Terribly sad news, one of my closest friends is in critical condition having suffered a bleed on the brain Saturday night. He was rushed to hospital and had a heart attack in the ambulance. It appears likely they will switch the machine that is keeping him alive off tomorrow. He only turned 48 last month.
The cause of it seems to be overdoing it at the gym last Monday - terrible neck pain followed instantly by excruciating headache, and despite being offered to be taken to A&E, he just dosed up on Neurofen all week, which didn’t do any good. Had he gone straight there he’d probably be recovering from an operation now. Someone said he couldn’t be bothered with the possible 16 hour wait at the hospital, others said he did go but there was a strike, although I don’t know if that is true or not
Either way, it seems like putting off medical treatment has cost him his life. We all do it I think, hoping wherever is bothering us is just going to go away, but it’s crazy - even if turns out to be nothing, always best to be sure.
That's very sad, isam.
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.
Yes, condolences Isam, what a terrible thing to happen. Best wishes.
I expect them to scrap the link to Manchester and instead say they’ll improve west to east links . The public have never really got behind HS2 and the Tories want some cash to spend on other projects that are more voter friendly .
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 .
Is it caused by the huge cost of compensation in this country compared to elsewhere? Maybe it's because we're more densely populated than nearly every other European country, so whereas in places like Spain and France it's relatively easy to route a new train line through mostly empty areas, it's much more difficult to do that here. I was using the Spanish high speed trains in February/March this year and I was surprised to see how utterly empty a lot of the countryside was.
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).
The Times have a very good article on it today, if you can get behind the paywall.
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.
I think we really need a dedicated national infrastructure council that is at one remove from day to day political machinations that can make these kinds of long term decisions, ideally creating a pipeline of projects so that expertise in planning and contracting is not lost from one project to the next. 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.
Spot on re Westminster. Restored as a national monument, perhaps used for ceremonial occasions, it would be a major asset to the country.
If they must have parliament in London I hear Old Oak Common is going to be well-connected.
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.
I watched a Panorama on that - an individual Tory councillor seems to blame, and Thurrock council will be making cuts for years to pay for it
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.
I think many more Councils will go bankrupt. They are not subject to the same scutiny or the same accountability as those in Central Government and have done some extraordinary things.
I'm still waiting to hear why Surrey County Council are unable to cut foliage from roadsigns - those on the A31 are now completely buried, and look like it's 10 years after human civilisation has vanished.
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.
For most councils the reason they have left the place to go overgrown and unkept is a complete lack of money. But there is a solution - buy shears, cut down overgrowth. I'm doing it here...
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.
I watched a Panorama on that - an individual Tory councillor seems to blame, and Thurrock council will be making cuts for years to pay for it
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.
I think many more Councils will go bankrupt. They are not subject to the same scutiny or the same accountability as those in Central Government and have done some extraordinary things.
I'm still waiting to hear why Surrey County Council are unable to cut foliage from roadsigns - those on the A31 are now completely buried, and look like it's 10 years after human civilisation has vanished.
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.
For most councils the reason they have left the place to go overgrown and unkept is a complete lack of money. But there is a solution - buy shears, cut down overgrowth. I'm doing it here...
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.
The money wasted on unnecessary Health & Safety in construction is huge and mainly pointless
Unnecessary H&S is by definition completely pointless. There is also necessary H&S.
To be fair it can be really difficult to know what is 'necessary' and 'unnecessary' H&S; you cannot tell what a provision did to prevent an incident if the incident did not occur. As avoiding injuries and deaths is seen as vital (and rightly so), it becomes necessary to chuck money at H&S.
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.
Yes, H&S is one of those good ideas that gets discredited by being carried to extremes.
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.
Or wankers who try to sue you if you don't CYA in that very manner, alas. So insurers demand ...
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.
Indeed. Lawyers and Insurance Companies have a huge vested interest in protecting us from non-existent threats.
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.
But this can't be true. It was Keir Starmer forcing Nissan et al to ditch petrol. Sunak saved people from having to buy an electric car, it was in all the right newspapers and TV news shows. Thanks to Rishi making Long-Term Decisions for a Brighter Future, the dread threat of all EV by 2030 was removed.
Nissan must be mistaken .
Nissan don't make new cars at the £13k entry level range of the market like the Kia Picanto etc
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...
On the contrary, it's very likely indeed. 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.
And if it happens, then the market will take care of that.
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?
Nobody who is skint buys a new car anyway, surely? I'm quite well off, and I wouldn't buy a new car. I'm sure there will be second hand EVs available to suit every budget.
I expect them to scrap the link to Manchester and instead say they’ll improve west to east links . The public have never really got behind HS2 and the Tories want some cash to spend on other projects that are more voter friendly .
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 .
Is it caused by the huge cost of compensation in this country compared to elsewhere? Maybe it's because we're more densely populated than nearly every other European country, so whereas in places like Spain and France it's relatively easy to route a new train line through mostly empty areas, it's much more difficult to do that here. I was using the Spanish high speed trains in February/March this year and I was surprised to see how utterly empty a lot of the countryside was.
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).
The Times have a very good article on it today, if you can get behind the paywall.
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.
I think we really need a dedicated national infrastructure council that is at one remove from day to day political machinations that can make these kinds of long term decisions, ideally creating a pipeline of projects so that expertise in planning and contracting is not lost from one project to the next. 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.
The problem with this is the universal problem of politics. Just as philosophy is the study of issues that can't be solved, politics is the art of making hard choices between contested alternatives with finite resources, infinite demand and regular elections.
This can't be delegated away from politics. Those to whom it is delegated become themselves part of the political process.
Long term infrastructure involves many of the hardest and most contested choices both in terms of general policy (nuclear or wind or tides; rail or road or 3rd runway) and raw politics (where to build 2 million houses).
One to keep and eye on: Suella making a speech about the Refugee Convention.
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 don't disagree that the situation requires a new approach globally. The challenge for the Tories is that their preferred solution - order the forrin to go away and leave us alone don't they know who we are - doesn't work.
What we should be doing is forging international backing for change. A consensus of like-minded countries proposing ideas to reduce the push of refugees away from problem countries as well as a way to better manage the pull so that refugees don't concentrate in places like Poland and Greece and instead get fairly shared out to laggards like the UK.
Instead we think that shouting and hollow threats will do the job.
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.
The money wasted on unnecessary Health & Safety in construction is huge and mainly pointless
Unnecessary H&S is by definition completely pointless. There is also necessary H&S.
To be fair it can be really difficult to know what is 'necessary' and 'unnecessary' H&S; you cannot tell what a provision did to prevent an incident if the incident did not occur. As avoiding injuries and deaths is seen as vital (and rightly so), it becomes necessary to chuck money at H&S.
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.
Yes, H&S is one of those good ideas that gets discredited by being carried to extremes.
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.
There's some good elfin safety gone mad stuff in this podcast about the Ukraine war, where Jack Watling is talking about how they could improve training for Ukrainian recruits.
Apparently the British military have a bunch of rules reasonably designed to prevent the kids from blowing themselves up on training exercises where you have to complete preliminary stages like the basic "not blowing yourself up with live grenades" course or whatever before you're allowed to train with live grenades. Unfortunately the Ukrainian training plan is truncated to only 3 months, so they have to learn how to storm trenches without having time to do the earlier parts. The result is that their exercises are very safe and don't involve dangerous things like live grenades, which makes them less useful that they could be.
It sounds from this clip in the header that cabinet government has collapsed. Either this minister, or Grant Shapps doesn't know what they are talking about and have been hung out to dry.
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.
The weirdest thing about it is that we've had the Prime Minister loudly refusing to comment on speculation that he's responsible for having stirred up. And the Secretary of State for Defence loudly defending the gist of the speculation. And now the Housing Minister denying it.
But where is the Transport Secretary? There's not been a peep from him since he last attacked ULEZ, 13 days ago. Has he been sidelined? Gone on strike? Fallen down the back of the sofa?
One to keep and eye on: Suella making a speech about the Refugee Convention.
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 don't disagree that the situation requires a new approach globally. The challenge for the Tories is that their preferred solution - order the forrin to go away and leave us alone don't they know who we are - doesn't work.
What we should be doing is forging international backing for change. A consensus of like-minded countries proposing ideas to reduce the push of refugees away from problem countries as well as a way to better manage the pull so that refugees don't concentrate in places like Poland and Greece and instead get fairly shared out to laggards like the UK.
Instead we think that shouting and hollow threats will do the job.
Absolutely right about the action needed; what I think we shall get is electioneering and grandstanding. Labour also won't find this one easy. They have Yvette Cooper on the job of saying nothing useful while sounding competent. Labour's voters are very split on this issue.
I expect them to scrap the link to Manchester and instead say they’ll improve west to east links . The public have never really got behind HS2 and the Tories want some cash to spend on other projects that are more voter friendly .
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 .
Is it caused by the huge cost of compensation in this country compared to elsewhere? Maybe it's because we're more densely populated than nearly every other European country, so whereas in places like Spain and France it's relatively easy to route a new train line through mostly empty areas, it's much more difficult to do that here. I was using the Spanish high speed trains in February/March this year and I was surprised to see how utterly empty a lot of the countryside was.
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).
The Times have a very good article on it today, if you can get behind the paywall.
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.
I think that is spot on. Somehow the French and the Italians manage to circumnavigate the politics of grand projets to such a degree that they get things built for lots cheaper despite labour and materials being as expensive there. Isn't there a law in France that if they want to build a railway or autoroute, you have to give up your house/land but are paid twice the market rate for it? I don't know, but I am sure I remember hearing something like that.
You lie. They will keep making petrol cars in Sunderland just for the UK. Having us as the outlier of their global business strategy because we said so. Obeying the 17.4m people who voted for the right to buy a new petrol Qashqai in 2034...
Car manufacturers should have the right to build and sell cars with a manual crank handle. I'm not interested in buying one though.
I can't wait for the Daily Mail to start objecting. Their readers know that EVs are a lefties scam. They know that Sunak has prevented the evil Starmer's plan. So why would Nissan stop selling lovely petrol Micra's?
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
Madainn mhath a h-uile duine.
Daily Mail readers won’t buy Japanese cars anyway, because, to them, WW2 hasn’t finished. (See also Germany)
Interesting to consider the history of Japanese conglomerates during WWII and the fact that until quite recently (a decade or 2 ago), the owner contained numbers of people who had actual participated in what went on.
Including mass slavery.
Reparations, anyone?
The Koreans have more or less settled that issue - though the memory is very much a part of their culture. On my recent holiday I was much struck by the number of small museums in Busan which dealt with various aspects of Japanese invasion and colonialism.
One to keep and eye on: Suella making a speech about the Refugee Convention.
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.
Her position seems to be "Western countries do not want brown refugees because we're racist" - whether dog whistle or not, that is the long and short of it.
So what's the alternative? You talk about the "quality of governance in countries being fled from", but who benefits from corrupt dictators or impoverished nations with lots of natural resources? The West. Who sanctions or invades any country that tries to nationalise their own natural resources for the benefit of their own people? The West. We have no leg to stand on and say "we don't want these people here, they should sort themselves out" when we are the cause of their instability. And that will only get worse with climate change.
There are only two real solutions - all countries sign up to take a percentage of global refugees, pay into a pot and it gets organised internationally (lol, not gonna happen). Or the attitude of "let them die" will come back.
We also have to remember why the Convention was written in the first place. "Never Forget" is about more than just gas chambers - it's about the countries that turned away fleeing Jewish refugees and consigned them to a different death. It's about remembering the humanity in all peoples, and not just our own volk. Why do I have more right to live on this bit of land land than any other human being, just by an accident of birth?
From today's Guardian: Do other countries do it cheaper? Apparently so. France’s latest 203-mile (327km) stretch of high-speed track to be constructed from Bordeaux across the country’s south – just under double the length of London-Birmingham – is expected to come in at €14bn (£12.1bn). A UK government-commissioned study from 2018 found high-speed rail internationally was generally achieved for about £32m a kilometre, on a range of £11m-£79m a kilometre. Phase one of HS2 looks like coming in at about £250m/km.
I expect them to scrap the link to Manchester and instead say they’ll improve west to east links . The public have never really got behind HS2 and the Tories want some cash to spend on other projects that are more voter friendly .
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 .
Is it caused by the huge cost of compensation in this country compared to elsewhere? Maybe it's because we're more densely populated than nearly every other European country, so whereas in places like Spain and France it's relatively easy to route a new train line through mostly empty areas, it's much more difficult to do that here. I was using the Spanish high speed trains in February/March this year and I was surprised to see how utterly empty a lot of the countryside was.
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).
