I hadn't realised that one of Sunak's big ideas - the smoking ban - isn't even going to be whipped by the Tories (according to the BBC this morning). One wonders whether it has been agreed - or even discussed - by the Cabinet.
Not only is it unlikely to get through Parliament but if it did it would be completely unenforceable.
One year to a GE and Sunak has got the country focussed on railway lines.
Taking a step back from the fire and fury tonight: is that really a very good re-election launch strategy?
As disgusted as I am, cynically it could be.
Rail just isn't that important outside of London, which is why HS2 was only ever a Londoners blueprint for what Levelling Up should mean.
If the Opposition overreacts to this then it could backfire, which is probably why Starmer is wisely keeping his cards close to his chest currently.
If Sunak wanted to be really cynical, he should slash fuel duty before the election. Would help him make his inflation target too.
This is your blind spot for all things transport.
The reason it isn't important is because it isn't available. That's what HS2 was aiming to fix.
The reason you have high levels of driving in the north-west is because you have the highest density of roads anywhere in the country.
So what you're saying is we have high levels of driving because we have the best density of roads anywhere in the country?
Great. And your problem with that is?
So if other areas had better road density, they could cope with more driving too. And since 95% of freight mileage comes on the roads, and 90% of passenger mileage comes on the roads, then any extra driving would be GDP growth.
Just because our road situation is better than elsewhere, doesn't mean its worse than it should be. Had we continued to invest in our roads at the same rate as we had in the 60s then we'd be much better off now and our GDP/capita would have continued to grow just as it did in the 60s and 70s.
You could literally double all rail capacity and that would be a miniscule boost in freight capacity nationwide, but if you double road capacity then since 95% of transport comes on roads that takes you to 190% capacity.
Its almost as if investment in infrastructure works, seems like you're coming around.
High road coverage, low productivity. Thought you were interested in levelling up, not down?
(Doubling rail coverage from a low base is not the same as doubling road coverage)
There's no inverse relationship between high productivity including high home ownership and road coverage.
Your argument is as illogical as your contention that just because something is working doesn't mean we don't need more of it.
By your logic London already had rail so has no need for Crossrail.
Given London has high levels of productivity and relatively few roads per person, seems a safe bet to invest in public transport rather than roads.
But I actually agree - I think levels of public transport
3 charts to comprehensively prove once and for all that I am right and Eabhal is wrong.
Chart over time national productivity, national population density, and national road usage. Lets see which is related or correlated.
Figure 1: UK productivity - what do we notice? A complete flatline in recent years, utterly unprecedented in fact. The unprecedented flatline continues past 2018.
Figure 2: UK population density - what do we notice? A major increase in recent years.
Q: Are figure 1 and figure 2 related? A: No, they're inversely correlated in fact. Productivity was growing faster when our density was stable and has collapsed while our density has been rising.
How does that make sense? Could it be due to figure 3? Figure 3: UK road usage - what do we notice? A major flatline in recent years.
Q: Are figure 1 and figure 3 related? A: Yes.
The UK stopped investing in roads last century. Our population density has shot up this century, our population grown nearly a quarter, but our roads have not kept up and we've not been building them. As a result our vehicle usage has stalled, leading to productivity stalling, since as we all know 95% of freight and 90% of passenger mileage is by the road, so no extra road activity = no extra productivity.
Case comprehensively closed and proven. If you want productivity, build some roads. We're overdue decades of investment.
Have you sent your analysis to the OECD? Nobel prize I reckon. It was roads all along.
Infrastructure, yes. Roads are infrastructure not your enemy.
No I've not sent it to the OECD as it's not news to economists that infrastructure investment has a causative relationship with growth.
Tories are finished now. A new hard right party will take their place and even if the tories survive they will be the hard right party.
5 years ago you could have said 'Labour are finished now. A new hard left party will take their place and even if Labour survive they will be the hard left party.'
The 2 main parties have always moved between their centrist and more extreme ideological wings and back
But the Tories need a new centrist leader elected by their hard right membership. How is that going to work?
I suppose it could work if Tory MPs only give two centrist candidates to the membership to choose from. Mordaunt and Barclay?
I quite like Barclay for some reason but think as leader he would very much be whatever his members wanted him to be (fantasy right?) rather than sticking to his own views, whether centrist or not.
Tories are finished now. A new hard right party will take their place and even if the tories survive they will be the hard right party.
KGB News and the Conservatives have become Fox news and Trump GOP tribute acts respectively. It remains to be seen if there is a market for the hard right in the UK when the originals in the US seem to be in intellectual and financial meltdown.
I think the general sarcasm in the UK may prove a considerable defence against these humourless extremists.
Hard right. The Tories are hardly hard right. Or even a UKIP tribute act. If they were there wouldn’t be the smoking ban or nanny state policies, there wouldn’t be taxes at the rate they are and net inward migration wouldn’t be as high as it is now, it may be as high as a million this year, and the small boats would have been sorted.
I have seen this claim, usually from centrist dad types on twitter trying to score politics points, but I cannot see how it stands up to scrutiny.
Isn't this just part of their problem though? They are politically all over the place. Some of their policies are, as you quite rightly point out, anti-freedom. I mean in my view, bizarrely so.
Perhaps it's a general problem with the right. I mean if you truly believe in freedom you don't go telling people they can't express gender however they like. Or ban smoking. etc. etc.
Ontologically the right is in a mess.
(The same thing happened with the hard left a few years ago and regularly surfaces)
Smoking is very anti-freedom. Nicotine is exceedingly addictive. It is as and possibly more addictive than heroin or cocaine. Once someone is hooked by smoking, they lose their freedom to a biochemical imbalance caused in the brain. Constantly craving the next cigarette is not freedom.
"Possibly" meaning no one knows
It is amazing how something as illiberal as this ban is portrayed as being a "freedom" measure. People start smoking and clearly they lose their own free will. Even though many many people have stopped quite easily.
“Possibly” meaning that addictiveness is hard to define and is partly socially determined rather than purely being about neurochemistry. We do know. Nicotine is one of the most researched drugs ever.
People vary: some find it easier to give up than others. Others don’t. The majority of all smokers have tried to quit and failed. The majority of all smokers want to quit. If most people doing something don’t want to be doing it, it’s not much of a freedom!
So "possibly" means we don't know but anti smoking activists use an unverifiable claim to try to back up their arguments as well as all sorts of nonsensical claims about vaping "popcorn lung" for examply.
A majority May say they want to quit. What people say and what they want are often different things.
We have far fewer smokers and the numbers are declining.
Still if you think removing a freedom is giving people freedom welcome to 1984.
I hadn't realised that one of Sunak's big ideas - the smoking ban - isn't even going to be whipped by the Tories (according to the BBC this morning). One wonders whether it has been agreed - or even discussed - by the Cabinet.
Not only is it unlikely to get through Parliament but if it did it would be completely unenforceable.
It’s just clueless drivel.
Labour will support it. Enough Tories will support it. I suspect it will get through the Commons fine.
Partial enforcement will still get the job done. If you make tobacco harder to come by, fewer people smoke, fewer people start smoking, and the quicker you get to no-one smoking tobacco.
I hadn't realised that one of Sunak's big ideas - the smoking ban - isn't even going to be whipped by the Tories (according to the BBC this morning). One wonders whether it has been agreed - or even discussed - by the Cabinet.
Not only is it unlikely to get through Parliament but if it did it would be completely unenforceable.
Tories are finished now. A new hard right party will take their place and even if the tories survive they will be the hard right party.
KGB News and the Conservatives have become Fox news and Trump GOP tribute acts respectively. It remains to be seen if there is a market for the hard right in the UK when the originals in the US seem to be in intellectual and financial meltdown.
I think the general sarcasm in the UK may prove a considerable defence against these humourless extremists.
Hard right. The Tories are hardly hard right. Or even a UKIP tribute act. If they were there wouldn’t be the smoking ban or nanny state policies, there wouldn’t be taxes at the rate they are and net inward migration wouldn’t be as high as it is now, it may be as high as a million this year, and the small boats would have been sorted.
I have seen this claim, usually from centrist dad types on twitter trying to score politics points, but I cannot see how it stands up to scrutiny.
Isn't this just part of their problem though? They are politically all over the place. Some of their policies are, as you quite rightly point out, anti-freedom. I mean in my view, bizarrely so.
Perhaps it's a general problem with the right. I mean if you truly believe in freedom you don't go telling people they can't express gender however they like. Or ban smoking. etc. etc.
Ontologically the right is in a mess.
(The same thing happened with the hard left a few years ago and regularly surfaces)
Smoking is very anti-freedom. Nicotine is exceedingly addictive. It is as and possibly more addictive than heroin or cocaine. Once someone is hooked by smoking, they lose their freedom to a biochemical imbalance caused in the brain. Constantly craving the next cigarette is not freedom.
"Possibly" meaning no one knows
It is amazing how something as illiberal as this ban is portrayed as being a "freedom" measure. People start smoking and clearly they lose their own free will. Even though many many people have stopped quite easily.
“Possibly” meaning that addictiveness is hard to define and is partly socially determined rather than purely being about neurochemistry. We do know. Nicotine is one of the most researched drugs ever.
People vary: some find it easier to give up than others. Others don’t. The majority of all smokers have tried to quit and failed. The majority of all smokers want to quit. If most people doing something don’t want to be doing it, it’s not much of a freedom!
So "possibly" means we don't know but anti smoking activists use an unverifiable claim to try to back up their arguments as well as all sorts of nonsensical claims about vaping "popcorn lung" for examply.
A majority May say they want to quit. What people say and what they want are often different things.
We have far fewer smokers and the numbers are declining.
Still if you think removing a freedom is giving people freedom welcome to 1984.
These aren’t unverifiable claims. Smoking is one of the most studied phenomena ever. There are hundreds of articles in the scientific literature published about smoking every quarter. Nicotine’s highly addictive nature has been attested by scientific research over and over and over, but if you don’t want to read, talk to half a dozen smokers and you’ll come to the same conclusion.
We do have far fewer smokers and the numbers are declining. If that’s a good thing, then why are you so opposed to speeding up that process?
Tories are finished now. A new hard right party will take their place and even if the tories survive they will be the hard right party.
5 years ago you could have said 'Labour are finished now. A new hard left party will take their place and even if Labour survive they will be the hard left party.'
The 2 main parties have always moved between their centrist and more extreme ideological wings and back
But the Tories need a new centrist leader elected by their hard right membership. How is that going to work?
I suppose it could work if Tory MPs only give two centrist candidates to the membership to choose from. Mordaunt and Barclay?
This last scenario depends on the spectrum of Tory MPs after the next election. It relies on the remaining MPS being mainly centre-right.
Tories are finished now. A new hard right party will take their place and even if the tories survive they will be the hard right party.
KGB News and the Conservatives have become Fox news and Trump GOP tribute acts respectively. It remains to be seen if there is a market for the hard right in the UK when the originals in the US seem to be in intellectual and financial meltdown.
I think the general sarcasm in the UK may prove a considerable defence against these humourless extremists.
Hard right. The Tories are hardly hard right. Or even a UKIP tribute act. If they were there wouldn’t be the smoking ban or nanny state policies, there wouldn’t be taxes at the rate they are and net inward migration wouldn’t be as high as it is now, it may be as high as a million this year, and the small boats would have been sorted.
I have seen this claim, usually from centrist dad types on twitter trying to score politics points, but I cannot see how it stands up to scrutiny.
Isn't this just part of their problem though? They are politically all over the place. Some of their policies are, as you quite rightly point out, anti-freedom. I mean in my view, bizarrely so.
