The RAAC issues could be huge. It feels like nobody has really got to the bottom of the impact yet, and how many properties it affects.
This could affect (as well as schools) hospitals, homes, infrastructure…. Very worrying.
How many buildings are spontaneously collapsing per year?
Not sure why this is very worrying whereas something like ever increasing obesity is just accepted as normal?
Oh, RAAC collapses are a recognised problem already. It looks as if it's not so much the whole thing but chunks of it - literally so, a lot of RAAC elements are precast in a factory.
A little poking around on this website in general shows that there are cases where RAAC ceiling elements had to be replaced because they were failing - and here is a case where they were not caught in time.
"In 2017, they were asked to investigate an RAAC roof which had collapsed in a school. Luckily, there was no one in the classroom at the time of the collapse. Shear failure of RAAC planks
According to the reporter, the cause of the collapse was a shear failure due to inadequate bearing following some structural alterations made by the school. The failure was triggered by outfall gutters becoming blocked which allowed ponding of water on the roof to quickly build up during a storm.
The reporter carried out a full structural survey of the school and found numerous other signs of progressing defects similar to those highlighted in the SCOSS Alert. Roof leaks can lead to the deterioration of RAAC planks
In 2019, the reporter was asked to investigate the partial failure of an RAAC plank at another school. Temporary props were installed to prevent collapse of the RAAC planks. The reporter carried out a full structural survey of the school and again found numerous defects in the planks. These were mainly related to historic roof leaks which caused the reinforcement in the planks to corrode and thus lose bond with the concrete.
The reporter is now frequently encountering RAAC planks in school roofs and their experience suggests that these planks are becoming more defective with time. They have also found that many schools are not aware that their roofs are constructed using RAAC planks and are therefore not aware of the risks."
Just trying to understand it as an order of magnitude problem.
Obesity kills about 30,000 people per year and worsens the life quality of many millions and the productivity of the economy and health service.
If we did nothing to fix RAAC, and of course we will, how many deaths are expected per year? 10? 100?
The RAAC issues could be huge. It feels like nobody has really got to the bottom of the impact yet, and how many properties it affects.
This could affect (as well as schools) hospitals, homes, infrastructure…. Very worrying.
How many buildings are spontaneously collapsing per year?
Not sure why this is very worrying whereas something like ever increasing obesity is just accepted as normal?
Oh, RAAC collapses are a recognised problem already. It looks as if it's not so much the whole thing but chunks of it - literally so, a lot of RAAC elements are precast in a factory.
A little poking around on this website in general shows that there are cases where RAAC ceiling elements had to be replaced because they were failing - and here is a case where they were not caught in time.
"In 2017, they were asked to investigate an RAAC roof which had collapsed in a school. Luckily, there was no one in the classroom at the time of the collapse. Shear failure of RAAC planks
According to the reporter, the cause of the collapse was a shear failure due to inadequate bearing following some structural alterations made by the school. The failure was triggered by outfall gutters becoming blocked which allowed ponding of water on the roof to quickly build up during a storm.
The reporter carried out a full structural survey of the school and found numerous other signs of progressing defects similar to those highlighted in the SCOSS Alert. Roof leaks can lead to the deterioration of RAAC planks
In 2019, the reporter was asked to investigate the partial failure of an RAAC plank at another school. Temporary props were installed to prevent collapse of the RAAC planks. The reporter carried out a full structural survey of the school and again found numerous defects in the planks. These were mainly related to historic roof leaks which caused the reinforcement in the planks to corrode and thus lose bond with the concrete.
The reporter is now frequently encountering RAAC planks in school roofs and their experience suggests that these planks are becoming more defective with time. They have also found that many schools are not aware that their roofs are constructed using RAAC planks and are therefore not aware of the risks."
Can I make the joke about everyone in teaching sees planks at the top of the education system and they're certainly getting more defective with time?
Cue a thousand Remoaner think pieces about Germany, Italy and France as the “sick men of Europe”, as brave Brexit Britain forges ahead
Or not. Of course.
Just think of all the absolute BS published in the Economist, FT, Guardian and so on over the last few years, not to mention all the nonsense from think tanks and "charities" and regurgitated by leftie politicians and their simple-minded followers. Incredible really.
They need to do what the BoE has done and get a bunch of outsiders in to come and troubleshoot why everything is so fucked up. Once again, it turns out that had the correct data been given earlier the BoE would have had significant room to raise rates faster and earlier to bring inflation down much earlier.
These fuck ups have got real world consequences despite people suggesting they haven't and it's all just nonsense statistics.
It's surely close to sacking territory for the ONS brainboxes, they've managed to miss something akin to a year of economic growth.
You measure a country of 68 million people with tens of airfields and possibly hundreds of ports, all of whom are trying their level best to keep their affairs secret, and you want it to the nearest percentage decimal point. You're lucky they didn't say "I'm an orange I'm an orange" before standing on the desk and stripping off. 😀
I'm going to be hobnobbing with royalty today. Never done that before. Handy when you know someone, who knows someone, who knows someone. I have just been told to arrive 30 minutes later than planned as otherwise it will conflict with the security for the royals. I suggested they wait, but that was apparently not acceptable.
On behalf of the PB teachers, ask if we should back the King & Queen's horse, Educator, at Sandown Park tomorrow.
Will do
Any other requests while we are at it?
@DecrepiterJohnL sadly I didn't see any royals after all so no horse racing tips I'm afraid, although Prince Michael of Kent apparently did pinch one of the security guards buggies and drive it around. I did however attend an exclusive car auction, and on the assumption I was a bidder, (I wasn't), I got plied with free champagne.
A constitutional question (I was drunkenly discussing this last night). Suppose a huge swathe of Tory MPs defected to Labour and took the Labour whip, meaning that Sir Keir could now easily control the majority of the House. What would happen? Would Sir Keir simply be made PM in Rishi's place, or would a general election be forced?
Opposition calls a confidence vote. Rishi loses it. He goes to palace and recommends that Sir Keir should be appointed PM on the basis that the latter now commands a majority. Sir Keir is appointed PM.
No need for an election (although Rishi could call one if he acts before losing the confidence vote).
Ah okay. That makes sense. Thanks. Labour would officially still be the opposition despite having the vast majority of MPs. So it would take the vote of confidence to politically re-calibrate everything.
It doesn't require a vote of confidence. Rishi can just go straight to the palace and say Keir now commands the respect of the House.
CCTV monitoring all public spaces: 55% Compulsory ID cards: 54% National fingerprint database: 50% (net +10) National DNA database: 45% (net +4) Communications companies having to retain everyone's data: 16%"
"Tory voters are more likely to support security measures than Lab voters
Compulsory ID cards Con: 65% Lab: 42%
CCTV monitoring all public spaces Con: 65% Lab: 48%
Scary isn't it. The more I think about it, the more I think there may be something weird about the British. Are any other countries so keen to build their own prison camp?
A constitutional question (I was drunkenly discussing this last night). Suppose a huge swathe of Tory MPs defected to Labour and took the Labour whip, meaning that Sir Keir could now easily control the majority of the House. What would happen? Would Sir Keir simply be made PM in Rishi's place, or would a general election be forced?
Where’s TSE to teach you a lesson on the Lascelles principles?
But in my scenario the PM (Rishi) doesn't actually ask for parliament to be dissolved. So I was wondering how that deadlock could be resolved. Surely Sir Keir can't just march into Rishi's office and tell him to sling his hook. But Richard Nabavi has now explained: an opposition vote of confidence would set matters straight.
The Queen appoints the majority commander to form a Government. Rishi's resignation is unnecessary and his cooperation is not required.
My Favorite Tory. . . Lord Woolton and his first day as Minster for Food, 1940
Lord Woolton, a working-class lad who made himself into a successful businessman, head of Lewis department stores, was serving as Minister of Supply in April of 1940 when Neville Chamberlain appointed him Minister of Food.
As he was cleaning out his office at his old department, he was visited by the head civil servant at MoF, who informed him that the Minister was scheduled to give a major press conference the next day.
"My trouble was that I had not formulated any policy," Woolton later wrote, or even had a chance to brief himself on his new duties, which were clearly epic. But that was not a problem for the mandarin - "here, Minister, is your speech."
Woolton's response was to head home, cancel his plans for the evening, then spend all night reading up on official reports, memos, statistics, etc., etc. about Britain's already challenging food situation - just as WW2 was morphing from Phoney War to western Blitzkreig.
The next day, he arrived before a throng of press reporters, photographers, newsreel cameramen, radio recording engineers.
He began by setting his sights way beyond the journos and techies assembled before him.
"My audience is not the aggregate of the public who are listening but the detail of the individual in front of the domestic receiving set. . . . In front of my mind I keep a picture of a man in his cottage, sitting without a collar, with slippers on, at the end of a day's work, children playing on the rug, with his wife washing up in the adjoining room with the door open."
As Woolton began his speech, he pushed away the speech given him, and instead reached for his own notes that he'd worked on over night - to the horror of his civil servant.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
source: "Eggs or Anarchy" by William Sitwell (2017)
A constitutional question (I was drunkenly discussing this last night). Suppose a huge swathe of Tory MPs defected to Labour and took the Labour whip, meaning that Sir Keir could now easily control the majority of the House. What would happen? Would Sir Keir simply be made PM in Rishi's place, or would a general election be forced?
Where’s TSE to teach you a lesson on the Lascelles principles?
But in my scenario the PM (Rishi) doesn't actually ask for parliament to be dissolved. So I was wondering how that deadlock could be resolved. Surely Sir Keir can't just march into Rishi's office and tell him to sling his hook. But Richard Nabavi has now explained: an opposition vote of confidence would set matters straight.
The Queen appoints the majority commander to form a Government. Rishi's resignation is unnecessary and his cooperation is not required.
Believe you are giving Camilla a wee bit toooooooooo much authority!
1) Starlink is the LEO data satellite constellation being launched by SpaceX - 5000+ satellites launched). Currently using their Falcon 9 rocket. Which is the cheapest way of throwing stuff upstairs on Earth. They are hammering the competition. 2) Amazon want into the LEO data satellite constellation business. Their plan is called Kepler. Nothing launched yet. 3) Blue Origin is an operate company owned by Bezos - analogous to SpaceX. Nothing launched yet, but they are working on it. 4) So Bezos got Amazon to buy up all the non-SpaceX launch capacity around the world, to launch Kepler. Which costs more than SpaceX. He also got Amazon to contract with Blue Origin to buy future launches. At what price is rather obscure.
So other Amazon shareholders want the Bezos to swallow his pride and get cheaper launches from SpaceX until Blue Origin can compete on price.
Blue Origin is a legal firm with a small rocket company attached. It is very good at suing and shit at building rockets. Musk, for all his weirdness, does build and launch rockets that work.
The RAAC issues could be huge. It feels like nobody has really got to the bottom of the impact yet, and how many properties it affects.
This could affect (as well as schools) hospitals, homes, infrastructure…. Very worrying.
How many buildings are spontaneously collapsing per year?
Not sure why this is very worrying whereas something like ever increasing obesity is just accepted as normal?
I wouldn’t say ever increasing obesity isn’t worrying….
See upthread my example of Grenfell. The fact that buildings seemingly aren’t spontaneously collapsing (although haven’t there been some issues in schools over the summer that have triggered this scare?) doesn’t mean that a SINGLE spontaneous collapse, at the wrong place, and at the wrong time, would be horrendous and lead to all sorts of questions/issues/developments. The fact that nothing of that magnitude has happened yet but that this is becoming an issue is actually more reassuring, for once.
Hmm. The question this raises is whether the action taken is sufficient to outpace the ongoing deterioration with age, esp. if there is a bulk obsolescence issue.
Also that report I posted says that they already had failures in the 1980s, needing to demolish buildings.
Andf presumably a signle element can have the effect you raise, on the principle that the construction elements in Building X are patently unsafe if one collapses, or simply fails to a lesser degree, even if most have not yet collapsed. They're not going to get stronger with time, but weaker. As they were factory produced, it would raise questions about all other buildings using elements from that design/supplier.
A constitutional question (I was drunkenly discussing this last night). Suppose a huge swathe of Tory MPs defected to Labour and took the Labour whip, meaning that Sir Keir could now easily control the majority of the House. What would happen? Would Sir Keir simply be made PM in Rishi's place, or would a general election be forced?
Cue a thousand Remoaner think pieces about Germany, Italy and France as the “sick men of Europe”, as brave Brexit Britain forges ahead
Or not. Of course.
Just think of all the absolute BS published in the Economist, FT, Guardian and so on over the last few years, not to mention all the nonsense from think tanks and "charities" and regurgitated by leftie politicians and their simple-minded followers. Incredible really.
They need to do what the BoE has done and get a bunch of outsiders in to come and troubleshoot why everything is so fucked up. Once again, it turns out that had the correct data been given earlier the BoE would have had significant room to raise rates faster and earlier to bring inflation down much earlier.
These fuck ups have got real world consequences despite people suggesting they haven't and it's all just nonsense statistics.
It's surely close to sacking territory for the ONS brainboxes, they've managed to miss something akin to a year of economic growth.
You measure a country of 68 million people with tens of airfields and possibly hundreds of ports, all of whom are trying their level best to keep their affairs secret, and you want it to the nearest percentage decimal point. You're lucky they didn't say "I'm an orange I'm an orange" before standing on the desk and stripping off. 😀
Ha ha, don't think I expect better, I'm sceptical of other stats as well, including population, the settled status scheme suggests our population data is pants too. But a revision of this sizes makes me think "why bother?" If nothing else there seems to be little point rushing to publish data, it might as well wait. Which is probably the case for most economic and I dare say even financial data. Instantaneous judgements about tiny movements don't seem to benefit society very much, even if they have theoretical advantages for liquidity.
A constitutional question (I was drunkenly discussing this last night). Suppose a huge swathe of Tory MPs defected to Labour and took the Labour whip, meaning that Sir Keir could now easily control the majority of the House. What would happen? Would Sir Keir simply be made PM in Rishi's place, or would a general election be forced?
Opposition calls a confidence vote. Rishi loses it. He goes to palace and recommends that Sir Keir should be appointed PM on the basis that the latter now commands a majority. Sir Keir is appointed PM.
No need for an election (although Rishi could call one if he acts before losing the confidence vote).
Though if he had any sense I think SKS would then be well advised to hold an election ASAP. Whatever happens it would have to happen before early 2025 and straight after he has taken over would seem to be the perfect time as I suspect it would all start to be downhill in terms of polling from that point.
Cue a thousand Remoaner think pieces about Germany, Italy and France as the “sick men of Europe”, as brave Brexit Britain forges ahead
Or not. Of course.
Just think of all the absolute BS published in the Economist, FT, Guardian and so on over the last few years, not to mention all the nonsense from think tanks and "charities" and regurgitated by leftie politicians and their simple-minded followers. Incredible really.
They need to do what the BoE has done and get a bunch of outsiders in to come and troubleshoot why everything is so fucked up. Once again, it turns out that had the correct data been given earlier the BoE would have had significant room to raise rates faster and earlier to bring inflation down much earlier.