The Times have a very good article on it today, if you can get behind the paywall.
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.
I think we really need a dedicated national infrastructure council that is at one remove from day to day political machinations that can make these kinds of long term decisions, ideally creating a pipeline of projects so that expertise in planning and contracting is not lost from one project to the next. 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.
The problem with this is the universal problem of politics. Just as philosophy is the study of issues that can't be solved, politics is the art of making hard choices between contested alternatives with finite resources, infinite demand and regular elections.
This can't be delegated away from politics. Those to whom it is delegated become themselves part of the political process.
Long term infrastructure involves many of the hardest and most contested choices both in terms of general policy (nuclear or wind or tides; rail or road or 3rd runway) and raw politics (where to build 2 million houses).
I agree on the substance of this, it will of course remain a politically contested area as indeed it should, but I think there are institutional arrangements that can leave the politicians to set the direction but not meddle day to day and allow for a longer term focus to dictate these decisions. HS2 - which I think is a fundamentally sound idea - has become the poster child for how not to manage these projects. We are in danger of becoming a country where major infrastructure development becomes impossible - and that really is not a country that any of us should want to live in.
One to keep and eye on: Suella making a speech about the Refugee Convention.
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.
Her position seems to be "Western countries do not want brown refugees because we're racist" - whether dog whistle or not, that is the long and short of it.
So what's the alternative? You talk about the "quality of governance in countries being fled from", but who benefits from corrupt dictators or impoverished nations with lots of natural resources? The West. Who sanctions or invades any country that tries to nationalise their own natural resources for the benefit of their own people? The West. We have no leg to stand on and say "we don't want these people here, they should sort themselves out" when we are the cause of their instability. And that will only get worse with climate change.
There are only two real solutions - all countries sign up to take a percentage of global refugees, pay into a pot and it gets organised internationally (lol, not gonna happen). Or the attitude of "let them die" will come back.
We also have to remember why the Convention was written in the first place. "Never Forget" is about more than just gas chambers - it's about the countries that turned away fleeing Jewish refugees and consigned them to a different death. It's about remembering the humanity in all peoples, and not just our own volk. Why do I have more right to live on this bit of land land than any other human being, just by an accident of birth?
All completely correct, and illustrating the problem. Especially the 'all countries sign up....' bit. All countries includes of course all the countries people are fleeing. Flee Somalia, find yourself in Myanmar....
On EV cars we can argue the toss about price differentials, government policy, commercial factors. The market will sort it out with or without the government.
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.
People aren't missing that.
There's just saying the message is stupid and dishonest.
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.
But this can't be true. It was Keir Starmer forcing Nissan et al to ditch petrol. Sunak saved people from having to buy an electric car, it was in all the right newspapers and TV news shows. Thanks to Rishi making Long-Term Decisions for a Brighter Future, the dread threat of all EV by 2030 was removed.
Nissan must be mistaken .
Nissan don't make new cars at the £13k entry level range of the market like the Kia Picanto etc
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?
They won't be outlawed. And manufacturers will continue to make budget cars with petrol engines - they just won't sell them in Europe. That process is already happening and will not be stopped by Rishi faffing with dates.
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...
Are you counting 2005 as "in recent memory"? In real terms its price has barely budged in the past eighteen years, its gone up a bit post-Covid as have all because of shortages etc in the market for electrics etc, but overall the price has been remarkably stable in real terms.
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.
Again again - they aren't being outlawed. They will still be made in large numbers. They just won't be made *for Europe*. Kia build various cars that never come here. Other brands like Mitsubishi and Proton have exited completely but still make a lot of vehicles.
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.
Good.
So what's the problem?
If Tata are eight grand cheaper than the cheapest EV they should be allowed to sell their product here.
If EV are the cheapest, then there's no rational reason to buy an ICE and nobody will.
I'd love to see only ICE cars being on the road, and if the technology is there then great, if its not then it will be just a few years later, but either way its technology and scale that matters more than laws and edicts so what's your problem?
On EV cars we can argue the toss about price differentials, government policy, commercial factors. The market will sort it out with or without the government.
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.
Nobody was forcing anyone to pay thousands of pounds. Sunak has been widely mocked for his list of things he was cancelling which only ever existed on a policy proposal drawn up by his own government.
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.
Nissan aren't in the market for £13k vehicles already, so they've confirmed nothing.
I'll be more interested in listening to what those who do have £13k vehicles have to say. So Kia, Dacia etc
I expect them to scrap the link to Manchester and instead say they’ll improve west to east links . The public have never really got behind HS2 and the Tories want some cash to spend on other projects that are more voter friendly .
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 .
Is it caused by the huge cost of compensation in this country compared to elsewhere? Maybe it's because we're more densely populated than nearly every other European country, so whereas in places like Spain and France it's relatively easy to route a new train line through mostly empty areas, it's much more difficult to do that here. I was using the Spanish high speed trains in February/March this year and I was surprised to see how utterly empty a lot of the countryside was.
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).
The Times have a very good article on it today, if you can get behind the paywall.
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.
I think that is spot on. Somehow the French and the Italians manage to circumnavigate the politics of grand projets to such a degree that they get things built for lots cheaper despite labour and materials being as expensive there. Isn't there a law in France that if they want to build a railway or autoroute, you have to give up your house/land but are paid twice the market rate for it? I don't know, but I am sure I remember hearing something like that.
Yes. Ironically, compulsory purchase on a grand, simple scale like that is the cheap option.
A number ideas to deal with the Hammersmith Bridge problem have been stalled by a small number of residents who live close to the end of the bridge and their concern. I suggested exactly this solution to a local councillor - just knock on their doors with a cheque for twice what the houses are worth. His reaction was horror at the idea of "bribery".
I expect them to scrap the link to Manchester and instead say they’ll improve west to east links . The public have never really got behind HS2 and the Tories want some cash to spend on other projects that are more voter friendly .
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 .
Is it caused by the huge cost of compensation in this country compared to elsewhere? Maybe it's because we're more densely populated than nearly every other European country, so whereas in places like Spain and France it's relatively easy to route a new train line through mostly empty areas, it's much more difficult to do that here. I was using the Spanish high speed trains in February/March this year and I was surprised to see how utterly empty a lot of the countryside was.
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).
The Times have a very good article on it today, if you can get behind the paywall.
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.
I think we really need a dedicated national infrastructure council that is at one remove from day to day political machinations that can make these kinds of long term decisions, ideally creating a pipeline of projects so that expertise in planning and contracting is not lost from one project to the next. 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.
The problem with this is the universal problem of politics. Just as philosophy is the study of issues that can't be solved, politics is the art of making hard choices between contested alternatives with finite resources, infinite demand and regular elections.
This can't be delegated away from politics. Those to whom it is delegated become themselves part of the political process.
Long term infrastructure involves many of the hardest and most contested choices both in terms of general policy (nuclear or wind or tides; rail or road or 3rd runway) and raw politics (where to build 2 million houses).
The planning, contracting and management ought to be separated as much as possible from politics, though. Since politicians are so bad at it.
I expect them to scrap the link to Manchester and instead say they’ll improve west to east links . The public have never really got behind HS2 and the Tories want some cash to spend on other projects that are more voter friendly .
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 .
Is it caused by the huge cost of compensation in this country compared to elsewhere? Maybe it's because we're more densely populated than nearly every other European country, so whereas in places like Spain and France it's relatively easy to route a new train line through mostly empty areas, it's much more difficult to do that here. I was using the Spanish high speed trains in February/March this year and I was surprised to see how utterly empty a lot of the countryside was.
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).
The Times have a very good article on it today, if you can get behind the paywall.
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.
I think we really need a dedicated national infrastructure council that is at one remove from day to day political machinations that can make these kinds of long term decisions, ideally creating a pipeline of projects so that expertise in planning and contracting is not lost from one project to the next. 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.
The problem with this is the universal problem of politics. Just as philosophy is the study of issues that can't be solved, politics is the art of making hard choices between contested alternatives with finite resources, infinite demand and regular elections.
This can't be delegated away from politics. Those to whom it is delegated become themselves part of the political process.
Long term infrastructure involves many of the hardest and most contested choices both in terms of general policy (nuclear or wind or tides; rail or road or 3rd runway) and raw politics (where to build 2 million houses).
A major factor you haven't mentioned is the role of HM Treasury. They look at all projects, use unrealistic test discount rates and suggest modelling assumptions to filter out most projects, leaving only those that have significant economic benefit (read: mostly based in the South East and support London's GDP) or irresistible support from the political party in power. Even so, they act to water down what is approved - for example, restricting the number of lanes of the M25 near Heathrow even when the initial modelling suggested that 5+ each way would be sensible.
One to keep and eye on: Suella making a speech about the Refugee Convention.
This could get very confused between: pragmatic reality, grandstanding, the press - both left and right, electioneering, lobbyists and extremists.
If you're hoping to start a pragmatic debate, a highly publicised speech to a right wing think tank is probably not the way to go about it.
And Suella is not the person to make it.
All true. Wouldn't it be good if Labour, LDs, BBC, Guardian, Economist, Times, FT, High Commission for Refugees, Refugee Council, the Islamic World, the African Union were the prime movers here.
I expect them to scrap the link to Manchester and instead say they’ll improve west to east links . The public have never really got behind HS2 and the Tories want some cash to spend on other projects that are more voter friendly .
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 .
Is it caused by the huge cost of compensation in this country compared to elsewhere? Maybe it's because we're more densely populated than nearly every other European country, so whereas in places like Spain and France it's relatively easy to route a new train line through mostly empty areas, it's much more difficult to do that here. I was using the Spanish high speed trains in February/March this year and I was surprised to see how utterly empty a lot of the countryside was.
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).
The Times have a very good article on it today, if you can get behind the paywall.
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.
I think that is spot on. Somehow the French and the Italians manage to circumnavigate the politics of grand projets to such a degree that they get things built for lots cheaper despite labour and materials being as expensive there. Isn't there a law in France that if they want to build a railway or autoroute, you have to give up your house/land but are paid twice the market rate for it? I don't know, but I am sure I remember hearing something like that.
Yes. Ironically, compulsory purchase on a grand, simple scale like that is the cheap option.
A number ideas to deal with the Hammersmith Bridge problem have been stalled by a small number of residents who live close to the end of the bridge and their concern. I suggested exactly this solution to a local councillor - just knock on their doors with a cheque for twice what the houses are worth. His reaction was horror at the idea of "bribery".
That is a superb example in microcosm. Opportunity for Starmer to install a French-style 2x£ CPO policy here. As you say, it's much cheaper than getting bogged down in planning for decades.
One to keep and eye on: Suella making a speech about the Refugee Convention.
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.
Her position seems to be "Western countries do not want brown refugees because we're racist" - whether dog whistle or not, that is the long and short of it.
So what's the alternative? You talk about the "quality of governance in countries being fled from", but who benefits from corrupt dictators or impoverished nations with lots of natural resources? The West. Who sanctions or invades any country that tries to nationalise their own natural resources for the benefit of their own people? The West. We have no leg to stand on and say "we don't want these people here, they should sort themselves out" when we are the cause of their instability. And that will only get worse with climate change.
There are only two real solutions - all countries sign up to take a percentage of global refugees, pay into a pot and it gets organised internationally (lol, not gonna happen). Or the attitude of "let them die" will come back.
We also have to remember why the Convention was written in the first place. "Never Forget" is about more than just gas chambers - it's about the countries that turned away fleeing Jewish refugees and consigned them to a different death. It's about remembering the humanity in all peoples, and not just our own volk. Why do I have more right to live on this bit of land land than any other human being, just by an accident of birth?
All completely correct, and illustrating the problem. Especially the 'all countries sign up....' bit. All countries includes of course all the countries people are fleeing. Flee Somalia, find yourself in Myanmar....
{cynical but smart politician mode}
Make every single application for UK residency and citizenship an asylum claim.
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.
But this can't be true. It was Keir Starmer forcing Nissan et al to ditch petrol. Sunak saved people from having to buy an electric car, it was in all the right newspapers and TV news shows. Thanks to Rishi making Long-Term Decisions for a Brighter Future, the dread threat of all EV by 2030 was removed.
Nissan must be mistaken .
Nissan don't make new cars at the £13k entry level range of the market like the Kia Picanto etc
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...
On the contrary, it's very likely indeed. 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.
And if it happens, then the market will take care of that.
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?
Nobody who is skint buys a new car anyway, surely? I'm quite well off, and I wouldn't buy a new car. I'm sure there will be second hand EVs available to suit every budget.
That's a rather ignorant attitude.
Actually yes plenty of people on a budget do buy a new car. If you have eg a £3k deposit then getting £10k in finance to make it £13k is a lot more affordable than getting a £24k deposit to get a £27k car like the MG4.
