A quarter of the £36bn that the Government will save by axing HS2 in the North is to be spent on potholes, it has emerged...
And 150% of the money saved is going to be spent on increased debt servicing caused by Truss.
The increase in our interest payments was not caused by Truss. It has been caused by the increase in base rates that we have seen around the world since the inflation genie escaped the bottle. If Truss had never happened our costs today would have been much the same.
We are paying the price for living beyond our means, for pretending we could get through lockdowns without economic consequences, for subsidising the Ukraine war on credit and for spending absurd amounts trying to protect the middle classes from a higher gas bill. Sooner or later reality catches up with us.
Bingo, 100% right.
So basically we dumped Truss for Sunak for nothing.
Sunak is infinitely worse than Truss. Truss fucked up a mini budget, but most of that was purely presentational not economic and had already rolled it back and brought Hunt in before she went.
Sunak just has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. He has the popularity of Truss, the integrity of Johnson, the party management of May, the hubris of Cameron and rolled up with the economics of Brown.
I think you're underestimating the importance of presentation. I don't just mean politically. Our entire economy and way of life rests on the idea of sane competence amongst the important people and institutions.
People talk about fiat currencies. Well I think we should talk about fiat polities. Without that, we have the barbarism of whoever the nearest painlord or goodies-distributor controlling our local fief. Presentation is what soothes differences without us all resorting to violence and corruption.
A quarter of the £36bn that the Government will save by axing HS2 in the North is to be spent on potholes, it has emerged...
And 150% of the money saved is going to be spent on increased debt servicing caused by Truss.
The increase in our interest payments was not caused by Truss. It has been caused by the increase in base rates that we have seen around the world since the inflation genie escaped the bottle. If Truss had never happened our costs today would have been much the same.
We are paying the price for living beyond our means, for pretending we could get through lockdowns without economic consequences, for subsidising the Ukraine war on credit and for spending absurd amounts trying to protect the middle classes from a higher gas bill. Sooner or later reality catches up with us.
This is true, but this "fake news" has become truth in many voters minds.
And nobody really wants to admit the real situation is as you say living beyond our means for many many years, while piss poor productivity.
Benpointer is bright enough to know he's spouting nonsense about Truss - he's doing it because it's the SKS line to take, for whatever reason.
Not that the scraping A/T - Levels will happen, but politically is there any real interest in doing this?
Surely parents are worried about mortgages, food / energy bills, knife crime, cost of uni....there is literally no benefit to an announcement to overturn the apple cart on education qualifications like this.
The youngsters need better maths skills, I can see that, but lets scrap the whole qualification system, just bizarre. There is zero upside politically or practically.
I don't get the whole "maths at 18" obsession. A-level maths is pretty abstruse. I write fairly complex geometry code these days, inter alia, and even then pretty much everything I need was covered in the GCSE syllabus. Most people don't write complex geometry code.
We need more kids to be getting good maths GCSEs at 16, not poor A-levels (or whatever Sunak's replacement is called) at 18.
No need for it to be A-Levels until 18.
Have higher level (A-Level standard) until 18 for the Maths gifted kids.
Have foundation level (GCSE+ basically) for those who would currently be dropping Maths altogether currently.
And what about the ones struggling with functional skills Level 1? What exactly is the point of continuing to set them up to fail for an extra two years?
The answer to children leaving school functionally illiterate and innumerate is not more A-levels, it is to fix primary education where these things are either learned or not.
The answer to children leaving school functionally illiterate and innumerate is to fix life so that parents are functionally literate and numerate so can help kids learn at home, so parents read books to their children, so that parents can afford to buy books, or bookshelves, so children don't live in overcrowded homes and can live in a home with a bedroom of their own and a desk and a bookshelf so they can study and learn.
There is no magic wand to any of this. I'm sure almost all primary school teachers are doing the best they can, as are almost all secondary school teachers. Its not a magic wand, but funded properly I can't see 2 more years of teaching hurting, particularly if it is set to the pupil's own ability and needs not some "gold standard".
But whatever way you slice it, it comes back to needing to fund it properly. And Sunak won't do that.
On fags / vapes, something I am increasingly seeing is people using Snus. I know it is apparently being widely used by footballers, but I am increasingly seeing normal folk using it.
Hard to believe this was Sunak's first speech to the Party Conference as leader - might very well be his last as well.
The HS2 debacle has overshadowed the week despite the Mail's attempts to portray Braverman as the new Thatcher - the true voice of the nation (the bits of it that read the Mail presumably).
Recent polling suggests we have two poll groupings - one has a Labour lead of 18-22 points with the Conservatives in the mid to high 20s and Labour in the mid to high 40s. The other has the Conservatives just under 30% and Labour around or just over 40%. I presume the difference is sampling methodologies, reallocation of DKs etc but we need to get through Conference season for the dust to settle so in a fortnight or so we'll have a better idea of where we are.
Doesn't really matter, does it? Even if the true score is L42C28, that still points to a terrible outcome for the government.
Remember everyone- the Gold Standard ICM polls from 1996 were in the range L45-50 C26-34 LD14-22. They're pretty much the only polls from that era with a methodology comparable to today.
the interesting question is not "will Richi be PM after the next election?', it's "will he still be PM when the next election is called?"
He will be, because you need somebody to pin a big defeat on, then you clean house.
Hard to believe this was Sunak's first speech to the Party Conference as leader - might very well be his last as well.
The HS2 debacle has overshadowed the week despite the Mail's attempts to portray Braverman as the new Thatcher - the true voice of the nation (the bits of it that read the Mail presumably).
Recent polling suggests we have two poll groupings - one has a Labour lead of 18-22 points with the Conservatives in the mid to high 20s and Labour in the mid to high 40s. The other has the Conservatives just under 30% and Labour around or just over 40%. I presume the difference is sampling methodologies, reallocation of DKs etc but we need to get through Conference season for the dust to settle so in a fortnight or so we'll have a better idea of where we are.
Doesn't really matter, does it? Even if the true score is L42C28, that still points to a terrible outcome for the government.
Remember everyone- the Gold Standard ICM polls from 1996 were in the range L45-50 C26-34 LD14-22. They're pretty much the only polls from that era with a methodology comparable to today.
the interesting question is not "will Richi be PM after the next election?', it's "will he still be PM when the next election is called?"
He will be, because you need somebody to pin a big defeat on, then you clean house.
That was what I thought. Besides, changing PM again would just look silly.
But I'm beginning to wonder- maybe the Sunak is so awful, that it's worth replacing him, what ever the downside, to save a little bit more of the furniture.
Not to win, obviously, but to turn an existential disaster into a mere rout. After all, the alternative is the Conservative Party offering Rishi Sunak to the public to continue being Prime Minister. I mean, really?
A quarter of the £36bn that the Government will save by axing HS2 in the North is to be spent on potholes, it has emerged...
And 150% of the money saved is going to be spent on increased debt servicing caused by Truss.
The increase in our interest payments was not caused by Truss. It has been caused by the increase in base rates that we have seen around the world since the inflation genie escaped the bottle. If Truss had never happened our costs today would have been much the same.
We are paying the price for living beyond our means, for pretending we could get through lockdowns without economic consequences, for subsidising the Ukraine war on credit and for spending absurd amounts trying to protect the middle classes from a higher gas bill. Sooner or later reality catches up with us.
Bingo, 100% right.
So basically we dumped Truss for Sunak for nothing.
Sunak is infinitely worse than Truss. Truss fucked up a mini budget, but most of that was purely presentational not economic and had already rolled it back and brought Hunt in before she went.
Sunak just has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. He has the popularity of Truss, the integrity of Johnson, the party management of May, the hubris of Cameron and rolled up with the economics of Brown.
I think you're underestimating the importance of presentation. I don't just mean politically. Our entire economy and way of life rests on the idea of sane competence amongst the important people and institutions.
People talk about fiat currencies. Well I think we should talk about fiat polities. Without that, we have the barbarism of whoever the nearest painlord or goodies-distributor controlling our local fief. Presentation is what soothes differences without us all resorting to violence and corruption.
This is why I place Truss below Sunak. She's visibly mad. It's hard to trust a system that puts THAT at the head of everything.
And it's why I put Johnson below everyone else. Because his smirking, winking lies and his batting away of conventions were an assault on the very idea of trust. When you have wrongdoers doing their wrongdoing out in the open, that's poison. Britain Trump. Fuck, I've got myself all worked up again!
I did a pretty mammoth walk yesterday: just over 73,000 steps and about 30 miles
I set off from Marlborough with the dog at just after 5:30 on the clearest of dark mornings. I could see thousands of stars and the moon was bright enough to cast a shadow
A couple of miles out of town, walking along the Herepath, we came over the brow of a hill into a misty morning
We got to Avebury where I met my Dad who picked up the dog, and I headed off to Devizes past the Adam and Eve stones
I got briefly lost on the way, and slipped and fell a bit walking down the Wansdyke so I had a muddy leg all day, but got there and visited the Wiltshire museum to see all of the artefacts dug up from the sites I've been seeing
I then headed to my mate's place between Upavon and Amesbury. I met some pigs, then felt a bit guilty about my bacon sandwich lunch
Finally got to my friend's house fourteen hours after I set off, just as it got dark
Looks amazing. I always think of Children of the Stones when I hear Avebury mentioned.
I see mention of Children of the Stones - I press the 'like' button.
On fags / vapes, something I am increasingly seeing is people using Snus. I know it is apparently being widely used by footballers, but I am increasingly seeing normal folk using it.
On fags / vapes, something I am increasingly seeing is people using Snus. I know it is apparently being widely used by footballers, but I am increasingly seeing normal folk using it.
The stuff is seriously bad for you.
I've seen quite a few people on my local social media feeds asking where to buy it. Def. on the up.
Hard to believe this was Sunak's first speech to the Party Conference as leader - might very well be his last as well.
The HS2 debacle has overshadowed the week despite the Mail's attempts to portray Braverman as the new Thatcher - the true voice of the nation (the bits of it that read the Mail presumably).
Recent polling suggests we have two poll groupings - one has a Labour lead of 18-22 points with the Conservatives in the mid to high 20s and Labour in the mid to high 40s. The other has the Conservatives just under 30% and Labour around or just over 40%. I presume the difference is sampling methodologies, reallocation of DKs etc but we need to get through Conference season for the dust to settle so in a fortnight or so we'll have a better idea of where we are.
Doesn't really matter, does it? Even if the true score is L42C28, that still points to a terrible outcome for the government.
Remember everyone- the Gold Standard ICM polls from 1996 were in the range L45-50 C26-34 LD14-22. They're pretty much the only polls from that era with a methodology comparable to today.
the interesting question is not "will Richi be PM after the next election?', it's "will he still be PM when the next election is called?"
He will be, because you need somebody to pin a big defeat on, then you clean house.
Hard to believe this was Sunak's first speech to the Party Conference as leader - might very well be his last as well.
The HS2 debacle has overshadowed the week despite the Mail's attempts to portray Braverman as the new Thatcher - the true voice of the nation (the bits of it that read the Mail presumably).
Recent polling suggests we have two poll groupings - one has a Labour lead of 18-22 points with the Conservatives in the mid to high 20s and Labour in the mid to high 40s. The other has the Conservatives just under 30% and Labour around or just over 40%. I presume the difference is sampling methodologies, reallocation of DKs etc but we need to get through Conference season for the dust to settle so in a fortnight or so we'll have a better idea of where we are.
Doesn't really matter, does it? Even if the true score is L42C28, that still points to a terrible outcome for the government.
Remember everyone- the Gold Standard ICM polls from 1996 were in the range L45-50 C26-34 LD14-22. They're pretty much the only polls from that era with a methodology comparable to today.
the interesting question is not "will Richi be PM after the next election?', it's "will he still be PM when the next election is called?"
He will be, because you need somebody to pin a big defeat on, then you clean house.
That was what I thought. Besides, changing PM again would just look silly.
But I'm beginning to wonder- maybe the Sunak is so awful, that it's worth replacing him, what ever the downside, to save a little bit more of the furniture.
Not to win, obviously, but to turn an existential disaster into a mere rout. After all, the alternative is the Conservative Party offering Rishi Sunak to the public to continue being Prime Minister. I mean, really?
Really?
Yep.
Said it since the start. Electoral dud in a bubble of his own making.
Moving off UK politics for a moment - there's a State election in Hesse this weekend and the polls suggest both the CDU and AfD will advance while the SPD and Greens will drop back.
The CDU are up six points on the last State election, the Greens and SPD down four each and the AfD up three. It looks as though the FDP will just about survive but Linke will exit from the Landtag.
Bavaria also votes on Sunday but this looks a fairly straightforward contest with little change from the last election. The CSU governs with the Free Voters and they enjoy a comfortable majority in the Landtag. That won't change though the CSU may drop fractionally and the FW move forward slightly. The AfD, Greens and SPD will scrap forn the remaining seats with the FDP likely to lose its 11 seats.
Poland votes on Sunday 15th. The latest projection has the ruling PIS (United Front, led by Law and Justice) winning 188 seats in the Sejm with the Civic Coalition bloc of parties on 157, The Left on 46 and the Third Way on 41. The nationalist Confederation (a possible ally for United Poland) has 27 seats.
If this turns out to be correct, we could say one of the main populist nationalist Governments in eastern Europe toppled and a more centrist administration formed which might be interesting.
New Zealand votes the previous day and it looks all over for Labour who are badly trailing National. Christopher Luxon's party looked able to form a majority coalition with ACT but the latest One News poll shows ACT dropping back two points and the combined National/ACT just short of a majority with 59 seats in the 120 seat Parliament. The Labour/Green/Maori group would win 53 seats with Winston Peters, staging one of the biggest political returns possible (think Farage and Reform winning 25 seats at the next UK election) holding the balance with 8 seats.
Famously, Peters abandoned National for Jacinda Ardern's Labour - could he do the same again? It seems inconceivable but you can be sure IF the numbers work, Peters will milk his time in the spotlight for all its worth.
For the first time in my life I want the Tories to lose a general election, actually I want them eviscerated.
Sunak's shafting of the North will not be forgotten or forgiven.
Scorching the earth to ensure HS2 cannot be resurrected by the next government which might only be a year away (without substantial additional cost) is really rather outrageous.
The cancelling of HS2 is made out to be a massive deal but how many people actually travel from Manchester to London on a regular basis?
I only go into London about 4 times a year and I live in the south.
That's not really the point (or probably relevant).
Freeing up the older lines for freight (and moving it off road) would have been the big winner.
No.
Building more roads to carry both freight and passengers would have been a big winner.
If capacity is needed because passengers are trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough. If capacity is needed because freight is trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough.
If capacity is needed to dislocate a fraction of road traffic off the arteries - just build more road artery capacity.
I keep telling you roads are not the answer, and I use the motorway network all day every day. The more roads you make, the more vehicles you encourage and the cycle continues. The M25 was the case in point. You need people out of their cars and freight on the rails. It is the only way forward.
And I keep telling you you're wrong.
95% of freight mileage is moving by roads, so if you get more vehicles on the roads afterwards then what are they moving? The remaining 5%? Or goods not currently getting moved?
If its the latter, there's a word for that. Economic growth!
That's two words.
In 20 years your new roads will be full to the brim again. It won't help long term economic growth.
In 20 years time your railway would be full to the brim too. If railways are a magic bullet why does the WCML have capacity issues? Why doesn't it just magic away all the problems? Could it be that investment is necessary no matter what.
Any infrastructure fills up if your population keeps growing and then you neglect to invest. Had we continuously invested continuously in building new motorways at the rate we were in the 1960s rather than stopping bothering to invest then by now our motorway network would have 7x the mileage that we do today.
And since freight is 95% road anyway, that either means the motorways would have an overabundance of capacity and not be full, or we'd be moving roughly 7x the products that we are today, which a tremendous economic growth.
On fags / vapes, something I am increasingly seeing is people using Snus. I know it is apparently being widely used by footballers, but I am increasingly seeing normal folk using it.
The stuff is seriously bad for you.
Very popular in Scandinavia I think.
Sweden in particular. I believe its supposedly banned from sale in most other European countries (for good reason e.g. gum cancer), but it seems all over the place.
Hard to believe this was Sunak's first speech to the Party Conference as leader - might very well be his last as well.
The HS2 debacle has overshadowed the week despite the Mail's attempts to portray Braverman as the new Thatcher - the true voice of the nation (the bits of it that read the Mail presumably).
Recent polling suggests we have two poll groupings - one has a Labour lead of 18-22 points with the Conservatives in the mid to high 20s and Labour in the mid to high 40s. The other has the Conservatives just under 30% and Labour around or just over 40%. I presume the difference is sampling methodologies, reallocation of DKs etc but we need to get through Conference season for the dust to settle so in a fortnight or so we'll have a better idea of where we are.
Doesn't really matter, does it? Even if the true score is L42C28, that still points to a terrible outcome for the government.
Remember everyone- the Gold Standard ICM polls from 1996 were in the range L45-50 C26-34 LD14-22. They're pretty much the only polls from that era with a methodology comparable to today.
the interesting question is not "will Richi be PM after the next election?', it's "will he still be PM when the next election is called?"
He will be, because you need somebody to pin a big defeat on, then you clean house.
Hard to believe this was Sunak's first speech to the Party Conference as leader - might very well be his last as well.
The HS2 debacle has overshadowed the week despite the Mail's attempts to portray Braverman as the new Thatcher - the true voice of the nation (the bits of it that read the Mail presumably).
Recent polling suggests we have two poll groupings - one has a Labour lead of 18-22 points with the Conservatives in the mid to high 20s and Labour in the mid to high 40s. The other has the Conservatives just under 30% and Labour around or just over 40%. I presume the difference is sampling methodologies, reallocation of DKs etc but we need to get through Conference season for the dust to settle so in a fortnight or so we'll have a better idea of where we are.
Doesn't really matter, does it? Even if the true score is L42C28, that still points to a terrible outcome for the government.
Remember everyone- the Gold Standard ICM polls from 1996 were in the range L45-50 C26-34 LD14-22. They're pretty much the only polls from that era with a methodology comparable to today.
the interesting question is not "will Richi be PM after the next election?', it's "will he still be PM when the next election is called?"
He will be, because you need somebody to pin a big defeat on, then you clean house.
That was what I thought. Besides, changing PM again would just look silly.
But I'm beginning to wonder- maybe the Sunak is so awful, that it's worth replacing him, what ever the downside, to save a little bit more of the furniture.
Not to win, obviously, but to turn an existential disaster into a mere rout. After all, the alternative is the Conservative Party offering Rishi Sunak to the public to continue being Prime Minister. I mean, really?
Really?
Yep.
Said it since the start. Electoral dud in a bubble of his own making.
There literally seems to be nobody but @HYUFD left.
And if Sir Graham Brady's postbag was stuffed full and Sunak went next week then @HYUFD would back his successor just as loyally, so he really shouldn't be counted anyway.
A quarter of the £36bn that the Government will save by axing HS2 in the North is to be spent on potholes, it has emerged...
And 150% of the money saved is going to be spent on increased debt servicing caused by Truss.
The increase in our interest payments was not caused by Truss. It has been caused by the increase in base rates that we have seen around the world since the inflation genie escaped the bottle. If Truss had never happened our costs today would have been much the same.
