It just occurred to me. Through all the CPC weirdness, one strange lacuna. Nobody is banging on about Brexit. Almost completely absent from their discourse.
It’s an over-engineered version of a standard Dutch roundabout. They do work really well. But this one (and the same design in Manchester) do look a bit like someone gave a Dutch blueprint to a bunch of HS2 engineers and said “here, build one of these”.
LOL! 😂
It probably can be done better, considering its an early adoption in the UK of what the Dutch have been doing for years no doubt it will evolve over time and future ones might be better.
But functionally? Its a good idea and works well.
The Dutch have nailed this for years. Build more roads, design well for active travel, everyone wins.
Its great to see parts of the UK adopting the Dutch approach. Hopefully more do over time. Evolving the aesthetics to look better is a secondary priority over functionality.
Yes, let’s all prioritise “functionality”. Eventually that way the whole of Britain can become a motorway and no one need ever get stuck in traffic because NO ONE WILL EVER WANT TO LIVE IN UGLY DEPRESSING BRITAIN
This is, by the way, exactly what happened to thousands of American downtowns. They prioritised the functionality of driving and parking. By destroying millions of lovely old buildings to make way for car lots and wide roads
Now no one wants to drive to the downtowns because they are hideous dystopias full of homeless people and empty car lots. = zero traffic. Problem solved
That's funny because towns like Warrington and cities like Preston that are facilitating both driving and active travel, along with getting new builds, are rapidly growing in population not shrinking.
Oh and home ownership rates are far higher than in miserably depressing London where most people have to work to pay rent with no hope of a home of their own.
And the roads are free flowing. As are the cycle paths. With plenty of trees also along the routes too, even if not shown at the junctions.
You have a very different idea of depressing to me. I find 21 people being forced into one two bedroom flat as they have nowhere else to live far more depressing: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-66941965
I'm sorry but no one wants to live in Warrington. That's why it's affordable, and why BTL landlords haven't come sniffing.
Most of the UK lives in towns like Warrington. Only there's hundreds of Warringtons dotted around the country each with a different name.
Its only a tiny minority that lives in cities (and even in cities most still drive).
Its an even smaller minority that lives in London, the only city where most have been forced off the road due to chronic overcrowding.
38% of the UK population lives in a city (defined as a populous urban area with a population over 500k people). Not a majority, but not tiny either. (Source: http://www.demographia.com/db-worldua.pdf )
We should neither ignore cities (which are, after all, the economic engines of the UK) nor ignore the majority of people who live in towns & the wider countryside.
That data is only that high by merging neighbouring towns into built up urban areas. Here is the real data:
Cities excluding London make up 6.9 million people in England and Wales.
The majority of England and Wales live in towns.
You can’t exclude the population of London from “people who live in cities in England & Wales”. Come on.
Fair but even including London you only get to 17m people (correction exc London is 8m, I copied off wrong column).
Whereas 32.9 million live in towns.
Towns dramatically exceed cities in England, nearly 2:1, not that you'd know it from our city based correspondents and media.
For planning purposes, those areas that are contiguously built up with no rural / agricultural land around a city are really part of the city though. Hence my point that, according to a measure of those areas 38% of the UK population live in them.
You might (reasonably) argue that these hinterlands have differing needs to the city cores & I wouldn’t argue with that, but I would argue that they are not going to be the same as rural towns, so lumping them in with the rural town population & calling them “non city” residents seems wrong to me.
I never said rural towns though, rural was not part of the equation.
Most towns absolutely are urban/suburban and are neither rural nor city.
In the North West Liverpool/Manchester conurbation for instance I believe far more people live in towns like Wigan, Widnes, Warrington, Runcorn, Leigh, Stockport, Northwich, Altrincham etc, etc, etc than either Liverpool or Manchester.
That certainly used to be the case in the South Yorkshire conurbation vs Sheffield until some fool made Doncaster a city.
My home town (sort of; I’m from a village outside). Donny is not a city in anything other than a technical vanity sense. In some ways it’s the ur-English Town.
I'm from round there too. Maybe they were hoping making it a city would be viewed as Levelling Up.
I expect the council will award themselves pay rises now they are a 'city' council but I'm not expecting many other changes.
It’s an over-engineered version of a standard Dutch roundabout. They do work really well. But this one (and the same design in Manchester) do look a bit like someone gave a Dutch blueprint to a bunch of HS2 engineers and said “here, build one of these”.
LOL! 😂
It probably can be done better, considering its an early adoption in the UK of what the Dutch have been doing for years no doubt it will evolve over time and future ones might be better.
But functionally? Its a good idea and works well.
The Dutch have nailed this for years. Build more roads, design well for active travel, everyone wins.
Its great to see parts of the UK adopting the Dutch approach. Hopefully more do over time. Evolving the aesthetics to look better is a secondary priority over functionality.
Yes, let’s all prioritise “functionality”. Eventually that way the whole of Britain can become a motorway and no one need ever get stuck in traffic because NO ONE WILL EVER WANT TO LIVE IN UGLY DEPRESSING BRITAIN
This is, by the way, exactly what happened to thousands of American downtowns. They prioritised the functionality of driving and parking. By destroying millions of lovely old buildings to make way for car lots and wide roads
Now no one wants to drive to the downtowns because they are hideous dystopias full of homeless people and empty car lots. = zero traffic. Problem solved
That's funny because towns like Warrington and cities like Preston that are facilitating both driving and active travel, along with getting new builds, are rapidly growing in population not shrinking.
Oh and home ownership rates are far higher than in miserably depressing London where most people have to work to pay rent with no hope of a home of their own.
And the roads are free flowing. As are the cycle paths. With plenty of trees also along the routes too, even if not shown at the junctions.
You have a very different idea of depressing to me. I find 21 people being forced into one two bedroom flat as they have nowhere else to live far more depressing: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-66941965
I'm sorry but no one wants to live in Warrington. That's why it's affordable, and why BTL landlords haven't come sniffing.
Most of the UK lives in towns like Warrington. Only there's hundreds of Warringtons dotted around the country each with a different name.
Its only a tiny minority that lives in cities (and even in cities most still drive).
Its an even smaller minority that lives in London, the only city where most have been forced off the road due to chronic overcrowding.
38% of the UK population lives in a city (defined as a populous urban area with a population over 500k people). Not a majority, but not tiny either. (Source: http://www.demographia.com/db-worldua.pdf )
We should neither ignore cities (which are, after all, the economic engines of the UK) nor ignore the majority of people who live in towns & the wider countryside.
That data is only that high by merging neighbouring towns into built up urban areas. Here is the real data:
Cities excluding London make up 6.9 million people in England and Wales.
The majority of England and Wales live in towns.
You can’t exclude the population of London from “people who live in cities in England & Wales”. Come on.
Fair but even including London you only get to 17m people (correction exc London is 8m, I copied off wrong column).
Whereas 32.9 million live in towns.
Towns dramatically exceed cities in England, nearly 2:1, not that you'd know it from our city based correspondents and media.
For planning purposes, those areas that are contiguously built up with no rural / agricultural land around a city are really part of the city though. Hence my point that, according to a measure of those areas 38% of the UK population live in them.
You might (reasonably) argue that these hinterlands have differing needs to the city cores & I wouldn’t argue with that, but I would argue that they are not going to be the same as rural towns, so lumping them in with the rural town population & calling them “non city” residents seems wrong to me.
I never said rural towns though, rural was not part of the equation.
Most towns absolutely are urban/suburban and are neither rural nor city.
In the North West Liverpool/Manchester conurbation for instance I believe far more people live in towns like Wigan, Widnes, Warrington, Runcorn, Leigh, Stockport, Northwich, Altrincham etc, etc, etc than either Liverpool or Manchester.
Why do you differentiate say Altrincham from Manchester ?
It's part of the same urban lump, there is no rural gap.
Metrolink takes you from Alty to St Peters Sq in 25mins, every 6mins.
Historically yes Alty was very much a separate town and no doubt many still 'feel' it is in Cheshire and not an urban area.
Yet the government measures of Primary Urban Area and Travel to Work Areas both include Alty in the Manchester urban area as they are economically and socially one urban area.
Because Altrincham simply isn't in the city of Manchester.
Its very much a town. Yes the Metrolink goes there, but Metrolink does not a city make, people going from Altrincham into Manchester are commuting into the city, not from one.
Altrincham very much has a town feeling and town statistics same as the other towns I named. 76% of Altrincham own their own home, versus barely over 50% in Manchester. Altrincham is predominantly houses not flats. Etc, etc
Most of the people who live in Manchester's urban area live in a town, not the City. That's kind of the point!
Eh ???
The vast majority of people who live in the local authority called Manchester live in houses, not flats, they are just poorer so fewer own them.
The ONS have gone to the effort of telling you 2.5m people live in the Greater Manchester urban area, that urban area includes Alty, Stockport, Sale etc. But not Wigan.
You can walk from Alty (Trafford) to Middleton (Rochdale) without leaving urban areas, that is what makes it all feel like a city.
You seem a little to focused on local authorities, come to Manchester, you will see that they are meaningless.
Yes they have and they've also gone to the effect of breaking that urban area into towns and cities. The ONS agrees with me, Altrincham is a town, in Manchester's urban area. It is not part of the City of Manchester.
you agree the English definition of a city is based on a local authority which is utterly meaningless when talking about urban planning I assume ?
Yes multiple cities in England, such as Doncaster or Preston, really ought to be classed as large towns.
I don't know of any towns in England that should be classed as cities.
You miss the point.
No one would ever think of a local authority boundary as relevant to any sort of urban planning would they ?
Even you can spot that I assume ?
Yes I do. And the towns I'm naming have all the qualities of a town, not those of a city. Which is why it's all houses with cars and people drive overwhelmingly etc unless they're using the Metrolink to commute into the city.
Stretford I would class as part of Manchester much, much more than Altrincham and not just as it's the right side of the M60.
You have quite literally no idea about Manchester.
I live in Sale, between Stretford and Alty and consider myself far more aware of the local area than someone who comes across as disconnected from any sort of understanding of how economies and urban areas actually operate.
I absolutely do, I'm from the North West myself and worked across Greater Manchester, Cheshire, Merseyside and Lancashire.
Except you're not listening to what I'm saying. I have literally repeatedly said that these towns are connected to Manchester (and Liverpool FWIW). I've never said otherwise though.
They're still towns though.
What does a town mean to you? You seem to be stuck on the concept of rural, but towns overwhelmingly are urban not rural.
Utterly pathetic . The boy who ran over that poor lady was allowed to plead guilty to death by dangerous driving instead of being charged with murder . He ran over this poor woman and then did so again when she was trapped under her car. And then watching the news the judges and KC apparently removed their gowns and wigs to make him feel more comfortable. Pathetic .
Jeez why didn’t they just sing him kumbaya and hand out some chocolates to make him feel even better ! I’m sure his parents are so proud , what a wonderful child they produced !
If he is being correctly quoted as having said 'looks like I've got my first kill' at the time (one never knows with the police) then I have no idea why this wasn't tried as murder.
