was stopped by a man just outside Parliament yesterday evening. He introduced himself as a civil servant. He told me to ‘keep doing what you are doing, everyone knows it’s the truth. The establishment are very worried because they know what’s coming down the track for them!’ This is not the first civil servant to say this to me in private . They all know the truth and they all know it has to be exposed.
So we're going to be presented with a vastly over-engineered HS2 which connects a station by itself in Birmingham to a building site in west London.
Other countries manage to do infrastructure projects like this. We're just absolutely shit.
Should have spent the money on roads from the beginning.
New motorways would have far greater economic return and allow far more traffic including both goods and people.
However having said that, we've spent all this money already and half-building it is just bloody stupid. If you're going to do this stupid thing, then do it properly.
Next time though that there's any big cross country infrastructure like this, start construction in the North, make London the last place that's connected not the first. Then the Treasury can't weasel out of it. The second construction began at London it was obvious that once the bit London wanted was done (relieving pressure on the Southern tracks) then why bother with the rest of the country would be the Treasuries attitude.
Except it now looks like the plan isn't even to do that. Birmingham - Old Oak Common won't even unclog the Euston/St Pancras/Kings Cross suburban and regional networks. (And whilst it's tactless to say it, that was a large part of the point of the scheme; getting the fast trains off the existing tracks to leave a lot more space for slower ones.) The Flying Scotsman et al are still going to have to go on their heritage lines to get close enough to the centre of London.
So what was the point of any of this? Its all been just pissed up the wall.
A new "M6" to relieve the existing one would have added a lot of capacity too, relieved the existing network too, and on top of that allowed the construction or expansion of new towns and not just pre-existing ones. Far greater return on investment, but the DfT has been captured by a rail lobby that won't even do rail properly. Bloody imbeciles should be nuked from orbit, just to be sure.
There was a point- and rail can pentrate city centres in a way that roads can't. (Or not without consequnces that the public aren't prepared to swallow.) And cities like London are all about density.
But yes- if Sunak's plan is to run HS2 from OOC to Birmingham, it is going to be pretty pointless. (And by the time you have made OOC work as a terminal and got enough capacity for people to do the last five miles into town, it probably won't even save much.)
Is Sunak really going to leave HS2 unfinished? I mean…I think that would easily sum up the woeful record of this government
They've been trying to wriggle out of it for two years, ever since that silly Integrated Rail Plan which was clearly a first step in justifying abandonment.
The issue I think is that Sunak isn't very good at managing money. He doesn't understand how to spend it to generate a solid return. And the Treasury and DfT, who never spend money outside London if they can help it, have never wanted HS2. Indeed, they've put every possible barrier in its way from the start, including deliberately inflating its cost by putting impossible specs in place. So without a political will they're getting what they want.
It is also possible of course that he got burned by Eat out to Help Out and is spooked by the Chesham by-election.
It just needs to be killed at this stage. We have to remember that this was not conceived because it was 'needed' to make Britain's economy work. It is the Northern spur of a Europe-wide railway network - a project dreamed up in the 1950's, before even the Beeching cuts. All the arguments in its favour are generalised 'we should be a nation that spends more on infrastructure and does it properly' - sure, but this is like spending more on the army and buying all one type of tank that isn't particularly good. It is 'an' infrastructure project but not necessarily 'the' infrastructure project. Just make a new, cheap exit plan to make something of what's there, and shitcan the rest.
"make a new cheap exit plan" seems to have been the theory driving a fair bit of the decision making that's resulted in it turning out so crap, so I am sceptical that it is the right answer now...
I think the dynamics of the project have been more irresistible force meets immovable object. Irresistible force being a totemic, uncancellable project, conceived (and apparently partly funded) by the EU. Immovable object being our general British civil service bumbling rubbish way at doing these projects.
So we're going to be presented with a vastly over-engineered HS2 which connects a station by itself in Birmingham to a building site in west London.
Other countries manage to do infrastructure projects like this. We're just absolutely shit.
Should have spent the money on roads from the beginning.
New motorways would have far greater economic return and allow far more traffic including both goods and people.
However having said that, we've spent all this money already and half-building it is just bloody stupid. If you're going to do this stupid thing, then do it properly.
Next time though that there's any big cross country infrastructure like this, start construction in the North, make London the last place that's connected not the first. Then the Treasury can't weasel out of it. The second construction began at London it was obvious that once the bit London wanted was done (relieving pressure on the Southern tracks) then why bother with the rest of the country would be the Treasuries attitude.
Except it now looks like the plan isn't even to do that. Birmingham - Old Oak Common won't even unclog the Euston/St Pancras/Kings Cross suburban and regional networks. (And whilst it's tactless to say it, that was a large part of the point of the scheme; getting the fast trains off the existing tracks to leave a lot more space for slower ones.) The Flying Scotsman et al are still going to have to go on their heritage lines to get close enough to the centre of London.
So what was the point of any of this? Its all been just pissed up the wall.
A new "M6" to relieve the existing one would have added a lot of capacity too, relieved the existing network too, and on top of that allowed the construction or expansion of new towns and not just pre-existing ones. Far greater return on investment, but the DfT has been captured by a rail lobby that won't even do rail properly. Bloody imbeciles should be nuked from orbit, just to be sure.
There was a point- and rail can pentrate city centres in a way that roads can't. (Or not without consequnces that the public aren't prepared to swallow.) And cities like London are all about density.
But yes- if Sunak's plan is to run HS2 from OOC to Birmingham, it is going to be pretty pointless. (And by the time you have made OOC work as a terminal and got enough capacity for people to do the last five miles into town, it probably won't even save much.)
If you're going to mess around with interchanges like that, might as well have done a motorway to out of town and then that via a park and ride to the underground.
Especially once you grasp that not everyone wants to go to London. I wonder what proportion of journeys on the M6 are heading actually into London each day, I imagine pretty close to 1% if that.
