The first thing to read is this twitter thread/report which suggests that transport infrastructure in the UK is incredibly expensive compared to peer economies.
The next thing is these two charts, the first of which I posted last night. The usual suspects couldn’t wait to criticise, it was variously dismissed as Remainer propaganda, erroneous (by those who didn’t bother to check the underlying data), while others managed to find themselves arguing that commuter systems should not extend to actual commuting catchment areas (Tyndall).
I think the criticism that the first chart does not contain rail and bus is fair. But including them won't make the UK look much better compared with European countries, given only 2% of us use the train and 4% the bus to commute to work.
The ONS think 17.5 million people in England and Wales, or 35%, live in "major built up areas" - population over 200,000.
That only a small percentage choose to use inferior public transport is fine, its a valid choice to choose not to do so, just ensure people have a choice.
What we need is to invest in our infrastructure. For our population density we lack sufficient roads, we have far lower roads than comparably dense nations like the Netherlands or Japan (both of whom have a higher public transport share and cycling share than we do) which means we lack sufficient cycle paths as a result.
Do what the Dutch have done and build more roads, cycling improves and public transport (buses) improves too. Everybody wins.
The first thing to read is this twitter thread/report which suggests that transport infrastructure in the UK is incredibly expensive compared to peer economies.
The next thing is these two charts, the first of which I posted last night. The usual suspects couldn’t wait to criticise, it was variously dismissed as Remainer propaganda, erroneous (by those who didn’t bother to check the underlying data), while others managed to find themselves arguing that commuter systems should not extend to actual commuting catchment areas (Tyndall).
I think the criticism that the first chart does not contain rail and bus is fair. But including them won't make the UK look much better compared with European countries, given only 2% of us use the train and 4% the bus to commute to work.
The ONS think 17.5 million people in England and Wales, or 35%, live in "major built up areas" - population over 200,000.
That only a small percentage choose to use inferior public transport is fine, its a valid choice to choose not to do so, just ensure people have a choice.
What we need is to invest in our infrastructure. For our population density we lack sufficient roads, we have far lower roads than comparably dense nations like the Netherlands or Japan (both of whom have a higher public transport share and cycling share than we do) which means we lack sufficient cycle paths as a result.
Do what the Dutch have done and build more roads, cycling improves and public transport (buses) improves too. Everybody wins.
I agree we need both.
Bizarrely (given reputation), it’s a pleasure to drive on New York State highways, and it’s been a pleasure to drive on motorways here in France.
But you usually overstate your case by insisting on “two cars for every girl”. If I had to ruthlessly prioritise, I would start with the mass transits I mentioned above.
The first thing to read is this twitter thread/report which suggests that transport infrastructure in the UK is incredibly expensive compared to peer economies.
The next thing is these two charts, the first of which I posted last night. The usual suspects couldn’t wait to criticise, it was variously dismissed as Remainer propaganda, erroneous (by those who didn’t bother to check the underlying data), while others managed to find themselves arguing that commuter systems should not extend to actual commuting catchment areas (Tyndall).
I think the criticism that the first chart does not contain rail and bus is fair. But including them won't make the UK look much better compared with European countries, given only 2% of us use the train and 4% the bus to commute to work.
The ONS think 17.5 million people in England and Wales, or 35%, live in "major built up areas" - population over 200,000.
That only a small percentage choose to use inferior public transport is fine, its a valid choice to choose not to do so, just ensure people have a choice.
What we need is to invest in our infrastructure. For our population density we lack sufficient roads, we have far lower roads than comparably dense nations like the Netherlands or Japan (both of whom have a higher public transport share and cycling share than we do) which means we lack sufficient cycle paths as a result.
Do what the Dutch have done and build more roads, cycling improves and public transport (buses) improves too. Everybody wins.
A hospital manager accused of failing to act on doctors’ warnings about Lucy Letby has said that she was duped by the “calculating” child killer for years...Rees said she had refused to believe in Letby’s guilt because she had had regular meetings with her after her suspension from the neonatal unit in June 2016, and had “witnessed her in complete distress, crying and swearing her innocence”.
One of the consultants concerned is not impressed:
Improbable defence here. She had #lucyletby round for dinner, triumphantly read her letter to the consultants at the meeting where we were threatened with “consequences for crossing the line” She chose to be “duped” as it fitted with her own bias
I hate this kind of analysis. Hatehatehate it. I have no idea who Karen Rees is, or "@DrRaviJ", and I really do not want to know who Lucy Letby is. People can be malevolent, make mistakes, or can be legitimately trying to be helpful but just plain wrong. Stuff like this is pointless noise.
The practice of journalism, or looking at both sides and attempting to draw conclusions, is flawed - it doesn't work any more because side X can just generate sources to support their side, and so can side Y. Quoting from Twitter is pointless, because anybody can say anything, pro or con, and no doubt has.
The only way we can handle things like this is by statistical or similar methods. If anybody has about £50K to lob at me I'll take a year or two off to look at it properly.
As I’ve noted before, following the 80:20 rule, the UK would get max bang for buck by delivering proper mass transit for Glasgow, Liverpool-Manchester-Leeds-Sheffield, and Greater Birmingham.
But it requires real leadership, since there are astonishing forces arrayed against doing so, from all sides of the political spectrum.
Greater Birmingham is making progress, albeit not at light speed.
Fascinating article in FT on our infrastructure problems compared to other countries. Suspect it's not just the nimbys... but bit worrying there weren't more ideas to stop nimbyism.
Sadly the article contains the garbage claims being discussed yesterday about the % of British cities with mass transit systems - managing to get both the overall number of cities and the number of systeems completely wrong. I suspect most of their other claims are equally poorly researched.
Nevertheless,the whole argument raises the interesting question whether our assumptions are the correct ones, not least because buses don't really count - there is no dedicated infrastructure to speak of. Perhaps we *should* be thinking of places such as Cadnam and as part of the Southampton mass transit system. Should, for instance, trams such as the Edinburgh ones run on light rail tracks through the outer suburbs and green belts for 10-15miles into the commuter hinterland, with street running where necessary? The Edinburgh trams are already poking out west into the green belt, at the airport, for instance, and I can see that being able to run on the roads for limited stretches would both attract custom and make it much easier to adapt old railway lines etc.
IIRC in Calgary, the tram system extended way out of the city into open countryside.
Makes a lot of sense. The Canadians built a tram system that has succeeded?
The Nottingham ones run for a distance outside the city to "effective suburbs", but then it's a small city. The distances are more like 7 miles than 15 miles. Per pop the ridership is about the same as Calgary, having gone down a little during Covid.
In the old days there were a surprising (to modern UK eyes) number of rural tramways that were effectively light railways but made use of roads or road verges. This was particularly so in NE France/Belgium. But ffor example consider the Wantage Tramway - effectively a passenger *and cargo* feeder to/from the Great Western mainline at WAntage Road GWR station (a name which of course meant "get off here for Wantage and then take a hike").
This piece by Naomi Klein on Naomi Wolf is long but extremely interesting and touches on a lot of the things we talk about here. It's a window on the kind of alternative realities and conspiracies that are being constructed and increasingly believed.
My favourite Naomi Wolf moment was her deciding for some reason to weigh in on a British election to comment on exit polls.
Disturbing that 1) Exit votes may announced before all votes counted, b) BBC, overseen by the current gov't, has a privileged position in announcing un-indendendently-verifiable results. Respectfully, this process is very un-transparent, unverifiable https://nitter.net/naomirwolf/status/1205229521420660738#m
Her follow ups made clear that, among other misconceptions, she presumed areas in the UK were still voting when the exit poll was announced, and some nonsensical thing about news outlets 'deciding the votes', which I don't even understand.
It's fascinating when lack of understanding of basic facts cannot be overcome by pointing out the misunderstandings. People just double down. I know that's part of human psychology not liking to be corrected or be mistaken, but when it's a pretty basic error with no real emotional investment you'd think it'd be easier.
As I’ve noted before, following the 80:20 rule, the UK would get max bang for buck by delivering proper mass transit for Glasgow, Liverpool-Manchester-Leeds-Sheffield, and Greater Birmingham.
But it requires real leadership, since there are astonishing forces arrayed against doing so, from all sides of the political spectrum.
Greater Birmingham is making progress, albeit not at light speed.
Also plenty of heavy rail there. You can get from the outskirts of Birmingham to the city centre in 10 to 20 minutes on a selection of radial lines, and some are being reopened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Hill_line
The first thing to read is this twitter thread/report which suggests that transport infrastructure in the UK is incredibly expensive compared to peer economies.
The next thing is these two charts, the first of which I posted last night. The usual suspects couldn’t wait to criticise, it was variously dismissed as Remainer propaganda, erroneous (by those who didn’t bother to check the underlying data), while others managed to find themselves arguing that commuter systems should not extend to actual commuting catchment areas (Tyndall).
I think the criticism that the first chart does not contain rail and bus is fair. But including them won't make the UK look much better compared with European countries, given only 2% of us use the train and 4% the bus to commute to work.
The ONS think 17.5 million people in England and Wales, or 35%, live in "major built up areas" - population over 200,000.
Not doing the maths, but I suspect many more than 35% live in what the OECD defines as a “functional urban area” over 250,000.
These areas are very similar to travel-to-work areas. The government publishes these after every census and we are due another update soon.
These areas are likely the best unit when thinking about an urban economy. Ideally, our political units would map much more closely to these.
Indeed that’s broadly the idea behind “West Yorkshire”, “South Yorkshire” etc.
That map looks like pure male bovine ploppy.
I wonder what size of 'local administrative unit' they used. Did they used too large an area? I can't see many commuting from Braemar to Aberdeen or Redesdale to Newcastle.
I'd have thought a time based map might work out better (isochrones?)
What does PB think of a prospective one on one debate of SKS vs Rishi Sunak? Should both leaders agree to it.
I think they should and would. Rishi would need it because he's behind and would hope to show youthful energy versus a boring old Sir Keir, and Starmer would want to avoid any suggestion he's being arrogant or fearful of a debate - Boris was able to withstand that, but I'm sure Starmer made comments that he was wrong to do so.
I disagree with noneoftheabove and pagan2, I don't think it would be a bore draw. Look at the debates for the Tory leadership, where Rishi overcorrected to appear assertive and tough, and was just rude and abrasive. I think he'd try too hard to be interesting, and that woul dlead to it being interesting, but not in the way he hoped.
As I’ve noted before, following the 80:20 rule, the UK would get max bang for buck by delivering proper mass transit for Glasgow, Liverpool-Manchester-Leeds-Sheffield, and Greater Birmingham.
But it requires real leadership, since there are astonishing forces arrayed against doing so, from all sides of the political spectrum.
Greater Birmingham is making progress, albeit not at light speed.
Also plenty of heavy rail there. You can get from the outskirts of Birmingham to the city centre in 10 to 20 minutes on a selection of radial lines, and some are being reopened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Hill_line
There is a lot to be positive about - the levenmouth rail link, Borders railway, tram extension here in Edinburgh.
It should be a rolling programme though - odd that they didn't just start with the next tram extension when this one concluded.
The first thing to read is this twitter thread/report which suggests that transport infrastructure in the UK is incredibly expensive compared to peer economies.
The next thing is these two charts, the first of which I posted last night. The usual suspects couldn’t wait to criticise, it was variously dismissed as Remainer propaganda, erroneous (by those who didn’t bother to check the underlying data), while others managed to find themselves arguing that commuter systems should not extend to actual commuting catchment areas (Tyndall).
I think the criticism that the first chart does not contain rail and bus is fair. But including them won't make the UK look much better compared with European countries, given only 2% of us use the train and 4% the bus to commute to work.
The ONS think 17.5 million people in England and Wales, or 35%, live in "major built up areas" - population over 200,000.
Not doing the maths, but I suspect many more than 35% live in what the OECD defines as a “functional urban area” over 250,000.
These areas are very similar to travel-to-work areas. The government publishes these after every census and we are due another update soon.
These areas are likely the best unit when thinking about an urban economy. Ideally, our political units would map much more closely to these.
Indeed that’s broadly the idea behind “West Yorkshire”, “South Yorkshire” etc.
That map looks like pure male bovine ploppy.
I wonder what size of 'local administrative unit' they used. Did they used too large an area? I can't see many commuting from Braemar to Aberdeen or Redesdale to Newcastle.
If i had time I'd get a GIS out...
It's just Local Authority. I don't think they are suggesting that everyone in that LA commutes to that city.
Rather, both should be subjected to an hour or an hour or half of questioning, by a rigorous and informed interviewer.
One thing you have to praise Vivek Ramaswamy for is his willingness to do long-form interviews with a wide range of people.
When you are a complete outsider to the political arena it makes a lot more sense to risk that as a strategy. Sure, you might make a complete arse of yourself on something, but even that will get you attention, and you may well impress some people too.
The first thing to read is this twitter thread/report which suggests that transport infrastructure in the UK is incredibly expensive compared to peer economies.
The next thing is these two charts, the first of which I posted last night. The usual suspects couldn’t wait to criticise, it was variously dismissed as Remainer propaganda, erroneous (by those who didn’t bother to check the underlying data), while others managed to find themselves arguing that commuter systems should not extend to actual commuting catchment areas (Tyndall).
I think the criticism that the first chart does not contain rail and bus is fair. But including them won't make the UK look much better compared with European countries, given only 2% of us use the train and 4% the bus to commute to work.
The ONS think 17.5 million people in England and Wales, or 35%, live in "major built up areas" - population over 200,000.
Not doing the maths, but I suspect many more than 35% live in what the OECD defines as a “functional urban area” over 250,000.
These areas are very similar to travel-to-work areas. The government publishes these after every census and we are due another update soon.
These areas are likely the best unit when thinking about an urban economy. Ideally, our political units would map much more closely to these.
Indeed that’s broadly the idea behind “West Yorkshire”, “South Yorkshire” etc.
That map looks like pure male bovine ploppy.
I wonder what size of 'local administrative unit' they used. Did they used too large an area? I can't see many commuting from Braemar to Aberdeen or Redesdale to Newcastle.
If i had time I'd get a GIS out...
It's just Local Authority. I don't think they are suggesting that everyone in that LA commutes to that city.
Is there any point drawing the whole of Northumberland County Council as a commuter area if those working in Newcastle only live in the closest 20% of it?
Polish InterCity train. Looks to my untrained eye rather like a British InterCity train. The important things are that it left on time, and has aircon & wifi.