Too much GTA?
A really shocking case.
Didn’t he also say something afterwards about how sorry he was.
Utterly pathetic . The boy who ran over that poor lady was allowed to plead guilty to death by dangerous driving instead of being charged with murder . He ran over this poor woman and then did so again when she was trapped under her car. And then watching the news the judges and KC apparently removed their gowns and wigs to make him feel more comfortable. Pathetic .
Jeez why didn’t they just sing him kumbaya and hand out some chocolates to make him feel even better ! I’m sure his parents are so proud , what a wonderful child they produced !
If he is being correctly quoted as having said 'looks like I've got my first kill' at the time (one never knows with the police) then I have no idea why this wasn't tried as murder.
Too much GTA?
A really shocking case.
I don’t want to sound like Bravermans love child but the little runt deserves a good beating before being jailed and the key thrown away. The manner of the case is horrific , the suffering inflicted on that poor woman was horrific before she died .
Utterly pathetic . The boy who ran over that poor lady was allowed to plead guilty to death by dangerous driving instead of being charged with murder . He ran over this poor woman and then did so again when she was trapped under her car. And then watching the news the judges and KC apparently removed their gowns and wigs to make him feel more comfortable. Pathetic .
Jeez why didn’t they just sing him kumbaya and hand out some chocolates to make him feel even better ! I’m sure his parents are so proud , what a wonderful child they produced !
Removing wigs and gowns is SOP with child cases if it seems necessary to conduct the trial, as I understand it. It's not specific to this case at all. And it also removes one possbile ground of appeal.
Well, actually, I try to keep my head down and hope that my wife does it.
Meanwhile, it looks like Braverman has upset all of the people she intended to upset.
I was going to attack Braverman's absurd line about well heeled liberals getting immigrants to mow their lawn but then I remembered the last two people to mow our lawn were my father in law (born Sri Lanka) and my son (born USA) and I suddenly realised - my God, she might be onto something here.
It’s an over-engineered version of a standard Dutch roundabout. They do work really well. But this one (and the same design in Manchester) do look a bit like someone gave a Dutch blueprint to a bunch of HS2 engineers and said “here, build one of these”.
LOL! 😂
It probably can be done better, considering its an early adoption in the UK of what the Dutch have been doing for years no doubt it will evolve over time and future ones might be better.
But functionally? Its a good idea and works well.
The Dutch have nailed this for years. Build more roads, design well for active travel, everyone wins.
Its great to see parts of the UK adopting the Dutch approach. Hopefully more do over time. Evolving the aesthetics to look better is a secondary priority over functionality.
Yes, let’s all prioritise “functionality”. Eventually that way the whole of Britain can become a motorway and no one need ever get stuck in traffic because NO ONE WILL EVER WANT TO LIVE IN UGLY DEPRESSING BRITAIN
This is, by the way, exactly what happened to thousands of American downtowns. They prioritised the functionality of driving and parking. By destroying millions of lovely old buildings to make way for car lots and wide roads
Now no one wants to drive to the downtowns because they are hideous dystopias full of homeless people and empty car lots. = zero traffic. Problem solved
That's funny because towns like Warrington and cities like Preston that are facilitating both driving and active travel, along with getting new builds, are rapidly growing in population not shrinking.
Oh and home ownership rates are far higher than in miserably depressing London where most people have to work to pay rent with no hope of a home of their own.
And the roads are free flowing. As are the cycle paths. With plenty of trees also along the routes too, even if not shown at the junctions.
You have a very different idea of depressing to me. I find 21 people being forced into one two bedroom flat as they have nowhere else to live far more depressing: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-66941965
I'm sorry but no one wants to live in Warrington. That's why it's affordable, and why BTL landlords haven't come sniffing.
Most of the UK lives in towns like Warrington. Only there's hundreds of Warringtons dotted around the country each with a different name.
Its only a tiny minority that lives in cities (and even in cities most still drive).
Its an even smaller minority that lives in London, the only city where most have been forced off the road due to chronic overcrowding.
38% of the UK population lives in a city (defined as a populous urban area with a population over 500k people). Not a majority, but not tiny either. (Source: http://www.demographia.com/db-worldua.pdf )
We should neither ignore cities (which are, after all, the economic engines of the UK) nor ignore the majority of people who live in towns & the wider countryside.
That data is only that high by merging neighbouring towns into built up urban areas. Here is the real data:
Cities excluding London make up 6.9 million people in England and Wales.
The majority of England and Wales live in towns.
You can’t exclude the population of London from “people who live in cities in England & Wales”. Come on.
Fair but even including London you only get to 17m people (correction exc London is 8m, I copied off wrong column).
Whereas 32.9 million live in towns.
Towns dramatically exceed cities in England, nearly 2:1, not that you'd know it from our city based correspondents and media.
For planning purposes, those areas that are contiguously built up with no rural / agricultural land around a city are really part of the city though. Hence my point that, according to a measure of those areas 38% of the UK population live in them.
You might (reasonably) argue that these hinterlands have differing needs to the city cores & I wouldn’t argue with that, but I would argue that they are not going to be the same as rural towns, so lumping them in with the rural town population & calling them “non city” residents seems wrong to me.
I never said rural towns though, rural was not part of the equation.
Most towns absolutely are urban/suburban and are neither rural nor city.
In the North West Liverpool/Manchester conurbation for instance I believe far more people live in towns like Wigan, Widnes, Warrington, Runcorn, Leigh, Stockport, Northwich, Altrincham etc, etc, etc than either Liverpool or Manchester.
Why do you differentiate say Altrincham from Manchester ?
It's part of the same urban lump, there is no rural gap.
Metrolink takes you from Alty to St Peters Sq in 25mins, every 6mins.
Historically yes Alty was very much a separate town and no doubt many still 'feel' it is in Cheshire and not an urban area.
Yet the government measures of Primary Urban Area and Travel to Work Areas both include Alty in the Manchester urban area as they are economically and socially one urban area.
Because Altrincham simply isn't in the city of Manchester.
Its very much a town. Yes the Metrolink goes there, but Metrolink does not a city make, people going from Altrincham into Manchester are commuting into the city, not from one.
Altrincham very much has a town feeling and town statistics same as the other towns I named. 76% of Altrincham own their own home, versus barely over 50% in Manchester. Altrincham is predominantly houses not flats. Etc, etc
Most of the people who live in Manchester's urban area live in a town, not the City. That's kind of the point!
Eh ???
The vast majority of people who live in the local authority called Manchester live in houses, not flats, they are just poorer so fewer own them.
The ONS have gone to the effort of telling you 2.5m people live in the Greater Manchester urban area, that urban area includes Alty, Stockport, Sale etc. But not Wigan.
You can walk from Alty (Trafford) to Middleton (Rochdale) without leaving urban areas, that is what makes it all feel like a city.
You seem a little to focused on local authorities, come to Manchester, you will see that they are meaningless.
Yes they have and they've also gone to the effect of breaking that urban area into towns and cities. The ONS agrees with me, Altrincham is a town, in Manchester's urban area. It is not part of the City of Manchester.
You seem a little too focused on Rural. You can walk from Liverpool to Manchester without leaving urban areas. Does that mean that Manchester is in the City of Liverpool?
Is Wigan part of the City of Manchester in your eyes? Leigh? Warrington?
Salford?
It's almost like we need an impartial, independent, data expert team to work this out for us....
NYT - Live blog US House vote(s) on removing Kevin McCarthy as Speaker (newest first):
> Representative Kelly Armstrong, Republican of North Dakota, said as he was entering the chamber that if Speaker Kevin McCarthy is ousted, Armstrong believes more than 200 Republican members will fight for him to be reinstated. “Anybody else said they want the job?," he asked. "Why the hell would they?”
> A group of hard-right Republican rebels is seated together: Tim Burchett, Eli Crane, Matt Gaetz and Ken Buck. All of them except Buck have stated definitely that they will vote for a motion to vacate. Buck has been noncommittal.
>A group of teenage Senate pages has filed into the House gallery to watch what could potentially be a momentous day. The House page program was discontinued years ago after a series of scandals.
> Quite a day to be a tourist visiting the Capitol. The visitors galleries are packed.
Utterly pathetic . The boy who ran over that poor lady was allowed to plead guilty to death by dangerous driving instead of being charged with murder . He ran over this poor woman and then did so again when she was trapped under her car. And then watching the news the judges and KC apparently removed their gowns and wigs to make him feel more comfortable. Pathetic .
Jeez why didn’t they just sing him kumbaya and hand out some chocolates to make him feel even better ! I’m sure his parents are so proud , what a wonderful child they produced !
Removing wigs and gowns is SOP with child cases if it seems necessary to conduct the trial, as I understand it. It's not specific to this case at all. And it also removes one possbile ground of appeal.
Grounds for appeal . I don’t understand. So the little runt was okay driving over a lady and killing her but apparently too sensitive and traumatized to see the gowns and wigs of the judiciary.
It’s an over-engineered version of a standard Dutch roundabout. They do work really well. But this one (and the same design in Manchester) do look a bit like someone gave a Dutch blueprint to a bunch of HS2 engineers and said “here, build one of these”.
LOL! 😂
It probably can be done better, considering its an early adoption in the UK of what the Dutch have been doing for years no doubt it will evolve over time and future ones might be better.
But functionally? Its a good idea and works well.
The Dutch have nailed this for years. Build more roads, design well for active travel, everyone wins.
Its great to see parts of the UK adopting the Dutch approach. Hopefully more do over time. Evolving the aesthetics to look better is a secondary priority over functionality.
Yes, let’s all prioritise “functionality”. Eventually that way the whole of Britain can become a motorway and no one need ever get stuck in traffic because NO ONE WILL EVER WANT TO LIVE IN UGLY DEPRESSING BRITAIN
This is, by the way, exactly what happened to thousands of American downtowns. They prioritised the functionality of driving and parking. By destroying millions of lovely old buildings to make way for car lots and wide roads
Now no one wants to drive to the downtowns because they are hideous dystopias full of homeless people and empty car lots. = zero traffic. Problem solved
That's funny because towns like Warrington and cities like Preston that are facilitating both driving and active travel, along with getting new builds, are rapidly growing in population not shrinking.
Oh and home ownership rates are far higher than in miserably depressing London where most people have to work to pay rent with no hope of a home of their own.
And the roads are free flowing. As are the cycle paths. With plenty of trees also along the routes too, even if not shown at the junctions.
You have a very different idea of depressing to me. I find 21 people being forced into one two bedroom flat as they have nowhere else to live far more depressing: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-66941965
I'm sorry but no one wants to live in Warrington. That's why it's affordable, and why BTL landlords haven't come sniffing.
Most of the UK lives in towns like Warrington. Only there's hundreds of Warringtons dotted around the country each with a different name.
Its only a tiny minority that lives in cities (and even in cities most still drive).
Its an even smaller minority that lives in London, the only city where most have been forced off the road due to chronic overcrowding.