These fuck ups have got real world consequences despite people suggesting they haven't and it's all just nonsense statistics.
Probably not with a metric as totemic as GDP but I think the option of not measuring something is often underrated.
In reality central bankers understand very well the shortcomings of early vintage national account data and don't put a huge amount of weight on it in forming their judgements (the BOE actually have a method for adjusting what they see as a persistent downwards bias in the most recent ONS numbers). This does not of course mean they get their judgements right, I've been tearing my hair out over the BOE's ineptitude, but I wouldn't blame the GDP data for that.
No I'm sorry that's not right. This is revising 2021 data, not the preliminary quarterly result or monthly index. The 2021 quarterly GDP data will have fed directly into the BoE forecast model for 2023 growth unadulterated. Had this data been correct from the off as it should have been then the BoE model would have shown a lot more spare capacity to absorb interest rate rises in 2022 than was thought to be the case. The BoE fucked up, there's no doubt about it, it's also the case that the ONS fucked up and we didn't raise interest rates anywhere near quickly and early enough.
On your earlier point of the US also having seeming contrasting metrics, that's a function of GDI and GDP being different things that aren't necessarily supposed to reconcile but will correlate to each other over the time series. We have two measures of chained volume GDP which show different YoY tracking and both had the most up to date revisions data. The reason they don't reconcile is that they are produced by different teams and use different methodology to gather the data. At least that's the answer we got when we asked the ONS for an explanation as to why they were so different.
GDP and GDI are absolutely meant to measure the same thing. You can derive measures of national income by looking at income, expenditure or output and they are all meant to give you the same number, but they don't because they employ different methodologies. One way to avoid confusion is to give them different names, like the BEA does, but that doesn't alter the fact that they are meant to capture the same thing. The BOE absolutely does not take the ONS GDP data at face value, take a look at the latest Monetary Policy Report, you will note that their fan charts for inflation and unemployment treat historical data as fact while for GDP they put uncertainty bands around the historical data reflecting the likelihood of revision. CPI data are never revised, while revisions to labour market data are typically minor. The BOE's assessment of slack in the economy comes much more from looking at slack in the labour market and spare capacity within firms than from the GDP data, as a result. For sure the BOE would prefer more reliable GDP data and the big revisions don't help but they know the data aren't reliable and that's why they rely more on other data to inform their view on slack and what that means for inflation. In my opinion their mistake has been to ignore how the experience of high inflation has changed price and wage setting behaviour and inflation psychology, leading to more persistent wage and services inflation, so that previous relationships no longer hold. This is an argument I've made in conversations with MPC members, and I'm sure others have, and I think they have started to get it, albeit too late.
I apologise in advance if I am misunderstanding you but surely wage and price inflation have nothing to do with this revision as this is for a period long before these started to take off.
Yes absolutely. I'm talking about the mistakes (in my view) the BOE has made on policy. The ONS GDP revision is I would argue not such a massive deal for the BOE because what matters for them in terms of their inflation forecast is the degree of slack in the economy and for their estimate of that the GDP data aren't that important, precisely because the BOE know they can be revised so much.
1) Starlink is the LEO data satellite constellation being launched by SpaceX - 5000+ satellites launched). Currently using their Falcon 9 rocket. Which is the cheapest way of throwing stuff upstairs on Earth. They are hammering the competition. 2) Amazon want into the LEO data satellite constellation business. Their plan is called Kepler. Nothing launched yet. 3) Blue Origin is an operate company owned by Bezos - analogous to SpaceX. Nothing launched yet, but they are working on it. 4) So Bezos got Amazon to buy up all the non-SpaceX launch capacity around the world, to launch Kepler. Which costs more than SpaceX. He also got Amazon to contract with Blue Origin to buy future launches. At what price is rather obscure.
So other Amazon shareholders want the Bezos to swallow his pride and get cheaper launches from SpaceX until Blue Origin can compete on price.
Blue Origin is a legal firm with a small rocket company attached. It is very good at suing and shit at building rockets. Musk, for all his weirdness, does build and launch rockets that work.
That is ridiculously untrue; at least, let's wait a couple of years to see how New Glenn works out.
And if you're talking about delays, I'd also point out that SH/SS are *years* late.
1) Starlink is the LEO data satellite constellation being launched by SpaceX - 5000+ satellites launched). Currently using their Falcon 9 rocket. Which is the cheapest way of throwing stuff upstairs on Earth. They are hammering the competition. 2) Amazon want into the LEO data satellite constellation business. Their plan is called Kepler. Nothing launched yet. 3) Blue Origin is an operate company owned by Bezos - analogous to SpaceX. Nothing launched yet, but they are working on it. 4) So Bezos got Amazon to buy up all the non-SpaceX launch capacity around the world, to launch Kepler. Which costs more than SpaceX. He also got Amazon to contract with Blue Origin to buy future launches. At what price is rather obscure.
So other Amazon shareholders want the Bezos to swallow his pride and get cheaper launches from SpaceX until Blue Origin can compete on price.
Blue Origin is a legal firm with a small rocket company attached. It is very good at suing and shit at building rockets. Musk, for all his weirdness, does build and launch rockets that work.
To be fair, they have successfully launched a few tourists into space.
The RAAC issues could be huge. It feels like nobody has really got to the bottom of the impact yet, and how many properties it affects.
This could affect (as well as schools) hospitals, homes, infrastructure…. Very worrying.
How many buildings are spontaneously collapsing per year?
Not sure why this is very worrying whereas something like ever increasing obesity is just accepted as normal?
Oh, RAAC collapses are a recognised problem already. It looks as if it's not so much the whole thing but chunks of it - literally so, a lot of RAAC elements are precast in a factory.
A little poking around on this website in general shows that there are cases where RAAC ceiling elements had to be replaced because they were failing - and here is a case where they were not caught in time.
"In 2017, they were asked to investigate an RAAC roof which had collapsed in a school. Luckily, there was no one in the classroom at the time of the collapse. Shear failure of RAAC planks
According to the reporter, the cause of the collapse was a shear failure due to inadequate bearing following some structural alterations made by the school. The failure was triggered by outfall gutters becoming blocked which allowed ponding of water on the roof to quickly build up during a storm.
The reporter carried out a full structural survey of the school and found numerous other signs of progressing defects similar to those highlighted in the SCOSS Alert. Roof leaks can lead to the deterioration of RAAC planks
In 2019, the reporter was asked to investigate the partial failure of an RAAC plank at another school. Temporary props were installed to prevent collapse of the RAAC planks. The reporter carried out a full structural survey of the school and again found numerous defects in the planks. These were mainly related to historic roof leaks which caused the reinforcement in the planks to corrode and thus lose bond with the concrete.
The reporter is now frequently encountering RAAC planks in school roofs and their experience suggests that these planks are becoming more defective with time. They have also found that many schools are not aware that their roofs are constructed using RAAC planks and are therefore not aware of the risks."
Just trying to understand it as an order of magnitude problem.
Obesity kills about 30,000 people per year and worsens the life quality of many millions and the productivity of the economy and health service.
If we did nothing to fix RAAC, and of course we will, how many deaths are expected per year? 10? 100?
Sure, but - as I read many years ago in Gordon's The Science of Strong Materials - there are many ways to fail.
Once one ceiling slab element in a school starts failing, no way can you rely on the others: ergo no way can you send the little dears - and, just as importantly, Sir and Miss and the support staff - under those ceilings. It's flat out illegal under HASAWA, not to mention against insurers' conditions (just as important for LAs).
And that would be triggered by a failure of the same slab (make, design) elsewhere.
You don't have to squash any childrenm to have a comprehensive failure mode in operation across multiple sites.
And that is before any moral panic element kicks in.
A constitutional question (I was drunkenly discussing this last night). Suppose a huge swathe of Tory MPs defected to Labour and took the Labour whip, meaning that Sir Keir could now easily control the majority of the House. What would happen? Would Sir Keir simply be made PM in Rishi's place, or would a general election be forced?
There wouldn't be an election.
Yes, I didn't really think there'd be an election. I was more curious about the precise mechanism that would be used to chuck Rishi out and put Keir in.
That doesn’t sound right. The model is based on the state of the economy before 2016, and the revisions changed the size of the current economy by 1.7%, without adjusting the model. It should be 1.7% closer, surely?
I think that's what Gardenwalker is saying.
But I'd like to reiterate the point I made at the height of Covid:
It will take decades to know what the economic consequences of Brexit are. And, indeed, it is highly likely that other factors (education, the benefits system, demographics) are likely to be much more significant than Brexit.
Martin Kühne, a German city councilor in Baden-Baden from the AfD party, has resigned after having been caught writing ethnic slurs and drawing swastikas on 2 cars belonging to Ukrainian refugees. https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1697230516284518697
Cue a thousand Remoaner think pieces about Germany, Italy and France as the “sick men of Europe”, as brave Brexit Britain forges ahead
Or not. Of course.
Just think of all the absolute BS published in the Economist, FT, Guardian and so on over the last few years, not to mention all the nonsense from think tanks and "charities" and regurgitated by leftie politicians and their simple-minded followers. Incredible really.
They need to do what the BoE has done and get a bunch of outsiders in to come and troubleshoot why everything is so fucked up. Once again, it turns out that had the correct data been given earlier the BoE would have had significant room to raise rates faster and earlier to bring inflation down much earlier.
These fuck ups have got real world consequences despite people suggesting they haven't and it's all just nonsense statistics.
It's surely close to sacking territory for the ONS brainboxes, they've managed to miss something akin to a year of economic growth.
You measure a country of 68 million people with tens of airfields and possibly hundreds of ports, all of whom are trying their level best to keep their affairs secret, and you want it to the nearest percentage decimal point. You're lucky they didn't say "I'm an orange I'm an orange" before standing on the desk and stripping off. 😀
It is also worth remembering that every country regularly changes GDP numbers, and often by quite large amounts.
Ireland made a c. 15% change a few years ago, because they'd cumulatively mismeasured the impact of FDI.
The RAAC issues could be huge. It feels like nobody has really got to the bottom of the impact yet, and how many properties it affects.
This could affect (as well as schools) hospitals, homes, infrastructure…. Very worrying.
How many buildings are spontaneously collapsing per year?
Not sure why this is very worrying whereas something like ever increasing obesity is just accepted as normal?
Oh, RAAC collapses are a recognised problem already. It looks as if it's not so much the whole thing but chunks of it - literally so, a lot of RAAC elements are precast in a factory.
A little poking around on this website in general shows that there are cases where RAAC ceiling elements had to be replaced because they were failing - and here is a case where they were not caught in time.
"In 2017, they were asked to investigate an RAAC roof which had collapsed in a school. Luckily, there was no one in the classroom at the time of the collapse. Shear failure of RAAC planks
According to the reporter, the cause of the collapse was a shear failure due to inadequate bearing following some structural alterations made by the school. The failure was triggered by outfall gutters becoming blocked which allowed ponding of water on the roof to quickly build up during a storm.
The reporter carried out a full structural survey of the school and found numerous other signs of progressing defects similar to those highlighted in the SCOSS Alert. Roof leaks can lead to the deterioration of RAAC planks
In 2019, the reporter was asked to investigate the partial failure of an RAAC plank at another school. Temporary props were installed to prevent collapse of the RAAC planks. The reporter carried out a full structural survey of the school and again found numerous defects in the planks. These were mainly related to historic roof leaks which caused the reinforcement in the planks to corrode and thus lose bond with the concrete.
The reporter is now frequently encountering RAAC planks in school roofs and their experience suggests that these planks are becoming more defective with time. They have also found that many schools are not aware that their roofs are constructed using RAAC planks and are therefore not aware of the risks."
Just trying to understand it as an order of magnitude problem.
Obesity kills about 30,000 people per year and worsens the life quality of many millions and the productivity of the economy and health service.
If we did nothing to fix RAAC, and of course we will, how many deaths are expected per year? 10? 100?
Sure, but - as I read many years ago in Gordon's The Science of Strong Materials - there are many ways to fail.
Once one ceiling slab element in a school starts failing, no way can you rely on the others: ergo no way can you send the little dears - and, just as importantly, Sir and Miss and the support staff - under those ceilings. It's flat out illegal under HASAWA, not to mention against insurers' conditions (just as important for LAs).
And that would be triggered by a failure of the same slab (make, design) elsewhere.
You don't have to squash any childrenm to have a comprehensive failure mode in operation across multiple sites.
And that is before any moral panic element kicks in.
"The Science of Strong Materials" is superb. I still pick it up and read bits occasionally. As is his "Structures, or why things don't fall down"
1) Starlink is the LEO data satellite constellation being launched by SpaceX - 5000+ satellites launched). Currently using their Falcon 9 rocket. Which is the cheapest way of throwing stuff upstairs on Earth. They are hammering the competition. 2) Amazon want into the LEO data satellite constellation business. Their plan is called Kepler. Nothing launched yet. 3) Blue Origin is an operate company owned by Bezos - analogous to SpaceX. Nothing launched yet, but they are working on it. 4) So Bezos got Amazon to buy up all the non-SpaceX launch capacity around the world, to launch Kepler. Which costs more than SpaceX. He also got Amazon to contract with Blue Origin to buy future launches. At what price is rather obscure.
So other Amazon shareholders want the Bezos to swallow his pride and get cheaper launches from SpaceX until Blue Origin can compete on price.
Blue Origin is a legal firm with a small rocket company attached. It is very good at suing and shit at building rockets. Musk, for all his weirdness, does build and launch rockets that work.
To be fair, they have successfully launched a few tourists into space.
Yes, but suborbital hops measured in tens of seconds is the equivalent of the special corner where the slow kids play with the rounded scissors and glitter...😀
The RAAC issues could be huge. It feels like nobody has really got to the bottom of the impact yet, and how many properties it affects.
This could affect (as well as schools) hospitals, homes, infrastructure…. Very worrying.
How many buildings are spontaneously collapsing per year?
Not sure why this is very worrying whereas something like ever increasing obesity is just accepted as normal?
Oh, RAAC collapses are a recognised problem already. It looks as if it's not so much the whole thing but chunks of it - literally so, a lot of RAAC elements are precast in a factory.
A little poking around on this website in general shows that there are cases where RAAC ceiling elements had to be replaced because they were failing - and here is a case where they were not caught in time.
"In 2017, they were asked to investigate an RAAC roof which had collapsed in a school. Luckily, there was no one in the classroom at the time of the collapse. Shear failure of RAAC planks
According to the reporter, the cause of the collapse was a shear failure due to inadequate bearing following some structural alterations made by the school. The failure was triggered by outfall gutters becoming blocked which allowed ponding of water on the roof to quickly build up during a storm.
The reporter carried out a full structural survey of the school and found numerous other signs of progressing defects similar to those highlighted in the SCOSS Alert. Roof leaks can lead to the deterioration of RAAC planks
In 2019, the reporter was asked to investigate the partial failure of an RAAC plank at another school. Temporary props were installed to prevent collapse of the RAAC planks. The reporter carried out a full structural survey of the school and again found numerous defects in the planks. These were mainly related to historic roof leaks which caused the reinforcement in the planks to corrode and thus lose bond with the concrete.