A new Kia Picanto costs less than a 3 year old used MG4. A new vehicle also comes with a full warranty etc too.
For the record my first new car I ever bought was a Kia Picanto, in 2005. It was what I could afford at the time and it was enough for my needs.
I expect them to scrap the link to Manchester and instead say they’ll improve west to east links . The public have never really got behind HS2 and the Tories want some cash to spend on other projects that are more voter friendly .
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 .
Is it caused by the huge cost of compensation in this country compared to elsewhere? Maybe it's because we're more densely populated than nearly every other European country, so whereas in places like Spain and France it's relatively easy to route a new train line through mostly empty areas, it's much more difficult to do that here. I was using the Spanish high speed trains in February/March this year and I was surprised to see how utterly empty a lot of the countryside was.
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).
The Times have a very good article on it today, if you can get behind the paywall.
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.
I think we really need a dedicated national infrastructure council that is at one remove from day to day political machinations that can make these kinds of long term decisions, ideally creating a pipeline of projects so that expertise in planning and contracting is not lost from one project to the next. 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.
Spot on re Westminster. Restored as a national monument, perhaps used for ceremonial occasions, it would be a major asset to the country.
If they must have parliament in London I hear Old Oak Common is going to be well-connected.
I would demolish it. Ugly as feck neo-gothic monstrosity. Sell off the land to developers to cover the cost of the replacement fit for purpose parliament.
I'm feeling generous - keep the clock tower as it is a bit of a national symbol.
The new parliament could be built on redundant railway land at Toton, if that turns out to be the terminus for HS2.
From today's Guardian: Do other countries do it cheaper? Apparently so. France’s latest 203-mile (327km) stretch of high-speed track to be constructed from Bordeaux across the country’s south – just under double the length of London-Birmingham – is expected to come in at €14bn (£12.1bn). A UK government-commissioned study from 2018 found high-speed rail internationally was generally achieved for about £32m a kilometre, on a range of £11m-£79m a kilometre. Phase one of HS2 looks like coming in at about £250m/km.
That is really quite astounding. I don't understand why we didn't just get the French (or the Chinese) to build it. Or at least not been so terrified of the Cotswolds Nimbys that we put half of it in unnecessary tunnels.
I expect them to scrap the link to Manchester and instead say they’ll improve west to east links . The public have never really got behind HS2 and the Tories want some cash to spend on other projects that are more voter friendly .
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 .
Is it caused by the huge cost of compensation in this country compared to elsewhere? Maybe it's because we're more densely populated than nearly every other European country, so whereas in places like Spain and France it's relatively easy to route a new train line through mostly empty areas, it's much more difficult to do that here. I was using the Spanish high speed trains in February/March this year and I was surprised to see how utterly empty a lot of the countryside was.
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).
The Times have a very good article on it today, if you can get behind the paywall.
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.
I think we really need a dedicated national infrastructure council that is at one remove from day to day political machinations that can make these kinds of long term decisions, ideally creating a pipeline of projects so that expertise in planning and contracting is not lost from one project to the next. 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.
The problem with this is the universal problem of politics. Just as philosophy is the study of issues that can't be solved, politics is the art of making hard choices between contested alternatives with finite resources, infinite demand and regular elections.
This can't be delegated away from politics. Those to whom it is delegated become themselves part of the political process.
Long term infrastructure involves many of the hardest and most contested choices both in terms of general policy (nuclear or wind or tides; rail or road or 3rd runway) and raw politics (where to build 2 million houses).
A major factor you haven't mentioned is the role of HM Treasury. They look at all projects, use unrealistic test discount rates and suggest modelling assumptions to filter out most projects, leaving only those that have significant economic benefit (read: mostly based in the South East and support London's GDP) or irresistible support from the political party in power. Even so, they act to water down what is approved - for example, restricting the number of lanes of the M25 near Heathrow even when the initial modelling suggested that 5+ each way would be sensible.
Thanks. How the Treasury is structured to develop policy, and what decisions are made on its advice are all for politicians and is all politics.
“The strike became something of a proxy battle of humans vs. AI. It was a battle that most of the public was eager to see the writers win….According to one Gallup poll, the public supported them over the execs by an astonishing margin of 72% to 19%” https://twitter.com/tedgioia/status/1706555691584885055
I expect them to scrap the link to Manchester and instead say they’ll improve west to east links . The public have never really got behind HS2 and the Tories want some cash to spend on other projects that are more voter friendly .
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 .
Is it caused by the huge cost of compensation in this country compared to elsewhere? Maybe it's because we're more densely populated than nearly every other European country, so whereas in places like Spain and France it's relatively easy to route a new train line through mostly empty areas, it's much more difficult to do that here. I was using the Spanish high speed trains in February/March this year and I was surprised to see how utterly empty a lot of the countryside was.
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).
The Times have a very good article on it today, if you can get behind the paywall.
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.
I think we really need a dedicated national infrastructure council that is at one remove from day to day political machinations that can make these kinds of long term decisions, ideally creating a pipeline of projects so that expertise in planning and contracting is not lost from one project to the next. 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.
Spot on re Westminster. Restored as a national monument, perhaps used for ceremonial occasions, it would be a major asset to the country.
If they must have parliament in London I hear Old Oak Common is going to be well-connected.
I would demolish it. Ugly as feck neo-gothic monstrosity. Sell off the land to developers to cover the cost of the replacement fit for purpose parliament.
I'm feeling generous - keep the clock tower as it is a bit of a national symbol.
The new parliament could be built on redundant railway land at Toton, if that turns out to be the terminus for HS2.
The Treasury should be moved to somewhere between Manchester and Leeds (Saddleworth Moor?). Then HS2 might get completed to Manchester and Leeds.
I expect them to scrap the link to Manchester and instead say they’ll improve west to east links . The public have never really got behind HS2 and the Tories want some cash to spend on other projects that are more voter friendly .
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 .
Is it caused by the huge cost of compensation in this country compared to elsewhere? Maybe it's because we're more densely populated than nearly every other European country, so whereas in places like Spain and France it's relatively easy to route a new train line through mostly empty areas, it's much more difficult to do that here. I was using the Spanish high speed trains in February/March this year and I was surprised to see how utterly empty a lot of the countryside was.
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).
The Times have a very good article on it today, if you can get behind the paywall.
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.
I think we really need a dedicated national infrastructure council that is at one remove from day to day political machinations that can make these kinds of long term decisions, ideally creating a pipeline of projects so that expertise in planning and contracting is not lost from one project to the next. 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.
The problem with this is the universal problem of politics. Just as philosophy is the study of issues that can't be solved, politics is the art of making hard choices between contested alternatives with finite resources, infinite demand and regular elections.
This can't be delegated away from politics. Those to whom it is delegated become themselves part of the political process.
Long term infrastructure involves many of the hardest and most contested choices both in terms of general policy (nuclear or wind or tides; rail or road or 3rd runway) and raw politics (where to build 2 million houses).
I agree on the substance of this, it will of course remain a politically contested area as indeed it should, but I think there are institutional arrangements that can leave the politicians to set the direction but not meddle day to day and allow for a longer term focus to dictate these decisions. HS2 - which I think is a fundamentally sound idea - has become the poster child for how not to manage these projects. We are in danger of becoming a country where major infrastructure development becomes impossible - and that really is not a country that any of us should want to live in.
Arrangements to put matters "beyond politics" are just as dangerous as the politics.
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.
But this can't be true. It was Keir Starmer forcing Nissan et al to ditch petrol. Sunak saved people from having to buy an electric car, it was in all the right newspapers and TV news shows. Thanks to Rishi making Long-Term Decisions for a Brighter Future, the dread threat of all EV by 2030 was removed.
Nissan must be mistaken .
Nissan don't make new cars at the £13k entry level range of the market like the Kia Picanto etc
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...
On the contrary, it's very likely indeed. 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.
And if it happens, then the market will take care of that.
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?
Nobody who is skint buys a new car anyway, surely? I'm quite well off, and I wouldn't buy a new car. I'm sure there will be second hand EVs available to suit every budget.
That's a rather ignorant attitude.
Actually yes plenty of people on a budget do buy a new car. If you have eg a £3k deposit then getting £10k in finance to make it £13k is a lot more affordable than getting a £24k deposit to get a £27k car like the MG4.
A new Kia Picanto costs less than a 3 year old used MG4. A new vehicle also comes with a full warranty etc too.
For the record my first new car I ever bought was a Kia Picanto, in 2005. It was what I could afford at the time and it was enough for my needs.
A new car loses something like a third of its value as soon as you drive it off the forecourt, doesn't it? That seems like a luxury that people on a budget can't afford. New cars are just a status symbol, it's never even crossed my mind to buy one.
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I expect them to scrap the link to Manchester and instead say they’ll improve west to east links . The public have never really got behind HS2 and the Tories want some cash to spend on other projects that are more voter friendly .
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 .
Is it caused by the huge cost of compensation in this country compared to elsewhere? Maybe it's because we're more densely populated than nearly every other European country, so whereas in places like Spain and France it's relatively easy to route a new train line through mostly empty areas, it's much more difficult to do that here. I was using the Spanish high speed trains in February/March this year and I was surprised to see how utterly empty a lot of the countryside was.
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).
The Times have a very good article on it today, if you can get behind the paywall.
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.
I think we really need a dedicated national infrastructure council that is at one remove from day to day political machinations that can make these kinds of long term decisions, ideally creating a pipeline of projects so that expertise in planning and contracting is not lost from one project to the next. 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.
The problem with this is the universal problem of politics. Just as philosophy is the study of issues that can't be solved, politics is the art of making hard choices between contested alternatives with finite resources, infinite demand and regular elections.
This can't be delegated away from politics. Those to whom it is delegated become themselves part of the political process.
Long term infrastructure involves many of the hardest and most contested choices both in terms of general policy (nuclear or wind or tides; rail or road or 3rd runway) and raw politics (where to build 2 million houses).
The planning, contracting and management ought to be separated as much as possible from politics, though. Since politicians are so bad at it.
Fair enough. The number of MPs who could project manage Crossrail or HS2 is, I should think, small. Oxford PPE doesn't have management of massive engineering projects as an option.
I expect them to scrap the link to Manchester and instead say they’ll improve west to east links . The public have never really got behind HS2 and the Tories want some cash to spend on other projects that are more voter friendly .
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 .
Is it caused by the huge cost of compensation in this country compared to elsewhere? Maybe it's because we're more densely populated than nearly every other European country, so whereas in places like Spain and France it's relatively easy to route a new train line through mostly empty areas, it's much more difficult to do that here. I was using the Spanish high speed trains in February/March this year and I was surprised to see how utterly empty a lot of the countryside was.
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).
The Times have a very good article on it today, if you can get behind the paywall.
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.
I think we really need a dedicated national infrastructure council that is at one remove from day to day political machinations that can make these kinds of long term decisions, ideally creating a pipeline of projects so that expertise in planning and contracting is not lost from one project to the next. 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.
The problem with this is the universal problem of politics. Just as philosophy is the study of issues that can't be solved, politics is the art of making hard choices between contested alternatives with finite resources, infinite demand and regular elections.
This can't be delegated away from politics. Those to whom it is delegated become themselves part of the political process.
Long term infrastructure involves many of the hardest and most contested choices both in terms of general policy (nuclear or wind or tides; rail or road or 3rd runway) and raw politics (where to build 2 million houses).
I agree on the substance of this, it will of course remain a politically contested area as indeed it should, but I think there are institutional arrangements that can leave the politicians to set the direction but not meddle day to day and allow for a longer term focus to dictate these decisions. HS2 - which I think is a fundamentally sound idea - has become the poster child for how not to manage these projects. We are in danger of becoming a country where major infrastructure development becomes impossible - and that really is not a country that any of us should want to live in.
Arrangements to put matters "beyond politics" are just as dangerous as the politics.
Triple Lock, anyone?
The triple lock is hardly beyond politics, it's pretty much all politicians ever talk about.
This EV debate still has not addressed the fact that there does not seem to be any plan to build the required electrical and charging infrastructure that will be required to charge all these electric vehicles.
At the Tesco's petrol station this morning all 24 pumps were in use and there were 20 cars waiting. I really don't think prople realise the number of EV charging points that will be required or the upgrades required to the electrical wiring infrastructure.
One to keep and eye on: Suella making a speech about the Refugee Convention.
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.
6) Nobody needs to flee from France to come to the UK.
It sounds from this clip in the header that cabinet government has collapsed. Either this minister, or Grant Shapps doesn't know what they are talking about and have been hung out to dry.