Perhaps it's a general problem with the right. I mean if you truly believe in freedom you don't go telling people they can't express gender however they like. Or ban smoking. etc. etc.
Ontologically the right is in a mess.
(The same thing happened with the hard left a few years ago and regularly surfaces)
Smoking is very anti-freedom. Nicotine is exceedingly addictive. It is as and possibly more addictive than heroin or cocaine. Once someone is hooked by smoking, they lose their freedom to a biochemical imbalance caused in the brain. Constantly craving the next cigarette is not freedom.
"Possibly" meaning no one knows
It is amazing how something as illiberal as this ban is portrayed as being a "freedom" measure. People start smoking and clearly they lose their own free will. Even though many many people have stopped quite easily.
“Possibly” meaning that addictiveness is hard to define and is partly socially determined rather than purely being about neurochemistry. We do know. Nicotine is one of the most researched drugs ever.
People vary: some find it easier to give up than others. Others don’t. The majority of all smokers have tried to quit and failed. The majority of all smokers want to quit. If most people doing something don’t want to be doing it, it’s not much of a freedom!
So "possibly" means we don't know but anti smoking activists use an unverifiable claim to try to back up their arguments as well as all sorts of nonsensical claims about vaping "popcorn lung" for examply.
A majority May say they want to quit. What people say and what they want are often different things.
We have far fewer smokers and the numbers are declining.
Still if you think removing a freedom is giving people freedom welcome to 1984.
The thing about vaping is that it’s still fairly new, there are lots of different types of vapes and so the jury has to still be out on safety. I have looked at some vaping products in a minor harm reduction project and we’ve seen flavourings chemically reacting with carrier solvents in the vape, to produce chemical products that do not have known safety properties. In the states in particular cannabis vaping is common and other drugs. There will be issues down the line. My hunch is bog standard nicotine vapes are better than cigarettes, but I wouldn’t assume too much just yet.
How is it possible to be as into roads as Uncle Barty?
He needs to take a break from houses sometimes
BUILD! BUILD! BUILD!
Never saw a patch of green that couldn’t be improved by the application of concrete
Reminds me of a documentary I saw about the M6 once. Someone was spouting on about how the M6 through the valleys by the Lake District had improved the scenery…
I hadn't realised that one of Sunak's big ideas - the smoking ban - isn't even going to be whipped by the Tories (according to the BBC this morning). One wonders whether it has been agreed - or even discussed - by the Cabinet.
Not only is it unlikely to get through Parliament but if it did it would be completely unenforceable.
It’s just clueless drivel.
Because of the nature of the vote - it would have to be a free vote in Parliament. It seems many Labour MPs are also in favour of it so I suspect it will become law.
How it gets enforced is however a very different (and way more complex) question...
3 charts to comprehensively prove once and for all that I am right and Eabhal is wrong.
Chart over time national productivity, national population density, and national road usage. Lets see which is related or correlated.
Figure 1: UK productivity - what do we notice? A complete flatline in recent years, utterly unprecedented in fact. The unprecedented flatline continues past 2018.
Figure 2: UK population density - what do we notice? A major increase in recent years.
Q: Are figure 1 and figure 2 related? A: No, they're inversely correlated in fact. Productivity was growing faster when our density was stable and has collapsed while our density has been rising.
How does that make sense? Could it be due to figure 3? Figure 3: UK road usage - what do we notice? A major flatline in recent years.
Q: Are figure 1 and figure 3 related? A: Yes.
The UK stopped investing in roads last century. Our population density has shot up this century, our population grown nearly a quarter, but our roads have not kept up and we've not been building them. As a result our vehicle usage has stalled, leading to productivity stalling, since as we all know 95% of freight and 90% of passenger mileage is by the road, so no extra road activity = no extra productivity.
Case comprehensively closed and proven. If you want productivity, build some roads. We're overdue decades of investment.
You’ve actually made no link between the two facts. Correlation not causation.
A major driver (heh) of the flat lining productivity was the impact of 2008 on the City. Proved a lot of the business was unsustainable/ unattractive but it was in the historical productivity stats and not since then
So what's the latest pb thinking on timing of the GE? Shame we can't have a poll:
1. Spring 2024
2. Autumn 2024
3. January 2025
The question isn't what you'd like but what you think.
2,1, 3 for me but I wouldn't discount 3, much as I hate the idea.
I increasingly suspect Spring 2024. I don't think the Tories want another conference like this as a prelude to a GE.
If you had an October election would conference season go ahead or be cancelled?
That’s a good point, presumably announced in mid September. Although it’s a bit like the puzzle about the prisoner and the surprise execution. If we get to August it’s almost certain to be Oct as the date. No sane PM would call it over Christmas.
So what's the latest pb thinking on timing of the GE? Shame we can't have a poll:
1. Spring 2024
2. Autumn 2024
3. January 2025
The question isn't what you'd like but what you think.
2,1, 3 for me but I wouldn't discount 3, much as I hate the idea.
I increasingly suspect Spring 2024. I don't think the Tories want another conference like this as a prelude to a GE.
Don’t agree; I think we’re moving into the desperation stage comparable to Callaghan in 79 and Major in 97. January 25 has the advantage that two weeks of campaigning will be lost because of Christmas and New Year and peoples minds will be elsewhere.
I hadn't realised that one of Sunak's big ideas - the smoking ban - isn't even going to be whipped by the Tories (according to the BBC this morning). One wonders whether it has been agreed - or even discussed - by the Cabinet.
I believe Labour have said they'll support it, though.
It's the Education policy which is most absurd in this respect. Putting forward, without consultation of any kind, a year before an election, a fundamental reform which will take a decade to come about, is simply absurd.
Sunak appears to believe he was elected with some massive mandate to mess around with the country at his whim. He needs to recognise he's a fag end* PM who's almost certain to be ejected by an electorate which is wholly disillusioned with both him and his party.
*Possibly his only legacy.
Both need wider debate, maybe even a Royal Commission especially for the smoking ban. We don't need PMs who think they are both the Oracle and all powerful, especially the ones who are actually weak and under threat.
Why do we need a Royal Commission on the smoking ban? We’ve known the ills of smoking for decades. We’ve known the effects of different approaches to reduce smoking for decades. Let’s make a decision.
Prohibition on drugs hasn't exactly worked out brilliantly or without its own side effects? I am probably in favour, but those pretending this is a slam dunk because smoking is bad are being very naive.
And major changes generally that impact generations to come should not be rabbits out of the hat at a PMs whim making a quick decision, but be informed decisions after a proper debate and attempts to build consensus where possible.
Agree. It would be nice if no-one smoked. But prohibition is not the answer. Cigarettes are highly addictive, and we know that people are preapered to pay a lot of money for their habit. With cigarettes being cheap and easily available in other parts of the world this will just set up a black market, and the problem will be just as bad as with all other illegal drugs.
So what's the latest pb thinking on timing of the GE? Shame we can't have a poll:
1. Spring 2024
2. Autumn 2024
3. January 2025
The question isn't what you'd like but what you think.
2,1, 3 for me but I wouldn't discount 3, much as I hate the idea.
I increasingly suspect Spring 2024. I don't think the Tories want another conference like this as a prelude to a GE.
Don’t agree; I think we’re moving into the desperation stage comparable to Callaghan in 79 and Major in 97. January 25 has the advantage that two weeks of campaigning will be lost because of Christmas and New Year and peoples minds will be elsewhere.
January will be much worse for Sunak than October/November. No-one will want an election campaign over Christmas and most will just accuse Sunak of being a chicken and that he just wants one last Christmas in No. 10.
So for reasons Mrs Eek has to go via Richmond (North Yorkshire) to work today. Which means she heard this conversation between 2 people in Rishi's constituency
"Does he care about us or has he ever cared about us?" to which the answer was No...
Tories are finished now. A new hard right party will take their place and even if the tories survive they will be the hard right party.
KGB News and the Conservatives have become Fox news and Trump GOP tribute acts respectively. It remains to be seen if there is a market for the hard right in the UK when the originals in the US seem to be in intellectual and financial meltdown.
I think the general sarcasm in the UK may prove a considerable defence against these humourless extremists.
Hard right. The Tories are hardly hard right. Or even a UKIP tribute act. If they were there wouldn’t be the smoking ban or nanny state policies, there wouldn’t be taxes at the rate they are and net inward migration wouldn’t be as high as it is now, it may be as high as a million this year, and the small boats would have been sorted.
I have seen this claim, usually from centrist dad types on twitter trying to score politics points, but I cannot see how it stands up to scrutiny.
The Tories aren't hard right but cabinet ministers do flirt with them nowadays in way that would have been unthinkable for most of my lifetime. GB News seems very keen on the "conspiracy right" as a core audience which often overlaps and provides a gateway to the hard right.
I do not watch GB News but I think if it wants to be taken seriously it needs to ditch the conspiracy right.
It has started. But really needs to purge a few loons still. There is a place for a right of centre news channel which is a little more mainstream and less "WEF are controlling us all, use only cash" types.
Mind you the more I see of the Guardian these days it is like a left wing, print, version of GB News. Or at least what GB News seems to be from social media as I don't watch it.
I think that's part of the package. MSNBC feeds off Fox, which feeds off MSNBC like symbiotic dual tumours on the body politic.
So what's the latest pb thinking on timing of the GE? Shame we can't have a poll:
1. Spring 2024
2. Autumn 2024
3. January 2025
The question isn't what you'd like but what you think.
2,1, 3 for me but I wouldn't discount 3, much as I hate the idea.
I increasingly suspect Spring 2024. I don't think the Tories want another conference like this as a prelude to a GE.
If you had an October election would conference season go ahead or be cancelled?
That’s a good point, presumably announced in mid September. Although it’s a bit like the puzzle about the prisoner and the surprise execution. If we get to August it’s almost certain to be Oct as the date. No sane PM would call it over Christmas.
(Damn, seen the problem with my post…)
I suspect if we get past May 15th (or so) it's an October election. Otherwise you are in school holidays either Scotland or England..
So what's the latest pb thinking on timing of the GE? Shame we can't have a poll:
1. Spring 2024
2. Autumn 2024
3. January 2025
The question isn't what you'd like but what you think.
2,1, 3 for me but I wouldn't discount 3, much as I hate the idea.
I increasingly suspect Spring 2024. I don't think the Tories want another conference like this as a prelude to a GE.
Don’t agree; I think we’re moving into the desperation stage comparable to Callaghan in 79 and Major in 97. January 25 has the advantage that two weeks of campaigning will be lost because of Christmas and New Year and peoples minds will be elsewhere.
There is too the risk of letters going in to the 1922 if the May elections are poor. The risk is on both sides for Sunak.
Back onto HS2 for a minute, we have an interesting plan as envisaged by Sunak. OK, not Sunak as he is clueless, and not Network Rail as nobody consulted them.
HS2 will now end at Handsacre junction and they plan to sell off the land north of there to stop that evil Starmer from carrying out the strenuously argued plans of Sunak and Hunt and Shapps etc.
So we will dump a 200mph train onto a 125mph railway which is largely at capacity. And then we will slow it down! The twistier sections lie ahead and the HS2 trains will not tilt. Which means they will have to follow the new MU speed limits and not the EPS limits allowed for the existing tilting trains.
MU is mostly 110mph, EPS is mostly 125mph. In 75% of cases MU is slower than EPS, especially through the bends of which there are a great many.
So not only does HS2 no longer solve the congestion issues on the route, it will actively slow down the traffic which already runs. Faster running on HS2 slower running on the WCML. This will mean faster journey times overall but *less capacity* - as trains are being slowed down - once they rejoin the WCML.
