Philip (Lord) Hammond was on the TV yesterday. We need to invest more, consume less and then raise productivity as a result was his advice. Sounds reasonable enough. You can fiddle around with local government etc but I don't see it as a fundamental problem.
Invest in what? Things that are of obvious benefit to us in the future. Things that foreigners would want to buy from us, so we can afford to import stuff from them. Not investing in fixed assets like the housing stock. The readjustment of house prices might be a start. I'd love to see a regional breakdown of bank lending. What percentage of mortgage lending is to the south east?
Enjoy less quality of life and no new housing builds? It's certainly a message to go out on a bang with.
Where do you get the 'no new housing builds' from?
Tank house prices, invest less in housing?
Nothing to stop houses being built.
There is if they sell for half the price, for the same labour and materials.
I also thought that "Not investing in fixed assets like the housing stock" would implicitly involve less housebuilding. It's mostly not extensions.
Philip (Lord) Hammond was on the TV yesterday. We need to invest more, consume less and then raise productivity as a result was his advice. Sounds reasonable enough. You can fiddle around with local government etc but I don't see it as a fundamental problem.
Invest in what? Things that are of obvious benefit to us in the future. Things that foreigners would want to buy from us, so we can afford to import stuff from them. Not investing in fixed assets like the housing stock. The readjustment of house prices might be a start. I'd love to see a regional breakdown of bank lending. What percentage of mortgage lending is to the south east?
Enjoy less quality of life and no new housing builds? It's certainly a message to go out on a bang with.
Where do you get the 'no new housing builds' from?
Tank house prices, invest less in housing?
Nothing to stop houses being built.
There is if they sell for half the price, for the same labour and materials.
I also thought that "Not investing in fixed assets like the housing stock" would implicitly involve less housebuilding. It's mostly not extensions.
By fixed assets (sorry I'm not an economist) I meant mortgages for existing properties. I suppose I shouldn't have used the word invest. Or at least put it in inverted commas. Lending would be the correct word.
Off topic, but too amusing not to share: "A Democratic candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates performed sex acts with her husband online — and asked her virtual audience to pitch in with “tips,” The Post has learned.
There, I've said it. I didn't used to hate them, and I'm generally courteous to bike riders - when overtaking I'll wait for a safe spot, slow down and leave plenty of room - but more and more a large percentage of cyclists have gone militant and seem to deliberately want to piss off other road users.
Coming home from the supermarket this afternoon, and oh look there's cyclists on the road. About thirty of them, strung out at irregular intervals and every one riding dead centre in the lane. It's a twisty rural road with loads of blind bends, so effectively they've made sure any car trying to overtake has to do so in a dangerous manner or spend the next five miles moving at a crawl.
But I'm riding a scooter, not driving a car. evil cackle
I can still get past, although without as much gap as I'd normally leave. So I carefully and slowly make my way past several of them, only to have one shake his fist at me and another obviously shouting something (futile, as I'm wearing earplugs). Clearly the objective was to stop anyone getting past.
If I indulged in that sort of twattery on the road the courts would, rightly, look to confiscate my license. But cyclists don't have licences. Or registration plates to identify them.
I hate cyclists.
I love cyclists.
They are making lawyers and bankers look less bad.
Especially when it comes to loud clothing in quiet areas.
Even louder footwear.
The latest addition to the shoe family.
Is that in case you run into an XL Bully? Armoured trainers?
Who could have predicted rent controls do not work?
Former first minister Nicola Sturgeon’s rent cap and eviction ban have sent prices for Scottish tenants soaring faster than in London, new data reveals.
The cost of rent in Scotland is rising more rapidly than anywhere else in the UK after the SNP introduced restrictions on landlords’ ability to raise rent and carry out evictions.
Holyrood’s decision in September 2022 to freeze rent payments for hundreds of thousands of Scots and ban most evictions came in response to the cost of living crisis, which Ms Sturgeon labelled a “humanitarian emergency” at the time.
However, the move has since backfired with rental growth in Scotland climbing 12.7pc in the last year, compared with 10.5pc nationally and 12.4pc in London, according to property website Zoopla.
It’s practically the one thing the entire economics profession agrees on, from left to right. Rent controls always result in a housing market that’s even worse than it was before you brought them in.
Build more housing: That’s how you bring rents down.
Off topic, but too amusing not to share: "A Democratic candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates performed sex acts with her husband online — and asked her virtual audience to pitch in with “tips,” The Post has learned.
TPE: If the Nova 3s are going, that doesn't sound like a terrible decision, albeit the romance of locomotives people will be deeply saddened.
Of all TPE rolled out, the Nova 3s never fully came in, they served Scarborough, but never replaced the 185s to Middlesbrough. And then Scarborough became half a service and a lot of them only shuttled to York.
I was worried a year or so ago that they'd re-assign the Nova 1 Hitachis for parts or to GWR. At least those stay in the fleet, but guess it could mean fewer 6 carriagers on the Sheffield line.
Let's see the timetables that result and how they run, but that could be OK.
There, I've said it. I didn't used to hate them, and I'm generally courteous to bike riders - when overtaking I'll wait for a safe spot, slow down and leave plenty of room - but more and more a large percentage of cyclists have gone militant and seem to deliberately want to piss off other road users.
Coming home from the supermarket this afternoon, and oh look there's cyclists on the road. About thirty of them, strung out at irregular intervals and every one riding dead centre in the lane. It's a twisty rural road with loads of blind bends, so effectively they've made sure any car trying to overtake has to do so in a dangerous manner or spend the next five miles moving at a crawl.
But I'm riding a scooter, not driving a car. evil cackle
I can still get past, although without as much gap as I'd normally leave. So I carefully and slowly make my way past several of them, only to have one shake his fist at me and another obviously shouting something (futile, as I'm wearing earplugs). Clearly the objective was to stop anyone getting past.
If I indulged in that sort of twattery on the road the courts would, rightly, look to confiscate my license. But cyclists don't have licences. Or registration plates to identify them.
I hate cyclists.
I love cyclists.
They are making lawyers and bankers look less bad.
Especially when it comes to loud clothing in quiet areas.
Even louder footwear.
The latest addition to the shoe family.
Is that in case you run into an XL Bully? Armoured trainers?
Giving those a mauling would be a public service that could seriously undermine the case for a ban.
How serious do people think the shoplifting situation is?.
It's bad. Two issues: 1. An awful lot of people who are utterly desperate. Petty crime increases the worse the economy gets 2. Local gangstas realising the chances of getting nicked, and then of actually getting prosecuted is very low thanks to cuts. So tax away.
No 10 refuses to confirm HS2 will run to Manchester Fresh uncertainty for high-speed line as leaked document suggests Sunak and Hunt have met to discuss more cuts
While Downing Street said the government was “committed to HS2”, the PM’s spokesperson would not confirm that HS2 would extend to Manchester, under repeated questioning at a briefing on Thursday...
HS2 looking increasingly like a very, very long-burn version of the classic Monorail episode of The Simpsons.
The scale of the failure here is genuinely very difficult to fully comprehend - I'm sure someone's made out of it like an absolute bandit though.
I'd like to see the revised economic case for the current shitshow.
Hunt is desperately looking for tax cut money for next year so why on earth does £34b of capital investment to be spent over the next 20 years come into the frame?
Fag end days of this administration.
It's a sobering thought that I was arguing about HS2 with Josiah Jessop when I was still an MP, which is more than 13 years ago. I said it was a classic big-project politicians' catnip, we should spend the money on improving smaller projects and the cost estimates were likely to be wild underestimates, JJ was his customary scornful self and said it was absolutely essential (as, to be fair, did most local councillors in my area). What's sobering is that it's still undecided and JJ and I are still here. Does nothing ever change??
That's the stark difference between North and South. Up there everyone wants it, down here no-one wants it.
That was actually the case in France a couple of decades ago. Parts of France wanted high-speed rail links; often the poorer parts. The richer parts often did not. (There was actually a study on this, I think...)
My own view on HS2: a country runs on its infrastructure. And if you want a country to grow and modernise, you need its infrastructure to grow and modernise. Whilst that does not mean a trash-everything approach, it does not mean we should try to preserve a bucolic past and country that never really existed, either. Anything else is stagnation and reversal.
Imagine if NIMBYs had existed in the mid-1800s (aside from a few gentrified landowners), and we had not developed a railway network. Where would the country - and because of the Empire, the world - be now? What if we had decided not to build the motorway network from the 1960s onwards?
Yes, HS2 has been mismanaged by the Conservative governments, and the coalition (although given the dead hands of the DfT and treasury, I doubt it would have been much different under any government). But that does not mean that such projects are unnecessary. What is necessary is to work out *why* and *how* they were mismanaged, and try to ensure such mistakes do not happen again.
We have had interesting discussions on those questions on here in the past, including recently.
I know too much about HS2 to guve a succinct view, but a few points: - the business cases are in the public domain (links below). - HS2 identified benefuts outweighed costs in the Jan22 business case - however when the Golborne Link was taken out in Jun22 (temporarily?), this was no longer the case. - However, the monetised benefits don't include the benefits of released capacity and improved reliability - because this is hard to monetise; and nor do they include land use benefits/regeneration benefits. This is superficially odd, as this is all kind of the point of the exercise. As anyone who knows anything about this will bang on ceaselessly about, it's about capacity, not speed. But DfT don't really like monetisation of those sorts of benefita in business cases.
I'm ducking back out of this conversation for now because the wife has got out of the bath and the second half of France Uruguay beckons! (Uruguay looking surprisingly good!)
The first thing you always do in government when considering a policy with long term costs and benefits is bin the business case/impact assessment/cost-benefit analysis though, for several overlapping reasons:
- they're usually out of date - they almost always underestimate the costs by several times and overestimate the benefits likewise - the social discount rate is questionable, if not outright ridiculous - as you point out, they often don't include key factors - they're often rigged to get the outcome the government of the day wants.
I've been involved in the preparation and assessment of far too many of them in my career to take them seriously. Still, fortunately, the work can be very lucrative.
The exceptions seem to be the more sensible railway projects, like the Bathgate electrification in Scotland, and elsewhere too. Massively popular. To the degree they were underconstructed in the first place because of the model used, which hit the Edinburgh-Tweedbank railway quite badly (too much single and not enough double track).
I'm a fan of train travel but it's not a good experience especially at weekends.
Let's be positive - on my last journey the trains were punctual and arrived within about five minutes of schedule and a connecting train was made albeit at a push.
Getting the trains to run on time is a start but there seems a complete misconception among train operators of weekend travel which is if anyhting busier than pre-pandemic even as commuting still struggles especially on Mondays and Fridays.
Weekend leisure travel is where rail travel is now yet it's the time when facilities are neglected, trains run with minimal stock and basic catering is abandoned. If anything, the modern post-covid railway should be improving its weekend offering - more trains, longer trains, improved catering - and not try to re-create the pre-covid operating model.
Stodge Towers is 574 miles from Inverness - I can be there by train in 9 hours - we should be able to get that down by a third with proper track and trains.
Philip (Lord) Hammond was on the TV yesterday. We need to invest more, consume less and then raise productivity as a result was his advice. Sounds reasonable enough. You can fiddle around with local government etc but I don't see it as a fundamental problem.
Invest in what? Things that are of obvious benefit to us in the future. Things that foreigners would want to buy from us, so we can afford to import stuff from them. Not investing in fixed assets like the housing stock. The readjustment of house prices might be a start. I'd love to see a regional breakdown of bank lending. What percentage of mortgage lending is to the south east?
Enjoy less quality of life and no new housing builds? It's certainly a message to go out on a bang with.
Where do you get the 'no new housing builds' from?
Tank house prices, invest less in housing?
Nothing to stop houses being built.
There is if they sell for half the price, for the same labour and materials.
I also thought that "Not investing in fixed assets like the housing stock" would implicitly involve less housebuilding. It's mostly not extensions.
By fixed assets (sorry I'm not an economist) I meant mortgages for existing properties. I suppose I shouldn't have used the word invest. Or at least put it in inverted commas. Lending would be the correct word.
Who could have predicted rent controls do not work?