38% of the UK population lives in a city (defined as a populous urban area with a population over 500k people). Not a majority, but not tiny either. (Source: http://www.demographia.com/db-worldua.pdf )
We should neither ignore cities (which are, after all, the economic engines of the UK) nor ignore the majority of people who live in towns & the wider countryside.
That data is only that high by merging neighbouring towns into built up urban areas. Here is the real data:
Cities excluding London make up 6.9 million people in England and Wales.
The majority of England and Wales live in towns.
You can’t exclude the population of London from “people who live in cities in England & Wales”. Come on.
Fair but even including London you only get to 17m people (correction exc London is 8m, I copied off wrong column).
Whereas 32.9 million live in towns.
Towns dramatically exceed cities in England, nearly 2:1, not that you'd know it from our city based correspondents and media.
For planning purposes, those areas that are contiguously built up with no rural / agricultural land around a city are really part of the city though. Hence my point that, according to a measure of those areas 38% of the UK population live in them.
You might (reasonably) argue that these hinterlands have differing needs to the city cores & I wouldn’t argue with that, but I would argue that they are not going to be the same as rural towns, so lumping them in with the rural town population & calling them “non city” residents seems wrong to me.
I never said rural towns though, rural was not part of the equation.
Most towns absolutely are urban/suburban and are neither rural nor city.
In the North West Liverpool/Manchester conurbation for instance I believe far more people live in towns like Wigan, Widnes, Warrington, Runcorn, Leigh, Stockport, Northwich, Altrincham etc, etc, etc than either Liverpool or Manchester.
Why do you differentiate say Altrincham from Manchester ?
It's part of the same urban lump, there is no rural gap.
Metrolink takes you from Alty to St Peters Sq in 25mins, every 6mins.
Historically yes Alty was very much a separate town and no doubt many still 'feel' it is in Cheshire and not an urban area.
Yet the government measures of Primary Urban Area and Travel to Work Areas both include Alty in the Manchester urban area as they are economically and socially one urban area.
Because Altrincham simply isn't in the city of Manchester.
Its very much a town. Yes the Metrolink goes there, but Metrolink does not a city make, people going from Altrincham into Manchester are commuting into the city, not from one.
Altrincham very much has a town feeling and town statistics same as the other towns I named. 76% of Altrincham own their own home, versus barely over 50% in Manchester. Altrincham is predominantly houses not flats. Etc, etc
Most of the people who live in Manchester's urban area live in a town, not the City. That's kind of the point!
Eh ???
The vast majority of people who live in the local authority called Manchester live in houses, not flats, they are just poorer so fewer own them.
The ONS have gone to the effort of telling you 2.5m people live in the Greater Manchester urban area, that urban area includes Alty, Stockport, Sale etc. But not Wigan.
You can walk from Alty (Trafford) to Middleton (Rochdale) without leaving urban areas, that is what makes it all feel like a city.
You seem a little to focused on local authorities, come to Manchester, you will see that they are meaningless.
Yes they have and they've also gone to the effect of breaking that urban area into towns and cities. The ONS agrees with me, Altrincham is a town, in Manchester's urban area. It is not part of the City of Manchester.
you agree the English definition of a city is based on a local authority which is utterly meaningless when talking about urban planning I assume ?
Yes multiple cities in England, such as Doncaster or Preston, really ought to be classed as large towns.
I don't know of any towns in England that should be classed as cities.
You miss the point.
No one would ever think of a local authority boundary as relevant to any sort of urban planning would they ?
Even you can spot that I assume ?
Yes I do. And the towns I'm naming have all the qualities of a town, not those of a city. Which is why it's all houses with cars and people drive overwhelmingly etc unless they're using the Metrolink to commute into the city.
Stretford I would class as part of Manchester much, much more than Altrincham and not just as it's the right side of the M60.
You have quite literally no idea about Manchester.
I live in Sale, between Stretford and Alty and consider myself far more aware of the local area than someone who comes across as disconnected from any sort of understanding of how economies and urban areas actually operate.
I absolutely do, I'm from the North West myself and worked across Greater Manchester, Cheshire, Merseyside and Lancashire.
Except you're not listening to what I'm saying. I have literally repeatedly said that these towns are connected to Manchester (and Liverpool FWIW). I've never said otherwise though.
They're still towns though.
What does a town mean to you? You seem to be stuck on the concept of rural, but towns overwhelmingly are urban not rural.
Alty is intrinsically economically and socially linked into the Manc urban area.
As much as Ealing is to London.
The term town is utterly meaningless today, Alty was founded as a town in 1290 (from memory) today it's part of the urban fabric of Manc.
Trams very heavily used every 6 mins, A56 rammed most of the day to and from town.
Alty is a part of suburban Manc, more flats than Stretford, more flats than Chorlton, Didsbury and a whole heap of 'Manchester'
Alty is actually very rich, there will be high car ownership as they are 15km from central Manc and going south the traffic isn't bad.
But going North are trams for commuters and the M60 for the Trafford Centre, the idea that Alty has the same profile for transport provision as Nantwich is bonkers.
another US House procedural roll call, previous one passed on strict party line, Reps yea, Dems no with limited number not voting (3 Reps and I think 8 Dems).
Interestingly, at start of current roll call, one Republican is voting No along with the Dems.
Republicans have nearly all voted, Democrats are taking their sweet time, no doubt on purpose.
I have now had a chance to watch the Suella Braverman speech.
I do not take pleasure in saying this because it was full of the usual divisive rhetoric she has taken to delivering, but it was very, very well delivered. That is not a speech she could have delivered that well 18 months ago. She has clearly taken coaching, and learned from it.
I suspect, rather worryingly, we are looking at the next Tory leader. The narrative is there - ‘I wanted to sort all this out, Rishi stopped me. I said all this at the time I was Home Secretary, the Blob was too squeamish.’ If you’d asked me 6 months ago who I thought would win in a contest between Braverman, Mordaunt and Badenoch I’d have suggested the latter. Now I’m pretty convinced Braverman will be able to sell the culture war stuff to the membership even better than Badenoch can. Buckle in.
It’s an over-engineered version of a standard Dutch roundabout. They do work really well. But this one (and the same design in Manchester) do look a bit like someone gave a Dutch blueprint to a bunch of HS2 engineers and said “here, build one of these”.
LOL! 😂
It probably can be done better, considering its an early adoption in the UK of what the Dutch have been doing for years no doubt it will evolve over time and future ones might be better.
But functionally? Its a good idea and works well.
The Dutch have nailed this for years. Build more roads, design well for active travel, everyone wins.
Its great to see parts of the UK adopting the Dutch approach. Hopefully more do over time. Evolving the aesthetics to look better is a secondary priority over functionality.
Yes, let’s all prioritise “functionality”. Eventually that way the whole of Britain can become a motorway and no one need ever get stuck in traffic because NO ONE WILL EVER WANT TO LIVE IN UGLY DEPRESSING BRITAIN
This is, by the way, exactly what happened to thousands of American downtowns. They prioritised the functionality of driving and parking. By destroying millions of lovely old buildings to make way for car lots and wide roads
Now no one wants to drive to the downtowns because they are hideous dystopias full of homeless people and empty car lots. = zero traffic. Problem solved
That's funny because towns like Warrington and cities like Preston that are facilitating both driving and active travel, along with getting new builds, are rapidly growing in population not shrinking.
Oh and home ownership rates are far higher than in miserably depressing London where most people have to work to pay rent with no hope of a home of their own.
And the roads are free flowing. As are the cycle paths. With plenty of trees also along the routes too, even if not shown at the junctions.
You have a very different idea of depressing to me. I find 21 people being forced into one two bedroom flat as they have nowhere else to live far more depressing: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-66941965
I'm sorry but no one wants to live in Warrington. That's why it's affordable, and why BTL landlords haven't come sniffing.
Most of the UK lives in towns like Warrington. Only there's hundreds of Warringtons dotted around the country each with a different name.
Its only a tiny minority that lives in cities (and even in cities most still drive).
Its an even smaller minority that lives in London, the only city where most have been forced off the road due to chronic overcrowding.
38% of the UK population lives in a city (defined as a populous urban area with a population over 500k people). Not a majority, but not tiny either. (Source: http://www.demographia.com/db-worldua.pdf )
We should neither ignore cities (which are, after all, the economic engines of the UK) nor ignore the majority of people who live in towns & the wider countryside.
That data is only that high by merging neighbouring towns into built up urban areas. Here is the real data:
Cities excluding London make up 6.9 million people in England and Wales.
The majority of England and Wales live in towns.
You can’t exclude the population of London from “people who live in cities in England & Wales”. Come on.
Fair but even including London you only get to 17m people (correction exc London is 8m, I copied off wrong column).
Whereas 32.9 million live in towns.
Towns dramatically exceed cities in England, nearly 2:1, not that you'd know it from our city based correspondents and media.
For planning purposes, those areas that are contiguously built up with no rural / agricultural land around a city are really part of the city though. Hence my point that, according to a measure of those areas 38% of the UK population live in them.
You might (reasonably) argue that these hinterlands have differing needs to the city cores & I wouldn’t argue with that, but I would argue that they are not going to be the same as rural towns, so lumping them in with the rural town population & calling them “non city” residents seems wrong to me.
I never said rural towns though, rural was not part of the equation.
Most towns absolutely are urban/suburban and are neither rural nor city.
In the North West Liverpool/Manchester conurbation for instance I believe far more people live in towns like Wigan, Widnes, Warrington, Runcorn, Leigh, Stockport, Northwich, Altrincham etc, etc, etc than either Liverpool or Manchester.
Why do you differentiate say Altrincham from Manchester ?
It's part of the same urban lump, there is no rural gap.
Metrolink takes you from Alty to St Peters Sq in 25mins, every 6mins.
Historically yes Alty was very much a separate town and no doubt many still 'feel' it is in Cheshire and not an urban area.
Yet the government measures of Primary Urban Area and Travel to Work Areas both include Alty in the Manchester urban area as they are economically and socially one urban area.
Because Altrincham simply isn't in the city of Manchester.
Its very much a town. Yes the Metrolink goes there, but Metrolink does not a city make, people going from Altrincham into Manchester are commuting into the city, not from one.
Altrincham very much has a town feeling and town statistics same as the other towns I named. 76% of Altrincham own their own home, versus barely over 50% in Manchester. Altrincham is predominantly houses not flats. Etc, etc
Most of the people who live in Manchester's urban area live in a town, not the City. That's kind of the point!
Eh ???
The vast majority of people who live in the local authority called Manchester live in houses, not flats, they are just poorer so fewer own them.
The ONS have gone to the effort of telling you 2.5m people live in the Greater Manchester urban area, that urban area includes Alty, Stockport, Sale etc. But not Wigan.
You can walk from Alty (Trafford) to Middleton (Rochdale) without leaving urban areas, that is what makes it all feel like a city.
You seem a little to focused on local authorities, come to Manchester, you will see that they are meaningless.
Yes they have and they've also gone to the effect of breaking that urban area into towns and cities. The ONS agrees with me, Altrincham is a town, in Manchester's urban area. It is not part of the City of Manchester.
you agree the English definition of a city is based on a local authority which is utterly meaningless when talking about urban planning I assume ?