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.
The weirdest thing about it is that we've had the Prime Minister loudly refusing to comment on speculation that he's responsible for having stirred up. And the Secretary of State for Defence loudly defending the gist of the speculation. And now the Housing Minister denying it.
But where is the Transport Secretary? There's not been a peep from him since he last attacked ULEZ, 13 days ago. Has he been sidelined? Gone on strike? Fallen down the back of the sofa?
I think what we've been seeing in recent weeks is kite-flying - maybe we'll rethink HS2, perhaps we'll cut inheritance tax, etc., let's see how the public think about that, eh? That can work when it's an unattributable briefing to a journalist - you get an idea of current sensitivities, and also it gets the press talking about you. But it's bonkers when everyone from the PM down joins in, since it conveys the impression that nobody actually has a clue.
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.
The money wasted on unnecessary Health & Safety in construction is huge and mainly pointless
Unnecessary H&S is by definition completely pointless. There is also necessary H&S.
To be fair it can be really difficult to know what is 'necessary' and 'unnecessary' H&S; you cannot tell what a provision did to prevent an incident if the incident did not occur. As avoiding injuries and deaths is seen as vital (and rightly so), it becomes necessary to chuck money at H&S.
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.
Yes, H&S is one of those good ideas that gets discredited by being carried to extremes.
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.
Or wankers who try to sue you if you don't CYA in that very manner, alas. So insurers demand ...
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.
Indeed. Lawyers and Insurance Companies have a huge vested interest in protecting us from non-existent threats.
That's the problem.
It is not the Heath and Safety etc. At Work Act 1974 that is the problem, it is the ambulance chasing lawyers. All these silly signs are the insurer's demand to mitigate litigation.
I once did some work for a car breakers in Caerphilly. The guy who owned ithe yard had been sued by a woman who entered site and fell over in a pothole. There were no site rules, hazard or prohibition signs and the place was essentially an H&S free zone. The plaintiff won about £5k and the guy's bill was circa £25k. The trouble was this guy had no liability insurance so he had to remortgage his home to pay the legal bills. He said if the woman has asked him first, he'd have gladly given her the 5 grand.
It sounds from this clip in the header that cabinet government has collapsed. Either this minister, or Grant Shapps doesn't know what they are talking about and have been hung out to dry.
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.
The weirdest thing about it is that we've had the Prime Minister loudly refusing to comment on speculation that he's responsible for having stirred up. And the Secretary of State for Defence loudly defending the gist of the speculation. And now the Housing Minister denying it.
But where is the Transport Secretary? There's not been a peep from him since he last attacked ULEZ, 13 days ago. Has he been sidelined? Gone on strike? Fallen down the back of the sofa?
I think what we've been seeing in recent weeks is kite-flying - maybe we'll rethink HS2, perhaps we'll cut inheritance tax, etc., let's see how the public think about that, eh? That can work when it's an unattributable briefing to a journalist - you get an idea of current sensitivities, and also it gets the press talking about you. But it's bonkers when everyone from the PM down joins in, since it conveys the impression that nobody actually has a clue.
It's probably conveying the correct impression then.
I expect them to scrap the link to Manchester and instead say they’ll improve west to east links . The public have never really got behind HS2 and the Tories want some cash to spend on other projects that are more voter friendly .
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 .
Is it caused by the huge cost of compensation in this country compared to elsewhere? Maybe it's because we're more densely populated than nearly every other European country, so whereas in places like Spain and France it's relatively easy to route a new train line through mostly empty areas, it's much more difficult to do that here. I was using the Spanish high speed trains in February/March this year and I was surprised to see how utterly empty a lot of the countryside was.
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).
The Times have a very good article on it today, if you can get behind the paywall.
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.
I think that is spot on. Somehow the French and the Italians manage to circumnavigate the politics of grand projets to such a degree that they get things built for lots cheaper despite labour and materials being as expensive there. Isn't there a law in France that if they want to build a railway or autoroute, you have to give up your house/land but are paid twice the market rate for it? I don't know, but I am sure I remember hearing something like that.
Yes. Ironically, compulsory purchase on a grand, simple scale like that is the cheap option.
A number ideas to deal with the Hammersmith Bridge problem have been stalled by a small number of residents who live close to the end of the bridge and their concern. I suggested exactly this solution to a local councillor - just knock on their doors with a cheque for twice what the houses are worth. His reaction was horror at the idea of "bribery".
That is a superb example in microcosm. Opportunity for Starmer to install a French-style 2x£ CPO policy here. As you say, it's much cheaper than getting bogged down in planning for decades.
It was literally a dozen houses. or something like that.
"Hello Mr Home Owner. Would you like to retire, immediately, to an identical house to the one you live in, a couple of streets over, and live on an annuity that is better than the pension a very senior consultant gets, for the rest of your life?"
I expect them to scrap the link to Manchester and instead say they’ll improve west to east links . The public have never really got behind HS2 and the Tories want some cash to spend on other projects that are more voter friendly .
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 .
Is it caused by the huge cost of compensation in this country compared to elsewhere? Maybe it's because we're more densely populated than nearly every other European country, so whereas in places like Spain and France it's relatively easy to route a new train line through mostly empty areas, it's much more difficult to do that here. I was using the Spanish high speed trains in February/March this year and I was surprised to see how utterly empty a lot of the countryside was.
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).
The Times have a very good article on it today, if you can get behind the paywall.
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.
I think we really need a dedicated national infrastructure council that is at one remove from day to day political machinations that can make these kinds of long term decisions, ideally creating a pipeline of projects so that expertise in planning and contracting is not lost from one project to the next. 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.
Make Westminster a museum absolutely!
Move Parliament and the Civil Service out of London and into a new build city.
Looking at a map, North of York, East of Hull there seems to be quite a bit of land that's neither well developed nor in an AONB. Or between Grimsby and Scunthorpe could be another good location, though that's getting close to Lincolnshire Wolds AONB.
Build a new capital city for Parliament and the Civil Service there, in the form of Washington DC or Canberra, then see how quickly infrastructure gets developed.
One to keep and eye on: Suella making a speech about the Refugee Convention.
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.
6) Nobody needs to flee from France to come to the UK.
This is what vexes the public.
I disagree. There may be individuals who speak English and not French and being in England is safer for them for that reason. There may be people from certain countries where communities already exist in England and don't in France. And, in terms of per capita refugee figures (last figures I can find are from 2015 tbf), France takes in just over twice the number of refugees the UK does.
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.
The money wasted on unnecessary Health & Safety in construction is huge and mainly pointless
Unnecessary H&S is by definition completely pointless. There is also necessary H&S.
To be fair it can be really difficult to know what is 'necessary' and 'unnecessary' H&S; you cannot tell what a provision did to prevent an incident if the incident did not occur. As avoiding injuries and deaths is seen as vital (and rightly so), it becomes necessary to chuck money at H&S.
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.
Yes, H&S is one of those good ideas that gets discredited by being carried to extremes.
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.
Or wankers who try to sue you if you don't CYA in that very manner, alas. So insurers demand ...
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.
Indeed. Lawyers and Insurance Companies have a huge vested interest in protecting us from non-existent threats.
That's the problem.
It is not the Heath and Safety etc. At Work Act 1974 that is the problem, it is the ambulance chasing lawyers. All these silly signs are the insurer's demand to mitigate litigation.
I once did some work for a car breakers in Caerphilly. The guy who owned the yard had been sued by a woman who entered site and fell over in a pothole. There were no site rules, hazard or prohibition signs and the place was essentially an H&S free zone. The plaintiff won about £5k and the guy's bill was circa £25k. The trouble was this guy had no liability insurance so he had to remortgage his home to pay the legal bills. He said if the woman has asked him first, he'd have gladly given her the 5 grand.
"No win, no fee" is the problem - effectively giving complainants a free hit. If the lawyers lose, they just raise their fees in general to compensate.
On EV cars we can argue the toss about price differentials, government policy, commercial factors. The market will sort it out with or without the government.
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.
Nobody was forcing anyone to pay thousands of pounds. Sunak has been widely mocked for his list of things he was cancelling which only ever existed on a policy proposal drawn up by his own government.
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.
For a politically astute kind of guy you are going out of your way to miss the point.
The Cons are signalling to people that they aren't going in for "all this green nonsense" which is virtue signalling and costing hard working families a fortune.
They are appealing to those drivers who drag the Just Stop Oil protesters by the hair out of the way of the traffic.
I expect them to scrap the link to Manchester and instead say they’ll improve west to east links . The public have never really got behind HS2 and the Tories want some cash to spend on other projects that are more voter friendly .
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 .
Is it caused by the huge cost of compensation in this country compared to elsewhere? Maybe it's because we're more densely populated than nearly every other European country, so whereas in places like Spain and France it's relatively easy to route a new train line through mostly empty areas, it's much more difficult to do that here. I was using the Spanish high speed trains in February/March this year and I was surprised to see how utterly empty a lot of the countryside was.
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).
The Times have a very good article on it today, if you can get behind the paywall.
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.
I think we really need a dedicated national infrastructure council that is at one remove from day to day political machinations that can make these kinds of long term decisions, ideally creating a pipeline of projects so that expertise in planning and contracting is not lost from one project to the next. 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.
Make Westminster a museum absolutely!
Move Parliament and the Civil Service out of London and into a new build city.
Looking at a map, North of York, East of Hull there seems to be quite a bit of land that's neither well developed nor in an AONB. Or between Grimsby and Scunthorpe could be another good location, though that's getting close to Lincolnshire Wolds AONB.
Build a new capital city for Parliament and the Civil Service there, in the form of Washington DC or Canberra, then see how quickly infrastructure gets developed.
Or a bit further south; Ashbourne is basically the middle of the country - in between Stoke and Derby
On EV cars we can argue the toss about price differentials, government policy, commercial factors. The market will sort it out with or without the government.
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.
People aren't missing that.
There's just saying the message is stupid and dishonest.
One to keep and eye on: Suella making a speech about the Refugee Convention.
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.
6) Nobody needs to flee from France to come to the UK.
This is what vexes the public.
I disagree. There may be individuals who speak English and not French and being in England is safer for them for that reason. There may be people from certain countries where communities already exist in England and don't in France. And, in terms of per capita refugee figures (last figures I can find are from 2015 tbf), France takes in just over twice the number of refugees the UK does.
This neatly illustrates the wider problem. You express the issue in terms of the rights and preferences of the refugee - preferring France to Greece, and UK to France. But millions of refugees live for years in tents in the desert with the most basic of conditions. For example the 600,000 in Chad.
One, large, group is given the barest rights. The others, good at the obstacle course, have every chance of sending their children to Oxford.
From where comes the justification for this disparity?
One to keep and eye on: Suella making a speech about the Refugee Convention.
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.
6) Nobody needs to flee from France to come to the UK.
This is what vexes the public.
I disagree. There may be individuals who speak English and not French and being in England is safer for them for that reason. There may be people from certain countries where communities already exist in England and don't in France. And, in terms of per capita refugee figures (last figures I can find are from 2015 tbf), France takes in just over twice the number of refugees the UK does.
This neatly illustrates the wider problem. You express the issue in terms of the rights and preferences of the refugee - preferring France to Greece, and UK to France. But millions of refugees live for years in tents in the desert with the most basic of conditions. For example the 600,000 in Chad.
One, large, group is given the barest rights. The others, good at the obstacle course, have every chance of sending their children to Oxford.
From where comes the justification for this disparity?
I think that disparity is bad too. I think they should all have the opportunity to have the option to go somewhere else and better. Again, the disparity is mostly created by western countries who pay other governments to keep the refugees far away from them - like how Turkey has been paid off by the EU for years to house Syrian refugees.
I expect them to scrap the link to Manchester and instead say they’ll improve west to east links . The public have never really got behind HS2 and the Tories want some cash to spend on other projects that are more voter friendly .
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 .
Is it caused by the huge cost of compensation in this country compared to elsewhere? Maybe it's because we're more densely populated than nearly every other European country, so whereas in places like Spain and France it's relatively easy to route a new train line through mostly empty areas, it's much more difficult to do that here. I was using the Spanish high speed trains in February/March this year and I was surprised to see how utterly empty a lot of the countryside was.
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).
The Times have a very good article on it today, if you can get behind the paywall.
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.
I think we really need a dedicated national infrastructure council that is at one remove from day to day political machinations that can make these kinds of long term decisions, ideally creating a pipeline of projects so that expertise in planning and contracting is not lost from one project to the next. 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.
Make Westminster a museum absolutely!
Move Parliament and the Civil Service out of London and into a new build city.