Former first minister Nicola Sturgeon’s rent cap and eviction ban have sent prices for Scottish tenants soaring faster than in London, new data reveals.
The cost of rent in Scotland is rising more rapidly than anywhere else in the UK after the SNP introduced restrictions on landlords’ ability to raise rent and carry out evictions.
Holyrood’s decision in September 2022 to freeze rent payments for hundreds of thousands of Scots and ban most evictions came in response to the cost of living crisis, which Ms Sturgeon labelled a “humanitarian emergency” at the time.
However, the move has since backfired with rental growth in Scotland climbing 12.7pc in the last year, compared with 10.5pc nationally and 12.4pc in London, according to property website Zoopla.
It’s practically the one thing the entire economics profession agrees on, from left to right. Rent controls always result in a housing market that’s even worse than it was before you brought them in.
Build more housing: That’s how you bring rents down.
TBF the SNP *have* been building council housing since 2010, to a modest but not at all trivial scale, and decent standards from what I (and IIRC DavidL) have seen. One estimate I saw was that they needed to do about twice as much. But it is still a good contribution.
How serious do people think the shoplifting situation is?.
It's bad. Two issues: 1. An awful lot of people who are utterly desperate. Petty crime increases the worse the economy gets 2. Local gangstas realising the chances of getting nicked, and then of actually getting prosecuted is very low thanks to cuts. So tax away.
The police policy of leaving criminals to get on with it whilst harassing people for hate crimes on Twitter is well-established and has nothing to do with 'cuts'.
What we're seeing is simple behaviourism. The positive consequences of shoplifting outweigh the negative for many people.
No 10 refuses to confirm HS2 will run to Manchester Fresh uncertainty for high-speed line as leaked document suggests Sunak and Hunt have met to discuss more cuts
While Downing Street said the government was “committed to HS2”, the PM’s spokesperson would not confirm that HS2 would extend to Manchester, under repeated questioning at a briefing on Thursday...
HS2 looking increasingly like a very, very long-burn version of the classic Monorail episode of The Simpsons.
The scale of the failure here is genuinely very difficult to fully comprehend - I'm sure someone's made out of it like an absolute bandit though.
And TPE is going to get worse from December.
The North has been well and truly fucked by Sunak.
First northern england PM since Blair and yet ironically he does not give a flying f.
Southampton only northern if you are based on the Isle of Wight!
Who was the last proper northerner to be PM?
Assuming we don't count Grantham as the north, I come up with Harold Wilson, and Eden, but then I think I'm going all the way back to Asquith for the previous one.
No 10 refuses to confirm HS2 will run to Manchester Fresh uncertainty for high-speed line as leaked document suggests Sunak and Hunt have met to discuss more cuts
While Downing Street said the government was “committed to HS2”, the PM’s spokesperson would not confirm that HS2 would extend to Manchester, under repeated questioning at a briefing on Thursday...
HS2 looking increasingly like a very, very long-burn version of the classic Monorail episode of The Simpsons.
The scale of the failure here is genuinely very difficult to fully comprehend - I'm sure someone's made out of it like an absolute bandit though.
And TPE is going to get worse from December.
The North has been well and truly fucked by Sunak.
First northern england PM since Blair and yet ironically he does not give a flying f.
Southampton only northern if you are based on the Isle of Wight!
Who was the last proper northerner to be PM?
Assuming we don't count Grantham as the north, I come up with Harold Wilson, and Eden, but then I think I'm going all the way back to Asquith for the previous one.
DLG was a northerner of a sort (and born in Manc as well).
There, I've said it. I didn't used to hate them, and I'm generally courteous to bike riders - when overtaking I'll wait for a safe spot, slow down and leave plenty of room - but more and more a large percentage of cyclists have gone militant and seem to deliberately want to piss off other road users.
Coming home from the supermarket this afternoon, and oh look there's cyclists on the road. About thirty of them, strung out at irregular intervals and every one riding dead centre in the lane. It's a twisty rural road with loads of blind bends, so effectively they've made sure any car trying to overtake has to do so in a dangerous manner or spend the next five miles moving at a crawl.
But I'm riding a scooter, not driving a car. evil cackle
I can still get past, although without as much gap as I'd normally leave. So I carefully and slowly make my way past several of them, only to have one shake his fist at me and another obviously shouting something (futile, as I'm wearing earplugs). Clearly the objective was to stop anyone getting past.
If I indulged in that sort of twattery on the road the courts would, rightly, look to confiscate my license. But cyclists don't have licences. Or registration plates to identify them.
I hate cyclists.
I love cyclists.
They are making lawyers and bankers look less bad.
Especially when it comes to loud clothing in quiet areas.
Even louder footwear.
The latest addition to the shoe family.
Is that in case you run into an XL Bully? Armoured trainers?
No, those would be my steel toe cap DM shoes. Look like normal black shoes. But don't get me mad...
No 10 refuses to confirm HS2 will run to Manchester Fresh uncertainty for high-speed line as leaked document suggests Sunak and Hunt have met to discuss more cuts
While Downing Street said the government was “committed to HS2”, the PM’s spokesperson would not confirm that HS2 would extend to Manchester, under repeated questioning at a briefing on Thursday...
HS2 looking increasingly like a very, very long-burn version of the classic Monorail episode of The Simpsons.
The scale of the failure here is genuinely very difficult to fully comprehend - I'm sure someone's made out of it like an absolute bandit though.
And TPE is going to get worse from December.
The North has been well and truly fucked by Sunak.
First northern england PM since Blair and yet ironically he does not give a flying f.
Southampton only northern if you are based on the Isle of Wight!
Who was the last proper northerner to be PM?
Assuming we don't count Grantham as the north, I come up with Harold Wilson, and Eden, but then I think I'm going all the way back to Asquith for the previous one.
DLG was a northerner of a sort (and born in Manc as well).
Obviously Ramsay Mac doesn't count to you lot. But he was only in the North-East. Not the proper North, north of Inverness.
I'm a fan of train travel but it's not a good experience especially at weekends.
Let's be positive - on my last journey the trains were punctual and arrived within about five minutes of schedule and a connecting train was made albeit at a push.
Getting the trains to run on time is a start but there seems a complete misconception among train operators of weekend travel which is if anyhting busier than pre-pandemic even as commuting still struggles especially on Mondays and Fridays.
Weekend leisure travel is where rail travel is now yet it's the time when facilities are neglected, trains run with minimal stock and basic catering is abandoned. If anything, the modern post-covid railway should be improving its weekend offering - more trains, longer trains, improved catering - and not try to re-create the pre-covid operating model.
Stodge Towers is 574 miles from Inverness - I can be there by train in 9 hours - we should be able to get that down by a third with proper track and trains.
Likely the weekend service is more costly to run. Also likely the passengers are price-sensitive, because commuters are going to a fixed location whereas daytrippers have a range of options that don't involve the train; the 12-hour weekend return trip is always likely to be niche. But I think that won't have changed a lot in the last five years, whereas the labour situation has changed..
I'm a fan of train travel but it's not a good experience especially at weekends.
Let's be positive - on my last journey the trains were punctual and arrived within about five minutes of schedule and a connecting train was made albeit at a push.
Getting the trains to run on time is a start but there seems a complete misconception among train operators of weekend travel which is if anyhting busier than pre-pandemic even as commuting still struggles especially on Mondays and Fridays.
Weekend leisure travel is where rail travel is now yet it's the time when facilities are neglected, trains run with minimal stock and basic catering is abandoned. If anything, the modern post-covid railway should be improving its weekend offering - more trains, longer trains, improved catering - and not try to re-create the pre-covid operating model.
Stodge Towers is 574 miles from Inverness - I can be there by train in 9 hours - we should be able to get that down by a third with proper track and trains.
Likely the weekend service is more costly to run. Also likely the passengers are price-sensitive, because commuters are going to a fixed location whereas daytrippers have a range of options that don't involve the train; the 12-hour weekend return trip is always likely to be niche. But I think that won't have changed a lot in the last five years, whereas the labour situation has changed..
Also, they need to mend the tracks etc., which is a further pain and cost all round.
No 10 refuses to confirm HS2 will run to Manchester Fresh uncertainty for high-speed line as leaked document suggests Sunak and Hunt have met to discuss more cuts
While Downing Street said the government was “committed to HS2”, the PM’s spokesperson would not confirm that HS2 would extend to Manchester, under repeated questioning at a briefing on Thursday...
HS2 looking increasingly like a very, very long-burn version of the classic Monorail episode of The Simpsons.
The scale of the failure here is genuinely very difficult to fully comprehend - I'm sure someone's made out of it like an absolute bandit though.
And TPE is going to get worse from December.
The North has been well and truly fucked by Sunak.
Using TPE on the north east leg I cannot see how it would get any worse.
TransPennine Express will mothball a fleet of 13 almost new trains as part of drastic plans to cut services from December and improve its dreadful punctuality record.
The company's boss said the moves were aimed at simplifying its operations and 'deliver improved punctuality and reliability'. The train firm was nationalised in May after months of poor performance.
The train company only began using its Spain-built Nova 3 trains in August 2019 but bosses have now confirmed they will be withdrawn because they don't have enough drivers trained to operate them.
There is an argument for a new Labour government to actually borrow more money to drive through improved metro and intercity links in the Midlands and the North. Especially the northern power link, or whatever it was: a regular Crossrail-esque train from Liverpool to Salford to Manc to Sheffield to Leeds to Newcastle. And then build proper tram or light rail links in the northern cities, all integrated with some Oystercard contactless system that works across the north
I cannot think of a single thing more likely to “level up”
That argument, or something very close to it, has been made for well over a decade now. One day it might even happen.
If I vote for Labour for the first time in my life - and it might well happen - I will feel my vote has been well-used (to an extent) if Starmer does this
IT IS SO FUCKING OBVIOUS
This is how you level up the North. Turn it into one giant conurbation so it gets economies of scale and the virtues of agglomeration
Will never happen owing to the chronic parochialism (the archetypal narcissism of small differences) of the British public. If you can't persuade people in Gateshead that they are part of Newcastle, and folk are still whining about utilitarian reforms to local government made 50 years ago, your chances of creating the beautiful Northern mega city of Limalesh are unfortunately vanishingly small.
We need a King of the North to overrule them. I am at least semi serious
The combined might of Liverpool, Manc, Leeds, Sheffield, Newc would be a city to nearly match London and a city to match almost anywhere in Europe
Consider the combined puissance of the universities, industries, services, cultural impact - DO IT. Like a kind of EU of English northern cities
The advantage of England is that it is tiny: ergo compact. Everywhere is about 2 miles from anywhere else. Weaponise this
Ange is now levelling up shadow. Queen of the North?
Who could have predicted rent controls do not work?
Former first minister Nicola Sturgeon’s rent cap and eviction ban have sent prices for Scottish tenants soaring faster than in London, new data reveals.
The cost of rent in Scotland is rising more rapidly than anywhere else in the UK after the SNP introduced restrictions on landlords’ ability to raise rent and carry out evictions.
Holyrood’s decision in September 2022 to freeze rent payments for hundreds of thousands of Scots and ban most evictions came in response to the cost of living crisis, which Ms Sturgeon labelled a “humanitarian emergency” at the time.
However, the move has since backfired with rental growth in Scotland climbing 12.7pc in the last year, compared with 10.5pc nationally and 12.4pc in London, according to property website Zoopla.
It’s practically the one thing the entire economics profession agrees on, from left to right. Rent controls always result in a housing market that’s even worse than it was before you brought them in.
Build more housing: That’s how you bring rents down.
TBF the SNP *have* been building council housing since 2010, to a modest but not at all trivial scale, and decent standards from what I (and IIRC DavidL) have seen. One estimate I saw was that they needed to do about twice as much. But it is still a good contribution.
In my neck of the woods most of the building has been done by Housing Associations who have indeed been quite innovative, utilising brown field and smaller sites than the traditional council housing schemes which tended to create deserts with very few services and problem neighbourhoods. This is, of course, being done with public money and I would agree that the Scottish government is due some credit for it. Unfortunately, their disastrous interventions in the private sector rental market have offset that benefit very considerably.
