I was somewhat concerned by Rishi's statement 'a man is a man and a woman is a woman' and the motivation behind it. Sounds like pandering to prejudice to me.
For the vast majority of us this is true, but for a small minority it is not physically certain and for another small minority emotionally not true and with the exception of many sports (a pretty impossible dilemma) and toilets/changing room (a solvable dilemma) and some bureaucracy it doesn't matter two hoots whether someone considers themselves male or female.
Worse to me is the motivation of saying it. He wouldn't say, for instance 'men and women are straight', just because most are would he, nor would he say 'people are white', because most here are? So why say it?
To stoke bigotry, duh.
Again, the kind of rhetoric and potential policy outcomes this government is proposing for LGBTQ+ people is extremely concerning and has lots of queer people questioning whether this country is somewhere safe to be. And of course, for most people, even if this country isn't safe we don't have the means to leave. We know where this goes - this reactionary tendency is one that demands a strict gender binary and strict adherence to it; this may start with legal restrictions on trans people, but will include all LGBTQ+ people and will extend to cis people who are just not cis enough...
Honestly you are paranoid. This country is one of the most accepting of lgbt in the world.
Anecdotally, I remember at university getting the odd person looking at me funny or making comments when holding hands with a male presenting partner. That was happening less frequently. It has increased in the last few years. And, again anecdotally, my queer friends are seeing the same.
And my gay daughter is seeing exactly the opposite. Needless to say I trust her opinion more than yours.
I'm happy that is the case for your daughter - but the data are suggestive of things going backwards.
Legitimate discussions, and politicians' uses of them. It's much the same when Braverman talks about "Multiculturalism has failed." There's an argument about where the sliding scale of integration should be between multiracialism and multiculturalism, and all sorts of peoples' views about where that might and should be, or where it already successfully is. But that is very different from the rhetorical and focus-grouped use Braverman is putting it to, which is "Multiculturalism=foreigners" , for a certain very carefully researched and targeted demographic the Tory machine is after.
It's much the same with Trans and gender issues.
I don't think these should be party conference fodder except in extremis, because the intention is nearly always the same ; to appear to want to raise genuine debates, but in fact to be engaged in provocative button-pushing.
“Mate you need to tell your photoshop team to bear in mind that when they search for stock images, "UK" also stands for University of Kentucky”
That's hilarious! And accidentally plays into the theme of the week that Sunak and his fellow travellers seem to be living in some parallel US political universe.
I did miss the university of Kentucky shirts on first glance. But now they look so American, with Sunak rather poorly photoshopped in 😂
Why is it so shit? I don't do it for a living and I am, quite literally, 100x better at Photoshop than whoever did this.
My question is why couldn't they have found a real image of Sunak smiling with some kids. It's not like politicians don't do that.
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.
You know that you are completely wrong about this don’t you?
Precisely the same situation with ciggies will exist in the future that exists now for people in their early/mid 40s with the ability to drive 8 ton lorries (Or not).
Except that driving 8 ton lorries is really useful, and the main result of the ban has been to spawn a whole generation of blokes driving overloaded 3.5T pickups (my personal best was discovering I'd delivered a 6 ton load to Scunthorpe Steelworks on a Transit rated to carry 1850kg - I'd been told it was a 2T load, turned out each of the three cases was 2T each - I had thought it felt heavier than that when driving!).
Smoking fags is usually something not very enjoyable, taken up to "fit in", but which people then can't get out of, thanks to addiction. I'm not generally a believer in banning things, but banning smoking is more sane than lots of other things we ban...
Are you just under the cut off like me ? & yes that's my point it is potentially useful !
Back in the late 90s obviously we were too young to drive, but I passed in 1998 but have less rights than @Sandpit who passed in 1996 I think. One of those - oh it's ok kids can't drive huge lorries but 26 years later those "kids" are in their early 40s...
Yes I passed my test in 1995, and can drive 7.5t trucks, those who passed after a certain point in 1996 are restricted to 3.5t.
The change was as a result of an EU directive aimed at commercial drivers, but has caught up a lot of people who want to rent a van to move house, or carry various sporting equipment on a trailer.
One problem is that I don't think it is possible to learn to drive 7.5 tonners, I think the only option is to get a Class 2 HGV. I have 7.5t on my licence and in the past, when I have done so, it takes about an hour familiarisation to get used to it.
“Mate you need to tell your photoshop team to bear in mind that when they search for stock images, "UK" also stands for University of Kentucky”
That's hilarious! And accidentally plays into the theme of the week that Sunak and his fellow travellers seem to be living in some parallel US political universe.
I did miss the university of Kentucky shirts on first glance. But now they look so American, with Sunak rather poorly photoshopped in 😂
Why is it so shit? I don't do it for a living and I am, quite literally, 100x better at Photoshop than whoever did this.
It's a little disappointing this wasn't a photoshop SNAFU. Just one of those odd examples of people in one country wearing symbols from another country even though they are meaningless to them. A global phenomenon: witness the union jacks on apparel around the world, the ubiquitous stars and stripes, the NY baseball caps, premier league or liga football shirts (maybe not so meaningless to the wearer).
“Mate you need to tell your photoshop team to bear in mind that when they search for stock images, "UK" also stands for University of Kentucky”
That's hilarious! And accidentally plays into the theme of the week that Sunak and his fellow travellers seem to be living in some parallel US political universe.
I did miss the university of Kentucky shirts on first glance. But now they look so American, with Sunak rather poorly photoshopped in 😂
Why is it so shit? I don't do it for a living and I am, quite literally, 100x better at Photoshop than whoever did this.
My question is why couldn't they have found a real image of Sunak smiling with some kids. It's not like politicians don't do that.
Apparently this was. So we'll let them off this time.
Precisely the same situation with ciggies will exist in the future that exists now for people in their early/mid 40s with the ability to drive 8 ton lorries (Or not).
Presumably anyone born after a certain date can take a test to drive heavy lorries? Or are we going to run out of lorry drivers in a few years?
If the smoking ban corresponds with a crackdown on smoking pot, then I might have sympathy, but that isn't going to happen.
Precisely the same situation with ciggies will exist in the future that exists now for people in their early/mid 40s with the ability to drive 8 ton lorries (Or not).
Except that driving 8 ton lorries is really useful, and the main result of the ban has been to spawn a whole generation of blokes driving overloaded 3.5T pickups (my personal best was discovering I'd delivered a 6 ton load to Scunthorpe Steelworks on a Transit rated to carry 1850kg - I'd been told it was a 2T load, turned out each of the three cases was 2T each - I had thought it felt heavier than that when driving!).
Smoking fags is usually something not very enjoyable, taken up to "fit in", but which people then can't get out of, thanks to addiction. I'm not generally a believer in banning things, but banning smoking is more sane than lots of other things we ban...
Are you just under the cut off like me ? & yes that's my point it is potentially useful !
Back in the late 90s obviously we were too young to drive, but I passed in 1998 but have less rights than @Sandpit who passed in 1996 I think. One of those - oh it's ok kids can't drive huge lorries but 26 years later those "kids" are in their early 40s...
Yes I passed my test in 1995, and can drive 7.5t trucks, those who passed after a certain point in 1996 are restricted to 3.5t.
The change was as a result of an EU directive aimed at commercial drivers, but has caught up a lot of people who want to rent a van to move house, or carry various sporting equipment on a trailer.
I'd have it as an allowance for drivers who have passed at least 5 years & are over 25 (Insurance probably sees to that anyway tbh). You DO want some experience before being allowed to drive something a bit larger imo. As I've said before I remain a rejoiner but whilst we're out (And we are out) we should change things like this.
The insurance is so expensive on Cat C1 LGVs now that it's almost always cheaper to pay somebody to move your shit than to rent a truck and do it yourself.
Over the years, I have seen claims that one of the reasons some of our infrastructure projects cost more than European ones is that we measure things differently. For us, a large project such as Crossrail or HS2 is a full project, with line, stations and everything else included. Apparently in France and Germany, the line itself is the project. The stations, preparatory works (demolitions), and the line itself are all separate projects, with separate budgets. Which can make sense, and allows better integration of local projects.
I've seen this many times, including from people who should know, and it would be interesting to know if it is the case.
The other thing, is that if railways cost a billion pounds a mile, then we aren't going to get lots of railways.
While the "but we must pay to get railways, because they are great" argument holds, it does so only to a certain point.
There is a system in public contracts that "special inflation" applies. So costs go up, year on year, faster than regular inflation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider - a case where the spend exceeded the support. Because the only way to get the votes to back it was to use the project to spread pork. Which ballooned the project faster than votes came in for it on Congress.
The next few weeks in US politics are going to be fascinating. Can the small group of Republican rebels in the House, actually get regular Americans talking about inefficiency and waste in government procurement, and abolish the endless continuation bills sponsored by the best lobbyists money can buy?
No, because they're not actually bothered about that. They're bothered about giving the rich even more money.
I also like the idea that these republican 'rebels' are in no way in hock to lobbyists and money...
I’ve seen a few interviews with Matt Gaetz, and he seems serious about balancing the budget and reducing the tax burden, rather than simply diverting the pool of Federal money to his own specific interests.
We’ve discussed things like the Senate Launch System vs SpaceX on here many times, and how the amount of pork and lobbying has got so far out of hand, that most of the Federal budget could be cut in half and no-one would actually notice. It’s rather like HS2 in that regard.
", that most of the Federal budget could be cut in half and no-one would actually notice."
I mean, that's absolute bullshit, isn't it? Do you really believe that?
Precisely the same situation with ciggies will exist in the future that exists now for people in their early/mid 40s with the ability to drive 8 ton lorries (Or not).
Presumably anyone born after a certain date can take a test to drive heavy lorries? Or are we going to run out of lorry drivers in a few years?
If the smoking ban corresponds with a crackdown on smoking pot, then I might have sympathy, but that isn't going to happen.
My point is people are acting like the age - related smoking ban is some unique form of discrimination whereas there's a trivial example that people over ~ 43 have house moving options younger people do not for instance. The cost and expense of taking a Cat 2 HGV course & test (Thanks @Johnlilburne) for the one off use of a 7.5T lorry clearly won't be worth doing.
Of course Sunak has the COVID enquiry to face and to explain the number of deaths he apparently caused by that reckless "Eat Out" policy in August 2020.
“Mate you need to tell your photoshop team to bear in mind that when they search for stock images, "UK" also stands for University of Kentucky”
That's hilarious! And accidentally plays into the theme of the week that Sunak and his fellow travellers seem to be living in some parallel US political universe.
I did miss the university of Kentucky shirts on first glance. But now they look so American, with Sunak rather poorly photoshopped in 😂
Why is it so shit? I don't do it for a living and I am, quite literally, 100x better at Photoshop than whoever did this.
My question is why couldn't they have found a real image of Sunak smiling with some kids. It's not like politicians don't do that.
Apparently this was. So we'll let them off this time.
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?