I assume this comes from the same genius who wrote the Network North release? Announcing trams will now run to Clifton and Manchester Airport. Again. Announcing £2.5bn or £500m for a metro system which has no definition and is not understood by the local mayoral authority or network rail. Or that 60mph to Hull is High Speed. Or that the Mcr North West Quadrant will now be built although nobody has actually even proposed what that is.
At the Knappers Gazette, we believe in balance, so I just want to point out that it has now been raining in the Maldives, for four days; almost without cease
The scuba diving remains sensational, not least coz it gets you out of the dreadful, dreary rain
For a grand a night, you'd think they could do something about the weather.
To keep you occupied, here's another clue for you. Just to the side of the palace you couldn't identify.
Tories are finished now. A new hard right party will take their place and even if the tories survive they will be the hard right party.
KGB News and the Conservatives have become Fox news and Trump GOP tribute acts respectively. It remains to be seen if there is a market for the hard right in the UK when the originals in the US seem to be in intellectual and financial meltdown.
I think the general sarcasm in the UK may prove a considerable defence against these humourless extremists.
Hard right. The Tories are hardly hard right. Or even a UKIP tribute act. If they were there wouldn’t be the smoking ban or nanny state policies, there wouldn’t be taxes at the rate they are and net inward migration wouldn’t be as high as it is now, it may be as high as a million this year, and the small boats would have been sorted.
I have seen this claim, usually from centrist dad types on twitter trying to score politics points, but I cannot see how it stands up to scrutiny.
Isn't this just part of their problem though? They are politically all over the place. Some of their policies are, as you quite rightly point out, anti-freedom. I mean in my view, bizarrely so.
Perhaps it's a general problem with the right. I mean if you truly believe in freedom you don't go telling people they can't express gender however they like. Or ban smoking. etc. etc.
Ontologically the right is in a mess.
(The same thing happened with the hard left a few years ago and regularly surfaces)
Smoking is very anti-freedom. Nicotine is exceedingly addictive. It is as and possibly more addictive than heroin or cocaine. Once someone is hooked by smoking, they lose their freedom to a biochemical imbalance caused in the brain. Constantly craving the next cigarette is not freedom.
"Possibly" meaning no one knows
It is amazing how something as illiberal as this ban is portrayed as being a "freedom" measure. People start smoking and clearly they lose their own free will. Even though many many people have stopped quite easily.
“Possibly” meaning that addictiveness is hard to define and is partly socially determined rather than purely being about neurochemistry. We do know. Nicotine is one of the most researched drugs ever.
People vary: some find it easier to give up than others. Others don’t. The majority of all smokers have tried to quit and failed. The majority of all smokers want to quit. If most people doing something don’t want to be doing it, it’s not much of a freedom!
So "possibly" means we don't know but anti smoking activists use an unverifiable claim to try to back up their arguments as well as all sorts of nonsensical claims about vaping "popcorn lung" for examply.
A majority May say they want to quit. What people say and what they want are often different things.
We have far fewer smokers and the numbers are declining.
Still if you think removing a freedom is giving people freedom welcome to 1984.
The thing about vaping is that it’s still fairly new, there are lots of different types of vapes and so the jury has to still be out on safety. I have looked at some vaping products in a minor harm reduction project and we’ve seen flavourings chemically reacting with carrier solvents in the vape, to produce chemical products that do not have known safety properties. In the states in particular cannabis vaping is common and other drugs. There will be issues down the line. My hunch is bog standard nicotine vapes are better than cigarettes, but I wouldn’t assume too much just yet.
I think there's already a fair amount of early research suggesting vaping is much safer than cigarettes from the POV of lung damage ?
But as you say, it will be fine time before the risks are well defined.
So what's the latest pb thinking on timing of the GE? Shame we can't have a poll:
1. Spring 2024
2. Autumn 2024
3. January 2025
The question isn't what you'd like but what you think.
2,1, 3 for me but I wouldn't discount 3, much as I hate the idea.
I increasingly suspect Spring 2024. I don't think the Tories want another conference like this as a prelude to a GE.
Don’t agree; I think we’re moving into the desperation stage comparable to Callaghan in 79 and Major in 97. January 25 has the advantage that two weeks of campaigning will be lost because of Christmas and New Year and peoples minds will be elsewhere.
There is too the risk of letters going in to the 1922 if the May elections are poor. The risk is on both sides for Sunak.
Sunak seems to be spending some of the billions of capital saved from HS2 on keeping bus fares down.
Surely the latter is day-to-day spending not capital?
I don't think he cares.
I don't want to think that Rishi is running the country like he's running a hedge fund, but it's consistent with the observations.
Take over a troubled firm, change a load of stuff without reference to the domain experts, cut capex, flog off the bits for as much short term dosh as possible.
I wonder who is going to get Britain? Hope it's someone nice.
So for reasons Mrs Eek has to go via Richmond (North Yorkshire) to work today. Which means she heard this conversation between 2 people in Rishi's constituency
"Does he care about us or has he ever cared about us?" to which the answer was No...
I think the last PM to which the answer might be 'yes' is John Major in Hillingdon.
I hadn't realised that one of Sunak's big ideas - the smoking ban - isn't even going to be whipped by the Tories (according to the BBC this morning). One wonders whether it has been agreed - or even discussed - by the Cabinet.
I believe Labour have said they'll support it, though.
It's the Education policy which is most absurd in this respect. Putting forward, without consultation of any kind, a year before an election, a fundamental reform which will take a decade to come about, is simply absurd.
Sunak appears to believe he was elected with some massive mandate to mess around with the country at his whim. He needs to recognise he's a fag end* PM who's almost certain to be ejected by an electorate which is wholly disillusioned with both him and his party.
*Possibly his only legacy.
Both need wider debate, maybe even a Royal Commission especially for the smoking ban. We don't need PMs who think they are both the Oracle and all powerful, especially the ones who are actually weak and under threat.
Why do we need a Royal Commission on the smoking ban? We’ve known the ills of smoking for decades. We’ve known the effects of different approaches to reduce smoking for decades. Let’s make a decision.
Prohibition on drugs hasn't exactly worked out brilliantly or without its own side effects? I am probably in favour, but those pretending this is a slam dunk because smoking is bad are being very naive.
And major changes generally that impact generations to come should not be rabbits out of the hat at a PMs whim making a quick decision, but be informed decisions after a proper debate and attempts to build consensus where possible.
Agree. It would be nice if no-one smoked. But prohibition is not the answer. Cigarettes are highly addictive, and we know that people are preapered to pay a lot of money for their habit. With cigarettes being cheap and easily available in other parts of the world this will just set up a black market, and the problem will be just as bad as with all other illegal drugs.
Is that true ? The evidence of NZ suggests otherwise. And if you have an alternative source of nicotine hit which is safer, it will be hardly worth th xx while of your black marketeers. Particularly with a gradual phase out.
So for reasons Mrs Eek has to go via Richmond (North Yorkshire) to work today. Which means she heard this conversation between 2 people in Rishi's constituency
"Does he care about us or has he ever cared about us?" to which the answer was No...
I think the last PM to which the answer might be 'yes' is John Major in Hillingdon.
I do not watch GB News but I think if it wants to be taken seriously it needs to ditch the conspiracy right.
It has started. But really needs to purge a few loons still. There is a place for a right of centre news channel which is a little more mainstream and less "WEF are controlling us all, use only cash" types.
Mind you the more I see of the Guardian these days it is like a left wing, print, version of GB News. Or at least what GB News seems to be from social media as I don't watch it.
I do feel the Guardian goes too far with reader-pleasing narratives - you get the impression that virtually nobody still supports the Tories. As a left-wing reader I want to understand the right too, and they don't help.
One year to a GE and Sunak has got the country focussed on railway lines.
Taking a step back from the fire and fury tonight: is that really a very good re-election launch strategy?
As disgusted as I am, cynically it could be.
Rail just isn't that important outside of London, which is why HS2 was only ever a Londoners blueprint for what Levelling Up should mean.
If the Opposition overreacts to this then it could backfire, which is probably why Starmer is wisely keeping his cards close to his chest currently.
If Sunak wanted to be really cynical, he should slash fuel duty before the election. Would help him make his inflation target too.
This is your blind spot for all things transport.
The reason it isn't important is because it isn't available. That's what HS2 was aiming to fix.
The reason you have high levels of driving in the north-west is because you have the highest density of roads anywhere in the country.
So what you're saying is we have high levels of driving because we have the best density of roads anywhere in the country?
Great. And your problem with that is?
So if other areas had better road density, they could cope with more driving too. And since 95% of freight mileage comes on the roads, and 90% of passenger mileage comes on the roads, then any extra driving would be GDP growth.
Just because our road situation is better than elsewhere, doesn't mean its worse than it should be. Had we continued to invest in our roads at the same rate as we had in the 60s then we'd be much better off now and our GDP/capita would have continued to grow just as it did in the 60s and 70s.
You could literally double all rail capacity and that would be a miniscule boost in freight capacity nationwide, but if you double road capacity then since 95% of transport comes on roads that takes you to 190% capacity.
Its almost as if investment in infrastructure works, seems like you're coming around.
High road coverage, low productivity. Thought you were interested in levelling up, not down?
(Doubling rail coverage from a low base is not the same as doubling road coverage)
There's no inverse relationship between high productivity including high home ownership and road coverage.
Your argument is as illogical as your contention that just because something is working doesn't mean we don't need more of it.
By your logic London already had rail so has no need for Crossrail.
Given London has high levels of productivity and relatively few roads per person, seems a safe bet to invest in public transport rather than roads.
But I actually agree - I think levels of public transport
3 charts to comprehensively prove once and for all that I am right and Eabhal is wrong.
Chart over time national productivity, national population density, and national road usage. Lets see which is related or correlated.
Figure 1: UK productivity - what do we notice? A complete flatline in recent years, utterly unprecedented in fact. The unprecedented flatline continues past 2018.
Figure 2: UK population density - what do we notice? A major increase in recent years.
Q: Are figure 1 and figure 2 related? A: No, they're inversely correlated in fact. Productivity was growing faster when our density was stable and has collapsed while our density has been rising.
How does that make sense? Could it be due to figure 3? Figure 3: UK road usage - what do we notice? A major flatline in recent years.
Q: Are figure 1 and figure 3 related? A: Yes.
The UK stopped investing in roads last century. Our population density has shot up this century, our population grown nearly a quarter, but our roads have not kept up and we've not been building them. As a result our vehicle usage has stalled, leading to productivity stalling, since as we all know 95% of freight and 90% of passenger mileage is by the road, so no extra road activity = no extra productivity.
Case comprehensively closed and proven. If you want productivity, build some roads. We're overdue decades of investment.
Have you sent your analysis to the OECD? Nobel prize I reckon. It was roads all along.
Infrastructure, yes. Roads are infrastructure not your enemy.
No I've not sent it to the OECD as it's not news to economists that infrastructure investment has a causative relationship with growth.
You absolutely should pal. Productivity growth has been low since 2008 and this might be the eureka moment.
So what's the latest pb thinking on timing of the GE? Shame we can't have a poll:
1. Spring 2024
2. Autumn 2024
3. January 2025
The question isn't what you'd like but what you think.
2,1, 3 for me but I wouldn't discount 3, much as I hate the idea.
I increasingly suspect Spring 2024. I don't think the Tories want another conference like this as a prelude to a GE.