TPE: If the Nova 3s are going, that doesn't sound like a terrible decision, albeit the romance of locomotives people will be deeply saddened.
Of all TPE rolled out, the Nova 3s never fully came in, they served Scarborough, but never replaced the 185s to Middlesbrough. And then Scarborough became half a service and a lot of them only shuttled to York.
I was worried a year or so ago that they'd re-assign the Nova 1 Hitachis for parts or to GWR. At least those stay in the fleet, but guess it could mean fewer 6 carriagers on the Sheffield line.
Let's see the timetables that result and how they run, but that could be OK.
The real comedy with TPE is that it's a DfT farce in many parts. It needed new rolling stock. Partly because the "Pennine Class" 185 units were 3-car not 4-car because the DfT refused to pay for trains fit for purpose.
New trains? DfT direct almost all of the decisions. So we end up with 4 wholly incompatible fleets with one operator. With the DfT also dictating how drivers should be rostered. Suddenly 3 drivers needed for a Scarborough - Liverpool, hence cutting them back to York.
I understand the decision to pull these trains. Almost all of them are already parked up and not used. Driver training needs to be scrapped so the drivers they have can relearn the routes culled by DfT edict. So the trains may be shorter than needed but will at least run.
Who could have predicted rent controls do not work?
Former first minister Nicola Sturgeon’s rent cap and eviction ban have sent prices for Scottish tenants soaring faster than in London, new data reveals.
The cost of rent in Scotland is rising more rapidly than anywhere else in the UK after the SNP introduced restrictions on landlords’ ability to raise rent and carry out evictions.
Holyrood’s decision in September 2022 to freeze rent payments for hundreds of thousands of Scots and ban most evictions came in response to the cost of living crisis, which Ms Sturgeon labelled a “humanitarian emergency” at the time.
However, the move has since backfired with rental growth in Scotland climbing 12.7pc in the last year, compared with 10.5pc nationally and 12.4pc in London, according to property website Zoopla.
It’s practically the one thing the entire economics profession agrees on, from left to right. Rent controls always result in a housing market that’s even worse than it was before you brought them in.
Build more housing: That’s how you bring rents down.
TBF the SNP *have* been building council housing since 2010, to a modest but not at all trivial scale, and decent standards from what I (and IIRC DavidL) have seen. One estimate I saw was that they needed to do about twice as much. But it is still a good contribution.
In my neck of the woods most of the building has been done by Housing Associations who have indeed been quite innovative, utilising brown field and smaller sites than the traditional council housing schemes which tended to create deserts with very few services and problem neighbourhoods. This is, of course, being done with public money and I would agree that the Scottish government is due some credit for it. Unfortunately, their disastrous interventions in the private sector rental market have offset that benefit very considerably.
Much the same in my neck of the woods, though I think the local council actually does that (but also small and brownfield sites like redundant schools sans playing space and old industrial places).
Who could have predicted rent controls do not work?
Former first minister Nicola Sturgeon’s rent cap and eviction ban have sent prices for Scottish tenants soaring faster than in London, new data reveals.
The cost of rent in Scotland is rising more rapidly than anywhere else in the UK after the SNP introduced restrictions on landlords’ ability to raise rent and carry out evictions.
Holyrood’s decision in September 2022 to freeze rent payments for hundreds of thousands of Scots and ban most evictions came in response to the cost of living crisis, which Ms Sturgeon labelled a “humanitarian emergency” at the time.
However, the move has since backfired with rental growth in Scotland climbing 12.7pc in the last year, compared with 10.5pc nationally and 12.4pc in London, according to property website Zoopla.
It’s practically the one thing the entire economics profession agrees on, from left to right. Rent controls always result in a housing market that’s even worse than it was before you brought them in.
Build more housing: That’s how you bring rents down.
TBF the SNP *have* been building council housing since 2010, to a modest but not at all trivial scale, and decent standards from what I (and IIRC DavidL) have seen. One estimate I saw was that they needed to do about twice as much. But it is still a good contribution.
Were you not furiously in favour of a policy of stopping new housing being built because of 'nutrient neutrality' a mere few days ago? Are the new occupants of SNP council houses going to hold it in, or do they get some sort of special dispensation from you to add shit to the rivers?
You are a poster I value, with interesting points to make on several topics, but you are also one of the biggest political hypocrites going on this site.
"FT Magazine Britain’s dawning self-awareness The nation has realised what it is: a small country that needs immigrants, high taxes and European allies Simon Kuper"
It's a biggish country that needs immigrants, investment (in the short term therefore higher taxes but investment does pay off) and European allies. So about half right, but the small country barb not just innaccurate but deliberately switching off the people he should be persuading. Why?
Indeed, and I usually quite like Simon Kuper (albeit mostly his football writing).
You can’t call a nation that is in the top 10% of countries in the world by population ‘small’ by any definition.
How serious do people think the shoplifting situation is?.
It's bad. Two issues: 1. An awful lot of people who are utterly desperate. Petty crime increases the worse the economy gets 2. Local gangstas realising the chances of getting nicked, and then of actually getting prosecuted is very low thanks to cuts. So tax away.
The police policy of leaving criminals to get on with it whilst harassing people for hate crimes on Twitter is well-established and has nothing to do with 'cuts'.
What we're seeing is simple behaviourism. The positive consequences of shoplifting outweigh the negative for many people.
You do post some guff. Plenty of norther towns and conurbations where actual real world genuine cuts mean that if they make a couple of public order arrests of an evening there are zero police left in the town.
Before you call me a liar that is how the local Inspector described Cleveland Police operations to us gobsmacked councillors.
You can say "it's not cuts, it's woke". But nobody is listening because it's laughable bullshit. We all have eyes and a brain. Tory denials of lived reality no longer work.
Who could have predicted rent controls do not work?
Former first minister Nicola Sturgeon’s rent cap and eviction ban have sent prices for Scottish tenants soaring faster than in London, new data reveals.
The cost of rent in Scotland is rising more rapidly than anywhere else in the UK after the SNP introduced restrictions on landlords’ ability to raise rent and carry out evictions.
Holyrood’s decision in September 2022 to freeze rent payments for hundreds of thousands of Scots and ban most evictions came in response to the cost of living crisis, which Ms Sturgeon labelled a “humanitarian emergency” at the time.
However, the move has since backfired with rental growth in Scotland climbing 12.7pc in the last year, compared with 10.5pc nationally and 12.4pc in London, according to property website Zoopla.
It’s practically the one thing the entire economics profession agrees on, from left to right. Rent controls always result in a housing market that’s even worse than it was before you brought them in.
Build more housing: That’s how you bring rents down.
TBF the SNP *have* been building council housing since 2010, to a modest but not at all trivial scale, and decent standards from what I (and IIRC DavidL) have seen. One estimate I saw was that they needed to do about twice as much. But it is still a good contribution.
Were you not furiously in favour of a policy of stopping new housing being built because of 'nutrient neutrality' a mere few days ago? Are the new occupants of SNP council houses going to hold it in, or do they get some sort of special dispensation from you to add shit to the rivers?
You are a poster I value, with interesting points to make on several topics, but you are also one of the biggest political hypocrites going on this site.
Those are small developments in established towns. Not large commercial operations out in the middle of **** all.
I'm a fan of train travel but it's not a good experience especially at weekends.
Let's be positive - on my last journey the trains were punctual and arrived within about five minutes of schedule and a connecting train was made albeit at a push.
Getting the trains to run on time is a start but there seems a complete misconception among train operators of weekend travel which is if anyhting busier than pre-pandemic even as commuting still struggles especially on Mondays and Fridays.
Weekend leisure travel is where rail travel is now yet it's the time when facilities are neglected, trains run with minimal stock and basic catering is abandoned. If anything, the modern post-covid railway should be improving its weekend offering - more trains, longer trains, improved catering - and not try to re-create the pre-covid operating model.
Stodge Towers is 574 miles from Inverness - I can be there by train in 9 hours - we should be able to get that down by a third with proper track and trains.
Suspect that a reasonable number of your miles will be north of Perth on the Highland mainline. That wasn't built for either high speed running or for double tracks. Cutting 3 hours may be hard.
Who could have predicted rent controls do not work?
Former first minister Nicola Sturgeon’s rent cap and eviction ban have sent prices for Scottish tenants soaring faster than in London, new data reveals.
The cost of rent in Scotland is rising more rapidly than anywhere else in the UK after the SNP introduced restrictions on landlords’ ability to raise rent and carry out evictions.
Holyrood’s decision in September 2022 to freeze rent payments for hundreds of thousands of Scots and ban most evictions came in response to the cost of living crisis, which Ms Sturgeon labelled a “humanitarian emergency” at the time.
However, the move has since backfired with rental growth in Scotland climbing 12.7pc in the last year, compared with 10.5pc nationally and 12.4pc in London, according to property website Zoopla.
It’s practically the one thing the entire economics profession agrees on, from left to right. Rent controls always result in a housing market that’s even worse than it was before you brought them in.
Build more housing: That’s how you bring rents down.
TBF the SNP *have* been building council housing since 2010, to a modest but not at all trivial scale, and decent standards from what I (and IIRC DavidL) have seen. One estimate I saw was that they needed to do about twice as much. But it is still a good contribution.
In my neck of the woods most of the building has been done by Housing Associations who have indeed been quite innovative, utilising brown field and smaller sites than the traditional council housing schemes which tended to create deserts with very few services and problem neighbourhoods. This is, of course, being done with public money and I would agree that the Scottish government is due some credit for it. Unfortunately, their disastrous interventions in the private sector rental market have offset that benefit very considerably.
Public housing and rent controls mostly benefit non-mobile client groups who can become vote banks, while rent controls mostly punish foreign and English renters who have to move to Scotland without getting the rent controlled units, so it's the perfect policy for a nationalist socialist government.
Mrs. Gibson won the Democratic primary 3,181 to 2,574.
Beyond that, I don't know enough about that area to predict with certainty whether she will win the general election -- but it is likely that this story will help Republicans in their effort to win control of the state legislature: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_General_Assembly
Who could have predicted rent controls do not work?
Former first minister Nicola Sturgeon’s rent cap and eviction ban have sent prices for Scottish tenants soaring faster than in London, new data reveals.
The cost of rent in Scotland is rising more rapidly than anywhere else in the UK after the SNP introduced restrictions on landlords’ ability to raise rent and carry out evictions.
Holyrood’s decision in September 2022 to freeze rent payments for hundreds of thousands of Scots and ban most evictions came in response to the cost of living crisis, which Ms Sturgeon labelled a “humanitarian emergency” at the time.
However, the move has since backfired with rental growth in Scotland climbing 12.7pc in the last year, compared with 10.5pc nationally and 12.4pc in London, according to property website Zoopla.
It’s practically the one thing the entire economics profession agrees on, from left to right. Rent controls always result in a housing market that’s even worse than it was before you brought them in.
Build more housing: That’s how you bring rents down.
TBF the SNP *have* been building council housing since 2010, to a modest but not at all trivial scale, and decent standards from what I (and IIRC DavidL) have seen. One estimate I saw was that they needed to do about twice as much. But it is still a good contribution.
Were you not furiously in favour of a policy of stopping new housing being built because of 'nutrient neutrality' a mere few days ago? Are the new occupants of SNP council houses going to hold it in, or do they get some sort of special dispensation from you to add shit to the rivers?
You are a poster I value, with interesting points to make on several topics, but you are also one of the biggest political hypocrites going on this site.
Those are small developments in established towns. Not large commercial operations out in the middle of **** all.
See the difference?
No I don't see the difference, because there isn't one. The nutrient neutrality laws aren't affecting 'large commercial operations' - they primarily affect small house-builders, on developments that have in all other respects achieved planning permission. The ludicrous nutrient neutrality laws that you defended posit that every new home presents a new source of dangerous sewage entering the water, and I recall that you (to be fair, it could have been some other ill-informed participant) defended this on the basis that new homes somehow attract 'new people'. None of which seems to have entered your discourse on the SNP and their fabulous council house building programme. Mystifying.
I'm a fan of train travel but it's not a good experience especially at weekends.