He is not proposing any change to the law.
It is the trans lobbyists who want to water down the Equality Act to remove existing rights for women. Fortunately Labour seems to be having second thoughts.
In making a big deal of saying in his leader's speech that "a man is a man and a woman is a woman" Sunak seeks to send the message that transgender is not a valid identity. That it's a fad, a delusion, a disorder, a perversion. He's appealing to the (many) people who feel this. That's the point of including it. Does it amount to a proposal to change the law? No, it's dog-whistling, but ending the right to transition is the logical endpoint of this way of thinking.
I was somewhat concerned by Rishi's statement 'a man is a man and a woman is a woman' and the motivation behind it. Sounds like pandering to prejudice to me.
For the vast majority of us this is true, but for a small minority it is not physically certain and for another small minority emotionally not true and with the exception of many sports (a pretty impossible dilemma) and toilets/changing room (a solvable dilemma) and some bureaucracy it doesn't matter two hoots whether someone considers themselves male or female.
Worse to me is the motivation of saying it. He wouldn't say, for instance 'men and women are straight', just because most are would he, nor would he say 'people are white', because most here are? So why say it?
To stoke bigotry, duh.
Again, the kind of rhetoric and potential policy outcomes this government is proposing for LGBTQ+ people is extremely concerning and has lots of queer people questioning whether this country is somewhere safe to be. And of course, for most people, even if this country isn't safe we don't have the means to leave. We know where this goes - this reactionary tendency is one that demands a strict gender binary and strict adherence to it; this may start with legal restrictions on trans people, but will include all LGBTQ+ people and will extend to cis people who are just not cis enough...
Honestly you are paranoid. This country is one of the most accepting of lgbt in the world.
But 50 years ago, it was one of the most intolerant and used to criminalise people gay people. It is only tolerant now because of the hard work and effort and pressure for change.
It is perfectly possible to reverse the current situation and start targeting people again and that reversal has to start somewhere. Sunak is the leader of the country. He can give a lead in whatever direction he chooses and steer policy to suit.
“Mate you need to tell your photoshop team to bear in mind that when they search for stock images, "UK" also stands for University of Kentucky”
That's hilarious! And accidentally plays into the theme of the week that Sunak and his fellow travellers seem to be living in some parallel US political universe.
I did miss the university of Kentucky shirts on first glance. But now they look so American, with Sunak rather poorly photoshopped in 😂
Why is it so shit? I don't do it for a living and I am, quite literally, 100x better at Photoshop than whoever did this.
Bit surprised Rutherglen isn't getting more coverage here today, and hasn't had that much media coverage previously.
In some ways, it's the most important by-election of this Parliament, or at least it is in terms of betting on the outcome of the next General Election.
I'm going to say Labour by 4k, although I don't have any real insight into it.
A by-election in a country far away about which we know little.
Precisely the same situation with ciggies will exist in the future that exists now for people in their early/mid 40s with the ability to drive 8 ton lorries (Or not).
Except that driving 8 ton lorries is really useful, and the main result of the ban has been to spawn a whole generation of blokes driving overloaded 3.5T pickups (my personal best was discovering I'd delivered a 6 ton load to Scunthorpe Steelworks on a Transit rated to carry 1850kg - I'd been told it was a 2T load, turned out each of the three cases was 2T each - I had thought it felt heavier than that when driving!).
Smoking fags is usually something not very enjoyable, taken up to "fit in", but which people then can't get out of, thanks to addiction. I'm not generally a believer in banning things, but banning smoking is more sane than lots of other things we ban...
Are you just under the cut off like me ? & yes that's my point it is potentially useful !
Back in the late 90s obviously we were too young to drive, but I passed in 1998 but have less rights than @Sandpit who passed in 1996 I think. One of those - oh it's ok kids can't drive huge lorries but 26 years later those "kids" are in their early 40s...
Yes I passed my test in 1995, and can drive 7.5t trucks, those who passed after a certain point in 1996 are restricted to 3.5t.
The change was as a result of an EU directive aimed at commercial drivers, but has caught up a lot of people who want to rent a van to move house, or carry various sporting equipment on a trailer.
I'd have it as an allowance for drivers who have passed at least 5 years & are over 25 (Insurance probably sees to that anyway tbh). You DO want some experience before being allowed to drive something a bit larger imo. As I've said before I remain a rejoiner but whilst we're out (And we are out) we should change things like this.
The insurance is so expensive on Cat C1 LGVs now that it's almost always cheaper to pay somebody to move your shit than to rent a truck and do it yourself.
Eldest son is horrified at the size of the quotes he has to insure his 17 year old daughter to enable her to drive. More than the cost of a suitable second-hand car ….. eg Fiat 500, or Ka ….. would be!
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?
He is not proposing any change to the law.
It is the trans lobbyists who want to water down the Equality Act to remove existing rights for women. Fortunately Labour seems to be having second thoughts.
In making a big deal of saying in his leader's speech that "a man is a man and a woman is a woman" Sunak seeks to send the message that transgender is not a valid identity. That it's a fad, a delusion, a disorder, a perversion. He's appealing to the (many) people who feel this. That's the point of including it. Does it amount to a proposal to change the law? No, it's dog-whistling, but ending the right to transition is the logical endpoint of this way of thinking.
"A man is a man and a woman is a woman" can also be read as a plea for a 1950's paradise of very straightforward gender roles for all men and women, regardless of sexuality, and well beyond the trans debates.
Sunak and his scriptwriters will have known this full well, just as they know the significance and reasons for making nicey-nicey with Nigel.
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" 📈
Growth in number of car journeys =/= economic growth
= Growth in BMI of all those folk too lazy to walk to the local shop
I was somewhat concerned by Rishi's statement 'a man is a man and a woman is a woman' and the motivation behind it. Sounds like pandering to prejudice to me.
For the vast majority of us this is true, but for a small minority it is not physically certain and for another small minority emotionally not true and with the exception of many sports (a pretty impossible dilemma) and toilets/changing room (a solvable dilemma) and some bureaucracy it doesn't matter two hoots whether someone considers themselves male or female.
Worse to me is the motivation of saying it. He wouldn't say, for instance 'men and women are straight', just because most are would he, nor would he say 'people are white', because most here are? So why say it?
To stoke bigotry, duh.
Again, the kind of rhetoric and potential policy outcomes this government is proposing for LGBTQ+ people is extremely concerning and has lots of queer people questioning whether this country is somewhere safe to be. And of course, for most people, even if this country isn't safe we don't have the means to leave. We know where this goes - this reactionary tendency is one that demands a strict gender binary and strict adherence to it; this may start with legal restrictions on trans people, but will include all LGBTQ+ people and will extend to cis people who are just not cis enough...
Honestly you are paranoid. This country is one of the most accepting of lgbt in the world.
Anecdotally, I remember at university getting the odd person looking at me funny or making comments when holding hands with a male presenting partner. That was happening less frequently. It has increased in the last few years. And, again anecdotally, my queer friends are seeing the same.
And my gay daughter is seeing exactly the opposite. Needless to say I trust her opinion more than yours.
I'm happy that is the case for your daughter - but the data are suggestive of things going backwards.
Does it? Or is it just the old issue that things are now being reported more than they were in the past? (in itself a positive thing).
“Mate you need to tell your photoshop team to bear in mind that when they search for stock images, "UK" also stands for University of Kentucky”
That's hilarious! And accidentally plays into the theme of the week that Sunak and his fellow travellers seem to be living in some parallel US political universe.
I did miss the university of Kentucky shirts on first glance. But now they look so American, with Sunak rather poorly photoshopped in 😂
Why is it so shit? I don't do it for a living and I am, quite literally, 100x better at Photoshop than whoever did this.
It's a little disappointing this wasn't a photoshop SNAFU. Just one of those odd examples of people in one country wearing symbols from another country even though they are meaningless to them. A global phenomenon: witness the union jacks on apparel around the world, the ubiquitous stars and stripes, the NY baseball caps, premier league or liga football shirts (maybe not so meaningless to the wearer).
Back in the 70s I had a "Texas Tigers" T-shirt. I don't even know if they are a real team.
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" 📈
Growth in number of car journeys =/= economic growth
= Growth in BMI of all those folk too lazy to walk to the local shop
My local shop is diagonally across the road and has an epic deli counter full of locally-made epic pies and cakes.
Precisely the same situation with ciggies will exist in the future that exists now for people in their early/mid 40s with the ability to drive 8 ton lorries (Or not).
Except that driving 8 ton lorries is really useful, and the main result of the ban has been to spawn a whole generation of blokes driving overloaded 3.5T pickups (my personal best was discovering I'd delivered a 6 ton load to Scunthorpe Steelworks on a Transit rated to carry 1850kg - I'd been told it was a 2T load, turned out each of the three cases was 2T each - I had thought it felt heavier than that when driving!).
Smoking fags is usually something not very enjoyable, taken up to "fit in", but which people then can't get out of, thanks to addiction. I'm not generally a believer in banning things, but banning smoking is more sane than lots of other things we ban...
Are you just under the cut off like me ? & yes that's my point it is potentially useful !
Back in the late 90s obviously we were too young to drive, but I passed in 1998 but have less rights than @Sandpit who passed in 1996 I think. One of those - oh it's ok kids can't drive huge lorries but 26 years later those "kids" are in their early 40s...
Yes I passed my test in 1995, and can drive 7.5t trucks, those who passed after a certain point in 1996 are restricted to 3.5t.
The change was as a result of an EU directive aimed at commercial drivers, but has caught up a lot of people who want to rent a van to move house, or carry various sporting equipment on a trailer.
I'd have it as an allowance for drivers who have passed at least 5 years & are over 25 (Insurance probably sees to that anyway tbh). You DO want some experience before being allowed to drive something a bit larger imo. As I've said before I remain a rejoiner but whilst we're out (And we are out) we should change things like this.
The insurance is so expensive on Cat C1 LGVs now that it's almost always cheaper to pay somebody to move your shit than to rent a truck and do it yourself.
Eldest son is horrified at the size of the quotes he has to insure his 17 year old daughter to enable her to drive. More than the cost of a suitable second-hand car ….. eg Fiat 500, or Ka ….. would be!
It was 250 quid/month to insure the eldest Ukrainian as a learner driver (in a Porsche 911, LOL).
I was somewhat concerned by Rishi's statement 'a man is a man and a woman is a woman' and the motivation behind it. Sounds like pandering to prejudice to me.
For the vast majority of us this is true, but for a small minority it is not physically certain and for another small minority emotionally not true and with the exception of many sports (a pretty impossible dilemma) and toilets/changing room (a solvable dilemma) and some bureaucracy it doesn't matter two hoots whether someone considers themselves male or female.
Worse to me is the motivation of saying it. He wouldn't say, for instance 'men and women are straight', just because most are would he, nor would he say 'people are white', because most here are? So why say it?
To stoke bigotry, duh.