Oh, and unlike the previous PB travel correspondent, I got on the right one!
Polish InterCity train. Looks to my untrained eye rather like a British InterCity train. The important things are that it left on time, and has aircon & wifi.
Oh, and unlike the previous PB travel correspondent, I got on the right one!
I bet you'll have continuous reception on the railway and in tunnels, something the apparently amazing UK railway infrastructure still cannot manage.
Polish InterCity train. Looks to my untrained eye rather like a British InterCity train. The important things are that it left on time, and has aircon & wifi.
Oh, and unlike the previous PB travel correspondent, I got on the right one!
I bet you'll have continuous reception on the railway and in tunnels, something the apparently amazing UK railway infrastructure still cannot manage.
As I’ve noted before, following the 80:20 rule, the UK would get max bang for buck by delivering proper mass transit for Glasgow, Liverpool-Manchester-Leeds-Sheffield, and Greater Birmingham.
But it requires real leadership, since there are astonishing forces arrayed against doing so, from all sides of the political spectrum.
Greater Birmingham is making progress, albeit not at light speed.
Also plenty of heavy rail there. You can get from the outskirts of Birmingham to the city centre in 10 to 20 minutes on a selection of radial lines, and some are being reopened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Hill_line
Birmingham does have some heavy rail as well as its rudimentary metro, but large swathes of the city have only buses as public transport. My own neck of the woods, Sutton Coldfield, has only the cross-city line running through it. Compared with, say, Valencia, which I visited this summer, public transport (and cycling provision) in Birmingham is still pretty lacking. This isn't so surprising, given that development of the city during the 60s was heavy focussed on road transport while dedicated public transport infrastructure was neglected, so there's a lot of catching up to do.
As I’ve noted before, following the 80:20 rule, the UK would get max bang for buck by delivering proper mass transit for Glasgow, Liverpool-Manchester-Leeds-Sheffield, and Greater Birmingham.
But it requires real leadership, since there are astonishing forces arrayed against doing so, from all sides of the political spectrum.
Greater Birmingham is making progress, albeit not at light speed.
Also plenty of heavy rail there. You can get from the outskirts of Birmingham to the city centre in 10 to 20 minutes on a selection of radial lines, and some are being reopened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Hill_line
Birmingham does have some heavy rail as well as its rudimentary metro, but large swathes of the city have only buses as public transport. My own neck of the woods, Sutton Coldfield, has only the cross-city line running through it. Compared with, say, Valencia, which I visited this summer, public transport (and cycling provision) in Birmingham is still pretty lacking. This isn't so surprising, given that development of the city during the 60s was heavy focussed on road transport while dedicated public transport infrastructure was neglected, so there's a lot of catching up to do.
Polish InterCity train. Looks to my untrained eye rather like a British InterCity train. The important things are that it left on time, and has aircon & wifi.
Oh, and unlike the previous PB travel correspondent, I got on the right one!
Can't you find any decent services to travel on, hauled by 40 year old diesel locomotives hauling a set of vacuum brake coaches?
As I’ve noted before, following the 80:20 rule, the UK would get max bang for buck by delivering proper mass transit for Glasgow, Liverpool-Manchester-Leeds-Sheffield, and Greater Birmingham.
But it requires real leadership, since there are astonishing forces arrayed against doing so, from all sides of the political spectrum.
Greater Birmingham is making progress, albeit not at light speed.
Also plenty of heavy rail there. You can get from the outskirts of Birmingham to the city centre in 10 to 20 minutes on a selection of radial lines, and some are being reopened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Hill_line
There is a lot to be positive about - the levenmouth rail link, Borders railway, tram extension here in Edinburgh.
It should be a rolling programme though - odd that they didn't just start with the next tram extension when this one concluded.
In Edinburgh they are going to need 5+ years to sort out the dog's breakfast that is the current tram extension.
Not particularly having a pop; it's just a mess as defined in the project, and they think they can't start to correct until they have a finished mess.
The first thing to read is this twitter thread/report which suggests that transport infrastructure in the UK is incredibly expensive compared to peer economies.
The next thing is these two charts, the first of which I posted last night. The usual suspects couldn’t wait to criticise, it was variously dismissed as Remainer propaganda, erroneous (by those who didn’t bother to check the underlying data), while others managed to find themselves arguing that commuter systems should not extend to actual commuting catchment areas (Tyndall).
I think the criticism that the first chart does not contain rail and bus is fair. But including them won't make the UK look much better compared with European countries, given only 2% of us use the train and 4% the bus to commute to work.
The ONS think 17.5 million people in England and Wales, or 35%, live in "major built up areas" - population over 200,000.
Not doing the maths, but I suspect many more than 35% live in what the OECD defines as a “functional urban area” over 250,000.
These areas are very similar to travel-to-work areas. The government publishes these after every census and we are due another update soon.
These areas are likely the best unit when thinking about an urban economy. Ideally, our political units would map much more closely to these.
Indeed that’s broadly the idea behind “West Yorkshire”, “South Yorkshire” etc.
That map looks like pure male bovine ploppy.
I wonder what size of 'local administrative unit' they used. Did they used too large an area? I can't see many commuting from Braemar to Aberdeen or Redesdale to Newcastle.
If i had time I'd get a GIS out...
It's just Local Authority. I don't think they are suggesting that everyone in that LA commutes to that city.
Is there any point drawing the whole of Northumberland County Council as a commuter area if those working in Newcastle only live in the closest 20% of it?
I know someone who lives in Redesdale-ish and commuted to Newcastle before he retired recently ...
Same attitude as the Chester Hospitals or the Horizon scandal or OFSTED. Fortunately the consequences have been somewhat less serious.
Indeed, though (a) he did resign rather more quickly when the manure hit the aircon, but (b) this does open up the museum to new lines of attack on another front: it - and/or the opponents of restitution of cultural objects - have been relying on the argument we-know-best-how-to-look-after-the-objects-than-the-Johnny-Foreigner-they-were-theived/extorted-from, with predictable results already happening.
Osborne’s entertaining defence this am on R4 was the Elgin Marbles are fine because they’re too big to nick, or ‘mislay’. That’s the Tzadziki munchers put in their place.
Same attitude as the Chester Hospitals or the Horizon scandal or OFSTED. Fortunately the consequences have been somewhat less serious.
Indeed, though (a) he did resign rather more quickly when the manure hit the aircon, but (b) this does open up the museum to new lines of attack on another front: it - and/or the opponents of restitution of cultural objects - have been relying on the argument we-know-best-how-to-look-after-the-objects-than-the-Johnny-Foreigner-they-were-theived/extorted-from, with predictable results already happening.
Osborne’s entertaining defence this am on R4 was the Elgin Marbles are fine because they’re too big to nick, or ‘mislay’. That’s the Tzadziki munchers put in their place.
I wouldn't be impressed with that if I came from Benin. And if I were the new Museum Director, I'd at ionce initiate an urgent check of any odd bits of the EMs in store - quite the treat for an evil-minded billionaire to have in the private collection. In any case, as for the EMs, that argument of "we look after it proper, see" has already been lost, in the eyes of many, vide the heavy scrubbing of the marbles in the C20.
Fascinating article in FT on our infrastructure problems compared to other countries. Suspect it's not just the nimbys... but bit worrying there weren't more ideas to stop nimbyism.
Sadly the article contains the garbage claims being discussed yesterday about the % of British cities with mass transit systems - managing to get both the overall number of cities and the number of systeems completely wrong. I suspect most of their other claims are equally poorly researched.
Nevertheless,the whole argument raises the interesting question whether our assumptions are the correct ones, not least because buses don't really count - there is no dedicated infrastructure to speak of. Perhaps we *should* be thinking of places such as Cadnam and as part of the Southampton mass transit system. Should, for instance, trams such as the Edinburgh ones run on light rail tracks through the outer suburbs and green belts for 10-15miles into the commuter hinterland, with street running where necessary? The Edinburgh trams are already poking out west into the green belt, at the airport, for instance, and I can see that being able to run on the roads for limited stretches would both attract custom and make it much easier to adapt old railway lines etc.
IIRC in Calgary, the tram system extended way out of the city into open countryside.
Makes a lot of sense. The Canadians built a tram system that has succeeded?
The Nottingham ones run for a distance outside the city to "effective suburbs", but then it's a small city. The distances are more like 7 miles than 15 miles. Per pop the ridership is about the same as Calgary, having gone down a little during Covid.
Nottingham’s not a small city, really. It’s relatively large - ninth largest in the UK.
The first thing to read is this twitter thread/report which suggests that transport infrastructure in the UK is incredibly expensive compared to peer economies.
The next thing is these two charts, the first of which I posted last night. The usual suspects couldn’t wait to criticise, it was variously dismissed as Remainer propaganda, erroneous (by those who didn’t bother to check the underlying data), while others managed to find themselves arguing that commuter systems should not extend to actual commuting catchment areas (Tyndall).
The second graph just shows that British motorists are just too pig-headed to leave their car at home and use public transport.
Public transport is too poor and too unreliable to allow people too commute without causing problems at work. This is largely because public transport operators are allowed to be profit based rather than service based. As an example, the express bus to a town near me, which doesn’t have a railway station, has been cut so that the last bus from Glasgow now leaves at 17.15. The only other way home by public transport is by train to a station 3 miles away, then hope a bus turns up to take you the rest of the way home, or hope you can get a space in the station car park. I’m sure that there are many other examples. If we want better public transport, we need to start with proper integration. Not everyone is able to walk or cycle everywhere.
Indeed. A lot of people just don't seem to understand depending on public transport is positively masochistic in many parts of the country.
If I needed to take the 10 mile trip to the local hospital via public transport it involves taking a bus to the nearest town (this service is poor and was only saved from withdrawal last year by a government subsidy), changing to a second bus to reach another town, then finally a bus to the hospital. Total time to get there is around 90 minutes to two hours during the day, more like 3 hours in the evening. Imagine a 6 hour round trip if you're a typical hospital patient - old, disabled or sick.
If I am sensible and take my scooter it's 23 minutes each way, a car would be just a few minutes slower. So 3-6 hours round trip vs less than 50 minutes. Nobody in this area uses public transport unless they positively have no alternative.
Fascinating article in FT on our infrastructure problems compared to other countries. Suspect it's not just the nimbys... but bit worrying there weren't more ideas to stop nimbyism.
Sadly the article contains the garbage claims being discussed yesterday about the % of British cities with mass transit systems - managing to get both the overall number of cities and the number of systeems completely wrong. I suspect most of their other claims are equally poorly researched.
Nevertheless,the whole argument raises the interesting question whether our assumptions are the correct ones, not least because buses don't really count - there is no dedicated infrastructure to speak of. Perhaps we *should* be thinking of places such as Cadnam and as part of the Southampton mass transit system. Should, for instance, trams such as the Edinburgh ones run on light rail tracks through the outer suburbs and green belts for 10-15miles into the commuter hinterland, with street running where necessary? The Edinburgh trams are already poking out west into the green belt, at the airport, for instance, and I can see that being able to run on the roads for limited stretches would both attract custom and make it much easier to adapt old railway lines etc.
IIRC in Calgary, the tram system extended way out of the city into open countryside.
Makes a lot of sense. The Canadians built a tram system that has succeeded?
The Nottingham ones run for a distance outside the city to "effective suburbs", but then it's a small city. The distances are more like 7 miles than 15 miles. Per pop the ridership is about the same as Calgary, having gone down a little during Covid.
Nottingham’s not a small city, really. It’s relatively large - ninth largest in the UK.
Same attitude as the Chester Hospitals or the Horizon scandal or OFSTED. Fortunately the consequences have been somewhat less serious.
Indeed, though (a) he did resign rather more quickly when the manure hit the aircon, but (b) this does open up the museum to new lines of attack on another front: it - and/or the opponents of restitution of cultural objects - have been relying on the argument we-know-best-how-to-look-after-the-objects-than-the-Johnny-Foreigner-they-were-theived/extorted-from, with predictable results already happening.
Osborne’s entertaining defence this am on R4 was the Elgin Marbles are fine because they’re too big to nick, or ‘mislay’. That’s the Tzadziki munchers put in their place.
Fascinating article in FT on our infrastructure problems compared to other countries. Suspect it's not just the nimbys... but bit worrying there weren't more ideas to stop nimbyism.
Sadly the article contains the garbage claims being discussed yesterday about the % of British cities with mass transit systems - managing to get both the overall number of cities and the number of systeems completely wrong. I suspect most of their other claims are equally poorly researched.
Nevertheless,the whole argument raises the interesting question whether our assumptions are the correct ones, not least because buses don't really count - there is no dedicated infrastructure to speak of. Perhaps we *should* be thinking of places such as Cadnam and as part of the Southampton mass transit system. Should, for instance, trams such as the Edinburgh ones run on light rail tracks through the outer suburbs and green belts for 10-15miles into the commuter hinterland, with street running where necessary? The Edinburgh trams are already poking out west into the green belt, at the airport, for instance, and I can see that being able to run on the roads for limited stretches would both attract custom and make it much easier to adapt old railway lines etc.
IIRC in Calgary, the tram system extended way out of the city into open countryside.
Makes a lot of sense. The Canadians built a tram system that has succeeded?
The Nottingham ones run for a distance outside the city to "effective suburbs", but then it's a small city. The distances are more like 7 miles than 15 miles. Per pop the ridership is about the same as Calgary, having gone down a little during Covid.
Nottingham’s not a small city, really. It’s relatively large - ninth largest in the UK.
Same attitude as the Chester Hospitals or the Horizon scandal or OFSTED. Fortunately the consequences have been somewhat less serious.
Indeed, though (a) he did resign rather more quickly when the manure hit the aircon, but (b) this does open up the museum to new lines of attack on another front: it - and/or the opponents of restitution of cultural objects - have been relying on the argument we-know-best-how-to-look-after-the-objects-than-the-Johnny-Foreigner-they-were-theived/extorted-from, with predictable results already happening.
Osborne’s entertaining defence this am on R4 was the Elgin Marbles are fine because they’re too big to nick, or ‘mislay’. That’s the Tzadziki munchers put in their place.
If I understood Osborne correctly this morning one of the real problems is that the BM doesn't possess a complete list of everything they are supposed to hold. This of course may prove mighty convenient.
The first thing to read is this twitter thread/report which suggests that transport infrastructure in the UK is incredibly expensive compared to peer economies.