Let's be positive - on my last journey the trains were punctual and arrived within about five minutes of schedule and a connecting train was made albeit at a push.
Getting the trains to run on time is a start but there seems a complete misconception among train operators of weekend travel which is if anyhting busier than pre-pandemic even as commuting still struggles especially on Mondays and Fridays.
Weekend leisure travel is where rail travel is now yet it's the time when facilities are neglected, trains run with minimal stock and basic catering is abandoned. If anything, the modern post-covid railway should be improving its weekend offering - more trains, longer trains, improved catering - and not try to re-create the pre-covid operating model.
Stodge Towers is 574 miles from Inverness - I can be there by train in 9 hours - we should be able to get that down by a third with proper track and trains.
Likely the weekend service is more costly to run. Also likely the passengers are price-sensitive, because commuters are going to a fixed location whereas daytrippers have a range of options that don't involve the train; the 12-hour weekend return trip is always likely to be niche. But I think that won't have changed a lot in the last five years, whereas the labour situation has changed..
Also, they need to mend the tracks etc., which is a further pain and cost all round.
For sure. And if they run more trains at the weekend, likely they also need to do more repairs and servicing during the nighttime which is far from ideal or affordable.
How serious do people think the shoplifting situation is?.
It's bad. Two issues: 1. An awful lot of people who are utterly desperate. Petty crime increases the worse the economy gets 2. Local gangstas realising the chances of getting nicked, and then of actually getting prosecuted is very low thanks to cuts. So tax away.
The police policy of leaving criminals to get on with it whilst harassing people for hate crimes on Twitter is well-established and has nothing to do with 'cuts'.
What we're seeing is simple behaviourism. The positive consequences of shoplifting outweigh the negative for many people.
You do post some guff. Plenty of norther towns and conurbations where actual real world genuine cuts mean that if they make a couple of public order arrests of an evening there are zero police left in the town.
Before you call me a liar that is how the local Inspector described Cleveland Police operations to us gobsmacked councillors.
You can say "it's not cuts, it's woke". But nobody is listening because it's laughable bullshit. We all have eyes and a brain. Tory denials of lived reality no longer work.
There are a lot of cops spending their time pretending to be 14 year old kids on the internet. One of the reasons for this is that the vigilante groups who go after people trying to groom such kids are having a lot of success and demonstrating it’s really not that hard.
Cancelling HS2 is a stupid idea IMO. The trains between London, B'ham and Manchester are currently very crowded. You often have to stand up the whole way.
Since Covid they are running fewer trains to cut their losses. For example, there used to be three fast trains an hour between Euston and Coventry. Now there are only two.
You sure about that? Avanti West Coast still seem to be running three although admittedly one takes a few minutes longer than the others:
By 'fast' I mean roughly an hour. There are 'fast' trains at xx:16 and xx:40 and a semi-fast (change at Rugby) at xx:53. This is a considerable reduction in capacity compared with pre-Covid. In those days there was a train every 20 minutes throughout the day, some ending in Wolverhampton, others continuing to Manchester or Scotland. The demand for and supply of train travel are both severely diminished compared to the original HS2 business case. This is the problem.
So if Labour make only 10 gains in Scotland they will need to make 114 net gains in England & Wales for a majority (and that's before boundary changes.)
Point of order: the number of E&W gains required would be 114 after boundary changes too.
Cancelling HS2 is a stupid idea IMO. The trains between London, B'ham and Manchester are currently very crowded. You often have to stand up the whole way.
Since Covid they are running fewer trains to cut their losses. For example, there used to be three fast trains an hour between Euston and Coventry. Now there are only two.
You sure about that? Avanti West Coast still seem to be running three although admittedly one takes a few minutes longer than the others:
By 'fast' I mean roughly an hour. There are 'fast' trains at xx:16 and xx:40 and a semi-fast (change at Rugby) at xx:53. This is a considerable reduction in capacity compared with pre-Covid. In those days there was a train every 20 minutes throughout the day, some ending in Wolverhampton, others continuing to Manchester or Scotland. The demand for and supply of train travel are both severely diminished compared to the original HS2 business case. This is the problem.
The demand isn't there because its virtually impossible to pay a ticket from Euston to Manchester in advance...
Remember that LNER runs at levels above pre-covid - so the issue of reduced demand is both local and due to train networks intentionally running services down..
No 10 refuses to confirm HS2 will run to Manchester Fresh uncertainty for high-speed line as leaked document suggests Sunak and Hunt have met to discuss more cuts
While Downing Street said the government was “committed to HS2”, the PM’s spokesperson would not confirm that HS2 would extend to Manchester, under repeated questioning at a briefing on Thursday...
HS2 looking increasingly like a very, very long-burn version of the classic Monorail episode of The Simpsons.
The scale of the failure here is genuinely very difficult to fully comprehend - I'm sure someone's made out of it like an absolute bandit though.
I'd like to see the revised economic case for the current shitshow.
Hunt is desperately looking for tax cut money for next year so why on earth does £34b of capital investment to be spent over the next 20 years come into the frame?
Fag end days of this administration.
It's a sobering thought that I was arguing about HS2 with Josiah Jessop when I was still an MP, which is more than 13 years ago. I said it was a classic big-project politicians' catnip, we should spend the money on improving smaller projects and the cost estimates were likely to be wild underestimates, JJ was his customary scornful self and said it was absolutely essential (as, to be fair, did most local councillors in my area). What's sobering is that it's still undecided and JJ and I are still here. Does nothing ever change??
That's the stark difference between North and South. Up there everyone wants it, down here no-one wants it.
That was actually the case in France a couple of decades ago. Parts of France wanted high-speed rail links; often the poorer parts. The richer parts often did not. (There was actually a study on this, I think...)
My own view on HS2: a country runs on its infrastructure. And if you want a country to grow and modernise, you need its infrastructure to grow and modernise. Whilst that does not mean a trash-everything approach, it does not mean we should try to preserve a bucolic past and country that never really existed, either. Anything else is stagnation and reversal.
Imagine if NIMBYs had existed in the mid-1800s (aside from a few gentrified landowners), and we had not developed a railway network. Where would the country - and because of the Empire, the world - be now? What if we had decided not to build the motorway network from the 1960s onwards?
Yes, HS2 has been mismanaged by the Conservative governments, and the coalition (although given the dead hands of the DfT and treasury, I doubt it would have been much different under any government). But that does not mean that such projects are unnecessary. What is necessary is to work out *why* and *how* they were mismanaged, and try to ensure such mistakes do not happen again.
We have had interesting discussions on those questions on here in the past, including recently.
I know too much about HS2 to guve a succinct view, but a few points: - the business cases are in the public domain (links below). - HS2 identified benefuts outweighed costs in the Jan22 business case - however when the Golborne Link was taken out in Jun22 (temporarily?), this was no longer the case. - However, the monetised benefits don't include the benefits of released capacity and improved reliability - because this is hard to monetise; and nor do they include land use benefits/regeneration benefits. This is superficially odd, as this is all kind of the point of the exercise. As anyone who knows anything about this will bang on ceaselessly about, it's about capacity, not speed. But DfT don't really like monetisation of those sorts of benefita in business cases.
I'm ducking back out of this conversation for now because the wife has got out of the bath and the second half of France Uruguay beckons! (Uruguay looking surprisingly good!)
Wife getting out of the bath or watch the rugby... Tough choices, eh?
How serious do people think the shoplifting situation is?.
It's bad. Two issues: 1. An awful lot of people who are utterly desperate. Petty crime increases the worse the economy gets 2. Local gangstas realising the chances of getting nicked, and then of actually getting prosecuted is very low thanks to cuts. So tax away.
The police policy of leaving criminals to get on with it whilst harassing people for hate crimes on Twitter is well-established and has nothing to do with 'cuts'.
What we're seeing is simple behaviourism. The positive consequences of shoplifting outweigh the negative for many people.
You do post some guff. Plenty of norther towns and conurbations where actual real world genuine cuts mean that if they make a couple of public order arrests of an evening there are zero police left in the town.
Before you call me a liar that is how the local Inspector described Cleveland Police operations to us gobsmacked councillors.
You can say "it's not cuts, it's woke". But nobody is listening because it's laughable bullshit. We all have eyes and a brain. Tory denials of lived reality no longer work.
Was it cuts that allowed the grooming of children in Rotherham to bloom into an epidemic whilst the police politely looked the other way?
How serious do people think the shoplifting situation is?.
It's bad. Two issues: 1. An awful lot of people who are utterly desperate. Petty crime increases the worse the economy gets 2. Local gangstas realising the chances of getting nicked, and then of actually getting prosecuted is very low thanks to cuts. So tax away.
The police policy of leaving criminals to get on with it whilst harassing people for hate crimes on Twitter is well-established and has nothing to do with 'cuts'.
What we're seeing is simple behaviourism. The positive consequences of shoplifting outweigh the negative for many people.
You do post some guff. Plenty of norther towns and conurbations where actual real world genuine cuts mean that if they make a couple of public order arrests of an evening there are zero police left in the town.
Before you call me a liar that is how the local Inspector described Cleveland Police operations to us gobsmacked councillors.
You can say "it's not cuts, it's woke". But nobody is listening because it's laughable bullshit. We all have eyes and a brain. Tory denials of lived reality no longer work.
There are a lot of cops spending their time pretending to be 14 year old kids on the internet. One of the reasons for this is that the vigilante groups who go after people trying to groom such kids are having a lot of success and demonstrating it’s really not that hard.
Big city cops? Perhaps. But again, you're desperately spinning an "it's all woke" line which is beyond detached from reality.
You're a Tory lawyer. When your government cuts the police and cuts the legal service and cuts prisons, you of all people shouldn't be in denial.
Firstly, you were not an MP. AFAICR you were the 2015 candidate for Broxtowe, the good people of that constituency having chucked you out in 2010. I'm fairly sure of this, as I only joined this site in 2010. Facts, eh?
I also believe my argument with you was not about that: it was about you sitting on the fence over the project, and waiting for the party to tell you what to think on it. You were, as I recall, 'undecided', as if your radar dish was still waiting for a signal from Miliband.
My memories might well be wrong, but I don't believe so.
" JJ was his customary scornful self "
Well, yes, I am scornful towards the sort of people who excuse Russia's evil little imperialistic war, and worse, who blame *us* for the invasion of Ukraine. As you do. I guess this little rant against me is more to do with my pointing out your sheer hypocrisy and stupidity over Ukraine, rather than HS2.
I could continue, but it might well gain me my first ban.
Oh, you could also at least spell my alias correctly...
Lol! I expect you're right about the date, though not about the issue - I was publicly against the project, against most party colleagues.
Calling you customarily scornful isn't exactly a rant. IMO you're unnecessarily abrasive on everything and with everyone, so I won't cross swords with you further on Ukraine either. But long may we both flourish on PB.
I'm fairly sure you were on the fence, awaiting orders.
"IMO you're unnecessarily abrasive on everything and with everyone"
It's a discussion site. There are times most of us have argued with others on here, and times when the same people have been in rapturous agreement. It's like a pub, albeit with generally more educated people in. Views and opinions are often hard-set, and text-based forums are not ideal for nuances. I've agreed with you on many things in the past, liked your posts etc.
I won't promise not to cross words with you further in Ukraine, as when you say *really* stupid things, particularly things that would just slip out of a Russian propagandist's mouth, I'll reply.
Fair enough re debate. I definitely wasn't "awaiting orders" - nobody in party HQ gave a toss what the candidate for Broxtowe thought about HS2. My recollection is that I was initially uncertain but came down firmly against.
Who could have predicted rent controls do not work?
Former first minister Nicola Sturgeon’s rent cap and eviction ban have sent prices for Scottish tenants soaring faster than in London, new data reveals.
The cost of rent in Scotland is rising more rapidly than anywhere else in the UK after the SNP introduced restrictions on landlords’ ability to raise rent and carry out evictions.
Holyrood’s decision in September 2022 to freeze rent payments for hundreds of thousands of Scots and ban most evictions came in response to the cost of living crisis, which Ms Sturgeon labelled a “humanitarian emergency” at the time.