We are paying the price for living beyond our means, for pretending we could get through lockdowns without economic consequences, for subsidising the Ukraine war on credit and for spending absurd amounts trying to protect the middle classes from a higher gas bill. Sooner or later reality catches up with us.
This is true, but this "fake news" has become truth in many voters minds.
And nobody really wants to admit the real situation is as you say living beyond our means for many many years, while piss poor productivity.
Benpointer is bright enough to know he's spouting nonsense about Truss - he's doing it because it's the SKS line to take, for whatever reason.
I am indeed being a little tongue-in-cheek about this and I certainly accept we'd be facing higher debt servicing costs even without Truss. I should have said "since Truss" (as I did at 18:16) rather than "caused by Truss", although I suspect UK borrowing costs are measurably higher now than they would have been without Truss - tricky to prove though.
My real point is the capital savings of HS2 cuts is dwarfed by the revenue costs of debt servicing.
I agree with the "we've been living beyond our means for years" point. The obvious if unpalatable answer, since no government is able to avoid the essential public spending needed by a modern developed state, is to raise taxes and to raise them on the wealthy - on people like me and quite a few (probably most) of us on here.
£9bn sounds like an astonishingly large sum to spend on potholes. Are they filling them all in with expensive epoxy resin as part of some huge art project?
Moving off UK politics for a moment - there's a State election in Hesse this weekend and the polls suggest both the CDU and AfD will advance while the SPD and Greens will drop back.
The CDU are up six points on the last State election, the Greens and SPD down four each and the AfD up three. It looks as though the FDP will just about survive but Linke will exit from the Landtag.
Bavaria also votes on Sunday but this looks a fairly straightforward contest with little change from the last election. The CSU governs with the Free Voters and they enjoy a comfortable majority in the Landtag. That won't change though the CSU may drop fractionally and the FW move forward slightly. The AfD, Greens and SPD will scrap forn the remaining seats with the FDP likely to lose its 11 seats.
Poland votes on Sunday 15th. The latest projection has the ruling PIS (United Front, led by Law and Justice) winning 188 seats in the Sejm with the Civic Coalition bloc of parties on 157, The Left on 46 and the Third Way on 41. The nationalist Confederation (a possible ally for United Poland) has 27 seats.
If this turns out to be correct, we could say one of the main populist nationalist Governments in eastern Europe toppled and a more centrist administration formed which might be interesting.
New Zealand votes the previous day and it looks all over for Labour who are badly trailing National. Christopher Luxon's party looked able to form a majority coalition with ACT but the latest One News poll shows ACT dropping back two points and the combined National/ACT just short of a majority with 59 seats in the 120 seat Parliament. The Labour/Green/Maori group would win 53 seats with Winston Peters, staging one of the biggest political returns possible (think Farage and Reform winning 25 seats at the next UK election) holding the balance with 8 seats.
Famously, Peters abandoned National for Jacinda Ardern's Labour - could he do the same again? It seems inconceivable but you can be sure IF the numbers work, Peters will milk his time in the spotlight for all its worth.
New Zealand Labour could drop from 50% last time to between 25% and 30%.
A quarter of the £36bn that the Government will save by axing HS2 in the North is to be spent on potholes, it has emerged...
And 150% of the money saved is going to be spent on increased debt servicing caused by Truss.
The increase in our interest payments was not caused by Truss. It has been caused by the increase in base rates that we have seen around the world since the inflation genie escaped the bottle. If Truss had never happened our costs today would have been much the same.
We are paying the price for living beyond our means, for pretending we could get through lockdowns without economic consequences, for subsidising the Ukraine war on credit and for spending absurd amounts trying to protect the middle classes from a higher gas bill. Sooner or later reality catches up with us.
Bingo, 100% right.
So basically we dumped Truss for Sunak for nothing.
Sunak is infinitely worse than Truss. Truss fucked up a mini budget, but most of that was purely presentational not economic and had already rolled it back and brought Hunt in before she went.
Sunak just has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. He has the popularity of Truss, the integrity of Johnson, the party management of May, the hubris of Cameron and rolled up with the economics of Brown.
I think you're underestimating the importance of presentation. I don't just mean politically. Our entire economy and way of life rests on the idea of sane competence amongst the important people and institutions.
People talk about fiat currencies. Well I think we should talk about fiat polities. Without that, we have the barbarism of whoever the nearest painlord or goodies-distributor controlling our local fief. Presentation is what soothes differences without us all resorting to violence and corruption.
This is why I place Truss below Sunak. She's visibly mad. It's hard to trust a system that puts THAT at the head of everything.
And it's why I put Johnson below everyone else. Because his smirking, winking lies and his batting away of conventions were an assault on the very idea of trust. When you have wrongdoers doing their wrongdoing out in the open, that's poison. Britain Trump. Fuck, I've got myself all worked up again!
What you call mad, I see as admittedly gauche but refreshingly honest. Truss says what she believes, believes what she says, and says the same to everyone. I respect and value that a lot.
Not that the scraping A/T - Levels will happen, but politically is there any real interest in doing this?
Surely parents are worried about mortgages, food / energy bills, knife crime, cost of uni....there is literally no benefit to an announcement to overturn the apple cart on education qualifications like this.
The youngsters need better maths skills, I can see that, but lets scrap the whole qualification system, just bizarre. There is zero upside politically or practically.
I don't get the whole "maths at 18" obsession. A-level maths is pretty abstruse. I write fairly complex geometry code these days, inter alia, and even then pretty much everything I need was covered in the GCSE syllabus. Most people don't write complex geometry code.
We need more kids to be getting good maths GCSEs at 16, not poor A-levels (or whatever Sunak's replacement is called) at 18.
No need for it to be A-Levels until 18.
Have higher level (A-Level standard) until 18 for the Maths gifted kids.
Have foundation level (GCSE+ basically) for those who would currently be dropping Maths altogether currently.
And what about the ones struggling with functional skills Level 1? What exactly is the point of continuing to set them up to fail for an extra two years?
The answer to children leaving school functionally illiterate and innumerate is not more A-levels, it is to fix primary education where these things are either learned or not.
The answer to children leaving school functionally illiterate and innumerate is to fix life so that parents are functionally literate and numerate so can help kids learn at home, so parents read books to their children, so that parents can afford to buy books, or bookshelves, so children don't live in overcrowded homes and can live in a home with a bedroom of their own and a desk and a bookshelf so they can study and learn.
There is no magic wand to any of this. I'm sure almost all primary school teachers are doing the best they can, as are almost all secondary school teachers. Its not a magic wand, but funded properly I can't see 2 more years of teaching hurting, particularly if it is set to the pupil's own ability and needs not some "gold standard".
But whatever way you slice it, it comes back to needing to fund it properly. And Sunak won't do that.
Also, hungry children find it harder to learn than well nourished children.
On fags / vapes, something I am increasingly seeing is people using Snus. I know it is apparently being widely used by footballers, but I am increasingly seeing normal folk using it.
The stuff is seriously bad for you.
I've seen quite a few people on my local social media feeds asking where to buy it. Def. on the up.
I did a pretty mammoth walk yesterday: just over 73,000 steps and about 30 miles
I set off from Marlborough with the dog at just after 5:30 on the clearest of dark mornings. I could see thousands of stars and the moon was bright enough to cast a shadow
A couple of miles out of town, walking along the Herepath, we came over the brow of a hill into a misty morning
We got to Avebury where I met my Dad who picked up the dog, and I headed off to Devizes past the Adam and Eve stones
I got briefly lost on the way, and slipped and fell a bit walking down the Wansdyke so I had a muddy leg all day, but got there and visited the Wiltshire museum to see all of the artefacts dug up from the sites I've been seeing
I then headed to my mate's place between Upavon and Amesbury. I met some pigs, then felt a bit guilty about my bacon sandwich lunch
Finally got to my friend's house fourteen hours after I set off, just as it got dark
Looks amazing. I always think of Children of the Stones when I hear Avebury mentioned.
I see mention of Children of the Stones - I press the 'like' button.
A quarter of the £36bn that the Government will save by axing HS2 in the North is to be spent on potholes, it has emerged...
And 150% of the money saved is going to be spent on increased debt servicing caused by Truss.
The increase in our interest payments was not caused by Truss. It has been caused by the increase in base rates that we have seen around the world since the inflation genie escaped the bottle. If Truss had never happened our costs today would have been much the same.
We are paying the price for living beyond our means, for pretending we could get through lockdowns without economic consequences, for subsidising the Ukraine war on credit and for spending absurd amounts trying to protect the middle classes from a higher gas bill. Sooner or later reality catches up with us.
Bingo, 100% right.
So basically we dumped Truss for Sunak for nothing.
Sunak is infinitely worse than Truss. Truss fucked up a mini budget, but most of that was purely presentational not economic and had already rolled it back and brought Hunt in before she went.
Sunak just has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. He has the popularity of Truss, the integrity of Johnson, the party management of May, the hubris of Cameron and rolled up with the economics of Brown.
I think you're underestimating the importance of presentation. I don't just mean politically. Our entire economy and way of life rests on the idea of sane competence amongst the important people and institutions.
People talk about fiat currencies. Well I think we should talk about fiat polities. Without that, we have the barbarism of whoever the nearest painlord or goodies-distributor controlling our local fief. Presentation is what soothes differences without us all resorting to violence and corruption.
This is why I place Truss below Sunak. She's visibly mad. It's hard to trust a system that puts THAT at the head of everything.
And it's why I put Johnson below everyone else. Because his smirking, winking lies and his batting away of conventions were an assault on the very idea of trust. When you have wrongdoers doing their wrongdoing out in the open, that's poison. Britain Trump. Fuck, I've got myself all worked up again!
Sunak has all the integrity of Johnson.
This week just proves it yet again, and not for the first time.
A quarter of the £36bn that the Government will save by axing HS2 in the North is to be spent on potholes, it has emerged...
And 150% of the money saved is going to be spent on increased debt servicing caused by Truss.
The increase in our interest payments was not caused by Truss. It has been caused by the increase in base rates that we have seen around the world since the inflation genie escaped the bottle. If Truss had never happened our costs today would have been much the same.
We are paying the price for living beyond our means, for pretending we could get through lockdowns without economic consequences, for subsidising the Ukraine war on credit and for spending absurd amounts trying to protect the middle classes from a higher gas bill. Sooner or later reality catches up with us.
Bingo, 100% right.
So basically we dumped Truss for Sunak for nothing.
Sunak is infinitely worse than Truss. Truss fucked up a mini budget, but most of that was purely presentational not economic and had already rolled it back and brought Hunt in before she went.
Sunak just has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. He has the popularity of Truss, the integrity of Johnson, the party management of May, the hubris of Cameron and rolled up with the economics of Brown.
I think you're underestimating the importance of presentation. I don't just mean politically. Our entire economy and way of life rests on the idea of sane competence amongst the important people and institutions.
People talk about fiat currencies. Well I think we should talk about fiat polities. Without that, we have the barbarism of whoever the nearest painlord or goodies-distributor controlling our local fief. Presentation is what soothes differences without us all resorting to violence and corruption.
This is why I place Truss below Sunak. She's visibly mad. It's hard to trust a system that puts THAT at the head of everything.
And it's why I put Johnson below everyone else. Because his smirking, winking lies and his batting away of conventions were an assault on the very idea of trust. When you have wrongdoers doing their wrongdoing out in the open, that's poison. Britain Trump. Fuck, I've got myself all worked up again!
Yes it still bewilders me that there are people who think Johnson was a harmless clown and not the absolute poison for our democracy that he undoubtedly was. It will take this country decades to recover from his malign impact on our politics.
Hard to believe this was Sunak's first speech to the Party Conference as leader - might very well be his last as well.
The HS2 debacle has overshadowed the week despite the Mail's attempts to portray Braverman as the new Thatcher - the true voice of the nation (the bits of it that read the Mail presumably).
Recent polling suggests we have two poll groupings - one has a Labour lead of 18-22 points with the Conservatives in the mid to high 20s and Labour in the mid to high 40s. The other has the Conservatives just under 30% and Labour around or just over 40%. I presume the difference is sampling methodologies, reallocation of DKs etc but we need to get through Conference season for the dust to settle so in a fortnight or so we'll have a better idea of where we are.
Doesn't really matter, does it? Even if the true score is L42C28, that still points to a terrible outcome for the government.
Remember everyone- the Gold Standard ICM polls from 1996 were in the range L45-50 C26-34 LD14-22. They're pretty much the only polls from that era with a methodology comparable to today.
the interesting question is not "will Richi be PM after the next election?', it's "will he still be PM when the next election is called?"
He will be, because you need somebody to pin a big defeat on, then you clean house.
Hard to believe this was Sunak's first speech to the Party Conference as leader - might very well be his last as well.
The HS2 debacle has overshadowed the week despite the Mail's attempts to portray Braverman as the new Thatcher - the true voice of the nation (the bits of it that read the Mail presumably).
Recent polling suggests we have two poll groupings - one has a Labour lead of 18-22 points with the Conservatives in the mid to high 20s and Labour in the mid to high 40s. The other has the Conservatives just under 30% and Labour around or just over 40%. I presume the difference is sampling methodologies, reallocation of DKs etc but we need to get through Conference season for the dust to settle so in a fortnight or so we'll have a better idea of where we are.
Doesn't really matter, does it? Even if the true score is L42C28, that still points to a terrible outcome for the government.
Remember everyone- the Gold Standard ICM polls from 1996 were in the range L45-50 C26-34 LD14-22. They're pretty much the only polls from that era with a methodology comparable to today.
the interesting question is not "will Richi be PM after the next election?', it's "will he still be PM when the next election is called?"
He will be, because you need somebody to pin a big defeat on, then you clean house.
That was what I thought. Besides, changing PM again would just look silly.
But I'm beginning to wonder- maybe the Sunak is so awful, that it's worth replacing him, what ever the downside, to save a little bit more of the furniture.
Not to win, obviously, but to turn an existential disaster into a mere rout. After all, the alternative is the Conservative Party offering Rishi Sunak to the public to continue being Prime Minister. I mean, really?
Really?
Yep.
Said it since the start. Electoral dud in a bubble of his own making.
£9bn sounds like an astonishingly large sum to spend on potholes. Are they filling them all in with expensive epoxy resin as part of some huge art project?
They've made the same error Jasper Carrott made when wallpapering.
'Polycell, polyfilla, I don't know the damn difference!'
Hard to believe this was Sunak's first speech to the Party Conference as leader - might very well be his last as well.
The HS2 debacle has overshadowed the week despite the Mail's attempts to portray Braverman as the new Thatcher - the true voice of the nation (the bits of it that read the Mail presumably).
Recent polling suggests we have two poll groupings - one has a Labour lead of 18-22 points with the Conservatives in the mid to high 20s and Labour in the mid to high 40s. The other has the Conservatives just under 30% and Labour around or just over 40%. I presume the difference is sampling methodologies, reallocation of DKs etc but we need to get through Conference season for the dust to settle so in a fortnight or so we'll have a better idea of where we are.
Doesn't really matter, does it? Even if the true score is L42C28, that still points to a terrible outcome for the government.
Remember everyone- the Gold Standard ICM polls from 1996 were in the range L45-50 C26-34 LD14-22. They're pretty much the only polls from that era with a methodology comparable to today.
the interesting question is not "will Richi be PM after the next election?', it's "will he still be PM when the next election is called?"
He will be, because you need somebody to pin a big defeat on, then you clean house.
Hard to believe this was Sunak's first speech to the Party Conference as leader - might very well be his last as well.
The HS2 debacle has overshadowed the week despite the Mail's attempts to portray Braverman as the new Thatcher - the true voice of the nation (the bits of it that read the Mail presumably).
Recent polling suggests we have two poll groupings - one has a Labour lead of 18-22 points with the Conservatives in the mid to high 20s and Labour in the mid to high 40s. The other has the Conservatives just under 30% and Labour around or just over 40%. I presume the difference is sampling methodologies, reallocation of DKs etc but we need to get through Conference season for the dust to settle so in a fortnight or so we'll have a better idea of where we are.
Doesn't really matter, does it? Even if the true score is L42C28, that still points to a terrible outcome for the government.
Remember everyone- the Gold Standard ICM polls from 1996 were in the range L45-50 C26-34 LD14-22. They're pretty much the only polls from that era with a methodology comparable to today.
the interesting question is not "will Richi be PM after the next election?', it's "will he still be PM when the next election is called?"
He will be, because you need somebody to pin a big defeat on, then you clean house.
That was what I thought. Besides, changing PM again would just look silly.
But I'm beginning to wonder- maybe the Sunak is so awful, that it's worth replacing him, what ever the downside, to save a little bit more of the furniture.
Not to win, obviously, but to turn an existential disaster into a mere rout. After all, the alternative is the Conservative Party offering Rishi Sunak to the public to continue being Prime Minister. I mean, really?
Really?
Yep.
Said it since the start. Electoral dud in a bubble of his own making.
Hard to believe this was Sunak's first speech to the Party Conference as leader - might very well be his last as well.
The HS2 debacle has overshadowed the week despite the Mail's attempts to portray Braverman as the new Thatcher - the true voice of the nation (the bits of it that read the Mail presumably).
Recent polling suggests we have two poll groupings - one has a Labour lead of 18-22 points with the Conservatives in the mid to high 20s and Labour in the mid to high 40s. The other has the Conservatives just under 30% and Labour around or just over 40%. I presume the difference is sampling methodologies, reallocation of DKs etc but we need to get through Conference season for the dust to settle so in a fortnight or so we'll have a better idea of where we are.
Doesn't really matter, does it? Even if the true score is L42C28, that still points to a terrible outcome for the government.
Remember everyone- the Gold Standard ICM polls from 1996 were in the range L45-50 C26-34 LD14-22. They're pretty much the only polls from that era with a methodology comparable to today.
the interesting question is not "will Richi be PM after the next election?', it's "will he still be PM when the next election is called?"
He will be, because you need somebody to pin a big defeat on, then you clean house.
Hard to believe this was Sunak's first speech to the Party Conference as leader - might very well be his last as well.
The HS2 debacle has overshadowed the week despite the Mail's attempts to portray Braverman as the new Thatcher - the true voice of the nation (the bits of it that read the Mail presumably).
Recent polling suggests we have two poll groupings - one has a Labour lead of 18-22 points with the Conservatives in the mid to high 20s and Labour in the mid to high 40s. The other has the Conservatives just under 30% and Labour around or just over 40%. I presume the difference is sampling methodologies, reallocation of DKs etc but we need to get through Conference season for the dust to settle so in a fortnight or so we'll have a better idea of where we are.
Doesn't really matter, does it? Even if the true score is L42C28, that still points to a terrible outcome for the government.
Remember everyone- the Gold Standard ICM polls from 1996 were in the range L45-50 C26-34 LD14-22. They're pretty much the only polls from that era with a methodology comparable to today.
the interesting question is not "will Richi be PM after the next election?', it's "will he still be PM when the next election is called?"
He will be, because you need somebody to pin a big defeat on, then you clean house.
That was what I thought. Besides, changing PM again would just look silly.
But I'm beginning to wonder- maybe the Sunak is so awful, that it's worth replacing him, what ever the downside, to save a little bit more of the furniture.