The next thing is these two charts, the first of which I posted last night. The usual suspects couldn’t wait to criticise, it was variously dismissed as Remainer propaganda, erroneous (by those who didn’t bother to check the underlying data), while others managed to find themselves arguing that commuter systems should not extend to actual commuting catchment areas (Tyndall).
I think the criticism that the first chart does not contain rail and bus is fair. But including them won't make the UK look much better compared with European countries, given only 2% of us use the train and 4% the bus to commute to work.
The ONS think 17.5 million people in England and Wales, or 35%, live in "major built up areas" - population over 200,000.
Not doing the maths, but I suspect many more than 35% live in what the OECD defines as a “functional urban area” over 250,000.
These areas are very similar to travel-to-work areas. The government publishes these after every census and we are due another update soon.
These areas are likely the best unit when thinking about an urban economy. Ideally, our political units would map much more closely to these.
Indeed that’s broadly the idea behind “West Yorkshire”, “South Yorkshire” etc.
That map looks like pure male bovine ploppy.
I wonder what size of 'local administrative unit' they used. Did they used too large an area? I can't see many commuting from Braemar to Aberdeen or Redesdale to Newcastle.
If i had time I'd get a GIS out...
It's just Local Authority. I don't think they are suggesting that everyone in that LA commutes to that city.
Is there any point drawing the whole of Northumberland County Council as a commuter area if those working in Newcastle only live in the closest 20% of it?
I know someone who lives in Redesdale-ish and commuted to Newcastle before he retired recently ...
There's always one!
There's a few that commute to King's Cross from the Flatlands (90 minutes by ECML) but I wouldn't base a transport policy on them.
The first thing to read is this twitter thread/report which suggests that transport infrastructure in the UK is incredibly expensive compared to peer economies.
The next thing is these two charts, the first of which I posted last night. The usual suspects couldn’t wait to criticise, it was variously dismissed as Remainer propaganda, erroneous (by those who didn’t bother to check the underlying data), while others managed to find themselves arguing that commuter systems should not extend to actual commuting catchment areas (Tyndall).
I think the criticism that the first chart does not contain rail and bus is fair. But including them won't make the UK look much better compared with European countries, given only 2% of us use the train and 4% the bus to commute to work.
The ONS think 17.5 million people in England and Wales, or 35%, live in "major built up areas" - population over 200,000.
Not doing the maths, but I suspect many more than 35% live in what the OECD defines as a “functional urban area” over 250,000.
These areas are very similar to travel-to-work areas. The government publishes these after every census and we are due another update soon.
These areas are likely the best unit when thinking about an urban economy. Ideally, our political units would map much more closely to these.
Indeed that’s broadly the idea behind “West Yorkshire”, “South Yorkshire” etc.
That map looks like pure male bovine ploppy.
I wonder what size of 'local administrative unit' they used. Did they used too large an area? I can't see many commuting from Braemar to Aberdeen or Redesdale to Newcastle.
If i had time I'd get a GIS out...
It's just Local Authority. I don't think they are suggesting that everyone in that LA commutes to that city.
Is there any point drawing the whole of Northumberland County Council as a commuter area if those working in Newcastle only live in the closest 20% of it?
I know someone who lives in Redesdale-ish and commuted to Newcastle before he retired recently ...
There's always one!
There's a few that commute to King's Cross from the Flatlands (90 minutes by ECML) but I wouldn't base a transport policy on them.
But nobody, literally nobody, is suggesting we should.
The first thing to read is this twitter thread/report which suggests that transport infrastructure in the UK is incredibly expensive compared to peer economies.
The next thing is these two charts, the first of which I posted last night. The usual suspects couldn’t wait to criticise, it was variously dismissed as Remainer propaganda, erroneous (by those who didn’t bother to check the underlying data), while others managed to find themselves arguing that commuter systems should not extend to actual commuting catchment areas (Tyndall).
I think the criticism that the first chart does not contain rail and bus is fair. But including them won't make the UK look much better compared with European countries, given only 2% of us use the train and 4% the bus to commute to work.
The ONS think 17.5 million people in England and Wales, or 35%, live in "major built up areas" - population over 200,000.
Not doing the maths, but I suspect many more than 35% live in what the OECD defines as a “functional urban area” over 250,000.
These areas are very similar to travel-to-work areas. The government publishes these after every census and we are due another update soon.
These areas are likely the best unit when thinking about an urban economy. Ideally, our political units would map much more closely to these.
Indeed that’s broadly the idea behind “West Yorkshire”, “South Yorkshire” etc.
That map looks like pure male bovine ploppy.
I wonder what size of 'local administrative unit' they used. Did they used too large an area? I can't see many commuting from Braemar to Aberdeen or Redesdale to Newcastle.
If i had time I'd get a GIS out...
It's just Local Authority. I don't think they are suggesting that everyone in that LA commutes to that city.
Is there any point drawing the whole of Northumberland County Council as a commuter area if those working in Newcastle only live in the closest 20% of it?
I know someone who lives in Redesdale-ish and commuted to Newcastle before he retired recently ...
There's always one!
There's a few that commute to King's Cross from the Flatlands (90 minutes by ECML) but I wouldn't base a transport policy on them.
Same attitude as the Chester Hospitals or the Horizon scandal or OFSTED. Fortunately the consequences have been somewhat less serious.
Indeed, though (a) he did resign rather more quickly when the manure hit the aircon, but (b) this does open up the museum to new lines of attack on another front: it - and/or the opponents of restitution of cultural objects - have been relying on the argument we-know-best-how-to-look-after-the-objects-than-the-Johnny-Foreigner-they-were-theived/extorted-from, with predictable results already happening.
Osborne’s entertaining defence this am on R4 was the Elgin Marbles are fine because they’re too big to nick, or ‘mislay’. That’s the Tzadziki munchers put in their place.
If I understood Osborne correctly this morning one of the real problems is that the BM doesn't possess a complete list of everything they are supposed to hold. This of course may prove mighty convenient.
How the hell does a museum not have a database of artifacts, and a tracking system to follow them around?
Surely maintaining a catalogue, is one of the most important activities a museum is supposed to do!
The first thing to read is this twitter thread/report which suggests that transport infrastructure in the UK is incredibly expensive compared to peer economies.
The next thing is these two charts, the first of which I posted last night. The usual suspects couldn’t wait to criticise, it was variously dismissed as Remainer propaganda, erroneous (by those who didn’t bother to check the underlying data), while others managed to find themselves arguing that commuter systems should not extend to actual commuting catchment areas (Tyndall).
The second graph just shows that British motorists are just too pig-headed to leave their car at home and use public transport.
Public transport is too poor and too unreliable to allow people too commute without causing problems at work. This is largely because public transport operators are allowed to be profit based rather than service based. As an example, the express bus to a town near me, which doesn’t have a railway station, has been cut so that the last bus from Glasgow now leaves at 17.15. The only other way home by public transport is by train to a station 3 miles away, then hope a bus turns up to take you the rest of the way home, or hope you can get a space in the station car park. I’m sure that there are many other examples. If we want better public transport, we need to start with proper integration. Not everyone is able to walk or cycle everywhere.
Indeed. A lot of people just don't seem to understand depending on public transport is positively masochistic in many parts of the country.
If I needed to take the 10 mile trip to the local hospital via public transport it involves taking a bus to the nearest town (this service is poor and was only saved from withdrawal last year by a government subsidy), changing to a second bus to reach another town, then finally a bus to the hospital. Total time to get there is around 90 minutes to two hours during the day, more like 3 hours in the evening. Imagine a 6 hour round trip if you're a typical hospital patient - old, disabled or sick.
If I am sensible and take my scooter it's 23 minutes each way, a car would be just a few minutes slower. So 3-6 hours round trip vs less than 50 minutes. Nobody in this area uses public transport unless they positively have no alternative.
I think there are quite fundamental constraints of geography in achieving good public transport in much of the UK. Unless you want to go scandinavian and put in 15 minute interval bus routes to every suburban corner of a town, and run at a loss, then the reality is that car is going to the favoured option for most people. You could do some work retrofitting cycle routes but unless there is some demand for this it is really hard work to make happen. I don't know. It is just one way in which we seem to have got things totally wrong due to about 5 decades of provincial petrolhead philistinism. It prevails to this day and is deeply entrenched. For instance I have been working on a retail park with enormous congestion and no footpaths between the shops, so people drive from car park to car park, and the retailers have little to no interest in improving the pedestrian situation (consultants sending in diagrams arguing that there is actually no problem). People in England actually seem to want to live in car dominated, polluted misery, it is just sad and pathetic.
The first thing to read is this twitter thread/report which suggests that transport infrastructure in the UK is incredibly expensive compared to peer economies.
The next thing is these two charts, the first of which I posted last night. The usual suspects couldn’t wait to criticise, it was variously dismissed as Remainer propaganda, erroneous (by those who didn’t bother to check the underlying data), while others managed to find themselves arguing that commuter systems should not extend to actual commuting catchment areas (Tyndall).
I think the criticism that the first chart does not contain rail and bus is fair. But including them won't make the UK look much better compared with European countries, given only 2% of us use the train and 4% the bus to commute to work.
The ONS think 17.5 million people in England and Wales, or 35%, live in "major built up areas" - population over 200,000.
Not doing the maths, but I suspect many more than 35% live in what the OECD defines as a “functional urban area” over 250,000.
These areas are very similar to travel-to-work areas. The government publishes these after every census and we are due another update soon.
These areas are likely the best unit when thinking about an urban economy. Ideally, our political units would map much more closely to these.
Indeed that’s broadly the idea behind “West Yorkshire”, “South Yorkshire” etc.
That map looks like pure male bovine ploppy.
I wonder what size of 'local administrative unit' they used. Did they used too large an area? I can't see many commuting from Braemar to Aberdeen or Redesdale to Newcastle.
If i had time I'd get a GIS out...
It's just Local Authority. I don't think they are suggesting that everyone in that LA commutes to that city.
Is there any point drawing the whole of Northumberland County Council as a commuter area if those working in Newcastle only live in the closest 20% of it?
I know someone who lives in Redesdale-ish and commuted to Newcastle before he retired recently ...
There's always one!
There's a few that commute to King's Cross from the Flatlands (90 minutes by ECML) but I wouldn't base a transport policy on them.
I used to live in Salisbury, and more than once had to stand all the way on the 06:30 train to Waterloo.
I’m sure there were quite a few city types who were doing that trip daily.
Same attitude as the Chester Hospitals or the Horizon scandal or OFSTED. Fortunately the consequences have been somewhat less serious.
Indeed, though (a) he did resign rather more quickly when the manure hit the aircon, but (b) this does open up the museum to new lines of attack on another front: it - and/or the opponents of restitution of cultural objects - have been relying on the argument we-know-best-how-to-look-after-the-objects-than-the-Johnny-Foreigner-they-were-theived/extorted-from, with predictable results already happening.
Osborne’s entertaining defence this am on R4 was the Elgin Marbles are fine because they’re too big to nick, or ‘mislay’. That’s the Tzadziki munchers put in their place.
If I understood Osborne correctly this morning one of the real problems is that the BM doesn't possess a complete list of everything they are supposed to hold. This of course may prove mighty convenient.
How the hell does a museum not have a database of artifacts, and a tracking system to follow them around?
Surely maintaining a catalogue, is one of the most important activities a museum is supposed to do!
It's not as simple as that. A lot of things may be donated at once, and not adequately catalogued at donation, causing a backlog. Also, with things being constantly put on and off display, and breakages, and other losses, there's a need to keep it updated, but many are probably still not fully digitised. Finally, of course, the British Museum itself was divided up comparatively recently and everything would have to be sorted again. I also imagine digitising the catalogue to make all this easier has been a very slow process.
The first thing to read is this twitter thread/report which suggests that transport infrastructure in the UK is incredibly expensive compared to peer economies.
The next thing is these two charts, the first of which I posted last night. The usual suspects couldn’t wait to criticise, it was variously dismissed as Remainer propaganda, erroneous (by those who didn’t bother to check the underlying data), while others managed to find themselves arguing that commuter systems should not extend to actual commuting catchment areas (Tyndall).
I think the criticism that the first chart does not contain rail and bus is fair. But including them won't make the UK look much better compared with European countries, given only 2% of us use the train and 4% the bus to commute to work.
The ONS think 17.5 million people in England and Wales, or 35%, live in "major built up areas" - population over 200,000.
Not doing the maths, but I suspect many more than 35% live in what the OECD defines as a “functional urban area” over 250,000.
These areas are very similar to travel-to-work areas. The government publishes these after every census and we are due another update soon.
These areas are likely the best unit when thinking about an urban economy. Ideally, our political units would map much more closely to these.
Indeed that’s broadly the idea behind “West Yorkshire”, “South Yorkshire” etc.
That map looks like pure male bovine ploppy.
I wonder what size of 'local administrative unit' they used. Did they used too large an area? I can't see many commuting from Braemar to Aberdeen or Redesdale to Newcastle.
If i had time I'd get a GIS out...
It's just Local Authority. I don't think they are suggesting that everyone in that LA commutes to that city.
Is there any point drawing the whole of Northumberland County Council as a commuter area if those working in Newcastle only live in the closest 20% of it?
A vast majority of the population of Northumberland lives south of Morpeth so it is not like it matters.
What does PB think of a prospective one on one debate of SKS vs Rishi Sunak? Should both leaders agree to it.
Dullish bore draw?
Yep. Throw Ed Davey into the mix, and have the whole thing sponsored by Horlicks. Give the nation the best night's sleep it's had in years.
That's not even a criticism - I rather like the "grey is the new technicolour" that has taken over British politics more recently.
Of course there will never again be a 3-way debate. It’ll either be all comers, which just descends into shouting and catch phrases, or one on one for the 2 main national parties.
Which is a shake, because - and others will doubtless disagree - I think those 3 men, pale male and stale as they may be, would all emerge from a debate with reputations enhanced.
Rishi was actually OK in the Tory leadership debates. He was more energised and borderline charismatic than he is in journalist interviews, which seem be his weakest format. He would be forced to go beyond meaningless strap lines like stop the boats, and without braying backbenchers behind him would probably give up on the silly lefty lawyer jibes after a while because the audience would groan.
Starmer would benefit from being able to show his human side, and would I expect score some points victories over Sunak on policy record. Of the 3 he probably has most to lose from a debate though, as there’s a risk he may get stuck on a non-answer to an important question. He’d need to focus on delivering plain English replies.