However, the move has since backfired with rental growth in Scotland climbing 12.7pc in the last year, compared with 10.5pc nationally and 12.4pc in London, according to property website Zoopla.
It’s practically the one thing the entire economics profession agrees on, from left to right. Rent controls always result in a housing market that’s even worse than it was before you brought them in.
Build more housing: That’s how you bring rents down.
TBF the SNP *have* been building council housing since 2010, to a modest but not at all trivial scale, and decent standards from what I (and IIRC DavidL) have seen. One estimate I saw was that they needed to do about twice as much. But it is still a good contribution.
Were you not furiously in favour of a policy of stopping new housing being built because of 'nutrient neutrality' a mere few days ago? Are the new occupants of SNP council houses going to hold it in, or do they get some sort of special dispensation from you to add shit to the rivers?
You are a poster I value, with interesting points to make on several topics, but you are also one of the biggest political hypocrites going on this site.
Those are small developments in established towns. Not large commercial operations out in the middle of **** all.
See the difference?
No I don't see the difference, because there isn't one. The nutrient neutrality laws aren't affecting 'large commercial operations' - they primarily affect small house-builders, on developments that have in all other respects achieved planning permission. The ludicrous nutrient neutrality laws that you defended posit that every new home presents a new source of dangerous sewage entering the water, and I recall that you (to be fair, it could have been some other ill-informed participant) defended this on the basis that new homes somehow attract 'new people'. None of which seems to have entered your discourse on the SNP and their fabulous council house building programme. Mystifying.
Pre-existing sewerage plants = no problem in conforming to the legislation, whatever one may think of it. Adzding a few houses to an existing town is a lot different from building a large new estate out in the sticks.
Good evening from Dirty Leeds. Have to come here every month or so, and stay at Granary Wharf. From my table at the hotel bar the view is genuinely fantastic.
My only issue is that Granary Wharf is the *only* bit of Leeds which I like. I rejected the university as an option almost 3 decades ago, and despite all the money spent on bits of the city, much of the rest is still awful.
How serious do people think the shoplifting situation is?.
It's bad. Two issues: 1. An awful lot of people who are utterly desperate. Petty crime increases the worse the economy gets 2. Local gangstas realising the chances of getting nicked, and then of actually getting prosecuted is very low thanks to cuts. So tax away.
The police policy of leaving criminals to get on with it whilst harassing people for hate crimes on Twitter is well-established and has nothing to do with 'cuts'.
What we're seeing is simple behaviourism. The positive consequences of shoplifting outweigh the negative for many people.
You do post some guff. Plenty of norther towns and conurbations where actual real world genuine cuts mean that if they make a couple of public order arrests of an evening there are zero police left in the town.
Before you call me a liar that is how the local Inspector described Cleveland Police operations to us gobsmacked councillors.
You can say "it's not cuts, it's woke". But nobody is listening because it's laughable bullshit. We all have eyes and a brain. Tory denials of lived reality no longer work.
There are a lot of cops spending their time pretending to be 14 year old kids on the internet. One of the reasons for this is that the vigilante groups who go after people trying to groom such kids are having a lot of success and demonstrating it’s really not that hard.
Big city cops? Perhaps. But again, you're desperately spinning an "it's all woke" line which is beyond detached from reality.
You're a Tory lawyer. When your government cuts the police and cuts the legal service and cuts prisons, you of all people shouldn't be in denial.
Police aren't even going after theives when the tracking devices on their stolen goods can pinpoint their location on a map. People are stealing their own bikes back by answering ads on Gumtree. They simply cannot be arsed.
How serious do people think the shoplifting situation is?.
It's bad. Two issues: 1. An awful lot of people who are utterly desperate. Petty crime increases the worse the economy gets 2. Local gangstas realising the chances of getting nicked, and then of actually getting prosecuted is very low thanks to cuts. So tax away.
The police policy of leaving criminals to get on with it whilst harassing people for hate crimes on Twitter is well-established and has nothing to do with 'cuts'.
What we're seeing is simple behaviourism. The positive consequences of shoplifting outweigh the negative for many people.
You do post some guff. Plenty of norther towns and conurbations where actual real world genuine cuts mean that if they make a couple of public order arrests of an evening there are zero police left in the town.
Before you call me a liar that is how the local Inspector described Cleveland Police operations to us gobsmacked councillors.
You can say "it's not cuts, it's woke". But nobody is listening because it's laughable bullshit. We all have eyes and a brain. Tory denials of lived reality no longer work.
There are a lot of cops spending their time pretending to be 14 year old kids on the internet. One of the reasons for this is that the vigilante groups who go after people trying to groom such kids are having a lot of success and demonstrating it’s really not that hard.
Big city cops? Perhaps. But again, you're desperately spinning an "it's all woke" line which is beyond detached from reality.
You're a Tory lawyer. When your government cuts the police and cuts the legal service and cuts prisons, you of all people shouldn't be in denial.
Police aren't even going after theives when the tracking devices on their stolen goods can pinpoint their location on a map. People are stealing their own bikes back by answering ads on Gumtree. They simply cannot be arsed.
1. They don't have the resources to chase down all the petty crime. Takes huge amounts of paperwork they don't have the people to complete 2. When they nick bike-stealing scrotes the prospects of actual justice are low - massive backlog in the courts.
You can deflect and deny all you like. Actually please do more. It only increases the size of your defeat.
Cancelling HS2 is a stupid idea IMO. The trains between London, B'ham and Manchester are currently very crowded. You often have to stand up the whole way.
Since Covid they are running fewer trains to cut their losses. For example, there used to be three fast trains an hour between Euston and Coventry. Now there are only two.
You sure about that? Avanti West Coast still seem to be running three although admittedly one takes a few minutes longer than the others:
By 'fast' I mean roughly an hour. There are 'fast' trains at xx:16 and xx:40 and a semi-fast (change at Rugby) at xx:53. This is a considerable reduction in capacity compared with pre-Covid. In those days there was a train every 20 minutes throughout the day, some ending in Wolverhampton, others continuing to Manchester or Scotland. The demand for and supply of train travel are both severely diminished compared to the original HS2 business case. This is the problem.
The demand isn't there because its virtually impossible to pay a ticket from Euston to Manchester in advance...
Remember that LNER runs at levels above pre-covid - so the issue of reduced demand is both local and due to train networks intentionally running services down..
The ongoing strikes cannot help either.
Admittedly on a micro rather than macro level we used to take the train to Newcastle. Given it never being on time when it runs or at times not running we now get the x21 which is pretty fast. I suspect we are not alone in moving from rail.
No 10 refuses to confirm HS2 will run to Manchester Fresh uncertainty for high-speed line as leaked document suggests Sunak and Hunt have met to discuss more cuts
While Downing Street said the government was “committed to HS2”, the PM’s spokesperson would not confirm that HS2 would extend to Manchester, under repeated questioning at a briefing on Thursday...
HS2 looking increasingly like a very, very long-burn version of the classic Monorail episode of The Simpsons.
The scale of the failure here is genuinely very difficult to fully comprehend - I'm sure someone's made out of it like an absolute bandit though.
And TPE is going to get worse from December.
The North has been well and truly fucked by Sunak.
Using TPE on the north east leg I cannot see how it would get any worse.
TransPennine Express will mothball a fleet of 13 almost new trains as part of drastic plans to cut services from December and improve its dreadful punctuality record.
The company's boss said the moves were aimed at simplifying its operations and 'deliver improved punctuality and reliability'. The train firm was nationalised in May after months of poor performance.
The train company only began using its Spain-built Nova 3 trains in August 2019 but bosses have now confirmed they will be withdrawn because they don't have enough drivers trained to operate them.
There is an argument for a new Labour government to actually borrow more money to drive through improved metro and intercity links in the Midlands and the North. Especially the northern power link, or whatever it was: a regular Crossrail-esque train from Liverpool to Salford to Manc to Sheffield to Leeds to Newcastle. And then build proper tram or light rail links in the northern cities, all integrated with some Oystercard contactless system that works across the north
I cannot think of a single thing more likely to “level up”
That argument, or something very close to it, has been made for well over a decade now. One day it might even happen.
If I vote for Labour for the first time in my life - and it might well happen - I will feel my vote has been well-used (to an extent) if Starmer does this
IT IS SO FUCKING OBVIOUS
This is how you level up the North. Turn it into one giant conurbation so it gets economies of scale and the virtues of agglomeration
Will never happen owing to the chronic parochialism (the archetypal narcissism of small differences) of the British public. If you can't persuade people in Gateshead that they are part of Newcastle, and folk are still whining about utilitarian reforms to local government made 50 years ago, your chances of creating the beautiful Northern mega city of Limalesh are unfortunately vanishingly small.
We need a King of the North to overrule them. I am at least semi serious
The combined might of Liverpool, Manc, Leeds, Sheffield, Newc would be a city to nearly match London and a city to match almost anywhere in Europe
Consider the combined puissance of the universities, industries, services, cultural impact - DO IT. Like a kind of EU of English northern cities
The advantage of England is that it is tiny: ergo compact. Everywhere is about 2 miles from anywhere else. Weaponise this
Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield I agree with but Newcastle is too far away from those to be considered part of that Northern giant conurbation. Newcastle is further from Manchester than Birmingham is from London.
Cancelling HS2 is a stupid idea IMO. The trains between London, B'ham and Manchester are currently very crowded. You often have to stand up the whole way.
Since Covid they are running fewer trains to cut their losses. For example, there used to be three fast trains an hour between Euston and Coventry. Now there are only two.
You sure about that? Avanti West Coast still seem to be running three although admittedly one takes a few minutes longer than the others:
By 'fast' I mean roughly an hour. There are 'fast' trains at xx:16 and xx:40 and a semi-fast (change at Rugby) at xx:53. This is a considerable reduction in capacity compared with pre-Covid. In those days there was a train every 20 minutes throughout the day, some ending in Wolverhampton, others continuing to Manchester or Scotland. The demand for and supply of train travel are both severely diminished compared to the original HS2 business case. This is the problem.
The demand isn't there because its virtually impossible to pay a ticket from Euston to Manchester in advance...
Remember that LNER runs at levels above pre-covid - so the issue of reduced demand is both local and due to train networks intentionally running services down..
The ongoing strikes cannot help either.
Admittedly on a micro rather than macro level we used to take the train to Newcastle. Given it never being on time when it runs or at times not running we now get the x21 which is pretty fast. I suspect we are not alone in moving from rail.
TPE? I often check the trains on the Durham-Newcastle/Edinburgh sector for Mrs C and TPE is the dodgy bit, though it does seem to have improved of late.
Also off topic, but important. From David Miliband: "Half the children under 5 in Somalia, the epicenter of the current crisis, could become acutely malnourished this year. Untreated, these children lack the strength to walk, cry, smile or fight off infections. They are up to 11 times more likely to die than their peers. Globally, acute malnutrition affects 60 million children every year.
Milband suggests giving out "a fortified peanut paste known as ready-to-use therapeutic food, or RUTF. A daily dose for just a few weeks helps up to 92 percent of children".
(There will be, to put it mildly, difficulties in distributing even such simple aid in Somalia -- but I think we ought to try. And we certainly ought to try in other, less violent places.)
Good evening from Dirty Leeds. Have to come here every month or so, and stay at Granary Wharf. From my table at the hotel bar the view is genuinely fantastic.
My only issue is that Granary Wharf is the *only* bit of Leeds which I like. I rejected the university as an option almost 3 decades ago, and despite all the money spent on bits of the city, much of the rest is still awful.
Sorry to any Leeds residents...
I passed thru Leeds on my way to Harrogate the other day (I may have mentioned it). I was surprised by the number of new tall buildings. I later went thru That London and again, lots of new tall buildings. Lots of small little boxes to stack people who really want a house... ☹️
How serious do people think the shoplifting situation is?.
It's bad. Two issues: 1. An awful lot of people who are utterly desperate. Petty crime increases the worse the economy gets 2. Local gangstas realising the chances of getting nicked, and then of actually getting prosecuted is very low thanks to cuts. So tax away.
