here, she is by turns funny, profane and inspiring. As she explains how she battled off an attacker as a girl in the barrios, you can see why the populist autocrat López Obrador seems worried about her. . . . “I have the ovaries to confront him. I hope you have the balls to follow me,” she recently told an audience in Chihuahua, according to one of her advisers." source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/08/20/mexico-presidential-elections-galvez-interview/
According to columnist David Ignatius, she has, among other things, dressed up as a T. Rex to protest 'Obrador’s proposed election-law changes that she claimed bring back the “Jurassic era.”.
(Yes, I know, T. Rex lived in the Cretaceous period, but, thanks to the movie, more people would recognize "Jurassic".)
I was in Portsmouth not so long ago. The Mary Rose and HMS Victory are deservedly famous. The rest is an embarassment, including the bathetic Spinnaker Tower.
In theory, Hampshire has a great coastline. (I am currently on the beach on the other side of the Channel) but the actualité is profoundly crap.
This is with just a fraction of EVs participating in vehicle-to-grid.
Do this and there is no limit to how much we can rely upon renewable energy, and save the planet. Completely eliminate gas from our energy supply, and free ourselves from relying upon imports from the Middle East/Russia, and stop climate emissions.
Interesting article in NYT this morning, on how the present Polish government is stoking fears of an apparently non-existent threat of imminent invasion by Belarus via the "Suwałki Gap" in leadup to October parliamentary election.
Polish regime may be IHMO characterized as anti-Putin Putinists, who aside from Mad Vlad's invasion of Ukraine, are aligned with the rest of his program, including:
> hyper-populism > mega-nationalism > aggressive anti-Wokeism > crony capitalism writ large > fake news as instrument of power > disrespect (to put it mildly) for rule of law
People living in shanty towns with open sewers . I would have thought that the Indian government might have more important priorities . Instead the Putin arse licker Mohdi decides to spend money on some moon mission!
I was in Portsmouth not so long ago. The Mary Rose and HMS Victory are deservedly famous. The rest is an embarassment, including the bathetic Spinnaker Tower.
In theory, Hampshire has a great coastline. (I am currently on the beach on the other side of the Channel) but the actualité is profoundly crap.
I quite like the Spinnaker Tower. Queen Victoria would have had an excellent view from Osborn.
I quite like Portsmouth, often a socialist oasis in a Tory desert.
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.
If there's parking at A and B, which very often in city centres there isn't.
Strangely there are a lot of places people want to go that aren't city or town centres. The only time for example I am in them is to get public transport back out to where I actually want to go. If I could avoid either I would because they are generally ugly places to be
There are also many beautiful city centres, but aside from a handful in Britain (Edinburgh, Oxford, Cambridge, Bath, York, one or two other small cathedral cities and er, that's it) most of them are on the continent or in North Africa and the Middle East. The vast majority of beautiful city centres around the world are wholly or mainly pedestrianised. The medinas of North Africa being probably the apotheosis of the 15 minute city.
Glasgow, Manchester and Liverpool each have their merits. Bristol and Newcastle too.
Birmingham and Portsmouth not so much.
Not sure about Sheffield, Leeds, and Southampton.
Southampton doesn't really have a well defined centre (at least, that was my experience when living there). Rather a few different areas where you might end up on e.g. a night out or a shopping trip (notably, those two purposes would be in quite different areas). That also has it's appeal, of course.
Leeds has nice bits in the middle, but not a compelling centre (possibly related: traffic is very much a part of the city centre).
Gloucester was lovely and walkable. Pedestrianised centre and quays area. Chester and York too.
Norwich is good bit of townscape. England's speciality is not the larger cities, which are more or less uniformly bits of wreckage accompanied by cars and litter, but small towns especially off the beaten track. Stamford is the best of all.
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.
If it symbolises anything it's India no longer looking up to Russia.