Don’t agree; I think we’re moving into the desperation stage comparable to Callaghan in 79 and Major in 97. January 25 has the advantage that two weeks of campaigning will be lost because of Christmas and New Year and peoples minds will be elsewhere.
January will be much worse for Sunak than October/November. No-one will want an election campaign over Christmas and most will just accuse Sunak of being a chicken and that he just wants one last Christmas in No. 10.
October seems the form horse but if the conservatives are still anywhere close to their current poll rating it will be very tempting to wait and see if something turns up.
I think next year could be grim, politically. Ever more desperate attempts to stoke a culture war here, a nasty Trump-Biden presidential contest in the Autumn possibly accompanied by insurrection of some sort, and a possible creeping abandonment of Ukraine by bored westerners putting a smile on Putin’s face.
Again and again Sunak in his interview, says 'I've been PM for less than a year".
This is the strategy. "I am the change", "I am new", "I need more time to change things", "forget the other 13 years"
Will it work?
Dunno. But I wont be surprised if there is some kind of narrowing of the polls.
He's had government posts for half a decade. His party has been in power for well over a decade. His conference speech demonstrated that he's just another smoke and mirrors merchant.
3 charts to comprehensively prove once and for all that I am right and Eabhal is wrong.
Chart over time national productivity, national population density, and national road usage. Lets see which is related or correlated.
Figure 1: UK productivity - what do we notice? A complete flatline in recent years, utterly unprecedented in fact. The unprecedented flatline continues past 2018.
Figure 2: UK population density - what do we notice? A major increase in recent years.
Q: Are figure 1 and figure 2 related? A: No, they're inversely correlated in fact. Productivity was growing faster when our density was stable and has collapsed while our density has been rising.
How does that make sense? Could it be due to figure 3? Figure 3: UK road usage - what do we notice? A major flatline in recent years.
Q: Are figure 1 and figure 3 related? A: Yes.
The UK stopped investing in roads last century. Our population density has shot up this century, our population grown nearly a quarter, but our roads have not kept up and we've not been building them. As a result our vehicle usage has stalled, leading to productivity stalling, since as we all know 95% of freight and 90% of passenger mileage is by the road, so no extra road activity = no extra productivity.
Case comprehensively closed and proven. If you want productivity, build some roads. We're overdue decades of investment.
You’ve actually made no link between the two facts. Correlation not causation.
A major driver (heh) of the flat lining productivity was the impact of 2008 on the City. Proved a lot of the business was unsustainable/ unattractive but it was in the historical productivity stats and not since then
Bart's attempts at establishing causation remind me of the Pastafarian linkage between climate change and pirates. It is an uncannily close match but is, of course, utter rubbish - which is the whole point.
As a queer man, I can say that this conference scared the hell out of me and that a typical conversation amongst the queer people I know is where should they could start moving to to be safe. When that was a feeling amongst some people in the Jewish community in response to Corbyn, it was talked about a lot as disqualifying. That the front pages are cheering for much of this tripe only increases this fear.
The Conservative project seems to be about defining who is a citizen, and therefore deserving of state interest, and who isn't, and therefore deserving of state vitriol. The talking points around trans people, gender ideologists, parental rights around sex education and the idea of fake gay asylum seekers shows that the entire LGBTQ+ community is in the cross hairs. Hell, even a Conservative London Assembly member sees that (even if I put that in the "I didn't think the leopards would eat my face" category of politics).
And SKS doesn't seem to be interested in protecting us either; if anything this seems to be something he's willing to agree with the Tories on...
It looks like Starmer starts his conference with at least a dozen open goals.
So a no score draw by next Wednesday.
No. If Labour can't make hay out of Sunak's weak character, looseness with the numbers, and rash fudging of major transport plans in a few days — which are full of flaws and contradictions — then Labour should shut up shop. Even a half-competent opposition should find it easy to beat these Tory no-marks.
3 charts to comprehensively prove once and for all that I am right and Eabhal is wrong.
Chart over time national productivity, national population density, and national road usage. Lets see which is related or correlated.
Figure 1: UK productivity - what do we notice? A complete flatline in recent years, utterly unprecedented in fact. The unprecedented flatline continues past 2018.
Figure 2: UK population density - what do we notice? A major increase in recent years.
Q: Are figure 1 and figure 2 related? A: No, they're inversely correlated in fact. Productivity was growing faster when our density was stable and has collapsed while our density has been rising.
How does that make sense? Could it be due to figure 3? Figure 3: UK road usage - what do we notice? A major flatline in recent years.
Q: Are figure 1 and figure 3 related? A: Yes.
The UK stopped investing in roads last century. Our population density has shot up this century, our population grown nearly a quarter, but our roads have not kept up and we've not been building them. As a result our vehicle usage has stalled, leading to productivity stalling, since as we all know 95% of freight and 90% of passenger mileage is by the road, so no extra road activity = no extra productivity.
Case comprehensively closed and proven. If you want productivity, build some roads. We're overdue decades of investment.
You’ve actually made no link between the two facts. Correlation not causation.
A major driver (heh) of the flat lining productivity was the impact of 2008 on the City. Proved a lot of the business was unsustainable/ unattractive but it was in the historical productivity stats and not since then
Bart's attempts at establishing causation remind me of the Pastafarian linkage between climate change and pirates. It is an uncannily close match but is, of course, utter rubbish - which is the whole point.
People who own budgerigars suffer more heart-attacks. Ban the budgie!
I wonder if they might go for May to combine with the locals and mayoral in the expectation that they'll do better than expected in London and at least save some marginals there. On the other hand, if they're still doing badly, October would save the embarrassment of a futile and depressing conference.
I do not watch GB News but I think if it wants to be taken seriously it needs to ditch the conspiracy right.
It has started. But really needs to purge a few loons still. There is a place for a right of centre news channel which is a little more mainstream and less "WEF are controlling us all, use only cash" types.
Mind you the more I see of the Guardian these days it is like a left wing, print, version of GB News. Or at least what GB News seems to be from social media as I don't watch it.
I do feel the Guardian goes too far with reader-pleasing narratives - you get the impression that virtually nobody still supports the Tories. As a left-wing reader I want to understand the right too, and they don't help.
The difference is that GB News wants to be the hand on the one way ratchet that is British politics. They want to be the bridge between the crazy stuff and the mainstream. You only need look at this Tory conference to see that it's already working - that ministers are taking the "threat" of 15 minute cities seriously is a "we must find bigfoot" level of conspiracy nonsense. The problem is to be that bridge they need enough crazy to get the twitter right wingers to watch and enjoy, but not too much crazy that the politicians refuse to appear on it (until they are more established, at least). Fox did this - it was relatively "sensible" at the beginning of its life cycle, and had the odd crazy opinion presenter (typically at prime time). Then, as Fox clearly held more sway, the serious journalists got less air time and the cranks got more until the cranks were all that was left.
How come the Tories aren't going last in this years conference season? The Conservatives were traditionally the last party to have their conference after Labour?
Perhaps the "may" in this will provide a defence ? ..But it now looks like she may go down for very different reasons...
So the issue I have with this is the same as many other cases. The investigation is taking far too long. When was she arrested and interviewed? I understand it may be complicated but I think people have a right not to be left hanging. We’ve seen that far too often in alleged sexual assault cases, often that never proceed to charge.
I’m no lawyer, so have no understanding of how a rather good quip can influence a trial. I’m sure Cyclefree will be along to state chapter and verse but it’s hard to see how a jury would be influenced.
I wonder if they might go for May to combine with the locals and mayoral in the expectation that they'll do better than expected in London and at least save some marginals there. On the other hand, if they're still doing badly, October would save the embarrassment of a futile and depressing conference.
I would think that the local parties would prefer that the locals not be on the same day as the GE, surely? If it looks like the national party are going to get a drubbing, and few voters will split ticket, surely the best bet for local Tories is a local election where they can distance themselves from the national party?
I do not watch GB News but I think if it wants to be taken seriously it needs to ditch the conspiracy right.
It has started. But really needs to purge a few loons still. There is a place for a right of centre news channel which is a little more mainstream and less "WEF are controlling us all, use only cash" types.
Mind you the more I see of the Guardian these days it is like a left wing, print, version of GB News. Or at least what GB News seems to be from social media as I don't watch it.
I do feel the Guardian goes too far with reader-pleasing narratives - you get the impression that virtually nobody still supports the Tories. As a left-wing reader I want to understand the right too, and they don't help.
Yes agreed. They used to have regular right of centre opinion pieces but not so much now. A symptom of the increased left-right binaryism?
(There must be a better word than binaryism but I can't think of it this morning.)
How come the Tories aren't going last in this years conference season? The Conservatives were traditionally the last party to have their conference after Labour?
Seems an odd change?
They swapped because Labour were having difficult getting a booking.
As a queer man, I can say that this conference scared the hell out of me and that a typical conversation amongst the queer people I know is where should they could start moving to to be safe. When that was a feeling amongst some people in the Jewish community in response to Corbyn, it was talked about a lot as disqualifying. That the front pages are cheering for much of this tripe only increases this fear.
The Conservative project seems to be about defining who is a citizen, and therefore deserving of state interest, and who isn't, and therefore deserving of state vitriol. The talking points around trans people, gender ideologists, parental rights around sex education and the idea of fake gay asylum seekers shows that the entire LGBTQ+ community is in the cross hairs. Hell, even a Conservative London Assembly member sees that (even if I put that in the "I didn't think the leopards would eat my face" category of politics).
And SKS doesn't seem to be interested in protecting us either; if anything this seems to be something he's willing to agree with the Tories on...
For goodness sake, 60 years ago homosexuality was illegal in the UK and still is in some nations and yesterday Sunak praised gay marriage.
Trans people might be a bit more concerned given his comments that men were not women but Starmer supports even gender conversion without medical certificate
I do not watch GB News but I think if it wants to be taken seriously it needs to ditch the conspiracy right.
It has started. But really needs to purge a few loons still. There is a place for a right of centre news channel which is a little more mainstream and less "WEF are controlling us all, use only cash" types.
Mind you the more I see of the Guardian these days it is like a left wing, print, version of GB News. Or at least what GB News seems to be from social media as I don't watch it.
I do feel the Guardian goes too far with reader-pleasing narratives - you get the impression that virtually nobody still supports the Tories. As a left-wing reader I want to understand the right too, and they don't help.
Quite right, Nick, echo chambers be they right or left are not helpful.
Sadly PB is becoming ever more anti Tory by the minute, although the Tories keep making it easy…
I wonder if they might go for May to combine with the locals and mayoral in the expectation that they'll do better than expected in London and at least save some marginals there. On the other hand, if they're still doing badly, October would save the embarrassment of a futile and depressing conference.
I would think that the local parties would prefer that the locals not be on the same day as the GE, surely? If it looks like the national party are going to get a drubbing, and few voters will split ticket, surely the best bet for local Tories is a local election where they can distance themselves from the national party?
If the polls remain are as they are, the Tories will get a drubbing in the May locals in lieu of a GE.
Perhaps the "may" in this will provide a defence ? ..But it now looks like she may go down for very different reasons...
So the issue I have with this is the same as many other cases. The investigation is taking far too long. When was she arrested and interviewed? I understand it may be complicated but I think people have a right not to be left hanging. We’ve seen that far too often in alleged sexual assault cases, often that never proceed to charge.
I’m no lawyer, so have no understanding of how a rather good quip can influence a trial. I’m sure Cyclefree will be along to state chapter and verse but it’s hard to see how a jury would be influenced.
If the PM is publicly making a joke about her guilt, in a speech broadcast to the entire nation, it's hard to see how one can argue that doesn't potentially prejudice opinion.