Not to win, obviously, but to turn an existential disaster into a mere rout. After all, the alternative is the Conservative Party offering Rishi Sunak to the public to continue being Prime Minister. I mean, really?
Really?
Remember that the Conservative party membership would choose the next leader, unless the MPs could agree only one candidate. Would Braverman do a better job than Sunak?
For the first time in my life I want the Tories to lose a general election, actually I want them eviscerated.
Sunak's shafting of the North will not be forgotten or forgiven.
He announced a whole range of new transport projects for the North
Only to see if Labour will promise to do them, not with any intention of disturbing a single sod of northern soil.
The whole thing was a combination of Sunak's personal whim and 'look, I can do bold change'.
Appalling day for Britain plc frankly.
I am incandescent.
The lack of awareness on his part of the complete absence of genuine mandate for any of this; the sheer mendacity of allowing contacts costing hundreds of millions to be signed while he denied making a decision which he'd already made; the petty cynicism of having his (perfectly charming) wife, whose being 'dragged into politics' he'd previously complained of, front up the speech ...
I don't think any party conference speech has ever made such an impact for me, either.
A quarter of the £36bn that the Government will save by axing HS2 in the North is to be spent on potholes, it has emerged...
And 150% of the money saved is going to be spent on increased debt servicing caused by Truss.
The increase in our interest payments was not caused by Truss. It has been caused by the increase in base rates that we have seen around the world since the inflation genie escaped the bottle. If Truss had never happened our costs today would have been much the same.
We are paying the price for living beyond our means, for pretending we could get through lockdowns without economic consequences, for subsidising the Ukraine war on credit and for spending absurd amounts trying to protect the middle classes from a higher gas bill. Sooner or later reality catches up with us.
Bingo, 100% right.
So basically we dumped Truss for Sunak for nothing.
Sunak is infinitely worse than Truss. Truss fucked up a mini budget, but most of that was purely presentational not economic and had already rolled it back and brought Hunt in before she went.
Sunak just has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. He has the popularity of Truss, the integrity of Johnson, the party management of May, the hubris of Cameron and rolled up with the economics of Brown.
I think you're underestimating the importance of presentation. I don't just mean politically. Our entire economy and way of life rests on the idea of sane competence amongst the important people and institutions.
People talk about fiat currencies. Well I think we should talk about fiat polities. Without that, we have the barbarism of whoever the nearest painlord or goodies-distributor controlling our local fief. Presentation is what soothes differences without us all resorting to violence and corruption.
This is why I place Truss below Sunak. She's visibly mad. It's hard to trust a system that puts THAT at the head of everything.
And it's why I put Johnson below everyone else. Because his smirking, winking lies and his batting away of conventions were an assault on the very idea of trust. When you have wrongdoers doing their wrongdoing out in the open, that's poison. Britain Trump. Fuck, I've got myself all worked up again!
What you call mad, I see as admittedly gauche but refreshingly honest. Truss says what she believes, believes what she says, and says the same to everyone. I respect and value that a lot.
Do they have the equivalent of GCSEs there, or are their 18 qualifications the first major exams people sit?
Each state is different, I was in Victoria and the VCE is their A-Level equivalent at 18. There is no GCSE equivalent.
I did the International Baccalaureate myself though as was always planning on returning home and did at 17 to start University [I'd skipped a year so had finished school by 17].
But yes, the system there is school runs until 18 (no school/college divide) and 18 is when you sit your exams, not 16 and 18.
To be perfectly honest, I'm not convinced I see the point in GCSEs now that we have compulsory education until 18 anyway. Seems to me like most of teachers work now seems to be teaching to exams, rather than teaching for furthering education.
If we're going to reform A-Levels, it should be part of an overall package of reform and as a left-field suggestion I'd suggest abolishing GCSEs as part of that package. Have kids until 16 getting educated, not practicing for exams, have the exams at 18 not 16 then 18.
Hard to believe this was Sunak's first speech to the Party Conference as leader - might very well be his last as well.
The HS2 debacle has overshadowed the week despite the Mail's attempts to portray Braverman as the new Thatcher - the true voice of the nation (the bits of it that read the Mail presumably).
Recent polling suggests we have two poll groupings - one has a Labour lead of 18-22 points with the Conservatives in the mid to high 20s and Labour in the mid to high 40s. The other has the Conservatives just under 30% and Labour around or just over 40%. I presume the difference is sampling methodologies, reallocation of DKs etc but we need to get through Conference season for the dust to settle so in a fortnight or so we'll have a better idea of where we are.
Doesn't really matter, does it? Even if the true score is L42C28, that still points to a terrible outcome for the government.
Remember everyone- the Gold Standard ICM polls from 1996 were in the range L45-50 C26-34 LD14-22. They're pretty much the only polls from that era with a methodology comparable to today.
the interesting question is not "will Richi be PM after the next election?', it's "will he still be PM when the next election is called?"
He will be, because you need somebody to pin a big defeat on, then you clean house.
Hard to believe this was Sunak's first speech to the Party Conference as leader - might very well be his last as well.
The HS2 debacle has overshadowed the week despite the Mail's attempts to portray Braverman as the new Thatcher - the true voice of the nation (the bits of it that read the Mail presumably).
Recent polling suggests we have two poll groupings - one has a Labour lead of 18-22 points with the Conservatives in the mid to high 20s and Labour in the mid to high 40s. The other has the Conservatives just under 30% and Labour around or just over 40%. I presume the difference is sampling methodologies, reallocation of DKs etc but we need to get through Conference season for the dust to settle so in a fortnight or so we'll have a better idea of where we are.
Doesn't really matter, does it? Even if the true score is L42C28, that still points to a terrible outcome for the government.
Remember everyone- the Gold Standard ICM polls from 1996 were in the range L45-50 C26-34 LD14-22. They're pretty much the only polls from that era with a methodology comparable to today.
the interesting question is not "will Richi be PM after the next election?', it's "will he still be PM when the next election is called?"
He will be, because you need somebody to pin a big defeat on, then you clean house.
That was what I thought. Besides, changing PM again would just look silly.
But I'm beginning to wonder- maybe the Sunak is so awful, that it's worth replacing him, what ever the downside, to save a little bit more of the furniture.
Not to win, obviously, but to turn an existential disaster into a mere rout. After all, the alternative is the Conservative Party offering Rishi Sunak to the public to continue being Prime Minister. I mean, really?
Really?
Yep.
Said it since the start. Electoral dud in a bubble of his own making.
Hard to believe this was Sunak's first speech to the Party Conference as leader - might very well be his last as well.
The HS2 debacle has overshadowed the week despite the Mail's attempts to portray Braverman as the new Thatcher - the true voice of the nation (the bits of it that read the Mail presumably).
Recent polling suggests we have two poll groupings - one has a Labour lead of 18-22 points with the Conservatives in the mid to high 20s and Labour in the mid to high 40s. The other has the Conservatives just under 30% and Labour around or just over 40%. I presume the difference is sampling methodologies, reallocation of DKs etc but we need to get through Conference season for the dust to settle so in a fortnight or so we'll have a better idea of where we are.
Doesn't really matter, does it? Even if the true score is L42C28, that still points to a terrible outcome for the government.
Remember everyone- the Gold Standard ICM polls from 1996 were in the range L45-50 C26-34 LD14-22. They're pretty much the only polls from that era with a methodology comparable to today.
the interesting question is not "will Richi be PM after the next election?', it's "will he still be PM when the next election is called?"
He will be, because you need somebody to pin a big defeat on, then you clean house.
Hard to believe this was Sunak's first speech to the Party Conference as leader - might very well be his last as well.
The HS2 debacle has overshadowed the week despite the Mail's attempts to portray Braverman as the new Thatcher - the true voice of the nation (the bits of it that read the Mail presumably).
Recent polling suggests we have two poll groupings - one has a Labour lead of 18-22 points with the Conservatives in the mid to high 20s and Labour in the mid to high 40s. The other has the Conservatives just under 30% and Labour around or just over 40%. I presume the difference is sampling methodologies, reallocation of DKs etc but we need to get through Conference season for the dust to settle so in a fortnight or so we'll have a better idea of where we are.
Doesn't really matter, does it? Even if the true score is L42C28, that still points to a terrible outcome for the government.
Remember everyone- the Gold Standard ICM polls from 1996 were in the range L45-50 C26-34 LD14-22. They're pretty much the only polls from that era with a methodology comparable to today.
the interesting question is not "will Richi be PM after the next election?', it's "will he still be PM when the next election is called?"
He will be, because you need somebody to pin a big defeat on, then you clean house.
That was what I thought. Besides, changing PM again would just look silly.
But I'm beginning to wonder- maybe the Sunak is so awful, that it's worth replacing him, what ever the downside, to save a little bit more of the furniture.
Not to win, obviously, but to turn an existential disaster into a mere rout. After all, the alternative is the Conservative Party offering Rishi Sunak to the public to continue being Prime Minister. I mean, really?
Really?
Remember that the Conservative party membership would choose the next leader, unless the MPs could agree only one candidate. Would Braverman do a better job than Sunak?
What Blackadder said to Baldrick on being asked if his departure made Baldrick the new butler.
£9bn sounds like an astonishingly large sum to spend on potholes. Are they filling them all in with expensive epoxy resin as part of some huge art project?
No, but they are only using Tory donor companies to do the work.
For the first time in my life I want the Tories to lose a general election, actually I want them eviscerated.
Sunak's shafting of the North will not be forgotten or forgiven.
Scorching the earth to ensure HS2 cannot be resurrected by the next government which might only be a year away (without substantial additional cost) is really rather outrageous.
The cancelling of HS2 is made out to be a massive deal but how many people actually travel from Manchester to London on a regular basis?
I only go into London about 4 times a year and I live in the south.
That's not really the point (or probably relevant).
Freeing up the older lines for freight (and moving it off road) would have been the big winner.
No.
Building more roads to carry both freight and passengers would have been a big winner.
If capacity is needed because passengers are trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough. If capacity is needed because freight is trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough.
If capacity is needed to dislocate a fraction of road traffic off the arteries - just build more road artery capacity.
I keep telling you roads are not the answer, and I use the motorway network all day every day. The more roads you make, the more vehicles you encourage and the cycle continues. The M25 was the case in point. You need people out of their cars and freight on the rails. It is the only way forward.
And I keep telling you you're wrong.
95% of freight mileage is moving by roads, so if you get more vehicles on the roads afterwards then what are they moving? The remaining 5%? Or goods not currently getting moved?
If its the latter, there's a word for that. Economic growth!
That's two words.
In 20 years your new roads will be full to the brim again. It won't help long term economic growth.
In 20 years time your railway would be full to the brim too. If railways are a magic bullet why does the WCML have capacity issues? Why doesn't it just magic away all the problems? Could it be that investment is necessary no matter what.
Any infrastructure fills up if your population keeps growing and then you neglect to invest. Had we continuously invested continuously in building new motorways at the rate we were in the 1960s rather than stopping bothering to invest then by now our motorway network would have 7x the mileage that we do today.
And since freight is 95% road anyway, that either means the motorways would have an overabundance of capacity and not be full, or we'd be moving roughly 7x the products that we are today, which a tremendous economic growth.
Either way - win/win.
As an aside, and I am reminded about this by Rishi Pothole, I sometimes ponder with amazement the massive capital investment that went into asphalting a quarter of a million miles of unsurfaced road in Britain, largely in the 1920s and 30s, I believe.
Given the difficulty of getting even a few miles of disintegrating road resurfaced around here it seems astounding that the whole road network was ever surfaced.
Do they have the equivalent of GCSEs there, or are their 18 qualifications the first major exams people sit?
Each state is different, I was in Victoria and the VCE is their A-Level equivalent at 18. There is no GCSE equivalent.
I did the International Baccalaureate myself though as was always planning on returning home and did at 17 to start University [I'd skipped a year so had finished school by 17].
But yes, the system there is school runs until 18 (no school/college divide) and 18 is when you sit your exams, not 16 and 18.
To be perfectly honest, I'm not convinced I see the point in GCSEs now that we have compulsory education until 18 anyway. Seems to me like most of teachers work now seems to be teaching to exams, rather than teaching for furthering education.
If we're going to reform A-Levels, it should be part of an overall package of reform and as a left-field suggestion I'd suggest abolishing GCSEs as part of that package. Have kids until 16 getting educated, not practicing for exams, have the exams at 18 not 16 then 18.
Thank you, that's what I thought (although I didn't know it varied by state).
I don't think your suggestion of abolishing GCSEs is left field, I think that's a sensible suggestion. In fact, I've suggested it before. I'd get rid of SATs too, for much the same reason.
What worries me is that if - as Sunak seems to be suggesting - the idea is for current A-levels plus extra subjects including maths and English, on top of GCSEs we're going to have the most grossly over-examined children in the world by the time they start uni.
Also, we won't have enough teachers. Maths is already in crisis and English is heading that way due to Gove's reforms.
For the first time in my life I want the Tories to lose a general election, actually I want them eviscerated.
Sunak's shafting of the North will not be forgotten or forgiven.
He announced a whole range of new transport projects for the North
Only to see if Labour will promise to do them, not with any intention of disturbing a single sod of northern soil.
The whole thing was a combination of Sunak's personal whim and 'look, I can do bold change'.
Appalling day for Britain plc frankly.
I am incandescent.
The lack of awareness on his part of the complete absence of genuine mandate for any of this; the sheer mendacity of allowing contacts costing hundreds of millions to be signed while he denied making a decision which he'd already made; the petty cynicism of having his (perfectly charming) wife, whose being 'dragged into politics' he'd previously complained of, front up the speech ...
I don't think any party conference speech has ever made such an impact for me, either.
[Commercial voiceover voice:] Rishi Sunak: Everything you hated about Boris Johnson, but without the winning grin or way with words.
For the first time in my life I want the Tories to lose a general election, actually I want them eviscerated.
Sunak's shafting of the North will not be forgotten or forgiven.
Scorching the earth to ensure HS2 cannot be resurrected by the next government which might only be a year away (without substantial additional cost) is really rather outrageous.
The cancelling of HS2 is made out to be a massive deal but how many people actually travel from Manchester to London on a regular basis?
I only go into London about 4 times a year and I live in the south.
That's not really the point (or probably relevant).
Freeing up the older lines for freight (and moving it off road) would have been the big winner.
No.
Building more roads to carry both freight and passengers would have been a big winner.
If capacity is needed because passengers are trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough. If capacity is needed because freight is trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough.
If capacity is needed to dislocate a fraction of road traffic off the arteries - just build more road artery capacity.
I keep telling you roads are not the answer, and I use the motorway network all day every day. The more roads you make, the more vehicles you encourage and the cycle continues. The M25 was the case in point. You need people out of their cars and freight on the rails. It is the only way forward.
And I keep telling you you're wrong.
95% of freight mileage is moving by roads, so if you get more vehicles on the roads afterwards then what are they moving? The remaining 5%? Or goods not currently getting moved?
If its the latter, there's a word for that. Economic growth!
That's two words.
In 20 years your new roads will be full to the brim again. It won't help long term economic growth.
In 20 years time your railway would be full to the brim too. If railways are a magic bullet why does the WCML have capacity issues? Why doesn't it just magic away all the problems? Could it be that investment is necessary no matter what.
Any infrastructure fills up if your population keeps growing and then you neglect to invest. Had we continuously invested continuously in building new motorways at the rate we were in the 1960s rather than stopping bothering to invest then by now our motorway network would have 7x the mileage that we do today.
And since freight is 95% road anyway, that either means the motorways would have an overabundance of capacity and not be full, or we'd be moving roughly 7x the products that we are today, which a tremendous economic growth.
Either way - win/win.
As an aside, and I am reminded about this by Rishi Pothole, I sometimes ponder with amazement the massive capital investment that went into asphalting a quarter of a million miles of unsurfaced road in Britain, largely in the 1920s and 30s, I believe.
Given the difficulty of getting even a few miles of disintegrating road resurfaced around here it seems astounding that the whole road network was ever surfaced.
Of course when we have done massive investment in our transport infrastructure, it has always resulted in massive economic growth per capita.
The last rapid GDP per capita growth we had was when the motorway network was built. Since we stopped investing in it, GDP per capita has stalled.
Its almost as if real investment (not slapping the word investment on operational expenditure) works.
A quarter of the £36bn that the Government will save by axing HS2 in the North is to be spent on potholes, it has emerged...
And 150% of the money saved is going to be spent on increased debt servicing caused by Truss.
The increase in our interest payments was not caused by Truss. It has been caused by the increase in base rates that we have seen around the world since the inflation genie escaped the bottle. If Truss had never happened our costs today would have been much the same.
We are paying the price for living beyond our means, for pretending we could get through lockdowns without economic consequences, for subsidising the Ukraine war on credit and for spending absurd amounts trying to protect the middle classes from a higher gas bill. Sooner or later reality catches up with us.
This is true, but this "fake news" has become truth in many voters minds.
And nobody really wants to admit the real situation is as you say living beyond our means for many many years, while piss poor productivity.
Benpointer is bright enough to know he's spouting nonsense about Truss - he's doing it because it's the SKS line to take, for whatever reason.
I am indeed being a little tongue-in-cheek about this and I certainly accept we'd be facing higher debt servicing costs even without Truss. I should have said "since Truss" (as I did at 18:16) rather than "caused by Truss", although I suspect UK borrowing costs are measurably higher now than they would have been without Truss - tricky to prove though.
My real point is the capital savings of HS2 cuts is dwarfed by the revenue costs of debt servicing.
I agree with the "we've been living beyond our means for years" point. The obvious if unpalatable answer, since no government is able to avoid the essential public spending needed by a modern developed state, is to raise taxes and to raise them on the wealthy - on people like me and quite a few (probably most) of us on here.
You may not like it but that's the only answer.
Except it doesn't really work. Raising taxes in wealth drives away wealth. Raising taxes in income drives away work. Raising taxes on spending drives down spending. There's only so much money you can raise by raising taxes before it becomes counter productive. In my view we passed that some time ago. We either have to increase productivity or spend less.
Not that the scraping A/T - Levels will happen, but politically is there any real interest in doing this?
Surely parents are worried about mortgages, food / energy bills, knife crime, cost of uni....there is literally no benefit to an announcement to overturn the apple cart on education qualifications like this.
The youngsters need better maths skills, I can see that, but lets scrap the whole qualification system, just bizarre. There is zero upside politically or practically.
I don't get the whole "maths at 18" obsession. A-level maths is pretty abstruse. I write fairly complex geometry code these days, inter alia, and even then pretty much everything I need was covered in the GCSE syllabus. Most people don't write complex geometry code.
We need more kids to be getting good maths GCSEs at 16, not poor A-levels (or whatever Sunak's replacement is called) at 18.
No need for it to be A-Levels until 18.
Have higher level (A-Level standard) until 18 for the Maths gifted kids.
Have foundation level (GCSE+ basically) for those who would currently be dropping Maths altogether currently.
And what about the ones struggling with functional skills Level 1? What exactly is the point of continuing to set them up to fail for an extra two years?
The answer to children leaving school functionally illiterate and innumerate is not more A-levels, it is to fix primary education where these things are either learned or not.