I've been trying to find how many journeys a day are done on the M6 alone to contrast it with HS2, but can't find the figures. It seems that the stretch 21a to 26 [current roadworks for turning into a smart motorway, M62 connection at Warrington to Wigan roughly] alone carries over 120k vehicles a day.
The amazing thing is there are music channels where you can listen to the tunes of the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s as well as general "oldie" music so if you want to listen to ABBA, The Beatles, early Stones, Roxy Music or whatever it's not that far away (and that's before YouTube or whatever).
Waterloo was recorded nearly 50 years ago yet the winning performance from Eurovision at Brighton is there for all to view. Had I, growing up in the 1970s, wanted to listen to the music of the 1920s, I'd have been laughed at.
It was as though for my generation music began in the 1950s (Elvis, Bill Haley etc) and even the likes of swing and big band music from the 1940s were never played or heard on the radio.
I wonder if culturally and perhaps politically the availability of what "was" has fuelled a desire for nostalgia and encouraged those with populist messages around change, tradition and identity.
When the past was less in the present, you thought more about the future and the 60s and to an extent the 70s were a time of modernity and the future (the White Heat of Technology, Star Trek for example). Political messaging was about the future and wanting to make it better - now, it seems the past has been romanticised as much as politicised.
I'm still reminded of the old maxim - nostalgia ain't what it used to be.
A key element here was the 1990's ; a gradual loss of confidence in both political and artistic ideas of the future, postmodernism, and the beginning of the recycling of the 1960's and '70s.
That didn’t just happen in the 1990's,in the 1980's there was a big resurgence in 1950's culture, and I am sure there was similar nostalgia in the 1970's though I wasn't around to pinpoint it accurately.
See the current nostalgia for the 80s (and I'm sure soon to be 90s). I'm sure it's something to do with one generation discovering what their parents were shagging to. And as the generations get longer so does the nostalgia.
Oh, there's already a lot of 90's nostalgia, celebration of house etc. It's nostalgia for the noughties I don't think I'm ready for.
Yep. Just passed a huge line of teens and twenties queueing to get into "House Sounds of the 90's" night at NZ Newcastle. And during a Toon home game, too.
Dance music was the big hope of cultural "futurism" of the late 1980's and turn of the 1990s, possibly the last big hope of this type.
Much of this heady optmism ended with the ban on unlicensed raves and good old Michael Howard';s Criminal Justice Act in 1994, after which it became much more heavily consumerist.
I think that future-focus lives in the rap/hip-hop genre now. That's where the weird beats and rhythms live these days. I doubt the average pber feels this is their natural hinterland, but it dominated pop music for a lot of the 21st century, e.g. pretty much the whole 2000s before Lady Gaga, and it still has the chin-strokers' favourite acts like Kendrick Lamar.
The amazing thing is there are music channels where you can listen to the tunes of the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s as well as general "oldie" music so if you want to listen to ABBA, The Beatles, early Stones, Roxy Music or whatever it's not that far away (and that's before YouTube or whatever).
Waterloo was recorded nearly 50 years ago yet the winning performance from Eurovision at Brighton is there for all to view. Had I, growing up in the 1970s, wanted to listen to the music of the 1920s, I'd have been laughed at.
It was as though for my generation music began in the 1950s (Elvis, Bill Haley etc) and even the likes of swing and big band music from the 1940s were never played or heard on the radio.
I wonder if culturally and perhaps politically the availability of what "was" has fuelled a desire for nostalgia and encouraged those with populist messages around change, tradition and identity.
When the past was less in the present, you thought more about the future and the 60s and to an extent the 70s were a time of modernity and the future (the White Heat of Technology, Star Trek for example). Political messaging was about the future and wanting to make it better - now, it seems the past has been romanticised as much as politicised.
I'm still reminded of the old maxim - nostalgia ain't what it used to be.
A key element here was the 1990's ; a gradual loss of confidence in both political and artistic ideas of the future, postmodernism, and the beginning of the recycling of the 1960's and '70s.
That didn’t just happen in the 1990's,in the 1980's there was a big resurgence in 1950's culture, and I am sure there was similar nostalgia in the 1970's though I wasn't around to pinpoint it accurately.
See the current nostalgia for the 80s (and I'm sure soon to be 90s). I'm sure it's something to do with one generation discovering what their parents were shagging to. And as the generations get longer so does the nostalgia.
Oh, there's already a lot of 90's nostalgia, celebration of house etc. It's nostalgia for the noughties I don't think I'm ready for.
Yep. Just passed a huge line of teens and twenties queueing to get into "House Sounds of the 90's" night at NZ Newcastle. And during a Toon home game, too.
Dance music was the big hope of cultural "futurism" of the late 1980's and turn of the 1990s, possibly the last big hope of this type.
Much of this heady optmism ended with the ban on unlicensed raves and good old Michael Howard';s Criminal Justice Act in 1994, after which it became much more heavily consumerist.
I think that future-focus lives in the rap/hip-hop genre now. That's where the weird beats and rhythms live these days. I doubt the average pber feels this is their natural hinterland, but it dominated pop music for a lot of the 21st century, e.g. pretty much the whole 2000s before Lady Gaga, and it still has the chin-strokers' favourite acts like Kendrick Lamar.
Rap/hip-hop has been going for 40+ years now, its not really future any more either?
Not sure that pre-Lady Gaga counts as future, rather than increasingly distant past.
So we're going to be presented with a vastly over-engineered HS2 which connects a station by itself in Birmingham to a building site in west London.
Other countries manage to do infrastructure projects like this. We're just absolutely shit.
Should have spent the money on roads from the beginning.
New motorways would have far greater economic return and allow far more traffic including both goods and people.
However having said that, we've spent all this money already and half-building it is just bloody stupid. If you're going to do this stupid thing, then do it properly.