Yes multiple cities in England, such as Doncaster or Preston, really ought to be classed as large towns.
I don't know of any towns in England that should be classed as cities.
You miss the point.
No one would ever think of a local authority boundary as relevant to any sort of urban planning would they ?
Even you can spot that I assume ?
Yes I do. And the towns I'm naming have all the qualities of a town, not those of a city. Which is why it's all houses with cars and people drive overwhelmingly etc unless they're using the Metrolink to commute into the city.
Stretford I would class as part of Manchester much, much more than Altrincham and not just as it's the right side of the M60.
You have quite literally no idea about Manchester.
I live in Sale, between Stretford and Alty and consider myself far more aware of the local area than someone who comes across as disconnected from any sort of understanding of how economies and urban areas actually operate.
I absolutely do, I'm from the North West myself and worked across Greater Manchester, Cheshire, Merseyside and Lancashire.
Except you're not listening to what I'm saying. I have literally repeatedly said that these towns are connected to Manchester (and Liverpool FWIW). I've never said otherwise though.
They're still towns though.
What does a town mean to you? You seem to be stuck on the concept of rural, but towns overwhelmingly are urban not rural.
Alty is intrinsically economically and socially linked into the Manc urban area.
As much as Ealing is to London.
The term town is utterly meaningless today, Alty was founded as a town in 1290 (from memory) today it's part of the urban fabric of Manc.
Trams very heavily used every 6 mins, A56 rammed most of the day to and from town.
Alty is a part of suburban Manc, more flats than Stretford, more flats than Chorlton, Didsbury and a whole heap of 'Manchester'
Alty is actually very rich, there will be high car ownership as they are 15km from central Manc and going south the traffic isn't bad.
But going North are trams for commuters and the M60 for the Trafford Centre, the idea that Alty has the same profile for transport provision as Nantwich is bonkers.
I never even mentioned Nantwich! Nantwich is not a suburban town unlike any of the others I named.
Yes Altrincham is completely different to Nantwich but it's also different to the city of Manchester. You can commute into the city, or stay in the town, or go away from the city all quite easily.
Either way though it's a bit moot. Whether we count Alty or not doesn't change the overall point originally made. More of the population of the North West live in suburban towns than in the cities.
I have now had a chance to watch the Suella Braverman speech.
I do not take pleasure in saying this because it was full of the usual divisive rhetoric she has taken to delivering, but it was very, very well delivered. That is not a speech she could have delivered that well 18 months ago. She has clearly taken coaching, and learned from it.
I suspect, rather worryingly, we are looking at the next Tory leader. The narrative is there - ‘I wanted to sort all this out, Rishi stopped me. I said all this at the time I was Home Secretary, the Blob was too squeamish.’ If you’d asked me 6 months ago who I thought would win in a contest between Braverman, Mordaunt and Badenoch I’d have suggested the latter. Now I’m pretty convinced Braverman will be able to sell the culture war stuff to the membership even better than Badenoch can. Buckle in.
Very hard to see Braverman ever winning a GE though.
A message for Nick from the Democratic Socialists of America…
http://www.ericlee.info/dsa/ … The message I got from everyone could not have been clearer: The Ukrainian labor movement and Left stand fully against the Russian invasion. They want and expect solidarity from the labor movement and Left in other countries. They enormously appreciate everything from solidarity gestures such as the visits of leading trade unionists, including the American Federation of Teachers’ president Randi Weingarten, and donations from unions ranging from generators to much-needed bandages.
Despite the differences, I still see this conflict as the Spanish Civil War of our time. The many young men and women who have come to Ukraine to join the fight are inspiring in the way that the International Brigades were some 90 years ago. The Spanish Republic was defeated in large part because many democracies failed to come to its aid, while the fascists were fully backed by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Will the same thing happen in Ukraine?
Putin’s regime is a fascist one, and the war on Ukraine is an illegal, imperialist war. Ukraine is not a perfect society, and its government is not a perfect government. Nor was the Spanish Republic. But in the fight against fascism, we need to ask ourselves, to paraphrase the old song, which side are we on?..
PGMOL have released the audio of the Luis Diaz goal.
Absolute shit show, the VAR and AVAR froze whilst the TV operator was the only one who realised the fuck up as the VAR was keen to get the match restarted ASAP, the AVAR did fuck all.
I have now had a chance to watch the Suella Braverman speech.
I do not take pleasure in saying this because it was full of the usual divisive rhetoric she has taken to delivering, but it was very, very well delivered. That is not a speech she could have delivered that well 18 months ago. She has clearly taken coaching, and learned from it.
I suspect, rather worryingly, we are looking at the next Tory leader. The narrative is there - ‘I wanted to sort all this out, Rishi stopped me. I said all this at the time I was Home Secretary, the Blob was too squeamish.’ If you’d asked me 6 months ago who I thought would win in a contest between Braverman, Mordaunt and Badenoch I’d have suggested the latter. Now I’m pretty convinced Braverman will be able to sell the culture war stuff to the membership even better than Badenoch can. Buckle in.
Very hard to see Braverman ever winning a GE though.
I have now had a chance to watch the Suella Braverman speech.
I do not take pleasure in saying this because it was full of the usual divisive rhetoric she has taken to delivering, but it was very, very well delivered. That is not a speech she could have delivered that well 18 months ago. She has clearly taken coaching, and learned from it.
I suspect, rather worryingly, we are looking at the next Tory leader. The narrative is there - ‘I wanted to sort all this out, Rishi stopped me. I said all this at the time I was Home Secretary, the Blob was too squeamish.’ If you’d asked me 6 months ago who I thought would win in a contest between Braverman, Mordaunt and Badenoch I’d have suggested the latter. Now I’m pretty convinced Braverman will be able to sell the culture war stuff to the membership even better than Badenoch can. Buckle in.
Both Priti Patel and Kemi Badenoch will be annoyed by the speech, because it makes their chances of winning the next Tory leadership election more difficult.
Americans certainly do like cheese. If you go to a Walmart there will be aisles and aisles of it - but it will all be about 3 varieties - Jack, Monterey Jack, versions of cheddar. “Philadelphia” - the rest will be different forms of this with different shapes, processing and added bits
What they don’t have is a sophisticated market for cheese nor a taste for runny, pungent, blue, or goaty cheese - ie all the best stuff
But this used to be true of American beer. It used to be universally shit and gassy and pasteurised. Now they have one of the best beer cultures in the world and you can get excellent craft IPA anywhere in the country - a much better selection than most European countries (which will have 3 or 4 predictable beers)
So they may wise up to cheese in a similar way
I think when it comes to food, it is like a lot of US, the two extremes with the "middle" not being great. You have your rich that shop at Whole Foods or regional chains like Publix, which are often a better form of Waitrose...then the other extreme of Walmart / Dollar Tree where they might not even carry any fresh food. The middle like Albertsons are quite shitty in comparison to what we have here.
Our midmarket has traditionally been pretty decent. The US doesn't seem to have the equivalent of Sainsburys, or M&S, or even Tesco.
Likewise on the continent, certainly in France and Spain (Germany a bit more of a fractured market plus Aldi and Lidl). And in France it's really difficult to discern which are the u or non-u chains. Much less of a class system in French supermarkets: Auchan, Leclerc, Carrefour, Intermarche: more variation between stores than between chains.
The US has Ralph’s, Vons and Trader Joe’s
Trader Joe's is very like M&S - right down to almost everything being private label.
(Except, I guess, Trader Joe's has more weird shit.)
The rights have been sold for a dramatization of Harry Cole and James Heale’s pacey chronicle of Truss’ brief spell in No. 10, and several SW1 insiders have been tapped up by the team working on the project for further details about pivotal scenes.
I have now had a chance to watch the Suella Braverman speech.
I do not take pleasure in saying this because it was full of the usual divisive rhetoric she has taken to delivering, but it was very, very well delivered. That is not a speech she could have delivered that well 18 months ago. She has clearly taken coaching, and learned from it.
I suspect, rather worryingly, we are looking at the next Tory leader. The narrative is there - ‘I wanted to sort all this out, Rishi stopped me. I said all this at the time I was Home Secretary, the Blob was too squeamish.’ If you’d asked me 6 months ago who I thought would win in a contest between Braverman, Mordaunt and Badenoch I’d have suggested the latter. Now I’m pretty convinced Braverman will be able to sell the culture war stuff to the membership even better than Badenoch can. Buckle in.
I will not vote for a Braverman led Conservative Party. It’s not so much a step too far as a different planet.
PGMOL have released the audio of the Luis Diaz goal.
Absolute shit show, the VAR and AVAR froze whilst the TV operator was the only one who realised the fuck up as the VAR was keen to get the match restarted ASAP, the AVAR did fuck all.
Anyone else going to see the 50th anniversary showing of The Exorcist? Mark Kermode's favourite film, BBC film critic.
Dunno, if I really wanted to watch the story of a host body being gradually taken over by a malignant demon, I'd watch the footage of Farage living it up at the Tory Party Conference.
“NEW “cancelling HS2 would be a major act of economic self-sabotage and damage our international standing as a place to do business.” Say some major businesses with big presences in the North … including Kraftheinz, bruntwood, Manchester Airports Group and Manchester United”
..guess what option the Tories have decided to go for.
Utterly pathetic . The boy who ran over that poor lady was allowed to plead guilty to death by dangerous driving instead of being charged with murder . He ran over this poor woman and then did so again when she was trapped under her car. And then watching the news the judges and KC apparently removed their gowns and wigs to make him feel more comfortable. Pathetic .
Jeez why didn’t they just sing him kumbaya and hand out some chocolates to make him feel even better ! I’m sure his parents are so proud , what a wonderful child they produced !
Removing wigs and gowns is SOP with child cases if it seems necessary to conduct the trial, as I understand it. It's not specific to this case at all. And it also removes one possbile ground of appeal.
A friend who sits in the Family Division says the kids love it when he puts his wig on because it makes him look like Santa Claus.
Americans certainly do like cheese. If you go to a Walmart there will be aisles and aisles of it - but it will all be about 3 varieties - Jack, Monterey Jack, versions of cheddar. “Philadelphia” - the rest will be different forms of this with different shapes, processing and added bits
What they don’t have is a sophisticated market for cheese nor a taste for runny, pungent, blue, or goaty cheese - ie all the best stuff
But this used to be true of American beer. It used to be universally shit and gassy and pasteurised. Now they have one of the best beer cultures in the world and you can get excellent craft IPA anywhere in the country - a much better selection than most European countries (which will have 3 or 4 predictable beers)
So they may wise up to cheese in a similar way
I think when it comes to food, it is like a lot of US, the two extremes with the "middle" not being great. You have your rich that shop at Whole Foods or regional chains like Publix, which are often a better form of Waitrose...then the other extreme of Walmart / Dollar Tree where they might not even carry any fresh food. The middle like Albertsons are quite shitty in comparison to what we have here.