The answer to children leaving school functionally illiterate and innumerate is to fix life so that parents are functionally literate and numerate so can help kids learn at home, so parents read books to their children, so that parents can afford to buy books, or bookshelves, so children don't live in overcrowded homes and can live in a home with a bedroom of their own and a desk and a bookshelf so they can study and learn.
There is no magic wand to any of this. I'm sure almost all primary school teachers are doing the best they can, as are almost all secondary school teachers. Its not a magic wand, but funded properly I can't see 2 more years of teaching hurting, particularly if it is set to the pupil's own ability and needs not some "gold standard".
But whatever way you slice it, it comes back to needing to fund it properly. And Sunak won't do that.
This is all true.
And the corollary is that - given that broken homes do exist and are going to exist for the foreseeable future - the single best investment Government can make is in properly resourcing special needs education. So the "doing the best they can" teachers can concentrate on teaching maths to the 95% of the class, rather than on restraining the 5% which is currently setting fire to the school, biting the teaching assistant, or strangling poor little Jake on the same table. It isn't a magic wand, but it's the closest there is.
A quarter of the £36bn that the Government will save by axing HS2 in the North is to be spent on potholes, it has emerged...
And 150% of the money saved is going to be spent on increased debt servicing caused by Truss.
The increase in our interest payments was not caused by Truss. It has been caused by the increase in base rates that we have seen around the world since the inflation genie escaped the bottle. If Truss had never happened our costs today would have been much the same.
We are paying the price for living beyond our means, for pretending we could get through lockdowns without economic consequences, for subsidising the Ukraine war on credit and for spending absurd amounts trying to protect the middle classes from a higher gas bill. Sooner or later reality catches up with us.
This is true, but this "fake news" has become truth in many voters minds.
And nobody really wants to admit the real situation is as you say living beyond our means for many many years, while piss poor productivity.
Benpointer is bright enough to know he's spouting nonsense about Truss - he's doing it because it's the SKS line to take, for whatever reason.
I am indeed being a little tongue-in-cheek about this and I certainly accept we'd be facing higher debt servicing costs even without Truss. I should have said "since Truss" (as I did at 18:16) rather than "caused by Truss", although I suspect UK borrowing costs are measurably higher now than they would have been without Truss - tricky to prove though.
My real point is the capital savings of HS2 cuts is dwarfed by the revenue costs of debt servicing.
I agree with the "we've been living beyond our means for years" point. The obvious if unpalatable answer, since no government is able to avoid the essential public spending needed by a modern developed state, is to raise taxes and to raise them on the wealthy - on people like me and quite a few (probably most) of us on here.
You may not like it but that's the only answer.
But 'since Truss' ignores the fact that yields had been rising consistently before her, as well as continuing to rise consistently since her.
... Sunak’s tenure as the Chancellor of the Exchequer saw 10-year gilt yields increase by 376 per cent. His replacement, Nadhim Zahawi, presided over 10-year gilt yields rising by 38 per cent. Neither Chancellor saw many complaints about this from the press, however. Whilst Kwasi Kwarteng was Chancellor, 10-year gilt yields continued to increase, up 41 per cent from 3.0865 to 4.3462. This is not dissimilar from the increase under Zahawi and certainly less than the increase under Sunak, but still the commentary and comedy circuit is sure that it was the Truss/Kwarteng Government that broke the UK economy... https://thecritic.co.uk/why-truss-was-right/
No, the obvious answer is to lower taxes and stimulate economic activity. Does it occur to anyone just *why* the USA has been on a mission to get everyone else to raise their CT levels?
That proposal would leave large sections of the East Midlands without rail services at all (as the IRP would have done) because it would utterly destroy capacity.
Not that the scraping A/T - Levels will happen, but politically is there any real interest in doing this?
Surely parents are worried about mortgages, food / energy bills, knife crime, cost of uni....there is literally no benefit to an announcement to overturn the apple cart on education qualifications like this.
The youngsters need better maths skills, I can see that, but lets scrap the whole qualification system, just bizarre. There is zero upside politically or practically.
I don't get the whole "maths at 18" obsession. A-level maths is pretty abstruse. I write fairly complex geometry code these days, inter alia, and even then pretty much everything I need was covered in the GCSE syllabus. Most people don't write complex geometry code.
We need more kids to be getting good maths GCSEs at 16, not poor A-levels (or whatever Sunak's replacement is called) at 18.
No need for it to be A-Levels until 18.
Have higher level (A-Level standard) until 18 for the Maths gifted kids.
Have foundation level (GCSE+ basically) for those who would currently be dropping Maths altogether currently.
And what about the ones struggling with functional skills Level 1? What exactly is the point of continuing to set them up to fail for an extra two years?
The answer to children leaving school functionally illiterate and innumerate is not more A-levels, it is to fix primary education where these things are either learned or not.
The answer to children leaving school functionally illiterate and innumerate is to fix life so that parents are functionally literate and numerate so can help kids learn at home, so parents read books to their children, so that parents can afford to buy books, or bookshelves, so children don't live in overcrowded homes and can live in a home with a bedroom of their own and a desk and a bookshelf so they can study and learn.
There is no magic wand to any of this. I'm sure almost all primary school teachers are doing the best they can, as are almost all secondary school teachers. Its not a magic wand, but funded properly I can't see 2 more years of teaching hurting, particularly if it is set to the pupil's own ability and needs not some "gold standard".
But whatever way you slice it, it comes back to needing to fund it properly. And Sunak won't do that.
This is all true.
And the corollary is that - given that broken homes do exist and are going to exist for the foreseeable future - the single best investment Government can make is in properly resourcing special needs education. So the "doing the best they can" teachers can concentrate on teaching maths to the 95% of the class, rather than on restraining the 5% which is currently setting fire to the school, biting the teaching assistant, or strangling poor little Jake on the same table. It isn't a magic wand, but it's the closest there is.
How dare you suggest a sensible solution, sir?
Next, you'll be suggesting we fire all those scum at the DfE merely for being (a) preternaturally useless and (b) drunk all day every day.
For the first time in my life I want the Tories to lose a general election, actually I want them eviscerated.
Sunak's shafting of the North will not be forgotten or forgiven.
Scorching the earth to ensure HS2 cannot be resurrected by the next government which might only be a year away (without substantial additional cost) is really rather outrageous.
The cancelling of HS2 is made out to be a massive deal but how many people actually travel from Manchester to London on a regular basis?
I only go into London about 4 times a year and I live in the south.
That's not really the point (or probably relevant).
Freeing up the older lines for freight (and moving it off road) would have been the big winner.
No.
Building more roads to carry both freight and passengers would have been a big winner.
If capacity is needed because passengers are trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough. If capacity is needed because freight is trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough.
If capacity is needed to dislocate a fraction of road traffic off the arteries - just build more road artery capacity.
I keep telling you roads are not the answer, and I use the motorway network all day every day. The more roads you make, the more vehicles you encourage and the cycle continues. The M25 was the case in point. You need people out of their cars and freight on the rails. It is the only way forward.
And I keep telling you you're wrong.
95% of freight mileage is moving by roads, so if you get more vehicles on the roads afterwards then what are they moving? The remaining 5%? Or goods not currently getting moved?
If its the latter, there's a word for that. Economic growth!
That's two words.
In 20 years your new roads will be full to the brim again. It won't help long term economic growth.
In 20 years time your railway would be full to the brim too. If railways are a magic bullet why does the WCML have capacity issues? Why doesn't it just magic away all the problems? Could it be that investment is necessary no matter what.
Any infrastructure fills up if your population keeps growing and then you neglect to invest. Had we continuously invested continuously in building new motorways at the rate we were in the 1960s rather than stopping bothering to invest then by now our motorway network would have 7x the mileage that we do today.
And since freight is 95% road anyway, that either means the motorways would have an overabundance of capacity and not be full, or we'd be moving roughly 7x the products that we are today, which a tremendous economic growth.
Either way - win/win.
As an aside, and I am reminded about this by Rishi Pothole, I sometimes ponder with amazement the massive capital investment that went into asphalting a quarter of a million miles of unsurfaced road in Britain, largely in the 1920s and 30s, I believe.
Given the difficulty of getting even a few miles of disintegrating road resurfaced around here it seems astounding that the whole road network was ever surfaced.
Lots of unemployed ... narrower roads ... and a much smaller job, basically just tarring over the macadam (gravel, stone and foundation) that was already there, I'd think?
For the first time in my life I want the Tories to lose a general election, actually I want them eviscerated.
Sunak's shafting of the North will not be forgotten or forgiven.
He announced a whole range of new transport projects for the North
Only to see if Labour will promise to do them, not with any intention of disturbing a single sod of northern soil.
The whole thing was a combination of Sunak's personal whim and 'look, I can do bold change'.
Appalling day for Britain plc frankly.
I am incandescent.
The lack of awareness on his part of the complete absence of genuine mandate for any of this; the sheer mendacity of allowing contacts costing hundreds of millions to be signed while he denied making a decision which he'd already made; the petty cynicism of having his (perfectly charming) wife, whose being 'dragged into politics' he'd previously complained of, front up the speech ...
I don't think any party conference speech has ever made such an impact for me, either.
[Commercial voiceover voice:] Rishi Sunak: Everything you hated about Boris Johnson, but without the winning grin or way with words.
They're a spivvy estate agent flogging a building with potential.
The rest of us are thinking: "NFW!"
I hope that's not your new garden cabin Cyclefree!
No.
Currently negotiating to buy the land on which it sits so that I can have a beach hut. I will spend my final days there looking out at this. Frankly, given the state of everything, those days can't come soon enough.
That proposal would leave large sections of the East Midlands without rail services at all (as the IRP would have done) because it would utterly destroy capacity.
Hasn't Chris Packham done exactly the same? Both advocating for people to break the law & say he doesn't think he has any choice to do the same. But no visit from the rozzas yet.
I think Whacko Packo has been a good deal less explicit than Lozza. He has expressed celebration of and support for Hunt Sabs ("top work"), and said (you say) that he sees 'no alternative other than to break the law'.
(BTW Packo called for vandalism of building sites - removing netting from hedges - a couple of years ago on the radio, but nothing happened.)
Lozza has been explicit (see the vid I linked - BBB is quite careful and objective), and ties himself in with Blade Runners, and declares he will be out there with his chainsaw doing it.
Perhaps Lozza is just far more stupid than Packham.
A quarter of the £36bn that the Government will save by axing HS2 in the North is to be spent on potholes, it has emerged...
And 150% of the money saved is going to be spent on increased debt servicing caused by Truss.
The increase in our interest payments was not caused by Truss. It has been caused by the increase in base rates that we have seen around the world since the inflation genie escaped the bottle. If Truss had never happened our costs today would have been much the same.
We are paying the price for living beyond our means, for pretending we could get through lockdowns without economic consequences, for subsidising the Ukraine war on credit and for spending absurd amounts trying to protect the middle classes from a higher gas bill. Sooner or later reality catches up with us.
This is true, but this "fake news" has become truth in many voters minds.
And nobody really wants to admit the real situation is as you say living beyond our means for many many years, while piss poor productivity.
Benpointer is bright enough to know he's spouting nonsense about Truss - he's doing it because it's the SKS line to take, for whatever reason.
I am indeed being a little tongue-in-cheek about this and I certainly accept we'd be facing higher debt servicing costs even without Truss. I should have said "since Truss" (as I did at 18:16) rather than "caused by Truss", although I suspect UK borrowing costs are measurably higher now than they would have been without Truss - tricky to prove though.
My real point is the capital savings of HS2 cuts is dwarfed by the revenue costs of debt servicing.
I agree with the "we've been living beyond our means for years" point. The obvious if unpalatable answer, since no government is able to avoid the essential public spending needed by a modern developed state, is to raise taxes and to raise them on the wealthy - on people like me and quite a few (probably most) of us on here.
You may not like it but that's the only answer.
Except it doesn't really work. Raising taxes in wealth drives away wealth. Raising taxes in income drives away work. Raising taxes on spending drives down spending. There's only so much money you can raise by raising taxes before it becomes counter productive. In my view we passed that some time ago. We either have to increase productivity or spend less.
If you care about the economy, not votes, there are plenty of taxes that could be raised without driving away anything, except votes.
EG why the hell should pensions, especially gold-plated ones, be taxed less than salaries. Tax income highly people work less, tax pensions the same as income and . . . what? They're not going to retire? They're not going to take the pension? There's no reason other than pandering to the grey vote to tax salaries any higher than other incomes.
Or you can tax land. Especially sound is a land value tax, so that developing land means its not taxed any more, but holding banks of land is taxed just as highly as holding developed land. Again what's going to happen if they're taxed? People will make less land?
The problem is our taxes are the lowest, are the taxes that are most efficient, because of pandering to voters not caring about the economy.
For the first time in my life I want the Tories to lose a general election, actually I want them eviscerated.
Sunak's shafting of the North will not be forgotten or forgiven.
Scorching the earth to ensure HS2 cannot be resurrected by the next government which might only be a year away (without substantial additional cost) is really rather outrageous.
The cancelling of HS2 is made out to be a massive deal but how many people actually travel from Manchester to London on a regular basis?
I only go into London about 4 times a year and I live in the south.
That's not really the point (or probably relevant).
Freeing up the older lines for freight (and moving it off road) would have been the big winner.
No.
Building more roads to carry both freight and passengers would have been a big winner.
If capacity is needed because passengers are trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough. If capacity is needed because freight is trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough.
If capacity is needed to dislocate a fraction of road traffic off the arteries - just build more road artery capacity.
I keep telling you roads are not the answer, and I use the motorway network all day every day. The more roads you make, the more vehicles you encourage and the cycle continues. The M25 was the case in point. You need people out of their cars and freight on the rails. It is the only way forward.
And I keep telling you you're wrong.
95% of freight mileage is moving by roads, so if you get more vehicles on the roads afterwards then what are they moving? The remaining 5%? Or goods not currently getting moved?
If its the latter, there's a word for that. Economic growth!
That's two words.
In 20 years your new roads will be full to the brim again. It won't help long term economic growth.
In 20 years time your railway would be full to the brim too. If railways are a magic bullet why does the WCML have capacity issues? Why doesn't it just magic away all the problems? Could it be that investment is necessary no matter what.
Any infrastructure fills up if your population keeps growing and then you neglect to invest. Had we continuously invested continuously in building new motorways at the rate we were in the 1960s rather than stopping bothering to invest then by now our motorway network would have 7x the mileage that we do today.
And since freight is 95% road anyway, that either means the motorways would have an overabundance of capacity and not be full, or we'd be moving roughly 7x the products that we are today, which a tremendous economic growth.
Either way - win/win.
As an aside, and I am reminded about this by Rishi Pothole, I sometimes ponder with amazement the massive capital investment that went into asphalting a quarter of a million miles of unsurfaced road in Britain, largely in the 1920s and 30s, I believe.
Given the difficulty of getting even a few miles of disintegrating road resurfaced around here it seems astounding that the whole road network was ever surfaced.
Lots of unemployed ... narrower roads ... and a much smaller job, basically just tarring over the macadam (gravel, stone and foundation) that was already there, I'd think?
I think the real wonder is the massive road building programme of the 50s and 60s. All the motorways, all the dual carriageways, most A-roads and many B-roads widened - especially noticeable in Scotland and Wales of course, where previously roads were very very narrow.
For the first time in my life I want the Tories to lose a general election, actually I want them eviscerated.
Sunak's shafting of the North will not be forgotten or forgiven.
Scorching the earth to ensure HS2 cannot be resurrected by the next government which might only be a year away (without substantial additional cost) is really rather outrageous.
The cancelling of HS2 is made out to be a massive deal but how many people actually travel from Manchester to London on a regular basis?
I only go into London about 4 times a year and I live in the south.
That's not really the point (or probably relevant).
Freeing up the older lines for freight (and moving it off road) would have been the big winner.
No.
Building more roads to carry both freight and passengers would have been a big winner.
If capacity is needed because passengers are trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough. If capacity is needed because freight is trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough.
If capacity is needed to dislocate a fraction of road traffic off the arteries - just build more road artery capacity.
I keep telling you roads are not the answer, and I use the motorway network all day every day. The more roads you make, the more vehicles you encourage and the cycle continues. The M25 was the case in point. You need people out of their cars and freight on the rails. It is the only way forward.
And I keep telling you you're wrong.
95% of freight mileage is moving by roads, so if you get more vehicles on the roads afterwards then what are they moving? The remaining 5%? Or goods not currently getting moved?
If its the latter, there's a word for that. Economic growth!
That's two words.
In 20 years your new roads will be full to the brim again. It won't help long term economic growth.
In 20 years time your railway would be full to the brim too. If railways are a magic bullet why does the WCML have capacity issues? Why doesn't it just magic away all the problems? Could it be that investment is necessary no matter what.
Any infrastructure fills up if your population keeps growing and then you neglect to invest. Had we continuously invested continuously in building new motorways at the rate we were in the 1960s rather than stopping bothering to invest then by now our motorway network would have 7x the mileage that we do today.
And since freight is 95% road anyway, that either means the motorways would have an overabundance of capacity and not be full, or we'd be moving roughly 7x the products that we are today, which a tremendous economic growth.
Either way - win/win.
As an aside, and I am reminded about this by Rishi Pothole, I sometimes ponder with amazement the massive capital investment that went into asphalting a quarter of a million miles of unsurfaced road in Britain, largely in the 1920s and 30s, I believe.
Given the difficulty of getting even a few miles of disintegrating road resurfaced around here it seems astounding that the whole road network was ever surfaced.
Of course when we have done massive investment in our transport infrastructure, it has always resulted in massive economic growth per capita.
The last rapid GDP per capita growth we had was when the motorway network was built. Since we stopped investing in it, GDP per capita has stalled.
Its almost as if real investment (not slapping the word investment on operational expenditure) works.
I agree with you about most economical issues, but I think you might be confusing correlation with causation there. The economy enjoyed something of a post-war boom, therefore we built motorways, would be another, and potentially just as plausible explanation. Of course, there's probably an element of both.
On fags / vapes, something I am increasingly seeing is people using Snus. I know it is apparently being widely used by footballers, but I am increasingly seeing normal folk using it.
The HS2 debacle is like having an electrician spend a week only half-finishing the installation of your fuse box, then pointing at dangling wires and asking “which cowboy did this”. After you say “you did”, they shrug and tell you they are going to rewire the kitchen instead.
Or it’s like an electrician on your fuse box looking at the dangling wires and pointing out that the guys he took over the company from had sold you the job based on prices from 2008 when you were putting in the new kitchen and the basement conversion but since then your partner lost their job, the the roof needed replacing, the cost of wires has gone up ten times, and whilst it would be nice to put in the wiring and points you wanted in 2008 you don’t have the money to do it and send your kids to private school but he can make sure the kettle and the oven still work and also put in the new sockets with the holes for chargers that are actually more useful than the LED lights in the basement gym you can’t justify anymore.
I was looking at the historical costs for Phase 2 HS2 today. Contrary to popular opinion, they've actually remained pretty stable since they were first set out in 2013. Phase 1 has gone up and up, but Phase 2 has not, really.