The police policy of leaving criminals to get on with it whilst harassing people for hate crimes on Twitter is well-established and has nothing to do with 'cuts'.
What we're seeing is simple behaviourism. The positive consequences of shoplifting outweigh the negative for many people.
You do post some guff. Plenty of norther towns and conurbations where actual real world genuine cuts mean that if they make a couple of public order arrests of an evening there are zero police left in the town.
Before you call me a liar that is how the local Inspector described Cleveland Police operations to us gobsmacked councillors.
You can say "it's not cuts, it's woke". But nobody is listening because it's laughable bullshit. We all have eyes and a brain. Tory denials of lived reality no longer work.
There are a lot of cops spending their time pretending to be 14 year old kids on the internet. One of the reasons for this is that the vigilante groups who go after people trying to groom such kids are having a lot of success and demonstrating it’s really not that hard.
Big city cops? Perhaps. But again, you're desperately spinning an "it's all woke" line which is beyond detached from reality.
You're a Tory lawyer. When your government cuts the police and cuts the legal service and cuts prisons, you of all people shouldn't be in denial.
Police aren't even going after theives when the tracking devices on their stolen goods can pinpoint their location on a map. People are stealing their own bikes back by answering ads on Gumtree. They simply cannot be arsed.
1. They don't have the resources to chase down all the petty crime. Takes huge amounts of paperwork they don't have the people to complete 2. When they nick bike-stealing scrotes the prospects of actual justice are low - massive backlog in the courts.
You can deflect and deny all you like. Actually please do more. It only increases the size of your defeat.
Please. It isn't 'my' defeat - I'm looking forward to Sunak being chucked out. The only negative is it means Starmer coming in.
1. Perhaps someone should work out how to reduce the paperwork involved rater than just letting the criminals be - catching criminals is, after all, sort of the reason that the police force exists. 2. Depressing outcomes later are a pretty shit reason not to nick thieves and recover peoples' property - it is, again, the whole reason the police exist. 3. And I'm the one deflecting and denying?
Hello again, @RochdalePioneers : I like Leeds very much. Or I did - probably at least a decade since I was last there. IMO Briggate is the handsomest main shopping street of any city in England. And I had the second best sandwich I've ever had there in Jan 2008. Leeds has two downsides: 1) I've never been able to find any particularly enjoyable city centre pubs. And 2) its suburbs - perfectly nice, but not much there in the way there is in Manchester or Newcastle or Liverpool. But a handsome city nonetheless. @Leon : Manchester/Leeds/Liverpool/Sheffield is what George Osborne was trying to achieve. It rather lost impetus after he left office. I rather like the idea, not least because, well, imagine a city of 10 million people with the Peak District at its centre. World's best urban park. @Benpointer : wife was getting out of the bath to watch the rugby with me. We weren't - you know *blushes*. I like the RWC, but France-Uruguay wouldn't trump that. On which subject, weren't Uruguay amazing? The 27-12 scoreline rather flattered France. The handicap odds at the start reckoned even money on France winning by 50. @NickPalmer - one day I'll have a more spirited go at persuading you of this, but what HS2, done right, should give us is the opportunity to do lots of small improvements. For example, by taking fast trains off the Stockport-Crewe line you can run far more stopping trains and freight. Done right, it is a series of local improvements badly badged as a high speed investment.
Philip (Lord) Hammond was on the TV yesterday. We need to invest more, consume less and then raise productivity as a result was his advice. Sounds reasonable enough. You can fiddle around with local government etc but I don't see it as a fundamental problem.
Invest in what? Things that are of obvious benefit to us in the future. Things that foreigners would want to buy from us, so we can afford to import stuff from them. Not investing in fixed assets like the housing stock. The readjustment of house prices might be a start. I'd love to see a regional breakdown of bank lending. What percentage of mortgage lending is to the south east?
Good evening from Dirty Leeds. Have to come here every month or so, and stay at Granary Wharf. From my table at the hotel bar the view is genuinely fantastic.
My only issue is that Granary Wharf is the *only* bit of Leeds which I like. I rejected the university as an option almost 3 decades ago, and despite all the money spent on bits of the city, much of the rest is still awful.
Sorry to any Leeds residents...
" I rejected the university as an option almost 3 decades ago, "
As a graduate of the finest higher education facility in Britain I have to say this is some of the worst abuse I have ever read on PB.
I'm a fan of train travel but it's not a good experience especially at weekends.
Let's be positive - on my last journey the trains were punctual and arrived within about five minutes of schedule and a connecting train was made albeit at a push.
Getting the trains to run on time is a start but there seems a complete misconception among train operators of weekend travel which is if anyhting busier than pre-pandemic even as commuting still struggles especially on Mondays and Fridays.
Weekend leisure travel is where rail travel is now yet it's the time when facilities are neglected, trains run with minimal stock and basic catering is abandoned. If anything, the modern post-covid railway should be improving its weekend offering - more trains, longer trains, improved catering - and not try to re-create the pre-covid operating model.
Stodge Towers is 574 miles from Inverness - I can be there by train in 9 hours - we should be able to get that down by a third with proper track and trains.
Just put your car on the train at Euston, go to sleep in Watford, wake up in Aviemore, eat breakfast. It's hard to believe such a civilised arrangement ever existed. The World We Have Lost, eh?
I'm a fan of train travel but it's not a good experience especially at weekends.
Let's be positive - on my last journey the trains were punctual and arrived within about five minutes of schedule and a connecting train was made albeit at a push.
Getting the trains to run on time is a start but there seems a complete misconception among train operators of weekend travel which is if anyhting busier than pre-pandemic even as commuting still struggles especially on Mondays and Fridays.
Weekend leisure travel is where rail travel is now yet it's the time when facilities are neglected, trains run with minimal stock and basic catering is abandoned. If anything, the modern post-covid railway should be improving its weekend offering - more trains, longer trains, improved catering - and not try to re-create the pre-covid operating model.
Stodge Towers is 574 miles from Inverness - I can be there by train in 9 hours - we should be able to get that down by a third with proper track and trains.
Just put your car on the train at Euston, go to sleep in Watford, wake up in Aviemore, eat breakfast. It's hard to believe such a civilised arrangement ever existed. The World We Have Lost, eh?
Hang on, would lardy modern cars actually fit on a motorail train now?
How serious do people think the shoplifting situation is?.
It's bad. Two issues: 1. An awful lot of people who are utterly desperate. Petty crime increases the worse the economy gets 2. Local gangstas realising the chances of getting nicked, and then of actually getting prosecuted is very low thanks to cuts. So tax away.
The police policy of leaving criminals to get on with it whilst harassing people for hate crimes on Twitter is well-established and has nothing to do with 'cuts'.
What we're seeing is simple behaviourism. The positive consequences of shoplifting outweigh the negative for many people.
You do post some guff. Plenty of norther towns and conurbations where actual real world genuine cuts mean that if they make a couple of public order arrests of an evening there are zero police left in the town.
Before you call me a liar that is how the local Inspector described Cleveland Police operations to us gobsmacked councillors.
You can say "it's not cuts, it's woke". But nobody is listening because it's laughable bullshit. We all have eyes and a brain. Tory denials of lived reality no longer work.
There are a lot of cops spending their time pretending to be 14 year old kids on the internet. One of the reasons for this is that the vigilante groups who go after people trying to groom such kids are having a lot of success and demonstrating it’s really not that hard.
Big city cops? Perhaps. But again, you're desperately spinning an "it's all woke" line which is beyond detached from reality.
You're a Tory lawyer. When your government cuts the police and cuts the legal service and cuts prisons, you of all people shouldn't be in denial.
Police aren't even going after theives when the tracking devices on their stolen goods can pinpoint their location on a map. People are stealing their own bikes back by answering ads on Gumtree. They simply cannot be arsed.
1. They don't have the resources to chase down all the petty crime. Takes huge amounts of paperwork they don't have the people to complete 2. When they nick bike-stealing scrotes the prospects of actual justice are low - massive backlog in the courts.
You can deflect and deny all you like. Actually please do more. It only increases the size of your defeat.
The problem with policing, as in most areas of Britain, is only partly the lack of resources, it’s the paperwork. See also housebuilding, NHS, running a business, infrastructure planning.
How serious do people think the shoplifting situation is?.
It's bad. Two issues: 1. An awful lot of people who are utterly desperate. Petty crime increases the worse the economy gets 2. Local gangstas realising the chances of getting nicked, and then of actually getting prosecuted is very low thanks to cuts. So tax away.
The police policy of leaving criminals to get on with it whilst harassing people for hate crimes on Twitter is well-established and has nothing to do with 'cuts'.
What we're seeing is simple behaviourism. The positive consequences of shoplifting outweigh the negative for many people.
You do post some guff. Plenty of norther towns and conurbations where actual real world genuine cuts mean that if they make a couple of public order arrests of an evening there are zero police left in the town.
Before you call me a liar that is how the local Inspector described Cleveland Police operations to us gobsmacked councillors.
You can say "it's not cuts, it's woke". But nobody is listening because it's laughable bullshit. We all have eyes and a brain. Tory denials of lived reality no longer work.
There are a lot of cops spending their time pretending to be 14 year old kids on the internet. One of the reasons for this is that the vigilante groups who go after people trying to groom such kids are having a lot of success and demonstrating it’s really not that hard.
Big city cops? Perhaps. But again, you're desperately spinning an "it's all woke" line which is beyond detached from reality.
You're a Tory lawyer. When your government cuts the police and cuts the legal service and cuts prisons, you of all people shouldn't be in denial.
Police aren't even going after theives when the tracking devices on their stolen goods can pinpoint their location on a map. People are stealing their own bikes back by answering ads on Gumtree. They simply cannot be arsed.
1. They don't have the resources to chase down all the petty crime. Takes huge amounts of paperwork they don't have the people to complete 2. When they nick bike-stealing scrotes the prospects of actual justice are low - massive backlog in the courts.
You can deflect and deny all you like. Actually please do more. It only increases the size of your defeat.
The problem with policing, as in most areas of Britain, is only partly the lack of resources, it’s the paperwork. See also housebuilding, NHS, running a business, infrastructure planning.
How serious do people think the shoplifting situation is?.
It's bad. Two issues: 1. An awful lot of people who are utterly desperate. Petty crime increases the worse the economy gets 2. Local gangstas realising the chances of getting nicked, and then of actually getting prosecuted is very low thanks to cuts. So tax away.
The police policy of leaving criminals to get on with it whilst harassing people for hate crimes on Twitter is well-established and has nothing to do with 'cuts'.
What we're seeing is simple behaviourism. The positive consequences of shoplifting outweigh the negative for many people.
You do post some guff. Plenty of norther towns and conurbations where actual real world genuine cuts mean that if they make a couple of public order arrests of an evening there are zero police left in the town.
Before you call me a liar that is how the local Inspector described Cleveland Police operations to us gobsmacked councillors.
You can say "it's not cuts, it's woke". But nobody is listening because it's laughable bullshit. We all have eyes and a brain. Tory denials of lived reality no longer work.
There are a lot of cops spending their time pretending to be 14 year old kids on the internet. One of the reasons for this is that the vigilante groups who go after people trying to groom such kids are having a lot of success and demonstrating it’s really not that hard.
Big city cops? Perhaps. But again, you're desperately spinning an "it's all woke" line which is beyond detached from reality.
You're a Tory lawyer. When your government cuts the police and cuts the legal service and cuts prisons, you of all people shouldn't be in denial.
Police aren't even going after theives when the tracking devices on their stolen goods can pinpoint their location on a map. People are stealing their own bikes back by answering ads on Gumtree. They simply cannot be arsed.
1. They don't have the resources to chase down all the petty crime. Takes huge amounts of paperwork they don't have the people to complete 2. When they nick bike-stealing scrotes the prospects of actual justice are low - massive backlog in the courts.
You can deflect and deny all you like. Actually please do more. It only increases the size of your defeat.
The problem with policing, as in most areas of Britain, is only partly the lack of resources, it’s the paperwork. See also housebuilding, NHS, running a business, infrastructure planning.
Or even applying for a municipal chess board.
That whole story comes across like a Yes Minister parody.