Looking at a map, North of York, East of Hull there seems to be quite a bit of land that's neither well developed nor in an AONB. Or between Grimsby and Scunthorpe could be another good location, though that's getting close to Lincolnshire Wolds AONB.
Build a new capital city for Parliament and the Civil Service there, in the form of Washington DC or Canberra, then see how quickly infrastructure gets developed.
Do you mean west of Hull? (Noth)East of Hull you'd have parliament on sea. Good luck taking on th NIMBYs in the Yorkshire Wolds (rolling countryside, less spectacular than moors or dales, but still popular). Proposed to my wife on a walk in the Wolds.
I'd tend to pop if somewhere Leeds/Bradford or further north to Darlington/Northallerton area to be more central for a UK parliament (Shetland can bugger off and join Norway if they don't consider that central-enough )
From today's Guardian: Do other countries do it cheaper? Apparently so. France’s latest 203-mile (327km) stretch of high-speed track to be constructed from Bordeaux across the country’s south – just under double the length of London-Birmingham – is expected to come in at €14bn (£12.1bn). A UK government-commissioned study from 2018 found high-speed rail internationally was generally achieved for about £32m a kilometre, on a range of £11m-£79m a kilometre. Phase one of HS2 looks like coming in at about £250m/km.
That is really quite astounding. I don't understand why we didn't just get the French (or the Chinese) to build it. Or at least not been so terrified of the Cotswolds Nimbys that we put half of it in unnecessary tunnels.
We have had a situation where the same question was asked. For ten years they have been trying to build a new hospital and so far having spent £240m they still haven’t built anything because everyone keeps arguing and changing the preferred site or whether to have one site or two. The new target is for it to be completed in mid 2030’s and they seem to think total cost will stay at £800m!
People didn’t want it built on a park that about 5 people a day use and is about 100 metres from a bloody huge beach and 10 metres from another park. People didn’t want it on reclaimed waterfront land, people didn’t want a road widened near their houses for another huge site that was a former out patients centre. Now they have gone back to split site on original site and a secondary site.
A French company, who exist solely to build hospitals in France, were invited over by non gov people and after doing their study, based on their previous builds for similar needs and population and factoring in higher costs said they could do it for £91m. It was dismissed by the gov.
I see a lot of whining on LBC about Labours plan to remove charitable status from private schools .
Why should the public be expected to subsidize these ?
Even if we were to accept the premise of your question (zero rating for VAT is not a subsidy), the answer would be 'because the parents are already paying for the state provision of education and deciding not to use it'.
I expect them to scrap the link to Manchester and instead say they’ll improve west to east links . The public have never really got behind HS2 and the Tories want some cash to spend on other projects that are more voter friendly .
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 .
Is it caused by the huge cost of compensation in this country compared to elsewhere? Maybe it's because we're more densely populated than nearly every other European country, so whereas in places like Spain and France it's relatively easy to route a new train line through mostly empty areas, it's much more difficult to do that here. I was using the Spanish high speed trains in February/March this year and I was surprised to see how utterly empty a lot of the countryside was.
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).
The Times have a very good article on it today, if you can get behind the paywall.
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.
I think we really need a dedicated national infrastructure council that is at one remove from day to day political machinations that can make these kinds of long term decisions, ideally creating a pipeline of projects so that expertise in planning and contracting is not lost from one project to the next. 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.
Spot on re Westminster. Restored as a national monument, perhaps used for ceremonial occasions, it would be a major asset to the country.
If they must have parliament in London I hear Old Oak Common is going to be well-connected.
I would demolish it. Ugly as feck neo-gothic monstrosity. Sell off the land to developers to cover the cost of the replacement fit for purpose parliament.
I'm feeling generous - keep the clock tower as it is a bit of a national symbol.
The new parliament could be built on redundant railway land at Toton, if that turns out to be the terminus for HS2.
The Treasury should be moved to somewhere between Manchester and Leeds (Saddleworth Moor?). Then HS2 might get completed to Manchester and Leeds.
Move them to Bradford and Northern Poorhouse Rail would be a dead cert.
I expect them to scrap the link to Manchester and instead say they’ll improve west to east links . The public have never really got behind HS2 and the Tories want some cash to spend on other projects that are more voter friendly .
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 .
Is it caused by the huge cost of compensation in this country compared to elsewhere? Maybe it's because we're more densely populated than nearly every other European country, so whereas in places like Spain and France it's relatively easy to route a new train line through mostly empty areas, it's much more difficult to do that here. I was using the Spanish high speed trains in February/March this year and I was surprised to see how utterly empty a lot of the countryside was.
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).
The Times have a very good article on it today, if you can get behind the paywall.
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.
I think we really need a dedicated national infrastructure council that is at one remove from day to day political machinations that can make these kinds of long term decisions, ideally creating a pipeline of projects so that expertise in planning and contracting is not lost from one project to the next. 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.
The problem with this is the universal problem of politics. Just as philosophy is the study of issues that can't be solved, politics is the art of making hard choices between contested alternatives with finite resources, infinite demand and regular elections.
This can't be delegated away from politics. Those to whom it is delegated become themselves part of the political process.
Long term infrastructure involves many of the hardest and most contested choices both in terms of general policy (nuclear or wind or tides; rail or road or 3rd runway) and raw politics (where to build 2 million houses).
I agree on the substance of this, it will of course remain a politically contested area as indeed it should, but I think there are institutional arrangements that can leave the politicians to set the direction but not meddle day to day and allow for a longer term focus to dictate these decisions. HS2 - which I think is a fundamentally sound idea - has become the poster child for how not to manage these projects. We are in danger of becoming a country where major infrastructure development becomes impossible - and that really is not a country that any of us should want to live in.
Arrangements to put matters "beyond politics" are just as dangerous as the politics.
Triple Lock, anyone?
The triple lock is hardly beyond politics, it's pretty much all politicians ever talk about.
It is beyond politics, in the sense that, the politicians are bound to it. Yes, they fiddle with it, where they can't be immediately detected. But all the political parties will keep it.
Starmer isn't going to start the first Labour government in a long while with an assault on the Welfare State. Which is what removing the Triple Lock will be seen as, in the Labour party.
The only plausible route is, I think, gradually merging NI into income tax and equalising taxes for pensioners.
I expect them to scrap the link to Manchester and instead say they’ll improve west to east links . The public have never really got behind HS2 and the Tories want some cash to spend on other projects that are more voter friendly .
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 .
Is it caused by the huge cost of compensation in this country compared to elsewhere? Maybe it's because we're more densely populated than nearly every other European country, so whereas in places like Spain and France it's relatively easy to route a new train line through mostly empty areas, it's much more difficult to do that here. I was using the Spanish high speed trains in February/March this year and I was surprised to see how utterly empty a lot of the countryside was.
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).
The Times have a very good article on it today, if you can get behind the paywall.
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.
I think we really need a dedicated national infrastructure council that is at one remove from day to day political machinations that can make these kinds of long term decisions, ideally creating a pipeline of projects so that expertise in planning and contracting is not lost from one project to the next. 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.
The problem with this is the universal problem of politics. Just as philosophy is the study of issues that can't be solved, politics is the art of making hard choices between contested alternatives with finite resources, infinite demand and regular elections.
This can't be delegated away from politics. Those to whom it is delegated become themselves part of the political process.
Long term infrastructure involves many of the hardest and most contested choices both in terms of general policy (nuclear or wind or tides; rail or road or 3rd runway) and raw politics (where to build 2 million houses).
I agree on the substance of this, it will of course remain a politically contested area as indeed it should, but I think there are institutional arrangements that can leave the politicians to set the direction but not meddle day to day and allow for a longer term focus to dictate these decisions. HS2 - which I think is a fundamentally sound idea - has become the poster child for how not to manage these projects. We are in danger of becoming a country where major infrastructure development becomes impossible - and that really is not a country that any of us should want to live in.
Arrangements to put matters "beyond politics" are just as dangerous as the politics.
Triple Lock, anyone?
Many of the UK voting public saw the EU as an arrangement which placed lots of things beyond UK politics, including vast amounts of legislation, transferring them to bodies which were not directly elected. I think we were a bit split as to whether this was a Good Thing or not, as we still are.
There are suggestions that the migration/refugee issue could blow open again a few of those issues for the EU.
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.
But this can't be true. It was Keir Starmer forcing Nissan et al to ditch petrol. Sunak saved people from having to buy an electric car, it was in all the right newspapers and TV news shows. Thanks to Rishi making Long-Term Decisions for a Brighter Future, the dread threat of all EV by 2030 was removed.
Nissan must be mistaken .
Nissan don't make new cars at the £13k entry level range of the market like the Kia Picanto etc
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...
On the contrary, it's very likely indeed. 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.
And if it happens, then the market will take care of that.
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?
Nobody who is skint buys a new car anyway, surely? I'm quite well off, and I wouldn't buy a new car. I'm sure there will be second hand EVs available to suit every budget.
That's a rather ignorant attitude.
Actually yes plenty of people on a budget do buy a new car. If you have eg a £3k deposit then getting £10k in finance to make it £13k is a lot more affordable than getting a £24k deposit to get a £27k car like the MG4.
A new Kia Picanto costs less than a 3 year old used MG4. A new vehicle also comes with a full warranty etc too.
For the record my first new car I ever bought was a Kia Picanto, in 2005. It was what I could afford at the time and it was enough for my needs.
When you bought a new Kia Picanto in 2005, what was the sticker price?
I expect them to scrap the link to Manchester and instead say they’ll improve west to east links . The public have never really got behind HS2 and the Tories want some cash to spend on other projects that are more voter friendly .
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 .
Is it caused by the huge cost of compensation in this country compared to elsewhere? Maybe it's because we're more densely populated than nearly every other European country, so whereas in places like Spain and France it's relatively easy to route a new train line through mostly empty areas, it's much more difficult to do that here. I was using the Spanish high speed trains in February/March this year and I was surprised to see how utterly empty a lot of the countryside was.
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).
The Times have a very good article on it today, if you can get behind the paywall.
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.
I think we really need a dedicated national infrastructure council that is at one remove from day to day political machinations that can make these kinds of long term decisions, ideally creating a pipeline of projects so that expertise in planning and contracting is not lost from one project to the next. 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.
Spot on re Westminster. Restored as a national monument, perhaps used for ceremonial occasions, it would be a major asset to the country.
If they must have parliament in London I hear Old Oak Common is going to be well-connected.
I would demolish it. Ugly as feck neo-gothic monstrosity. Sell off the land to developers to cover the cost of the replacement fit for purpose parliament.
I'm feeling generous - keep the clock tower as it is a bit of a national symbol.
The new parliament could be built on redundant railway land at Toton, if that turns out to be the terminus for HS2.
The Treasury should be moved to somewhere between Manchester and Leeds (Saddleworth Moor?). Then HS2 might get completed to Manchester and Leeds.
If you are going to put the treasury on Saddleworth Moor at least hide it in the canal tunnel so as not to spoil the view.
“The strike became something of a proxy battle of humans vs. AI. It was a battle that most of the public was eager to see the writers win….According to one Gallup poll, the public supported them over the execs by an astonishing margin of 72% to 19%” https://twitter.com/tedgioia/status/1706555691584885055
Read that as 'Holyrood'. I was thinking things had quietened down since those exciting episodes earlier in the year involving mobile homes and police raids and the like!
I expect them to scrap the link to Manchester and instead say they’ll improve west to east links . The public have never really got behind HS2 and the Tories want some cash to spend on other projects that are more voter friendly .
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 .
Is it caused by the huge cost of compensation in this country compared to elsewhere? Maybe it's because we're more densely populated than nearly every other European country, so whereas in places like Spain and France it's relatively easy to route a new train line through mostly empty areas, it's much more difficult to do that here. I was using the Spanish high speed trains in February/March this year and I was surprised to see how utterly empty a lot of the countryside was.
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).
The Times have a very good article on it today, if you can get behind the paywall.
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.
I think we really need a dedicated national infrastructure council that is at one remove from day to day political machinations that can make these kinds of long term decisions, ideally creating a pipeline of projects so that expertise in planning and contracting is not lost from one project to the next. 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.
Make Westminster a museum absolutely!
Move Parliament and the Civil Service out of London and into a new build city.
Looking at a map, North of York, East of Hull there seems to be quite a bit of land that's neither well developed nor in an AONB. Or between Grimsby and Scunthorpe could be another good location, though that's getting close to Lincolnshire Wolds AONB.
Build a new capital city for Parliament and the Civil Service there, in the form of Washington DC or Canberra, then see how quickly infrastructure gets developed.
"Never will you find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious!"
I see a lot of whining on LBC about Labours plan to remove charitable status from private schools .
Why should the public be expected to subsidize these ?