I thought the tories were at last getting a few votes their way the other few weeks with their policies announcements ,even HS2 cancelllation was probably vote neutral in the sense it is a large sum to spend on a few commuters but the rubbish about banning cigs for adults just smacks of first order nanny state wokism - exactly what was turning off voters in the past few years from the tories .
For the first time in my life I want the Tories to lose a general election, actually I want them eviscerated.
Sunak's shafting of the North will not be forgotten or forgiven.
Scorching the earth to ensure HS2 cannot be resurrected by the next government which might only be a year away (without substantial additional cost) is really rather outrageous.
The cancelling of HS2 is made out to be a massive deal but how many people actually travel from Manchester to London on a regular basis?
I only go into London about 4 times a year and I live in the south.
That's not really the point (or probably relevant).
Freeing up the older lines for freight (and moving it off road) would have been the big winner.
No.
Building more roads to carry both freight and passengers would have been a big winner.
If capacity is needed because passengers are trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough. If capacity is needed because freight is trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough.
If capacity is needed to dislocate a fraction of road traffic off the arteries - just build more road artery capacity.
I keep telling you roads are not the answer, and I use the motorway network all day every day. The more roads you make, the more vehicles you encourage and the cycle continues. The M25 was the case in point. You need people out of their cars and freight on the rails. It is the only way forward.
And I keep telling you you're wrong.
95% of freight mileage is moving by roads, so if you get more vehicles on the roads afterwards then what are they moving? The remaining 5%? Or goods not currently getting moved?
If its the latter, there's a word for that. Economic growth!
That's two words.
In 20 years your new roads will be full to the brim again. It won't help long term economic growth.
In 20 years time your railway would be full to the brim too. If railways are a magic bullet why does the WCML have capacity issues? Why doesn't it just magic away all the problems? Could it be that investment is necessary no matter what.
Any infrastructure fills up if your population keeps growing and then you neglect to invest. Had we continuously invested continuously in building new motorways at the rate we were in the 1960s rather than stopping bothering to invest then by now our motorway network would have 7x the mileage that we do today.
And since freight is 95% road anyway, that either means the motorways would have an overabundance of capacity and not be full, or we'd be moving roughly 7x the products that we are today, which a tremendous economic growth.
Either way - win/win.
As an aside, and I am reminded about this by Rishi Pothole, I sometimes ponder with amazement the massive capital investment that went into asphalting a quarter of a million miles of unsurfaced road in Britain, largely in the 1920s and 30s, I believe.
Given the difficulty of getting even a few miles of disintegrating road resurfaced around here it seems astounding that the whole road network was ever surfaced.
Lots of unemployed ... narrower roads ... and a much smaller job, basically just tarring over the macadam (gravel, stone and foundation) that was already there, I'd think?
I think the real wonder is the massive road building programme of the 50s and 60s. All the motorways, all the dual carriageways, most A-roads and many B-roads widened - especially noticeable in Scotland and Wales of course, where previously roads were very very narrow.
And now they all need replacing...
Not just replacing and since our population has grown 25% but no investment has happened in that time, but adding to too.
Instead of HS2 we should have had M6 (2) (not to be confused with M62). Or better, have it as well as HS2.
That proposal would leave large sections of the East Midlands without rail services at all (as the IRP would have done) because it would utterly destroy capacity.
For the first time in my life I want the Tories to lose a general election, actually I want them eviscerated.
Sunak's shafting of the North will not be forgotten or forgiven.
Scorching the earth to ensure HS2 cannot be resurrected by the next government which might only be a year away (without substantial additional cost) is really rather outrageous.
The cancelling of HS2 is made out to be a massive deal but how many people actually travel from Manchester to London on a regular basis?
I only go into London about 4 times a year and I live in the south.
That's not really the point (or probably relevant).
Freeing up the older lines for freight (and moving it off road) would have been the big winner.
No.
Building more roads to carry both freight and passengers would have been a big winner.
If capacity is needed because passengers are trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough. If capacity is needed because freight is trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough.
If capacity is needed to dislocate a fraction of road traffic off the arteries - just build more road artery capacity.
I keep telling you roads are not the answer, and I use the motorway network all day every day. The more roads you make, the more vehicles you encourage and the cycle continues. The M25 was the case in point. You need people out of their cars and freight on the rails. It is the only way forward.
And I keep telling you you're wrong.
95% of freight mileage is moving by roads, so if you get more vehicles on the roads afterwards then what are they moving? The remaining 5%? Or goods not currently getting moved?
If its the latter, there's a word for that. Economic growth!
That's two words.
In 20 years your new roads will be full to the brim again. It won't help long term economic growth.
In 20 years time your railway would be full to the brim too. If railways are a magic bullet why does the WCML have capacity issues? Why doesn't it just magic away all the problems? Could it be that investment is necessary no matter what.
Any infrastructure fills up if your population keeps growing and then you neglect to invest. Had we continuously invested continuously in building new motorways at the rate we were in the 1960s rather than stopping bothering to invest then by now our motorway network would have 7x the mileage that we do today.
And since freight is 95% road anyway, that either means the motorways would have an overabundance of capacity and not be full, or we'd be moving roughly 7x the products that we are today, which a tremendous economic growth.
Either way - win/win.
As an aside, and I am reminded about this by Rishi Pothole, I sometimes ponder with amazement the massive capital investment that went into asphalting a quarter of a million miles of unsurfaced road in Britain, largely in the 1920s and 30s, I believe.
Given the difficulty of getting even a few miles of disintegrating road resurfaced around here it seems astounding that the whole road network was ever surfaced.
Lots of unemployed ... narrower roads ... and a much smaller job, basically just tarring over the macadam (gravel, stone and foundation) that was already there, I'd think?
I think the real wonder is the massive road building programme of the 50s and 60s. All the motorways, all the dual carriageways, most A-roads and many B-roads widened - especially noticeable in Scotland and Wales of course, where previously roads were very very narrow.
And now they all need replacing...
Bridges might cause some toothsucking. As I understand it, the mass obsolescence of road bridges in the US since the big boom in roads postwar has been a concern. But IANAEngineer.
A quarter of the £36bn that the Government will save by axing HS2 in the North is to be spent on potholes, it has emerged...
And 150% of the money saved is going to be spent on increased debt servicing caused by Truss.
The increase in our interest payments was not caused by Truss. It has been caused by the increase in base rates that we have seen around the world since the inflation genie escaped the bottle. If Truss had never happened our costs today would have been much the same.
We are paying the price for living beyond our means, for pretending we could get through lockdowns without economic consequences, for subsidising the Ukraine war on credit and for spending absurd amounts trying to protect the middle classes from a higher gas bill. Sooner or later reality catches up with us.
Bingo, 100% right.
So basically we dumped Truss for Sunak for nothing.
Sunak is infinitely worse than Truss. Truss fucked up a mini budget, but most of that was purely presentational not economic and had already rolled it back and brought Hunt in before she went.
Sunak just has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. He has the popularity of Truss, the integrity of Johnson, the party management of May, the hubris of Cameron and rolled up with the economics of Brown.
I think you're underestimating the importance of presentation. I don't just mean politically. Our entire economy and way of life rests on the idea of sane competence amongst the important people and institutions.
People talk about fiat currencies. Well I think we should talk about fiat polities. Without that, we have the barbarism of whoever the nearest painlord or goodies-distributor controlling our local fief. Presentation is what soothes differences without us all resorting to violence and corruption.
This is why I place Truss below Sunak. She's visibly mad. It's hard to trust a system that puts THAT at the head of everything.
And it's why I put Johnson below everyone else. Because his smirking, winking lies and his batting away of conventions were an assault on the very idea of trust. When you have wrongdoers doing their wrongdoing out in the open, that's poison. Britain Trump. Fuck, I've got myself all worked up again!
What you call mad, I see as admittedly gauche but refreshingly honest. Truss says what she believes, believes what she says, and says the same to everyone. I respect and value that a lot.
All of that might be true - but she is utterly unsuited to be a PM.
For the first time in my life I want the Tories to lose a general election, actually I want them eviscerated.
Sunak's shafting of the North will not be forgotten or forgiven.
Scorching the earth to ensure HS2 cannot be resurrected by the next government which might only be a year away (without substantial additional cost) is really rather outrageous.
The cancelling of HS2 is made out to be a massive deal but how many people actually travel from Manchester to London on a regular basis?
I only go into London about 4 times a year and I live in the south.
That's not really the point (or probably relevant).
Freeing up the older lines for freight (and moving it off road) would have been the big winner.
No.
Building more roads to carry both freight and passengers would have been a big winner.
If capacity is needed because passengers are trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough. If capacity is needed because freight is trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough.
If capacity is needed to dislocate a fraction of road traffic off the arteries - just build more road artery capacity.
I keep telling you roads are not the answer, and I use the motorway network all day every day. The more roads you make, the more vehicles you encourage and the cycle continues. The M25 was the case in point. You need people out of their cars and freight on the rails. It is the only way forward.
Logically there must be an endpoint to the demand induced by building better roads. I'm only willing to travel for so long to get to work, say 40 minutes. If I drive at a steady 70mph on an empty motorway that's only 46 miles. If you were to build a road network which allowed this, then my individual demand will cease to grow despite more and better roads being built near me. Actually, in my area this is pretty much the case - my average speed for my current commute is about 50mph, and I'm only using single carriageway A roads (on most of which traffic flows at 65-75mph).
More to the point, demand growing because of additional roads tells you that there is phenomenal pent up demand for more road travel, some of which is released by building more roads. Presumably that leads to at least some economic growth, unless people are making all these additional journeys for the love of driving.
But when the new roads reach saturation, economic growth from those roads stalls again and we need more roads and so the cycle goes on.
For the first time in my life I want the Tories to lose a general election, actually I want them eviscerated.
Sunak's shafting of the North will not be forgotten or forgiven.
Scorching the earth to ensure HS2 cannot be resurrected by the next government which might only be a year away (without substantial additional cost) is really rather outrageous.
The cancelling of HS2 is made out to be a massive deal but how many people actually travel from Manchester to London on a regular basis?
I only go into London about 4 times a year and I live in the south.
That's not really the point (or probably relevant).
Freeing up the older lines for freight (and moving it off road) would have been the big winner.
No.
Building more roads to carry both freight and passengers would have been a big winner.
If capacity is needed because passengers are trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough. If capacity is needed because freight is trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough.
If capacity is needed to dislocate a fraction of road traffic off the arteries - just build more road artery capacity.
I keep telling you roads are not the answer, and I use the motorway network all day every day. The more roads you make, the more vehicles you encourage and the cycle continues. The M25 was the case in point. You need people out of their cars and freight on the rails. It is the only way forward.
And I keep telling you you're wrong.
95% of freight mileage is moving by roads, so if you get more vehicles on the roads afterwards then what are they moving? The remaining 5%? Or goods not currently getting moved?
If its the latter, there's a word for that. Economic growth!
That's two words.
In 20 years your new roads will be full to the brim again. It won't help long term economic growth.
In 20 years time your railway would be full to the brim too. If railways are a magic bullet why does the WCML have capacity issues? Why doesn't it just magic away all the problems? Could it be that investment is necessary no matter what.
Any infrastructure fills up if your population keeps growing and then you neglect to invest. Had we continuously invested continuously in building new motorways at the rate we were in the 1960s rather than stopping bothering to invest then by now our motorway network would have 7x the mileage that we do today.
And since freight is 95% road anyway, that either means the motorways would have an overabundance of capacity and not be full, or we'd be moving roughly 7x the products that we are today, which a tremendous economic growth.
Either way - win/win.
As an aside, and I am reminded about this by Rishi Pothole, I sometimes ponder with amazement the massive capital investment that went into asphalting a quarter of a million miles of unsurfaced road in Britain, largely in the 1920s and 30s, I believe.
Given the difficulty of getting even a few miles of disintegrating road resurfaced around here it seems astounding that the whole road network was ever surfaced.
Lots of unemployed ... narrower roads ... and a much smaller job, basically just tarring over the macadam (gravel, stone and foundation) that was already there, I'd think?
I think the real wonder is the massive road building programme of the 50s and 60s. All the motorways, all the dual carriageways, most A-roads and many B-roads widened - especially noticeable in Scotland and Wales of course, where previously roads were very very narrow.
And now they all need replacing...
Bridges might cause some toothsucking. As I understand it, the mass obsolescence of road bridges in the US since the big boom in roads postwar has been a concern. But IANAEngineer.
They did a lot of work on the Oldbury viaduct just before Covid.
Alarmingly, they found it was not only in a much worse state than they thought, but in much too bad a state to do a full repair on as they had neither the time nor the money to do so.
They just patched it up and are hoping it doesn't collapse.
For the first time in my life I want the Tories to lose a general election, actually I want them eviscerated.
Sunak's shafting of the North will not be forgotten or forgiven.
Scorching the earth to ensure HS2 cannot be resurrected by the next government which might only be a year away (without substantial additional cost) is really rather outrageous.
The cancelling of HS2 is made out to be a massive deal but how many people actually travel from Manchester to London on a regular basis?
I only go into London about 4 times a year and I live in the south.
That's not really the point (or probably relevant).
Freeing up the older lines for freight (and moving it off road) would have been the big winner.
No.
Building more roads to carry both freight and passengers would have been a big winner.
If capacity is needed because passengers are trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough. If capacity is needed because freight is trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough.
If capacity is needed to dislocate a fraction of road traffic off the arteries - just build more road artery capacity.
I keep telling you roads are not the answer, and I use the motorway network all day every day. The more roads you make, the more vehicles you encourage and the cycle continues. The M25 was the case in point. You need people out of their cars and freight on the rails. It is the only way forward.
And I keep telling you you're wrong.
95% of freight mileage is moving by roads, so if you get more vehicles on the roads afterwards then what are they moving? The remaining 5%? Or goods not currently getting moved?
If its the latter, there's a word for that. Economic growth!
That's two words.
In 20 years your new roads will be full to the brim again. It won't help long term economic growth.
In 20 years time your railway would be full to the brim too. If railways are a magic bullet why does the WCML have capacity issues? Why doesn't it just magic away all the problems? Could it be that investment is necessary no matter what.
Any infrastructure fills up if your population keeps growing and then you neglect to invest. Had we continuously invested continuously in building new motorways at the rate we were in the 1960s rather than stopping bothering to invest then by now our motorway network would have 7x the mileage that we do today.
And since freight is 95% road anyway, that either means the motorways would have an overabundance of capacity and not be full, or we'd be moving roughly 7x the products that we are today, which a tremendous economic growth.
Either way - win/win.
As an aside, and I am reminded about this by Rishi Pothole, I sometimes ponder with amazement the massive capital investment that went into asphalting a quarter of a million miles of unsurfaced road in Britain, largely in the 1920s and 30s, I believe.
Given the difficulty of getting even a few miles of disintegrating road resurfaced around here it seems astounding that the whole road network was ever surfaced.
Of course when we have done massive investment in our transport infrastructure, it has always resulted in massive economic growth per capita.
The last rapid GDP per capita growth we had was when the motorway network was built. Since we stopped investing in it, GDP per capita has stalled.
Its almost as if real investment (not slapping the word investment on operational expenditure) works.
I agree with you about most economical issues, but I think you might be confusing correlation with causation there. The economy enjoyed something of a post-war boom, therefore we built motorways, would be another, and potentially just as plausible explanation. Of course, there's probably an element of both.
No there's a causative relationship, the motorways are quite literally the arteries of our economy, it unlocked the capacity to move goods we'd never seen before - or due to a neglect in investment since an increase in capacity we've never seen again since.
As I've said many times before 95% of freight movement happens on the roads. If those motorways weren't there, those goods would simply not all be getting moved, since local roads would never have had the capacity to carry that volume of goods.
Had we continued investing in motorways at the rate we were in the 60s then we'd have about 7x the arteries that we have now. Now either those would all be fairly smooth running at 1/7th the volume, or we'd have extra volume moving about coming off the local roads (so local roads would be quiet), or we'd have far more goods being moved which would be goods not currently being moved since we're already at 95% being moved by road freight.
Realistically it'd be a combination of all 3. And the third, is real economic growth.
A levels really dont need scraping either - not sure why Sunak has concentrated on a buy body policy on cigs and a arrogant thinking he knows best to scrap A levels that have stood the test of time (no pun) for more than 70 years.
For the first time in my life I want the Tories to lose a general election, actually I want them eviscerated.
Sunak's shafting of the North will not be forgotten or forgiven.
Scorching the earth to ensure HS2 cannot be resurrected by the next government which might only be a year away (without substantial additional cost) is really rather outrageous.
The cancelling of HS2 is made out to be a massive deal but how many people actually travel from Manchester to London on a regular basis?
I only go into London about 4 times a year and I live in the south.
That's not really the point (or probably relevant).
Freeing up the older lines for freight (and moving it off road) would have been the big winner.
No.
Building more roads to carry both freight and passengers would have been a big winner.
If capacity is needed because passengers are trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough. If capacity is needed because freight is trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough.
If capacity is needed to dislocate a fraction of road traffic off the arteries - just build more road artery capacity.
I keep telling you roads are not the answer, and I use the motorway network all day every day. The more roads you make, the more vehicles you encourage and the cycle continues. The M25 was the case in point. You need people out of their cars and freight on the rails. It is the only way forward.
Logically there must be an endpoint to the demand induced by building better roads. I'm only willing to travel for so long to get to work, say 40 minutes. If I drive at a steady 70mph on an empty motorway that's only 46 miles. If you were to build a road network which allowed this, then my individual demand will cease to grow despite more and better roads being built near me. Actually, in my area this is pretty much the case - my average speed for my current commute is about 50mph, and I'm only using single carriageway A roads (on most of which traffic flows at 65-75mph).
More to the point, demand growing because of additional roads tells you that there is phenomenal pent up demand for more road travel, some of which is released by building more roads. Presumably that leads to at least some economic growth, unless people are making all these additional journeys for the love of driving.
But when the new roads reach saturation, economic growth from those roads stalls again and we need more roads and so the cycle goes on.
So don't stop investing in infrastructure.
Problem solved.
All infrastructure runs out of capacity if you don't invest and you have rampant population growth and no investment. Nothing unique about roads, or rail, or anything else about that. That's why all our infrastructure is at capacity.
I thought the tories were at last getting a few votes their way the other few weeks with their policies announcements ,even HS2 cancelllation was probably vote neutral in the sense it is a large sum to spend on a few commuters but the rubbish about banning cigs for adults just smacks of first order nanny state wokism - exactly what was turning off voters in the past few years from the tories .
I'm sure the Mail will hail the Conference as a huge success, Sunak the greatest leader since Thatcher and Braverman the greatest leader-in-waiting since, er, Thatcher.
The Express will be similarly complimentary while adding the election of Starmer and Labour will condemn us to unending darkness, wailing and teeth gnashing, starvation, plagues of locusts etc.
All of which can be prevented by steadfast voting.
On fags / vapes, something I am increasingly seeing is people using Snus. I know it is apparently being widely used by footballers, but I am increasingly seeing normal folk using it.
A levels really dont need scraping either - not sure why Sunak has concentrated on a buy body policy on cigs and a arrogant thinking he knows best to scrap A levels that have stood the test of time (no pun) for more than 70 years.