What amazes me is that 54 years ago a man landed on the moon, and 52 years ago a man was driving an electric car around up there. This was with significantly less computer power than is in an air fryer. Yet all this time later it makes headlines around the world when a craft just lands on the moon. Its like the ZX80 being released now and people being in awe at the 1KB of static RAM.
"54 years ago a man landed on the moon"? Have you never seen Capricorn One?
The first moon landing was Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece.
Oooh! I might have to watch that again. Haven't seen it in years. Don't think Kubrick directed it though...
No, the legend has it that Kubrick filmed the actual moon landings.
I am not a conspiracy theorist generally, but cotton suits, shadows of the astronauts and flags blowing in the breeze. Do me a favour. Oh, and Richard Nixon was President.
I am aware of that particular legend. There is an awful lot of misinformation set out as "fact" and misunderstanding of how things work as "proof".
It was the middle of the cold war so I get the reason why a desperate administration might fake some piece of propaganda. But having beaten the Soviets to land on the moon, why repeatedly keep faking it?
The reason we can't go back now is simple - we're not crazy enough to take the same risks and spend the same money. We can't replicate the old analogue technology (such as a Rocketdyne F5 engine), and we're unwilling to burn oceans of cash to ask men to take absurd risks.
We'll make it back. Eventually.
You mean the F1
And yes, we could replicate it - NASA had a brief look at building some more of the F1A, which was a far better engine.
But it’s a 1950s design - chamber size and pressure right in the middle of the instability zone.
We can do far better today.
Especially since we have conquered the FFSC cycle.
We should all be getting 1 hour of exercise a day (or at least 150 mins a week). That means that most people with a commute less than 10km (6 miles) should be cycling or walking to work.
In England and Wales, 65% of commuters are within 10km of their workplace. 43% are within 5km. Yet only 14% walk or cycle.
Whatever happened to "protect the NHS"?
It's that kind of hectoring tone, particularly when combined with a message that (1) tells people that they're not good enough - for themselves and for humanity - and (2) wants to make their life less pleasant*, that makes them want to go and order a big fat pizza just out of spite.
* There's a reason people drive or take a bus/train and it comes down to the traditional four metrics of modal choice: cost, speed, convenience and pleasantness. Granted, cost will always tend to weigh for cycling and will always do so for walking; the other three, however, usually more than offset it.
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.
If there's parking at A and B, which very often in city centres there isn't.
Strangely there are a lot of places people want to go that aren't city or town centres. The only time for example I am in them is to get public transport back out to where I actually want to go. If I could avoid either I would because they are generally ugly places to be
There are also many beautiful city centres, but aside from a handful in Britain (Edinburgh, Oxford, Cambridge, Bath, York, one or two other small cathedral cities and er, that's it) most of them are on the continent or in North Africa and the Middle East. The vast majority of beautiful city centres around the world are wholly or mainly pedestrianised. The medinas of North Africa being probably the apotheosis of the 15 minute city.
Glasgow, Manchester and Liverpool each have their merits. Bristol and Newcastle too.
Birmingham and Portsmouth not so much.
Not sure about Sheffield, Leeds, and Southampton.
Southampton doesn't really have a well defined centre (at least, that was my experience when living there). Rather a few different areas where you might end up on e.g. a night out or a shopping trip (notably, those two purposes would be in quite different areas). That also has it's appeal, of course.
Leeds has nice bits in the middle, but not a compelling centre (possibly related: traffic is very much a part of the city centre).
Gloucester was lovely and walkable. Pedestrianised centre and quays area. Chester and York too.
Norwich is good bit of townscape. England's speciality is not the larger cities, which are more or less uniformly bits of wreckage accompanied by cars and litter, but small towns especially off the beaten track. Stamford is the best of all.
London’s actually pretty good.
Britain’s unique feature is the “urban village” typology which you don’t really get Paris (save maybe Montmartre), New York, or Tokyo.
Of course London lacks the sheer drama of New York skyline, and the graceful order of Parisian boulevards, but you can’t have it all.