Davey would get the benefit of equal footing and profile like Clegg did, but I expect his avuncular and benign personality would come across too. He would seem likeable.
Polish InterCity train. Looks to my untrained eye rather like a British InterCity train. The important things are that it left on time, and has aircon & wifi.
Oh, and unlike the previous PB travel correspondent, I got on the right one!
I bet you'll have continuous reception on the railway and in tunnels, something the apparently amazing UK railway infrastructure still cannot manage.
What you're basically saying is: "There's this thing I hate in this country, and I bet they do better!" with zero evidence.
Like many conversations about railways, too many people make comments assuming the grass is greener over on the continent. It isn't always: particularly if you take the prestige high-speed routes out of the equation.
The first thing to read is this twitter thread/report which suggests that transport infrastructure in the UK is incredibly expensive compared to peer economies.
The next thing is these two charts, the first of which I posted last night. The usual suspects couldn’t wait to criticise, it was variously dismissed as Remainer propaganda, erroneous (by those who didn’t bother to check the underlying data), while others managed to find themselves arguing that commuter systems should not extend to actual commuting catchment areas (Tyndall).
The second graph just shows that British motorists are just too pig-headed to leave their car at home and use public transport.
Public transport is too poor and too unreliable to allow people too commute without causing problems at work. This is largely because public transport operators are allowed to be profit based rather than service based. As an example, the express bus to a town near me, which doesn’t have a railway station, has been cut so that the last bus from Glasgow now leaves at 17.15. The only other way home by public transport is by train to a station 3 miles away, then hope a bus turns up to take you the rest of the way home, or hope you can get a space in the station car park. I’m sure that there are many other examples. If we want better public transport, we need to start with proper integration. Not everyone is able to walk or cycle everywhere.
Indeed. A lot of people just don't seem to understand depending on public transport is positively masochistic in many parts of the country.
If I needed to take the 10 mile trip to the local hospital via public transport it involves taking a bus to the nearest town (this service is poor and was only saved from withdrawal last year by a government subsidy), changing to a second bus to reach another town, then finally a bus to the hospital. Total time to get there is around 90 minutes to two hours during the day, more like 3 hours in the evening. Imagine a 6 hour round trip if you're a typical hospital patient - old, disabled or sick.
If I am sensible and take my scooter it's 23 minutes each way, a car would be just a few minutes slower. So 3-6 hours round trip vs less than 50 minutes. Nobody in this area uses public transport unless they positively have no alternative.
I think there are quite fundamental constraints of geography in achieving good public transport in much of the UK. Unless you want to go scandinavian and put in 15 minute interval bus routes to every suburban corner of a town, and run at a loss, then the reality is that car is going to the favoured option for most people. You could do some work retrofitting cycle routes but unless there is some demand for this it is really hard work to make happen. I don't know. It is just one way in which we seem to have got things totally wrong due to about 5 decades of provincial petrolhead philistinism. It prevails to this day and is deeply entrenched. For instance I have been working on a retail park with enormous congestion and no footpaths between the shops, so people drive from car park to car park, and the retailers have little to no interest in improving the pedestrian situation (consultants sending in diagrams arguing that there is actually no problem). People in England actually seem to want to live in car dominated, polluted misery, it is just sad and pathetic.
I don't think they do, actually. There is enormous latent demand for walking, cycling and public transport - just see the popularity of the integrated cycle network in London, or the doubling of tram passengers in Edinburgh after the extension, Crossrail, the rail network with capacity issues etc. Very few people are wedded to their cars if alternatives are available.
The problem it's very hard to measure that latent demand, so takes a great deal of courage from our politicians to make the large investments required.
Same attitude as the Chester Hospitals or the Horizon scandal or OFSTED. Fortunately the consequences have been somewhat less serious.
Indeed, though (a) he did resign rather more quickly when the manure hit the aircon, but (b) this does open up the museum to new lines of attack on another front: it - and/or the opponents of restitution of cultural objects - have been relying on the argument we-know-best-how-to-look-after-the-objects-than-the-Johnny-Foreigner-they-were-theived/extorted-from, with predictable results already happening.
Osborne’s entertaining defence this am on R4 was the Elgin Marbles are fine because they’re too big to nick, or ‘mislay’. That’s the Tzadziki munchers put in their place.
If I understood Osborne correctly this morning one of the real problems is that the BM doesn't possess a complete list of everything they are supposed to hold. This of course may prove mighty convenient.
How the hell does a museum not have a database of artifacts, and a tracking system to follow them around?
Surely maintaining a catalogue, is one of the most important activities a museum is supposed to do!
It's not as simple as that. A lot of things may be donated at once, and not adequately catalogued at donation, causing a backlog. Also, with things being constantly put on and off display, and breakages, and other losses, there's a need to keep it updated, but many are probably still not fully digitised. Finally, of course, the British Museum itself was divided up comparatively recently and everything would have to be sorted again. I also imagine digitising the catalogue to make all this easier has been a very slow process.
Well that’s my IT brain, rather than my historian brain! I’d have expected everything in the collection to be assiduously tagged and tracked.
This is so grotesque that it’s funny. There’s ambulance-chasing (an activity of which Baillie is an enthusiastic practitioner), and there’s stripping naked, painting yourself red and running after an ambaileans screeching ‘You’re just like serial killers, you are’.
Same attitude as the Chester Hospitals or the Horizon scandal or OFSTED. Fortunately the consequences have been somewhat less serious.
Indeed, though (a) he did resign rather more quickly when the manure hit the aircon, but (b) this does open up the museum to new lines of attack on another front: it - and/or the opponents of restitution of cultural objects - have been relying on the argument we-know-best-how-to-look-after-the-objects-than-the-Johnny-Foreigner-they-were-theived/extorted-from, with predictable results already happening.
Osborne’s entertaining defence this am on R4 was the Elgin Marbles are fine because they’re too big to nick, or ‘mislay’. That’s the Tzadziki munchers put in their place.
If I understood Osborne correctly this morning one of the real problems is that the BM doesn't possess a complete list of everything they are supposed to hold. This of course may prove mighty convenient.
How the hell does a museum not have a database of artifacts, and a tracking system to follow them around?
Presumably they have some sort of paper records (though institutional collections don't always have complete paper records). But paper records don't magically turn into databases. The British Library certainly doesn't have computerised records of its own archives; nor do a lot of institutional collections.
Same attitude as the Chester Hospitals or the Horizon scandal or OFSTED. Fortunately the consequences have been somewhat less serious.
Indeed, though (a) he did resign rather more quickly when the manure hit the aircon, but (b) this does open up the museum to new lines of attack on another front: it - and/or the opponents of restitution of cultural objects - have been relying on the argument we-know-best-how-to-look-after-the-objects-than-the-Johnny-Foreigner-they-were-theived/extorted-from, with predictable results already happening.
Osborne’s entertaining defence this am on R4 was the Elgin Marbles are fine because they’re too big to nick, or ‘mislay’. That’s the Tzadziki munchers put in their place.
If I understood Osborne correctly this morning one of the real problems is that the BM doesn't possess a complete list of everything they are supposed to hold. This of course may prove mighty convenient.
How the hell does a museum not have a database of artifacts, and a tracking system to follow them around?
Surely maintaining a catalogue, is one of the most important activities a museum is supposed to do!
It's not as simple as that. A lot of things may be donated at once, and not adequately catalogued at donation, causing a backlog. Also, with things being constantly put on and off display, and breakages, and other losses, there's a need to keep it updated, but many are probably still not fully digitised. Finally, of course, the British Museum itself was divided up comparatively recently and everything would have to be sorted again. I also imagine digitising the catalogue to make all this easier has been a very slow process.
Well that’s my IT brain, rather than my historian brain! I’d have expected everything in the collection to be assiduously tagged and tracked.
Even if such a database and monitoring system had been set up - can I ask how many archivists and museum curators you know?
Marcus Brody (who got lost in his own museum) was a caricature, but as with all caricatures there was an element of truth in it.
Same attitude as the Chester Hospitals or the Horizon scandal or OFSTED. Fortunately the consequences have been somewhat less serious.
Indeed, though (a) he did resign rather more quickly when the manure hit the aircon, but (b) this does open up the museum to new lines of attack on another front: it - and/or the opponents of restitution of cultural objects - have been relying on the argument we-know-best-how-to-look-after-the-objects-than-the-Johnny-Foreigner-they-were-theived/extorted-from, with predictable results already happening.
Osborne’s entertaining defence this am on R4 was the Elgin Marbles are fine because they’re too big to nick, or ‘mislay’. That’s the Tzadziki munchers put in their place.
I wouldn't be impressed with that if I came from Benin. And if I were the new Museum Director, I'd at ionce initiate an urgent check of any odd bits of the EMs in store - quite the treat for an evil-minded billionaire to have in the private collection. In any case, as for the EMs, that argument of "we look after it proper, see" has already been lost, in the eyes of many, vide the heavy scrubbing of the marbles in the C20.
The British Museum’s problem is that it’s become a comedy meme. We’re at the point where any mention of the place online triggers a quip about nicking foreign treasure.
I’m not sure how it prevents this becoming self-fulfilling. The equivalents elsewhere don’t get this and I expect they’re grateful the BM takes the stick. The Met in New York and the Louvre in particular. They’re equally chock full of plundered treasure and the Louvre has come under pressure to return some booty but it doesn’t have the same social media salience. In the Met’s case there’s European heritage too - visiting the gutted out interior of the castle at Velez Blanco in Spain and then seeing it in its full glory inside a museum in NYC is a strange experience.
The first thing to read is this twitter thread/report which suggests that transport infrastructure in the UK is incredibly expensive compared to peer economies.
The next thing is these two charts, the first of which I posted last night. The usual suspects couldn’t wait to criticise, it was variously dismissed as Remainer propaganda, erroneous (by those who didn’t bother to check the underlying data), while others managed to find themselves arguing that commuter systems should not extend to actual commuting catchment areas (Tyndall).
I think the criticism that the first chart does not contain rail and bus is fair. But including them won't make the UK look much better compared with European countries, given only 2% of us use the train and 4% the bus to commute to work.
The ONS think 17.5 million people in England and Wales, or 35%, live in "major built up areas" - population over 200,000.
Not doing the maths, but I suspect many more than 35% live in what the OECD defines as a “functional urban area” over 250,000.
These areas are very similar to travel-to-work areas. The government publishes these after every census and we are due another update soon.
These areas are likely the best unit when thinking about an urban economy. Ideally, our political units would map much more closely to these.
Indeed that’s broadly the idea behind “West Yorkshire”, “South Yorkshire” etc.
That map looks like pure male bovine ploppy.
I wonder what size of 'local administrative unit' they used. Did they used too large an area? I can't see many commuting from Braemar to Aberdeen or Redesdale to Newcastle.
If i had time I'd get a GIS out...
It's just Local Authority. I don't think they are suggesting that everyone in that LA commutes to that city.
Is there any point drawing the whole of Northumberland County Council as a commuter area if those working in Newcastle only live in the closest 20% of it?
I know someone who lives in Redesdale-ish and commuted to Newcastle before he retired recently ...
There's always one!
There's a few that commute to King's Cross from the Flatlands (90 minutes by ECML) but I wouldn't base a transport policy on them.
The first thing to read is this twitter thread/report which suggests that transport infrastructure in the UK is incredibly expensive compared to peer economies.
The next thing is these two charts, the first of which I posted last night. The usual suspects couldn’t wait to criticise, it was variously dismissed as Remainer propaganda, erroneous (by those who didn’t bother to check the underlying data), while others managed to find themselves arguing that commuter systems should not extend to actual commuting catchment areas (Tyndall).
The second graph just shows that British motorists are just too pig-headed to leave their car at home and use public transport.
Public transport is too poor and too unreliable to allow people too commute without causing problems at work. This is largely because public transport operators are allowed to be profit based rather than service based. As an example, the express bus to a town near me, which doesn’t have a railway station, has been cut so that the last bus from Glasgow now leaves at 17.15. The only other way home by public transport is by train to a station 3 miles away, then hope a bus turns up to take you the rest of the way home, or hope you can get a space in the station car park. I’m sure that there are many other examples. If we want better public transport, we need to start with proper integration. Not everyone is able to walk or cycle everywhere.
Indeed. A lot of people just don't seem to understand depending on public transport is positively masochistic in many parts of the country.
If I needed to take the 10 mile trip to the local hospital via public transport it involves taking a bus to the nearest town (this service is poor and was only saved from withdrawal last year by a government subsidy), changing to a second bus to reach another town, then finally a bus to the hospital. Total time to get there is around 90 minutes to two hours during the day, more like 3 hours in the evening. Imagine a 6 hour round trip if you're a typical hospital patient - old, disabled or sick.
If I am sensible and take my scooter it's 23 minutes each way, a car would be just a few minutes slower. So 3-6 hours round trip vs less than 50 minutes. Nobody in this area uses public transport unless they positively have no alternative.
I think there are quite fundamental constraints of geography in achieving good public transport in much of the UK. Unless you want to go scandinavian and put in 15 minute interval bus routes to every suburban corner of a town, and run at a loss, then the reality is that car is going to the favoured option for most people. You could do some work retrofitting cycle routes but unless there is some demand for this it is really hard work to make happen. I don't know. It is just one way in which we seem to have got things totally wrong due to about 5 decades of provincial petrolhead philistinism. It prevails to this day and is deeply entrenched. For instance I have been working on a retail park with enormous congestion and no footpaths between the shops, so people drive from car park to car park, and the retailers have little to no interest in improving the pedestrian situation (consultants sending in diagrams arguing that there is actually no problem). People in England actually seem to want to live in car dominated, polluted misery, it is just sad and pathetic.
I don't think they do, actually. There is enormous latent demand for walking, cycling and public transport - just see the popularity of the integrated cycle network in London, or the doubling of tram passengers in Edinburgh after the extension, Crossrail, the rail network with capacity issues etc. Very few people are wedded to their cars if alternatives are available.
The problem it's very hard to measure that latent demand, so takes a great deal of courage from our politicians to make the large investments required.
Yeah - it isn't all people in England. But a lot.
My sense though is that we are way behind other countries, and the time it takes to change the situation (see recent discussion of the 'planning Inquiry problem') means that other countries will make much swifter advances away from the car.
Same attitude as the Chester Hospitals or the Horizon scandal or OFSTED. Fortunately the consequences have been somewhat less serious.