Our midmarket has traditionally been pretty decent. The US doesn't seem to have the equivalent of Sainsburys, or M&S, or even Tesco.
Likewise on the continent, certainly in France and Spain (Germany a bit more of a fractured market plus Aldi and Lidl). And in France it's really difficult to discern which are the u or non-u chains. Much less of a class system in French supermarkets: Auchan, Leclerc, Carrefour, Intermarche: more variation between stores than between chains.
The US has Ralph’s, Vons and Trader Joe’s
Trader Joe's is literally Aldi. Its a limited selection of every changing goods made under licensing agreements to white label goods. All supermarkets do this to some extent now, but that isn't comparable to say a Sainsbury's supermarket.
If I remember correctly Vons is just Safeway, but in California.
Trader Joe's is not Aldi.
Trader Joe's is - price-wise - only a small step down from Whole Foods. It's customer base is young urban professionals, and if you look where they have stores it is in the wealthier parts of large US cities.
I have now had a chance to watch the Suella Braverman speech.
I do not take pleasure in saying this because it was full of the usual divisive rhetoric she has taken to delivering, but it was very, very well delivered. That is not a speech she could have delivered that well 18 months ago. She has clearly taken coaching, and learned from it.
I suspect, rather worryingly, we are looking at the next Tory leader. The narrative is there - ‘I wanted to sort all this out, Rishi stopped me. I said all this at the time I was Home Secretary, the Blob was too squeamish.’ If you’d asked me 6 months ago who I thought would win in a contest between Braverman, Mordaunt and Badenoch I’d have suggested the latter. Now I’m pretty convinced Braverman will be able to sell the culture war stuff to the membership even better than Badenoch can. Buckle in.
With Truss as shadow CoE? That's a team to tickle some tummies.
Just logged on. Already bored with what is, or is not, a city.
Is there any politics happening?
In England and Wales it's easy to figure out if you live in a city or a town. If your area voted Remain you live in a city. If it voted Leave you live in a town. And yes, Birmingham is a town.
I have now had a chance to watch the Suella Braverman speech.
I do not take pleasure in saying this because it was full of the usual divisive rhetoric she has taken to delivering, but it was very, very well delivered. That is not a speech she could have delivered that well 18 months ago. She has clearly taken coaching, and learned from it.
I suspect, rather worryingly, we are looking at the next Tory leader. The narrative is there - ‘I wanted to sort all this out, Rishi stopped me. I said all this at the time I was Home Secretary, the Blob was too squeamish.’ If you’d asked me 6 months ago who I thought would win in a contest between Braverman, Mordaunt and Badenoch I’d have suggested the latter. Now I’m pretty convinced Braverman will be able to sell the culture war stuff to the membership even better than Badenoch can. Buckle in.
I will not vote for a Braverman led Conservative Party. It’s not so much a step too far as a different planet.
Farage will take over after her turn and save you.......
It’s an over-engineered version of a standard Dutch roundabout. They do work really well. But this one (and the same design in Manchester) do look a bit like someone gave a Dutch blueprint to a bunch of HS2 engineers and said “here, build one of these”.
LOL! 😂
It probably can be done better, considering its an early adoption in the UK of what the Dutch have been doing for years no doubt it will evolve over time and future ones might be better.
But functionally? Its a good idea and works well.
The Dutch have nailed this for years. Build more roads, design well for active travel, everyone wins.
Its great to see parts of the UK adopting the Dutch approach. Hopefully more do over time. Evolving the aesthetics to look better is a secondary priority over functionality.
Yes, let’s all prioritise “functionality”. Eventually that way the whole of Britain can become a motorway and no one need ever get stuck in traffic because NO ONE WILL EVER WANT TO LIVE IN UGLY DEPRESSING BRITAIN
This is, by the way, exactly what happened to thousands of American downtowns. They prioritised the functionality of driving and parking. By destroying millions of lovely old buildings to make way for car lots and wide roads
Now no one wants to drive to the downtowns because they are hideous dystopias full of homeless people and empty car lots. = zero traffic. Problem solved
That's funny because towns like Warrington and cities like Preston that are facilitating both driving and active travel, along with getting new builds, are rapidly growing in population not shrinking.
Oh and home ownership rates are far higher than in miserably depressing London where most people have to work to pay rent with no hope of a home of their own.
And the roads are free flowing. As are the cycle paths. With plenty of trees also along the routes too, even if not shown at the junctions.
You have a very different idea of depressing to me. I find 21 people being forced into one two bedroom flat as they have nowhere else to live far more depressing: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-66941965
I'm sorry but no one wants to live in Warrington. That's why it's affordable, and why BTL landlords haven't come sniffing.
Most of the UK lives in towns like Warrington. Only there's hundreds of Warringtons dotted around the country each with a different name.
Its only a tiny minority that lives in cities (and even in cities most still drive).
Its an even smaller minority that lives in London, the only city where most have been forced off the road due to chronic overcrowding.
38% of the UK population lives in a city (defined as a populous urban area with a population over 500k people). Not a majority, but not tiny either. (Source: http://www.demographia.com/db-worldua.pdf )
We should neither ignore cities (which are, after all, the economic engines of the UK) nor ignore the majority of people who live in towns & the wider countryside.
That data is only that high by merging neighbouring towns into built up urban areas. Here is the real data:
Cities excluding London make up 6.9 million people in England and Wales.
The majority of England and Wales live in towns.
You can’t exclude the population of London from “people who live in cities in England & Wales”. Come on.
Fair but even including London you only get to 17m people (correction exc London is 8m, I copied off wrong column).
Whereas 32.9 million live in towns.
Towns dramatically exceed cities in England, nearly 2:1, not that you'd know it from our city based correspondents and media.
For planning purposes, those areas that are contiguously built up with no rural / agricultural land around a city are really part of the city though. Hence my point that, according to a measure of those areas 38% of the UK population live in them.
You might (reasonably) argue that these hinterlands have differing needs to the city cores & I wouldn’t argue with that, but I would argue that they are not going to be the same as rural towns, so lumping them in with the rural town population & calling them “non city” residents seems wrong to me.
I never said rural towns though, rural was not part of the equation.
Most towns absolutely are urban/suburban and are neither rural nor city.
In the North West Liverpool/Manchester conurbation for instance I believe far more people live in towns like Wigan, Widnes, Warrington, Runcorn, Leigh, Stockport, Northwich, Altrincham etc, etc, etc than either Liverpool or Manchester.
Why do you differentiate say Altrincham from Manchester ?
It's part of the same urban lump, there is no rural gap.
Metrolink takes you from Alty to St Peters Sq in 25mins, every 6mins.
Historically yes Alty was very much a separate town and no doubt many still 'feel' it is in Cheshire and not an urban area.
Yet the government measures of Primary Urban Area and Travel to Work Areas both include Alty in the Manchester urban area as they are economically and socially one urban area.
Look at the maps on this page just to see how much Stockport and Alty actually are part of the urban area around Manchester, without a rural gap.
Yep, places like Wigan which are in Greater Manchester are not in the urban lump, but you are massively under estimating the size of the urban lump.
Yes its an urban lump, I said that. Warrington is in that urban lump, sandwiched between Liverpool and Manchester. You can drive contiguously from Liverpool to Widnes to Warrington to Leigh to Manchester (or other routes) without ever getting into rural areas.
But that doesn't make Warrington, or Widnes, or Leigh, or Altrincham cities. They're suburban towns in the suburbs of cities.
Phew: this is a difficult one.
Golders Green could well be described as a suburban town in the surburbs of London. But I think we'd all say it was part of London. But what about Bromley?
And if we're sticking with Manchester, what about Didsbury? Part of Manchester, no?
So, given I'm now a political free agent, where on earth should my vote rest?
I'm nearly persuaded that Labour offer the best choice - that, despite them being incompetent, disingenuous bad people.
The LDs are clearly the most ghastly people in the world. Ed Davey?
Greens - oh fuck off.
I really have no idea - clearly none of the above.
Depends on your seat, party best placed to defeat the Tories.
The new iteration of Tories in power need an epochal defeat to understand their hurricane of hate, outright corruption and incompetence has no place in the UK.
It does feel rather like the "You still think you can control them?" moment from Cabaret. Does that make Andrew Boff the EmmCee?
In other "No, they can't be controlled" news,
Security minister Tom Tugendhat tells me he would welcome Nigel Farage into the Conservative Party if he applied to join.
I have now had a chance to watch the Suella Braverman speech.
I do not take pleasure in saying this because it was full of the usual divisive rhetoric she has taken to delivering, but it was very, very well delivered. That is not a speech she could have delivered that well 18 months ago. She has clearly taken coaching, and learned from it.
I suspect, rather worryingly, we are looking at the next Tory leader. The narrative is there - ‘I wanted to sort all this out, Rishi stopped me. I said all this at the time I was Home Secretary, the Blob was too squeamish.’ If you’d asked me 6 months ago who I thought would win in a contest between Braverman, Mordaunt and Badenoch I’d have suggested the latter. Now I’m pretty convinced Braverman will be able to sell the culture war stuff to the membership even better than Badenoch can. Buckle in.
I will not vote for a Braverman led Conservative Party. It’s not so much a step too far as a different planet.
Farage will take over after her turn and save you.......
I have now had a chance to watch the Suella Braverman speech.
I do not take pleasure in saying this because it was full of the usual divisive rhetoric she has taken to delivering, but it was very, very well delivered. That is not a speech she could have delivered that well 18 months ago. She has clearly taken coaching, and learned from it.
I suspect, rather worryingly, we are looking at the next Tory leader. The narrative is there - ‘I wanted to sort all this out, Rishi stopped me. I said all this at the time I was Home Secretary, the Blob was too squeamish.’ If you’d asked me 6 months ago who I thought would win in a contest between Braverman, Mordaunt and Badenoch I’d have suggested the latter. Now I’m pretty convinced Braverman will be able to sell the culture war stuff to the membership even better than Badenoch can. Buckle in.
With Truss as shadow CoE? That's a team to tickle some tummies.
The most nauseating thing will be the attempted love in between LOTO Braverman and POTUS Donald Trump. Coming to a news bulletin near you in early 2025.
“NEW “cancelling HS2 would be a major act of economic self-sabotage and damage our international standing as a place to do business.” Say some major businesses with big presences in the North … including Kraftheinz, bruntwood, Manchester Airports Group and Manchester United”
..guess what option the Tories have decided to go for.
HS2 will not go to Manchester if it runs on existing rails after Birmingham. Under that definition you could say that HS2 will go to Wick, if you ran an HS2 train all the way up there on existing tracks.
Back from 12 days on a cruise down to the Canaries and back. A nice bit of late summer sunshine and I met a genuine Trump supporter and her husband from Florida. She was very keen on DJT pointing out he stood for "christian, family values". I pointed out he had the morals of a gutter rat and the language he used about women was disgraceful after which, for some reason, she stopped talking to me.