How come the Tories aren't going last in this years conference season? The Conservatives were traditionally the last party to have their conference after Labour?
Seems an odd change?
Yes, I wondered about that. You would think there would be a small advantage in going last.
Checks: Cons seem to have gone after Labour in every conference season since 2012 at least:
I wonder if they might go for May to combine with the locals and mayoral in the expectation that they'll do better than expected in London and at least save some marginals there. On the other hand, if they're still doing badly, October would save the embarrassment of a futile and depressing conference.
I would think that the local parties would prefer that the locals not be on the same day as the GE, surely? If it looks like the national party are going to get a drubbing, and few voters will split ticket, surely the best bet for local Tories is a local election where they can distance themselves from the national party?
They'll get dubbed anyway- the Conservative voter strike next spring will be of the sort that would make Red Robbo jealous.
If anything, running locals and the General together might help local Conservatives a bit. The voters who would like to send Sunak a message but really don't want PM Starmer will be forced off their sofas, which is what local elections are all about.
Again and again Sunak in his interview, says 'I've been PM for less than a year".
This is the strategy. "I am the change", "I am new", "I need more time to change things", "forget the other 13 years"
Will it work?
Dunno. But I wont be surprised if there is some kind of narrowing of the polls.
I agree (to a lead of 10ish?), though I think his message was somewhat forgettable. Traditionally parties do get a bit of a boost after their conferences (which is why Labour is pleased that the two English by-elections are after ours), and I'd expect Labour's lead to be back to 15+ in a couple of weeks.
So what's the latest pb thinking on timing of the GE? Shame we can't have a poll:
1. Spring 2024
2. Autumn 2024
3. January 2025
The question isn't what you'd like but what you think.
2,1, 3 for me but I wouldn't discount 3, much as I hate the idea.
I increasingly suspect Spring 2024. I don't think the Tories want another conference like this as a prelude to a GE.
Don’t agree; I think we’re moving into the desperation stage comparable to Callaghan in 79 and Major in 97. January 25 has the advantage that two weeks of campaigning will be lost because of Christmas and New Year and peoples minds will be elsewhere.
January will be much worse for Sunak than October/November. No-one will want an election campaign over Christmas and most will just accuse Sunak of being a chicken and that he just wants one last Christmas in No. 10.
October seems the form horse but if the conservatives are still anywhere close to their current poll rating it will be very tempting to wait and see if something turns up.
I think next year could be grim, politically. Ever more desperate attempts to stoke a culture war here, a nasty Trump-Biden presidential contest in the Autumn possibly accompanied by insurrection of some sort, and a possible creeping abandonment of Ukraine by bored westerners putting a smile on Putin’s face.
By next autumn Trump might be in jail if his court cases go against him, I am sceptical he will be nominee. Ukraine is heading for deadlock, Putin can't get to Kyiv and Zelensky can't push the Russians out of Crimea
3 charts to comprehensively prove once and for all that I am right and Eabhal is wrong.
Chart over time national productivity, national population density, and national road usage. Lets see which is related or correlated.
Figure 1: UK productivity - what do we notice? A complete flatline in recent years, utterly unprecedented in fact. The unprecedented flatline continues past 2018.
Figure 2: UK population density - what do we notice? A major increase in recent years.
Q: Are figure 1 and figure 2 related? A: No, they're inversely correlated in fact. Productivity was growing faster when our density was stable and has collapsed while our density has been rising.
How does that make sense? Could it be due to figure 3? Figure 3: UK road usage - what do we notice? A major flatline in recent years.
Q: Are figure 1 and figure 3 related? A: Yes.
The UK stopped investing in roads last century. Our population density has shot up this century, our population grown nearly a quarter, but our roads have not kept up and we've not been building them. As a result our vehicle usage has stalled, leading to productivity stalling, since as we all know 95% of freight and 90% of passenger mileage is by the road, so no extra road activity = no extra productivity.
Case comprehensively closed and proven. If you want productivity, build some roads. We're overdue decades of investment.
You’ve actually made no link between the two facts. Correlation not causation.
A major driver (heh) of the flat lining productivity was the impact of 2008 on the City. Proved a lot of the business was unsustainable/ unattractive but it was in the historical productivity stats and not since then
I have made a link between the two facts, there's a causative (not correlative) link between infrastructure and growth.
Don't believe me, ask those opposed to new roads as it will lead to "induced demand".
Want another word for "induced demand"? "Growth" 📈
Back onto HS2 for a minute, we have an interesting plan as envisaged by Sunak. OK, not Sunak as he is clueless, and not Network Rail as nobody consulted them.
HS2 will now end at Handsacre junction and they plan to sell off the land north of there to stop that evil Starmer from carrying out the strenuously argued plans of Sunak and Hunt and Shapps etc.
So we will dump a 200mph train onto a 125mph railway which is largely at capacity. And then we will slow it down! The twistier sections lie ahead and the HS2 trains will not tilt. Which means they will have to follow the new MU speed limits and not the EPS limits allowed for the existing tilting trains.
MU is mostly 110mph, EPS is mostly 125mph. In 75% of cases MU is slower than EPS, especially through the bends of which there are a great many.
So not only does HS2 no longer solve the congestion issues on the route, it will actively slow down the traffic which already runs. Faster running on HS2 slower running on the WCML. This will mean faster journey times overall but *less capacity* - as trains are being slowed down - once they rejoin the WCML.
I assume this comes from the same genius who wrote the Network North release? Announcing trams will now run to Clifton and Manchester Airport. Again. Announcing £2.5bn or £500m for a metro system which has no definition and is not understood by the local mayoral authority or network rail. Or that 60mph to Hull is High Speed. Or that the Mcr North West Quadrant will now be built although nobody has actually even proposed what that is.
The genius in question is rumoured to be Andrew Gilligan.
So Sunak is portraying himself as “change”. And has the same two principal advisors as Johnson.
So what's the latest pb thinking on timing of the GE? Shame we can't have a poll:
1. Spring 2024
2. Autumn 2024
3. January 2025
The question isn't what you'd like but what you think.
2,1, 3 for me but I wouldn't discount 3, much as I hate the idea.
I increasingly suspect Spring 2024. I don't think the Tories want another conference like this as a prelude to a GE.
Sunak won't survive another drubbing in the locals - backbenchers will remove him.
So either they wait till after that, and he's removed, or they go then.
A honeymoon election victory immediately after PM Braverman replaces Sunak could work.
The gravy train has to keep running. If it stops the game is up.
Anyway the media seem more than pleased with Sunak's performance yesterday. All I can say is they can't have listened for the entire hour as I did. Maybe it made more sense with the sound turned off.
Perhaps the "may" in this will provide a defence ? ..But it now looks like she may go down for very different reasons...
So the issue I have with this is the same as many other cases. The investigation is taking far too long. When was she arrested and interviewed? I understand it may be complicated but I think people have a right not to be left hanging. We’ve seen that far too often in alleged sexual assault cases, often that never proceed to charge.
I’m no lawyer, so have no understanding of how a rather good quip can influence a trial. I’m sure Cyclefree will be along to state chapter and verse but it’s hard to see how a jury would be influenced.
If the PM is publicly making a joke about her guilt, in a speech broadcast to the entire nation, it's hard to see how one can argue that doesn't potentially prejudice opinion.
You don't have to be a lawyer to get that.
He made no implication of guilt or otherwise.
Fine, perhaps it was wrong. I think the police taking an age are the issue. Not unlike VAR. If there is eveidence bring the charges. If it’s taking this long, you have to wonder why.
Perhaps the "may" in this will provide a defence ? ..But it now looks like she may go down for very different reasons...
So the issue I have with this is the same as many other cases. The investigation is taking far too long. When was she arrested and interviewed? I understand it may be complicated but I think people have a right not to be left hanging. We’ve seen that far too often in alleged sexual assault cases, often that never proceed to charge.
I’m no lawyer, so have no understanding of how a rather good quip can influence a trial. I’m sure Cyclefree will be along to state chapter and verse but it’s hard to see how a jury would be influenced.
If the PM is publicly making a joke about her guilt, in a speech broadcast to the entire nation, it's hard to see how one can argue that doesn't potentially prejudice opinion.
You don't have to be a lawyer to get that.
The fact that a prime minister can lay himself open to a charge of contempt of court in a major speech, every word of which must have been weighed in advance, must say something about the calibre of his advisors.
So what's the latest pb thinking on timing of the GE? Shame we can't have a poll:
1. Spring 2024
2. Autumn 2024
3. January 2025
The question isn't what you'd like but what you think.
2,1, 3 for me but I wouldn't discount 3, much as I hate the idea.
I increasingly suspect Spring 2024. I don't think the Tories want another conference like this as a prelude to a GE.
Don’t agree; I think we’re moving into the desperation stage comparable to Callaghan in 79 and Major in 97. January 25 has the advantage that two weeks of campaigning will be lost because of Christmas and New Year and peoples minds will be elsewhere.
There is too the risk of letters going in to the 1922 if the May elections are poor. The risk is on both sides for Sunak.
Thatcher reincarnated probably wouldn't re elect the Tories now. It is like Labour in 1979 or 2010 or the Tories in 1997. Sunak will stay not least as no other Tory really wants the job until opposition when Labour as likely next government would have to deal with the economy
As a queer man, I can say that this conference scared the hell out of me and that a typical conversation amongst the queer people I know is where should they could start moving to to be safe. When that was a feeling amongst some people in the Jewish community in response to Corbyn, it was talked about a lot as disqualifying. That the front pages are cheering for much of this tripe only increases this fear.
The Conservative project seems to be about defining who is a citizen, and therefore deserving of state interest, and who isn't, and therefore deserving of state vitriol. The talking points around trans people, gender ideologists, parental rights around sex education and the idea of fake gay asylum seekers shows that the entire LGBTQ+ community is in the cross hairs. Hell, even a Conservative London Assembly member sees that (even if I put that in the "I didn't think the leopards would eat my face" category of politics).
And SKS doesn't seem to be interested in protecting us either; if anything this seems to be something he's willing to agree with the Tories on...
For goodness sake, 60 years ago homosexuality was illegal in the UK and still is in some nations and yesterday Sunak praised gay marriage.
Trans people might be a bit more concerned given his comments that men were not women but Starmer supports even gender conversion without medical certificate
The legally recognised ability of individuals to change gender was settled law before Sunak entered Parliament. The 2019 Conservative Party manifesto made no mention of changing this. I've not checked, but I don't think there was any mention of the issue in the 2017 or 2015 manifestoes either. What is Sunak's democratic mandate here?
I do not watch GB News but I think if it wants to be taken seriously it needs to ditch the conspiracy right.
It has started. But really needs to purge a few loons still. There is a place for a right of centre news channel which is a little more mainstream and less "WEF are controlling us all, use only cash" types.
Mind you the more I see of the Guardian these days it is like a left wing, print, version of GB News. Or at least what GB News seems to be from social media as I don't watch it.
I do feel the Guardian goes too far with reader-pleasing narratives - you get the impression that virtually nobody still supports the Tories. As a left-wing reader I want to understand the right too, and they don't help.
Quite right, Nick, echo chambers be they right or left are not helpful.
Sadly PB is becoming ever more anti Tory by the minute, although the Tories keep making it easy…
There are quite a few PB Tories making the criticisms too, though.
As far as the Guardian is concerned, its editorial stance is irritating at times, and, like every other publication, influences its reporting. But on the whole, it's more engaged in the practice of actual journalism than any of its competitors other than the Times and FT.