The reporter is now frequently encountering RAAC planks in school roofs and their experience suggests that these planks are becoming more defective with time. They have also found that many schools are not aware that their roofs are constructed using RAAC planks and are therefore not aware of the risks."
Just trying to understand it as an order of magnitude problem.
Obesity kills about 30,000 people per year and worsens the life quality of many millions and the productivity of the economy and health service.
If we did nothing to fix RAAC, and of course we will, how many deaths are expected per year? 10? 100?
Sure, but - as I read many years ago in Gordon's The Science of Strong Materials - there are many ways to fail.
Once one ceiling slab element in a school starts failing, no way can you rely on the others: ergo no way can you send the little dears - and, just as importantly, Sir and Miss and the support staff - under those ceilings. It's flat out illegal under HASAWA, not to mention against insurers' conditions (just as important for LAs).
And that would be triggered by a failure of the same slab (make, design) elsewhere.
You don't have to squash any childrenm to have a comprehensive failure mode in operation across multiple sites.
And that is before any moral panic element kicks in.
It shouldn't be very worrying. Being very worried will lead to panicked answers like closing loads of schools down and returning to schooling from home. That is obviously worse than carrying on whilst starting to fix the problems and accepting the risk of building collapse will temporarily be above where we thought it was.
The RAAC issues could be huge. It feels like nobody has really got to the bottom of the impact yet, and how many properties it affects.
This could affect (as well as schools) hospitals, homes, infrastructure…. Very worrying.
How many buildings are spontaneously collapsing per year?
Not sure why this is very worrying whereas something like ever increasing obesity is just accepted as normal?
Oh, RAAC collapses are a recognised problem already. It looks as if it's not so much the whole thing but chunks of it - literally so, a lot of RAAC elements are precast in a factory.
A little poking around on this website in general shows that there are cases where RAAC ceiling elements had to be replaced because they were failing - and here is a case where they were not caught in time.
"In 2017, they were asked to investigate an RAAC roof which had collapsed in a school. Luckily, there was no one in the classroom at the time of the collapse. Shear failure of RAAC planks
According to the reporter, the cause of the collapse was a shear failure due to inadequate bearing following some structural alterations made by the school. The failure was triggered by outfall gutters becoming blocked which allowed ponding of water on the roof to quickly build up during a storm.
The reporter carried out a full structural survey of the school and found numerous other signs of progressing defects similar to those highlighted in the SCOSS Alert. Roof leaks can lead to the deterioration of RAAC planks
In 2019, the reporter was asked to investigate the partial failure of an RAAC plank at another school. Temporary props were installed to prevent collapse of the RAAC planks. The reporter carried out a full structural survey of the school and again found numerous defects in the planks. These were mainly related to historic roof leaks which caused the reinforcement in the planks to corrode and thus lose bond with the concrete.
The reporter is now frequently encountering RAAC planks in school roofs and their experience suggests that these planks are becoming more defective with time. They have also found that many schools are not aware that their roofs are constructed using RAAC planks and are therefore not aware of the risks."
Just trying to understand it as an order of magnitude problem.
Obesity kills about 30,000 people per year and worsens the life quality of many millions and the productivity of the economy and health service.
If we did nothing to fix RAAC, and of course we will, how many deaths are expected per year? 10? 100?
Sure, but - as I read many years ago in Gordon's The Science of Strong Materials - there are many ways to fail.
Once one ceiling slab element in a school starts failing, no way can you rely on the others: ergo no way can you send the little dears - and, just as importantly, Sir and Miss and the support staff - under those ceilings. It's flat out illegal under HASAWA, not to mention against insurers' conditions (just as important for LAs).
And that would be triggered by a failure of the same slab (make, design) elsewhere.
You don't have to squash any childrenm to have a comprehensive failure mode in operation across multiple sites.
And that is before any moral panic element kicks in.
"The Science of Strong Materials" is superb. I still pick it up and read bits occasionally. As is his "Structures, or why things don't fall down"
Oh yes, I was brought up on them ... actually I hope I'm citing the right one of the pair just now.
1) Starlink is the LEO data satellite constellation being launched by SpaceX - 5000+ satellites launched). Currently using their Falcon 9 rocket. Which is the cheapest way of throwing stuff upstairs on Earth. They are hammering the competition. 2) Amazon want into the LEO data satellite constellation business. Their plan is called Kepler. Nothing launched yet. 3) Blue Origin is an operate company owned by Bezos - analogous to SpaceX. Nothing launched yet, but they are working on it. 4) So Bezos got Amazon to buy up all the non-SpaceX launch capacity around the world, to launch Kepler. Which costs more than SpaceX. He also got Amazon to contract with Blue Origin to buy future launches. At what price is rather obscure.
So other Amazon shareholders want the Bezos to swallow his pride and get cheaper launches from SpaceX until Blue Origin can compete on price.
Blue Origin is a legal firm with a small rocket company attached. It is very good at suing and shit at building rockets. Musk, for all his weirdness, does build and launch rockets that work.
We simply don't know how good/bad BO is.
Bezos staffed the place with people from Old Space - who took the Perfect Design approach. That is, they attempt to get a perfect design of rocket to the pad to work the first time. They also used a contracting pyramid that substantially slows things down and adds to costs.
The question is at what time scale and cost point they will deliver.
Certainly is news in the context of today's announcements together with 2 Welsh hospitals
A new definition of news!
As a matter of interest what did the Scottish government do about the report ?
You'll have to look it up - time for me to cook dinner.
But as it was a Scottish LD FOI, they knew already. They already seem to have been gathering information and tasking action. Fopr instance, they established some time back that 250 or so hospitals are likely to have the stuff.
1) Starlink is the LEO data satellite constellation being launched by SpaceX - 5000+ satellites launched). Currently using their Falcon 9 rocket. Which is the cheapest way of throwing stuff upstairs on Earth. They are hammering the competition. 2) Amazon want into the LEO data satellite constellation business. Their plan is called Kepler. Nothing launched yet. 3) Blue Origin is an operate company owned by Bezos - analogous to SpaceX. Nothing launched yet, but they are working on it. 4) So Bezos got Amazon to buy up all the non-SpaceX launch capacity around the world, to launch Kepler. Which costs more than SpaceX. He also got Amazon to contract with Blue Origin to buy future launches. At what price is rather obscure.
So other Amazon shareholders want the Bezos to swallow his pride and get cheaper launches from SpaceX until Blue Origin can compete on price.
Blue Origin is a legal firm with a small rocket company attached. It is very good at suing and shit at building rockets. Musk, for all his weirdness, does build and launch rockets that work.
That is ridiculously untrue; at least, let's wait a couple of years to see how New Glenn works out.
And if you're talking about delays, I'd also point out that SH/SS are *years* late.
Is it? They've existed for over a decade now. They haven't launched anything into orbit or done anything that wasn't bettered by an X15. Musk launched. That Neutron guy launched. The world is filling up with hungry entrepreneurs with a clean-sheet factory and photocopies of. a Falcon. Even the French upgraded Ariane.
The RAAC issues could be huge. It feels like nobody has really got to the bottom of the impact yet, and how many properties it affects.
This could affect (as well as schools) hospitals, homes, infrastructure…. Very worrying.
How many buildings are spontaneously collapsing per year?
Not sure why this is very worrying whereas something like ever increasing obesity is just accepted as normal?
Oh, RAAC collapses are a recognised problem already. It looks as if it's not so much the whole thing but chunks of it - literally so, a lot of RAAC elements are precast in a factory.
A little poking around on this website in general shows that there are cases where RAAC ceiling elements had to be replaced because they were failing - and here is a case where they were not caught in time.
"In 2017, they were asked to investigate an RAAC roof which had collapsed in a school. Luckily, there was no one in the classroom at the time of the collapse. Shear failure of RAAC planks
According to the reporter, the cause of the collapse was a shear failure due to inadequate bearing following some structural alterations made by the school. The failure was triggered by outfall gutters becoming blocked which allowed ponding of water on the roof to quickly build up during a storm.
The reporter carried out a full structural survey of the school and found numerous other signs of progressing defects similar to those highlighted in the SCOSS Alert. Roof leaks can lead to the deterioration of RAAC planks
In 2019, the reporter was asked to investigate the partial failure of an RAAC plank at another school. Temporary props were installed to prevent collapse of the RAAC planks. The reporter carried out a full structural survey of the school and again found numerous defects in the planks. These were mainly related to historic roof leaks which caused the reinforcement in the planks to corrode and thus lose bond with the concrete.
The reporter is now frequently encountering RAAC planks in school roofs and their experience suggests that these planks are becoming more defective with time. They have also found that many schools are not aware that their roofs are constructed using RAAC planks and are therefore not aware of the risks."
Just trying to understand it as an order of magnitude problem.
Obesity kills about 30,000 people per year and worsens the life quality of many millions and the productivity of the economy and health service.
If we did nothing to fix RAAC, and of course we will, how many deaths are expected per year? 10? 100?
Sure, but - as I read many years ago in Gordon's The Science of Strong Materials - there are many ways to fail.
Once one ceiling slab element in a school starts failing, no way can you rely on the others: ergo no way can you send the little dears - and, just as importantly, Sir and Miss and the support staff - under those ceilings. It's flat out illegal under HASAWA, not to mention against insurers' conditions (just as important for LAs).
And that would be triggered by a failure of the same slab (make, design) elsewhere.
You don't have to squash any childrenm to have a comprehensive failure mode in operation across multiple sites.
And that is before any moral panic element kicks in.
"The Science of Strong Materials" is superb. I still pick it up and read bits occasionally. As is his "Structures, or why things don't fall down"
The bigger problem is that the unexpected failure casts doubt on their method for analysing risk. So they can't tell what is about to fail or not.
The RAAC issues could be huge. It feels like nobody has really got to the bottom of the impact yet, and how many properties it affects.
This could affect (as well as schools) hospitals, homes, infrastructure…. Very worrying.
How many buildings are spontaneously collapsing per year?
Not sure why this is very worrying whereas something like ever increasing obesity is just accepted as normal?
Oh, RAAC collapses are a recognised problem already. It looks as if it's not so much the whole thing but chunks of it - literally so, a lot of RAAC elements are precast in a factory.
A little poking around on this website in general shows that there are cases where RAAC ceiling elements had to be replaced because they were failing - and here is a case where they were not caught in time.
"In 2017, they were asked to investigate an RAAC roof which had collapsed in a school. Luckily, there was no one in the classroom at the time of the collapse. Shear failure of RAAC planks
According to the reporter, the cause of the collapse was a shear failure due to inadequate bearing following some structural alterations made by the school. The failure was triggered by outfall gutters becoming blocked which allowed ponding of water on the roof to quickly build up during a storm.
The reporter carried out a full structural survey of the school and found numerous other signs of progressing defects similar to those highlighted in the SCOSS Alert. Roof leaks can lead to the deterioration of RAAC planks
In 2019, the reporter was asked to investigate the partial failure of an RAAC plank at another school. Temporary props were installed to prevent collapse of the RAAC planks. The reporter carried out a full structural survey of the school and again found numerous defects in the planks. These were mainly related to historic roof leaks which caused the reinforcement in the planks to corrode and thus lose bond with the concrete.
The reporter is now frequently encountering RAAC planks in school roofs and their experience suggests that these planks are becoming more defective with time. They have also found that many schools are not aware that their roofs are constructed using RAAC planks and are therefore not aware of the risks."
Just trying to understand it as an order of magnitude problem.
Obesity kills about 30,000 people per year and worsens the life quality of many millions and the productivity of the economy and health service.
If we did nothing to fix RAAC, and of course we will, how many deaths are expected per year? 10? 100?
Sure, but - as I read many years ago in Gordon's The Science of Strong Materials - there are many ways to fail.
Once one ceiling slab element in a school starts failing, no way can you rely on the others: ergo no way can you send the little dears - and, just as importantly, Sir and Miss and the support staff - under those ceilings. It's flat out illegal under HASAWA, not to mention against insurers' conditions (just as important for LAs).
And that would be triggered by a failure of the same slab (make, design) elsewhere.
You don't have to squash any childrenm to have a comprehensive failure mode in operation across multiple sites.
And that is before any moral panic element kicks in.
"The Science of Strong Materials" is superb. I still pick it up and read bits occasionally. As is his "Structures, or why things don't fall down"
1) Starlink is the LEO data satellite constellation being launched by SpaceX - 5000+ satellites launched). Currently using their Falcon 9 rocket. Which is the cheapest way of throwing stuff upstairs on Earth. They are hammering the competition. 2) Amazon want into the LEO data satellite constellation business. Their plan is called Kepler. Nothing launched yet. 3) Blue Origin is an operate company owned by Bezos - analogous to SpaceX. Nothing launched yet, but they are working on it. 4) So Bezos got Amazon to buy up all the non-SpaceX launch capacity around the world, to launch Kepler. Which costs more than SpaceX. He also got Amazon to contract with Blue Origin to buy future launches. At what price is rather obscure.
So other Amazon shareholders want the Bezos to swallow his pride and get cheaper launches from SpaceX until Blue Origin can compete on price.
Blue Origin is a legal firm with a small rocket company attached. It is very good at suing and shit at building rockets. Musk, for all his weirdness, does build and launch rockets that work.
That is ridiculously untrue; at least, let's wait a couple of years to see how New Glenn works out.
And if you're talking about delays, I'd also point out that SH/SS are *years* late.
Is it? They've existed for over a decade now. They haven't launched anything into orbit or done anything that wasn't bettered by an X15. Musk launched. That Neutron guy launched. The world is filling up with hungry entrepreneurs with a clean-sheet factory and photocopies of. a Falcon. Even the French upgraded Ariane.
Ariane fucked up by cancelling 5 before 6 flew. And 6 is simply a rewarmed version of the traditional Ariane approach. No reusability.
The RAAC issues could be huge. It feels like nobody has really got to the bottom of the impact yet, and how many properties it affects.
This could affect (as well as schools) hospitals, homes, infrastructure…. Very worrying.
How many buildings are spontaneously collapsing per year?
Not sure why this is very worrying whereas something like ever increasing obesity is just accepted as normal?
Oh, RAAC collapses are a recognised problem already. It looks as if it's not so much the whole thing but chunks of it - literally so, a lot of RAAC elements are precast in a factory.
A little poking around on this website in general shows that there are cases where RAAC ceiling elements had to be replaced because they were failing - and here is a case where they were not caught in time.
"In 2017, they were asked to investigate an RAAC roof which had collapsed in a school. Luckily, there was no one in the classroom at the time of the collapse. Shear failure of RAAC planks
According to the reporter, the cause of the collapse was a shear failure due to inadequate bearing following some structural alterations made by the school. The failure was triggered by outfall gutters becoming blocked which allowed ponding of water on the roof to quickly build up during a storm.
The reporter carried out a full structural survey of the school and found numerous other signs of progressing defects similar to those highlighted in the SCOSS Alert. Roof leaks can lead to the deterioration of RAAC planks
In 2019, the reporter was asked to investigate the partial failure of an RAAC plank at another school. Temporary props were installed to prevent collapse of the RAAC planks. The reporter carried out a full structural survey of the school and again found numerous defects in the planks. These were mainly related to historic roof leaks which caused the reinforcement in the planks to corrode and thus lose bond with the concrete.