Even if we were to accept the premise of your question (zero rating for VAT is not a subsidy), the answer would be 'because the parents are already paying for the state provision of education and deciding not to use it'.
Good answer . I never thought of it that way. But politically I expect Labour to simply say that tax papers are subsidizing those attending Elton.
One to keep and eye on: Suella making a speech about the Refugee Convention.
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.
6) Nobody needs to flee from France to come to the UK.
This is what vexes the public.
I disagree. There may be individuals who speak English and not French and being in England is safer for them for that reason. There may be people from certain countries where communities already exist in England and don't in France. And, in terms of per capita refugee figures (last figures I can find are from 2015 tbf), France takes in just over twice the number of refugees the UK does.
This neatly illustrates the wider problem. You express the issue in terms of the rights and preferences of the refugee - preferring France to Greece, and UK to France. But millions of refugees live for years in tents in the desert with the most basic of conditions. For example the 600,000 in Chad.
One, large, group is given the barest rights. The others, good at the obstacle course, have every chance of sending their children to Oxford.
From where comes the justification for this disparity?
I think that disparity is bad too. I think they should all have the opportunity to have the option to go somewhere else and better. Again, the disparity is mostly created by western countries who pay other governments to keep the refugees far away from them - like how Turkey has been paid off by the EU for years to house Syrian refugees.
Good luck with that one. If Sir K decided he wants to lose the next election he could borrow that idea.
Mr. 679, the public doesn't subsidise private schools. The parents of children at private schools subsidise the state sector.
By your rationale, why should atheists be forced to subsidise religions?
The parents of private schools do not subsidise the state - children at private schools get access to privileged education on the basis of being able to pay for it. That the tax payer doesn't have to pay for the education of those children does not matter - because it creates a two tier education system that allows rich people to opt out of the social contract that all children being educated matters. If private schools didn't exist, for example, it would create an incentive for the richest and most privileged to care about public education because it would effect their kids. It would also, hopefully, end the system of privileged patronage that governs this country - that Eton boys run everything because they always have and all know each other.
Labour's plans to tax them a bit more is a sticking plaster - end all non state schooling.
One to keep and eye on: Suella making a speech about the Refugee Convention.
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.
6) Nobody needs to flee from France to come to the UK.
This is what vexes the public.
I disagree. There may be individuals who speak English and not French and being in England is safer for them for that reason. There may be people from certain countries where communities already exist in England and don't in France. And, in terms of per capita refugee figures (last figures I can find are from 2015 tbf), France takes in just over twice the number of refugees the UK does.
I know that Parisian waiters have a reputation for being surly, but nobody faces persecution due to being unable to order a coffee.
Yes, a lot of people would rather be in the UK but France, but that isn't justification to come here.
One to keep and eye on: Suella making a speech about the Refugee Convention.
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.
6) Nobody needs to flee from France to come to the UK.
This is what vexes the public.
I disagree. There may be individuals who speak English and not French and being in England is safer for them for that reason. There may be people from certain countries where communities already exist in England and don't in France. And, in terms of per capita refugee figures (last figures I can find are from 2015 tbf), France takes in just over twice the number of refugees the UK does.
This neatly illustrates the wider problem. You express the issue in terms of the rights and preferences of the refugee - preferring France to Greece, and UK to France. But millions of refugees live for years in tents in the desert with the most basic of conditions. For example the 600,000 in Chad.
One, large, group is given the barest rights. The others, good at the obstacle course, have every chance of sending their children to Oxford.
From where comes the justification for this disparity?
I think that disparity is bad too. I think they should all have the opportunity to have the option to go somewhere else and better. Again, the disparity is mostly created by western countries who pay other governments to keep the refugees far away from them - like how Turkey has been paid off by the EU for years to house Syrian refugees.
Good luck with that one. If Sir K decided he wants to lose the next election he could borrow that idea.
I understand it isn't politically viable, but the reason it isn't politically viable is just racism - pure and simple.
And if we treated refugees more equitably it would be easier for them to settle in to their new home country, socially and economically. The border regime of the modern nation state is a relatively new historical phenomena - it is by no means something that need continue.
Mr. 679, the public doesn't subsidise private schools. The parents of children at private schools subsidise the state sector.
By your rationale, why should atheists be forced to subsidise religions?
The parents of private schools do not subsidise the state - children at private schools get access to privileged education on the basis of being able to pay for it. That the tax payer doesn't have to pay for the education of those children does not matter - because it creates a two tier education system that allows rich people to opt out of the social contract that all children being educated matters. If private schools didn't exist, for example, it would create an incentive for the richest and most privileged to care about public education because it would effect their kids. It would also, hopefully, end the system of privileged patronage that governs this country - that Eton boys run everything because they always have and all know each other.
Labour's plans to tax them a bit more is a sticking plaster - end all non state schooling.
I see a lot of whining on LBC about Labours plan to remove charitable status from private schools .
Why should the public be expected to subsidize these ?
Even if we were to accept the premise of your question (zero rating for VAT is not a subsidy), the answer would be 'because the parents are already paying for the state provision of education and deciding not to use it'.
In these conversations it quickly becomes apparent how much people with kids at private school resent paying taxes to finance state education. Then we wonder why a government composed of (and from a party financed by) people who mostly send their kids to private school won't fund state education properly.
I see a lot of whining on LBC about Labours plan to remove charitable status from private schools .
Why should the public be expected to subsidize these ?
Even if we were to accept the premise of your question (zero rating for VAT is not a subsidy), the answer would be 'because the parents are already paying for the state provision of education and deciding not to use it'.
Good answer . I never thought of it that way. But politically I expect Labour to simply say that tax papers are subsidizing those attending Elton.
First lesson at prep school: how to defend your private education......
One to keep and eye on: Suella making a speech about the Refugee Convention.
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.
6) Nobody needs to flee from France to come to the UK.
This is what vexes the public.
I disagree. There may be individuals who speak English and not French and being in England is safer for them for that reason. There may be people from certain countries where communities already exist in England and don't in France. And, in terms of per capita refugee figures (last figures I can find are from 2015 tbf), France takes in just over twice the number of refugees the UK does.
I know that Parisian waiters have a reputation for being surly, but nobody faces persecution due to being unable to order a coffee.
Yes, a lot of people would rather be in the UK but France, but that isn't justification to come here.
If you do not speak a language of a country and are a refugee, you are more exploitable and more prone to be victimised.
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.
But this can't be true. It was Keir Starmer forcing Nissan et al to ditch petrol. Sunak saved people from having to buy an electric car, it was in all the right newspapers and TV news shows. Thanks to Rishi making Long-Term Decisions for a Brighter Future, the dread threat of all EV by 2030 was removed.
Nissan must be mistaken .
Nissan don't make new cars at the £13k entry level range of the market like the Kia Picanto etc
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...
On the contrary, it's very likely indeed. 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.
And if it happens, then the market will take care of that.
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?
Nobody who is skint buys a new car anyway, surely? I'm quite well off, and I wouldn't buy a new car. I'm sure there will be second hand EVs available to suit every budget.
That's a rather ignorant attitude.
Actually yes plenty of people on a budget do buy a new car. If you have eg a £3k deposit then getting £10k in finance to make it £13k is a lot more affordable than getting a £24k deposit to get a £27k car like the MG4.
A new Kia Picanto costs less than a 3 year old used MG4. A new vehicle also comes with a full warranty etc too.
For the record my first new car I ever bought was a Kia Picanto, in 2005. It was what I could afford at the time and it was enough for my needs.
When you bought a new Kia Picanto in 2005, what was the sticker price?
Its eighteen years ago, I'm not entirely certain.
From memory it was about £7.5k sticker price but I believe I negotiated it down to £7k.
My first car I got (with my parents help) when I was 17 in 2000 was a J-reg used Seat Ibiza for £995, which got me through University, by 2005 it was falling apart though so I wanted to replace it with a new vehicle with a warranty. The Picanto was the first new car I ever bought about a year after graduating my Masters course and it was quite a nice moment for me to be able to afford my own car, new, without help - but I was on a budget, I couldn't have afforded bigger cars new and the Picanto was then like now cheaper than many used cars, but I wanted a new one and I budgeted it and could afford it.
I expect them to scrap the link to Manchester and instead say they’ll improve west to east links . The public have never really got behind HS2 and the Tories want some cash to spend on other projects that are more voter friendly .
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 .
Is it caused by the huge cost of compensation in this country compared to elsewhere? Maybe it's because we're more densely populated than nearly every other European country, so whereas in places like Spain and France it's relatively easy to route a new train line through mostly empty areas, it's much more difficult to do that here. I was using the Spanish high speed trains in February/March this year and I was surprised to see how utterly empty a lot of the countryside was.
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).
The Times have a very good article on it today, if you can get behind the paywall.
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.
I think we really need a dedicated national infrastructure council that is at one remove from day to day political machinations that can make these kinds of long term decisions, ideally creating a pipeline of projects so that expertise in planning and contracting is not lost from one project to the next. 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.
The problem with this is the universal problem of politics. Just as philosophy is the study of issues that can't be solved, politics is the art of making hard choices between contested alternatives with finite resources, infinite demand and regular elections.
This can't be delegated away from politics. Those to whom it is delegated become themselves part of the political process.
Long term infrastructure involves many of the hardest and most contested choices both in terms of general policy (nuclear or wind or tides; rail or road or 3rd runway) and raw politics (where to build 2 million houses).
I agree on the substance of this, it will of course remain a politically contested area as indeed it should, but I think there are institutional arrangements that can leave the politicians to set the direction but not meddle day to day and allow for a longer term focus to dictate these decisions. HS2 - which I think is a fundamentally sound idea - has become the poster child for how not to manage these projects. We are in danger of becoming a country where major infrastructure development becomes impossible - and that really is not a country that any of us should want to live in.
Arrangements to put matters "beyond politics" are just as dangerous as the politics.
Triple Lock, anyone?
Many of the UK voting public saw the EU as an arrangement which placed lots of things beyond UK politics, including vast amounts of legislation, transferring them to bodies which were not directly elected. I think we were a bit split as to whether this was a Good Thing or not, as we still are.
There are suggestions that the migration/refugee issue could blow open again a few of those issues for the EU.
In much of the EU, that was the point of the EU. In a number of countries, giving up control of printing money (the Euro) was about getting out of the cycle of governments printing money to buy popularity.
Or forcing out corruption - a chap I know is building a house in Montenegro and has commented on watching the growing pains of changing from a system where you greased palms to where you need to fill out the forms properly. It's sold, locally, as "We are becoming proper Europeans".
I see a lot of whining on LBC about Labours plan to remove charitable status from private schools .
Why should the public be expected to subsidize these ?
Even if we were to accept the premise of your question (zero rating for VAT is not a subsidy), the answer would be 'because the parents are already paying for the state provision of education and deciding not to use it'.
In these conversations it quickly becomes apparent how much people with kids at private school resent paying taxes to finance state education. Then we wonder why a government composed of (and from a party financed by) people who mostly send their kids to private school won't fund state education properly.
Politics of envy much? You are absolutely projecting.
I've never understood the mentality of obviously articulate people, who have evidently done well in life, carrying such a chip on their shoulder.
Mr. 679, the public doesn't subsidise private schools. The parents of children at private schools subsidise the state sector.
By your rationale, why should atheists be forced to subsidise religions?
The parents of private schools do not subsidise the state - children at private schools get access to privileged education on the basis of being able to pay for it. That the tax payer doesn't have to pay for the education of those children does not matter - because it creates a two tier education system that allows rich people to opt out of the social contract that all children being educated matters. If private schools didn't exist, for example, it would create an incentive for the richest and most privileged to care about public education because it would effect their kids. It would also, hopefully, end the system of privileged patronage that governs this country - that Eton boys run everything because they always have and all know each other.
Labour's plans to tax them a bit more is a sticking plaster - end all non state schooling.
Lol. Fifth form debating stuff.
Thanks for that robust response to the position I took, I have completely changed my mind and think that toffs obviously just deserve all the benefits they get because they obviously just worked so hard and pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
Mr. 679, the public doesn't subsidise private schools. The parents of children at private schools subsidise the state sector.
By your rationale, why should atheists be forced to subsidise religions?
The parents of private schools do not subsidise the state - children at private schools get access to privileged education on the basis of being able to pay for it. That the tax payer doesn't have to pay for the education of those children does not matter - because it creates a two tier education system that allows rich people to opt out of the social contract that all children being educated matters. If private schools didn't exist, for example, it would create an incentive for the richest and most privileged to care about public education because it would effect their kids. It would also, hopefully, end the system of privileged patronage that governs this country - that Eton boys run everything because they always have and all know each other.