They haven't. The current system dates from 2016 and replaced one set up in 2000.
And incidentally the current system is shit, which makes it bizarre Sunak has said he's 'proud' of the government's record in it. In a field of stiff competition this has been the worst government ever for education.
I suspect Cummings wrote that part, because he doesn't want to admit just what an epochal failure his ignorance and stupidity has wrought (if his rather limited intellect can even begin to grasp it).
There is definitely a case to be made for dramatic changes, but that case is not being made. The information so far suggests an even bigger disaster in the making.
The rail industry has been busy today telling us HS2 is all about capacity - not speed. In which case it was a rotten project name. If it was about capacity why did we not build a slower line, built to a lower, cheaper spec? Presumably it could bend round obstacles more easily and therefore require less tunnels - making the project even cheaper. It could have happily stopped at old oak, avoided the centre of Birmingham altogether, stopping at NEC and then onto Manchester. The new line handles freight and local commuter traffic and the WCML concentrates only on intercity. Is that what we really needed but got seduced by Japanese bullet trains?
The rail industry has been busy today telling us HS2 is all about capacity - not speed. In which case it was a rotten project name. If it was about capacity why did we not build a slower line, built to a lower, cheaper spec? Presumably it could bend round obstacles more easily and therefore require less tunnels - making the project even cheaper. It could have happily stopped at old oak, avoided the centre of Birmingham altogether, stopping at NEC and then onto Manchester. The new line handles freight and local commuter traffic and the WCML concentrates only on intercity. Is that what we really needed but got seduced by Japanese bullet trains?
Because high speed is part of what gives it the capacity.
A quarter of the £36bn that the Government will save by axing HS2 in the North is to be spent on potholes, it has emerged...
And 150% of the money saved is going to be spent on increased debt servicing caused by Truss.
The increase in our interest payments was not caused by Truss. It has been caused by the increase in base rates that we have seen around the world since the inflation genie escaped the bottle. If Truss had never happened our costs today would have been much the same.
We are paying the price for living beyond our means, for pretending we could get through lockdowns without economic consequences, for subsidising the Ukraine war on credit and for spending absurd amounts trying to protect the middle classes from a higher gas bill. Sooner or later reality catches up with us.
Bingo, 100% right.
So basically we dumped Truss for Sunak for nothing.
Sunak is infinitely worse than Truss. Truss fucked up a mini budget, but most of that was purely presentational not economic and had already rolled it back and brought Hunt in before she went.
Sunak just has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. He has the popularity of Truss, the integrity of Johnson, the party management of May, the hubris of Cameron and rolled up with the economics of Brown.
For the first time in my life I want the Tories to lose a general election, actually I want them eviscerated.
Sunak's shafting of the North will not be forgotten or forgiven.
Scorching the earth to ensure HS2 cannot be resurrected by the next government which might only be a year away (without substantial additional cost) is really rather outrageous.
The cancelling of HS2 is made out to be a massive deal but how many people actually travel from Manchester to London on a regular basis?
I only go into London about 4 times a year and I live in the south.
That's not really the point (or probably relevant).
Freeing up the older lines for freight (and moving it off road) would have been the big winner.
No.
Building more roads to carry both freight and passengers would have been a big winner.
If capacity is needed because passengers are trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough. If capacity is needed because freight is trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough.
If capacity is needed to dislocate a fraction of road traffic off the arteries - just build more road artery capacity.
I keep telling you roads are not the answer, and I use the motorway network all day every day. The more roads you make, the more vehicles you encourage and the cycle continues. The M25 was the case in point. You need people out of their cars and freight on the rails. It is the only way forward.
And I keep telling you you're wrong.
95% of freight mileage is moving by roads, so if you get more vehicles on the roads afterwards then what are they moving? The remaining 5%? Or goods not currently getting moved?
If its the latter, there's a word for that. Economic growth!
That's two words.
In 20 years your new roads will be full to the brim again. It won't help long term economic growth.
In 20 years time your railway would be full to the brim too. If railways are a magic bullet why does the WCML have capacity issues? Why doesn't it just magic away all the problems? Could it be that investment is necessary no matter what.
Any infrastructure fills up if your population keeps growing and then you neglect to invest. Had we continuously invested continuously in building new motorways at the rate we were in the 1960s rather than stopping bothering to invest then by now our motorway network would have 7x the mileage that we do today.
And since freight is 95% road anyway, that either means the motorways would have an overabundance of capacity and not be full, or we'd be moving roughly 7x the products that we are today, which a tremendous economic growth.
Either way - win/win.
As an aside, and I am reminded about this by Rishi Pothole, I sometimes ponder with amazement the massive capital investment that went into asphalting a quarter of a million miles of unsurfaced road in Britain, largely in the 1920s and 30s, I believe.
Given the difficulty of getting even a few miles of disintegrating road resurfaced around here it seems astounding that the whole road network was ever surfaced.
Lots of unemployed ... narrower roads ... and a much smaller job, basically just tarring over the macadam (gravel, stone and foundation) that was already there, I'd think?
I think the real wonder is the massive road building programme of the 50s and 60s. All the motorways, all the dual carriageways, most A-roads and many B-roads widened - especially noticeable in Scotland and Wales of course, where previously roads were very very narrow.
And now they all need replacing...
Bridges might cause some toothsucking. As I understand it, the mass obsolescence of road bridges in the US since the big boom in roads postwar has been a concern. But IANAEngineer.
They did a lot of work on the Oldbury viaduct just before Covid.
Alarmingly, they found it was not only in a much worse state than they thought, but in much too bad a state to do a full repair on as they had neither the time nor the money to do so.
They just patched it up and are hoping it doesn't collapse.
As am I given how often I drive over it.
And, come to think of it, the Queensferry Crossing (2nd Forth Road Bridge) was built to part replace, part extend the life of the original 1960s Road Bridge. Not sure if that is the case for the Severn one as well, or if that is just traffic increase.
For the first time in my life I want the Tories to lose a general election, actually I want them eviscerated.
Sunak's shafting of the North will not be forgotten or forgiven.
Scorching the earth to ensure HS2 cannot be resurrected by the next government which might only be a year away (without substantial additional cost) is really rather outrageous.
The cancelling of HS2 is made out to be a massive deal but how many people actually travel from Manchester to London on a regular basis?
I only go into London about 4 times a year and I live in the south.
That's not really the point (or probably relevant).
Freeing up the older lines for freight (and moving it off road) would have been the big winner.
No.
Building more roads to carry both freight and passengers would have been a big winner.
If capacity is needed because passengers are trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough. If capacity is needed because freight is trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough.
If capacity is needed to dislocate a fraction of road traffic off the arteries - just build more road artery capacity.
I keep telling you roads are not the answer, and I use the motorway network all day every day. The more roads you make, the more vehicles you encourage and the cycle continues. The M25 was the case in point. You need people out of their cars and freight on the rails. It is the only way forward.
And I keep telling you you're wrong.
95% of freight mileage is moving by roads, so if you get more vehicles on the roads afterwards then what are they moving? The remaining 5%? Or goods not currently getting moved?
If its the latter, there's a word for that. Economic growth!
That's two words.
In 20 years your new roads will be full to the brim again. It won't help long term economic growth.
In 20 years time your railway would be full to the brim too. If railways are a magic bullet why does the WCML have capacity issues? Why doesn't it just magic away all the problems? Could it be that investment is necessary no matter what.
Any infrastructure fills up if your population keeps growing and then you neglect to invest. Had we continuously invested continuously in building new motorways at the rate we were in the 1960s rather than stopping bothering to invest then by now our motorway network would have 7x the mileage that we do today.
And since freight is 95% road anyway, that either means the motorways would have an overabundance of capacity and not be full, or we'd be moving roughly 7x the products that we are today, which a tremendous economic growth.
Either way - win/win.
As an aside, and I am reminded about this by Rishi Pothole, I sometimes ponder with amazement the massive capital investment that went into asphalting a quarter of a million miles of unsurfaced road in Britain, largely in the 1920s and 30s, I believe.
Given the difficulty of getting even a few miles of disintegrating road resurfaced around here it seems astounding that the whole road network was ever surfaced.
Lots of unemployed ... narrower roads ... and a much smaller job, basically just tarring over the macadam (gravel, stone and foundation) that was already there, I'd think?
I think the real wonder is the massive road building programme of the 50s and 60s. All the motorways, all the dual carriageways, most A-roads and many B-roads widened - especially noticeable in Scotland and Wales of course, where previously roads were very very narrow.
And now they all need replacing...
Bridges might cause some toothsucking. As I understand it, the mass obsolescence of road bridges in the US since the big boom in roads postwar has been a concern. But IANAEngineer.
Judging by the ongoing fun here with the Ouse bridge (M62, early 1970s) and the Grade 2 listed Went bridge (A1, 1961) that problem is definitely increasing, although not as bad as in the US yet. At least we are replacing the worst offenders (Such as the Forth Bridge).
The rail industry has been busy today telling us HS2 is all about capacity - not speed. In which case it was a rotten project name. If it was about capacity why did we not build a slower line, built to a lower, cheaper spec? Presumably it could bend round obstacles more easily and therefore require less tunnels - making the project even cheaper. It could have happily stopped at old oak, avoided the centre of Birmingham altogether, stopping at NEC and then onto Manchester. The new line handles freight and local commuter traffic and the WCML concentrates only on intercity. Is that what we really needed but got seduced by Japanese bullet trains?
No, because it was always going to be part of a larger network including HS1 and Europe, but also rather more of the UK than merely Manc and Brum, important as they are. And you need speed for that for (a) more trains per line and (b) competition and (c) replacing faffing around at Luton Airport etc.
Not that the scraping A/T - Levels will happen, but politically is there any real interest in doing this?
Surely parents are worried about mortgages, food / energy bills, knife crime, cost of uni....there is literally no benefit to an announcement to overturn the apple cart on education qualifications like this.
The youngsters need better maths skills, I can see that, but lets scrap the whole qualification system, just bizarre. There is zero upside politically or practically.
I don't get the whole "maths at 18" obsession. A-level maths is pretty abstruse. I write fairly complex geometry code these days, inter alia, and even then pretty much everything I need was covered in the GCSE syllabus. Most people don't write complex geometry code.
We need more kids to be getting good maths GCSEs at 16, not poor A-levels (or whatever Sunak's replacement is called) at 18.
No need for it to be A-Levels until 18.
Have higher level (A-Level standard) until 18 for the Maths gifted kids.
Have foundation level (GCSE+ basically) for those who would currently be dropping Maths altogether currently.
And what about the ones struggling with functional skills Level 1? What exactly is the point of continuing to set them up to fail for an extra two years?
The answer to children leaving school functionally illiterate and innumerate is not more A-levels, it is to fix primary education where these things are either learned or not.
The answer to children leaving school functionally illiterate and innumerate is to fix life so that parents are functionally literate and numerate so can help kids learn at home, so parents read books to their children, so that parents can afford to buy books, or bookshelves, so children don't live in overcrowded homes and can live in a home with a bedroom of their own and a desk and a bookshelf so they can study and learn.
There is no magic wand to any of this. I'm sure almost all primary school teachers are doing the best they can, as are almost all secondary school teachers. Its not a magic wand, but funded properly I can't see 2 more years of teaching hurting, particularly if it is set to the pupil's own ability and needs not some "gold standard".
But whatever way you slice it, it comes back to needing to fund it properly. And Sunak won't do that.
All of which is true. But it doesn't have to be, (and in these cases almost necessarily shouldn't be) yet more Maths that they haven't been able to do for the previous 16 years.
For the first time in my life I want the Tories to lose a general election, actually I want them eviscerated.
Sunak's shafting of the North will not be forgotten or forgiven.
Scorching the earth to ensure HS2 cannot be resurrected by the next government which might only be a year away (without substantial additional cost) is really rather outrageous.
The cancelling of HS2 is made out to be a massive deal but how many people actually travel from Manchester to London on a regular basis?
I only go into London about 4 times a year and I live in the south.
That's not really the point (or probably relevant).
Freeing up the older lines for freight (and moving it off road) would have been the big winner.
No.
Building more roads to carry both freight and passengers would have been a big winner.
If capacity is needed because passengers are trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough. If capacity is needed because freight is trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough.
If capacity is needed to dislocate a fraction of road traffic off the arteries - just build more road artery capacity.
I keep telling you roads are not the answer, and I use the motorway network all day every day. The more roads you make, the more vehicles you encourage and the cycle continues. The M25 was the case in point. You need people out of their cars and freight on the rails. It is the only way forward.
And I keep telling you you're wrong.
95% of freight mileage is moving by roads, so if you get more vehicles on the roads afterwards then what are they moving? The remaining 5%? Or goods not currently getting moved?
If its the latter, there's a word for that. Economic growth!
That's two words.
In 20 years your new roads will be full to the brim again. It won't help long term economic growth.
In 20 years time your railway would be full to the brim too. If railways are a magic bullet why does the WCML have capacity issues? Why doesn't it just magic away all the problems? Could it be that investment is necessary no matter what.
Any infrastructure fills up if your population keeps growing and then you neglect to invest. Had we continuously invested continuously in building new motorways at the rate we were in the 1960s rather than stopping bothering to invest then by now our motorway network would have 7x the mileage that we do today.
And since freight is 95% road anyway, that either means the motorways would have an overabundance of capacity and not be full, or we'd be moving roughly 7x the products that we are today, which a tremendous economic growth.
Either way - win/win.
As an aside, and I am reminded about this by Rishi Pothole, I sometimes ponder with amazement the massive capital investment that went into asphalting a quarter of a million miles of unsurfaced road in Britain, largely in the 1920s and 30s, I believe.
Given the difficulty of getting even a few miles of disintegrating road resurfaced around here it seems astounding that the whole road network was ever surfaced.
Lots of unemployed ... narrower roads ... and a much smaller job, basically just tarring over the macadam (gravel, stone and foundation) that was already there, I'd think?
I think the real wonder is the massive road building programme of the 50s and 60s. All the motorways, all the dual carriageways, most A-roads and many B-roads widened - especially noticeable in Scotland and Wales of course, where previously roads were very very narrow.
And now they all need replacing...
Bridges might cause some toothsucking. As I understand it, the mass obsolescence of road bridges in the US since the big boom in roads postwar has been a concern. But IANAEngineer.
Judging by the ongoing fun here with the Ouse bridge (M62, early 1970s) and the Grade 2 listed Went bridge (A1, 1961) that problem is definitely increasing, although not as bad as in the US yet. At least we are replacing the worst offenders (Such as the Forth Bridge).
A quarter of the £36bn that the Government will save by axing HS2 in the North is to be spent on potholes, it has emerged...
And 150% of the money saved is going to be spent on increased debt servicing caused by Truss.
The increase in our interest payments was not caused by Truss. It has been caused by the increase in base rates that we have seen around the world since the inflation genie escaped the bottle. If Truss had never happened our costs today would have been much the same.
We are paying the price for living beyond our means, for pretending we could get through lockdowns without economic consequences, for subsidising the Ukraine war on credit and for spending absurd amounts trying to protect the middle classes from a higher gas bill. Sooner or later reality catches up with us.
Bingo, 100% right.
So basically we dumped Truss for Sunak for nothing.
Sunak is infinitely worse than Truss. Truss fucked up a mini budget, but most of that was purely presentational not economic and had already rolled it back and brought Hunt in before she went.
Sunak just has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. He has the popularity of Truss, the integrity of Johnson, the party management of May, the hubris of Cameron and rolled up with the economics of Brown.
The rail industry has been busy today telling us HS2 is all about capacity - not speed. In which case it was a rotten project name. If it was about capacity why did we not build a slower line, built to a lower, cheaper spec? Presumably it could bend round obstacles more easily and therefore require less tunnels - making the project even cheaper. It could have happily stopped at old oak, avoided the centre of Birmingham altogether, stopping at NEC and then onto Manchester. The new line handles freight and local commuter traffic and the WCML concentrates only on intercity. Is that what we really needed but got seduced by Japanese bullet trains?
No, because it was always going to be part of a larger network including HS1 and Europe, but also rather more of the UK than merely Manc and Brum, important as they are. And you need speed for that for (a) more trains per line and (b) competition and (c) replacing faffing around at Luton Airport etc.
Except for the inconvenient fact that it didn't join up to HS1, or Europe, so kind of failed at the first hurdle.
Because compulsorily purchasing buildings the length and of the country is fine, but knocking down a few buildings where @Leon lives in order to get a connection that works is completely out of the question.
Not that the scraping A/T - Levels will happen, but politically is there any real interest in doing this?
Surely parents are worried about mortgages, food / energy bills, knife crime, cost of uni....there is literally no benefit to an announcement to overturn the apple cart on education qualifications like this.
The youngsters need better maths skills, I can see that, but lets scrap the whole qualification system, just bizarre. There is zero upside politically or practically.
I don't get the whole "maths at 18" obsession. A-level maths is pretty abstruse. I write fairly complex geometry code these days, inter alia, and even then pretty much everything I need was covered in the GCSE syllabus. Most people don't write complex geometry code.
We need more kids to be getting good maths GCSEs at 16, not poor A-levels (or whatever Sunak's replacement is called) at 18.
No need for it to be A-Levels until 18.
Have higher level (A-Level standard) until 18 for the Maths gifted kids.
Have foundation level (GCSE+ basically) for those who would currently be dropping Maths altogether currently.
And what about the ones struggling with functional skills Level 1? What exactly is the point of continuing to set them up to fail for an extra two years?
The answer to children leaving school functionally illiterate and innumerate is not more A-levels, it is to fix primary education where these things are either learned or not.
The answer to children leaving school functionally illiterate and innumerate is to fix life so that parents are functionally literate and numerate so can help kids learn at home, so parents read books to their children, so that parents can afford to buy books, or bookshelves, so children don't live in overcrowded homes and can live in a home with a bedroom of their own and a desk and a bookshelf so they can study and learn.
There is no magic wand to any of this. I'm sure almost all primary school teachers are doing the best they can, as are almost all secondary school teachers. Its not a magic wand, but funded properly I can't see 2 more years of teaching hurting, particularly if it is set to the pupil's own ability and needs not some "gold standard".
But whatever way you slice it, it comes back to needing to fund it properly. And Sunak won't do that.
Also, hungry children find it harder to learn than well nourished children.
It's Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. It ain't complicated. A further point. Many children simply don't feel safe in school. Can't go anywhere with that.
For the first time in my life I want the Tories to lose a general election, actually I want them eviscerated.
Sunak's shafting of the North will not be forgotten or forgiven.
Scorching the earth to ensure HS2 cannot be resurrected by the next government which might only be a year away (without substantial additional cost) is really rather outrageous.
The cancelling of HS2 is made out to be a massive deal but how many people actually travel from Manchester to London on a regular basis?
I only go into London about 4 times a year and I live in the south.
That's not really the point (or probably relevant).
Freeing up the older lines for freight (and moving it off road) would have been the big winner.
No.
Building more roads to carry both freight and passengers would have been a big winner.
If capacity is needed because passengers are trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough. If capacity is needed because freight is trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough.
If capacity is needed to dislocate a fraction of road traffic off the arteries - just build more road artery capacity.