We should all be getting 1 hour of exercise a day (or at least 150 mins a week). That means that most people with a commute less than 10km (6 miles) should be cycling or walking to work.
In England and Wales, 65% of commuters are within 10km of their workplace. 43% are within 5km. Yet only 14% walk or cycle.
Whatever happened to "protect the NHS"?
It's that kind of hectoring tone, particularly when combined with a message that (1) tells people that they're not good enough - for themselves and for humanity - and (2) wants to make their life less pleasant*, that makes them want to go and order a big fat pizza just out of spite.
* There's a reason people drive or take a bus/train and it comes down to the traditional four metrics of modal choice: cost, speed, convenience and pleasantness. Granted, cost will always tend to weigh for cycling and will always do so for walking; the other three, however, usually more than offset it.
Before we moved up here I occasionally took the car close to the kids school, which was otherwise an easy walking distance across the park. Not because lazy or ignorant, because I was travelling to/from elsewhere.
So many parents sadly are lazy and ignorant, but not all. School parking seems to wind so many people up (especially the poor sods unfortunate enough to live near a school) - all of which could be solved by the parents parking slightly further away. A few more steps won't kill them.
We should all be getting 1 hour of exercise a day (or at least 150 mins a week). That means that most people with a commute less than 10km (6 miles) should be cycling or walking to work.
In England and Wales, 65% of commuters are within 10km of their workplace. 43% are within 5km. Yet only 14% walk or cycle.
Whatever happened to "protect the NHS"?
It's that kind of hectoring tone, particularly when combined with a message that (1) tells people that they're not good enough - for themselves and for humanity - and (2) wants to make their life less pleasant*, that makes them want to go and order a big fat pizza just out of spite.
* There's a reason people drive or take a bus/train and it comes down to the traditional four metrics of modal choice: cost, speed, convenience and pleasantness. Granted, cost will always tend to weigh for cycling and will always do so for walking; the other three, however, usually more than offset it.
I was in Portsmouth not so long ago. The Mary Rose and HMS Victory are deservedly famous. The rest is an embarassment, including the bathetic Spinnaker Tower.
In theory, Hampshire has a great coastline. (I am currently on the beach on the other side of the Channel) but the actualité is profoundly crap.
I quite like the Spinnaker Tower. Queen Victoria would have had an excellent view from Osborn.
I quite like Portsmouth, often a socialist oasis in a Tory desert.
Spinnaker Tower is awful. Let’s build a tower, they said. But make it cheap, uninspired, and useless!
Its sole benefit is to make the disgraceful high rise council blocks over in Gosport seem less dominant.
Interesting article in NYT this morning, on how the present Polish government is stoking fears of an apparently non-existent threat of imminent invasion by Belarus via the "Suwałki Gap" in leadup to October parliamentary election.
Polish regime may be IHMO characterized as anti-Putin Putinists, who aside from Mad Vlad's invasion of Ukraine, are aligned with the rest of his program, including:
> hyper-populism > mega-nationalism > aggressive anti-Wokeism > crony capitalism writ large > fake news as instrument of power > disrespect (to put it mildly) for rule of law
Any of this sound familiar to UKers?
Yes, that's a fair description. Poland has always has a strain of nationalist and authoritarian politics (and there were plenty of examples of anti-semitism before and during the war), partly at least because they've always had aggressive neighbours in Germany and Russia. (Having an aggressive neighbour doesn't necessarily mean you're nice yourself.)
Cosmopolitan Warsaw is very different, with lots of liberal and open-minded people who view their government with as little enthusiasm as most Londoners view Nigel Farage, but parts of the countryside are another matter.
First song ever to debut at #1 in the US from an artist with no record label. No promotion for it at all, just word of mouth. Brilliant to see cultural moments like that.
See also the film “Sound of Freedom”, which is one of the top films of the summer in the US, made on a tiny budget.