Labour's plans to tax them a bit more is a sticking plaster - end all non state schooling.
Do you think that the “ system of privileged patronage that governs this country - that Eton boys run everything because they always have and all know each other.” would end if the public schools vanished? All that would happen is that the wealthy parents would all be sending their children to the schools in their very wealthy catchment area all together, those kids would continue to be in a bubble from the start of education and still all be connected just the name of the schools would change.
Those state schools would likely also find that parent fundraising drives would generate shitloads of money, especially as they don’t need to pay for fees, in order to build those area’s state schools a new gym or theatre or science lab and so they would have better facilities and still a two tier education system and the kids who couldn’t go to Eton still don’t get a look in because their parents cannot afford to buy or rent in the catchment area where all the parents who used to send the kids to public school are living and taking up the school places locally.
I see a lot of whining on LBC about Labours plan to remove charitable status from private schools .
Why should the public be expected to subsidize these ?
Even if we were to accept the premise of your question (zero rating for VAT is not a subsidy), the answer would be 'because the parents are already paying for the state provision of education and deciding not to use it'.
Good answer . I never thought of it that way. But politically I expect Labour to simply say that tax papers are subsidizing those attending Elton.
He's one of this country's greatest entertainers and I, for one, am happy to help pay for his domestic staff with my tax papers (or banknotes as some people call them).
I see a lot of whining on LBC about Labours plan to remove charitable status from private schools .
Why should the public be expected to subsidize these ?
Even if we were to accept the premise of your question (zero rating for VAT is not a subsidy), the answer would be 'because the parents are already paying for the state provision of education and deciding not to use it'.
In these conversations it quickly becomes apparent how much people with kids at private school resent paying taxes to finance state education. Then we wonder why a government composed of (and from a party financed by) people who mostly send their kids to private school won't fund state education properly.
Politics of envy much? You are absolutely projecting.
I've never understood the mentality of obviously articulate people, who have evidently done well in life still, carrying such a chip on their shoulder.
If it's the politics of envy to want to make sure that there is meritocratic and equitable education for all children - call me a member of the Green Eyed Monster Party.
Mr. 679, the public doesn't subsidise private schools. The parents of children at private schools subsidise the state sector.
By your rationale, why should atheists be forced to subsidise religions?
The parents of private schools do not subsidise the state - children at private schools get access to privileged education on the basis of being able to pay for it. That the tax payer doesn't have to pay for the education of those children does not matter - because it creates a two tier education system that allows rich people to opt out of the social contract that all children being educated matters. If private schools didn't exist, for example, it would create an incentive for the richest and most privileged to care about public education because it would effect their kids. It would also, hopefully, end the system of privileged patronage that governs this country - that Eton boys run everything because they always have and all know each other.
Labour's plans to tax them a bit more is a sticking plaster - end all non state schooling.
Lol. Fifth form debating stuff.
Thanks for that robust response to the position I took, I have completely changed my mind and think that toffs obviously just deserve all the benefits they get because they obviously just worked so hard and pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
Have you ever looked at the French government? It makes the Eton & Winchester thing look minor.
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.
But this can't be true. It was Keir Starmer forcing Nissan et al to ditch petrol. Sunak saved people from having to buy an electric car, it was in all the right newspapers and TV news shows. Thanks to Rishi making Long-Term Decisions for a Brighter Future, the dread threat of all EV by 2030 was removed.
Nissan must be mistaken .
Nissan don't make new cars at the £13k entry level range of the market like the Kia Picanto etc
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...
On the contrary, it's very likely indeed. 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.
And if it happens, then the market will take care of that.
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?
Nobody who is skint buys a new car anyway, surely? I'm quite well off, and I wouldn't buy a new car. I'm sure there will be second hand EVs available to suit every budget.
That's a rather ignorant attitude.
Actually yes plenty of people on a budget do buy a new car. If you have eg a £3k deposit then getting £10k in finance to make it £13k is a lot more affordable than getting a £24k deposit to get a £27k car like the MG4.
A new Kia Picanto costs less than a 3 year old used MG4. A new vehicle also comes with a full warranty etc too.
For the record my first new car I ever bought was a Kia Picanto, in 2005. It was what I could afford at the time and it was enough for my needs.
If you have a spare £3k to put a deposit down on a car, are you really "skint"?
The times in my life when I would say I was "skint" I didn't have any money at all. One time, I lived a week on two cakes I got from a bargain bin for 10p because that's all I had. Two cakes and tap water. That's skint.
There's absolutely shades its not all one extreme or another.
Yes you can have completely broke and can't afford anything on one extreme, and completely wealthy and don't need to ask the price just put it on the black Amex on the other extreme.
But real life is a bell curve and most people are in the middle. I prefer the phrase "on a budget" to "skint" which is what I used.
I see a lot of whining on LBC about Labours plan to remove charitable status from private schools .
Why should the public be expected to subsidize these ?
Even if we were to accept the premise of your question (zero rating for VAT is not a subsidy), the answer would be 'because the parents are already paying for the state provision of education and deciding not to use it'.
In these conversations it quickly becomes apparent how much people with kids at private school resent paying taxes to finance state education. Then we wonder why a government composed of (and from a party financed by) people who mostly send their kids to private school won't fund state education properly.
Politics of envy much? You are absolutely projecting.
I've never understood the mentality of obviously articulate people, who have evidently done well in life still, carrying such a chip on their shoulder.
If it's the politics of envy to want to make sure that there is meritocratic and equitable education for all children - call me a member of the Green Eyed Monster Party.
In that case, you should bring back grammar schools. Because I have bad news for you - the state sector isn't meritocratic of equitable at all. And wouldn't be if private schools are abolished. Because house prices.
One to keep and eye on: Suella making a speech about the Refugee Convention.
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.
6) Nobody needs to flee from France to come to the UK.
This is what vexes the public.
I disagree. There may be individuals who speak English and not French and being in England is safer for them for that reason. There may be people from certain countries where communities already exist in England and don't in France. And, in terms of per capita refugee figures (last figures I can find are from 2015 tbf), France takes in just over twice the number of refugees the UK does.
I know that Parisian waiters have a reputation for being surly, but nobody faces persecution due to being unable to order a coffee.
Yes, a lot of people would rather be in the UK but France, but that isn't justification to come here.
If you do not speak a language of a country and are a refugee, you are more exploitable and more prone to be victimised.
Mr. 679, the public doesn't subsidise private schools. The parents of children at private schools subsidise the state sector.
By your rationale, why should atheists be forced to subsidise religions?
The parents of private schools do not subsidise the state - children at private schools get access to privileged education on the basis of being able to pay for it. That the tax payer doesn't have to pay for the education of those children does not matter - because it creates a two tier education system that allows rich people to opt out of the social contract that all children being educated matters. If private schools didn't exist, for example, it would create an incentive for the richest and most privileged to care about public education because it would effect their kids. It would also, hopefully, end the system of privileged patronage that governs this country - that Eton boys run everything because they always have and all know each other.
Labour's plans to tax them a bit more is a sticking plaster - end all non state schooling.
Do you think that the “ system of privileged patronage that governs this country - that Eton boys run everything because they always have and all know each other.” would end if the public schools vanished? All that would happen is that the wealthy parents would all be sending their children to the schools in their very wealthy catchment area all together, those kids would continue to be in a bubble from the start of education and still all be connected just the name of the schools would change.
Those state schools would likely also find that parent fundraising drives would generate shitloads of money, especially as they don’t need to pay for fees, in order to build those area’s state schools a new gym or theatre or science lab and so they would have better facilities and still a two tier education system and the kids who couldn’t go to Eton still don’t get a look in because their parents cannot afford to buy or rent in the catchment area where all the parents who used to send the kids to public school are living and taking up the school places locally.
Is this only about abolishing private schools? No. But it should be a start.
I don't think state schools should be allowed to do private fundraising. If they need things and can justify it to the state, the state should provide. The wealth of the parents or local whoever should not be able to be a factor in the quality of education children get.
Mr. 679, the public doesn't subsidise private schools. The parents of children at private schools subsidise the state sector.
By your rationale, why should atheists be forced to subsidise religions?
The parents of private schools do not subsidise the state - children at private schools get access to privileged education on the basis of being able to pay for it. That the tax payer doesn't have to pay for the education of those children does not matter - because it creates a two tier education system that allows rich people to opt out of the social contract that all children being educated matters. If private schools didn't exist, for example, it would create an incentive for the richest and most privileged to care about public education because it would effect their kids. It would also, hopefully, end the system of privileged patronage that governs this country - that Eton boys run everything because they always have and all know each other.
Labour's plans to tax them a bit more is a sticking plaster - end all non state schooling.
Do you think that the “ system of privileged patronage that governs this country - that Eton boys run everything because they always have and all know each other.” would end if the public schools vanished? All that would happen is that the wealthy parents would all be sending their children to the schools in their very wealthy catchment area all together, those kids would continue to be in a bubble from the start of education and still all be connected just the name of the schools would change.
Those state schools would likely also find that parent fundraising drives would generate shitloads of money, especially as they don’t need to pay for fees, in order to build those area’s state schools a new gym or theatre or science lab and so they would have better facilities and still a two tier education system and the kids who couldn’t go to Eton still don’t get a look in because their parents cannot afford to buy or rent in the catchment area where all the parents who used to send the kids to public school are living and taking up the school places locally.
Is this only about abolishing private schools? No. But it should be a start.
I don't think state schools should be allowed to do private fundraising. If they need things and can justify it to the state, the state should provide. The wealth of the parents or local whoever should not be able to be a factor in the quality of education children get.
Fifth form was overstating it. Third form at best.
I see a lot of whining on LBC about Labours plan to remove charitable status from private schools .
Why should the public be expected to subsidize these ?
Even if we were to accept the premise of your question (zero rating for VAT is not a subsidy), the answer would be 'because the parents are already paying for the state provision of education and deciding not to use it'.
In these conversations it quickly becomes apparent how much people with kids at private school resent paying taxes to finance state education. Then we wonder why a government composed of (and from a party financed by) people who mostly send their kids to private school won't fund state education properly.
Politics of envy much? You are absolutely projecting.
I've never understood the mentality of obviously articulate people, who have evidently done well in life still, carrying such a chip on their shoulder.
If it's the politics of envy to want to make sure that there is meritocratic and equitable education for all children - call me a member of the Green Eyed Monster Party.
In that case, you should bring back grammar schools. Because I have bad news for you - the state sector isn't meritocratic of equitable at all. And wouldn't be if private schools are abolished. Because house prices.
Grammar schools are also bad - literally areas that still have the 11 plus show bigger disparities in educational outcomes. Why? Because people who are wealthy can pay for their kids to have tutoring to pass the 11 plus, and therefore funnel investment into grammar schools whilst ignoring state schools. State school education is bad partly because that is the system we have with private schools as well.
I started this on previous thread and think it needs some discussion.
The current odds for the 4 favourite teams (SA, IRE, FRA, NZ) are all 3-1 to 4-1. Probably a fair reflection with no value to be seen. England are then at 10/1, with Wales 22/1. England looks about right but not in comparison to Wales - not because of any perception in strength - but because of the run in of both teams. England have not qualified yet and still need to beat Samoa to do so (not a foregone conclusion). England will then probably play Fiji (who beat them recently) while Wales probably play Argentina (who have not impressed). After that Wales and England have a similar route through SF & F. My point is that the odds are overpriced for England in comparison to Wales - there is definitely value in the Welsh odds - not in England.
Mr. 679, the public doesn't subsidise private schools. The parents of children at private schools subsidise the state sector.
By your rationale, why should atheists be forced to subsidise religions?
The parents of private schools do not subsidise the state - children at private schools get access to privileged education on the basis of being able to pay for it. That the tax payer doesn't have to pay for the education of those children does not matter - because it creates a two tier education system that allows rich people to opt out of the social contract that all children being educated matters. If private schools didn't exist, for example, it would create an incentive for the richest and most privileged to care about public education because it would effect their kids. It would also, hopefully, end the system of privileged patronage that governs this country - that Eton boys run everything because they always have and all know each other.
Labour's plans to tax them a bit more is a sticking plaster - end all non state schooling.
If private education didn't exist it would just mean that wealthy individuals would (even more than already happens) buy homes in catchment areas of good schools, then get their kids educated by the state in those schools.
The idea that they'll suddenly end up rubbing shoulders with the hoi polloi either way isn't going to happen. Already today good schools inflate the value of houses in their catchment area.
I see a lot of whining on LBC about Labours plan to remove charitable status from private schools .
Why should the public be expected to subsidize these ?
