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This will make you even more confused about HS2 – politicalbetting.com
This will make you even more confused about HS2 – politicalbetting.com
After spending a week briefing that they're going to cut HS2, while suggesting that the full project is unsustainable, the Housing Minister now tells Sky News there is no announcement planned and "we're focused on delivering HS2". pic.twitter.com/E7IN9fSMdE
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*In the narrow minded political sense.
Very sorry to hear this @isam. A lot of middle aged people do run into trouble at the gym... Of course exercise is good but for people in their 40s and 50s it's important to keep a close eye on blood pressure and cholesterol to make sure the heart/circulatory system is up to it the rigors its going to be put through...
When symptoms started occurring he should certainly have looked for help. Though like you say, putting off getting medical help is something we all do (men especially)
Last year I was treated for cancer. I knew I was very likely to have the "C" as early as mid 2021 but I put of referring myself for months and months... Although in mitigation M'lud I was a carer for someone else and they themselves were terminally ill with metastatic breast cancer. So it was a very unusual situation to say the least..
When I finally referred myself to a specialist I was stage 2 and as far as I know I've now been successfully treated but I am VERY lucky to get away with this. It could very easily have been a very different outcome.
Anyway, I'm so sorry for you and your friend. Let us know what happens tomorrow.
Not sure if anyone saw Newsnight but the comparison between cost per mile of building track in the UK compared to other major country’s was shocking.
Jaw dropping in fact .
I went to see him today, and although I knew there was very little chance of a recovery, seeing him breathing, albeit via a ventilator, gave me (false) hope. Tonight another mate went, and the nurse pretty much told him our friend was only being kept alive so we could say our goodbyes.
He was/is someone who burnt the candle at both ends. Strong as a ox, probably to a fault - could drink 10 pints one night and go to the gym next day. One of the most popular people I know
He text me at 22:45 Sat night to say something funny was on tv, and 15 mins later had collapsed.
I remember visiting my dad in hospital after he'd had a sudden cardiac arrest and they had him sat up in bed on a ventilator.
His eyes were open and to look at him initially you would have thought he was fine... But on closer inspection his eyes were rolling to the back of his head and he was totally unresponsive to any outside stimulus. It was very eerie.
Five days later they turned off his life support and he was gone... but of course he'd already left us.
Please keep us updated. Hopefully your friend will be OK, but if not, remember, we're here you.
It sounds like the situation we are in now - his
heart is strong but there is no response when
they shine the light in his eyes.
That's not to say we haven't overpaid, but international comparisons can be simplistic.
Also, on the subject of cancelling the line to M'chester, what some people don't seem to realise is that they've already spent a huge amount of money on some of the infrastructure for the B'ham to M'chester route, so if they cancel it all of that will be wasted, and also all the disruption they've already caused in that area will have been for nothing. I hope Starmer decides to go ahead with it when he becomes PM (which seems very likely to happen now).
In short because the Tories flamed the civil service, the government ministries must rely on expensive consultants who may not be any more than so-so.
It doesn't help that capital maintenance projects are the first thing that get cut since they are treated as an expense not as an essential part of avoiding long term asset degradation.
So the problem is fundamental and it is one the Tories themselves created.
I get a lot has changed since the original decision was made: costs have increased, the pandemic has added considerable uncertainty to passenger numbers...
...but cancelling now, when we've spent so much on it already, just looks stupid. It's like training for the London marathon all through the dark days of winter and then deciding in March you can't be bothered after all.
I thought the word "conservative" -- and the whole Tory brand -- meant avoiding change for change's sake. But each new Prime Minister seems intent on trashing whatever their party's stood for before. Johnson kicked very long-serving colleagues like Ken Clarke out of the party. Truss threw conventional "balance the books" Tory fiscal policy out of the window. Now Sunak's going to scrap green targets (when climate change is accelerating), ditch "gold-standard" 'A'-levels (which even survived Gove's disruption 10 years ago), waste £££ on cancelling HS2... it's like the Conservatives don't know what "conservative" means any more.
If they don't, how will the voters?
If Johnson was lucky coming up against Livingstone and Corbyn, Starmer's been even luckier coming up against Johnson, Truss and Sunak.
There was no strike on the weekend or Monday last week, and on all days there has been emergency cover.
Sad news
FWIW I am also in the 'it will correct itself' category.
It reminds me of the fag end of Johnsons government, when a minister would appear on the morning news round to defend a position, only to find it changed an hour later.
It is no longer a functioning government when it reaches this stage.