Why are you celebrating a film (and also to a degree a song) that are QAnon-adjacent? How is it brilliant to see conspiracy theories flourish?
First song ever to debut at #1 in the US from an artist with no record label. No promotion for it at all, just word of mouth. Brilliant to see cultural moments like that.
See also the film “Sound of Freedom”, which is one of the top films of the summer in the US, made on a tiny budget.
Both are alt-right nutjob affairs.
So the far-left nutjobs have been saying.
Do you believe large numbers of children are being abducted by organised sex traffickers who control the media?
Transport - it's a difficult one, isn't it? As others have said, the choices available to some aren't the choices available to all. Having a bus at the end of every street would be nice but we know it isn't practical. Travel is often time sensitive - "I have to be at x by 9am" for example and local knowledge/experience/expediency will dictate whether it's a drive, a bus, a walk, a cycle or whatever.
Transport policy should be first about providing the maximum amount of choice for all rather than favouring one mode over another. The second aspect of transport should be reliability (both private and public) followed by affordability and integration.
Even in the purified sanctum of ULEZ inner London, there are journeys I would make by car rather than use public transport for convenience or necessity or time.
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.
Are we still giving foreign aid to India?
A bit - £33 million this year, or 40p for each of us. We were going to phase it out, but still send some technical assistance and aid for finance. Here's a piece attacking it, though a bit of a hatchet job:
As I heard the news on heading back to the hotel earlier I thought to myself "Daily Mail readers will be demanding we slash the foreign aid budget". Daily Mail readers really are w,,,,,,,
Comments
The Exchequer alone takes (net) many tens of billions from driving, and subsidises (net) public transport by many billions more. The public largely makes economically rational choices so are choosing the roads despite not because of the Exchequer's heavy hand because that is the rational choice and they'd be worse off with alternatives.
As for your supposed externalities you claimed, most of them aren't real for the future.
Congestion - This is largely BS as an externality since the ones who 'pay' for congestion are the ones using the road, if you're using a train, or working from home, then the fact that there was traffic on the road didn't affect you; plus with better infrastructure congestion can be eliminated or reduced anyway. Furthermore how do you measure it? EG if a journey takes 20 minutes in clear traffic, 25 minutes with traffic, or an hour on public transport - then does a 25 minute journey equate to 5 minutes "lost" in congestion? Or 35 minutes gained by not using public transport? Almost all reports into congestion will look at the 'cost' of the lost 5 minutes, and not the 35 more minutes lost had the car not been used.
Noise pollution - not an issue with electric cars.
Carbon emissions - not an issue with electric cars.
Air pollution - not an issue with electric cars.
Road traffic casualties - Roads in the UK are very safe and casualties are incredibly low and falling as cars have improved dramatically in quality and safety.
https://blog.jatan.space/p/missing-science-from-mangalyaan
NASA's achievements are massive, and a significant part of that is the way they have shared vast volumes of data with the world. China is much less keen to (allegedly even when an instrument on a satellite was provided by a western country on the agreement data from the instrument would be shared), and I fear India might go the same way.
Basically if you want a civilian Ro-Ro you're starting there: whatever happens in the yard design and fabrication is another matter, and well worthy of attention.
Though some of this is the [edit] kind of innovatory stuff which always causes problems. Not wise to rely on it without spare [edit] ships, that's for sure.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-66591708
I know it's that there London, but I'm staggered that only 20-30% of passengers greet the driver. I don't often take the bus, but up here in Yorkshire, when I do I always say hello and thank the driver when getting off and just about everybody else does, too. It just seems weird to walk past someone doing something for you (albeit getting paid for that) and ignore them.
ETA: Puts me in mind, a few years back walking York walls with my parents when my wife and I got into conversation with someone who had waited to let us descend the steps at one of the bars. My (southern) dad asked afterwards how we know the lady and found it hard to understand that, having had a conversation with her, we had never met her before that moment.