Next time though that there's any big cross country infrastructure like this, start construction in the North, make London the last place that's connected not the first. Then the Treasury can't weasel out of it. The second construction began at London it was obvious that once the bit London wanted was done (relieving pressure on the Southern tracks) then why bother with the rest of the country would be the Treasuries attitude.
Except it now looks like the plan isn't even to do that. Birmingham - Old Oak Common won't even unclog the Euston/St Pancras/Kings Cross suburban and regional networks. (And whilst it's tactless to say it, that was a large part of the point of the scheme; getting the fast trains off the existing tracks to leave a lot more space for slower ones.) The Flying Scotsman et al are still going to have to go on their heritage lines to get close enough to the centre of London.
So what was the point of any of this? Its all been just pissed up the wall.
A new "M6" to relieve the existing one would have added a lot of capacity too, relieved the existing network too, and on top of that allowed the construction or expansion of new towns and not just pre-existing ones. Far greater return on investment, but the DfT has been captured by a rail lobby that won't even do rail properly. Bloody imbeciles should be nuked from orbit, just to be sure.
There was a point- and rail can pentrate city centres in a way that roads can't. (Or not without consequnces that the public aren't prepared to swallow.) And cities like London are all about density.
But yes- if Sunak's plan is to run HS2 from OOC to Birmingham, it is going to be pretty pointless. (And by the time you have made OOC work as a terminal and got enough capacity for people to do the last five miles into town, it probably won't even save much.)
If you're going to mess around with interchanges like that, might as well have done a motorway to out of town and then that via a park and ride to the underground.
Especially once you grasp that not everyone wants to go to London. I wonder what proportion of journeys on the M6 are heading actually into London each day, I imagine pretty close to 1% if that.
I've been trying to find how many journeys a day are done on the M6 alone to contrast it with HS2, but can't find the figures. It seems that the stretch 21a to 26 [current roadworks for turning into a smart motorway, M62 connection at Warrington to Wigan roughly] alone carries over 120k vehicles a day.
Only because there isn't decent public transport in the North.
So we're going to be presented with a vastly over-engineered HS2 which connects a station by itself in Birmingham to a building site in west London.
Other countries manage to do infrastructure projects like this. We're just absolutely shit.
Should have spent the money on roads from the beginning.
New motorways would have far greater economic return and allow far more traffic including both goods and people.
However having said that, we've spent all this money already and half-building it is just bloody stupid. If you're going to do this stupid thing, then do it properly.
Next time though that there's any big cross country infrastructure like this, start construction in the North, make London the last place that's connected not the first. Then the Treasury can't weasel out of it. The second construction began at London it was obvious that once the bit London wanted was done (relieving pressure on the Southern tracks) then why bother with the rest of the country would be the Treasuries attitude.
Except it now looks like the plan isn't even to do that. Birmingham - Old Oak Common won't even unclog the Euston/St Pancras/Kings Cross suburban and regional networks. (And whilst it's tactless to say it, that was a large part of the point of the scheme; getting the fast trains off the existing tracks to leave a lot more space for slower ones.) The Flying Scotsman et al are still going to have to go on their heritage lines to get close enough to the centre of London.
So what was the point of any of this? Its all been just pissed up the wall.
A new "M6" to relieve the existing one would have added a lot of capacity too, relieved the existing network too, and on top of that allowed the construction or expansion of new towns and not just pre-existing ones. Far greater return on investment, but the DfT has been captured by a rail lobby that won't even do rail properly. Bloody imbeciles should be nuked from orbit, just to be sure.
There was a point- and rail can pentrate city centres in a way that roads can't. (Or not without consequnces that the public aren't prepared to swallow.) And cities like London are all about density.
But yes- if Sunak's plan is to run HS2 from OOC to Birmingham, it is going to be pretty pointless. (And by the time you have made OOC work as a terminal and got enough capacity for people to do the last five miles into town, it probably won't even save much.)
If you're going to mess around with interchanges like that, might as well have done a motorway to out of town and then that via a park and ride to the underground.
Especially once you grasp that not everyone wants to go to London. I wonder what proportion of journeys on the M6 are heading actually into London each day, I imagine pretty close to 1% if that.
I've been trying to find how many journeys a day are done on the M6 alone to contrast it with HS2, but can't find the figures. It seems that the stretch 21a to 26 [current roadworks for turning into a smart motorway, M62 connection at Warrington to Wigan roughly] alone carries over 120k vehicles a day.
Only because there isn't decent public transport in the North.
Public transport is a pathetic share of people transportation and an even lower share of goods transportation in the entire country.
Worth investing in, but get out of a London/city commuter bubble and enter the real world from time to time.
The last time the country was getting rapid per capita productivity and wage growth is when the strategic road network was getting built. Since we stopped investing in roads and have gone into real decline especially when you compare with population growth, our productivity growth has collapsed.
So we're going to be presented with a vastly over-engineered HS2 which connects a station by itself in Birmingham to a building site in west London.
Other countries manage to do infrastructure projects like this. We're just absolutely shit.
Should have spent the money on roads from the beginning.
New motorways would have far greater economic return and allow far more traffic including both goods and people.
However having said that, we've spent all this money already and half-building it is just bloody stupid. If you're going to do this stupid thing, then do it properly.
Next time though that there's any big cross country infrastructure like this, start construction in the North, make London the last place that's connected not the first. Then the Treasury can't weasel out of it. The second construction began at London it was obvious that once the bit London wanted was done (relieving pressure on the Southern tracks) then why bother with the rest of the country would be the Treasuries attitude.
Except it now looks like the plan isn't even to do that. Birmingham - Old Oak Common won't even unclog the Euston/St Pancras/Kings Cross suburban and regional networks. (And whilst it's tactless to say it, that was a large part of the point of the scheme; getting the fast trains off the existing tracks to leave a lot more space for slower ones.) The Flying Scotsman et al are still going to have to go on their heritage lines to get close enough to the centre of London.
So what was the point of any of this? Its all been just pissed up the wall.