The reporter is now frequently encountering RAAC planks in school roofs and their experience suggests that these planks are becoming more defective with time. They have also found that many schools are not aware that their roofs are constructed using RAAC planks and are therefore not aware of the risks."
Just trying to understand it as an order of magnitude problem.
Obesity kills about 30,000 people per year and worsens the life quality of many millions and the productivity of the economy and health service.
If we did nothing to fix RAAC, and of course we will, how many deaths are expected per year? 10? 100?
Sure, but - as I read many years ago in Gordon's The Science of Strong Materials - there are many ways to fail.
Once one ceiling slab element in a school starts failing, no way can you rely on the others: ergo no way can you send the little dears - and, just as importantly, Sir and Miss and the support staff - under those ceilings. It's flat out illegal under HASAWA, not to mention against insurers' conditions (just as important for LAs).
And that would be triggered by a failure of the same slab (make, design) elsewhere.
You don't have to squash any childrenm to have a comprehensive failure mode in operation across multiple sites.
And that is before any moral panic element kicks in.
It shouldn't be very worrying. Being very worried will lead to panicked answers like closing loads of schools down and returning to schooling from home. That is obviously worse than carrying on whilst starting to fix the problems and accepting the risk of building collapse will temporarily be above where we thought it was.
Trouble is, the failure rate is now going to accelerate. Ageing, bad installation, chain effects, and so on.
IT's possible to prop up all the ceiling panels, and so on, but what message does it send?
Certainly is news in the context of today's announcements together with 2 Welsh hospitals
A new definition of news!
As a matter of interest what did the Scottish government do about the report ?
You'll have to look it up - time for me to cook dinner.
But as it was a Scottish LD FOI, they knew already. They already seem to have been gathering information and tasking action. Fopr instance, they established some time back that 250 or so hospitals are likely to have the stuff.
Sky just confirmed that this is a major problem, not only in England, but also the devolved nations who are each responsible for their buildings and that it is not confined to schools
To be honest this looks like it is going to be a very big problem for governments going forward as the cost implications must be many billions
The RAAC issues could be huge. It feels like nobody has really got to the bottom of the impact yet, and how many properties it affects.
This could affect (as well as schools) hospitals, homes, infrastructure…. Very worrying.
How many buildings are spontaneously collapsing per year?
Not sure why this is very worrying whereas something like ever increasing obesity is just accepted as normal?
Oh, RAAC collapses are a recognised problem already. It looks as if it's not so much the whole thing but chunks of it - literally so, a lot of RAAC elements are precast in a factory.
A little poking around on this website in general shows that there are cases where RAAC ceiling elements had to be replaced because they were failing - and here is a case where they were not caught in time.
"In 2017, they were asked to investigate an RAAC roof which had collapsed in a school. Luckily, there was no one in the classroom at the time of the collapse. Shear failure of RAAC planks
According to the reporter, the cause of the collapse was a shear failure due to inadequate bearing following some structural alterations made by the school. The failure was triggered by outfall gutters becoming blocked which allowed ponding of water on the roof to quickly build up during a storm.
The reporter carried out a full structural survey of the school and found numerous other signs of progressing defects similar to those highlighted in the SCOSS Alert. Roof leaks can lead to the deterioration of RAAC planks
In 2019, the reporter was asked to investigate the partial failure of an RAAC plank at another school. Temporary props were installed to prevent collapse of the RAAC planks. The reporter carried out a full structural survey of the school and again found numerous defects in the planks. These were mainly related to historic roof leaks which caused the reinforcement in the planks to corrode and thus lose bond with the concrete.
The reporter is now frequently encountering RAAC planks in school roofs and their experience suggests that these planks are becoming more defective with time. They have also found that many schools are not aware that their roofs are constructed using RAAC planks and are therefore not aware of the risks."
Just trying to understand it as an order of magnitude problem.
Obesity kills about 30,000 people per year and worsens the life quality of many millions and the productivity of the economy and health service.
If we did nothing to fix RAAC, and of course we will, how many deaths are expected per year? 10? 100?
Sure, but - as I read many years ago in Gordon's The Science of Strong Materials - there are many ways to fail.
Once one ceiling slab element in a school starts failing, no way can you rely on the others: ergo no way can you send the little dears - and, just as importantly, Sir and Miss and the support staff - under those ceilings. It's flat out illegal under HASAWA, not to mention against insurers' conditions (just as important for LAs).
And that would be triggered by a failure of the same slab (make, design) elsewhere.
You don't have to squash any childrenm to have a comprehensive failure mode in operation across multiple sites.
And that is before any moral panic element kicks in.
It shouldn't be very worrying. Being very worried will lead to panicked answers like closing loads of schools down and returning to schooling from home. That is obviously worse than carrying on whilst starting to fix the problems and accepting the risk of building collapse will temporarily be above where we thought it was.
From what I've read, we're not talking about "building collapse" here. We're talking about partial collapse of small bits of a building, such as ceilings and wall panels.
Potentially nasty if you're under them, but not the same as a total collapse of the building.
Certainly is news in the context of today's announcements together with 2 Welsh hospitals
A new definition of news!
As a matter of interest what did the Scottish government do about the report ?
You'll have to look it up - time for me to cook dinner.
But as it was a Scottish LD FOI, they knew already. They already seem to have been gathering information and tasking action. Fopr instance, they established some time back that 250 or so hospitals are likely to have the stuff.
Sky just confirmed that this is a major problem, not only in England, but also the devolved nations who are each responsible for their buildings and that it is not confined to schools
To be honest this looks like it is going to be a very big problem for governments going forward as the cost implications must be many billions
Oh yes. Though some of the schools etc should have been replaced anyway, so there's that.
Also - the private sector. Shopping centres and so on.
Certainly is news in the context of today's announcements together with 2 Welsh hospitals
A new definition of news!
As a matter of interest what did the Scottish government do about the report ?
You'll have to look it up - time for me to cook dinner.
But as it was a Scottish LD FOI, they knew already. They already seem to have been gathering information and tasking action. Fopr instance, they established some time back that 250 or so hospitals are likely to have the stuff.
Sky just confirmed that this is a major problem, not only in England, but also the devolved nations who are each responsible for their buildings and that it is not confined to schools
To be honest this looks like it is going to be a very big problem for governments going forward as the cost implications must be many billions
Oh yes. Though some of the schools etc should have been replaced anyway, so there's that.
Also - the private sector. Shopping centres and so on.
To be honest this looks every bit as bad as asbestos and potentially worse and as for the cost !!!!!
Martin Kühne, a German city councilor in Baden-Baden from the AfD party, has resigned after having been caught writing ethnic slurs and drawing swastikas on 2 cars belonging to Ukrainian refugees. https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1697230516284518697
A constitutional question (I was drunkenly discussing this last night). Suppose a huge swathe of Tory MPs defected to Labour and took the Labour whip, meaning that Sir Keir could now easily control the majority of the House. What would happen? Would Sir Keir simply be made PM in Rishi's place, or would a general election be forced?
Opposition calls a confidence vote. Rishi loses it. He goes to palace and recommends that Sir Keir should be appointed PM on the basis that the latter now commands a majority. Sir Keir is appointed PM.
No need for an election (although Rishi could call one if he acts before losing the confidence vote).
Though if he had any sense I think SKS would then be well advised to hold an election ASAP. Whatever happens it would have to happen before early 2025 and straight after he has taken over would seem to be the perfect time as I suspect it would all start to be downhill in terms of polling from that point.
There's be an election straight away.
NFW would the party accept that many defectors in what they see as winnable seats.
Though it's an utterly improbable scenario anyway, so sensible analysis is problematic.
The RAAC issues could be huge. It feels like nobody has really got to the bottom of the impact yet, and how many properties it affects.
This could affect (as well as schools) hospitals, homes, infrastructure…. Very worrying.
How many buildings are spontaneously collapsing per year?
Not sure why this is very worrying whereas something like ever increasing obesity is just accepted as normal?
Oh, RAAC collapses are a recognised problem already. It looks as if it's not so much the whole thing but chunks of it - literally so, a lot of RAAC elements are precast in a factory.
A little poking around on this website in general shows that there are cases where RAAC ceiling elements had to be replaced because they were failing - and here is a case where they were not caught in time.
"In 2017, they were asked to investigate an RAAC roof which had collapsed in a school. Luckily, there was no one in the classroom at the time of the collapse. Shear failure of RAAC planks
According to the reporter, the cause of the collapse was a shear failure due to inadequate bearing following some structural alterations made by the school. The failure was triggered by outfall gutters becoming blocked which allowed ponding of water on the roof to quickly build up during a storm.
The reporter carried out a full structural survey of the school and found numerous other signs of progressing defects similar to those highlighted in the SCOSS Alert. Roof leaks can lead to the deterioration of RAAC planks
In 2019, the reporter was asked to investigate the partial failure of an RAAC plank at another school. Temporary props were installed to prevent collapse of the RAAC planks. The reporter carried out a full structural survey of the school and again found numerous defects in the planks. These were mainly related to historic roof leaks which caused the reinforcement in the planks to corrode and thus lose bond with the concrete.
The reporter is now frequently encountering RAAC planks in school roofs and their experience suggests that these planks are becoming more defective with time. They have also found that many schools are not aware that their roofs are constructed using RAAC planks and are therefore not aware of the risks."
Just trying to understand it as an order of magnitude problem.
Obesity kills about 30,000 people per year and worsens the life quality of many millions and the productivity of the economy and health service.
If we did nothing to fix RAAC, and of course we will, how many deaths are expected per year? 10? 100?
An Aberfan type disaster is politically unconscionable.
1) Starlink is the LEO data satellite constellation being launched by SpaceX - 5000+ satellites launched). Currently using their Falcon 9 rocket. Which is the cheapest way of throwing stuff upstairs on Earth. They are hammering the competition. 2) Amazon want into the LEO data satellite constellation business. Their plan is called Kepler. Nothing launched yet. 3) Blue Origin is an operate company owned by Bezos - analogous to SpaceX. Nothing launched yet, but they are working on it. 4) So Bezos got Amazon to buy up all the non-SpaceX launch capacity around the world, to launch Kepler. Which costs more than SpaceX. He also got Amazon to contract with Blue Origin to buy future launches. At what price is rather obscure.
So other Amazon shareholders want the Bezos to swallow his pride and get cheaper launches from SpaceX until Blue Origin can compete on price.
Blue Origin is a legal firm with a small rocket company attached. It is very good at suing and shit at building rockets. Musk, for all his weirdness, does build and launch rockets that work.
That is ridiculously untrue; at least, let's wait a couple of years to see how New Glenn works out.
And if you're talking about delays, I'd also point out that SH/SS are *years* late.
Is it? They've existed for over a decade now. They haven't launched anything into orbit or done anything that wasn't bettered by an X15. Musk launched. That Neutron guy launched. The world is filling up with hungry entrepreneurs with a clean-sheet factory and photocopies of. a Falcon. Even the French upgraded Ariane.
Yes, it is.
They decided to take a massive step in going from a suborbital rocket to one that is much bigger than a Falcon 9 (though nowhere near as big as SH/SS). No-one has ever attempted that before. Their BE-4 engines will soon launch on Vulcan-Centaur (as soon as ULA sort out the Centaur's tanks...), and their factory *is* building hardware: https://www.space.com/blue-origin-new-glenn-rocket-factory-photo
I wish both SpaceX and BO well; they're both awesome companies.
Certainly is news in the context of today's announcements together with 2 Welsh hospitals
A new definition of news!
As a matter of interest what did the Scottish government do about the report ?
You'll have to look it up - time for me to cook dinner.
But as it was a Scottish LD FOI, they knew already. They already seem to have been gathering information and tasking action. Fopr instance, they established some time back that 250 or so hospitals are likely to have the stuff.
Sky just confirmed that this is a major problem, not only in England, but also the devolved nations who are each responsible for their buildings and that it is not confined to schools
To be honest this looks like it is going to be a very big problem for governments going forward as the cost implications must be many billions
Oh yes. Though some of the schools etc should have been replaced anyway, so there's that.
Also - the private sector. Shopping centres and so on.
To be honest this looks every bit as bad as asbestos and potentially worse and as for the cost !!!!!
Raising another issue. How many of these buildings have asbestos?
A constitutional question (I was drunkenly discussing this last night). Suppose a huge swathe of Tory MPs defected to Labour and took the Labour whip, meaning that Sir Keir could now easily control the majority of the House. What would happen? Would Sir Keir simply be made PM in Rishi's place, or would a general election be forced?
Where’s TSE to teach you a lesson on the Lascelles principles?
But in my scenario the PM (Rishi) doesn't actually ask for parliament to be dissolved. So I was wondering how that deadlock could be resolved. Surely Sir Keir can't just march into Rishi's office and tell him to sling his hook. But Richard Nabavi has now explained: an opposition vote of confidence would set matters straight.
The Queen appoints the majority commander to form a Government. Rishi's resignation is unnecessary and his cooperation is not required.
The *King* (unless you know something I done - all’s fair in love and war) wouldn’t do that without a confidence vote as proof
The RAAC issues could be huge. It feels like nobody has really got to the bottom of the impact yet, and how many properties it affects.
This could affect (as well as schools) hospitals, homes, infrastructure…. Very worrying.
How many buildings are spontaneously collapsing per year?
Not sure why this is very worrying whereas something like ever increasing obesity is just accepted as normal?
Oh, RAAC collapses are a recognised problem already. It looks as if it's not so much the whole thing but chunks of it - literally so, a lot of RAAC elements are precast in a factory.
A little poking around on this website in general shows that there are cases where RAAC ceiling elements had to be replaced because they were failing - and here is a case where they were not caught in time.
"In 2017, they were asked to investigate an RAAC roof which had collapsed in a school. Luckily, there was no one in the classroom at the time of the collapse. Shear failure of RAAC planks
According to the reporter, the cause of the collapse was a shear failure due to inadequate bearing following some structural alterations made by the school. The failure was triggered by outfall gutters becoming blocked which allowed ponding of water on the roof to quickly build up during a storm.
The reporter carried out a full structural survey of the school and found numerous other signs of progressing defects similar to those highlighted in the SCOSS Alert. Roof leaks can lead to the deterioration of RAAC planks
In 2019, the reporter was asked to investigate the partial failure of an RAAC plank at another school. Temporary props were installed to prevent collapse of the RAAC planks. The reporter carried out a full structural survey of the school and again found numerous defects in the planks. These were mainly related to historic roof leaks which caused the reinforcement in the planks to corrode and thus lose bond with the concrete.
The reporter is now frequently encountering RAAC planks in school roofs and their experience suggests that these planks are becoming more defective with time. They have also found that many schools are not aware that their roofs are constructed using RAAC planks and are therefore not aware of the risks."
Just trying to understand it as an order of magnitude problem.
Obesity kills about 30,000 people per year and worsens the life quality of many millions and the productivity of the economy and health service.