Again, the kind of rhetoric and potential policy outcomes this government is proposing for LGBTQ+ people is extremely concerning and has lots of queer people questioning whether this country is somewhere safe to be. And of course, for most people, even if this country isn't safe we don't have the means to leave. We know where this goes - this reactionary tendency is one that demands a strict gender binary and strict adherence to it; this may start with legal restrictions on trans people, but will include all LGBTQ+ people and will extend to cis people who are just not cis enough...
Honestly you are paranoid. This country is one of the most accepting of lgbt in the world.
Anecdotally, I remember at university getting the odd person looking at me funny or making comments when holding hands with a male presenting partner. That was happening less frequently. It has increased in the last few years. And, again anecdotally, my queer friends are seeing the same.
And my gay daughter is seeing exactly the opposite. Needless to say I trust her opinion more than yours.
I'm happy that is the case for your daughter - but the data are suggestive of things going backwards.
Does it? Or is it just the old issue that things are now being reported more than they were in the past? (in itself a positive thing).
When people write reports like this they tend to take that kind of thing into consideration. It is also still believed that LGBTQ+ hate crimes are under reported.
Precisely the same situation with ciggies will exist in the future that exists now for people in their early/mid 40s with the ability to drive 8 ton lorries (Or not).
Except that driving 8 ton lorries is really useful, and the main result of the ban has been to spawn a whole generation of blokes driving overloaded 3.5T pickups (my personal best was discovering I'd delivered a 6 ton load to Scunthorpe Steelworks on a Transit rated to carry 1850kg - I'd been told it was a 2T load, turned out each of the three cases was 2T each - I had thought it felt heavier than that when driving!).
Smoking fags is usually something not very enjoyable, taken up to "fit in", but which people then can't get out of, thanks to addiction. I'm not generally a believer in banning things, but banning smoking is more sane than lots of other things we ban...
Are you just under the cut off like me ? & yes that's my point it is potentially useful !
Back in the late 90s obviously we were too young to drive, but I passed in 1998 but have less rights than @Sandpit who passed in 1996 I think. One of those - oh it's ok kids can't drive huge lorries but 26 years later those "kids" are in their early 40s...
Yes I passed my test in 1995, and can drive 7.5t trucks, those who passed after a certain point in 1996 are restricted to 3.5t.
The change was as a result of an EU directive aimed at commercial drivers, but has caught up a lot of people who want to rent a van to move house, or carry various sporting equipment on a trailer.
I'd have it as an allowance for drivers who have passed at least 5 years & are over 25 (Insurance probably sees to that anyway tbh). You DO want some experience before being allowed to drive something a bit larger imo. As I've said before I remain a rejoiner but whilst we're out (And we are out) we should change things like this.
The insurance is so expensive on Cat C1 LGVs now that it's almost always cheaper to pay somebody to move your shit than to rent a truck and do it yourself.
Eldest son is horrified at the size of the quotes he has to insure his 17 year old daughter to enable her to drive. More than the cost of a suitable second-hand car ….. eg Fiat 500, or Ka ….. would be!
The trick is, or was, to buy an extra car when she was 15 and later, when she gets her licence, add her to mummy and daddy's existing cars and hope the insurance company won't count the cars and realise daughter has a dedicated vehicle.
Precisely the same situation with ciggies will exist in the future that exists now for people in their early/mid 40s with the ability to drive 8 ton lorries (Or not).
Except that driving 8 ton lorries is really useful, and the main result of the ban has been to spawn a whole generation of blokes driving overloaded 3.5T pickups (my personal best was discovering I'd delivered a 6 ton load to Scunthorpe Steelworks on a Transit rated to carry 1850kg - I'd been told it was a 2T load, turned out each of the three cases was 2T each - I had thought it felt heavier than that when driving!).
Smoking fags is usually something not very enjoyable, taken up to "fit in", but which people then can't get out of, thanks to addiction. I'm not generally a believer in banning things, but banning smoking is more sane than lots of other things we ban...
Are you just under the cut off like me ? & yes that's my point it is potentially useful !
Back in the late 90s obviously we were too young to drive, but I passed in 1998 but have less rights than @Sandpit who passed in 1996 I think. One of those - oh it's ok kids can't drive huge lorries but 26 years later those "kids" are in their early 40s...
Yes I passed my test in 1995, and can drive 7.5t trucks, those who passed after a certain point in 1996 are restricted to 3.5t.
The change was as a result of an EU directive aimed at commercial drivers, but has caught up a lot of people who want to rent a van to move house, or carry various sporting equipment on a trailer.
I'd have it as an allowance for drivers who have passed at least 5 years & are over 25 (Insurance probably sees to that anyway tbh). You DO want some experience before being allowed to drive something a bit larger imo. As I've said before I remain a rejoiner but whilst we're out (And we are out) we should change things like this.
The insurance is so expensive on Cat C1 LGVs now that it's almost always cheaper to pay somebody to move your shit than to rent a truck and do it yourself.
Eldest son is horrified at the size of the quotes he has to insure his 17 year old daughter to enable her to drive. More than the cost of a suitable second-hand car ….. eg Fiat 500, or Ka ….. would be!
The trick is, or was, to buy an extra car when she was 15 and later, when she gets her licence, add her to mummy and daddy's existing cars and hope the insurance company won't count the cars and realise daughter has a dedicated vehicle.
He only once, in his 40+ motoring years, has taken, or even really listened to, my advice on matters motoring.
Sun readers leaning Labour, and Daily Mail readers only prefer Cons to Lab by 2%
Bloody hell, the Tories have lost Daily Telegraph readers.
As a Telegraph subscriber, I have previously mentioned the Telegraph's sudden lurch to the alt-right earlier this year. It might be this is putting off the mainstream, small-c conservatives who comprise its readership.
Sun readers leaning Labour, and Daily Mail readers only prefer Cons to Lab by 2%
I always find those sorts of polls interesting in that newspaper choice is not nearly as predictive of voting as people who are ultra-interested in British politics tend to expect.
Plenty of people get the Telegraph because it has good sports (particularly cricket) coverage, while the Mail pretty assiduously courts a particular group of female readers with a lot of "lifestyle" stuff.
In this one, Telegraph readers are more Tory than the nation as a whole... but Labour still have a lead which isn't much smaller than their national poll lead.
It's also always instructive to read in conjunction with circulation figures. Political campaigners often forget that in terms of sheer numbers (rather than percentages) many more Labour voters read the Mail than the Guardian, many more Tories read the Mirror than the FT, and many more Lib Dems read the Sun than the Independent.
Precisely the same situation with ciggies will exist in the future that exists now for people in their early/mid 40s with the ability to drive 8 ton lorries (Or not).
Except that driving 8 ton lorries is really useful, and the main result of the ban has been to spawn a whole generation of blokes driving overloaded 3.5T pickups (my personal best was discovering I'd delivered a 6 ton load to Scunthorpe Steelworks on a Transit rated to carry 1850kg - I'd been told it was a 2T load, turned out each of the three cases was 2T each - I had thought it felt heavier than that when driving!).
Smoking fags is usually something not very enjoyable, taken up to "fit in", but which people then can't get out of, thanks to addiction. I'm not generally a believer in banning things, but banning smoking is more sane than lots of other things we ban...
Are you just under the cut off like me ? & yes that's my point it is potentially useful !
Back in the late 90s obviously we were too young to drive, but I passed in 1998 but have less rights than @Sandpit who passed in 1996 I think. One of those - oh it's ok kids can't drive huge lorries but 26 years later those "kids" are in their early 40s...
Yes I passed my test in 1995, and can drive 7.5t trucks, those who passed after a certain point in 1996 are restricted to 3.5t.
The change was as a result of an EU directive aimed at commercial drivers, but has caught up a lot of people who want to rent a van to move house, or carry various sporting equipment on a trailer.
I'd have it as an allowance for drivers who have passed at least 5 years & are over 25 (Insurance probably sees to that anyway tbh). You DO want some experience before being allowed to drive something a bit larger imo. As I've said before I remain a rejoiner but whilst we're out (And we are out) we should change things like this.
The insurance is so expensive on Cat C1 LGVs now that it's almost always cheaper to pay somebody to move your shit than to rent a truck and do it yourself.
Eldest son is horrified at the size of the quotes he has to insure his 17 year old daughter to enable her to drive. More than the cost of a suitable second-hand car ….. eg Fiat 500, or Ka ….. would be!
The trick is, or was, to buy an extra car when she was 15 and later, when she gets her licence, add her to mummy and daddy's existing cars and hope the insurance company won't count the cars and realise daughter has a dedicated vehicle.
Precisely the same situation with ciggies will exist in the future that exists now for people in their early/mid 40s with the ability to drive 8 ton lorries (Or not).
Except that driving 8 ton lorries is really useful, and the main result of the ban has been to spawn a whole generation of blokes driving overloaded 3.5T pickups (my personal best was discovering I'd delivered a 6 ton load to Scunthorpe Steelworks on a Transit rated to carry 1850kg - I'd been told it was a 2T load, turned out each of the three cases was 2T each - I had thought it felt heavier than that when driving!).
Smoking fags is usually something not very enjoyable, taken up to "fit in", but which people then can't get out of, thanks to addiction. I'm not generally a believer in banning things, but banning smoking is more sane than lots of other things we ban...
Are you just under the cut off like me ? & yes that's my point it is potentially useful !
Back in the late 90s obviously we were too young to drive, but I passed in 1998 but have less rights than @Sandpit who passed in 1996 I think. One of those - oh it's ok kids can't drive huge lorries but 26 years later those "kids" are in their early 40s...
Yes I passed my test in 1995, and can drive 7.5t trucks, those who passed after a certain point in 1996 are restricted to 3.5t.
The change was as a result of an EU directive aimed at commercial drivers, but has caught up a lot of people who want to rent a van to move house, or carry various sporting equipment on a trailer.
I'd have it as an allowance for drivers who have passed at least 5 years & are over 25 (Insurance probably sees to that anyway tbh). You DO want some experience before being allowed to drive something a bit larger imo. As I've said before I remain a rejoiner but whilst we're out (And we are out) we should change things like this.
The insurance is so expensive on Cat C1 LGVs now that it's almost always cheaper to pay somebody to move your shit than to rent a truck and do it yourself.
Eldest son is horrified at the size of the quotes he has to insure his 17 year old daughter to enable her to drive. More than the cost of a suitable second-hand car ….. eg Fiat 500, or Ka ….. would be!
The trick is, or was, to buy an extra car when she was 15 and later, when she gets her licence, add her to mummy and daddy's existing cars and hope the insurance company won't count the cars and realise daughter has a dedicated vehicle.
Precisely the same situation with ciggies will exist in the future that exists now for people in their early/mid 40s with the ability to drive 8 ton lorries (Or not).
Presumably anyone born after a certain date can take a test to drive heavy lorries? Or are we going to run out of lorry drivers in a few years?