Hard to know what policies they will run on, when even their ministers don't know.
Nissan plans to be all electric by 2030.
https://edl.ecml.at/
Rishi really doesn't like HS2 and never has.
Rishi and Jim have spent the summer in No 10, coming up with a plan to kill HS2.
That plan is struggling to survive contact with people outside the No 10 bubble.
It reminds me too of the fag end of John Major's (Thatcher's) Government. It felt just like this. A party in power that had burnt itself out. Bereft. Rudderless. Anarchic. But perhaps above all just very tired.
Also some countries, you might get lucky to even get asked before the bulldozers roll in.
Not like this is a surprise to anyone though.
The sad thing is that the government turned this into a monster. Wanting to cut costs it loaded all the risk onto contractors who made the cost £stupid. Combine that with the endless political rows and rethinks and we have a core route costing £stupid which is engineered to carry trains that won't exist as speeds they wouldn't be able to do if they did.
Fun fact regarding east-west links. Some Tories are encouraging scrapping HS2 north of the delta junction saying "build NPR instead".
That would be difficult. A core section of NPR is HS2. Without HS2 the NPR project makes little financial sense to treasury psychopaths who in any case plan to let t'north argue about t'route of NPR before killing that as well.
https://news.sky.com/story/workplace-absences-at-10-year-high-with-stress-the-major-cause-of-long-term-sickness-12969756
The market is deciding. The hysteria about the announcement last week was partly synthetic and partly misplaced. Just because people can sell something doesn’t mean they will.
Auto makers work on cycle times of years on products and platforms. They’d not be likely to chop and change at the govts whim.
The Biggie? The risk management factor, and the political idiocy. The Spanish plan a route and build it. We plan a route. Argue about it for 15 years. Appoint several rounds of expensive consultants who cost load the project, contract in a consortium and drown them in legal requirements, and then after the start of works continually fiddle with both detail and the whole concept of what is being built where the tight legal contracts just load more and more and more cost on the project.
Nissan must be mistaken .
They say it's because nobody will want to buy them. But that can't be right says the right-wing media, not with all the effort we are expending to lie about EVs.
The only way to save HS2 is to vote Conservative. Announces Rishi Sunak. Behind a lectern saying Long-term decisions for a Brighter Future.
A little over a decade ago, a primary school we know had some roofing work done. It is a small single-storey building, and scaffolding was put up along one side.
Along with this, they put up a scaffolding staircase, which was probably about half the total scaffolding used, and a materials hoist. I can understand the need for a materials hoist; but the staircase seemed an utter extravagance and waste of money over plain old ladders - which the people doing the work apparently later added.
It is *really* easy to waste money on construction - particularly if it is other people's money.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mv7sZoQkkns
Peter Oborne, author of The Rise of Political Lying, worries that Starmer tells fibs.
Heseltine, whom we were discussing yesterday, tried to do away with it at the MoD.
There is also necessary H&S.
The Nissan Juke is their cheapest car at £21k: https://www.nissan.co.uk/vehicles/new-vehicles.html
By 2030 it seems entirely plausible that an electric juke will be as cheap as a petrol Juke, but it does not look likely that an electric Picanto would be available as cheap as a petrol Picanto.
So again, if in 6 years time if you could get a cheap petrol vehicle like the Picanto for £13k in real terms, but if the cheapest electric is in real terms £21k (currently £27k is cheapest) then should the Picanto be outlawed and people who want to buy it be forced to pay eight grand more?
We need to continue with what the market has been doing from Tesla onwards which is to start at the top of the market and work down with electrification, not the other way around. If in 2030 the only petrol vehicles the market still offers is 1.0 litre runarounds like the Picanto simply because electrification of them isn't affordably ready yet, then what's the harm in that?
I'm guessing you missed the fact that Nissan lost their marketshare with that already and it was discontinued already previously?
They don't need to discontinue something by 2030 they've already discontinued. British politics has nothing to do with that, the market does.
Nor in the next couple of years, but certainly by 2030.
The cost of providing a 70kWh battery pack - which would be sufficient for 95% of Picanto owners, and is 50% more than current entry level EVs - will plummet.
Kia is already selling an EV for $20k in their home market.
It's easy to say the money was wasted, unless it's your health or life on the line, doing the work. But sometimes the work needs to be done, and excess H&S can actually prevent work from being done.
IMV the scaffolding staircase I mentioned below was unnecessary, especially as the people doing the work added ladders themselves, and other, higher, jobs, seem to manage without it. But neither do I want to go back to other, more dangerous, practices.