If we did nothing to fix RAAC, and of course we will, how many deaths are expected per year? 10? 100?
Sure, but - as I read many years ago in Gordon's The Science of Strong Materials - there are many ways to fail.
Once one ceiling slab element in a school starts failing, no way can you rely on the others: ergo no way can you send the little dears - and, just as importantly, Sir and Miss and the support staff - under those ceilings. It's flat out illegal under HASAWA, not to mention against insurers' conditions (just as important for LAs).
And that would be triggered by a failure of the same slab (make, design) elsewhere.
You don't have to squash any childrenm to have a comprehensive failure mode in operation across multiple sites.
And that is before any moral panic element kicks in.
"The Science of Strong Materials" is superb. I still pick it up and read bits occasionally. As is his "Structures, or why things don't fall down"
The bigger problem is that the unexpected failure casts doubt on their method for analysing risk. So they can't tell what is about to fail or not.
That's a general problem with concrete though: it can fail suddenly in a very brittle manner. See the Miami condo collapse I mentioned earlier. Steel *tends* to give you much more warning of failure, if you look. Steel is also much easier to patch and repair.
Certainly is news in the context of today's announcements together with 2 Welsh hospitals
A new definition of news!
As a matter of interest what did the Scottish government do about the report ?
You'll have to look it up - time for me to cook dinner.
But as it was a Scottish LD FOI, they knew already. They already seem to have been gathering information and tasking action. Fopr instance, they established some time back that 250 or so hospitals are likely to have the stuff.
Sky just confirmed that this is a major problem, not only in England, but also the devolved nations who are each responsible for their buildings and that it is not confined to schools
To be honest this looks like it is going to be a very big problem for governments going forward as the cost implications must be many billions
Oh yes. Though some of the schools etc should have been replaced anyway, so there's that.
Also - the private sector. Shopping centres and so on.
To be honest this looks every bit as bad as asbestos and potentially worse and as for the cost !!!!!
Raising another issue. How many of these buildings have asbestos?
I have no idea but in view of the age range circa 1950s to 1996 possibly very many
The RAAC issues could be huge. It feels like nobody has really got to the bottom of the impact yet, and how many properties it affects.
This could affect (as well as schools) hospitals, homes, infrastructure…. Very worrying.
How many buildings are spontaneously collapsing per year?
Not sure why this is very worrying whereas something like ever increasing obesity is just accepted as normal?
Oh, RAAC collapses are a recognised problem already. It looks as if it's not so much the whole thing but chunks of it - literally so, a lot of RAAC elements are precast in a factory.
A little poking around on this website in general shows that there are cases where RAAC ceiling elements had to be replaced because they were failing - and here is a case where they were not caught in time.
"In 2017, they were asked to investigate an RAAC roof which had collapsed in a school. Luckily, there was no one in the classroom at the time of the collapse. Shear failure of RAAC planks
According to the reporter, the cause of the collapse was a shear failure due to inadequate bearing following some structural alterations made by the school. The failure was triggered by outfall gutters becoming blocked which allowed ponding of water on the roof to quickly build up during a storm.
The reporter carried out a full structural survey of the school and found numerous other signs of progressing defects similar to those highlighted in the SCOSS Alert. Roof leaks can lead to the deterioration of RAAC planks
In 2019, the reporter was asked to investigate the partial failure of an RAAC plank at another school. Temporary props were installed to prevent collapse of the RAAC planks. The reporter carried out a full structural survey of the school and again found numerous defects in the planks. These were mainly related to historic roof leaks which caused the reinforcement in the planks to corrode and thus lose bond with the concrete.
The reporter is now frequently encountering RAAC planks in school roofs and their experience suggests that these planks are becoming more defective with time. They have also found that many schools are not aware that their roofs are constructed using RAAC planks and are therefore not aware of the risks."
Just trying to understand it as an order of magnitude problem.
Obesity kills about 30,000 people per year and worsens the life quality of many millions and the productivity of the economy and health service.
If we did nothing to fix RAAC, and of course we will, how many deaths are expected per year? 10? 100?
An Aberfan type disaster is politically unconscionable.
Even with the added risk, building safety in the UK will be far higher than most of the world. They manage to run their schools and so can we.
Ironically I suspect if SKS had been Labour leader during Brexit he may well have become PM of a grand coalition
Ironically if it had been May vs SKS in 2017, she might have won her majority.
I highly doubt it. SKS will be a much better PM than TM ever was.
She was genuinely popular before that election campaign, and Corbyn was able to capture the public imagination at the time in a way that I don't think SKS is capable of.
Burnham had he beaten Corbyn to the Labour leadership in 2015 might even have beaten May and won most seats in 2017.
By electing Corbyn Labour members got a socialist purist they loved but probably at the cost of an extra 7 years in opposition
The RAAC issues could be huge. It feels like nobody has really got to the bottom of the impact yet, and how many properties it affects.
This could affect (as well as schools) hospitals, homes, infrastructure…. Very worrying.
How many buildings are spontaneously collapsing per year?
Not sure why this is very worrying whereas something like ever increasing obesity is just accepted as normal?
Oh, RAAC collapses are a recognised problem already. It looks as if it's not so much the whole thing but chunks of it - literally so, a lot of RAAC elements are precast in a factory.
A little poking around on this website in general shows that there are cases where RAAC ceiling elements had to be replaced because they were failing - and here is a case where they were not caught in time.
"In 2017, they were asked to investigate an RAAC roof which had collapsed in a school. Luckily, there was no one in the classroom at the time of the collapse. Shear failure of RAAC planks
According to the reporter, the cause of the collapse was a shear failure due to inadequate bearing following some structural alterations made by the school. The failure was triggered by outfall gutters becoming blocked which allowed ponding of water on the roof to quickly build up during a storm.
The reporter carried out a full structural survey of the school and found numerous other signs of progressing defects similar to those highlighted in the SCOSS Alert. Roof leaks can lead to the deterioration of RAAC planks
In 2019, the reporter was asked to investigate the partial failure of an RAAC plank at another school. Temporary props were installed to prevent collapse of the RAAC planks. The reporter carried out a full structural survey of the school and again found numerous defects in the planks. These were mainly related to historic roof leaks which caused the reinforcement in the planks to corrode and thus lose bond with the concrete.
The reporter is now frequently encountering RAAC planks in school roofs and their experience suggests that these planks are becoming more defective with time. They have also found that many schools are not aware that their roofs are constructed using RAAC planks and are therefore not aware of the risks."
Just trying to understand it as an order of magnitude problem.
Obesity kills about 30,000 people per year and worsens the life quality of many millions and the productivity of the economy and health service.
If we did nothing to fix RAAC, and of course we will, how many deaths are expected per year? 10? 100?
An Aberfan type disaster is politically unconscionable.
Aberfan is seared into our memory as 8 days later on the 29th October 1966, our eldest son was born and as we held him so tight we could only think how fortunate we were when so many parents were grieving here in Wales for their lost children
The RAAC issues could be huge. It feels like nobody has really got to the bottom of the impact yet, and how many properties it affects.
This could affect (as well as schools) hospitals, homes, infrastructure…. Very worrying.
How many buildings are spontaneously collapsing per year?
Not sure why this is very worrying whereas something like ever increasing obesity is just accepted as normal?
Oh, RAAC collapses are a recognised problem already. It looks as if it's not so much the whole thing but chunks of it - literally so, a lot of RAAC elements are precast in a factory.
A little poking around on this website in general shows that there are cases where RAAC ceiling elements had to be replaced because they were failing - and here is a case where they were not caught in time.
"In 2017, they were asked to investigate an RAAC roof which had collapsed in a school. Luckily, there was no one in the classroom at the time of the collapse. Shear failure of RAAC planks
According to the reporter, the cause of the collapse was a shear failure due to inadequate bearing following some structural alterations made by the school. The failure was triggered by outfall gutters becoming blocked which allowed ponding of water on the roof to quickly build up during a storm.
The reporter carried out a full structural survey of the school and found numerous other signs of progressing defects similar to those highlighted in the SCOSS Alert. Roof leaks can lead to the deterioration of RAAC planks
In 2019, the reporter was asked to investigate the partial failure of an RAAC plank at another school. Temporary props were installed to prevent collapse of the RAAC planks. The reporter carried out a full structural survey of the school and again found numerous defects in the planks. These were mainly related to historic roof leaks which caused the reinforcement in the planks to corrode and thus lose bond with the concrete.
The reporter is now frequently encountering RAAC planks in school roofs and their experience suggests that these planks are becoming more defective with time. They have also found that many schools are not aware that their roofs are constructed using RAAC planks and are therefore not aware of the risks."
Just trying to understand it as an order of magnitude problem.
Obesity kills about 30,000 people per year and worsens the life quality of many millions and the productivity of the economy and health service.
If we did nothing to fix RAAC, and of course we will, how many deaths are expected per year? 10? 100?
An Aberfan type disaster is politically unconscionable.
The Grenfell fire had no political impact. at all.
The RAAC issues could be huge. It feels like nobody has really got to the bottom of the impact yet, and how many properties it affects.
This could affect (as well as schools) hospitals, homes, infrastructure…. Very worrying.
How many buildings are spontaneously collapsing per year?
Not sure why this is very worrying whereas something like ever increasing obesity is just accepted as normal?
Oh, RAAC collapses are a recognised problem already. It looks as if it's not so much the whole thing but chunks of it - literally so, a lot of RAAC elements are precast in a factory.
A little poking around on this website in general shows that there are cases where RAAC ceiling elements had to be replaced because they were failing - and here is a case where they were not caught in time.
"In 2017, they were asked to investigate an RAAC roof which had collapsed in a school. Luckily, there was no one in the classroom at the time of the collapse. Shear failure of RAAC planks
According to the reporter, the cause of the collapse was a shear failure due to inadequate bearing following some structural alterations made by the school. The failure was triggered by outfall gutters becoming blocked which allowed ponding of water on the roof to quickly build up during a storm.
The reporter carried out a full structural survey of the school and found numerous other signs of progressing defects similar to those highlighted in the SCOSS Alert. Roof leaks can lead to the deterioration of RAAC planks
In 2019, the reporter was asked to investigate the partial failure of an RAAC plank at another school. Temporary props were installed to prevent collapse of the RAAC planks. The reporter carried out a full structural survey of the school and again found numerous defects in the planks. These were mainly related to historic roof leaks which caused the reinforcement in the planks to corrode and thus lose bond with the concrete.
The reporter is now frequently encountering RAAC planks in school roofs and their experience suggests that these planks are becoming more defective with time. They have also found that many schools are not aware that their roofs are constructed using RAAC planks and are therefore not aware of the risks."
Just trying to understand it as an order of magnitude problem.
Obesity kills about 30,000 people per year and worsens the life quality of many millions and the productivity of the economy and health service.
If we did nothing to fix RAAC, and of course we will, how many deaths are expected per year? 10? 100?
An Aberfan type disaster is politically unconscionable.
Even with the added risk, building safety in the UK will be far higher than most of the world. They manage to run their schools and so can we.
You are suggesting something that is politically impossible now the risk has been established
Cue a thousand Remoaner think pieces about Germany, Italy and France as the “sick men of Europe”, as brave Brexit Britain forges ahead
Or not. Of course.
Just think of all the absolute BS published in the Economist, FT, Guardian and so on over the last few years, not to mention all the nonsense from think tanks and "charities" and regurgitated by leftie politicians and their simple-minded followers. Incredible really.
They need to do what the BoE has done and get a bunch of outsiders in to come and troubleshoot why everything is so fucked up. Once again, it turns out that had the correct data been given earlier the BoE would have had significant room to raise rates faster and earlier to bring inflation down much earlier.
These fuck ups have got real world consequences despite people suggesting they haven't and it's all just nonsense statistics.
It's surely close to sacking territory for the ONS brainboxes, they've managed to miss something akin to a year of economic growth.
You measure a country of 68 million people with tens of airfields and possibly hundreds of ports, all of whom are trying their level best to keep their affairs secret, and you want it to the nearest percentage decimal point. You're lucky they didn't say "I'm an orange I'm an orange" before standing on the desk and stripping off. 😀
It is also worth remembering that every country regularly changes GDP numbers, and often by quite large amounts.
Ireland made a c. 15% change a few years ago, because they'd cumulatively mismeasured the impact of FDI.
One interesting aspect of this revision is that clearly Lockdown and WFH wasn't as bad for the economy as was thought.
(Stands back to await flying brickbats).
Unless the following years are revised down, then GDP seems to have been missed subsequent years too.
'Amateur mushroom pickers have been urged to avoid foraging books sold on Amazon that appear to have been written by artificial intelligence chatbots. [...]
Leon Frey, a foraging guide and field mycologist at Cornwall-based Family Foraging Kitchen, which organises foraging field trips, said the samples he had seen contained serious flaws such as referring to “smell and taste” as an identifying feature. “This seems to encourage tasting as a method of identification. This should absolutely not be the case,” he said. One book refers to the Lion’s Mane fungus, which is edible, but is a protected species in the UK and should not be picked.'
Martin Kühne, a German city councilor in Baden-Baden from the AfD party, has resigned after having been caught writing ethnic slurs and drawing swastikas on 2 cars belonging to Ukrainian refugees. https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1697230516284518697
On the other hand at least AfD seems to have decided Nazis are bad....
CCTV monitoring all public spaces: 55% Compulsory ID cards: 54% National fingerprint database: 50% (net +10) National DNA database: 45% (net +4) Communications companies having to retain everyone's data: 16%"
"Tory voters are more likely to support security measures than Lab voters
Compulsory ID cards Con: 65% Lab: 42%
CCTV monitoring all public spaces Con: 65% Lab: 48%
Scary isn't it. The more I think about it, the more I think there may be something weird about the British. Are any other countries so keen to build their own prison camp?
It is a bit like Brexit votes really being about levelling up, and we need to take a step back. What these answers are saying is people do not feel safe, so what they actually want is safety rather than any of these solutions in particular. If I were the Home Secretary, I might be slightly concerned at low levels of support for the two and a half things listed which are already in place.
Ironically I suspect if SKS had been Labour leader during Brexit he may well have become PM of a grand coalition
Ironically if it had been May vs SKS in 2017, she might have won her majority.
I highly doubt it. SKS will be a much better PM than TM ever was.
She was genuinely popular before that election campaign, and Corbyn was able to capture the public imagination at the time in a way that I don't think SKS is capable of.
Burnham had he beaten Corbyn to the Labour leadership in 2015 might even have beaten May and won most seats in 2017.
By electing Corbyn Labour members got a socialist purist they loved but probably at the cost of an extra 7 years in opposition
Well maybe, or maybe there would not have been the groundswell of enthusiasm, crowds would not have been singing Oh Andy Burnham and Labour would have done worse in 2017. Who can tell?
Sudden sharp move to Labour for mid-Beds on Betfair (in from 4 to 2.74 at the time of writing) and out for the Lib Dems (from 1.9 to 2.26) - the numbers have been moving by a tenth of a % up to now. Tories also in from 3.6 to 3.3. A poll coming? The shift has left big holes in the market - lots of scope for trading bets (e.g. LDs are buy at 2.26, sell at 2.9).