If the smoking ban corresponds with a crackdown on smoking pot, then I might have sympathy, but that isn't going to happen.
Yes, the change was in the size of vehicle you could drive with a normal car licence, as opposed to a specific truck licence, was changed from 7.5t to 3.5t.
If you want to drive a 7.5t truck now, and passed your first car driving test after 1996, you have to rent a truck, with an instructor, for several hours, followed by a driving test in the truck. Which is fine if you just bought a horse box and plan on driving around the country in it, but a total pain in the arse if you just want to move house yourself on one occasion. Most people would rather just hire a man with a van, than spend several hundred quid on the training.
For reference, a 3.5t truck looks like a large Transit van, while a 7.5t looks more like a small lorry. http://www.furnell.com/fleet.html
Of course Sunak has the COVID enquiry to face and to explain the number of deaths he apparently caused by that reckless "Eat Out" policy in August 2020.
I hope the enquiry will look at the increase in social communication disorders in children caused by the cruel restrictions, which will affect them for life and is much more serious in our case.
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" 📈
Growth in number of car journeys =/= economic growth
= Growth in BMI of all those folk too lazy to walk to the local shop
For me it depends on whether the BOGOF offer is there on Magnums or not......
Precisely the same situation with ciggies will exist in the future that exists now for people in their early/mid 40s with the ability to drive 8 ton lorries (Or not).
Except that driving 8 ton lorries is really useful, and the main result of the ban has been to spawn a whole generation of blokes driving overloaded 3.5T pickups (my personal best was discovering I'd delivered a 6 ton load to Scunthorpe Steelworks on a Transit rated to carry 1850kg - I'd been told it was a 2T load, turned out each of the three cases was 2T each - I had thought it felt heavier than that when driving!).
Smoking fags is usually something not very enjoyable, taken up to "fit in", but which people then can't get out of, thanks to addiction. I'm not generally a believer in banning things, but banning smoking is more sane than lots of other things we ban...
Are you just under the cut off like me ? & yes that's my point it is potentially useful !
Back in the late 90s obviously we were too young to drive, but I passed in 1998 but have less rights than @Sandpit who passed in 1996 I think. One of those - oh it's ok kids can't drive huge lorries but 26 years later those "kids" are in their early 40s...
Yes I passed my test in 1995, and can drive 7.5t trucks, those who passed after a certain point in 1996 are restricted to 3.5t.
The change was as a result of an EU directive aimed at commercial drivers, but has caught up a lot of people who want to rent a van to move house, or carry various sporting equipment on a trailer.
I'd have it as an allowance for drivers who have passed at least 5 years & are over 25 (Insurance probably sees to that anyway tbh). You DO want some experience before being allowed to drive something a bit larger imo. As I've said before I remain a rejoiner but whilst we're out (And we are out) we should change things like this.
The insurance is so expensive on Cat C1 LGVs now that it's almost always cheaper to pay somebody to move your shit than to rent a truck and do it yourself.
Eldest son is horrified at the size of the quotes he has to insure his 17 year old daughter to enable her to drive. More than the cost of a suitable second-hand car ….. eg Fiat 500, or Ka ….. would be!
The trick is, or was, to buy an extra car when she was 15 and later, when she gets her licence, add her to mummy and daddy's existing cars and hope the insurance company won't count the cars and realise daughter has a dedicated vehicle.
Something that’s almost guaranteed to be looked at very carefully in the event of a claim.
Is it time for Uncle Barty to pop up with his vision for the future - you know, the one where our cities are like those in America where you have to drive to a giant road junction just to buy a pint of milk?
“Mate you need to tell your photoshop team to bear in mind that when they search for stock images, "UK" also stands for University of Kentucky”
That's hilarious! And accidentally plays into the theme of the week that Sunak and his fellow travellers seem to be living in some parallel US political universe.
I did miss the university of Kentucky shirts on first glance. But now they look so American, with Sunak rather poorly photoshopped in 😂
Why is it so shit? I don't do it for a living and I am, quite literally, 100x better at Photoshop than whoever did this.
It's a little disappointing this wasn't a photoshop SNAFU. Just one of those odd examples of people in one country wearing symbols from another country even though they are meaningless to them. A global phenomenon: witness the union jacks on apparel around the world, the ubiquitous stars and stripes, the NY baseball caps, premier league or liga football shirts (maybe not so meaningless to the wearer).
Back in the 70s I had a "Texas Tigers" T-shirt. I don't even know if they are a real team.
I was in Berlin recently wearing some random t-shirt i picked up somewhere with the name of an American college’s football team on it. An American student happened to walk by me, saw it, big broad grin on his face and was like ‘hey man, go (whatever team it was, without looking at the shirt I can’t even remember what the name)!’
Seeing my look of utter incomprehension his face fell and he went ‘that’s just a random shirt to you, isn’t it?’ Yep, sorry mate.
Sun readers leaning Labour, and Daily Mail readers only prefer Cons to Lab by 2%
Bloody hell, the Tories have lost Daily Telegraph readers.
As a Telegraph subscriber, I have previously mentioned the Telegraph's sudden lurch to the alt-right earlier this year. It might be this is putting off the mainstream, small-c conservatives who comprise its readership.
I think the Guardian's lurch at times recently toward one-track dogmatism must be equally off-putting to some of its older liberal readers.
Even after Thatcher destroyed so much in British public culture and broadcasting at the behest of Murdoch , and his obsessive resentment of all and any of the British postwar elites, Britain was partially redeemed by having a reasonably intelligent broadsheet press. We're partly in such trouble now because any nuances are disappearing there, too.
For goodness sake, 60 years ago homosexuality was illegal in the UK and still is in some nations and yesterday Sunak praised gay marriage.
The trick to remember is that the Conservatives were historically very in favour of homosexuality provided it was sotto voce and within people of the right class. People got progressively less protection the further away from that position they got. That remained the case until AIDS forced the issue as closetry became less sustainable.
Incidentally, the reason why I came here today is because I'm trying to track down a quote from Margaret Thatcher about how politicians think they have done something just because they gave a speech. I figure - unsarcastically - that you would be the best person to ask.
I've previously plugged Chris Bryant's book about the largely gay Conservative MPs who supported Churchill during his wilderness years. As visitors to Berlin, the gay capital of Europe, they could see what the Nazis were doing. (Cabaret and all that.)
Re the quote, Donald Trump described politicians as all talk and no action. Mrs Thatcher said that if you wanted something said, ask a man, but if you wanted something done, ask a woman. (Ironically, Mrs Thatcher was not a great champion of other Conservative women.) My Mrs T quote book might already have been a victim of my decluttering from bookshelves to bin.
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" 📈
Growth in number of car journeys =/= economic growth
Of course it is.
People only make journeys that are economically productive for them, and others they trade with.
“Mate you need to tell your photoshop team to bear in mind that when they search for stock images, "UK" also stands for University of Kentucky”
That's hilarious! And accidentally plays into the theme of the week that Sunak and his fellow travellers seem to be living in some parallel US political universe.
I did miss the university of Kentucky shirts on first glance. But now they look so American, with Sunak rather poorly photoshopped in 😂
Why is it so shit? I don't do it for a living and I am, quite literally, 100x better at Photoshop than whoever did this.
It's a little disappointing this wasn't a photoshop SNAFU. Just one of those odd examples of people in one country wearing symbols from another country even though they are meaningless to them. A global phenomenon: witness the union jacks on apparel around the world, the ubiquitous stars and stripes, the NY baseball caps, premier league or liga football shirts (maybe not so meaningless to the wearer).
Back in the 70s I had a "Texas Tigers" T-shirt. I don't even know if they are a real team.
I was in Berlin recently wearing some random t-shirt i picked up somewhere with the name of an American college’s football team on it. An American student happened to walk by me, saw it, big broad grin on his face and was like ‘hey man, go (whatever team it was, without looking at the shirt I can’t even remember what the name)!’
Seeing my look of utter incomprehension his face fell and he went ‘that’s just a random shirt to you, isn’t it?’ Yep, sorry mate.
I did the same, saying hello to a couple of random people in Ukraine wearing Liverpool shirts.
What happens, is that surplus stocks of old branded shirts end up shipped out to poorer countries and sold for pennies.
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."
I thought Poland was the first country to deliver tanks to Ukraine?
“Mate you need to tell your photoshop team to bear in mind that when they search for stock images, "UK" also stands for University of Kentucky”
Tweet now withdrawn. Someone else showed it wasn't Photoshop; it was real.
The photo has definitely been fucked about with no great skill though which gave it its bizarre appearance. Maybe they were trying to fix depth of field and/or white balance but the result was amateurish.
Bit surprised Rutherglen isn't getting more coverage here today, and hasn't had that much media coverage previously.
In some ways, it's the most important by-election of this Parliament, or at least it is in terms of betting on the outcome of the next General Election.
I'm going to say Labour by 4k, although I don't have any real insight into it.
A by-election in a country far away about which we know little.
Quite. In all seriousness, what is its relvance to South British electoral politics? A by-election where the Slab candidate has been espousing SNP policies in contradiction to UKLab ones? In a country which is in part governed by a devolced and very diufferent administration from that in London, which govern the other half of public activity and control the overall budget?
If you can read the runes for the Blue Wall in that, or even the Red Wall, you're a, well not a man, my son - that bit of Kipling is out of its time - but certainly a psephologist of note.
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" 📈
Growth in number of car journeys =/= economic growth
Of course it is.
People only make journeys that are economically productive for them, and others they trade with.
That's what I tell my mum, but she keeps inviting me over.
Sun readers leaning Labour, and Daily Mail readers only prefer Cons to Lab by 2%
Bloody hell, the Tories have lost Daily Telegraph readers.
As a Telegraph subscriber, I have previously mentioned the Telegraph's sudden lurch to the alt-right earlier this year. It might be this is putting off the mainstream, small-c conservatives who comprise its readership.
I think the Guardian's lurch at times recently toward one-track dogmatism must be equally off-putting to some of its older liberal readers.
Even after Thatcher destroyed so much in British public culture and broadcasting at the behest of Murdoch , and his obsessive resentment of all and any of the British postwar elites, Britain was partially redeemed by having a reasonably intelligent broadsheet press. We're partly in such trouble now because any nuances are disappearing there, too.
Guardian columnists' dogmatism is only matched by their fondness for academic jargon which too often defeats this bear of very little brain.
Precisely the same situation with ciggies will exist in the future that exists now for people in their early/mid 40s with the ability to drive 8 ton lorries (Or not).
Presumably anyone born after a certain date can take a test to drive heavy lorries? Or are we going to run out of lorry drivers in a few years?
If the smoking ban corresponds with a crackdown on smoking pot, then I might have sympathy, but that isn't going to happen.
Yes, the change was in the size of vehicle you could drive with a normal car licence, as opposed to a specific truck licence, was changed from 7.5t to 3.5t.