Indeed, though (a) he did resign rather more quickly when the manure hit the aircon, but (b) this does open up the museum to new lines of attack on another front: it - and/or the opponents of restitution of cultural objects - have been relying on the argument we-know-best-how-to-look-after-the-objects-than-the-Johnny-Foreigner-they-were-theived/extorted-from, with predictable results already happening.
Osborne’s entertaining defence this am on R4 was the Elgin Marbles are fine because they’re too big to nick, or ‘mislay’. That’s the Tzadziki munchers put in their place.
If I understood Osborne correctly this morning one of the real problems is that the BM doesn't possess a complete list of everything they are supposed to hold. This of course may prove mighty convenient.
How the hell does a museum not have a database of artifacts, and a tracking system to follow them around?
Presumably they have some sort of paper records (though institutional collections don't always have complete paper records). But paper records don't magically turn into databases. The British Library certainly doesn't have computerised records of its own archives; nor do a lot of institutional collections.
I did intern stuff at the Ashmolean many years back. This was cataloging the tons of old stuff in the basement - reboxing in modern materials, photo, barcode linked to an ID (all linked to the various old ids)
Boring as hell and would take years to finish. Which is why I ask why this wasn’t started 10 years ago? Or 20?
Rubiales playing the victim and getting a standing ovation from the Spanish football association. WTF? Also, pass the sick bucket.
Why don't he just apologise and say he was overcome with excitement? It was a kiss, ffs, not aggravated rape.
This is a headline issue? Jeepers.
Prince William's decision not to attend is looking increasingly judicious. Had he been there it would surely have sparked a national debate and a million articles about his role in a toxic male culture and why he failed to 'intervene'.
A sense of fin de l'ete in my part of London with lots travelling in to town and heading for the dubious delights of Southend on the train.
We really need a mid autumn public holiday - NOT Trafalgar Day please - the Irish just have the last Monday of October as a bank holiday - perhaps we should. It's going to be a long haul to Christmas with cheery Rishi telling us how wonderful everything is.
That is what Governments and Prime Ministers do - talk themselves and their country up. Listening to some of Modi's supporters, you'd think putting a small craft on the lunar south pole was the greatest moment of Indian history. In a sense, Trump and Johnson's national populism was predicated on making people feel good about themselves, their country and by extension their Government taking what leaders normally do a step further.
Do those who try know it's a pup they can't sell or is there an element of delusion? Trump, I think, genuinely believes he was the greatest President there has ever been - Johnson, I suspect, is more sanguine about his political career. Sunak - well, I don't know. I actually think losing the next election and being publicly humiliated could be the making of him - character is often forged in the fires of adversity.
What then is his alternative? He has two - one, call an election and commit political suicide. In time, scorching the earth allows new plants to grow so culling 200-250 MPs will allow the Conservatives a proper opportunity to regroup, re-organise and re-think. The second is a mea culpa - admit the Government and its predecessors have failed, admit mistakes have been made, take the blame. It's a novel approach but it might work. I was always told honesty was the best policy - perhaps that's still true.
He will of course do neither and pace Hitler and Comical Ali in their turn, claim victory is close even when the evidence of final defeat is staring in the face.
Same attitude as the Chester Hospitals or the Horizon scandal or OFSTED. Fortunately the consequences have been somewhat less serious.
Indeed, though (a) he did resign rather more quickly when the manure hit the aircon, but (b) this does open up the museum to new lines of attack on another front: it - and/or the opponents of restitution of cultural objects - have been relying on the argument we-know-best-how-to-look-after-the-objects-than-the-Johnny-Foreigner-they-were-theived/extorted-from, with predictable results already happening.
Osborne’s entertaining defence this am on R4 was the Elgin Marbles are fine because they’re too big to nick, or ‘mislay’. That’s the Tzadziki munchers put in their place.
If I understood Osborne correctly this morning one of the real problems is that the BM doesn't possess a complete list of everything they are supposed to hold. This of course may prove mighty convenient.
How the hell does a museum not have a database of artifacts, and a tracking system to follow them around?
Presumably they have some sort of paper records (though institutional collections don't always have complete paper records). But paper records don't magically turn into databases. The British Library certainly doesn't have computerised records of its own archives; nor do a lot of institutional collections.
I did intern stuff at the Ashmolean many years back. This was cataloging the tons of old stuff in the basement - reboxing in modern materials, photo, barcode linked to an ID (all linked to the various old ids)
Boring as hell and would take years to finish. Which is why I ask why this wasn’t started 10 years ago? Or 20?
An obvious possibility is that they didn't have infinite resources, and had other calls on the resources they had.
Same attitude as the Chester Hospitals or the Horizon scandal or OFSTED. Fortunately the consequences have been somewhat less serious.
Indeed, though (a) he did resign rather more quickly when the manure hit the aircon, but (b) this does open up the museum to new lines of attack on another front: it - and/or the opponents of restitution of cultural objects - have been relying on the argument we-know-best-how-to-look-after-the-objects-than-the-Johnny-Foreigner-they-were-theived/extorted-from, with predictable results already happening.
Osborne’s entertaining defence this am on R4 was the Elgin Marbles are fine because they’re too big to nick, or ‘mislay’. That’s the Tzadziki munchers put in their place.
If I understood Osborne correctly this morning one of the real problems is that the BM doesn't possess a complete list of everything they are supposed to hold. This of course may prove mighty convenient.
How the hell does a museum not have a database of artifacts, and a tracking system to follow them around?
Presumably they have some sort of paper records (though institutional collections don't always have complete paper records). But paper records don't magically turn into databases. The British Library certainly doesn't have computerised records of its own archives; nor do a lot of institutional collections.
I did intern stuff at the Ashmolean many years back. This was cataloging the tons of old stuff in the basement - reboxing in modern materials, photo, barcode linked to an ID (all linked to the various old ids)
Boring as hell and would take years to finish. Which is why I ask why this wasn’t started 10 years ago? Or 20?
Money?
I remember 20 years ago when I was at uni a major project had just begun to catalogue the British Library Newspaper Archive. Aled Jones (who was Aber's big expert on newspaper history) was asked by a 19 year old student how long it would take.
'Well,' he said. 'It might happen in your lifetime. And then again, it might not. It depends on how long they're willing to keep paying for it.'
'How long will it be?' asked the student.
'Well, if all goes right, maybe 65 years,' Aled replied.
This is so grotesque that it’s funny. There’s ambulance-chasing (an activity of which Baillie is an enthusiastic practitioner), and there’s stripping naked, painting yourself red and running after an ambaileans screeching ‘You’re just like serial killers, you are’.
Her comparison - from that comment - seems to be more about cover-up culture, which is fair comment.
Polish InterCity train. Looks to my untrained eye rather like a British InterCity train. The important things are that it left on time, and has aircon & wifi.
Oh, and unlike the previous PB travel correspondent, I got on the right one!
I bet you'll have continuous reception on the railway and in tunnels, something the apparently amazing UK railway infrastructure still cannot manage.
What you're basically saying is: "There's this thing I hate in this country, and I bet they do better!" with zero evidence.
Like many conversations about railways, too many people make comments assuming the grass is greener over on the continent. It isn't always: particularly if you take the prestige high-speed routes out of the equation.
The UK almost uniquely of any European country I am aware of, has virtually no mobile phone coverage in tunnels on the railway. Unlike Germany and France there is nothing in licensing conditions for railway coverage and no large-scale (beyond a trial on Brighton Mainline) to have trackside coverage.
Very happy to discuss this further, as it was something I learned a lot about when I was at Vodafone.
The first thing to read is this twitter thread/report which suggests that transport infrastructure in the UK is incredibly expensive compared to peer economies.
The next thing is these two charts, the first of which I posted last night. The usual suspects couldn’t wait to criticise, it was variously dismissed as Remainer propaganda, erroneous (by those who didn’t bother to check the underlying data), while others managed to find themselves arguing that commuter systems should not extend to actual commuting catchment areas (Tyndall).
I think the criticism that the first chart does not contain rail and bus is fair. But including them won't make the UK look much better compared with European countries, given only 2% of us use the train and 4% the bus to commute to work.
The ONS think 17.5 million people in England and Wales, or 35%, live in "major built up areas" - population over 200,000.
Not doing the maths, but I suspect many more than 35% live in what the OECD defines as a “functional urban area” over 250,000.
These areas are very similar to travel-to-work areas. The government publishes these after every census and we are due another update soon.
These areas are likely the best unit when thinking about an urban economy. Ideally, our political units would map much more closely to these.
Indeed that’s broadly the idea behind “West Yorkshire”, “South Yorkshire” etc.
That map looks like pure male bovine ploppy.
I wonder what size of 'local administrative unit' they used. Did they used too large an area? I can't see many commuting from Braemar to Aberdeen or Redesdale to Newcastle.
If i had time I'd get a GIS out...
It's just Local Authority. I don't think they are suggesting that everyone in that LA commutes to that city.
Is there any point drawing the whole of Northumberland County Council as a commuter area if those working in Newcastle only live in the closest 20% of it?
I know someone who lives in Redesdale-ish and commuted to Newcastle before he retired recently ...
There's always one!
There's a few that commute to King's Cross from the Flatlands (90 minutes by ECML) but I wouldn't base a transport policy on them.
The first thing to read is this twitter thread/report which suggests that transport infrastructure in the UK is incredibly expensive compared to peer economies.
The next thing is these two charts, the first of which I posted last night. The usual suspects couldn’t wait to criticise, it was variously dismissed as Remainer propaganda, erroneous (by those who didn’t bother to check the underlying data), while others managed to find themselves arguing that commuter systems should not extend to actual commuting catchment areas (Tyndall).
The second graph just shows that British motorists are just too pig-headed to leave their car at home and use public transport.
Public transport is too poor and too unreliable to allow people too commute without causing problems at work. This is largely because public transport operators are allowed to be profit based rather than service based. As an example, the express bus to a town near me, which doesn’t have a railway station, has been cut so that the last bus from Glasgow now leaves at 17.15. The only other way home by public transport is by train to a station 3 miles away, then hope a bus turns up to take you the rest of the way home, or hope you can get a space in the station car park. I’m sure that there are many other examples. If we want better public transport, we need to start with proper integration. Not everyone is able to walk or cycle everywhere.
Indeed. A lot of people just don't seem to understand depending on public transport is positively masochistic in many parts of the country.
If I needed to take the 10 mile trip to the local hospital via public transport it involves taking a bus to the nearest town (this service is poor and was only saved from withdrawal last year by a government subsidy), changing to a second bus to reach another town, then finally a bus to the hospital. Total time to get there is around 90 minutes to two hours during the day, more like 3 hours in the evening. Imagine a 6 hour round trip if you're a typical hospital patient - old, disabled or sick.
If I am sensible and take my scooter it's 23 minutes each way, a car would be just a few minutes slower. So 3-6 hours round trip vs less than 50 minutes. Nobody in this area uses public transport unless they positively have no alternative.
I think there are quite fundamental constraints of geography in achieving good public transport in much of the UK. Unless you want to go scandinavian and put in 15 minute interval bus routes to every suburban corner of a town, and run at a loss, then the reality is that car is going to the favoured option for most people. You could do some work retrofitting cycle routes but unless there is some demand for this it is really hard work to make happen. I don't know. It is just one way in which we seem to have got things totally wrong due to about 5 decades of provincial petrolhead philistinism. It prevails to this day and is deeply entrenched. For instance I have been working on a retail park with enormous congestion and no footpaths between the shops, so people drive from car park to car park, and the retailers have little to no interest in improving the pedestrian situation (consultants sending in diagrams arguing that there is actually no problem). People in England actually seem to want to live in car dominated, polluted misery, it is just sad and pathetic.
I don't think they do, actually. There is enormous latent demand for walking, cycling and public transport - just see the popularity of the integrated cycle network in London, or the doubling of tram passengers in Edinburgh after the extension, Crossrail, the rail network with capacity issues etc. Very few people are wedded to their cars if alternatives are available.
The problem it's very hard to measure that latent demand, so takes a great deal of courage from our politicians to make the large investments required.
Yeah - it isn't all people in England. But a lot.
My sense though is that we are way behind other countries, and the time it takes to change the situation (see recent discussion of the 'planning Inquiry problem') means that other countries will make much swifter advances away from the car.
Those FT charts are an example of the neither here nor there, halfway house nature of lots of UK life compared with the US and EU.
I think this manifests itself as the best of both worlds in some walks of life, and the worst of both worlds in others. For example I’d say our working hours, holiday allowances and labour rights are probably in the best of both worlds category. Perhaps in due course so-too our agricultural regulations, free of the anti-scientific dogma of the continent on GM crops for example, but nowhere near the low animal welfare, industrialised model of US agribusiness. There’s an argument our higher education sector is also in a happy medium of prestige vs affordability.
But infrastructure and our urban built environment definitely seem to take the worst of both worlds, and not even do so in any kind of deliberate manner.
Same attitude as the Chester Hospitals or the Horizon scandal or OFSTED. Fortunately the consequences have been somewhat less serious.
Indeed, though (a) he did resign rather more quickly when the manure hit the aircon, but (b) this does open up the museum to new lines of attack on another front: it - and/or the opponents of restitution of cultural objects - have been relying on the argument we-know-best-how-to-look-after-the-objects-than-the-Johnny-Foreigner-they-were-theived/extorted-from, with predictable results already happening.
Osborne’s entertaining defence this am on R4 was the Elgin Marbles are fine because they’re too big to nick, or ‘mislay’. That’s the Tzadziki munchers put in their place.
If I understood Osborne correctly this morning one of the real problems is that the BM doesn't possess a complete list of everything they are supposed to hold. This of course may prove mighty convenient.
How the hell does a museum not have a database of artifacts, and a tracking system to follow them around?
Presumably they have some sort of paper records (though institutional collections don't always have complete paper records). But paper records don't magically turn into databases. The British Library certainly doesn't have computerised records of its own archives; nor do a lot of institutional collections.
I did intern stuff at the Ashmolean many years back. This was cataloging the tons of old stuff in the basement - reboxing in modern materials, photo, barcode linked to an ID (all linked to the various old ids)
Boring as hell and would take years to finish. Which is why I ask why this wasn’t started 10 years ago? Or 20?
Money?
I remember 20 years ago when I was at uni a major project had just begun to catalogue the British Library Newspaper Archive. Aled Jones (who was Aber's big expert on newspaper history) was asked by a 19 year old student how long it would take.
'Well,' he said. 'It might happen in your lifetime. And then again, it might not. It depends on how long they're willing to keep paying for it.'