Or a school shutting?
False alarm - the figures are back to 3.4/3.35/2.16
The RAAC issues could be huge. It feels like nobody has really got to the bottom of the impact yet, and how many properties it affects.
This could affect (as well as schools) hospitals, homes, infrastructure…. Very worrying.
How many buildings are spontaneously collapsing per year?
Not sure why this is very worrying whereas something like ever increasing obesity is just accepted as normal?
Oh, RAAC collapses are a recognised problem already. It looks as if it's not so much the whole thing but chunks of it - literally so, a lot of RAAC elements are precast in a factory.
A little poking around on this website in general shows that there are cases where RAAC ceiling elements had to be replaced because they were failing - and here is a case where they were not caught in time.
"In 2017, they were asked to investigate an RAAC roof which had collapsed in a school. Luckily, there was no one in the classroom at the time of the collapse. Shear failure of RAAC planks
According to the reporter, the cause of the collapse was a shear failure due to inadequate bearing following some structural alterations made by the school. The failure was triggered by outfall gutters becoming blocked which allowed ponding of water on the roof to quickly build up during a storm.
The reporter carried out a full structural survey of the school and found numerous other signs of progressing defects similar to those highlighted in the SCOSS Alert. Roof leaks can lead to the deterioration of RAAC planks
In 2019, the reporter was asked to investigate the partial failure of an RAAC plank at another school. Temporary props were installed to prevent collapse of the RAAC planks. The reporter carried out a full structural survey of the school and again found numerous defects in the planks. These were mainly related to historic roof leaks which caused the reinforcement in the planks to corrode and thus lose bond with the concrete.
The reporter is now frequently encountering RAAC planks in school roofs and their experience suggests that these planks are becoming more defective with time. They have also found that many schools are not aware that their roofs are constructed using RAAC planks and are therefore not aware of the risks."
Just trying to understand it as an order of magnitude problem.
Obesity kills about 30,000 people per year and worsens the life quality of many millions and the productivity of the economy and health service.
If we did nothing to fix RAAC, and of course we will, how many deaths are expected per year? 10? 100?
Sure, but - as I read many years ago in Gordon's The Science of Strong Materials - there are many ways to fail.
Once one ceiling slab element in a school starts failing, no way can you rely on the others: ergo no way can you send the little dears - and, just as importantly, Sir and Miss and the support staff - under those ceilings. It's flat out illegal under HASAWA, not to mention against insurers' conditions (just as important for LAs).
And that would be triggered by a failure of the same slab (make, design) elsewhere.
You don't have to squash any childrenm to have a comprehensive failure mode in operation across multiple sites.
And that is before any moral panic element kicks in.
"The Science of Strong Materials" is superb. I still pick it up and read bits occasionally. As is his "Structures, or why things don't fall down"
The bigger problem is that the unexpected failure casts doubt on their method for analysing risk. So they can't tell what is about to fail or not.
That's a general problem with concrete though: it can fail suddenly in a very brittle manner. See the Miami condo collapse I mentioned earlier. Steel *tends* to give you much more warning of failure, if you look. Steel is also much easier to patch and repair.
The Maimi condo was conventional concrete that was badly designed, badly poured, then mistreated in a number of ways over the years until established modelling methodology says that it failing was no big surprise. How it was allowed to get to that state is the problem.
The RAAC problem we have, is that the model seems to be wrong. At least apparently - hopefully it will turn out that something else added to the state and caused the collapse. Otherwise we don't have a way of assessing the issue.
Ironically I suspect if SKS had been Labour leader during Brexit he may well have become PM of a grand coalition
Ironically if it had been May vs SKS in 2017, she might have won her majority.
I highly doubt it. SKS will be a much better PM than TM ever was.
She was genuinely popular before that election campaign, and Corbyn was able to capture the public imagination at the time in a way that I don't think SKS is capable of.
And Corbyn no qualms about saying Labour would take us out of the single market ending free movement of people.
Might have been tougher for Starmer to do that.
Most importantly, May would have been *a lot* more careful about what policies she was putting forward.
She put forward a right wing wet dream bucket list on the assumption there was no way on God's green Earth that anyone would vote for the Jezaster.
She was completely wrong.
She probably wouldn't have called an election.
But was her manifesto really that right wing? She tried to do something about adult social care. You can argue about whether it was the right thing to do or not, but her opponents (especially the **** in Westmorland and Lonsdale) characterised it as the Tories stealing your house, which was incredibly unfair.
1) Starlink is the LEO data satellite constellation being launched by SpaceX - 5000+ satellites launched). Currently using their Falcon 9 rocket. Which is the cheapest way of throwing stuff upstairs on Earth. They are hammering the competition. 2) Amazon want into the LEO data satellite constellation business. Their plan is called Kepler. Nothing launched yet. 3) Blue Origin is an operate company owned by Bezos - analogous to SpaceX. Nothing launched yet, but they are working on it. 4) So Bezos got Amazon to buy up all the non-SpaceX launch capacity around the world, to launch Kepler. Which costs more than SpaceX. He also got Amazon to contract with Blue Origin to buy future launches. At what price is rather obscure.
So other Amazon shareholders want the Bezos to swallow his pride and get cheaper launches from SpaceX until Blue Origin can compete on price.
Blue Origin is a legal firm with a small rocket company attached. It is very good at suing and shit at building rockets. Musk, for all his weirdness, does build and launch rockets that work.
To be fair, they have successfully launched a few tourists into space.
The RAAC issues could be huge. It feels like nobody has really got to the bottom of the impact yet, and how many properties it affects.
This could affect (as well as schools) hospitals, homes, infrastructure…. Very worrying.
How many buildings are spontaneously collapsing per year?
Not sure why this is very worrying whereas something like ever increasing obesity is just accepted as normal?
Oh, RAAC collapses are a recognised problem already. It looks as if it's not so much the whole thing but chunks of it - literally so, a lot of RAAC elements are precast in a factory.
A little poking around on this website in general shows that there are cases where RAAC ceiling elements had to be replaced because they were failing - and here is a case where they were not caught in time.
"In 2017, they were asked to investigate an RAAC roof which had collapsed in a school. Luckily, there was no one in the classroom at the time of the collapse. Shear failure of RAAC planks
According to the reporter, the cause of the collapse was a shear failure due to inadequate bearing following some structural alterations made by the school. The failure was triggered by outfall gutters becoming blocked which allowed ponding of water on the roof to quickly build up during a storm.
The reporter carried out a full structural survey of the school and found numerous other signs of progressing defects similar to those highlighted in the SCOSS Alert. Roof leaks can lead to the deterioration of RAAC planks
In 2019, the reporter was asked to investigate the partial failure of an RAAC plank at another school. Temporary props were installed to prevent collapse of the RAAC planks. The reporter carried out a full structural survey of the school and again found numerous defects in the planks. These were mainly related to historic roof leaks which caused the reinforcement in the planks to corrode and thus lose bond with the concrete.
The reporter is now frequently encountering RAAC planks in school roofs and their experience suggests that these planks are becoming more defective with time. They have also found that many schools are not aware that their roofs are constructed using RAAC planks and are therefore not aware of the risks."
Just trying to understand it as an order of magnitude problem.
Obesity kills about 30,000 people per year and worsens the life quality of many millions and the productivity of the economy and health service.
If we did nothing to fix RAAC, and of course we will, how many deaths are expected per year? 10? 100?
Sure, but - as I read many years ago in Gordon's The Science of Strong Materials - there are many ways to fail.
Once one ceiling slab element in a school starts failing, no way can you rely on the others: ergo no way can you send the little dears - and, just as importantly, Sir and Miss and the support staff - under those ceilings. It's flat out illegal under HASAWA, not to mention against insurers' conditions (just as important for LAs).
And that would be triggered by a failure of the same slab (make, design) elsewhere.
You don't have to squash any childrenm to have a comprehensive failure mode in operation across multiple sites.
And that is before any moral panic element kicks in.
"The Science of Strong Materials" is superb. I still pick it up and read bits occasionally. As is his "Structures, or why things don't fall down"
The bigger problem is that the unexpected failure casts doubt on their method for analysing risk. So they can't tell what is about to fail or not.
That's a general problem with concrete though: it can fail suddenly in a very brittle manner. See the Miami condo collapse I mentioned earlier. Steel *tends* to give you much more warning of failure, if you look. Steel is also much easier to patch and repair.
The Maimi condo was conventional concrete that was badly designed, badly poured, then mistreated in a number of ways over the years until established modelling methodology says that it failing was no big surprise. How it was allowed to get to that state is the problem.
The RAAC problem we have, is that the model seems to be wrong. At least apparently - hopefully it will turn out that something else added to the state and caused the collapse. Otherwise we don't have a way of assessing the issue.
"... that the model seems to be wrong."
Is that true? Apparently the RAAC panels were generally designed to have a 30-year life. If the structures failing are over that in age, then the model might just be correct.
IMV (from the little we know) is that people did not realise / care that a material their building was partially built from was essentially life-expired, or coming to the end of its life.
Ironically I suspect if SKS had been Labour leader during Brexit he may well have become PM of a grand coalition
Ironically if it had been May vs SKS in 2017, she might have won her majority.
I highly doubt it. SKS will be a much better PM than TM ever was.
She was genuinely popular before that election campaign, and Corbyn was able to capture the public imagination at the time in a way that I don't think SKS is capable of.
Burnham had he beaten Corbyn to the Labour leadership in 2015 might even have beaten May and won most seats in 2017.
By electing Corbyn Labour members got a socialist purist they loved but probably at the cost of an extra 7 years in opposition
Well maybe, or maybe there would not have been the groundswell of enthusiasm, crowds would not have been singing Oh Andy Burnham and Labour would have done worse in 2017. Who can tell?
Labour did well in 2017 because Corbyn was unknown. Same as SKS
Cue a thousand Remoaner think pieces about Germany, Italy and France as the “sick men of Europe”, as brave Brexit Britain forges ahead
Or not. Of course.
Just think of all the absolute BS published in the Economist, FT, Guardian and so on over the last few years, not to mention all the nonsense from think tanks and "charities" and regurgitated by leftie politicians and their simple-minded followers. Incredible really.
They need to do what the BoE has done and get a bunch of outsiders in to come and troubleshoot why everything is so fucked up. Once again, it turns out that had the correct data been given earlier the BoE would have had significant room to raise rates faster and earlier to bring inflation down much earlier.
These fuck ups have got real world consequences despite people suggesting they haven't and it's all just nonsense statistics.
It's surely close to sacking territory for the ONS brainboxes, they've managed to miss something akin to a year of economic growth.
You measure a country of 68 million people with tens of airfields and possibly hundreds of ports, all of whom are trying their level best to keep their affairs secret, and you want it to the nearest percentage decimal point. You're lucky they didn't say "I'm an orange I'm an orange" before standing on the desk and stripping off. 😀
It is also worth remembering that every country regularly changes GDP numbers, and often by quite large amounts.
Ireland made a c. 15% change a few years ago, because they'd cumulatively mismeasured the impact of FDI.
About 15 years ago Italy added 25% to GDP to include their estimate of the “informal economy” (crime, prostitution and illegal gambling)
Cue a thousand Remoaner think pieces about Germany, Italy and France as the “sick men of Europe”, as brave Brexit Britain forges ahead
Or not. Of course.
Just think of all the absolute BS published in the Economist, FT, Guardian and so on over the last few years, not to mention all the nonsense from think tanks and "charities" and regurgitated by leftie politicians and their simple-minded followers. Incredible really.
They need to do what the BoE has done and get a bunch of outsiders in to come and troubleshoot why everything is so fucked up. Once again, it turns out that had the correct data been given earlier the BoE would have had significant room to raise rates faster and earlier to bring inflation down much earlier.
These fuck ups have got real world consequences despite people suggesting they haven't and it's all just nonsense statistics.
It's surely close to sacking territory for the ONS brainboxes, they've managed to miss something akin to a year of economic growth.
You measure a country of 68 million people with tens of airfields and possibly hundreds of ports, all of whom are trying their level best to keep their affairs secret, and you want it to the nearest percentage decimal point. You're lucky they didn't say "I'm an orange I'm an orange" before standing on the desk and stripping off. 😀
It is also worth remembering that every country regularly changes GDP numbers, and often by quite large amounts.
Ireland made a c. 15% change a few years ago, because they'd cumulatively mismeasured the impact of FDI.
About 15 years ago Italy added 25% to GDP to include their estimate of the “informal economy” (crime, prostitution and illegal gambling)
I think was more like 30 years ago! You and I are getting old
Certainly is news in the context of today's announcements together with 2 Welsh hospitals
A new definition of news!
As a matter of interest what did the Scottish government do about the report ?
You'll have to look it up - time for me to cook dinner.
But as it was a Scottish LD FOI, they knew already. They already seem to have been gathering information and tasking action. Fopr instance, they established some time back that 250 or so hospitals are likely to have the stuff.
Sky just confirmed that this is a major problem, not only in England, but also the devolved nations who are each responsible for their buildings and that it is not confined to schools
To be honest this looks like it is going to be a very big problem for governments going forward as the cost implications must be many billions
Oh yes. Though some of the schools etc should have been replaced anyway, so there's that.
Also - the private sector. Shopping centres and so on.
To be honest this looks every bit as bad as asbestos and potentially worse and as for the cost !!!!!
Raising another issue. How many of these buildings have asbestos?
I have no idea but in view of the age range circa 1950s to 1996 possibly very many
The legal requirements for asbestos surveys and registers are far more onerous, though, so much more likely it's known about if it hasn't already been removed.
Note the estimate for schools possibly affected has risen from 100 to 1000 this morning.
Cue a thousand Remoaner think pieces about Germany, Italy and France as the “sick men of Europe”, as brave Brexit Britain forges ahead
Or not. Of course.
Just think of all the absolute BS published in the Economist, FT, Guardian and so on over the last few years, not to mention all the nonsense from think tanks and "charities" and regurgitated by leftie politicians and their simple-minded followers. Incredible really.
They need to do what the BoE has done and get a bunch of outsiders in to come and troubleshoot why everything is so fucked up. Once again, it turns out that had the correct data been given earlier the BoE would have had significant room to raise rates faster and earlier to bring inflation down much earlier.
These fuck ups have got real world consequences despite people suggesting they haven't and it's all just nonsense statistics.
It's surely close to sacking territory for the ONS brainboxes, they've managed to miss something akin to a year of economic growth.
You measure a country of 68 million people with tens of airfields and possibly hundreds of ports, all of whom are trying their level best to keep their affairs secret, and you want it to the nearest percentage decimal point. You're lucky they didn't say "I'm an orange I'm an orange" before standing on the desk and stripping off. 😀
It is also worth remembering that every country regularly changes GDP numbers, and often by quite large amounts.
Ireland made a c. 15% change a few years ago, because they'd cumulatively mismeasured the impact of FDI.