I keep telling you roads are not the answer, and I use the motorway network all day every day. The more roads you make, the more vehicles you encourage and the cycle continues. The M25 was the case in point. You need people out of their cars and freight on the rails. It is the only way forward.
And I keep telling you you're wrong.
95% of freight mileage is moving by roads, so if you get more vehicles on the roads afterwards then what are they moving? The remaining 5%? Or goods not currently getting moved?
If its the latter, there's a word for that. Economic growth!
That's two words.
In 20 years your new roads will be full to the brim again. It won't help long term economic growth.
In 20 years time your railway would be full to the brim too. If railways are a magic bullet why does the WCML have capacity issues? Why doesn't it just magic away all the problems? Could it be that investment is necessary no matter what.
Any infrastructure fills up if your population keeps growing and then you neglect to invest. Had we continuously invested continuously in building new motorways at the rate we were in the 1960s rather than stopping bothering to invest then by now our motorway network would have 7x the mileage that we do today.
And since freight is 95% road anyway, that either means the motorways would have an overabundance of capacity and not be full, or we'd be moving roughly 7x the products that we are today, which a tremendous economic growth.
Either way - win/win.
As an aside, and I am reminded about this by Rishi Pothole, I sometimes ponder with amazement the massive capital investment that went into asphalting a quarter of a million miles of unsurfaced road in Britain, largely in the 1920s and 30s, I believe.
Given the difficulty of getting even a few miles of disintegrating road resurfaced around here it seems astounding that the whole road network was ever surfaced.
Lots of unemployed ... narrower roads ... and a much smaller job, basically just tarring over the macadam (gravel, stone and foundation) that was already there, I'd think?
I think the real wonder is the massive road building programme of the 50s and 60s. All the motorways, all the dual carriageways, most A-roads and many B-roads widened - especially noticeable in Scotland and Wales of course, where previously roads were very very narrow.
And now they all need replacing...
Bridges might cause some toothsucking. As I understand it, the mass obsolescence of road bridges in the US since the big boom in roads postwar has been a concern. But IANAEngineer.
Judging by the ongoing fun here with the Ouse bridge (M62, early 1970s) and the Grade 2 listed Went bridge (A1, 1961) that problem is definitely increasing, although not as bad as in the US yet. At least we are replacing the worst offenders (Such as the Forth Bridge).
Its the kind of obsolete structure that is common over the pond.
As ever, there are links for this stuff. Around 3000 substandard bridges in Britain - mostly the kind of short span bridges crossing an unnoticed river in a town:
A quarter of the £36bn that the Government will save by axing HS2 in the North is to be spent on potholes, it has emerged...
And 150% of the money saved is going to be spent on increased debt servicing caused by Truss.
The increase in our interest payments was not caused by Truss. It has been caused by the increase in base rates that we have seen around the world since the inflation genie escaped the bottle. If Truss had never happened our costs today would have been much the same.
We are paying the price for living beyond our means, for pretending we could get through lockdowns without economic consequences, for subsidising the Ukraine war on credit and for spending absurd amounts trying to protect the middle classes from a higher gas bill. Sooner or later reality catches up with us.
This is true, but this "fake news" has become truth in many voters minds.
And nobody really wants to admit the real situation is as you say living beyond our means for many many years, while piss poor productivity.
Benpointer is bright enough to know he's spouting nonsense about Truss - he's doing it because it's the SKS line to take, for whatever reason.
I am indeed being a little tongue-in-cheek about this and I certainly accept we'd be facing higher debt servicing costs even without Truss. I should have said "since Truss" (as I did at 18:16) rather than "caused by Truss", although I suspect UK borrowing costs are measurably higher now than they would have been without Truss - tricky to prove though.
My real point is the capital savings of HS2 cuts is dwarfed by the revenue costs of debt servicing.
I agree with the "we've been living beyond our means for years" point. The obvious if unpalatable answer, since no government is able to avoid the essential public spending needed by a modern developed state, is to raise taxes and to raise them on the wealthy - on people like me and quite a few (probably most) of us on here.
You may not like it but that's the only answer.
But 'since Truss' ignores the fact that yields had been rising consistently before her, as well as continuing to rise consistently since her.
... Sunak’s tenure as the Chancellor of the Exchequer saw 10-year gilt yields increase by 376 per cent. His replacement, Nadhim Zahawi, presided over 10-year gilt yields rising by 38 per cent. Neither Chancellor saw many complaints about this from the press, however. Whilst Kwasi Kwarteng was Chancellor, 10-year gilt yields continued to increase, up 41 per cent from 3.0865 to 4.3462. This is not dissimilar from the increase under Zahawi and certainly less than the increase under Sunak, but still the commentary and comedy circuit is sure that it was the Truss/Kwarteng Government that broke the UK economy... https://thecritic.co.uk/why-truss-was-right/
No, the obvious answer is to lower taxes and stimulate economic activity. Does it occur to anyone just *why* the USA has been on a mission to get everyone else to raise their CT levels?
Corporate taxes and personal taxes need to be considered separately.
With CT, given the ability of many companies to operate in one country and headquarter for tax purposes in another, there's the potential for a global competition to the bottom. Which might be fine - set CT to a low% and hope to attract companies to invest here (well headquarter here, at least).
Small states can gain a bit that way (see various tax havens). If we tried it to too great an extent we'd either be outbid with even lower CT by our competitors or, more likely, shunned when trying to trade with them. And has the low CT actually stimulated real growth or pinched apparent growth from our neighbours, who will try to steal it back soon enough?
Then there's a bigger issue of public services still needing to be paid for somehow. That CT needs to be replaced with some other tax or else the already shite public services cut even further.
For CT see also taxes on employment (e.g. employers' NI).
With private taxation (including taxation on consumption) I remain totally unconvinced that tax rates directly drive growth rates.
I can see that raising taxes on the poorest, e.g. by freezing personal allowances, will hit growth (as would freezing benefits) because the poorest have no cushion to maintain spending. Similarly, lowering taxes on the poorest will stimulate demand in the short term (though not necessarily sustainable growth).
Would raising taxes on the highest earners, or on wealth, hit growth? Would it f*ck. For every high earner who says 'tax has gone up, my net income has gone down, so I am going to work less hard (and see my income go down further(!))' there will be another who strives harder, works longer, to maintain their net income.
For the first time in my life I want the Tories to lose a general election, actually I want them eviscerated.
Sunak's shafting of the North will not be forgotten or forgiven.
Scorching the earth to ensure HS2 cannot be resurrected by the next government which might only be a year away (without substantial additional cost) is really rather outrageous.
The cancelling of HS2 is made out to be a massive deal but how many people actually travel from Manchester to London on a regular basis?
I only go into London about 4 times a year and I live in the south.
That's not really the point (or probably relevant).
Freeing up the older lines for freight (and moving it off road) would have been the big winner.
No.
Building more roads to carry both freight and passengers would have been a big winner.
If capacity is needed because passengers are trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough. If capacity is needed because freight is trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough.
If capacity is needed to dislocate a fraction of road traffic off the arteries - just build more road artery capacity.
I keep telling you roads are not the answer, and I use the motorway network all day every day. The more roads you make, the more vehicles you encourage and the cycle continues. The M25 was the case in point. You need people out of their cars and freight on the rails. It is the only way forward.
And I keep telling you you're wrong.
95% of freight mileage is moving by roads, so if you get more vehicles on the roads afterwards then what are they moving? The remaining 5%? Or goods not currently getting moved?
If its the latter, there's a word for that. Economic growth!
That's two words.
In 20 years your new roads will be full to the brim again. It won't help long term economic growth.
In 20 years time your railway would be full to the brim too. If railways are a magic bullet why does the WCML have capacity issues? Why doesn't it just magic away all the problems? Could it be that investment is necessary no matter what.
Any infrastructure fills up if your population keeps growing and then you neglect to invest. Had we continuously invested continuously in building new motorways at the rate we were in the 1960s rather than stopping bothering to invest then by now our motorway network would have 7x the mileage that we do today.
And since freight is 95% road anyway, that either means the motorways would have an overabundance of capacity and not be full, or we'd be moving roughly 7x the products that we are today, which a tremendous economic growth.
Either way - win/win.
As an aside, and I am reminded about this by Rishi Pothole, I sometimes ponder with amazement the massive capital investment that went into asphalting a quarter of a million miles of unsurfaced road in Britain, largely in the 1920s and 30s, I believe.
Given the difficulty of getting even a few miles of disintegrating road resurfaced around here it seems astounding that the whole road network was ever surfaced.
Lots of unemployed ... narrower roads ... and a much smaller job, basically just tarring over the macadam (gravel, stone and foundation) that was already there, I'd think?
I think the real wonder is the massive road building programme of the 50s and 60s. All the motorways, all the dual carriageways, most A-roads and many B-roads widened - especially noticeable in Scotland and Wales of course, where previously roads were very very narrow.
And now they all need replacing...
Bridges might cause some toothsucking. As I understand it, the mass obsolescence of road bridges in the US since the big boom in roads postwar has been a concern. But IANAEngineer.
They did a lot of work on the Oldbury viaduct just before Covid.
Alarmingly, they found it was not only in a much worse state than they thought, but in much too bad a state to do a full repair on as they had neither the time nor the money to do so.
They just patched it up and are hoping it doesn't collapse.
As am I given how often I drive over it.
And, come to think of it, the Queensferry Crossing (2nd Forth Road Bridge) was built to part replace, part extend the life of the original 1960s Road Bridge. Not sure if that is the case for the Severn one as well, or if that is just traffic increase.
It was both, but in that case it was also to cut a big dog leg and a serious bottleneck off the M4.
The rail industry has been busy today telling us HS2 is all about capacity - not speed. In which case it was a rotten project name. If it was about capacity why did we not build a slower line, built to a lower, cheaper spec? Presumably it could bend round obstacles more easily and therefore require less tunnels - making the project even cheaper. It could have happily stopped at old oak, avoided the centre of Birmingham altogether, stopping at NEC and then onto Manchester. The new line handles freight and local commuter traffic and the WCML concentrates only on intercity. Is that what we really needed but got seduced by Japanese bullet trains?
No, because it was always going to be part of a larger network including HS1 and Europe, but also rather more of the UK than merely Manc and Brum, important as they are. And you need speed for that for (a) more trains per line and (b) competition and (c) replacing faffing around at Luton Airport etc.
Except for the inconvenient fact that it didn't join up to HS1, or Europe, so kind of failed at the first hurdle.
Because compulsorily purchasing buildings the length and of the country is fine, but knocking down a few buildings where @Leon lives in order to get a connection that works is completely out of the question.
Not entirely Leon's fault, as trying t oconnect the sub-Primrose Hill tunnel to the North London Railway line and keep the Euston line, as well as the existing ones, seems to have been a plate of spaghetti too far.
Could have been plugged into Stratford ab initio, with a new union station in the Railway Lands north of KX-StP. But no, we had to have a fucking hipster paradise there instead (much as I normnally like railway architecture).
Not that the scraping A/T - Levels will happen, but politically is there any real interest in doing this?
Surely parents are worried about mortgages, food / energy bills, knife crime, cost of uni....there is literally no benefit to an announcement to overturn the apple cart on education qualifications like this.
The youngsters need better maths skills, I can see that, but lets scrap the whole qualification system, just bizarre. There is zero upside politically or practically.
I don't get the whole "maths at 18" obsession. A-level maths is pretty abstruse. I write fairly complex geometry code these days, inter alia, and even then pretty much everything I need was covered in the GCSE syllabus. Most people don't write complex geometry code.
We need more kids to be getting good maths GCSEs at 16, not poor A-levels (or whatever Sunak's replacement is called) at 18.
No need for it to be A-Levels until 18.
Have higher level (A-Level standard) until 18 for the Maths gifted kids.
Have foundation level (GCSE+ basically) for those who would currently be dropping Maths altogether currently.
And what about the ones struggling with functional skills Level 1? What exactly is the point of continuing to set them up to fail for an extra two years?
The answer to children leaving school functionally illiterate and innumerate is not more A-levels, it is to fix primary education where these things are either learned or not.
The answer to children leaving school functionally illiterate and innumerate is to fix life so that parents are functionally literate and numerate so can help kids learn at home, so parents read books to their children, so that parents can afford to buy books, or bookshelves, so children don't live in overcrowded homes and can live in a home with a bedroom of their own and a desk and a bookshelf so they can study and learn.
There is no magic wand to any of this. I'm sure almost all primary school teachers are doing the best they can, as are almost all secondary school teachers. Its not a magic wand, but funded properly I can't see 2 more years of teaching hurting, particularly if it is set to the pupil's own ability and needs not some "gold standard".
But whatever way you slice it, it comes back to needing to fund it properly. And Sunak won't do that.
All of which is true. But it doesn't have to be, (and in these cases almost necessarily shouldn't be) yet more Maths that they haven't been able to do for the previous 16 years.
Kids haven't been in school the previous 16 years have they? I thought most started around 4 or 5, not newborn.
Its not primary school teachers fault that some pupils struggle, and its not secondary school pupils fault that some do either. Teachers aren't miracle workers.
But setting and streaming and getting 2 more years of educating kids, who are still in compulsory education anyway until 18, seems worthwhile to me. But again only if funded properly.
And again, probably only sensible with complete wholesale reform including abolishing GCSEs.
If you're going to do this though, its not a policy for a party conference. It'd probably take at least a decade to design a curriculum, rebuild schools/colleges to fit the classrooms, recruit and train sufficient staff etc
And it'd cost a not very small fortune and that would need fully funding.
Prepared to do that? Then it could work. Not prepared to do that? Then bugger off and don't screw around with our kids education for the sake of political soundbites.
A quarter of the £36bn that the Government will save by axing HS2 in the North is to be spent on potholes, it has emerged...
And 150% of the money saved is going to be spent on increased debt servicing caused by Truss.
The increase in our interest payments was not caused by Truss. It has been caused by the increase in base rates that we have seen around the world since the inflation genie escaped the bottle. If Truss had never happened our costs today would have been much the same.
We are paying the price for living beyond our means, for pretending we could get through lockdowns without economic consequences, for subsidising the Ukraine war on credit and for spending absurd amounts trying to protect the middle classes from a higher gas bill. Sooner or later reality catches up with us.
This is true, but this "fake news" has become truth in many voters minds.
And nobody really wants to admit the real situation is as you say living beyond our means for many many years, while piss poor productivity.
Benpointer is bright enough to know he's spouting nonsense about Truss - he's doing it because it's the SKS line to take, for whatever reason.
It’s in the same camp as the Tories blaming Brown for all those dodgy American mortgages.
Not that the scraping A/T - Levels will happen, but politically is there any real interest in doing this?
Surely parents are worried about mortgages, food / energy bills, knife crime, cost of uni....there is literally no benefit to an announcement to overturn the apple cart on education qualifications like this.
The youngsters need better maths skills, I can see that, but lets scrap the whole qualification system, just bizarre. There is zero upside politically or practically.
I don't get the whole "maths at 18" obsession. A-level maths is pretty abstruse. I write fairly complex geometry code these days, inter alia, and even then pretty much everything I need was covered in the GCSE syllabus. Most people don't write complex geometry code.
We need more kids to be getting good maths GCSEs at 16, not poor A-levels (or whatever Sunak's replacement is called) at 18.
No need for it to be A-Levels until 18.
Have higher level (A-Level standard) until 18 for the Maths gifted kids.
Have foundation level (GCSE+ basically) for those who would currently be dropping Maths altogether currently.
And what about the ones struggling with functional skills Level 1? What exactly is the point of continuing to set them up to fail for an extra two years?
The answer to children leaving school functionally illiterate and innumerate is not more A-levels, it is to fix primary education where these things are either learned or not.
The answer to children leaving school functionally illiterate and innumerate is to fix life so that parents are functionally literate and numerate so can help kids learn at home, so parents read books to their children, so that parents can afford to buy books, or bookshelves, so children don't live in overcrowded homes and can live in a home with a bedroom of their own and a desk and a bookshelf so they can study and learn.
There is no magic wand to any of this. I'm sure almost all primary school teachers are doing the best they can, as are almost all secondary school teachers. Its not a magic wand, but funded properly I can't see 2 more years of teaching hurting, particularly if it is set to the pupil's own ability and needs not some "gold standard".
But whatever way you slice it, it comes back to needing to fund it properly. And Sunak won't do that.
Also, hungry children find it harder to learn than well nourished children.
It's Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. It ain't complicated. A further point. Many children simply don't feel safe in school. Can't go anywhere with that.
The government could improve matters in a small way by doing basic safeguarding checks on OFSTED inspectors.
But since they can't even be bothered to do that, anything they say about children's education should be considered vapid bullshit.
For the first time in my life I want the Tories to lose a general election, actually I want them eviscerated.
Sunak's shafting of the North will not be forgotten or forgiven.
Scorching the earth to ensure HS2 cannot be resurrected by the next government which might only be a year away (without substantial additional cost) is really rather outrageous.
The cancelling of HS2 is made out to be a massive deal but how many people actually travel from Manchester to London on a regular basis?
I only go into London about 4 times a year and I live in the south.
That's not really the point (or probably relevant).
Freeing up the older lines for freight (and moving it off road) would have been the big winner.
No.
Building more roads to carry both freight and passengers would have been a big winner.
If capacity is needed because passengers are trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough. If capacity is needed because freight is trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough.
If capacity is needed to dislocate a fraction of road traffic off the arteries - just build more road artery capacity.
I keep telling you roads are not the answer, and I use the motorway network all day every day. The more roads you make, the more vehicles you encourage and the cycle continues. The M25 was the case in point. You need people out of their cars and freight on the rails. It is the only way forward.
And I keep telling you you're wrong.
95% of freight mileage is moving by roads, so if you get more vehicles on the roads afterwards then what are they moving? The remaining 5%? Or goods not currently getting moved?
If its the latter, there's a word for that. Economic growth!
That's two words.
In 20 years your new roads will be full to the brim again. It won't help long term economic growth.
In 20 years time your railway would be full to the brim too. If railways are a magic bullet why does the WCML have capacity issues? Why doesn't it just magic away all the problems? Could it be that investment is necessary no matter what.
Any infrastructure fills up if your population keeps growing and then you neglect to invest. Had we continuously invested continuously in building new motorways at the rate we were in the 1960s rather than stopping bothering to invest then by now our motorway network would have 7x the mileage that we do today.
And since freight is 95% road anyway, that either means the motorways would have an overabundance of capacity and not be full, or we'd be moving roughly 7x the products that we are today, which a tremendous economic growth.
Either way - win/win.
As an aside, and I am reminded about this by Rishi Pothole, I sometimes ponder with amazement the massive capital investment that went into asphalting a quarter of a million miles of unsurfaced road in Britain, largely in the 1920s and 30s, I believe.
Given the difficulty of getting even a few miles of disintegrating road resurfaced around here it seems astounding that the whole road network was ever surfaced.
Of course when we have done massive investment in our transport infrastructure, it has always resulted in massive economic growth per capita.
The last rapid GDP per capita growth we had was when the motorway network was built. Since we stopped investing in it, GDP per capita has stalled.
Its almost as if real investment (not slapping the word investment on operational expenditure) works.