If you want to drive a 7.5t truck now, and passed your first car driving test after 1996, you have to rent a truck, with an instructor, for several hours, followed by a driving test in the truck. Which is fine if you just bought a horse box and plan on driving around the country in it, but a total pain in the arse if you just want to move house yourself on one occasion. Most people would rather just hire a man with a van, than spend several hundred quid on the training.
For reference, a 3.5t truck looks like a large Transit van, while a 7.5t looks more like a small lorry. http://www.furnell.com/fleet.html
So I could just step into the cab of one of those lorries and drive off? That is mad. No wonder the rules were changed.
Faisal Islam @faisalislam Japan building revolutionary 177 mile maglev from Tokyo to Nagoya for £45bn, 90% in tunnels under mountains as part of integrated Shinkansen system…
equivalent of London to Manchester (in straight line) in 40 minutes… at 310mph
“Mate you need to tell your photoshop team to bear in mind that when they search for stock images, "UK" also stands for University of Kentucky”
That's hilarious! And accidentally plays into the theme of the week that Sunak and his fellow travellers seem to be living in some parallel US political universe.
I did miss the university of Kentucky shirts on first glance. But now they look so American, with Sunak rather poorly photoshopped in 😂
Why is it so shit? I don't do it for a living and I am, quite literally, 100x better at Photoshop than whoever did this.
It's a little disappointing this wasn't a photoshop SNAFU. Just one of those odd examples of people in one country wearing symbols from another country even though they are meaningless to them. A global phenomenon: witness the union jacks on apparel around the world, the ubiquitous stars and stripes, the NY baseball caps, premier league or liga football shirts (maybe not so meaningless to the wearer).
Back in the 70s I had a "Texas Tigers" T-shirt. I don't even know if they are a real team.
I was in Berlin recently wearing some random t-shirt i picked up somewhere with the name of an American college’s football team on it. An American student happened to walk by me, saw it, big broad grin on his face and was like ‘hey man, go (whatever team it was, without looking at the shirt I can’t even remember what the name)!’
Seeing my look of utter incomprehension his face fell and he went ‘that’s just a random shirt to you, isn’t it?’ Yep, sorry mate.
Bit surprised Rutherglen isn't getting more coverage here today, and hasn't had that much media coverage previously.
In some ways, it's the most important by-election of this Parliament, or at least it is in terms of betting on the outcome of the next General Election.
I'm going to say Labour by 4k, although I don't have any real insight into it.
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?
He is not proposing any change to the law.
It is the trans lobbyists who want to water down the Equality Act to remove existing rights for women. Fortunately Labour seems to be having second thoughts.
In making a big deal of saying in his leader's speech that "a man is a man and a woman is a woman" Sunak seeks to send the message that transgender is not a valid identity. That it's a fad, a delusion, a disorder, a perversion. He's appealing to the (many) people who feel this. That's the point of including it. Does it amount to a proposal to change the law? No, it's dog-whistling, but ending the right to transition is the logical endpoint of this way of thinking.
"A man is a man and a woman is a woman" can also be read as a plea for a 1950's paradise of very straightforward gender roles for all men and women, regardless of sexuality, and well beyond the trans debates.
Sunak and his scriptwriters will have known this full well, just as they know the significance and reasons for making nicey-nicey with Nigel.
Good point. However as regards the particular 'culture wars' topic of Trans this was him weighing in firmly on one side. Starmer by contrast is seeking to stay out of it. Electoral politics probably explains both decisions.
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."
I thought Poland was the first country to deliver tanks to Ukraine?
I'm inclined to let Sunak off for this, although his pro-Ukraine stance is lukewarm compared to Truss and (especially) Boris who did it with gusto. With regards to Poland, I pointed out that for historical reasons Poland is motivated and able to help Ukraine in a way that UK is not, due to a degree of self-interest.
“Mate you need to tell your photoshop team to bear in mind that when they search for stock images, "UK" also stands for University of Kentucky”
Tweet now withdrawn. Someone else showed it wasn't Photoshop; it was real.
The photo has definitely been fucked about with no great skill though which gave it its bizarre appearance. Maybe they were trying to fix depth of field and/or white balance but the result was amateurish.
Yes. I am perfectly willing to accept it's a real photo (those lads couldn't be more Cornish, for example, sweatshirts notwithstanding). But someone at CCO has certainly done their best to make it look Photoshopped!
Faisal Islam @faisalislam Japan building revolutionary 177 mile maglev from Tokyo to Nagoya for £45bn, 90% in tunnels under mountains as part of integrated Shinkansen system…
equivalent of London to Manchester (in straight line) in 40 minutes… at 310mph
The ridiculous cost of large public sector projects needs to be looked at because - nuclear power is another traincrash for finances in this country generally.
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."
I thought Poland was the first country to deliver tanks to Ukraine?
I'm inclined to let Sunak off for this, although his pro-Ukraine stance is lukewarm compared to Truss and (especially) Boris who did it with gusto. With regards to Poland, I pointed out that for historical reasons Poland is motivated and able to help Ukraine in a way that UK is not, due to a degree of self-interest.
Sun readers leaning Labour, and Daily Mail readers only prefer Cons to Lab by 2%
I always find those sorts of polls interesting in that newspaper choice is not nearly as predictive of voting as people who are ultra-interested in British politics tend to expect.
Plenty of people get the Telegraph because it has good sports (particularly cricket) coverage, while the Mail pretty assiduously courts a particular group of female readers with a lot of "lifestyle" stuff..
It's a mashup of Waugh's 'Daily Brute', and Woodhouse's 'Milady's Boudoir'.
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?
He is not proposing any change to the law.
It is the trans lobbyists who want to water down the Equality Act to remove existing rights for women. Fortunately Labour seems to be having second thoughts.
In making a big deal of saying in his leader's speech that "a man is a man and a woman is a woman" Sunak seeks to send the message that transgender is not a valid identity. That it's a fad, a delusion, a disorder, a perversion. He's appealing to the (many) people who feel this. That's the point of including it. Does it amount to a proposal to change the law? No, it's dog-whistling, but ending the right to transition is the logical endpoint of this way of thinking.
"A man is a man and a woman is a woman" can also be read as a plea for a 1950's paradise of very straightforward gender roles for all men and women, regardless of sexuality, and well beyond the trans debates.
Sunak and his scriptwriters will have known this full well, just as they know the significance and reasons for making nicey-nicey with Nigel.
Good point. However as regards the particular 'culture wars' topic of Trans this was him weighing in firmly on one side. Starmer by contrast is seeking to stay out of it. Electoral politics probably explains both decisions.
Sunak was making clear that he sits firmly in the "Cock and balls? Bloke in a dress." camp. Giving the opportunity for anyone who disagrees with this position to look daft and tie themselves in knots when being interviewed.
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."
I thought Poland was the first country to deliver tanks to Ukraine?
Yes, but they were old Soviet ones. As opposed to old western ones.
For goodness sake, 60 years ago homosexuality was illegal in the UK and still is in some nations and yesterday Sunak praised gay marriage.
The trick to remember is that the Conservatives were historically very in favour of homosexuality provided it was sotto voce and within people of the right class. People got progressively less protection the further away from that position they got. That remained the case until AIDS forced the issue as closetry became less sustainable.
Incidentally, the reason why I came here today is because I'm trying to track down a quote from Margaret Thatcher about how politicians think they have done something just because they gave a speech. I figure - unsarcastically - that you would be the best person to ask.
I've previously plugged Chris Bryant's book about the largely gay Conservative MPs who supported Churchill during his wilderness years. As visitors to Berlin, the gay capital of Europe, they could see what the Nazis were doing. (Cabaret and all that.)
Re the quote, Donald Trump described politicians as all talk and no action..
“Mate you need to tell your photoshop team to bear in mind that when they search for stock images, "UK" also stands for University of Kentucky”
That's hilarious! And accidentally plays into the theme of the week that Sunak and his fellow travellers seem to be living in some parallel US political universe.
I did miss the university of Kentucky shirts on first glance. But now they look so American, with Sunak rather poorly photoshopped in 😂
Why is it so shit? I don't do it for a living and I am, quite literally, 100x better at Photoshop than whoever did this.
It's a little disappointing this wasn't a photoshop SNAFU. Just one of those odd examples of people in one country wearing symbols from another country even though they are meaningless to them. A global phenomenon: witness the union jacks on apparel around the world, the ubiquitous stars and stripes, the NY baseball caps, premier league or liga football shirts (maybe not so meaningless to the wearer).
Back in the 70s I had a "Texas Tigers" T-shirt. I don't even know if they are a real team.
I was in Berlin recently wearing some random t-shirt i picked up somewhere with the name of an American college’s football team on it. An American student happened to walk by me, saw it, big broad grin on his face and was like ‘hey man, go (whatever team it was, without looking at the shirt I can’t even remember what the name)!’
Seeing my look of utter incomprehension his face fell and he went ‘that’s just a random shirt to you, isn’t it?’ Yep, sorry mate.
So why did you buy the shirt?
i liked the logo. i get them from a company in america - https://www.homage.com/ - the t-shirts are superb quality, last for years and fit really well, and they do bazillions of designs so i've got quite a few with various logos on and i have no idea what teams they are. not even sure what sport some are tbh.
Bit surprised Rutherglen isn't getting more coverage here today, and hasn't had that much media coverage previously.
In some ways, it's the most important by-election of this Parliament, or at least it is in terms of betting on the outcome of the next General Election.
I'm going to say Labour by 4k, although I don't have any real insight into it.
Sun readers leaning Labour, and Daily Mail readers only prefer Cons to Lab by 2%
Bloody hell, the Tories have lost Daily Telegraph readers.
As a Telegraph subscriber, I have previously mentioned the Telegraph's sudden lurch to the alt-right earlier this year. It might be this is putting off the mainstream, small-c conservatives who comprise its readership.
I think the Guardian's lurch at times recently toward one-track dogmatism must be equally off-putting to some of its older liberal readers.
Even after Thatcher destroyed so much in British public culture and broadcasting at the behest of Murdoch , and his obsessive resentment of all and any of the British postwar elites, Britain was partially redeemed by having a reasonably intelligent broadsheet press. We're partly in such trouble now because any nuances are disappearing there, too.
Scotland suffered that when the Scotsman was taken over, and later the Herald went all Unionist in 2013 or so, not compensated for by the Herald trying to compensate for its instant loss of readers by inventing the National.
Faisal Islam @faisalislam Japan building revolutionary 177 mile maglev from Tokyo to Nagoya for £45bn, 90% in tunnels under mountains as part of integrated Shinkansen system…
equivalent of London to Manchester (in straight line) in 40 minutes… at 310mph
Yea, that technology is very cool. It has the downside of needing dedicated tracks though, so in a UK context you’d need to build London to at least Manchester in one go.
There was a UK proposal for a Maglev a couple of decades back which, if it had been given the green light at the time, could have been operational by now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Ultraspeed
“Mate you need to tell your photoshop team to bear in mind that when they search for stock images, "UK" also stands for University of Kentucky”
Tweet now withdrawn. Someone else showed it wasn't Photoshop; it was real.