Once you start putting in enough road and parking space for cars to work well, other ways of getting around start to work pretty badly. That's especially true of edge-of-town offices and shopping centres. Once stuff is dispersed, walking and cycling distances increase and you also struggle to get enough passengers together for attractive public transport to be viable.
Hence town and city centres. And that agglomeration seems to drive productivity which we're going to need to get out of (sweeping gesture) all of this.
Because that was well known before they tendered for the contract.
If Ferguson Marine didn't know it, then that's yet more evidence they should not be building them.
To put it in context, this much larger and more complex vessel was laid down in 2020 and has just entered service.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_P&O_Pioneer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqSA-SY5Hro
- noise: tyres/wind noise more of an issue than the ICE above a certain speed
- carbon emissions: the UK grid is far from carbon neutral at present, albeit the potential is at least there, longer term
- air pollution: still particulates from braking etc (but much better than ICE and regenerative braking helps too)
EVs are much better, but all three issues still exist, to varying extents.And if you look at the big picture, productivity for cities is much lower than it first appears. For one, look at transport, the Exchequer is heavily subsidising public transport in cities, while heavily taxing driving and more spread out transportation. Pay your own way on an even scale without the Exchequer tilting the scales, and then see how productive things are without the Exchequer picking winners and losers.
For another house price to earning ratios tend to be worse, not better, in the cities. If you can earn more in a city but need to spend it all subsidising your landlords lifestyle, while you can have a house of your own, with a garden and a driveway in a town, then are you really better off in the city?
I'd rather live in my area, where my kids can play outside safely to their hearts content, bounce and burn their energy on their 10ft trampoline in our garden etc, than be cooped up in a rented flat in a city.
As for carbon emissions, yes our grid isn't neutral yet but it needs to get there, and cars will help it get there, as cars can take renewable energy that wouldn't be needed at off-peak times which allows us to build more renewable capacity for on-peak times too.
Which raises the question why you needed to plant a flag ?
Likewise, there is air pollution associated with our current electricity generation (again, decreasing). It does help that that air pollution is moved away from the vehicles, which are generally where people are, to electricity generating plants, which are generally further away from people. There is also some air pollution, with particulates, that are associated with tyres on a road -- these remain even with electric cars.
Imagine if you lived and worked in Wales with autocorrect adding apostrophe's (thank you
autocorrect) wi'lly-ni'lly to all those place name spe'llings inclusive of double 'lls
But that is by no means an argument against EVs. Getting rid of the engine noise is still a great leap forward.
I struggle with the idea of air pollution being a serious issue with EVs. Water pollution certainly will be though just as it is with ICEs. There is a staggering amount of microplastic/synthetic rubber that ends up in our water courses from tyre wear.
As for pollution; you get it from tyres and brakes as well. This *should* be increased as EVs are considerably heavier than ICE's of the same type, but brake wear might be reduced due to regen braking.
See also the film “Sound of Freedom”, which is one of the top films of the summer in the US, made on a tiny budget.
https://twitter.com/isro/status/1694327198394863911
Pretty impressive achievement.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003682X13000790
(does seem to suggest that engine/exhause - i.e. ICE in combination - is the largest component, although perception at different frequencies may also be important)
EVs certainly help (as stated) but they don't eliminate all issues. I'd much rather live next to the M62 with all EVs than with ICEVs, but I'd still prefer not to live there. EVs will however make a big positive difference on our residential A-road (30mph limit) both in noise and pollution.
However it is NASA which has launched the only 2 craft to travel beyond the solar system still, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-66408851
The Russians have cosmonauts.
The Chinese have taikonauts.
Apparently the Indians have vyomanauts.
The first moon landing was Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece.
In England and Wales, 65% of commuters are within 10km of their workplace. 43% are within 5km. Yet only 14% walk or cycle.
Whatever happened to "protect the NHS"?
There are an awful lot of alt-right nut jobs in the US, and a couple on this board.
That is genuinely what people thought in 1969. 54 years later and an unmanned spacecraft landing on the moon is considered an amazing achievement.