About 15 years ago Italy added 25% to GDP to include their estimate of the “informal economy” (crime, prostitution and illegal gambling)
I think was more like 30 years ago! You and I are getting old
Really?! 😳
Remind me to give you the What3Words reference for fountain.of.youth at some point
Cue a thousand Remoaner think pieces about Germany, Italy and France as the “sick men of Europe”, as brave Brexit Britain forges ahead
Or not. Of course.
Just think of all the absolute BS published in the Economist, FT, Guardian and so on over the last few years, not to mention all the nonsense from think tanks and "charities" and regurgitated by leftie politicians and their simple-minded followers. Incredible really.
They need to do what the BoE has done and get a bunch of outsiders in to come and troubleshoot why everything is so fucked up. Once again, it turns out that had the correct data been given earlier the BoE would have had significant room to raise rates faster and earlier to bring inflation down much earlier.
These fuck ups have got real world consequences despite people suggesting they haven't and it's all just nonsense statistics.
It's surely close to sacking territory for the ONS brainboxes, they've managed to miss something akin to a year of economic growth.
You measure a country of 68 million people with tens of airfields and possibly hundreds of ports, all of whom are trying their level best to keep their affairs secret, and you want it to the nearest percentage decimal point. You're lucky they didn't say "I'm an orange I'm an orange" before standing on the desk and stripping off. 😀
It is also worth remembering that every country regularly changes GDP numbers, and often by quite large amounts.
Ireland made a c. 15% change a few years ago, because they'd cumulatively mismeasured the impact of FDI.
About 15 years ago Italy added 25% to GDP to include their estimate of the “informal economy” (crime, prostitution and illegal gambling)
I think was more like 30 years ago! You and I are getting old
Thatcher's election victory was closer to WW2 than to today.
This is not unexpected, but it ought to be astonishing that a large, key swing state in the US, where billions are spent on political organisation, could be in this condition.
At least they've realised now, and not next September.
Pennsylvania is key for Biden. Democrats there say the party is in shambles.
There was just one small problem: Election Day is Nov. 7.
With a little more than a year to go until the 2024 election, the state Democratic Party is reeling from financial problems and a lack of trust across the party, according to interviews with 20 Democratic officials and operatives throughout Pennsylvania. They include elected officials, county chairs, state committee members, former state party employees and strategists.
“It’s amateur hour,” said a state committee member who, like other Democrats, was granted anonymity to speak frankly about a sensitive matter. “It’s a fucking disaster,” said a former state party staffer.
The state party underwent a round of layoffs in July, which have not been reported until now. One of its political action committees only had $7,500 in the bank as of early June, according to its most recent campaign finance filings. And questions are mounting among Democrats in the state about the competency of its leadership, including state party chair Sharif Street...
Certainly is news in the context of today's announcements together with 2 Welsh hospitals
A new definition of news!
As a matter of interest what did the Scottish government do about the report ?
You'll have to look it up - time for me to cook dinner.
But as it was a Scottish LD FOI, they knew already. They already seem to have been gathering information and tasking action. Fopr instance, they established some time back that 250 or so hospitals are likely to have the stuff.
Sky just confirmed that this is a major problem, not only in England, but also the devolved nations who are each responsible for their buildings and that it is not confined to schools
To be honest this looks like it is going to be a very big problem for governments going forward as the cost implications must be many billions
Oh yes. Though some of the schools etc should have been replaced anyway, so there's that.
Also - the private sector. Shopping centres and so on.
To be honest this looks every bit as bad as asbestos and potentially worse and as for the cost !!!!!
Raising another issue. How many of these buildings have asbestos?
I have no idea but in view of the age range circa 1950s to 1996 possibly very many
The legal requirements for asbestos surveys and registers are far more onerous, though, so much more likely it's known about if it hasn't already been removed.
Note the estimate for schools possibly affected has risen from 100 to 1000 this morning.
It seems like it is a developing crisis across England and the devolved nations
A constitutional question (I was drunkenly discussing this last night). Suppose a huge swathe of Tory MPs defected to Labour and took the Labour whip, meaning that Sir Keir could now easily control the majority of the House. What would happen? Would Sir Keir simply be made PM in Rishi's place, or would a general election be forced?
Where’s TSE to teach you a lesson on the Lascelles principles?
But in my scenario the PM (Rishi) doesn't actually ask for parliament to be dissolved. So I was wondering how that deadlock could be resolved. Surely Sir Keir can't just march into Rishi's office and tell him to sling his hook. But Richard Nabavi has now explained: an opposition vote of confidence would set matters straight.
The Queen appoints the majority commander to form a Government. Rishi's resignation is unnecessary and his cooperation is not required.
Rishi remains PM until he isn't; following the switch of sides Rishi would face and lose a VONC; he would then have to resign. I suspect the terms of the (repealed) FTPA would be a guide as to what follows: 14 days to get a VOC in some other configuration or monarch dissolves parliament. Or Rishi could just ask the king do so on his own account.
If SKS received a VOC he could still ask for a dissolution on the basis that there isn't a mandate. In practice he might want one quick in order to stop 100 ex Tories claiming the right to the Labour candidate when Buggins has already been selected.
This is not unexpected, but it ought to be astonishing that a large, key swing state in the US, where billions are spent on political organisation, could be in this condition.
At least they've realised now, and not next September.
Pennsylvania is key for Biden. Democrats there say the party is in shambles.
There was just one small problem: Election Day is Nov. 7.
With a little more than a year to go until the 2024 election, the state Democratic Party is reeling from financial problems and a lack of trust across the party, according to interviews with 20 Democratic officials and operatives throughout Pennsylvania. They include elected officials, county chairs, state committee members, former state party employees and strategists.
“It’s amateur hour,” said a state committee member who, like other Democrats, was granted anonymity to speak frankly about a sensitive matter. “It’s a fucking disaster,” said a former state party staffer.
The state party underwent a round of layoffs in July, which have not been reported until now. One of its political action committees only had $7,500 in the bank as of early June, according to its most recent campaign finance filings. And questions are mounting among Democrats in the state about the competency of its leadership, including state party chair Sharif Street...
So Trump was right about all those late votes......
A constitutional question (I was drunkenly discussing this last night). Suppose a huge swathe of Tory MPs defected to Labour and took the Labour whip, meaning that Sir Keir could now easily control the majority of the House. What would happen? Would Sir Keir simply be made PM in Rishi's place, or would a general election be forced?
Where’s TSE to teach you a lesson on the Lascelles principles?
But in my scenario the PM (Rishi) doesn't actually ask for parliament to be dissolved. So I was wondering how that deadlock could be resolved. Surely Sir Keir can't just march into Rishi's office and tell him to sling his hook. But Richard Nabavi has now explained: an opposition vote of confidence would set matters straight.
The Queen appoints the majority commander to form a Government. Rishi's resignation is unnecessary and his cooperation is not required.
Believe you are giving Camilla a wee bit toooooooooo much authority!
Sudden sharp move to Labour for mid-Beds on Betfair (in from 4 to 2.74 at the time of writing) and out for the Lib Dems (from 1.9 to 2.26) - the numbers have been moving by a tenth of a % up to now. Tories also in from 3.6 to 3.3. A poll coming? The shift has left big holes in the market - lots of scope for trading bets (e.g. LDs are buy at 2.26, sell at 2.9).
After saying he'd accepted responsibility and sobbing for mercy in front of Judge Kelly — and receiving a 10-year downward variance — a smiling Dominic Pezzola raised his fist and shouted "Trump won!" as he was led out of the courtroom. https://twitter.com/JordanOnRecord/status/1697655526245433745
The fuckers'll stump up 8 billion quid to fix up Westminster....maybe make the politicians doss about in portacabins for a few years and spend the Westminster slush fund on the school buildings? My school days back in the 70/80s was rife with portacabins and prefabs. Tory MPs love the good old days, let 'em experience them again!
The government was warned four years ago that unsafe concrete used in schools could collapse without warning, i can reveal.
Ministers have claimed that they had to take the snap decision to close more than 150 schools just days before the start of the new term because of “new evidence” this summer that reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) could fail with “no warning”, rather than a previous assessment that remedial work should be carried out where there was visible evidence of buildings being affected.
However, i has been told that an alert was sent to the Department for Education (DfE) and the Local Government Association (LGA) in 2019 from a structural engineering organisation that buildings where RAAC was used could collapse “with very little noticeable warning”.
Certainly is news in the context of today's announcements together with 2 Welsh hospitals
A new definition of news!
As a matter of interest what did the Scottish government do about the report ?
You'll have to look it up - time for me to cook dinner.
But as it was a Scottish LD FOI, they knew already. They already seem to have been gathering information and tasking action. Fopr instance, they established some time back that 250 or so hospitals are likely to have the stuff.
Sky just confirmed that this is a major problem, not only in England, but also the devolved nations who are each responsible for their buildings and that it is not confined to schools
To be honest this looks like it is going to be a very big problem for governments going forward as the cost implications must be many billions
Oh yes. Though some of the schools etc should have been replaced anyway, so there's that.
Also - the private sector. Shopping centres and so on.
To be honest this looks every bit as bad as asbestos and potentially worse and as for the cost !!!!!
Raising another issue. How many of these buildings have asbestos?
I have no idea but in view of the age range circa 1950s to 1996 possibly very many
The legal requirements for asbestos surveys and registers are far more onerous, though, so much more likely it's known about if it hasn't already been removed.
Note the estimate for schools possibly affected has risen from 100 to 1000 this morning.
It seems like it is a developing crisis across England and the devolved nations
If only there was a collective noun for “England and the devolved nations” 🤔
So that's the second opinion poll out today to show a Labour lead of 21% and this one includes fieldwork today.
My view is that the Conservatives are going to be eviscerated at the next General Election. Pb tories can castigate me all you like but my anecdotal antennae are backed up by polling.
Have a nice evening all.
xx
My view is, over the year Sunak’ credibility has fallen apart in voters eyes. Slipping further behind Starmer in best PM recently is related to who voters feel will deliver on promises.
It’s not what you are promising, or your policies, it’s wether you are believed you can deliver on them. A key moment, ironically when we had peak Sunak earlier in the year, wise old Conservative heads were shaking when they sensed he was “overpromising” on some policy.
It’s reached the point of a glass ceiling for the Tories under Sunak, likely not in the 30s. Sunak is now dragging the Tory poll rating further down.
So that's the second opinion poll out today to show a Labour lead of 21% and this one includes fieldwork today.
My view is that the Conservatives are going to be eviscerated at the next General Election. Pb tories can castigate me all you like but my anecdotal antennae are backed up by polling.
Have a nice evening all.
xx
My view is, over the year Sunak’ credibility has fallen apart in voters eyes. Slipping further behind Starmer in best PM recently is related to who voters feel will deliver on promises.
It’s not what you are promising, or your policies, it’s wether you are believed you can deliver on them. A key moment, ironically when we had peak Sunak earlier in the year, wise old Conservative heads were shaking when they sensed he was “overpromising” on some policy.
It’s reached the point of a glass ceiling for the Tories under Sunak, likely not in the 30s. Sunak is now dragging the Tory poll rating further down.
I think people probably gave Rishi a fair hearing for his first few months, to see if he was offering better government and solutions.
As it has now transpired that the government is still in a mess, and Rishi has very little in the way of solutions, people have now just shrugged their shoulders and moved on from the Tories.
A lot of this isn’t just Sunak’s fault - he has a lot of rotten figures and abject failures at the top of the Tory Party to work with - but he isn’t up to saving them. Very few people would be, given the state of the rot.
No. It was more than a few months, it’s only recently they view Sunak as bad as now, because it takes longer, nearly a year, to work out if someone can deliver on what they say they will.
Mike Smithson keeps hinting Conservatives might change leader with 1 year to go, like they did in 1963, and chewed up Labours big poll lead in those last months, though still lost by a little bit.
If you are still polling 24% 25% and 20+ behind, is there much jeopardy throwing the dice and offering voters a more dynamic and likeable PM, Chancellor and Home Secretary in build up to election?
You think Conservative members and MPs are going to choose Mordaunt? Because she's all they've got who could be described as "more dynamic and likeable".
Well… yes. It’s what I’m saying.
But it more than that isn’t it. A more electably combative message for next years General Election, tax, housing etc cannot now be delivered by Sunak and Hunt, because the voters just won’t be listening to them. Successfully selling the more aspirational agenda, and making the coming election more of a fight than a steam rollering, can only happen now if the Tories change the faces and voices.
I have already explained this in this mini thread. “It’s not what you are promising, or your policies, it’s wether you are believed you can deliver on them.” Do I have to keep repeating it till these facts of political life sink in?
If you are saying this simply won’t work now, you are simply saying it won’t work in 1963 ahead of 1964 election. Unfortunately for you, fresh faces and voices did work back then, Labours poll lead all but vanished.
Certainly is news in the context of today's announcements together with 2 Welsh hospitals
A new definition of news!
As a matter of interest what did the Scottish government do about the report ?
You'll have to look it up - time for me to cook dinner.
But as it was a Scottish LD FOI, they knew already. They already seem to have been gathering information and tasking action. Fopr instance, they established some time back that 250 or so hospitals are likely to have the stuff.
Sky just confirmed that this is a major problem, not only in England, but also the devolved nations who are each responsible for their buildings and that it is not confined to schools
To be honest this looks like it is going to be a very big problem for governments going forward as the cost implications must be many billions
Oh yes. Though some of the schools etc should have been replaced anyway, so there's that.
Also - the private sector. Shopping centres and so on.
To be honest this looks every bit as bad as asbestos and potentially worse and as for the cost !!!!!
Raising another issue. How many of these buildings have asbestos?
I have no idea but in view of the age range circa 1950s to 1996 possibly very many
The legal requirements for asbestos surveys and registers are far more onerous, though, so much more likely it's known about if it hasn't already been removed.
Note the estimate for schools possibly affected has risen from 100 to 1000 this morning.
It seems like it is a developing crisis across England and the devolved nations
If only there was a collective noun for “England and the devolved nations” 🤔
So glad the privatisation of Royal Mail has produced an efficient and productive company away from the public sector. Oh wait, it hasn't.
To some extent that tells us how in need of reform it was.
My general mail is really quite unreliable now though.
I think what we need is sensors in postboxes. If you send me a letter then it's not delivered until it gets a signal from my letterbox saying 'hello and thanks'.
After saying he'd accepted responsibility and sobbing for mercy in front of Judge Kelly — and receiving a 10-year downward variance — a smiling Dominic Pezzola raised his fist and shouted "Trump won!" as he was led out of the courtroom. https://twitter.com/JordanOnRecord/status/1697655526245433745
The tweet’s misleading
The prosecutor sought 20 years. The judge decided he was an “enthusiastic foot soldier” and so gave him 10 years vs 15-17 for the ring leaders. He didn’t get a specific discount for his apparently false contrition
That doesn’t seem unreasonable - he stole a riot shield and smashed a window, which are relatively minor actions, so the bulk of the sentence is presumably because of the broader Jan 6 objective
The Government has published a prospectus this morning inviting local authorities to register their interest for one chess table and four seats, at the cost of £2,500.
The RAAC issues could be huge. It feels like nobody has really got to the bottom of the impact yet, and how many properties it affects.