But if it hasn't?
If in 2030 a 1.0 litre Picanto would cost £13k petrol while the cheapest EV is £21k [which is still a six grand plummet in costs from today] then would you criminalise the 1.0 litre Picanto?
If its going to take until 2034 for EV affordability and production to scale up until the point that £13k EVs become available, then what should happen between 2030 and that point?
And that's as much because of government action as it is the market.
It's in our interests to encourage them to build here. Clinging on to legacy plants works against that at the margin.
If government wants to do something constructive, they should be looking harder at incentives for charging infrastructure.
I had an uncle died on a demolition site in 1950 when he was hit on the head by an oxygen bottle. No hard hats in those days, mate. Such a simple precaution would have saved him.
Now I go to the park and see a four foot high ornamental water fountain with a large yellow sign on it saying 'Caution, slippery when wet', and I think to myself 'Somebody got paid for doing that?'
Same everywhere, I suppose. No matter how sound the idea, there will be wankers who carry it beyond its useful extremities.
It ought not to be impossible to do something about that, but Luddite Rishi isn't helping.
I also completely agree that the way that Sunak handled the car thing was completely cack-handed. To pledge to manufacturers one week the ban was proceeding, then drop it days later, with no review in-between is just plain dishonesty and shows a stunning lack of integrity.
Given that the EU was going with 2035 as the date, the way I would have handled this if I were Prime Minister is to keep our 2030 date but with a review in 2029, if by 2029 there is still an eg eight grand cost differential between EVs and Petrols then I would postpone the transition by a couple of years, subject to reviews, until the cost differential closes. With no tariffs on imports since that'd be something we're not manufacturing ourselves as we're trying to embrace the future.
But charging is the biggest issue. Especially charging for people who don't have off road parking.
https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/09/1141417
It's only a problem because you can't rely on common sense being applied. Hence the absurd requirements to document and micromanage everything.
'Necessary' includes being able to prove after the event to your insurers, or the courts, that your management of H&S was adequate.
A £14k fall in 6 years might be a stretch.
If it happens though, great. That'd be fantastic.
I just wouldn't start counting chickens yet six years before they're hatched.
Despite not including a swimming pool. For the school, that is.
I Imagine a lot of that sort of thing is down to children. I forget the exact legislation, but I do recall from my professional training that children were a big problem - you couldn't just put up a Keep Out notice, as they were deemed irresponsible, unable to comprehend such things, etc.
Edit: possibly HASAWA. Which also covers visitors official and otherwise, IIRC.
Nissan will not be an outlier in being EV only by 2030 - I expect that almost everyone will. The UK is one of few RHD markets so even if there is a need to build ICE vehicles for LHD we're an additional cost.
Your £13k Picanto simply won't exist. And as it used to cost £7k in recent memory that shouldn't be a surprise. If we are lucky someone will be prepared to sell cars made for RHD markets here - we will get cast off cars designed for India...
Firstly, the number of battery factories currently in production is a small fraction of what's planned and/or currently being built.
Secondly, mass production battery technologies are improving both incrementally, and (possibly within the next three or four years) quite radically.
Similarly with EV plants.
All of this has been to some extent predictable for at least half a decade. It's bloody obvious now.
Daily Mail readers won’t buy Japanese cars anyway, because, to them, WW2 hasn’t finished. (See also Germany)
So you are covered in court.
Of course, no one on the site will ever read the telephone directories of paper. So it’s up to someone to remember that brooms exist for a reason.
https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2023-03-24/everybodys-on-their-knees-the-fall-out-of-thurrocks-failed-investments
Essentially one bloke turns up and starts saying to councils if they invest in his solar farms they'll get good ROI. To begin with, maybe this is legit, but he ends up taking half a billion from Thurrock Council and just wandering off with it? Shows the length local authorities are going to to try and keep up with government cuts, and the kind of sharks out there preying on them.
One is that the technology to make cheap electric cars does exist. In that case, signalling to manufacturers "you've got until date X to get ready" well in advance is an excellent way to get businesses to optimise and use the technology. Good, stable, regulation.
The other is that it can't be done. In that case, as a society, we have a problem. We can't keep using ICE at the current rates. But again, we have a clear deadline to work out how we want to achieve the things we currently do with petrol cars.
Worst thing is to keep mucking around with plans.
See also HS2.
We'll see what happens.
If there's a real terms £13k EV in 2030 then I'll be delighted and ICE will be dead and buried, good riddance.