As a queer man, I can say that this conference scared the hell out of me and that a typical conversation amongst the queer people I know is where should they could start moving to to be safe. When that was a feeling amongst some people in the Jewish community in response to Corbyn, it was talked about a lot as disqualifying. That the front pages are cheering for much of this tripe only increases this fear.
The Conservative project seems to be about defining who is a citizen, and therefore deserving of state interest, and who isn't, and therefore deserving of state vitriol. The talking points around trans people, gender ideologists, parental rights around sex education and the idea of fake gay asylum seekers shows that the entire LGBTQ+ community is in the cross hairs. Hell, even a Conservative London Assembly member sees that (even if I put that in the "I didn't think the leopards would eat my face" category of politics).
And SKS doesn't seem to be interested in protecting us either; if anything this seems to be something he's willing to agree with the Tories on...
For goodness sake, 60 years ago homosexuality was illegal in the UK and still is in some nations and yesterday Sunak praised gay marriage.
Trans people might be a bit more concerned given his comments that men were not women but Starmer supports even gender conversion without medical certificate
Latest: train franchise to be renamed "Cis-Pennine Express".
3 charts to comprehensively prove once and for all that I am right and Eabhal is wrong.
Chart over time national productivity, national population density, and national road usage. Lets see which is related or correlated.
Figure 1: UK productivity - what do we notice? A complete flatline in recent years, utterly unprecedented in fact. The unprecedented flatline continues past 2018.
Figure 2: UK population density - what do we notice? A major increase in recent years.
Q: Are figure 1 and figure 2 related? A: No, they're inversely correlated in fact. Productivity was growing faster when our density was stable and has collapsed while our density has been rising.
How does that make sense? Could it be due to figure 3? Figure 3: UK road usage - what do we notice? A major flatline in recent years.
Q: Are figure 1 and figure 3 related? A: Yes.
The UK stopped investing in roads last century. Our population density has shot up this century, our population grown nearly a quarter, but our roads have not kept up and we've not been building them. As a result our vehicle usage has stalled, leading to productivity stalling, since as we all know 95% of freight and 90% of passenger mileage is by the road, so no extra road activity = no extra productivity.
Case comprehensively closed and proven. If you want productivity, build some roads. We're overdue decades of investment.
You’ve actually made no link between the two facts. Correlation not causation.
A major driver (heh) of the flat lining productivity was the impact of 2008 on the City. Proved a lot of the business was unsustainable/ unattractive but it was in the historical productivity stats and not since then
Bart's attempts at establishing causation remind me of the Pastafarian linkage between climate change and pirates. It is an uncannily close match but is, of course, utter rubbish - which is the whole point.
The idea that there is no link between infrastructure and growth is what is utter rubbish.
Of course people know that, which is why they bitch and whine about growth, under the name induced demand.
Infrastructure leads to growth, causation not correlation.
So what's the latest pb thinking on timing of the GE? Shame we can't have a poll:
1. Spring 2024
2. Autumn 2024
3. January 2025
The question isn't what you'd like but what you think.
2,1, 3 for me but I wouldn't discount 3, much as I hate the idea.
I increasingly suspect Spring 2024. I don't think the Tories want another conference like this as a prelude to a GE.
Don’t agree; I think we’re moving into the desperation stage comparable to Callaghan in 79 and Major in 97. January 25 has the advantage that two weeks of campaigning will be lost because of Christmas and New Year and peoples minds will be elsewhere.
There is too the risk of letters going in to the 1922 if the May elections are poor. The risk is on both sides for Sunak.
Thatcher reincarnated probably wouldn't re elect the Tories now. It is like Labour in 1979 or 2010 or the Tories in 1997. Sunak will stay not least as no other Tory really wants the job until opposition when Labour as likely next government would have to deal with the economy
Yep, it's game over.
Rishi is there to take the defeat and then the battle to become LOTO will begin after the defeat.
3 charts to comprehensively prove once and for all that I am right and Eabhal is wrong.
Chart over time national productivity, national population density, and national road usage. Lets see which is related or correlated.
Figure 1: UK productivity - what do we notice? A complete flatline in recent years, utterly unprecedented in fact. The unprecedented flatline continues past 2018.
Figure 2: UK population density - what do we notice? A major increase in recent years.
Q: Are figure 1 and figure 2 related? A: No, they're inversely correlated in fact. Productivity was growing faster when our density was stable and has collapsed while our density has been rising.
How does that make sense? Could it be due to figure 3? Figure 3: UK road usage - what do we notice? A major flatline in recent years.
Q: Are figure 1 and figure 3 related? A: Yes.
The UK stopped investing in roads last century. Our population density has shot up this century, our population grown nearly a quarter, but our roads have not kept up and we've not been building them. As a result our vehicle usage has stalled, leading to productivity stalling, since as we all know 95% of freight and 90% of passenger mileage is by the road, so no extra road activity = no extra productivity.
Case comprehensively closed and proven. If you want productivity, build some roads. We're overdue decades of investment.
You’ve actually made no link between the two facts. Correlation not causation.
A major driver (heh) of the flat lining productivity was the impact of 2008 on the City. Proved a lot of the business was unsustainable/ unattractive but it was in the historical productivity stats and not since then
I have made a link between the two facts, there's a causative (not correlative) link between infrastructure and growth.
Don't believe me, ask those opposed to new roads as it will lead to "induced demand".
Want another word for "induced demand"? "Growth" 📈
Yes but is it mostly crud growth?
Suppose a wizard came along one night and moved everyone's jobs further away from their homes.
Technically, that would be more activity, more growth, but I doubt that most people would be happier as a result.
Miles driven are a means to an end (access to jobs, facilities, life) not an end in themselves. And cities provide an alternative means to that end without all the driving. Indeed, beyond a certain point, cars get in the way of civic life by taking up so much space.
As a queer man, I can say that this conference scared the hell out of me and that a typical conversation amongst the queer people I know is where should they could start moving to to be safe. When that was a feeling amongst some people in the Jewish community in response to Corbyn, it was talked about a lot as disqualifying. That the front pages are cheering for much of this tripe only increases this fear.
The Conservative project seems to be about defining who is a citizen, and therefore deserving of state interest, and who isn't, and therefore deserving of state vitriol. The talking points around trans people, gender ideologists, parental rights around sex education and the idea of fake gay asylum seekers shows that the entire LGBTQ+ community is in the cross hairs. Hell, even a Conservative London Assembly member sees that (even if I put that in the "I didn't think the leopards would eat my face" category of politics).
And SKS doesn't seem to be interested in protecting us either; if anything this seems to be something he's willing to agree with the Tories on...
For goodness sake, 60 years ago homosexuality was illegal in the UK and still is in some nations and yesterday Sunak praised gay marriage.
Trans people might be a bit more concerned given his comments that men were not women but Starmer supports even gender conversion without medical certificate
And violent attacks on all LGBTQ+ people have been increasing massively in this country. The UK is importing the language of "groomer" from the US. And this government is refusing to move on banning conversion therapy for any queer people. I had someone scream at me "Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve" holding hands with a partner at the weekend. And I'm a tall white cis guy who is pretty straight passing.
I can hear dog whistles when they're used. When the conversation is "parent's controlling sex ed" it means "kids shouldn't know gay people exist because we view them as inherently sexual". That isn't far away from "just keep it in the house". The arguments against trans people are the exact same arguments from the 80's in the moral panic against gay people then. And when you police trans people's bodies femme gay men and butch lesbians and just gender non conforming people will be caught in the same net - we already know that more cis people get questioned for being in the "wrong" toilet because people don't believe they're actually the gender they say they are.
Tories are finished now. A new hard right party will take their place and even if the tories survive they will be the hard right party.
5 years ago you could have said 'Labour are finished now. A new hard left party will take their place and even if Labour survive they will be the hard left party.'
The 2 main parties have always moved between their centrist and more extreme ideological wings and back
But the Tories need a new centrist leader elected by their hard right membership. How is that going to work?
I suppose it could work if Tory MPs only give two centrist candidates to the membership to choose from. Mordaunt and Barclay?
This last scenario depends on the spectrum of Tory MPs after the next election. It relies on the remaining MPS being mainly centre-right.
Barclay v Tugendhat as the last 2 Tory MPs pick to go to members is possible. Most of the harder line redwall MPs will likely lose their seats and some ERG types like Redwood and IDS are vulnerable to the LDs or Labour
Again and again Sunak in his interview, says 'I've been PM for less than a year".
This is the strategy. "I am the change", "I am new", "I need more time to change things", "forget the other 13 years"
Will it work?
Dunno. But I wont be surprised if there is some kind of narrowing of the polls.
I agree (to a lead of 10ish?), though I think his message was somewhat forgettable. Traditionally parties do get a bit of a boost after their conferences (which is why Labour is pleased that the two English by-elections are after ours), and I'd expect Labour's lead to be back to 15+ in a couple of weeks.
If he was genuinely a 'change' candidate, he'd have the stones to put his agenda to the nation in a general election.
Ooh - I wasn't far off with my speculation about Euston. I sarcastically said one platform on the existing site. OK its 6, but mostly in the existing footprint.
That means two things - a huge revenue from selling off the land bulldozed for the now cancelled HS station, and the absolute cancellation of the rest of the network. Originally HS2 was to take 18 trains an hour - from 6 platforms that would mean 15 minute turnarounds of 400m trains. Which is impossible.
Happily we will have had an election before much progress is made on this.
Back onto HS2 for a minute, we have an interesting plan as envisaged by Sunak. OK, not Sunak as he is clueless, and not Network Rail as nobody consulted them.
HS2 will now end at Handsacre junction and they plan to sell off the land north of there to stop that evil Starmer from carrying out the strenuously argued plans of Sunak and Hunt and Shapps etc.
So we will dump a 200mph train onto a 125mph railway which is largely at capacity. And then we will slow it down! The twistier sections lie ahead and the HS2 trains will not tilt. Which means they will have to follow the new MU speed limits and not the EPS limits allowed for the existing tilting trains.
MU is mostly 110mph, EPS is mostly 125mph. In 75% of cases MU is slower than EPS, especially through the bends of which there are a great many.
So not only does HS2 no longer solve the congestion issues on the route, it will actively slow down the traffic which already runs. Faster running on HS2 slower running on the WCML. This will mean faster journey times overall but *less capacity* - as trains are being slowed down - once they rejoin the WCML.
I assume this comes from the same genius who wrote the Network North release? Announcing trams will now run to Clifton and Manchester Airport. Again. Announcing £2.5bn or £500m for a metro system which has no definition and is not understood by the local mayoral authority or network rail. Or that 60mph to Hull is High Speed. Or that the Mcr North West Quadrant will now be built although nobody has actually even proposed what that is.
The genius in question is rumoured to be Andrew Gilligan.
So Sunak is portraying himself as “change”. And has the same two principal advisors as Johnson.
That IS a change. It is traditional to change advisors when you change leader. But Glenn and Ollie have kept their jobs! Radical!!!!
So what's the latest pb thinking on timing of the GE? Shame we can't have a poll:
1. Spring 2024
2. Autumn 2024
3. January 2025
The question isn't what you'd like but what you think.
2,1, 3 for me but I wouldn't discount 3, much as I hate the idea.
I increasingly suspect Spring 2024. I don't think the Tories want another conference like this as a prelude to a GE.
Don’t agree; I think we’re moving into the desperation stage comparable to Callaghan in 79 and Major in 97. January 25 has the advantage that two weeks of campaigning will be lost because of Christmas and New Year and peoples minds will be elsewhere.
January will be much worse for Sunak than October/November. No-one will want an election campaign over Christmas and most will just accuse Sunak of being a chicken and that he just wants one last Christmas in No. 10.