A new "M6" to relieve the existing one would have added a lot of capacity too, relieved the existing network too, and on top of that allowed the construction or expansion of new towns and not just pre-existing ones. Far greater return on investment, but the DfT has been captured by a rail lobby that won't even do rail properly. Bloody imbeciles should be nuked from orbit, just to be sure.
There was a point- and rail can pentrate city centres in a way that roads can't. (Or not without consequnces that the public aren't prepared to swallow.) And cities like London are all about density.
But yes- if Sunak's plan is to run HS2 from OOC to Birmingham, it is going to be pretty pointless. (And by the time you have made OOC work as a terminal and got enough capacity for people to do the last five miles into town, it probably won't even save much.)
If you're going to mess around with interchanges like that, might as well have done a motorway to out of town and then that via a park and ride to the underground.
Especially once you grasp that not everyone wants to go to London. I wonder what proportion of journeys on the M6 are heading actually into London each day, I imagine pretty close to 1% if that.
I've been trying to find how many journeys a day are done on the M6 alone to contrast it with HS2, but can't find the figures. It seems that the stretch 21a to 26 [current roadworks for turning into a smart motorway, M62 connection at Warrington to Wigan roughly] alone carries over 120k vehicles a day.
Catch with that is that much of the underground is already pretty much full at key times of day. That includes the Elizabeth Line on some days, and that's only just been fully opened. And whilst plenty of people don't work in the very centre of London, those who do pay an outsized share of the taxes keeping the rest of us afloat. Probably it shouldn't be that way, but that's how it currently is.
But if Rishi really doesn't want the key bit, and he means it, he probably might as well can the whole scheme. Pay off the contractors the best he can, leave what's there to rust. Have a go Rishi, if you think you're hard enough and if you want a memorial.
I won't link to it as it's truly horrific but there's a video circulating on Twitter of the fatal Bully XL attack in Staffordshire. I don't think the government will be able to get away with just a registration scheme.
Omg I just saw it
Why are the men so fucking useless???? Kill the dogs. Stab them. Chop them. This man is being eaten alive
And yes, you’re right. Every one of these dogs needs culling, now
was stopped by a man just outside Parliament yesterday evening. He introduced himself as a civil servant. He told me to ‘keep doing what you are doing, everyone knows it’s the truth. The establishment are very worried because they know what’s coming down the track for them!’ This is not the first civil servant to say this to me in private . They all know the truth and they all know it has to be exposed.
The amazing thing is there are music channels where you can listen to the tunes of the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s as well as general "oldie" music so if you want to listen to ABBA, The Beatles, early Stones, Roxy Music or whatever it's not that far away (and that's before YouTube or whatever).
Waterloo was recorded nearly 50 years ago yet the winning performance from Eurovision at Brighton is there for all to view. Had I, growing up in the 1970s, wanted to listen to the music of the 1920s, I'd have been laughed at.
It was as though for my generation music began in the 1950s (Elvis, Bill Haley etc) and even the likes of swing and big band music from the 1940s were never played or heard on the radio.
I wonder if culturally and perhaps politically the availability of what "was" has fuelled a desire for nostalgia and encouraged those with populist messages around change, tradition and identity.
When the past was less in the present, you thought more about the future and the 60s and to an extent the 70s were a time of modernity and the future (the White Heat of Technology, Star Trek for example). Political messaging was about the future and wanting to make it better - now, it seems the past has been romanticised as much as politicised.
I'm still reminded of the old maxim - nostalgia ain't what it used to be.
A key element here was the 1990's ; a gradual loss of confidence in both political and artistic ideas of the future, postmodernism, and the beginning of the recycling of the 1960's and '70s.
That didn’t just happen in the 1990's,in the 1980's there was a big resurgence in 1950's culture, and I am sure there was similar nostalgia in the 1970's though I wasn't around to pinpoint it accurately.
See the current nostalgia for the 80s (and I'm sure soon to be 90s). I'm sure it's something to do with one generation discovering what their parents were shagging to. And as the generations get longer so does the nostalgia.
Oh, there's already a lot of 90's nostalgia, celebration of house etc. It's nostalgia for the noughties I don't think I'm ready for.
Yep. Just passed a huge line of teens and twenties queueing to get into "House Sounds of the 90's" night at NZ Newcastle. And during a Toon home game, too.
Dance music was the big hope of cultural "futurism" of the late 1980's and turn of the 1990s, possibly the last big hope of this type.
Much of this heady optmism ended with the ban on unlicensed raves and good old Michael Howard';s Criminal Justice Act in 1994, after which it became much more heavily consumerist.
I think that future-focus lives in the rap/hip-hop genre now. That's where the weird beats and rhythms live these days. I doubt the average pber feels this is their natural hinterland, but it dominated pop music for a lot of the 21st century, e.g. pretty much the whole 2000s before Lady Gaga, and it still has the chin-strokers' favourite acts like Kendrick Lamar.
Rap/hip-hop has been going for 40+ years now, its not really future any more either?
Not sure that pre-Lady Gaga counts as future, rather than increasingly distant past.
50 years. The genre overall isn't the future, but it is where the non-retro takes reside. Inevitable after 2010s EDM mined every conceivable seam from annoying (tropical house) to annoying but funny (Skrillex). But now, for whatever reason, acoustic-sounding country is doing really well at the moment!
So we're going to be presented with a vastly over-engineered HS2 which connects a station by itself in Birmingham to a building site in west London.
Other countries manage to do infrastructure projects like this. We're just absolutely shit.
Should have spent the money on roads from the beginning.
New motorways would have far greater economic return and allow far more traffic including both goods and people.
However having said that, we've spent all this money already and half-building it is just bloody stupid. If you're going to do this stupid thing, then do it properly.
Next time though that there's any big cross country infrastructure like this, start construction in the North, make London the last place that's connected not the first. Then the Treasury can't weasel out of it. The second construction began at London it was obvious that once the bit London wanted was done (relieving pressure on the Southern tracks) then why bother with the rest of the country would be the Treasuries attitude.