On an American ship so average food (apart from the ribeye in the fine dining restaurant which was one of the best steaks I've had for a long time) and a bit "holiday camp" with "wakey wakey, eggs and baky" every morning. The ship, albeit from 2015, already looks dated compared with the newer offerings. Huge amounts of up-selling and I renamed it "Gouging of the Seas" which seemed more appropriate.
It seems we've had Suella Braverman's pitch to the party - I can't remember if it was Straw or Blunkett who used the word "swamped" back in the day but it seems we have a "hurricane of migration" coming our way - a curious term given much of future migration might be driven by climate change.
I'd love to read what Braverman actually said but I sense a speech long on rhetoric and short on specifics and solutions - most Conference speeches are in truth. Whether "Uxbridge Man" will lap it up or be faintly appalled by it I'm less certain. Starmer now has a clear opportunity to sound sensible and Prime Ministerial next week.
PGMOL have released the audio of the Luis Diaz goal.
Absolute shit show, the VAR and AVAR froze whilst the TV operator was the only one who realised the fuck up as the VAR was keen to get the match restarted ASAP, the AVAR did fuck all.
Not sure which is the bigger shit show - that transcript or Conservative Party Conference.
I think VAR would have reviewed the Conservative Party Conference and upgraded the yellow card to a red card. And Braverman would have been found to be well offside when she scored.
I have now had a chance to watch the Suella Braverman speech.
I do not take pleasure in saying this because it was full of the usual divisive rhetoric she has taken to delivering, but it was very, very well delivered. That is not a speech she could have delivered that well 18 months ago. She has clearly taken coaching, and learned from it.
I suspect, rather worryingly, we are looking at the next Tory leader. The narrative is there - ‘I wanted to sort all this out, Rishi stopped me. I said all this at the time I was Home Secretary, the Blob was too squeamish.’ If you’d asked me 6 months ago who I thought would win in a contest between Braverman, Mordaunt and Badenoch I’d have suggested the latter. Now I’m pretty convinced Braverman will be able to sell the culture war stuff to the membership even better than Badenoch can. Buckle in.
I will not vote for a Braverman led Conservative Party. It’s not so much a step too far as a different planet.
Farage will take over after her turn and save you.......
Nope. Won’t vote for him either.
Sounds like a long wait til the Piers Morgan takeover in 2029....
I have now had a chance to watch the Suella Braverman speech.
I do not take pleasure in saying this because it was full of the usual divisive rhetoric she has taken to delivering, but it was very, very well delivered. That is not a speech she could have delivered that well 18 months ago. She has clearly taken coaching, and learned from it.
I suspect, rather worryingly, we are looking at the next Tory leader. The narrative is there - ‘I wanted to sort all this out, Rishi stopped me. I said all this at the time I was Home Secretary, the Blob was too squeamish.’ If you’d asked me 6 months ago who I thought would win in a contest between Braverman, Mordaunt and Badenoch I’d have suggested the latter. Now I’m pretty convinced Braverman will be able to sell the culture war stuff to the membership even better than Badenoch can. Buckle in.
I will not vote for a Braverman led Conservative Party. It’s not so much a step too far as a different planet.
Farage will take over after her turn and save you.......
Nope. Won’t vote for him either.
Sounds like a long wait til the Piers Morgan takeover in 2029....
I have now had a chance to watch the Suella Braverman speech.
I do not take pleasure in saying this because it was full of the usual divisive rhetoric she has taken to delivering, but it was very, very well delivered. That is not a speech she could have delivered that well 18 months ago. She has clearly taken coaching, and learned from it.
I suspect, rather worryingly, we are looking at the next Tory leader. The narrative is there - ‘I wanted to sort all this out, Rishi stopped me. I said all this at the time I was Home Secretary, the Blob was too squeamish.’ If you’d asked me 6 months ago who I thought would win in a contest between Braverman, Mordaunt and Badenoch I’d have suggested the latter. Now I’m pretty convinced Braverman will be able to sell the culture war stuff to the membership even better than Badenoch can. Buckle in.
With Truss as shadow CoE? That's a team to tickle some tummies.
Didn't Truss sack Braverman from the Home Office? We'd be looking at a rapprochement on a level with Molotov and Ribbentrop or Farage and the Conservative Party (too soon?).
nyt blog - Democrats are now voting by hand, with paper ballots, in an apparent effort to slow down this vote on a separate bill and buy more time for members to get here before the motion on ousting the speaker, Kevin McCarthy. There were five Democratic absences on the previous vote.
roll call passed, then Greasy Gaetz moved his motion to vacate the office of Speaker, now another procedural vote.
PGMOL have released the audio of the Luis Diaz goal.
Absolute shit show, the VAR and AVAR froze whilst the TV operator was the only one who realised the fuck up as the VAR was keen to get the match restarted ASAP, the AVAR did fuck all.
Not sure which is the bigger shit show - that transcript or Conservative Party Conference.
I think VAR would have reviewed the Conservative Party Conference and upgraded the yellow card to a red card. And Braverman would have been found to be well offside when she scored.
You have more faith than me in VAR.
I think VAR would have reviewed the Conservative Party Conference and said no red for Davey, and found Starmer to be onside when he scored.
I have now had a chance to watch the Suella Braverman speech.
I do not take pleasure in saying this because it was full of the usual divisive rhetoric she has taken to delivering, but it was very, very well delivered. That is not a speech she could have delivered that well 18 months ago. She has clearly taken coaching, and learned from it.
I suspect, rather worryingly, we are looking at the next Tory leader. The narrative is there - ‘I wanted to sort all this out, Rishi stopped me. I said all this at the time I was Home Secretary, the Blob was too squeamish.’ If you’d asked me 6 months ago who I thought would win in a contest between Braverman, Mordaunt and Badenoch I’d have suggested the latter. Now I’m pretty convinced Braverman will be able to sell the culture war stuff to the membership even better than Badenoch can. Buckle in.
I will not vote for a Braverman led Conservative Party. It’s not so much a step too far as a different planet.
It's like having concern and affection for a teenager intent on going off the rails.
You can see it's going to end badly, possibly fatally, but there's nothing you can say or do to stop them. It would ge nice if they could wait until after their General Election loss before going full-on tonto, but that may be a luxury we don't deserve.
Still eight years as a joke opposition doesn't take long. At least, not if you say it really quickly.
I have now had a chance to watch the Suella Braverman speech.
I do not take pleasure in saying this because it was full of the usual divisive rhetoric she has taken to delivering, but it was very, very well delivered. That is not a speech she could have delivered that well 18 months ago. She has clearly taken coaching, and learned from it.
I suspect, rather worryingly, we are looking at the next Tory leader. The narrative is there - ‘I wanted to sort all this out, Rishi stopped me. I said all this at the time I was Home Secretary, the Blob was too squeamish.’ If you’d asked me 6 months ago who I thought would win in a contest between Braverman, Mordaunt and Badenoch I’d have suggested the latter. Now I’m pretty convinced Braverman will be able to sell the culture war stuff to the membership even better than Badenoch can. Buckle in.
I will not vote for a Braverman led Conservative Party. It’s not so much a step too far as a different planet.
I have now had a chance to watch the Suella Braverman speech.
I do not take pleasure in saying this because it was full of the usual divisive rhetoric she has taken to delivering, but it was very, very well delivered. That is not a speech she could have delivered that well 18 months ago. She has clearly taken coaching, and learned from it.
I suspect, rather worryingly, we are looking at the next Tory leader. The narrative is there - ‘I wanted to sort all this out, Rishi stopped me. I said all this at the time I was Home Secretary, the Blob was too squeamish.’ If you’d asked me 6 months ago who I thought would win in a contest between Braverman, Mordaunt and Badenoch I’d have suggested the latter. Now I’m pretty convinced Braverman will be able to sell the culture war stuff to the membership even better than Badenoch can. Buckle in.
I will not vote for a Braverman led Conservative Party. It’s not so much a step too far as a different planet.
One of the earliest and most lifelike examples of a human sculpture – depicting a man holding his phallus with both hands – has been uncovered by archaeologists in Turkey.
The unusual 7.5ft (2.3m)-tall statue was discovered at a prehistoric site known as Karahan Tepe
And shows how this country is governed. After nearly a generation of politicians voting to build HS2, with all the key regional players like A Street on board, a PM can have a bit of a whim and cancel half of the project in the space of a week.
Americans certainly do like cheese. If you go to a Walmart there will be aisles and aisles of it - but it will all be about 3 varieties - Jack, Monterey Jack, versions of cheddar. “Philadelphia” - the rest will be different forms of this with different shapes, processing and added bits
What they don’t have is a sophisticated market for cheese nor a taste for runny, pungent, blue, or goaty cheese - ie all the best stuff
But this used to be true of American beer. It used to be universally shit and gassy and pasteurised. Now they have one of the best beer cultures in the world and you can get excellent craft IPA anywhere in the country - a much better selection than most European countries (which will have 3 or 4 predictable beers)
So they may wise up to cheese in a similar way
I think when it comes to food, it is like a lot of US, the two extremes with the "middle" not being great. You have your rich that shop at Whole Foods or regional chains like Publix, which are often a better form of Waitrose...then the other extreme of Walmart / Dollar Tree where they might not even carry any fresh food. The middle like Albertsons are quite shitty in comparison to what we have here.
Our midmarket has traditionally been pretty decent. The US doesn't seem to have the equivalent of Sainsburys, or M&S, or even Tesco.
Likewise on the continent, certainly in France and Spain (Germany a bit more of a fractured market plus Aldi and Lidl). And in France it's really difficult to discern which are the u or non-u chains. Much less of a class system in French supermarkets: Auchan, Leclerc, Carrefour, Intermarche: more variation between stores than between chains.
The US has Ralph’s, Vons and Trader Joe’s
Trader Joe's is literally Aldi. Its a limited selection of every changing goods made under licensing agreements to white label goods. All supermarkets do this to some extent now, but that isn't comparable to say a Sainsbury's supermarket.
If I remember correctly Vons is just Safeway, but in California.
Trader Joe's is not Aldi.
Trader Joe's is - price-wise - only a small step down from Whole Foods. It's customer base is young urban professionals, and if you look where they have stores it is in the wealthier parts of large US cities.
Not sure I'd call the U-District in Seattle "the wealthier part" of Seattle but in general your point is correct.
As for "ever changing" am pretty sure you can go to the nearest Trader Joe's and find a bag of chocolate covered nuts, just like a decade or more ago.
Of course, whose nuts are getting covered with what, is as always problematic.
I have now had a chance to watch the Suella Braverman speech.
I do not take pleasure in saying this because it was full of the usual divisive rhetoric she has taken to delivering, but it was very, very well delivered. That is not a speech she could have delivered that well 18 months ago. She has clearly taken coaching, and learned from it.
I suspect, rather worryingly, we are looking at the next Tory leader. The narrative is there - ‘I wanted to sort all this out, Rishi stopped me. I said all this at the time I was Home Secretary, the Blob was too squeamish.’ If you’d asked me 6 months ago who I thought would win in a contest between Braverman, Mordaunt and Badenoch I’d have suggested the latter. Now I’m pretty convinced Braverman will be able to sell the culture war stuff to the membership even better than Badenoch can. Buckle in.