October seems the form horse but if the conservatives are still anywhere close to their current poll rating it will be very tempting to wait and see if something turns up.
I think next year could be grim, politically. Ever more desperate attempts to stoke a culture war here, a nasty Trump-Biden presidential contest in the Autumn possibly accompanied by insurrection of some sort, and a possible creeping abandonment of Ukraine by bored westerners putting a smile on Putin’s face.
By next autumn Trump might be in jail if his court cases go against him, I am sceptical he will be nominee. Ukraine is heading for deadlock, Putin can't get to Kyiv and Zelensky can't push the Russians out of Crimea
Did Sunak mention Ukraine at all? Or is it on the laterbase while he sorts out that sketchy section of the A1 near Worksop?
Ooh - I wasn't far off with my speculation about Euston. I sarcastically said one platform on the existing site. OK its 6, but mostly in the existing footprint.
That means two things - a huge revenue from selling off the land bulldozed for the now cancelled HS station, and the absolute cancellation of the rest of the network. Originally HS2 was to take 18 trains an hour - from 6 platforms that would mean 15 minute turnarounds of 400m trains. Which is impossible.
Happily we will have had an election before much progress is made on this.
But we need to stop the land being sold prior to the election - as I said Labour needs to emphasis that things may change and anything sold will be compulsorily bought back at (best) the price paid..
So what's the latest pb thinking on timing of the GE? Shame we can't have a poll:
1. Spring 2024
2. Autumn 2024
3. January 2025
The question isn't what you'd like but what you think.
2,1, 3 for me but I wouldn't discount 3, much as I hate the idea.
I increasingly suspect Spring 2024. I don't think the Tories want another conference like this as a prelude to a GE.
Don’t agree; I think we’re moving into the desperation stage comparable to Callaghan in 79 and Major in 97. January 25 has the advantage that two weeks of campaigning will be lost because of Christmas and New Year and peoples minds will be elsewhere.
January will be much worse for Sunak than October/November. No-one will want an election campaign over Christmas and most will just accuse Sunak of being a chicken and that he just wants one last Christmas in No. 10.
October seems the form horse but if the conservatives are still anywhere close to their current poll rating it will be very tempting to wait and see if something turns up.
I think next year could be grim, politically. Ever more desperate attempts to stoke a culture war here, a nasty Trump-Biden presidential contest in the Autumn possibly accompanied by insurrection of some sort, and a possible creeping abandonment of Ukraine by bored westerners putting a smile on Putin’s face.
By next autumn Trump might be in jail if his court cases go against him, I am sceptical he will be nominee. Ukraine is heading for deadlock, Putin can't get to Kyiv and Zelensky can't push the Russians out of Crimea
Did Sunak mention Ukraine at all? Or is it on the laterbase while he sorts out that sketchy section of the A1 near Worksop?
He had two paragraphs on Ukraine:
"I am proud to say we have led the world in providing support to Ukraine. We were the first country to send Western battle tanks to Kyiv, now more than 10 others have followed. We were the first country to send long-range weapons to Kyiv, now France and the US have followed.
"We were the first country to agree to train Ukrainian pilots, now more than a dozen others have followed. I say this to our allies, if we give President Zelensky the tools, the Ukrainians will finish the job. Slava Ukraini. Doing this job, I meet and talk to inspirational men and women across our country. You see that our most potent strength, our most powerful resource, our greatest hope is our people."
So what's the latest pb thinking on timing of the GE? Shame we can't have a poll:
1. Spring 2024
2. Autumn 2024
3. January 2025
The question isn't what you'd like but what you think.
2,1, 3 for me but I wouldn't discount 3, much as I hate the idea.
I increasingly suspect Spring 2024. I don't think the Tories want another conference like this as a prelude to a GE.
Don’t agree; I think we’re moving into the desperation stage comparable to Callaghan in 79 and Major in 97. January 25 has the advantage that two weeks of campaigning will be lost because of Christmas and New Year and peoples minds will be elsewhere.
January will be much worse for Sunak than October/November. No-one will want an election campaign over Christmas and most will just accuse Sunak of being a chicken and that he just wants one last Christmas in No. 10.
October seems the form horse but if the conservatives are still anywhere close to their current poll rating it will be very tempting to wait and see if something turns up.
I think next year could be grim, politically. Ever more desperate attempts to stoke a culture war here, a nasty Trump-Biden presidential contest in the Autumn possibly accompanied by insurrection of some sort, and a possible creeping abandonment of Ukraine by bored westerners putting a smile on Putin’s face.
By next autumn Trump might be in jail if his court cases go against him, I am sceptical he will be nominee. Ukraine is heading for deadlock, Putin can't get to Kyiv and Zelensky can't push the Russians out of Crimea
Did Sunak mention Ukraine at all? Or is it on the laterbase while he sorts out that sketchy section of the A1 near Worksop?
In passing, while saying we couldn't trust Starmer with the country's security.
3 charts to comprehensively prove once and for all that I am right and Eabhal is wrong.
Chart over time national productivity, national population density, and national road usage. Lets see which is related or correlated.
Figure 1: UK productivity - what do we notice? A complete flatline in recent years, utterly unprecedented in fact. The unprecedented flatline continues past 2018.
Figure 2: UK population density - what do we notice? A major increase in recent years.
Q: Are figure 1 and figure 2 related? A: No, they're inversely correlated in fact. Productivity was growing faster when our density was stable and has collapsed while our density has been rising.
How does that make sense? Could it be due to figure 3? Figure 3: UK road usage - what do we notice? A major flatline in recent years.
Q: Are figure 1 and figure 3 related? A: Yes.
The UK stopped investing in roads last century. Our population density has shot up this century, our population grown nearly a quarter, but our roads have not kept up and we've not been building them. As a result our vehicle usage has stalled, leading to productivity stalling, since as we all know 95% of freight and 90% of passenger mileage is by the road, so no extra road activity = no extra productivity.
Case comprehensively closed and proven. If you want productivity, build some roads. We're overdue decades of investment.
You’ve actually made no link between the two facts. Correlation not causation.
A major driver (heh) of the flat lining productivity was the impact of 2008 on the City. Proved a lot of the business was unsustainable/ unattractive but it was in the historical productivity stats and not since then
Bart's attempts at establishing causation remind me of the Pastafarian linkage between climate change and pirates. It is an uncannily close match but is, of course, utter rubbish - which is the whole point.
The idea that there is no link between infrastructure and growth is what is utter rubbish.
Of course people know that, which is why they bitch and whine about growth, under the name induced demand.
Infrastructure leads to growth, causation not correlation.
It depends on the infrastructure. And it also depends on the growth. Spending money on infrastructure certainly creates a Keynesian demand-side boost, unless the economy is at its maximum productive potential. Whether or not it boosts the private sector in the areas it targets depends on many other factors.
What I don't think is contestible, looking at the cost-benefit analysis done, is that HS2 won't cause much of the latter type of growth, compared to the best road-building schemes, which are mostly in the south-east of England, or Crossrail 2, which is the rail scheme we should really be building if we're serious about boosting productivity.
The other way to boost productivity is to encourage people to move from areas like the north, where they are unproductive, to areas like the south, where they are much more productive. This involves, for instance, building new towns in the south with decent transport links to London (e.g. Crossrail 2) where they can move to, and easing the decline of unproductive towns in the north, where half the town can be on welfare, state employment or crappy minimum wage jobs.
3 charts to comprehensively prove once and for all that I am right and Eabhal is wrong.
Chart over time national productivity, national population density, and national road usage. Lets see which is related or correlated.
Figure 1: UK productivity - what do we notice? A complete flatline in recent years, utterly unprecedented in fact. The unprecedented flatline continues past 2018.
Figure 2: UK population density - what do we notice? A major increase in recent years.
Q: Are figure 1 and figure 2 related? A: No, they're inversely correlated in fact. Productivity was growing faster when our density was stable and has collapsed while our density has been rising.
How does that make sense? Could it be due to figure 3? Figure 3: UK road usage - what do we notice? A major flatline in recent years.
Q: Are figure 1 and figure 3 related? A: Yes.
The UK stopped investing in roads last century. Our population density has shot up this century, our population grown nearly a quarter, but our roads have not kept up and we've not been building them. As a result our vehicle usage has stalled, leading to productivity stalling, since as we all know 95% of freight and 90% of passenger mileage is by the road, so no extra road activity = no extra productivity.
Case comprehensively closed and proven. If you want productivity, build some roads. We're overdue decades of investment.
There are quite a few problems with this analysis. As others have noted, especially around the causative side.
Instead of dwelling on those I want to highlight three areas that would improve the analysis.
Firstly, international comparisons. To the extent that you can talk about productivity flatlining (it's really not clear from the chart what's going on because the logarithmic scale flattens things at the top end. It's clear something is happening but not clear how much of something) we need to establish how that compares with other countries. Is there something specific or is something systemic happening in comparable countries? Explaining any differences in terms of differential road building would be a big step towards supporting or undermining your point.
It's in that second analysis that I think you'll run into trouble. London's high productivity growth makes me wonder a lot whether your theory is total bunk.
Thirdly, lastly, you probably need to talk about mechanisms. The broad brush idea that moving stuff around is needed for production and that if it can't move you can't produce. But what bottlenecks are there and how bad are they? Which industries are affected and by how much? If you work in finance in Edinburgh the effects of a traffic jams at Dover are probably quite distant whereas the availability of people trained in the latest software and techniques is highly relevant. The question of how bad traffic is, where, and to what effect in what sectors is necessary to establish a solid narrative for why new roads are the solution.
I think your analysis is interesting, so I won't pan it. But your claim that you've "comprehensively" proven anything is, I'm afraid, risible.
As a queer man, I can say that this conference scared the hell out of me and that a typical conversation amongst the queer people I know is where should they could start moving to to be safe. When that was a feeling amongst some people in the Jewish community in response to Corbyn, it was talked about a lot as disqualifying. That the front pages are cheering for much of this tripe only increases this fear.
The Conservative project seems to be about defining who is a citizen, and therefore deserving of state interest, and who isn't, and therefore deserving of state vitriol. The talking points around trans people, gender ideologists, parental rights around sex education and the idea of fake gay asylum seekers shows that the entire LGBTQ+ community is in the cross hairs. Hell, even a Conservative London Assembly member sees that (even if I put that in the "I didn't think the leopards would eat my face" category of politics).
And SKS doesn't seem to be interested in protecting us either; if anything this seems to be something he's willing to agree with the Tories on...
For goodness sake, 60 years ago homosexuality was illegal in the UK and still is in some nations and yesterday Sunak praised gay marriage.
Trans people might be a bit more concerned given his comments that men were not women but Starmer supports even gender conversion without medical certificate
The legally recognised ability of individuals to change gender was settled law before Sunak entered Parliament. The 2019 Conservative Party manifesto made no mention of changing this. I've not checked, but I don't think there was any mention of the issue in the 2017 or 2015 manifestoes either. What is Sunak's democratic mandate here?
Indeed, arguably transitioning was considered more socially acceptable for a period of time than being LGB - it just wasn't talked about as much (partly because the piñata for bigotry was still mostly lesbians and gay men). For most of British history it essentially came down to whether or not the government functionary you met was happy to make the change for you on your documents, and the amount your doctor knew about the topic. There are numerous cases of people who essentially socially transitioned and never told anyone their assigned gender at birth and lived long happy lives.