Except it now looks like the plan isn't even to do that. Birmingham - Old Oak Common won't even unclog the Euston/St Pancras/Kings Cross suburban and regional networks. (And whilst it's tactless to say it, that was a large part of the point of the scheme; getting the fast trains off the existing tracks to leave a lot more space for slower ones.) The Flying Scotsman et al are still going to have to go on their heritage lines to get close enough to the centre of London.
So what was the point of any of this? Its all been just pissed up the wall.
A new "M6" to relieve the existing one would have added a lot of capacity too, relieved the existing network too, and on top of that allowed the construction or expansion of new towns and not just pre-existing ones. Far greater return on investment, but the DfT has been captured by a rail lobby that won't even do rail properly. Bloody imbeciles should be nuked from orbit, just to be sure.
There was a point- and rail can pentrate city centres in a way that roads can't. (Or not without consequnces that the public aren't prepared to swallow.) And cities like London are all about density.
But yes- if Sunak's plan is to run HS2 from OOC to Birmingham, it is going to be pretty pointless. (And by the time you have made OOC work as a terminal and got enough capacity for people to do the last five miles into town, it probably won't even save much.)
If you're going to mess around with interchanges like that, might as well have done a motorway to out of town and then that via a park and ride to the underground.
Especially once you grasp that not everyone wants to go to London. I wonder what proportion of journeys on the M6 are heading actually into London each day, I imagine pretty close to 1% if that.
I've been trying to find how many journeys a day are done on the M6 alone to contrast it with HS2, but can't find the figures. It seems that the stretch 21a to 26 [current roadworks for turning into a smart motorway, M62 connection at Warrington to Wigan roughly] alone carries over 120k vehicles a day.
Only because there isn't decent public transport in the North.
Public transport is a pathetic share of people transportation and an even lower share of goods transportation in the entire country.
Worth investing in, but get out of a London/city commuter bubble and enter the real world from time to time.
The last time the country was getting rapid per capita productivity and wage growth is when the strategic road network was getting built. Since we stopped investing in roads and have gone into real decline especially when you compare with population growth, our productivity growth has collapsed.
Yep, and we should fix that! You epitomise the "too hard" generation that holds this country back.
Productivity growth != cars. We had turnpike roads, canals, railways, motorways, all of which increased productivity growth. Now we have WFH, public transport and active travel.
The cheapest and easiest (and therefore most productive) way to get more commercial and industrial capacity on our transport network is to reduce private car use.
Rosamund Urwin @RosamundUrwin · 2h If you believe in the power of investigative journalism, please buy a paper tomorrow. Or better, if you can afford to, please consider subscribing. There are huge costs of stories like this.
The 90s revival has been a thing for five years or more. It’s hard to tell, because 90s fashion was unexuberant.
In fact, we are not far off a 00s revival.
What should we look forward to in a noughties revival?
A little bit of Cameroon detoxifying?
Amy and Chester would have been leading candidates. Beyoncé is still a going concern, with a legitimate solo number one single in blimmin' 2022. Eminem could likely come back with another best-selling album. Probably the best chance of a revival scene is neo-emo, people aged around 30 seem to still love Paramore/My Chemical Romance.
The 90s revival has been a thing for five years or more. It’s hard to tell, because 90s fashion was unexuberant.
In fact, we are not far off a 00s revival.
What should we look forward to in a noughties revival?
A little bit of Cameroon detoxifying?
Amy and Chester would have been leading candidates. Beyoncé is still a going concern, with a legitimate solo number one single in blimmin' 2022. Eminem could likely come back with another best-selling album. Probably the best chance of a revival scene is neo-emo, people aged around 30 seem to still love Paramore/My Chemical Romance.
Crikey. Imagine a shittier, more reductive reimagining of emo. The mind simply boggles.
O/T Beautiful late summer day in London today 27°C.
Driving home from lunch with our nephew this afternoon from Tooting Bec to Raynes Park along the A24/A298 - the High Street may be dying in much of Britain but in South London it is very much alive and kicking.
Rosamund Urwin @RosamundUrwin · 2h If you believe in the power of investigative journalism, please buy a paper tomorrow. Or better, if you can afford to, please consider subscribing. There are huge costs of stories like this.
I just can’t raise any interest for this story . It’s suffered from a huge build up as if its something extraordinary and is just another celeb turns out to be like a dog on heat and won’t take no for an answer. I find it strange that this investigation was done by the Sunday Times and Channel 4 . I would have thought it was more tabloid friendly .
O/T Beautiful late summer day in London today 27°C.
Driving home from lunch with our nephew this afternoon from Tooting Bec to Raynes Park along the A24/A298 - the High Street may be dying in much of Britain but in South London it is very much alive and kicking.
We took a boat from Embankment to Battersea Power Station this evening. Lovely. Sat outside at one of those restaurants near the former power station. Very windy though.
Rosamund Urwin @RosamundUrwin · 2h If you believe in the power of investigative journalism, please buy a paper tomorrow. Or better, if you can afford to, please consider subscribing. There are huge costs of stories like this.
I just can’t raise any interest for this story . It’s suffered from a huge build up as if its something extraordinary and is just another celeb turns out to be like a dog on heat and won’t take no for an answer. I find it strange that this investigation was done by the Sunday Times and Channel 4 . I would have thought it was more tabloid friendly .
The story is morphing rapidly into a war between the alt-right conspiracy online cult and old media.
It is potentially a battle that symbolises our times.
What kind of spineless fuck can’t plunge a knife into a dog? To save a man’s life?
You'd have 400,000 XL Bully owners and the RSPCA come after you. Not worth the risk.