The photo has definitely been fucked about with no great skill though which gave it its bizarre appearance. Maybe they were trying to fix depth of field and/or white balance but the result was amateurish.
Yes. I am perfectly willing to accept it's a real photo (those lads couldn't be more Cornish, for example, sweatshirts notwithstanding). But someone at CCO has certainly done their best to make it look Photoshopped!
Modern lenses can create some unreal looking effects, because the designers are using computer to design lenses that create previously impossible combinations of flat field and deep focus (for example).
This jars with perceptions trained to earlier lenses. Hence the Peston stuff about perspective a while back.
https://twitter.com/anneapplebaum/status/1709879648794898592 The national post office distributed this leaflet, "Your Referendum Vote," to everyone in Poland. An acquaintance got it yesterday. Main headline: "IT'S ALREADY AN INVASION, THEY ARE SAILING HERE!" Photo is of African refugees on the Mediterranean..
... the leaflet is printed by the deceptively named "Indepedent Media Foundation," a state-funded organization, according to this article:
...The reference is to a question on the referendum that will be held on Oct 15: "Do you support the admission of thousands of illegal immigrants from the Middle East and Africa, in accordance with the forced-relocation mechanism imposed by the European bureaucracy?”
..Note that there is no "force-relocation mechanism imposed by the European bureaucracy", this is an invention. The purpose of the referendum, which is of dubious legality, is to persuade Poles that there is, and that the opposition approves of it.
..The referendum is being held alongside a general parliamentary election, and is, a designed to persuade voters that an opposition victory will lead to immigration from the Middle East and Africa. Also more higher retirement age, etc
..The biggest immigration from the Middle East and Africa in Polish history took place over the last several years, under the current government, some of whose bureaucrats were selling visas in exchange for bribes. Obviously the leaflet doesn't explain that...
Sun readers leaning Labour, and Daily Mail readers only prefer Cons to Lab by 2%
Bloody hell, the Tories have lost Daily Telegraph readers.
As a Telegraph subscriber, I have previously mentioned the Telegraph's sudden lurch to the alt-right earlier this year. It might be this is putting off the mainstream, small-c conservatives who comprise its readership.
I think the Guardian's lurch at times recently toward one-track dogmatism must be equally off-putting to some of its older liberal readers.
Even after Thatcher destroyed so much in British public culture and broadcasting at the behest of Murdoch , and his obsessive resentment of all and any of the British postwar elites, Britain was partially redeemed by having a reasonably intelligent broadsheet press. We're partly in such trouble now because any nuances are disappearing there, too.
Always best to be mistrustful of people who rail against elites, it usually signals that they're hoping to replace the old elite themselves, or are already part of the elite but feel their power is being unfairly blocked. Hence the ludicrous spectacle of Dominic Cummings (private school, Oxford, married into the aristocracy, runs campaigns financed by private equity dark money, worked for the PM) attacking 'the elite' - by which he means junior civil servants who dare to question him throwing public money at his bizarre pet causes, or probably just anyone with a university degree who disagrees with him.
Sun readers leaning Labour, and Daily Mail readers only prefer Cons to Lab by 2%
Bloody hell, the Tories have lost Daily Telegraph readers.
As a Telegraph subscriber, I have previously mentioned the Telegraph's sudden lurch to the alt-right earlier this year. It might be this is putting off the mainstream, small-c conservatives who comprise its readership.
I think the Guardian's lurch at times recently toward one-track dogmatism must be equally off-putting to some of its older liberal readers.
Even after Thatcher destroyed so much in British public culture and broadcasting at the behest of Murdoch , and his obsessive resentment of all and any of the British postwar elites, Britain was partially redeemed by having a reasonably intelligent broadsheet press. We're partly in such trouble now because any nuances are disappearing there, too.
Scotland suffered that when the Scotsman was taken over, and later the Herald went all Unionist in 2013 or so, not compensated for by the Herald trying to compensate for its instant loss of readers by inventing the National.
Never been the same since.
I have tended in the past to bleat if only there were a unbiased Scottish paper willing to analyse Scotpol on a politically and constitutionally objective basis they would clean up, but I fear because things are so polarised and the press staggering about on its last legs that it’s all too late. The Scottish press seems to exist mainly to feed headlines to tv news, mainly the BBC, though I think the latter is least trusted in Scotland out of all parts of the UK. Who knows where it’ll end up, probably more ‘citizen journalism’ and folk ranting on the internet.
Faisal Islam @faisalislam Japan building revolutionary 177 mile maglev from Tokyo to Nagoya for £45bn, 90% in tunnels under mountains as part of integrated Shinkansen system…
equivalent of London to Manchester (in straight line) in 40 minutes… at 310mph
The ridiculous cost of large public sector projects needs to be looked at because - nuclear power is another traincrash for finances in this country generally.
The management of the Euston end of the HS2 project has been terrible. I know electricians working on the project at Euston who for the past year have done no work but are getting paid £2200 per week. They just go and sit in the site hut and play on their phones. I imagine this type of management is why Sunak said yesterday that those in charge of the Euston bit are being relieved of their duties. It does seem a British thing that for large scale public projects people are much more interested in how much money they can make from it for very little work rather than getting the job done on time..
Sun readers leaning Labour, and Daily Mail readers only prefer Cons to Lab by 2%
Bloody hell, the Tories have lost Daily Telegraph readers.
As a Telegraph subscriber, I have previously mentioned the Telegraph's sudden lurch to the alt-right earlier this year. It might be this is putting off the mainstream, small-c conservatives who comprise its readership.
I think the Guardian's lurch at times recently toward one-track dogmatism must be equally off-putting to some of its older liberal readers.
Even after Thatcher destroyed so much in British public culture and broadcasting at the behest of Murdoch , and his obsessive resentment of all and any of the British postwar elites, Britain was partially redeemed by having a reasonably intelligent broadsheet press. We're partly in such trouble now because any nuances are disappearing there, too.
Always best to be mistrustful of people who rail against elites, it usually signals that they're hoping to replace the old elite themselves, or are already part of the elite but feel their power is being unfairly blocked. Hence the ludicrous spectacle of Dominic Cummings (private school, Oxford, married into the aristocracy, runs campaigns financed by private equity dark money, worked for the PM) attacking 'the elite' - by which he means junior civil servants who dare to question him throwing public money at his bizarre pet causes, or probably just anyone with a university degree who disagrees with him.
As Christopher Hitchens said: if, as a journalist, you start getting called a snob or an elite it normally means you're onto something, because you're running against the herd.
Faisal Islam @faisalislam Japan building revolutionary 177 mile maglev from Tokyo to Nagoya for £45bn, 90% in tunnels under mountains as part of integrated Shinkansen system…
equivalent of London to Manchester (in straight line) in 40 minutes… at 310mph
Yea, that technology is very cool. It has the downside of needing dedicated tracks though, so in a UK context you’d need to build London to at least Manchester in one go.
There was a UK proposal for a Maglev a couple of decades back which, if it had been given the green light at the time, could have been operational by now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Ultraspeed
We're almost at the need for dedicated tracks point here.
The original plan for thw West Coast Mainline was that the existing fast lines would become a dedicated 140mph railway with all other traffic on the slow lines (each having one track in each direction). Then Railtrack spent all their money on shops and not maintenance, went pop and the scheme got pared back.
Now? HS2 trains will be slower than the Pendolino trains they are replacing. Dumping them back onto the WCML at Handsacre just as the line gets really twisty will slow things down and actively *reduce* capacity.
Which is why they need to build the rest of 2a to connect phase 1 to phase 2b. The "potteries gap" between the sections of high speed line will be a real bottleneck.
Faisal Islam @faisalislam Japan building revolutionary 177 mile maglev from Tokyo to Nagoya for £45bn, 90% in tunnels under mountains as part of integrated Shinkansen system…
equivalent of London to Manchester (in straight line) in 40 minutes… at 310mph
The ridiculous cost of large public sector projects needs to be looked at because - nuclear power is another traincrash for finances in this country generally.
The management of the Euston end of the HS2 project has been terrible. I know electricians working on the project at Euston who for the past year have done no work but are getting paid £2200 per week. They just go and sit in the site hut and play on their phones. I imagine this type of management is why Sunak said yesterday that those in charge of the Euston bit are being relieved of their duties. It does seem a British thing that for large scale public projects people are much more interested in how much money they can make from it for very little work rather than getting the job done on time..
With their contractor (Sub to the main) charging a grand a person a week on top and the main contractor charging them at 5 grand a week to the Gov't.
Sun readers leaning Labour, and Daily Mail readers only prefer Cons to Lab by 2%
Bloody hell, the Tories have lost Daily Telegraph readers.
As a Telegraph subscriber, I have previously mentioned the Telegraph's sudden lurch to the alt-right earlier this year. It might be this is putting off the mainstream, small-c conservatives who comprise its readership.
I think the Guardian's lurch at times recently toward one-track dogmatism must be equally off-putting to some of its older liberal readers.
Even after Thatcher destroyed so much in British public culture and broadcasting at the behest of Murdoch , and his obsessive resentment of all and any of the British postwar elites, Britain was partially redeemed by having a reasonably intelligent broadsheet press. We're partly in such trouble now because any nuances are disappearing there, too.
Always best to be mistrustful of people who rail against elites, it usually signals that they're hoping to replace the old elite themselves, or are already part of the elite but feel their power is being unfairly blocked. Hence the ludicrous spectacle of Dominic Cummings (private school, Oxford, married into the aristocracy, runs campaigns financed by private equity dark money, worked for the PM) attacking 'the elite' - by which he means junior civil servants who dare to question him throwing public money at his bizarre pet causes, or probably just anyone with a university degree who disagrees with him.
As Christopher Hitchens said: if, as a journalist, you start getting called a snob or an elite it normally means you're onto something, because you're running against the herd.
What definition of "elite" does not include the Brothers Hitchens?
Faisal Islam @faisalislam Japan building revolutionary 177 mile maglev from Tokyo to Nagoya for £45bn, 90% in tunnels under mountains as part of integrated Shinkansen system…
equivalent of London to Manchester (in straight line) in 40 minutes… at 310mph
The ridiculous cost of large public sector projects needs to be looked at because - nuclear power is another traincrash for finances in this country generally.
When you look at how much South Korea paid for their last nuclear power station ($6bn from memory) Sizewell C is utterly insane...
Faisal Islam @faisalislam Japan building revolutionary 177 mile maglev from Tokyo to Nagoya for £45bn, 90% in tunnels under mountains as part of integrated Shinkansen system…
equivalent of London to Manchester (in straight line) in 40 minutes… at 310mph
The ridiculous cost of large public sector projects needs to be looked at because - nuclear power is another traincrash for finances in this country generally.