This could affect (as well as schools) hospitals, homes, infrastructure…. Very worrying.
How many buildings are spontaneously collapsing per year?
Not sure why this is very worrying whereas something like ever increasing obesity is just accepted as normal?
Oh, RAAC collapses are a recognised problem already. It looks as if it's not so much the whole thing but chunks of it - literally so, a lot of RAAC elements are precast in a factory.
A little poking around on this website in general shows that there are cases where RAAC ceiling elements had to be replaced because they were failing - and here is a case where they were not caught in time.
"In 2017, they were asked to investigate an RAAC roof which had collapsed in a school. Luckily, there was no one in the classroom at the time of the collapse. Shear failure of RAAC planks
According to the reporter, the cause of the collapse was a shear failure due to inadequate bearing following some structural alterations made by the school. The failure was triggered by outfall gutters becoming blocked which allowed ponding of water on the roof to quickly build up during a storm.
The reporter carried out a full structural survey of the school and found numerous other signs of progressing defects similar to those highlighted in the SCOSS Alert. Roof leaks can lead to the deterioration of RAAC planks
In 2019, the reporter was asked to investigate the partial failure of an RAAC plank at another school. Temporary props were installed to prevent collapse of the RAAC planks. The reporter carried out a full structural survey of the school and again found numerous defects in the planks. These were mainly related to historic roof leaks which caused the reinforcement in the planks to corrode and thus lose bond with the concrete.
The reporter is now frequently encountering RAAC planks in school roofs and their experience suggests that these planks are becoming more defective with time. They have also found that many schools are not aware that their roofs are constructed using RAAC planks and are therefore not aware of the risks."
Just trying to understand it as an order of magnitude problem.
Obesity kills about 30,000 people per year and worsens the life quality of many millions and the productivity of the economy and health service.
If we did nothing to fix RAAC, and of course we will, how many deaths are expected per year? 10? 100?
Sure, but - as I read many years ago in Gordon's The Science of Strong Materials - there are many ways to fail.
Once one ceiling slab element in a school starts failing, no way can you rely on the others: ergo no way can you send the little dears - and, just as importantly, Sir and Miss and the support staff - under those ceilings. It's flat out illegal under HASAWA, not to mention against insurers' conditions (just as important for LAs).
And that would be triggered by a failure of the same slab (make, design) elsewhere.
You don't have to squash any childrenm to have a comprehensive failure mode in operation across multiple sites.
And that is before any moral panic element kicks in.
"The Science of Strong Materials" is superb. I still pick it up and read bits occasionally. As is his "Structures, or why things don't fall down"
The bigger problem is that the unexpected failure casts doubt on their method for analysing risk. So they can't tell what is about to fail or not.
That's a general problem with concrete though: it can fail suddenly in a very brittle manner. See the Miami condo collapse I mentioned earlier. Steel *tends* to give you much more warning of failure, if you look. Steel is also much easier to patch and repair.
The Maimi condo was conventional concrete that was badly designed, badly poured, then mistreated in a number of ways over the years until established modelling methodology says that it failing was no big surprise. How it was allowed to get to that state is the problem.
The RAAC problem we have, is that the model seems to be wrong. At least apparently - hopefully it will turn out that something else added to the state and caused the collapse. Otherwise we don't have a way of assessing the issue.
"... that the model seems to be wrong."
Is that true? Apparently the RAAC panels were generally designed to have a 30-year life. If the structures failing are over that in age, then the model might just be correct.
IMV (from the little we know) is that people did not realise / care that a material their building was partially built from was essentially life-expired, or coming to the end of its life.
As I understand it, someone came up with a model that predicted how urgent it was to replace the panels in question. This was used to assess a panel as safe that then collapsed.
Quite how you model the lifespan of a time expired, limited lifespan material - I have no idea. It does sound life Safe Life and the Vickers Valiant (and other aircraft). Where repeatedly, estimates were made and found to be slightly flawed. Slightly flawed as in completely fucking useless.
Certainly is news in the context of today's announcements together with 2 Welsh hospitals
A new definition of news!
As a matter of interest what did the Scottish government do about the report ?
You'll have to look it up - time for me to cook dinner.
But as it was a Scottish LD FOI, they knew already. They already seem to have been gathering information and tasking action. Fopr instance, they established some time back that 250 or so hospitals are likely to have the stuff.
Sky just confirmed that this is a major problem, not only in England, but also the devolved nations who are each responsible for their buildings and that it is not confined to schools
To be honest this looks like it is going to be a very big problem for governments going forward as the cost implications must be many billions
Oh yes. Though some of the schools etc should have been replaced anyway, so there's that.
Also - the private sector. Shopping centres and so on.
To be honest this looks every bit as bad as asbestos and potentially worse and as for the cost !!!!!
Raising another issue. How many of these buildings have asbestos?
I have no idea but in view of the age range circa 1950s to 1996 possibly very many
The legal requirements for asbestos surveys and registers are far more onerous, though, so much more likely it's known about if it hasn't already been removed.
Note the estimate for schools possibly affected has risen from 100 to 1000 this morning.
It seems like it is a developing crisis across England and the devolved nations
If only there was a collective noun for “England and the devolved nations” 🤔
Le Royaume-Uni.
The French are less politically correct. They still often use l'angleterre for the UK and stick to names like Pékin and Bombay.
So glad the privatisation of Royal Mail has produced an efficient and productive company away from the public sector. Oh wait, it hasn't.
I fondly remember the 1980s when we simply assumed that a letter arriving at the sorting office must just have been posted, and a letter arriving at the delivery office was surely about to be delivered. Our performance statistics were excellent.
Comments
Obesity kills about 30,000 people per year and worsens the life quality of many millions and the productivity of the economy and health service.
If we did nothing to fix RAAC, and of course we will, how many deaths are expected per year? 10? 100?
Lord Woolton, a working-class lad who made himself into a successful businessman, head of Lewis department stores, was serving as Minister of Supply in April of 1940 when Neville Chamberlain appointed him Minister of Food.
As he was cleaning out his office at his old department, he was visited by the head civil servant at MoF, who informed him that the Minister was scheduled to give a major press conference the next day.
"My trouble was that I had not formulated any policy," Woolton later wrote, or even had a chance to brief himself on his new duties, which were clearly epic. But that was not a problem for the mandarin - "here, Minister, is your speech."
Woolton's response was to head home, cancel his plans for the evening, then spend all night reading up on official reports, memos, statistics, etc., etc. about Britain's already challenging food situation - just as WW2 was morphing from Phoney War to western Blitzkreig.
The next day, he arrived before a throng of press reporters, photographers, newsreel cameramen, radio recording engineers.
He began by setting his sights way beyond the journos and techies assembled before him.
"My audience is not the aggregate of the public who are listening but the detail of the individual in front of the domestic receiving set. . . . In front of my mind I keep a picture of a man in his cottage, sitting without a collar, with slippers on, at the end of a day's work, children playing on the rug, with his wife washing up in the adjoining room with the door open."
As Woolton began his speech, he pushed away the speech given him, and instead reached for his own notes that he'd worked on over night - to the horror of his civil servant.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
source: "Eggs or Anarchy" by William Sitwell (2017)
Lord Woolton eats Woolton pie at communal feeding club in Hackney. (1942)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1ZvrwC7S6U
Also that report I posted says that they already had failures in the 1980s, needing to demolish buildings.
Andf presumably a signle element can have the effect you raise, on the principle that the construction elements in Building X are patently unsafe if one collapses, or simply fails to a lesser degree, even if most have not yet collapsed. They're not going to get stronger with time, but weaker. As they were factory produced, it would raise questions about all other buildings using elements from that design/supplier.
And if you're talking about delays, I'd also point out that SH/SS are *years* late.
Once one ceiling slab element in a school starts failing, no way can you rely on the others: ergo no way can you send the little dears - and, just as importantly, Sir and Miss and the support staff - under those ceilings. It's flat out illegal under HASAWA, not to mention against insurers' conditions (just as important for LAs).
And that would be triggered by a failure of the same slab (make, design) elsewhere.
You don't have to squash any childrenm to have a comprehensive failure mode in operation across multiple sites.
And that is before any moral panic element kicks in.
https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1697619971566686615
But I'd like to reiterate the point I made at the height of Covid:
It will take decades to know what the economic consequences of Brexit are. And, indeed, it is highly likely that other factors (education, the benefits system, demographics) are likely to be much more significant than Brexit.
https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1697230516284518697
Ireland made a c. 15% change a few years ago, because they'd cumulatively mismeasured the impact of FDI.
Bezos staffed the place with people from Old Space - who took the Perfect Design approach. That is, they attempt to get a perfect design of rocket to the pad to work the first time. They also used a contracting pyramid that substantially slows things down and adds to costs.
The question is at what time scale and cost point they will deliver.
But as it was a Scottish LD FOI, they knew already. They already seem to have been gathering information and tasking action. Fopr instance, they established some time back that 250 or so hospitals are likely to have the stuff.
https://twitter.com/DeItaone/status/1697610316182376641
IT's possible to prop up all the ceiling panels, and so on, but what message does it send?
I don't know what the answer is.
To be honest this looks like it is going to be a very big problem for governments going forward as the cost implications must be many billions
Potentially nasty if you're under them, but not the same as a total collapse of the building.
Also - the private sector. Shopping centres and so on.
NFW would the party accept that many defectors in what they see as winnable seats.
Though it's an utterly improbable scenario anyway, so sensible analysis is problematic.
They decided to take a massive step in going from a suborbital rocket to one that is much bigger than a Falcon 9 (though nowhere near as big as SH/SS). No-one has ever attempted that before. Their BE-4 engines will soon launch on Vulcan-Centaur (as soon as ULA sort out the Centaur's tanks...), and their factory *is* building hardware:
https://www.space.com/blue-origin-new-glenn-rocket-factory-photo
I wish both SpaceX and BO well; they're both awesome companies.
How many of these buildings have asbestos?
By electing Corbyn Labour members got a socialist purist they loved but probably at the cost of an extra 7 years in opposition
(Stands back to await flying brickbats).
Unless the following years are revised down, then GDP seems to have been missed subsequent years too.
'Amateur mushroom pickers have been urged to avoid foraging books sold on Amazon that appear to have been written by artificial intelligence chatbots. [...]
Leon Frey, a foraging guide and field mycologist at Cornwall-based Family Foraging Kitchen, which organises foraging field trips, said the samples he had seen contained serious flaws such as referring to “smell and taste” as an identifying feature. “This seems to encourage tasting as a method of identification. This should absolutely not be the case,” he said. One book refers to the Lion’s Mane fungus, which is edible, but is a protected species in the UK and should not be picked.'
The RAAC problem we have, is that the model seems to be wrong. At least apparently - hopefully it will turn out that something else added to the state and caused the collapse. Otherwise we don't have a way of assessing the issue.
But was her manifesto really that right wing? She tried to do something about adult social care. You can argue about whether it was the right thing to do or not, but her opponents (especially the **** in Westmorland and Lonsdale) characterised it as the Tories stealing your house, which was incredibly unfair.
Is that true? Apparently the RAAC panels were generally designed to have a 30-year life. If the structures failing are over that in age, then the model might just be correct.
IMV (from the little we know) is that people did not realise / care that a material their building was partially built from was essentially life-expired, or coming to the end of its life.
Note the estimate for schools possibly affected has risen from 100 to 1000 this morning.
Remind me to give you the What3Words reference for fountain.of.youth at some point
At least they've realised now, and not next September.
Pennsylvania is key for Biden. Democrats there say the party is in shambles.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/01/pennsylvania-democratic-party-trouble-00113705
In anticipation of a major gathering of rural activists a few weeks ago, the Pennsylvania Democratic Party printed out thousands of cards reminding voters to “Vote at Polls: Election Day Tuesday November 8.”
There was just one small problem: Election Day is Nov. 7.
With a little more than a year to go until the 2024 election, the state Democratic Party is reeling from financial problems and a lack of trust across the party, according to interviews with 20 Democratic officials and operatives throughout Pennsylvania. They include elected officials, county chairs, state committee members, former state party employees and strategists.
“It’s amateur hour,” said a state committee member who, like other Democrats, was granted anonymity to speak frankly about a sensitive matter. “It’s a fucking disaster,” said a former state party staffer.
The state party underwent a round of layoffs in July, which have not been reported until now. One of its political action committees only had $7,500 in the bank as of early June, according to its most recent campaign finance filings. And questions are mounting among Democrats in the state about the competency of its leadership, including state party chair Sharif Street...
If SKS received a VOC he could still ask for a dissolution on the basis that there isn't a mandate. In practice he might want one quick in order to stop 100 ex Tories claiming the right to the Labour candidate when Buggins has already been selected.
https://twitter.com/JordanOnRecord/status/1697655526245433745
Ministers have claimed that they had to take the snap decision to close more than 150 schools just days before the start of the new term because of “new evidence” this summer that reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) could fail with “no warning”, rather than a previous assessment that remedial work should be carried out where there was visible evidence of buildings being affected.
However, i has been told that an alert was sent to the Department for Education (DfE) and the Local Government Association (LGA) in 2019 from a structural engineering organisation that buildings where RAAC was used could collapse “with very little noticeable warning”.
https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/concrete-schools-safety-alert-buildings-risk-collapse-sent-department-eduction-2019-2588559
But it more than that isn’t it. A more electably combative message for next years General Election, tax, housing etc cannot now be delivered by Sunak and Hunt, because the voters just won’t be listening to them. Successfully selling the more aspirational agenda, and making the coming election more of a fight than a steam rollering, can only happen now if the Tories change the faces and voices.
I have already explained this in this mini thread. “It’s not what you are promising, or your policies, it’s wether you are believed you can deliver on them.” Do I have to keep repeating it till these facts of political life sink in?
If you are saying this simply won’t work now, you are simply saying it won’t work in 1963 ahead of 1964 election. Unfortunately for you, fresh faces and voices did work back then, Labours poll lead all but vanished.
My general mail is really quite unreliable now though.
I think what we need is sensors in postboxes. If you send me a letter then it's not delivered until it gets a signal from my letterbox saying 'hello and thanks'.
The prosecutor sought 20 years. The judge decided he was an “enthusiastic foot soldier” and so gave him 10 years vs 15-17 for the ring leaders. He didn’t get a specific discount for his apparently false contrition
That doesn’t seem unreasonable - he stole a riot shield and smashed a window, which are relatively minor actions, so the bulk of the sentence is presumably because of the broader Jan 6 objective
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1178668/countries-best-postal-services-worldwide/
The Government has published a prospectus this morning inviting local authorities to register their interest for one chess table and four seats, at the cost of £2,500.
https://x.com/jacktshaw/status/1697568810134331631?s=46&t=L9g_woCIqbo1MTuBFCK0xg
Quite how you model the lifespan of a time expired, limited lifespan material - I have no idea. It does sound life Safe Life and the Vickers Valiant (and other aircraft). Where repeatedly, estimates were made and found to be slightly flawed. Slightly flawed as in completely fucking useless.
https://www.lemonde.fr/m-styles/article/2023/03/31/a-mumbai-dior-en-fil-indien_6167759_4497319.html