I doubt most of the 400,00 are the psychopaths who own these dogs, most are just idiots. But there is no doubt that all the owners are scum who should be
Neil O'Brien MP @NeilDotObrien · 1h Responses to Brand revelations are clarifying which people in public life have extreme Conspiracy Brain Rot
I started off somewhat sceptical, as one should be, though having listened to the Times radio report the text messages seem pretty damning. I would be interested to know what prompted the investigation. If it started 3 years ago that would coincide with Brand's shift to the political dark side.
Rosamund Urwin @RosamundUrwin · 2h If you believe in the power of investigative journalism, please buy a paper tomorrow. Or better, if you can afford to, please consider subscribing. There are huge costs of stories like this.
I just can’t raise any interest for this story . It’s suffered from a huge build up as if its something extraordinary and is just another celeb turns out to be like a dog on heat and won’t take no for an answer. I find it strange that this investigation was done by the Sunday Times and Channel 4 . I would have thought it was more tabloid friendly .
The story is morphing rapidly into a war between the alt-right conspiracy online cult and old media.
It is potentially a battle that symbolises our times.
I wonder if this takes a turn where a number of the old media behaving like a dog on heat who won't take no for an answer get outed as such by Russell Brand...
Rosamund Urwin @RosamundUrwin · 2h If you believe in the power of investigative journalism, please buy a paper tomorrow. Or better, if you can afford to, please consider subscribing. There are huge costs of stories like this.
I just can’t raise any interest for this story . It’s suffered from a huge build up as if its something extraordinary and is just another celeb turns out to be like a dog on heat and won’t take no for an answer. I find it strange that this investigation was done by the Sunday Times and Channel 4 . I would have thought it was more tabloid friendly .
Snap. If Brand has committed a crime he should be prosecuted like anyone else.
Beyond 'man alleged to have committed crimes' it's a total non-story.
Rosamund Urwin @RosamundUrwin · 2h If you believe in the power of investigative journalism, please buy a paper tomorrow. Or better, if you can afford to, please consider subscribing. There are huge costs of stories like this.
I just can’t raise any interest for this story . It’s suffered from a huge build up as if its something extraordinary and is just another celeb turns out to be like a dog on heat and won’t take no for an answer. I find it strange that this investigation was done by the Sunday Times and Channel 4 . I would have thought it was more tabloid friendly .
Snap. If Brand has committed a crime he should be prosecuted like anyone else.
Beyond 'man alleged to have committed crimes' it's a total non-story.
What often happens in cases like this is that the initial publicity leads to other victims coming forwards, which then better supports a prosecution. The story has value for obtaining justice.
Neil O'Brien MP @NeilDotObrien · 1h Responses to Brand revelations are clarifying which people in public life have extreme Conspiracy Brain Rot
I started off somewhat sceptical, as one should be, though having listened to the Times radio report the text messages seem pretty damning. I would be interested to know what prompted the investigation. If it started 3 years ago that would coincide with Brand's shift to the political dark side.
4 years:
Gabriel Pogrund @Gabriel_Pogrund · 7h Couldn’t be prouder of @RosamundUrwin today — after four years of toil and courageous reporting, the Sunday Times today lays bare the horrific alleged criminality of Russell Brand.
I have often disagreed with Nicholas Kristof, but have always considered him a person of good character. (I see him, as I always have, as a “bleeding-heart” liberal, a person who wants the best for everyone, but may not be willing to make the hard choices necessary to achieve that.)
And now I have even more respect for him; he has said the unsayable, and at the New York Times, no less:
"American liberals need to accept that single-parent families are more likely to raise children in poverty, an influential New York Times columnist has argued.
(For years, I have believed that the decline in families in America is our largest domestic problem — by far. We are, more and more, less able to do what, for example, ordinary crows do routinely: form pair bonds that make it far easier to raise healthy offspring.)
What kind of spineless fuck can’t plunge a knife into a dog? To save a man’s life?
You'd have 400,000 XL Bully owners and the RSPCA come after you. Not worth the risk.
I doubt most of the 400,00 are the psychopaths who own these dogs, most are just idiots. But there is no doubt that all the owners are scum who should be
Definitely a ULEZ vibe to this - if they come for XL murder dogs first, they'll be after my spaniel next.
HS2 is, (as is often the case in the current incarnation of this increasingly bonkers isle) now a total mess of what was once a decent idea. Shocking and embarrassing, in the country that came up with the railways in the first place. One of the major problems being building a really major railway infrastructure project to suit developers and contractors above and over all other considerations and with minimal forward planning and with no consideration to re-use of old infrastructure. The old Great Central route through Central England and over the Woodhead Pass towards Manchester could have been very useful, but was ignored, as was the former Midland Mainline to Manchester, both closed during the Beeching cuts of the 60's. Less profits to be made from re-use of these. Ludicrous. We take years and years to build anything these days, due to the insanity of the system, contracting and sub-contracting combined with bureaucracy. It's painful. Japan had the first Bullet train running in 1964 ...
Rosamund Urwin @RosamundUrwin · 2h If you believe in the power of investigative journalism, please buy a paper tomorrow. Or better, if you can afford to, please consider subscribing. There are huge costs of stories like this.
I just can’t raise any interest for this story . It’s suffered from a huge build up as if its something extraordinary and is just another celeb turns out to be like a dog on heat and won’t take no for an answer. I find it strange that this investigation was done by the Sunday Times and Channel 4 . I would have thought it was more tabloid friendly .
What surprised me is the correct use of journalism. British journalism has deteriorated to the point where it's reporting things on Twitter as if they are facts and indulging in both sides summary. But in this case it involved interviewing witnesses, constructing a case and backing it up with evidence. It's good work, but it just highlights how rare it is.
Rosamund Urwin @RosamundUrwin · 2h If you believe in the power of investigative journalism, please buy a paper tomorrow. Or better, if you can afford to, please consider subscribing. There are huge costs of stories like this.
I just can’t raise any interest for this story . It’s suffered from a huge build up as if its something extraordinary and is just another celeb turns out to be like a dog on heat and won’t take no for an answer. I find it strange that this investigation was done by the Sunday Times and Channel 4 . I would have thought it was more tabloid friendly .