Once upon a time, the RWC progressed with a bit more urgency. And I can understand why they don't. This isn't football; you can't really play more than one serious game of rugby a week. Once upon a time the no-hopers in the groups would get lumbered with awkward schedules so that the seeded teams would always get to play at the weekends; now everyone plays at the weekend. Which is better for the players, and fairer. But I miss the days when you would get a game every night. I really, really like rugby. There is no game I like watching better when I have no interest in either side winning. Georgia vs Tonga? I'm absolutely lapping it up. I'm slightly disappointed it's not on every night.
I'm a fan of train travel but it's not a good experience especially at weekends.
Let's be positive - on my last journey the trains were punctual and arrived within about five minutes of schedule and a connecting train was made albeit at a push.
Getting the trains to run on time is a start but there seems a complete misconception among train operators of weekend travel which is if anyhting busier than pre-pandemic even as commuting still struggles especially on Mondays and Fridays.
Weekend leisure travel is where rail travel is now yet it's the time when facilities are neglected, trains run with minimal stock and basic catering is abandoned. If anything, the modern post-covid railway should be improving its weekend offering - more trains, longer trains, improved catering - and not try to re-create the pre-covid operating model.
Stodge Towers is 574 miles from Inverness - I can be there by train in 9 hours - we should be able to get that down by a third with proper track and trains.
Just put your car on the train at Euston, go to sleep in Watford, wake up in Aviemore, eat breakfast. It's hard to believe such a civilised arrangement ever existed. The World We Have Lost, eh?
A motion from Plaid Cymru to alter the 20mph policy was successful in the Senedd, with 38 votes in favour and 15 against.
The motion from MS Heledd Fychan reads that "lowering speed limits where people and vehicles interact the most can save lives" and "exemptions are possible in locations deemed appropriate by local authorities".
It adds that "the importance of community support to any speed limit changes to ensure genuine concerns can be alleviated" and "more exemptions may be identified following the introduction of new limits".
Plaid's successful amendment explicitly calls on the Welsh Government to "continuously review the impact of new limits, empower local authorities to make any further exemptions and provide local authorities with adequate funding to facilitate the introduction of new limits,"
That's a mistake.
They had the same review process in Edinburgh, which discovered a significant reduction in collisions (and a bunch of other benefits, like lower noise pollution), and the council are using the findings to roll out even more 20mph limits.
If you don't like 20mph, you need to conduct some kind of cover up.
I'm a fan of train travel but it's not a good experience especially at weekends.
Let's be positive - on my last journey the trains were punctual and arrived within about five minutes of schedule and a connecting train was made albeit at a push.
Getting the trains to run on time is a start but there seems a complete misconception among train operators of weekend travel which is if anyhting busier than pre-pandemic even as commuting still struggles especially on Mondays and Fridays.
Weekend leisure travel is where rail travel is now yet it's the time when facilities are neglected, trains run with minimal stock and basic catering is abandoned. If anything, the modern post-covid railway should be improving its weekend offering - more trains, longer trains, improved catering - and not try to re-create the pre-covid operating model.
Stodge Towers is 574 miles from Inverness - I can be there by train in 9 hours - we should be able to get that down by a third with proper track and trains.
Just put your car on the train at Euston, go to sleep in Watford, wake up in Aviemore, eat breakfast. It's hard to believe such a civilised arrangement ever existed. The World We Have Lost, eh?
When could you put your car on the train?
UK services stopped in 1995, and the service from Calais to the Med in 2010.
I'm a fan of train travel but it's not a good experience especially at weekends.
Let's be positive - on my last journey the trains were punctual and arrived within about five minutes of schedule and a connecting train was made albeit at a push.
Getting the trains to run on time is a start but there seems a complete misconception among train operators of weekend travel which is if anyhting busier than pre-pandemic even as commuting still struggles especially on Mondays and Fridays.
Weekend leisure travel is where rail travel is now yet it's the time when facilities are neglected, trains run with minimal stock and basic catering is abandoned. If anything, the modern post-covid railway should be improving its weekend offering - more trains, longer trains, improved catering - and not try to re-create the pre-covid operating model.
Stodge Towers is 574 miles from Inverness - I can be there by train in 9 hours - we should be able to get that down by a third with proper track and trains.
Just put your car on the train at Euston, go to sleep in Watford, wake up in Aviemore, eat breakfast. It's hard to believe such a civilised arrangement ever existed. The World We Have Lost, eh?
When could you put your car on the train?
I read this and thought, aha, I know - France. Take that.
Then I checked and found that the last French Motorail trains from Calais were discontinued in 2010.
Rather sad. My wife and I took Calais to Brive and Narbonne several times back in the early 2000s.
Once upon a time, the RWC progressed with a bit more urgency. And I can understand why they don't. This isn't football; you can't really play more than one serious game of rugby a week. Once upon a time the no-hopers in the groups would get lumbered with awkward schedules so that the seeded teams would always get to play at the weekends; now everyone plays at the weekend. Which is better for the players, and fairer. But I miss the days when you would get a game every night. I really, really like rugby. There is no game I like watching better when I have no interest in either side winning. Georgia vs Tonga? I'm absolutely lapping it up. I'm slightly disappointed it's not on every night.
It's hard to get pumped up about an 'event' tournament if it is going on for more than a month, with big gaps between matches. Hype and interest are hard to maintain even for fans.
I'm a fan of train travel but it's not a good experience especially at weekends.
Let's be positive - on my last journey the trains were punctual and arrived within about five minutes of schedule and a connecting train was made albeit at a push.
Getting the trains to run on time is a start but there seems a complete misconception among train operators of weekend travel which is if anyhting busier than pre-pandemic even as commuting still struggles especially on Mondays and Fridays.
Weekend leisure travel is where rail travel is now yet it's the time when facilities are neglected, trains run with minimal stock and basic catering is abandoned. If anything, the modern post-covid railway should be improving its weekend offering - more trains, longer trains, improved catering - and not try to re-create the pre-covid operating model.
Stodge Towers is 574 miles from Inverness - I can be there by train in 9 hours - we should be able to get that down by a third with proper track and trains.
Just put your car on the train at Euston, go to sleep in Watford, wake up in Aviemore, eat breakfast. It's hard to believe such a civilised arrangement ever existed. The World We Have Lost, eh?
When could you put your car on the train?
I read this and thought, aha, I know - France. Take that.
Then I checked and found that the last French Motorail trains from Calais were discontinued in 2010.
Rather sad. My wife and I took Calais to Brive and Narbonne several times back in the early 2000s.
We did a family holiday to Rome in 1989, with the car going on the train from Calais to Nice, and from Nice to Paris on the way back (after we missed the train to Calais). Shame if they've stopped it.
Philip (Lord) Hammond was on the TV yesterday. We need to invest more, consume less and then raise productivity as a result was his advice. Sounds reasonable enough. You can fiddle around with local government etc but I don't see it as a fundamental problem.
Invest in what? Things that are of obvious benefit to us in the future. Things that foreigners would want to buy from us, so we can afford to import stuff from them. Not investing in fixed assets like the housing stock. The readjustment of house prices might be a start. I'd love to see a regional breakdown of bank lending. What percentage of mortgage lending is to the south east?
Mrs. Gibson won the Democratic primary 3,181 to 2,574.
Beyond that, I don't know enough about that area to predict with certainty whether she will win the general election -- but it is likely that this story will help Republicans in their effort to win control of the state legislature: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_General_Assembly
Last election (2021) VA House of Delegates District 56 was essentially city of Charlottesville, HOWEVER legislative redistricting moved it to outer northwest suburban Richmond (eastern Goochland county and western Henrico county).
Meaning that new VA HD57 is significantly LESS Democratic than the old 57 (though don't have numbers to validate this).
My guess (pure supposition) is that GOP discovered the lady's online activities BEFORE the June 2023 primary, but waited until AFTERwards to spill the . . . beans.
As for Democrats, yet another candidate vetting failure.
Philip (Lord) Hammond was on the TV yesterday. We need to invest more, consume less and then raise productivity as a result was his advice. Sounds reasonable enough. You can fiddle around with local government etc but I don't see it as a fundamental problem.
Invest in what? Things that are of obvious benefit to us in the future. Things that foreigners would want to buy from us, so we can afford to import stuff from them. Not investing in fixed assets like the housing stock. The readjustment of house prices might be a start. I'd love to see a regional breakdown of bank lending. What percentage of mortgage lending is to the south east?
"Hunter Biden has been indicted by special counsel David Weiss in connection with a gun he purchased in 2018.
The charges include making false statements on a federal firearms form and possession of a firearm as a prohibited person.
It’s an extraordinary turn of events after his original plea deal collapsed and potentially sets up a dramatic trial in the middle of his father’s 2024 reelection bid."
"FT Magazine Britain’s dawning self-awareness The nation has realised what it is: a small country that needs immigrants, high taxes and European allies Simon Kuper"
It's a biggish country that needs immigrants, investment (in the short term therefore higher taxes but investment does pay off) and European allies. So about half right, but the small country barb not just innaccurate but deliberately switching off the people he should be persuading. Why?
There are a decent number of opinion-formers on the soft-left who hold a thinly-veiled contempt for their own country, and think the sooner it's absorbed into something else and forgotten about the better.
I'm a fan of train travel but it's not a good experience especially at weekends.
Let's be positive - on my last journey the trains were punctual and arrived within about five minutes of schedule and a connecting train was made albeit at a push.
Getting the trains to run on time is a start but there seems a complete misconception among train operators of weekend travel which is if anyhting busier than pre-pandemic even as commuting still struggles especially on Mondays and Fridays.
Weekend leisure travel is where rail travel is now yet it's the time when facilities are neglected, trains run with minimal stock and basic catering is abandoned. If anything, the modern post-covid railway should be improving its weekend offering - more trains, longer trains, improved catering - and not try to re-create the pre-covid operating model.
Stodge Towers is 574 miles from Inverness - I can be there by train in 9 hours - we should be able to get that down by a third with proper track and trains.
Just put your car on the train at Euston, go to sleep in Watford, wake up in Aviemore, eat breakfast. It's hard to believe such a civilised arrangement ever existed. The World We Have Lost, eh?
When could you put your car on the train?
UK services stopped in 1995, and the service from Calais to the Med in 2010.
Hello again, @RochdalePioneers : I like Leeds very much. Or I did - probably at least a decade since I was last there. IMO Briggate is the handsomest main shopping street of any city in England. And I had the second best sandwich I've ever had there in Jan 2008. Leeds has two downsides: 1) I've never been able to find any particularly enjoyable city centre pubs. And 2) its suburbs - perfectly nice, but not much there in the way there is in Manchester or Newcastle or Liverpool. But a handsome city nonetheless. @Leon : Manchester/Leeds/Liverpool/Sheffield is what George Osborne was trying to achieve. It rather lost impetus after he left office. I rather like the idea, not least because, well, imagine a city of 10 million people with the Peak District at its centre. World's best urban park. @Benpointer : wife was getting out of the bath to watch the rugby with me. We weren't - you know *blushes*. I like the RWC, but France-Uruguay wouldn't trump that. On which subject, weren't Uruguay amazing? The 27-12 scoreline rather flattered France. The handicap odds at the start reckoned even money on France winning by 50. @NickPalmer - one day I'll have a more spirited go at persuading you of this, but what HS2, done right, should give us is the opportunity to do lots of small improvements. For example, by taking fast trains off the Stockport-Crewe line you can run far more stopping trains and freight. Done right, it is a series of local improvements badly badged as a high speed investment.
If John Curtice's analysis is right then the SNP are stonking value in Rutherglen at over 10/1.
I've had a taste. DYOR.
Can't help wondering whether Starmer might be in (mild) trouble if he fails to win any of these three by-elections, when the assumption has been he'd win at least one of them.
I'm a fan of train travel but it's not a good experience especially at weekends.
Let's be positive - on my last journey the trains were punctual and arrived within about five minutes of schedule and a connecting train was made albeit at a push.
Getting the trains to run on time is a start but there seems a complete misconception among train operators of weekend travel which is if anyhting busier than pre-pandemic even as commuting still struggles especially on Mondays and Fridays.