'How long will it be?' asked the student.
'Well, if all goes right, maybe 65 years,' Aled replied.
Was that not *scanning* for the britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk and the British Library British Newspapers databases, rather than cataloguing? Librarians tdend to be pretty hot on cataloguing, as well as bananas etc.
Same attitude as the Chester Hospitals or the Horizon scandal or OFSTED. Fortunately the consequences have been somewhat less serious.
Indeed, though (a) he did resign rather more quickly when the manure hit the aircon, but (b) this does open up the museum to new lines of attack on another front: it - and/or the opponents of restitution of cultural objects - have been relying on the argument we-know-best-how-to-look-after-the-objects-than-the-Johnny-Foreigner-they-were-theived/extorted-from, with predictable results already happening.
Osborne’s entertaining defence this am on R4 was the Elgin Marbles are fine because they’re too big to nick, or ‘mislay’. That’s the Tzadziki munchers put in their place.
If I understood Osborne correctly this morning one of the real problems is that the BM doesn't possess a complete list of everything they are supposed to hold. This of course may prove mighty convenient.
How the hell does a museum not have a database of artifacts, and a tracking system to follow them around?
Surely maintaining a catalogue, is one of the most important activities a museum is supposed to do!
I have several times idly thought, how do museums stop staff making off with stored artefacts, when they might hold millions of these objects? Answer seems to be, they don't.
Cataloguing is an inexact art on that scale and going back a hundred years or more. The catalogue entry might just say "two swords, English, 17C". It doesn't help trace the swords if stolen, nor prevent the theft of the objects in the first place.
Same attitude as the Chester Hospitals or the Horizon scandal or OFSTED. Fortunately the consequences have been somewhat less serious.
Indeed, though (a) he did resign rather more quickly when the manure hit the aircon, but (b) this does open up the museum to new lines of attack on another front: it - and/or the opponents of restitution of cultural objects - have been relying on the argument we-know-best-how-to-look-after-the-objects-than-the-Johnny-Foreigner-they-were-theived/extorted-from, with predictable results already happening.
Osborne’s entertaining defence this am on R4 was the Elgin Marbles are fine because they’re too big to nick, or ‘mislay’. That’s the Tzadziki munchers put in their place.
If I understood Osborne correctly this morning one of the real problems is that the BM doesn't possess a complete list of everything they are supposed to hold. This of course may prove mighty convenient.
How the hell does a museum not have a database of artifacts, and a tracking system to follow them around?
Surely maintaining a catalogue, is one of the most important activities a museum is supposed to do!
It's not as simple as that. A lot of things may be donated at once, and not adequately catalogued at donation, causing a backlog. Also, with things being constantly put on and off display, and breakages, and other losses, there's a need to keep it updated, but many are probably still not fully digitised. Finally, of course, the British Museum itself was divided up comparatively recently and everything would have to be sorted again. I also imagine digitising the catalogue to make all this easier has been a very slow process.
Well that’s my IT brain, rather than my historian brain! I’d have expected everything in the collection to be assiduously tagged and tracked.
Even if such a database and monitoring system had been set up - can I ask how many archivists and museum curators you know?
As an illustration of the kind of problems that exist - until very recently the main online search form for the British Library catalogue warned the reader that it was essential to use only lower case when inputting search terms!
Onshore wind farms, nuclear reactors and other green energy infrastructure are expected to be fast-tracked as the Labour prepares for changes to the planning system to improve the economy
Sir Keir Starmer has said he is willing to allow building on the green belt, and is expected to set out how this will let councils in areas with a shortage of homes draw up plans for bigger and better developments featuring transport, energy, schools and GP surgeries
Same attitude as the Chester Hospitals or the Horizon scandal or OFSTED. Fortunately the consequences have been somewhat less serious.
Indeed, though (a) he did resign rather more quickly when the manure hit the aircon, but (b) this does open up the museum to new lines of attack on another front: it - and/or the opponents of restitution of cultural objects - have been relying on the argument we-know-best-how-to-look-after-the-objects-than-the-Johnny-Foreigner-they-were-theived/extorted-from, with predictable results already happening.
Osborne’s entertaining defence this am on R4 was the Elgin Marbles are fine because they’re too big to nick, or ‘mislay’. That’s the Tzadziki munchers put in their place.
If I understood Osborne correctly this morning one of the real problems is that the BM doesn't possess a complete list of everything they are supposed to hold. This of course may prove mighty convenient.
How the hell does a museum not have a database of artifacts, and a tracking system to follow them around?
Presumably they have some sort of paper records (though institutional collections don't always have complete paper records). But paper records don't magically turn into databases. The British Library certainly doesn't have computerised records of its own archives; nor do a lot of institutional collections.
I did intern stuff at the Ashmolean many years back. This was cataloging the tons of old stuff in the basement - reboxing in modern materials, photo, barcode linked to an ID (all linked to the various old ids)
Boring as hell and would take years to finish. Which is why I ask why this wasn’t started 10 years ago? Or 20?
Money?
I remember 20 years ago when I was at uni a major project had just begun to catalogue the British Library Newspaper Archive. Aled Jones (who was Aber's big expert on newspaper history) was asked by a 19 year old student how long it would take.
'Well,' he said. 'It might happen in your lifetime. And then again, it might not. It depends on how long they're willing to keep paying for it.'
'How long will it be?' asked the student.
'Well, if all goes right, maybe 65 years,' Aled replied.
Was that not *scanning* for the britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk and the British Library British Newspapers databases, rather than cataloguing? Librarians tdend to be pretty hot on cataloguing, as well as bananas etc.
Rubiales playing the victim and getting a standing ovation from the Spanish football association. WTF? Also, pass the sick bucket.
Why don't he just apologise and say he was overcome with excitement? It was a kiss, ffs, not aggravated rape.
This is a headline issue? Jeepers.
You understand the importance of symbols, surely ? And the point is he did the exact opposite of apologising.
It’s not as though football itself belongs on the front pages, but it’s there all the time.
I heard him apologising , absolutely pathetic stushie about nothing, far bigger things in the world that should be headlines rather than over some pathetic overpaid arses who kick a small ball about.
you think women footballers are overpaid? they are on peanuts
Male players are overpaid.
I don't understand that argument. On the model of supply and demand economics, a top footballer is paid his millions because top footballers are limited in their supply, and in high demand from the club's that employ them. The clubs believe these players to be value for money because of the profile, prestige, trophies and sheer selling power they bring to the clubs. At the opposite end of the scale a Division Two player with say, Newport County is probably struggling to pay his mortgage.
Are Boris Johnson, and Liz Truss paid too much as after dinner turns, or are they worthy because of their class, educational attainment, intellect and quality of their philosophical narrative?
Same attitude as the Chester Hospitals or the Horizon scandal or OFSTED. Fortunately the consequences have been somewhat less serious.
Indeed, though (a) he did resign rather more quickly when the manure hit the aircon, but (b) this does open up the museum to new lines of attack on another front: it - and/or the opponents of restitution of cultural objects - have been relying on the argument we-know-best-how-to-look-after-the-objects-than-the-Johnny-Foreigner-they-were-theived/extorted-from, with predictable results already happening.
Osborne’s entertaining defence this am on R4 was the Elgin Marbles are fine because they’re too big to nick, or ‘mislay’. That’s the Tzadziki munchers put in their place.
If I understood Osborne correctly this morning one of the real problems is that the BM doesn't possess a complete list of everything they are supposed to hold. This of course may prove mighty convenient.
How the hell does a museum not have a database of artifacts, and a tracking system to follow them around?
Presumably they have some sort of paper records (though institutional collections don't always have complete paper records). But paper records don't magically turn into databases. The British Library certainly doesn't have computerised records of its own archives; nor do a lot of institutional collections.
I did intern stuff at the Ashmolean many years back. This was cataloging the tons of old stuff in the basement - reboxing in modern materials, photo, barcode linked to an ID (all linked to the various old ids)
Boring as hell and would take years to finish. Which is why I ask why this wasn’t started 10 years ago? Or 20?
An obvious possibility is that they didn't have infinite resources, and had other calls on the resources they had.
I was an unpaid 16 year old. Aside from the new storage boxes, the bar codes were printed off a small label machine. The whole operation cost peanuts.
Yes, I know. A Proper Museum could only do a Proper Project costing 100 million or something.
The first thing to read is this twitter thread/report which suggests that transport infrastructure in the UK is incredibly expensive compared to peer economies.
The next thing is these two charts, the first of which I posted last night. The usual suspects couldn’t wait to criticise, it was variously dismissed as Remainer propaganda, erroneous (by those who didn’t bother to check the underlying data), while others managed to find themselves arguing that commuter systems should not extend to actual commuting catchment areas (Tyndall).
I think the criticism that the first chart does not contain rail and bus is fair. But including them won't make the UK look much better compared with European countries, given only 2% of us use the train and 4% the bus to commute to work.
The ONS think 17.5 million people in England and Wales, or 35%, live in "major built up areas" - population over 200,000.
Not doing the maths, but I suspect many more than 35% live in what the OECD defines as a “functional urban area” over 250,000.
These areas are very similar to travel-to-work areas. The government publishes these after every census and we are due another update soon.
These areas are likely the best unit when thinking about an urban economy. Ideally, our political units would map much more closely to these.
Indeed that’s broadly the idea behind “West Yorkshire”, “South Yorkshire” etc.
That map looks like pure male bovine ploppy.
I wonder what size of 'local administrative unit' they used. Did they used too large an area? I can't see many commuting from Braemar to Aberdeen or Redesdale to Newcastle.
If i had time I'd get a GIS out...
It's just Local Authority. I don't think they are suggesting that everyone in that LA commutes to that city.
Is there any point drawing the whole of Northumberland County Council as a commuter area if those working in Newcastle only live in the closest 20% of it?
I know someone who lives in Redesdale-ish and commuted to Newcastle before he retired recently ...
There's always one!
There's a few that commute to King's Cross from the Flatlands (90 minutes by ECML) but I wouldn't base a transport policy on them.
As a counter to Flatlander, can I quote a cousin of mine who, brought up in South Essex and therefore accustomed to long commutes, moved to New Zealand and a job in Christchurch. He bought a house half an hour’s drive away and was sympathised with by his new colleagues about the time it would take him to get home!
This is so grotesque that it’s funny. There’s ambulance-chasing (an activity of which Baillie is an enthusiastic practitioner), and there’s stripping naked, painting yourself red and running after an ambaileans screeching ‘You’re just like serial killers, you are’.
Her comparison - from that comment - seems to be more about cover-up culture, which is fair comment.
And a problem in a lot of places.
I hesitate to give the noisy balloon ideas but she should go the whole Godwinesque hog.
QUEH reputation protectors akin to holocaust denial.
Same attitude as the Chester Hospitals or the Horizon scandal or OFSTED. Fortunately the consequences have been somewhat less serious.
Indeed, though (a) he did resign rather more quickly when the manure hit the aircon, but (b) this does open up the museum to new lines of attack on another front: it - and/or the opponents of restitution of cultural objects - have been relying on the argument we-know-best-how-to-look-after-the-objects-than-the-Johnny-Foreigner-they-were-theived/extorted-from, with predictable results already happening.
Osborne’s entertaining defence this am on R4 was the Elgin Marbles are fine because they’re too big to nick, or ‘mislay’. That’s the Tzadziki munchers put in their place.
If I understood Osborne correctly this morning one of the real problems is that the BM doesn't possess a complete list of everything they are supposed to hold. This of course may prove mighty convenient.
How the hell does a museum not have a database of artifacts, and a tracking system to follow them around?
Surely maintaining a catalogue, is one of the most important activities a museum is supposed to do!
It's not as simple as that. A lot of things may be donated at once, and not adequately catalogued at donation, causing a backlog. Also, with things being constantly put on and off display, and breakages, and other losses, there's a need to keep it updated, but many are probably still not fully digitised. Finally, of course, the British Museum itself was divided up comparatively recently and everything would have to be sorted again. I also imagine digitising the catalogue to make all this easier has been a very slow process.
Well that’s my IT brain, rather than my historian brain! I’d have expected everything in the collection to be assiduously tagged and tracked.
Even if such a database and monitoring system had been set up - can I ask how many archivists and museum curators you know?
As an illustration of the kind of problems that exist - until very recently the main online search form for the British Library catalogue warned the reader that it was essential to use only lower case when inputting search terms!
That’s actually an IT problem, that a search engine is case-sensitive. It was probably a decision make during implementation to speed up the search results, knowing that it would mostly be used by professionals internally - then they set up an online portal to it, and everyone had to work around the limitation.
The first thing to read is this twitter thread/report which suggests that transport infrastructure in the UK is incredibly expensive compared to peer economies.
The next thing is these two charts, the first of which I posted last night. The usual suspects couldn’t wait to criticise, it was variously dismissed as Remainer propaganda, erroneous (by those who didn’t bother to check the underlying data), while others managed to find themselves arguing that commuter systems should not extend to actual commuting catchment areas (Tyndall).
I think the criticism that the first chart does not contain rail and bus is fair. But including them won't make the UK look much better compared with European countries, given only 2% of us use the train and 4% the bus to commute to work.
The ONS think 17.5 million people in England and Wales, or 35%, live in "major built up areas" - population over 200,000.
Not doing the maths, but I suspect many more than 35% live in what the OECD defines as a “functional urban area” over 250,000.
These areas are very similar to travel-to-work areas. The government publishes these after every census and we are due another update soon.
These areas are likely the best unit when thinking about an urban economy. Ideally, our political units would map much more closely to these.
Indeed that’s broadly the idea behind “West Yorkshire”, “South Yorkshire” etc.
That map looks like pure male bovine ploppy.
I wonder what size of 'local administrative unit' they used. Did they used too large an area? I can't see many commuting from Braemar to Aberdeen or Redesdale to Newcastle.
If i had time I'd get a GIS out...
It's just Local Authority. I don't think they are suggesting that everyone in that LA commutes to that city.
Is there any point drawing the whole of Northumberland County Council as a commuter area if those working in Newcastle only live in the closest 20% of it?
I know someone who lives in Redesdale-ish and commuted to Newcastle before he retired recently ...
There's always one!
There's a few that commute to King's Cross from the Flatlands (90 minutes by ECML) but I wouldn't base a transport policy on them.
I used to live in Salisbury, and more than once had to stand all the way on the 06:30 train to Waterloo.