What surprised me is the correct use of journalism. British journalism has deteriorated to the point where it's reporting things on Twitter as if they are facts and indulging in both sides summary. But in this case it involved interviewing witnesses, constructing a case and backing it up with evidence. It's good work, but it just highlights how rare it is.
Buy the paper. It costs a ton of money to do this kinda stuff.
I see the Texas Senate has cleared the impeached AG Ken Paxton, with only two of the Republicans at most voting to convict him.
Interesting that the Texas House of Representatives, also Republican controlled, overwhelmingly voted to impeach him in the first place, yet so few of their colleagues in the Senate were swayed.
I have often disagreed with Nicholas Kristof, but have always considered him a person of good character. (I see him, as I always have, as a “bleeding-heart” liberal, a person who wants the best for everyone, but may not be willing to make the hard choices necessary to achieve that.)
And now I have even more respect for him; he has said the unsayable, and at the New York Times, no less:
"American liberals need to accept that single-parent families are more likely to raise children in poverty, an influential New York Times columnist has argued.
(For years, I have believed that the decline in families in America is our largest domestic problem — by far. We are, more and more, less able to do what, for example, ordinary crows do routinely: form pair bonds that make it far easier to raise healthy offspring.)
Cross posted at Patterico's.
By which you presumably mean, Moynihan was elected four times to the US Senate as a New York Democrat? If that is lib cancel culture, sign me up.
Larry the Cat @Number10cat · 1h First they came for Russell Brand and I… was relieved, as I’d been waiting ages for them to come for Russell Brand #Dispatches
Larry the Cat @Number10cat · 1h First they came for Russell Brand and I… was relieved, as I’d been waiting ages for them to come for Russell Brand #Dispatches
HS2 is, (as is often the case in the current incarnation of this increasingly bonkers isle) now a total mess of what was once a decent idea. Shocking and embarrassing, in the country that came up with the railways in the first place. One of the major problems being building a really major railway infrastructure project to suit developers and contractors above and over all other considerations and with minimal forward planning and with no consideration to re-use of old infrastructure. The old Great Central route through Central England and over the Woodhead Pass towards Manchester could have been very useful, but was ignored, as was the former Midland Mainline to Manchester, both closed during the Beeching cuts of the 60's. Less profits to be made from re-use of these. Ludicrous. We take years and years to build anything these days, due to the insanity of the system, contracting and sub-contracting combined with bureaucracy. It's painful. Japan had the first Bullet train running in 1964 ...
Like the Millennium Dome, the main reason why HS2 has problems is because people who didn't like the idea from the start have been relentlessly talking it down ever since it was first mooted as an idea. Eventually their negativity starts to have a real-world effect.
Do you like history? Do you like military stuff? Do you like military history? Then you may be interested in https://armchairhistory.tv/ .
YouTube rules on monetarizing content are strict and arbitrary, and has led to some excellent YouTubers losing chunks of living. Just as the film/media-orientated creators set up Nebula, the military historians have set up ArmchairHistory. If you watch a lot of YouTube and are interested in military history you may be familiar with creators such as these https://armchairhistory.tv/pages/creators
...The paper also reported that the woman who said she met Brand when aged 16 – whom it gave the pseudonym Alice – contacted Brand’s former agency Tavistock Wood in 2020 to alert them to his behaviour she had alleged, and seeking an apology.
She said she was promised a response when he returned from a wellness retreat. When one came, she said, it was from lawyers representing Brand, who issued a denial on his behalf, and accused her of seeking financial gain...
HS2 is, (as is often the case in the current incarnation of this increasingly bonkers isle) now a total mess of what was once a decent idea. Shocking and embarrassing, in the country that came up with the railways in the first place. One of the major problems being building a really major railway infrastructure project to suit developers and contractors above and over all other considerations and with minimal forward planning and with no consideration to re-use of old infrastructure. The old Great Central route through Central England and over the Woodhead Pass towards Manchester could have been very useful, but was ignored, as was the former Midland Mainline to Manchester, both closed during the Beeching cuts of the 60's. Less profits to be made from re-use of these. Ludicrous. We take years and years to build anything these days, due to the insanity of the system, contracting and sub-contracting combined with bureaucracy. It's painful. Japan had the first Bullet train running in 1964 ...
Okay, coming late to this, but it's time to get some facts out again. The Great Central route s beloved by railway fans, but is of f-all use for anything approximating the HS2 project's requirements.
1) It goes to the 'wrong' places. What was needed initially was a route to relieve the WCML, and the GC route goes the wrong way. 2) The GC route was not high-speed. Far from. 3) The southern end of the GC is still in heavy use (see the route into Marylebone). Any use of that for other services would either require those current services removing, or a new London terminus... and all that cost. 4) Large parts of the route have been erased, e.g. through Leicester and Nottingham. Reuse of that route will require massive works in both those cities, and elsewhere.
There's more, but that's enough to be going on with.
Comments
But yes- if Sunak's plan is to run HS2 from OOC to Birmingham, it is going to be pretty pointless. (And by the time you have made OOC work as a terminal and got enough capacity for people to do the last five miles into town, it probably won't even save much.)
Especially once you grasp that not everyone wants to go to London. I wonder what proportion of journeys on the M6 are heading actually into London each day, I imagine pretty close to 1% if that.
I've been trying to find how many journeys a day are done on the M6 alone to contrast it with HS2, but can't find the figures. It seems that the stretch 21a to 26 [current roadworks for turning into a smart motorway, M62 connection at Warrington to Wigan roughly] alone carries over 120k vehicles a day.
Not sure that pre-Lady Gaga counts as future, rather than increasingly distant past.
A little bit of Cameroon detoxifying?