The big legal cases that started some of these issues included a trans man who was the eldest child of an hereditary aristocrat, and the younger brother took him to court to assure he inherited the title and land over his older trans brother, and the case of that rich guy who knowingly married a trans woman and then wanted a divorce without having to pay anything so claimed in court their marriage wasn't legal as it was a "same sex" marriage not recognised in law - and the judge agreed. These are the foundations of the legal necessity for gender recognition - and self ID was essentially the de facto practice in this country with no issue until a few years ago when transphobia became the cause celeb amongst a certain subsection of very online people and reactionary middle class women.
Comments
It’s just clueless drivel.
Or Both !!!!
No I've not sent it to the OECD as it's not news to economists that infrastructure investment has a causative relationship with growth.
Can only play left to right but should still win
A majority May say they want to quit. What people say and what they want are often different things.
We have far fewer smokers and the numbers are declining.
Still if you think removing a freedom is giving people freedom welcome to 1984.
Partial enforcement will still get the job done. If you make tobacco harder to come by, fewer people smoke, fewer people start smoking, and the quicker you get to no-one smoking tobacco.
We do have far fewer smokers and the numbers are declining. If that’s a good thing, then why are you so opposed to speeding up that process?
BUILD! BUILD! BUILD!
Never saw a patch of green that couldn’t be improved by the application of concrete
In the states in particular cannabis vaping is common and other drugs. There will be issues down the line.
My hunch is bog standard nicotine vapes are better than cigarettes, but I wouldn’t assume too much just yet.
How it gets enforced is however a very different (and way more complex) question...
A major driver (heh) of the flat lining productivity was the impact of 2008 on the City. Proved a lot of the business was unsustainable/ unattractive but it was in the historical productivity stats and not since then
https://twitter.com/OliDugmore/status/1709532174649614573
(Damn, seen the problem with my post…)
January 25 has the advantage that two weeks of campaigning will be lost because of Christmas and New Year and peoples minds will be elsewhere.
So either they wait till after that, and he's removed, or they go then.
"Does he care about us or has he ever cared about us?" to which the answer was No...
I doubt 'Conservative' will even appear on the leaflets.
HS2 will now end at Handsacre junction and they plan to sell off the land north of there to stop that evil Starmer from carrying out the strenuously argued plans of Sunak and Hunt and Shapps etc.
So we will dump a 200mph train onto a 125mph railway which is largely at capacity. And then we will slow it down! The twistier sections lie ahead and the HS2 trains will not tilt. Which means they will have to follow the new MU speed limits and not the EPS limits allowed for the existing tilting trains.
MU is mostly 110mph, EPS is mostly 125mph. In 75% of cases MU is slower than EPS, especially through the bends of which there are a great many.
So not only does HS2 no longer solve the congestion issues on the route, it will actively slow down the traffic which already runs. Faster running on HS2 slower running on the WCML. This will mean faster journey times overall but *less capacity* - as trains are being slowed down - once they rejoin the WCML.
I assume this comes from the same genius who wrote the Network North release? Announcing trams will now run to Clifton and Manchester Airport. Again. Announcing £2.5bn or £500m for a metro system which has no definition and is not understood by the local mayoral authority or network rail. Or that 60mph to Hull is High Speed. Or that the Mcr North West Quadrant will now be built although nobody has actually even proposed what that is.
To keep you occupied, here's another clue for you. Just to the side of the palace you couldn't identify.
Surely the latter is day-to-day spending not capital?
But as you say, it will be fine time before the risks are well defined.
This is the strategy. "I am the change", "I am new", "I need more time to change things", "forget the other 13 years"
Will it work?
Dunno. But I wont be surprised if there is some kind of narrowing of the polls.
I don't want to think that Rishi is running the country like he's running a hedge fund, but it's consistent with the observations.
Take over a troubled firm, change a load of stuff without reference to the domain experts, cut capex, flog off the bits for as much short term dosh as possible.
I wonder who is going to get Britain? Hope it's someone nice.
Smoking: this brings in substantial net revenue. Any plan to ban it has to account for this.
The evidence of NZ suggests otherwise. And if you have an alternative source of nicotine hit which is safer, it will be hardly worth th xx while of your black marketeers.
Particularly with a gradual phase out.
Roads
I think next year could be grim, politically. Ever more desperate attempts to stoke a culture war here, a nasty Trump-Biden presidential contest in the Autumn possibly accompanied by insurrection of some sort, and a possible creeping abandonment of Ukraine by bored westerners putting a smile on Putin’s face.
His party has been in power for well over a decade.
His conference speech demonstrated that he's just another smoke and mirrors merchant.
So no.
Rishi Sunak reported to Scottish police over joke about Nicola Sturgeon
General secretary of Scotland’s Alba party said PM acted in contempt of court by commenting on Operation Branchform
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/oct/04/rishi-sunak-reported-to-scottish-police-over-joke-about-nicola-sturgeon
Will be interesting to see where this goes.
Perhaps the "may" in this will provide a defence ?
..But it now looks like she may go down for very different reasons...
The Conservative project seems to be about defining who is a citizen, and therefore deserving of state interest, and who isn't, and therefore deserving of state vitriol. The talking points around trans people, gender ideologists, parental rights around sex education and the idea of fake gay asylum seekers shows that the entire LGBTQ+ community is in the cross hairs. Hell, even a Conservative London Assembly member sees that (even if I put that in the "I didn't think the leopards would eat my face" category of politics).
And SKS doesn't seem to be interested in protecting us either; if anything this seems to be something he's willing to agree with the Tories on...
Seems an odd change?
I’m no lawyer, so have no understanding of how a rather good quip can influence a trial. I’m sure Cyclefree will be along to state chapter and verse but it’s hard to see how a jury would be influenced.
(There must be a better word than binaryism but I can't think of it this morning.)
marriage.
Trans people might be a bit more concerned given his comments that men were not women but Starmer supports even gender conversion without medical certificate
Sadly PB is becoming ever more anti Tory by the minute, although the Tories keep making it easy…
You don't have to be a lawyer to get that.
Checks: Cons seem to have gone after Labour in every conference season since 2012 at least:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_conference_season#
If anything, running locals and the General together might help local Conservatives a bit. The voters who would like to send Sunak a message but really don't want PM Starmer will be forced off their sofas, which is what local elections are all about.
Don't believe me, ask those opposed to new roads as it will lead to "induced demand".
Want another word for "induced demand"? "Growth" 📈
So Sunak is portraying himself as “change”. And has the same two principal advisors as Johnson.
The gravy train has to keep running. If it stops the game is up.
Anyway the media seem more than pleased with Sunak's performance yesterday. All I can say is they can't have listened for the entire hour as I did. Maybe it made more sense with the sound turned off.
Fine, perhaps it was wrong. I think the police taking an age are the issue. Not unlike VAR. If there is eveidence bring the charges. If it’s taking this long, you have to wonder why.
As far as the Guardian is concerned, its editorial stance is irritating at times, and, like every other publication, influences its reporting.
But on the whole, it's more engaged in the practice of actual journalism than any of its competitors other than the Times and FT.
Latest: train franchise to be renamed "Cis-Pennine Express".
Of course people know that, which is why they bitch and whine about growth, under the name induced demand.
Infrastructure leads to growth, causation not correlation.
Rishi is there to take the defeat and then the battle to become LOTO will begin after the defeat.
Suppose a wizard came along one night and moved everyone's jobs further away from their homes.
Technically, that would be more activity, more growth, but I doubt that most people would be happier as a result.
Miles driven are a means to an end (access to jobs, facilities, life) not an end in themselves. And cities provide an alternative means to that end without all the driving. Indeed, beyond a certain point, cars get in the way of civic life by taking up so much space.
I can hear dog whistles when they're used. When the conversation is "parent's controlling sex ed" it means "kids shouldn't know gay people exist because we view them as inherently sexual". That isn't far away from "just keep it in the house". The arguments against trans people are the exact same arguments from the 80's in the moral panic against gay people then. And when you police trans people's bodies femme gay men and butch lesbians and just gender non conforming people will be caught in the same net - we already know that more cis people get questioned for being in the "wrong" toilet because people don't believe they're actually the gender they say they are.
That means two things - a huge revenue from selling off the land bulldozed for the now cancelled HS station, and the absolute cancellation of the rest of the network. Originally HS2 was to take 18 trains an hour - from 6 platforms that would mean 15 minute turnarounds of 400m trains. Which is impossible.
Happily we will have had an election before much progress is made on this.
"I am proud to say we have led the world in providing support to Ukraine. We were the first country to send Western battle tanks to Kyiv, now more than 10 others have followed. We were the first country to send long-range weapons to Kyiv, now France and the US have followed.
"We were the first country to agree to train Ukrainian pilots, now more than a dozen others have followed. I say this to our allies, if we give President Zelensky the tools, the Ukrainians will finish the job. Slava Ukraini. Doing this job, I meet and talk to inspirational men and women across our country. You see that our most potent strength, our most powerful resource, our greatest hope is our people."
What I don't think is contestible, looking at the cost-benefit analysis done, is that HS2 won't cause much of the latter type of growth, compared to the best road-building schemes, which are mostly in the south-east of England, or Crossrail 2, which is the rail scheme we should really be building if we're serious about boosting productivity.
The other way to boost productivity is to encourage people to move from areas like the north, where they are unproductive, to areas like the south, where they are much more productive. This involves, for instance, building new towns in the south with decent transport links to London (e.g. Crossrail 2) where they can move to, and easing the decline of unproductive towns in the north, where half the town can be on welfare, state employment or crappy minimum wage jobs.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/oct/05/motorway-services-near-bradford-voted-worst-in-britain-again
Instead of dwelling on those I want to highlight three areas that would improve the analysis.
Firstly, international comparisons. To the extent that you can talk about productivity flatlining (it's really not clear from the chart what's going on because the logarithmic scale flattens things at the top end. It's clear something is happening but not clear how much of something) we need to establish how that compares with other countries. Is there something specific or is something systemic happening in comparable countries? Explaining any differences in terms of differential road building would be a big step towards supporting or undermining your point.
Secondly, internal regional differences. Here are some regional productivity and productivity growth stats (I chose the latest data unaffected by the pandemic, but later data are available): https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/economicoutputandproductivity/productivitymeasures/bulletins/regionallabourproductivityincludingindustrybyregionuk/2019
Explaining those in terms of regional differentials of road building would, as above, go some way to supporting or undermining your point.
It's in that second analysis that I think you'll run into trouble. London's high productivity growth makes me wonder a lot whether your theory is total bunk.
Thirdly, lastly, you probably need to talk about mechanisms. The broad brush idea that moving stuff around is needed for production and that if it can't move you can't produce. But what bottlenecks are there and how bad are they? Which industries are affected and by how much? If you work in finance in Edinburgh the effects of a traffic jams at Dover are probably quite distant whereas the availability of people trained in the latest software and techniques is highly relevant. The question of how bad traffic is, where, and to what effect in what sectors is necessary to establish a solid narrative for why new roads are the solution.
I think your analysis is interesting, so I won't pan it. But your claim that you've "comprehensively" proven anything is, I'm afraid, risible.
The big legal cases that started some of these issues included a trans man who was the eldest child of an hereditary aristocrat, and the younger brother took him to court to assure he inherited the title and land over his older trans brother, and the case of that rich guy who knowingly married a trans woman and then wanted a divorce without having to pay anything so claimed in court their marriage wasn't legal as it was a "same sex" marriage not recognised in law - and the judge agreed. These are the foundations of the legal necessity for gender recognition - and self ID was essentially the de facto practice in this country with no issue until a few years ago when transphobia became the cause celeb amongst a certain subsection of very online people and reactionary middle class women.