I’m sure there were quite a few city types who were doing that trip daily.
And from further. Westbury is much smaller but the main connection to London daily for people on the other side of the county if not coming via Bath.
Rubiales playing the victim and getting a standing ovation from the Spanish football association. WTF? Also, pass the sick bucket.
Why don't he just apologise and say he was overcome with excitement? It was a kiss, ffs, not aggravated rape.
This is a headline issue? Jeepers.
You understand the importance of symbols, surely ? And the point is he did the exact opposite of apologising.
It’s not as though football itself belongs on the front pages, but it’s there all the time.
I heard him apologising , absolutely pathetic stushie about nothing, far bigger things in the world that should be headlines rather than over some pathetic overpaid arses who kick a small ball about.
you think women footballers are overpaid? they are on peanuts
Male players are overpaid.
I don't understand that argument. On the model of supply and demand economics, a top footballer is paid his millions because top footballers are limited in their supply, and in high demand from the club's that employ them. The clubs believe these players to be value for money because of the profile, prestige, trophies and sheer selling power they bring to the clubs. At the opposite end of the scale a Division Two player with say, Newport County is probably struggling to pay his mortgage.
Are Boris Johnson, and Liz Truss paid too much as after dinner turns, or are they worthy because of their class, educational attainment, intellect and quality of their philosophical narrative?
Same attitude as the Chester Hospitals or the Horizon scandal or OFSTED. Fortunately the consequences have been somewhat less serious.
Indeed, though (a) he did resign rather more quickly when the manure hit the aircon, but (b) this does open up the museum to new lines of attack on another front: it - and/or the opponents of restitution of cultural objects - have been relying on the argument we-know-best-how-to-look-after-the-objects-than-the-Johnny-Foreigner-they-were-theived/extorted-from, with predictable results already happening.
Osborne’s entertaining defence this am on R4 was the Elgin Marbles are fine because they’re too big to nick, or ‘mislay’. That’s the Tzadziki munchers put in their place.
If I understood Osborne correctly this morning one of the real problems is that the BM doesn't possess a complete list of everything they are supposed to hold. This of course may prove mighty convenient.
How the hell does a museum not have a database of artifacts, and a tracking system to follow them around?
Surely maintaining a catalogue, is one of the most important activities a museum is supposed to do!
I have several times idly thought, how do museums stop staff making off with stored artefacts, when they might hold millions of these objects? Answer seems to be, they don't.
Cataloguing is an inexact art on that scale and going back a hundred years or more. The catalogue entry might just say "two swords, English, 17C". It doesn't help trace the swords if stolen, nor prevent the theft of the objects in the first place.
Same attitude as the Chester Hospitals or the Horizon scandal or OFSTED. Fortunately the consequences have been somewhat less serious.
Indeed, though (a) he did resign rather more quickly when the manure hit the aircon, but (b) this does open up the museum to new lines of attack on another front: it - and/or the opponents of restitution of cultural objects - have been relying on the argument we-know-best-how-to-look-after-the-objects-than-the-Johnny-Foreigner-they-were-theived/extorted-from, with predictable results already happening.
Osborne’s entertaining defence this am on R4 was the Elgin Marbles are fine because they’re too big to nick, or ‘mislay’. That’s the Tzadziki munchers put in their place.
If I understood Osborne correctly this morning one of the real problems is that the BM doesn't possess a complete list of everything they are supposed to hold. This of course may prove mighty convenient.
How the hell does a museum not have a database of artifacts, and a tracking system to follow them around?
Surely maintaining a catalogue, is one of the most important activities a museum is supposed to do!
It's not as simple as that. A lot of things may be donated at once, and not adequately catalogued at donation, causing a backlog. Also, with things being constantly put on and off display, and breakages, and other losses, there's a need to keep it updated, but many are probably still not fully digitised. Finally, of course, the British Museum itself was divided up comparatively recently and everything would have to be sorted again. I also imagine digitising the catalogue to make all this easier has been a very slow process.
Well that’s my IT brain, rather than my historian brain! I’d have expected everything in the collection to be assiduously tagged and tracked.
Even if such a database and monitoring system had been set up - can I ask how many archivists and museum curators you know?
As an illustration of the kind of problems that exist - until very recently the main online search form for the British Library catalogue warned the reader that it was essential to use only lower case when inputting search terms!
That’s actually an IT problem, that a search engine is case-sensitive. It was probably a decision make during implementation to speed up the search results, knowing that it would mostly be used by professionals internally - then they set up an online portal to it, and everyone had to work around the limitation.
Sounds like their database should be in a museum if that's the case.
Same attitude as the Chester Hospitals or the Horizon scandal or OFSTED. Fortunately the consequences have been somewhat less serious.
Indeed, though (a) he did resign rather more quickly when the manure hit the aircon, but (b) this does open up the museum to new lines of attack on another front: it - and/or the opponents of restitution of cultural objects - have been relying on the argument we-know-best-how-to-look-after-the-objects-than-the-Johnny-Foreigner-they-were-theived/extorted-from, with predictable results already happening.
Osborne’s entertaining defence this am on R4 was the Elgin Marbles are fine because they’re too big to nick, or ‘mislay’. That’s the Tzadziki munchers put in their place.
If I understood Osborne correctly this morning one of the real problems is that the BM doesn't possess a complete list of everything they are supposed to hold. This of course may prove mighty convenient.
How the hell does a museum not have a database of artifacts, and a tracking system to follow them around?
Surely maintaining a catalogue, is one of the most important activities a museum is supposed to do!
It's not as simple as that. A lot of things may be donated at once, and not adequately catalogued at donation, causing a backlog. Also, with things being constantly put on and off display, and breakages, and other losses, there's a need to keep it updated, but many are probably still not fully digitised. Finally, of course, the British Museum itself was divided up comparatively recently and everything would have to be sorted again. I also imagine digitising the catalogue to make all this easier has been a very slow process.
Well that’s my IT brain, rather than my historian brain! I’d have expected everything in the collection to be assiduously tagged and tracked.
Even if such a database and monitoring system had been set up - can I ask how many archivists and museum curators you know?
As an illustration of the kind of problems that exist - until very recently the main online search form for the British Library catalogue warned the reader that it was essential to use only lower case when inputting search terms!
That’s actually an IT problem, that a search engine is case-sensitive. It was probably a decision make during implementation to speed up the search results, knowing that it would mostly be used by professionals internally - then they set up an online portal to it, and everyone had to work around the limitation.
Obviously it's an IT problem, which could very easily be fixed.
As I said, it is an illustration of the problems that exist.
Same attitude as the Chester Hospitals or the Horizon scandal or OFSTED. Fortunately the consequences have been somewhat less serious.
Indeed, though (a) he did resign rather more quickly when the manure hit the aircon, but (b) this does open up the museum to new lines of attack on another front: it - and/or the opponents of restitution of cultural objects - have been relying on the argument we-know-best-how-to-look-after-the-objects-than-the-Johnny-Foreigner-they-were-theived/extorted-from, with predictable results already happening.
Osborne’s entertaining defence this am on R4 was the Elgin Marbles are fine because they’re too big to nick, or ‘mislay’. That’s the Tzadziki munchers put in their place.
If I understood Osborne correctly this morning one of the real problems is that the BM doesn't possess a complete list of everything they are supposed to hold. This of course may prove mighty convenient.
How the hell does a museum not have a database of artifacts, and a tracking system to follow them around?
Presumably they have some sort of paper records (though institutional collections don't always have complete paper records). But paper records don't magically turn into databases. The British Library certainly doesn't have computerised records of its own archives; nor do a lot of institutional collections.
I did intern stuff at the Ashmolean many years back. This was cataloging the tons of old stuff in the basement - reboxing in modern materials, photo, barcode linked to an ID (all linked to the various old ids)
Boring as hell and would take years to finish. Which is why I ask why this wasn’t started 10 years ago? Or 20?
An obvious possibility is that they didn't have infinite resources, and had other calls on the resources they had.
I was an unpaid 16 year old. Aside from the new storage boxes, the bar codes were printed off a small label machine. The whole operation cost peanuts.
On that basis, perhaps the whole of our public services could be run without cost by unpaid, untrained teenage volunteers organising their own activities.
Rubiales playing the victim and getting a standing ovation from the Spanish football association. WTF? Also, pass the sick bucket.
Why don't he just apologise and say he was overcome with excitement? It was a kiss, ffs, not aggravated rape.
This is a headline issue? Jeepers.
You understand the importance of symbols, surely ? And the point is he did the exact opposite of apologising.
It’s not as though football itself belongs on the front pages, but it’s there all the time.
I heard him apologising , absolutely pathetic stushie about nothing, far bigger things in the world that should be headlines rather than over some pathetic overpaid arses who kick a small ball about.
you think women footballers are overpaid? they are on peanuts
Male players are overpaid.
I don't understand that argument. On the model of supply and demand economics, a top footballer is paid his millions because top footballers are limited in their supply, and in high demand from the club's that employ them. The clubs believe these players to be value for money because of the profile, prestige, trophies and sheer selling power they bring to the clubs. At the opposite end of the scale a Division Two player with say, Newport County is probably struggling to pay his mortgage.
Are Boris Johnson, and Liz Truss paid too much as after dinner turns, or are they worthy because of their class, educational attainment, intellect and quality of their philosophical narrative?
It's a funny old game.
Yep they are paid what they are worth because of market forces but the market is also distorted by the rules of the game in that you can only have 11 players on the pitch at any one time. In a normal market you would flood the pitch with lower costing players at an overall cheaper cost with the difference in skill level although relevant, not as so relevant. Because you are limited to 11 (plus subs etc) there is a huge market in getting the best.
Having said all of that I don't understand why CEOs of FTSE companies get so much. It doesn't feel like they do make the difference that £50m footballer compared to a £1m player can make. I have never seen the difference in talent between an executive getting £5m and one getting £0.25m and you can get 20 of those for the same price and play them all (unlike football)
Same attitude as the Chester Hospitals or the Horizon scandal or OFSTED. Fortunately the consequences have been somewhat less serious.
Indeed, though (a) he did resign rather more quickly when the manure hit the aircon, but (b) this does open up the museum to new lines of attack on another front: it - and/or the opponents of restitution of cultural objects - have been relying on the argument we-know-best-how-to-look-after-the-objects-than-the-Johnny-Foreigner-they-were-theived/extorted-from, with predictable results already happening.
Osborne’s entertaining defence this am on R4 was the Elgin Marbles are fine because they’re too big to nick, or ‘mislay’. That’s the Tzadziki munchers put in their place.
If I understood Osborne correctly this morning one of the real problems is that the BM doesn't possess a complete list of everything they are supposed to hold. This of course may prove mighty convenient.
How the hell does a museum not have a database of artifacts, and a tracking system to follow them around?
Surely maintaining a catalogue, is one of the most important activities a museum is supposed to do!
I have several times idly thought, how do museums stop staff making off with stored artefacts, when they might hold millions of these objects? Answer seems to be, they don't.
Cataloguing is an inexact art on that scale and going back a hundred years or more. The catalogue entry might just say "two swords, English, 17C". It doesn't help trace the swords if stolen, nor prevent the theft of the objects in the first place.
Just photograph the lot, surely, next to their barcode/qr code.
If the Bodleian can manage to catalogue all its books and fetch you one when asked, surely a museum can manage it.
For anything really interesting, put it on a turntable and make a 3D model (photogrammetry is easy these days).
Same attitude as the Chester Hospitals or the Horizon scandal or OFSTED. Fortunately the consequences have been somewhat less serious.
Indeed, though (a) he did resign rather more quickly when the manure hit the aircon, but (b) this does open up the museum to new lines of attack on another front: it - and/or the opponents of restitution of cultural objects - have been relying on the argument we-know-best-how-to-look-after-the-objects-than-the-Johnny-Foreigner-they-were-theived/extorted-from, with predictable results already happening.
Osborne’s entertaining defence this am on R4 was the Elgin Marbles are fine because they’re too big to nick, or ‘mislay’. That’s the Tzadziki munchers put in their place.
If I understood Osborne correctly this morning one of the real problems is that the BM doesn't possess a complete list of everything they are supposed to hold. This of course may prove mighty convenient.
How the hell does a museum not have a database of artifacts, and a tracking system to follow them around?
Presumably they have some sort of paper records (though institutional collections don't always have complete paper records). But paper records don't magically turn into databases. The British Library certainly doesn't have computerised records of its own archives; nor do a lot of institutional collections.
I did intern stuff at the Ashmolean many years back. This was cataloging the tons of old stuff in the basement - reboxing in modern materials, photo, barcode linked to an ID (all linked to the various old ids)
Boring as hell and would take years to finish. Which is why I ask why this wasn’t started 10 years ago? Or 20?
An obvious possibility is that they didn't have infinite resources, and had other calls on the resources they had.
I was an unpaid 16 year old. Aside from the new storage boxes, the bar codes were printed off a small label machine. The whole operation cost peanuts.
On that basis, perhaps the whole of our public services could be run without cost by unpaid, untrained teenage volunteers organising their own activities.
But I don't think that's very realistic.
TBF, it's hard to see how they could be more inept than the DfT or the DfE.
Same attitude as the Chester Hospitals or the Horizon scandal or OFSTED. Fortunately the consequences have been somewhat less serious.
Indeed, though (a) he did resign rather more quickly when the manure hit the aircon, but (b) this does open up the museum to new lines of attack on another front: it - and/or the opponents of restitution of cultural objects - have been relying on the argument we-know-best-how-to-look-after-the-objects-than-the-Johnny-Foreigner-they-were-theived/extorted-from, with predictable results already happening.
Osborne’s entertaining defence this am on R4 was the Elgin Marbles are fine because they’re too big to nick, or ‘mislay’. That’s the Tzadziki munchers put in their place.
If I understood Osborne correctly this morning one of the real problems is that the BM doesn't possess a complete list of everything they are supposed to hold. This of course may prove mighty convenient.
How the hell does a museum not have a database of artifacts, and a tracking system to follow them around?
Surely maintaining a catalogue, is one of the most important activities a museum is supposed to do!
I have several times idly thought, how do museums stop staff making off with stored artefacts, when they might hold millions of these objects? Answer seems to be, they don't.
Cataloguing is an inexact art on that scale and going back a hundred years or more. The catalogue entry might just say "two swords, English, 17C". It doesn't help trace the swords if stolen, nor prevent the theft of the objects in the first place.