Neil O'Brien MP
@NeilDotObrien
·
1h
Responses to Brand revelations are clarifying which people in public life have extreme Conspiracy Brain Rot
Worth investing in, but get out of a London/city commuter bubble and enter the real world from time to time.
The last time the country was getting rapid per capita productivity and wage growth is when the strategic road network was getting built. Since we stopped investing in roads and have gone into real decline especially when you compare with population growth, our productivity growth has collapsed.
But if Rishi really doesn't want the key bit, and he means it, he probably might as well can the whole scheme. Pay off the contractors the best he can, leave what's there to rust. Have a go Rishi, if you think you're hard enough and if you want a memorial.
Why are the men so fucking useless???? Kill the dogs. Stab them. Chop them. This man is being eaten alive
And yes, you’re right. Every one of these dogs needs culling, now
- Dr Strangelove,
- Fail Safe,
- Colossus.
- and others.
Great use of black. https://www.reddit.com/r/cinematography/comments/pjlz7g/black_blacks_and_the_film_look/Go on TwitterX and search “bully attack video” and it will come up first. That poor man
Sweet Jesus
Are there really >400k XL Bully fans out there or has someone managed to game the system?
Productivity growth != cars. We had turnpike roads, canals, railways, motorways, all of which increased productivity growth. Now we have WFH, public transport and active travel.
The cheapest and easiest (and therefore most productive) way to get more commercial and industrial capacity on our transport network is to reduce private car use.
@RosamundUrwin
·
2h
If you believe in the power of investigative journalism, please buy a paper tomorrow. Or better, if you can afford to, please consider subscribing. There are huge costs of stories like this.
Driving home from lunch with our nephew this afternoon from Tooting Bec to Raynes Park along the A24/A298 - the High Street may be dying in much of Britain but in South London it is very much alive and kicking.
It is potentially a battle that symbolises our times.
Beyond 'man alleged to have committed crimes' it's a total non-story.
Gabriel Pogrund
@Gabriel_Pogrund
·
7h
Couldn’t be prouder of
@RosamundUrwin
today — after four years of toil and courageous reporting, the Sunday Times today lays bare the horrific alleged criminality of Russell Brand.
Dcn Calvin Robinson
@calvinrobinson
Innocent until proven guilty.
If a crime has been committed, alleged victims should go to the police.
MSM is not judge/jury/executioner.
What is their motivation? RB has a bigger audience than Channel 4 & The Times combined.
Independent media is a threat to the Establishment.
And now I have even more respect for him; he has said the unsayable, and at the New York Times, no less:
"American liberals need to accept that single-parent families are more likely to raise children in poverty, an influential New York Times columnist has argued.
Nick Kristof said the fact was taboo among progressives, who worried that they would be labelled racist for admitting it."
source: https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/parenting/new-york-times-op-ed-says-liberals-need-to-admit-that-single-parent-families-are-large-drivers-of-childhood-poverty-and-that-youngsters-whose-parents-are-married-usually-fare-far-better/ar-AA1gGRfU?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=64b61c1871e642c9b419bf15f59f162f&ei=60
As someone who is old enough to remember what happened to Patrick Moynihan when he raised this issue, I admire Kristof’s courage for writing this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Negro_Family:_The_Case_For_National_Action
(For years, I have believed that the decline in families in America is our largest domestic problem — by far. We are, more and more, less able to do what, for example, ordinary crows do routinely: form pair bonds that make it far easier to raise healthy offspring.)
Cross posted at Patterico's.
Interesting that the Texas House of Representatives, also Republican controlled, overwhelmingly voted to impeach him in the first place, yet so few of their colleagues in the Senate were swayed.
Larry the Cat
@Number10cat
·
1h
First they came for Russell Brand and I… was relieved, as I’d been waiting ages for them to come for Russell Brand #Dispatches
The woman originally approached his agent asking for an apology and nothing else. The lawyer launched a full throated attack accusing her of blackmail
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_United_States_Senate_election_in_New_York
Yes, if he can give voters an inspiring vision of SUNAKISM and how he'll release Britain from the CHOKEHOLD OF THE LEFT
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-12524443/LORD-ASHCROFT-way-Rishi-win.html
The Mail thinks Ed Miliband has been Prime Minister for the past 13 years.
YouTube rules on monetarizing content are strict and arbitrary, and has led to some excellent YouTubers losing chunks of living. Just as the film/media-orientated creators set up Nebula, the military historians have set up ArmchairHistory. If you watch a lot of YouTube and are interested in military history you may be familiar with creators such as these https://armchairhistory.tv/pages/creators
ArmchairHistory
- https://armchairhistory.tv/
Nebula...According to the paper’s report, one of the women said Brand entered into a relationship with her while he was 31 and she was still a 16-year-old schoolgirl. She reportedly said he referred to her as “the child” during an alleged emotionally abusive and controlling three-month relationship...
...The paper also reported that the woman who said she met Brand when aged 16 – whom it gave the pseudonym Alice – contacted Brand’s former agency Tavistock Wood in 2020 to alert them to his behaviour she had alleged, and seeking an apology.
She said she was promised a response when he returned from a wellness retreat. When one came, she said, it was from lawyers representing Brand, who issued a denial on his behalf, and accused her of seeking financial gain...
Kevin McCarthy’s Brother-In-Law Got $7.6M in Government Contracts — “Never Discussed”
https://twitter.com/mvario1/status/1703109892289016058
As well as being an abuse of Congressional powers, it's also utter hypocrisy.
NEW THREAD
1) It goes to the 'wrong' places. What was needed initially was a route to relieve the WCML, and the GC route goes the wrong way.
2) The GC route was not high-speed. Far from.
3) The southern end of the GC is still in heavy use (see the route into Marylebone). Any use of that for other services would either require those current services removing, or a new London terminus... and all that cost.
4) Large parts of the route have been erased, e.g. through Leicester and Nottingham. Reuse of that route will require massive works in both those cities, and elsewhere.
There's more, but that's enough to be going on with.