I agree with you about most economical issues, but I think you might be confusing correlation with causation there. The economy enjoyed something of a post-war boom, therefore we built motorways, would be another, and potentially just as plausible explanation. Of course, there's probably an element of both.
No there's a causative relationship, the motorways are quite literally the arteries of our economy, it unlocked the capacity to move goods we'd never seen before - or due to a neglect in investment since an increase in capacity we've never seen again since.
As I've said many times before 95% of freight movement happens on the roads. If those motorways weren't there, those goods would simply not all be getting moved, since local roads would never have had the capacity to carry that volume of goods.
Had we continued investing in motorways at the rate we were in the 60s then we'd have about 7x the arteries that we have now. Now either those would all be fairly smooth running at 1/7th the volume, or we'd have extra volume moving about coming off the local roads (so local roads would be quiet), or we'd have far more goods being moved which would be goods not currently being moved since we're already at 95% being moved by road freight.
Realistically it'd be a combination of all 3. And the third, is real economic growth.
Hang on, I thought you didn't believe in induced demand?
If that's so, increasing the number of roads will have no impact on the volume of goods moved, and there will be no consequent impact on economic growth.
They're a spivvy estate agent flogging a building with potential.
The rest of us are thinking: "NFW!"
I hope that's not your new garden cabin Cyclefree!
No.
Currently negotiating to buy the land on which it sits so that I can have a beach hut. I will spend my final days there looking out at this. Frankly, given the state of everything, those days can't come soon enough.
I was going to 'like' the post for the idea of sitting and enjoying the view but I can't like the 'end of days can't come soon enough' sentiment.
A quarter of the £36bn that the Government will save by axing HS2 in the North is to be spent on potholes, it has emerged...
And 150% of the money saved is going to be spent on increased debt servicing caused by Truss.
The increase in our interest payments was not caused by Truss. It has been caused by the increase in base rates that we have seen around the world since the inflation genie escaped the bottle. If Truss had never happened our costs today would have been much the same.
We are paying the price for living beyond our means, for pretending we could get through lockdowns without economic consequences, for subsidising the Ukraine war on credit and for spending absurd amounts trying to protect the middle classes from a higher gas bill. Sooner or later reality catches up with us.
This is true, but this "fake news" has become truth in many voters minds.
And nobody really wants to admit the real situation is as you say living beyond our means for many many years, while piss poor productivity.
Benpointer is bright enough to know he's spouting nonsense about Truss - he's doing it because it's the SKS line to take, for whatever reason.
It’s in the same camp as the Tories blaming Brown for all those dodgy American mortgages.
I don't blame him for those.
I do blame him for a regulatory system that left our banks badly undercapitalised while buying high-risk assets like CDS and therefore grossly over-exposed to the mortgages in question with no protection against it.
A quarter of the £36bn that the Government will save by axing HS2 in the North is to be spent on potholes, it has emerged...
And 150% of the money saved is going to be spent on increased debt servicing caused by Truss.
The increase in our interest payments was not caused by Truss. It has been caused by the increase in base rates that we have seen around the world since the inflation genie escaped the bottle. If Truss had never happened our costs today would have been much the same.
We are paying the price for living beyond our means, for pretending we could get through lockdowns without economic consequences, for subsidising the Ukraine war on credit and for spending absurd amounts trying to protect the middle classes from a higher gas bill. Sooner or later reality catches up with us.
This is true, but this "fake news" has become truth in many voters minds.
And nobody really wants to admit the real situation is as you say living beyond our means for many many years, while piss poor productivity.
Benpointer is bright enough to know he's spouting nonsense about Truss - he's doing it because it's the SKS line to take, for whatever reason.
It’s in the same camp as the Tories blaming Brown for all those dodgy American mortgages.
I don't know any Tories who blame Brown for the dodgy American mortgages.
I do know Tories and ex-Tories (inc myself) who blame Brown for blowing our budget wide open before the recession hit so we were horrendously exposed when it hit.
The financial crisis wasn't in a historical context that special as far as how it hit our deficit. It added about 7% to our deficit which isn't that abnormal.
What was abnormal was we'd gone into the recession with a 3% deficit having had a surplus a few years earlier. So 3% deficit became 10% deficit which was catastrophic.
Had we gone into the recession with a 1% surplus we'd have come out of it with a 6% deficit, which is entirely manageable in an economic cycle without austerity.
The rail industry has been busy today telling us HS2 is all about capacity - not speed. In which case it was a rotten project name. If it was about capacity why did we not build a slower line, built to a lower, cheaper spec? Presumably it could bend round obstacles more easily and therefore require less tunnels - making the project even cheaper. It could have happily stopped at old oak, avoided the centre of Birmingham altogether, stopping at NEC and then onto Manchester. The new line handles freight and local commuter traffic and the WCML concentrates only on intercity. Is that what we really needed but got seduced by Japanese bullet trains?
No, because it was always going to be part of a larger network including HS1 and Europe, but also rather more of the UK than merely Manc and Brum, important as they are. And you need speed for that for (a) more trains per line and (b) competition and (c) replacing faffing around at Luton Airport etc.
Except for the inconvenient fact that it didn't join up to HS1, or Europe, so kind of failed at the first hurdle.
Because compulsorily purchasing buildings the length and of the country is fine, but knocking down a few buildings where @Leon lives in order to get a connection that works is completely out of the question.
Comments
People talk about fiat currencies. Well I think we should talk about fiat polities. Without that, we have the barbarism of whoever the nearest painlord or goodies-distributor controlling our local fief. Presentation is what soothes differences without us all resorting to violence and corruption.
Just saying.
There is no magic wand to any of this. I'm sure almost all primary school teachers are doing the best they can, as are almost all secondary school teachers. Its not a magic wand, but funded properly I can't see 2 more years of teaching hurting, particularly if it is set to the pupil's own ability and needs not some "gold standard".
But whatever way you slice it, it comes back to needing to fund it properly. And Sunak won't do that.
The stuff is seriously bad for you.
But I'm beginning to wonder- maybe the Sunak is so awful, that it's worth replacing him, what ever the downside, to save a little bit more of the furniture.
Not to win, obviously, but to turn an existential disaster into a mere rout. After all, the alternative is the Conservative Party offering Rishi Sunak to the public to continue being Prime Minister. I mean, really?
Really?
And it's why I put Johnson below everyone else. Because his smirking, winking lies and his batting away of conventions were an assault on the very idea of trust. When you have wrongdoers doing their wrongdoing out in the open, that's poison. Britain Trump. Fuck, I've got myself all worked up again!
Said it since the start. Electoral dud in a bubble of his own making.
How many 2019 Tories here thought he was terrible today? Other than me, I count @Casino_Royale , @MaxPB , @BartholomewRoberts etc etc
When you only have @HYUFD left, you're due a visit from Sir Graham....
The CDU are up six points on the last State election, the Greens and SPD down four each and the AfD up three. It looks as though the FDP will just about survive but Linke will exit from the Landtag.
Bavaria also votes on Sunday but this looks a fairly straightforward contest with little change from the last election. The CSU governs with the Free Voters and they enjoy a comfortable majority in the Landtag. That won't change though the CSU may drop fractionally and the FW move forward slightly. The AfD, Greens and SPD will scrap forn the remaining seats with the FDP likely to lose its 11 seats.
Poland votes on Sunday 15th. The latest projection has the ruling PIS (United Front, led by Law and Justice) winning 188 seats in the Sejm with the Civic Coalition bloc of parties on 157, The Left on 46 and the Third Way on 41. The nationalist Confederation (a possible ally for United Poland) has 27 seats.
If this turns out to be correct, we could say one of the main populist nationalist Governments in eastern Europe toppled and a more centrist administration formed which might be interesting.
New Zealand votes the previous day and it looks all over for Labour who are badly trailing National. Christopher Luxon's party looked able to form a majority coalition with ACT but the latest One News poll shows ACT dropping back two points and the combined National/ACT just short of a majority with 59 seats in the 120 seat Parliament. The Labour/Green/Maori group would win 53 seats with Winston Peters, staging one of the biggest political returns possible (think Farage and Reform winning 25 seats at the next UK election) holding the balance with 8 seats.
Famously, Peters abandoned National for Jacinda Ardern's Labour - could he do the same again? It seems inconceivable but you can be sure IF the numbers work, Peters will milk his time in the spotlight for all its worth.
Any infrastructure fills up if your population keeps growing and then you neglect to invest. Had we continuously invested continuously in building new motorways at the rate we were in the 1960s rather than stopping bothering to invest then by now our motorway network would have 7x the mileage that we do today.
And since freight is 95% road anyway, that either means the motorways would have an overabundance of capacity and not be full, or we'd be moving roughly 7x the products that we are today, which a tremendous economic growth.
Either way - win/win.
There literally seems to be nobody but @HYUFD left.
And if Sir Graham Brady's postbag was stuffed full and Sunak went next week then @HYUFD would back his successor just as loyally, so he really shouldn't be counted anyway.
There's nobody left.
My real point is the capital savings of HS2 cuts is dwarfed by the revenue costs of debt servicing.
I agree with the "we've been living beyond our means for years" point. The obvious if unpalatable answer, since no government is able to avoid the essential public spending needed by a modern developed state, is to raise taxes and to raise them on the wealthy - on people like me and quite a few (probably most) of us on here.
You may not like it but that's the only answer.
I think you were educated in Aus?
Do they have the equivalent of GCSEs there, or are their 18 qualifications the first major exams people sit?
This week just proves it yet again, and not for the first time.
'Polycell, polyfilla, I don't know the damn difference!'
I don't think any party conference speech has ever made such an impact for me, either.
I did the International Baccalaureate myself though as was always planning on returning home and did at 17 to start University [I'd skipped a year so had finished school by 17].
But yes, the system there is school runs until 18 (no school/college divide) and 18 is when you sit your exams, not 16 and 18.
To be perfectly honest, I'm not convinced I see the point in GCSEs now that we have compulsory education until 18 anyway. Seems to me like most of teachers work now seems to be teaching to exams, rather than teaching for furthering education.
If we're going to reform A-Levels, it should be part of an overall package of reform and as a left-field suggestion I'd suggest abolishing GCSEs as part of that package. Have kids until 16 getting educated, not practicing for exams, have the exams at 18 not 16 then 18.
They're a spivvy estate agent flogging a building with potential.
The rest of us are thinking: "NFW!"
Given the difficulty of getting even a few miles of disintegrating road resurfaced around here it seems astounding that the whole road network was ever surfaced.
I don't think your suggestion of abolishing GCSEs is left field, I think that's a sensible suggestion. In fact, I've suggested it before. I'd get rid of SATs too, for much the same reason.
What worries me is that if - as Sunak seems to be suggesting - the idea is for current A-levels plus extra subjects including maths and English, on top of GCSEs we're going to have the most grossly over-examined children in the world by the time they start uni.
Also, we won't have enough teachers. Maths is already in crisis and English is heading that way due to Gove's reforms.
Rishi Sunak: Everything you hated about Boris Johnson, but without the winning grin or way with words.
The last rapid GDP per capita growth we had was when the motorway network was built. Since we stopped investing in it, GDP per capita has stalled.
Its almost as if real investment (not slapping the word investment on operational expenditure) works.
And the corollary is that - given that broken homes do exist and are going to exist for the foreseeable future - the single best investment Government can make is in properly resourcing special needs education. So the "doing the best they can" teachers can concentrate on teaching maths to the 95% of the class, rather than on restraining the 5% which is currently setting fire to the school, biting the teaching assistant, or strangling poor little Jake on the same table. It isn't a magic wand, but it's the closest there is.
... Sunak’s tenure as the Chancellor of the Exchequer saw 10-year gilt yields increase by 376 per cent. His replacement, Nadhim Zahawi, presided over 10-year gilt yields rising by 38 per cent. Neither Chancellor saw many complaints about this from the press, however. Whilst Kwasi Kwarteng was Chancellor, 10-year gilt yields continued to increase, up 41 per cent from 3.0865 to 4.3462. This is not dissimilar from the increase under Zahawi and certainly less than the increase under Sunak, but still the commentary and comedy circuit is sure that it was the Truss/Kwarteng Government that broke the UK economy...
https://thecritic.co.uk/why-truss-was-right/
No, the obvious answer is to lower taxes and stimulate economic activity. Does it occur to anyone just *why* the USA has been on a mission to get everyone else to raise their CT levels?
What do these people have instead of brains?
A test for Starmer.
Next, you'll be suggesting we fire all those scum at the DfE merely for being (a) preternaturally useless and (b) drunk all day every day.
Currently negotiating to buy the land on which it sits so that I can have a beach hut. I will spend my final days there looking out at this.
Frankly, given the state of everything, those days can't come soon enough.
(BTW Packo called for vandalism of building sites - removing netting from hedges - a couple of years ago on the radio, but nothing happened.)
Lozza has been explicit (see the vid I linked - BBB is quite careful and objective), and ties himself in with Blade Runners, and declares he will be out there with his chainsaw doing it.
Perhaps Lozza is just far more stupid than Packham.
https://youtu.be/kP9mU7FQfGw?t=194
EG why the hell should pensions, especially gold-plated ones, be taxed less than salaries. Tax income highly people work less, tax pensions the same as income and . . . what? They're not going to retire? They're not going to take the pension? There's no reason other than pandering to the grey vote to tax salaries any higher than other incomes.
Or you can tax land. Especially sound is a land value tax, so that developing land means its not taxed any more, but holding banks of land is taxed just as highly as holding developed land. Again what's going to happen if they're taxed? People will make less land?
The problem is our taxes are the lowest, are the taxes that are most efficient, because of pandering to voters not caring about the economy.
And now they all need replacing...
Instead of HS2 we should have had M6 (2) (not to be confused with M62). Or better, have it as well as HS2.
Alarmingly, they found it was not only in a much worse state than they thought, but in much too bad a state to do a full repair on as they had neither the time nor the money to do so.
They just patched it up and are hoping it doesn't collapse.
As am I given how often I drive over it.
As I've said many times before 95% of freight movement happens on the roads. If those motorways weren't there, those goods would simply not all be getting moved, since local roads would never have had the capacity to carry that volume of goods.
Had we continued investing in motorways at the rate we were in the 60s then we'd have about 7x the arteries that we have now. Now either those would all be fairly smooth running at 1/7th the volume, or we'd have extra volume moving about coming off the local roads (so local roads would be quiet), or we'd have far more goods being moved which would be goods not currently being moved since we're already at 95% being moved by road freight.
Realistically it'd be a combination of all 3. And the third, is real economic growth.
Problem solved.
All infrastructure runs out of capacity if you don't invest and you have rampant population growth and no investment. Nothing unique about roads, or rail, or anything else about that. That's why all our infrastructure is at capacity.
The Express will be similarly complimentary while adding the election of Starmer and Labour will condemn us to unending darkness, wailing and teeth gnashing, starvation, plagues of locusts etc.
All of which can be prevented by steadfast voting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snus
Snuff:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snuff_(tobacco)
Apparently snuff is not too bad cancer-wise, but snus is. Oh, and to confuse the issue further:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dipping_tobacco
Probably one of the most dramatic BBC 9 O'clock News programmes, from 20th December 1985. A BBC camera gets hit by a bullet from a French gunman.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLyNs4eBh_o
And incidentally the current system is shit, which makes it bizarre Sunak has said he's 'proud' of the government's record in it. In a field of stiff competition this has been the worst government ever for education.
I suspect Cummings wrote that part, because he doesn't want to admit just what an epochal failure his ignorance and stupidity has wrought (if his rather limited intellect can even begin to grasp it).
There is definitely a case to be made for dramatic changes, but that case is not being made. The information so far suggests an even bigger disaster in the making.
One of our readers might remember this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-5_Skagit_River_bridge_collapse
Its the kind of obsolete structure that is common over the pond.
But it doesn't have to be, (and in these cases almost necessarily shouldn't be) yet more Maths that they haven't been able to do for the previous 16 years.
If he's very lucky.
Because compulsorily purchasing buildings the length and of the country is fine, but knocking down a few buildings where @Leon lives in order to get a connection that works is completely out of the question.
A further point. Many children simply don't feel safe in school. Can't go anywhere with that.
https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/britains-road-bridges-are-increasingly-becoming-substandard-29-01-2021/
With CT, given the ability of many companies to operate in one country and headquarter for tax purposes in another, there's the potential for a global competition to the bottom. Which might be fine - set CT to a low% and hope to attract companies to invest here (well headquarter here, at least).
Small states can gain a bit that way (see various tax havens). If we tried it to too great an extent we'd either be outbid with even lower CT by our competitors or, more likely, shunned when trying to trade with them. And has the low CT actually stimulated real growth or pinched apparent growth from our neighbours, who will try to steal it back soon enough?
Then there's a bigger issue of public services still needing to be paid for somehow. That CT needs to be replaced with some other tax or else the already shite public services cut even further.
For CT see also taxes on employment (e.g. employers' NI).
With private taxation (including taxation on consumption) I remain totally unconvinced that tax rates directly drive growth rates.
I can see that raising taxes on the poorest, e.g. by freezing personal allowances, will hit growth (as would freezing benefits) because the poorest have no cushion to maintain spending. Similarly, lowering taxes on the poorest will stimulate demand in the short term (though not necessarily sustainable growth).
Would raising taxes on the highest earners, or on wealth, hit growth? Would it f*ck. For every high earner who says 'tax has gone up, my net income has gone down, so I am going to work less hard (and see my income go down further(!))' there will be another who strives harder, works longer, to maintain their net income.
Could have been plugged into Stratford ab initio, with a new union station in the Railway Lands north of KX-StP. But no, we had to have a fucking hipster paradise there instead (much as I normnally like railway architecture).
Its not primary school teachers fault that some pupils struggle, and its not secondary school pupils fault that some do either. Teachers aren't miracle workers.
But setting and streaming and getting 2 more years of educating kids, who are still in compulsory education anyway until 18, seems worthwhile to me. But again only if funded properly.
And again, probably only sensible with complete wholesale reform including abolishing GCSEs.
If you're going to do this though, its not a policy for a party conference. It'd probably take at least a decade to design a curriculum, rebuild schools/colleges to fit the classrooms, recruit and train sufficient staff etc
And it'd cost a not very small fortune and that would need fully funding.
Prepared to do that? Then it could work. Not prepared to do that? Then bugger off and don't screw around with our kids education for the sake of political soundbites.
But since they can't even be bothered to do that, anything they say about children's education should be considered vapid bullshit.
If that's so, increasing the number of roads will have no impact on the volume of goods moved, and there will be no consequent impact on economic growth.
“To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow”
I do blame him for a regulatory system that left our banks badly undercapitalised while buying high-risk assets like CDS and therefore grossly over-exposed to the mortgages in question with no protection against it.
I do know Tories and ex-Tories (inc myself) who blame Brown for blowing our budget wide open before the recession hit so we were horrendously exposed when it hit.
The financial crisis wasn't in a historical context that special as far as how it hit our deficit. It added about 7% to our deficit which isn't that abnormal.
What was abnormal was we'd gone into the recession with a 3% deficit having had a surplus a few years earlier. So 3% deficit became 10% deficit which was catastrophic.
Had we gone into the recession with a 1% surplus we'd have come out of it with a 6% deficit, which is entirely manageable in an economic cycle without austerity.