Birmingham and Portsmouth not so much.
Not sure about Sheffield, Leeds, and Southampton.
But encouraging the use of public transport doesn't mean completely ban cars - they're still needed when pick ups / drop offs / collection of stuff / one call on a bigger journey / the elderly and disabled need access happen.
An example of stupidity. My last weekend staying in Newcastle. By far and away the cheapest parking option was to drive into town and park at Central station (where they have an excellent weekend deal). Park and ride options expensive and less safe. Bonkers.
We need to scale up our renewable electricity supply in order to be able to cope with peak demand, without relying upon coal or gas, in order to have zero-carbon energy. But to have reliable peak supply would leave us with far too much off-peak supply. So there needs to be some sort of offsetting.
Cars at home are the perfect solution to that conundrum. Being large scale batteries they can be charged off-peak while leaving peak supply available for that which unavoidably needs it. In this way we balance peak and off peak supply and demand, which allows for a cleaner, greener future.
Without cars, getting to net zero would be much harder, not easier.
Many people exercise while at work, a lot of people are on their feet much or all of the day and not just sat behind a desk.
While others might want to exercise before or after work instead.
A 5 mile commute can be driven in 10-15 minutes which leaves you plenty of day to get your exercise in when not driving.
Plus exercise makes you sweaty which isn't an ideal way to start your workday.
Personally I'd rather exercise by going for a jog or ride my bike to and around the park near where I live, or a jog along the river I live near, than go for a jog or cycle in my work clothes before work.
I am not a conspiracy theorist generally, but cotton suits, shadows of the astronauts and flags blowing in the breeze. Do me a favour. Oh, and Richard Nixon was President.
Leeds has nice bits in the middle, but not a compelling centre (possibly related: traffic is very much a part of the city centre).
Meanwhile the Tricorn was demolished in 2004, once the city worked out how to do without the parking. And Jonathan Meades ("You don't go knocking down Stonehenge or Lincoln Cathedral. I think buildings like the Tricorn were as good as that.") can get into the sea.
Fairly easy to do in Portsmouth.
Just that all existing ferries on a given route would have to be replaced, and either ticket prices would rise a bit or a subsidy would be required.
40 million vehicles on the road. Lets say 30 million become electric at an average of 100 kWh capacity. That's 3 billion kWh, 3 million MWh, 3,000 GWh or 3 TWh of distributed energy storage.
There's currently 16 GWh of energy storage operating across the UK, so adding 3 TWh of distributed storage would utterly dwarf that and make the switch to renewables almost infinitely easier.
Commonplace, indeed the norm, in Seattle. Which surely accounts for some "economic gains".
He didn't want to change the world, he wasn't looking for a new England.
It was the middle of the cold war so I get the reason why a desperate administration might fake some piece of propaganda. But having beaten the Soviets to land on the moon, why repeatedly keep faking it?
The reason we can't go back now is simple - we're not crazy enough to take the same risks and spend the same money. We can't replicate the old analogue technology (such as a Rocketdyne F5 engine), and we're unwilling to burn oceans of cash to ask men to take absurd risks.
We'll make it back. Eventually.
"MEXICO CITY — Xóchitl Gálvez is a Mexican original. She’s a radiant, broad-faced Indigenous woman who grew up in extreme poverty, studied math over the protests of her abusive, alcoholic father, and battled her way to building a prosperous tech company and becoming a senator. Now she is rocking Mexican politics.
Gálvez is the leading opposition candidate running to succeed President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Clothed in a simple embroidered dress during an interview here, she is by turns funny, profane and inspiring. As she explains how she battled off an attacker as a girl in the barrios, you can see why the populist autocrat López Obrador seems worried about her.
. . .
“I have the ovaries to confront him. I hope you have the balls to follow me,” she recently told an audience in Chihuahua, according to one of her advisers."
source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/08/20/mexico-presidential-elections-galvez-interview/
According to columnist David Ignatius, she has, among other things, dressed up as a T. Rex to protest 'Obrador’s proposed election-law changes that she claimed bring back the “Jurassic era.”.