The management of the Euston end of the HS2 project has been terrible. I know electricians working on the project at Euston who for the past year have done no work but are getting paid £2200 per week. They just go and sit in the site hut and play on their phones. I imagine this type of management is why Sunak said yesterday that those in charge of the Euston bit are being relieved of their duties. It does seem a British thing that for large scale public projects people are much more interested in how much money they can make from it for very little work rather than getting the job done on time..
They are on time - they're being paid £2,200 a week because the section east of OOC was put on hold back in the spring.
Sun readers leaning Labour, and Daily Mail readers only prefer Cons to Lab by 2%
Bloody hell, the Tories have lost Daily Telegraph readers.
As a Telegraph subscriber, I have previously mentioned the Telegraph's sudden lurch to the alt-right earlier this year. It might be this is putting off the mainstream, small-c conservatives who comprise its readership.
I think the Guardian's lurch at times recently toward one-track dogmatism must be equally off-putting to some of its older liberal readers.
Even after Thatcher destroyed so much in British public culture and broadcasting at the behest of Murdoch , and his obsessive resentment of all and any of the British postwar elites, Britain was partially redeemed by having a reasonably intelligent broadsheet press. We're partly in such trouble now because any nuances are disappearing there, too.
Always best to be mistrustful of people who rail against elites, it usually signals that they're hoping to replace the old elite themselves, or are already part of the elite but feel their power is being unfairly blocked. Hence the ludicrous spectacle of Dominic Cummings (private school, Oxford, married into the aristocracy, runs campaigns financed by private equity dark money, worked for the PM) attacking 'the elite' - by which he means junior civil servants who dare to question him throwing public money at his bizarre pet causes, or probably just anyone with a university degree who disagrees with him.
Indeed. Cummings seems to perceive himself as some of rave-era anarchist, which may relate to his period in his 'twenties working as a doorman in Durham.
Unfairly blocked seems exactly the issue with Murdoch. He instantly hated not the old aristo elite, but Britain's postwar cultural elite, the Melvyn Braggs and Joan Bakewells. It was hugely important to him that British TV and media was no longer what he thought was intellectually elitist and snobby, and he hated this influence. The problem was that these people were helping to make this country a far more thoughtful, interesting and nuanced place.
Faisal Islam @faisalislam Japan building revolutionary 177 mile maglev from Tokyo to Nagoya for £45bn, 90% in tunnels under mountains as part of integrated Shinkansen system…
equivalent of London to Manchester (in straight line) in 40 minutes… at 310mph
The ridiculous cost of large public sector projects needs to be looked at because - nuclear power is another traincrash for finances in this country generally.
The management of the Euston end of the HS2 project has been terrible. I know electricians working on the project at Euston who for the past year have done no work but are getting paid £2200 per week. They just go and sit in the site hut and play on their phones. I imagine this type of management is why Sunak said yesterday that those in charge of the Euston bit are being relieved of their duties. It does seem a British thing that for large scale public projects people are much more interested in how much money they can make from it for very little work rather than getting the job done on time..
Plus of course by paying electricians to do nothing they raise the cost for anyone else who needs an electrician. Paying someone whose skills are in short supply to do nothing is utterly scandalous. I don't know why we can't sort this kind of shit out. We have to be able to do big infrastructure projects if we are to grow our economy, so we have to figure out a way of doing it in a way that doesn't bankrupt us. Alongside completing HS2 I would argue for an inquiry into the cost overruns and a new focus on managing public procurement to deliver value for money. This is the kind of thing that separates successful and unsuccessful countries.
Faisal Islam @faisalislam Japan building revolutionary 177 mile maglev from Tokyo to Nagoya for £45bn, 90% in tunnels under mountains as part of integrated Shinkansen system…
equivalent of London to Manchester (in straight line) in 40 minutes… at 310mph
The ridiculous cost of large public sector projects needs to be looked at because - nuclear power is another traincrash for finances in this country generally.
The management of the Euston end of the HS2 project has been terrible. I know electricians working on the project at Euston who for the past year have done no work but are getting paid £2200 per week. They just go and sit in the site hut and play on their phones. I imagine this type of management is why Sunak said yesterday that those in charge of the Euston bit are being relieved of their duties. It does seem a British thing that for large scale public projects people are much more interested in how much money they can make from it for very little work rather than getting the job done on time..
Hang on, are you suggesting this going to work thing is supposed to involve more than just sitting around wasting time on the internet? I mean there is lunch obviously, but what else?
Sun readers leaning Labour, and Daily Mail readers only prefer Cons to Lab by 2%
Bloody hell, the Tories have lost Daily Telegraph readers.
As a Telegraph subscriber, I have previously mentioned the Telegraph's sudden lurch to the alt-right earlier this year. It might be this is putting off the mainstream, small-c conservatives who comprise its readership.
Alison Pearson, The Tele's bonkers right-wing cheer leader announced in her column this week that she was hoping the Conservatives lose the next election.
Faisal Islam @faisalislam Japan building revolutionary 177 mile maglev from Tokyo to Nagoya for £45bn, 90% in tunnels under mountains as part of integrated Shinkansen system…
equivalent of London to Manchester (in straight line) in 40 minutes… at 310mph
The ridiculous cost of large public sector projects needs to be looked at because - nuclear power is another traincrash for finances in this country generally.
The management of the Euston end of the HS2 project has been terrible. I know electricians working on the project at Euston who for the past year have done no work but are getting paid £2200 per week. They just go and sit in the site hut and play on their phones. I imagine this type of management is why Sunak said yesterday that those in charge of the Euston bit are being relieved of their duties. It does seem a British thing that for large scale public projects people are much more interested in how much money they can make from it for very little work rather than getting the job done on time..
They are on time - they're being paid £2,200 a week because the section east of OOC was put on hold back in the spring.
£2,200 per week to do no work is an OK way for public money to be spent?
Sun readers leaning Labour, and Daily Mail readers only prefer Cons to Lab by 2%
Bloody hell, the Tories have lost Daily Telegraph readers.
As a Telegraph subscriber, I have previously mentioned the Telegraph's sudden lurch to the alt-right earlier this year. It might be this is putting off the mainstream, small-c conservatives who comprise its readership.
Alison Pearson, The Tele's bonkers right-wing cheer leader announced in her column this week that she was hoping the Conservatives lose the next election.
For not being nutty enough or maybe more charitably for not being able to deliver her fantasy politics.
Faisal Islam @faisalislam Japan building revolutionary 177 mile maglev from Tokyo to Nagoya for £45bn, 90% in tunnels under mountains as part of integrated Shinkansen system…
equivalent of London to Manchester (in straight line) in 40 minutes… at 310mph
Yea, that technology is very cool. It has the downside of needing dedicated tracks though, so in a UK context you’d need to build London to at least Manchester in one go.
There was a UK proposal for a Maglev a couple of decades back which, if it had been given the green light at the time, could have been operational by now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Ultraspeed
We're almost at the need for dedicated tracks point here.
The original plan for thw West Coast Mainline was that the existing fast lines would become a dedicated 140mph railway with all other traffic on the slow lines (each having one track in each direction). Then Railtrack spent all their money on shops and not maintenance, went pop and the scheme got pared back.
Now? HS2 trains will be slower than the Pendolino trains they are replacing. Dumping them back onto the WCML at Handsacre just as the line gets really twisty will slow things down and actively *reduce* capacity.
Which is why they need to build the rest of 2a to connect phase 1 to phase 2b. The "potteries gap" between the sections of high speed line will be a real bottleneck.
So running Pendos on HS2 would be quicker for services going beyond Brum. Well there's the solution. Scrap the idea of new super-fast trains and just keep the Pendos. Minimal saving in journey time to Brum, but it doesn't take that long anyway. And the extra capacity on the southern WCML will still be there.
Faisal Islam @faisalislam Japan building revolutionary 177 mile maglev from Tokyo to Nagoya for £45bn, 90% in tunnels under mountains as part of integrated Shinkansen system…
equivalent of London to Manchester (in straight line) in 40 minutes… at 310mph
The ridiculous cost of large public sector projects needs to be looked at because - nuclear power is another traincrash for finances in this country generally.
The management of the Euston end of the HS2 project has been terrible. I know electricians working on the project at Euston who for the past year have done no work but are getting paid £2200 per week. They just go and sit in the site hut and play on their phones. I imagine this type of management is why Sunak said yesterday that those in charge of the Euston bit are being relieved of their duties. It does seem a British thing that for large scale public projects people are much more interested in how much money they can make from it for very little work rather than getting the job done on time..
They are on time - they're being paid £2,200 a week because the section east of OOC was put on hold back in the spring.
£2,200 per week to do no work is an OK way for public money to be spent?
They've turned up and fulfilled the terms of their contract. Not *their* fault if there is SFA to do.
The political and specialist management, on the other hand ...
Sun readers leaning Labour, and Daily Mail readers only prefer Cons to Lab by 2%
Bloody hell, the Tories have lost Daily Telegraph readers.
As a Telegraph subscriber, I have previously mentioned the Telegraph's sudden lurch to the alt-right earlier this year. It might be this is putting off the mainstream, small-c conservatives who comprise its readership.
I think the Guardian's lurch at times recently toward one-track dogmatism must be equally off-putting to some of its older liberal readers.
Even after Thatcher destroyed so much in British public culture and broadcasting at the behest of Murdoch , and his obsessive resentment of all and any of the British postwar elites, Britain was partially redeemed by having a reasonably intelligent broadsheet press. We're partly in such trouble now because any nuances are disappearing there, too.
Always best to be mistrustful of people who rail against elites, it usually signals that they're hoping to replace the old elite themselves, or are already part of the elite but feel their power is being unfairly blocked. Hence the ludicrous spectacle of Dominic Cummings (private school, Oxford, married into the aristocracy, runs campaigns financed by private equity dark money, worked for the PM) attacking 'the elite' - by which he means junior civil servants who dare to question him throwing public money at his bizarre pet causes, or probably just anyone with a university degree who disagrees with him.
Also worth mentioning that Cummings’s father-in-law is some kind of creepy eugenicist, and that Cummings himself is an enthusiastic follower of various libertarian crypto-influencers.
Sun readers leaning Labour, and Daily Mail readers only prefer Cons to Lab by 2%
Bloody hell, the Tories have lost Daily Telegraph readers.
As a Telegraph subscriber, I have previously mentioned the Telegraph's sudden lurch to the alt-right earlier this year. It might be this is putting off the mainstream, small-c conservatives who comprise its readership.
Alison Pearson, The Tele's bonkers right-wing cheer leader announced in her column this week that she was hoping the Conservatives lose the next election.
For not being nutty enough or maybe more charitably for not being able to deliver her fantasy politics.
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" 📈
Growth in number of car journeys =/= economic growth
Of course it is.
People only make journeys that are economically productive for them, and others they trade with.
Just because you can't post on PB while doing it doesn't mean it's productive.