Weekend leisure travel is where rail travel is now yet it's the time when facilities are neglected, trains run with minimal stock and basic catering is abandoned. If anything, the modern post-covid railway should be improving its weekend offering - more trains, longer trains, improved catering - and not try to re-create the pre-covid operating model.
Stodge Towers is 574 miles from Inverness - I can be there by train in 9 hours - we should be able to get that down by a third with proper track and trains.
Renationalise the whole railway and start from scratch. The current system is a dog’s breakfast and the public want one arse to kick - that of the government.
A motion from Plaid Cymru to alter the 20mph policy was successful in the Senedd, with 38 votes in favour and 15 against.
The motion from MS Heledd Fychan reads that "lowering speed limits where people and vehicles interact the most can save lives" and "exemptions are possible in locations deemed appropriate by local authorities".
It adds that "the importance of community support to any speed limit changes to ensure genuine concerns can be alleviated" and "more exemptions may be identified following the introduction of new limits".
Plaid's successful amendment explicitly calls on the Welsh Government to "continuously review the impact of new limits, empower local authorities to make any further exemptions and provide local authorities with adequate funding to facilitate the introduction of new limits,"
That's a mistake.
They had the same review process in Edinburgh, which discovered a significant reduction in collisions (and a bunch of other benefits, like lower noise pollution), and the council are using the findings to roll out even more 20mph limits.
If you don't like 20mph, you need to conduct some kind of cover up.
Half of London’s roads now are 20mph, according to tonight’s Evening Standard. Which is good, and makes sense. Realise it makes it even less likely that the PB Bumpkins will drive down here now, as their cars explode when driven so slowly.
(Not that they ever would have visited anyway, so I guess we haven’t lost anything.)
If John Curtice's analysis is right then the SNP are stonking value in Rutherglen at over 10/1.
I've had a taste. DYOR.
Can't help wondering whether Starmer might be in (mild) trouble if he fails to win any of these three by-elections, when the assumption has been he'd win at least one of them.
I’ve taken a cheeky fiver on the SNP. Thanks for the tip @Casino_Royale
I doubt it’s a winner but it’s certainly value and, as you say, worth a tickle.
Cancelling HS2 is a stupid idea IMO. The trains between London, B'ham and Manchester are currently very crowded. You often have to stand up the whole way.
Since Covid they are running fewer trains to cut their losses. For example, there used to be three fast trains an hour between Euston and Coventry. Now there are only two.
You sure about that? Avanti West Coast still seem to be running three although admittedly one takes a few minutes longer than the others:
By 'fast' I mean roughly an hour. There are 'fast' trains at xx:16 and xx:40 and a semi-fast (change at Rugby) at xx:53. This is a considerable reduction in capacity compared with pre-Covid. In those days there was a train every 20 minutes throughout the day, some ending in Wolverhampton, others continuing to Manchester or Scotland. The demand for and supply of train travel are both severely diminished compared to the original HS2 business case. This is the problem.
You clearly haven’t read it properly. There are fast non-stop trains at 9.10 and 9.40 and a fast train with three stops at 9.16. The other four are semi-fast.
There used to be a third non stop but that was due to be removed before Covid.
The change was made to try and increase capacity with in the absence of new tracks. HS2 would therefore change it back…
Comments
I also thought that "Not investing in fixed assets like the housing stock" would implicitly involve less housebuilding. It's mostly not extensions.
Build more housing: That’s how you bring rents down.
Of all TPE rolled out, the Nova 3s never fully came in, they served Scarborough, but never replaced the 185s to Middlesbrough. And then Scarborough became half a service and a lot of them only shuttled to York.
I was worried a year or so ago that they'd re-assign the Nova 1 Hitachis for parts or to GWR. At least those stay in the fleet, but guess it could mean fewer 6 carriagers on the Sheffield line.
Let's see the timetables that result and how they run, but that could be OK.
1. An awful lot of people who are utterly desperate. Petty crime increases the worse the economy gets
2. Local gangstas realising the chances of getting nicked, and then of actually getting prosecuted is very low thanks to cuts. So tax away.
I'm a fan of train travel but it's not a good experience especially at weekends.
Let's be positive - on my last journey the trains were punctual and arrived within about five minutes of schedule and a connecting train was made albeit at a push.
Getting the trains to run on time is a start but there seems a complete misconception among train operators of weekend travel which is if anyhting busier than pre-pandemic even as commuting still struggles especially on Mondays and Fridays.
Weekend leisure travel is where rail travel is now yet it's the time when facilities are neglected, trains run with minimal stock and basic catering is abandoned. If anything, the modern post-covid railway should be improving its weekend offering - more trains, longer trains, improved catering - and not try to re-create the pre-covid operating model.
Stodge Towers is 574 miles from Inverness - I can be there by train in 9 hours - we should be able to get that down by a third with proper track and trains.
What we're seeing is simple behaviourism. The positive consequences of shoplifting outweigh the negative for many people.
This is, of course, being done with public money and I would agree that the Scottish government is due some credit for it. Unfortunately, their disastrous interventions in the private sector rental market have offset that benefit very considerably.
New trains? DfT direct almost all of the decisions. So we end up with 4 wholly incompatible fleets with one operator. With the DfT also dictating how drivers should be rostered. Suddenly 3 drivers needed for a Scarborough - Liverpool, hence cutting them back to York.
I understand the decision to pull these trains. Almost all of them are already parked up and not used. Driver training needs to be scrapped so the drivers they have can relearn the routes culled by DfT edict. So the trains may be shorter than needed but will at least run.
Almost an improvement.
You are a poster I value, with interesting points to make on several topics, but you are also one of the biggest political hypocrites going on this site.
You can’t call a nation that is in the top 10% of countries in the world by population ‘small’ by any definition.
Before you call me a liar that is how the local Inspector described Cleveland Police operations to us gobsmacked councillors.
You can say "it's not cuts, it's woke". But nobody is listening because it's laughable bullshit. We all have eyes and a brain. Tory denials of lived reality no longer work.
See the difference?
Mrs. Gibson won the Democratic primary 3,181 to 2,574.
Beyond that, I don't know enough about that area to predict with certainty whether she will win the general election -- but it is likely that this story will help Republicans in their effort to win control of the state legislature: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_General_Assembly
(I love the first name of the Republican lieutenant governor, and her record of service: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winsome_Sears )
Remember that LNER runs at levels above pre-covid - so the issue of reduced demand is both local and due to train networks intentionally running services down..
https://x.com/keir_starmer/status/1702405631209046287
You're a Tory lawyer. When your government cuts the police and cuts the legal service and cuts prisons, you of all people shouldn't be in denial.
My only issue is that Granary Wharf is the *only* bit of Leeds which I like. I rejected the university as an option almost 3 decades ago, and despite all the money spent on bits of the city, much of the rest is still awful.
Sorry to any Leeds residents...
2. When they nick bike-stealing scrotes the prospects of actual justice are low - massive backlog in the courts.
You can deflect and deny all you like. Actually please do more. It only increases the size of your defeat.
Admittedly on a micro rather than macro level we used to take the train to Newcastle. Given it never being on time when it runs or at times not running we now get the x21 which is pretty fast. I suspect we are not alone in moving from rail.
This crisis mirrors the HIV/AIDS epidemic before President George W. Bush launched PEPFAR. Antiretrovirals had emerged as a lifesaving treatment, but they were exorbitantly expensive and scarce, particularly in Africa."
source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/04/03/children-malnutrition-famine-american-leadership/
Milband suggests giving out "a fortified peanut paste known as ready-to-use therapeutic food, or RUTF. A daily dose for just a few weeks helps up to 92 percent of children".
(There will be, to put it mildly, difficulties in distributing even such simple aid in Somalia -- but I think we ought to try. And we certainly ought to try in other, less violent places.)
1. Perhaps someone should work out how to reduce the paperwork involved rater than just letting the criminals be - catching criminals is, after all, sort of the reason that the police force exists.
2. Depressing outcomes later are a pretty shit reason not to nick thieves and recover peoples' property - it is, again, the whole reason the police exist.
3. And I'm the one deflecting and denying?
Jack Surfleet
@jacksurfleet
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1m
Friday's GUARDIAN: 'Starmer criticised by left and right over plan to end small boats crisis'
#TomorrowsPapersToday
@RochdalePioneers : I like Leeds very much. Or I did - probably at least a decade since I was last there. IMO Briggate is the handsomest main shopping street of any city in England. And I had the second best sandwich I've ever had there in Jan 2008. Leeds has two downsides: 1) I've never been able to find any particularly enjoyable city centre pubs. And 2) its suburbs - perfectly nice, but not much there in the way there is in Manchester or Newcastle or Liverpool.
But a handsome city nonetheless.
@Leon : Manchester/Leeds/Liverpool/Sheffield is what George Osborne was trying to achieve. It rather lost impetus after he left office. I rather like the idea, not least because, well, imagine a city of 10 million people with the Peak District at its centre. World's best urban park.
@Benpointer : wife was getting out of the bath to watch the rugby with me. We weren't - you know *blushes*. I like the RWC, but France-Uruguay wouldn't trump that. On which subject, weren't Uruguay amazing? The 27-12 scoreline rather flattered France. The handicap odds at the start reckoned even money on France winning by 50.
@NickPalmer - one day I'll have a more spirited go at persuading you of this, but what HS2, done right, should give us is the opportunity to do lots of small improvements. For example, by taking fast trains off the Stockport-Crewe line you can run far more stopping trains and freight. Done right, it is a series of local improvements badly badged as a high speed investment.
As a graduate of the finest higher education facility in Britain I have to say this is some of the worst abuse I have ever read on PB.
Demonisation isn’t working"
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/09/14/the-eus-liberals-need-better-ways-to-deal-with-populists
And I can understand why they don't. This isn't football; you can't really play more than one serious game of rugby a week. Once upon a time the no-hopers in the groups would get lumbered with awkward schedules so that the seeded teams would always get to play at the weekends; now everyone plays at the weekend. Which is better for the players, and fairer. But I miss the days when you would get a game every night.
I really, really like rugby. There is no game I like watching better when I have no interest in either side winning. Georgia vs Tonga? I'm absolutely lapping it up. I'm slightly disappointed it's not on every night.
They had the same review process in Edinburgh, which discovered a significant reduction in collisions (and a bunch of other benefits, like lower noise pollution), and the council are using the findings to roll out even more 20mph limits.
If you don't like 20mph, you need to conduct some kind of cover up.
https://www.seat61.com/motorail-trains.htm
Then I checked and found that the last French Motorail trains from Calais were discontinued in 2010.
Rather sad. My wife and I took Calais to Brive and Narbonne several times back in the early 2000s.
https://medium.com/britainelects/previewing-the-six-council-by-elections-of-14th-september-2023-20af25df3e1d
Political Currency
@polcurrency
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5h
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"It's a mistake."
@George_Osborne
warns Jeremy Hunt and Rishi Sunak that abandoning the second leg of HS2 to Manchester would be a "real tragedy".
Meaning that new VA HD57 is significantly LESS Democratic than the old 57 (though don't have numbers to validate this).
My guess (pure supposition) is that GOP discovered the lady's online activities BEFORE the June 2023 primary, but waited until AFTERwards to spill the . . . beans.
As for Democrats, yet another candidate vetting failure.
https://www.fca.org.uk/data/product-sales-data/mortgage-product-sales-data-geographic-area
https://twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1702402645363687635
"Election Maps UK
@ElectionMapsUK
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3h
Scottish Westminster Voting Intention:
SNP: 38% (+2)
LAB: 27% (-5)
CON: 16% (+1)
LDM: 7% (+1)
Via
@YouGov
, 8-13 Sep.
Changes w/ 3-8 Aug."
I've had a taste. DYOR.
(Not that they ever would have visited anyway, so I guess we haven’t lost anything.)
I doubt it’s a winner but it’s certainly value and, as you say, worth a tickle.
There used to be a third non stop but that was due to be removed before Covid.
The change was made to try and increase capacity with in the absence of new tracks. HS2 would therefore change it back…