I agree. Badenoch and Patel are left in her wake as the SS Culture War speeds on. I have put a few quid on her. She clearly intends to run.
NYT - in US House, motion to table Gaetz motion to vacate, is currently losing
Cory Mills of Florida just voted against tabling the motion, bringing the total of Republican no votes on this to 11.
Representative Lauren Boebert, one of the conservative Republican rebels, is seated next to Representative Matt Gaetz in the chamber. She has her card in her hand and hasn’t voted yet. She appears to be waiting until the end to cast her vote.
I have now had a chance to watch the Suella Braverman speech.
I do not take pleasure in saying this because it was full of the usual divisive rhetoric she has taken to delivering, but it was very, very well delivered. That is not a speech she could have delivered that well 18 months ago. She has clearly taken coaching, and learned from it.
I suspect, rather worryingly, we are looking at the next Tory leader. The narrative is there - ‘I wanted to sort all this out, Rishi stopped me. I said all this at the time I was Home Secretary, the Blob was too squeamish.’ If you’d asked me 6 months ago who I thought would win in a contest between Braverman, Mordaunt and Badenoch I’d have suggested the latter. Now I’m pretty convinced Braverman will be able to sell the culture war stuff to the membership even better than Badenoch can. Buckle in.
I will not vote for a Braverman led Conservative Party. It’s not so much a step too far as a different planet.
+100%
I’m not sure Braverman will be popular even among core Tory voters to be honest. They generally need to pass the would you have a drink in the pub with them test (she’d flunk that, unlike fellow traveler Farage), or the do you respect them like your old head teacher test (which May managed, as did Thatcher and Howard).
I could imagine having a drink or two down the pub with Truss. It would be a bit surreal but possibly good entertainment. Braverman, no. I think her role will be forever as the hard line enforcer who says the things the leader dare not.
That’s interesting spin by them. HS2 will go to Manchester, but on the existing WCML and not at high speed. But it’ll still be HS2, honest.
To bw fair, Crossrail (the Elizabeth Line) runs on pre-exiting track from Shenfield to Stratford and then diverts on to the "new bit" to Paddington and rejoins the pre-existing line west of Paddington.
It's a common tactic (Croydon Tramlink did the same in places). The suggestions for the north-south cross-London link (HS3?) use a lot of existing track with the main construction new tunnels in the capital.
The question then becomes whether you can offer something better than what currently exists - it doesn't have to be quicker butn it has to be reliable and a decent experience for the passenger.
NYT - Speaker Kevin McCarthy has lost the vote to kill Representatives Matt Gaetz’s bid to oust him, 208 to 218. That tees an up-or-down vote to remove McCarthy.
Braverman and Farage clearly belong in the same party. He might be considered a bit too much of a moderate to be in her shadow cabinet, but I'm sure it'll be a broad church.
The election really can't come soon enough. The Tories have shifted from plodding along with managed decline in their last year or so in office, to bring a strange loony right amalgamation that actively seeks to damage the UK's long-term prospects.
And shows how this country is governed. After nearly a generation of politicians voting to build HS2, with all the key regional players like A Street on board, a PM can have a bit of a whim and cancel half of the project in the space of a week.
It wasnt even really the PM. It was the previous PM who was so bad she was outlasted by the lettuce who demanded it was cancelled and Rishi was and is too weak to ignore her.
@HYUFD has predicted the conservative party will turn right post GE24 defeat and we are seeing it on full view in Manchester
This is the bit I don't get. Parties, after long periods in power, go into opposition and seem hippo-like to enjoy a good wallow in the comfy futility thereof.
There comes a point when a party collectively "comes to its senses" and realises the point isn't self-indulgence but trying to provide good governance to improve the lot of the country and every citizen.
It wouldn't surprise me if a future Conservative leader threw Braverman out of the party for being too extreme.
And shows how this country is governed. After nearly a generation of politicians voting to build HS2, with all the key regional players like A Street on board, a PM can have a bit of a whim and cancel half of the project in the space of a week.
Not just that, but a Prime Minister with the thinnest democratic mandate of any modern PM ever.
Not chosen by the people. Not chosen by his party, except by default.
Not even the "oh, he's bound to take over" semi endorsement Brown had.
And yet Sunak sees fit to rip up a pile of consensus with zero reference to Parliament, who will at best be asked to rubber stamp decisions he has made inside the No 10 bubble. Because he thinks he knows better.
The arrogant little sh... ine up your buttons with Brasso, It's only three Bob a tin. You can buy it or nick it at Woolie's But I doubt that they'll have any in.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy has lost the vote to kill Representative Matt Gaetz’s bid to oust him, 208 to 218. That tees an up-or-down vote to remove McCarthy.
NYT - Speaker Kevin McCarthy has lost the vote to kill Representatives Matt Gaetz’s bid to oust him, 208 to 218. That tees an up-or-down vote to remove McCarthy.
He doesn’t deserve support. His futile attempts to ameliorate these nutters condemns him.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy has lost the vote to kill Representative Matt Gaetz’s bid to oust him, 208 to 218. That tees an up-or-down vote to remove McCarthy.
@HYUFD has predicted the conservative party will turn right post GE24 defeat and we are seeing it on full view in Manchester
This is the bit I don't get. Parties, after long periods in power, go into opposition and seem hippo-like to enjoy a good wallow in the comfy futility thereof.
There comes a point when a party collectively "comes to its senses" and realises the point isn't self-indulgence but trying to provide good governance to improve the lot of the country and every citizen.
It wouldn't surprise me if a future Conservative leader threw Braverman out of the party for being too extreme.
Not really sure how they get there. And influences from the nutty part of the right abroad in US and closer to home in Europe will legitimise the likes of Braverman, Farage et al to the party members.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy has lost the vote to kill Representative Matt Gaetz’s bid to oust him, 208 to 218. That tees an up-or-down vote to remove McCarthy.
NY Times blog
Why would the Democrats side with Gaetz?
Embarrass McCarthy by voting en-bloc with him.
They want to show that the GOP is an ungovernable shambles not fit to run the proverbial whelk stall. And lots of other obvious things.
NYT - Speaker Kevin McCarthy has lost the vote to kill Representatives Matt Gaetz’s bid to oust him, 208 to 218. That tees an up-or-down vote to remove McCarthy.
He doesn’t deserve support. His futile attempts to ameliorate these nutters condemns him.
NYT - Speaker Kevin McCarthy has lost the vote to kill Representatives Matt Gaetz’s bid to oust him, 208 to 218. That tees an up-or-down vote to remove McCarthy.
He doesn’t deserve support. His futile attempts to ameliorate these nutters condemns him.
I don't agree.
He tried to ameliorate the nutters, but he didn't let America go over the cliff and ultimately sided with the Democrats to get a bill through before time ran out even though he couldn't carry Gaetz and other loons.
That’s interesting spin by them. HS2 will go to Manchester, but on the existing WCML and not at high speed. But it’ll still be HS2, honest.
To bw fair, Crossrail (the Elizabeth Line) runs on pre-exiting track from Shenfield to Stratford and then diverts on to the "new bit" to Paddington and rejoins the pre-existing line west of Paddington.
It's a common tactic (Croydon Tramlink did the same in places). The suggestions for the north-south cross-London link (HS3?) use a lot of existing track with the main construction new tunnels in the capital.
That's true, but both Crossrail and Tramlink have (near) exclusive use of those lines. There's a few bits of freight on the GWML when you get some way out of Paddington, and the occasional GWR semi-fasts cross over from the mains to the reliefs at Slough, but Crossrail absolutely dominates the reliefs.
That isn't going to be the case for Birmingham-Manchester, which is already congested. The HS2 express, after travelling on an alignment engineered for 400km/h between London and Birmingham, will have to follow the 60mph Northern stopper along the suburban lines into Manchester. Absolutely ludicrous.
Are any Conservative MPs likely to defect to another party?
My view is this is relatively unlikely.
A lot of free thinking moderates were purged or simply retired in 2019.
Anyone tempted to follow Christian Wakeford has possibly missed their chance as Labour/Lib Dems have candidates in most targets (Wakeford went before a Labour candidate was selected in his seat, and indeed now is the Labour candidate).
Andrew Bridgen has had some kind of breakdown, and joined the party for middle aged men with significant personal demons, so I don't see anyone following him.
I think at this stage, if you're really p1ssed off as a Tory MP, you just call it a day at the election.
More likely than defection is a Faragiste entryism and subsequent civil war - potentially splitting the party in half.
I’m not sure it would lead to civil war anymore. The Tory centre is much weaker vs the hard right than the Labour centre were vs the Corbynites. The latter were able to achieve a counterrevolution pretty quickly. I can’t see any way back for the centre-right in the Tory party, it seems to have achieved GOP escape velocity.
'A counterrevolution pretty quickly?' Starmer only got elected after FOUR consecutive Labour general election defeats and a Labour party moving progressively left from Blair to Brown to Ed Miliband to Corbyn who was not only elected Labour leader in 2015 but won re election as leader in 2016 despite most Labour MPs opposing him (which wouldn't be possible in the Tory party as Truss and IDS discovered) and despite leading Labour to defeat in 2017 stayed on as leader until leadlng them to landslide defeat in 2019
NYT - Speaker Kevin McCarthy has lost the vote to kill Representatives Matt Gaetz’s bid to oust him, 208 to 218. That tees an up-or-down vote to remove McCarthy.
He doesn’t deserve support. His futile attempts to ameliorate these nutters condemns him.
But what comes next?
Hopefully a mess where the GOP cannot select a new Speaker until they are thrown out of office.
Americans certainly do like cheese. If you go to a Walmart there will be aisles and aisles of it - but it will all be about 3 varieties - Jack, Monterey Jack, versions of cheddar. “Philadelphia” - the rest will be different forms of this with different shapes, processing and added bits
What they don’t have is a sophisticated market for cheese nor a taste for runny, pungent, blue, or goaty cheese - ie all the best stuff
But this used to be true of American beer. It used to be universally shit and gassy and pasteurised. Now they have one of the best beer cultures in the world and you can get excellent craft IPA anywhere in the country - a much better selection than most European countries (which will have 3 or 4 predictable beers)
So they may wise up to cheese in a similar way
I think when it comes to food, it is like a lot of US, the two extremes with the "middle" not being great. You have your rich that shop at Whole Foods or regional chains like Publix, which are often a better form of Waitrose...then the other extreme of Walmart / Dollar Tree where they might not even carry any fresh food. The middle like Albertsons are quite shitty in comparison to what we have here.
Our midmarket has traditionally been pretty decent. The US doesn't seem to have the equivalent of Sainsburys, or M&S, or even Tesco.
Likewise on the continent, certainly in France and Spain (Germany a bit more of a fractured market plus Aldi and Lidl). And in France it's really difficult to discern which are the u or non-u chains. Much less of a class system in French supermarkets: Auchan, Leclerc, Carrefour, Intermarche: more variation between stores than between chains.