(Yes, I know, T. Rex lived in the Cretaceous period, but, thanks to the movie, more people would recognize "Jurassic".)
The Mary Rose and HMS Victory are deservedly famous. The rest is an embarassment, including the bathetic Spinnaker Tower.
In theory, Hampshire has a great coastline.
(I am currently on the beach on the other side of the Channel) but the actualité is profoundly crap.
EVs could provide the entire globe's short-term grid storage needs by 2030. https://thedriven.io/2023/01/20/evs-could-provide-entire-global-short-term-grid-storage-needs-by-2030-study-finds/#:~:text=The report's findings include both,term storage globally by 2050.
This is with just a fraction of EVs participating in vehicle-to-grid.
Do this and there is no limit to how much we can rely upon renewable energy, and save the planet. Completely eliminate gas from our energy supply, and free ourselves from relying upon imports from the Middle East/Russia, and stop climate emissions.
What's not to like about that?
Polish regime may be IHMO characterized as anti-Putin Putinists, who aside from Mad Vlad's invasion of Ukraine, are aligned with the rest of his program, including:
> hyper-populism
> mega-nationalism
> aggressive anti-Wokeism
> crony capitalism writ large
> fake news as instrument of power
> disrespect (to put it mildly) for rule of law
Any of this sound familiar to UKers?
But the architecture of Marine Parade is like Noddy Town as dreamt up by Barratt Homes.
I quite like Portsmouth, often a socialist oasis in a Tory desert.
And yes, we could replicate it - NASA had a brief look at building some more of the F1A, which was a far better engine.
But it’s a 1950s design - chamber size and pressure right in the middle of the instability zone.
We can do far better today.
Especially since we have conquered the FFSC cycle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BE-4
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Raptor
Oh, and the next moon landing by humans is pencilled in for 2025 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_3
* There's a reason people drive or take a bus/train and it comes down to the traditional four metrics of modal choice: cost, speed, convenience and pleasantness. Granted, cost will always tend to weigh for cycling and will always do so for walking; the other three, however, usually more than offset it.
Britain’s unique feature is the “urban village” typology which you don’t really get Paris (save maybe Montmartre), New York, or Tokyo.
Of course London lacks the sheer drama of New York skyline, and the graceful order of Parisian boulevards, but you can’t have it all.
So many parents sadly are lazy and ignorant, but not all. School parking seems to wind so many people up (especially the poor sods unfortunate enough to live near a school) - all of which could be solved by the parents parking slightly further away. A few more steps won't kill them.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-12436887/Indias-Chandrayaan-3-makes-history-landing-moons-South-Pole-time-beating-Russia-China-USA.html?openWebLoggedIn=true&login
Let’s build a tower, they said. But make it cheap, uninspired, and useless!
Its sole benefit is to make the disgraceful high rise council blocks over in Gosport seem less dominant.
Cosmopolitan Warsaw is very different, with lots of liberal and open-minded people who view their government with as little enthusiasm as most Londoners view Nigel Farage, but parts of the countryside are another matter.
Transport - it's a difficult one, isn't it? As others have said, the choices available to some aren't the choices available to all. Having a bus at the end of every street would be nice but we know it isn't practical. Travel is often time sensitive - "I have to be at x by 9am" for example and local knowledge/experience/expediency will dictate whether it's a drive, a bus, a walk, a cycle or whatever.
Transport policy should be first about providing the maximum amount of choice for all rather than favouring one mode over another. The second aspect of transport should be reliability (both private and public) followed by affordability and integration.
Even in the purified sanctum of ULEZ inner London, there are journeys I would make by car rather than use public transport for convenience or necessity or time.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/07/18/britain-foreign-aid-india-space-rocket-launch/#:~:text=The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development,57 million in 2024/25.