Faisal Islam @faisalislam Japan building revolutionary 177 mile maglev from Tokyo to Nagoya for £45bn, 90% in tunnels under mountains as part of integrated Shinkansen system…
equivalent of London to Manchester (in straight line) in 40 minutes… at 310mph
The ridiculous cost of large public sector projects needs to be looked at because - nuclear power is another traincrash for finances in this country generally.
The management of the Euston end of the HS2 project has been terrible. I know electricians working on the project at Euston who for the past year have done no work but are getting paid £2200 per week. They just go and sit in the site hut and play on their phones. I imagine this type of management is why Sunak said yesterday that those in charge of the Euston bit are being relieved of their duties. It does seem a British thing that for large scale public projects people are much more interested in how much money they can make from it for very little work rather than getting the job done on time..
They are on time - they're being paid £2,200 a week because the section east of OOC was put on hold back in the spring.
£2,200 per week to do no work is an OK way for public money to be spent?
Hell no! But this is Tory spivism in action - pay large amounts of money for nothing. Remember all the duff PPE contracts? How is this any different?
Faisal Islam @faisalislam Japan building revolutionary 177 mile maglev from Tokyo to Nagoya for £45bn, 90% in tunnels under mountains as part of integrated Shinkansen system…
equivalent of London to Manchester (in straight line) in 40 minutes… at 310mph
Yea, that technology is very cool. It has the downside of needing dedicated tracks though, so in a UK context you’d need to build London to at least Manchester in one go.
There was a UK proposal for a Maglev a couple of decades back which, if it had been given the green light at the time, could have been operational by now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Ultraspeed
We're almost at the need for dedicated tracks point here.
The original plan for thw West Coast Mainline was that the existing fast lines would become a dedicated 140mph railway with all other traffic on the slow lines (each having one track in each direction). Then Railtrack spent all their money on shops and not maintenance, went pop and the scheme got pared back.
Now? HS2 trains will be slower than the Pendolino trains they are replacing. Dumping them back onto the WCML at Handsacre just as the line gets really twisty will slow things down and actively *reduce* capacity.
Which is why they need to build the rest of 2a to connect phase 1 to phase 2b. The "potteries gap" between the sections of high speed line will be a real bottleneck.
So running Pendos on HS2 would be quicker for services going beyond Brum. Well there's the solution. Scrap the idea of new super-fast trains and just keep the Pendos. Minimal saving in journey time to Brum, but it doesn't take that long anyway. And the extra capacity on the southern WCML will still be there.
Surely the better* solution would be to do cross-platform change of train at Birmingham Interchange. That way we get the benefits of high speed running south of there and don't hold up anything on the WCML.
Or, in reality, the DfT are forcing the removal of tilting and the slowing down of services. Avanti have bought a fleet of non-tilting and slower EMUs because that is what their DfT masters directed them to do. They run slower than the trains they replace but so what.
Soon we will have "we can't afford the cost of maintaining the tilting system" and it will be turned off as CrossCountry did on the Oxford route. So it won't matter that the HS fleet won't tilt. Because by then nothing will and 125mph running will be a distant memory.
Comments
Legitimate discussions, and politicians' uses of them. It's much the same when Braverman talks about "Multiculturalism has failed." There's an argument about where the sliding scale of integration should be between multiracialism and multiculturalism, and all sorts of peoples' views about where that might and should be, or where it already successfully is. But that is very different from the rhetorical and focus-grouped use Braverman is putting it to, which is "Multiculturalism=foreigners" , for a certain very carefully researched and targeted demographic the Tory machine is after.
It's much the same with Trans and gender issues.
I don't think these should be party conference fodder except in extremis, because the intention is nearly always the same ; to appear to want to raise genuine debates, but in fact to be engaged in provocative button-pushing.
Edit: Roy
& gone
A lack of infrastructure caps growth.
Infrastructure investment increases economic potential
It doesn’t lead to growth in and of itself
If the smoking ban corresponds with a crackdown on smoking pot, then I might have sympathy, but that isn't going to happen.
I mean, that's absolute bullshit, isn't it? Do you really believe that?
https://twitter.com/damiansurvation/status/1709843317519737113
Sun readers leaning Labour, and Daily Mail readers only prefer Cons to Lab by 2%
The cost and expense of taking a Cat 2 HGV course & test (Thanks @Johnlilburne) for the one off use of a 7.5T lorry clearly won't be worth doing.
It is a pain - 4 minutes walk in the drizzle. It can be confusing for tourists
Not sure it is worth £x hundred millions to avoid though from a value for money perspective
It is perfectly possible to reverse the current situation and start targeting people again and that reversal has to start somewhere. Sunak is the leader of the country. He can give a lead in whatever direction he chooses and steer policy to suit.
That is why that speech is so troubling
More than the cost of a suitable second-hand car ….. eg Fiat 500, or Ka ….. would be!
Sunak and his scriptwriters will have known this full well, just as they know the significance and reasons for making nicey-nicey with Nigel.
I am doomed.
Plenty of people get the Telegraph because it has good sports (particularly cricket) coverage, while the Mail pretty assiduously courts a particular group of female readers with a lot of "lifestyle" stuff.
In this one, Telegraph readers are more Tory than the nation as a whole... but Labour still have a lead which isn't much smaller than their national poll lead.
It's also always instructive to read in conjunction with circulation figures. Political campaigners often forget that in terms of sheer numbers (rather than percentages) many more Labour voters read the Mail than the Guardian, many more Tories read the Mirror than the FT, and many more Lib Dems read the Sun than the Independent.
If you want to drive a 7.5t truck now, and passed your first car driving test after 1996, you have to rent a truck, with an instructor, for several hours, followed by a driving test in the truck. Which is fine if you just bought a horse box and plan on driving around the country in it, but a total pain in the arse if you just want to move house yourself on one occasion. Most people would rather just hire a man with a van, than spend several hundred quid on the training.
For reference, a 3.5t truck looks like a large Transit van, while a 7.5t looks more like a small lorry. http://www.furnell.com/fleet.html
Ah, yes, I see the flaw in my thinking.
Seeing my look of utter incomprehension his face fell and he went ‘that’s just a random shirt to you, isn’t it?’ Yep, sorry mate.
Even after Thatcher destroyed so much in British public culture and broadcasting at the behest of Murdoch , and his obsessive resentment of all and any of the British postwar elites, Britain was partially redeemed by having a reasonably intelligent broadsheet press. We're partly in such trouble now because any nuances are disappearing there, too.
Re the quote, Donald Trump described politicians as all talk and no action. Mrs Thatcher said that if you wanted something said, ask a man, but if you wanted something done, ask a woman. (Ironically, Mrs Thatcher was not a great champion of other Conservative women.) My Mrs T quote book might already have been a victim of my decluttering from bookshelves to bin.
People only make journeys that are economically productive for them, and others they trade with.
What happens, is that surplus stocks of old branded shirts end up shipped out to poorer countries and sold for pennies.
After all: the media will have got all the "normal" photo-ops as Sunak got off the train.
If you can read the runes for the Blue Wall in that, or even the Red Wall, you're a, well not a man, my son - that bit of Kipling is out of its time - but certainly a psephologist of note.
I’ve a feeling that’s a few runs short and a wicket or two extra, compared to where they need to be.
@faisalislam
Japan building revolutionary 177 mile maglev from Tokyo to Nagoya for £45bn, 90% in tunnels under mountains as part of integrated Shinkansen system…
equivalent of London to Manchester (in straight line) in 40 minutes… at 310mph
https://x.com/ballotboxscot/status/1709833298522804686?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
https://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2023/01/29/the-intermarium/
As opposed to old western ones.
Surely he has to win one of these, simply by the law of averages?
Never been the same since.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=q_dzK9ykGyc a good short documentary about it, from last year.
There was a UK proposal for a Maglev a couple of decades back which, if it had been given the green light at the time, could have been operational by now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Ultraspeed
This jars with perceptions trained to earlier lenses. Hence the Peston stuff about perspective a while back.
https://twitter.com/anneapplebaum/status/1709879648794898592
The national post office distributed this leaflet, "Your Referendum Vote," to everyone in Poland. An acquaintance got it yesterday. Main headline: "IT'S ALREADY AN INVASION, THEY ARE SAILING HERE!" Photo is of African refugees on the Mediterranean..
... the leaflet is printed by the deceptively named "Indepedent Media Foundation," a state-funded organization, according to this article:
...The reference is to a question on the referendum that will be held on Oct 15: "Do you support the admission of thousands of illegal immigrants from the Middle East and Africa, in accordance with the forced-relocation mechanism imposed by the European bureaucracy?”
..Note that there is no "force-relocation mechanism imposed by the European bureaucracy", this is an invention. The purpose of the referendum, which is of dubious legality, is to persuade Poles that there is, and that the opposition approves of it.
..The referendum is being held alongside a general parliamentary election, and is, a designed to persuade voters that an opposition victory will lead to immigration from the Middle East and Africa. Also more higher retirement age, etc
..The biggest immigration from the Middle East and Africa in Polish history took place over the last several years, under the current government, some of whose bureaucrats were selling visas in exchange for bribes. Obviously the leaflet doesn't explain that...
The original plan for thw West Coast Mainline was that the existing fast lines would become a dedicated 140mph railway with all other traffic on the slow lines (each having one track in each direction). Then Railtrack spent all their money on shops and not maintenance, went pop and the scheme got pared back.
Now? HS2 trains will be slower than the Pendolino trains they are replacing. Dumping them back onto the WCML at Handsacre just as the line gets really twisty will slow things down and actively *reduce* capacity.
Which is why they need to build the rest of 2a to connect phase 1 to phase 2b. The "potteries gap" between the sections of high speed line will be a real bottleneck.
Unfairly blocked seems exactly the issue with Murdoch. He instantly hated not the old aristo elite, but Britain's postwar cultural elite, the Melvyn Braggs and Joan Bakewells. It was hugely important to him that British TV and media was no longer what he thought was intellectually elitist and snobby, and he hated this influence. The problem was that these people were helping to make this country a far more thoughtful, interesting and nuanced place.
I don't know why we can't sort this kind of shit out. We have to be able to do big infrastructure projects if we are to grow our economy, so we have to figure out a way of doing it in a way that doesn't bankrupt us. Alongside completing HS2 I would argue for an inquiry into the cost overruns and a new focus on managing public procurement to deliver value for money. This is the kind of thing that separates successful and unsuccessful countries.
Yet another example of failing to the top & then being unsackable.
The political and specialist management, on the other hand ...
None of this is normal.
Or, in reality, the DfT are forcing the removal of tilting and the slowing down of services. Avanti have bought a fleet of non-tilting and slower EMUs because that is what their DfT masters directed them to do. They run slower than the trains they replace but so what.
Soon we will have "we can't afford the cost of maintaining the tilting system" and it will be turned off as CrossCountry did on the Oxford route. So it won't matter that the HS fleet won't tilt. Because by then nothing will and 125mph running will be a distant memory.