Just photograph the lot, surely, next to their barcode/qr code.
If the Bodleian can manage to catalogue all its books and fetch you one when asked, surely a museum can manage it.
For anything really interesting, put it on a turntable and make a 3D model (photogrammetry is easy these days).
You sure the Bodley has? The British Library certainly hasn't.
Rubiales playing the victim and getting a standing ovation from the Spanish football association. WTF? Also, pass the sick bucket.
Why don't he just apologise and say he was overcome with excitement? It was a kiss, ffs, not aggravated rape.
This is a headline issue? Jeepers.
You understand the importance of symbols, surely ? And the point is he did the exact opposite of apologising.
It’s not as though football itself belongs on the front pages, but it’s there all the time.
I heard him apologising , absolutely pathetic stushie about nothing, far bigger things in the world that should be headlines rather than over some pathetic overpaid arses who kick a small ball about.
you think women footballers are overpaid? they are on peanuts
Male players are overpaid.
I don't understand that argument. On the model of supply and demand economics, a top footballer is paid his millions because top footballers are limited in their supply, and in high demand from the club's that employ them. The clubs believe these players to be value for money because of the profile, prestige, trophies and sheer selling power they bring to the clubs. At the opposite end of the scale a Division Two player with say, Newport County is probably struggling to pay his mortgage.
Are Boris Johnson, and Liz Truss paid too much as after dinner turns, or are they worthy because of their class, educational attainment, intellect and quality of their philosophical narrative?
Same attitude as the Chester Hospitals or the Horizon scandal or OFSTED. Fortunately the consequences have been somewhat less serious.
Indeed, though (a) he did resign rather more quickly when the manure hit the aircon, but (b) this does open up the museum to new lines of attack on another front: it - and/or the opponents of restitution of cultural objects - have been relying on the argument we-know-best-how-to-look-after-the-objects-than-the-Johnny-Foreigner-they-were-theived/extorted-from, with predictable results already happening.
Osborne’s entertaining defence this am on R4 was the Elgin Marbles are fine because they’re too big to nick, or ‘mislay’. That’s the Tzadziki munchers put in their place.
If I understood Osborne correctly this morning one of the real problems is that the BM doesn't possess a complete list of everything they are supposed to hold. This of course may prove mighty convenient.
How the hell does a museum not have a database of artifacts, and a tracking system to follow them around?
Surely maintaining a catalogue, is one of the most important activities a museum is supposed to do!
I have several times idly thought, how do museums stop staff making off with stored artefacts, when they might hold millions of these objects? Answer seems to be, they don't.
Cataloguing is an inexact art on that scale and going back a hundred years or more. The catalogue entry might just say "two swords, English, 17C". It doesn't help trace the swords if stolen, nor prevent the theft of the objects in the first place.
Just photograph the lot, surely, next to their barcode/qr code.
If the Bodleian can manage to catalogue all its books and fetch you one when asked, surely a museum can manage it.
???
If items aren't catalogued in a database, where do you suppose "their barcode" comes from? Magic?
And how on earth would a set of tens or hundreds of thousands of photographs of objects next to barcodes enable an institution to "fetch you one when asked"? Magic again, presumably.
Comments
What we need is to invest in our infrastructure. For our population density we lack sufficient roads, we have far lower roads than comparably dense nations like the Netherlands or Japan (both of whom have a higher public transport share and cycling share than we do) which means we lack sufficient cycle paths as a result.
Do what the Dutch have done and build more roads, cycling improves and public transport (buses) improves too. Everybody wins.
Bizarrely (given reputation), it’s a pleasure to drive on New York State highways, and it’s been a pleasure to drive on motorways here in France.
But you usually overstate your case by insisting on “two cars for every girl”. If I had to ruthlessly prioritise, I would start with the mass transits I mentioned above.
The practice of journalism, or looking at both sides and attempting to draw conclusions, is flawed - it doesn't work any more because side X can just generate sources to support their side, and so can side Y. Quoting from Twitter is pointless, because anybody can say anything, pro or con, and no doubt has.
The only way we can handle things like this is by statistical or similar methods. If anybody has about £50K to lob at me I'll take a year or two off to look at it properly.
Rather, both should be subjected to an hour or an hour or half of questioning, by a rigorous and informed interviewer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Midlands_Metro
http://www.tramwaybadgesandbuttons.com/page148/page152/styled-268/page691.html
Disturbing that 1) Exit votes may announced before all votes counted, b) BBC, overseen by the current gov't, has a privileged position in announcing un-indendendently-verifiable results. Respectfully, this process is very un-transparent, unverifiable
https://nitter.net/naomirwolf/status/1205229521420660738#m
Her follow ups made clear that, among other misconceptions, she presumed areas in the UK were still voting when the exit poll was announced, and some nonsensical thing about news outlets 'deciding the votes', which I don't even understand.
It's fascinating when lack of understanding of basic facts cannot be overcome by pointing out the misunderstandings. People just double down. I know that's part of human psychology not liking to be corrected or be mistaken, but when it's a pretty basic error with no real emotional investment you'd think it'd be easier.
The last pitch the Corbyn fandom had was that SKS was making the party go bust.
Labour reports £3m surplus as annual income surpasses Tories by £16m
Oh dear.
I wonder what size of 'local administrative unit' they used. Did they used too large an area? I can't see many commuting from Braemar to Aberdeen or Redesdale to Newcastle.
I'd have thought a time based map might work out better (isochrones?)
If i had time I'd get a GIS out...
I disagree with noneoftheabove and pagan2, I don't think it would be a bore draw. Look at the debates for the Tory leadership, where Rishi overcorrected to appear assertive and tough, and was just rude and abrasive. I think he'd try too hard to be interesting, and that woul dlead to it being interesting, but not in the way he hoped.
It should be a rolling programme though - odd that they didn't just start with the next tram extension when this one concluded.
That's not even a criticism - I rather like the "grey is the new technicolour" that has taken over British politics more recently.
Oh, and unlike the previous PB travel correspondent, I got on the right one!
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n12/dani-garavelli/all-in-slow-motion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isochrone_map#/media/File:Map_of_Melbourne_and_environs_minimum_railway_or_tramway_time_zones.jpg
With enough Google data, it should be possible to create one for each UK population centre.
Not particularly having a pop; it's just a mess as defined in the project, and they think they can't start to correct until they have a finished mess.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_urban_areas_in_the_United_Kingdom
If I needed to take the 10 mile trip to the local hospital via public transport it involves taking a bus to the nearest town (this service is poor and was only saved from withdrawal last year by a government subsidy), changing to a second bus to reach another town, then finally a bus to the hospital. Total time to get there is around 90 minutes to two hours during the day, more like 3 hours in the evening. Imagine a 6 hour round trip if you're a typical hospital patient - old, disabled or sick.
If I am sensible and take my scooter it's 23 minutes each way, a car would be just a few minutes slower. So 3-6 hours round trip vs less than 50 minutes. Nobody in this area uses public transport unless they positively have no alternative.
There's a few that commute to King's Cross from the Flatlands (90 minutes by ECML) but I wouldn't base a transport policy on them.
https://scotlandcommute.datashine.org.uk/
Surely maintaining a catalogue, is one of the most important activities a museum is supposed to do!
I’m sure there were quite a few city types who were doing that trip daily.
Which is a shake, because - and others will doubtless disagree - I think those 3 men, pale male and stale as they may be, would all emerge from a debate with reputations enhanced.
Rishi was actually OK in the Tory leadership debates. He was more energised and borderline charismatic than he is in journalist interviews, which seem be his weakest format. He would be forced to go beyond meaningless strap lines like stop the boats, and without braying backbenchers behind him would probably give up on the silly lefty lawyer jibes after a while because the audience would groan.
Starmer would benefit from being able to show his human side, and would I expect score some points victories over Sunak on policy record. Of the 3 he probably has most to lose from a debate though, as there’s a risk he may get stuck on a non-answer to an important question. He’d need to focus on delivering plain English replies.
Davey would get the benefit of equal footing and profile like Clegg did, but I expect his avuncular and benign personality would come across too. He would seem likeable.
Like many conversations about railways, too many people make comments assuming the grass is greener over on the continent. It isn't always: particularly if you take the prestige high-speed routes out of the equation.
The problem it's very hard to measure that latent demand, so takes a great deal of courage from our politicians to make the large investments required.
This is a pile scaffolding for use in repairing Hammersmith bridge.
Some people shoot at their feet with a belt fed machine gun
This is using a M19 full auto grenade launcher.
Aside from the small moral matter of attacking the victim… have they just hired the ex-CEO of Coutts? Or some NHS hospital managers?
Marcus Brody (who got lost in his own museum) was a caricature, but as with all caricatures there was an element of truth in it.
I’m not sure how it prevents this becoming self-fulfilling. The equivalents elsewhere don’t get this and I expect they’re grateful the BM takes the stick. The Met in New York and the Louvre in particular. They’re equally chock full of plundered treasure and the Louvre has come under pressure to return some booty but it doesn’t have the same social media salience. In the Met’s case there’s European heritage too - visiting the gutted out interior of the castle at Velez Blanco in Spain and then seeing it in its full glory inside a museum in NYC is a strange experience.
There appears to be a (less granular, sadly) regional map showing the same data as the OECD:
https://regioncommute.datashine.org.uk/#mode=allflows&direction=both&la=undefined&zoom=8.006426269159434&lon=-3.0000&lat=54.5000
You can even click on Southampton...
My sense though is that we are way behind other countries, and the time it takes to change the situation (see recent discussion of the 'planning Inquiry problem') means that other countries will make much swifter advances away from the car.
Boring as hell and would take years to finish. Which is why I ask why this wasn’t started 10 years ago? Or 20?
A sense of fin de l'ete in my part of London with lots travelling in to town and heading for the dubious delights of Southend on the train.
We really need a mid autumn public holiday - NOT Trafalgar Day please - the Irish just have the last Monday of October as a bank holiday - perhaps we should. It's going to be a long haul to Christmas with cheery Rishi telling us how wonderful everything is.
That is what Governments and Prime Ministers do - talk themselves and their country up. Listening to some of Modi's supporters, you'd think putting a small craft on the lunar south pole was the greatest moment of Indian history. In a sense, Trump and Johnson's national populism was predicated on making people feel good about themselves, their country and by extension their Government taking what leaders normally do a step further.
Do those who try know it's a pup they can't sell or is there an element of delusion? Trump, I think, genuinely believes he was the greatest President there has ever been - Johnson, I suspect, is more sanguine about his political career. Sunak - well, I don't know. I actually think losing the next election and being publicly humiliated could be the making of him - character is often forged in the fires of adversity.
What then is his alternative? He has two - one, call an election and commit political suicide. In time, scorching the earth allows new plants to grow so culling 200-250 MPs will allow the Conservatives a proper opportunity to regroup, re-organise and re-think. The second is a mea culpa - admit the Government and its predecessors have failed, admit mistakes have been made, take the blame. It's a novel approach but it might work. I was always told honesty was the best policy - perhaps that's still true.
He will of course do neither and pace Hitler and Comical Ali in their turn, claim victory is close even when the evidence of final defeat is staring in the face.
I remember 20 years ago when I was at uni a major project had just begun to catalogue the British Library Newspaper Archive. Aled Jones (who was Aber's big expert on newspaper history) was asked by a 19 year old student how long it would take.
'Well,' he said. 'It might happen in your lifetime. And then again, it might not. It depends on how long they're willing to keep paying for it.'
'How long will it be?' asked the student.
'Well, if all goes right, maybe 65 years,' Aled replied.
And a problem in a lot of places.
Very happy to discuss this further, as it was something I learned a lot about when I was at Vodafone.
In relation to the earlier argument, not many from Lyndhurst to Southampton.
https://commute.datashine.org.uk/#mode=allflows&direction=both&msoa=E02003577&zoom=13.0&lon=-1.4333&lat=50.9137
(Data from 2011)
I think this manifests itself as the best of both worlds in some walks of life, and the worst of both worlds in others. For example I’d say our working hours, holiday allowances and labour
rights are probably in the best of both worlds category. Perhaps in due course so-too our agricultural regulations, free of the anti-scientific dogma of the continent on GM crops for example, but nowhere near the low animal welfare, industrialised model of US agribusiness. There’s an argument our higher education sector is also in a happy medium of prestige vs affordability.
But infrastructure and our urban built environment definitely seem to take the worst of both worlds, and not even do so in any kind of deliberate manner.
Cataloguing is an inexact art on that scale and going back a hundred years or more. The catalogue entry might just say "two swords, English, 17C". It doesn't help trace the swords if stolen, nor prevent the theft of the objects in the first place.
Onshore wind farms, nuclear reactors and other green energy infrastructure are expected to be fast-tracked as the Labour prepares for changes to the planning system to improve the economy
Sir Keir Starmer has said he is willing to allow building on the green belt, and is expected to set out how this will let councils in areas with a shortage of homes draw up plans for bigger and better developments featuring transport, energy, schools and GP surgeries
https://twitter.com/thetimes/status/1695396549742694731
Good.
Are Boris Johnson, and Liz Truss paid too much as after dinner turns, or are they worthy because of their class, educational attainment, intellect and quality of their philosophical narrative?
It's a funny old game.
Yes, I know. A Proper Museum could only do a Proper Project costing 100 million or something.
QUEH reputation protectors akin to holocaust denial.
Step 2: Pontificate on how it would take an age for you to get anywhere by public transport, and it is so much quicker and easier to drive.
As I said, it is an illustration of the problems that exist.
But I don't think that's very realistic.
Having said all of that I don't understand why CEOs of FTSE companies get so much. It doesn't feel like they do make the difference that £50m footballer compared to a £1m player can make. I have never seen the difference in talent between an executive getting £5m and one getting £0.25m and you can get 20 of those for the same price and play them all (unlike football)
If the Bodleian can manage to catalogue all its books and fetch you one when asked, surely a museum can manage it.
For anything really interesting, put it on a turntable and make a 3D model (photogrammetry is easy these days).
Being fired from the Cabinet for being incompetent?
Being asked to leave the SNP for financial mismanagement?
Being accused of bringing the courts into disrepute by Lord Denning?
If items aren't catalogued in a database, where do you suppose "their barcode" comes from? Magic?
And how on earth would a set of tens or hundreds of thousands of photographs of objects next to barcodes enable an institution to "fetch you one when asked"? Magic again, presumably.
One inappropriate gesture versus wholescale corruption.
They really haven’t.