If there's not, if only real terms £20k+ vehicles are still available, then we shouldn't be outlawing real terms £13k vehicles.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/sep/26/senior-business-leaders-back-keir-starmers-call-not-to-diverge-from-eu
But you add them all together and your just left with an Acton Aston expressway..
I have a theory that the more political a project is (like Palace of Westminster Restoration and Renewal, which is absolutely political and could fall or burn down at any time), or HS2, which simply crosses far too many constituencies for it not to be, the worse its governance will be because politicians simply can't help making kneejerk uninformed decisions and that's death to big infrastructure.
Including mass slavery.
Reparations, anyone?
What people are missing is that the announcement was made to send a message that a Conservative government won't force you to pay thousands upon thousands of pounds on the whim of some green edict or other.
That is the clear blue water, or they hope it will be, between the parties.
It is just about all they have but is close to peoples' lives so it might just help if not work.
What astounds me is that the council didn't even have the money to begin with to have someone take it off the council - it borrowed it from other councils if the summary here is correct.
My condolences.
So in 2030 the Tories propose that it will still be legal to sell cars that don't have a PHEV system. Great - who will still be making them? None of the mainstream manufacturers will be pushing the old technology - they are already resolutely on track to go fully EV (e.g Nissan, Volvo, MINI etc) as a matter of corporate survival against the chinese onslaught.
You might see someone like Dacia - or new old brands recreated like Dacia. Still churning out low volume vehicles in the old tech. But at higher cost - lower numbers, lack of feed through of hand-me-down components. And we are RHD.
If you want cheap then you're looking at the likes of Proton and Tata. Selling you budget cars built for 2nd world economies. Which is OK because thats how Kia started. But none of the big brands. ICE is dead whether the Tories like it or not.
In the early days of the Commercial Cargo project, in the US, to send cargo to the international space station, this happened.
The contracts were fixed price, payment on milestones. There was no mechanism for the politicians to twiddle things. Get X done, get paid Y.
Senator Diane Feinstein complained at the lack of paperwork for her staff to review. What she meant - and was agreed by her fellows - was that she was being left out of the process.
Didn't Andrew Marr suffer his stroke while on an exercise bike. So it is definitely a thing. Pretty much a significant part of the PB demographic, more or less.
As for the cost of EVs, the market doesn't give a fuck what the Tories say or think. As Nissan have confirmed, the date is 2030. Because they are now all in a race to survive the battle with SAIC, GWM etc flooding the market. They need to be first if they are to still be here in 2040.
I had a similar episode last year, sudden extremely severe headache (had never experienced anything like it) with exertion on Sunday evening - I almost called 999, but then it eased. Next day it returned - although not as severe - again with exertion. I knew the possible link of symptoms to brain bleed, so got on the phone to GP, had a call back within 30 minutes, in person appointment that afternoon and was in hospital that evening. CT and LP confirmed no bleed and I was back home after ~24 hours.
I hesitated to call it in, because I thought it very unlikely that I'd be otherwise asymptomatic with a brain bleed - have wondered since then whether I was right to call it in (GP assured me that I was, even though she agreed it was not very likely with my lack of other symptoms). Stories like yours remind us that it's better to let a professional check us over, rather than putting it off or attempting to self diagnose.
My thoughts with you, your friend and his other friends and family.
On Westminster I think the building is too expensive to renovate as a working Parliament. They should simply pay to preserve it as an important national monument and move the parliament elsewhere. Maybe put them in tunnels under Euston until they complete HS2 to Manchester and Leeds. That might concentrate minds s bit.
This could get very confused between: pragmatic reality, grandstanding, the press - both left and right, electioneering, lobbyists and extremists.
FWIW I think there are a few uncomfortable realities.
1) Status quo is unsustainable.
2) Western opinion does not regard all refugees as the same, and this won't change. No politician can say this.
3) About 2 billion people would have the right to refugee status given the desire and the chance.
4) Being a refugee is a complete lottery/obstacle course. At one end you spend 40 years in a tent in a desert. At the other end you are housed in the most expensive city in the world and you children have every chance of going to Oxford.
5) The real problem is the quality of governance in the countries being fled from.
I agree with Suella (this is rare) that the Convention has to change, or else the UK has to go independent of it. A number of EU countries plainly think the same. The problem is what to replace it with.
I have a theory (totally snookered by a multi year contract with no-break clauses, an incompetent/bankrupt contractor, and/or no funding in the council - and unable to unlock it) but I don't know for sure.