The US has Ralph’s, Vons and Trader Joe’s
Trader Joe's is very like M&S - right down to almost everything being private label.
(Except, I guess, Trader Joe's has more weird shit.)
Comments
So far this roll call strictly party line, all Reps Yea, all Dems No.
Except you're not listening to what I'm saying. I have literally repeatedly said that these towns are connected to Manchester (and Liverpool FWIW). I've never said otherwise though.
They're still towns though.
What does a town mean to you? You seem to be stuck on the concept of rural, but towns overwhelmingly are urban not rural.
Is there any politics happening?
> Representative Kelly Armstrong, Republican of North Dakota, said as he was entering the chamber that if Speaker Kevin McCarthy is ousted, Armstrong believes more than 200 Republican members will fight for him to be reinstated. “Anybody else said they want the job?," he asked. "Why the hell would they?”
> A group of hard-right Republican rebels is seated together: Tim Burchett, Eli Crane, Matt Gaetz and Ken Buck. All of them except Buck have stated definitely that they will vote for a motion to vacate. Buck has been noncommittal.
>A group of teenage Senate pages has filed into the House gallery to watch what could potentially be a momentous day. The House page program was discontinued years ago after a series of scandals.
> Quite a day to be a tourist visiting the Capitol. The visitors galleries are packed.
As much as Ealing is to London.
The term town is utterly meaningless today, Alty was founded as a town in 1290 (from memory) today it's part of the urban fabric of Manc.
Trams very heavily used every 6 mins, A56 rammed most of the day to and from town.
Alty is a part of suburban Manc, more flats than Stretford, more flats than Chorlton, Didsbury and a whole heap of 'Manchester'
Alty is actually very rich, there will be high car ownership as they are 15km from central Manc and going south the traffic isn't bad.
But going North are trams for commuters and the M60 for the Trafford Centre, the idea that Alty has the same profile for transport provision as Nantwich is bonkers.
Perhaps the value bet will be on a low turnout at the next GE.
The next worst is five years studying the people they elect.
Interestingly, at start of current roll call, one Republican is voting No along with the Dems.
Republicans have nearly all voted, Democrats are taking their sweet time, no doubt on purpose.
Anyone else going to see the 50th anniversary showing of The Exorcist? Mark Kermode's favourite film, BBC film critic.
I do not take pleasure in saying this because it was full of the usual divisive rhetoric she has taken to delivering, but it was very, very well delivered. That is not a speech she could have delivered that well 18 months ago. She has clearly taken coaching, and learned from it.
I suspect, rather worryingly, we are looking at the next Tory leader. The narrative is there - ‘I wanted to sort all this out, Rishi stopped me. I said all this at the time I was Home Secretary, the Blob was too squeamish.’ If you’d asked me 6 months ago who I thought would win in a contest between Braverman, Mordaunt and Badenoch I’d have suggested the latter. Now I’m pretty convinced Braverman will be able to sell the culture war stuff to the membership even better than Badenoch can. Buckle in.
Yes Altrincham is completely different to Nantwich but it's also different to the city of Manchester. You can commute into the city, or stay in the town, or go away from the city all quite easily.
Either way though it's a bit moot. Whether we count Alty or not doesn't change the overall point originally made. More of the population of the North West live in suburban towns than in the cities.
http://www.ericlee.info/dsa/
… The message I got from everyone could not have been clearer: The Ukrainian labor movement and Left stand fully against the Russian invasion. They want and expect solidarity from the labor movement and Left in other countries. They enormously appreciate everything from solidarity gestures such as the visits of leading trade unionists, including the American Federation of Teachers’ president Randi Weingarten, and donations from unions ranging from generators to much-needed bandages.
Despite the differences, I still see this conflict as the Spanish Civil War of our time. The many young men and women who have come to Ukraine to join the fight are inspiring in the way that the International Brigades were some 90 years ago. The Spanish Republic was defeated in large part because many democracies failed to come to its aid, while the fascists were fully backed by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Will the same thing happen in Ukraine?
Putin’s regime is a fascist one, and the war on Ukraine is an illegal, imperialist war. Ukraine is not a perfect society, and its government is not a perfect government. Nor was the Spanish Republic. But in the fight against fascism, we need to ask ourselves, to paraphrase the old song, which side are we on?..
Absolute shit show, the VAR and AVAR froze whilst the TV operator was the only one who realised the fuck up as the VAR was keen to get the match restarted ASAP, the AVAR did fuck all.
https://www.premierleague.com/news/3718057
BBC have a transcript.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/66998252
(Except, I guess, Trader Joe's has more weird shit.)
Ralph's is Sainsburys. Vons is Vons.
The rights have been sold for a dramatization of Harry Cole and James Heale’s pacey chronicle of Truss’ brief spell in No. 10, and several SW1 insiders have been tapped up by the team working on the project for further details about pivotal scenes.
https://www.politico.eu/newsletter/london-playbook/still-holding-the-train-line/
“NEW “cancelling HS2 would be a major act of economic self-sabotage and damage our international standing as a place to do business.” Say some major businesses with big presences in the North … including Kraftheinz, bruntwood, Manchester Airports Group and Manchester United”
..guess what option the Tories have decided to go for.
Trader Joe's is - price-wise - only a small step down from Whole Foods. It's customer base is young urban professionals, and if you look where they have stores it is in the wealthier parts of large US cities.
Beth Rigby now reporting HS2 will go from Euston to Manchester but switch onto
normal tracks at Birmingham
https://twitter.com/BethRigby/status/1709267341391909200?t=uXDmRnEvXLeNDALmRRfvnw&s=19
https://news.sky.com/story/hs2-will-go-to-manchester-but-from-birmingham-it-will-run-on-existing-tracks-12976020
Pretty sure he wasn't there on list yesterday.
Golders Green could well be described as a suburban town in the surburbs of London. But I think we'd all say it was part of London. But what about Bromley?
And if we're sticking with Manchester, what about Didsbury? Part of Manchester, no?
Back from 12 days on a cruise down to the Canaries and back. A nice bit of late summer sunshine and I met a genuine Trump supporter and her husband from Florida. She was very keen on DJT pointing out he stood for "christian, family values". I pointed out he had the morals of a gutter rat and the language he used about women was disgraceful after which, for some reason, she stopped talking to me.
On an American ship so average food (apart from the ribeye in the fine dining restaurant which was one of the best steaks I've had for a long time) and a bit "holiday camp" with "wakey wakey, eggs and baky" every morning. The ship, albeit from 2015, already looks dated compared with the newer offerings. Huge amounts of up-selling and I renamed it "Gouging of the Seas" which seemed more appropriate.
It seems we've had Suella Braverman's pitch to the party - I can't remember if it was Straw or Blunkett who used the word "swamped" back in the day but it seems we have a "hurricane of migration" coming our way - a curious term given much of future migration might be driven by climate change.
I'd love to read what Braverman actually said but I sense a speech long on rhetoric and short on specifics and solutions - most Conference speeches are in truth. Whether "Uxbridge Man" will lap it up or be faintly appalled by it I'm less certain. Starmer now has a clear opportunity to sound sensible and Prime Ministerial next week.
Levelling Up my arse!
roll call passed, then Greasy Gaetz moved his motion to vacate the office of Speaker, now another procedural vote.
I think VAR would have reviewed the Conservative Party Conference and said no red for Davey, and found Starmer to be onside when he scored.
https://youtu.be/Whqs8v1svyo?si=KjRZQiONQWz-qwtK
You can see it's going to end badly, possibly fatally, but there's nothing you can say or do to stop them. It would ge nice if they could wait until after their General Election loss before going full-on tonto, but that may be a luxury we don't deserve.
Still eight years as a joke opposition doesn't take long. At least, not if you say it really quickly.
Statue Wankaaahhh!
And shows how this country is governed. After nearly a generation of politicians voting to build HS2, with all the key regional players like A Street on board, a PM can have a bit of a whim and cancel half of the project in the space of a week.
As for "ever changing" am pretty sure you can go to the nearest Trader Joe's and find a bag of chocolate covered nuts, just like a decade or more ago.
Of course, whose nuts are getting covered with what, is as always problematic.
URL says it all.
Cory Mills of Florida just voted against tabling the motion, bringing the total of Republican no votes on this to 11.
Representative Lauren Boebert, one of the conservative Republican rebels, is seated next to Representative Matt Gaetz in the chamber. She has her card in her hand and hasn’t voted yet. She appears to be waiting until the end to cast her vote.
I could imagine having a drink or two down the pub with Truss. It would be a bit surreal but possibly good entertainment. Braverman, no. I think her role will be forever as the hard line enforcer who says the things the leader dare not.
It's a common tactic (Croydon Tramlink did the same in places). The suggestions for the north-south cross-London link (HS3?) use a lot of existing track with the main construction new tunnels in the capital.
The question then becomes whether you can offer something better than what currently exists - it doesn't have to be quicker butn it has to be reliable and a decent experience for the passenger.
My god, how wrong I was…
The election really can't come soon enough. The Tories have shifted from plodding along with managed decline in their last year or so in office, to bring a strange loony right amalgamation that actively seeks to damage the UK's long-term prospects.
It'll be a long 12 months.
There comes a point when a party collectively "comes to its senses" and realises the point isn't self-indulgence but trying to provide good governance to improve the lot of the country and every citizen.
It wouldn't surprise me if a future Conservative leader threw Braverman out of the party for being too extreme.
Not chosen by the people.
Not chosen by his party, except by default.
Not even the "oh, he's bound to take over" semi endorsement Brown had.
And yet Sunak sees fit to rip up a pile of consensus with zero reference to Parliament, who will at best be asked to rubber stamp decisions he has made inside the No 10 bubble. Because he thinks he knows better.
The arrogant little sh...
ine up your buttons with Brasso,
It's only three Bob a tin.
You can buy it or nick it at Woolie's
But I doubt that they'll have any in.
NY Times blog
None of them goes to a heliport as far as I know.
The car is best.
Embarrass McCarthy by voting en-bloc with him.
https://x.com/louhaigh/status/1709280357382492196?s=46&t=2iv1prQ4P8HyMrM-UX0Dig
The Conservatives literally rubbished this idea in their own rail plan.
And GM warned it could actually make things worse by *increasing* delays on the West Coast Mainline
Only the Conservatives could draw up a plan that could actually make northern transport worse than before.
He tried to ameliorate the nutters, but he didn't let America go over the cliff and ultimately sided with the Democrats to get a bill through before time ran out even though he couldn't carry Gaetz and other loons.
That isn't going to be the case for Birmingham-Manchester, which is already congested. The HS2 express, after travelling on an alignment engineered for 400km/h between London and Birmingham, will have to follow the 60mph Northern stopper along the suburban lines into Manchester. Absolutely ludicrous.
None of this Ezekiel ‘4:9 overpriced muck for me…
What about freight?
If they could fit more trains on existing track why is there a capacity fucking issue?
Jeez. It is enough to make you weep.
A PM pulls an all-nighter with a couple of spreadsheets and a coke and wrecks an entire generation of rail capacity planning.