Even if we were to accept the premise of your question (zero rating for VAT is not a subsidy), the answer would be 'because the parents are already paying for the state provision of education and deciding not to use it'.
In these conversations it quickly becomes apparent how much people with kids at private school resent paying taxes to finance state education. Then we wonder why a government composed of (and from a party financed by) people who mostly send their kids to private school won't fund state education properly.
Politics of envy much? You are absolutely projecting.
I've never understood the mentality of obviously articulate people, who have evidently done well in life still, carrying such a chip on their shoulder.
If it's the politics of envy to want to make sure that there is meritocratic and equitable education for all children - call me a member of the Green Eyed Monster Party.
In that case, you should bring back grammar schools. Because I have bad news for you - the state sector isn't meritocratic of equitable at all. And wouldn't be if private schools are abolished. Because house prices.
Grammar schools are also bad - literally areas that still have the 11 plus show bigger disparities in educational outcomes. Why? Because people who are wealthy can pay for their kids to have tutoring to pass the 11 plus, and therefore funnel investment into grammar schools whilst ignoring state schools. State school education is bad partly because that is the system we have with private schools as well.
Do you also want to abolish house prices?
Frankly, your idealistic positions sound like those of the 14 year olds I used to debate at school.
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https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1706433356186161479.html
Around 7:26pm I received an email that my train had been cancelled.
This was a surprise because:
a) I was still on a moving train
b) there had been no announcement on the moving train
If they must have parliament in London I hear Old Oak Common is going to be well-connected.
This can't be delegated away from politics. Those to whom it is delegated become themselves part of the political process.
Long term infrastructure involves many of the hardest and most contested choices both in terms of general policy (nuclear or wind or tides; rail or road or 3rd runway) and raw politics (where to build 2 million houses).
What we should be doing is forging international backing for change. A consensus of like-minded countries proposing ideas to reduce the push of refugees away from problem countries as well as a way to better manage the pull so that refugees don't concentrate in places like Poland and Greece and instead get fairly shared out to laggards like the UK.
Instead we think that shouting and hollow threats will do the job.
Apparently the British military have a bunch of rules reasonably designed to prevent the kids from blowing themselves up on training exercises where you have to complete preliminary stages like the basic "not blowing yourself up with live grenades" course or whatever before you're allowed to train with live grenades. Unfortunately the Ukrainian training plan is truncated to only 3 months, so they have to learn how to storm trenches without having time to do the earlier parts. The result is that their exercises are very safe and don't involve dangerous things like live grenades, which makes them less useful that they could be.
https://warontherocks.com/episode/therussiacontingency/29535/fires-and-observation-a-conversation-with-jack-watling-part-2/?view=file&token=qn452db9v1jle3kv44n8w6o7gprnqmkd
The lunar night *is* brutal on machines. Which is why radioisotope thermoelectric generators were so liked in the early missions in the 60s.
But where is the Transport Secretary? There's not been a peep from him since he last attacked ULEZ, 13 days ago. Has he been sidelined? Gone on strike? Fallen down the back of the sofa?
On my recent holiday I was much struck by the number of small museums in Busan which dealt with various aspects of Japanese invasion and colonialism.
This is the Chungnyeolsa shrine which commemorate the invasion of ... 1592.
There's still a rite of remembrance there every May.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chungnyeolsa_(Busan)
So what's the alternative? You talk about the "quality of governance in countries being fled from", but who benefits from corrupt dictators or impoverished nations with lots of natural resources? The West. Who sanctions or invades any country that tries to nationalise their own natural resources for the benefit of their own people? The West. We have no leg to stand on and say "we don't want these people here, they should sort themselves out" when we are the cause of their instability. And that will only get worse with climate change.
There are only two real solutions - all countries sign up to take a percentage of global refugees, pay into a pot and it gets organised internationally (lol, not gonna happen). Or the attitude of "let them die" will come back.
We also have to remember why the Convention was written in the first place. "Never Forget" is about more than just gas chambers - it's about the countries that turned away fleeing Jewish refugees and consigned them to a different death. It's about remembering the humanity in all peoples, and not just our own volk. Why do I have more right to live on this bit of land land than any other human being, just by an accident of birth?
Do other countries do it cheaper?
Apparently so. France’s latest 203-mile (327km) stretch of high-speed track to be constructed from Bordeaux across the country’s south – just under double the length of London-Birmingham – is expected to come in at €14bn (£12.1bn). A UK government-commissioned study from 2018 found high-speed rail internationally was generally achieved for about £32m a kilometre, on a range of £11m-£79m a kilometre. Phase one of HS2 looks like coming in at about £250m/km.
And Suella is not the person to make it.
There's just saying the message is stupid and dishonest.
So what's the problem?
If Tata are eight grand cheaper than the cheapest EV they should be allowed to sell their product here.
If EV are the cheapest, then there's no rational reason to buy an ICE and nobody will.
I'd love to see only ICE cars being on the road, and if the technology is there then great, if its not then it will be just a few years later, but either way its technology and scale that matters more than laws and edicts so what's your problem?
I'll be more interested in listening to what those who do have £13k vehicles have to say. So Kia, Dacia etc
A number ideas to deal with the Hammersmith Bridge problem have been stalled by a small number of residents who live close to the end of the bridge and their concern. I suggested exactly this solution to a local councillor - just knock on their doors with a cheque for twice what the houses are worth. His reaction was horror at the idea of "bribery".
Make every single application for UK residency and citizenship an asylum claim.
World beating at the stroke of a pen....
Actually yes plenty of people on a budget do buy a new car. If you have eg a £3k deposit then getting £10k in finance to make it £13k is a lot more affordable than getting a £24k deposit to get a £27k car like the MG4.
A new Kia Picanto costs less than a 3 year old used MG4. A new vehicle also comes with a full warranty etc too.
For the record my first new car I ever bought was a Kia Picanto, in 2005. It was what I could afford at the time and it was enough for my needs.
I'm feeling generous - keep the clock tower as it is a bit of a national symbol.
The new parliament could be built on redundant railway land at Toton, if that turns out to be the terminus for HS2.
I don't understand why we didn't just get the French (or the Chinese) to build it. Or at least not been so terrified of the Cotswolds Nimbys that we put half of it in unnecessary tunnels.
“The strike became something of a proxy battle of humans vs. AI. It was a battle that most of the public was eager to see the writers win….According to one Gallup poll, the public supported them over the execs by an astonishing margin of 72% to 19%”
https://twitter.com/tedgioia/status/1706555691584885055
Triple Lock, anyone?
LATEST: NASA finally acknowledges the successful private lunar orbital project pioneered by Scottish band the Waterboys in 1985, that enabled them to see the whole of the moon.
At the Tesco's petrol station this morning all 24 pumps were in use and there were 20 cars waiting. I really don't think prople realise the number of EV charging points that will be required or the upgrades required to the electrical wiring infrastructure.
This is what vexes the public.
It is not the Heath and Safety etc. At Work Act 1974 that is the problem, it is the ambulance chasing lawyers. All these silly signs are the insurer's demand to mitigate litigation.
I once did some work for a car breakers in Caerphilly. The guy who owned ithe yard had been sued by a woman who entered site and fell over in a pothole. There were no site rules, hazard or prohibition signs and the place was essentially an H&S free zone. The plaintiff won about £5k and the guy's bill was circa £25k. The trouble was this guy had no liability insurance so he had to remortgage his home to pay the legal bills. He said if the woman has asked him first, he'd have gladly given her the 5 grand.
"Hello Mr Home Owner. Would you like to retire, immediately, to an identical house to the one you live in, a couple of streets over, and live on an annuity that is better than the pension a very senior consultant gets, for the rest of your life?"
Move Parliament and the Civil Service out of London and into a new build city.
Looking at a map, North of York, East of Hull there seems to be quite a bit of land that's neither well developed nor in an AONB. Or between Grimsby and Scunthorpe could be another good location, though that's getting close to Lincolnshire Wolds AONB.
Build a new capital city for Parliament and the Civil Service there, in the form of Washington DC or Canberra, then see how quickly infrastructure gets developed.
If the lawyers lose, they just raise their fees in general to compensate.
The Cons are signalling to people that they aren't going in for "all this green nonsense" which is virtue signalling and costing hard working families a fortune.
They are appealing to those drivers who drag the Just Stop Oil protesters by the hair out of the way of the traffic.
One, large, group is given the barest rights. The others, good at the obstacle course, have every chance of sending their children to Oxford.
From where comes the justification for this disparity?
Why should the public be expected to subsidize these ?
I'd tend to pop if somewhere Leeds/Bradford or further north to Darlington/Northallerton area to be more central for a UK parliament (Shetland can bugger off and join Norway if they don't consider that central-enough
People didn’t want it built on a park that about 5 people a day use and is about 100 metres from a bloody huge beach and 10 metres from another park. People didn’t want it on reclaimed waterfront land, people didn’t want a road widened near their houses for another huge site that was a former out patients centre. Now they have gone back to split site on original site and a secondary site.
A French company, who exist solely to build hospitals in France, were invited over by non gov people and after doing their study, based on their previous builds for similar needs and population and factoring in higher costs said they could do it for £91m. It was dismissed by the gov.
My condolences, Mr. Isam.
Mr. 679, the public doesn't subsidise private schools. The parents of children at private schools subsidise the state sector.
By your rationale, why should atheists be forced to subsidise religions?
Starmer isn't going to start the first Labour government in a long while with an assault on the Welfare State. Which is what removing the Triple Lock will be seen as, in the Labour party.
The only plausible route is, I think, gradually merging NI into income tax and equalising taxes for pensioners.
There are suggestions that the migration/refugee issue could blow open again a few of those issues for the EU.
Sealing up both ends is optional.
"Never will you find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious!"
Labour's plans to tax them a bit more is a sticking plaster - end all non state schooling.
Yes, a lot of people would rather be in the UK but France, but that isn't justification to come here.
And if we treated refugees more equitably it would be easier for them to settle in to their new home country, socially and economically. The border regime of the modern nation state is a relatively new historical phenomena - it is by no means something that need continue.
From memory it was about £7.5k sticker price but I believe I negotiated it down to £7k.
My first car I got (with my parents help) when I was 17 in 2000 was a J-reg used Seat Ibiza for £995, which got me through University, by 2005 it was falling apart though so I wanted to replace it with a new vehicle with a warranty. The Picanto was the first new car I ever bought about a year after graduating my Masters course and it was quite a nice moment for me to be able to afford my own car, new, without help - but I was on a budget, I couldn't have afforded bigger cars new and the Picanto was then like now cheaper than many used cars, but I wanted a new one and I budgeted it and could afford it.
Or forcing out corruption - a chap I know is building a house in Montenegro and has commented on watching the growing pains of changing from a system where you greased palms to where you need to fill out the forms properly. It's sold, locally, as "We are becoming proper Europeans".
The EU as a Temperance Pledge, in a way.
I've never understood the mentality of obviously articulate people, who have evidently done well in life, carrying such a chip on their shoulder.
Those state schools would likely also find that parent fundraising drives would generate shitloads of money, especially as they don’t need to pay for fees, in order to build those area’s state schools a new gym or theatre or science lab and so they would have better facilities and still a two tier education system and the kids who couldn’t go to Eton still don’t get a look in because their parents cannot afford to buy or rent in the catchment area where all the parents who used to send the kids to public school are living and taking up the school places locally.
Yes you can have completely broke and can't afford anything on one extreme, and completely wealthy and don't need to ask the price just put it on the black Amex on the other extreme.
But real life is a bell curve and most people are in the middle. I prefer the phrase "on a budget" to "skint" which is what I used.
I don't think state schools should be allowed to do private fundraising. If they need things and can justify it to the state, the state should provide. The wealth of the parents or local whoever should not be able to be a factor in the quality of education children get.
I started this on previous thread and think it needs some discussion.
The current odds for the 4 favourite teams (SA, IRE, FRA, NZ) are all 3-1 to 4-1. Probably a fair reflection with no value to be seen.
England are then at 10/1, with Wales 22/1. England looks about right but not in comparison to Wales - not because of any perception in strength - but because of the run in of both teams. England have not qualified yet and still need to beat Samoa to do so (not a foregone conclusion). England will then probably play Fiji (who beat them recently) while Wales probably play Argentina (who have not impressed). After that Wales and England have a similar route through SF & F.
My point is that the odds are overpriced for England in comparison to Wales - there is definitely value in the Welsh odds - not in England.
The idea that they'll suddenly end up rubbing shoulders with the hoi polloi either way isn't going to happen. Already today good schools inflate the value of houses in their catchment area.
Frankly, your idealistic positions sound like those of the 14 year olds I used to debate at school.